If you already consider yourself a good cook, stop reading now. This post will only bore you.

1. Add fat.
Last night my friend OCD and her husband Juan came over for dinner. OCD asked me what on earth I had done to the salmon.
"Nothing special. Onion chives, fresh taragon, lemon, salt, pepper, and two incisions stuffed with butter," I recited.
"Butter!" she said, light dawning in her eyes. "I should use more butter..."
Yes, yes you should, I mused silently. This musing was not directed at OCD particularly, but at the world in general. Unfortunately, our national anti-fat hysteria has caused people to remove obvious sources of fat such as butter and olive oil from their diets while they continue to consume mass quantities of unhealthy additives in processed foods. It's a lose/lose situation.

2. Do not be afraid of existing fat.
OCD also has a phobia of visible fat on meat. Being OCD, she is inclined to remove all fat from raw meat with surgical precision. I can understand that. Fat is kind of gross looking and can have a rubbery texture. (I am the nasty sort of person that actually enjoys chewing on great pieces of succulent steak fat, but I can't expect everyone to be on that bandwagon.) Fat is also what gives meet its succulence. If you insist on removing fat or skin for dietary or aesthetic reasons, consider waiting until after the cooking process. Your meat may have a slightly higher fat content but it will also be more satisfying.

3. Grow and use fresh herbs.
Fresh herbs brighten any dish, and can do wonders for canned foods. Unfortunately, fresh herbs in the produce aisle are incredibly overpriced. The problem is easily rectified by creating a small herb garden. (I prefer growing herbs in a container because I am lazy and it saves me from walking all the way out to the garden for a sprig of thyme.) Plus, growing your own fresh herbs is an excellent way to impress the ladies. Or so I'm told...

4. Own cast iron.
A properly seasoned iron skillet is as nonstick as Teflon and you can treat it more roughly. (And instead of releasing particles of polytetrafluoroethylene into your food, cast iron pans leach trace elements of iron, which is actually beneficial, especially for all of you anemic vegetarians.)

5. Use stock.
Chicken stock adds dimension to sauces, soups, and sauteed vegetables. If you are interested in a simple and foolproof recipe, let me know.

"Only two things that money can't buy, and that's true love and home grown tomatoes," sings country troubadour Guy Clark. I'm inclined to agree with Guy (about most things he voices, actually) , though at the moment our tomatoes are just spindly starts and I'm singing the praises of one other thing that money can't buy: home grown salad greens.

Unlike the notoriously dreadful store bought tomato, store bought salad greens (especially the overpriced baby greens that I buy) are edible. However, the texture of homegrown greens is noticeably different: crispier, more delicate. Homegrown lettuce has thin, silky ruffles and homegrown spinach evades the leathery texture that mars, say, Popeye's Spinach Salad Mix. This year I'm growing butter lettuce, mustard greens, spinach, and rocket (which sounds infinitely cooler than arugula, does it not?). Having a pleasing array of fresh salad greens on hand is definitely an incentive to eat salad.

Not the gardening type? More of a cigar smoking libertine? Find salad totally boring even when it's crafted of the most meticulously harvested locally grown microgreens? This post is crafted with you in mind, too.

Yesterday I discovered that lettuce is better with single malt scotch. Don't ask me why I happened to discover this. But no, I wasn't just going around indiscriminately pouring scotch on things and then sticking them in my mouth.


Scotch Salad Dressing

You will need:
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 teaspoon of granulated garlic
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons of warm water
1/2 teaspoon of honey
1 teaspoon of scotch (I used Abelour)
4 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil

Mix soy sauce, granulated garlic, and balsalmic.
Add honey.
Add warm water and scotch.
Stir.
Add olive oil.
Close jar and shake.
Cool before applying to salad.

A grilled cheese sandwich, fried in butter to crispy perfection and sliced diagonally, sits on a wooden plate on the bright oil cloth table. Next to the sandwich, a bowl of Campbell's tomato soup is classic, placid, delicious. Outside the rain falls on the Oregon woods. I am six years old.

My mother made me grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell's tomato soup, and the meal still seems like the ultimate comfort food. In theory, I love Campbell's tomato soup. But I can't remember the last time I bought a can of Campbell's or any other type of canned soup. I detest the metallic can flavor, most canned soups have questionable ingredients (hello, high fructose corn syrup), and I consider making soups from scratch a form of leisure entertainment.

Enter the flu and my friend Cornelius, who brought me a can of Amy's Thai Coconut Soup, claiming it made him feel better the last time he was sick. Cornelius has pretty good taste in sustenance (his devotion to Chock Full o' Nuts Coffee aside) and the soup is organic and made of whole, recognizable ingredients, so I approached the can with a relatively open mind. (Plus I was really too sick to have any desire to cook anything from scratch.)

I found the coconut broth tasty--light, aromatic, pleasantly spiced, and remarkably free of any "can" flavor. It tasted even better when I added a lime, a teaspoon of chili oil, and a few leaves of cilantro, but that's true about homemade Tom Kha too. The soup contains shitaki mushrooms, sweet potatoes, green beans, shallots, tofu, and even kaffir lime leaves. The mushrooms were good (and I don't even like shitakes), and the tofu was chewy, but the vegetables were predictably mushy--the carrots, in large slices, being the worst offenders. That said, I ate the contents of the can in one sitting. Cornelius was right--I did feel better.

Overall, a good product, and at 280 calories for a whole can (2 servings) a pretty healthy choice.

