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Here are some of Agnes's columns. Be warned that she is not a foodie and she does not guarantee any of this. Or whatever that disclaimer is that people put in cookbooks. This is fiction, folks.

“Coke Would Like To Teach The World To Cook”

Cranky Agnes Column #12

Those who are critical of Coke, point out that when you drop a nail into a Coke, and leave it there for four days, the nail dissolves completely; imagine, they say, what that same Coke does to your stomach. Those who are fans of Coke Ham point out that when you pour Coke over a ham and bake it in a 300 degree oven for two and a half hours, the ham tastes delicious.  I would like to point out that anybody who has put a nail in a can of Coke and waited four days knows that it doesn’t dissolve at all.   Why do people believe everything they hear?  On the other hand, Coke Ham really is good.  Better than that, it’s criminally easy.

In fact, Coca-cola has spent much of its history trying to get people to cook with its fizzy sugar rush.   And like all histories, some of it is not pretty.  There’s the Indian Chicken Curry made with Coke and coffee creamer.  The Coca-Cola French Onion Soup which is just dumb.  And who could forget the Diet Cherry Coke Lentils?  I’m trying, I’m trying.  But just as you’re overcome by snickering, you discover culinary art’s dirty little secret.

Coke Ham is really good.

I was much heartened to read Nigella Lawson on this.  Nigella is the queen of porn food; I think half of her audience is men watching her tie that apron around her voluptuous, screw-the-calories-I-love-food body and lick buttery-rich food off her fingers.  Hell, if I were a guy, I’d watch for that.   But she does tend to go for ingredients--you don’t hear Nigella saying, “Just throw some Lipton soup mix on that slab of meat and go watch your soaps”—so when she talked about her conversion to Coke ham, I knew she meant it.  In fact, although she tried Coke Ham as a joke, she now says, “The truth is it's magnificent, and makes converts of anyone who eats it.”

This was certainly true of me.  I did not try it as a joke, I tried it as an act of desperation after blithely saying to a bunch of very picky eaters, “Oh, just come to my place and I’ll make a ham.”  I think I had some idea of pouring a can of pineapple slices over it and hoping they’d stick.   I even tried that ahead of time and disaster did not begin to describe the dried up football—we’re talking pigskin here—of a protein blob I ended with.  So I hit the internet and there was Coke Ham, with the incredibly easy directions of “Put ham in the oven, pour Coke over, bake.”  Which I did, and got compliments like crazy.   Of course, I did more than pour the Coke, I’m Cranky Agnes, I have a rep to protect.  I did the pineapple and cloves thing, too.  But basically, you’re talking Coke and ham here.  It’s good.

Cranky Agnes’s Coke Ham

  • Ham, not large, no more than five pounds
  • 2 two-liter bottles of regular Coke, NOT DIET
  • 2 T. yellow mustard
  • Cloves
  • Sliced pineapple
  • Toothpicks
  1. Put the ham in a roasting pan. 
  2. Drain the pineapple juice from the sliced pineapple into a bowl, then put the pineapples slices on the ham with the toothpicks.  Feel creative. 
  3. Stab the ham in between the pineapple rings with a toothpick and insert cloves.  Control yourself.  It’s easy to over-clove a ham.
  4. Put the mustard into the pineapple juice and splash in some Coke to make a thick glaze.  If you’re not afraid of sugar, sling some brown sugar in there, too.  Spread the glaze over the ham (if you have no brush, use your fingers; Nigella would).  Splash some Coke into the pan to keep the juices from sticking.
  5. Bake for ten minutes at 300 to set the pineapple mustard glaze, then pour over some more Coke. Back into the oven it goes.
  6. Keep pouring Coke over the ham, building up a sweet glaze crust, until the time is up or your meat thermometer says it’s done.
  7. Eat, while drinking whatever Coke you have left over.

Or

  1. Put the ham in a pan in the 300 oven.
  2. Pour the coke over it every fifteen minutes until it’s done.
  3. Eat.

For dessert have Coke Cake if you’re not picky about cake (this one has been floating around the internet for centuries):

  • 1 pkg of chocolate cake mix
  • 1 can of Diet Coke (or 1 1/3 c.)
  1. Mix cake mix with diet coke.
  2. Bake according to package directions.
  3. Eat

No, I’m not kidding. It’s not great, but if you want to make your kids laugh, pour in the Coke and bake. If your taste runs to white or yellow cake, use diet 7-Up or Vernor's Ginger Ale.

