Saturday, January 30, 2010

WHAT TO DO IN SERIOUSLY BRR WEATHER




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At the moment, citizens of Little Macondo have no reason  to ask where  the snows of yesteryear have gone. The snow, my friends has returned with a vengeance. Yesterday,  snowflakes  nearly a large as popped corn poured from the sky   for six hours to cloak  the entire village in  glittery white. At my house, we spent part  of the time feeding voracious wood stove, Morsolino, our main source of warmth. In between trips to the wood pile, we read, drank tea, deplored the  shamefully bad articles in Newsweek and praised the excellence of the writing in  The New Yorker and Harper's.
Perhaps it is typical of those over fifty to mourn their salad days when journalist took their work seriously  and editors knew how to do their jobs. Again, it is quite possible that today's journalists target  readers whose attention span is briefer than their underwear. The effect of e-mail, instant messaging, texting and blogging, the immediacy of which often precludes reflection,  and care may account for a relaxation of old rules. A new language seems to be emerging from   text messages. That is very exciting. Linguistic evolution often is so slow it goes on unnoticed by all but academics. To keep track of  rapid change the  English language has undergone since the internet revolution  is to watch history unfold. To witness  the the emergence of new forms of expression is exhilarating. To see citizen journalists challenge the monopoly traditional media once had on the written word is at once alarming and fascinating. It is a pity, however, that in effort not be left behind, so many journalist  the traditional media dumb down their writing.
Being snowbound  is a chance to be more aware of  details we fail to notice unless we slow our pace--the way the setting sun suffuses grey clouds with a subtle lavender wash, the raucous cries of the blue jay in the snowy woods, the muted song of the creek behind our house. What we do on snowy days is to match our pace to that of the snowfall. We move go about our business steadily. We read and read--Orlando Figes on the dark days of Stalin's reign of terror, a lovely article by Jonathan Rosen on the poet Milton, Trailhead, a perfect  story by E. O. Wilson and we find delicious treats on the net, for example,

Let it snow!

Friday, January 29, 2010

BRIT WIT?

Reading the news on the net is such sweet sorrow. This morning, I blundered upon "A Nation  of Nicompoops", a virulent attack on  the Obama administration by a  Alex Massie,  whose creds include having written  for a publication called The Scotsman.  Dissing Americans must boost his hits, but  so many British writers seem make a profession of feeling superior to us crass colonials I wonder what would happen if they were forced to write objectively about American politics. Massie spent a whole five years in Washington DC and perhaps this qualifies him for punditry. In my opinion, it should  qualify him  to be  the local dog catcher. That would free him from the onerous task of having to write about cricket--his political blathering is anything but  cricket. Personally, I would like to import him to our little burg and let him run the dog pound. Unfortunately,  Little Macondo by DC has its share of  homegrown underemployed nincompoops competing for the post. The addition of a a British cricket writer to its number is something up with which they probably  would  not put.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

COMING UP

Homemade bread starter
Old cookbooks for green times

SOUP OF THE EVENING, BEAUTIFUL SOUP

HOT CUCUMBER SOUP





According to  the weather forecast,  the meteorological treats the skies have in store for the Mid-Atlantic region are rain, sleet and snow--in other words, brr weather. This calls for  for extraordinary measures, namely, hearty meals that will neither  wreck the household  budget nor  add pounds to the householder's figure. Hot cucumber soup made with whole milk, cucumbers, potatoes, peas, queso blanco and mozzarella is  a spin off of a Brazilian dish. The original calls for West Indian gherkins and fresh pinto beans, both unavailable at local supermarkets.

HOT CUCUMBER SOUP
Serves four


FOR THE ROUX
One tablespoon butter
One tablespoon flour
Half a cup Half and Half

FOR THE SOUP

Two cups whole milk
One teaspoon salt
One large potato, peeled and cubed
One cup fresh or frozen peas
Two pickling cucumbers, peeled and cubed
Two ounces quesso blanco, cubed
Two ounces mozzarella, cubed
Freshly grated black pepper to taste
Half a cup cilantro minced
One  tablespoon chives, minced

Make roux. Place milk and salt in soup pot  and bring mix to a boil. Add potatoes. Simmer for ten minutes. Add peas and simmer until brely cooked--approximately three minutes. Add cucumbers, cheese  and roux. Turn of heat and allow soup to rest for ten minutes. Add pepper, cilantro and chives. Serve with toasted sesame batard slices.





ALMOST BRAZILIAN BEEF AND NOODLE SOUP










In Brazil, beef soup sometimes is made with leftovers from the large midday meal--beef, rice, potatoes and noodles.  Made from scratch, it begins with cubed beef, shallots, garlic, black pepper, green peppers, and tomatoes. Although these ingredients are fairly constant, there is no fixed recipe since many Brazilians prefer to whatever is in season.  My  version uses  uses lean ground beef, onions, garlic carrots, potatoes, mushrooms and noodles as well as a spice that is not part of the Brazilian culinary vernacular--smoked Spanish paprika.

