I'll Have That With a Biscotti and Peanuts, Please

Beers with all sorts of added flavors, juices and whatnot are popular. Beer with lemon. Beer with cola. Beer with apple. With dragonfruit. With hot peppers. With honey. With energy drink. With grapefruit - that one, presumably, because someone found that beer just wasn't bitter enough on its own. If you're the sort of person who digs beer with a fruit smoothie then more power to you.

I thought every combination had been done until yesterday when I saw for sale bottles of beer plus cappuccino. And I'm wondering if it's going to be proper to have a sprinkle of cinnamon over the top or perhaps a decorative heart drawn in the foam.

I'm now waiting for beer with gingerbread spice latte or beer with eggnog. You know. For those festive holiday get togethers.

Tortured

I had stuff I wanted to write about but it's been ruined because right now only one thing is on my mind. Tonight for supper I had shrimp with garlic and herbs and now my whole flat stinks of garlic. I've got the windows open, I've sprayed air freshener around, I've washed everything in the kitchen - it still stinks. Reeks. It's as if my entire flat has been steeped in garlic. So garlic stinky that I can't even think about anything else save how freaky ass garlicky everything smells. So bad that the fictional vampire books on my shelves are beating on the door to escape. I just know I'll never get any sleep because I'll be terrorized by the stench of garlic all night.

Shit. Now we're going to have to move or else be haunted forever by torturous garlicky shrimp.

Friday Shuffle - Pastel Sweets Edition

I finished these last weekend and waited until I had nothing to write for just the right moment to show them to you.

Hey look! It's the right moment!



Yarny talk:

Pattern: Spring Forward
Needles: 2.5mm double pointed needles
Yarn: Austermann Step
Colorway: 0010

I've been trying to connect my July blog posts to the subject of food so what do these hand knit socks have to do with food? The muted, semi-pastel colors of the socks remind me of the colors you find in a roll of Necco Wafers. I never was a fan of Necco Wafers (few things are worse than the black licorice flavored ones) but at one time they were quite useful when my friends and I found that we could trip the toll booths around Richmond by flipping in a Necco Wafer instead of an actual coin.

Let's shuffle.

1. Someone Like You - I Am Kloot
2. Mrs. Robinson - The Lemonheads
3. Call It Love - Poco
   
4. This Is How I Know - Ron Sexsmith
5. Wooden Heart (Muss I Denn) - Elvis Presley
6. Here Comes The Rain - The Mavericks
7. All Over You - Live
8. Your Own Worst Enemy - Bruce Springsteen
9. Long Cool Woman - The Hollies
10. Vince The Loveable Stoner - The Fratellis
    

Nourishment of a Different Sort

I was thinking that five years ago today I was in the hospital, fresh from having surgery.

Know what the worst part of it was? It wasn't being away from my husband. It wasn't being in a room with four other women and no privacy (here's a trick - snore extremely loud and they'll move you off by yourself). It wasn't being stuck in an un-air conditioned hospital during a 95+°F heat wave. It wasn't, during said heatwave, having to wear thick, tight, hot, anti-thrombosis stockings that went from my toes to my upper thighs. It wasn't the burning and painful anti-thrombosis injections I had to have in my leg each day of my two week stay there at the no privacy, no air conditioning hospital. And even though it's a close second, it wasn't even the surgery where my abdomen was sliced open from navel to the beginning of happy land so parts that I was fond of and to this day miss could be removed.

The worst part was the vile swill served to us three times a day that they laughingly called food.

I'd alway heard stories of hospital food but since the last time I had been hospitalized was when Lyndon Johnson was president and most of my nutrition came out of a bottle, I wasn't familiar with it first hand. At first it didn't seem so bad. On the day I was admitted I had eaten breakfast at home and my lunch was some sort of macaroni in cheese sauce fare that wasn't so bad. I was denied food for days after that because of tests I had to have and because of my surgery so it wasn't until days later that I found out how terrible hospital food really is.

Sometimes the flavor was so terrible I couldn't determine whether they were feeding me a meal or simply trying to get rid of medical waste. I recall a meal of goulash that had the same flavor that I would expect to find if I licked my bathmat. On a Sunday we had a "fancy" dinner of pork roast in gravy and I'm fairly certain the gravy had a previous life as rinse water in the laundry. Other times the food wasn't bad tasting at all. It wasn't good tasting either. It simply had no flavor whatsoever. Now I understand that hospital food has to be cooked with little or no salt and whatnot but the food itself should have a flavor of its own. It was so disappointing to be served a dish that in appearace looked fine but when put in one's mouth it was like eating hot nothing. I was often given yogurt and fresh fruit as part of my meals and damn if even they were flavorless. Bland, runny yogurt, half-ripe, tasteless pears, mealy apples devoid of any aroma at all. Mealtimes were an exercise in disappointment. Is there any wonder I lost twenty pounds in two weeks while I was there?

