Christmas has come and gone

Sarah and Aaron were here for ALMOST a week. Things went awry because of the snowstorm that shut down (almost) everyplace in the US except Kentucky, it seemed. They were supposed to fly in on Sunday morning the 20th. On Friday we phoned them to suggest that they might want to get out of town before the storm hit, but they didn't; they were also planning a cocktail party for Saturday night. Saturday morning they discovered that their flight was already cancelled; they re-scheduled for Monday night (first available), and reserved the last one-way car rental available for Sunday in NY, they think. Sunday the computer said their Monday flight was cancelled, but Delta said it wasn't. Sunday afternoon after it stopped actually snowing, they decided to get out of town, collected the car, and drove to KY, arriving about 2:30 a.m. on Monday. Interstates were cleared; nothing else was.

They missed Lessons and Carols as a consequence. The rest of the week is a blur, but we had a great time...we made cookies and a Yule Log (Buche de Noel). Martin made things. I finally actually made the cassoulet and froze it; we'll eat it later.

Martin made a gingerbread train, and two batches of fudge (one perfect, the other needs a sledgehammer to cut), and a batch of brownies with Reese's miniatures in them.

We also made Mexican wedding cookies, gingerbread men (decorated), pizzelle, canneles, can't remember what all. Brenda phoned the 23rd and asked if I had an extra Christmas pudding lying around as she couldn't find one anywhere. I didn't, but I made Christmas pudding (if you've never had it, it's basically an English fruitcake, steamed in a mold for something like 6 hours, served with brandy hard sauce), and it was too much for my mold, so I actually made two. Gave the second one to Therese. Have to download the photos of the Buche de Noel; it's a masterpiece, and it ought to be, given how much of a pain it was to make.

We went to the Curtz's on Christmas Eve for their traditional buffet: boiled shrimp, foie gras, beef tenderloin, some wonderful cheese they bought at some place they discovered in Boston, asparagus, etc., desserts of various sorts, generally a blow-out. Later we went to the late service at Christ Church; music was good, sermon by the Bishop was pretty bad. All of us went, and Martin was of course in the choir.

Christmas day we had a great time, even if I did spend too much of it cooking. Jim Krupa came, as well as Kay and Madhu (both graduate student, Kay a student of Phil's...they are from India), Therese and the boys came as usual. John dislocated his shoulder and recently had surgery on it; he's still doing poorly, as they say.

The kids left this morning, and I am absolutely whacked. I think we all are, but I have a wonderful stack of books to read (Christmas presents), so I think I'll tuck in...

Lillie

cassoulet

I'm in a mood to go back to France, even though the weather there is at least as bad as it is here, and all my joints hurt here, so it really wouldn't be better there. But it smells different...looks different...things like that.

I did something drastic a week ago, and ordered a Cassoulet "kit" from d'Artagnan. Included not only confit duck legs (which I can make myself), but also the right kind of beans, sausage, garlic sausage, and a couple of other things I can't get here OR make myself. Have started the beans, so I need to make the cassoulet tomorrow. We'll see if it's any good.

I'm also trying to figure out what to make during Christmas week. We're not having turkey, rather leg of lamb, which is okay to make, but I don't eat lamb (allergies...), AND a leg of lamb won't be enough to feed as many people as we'll have here for Christmas dinner.

Am thinking about making a Buche de Noel. Sarah and I have been threatening to make one for years; it's a traditional Christmas dessert in France.

I may also make a Beef Wellington while Sarah and Aaron are here, but won't make it with pate and truffles as the "stuffing" (the stuff wrapped around the beef tenderloin between the meat and the pastry), but rather a mushroom stuffing, including some rather strange mushrooms, as well as the regular ones. Not sure what else.

Please advise...

Cheers, Lillie

Christmas and a few other things

Well, we had the semi-annual lab party last Saturday. Can't believe I keep agreeing to do this. We invite all of Phil's graduate students, plus students who just have him on their committees (I think), a few faculty types in ecology, and occasionally some unrelated people. This year I did Indian food (and Kay and Madhu are actually INDIAN from INDIA, talk about coals to Newcastle...). It turned out pretty well, though, despite the fact that there was no definite number of bodies until they actually arrived, so I was prepared for 30-50 people. Made a great deal of chicken curry, basmati rice, koftas (pork meatballs in spicy yogurt sauce, supposed to be made from ground lamb but I couldn't find any...), raita (made the yogurt myself, thank you very much), potato stuff (supposed to be turned into samosas, but I ran out of steam...), gujerati green beans, papadums, condiments, etc., can't remember what all else, but I think there were a couple of other things...

Lydia Curtz and Ben saved my skin on the deal; they organized the service, made some punch in that thing on the back porch, set everything out, etc. I would have been seriously under water without them...

But it was actually fun.

So there...

Lillie

p.s. turned out there were 41 people who put in appearance, and ONLY ONE annoyed me by not talking to me...I guess some of these people either don't know who I am and don't bother to find out whose house they're at, or find me scary...

back to food

So today I made yet another recipe out of the Babbo cookbook. Heretofore, EVERYTHING I have done out of that cookbook has been really, REALLY good, and there are several I've made more than once. This was bass cooked (grilled, actually, in olive oil), and served on Belgian endives cooked for a very long time in O.J., honey and white raisins, with a vinaigrette made from O.J., saffron, white vinegar and olive oil (actually it called for Champagne vinegar but I used white wine vinegar). And actually I made it with cod instead of bass (hey, they had cod at Kroger, Martin loves it, etc., what would you do?!?). Cooked fettuccini, tossed it with butter, pepper, and Parmesan.

Had a LOVELY 2005 not-very-expensive red Bordeaux with it.

The pasta was good; however, it is hard to mess this up, unless you overcook it, use margarine instead of butter, ground pepper out of a can, and Parmesan out of a box, none of which I EVER do.

The wine was VERY GOOD. 2005 was an exceptional year; we weren't in SouthWest France that year, but have heard about it. The temperature was up to 50 degrees centigrade for quite awhile, late summer, and the wine as a consequence is supposed to be very good. This is indeed very good.

The cod was okay. The sauce, endives, etc., were pretty lousy. And I spent most of the late afternoon and evening messing with it. Drat.

Lillie

Sesame Street

It took me approximately the entire week to figure out that the "logos" on Google this week were Sesame Street characters because this week is the 40th anniversary of the invention/creation/release of Sesame Street. And there was an entire "Fresh Air" hour devoted to it, a great deal of which I heard while driving back from Lexington this afternoon. Sarah and I spent a great deal of time watching Sesame Street in the house on Nicholasville Road (also Mr. Rogers, and Today's Special--I found Mr. Rogers a bit dull but she didn't, and we both thought Today's Special was great, at least I think we did--I know I did). I have a couple of distinct memories. One was of her (Sarah, about 1, I think) wreaking havoc in the pantry, moving stuff off the shelves, I think, and suddenly saying "Pogga, Pogga, Pogga...", and making a bee-line for the living room, where Kermit was talking about something or other (Pogga being, of course, "frog"). Another was when I had my brief career doing latch-hook, and made the cover for a pillow of Ernie. When I had FINALLY finished, and showed it to Sarah, her only response was, Where's Bert?!? I think I MAY have actually turned Ernie into a pillow, but I HATED latch-hook stuff, and sorry, Baby, but Ernie never materialized.