So what have we learned from this? 
Don’t believe everything you hear about Coke, but the ham is the real thing.

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“Just Like Mother Used To Fake”

Cranky Agnes Column #62

Many of us have a recipe passed down to us by our mothers that pretty much sums up our childhood memories in an ingredient list.  In my case it was “One chilled glass, two parts Tanquerey, wave at the vermouth bottle, stir clockwise if you’re north of the equator, and for God’s sake, Agnes, don’t bruise the gin.”  Yours was probably a can of cream of mushroom soup poured over a can of green beans.  That mother who made baked Alaska from scratch complete with tiny Eskimos carved out of candied ginger?  She probably also screamed “No wire hangers!”  Those over-achievers always have a dark side.

But now you’re grown up and sophisticated and you wouldn’t dream of ripping open an envelope of dried soup and throwing it on a piece of chuck.  The problem is that most recipes that take a country by storm do so because they work.  If you want to get fancy and substitute sour cream for cream of mushroom soup, go ahead, but really, why make things harder for yourself? The whole point of fake cooking is that it’s easy.   

And if the term “fake cooking” makes you squirm, call it “retro cuisine.”   Mama won’t care.

Mama Lipton’s Roast Beef

  • Olive oil
  • 1 chuck roast, about five pounds
  • 1 pkg. Lipton’s onion soup mix
  • 1 can of low sodium beef broth (because there’s enough sodium in that onion soup mix to pickle your spleen)
  • 8 oz of baby carrots (hey, if Mama had had them, she woulda used them)
  • 8 red potatoes (potatoes are fat sponges, so leave them unpeeled to cut down on the suckage)
  1. Heat the olive oil in a heavy dutch oven, and then brown the roast on all sides. You’re not cooking it, you’re sealing it.
  2. Add the carrots and potatoes.
  3. Mix soup mix and a cup of the beef broth and pour over the roast.  Or just throw the soup on the roast and pour the broth over.  This is not fussy cooking.
  4. Cover and bake at 350 for an hour, checking every fifteen minutes to add more beef broth if necessary. 
  5. Take the roast out and let it rest on a plate for fifteen minutes.  Do not cut into it no matter how good it smells.  Put the veggies with it.
  6. Put the dutch oven on the stove top and scrape up the good sludge on the bottom (if you kept adding beef broth you have good sludge; if you didn’t, just put the pan to soak and skip the next part).
  7. Add the rest of the beef broth to make a thick au ju.  Pour over the roast.
  8. Eat.

Then the next night you have incredible roast beef sandwiches with

Mama Campbell’s Green Beans

  • 2 can’s of green beans (don’t go for frozen, they taste funny in this dish)
  • 1 can of Healthy Choice Cream of Mushroom Soup
  • Splash of skim milk (really more of a lubricant than an ingredient here)
  • 1 can of mushrooms (large or small depending on your mushroom fetish or lack thereof)
  • Splash of Worcestershire sauce
  • No salt (have you seen the sodium contents on those cans you opened?)
  • Ground pepper to taste
  • Slivered almonds 
  1. Put green beans in a sauce pan or oven proof dish.
  2. Put everything else except the almonds in a bowl and mix together.   (Oh, hell, put the almonds in, too, if you want.)
  3. Mix the sauce with the green beans. 
  4. Sprinkle the almonds on top.  (Don’t even think about those damned canned onion rings, Mama Campbell would have a fit.)
  5. Stir on the stove top until heated through (save the almonds until the end if using this method), nuke in the microwave for four to five minutes, or sling into the oven for twenty. 
  6. Eat.

Mama Hostess’s Cupcakes

  1. Open the package.  (Mama doesn’t want you to wait.)
  2. Eat.

Good old Mom. 

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“Food TV: They Are Not Your Friends, They Just Act Like It”

Cranky Agnes Column #88

Food TV.  What nice people are on there.  Well, some of them.  I am not one of those who sniffs at the perkiness of Rachael Ray--I wish she wouldn’t call good olive oil EVOO, but she cooks good simple meals with fresh ingredients and she does it fast without swanning around about what a stud she is (Tyler and Bobby, I’m looking at you)--but don’t get me started on that Sandra woman, who’s never met a pre-packaged trans fat she didn’t love.  But I love Food TV.  My guilty, guilty secret?  Iron Chef America.  I want a smackdown between Alton Brown and Cat Cora.  I know she’s going to take him, I just want to watch.

