If you're my age, Gentle Reader, you saw the blog title and instantly flashed on Jefferson Airplane cover art and people in funny hats saluting ironically. Just wanted to get that off my mind.
But this is not actually going to be a piece about members of dinosaur bands wearing funny hats and saluting ironically. At least, I don't think it is - I never know where my blog is going to take me, and sometimes it's like Betsy Trotwood's dear friend Mr. Dick and King Charles' head in David Copperfield - no matter what poor Mr. Dick sets out to talk about, up pops King Charles' head and there he is, at it again, talking about decapitated Stuart monarchs. I'll do my best, though.
My point - and I did have one - was going to be that I am now halfway through my training as a volunteer in Rockland County's Literacy Solutions program, and I am surprised by how enjoyable I am finding the process. So let me get back to that.
The training is done in six three-hour sessions taking place at the library. There are roughly 20 aspiring volunteers, many of them retired teachers. The three ladies leading the sessions have been working within the program for a very long time, and they are dynamic, enthusiastic, and well-prepared for every class. Excellent role models, in short. There is also a backlogged waiting list of almost 60 aspiring students waiting to be paired off with a tutor. 20 volunteers. 60 potential students. Even I can do the math. There is a distinct need for this service.
A confession. . . Yes, another one. (Don't tell me you are weary of my confessions? We haven't even gotten to the spicy ones yet.) Some years ago I thought I would get an advanced degree in education and look for a job as an English teacher. I lasted exactly two days in the program before withdrawing in confusion and haste. Dear Gentle Readers Who Are Teachers - I don't know how you did it. How on earth did you choke down all those never-ending mouthfuls of Dead Sea fruit known as Educational Theory? Especially in the despairing knowledge that the Powers That Be were planning to change it all up on you anyway in a few years, tell you nothing you'd learned was relevant any longer, and sporadically present you a nice fresh plate of Dead Sea fruit to consume in the lofty name of Professional Development (meaning that you'd have to go to school and sit in the classroom listening to somebody drone on about adolescent psychology while all your students took the day off.)
Now, it will be said, and with some justice, that I did not give the education program a fair shake, and that some of the classes would undoubtedly have proved interesting and inspirational, which is probably so. No matter. I have found my niche in the literacy volunteer training, which provides pithy advice on what to tell a student who wants to go out drinking with you after class, ("No, thanks") down and dirty tips on how to inculcate the use of the definite article in those students whose native tongue does not have definite articles, and which, above all, urges me to make the lessons fun.
Fun, let me tell you, was sadly lacking in the postgraduate education classroom.
And that, to me, is a problem, at whatever level you are planning to teach. Because if you can't get your students excited about learning... if you can't figure out a way to engage them, to make them sit up a little straighter, to make their eyes sparkle as they make a connection they can't wait to share with you - then chances are that everybody - teacher and pupil - is going to go home thinking, "I don't wanna do this anymore."
Now, I am not necessarily planning to use this particular illustration of the importance of proper capitalization with my literacy students (at least, not until they are very advanced, and then only when we go out drinking after class . . . ahem! - which, as you know, we are not going to do.) But here is a sample of the dynamic lesson taught to us today by the Literacy Ladies:
Correct capitalization is extremely important. It can make the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
It's like I said. . . Lessons should be fun.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
The House Elves Cook a Meal
It is always a dilemma whether or not to disclose that one has performed a Random Act of Kindness, because in doing so one risks venturing into the murky shoals of the Humble Brag. Having made this disclaimer, I am going to talk about something I did yesterday that gave me enormous satisfaction and that I plan to do again for the very selfish reason that it made me feel so good to do it.
I was exchanging emails with a close friend with whom I have, in the past, joyfully collaborated on some writing projects. My friend lives near me and has a full-time job in the Bronx and two children under the age of five. While she dearly loves creating anything related to the arts, she is presently paying off a mortgage and raising two small children. So, like many other people in these hard times, she must often put her artistic talents on the shelf because there are only so many hours to the day. Here is her description of A Day In the Life:
My basic day is get up at 4:30 a.m., shower, dress, get things for me & the kids, then help my husband get the boys dressed & into car and we all have to be out by 5:45 a.m.! I work, get off at 3:30 p.m. if I don't get stuck with mandatory overtime, fight traffic to the babysitter's & then the kids go crazy that I am there. It takes about 30 minutes to get out of there and I actually feel bad not chatting w/ the sitter but I try and avoid packed rush hour traffic - which is impossible, because it's 4 pm at that point. I leave by 4:15 and get home by 5 (if I'm lucky) and heavens forbid I don't have the travel DVD player or the baby will scream and throw his bottle from boredom.
If the kids fall asleep in the car, which is often, then I can forget them going to sleep for the night before 10pm. I get home; at least one of them wakes up; and here go the 3 trips back and forth between the car and the house to get everyone and everything out. Happy to have a driveway!
Then it's food time, sometimes unhealthy leftovers. Husband finally gets home by 6:15 - he gets off at 4:45, but traffic turns the 30 minute trip into an hour and a half!!!
By 9:00 I'm exhausted, but I usually can't go to bed before 10:00 because the kids are wired.
Sleep 4-5 hours, then get up and do it all over again.
This is a brutal way to live. I can't tell you how much I admire and honor the many, many unsung heroes and heroines of these times who are soldiering through the exhausting grind that being a responsible human being trying to live decently and raise a family has become. Yes - I know - many people have it even worse than the above situation. But that doesn't mean this situation is good - it means things are bad.
I myself have had little success in finding work relating to my field (English majors are not, as it turns out, highly sought after to run Fortune 500 companies - who knew?) so I free-lance as an editor, do some SAT tutoring, help high school students with college application essays, etc. In other words, I am blessed with a flexible schedule and a husband who has a nine-to-five job that produces enough income for us to live on. I'm incredibly lucky, and I know it.
