Category Archives: teevee

Jan25

Julia, Julie, and Lemons

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I finally saw “Julie and Julia” (thanks to my fabulous new Apple TV that I got to go with the fabulous new HDTV), and I am, once again, madly in love with Meryl Streep. Jesus christ on a pogo stick, that woman can act. The “Julie” part of the movie was kinda eh, IMHO. Amy Adams was fine, it’s not a criticism of her; it’s just that Meryl is so good, and Julia was so wonderful, there isn’t enough room for the Julie part. Seriously, I would much rather have had an additional hour of Julia. And Stanley Tucci, for that matter, who was also wonderful.

I’d read the Amanda Hesser article about Julie years ago, and then looked for the blog, and then started at the beginning and read the whole damn thing (meaning I don’t have a lot of interest in buying the actual book), and was sufficiently entertained by it. It was an interesting exercise, and, given my love of food and cooking, I am always happy to see someone actually interested in cooking. But, no, it was just way less interesting than the Julia part, and it would have been fun to see more of that part.

Meanwhile, back at Iron Chef: My Place, a bunch of stuff got made, and some of it was pretty good. I made the lemon ginger biscotti for the third time, again adding cranberries and this time adding pistachios instead of almonds, and they’re getting better with each attempt. The lemon flavor and scent is really delightful. Not enough ginger this time, though–I couldn’t taste it at all. I also attempted some chocolate hazelnut biscotti, and those were a major failure. For one thing, I must not have put in enough flour or something, because they simply didn’t hold together: I have big chunks of chocolatey goodness, surrounding hazelnuts, but nothing that maintains its shape or integrity. For another, I really need to chop the hazelnuts; they probably contributed to the problems. However, the chunks taste just fine–very chocolatey. You can only get the barest hint of the barley sugar in them; it was another in my attempts to achieve a malted-milk-ball thing, so there’s barley sugar, barley flour, and malted milk powder in them, but it’s not all that noticeable, I don’t think. I think next time I’m going to grind some hazelnuts into paste, and chop some, too. And add more flour.

For dinner, my task was to use some lemon (because while at the store on Saturday I purchased more Meyer lemons, even though I still had some here) and the kale that was about to become a science project. So I got out the big wok-shaped pan, put some water to boil in another pan (eventually there would be spaghetti in the boiling water), and got started. First, I took a lemon–sliced coarsely, so I could remove the seeds, but otherwise the whole thing–and a few cloves of garlic, and maybe some ginger (I don’t remember) and put it in the bowl of my stick blender (I killed my mini-prep awhile ago) and whirred it around. I let it sit for awhile, remembering from Cooks that lemon will mellow out the garlic if I let it sit for a few minutes. I chopped up the practically-still-frozen chicken breasts and threw them into the pan with some butter and olive oil. Sauteed them awhile while I chopped an onion. When the chicken was nearly done, I threw the lemon garlic mixture in. Let it all cook a bit, then took all of that out of the pan. Added a bit more oil and threw in the onion, cooked that down, added the chopped kale (by now the spaghetti is cooking merrily on another burner). Eventually I added a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan.

To finish, after everything was cooked, I dumped the chicken/lemon mixture back in with the kale and onion mixture, added a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream, drained the cooked pasta, threw that in the pan to mix it all around, and served it with some grated cheese. It so totally didn’t suck, and it had the advantage of using at least three things that needed using (the chicken, the kale, and a lemon), so yay for that.

Anyway. Lots of meetings this week, too, plus a hockey game tomorrow night and Chuck and CK on Friday, so it’s time for sleep.

Jan19

Random

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I only seem capable of food blogging these days . . . let’s try something else.

Partly it’s because all of the stuff at work goes on, but I’ve become more wary about going into detail on the ‘tubes (not that I’ve ever had any inkling that any coworker even knows I have a blog, much less has stumbled across it, number one, and, number two, the people about whom I would be most dismayed stumbling across this thing don’t have enough internet savvy to find it–most probably don’t know what a blog is, much less how to find mine; but you never know). Some things are going quite well–the new middle lord (my direct supervisor) has turned out to be quite good; I like hir personally and professionally, and zie seems intent on finding ways to use my talents to their fullest rather than just letting me continue to do three or four jobs in obscurity. Which, hey, all good. But it’s too soon to even try to talk about it here; it remains to be seen what can or will be done.

So I go to work, submit the next thing, come home and provide a lap for the cat (Friend’s cat is living with me for a little while, as I think I mentioned), work out, watch the hockey game if there is one, watch Top Chef on Wednesday night, maybe go out for dinner with Friend one night, maybe do some cooking or baking if I’m inspired.

My tile-making class started this past week, and I’m already feeling weird about it. Part of it is that I know that what I need to do is to sit down and do some drawings, start doing something, anything, really, but, instead, I dink around. The one tile I made last year actually came out reasonably well for a first effort, and I’m looking forward to making it even better, but that was a goddamned expensive tile. And now I’m in a class where I’m surrounded by people who are Genuine Artists–or it feels that way to me–and I’m just a schlub with no ideas about what I want to create. And I know that that approach violates the Top Chef Rule–cook your own food and don’t worry about what other people are cooking–but my brain keeps going there anyway.