And there’s the thing: I think I know them—I know Alton is a darling, I trust Alton—but I really don’t know them at all—television can be misleading and Alton could be a hound of hell.  Which is why I’ve been led down the herb garden path by them so many times.   “Gently chop the saffron,” they say, and I think, God yes, the saffron.  That’s what’s been wrong with my cooking up until now, I need SAFFRON.  And a cutting board like that.  And a kitchen like that.  (How many of you have had wet dreams about the Barefoot Contessa’s kitchen?  Yes, me, too.)  And then I go out to buy saffron and find out it costs roughly the same as Nigella’s stove and I wander off and buy another pound of pimento loaf and a vat of mustard.  (Speaking of the Barefoot Contessa, her roast chicken rocks.)

There are people who can make everything those chefs make, they live for the recipes on FoodTV.  They have springform pans and apple corers and microplane graters.   You are not that person because if you were, you’d be spitting on this column.  Then there are the people who can make most things and will carefully select the recipes they watch based on their own abilities.  You are not that person, either.  Then there are the people who drool at the TV thinking,  God, that looks so good, I’m going to make that, and end up with half a jar of capers in their fridges and the other half in a recipe that goes down their garbage disposals.   You are that person.  I am that person.  Most of America is that person.  Food TV is like porn; we dial it up even though we’re pretty sure we can’t do that, in fact we’re pretty sure we don’t want to do that, but it sure is fun to watch.  And then sometimes, in the heat of watching, we try to do that.  It’s usually not pretty.

Which is why I like Rachael Ray.   Rachael Ray truly wants you to eat right, but she’s not going to go all cheery-grim on you and say, “Add the saffron gently and then stir for the next thirty minutes because you have no life and food is everything.” No, Rachel makes easy meals right in front of you and they have things in them like potatoes and butter and pasta.  I don’t think Rachel has ever used saffron.  I’m sure she appreciates it,  I just don’t think she’d inflict it on her audience.  

Still even Rachael has her moments of insanity.  Heavy cream in a peasant pasta dish, for example.  Who does she think she is, Ina Garten (“And to finish your salad, add 3/4 cup of butter and a cup of heavy cream . . .)?  A pound and a half of sausage so there’s quarter pounder in every serving.  Honestly, she’s been at the cooking sherry again.  But the basic recipe is quite good so here’s

Cranky Agnes’s Remake of Rachael Ray (What A Nice Girl)’s Peasant Pasta.

  • Olive oil.
  • 1/2 pound Italian sausage, sweet, hot, both, whatever floats your boat 
  • 3 cloves of garlic, chopped, unless you’re not a garlic person in which case, up the onion
  • 1/2 c. chicken broth
  • 1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes or a pound and a half of Roma tomatoes that you chop yourself (because that is easy and really makes you feel like a cook)
  • Salt
  • Pepper (she says freshly ground, and you really should use a pepper grinder, it’s extremely low rent gourmet, but don’t lose any sleep over it)
  • 24 leaves of fresh basil (give or take, probably about 1/3 cup of leaves and you know, in the summer this stuff grows like a weed, so really, plant some)
  • 1 large chopped white or yellow onion (how she could have left this out is beyond me)
  • 1 pound of whole wheat penne pasta (it’s good for you, it makes the dish richer, and you probably won’t notice the difference after the first bite)
  • Grated mozzarella or parm.  Or both, what the hell.
  1. Drizzle the olive oil in the skillet.  Don’t be afraid, it’s good for you, but don’t lose your grip, either: you have sausage coming up.
  2. Crumble the sausage into pan to brown and then watch it so it doesn’t burn, adding first the onion to the pan until it gets soft and then the garlic.
  3. Add the chicken broth, scraping the pan to get up all the good stuff stuck to the bottom, assuming you haven’t burned it (I told you to watch it).
  4. Stir in the tomatoes and then bring the whole thing to a simmer.  
  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste (less is more because you can always add more at the table).
  6. Stir the basil and peas in until they’re warmed through but not cooked.
  7. Toss with the hot pasta. Top with cheese if you want.
  8. Eat.

I’m telling you now, except for this one moment of heavy cream insanity, Rachael Ray is Our Girl.  As for the rest of Food TV, they’re lovely, lovely people with lovely, lovely kitchens.   And way too much saffron.

