All the Ingredients

Cookin' With Coolio

Okay, I confess. Although I spend my share of time on the internet, I do not watch a lot of YouTube. That is obviously how I missed the numerous episodes of "Cookin' with Coolio: The Ghetto Gourmet." Which is a good thing, because I find videos of Coolio overwhelming. His loud & colorful personality, his "sous-chef" Jarez, and the ladies who provide the background eye-candy, completely overshadow whatever he is cooking.

Spend time looking through his new book Cookin' with Coolio,and you get an entirely different view of this rap star. An appealing view. Coolio cooks because what you make at home is better than what you get at a drive-through window. It is also better for you. And you can do it on a budget and still eat well. There are a whole lot of fancy cookbooks out there waiting to end up under your Christmas tree this year that will charge way more than $16 to tell you that.

And this book is funny.

Maybe all the folks who have spent their summers trying to wade through the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, need to try lightening up with Coolio's recipes where the spices are measured in the quantities of "dime bag," and "nickel bag." (A dime bag of salt = 1 T salt, a nickel bag = 1/2 T.) 

Coolio's sous-chef Jarez adds his comments in bold blue ribbons across each recipe. Some are technical comments about how to preheat the oven or drain the fried shrimp. Some are more audience-specific: "To check and see if your [Sweet Chocolate Potato] pie is done, simply shank it with your shiv. If it comes out clean, it's done." My son found this book highly entertaining, although I am not sure any cookbook would push him to prepare any food beyond his comfort zone of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Coolio is not afraid of vegetables, and includes recommendations for lightening up recipes, such as using chicken or turkey sausages in place of ground beef in "Bro-ghetti" sauce. And the food styling and photography in this book would make Emeril or Paula jealous.

I tried the "Dom Chicken Alfredo." Coolio says that Fettuccine Alfredo is just mac and cheese for adults, and that if you make his recipe, your kids will never want the stuff out of the blue box again. My daughter already likes Fettuccine Alfredo (and still likes the stuff in the blue box). However, on this evening, she declared that she was not hungry and didn't want any. But by the time I had sauteed the onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and mixed together the sauce with its two types of cheeses, she was sniffing  around the kitchen.

The last ingredients added to the sauce before you pour the "Dom Chicken Alfredo" over the cooked fettuccine, is the chicken you have grilled and cut into strips, some sour cream, and fresh diced tomatoes. Even though I drained the tomatoes after I diced them, they were just watery enough so that they broke the cream sauce. My gorgeous alfredo sauce turned stringy. But it was delicious. My daughter was halfway through her plateful before she noticed the tomatoes and exclaimed, "What are these pink things!" I think the next time I will either cook the tomatoes with the rest of the vegetables, or serve them sliced on the side drizzled with balsamic vinegar (one of Coolio's favorite ingredients along with hot peppers).

I think a lot of the new cookbooks out this holiday season are retreads. (I swear that the photo of Nigella Lawson on the cover of Nigella's Christmas was taken when she was eighteen!) I guarantee that you will get your money's worth with Cookin' with Coolio, and it will be a unique present under anyone's Christmas tree.

Feeding the Flu

My son came home from college a week ago, having fallen victim to H1N1. I knew at some point he would catch the flu. He is a member of one of the most susceptible populations, and as a college student, he doesn't get enough sleep or eat right. One of the perks of going to college 40 minutes away is that he could come home and not have to try and get better in a dorm room with dorm food.

He was miserable, with chest congestion, high fever, and chills. I don't even remember what cooking plans I may have had for last week because it quickly became about feeding and caring for Plague Boy. ("Nice nickname. Thanks Mom. I love you too.") 

In the early stages of the flu, when his fever was the highest, we kept pushing liquids: soda and Kool-Aid. When he did feel hungry, he was very happy with some Club Crackers and peeled slices of apple. Mostly he just wanted to sleep. And his cat, thrilled to have him home, slept with him. That seems to be the trick in the high-fever stage of the flu, lots of liquids (with pain relievers) and just enough food to keep the stomach happy. Also he didn't want anything hot or cold because the chills were still coming and going.

In the next stage of the flu, Plague Boy's fever had come down to about a degree above normal. He wanted something more to eat, but wasn't really hungry. Now, usually I make my own chicken noodle soup when people about the house fall sick. But when you are trying to keep one person segregated and sanitize contaminated items (we actually wrote on his drinking glasses with a permanent marker so we all knew they were his), making food from scratch takes too much time. So we fell back on one of the pantry's staple items, Campbell's Healthy Request Chicken Noodle Soup. It the only canned soup that everyone in the house will eat. The kids like it because there are lots of noodles, chicken,and carrots, and not so much broth and celery. And the soup tastes great with Club Crackers broken up into it. Once the chills stopped, we also started giving Plague Boy popsicles.

Once the fever was gone completely, we went back to offering him favorites like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches--still with apple slices instead of chips. Or pb&j with the chicken noodles soup. Zach never seemed to have the nausea that can come with the flu, and I think that the fact that he could continue to eat, plus the fact that he's young and healthy, helped him recover in five days. And so far, no one else in the house has come down with it, although it's early in the flu season. But we have restocked the soup just in case. Be well!