Sheer Misery - Don't Try This At Home (Clam Croquettes)

A long, long time ago, when I was young and worked two jobs and went to night school in Brooklyn, I wore Sheer Energy pantyhose to help my overworked legs. I still don't know how I did it back then - eighty hours a week, half of those on my feet - but as I say, I was young and except for heart palpitations, morbid obesity and high cholesterol, a reasonably healthy individual. These days I am old and decrepit and I haven't worn pantyhose since March 2, 2015, but if I did, they would likely be called Sheer Misery, and would not help me one whit. I have reached the point where I believe I am beyond help.

Not a great harvest today

The Clam Croquettes are also beyond help, I regret to report to my cooking audience, whoever you might be.  I suspect that the texture of the flaked tuna fish in the original recipe helped to keep the mixture from disintegrating in the frying pan.  As it is, all but one of the nine croquettes dissolved, and in giving up their corporeal existence released a great deal of liquid to the pan. The resultant splattering was intense and probably created some kind of record for spitting distance by a hot liquid. But the greatest disappointment is not that I expect to have to still be cleaning up at midnight, or that I am going to have blisters and welts all over my arms from being pelted by hot oil drops. Rather, I am aggravated about the croquette fail because the mixture was so delicious, so blissfully seasoned and balanced, that I was really looking forward to eating the damn things.  With tartar sauce and real lemon quarters to squeeze over the perfect crispness.

I have a few ideas as to what would alleviate the croquettes' tendency to give up the ghost upon being immersed in 350 degree oil.  Me and my ideas, right?  I'm not sure if or when I'll get around to trying them, as The Nero Wolfe Cookbook with its two different clam cake recipes is arriving tomorrow, but here they are anyway; first, I would advise very strongly NOT to try the original recipe at home.  I can assure you there is going to be a horrid mess and the real possibility of injury from flying canola oil.  With the changes I'm considering - well, I would still hold off until I get a chance to try them, here in the Inspiration Nation Kissimmee Test Kitchen.  Really, I'm quite serious, as I do not want anyone to get hurt.

2-6.5 oz. cans chopped clams, drained, clam juice retained
4 tablespoons (half stick) butter
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) all purpose flour
1 cup of the saved clam juice
1 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried chives
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
dash of cayenne pepper

dry, unseasoned bread crumbs
kosher salt
black pepper

Prepare a roux from the butter and flour.  Add the clam juice and whisk over heat until the mixture bubbles and thickens.  Remove from the heat.  Stir in the parsley, Old Bay, chives, white pepper, black pepper, and cayenne.  Stir in the drained clams.  Place the mixture in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Prepare the breading by mixing the bread crumbs, salt and pepper in a flat dish. Heat about an inch of canola oil in a heavy skillet to 350 degrees. With a medium scoop, scoop up some of the clam mixture and drop gently into the bread crumbs.  With a fork flatten a bit and then turn the croquette over.  Repeat to ensure the croquette is well-coated in crumbs.

If I ever try these again, I'm going to add a lightly beaten egg or two to the clam mixture after it cools down a bit and also coat the croquettes by dipping them in flour, egg, and then the bread crumbs. Someday.

They Call Him Mister Pibb

Hum.  Well, I was reading a Nero Wolfe mystery, and Archie Goodwin mentioned that he and Wolfe were about to be served fried shrimps and clam cakes, prepared by the incomparable Fritz Brenner. Next thing I know, I'm switching gears from Kindle to Safari so I can search for clam cake recipes.  Did I mention that I've been feeling sick to my stomach this morning?  Yes, so I can't imagine how I found the idea of food attractive, but fried seafood sets my heart aflutter, and I was pretty sure one can make a decent clam cake from canned clams.

I always roar at the contestants on Guy's Grocery Games who, being restricted to canned foods or some other fillip thrown in to make their food preparation more challenging, sniff and turn up their noses, complaining, "I never use canned goods!"  Oh please, you snippy little yuppie larvae ... don't tell me you don't use canned tomatoes or canned pumpkin!  Real people use canned goods.  Bobby Flay uses canned pumpkin, for heaven's sake.  I keep a variety of canned fish in the house - tuna, salmon, sardines, clams, and even crabmeat.  I grew up eating tuna fish sandwiches and chances are so did you. There is nothing wrong with tuna fish in a can that can't be cured with a couple of tablespoons Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise.  Canned corn is better than frozen. Yes, fresh corn is best but I never got any complaints about my corn fritters and they are made with the canned stuff.

