What I Left Behind

It is 9^of.
The snow in the firs out my daughter's window looks like Vermont.
The snow crunches underfoot.
I haven't heard that in decades.
--ml
tag: snowscapes

Rain Is Not Just Liquid Sunshine

Sometimes it gets chilly enough around here to transform the whole scene. Here's one of our apple trees:


Here's the poor little brown Washington birds trying to get a bite.


Amazing what happens when you get all those light beams bouncing from grey cloud to white ground and back again!
--ml
tag: Snowscapes

Friday Cat Blogging (Not)

The simonized in the snow.

--ml
tag: Friday cat Blogging

Out Of The Ether

Tiscali UK Ltd asks "Why do sailors wear bell bottoms?"

hmmm ...
Among the answers I know is that, after it became common for sailors to change their clothes (at all, at all), they sailed in ships that were likely to be:

• attacked at any time; or
• were likely to catch a fire

Fireman will tell you that sleeping in fire retardant pants is not pleasant. Yet, getting into one's clobber quickly is very important when the station house bell is ringing.
More so for sailors when a sudden attack lit the companionway to the magazine. Worse, when the oil bunkers caught afire, instant action was required.
For the watch on deck this is not a problem. They are dressed and ready to go.
Since it became acceptable-- and possible -- to sleep in something other then one's workaday clothes, the off watch was in a quandary.
Comfort called for divestment. Readiness called for assumables and shoon. That is: sleep comfortable and be ready to die putting on your clothes; or sleep in your boots and be ready to go without your pants; OR jump out of your hammock in your boots into your pants that get wider toward the bottom to go over your clodhoppers.

If that is too techno-babble an answer how about this:
The girls love a handsome sailor in bell bottoms.

For this reason the US Navy decided to retire bell bottoms as part of the uniform at the height of the winding down of the US-Vietnam conflict when capitalist fashion designers declared the bell bottom IN.

--ml
tags: Design, Bell Bottoms, USN

Moderation, Me Dears

Moderation is all in all.
So be moderate in all things ...
Especially moderation.

--ml
tags: Feast of Holidays, Thanksgiving, aphorisms

Parent Seminar

Wil at WWdN in Exile reports:

Ryan pointed to V for Vendetta, which was on top. "I've been thinking about it, and I think the book is better than the movie," he said.

"It usually is," I said.

"They should have kept in a lot of stuff that they cut, and they sort of changed the entire meaning of the story with the screenplay." He said.

If films were all maxi series and books were all short stories the problem might be less so.
Except:
When I read I see in my head what no director, no camera man, no set (costume, makeup, sound, color) designer ever thought of.
Certainly no producer, not even New Line, would ever approve the cost of bringing that vision to the screen / stage / speaker / museum.
Even if one did, you would accuse it of not being what I saw in my head, let alone what you saw in your own.
If an apple is wanted talk about which apple.
Do not quibble about the mikan.
--ml
tags: Design, adaptation

Thanksgiving: prayer?

Every one of us is in a muddle.
Many of us are in a muddle because of our assumptions.
Many assumptions have some basis in what we agree is reality.
All else follows?

95% of the universe is not just unknown to science...
BUT
Is currently unknowable.

We're working on that.

Still, be thankful that we can.
--ml
tag: Thanksgiving, Feast of Holidays

Thanksgiving III

Or:

Survive the Process

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

You want philosophy? Read my maugerings beginning with Time's Just No Thing and et seq. here and here. Besides wasting your time (possibly pleasurably), these will fortify your comprehension of the ancient new Hassidic-Zen concept that there is time to do what is important to you. Maybe not what you want to do, but what you must do and what is important to you. If that is cooking a feast, so what's the problem? Otherwise you have to choose among the myriad invitations pressed upon you by a breathless public, or wheedle your spouse into watching the game at the brew pub -- she'll love the wide screen and full theatre sound system.

Practically speaking, to those who remain ...

To build your feast without causing your day runner to scream tilt! or your temper to fray way past anybody's enjoyment, you need not to mourn but to organize.
First, observe that a feast need not be many complex dishes. An agglomeration of simple dishes will do the job, provided each is very good or better. By that I mean making from scratch whenever possible.
The big handle on cooking is the difference between preparation and cooking. Cooking is passive for the cook. Prep is active. What can be done ahead? All the cutting? How many steps can you do in the days before the event? What can you start while the first dish cooks? Without getting too far ahead of yourself?
A quarter hour spent planning your menu will go a long long way to de-frazzling the chef.
Here's the plan of battle I drew up for one year:

Tuesday, AM: Shop
Tuesday, PM: Make lime sherbet, cranberry sauce
Tuesday, Eve: Start knot rolls
Wednesday, AM: Finish knot rolls, make pie crust, roast nuts
Wednesday, PM: Assemble rice ring and stuffing up to baking, make pumpkin pie filling
Wednesday, Eve: Turkey into oven for overnight baking.
Thursday, AM: Breakfast, soup, salad and relish for lunch
Thursday, PM: Vegetables, warm stuffing. rice ring and so forth, make gravy, relish tray etc.

This works if you happen to have the days off before Thursday.
Without that luxury you have to do something more like this:

Saturday: Shop
Sunday: Sherbet, cranberry sauce, nuts and pie pastry.
Monday, Eve: Make pie filling,
Tuesday Eve: make rice ring and stuffing.
Wednesday Eve: Start knot rolls overnight. Turkey.
Thursday, AM: Breakfast, bake rolls, make soup, salad for lunch.
Thursday, PM: Vegetables, pies, warm it up, gravy and serve.