Well, there’s only been one class, so maybe I’ll get my head out of my own head and actually do the drawings I need to do, and create some fun playful stuff just to amuse myself, and take a couple of afternoons off of work and spend some time in the studios (which doesn’t cost anything extra if you’re taking a class). I also know that I do my best work when I have the opportunity to just fuck around, play, see what evolves, and I didn’t have much of that last spring. I have a ton of vacation time–nearly three weeks, plus five personal days–so we’ll see. And did I mention that I want to just have fun with it, fer chrissakes?

This week’s other task is to find out what the weird patch on my leg is. I called my dermatologist today and got an appointment for Thursday. I’m perfectly willing to pay my co-pay only to be told that it’s just a patch of, I don’t know, eczema or something, but it doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever had on my skin before, and it’s in a location that isn’t a good candidate for plain old dry skin, and I moisturize after my showers, and I’ve been treating it for 10 days or so with no results, so I figure it won’t hurt to have an expert take a look at it. It’s probably something stupid and routine–and that would be absolutely fine with me.

As for cultural commentary: Lately I’ve been reading Eliot Pattison’s Inspector Shan series, and absolutely loving it. I’ve worked my way through the first four, I think, and I alternate with other stuff, of course, but it’s way fun. The other thing I’ve discovered–and, yes, I realize I’m late to this party–is “Big Bang Theory.” I’ve been getting it on Netflix and watching it while I row, and it makes me laugh out loud. I just finished season two (I alternate with the BBC’s Inspector Morse series), so I have a few more disks to go. But it cracks me up, and I’ve always had a crush on both Johnny Galecki and Sarah Gilbert, so it’s even more fun. I got a new TV, too–a big-ass sucker–but I’m using the old TV in the back bedroom with the rowing machine, i.e., I only get to watch the little TV while I row, but I have the rowing machine out of my living room. No furniture yet, but the furniture maker was here the week before last, and as soon as I figure out what I’m getting back on my taxes I’m going to order some stuff.

Okay, that’s the best I can do without involving food.

Jan17

Chili with a Chance of Potatoes

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As we all know, I lurve me some Top Chef–particularly this season, which has a lot of people who can cook, plus, because they’ve all done it before (it’s an “all-star” season, where all of them were eliminated in their own season but, in most cases, got pretty far, possibly even to the finals, before that), they all know what to expect. We’re not seeing as much of the over-the-top stuff as with the Voltaggios and Kevin, but otherwise, there’s some talent present.

However.

I’ve also realized that, in general, other than Top Chef and its spinoffs, I don’t like the cooking shows that are competitions. I can tolerate Iron Chef, up to a point, because the chefs are pretty uniformly good. But two of the others–Chopped, and, especially, Worst Cook in America–bug me. Chopped just isn’t as interesting as any of the others; rather than eliminate someone for each round, I’d rather see them each do all three rounds and see what the overall scores are. If they knew their scores for each round as they went along, then they’d each know how well they needed to do to win, which would keep it kind of interesting. But the one that bugs me the most (of the ones I’ve seen–I don’t even bother with the cake shows, because they’re all a version of fondant plus sculpture, which may be entertaining to watch but sucks to eat) is the Worst Cook show.

Of all the shows of that genre, that’s the one that absolutely should not be eliminating someone each week. I do like the idea of having a bunch of terrible cooks, in teams, trying to learn how to cook, but you never really know when someone is going to start to get it. In addition, the whole point of learning to cook, IMHO, is that you have to be able to make a mistake and understand how and why you made it; simply following someone else’s directions without truly understanding what you’re doing isn’t going to provide you with actual cooking skills. So, if I were in charge, I’d keep them all around for at least half of the season, then do a test of some kind and maybe then eliminate some percentage of them–a third, say. Lather, rinse, repeat, then the last third has some more training, and for the final competition, they’re each given a selection of ingredients–with some choices they have to make–and they compete that way. THAT would be learning to cook, or a reasonable enough approximation of it, and it even still keeps it a competition of some kind.

But since when has anyone asked my opinion on these things?

I’ve been working on the biscotti recipe, and it’s pretty good. The Meyer lemons really are fun to work with; they have a distinct perfume, and the flavor is very nice. I made a second round this week, using more all-purpose and less whole wheat flour, and adding cranberries and almonds. (I’d intended to use pistachios, because I was sure I had some around, but I couldn’t find them yesterday–and then I stumbled across them this morning; too late.) The texture is crumbly but not hard–I think because I’ve put a bit of butter in them–but that means they can be eaten without dunking them in something, which I actually prefer. The next iteration will have cranberries and pistachios, and I want to do a chocolate hazelnut something, too.

