Chili Rules

Perfect.  The weather, the blue skies, the grand old buildings in the Kissimmee Historic District.

Top, the historic Osceola County Courthouse and bottom, the newly restored Carson-Bryan House

At the moment of writing this, there are 311,047,635 people in the United States.  Let us assume that one half are adults, and that three-quarters of those adults cook for self or family on a regular basis.  That brings us down to 116,642,863 people.  And let's assume further that 85 percent of those home cooks have a favorite recipe for chili.  Which means there are, at any one time in the United States, approximately 99,146,434 recipes for chili.  Let's call it 100 million, because that base number keeps going up. Go ahead, wrap your head around that: 100 million chili recipes.  Booyah!

I don't know if there is any other food preparation that evokes the kind of emotional response raised by a discussion of what constitutes the best, or most authentic recipe for chili.  Not even barbecue, and that is, you will excuse the expression, a very hot topic.  But there are a lot less people who practice the art of barbecue at home, in part because of the need for specialized equipment. 

On the other hand, anyone can prepare chili at home, using ingredients from your favorite supermarket, and whatever pots and pans you already own.  The other thing is that chili falls into the comfort food category, and most folks have a very personalized view of what brings them comfort.

I speak from long years of experience in the chili arena.  My ultimate comfort chili is the same chili I have been preparing for close to 35 years.  I got the original recipe from the 1975 Doubleday Cookbook, tweeked it just a bit, and have continued to prepare what is, to my mind and taste, the perfect bowl of chili.  Which has not prevented me from trying other recipes, but in the end I always come back to old faithful.

There is nothing "authentic" about old faithful, by the way.  As we all have been told, ad infinitum, "real" chili was born and raised in Texas, most likely around San Antonio, and NEVER includes beans.  So it seems I do not make "real" chili, and ask me if I care.  I like what I make, and so do my boys, and that is why Cory made a specific request for chili. 

I would like to visit San Antonio someday, not necessarily to taste the chili, but to try out their puffy tacos.

I've never been to San Antonio, although I had family living there for forty years.  My Great-Uncle Max and his wife, my Aunt Ella, relocated there from Brooklyn in the early 1920's.  I suppose he viewed it as a business opportunity - he started the Albert Hat Company there - but, romantic that I am, I like to imagine he moved there to get away from his slightly crazy family.  My Uncle Max was a very fine gentleman, and I always enjoyed his too-infrequent visits.  Somehow, when he was part of a gathering of his slightly off-kilter siblings:  my mother, my Aunt Ceil, Uncle Red, and Uncle Abby, they all seemed a little bit more normal.

Seated, left to right: Aunt Ella, her daughter Aline, Aline's husband Mike, Aunt Mildred, Uncle Red. Standing, left to right: Uncle Max, Aunt Ceil, my Uncle Marty, Cousin Marcia, my Pop, Mom, and Aunt Helen.  The date was February 18, 1967, the event was my brother's bar mitzvah.

As I said, I have tried a number of other chili recipes over the years, and have a small list of favorites in addition to old faithful.  Top of that list is something called Kickin' Chili from Emeril's Potluck Cookbook.  If I didn't already have an absolute favorite, this would be Number One on my list. Four bottles of dark beer go into that recipe (wheeeee!) and when I can get it, I prefer to use Turbodog. I also really like the White Chili recipe from Better Homes and Gardens' Crockery Cookbook (more of a soup than a stew, but really tasty), and Nigella Lawson's Quick Chili from Nigella Express.

Besides the comfort factor, the great thing about chili is that it makes a perfect dish for entertaining.  As a much younger married woman, anytime I planned on feeding a crowd, my menu included chili.  It also included my baked ziti and sausage and peppers.  Kind of an entertaining holy trinity.  I might have a lot of other dishes, variety being the spice of life and all that jazz, but the core menu featured those three. 

And now ... a Chili Story.  I should make my friend Mark tell this story, but here goes:  I was going to throw a baby shower for my friend Sandy, Mark's wife, who was pregnant with their first child.  At the time, Rob and I lived in a rather nice one bedroom apartment in Howard Beach with our cats Ira and Minerva.  Because this was going to be group of around 10 women, rather than a crowd of 35 (the number we'd invited to our apartment shortly after we married in 1978), I concentrated my menu on the baked ziti and sausage and peppers.  Mark's part in this little surprise was to get Sandy to our apartment, and he did so by telling her they had been invited over to dinner, and I was going to make my famous chili.  He had assumed, based on past experience, that I was going to include chili on the menu, but in another example of  "deviation is treason," I let creativity trump consistency.

The hat was a hit, and I know Sandy enjoyed the shower, but there was always that lingering disappointment over the lack of chili.  Lingered for 30 years or so ... seriously, I have no idea why it took so long, but I finally did make it up to Sandy a few years ago, when she and Mark, and Kathy and Alan, were guests at our house here in Florida.  Chili was very definitely on the menu.

Left to right: Rob, Alan, Sandy, Kathy, me, and Mark

Chili is a glorious enigma.  It is a perfect stand alone dish.  Chili purists can and do enjoy it without fuss, fanfare, or accompaniments.  At the same time, a perfect bowl of chili makes the ideal canvas for presentation of many other flavors.  Rice is nice, but I like to go whole hog with macaroni and cheese, cornbread (or corn casserole), homemade guacamole, and an array of toppings like lettuce, tomato, onion, grated cheese, sour cream, black olives, and a big bottle of Tabasco.

We're going on a chili journey this weekend!  Beans and all.

