This is a blog with a back story. It focuses on food, family, fiber arts, pets, friends, and fibromyalgia. It's about life at a certain age, the joys, the sorrows, the backaches, the mental confusion. There's a lot of kvetching, complaining, occasional profanity, righteous indignation, political incorrectness, knitting exhortations, and really good, original recipes.
Friday - I normally would not start another post with Coconut Curry Chicken and Beef Stuffed Baby Bell Peppers hanging out there like laundry on the line, but I cannot help but make a side trip at this point in my week. I am scared, so scared that my legs are weak. Fortunately I am the passenger, as Rob is driving us to Winter Park to discuss the results of all those tests and procedures that were done to the girls. In discussing my long list of fears with professionals who are trained to do so, I have assured them that I am not afraid of breast cancer, that whatever has to be done will be done, and more of that sort of crap. There's no percentage in lying to your therapist or your psychiatrist, folks. I am certain I didn't fool either one of them, and I surely did not fool myself.
I have been through this scenario with the same surgeon, back in 2006, and I can still see myself, with Rob, sitting in one of her examination rooms, hearing the good news that everything was benign. What a marvelous word, benign. But this is 2015, and in order to deal with the mind-numbing anxiety from weeks and months of invasive procedures, I have forced myself to believe that this time it would be déjà vu all over again and everything would be benign. Who am I fooling? I know no such thing.
Only now I do. First, you cry - even when it is good news. Then you hug your husband and go to Tibby's for lunch. Thank you, God.
Thursday, Day 37 - I am so close to that cruise ship I can taste my first bagel with lox and cream cheese. But until that happy moment, I promise you quiche, and Ella Fitzgerald singing "All the Things You Are."
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long You are the breathless hush of evening That trembles on the brink of a lovely song ...
I hate when I oversleep, but that's exactly what I did this morning, necessitating what can best be described as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to SODO. I realize I am dating myself with the reference to Mr. Toad, but you must remember this - we spent our honeymoon in Disneyworld, which back in 1974 was the Magic Kingdom and nothing else. I had a 9:45 appointment with (yet another) doctor in Orlando, an area I've always thought of as "The Hospital Zone" because of the jowl-to-cheek juxtaposition of Orlando Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Women and Children, Winnie Palmer Hospital, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Really an overwhelming collection of edifices containing really sick people and enough medical personnel to cure a third world nation of whatever ails it.
Earlier this year, I noticed that this general area on and around South Orange Avenue had been dubbed "SODO". It took me a few minutes to realize this meant "South of Downtown Orlando", and another 2 seconds to realize how off base the developer had been. SODO doesn't sound trendy like Tribeca or sophisticated like SOHO, or even charmingly silly like DUMBO. Not wanting to be slow to SODO, I ran like Jesse Owens and drove like Richard Petty and prayed like Pope Francis that the Great God of Traffic Lights would favor me with fortune. I made it in just under 41 minutes from sitting up in bed to sitting down in my doctor's waiting room. And I waited, for her, and while I waited, I thought about food. Specifically I thought about chicken schmaltz, and that led me to coconut milk and .... well, you'll just have to tune in tomorrow.
When asked if there was something he would like me to prepare for the week his father and I would be gone, Cory suggested "something with asparagus." Huh. Mention asparagus to me and I start dreaming about rivers of hollandaise, but that's a sauce that doesn't hold well. Cory likes his asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, but we've done that lately. Risotto? Meh. Soup? Nah. Quiche? Well, real men don't eat quiche, do they?
Hell yes they do! First of all, the book from whence that expression sprang was a satire! Second, quiche is substantial food, rich and filling. Why wouldn't a "real" man want to scarf down a couple of slices for lunch, or as a side dish for a more traditional entree like chicken or sliced pork loin?
Anyway, asparagus is one of those foods that has always been associated with springtime, so I wanted to reflect that in the quiche, without sacrificing the flavors that will attract men and women alike. This is a hearty quiche.
The Promised Quiche of Springtime
4 tablespoons schmaltz and/or butter
4 spring onions, sliced thin
12 oz. sliced button mushrooms
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and sliced diagonally
kosher salt
white pepper
2 deep dish frozen pie crusts (Mrs. Smith's)
2 cups shredded cheese (1 cup mozzarella, 1 cup sharp cheddar)
6 thin slices capacollo, cut or pulled into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup flame-roasted red peppers (sweet pimento), patted dry, sliced
4 teaspoons grated Pecorino Romano
6 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
pinch of nutmeg
dash of granulated garlic
Unwrap the frozen pie shells and let sit on the counter, while you prepare the filling. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a large skillet over medium high hear, cook the onions, mushrooms and asparagus until the liquid in the pan just evaporates. Season with the salt and pepper and set aside to cool. Divide the mozzarella and cheddar cheese between the pie shells, spreading across the bottoms. Place the capacollo on top of the cheese. Carefully spoon the cooled asparagus mixture on top of thecapacollo. Arrange the slices of pimento over the asparagus. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the Pecorino Romano over each pie. Place the filled pie shells on rimmed cookie sheets (I placed each shell in an aluminum lasagna pan, and it fit perfectly).