Meanwhile, friend and I tried the chili recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and it was pretty good. We made it with ground venison rather than blade steak; next time I’d probably throw in some wild turkey, too, for different texture. We made a few other chances–black beans rather than pintos; more beans and more tomatos than the recipe called for; added veggies in the form of carrots, celery, and frozen corn–but the basic spicing was the same, and it was pretty tasty. Basically, you toast cut-up anchos, and then puree the anchos and some arbols–all w/ stems and seeds removed–with some chicken broth and . . . something. The spices, I guess, which were cumin, oregano, and cocoa. There’s a little molasses in theire, too, as well as an onion and some jalpenos, and garlic. It definitely had a bite to it, but it wasn’t overwhelming, and the fact that you puree the chilis means that you don’t get a mouthful of one.

We ate it over these potato pancakes I’d made–I grated the last of the farm share potatos, mixed them with salt, pepper, two eggs, and some frozen spinach, and I formed them into patties and baked them on silpats until they were brown and crispy. It was nice to get potato pancakes without all of the grease. They still needed a little somethin-somethin, but the chili ended up being a perfect foil for them. Meanwile, I still have some kale and a head of cabbage to use, so that’s the next task; probably not next weekend, though. The current plan has us dashing to Madison for a hockey game on Saturday, then dashing back here on Sunday to attend a hockey game at 11:30 am and then dashing somewhere to watch the Big Football Game between his team and the Bears. It’s still not clear whether we’re both going to do all of those things, but it’s probably safe to say that cooking isn’t on that particular agenda.

Anyway. my two remaining tasks today are working out and going out to dinner, and I had better start in on the first one if I’m going to do it before the latter.

Oct1

It’s Not Death, It’s Only Cake

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Which is one of the most awesome things a judge on Top Chef (or, in this case, Top Chef Just Desserts) has ever said. Sylvia Weinstock, who is a wedding cake maven, apparently, was a guest judge last night, and one of the contestants was getting sniffly (as opposed to last week’s full-out breakdown by a different contestant–a breakdown that involved weeping and sobbing, “The red hots were for my mommy”) because her wedding cake kept getting worse and worse. It was difficult to watch, because I’ve had that sensation, where every single thing you do doesn’t just not help or not work, it actively makes things a whole quantum level worse. In her case, the cake basically started to fall off the cake stand as she stood there. And Sylvia was tactful, and gracious, and very nice to her, and she also reminded the contestant that hey, it’s only cake.

So I think I need to embroider that on a sampler or something, especially as things at work continue to get weird. The new person is apparently going to be making Large Changes, though not all of them have been revealed yet, and s/he’s doing a number of things that I suspect are likely to fail, and s/he is definitely listening to some of the wrong people. But you know what? It’s another thing about which I can do nothing, so I’m trying to keep my head down, stay calm, do my work and find another job. What the fuck else can I do?

Yes, it’s very disappointing, because I like the organization, in large part, and I like the work well enough, and I feel like I’m doing something useful. It’s not my life’s work or anything, though, and I’m waiting to see how a few things play out (e.g., will my boss lose his/her job? betting says yes), and I’m absolutely not jumping (will I be pushed? hard to say for sure) into just anything. But.

And, of course, it has been unpleasant since I returned from vacation. It’s clear that we’ve been maligned–in some cases, by people with whom we work closely–and it’s looking like, if the boss goes, some of the people who have been doing the maligning will be my/our new overlords. But unless the lottery comes through for me, or a new job does, they’ll be my overlords and I will need to obey them.

In any case, Sylvia’s comments made me think of a running conversation that K. and I have been having (for nearly 25 years . . .). She, like me, buried a sibling (though she was much younger than I was when it occurred). We have realized that, even all these years later, we have a tendency, when things are really shitty, to say, well, nobody died. Both of us being relatively strong people (and I do not pretend to know the direction of the causal arrows on that), that realization is a shorthand for put your grownup pants on and deal with it. And, really, that is a useful bit of perspective.

On the other hand, we have decided recently that we probably need a spectrum of good and bad that is more than binary: somebody died = bad; nobody died = not bad. There really are more gradations than that. For example, when Chuck was basically having a breakdown? That completely sucked, for both of us, and especially for him, in oh-so-many ways. There wasn’t a single fucking thing about that whole hot mess that was good at the time. (Yes, sure, in retrospect, he has gotten the help he needs–and is doing quite well; I had lunch with him and CK on Saturday–and so on, but at the time? Awful. As I’m sure you all remember, and you didn’t read about more than about 25% of it.)

So, now, at work, I find myself being the calm one. Well, more or less. But in general, I’ve been the Voice of Reason and Calm, or one of them, anyway, and I find myself thinking, yeah, this sucks, but not only did nobody die, this isn’t nearly as terrible as about six other times in my life. Possibly it’s age at work, too; when you get to be an old broad like me, especially when you’ve done the kind of shit I’ve done, you kinda figure something shitty will happen, and you’ll have to do something about it, or get through it, or . . . something. But there’s no point in worrying too much about it, because what good will worrying do? Oh; right; none.