Canned clams happen to be a pretty good product, and a lot easier to find than 4 dozen cherrystone clams, especially in Central Florida.  A good white clam sauce - mine, for instance - calls for both canned and fresh little neck clams.  Guess what? In my opinion, you can't make a decent white clam sauce without canned clams. My research shows that clam cakes can go either way.  I have a feeling Fritz Brenner used fresh clams, but then I would expect him too.  So would Wolfe.

I have an idea for a recipe to make clam cakes, quite a bit different than what I am finding online which all sound like pancake batter with clams dumped into it. but my curiosity remains unabated, so I just ordered the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, which is way out of print, but isn't everything available through Amazon?

I do think that's one of my best run-on sentences of all time.

My idea is based on one of my oldest and least-utilized recipes, this one for tuna croquettes.  I think the last time I prepared them was before Cory was born, or maybe a year or so after.  He's twenty-eight.  I had every intention of trying out my idea using clams, but on our way to CVS my back and the back of my head and shoulders crashed.  No clam cakes or croquettes, and no cat today. I could have had me a kitten, but fibromyalgia won.  Today, at least, I have no energy to cook and no energy to introduce a new kitten to our pack.  Never thought that would ever happen.

First Ira

The cats were being BOGO'ed at Petco, where we had stopped to pick up Chelsea's eye wash.  Oy! Not one but three boy tabbies looking oh so adoptable! And of course I had to look. And pet. And otherwise interact. And ultimately walk away because a new kitten (or two) is a lot of work and I wasn't even up to making a couple of clam cakes.

Second Ira

First I met Leonardo and DaVinci, two gray and black mackerel tabby brothers.  Leonardo was a doppelgänger of the Second Ira, while DaVinci clearly resembled the First Ira with his milk paws and other white markings. Leonardo was the front man while DaVinci napped at the back of the cage.  Imagine having both of them!  But I had raised twins before, Dora and Deety, and it is more than double the work. So I moved on to another cage which contained Sprite and Mr. Pibb, also alleged to be related although Sprite was a smooth orange tabby, while Mr. Pibb was a First Ira - gray and black mackerel tabby with quite a lot of white on his chin and chest. I caught his eye, and I could see he was following my movements back and forth.  He really liked my hat. And Robert was amenable, if that was what I really wanted.

There comes a time in every pet lover's life when you realize you can't take it anymore.  Not necessarily the care and vet and all the responsibilities that go with being owned by a cat or dog, but the terrible toll the loss of the pet takes on you.  I have outlived 10 cats and 2 dogs, holding most of them in my arms as they died.  I still have 4 dogs and 1 cat in my care, and at this point it is becoming a crapshoot as to who is going to outlive who.  Even the Queen of England has announced that she will not be bringing any more corgis into Buckingham Palace.  My friend Terry, one of the world's greatest pet lovers has made the same decision regarding cats and dogs.  For the first time in the many years that I know her, there are no cats in her house, and a greatly reduced number of dogs.

But I have been known to act foolishly in the face of all these inner arguments; this time, however, fibromyalgia won. Standing there in Petco, all I wanted to do was go home and lie down in my own bed.  Goodbye and good luck, Mr. Pibb.
        

I Found My Thrill, Part Deux - Anawana Orange and Blueberry Muffins

Yesterday was an okay day, productive even.  But here is the curse of fibromyalgia: today already sucks. August 28th will always be a sucky day, but this particular August 28th even more so because it hurts to stand up and my brain, she is foggy.

Today is my Pop's birthday, and if had lived - oh, if only he had lived! - he would be 107 years old, not an impossible number these days.  Today is also my first Ira's birthday, and he would have been 39, which is sort of an impossible age for a cat.   But still, birthdays are happy occasions, and so the memories are bittersweet.  Next to me, Pop was the first Ira's favorite human in the whole world, so it is sweet that they shared the day.

We Jews have something called a yahrzeit, the remembrance of the anniversary of a loved one's death. As it happens, tomorrow will be my mother Joyce's yahrzeit (August 24th would have been her 84th birthday) but today is the first anniversary of my second Ira's passing. There is no reason why a Jewish cat should not have a yahrzeit, and this is his.  Yahrzeits are never happy nor even bittersweet.  They bring sad memories and they hurt, damn it.

August 20th was the yahrzeit for my father Mike, but that's not one that affects me in any way, save a feeling of mild regret.  Oh, my scattered and shattered family ties, what grief you have brought me!

