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Tuesday, October 4, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Fast food,
Chicken
teams up
with corn
salad for quick
weeknight
meal
from home
By GRETCHEN McKAY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
N
ow that the kids are
back in school, it’s
back to the grind of
running from one place to
the next, with a home-cooked
dinner often an afterthought.
What you need in your
culinary arsenal is a slew of
easy weeknight meals that
come together in about a half-
hour with a few easy-to-find,
seasonal ingredients but still
deliver big on taste.
Cookbook author Mark
Bittman puts sweet corn
to good use in this simple
chicken recipe. After charring
the cut kernels in a hot skillet,
he tosses the corn with crispy
and zesty bites of chopped
radish, scallion and cilantro
and then dresses it simply
— but superbly — with a
generous squeeze of lime
juice. He pairs the fresh and
crunchy salad with juicy (and
inexpensive) broiled chicken
thigh, sprinkled with spices
and rubbed with garlic.
I doubled the recipe so I
had leftovers for lunch the
next day. If you can’t find
fresh corn, substitute frozen.
Serve over steamed rice, gar-
nished with a dollop of sour
cream.
CORN SALAD
WITH GARLIC
CHICKEN
4 ears fresh corn
Salt
2 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
3 or 4 boneless, skinless chicken
thighs (about 12 ounces)
2 tablespoons good-quality
vegetable oil
Dash or two of cayenne
2 teaspoons ground cumin
Pepper
8 radishes
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch fresh cilantro
2 limes
Sour cream, for garnish
Cooked plain white rice, for serving
Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-TNS
Roasted chicken thigh teams up with a crisp and zesty corn salad for a quick and easy weeknight meal.
Put a large skillet over medi-
um-high heat. Turn broiler to high
and put the rack 4 inches from heat.
Husk corn, trim and cut kernels off
the cob.
Put corn in the skillet and sprinkle
with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally,
until the corn chars lightly, 5-10
minutes
Put chicken on rimmed baking
sheet. Rub with 2 tablespoons oil,
and sprinkle with cayenne, cumin,
salt and pepper. Broil, turning once,
until lightly browned on both sides
and just cooked through, 5-10 min-
utes per side.
When corn is lightly charred, put
in a large bowl.
Trim and chop radishes and add
to bowl. Trim and chop scallions and
add to bowl. Chop 1 cup cilantro
and add to bowl. Halve limes and
squeeze juice into the bowl.
— “How to Cook Everything Fast”
(revised edition) by Mark Bittman
(Harvest, $40)
When chicken is done, remove
from broiler and rub all over with
raw garlic.
Toss the corn mixture
together; taste and adjust
seasoning. To serve, slice
chicken as thick as you like
and lay the slices over the
top of the salad.
Garnish with a dollop of sour
cream, if you like, with rice on the
side.
123RF
Serves 4.
DOROTHY
FLESHMAN
DORY’S DIARY
Sugar sacks
and the era
of no waste
H
ow I happen to have a 100-
pound sugar sack stuffed
with some soft material for
show among my belongings is a little
unclear because there is no memory
of my ever wearing a dress, slip, or
panties designed by my mother of
such material or even from a flour
sack.
Still, there is a distant memory
of there being such clothing in
the early days, when nothing was
wasted and a use was found for
everything until there was no longer
a way to turn items into one more
useful way.
Even from the rag-bag, washed
clean and ironed, torn into strips,
and braided into rugs, there was a
way to waste not, want not. And, for
what you didn’t have the money to
pay, you went without.
One learned these things at an
early age. You also learned to save
until you could afford the cherished
item.
The sugar sack of which I speak
is not the paper bag of 4 to 10
pounds of sugar or flour, but is of a
cotton fabric that once confined the
100-pound ingredients safely.
In this case, the sugar was refined
and packed by the W. J. McCahan
sugar and refining and molasses Com-
pany of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
and had been tested and approved by
the Good Housekeeping Bureau. The
cloth itself was made in the U.S.A.,
bragging in a way as such.
Flour came in similar sacks with
their own advertising. Housewives,
then, had to remove the printing with
bleach for using the sack material for
diapers or other uses. To re-dye the
cloth, the dye came from heating and
soaking the material in something
like berry juice until of the desired
depth of color.
Bessie (Phillips) Gorbett, an his-
torian in the 1890s, mentioned it
in her history of having gathered
shumac (sumac) leaves for a bright
red color in their everyday dresses
and going without shoes in the sum-
mertime to save the footwear for
school and winter weather. Their
dresses were handmade from a Gray
log house pattern owned by the
mother.
If the home had a sewing
machine, it would have been
foot-pedaled or the material sewn by
hand.
While I escaped those earlier
days, I remember their use in the
generations before and felt so lucky
to be able to shop in Montgomery
Ward’s or J. C. Penney’s store when
in town or ordering ready-made pur-
chases from their catalogs, the out-
of-date publications destined finally
for the outhouse.
See, Sacks/Page B2
Should you get your flu shot
and COVID booster together?
By LISA M. KRIEGER
The Mercury News
The flu shot is as
familiar an October ritual
as football, foliage and
Halloween.
But health officials
are urging Americans to
get the new flu shot and
COVID booster at the
same time — the sooner,
the better.
“Right where we are
now — that’s a good time
to be vaccinated,” influ-
enza expert Dr. Lisa
Grohskopf of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention told
the nation’s physicians in
a conference call late last
week.
That’s ahead of time, by
traditional measures. Flu
season most often peaks in
February — and our levels
of protective antibodies are
at their highest about two
weeks after the shot, then
wane over the next four to
six months.
Yet this year’s season
could start early if it fol-
lows the pattern seen else-
where in the world. So a
delay could catch people
unprepared.
There’s another con-
cern: People may not
want to make two trips to
the vaccination clinic —
so they may get the new
COVID booster but fail to
return for the flu.
Is there a perfect time
to be vaccinated?
If you have a crystal
ball, “it’s 14 days before
the flu attacks the com-
munity that you’re living
in,” said Dr. Darvin Scott
Smith, clinical lead for flu
vaccination at Kaiser Per-
manente Northern Cali-
fornia, who has already
gotten his shot.
Here’s the problem:
Nobody knows when that
will be.
Nearly four decades
of CDC data shows that
45% of flu seasons peak in
February.
But 18% of the time, the
season peaks as early as
December. In another 16%,
it peaks as late as March.
Protection isn’t assured
until two weeks after your
shot.
“It is impossible to pre-
dict the flu season with any
accuracy,” said Dr. Kelly L.
Moore, president of Immu-
nize.org, a nonprofit group
that works to increase
immunization rates.
If you want to save time
and travel, said Moore, get
your flu shot when you get
the new COVID booster,
now widely available at
California’s pharmacies
and clinics. It’s safe and
will spare you a return trip.
There’s no data to show
that side effects will be
worse.
A flu shot won’t pro-
tect against COVID, and a
COVID shot won’t protect
against flu. The two vac-
cines are very different.
“I really believe this
is why God gave us two
arms — one for the flu
shot and the other one for
the COVID shot,” White
House COVID coordinator
Dr. Ashish Jha said at a
Sept. 6 news briefing.
Children who need two
doses of the flu vaccine —
those six months through
8 years who have never
been vaccinated — should
receive their first dose
immediately, said experts.
Seth Herald/Getty Images-TNS, File
See, Shot/Page B2 A sign directing traffic to a drive-through flu shot station.