So, dinner tomorrow night, then off to Farm Aid on Saturday (back Saturday night), and possibly some cooking over the weekend. At the moment I have two batches of graham crackers in the kitchen–for one thing, I’m trying to find a version of the recipe that I really like. It tastes fine, but is missing something. One of the original recipes called for molasses, and that was fine, but very strong molasses flavor, which I like but not everyone does. So I swapped out some of the molasses for honey, and that works well enough, too, but it’s still not quite right. The next attempt will include some malted barley sugar, I think; see what that does for the flavor. The reality is, I have a huge wad of leftover ganache from last week’s bake sale, so I’m going to be making graham crackers until I run out of ganache. Yeah, I know, another tragedy. But nobody died.

Jul22

Scrappy

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Well, I ended up doing a version of Iron Chef at my house tonight. The great thing about it was that I was able to make something for tomorrow’s potluck at work and I was able to use up a whole bunch of scraps from around the kitchen. The two major things I had hanging around were three-quarters of a loaf of whole-grain bread that had gotten pretty stale and a fuckton of zucchini. I had originally thought to make a sweet bread pudding, maybe with some fruit thrown in, but then I thought doing it as a savory would be a better idea, one that would enable me to use up some of the zucchini. I sliced the zukes in the food processor. I chopped an onion and what I thought was another onion but that was a huge fucking shallot from my CSA share, and put those to saute in the big pan with some olive oil and a chunk of pesto from the freezer. I threw in four cloves of crushed garlic, too–also from my farm share–and then the zukes. I tried not to cook it too much. The bread–more than a pound of it–I cut into very small cubes. I used three cups of milk, six eggs, about three quarters of a cup of cream (basically, I used up some old milk and some old cream; I would have left out the cream if it were just for me, and I would not go out and buy it, but I happened to have a bunch of that around, too).

I mixed the cooked veggies into the bread cubes, then poured the milk and egg mix over it. I stirred it, a lot, and threw in some grated parmesan that was sitting in the fridge, and some grated carrots that I had intended to use for salads this week. I let it sit, stirred it again, and it’s in the fridge now. Tomorrow I”m going to bake it in muffin tins, so there will be individual nibbles. I’m going to add some cheese curds (again, in the fridge, otherwise I’d grate some gruyere), and I took some slow-roasted herbed tomatos out of the freezer, which I’ll chop and put on top tomorrow before I bake it. (I was a bit concerned about mixing the tomatos in, because of the milk, but I might do that anyway.) I was tempted to make it in a big pan, but I realized that it wouldn’t bake all that evenly, or quickly, and would be harder to transport as well, so I think the little things will work better. We’ll see how it comes out.

Finally, on tonight’s Top Chef, more annoyance. This season has yet to really interest me, in many ways, and a lot of the people commenting at Television Without Pity seem to feel the same way. It may be that the lesser chefs have just taken up too much time and space and it’ll improve, but . . .

The people who continue to annoy the fuck out of me: Amanda, oh lordy, she’s insane. Not to mention, for someone who said, a few weeks ago, that she was an addict when she was younger, she cooks with an awful lot of alcohol. Having spent a fair amount of time around recovering people–and having been married to one–that just strikes me as odd. I know that alcohol is useful for flavors and sauces and such, but EVERY dish? And Angelo continues to provide adjectives with his dish, which is completely annoying; you provide the food, I’ll pick my own fucking adjectives, ‘kay? I find it disturbing how much he’s treating the whole thing like Survivor: Kitchen. I know there is always a certain amount of strategery, but he really seems to take it to a whole ‘nother level, and that turns me off. If you can cook, then your need for that kind of strategizing is really limited.

Finally, I ordered a table from a place I found online, a guy in Arizona who does custom furniture in the Arts & Crafts and Mission styles. It’s nearly done–just needs a mail box on top (I asked him to create some kind of box to put on it for me to throw my mail into, but let him decide whatever he wanted to do) and finishing. Here’s what it looks like in his workshop:

I’ll post another picture when I get it and it’s in its proper place.

Jul2

Get Your Ass in the Kitchen and Make Me a Pie

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I’ve been sleeping for shit lately–waking up early more than having trouble getting to sleep–but I’ve decided to ignore it. I don’t actually feel tired during the day, so I”m going to assume that my brain just is a little wired at the moment. It’s true that there’s a lot going on, mostly at work, some of it very stressful, but I don’t think that’s it. I tend to regard these things as random and transient, so whatevs.

Meanwhile, on Top Chef this week: Pie Fail! Partly as a way to introduce the upcoming latest in the Top Chef line of programming, they had a rock star pastry chef to judge the quickfire, which was: make a pie. Seriously–that was it. And the Pie Fail? Was all over the kitchen. The absolute best comment, however, was the person who complained, “I’m not a pastry chef,” to which RockStar Pastry Chef said, “My grandmother’s not a pastry chef, either, and she can make a pie.” Total pwnage.