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

Take the "A" Train

Interior of Far Rockaway "A" train, 1969

I have never understood my fascination with the New York City Subway.  I started riding the subway in the late sixties, taking a torturous route that involved a three mile walk from North Woodmere to Central Avenue in Cedarhurst, a bus trip from Cedarhurst to the last stop in front of the Queens Borough Public Library, and then walked another few blocks to the Far Rockaway subway station, the last stop on the "A" train.  I didn't ride it often, but it was always a grand adventure.  The "A" train is elevated all along the Rockaway peninsula, and over Jamaica Bay into Broad Channel and Howard Beach, and I stared out the windows the whole way.  I had grown up in a very protected, insular environment and I was beginning to see the rest of the world, or at least, the rest of the city I'd been born in.  Once the train went underground at Grant Avenue, the view was even more fascinating.  Dark, mysterious tunnels, flashing lights, the shrieking of metal on metal, and best of all, the passages through dimly lit abandoned stations.  I never tired of it, even when I started commuting to the city on a daily basis.  Working first on Sixth Avenue near Rockefeller Center, and then later on Wall Street, I had the opportunity to travel on all different lines.  With my subway map in hand and a pocketful of tokens, I was fearless.  I never drove in Manhattan; I always took the subway and then walked.  The last time I rode the subway was in 2002.  We had traveled from Florida to New Jersey for Number Three Niece's Bat Mitzvah, and then headed over to New York and Long Island for a few days.  We rode from midtown down to the IRT Wall Street Station and walked all the way back, drinking in the street sights and the architecture.The subway was as fascinating as it had always been, and I especially enjoyed sharing the ride with my then 15 year old son.  I'm hopeless, I know, but I still spend a lot of internet time perusing sites that celebrate the subway, like nycsubway, and Forgotten NY. 

My parents never took mass transit; it was a point of honor that they drove their own cars.  Never mind that my mother had no sense of direction and got heart palpitations when she drove.  That was after my brother, then about age six, fell out of her sky-blue Rambler onto busy Flatbush Avenue.  Even before I got my driver's license, she had severely curtailed her driving, and once I was licensed, she never drove again.

According to my Pop, he learned to drive on a two-ton Mac truck, hauling coal for his father's business.  Pop was a character, and the tale may well be apocryphal, as he claimed to have been just 14 years old.  That would have been around 1922, and driver's licenses were not too carefully regulated, so I suppose it could be true.  There is no question that he loved driving, and he loved cars.  He took meticulous care of each and every one of them, spending a relaxing Sunday listening to the radio while hand simonizing one of the 1962 cars my parents owned at the time - a lipstick-red Chevy Impala and a fawn-colored Cadillac with fins that stretch halfway down the block.  He knew his way around Brooklyn "like the back of his hand", and had a well-refined sense of direction which I fortunately inherited.  But in all our discussions about the old days in Brooklyn, he never once mentioned to me riding the subway, or a bus, or even a trolley.  Nor did he ever ride on the Long Island Railroad.  In fact, the only family member of that generation who rode the LIRR was my great-Uncle Red, and that was only when he somehow divined that his little sister, my mother, had made chopped eggplant.  It was my mother's story that he could somehow smell when she prepared it, and she stuck to it.  Since he lived in Brooklyn and we had moved to Long Island, that was a pretty good trick, but my uncle was an interesting man and my mother used very sharp white onions in her eggplant.  Uncle Red - actually his name was Irving - had been born in Russia in 1899, and came to the United States with his older brother, my great-Uncle Max, a sister Rose who died long before I was born, and their mother, Chasie, for whom I am named, sometime around 1904.  He played music by ear, and had the most wonderful sense of humor.  He always called me "Cinderelder" and although we did not see him all that often, my memories of him are sharp and happy.  When I was about seven years old, he gave me a gold Star of David, with the turquoise enamel center, and I have worn it ever since.

Pop and Mom, Uncle Red, Aunt Mildred (his wife) and my Aunt Anna (I'm guessing here). Probably taken sometime during the late forties. 

I haven't made chopped eggplant in years. Although I often think about chopped liver and chopped herring, I hadn't thought about chopped eggplant for a very long time until my cousin Cary contacted me from California, asking if I had the recipe for the chopped eggplant his mother used to make.  Since our mothers were sisters, we assume they both prepared the same recipe, or at least close enough not to matter.  I gave him the recipe, and asked if he had the requisite double blade hand chopper and wooden chopping bowl with which to prepare it.  I was never able to find those very old-fashioned items in any store, and although I faked it over the years using a single blade chopper and a metal bowl, the eggplant never came out as good as Mom's, because I couldn't get the right consistency and degree of emulsification from adding the oil at the end.

"No, I don't," he wrote back.  "I guess I'll try using the food processor." 

Genius.  My cousin is a genius.

Hungarian Rhapsody

Last night, Bizarre Foods Foods visited Hungary.  I was looking forward to Andrew Zimmern discussing the finer points of chicken paprikas, szekely gulyas, and galuska, but instead he spent all but the last 5 minutes of the show scarfing down blood, guts, and reproductive organs.  His last stop was to the Jewish quarter in Budapest, and that was very nice.  Almost worth sitting through the first 55 minutes of his rhapsodizing about pig intestines and bull penis. For me, the episode improved immeasurably when became all misty-eyed about gefilte fish, explaining how after his grandma died it became his responsibility to prepare the gefilte fish for family holiday meals.

I love gefilte fish, but I realized a long time ago that it is an acquired taste.  My mother never made her own gefilte fish, and like blintzes, it is a traditional Jewish dish that I simply never learned to make.  My mother-in- law makes her own blintzes and they are the best I've ever eaten, but to date I have never attempted them myself.  All but the youngest of my nieces have, at one time or another, assisted their grandmother in making those divine blintzes.  I may have to request a cooking lesson sometime in the future.