The point of the feast is to be mindful of the good in our lives. Good food is surely one of these. It's preparation, if fun, will make it so.
--ml

tags: Feast of Holidays, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Afters

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

Dorothy used the Nonesuch condensed mincemeat by Borden and reconstituted it with a teaspoon from a small flask of Christian Brothers Brandy which appeared to me to last all through my childhood until as a teen I finished the half bottle mixed with various fruit juices. I survived. Not only the drink but also the pies and with an intact liking for mincemeat. Yes, I am aware that this places me in a minority. Again. But I do.
I have tried several recipes for Mincemeat, including ones that do include meat. The one I return to since I first acquired the recipe a quarter century ago is in "Great Britsh Cooking: A Well Kept Secret" by Jane Garmey (Random House 1981) It is readily available still in paperback from the usual suspects. In my experience it has only excellent recipes. Naturally I make changes, many of which are reflected below. I don't peel my apples, she does. I use ginger root instead of powder. She calls for brandy which I replaced with a dark rum which I preferred. That of late has been too hard on my blood sugar so I am trying a single malt Scot's whiskey (which does not bother my glucose). Ordinarily I consider that too good to be wasted by admixtures of any description. But what the hell. If you make it, do make enough to keep for next year. Already good, it will be much improved.

Mincemeat

1 cup beef suet, shredded
1/2 cup fruit mix
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
1 cup Thompson raisins
1 wineglass dark rum
3 medium green apples, diced
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 cup marmalade
1/4 tsp nutmeg, grated
3/4 cup almonds, chopped
1 slice ginger root, smashed
1 cup brown sugar

Mix all in a large bowl.
Cover with a cloth and
leave in a cool place overnight.
Next day Mix thoroughly
pack in sterile jars and
seal in hot water bath
for 5 minutes (sea level)
Make at least 3 weeks
ahead of time.
Keep it for a year for the best flavor.

Pastry is the reaction of flour and fat to heat. Gluten is a valuable ingredient in flour if you are making bread. Well developed gluten encloses gases released by the yeast as bread rises. Without the gluten the dough would pass the gases, so to speak, and collapse. But in pastry well developed gluten makes the crust as tough as shoe leather. Work quickly and lightly when mixing and rolling pastry. Roll the dough in one direction only to give the gluten as small a work out as possible. Use pastry flour or flour that is low in gluten (a soft wheat, not a hard wheat) and free of the most glutenous parts of the wheat grain. Keep making it and before very long you will receive accolades for your pies. Here's my current implementation. It freezes well for other times of the year. The lard does make a difference to the flakiness of the crust, while butter provides flavor. There are many other fats that work as any basic cookbook will show.

Pie Pastry
Yield: 3 Pies
-ml- Lard to make it flaky,
Butter to make it tasty.

1/2 cup lard
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
2 tbl ice water, approx.
21/2 cups flour

Cut lard and butter into flour and salt
until the texture of coarse meal.
Add just enough ice water to
gather the pastry in a ball. Chill.
Cut in thirds.
Roll one third out for each crust.
Prick all over the bottom
for a crisp pastry.
This makes pastry for
a one crust pumpkin
and a two crust mince.

Dorothy would say "All our pies are pumpkin" in that particular way that people use to signal they are quoting. I remain ignorant of the source to this day. So all my pies are not pumpkin. Neither were Dorothy's.

The special features of this recipe is the flavor given by the molasses and the coarse, slightly lumpy texture of the filling. If you insist you can use pumpkin instead of another squash.
But why would you do that when the sweet flavor of a delacottia is available?
Del once had a pumpkin that was a runner-up for the largest pumpkin category at the county fair. It was on the porch in good time for Halloween with a scary face carved in the street side. But Del couldn't see wasting all that pumpkin. He cut a slab of about a half square foot out of the back and boiled it up for dinner. That squash lasted he and the large family he was sharing the house with for pies and vegetables all winter long. It wasn't until February that blue fuzzies appeared on the pumpkin meat because the temperature warmed up.

Pumpkin Pie Filling

Yield: 6 Servings

1 squash
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbl molasses
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp ginger 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
Cook butternut, acorn, or other squash.
Preheat oven to 400°f.

Place 1½ cups squash, in chunks, in a bowl.
Add remaining ingredients and mix.
Keep texture coarse. Pour into single crust.
Bake 40 minutes

--ml
tags: Feast of Holidays, Thanksgiving, Afters

Thanksgiving Sides

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

Here we have a plethora of sides among which you may pick and choose as pleases you and yours.

Brussels Sprouts With Chestnuts
2 cups Brussels sprouts
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup chestnuts
2 tbl butter
Steam sprouts. Blanch and shell chestnuts. Sauté in sugar and butter. Mix.

It may be that Dorothy's straight forward presentation had a lot to do with my early rejection of turnips.

Dorothy's Turnips
Peel and dice a cup of turnips. Cover with water. Salt and bring to a boil. Simmer 'til done. Add salt, pepper and butter and serve. Treat rutabagas the same way.

As I said, Dorothy liked turnips and rutabagas.
One of my versions:

Turnip Yer Nose
3 lbs turnips
3 tbl cilantro
3 cloves garlic
3 tbl rice vinegar
1 tbl sesame oil
1 tbl sugar
1 tbl sesame seeds
2 tbl Canadian bacon
Peel and dice turnips. Simmer 'til just cooked. Drain.
Mix remaining ingredients. Add to turnips and toss to coat.
Var: use fresh tarragon instead of cilantro and omit garlic.