That’s the thing that kind of blows me away. This is Season SEVEN, people! Once you know you’re going to be on the show (or hey, live dangerously, when you’re still fucking trying out to get on), there are a half a dozen formulas you need to commit to memory:
1. A basic pie crust–this can be used in both sweet and savory concoctions, so it will increase your options for your all kinds of dishes (e.g., a breakfast quiche, anyone?)
2. A basic cake formula (ratio of flour, fat, liquid, leavening), which can be adapted in a number of ways; old Domestic Science cookbooks are full of this shit, because it dates to when women were trying to get into places like MIT by demonstrating the scientific aspects of their household work; if you make it look more like a chemistry task, then it looks all sciency and it “elevates” it, which of course is a whole nother patriarchy-induced cringe moment, but we’ll ignore that for the moment. The point is? Cake.
3. Pastry cream. Really not difficult, and it can be used in so many ways it’s not even funny.
4. A basic cookie recipe. Sugar cookies cab be flavored with all kinds of herbs and spices, and you’ve suddenly expanded those possibilities as well.
5. A basic yeasted dough. You can turn this into a whole-grain bread, or a baguette, or sweet rolls. This may be the least important one, but it may give you an opportunity to put an extra something on a plate at some point (restaurant wars, anyone?), and a lot of yeasted doughs don’t require much work on your part–the yeast does all the work!
6. A basic ganache. You can go crazy and add a buttercream and/or an italian meringue to this (the latter would be very useful, as the meringue principle could probably be used in savory concoctions somehow as well).

This will get you enough information for just about any dessert challenge, I’d say. BT, whaddya say? What am I missing? What would your list have?

Point being, however, even if you’re going to be hiring a pastry chef at Your Famous Restaurant, you should know some basic things to make (not least because you want to have a potential pastry cook know how to do these things, I’d say), and you really want to be able to evaluate the work that your pastry kitchen is putting out the door.

Jun29

Little of This, Little of That

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Okay, let’s see.

First and foremost, one of my best friends ever is coming to visit next week. You may remember her; she sang at the wedding. I met her my very first day of college, back in 1977, so I have known her for 33 years. Yes, well more than half of my life. I cannot wait to see her. I’m taking off the whole week (really only four days, because we get off on Monday for the holiday), which will give me time to clean on Tuesday, and then we have most of three days to hang out and sit on the sun porch and drink tea and just talk and talk and talk.

Second, Chuck and I had some intense email exchanges last week, which I hope cleared the air between us a bit and cleared the way for me to see CK again. I have to give him his props: he continues to try to do the right thing, which is all we can ever ask of anyone. I’m still not going to go into detail about any of it here, except to say that I’m glad.

Third, the Crossroads festival was, as expected, quite excellent. The day was very damn long (oh MY how long . . .) and I was about to tip over by the time it was over, but the music was really great. We also managed to stay out of the sun for most of the day, which, given that Friend and I are two of the palest people around, is helpful. Yes, we slather on the sunscreen, but still. We also managed to scam good seats over the course of the day; of the three places we sat, only one was the actual seats on the ticket. The last place–where we sat for the last three hours or so, when the music was even more fab–featured a lot of people with VIP tags as well as a lot of empty seats. The only sour note all day, really, was the fact that this venue had exactly one water fountain. Yes; one. You could BUY water, of course, for $5 a bottle, but can I say no fucking way? At first there was a very long line, but then I think people either gave up and started buying it or started filling their containers in the bathroom sinks (which I kinda doubt, because the water in there was hot–not warm, hot). We, however, being cheap in some ways, saved some plastic beer cups and just refilled those along with the one water bottle we’d snuck in.

Okay, on to the food.

This week’s farm share had more garlic scapes, more kohlrabi (to bring the total to three), two beets with greens, a head of lettuce, three mini squash, a little russian kale (those last two, plus some scapes, went into Saturday morning’s breakfast scramble), and . . . that might have been it. So yesterday I used up everything: sauteed a chopped onion, then added the garlic scapes (should have waited on those), then the peeled and sliced kohlrabi and a little water, then the sliced mini carrots that needed to be used up, then the sliced beets, and finally the beet greens and some frozen collards (a little bit left in a package). I tossed it with some whole wheat (mostly) pasta and some grated cheese, and we had some grilled wild turkey with it, and it was all good. I threw in a splash of balsamic vinegar, too, and salt and pepper, but that was it for the seasoning. I liked the way the flavors balanced and melded, and it was useful to basically use up all the scraps of vegetables sitting around. In principle I like fresh herbs, but, in practice, I find that it’s really, really easy to overwhelm whatever you’re cooking with them, so I tend to try to balance the flavors of the other ingredients.

So now I’ve eaten kohlrabi, and, eh. I mean, it was good and all, but it isn’t so good or so distinctive that I would necessarily seek it out, and it doesn’t have any special healthy properties, at least not any of which I am aware, and at least not any that, say, broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage have. (I like the brassica/cruciferous stuff, quite a bit, but I didn’t think the kohlrabi was better than any of those three.) I’d eat it again, and I’ll likely get the chance with this week’s share.