This year the Jewish holiday of Passover runs from April 18 to April 26, which means the first night of Passover is on Sunday, April 17.  And that means I should be able to manage preparing food for a first night seder.  I have ideas that involve gefilte fish, chopped liver, and brisket.  Perhaps some Cornish hens.  I am a staunch traditionalist when it comes to holiday food.  The best example of this was Thanksgiving of 2000, which we spent at the Buccaneer resort in St. Croix with friends and their children.  All the other adults, and my son Cory, who was thirteen at the time, enjoyed the warm water spiny lobsters.  I ate the turkey dinner, which was pretty darn good.  The thought of not having some turkey on Thanksgiving was mind-blowing to me.  Besides, I ordered the lobster the next night.  So did Cory.  Come to think of it, he ate lobster every night we were there.

Thanksgiving 2000.  The first in a series of spiny lobster-thons.

That was a crazy trip.  We had to fly in a plane, from Puerto Rico to St. Croix, that was so small, I dubbed it a Ford Expedition with wings.  The worst moment of the trip was when the airline employees had to ask us our weight, so as not to overload the Flying Ford.  This inquiry was made in public, and back in those days I never told anyone what I weighed, including my husband.  I was so embarrassed I shaved off a few pounds, and then spent the entire flight terrified that we were going to crash because of my silly vanity.

Of all the Jewish holidays, none is more tradition-bound than Passover.  The entire holiday is about the food.  Everything we eat is deeply symbolic.  So while I do not keep a kosher home, nor do I clear my home of chametz (leavened food) prior to Passover, what I put out on my table is de rigueur.  In addition to gefilte fish and chicken soup with knaidlach and charoses for the matzoh, there has to be a poultry dish as one of the entrees.  Passover is a good time for Cornish hens, since I love them but can't eat them at Thanksgiving.  Gotta have turkey.

Congregation Shalom Aleichem Passover Seder, 1994

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Today I went into Publix for Pupperoni and animal crackers, and came out with a bone-in pork loin, a head of cauliflower, and three baby eggplants.  The pork loins are almost always well priced, and if I don't want to roast the whole piece, I can cut it into four or five nice chops for a lot less than if I bought the chops already cut.  I decided to marinate the loin in a mixture of thick teriyaki glaze, orange juice, orange peel, the orange supremes (here is a really good explanation of how to supreme an orange), garlic (fresh and granulated) and a few other things.  It is in the refrigerator now, and I'm going to let it sit overnight and roast it tomorrow.  Assuming it works out okay, I'll take pictures and share the recipe. (It worked out great, and here's the link for the recipe,)

I love pork loin, both bone-in and boneless.  (I told you I didn't keep kosher.) Not so much the tenderloin, which is a much narrower piece of meat which dries out much too easily, but the wider, meatier loin.  Pork can take on almost any seasoning that works well with chicken, which makes it a lot more versatile than beef or lamb.  Pork works well with fruit, with curry, with Asian flavors, with sauerkraut, with Mediterranean herbs - I love the versatility, and the ease of preparation.  Stuffing a deboned pork loin is deceptively simple.  My favorite version uses dried plums (prunes to us old folk) and dried apricots, soaked in brandy or fruity liquor.  Rob's dad is crazy about that one.  When I see a beautiful cryovac pork loin at one of the warehouses, I'm likely to buy it, halve it, and get two glorious big family meals out of it.

Just not for Passover.

There was also a BOGO on Pepperidge Farm swirl breads, so I picked up two of the raisin swirls and decided to make a bread pudding.  I have a couple of excellent recipes I've made before, but I want to work with some different ingredients, inspired by a noodle kugel recipe which uses fruit cocktail, and a technique my Aunt Ceil used for making a delicious quiche.  Maybe tomorrow evening, maybe this weekend.  I have a couple of big trials coming up, and I'm going to have to plan my cooking around my trial preparation.  And then plan my knitting around my cooking.  That Kink scarf is so close to completion, just in time to put it away for the warm weather.

One other thing I would really like to do this weekend is head over to the AAA office and work on planning Rob's birthday cruise.  No way I could keep it a surprise, so I told him about my plan, and I do believe he was quite pleased.  This is one of those "special" birthdays that deserves celebration.  It is the least I can do for the very best husband in the world.

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

No Laughing Matter

Mimi Sheraton, the former food critic for the New York Times came to mind this morning as I was reading the Sunday newspapers - online, of course.  Thank you, Al Gore for inventing the internet, because I surely don't miss newsprint.  About 25 years ago I developed a sensitivity to the ink on newspapers, and if I wanted to read the Times, the New York Daily News, Newsday, or the Orlando Sentinel, I had to turn the pages while holding a piece of paper towel.

I had just finished making breakfast for my boys.  Boudin, paprika onions and peppers, sunnyside up eggs, and artisinal roasted garlic bread, handsliced and toasted.  The boudin was a new experience, part of my food haul from Walmart, and the boys pronounced it "different, but very good." 

Back at the computer to read the Times, I was saddened beyond words by the headlines, especially these two:

"U.S. and Allies Strike Libya - Qaddafi Pledges ‘Long War’ as Allies Pursue Air Assault on Libya"

"Japan Finds Tainted Food Up to 90 Miles From Nuclear Sites"

I am a child of the sixties, when the war in Vietnam dominated our thoughts and our headlines.  Since September 11, I have watched in horror as our children were sent overseas to fight and to die.  Don't get me started about Iraq.  And as far as Afghanistan, it seems we did not learn from the lessons the Russians had painfully discovered.  I apologize if this offends anyone, but on September 12, 2001, we should have carpet-bombed Afghanistan.  End of Osama bin Ladin, end of Al Qaeda.  End of discussion.

But, in a deja vu dance I'd rather not watch, our country has dragged on fighting in Afghanistan, fighting in Iraq, and poking our nose into other places around the world.  I fear we have been spoiling for a fight the last month or so, since civil wars have broken out in Middle Eastern countries with whom we have a less-than-cordial relationship.  My fear became reality with this morning's headline.  And my concern, my only concern, is for our children, our young men and women who have been and will continue to be deployed to foreign countries to fight and die.