ALMOST BRAZILIAN BEEF AND NOODLE SOUP
Serves six

 FOR THE SOUP
Six carrots, diced
Two onions, minced
Three cloves garlic
Two  tablespoons olive oil
Half a cup minced cilantro

THE VEGGIE MIX
Heat olive oil. Add onions and garlic and cook until transparent. Add carrots. Cook for three minutes.


FOR THE MEATBALLS


Two slices bread soaked in water
One pound lean ground beef

One egg
Two teaspoons salt
Two onions, minced
Three cloves of garlic, minced
Half a cup cilantro, minced
Four cups beef broth seasoned with one teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
Two  cups sliced mushrooms
Two potatoes, diced

 Mix all the ingredients and use a melon baller to shape into small meatballs.  Cook the meatballs in beef broth for ten minutes. add potatoes and cook until tender. Add noodles and cook for five minutes.  Add carrot and onion mix and simmer until noodles are al dente.. Add mushrooms and turn off heat. Wait  five minutes before adding cilantro.



Friday, January 22, 2010

CHEATING ON JOE






What if you could drink in potency, vitality, clarity and well-being in one fell slurp? Some purveyors of mate 
( pronounced MAH-tay)  the South  American tea made with the leaf and stems of of a type of holly,  Ilex paraguariensis claim that their product  offers you all that as well as antioxidants, vitamins,  cancer fighting phenolics,  antibacterial, antifungal and weight reducing agents.  They quote data  from scientific journals, biochemists, the University of Illinois, and the prestigious Pasteur Institute to support their claims. Nonbelievers not only  dismiss  the brew's magic properties; they list studies that mention possible links between mate drinking and bladder, esophagus and lung cancer. 

All this scientific and pseudo-scientific brouhaha leaves me cold. My interest in mate has nothing to do with the validity of this or that hypothesis. A long time ago, during   my salad days in northeast Brazil,   I discovered a Lebanese bistro that served mate batido,  a sweet  iced beverage made with toasted mate tea with   sfiha, a Syrian-Lebanese pastry as  a an yet to be labeled fusion cuisine snack.  Today, as a confirmed coffee drinker who has issues with caffeine, I am looking for a gentler  alternative. Mate also contains caffeine, but some of its distributors claim that it is healthier than coffee. Who knows? Slogging  through the welter of claims and counterclaims complicated  the process of how to cheat on Joe until much travelled friend Borys brought home a bag of Argentinian mate tea and a guampa, the gourd traditionally used as a container for the miraculous beverage. In matters culinary I am fearless. If it tastes good and it does not kill me, I will go for it. All I need before I toss my espresso maker, is a source of fresh sfiha.

Friday, January 15, 2010

BIRTHDAYS ARE HAPPIER WITH UPSIDE DOWN APPLE GINGERBREAD




Monet's Galettes.



UPSIDE DOWN APPLE GINGERBREAD

TOPPING

Half a cup brown sugar
Four tablespoons butter
4 apples, peeled and sliced
Two ounces crystallized ginger, minced
Melt  butter and brown sugar in an oven proof mold. Simmer for four minutes. Layer apple slices and crystallized ginger.


GINGERBREAD
Half a cup dark molasses
Half a cup manuka honey
Half a cup sugar
Half a cup butter
Two and half cups flour
One teaspoon  ginger
One teaspoon cinnamon
One teaspoon baking soda
Four eggs
One cup milk
Mix flour, baking soda and spices. Reserve. Cream sugar and butter. Add molasses, milk and eggs. Beat until thoroughly combined. Add flour mix. Pour batter over apple slices. Bake at 350F for 50 minutes.

Happy birthday, Your Sweetness!




Thursday, January 7, 2010

GARLIC, NOT SHUNGA






Valentine's and birthday loom in the horizon. If he goes a-roving, he gets bubkes. If he stays put, he gets a feast. He is a man of distinctly epicurean habits and for such men, chicken with forty cloves of garlic is--I'm guessing here in spite of twenty years of close association--better than shunga. Anyroad, shunga for some of us of a certain age shunga can a been-there-done-that sort of thing, an  unrefined, simple minded thing. Garlic is subtler. Garlic is good, as the  the menu Louis de Bernieres's odalisque  devised  for her lover in Birds with Broken Wings demonstrates. 
I missed the deadline for fall planting, negligent gardener that I am. It was not for lack of incentive. Johnny's Selected, the Cook's Garden, Burpee's. Thompson & Morgan  and various other seed purveyors update me regularly on  new additions to their inventories. what with the voracious deer, my enthusiasm for establishing new beds waned with gardening season and so I missed the chance to try out Nootka, an heirloom variety from Washington state. But all is not lost. Silver Rose garlic is said to grow very fast, whatever that means in seed catalog parlance.  If I manage to  keep Bambi at bay this coming spring--I am thinking of building a nice moat and dawbridge system or  very tricky haha to keep my pocket handkerchief veggie plot. All is fair in love and love and war.

