Don A, the other Don A who is now down in Florida for the winter, sent me a bunch of information about stuffed olives after seeing my little taunt about the very good appetizer Rebecca made for Christmas Eve.
Rebecca said her appetizer was "stuffed olives"; but actually it was little meatballs stuffed with pitted olives. Then she proceeded to argue that her little meatball recipe was the authentic one and that my memory of the olive being on the outside of the meat filling was faulty. This article sent me by Don is one more proof that she was wrong:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/preserved/2009/04/08/ascoli-piceno/
I suppose it's not surprising that Rebecca stubbornly maintained and defended her mistaken view despite the evidence, for Grandpop L used to periodically tell a joke that went like this:
Question - What's worse than having a dead body in the living room?
Answer - Having a stubborn Marche' knocking at the door.
The implication, of course, is that Marche's in general are a stubborn lot, impossible to get rid of. And Rebecca, of course, is three-eighths Marche' by the following calculation.
Grandmom and Grandpop L were both Marche's from Ascoli Piceno, as was Grandpop A. That makes Rebecca's dad three-fourths Marche. Grandmom A was not from Ascoli Piceno - she was born "a Muro Lucano" according to her birth certificate, which is in the L side electronic picture file I sent you a couple of years ago if you had a need for the family pictures.
"A Muro Lucano" means - well perhaps that will be your homework assignment. I figured out what it means many years ago before Al Gore invented this internet thingy, with the help of a librarian, much to Mom's irritation. Find and rattle your family own skeletons if you want to.
Speaking of family skeletons, there is evidence in the family picture album of at least two instances that prove Shakespeare was very right for all the ages when he wrote the best known line in Troilus and Cressida.
Now to other matters:
It's as cold as a brass bra on a witch's tit out there, as Pop and a friend of mine from Missouri named Randy often used to say at this time of year. A very useful quote which will stay useful for a lifetime.
Pop also used to say "another year shot to hell" each year on or after New Year's Day just as he would always say "another summer shot to hell" on or just after Labor Day each year. Not that he brooded on those things. Pop was a very optimistic person, perhaps the most naturally optimistic person I've ever met. Also just after New Year's Day, regarding the cold winter, which he most definitely did not like he always used to say "we're over the hump, it's all downhill from here." Pop managed to see the light at the end of every tunnel of life earlier than anybody else could see it. And he was optimistic about that light even after it became clear that the light might be an approaching train.
Don't go through life brooding about the approaching train that's gonna get you in the end no matter what you do. Most of the time the light is actually the other end of the tunnel, and even when the light is a train you may as well meet that train in a good mood, enjoying life until the moment it gets you.
I generally make my dentist appointments for 8:20 in the morning in part because the dentist usually has on the Philly radio station that has played the Monty Python song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at about 8:30. Life is too short to go through as a brooding mope.
In other news: Samuel came by last evening Samuel to give me and Linda a presentation on the knives he's selling. A very interesting presentation, and we bought some of his knives to complement the very fine ones Alex and Christina gave us for Christmas. After his presentaion we spent some time over coffee and discussion of David Serdaris's books and of the Oxford English Dictionary, of all things because Samuel said he was interested in books that contain interesting historical information, so I pulled out The Profession and the Madman to give to him.
The madman in the book made the best of his unfortunate situation, being in an insane asylum for life due to an unfortunate crime or two, by making himself the most prolific contributor to the OED. The professor in the book, on the other hand, spent twenty years of his life being grateful for the many contributions being made by mail by a certain fellow and didn't learn that the fellow was in an insane asylum until he decided to visit the recluse and thank him in person.
Here's a piece of advice for you younger married folks. There are a lot of things one must tolerate in life because they're impossible to avoid. And then there are other things one tolerates because of sheer foolishness. We, for instance, have been using a drawer full of annoyingly dull knives all our life because we were too foolish to buy decent knives way back when. This doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money all at once on good knives. But it does mean you should judiciously accumulate good quality stuff in those areas of life where you can purchase something that will truly last a lifetime.
If anybody is interested in books send me an email detailing the kinds of books you like along with your mailing address. If I have a book or two or a dozen that I think you will like I'll either put it aside for you or mail it to you - media mail is very cheap. My email address is sully(mylastname) at AOL dot com.
Showing posts with label Rebecca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rebecca. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
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
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
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Pizzles, Pogo Sticks and Pogo Possum
Pizzles. The women made pizzles during the cookie baking a few weeks ago. I'm speechless. Well, perhaps I'm not completely speechless.