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“Eating for Your Beating Heart”

Cranky Agnes Column #92

There are very few recipes that couldn’t be improved by the addition of three-quarters of a pound of butter and a cup of heavy cream, but this is cold comfort when you’re laid out like a slab of beef in intensive care, listening to the blood pound in your ears as you seriously consider going toward the light.  In that spirit, I’d like to propose a few ways to eat better without eating ugly.

You know what I mean by eating ugly, it’s the stuff recommended by those maniacs who say things like, “And for a snack, try fresh broccoli dipped in low fat cheese!”  First of all, broccoli is not a snack; even if you dip it low fat hot fudge sauce, it’s still gonna be broccoli.  Second, low fat cheese doesn’t melt, it separates into whatever evil things the anti-food manufacturer snuck in there—it’s not a food, it’s a food product!—to take the place of good old American fat.   What’s the point of eating if it’s not wonderful?

But since there’s death looming in practically everything that’s delicious, we do need to show some common sense.  For instance, when was the last time you said, “Mmmmm, iceberg lettuce!”?  Yeah, the stuff has no taste, plus it’s probably on a sandwich with meat, cheese, mustard, pickle, and god knows what else.   So switch it out for fresh spinach.  As God is my witness, with the ketchup and the relish, all you’ll taste is green and crunch, and if you can load enough on—increase it gradually until you hit your fresh spinach threshold—you’re getting one of the best foods in the world as a freebie.   Oh, and try the light Hellman’s mayo on that sandwich; it’s one of the few “lite” (always makes me want to say “bite me”) foods that’s as good as the regular.  

Another way to increase your chances of surviving is whole wheat pasta.   It tastes a little different, but again, when was the last time you said, “Oh, good, pasta!” and meant a plate of naked noodles?  Pasta is almost always the delivery system for the sauce (I’m ignoring fresh noodles here because, come on, you’re not making fresh noodles because if you were, you wouldn’t be reading my column, you’d be out milking the goat) and the sauce is almost always tangy (tomatoes and basil and garlic and onions and peppers, oh my) or creamy (alfredo, parmesan, the blond heart attack on a plate).  You’ll adapt to the whole wheat in no time and up your fiber consumption considerably.  Try whole wheat tortillas, too; they actually taste better.   Whole wheat pancakes, on the other hand, are like those people in the synthetic shoes who tell you leather is a sin: you want to like them but they smell odd and you just end up avoiding them so the ingredients sit on your pantry shelf and age while you feel guilty.  High fiber does not have to mean “tastes like a wet dog.”  Any food that has a gram of fiber for every fifty calories is high fiber so check to make sure.  Those manufacturers will slap whole wheat on anything, but the fiber/calorie ration does not lie.

Finally,  there’s dessert.  Yes, a nice apple is very healthy, but you want dessert.  I’m a big proponent of treating yourself but if you do it every night, you’ll end up looking the back side of a rapidly deteriorating bus.   So try Cranky Agnes’s Poor Woman’s Hot Fudge Sundae.   I’m telling you now, this is not the real thing, not even close, but it has a trailer-park allure all of its own and it’s gotten me through some tight times in the stress-eating department, and depending on the ice cream you pour it over, it may actually be good for you.  It’s definitely going to kill you slower than the real thing.

Cranky Agnes’s Poor Woman’s Hot Fudge Sundae

  • Jello Sugar-Free Chocolate Pudding Mix (NOT INSTANT)
  • Skim Milk
  • Almonds or walnuts
  • The lowest fat vanilla ice cream you can find that still tastes like ice cream.
  1. Make the pudding according to the pie directions on the package using skim milk.
  2. While it’s cooking (in the microwave, of course), chop some almonds to whatever fineness you like.  You should be eating six almonds a day, so if you haven’t been, you have some to make up for.  And the oil in the almonds is good oil, so your heart is safe.
  3. Scoop up the ice cream, being generous in proportion to the fat calories: the lower the fat, the more you can sling in there.
  4. Dump the chopped almonds over the ice cream and then pour the thickened pudding over that.
  5. Eat.  

What you’re getting here is a lot of calcium—skim milk and low fat ice cream—with the added boost of the almonds.   This is not health food, but it’s a hell of a lot healthier than the real deal and may give you the hot chocolate and creamy vanilla fix you need to keep from going toward the light.  No, that’s not your next door neighbor’s porch fixture, that’s death.

Eat your spinach.

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