As described in my previous post, I'm trying some recipes from The First Ladies Cookbook. Are you waiting with baited breath? Hayes triumphed over Jefferson in my roast beef conundrum. Weird, I know. I'm fairly certain Jefferson normally trumps Hayes in any category (pesky slave owning aside) and clearly Jefferson could give all of his presidential cohorts a run for their money foodwise. Half the people in this country (this may be a generous estimate) probably wouldn't be able to name Hayes as a president, and when he is remembered, I'm pretty certain it's not as a foodie. Whereas Jefferson is famous for his devotion to the culinary... However, I'm feeling distinctly lazy and Lucy Hayes' recipe looks easier. Also, this is about first ladies right? Jefferson didn't even have a first lady, so Lucy Hayes would triumph by default in a Hayes/Jefferson first lady smackdown.

So roast beef ala Hayes it is. Because I'm feeling lazy, the aforementioned potato puffs will have to wait for later. Roasted potatoes will do.

Life is full of hidden challenges. I choose a seemingly unchallenging recipe only to feel the cold snap of Lucy Hayes' teeth on my Achilles tendon. Let's get down to brass tacks: restraint is not one of my more evident qualities as a cook. Although I have learned that moderation in spicing can be a good thing, I tend to make up for any (modest) restraint in that area by using tons of flavorful ingredients: garlic, leeks, scallions, wine, capers, olive oil, Parmesan, bacon grease, chicken stock. Did I mention bacon I rarely cook anything that has fewer than eight ingredients. The ingredients for Lucy Hayes' roast beef? Four. Flour, beef, salt, and pepper. Five if you count hot water.

The bland recipe seems fairly in keeping with the Hayes white house. Although Lucy Hayes was the first college graduate first lady, she wasn't exactly a firecracker. The chapter on the Hayes white house is peppered with phrases such as: "Virtue became fashionable, and Lucy was hailed as its defender", "Then to the blue room for family prayers", and "Every night the family gathered in the Red Room to sing old ballads, hymns, and Stephen Foster songs". Lucy became known as "lemonade Lucy" because the Hayes White House had a strict ban on alcohol.

A number of ingredients spring to mind as I ready the roast. Ingredients I have around that really would add to the recipe...Perhaps a sprinkle of smoked paprika? Some fresh rosemary? Leeks couldn't possibly hurt...Do I really have to put hot water in the bottom of the pan? Wouldn't stock or wine be better?

I heat the oven to 450 degrees. For some reason it has never occurred to me to cook a roast at this high of heat. At first I want to consult other recipes, but as I think about it, it begins to make sense. Steaks are good cooked at high heat for short periods of time, after all. Speaking of short periods of time, the recipe claims that a roast this size (3.5 lbs) should be done in 45 minutes, which seems impossible. I am used to making pot roast, which takes all day.

I resist the temptation to add any spices or additional ingredients and dump the floured and salted lump into a pan, ringed only by the potatoes I'm roasting. I do cheat a little and add a splash of wine, my rationalization being this: Lucy and Rutherford B. were teetotalers, so of course it wouldn't occur to them to add wine to a recipe. But probably anyone else cooking this recipe at that time would have added wine as a matter of course, right? Jefferson's recipe calls for wine. I can't be a slave to their inhibitions. Also, I don't want the potatoes to be too dry...

After 45 minutes, I check the roast. It smells good and the outside sizzles crispy, but I am still suspicious of the timing. I like rare (read: raw) meat myself, but my roommate Cornelius (purchaser of said roast) eschews bloody beef. I plunge the meat thermometer into the roast, and the arrow doesn't waver. According to the thermometer, the meat doesn't even qualify as rare yet. I cook until I get a rare reading, another 45 minutes.

And the results? The roast, like the Hayes administration, is unremarkable. It's tender and juicy enough and doesn't seem to suffer terribly from the lack of spices. However, truth be told, the extremities are overdone. I should have listened to Lucy Hayes.

Two of my great obsessions, cooking and presidential history, collide in the remarkable The First Ladies Cook Book: Favorite Recipes of All the Presidents of the United States, which was published in 1969. A wedding gift from a dear friend of mine, the book is satisfying in so many ways. The aesthetic is very much a product of the era: saturated color prints amp the surreal kitsch of White House interiors, and the photographs of food are reminiscent of old Betty Crocker cookbooks: lurid, glistening roasts flanked by sinister jell-o molds. Nonetheless, the historical research is sound and the book is reasonably well-written. Though as far as I can tell, the most interesting thing about Rutherford and Lucy Hayes was their taste in china patterns (amazing paintings of American flora and fauna, particularly the excellent plates featuring bucks poised in a majestic tableau). But then there's juicier fare: Theodore Roosevelt, for example, was fond of whole suckling pigs. Are you surprised? Perusing the volume is a pleasure and offers piquant lines: "for the stuffing, simmer heart and liver together";"Mrs. (John Quincey) Adams received her guests resplendent in a gown of steel-colored llama cloth with cut steel ornamentation"; "these feet must be well boiled the day before they are wanted"; and the following quote from poor, doomed James Garfield, "It was a pleasant relief from the monotony of the White House to get out for an evening."

Today I will be attempting my first recipe from the book. I would, of course, gravitate toward Abigail Adams, but the main recipe in her chapter is salmon stuffed with oysters, which seems a bit fancy for a Tuesday night with no guests, and also requires you to 'lard the fish with skinned eel', whatever that means. I happen to have a roast on hand, so it's either Jefferson's Boeuf a la Mode (Jefferson is, of course, one of my presidential obsessions, and the recipe involves bacon) or Hayes' Roast Beef with Potato Puffs (the roast recipe sounds easy and the potato puffs sound delicious). Updates pending.