Love, Mom

food

So twice in only one week I've tricked the boys into eating spinach. First was the ravioli that I stuffed with spinach (fresh), can't remember exactly what else, but I think shallots, ricotta, parmesan cheese, some fake egg... Butter and parmesan cheese on top. Not only did they eat it, but they ate it left-over (both are generally opposed to left-overs, unless it's cheese enchiladas).

And then last night I made some crepes, which were actually fake crepes, since I used fake eggs and soy milk instead of eggs and milk. And I didn't manage to make enough because I took some out to make some dessert crepes (added some sugar and orange liqueur) that I stuffed with cherry pie filling.

The real crepes had spinach in them, also mushrooms, onion, a bit of ricotta (couldn't find any goat cheese at Food Lion--recipes call generally for cream cheese with the spinach stuffing for crepes, and I try to avoid cream cheese, as I don't want to get sick). Instead of a proper veloute sauce, I used chicken broth instead of milk. Put some frozen shrimp in half of them (for some reason, Martin hates shrimp in any guise). rest of the sauce and some grated (seriously mediocre) Swiss cheese (also from the Paris Food Lion). Not only did they say it was very good, Martin asked if there would be any left over. I didn't tell him the active ingredient in the filling was spinach.

I also bought a pie pumpkin, and am trying to figure out a way to get them to eat that. It certainly won't be in a pie. Soup, maybe?

Cheers,

duck

Just read Garlic and Sapphires, by Ruth Reichl, lately editor of the late Gourmet. Read it again actually; I read it when it first came out several years ago, and didn't enjoy it all that much then. I've since been to NYC several times, and when I read it before, I was still mad at her because of the changes she'd made in the magazine when she took over.

This time I loved it.

I also cooked tonight. Not sure what you'd call it, but it was the breasts from that whole duck I bought at Critchfield's last week, and I marinated them for awhile (probably not long enough) in Madeira. Sauteed them in butter, rapidly, until they were rare. Made a sauce with the Madeira, some red wine, shallots, mushrooms (shallots and mushrooms sauteed earlier in butter), chicken broth, the syrup from a can of dark cherries, and finally the cherries. Didn't manage to thicken the sauce but the boys thought the duck was really, really good. Served it sliced and spread onto mashed potatoes (I forgot that I had some french bread....) with the cherries and mushroom sauce poured over everything. Evidently they really liked it all.

Also made garlic soup (Gascon staple in the wintertime, doesn't keep at all well, but easy to make, cheap, and good for you), and a green salad.

Wasn't ready until 9:00 p.m. but they were watching the World Series game anyway.

Lillie

another thing

Did you see the post (perhaps a week ago, or so) about Phil bringing me a miniature metal Mini-Cooper? to try to cheer me up because I've been dealing with the boys with swine flu? Not only is it NOT the real thing, it's YELLOW. I want a RED Mini-Cooper. Don't give a fig whether or not it has a sunroof. I DO NOT WANT a CONVERTIBLE Mini-Cooper. I do, however, want a RED MINI-COOPER. And it needs to get major mpg. So there. I think they are cute. Ought to be easy to get around corners and into parking places, and they are low to the ground, so should be basically stable, unlike those van things that I can't seem to drive. Not to mention get myself into.

But I'm not getting any younger and I WANT A RED CAR.

Lillie

Sunday at Christ Church

So perhaps I drank too much last night when Therese and Gillian were here, but ah, it was fun. We ate at Phil's grandmother's table out on the porch. This is the wrought iron table, with a glass top, and six wrought iron chairs, that was, I think, on the sleeping porch at Mammaw's house on Western Ave. in Fort Worth. House no longer there, and I never saw it. By the time I met Phil his grandmother had had a bad stroke and was living with his parents, house had been sold, I think.

There are many family photos that involve the table. M.A. and Frank's wedding photos, with them cutting the cake; Philip's sixth birthday party, with the cowboy theme, his grandfather holding him; not sure what else, but evidently there are lots of family photos around the table. Bob, his cousin, had it for many years, and recently moved into a house (very modern) with no good place for the table. We seem to have acquired it (at non-trivial expense to move it up here, and get it sanded, primed, and painted white), but it looks great on the back porch there. Problem is, a great deal of the year it's COLD out there, but it was fun eating out there at the table.

I never feel well in the morning, but went to church anyway. All Saints' Day, Gerre Hancock was here for the weekend, directing the combined choirs and playing the organ (Martin is seriously jealous and asked me "how does he do that?!?!?"). He does seem to be able to work wonders with the choirs.

At Evensong they sang "Blessed City Heavenly Salem" (or maybe it is "Blessed Salem Heavenly City"---whichever) as the anthem. They have sung this before. Several times. Never before did it sound this good. The man is a wonder as a choirmaster. It was a real treat.

Turns out that, on top of being a top-notch, world class organist and choirmaster, HE IS A TEXAN. HE HAS ACTUALLY BEEN TO GOLIAD. KNOWS where it is, etc., etc. Small world.

Lillie

dinner on Saturday HALLOWEEN

I am very sad to say that we get no (NO! ZERO!) Trick-or-Treaters out here on the farm. I always loved Trick-or-Treat-ing. Whether I was doing it, or my kids were doing it, or whatever. We got a lot of them when we lived on Cochran Road in Chevy chase in Lexington. Ah, well...

Had Therese Lew and her sister Gillian over for dinner tonight and it was great fun. Gillian is here for six weeks, I think, from Melbourne. Haven't seen her in some years. John dislocated his shoulder last week, etc. I made pate from chicken livers, Stanley Demos's recipe, sort of, and bruschetta with fresh tomatoes on them, for hors d'oeuvres. Dinner was veal scaloppini (no clue how to actually spell this) sauteed in butter and olive oil with chopped shallots, with flour on it, white wine, and then chicken broth and finally bleu d'auvergne cheese ( a blue cheese from central France that melts well..). Mashed potatoes. And then a salad with balsamic and walnut oil. Good red wine from France (!). French bread, of course. So THERE...

Lillie

HELP

Actually, it's okay. Phil is better. The chicken croquettes were lousy, but hey, the ricotta and spinach ravioli were good. Yesterday I went to Lex on a mission to purchase some pork belly (they have it at Critchfield's, hey, it may be a miracle) and plan to make bacon AND pork rillettes. One problem is that Aaron may never enjoy this, as he doesn't eat pork. his loss...

And I also bought a frozen duck. Had planned to just purchase duck breasts to (probably) make magrets sechees, (dried duck breasts, folks), but two duck breasts (one duck) was >$16, while an entire bird was < $20, so I bought the whole thing. We had the legs tonight, which I didn't start until after 7:00 p.m., and they were, shall we say, underwhelming. So there. We'll see about the dried duck breasts. I could just take myself to France, where it's all available, all the time, although magrets sechees is very expensive. I suspect I could make it over there, HOWEVER.

