some very random thoughts: political/medical, gastronomical, and astrological

A really good use of bioengineering or stem cell research would be to find a cure for the lack of Teh Irony [comprehension] gene that has affected so many members of the GOP, as well as their enablers in the LegacyMedia. And while the researchers (in my imagination) are at work on that, they might also look for a solution to that lack of a History gene, too, which seems to affect so many in that same subset of the GOP.

Perhaps if both of those often coexistent conditions may finally be treatable, we may find less projection and more self-reflection among the GOP, a party that was once inhabited by some honorable politicians, but is now dedicated merely to protecting its extremist and fringe elements.

* * * * *

I’m psyching myself up to make some soup tonight, to cook some ears of corn, and to do something with the peaches still languishing in my fridge.

I already have some plans for some Gingergold apples and some Bartlett pears… and apple-sauce… with pears. In the crockpot. But the pears are not yet ripe enough.

I still haven’t finished reading Julia Child’s book about her life in France. Her husband’s nephew, Alex Prud’ homme, collaborated with her on it. What a delightfully composed book. Written more or less chronologically, it is told episodically. Most surprising (to me) were some of the feathers/fur to plate descriptions of putting a meal on the table for just the two of them, or for a dinner party of esteemed guests.

And I especially appreciated her deep research into simple sauces, like a white sauce, or a simple mayonnaise, in order to have clear directions for American cooks who use different methods for measuring (volume) than do European cooks (weight).

What I need–in order to finish this book in a more timely manner–is a longer commute, and I should make a habit of riding in the “quiet” car where no talking is allowed. I’d be finished by now if I rode a half-hour each way in that car every day. A twelve-minute commute, distracted by conversation, is just not enough time for my “transit” reading.

Finally, I intend to learn to make pie again. (A challenge without wheat or butter, but I am determined.)

* * * * *

Postscript: Mercury is retrograde–again!–and has been since Labor Day weekend. Expect poor communications, snags in any plans you make during this phase, irritating computer issues, etc.

However, if you have any long-term projects that have been simmering, this is a good time for revising, revisiting, editing, rewriting etc., i.e., anything with a “re” quality to it.

* * * * *

Update: I have a more overtly political post up now at FDL’s The Seminal.

an afghan-in-progress

In the tote bag, you can more easily see the two colors of yarn that I’m blending by knitting with a strand of each. I love mixing colors this way, especially tweeds, which become even tweedier.

The pattern is from Plymouth Yarn.

Each afghan requires 10 skeins of Plymouth’s Encore tweed, knitted two strands at a time.

Supposedly, these patterns can be completed in a weekend. Cast on Friday, and be finished by Monday?!

I suppose it might be possible, but one does have other things to do on the weekend, too: shopping, laundry, cooking, etc. And how would my hands feel on Monday if spent the entire weekend only knitting? Sounds like a possible Olympic event to me… something that would require a bit of training first.

Plymouth Yarn: Done by Monday Aghans

Mine is taking longer than one weekend, but I am going to finish it very soon. I’m planning to add buttons to the cast-on end, and button-holes to the cast-off end. My daughter (who is now a better knitter than I am) thinks they are not necessary. What happens will depend on whether I can decide upon a buttonhole scheme that I like.

I took the two photos with my cell phone, which is why the resolution is not very wonderful. The pattern is pretty simple: alternating squares (7 stitches each over 10 rows) of stockinette and seed stitch. If I were to knit this pattern again, however, I would try to make it more truly reversible by using both stockinette and reverse stockinette squares. The afghan is bordered on all four sides with garter stitch so that its edges will not curl.

from my life on Twitter… and in the kitchen

from Twitter…

@EatingWell RT @julienegrin: Nat’l Gardening Assoc: 43 mill planted backyard garden or has share in community garden in ‘09, up from 36 mil in ‘08

To translate for those who do not use Twitter… @EatingWell is Re-tweeting @julienegrin’s orignal tweet about statistics from the National Gardening Association. Apparently, the number of backyard and community gardens has increased dramatically in the past year.

We don’t have that kind of garden, and it would be difficult for us to have one, given the layout (we’re on a corner), the amazing number of old-growth trees, and the narrow strips of sloping lawn that we’d have to till, since raised beds might not be feasible. Still, I did plant some window boxes around the deck with a few flowering items and some herbs. Unfortunately, the weather was soooo bad this year that nothing is really flourishing as it should be in August. There are some blooms on the nasturtiums and the dianthus, but their foliage is sorely lacking. The herbs fared slightly better, but not very much. Too much rain!

However, I started doing something else more regularly this year: ordering produce online and then picking it up on Friday or Saturday at a nearby local & weekend storefront. Although it’s not quite the same as subscribing to a CSA farm (Community Sustained Agriculture), this is as close as I can come to buying from a CSA. And best of all, I can pay smaller amounts weekly, rather than a large amount yearly or seasonally, and order only what I want each week… or every other week, if I have been cooking less often during the previous week.

