skip to main |
skip to sidebar
How do you know there's an elephant in your refrigerator?
Elephant footprints in your butter.
How do you know there are two elephants in your refrigerator?
Two sets of footprints.
How do you put a giraffe in your refrigerator?
Take out the elephants and put the giraffe in.
How do you get four elephants in a compact car?
Two in front and two in the rear.
How do you know there are four elephants in your refrigerator?
There's a compact car parked out front and a giraffe standing in your kitchen.
[Now back to your regular daily life.]
Who hasn't heard of the cupcake craze? Stores that sell cupcakes exclusively. TV shows about cupcake contests. Now, there are even eggs specifically designed for baking into cupcakes.
All in a bright pink box. Pepto-Bismol pink. No. Barbie pink. Advertising the perfect sized eggs in rags like Cosmo and selling them at your local Sainsbury.
And the woman in the ad? She looks like she just finished a shoot for an adult movie rather than baked cupcakes. Did someone photoshop a cupcake over a dildo in her hand?
She looks very Stepford-esque. Isn't that every man's secret fantasy? A woman with perfectly coifed hair, killer figure, prim dress, offering him fresh baked goods and a stiff drink when he walks in the door after a long day at the office before strapping on her knee-pads in the bedroom to help him "relax".
Where's my Stepford Husband?
[Title taken from this.]
I'm getting into the groove again with the 30 Day Non-Facebook Prose-Instead-of-Pictures Challenge. Today's challenge:
16.A picture of someone who inspires you
Taking the easy way out isn't for me. The answer won't be Jesus, or Mother Teresa, or Gandhi. Those are all inspiring people. But too easy. To make it more difficult for myself, I remembered a sermon from several years ago about Pentecost.
What does Pentecost have to do with inspiration? "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them" -- Acts 2:4. Spirit. Inspire. They both come from the root Greek spīrāre, to breathe. Inspīrāre, to breathe upon or into. So what breathes into me? Who makes me alive?
There are very few people who truly inspire me. Suzanne Farrell, the ballerina, for her endless love of dance to the point of destroying her hips and knees only to have them replaced with metal, for showing me that there can still be the love and desire of something so beautiful but dangerous even well into one's sixties. John Muir, the naturalist, for his devotion to nature, for teaching me that the land can be loved, and cared for, now so that future generations will be able to love it as we do. Julia Child, the early television foodie, for introducing me to roast chicken which can still be saved even when dropped on the floor in front of millions of viewers. And a friend who will remain nameless, for utterly breathing the spirit of creativity into my mind and creating new ideas and ways to view things, for making me look at myself as someone still growing, never accepting that this is all there is.
Having a friend with no name push me to push myself, to be myself, to be more than myself. That is true inspiration. The breath of life that creates new life within me.
[Title taken from this.]
What I'm about to say will piss off any number of people. But this is my rant. If you don't like it, too bad. 'Cause it's the way I feel.
I am no longer a full-time mother. And I hate hate hate that. My new job demands over 50 hours a week. Including the 2 1/2 that I put in today. Today! A Sunday! The Sabbath! So much for keeping all Ten of the Commandments.
My paid job is a full-time office position. The entire family eats breakfast together before Mr. Gaelic and I carpool to our respective offices and Deirdre drives Maeve and herself to school. We eat supper together every possible night. Mostly five of seven, since Deirdre and Maeve both babysit and Deirdre has a boyfriend.
But there is no way that I can in good conscience call myself a full-time mother. Other women, upon hearing me call myself that in the past, would say that they work as a whatever at such-and-such a place. Then they'd tack on that they were full-time mothers as well. Hell no you're not!
Can you be a full-time surgeon and a full-time high school principal at the same time? No. Then what makes you think you can be a full-time whatever and a full-time mother at the same time? You can't. Because you're not there for your kids full time. When they need you. When they come home from school upset and claim that nothing is bothering them, until three hours later when they've finally decided to tell you what's wrong.