SUPERMARKET ETHNOGRAPHY


There was a fiftyish man ahead of me at the checkout  line at the supermarket and I  had a temporarily relapse into my newspaper columnist days when all that moved was copy. That was just an excuse. I love peeking into people's grocery carts. I try to guess from the contents what sort of life they might be leading. Newspaper columnists rarely refrain from such minor invasions of privacy. It is a hard habit  to kill. Anyway,. the man ahead of me was darkly handsome in an outdated, Italian pop singer way--Dean Martin's, perhaps. He had an expensive Republican haircut--think Rat Pack-- and he wore an expensive looking leather jacket. He bought, a 24-pack of imported beer. That told me that he was neither local nor poor. By and large, poor locals in that age group buy domestic. Darkly Handsome  bought, in addition, a large carton of  cottage cheese, fresh asparagus, raspberries,  green grapes and a bottle of  red Columbia Crest wine. His bill came to thirty eight dollars..  Note the red wone, which indicates that he will be having meat with it. that many of that many men of that  generation would consider  fair-to-middling wine, a steak, a baked potato and an out of season veggie  followed by out of season fruit a prelude to romance. Do I know that by experience? Certainly not. Due to an European upbringing, my own guy's idea of seductive food  does not include plain  meat and potatoes--tournedos and pommes Anna, maybe. Columbia Crest wine, jamais.   Ergo Darkly Handsome must be  an average American,  Where did I learn about the mating habits of the average fiftyish American male? I learned  them from the souurce of all wisdom, i.e,  American movies.


Il Dino Martino, Rat Packlish impish.

But where was DH's steak? Where was the potato? Where was the sour cream for the potato? What was it with the cottage cheese? If he could afford a pricey haircut and jacket why did buy Columbia Crest wine by the bottle? Iif he had serious money he would have good vintage wine stashed at home, right? Hell, he's have a personal chef . So, Darkly Handsome was an out of state, middle class guy who spent more onhair and clothes than on his prospective squeeze. Problem, the Infanta who is a truly observant person, pointed out that DH wore a wedding ring. Damn and blast.That changes everything.  The wine and beer were for him, the rest was for his wife. who had just made a New Year's resolution to go on a diet, hence the cottage cheese, fruit and veggies. Such expensive diet  fare points to  a dual  income. DH was then, an average married middle middle class, conservative American--no ear rings, no visible tats.  Columbia Crest wine probably hints at an anti-globalisation cast of mind.  Whatever he was, he stood out from the bearded, long-haired, flanel shirted, work booted guys whose shopping carts contained a big bag of dog food, domestic beer and a giant frozen pizza..  That means poor,  divorced and  committed to their buddies ( giant pizza is the clue here) and dog. I have spoken.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FOOD BANK

As most internet users, my e-mail inbox fills up with requests for s this time of the year. The most poignant  is from Move On, which did such a superb job rallying voters to support Obama and which subsequently campaigned hard for his health bill. Now Move On lets us know that food banks are in crisis. Not surprisingly, given the state of the economy, demand is high and supplies are low. While on this topic, I must remember that it is time to honor good New Year resolutions by making blood donations to the Red Cross. It costs nothing to donate blood and you even get a cookie and fruit juice as a reward. Not a bad deal.
 The next piece of e-mail to catch my attention comes from the  Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
"How do birds withstand wicked winter weather and other daily threats to survival, even in warmer climates? We have a new environmental challenge for you from the Celebrate Urban Birds project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We invite you to show us how birds are surviving in your neighborhood this winter. It can be a photo, artwork, video, even a story or a poem describing how birds are finding the food, water, and shelter they need. You can take part no matter what your age or skill level. Groups such as schools, libraries, clubs, and businesses are also more than welcome. As you may know, Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round citizen-science project focused on birds in neighborhood settings." The deadline is February 15, 2010. Prizes include a pair of Eagle Optics binoculars, bird feeders, a birdsong calendar, books, posters, cards and more. The first 50 people who enter will receive a copy of the "Little Green Places" poster and selected images and videos will be posted on the Celebrate Urban Birds website. I intend to particpate by photographing birds in my own neighborhood and those brave little sparrows who scrounge crumbs in the parking lots of supermarkets. I remember such a cheeky little guy perched on the back of my chair at a cafe at the Gare du Nord, in Paris, long ago. He had no fear and he gots lots of croissant crumbs.We should all be so lucky. As for the local sparrows, they are just as charming, just as fearless and just as deserving of more than stale doughnuts. Ten minutes of internet fame, perhaps? 
There is also in my mail an article about the Google Superphone, presumably designedto geared to compete with all the smartphones out there. As the owner of stupidphones, I am not unduly concerned, by the big guys at Apple should be.