Family Freakout - Pasta, Pork, and Peppers Manicotti

I got punched in the stomach by a selfie.  I blame my cousin Steven, but not really.  He did warn me.

I can't make these things up. Just work with me here.  Okay, as a lawyer, I have spent the last 24 years in search of the truth. Most of that time I have been a civil prosecutor, held to a higher standard.  I'm not just there to win the case, I am charged with finding out what really happened.  If the truth caused me to lose a case, so be it.  I've always trusted my judges (well, at least until recently) to do the Right Thing with the information I had available to give them.

My personal life has also been spent in search of the truth, which I suppose was inevitable because I had been lied to by my family, my whole life.  So I have spent my whole life trying to figure out who I really am.  Who do I really look like?  Where did I get this or that trait from? How can I begin to answer these sorts of questions when I have no idea what half my family even looks like?  Where did my younger brother get those gorgeous blue eyes, so different from everyone else in our family?

Trust me, they are blue

                    

When I "found" my paternal relatives in 2013, I also found those gorgeous blue eyes, most notably on a cousin whose grandfather was my father's brother, and on my first cousin Steve; my father and his mother were brother and sister. And others.  Freaky in a very nice way. But since my youngest brother (formerly known as my only brother) remains estranged from me, and surely does not follow my blog, he will remain clueless.

I've looked at my face and I can discern certain genetic markers - the Nathan chin; the left eyelid droop from the Alberts. But overall, when I look at me, I don't see a real maternal family resemblance.  As my beloved cousin Marcia once told me -  and she had grown up with my mother, and had never, ever lied to me - I look like the "other side."  And that my grandmother-who-raised-me did not like that. 

Without pictures of the "other side", I just didn't see it.  Heck, even with pictures of the other side, lovingly provided by Cousin Steve, I just didn't see it. I knew I did not look like my mother Joyce but I kind of looked like her brother, my Uncle Marty and yes, you are right, I was in denial.

But when you've been lied to by the adults closest to you, and asked to lie by them as well, to perpetrate a family fraud, lines blur and so do faces. But just recently, a Facebook photo of one of my Osher nephews struck me, and there was no doubt but I could see the resemblance, and with his father, my brother Fred, and with my sister Nora.  If you were to take a picture of us together (and sadly, Fred is gone) you would say we were obviously family.

But wait!  Along came the selfie, and I finally finally FINALLY saw what my Cousin Steve had been trying to tell me two years ago.

Total family freakout.  Yes, I do look like my aunties, my father Mike's sisters, especially my Aunt Helen on the right. I was so shocked by the selfie-in-the-garden that I ran around like a lunatic to find the pictures Steve and Cookie had brought me two years ago (I told you I was in denial).  I had put them in a safe place; so safe, in fact, it took me two hours to find them.

The moral of the story is that it is almost always a bad idea to lie to your children.  I once told Cousin Steve that Cindy Osher had disappeared the end of May, 1962, but I was wrong; she merely went involuntarily underground for the next fifty years.  Bad idea, definitely added to the pathological tendencies I inherited from both sides, but I can't change it.  I am who I am, except now I am whole. Mostly.  I still don't know what Mike looked like.  

More serious stuff: A DCF worker was shot and killed by a parent in Vermont after that parent lost custody of her child. This is so upsetting, I cannot put it into words.  My social service colleagues, the child protective investigators, and the case managers, put their lives at risk every day, yet they are underpaid, overworked, and under-appreciated.  

As an attorney for the Department, I'm not out in the field, like they are, and yet I have had my office windows shot out twice, my identity stolen and used to buy televisions and such, and verbally threatened so that deputies had to escort me out of the courthouse.  I've been followed, screamed at, and pushed (I pushed back).  As bad as that is, the investigators and case managers are at much higher risk, as they are out there, in the field, in people's homes, all alone with nothing but a cell phone. No wonder the turnover rate is so high.  No wonder.

Less serious stuff:  Oh Donald, what have you done? Actually, thank you for putting Megyn Kelly in her place. Hey, I really like Bret Baier and Chris Wallace.  Lately. though Megyn has been coming across like a brittle shrew.  They should have had Greta on that panel. Fox out-foxed themselves.  Pathetic.

I ate the tomato and it was good

I shouldn't have cooked today, but it is hard for me to sit still despite the price I pay.  Because I was active yesterday, spending too much time on my feet, I had a dreadful night, mostly sleepless.  When I did get up, my back was on fire.  Yesterday I was able to eat; today is a whole different story.

While I was checking the Lower Forty today, and harvesting Italian parsley and Thai basil, I noticed that I already had 3 gorgeous okra pods ripening on the plant.  A few more of those and I can start giving serious though to preparing my gumbo. Stay tuned.

So I had a bag of uncooked manicotti tubes staring me in the face from one of my pantries. I always have grating cheese and prepared sauce in the house - basil and parsley in the garden - all I had to do was pick up ricotta - and while I was doing that those cute little pork sausage meatballs jumped into my shopping cart.  It's not a huge amount, but enough for a small family, with dividends.

Pasta, Pork, and Peppers Manicotti

1 pound Italian pork sausage, any casing removed, formed into 12 meatballs

Canola oil, for frying

6 to 10 uncooked manicotti tubes

1-24 oz. jar of your favorite prepared pasta sauce

1-15 oz. container whole milk ricotta (Galbani, if you can find it)

1 extra large egg

1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

pinch white pepper

pinch cayenne pepper

pinch granulated garlic

1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

1 cup shredded pepper jack cheese

1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano

1/2 cup (from a 12 oz. jar) Mancini brand fried peppers, rough chop

1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

1 tablespoon chopped Thai basil

1 cup shredded Parmigiano Reggiano (or other good Parmesan)

Fry the meatballs in canola oil; remove to a pan and place in the refrigerator to cool down.

Place the manicotti in boiling water that has had a tablespoon of salt and some oil added to it. Reduce the heat setting to Low, cover the pot and time for 9 minutes.  Remove each cooked manicotti with a slotted spoon and place in a large bowl half filled with ice and cold water.  When the manicotti are cooled down, carefully move them to paper towels to drain. Save some of the cooking water. If you are lucky, you will have 6 relatively intact cooked manicotti.  If you have more, go ahead and use them.  I had 8 out of the 9 - good catch.

Prepare the filling: in a large mixing bowl combine the ricotta, egg, salt, peppers and granulated garlic. Mix well to incorporate the egg. Take 6 of the cooked meatballs and chop into smaller pieces. Add the chopped meatballs, along with the pepper jack, Romano, and fried peppers, and stir gently to fully combine. Finally fold in the parsley and basil.

Cover the bottom of an aluminum baking pan with some of the sauce thinned with some of the pasta water.  Fill the manicotti tubes with the ricotta mixture.  Place each filled manicotti on top of the sauce. Eight manicotti will fit comfortably in the pan.  Spread any leftover filling across the manicotti.

Thin the remaining sauce with more of the pasta water, and pour over the manicotti, covering all of the exposed pasta.  Optional:  slice the remaining meatballs and place them on top of the manicotti.  Do the same with some of the fried pepper pieces. Cover the top of the casserole with the Parmesan cheese. Bake in a 350 degree preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes.

Garnish with chiffonade of fresh basil, if you're that kind of person.

From Superstitious to Sentimental - Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

I freely admit that I am sentimental to the point of occasional stupidity.  Which is why I have So Much Stuff that I can't bear to get rid of, like the pink pan in this photo.  It was my grandmother's and always sat on her stovetop for boiling water. (I hope that someday Cory feels the same about the white and blue Corning Ware kettle sitting there.)   I'm sure I could get a guest shot on "Hoarders", but I would end up having to call my friend Donna to represent me on charges of assault, battery, and maybe worse, if anybody from the show tried to discard My Stuff.

That's how The Rabbi ended up on the wall, even though this painting was never part of My Stuff, and I don't particularly care for it.  Sentimentality is a slippery slope, my friends.  All it took was a piece of paper with Robert's name written on it in a slightly shaky, unfamiliar hand, taped to the back of the painting, and the sentimentality gene kicked in. So there he is, and there he'll stay.

Grandma Morris

With James' irreplaceable help, we got a whole lot more of our pictures hung up.  First, we hung The Grandmas.  The fact that I'm still shlepping them around and hanging them with reverence is just more of that sentimentality jazz.

Grandma Albert

I come by the sentimentality thing (and the superstitious thing) honestly. I was raised by my grandparents, both of whom were, in their own ways, deeply spiritual people, and this belief in Something Else Out There was the source of a lot of their funny ways.  Both were firmly convinced that red was a lucky color, and a red ribbon would ward off evil spirits. A bittersweet story - Pop had been fighting colon and abdominal cancer for 16 months when he had to be admitted to the hospital yet again.  He was there for a week, and then he passed away in his blessedly drug-induced sleep. When I went to pack up his belongings, I found the outfit he had worn to go to the hospital.  Everything, with the exception of his underclothes, was some shade of red. Now it was certainly true that the red clothes did not ward off the evil spirit, so that he could survive the cancer, but it did keep the kinehora at arm's length long enough for me to get down to Florida to see him and say goodbye.

Mom was the same way; she loved mystic stuff, tarot card readings, and was convinced she had some sort of paranormal abilities.  She believed in the power of the color red, was nuts about keeping hats off of beds, and was sentimental to a fault.  Between the two of them they were a mess, to tell you the truth, but they did manage to pull themselves together, sentimentally speaking, and commissioned the two portraits of their mothers, to be done from very old, very precious photos.  Their sentimentality brought them together when so many other things pulled them apart, and those portraits hung side by side in their home until Pop was gone, Mom had to be moved to assisted living, and their condo had to be dismantled for good.  Since then, I am the Keeper of the Grandmas, and have hung them faithfully in each of my homes.  Sentimental slob that I am, I always feel better when they are both glaring down at me.  I'm not sure anyone else shares my attachment, and I am pretty sure that when I'm gone, the portraits are going with me ... wherever.

In addition to the Rabbi and the Grandmas, James hung up a whole bunch of stuff for us, and I have to admit it's beginning to look a lot like home. And office. More office than home, at least this trip.

There was more, but you get the idea.  That's still my front door, and I like walking in through it.  Thank you James, as always, great job.

Serious stuff: Yesterday, a jury in Colorado sentenced the Aurora Theatre killer to life without possibility of parole.  I know that a number of people, including victims' family members, are disappointed, but, for what it is worth, in my opinion, it is the correct sentence.  Somewhere along the line, while I was revising my personal opinion on abortion, my opinion regarding capital punishment changed as well. Not because I don't have a big streak of bloodthirsty in my make-up, but because I truly believe that we (we, the People, we, the innocent, we, the victims) are better than that.  (I also have a huge concern regarding improper convictions of innocent parties, but that doesn't apply here). We do not have to kill to punish. We (should) value Life above all else.  Besides, taking a killer's sorry ass life can NEVER be sufficient repayment for what that killer has taken from the victims and their families.  Life in prison without parole is a pretty stiff sentence.  Perhaps it is not enough, but it is the strongest we can impose. And that's my opinion.

The past two days, I've given you recipes for cookies, including The Very Best Butter Cookie.  Let me say, for the record, that if I could bake - and eat - only one cookie for the rest of my life, it would be this butter cookie. But if I was granted the boon of baking the same two cookie recipes for the next 30 or so years, until God calls me home to Brooklyn - you didn't think I was going to Heaven, did you? - my second choice would be this Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Sidebar - Rob is watching "Sharknado III" and all hell has broken out at Universal Studios Orlando. Since I pass Universal every time I drive to my therapist's office, this is bound to give me nightmares once a week, every week.  This movie is so bad it's good in a really sick way.  In the meantime, I'm dancing around in my kitchen while listening to Jefferson Starship.  Should be giving my neighbor an eyeful.  Enjoy it, honey, usually you're watching me throw up.