I miss my kids terribly. I was an awesome full-time mother. It was my calling in life. We chose for me to stay home with them and our finances suffered for the first few years after the transition. Only in the last three years had we fully recovered financially from going down to one bread-winning salary.
Mr. Gaelic has heard this rant before. He understands that he's not a full-time father. He understands that no parent who works at any job other than parenting can claim to be a full-time parent. That goes for parents who work from home, too. How does Junior feel when you say to him, "Mommy can't play with you right now because I've got to take this call and finish this report"?
I was fortunate to be able to be a full-time mother for 14 years. I experienced my youngest's infancy and my eldest's graduation. I also realize that taking a paying job is something I do for my children. I am providing Finola with the opportunity to attend the best possible college for her. I will continue in the paid workforce if Deirdre and Maeve want to attend prestigious private universities as well. What I do I do for them.
I just wish there were some way to provide the best for them while providing the best for me and Mr. Gaelic. We miss our former lifestyle of a home-cooked supper on the table at 6:30 every night, no lines at the grocery store or dry cleaner, and being able to do absolutely nothing on Saturdays and Sundays.
I want to be a full-time mom again.
This will be a busy week in the Gaelic household. Finola returns from college late Tuesday night. There is a party at a neighbor's house on Christmas Eve afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00 for kids and adults. Deirdre and Maeve are acolyting at the 11:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service. That means that Saturday is Christmas.
For as long as I can remember Christmas Eve supper was always spaghetti. Probably because my mama didn't want to have to spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen if she was going to be cooking a big meal the next day. That tradition is being instilled in my children. There were exceptions to the spaghetti rule. For a while we would alternate hosting Christmas Eve supper with friends. Our years to host, I would give a nod to the wife's Italian heritage and make a pasta with seven types of seafood. Still the pasta from my childhood, but the more traditional Italian Christmas Eve flavor. On our off years, my donation would be a homemade panettone.
Here are this week's menus:
- Monday
- Breakfast: grapefruit, toast
- Supper: butternut squash soup (leftover from last week), fresh baked bread
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal
- Supper: chili with assorted toppings, rice
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: bagels, creme cheese
- Supper: potluck (to clean out the fridge)
- Thursday
- Breakfast: oatmeal
- Supper: potluck (to finish cleaning out fridge) or delivered pizza
- Friday
- Breakfast: cinnamon toast
- Supper: spaghetti
- Saturday
- Breakfast: waffles, sausage links
- Dinner: standing rib roast, red wine sauce, horseradish sauce, Yorkshire pudding, mashed root vegetables, Brussels sprouts, congealed salad, steamed pudding with hard sauce
- Sunday
- Breakfast: cream of wheat
- Supper: shepherd's pie (use leftover root vegetables as topping)
Christmas dinner may sound like a lot of work. It's the same menu from year to year. After 20 years of cooking holiday meals by myself, by this time I can do it in my sleep. Sort of like every other holiday with their own constant but individual menus.
Almost 200 pounds! That's how much meat was stuffed into the freezer this past week. In the long saga of the meat co-op, the last possible pick-up time until next spring was last Wednesday. My order included a quarter of a cow and a half of a hog.
In reorganizing the freezer, there was a treasure trove of some of the richest homemade stocks you've ever laid eyes on. They lay forgotten underneath more recent additions of puppy pops (doggie ice cream), frozen yogurt, and Phish Food. Part of the reorganization included making a detailed list of everything in the freezer and the numbers of same items.
With the discovery of liquid gold, this week will see more soups on the menu. Even though stock freezes well, it should not sit at the bottom of the freezer never to see the bottom of a soup pot. And with that, I give you this week's menus.