So Mimi Sheraton came to mind when I momentarily flashed back to something she had written in her book "From My Mother's Kitchen", about growing up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in the 1930's, and how the newspapers were delivered to the door - "and what a pile of newspapers it was, for on Sunday, to get all the comics, we had the Brooklyn Eagle, the Herald Tribune, the Sunday News, the Journal-American, and the Sunday Mirror."  But here is the part of the article that popped up in my head as I read those electronic headlines: "we also had the New York Times, but in those days that was a paper strictly for adults and no laughing matter."

No laughing matter, indeed.  It seems that we have not learned from the past, and that is a tragedy because we are destroying the lives of our best and brightest without good reason or rhyme.  In my line of work, I meet many families that have been torn apart because of a parent's mental illness or drug addiction.  For too many of those parents, the roots of their illness go back to their participation in a war, or time spent in the military.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is no joke.  Losing a limb, or one's eyesight, spending life in a wheelchair or in a burn unit ... why do we let this happen to our children?  Forty years after Richard Nixon brought our troops home from Vietnam, we are still sending them back out.  Why?

This has gotten much too serious ... let me lighten things up a bit.  Today is baking day at Casa de Rothfeld.  I'm not sure how much I'll get done, but I can assure you I will take pictures and post recipes on our companion blog.  Almost forgot to take a picture of the boudin breakfast platter, and was all ready to serve it up to the boys, and Rob says, "aren't you going to take a picture of it?"  Ack!  I had really forgotten.  Great food blogger, eh?  And speaking of food bloggers, I just added the BA (Bon Appetit) Foodist Blog to my blog list (look at the right column of this page for my food blog list, a couple of foodie polls, and other useful gadgets).  All I can say is that Andrew Knowlton does a lot better in print than in his much-too-frequent appearances on Food Network.

Back to Mimi Sheraton - thinking of her book, which is half cookbook and half family reminiscences, reminded me that many of the cookbooks I still love dearly, and from which I learned so much, are out of print!  And not, I might add, available electronically.  I guess that makes my cookbook library, which has somehow expanded to occupy almost every room in this house, a very valuable collection.  Who woulda thunk it?  My very first cookbook was The Joy of Cooking, an engagement present from an adult cousin.  I was thrilled; my mother was miffed as she considered anything other than a tidy check or a complete set of Farberware pots to be "cheap."  Mom was a mercenary.

I realize that celebrity chefs have taken over the cookbook market, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  On the contrary, I am very happy to place Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Paula Deen, and Ina Garten on the shelves next to my old favorites.  But I'm happier still to keep those oldies safe and sound, because those memories are special.  Emeril's crawfish etouffee' and Bobby's unique tamales are outrageously good, but Mimi Sheraton's mother's recipe for chicken fricassee with meatballs evokes memories of those unscheduled Sunday visits to my Uncle Abby (pronounced "Ah-bee", short for Abraham) and Aunt Rose's apartment in Brooklyn.  We always ate out on the weekend, but afterwards my parents liked to drop in on relatives.    No one called ahead in those days.  My Aunt Rose always had food on the stove, because we were not the only ones to stop by. And she always offered her chicken fricassee, which, I am sorry to say, I never got to taste because we always ate ahead of time.   I can only imagine that Mimi Sheraton's recipe comes close to Aunt Rose's.  Which means it must have been simply wonderful.

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

Cognitive Overload

This is a lovely day.  See how blue the sky is in this view from my backyard:

So lovely that I did not mind leaving the house at 6:30 this morning to head to the Juvenile Justice Center in Orlando.  I did not mind that I had weekend duty.  I did not mind the drive.  I opened the windows and enjoyed the clear air.  I had a very pleasant child protective investigator who had contacted me yesterday and emailed her petition, so we were signed, sealed, delivered and ready to go.  There was a rather nice judge on the bench.  I have no idea who he is.  I looked for him over at the NINJA (Ninth Judicial Circuit) site, but did not see anyone there who looked like him.  Actually, I initially thought he must be the IT guy, checking on the electronics or something behind the bench.  No one called him by name, but no one jumped up and accused him of impersonating a judge, so I'm guessing the order he signed is legal.

I haven't received a call yet for any Sunday shelters, but I have both cellphone ringers on, so if the inevitable happens, I'll be able to hear it.  I normally keep the ringers off because I am in-and-out of court, and when I'm not ... well, I hate the phone and will not willingly use it if I can use email instead.  Right now my office BlackBerry is set for a rather aggressive version of "Fur Elise" (there should be an umlaut over the "u" but I have no idea how to make it happen) while my personal iPhone is set to belt out "Who Are You" by The Who.  I agree, CSI hasn't been the same since William Petersen left.

On the way back, I did something absolutely radical.  I could never do it if my husband or son were around ... I planned my trip back so I would pass the Walmart on Sand Lake Road, then pulled into their parking lot and DID MY SATURDAY FOOD SHOPPING THERE!  I can't remember the last time I did that.  I'm not sure I ever have done that before.  Walking into Walmart usually causes cognitive overload.  The store closest to my office, where I run in on occasional lunch hours to pick up odds and ends, is avoided by the rest of my family.  Too crowded for them, and English is not the primary language.  I speak a sort of fractured Spanish that lets me get by, but my husband and son do not.  Also too touristy for them, as it is on the main road from the Florida Turnpike to Disneyworld.

It was still pretty early in the morning, so the crowds weren't bad, the lines were light, and the shelves were crazy good stocked.  So many choices.  Cans, bottles, boxes in a dazzling display of form and color.  For one brief moment the synapses in my brain flaired from cognitive overload.  Cowabunga, dudes!  I got it under control and began a stately stroll through all of the aisles, the produce section, the seafood counter and freezer, the city block of meats and poultry.  It was grand.  I picked up stuff I needed at better prices than I can get elsewhere, and I also found stuff I haven't seen anywhere else.