In a 4 cup (or larger) glass measuring cup, whisk together the eggs and heavy cream. Add some kosher salt and pepper, Italian seasoning, the nutmeg and the granulated garlic, and whisk to combine. Carefully pour half of the liquid over each pie, and the carefully moved them to the preheated oven. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until the custard is set and the crust is golden brown. Do not overbake. Allow the quiche to cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting. I left the second quiche in the aluminum lasagna pan, double wrapped the pie and then the aluminum pan, and placed it into the freezer.
Both of the real men in my life tasted, scarfed, and heartily approved.
I do have a confession to make. When the asparagus begat the springtime theme, the first song that came to mind was "Springtime for Hitler" from "The Producers." Try as I might - and when it comes to anything by Mel Brooks, I try really hard - I could not find a nice way to work it in. I mean, imagine calling this my "Springtime for Hitler" quiche? Pretty awful. What is not awful is one of my favorite actors singing what can only be described as the most politically incorrect song in the history of modern cinema. That is indeed John Barrowman, with his normal good looks marred by the swastika on his armband and the Guy Fieri bleach job. Never mind all that, he's gorgeous, he's sexy, and he can sing like an angel. I'd make this quiche for him anytime.
Wednesday, Day 36 - So here I am back at Florida Radiology at a ridiculously early cow-milking hour, for an MRI. It was not, as MRIs go, uncomfortable in the least, thanks to that Valium my surgeon suggested I take prior, and the fact that for this test, I got to lie face down. The girls, who would otherwise have been unbearably squashed, were suitably accommodated. I think they enjoyed the "airing" so to speak. If that has been too much information, I apologize, but not much.
Let's "Ringo" in the day with a little tune:
Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don't come easy.
You don't have to shout or leap about,
You can even play them easy. Forget about the past and all your sorrows,
The future won't last,
It will soon be over tomorrow.
I don't ask for much, I only want your trust,
And you know it don't come easy.
And this love of mine keeps growing all the time,
And you know it just ain't easy.
As you know, eating "don't come easy" to me. Most of that is attributed to the gastric bypass surgery I had in 2003, while the rest is a toothy issue - like in, I don't have any. I was never blessed with good strong teeth, despite those yearly childhood visits to the dentist, and they only got worse over the years, so here we are. Eating with dentures don't come easy either, and when I am home en famille, I forego the damn things. They not only hurt, but they interfere with my ability to taste.
I have learned the hard way that I have to eat small - small portions and very small pieces of food. Texture makes a big difference as well, especially when I'm imitating Granny Clampett. But that doesn't stop me from occasionally craving fried food or real pit barbecue or a Big Mac, hold the lettuce, and sometimes I've just got to give in.
I'd had a mad yen for the burnt ends from Jimmy Bear's BBQ in St. Cloud, but tax season got in the way. As soon as it was over, however, and while I was at one of my interminable trips to a doctor, my darling husband zipped down the highway to heaven and picked up a pound, along with a slab of ribs and some fried pickles.
Of course there were leftovers, and I find leftovers of any sort to be difficult to swallow, literally. But these burnt ends were so good, I knew I just had to find a way to enjoy them again ... and again. So I repurposed them - repurposing being the New Millenium term for "making good use of leftovers." I made the cutest little sliders out of them, keeping in mind my need for soft textures and tiny bits. These are really so good, you do not need to be a post-operative gastric bypass patient to enjoy them. In fact, you can make a whole tray of these as snack food during the NBA play-offs or for your ladies' book club meeting. That being said, I was able to finish one. Just one, and it was marvelous.
Leftover barbecue burnt ends from Jimmy Bear's Barbecue, chopped pretty fine, with the layer of fat
onion, chopped
olive oil or canola oil
really good quality barbecue sauce from Four Rivers Barbecue
To serve:
1-15 oz. bag Martin's Party Potato Rolls (24 to a package)
1-8oz. jar Mt. Olive Dill Relish
On the side:
Tabbouleh from Whole Foods
I can't really give you precise amounts, because it depends how many of the burnt ends are left over. I like a lot of onions, and they cook down anyway, but your mileage may vary. This recipe is all about self-detrmination, so you will have to determine for yourself the ratio of beef to onion.