- Monday
- Breakfast: bagels, cream cheese
- Supper: peanut soup, millet bread
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal
- Supper: pinto beans, corn pudding, fried okra, cornbread
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: cereal (again since Mr. Gaelic is catching an early flight to Chicago for business)
- Supper: butternut squash soup with bleu cheese, fresh baked bread
- Thursday
- Breakfast: cream of wheat
- Supper: potluck
- Friday
- Breakfast: grapefruit, toast
- Supper: date night (both girls are babysitting)
- Saturday
- Breakfast: bacon, eggs, grits, toast
- Supper: pizza for girls, Winter Solstice Party with Boat Burning for Mr. G and I (yes, a real Viking tradition)
- Sunday
- Breakfast: pancakes, sausage links
- Dinner: pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans
Our friends, who are Jewish, are having their annual Winter Solstice Party where they burn a boat, just like the husband's ancestors. Jewish Vikings??? No. He converted to Judaism for his wife.
A day late and a menu plan short; or, better late than never. My plan of getting the weekly menu plan done yesterday went up in smoke on Saturday night when I received an email requesting an interview.
I am the cavalry. I'm the one who gets called up to the front when the financial need arises. The need arose when Finola got into such a prestigious private college. College was in our budget plans. But we just need a little extra for the private school part.
My job search had not been going very well for several months. It's very difficult to get to the interview stage when online applications sort potential candidates based on certain words or phrases used in the answers. It's like a guessing game to figure out what the computers might be looking for.
Finding a job is always about who you know. Mr. Gaelic's colleague (Mr. A) passed along a copy of my resume to the son-in-law (Mr. B) of the colleague's (Mr. A's) former boss who passed it along to the chief of staff (Mr. C) of the man (Mr. D) I want to work for. Since I have been a full-time mother for the past 13+ years, I needed to find out what has changed in my field in the meantime as well as find out a bit about Mr. D so that I know what he's looking for in an employee. After church yesterday, the afternoon was spent researching all sorts of information and biographical sketches. Never go to an interview unprepared.
That's my excuse for not getting my menu plan posted on a Sunday as I have in the past.
- Monday
- Breakfast: grapefruit, toast
- Supper: potluck (where did all that food come from?)
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal
- Supper: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, broccoli
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: oatmeal
- Supper: steak, baked potatoes (meat co-op delivery day!)
- Thursday
- Breakfast: cinnamon toast
- Supper: baked beans, dirty rice, fried okra, cornbread
- Friday
- Breakfast: cream of wheat
- Supper: cedar-plank salmon, roasted root vegetables, lentil salad
- Saturday
- Breakfast: cereal (have to be at church at 7:30 for meal delivery at a retirement home)
- Supper: pizza for girls, eat out with Mr. Gaelic (date night)
- Sunday
- Breakfast: bacon, eggs, grits, toast
- Dinner: roast chicken, green peas, mashed acorn squash, dinner rolls
Wow! I didn't realize just how busy this coming Saturday is until now. 7:30 a.m. meal delivery (similar to Meals on Wheels), 9:30 Deirdre's Girl Scout troop cleanup (at a different retirement home), also at 9:30 Deirdre's Girl Scout home-baked cookie drop-off (as a fund-raiser but not the official boxed Girl Scout cookies yet - those are being sold by our troops beginning December 22nd), 11:00 local charity pick-up of our old mattress and box spring (same group as is organizing the early morning meal delivery), 6:00 p.m. Deirdre to babysit, and finally Time To Be Determined date with Mr. Gaelic (whom I haven't seen much of lately due to his travelling on business).
Whew! I'm tired just typing that. Good thing it's potluck tonight and I don't have to think about cooking.
There was much in the media this past week about Thanksgiving and how the Pilgrims and Indians didn't overeat and then go shopping. Apparently, during those times people were a bit more conservative with their stores of food, wanting to make the harvest last through the cold winter months. So it's apropos that today is the first day of Advent. A time to scale back in preparation for the Christmas season.