So here's what I did after I read my friend's email. I thought to myself, "What is the one thing that is most lacking in her life right now?" And the answer, obviously, was, "Time." Time to enjoy relaxing with her family after a long day of work. Time to enjoy the luxury of a home-cooked meal that takes longer than five minutes to throw together. Time to come home and not have to play catch-up with all the stuff that piled up while she was out. And I came up with a plan. And, after a bit of incredulity and resistance on her part, I prevailed upon my friend to let me put my plan into effect.
At 4:30 yesterday afternoon, I texted my friend to make sure she was on her way home. I then drove over to her house with a great big beautiful lasagna that my husband the chef had made. She knew all about the lasagna, and had given me the passcode to her garage door opener and told me how to turn on the oven. Although she'd initially had reservations and demurred about not wanting to put me to any trouble, she admitted that she was very glad to be looking forward to arriving home to a dinner already underway that she would not have to think about making. ("You have to let me pay you back for the groceries!" she kept insisting.)
But I had a few other surprises up my sleeve that she did not know about, and that was part of the fun.
I parked on the street, happy that I'd thought to throw our snow shovel into the back of the car, because the driveway was completely covered in 4 inches of fresh snow. As I shovelled it clear, I thought about how I would feel if I had to come home to an uncleared driveway with two cranky kids in the car and the prospect of making dinner still ahead of me. I would probably take one look and burst into tears. Clearing off the driveway was a pleasure, not a chore. It made me so happy to think that I could smooth my friend's way toward at least one hassle-free evening.
Driveway cleared, I pulled in and unloaded the big hamper-on-wheels that we use when we're transporting large amounts of food. I let myself in, got everything into the kitchen, started preheating the oven, and went to work.
To begin with, the second lasagna - the one for the freezer. There are always too many noodles in the box for just one lasagna, so we'd decided to make a second and freeze it. Into the freezer it went.
I put the cut-up Romaine lettuce and the thick, eggy Caesar dressing my husband had made into the fridge, along with a small container of grated Romano cheese I'd shared out from our own larger container at home. Nothing is as aggravating as having a wonderful pasta dinner in front of you, wanting to put a little grated cheese on top and being unable to catch your server's eye at the restaurant, right?
Next to the salad fixings I placed an aeresol can of whipped cream. For the lasagna? No - for the gingerbread! M.F.K. Fisher's delectable "Edith's Gingerbread" has been a cherished standard in our family since the first time I doubtfully tried out the recipe. Whip baking soda into molasses "until light and fluffy"? Was M.F.K. Fisher kidding? As it turns out, she was not - the molasses quickly turns a beautiful, creamy taffy-brown hue and doubles in size when you follow her instructions. The result is a ginger bread that is light and fluffy, yet moist and with a tender crumb. The spices are assertive, not aggressive, and, as Fisher remarks, the gingerbread nearly always gets gobbled up before it can even cool off, which is a pity because it is so good when it's cold.
I turned the gingerbread out of the baking pan onto a pretty plate from the cupboard and put it on the kitchen counter to save it from immediate attack by the kids - or at least, to give my friend a fighting chance to get to it first. My friend and her husband had bought a fixer-upper house and planned the renovations themselves, and it turned out beautifully. I admired the gorgeous granite countertops for the umpteenth time. Behind me, the stainless-steel oven chimed out its little tune - the oven was pre-heated, the lasagna could go in!
I placed the lasagna on a cookie sheet - no need to have cheesy, tomato-y messes bubbling over for my friend to clean off the oven at midnight. I popped it in the oven, shot her a text - "Lasagna in at 5 p.m., take out at 6, let rest 10 minutes before you eat it." Then I turned back to the kitchen counter and unfurled half a bunch of bright yellow chrysanthemums I'd picked up at the grocery store when I'd shopped for the ingredients. They are generous with the flowers at my supermarket, and for five dollars I'd gotten a large bunch of cheery mums that amply brightened up not only her kitchen, but mine as well! $2.50 apiece to make two women happy certainly seemed like a bargain.
I put the flowers in a vase and propped a little handwritten menu up against them. It all looked very pretty - the dark brown fragrant richness of the gingerbread, the golden sunshine of the flowers, the Carte du Jour in my nicest script, the shining countertops and gleaming appliances. My friend may have no time to call her own, but she is one fastitious housekeeper. I don't know how she manages it.
I finished by setting the table, Before I left, I texted my friend again to make sure she'd be home in time to pull the lasagna out of the oven at 6:00. Of course, she was stuck in traffic. Of course, that was fine; I turned the oven down and texted back that the food would be ready at 6:30. I locked up the house, hopped in my car, and went home.
At 6:45, I got the first text.
Just got home!!! Wow UR too much & U shovelled the snow! Holy shit, along w/ cake & flowers I just can't believe it what a treat!
From then on the texts came in a steady stream - the kids were ecstatic, the house smelled fantastic, her husband, who is of Italian descent and incredibly picky about pasta, was reaching for thirds, and so on - until I finally texted back that she should stop texting already and eat her dinner before it got cold!
I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this was for all concerned. We all felt absolutely great. There is nothing quite as gratifying as pulling off a nice surprise for somebody you love very much. My husband, of course, enjoyed the compliments to his cooking. My friends got a bit of pampering after a long day of hard work, nasty traffic, and horrible weather that made the commute even worse than usual. The kids were happy because we'd deliberately chosen a meal that was kid-friendly, and because there was dessert. And, of course, because Mom and Dad were a little less stressed and exhausted than they could have been.
The best way to keep what you have is to give it away.
