I Watched It

Let me preface this by giving you a little history.
I married Cranky in 1981, 30 years ago (almost, June), the same year Diana married that dishonest phony Prince Charles. We scheduled our wedding so that there would not be too much competition or comparison with the royals. (I wanted a little undiluted attention.)
Then decades later the beautiful William and beautiful Kate wanted to get hitched, and the blogosphere was suddenly "NO! You are an airhead if you care about that!"
Look, I was never going to stay up all night for it. I was just curious. So we taped the CBS coverage (four hours, but you can skip the dull parts). Might look at it; might just erase it.
This morning, I perused a bunch of wedding photos online.
Then Cranky said, "Let's go watch!"
Middle of the day, hadn't even had lunch (still haven't, but pizza will be here soon). We sat there together on the baby-blue love seat and looked at that sea of absurd hats (don't think I don't want one, because I do). Fast-forwarded through a few flabby moments, but just absolutely adored seeing the composed, lovely young couple do their thing in front of the whole world. What a job. Wills knows how to do it by now, but his bride is still in training. She came off very good.
My husband really, really enjoyed watching. I wonder if it made him a little tumescent about our upcoming anniversary.
I need a tiara.

Could There BE a Better News Day?

Obama releases his "long form" birth certificate on the day Donald Trump flies in a personalized helicopter to New Hampshire, to start the presidential campaign firming up process.
Trump brushes off the news. He next reveals he can't imagine HOW Obama was admitted to Columbia and Harvard law.
As one clever quipster (or two) said in the blogosphere today, there is no document that will make Obama white.
Let the racism begin! This is a terrible, funny mess.

No Cow Died For This

I died for this.
"Beef" Stroganoff, hold the beef.
It is entirely possible. Tastes as good as the real thing. That's what mushrooms are for: fake meat umami and a little texture.
Not gonna bother you with recipes and proportions and flavorings (hot smoked paprika). Just use your usual version, and leave out the cow.
You will be so amazed, really.
Your gut will thank you, too.
Can I get this to go viral on YouTube? It is that good.

The Rabbit Poops Jellybeans; Just Sayin'

Happy spring holiday to my PEEPS!

Why Is Good Friday Good?

No, I'm not going religiony.
The recent huge earthquake in Japan reminded me of the Great Alaskan Earthquake on Good Friday in 1964. My dad and his entire squadron of P2V Neptunes and all the men who made them fly were stationed in Adak then. As soon as the quake hit (about the same magnitude as the Japan one), they took the planes and humans to higher ground.
Yep, a tsunami was on the way. We didn't call them tsunamis then (maybe you did). We just called them tidal waves, which sounds scary enough. I don't think that wave had anything to do with the tides, though.
My mom and my brother and I were at home on Whidbey Island. We were assured that everybody was safe. We heard that my dad's belongings would be shipped to us soon. (Why did he not need his belongings? I was a kid; I don't know. He came home soon after.)
When you're a kid, you're always looking for cool things, funny things.
This was cool. And funny.
Dad's Navy trunk arrived. We jimmied open the lock, and the inside was filled with wet clothing. Khakis, skivvies, socks. Soaked in salt water. Ocean water. The tsunami had delivered this dose of saline through the keyhole!
Maybe that wasn't funny.
But you know what was funny? There were tiny dead crabs and shreds of seaweed in there, too.

I Need to Be This Girl

Yeah, and maybe I am.
I heard some bad news today, about a local asparagus farmer I had befriended. He died.
My Internet connection was down for most of the day.
Stuff is hard, and then it's not.
Shit.

The Princess and the Peas

With this fickle weather, I don't know how the crops know it's time to grow. Rainy and gloomy outside, yet the pear trees are bristling with baby pears. Dandelions popping up right on cue. But what's the cue? It's rainy and gloomy outside.
And peas. Indomitable peas. We have a couple of good, local pea people. The peas are in the market NOW, so we got some. What's not to yadda, yadda, yadda.
I usually wait until later in the season to pulverize peas. When they're new, it's irresistible to eat them globular, the way god intended. But I was ready for a delicate green soup.
Look, you can cook these any way you want. I used chicken stock, no MINT, flavorings of fenugreek (you have to try this) and cumin. Some fine dice of spring onion. E basta. Oh, wait. A glug of cream. Now, e basta.
My twist this time was not to whirl the soup in an Osterizer. I just sort of crippled the peas with an immersion blender, for an innocent, rustic texture.
This would be an insanely good popsicle, if you didn't have a sweet tooth.
It was pretty good hot and molten, too.

What Are We Looking At?