And this season’s Top Chef has begun, and, even after two weeks, one person has emerged as a total gaming asshole. Why yes, Angelo, I’m talking about you. Basically, this guy is seriously cocky. He and Tracey won the Quickfire, which meant (a) they had immunity and (b) they could choose the other two people who were going to be on their team for the Elimination Challenge. (Which was that each four-person team had a budget of about $2.60 per kid and had to make a “healthy” lunch for 50 kids–the dollar amount is what most schools have to work with. Some viewers apparently thought it was too preachy, but I was glad to see that theme–and I was completely entertained that Tom’s mom was a lunch lady.) Okay, so Angelo and Tracey pick Kenny and Somebody–Kenny being the strongest apparent competition for Angelo at this early stage of the game–to be on their team. This could have been Angelo’s way of ensuring that his team won the challenge, but of course Angelo is trying to game the whole system: because he and his partner have immunity, that means if their team loses, the other two people have a greater chance of going home.

So what did Angelo make for his dish? Celery sticks with peanut butter mousse and some kind of tuile. Yes. Celery sticks with peanut butter and a cookie. As a vegetable. The thing is, I think the judges even figured this out, and I do hope this comes back to bite Angelo in the ass. On the Television Without Pity forums, a couple of people who hated various other contestants over the years pointed out that none of those guys would have pulled such a dick move. Seriously, dude; if you think you’re all that and a bag of chips, then you should be able to beat anyone else on the show with your actual cooking rather than bullshit games like that.

The other thing that was sort of train-wrecky to watch was the team that had Amanda–the Leah clone–on it. One of the interstitials showed her saying something to the effect that being a team player or taking one for the team wasn’t in her vocabulary. Honey, that shit will come back to haunt you at some point. But, more important, (1) one of her teammates was the one who went home, because she made a nasty-ass banana pudding with way too much sugar in it, which she did because there wasn’t enough cash in the budget for her original recipe, which included chocolate, and (2) Amanda made chicken thighs with sherry jus. Yes. Alcohol for school children. And a food item that likely broke their fucking budget. (Why did she get to keep her sherry when they were over budget, but Banana Woman had to put back some of her ingredients?) That kind of blew me away. And if I were Amanda, I’d be sending a thank-you note to banana pudding person, because the nastiness of that dish saved Amanda’s ass.

I was a little surprised that she went with the banana pudding after she had to change the original conception. And someone on a forum suggested that maybe the bananas weren’t quite ripe, which would have explained the trouble she was having with taste and texture. But why stick with that? K and I thought that rice pudding, for example, could have been subbed: brown rice pudding with a swirl of blueberry compote, for example, would have worked just fine, probably been healthier, and surely would have tasted better.

The other thing that that whole thing raised was how the teams split up the budget. Seems to me that you divide the dollar amount in four and negotiate from there. (“Hey, my thing is only going to cost X dollars, leaving me with some extra; who needs it?”) It also seems that, if you’re going to do something that depends on the condition of the fruit or vegetable, you should have a backup plan. But, hey, it’s easy to think these things from my couch, probably harder to do it at Restaurant Depot, when one of the people on your team insists on buying sherry. Still, look at the plate of the team that won: lots more food, and it looks lots more appetizing. I think I want them to make the lunches at my school.

Mar16

Crime Scenes

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Nearly all of my entertainment is crime-related these days: I’m making my way through the Parker and Spenser novels, and my current Netflix choices are the Inspector Morse series and, this past week, the first season of “Hill Street Blues,” which is still, IMHO, the best show ever broadcast. Unfortunately, only the first two seasons ever made it to DVD legitimately (I’ve seen some stuff for sale that I think isn’t quite legit that claims to provide all seasons of the show), so I am destined to be left wanting more. Back in the day, when HSB was first broadcast, I made no plans for Thursday night that did not involve being in front of the TV, watching the latest installment. (This was long before VCRs, DVDs, TiVo, Television Without Pity, etc., and you either saw it or you didn’t.)

The show hasn’t been on television much since then, despite having produced enough episodes for syndication, because the stories overlapped and the threads often ran through multiple episodes, and they’d make no sense if you didn’t watch them in order, which, I imagine, would make syndicated broadcast difficult. In the first five shows of the first season, for example, there’s some question of whether one of the cops is on the take. If you saw those episodes out of order, they’d make no sense. In the first three or four episodes, the precinct is preparing for a visit from the president, which involves a gang truce that Furillo negotiates. (Most amusing cameo so far: a gap-toothed David Caruso, as the leader of the “Shamrocks,” an Irish gang. Which, really? An Irish gang? In which city, in the 1980s?)

The creators of the show never specified what city it was, though I do remember Philadelphia’s city hall making an appearance in a couple of shows. I later learned that the scenes of the outside of the precinct house were filmed in Chicago, at the Maxwell Street house. I realize now–now that I’ve seen the originals, as it were–several other of the opening scenes, most particularly one with an Old Style sign outside a bar, were also filmed in Chicago; I think most of the rest of it was filmed in L.A., even though the city has the weather and the grit of an old industrial city–Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, something like that.