We went over to Sam and Deb's for Christmas dinner. First off I saw Deb's sister Donna put a pat of butter on the mashed potatoes we brought. I hope her cholesterol numbers are well under control. Eight pounds of potatoes. Two teaspoons of salt. About half a teaspoon of pepper. Three quarters of a pound of butter. And a little milk which wasn't needed. The potatoes were just a bit too creamy; but they almost all went. And the only quibble was by Marianne who just had to get in a little dig.
After dinner I told Sam that he was completely off base on Christmas Eve when he asserted in his typical no-doubt-about-it fashion that the Pogo Stick was named after the Pogo comic strip. It sounded shaky to me at the time, so I looked it up. The Pogo Stick was patented in 1919; while the Pogo Possum comic strip didn't start til the 1940's.
Sam, of course, reacted to being trapped by trying to switch fields. He lamely claimed that the Pogo comic strip was named after the Pogo Stick. But I had already foreclosed that escape by looking up the info on the comic strip. No mention of any Pogo Sticks; but lots of mention of the writer choosing names to go with the type of animal. So the possum's name is Pogo for onomatopoetic reasons, not bouncing reasons. Besides, who would ever envision a sluggish waddling possum bouncing like a person on a Pogo Stick? If the character was named Pogo Pronghorn it would perhaps make sense to think that it was derived from a Pogo Stick; but thinking that of Pogo Possum doesn't make a lick of sense.
So I was up two points on Sam. And I still haven't gotten around to checking on whether Volare is the only foreign language song ever to get to number one on the Pop charts. Sam claims we saw that song sung on the Ed Sullivan show with Uncle Angelo that time when Mom and Pop were gone for a week and Aunt Tavia and Uncle Angelo were babysitting us. I tend to believe Sam in this case because he's pretty good with family stories; although the Volare flourish is just the sort of thing he would gratuitously embroider into a story. Sam's not a just-the-facts guy like me. Anyway, it's also intriguing to wonder where Mom and Pop went that time. And just now I realize where Mom and Pop went that time. The only other time I can remember anybody moving in to babysit us was when Grandmom and Grandpop L came up to take over while Mom was in the hospital having Marianne. But that's a story for another time. I have to get to the pizzles.
A bit later Hobbs was being cute, playing his well practiced "I want a treat" game. Have I ever mentioned that Hobbs runs that house? Anyway, Sam suggested to Deb that she give him one of the pizzelles, "He likes the pizzelles," Sam said. So Deb goes in the dining room and gives Hobbs his treat. Then she comes out and reports that she gave Hobbs a pizzle; at which Sam, Deb, Dolores and Marianne laugh. It's clearly an inside joke; but the combination of the pronunciation with the fact of Hobbs getting a treat has rung a bell for me even though some coincidences are just too incredible to occur; and at that point even I wasn't fully connecting all the dots, at least not consciously. So I spell out P-I-Z-Z-L-E and ask if that's how they're spelling the word.
They explained that they're laughing because Rebecca, whose last name will not be mentioned to spare her embarrassment, had her pizzelle recipe labelled "pizzles" when she came to the cookie baking to make them. It also turns out that the inside joke people are laughing because they found the mis-spelling funny; but they're unaware that the joke goes deeper. So I point out that I could be wrong - I was wrong on a vocabulary question one time in the 1980's and I was wrong on a simple word spelling question one time in the 1950's, onstage at a spelling bee unfortunately - but I'm pretty sure a pizzle is the particular body part that connects a bull and a cow when they're in a romantic frame of mind and endeavoring to make a new little cow or bull.
None of them have heard of this meaning, even though I know for a fact that Sam has read Commanche Moon by Larry McMurtry. The word is used in there, quite memorably in a sentence uttered by Captain Inish Scull that I could come close to quoting if this weren't a family blog. The relevant phrase is ". . . a Dalrymple pizzle." I haven't googled that but it may work if someone has extracted memorable quotes from the book.
They're all doubting me so much that Deb even gets up and checks their dictionary; and she finds that pizzle isn't in their dictionary. So now even I'm doubting. But understand me. I'm not doubting the existence and meaning of the word. I'm doubting the quality of Sam and Deb's dictionary. And, just a little part of me is thinking that maybe I have the spelling wrong, even though I can visualize that sentence in Commanche Moon.
So when I got home I checked on the web, and sure enough there it is. Pizzle is not only a word, it's a pretty old word; and it's primary meaning is just what I thought. Not only that; but one of its other meanings, as a name brand for dog treats, explains why I perked up when Deb returned and mentioned that she had given Hobbs a pizzle.
Rebecca has a dog. I need to remember to buy a treat for him next Christmas. Maybe I'll pick up one for Hobbs too.
