Blizzard Warning

They're saying 12-18" before it winds down tomorrow night. 

I was out and about earlier today.  Sunday, day after Christmas... it was dead.  Very little traffic; only a few people in the grocery stores.

There's a weather advisory for a foot and a half of snow, 50-knot winds, and zero visibility, and no one is out stocking up on anything.  They've already got it.  Water, check.  Food, check.  Safety lanterns, emergency radio, auxiliary heat source:  check, check, check.

Some would call this endemic pessimism.  Perhaps.  But it seems wise to me.  Expect the worst - and you are both unlikely to be disappointed, and more likely than your sunny counterpart to be pleasantly surprised. 

We will take this storm in stride.  And it too shall pass.

Christmas Day

Until about lunchtime we didn't even know if we'd be opening presents today.  It all depended on how my mother, who came home from Brigham & Women's late last night, was feeling. 

She desperately wanted to be here when the kids had their tree.  My stepfather desperately wanted Christmas dinner.

But between the pain and the medication therefore, her condition was not, as it turned out, such as to allow her to make the eight-mile trek to our house - or even to get out of bed until this evening.  Around noon we decided (mutually) that the kids should go ahead with presents (the other options being, truck everything - spiral ham, steamed pudding, and gifts - to her house and hope she was well enough to function; postpone Christmas until such time she is feeling better; or some combination thereof). 

We opted for Door #3.  The four of us had our family gift exchange, made dinner, then packed up some food and went to my mother's house, where we made a plate for my stepfather (my mother being not so interested in eating just now), delivered presents, and visited for a bit - Mother being through some combination of willpower and pharmacological assistance able to sit downstairs.  Then we came home for warmed-over ham and au gratin potatoes.

I have to hand it to my kids - they are troopers.  Especially Thing One, who had no presents from his grandparents because the last three shopping days before Christmas were spent in the hospital. 

We were all just glad to be together.

Christmas Eve

On this day in 2010: 

Oysters on the half shell

 Learning new vocabulary with Dad while he shucks the oysters

Emergency run to Wal-Mart to get seed for the bird feeders (OMG, bad idea)

Lobster stew... with buttermilk biscuits, salad and pecan pie



The kids open one present - cozy new pajamas and a book for each

Two phone calls between here and Brigham & Women's

Tracking Santa on Norad even though we started putting air quotes around "Santa" three years ago

Watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

The next-to-last bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau

Putting all the presents under the tree

Trying to identify contents of said presents

Reading new books in new pajamas by the fire

Stockings hung by the chimney with care

Leaving out a gin and tonic for "Santa"

And to all, a good night.

Christmas Eve Eve tradition #2: Lobster Stew

Actually this is technically a Christmas Eve tradition - the eating of it, anyway - but the making of it should happen the day before.  It has to be cooked very slowly and gently and then it has to sit, you see.  Something wonderful and miraculous (which my children are too young to know about) happens overnight.

First, get half a dozen or eight (depending on the size) lobsters.  I like soft-shell lobsters because hard-shell shells are really hard on the old hands.  (At this point you can choose to introduce the lobsters to your housepets.  Or not.)

Boil a couple of inches of salted water in a big water-bath canner, then plunge the lobsters – two or three at a time – in headfirst.  Cover and cook for 15 minutes.  Remove the lobsters set aside until they're cool enough to handle.

Note:  Lobsters do not scream while being cooked.  They don’t have vocal chords or respiratory systems, both of which are required in order to phonate.  That noise people talk about – which I have never ever EVER heard in many years of cooking lobster – is steam escaping from the shell.

Pick the meat, cut larger pieces into chunks and set aside.  

Confession:  Everything up through this part is messy.  No pictures.  Camera + steam + lobster juice = bad combination.

Before:

After:



Now melt a cup of butter in a stockpot, then stir in the lobster chunks.  Simmer on low heat for ten minutes, stirring frequently.  

While the lobster is getting to know the butter, heat three quarts of half and half in a separate pot.  It should get hot but not too hot. 

This is my secret ingredient.  