I've also been in a real snit lately. Internet is awful. not sure whether it's the satellite, the modem, the wireless router, or the Starband ISP. But it is seriously underwhelming and very, very frustrating.

I have been trying very hard to get my websites which I have paid good money for up and running, etc., and it seems to be an uphill battle when one is a limited in skills (!) as I am and as impatient as I am. And also, the Internet is as undependable as it is. Bitch, bitch....

So there.

I'll keep you posted, if anybody cares.

I do hate soaps.

Lillie

the boys

Phil is still sick. Is doing a thesis defense over the phone from home; this will be a three hour phone call, folks. Martin finally seems to be on the mend. He clearly feels better, and wants to go to work (!). I think he's FINALLY sick of Full House, Little House and Days of our Lives. Has been watching Star Wars and Lion, Witch & Wardrobe. I told him he couldn't go anywhere until he'd been fever-free for 24 hours, and he's been in here checking his temperature every couple of hours. Wants very badly to go to rehearsal tonight, but Erich told him to wait until Saturday (this is the week Gerre Hancock is coming to conduct).

I'm tired of being in a house with sick men.

I may make some bouillabaisse. That always cheers me up. Last night I was busy making ravioli when I was told they really only wanted soup. A can of tomato soup it was. I should finish the ravioli, shouldn't I. Stuffed with spinach and ricotta, and I was also all set to make chicken croquettes. Leftover boiled chicken. The sauce that holds them together has chicken broth instead of milk in it, but whatever. Probably still edible.

If I'm back cooking, I guess I'm in a better mood. So there.

more flu

Sarah let Phil have an earful last night, threatened him with all sorts of things and actually got him to go to the doctor this morning. Quick swine flu test came back negative, they did the long one, will get results tomorrow. He was told to stay away from college students until that comes back so he's (oh, dear) back home. The doc gave him a prescription for tamiflu for me to take as a prophylactic measure.

Also brought me a present--a toy mini-Cooper--as a "reward" for putting up with the two of them. I deserve more, much, much more, like a REAL mini-Cooper, for spending two weeks in the house with sick men.

Lillie

flu and things

So Tino got sick while were in NYC, and had a bad cold. Had two beds in the room, and he couldn't sleep because he couldn't breathe, and snores a lot, of course. Sounded like he was drowning about half the night(s). Monday when we came home he said he had a bit of an earache. Very bad sign. And Phil got sick on Monday, too. Tuesday (maybe the 20th) went with Tino to the doctor, and of course both ears were infected. Got a Z-Pack (may have posted this already). Other stuff too. Phil got sicker, stayed home both Wednesday (missing both lab meeting AND seminar, which meets only once/week) and Thursday. Achy, feeling congested, coughing, fever, etc., but Tino got a bit better. Went to work two days.

Friday night Martin couldn't sleep, said he was "shivering". Fever Saturday and Sunday, left ear, the worst one, still felt "clogged". Achy, slept a lot, sounds bad. Went to doctor again today (Monday). He has swine flu, which means Phil has it, too, as they have same symptoms. Tino's ear infection not gone. On another antibiotic for ears, plus Tamiflu.

It's not quite as bad as when Sarah, Martin and then Phil got chicken pox in sequence when we were in York way back when, but it's approaching that. Lord, I HOPE I don't get the flu.

Lillie

yet another comment

Has anyone noticed that I have posted three (I think) entries without making a single disparaging remark about the demise of Gourmet magazine?

If anyone out there finds a copy of Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I (which is HIGHLY unlikely) that is in decent shape, please let me know....I have one that I got as a Book of the Month Club offer, I think, or something like that, back in about 1965 or so, and it is seriously falling apart. Bought another some many years later, remaindered, somewhere, and gave it to Sarah. But this is really the book I used to teach myself how to cook.

If the boys ever get well, I may start cooking again...

Lillie

Michael Tremoulet's stuff

Michael seems to use this "pink salt" which is some sort of salt combined with sodium nitrite (or is it sodium nitrate? I never had either a decent chemistry or physics course, not that this is physics...). I think it's sodium nitrite, and I think I had some of it years ago when I tried to make the jambon persillee, and cured pork for it. Pretty certain I threw the stuff out, though.

Is it possible to find things like pork belly in central Kentucky? We'll see...

I think you all should check out his blog and give him a hard time. I suspect that he's going to cause me a great deal of work, if not grief...

Cheers, Lillie

Food

And yesterday I read a whole slew of Michael Tremoulet's posts which were all about food. If you don't know Michael (sorry, Michael, I've known you ALL your life and as far as I'm concerned, you're Michael, NOT Mike...you adopted that too late for me).

Well, Michael has become a fan of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio book, which I actually haven't read, although I've read a number of Ruhlman's books about food and chefs and things like that. It seems he's started making bacon, rillettes, etc., from scratch. I've made sausage before (cf. Julia Child, except I never put a lot of fat in the ground pork like she says, but homemade sausage from ground pork is great, not unlike the stuff we used to get fresh from the grocery stores in Goliad back when they existed...). And I've tried making her Jambon Persille (Persillee?) it's actually chopped up cured ham cooked, with jellied meat stuff and lots of garlic and parsley. Problem was, it always ended up too salty. You can get it everywhere in France and it's great.

And the rillettes...pork, duck, goose? you can get them sort of everywhere in southwest France, too. It's how they deal with the rest of the meat, the little bits that are left over after you make confit out of the duck or goose legs, render the fat to use to cook with, scrape the bones and then use them to make stock, etc. The little bits that are left are turned into rillettes. DO NOT WASTE ANYTHING. Also, the confit and the rillettes, etc., not to mention the cured pork (here in Kentucky they call the stuff "Country Ham" and we actually have a curing shed on our farm), keeps beautifully over the winter. And if you kill the pigs and/or birds (ducks, geese, etc.) in the fall you don't have to feed them over the winter. Wonderful stuff born of necessity.

Soooo, Michael is now making bacon and rillettes, from pork belly, which he cures in the fridge. My next project is to find some of the stuff somewhere in central Kentucky.

So there. You can actually check out all his stuff (including the dreadful dinner he made of leftover pancakes, processed ham and cheese, and scrambled eggs) at coffeecorner.com. Or maybe it's www.coffeecorner.org. Something like that. So there.

The other day, while I was in Lexington, and in a bit of a snit about having to nurse the boys here at home (will they do this for me? well, NO, not in a million years...) I bought some sweetbreads at Critchfields. We had some sweetbreads in an appetizer at Holly Hill some time ago, and they were really good. I had seen them at Critchfields, but had never either made them or had them before Holly Hill (except when my mother made them, and sorry, folks, that does NOT count).