We went over to Sam and Deb's for Christmas dinner. First off I saw Deb's sister Donna put a pat of butter on the mashed potatoes we brought. I hope her cholesterol numbers are well under control. Eight pounds of potatoes. Two teaspoons of salt. About half a teaspoon of pepper. Three quarters of a pound of butter. And a little milk which wasn't needed. The potatoes were just a bit too creamy; but they almost all went. And the only quibble was by Marianne who just had to get in a little dig.
After dinner I told Sam that he was completely off base on Christmas Eve when he asserted in his typical no-doubt-about-it fashion that the Pogo Stick was named after the Pogo comic strip. It sounded shaky to me at the time, so I looked it up. The Pogo Stick was patented in 1919; while the Pogo Possum comic strip didn't start til the 1940's.
Sam, of course, reacted to being trapped by trying to switch fields. He lamely claimed that the Pogo comic strip was named after the Pogo Stick. But I had already foreclosed that escape by looking up the info on the comic strip. No mention of any Pogo Sticks; but lots of mention of the writer choosing names to go with the type of animal. So the possum's name is Pogo for onomatopoetic reasons, not bouncing reasons. Besides, who would ever envision a sluggish waddling possum bouncing like a person on a Pogo Stick? If the character was named Pogo Pronghorn it would perhaps make sense to think that it was derived from a Pogo Stick; but thinking that of Pogo Possum doesn't make a lick of sense.
So I was up two points on Sam. And I still haven't gotten around to checking on whether Volare is the only foreign language song ever to get to number one on the Pop charts. Sam claims we saw that song sung on the Ed Sullivan show with Uncle Angelo that time when Mom and Pop were gone for a week and Aunt Tavia and Uncle Angelo were babysitting us. I tend to believe Sam in this case because he's pretty good with family stories; although the Volare flourish is just the sort of thing he would gratuitously embroider into a story. Sam's not a just-the-facts guy like me. Anyway, it's also intriguing to wonder where Mom and Pop went that time. And just now I realize where Mom and Pop went that time. The only other time I can remember anybody moving in to babysit us was when Grandmom and Grandpop L came up to take over while Mom was in the hospital having Marianne. But that's a story for another time. I have to get to the pizzles.
A bit later Hobbs was being cute, playing his well practiced "I want a treat" game. Have I ever mentioned that Hobbs runs that house? Anyway, Sam suggested to Deb that she give him one of the pizzelles, "He likes the pizzelles," Sam said. So Deb goes in the dining room and gives Hobbs his treat. Then she comes out and reports that she gave Hobbs a pizzle; at which Sam, Deb, Dolores and Marianne laugh. It's clearly an inside joke; but the combination of the pronunciation with the fact of Hobbs getting a treat has rung a bell for me even though some coincidences are just too incredible to occur; and at that point even I wasn't fully connecting all the dots, at least not consciously. So I spell out P-I-Z-Z-L-E and ask if that's how they're spelling the word.
They explained that they're laughing because Rebecca, whose last name will not be mentioned to spare her embarrassment, had her pizzelle recipe labelled "pizzles" when she came to the cookie baking to make them. It also turns out that the inside joke people are laughing because they found the mis-spelling funny; but they're unaware that the joke goes deeper. So I point out that I could be wrong - I was wrong on a vocabulary question one time in the 1980's and I was wrong on a simple word spelling question one time in the 1950's, onstage at a spelling bee unfortunately - but I'm pretty sure a pizzle is the particular body part that connects a bull and a cow when they're in a romantic frame of mind and endeavoring to make a new little cow or bull.
None of them have heard of this meaning, even though I know for a fact that Sam has read Commanche Moon by Larry McMurtry. The word is used in there, quite memorably in a sentence uttered by Captain Inish Scull that I could come close to quoting if this weren't a family blog. The relevant phrase is ". . . a Dalrymple pizzle." I haven't googled that but it may work if someone has extracted memorable quotes from the book.
They're all doubting me so much that Deb even gets up and checks their dictionary; and she finds that pizzle isn't in their dictionary. So now even I'm doubting. But understand me. I'm not doubting the existence and meaning of the word. I'm doubting the quality of Sam and Deb's dictionary. And, just a little part of me is thinking that maybe I have the spelling wrong, even though I can visualize that sentence in Commanche Moon.
So when I got home I checked on the web, and sure enough there it is. Pizzle is not only a word, it's a pretty old word; and it's primary meaning is just what I thought. Not only that; but one of its other meanings, as a name brand for dog treats, explains why I perked up when Deb returned and mentioned that she had given Hobbs a pizzle.