Dissolve a good-sized glop (about 3 tablespoons) of lobster base in the cream.

Over very low heat, slowly stir the hot cream into the buttery lobster.  Season, then put in the fridge uncovered (lest it curdle as it cools) and forget about it until the next day.

 

Reheat gently and serve with oyster crackers, salad, and biscuits.

Here's the recipe written out:

Lobster Stew

6 1-1/4 lb. new shell lobsters

1 cup butter

3 qts half and half

3 tablespoons lobster base

Salt & pepper to taste

Paprika (optional)

Steam, cool and pick the lobsters.  Cut large chunks of meat into bite-sized pieces.

In a 5-quart stock pot, melt the butter.  Gently cook the lobster meat in the butter for about 10 minutes.  

While lobster is warming in the butter, in a separate large saucepan heat half & half and lobster base until it is hot but not simmering.

Over low heat, gradually stir the hot cream mixture into lobster, stirring constantly.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and add paprika for color if desired.

Remove from heat and allow to cool, uncovered, then cover and refrigerate overnight.

Reheat gently, uncovered. 

8 servings.

Christmas Eve Eve tradition

Let's call this one "Introduction of the Animals" or "Inter-species Fellowship." 

It has everything to do with the spirit of the season and nothing at all to do with mildly antagonizing the cats.

And nothing at all to do with harassing the lobster.

The lobster has long since come to terms with his fate - he is about to give his all for lobster stew.  Watch this space.

First real snow of the season

Winter can uncomfortable and dangerous but breathtakingly lovely.  The kids moan about shoveling and hauling firewood one minute, and begging the Flying Spaghetti Monster for a snow day the next.  The meteorologists insist on a total accumulation of one inch even as there are three on the ground and it's still falling thickly (which is the situation my stepfather and I found ourselves in driving home from Boston last night at 40 mph).

Earth stood hard as irony.... 

Christmas topiaries

This weekend we have made gingerbread men, peppermint bark, peanut butter bars, toffee cookies, shortbread, gumbo, roast beef, and topiaries.  I can't wait to get back to work so I can sit down.

Here are the topiaries.  Started out a couple of weeks ago by painting some terra cotta flowerpots with a gold wash.

This afternoon we cut florist foam to fit in the pots.

By "we" of course I do mean "the help."  I adore compulsory labor.  Should have had more children.  They did a bang-up job decorating cookies today, with the exception of the anatomically correct gingerbread man, but that's a story for another time. 

I digress.

We took a couple of small Styrofoam cones and one larger one, and put three cinnamon sticks in the base of each to make a trunk.

Planted in the pot, with a healthy glop of hot glue in the (probably vain) hope that the thing will stay together.

Now the balsam tips (salvaged from the bottom branches we trimmed from the Christmas tree).

Finished with moss around the base and the top, with a red bead "star" because I didn't know quite what else to do.

I had every intention of gluing more red beads and small pinecones on the trees but ran out of glue cartridges, so we're calling it the simple look.



Allez!

The Heir had a fencing meet yesterday.

 He's been fencing since he was about 10.  He likes it because 1) it's different - no one else in his school does it; 2) it involves weaponry; and 3) the sport's physical and mental requirements suit him. 

We have to get him all the way to Belfast once or twice a week for lessons, but whatevs.

That's him in the bug hat.

Here he is without the bug hat.

 

It's really called a face mask.  The rest of the kit consists of lamé, jacket, underarm protector, glove, knickers, socks, special shoes, body cord, and electric foil.  I have to replace one of these things approximately every fifteen minutes to keep up with the growth rate.  Do you see the size of those feet?

Anyhoo, back to the fencing meet. 

The Heir's weapon of choice is foil (as opposed to épée or saber.  If you are truly interested in further explanation, a good overview is posted here.)



 These things go on...



...and on... 

Note:  I will never understand what's going on during these matches, any more than I will eventually comprehend exactly what "offsides" is in soccer.  Too many things happening too fast.

 

...and on.

It's hard work - not just physically but mentally, because there's so much strategy and concentration involved.  It's not called "physical chess" for nothing.