Cook the onions in some oil until the onions begin to brown. Add the chopped beef and its fat (there is some serious flavor in that fat, so don't discard it) and cook together until the fat has melted and the beef is heated through. Stir in the barbecue sauce and let everything simmer together until the beef is very tender. If you can stand it, refrigerate overnight so the flavors can happily consummate their marriage.
Next day - take the chill off the beef mixture, but don't over heat. Cut a roll in half, and pile on the beef. Top with some of the relish. Finally, make it into a real sandwich, stick a frilled toothpick down the middle, and take a picture. Consume with one swallow or a dozen dainty bites. Anyway you want it ...
I recommended specific pickle relish as well as the taboulleh because each is very finely chopped, making them perfect for me. If you like chunky relish, or even a slice of pickle, be my guest. Go ahead and enjoy a real green salad or a bowl of homemade coleslaw - both will go really well with the slider. Get crazy and put the coleslaw on the sandwich!
Tuesday, Day 35 - There are no vegetarians in my house, nosiree Rob. Cory will eat salad, as long as it is wearing his favorite Makoto Ginger Dressing. I adore salad, indigestible though it may be for me, especially if it is well-dressed in Ken's Steakhouse Thousand Island. Cory will ask for asparagus, and will eat pretty much any vegetable I put in front of him. But if I'm not doing the serving, he is just as likely to pile his plate high with one of every cooked protein in the house while forgetting about the gorgeous Italian broccoli or Greek green beans.
Rob can't be bothered with anything green. At a salad bar, while I am honing in on choice bits of romaine, mesclun, and baby spinach, he is making his plate look like something out of an surrealist's nightmare. Chick peas, marinated artichoke hearts, pickled beets, blue cheese dressing, all swirling around in nauseating technicolor. But even worse, he has little interest in any of my cooked vegetable dishes, especially if they are green. Or yellow or orange or white.
I admit to being rather sensitive on the subject. I may not be able (or willing) to make my own pie crust, but I am a whiz with vegetables. When I'm done with them, they taste good - really good - and it irritates me that my efforts go unrecognized by my regular eating audience. Now it could just be that I am in a pissy mood today - and I am, make no mistake about it - but it would do this Jewish mother's heart good to see my husband happily, deliberately, and voluntarily piling vegetables on his plate next to whichever protein and starch is about to be consumed.
Which is why it was so funny when both he and Cory ate the "wrong" part of the kraut sveckle. Now, kraut sveckle is not technically a vegetable dish. although it contains a rather healthy amount of cabbage. Shredded cabbage that has been slowly and lovingly cooked down in butter for an hour or more until it tastes rich and sweet and nothing at all like that boiled wedge you probably plunked down next to slices of corned beef on St. Patrick's Day. But first and foremost it is a noodle dish, and it is the contrast of the bland egg noodles and the cooked cabbage that work together so perfectly.
So I was working on this green bean dish from Guy Fieri, and decided to cook the cabbage for the kraut sveckle at the same time. When they were both done, I set them side by side on the counter. No noodles. As you may have guessed, my two geniuses ate rather generously of the cabbage, ignored the green bean dish, and felt virtuous for having consumed at least one vegetable with their dinner. I'm not so sure it was funny after all.
But that's not why I'm in a pissy mood today. No, I know why and there is little I can do about it but stew like a Shabbos cholent. Because I am fed up to the eyebrows with bureaucracy and red tape and forms and systems and intrusions and questions and requests and all that jazz to the point that I want to tell somebody, or several somebodies, off. And I know it wouldn't help, and I would end up feeling bad about being mean, and let's face it, it's a hot mess, and if I open my mouth and go all New York stevedore on them, I will just make things worse. Especially since I suspect I am overreacting in the midst of an anxiety attack. Hot mess, I told you.
Even my pedicure did not cheer me up the way it usually does.
I followed Guy's recipe almost exactly, making half of it (I only had one ear of corn and two cups of green beans in the fridge) and using a sweet rather than a red onion. Be generous with the salt, and feel free to blanch the green beans for an extra minute. I grated my own Parm, and I'm pretty sure there was more than three tablespoons, even with half the recipe. This made a very nice dish, tasty as well as visually pleasing. I snuck it onto Rob's dinner plate last night, and he proclaimed it "very good." Coming from him, that is indeed high praise for a vegetable.
Tomorrow I have an appointment at 7:00 am for the breast MRI, which means we will have to leave here around 6:00, which means waking up around 5:00. Ha, if you thought I was cranky today, wait until tomorrow.
