Tuesday, March 18, 2003

I just got back from a Rotary Club luncheon meeting.  My sister, the funeral director, is a member.  "Hope I don't see you around too much, heh, heh" all the other Rotarians say to her.  As her guest, I was asked quite a bit,  "And so what do you do?"  I just said, "I'm a mom, at home, with my pre-schooler.  The topic of today's meeting interests me, though."  "Oh.  What is the topic?"  Most of the regulars did not know.  The topic at today's meeting, and the reason I asked my sister to invite me, was "The Immigrant Situation in Red Wing".  A local immigration attorney was the speaker, along with another local woman who works for the Red Wing Shoe Company and is the town's official bi-lingual woman. I didn't learn one darn thing that I didn't already know (but we were served a very nice lunch--of chicken and dumplings!!!) Roughly a year ago, I put an ad in the local paper, in Spanish, looking for a  babysitter for Kipp.  I wanted him to have a chance to learn some authentic Spanish, from a native speaker.  A very nice woman from Mexico answered my ad.  She was young, 33, but had heart surgery and couldn't work outside the home.  Her three children were school-age and she did babysitting to help pay the bills. So I drove over to her apartment, to meet with her and her family.  The apartment they lived in turned out to be the exact same one my maternal grandparents had lived in in the early 1970's.  My grandfather died in that kitchen.  I spent hours there when I was Kipp's age.  It was a modest little place, half of a duplex, but back then the lawn was tidy & flowerbeds bordered the house.  Conditions had deteriorated greatly; the place had grown sad, unkempt, dank & decrepit.  There were rats and old mattresses in the basement.  Stepping back into the place some 30 years later was like a shove from the grave, my grandparents telling me that I had to help whoever was living here, in these conditions. Turned out it was a family of six living in a one-bedroom apartment, a very charming family.  Kipp adored their children.  The mother and father were good parents, very religious, conscientious and hard-working.  They had to leave Mexico because there was no work. Because Mina, the mother, also baby-sat some other children, she couldn't watch Kipp in my home, and though I knew there were good people inside, I found it difficult to send Kipp to that unhealthy apartment.  When the family told me they were considering buying a trailer home they'd had their eyes on, I knew there was a way to help them.  You know how hard it is as a citizen to navigate this country sometimes, to follow all the rules, pay all the taxes, jump through all the financial hoops--for an immigrant it's a thousand times harder.    Some people thought I was nuts, but my husband wasn't one of them, and with his blessings, I went with this family I scarcely knew and co-signed a loan for them so that they could buy their $10,000 piece of the American Dream, an older, but sunny and spacious, three-bedroom trailer home.  They've given me no cause for regret.  As I told the lady at the bank, "I trust them to watch my child.  How can I not trust them to pay back this loan?" Though I wasn't out for personal gain, it does come back to you.  What I gained was education on what it is to be an immigrant in this country, with no real hope of citizenship and, by extension, a greater appreciation of my own.  comment []2:39:22 PM     First we make broth.   There is justice in the world.  I did manage to do justice to the little stewing hen sitting in my fridge—transforming her into 6 pints of deep golden broth and subsequently, chicken and dumpling stew.   I scoured the internet searching for stewing hen recipes, which are few and far between, let me tell you.  The choices seemed to boil down to:   Belgian Chicken Waterzooie—but  my gorge rose at the thought of all that cream—which I love on strawberries (let me tell you what I do to strawberries some time), but not on chicken! Coq au Vin—red wine version.  Would have been an interesting experiment, but after making that white whine version, I'd sworn off red.  Sancocho—if I’m making Colombian stew it’s going to be ajiaco, and without the right ingredients, like 3 varieties of potatoes and those infernal guascas, I’m not making ajiaco. Brunswick Stew, Chicken Cacciatore—I’m not that big a fan of chicken with tomatoes or tomato based sauce. What I wanted to do with my hen was pure;  I just wanted the richness and flavor she could provide and nothing much more.    That meant broth first; there was no way around it.    I stumbled, I mean really stumbled into the backwoods of the Internet and found a recipe for old-fashioned chicken and dumpling stew at a kind of questionable looking site called Backwoods Home Magazine. I’m from Minnesota, so I’m not going to disparage anything having to do with the backwoods. What I most liked about the recipe I found was that it looked right.  The more recipes I read, the better I sense what I’m going to like and what I’m not.  I liked this:   Homemade Chicken Broth 1 5 to 6 pound stewing hen or roasting chicken 6 quarts cold water 2 medium onions, peeled and cut into quarters 1 celery rib with leaves attached 1 whole carrot 2 bay leaves 8 whole black peppercorns 3 whole cloves 1 piece peeled fresh ginger about one inch long, chopped 1 tsp. Kosher salt Method: 1. Place the chicken and the water in a 10- or 12-quart stockpot. Place the pot on the stove over a low flame and let the water come to a gentle boil. A froth will appear on top. This will take from 45 minutes to one hour. Carefully skim off the froth as it rises to the surface. Do not, for any reason, stir the pot after the froth first begins to appear. 2. The froth will continue to form on top of the broth for about an hour. When it stops foaming, let the broth simmer for about 30 minutes, then add the onions, celery, and carrot. 3. Let the pot return to a simmer while carefully skimming off any more sediment that rises to the surface. Add the bay leaves, peppercorns, whole clove, ginger, and salt. 4. Reduce the heat to a point where the broth is barely simmering. Continue to simmer, uncovered, for 1½ hours. If you are using a roasting chicken or capon, remove it at this point and let the stock simmer for another hour. If you are using an old stewing hen (fowl), leave it in the pot until the end. 5. Turn off the heat, remove the stewing hen, if necessary, and let the broth settle and cool. 6. Strain the broth into another pot through several layers of cheese cloth and place the pot in the refrigerator. This is the fastest and safest way to cool a perishable hot food like chicken broth. You can safely let the stock cool, unrefrigerated, for up to 90 minutes before placing it in the refrigerator. If you live in a northern climate, during the winter you can take a pot of hot stock on a cake rack and place it on your back porch for super-fast cooling. The foam was so easy to remove since no vegetables were added right at the beginning and the pot wasn't stirred in the slightest.  Next installment:  Conundrum in the Kitchen.       comment []10:48:32 AM

© Copyright 2003 L. L. Adams. Last update: 4/7/2003; 2:56:33 PM.