The best kind of hot chocolate

I just came in from plowing the driveway. A pretty straightforward job, although this was probably the third or fourth heaviest snow we've gotten since we moved into this house in 1986. Maybe the second heaviest.

When I went out to plow Alex had just called to say he was going walking on the frozen Charles River. When I got back in because my fingers were getting cold, Linda reported that someone had called 911 on him. So Alex was ushered off the Charles by the forces of the law, one cop waiting for him on the other side of the river and another cop waiting for him at the place he set out. Perhaps he will be on the evening news.

Linda told me this tale of the nanny state in action while I was searching for the old Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate mix that Albert gave us a couple of years back. Turned out that Linda had given the hot chocolate mix to Alex at Christmas time to take back to Massachusetts. But all was not lost, for I found a hoary box of Nestle cocoa powder way back on the shelf of the cabinet that should be marked "Here be dragons" or "Terra Incognita" like the empty places on Darwin's maps.

"Best by December 2007" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be used to make hot chocolate in February of 2010. Especially when you have a hankering for hot chocolate on a cold and snowy day after coming in from an arduous job of running the tractor up and down the driveway a half dozen times.

So I set out to make hot chocolate. But first Linda had to insist there was a recipe for it on the box even though I was telling her that there was no recipe on the box. Then she suggested that I consult Joy of Cooking for a recipe. As though I needed a cookbook to tell me that hot chocolate is cocoa and sugar and milk in more or less the right proportions. The Aztecs and the Mayans used to make hot chocolate before cookbooks were invented. They didn't even have milk.

So here I am enjoying the very best sort of hot chocolate; the sort that someone says cannot be made but that nonetheless is made out of suspect ingredients combined by instinct. Unfortunately there were no ancient crusty marshmallows to melt on top of it. But you can't have everything in life.

In case you find yourself in a similar situation the recipe is two heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder, a cup or so of skim milk, a packet of Equal, a healthy shake or two of sugar from the bowl because the spoon is already wet with milk and a clotted mess of cocoa, and a dollop of half and half. The cocoa was difficult to dissolve until after I heated up the whole mess in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

Linda is out sweeping snow off her car. In a few minutes I'll go out and sweep off my car so I can move both of the cars to the plowed portion of the driveway. Then I can finish up the plowing, warmed by world class hot chocolate. Eat your hearts out Aztecs and Mayas.

Life is good. Alex got his walk on the frozen Charles before he could be snared by the forces of the law. And I got my hot chocolate.

We grew up gourmets and never knew it

The yuppies have discovered weeds as gourmet fare. Nine bucks a pound for dandelion! By that measure there's at least ten thousand bucks worth of valuable gourmet salad out there in the lawn right now.

It's hard to believe the author of this article in The Wall Street Journal missed Chima de Rabe. I remedied that with a comment to the article. As I write this I still have two containers of this Spring's rabes in the freezer. And, I happen to be eating a sandwich of boiled ham, rabes that I thawed the other day and a little mayonnaise on slices of Corropolese split loaf. I generally prefer this particular sandwich on a seeded football roll; but we're out of them right now. It used to make Pop crazy when he would see me putting mayonnaise on a sandwich of rabes and ham; but that's not why I still invariably do it.

Also, she specifies two changes of water for boiling Pokes. I can't imagine that Mom or Aunt Mary R did two changes of water, and I certainly never have; which may explain why there have been incidents of rapid necessary movement to the necessaries room related to the consumption of Poke Salad over the years. It's very difficult to resist the temptation to pick larger and larger and leafier and leafier shoots as one gets tired when picking Polks, which also may explain the incidents.

And, she mentions Burdock but doesn't mention that the leaves are poisonous, or at least that's what Mom believed, although the internet seems not to think so. Mom and Grandmom L only used the thick stems of the leaves which they called Cardunes and prepared by battering and deep frying. Next Spring I'm going to pick Cardunes and try to recreate that recipe. As I recall they had a unique flavor somewhat like, but only somewhat like, the battered and fried celery we do at Christmas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124338226000356493.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

And, since I'm on the subject of food, I should mention that Linda and I ate our first Swiss Chard from the garden on Tuesday, probably the earliest that it's ever been ready for picking. We've been eating lettuce for a couple of weeks; but slugs are multiplying and ravaging it now, probably due to the very rainy weather we've been having for the past week or so.

Finally, if you are one of the few people who still actually, you know, like, read, like, books, you may find this article by Ann Kirshner in The Chronicle Review interesting. She tried out all the current modes of reading and listening to Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit to see which she liked better. I can only wish she had gone further into the issue of the differences between sight reading and audio since I find them such distinctly different experiences.

Most interesting paragraph - "Readers are passionate and opinionated advocates for their preferred formats. Flip announced that she reads only hardcovers; end of conversation. "I get it," said Bill, watching me read on the iPhone: "You like your books little." Bob is no Luddite, but he insists that Steve Jobs has bribed me, since the Kindle is so obviously superior. Just wait for the Apple tablet," advises techno-sage Joe. And Judith derides my affection for audiobooks as "not really reading.""

For the record I will only read a hardback if I can't get a paperback. Something about a hardback book intimidates me and causes me to treat it too carefully. I can dog-ear the pages to mark my place or break the binding of a paperback by bending it back to hold in one hand; but I can rarely bring myself to treat a hardback book so cavalierly no matter how cheaply I bought it. And, I find listening to an audio book so different from reading the same book that I will often read an especially good novel immediately after listening to it and vice versa. Also, she doesn't mention the obvious next step, which is to combine audio with a video formatted somewhat like the succession of still pictures that Ken Burns used in his Civil War series on PBS. Soon technology should allow relatively easy mating of period pictures with text. So you could see a street scene related to a passage of audio or a picture of an animal mentioned in an audio passage as you listened, for instance.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i39/39b01601.htm

And, really, really, finally, since I've been on the subjects of yuppies, books, reading and cooking; here's an interesting article by Jennifer Reese on Slate about a book about a whole different way to think about cooking. One suspects that Linda will come home to find something really new and different on the table one of these days; but not 'til after she has endured Lobscouse, which I still haven't gotten around to making even though Alex tried it and praised it pretty highly.

http://www.slate.com/id/2219243/pagenum/all

Mangia, mangia, tuta cosa

Forget about buying cookbooks. Clara Cunnicciari will teach you to cook for free. I'm going to serve Linda her poor man's meal one of these nights, right after I remember to make lobscouse.

The best part about Clara is that she's so absent minded. In her pepper and eggs video she said she never uses a cutting board; in this video she pulls out a cutting board. Also, in this video she tells the same story twice within a couple of minutes. Plus, she makes you cringe from the way she's handling a knife; it's surprising she still has all her fingers at 91 years old.

She'd better hurry and make all the videos she wants to make before the nanny state people take away her knives and disconnect her stove.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA&feature=channel

It's a good time to buy a used boat

I'm open to the idea of someone mooring their boat in our pond, if it's a picturesque one. They can even live aboard it for a nominal rent. And they can keep all the snapping turtles they catch in exchange for an occasional couple of bowls of snapper soup.

Hunters are always trying to give us venison which we don't like; but snapper soup is another thing entirely. I think our edition of The Joy of Cooking has a recipe starting with the necessary cutting off of the head of the snapper with an ax. I'll provide the chopping block and the ax.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?_r=3&hp

Meanwhile, in other news: Detroit is reverting to the wild and there's a wide awake fellow selling skinned raccoons for $12 each. Slick Willy took his woman in 1970; but apparently he didn't take the Coonman's hunting dogs or his down home skills. I like his little touch of leaving one paw on the carcass.

"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."

During the seven or so minute video that accompanies the newspaper article the Coonman channels Julia Child with a nice raccoon cooking demonstration. And that's before he plays and sings a nice blues song that's got a tempo perfect for our level of West Coast Swing skill.

Unfortunately I've only seen raccoons two times since we bought our land in 1978; although there's no question that they're regularly around. Linda just pointed out a raccoon paw print to me down at the creek a few days ago. I may look into learning how to set a snare. That raccoon recipe looked mighty inviting; although I might be tempted to present it to Linda as rabbit if I ever get the chance to try it out.

The Coonman also sells rabbits and squirrels if you happen to be passing through Detroit and want to work up to the raccoon sort of sideways. I bet he would have a field day with the geese around here and up and down along the river drives in Philly.

The quotes from Beasley are priceless. An example - "Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do." That's a fellow I'd like to know.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/904020395/To+urban+hunter++next+meal+is+scampering+by

And, in yet other news, here's a nice, very reasonable, well spoken Arab fellow who wants to come and make an impact on a neighborhood near you.

http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4