You can thank The Mamas and the Papas for today's ear worm. If you are old like me, nothing screams the 60's like their four part harmony, except possibly extra wide bell bottoms and platform shoes. Monday, Monday
Can't trust that day Monday, Monday Sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh, Monday morning you gave me no warning Of what was to be Oh, Monday, Monday How could you leave and not take me ...
But whenever Monday comes You can find me crying all of the time
Flowers outside the Florida Radiology building. Of course they are pink!
Monday, Day 34 - I hate to give up my fine parking spot outside Florida Radiology, but I'm waiting on some CDs to be burned, which is going to take a little while, and I really do need another cup of coffee. The lot was practically empty when I got here just an hour ago; now, it's filled up all the way to left field. Minor inconvenience standing between me and my coffee.
Chelsea, hating her new shirt
I am finding it just a tad overwhelming to have medical appointments of one sort or another, every day this week. Last week I "only" had them four out of five. And did I mention that every single one has been way outside of my home zone? How do other people do it? What well of strength do they draw from, that I seem to be lacking?
When I feel sorry for myself, I go shopping - food shopping, that is, and that's how I found myself at the Winter Park Whole Foods this morning. You can't tell me it's not therapeutic to stroll up and down aisles where almost everything is marked "organic". I know I feel better for having gone there, and it only cost me $9.32 for steel cut oats, Bob's wheat bran (I don't know Bob, but I like his products), zante currants, and Popchips brand sweet potato chips. That's a lot less than a therapy session, although I have to go to one of those this week as well.
Feeling lower than Chris Christie's poll numbers, I finished at Whole Foods and then struck off on a trip to nowhere. I missed the easy exit to I-4 and kept going, exploring roads and locations that were hardly known to me. I love to explore, and the day started to shape up the way I like it, finishing with yet another food shopping foray inside Publix. If it wasn't for my back trying to crack in two, I'd say it was a pretty damn fine day.
Orchids and Hydrangea at Whole Foods
I want to Talk Pork with you today. First of all, it's a good thing I don't keep kosher, because pork is still affordable, unlike beef, lamb, and veal. Second, the best deal on pork is a honking huge boneless pork loin, in cryovac, from BJs warehouse. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Costco and Sam's Club likely carry the same hunk of porcine glory in their meat case. They run between nine and twelve pounds and every single ounce of it is edible.
Last time I bought one of these, I divided it into thirds, used one piece and froze the other two, but before freezing them, I seasoned them rather well and swaddled them in aluminum foil. One was seasoned with my mild Jamaican jolt spice blend while the other got showered with garlic salt and lemon pepper. Just as I feel secure in the knowledge that one cannot starve with a drawer full of sliced cheeses, it satisfies my balaboostah's soul to see hunks of meat - pork loin, pillow packs of chicken thighs, eye round roasts - tucked into deep freeze. One could survive a zombie apocalypse with such provisions at hand, assuming your living dead next door neighbor had not destroyed the local electrical grid. In that worst case scenario, throw the frozen protein projectile at the marauding zombies, grab a couple of cheese sandwiches, and run like hell.
Because I need to do some serious advance cooking for this week and next, I pulled the garlic salt and lemon pepper loin out of the freezer, and thought I would figure out a recipe by the time it defrosted. I did, and I have it on good authority that the flavor combination rocks.
Apple Honey Mustard Roast Pork Loin
1 - 3 pound piece of boneless pork loin
Garlic salt
Lemon pepper
5.5 oz. can apple juice
1 bottle Ken's Steakhouse Honey Mustard Dressing
kosher salt, black pepper, granulated garlic
Raging River Five Pepper blend or cayenne pepper, to taste
Season the pork with the garlic salt and lemon pepper. Refrigerate several hours or overnight. Heat a heavy skillet on medium high; sear the pork roast on all sides. Remove to a baking dish into which the apple juice has been poured. Cover with aluminum foil, then place into a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and squeeze or pour on enough of the honey mustard dressing to coat the pork loin. Use a fork or flat wire whisk to incorporate any honey mustard that has dripped dow, into the apple juice in the pan. Return to the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven, and with tongs, carefully move the pork to another dish. Increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees. Whisk the cooking liquid until well-combined. Taste and adjust seasoning with the salt, pepper, granulated garlic, and Raging River. Place the pork back into the pan, and baste with the cooking liquid. Finish cooking the pork for 10 to 20 minutes, basting twice more, and until the internal temperature reaches 145 to 150 degrees. Let rest before carving. Slice into fairly thin slices, and pour the sauce over the slices.