By the time it's over, the kids are well and truly pooped.

 

The guy in the black is who keeps showing up in the pictures is John Krauss, who runs the Down East School of Fencing.   Great guy, fantastic instructor.  He loves the sport and really gets the kids.

Another note:  kids who fence are really great.  I say this objectively, of course.  I will refrain from going into a deep psychological musing about the type of person who is drawn to a sport that combines intellectual quickness, discipline, rigorous physical activity, respect, tradition, protocol, and the ability to adhere to strict rules, other than to say there's a marked difference from certain other sports.

Here are yesterday's winners, who have gone from beating the crap out of each other with swords to best buds in two seconds flat.

Red sky in the morning

A red sunrise portends unsettled weather, while a red sunset assures calm.  Hence the old adage "red sky in the morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailors' delight."

The sunrise this morning was blazing orange, which jibes with the forecast; everyone is keeping a wary eye on a nor'easter forming off shore.

I wouldn't say the kids are keeping a "wary" eye, exactly.  They're rooting for a snow day or three next week.

Yankee Swap

A Yankee Swap (in its most common form, though there are variations) is a New England holiday party tradition wherein everyone brings a wrapped, inexpensive gift.  Sometimes the gifts are obnoxious (and make the rounds of the Swaps year after year); usually, though, they're decent. 

Everyone who brought a gift draws a number, and chooses and opens a gift in the order of the drawing.  If someone who went before you got a present you like better, well, when it's your turn you just go take their present and give them yours. 

It can get brutal.

Obviously it's advantageous to get a higher number in the drawing, but best to get #1, because when it's all over #1 gets to choose from among all the presents if he or she wants to trade. 

So last night was Himself's office holiday potluck and the obligatory Yankee Swap.  I drew #17 out of 19; pretty good positioning.

The most-swapped object was one of those ice-cream-making balls that you kick around.  (This, however, was not something I coveted; I'm perfectly okay with my Cuisinart ice cream maker, which has a delightful little device called an on/off switch and requires no physical exertion other than the flick of a finger.)

When our turn came Himself opened a very respectable 2011 calendar/planner but (having received strict instructions in advance) swapped for #4's present, which had already been swapped by #11. 

It is two balls, 120 yards each, of a delicious self-striping wool/acrylic blend in shades of blue and teal.  And bamboo circs size 9.

What, oh what does it want to be?

The Charlie Brown tree

For the second year now the kids have gone out into the woods and come back with a raggedy, crooked little white pine sapling which they doll up just a bit.  Cute.

An afternoon at the opera

We took the kids to see Don Carlo yesterday – the Metropolitan Opera live HDTV broadcast on the big screen at The Strand.  There was much preliminary moaning about the 4 ½ - hour run time, but once we got there they were fully engaged.  Hungry by the first intermission, but engaged. 

I was impressed, because Don Carlo is, probably more than any other opera, a wrenching portrayal of people who are utterly at the mercy of forces larger than themselves – political, emotional, religious, it’s all there, and it requires a certain maturity of perspective to appreciate.  

This is the third season that we’ve splurged on a family outing to the opera broadcast.  By now my punks are unfazed at being the youngest people there (attendance is heavily skewed to retirees of a certain income level) and they are better behaved than the some of the old people. 

This performance was impressive, to be sure.  In fact it was marred only by the lead tenor’s singing his big opening aria with a ginormous booger hanging out of his left nostril.  

HD is so unforgiving.

My favorite Christmas decoration

Sometimes – very rarely, but it does happen – you find the exactly the right gift for someone.  Something thoughtful, appropriate, unique, personal; something that will evoke memories and bring a smile every time they look at it.

This was one of those gifts.  (Hard to get a good shot of it without glare - sorry.)

It was presented to me maybe ten years ago by my choir in Pennsylvania, the year we tackled Craig Courtney’s “A Musicological Journey through the Twelve Days of Christmas” – wherein each verse progresses, in historical order, through musical periods (the first day of Christmas is set like a Gregorian chant, and by the twelfth you wind up in a mashup of The Stars and Stripes Forever – with stops along the way to visit Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Saint-Saens.  Brilliant but brutal; I’m still not sure what possessed me that year).