The first week after Thanksgiving is also a time to finish off the turkey. When you order one from the meat co-op you order a weight range. This year's turkey was on the upper end of the range. Lots and lots of leftovers.
- Monday
- Breakfast: cereal (Mr. Gaelic leaves for a business trip)
- Supper: creamed spinach, corn pudding, pinto beans
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: oatmeal
- Supper: turkey pot pie
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: cinnamon toast
- Supper: turkey barley soup
- Thursday
- Breakfast: cream of wheat
- Supper: baked mac and cheese, broccoli, honeyed pumpkin
- Friday
- Breakfast: soft-boiled eggs, toast
- Supper: pizza for girls, Mr. Gaelic and I are headed to a scotch tasting with heavy hors d'oeuvres
- Saturday
- Breakfast: waffles, bacon
- Supper: tuna casserole, salad
- Sunday
- Breakfast: sausage gravy, homemade biscuits
- Dinner: hot turkey salad, potatoes, green beans
It cannot be December already. Just where did the year go? Time for another holiday soon. Time to pull out the cookbooks and see what can be done ahead of time. Maybe it's time to dust off my mama's fruitcake recipe. Lots of planning and decisions coming up. Stay tuned to see what it'll be.
No matter how much prep work has been done in the preceeding weeks, the three days before Thanksgiving always make me feel like the White Rabbit. "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date."
So today's blog will be short and to the point so that I can get back to the kitchen.
- Monday
- Breakfast: bran muffins
- Supper: vegetable soup (great way to use up what may still be lurking in the veggie crisper), homemade bread
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal (as usual on Tuesday)
- Supper: baked ziti, salad
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: bagels with cream cheese
- Supper: eat out at Finola's favorite Indian restaurant (she returns from college Tuesday evening)
- Thursday/Thanksgiving
- Breakfast: egg, cheese, sausage and grits casserole
- Dinner: turkey, dressing (NOT stuffing since I was raised in the South), giblet gravy, cranberry relish, sweet potato casserole, Brussels sprouts, cherry congealed salad (because this is really 1950 after all), homemade dinner rolls, pumpkin cheesecake (It's listed as dinner not supper because it'll be served mid-afternoon.)
- Friday
- Breakfast: coffee (gotta make the Black Friday sales)
- Supper: hot turkey salad casserole (sounds odd but it's my mom's recipe), green salad
- Saturday
- Breakfast: Krispy Kreme doughnuts (hot, now!)
- Supper: leftovers from Thanksgiving
- Sunday
- Breakfast: bacon, eggs, grits, toast
- Dinner: chicken 'n' dumplin's, carrots, green beans
Back to the apron.
Gail asked how I do my menu planning. It all started when I was a youngster. My mother didn’t read regular books. No dime-store romances, no New York Times bestsellers, no Book of the Month Club selection. No, she read cookbooks in the evening. And she loved to throw parties of all kinds, dinner parties, cocktail parties, open house buffets, cookouts, picnics, coffees, breakfasts, you name it, she threw it.
She taught me how to shop the ads. Take the grocery store weekly circulars and find the loss-leaders. Those are the items that are deeply discounted to get people into the store. Like the 99¢ per pound chicken legs or the 49¢ per pound baking potatoes. Then build a meal around chicken legs and potatoes. See what else is on sale, rinse, repeat.
Going organic has put a damper on shopping the ads. But it’s still helpful to have an idea about what to cook for supper on any given night. Now the formula is more along the lines of particular types of dishes on certain nights.
Ever since finding the Meat-Free Monday movement, Monday’s suppers hearken back to my childhood with a plate of three Southern-style veggie dishes and maybe a cornbread. Anything as long as it’s all vegetarian, but not vegan. That’s too foreign for my household.
The rest of the week consists of one night of a soup, one night of a nice meat-centric meal, one night of seafood, and one night of leftovers to clean out the refrigerator for the next week’s groceries. Some things get repeated during the week. Maybe it’s the meat-plus-two; maybe it’s the all-veggie meal.
