Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

I got five gallons of diesel for the tractor yesterday, so I'm of a mind to wish for snow. This winter has started off well but we need more. We haven't had a really good winter for snow for a few years. Bring it on! I have plenty of wood stored up for the stove.

Now for the subject of Christmas Eve, which Rebecca reminded me of at Sam and Deb's house yesterday before she convinced me that I have to bit the bullet and yank my jammed toe back into proper alignment. . . which I may do once I get up the nerve when Linda isn't around to hear the scream. And then again, I may not. Who declared Rebecca a toe doctor to know whether I should torture myself intensively by yanking at that thing or whether I should simply leave it alone to torture me subtly and naggingly until it gives up?

Enough with the toe. It's mildly throbbing down there; but I have more important things to concern myself with, namely a rant on the general disrespect for tradition among the younger generation.

We deep fry battered vegetables and breaded fish on Christmas Eve because in the proper scheme of things, before the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, no meat was allowed until midnight. This tradition has, of course, been corrupted for many a year by the introduction of red tomato gravy made with meat, which some barbarians insist on putting on my Spaghetti Aglio e' Olio, thus turning it into a fusion cuisine nightmare.

This practice is by no means new. It started in the 1990's, thankfully after Pop was no longer around to see it. Mom, however, was still around, and we had many a discussion about whether it should be permitted, the uneasy compromise being that we would not make the red gravy but would turn a more or less blind eye to its introduction into the house.

This year, however, Rebecca went further. She suggested that she would bring stuffed olives and I agreed to the suggestion in a moment of weakness. Thus did meat, actual meat, impossible to deny, enter the house on Christmas Eve. I agreed, of course, because stuffed olives are perhaps the finest achievement of Italian cuisine, at least in the appetizer category.

But then, when Rebecca brought what she said were stuffed olives they turned out to be olives in the middle surrounded by little meat balls. She made some claim that her dog had eaten the olives meant for stuffing, so she had to revert to pimento stuffed olives. Then she went further and claimed that putting the meat outside of the olives was actually the original Marche' recipe. Sam's Marche' cook book quickly proved that wrong; but it wasn't necessary.

My memory may have degenerated a bit over the years; but this is something impossible to get wrong. I distinctly remember Mom and Aunt Mary discussing the people who used pitted olives and the people who put the meat on the outside of the olive as they spiral cut the olives away from their pits, a fairly delicate task.

I just finished, by the way, a porchetta sandwich on a Corropolese medium kaiser roll. And I'm fairly confident you didn't. There was quite a bit of porchetta left over on New Year's Eve from that 9 pound roast I cooked; but I somehow neglected to give any of it away to the departing guests. I have five containers of it in the freezer, plus the bowl I've been finishing sandwich by sandwich since New Year's day.

Meanwhile, a large flock of starlings is flying and walking around the lawn out there even as a fifteen or so mile an our wind is whipping the 25 degree air around. It's hard to imagine just how those birds survive in this cold. Why don't they go south? They're clearly finding stuff to eat out there on the frozen ground; but wouldn't they find tastier and warmer stuff in Georgia or South Carolina where they would have warmer feet?

Sam and I talked to Al and Jas down in Florida yesterday and they were whining about the temperatures dipping into the fifties during the day. These starlings should be down in Florida annoying them.

There are, however, some small consolations for living up here in the cold. I have the woodstove roaring away in there. Sitting by it as those damned starlings freeze there little feet off because they're too stupid to fly south is one of those consolations.

In other news: Five scientists, no doubt working very hard down in Australia, where it is summer for those of you who are geographically challenged, have figured out how bees land. I was intrigued by this paragraph:

"First the scientists built a bee landing platform that could be inclined at any angle from horizontal to inverted (like a ceiling), then they trained bees to land on it and began filming."

One has to wonder whether it really took five scientists to do that; or whether a couple of those scientists were looking for an excuse to go to Austrialia and catch some rays.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074657.htm

Traditions

Family traditions are important.

Linda and I, for instance, have a tradition of putting a little reminder on the inside of the front door each Monday morning so we don't forget to take the trash out to the curb on Monday evening. This morning we had to search for the hallowed "Trash Tonight" sign because Linda took it off the refrigerator and put it into a drawer as part of her traditional pre Christmas Eve cleanup operation which moves all sorts of things from their normal places to new surprising places. Linda thinks the "Trash Tonight" sign dates from before Aunt Mary R died,. which would make it more than ten years old. That little scrap of notebook paper has made a lot of trips from the refrigerator to the front door and back again over the years, recently accompanied by the blue Mascaro elephant refrigerator magnet. It used to travel in company with the carrot magnet that wasn't quite strong enough to secure it if you put it too close to the swinging open side of the refrigerator door; but the carrot magnet disappeared some time ago. Perhaps it will turn up again in a surprising place one of these days. I wonder if Al Gore is so careful in recycling his "trash tonight" sign so as to avoid putting stress on the planet.

Speaking of Fat Albert, we also have a tradition of eating healthy meals before we get our cholesterol tests so as not to needlessly alarm our doctors. Our blood chemistry is always at its most healthy when we go for our blood tests. We would probably live forever if they gave us blood tests every week, or perhaps if the doctors were smart enough to institute random blood testing procedures. I'll bet a lot of people would be a lot healthier if the doctors set up a system that held the threat of cholesterol tests over their heads like so many personal Swords of Damocles. I picture community service "volunteers" stopping random motorists - "Just the blood sample Ma'am." Maybe Barry will make that part of the brave new world order he hopes to implement.

On that note, the other day Jas charged me with calling President Elect Barack Hussein Obama "Barry" in imitation of Rush Limbaugh. For the record Sam is the Limbaugh fan. I'm very seldom aware of what Rush Limbaugh is saying because I use my car sound system to listen to book tapes. And, even though I tend to agree with much of what he says when I do hear him say things, I'm not a big fan of Limbaugh. He's a bit too forgiving of large corporations for my taste. Large corporations are not in favor of free markets. They are nearly as much in favor of fascist and totalitarian regulations and policies as Barry is because government intrusion in the marketplace almost always squeezes the little guys who threaten the cozy situations of the big guys. That only makes sense because the big guys are the ones who have the most money to buy folks like Barry and/or the regulators he will install to "protect the little guys". But the main point is that I wasn't aware that Rush Limbaugh was calling The One "Barry". For all I know Limbaugh's been imitating me.

But I was talking about Linda's desire to lower her cholesterol level before her blood test. So last night we had Indian food. I made Punjabi Chhole with the help of a spice packet. And I made spinach and potatoes that I made by cutting the top off the pouch it was in and microwaving the disgusting looking mixture which turned out to taste pretty good. The Chhole also turned out pretty darned good despite the fact that I kind of winged it with the proportions.

The Chhole spice packet was intended for a 30 ounce can of garbanzo beans; and it was a pretty disappointing spice packet in that the little print instructions on the back wanted fresh ginger and cilantro. Who keeps fresh ginger and cilantro on hand? And what good is a spice packet that doesn't include all the spices? So I had to go out to the market. And I had to adjust the recipe for a 19 ounce can of garbanzo beans. And I'm pretty disrespectful of recipes in the first place, let alone recipes on traitorously incomplete spice packets, so changes were made; but it turned out very good over Basmati Rice. If you haven't discovered Basmati Rice you need to get a package of it.

In addition Linda made a spinach, clementine segment and cucumber salad with a very good dressing that may never be reproducible because she used a spoonful of the honey mixture from the preserved kumquats we bought in Corfu. I'm doubly glad we took that cruise before the market collapse for a couple of reasons. First off we would definitely have thought twice about the money if we had already observed our 401Ks being ravaged. And secondly, the fact that we had already spent that dough meant that it wasn't in the market to be ravaged. The delights of the cruise are safely in our heads, completely insulated from the vagaries of the stock market. Grandpop L always said that you can't waste money on something that you put in your belly. I would add that you can't waste money on travel and new experiences as long as you don't cut into the assets you need for essentials like Basmati Rice. It's great prepared according to the package directions; but even better if you put a dribble of toasted Sesame oil and a tablespoon or so of Olive Oil in with the cooking water.

There are going to be some interesting meals around here if I remain in this semi-laid off state for a while. Linda got me an Indian cookbook for Christmas so there will soon be no more Indian cooking with spice packets and pouches and little tins of premixed curry powder. One of these days I'm going to go down to that Indian market in Trooper and outfit myself with the genuine individual spices. I may even go all the way and pick up a mortar and pestle.

Perhaps next Christmas Eve we'll have Rijsttafel instead of the traditional Italian foods. Or maybe we'll replace the angel atop the tree with a little Ganesh after New Year's day next year and have Rijsttafel on the fourth day of the next waning moon. Maybe Sam can arrange for someone to wear the Mascaro elephant suit to the party.

I've got to get going now. I need to pick up a couple of pork roasts to make for New Year's Eve, and I need to reserve a couple dozen medium kaiser rolls at Corropolese for pickup that morning. We're having Sam, Deb, Jas, Kathy, Mark and Linda over for porkette, potato salad and some other stuff. Linda's blood sample will be on the way to the lab by then, and my blood test is months away, so cholesterol is not a problem. We'll probably be pretty well behaved anyway because we're eating at 5:00 and we have to be sufficiently recovered to dance by 7:00 since that's when Deb has her church hall reserved. Have I mentioned that Linda and I have retained almost all of the intermediate Rumba moves that Jas and Kathy taught in the last series of lessons up at the Ballroom on High?