The tree is a paper cutout representing the twelve days of Christmas – the twelve drummers comprise the fundament and the partridge is the crown.  The red batik-fabric background was dyed by one of the altos.  Another alto’s gallery took care of the matting and frame.

I get a warm fuzzy every single year when I put it out. 

A big shoutout to my UU homies back in Meadville:  Merry Christmannukwanzaa. 

I miss you guys. 

The season

Getting the Christmas tree is always an event. 

We have a vaulted ceiling in the great room, so we get a big one - say twelve feet.  Since the designated site is occupied forty-nine weeks of the year by bookshelves, there's a lot of work involved before the tree even comes in the door.  At the end of the season everything has to be done in reverse.

The logistics of managing a tree this size are complicated too.  It's friggin' heavy, for starters.  It requires a super-sized base.  We always anchor it to the wall, just to be on the safe side.  And the sheer number of lights involved?  Unless we win the lottery, we won't be switching to LED any time soon. 

It's a production, but by gorry when it's done it really feels like Christmas.

The kids are big enough now to help move heavy things, and this year it went quite smoothly.  We picked up the tree on Friday night.  Yesterday we brought it inside and decorated it.

It's a balsam, so the house smells delicious.  It's not the tallest tree we've ever had, but it's exceptionally full (it took the kids a full half hour to find the pickle ornament...). 

This morning's dusting of snow adds to the spirit. 

Now if I could just get inspired to write the annual family newsletter...

But who's counting...?

There are only 1.2 million people in the entire state, and most of those reside in the greater Portland area.  The population here in the midcoast is relatively thin. 

Our schools, small though they are, work hard to focus on the arts, and the high school in our particular district consistently cranks out choral and instrumental ensembles that compete successfully at both state and regional levels. 

The middle school music program is crucial in developing this talent. 

Let’s face it, though:  regardless of the untapped potential represented by any given class of fifth graders, you take these students – some of whom do not know a quarter note from page 8 – hand them a bunch of instruments, rehearse for two months, and then give a concert, consider yourself lucky if they produce a recognizable melody.

Year over year, the beginning band’s annual fall rendition of Hot Cross Buns does not get any better.  But if you want proof that miracles do happen, take that performance and compare it to the stuff the 7^th-8^th grade symphonic band pulls off.   

Saint Patricia is the middle school band director.  She takes all the silliness and spit valves and squeaking reeds and just plain bad playing and in four short years, she turns it into something worth listening to.  Somehow she also maintains her sanity and her sense of humor. 

I have been to exactly seven middle school band concerts so far. 

I have exactly seven left to go.

Doing our part to help the retail sector this holiday season...

We pulled the plug on commercial television early in the first Clinton administration.  This was before marriage and kids, and it wasn’t because we had any particular moral or aesthetic objection; we just decided the money we were spending on the cable subscription could be put to much better use.  

So far the children are growing up without any serious psychological scars.

We’ve always kept a television set, though, tucked away in cellar with the old living room furniture, which we use regularly for watching movies and the occasional TV show on DVD.  (Huge Big Bang Theory fans.  Huge.  And that whole Netflix on demand thing through the Wii?  Brilliant.)

And a while back we got to thinking that it was time upgrade the old set.  Current sale prices convinced us to make said upgrade the Christmas “family gift.”

So yesterday we loaded everyone into the truck and drove to Augusta to do some comparison shopping, and we came home with a new 55” LED HDTV, which is an vast improvement over the old set in about four hundred sixty-seven ways.  

Getting the thing up and running - between the wall-mounting device, the new Blu-ray player, the A/V receiver and surround sound, the Wii, the Interweb – was kind of an event.  You know something is complicated when Himself has to spend two hours on the phone with tech support; that was last night, and he’s still at it down there, but I think he’s almost done.  

It’s a school night but we might have to watch a movie anyway…

Simplest appetizer on the planet

My mother-in-law used to make this.  Very popular and festive, but absolutely no work...