Once the Crockpot has passed inspection, perhaps on nights when there is carpool duty, supper might be slow-simmered. My oven has a delay start and a cooking timer. There are nights when the meatloaf is placed in the oven with a delayed start time ensuring that it’ll be ready to come out right at supper time after the last extracurricular activity.
If you want to get started on menu planning, make a list of the things you cook regularly. Then rotate them throughout the month. There might be spaghetti, roast chicken, tacos, broiled fish, sloppy Joes, tuna casserole, meatloaf, chili, chicken tetrazzini, you get the idea. Fill in with some lighter meals such as warm winter soups or light chilled summer soups. Or something quick and fast like sandwiches and a can of tomato soup.
Use either method. The rotation plan is my default plan since I don’t shop the ads like my mother did. It’s hard to shop the ads when most of our food comes from the organic meat co-op or the farmers’ market. For that, you have to think on your feet about what’s fresh and what you can make with those. Or use the shop-the-ads plan basing your menus on what’s on sale at your grocery store. Here’s a hint. When I used to shop the ads, I didn’t limit myself to one store. There were three stores in a close radius whose ads I would shop.
Regardless of your method, have fun with your meals. And eat with someone else as often as you can.
If you're a regular reader, you know I grew up in a small Southern town. Today's quiz is about the food of the American South.
- What is the base flavoring of benne wafers?
- Vanilla
- Chocolate
- Sesame seed
- Molasses
- What do you call the liquid released from collard greens as they cook?
- Potlikker
- Collard cola
- Green gumbo
- Hock sauce
- Hoppin' John is made with rice and what?
- Lima beans
- Green beans
- Pinto beans
- Black-eyed peas
- What is the traditional topping of Southern-style banana pudding?
- Benne wafers
- Vanilla wafers
- Pecan Sandies
- Butter cookies
- "Chitlins and maw" are what parts of the animal respectively?
- Pig intestines and cow stomach
- Cow intestines and pig stomach
- Pig intestines and pig stomach
- Cow intestines and cow stomach
- Sorghum is a type of what?
- Grain
- Vegetable
- Fruit
- Candy
- Pimento cheese is what?
- A semi-hard, cow's milk cheese made with pimento peppers
- A type of spread consisting mainly of mayonnaise, sharp cheddar cheese, and pimento peppers
- A melted cheese dip similar to queso that is specked with pimento peppers
- Country-fried steak and chicken-fried steak are the same thing.
- True
- False
- What is the most recommended vessel for cooking cornbread?
- Deep-fryer
- Dutch oven
- Muffin pan
- Cast-iron skillet
- When ground, hominy is called what?
- Porridge
- Oatmeal
- Muesli
- Grits
Answers tomorrow. For some reason I've got a hankerin' for some fried okra right now.
Having exhausted all my ideas on why my photos won't properly upload on Blogger, there are no pictures of the cake we took with us to the Murder Mystery Party last night. (And no pictures of Thing 1 or Thing 2, either, for those of you who asked.)
It's a flourless cake. Just three ingredients - 1/2 pound of unsalted butter, 1 pound of bittersweet chocolate, and 6 eggs. My preference of bittersweet chocolate is Valhrona Amer, which is 71% cocoa. It's like the Darth Vader of chocolate. Beware the Dark Side!
To cut through the richness, my choice of accompanying sauce is a raspberry puree. Again, three total ingredients - raspberries, lemon juice, and superfine sugar (not powdered). Because only the raspberry juice is boiled down, not the pulp, it retains a fresher, tarter taste. And the dark red against the dark brown almost black looks so cool.
Even though another couple brought a cleverly decorated cake, mine tasted better. Rolled fondant takes so much time that the red velvet cake underneath was a bit on the dry side. My one attempt at a fondant cake wasn't as moist as most of my cakes. But the hand-painted fondant flowers were really memorable. (It's was Mr. Gaelic's birthday cake the first year we were married.)