Back to the cookies - they are so good, your tongue will slap your brains out (I've been living down south much too long).  I ate two right out of the oven - anorexia, my ass.  These came out so good, I surprised myself.  For some reason I made them by hand.  Oh hell, I was just too lazy to dig out the stand mixer or wash the beaters from the hand mixer.  So I did the whole thing by hand, wooden spoon, and rubber spatula.  Three batches, fast and easy thanks to the aluminum foil trick I learned from Maida Heatter 40 years ago.  You know how I am about aluminum.

I can't take credit for the recipe, and don't scream when you see the list of ingredients which is mercifully short.  All you need to know is that it works like a dream.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 stick butter, softened to room temperature

1-8 oz. bar Philadelphia cream cheese, softened to room temperature 

1 extra large egg

1/2 teaspoon real vanilla extract

1-18 oz. package yellow cake mix

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup milk chocolate chips

Cream together the butter and cream cheese until smooth and lump-free.  Blend in the egg and vanilla. Add the dry cake mix, one-third at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Mix in the chocolate chips. Cover the dough and chill for at least 30 minutes.

You will need 3 pieces of aluminum foil large enough to cover your cookie sheet.  With a medium sized scoop, portion out 12 to 14 cookies for the first sheet of foil and slide the cookie sheet underneath it. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 11 to 12 minutes.  While the first cookies are baking, portion out the remaining dough on the other 2 pieces of aluminum foil.

Remove the baked cookies from the oven and cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, no more.  Check the bottom of one cookie; it should be light/medium brown.  Remove the finished cookies to a cooling rack, and allow the cookie sheet for a few minutes before sliding it under the second piece of foil. Repeat the procedure until all 3 sheets have been baked.  With the medium scoop, I got 41 cookies.

Utter cookie perfection.  Thank you Betty Crocker.

Peace, Love, and TPR - Maple Oatmeal Macaroons

Happy day, and for you folks still doing the old 9 to 5, thank goodness it's Friday.  I've got cookies and cats and Pandora knock-offs and as always, a back story.

#spooniegotthestory

Oh, for CRYING OUT LOUD!  Anakin Skywalker, what's your boggle??? This cat, the Only Cat, actually backed  into the narrow space between the baking sheet and the cookies.  He never bothers the cookies, or touches them, or even sniffs at them.  He just poses for pictures with them.  Any ideas on how to keep him off the stove top?                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Incidentally, did anyone not watch the Republican debates last night? What did you all think about Carly Fiorina?

I am a superstitious lady, which flies in the face of my many years of scientific and legal training.  I am supposed to be logical, but I freely admit to belief in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis. I believe in ghosts - hell, I live with some of them - and I also believe in the power of Jewish kinehora and Italian malocchio and Greek matiasma.  I always have a red ribbon attached somewhere inside my car. (The one time I did not get a red ribbon attached to one of our cars, we got hit by a deer.)  I never put a hat on my bed. I always hang mezuzot on the outside door frames of my house and office.  (Yes, I know that it is a Jewish commandment, but it's one I choose to follow because of my superstitious nature.  There are 613 commandments, and I've broken or ignored most of them, but not that one).  Like other superstitious people of any culture, I attach a good deal of significance to certain symbols which are said to keep away the evil eye, or ward off evil spirits.

The reason I bring this up is I suddenly and unexpectedly decided to pick one of my Highly Symbolic Bracelets to wear.  The last few years of daily working I was rigidly ritualistic about wearing one or more of my bracelets to the office and court. I was falling apart, slowly and gracefully at first, quick and dirty at the end, and I needed all the help I could get.

On the right wrist I always wore the Serenity Prayer bracelet that I found in Hobby Lobby of all places, and a two-tone three-heart bracelet which always represented my family to me. The left wrist has been for a rotating selection depending on my mood and circumstance.  And today I wanted to wear one, and that indicated to me that I might actually live through this.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I was worthy of protection.  I was practically giddy for about a minute. Felt good. #spooniehasntgottimeforthepain  (The little cylinder is worn around my neck and is especially precious to me, but that's another blog post, and there's another bracelet to the story).

Today I chose the all-red bracelet, my own personal kinehora bendel, designed to ward off evil spirits.  I designed it to have every lucky amulet I could get my hands on, and of course every bead is red (the little purple dog at the end symbolizes fibromyalgia, hiss boo.) So I had a pretty good day.  Pain, yes indeed, my back and legs are on fire, but I had ibuprofen and a comfortable chair to make it bearable. Maybe there really is hope, for days that are less painful, days when the dementors leave me alone.

The bracelet immediately above the red one is my favorite, and I wear it the most often.  It symbolizes my support for victims of HIV/AIDS, heart disease, child abuse, fibromyalgia, breast cancer, and lymphoma. I have my reasons.  And the one above that is ...well, can't you see it? It's my Orlando Magic bracelet!  I wear it whenever my team plays.  Do they win?  Nah, but I feel good for supporting them.

I haven't had to do any heavy cooking the past few days, which gave me time to bake a few batches of cookies. Yesterday was for the butter cookies, today was all about these cute little macaroons, and ... oh.  That black bracelet on top of the post?  That is a dual-purpose bracelet; I wore it whenever I was in a bad mood - and for every TPR (termination of parental rights) trial I prosecuted.  And I had a lot of them.  I was also in a bad mood a good deal of the time.  When those two coincided, I dressed in all black AND wore the bracelet, because I was in serious mourning for my sanity.

Back to the cookies - this is another ridiculously easy recipe.  No flour, no leavening agent, no beaters. You mix this up in a saucepan.

Maple Oatmeal Macaroons

1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
a dash of salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup dried currants
1 extra large egg, beaten with a fork

In a small saucepan, melt the butter.  Stir in the maple syrup, salt, and cinnamon.  Add the oats, coconut, and currants.  Take the saucepan off the heat and allow it to cool down.  Stir the beaten egg in to the oatmeal mixture.

Place a silpat on a cookie sheet and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Drop small scoops of the dough onto the cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Cool the macaroons for about 5 minutes and then remove them to a rack to finish cooling.

This is one of those recipes when it is important to use real maple syrup.  Also, the currants really make the cookie.   If you can't find zante currants - difficult even during the Christmas cookie-baking season - you can use raisins, but the cookie is just not the same.  If you have access to a Whole Foods, you can find the currants in the bulk foods section.

When you're hot, you're hot - The Very Best Butter Cookies

No cats were harmed in the making of this blog post

And when you're not, you're still hot.  This is Florida, mind you.  Here in Central Florida, we have two seasons - summer and winter - and winter lasts for three weeks.  I have lived here for almost 24 years, and I do not own a winter coat. 

Heat tolerance is a relative thing, and it was my relative, Aunt Ceil, who explained it to me a very long time ago.  She told me that after two years, your body adjusts to the heat - she stated "your blood thins out" - and with that, you would be able to tolerate constant high temperatures.  Of course, as I have found to my sorrow, you also lose the ability to tolerate cold.  The coldest spot in Kissimmee is in front of the new courthouse in January, in other words, down the block from here. With the wind that gets caught in the space formed by both courthouses and the county administration building, we have a real wind chill factor.  Maybe 45 degrees. A New Yorker would laugh at me - heck, 30 years ago I would have laughed at myself - but once the temperature dips below 50, it starts to feel chilly.

So as we speak, it is only 81, or maybe it is 84 already, but still, good temperatures to be outside pulling weeds.

I know there are several people, who reading this, are shaking their heads and muttering, say what?  I was always hypersensitive to heat, and anything over 75 was uncomfortable.  When I was nine years old, spending my third summer at Camp Anawana, I passed out during a line-up.  Hit the deck.  Weird feeling, first time I remember ever having that happen.  It was blazing hot, the humidity was high, and it was all too much for that chubby little body.  I was embarrassed, but I got an ice pop out of the deal, so I got over it.

Around 1976, when I was a single girl with an apartment (!) and a strained budget, my father, may his memory be for a blessing, took pity on me during that terrible summer and gave me money so I could ride the express bus from Howard Beach to Manhattan.  I thought it was because of the wretched heat, which Pop knew destroyed me on a daily basis.  It was only later that it occurred to me his concern might also have something to do with 1976 being the Summer of Sam.  New York, I love this town!

We didn't have ghosts or Sumarian demi-gods, but we did have a serial killer, and he (David Berkowitz aka Son of Sam) had all of us in a tizzy. A well-founded tizzy.  True, he was targeting young couples, and I wasn't part of a couple, being between husbands, but I was a young and temporarily attractive female, and back then we didn't have "Criminal Minds" around to tell us that a serial killer stays true to his profile.  

Another time ... okay this is the last one ... this was also in the mid-seventies.  There I was, a native New Yorker who had never been to the Statue of Liberty.  My friends Mark and Sandy had invited me for a day of fun, checking out odd lines of the subway (Mark and I are both subway aficionados), on our way to the southern tip of Manhattan for the ferry ride to Liberty Island.  Halfway up the stairs, the heat and closeness of the structure got to me, and I started to hit the deck when Sandy caught me.  Between the two of them, they got me out of there and I started to feel better; fresh air and Moo Shu Pork did the rest.  I have fond memories of that day. Good times.

So I was saying that it is a good day to garden, except the golden moment passed, and now it's not.  Rob and I went out to do some necessary shopping, and by the time we got back things had changed somewhat.

Clearly, there was nothing else to do but bake cookies. Not just any cookie, mind you, but The Very Best Cookies In The World.  These are my mother-in-law's butter cookies.  I first tasted them when I was dating Rob, circa 1972 (oh yes), and continued to consume them in impressive quantities through our engagement and first marriage.  When Rob and I separated in 1975, I was devastated.  Besides feeling like my life was destroyed, I had never gotten that cookie recipe from my mother-in-law.  I tried to find a recipe that would come close, but to no avail.

Eventually, Robert and I came to our senses and remarried, and as a splendid bonus, I finally got that recipe.  It is not true that I remarried to get that recipe ... but it didn't hurt.  (Just kidding, sweetheart.)

Rob and I, his brothers, and all my ex-sisters-in-law call these Mom's Butter Cookies.  The cooking grandchildren, my nieces Mara and Adina, call them Grammie's Butter Cookies.  Simpler, then, to call them "The Very Best Butter Cookies In The World."  Because they are.

Cat on a Hot Glass Stove

So while I'm working on the cookies, I had a visitor.  He's black, he's white, he's short, and he's entirely too fond of the heat given off by the oven.

The recipe is easy, the list of ingredients short, but you must follow the instructions precisely to produce this ethereal treat.  Trust me.

Mom's Butter Cookies (aka The Very Best Butter Cookies in the World)

1/2 pound butter (not margarine or any other substitute. Real dairy butter or nothing.)

1/2 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (the real stuff)
3 cups sifted flour
strawberry jam, or apricot preserves

First and foremost: bite the bullet and sift the damn flour.  If you don't, if you believe that the flour is "presifted", you will end up with dry and heavy cookies. You have been warned.

Second and nextmost: yes, these are thumbprint cookies, but if like me you have acrylic fingernails, don't bother trying to use your thumb or any other digit.  Instead, haul out the hardware:

You're also going to need a stand mixer or hand mixer.  Cream the butter; add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy.  Add the egg yolks and the vanilla, and beat everything together.

Now add the flour in 3 or 4 batches, mixing well to incorporate it.  If you have been using a hand mixer, you may need to incorporate the last batch of flour by hand.

No, seriously, BY HAND.  Time to play with your food.  Wash those hands and dive right in.

#spooniemeanswhatspooniesays

Place the cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least five minutes.  With a small scoop, make balls about one inch in diameter.  Roll them between your hands, and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Make an indentation with your thumb, a tomato shark, or a round-bottomed 1/4 teaspoon measure, and then fill with the jam.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10-18 minutes. With a spatula, remove to a cooling rack.

You're welcome.