Shrimp spread

8 oz cream cheese
1 8-oz jar cocktail sauce
1 7-oz can shrimp, drained

Put the cream cheese on a small rimmed plate.  Dump the cocktail sauce on top of the cream cheese.  Dump the shrimp on top of the cocktail sauce.  Serve with crackers.

Passing the torch

Lot been going on the last few days, getting ready to host Thanksgiving.  The type of cleaning that I should do more regularly (dusting the curtain rods, Windexing the chandelier bulbs, mopping underneath the sofa), and of course planning a meal for a couple dozen people.  There were spreadsheets involved.  ‘Nuff said.

This is a bittersweet experience for me.  Thanksgiving has always been my mother’s holiday.  When I was growing up, she would always pull off an incredible Thanksgiving dinner – and when we were living god knows where away from family, which was most of my childhood, Thanksgiving was a celebration of friendship, because the people who joined us around the twelve-foot walnut table were a collection of folks who didn’t have anywhere else to go – some of whom we knew better than others, but all of whom were grateful for a good meal and the company.  

This year, though, she finally admitted she couldn’t do it.  Couldn’t get her tiny house ready to pack in all those people and manage the logistics of a meal that runs to twelve dishes, plus appetizers and pies.  The goddamn cancer has sapped too much of her strength. 

So have it here, I said.  We have the room.  I do know how to cook.  I started suggesting this some weeks ago but it took her a while to realize she really did need to pass the torch.  

But realize she did, and then she devoted her not-inconsiderable force of will to helping.   

There were twenty-two of us around the table – four generations, from my grandmother down to my three-year-old first cousin once removed.    

Everyone brought food.  There were two turkeys, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, turnips, squash, sweet potatoes, peas & pearl onions, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce, and seven kinds of pie.  The battalion of aunts did their usual blink-and-you-miss-it kitchen cleanup afterward.    

It was a lovely event.

My house is very clean.

And I have three whole days off to recover. 

Saturday night supper

I think our dour New England forebears must have had some sense of humor, to come up with a tradition of serving baked beans for Saturday supper.  

Sure, I know that dried beans and salt pork were year-round staples, I understand that it was economical and nutritious, I get the whole serve-leftovers-for-Sunday-breakfast thing ensured the Puritan housewife was in compliance with the fourth commandment.  

But how could there not have been a bit of wry fun derived from packing into a small sanctuary for a three-hour church service the morning after everyone had eaten a meal consisting primarily of beans?  Particularly if any of the congregants were thirteen-year-old boys?



Baked beans & brown bread



Biscuits or brown bread – that dense, dark, steamed whole grain bread – traditionally accompanied the beans, and somewhere along the line we started serving them with hot dogs.  Anyone who is over sixty years of age and grew up around here can tell you about having beans and franks every Saturday night.  



And the tradition is still very much alive and well, though for most of us it is no longer weekly fare.  Saturday night bean suppers are a popular community event.  Diners of a certain variety still offer baked beans – and codfish cakes – on their breakfast menus.  

Saturday night supper

 Though there are any number of decent canned varieties available, when we make this, which we do a couple times a year and yes, it’s always on a Saturday night, we do it the old-fashioned way.  Both the beans and the brown bread take a bit of planning ahead, some specialty equipment and several hours to cook, but are easy to put together and require scant attention. 

Baked beans

1 lb. navy beans, sorted and rinsed

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 lb. salt pork

1 large yellow onion

1/4 cup dark unsulphured molasses

1 teaspoon dried mustard

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup hot water, plus additional

Salt & pepper

Soak the beans overnight, then drain, cover with ample water, stir in the baking soda, and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Drain.



The usual suspects - onions, salt pork, beans & molasses



 While the beans simmer, peel and slice the onion and dice the salt pork (discard the rind).  Combine the molasses, dried mustard, cider vinegar, brown sugar, water, salt and pepper; stir to dissolve everything.  Preheat the oven to 300. 

In a bean pot, make three layers of beans/onion/salt pork (using 1/3 of each ingredient for each layer) – ending with salt pork on top. 