But enough about desserts.
- Monday
- Breakfast: carrot-raisin muffins
- Supper: butternut squash soup, homemade potato bread
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal (as always on Tuesdays)
- Supper: barbecued ribs, homemade white bread, sauce (Ask anyone who's ever tried Dreamland BBQ, it's the only way to eat ribs.)
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: soft-boiled eggs, toast
- Supper: fried okra, black-eyed peas, picked beets, spoon bread
- Thursday
- Breakfast: cereal (Veteran's Day = no school = sleep late)
- Supper: French onion soup, salad (Veteran's Day = remembering my daddy who landed on Normandy Beach on D+14 = French food)
- Friday
- Breakfast: English muffins, fig preserves or honey (We're currently out of Tupelo honey, so I'll poke around the condiment section for something interesting.)
- Supper: cheese soufflé, asparagus
- Saturday
- Breakfast: pancakes, bacon
- Supper: pizza for girls, Mr. Gaelic and I are headed to a party at church for major donors of a new grand piano
- Sunday
- Breakfast: sausage gravy, homemade biscuits
- Dinner: roast chicken, potatoes Anna, green beans
Sometime during the week, we'll finish off the last five slices of chocolate cake. The slices are quite thin since the cake is quite rich. As well as the almond cookies that Maeve made last night while we were trying to solve the murder mystery.
My budding chef. Following in her sisters', and mother's, and father's footsteps.
Food porn. Staring me right in the face. Lying smack dab in the middle of a half-price table at Barnes & Noble. And I couldn't pull my eyes away. Thoughts of lovingly placing the same dish on the table for my family kept me gazing at the cover photo. My mouth watered and my mind raced taking mental stock of all the necessary ingredients and whether they were on hand at home.
At the early morning farmers' market, we scored Brussels sprouts, onions, baby red potatoes, an end-of-season casaba melon, a pound of free-range bacon, a pound of buffalo stew meat, and a free reusable "green" bag from a political candidate that we can't vote for because he represents the county and not the city (weird jurisdictions mean that our cities and counties are entirely separate as opposed to other states where cities are in counties and under both jurisdictions). At the meat co-op, we bagged up three broilers, three stewing hens (the layers that are past their laying prime), two packs of pork ribs, three pounds of bacon (I forgot I had ordered bacon), and our Thanksgiving turkey (frozen, but I didn't want to run the risk of their selling out).
The meat co-op is all free-range, grass-fed meat. Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, eggs. Sometimes they work with neighboring like-minded farmers to supply duck, duck eggs, lamb, and rabbit. The co-op delivers every eight weeks, so stock up.
Then there are the last of the backyard crop. Carrots, onions that didn't "bulb", and a few beets.
Do I have enough to put together that gorgeous food porn I coveted? Let's try.
- Monday
- Breakfast: oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar
- Supper: meatloaf (need to use the ground beef in the freezer to make room for the turkey), creamed red potatoes, green beans
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: cereal (early morning meetings at the Company don't allow time for more)
- Supper: Peruvian stew with buffalo meat, hearty home-baked bread
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: English muffins, fig preserves or tupelo honey
- Supper: baked mac & cheese, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cornbread
- Thursday
- Breakfast: melon, Greek yogurt
- Supper: candied sweet potatoes, orange beets, creamed spinach, homemade dinner rolls (save half)
- Friday
- Breakfast: baked apples, toast
- Supper: moules (mussels) à la marinière, french fries, salad, baguettes (gotta have something to soak up the broth)
- Saturday
- Breakfast: pancakes, bacon
- Supper: Maeve's birthday party (finger sandwiches, carrot and celery sticks, cake, and homemade lemonade)
- Sunday
- Breakfast: bacon, eggs, grits, toast
- Dinner: coq au vin, quinoa pilaf, salad, dinner rolls (saved from Thursday)
So coq au vin isn't quite the food porn I drooled over. But most of the ingredients are readily available from what's on-hand. And I don't have to buy a new cookbook for one food-porn recipe.