So I dug out Julia's Mastering Vol. I, and a couple of other books, and did basically what she said. But I stopped at the braising part, and didn't bread them and fry them (wasn't in the mood to start frying stuff, as I was still nursing sick boys...). They DID NOT like them AT ALL. I thought they were fine, albeit not great. And nobody got sick.

Next time I will bread them and fry them, after I braise them. The trouble with all these internal organ things is that they aren't straightforward. You have to do all this stuff before you finish them.

So there

Couple of things, how about food?

Haven't cooked in a couple of days. The boys have been sick, both of them. Martin got a cold while we were in NYC, and as we were all in the same hotel room, we got to listen to him trying to breathe and sleep (he snores, and he sounded like he was drowning, sorry Tino). So the day we flew back (Monday) he said his left ear was bothering him. I've heard this before. By the time Martin says his ear aches "a little", it means two things: (1) both ears are badly infected; and (2) the ear that aches "a little" is about to blow. So we went to the doctor on Tuesday afternoon, and he told her that his ear ached "a little" and "off and on". She looked into it and sorta gasped. And then she looked at the one that wasn't "bothering" him, and it of course was infected as well. So, he's been on a Z-Pack all week. Problem is, Phil got sick, too. So far I haven't. Phil stayed home TWO DAYS, one of them a day when one of his courses has its seminar. And Martin first got better, and then yesterday he had fever and clearly felt rotten. Where do you hurt? "I don't know". Does your head hurt? "No". How about your nose, etc.? "Stuffy". Okay, do you ache anywhere? "I ache everywhere". I think he has swine flu.

He told me he would be "devastated" (his word) if he couldn't go to church today. They were singing Wesley's "Blessed Be the God and Father"...which is indeed wonderful. It sort of wasn't an issue.

I am so sick of taking care of sick boys. And the weather has turned cold, and all my bones ache. I haven't cooked in three days...So there.

Lillie

Several Things, NOT ABOUT GOURMET Magazine

It is possible that I have given up on Gourmet, and all things related.

Perhaps I should begin a rant about the current health care debate. So why exactly is it that we SHOULD NOT have the "public option"?!? How many people have I talked to who are vehemently opposed to the health insurance reform plan and (ESPECIALLY) the Public Option. Of all you people out there opposed, please tell me how many benefit from (a) Medicare and/or (b) VA Benefits? Hello?!?

I have lived in two countries with universal Health Care.

First, I have lived twice for a year each time in England. National Health there provide WONDERFUL primary health care. Your kid is sick? you go to a "surgery", unannounced, and get excellent primary care.

You get hit by a car? Well, you get picked up by an ambulance, and taken to a hospital ER that specializes in head wounds/injuries because these are what you have. You make a great come-back the next day? Great! It's back home; back to normal, no expense.

Need surgery?!? Okay. Not immediately, but it's actually diagnostic, and results not urgent, so no big deal. Charge? None.

Have a tattoo you want removed? Too bad, so sad, you may have to wait...

Blood-shot eyes? other problems? turns out you have sarcoidosis? well, okay, go to this doctor asap. We'll take care of you.

And then there's France, with a National Insurance Plan, NOT a National Health plan. HOWEVER, it's universal, doctors know they will get paid, and so don't have to spend 30% or more on collecting what is owed them. Funding comes from the Central Government. Brits who live in southern France instead instead of Britain testify that the health care plan in France is MUCH Better than either the US or England.

back to Gourmet

Well, the November issue arrived last Friday just before we left for New York. I read it after we came back. I'm still really, really angry. There are all these postcards inside wanting you to subscribe, give a subscription to all your friends, and also I KEEP SEEING ADS ONLINE TRYING TO GET ME TO SUBSCRIBE TO GOURMET. This is torture.

On top of which, when I heard the interview Ruth Reichl had given on Fresh Air (NPR, just before All Things Considered), but I might have read it somewhere else, the December and January issues were about ready to go to press. SO why exactly can't they go ahead and print those and send them to me? Evidently I am going to get a subscription to Bon Appetit as a substitute. I suppose I could write them and tell them I don't want it, to send my money back instead, just to be ornery.

I'm still furious.

So there.

Odds and Ends

Item: What's the difference between a sardine and a 21st century airline traveler? Give up? The sardine is flat, while the airline traveler is bent in two places.

Item: Plan to get websites up and running THIS WEEK, what with taxes (gasp) filed and all, fat checks written that may bounce notwithstanding...these are 2008 taxes, you must understand...one problem with websites is that I still don't have Sarah and Aaron's wedding photos from the photographer, and the photographer has given her blessing for me to use them, and I KNOW they are better than mine, but I can't post them if I don't have them...

Item: I really like the format of Ruth Reichl's website, with the various activities, Gourmet job, bio, books, blog, etc. I like the way it looks. My plan is to have a base website, and two primary sub-sites, each with blogs and things. I think I have a pretty good concept but am slipping and sliding on this learning curve. I've drafted this thing to date about three times. About three more and I may seek professional help, except I'm broke. Until now, though, there have been serious distractions.

Item: Phil, Martin and I spent last weekend in New York visiting Sarah and Aaron. This time we stayed at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge, which is not far from their apartment and cost very little more than other places we've stayed that were "bargains". The Marriott had the enormous advantage of an elevator, decent sized room, etc. In other words, I didn't have to go up four or five flights of stairs to get to our room, not to mention going DOWN same. Lord, NYC is expensive. I'm not sure how much we spent on cab fares, but I'm fairly certain I DO NOT want to know. No plans to add it up. We had some really good if not spectacular food. It was great seeing Sarah and Aaron.

They are doing great. She likes her job even though she's seriously stressed out much of the time. They are trying to decide what to do next, when their current jobs are over next fall.

The weather during the weekend was rotten (cold, rainy, dreary), and at one point we decided that staying in their warm apartment and playing Scrabble (I read e-mail instead) was far superior to actually going anywhere. It was a great weekend, though, we saw "West Side Story" the new production on Broadway Saturday afternoon, and went to Evensong at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Sunday evening. Afterward we had drinks in Bruce and Brandon's apartment in the cathedral precincts and dinner later in the "hood" with them. That cathedral's echo MAY NOT be better than the one at York Minster, but if it isn't better, it's really, really hard to tell. Music in that place just transports you. So THERE.

This morning (Monday) we had breakfast with Sarah at David Bouley's bakery, which is an odd sort of place, but the food was good. It is also very near her office. She went to work and we went "exploring", which lasted about 20 minutes, until we all decided what we wanted to do with the time left until we had to go to the airport was,......, TAKE A NAP.

So there. New York City is a great place to visit, but it'd be a tough place to live...

Item: I'm still furious that Gourmet is history. My last issue arrived the day we left. I DO NOT WANT a subscription to Bon Appetit, which is what they are going to give me, although I LIKE Bon Appetit. It just isn't the same sort of magazine. And to add insult to injury, the new PBS show that is a Gourmet spinoff isn't going to be shown in central Kentucky. It figures...