Anyway, one of the things that has become glaring is how technology has changed in the last 30 to 40 years. In the Parker (and Dortmunder) novels, for example, Parker acts and talks like someone out of the 1950s, maybe early 60s. I think, as Robert Parker did with Spenser, the origins get blurred a little in the later novels, so that he can still be doing his thing in the 1990s and not have to be 85 years old to make the math work out. (In one of the early novels, Spenser says something about serving in Korea–which would have been in the early ’50s, and would make him around the same age as my dad, who is 79. I remember reading that in later novels, it sounds as though he served in Vietnam, not Korea. Similarly, Parker has a dishonorable discharge somewhere in his past.) But in one of the later novels that I read out of turn, Parker observes that it’s harder to find wads of cash these days, where so many transactions happen electronically rather than with piles of paper in hand.

I can’t help wondering what would have happened if Parker and Spenser had crossed paths. The reality is, they likely would not have. Both of them operate on the principle that people do stupid shit, and they find ways to exploit that, Parker for his own benefit and Spenser for his clients’ benefit, but neither of them does a lot of stupid shit of their own. Parker doesn’t mind killing someone, at least not in the early novels (though Dortmunder and Kelp and their compatriots never resort to violence), but he doesn’t do it out of pure malice. If someone gets in the way–typically by intruding in some way on Parker’s activities, rather than by innocently stumbling into the path–Parker does not hesitate to kill him or her, but in general it’s not his preference. He doesn’t kill for fun, and he doesn’t kill if he doesn’t have to do so, which kind of sets him apart from the crime that hits our newspapers, and, most importantly for this what-if, he avoids making stupid mistakes himself; killing someone unnecessarily is stupid.

On HSB, all of the phone calls are on land lines–many even on public phones–because no one had cell phones in 1982. Thus, communication is actually a plot point in many ways: where is this person, where that conversation can be held, what kinds of tracing are possible. By way of contrast, I have conducted about 85% to 90% of the business of buying a condo via email, other than actually looking at the place. I have never met the lawyers in person, though I have spoken with the lawyer and her assistant several times (including twice today, as we finalized the papers that are going back to the sellers). I have met the mortgage guy once. I never met the appraiser, though I have paid them money. Except for some mortgage papers that I signed in person–in part so the mortgage guy could explain things to me in person–I’ve even submitted a lot of paperwork to him via email. The papers the lawyers have sent on my behalf, for example–i’ve only seen PDFs of them.

But being so immersed in crime (and hockey and racing) is a little weird, even if the crime is fictional and even if my reading and viewing is on both sides of the line, as it were. It also makes me wonder what it is that makes someone decide that theft is the way to make one’s money, and it definitely makes me sure that I have little or no interest in making my living that way.

I haven’t forgotten kstyle’s comments, either, about baking and cooking, but it’s time for bed, so those musings will have to wait.

Mar9

Wild Turkey Rag(u)

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First, the inspection. By and large, it went fine. There are a couple of smallish things, mostly plumbing-related, but I hope they don’t derail the thing. My understanding from others is that this isn’t unusual; given my lack of experience, I will only be convinced when I take possession of the property. Or, rather, take residence therein; I won’t take “possession,” per se, until 2040, at which point I would be 81 years old. Which kind of freaks me out a little, so I’m not going to think about it.

I was further distracted/depressed on Sunday by news that a cousin was killed in a motorcycle accident this weekend–he was 54. His mother (who is my mother’s first cousin, so i guess he’s my second cousin?) and sister are favorites of mine (he lived on the west coast, so I haven’t seen him in years and years), and it’s just terribly sad. My parents are upset, too, not surprisingly.

Yesterday Friend and I hung out, watched hockey, played cribbage, and finally got around to doing some cooking. He had some wild turkey legs and thighs that he had cooked in his slow cooker last weekend; he has discovered that that method makes it easier to separate the meat from the tendony fibrous bits, and he likes to make gumbo with the meat. But he had more than he needed for the gumbo, so I got to use some of it.

I took two pieces of bacon and cooked them, mostly to render the fat. I removed nearly all of the rendered fat, as well as the cooked bacon, from the pan, and then sauteed a diced onion and several pressed cloves of garlic in the bacon grease. When they were done, I added some onions, shitakis, and wine sauce from last weekend’s sauce for the venison steak, as well as the crumbled bacon. That cooked for awhile, then I added the shredded turkey, a drained and rinsed can of white beans, and a bag of frozen herbed slow-roasted tomatos from my freezer that I’d brought over there awhile ago. I added a splash of madeira and a splash of balsamic vinegar and I let it simmer away for a little while. I made some whole wheat fusilli, and, a minute or two before it was done, I added a bag of baby spinach (i.e., just long enough to barely cook the spinach). Sauce on top of the spinach/pasta mixture, with some grated cheese of some kind on top. (I have no idea what the cheese was; I’d brought it over, but quite awhile ago.) Extremely tasty, I must say. For dessert, last week’s caramel plus bananas plus walnuts, except this time I had chocolate ice cream and Friend’s freshly made banana bread over which to put everything, plus I fucked up the caramel sauce (crystallized the sugar instead of having a nice smooth caramel).

As i worked out yesterday morning in Friend’s basement, I was listening to my iPod but also had the Food channel on for visuals (the sound was down). I was guessing that I was going to be able to follow along. One of the shows was something about five ingredients–I think no dish had more than five ingredients? In any case, yesterday’s show featured:
1. oven-roasted grape tomatos, with garlic and olive oil
2. creamed spinach (with heavy cream)
3. beef filets stuffed and topped with a butter/stilton cheese mix
4. white chocolate mousse (egg yolks, cream, white chocolate, sugar)

All I could think was how much fat would be in that meal. My arteries ached just looking at it.

And it’s not as though I never eat like that–Friend and I had French food Friday night. He had scallops with some kind of creamy mashed potatos and about a pound of butter, as well as a cream-based soup and a shared chocolate mousse for dessert, and I had coq a vin over black pepper noodles, and started with french lentils and carrots in endive, with some kind of wonderful sauce, as well as half of the mousse, and we both had plenty of bread with roasted garlic spread on it.

Both of us were stuffed as a result–I even took some home–despite not having had lunch that day. It was quite good, of course, but I truly don’t want to eat like that more than once every couple of weeks. And that’s what kind of irritated me about the TV show. It wasn’t being presented as “special-occasion” food, it was being presented as everyday food–look, only five ingredients, so easy to whip up! Yes, i realize that grains and veggies and beans aren’t all that exciting, at first glance, and don’t make exciting television . . . or would they? Actually, I’d like to see that (I’d like to DO that): making quick, tasty meals that don’t give you a heart attack. Even better–the leftovers heat for lunches, and/or can be combined to make whole new meals. Wouldn’t that be a more useful cooking show?

Jan14

Random Thoughts Make a Post

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I am tired of the smell of burning hair. Whenever I smell someone’s hair burning these days, it’s a pretty good bet that I’m going to have to be involved in the firefighting, and I am tired of that.

I am tired of our finance person playing the game of “Let’s you and her fight.” I am tired of asking for someone with different/relevant experience to review the budgets we are preparing and tell us what we’re doing wrong, and getting absolutely no response whatsoever. Most of all, though, I am tired of being told that the way to solve problems that are obviously systemic is to throw time, effort, and more time and effort at them, rather than devising a system that fixes the problems.

I am tired of hearing about Tiger Woods’ genitalia and what he does with it. I. Do. Not. Care. Really; I don’t. If he were telling others what they should do with their genitalia, and it differed from what he is doing with his, then we could criticize him for being a hypocrite, but he is not doing that.

I am peeved at hearing someone disparage Mark McGwire for the “carefully orchestrated” way he revealed that he used steroids. Of course it’s carefully orchestrated; did you expect him to blurt it out? He fucked up, and he knows he did, and he kinda hopes he gets to get credit without an asterisk for his home runs. (I don’t really know how I feel about that. It’s not as though we can go back and test everyone who held a record at some point, so it seems unfair to only punish some people. On the other hand, the Tour de France has been pretty relentless in drug testing and in throwing out offenders, so it can be done. I really think that, players’ stupidity or cupidity aside, the message hasn’t exactly been clear.)

On a related note, I find it disingenuous, at best, for McGwire to say that he only took steroids to help heal injuries, that he would never ever have used them solely to boost his performance. Look, dude: my dad has been taking steroids to address a rash that resulted from his chemo. When he was on the (legitimately prescribed) juice, his knees felt MUCH better. Within a day of stopping the juice? Back to the aching, nearly-80-year-old, did-physical-labor-for-45-years knees. Even he could tell a performance difference. Also, McGwire’s claims that if there’d been drug testing in baseball then he wouldn’t have used them kinda conflicts with his claim that he needed them, don’t it? If you “needed” them, then the testing shouldn’t have mattered, no?

I am pleased that my specific plans to drink more water are resulting in more water being drunk by me. My body seems happy about this, though the “happier” part is subtle and possibly related to the other things I’ve been doing as well.

I am pleased that I have managed to do some kind of workout for 9 of the last 10 days, for at least 30 minutes a day. It hasn’t always been as long or as intense as I would prefer–45 minutes and a bit more intensity would have been nice on a few days–but I did it.

I have practiced at least a little yoga every day for the past 10 days. My specific commitment was to two sun salutations (a version a little different from the classic/standard sun salutation) each day, and I have done that. Yesterday and today I modified that a bit to incorporate a couple additional asanas. As I pointed out to myself, two sun salutations isn’t all that difficult to fit in. Friend and I are going out of town next weekend–leaving Friday after work, coming back Sunday–so I don’t know what I’ll do on Saturday, as we’ll be staying with friends of his, but I’ll deal with it. Missing one day won’t be an issue if it comes to that.

And I have been doing other things to help maintain in this high-stress environment. My back/hip are acting up again–time for more acupuncture!–but whatevs. My goal is to continue to try to work toward solutions. Not everyone is on board with that, but I can’t control what other people do. And so to bed.