Here's the weekend's cooking:  Kielbasa Lentil Soup, Mussels in Wine Sauce, Green Velvet Cupcakes and Hamantaschen.  The soup's on now, and the rest is planned for tomorrow. 

There was one more item that I got at Walmart's that I wouldn't have been able to find at Publix.

Yup, that's a stroller for Teena.  I have been wanting to get one for years, since my beloved Tuffy got too old to keep up with me on our walks.  We've already tested it in the house, and she likes being "driven" around.  I can still walk the boys, Woody and Indy, on separate leashes while pushing my baby girl in the stroller.

Soup's done. The recipe can be found on our companion blog, part of the March 19, 2011 entry.  Please enjoy!

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

I'm Capricorn, I Worry

"Capricorns worry like no other sign. You can literally make yourself sick. Any illness you suffer is probably stress-induced, a result of holding too much inside or being too hard on yourself. Caps are prone to obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and addictions, like Capricorn Kate Moss."

Kate Moss?  What about Richard Nixon?  Mel Gibson, Joseph Stalin, J.D. Salinger?  Hermann Goering?  Mao Tse Tung?  You got addictions?  We've got Elvis Presley.  You want to talk obsessive-compulsive?  How about J. Edgar Hoover?  Howard Hughes?

The nice thing about being a depressed, obsessive-compulsive worrier is that when it turns out that the situation you are worried about is not nearly as dire as anticipated, that sigh of relief is worth all the money in the world.  Until next time, anyway.  Because we Cappies always have something to worry about.  If we don't have something, we find it.  Search it out.  Dig for it.  Imagine it.

So it turns out the auto da fe' was unnecessary, and all my worry with it's accompanying gastric disturbances and eye-piercing headaches, was for naught.  Great!  Let's move on then ...

The Spiral Galaxy sock is coming along nicely, nicely:

. . . and the Kink scarf is almost done.  I've discovered the Donovan Creed crime series, written by John Locke - I'm not making this up, that is his name, or at least his nom de plume.  I've zipped through his first three books, and then veered off into a completely new genre for me - vampire detectives. And I'm thinking about food.  There are still lovely leftovers, including a styrofoam container filled with curried goat.  I did not prepare the curried goat, nor have I tasted it.  My husband has a number of clients from foreign countries, and some of them are unfailingly gracious.  As a result, we are often the lucky recipients of Russian chocolates and wines, hand hooked rugs, and homemade curried goat.  I really would like to try the goat - after all, I got brave enough to try alligator this past year, and then there was the incident with the frog's legs - but my husband has advised me, through the tears streaming down his face, that the curry was hot.  Very hot.  Incendiary.  Which did it for me.  No goat, sadly enough.  At least not the curried goat prepared with loving hands by someone's dear old Bangladeshi mom.  Just for once I wish I had an asbestos palate. 

I still have some of the goat available to photograph.  The smell wafting out from the box is intoxicating.  You can see the rich curry color from the sauce.  Bangladeshi Mom also provided a container of cooked basmati rice, and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.  I know my family has been enjoying it, bones and all.

The incident with the frog's legs took place at the Cock 'n Bull Restaurant in Lahaska, Pennsylvania.  We were with our friends Vicki and Dan, and their daughter Mandy.  My son Cory was a toddler, and Mandy must have been all of 7 or 8 at the time.  We wanted to introduce our friends to the buffet there because we'd had so many wonderful meals over the years, off the menu, at the King Henry Feast, and the weekend buffet.  The food was incredible.  And I thought those were the sweetest, most tender chicken wings I'd ever eaten.  You know where this is going, right?

Incidentally, if anybody has a recipe for the Cock 'n Bull apple dumpling with that incomparable vanilla sauce, please share it with me.  I've been dreaming about them for over 30 years.

1971

Since I brought up Vicki and Dan, I should tell you that Vicki has been one of my best - maybe "the" best - cooking buddy I've had throughout my life.  I met Vicki when we were assigned to be suitemates in DuBois Hall at SUNY New Paltz.  That was 1971, and we've been friends ever since.  We've also been sharing recipes since that time, and have learned a lot from each other.  We both got married at about the same time - Rob and I in 1974 (and 1978), and Vicki and Dan in 1975.  Back then, our favorite form of entertainment was to visit each other's homes and share a meal.  I still think of this as Vicki's signature recipe.  It is so simple, and so good and it never goes out of style.

2005

 Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

Inspiration of Another Sort

All of these showed up on my most recent Facebook page.  Hope really does spring eternal and laughter is the best medicine.

I love today tomorrow will be even better!

Why is it so easy to forget all the good things that people do ... but when its hurtful and deceiving you can never forget or let go ?

So... who's in jail this morning? Come on, 'fess up!

Today was lots of fun! This week has been awesome! The liberty kids were really cool, and we did pretty well at mpas =D

Donate to the Red Cross and LivingSocial will match your donation 100%! If you have been thinking about donating to the Red Cross' Japan Relief, this is a great way to double your donation.

It was such a fun birthday and I am so excited to get all these messages! Thank you everyone! I'm such a baby about birthdays! :-)

I forgot how to throw a boomerang, but then it came back to me......

Today I wore green and kissed an Irishman. Did you?

YAY!! Can't wait for this weekend!

I didn't get pinched today! :D

At the Baseball game with my son. He is pitching. Hope he has a good game..

Oh yum. You can "Like" corned beef & cabbage on Facebook.

i.m felling a bit better than yesterday Love all your comments Girls & Boys xoxoxoxoooxoxoxox

I know lately we have been hearing on the news or radio how bad things are getting over in Japan and the few brave souls who are putting themselves in harms way to try to help from it getting any worse. Please keep everybody over there, including our soldiers and families who are stationed over there, in your prayers. My friend is over there with her husband, and they are constantly on my mind and in my prayers.