Another possibility:

Baked Turnips And Cream
(with apologies to whoever I stole this from and forgot to note down.)
½ cup cubed bacon
6 medium turnips, peeled and sliced 1/8 inch
3 leeks (white portion only) cleaned and sliced
3 cups whipping cream
3 tbl Dijon mustard
2 tsp nutmeg
salt & pepper
Fry bacon until almost crisp; drain. Layer raw turnips with bacon and leaks in baking pan. Combine whipping cream, Dijon mustard and nutmeg in a small bowl; season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour over turnips. Bake at 350º for 1 to 1 ½ hours or until tender. Serves 6 to 8.

Here is this year's new addition which probably has appeared at many other tables unbeknownst to me.

Crustless Leak Quiche
2 tbl ham cubed
3 or 4 leaks, cleaned and sliced.
1 lb Gruyeres cheese cubed.
1 cup whipping cream
3 eggs
nutmeg
celery seed
cayenne pepper
salt and pepper.
Butter a baking dish and fill with the first three ingredients.
Whisk remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour over leaks.
Bake in 350º f. for ½ hour or until done.

This is straight off the Ocean Spray package:

Cranberry Sauce
1 cup water
1 bag (12 oz) cranberries
1 cup Sugar
Rinse and pick over cranberries.
In a saucepan bring sugar and water to a boil.
Add cranberries and return to boil. Stir.
Reduce heat to a slow boil for 10 minutes. Stir. Cool and refrigerate.

Ann does this which we very much prefer:

Cranberry Chutney
Gourmet Magazine Nov 2000
Makes about 2 cups
5 shallots (6 oz) coarsely chopped
1½ tbl vegetable oil
12 oz cranberries
2/3 cup sugar
¼ cup cider vinegar
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
½ tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
Cook shallots in oil in a 3 qt heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened. Stir in remaining ingredients. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until berries pop, about 10 to 12 minutes, then cool.
Note: may be made 1 wk ahead and chilled, covered

Ann comments: It keeps for quite awhile in fridge, though is so good it can be eaten by the spoonful from the jar and thus doesn't stay around long.

Now for the carbs. Hooray!

Potatoes With A Butter Mine
-ml (Stolen from Phyllis)
8 medium red potatoes, peeled
6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
3/4 cup butter
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 cup milk
salt & pepper
Cook potatoes. Drain. Reserve water. Add ¼ cup butter, ½ cup milk, garlic, cayenne, salt & pepper. Whip in electric mixer until smooth. Add reserved potato water if needed. Put in serving bowl. Push remaining stick of butter into the middle. Mold potatoes to hide the butter.

Melissa prefers Yukon golds. Oh well. Works.

Rice Ring
-ml- From Phyllis who used all wild rice. I sometimes mix wild and pearl (short grain.) Long grain also works.
Wild rice calls for simmering about 40 minutes to cook. 1 cup of rice to 3 cups of water. Or use dilute (1 can stock to 2 cans water) chicken stock. A rice cooker, which is my preferred method for cooking long and short grain rice, doesn't do it. Shitakes are wonderful in this. Any mushroom you like would be.
2 cups rice
21/4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup butter
6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 medium onions
8 oz brown mushrooms, sliced
salt & pepper
Cook rice in stock. Add ¼ stick butter. Set aside. Sauté garlic, onions and mushrooms in remaining butter. Add to rice. mix. Pour into a buttered mold or covered casserole. Bake in 350°f. oven for 30 minutes (or more) Unmold onto platter to serve.

Onion & Sage Stuffing
-ml- loosely based on Dorothy
1 loaf bread
1/4 lb butter, melted
2 tsp celery seed
3 medium onions, chopped
1 celery with leaves
1 tbl thyme, fresh chopped
2 tbl sage, fresh chopped
pepper
1 can (10.5 oz) chicken stock
2 cans (10.5 oz) water
Leave the bread out for a day or two to dry out. Dice into ½" cubes. Place in a large bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Mix Thoroughly. Pour into 2 buttered casseroles. Cover (with foil if no lid.) Bake in 325°f. (or more whatever °) for a minimum of 30 minutes. After that hold at the cook's pleasure.
-n.b. Stuffing in the bird's cavity spends too long at the proper temperature to grow unwelcome critters.

Turkey Stuffing
-ml- experiment #1 of 11/98. If you make bread often this may interest you.
¹/₃ cup water, lukewarm
1 tsp salt
1½ tbl yeast
½ cup butter
2 tbl honey
1 cup celery with leaves, chopped
1 cup regular rolled oatmeal
2 cups onion, chopped
4 cups bread flour
1 can (10.5 oz) chicken stock
1 can (10.5 oz) water
2 tbl olive oil
2 tbl sage
1 tbl thyme
¼ tsp cayenne
1 tbl celery seed
Three or four days ahead:
Proof yeast in lukewarm water and honey.
In a bowl combine yeast with oatmeal, oil, sage, thyme, salt and 2 cups flour. Mix. Add rest of flour. Knead. Rise. Form into a long loaf. Rise.
Preheat oven to 400°f. Bake loaf 25 to 30 minutes. Spritz well to make heat moist.
Let loaf dry at room temperature until ready to make dressing.
Cut bread into ¾" cubes.
Sauté onions and celery in butter until translucent.
Mix with bread. Add stock and water. Season with pepper and cayenne.
Pour into 2 buttered casserole and cover.
Bake above 325°f. for at least 30 minutes.
- n.b.: Heating stuffing in the bird's cavity makes a very good growing media for nasty critters because it takes so long to get the stuffing above 120°f. This method reduces the chance of ruining a fine holiday.