Yes it's true, I have a great deal more feeling for Ira than the father I barely remember.  Ira's death, and the night and day that preceded it, are stuck in my head.  So many of my pets had crossed the Rainbow Bridge in a short period of time; I had lost my little girl Athene less than a year before, and before that my poor Zebbie, my orange twins Dora and Deety, my precious Emeril, and the list goes on.  Too many in too short a period of time.  That stress, and the monumental blow from losing my oldest and dearest friend Bethe in February 2013, had fractured my personal infrastructure.  Those last days with Ira, the seismic seizures, the cancer diagnosis, the massive doses of  phenobarbital I had to administer to him, the look on my vet's face and the look on Ira's face, at the end ... well.  I was telling you why August 28th sucks, and now you know.

Oh ha! here's a good one - now my right arm, which daily bears the brunt of being a cane-holder, is protesting the assignment.  Crap. Look, I gotta use a cane. I gotta hold the cane. I am an unrepentant rightie, no ambidexterous talents in this decrepit little body. And now, because fibromyalgia is a harsh mistress, my upper right appendage, from fingertip to shoulder, hurts like hell.

Let's talk about my childhood.  Not the bad parts, you get enough of that when I'm in drama queen mode.  No, there were good parts, irregular like certain verbs, but good nonethless.  My favorite memories - besides eating, shopping for food with my grandmother in Waldbaums, going to restaurants to do more eating, and spending time with my cousin Cary and brother Elliot - were the summers I went to the ubiquitous sleepaway camps of upstate New York (everything north of the Bronx is upstate, by the way), and the best of those were the three years I went to Camp Anawana in Monticello.  The reason I bring this up is to segue into today's recipe for Anawana Orange and Blueberry Muffins, a first cousin of my Monticello Blueberry Muffins from a few months ago.

Apparently everything is on the internet these days, including a picture of me from 1961.  I was scrolling through some sites dedicated to Anawana alumni and nearly jumped out of my skin because  even from a small thumbnail on the screen knew who a certain chubby kid was.  I remember the picture, and probably have it tucked away with others my parents collected from those summers, but this one, with the bright orange and blue banner, is positively iconic.  I have good memories - this was pre-adolescence, before the Dark Times, before I became a moody teenager.

Anyway, I always associate blueberries with my summers in Monticello, and when I had a brainstorm regarding the use of the orange cake mix and dried blueberries in my pantry, Anawana came to mind. Our camp colors were orange and blue (no kidding) which made it practically impossible to conform to the dress code, so to speak, because orange is an odd color and solid orange clothing difficult to find.  Fortunately blue and white was an acceptable substitute.

Orange is my second least favorite color, but it is my favorite fruit. I am crazy for citrus in general, and orange in particular and I kept trying to come up with a recipe to incorporate the orange cake mix for at least a week.  Even if you never went to summer sleepaway camp, you will love these muffins.

1 box Duncan Hines Orange Supreme cake mix

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2/3 cup sour cream 

1/3 cup canola oil

3 large eggs

1-3.5 oz. bag Mariani wild blueberries (these are in the dried fruit section)

1 cup Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal, crushed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Wipe the top of the muffin pan with a paper towel sprayed with Pam. Place a paper liner into each muffin cup.  

In a large bowl, combine the dry cake mix, baking powder, flour, sour cream, oil, and eggs, and stir together with a wooden spoon; don't worry if there are some lumps left.  Fold in the blueberries very gently with a spatula.  Let the batter sit for five or six minutes, then use the spatula to fold a few more times.

Scoop into the lined muffin cups, dividing the batter evenly between the cups.  Sprinkle some of the crushed cereal on top of each muffin, gently pressing in to the batter.  Bake for 21 minutes in the preheated oven.  Let cool a few minutes, then remove the muffins to a metal rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 muffins.

Madness and Anarchy - That Cabbage Soup

Is it something in the water?  Eating too much GMO or fast food?  Too much ADHD medication as a child? I am referring to what feels like an almost daily assault on the senses as young and not-so-young men go on murderous rampages. Strangers, ex-coworkers, police officers, neighbors, schoolchildren. The latest was the videotaped shooting of a reporter and a camera man in Virginia.  Apparently the killer, who later saved the state a whole lot of money and shot himself to death, had carefully planned and publicized the event. Why? He was, by all reports, a very angry man. Resentful. Litigious. Confrontational. And now, as we know, murderous.  He wrote that the massacre in the South Carolina church was the last straw, the thing that set him off for the last time.