Cheers, Lillie

the 21st Century

I've decided I may not be able to cope with the 21st century. I might argue that I am on some fronts better equipped than some other people my age: I've been totally dependent on various forms of modern technology--the internet, e-mail, cell phones, things like that--longer than many people I know. Some of it irritates me no end, like these phones and things that you can't see unless you are under 40. That said, I would argue that I've been generally more receptive to the technological innovations than many people I know.

HOWEVER, the 21st century has hit me with a number of blows. Some aren't the fault of the modern world, like my father's and my father-in-law's deaths (in November 2004 and July 2005), as both these guys were 91; that doesn't mean I'm any less resentful of them dying. One could argue the same about Julia Child's death: she taught me how to cook properly. I had been interested in cooking for quite awhile (it's not at all clear how this came to be but it doesn't matter a lot), and was fascinated with all things French as long as I have had an inkling what it was (no good reason there, either, BUT...), so her death was a bit of a blow, too, albeit not as personal, and she was 91 or so as well.

My big problem at the moment, though, is that amidst all the noise about the demise of newspapers and books and magazines, they seem to be dropping like flies. The Lexington Herald Leader was, when we moved to Lexington back in the dark ages back in 1976, TWO SEPARATE newspapers, the Lexington Herald and the Lexington Leader, one "Democratic" and the other "Republican", except I can't remember which was which. Now the single newspaper appears to be in imminent danger of disappearing totally. It has shrunk and shrunk, pages as well as font, not to mention content. There appears to be only one restaurant review/month, instead of a restaurant review each week. All the national and international news now comes only from the New York Times, which would be marginally interesting, except that we now get the NY Times daily too, actually a response to the deterioration of the Herald Leader.

Newsweek stinks, Time has for many years. TV news is sad: there is the network news, which is all pretty sad; CNN is soooo irritating, Fox is ghastly, MSNBC has a few merits but is unabashedly biased, too. The only newscast that I find tolerable right now is the Lehrer Report on PBS. It's not exactly comprehensive, though, is it...

The latest and lowest blow, though, is the murder of Gourmet magazine. This was the food magazine that maintained enormous integrity for many, many decades (I say this while admitting I had problems with its direction for awhile after Ruth Reichl took over). Yes, I look online for recipes frequently, as well as looking in cookbooks. But recipes online is no substitute for serious writing about food of the sort that one found in Gourmet.

So there. I'm not sure I can cope with the 21st century.

Lillie

DISASTER

It was on All Things Considered as I was driving home from the dentist this afternoon: Conde Nast, which I guess owns Gourmet magazine, is SHUTTING IT DOWN! along with a couple of bride magazines. Evidently it doesn't make enough money in advertising anymore.

I have only subscribed to Gourmet for about forty years. And I actually READ it. In truth, I ignore all or almost all of the ads, especially the ones for cars. This will once and for all totally wreck the rhythm of my life as I have known it.

I am continually annoyed with the cost-cutting measures happening almost monthly at the Lexington Herald-Leader (it continues to shrink, the type shrinks, virtually all the non-Lexington news is from the New York Times, which I get daily, too, and can easily read online, unlike the H/L), but will shed few tears when it finally bites the dust.

But Gourmet...no, that hurts!

Warning about food

I haven't cooked all that much lately, and my bones hurt and I've been in a bad mood. HOWEVER, there was a restaurant review in the Lexington Herald-Leader about a month ago that I wish to mention. Restaurant reviews are more and more rare these days, as are many things one might be interested in seeing in a local newspaper. This one, however, was about a couple of Mexican restaurants frequented mostly by local Hispanics, the kind where you rarely see people like me. One of them is Aguascalientes, which is a restaurant or taqueria next door to my very favorite Mexican grocery store on Alexandria drive where it caters to LOTS of Hispanics. I like it because the prices are reasonable, they have tons of ingredients for Mexican food, and they are nice to me (other than having brown hair and eyes, I do NOT look Mexican). Martin and I decided to go to one of the two in the restaurant review (which was very favorable to both of those reviewed) because it looked like we'd be totally unable to get a seat, given the crowd outside (this was mistake number 1--we were going after church on Sunday, when he had to go to work at Kroger at 3:00 and didn't want to go home first, so he and I went out to lunch).

We went to the other restaurant very favorably discussed in the review, around the corner, sort of, a place called Lulu's, a family owned place. Had a buffet. Menu, too. Tino didn't like the looks of the stuff on the buffet, so he ordered cheese enchiladas from the menu. This took a long time as they make everything from scratch. They were actually very good. The problem was that they came on a big bed of wet lettuce, and were covered with LOTS of potatoes. Once you got to the enchiladas, they were good.

There was, however, no iced tea, only pop and (probably) beer, so I drank water. They did have diet coke for Tino.

I had the buffet. The problem was that the posole was so unappetizing with the huge pieces of clearly very cheap cuts of pork still on the very large bones, very little hominy, I just couldn't bring myself to eat it. And there was tripe (menudo), which I just can't bring myself to eat, either, EVER. So this left turkey mole (it was actually good, but not hot), something that turned out to be pork belly (ALL fat), and a few other things, most of which were seriously unappetizing. The salsas were homemade and very good.

To my astonishment, this all cost $20. The people who own the place are indeed very nice, and by the time we left there were lots of Hispanics there, virtually all of whom were eating either the posole or menudo.

We argued a bit about whether to give it a 1, 2 or 3 on a scale of 10. It deserves better than a 1, and neither of us got sick, so perhaps it oughta have a 3. But go back? I don't think so. An WHY oh WHY did it get such a nice review in the Herald Leader?

I guess I'll probably try Aguascalientes; if the restaurant is as good as the grocery store, it is probably pretty good. And there's another place on Versailles Road about a block away (used to be a Jerry's) that has great fish tacos, seafood chalupas, and things (I think it's called Clamato's).

The MORAL HERE: DO NOT TRUST THE HERALD-LEADER RESTAURANT REVIEW, on those rare occasions these days when it actually happens.

Cheers, Lillie

back to food

The orthopod doesn't want to operate on my rotator cuff, at least not right now. I think my knees are a higher priority anyway.

I actually cooked what I think is a decent meal tonight, for a change.

They had sole at Fresh Market (I went in there planning to buy some scallops, but came away with sole), and had some lovely red bell peppers I bought yesterday (I have driven to Lexington every day so far this week, far too much, and too much of it in the Volvo, which is hard to steer and hurts my back--I got these holes in the bottom of the Buick, nobody seems to have a clue how).

We had sole meuniere, which wasn't gorgeous but tasted good, and I made soup out of the red peppers, which I basically made up. Had decided I wanted to make soup, and all the recipes I found wanted me to use either peppers and tomatoes, or milk, or orange in there with the peppers. Here's what I ended up with and it was GOOD:

3 fat red bell peppers
3 fat shallots
1 fat garlic clove
olive oil
a glob of butter
fresh thyme leaves
salt pepper
about 3 cups of chicken broth
fresh basil leaves

Broiled the peppers until the skins were black, cooled them, peeled them, seeded them, cut them into pieces, etc.
Heated some olive oil and a blob of butter, sauteed the shallots in it(chopped them in the food processor first), added salt, pepper, the pressed garlic clove, the peppers, chicken broth, cooked it a bit, added thyme leaves, cooked it more. Whirred it with that electric immersion thing. Heated it a bit more. Served it with basil on top. It was good.