So far, this summer, my orders have included beets (both red and golden), carrots, corn, radishes, leeks, new potatoes, cippolini onions, spring onions, mushrooms, shallots, blueberries, zucchini, various lettuces, tomatoes, and even beef short ribs a couple of times.

My agricultural source has a friendly enough online site and ordering form that includes important information, such as whether an item is local or regional, organic or the result of integrated pest management. I am comforted by the fact that they try to accommodate so many possible positions on the organic/non-organic continuum. In fact, I learned a week or two ago that they will bring in some greens during the winter from farther away, for those folks who just cannot do without them.

Greens are all good and well for those who can digest them easily… but not I. However, I am really looking forward to the fall and all of those root vegetables that I can’t always find in very good shape in the supermarket when I want to make some hearty vegetable soup. Rutabagas and turnips, in particular.

I live with a vegetarian of Italian descent, who thrives on pasta and dairy products. However, I can no longer eat either wheat or dairy, and so our kitchen life has devolved over a number of years into many frozen single-serving-sized dinners. Mine, of course, are more expensive. Soup, really good vegetable soup, is one thing that we can both eat and that we both really enjoy.

Lately, we’ve been making soup in the crock pot, in order not to heat up the kitchen and the rest of the houses, but when fall and winter return, I’ll return to the stove top, so I can sweat each layer of vegetables in a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of Herba-mare, before I add the canned tomatoes, stock, water, wine or any other liquids and allow it to simmer a bit with a few herbs. The crock pot soup is good enough, but it is not up to the same standard as the soup that happens when I spend some time at the stove.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to purchase all of our produce from this local and regional source. After all, we do buy bananas and avocados, too, but I hope to make it the primary source of our produce and buy fewer and fewer such items in the supermarket.

In order to make that happen, I am beginning to cook more… which is another story. And another blog post.

Image: source

last night while I was knitting in the breeze at the symphony

Verdi’s Aida in an emerald gown… then Rachmaninoff

An angel in warm brown skin sang Verdi’s arias from Aida
while wearing a brilliant emerald gown
and then… “Summertime”
as an encore.

A curtain of crickets and cicadas chirped and hummed along
in the background, a baffle of sound surrounding
the music from the band shell, against
the looming night

and the entire string section, whose musical precision
resembled a flight of dragonflies, attended only
to the conductor’s left hand and the tip
of his baton.

When they began the Rachmaninoff, I expected something
Russian-sounding… vodka-drinking, cold-defying
but the conductor wrapped us all up
in romantic flourishes

his gestures swooping and whorling like a calligrapher’s
but with music trailing his baton instead of ink.
He caught us all, lassoed us with italics
around our collective heart

long before he revealed the composer’s true Russian character
all in Cyrillic, embellished, angled and brusque…
so loud and rough that the music
must fight back.

Yet, he forged the two opposing forces into something
newer, bolder… a Roman type of face
a force that vanquished the brawl
and then returned

to the romantic, the italic, round and swooping loops & swirls
his arms thrown—once again—around us
each one, as he made love to us all…
with an orchestra.

cross-posted from cocktailhag.com on July 29, 2009

Women’s History Month at A Chef’s Table

This month, Jim Coleman is featuring women– chefs, cookbook writers, and photographers– on his weekly radio program. Yesterday, Coleman interviewed several women, including Laura Schenone , the author of A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food Recipes and Remembrances.

I was particularly struck by one thing she said while talking about the many roles– personal, charitable, and political– that cookbooks have played in women’s lives. Schenone is working on a theroy that women have often written cookbooks in order to deal with difficult situations in their lives. One example was Erma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, whose family suggested that she write a cookbook to deal with the death of her husband. And out of her grief was born “Joy.”

If you would like to hear the program, you can find it here for now, until it is available in the archives for March 25th.

Other featured books include:

Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste Techonogy and Transformation, byRoger Horowitz

The Cooking of Southwest France: Recipes from France’s Magnificent Rustic Cuisine, by Paula Wolfert

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food Recipes and Remembrances, by Paula Wolfert

Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes, by Leslie Li

Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals:Featuring 200 Recipes for Quick and Easy Dinners, by Sara Moulton, Dana Gallagher, Photographer

More Retro Diner: A Second Helping of Roadside Recipes, by Randy Garbin and Terri Dunn

Lidia’s Family Table, by Lidia Bastinach

Meat Me in Manhattan: A Carnivore’s Guide to New York, by Josh Osersky, photographer Kate Gardner

The 70% solution… ?

I was planning to post something about chocolate anyway, and then there was a news story today about its health benefits– especially for the cardiovascular system– which included a link to a peer-reviewed article with lots of details, many of which were over my head.