Some people are saying he was crazy.  Sorry, I've seen crazy and he wasn't crazy. Mean, nasty, hateful, but not crazy.  No excuses there. Did he have a sense of entitlement that wasn't being satisfied?  I don't know, I have no answers, but I don't like it at all. So many people to whom the rule of law and basic morals no longer matter.  No one is in charge, no one is in control.  We are living in a dystopia of our own crafting.

So many murders this past year.  Is it a global societal phenomenon we have to learn to live with? Or does it seem more prevalent and widespread because social media is a virus that spreads the news faster than Fox, speedier than CNN, and with more information than MSNBC?

This is madness. This is anarchy. The world is falling apart while our leaders, our elected officials, the celebrities we listen to, are acting on their pedophilic wet dreams. Some beat on their wives while others cheat on their wives, and the cheating is planned on the government's time clock.  Crap. I could go on, but let me end this rant in the best way I know how: What the fuck is happening here?

I want soup.  I love my egg drop soup from China King because it doesn't have a lot of stuff in it to get stuck in my throat.  Can't eat egg drop soup all the time, and most of my soup recipes have stuff in them.  Chunks of vegetables, slices of spicy sausage, bodacious beans and plenty of pasta.  Delicious but likely to cause me to give it right back.

So in my head I got stuck on that old-fashioned cabbage soup that used to form the basis of this crazy diet that must be one of the only diets I was never on.  But we had a similar soup recipe out of Weight Watchers, and God and Jean Nidetch know that I've been on that diet since Broadway was a prairie.  Both versions were cabbage vegetable soups, no beef, nothing like my mother's sweet and sour Jewish cabbage soup but delicious in its own way, and totally customizable.  And since I am trying to achieve a thinner, non-chunky soup, I chose fresh vegetables that given time and heat will cook down nice and soft. It helped that they were all precut and prepackaged from the Publix produce section.

To start, I sprayed my 6 quart crock pot with Pam, and added about 3 tablespoons of butter, one large white onion, thinly sliced, and half of a pound bag of cole slaw mix.  I set it on low, and left it overnight, starting at around 10:15.  The idea is to get some depth of flavor from caramelization.  I have caramelized onions in a crockpot several time before, but the cabbage was a new idea.  

I checked on it around 5:30, and it was just barely south of some of the cabbage getting burnt, damn it.  So I fished out some of the darker pieces and kept the rest, which was still sweet.  I'd have to say 4 to 6 hours would have been plenty`but I'm going to work with what I've got.

To the cooked onions and cabbage in the crockpot I added:

1-28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
the remaining cole slaw mix, about 1/2 pound
1 package (a little over 3/4 pound) precut peppers and onions
1 large stalk celery, chopped
4 cups unsalted chicken stock
1 package (a little under a pound precut new potatoes, onion, and carrots
2 teaspoons (about 4 cloves) minced garlic
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon ground sage
4 cups vegetable juice, plus more as needed (V-8 comes in a 46 oz. bottle)

When it came to the precut vegetables, I wanted them even smaller, so I took out my trusty santoku knife and whittled them down to size, especially the carrots. If you want to leave them chunky, that's fine. It only took me a few minutes to place the vegetables on a cutting board and chop them somewhat smaller (oh yeah, I got a very sharp chef's knife and I know how to use it). By the time I got everything in the crockpot, it was 6:30, so I covered it and plan to let it continue to cook on low for 8 hours while I move on with the rest of my day.  I love my crockpots, all four of them.

After two hours, I add several freshly-harvested okra pods that I sliced kind of thin (for okra), as well as a green plum tomato that had been knocked off the tomato plant by this morning's early rain storm.  It looked like a flat pear, rather than a plum, but I chopped it anyway and threw it in.  After four hours, I re-seasoned the soup with half the amount of each spice in the list of ingredients, including the sugar and the minced garlic (I'm using a squeeze tube of garlic for this).  I also added a little more of the vegetable juice.  I ate half of a very freshly-baked orange and blueberry muffin (quality control, you know) but that's another blog post.

Sneak peek. Wait for it ...

I'm holding the baby spinach till the home stretch. After the library, after lunch.

Now at hour seven, I threw in the last ingredient - several big handfuls of hand-torn baby spinach.  The spinach will wilt and does add a certain bitterness which I offset with a few pinches of sugar.  You can always leave the spinach out; the soup is good either way.