The veggies from my garden this year included cabbage, onions, carrot, and beets. There were also strawberries, raspberries, figs, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and lettuce. Of the first group one can make a delicious soup. Although Maeve called it a stew.
Don’t laugh, but I’m beginning to become Русско. (That’s Russian for Russki.) For longtime readers, you’ll remember my trek across country two years ago. My birthday on that trip found us in Chicago where we stumbled upon a wonderful Russian restaurant. I would remember how to say Happy Birthday in Russian as the waitress said it to me except for the flight of vodka that accompanied my dinner.
So, what do you get when you add cabbage and onions and carrots and beets? Throw in some chunks of beef and a dollop of sour cream on top. Serve it up with warm-from-the-oven black bread. You get a hearty supper of borscht and bread. The only thing missing was the Belvedere. But my potato crop didn't take this year. My Irish roots are still very strong.
Our city has several farmers markets, mostly on Saturday and Sunday, one on Wednesday. However we're surrounded by two counties that have a plethora of farmers markets, and better web designers. One of the counties has an online list of the markets by different days of the week, by location, and even by vendors. Pick your day, or whichever one is in the location of where else you might be on a particular day, or by which vendor carries whatever ingredient you need for your recipe.
I've been blowing right past the neighborhood farmers market on my way to the neighboring county's farmers market on Saturday mornings. The neighborhood market is quite small and the prices are higher than in the next county. Some of the same vendors have simultaneous booths at both markets, but better prices and selection in the next county.
Sunday is the day for a family meeting to discuss what everyone would like to eat during the coming week based on what's in season. The executive chef (moi) has veto power, as it should be. This is what will be on the table this week.
- Monday
- Breakfast: boiled eggs and toast
- Supper: baked ziti, salad
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: choice of cereal
- Supper: black-eyed peas, rice pilaf, orange beets, cornbread (double recipe, freeze one to use in Thanksgiving dressing)
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: homemade cinnamon-raisin bread
- Supper: borsht and hearty homemade bread (save half loaf)
- Thursday
- Breakfast: oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar
- Supper: Welch rabbit (use half loaf from Wednesday), steamed broccoli
- Friday
- Breakfast: bagels and cream cheese or cinnamon toast
- Supper: tuna casserole, salad
- Saturday
- Breakfast: bacon, choice of egg, grits, toast
- Supper: potluck (see what's left in fridge)
- Sunday
- Breakfast: waffles, sausage
- Dinner: pot roast, mashed potatoes, English peas, homemade dinner rolls
Did you notice that Sunday is dinner not supper? That's because I was raised in the South. Dinner is the meal that occurs around noontime. It was traditionally the biggest meal of the day, regardless of the day.
The roast gets thrown in the oven before heading out to church and the dough is left to rise next to the hot oven. Afterwards it doesn't take too long to finish everything up.
What's on your menu for the week?
There's an experiment going on in my backyard. It's called a vegetable garden.
When I was growing up, my farm-owning grandfather let all of his city-living kids have two or three rows in his garden to raise whatever they wanted as long as they did all the work. Weekends were spent hoeing and pulling weeds. The payoff was long-lived with vegetables that graced our table fresh from the stalk as well as stocked in our pantry in jars that my mama put up.
Although I helped with the garden duties, I'm not sure how much of their knowledge got osmosed.
My garden is growing. Although it's a bit unwieldy. Cabbage, carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, beets, onions, and corn have been harvested. There's also a fig "tree" against my house. It would have been a tree if it hadn't split as a young thing making it a bush instead. A twelve foot round bush.
Today's to-do list includes making fig preserves. Even if I didn't learn all the gardening skills I could have at my father's knee, I certainly learned all the canning skills I needed at my mother's and grandmother's apron strings.
