Thursday, October 16, 2014

#TBT - You Get No Bread With One Meatball

Columbus Day has come and gone, Monday of this week, and I could not help but notice that it is no longer politically correct to celebrate the birth of the man who is credited with discovering America.  I just hope that doesn't mean an end to all of the Italian food specials that invariably show up at that time.

I love Italian food.  It is as much a part of my culinary heritage as chopped liver and potato kugel.  Growing up in Flatbush in the fifties and sixties, there really was no difference between Italian Catholic families and us Russian Jewish families, and it was the late comedian and actor, Dom DeLuise, who reinforced this point, writing "the Jews had matzo balls, and we had meatballs."  For me, cooking Italian is instinctive.  Maybe I should call these instinctive meatballs.  Never mind.  I also love to make Jewish sweet and sour meatballs, Swedish meatballs, tiny meatballs for Italian wedding soup, and you get the idea.

"You Get No Bread With One Meatball" Meatballs  

The waiter hollered down the hall:
You get no bread with your one meat ball.

Little man felt so very bad,
One meat ball is all he had.
And in his dreams he can still hear that call
You get no bread with your one meat ball.


Oh, but what a meatball!

3 1/2 - 3 3/4 pound ground beef (I use Publix market beef or you can use ground round)
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup whole milk ricotta
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/2 cup cornflake crumbs
2 tablespoons granulated garlic
2 tablespoons parsley flakes
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 1/2 tablespoon dried basil
1 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon Hungarian sweet paprika
1 tablespoon coarse black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
crushed red pepper, to taste
2 teaspoons ground mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
4-26 oz. cans Hunt's garlic and herb pasta sauce


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and lightly spray the bottom of two casserole dishes, preferably the aluminum 9x13 size with deep sides.

Loosen up the ricotta by mixing it with the eggs.  Then combine all the ingredients except for the pasta sauce, in a very large bowl, take off your rings, and start mixing.  When everything is well mixed, take a small portion of the meat, form a very small patty and cook it in a pan.  Taste the cooked meat and make any seasoning adjustments to the meat mixture in the bowl.

Using a 3/4 cup measure, divide the meat into 16 portions.  Form the meatballs, and place eight in each of the prepared pans.  Place in the oven, uncovered, for 15 minutes.  Remove, carefully turn the meatballs over, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes.


While the meatballs are baking, heat the pasta sauce.  Ladle half the sauce into each pan of baked meatballs, cover with aluminum foil, lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees, and return the pans to the oven for 45 minutes.  Check for doneness with a thermometer - it should register 165 degrees internal temperature.  Add more time as needed to finish the meatballs.

Then eat your one meatball with as much bread as you like ... garlic bread for me.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Not Vegetarian Chick Pea Chili

I am trying to organize my recipe collection.  Over 40 years of scraps of paper scribbled in someone else's handwriting, recipe cards featuring pictures of cornucopia and matronly chickens, photostats from hundreds of cookbooks, printouts from food websites and blogs like this one.  I had one rather successful organization in 1990, using a very rudimentary program to type up and print out most of my recipes, but I never finished it and then things got out of control.  Still, I have all of those recipes, printed out and slipped into sheet protectors and clipped into a couple of extra-large ring binders, to use as a starting point for my ambitious project.  

Not only that, but I have a serious cookbook collection (and that's after weeding out the books I did not use or want anymore) and I have favorite recipes in most of them.  Okay, the truth is that I really want to leave a culinary legacy for my son.  And that means finding all of those favorite cookbook recipes, copying them, and adding them to the ring binders.  


Which means going through all of these cookbooks.  As well as the ones further to the left that didn't fit into the photo.  And the ones on the kitchen counter.  Also those on my night table, in my car, in my office, and on my Kindle reader.  

Going through those books was like opening up a whole lot of presents on Christmas morning.  In addition to the tried and true favorites, I was finding a new generation of recipes that I wanted to try.  This particular recipe, found in a book I must have purchased a good 15 years ago, caught my eye because of it's unabashed inclusion of garbanzo beans.  That was all it took for me to buy the ingredients and test it on my willing family, after I made some substantive changes to suit their taste. 

I realize that sounds kind of nervy, but have you ever read the reviews of online recipes?  The ones that start out "I love this recipe, and so did my husband!  I just substituted shallots for the red onion, and at the end I added nonfat yogurt instead of creme fraiche and I didn't have pork in the house so I used chicken and it was wonderful and thank you for sharing  your recipe."  Read enough of the reviews and you will realize there is an awful lot of tweaking (not twerking) going on, especially among us old cooking dinosaurs (definitely no twerking!)  For us, someone else's recipe is a framework, a suggestion, an idea that has not yet risen to full fruition.


It's not a great picture of the finished product, but when you see the turmeric in the recipe, you'll understand.  It really is quite delicious, and tastes best without any kind of topping or condiment.  But if you just have to pile on the cheese, sour cream, chopped onions, sliced black olives, and homemade guacamole, don't let me stop you.

Not Vegetarian Chick Pea Chili

2 1/4 pounds beef chuck, cut into very small pieces (carne picada, available in Walmart)
2 tablespoons Emeril's Essence
2 large onions (or 1 very large Vidalia), chopped
2 celery ribs, sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
1 large sweet green pepper, chopped
1 large sweet red pepper, chopped
1 Anaheim chili, seeded, ribs removed, and chopped*
6 garlic cloves, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
2 tablespoons McCormick Dark Chili Powder
2 tablespoons Badia Polvo de Chili Powder
2 tablespoons granulated garlic
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons paprika (preferably Hungarian)
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup dry red wine
1-28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1-10 oz. can Ro-Tel Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilis (mild or hot)
1-16 oz. can red kidney beans, drained
1-16 oz. can garbanzo beans (chick peas), drained
1-2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

Season the beef with Emeril's Essence and set aside.   Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large deep pan.  Add the onion, celery, sweet peppers, Anaheim pepper, and garlic, and sauté just to soften the vegetable.  Add the beef and cook, stirring constantly, until beef is no longer pink.  Drain off any fat and return to the pan.  Stir in all of the remaining ingredients except for the sherry vinegar.  Bring to a boil.  Cover the pan, reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for an hour and a half.

After an hour, taste the chili and reseason to taste.  At the end of another half hour, add the sherry vinegar.  Taste and add more if needed.

*Anaheim chili peppers grown in New Mexico are a lot hotter than those grown in California.  You can also add some heat to the chili by leaving the ribs and seeds intact.




Saturday, October 11, 2014

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

Maybe I can't watch the Cleveland Cavaliers play the Miami Heat in Rio de Janiero this evening, but I can see Doctor Who.  Happy Saturday!

Watching the news ... another photo hacking scandal.  If someone hacks into my iCloud, all they are going to snag are pictures of food.  And speaking of food photos, here we go:



This is the chili recipe I tried last weekend.  Aren't those chick peas gorgeous?  

Despite a massive recipe collection, which I am in the process of seriously organizing, I cannot seem to stop myself from browsing for more.  Any weekend when I am not on a Carnival cruise ship is an opportunity to try something new in the kitchen.  This weekend I had hoped to try Jamie Oliver's recipe for whole roast chicken cooked in milk, but the fresh sage leaves in the produce section at Publix were uninspiring.  Instead, I'm going to bake a little, and fry a little, and just maybe take a trip to to South Korea.  We'll see.

Right about now I was planning on typing up that chili recipe, but Anakin had other plans:


Baking his brains out while resting on the recipe.  Let's move on for a moment.

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

1-1/2  tablespoons butter
1-1/2 tablespoons light brown sugar
pinch of salt
12 maraschino cherries, patted dry and cut in halves
1-8 oz. can pineapple tidbits, drained, juice reserved
1-9 oz. box Jiffy Golden Yellow Cake Mix
1 extra-large egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Coat a 12-muffin pan with no-stick baking spray.

Melt the butter in a small pan and add the brown sugar and salt.  Place a cherry half, cut side down, in the center of each muffin cup. Divide the brown sugar mixture, about a half teaspoon each, around the cherry half.  Place 4 pineapple tidbits around each cherry, pressing lightly into the brown sugar mixture.  Set muffin pan aside.




Add cold water (or maraschino cherry juice) to the reserved pineapple juice to make 1/2 cup.  Prepare the cake mix as directed on the box, using the juice and egg.  Divide the cake mix evenly among the muffin cups.  Place the pan in the oven and bake for 18 minutes until done.  Remove the pan from the oven, and with a long sharp knife, holding the knife flush with the top of the pan, slice off any excess cake.  Immediately cover the muffin pan with a baking sheet (I first place a piece of wax paper over the muffins), and turn the whole thing over.  Remove the muffin pan - the cupcakes should come out easily if you did not let them cool off - and admire those cute little upside down cakes.




Thursday, October 9, 2014

#TBT - Peanut Chicken Stir Fry



Marinade and Peanut Sauce:
1 medium onion, minced
½ cup peanut or other neutral oil (I use canola)
½ cup fresh lemon juice
½ cup thin terikayi sauce (I use Mr. Yoshida’s Gourmet Marinade 
and Sauce)
½ cup dark rum (I used what I had, 151 proof – zowee!)
½  cup honey
2 tablespoons peeled and grated ginger root
6 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons kosher salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon granulated garlic
1 – 13 oz. jar creamy whipped peanut butter (you will not use
 all of it)
2 tablespoons half and half


Main ingredients:
2 pounds chicken breast meat, cut into bite sized pieces
1 medium or 2 small red bell peppers, large dice
1 medium onion, large dice
2 cups (approximately) stir fry vegetables (I used a 12 oz. bag of
 Eat Smart brand)
¼ cup thin teriyaki sauce (this is in addition to the ½ cup used in the marinade)

Wok on:
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon peeled and grated ginger root
3 garlic cloves, smashed and minced

To serve:
½ pound angel hair pasta
2-3 green onions, white and some green parts, thinly sliced
Olive oil

For the Fancy Schmancy:
Chopped peanuts
Additional green onion, thinly sliced


Combine all of the marinade ingredients except for the peanut butter.
 Pour over and marinate the chicken for several hours in refrigerator.  
Stir occasionally while marinating.

When ready to prepare the dish, set out all the ingredients next to 
the wok. Mise en place is always important, but never more so than 
when making a stir fry dish!

Drain marinade from chicken.  Measure it, then put into a small
 saucepan and heat over medium until boiling. Watch it very carefully, 
as the alcohol will cause it to boil over. Measure out half as much 
peanut butter as marinade, then remove pan from heat and add the peanut butter, stirring until sauce is smooth.  Taste and adjust with 
more peanut butter if you like.  Stir in the half and half.  Let sit on 
stove at very low or warming heat.

Cook angel hair pasta according to package directions.  Do not run 
cold water over the hot pasta.  As soon as hot water is drained off,
 add a drizzle of olive oil and sliced green onions and toss to coat
 and combine.  Return to pot and hold over low or warming heat on stovetop.

In hot oil in wok, stir fry garlic and ginger till fragrant, but do not let 
brown. Immediately add the chicken to wok and stir fry till done, then remove and hold on side.
Add more oil if needed to wok. Stir fry onion and red bell pepper.  
Add remaining vegetables to wok.  While stir frying, add about 
¼ cup teriyaki sauce to vegetables to create steam.  When vegetables
 are tender, add back the chicken.  Lower the heat under the wok and 
add the warm peanut butter sauce, stirring with the chicken and vegetables.

To serve:  ladle peanut chicken and sauce over the pasta.  Sprinkle
 with chopped peanuts and green onion if desired.  Or skip the pasta 
and serve with rice, preferably the sticky Chinese type.

Incidentally, I used my trusty electric fry pan instead of my wok
 for this dish.  Worked great, and the chicken had the opportunity 
to pick up a nice brown color.  If you do use a wok, I recommend 
stir frying the chicken in two separate batches, so that the chicken
 browns instead of steams.



Sunday, October 5, 2014

Welcome Back - Easy Falafel and My Favorite Tzatziki Sauce

My house smells awesome, as I am trying a new chili recipe.  Because you can never have enough chili recipes, ha ha.  These past few weeks I have tried a bunch of recipes, for no other reasons than my family has to eat, and perhaps more importantly, I find cooking to be extraordinarily therapeutic.  It is my meditation.

There were some successes but also a couple of epic fails.  The whole wheat bread pudding was just feh.  The kale and smoked turkey wing was so awful, I got up in the middle of the night, while it was simmering in the crock pot, and threw it out.  One of the successes, perhaps the best of the best, was my version of falafel, prepared from canned chick peas.

I love falafel.  Really love it, especially in a warm pita with chopped salad and garlicky yogurt sauce. Having moved to Central Florida in the early nineties, I was resigned to never experience the joys of real New York food, like a real falafel sandwich, bagels, and pizza, ever again.  After 23 years, I can safely report that you cannot get a decent bagel, nor a proper slice of pizza, in the entire state of Florida.  Good falafel can be had in, of all places, downtown Kissimmee.  Nadia's Cafe' on Broadway Avenue, right across from my office and a stone's throw from my house, serves excellent Mediterranean food, including an authentic falafel, which I get as part of a salad.  But Nadia's is not open at all those times I might experience a Mediterranean food craving, so I was going to have to come up with a homemade version that did not involve a mix, did not require me to soak beans overnight, and would not fall apart in the hot oil.




Voila!  By the way, that is an ebelskiver pan.  While it is not crucial to the success of the dish, I really think it made the frying part a lot easier.  Less mess, less oil absorbed, and more even cooking.

This recipe makes 18 falafel, which I portion out using the same size scoop I would use for meatballs.    These are best when served hot out of the oil, but they are also good cold.  I like them with tzatziki sauce, and I am posting my recipe below.  There are other Mediterranean sauces that probably work as well, but I'm a tzatziki sauce nut, and that's that.  

If I was going to serve this to a group, I would include pita and lightly toasted naan bread on the table, along with hummus, tabbouleh, and an Israeli salad, and let folks create their own version of Mediterranean goodness.  Cheaper than a flight to Morocco, safer than a trip to Israel.

Easy Falafel

1-15 oz. can chick peas (garbanzos), drained, rinsed with cold water, patted dry.  I use Goya.
1/2 cup finely minced onion
1 large clove garlic, finely minced
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 extra large egg, lightly beaten with a fork
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon kosher salt
white pepper and cayenne pepper, to taste
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup matzo meal, more if needed
canola oil for frying

In a large bowl or an aluminum pan (always my preference) mash the chick peas with an old-fashioned potato masher until thick and pasty.  There should be some recognizable bits of chick pea in the mixture.  Add the onion, garlic, and parsley, and use a fork to combine them.

Add the spices, lemon juice and baking powder to the egg, beating lightly with a fork to combine them.  Pour the egg mixture over the chick pea mixture, and then add the olive oil.  Use your trusty fork one more time to evenly distribute the ingredients.

Now add 1/2 cup of the matzo meal and use your hand to work into the chick pea mixture.  Do not overwork.  Add a little more matzo meal as needed, until mixture is no longer sticky nor too stiff.  This is similar to adding bread crumbs to a meatloaf, and you must rely on touch to know when enough matzo meal has been added.

Use a meatball scoop to portion out about 18 balls.  Roll lightly in your hands, then press gently to flatten slightly.  Heat the ebelskiver over medium high heat, and add enough oil to fill each well not more than halfway.  You can also use a regular skillet with an inch of oil.  Carefully place a falafel into each well, and fry until golden brown on each side.  Repeat until all the falafel is fried, and serve hot with your favorite Mediterranean accompaniments.

My original tzatziki recipe called for plain Dannon yogurt and a Kirby cucumber.  It's hard to buy just one Kirby, and I finally found a way to make an everyday cheap cuke work.



Tzatziki

1 - 6 oz. container Chobani plain non-fat yogurt
equal amount of sour cream
1/2 cucumber, peeled and seeded
1 clove fresh garlic
kosher salt and white pepper to taste
1 or 2 drops Tabasco sauce

In a small bowl, combine the yogurt and sour cream and set aside.

Shred the cucumber on the medium holes of a box grater.  Place the shredded cucumber between two sheets of paper towel, roll up and squeeze out the excess liquid.  Add the cucumber to the yogurt.  Mince the garlic very finely, or use a microplane to grate it, and add to the yogurt.  Season to taste with salt and pepper, add the Tabasco if using it, and mix everything together.  Cover and let chill in the refrigerator for an hour before using.  Serve with the falafel.  Also nice with certain lamb dishes, and I love to eat it as a dip with toasted naan.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Good heavens, I forgot the lemon poppy seed cake

Forgot to post it, can't remember where I put it, and haven't been here since. Mea culpa.  Wait, I just found it, stuck between the pages of my Johnsonville Big Taste of Sausage Cookbook.  Awesome.

Looking at the recipe part of this blog, I was shocked and appalled to realize that almost all of the photos were gone.  No idea why.  It may be a technical glitch, but if it involves my venturing into the mechanics of this blog, it may never get corrected.  After spending two hours on the phone yesterday with Bright House Networks, trying to figure out why my email up and quit, I am not feeling the emotional stamina to deal with Google.  Really, some of the pictures were pretty useless; food colors were off and the lighting sucked; but the recipes are pretty good, so try them anyway.  Look, I taught myself to cook starting in 1974 from The Joy of Cooking, and there is not one darn photo in there!    Yes, yes, when I was your age I walked to school in blizzards, uphill both ways.

2013 was a really tough year, and nowhere is that more reflected than in this blog.  I ignored it because I had barely enough energy to get out of the house each day to go to work.  Despite presenting a whole new set of challenges, 2014 is shaping up a lot better than its predecessor, so I will try to be a little more attentive ... but that's not a promise, just an aspiration.  Like the phrase I put into some court orders stating "the Department will make it's best effort to obtain the following services."  I'll make my best effort.

Here's the recipe:

Too easy.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Spray some nonstick stuff into an 8 x 12 x 2 inch aluminum bake pan.

Ingredients:
1 package Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme cake mix
3/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
4 eggs  at room temperature
1/4 cup poppy seeds

Combine cake mix with water, oil and extracts.  Beat on low speed just to combine, about 30 seconds.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat at medium speed (I use a Kitchen Aid stand mixer) for 4 minutes.  Yes, that is four (4) minutes.  Add poppy seeds and stir in on lowest speed.  Pour into prepared aluminum pan.  Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool completely before adding the topping.

Topping: Stir together 12 ounces defrosted Cool Whip and fresh lemon juice to taste. Spread on the cooled cake.  Store cake in the refrigerator.  Serves 12 to 24.

Monday, November 11, 2013

So much time has passed and so many things have happened in the last 19 months, and it is difficult to quantify the impact. One thing I have noticed is that I do not cook as frequently as I did in the past, and this blog is really based on my love affair with cooking.  Tonight having whipped up a really easy lemon poppy seed cake with a light frosting, also ridiculously easy, I suddenly felt the desire to share it on the recipe blog.  Maybe even take a picture.  Look for it tomorrow - between pretrial conferences and trying to recover our car from a garage in Cordele, Georgia, I should have the time to do so.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Loyalty

I couldn't be more proud of Dwight Howard than if he were my own son.  Loyalty does count.  He is, as my own mother would say, "a good boy."  Besides, it's not like he isn't going to be earning $19.5 million this coming season.

That was really the only good news over the past few weeks.  The world continues to go to hell in a minivan.  War, politics, massacres.  I sideswiped my own car in my own office garage. I made an appointment with my dentist because I cannot put if off any longer.  I realized that the pain in my left big toe is from podagra, also known as gout.  I oversalted my fried chicken (no one complained except me, but that's not the point.)  The price of gasoline continues on the upward path towards prohibitive.  March is almost over and nobody scheduled our office's monthly potluck.  All those lovely Irish-themed recipes I tested, for naught.  Well maybe not naught.  Cory and Rob had a grand time tasting them for me.

As always, when life becomes a little unpleasant, I start chopping onions.  I was determined to perfect a maque choux without tomatoes.  Why, you may ask?  Because tomatoes are over used.  I tried the maque choux last week, and found the flavor delightful until I added the tomatoes.  For some reason, the taste went flat after that.  Feh, flat.  Tried it again this week after tweeking a few ingredients, and I like the result, which is sort of a cross between maque choux and succotash.

To go with it, I prepared shrimp scampi - except instead of using olive oil with the butter, I used bacon fat.  Brined the shrimp first, and they stayed succulent and sweet.  I think I'm starting to get this cooking thing.

I got very little knitting done, darn it.

I spent a lot of time with my babies, and that was nice.

Cats and Dogs, living together ...

Earlier in the week, I took a little time for myself, and armed with a loaf of bread, headed down to the lake (Lake Tohopekaliga), and walked around a bit, feeding the ducks.  I discovered that Muscovy ducks can be quite aggressive when they realize that an unfeathered biped is carrying a bag of bread.  So can seagulls and other flying critters, and there was a moment there, I admit, when I felt like an extra in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  But the lake is beautiful, the weather was crisp and clear and sunny, and I came away feeling better than when I had arrived.



Recipes to follow ... not the duck!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Daydream Believer

Rest in peace, Davy Jones. 

Hey, has anyone else noticed that his passing did not garner the huge hoo-rah that Whitney Houston's did?  Is it because he wasn't a drug addict?  (Snarky of me, I admit, but still ...)

I'm still ranting a bit about getting our priorities straight.  The tornado victims in Indiana are important.  Rush Limbaugh is not.  We should have all resolved to ignore him a long time ago.  His numbers would have tanked, revenues would have dropped, his show would have been cancelled and he would not have been around to publicly humiliate a young women by calling her a slut and a prostitute.  The growing tension between Iran and Israel is important. (I know several young men in uniform and I would hate to see them deployed to the Middle East if that situation blows up.)  Lindsay Lohan on Saturday Night Live is not.  Why are we so fascinated with famous drug addicts?

The upcoming Presidential election is important.  What makes it hard to take seriously are some of the antics and bloopers put out there by the Republican candidates as they get closer to their primary.

Gas prices are back up in the stratosphere, with premium over the $4.00 mark.  Ah, Keystone, we hardly knew ye.

On a lighter note, I posted the recipe for my Mushroom Risotto with Sherry and Cream on the food blog, so here is the link.  I also have a few other recipes coming down the pike in the next few days.  I told you I kept cooking during my little hiatus from the blog.  Heck, I even wrote some of them down!

And because I don't always cook for the family, a shot of my devastatingly handsome son at Longhorn Steakhouse, eating a porterhouse the size of my head  ;-)

Saturday, March 3, 2012

I am as guilty as the next person

Well maybe not as guilty ... I did not obsess over the deaths of Whitney Houston nor Michael Jackson, and I never watch the Oscars ... but I am not immune from following the hype surrounding public figures.  I have been known to scream at the television while the Magic are playing ... or snoozing on the court, as happens far too often these days.  Stan, I love you, but it's time to go and take Otis with you.

See what I mean?  Still, I like to think that I spend much more time paying attention to the important stories out there, about noncelebrities who quietly make a difference, despite never getting a million dollar paycheck, and about true public servants who really are in it to help people.  (That leaves out all politicians, who make no sacrifices to serve the public, the very same public whose taxes are funding those extra special, exclusive lifetime benefits packages.)

Every day people continue to amaze me with their strength, their resolve, and their dignity in facing the worst that life can throw at them.  I think we all need to spend less time oogling (or is it googling) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and more time honoring everyday heroes.

Which is why I have added this blog to my blog list found on the right hand side of this page.  It is maintained by my friend and former coworker, Erin Baxter, who is doing an extraordinary job caring for her two children, one of whom was born with partial Trisomy 9.  If you don't know about trisomies - and I knew very little - you should follow her story.  Incidentally, if any of my Orlando peeps were aware that February 7th-14th was proclaimed as Congenital Heart Defect Week by Mayor Buddy Dyer, it was the result of Erin's intervention.  Erin was a Child Protective Investigator for the Department of Children and Families for over four years, and to say she is an incredibly strong child advocate would be an understatement.  This is for you, Erin, and Kaleb, Nolan, and Dennis.  The Johnston family rocks!

Moving over to food ... I am testing some Irish-themed recipes this weekend, in preparation for a little catering event.  Here is how that happened - our office had decided a while back that rather than try to go out to a restaurant to celebrate our birthdays - twelve, to be exact - we would pick one date every month and do a potluck lunch.  Those have been extremely successful, to say the least.  I think it was last month I brought in my version of shepherd's pie, which was so well-liked than one of my co-workers suggested I "cater" the lunches, so that they would fund the ingredients and I would do the cooking.  I really was honored by the suggestion, and while I don't think I would want to do that every month, I told them I would like to try it for our upcoming luncheon.  One of our group had earlier suggested we work each lunch around a theme - a terrific idea in my opinion - so I ran with that, and picked the quintessential March holiday of St. Patrick's Day.  I'm going to throw a little Purim in there as well, but just a little.  Purim is all about hamentaschen, rather than the main dishes, and the hamentaschen recipe I posted last year on the food blog is the bomb.

So there is, as we speak, an Irish soda bread in the bread machine which contains some of my favorite ingredients in the world - raisins and caraway seeds - and I am hoping it is a success so I can bake another one for my office buddies later this month.  I will also be testing an Irish stew, and miniature shepherd's pies in a biscuit crust.  That's not the whole menu by a long shot, as some of my selections are tried-and-true and don't need any testing.  If it all works out, you know where to find the recipes.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I think I've got a problem

This problem may require a visit to the doctor, so of course I am resisting.   I dislike being turned into a pincushion.  I resent having to give a well-meaning lab tech any amount of my blood, since I seem to have so little of it.  I don't like drugs of any kind, and while I have not been able to totally avoid them, my prescription medication intake is minimized to a manageable level - 2 little pills in the morning. I fear painkillers, and I am fortunate that neither my doctors nor my dentist are pill pushers.  My drug of choice for pain is ibuprofen, except for those rare post-surgical hours when my only choices are taking the damn Darvocet or screaming my head off.  As soon as possible, however, I switch to Advil.

I am not good about taking supplements, and I think that is the source of my current discomfort.  Since my little event up in Panama City Beach this past Labor Day, I have tried to be more diligent about taking my iron, B12, and calcium pills.  Unfortunately, one cannot take the wish for the deed when it comes to supplementing one's diet, and as I commit these thoughts to virtual paper, I realize what I have to do.


Taking a page from my diligent, organized, utterly devoted husband's book ... I have created my very own "pill box."  Yes, it is smaller, sleeker, and prettier than the one my husband faithfully drags out of the pantry every morning and evening.  And hopefully, I shall use it "in good health."  Now I just have to find room for it in the pantry.  Ha ha.

So I have not been up to cooking today, but I have several recipes (a very few with photos) taken during my recent hiatus, and will post them as time permits.  For now, I am going to creep back upstairs, crawl into bed and complain about how these darn vitamins are already upsetting my digestive system.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Happy Belated Birthday, dear Blog

Caught up in a whirl of 23 simultaneous games of Words with Friends, I totally missed the Blog's birthday.  Unlike Mandy, the GPS I refer to as "that electronic bitch", I really do care for the Blog, and would not want to hurt it's silicon-based feelings.  Mea culpa, Blog.

As you may recall, I started Inspiration Nation one year ago, February 19, 2011, my son's 24th birthday.  Now he is 25, and we still haven't celebrated.  I'm starting to see a pattern here ...

There have been several cruises and several road trips, and I am embarrassed to admit I failed to take photos and I also failed to make blog posts.  For all you knew, I had fallen into a vat of chicken fat - delicious but fatal. 

I have been cooking - a lot - but I didn't take pictures of those finished dishes either, except for an exceptional lasagna. 

The Giants won Superbowl.  But you knew that. (You can take the girl out of New York, but she's still going to root for the home team.)

We adopted another Yorkie, named Romeo.  His first human mother was quite ill, and had to find a home for him and his sister.  He is just two years old, exactly one year older than Blog, with all the energy that comes with that age.

Four Dog Night - Indiana Jones, Athene Minerva, Woodrow Wilson Smith, and Romeo Lee

Sometimes it seems I spend all of my time catering to those doggies, as well as their five feline siblings.  For example, today is a big day - the NBA All-Stars Game (in Orlando! Gonna make lots of snacks and root for the Eastern Conference Team), the Oscars (which I don't watch), and best of all, we are going to shave our orange cat, Fuzzybutt Dejah Thoris, and maybe, if Rob and I live through that adventure, we will also shave our feral cat, Zebadiah.  I am not sure why those two are so terribly matted, but in Dejah's case, those matted areas are reaching critical mass.  I should have bought some catnip to get her high to calm her down.  Zebbie can still be brushed out, I think, but it involves chasing him into a closed room and confining one part of him to a pillowcase while the other part is being combed.

I am also doing quite a bit of knitting ... but that's another blog post. 



Sunday, November 6, 2011

The Execution of Eddie Broom(e)

Yesterday was a hoot.  I embarrassed myself beyond all reasonable doubt, but instead of blushing and beating up on myself, I am laughing every time I think of it.

So ... I head into the office yesterday, and it was just me and my shadow.  I plugged myself into the iPod, armed with a blue ink pen and a stack of files, and started signing and singing.  I danced with the red file cart as I moved the files over to the copy machine.  Since no one was there, I removed the damn denture that is the bane of my existence, and felt totally comfortable and productive.

Until I turned to head down the hall and came face-to-face with a CBC employee, who had also come in to catch up on a project.  Big smiles, exchanged hellos, but when she started to introduce me to her husband, I found an excuse to duck back into my office to reseat that pesky denture.  Only then did I head out to shake hands.

Once she walked down to the conference room to set up, I went back to singing and signing - singing softly, signing with a flourish - but no more dancing with the red cart.  I still have a shred of dignity left, you know.

Or I did until I got home, having stopped at Publix on the way to pick up a few minor items.

Okay, let me stop here and take a sharp 180 degree turn to discuss one of my odd passions - old buildings.  Maybe I was an architect or an archeologist in another life.  All I know is that I am fascinated by anything that was built more than a century ago, like the New York City subway system, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and the Osceola County Courthouse.  I can sit for hours, staring at old photos (or even better, the real thing), admiring styles of architecture long out of vogue.  I am crazy for tunnels, especially if a train can run through it.  I love to try to figure out where the tunnels go.  Hallways are like tunnels, which is why I was probably the only person alive who was saddened when the first step in restoring the old courthouse was to pull down the annexes with their crazy quilt of secret passages, hidden offices,  and the world's strangest wheelchair lift.  The probate clerks had their office tucked in at the juncture of the old courthouse and the second annex (where the courtrooms and the world's worst restrooms were located) at sort of a half level, so you had to step up to step down to see them, and it was easier to stand at the door and hand them the paperwork.  The juvenile department was tucked under the front steps, and their ceiling sloped accordingly.  Being claustrophobic, I would have lasted about 20 minutes.  One of my regrets is that I never got any pictures of this collection of odd additions slapped onto the old courthouse over a period of 60 years.  Apparently, neither did anyone else, because while there is a decent collection of photos of the original courthouse, circa 1915, and the restored courthouse, circa 2001, there is little in between, darn it.  So much for urban exploration.

If you look very carefully at the left side of this photo, behind the oak trees, you can see bits of another building there.  That was the entrance into the second annex, and depending if you walked straight, turned right at the end of that hall, or made a sharp right when you first walked in, you could end up in one of three different buildings.


The "wart" on the historic Osceola County Courthouse is almost gone. For weeks, crews have been knocking, banging and tearing down the ugly one-story annex that was grafted onto the original three-story Romanesque Revival structure built in 1889. Earlier in the week, most of the east side of the annex was still standing. But in what seemed like a blink of an eye, everything was down Thursday. All that's left is a massive pile of rubble and a few pieces of the old brick walls that are still standing.
Apparently the Orlando Sentinel does not share my enthusiasm for historical oddities.  Just because it wasn't pretty - and it wasn't - doesn't mean it wasn't interesting fascinating.

Osceola County courthouse and city jail - Kissimmee, Florida

This one is a good shot of the first annex and the old jail, before the second annex was conceived and constructed by someone who had clearly done too much LSD in the sixties, after smoking too much marijuana with Robert Mitchum in the forties.  That second annex - the aforementioned "wart" - was built so as to wrap around and connect everything on that side of the street.  It was bizarre and beautiful.  I miss it, although I do not miss the crappy restrooms, or the old holding cells on the second floor.

Late at night, when my insomnia is in full swing, I spend a lot of time online at sites like Forgotten NY and this one, the Florida Memory Project. There are great photos from all over the state, starting from the late 1890's to the present day. This next photo, taken on January 19, 1912,  is disturbing, at several levels, and addresses sensitive issues of state executions and racism.  This is a photo of the last execution to ever take place at the Osceola County Courthouse, the execution of Eddie Broom (or Broome).

Execution of Eddie Broom outside Osceola County courthouse - Kissimmee, Florida

I'm not here to discuss capital punishment, which I have come to oppose, or the questionable treatment of this particular individual, an African-American accused and convicting of shooting a white man to death.  (It wasn't a lynching, but let's just say there was no time for a lengthy appeal.)  I want to discuss the location of the hanging, because it drove me crazy for several nights.  And because I get a cheap thrill from standing in close proximity to history.


Or sitting.  You can't imagine how many times I strained my neck trying to catch a glimpse of this abandoned station from the warm safety of an overcrowded A train as it rumbled its way towards Brooklyn.

But before any more historical blathering,  let's lighten the mood and finish the story of my dearth of dignity.

So I finish making my purchases at Publix and head home.  Mind you, I've been plugged into the iPod the whole time, grooving with the music.  Smiling and nodding at people I know, but not stopping to chat since I couldn't hear anything.  Happy as a clam.  Got home, greeted my husband, turned to put away my purchases in the kitchen, only to hear him say,

"Bear, did you know you have toilet paper hanging from the back of your pants?"

Oh yeah, apparently I did, and I can't tell you how long I'd been wearing that unintended accessory, except I am certain I had it on the entire time I was shopping at Publix.

Oy vay.  I've been shopping at the same Publix for close to 20 years, and all those people too polite to tap me on the shoulder.  I may have to start grocery shopping at Walmart.  It seems I'm already turning into a walmartian.  No no no, just kidding.  Besides, I always keep the denture in while I'm shopping in Walmart.  I'm bad, but I'm not hopeless.

Gotta laugh, right?  Because it is certainly funnier that the FIVE SEPARATE TIMES I had to frog back big chunks of the dishcloth I am knitting, from a pattern I designed named "Breaking Up is Hard to Do."  I may just have to rename it "Breaking Bad."

Comedy break is over, back to history.

Thursday I walked the entire perimeter of that darn courthouse, trying to see where the scaffold had been contructed.  (I think I frightened the guardian ad litem who happened to see me walking and staring and likely muttering to myself.)  Because clearly the unfortunate Mr. Broom had NOT been dispatched to his Great Reward from the end of a rope strung over the infamous Hanging Tree. 

KISSIMMEE — Legend has it that one of the old giant oak trees in front of the Osceola County Courthouse was used as a hanging tree. It is one of the tough-looking trees on the north side of the courthouse facing Vernon Avenue -- the one with the notches along some heavy branches.  The story goes that each notch stood for a person who was hanged.

Hanging trees? The facts are in dispute. Although official death sentences were carried out from temporary scaffolds erected alongside the courthouse, some longtime residents say no one has ever been strung from a tree on the grounds. Such talk, they say, is the product of embellished folklore.

Darn.  And here I thought it prophetic that the Hanging Tree survived the destruction wrought by the 2004 Hurricane Trifecta.  I know the roof of my office on Bryan Street didn't ...

It took me another day to figure it out.  I was so sure that the hanging took place at the front of courthouse, albeit not from the hanging tree, that I couldn't see the ... well, the forest for the trees.  And then I saw it, and I had to photograph it.  Which I did yesterday on my way to the office.

Scroll back up, and you'll see it too.  The only differences are that the drainage pipe has been moved to the end of the brick wall, and there are no spectators hanging out the windows. And the best part (for me, not Eddie) was that I was obviously standing on the top of the same stairway used by the 1912 photographer to capture the moment.

Northwest corner of the courthouse.  You can see clearly that the scaffold was constructed with it's floor at a level just above the first floor windows to provide sufficient height for ... well, I'll leave that as a lesson for the student.

Execution of Eddie Broom outside Osecola County courthouse - Kissimmee, Florida

If anybody is interested, I did prepare something I am calling chicken piccadillo.  Publix had boneless and skinless chicken breasts on sale for $1.99 a pound, and I was NOT passing that up regardless of the two-ton lasagna in my refrigerator.  It turned out quite tasty, and I will post the recipe real soon.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Lost in time, and lost in space ... danger, Will Robinson!

The last son of Gallifrey has got nuthin' on me ... I can bend time just by stepping close to a clock or watch, while he needs a time and relative dimension in space device to move about ...

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING TARDIS!!


(But he does.)

Here's the story:  I am unable to wear watches.  Any kind of watch, from the cheapest to the most costly, is doomed from the moment I place it on my wrist or hang it around my neck.  My old jewelry box is littered with the corpses of dead time pieces.

Apparently this odd electrophysiological quirk now extends beyond personal timepieces.  If I spend any amount of time close to a clock, it is likely to experience some trauma as a result of being sucked into my own personal space-time continuum.  I can speed them up or slow them down, the end result being that no clock within my sphere of influence ever tells the right time.  Yesterday, for example, I went to fetch my iPhone and iPad from my night table drawer on my way to work.  I keep them both plugged in overnight so they are fully charged each morning.  Imagine my surprise consternation when I realized that they were now four minutes apart, and that my night table clock, as well as Robert's alarm clock, all had different times.  Once upon a time, not so long ago, they were all set for the same time. (Insert voice of Dan Ackroyd from "Ghostbusters" - "I did that, I did that, that's my fault!")

I have always known I was punctuality-challenged.  Hell, everyone knows that about me.  One judge even took judicial notice of that fact.  Ha.  But now it appears I am temporally-challenged.  My life is one long deja vu all over again as I slip back and forth in time, not by years or centuries, but by short-burst moments. A minute here, a minute there.  Creepy.  A totally useless trick, since I never get to see the dinosaurs or the end of the earth in the year 5 billion.  I depend on wall clocks that belong to other people, especially if they are placed where I can't get close to them.  So I have been steadily and inadvertantly speeding up the clock on my car dashboard, and despite knowing this about myself, continue to be surprised when I get into the courthouse to find I am on time.

Florida has two (or three, depending on what judge I am in front of) time zones.  Me, I'm in my own time dimension, in which I experience jet lag from driving into Central Standard Time.  And no, I have never used mind-altering substances, not even during the Sixties.

"And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space... and meaning."

I have to head into the office for a little while.  Yes, I know it is Saturday, but there has been an explosion of new cases these past few months, and we are all drowning in a sea of sorrows.  There is a lot of anger and hopelessness out there, and some people are taking it out on their spouses and kids.  There is also a lot of gag-reflex-inducing sexual perversion ... WTF is THAT all about?  Gentlemen, it is a generally accepted societal rule that you DON'T do your daughters, or stepdaughters or nieces. I remember being taught that there were two deeply ingrained taboos, against incest and cannabalism.  For a growing number of very sick people, the first taboo is gone with the wind.  Can the second taboo be far behind?  God, I hope so.  Or else we'll all be someone's soylent green.

And on that cheerful note - enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Kwitcher Bitchin and Carpe Diem

I am in an oddly cheerful mood.  Maybe because I slept late, maybe because I had such a lovely time last evening.  Maybe because I haven't taken the damn iron pill yet.  Perhaps it was that awesome strawberry margarita I imbibed while enjoying the view at Downtown Disney.  Whatever the reason, I am embracing it on this Sunday before Hell Week.  Oh yeah, I have seen my court schedule for next week and it simply defies description.  But for today, and only for today, I am feeling quite chipper.  Carpe diem!

 
Downtown Disney and the Lego Dragon.  Yep, all Legos.

 
Eric, his really neat kids, and his lovely wife Amanda

 
Eric's brother Brian, and Brian's lovely wife Christine

  ... and a couple of grown-ups.  Kathy, Rob, and Alan.

We also got to meet Amanda's mom Sue, and I just had the best time with all of them.

While I am carping my diem, I am throwing caution to the wind and expanding my friends list on Facebook.  Six degrees of separation and I'm having fun.  See ya in cyberspace  ;-)

Now a bit of news from the culinary department - regardless of what anyone tells you, there is no recipe for lasagna.  I've got the perfect proof sitting in my fridge.  Talk about a creative use for leftovers ... we'll see how this one works out after I bake it off tomorrow.  I have never made a lasagna the same way twice.  I know I've never made this one before ... collard greens?  Yeah, stay tuned.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Do not go gentle into that good night

Crap.

That's what I feel like, crap.  Gradually, insidiously, I have been feeling more craptastic every day, a direct result of the length of my days on this earth.  My mortal coil is unwinding like an over-wound clock.  I have not bounced back from my adventure in the emergency room over Labor Day weekend, despite being pretty diligent about taking iron, calcium, and B12 supplements.  Every time I swallow an iron tablet, I experience an immediate assault on my tender digestive system.  But swallow them I do, and I haven't passed out again, although I have had a few passing moments of lightheadedness and a very brief weakness in my left leg.  Crap and crap again.  As Mick Jagger sang, what a drag it is getting old ...

In my pre-2003 days, when I looked in the mirror I only saw myself from the chin up, because to look anywhere else would have been too difficult.  I was a Very Big Girl in those days, and not happy about it.  Fast forward nine years, and I have simply stopped looking in the mirror.  Encroaching old age just ain't pretty, at least in my case.  I love road maps, but not all over my face, if you get my drift.

The worst part is not cosmetic, but it is physical.  I am almost always tired; sometimes I feel positively frail.  I have always kept my distance from anything geriatric and now I know why.

I am still cooking, kids, and I will be posting the recipe for my Chicken with Artichokes later today.  I may not be able to turn out a buffet for 40 hungry friends and relatives, but I can still feed my family, and I'm a whiz at potluck lunches.  Which reminds me, I brought in a Better than Sex cake to the office last week (by special request of mi amiga Cristina) and a good time was had by all.  I will post the link, along with the chicken recipe, over on the recipe blog.  Make these two dishes for the same meal, and your family will nominate you for sainthood.  Really.

Guess who is not heading into the office today?  Absolutely correct, the same little old lady who is going on a cruise over Thanksgiving and another cruise in December.  Being able to drive to Port Canaveral in just an hour is proving to be one of the best things about living in Florida.


I haven't changed my mind about tattoos (I may eat pork, but I would never let someone put a needle and ink to my skin), but if I ever did catch the bug, this is one I might consider.  Saw it on the Yarn Harlot's blog.  No, the Harlot hasn't been getting tattoos, but some of her fans have.

We are heading to Rainforest Cafe this evening to meet up with our friends and their family, including grandkids who I have only been able to admire from photos.  We are very much looking forward to this and have been for over a year, which is when Kathy and Al started to plan it.  Kathy was my freshman college roommate and a darn terrific cook in her own right.  Pictures to follow.