So that does it for side recipes. What about the main event: the turkey? Oh that's here and here.
And then there are afters.
--ml
tags: Feast of Holidays, Thanksgiving, side dishes

Thanksgiving II

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

The first Thanksgiving feast I cooked was in college. There were four couples to feed and we each kicked in to buy the food. Sean was living in a house that overlooked a young river valley nature preserve. The November day was grey and blustery with on and off rain, fog early and late. A typical Southwest Ohio late fall day.
I started cooking early, before Sean and his housemates were really stirring. I made noise. I made commotions. I made messes. I cleaned up messes. By late afternoon I was rewarded by the sight of my friends sprawled back from the table forms recumbent in satiety. Not a bad start.

The menu changed but subtly over the years mostly in response to what I learned about cooking and about eating. My reward for all that effort was that no cooking need be done for the next week as the remains were encored again and again. The penalty was that Turkey was off the menu the rest of the year.
I'm still working on that one. Turkey is too good -- and inexpensive -- not to appear periodically, and in other guises, e.g: turkey with mole sauce.
Dorothy always finished by turning the turkey carcass into a soup. It was tasty the first time or two. Regrettably it did not disappear then but lingered for several more meals spaced into December by which time the stock had soured. Dutifully I did the same. My stock, though good, waited its encores even longer and so more of it soured. At last I gave myself permission to not make stock. Throwing out the carcass before making soup may not have been the best conservation practice, but it did save expense compared to making soup and throwing that away.

Once we had Thanksgiving at Phyllis' house. She was a Californian, A student of the Martha Graham school of modern dance, an interior decorator and writer manque, trapped in the Midwest. She was like encountering a cordon bleu restaurant in the middle of a farm town. She added the wild rice ring to Dorothy's menu and subsequently to mine.

In my menu the turnips and rutabagas were out tout de suite. Of recent years the turnips have sometimes crept back. This year my crustless leek quiche will join the parade in my effort to shift the feast away from carbohydrates. A forlorn effort given my love of stuffing and potatoes and rice. Is self mastery the only answer? Gawd help me!

The best turkey was, of course, a unique and unrepeatable experience. We moved into a house set against a hill side we called Tiger's End because it was where the plain (tiger in feng shuey terms) ended.
It was an old house that had grown without much benefit of professional contractors. The owner had removed the kitchen. Over the summer I had replaced the bathroom, and re-plumbed the whole house and built the kitchen cabinets as inspired by the Motion Minded Kitchen.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I installed the new oven-broiler and the cooktop. All that remained was to run the gas line from the meter on one side of the house to the kitchen on the other side.
First I connected and lit the furnace. It was cold. It was very cold and starting to snow. This was a rare phenomenon at maybe fifteen feet above sea level. We were used to wearing many layers: under and over shirts, sweaters and even jackets. Elaine had just arrived from grad school in Oregon. There was a stray cat huddled in the window between the porch and my office. She was pulled inside which was accepted with a haughty bad grace. She did us the favor.
Then the furnace blower started.
Melissa, just two, took off her coat. She began to move about. The frost patterns on the windows faded. Melissa took off the first sweater and then the second and began to dance. Finally it was warm enough that in just her 'ummers' she danced from one end of the house to the other.
I cooked dinner on the propane two burner camp stove as usual and soon we settled for the night in a warm and snug house while the snow blew outside.
In the morning there was almost a foot or snow drifted to a couple of feet in places. It was so pleasant to be in a snug warm house and look out at it. Del arrived to help me lay and connect the last bit of gas pipe. As the coffee descended to bottom of the pot he pointed out that if we were going to eat turkey that day we had best get the turkey in his oven.
At the time he was the live aboard watchman of the former Army Corps of Engineers steam snag snatcher: the USS Preston then moored aground as a museum, next to the old railroad station just a block or two away.
Del and I hefted the bird into the back of Beulah Witch, our black VW squareback, and slid-drove to the boat. The galley featured a rather massive oil fired range which Del soon lit. We slid in the bird and made our way back to lay the pipe.
Which took longer than expected, of course.
At last , crossing all available limbs, I lit the pilots on the oven.

We didn't explode.

By then it was four and getting dark. Grateful to Del for suggesting it, we returned to the Preston and picked up the bird.
Then I put the various side dishes, made the day before, in the oven to warm. In the second oven I put the pies. We could eat in a half hour so it was time to uncork a nice red.
Ten Minutes later a wonderful aroma of done stuffing & pies perfumed the air. Only twenty minutes to go.
Five minutes after that a general suggestion from the assembled company offered that any pie that smelled like that wanted some supervision. So I opened the door to reveal the most gorgeous deep mahogany pies I have ever baked. Two of them. One was a crust covered mince. The other was an open top, spicy pumpkin. Both a rich almost chocolaty brown.
Intervention occurred just in time. The pies were on the dark side of perfect.
In my haste to start baking, I had neglected to place the temperature probe inside the oven. So the gas roared away without moderation driving the temperature to heights where few pies have ventured before.
The rest of the meal was hot. And the turkey ...

The turkey fell apart at a touch into succulent and tender bits of meat. There was no need to make gravy because the pan juices reduced to an excellent thickness a beautiful light brown color and delicious flavor.

