A Taste of Home

When my father's mother was nearing the end of her life, I don't know for what particular reason her diet was restricted, but I remember her saying "when I can eat again, all I want is a big slice of rare roast beef."

I don't know why I think of that from time to time. Maybe because as I get older, things don't taste quite the same as they used to and I miss the foods I used to love.  It's strange how many vivid food memories I have.  It's no wonder that I have had a  weight problem all of my life.

Walt went to San Francisco yesterday to go to a symphony matinee and decided to take the train down, so I took him to the train station at 8:30.  On the way home, I stopped at the donut shop and picked up a couple of donuts for breakfast.  I love donuts but almost never buy them, for several reasons -- one because I need them like I need a hole in the head, and two because it means getting up and out in the morning and doesn't seem worth the effort, but whenever I do get donuts at this particular shop, I'm always happy because if you get there early enough the donuts are still warm and so very, very fresh.  

I always think back to my days at UC Berkeley and the mornings we would go to Mass at the Newman center and then walk down to a donut shop nearby where I'd have a couple of warm donuts and hot chocolate.  What a way to start the morning.

My father didn't cook much, but when he did, what he made was memorable.  I have never had a potato salad to match his.  He said the secret was to slice the potatoes very thin, but even with that and adding the onions, mayonnaise, and sweet pickles that he mixed together, I've never been able to recreate that special taste.  I was his "taster" whenever he made potato salad, to let him know if he had the salt right.  My mother occasionally made potato salad, but it was never quite right.

I also remember the first time he made egg nog from scratch.  I can picture myself sitting in the kitchen while he worked in the pantry and gave me a taste of what he was making (without the liquor, of course).  It was like drinking flavored cream and I loved it.

He once made...and I can't remember what they are called, but Italian meat pies.  How he loved Italian food and swore that somewhere in his genes there were Italian ancestors.  But his pies were delicious and I have had them many times in many places, but never as good as the ones he made.

Of course then there were the peanut butter cookies that you had to drink from a glass.  We always teased him about that.  I don't know what he put in the mix, but whatever it was, it had the consistency of milk.

He always wanted the richest and the most calorie filled.  We would occasionally have taste tests where he would sit in our laundry room and open the window into the kitchen and we would give him a taste of two things and he would decide which was the best...it was always the thing that had the most calories.

My mother was a good cook, but mostly cooked "basic" things, though she made the best meatloaf, which try as I might, I have been unable to duplicate.  My cousin Peach had the same complaint.  She loved my mother's meatloaf and could not duplicate it either.  Something about the texture, I think.  I can't get the texture right.

One thing I remember most about my mother's cooking was her chocolate cream roll.  She must have made it often when I was a kid.  It was a chocolate sponge cake that was turned out onto a powdered sugar covered towel after it came out of the oven.  The edges were trimmed off (Karen and I got to eat them) and the cake was rolled tightly until it cooled.  When it was cooled, she unrolled it, filled it with real whipped cream, rolled it back up again and frosted it with a dark chocolate frosting--something else I have been unable to duplicate, despite my many years as a cake decorator.  I have often thought of making my own chocolate cream roll but don't think I ever did.

But outside of home, throughout my life there are special moments..."nothing" moments really, that I remember vividly because of the foods involved.

I worked for a summer at a tool company with my friend Joycie.  We would meet for breakfast before work each morning and I can still taste the wonderful pastries I had there, loaded with butter and just toasted enough.  Another taste I was never able to duplicate, though I've tried.

That was an interesting place.  The guy sold those cheap dollar tools and I was his biller-clerk.  I don't know why but I can't remember his name, but I remember that his birthday was March 24.  And I remember after I left the job reading that he had been arrested for something related to fraudulent business practices.  I wonder whatever happened to him....

I can picture the restaurant where I sat with my boyfriend Bill and his father.  The father ordered sweetbreads and Bill dared me to try them.  I didn't have a clue what sweetbreads were until years later -- and how could I pass up something with "sweet" and "bread" in the name? But I remember liking what I tasted.  I wouldn't eat them now that I know it's really the pancreas from a lamb or cow.  Shudder.  But I didn't know that at the time.

Like I can picture sitting at my grandmother's table (my mother's mother) and eating tongue for the first and only time and how much I liked it until I thought about it later and didn't want to ever eat it again.  I am not an adventurous eater.

I did agree to eat escargot once, though, when I took Gilbert to dinner at a French restaurant.  He had taken Paul and me to dinner somewhere after a rehearsal of a play Paul was in and someone nearby had escargot.  That buttery garlic smell was enticing and he talked about how delicious escargot was, so I decided I would try eating snails and offered to take him to dinner for his birthday.  The restaurant where we went didn't have the standard escargot but had them in a sauce and my word...they were so good we had a second order.  I don't think I've had escargot since, though I remember that dinner fondly.  I just can't get past the "snails" part.

I remember when Walt and I ate dinner at the home of a friend of his mother's once.  I don't remember her name, but I remember she made pie for dessert.  I don't remember what kind of pie it was, but I remember that it had the flakiest crust I'd ever had and I had to ask her how she made it.  In the days when I could still make pie crust (another art I've lost in my old age), I was able to duplicate that and think of her whenever I had a crust that came out light and flaky.

It is weird how vivid so many of my food memories are, and so I understand my grandmother's longing for a good slab of rare roast beef.  I don't think she ever got it.  I don't know that I have that sort of longing, but if I did long for something delicious from my past, I guess it would be to have another big dish of my father's potato salad.

That's HOT

I'm trying to clear out the freezer and use up things that have been in there for months (some for years).  Now that I have ordered freezer labels, I think things will go more smoothly and I won't run the danger of pouring pumpkin pie mix into my spaghetti sauce again.

Tonight I defrosted a rather large container of "something."  I could see it had beans in it and it smelled chili-ish, so  was fairly certain this was a legitimate dinner.  And it was.  It was a chili I made awhile ago and as I stirred it on the stove and took a small spoonful I remembered this recipe.  This had more heat than most chilis I make.  I don't know why I followed a recipe.  I never follow a recipe for chili, but I must have been inspired by a food network program or something.

In any event, as I tasted it, I remembered that when I first made it, this had been almost too spicy to eat.  And still is.