Our hopes and expectations. Black holes and revelations. - Muse

Okay, I didn't find this one on Facebook, but it still inspires:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

I wish you all a pleasant day - I'm off to dance at the auto da fe'!

Auto da fe' Friday

An auto-da-fé (also auto da fé and auto de fe) was the ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition or the Portuguese Inquisition had decided their punishment after the trial. Both 'auto de fe' in medieval Spanish and 'auto da fé' in Portuguese mean "act of faith".

In the popular imagination, an auto-da-fé has come to refer to burning at the stake for heresy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9

Auto-de-fe, what's an auto-de-fe?
It's what you oughten't to do, but you do anyway!

I haven't been able to find any information regarding the proper meal before attending an auto da fe', and since this is essentially a food blog, that would have been interesting to say the least.  Perhaps a little soup would be nice.  Light on the stomach, nothing to make one gag or retch ...

The Week from Hell is coming to an end, and tomorrow (Friday) is the Main Event.  Oh yes.  I really am attending an auto da fe' - my own auto da fe' - and I'm looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm I experienced before my 1982 surgery, and most especially those few minutes before they gave me the happy pills.  My mood has shifted from furious to depressed with all variations in between.  Today, for some reason, I got goofy and started thinking of my impending excoriation as an auto da fe', as staged by the incomparable Mel Brooks.  Now, instead of depressed I feel positively silly.  I hope I don't laugh.

Let me just say something here.  I love what I do.  I have done it, successfully, for almost 19 years.  I am proud of the work I do and of the people I work with, all of the people in my office.  And I am going to keep repeating that to myself tomorrow.  Wish me luck.

Reboot

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
And lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promised joy!  - Robert Burns

It's looking like this weekend rather than this evening for baking green velvet cupcakes.  I know I made plans, but as Robert Burns observed, spit happens.  Although he expressed it in a much finer fashion than I did or ever could.  The Week from Hell is playing out even worse than anticipated, with no relief in sight.  It will just have to be a late St. Patrick's Day celebration, which I may try to artfully combine with a slightly late Purim celebration focusing on hamantaschen.  Think of it as my tip of the hat to religious pluralism.  Ecumenical baked goods.

Speaking of hats ...  here in the US, we call the quintessential Purim pastry "hamantaschen" which is Yiddish for "Haman's pockets".  Haman was, in case you don't remember or never knew, the bad guy in the Book of Esther.  It is believed that Haman, who ordered the genocide of all the Jews in the great Persian Empire of that time, wore triangular hats.  In Hebrew, the pastry is called "Oznei Haman" which means Haman's ears.

In Italy, they are also called Haman's ears - Orecchiette di Amman.  I'm sorry I didn't get to try them when we were there in 2004.  The economy being what it is, I don't know if we'll ever get the chance to go back.  I had hoped to someday return to Bologna and Venice, and also get to see Florence and Rome, but ... the best laid plans and all that jazz.

Car 54, Where Are You?

Today was one long blur of hearings.  Pretrials, which are done in a jury room rather than the courtroom, went on for an interminable period of time.  I thought I would lose my mind.  For all I know, I'm still sitting there.  Of course, I'm lucky I was sitting in one of the chairs.  There are only six chairs around the table, although there is ample room for more.  One is for the judge, one is for the clerk who is handling the schedule and all of the orders. Then there were 5 attorneys from DCF Legal, 2 lawyers from the Guardian ad Litem Program, 2 more from Regional Conflict Counsel's office, at least 5 contract defense attorneys, and the judicial assistant.  You do the math. 

Not that there aren't other chairs in other rooms right down the hall.  But our deputies, who are really nice guys and gals (I love the hats; I wish they wore them in court) got flogged by "someone" for allowing us to bring additional chairs into our jury room 2 weeks ago, even though they were all returned, nice and neat.  We know that "someone" is not the judge.  We don't know who "someone" is, but we have our suspicions.  "Someone" seems to think it is appropriate for a dozen attorneys to have to sit on the floor while dressed for court in suits or skirts, or in the alternative, stand for two hours, holding a legal pad, a calendar, a stack of files and an iPhone.  "Someone" seems to think that he or she is higher up the food chain than the judge, who supports the moving of chairs.

I see now," said Winnie the Pooh."I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All." - A.A. Milne

If I'm not careful, this will turn into a rant about micromanagement by Petty People of No Brain at All.  Micromanagement is not limited to that "someone" in court administration who enjoys flexing his or her mini-muscles.  As we all know, or have personally experienced, micromanagement rears it's ugly head in all sorts of work places and situations.  I could tell you stories ... but I won't.  Not yet.  Just a reminder that no adult likes to be treated like a naughty child. 

I had to return to court after lunch.  Well, it wasn't really lunch.  It was ... let me show you a picture:

I nibbled, I worked.  As I said, not really lunch.

Like President Clinton, I am punctuality-challenged.  I have really been trying to overcome my tendency to arrive late, but the fact that I don't do mornings has made it difficult to achieve.  It has been my New Year's Resolution every year since 1966, and I think I have finally made some progress.  For example, today I left the office a few minutes early, and all went well until I tried to make the penultimate turn from John Young Parkway onto Emmett Street.  Two lights later, I'm still waiting.  The traffic heading north looked like it was backed up to Cuba.  And cars coming off Emmett and trying to turn onto John Young were getting stuck in the intersection.

Gridlock in Kissimmee? Has the world gone mad?  Was I going to be late despite my primo parking spot and my early departure?  Was I having flashbacks to New York?  Would the palm trees along John Young Parkway disappear from my field of vision to be replaced by scrub oak along the Long Island Expressway?  Car 54, where are you?

There's a hold up in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights.
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights.
There's a scout troop short a child,
Khruschev's due at Idlewild
Car 54, where are you?

Yes, I am showing my age.  Which is exactly how I got a seat around the pretrial table.  The supervising attorney for the GAL program and I decided that first dibs on the chairs went to those of us over fifty.  Rank may have it's privileges, but age works pretty well.  Anyway, I made it to court with 2 minutes to spare and an annoying earworm.  Car 54, where are you?

First sign of spring is the Cadbury egg (not the crocus, despite what my second grade teacher told me) and for St. Patrick's Day we have the green Hostess Sno-Balls

St. Patrick's Day is this Thursday, and I feel the need to bake cupcakes. Vivid green cupcakes. Bright, emerald, I'm-looking-over-a-four-leaf-clover green cupcakes.  With cream cheese frosting.  I stopped to pick up the ingredients and I'll bake tomorrow evening, God willing and the crick don't rise. 

Green velvet cupcakes.  Tomorrow.  Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

We have rules for that sort of thing ...

The Miami Heat are set to play the San Antonio Spurs at 8:00 on ESPN.  Bones is on TNT at 7:00, and NCIS is also on at 7:00.  So is Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.  Monday hasn't been a good night over at Food Network since Emeril Live went off the air.  Oh, but wait!  Emeril Live is on Cooking Channel at 7:00, followed by four episodes of Ciao America with Mario Batali.  I know where I'm going tonight.  And the Orlando Magic are playing the Lakers at 10:30 ...

It is Monday night, the end of a day I do not care to repeat.  Busy, crazy, boisterous.  The good news is that 20% of the week from hell is now officially over.  The bad news is that it gets worse from here, and there is still 80% to go.  Tomorrow is too awful to even talk about.

Anyway, I'm always exhausted on Monday, probably from the anticipation of returning to work after a too-short weekend.  Sometimes I crash on the couch, but today I made plans.  I set out some rules that I intend to follow to make my Monday night respite truly relaxing, and might I say, even memorable.

The Rules:
No staying in the office any later than 5:30.
Drive straight home.  No shopping, not even 7-Eleven.
No cooking. (I sliced a meatloaf.  Oops.)
No cleaning. (This one was easy.)
No sitting around in work clothes (It's okay to take off your bra before midnight.)
Watch TV, preferably reruns.  (Less need to think.)
Eat junk food, joyously.
Knit until the cows come home.
Oh yeah, no blogging.

Deviation is Treason

I hate daylight savings time.  I am one of those people who gets jet lag just driving from one time zone to another. The furthest I've actually driven is into the Central Time Zone.  Come to think of it, some of my favorite places are in the Central Time Zone - Little Rock, New Orleans, Panama City Beach - and I always gain an hour of sleep when I get there.  Of course, I deeply resent having to give back the hour on the trip home.  Daylight savings time is even worse, because I haven't driven anywhere at all and I'm still being forced to give up an hour sleep.  I feel like something is being stolen from me. 

So now I am an hour late in starting today's cooking.  I am also an hour late in starting my consumption of caffeine, and an hour closer to what promises to be a week from hell in the office.  But once again, I am living the good life in Orlando, Florida, home of Mickey Mouse and the Orlando Magic, half a world away from the tragedy in Japan, so I am resolved to stop whining and start cooking.

Before there were food blogs ... before there was the internet ... there was Calvin Trillin.

From Wikipedia:  Calvin (Bud) Marshall Trillin (born December 5, 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist.

It is the humorist and food writer I was introduced to in 1981, when a coworker, realizing I was a major foodie, gave me a copy of his American Fried.  I still have it, as worn as it is, for I have reread it many times.  Before Calvin Trillin, I was positively provincial in my knowledge of food.  American Fried opened my eyes to real barbecue, personified in his ode to Arthur Bryant's, the existence of crawfish and beignets in New Orleans, and the absolute joy of travel for the sake of enjoying regional foods.  When my friend Bethe suggested we travel to Italy over Thanksgiving vacation several years ago, because her husband wanted to spend his birthday eating in Bologna, the birthplace of Italian cuisine, that made perfect sense to me.  By the way, it was well worth the jet lag.

One of my favorite Trillin quotes is based on the weight loss experiences of his college friend, "Fats" Goldberg, who ate the same thing every single day of his life (unless he was in Kansas City): "Underlying the Fats Goldberg system of weight control is more or less the same philosophy that led to the great Russian purge trials of the thirties--deviation is treason."

That is why I am giving you the recipe for kasha varnishkes exactly as it has been prepared in my family for 100 years.  If you have Ronzoni farfalle in your pantry, avoid the temptation to use them instead of the Manischewitz egg bows.  It will NOT be kasha varnishkes.  Resist the temptation to substitute stock for the water.  Avoid olive oil, but do not be skimpy with the vegetable oil and for God's sake do NOT try to cut calories by using a cooking spray.  Ignore the fact that the box of kasha now gives directions on cooking the grain by boiling without the initial coating and toasting with a beaten egg.  Do not throw in a casual clove of garlic.  You do not mess with this recipe, just like you do not mess with the recipe for my husband's Grandma's Chocolate Cake, a Rothfeld-Levine family icon. Thirty years ago, I almost got mugged for my innocent attempt to elevate the cake into a black forest version.  That incident is still spoken of only in hushed tones and never in front of young children.  I have been properly chastened and learned my lesson well:  deviation is treason.

Someone should have given that quote to the folks at the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago, when in 1943 they started selling their deep dish version as "pizza".  Listen to me ... as a native New Yorker, I am here to tell you there is only one kind of pizza, and it is made in New York City.  What Chicago makes is rather delicious, but it ain't pizza.  California-style pizza is a lot closer to New York pizza, but it also ain't pizza.  Don't get me wrong, I think Wolfgang Puck is a national treasure and I love his smoked salmon pizza.  I just wish he'd call it something else.

Wolfgang Puck and my son Cory, circa 2004

In addition to the kasha varnishkes, I am going to be making my version of Deep Dish (It's Not Really) Pizza, and testing a new product off the shelves, Texas Pete Extra Mild Buffalo Wing Sauce.  For the Deep Dish, I purchased two pounds of Publix fresh pizza dough yesterday, combined them into one big ball of dough, punched it down and left it in the fridge overnight to rise.  This morning, I took the dough out to get closer to room temperature.

Don't tell me you didn't see THAT one coming!

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

First, the good news.  We have Progress:

The pattern is Spiral Galaxy from Socks a la Carte in Froehlich Wolle Maxi Ringel on size 1.5 double pointed needles.  Sweet.  I purchased this yarn quite a while ago, can't remember where or when, but it is working up rather nicely.  I like the colors even more than I thought I would, and the yarn, which is 80% wool, has a nice feel to it.  And I am crazy about the pattern, which is easy, practically a stockinette (which on a circular piece means knit every row) but with an occasional yarn over and knit two together to keep things interesting.

This was practically the only bright spot in what was otherwise a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  My case plan conference was cancelled (sick defense attorney).  It was 46 degrees this morning.  In Florida.  The flow of paper into my office never stops.  The walls between offices are paper thin.  I had a sinus headache and a stomach ache.  I sat through an hour staffing with three other people in a room the size of a walk in closet and the air quality of a sauna. I received an email I was expecting but it still sent me into the depths of despair.   At some point during the afternoon, I had a panic attack with a few heart palpitations thrown in for good measure.  Shut and locked the door, shut off all the lights, and sat on the floor.  Tried relaxation techniques I'd learned during rational emotive therapy in 1972.  Recited the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear and some deep breathing.  Ran through the names of all the players I could remember on the Orlando Magic.  Did the same thing for the 1961 New York Yankees, but didn't get beyond Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.  Finally was able to stand up, turn on the light, and resume what I was doing prior to my world crashing down around my ears.

And then God, or Mother Nature, or The Force decides to put things in perspective:

Every bad science fiction disaster movie I've ever watched has scenes like these ... except these are real.  This is Japan the day after the worst earthquake in over 100 years spawns a monster tsunami.

NAKAMINATO, Japan -- Entire villages in parts of Japan’s northern Pacific coast have vanished under a wall of water, many communities are cut off, and a nuclear emergency was unfolding near two stricken reactors as Japanese tried to absorb the scale of the destruction after Friday’s powerful earthquake and devastating tsunami.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13japan.html?hp

And as if this wasn't bad enough, and it was, the nuclear reactor is leaking ...

TOKYO -- An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building and destroyed the exterior walls of a crippled reactor, escalating the emergency confronting Japan after a huge earthquake and tsunami destroyed parts of the country’s northeastern coast on Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

That wasn't my world crashing down around my ears ... that was Japan.  My world, despite occasional bumps in the road, is pretty damn fine.

No big cooking this weekend, folks.  Kasha varnishkes are a go, and Rob and I discussed the merits of homemade pizza, starting with the fresh pizza dough available at Publix.

But that's another blog post ...

Cook like there's nobody watching, and eat like it's heaven on earth.

Noodles on the Brain

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about kasha varnishkes.  I've also been considering whether I should add the fruit cocktail from one of my noodle kugel recipes to the dairy ingredients from the other noodle kugel recipe.  And I've been checking out cabbage with an eye towards kraut sveckle, a Hungarian masterpiece I learned from my mother in law, one of the world's greatest cooks.  I have to admit she is a better cook than even my mother was, and a lot nicer too.   My mother in law is so nice, she actually liked my mother.

Grammy (my mother), my son Cory at age 4, and Grandma

I am craving those kasha varnishkes, but I think my friend Terry might enjoy a noodle pudding at our next office potluck, and kraut sveckle would make an awesome and original side dish to accompany corned beef on St. Patrick's Day.  There's the answer, I'll just make everything.

Then there's the chopped herring ... I haven't made chopped herring in years.  When I was living in the dorm at SUNY Stony Brook, I used to love to go to Waldbaum's, buy a quarter pound of chopped herring (I was on a budget) and a package of Lender's frozen pumpernickel bagels, then go back to the room, toast the bagel and schmeer on some chopped herring.  Best dinner, ever.

The truth is, one cannot easily stage a Brooklyn Jewish eating orgy in Central Florida.  It is a lot better than it was when we first moved here almost 20 years ago, but the deli counter in Publix does not carry smoked whitefish, baked salmon, chubs, lox that is sliced in front of you, chopped herring, or fat fillets of schmaltz herring that are sliced up by the counterman, and only then added to that wonderful cream sauce with onions.  Oy!  I'm getting heartburn just thinking of it.  

My Publix makes a pretty good challah, and we can get a really fine bagel at Delish New York Bakery, a recent addition to the Dr. Phillips neighborhood (check out the link-bagels boiled in New York!), but nothing will ever compare to Sunday mornings when my Pop would head out to Brooklyn to pick up a baker's dozen of the hottest, freshest, most intoxicating bagels, along with a half dozen fresh bialys. He would rush them back home for the best breakfast ever, but not before he scarfed down at least one of those hot bagels in the car.  Untoasted, unbuttered, no cream cheese or lox - bagel au naturel - the minimalist bagel - sheer bagel purity.  Then he would come home and eat at least one more bagel, piled high with lox, sliced tomato and onion and a lot of cream cheese, or laden with strips of crisp bacon covered in American cheese and placed in the toaster oven for a good melt.

I wandered off course ... back to noodles.

I'm gonna need a lot of onions.