Melissa calls this the 'fall-apart-bird' and it has become the standard by which we judge our efforts

-- ml
tag: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Lunch

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

At some now misty moment in the passage of years a transient spark of lucidity brushed past my synapses. It illuminated a question: Do you have to eat all of this all at once?
It is a good question. One that is susceptible to answers in several directions. 'Eat all this' was dismissed out of hand as an unprofitable line of inquiry. 'At once" beckoned more congenially. At length a glimmer hove into anchor: No. No, I don't suppose I do. Really. That gem combined with my observation that the salad wasn't eaten with the meal for lack of interest, (nor was it eaten subsequently due to a wilting lack of interest). The result was the feast day lunch. This 'light' repast (soup, salad, pickles, bread, butter and jam) serves to remove a portion of weight from the main event just sufficient to permit all contenders to finish in due course with dignity.

For Thanksgiving this features:

Brazilian Consommé
Yield: 6 Servings
-dl-

6 oz Brazil Nuts
2 cans (10.5 Oz) Consommé
1 cup whipped cream
Slice the Brazils nuts thinly. Toast in a 400°f. oven about five minutes until brown.
Whip cream.
Heat undiluted Consommé.
Serve the nuts and cream in small bowls to garnish the top of the soup.

Knot Rolls
Yield: 4 Dozen
-dl- Thanksgiving standard.
-djs- says "If they are not rolls, what are they?"

2 cups water, boiling
1 cup oatmeal
2/3 cup brown sugar
3 tbl olive oil
1 tbl yeast
1/3 cup water, luke warm
5 cups bread flour
2 tsp salt
Pour boiling water over oats and oil.
Set aside 'til lukewarm.
Proof yeast in luke warm water.
Combine oats, and yeast in a large bowl.
Add brown sugar, salt and 3 cups of flour.
Rise. (Can do this over night at room temp.)
Punch down and roll to ½" thick.
Cut into 1" X 3" strips. Tie in overhand knot.
Place on a buttered (or parchment paper covered) tray.
Rise. Bake in 375°f. oven 20 to 25 minutes.
Butter tops when done.

Holiday Salat
Yield: 1 Serving
-ml-

Per person:
2 leaves curly endive (escarole)
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp black olives, sliced
2 tsp olive oil
1 ring red onion
salt & pepper
1 tbl bleu cheese, crumbled
Mix bleu cheese, oil and vinegar.
Rinse Escarole. Slice or tear into bite size pieces.
Arrange on a plate.
Place onion ring on top.
Fill center with olives.
Pour dressing on top. Season.

Lime Sorbet
Yield: 6 Servings
-dl-

1 tbl lime zest, Grated
1/2 cup lime juice, Fresh squozen
1 cup water
1 cup whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
Grate zest, squeeze limes (about four.)
Heat sugar and water to boiling. Cook about five minutes. Add lime zest and cool to room temperature. Add lime juice and pour into a tray. Freeze to mush. Stir often to break up the ice crystals. Whip cream. Fold in mush and freeze.

var.: Substitute lemon or cut the sugar to ½ cup and use oranges or tangerines.

Holiday Roast Nuts
Yield: 3
-dl- did just almonds that we cracked
-ml- used shelled nuts and added filberts, Brazils etc.
-djs- calls them Killer Nuts

1/2 lb shelled almonds
1/2 lb shelled nutmeats, of your choice
1/2 lb shelled hazel nuts
6 tbl butter
1/2 lb shelled Brazil nuts
salt

Preheat oven to 400 °f.
Warm a baking tray a minute or two so it will melt butter without burning it.
Add a pat or two of butter and let it melt.
Add no more than ½ pound of nuts. Shake pan to coat nuts in butter. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes until nuts begin to brown. Remove to another pan covered in paper towels to absorb excess fat.
Sprinkle salt. Stir. Let cool. Repeat until all nuts are roasted. Store in paper towel lined tin.

Pickles? As you will. Dill, gherkin, roasted peppers, capers, cornichons, baby corn, watermelon rind pickle, jalapeños ... there are so many and mostly good that you must choose your own favored ones to serve.

--ml
tags: Thanksgiving, lunch

Thanksgiving Breakfast

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

Here begins the recipes that belong with the Thanksgiving I post.
Breakfast is a much needed meal, even on feast days. Yet with so much attention on the main event, better it should be simple. If it is also elegant, or otherwise special, so much the better. Dorothy's solution is both.
Among the Dutch immigrants to Western Michigan in the nineteenth century the Dutch Reformed church and its minister were the central focus of life. A visit from the minister was an honor to cherish even if it came by surprise. For the huswife caught without a cake to offer with the coffee social disaster loomed. The blitz kuchen, or lightening cake, saved her. The story is that seeing the minister turn in at the gate was ample warning. The cake was mixed and baked ready to be served by the time the minister knocked, was greeted and made comfortable in the best chair by the fire and the first pleasantries exchanged. Coffee was offered and as soon as accepted the tray issued from the kitchen with the fresh hot coffee, cream, sugar and the hot cake.
Here is Dorothy's version:

Cinnamon Hot Bread

Yield: 6 Servings
--dl- Thanksgiving standard

2 tbl butter
1 tbl baking powder
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 tbl sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups flour
Preheat oven to 375°f.
Butter a pie pan.
Mix butter with first sugar. Add eggs, milk, flour, baking powder and salt.
Pour into buttered pie pan.
Mix last sugar with cinnamon and sprinkle over top.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes.