Pour the molasses mixture over the beans and add additional water to just cover the beans – not too wet.  Put on the lid and tuck into the oven for about four hours.  Stir it occasionally, and keep an eye on the moisture level to keep it from drying out.  I’ve never had to add additional water but I always check.



Four hours later...



The beans will cook to a silken tenderness, the sauce cooks down to a rich brown, and the salt pork and onions melt into the beans.  


We aren’t churched people so we keep the side effects within our own four walls.

Brown bread

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup rye flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

¾ cup dark unsulphured molasses

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt

1 cup dark raisins

Mix together the dry ingredients ...

... then add the molasses, yogurt and raisins; stir to blend.  

Pour into two well-greased 1-qt. pudding molds (the kind with a lid – I’ve never had luck with the coffee-can-and-tin-foil method).

Secure the lids.  

Place in stock pots with a cake rack in the bottom (a few balls of tin foil can work, or a handful of stainless steel forks – the idea is to keep the pudding mold from resting directly on the bottom of the pot).  

Add boiling water to come about halfway up the sides of the molds and cover.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about 2 ½ hours.  Check the water level periodically to make sure it isn’t drying out.

Remove the pudding molds from the water bath and allow to cool slightly.  Remove lids and unmold the brown bread.  Slice and serve immediately with plenty of butter.

Leftovers are great for breakfast and also freeze well.

Thanksgiving Subterfuge

My 89-year-old grandmother is a teetotaler of the strictest Calvinist variety.  She is also one of those people blessed with the ability to simply not see that which she does not wish to be true. 

                                            

Therefore, not only does she herself not drink, but she is quite convinced that no one else in the family does either.

And – this is the thing that just slays me – we all play along.  So in order to allow Grandmother to remain blissfully oblivious and the rest of us to enjoy our Beaujolais Nouveau, Thanksgiving preparations involve some tactical planning.  My mother, who hosted Thanksgiving dinner for many years, developed this strategy which I will employ next week:

Set up two beverage stations:  one which we show to the assembled old people in denial and one for the rest of us. 

The first one is clearly visible and easily accessible; the second one is somewhere unobtrusive, preferably with sufficient physical obstructions – stairs or dog gates are good – to discourage old people in denial from inadvertently stumbling upon it. 

The first one showcases cranberry juice, and the second one the wine. 

Both stations are equipped with decorative paper cups, but of different designs (thus minimizing the chances that any of us inadvertently grabs the wrong type of beverage).  Cranberry juice and wine in paper cups appear sufficiently alike to maintain our little fiction.

Everyone’s happy except the beer drinkers.

Keg’s down cellar in the fridge.  Here’s a coffee mug.

Food drive

The place where I work employs about 65 people.  In the way that is peculiar to Mainers, it seems that no matter how serious our internal squabbles (and we crank out some doozies), when it comes time to rally for something, we are unstoppable.

Every year this time we have a food drive for the local food pantry.  The combination of a good cause and a little healthy competition brings out the best in us, and we usually manage to come up with a little over a ton of food.

This year I threw out a challenge to my direct reports – I said whatever poundage of food they contributed, I would bring in double.

They’ve just given me their totals.  I think these people have it in for me.

It’s all right.  It’s for a good cause. 

And I will remember this when I do their performance evaluations next month.

Now I’m off to the grocery store. 

Pointless exercise

I purged the refrigerator today – just found out we’re hosting Thanksgiving for the extended family and assorted random old people that my grandmother collects (at least 18 guests, possibly as many as 26), and this is one of those things that needs to be done along with blacking the wood stove and vacuuming out the registers.

By “purge” I mean not just getting rid of the fuzzy science experiments in the back of the bottom crisper drawer.  I’m actually not bad at keeping ahead of leftovers.

No.  By “purge” I mean hauling out, sorting, consolidating, coming to terms with, discarding and/or keeping everything else that’s in there.  By the time I got everything pulled out and organized into rough categories, of the approximately quarter of an acre of counterspace in this kitchen, two-thirds of it was covered by jars, bottles and containers of stuff.

This is what went back into the fridge.  This is embarrassing.

Mustards:

Chinese hot

Dijon

Grainy Dijon

Gulden’s Spicy Brown

Horseradish

Jalapeno

Chipotle

Sweet hot

Raye’s Old World Gourmet

Hot sauces:

Louisiana style

Original Tabasco

Habanero Tabasco

Jalapeno Tabasco

Cholula Original

Cholula Chipotle

Asian sauces:

Teriayaki

Black bean

Sambal oelek

Plum sauce

Hoisin sauce

Duck sauce

Fish sauce

Oyster sauce

Red curry paste

Green curry paste

Salad dressings:

Chipotle ranch

Caesar

Chipotle cheddar

Italian

French vinaigrette

Two kinds of bleu cheese

Buttermilk ranch

Russian

Thousand Island

Jams & preserves (which we DO NOT USE EVER):

Grape jam

Grape gelly

Strawberry preserves

Strawberry jam

Pomegranate jelly

Blueberry spread

Pear jam

Apple butter

Ginger preserves

There were also six kinds of ice cream topping, assorted pickles and a number of random sauces and condiments.  

My fridge is still full, but at least it’s squeaky clean and organized now….  

Yamdankee's baked potatoes with creamed fish

In my great-great-grandmother’s day, cod was unimaginably plentiful and easily preserved by salt-curing, so it was a year-round dietary staple.  Potatoes grew reliably in our acidic soil and also kept well over the winter.

Thus were potatoes topped with a thick salt-cod cream sauce a fairly common cold-weather supper – most definitely not low-fat or low-calorie, but back then it was about keeping bellies as warm and full as possible. 

The weather is turning here, with frosty evenings that call for a warm fire and old-fashioned comfort foods.  Some leftover CSF pollock was at hand last night and made a nice substitute for cod in my version of this dish.   

(Apologies to my great-great-grandmother for the inclusion of cayenne.  I believe cayenne was one of the things she foreswore when she signed the WCTU pledge.)

  (more bad food photography)

Yamdankee’s baked potatoes with creamed fish

3 cups whole milk

1 small onion, diced fine

1 tablespoon parsley flakes

½ teaspoon garlic powder

Salt & pepper to taste

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 bay leaf

1 ½ lb. cod or other thick white fish, cooked, cooled & flaked (one good-sized fillet should do it)

2 eggs

6 slices bacon

¼ cup butter or margarine

¼ cup all-purpose flour

4 baked potatoes

In a large saucepan, combine the milk, onion, parsley, garlic powder, cayenne, bay leaf and salt & pepper to taste.  Simmer for ½ hour or until onion is soft. 

Meanwhile, hard-boil and shred the eggs.  Cook and crumble the bacon.

In separate saucepan, melt the butter over low heat and whisk in the flour.  Cook until bubbly; do not brown.  Gradually stir a little of the hot milk mixture into the roux until it’s of blendable consistency, then add it to the hot milk mixture and whisk to combine; continue stirring over medium heat until thickened.  Add the fish and shredded eggs; heat through. 

Spoon sauce over hot baked potatoes and top with crumbled bacon.

Serves 4 very generously.

Unrouxly

Making roux bugs me.  I spend the half hour or so stirring and thinking of all the things around the house that are not being attended to because I am stirring.  Also that it is a half hour or so of my life that I will never, ever get back.

A recent gumbo test recipe from Cook’s Illustrated included an intriguingly different method:  it’s baked, not stirred.  No kidding. 

This is now my go-to roux. 

                                                                                 

·     Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350º.

·     In a Dutch oven over medium heat, toast ¾ cup flour, stirring constantly, until it’s just beginning to brown.  This takes about five minutes and when it happens, it happens quick, so you have to watch it like a hawk.

·     Remove from heat and whisk in ½ cup vegetable oil until smooth.

·     Cover, put it in the oven, and bake “until mixture smells toasty and is the color of an old penny” – 45 minutes.  Remove from the oven.

From here, you can either:

·     Gradually whisk liquid from a soup or stew into this, until it’s thick but blendable, then add it back into your stew pot; or

·     Return to stovetop, whisk to combine, sauté onions/carrots/celery etc. right in the roux, and continue to build your stew from there.

Aunt Fanny (and her Italian Sandwiches)

Frances Butler Sherer was my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandfather’s brother’s second wife. 

Got that?

She had no children, was widowed in 1946, never remarried, and lived to be 105.  I was in high school when she died. 

When my mother was a girl, growing up as one of five kids (or more, depending on what poor unfortunates her parents had taken in that week), Aunt Fanny spent a lot of time helping my grandmother with the housework and cooking. 

                                                       

She was a family institution and is very much a presence, to this day.  Everyone remembers how she would put a bit of vinegar into an almost-empty catsup bottle to stretch it.  And her sayings – like “use your head to save your heels.”  And her recipes.

Hereabouts we have a tradition of “Italians” – these are small sandwiches of meat and vegetables on a soft white roll, and bear little resemblance to anything actually from Italy, but fifty years ago salami was exotic and we had to call them something. 

This is how Aunt Fanny made Italian sandwiches.  She didn’t have a recipe per se; she said you just had to remember that there are seven ingredients. 

(I can remember that there are seven ingredients, but I can rarely remember what they all are.  It’s like trying to name the Von Trapp kids or the damn dwarves.)

Aunt Fanny’s Italian Sandwiches

Sliced salami

Sliced Provolone cheese

Bell pepper

Red or sweet onion

Tomatoes

Whole dill pickles

Iceberg lettuce

Top-sliced frankfurter rolls

Salad oil

Salt & pepper

Cut the salami and cheese into strips.  Thinly slice the pepper, onion, and tomato; slice the pickles lengthwise.  Tear the lettuce into manageable strips. 

Put a little bit of everything into the frankfurter rolls.  Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

The best bread evah

I don't have the patience of a food stylist, sorry.  Many people do it much better.  But you get the idea.  This is the bread I made yesterday, requested specifically by the friends we visited for dinner.

We make a lot a lot a lot of bread, usually of the French/Italian peasant free-form variety - I have maybe three or four recipes that I turn to regularly. 

The New York Times' 2006 no-knead bread recipe is a favorite:  easy peasy (as long as I can plan a day ahead), no fuss, and consistently produces the kind of loaf that prompts questions about which bakery I bought it from.

I've used all-purpose flour and bread flour with equal success, but for the ultimate rusticity (is that a word?) I substitute half a cup of white whole wheat flour for the white, and throw in a pinch of ascorbic acid.  The antique cast iron Dutch oven serves admirably for baking.

Our "friends" kept the half of the loaf we didn't finish last night, darn them.

Wondering

During last weekend’s dance shoe ordering fiasco, I discovered that this…

...is now within half a shoe size of me.

When the hell did that happen?

Shameless Plug: Matinicus

Matinicus is an island about 22 miles off of Rockland.  It’s remote to the point of frequent inaccessibility and the climate is brutal, unless 60-knot winds and 20-foot seas are your thing.  Only a few dozen residents have the intestinal fortitude to stick it out year-round. 

The place has quite a reputation.  It’s been in the news most recently because of a flare-up of lobster wars.

Eva Murray went out there in 1987 on a one-year teaching contract and has lived there ever since. 

(It is said there are two things which never come back from Matinicus:  a piece of lumber and a woman.)

For a number of years, Ms. Murray’s columns about life on Matinicus (everything except the lobster wars) have appeared in local publications.  She is insightful, sometimes blunt, frequently funny, and always honest. 

A lot of her writing gently prods this dichotomy:  In order to survive in a place as isolated and harsh as Matinicus, the same people who drill holes in each others’ lobster boats also have to pull together and work (sometimes literally shoulder to shoulder) for the good of the community. 

It’s fascinating.

Ms. Murray has (finally) published a collection of her columns (Well Out to Sea:  Year Round on Matinicus Island).  It’s a candid look at what is required, mostly behind the scenes, of everyone who lives out there.  Read it, and be prepared to feel inadequate and just a teensy bit spoiled.