The sole was good too, just salted and peppered and cooked in butter, served with chopped parsley and lemon wedges. It didn't have enough salt on it, though (the butter was unsalted, and I never seem to get the salt right).

French bread, a glass of wine, and it was so late we didn't even want the cheese I had out.

So there...

Lillie

weather

On the subject of weather: it's been looking like fall for awhile here, but when it's still in the 80's in the daytime, in the mid-sixties at night, and still raining regularly, it doesn't feel like fall. BTW there have been FLASH FLOODS around here lately, extremely unusual for this time of year. Stoner Creek is way up but not flooded; I haven't looked at the creek in the pasture, but I'll be it's up, too, and there have been flash floods sort of all around here. Fall as a rule is quite dry, as is late summer, but not this year, and I have all these lovely things we planted before the wedding that really look sad, and I suspect it's because of all the rain. Next year there will probably be a drought (for all you people, or any of you people, in places where you depend on aquifers and ground water and things like that, WE DON'T...we depend on the Kentucky River).

However, when I got out this morning in my rehearsal dinner suit, shoes with no stockings (linen suit), I was cold. Why? it was 59 degrees. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the low 70's, I think, or maybe it's the high 60's, with a low in the 50's and the next night the low in the 40's. I think summer is over. So the temperature is catching up with the trees; leaves are turning, black walnuts are falling, etc...

Lillie

no food this time, at least not much

I went to Cincinnati yesterday (by myself...) to go to IKEA to buy some bookcases and cupboards to fix up my room upstairs a bit. I am being optimistic here that Dr. Christensen will be able to sort my knees out a bit and I'll at least be able to do stairs. Cisco is going to put them together for me. I also have to organize some file cabinets that are higher, as I can't currently use the ones up there without standing on my head practically, and then sometimes I can't get back up.

I did, I confess, stop by Jungle Jim's after I left IKEA and bought another one of their ducks (head and feet and all), take an illegal photo of a hog's head, and buy some fish.

But today I'm trying to work up the courage to start websites for the house in France, a personal one, and one for the house here in Kentucky. So writing in a blog is a diversionary activity. Avoidance. I'm an expert. I've been dithering about all this for quite awhile.

So I've been trying to find out information about the cottage in France. It is clearly very, very old, and uses the outer wall of the old chateau as the back wall of the cottage. Given its location, and the fact that the steps down on the road date to the chateau, indications that there was a door in the cave that could well have been to a tunnel to the chateau, there has been (a fair amount of) speculation that it was originally the gate house to the chateau.

If this is true, then it is MUCH older than the 1600 date we were originally told. I've been trying to find info about Jean de la Salle, the bandit who owned the chateau. We're talking about the 14th century here, folks. Google references to him tend to be in French, and Old French at that. Aaaarghhh. This is not stuff I can read like it's a novel. I'll have to actually translate it, and I'm not sure it's going to let me print it out.

Forge ahead...but I did find the website for another holiday rental that's just farther up the road (our road) where the houses are newer (1800's), so that's good.

Lillie

Things--probably not very interesting

So I went to Cincinnati today, after having a lovely (fun? interesting?) lunch with Lydia and Brenda. Who gave me a present, I suspect because they actually were ready to leave home early (I never am) and went shopping to kill the time. It's a really, really cute glass baby chicken, to go in the window with the other glass chickens they gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Really, really cute.

At any rate, I managed to avoid driving to Lexington yesterday, AND I have decided NOT to have any more PT before I go back to the shoulder orthopod next week, as I don't think the PT has been doing any good at all, and it takes a lot of time.

On the other hand, Cisco is back from Mexico, legal now and all that stuff, but industries are not exactly hiring mechanical engineers in droves, so he's working for us again.

Fixing the mess in the ceiling in my office/room upstairs, actually, which I hope will be the only time it has to be fixed, as I hope that guy last spring actually fixed the leak in the roof. But I am also getting rid of all the $5 ugly wooden bookcases I bought from the house down the street on Cochran after that lady died.

Soooo, I went to Cincinnati today to get some cupboards and bookcases from IKEA, and Cisco is going to put them together for me. He is ALSO going to help me get rid of a lot of the crap in that room; there is so much of it that it is really, really hard to get anything done. Another problem is that the file drawers in there now are very, VERY difficult for me to use. I sort of have to stand on my head, if you know what I mean, and it's hard.

I am doing all this while being optimistic that the knee orthopod I'm going to will be able to make it be not so difficult to go up and down the stairs. This will evidently involve more surgery (torn meniscus on my right knee) and then some series of injections on both knees of some sort of stuff that is supposed to (1) lubricate things like my kneecaps which have no cartilage and are rubbing bone-on-bone when I do crazy things like try to go up and down stairs, and (2) allow/facilitate the patella to replace the missing cartilage. It would indeed be nice to be able to go up and down stairs...it's a quality of life issue, right?

food and things

So I was asked about the soy milk in the cobbler I made yesterday (which, BTW, was actually very good IMHO). Everybody claimed they couldn't tell the difference. I got plain soy milk, NOT the vanilla flavored stuff, have actually used it before in baked stuff and people claimed they couldn't tell the difference. Given the audience, I trust they are indeed telling the truth. Am not sure the cobbler was all that good; I think the fruit needed some juice. However, the people I cook for are generally so starved for desserts that they are at least nice about anything I make.

I have also actually found THREE recipes for caneles (canneles?) those incredible muffins/cookies/whatever you get in southwest France that are evidently indigenous to Bordeaux. I brought home some pans to make them in. You can buy them at markets sort of all over the place. It's sort of a cross between, well, an American cupcake, and brioche, and a cookie. One description is of a "cookie" made from VERY sweet crepe batter. They are small, buttery, very rich, actually quite dense, have these ridges along the edges they get from the molds you use to bake them in. The shape is SORT OF like a cross between a small-ish American cupcake and a Madeleine. Jacques Pepin (author of one of the recipes) comments that they are "highly addictive", and he is absolutely correct. They have lots of eggs, sugar, milk, not much flour, vanilla, butter, frequently rum or something. Highly addictive is a good description. I brought home a couple of pans for them, and plan to make some. Stay tuned if you wish.

I thought when I first tried one that they were made from some sort of very rich yeast dough/batter/whatever. But they don't seem to be. I will be amazed if I can actually reproduce them here in Kentucky, but I plan to try.

Lillie

dinner on saturday 19th sept 09 (not sure it's the 19th)

So the Curtz's came over to dinner tonight; we hadn't seen them since Sarah's wedding, back in June. They all left for the cottage up in Canada before we got back from France. In truth, I don't see how I would have coped with the wedding without Brenda and Lydia (who did the flowers, the bathroom trailer, and a few other things), not to mention Gretchen Tremoulet and Therese Lew. I suppose I might have coped, but it would have been even more stressful.