With the cake in the oven, it is easy to make the egg for each person as follows:

Shirred Eggs
Yield: 1 Serving
-dl- Thanksgiving standard

1 Egg
Butter
1 Slice Canadian Bacon
Preheat oven 375°f.
Butter a ramekin. Line it with Canadian bacon.Add 1 egg. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or 'til egg is set.
Can substitute ham. Bake it with Cinnamon Hot Bread.

While they bake Grapefruit can be sliced and the sections cut away from the membrane. For smalls who disapprove of sour tastes a sprinkle of sugar may help.
--ml
tags: Thanksgiving, breakfast, Feast of Holidays

Thanksgiving I

This is part af a multi post about Thanksgiving:
I
II
III
Breakfast
Lunch
Seattle Brown Out Turkey
Tukey Timing Redux
Sides
Afters

Dorothy had a Thanksgiving routine that seldom varied in my memory. Breakfast was always a half grapefruit, cinnamon hot bread and a shirred egg. Always served at table; a table set with full service on place mats usually. Sometimes the bamboo ones I didn't know then were sushi formers until an importer had the marketing inspiration needed to sell them in a land where 'sushi' was then a bizarre custom of an alien and enemy race. But sometimes the exquisite Red embroidered on white palm net scenes from the Philippines, a hostess gift, I believe, from a visiting Philippine business man and his wife to Dorothy. Earle got a case of San Miguel, an unheard of oddity in the land of Bud.
Already there were dishes and they had to be done by one of us children. Done promptly too, for the turkey was in process and the rest of the meal poised. All the silver had to be polished. That meant dragging the heavy chest and serving platters into the kitchen, washing each piece, applying the polish, rubbing it in, washing it off, and carefully wiping it dry to increase the luster of the now shining piece.

This was drudgery. To be avoided, whenever possible.

Guests were coming so the house had to be picked up and vacuumed to an acceptable standard of order. Not an over the top, compulsive, don't touch a thing!, clean -- just neat enough that no one need notice one way or the other.

More drudgery to be avoided.

Dorothy, meantime, created and slaved in the kitchen: Mixing, chopping, sautéing, stirring, sliding in and out of the oven, buttering, heaping, basting, and tasting.
If the weather was clement, I might slip outside. One year, second or third grade maybe, I made it to the local movie house and watched a film about the Mayflower over and over until Henry showed up to fetch me to the table. As a last resort I could try the basement full of woodworking tools and a room with my trains. To no avail. I would be found. I would receive my giving thanks dose of Dorothy's fury as she screamed her anger and frustration with my dilatoriness. Until I was big enough to effectively oppose it she would grab me by the throat and bang my head against the wall. Subsequently I learned that she had treated all her children thus under similar circumstances. After that I learned that she had been abused far worse by her parents as a child. Fortunately Melissa made me break that particular, and all too common, pattern of parental violence.
Time passing has brought understanding of just how far I incurred her rage by my attempts to evade pitching in to what I was told must be a community effort. Dorothy's eruption did exceed the provocation. It allowed her to spew her nervous tension as she created a wonderful meal for her guests who might sometimes be vital to Earle's business, and other times friends of one or another of us, but always all were important to her. Like a summer thunder storm it cleared the air and made the house fresh for the now imminent guests.

The extra leaves go into the cherry gate leg dining table which can seat six comfortably with out them. Spread the cotton pad. Smooth the snowy linen cloth over the top. This is one of Dorothy's great ideas: Each time the cloth was used all guests were invited to autograph their place in pencil. Before the cloth was washed Dorothy embroidered the signature in white thread. With the years the cloth became a nubbly palimpsest of her hospitality.
Now lay the rose and cream Spode, or later the black on white Carol Leighton New England Industry plates by Wedgwood, with the freshly polished silver. Among the last were six tiny tubs with minuscule spoons to hold salt. Beside each tub place the miniature cellar filled with pepper. There were two forks and two spoons and a shorter butter knife as well as the regular dinner knife. There was a butter plate, a soup bowl and the large dinner plates, though they were stacked next to Earle's place at the end of the table. There were glass goblets. Small for the ritual cranberry juice cocktail to begin the meal and large to hold water or milk. Only once was wine served. Dorothy disapproved of alcohol. The guest's too enthusiastic (too nervous?) opening of the sparkling burgundy turned a modest sea of the cloth purple-red. Slowly the stain faded, turning to grey and then to shadow, in wash after wash. That one Thanksgiving reverberated through the next decade.

With the table set, the nuts and other tit bits appeared in the living room just as the doorbell announced our guests arrival. The nuts were adored by all of us though they caused more drudgery. Dorothy did not buy shelled nuts until I returned from Japan and pointed out that not having to spend half a day shelling them was worth the few pennies more they cost.
Dorothy only used almonds as the teaser. Once a sufficiency were shelled, she blanched them in hot water to remove the brown skins. Batches were spread over a jelly roll tray and dotted, freely, with butter. Popped into a 400˚ f. oven for about five minutes, the cream of the almond turns a luscious light brown and develops the full aroma and flavor that deep frying overwhelms. Whisked off the tray onto paper towels, Dorothy salted the nuts lightly, stirred them vigorously and set them to cool.
Another nut which was much harder to shell was the Brazil nut. These were needed for the Brazilian Consommé. Dorothy poured boiling water over a bowl of the nuts and let it steep a minute. Drained and rinsed in cool water: “Now,” she told us, “they are easy to shell whole.”