However, I did catch the one about consuming 100g per day for two weeks in order to lower one’s blood pressure. (Mine’s gone up a bit since I’ve been eating butterscotch like it’s going out of style.) And, I thought it might be worth a small trial of my own. Especially, since my favorite bar comes in exactly that “dose.” And apparently there is a dose-response. At least in elderly Dutch men. This will mean a trip to CVS, where I can both take my blood pressure, and purchase a larger supply of Lindt bars than I usually have on hand. Further updates will follow…

And, in the meantime, another story on some surprising relationships between food and health arrived in my emailbox via The Progressive, and this one went much further than merely advocating for chocolate…

UPDATE ~ Same Day:
Today’s BP: 138 over 74 w/ a heart rate of 76.
[I always use to be well under the "normal" 120 over 80.]

UPDATE ~ March 5th: [I decided to measure it twice.]
1st BP: 137 over 76 w/ a heart rate of 71;
2nd BP: 132 over 74 w/ a heart rate of 66.

More Braising…

Well, I braised the beef short ribs last night, but I still haven’t eaten them yet. I would have had them for breakfast this morning, but I wasn’t hungry enough to eat them and still go out to lunch with a couple of co-workers, one of whom is leaving for new pastures. The good news is that I had some leftovers from lunch, including a nice serving of brown rice, that will be really good tomorrow morning when I add it to the short ribs. For breakfast.

In the meantime, I did some more braising tonight: two lamb shoulder chops, and a beef shin bone, but in separate casserole dishes. The vegetables I used were similar, onions, celery, shredded carrots, garlic, in and canned tomates, plus a bit of tomato paste, and some olive oil, but the beef was cooked with more of the tomatoes– I used just a bit for the lamb– and the lamb dish also included some parsnips, and some worcestershire. A small amount of white wine went into both. The short ribs were treated similarly last night.

Such abundance. Three kinds of braised meat, packed in individual servings in the freezer. I’ll report back on the results.

Borrowed Quotes…

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

~ Joseph Addison ~

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
~ Mortimer J. Adler ~

Beware of the man of one book.
~ Thomas Aquinas ~

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision
and strengthens our most fatal tendency–
the belief that the here and now is all there is.
~ Allan Bloom ~

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen,
is that you can take it to bed with you.
~ Daniel J. Boorstin ~

Readers may be divided into four classes:
1.) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in
nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2.) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get
through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3.) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4.) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by
what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

The greatest gift is the passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination.
~ Elizabeth Hardwick ~

In a very real sense, people who have read good literature
have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.
It is not true that we have only one life to lead; if we can read,
we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
~ S. I. Hayakawa ~

[borrowed from Mental multivitamin]

“The Fifth Taste Emerges…

“…from the Brine” (read this story from the NYTimes)

Umami — without wheat or dairy– is an experience that has become a bit more elusive for me than in years past. Parmesan cheese, for example, has umami, but I can’t eat that. Sometime late last spring, I started eating butterscotch candy like there was no tomorrow. The combination of salty and sweet and the roundness and mellowness of the flavor. [sigh] It provided a taste sensation that I wasn’t getting from rootbeer, which I had started drinking in earnest earlier that year. (Main Street brand, carried by Giant Food Stores, is my favorite, because it has the creamiest foam, and is available in a pony size.)

Well, I haven’t had any rootbeer this week, and only two pieces of butterscotch; the only reason I even ate those is that one of my co-workers had filled up her candy dish with my favorite version (non-dairy) in those square cellophane packets that pop open without having to be untwisted.

I’ve decided I really have to cut down, or better yet, eliminate them from my diet. Both the butterscotch and the rootbeer. Not only did my blood pressure go up quite a bit (not really a problem, since it was awfully low before), but I gained a signficant number of pounds around my middle, meaning a size or two. I really can’t justify buying all new clothes (beyond the two new pairs of pants I bought last month in desperation), when I have perfectly good clothes that I can almost wear, and sometimes still do, with a sweater hiding the length of zipper that remains unzipped. [sigh... sigh...]

So, now a new search for sources of umami and taste satisfaction must begin…

Something new in my kitchen

I just bought a new crock pot. For its maiden voyage… a small beef roast (browned slightly in some olive oil) on a bed of celery, carrots, parsnips & turnips, a can of whole tomatoes with the liquid, a few cloves of garlic and some sprigs of parsley. And the ubiquitous Herbamare.

Then… about 10 hours cooking time, on low, while we were away from home…

That evening, after a small taste test and a cooling-off period, the roast and vegetables were divided more or less equally among 4 plastic containers and nestled in the freezer, most likely to be consumed for breakfast, given my preference for hearty food in the mornings. Especially on cold mornings. Like this morning.

I’m wondering if I can do something resembling risotto in it. Or rice pudding. Or polenta. You get the idea…