I was exchanging emails with a close friend with whom I have, in the past, joyfully collaborated on some writing projects. My friend lives near me and has a full-time job in the Bronx and two children under the age of five. While she dearly loves creating anything related to the arts, she is presently paying off a mortgage and raising two small children. So, like many other people in these hard times, she must often put her artistic talents on the shelf because there are only so many hours to the day. Here is her description of A Day In the Life:
My basic day is get up at 4:30 a.m., shower, dress, get things for me & the kids, then help my husband get the boys dressed & into car and we all have to be out by 5:45 a.m.! I work, get off at 3:30 p.m. if I don't get stuck with mandatory overtime, fight traffic to the babysitter's & then the kids go crazy that I am there. It takes about 30 minutes to get out of there and I actually feel bad not chatting w/ the sitter but I try and avoid packed rush hour traffic - which is impossible, because it's 4 pm at that point. I leave by 4:15 and get home by 5 (if I'm lucky) and heavens forbid I don't have the travel DVD player or the baby will scream and throw his bottle from boredom.
If the kids fall asleep in the car, which is often, then I can forget them going to sleep for the night before 10pm. I get home; at least one of them wakes up; and here go the 3 trips back and forth between the car and the house to get everyone and everything out. Happy to have a driveway!
Then it's food time, sometimes unhealthy leftovers. Husband finally gets home by 6:15 - he gets off at 4:45, but traffic turns the 30 minute trip into an hour and a half!!!
By 9:00 I'm exhausted, but I usually can't go to bed before 10:00 because the kids are wired.
Sleep 4-5 hours, then get up and do it all over again.
This is a brutal way to live. I can't tell you how much I admire and honor the many, many unsung heroes and heroines of these times who are soldiering through the exhausting grind that being a responsible human being trying to live decently and raise a family has become. Yes - I know - many people have it even worse than the above situation. But that doesn't mean this situation is good - it means things are bad.
I myself have had little success in finding work relating to my field (English majors are not, as it turns out, highly sought after to run Fortune 500 companies - who knew?) so I free-lance as an editor, do some SAT tutoring, help high school students with college application essays, etc. In other words, I am blessed with a flexible schedule and a husband who has a nine-to-five job that produces enough income for us to live on. I'm incredibly lucky, and I know it.
So here's what I did after I read my friend's email. I thought to myself, "What is the one thing that is most lacking in her life right now?" And the answer, obviously, was, "Time." Time to enjoy relaxing with her family after a long day of work. Time to enjoy the luxury of a home-cooked meal that takes longer than five minutes to throw together. Time to come home and not have to play catch-up with all the stuff that piled up while she was out. And I came up with a plan. And, after a bit of incredulity and resistance on her part, I prevailed upon my friend to let me put my plan into effect.
At 4:30 yesterday afternoon, I texted my friend to make sure she was on her way home. I then drove over to her house with a great big beautiful lasagna that my husband the chef had made. She knew all about the lasagna, and had given me the passcode to her garage door opener and told me how to turn on the oven. Although she'd initially had reservations and demurred about not wanting to put me to any trouble, she admitted that she was very glad to be looking forward to arriving home to a dinner already underway that she would not have to think about making. ("You have to let me pay you back for the groceries!" she kept insisting.)
But I had a few other surprises up my sleeve that she did not know about, and that was part of the fun.
I parked on the street, happy that I'd thought to throw our snow shovel into the back of the car, because the driveway was completely covered in 4 inches of fresh snow. As I shovelled it clear, I thought about how I would feel if I had to come home to an uncleared driveway with two cranky kids in the car and the prospect of making dinner still ahead of me. I would probably take one look and burst into tears. Clearing off the driveway was a pleasure, not a chore. It made me so happy to think that I could smooth my friend's way toward at least one hassle-free evening.
Driveway cleared, I pulled in and unloaded the big hamper-on-wheels that we use when we're transporting large amounts of food. I let myself in, got everything into the kitchen, started preheating the oven, and went to work.
To begin with, the second lasagna - the one for the freezer. There are always too many noodles in the box for just one lasagna, so we'd decided to make a second and freeze it. Into the freezer it went.
I put the cut-up Romaine lettuce and the thick, eggy Caesar dressing my husband had made into the fridge, along with a small container of grated Romano cheese I'd shared out from our own larger container at home. Nothing is as aggravating as having a wonderful pasta dinner in front of you, wanting to put a little grated cheese on top and being unable to catch your server's eye at the restaurant, right?
Next to the salad fixings I placed an aeresol can of whipped cream. For the lasagna? No - for the gingerbread! M.F.K. Fisher's delectable "Edith's Gingerbread" has been a cherished standard in our family since the first time I doubtfully tried out the recipe. Whip baking soda into molasses "until light and fluffy"? Was M.F.K. Fisher kidding? As it turns out, she was not - the molasses quickly turns a beautiful, creamy taffy-brown hue and doubles in size when you follow her instructions. The result is a ginger bread that is light and fluffy, yet moist and with a tender crumb. The spices are assertive, not aggressive, and, as Fisher remarks, the gingerbread nearly always gets gobbled up before it can even cool off, which is a pity because it is so good when it's cold.
I turned the gingerbread out of the baking pan onto a pretty plate from the cupboard and put it on the kitchen counter to save it from immediate attack by the kids - or at least, to give my friend a fighting chance to get to it first. My friend and her husband had bought a fixer-upper house and planned the renovations themselves, and it turned out beautifully. I admired the gorgeous granite countertops for the umpteenth time. Behind me, the stainless-steel oven chimed out its little tune - the oven was pre-heated, the lasagna could go in!
I placed the lasagna on a cookie sheet - no need to have cheesy, tomato-y messes bubbling over for my friend to clean off the oven at midnight. I popped it in the oven, shot her a text - "Lasagna in at 5 p.m., take out at 6, let rest 10 minutes before you eat it." Then I turned back to the kitchen counter and unfurled half a bunch of bright yellow chrysanthemums I'd picked up at the grocery store when I'd shopped for the ingredients. They are generous with the flowers at my supermarket, and for five dollars I'd gotten a large bunch of cheery mums that amply brightened up not only her kitchen, but mine as well! $2.50 apiece to make two women happy certainly seemed like a bargain.
I put the flowers in a vase and propped a little handwritten menu up against them. It all looked very pretty - the dark brown fragrant richness of the gingerbread, the golden sunshine of the flowers, the Carte du Jour in my nicest script, the shining countertops and gleaming appliances. My friend may have no time to call her own, but she is one fastitious housekeeper. I don't know how she manages it.
I finished by setting the table, Before I left, I texted my friend again to make sure she'd be home in time to pull the lasagna out of the oven at 6:00. Of course, she was stuck in traffic. Of course, that was fine; I turned the oven down and texted back that the food would be ready at 6:30. I locked up the house, hopped in my car, and went home.
At 6:45, I got the first text.
Just got home!!! Wow UR too much & U shovelled the snow! Holy shit, along w/ cake & flowers I just can't believe it what a treat!
From then on the texts came in a steady stream - the kids were ecstatic, the house smelled fantastic, her husband, who is of Italian descent and incredibly picky about pasta, was reaching for thirds, and so on - until I finally texted back that she should stop texting already and eat her dinner before it got cold!
I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this was for all concerned. We all felt absolutely great. There is nothing quite as gratifying as pulling off a nice surprise for somebody you love very much. My husband, of course, enjoyed the compliments to his cooking. My friends got a bit of pampering after a long day of hard work, nasty traffic, and horrible weather that made the commute even worse than usual. The kids were happy because we'd deliberately chosen a meal that was kid-friendly, and because there was dessert. And, of course, because Mom and Dad were a little less stressed and exhausted than they could have been.
The best way to keep what you have is to give it away.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The Food Stamp Foodie: A Sample Recipe
My husband can cook anything. I mean anything.
I used to cook before we got together, but now I don't bother. If you lived with Picasso, would you be saying, "Pablo, why don't you let me paint the pictures once in awhile?"
What I can do, that my husband has absolutely no facility for, is write. So several years ago, I started copying out his recipes as he chopped, braised, explained, and created. Because a lot of what he comes up with is not in any recipe books - he just riffs. It's like watching a one-man jam band.
The down side is that he'll cook something fantastic, and I will fall in love with it and want to eat nothing but that dish each and every night for the rest of my life, but by that time he'll have forgotten what he did when he came up with it, or be off to the next culinary adventure. This is the other reason I started writing things down - so I can say, "It's been a really long time since you made that dish with the glass noodles and the mushrooms and peppers and tofu and sesame oil, and when are you making that again?" To which the invariable response is, "Oh - sure, I can make that. Why didn't you tell me you liked it? Uhhh...tell me what was in it again." So now I can go to the laptop, and I can tell him what was in it again.
We also decided to set ourselves a challenge. We aimed at coming up with a series of dishes made with healthy ingredients that would feed a family of four on a very restricted budget. We called the resultant collection "The Food Stamp Foodie."
Writing out the recipes was a bit of a conundrum, because my husband never measures anything. I had to convince him rather forcefully that "a nice glug of," "a handful or two," and "whatever you've got in the fridge" is not going to be helpful to anybody who is trying to cook the dish he is attempting to describe. I did my best and was often royally chewed out for cutting off the flow of the Creative Chef Process in midstream. (You are welcome, and yes, there is a Kickstarter campaign to cover my hospital bills.)
In recent years I became a vegetarian, which has ruffled my husband not at all, because he's perfectly happy to cook two different dinners and put them out at the same time, since he still eats meat, so we have both vegetarian and non-vegetarian recipes. Today being a cold any yuckky day, I thought I would share one of his vegetarian creations with you. It is one of my personal favorites. If you make it, let me know what you think!
Texas Thai Hodgepodge
FIRST: make your
Vietnamese Coleslaw:
MIX
1 bag coleslaw
2 T fish sauce
3 T rice vinegar, mixed with 3 T sugar, microwaved till sugar dissolves
Salt, Pepper
REFRIGERATE and allow to marinate for at least 8 hours before serving.
NEXT: Make your
Texas Three-Bean Pate:
1 15 oz. can each of pinto beans, pink beans, black beans, drained (3 cans total)
4-5 T finely-diced sundried tomatoes
4 T finely diced red onion, sauteed in olive oil till translucent but not caramelized.
1 tsp Veggie Magic
1 tsp Frank's or other mild hot sauce, to taste
3-4 T olive oil.
Mash all above ingredients together until they form a smooth paste. (If you are lucky enough to live near Zabar’s, you can simply buy their Texas three-bean pate.)
NOW make the
Texas Thai Curry:
1 large zucchini, diced into ½ inch cubes
1 medium eggplant, peeled & cubed
1 package extra-firm seasoned tofu, cubed
1 can coconut milk
1 box sliced mushrooms
1 bag raw coleslaw
2 tsp Thai green curry paste
1 tsp Adobo (spices -Goya section)
½ tsp Veggie Magic (Paul Prudhomme spice mix)
4 T olive oil (or a bit more if needed)
Method: Heat wok on high approx 1-2 minutes. Add olive oil. After about 5 seconds, throw in green curry paste & stir with spatula to break up the paste; keep it moving. Add all the vegetables: zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms, coleslaw. Stir. Sprinkle with Veggie Magic & Adobo. Stir. Cover; wait 3 minutes; uncover. Stir. Once veggies have started to wilt, add coconut milk & 1 cup of the Three-Bean Pate (8 oz). Keep stirring so that pate blends with coconut milk to make a sauce. Allow to cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring, so nothing sticks or burns. Add tofu; keep stirring. Allow to cook 2-3 minutes, and serve.
At table, mix in: VIETNAMESE COLESLAW, which adds a delightful note of coolness, crunch & contrast.
I used to cook before we got together, but now I don't bother. If you lived with Picasso, would you be saying, "Pablo, why don't you let me paint the pictures once in awhile?"
What I can do, that my husband has absolutely no facility for, is write. So several years ago, I started copying out his recipes as he chopped, braised, explained, and created. Because a lot of what he comes up with is not in any recipe books - he just riffs. It's like watching a one-man jam band.
The down side is that he'll cook something fantastic, and I will fall in love with it and want to eat nothing but that dish each and every night for the rest of my life, but by that time he'll have forgotten what he did when he came up with it, or be off to the next culinary adventure. This is the other reason I started writing things down - so I can say, "It's been a really long time since you made that dish with the glass noodles and the mushrooms and peppers and tofu and sesame oil, and when are you making that again?" To which the invariable response is, "Oh - sure, I can make that. Why didn't you tell me you liked it? Uhhh...tell me what was in it again." So now I can go to the laptop, and I can tell him what was in it again.
We also decided to set ourselves a challenge. We aimed at coming up with a series of dishes made with healthy ingredients that would feed a family of four on a very restricted budget. We called the resultant collection "The Food Stamp Foodie."
Writing out the recipes was a bit of a conundrum, because my husband never measures anything. I had to convince him rather forcefully that "a nice glug of," "a handful or two," and "whatever you've got in the fridge" is not going to be helpful to anybody who is trying to cook the dish he is attempting to describe. I did my best and was often royally chewed out for cutting off the flow of the Creative Chef Process in midstream. (You are welcome, and yes, there is a Kickstarter campaign to cover my hospital bills.)
In recent years I became a vegetarian, which has ruffled my husband not at all, because he's perfectly happy to cook two different dinners and put them out at the same time, since he still eats meat, so we have both vegetarian and non-vegetarian recipes. Today being a cold any yuckky day, I thought I would share one of his vegetarian creations with you. It is one of my personal favorites. If you make it, let me know what you think!
Texas Thai Hodgepodge
FIRST: make your
Vietnamese Coleslaw:
MIX
1 bag coleslaw
2 T fish sauce
3 T rice vinegar, mixed with 3 T sugar, microwaved till sugar dissolves
Salt, Pepper
REFRIGERATE and allow to marinate for at least 8 hours before serving.
NEXT: Make your
Texas Three-Bean Pate:
1 15 oz. can each of pinto beans, pink beans, black beans, drained (3 cans total)
4-5 T finely-diced sundried tomatoes
4 T finely diced red onion, sauteed in olive oil till translucent but not caramelized.
1 tsp Veggie Magic
1 tsp Frank's or other mild hot sauce, to taste
3-4 T olive oil.
Mash all above ingredients together until they form a smooth paste. (If you are lucky enough to live near Zabar’s, you can simply buy their Texas three-bean pate.)
NOW make the
Texas Thai Curry:
1 large zucchini, diced into ½ inch cubes
1 medium eggplant, peeled & cubed
1 package extra-firm seasoned tofu, cubed
1 can coconut milk
1 box sliced mushrooms
1 bag raw coleslaw
2 tsp Thai green curry paste
1 tsp Adobo (spices -Goya section)
½ tsp Veggie Magic (Paul Prudhomme spice mix)
4 T olive oil (or a bit more if needed)
Method: Heat wok on high approx 1-2 minutes. Add olive oil. After about 5 seconds, throw in green curry paste & stir with spatula to break up the paste; keep it moving. Add all the vegetables: zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms, coleslaw. Stir. Sprinkle with Veggie Magic & Adobo. Stir. Cover; wait 3 minutes; uncover. Stir. Once veggies have started to wilt, add coconut milk & 1 cup of the Three-Bean Pate (8 oz). Keep stirring so that pate blends with coconut milk to make a sauce. Allow to cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring, so nothing sticks or burns. Add tofu; keep stirring. Allow to cook 2-3 minutes, and serve.
At table, mix in: VIETNAMESE COLESLAW, which adds a delightful note of coolness, crunch & contrast.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Homesick
Homesick
For Corine Pettey
I thought I
missed the theaters. It turned out
That what I
missed was seeing plays with you.
I thought I
missed the restaurants, but dining out
was so much
better when I ate with you.
I thought I
missed museums. I forgot
Vermeers
looked better when I gazed with you.
And now you’ve
gone to your long home, and part of me
is homeless
till the day I go there too.Thursday, January 22, 2015
Dormitory Dreamin'
Monday was one of the great days of my life. Monday, we ferried my son to his dorm room and, after lugging his various "can't-live-without-its" up to the second floor, in obedience to his none-too-subtle-hints, expeditiously got back in our car and left him to plunge headlong into that eternal bacchanalia some of us fondly remember as College Life.
This wouldn't be a big deal for most parents in January. But the fact is, due to a glitch in the system, my son's school apparently did not get our housing deposit for the Fall semester. It was the end of August, and the work-study student handling phone calls from similarly disappointed and disgruntled freshmen who had expected to be living on campus and who now, two weeks before the start of classes, were being handed the news that the reason they hadn't gotten their room assignment was that - tee-hee, surprise! - they didn't have a room, laughed merrily and told us that so many people were in the same boat as we that my son was not even going to be added to the waiting list.
Fortunately, the house we moved into last June has a separate small downstairs apartment built into it. Quaintly known as a "mother-daughter apartment" the smaller apartment has everything except a stove. Apparently, if there's a stove, that kicks the house out of the mother-daughter tax bracket and into the two-family-home tax bracket, and since nobody here is looking to pay higher taxes, we got my son a hot plate and a microwave, told him to come upstairs if he felt inclined to roast a turkey, and called it a day.
It was not an ideal solution by any means, since we now live on the wrong side of the Hudson (i.e., the west side) and my son's SUNY is on the right side of the Hudson. So every. fricking. day. he had to be driven to the Mall, to catch the bus, to transfer to the campus shuttle, and thereafter all too frequently to tender his apologies to the professor if rush hour traffic had slowed down bridge traffic and he missed the connection for the shuttle, which runs once every hour, and if you miss it you're shit outta luck - all of these jump-through-hoops shenanigans due to the fact that we live in the House That Jack Built. And every afternoon I had to keep an eye on my cell phone for the text that would announce it was time to jam my feet into my boots and peel off for the Mall because he was on the homeward leg of the journey. And I would get to the Mall, only to find another text that read, "Oops - take your time - got on the Local by mistake, haven't even hit the bridge yet."
Let me tell you - I am not a fan of malls. Home Depot got a lot more money than they should have, just because I was bored and you can always put up another towel rack if you think hard about where you haven't put a towel rack yet.
My son was a good sport about it, all things considered. And I did my utmost (no, really - I did - don't listen to my husband!) to be a good sport about suddenly becoming a Suburban School Bus Mommy, which had certainly not been part of anybody's plan. Why didn't my son drive himself to school, you ask? Because we have only two family cars. We moved from Manhattan, remember? What sane family in Manhattan has a car for each and every member of the same household? I'll bet not even each of the de Blasio kids has a car - and I'm pretty sure Gracie Mansion has a garage.
So it was a glorious moment when we learned that my son had managed to get on-campus housing. I had called and I had called and I had called, and I think that I basically tortured so many people in the housing office with my incessant pleas that they "take away my adult child and put him somewhere," that they put him on the list just to shut me up and stop the phone calls. The news that he was finally in was greeted with the same sort of jubilant dance-around-the-kitchen-table-hugging-everybody-in-sight-and-inarticulately-shrieking-variations-on-"Whoopee!" that most families reserve for "I just found out I got a full scholarship to Harvard!" or "That Lotto ticket I found on the sidewalk outside my ten-dollar-an-hour job at Gray's Papaya just paid off at twenty-five million tax-free dollars!"
So last Monday we packed everything into the Honda, trundled across the bridge, got to the room, unpacked it all, and found that the double room was so nice and so big (with even a private bathroom, which is good, because my kid is spoiled after years and years of having his own bathroom, and spent most of his years at summer camp bitching, "I don't want to take a shower with all these fucking PEOPLE!") that there was room for things like the XBox and the PS4 and a large bag of video games and a small fridge and the little TV from our Adirondack summer cottage that my son says he is never going back to for the rest of his life because there isn't any subway station nearby and quite a lot of other things that he found he suddenly needed. So of course we all got back in the car, trundled across the bridge in the other direction, unplugged everything in sight, stuffed it in the car, and off we went, poop-poop, only to find that my son's room mate was unloading his stuff, including a second coffee maker, and was contemplating going back to his home for the bass guitar and the amp, since it's such a nice big room and they have so much space and anyway, he had forgotten to bring any blankets.
As my son gave is the hairy eyeball and jerked his head towards the door in the classic "What's that, Lassie? Timmy's fallen in the well?" move that every parent knows means, "Hit the road, please, Mom, and stand not upon the order of your going" my husband and I made eye contact, nodded at one another, and telegraphed, "Let's split before they can dream up any other essential equipment for Life in a Dorm." We slipped out the door, raced to our car, and fled.
I assume everything is fine, because so far we have not received any calls from my son, or, more importantly, from the authorities.
This wouldn't be a big deal for most parents in January. But the fact is, due to a glitch in the system, my son's school apparently did not get our housing deposit for the Fall semester. It was the end of August, and the work-study student handling phone calls from similarly disappointed and disgruntled freshmen who had expected to be living on campus and who now, two weeks before the start of classes, were being handed the news that the reason they hadn't gotten their room assignment was that - tee-hee, surprise! - they didn't have a room, laughed merrily and told us that so many people were in the same boat as we that my son was not even going to be added to the waiting list.
Fortunately, the house we moved into last June has a separate small downstairs apartment built into it. Quaintly known as a "mother-daughter apartment" the smaller apartment has everything except a stove. Apparently, if there's a stove, that kicks the house out of the mother-daughter tax bracket and into the two-family-home tax bracket, and since nobody here is looking to pay higher taxes, we got my son a hot plate and a microwave, told him to come upstairs if he felt inclined to roast a turkey, and called it a day.
It was not an ideal solution by any means, since we now live on the wrong side of the Hudson (i.e., the west side) and my son's SUNY is on the right side of the Hudson. So every. fricking. day. he had to be driven to the Mall, to catch the bus, to transfer to the campus shuttle, and thereafter all too frequently to tender his apologies to the professor if rush hour traffic had slowed down bridge traffic and he missed the connection for the shuttle, which runs once every hour, and if you miss it you're shit outta luck - all of these jump-through-hoops shenanigans due to the fact that we live in the House That Jack Built. And every afternoon I had to keep an eye on my cell phone for the text that would announce it was time to jam my feet into my boots and peel off for the Mall because he was on the homeward leg of the journey. And I would get to the Mall, only to find another text that read, "Oops - take your time - got on the Local by mistake, haven't even hit the bridge yet."
Let me tell you - I am not a fan of malls. Home Depot got a lot more money than they should have, just because I was bored and you can always put up another towel rack if you think hard about where you haven't put a towel rack yet.
My son was a good sport about it, all things considered. And I did my utmost (no, really - I did - don't listen to my husband!) to be a good sport about suddenly becoming a Suburban School Bus Mommy, which had certainly not been part of anybody's plan. Why didn't my son drive himself to school, you ask? Because we have only two family cars. We moved from Manhattan, remember? What sane family in Manhattan has a car for each and every member of the same household? I'll bet not even each of the de Blasio kids has a car - and I'm pretty sure Gracie Mansion has a garage.
So it was a glorious moment when we learned that my son had managed to get on-campus housing. I had called and I had called and I had called, and I think that I basically tortured so many people in the housing office with my incessant pleas that they "take away my adult child and put him somewhere," that they put him on the list just to shut me up and stop the phone calls. The news that he was finally in was greeted with the same sort of jubilant dance-around-the-kitchen-table-hugging-everybody-in-sight-and-inarticulately-shrieking-variations-on-"Whoopee!" that most families reserve for "I just found out I got a full scholarship to Harvard!" or "That Lotto ticket I found on the sidewalk outside my ten-dollar-an-hour job at Gray's Papaya just paid off at twenty-five million tax-free dollars!"
So last Monday we packed everything into the Honda, trundled across the bridge, got to the room, unpacked it all, and found that the double room was so nice and so big (with even a private bathroom, which is good, because my kid is spoiled after years and years of having his own bathroom, and spent most of his years at summer camp bitching, "I don't want to take a shower with all these fucking PEOPLE!") that there was room for things like the XBox and the PS4 and a large bag of video games and a small fridge and the little TV from our Adirondack summer cottage that my son says he is never going back to for the rest of his life because there isn't any subway station nearby and quite a lot of other things that he found he suddenly needed. So of course we all got back in the car, trundled across the bridge in the other direction, unplugged everything in sight, stuffed it in the car, and off we went, poop-poop, only to find that my son's room mate was unloading his stuff, including a second coffee maker, and was contemplating going back to his home for the bass guitar and the amp, since it's such a nice big room and they have so much space and anyway, he had forgotten to bring any blankets.
As my son gave is the hairy eyeball and jerked his head towards the door in the classic "What's that, Lassie? Timmy's fallen in the well?" move that every parent knows means, "Hit the road, please, Mom, and stand not upon the order of your going" my husband and I made eye contact, nodded at one another, and telegraphed, "Let's split before they can dream up any other essential equipment for Life in a Dorm." We slipped out the door, raced to our car, and fled.
I assume everything is fine, because so far we have not received any calls from my son, or, more importantly, from the authorities.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Saucer-Eyed in Babylon
I don't watch the Golden Globe Awards - as a matter of fact, I don't watch television. (You can scream and run away now, if you like.)
I'm not going to go into a long polemic about how it's a virtue not to watch TV. The fact is, I got out of the habit because ten years ago we decided that Time Warner was charging rip-off prices in Manhatan and we stopped paying for it. Recently after we moved to Rockland County we got basic TV thrown in as part of our telephone/Internet package, so we said, "great, why not?" and once it was all up and running I flipped channels for maybe fifteen minutes, decided that it wasn't very interesting, went upstairs and returned to my book, and that was that. As any of our Puritan forefathers will tell you, it's no virtue to abstain from doing something that doesn't appeal to you.
Resisting the cheesecake at Peter Luger's - now, for that you get points.
I do, however, like movies, and I go to them if the review sounds like it's not going to turn out to be an utter waste of time and of seven dollars. (Did I mention that the movies up here are cheaper?) And I do read the Times online, so when Amy Adams won Best Actress in a Comedy, I had actually seen Big Eyes. And it puzzled me very much indeed, having seen the movie, that Ms. Adams won as Best Actress in a Comedy, because it's a movie about a newly-divorced naif who marries slick con man/artist manqué Walter Keane, who starts passing her kitschy portraits of big-eyed kids of as his own work as soon as they start achieving inexplicable success. (I don't know why I just said that "kitsch sells" is inexplicable - this is, after all, America.) As soon as Mrs. Keane pipes up that she doesn't find this very honest of him, Mr. Keane sets fire to the very nice house they bought with all those Big Eye big bucks. The husband is played by Christoph Waltz, so the audience pretty much knows where it's going from the start... I guess Christopher Walken was unavailable.
So while it was fun to see San Francisco at the tail end of the Beat era (the extras are costumed like the Mad Magazine beatnik parody of My Fair Lady, and I kept waiting for somebody to start warbling "Wouldn't it be Kerouac?") and the courtroom scene where nasty Mr. Keane runs frantically from one side of the witness stand to the other as he ineptly represents himself (and here, I was irresistibly reminded of some of William Shatner's more bravura moments as Captain Kirk) was certainly good for a giggle, I wouldn't exactly call the movie a comedy.
I will, however, admit that when Terence Stamp, representing the haute and haughty Times art critic John Canaday (you remember John Canaday? No? The one who wrote the four volume boxed set The Lives of the Painters? Not to mention The Artful Avocado?) reads aloud that Mrs. Keane has gone public with the information that it is she and she alone who has perpetrated the Big Eye paintings upon the American public, lowers his newspaper in disbelief, and demands, "Good God...Who would admit to that?" I guffawed aloud.
Sadly, nobody else in the theater seemed to get the joke. I'll bet they all have Big Eyes hanging on their walls.
I'm not going to go into a long polemic about how it's a virtue not to watch TV. The fact is, I got out of the habit because ten years ago we decided that Time Warner was charging rip-off prices in Manhatan and we stopped paying for it. Recently after we moved to Rockland County we got basic TV thrown in as part of our telephone/Internet package, so we said, "great, why not?" and once it was all up and running I flipped channels for maybe fifteen minutes, decided that it wasn't very interesting, went upstairs and returned to my book, and that was that. As any of our Puritan forefathers will tell you, it's no virtue to abstain from doing something that doesn't appeal to you.
Resisting the cheesecake at Peter Luger's - now, for that you get points.
I do, however, like movies, and I go to them if the review sounds like it's not going to turn out to be an utter waste of time and of seven dollars. (Did I mention that the movies up here are cheaper?) And I do read the Times online, so when Amy Adams won Best Actress in a Comedy, I had actually seen Big Eyes. And it puzzled me very much indeed, having seen the movie, that Ms. Adams won as Best Actress in a Comedy, because it's a movie about a newly-divorced naif who marries slick con man/artist manqué Walter Keane, who starts passing her kitschy portraits of big-eyed kids of as his own work as soon as they start achieving inexplicable success. (I don't know why I just said that "kitsch sells" is inexplicable - this is, after all, America.) As soon as Mrs. Keane pipes up that she doesn't find this very honest of him, Mr. Keane sets fire to the very nice house they bought with all those Big Eye big bucks. The husband is played by Christoph Waltz, so the audience pretty much knows where it's going from the start... I guess Christopher Walken was unavailable.
So while it was fun to see San Francisco at the tail end of the Beat era (the extras are costumed like the Mad Magazine beatnik parody of My Fair Lady, and I kept waiting for somebody to start warbling "Wouldn't it be Kerouac?") and the courtroom scene where nasty Mr. Keane runs frantically from one side of the witness stand to the other as he ineptly represents himself (and here, I was irresistibly reminded of some of William Shatner's more bravura moments as Captain Kirk) was certainly good for a giggle, I wouldn't exactly call the movie a comedy.
I will, however, admit that when Terence Stamp, representing the haute and haughty Times art critic John Canaday (you remember John Canaday? No? The one who wrote the four volume boxed set The Lives of the Painters? Not to mention The Artful Avocado?) reads aloud that Mrs. Keane has gone public with the information that it is she and she alone who has perpetrated the Big Eye paintings upon the American public, lowers his newspaper in disbelief, and demands, "Good God...Who would admit to that?" I guffawed aloud.
Sadly, nobody else in the theater seemed to get the joke. I'll bet they all have Big Eyes hanging on their walls.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Feed the Birds!
A friend of mine recently mentioned in a group email that she had put out suet for the wild birds that frequent her backyard, even though she finds suet disgusting.
To this, another of my friends (a Harlem-reared transplant to Rockland County who, like myself, finds all the flora and fauna of country life a frequently enchanting, if sometimes bewildering, change from, "Ugh, a rat . . . Ugh, a water bug . . . Ugh, a rat with wings . . . Echh, there goes a landlord . . ." responded, "What's suet? I wanted to feed the birds in my back yard and figured I would just throw the food on the ground. I bought a bag of food for wild birds, have no idea if it's the right kind. Not a good idea? Let me know."
Now, this was something I did happen to know about because of my summers in the Adirondacks, and I responded to her query as follows:
If you throw the birdseed on the ground, the squirrels will grab it all, and they will frighten the birds off, too. Finding a squirrel-proof feeder is a challenge most of us who like to do the St. Francis of Assisi act have faced. The first time you see what looks like a ratty grey boa hanging over your feeder, you think, "How cute! Gee, that squirrel is smart!" Then you inspect your feeder a couple of days later and you realize your expensive feeder looks like a teenager whose pack of condoms failed to come out of the vending machine has been whaling on it with a tire iron, and suddenly you don't think the squirrels are so cute and so smart anymore, you're thinking, "I wanna kill that greedy little m.f.!" The idea is to somehow hang the feeder on a wire that is so thin and so long that that the squirrel can't climb down it, or leap onto it from a branch, or do any of those other annoying acrobatic tricks at which squirrels excel. There are also feeders with things called "squirrel baffles" on them, but not all of them work.
Suet is rendered animal fat and it looks like Crisco. The birds like it, for some reason. The English make puddings out of it. The birds and the English are weird.
This provoked a barrage of emails from the other ladies on our email list, all of us more or less in agreement that squirrels are a pain in the ass if you happen to like feeding birds, that nobody likes pigeons (that would be the above-mentioned "rats with wings"), and that the English are weird.
The subconscious being a strange and terrible place, all of this led to the moment after lunch when I was finally disentangling the lights from among the dessicated branches of the Christmas tree (snap! crackle! pop!) and found myself cheerily bellowing that song about the bag lady from Mary Poppins. I haven't thought of it since I was about six years old, but, to my horror, I find that when I sing it today I still make the same mistake I made when I was a tiny child and didn't know what an apostle was:
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
Feed the birds," that's what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies
All around the cathedral the saints and opossums
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it,
You know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares...
Actually, if there's an opossum looking down upon me, I'd just as soon have it be a smiling one.
To this, another of my friends (a Harlem-reared transplant to Rockland County who, like myself, finds all the flora and fauna of country life a frequently enchanting, if sometimes bewildering, change from, "Ugh, a rat . . . Ugh, a water bug . . . Ugh, a rat with wings . . . Echh, there goes a landlord . . ." responded, "What's suet? I wanted to feed the birds in my back yard and figured I would just throw the food on the ground. I bought a bag of food for wild birds, have no idea if it's the right kind. Not a good idea? Let me know."
Now, this was something I did happen to know about because of my summers in the Adirondacks, and I responded to her query as follows:
If you throw the birdseed on the ground, the squirrels will grab it all, and they will frighten the birds off, too. Finding a squirrel-proof feeder is a challenge most of us who like to do the St. Francis of Assisi act have faced. The first time you see what looks like a ratty grey boa hanging over your feeder, you think, "How cute! Gee, that squirrel is smart!" Then you inspect your feeder a couple of days later and you realize your expensive feeder looks like a teenager whose pack of condoms failed to come out of the vending machine has been whaling on it with a tire iron, and suddenly you don't think the squirrels are so cute and so smart anymore, you're thinking, "I wanna kill that greedy little m.f.!" The idea is to somehow hang the feeder on a wire that is so thin and so long that that the squirrel can't climb down it, or leap onto it from a branch, or do any of those other annoying acrobatic tricks at which squirrels excel. There are also feeders with things called "squirrel baffles" on them, but not all of them work.
Suet is rendered animal fat and it looks like Crisco. The birds like it, for some reason. The English make puddings out of it. The birds and the English are weird.
This provoked a barrage of emails from the other ladies on our email list, all of us more or less in agreement that squirrels are a pain in the ass if you happen to like feeding birds, that nobody likes pigeons (that would be the above-mentioned "rats with wings"), and that the English are weird.
The subconscious being a strange and terrible place, all of this led to the moment after lunch when I was finally disentangling the lights from among the dessicated branches of the Christmas tree (snap! crackle! pop!) and found myself cheerily bellowing that song about the bag lady from Mary Poppins. I haven't thought of it since I was about six years old, but, to my horror, I find that when I sing it today I still make the same mistake I made when I was a tiny child and didn't know what an apostle was:
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
Feed the birds," that's what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies
All around the cathedral the saints and opossums
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it,
You know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares...
Actually, if there's an opossum looking down upon me, I'd just as soon have it be a smiling one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)