I never found it so.

Since she shaved the shelled nuts into thin slices it hardly seemed to matter to me struggling to find the right pressure and the correct placement for the cracker. Of course she was thinking how much easier it is to hold the nut while you slice it if it is whole.
When I make the nuts now, the almonds are mixed always with filberts and sometimes with walnuts or pecans as well. I do not blanch the skins off the almonds. I buy them all ready shelled. How the standards have declined in the younger generation!
Diana calls them killer nuts. That does not keep her from eating her fair share.

Once the company is assembled, the feast begins, there is no time to dawdle. Left handers are accommodated as we sit. The cranberry juice is tossed off or gingerly sipped. The younger of us (me) frequently making dramatic pain in the arse noises at its sharpness. My appreciation for the tart-sour-bitter taste range came much later. This was succeeded by soup. Strong beef broth with a dollop of unsweetened whip cream and a scatter of toasted shaved Brazils, oh excellent foil to the richness to come. Knot Rolls (“If they're not rolls what are they?” Diana cracks every year.) and last June's strawberry jam are on the table. Also there are celery and carrot sticks and stuffed green olives swimming in the cold salty water that melted from the ice cubes that keep them crisp.
Dishes are removed “No stacking at the table” Henry admonishes. And Ann's Freshman year at Oberlin brought the unforgettable: “Gracious living, dears. Gracious living!” pet phrase of her Dorm Mother.

A brief intermission is offered in a palette cleansing dish of lime sherbet. Quite tart. So tart that small children are disillusioned by it thinking that even ice cream is turned against him. Adults enjoy.

Silence quickly returns as we watch Earle assess the enormous bird resplendent on the platter before him. He spent a good fifteen minutes before dinner sharpening his knife, but a few whets more are good to review the plan of attack.
The sharpening stone set aside the fork is inserted in the body where it will give the most purchase and one leg is deftly removed to a charger. Where it is promptly sliced and the not quite stripped bones set back on the platter to await late evening browsers. It is joined by the wing. Now he is free to address the main redoubt: the breast under its succulent brown skin, glistening with juices. Slice after white slice goes on the charger next to the dark sheaves of leg. Finally he asks – a ritual only this-- “What will the youngest have?” There is a fiercesome divide among us. Henry likes dark meat. Leonard likes white. These predilections are as firmly held as any doctrinal dispute over the nature of transubstantiation, or the serving of grape juice or wine in church. I am agnostic and like both. Earle digs a spoonful of stuffing out of the bird and places it next to the meat. The plate begins a solemn passage from hand to hand the length of the table to Dorothy who distributes vegetables: the good and the bad. While Earle inquires the preferences of the next person and fills their plate, Dorothy receives my plate and adds the good mashed potatoes, the okay Brussels sprouts with their maybe yes, maybe no, chestnuts and a huge spoonful of rutabaga and another of turnips. From my jaundiced perspective no one in the family except Dorothy likes these two roots. They are the plague of the day. Appropriate chastisement for the sin of gluttony which pervades the day. No arguing, no cajoling, no prayer will avoid the dread Plop. Plop! Of those two vegetables. But at last the plate descends in front of me. Agony. I can't start until Earle and Dorothy serve themselves – always the end of the line. An age of the world passes before it is permitted. Gravy is circulated. Cranberry sauce makes the rounds. There are sweet gherkins and pickled watermelon rind. There is a salad which can only find room as a side show on the small plate. The big tent is full.
Slowly it empties until only the dread rutabagas and turnips remain. “Seconds?” Earle asks. Still chewing I nod. Dorothy's hand stays my hopes and she repeats the rule: “No seconds until your plate is clean. Eat your vegetables.” Squawking is to no avail. Henry suggests I close my eyes and hold my nose. (I try this once -- but there is still the texture. And the after taste.) Leonard cheerfully offers to get a clothes pin to make sure I don't smell the offense. Amidst this rousting I somehow choke them down.

Seconds at last – but not of those horrid roots!

A hiatus may or may not occur depending on the stamina of the company. Just long enough to clear the table and set out the pies? Or long enough to retire to the living room and enjoy the fire? The bursting point of full bellies decides the issue.
The pies are daunting. A pumpkin and a mincemeat. Whipped cream, sweet with sugar and vanilla, is offered. The nuts reappear and any chocolates or other afters. Once, but only once, there were ants and bees and grasshoppers in chocolate. Dorothy loved crystallized ginger, for instance. Any ravenous teen ager who was not sated to the uttermost could thoughtfully nibble a cookie. Dorothy's ginger snaps and coconut oatmeal were the favored.
Thereafter a collapse before the fire was the only option.
Hours later, after the dishes were done and movement had rearranged the contents of the alimentary canal somewhat, one might venture on a sandwich of turkey and cheese on a knot roll. or just pick at the carcass.

Ann tells the tale differently. She remembers that there was a farmer's wife near our house who always saved geese for us. For Thanksgiving, Christmas and Henry's birthday. The goose is all dark meat.
But that was a different town from the one that features in my memories. For most of the time we lived in that house Ann was in college or beyond. She also always liked turnips. Of late years I do too.
--ml
For recipes see: Thanksgiving Breakfast
tag: Thanksgiving, Feast of Holidays

Step This Way, Me Boyo!

11/11/18/11/00PM
The war to end all wars ends.

At some point in the first quarter af the 20th century:

A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
--George Santayana

11/11/06/18/00PM
Nu?

--ml

tag: War, 1914, Feast of Holidays

Stand up! Stand up!

John strikes me dumb with his eloquence.
I haver for minutes over the blank comments screen.
No screed of my devising appears.
Later I am abashed. The penguin adds much in comments.

BadTux shames me further with this stentorian Penguin snort.

What can I say?
Gad I wish I had said that even half so well.
--ml
tags: Saddam, death penalty

More Guy

Tim Abbott at Walking the Berkshires offers a deeper look into Guy Fawkes and muses about home grown US opportunities to celebrate similar rats.
--ml

tags: Guy Fawkes, Feast of Holidays

A Penny for the Guy

On November fifth in 1605, a plot to blow up the English Parliament was foiled. A dastardly group of conspirators infiltrated the basements beneath parliament from a warehouse next door. Had these recreant hounds succeeded we would, of course, refer to them as courageous heroes fighting for the greater glory of the fatherland. Writing history is a minor joy of winning.

Guy Fawkes was the most notable in the media accounts of the day -- broadsheets and ballads for the most part. And so November 5^th is celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day everywhere in England save Yorkshire. They cut to the chase and call it Parkin Day. Neighborhood urchins demand "a penny for the guy" in the day or two before so that they may acquire the materials to build the guy -- an effigy of Guy Fawkes -- which will be burned with gay abandon on communal bonfires. Naturally a certain number of the guy's pennies find their way into the hands of cart men selling cider and parkin, a moist, rich, gingerbread cut into long rectangles that "look lak 'is fingers, luv."
Guy Fawkes is an adopted holiday of mine for two reasons. The socially acceptable one is that it serves as a civics lesson to appreciate our periodic chance to throw the bums out. Which I hope we do Tuesday. The other is Parkin:

The Horizon Cookbook¹ is one of my favorites for festal occasions. It provides the starting point, a very good one, for Parkin as follows:

1/2 cup molasses         
6 tablespoons butter     
1/2 cup brown  sugar     
1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
l egg, beaten            
2 cups Flour, sifted      
l teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons powdered ginger
3/4 cup sour cream
l teaspoon grated lemon rind
(3-4 cups powdered sugar
mixed with 2-4 tablespoons
lemon juice.)
Heat molasses. Add butter, sugar,
and baking soda and cool.
Beat in the egg.
Resift Flour with baking powder,
salt, and ginger into a large bowl.
Make well and pour in molasses and
sour cream. Work flour into
molasses mixture until smooth.
Add lemon rind and beat well.
Butter and flour a 7 by ll inch
pan and pour in batter. Bake in a
preheated 350° oven for 15 to 20
minutes or until cake springs back
when touched. Cool for about 10
minutes and remove. Ice with sugar
icing. Cut into "fingers." Makes 24.

The phrase in parens is mine to replace a reference to another recipe in the original.
This year's changes include:
Substitute a half cup of rye flour and a half cup of almond flour for one cup of wheat flour. Add 1/2 teaspoon anise, and cinnamon. Cut one or two (or Three or four) slices of fresh ginger root and smash them with the flat of a cleaver or otherwise grate them. Add. I think I got generous with the sour cream. Tchah. Only used a cup of powdered sugar in the icing which is why you can't really see it except in one or two spots and in the shine. It's plenty sweet for me and transparent. The rapidity of their vanishment testified to the accolades of the community.
--ml
¹Horizon Cookbook, Wendy Buehr & the Editors of Horizon Magazine, American Heritage Publishing 1968. page 675.
tag: Guy Fawkes, Parkin, Feast of Holidays

Superb

Roy says:

Remember, the blogosphere thing is just a bubble, and its skin, like that of the paramecium, is only semi-permeable: news may enter, but outrage mostly stays inside, which is of course the secret of both the blogosphere's growth and its ineffectuality: it swells without discharging.

--ml

Transition

Actually amazingly swift.
Once I figured out how to put the little scripts into the sidebar things smoothed out until the site almost looks normal (to me).
Despite my murpfhing of yesterday, this is an all around improvement today.
Principal gain is the ability to label, or categorize, posts. The reader has a more direct route to items of particular interest. I have a way to organize my scatter shot into the main venues I want to build here. See the sidebar about a third of the way down.

Feast of Holidays is a collection of recipes and table talk connected by the annual round of festal occasions. When completed the initial post for this would be "Time is just no thing." It is a quick way to find the directions for Seattle Brown Out Turkey.

Dum Luk's Ordinary is a second table talk/recipe book focusing on the rest of the year, the ordinary.

Supposedly this blog started as an exploration of design. Now those posts are collectible.

Dum Luk's Stockpot is just what you'd expect, the oddments that didn't go elsewhere tossed into a big pot to simmer and meld. A slice of life picture of my thought (hah!) process?

More may occur to me. Comments are always welcome.
--ml
Blogger beta,

If You Don't

Upper Left provides a jump off point:

base (bās) (n.)116240627907725424">

A supporting part or layer; a foundation.

A basic or underlying element; infrastructure.

If you don't understand 'base', it is 'infrastructure'.
Comprende?
--ml

Briar Patch

So today I suckered for the new blogger beta.
The turkey carpet salesman told me how easy it would be: I wouldn't ever bother my not so pretty head with HTML code again.
And they are right. I can use their template (none of which do what I want done.) and I can add and move with just a mouse drag.
'Course to do what I want done does re quire code. Not plain HTML, Brand spiffy new XML.