It was great to see them, though, and Ben managed to put on Frank Sinatra and some of us ended up dancing (!). Ben is Lydia's boyfriend. Both are basically wonderful.

The meal was altered a bit, I fear, by the usual (not surprising, actually).

No smoked salmon rolls with goat cheese. I didn't get that far. Just some olives. Sorry, folks.

The garlic soup (potage a l'ail) did happen; it's a classic, seen sort of everywhere, in Southwest France.

Sole meuniere didn't happen, either. They did have sole at the Kroger in Beaumont, where Martin works. AND it was fresh. However, when I got it home, I realized that it was going to be a serious pain (!) making sole meuniere for eight people. Two or three, or even four? not too bad. But EIGHT? that stuff needs to be served the instant it's ready. Soooo, I did a (very loose) version of a Julia Child recipe, with the stuff "poached" in this stuff made from shallots, butter, various dried mushrooms, white wine, water, hey, I don't remember what all was in it...I cooked it awhile, poached the sole in it, took it out, thickened the mushroom stuff with beurre manie, cooked that awhile longer, and put some cream in it. Then I put the sole back in, put it in a pan with gruyere on it, heated it in a warming oven for a few minutes, and served it with fingerling potatoes (boiled, with butter, chopped parsley, and not nearly enough salt), and acted like I knew what I was doing... So there.

Bread with all courses.

Mediocre salad...

Cobbler with several fruits, and they said it was good, even though I made it with soy milk instead of the real stuff (so I could eat it ((!))) and cream on top.

It was great seeing the Curtz's. Have missed them greatly.

Don't know what I would have done without Brenda, Lydia, et al. at the wedding. So there...

Lillie

better things

so I'm trying very hard not to worry about the fact that I seem to be being tossed from one specialist to another, and they all seem to want to do MRI's on my bad joints, which are probably hopeless, and then do various surgeries. Looks like I'm going to probably have two more surgeries this fall, not as serious as the one on my neck last year, but PIA's, nonetheless. And it's not clear that they will do all that much good...

On other fronts, it looks like summer is over and fall is around the corner. The air looks different, everybody seems to have allergies from ragweed (except me, but that's because I've had the sense to stay inside, despite the fact that the weather is lovely...you can see it from inside...). It's not hot. Actually, it's almost cool. The plumbing here has required major repair, at great expense, of course, and I still haven't done taxes from 2008, but I'm trying very hard to ignore the fact that I've been spending most of my time going from doctor to MRI to PT, and trying to concentrate on getting my "business" started, renting out the house for events and the cottage in France for holidays. Need legal advice at this point.

No interesting food adventures lately, unless you count the trip Martin and I made a couple of weeks ago to IKEA and Jungle Jim up in Cincinnati. We mostly looked around at IKEA and got ideas, and bought some little stuff. Bought some serious seafood at Jungle Jim's, as well as rather a lot of very good wine. Took far too long, according to Tino, but hey, too bad.

The Curtz's are coming over tomorrow evening and it's still not clear what the menu will be. It will undoubtedly require me to drive to Lexington tomorrow, which I'm sick and tired of doing every day. HOWEVER, we're probably looking at (I think) smoked salmon wrapped around goat cheese seasoned with good olive oil, pepper and chives for hors d'oeuvres, garlic soup for a first course, probably that cod in browned butter with capers I made the other day for a main, along with something. Don't have a clue about veg, and dessert, if there is one. I trust that the Curtz's will forgive me if it's not wonderful. You'd think I'd be on top of this sort of thing, since from one point of view, I don't have anything else to do, but that's not the way it seems to be working out...

So there,

Lillie

Doctors, food and Paris

First, Paris. Evidently they are shooting at least part of the film Secretariat in Bourbon County, partly on Claiborne Farm and partly in downtown Paris. It is of course about the horse. People are scurrying around getting Main Street (or maybe it's High Street, they are parallel and both one-way and I get them confused) all gussied up and the streets cleaned and things like that. And there's a Secretariat Festival on the 26th down at the Fairgrounds. Not sure what that's going to involve; there are a couple of banners across the road through town about it.

We weren't living here when they filmed Seabiscuit partly in Paris, but there was evidently nothing bad that came of it, and lots of buildings were fixed up for the event.

Second, food. I've been in a real funk lately and was in a REAL funk yesterday, feeling lousy and feeling sorry for myself and not feeling like cooking; I bought two lobsters at Meijer's and boiled them, and that's what we had. They are such a pain and a mess to eat, and they clearly hadn't been in the ocean all that recently, although both were seriously alive and kicking. But they were indeed easy to cook, and they were pretty good. The Curtz's are coming over on Saturday for dinner, and I have no idea what I'm going to cook, and I'll have to go in to Lexington to go shopping. Again. Have had to drive to Lexington every single day this week, for various reasons. The septic system sort of died, and it was an ordeal getting somebody to figure out what was actually wrong with it (many conversations with George, lots of phone calls, THREE different companies out trying to deal with it), let alone fix it. Ended up with at least one huge bill, two others undoubtedly on the way, and replacement of rather a great deal of the line out to the septic tank, which is waaaay out there in the pasture, not up near the house where you'd expect it to be. Aaargh. We also got Phil's grandmother's wrought iron table with the glass top and six chairs, which has been passed around among his cousins for many years. Needs to stay in the family. It's now on the back porch (at rather great expenditure of funds we don't have), and needs stripping and painting, and new covers on the chair cushions, which are lovely but don't go with anything else in our house.

And then there have been all my visits to PT folks, my exercise class and doctors. I am truly sick of it. The PT on my right shoulder is doing, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing, and I suspect that surgery is going to be in order. I do not want to do it, but this seriously impairs the use of my right arm, when added to the carpal tunnel and arthritic conditions in my hand(s).

Then there are my knees. Turns out they can't fix them just by putting this synthetic stuff in there to maybe lubricate the back of the patellas; I have a tear in the meniscus, whatever that is, in my right knee, and have to have surgery on that before they can do anything else. This is all so BORING; I don't have time for anything else.

Somebody needs to shoot me, but I get to choose who, AND I get to decide who has to clean up the mess. Maybe I should donate blood to a few people before I go (this is the vindictive side of me talking here, as my blood is contaminated).

Enough complaining. My next post will be INTERESTING. It may be about food, but I promise it won't just be complaining...

Lillie

food and Jacques Pepin, not to mention tennis

So after I had my two knee MRI's today, like I said in an earlier blog entry, I bought some food.