Something growing, obviously. Kinda nascent, although the plant is about four years old. First time I've ever seen this sort of commotion, in fact. I nearly pulled the plants out of the ground early this year because I thought they had frozen and gone dead.
But look at this promise of fertility!
You give up?
It's a little, teeny, tiny bunch of grapes. A bunch!
The first year I tended to the plantings, we got a total of TWO grapes, from four vines. Then one of the vines died away. So I was losing hope.
Nope. This one vine has at least three miniature bunches-in-waiting. I don't even know what variety of grapes, because the little signposts I stuck into the ground corroded and vanished. Let's just say it will be either red or green. A wine grape; I do recall that's what I planted.
Should I worry? Will birds attack the grapes before I'm ready to pick them? Yes, I can get netting, and I think I will.
You know, for someone who hasn't done a whole lot to foster this crop, I'm unduly excited.
And to think I nearly pulled them out of the ground. Sheesh, Ms. Farmer of Little Faith.

No, We Didn't Smoke Anything

This looks like a college dorm snack, doesn't it?
I had sardines on saltines many times in school, usually late at night. I loooved the mustard, because I have a sour tooth. But my suitemate Ann taught me an embellishment I have used ever since: she dribbled drops of vinegar on the sardines, to amp up the tang. (What we were doing with vinegar in the dorm I don't know. This, I guess.)
The sardines back then were pathetic, swimming in some hideous oil, but we didn't know of anything better. The saltines were simply saltines, and they still are (though now with less salt).
We happened upon a brand of wild California sardines packed in olive oil recently. It's upscalio, four bucks for four ounces. I think it's worth it, though. The fish are firm and intact. Large, good smell. The brand is Wild Planet.
Here's the deal. You already know how to make classy sardines on saltines (with homemade mustard and a squirt of Spanish sherry vinegar). The deal is, save the good olive oil from the can! Pour it into a jar and refrigerate it. You will undoubtedly think of something to use it in. Spaghetti? I'm doing that. Other things will come to mind. If you have an idea, share it, please.   :)    {smiley face}    ☺

Giorgio Foreman Cooked My Lunch

If you have one of those stupid meat "waffle iron" cookers, use it for hot sandwiches.
I got my little George for free when I worked at a newspaper. Swag was supposed to liberate me from my ethics, and lure me into writing wonderful things (aka unpaid advertorial, look it up) for the George Foreman Grill. Whatever it's called.
But really, would you trust a mangle to give you good steaks? Because that's all this thing is, a laundry press. With groovy griddle ridges inside.
Cook meat the way god intended, over fire. Flatten hot sandwiches the way god intended, in a small electrical appliance.
This flattened ham and cheese sandwich was decorated with homemade mustard and homemade pear chutney. Not bad, not bad a' tall!
It didn't cook long enough; the groovy stripes didn't turn toasty-dark, and not all the cheese melted. Someone in the kitchen was hungry, someone in the kitchen I know.
Well, that would have been mostly cosmetics, anyway. This tasted great, nonetheless.
Still, what a dirtbag machine.
No! Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose.
It's a tool for making panini, you ninny. Fancy! Stravagante.

We Ate Well

I'm still cold. It's still raining. When it gets windy (and it often gets so windy that my neighborhood has a windy nickname), it is an irritating, needling wind.
So, yeah, I haven't done much gardening yet. We (and I say "we" literally here, not just as some fake front because he does the work and I lie in the chaise longue with a planter's punch) — WE got some important weeding done. But there is still a lot of important weeding to do. I just don't want to go outside.
I understand that spring can be a little nippy. But I'm actually cold.
I still need mooshy comfort food.
That's why we (that was the fake "we") came up with this little dish of roasted root vegetables, semi-braised in chicken stock. It was homey and homely, with radishes, carrots, potatoes, leeks and artichoke bottoms (not roots, sue me).
The other "we," me, might have cooked it differently, with a buttery glaze and some browning.
But when your We is a he who cheerfully bangs around in the kitchen, bringing out tasty, nourishing meals... you don't complain.

A Square Meal

What is it with sandwiches all of a sudden? I do not follow food fads (oh, maybe I do), but at just the moment I realized I like sandwiches, the world seemed to erupt with sandwich stories. And sandwiches, of course.
Or maybe I only noticed the sandwich commotion around me because I was suddenly into it, even if it had been there all along.
I recently discovered the pleasure of just happening to have sliced provolone cheese in the fridge; a need might pop up.
And sliced ham. A need will pop up.
I will admit that in this case, the rye bread with caraway seeds had to be procured.
But there was homemade mustard in the fridge.
Do the non-Euclidean geometry, people!
Ham and cheese sammie. Because sometimes you don't want to braise.

Not-So-Angry Chicken

Search this blog for "chicken" and you will most likely find posts about failed cooking attempts. I can really wreck a chicken.
But I like to eat it, so I try, try again. (Which reminds me of how stuck I am at Level 3 of Angry Birds. Battery-wasting stuck; try, try again. Hey! A chicken is a bird.)
A while back I found a recipe for a sort of roasted chicken, but the bird was cut up instead of whole. The most appealing part, though, was the bed of vegetables that the chicken pieces sit atop for their trip to the oven.
The recipe is a chore, frankly, and I abbreviated it like mad. It's one of those "Yesterday, coax loving moans from a pot of chicken stock; you will need this today" type things.
I didn't even use chicken stock, but I did substitute another liquid. Chickenweiser. Likewise, my measurements were a touch random, and I even added a special secret ingredient to the vegetable mix.
I liked the method: Pan-sear the chicken until browned. Saute the vegetables in the (now- empty but still chickeny) same pot. Nestle the leg parts into the vegetables and roast, uncovered, for an hour. (This is too long, and we covered the pot for part of the time to keep the vegetables moist.) Finally, lay the breasts on top and roast uncovered for another 20 minutes or so.
Dang, I still managed to overcook the meat, but it was sooo close and so delicious, I'm totally trying this again.
OK, the secret ingredient? Little cut-up bits of homegrown prunes. Not sure I'd recommend Sun Maid, though you could try. Or you could use dried apricots or something. Try again!
It was absolutely insane!!! Subtle, deep, dark hints of sweetness.
Eating it made me hungry. I had two plates of Happy Bird.

Tattered

The fruit trees are wearing their lacy finery. Spring! But the wind batters the blossoms and knocks off the fragile ones.
Yesterday it was raining white petals.
Today it's cold and windy and the hope of spring would melt away, except that there are blossoms!
We had the pear tree groomed by an arborist; he apologized that his pruning of branches would result in a smaller crop. I think Cranky and I looked at each other and grinned the secret grin. We need fewer pears.
I find myself in a good frame of mind about these abundant annual crops: So what? We can always give away the excess. I'm no longer oppressed. There's even a guy in my city trying to put together a program where teams of pickers come to your house by appointment and harvest the fruit at no cost to you, and then donate the bounty to the food bank. (The problem with that is that the pears don't all get ripe on one day; they drop at their own sweet time, over a period of more than a month. But I know where the food bank is; I can deliver them myself.)
It's amazing how frightened I was of the trees the first couple of years. Now? Bring it on.

Tired of Cooking

I saw a recipe for homemade gyoza today, and I want to do it. I have made my own potstickers, with homemade wrappers, and it was easy. Very satisfying.
Cranky freaked out a little when I told him of my wish. We have frozen Chinese dumplings, and he thinks even that's too hard to cook just now.
We are on a cook goof-off.
We still get fed, and most of the time it is with local, healthy ingredients. But big ambition is not on the table.
It's almost like we're eating junk food, although we try to make it in-house. It's not junk.
So, yeah. Buffalo chicken wings. Again. It is so easy. And you get all that nutritional kick from the celery! (Don't you?)
Could NOT complain!
OK, lunch today is take-out pizza. Goof-off.

My Salad Day

I really like shrimp. I know, it's so lame, so middlebrow American.
Just as long as I can get decently harvested wild shrimp, which means *not local*.
This was Gulf shrimp. Gulf??? With a dipping sauce of BP?
Nah. It was safe. Tasty. Tender. Just right.
It was cooked in a flavory oil, loaded with spices. Of your choosing. Some lemon.
Then a salad dressing was made in the sauteing pan. Yeah, right in all those sauteed flavors. A little more oil, a little more lemon juice. Dressing!
Hearts of romaine lettuce, and clever curls of avocado that looked just like vegan shrimp.
Rats, forgot croutons.

That's So Cheesy

Anybody remember the 70s? Remember eating "grown-up" food in the 70s?
I recall it as a time of exploration, a time of experimentation. I'd had a good, sane, creative diet at home as a kid, so my palate was ready to try things. And, oh, sophistication? It was a quest. Naturellement.
So there was this tiny, expensive, packaged cheese from France, called Boursin. It came in a little cardboard box. Inside was a circular slice of soft white dairy, wrapped in foil.
It smelled heavenly. Garlic, herbs. There was a black pepper version, too, but that was maybe too grown-up.
Such a treat, smeared on baguette rounds. Accompanied by a sip of dry white — oaky, because this was the 70s.
One day a young woman I knew — she was probably the first foodie I had ever met, and the word "foodie" wasn't even invented yet — showed me how to toss some American cream cheese into a blender, along with minced herbs and crushed garlic. (One was still allowed to crush garlic in the 70s.) Whiz, spin, mix. And out came a shapeless blob of Boursin, swear to god.
Very good. But, you know, pathetic, because she didn't actually buy the expensive tiny package. Doesn't buying it make it better? Homemade? The poor thing.
Not that I never tried making my own Boursin from time to time.
But I moved on. Too many interesting things were happening in the foodosphere. I don't think I've tasted any of that 70s cheese since — the 70s.
Nowadays there are some wonderful little homestead cheeses in my area. (I will not use the word "foodshed." Oops.) A soft, white, creamy-yet-flaky one... Very local. Perfect for a resurrection of this project.
No blender needed. Grate some green garlic (is one allowed to grate garlic?) and mince some chives. Tiny. Crack some black pepper as chunky as you can get it. Stir these aromatics into the cheese, with a pinch of salt. Cover and refrigerate for an hour.
Scrape the shapeless blob into a pretty bowl, surround it with slices of good bread, and pop open the Chardonnay.
Roberta Flack optional.