Lucille Ball and I are one and the same person. Or so I believe. Especially after yesterday. Let’s recap, shall we?
We’re both redheads. We share the same birthday. We’re both of Gaelic descent. And we’re both totally, comedically incompetent at times.
Like yesterday.
I found a bootleg recipe for my all-time favorite barbecue sauce. Not Kraft or anything you can buy off the shelf. We’re talking a little barbecue joint deep in the backwoods of my home state. You can’t buy the liquid gold in the store, only order it or buy it at the “restaurant” (and I use that term loosely). To get to the place, you have to go with someone who knows the way. It’s down a road, make a right on a dirt road, go down a ways and when you see all the BMWs and Jeep Cherokees parked outside, you’re there. It’s a tar paper-sided shack that serves two things – ribs and white bread. You can get a half slab if you want. Either way, you get a stack of Wonder bread to sop up the sauce. Oh, yeah, they also serve Bud and Co-cola products.
The ill-gotten recipe calls for two tablespoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt. I didn’t realize I had grabbed the salt instead of the sugar until I was about to add the salt, which was listed near the bottom of the ingredient list. Oh. My. God. Two whole tablespoons of salt when it called for just one teaspoon.
Off to the grocery store I went to buy enough of certain ingredients so I could increase the recipe to make up for my mistake. It ended up being cooked down in my canning pot. Which for those of you who haven’t put up your own jars takes up about two burners on the stove. Perhaps the guys next door might like some bathtub barbecue hooch. They’re always grilling out.
5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE4 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons cocoa 1 egg 3 tablespoons milk 3 tablespoons oil 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional) A small splash of vanilla extract 1 large coffee mug Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.EAT! (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous.)
So why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world?
Because now we are all only five minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!
What’d you do for Valentine’s Day? Imagine this, a four-star one-table restaurant. Our table for two was by a steady fire, two candles on the linen-covered table. Delicate bone china, softly patina’d silver and sparkling leaded crystal rounded out the setting.
The first course was artichoke-parmesan crostini. Our fingers lifted the four crisp pieces from the small plates. The first round from a bottle of an Argentine Malbec filled our glasses. The entrée was a medium-rare for me, rare for the husband pepper-crusted filet mignon with a red wine reduction sauce served alongside creamy spinach and slow-roasted tomatoes. More Malbec. Finally, the pièce de résistance. Two individual light-as-air Grand Marnier soufflés with crème anglaise. Decaf coffee, if you please, came with a pitcher of real cream.
Total bill for the evening? $35.00. Where’d we find such a well-kept secret? Chez nous.
Yep. I cooked; the children set the table and built the fire; the two youngest acted as our servers. (The kids had pizza for supper and their own individual soufflés for dessert.)
No cards, no gifts, no flowers. Just a simple home-cooked meal for two.
Older Southern women keep theirs next to the stove. Younger Southern women keep theirs in the fridge. Other women wouldn’t know what to do with theirs. Of what do I speak?
Bacon grease, of course. You know, that hot liquid that you drain off your bacon. My goes straight into an old coffee can. But, then I put it in the refrigerator. My grandmother and her generation of Southern cooks kept it handy, right by the stove, so that when something needed a little extra flavor, it was within arm’s reach. These days, I don’t use bacon grease to cook as much as my cooking forebears did. I tend to use it only when I’m frying chicken. How else are you going to get that crispy outside and juicy inside?
My can is a well-kept secret. Most of my granola-crunchy neighbors would look askance at me if they knew that we eat bacon, much less cook with its drippings. Some of them might go so far as to contact Child Protective Services for endangering the health of a child by feeding them anything that is cooked with my beloved bacon grease. What they don’t understand is why my fried chicken seems to be eaten first at potlucks.
I’m not planning on telling them my hush-hush ingredient. Let’s just keep it our little secret between friends.