And tonight I fixed the poached cod with browned butter and some artichoke bottoms stuffed with snails, from the Jacques Pepin coffee table memoire or whatever it is I bought remaindered the other day. Both were really, really good. I served them with some good bread (hey, Kroger...from somewhere...) and a VERY good Languedoc Cote de Tangue (Tongue?) not sure, but don't much want to go have another look. I bought the wine at Jungle Jim in Cincinnati when Tino and I went there a couple of weeks ago. Used it in the snails. The problem, which is not at all uncommon when I cook things like this, is that both dishes (the cod with browned butter, capers and parsley, and the artichoke bottoms stuffed with snails cooked with lots of mushrooms, and shallots and garlic and wine) along with the bread, didn't quite hang together. Everything was REALLY good, including the wine, but it didn't quite work.

DAMN. This has been the story of my culinary life...

I seem to be (almost) always put together a Mexican meal, Tex-Mex, Mexican, or whatever, that works, but I don't seem to be able to put together a continental meal that actually works. It may be that I sort of cook what has caught my fancy within the last 24, 48 or 72 hours, but it seems, at any rate, to be a chronic problem.

So there.

Federer lost the final in the U.S. Open. Tino is happy; I'm sorry. Along with Tino, though, I'm sorry it wasn't between Federer and Nadal. They are always a treat to watch. BUT that one shot Federer made yesterday (? I think) in the semi-final, that basically won it, although it wasn't the last one, the impossible one that there was NO WAY he could get to it, but he hit it from behind through his legs ??!!? sealed it for me. He's one of the all-time greats. Tino thinks it's boring that he's won so many, but I'm not convinced.

Lillie

back to politics and religion

I have really, really annoyed my cousin who, I think, accused me of being unpatriotic and a disgrace to my late father. This because (at least, I think because) I refuse to believe that everything that comes out of Obama's mouth and out of his office is necessarily evil.

And while I never much liked George Bush (43), what I really, REALLY objected to was the irrationality of cutting taxes and then starting a war (we won't get into its relative merits) and then not vetoing any spending bills (until a stem cell research bill, much later), on top of which not including the cost of the actual war in the budget. This was fiscally irresponsible and we'll be paying for it for a long time. Like Lyndon Johnson; he expanded the Vietnam war and didn't want to raise taxes to do it, and we paid for it for a LONG time.

I just don't think most things are black and white. They are shades of gray.

So there. And I am NOT a disgrace to my father.

news and food

So I am supposed to be doing PT for my rotator cuff tears and rips, and I'm not convinced that it is or will do any good. I just want my shoulder to stop hurting. And I had MRI's on both my knees today, which is a colossal bore (MRI's, that is), and they of course can't do both of them at the same time. So I lay there for about an hour, and was only able to make about 30 words out of the letters of Toshiba (the brand of the machine) I suspect because I couldn't write them down, and also I got bored with it. Some of them are obscene. And I had to get them in there to brace my right shoulder because it started hurting a LOT from lying there immobile for so long.

Only have the radiologist's report from one knee, my left one (I go back on Thursday to discuss all this at the orthopod's office), and is says among other things that the cartilage on the back of my patella is largely "denuded", which I already knew. But I also have a cyst that is 5 x 3.4 x 1.1 cm. That's CENTIMETERS not MILLIMETERS. 5 cm is TWO INCHES. Crap. And I looked at the MRI's, didn't know what I was looking at, but the right one looks about like the left one, so there's probably a huge cyst there, too. Great.

After that lovely activity I went shopping for food. The other day I bought a big coffee table type book of Jacques Pepin's that was remaindered. Tonight we're having this poached cod with black butter on it from that book, and also artichoke bottoms stuffed with snails. These could turn out to be either spectacular or a spectacular bore. I went to Critchfield's, too, where you can get this wonderful butter made in an Amish community somewhere around here, as well as frozen weird meat things. They now (or at least, for now) have rabbit. SO I bought one. They also had veal sweatbreads, and I bought a package. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with them before I thaw them out, though. I bought some fresh kidneys in France after Val rhapsodised about them, and lost my nerve. Finally had to throw them out.

Got a letter from the Standard Insurance Company informing me that as far as they are concerned, I am still disabled and will probably remain so until I am 65. Not sure what happens then but I suspect the money, such as it is, stops. This so long as I don't earn any money or, as I read it, collect any retirement money. I don't quite understand that. And Social Security is still depositing disability money into my account, although they have still not notified me that I am disabled. I was told to visit the Social Security office and demand the papers, but that is a seriously dreary prospect.

My exciting activity tomorrow is a (badly needed, it's really straggly) haircut. And probably some more food shopping. I do need some more tea, which means going to this Persian grocery store I don't like. But you can't have everything. I also hope they come tackle the septic system tomorrow. We can't wash clothes, although we can shower, flush and wash dishes. Evidently there is a collapsed tile pipe in the field mine. Fun and games.

Lillie

Gourmet

Gourmet is better than it was when Ruth Reichl first took over as editor, but I still don't think it's as good as it used to be. It's a good thing that I had just renewed my subscription for three years when she first took over, as otherwise I would have cancelled whenever it was up. There were soooooo many pages of ads (still are, but not quite as bad), and I didn't like a lot of the stuff they did. Then she redeemed it with that Paris issue, and a recent one had an article (albeit far too short) with photos about the Cadouin night market, near our cottage in France.

But it's still erratic. This last one, the ABC (or alphabet, or what have you) issue has some interesting food and photos in it, but notwithstanding that it's about ABC's, I would argue that it's random. And there doesn't seem to be any rhythm to the magazine; I guess I miss the continuity it used to have from one issue to the next. And this may be simply a complaint I have because of my age, but there...

Not exactly about "food", but not far off...I read the issue while I was getting a pedicure this afternoon...

Lillie

back to health care

Well, if you're opposed to the health insurance reform plan, don't read this. You won't like it.

I've lived in Britain twice for a year each time, and health care there isn't perfect but hey, it's sure better than what we have here...

Brits who live in France say the French system (which is actually an insurance system, but it's run through the government so doctors don't have to jack up rates 30% so they can spend that trying to get paid...) is much better than the British system.

Martin just got a bill for $575 he owes in addition to the co-pay he's already paid (it was $25) for some tests. The problem is, he brings home about $180/week. He pays for food for his dogs, and some of the food for the house, and I've been making him pay for gas for the truck, and that doesn't leave a whole lot extra. I'm going to try to get them to reduce it, but we'll see. And this is with his wonderful insurance.

At least now he gets his epilepsy medicine through Kroger and it costs only $10 a month instead of the more than $150 we were paying before.

Back in the dark ages when I was a young adult, people (young men) were making career choices to try to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam, as they were opposed to the war, for various reasons. Now young people make career decisions not based on what they want to do, what they are good at, and where they can make a positive contribution, but on where they can get a job with health coverage. Things have changed. They may not be better, but they are certainly different.

Having said all that, back to being disabled. I think I'm getting used to it. I'm at least getting used to not working; this is something I've NEVER done. Not have a job, that is. I was off one summer (1976) when we were about to move to Kentucky. About two months, actuallly. And I didn't have a job for almost three months when I had Sarah, but I'm not sure that counts, because she was born mid-June, and I started back teaching part-time, three days/week, gone from home about three hours each time, mid-July. AND i was grading independent study papers from home, too.

And when Martin was born, