Bush Slips on Food Blog

As I look back over the events of 2005, I can’t help but think I’ve contributed to the decline in President Bush’s job approval ratings simply by beginning this blog. Talk about the power of the Internets.
I mean, look! Back in February, the guy’s numbers were in the low 50s. But I’M MAD AND I EAT debuted in May of this year, and by June I had him down to 47 percent.
I wonder if it was the arrival of my dual-fuel convection oven that got the ball rolling downhill. I know that was the first post I made here.
In June I put a Howard Dean button on my blog – my first experiment with html tricks, and I still don’t know what I did that day or I might have made the button a permanent part of my sidebar. Anyway, that’s when I got Bush’s numbers below 50 percent for the first time. (Was there any food involved that month? Oh, yes. Lots of green, summery things, like this soup. Look! I already knew how to make links by then. And what’s with the snarky remark about the Preznit at the bottom of that post?)
July found me harvesting the earliest crop of patio-grown tomatoes ever, and also making summery dill pickles. You’d think I’d have been in complete bliss, but no – I always find something to carp about. By the end of the month, I had Bush down to 44 percent, his lowest yet.
Eating in August was, in complete sincerity, one of the best things I’ve ever done. That’s when Cranky and I participated the the Eat Local Challenge. It really changed the way I eat (and shop). However, American military casualties spiked that month in Iraq, and Cindy Sheehan made the scene. I was feeling mellow, though, and refrained from totally jumping on the Preznit’s head, even when he gave me the opportunity.
Until Hurricane Katrina hit, and I lost my patience. Blammo! His numbers were now around 40 percent.
And there they stayed through September, while I got deeply involved with tomatoes and sort of slacked off on the Bush-bashing. I did manage to get one zinger in (and there were tomatoes involved).
In October, lots of political intrigue lended seasoning to an otherwise lazy fall month: The Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court fizzled; Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby resigned after an investigation turned up enough dirt to indict him on several counts of badness, Rove got a little twitchy. I couldn’t stop talking about tomatoes, but I fired off some digs here and there. And Bush slid below the 40 percent approval rating, to 39.
I was still wallowing in local food during November, visiting farmers’ markets whenever possible. Prince Charles and his bride, Camilla, caught wind of my new lifestyle and paid me a visit at the Point Reyes Station market. Meanwhile Americans grew increasingly unhappy with the quagmire in Iraq, and for the first time a majority said they didn’t believe or trust the Preznit. Approval rating? 37 percent.
Bush got a little bump in December, up to 42 or possibly even 45 percent, merely because some Iraqis managed to make it to the polls and vote in their parliamentary elections. It was a good month for feasting, but there was always that little burning feeling in my throat. Then when news broke of domestic spying, authorized by Bush, his numbers once again slid to 40. Talk of impeachment kicked into high gear, and I put up a blog banner using the I-word (I took it down for the holidays; it will return). That’s appetizing.
I’ll try to do even better next year.

I Can't Help It

Every time I look at the picture below this one, it feels like I'm looking at a funky photo of Bean Sprout.
OK, now go read the post below. This is just fluff.

Moldy Olives and Sour Grapes

I sort of forgot about the black olives I was curing, but even so, I got to them just in time, a month after I started them in a bed of salt. Yep, just plain, dry, non-iodized salt. You place a sieve over a bucket and line the sieve with burlap. Pile in a layer of salt, and then the washed and dried black olives. Distribute a whole bunch more salt over them, and ignore for a week. After a week, you give it a stir, then the next week, and the next, until the month is up.
These olives were so microscopic when we picked them, and they shriveled to almost nothing in the salt. In fact, they were hard and unappealing when I rinsed the salt off the day before yesterday.
Well, I let them dry off in the sieve and got back to them today, to find they had plumped a bit from their own oil. Nice, shiny, good leathery texture, no bitterness! But a few had begun to grow mold. (I was supposed to have put them back on salt, in the fridge, to keep them nice, and even then they have a terribly short shelf life.)
Then, after I took this picture, I ate the olive you see front and center. Beautiful sheen, good color, not a sign of mold.
Bleghghgchch!
It had been contaminated with invisible mold. Tasted awful. I chucked out the entire batch.
Ah, sour grapes. They were really too little to eat anyway.

Storm's A-Comin'

So we went out on this one day of not-so-rainy-gusty driveability and got — uh — food.
Four grocery stores, one farmers' market and three restaurants in a single day. I doubt that's a record, but I impressed myself.
The Marin farmers' market was skimpy today, but the basics were at hand. We got mushrooms to make beef stroganoff with our leftover Christmas roast beef. Potatoes to have with 1) the gravy I will make from the beef drippings, and 2) the New Year's Eve snicker-snack of roasted baby potatoes topped with crème fraîche and caviar. Some Huckleberry potatoes for — I dunno, a salad? — because I just read about them, and they're Pink Inside! Who could resist? And they're local. Some Marin wildflower honey for our tea, because ever since Eat Local August, we haven't used sugar. A couple of rolls for leftover roast beef sandwiches.
At the various stores: Rice vinegar to steep cloves of garlic in. Cowgirl Creamery crème fraîche and clabbered cottage cheese to experiment with on the caviar potatoes. A sack of black-eyed peas for New Year's Day "good luck" eatin'. Oh, some cans of English-style Heinz baked beans, for beans-on-toast. Some avocadoes on sale. Japanese rice seasoning (seaweed, salt, sesame seeds).
And at the restaurants: First, a sippy at one of our old Mill Valley haunts, followed by a gorgeous seafood repast of the mildest sort (though one could go way overboard, easily) at Fish, in Sausalito. We're going back; it's good. Then another sippy at another Mill Valley-Sausalito-ish, Christmasy place right off 101. Bar was so packed, one of us had to stand instead of sit. Who, I wonder?
Holidays. Lovely. And throughout this season, I've actually managed to shed a few pounds! (Too stressed to overeat? No, I love this season.)

Get Me Out of Here — Or Feed Me

Are you feeling a little stir crazy this holiday season? Maybe you're still camping on the living-room floor of your aunt's house, with all those grumpy, boozy, smelly, gossipy relatives of yours hogging the bathroom, the phone, the computer, the kitchen. Nobody can agree on what movie you should all go to, you're stuck in another city without your car, and to make it worse, it's probably too wet or icy or blustery to go outside anyway.
We got a little break in the weather this morning here in Marin, but those storm clouds are hunkered on the horizon, and before you know it, it will be Cooped-Up Time again.
Might as well rustle up some grub. It's the return of Literary Luncheon, in which I excerpt a food-related passage from an old book and accompany it with a recipe from the same era.
Today's snippet is from Cabin Fever, 1914 (or 1918, couldn't nail it down), by B. M. Bower. Bertha Bower published 68 novels set in the American West. She must have had some experience with that cooped-up feeling and grumpy relatives. Forthwith:

Cabin Fever
by B. M. Bower (1871-1940)

Bud turned his hotcakes with a vicious flop that spattered more batter on the stove. He had been a father only a month or so, but that was long enough to learn many things about babies which he had never known before. He knew, for instance, that the baby wanted its bottle, and that Marie was going to make him wait till feeding time by the clock.
"By heck, I wonder what would happen if that darn clock was to stop!" he exclaimed savagely, when his nerves would bear no more. "You'd let the kid starve to death before you'd let your own brains tell you what to do! Husky youngster like that —feeding 'im four ounces every four days — or some simp rule like that — " He lifted the cakes on to a plate that held two messy-looking fried eggs whose yolks had broken, set the plate on the cluttered table and slid petulantly into a chair and began to eat. The squeaking chair and the crying baby continued to torment him. Furthermore, the cakes were doughy in the middle.
"For gosh sake, Marie, give that kid his bottle!" Bud exploded again. "Use the brains God gave yuh — such as they are! By heck, I'll stick that darn book in the stove. Ain't yuh got any feelings at all? Why, I wouldn't let a dog go hungry like that! Don't yuh reckon the kid knows when he's hungry? Why, good Lord! I'll take and feed him myself, if you don't. I'll burn that book — so help me!"
"Yes, you will — not!" Marie's voice rose shrewishly, riding the high waves of the baby's incessant outcry against the restrictions upon appetite imposed by enlightened motherhood. "You do, and see what'll happen! You'd have him howling with colic, that's what you'd do."
"Well, I'll tell the world he wouldn't holler for grub! You'd go by the book if it told yuh to stand 'im on his head in the ice chest! By heck, between a woman and a hen turkey, give me the turkey when it comes to sense. They do take care of their young ones —"

Sour Milk Griddle-cakes
from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1918, by Fannie Farmer

2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sour milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoons soda
1 egg

Mix and sift flour, salt, and soda; add sour milk, and egg well beaten. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased hot griddle; cook on one side. When puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges, turn, and cook other side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

Got One of These?

It's not a soap dish (unless you use Motel 6 soap exclusively; too small).
This is a Japanese ginger grater. One of those wacky, single-purpose gadgets we acquire because of their cuteness, because of their brilliance, because we're hopeless gadget collectors, and there's a huge stash of brilliant but seldom-used gadgets in the lower cabinet, down there in the bin behind the rice cooker.
I may even be a more hopeless gadget collector than most, because I've got two ginger graters. The other one is made from ugly, yellow-tinted aluminum, and I find it too metallic-feeling in my hands (nothing technical, just an esthetics judgment), but boy does it have sharp teeth — it gets the job done.
I got this approachable-looking, white ceramic grater second. Actually, because it has less sharp teeth, I can scrub a knob of ginger against those teeth almost to the last molecule of ginger, without hurting my fingers.
Are you following? If you've never used one, here's the drill: Peel a chunk of ginger, and then furiously rub it back and forth (or up and down) over those bumps. Most of the stringiness of the ginger remains in a clump in your fingers, and the tender meat of the root purees into that pretty little device. A quick swipe with the fingertip clears most of the pulp off the teeth and into your dish.
So. I fetched this little beauty out of the bin behind the rice cooker yesterday, because we were warming up a batch of lump crabmeat that would be flavored with ginger and garlic. Once having rubbed the ginger into submission, I thought (oh, darn, you're way ahead of me here!) "Why not see how this baby works on a clove of garlic?"
Perfect. Just peel the paper off the clove. You don't even have to trim off the crusty little root end, because you will hold that end in your fingers and begin by rubbing the pointy, sun-facing tip of the garlic. You'll be able to puree nearly the entire clove before your fingers start bumping into those smooth, little white teeth.
And now it's no longer a wacky, single-purpose gadget. I might store it in a more accessible place from now on.

Um, I'm Back Sooner Than I Thought

Because Cranky gave me a fantastic, nanotech, human-genome, space-age, bells-and-whistles tripod to use with my camera. It's — yeah — "all that."
It even smells good: Black rubber and knurly (not a typo; look it up) knobs, metal, modern esters (I would guess), the smell of (well, I'm not going to say "new car") — Victory!
And, so, see... It works! Dr. Biggles told me last summer I'd have to get a tripod, and I was all like, "why?" Well. Duh. Jiggles, eh, Biggles? Bad lighting, shaky hands, focus disasters.
Anyway.
Here's the oysters with a tricked-up mignonette sauce. No shallots were harmed in the making of this mignonette, but we did sacrifice the first dribblings from a new bottle of Spanish sherry vinegar. Gosh, it was seriously good.
Then the crab, tossed in a saute pan with copious amounts of butter, and flavored with ginger, garlic, minced parsley and fresh Meyer lemon juice.
Look at the picture: The crab is surrounded by watercress. And if that's not enough, the plate — a Christmas present this morning from Cranky's Cranky Sister — is from Saudi Arabian Airlines! What a crack-up!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope you find wonderful things in your stocking, and I hope they're not as pissed off to be in there as Bean Sprout looks in this photo from last year, at our old house. He's put on a pound or so since then, so I'm not about to try stuffing him down anyone's socks this year.
See you in a couple of days.

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying

This post's title comes from the 1857 Christmas song by John H. Hopkins, Jr. Can you guess the name of the carol? (No, it's not Carol, smarty.)
I hope you're having a peaceful, warm and safe holiday. My thoughts are with the American troops who will miss celebrating with their families. (Thanks for nothing, A**es of Evil.)

Countdown Cassoulet

Note from the Blog Administrator: The comments thread on the previous post has been shut down due to hijacking by a bunch of clowns. Thank you. (Psst: Keep it up! Funny.)
As we near the feast time of Christmas Eve (probably Dungeness crab and/or oysters) and Christmas Day (rib roast), Cranky and I are cleaning out the larder and trying not to end up with too many leftovers.
OK, then. Well, we had some leftover bits of succulent pork chop. Leftover turkey in the freezer. A scrumptious duck sausage. And, as always, some duck fat in the freezer. Cranky proposed a quickie "cassoulet," one that could be assembled easily and cooked in a CrockPot instead of the oven.
Dang, it worked. It tasted exactly like the real, long-roasted thing. Some dry flageolet beans, soaked and simmered with a bouquet garni. The meats (in order of what needs cooking longest; the only raw meat was the sausage, so it went in first, after a brief saute with chopped onion and garlic and a dab of bacon grease — ooh, forgot to tell you about that part). We wanted a soupçon of tomato in there, so Cranky chipped off an ice shelf from the frozen tomato sauce I made a few months ago.
Then: A few hours in the slow-cooker, a deft addition of bread crumbs stirred in just toward the end, and a final sprinkling with more crumbs.
Very good. Recommended.

Happy Festivus

All you pagans gather 'round the fire for a wicked wiccan — no, wait, I mean dreamy Druid-y Solstice festival. 'Tis time for the Saturnalia!
Tonight, as the sun sets on the year's shortest day, you must surround yourself with the comfort of lights (candles, Duraflame, Christmas bulbs, even that ratty, buzzing, overhead fluorescent light in the kitchen, spilling its skimmed-milk luminescence out into the living room) and welcome the imminent return of longer days, and with them, the food-growing season.
But for now, you must live on winter crops along with whatever you managed to preserve and store. You must dance around the mystical megalith. You must listen to Spinal Tap.

Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge
Where a man is a man and the children dance to
the pipes of pan
Stonehenge
Tis a magic place where the moon doth rise
With a dragon's face
Stonehenge
Where the virgins lie
And the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky

And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go back in time to that mystic land
Where the dew drops cry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will show you how

Today's Saturnalia meal chez Cookiecrumb and Cranky consisted of bread (stored grains) topped with slow-cooked onions (root-cellared produce), butter and grated cheese (milk's leap toward immortality, as Clifton Paul Fadiman put it). This strata, if you will, is then baked for a surprisingly long half hour. We got the idea from Lidia's recent-ish cookbook. She stresses that if the cheese is very airily poofed on top of the bread and onions (not packed down), it will turn crisp but not burned or gooey in the oven.
Well, she's right. This dish went from an iffy pile of untoasted bread slathered with mundane "toppings" to a crackly, crusty package filled with a meltingly tender center. Call it quiche without the eggs. Pissaladière without the anchovies. French onion soup without the soup!
The house was heavenly with oniony aromas made even more wonderful for having been slowly sauteed with fresh bay leaves from my new laurel tree.
Hey: A tree! Wouldn't that make a cool pagan decoration for the house? But who'd be damn foolish enough to drag a tree inside?

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Sally Out to Buy the Beef

Time for another edition of Literary Luncheon, where I print an excerpt of a book featuring a food scene and pair it with an antique recipe, roughly contemporary with the book's publication date.
As the year tumbles toward its end, of course we are all rushing around getting the provisions in place for holiday meals. At my house, we celebrate a very secular Christmas, but we're quite dogmatic about the food. So yes, once again it will be roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, followed by a plum pudding (purchased, and I only eat a few bites).
As you read this snippet from A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, notice how in just a few seconds the mood changes from cold, dark and gloomy to unexpectedly warm and festive, with the promise of a lovely dinner.

A Christmas Carol
In Prose, Being
A Ghost Story of Christmas
by Charles Dickens

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Mrs. Beeton’s CHRISTMAS PLUM-PUDDING
Isabella Beeton (1836 - 1865)
(Very Good)
1328. INGREDIENTS - 1-1/2 lb. of raisins, 1/2 lb. of currants, 1/2 lb. of mixed peel, 3/4 lb. of bread crumbs, 3/4 lb. of suet, 8 eggs, 1 wineglassful of brandy.
Mode - Stone and cut the raisins in halves, but do not chop them; wash, pick, and dry the currants, and mince the suet finely; cut the candied peel into thin slices, and grate down the bread into fine crumbs. When all these dry ingredients are prepared, mix them well together; then moisten the mixture with the eggs, which should be well beaten, and the brandy; stir well, that everything may be very thoroughly blended, and press the pudding into a buttered mould; tie it down tightly with a floured cloth, and boil for 5 or 6 hours. It may be boiled in a cloth without a mould, and will require the same time allowed for cooking. As Christmas puddings are usually made a few days before they are required for table, when the pudding is taken out of the pot, hang it up immediately, and put a plate or saucer underneath to catch the water that may drain from it. The day it is to be eaten, plunge it into boiling water, and keep it boiling for at least 2 hours; then turn it out of the mould, and serve with brandy-sauce. On Christmas-day a sprig of holly is usually placed in the middle of the pudding, and about a wineglassful of brandy poured round it, which, at the moment of serving, is lighted, and the pudding thus brought to table encircled in flame.
Time - 5 or 6 hours the first time of boiling; 2 hours the day it is to be served.
Average cost, 4s.
Sufficient for a quart mould for 7 or 8 persons.
Seasonable on the 25th of December, and on various festive occasions till March.
Note - Five or six of these puddings should be made at one time, as they will keep good for many weeks, and in cases where unexpected guests arrive, will be found an acceptable, and, as it only requires warming through, a quickly-prepared dish. Moulds of every shape and size are manufactured for these puddings, and may be purchased of Messrs. R. & J. Slack, 336, Strand.

Christmas Shopping

Cranky and I went out for some remedial Christmas, um, remediality. (I ride the short bus. Forgive me.)
Don't tell Cranky (or my mom or my brother or my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law), but they've got some killer panettone for sale at Il Fornaio, one of Northern California's nicer chain Italian restaurants. I did an interview with Il Fornaio's chief baker a few years ago (he was on the American team competing in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris, in 1999 — the year they won!). The Christmasy fruitcake (sorry, that's what it is) is buttery, orangey, dreamy. Smells divine.
So, now there's one in a bag in a closet, awaiting wrapping paper and a temporary park under the tree.
It's not at all clear who is giving this gift to whom. We bought it together, Cranky and I, and then agreed to forget about it for a week.
But in a week, we'll be making toast out of it. Maybe even French toast. (Would the Italians mind?)

Dog Ego, Egad

Turns out someone's feeling crummy about not being included in Weekend Dog Blogging. Even if he was too sissy to sit outside and be photographed with the new laurel plant yesterday.
It's practically all we can do to get him to, um, poo outside, what with the unbelieveably windy, wet weather we're having. He won't poo inside (good boy), so he becomes a twitchy little thing.
Cranky is our hero in the getting-him-to-do-it Olympics. Outside.
Here's Little Mr. Scaredy-pants. Outside. Last month. (Shh!)

You'll Hate Me for This

Jamie at 10 Signs Like This tagged me for a quick 'n' easy meme: Name seven songs you're into right now. Jamie claims to be all out of touch with music, but of the seven artists she listed, I only recognize The Strokes and Kelly Clarkson. So I'm quite a bit out-of-toucher than she is.
I decided to go see which songs I've most recently bought from iTunes. But I will begin with a brain-munchingly bad, synapse-consumingly addictive, cornballishly horrific tune I wallow in every year at this time of year, composed in 1948 and still all over the airwaves (and I own the whole album it comes from):

1. Sleigh Ride, by Leroy Anderson. Go on, admit it. You're crazy about it! I am. Sweet as candy canes.
2. Comfortably Numb, by Pink Floyd. This had something to do with a televised benefit concert, where the reunited group's performance was talked over by show commentators, essentially blanking them out. I had to buy the song to listen to it in its entirety.
3. Time Warp, from Rocky Horror Picture Show. I don't know why. Forgive me. Well, actually, I didn't buy it; I just downloaded a snippet.
4. It's My Life, by Talk Talk. Because it bothered me that No Doubt and its big fat ego, Gwen Stefani, did a lousy cover of that song when such a good original already exists. So I bought the original.
5. Life's Been Good, by The Eagles. C'mon. They did a concert I watched on TV. That song's a hoot. I love to air-guitar along with it.
6. (I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass, by Nick Lowe. Um, I've been in an 80's mood. Because of song number 4. I will not confess to buying anything by A Flock of Seagulls, even if I have. I'm just sayin'.
7. Oh, very well, then. Hungry Like the Wolf, by Duran Duran. Just take me out back and flay me. Thank goodness this list ends at number seven.
8. But it's torture time! Jingle Bell Rock, by Bobby Helms (1957), not by Hillary Duff (2002).
9. Oh, heck, one more. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, by Brenda Lee (1960).
10. Update: There's another seasonal composition I absolutely love, and depending on your source of music-listening (malls, elevators, radio), you may not be getting enough of this one. The Troika Song from the Lieutenant Kije Suite, by Sergei Prokofiev. I like it so much I just went and bought it at iTunes. OK, that makes it an even ten.

I'm supposed to tag seven more people. I should think after this kind of abuse, you'd thank me if I didn't tag you. Tag yourself. You're It!

Laurel's Resting on my Patio

At Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging roundup of a couple of weeks ago, I learned about growing your own bay leaves from Mae Gabriel at Rice and Noodles. Well, actually I've long known that you could grow bay leaves (also called laurel), because at my previous house in San Francisco, we had a cute, meatball-trimmed little laurel tree. But I never picked the leaves off for cooking. Dumb!
Since my parents recently gave Cranky and me a generous housewarming gift of money to be spent on a pot for the patio, I decided to grace the pot with a new laurel tree, from which I would pull leaves for braises and sauces and — well, we'll just keep thinking of ideas. Thanks for the nudge, Mae!
I know that there's an edible California laurel species. If I knew what it looked like, I might have foraged some bay leaves from neighbors' yards during August's Eat Local Challenge. But I was in the unknow.
At my wonderful local garden store the other day, I was shown a Greek laurel tree. "Bush," they called it, but they allowed it could be allowed to grow tall (and then it wouldn't have to share ignominious ignomenclature with a lyin', cheatin', law-breakin' president). The fellow who did the heavy lifting there — 30+ year employee, and still loving it — yanked off a leaf and crushed it for me to sniff. Ambrosia. (That's Greek!)
So there it is on the rain-spattered patio. I figure that's local enough.
No, Bean Sprout was not interested in posing with the new tree. Not today.

Laugh Until You Sneeze

Better yet, Sneeze until you laugh.
No, seriously. Go read this, um, half blog-thingie. Go on. It's about food. Trust me.
OK, it's about food you shouldn't eat. But Steve eats it so you won't have to.
No, really, it's real food. Real, legally bought, commercially processed food. But you shouldn't eat it. Steve does.
Thank goodness.
Because then you didn't have to eat it. And because then he writes about it, and you laugh until you sneeze. Or something.

Coldcocked by Ersatz Colcannon

I'm not sure why British cooking is on everyone's mind these days. This dish we made today was conceived of well before we stumbled onto that English pub yesterday, just because we had the ingredients on hand.
There was half a bag of Brussels sprouts in the fridge, a couple of types of potatoes in the potato bowl (doesn't everybody have a potato bowl?) and the usual refrigerator/larder staples. The basic ingredients sort of suggested colcannon, the Irish dish of buttery mashed potatoes with cabbage.
But I got to thinking. Wouldn't scalloped potatoes be good with a layer of Brussels sprouts inside?
So I separated the outer leaves from the sprouts and shredded the innards. Sauteed them with minced garlic and salt. Peeled and sliced the taters (both russets and some of those arty, designer new potatoes, name lost to advancing — what's that word for when you get old and forget names?). Layered half the potato slices in a buttered dish, topped 'em with Brussels sprouts, and piled on the rest of the potatoes. Then I poured a gruesome amount of buttermilk over it all (no, really, I love buttermilk) with a splash of white wine to make it all settle in. Egregious dots of butter on top, and then into a 350° oven for just over an hour (use your judgement).
You should have heard Cranky snorfing it up, sighing, moaning. Yeah, it was that good.

Bless Us, Every One

We wanted to do something festive and Christmasy today, and ended up hitting a home run. Two home runs.
First, we stopped at our fabulous garden shop to spend the check my parents had presented us with as a housewarming gift. Mom wanted me to buy a nice pot for the patio, but she was almost certain the check wouldn't cover the whole cost of whatever we picked out. Surprise, mom! We made a nickel off the deal! Got a nice, big, pretty one, as well as a plant I'll be talking about later this week.
The unexpected treat was that this venerable nursery sets up a Christmas House, filled with decorated trees, gifts to buy, ornaments, you name it. We hadn't known about their tradition since this is our first Christmas in town. Beautiful.
After that we wanted lunch. Chinese? Thai? This city has all the ethnicities covered. But, wait! Stop the car! Sure enough, there was a parking space on the street in front of a beckoning English pub. Would there be food?
Yes. I had a most superb steak, ale and mushroom pie. Seriously. It was better than it had to be. Why don't Americans make this dish? Cranky had a zingy banger sandwich, which he drowned in steak sauce. He drowned his French fries in malt vinegar. He drowned his sorrows in a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale.
I had a glass of Boddington's Pub Ale, first time I've tried it. It struck me as very creamy. Then I came home and Googled for images, and guess what.

Literary Luncheon

Back in the old days, before I became a tomato ranchin’ bum, I used to produce a feature for a newspaper food section called Literary Luncheon. It consisted of an eating-related excerpt from a book, followed by an antique recipe roughly contemporary with the book’s publication.
I thought I’d give it a try again today. I might even do it more than once.
This passage is from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1903).

Mrs. Robinson had company only once or twice a year, and was generally much prostrated for several days afterward, the struggle between pride and parsimony being quite too great a strain upon her. It was necessary, in order to maintain her standing in the community, to furnish a good "set out," yet the extravagance of the proceeding goaded her from the first moment she began to stir the marble cake to the moment when the feast appeared upon the table.
The rooster had been boiling steadily over a slow fire since morning, but such was his power of resistance that his shape was as firm and handsome in the pot as on the first moment when he was lowered into it.
"He ain't goin' to give up!" said Alice, peering nervously under the cover, "and he looks like a scarecrow."
"We'll see whether he gives up or not when I take a sharp knife to him," her mother answered; "and as to his looks, a platter full o' gravy makes a sight o' difference with old roosters, and I'll put dumplings round the aidge; they're turrible fillin', though they don't belong with boiled chicken."
The rooster did indeed make an impressive showing, lying in his border of dumplings, and the dish was much complimented when it was borne in by Alice. This was fortunate, as the chorus of admiration ceased abruptly when the ladies began to eat the fowl.

Chicken with Baked Dumplings
From the Washington Women’s Cook Book, published by the Washington Equal Suffrage Association, compiled by Linda Deziah Jennings (1909)
Cut the chicken into pieces and stew until tender, when done put into a deep baking pan. If there is not enough liquor to nearly cover the chicken, add water and thicken to make a nice gravy, having previously seasoned well. Make a rich baking powder biscuit dough, cut out the biscuits and place on top of the chicken. Bake just long enough to cook the biscuits nicely. By many this is much preferred to boiled dumplings.

Satsumas-I-Am, Sam!

I thought I wouldn't be blogging about seasonal citrus fruit, especially after Sam poked an elbow at all the other bloggers who did just that (down at the bottom of her post).
But don't we talk about what we eat? What we do?
Today I wrapped Christmas presents.
Lunch was a bowl of toasted, buttered almonds, seasoned by Cranky with cumin, salt and smoked paprika. Some hot toddies. And a couple of satsumas. Fortunately, in this photo, they're blurry enough that Sam can't really get on my case.

Week in Review Soup

Not really leftovers per se (and Thomas Keller, you're welcome to title your next restaurant Leftovers Per Se, no finder's fee, help yourself to my intellectual property). But for lunch Cranky threw together a soup of cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots in some, OK, leftover organic chicken broth, along with tasty shreds of, um, OK, leftover frozen Kentucky ham. He did a wonderful job. I usually get twitchy when he's in the kitchen without me; I feel a need to be in there directing, meddling, kvetching. Lately, though, Cranky has been practicing creativity and restraint simultaneously. He's showing confidence, and he's refraining from overdoing flavors.
So, in review, today (Sunday), Gov. Schwarzenegger is showing no confidence at all about how to handle the clemency issue over Tookie Williams' impending execution. He’s probably feeling wimpy because Tookie’s biceps are bigger than his.
This little squizzle of soup is in a really tiny bowl, by the way, for photographic purposes. On Wednesday I complained in the blog about not being able to take good pictures of homey food. Among the many good suggestions I got in response was one from Jen at Life Begins at 30, who suggested shooting smaller portions of drab-looking food, and that gave me the idea of using dinky dishes to shoot little dabs! So that's what I did for this shot.
Meanwhile, U.S. air marshals shot and killed a guy for maybe or maybe not mumbling something about a bomb.
Flash forward to Friday. Cranky and I are enjoying our first dinner ever at San Francisco's lovely, romantic and cozy Isa, a place with an oxymoronic destination-neighborhood sensibility: homey and at the same time (ooh, can I say this?) metro. Our guests are Jen and her Jason. Jen presented me with a bag of tissue-wrapped small dishes, each one different and special and frisky and elegant. (I'm saving them for something classier than cabbage soup, Cranky.) Dinner at Isa is mostly shared small plates (small plates — prescient, Jen), but our two orders of potato-wrapped seabass amounted to at least a pound of flesh.
Meanwhile, we learn that much of the phony intelligence used by BushCo to ravage Iraq was acquired pound-of-flesh style (the T-word, torture).
Tuesday was an easy food day. A bag of Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips, wasabi flavor. Sometime you just gotta put the pot-holders on hold. I believe we were busy doing laundry. Underwear, stuff like that.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, whom we recently saw in his cell wearing baggy tighty-whities, shouted at the judge in his trial that he now had no underwear. Ew.
Saturday was a genuine leftovers day. We nuked turkey stuffing with gravy. When you do them already smooshed together, it turns out decadent, sticky, obscene.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department seems bent on producing an obscene sequel to “Behind the Green Door” with its racist, sexist, homophobist (izzat a word?) videos. Call it “Behind the Blue Door.” Pigs.
Then Thursday happened. (Isn’t it fun being all out of order?) We put together an outrageous turkey soup with mushrooms and wild rice (do you believe we can buy locally grown wild rice?) and spinach. Cranky did it. I twitched a little when he suggested the spinach, but then I realized he was putting very logical flavors together. Very intelligent.
So now, that ninny Ann Coulter is proving how being “intelligent” must have been the core course she skipped. Seems like she likes to be “stupider.”
OK, finally we’re looking at Monday. What did I eat? I don’t remember. Maybe I had no appetite.
Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice told European leaders that the United States "does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture." Maybe she doesn’t remember. I really have no appetite now.

Chronicles of a Meal

Guess what I ate for lunch today while being serenaded by this sweet fellow. We sat in soft, cushioned chairs in this dark room, grateful to be sheltered, because it was very cold outside. My meal was warm and buttery. I was ever so happy to be there (although at times I was frightened, but everything turned out fine).

Unexpectedly Sunny

Cranky and I had business in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was so cold over there, my shoulders instinctively hunched up to chin level. It took a long time for my head and hands to thaw out and I was literally stuttering during our meeting. Then at lunch afterward, I suddenly realized that not only was I not hungry, I felt unwell.
By that time my small bowl of soup had already arrived. Its soothing steam, the microscopic pearls of fat floating on its surface, the comforting tangle of egg threads inside, and the distinctive but delicate smell of pork broth made everything all right. I decided to pass on an entree, but Cranky let me spoon a little rice and chicken from his plate into my empty soup bowl. It was delicious. I'm sorry I missed a real meal at this elegant, understated gem of a place. At least I think it's a gem. I'm going back to find out.
(Pssst: Sam. It starts with an "X" in case you're still dining alphabetically. Xiao Loong, on West Portal.)
However! Today it's not so cold. We even managed to sit out on the patio in the sunshine long enough to get Bean Sprout interested in some homegrown oregano. Those missing bits of leaf are somewhere inside his mouth.
Two months ago I accidentally let the oregano plant dry up in the sun. I thought, "All's not lost; I'll just pull off the leaves and save them."
Well, I've got two observations: 1) That's not the right way to dry herbs. They didn't have any flavor, so I chucked 'em. 2) The plant regenerated! Yay.
This not-so-informative claptrap is brought to you in celebration of Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging.

My 10 Favorite Foods

Mae tagged me. So I'm Mad and I'm It, once again. Fun!
But this is really hard to do. Is a favorite food something I turn to often? Can I afford to turn to it often? Does it have a special psychological niche in my life? Or is it just something I grew up with and loved? My tastes have changed since childhood, so what was favorite then may not be now.
Well, I'll address the "now" now. As for affordability, I'm just going to proceed on the assumption that this will be the menu for my last meal, and the governator can darn well pay for it.
So. Ten things I'd really regret not tasting one final time. (Oh, phoo. I was going to write "truffles" 10 times, but that ain't fair.)
Ready, Mr. Letterman?

My Top Ten list of why the California penal system should spring Cookiecrumb from the penitentiary, because her final meal is going to be too expensive.
10. Truffles. White Italian truffles, and too many of them, as Colette would say. Might as well shave them over, oh, say, some soft, moist, scrambled eggs, maybe with a grating of Pecorino.
9. Smoked salmon. This has got to be real outdoorsman, Pacific Northwest style. Marinated in something vaguely sweet and spicy. Smoked over alder wood. Caramelized, actually. Chunks of meat, not sissy, velvety, loxy stuff.
8. An avocado. I could halve it and fill the center with a fiery vinaigrette, kicked up a bit with something sweetish (I've done this before with ketchup, but I'm so over ketchup). A splish of balsamic is probably just the ticket.
7. Oh, well, then — all righty now: Balsamic vinegar. I guess item #8 is already kind of a two-fer, but I'd like just one more taste of a really well-aged balsamico, please, Mr. Warden. Um, I'll say sprinkled over some beef carpaccio. Yeah. And no arugula. I love arugula, but not on carpaccio.
6. Mushroom soup. Made from cremini, a teensy bit of porcini, and one or two shiitake. Some sauteed onion. Semi-salty turkey broth if you got it (we got it, this time of year). Freshly grated nutmeg. And a lovely blurp of cream. Blended.
(How'm I doing, Dave? Oh? Five more to go.)
5. Fish quenelles from Gary Danko. I'm not going to pretend I know how to make them. At the end of a meal there one night, I asked our server if I could have more fish quenelles for my dessert course. She said no!
4. The classic, signature, wood-oven roasted chicken from Zuni Cafe. I know, I'm getting kind of full. So just bring the platter, and I'll work on the arugula, bread, pine nuts and currants salad that sops up the fantastic leaking chicken juices.
3. The world's most perfect strawberries. I don't know where you're going to get them, Ahnold, but the French Fraises des Bois grown at Chino Ranch in Rancho Santa Fe are fantastic. (Hah! And expensive.) Um, could we get a little more of that aged balsamic?
2. Oysters. Hama Hamas from Hood Canal, WA, in the depth of winter. Raw, on the half shell, with a mignonette sauce for dipping (champagne, sherry vinegar, chopped shallots, white pepper). Or, oh, hell... A bottle of Trappey's hot sauce. In that case, Appalachicola oysters will be fine. Saltines, too.
1. My mom's tuna casserole made with Chicken of the Sea, a can of Campbell's mushroom soup, and a *whole* bag of crushed potato chips stirred in.

So, now I must tag. I pick:
b'gina at stalking the waiter
mcauliflower at brownie points
paz at the cooking adventures of chef paz
kathyr (for coming out of lurkhood, even if she's not a food blogger) at everybody knows
mona at mona's apple

I really gotta let these people know right away they've been tagged. These memes spread like avian flu in a Lysol-free chicken coop.

Why Should I Do All the Work?

I got an e-mail from my sister-in-law the other day, telling me she has been reading my blog since May! I was surprised and happy to hear it.
She complimented me and Cranky for our food forays, and confessed that she liked Rachael Ray. In fact, she closed the e-mail like this:

P.S. I've been afraid to mention this to you because this is a very controversial subject, but just so you know, I LIKE RACHAEL RAY. I have recently discovered her (where have I been?), and I want to BE her.

Well, of course, I immediately sent her a link to Sam's roundup of Be Rachael Ray entries, from last August.
Then a day later I got another e-mail from my sister-in-law, which I am quoting directly (with her permission). I figure she's got a hilarious food-related anecdote or two, and no blog that I'm aware of, so I'm publishing my silly s-i-l and taking the day off myself.

I stayed up late to watch Rachael Ray on Jay Leno last night, and she was stupid. I think she was drunk. She kept mauling Jay. They made a dumb-looking pizza together with plain old hamburger on it. Phil was snoring through it, and when it was over, I was so jealous that he was already asleep and I was wide awake because I watched this. And to think I had actually cooked a Rachael Ray chicken dish for supper. It stunk; Cheyenne told me it was dry and asked me if I minded if she put ketchup on it. Nah, go ahead, but I might use ranch dressing, I told her. Phil, however, eats large quantities of any food at dinnertime, so he was good for four half boneless breasts, rice, and green beans.
One night a few months ago, Phil was a little late getting home from his energy-sapping kitchen installation job, and I knew he would be wicked hungry when he got home. I had bought him about a two-pound piece of cod for supper. He likes to just bake it in the oven with butter and herbs, whatever else there is to throw on it. I was in bed watching TV when he got home, so he started the fish when he walked in the door. Before I knew it, he was upstairs sitting on the bed with a plate of hot dogs (no buns) with mustard streamed all over them. It was a whole package he had zapped in the microwave. He ate them with his fingers in about a minute and a half. Then he went downstairs to tend to the fish, or so I thought. Nope, back upstairs again with a plate of scrambled eggs — one dozen — which were cooking while he ate the hot dogs. He mellowed out a bit and watched a little TV before he went back down for the two pounds of cod.
He doesn't eat all day, just nurses a large cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (the Army way: three sugars, one cream. "Just SHOW the coffee the cream!"), so he is starved when he gets home.
He will never be fat, couldn't possibly weigh over 150 because of his high metabolism.

Unbelievable. But true. Thanks, s-i-l. You're welcome to drop by any time.

Is It Impossible to Photograph the Tastiest Food?

Or to put it another way, is comfort food homely? I know it's homey. But I get nothing but blurry, boring photos of my most soothing, nourishing dishes.
So, in honor of Rachael's funny post today of horrid phood photos, I will follow up my post yesterday (of my mom's brilliant watercolor of food) with this roundup of some of my own bloopers.
Above, you are looking at potatoes done in a nouvelle Japanese style, from my old dog-eared Moosewood cookbook. The potatoes are boiled in chunks, then finished in a skillet with a mouthwatering mix of sake, shoyu and butter. Yrrngghh! (Translation: ♥) But ugly!
OK, now this is a wonderful stuffed sugarpie pumpkin (the filling is made from rice and mushrooms and walnuts and onions and I forget what all, because it's a year old. Yes, the camera I used in those days was of the inferior variety, but still. I mean. Hello, focus?)
All righty, now. Fourth of July. Marin Sun Farms grass-fed double-cut rib eye. Gorgeous piece of meat. Ba-a-ad picture. (Folks, that "sharpening" tool on your image editing app will only give you eye-shattering shards of light and harsh outlines. It cannot fix the focus.) Good steak, though.
Finally, here you have my turkey-tortilla casserole made with my dad's homegrown Hungarian peppers. (For you less-frequent visitors, Cranky and I cooked a second Thanksgiving dinner after we returned from visiting the folks, so it's not totally salmonella'd.) It was so rico-suave. And it's even in focus. But not a great pic.

She Paints, I Blog

My mom painted this a few years ago. I think it's just fantastic. Mom has been studying water- color for maybe 20 years now, and she just keeps getting better. She's temporarily waylaid by a complication from eye surgery, but she should be back at the drawing board soon. Her specialties are flowers and food.
Couple of great parents I have: My dad grows vegetables and my mom paints pictures of them.
Me? I'm mad and I eat.

Too Much Time on My Keyboard

I ♥ this new feature I just found. It's a character translator that allows me to view a keyboard, select a funny character, and get its html code. It seems to work just fine on my browser, which is Safari, but it didn't pass the test on Firefox.
If any of you would be so kind as to tell me what you're seeing in the top line here, after the initial "I," I may be able to decide whether this translator is worth the effort.
If you're getting the proper symbol, and you'd like this quick tool for yourself, pay a visit here .

Nice Haul of Olives

This being my first attempt ever at curing olives, I decided to start small.
Even the olives were small. Ultra-dinky.
Step one was easy enough: Wash them.
Step two was more tedious: Separate the greenies from the blackies.
The black olives are curing in nothing more than plain kosher salt. They'll get a stir in a couple of days, and then they'll continue in the salt for another month, with twice-a-week stirs.
The greenies bathed in a lye solution for about 16 hours (they cured faster than the guidelines say, because they're so small). Next they were rinsed in several changes of water for, I guess, about 10 hours. Finally they went into jars with a simple brine. I might toss in a clove of garlic too.
Meanwhile, what's Joe Lieberman up to? Sounds like he's considering defecting from the Democratic Party. Bye, Joe.

Criterial Turkey Sandwich

1: Good bread. Do not cheat.
2: Iceberg lettuce. Do not snob out.
3: Mayonnaise.
4: Sliced breast meat. Save the dark meat for soup or a casserole or hot turkey sandwiches with gravy.
5: Salt and pepper. Of course.
6: A smoodge of homemade cranberry sauce.
The only reason this sandwich survived long enough to have its picture taken is because it was my second sandwich.
You will need napkins.

OK, So I Was Late

Cranky and I visited my mom and dad for Thanksgiving, so we didn't have the opportunity to roast our own turkey.
And then we thought, "Oh, yes we do."
Cranky called the butcher at our local Whole Foods and learned they had a Diestel heritage turkey in the freezer, nearly doomed to end up in the meat grinder. And the price was reduced from close to $4/lb to less than $2/lb! So, a week and a day past the official date, we had a full-on thanksgiving dinner, complete with Brussels sprouts, cranberries, and mashed taters with sublime gravy.

Oh, there was some superb stuffing too, but no photo.




Now, this is one butt-ugly photo of gravy (I'm getting a tripod for Christmas, Dr. Biggles), but as Dr. Biggles will tell you, there is really no butt-ugly photo of gravy, if it's gravy. This gravy was incredible. I'm pretty good at gravy, but I outdid myself. I told Cranky, as I stirred and thickened the brew, that I just keep learning more and more how to be a better cook. He answered, "That's why grandmas are always the best cooks in the family. They've been doing it longest."
The turkey was seriously good, too, and it cooked very fast. I'm never goin' back to ordinary birds.

Lord of the Chives

Bean Sprout's gone all elfy on us. Prancing around, speaking runishly, falling in love with Liv Tyler.
That wreath on his head is made from tied-together sprigs of garlic chives, the flat, ribbonlike Asian chives (unlike domestic chives, which are thin, hollow spikes).
I have to say I've grown tired of the flavor of garlic chives. When I cut them from the plant on the patio, they smell a little garbagey. Cooking helps with the taste, but they lack a crisp, snappy green oniony touch.
On the other hand, they are easy to grow (my plant is several years old) and the strands are flexible, which can lend to creative tying functions .
Now that the tomatoes are gone, I've got a spare pot. I think I'll get a new chive plant.
I wonder if I could get Legolas to come over and help me pot it.

Olive Me, Why Not Take Olive Me

This is the time of year for the olive harvest. Actually, it's a little on the late side. But yesterday there were still olives on the tree across the street (on a public stretch, and judging by all the suicidal olives that had plunged to their deaths on the sidewalk, largely neglected).
The olives were in varying stages of ripeness. One side of the tree, the side that faces East, was almost bare of fruit, but the Western side of the tree was still hanging heavy with green, purple and black olives.
They are really tiny olives, about the size of Picholines. I know they can't be the more common Manzanillas, which are pretty big, but I simply don't know what type these are.
It's a good thing we took the ladder and bucket across the street yesterday, because it's gusting so hard outside right now, the rain is shooting sideways. Those olives were ready to be picked yesterday, to the point that they were literally jumping into our hands (and onto my head). Today they've probably all blown off.
We got a nice mixture of green and ripe olives, maybe about two pounds total. And we met a couple of nice strangers while we worked; a guy in a wheelchair who says he'd never seen an olive tree before (and he's from Wisconsin, so I believe him) and a jogging woman who also didn't know what kind of tree it was, but thought we were "cute" for harvesting from it.
I've seen olive oil produced a couple of times, and I can tell you I won't be trying that, not without a press and all the technology involved. So, yeah, I'm just going to try curing them.
Two different cures: Lye for the greenies, and mere salt for the blackies.
Am I out of my mind?
I love foraging.