And now the great reveal: In the end, I had to pull some rabbits out of my chef's hat to make it delicious (and it is. Was.)  In retrospect, the spinach was a bad idea.  The soup tasted better, and brighter, before I added it.  I had to fiddle with the soup. which had gone flat.  I know, I'm fussy and I'm also my own worst critic, but I had Robert's help on this and he agreed something was missing. Sugar, lemon juice, more salt, Worcestershire sauce, the remaining vegetable juice and Knorr beef bouillon cubes were added in succession, and we tasted and re-tasted until it was good.  So next time, I will start with 4 cups of beef stock rather than chicken, plus 2 Knorr beef bouillon cubes, and I will leave out the spinach at the end. Oh, and if the precut vegetable packages include baby carrots, skip them and chop up a couple of regular carrots instead.  They cook up softer and sweeter.

Serve hot with garlic cheese biscuits. Pass grated cheese at the table to sprinkle on top of each portion.

Just a day - an Apple a day

Not a bad day, not a good day.  Just a day like many others, when it's tough to get out of bed (it doesn't help that the bedroom floor slants precariously) and the pain in my back and right arm reminds me of things I'd rather not be reminded of.

Yesterday I did a lot, perhaps more than I should have.  There are so many other things I have to do - some of them are long-term projects that will give me something to do during my unintentional retirement. My garden is crying out for some serious attention, but the state of my back, and the dog days of August, are slowing me down. Others are the short-term, gotta-do-them-today sorts of projects that stress me out, like driving to the office by myself to finish the packing, and putting together my appeal of the the disability rejection.

What I really want to do today is mix up a batch of Mild Jamaican Jolt to replace what I used up during yesterday's mad smoking session, try a new cookie recipe, and maybe sit still long enough to do some knitting.  What I have to do is get my ass, and my rolls of bubble wrap, over to the office.


Speaking of stress, I just got a weather pop-up advising that Hurricane Erika is expected to reach Florida on Friday, two days from now.  Well, crap. Just yesterday I was standing on the back porch, mourning the loss of so many of the beautiful trees that graced our streets before the hell that was Hurricane Charley and his two evil female companions, Frances and Jeanne.

Jamaican Jolt Dry Rub for those with a delicate palate and a short memory: 

2/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup kosher salt

1/4 cup freeze dried chives

2 tablespoons coarse black pepper

2 tablespoons onion powder

2 tablespoons granulated garlic

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste

1 tablespoon dried thyme

2 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons dried ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

When all is said and done, I crossed my Rubicon and lived.  It took six months, four different medications and a dry run on Sunday, and I finally made it to the office, during office hours.  Did some more packing and communed happily with my peeps, who I have missed very much.  One more trip and it will all be done. If somebody says "closure", I will have to cyber-slap you upside the head.  Call it evolution, call it progress, but don't call it closure. Thank you. 

Most of us know what a smart phone (smartphone?) is and probably own one of the many available models. I would now like you to view this picture of a stupid phone (or stupidphone).

No, that's not a Star Trek flippy-phone communicator; it is an AT&T "Go Phone", my bridge to the future, which should arrive around 3 weeks from now.  I am an iPhone sort of gal, and even after Robert and Cory switched to their Galaxies, I stayed true to Apple. Which is kind of weird, since I've never owned or even used an Apple computer. Well, after almost 3 years my iPhone battery sputtered and died.  Requiescat in pace.  Apparently you can't switch out an iPhone battery, so there's a new phone on the horizon.  Unfortunately, timing sucks, because the new iPhone model is due out momentarily and if I have to put down $200 for a new old phone, I'd rather wait a few weeks and put the same $200 down for a new new phone.  

Now, I am not one of those frakking idiots who can't go to the bathroom unless they are talking on the phone glued to the side of their head.  Walking across a 4-lane highway? Phone glued to the head.  Driving at 75 mph down the Florida Turnpike? Phone glued to the head. No, that's not me; besides that bathroom thing grosses me out more than I can express.  I have always disliked telephones, long before they got smart. But damn it, Jim, even I need a phone to receive any calls or texts from my husband, son, doctors, pharmacy or even the occasional stranger bearing good news.

Turns out AT&T has the answer - this cheap little "go phone" which will serve my basic phone needs, utilizing my own phone number, until that day Apple announces the release of their newest model.  Genius.  I like genius.  I like the young lady at the AT&T store in Kissimmee, across from the Loop, who has helped us repeatedly.  So instead of minor despair, I just saved $150.  That's better than a slap in the face with a wet flounder.

So like I said at the beginning, not a bad day.  Maybe even a good day.