Luckily I had my friend, Kirsten. Kirsten is anorexic but damn if she doesn't know what's good. She'd visit me every couple days and would always sneak in a treat or two for me. Once she came to visit me and before coming by dropped by a bakery to get me something. Many bakeries here sell finished sandwiches and Kirsten brought me one, apologizing as she gave it to me because it was late in the day and the sandwich had probably had a couple hours age on it. I remember that sandwich vividly. Whole grain bread with boiled egg, tomatoes, cucumber and remoulade sauce. Just as she gave it to me one of the nurses came in to give me some medicine or to stab me with something or whatever so I quickly put the sandwich in my bedside table drawer. After Kirsten left and I had eaten yet another disappointing dinner and I knew the nurses wouldn't be in to check on me for a couple more hours I pulled the sandwich out. Despite being wrapped in plastic the crusts of the bread were dry and the remoulade had gotten the bread slightly soggy. I'm also not a big fan of boiled eggs. I like boiled egg whites but if I can taste the yolk I get a little wiggy. But so intense was my desperation that still I gleefully bit into the sandwich. And it was lovely. The remoulade hid the taste of the egg yolk and the cucumber and tomato wasn't even watery and bland. I quickly gulped down the sandwich, leaving the dry crusts behind and then slowly shuffled all hunchbacked into the bathroom (it was still less than a week after my surgery) where a large trashcan was that would enable me to hide the crusts from the prying eyes of the nurses.

I still had over a week to go before I would be released from the hospital but that one sandwich made me feel so wonderful. It made me feel that even though I was away having surgery in a strange place with strange people, I wasn't forgotten and I was still loved. A dear friend threw me a lifeline and it was in the shape of a boiled egg sandwich.

Brutal Honesty

Darling Mollie wanted me to knit some baby socks to give as a gift to a family member who's expecting a baby. She asked me about it last night when she called me.

"Do you know how to knit baby socks?"

"Sure. It's like knitting big people socks but you don't knit them as big. Basically the same structure though."

"Can you make green and yellow ones?"

"If I can get some yellow and green yarn."

"Can I get you the yarn?"

"Just go to the yarn shop and tell the sales lady what you want - sock yarn for baby socks. She'll get you the right stuff."

"Okay. So do you need me to send you anything else? Are you out of Hellmann's? Do you need me to send you Hellmanns?"

"Oh boy, I've been out of Hellmann's since February!"

"Okay. Do you want to try that new olive oil Hellmann's?"

Time to make a snap decision. I know I probably should be eating the olive oil stuff because it would be healthier for me to eat - if the word "healthy" could be attached to whipped oil and eggs anyway - but I've never before eaten it.

This is how it sounded in my head:

"Hmmm....ewww...olive oil. Maybe it's good though. Maybe it tastes the same. Maybe it's a little different. Olive oil tastes different. Remember the time you accidentally got too much olive oil in the Spanish rice? It was gross. Maybe it's gross. What if it's gross? I can't have Mollie send me Hellmann's and then me not eat it because it's gross! Maybe it would only be gross if I had it on a sandwich but not so gross if it's in potato salad. Is it worth it to try it? It could be very good. I thought I read someone say it was good. Mollie wouldn't know because she hates mayonnaise so I can't ask her. Perhaps I should have her send just a tiny jar of it but that's stupid because if I hate it, any of it is a waste. If I say I don't want it am I going to look like a pig? Maybe I should get it and learn to like it. Maybe all I need to do is try it. It would be better for me than regular mayonnaise. But that light mayonnaise would be better for me too and that stuff is vile. This stuff could be vile. Should I try it? Maybe I'll try it."

What Darling Mollie heard:

"Uhhhhh....no."

Mollie howled laughing and she said "I knew you'd give me an honest answer! Someone at work was asking me if I had someone in my life that I could be absolutely up-front with and who would always give me the absolute truth back and I told her it was you. You won't even mislead me about mayonnaise!".

And that's true. If you've got a friend who won't even bullshit you about something relatively unimportant (I say "relatively" because while mayonnaise is important to me it's not quite in the same catagory as "Should I marry this guy?"), you can trust them to tell you the truth when it comes to something crucial. Things like "Should I get the Chanel bag or the Louis Vuitton?".

Friday Shuffle - Needed Treats Edition

I am a creature of habit and some habits are unbreakable. Since I was a child I've taken comfort in chocolate and little trinket-type toys. One or the other is generally a sure-fire way to lure me out of a funk. If I can have them together, so much the better.