You know, of course, that when you have something super spicy, water does nothing to ease your mouth, but milk does.  I found something even better.  I also had half a package of tater tots and some fresh cherry tomatoes so served those with the chili, and taking one or the other or both after each mouthful of the chili made it palatable.  However, I told Walt (who cleans the kitchen each night) that unless he liked the recipe, he had my permission to throw the rest of it away, even though there was enough for another meal.

I was reading Malala Yousafzai's book about displaced families and the terrible conditions under which they live and what they go through to try to find peace in the United States, and telling Walt to throw away perfectly good food when there are so many starving around the world gave me a twinge of guilt.  But since I couldn't mail the food to them, I assuaged my guilt.

I have never been an adventurous eater.  In a fast food place, I order my cheeseburger plain (no sauce), buy mild cheeses, etc. The most adventurous I ever got was having escargot with Gilbert on his birthday in a French restaurant in San Francisco.  

But with all the food network programs I've been watching, I've decided to start trying to eat a little bit more spicy foods.  Everybody is always tossing in red pepper flakes to "turn it up a notch" and I'm starting to do that...just a tiny notch.  I am now actually adding the sriracha they send with our Home Chef meals (still only half of what is supplied) and am slowly helping my taste buds adjust to a slightly more spicy diet

Of course the fact that your taste buds change as you get older helps.

My favorite candy bars for forEVer have been either Snickers or U-No bars.  Now I find them both too sweet for me.  I used to love a nice rare steak or a big slab of prime rib.  Now I look at them pictured on menus and know I can't eat a fourth of what the pictures show.  I am no longer tempted by restaurant commercials which show delicious multi courses of delicious foods.  I know I couldn't eat a quarter of the foods shown.

Even my favorite crab salad sandwich at Fenton's is too big and I usually take half of it home either for Walt or for my next meal.

I now understand my (paternal) grandmother who, toward the end of her life, said rather plaintively "when I can eat again, I just want a big slice of prime rib."  I don't think she ever got it.

I guess this is why, though I think I eat way too much, my weight has not changed in about 5 years or more.

---

I am remembering the pledge I made a couple of years ago, to set aside time for reading, since I hadn't been reading as many books as I wanted.

While I would like to read something like 75 books a year, it seemed that my average was about 50.  But this year, as of the first of May, I had read only FIVE.  So I've been spending time reading for the last two weeks and am enjoying it.

It helps when I continue to read books as bad as "A Diary on my Screwing Up my Year Abroad."  All I wanted to do at the end of that book was to read a better book.

I chose a book that I described in my review as a "palate cleanser."  It was "The Tour: A Feel-Good Irish Springtime Read," which was a low key, easy read story of a group of people taking a bus tour around Ireland.  They were predictable character types and the life each one of them (including the bus driver, who had his own drama) was changed during their one week tour.  

Lots of suspension of disbelief that they all had such major life changes. 

But it was an easy read that took slightly over a day to read.

When that was finished, I was ready for something a bit more meaningful and chose the Malala Yousafzai book I mentioned before, which tells the stories of several women who were forced by violence or other circumstances to leave their homes and relocate elsewhere.

It's too bad our glorious leader doesn't read or his heart might be moved by the stories of what caused these women to leave their countries and why they endured such hardships to get to where they hoped they would find peace and safety in this country.  Of course, he doesn't have a drop of empathy in him, so I doubt he'd be moved anyway, even if he did care about the conditions of refugee women and children.

Next I'm moving on to re-reading "The Hobbit," which I first read in 1969 (I know because Paul was the baby at the time).  Bri tells me that's our next book club discussion and I have from now until July to finish it.

So Big!

Hey, did you know that something shocking happened on The Bachelor this week?  Since I have never watched the show it is amazing to me how much coverage, on talk shows and news shows this episode has received.  Thirty minutes yesterday and today they are covering it on Live with Kelly & Ryan.  Walt saw it on the nightly news.  Something about Arie and Lauren (I just learned)  We can't make guns safe, but we sure can dissect a stupid program like The Bachelor.  Our brains have been turned to mush.

Hey, look at this:

This is a Paesano's "Stromboli" and it's what I ordered for lunch at Paesano's when I went there with my friend Kathy yesterday.  It's slices of steak mixed with mushrooms, onions and cheese in a wine sauce.  Doesn't that sound yummy?  It was!

But my first reaction when they put this in front of me was that it was the size of the torso of a newborn baby.  The thing was huge.

There was a day when I would wolf the whole thing down, but I took this photo and sent it to Walt to let him know what I would be bringing half of home so he could have it for lunch.

I am remembering the days when Walt's mother used to complain whenever we went out to have a meal, angry that they gave her so much to eat. I am beginning to understand.

I saw a commercial for a Subway sandwich the other day and remembered when I was a kid, shopping in downtown San Francisco.  I took the cable car home, because it ran so close to my house and...well...because it was fun.  I caught it at the end of the line, where there was a Woolworth's by the cable car turn-around at Powell and Market.  Inside Woolworths was a food counter that made the very best subs I have ever had.  I've never tasted anything quite so good since then.  But when I looked at the Subway commercial, all I could think of was "there is no way I could eat that whole thing," though I had no problems when I was a teenager.

This is the turn-around in 1954 and the shop on the
right is Woolworth's.  (Note that people are climbing on
the cable car every which way...now you have to queue.  No fun!)

Another commercial that I always liked was the one for Outback Steak House.  Now I look at the big plates of steak and lobster (the lobster doesn't do anything for me, but in its time they also have pictures of crab) and all I can think of is how the plates are so big there is no way I could finish the whole serving.

I always loved our rare visits to a prime rib restaurant where you got a big slab of prime rib with delicious horseradish and a big loaded baked potato with sour cream, cheese, and bacon.  Now I shudder thinking of how much food I would pack up to take home.

We've been using Blue Apron and now Home Chef for dinners 3 days a week.  There are generous portions and it's the rare dinner where I am able to eat the whole thing.  It used to be that it was because I snacked so much during the day, but even on days where I rarely have anything for a snack, I just can't finish the meal. 

I wish I could say that the reduction in my appetite has resulted in a reduction in my weight, but alas my weight has stayed the same for at least 10 years.

Gotta Have It

One of my new favorite TV shows is This is Us, which is getting all sorts of buzz as it is slowly being found.  Those coming into the show late may be confused (and should find a way to watch episode 1 first) because it is the story of a family over the decades.  We follow each person in the family as well as the parents and don't discover until the end of act 1 that the parents, who are expecting triplets throughout the first episode, have lost one of the three babies at birth and end up adopting an abandoned African American baby who was born the same day.  And it goes from there.  I love it.

In last night's episode, during one of the flash backs to the parents, just discovering that the pregnancy they thought would yield their longed-for baby is actually going to give them triplets...and how will the low income family, already struggling financially, be able to handle three babies.

Early in the pregnancy, mom has a craving.  I don't remember what it was for, but it got me to thinking about pregnancy cravings.  Fortunately, for Walt, I didn't have a lot...and really only when I was pregnant with Jeri and Ned (by the time I was pregnant with Paul, I was too busy dealing with the first two to think about cravings.

Early in my pregnancy with Jeri, Walt and I went out for a Japanese dinner during which I had something called a "sushi cone."  I think it is made differently now because if you order a sushi cone today you get your rice and fish mixture in a black seaweed (nori) cone shape.

But the cones we had were wrapped in some sort of fried bean curd wrapper.  It was delicious.

When we got home that night, all I could think of was that sushi cone and how I wanted another one.  The craving was so strong, Walt finally went out, drove across town back to the restaurant and bought another one.  In truth (and he probably doesn't know this), by the time he returned home, the craving was gone.  I ate it because he had been so sweet in getting it for me, but I really didn't want it. 

Pregnant ladies are crazy.  Fortunately, I don't remember having another craving throughout that pregnancy.

It was different when I was pregnant with Ned.  I couldn't get enough Italian peppers.  I could go through a jar in a day and would often call Walt at work to let him know that I was out of peppers and ask him to pick up another jar on his way home.

Oddly enough, I don't remember ever caring about peppers before and certainly not since that pregnancy.  I never eat peppers today, but it certainly was a strong craving that may have shaped Ned's personality!

What pregnancy does to our tastes is weird.  Mine anyway.  I was birthin' babies during the era when you had to actually wait for a certain season to get your favorite fruits and vegetables and so, ever since I was a child, I wanted eagerly for August when Gravenstein apples, my favorites, hit the market.  I loved them.  

Ned was born in August and after his birth, my mother visited me in the hospital and brought me a bag of Gravensteins.  I couldn't eat them.  Even the smell of them made me ill and I ended up throwing the bag away.  To this day I still prefer sweeter apples and don't know that I have ever bought Gravenstein's in the past 50 years.

I still have cravings, but now I can't blame pregnancy on them.  I just blame faulty taste buds miswired into my brain somehow.  I crave peanut butter, I crave tortillas, I crave peanuts and certain brands of crackers (oddly, I don't usually crave chocolate).  In fact, I've been thinking, since I woke up this morning, that I have buttermilk in the fridge and I really want to make buttermilk pancakes, so that's what I'm going to do....

Super Size It

It comes as a surprise to no one that one of the most recognized health problems in America is obesity.  I am a prime example.  But I don't know if you have noticed or not, every time the Health Department comes out with some dire prediction about what health risks come along with fat and start touting a diet of kale juice an celery sticks, the big fast food joints come out with a new better, bigger, fattier version of their basic burgers.  If a double burger isn't enough, how about a triple and then supersize it with large fries and a gallon of coke.

If I have any redeeming fast food qualities at all it's that I can't eat a lot of food any more, don't like sauce at all, so my standard order would be a regular cheeseburger, plain, small fries, and I'll wash it down with the bottled water in the car.

But I came across a show today called The Tastiest Places to Chow Down on the Travel Channel  It was mind blowingly appalling, even for someone who likes food.  I took notes on a few of the more unbelievable joints.

Start with Juan in a Million in Austin Texas, which serves the Don Juan burrito as its specialty.  This is one whole potato, 2 eggs and bacon piled on a tortilla and covered with cheese to finish.

The record is 7 Don Juans at one sitting.

Big Lou's Piza in San Antonio has a pizza so big it is "heavier than a small child."  It's 3-1/2 feet wide and weighs 30 lbs.  They had to build a special oven to cook it in.  It takes a quart of sauce, 6 pounds of mozarrella, then all the usual toppings--pepperoni, sausage bacon, olives, peppers, etc, then top with another 6 lbs of mozarella and bake.

The Country Pancake House in Ridgewood, New Jersey serves 9 egg omelettes, French toast the size of shoe boxes and huge flapjacks, six times the size of a normal pancake (regular serving = 2 per person)

Steak & Main in Baltimore issues a Great Steak Challenge, which consists of multiple cuts of beef from all different parts of the cow, totaling a whopping 76 ounces of beef, plus 1 pound of sides.  You must finish everything in one hour.  If you complete it, the meal is free.  If you don't, you owe the restaurant $140.

Cecilia's Cafe in Albuquerque serves a 10 lb "Fireman's Burrito" with 4-1/2 lbs of pork, beans, bacon, and cheese.

The Big Jud burger at Big Jud's in Boise starts with two frisbee sized 1 lb patties, with swiss cheese, bacon and mushrooms on the biggest hamburger bun I've ever seen.

Sodolak's Country Inn in Snook, Tx has created battered, deep fried bacon.  Each serving is six strips of the fried bacon with a creamy gravy.

If you can eat an original Manuel’s Special burrito at El Tepeyak in Los Angeles on your own—you have one hour in which to complete this task—you score a free “I Ate the Whole Thing T-Shirt.”

There are five burger challenges at the Eagle Deli in Boston, everything from the Nick Lachey Burger (1 1/2lbs of burger, 6pcs of swiss cheese, 6pcs of bacon, 1/2lbs of fries, and a fountain soda. $16.99) on up through the Cowabunga burger, the Reilly Burger, and the Paul Jones Burger to the Eagle's Challenge, which is 5 lbs of burger, 20 pcs of bacon, 20 pcs of American cheese, 5lbs of fries, 1 deli pickle, and a fountain soda. $59.99

These are only nine of the top 100 restaurants in this country.  Is it any wonder that we have an obesity problem?

 

Anybody remember Mrs. Joy Boy?

Blue Apron

4 December 2015

It was exciting to drive up and see the box sitting in front of the door.

Laurel and I had discussed Blue Apron, a program which ships you the ingredients and instructions for x number of meals per week.  She said she and Tom had been using it for awhile and really liked it.  She also said that I could have the option of having three free meals to see if I liked it or not.

I knew I wasn't interested in it, but heck, I wouldn't say no to free meals.  My main concern, in addition to the expense, was that the meals would be too small for us.  We eat a lot (even tho I don't eat much at dinner).

I set it up with Blue Apron for 3 meals a week for 2 people.  The cost would be $60 a week, waived for the first week.  I was pleased to see that I could look at the meals before they were sent and if there was something I didn't want, I could make a substitution.  I could also choose to skip a week if I chose.  But here it was:  my first Blue Apron box.

I opened the box as soon as I got it inside and was pleased to see that the first thing on the top was cards for the menus included with instructions for how to make the meals.

Then came the "meat" of the box...and I was pleased to know that everything in the box is recyclable.  

Everything looked fresh and good.  There were ingredients for a beef dish, a chicken dish and a fish dish.  And everything was included, including a small piece of singer, and teeny packages of spices and the world's smallest bottle of soy sauce.

They recommend using the fish first so tonight I made Crispy Catfish Shoyu Ramen.  I never cook fish because it's too expensive, so I was pleased to have a fish dish to make.

I first boiled the noodles that were included (and realized immediately that this was more than enough for the two of us).  I then chopped all the things that needed chopping (scallions, yu choy and ginger) and cut the catfish into 4 pieces.

The fish got drenched in a spiced batter and deep fried and when the dish was finished, it looked like this.

I had given Walt the larger serving, and even at that, I could only eat helf of mine.  It was delicious.  We both agreed.  I talked about how if you think about it, it amounts to only $10 per person per meal. which is cheaper than a restaurant meal.  And based on what we got this week and what I see coming up in the next couple of weeks, we will be eating food I don't normally buy because it's too expensive.  We'll also be eating veggies, which I don't always cook.  And what's best is that I don't have to plan 3 of our meals during the week!

So, to my surprise, we are both happy with Blue Apron and are going to keep it going for awhile and see what we think.  

Thanks, Laurel!!!

Piece o' cake!

NaBloPoMo - DISH

The October theme:

This month, we're dishing on our favourite foods, sharing recipes (and the stories behind their creation), and reflecting on what we used to eat as kids. We're also looking at what dish we used to dread eating, and whether it's still our least favourite food.

I just joined BlogHer's NaBloPoMo, which is a month of daily blog entries.  These challenges are always such fun because I would do a month of daily blog entries anyway, so why not use it as an opportunity to get more readers, and to find more blogs to read?...to say nothing of having new ideas for interesting entries.  I don't know that I will follow all the prompts   (I just realized that I'll be on our cruise at the end of the month, so I'm sure I will have more interesting things to talk about than food), but at least there will be an entry a day! 

Apparently there are no prompts for the weekends, and I'm starting with a Saturday Entry, so I'll use the prompt for October 1 which was "tell us about your most beloved family dish."

My mother was a wonderful 'murrican cook.  She cooked plain, but everything she cooked was wonderful.  Fried chicken with shoestring fried potatoes, pot roast, meatloaf, roasts (beef and lamb, especially)...that kind of stuff.  When she got adventurous, she tried something like lasagna.  She made cakes from scratch and wonderful chocolate chip cookies.  One of my fondest memories of her is watching her sitting at the kitchen table, a big bowl between her knees to catch the apple peelings as she peeled and cut apples for apple pie.  We loved it when she made chocolate cream roll, a thin sponge cake filled with real whipped cream and frosted in a bittersweet chocolate frosting, the likes of which I have been unable to find.  My sister and I loved to lick the beaters and then to eat the "crusts" of the cake after it came out of the oven, before she rolled it in a powdered sugar covered towel to let it cool rolled up, to make adding the whipped cream later easier.

She had a cookbook, but I don't know how often she used it...and, being the Virgo that she is, when she decided she wouldn't be cooking any more, instead of asking me if I wanted the book, she just threw it away.

But the dinner that everyone loved the most, the one she made often for guests, was enchiladas, which seems an ambitious, unusual thing for someone who was such a basic cook to make.  But when I was very little--before I was old enough to remember--we had a Mexican neighbor who made them.  My parents loved them and so my mother asked Amalia to teach her how to make enchiladas.

I remember it was a many-day process for her, beginning with making her own chorizo.  The spices had to be blended just so and mixed in with the pork and then left in the fridge for 2 or 3 days. 

When it came time to assemble the enchiladas, it took the whole table, with a special sauce into which she dipped the tortillas, and then filled with ground beef, the chorizo, onions, olives, cheese and some other things.  Into the pan they went, topped with the remaining sauce into which she had dipped the tortillas, and topped with more cheese.

After they were baked, they were served, each on a romaine lettuce leaf and sprinkled with Parmesan.

I don't think I have had enchiladas since that I liked as much.  I did have her come to our house one time and show me how to make them, so I would know all the secrets.  At that time her mind had started to deteriorate and she wasn't sure she remembered right, but I did get the recipe.  I think I have made them once.  They were never the same as Momma used to make.

Chacun a son gout

Chacun a son gout is a French phrase that means "to each his own taste," and doesn't necessarily refer strictly to just food, but to anything about which you have an opinion.  For the purpose of this entry, however, it will refer to food.

I remember when Walt's mother started getting old...and then my own mother...and how whenever we went to a restaurant they would get angry because they were served too much food and couldn't possibly finish.  And, having grown up in the Depression, they didn't want to leave it behind.

I knew it was useless to point out that not everyone had the small appetites that they did and that the serving was designed to serve the average eater.

In those days we went to normal American restaurants with big steaks or slabs of prime rib or some other animal delicacy.  I loved them.  The rarer the better.  A big slab of still almost mooing prime rib with a bowl of creamy horseradish sauce was like dying and going to heaven.

Now I'm getting old and I find that I'm the one whose ability to polish off a meal has changed.

At home I serve myself a plate about half the size of Walt's and then end up giving a good deal of that to the dogs, or to Walt. I can't really finish a hamburger any more.  That's really a surprise.  When I cook chicken I give Walt 2 pieces and myself 1 and I don't finish the one (a thigh).  My stomach just can't handle as much food at dinner any more.

Breakfast may be different.  I can load up at breakfast, but by the end of the afternoon, I'm stuffed.

I also seem to be developing a distaste for beef.  I don't cook nearly as much of it as I used to and when I see commercials for restaurants like Outback Steak, showing their thick juicy steaks, it almost makes me nauseous.

I find I'm buying less and less beef.  I look at the beef in the meat bins and even if it weren't astronomically priced, it doesn't inspire me to want to cook it at all.  I bought two small lamb chops today and lamb still tastes good and doesn't turn me off but I still could only eat half of mine.  But lamb is expensive too.

And salt!  I'm the salt kid.  I'm the person who would salt anything before tasting it and then salt it some more while eating it.  Now I find many things too salty for me.  I finally had Walt check the taste of the sausage they served at Atria the other day to see if he agreed that it was way too salty.  He didn't.  A hot dog they served recently I had to leave because it was way too salty, which I found odd for a place full of old people with probable cardiac problems. Of course that's probably a good thing.

I guess I'm just getting old and my tastes are changing.

Did I just say I'm getting old???  Shame on me!!!!

I took two teeny cupcakes at the market today and brought them to my mother for her real birthday.  Of course she didn't remember it was her birthday .  They were each two bites, so she ate hers without complaint.

I decided after 30 minutes if I had to talk about how old she was one more minute I was going to scream.  Thirty minutes and all she wanted to talk about was how old she is, how she hates being old, how she hates the bruise on her arm and just wants to get a knife and cut it out because it's ugly.  And, oh by the way, she's getting old, you know.  God, I wish the woman was interested in anything besides her age and her physical appearance.  But even when I was answering (again) what exciting thing I had been doing (going to Dave's memorial yesterday) she interrupted me to say 'Oh god, I'm old."  Today she tells me she doesn't ever want to die.

That may kill me.

A Glass of Peanut Butter

Most of my happy memories of my father involve either the piano or food.  Mostly food.  Some good food memories, some bad (but funny) food memories, but food memories stand out foremost in my mind.  Is it any wonder food has been such a big part of my life all of my life.

Some food memories are as simple as the taste tests he used to conduct.  He would go into our laundry room, which had a window into the kitchen.  He would blindfold himself and my sister and I would pass him things to taste and offer opinion.  The only one I really remember was trying to decide which milk to buy based on which was the richest.  (This was in the years before I was put on skim milk, I assume!)

Some food memories involve going with him to the local pizzeria.  This was when this country was just discovering pizza and there were no Pizza Huts or Dominos.  The pizzeria made pizza.  You stood and watched them make it and then you brought it home to eat it. along with a big 5 gallon jug of "Dago red" that you could also buy there.

I used to love to go to the pizzeria because it was a small place, and I remember it was wood--dark, rough wood on the floor and on the walls, and boxes and bags of stuff around the place.  They made the pizza at a little counter with a box in front of it, so I could stand on the box and watch them.  The smells of yeast mingled with tomatoes and oregano mixed with the wood and the fire from the brick oven is a smell I will never forget.  As the guy tossed the dough up into the air to stretch it and then spread it with tomato sauce, he would hand me pieces of mozzarella to nibble while he worked.

I know memories change with age and I was probably Bri's age when I started going to get pizza with my father, so my memories may not be accurate, but that's how I remember it.

I also remember how he LOVED chocolate malt shakes, and we sometimes went to the corner drug store (which had a soda fountain) to get malteds.  That's another taste I keep trying to recreate and never can, the taste of those thick, rich malty shakes.

Occasionally he cooked.  He wasn't the type to follow a recipe.  When the mood to cook struck him, he took over the kitchen to create something all his own. To this day I have never tasted a potato salad to equal his and the secret died with him.  It was never a secret exactly, but my mother could never make his potato salad because she always over-salted it. What made his different from any that I get anywhere today is that he used sweet, not dill pickles, and no mustard.  Just potatoes sliced very thin (he said that was the secret), diced onions, sweet pickles, Best Foods mayonnaise, salt, and parsley. I was his taste tester to see whether it needed more salt or not. I used to make it once in a great while, but it relied heavily on onions and since neither Walt nor Marta will eat onions, if I make potato salad today, I know I will eat it all myself and while that would be wonderful, it's probably not something I should do.

One time he decided to make calzone, those yeasty Italian bread pockets filled with a meat stuffing.  I have had lots of calzones through the years, trying to find the taste of my father's.  I don't even remember now what it tasted like, but I know that I absolutely loved it and no store or restaurant bought calzone has ever affected me the way his did.

I still remember fondly the Christmas he made his own egg nog.  All I remember about it was that it was like drinking sweet whipping cream and it was fabulous.

But the most famous of his creations had to have been the peanut butter cookies.  It's sad that my sister is gone and my mother doesn't remember because we teased him about those cookies for decades (almost as long as we teased him about the one book he'd read in his life -- "Away All Boats."  I don't remember his every picking up another one.)

My mother, Karen and I weren't home when he decided to make peanut butter cookies, but he had this strange look on his face when we got home.  My mother asked him what was wrong and he said, sheepishly, that he had tried to make peanut butter cookies and he didn't know what he did wrong.  He showed us a bowl filled with brown liquid.  It was as thin as skim milk and this was supposed to be his cookie dough.  

His heart was in the right place, but I suspect that if he had a recipe, he severely misread the ingredients. As I recall we all had a small glass of his peanut butter cookies.

It's nice to remember him and smile and think about having a glass of peanut butter again.

Ptomaine

I hope you will be relieved to hear that neither Walt nor I seem to have ptomaine poisoning.

Today was book store day.  Last week I took a pork roast and found a nice crock pot recipe and when I got home from work, dinner was all ready.   Much preferable to having to come home and fix a meal.

So I found this nice recipe for a Mexican dish, with pork cubes and black beans and spices and prepared that.  Timing is tricky since I can't make it too early or it will finish before I get home from work, and if I wait too late, we eat at 9 p.m.

But this time I got the timing right and it was cooking nicely for a couple of hours before I went to Logos.

Where last week had been deadly dull at the store, this week was fairly steady. At one point I think I had 6 of 7 people all wandering around looking at books, and Susan, who always sends an accounting after you work, says that we made nearly $300, which is a good day.

Shortly after I arrived, this big Santa Claus type guy came in, fixed me with a steely gaze as he walked across the store and up to the desk.  He stuck out a hand and introduced himself.  Oh my goodness.  It was a guy I knew from decades ago.  He pointed out that he had added several pounds and his hair was white now (I told him I could identify with that remark!).  

I remembered him and his family well, and was pleased that for once my own pre-dementia brain had no trouble doing so.  His son and Paul had auditioned for the same role in the very first production of the Sunshine Children's Theater.   Ultimately the role went to Paul and the mother was quite upset, because she obviously felt her son would have been better in the part.  She accused the director of playing favorites because I had agreed to help with the founding and running of the fledgling company.

I don't remember if the kid ever got involved with other productions at STC, which became a home away from home for Jeri, Ned and Paul.  I asked the guy how his kids were and he mentioned that this particular child (well, he's in his mid 40s now) was an attorney in San Francisco and had worked with the mayor at one point.  I remembered reading about him and a very exciting project he had spearheaded for the mayor.   So I guess the disappointent of losing the role of Paul had not devastated him for the rest of his life!

I read "The Bonesetter's Daughter," which I was enjoying very much, and left behind on the shelf at the end of my stint.  I hope it will still be there when I go back to work next week.

Walt came to pick me up at 6, reporting that the 2nd game of the World Series was 0-0 in the third inning.  We had cheered the Red Sox onto their win in last night's game.  If you can't root for the Giants, might as well root for the team that Jeri is a fan of.  In fact, her dog, Lester, a female dog, is named for one of the players on the Red Sox team.

When we got home, and after I'd given the dogs their expected treats, I went to check on the crock pot and that's when I discovered it was not on.  In fact, it had been off so long that the pot was cold.

I asked Walt what he'd done, but he denies having done anything.   All I know is that the thing was cooking away nicely when I left and was off when I got back and I didn't think the dogs knew how to operate the cooker.

Having no idea how long the meat had sat there, first hot, then cooling off, and then cold.  I didn't know how long it took for all those bacteria to build and I didn't know if it was safe to eat...and I also didn't know how cooked the meat was.  Was it still partly raw?

I decided to throw caution to the wind and turned the thing on to high and let it cook for a couple of hours while we watched the Red Sox lose the second game of the series.

I served the dinner and it was delicious, and the pork cooked and tender.  But I still wasn't sure if it was safe to eat or not.  But as I write this it is 3 a.m. and I seem to be fine, so maybe we dodged a bullet.

I still don't know what happened that the crock pot got turned off but if it turns out that the dogs have actually learned how to operate the pot, they have some 'splaining to do...and they need to take a turn making dinner for us once in a while, for a change!

Joe Special

We had Joe Special for dinner tonight.

It's my go-to dinner when I'm uninspired, if I have hamburger and spinach in the house.  

I think it originated with Original Joe's in San Francisco, because I remember eating it as child, though it does not appear on the menu for that restaurant now (and I'm impressed with the number of "Original Joe's" on the internet!   That Joe was one busy guy!)  But it is still on the menu for Marin Joe's, which was a favorite eatery of my mother and her husband.

It's not a difficult dish to duplicate (and definitely not worth the menu price tag!).  You brown hamburger with garlic and when it is browned, add   a package of chopped spinach, cooked and drained, and then when that is pretty well incorporated with the meat, add 4-6 beaten eggs.  When the eggs are mixed and nearly set, pour in a cup of grated parmesan cheese.  Voila:  Joe Special!

I told my mother today that I was making Joe Special.  "From SCRATCH?" she asked.  Then she said that I was always an adventurous cook and that even in the days when she remembered how to cook, she would never have attempted anything so exotic.

My mother was always a good cook and she made some things that were just wonderful and that I have never been able to duplicate (and am angry because she threw away her cookbook when she got tired of cooking, without asking me if I wanted it!).   But she was a plain cookin' kind of cook.  Roasts, steaks, pot roast, mac 'n' cheese, spaghetti, fried chicken, tuna casserole.  That was the kind of thing she cooked.  I've never been able to duplicate her pot roast, which I loved.  She made a great turkey stuffing, but toward the end of her cooking days, she couldn't remember how to do it, and it wasn't the same as the kind I'd always loved.  In the meantime I had developed a recipe of my own that I use now.

The most exotic thing she made was enchiladas, because a Mexican neighbor showed her how to make them (it took 2-3 days to make chorizo, because it had to age).  I finally did get her to sit down and tell me how to make that recipe, but it was after we moved to Davis and long after she had made them the last time.   I'm not sure she remembered the recipe correctly.  They don't taste the same as hers did, served up on romaine lettuce cups.  I loved those enchiladas.

She never taught me to cook when I was living at home. I can't ever remember cooking with her.  She liked doing what she was doing and it never occurred to her to show Karen or me how to do any of it.  (Just like ironing.  She loved to iron and was impatient when I didn't do it the way she wanted it to be done, so I never learned to iron until I moved out of the house [and never could understand the love she found in it.  How happy I was when the "rumpled look" became popular]).

I learned to cook by cooking for a bunch of guys living in a house near my dorm.  Walt was one of those guys.  I don't what prompted me to volunteer to cook for them, but with only one exception, they all let me cook when it was their day to cook.  And that's how I started experimenting with recipes and realized that I loved cooking.  I also learned how to feed 9 of us on a ridiculously small amount of money (breast of lamb was a big favorite in those days--I could buy it for 25 cents a pound!)

When I moved into my own apartment, I experimented with recipes.   My roommate Gerry and I made so many things out of bananas that I ended up putting together a banana cookbook (would you believe banana meatloaf?  It wasn't bad!)

Most people cook the things they know when they are having guests.   If a person I know (or knew) was going to serve something new to guests, she would make it for her family a couple of nights before so she knew how it was going to turn out.

Not me.  I rarely made something I had cooked before when we had guests.  I almost always tried out new recipes on the unsuspecting guest and with very rare exceptions, things always turned out very good (difficult lesson learned:   unripe avocado does NOT improve by cooking!  Learned that back in the early 1960s).  I taught myself to prepare an Indian meal, I took a series of classes in Chinese cooking, from having all those Brasilians around, I became a pretty authentic Brasilian cook for awhile.  I even tried a few of Julia's French recipes.  And of course, Italian is a given--it's the food I grew up on.

 

My mother has always marveled at my expertise, but really I am, like her, a simple cook.  I look at a recipe, decide if it has more steps than I want to take and if it does not, I make it.  A few simple techniques are all you really need and you can look more impressive than you really are.  The difference between us is that I'm not afraid to try anything that sounds good to me.

I don't know if I taught my kids to cook.  I like to think I did.  I got two gourmet cooks out of it, so maybe I did show them some things.   Tom and Ned are great cooks.  Jeri married a good cook and has learned to be more adventurous from him.

We enjoyed our Joe Special tonight.  I should let Walt know that he was eating what he would have paid $12 for in a restaurant!

I'm Giving Up Food

I've decided the only solution is to give up food.  I can't afford to buy it any more.

I rarely go shopping these days.  I have to be out of absolutely everything before I go to the store..the thrill is definitely gone!

Walking into Nugget supermarket I saw a "sale" on blueberries.  A container that amounted to about one cup of berries for "only" $4.00.  You could get two containers of blackberries, about the same amount in each container for $7.00 each.

Strawberries, which were in a slightly larger container, were $5.   I love berries.  I eat a lot of berries on cereal, in cottage cheese, and just as snacks, but I passed on the berries.  I couldn't justify the luxury of the price.

Continuing through the produce aisle, I decided to look at the price of artichokes, which Walt and I both like a lot.  $3 each.  For one artichoke.   I've seen them higher, but I wasn't about to pay $6 for two artichokes.

But it wasn't until I came to the mushrooms that I had apoplexy.   $16 (well, $15.99) for mushrooms.  These aren't fancy schmancy mushrooms either.  Just the same old mushrooms I buy whenever I want to buy mushrooms.  Safe to say there will be no risotto or sauteed mushrooms in our foreseeable future.  The other mushrooms were every so slightly less (at least they were in single digits), but still not a price that I felt I could reasonably afford.

I moved on to the meat aisle.  What had brought me to the supermarket was having nothing for dinner.  Meat?  Pfwww.  Who can afford meat?  I didn't write down the price, but I wasn't going to pay $25 for a very small roast anything. It's been so long since lamb was affordable (and I love lamb...almost as much as I love crab) that I can hardly remember what it tastes like.   Hamburger now costs per pound what I used to pay for steaks.

It's not that the prices have suddenly jumped up.  They've been going up right along, but I usually go through the store with my eyes closed.  We need the stuff, and I grab it without checking the price.  Today my eyes were open.   (Well, really it was the mushrooms that opened my eyes!)

I finished the shopping, rejecting item after item after item because I wasn't going to pay that much.  In the end I had half a shopping cart full of food and it still cost me $100.  I had given up and bought some meat -- a pound of the lowest grade ground beef, and chicken that will last us two meals.  I also will make a "clean out the freezer" soup this week.  I don't have a clue what it will taste like, but it will be hearty and healthy.

As I left the supermarket, I was thinking about what they say will be the financial implications for the little guy with the financial downgrading this damn sequester will bring.  Walt and I aren't poor.  We have enough money to buy the food we want for dinner; it's just the principle of the thing that kept me from buying more stuff.  How in the world do people who are less well off manage?

Before I went to the store, Walt and I sat in the living room and listened to Says You on the radio.  Our dogs are so frustratingly weird.   Whenever there is anything unusually "social" going on (visitors, or Walt and me sitting in the living room) they feel that their way of participating is to wrestle at our feet.  Every. time.

I got my iPad and decided to make a video of it.  Unfortunately Sheila had tired by the time I got it, but Lizzie and Polly played all the way through the end of "Says You."  Windows Movie Maker doesn't permit me to edit video any more, but it will, at least, put together a few clips and turn them into a movie, which I have added to the "Photo of the Day" block.

One of these 

days I am either going to try to reinstall Windows Movie Maker or set aside time I don't really have to learn Adobe Premier Elements, which Ned loves and which I just can't seem to wrap my head around. Yet.

Me vs. Itallian Food

I made lasagne for dinner last night, but I wasn't hungry, so I didn't have any.  We had lots left over and had it for dinner tonight too.  I was hungrier tonight, so did have some and have to admit it wasn't bad, if I do say so myself.

I grew up in the heart of (or, more accurately, on the outskirts of) North Beach, the Italian section of San Francisco.  (Though the city is more homogeneous now, North Beach is still predominately Italian, with a slop-over of Chinese from nearby Chinatown.)  My parents lived there for more than 30 years. Within walking distance was St. Peter & Paul church, which was the Italian National Church in San Francisco.

My father comes from Irish and German roots.  His father's grandparents came to this country from Ireland, and his mother's family (about which I know virtually nothing) came from Germany.  But in his heart, my father was Italian, with or without the blood lines.

We lived in a flat on a hill in the city and our landlord was a guy named Joe, who was from the old country.  His Italian accent was so thick I could barely understand him.  His wife was German and they were theater folks, with their walls covered, to the ceiling, with pictures of the activities of their thespian group.   I don't think they performed, but they definitely were active in theatrical stuff.

Irma was a large woman who bought clothes, when she liked something, in three different sizes...small, medium and large, to accommodate her always fluctuating weight.

My father worshipped Joe and spent a lot of time with him.  And along with worshipping Joe came his love of Italian food.  He loved it all.   Dinner in our house was invariably something Italian, if it wasn't something Amurrican or delivered Chinese food.  Whenever we went out to eat as a family, 90% of the time it was to a local Italian restaurant.

I grew up with spaghetti, lasagne, veal parmesan, ravioli.  My father learned how to make a lot of Italian food and to this date I have never had calzoni as good as his.

He would take me with him to order pizza in the days when pizza was a new thing. I remember standing on a box to look over at the pizza-making area and watching the pizza being assembled.  They usually gave me a slice of mozarella to eat while we waited for the pizza to be cooked in the big brick oven.  I never remember other customers being in the shop when we went there, which tells you how new the whole pizza idea was!

To go with that pizza, my father bought what he always called "Dago red" wine by the gallon in bottles without a label on them. (I think that he actually brought the bottles back to be refilled).  I don't remember him slinging the jug over his shoulder to pour a glass, but it was the kind of bottle that you expected people to do that with.

But I somehow missed the Italian-loving gene.  I listen to Italian cooks on TV today, waxing rhapsodic about childhood memories of mama's spaghetti sauce.  I never got it.  Spaghetti sauce was spaghetti sauce to me.  Oh, I don't dislike Italian food, but if you offer me the choice of an ethnic restaurant for dinner, Italian would be about the last on my list of choices.

I'm also a pretty good Italian cook.  I can make spaghetti sauce from scratch, or dress up a bottled version.  I make a fairly good pizza (not nearly as good as Jim's family--but his son is a pro).   I make a good lasagne (and actually prefer the pesto type that we had in Portofino) and I am willing to try just about anything, but as with restaurant choices, Italian would never be my first choice of ethnic food to cook.  But I cook it because it's easy, it's famliar, and Walt likes it.

But if truth be told, I'd really rather be cooking something Mexican.

(My father would be shocked, I'm sure)

French Dip

When we were living in Berkeley, one of our favorite places to go for a meal was a hauf brau house called Brennan's.  It was at the end of University Avenue, across from San Francisco Bay, under the freeway overpass.  They made great French dip sandwiches.

You waited in line in front of the carvers, they stood at huge slabs of meat, heated by overhead lamps, and standing in the juice that formed in the pan as they were baking.  The carvers took big sourdough rolls,cut in half, dipped them in the juice at the bottom of the pan, topped the rolls with lots of thin slices of rare roast beef, and passed the plate along to the cashier, who gave horseradish and the beer you'd ordered, and you took your sandwich to one of the wooden tables to enjoy your lunch.  We had many happy meals there.

It bothers me what has happened to that classic French Dip sandwich.

I went to my mother's today to have lunch.  I've decided to see her more often so I can hopefully assess how she is really doing, memory wise.  Today was a fairly good day, except she had forgotten the inauguration was today.  I had watched the ceremonies at home before I left for San Rafael, and I turned it on when I got to her house.  It was just after the lunch, when the Obamas (et al.) were getting ready to review the troops and then get in the cars to parade down Pennsylvania Ave.   

As we sat there watching, the clock ticked on and on.  It was 12:30 and there still was no sign or mention of lunch.  Usually she has the table set when I get there and usually once noon comes around, she's ready to eat.  But she has also said that she sometimes forgets to eat, so I decided I'd give it until 1 and then ask her about food.

But as the First Couple got out of their limousine and were walking down the street, my mother finally said "I wish they'd hurry up, so we can go to lunch."  Ahh.  It was to be a "lunch out" day.  When they got back into the cars, we set the DVR to record and we got in my car and drove to the restaurant at the nearby golf course, where we eat occasionally.  They have a nice, smallish menu and it's almost within walking distance, but we always drive, especially today, when her legs were giving her problems.

As we left her house she started down the steps, holding onto the railing and carefully going one step at a time, leading with the same foot each time.   "This is how I have to go down stairs now," she said to me, sighing because she felt it showed that she was getting old.  I told her I'd been going downstairs like that for years.

Anyway, we got to the restaurant and I opened my menu and saw the thing that has driven me nuts for years.

Arrrgggghhhh!  Nail on a chalk board!  FIRST of all, au jus is two words.  It is French.  It means "to juice," which essentially translates into "with juice" in English.  For decades now when you go to a restaurant that offers a French Dip sandwich they more often than not say that it is "with au jus."  Which literally means it is "with with juice."   This is the first time I've seen au jus written as one word.

Despite the offending description, my mother and I both ordered it, and when it came, it reminded me of the second thing about a French Dip sandwich that bother me these days.

Au jus is no longer the drippings from the pan in which the roast beef was cooked.  Now it seems to be a bowl of beef consomme.  Anemic beef taste, compared to the rich taste of the jus from the pain.  It was so bad that I hardly had any of the jus, just ate the sandwich itself, which was tasty.   I certainly couldn't complain about the amount of meat piled on it (in fact, I brought half of it home to Walt).

I'm going to have to see if we can find a good hauf brau again some day and have a real French dip sandwich.

We returned home and watched some of the innaugural parade and I fell asleep for about half an hour, waking at about the time I usually leave to drive home.   It was essentially "rush hour," though I don't know how many people in the cars were actually enjoying the day off.  But a long part of the backup came on this bridge.

I thought it would go on forever, but it turned out there had been an accident at the very top of the bridge and once we passed that it was clear sailing all the way home.

Felt worn out when I got home.  It was not a strenuous day at all, but just felt all drug out...and not at all hungry, so just fed Walt and came in here to my office to write.  My plan was to go to see her weekly, but I know she would rather eat out than fix a meal these days and she won't let me pay.  I tried to tell her that next time I'd bring lunch with me, but she was adamant that I not and that she would pay.  Our lunch cost about $30 and I know she can't afford that every week, so I may do it every other week.  Unless I can figure out some sneaky way to bring lunch with me instead!

I'll Pass on the Jellyfish

We went to a big birthday party this week.  It was one of those big "ZERO years" for someone we had known for more than thirty years.  The party was held at a huge Chinese restaurant in Sacramento.  There were about forty of us, ten to a table, and it was an eleven course Chinese meal.

The soup was good, until I checked on what "fish maw" was just now and discovered it's a fish's air bladder.  If I had known that I wouldn't have eaten it, though the crab (in reality "krab") was good. 

The Combination Platter was put down on the table and looked kind of like Chinese antipasto, with two different things that looked like salami, something that looked like sweet and sour pork, and a mound of what I thought was rice noodles.  I chose one of the "salamis," a couple of the sweet and sours,and a big spoon of the rice noodles, which I love.  I had a chopstick full of noodles on the way to my mouth when our hostess started explaining about the "jellyfish."  I literally retched as I put it in my mouth, not wanting to be impolite, but managed to choke it down.  In truth, it wasn't bad--a bit too chewy for me, but I don't do adventurous eating.  If I know what it is, I can't eat it.   I remember my first boyfriend daring me to try his father's sweetbreads the first time we went out to dinner.  Heck, some bread that was sweet? I didn't understand the laughter.  It was very good.  It was years later before I found out what it was I had eaten.

The honey walnut prawns were familiar and delicious.  No problem there and I even ate the deep fried flounder, though it included eating the bones, which were friend crisp.  By this time I was taking very small portions of anything I was uncertain about.

The chicken was also delicious, and I was glad that nobody was expected to eat the chicken head.

When the 3 seafood delight came I pretty much passed it up. There were things in there that I was very suspicious of, but I did eat the mixed mushrooms and veggies, though it contained several types of mushrooms and I'm generally pretty squeamish about anything but plain old regular mushrooms.  But when I had taken a class from Martin Yan, he took us to a gourmet Chinese meal as well and the best thing on the menu was a dish that contained 7 different kinds of mushrooms.  Heck, I even took some of the noodle basket that the mushrooms came in.

The rest of the meal -- noodles, rice and birthday cake, were pretty safe (and delicious)

I often wish I were more adventurous trying new foods, but I just am not.  Walt enjoyed everything at this banquet and I might have had my taste buds expanded if only my taste buds had been more open about trying new things!