Rebecca has a dog. I need to remember to buy a treat for him next Christmas. Maybe I'll pick up one for Hobbs too.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night
I've been told that some folks have been wondering why I haven't posted anything here for a while. Part of the truth is that my laptop, on which I'm writing this, has a virus that has been causing it to crash regularly. Another part of the truth is that I've been immersed in a couple of pretty good novels. And the final part of the truth is that I've started several blog entries that haven't worked.
So, I'd be working on a frustrating blog entry and the laptop would crash. And when the laptop crashed I would use it as an excuse to pick up one of the novels. Then when I returned to the laptop after it restarted, I would find myself facing the still unsatisfactory blog entry. So I would try a new start for it, or a new middle, or a new end, and then the laptop would crash again. And I would go off to one of the novels again.
The two novels were Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven, which I finished a couple of days ago and Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, which I finished an hour or so ago. Both were excellent, but now they're done. I plan to loan Playing for Pizza to Sam and Jas because it's about football, Italians and food; but Fleet of Worlds will go up on the shelf with the other science fiction since nobody around here likes science fiction.
We had a great Christmas Eve gathering here earlier even though we missed Al R and Angela. Al's down in Florida crowing about the warm temperatures every time we talk to him on Saturday mornings. Angie's out in San Diego waiting on a back operation that's now scheduled for New Year's Eve day, of all the days. Hopefully they'll get to cutting on her back before they get to partying.
Thankfully Catherine and Liana came over to help with the food preparation. Linda and I couldn't have done it without them. There is a tempo necessary to preparing the various fried foods.
Incidentally, the laptop crapped out after the line above and restarted itself. I went out and had a cigarette and read the beginning of The Godfather Returns by some schlemiel named Mark Weingardner. How can it be that the best writer they could hire to continue the godfather saga can't write one tenth as well as Mario Puzo? Well, at least this novel is set in the time of the original novel and uses some of the original characters.
Anyway, we had a great Christmas Eve gathering of the tribe. Marianne and Dave managed to find the old pogo stick I wrote about a few days ago and gave that to me as a Christmas present. I was encouraged to try it out; but I'm not that stupid. Nor was I that drunk. I'm told that Samuel managed to do ten jumps on it when the younger and more foolish folks took it out to the driveway, so the darn thing still works fifty three years after I first got it as a gift. Meanwhile it's now propped out there by the front door, so I'm stuck with it again.
Rebecca brought very serviceable red baccala stew, although it wasn't a hundred percent Aunt Mary style, and Rebecca fessed up to messing with the recipe. Caramelize some tomato paste indeed! Mom would have said "quan de gatsa de mossa." But I think Mom would have approved of the flavor. Also, Rebecca gave Sam a Marche' cookbook which looked interesting. It had what looked like some of the traditional recipes in there. I have to borrow it from Sam and read it.
The fried foods were as delicious as they were unhealthful. And, as usual, the folks ate an unbelievable amount of garlic and oil spaghetti. Some of them corrupted it with a topping of the quite good tomato gravy that Deb brought, but all seemed to enjoy it. There is a segment of the family that refuses to recognize that garlic and oil spaghetti is too good to mess up with tomato sauce.
I'm always amazed when they compliment that spaghetti on Christmas Eve. Just for the record there's nothing magical about why it tasted the way it did. The secret is in the garlic, the fresh instead of dried parsley and the egg noodle spaghetti instead of water based pasta. It's an everything to excess recipe.
One bulb of garlic for each 14 ounce package of egg pasta even though your hands get cramped from chopping so much garlic. Buy a chopper if you don't want your hands to get cramped. Don't cut down on the amount of garlic. And one supermarket bunch of chopped fresh parsley for four packages of pasta, which is how much we went through tonight. Also, a couple of tablespoons of salt at least in the pasta cooking water and a tablespoon or so of salt in the couple of cups of olive oil in which the garlic is cooked until some of it is browning. Forget all that stuff you were told about not overcooking garlic. Some of the garlic has to be overcooked.
Truth to tell, in my own opinion, I could have browned the garlic a bit more than I did tonight. I was a bit too quick to put in the water and parsley. But things were a bit hectic over there what with the four packages of pasta being a bit too much for the size of the cauldron that Kathy loaned us. Also, I was getting a bit tired of cooking by that point, and I had forgotten the garlic and oil for a bit and they were on high. So I panicked a little when I saw the first brown bits and put the water and parsley in maybe a couple of minutes too soon.
So, I'd be working on a frustrating blog entry and the laptop would crash. And when the laptop crashed I would use it as an excuse to pick up one of the novels. Then when I returned to the laptop after it restarted, I would find myself facing the still unsatisfactory blog entry. So I would try a new start for it, or a new middle, or a new end, and then the laptop would crash again. And I would go off to one of the novels again.
The two novels were Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven, which I finished a couple of days ago and Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, which I finished an hour or so ago. Both were excellent, but now they're done. I plan to loan Playing for Pizza to Sam and Jas because it's about football, Italians and food; but Fleet of Worlds will go up on the shelf with the other science fiction since nobody around here likes science fiction.
We had a great Christmas Eve gathering here earlier even though we missed Al R and Angela. Al's down in Florida crowing about the warm temperatures every time we talk to him on Saturday mornings. Angie's out in San Diego waiting on a back operation that's now scheduled for New Year's Eve day, of all the days. Hopefully they'll get to cutting on her back before they get to partying.
Thankfully Catherine and Liana came over to help with the food preparation. Linda and I couldn't have done it without them. There is a tempo necessary to preparing the various fried foods.
Incidentally, the laptop crapped out after the line above and restarted itself. I went out and had a cigarette and read the beginning of The Godfather Returns by some schlemiel named Mark Weingardner. How can it be that the best writer they could hire to continue the godfather saga can't write one tenth as well as Mario Puzo? Well, at least this novel is set in the time of the original novel and uses some of the original characters.
Anyway, we had a great Christmas Eve gathering of the tribe. Marianne and Dave managed to find the old pogo stick I wrote about a few days ago and gave that to me as a Christmas present. I was encouraged to try it out; but I'm not that stupid. Nor was I that drunk. I'm told that Samuel managed to do ten jumps on it when the younger and more foolish folks took it out to the driveway, so the darn thing still works fifty three years after I first got it as a gift. Meanwhile it's now propped out there by the front door, so I'm stuck with it again.
Rebecca brought very serviceable red baccala stew, although it wasn't a hundred percent Aunt Mary style, and Rebecca fessed up to messing with the recipe. Caramelize some tomato paste indeed! Mom would have said "quan de gatsa de mossa." But I think Mom would have approved of the flavor. Also, Rebecca gave Sam a Marche' cookbook which looked interesting. It had what looked like some of the traditional recipes in there. I have to borrow it from Sam and read it.
The fried foods were as delicious as they were unhealthful. And, as usual, the folks ate an unbelievable amount of garlic and oil spaghetti. Some of them corrupted it with a topping of the quite good tomato gravy that Deb brought, but all seemed to enjoy it. There is a segment of the family that refuses to recognize that garlic and oil spaghetti is too good to mess up with tomato sauce.
I'm always amazed when they compliment that spaghetti on Christmas Eve. Just for the record there's nothing magical about why it tasted the way it did. The secret is in the garlic, the fresh instead of dried parsley and the egg noodle spaghetti instead of water based pasta. It's an everything to excess recipe.
One bulb of garlic for each 14 ounce package of egg pasta even though your hands get cramped from chopping so much garlic. Buy a chopper if you don't want your hands to get cramped. Don't cut down on the amount of garlic. And one supermarket bunch of chopped fresh parsley for four packages of pasta, which is how much we went through tonight. Also, a couple of tablespoons of salt at least in the pasta cooking water and a tablespoon or so of salt in the couple of cups of olive oil in which the garlic is cooked until some of it is browning. Forget all that stuff you were told about not overcooking garlic. Some of the garlic has to be overcooked.
Truth to tell, in my own opinion, I could have browned the garlic a bit more than I did tonight. I was a bit too quick to put in the water and parsley. But things were a bit hectic over there what with the four packages of pasta being a bit too much for the size of the cauldron that Kathy loaned us. Also, I was getting a bit tired of cooking by that point, and I had forgotten the garlic and oil for a bit and they were on high. So I panicked a little when I saw the first brown bits and put the water and parsley in maybe a couple of minutes too soon.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Christmas is a comin'
Ha! The New York Times apparently just discovered the merits of organic Christmas trees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/garden/04garden.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
We've had the most organic Christmas trees that it's possible to have ever since Alex and I got Linda to agree to the idea of a big tree and we cut down that fir back beyond the pond several years ago. Rebecca's disapproval when she found out we had cut a forty or fifty foot tree to use the top fourteen feet made my enjoyment of the tree all the better. Note to self - don't let Rebecca find out that I have my eye on an even bigger fir tree that has a nice symmetrical top.
I still remember that first live tree quite well because of Linda's skepticism when we dragged it in and set it up in the living room. It looked a lot bigger inside than it had outside, a lot bigger. I also remember it because the bottom thirty or so feet of it is still over there in the woods. I've had no reason to cut up the trunk because fir gives off too much creosote when you burn it; and the lower branches are still holding the trunk off the ground; so it isn't rotting.
Plus, it bothers me that such a nice straight log is sitting there unused. At one point I was going to remove the branches and use it as a stringer for the bridge; but I ended up using four cedars for the stringers because I thought they would last longer. The upstart is that that's turned out not to be the case. There the fir is, mocking me, still solid each time I whack it with a machete; and the thin ends of a couple of the cedar logs in the bridge are rotting.
I may replace them with oak trunks when I get around to taking apart the bridge and rebuilding it. There are oaks which really should be culled from the grove off to the side of the house and the trunk of the dead english oak hasn't rotted in more than a decade even though it's sitting on the ground. Of course, it's possible that the wood of the white and pin oaks in the grove will not be as rot resistant as english oak.
Come to think of it we should get a carbon credit for cutting that fir tree and leaving it lay in a way which has kept all the carbon in its trunk bound up and out of the atmosphere all these years.
Sadly there will be no live tree this year because Alex won't be home for Christmas. So we're going back to our artificial tree that's been taking up space in the garage for the past few years. Which reminds me that I just got an email from Angie. She's not coming for Christmas this year either. She's going to be recovering from a planned back operation to relieve pressure on a nerve. That means me and Linda are going to be breading and frying on Christmas Eve all alone. . . unless perhaps Liana and Catherine want to help?
Arrgh! It also means no baccala with potatoes, raisins and tomato sauce unless somebody wants to contact Angie for the recipe. There's no way Linda or I will have time to make it on Christmas Eve. I'll provide the baccala if someone wants to make it since I'll be buying and soaking some for the white baccala recipe anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/garden/04garden.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
We've had the most organic Christmas trees that it's possible to have ever since Alex and I got Linda to agree to the idea of a big tree and we cut down that fir back beyond the pond several years ago. Rebecca's disapproval when she found out we had cut a forty or fifty foot tree to use the top fourteen feet made my enjoyment of the tree all the better. Note to self - don't let Rebecca find out that I have my eye on an even bigger fir tree that has a nice symmetrical top.
I still remember that first live tree quite well because of Linda's skepticism when we dragged it in and set it up in the living room. It looked a lot bigger inside than it had outside, a lot bigger. I also remember it because the bottom thirty or so feet of it is still over there in the woods. I've had no reason to cut up the trunk because fir gives off too much creosote when you burn it; and the lower branches are still holding the trunk off the ground; so it isn't rotting.
Plus, it bothers me that such a nice straight log is sitting there unused. At one point I was going to remove the branches and use it as a stringer for the bridge; but I ended up using four cedars for the stringers because I thought they would last longer. The upstart is that that's turned out not to be the case. There the fir is, mocking me, still solid each time I whack it with a machete; and the thin ends of a couple of the cedar logs in the bridge are rotting.
I may replace them with oak trunks when I get around to taking apart the bridge and rebuilding it. There are oaks which really should be culled from the grove off to the side of the house and the trunk of the dead english oak hasn't rotted in more than a decade even though it's sitting on the ground. Of course, it's possible that the wood of the white and pin oaks in the grove will not be as rot resistant as english oak.
Come to think of it we should get a carbon credit for cutting that fir tree and leaving it lay in a way which has kept all the carbon in its trunk bound up and out of the atmosphere all these years.
Sadly there will be no live tree this year because Alex won't be home for Christmas. So we're going back to our artificial tree that's been taking up space in the garage for the past few years. Which reminds me that I just got an email from Angie. She's not coming for Christmas this year either. She's going to be recovering from a planned back operation to relieve pressure on a nerve. That means me and Linda are going to be breading and frying on Christmas Eve all alone. . . unless perhaps Liana and Catherine want to help?
Arrgh! It also means no baccala with potatoes, raisins and tomato sauce unless somebody wants to contact Angie for the recipe. There's no way Linda or I will have time to make it on Christmas Eve. I'll provide the baccala if someone wants to make it since I'll be buying and soaking some for the white baccala recipe anyway.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Death and hamburgers
There are at least eight billion stories I haven't gotten to yet, but the first thing on my agenda right now is to mention Rebecca, since Linda and I saw her and Matt at Sam and Deb's earlier this evening. Mentioning Rebecca, by the way, has nothing to do with the fact that she shamelessly asked to be mentioned. Instead, it has everything to do with the fact that she shamelessly praised this blog, telling me that I have readers I didn't know about in California and in the Tampa area of Florida.
In the course of this Rebecca told me I have a pathologist as a reader, a pathologist who has described me at different times, she reports, as both crazy and brilliant. I'll gladly take both the bitter and the sweet. I would much rather a pathologist judge me crazy after reading this blog than judge me as being past my sell by date after reading a slide of my liver cells. And anyway, everybody knows there's a thin line between genius and insanity. I'm quite content to be thought of as walking close to the line.
Also, Rebecca deserved to be mentioned because she has an unfailing knack of making conversations interesting. Tonight, for instance, we talked of Butch, and of the lion in the Stone Harbor zoo, and of Pop and Uncle Joe Sky. And we talked of a 1911 house trailer with sides of thin bakelite rather than metal. We also talked of sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings before talking about sturm und drang. Most surprisingly, we even talked of immanentizing the eschaton, which very rarely comes up in casual conversation. In fact, I'm very sure it has never come up in conversation in my presence in all of my sixty years. I've read the phrase a few times, and I've written it once in a former blog entry, and I may have spoken it quietly once or twice as a memory aid; but I've certainly never actually said it to someone. I may well be a bit insane, but I'm not that insane.
But I didn't set out to write about any of those things. I set out to write about death and fairness, or more specifically about death and hamburgers. However, first I have to write about Swiss Chard; because that's the whole reason Linda and I had to go up to Sam and Deb's this evening for rice pudding and coffee and conversation in the first place. Sam, you see, grew the most amazing Swiss Chard plant in the history of the world, or at least of Montgomery County, this year; and I noticed it in his garden on Friday night when we went up there for coffee. So I set out to pick it this morning on the way to Corropolese for rolls and bread. At Corropolese, by the way, I also found them to have an excellent new variety of tomato pie with breaded eggplant on it. But I can't talk about that now because I have an important point to get to and mustn't tarry.
But first I have to finish with the darn Swiss Chard. You're probably going to be skeptical, but Sam's prize Swiss Chard plant was at least three feet tall, and the leaves had stems perhaps two inches wide and an inch thick, bigger and better Swiss Chard by far than what they sell in the market. From that one plant and a couple of other somewhat smaller plants I made enough chard by itself to serve as a vegetable for a few meals, plus enough chard, green bean and potato stew to feed me and Linda for dinner, with leftovers enough to feed me at least a couple more times this week - Linda is somewhat resistant to eating the same thing multiple times in a few days; but I'm like Pop in that respect, I can happily eat something I particularly like every day until it's gone. Pop could and would happily eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast lunch and dinner when it was around. Butch was like that too, only his favorite meals all involved meat, which made sense because he was a butcher.
Anyway, there was a lot of chard and a lot of stew left over. And that's even after I took out a couple of generous helpings of each to take up to Sam. Which gets me back to why we happened to be up there this evening to see Rebecca and Matt. I had to go up there to deliver Sam his fair share of the Swiss Chard and stew, and also of the peppers I picked up this morning when I stopped to get the chard. I got the peppers because I did the right thing and told Sam yesterday morning that I was planning to come up and pick the chard since he wasn't picking it. So he told me to take the peppers as well. So I had to bring Sam some roasted peppers as well as the chard.
This is all of a sudden getting boring, or at least it would be getting boring if food could ever get boring; but it's not leading very directly to the point I want to make that started this whole blog entry. So I think I'll write a bit about Rose and Butch.
First off, it was not me that nicknamed them Pruney and Mumbles. I wish I could claim it was me, for the nicknames are as apt and melodious as any pair ever were, but Sam did that; and he and Jas and I have been laughing about them whenever we remember Rose and Butch for the past twenty years. Second, despite contradictory assertions and a certain amount of skepticism held by some parties as to the accuracy of my memory, I still think Linda and Alex and I were at the Stone Harbor zoo in the evening to see the lion that had roared at Johnny and Jenny the evening before when Pop and Mom showed up to tell me and Jas that they were headed home because Butch had died. Third, it was not me who started the story of Butch dying with his boots on, so to speak, by suffering his fatal heart attack while enjoying his customary late night snack of two good sized hamburgers. Sam started that story, repeating what Pop told him, I think, sometimes telling it as a story of tragedy and sometimes as a story of triumph.
But perhaps I'm the one who embroidered it into a story of triumph. Because I'm sad Butch was taken from us in 1986; but I'm determined to believe he got to enjoy to the full those two hamburgers before his head plopped down onto the coffee table and he went the way all of us will go if we're lucky.
Death is bad, sometimes hellishly bad; but I can tolerate the fact that death takes people from us because there's nothing to be done about it. What I can't tolerate is the thought that Butch didn't get to finish the burgers before his head plopped down. None of us can live forever, and only a very select few among us get to plop our head down onto an empty plate; but, dammit, Butch was too big hearted a guy to be cheated out of finishing those last two burgers.
In the course of this Rebecca told me I have a pathologist as a reader, a pathologist who has described me at different times, she reports, as both crazy and brilliant. I'll gladly take both the bitter and the sweet. I would much rather a pathologist judge me crazy after reading this blog than judge me as being past my sell by date after reading a slide of my liver cells. And anyway, everybody knows there's a thin line between genius and insanity. I'm quite content to be thought of as walking close to the line.
Also, Rebecca deserved to be mentioned because she has an unfailing knack of making conversations interesting. Tonight, for instance, we talked of Butch, and of the lion in the Stone Harbor zoo, and of Pop and Uncle Joe Sky. And we talked of a 1911 house trailer with sides of thin bakelite rather than metal. We also talked of sailing ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings before talking about sturm und drang. Most surprisingly, we even talked of immanentizing the eschaton, which very rarely comes up in casual conversation. In fact, I'm very sure it has never come up in conversation in my presence in all of my sixty years. I've read the phrase a few times, and I've written it once in a former blog entry, and I may have spoken it quietly once or twice as a memory aid; but I've certainly never actually said it to someone. I may well be a bit insane, but I'm not that insane.
But I didn't set out to write about any of those things. I set out to write about death and fairness, or more specifically about death and hamburgers. However, first I have to write about Swiss Chard; because that's the whole reason Linda and I had to go up to Sam and Deb's this evening for rice pudding and coffee and conversation in the first place. Sam, you see, grew the most amazing Swiss Chard plant in the history of the world, or at least of Montgomery County, this year; and I noticed it in his garden on Friday night when we went up there for coffee. So I set out to pick it this morning on the way to Corropolese for rolls and bread. At Corropolese, by the way, I also found them to have an excellent new variety of tomato pie with breaded eggplant on it. But I can't talk about that now because I have an important point to get to and mustn't tarry.
But first I have to finish with the darn Swiss Chard. You're probably going to be skeptical, but Sam's prize Swiss Chard plant was at least three feet tall, and the leaves had stems perhaps two inches wide and an inch thick, bigger and better Swiss Chard by far than what they sell in the market. From that one plant and a couple of other somewhat smaller plants I made enough chard by itself to serve as a vegetable for a few meals, plus enough chard, green bean and potato stew to feed me and Linda for dinner, with leftovers enough to feed me at least a couple more times this week - Linda is somewhat resistant to eating the same thing multiple times in a few days; but I'm like Pop in that respect, I can happily eat something I particularly like every day until it's gone. Pop could and would happily eat Pasta Fagiole for breakfast lunch and dinner when it was around. Butch was like that too, only his favorite meals all involved meat, which made sense because he was a butcher.
Anyway, there was a lot of chard and a lot of stew left over. And that's even after I took out a couple of generous helpings of each to take up to Sam. Which gets me back to why we happened to be up there this evening to see Rebecca and Matt. I had to go up there to deliver Sam his fair share of the Swiss Chard and stew, and also of the peppers I picked up this morning when I stopped to get the chard. I got the peppers because I did the right thing and told Sam yesterday morning that I was planning to come up and pick the chard since he wasn't picking it. So he told me to take the peppers as well. So I had to bring Sam some roasted peppers as well as the chard.
This is all of a sudden getting boring, or at least it would be getting boring if food could ever get boring; but it's not leading very directly to the point I want to make that started this whole blog entry. So I think I'll write a bit about Rose and Butch.
First off, it was not me that nicknamed them Pruney and Mumbles. I wish I could claim it was me, for the nicknames are as apt and melodious as any pair ever were, but Sam did that; and he and Jas and I have been laughing about them whenever we remember Rose and Butch for the past twenty years. Second, despite contradictory assertions and a certain amount of skepticism held by some parties as to the accuracy of my memory, I still think Linda and Alex and I were at the Stone Harbor zoo in the evening to see the lion that had roared at Johnny and Jenny the evening before when Pop and Mom showed up to tell me and Jas that they were headed home because Butch had died. Third, it was not me who started the story of Butch dying with his boots on, so to speak, by suffering his fatal heart attack while enjoying his customary late night snack of two good sized hamburgers. Sam started that story, repeating what Pop told him, I think, sometimes telling it as a story of tragedy and sometimes as a story of triumph.
But perhaps I'm the one who embroidered it into a story of triumph. Because I'm sad Butch was taken from us in 1986; but I'm determined to believe he got to enjoy to the full those two hamburgers before his head plopped down onto the coffee table and he went the way all of us will go if we're lucky.
Death is bad, sometimes hellishly bad; but I can tolerate the fact that death takes people from us because there's nothing to be done about it. What I can't tolerate is the thought that Butch didn't get to finish the burgers before his head plopped down. None of us can live forever, and only a very select few among us get to plop our head down onto an empty plate; but, dammit, Butch was too big hearted a guy to be cheated out of finishing those last two burgers.
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