Today was one of those touch-it-an-it-turns-to-crap days so I was rather delighted when, while reorganizing my pantry, I came across some Kinder Surprise Eggs that I'd purchased about six weeks ago, put away and promptly forgot about. Actually they're Kinder Joy eggs because Kinder Joy is what's sold here once warm weather sets in. Chocolate and toys in one fell swoop - yay! I could feel my mood lightening already.

And here's what was in two of the eggs. As ever, roll your cursor over the photo to make it change.



Chocolate, toys and Daffy and Sylvester. The third thing that's guaranteed to cheer me up.

The fourth thing that cheers me up? Bixente the iPod. Let's shuffle.

1. Captain Jack - Billy Joel
2. At Seventeen - Janis Ian
3. One And The Same - Audioslave
4. Summers End - Foo Fighters
5. Take Me To The Pilot - Elton John
6. Shoot The Poets - The Cribs
7. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
8. Hello In There - Bette Midler
9. Photograph - Ringo Starr
10. Raise The Barn - Keith Urban
    

Sharing the Good Stuff

Many Southern women claim that they learned to cook at the feet of their mothers and grandmothers. In a sense that's true for me as well - my mother taught me a great deal about cooking - but her knowledge did not come from her own mother. In a round about way it came from my paternal grandmother - the one who died in 1931 a few months before my mother was born.

My maternal grandmother was not a great cook. She wasn't terrible but cooking wasn't one of her talents. My mother readily attests to this. I remember her being pretty good with baking pies and cakes and she was pretty good with canning but as for regular meals, she just didn't have it. I haven't eaten anything cooked by my grandmother since - well, probably since I was in college - and I remember her cooking always being sort of mushy and somehow never tasting quite right. When we visited my grandparents I mostly remember my grandmother doing prep work but the real cooking was done by my mother and her sisters. At the time I'm sure I thought it was just them pitching in to help but now I think it was their way of making sure my grandmother didn't make anything funky tasting. It's not her fault though. My grandmother was six years old when her mother died and she evidently just didn't have anyone to really show her the Southern cooking ropes.

When my mother married my father she wasn't much of a cook either and so she ended up learning to cook from one of my father's much-older sisters, Irene. My paternal grandmother died when she gave birth to my Aunt Cora and since Irene was nearly grown she and one of the other older sisters helped raise both my father and Aunt Cora. Aunt Irene claimed that my grandmother was a fabulous cook and she learned from her and then passed it on to my mother and Aunt Cora and Aunt Irene's daughter, Wanda. It's no wonder that to me their cooking tasted an awful lot alike, although I have to say Aunt Cora could always beat my mother at baking biscuits.

What I love about families is the tradition of teaching younger generations how to cook and sharing recipes. Some of my favorite recipes are ones that came from my mother or my aunts or cousins. I learned some of my Southern cooking skills from Southern Living and church cookbooks but the best ones are the ones passed down to me from my kin and now I'll pass one on to you. This is the recipe for my cousin Wanda's chocolate meringue pie. Everyone in my family loves Wanda's chocolate pie. We all love her chocolate pie so much that when we speak of her we always say "She made the best chocolate pie!".

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
3 eggs, separated
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

Warm milk in a saucepan. Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Add enough of the warm milk to the dry ingredients to moisten them and pour all back into saucepan with rest of milk and stir well (I like to use a wire whisk). Heat mixture until begins to thicken. Add some of the hot mixture to egg yolks and stir well. Pour yolk mixture into saucepan mixture and cook until becomes a pudding consistency. Add butter and vanilla and stir. Pour into a browned pie shell and cover with meringue (Click here if you need to know how to make meringue) . Bake at 400°F until meringue is golden. Let cool completely before serving.

As much as our family loves Wanda's chocolate pie, this pie has been the cause of some family strife. Once my sister made a chocolate pie and she, my BIL and my nephew ate about half of it. The next day she had a horrible day at work and she couldn't wait to get home because she knew a piece of Wanda's glorious chocolate pie would improve her dark mood. Sister arrived home to see my BIL eating the last piece of the chocolate pie. My brother had come by earlier and ate about half of the leftovers and my BIL went ahead and polished off the rest. Bad move because a cranky woman cheated out of chocolate pie is a formidable foe. She freaked out for hours over it. About six months later when my sister and BIL were in Germany visiting me my BIL inadvertently mentioned the chocolate pie incident and she went into orbit all over again as if it has just happened. But it's cured my BIL for good. If it were to save his life, he still wouldn't take the last piece of chocolate pie without express permission from Sister.

Enjoy. And share the last piece with your family.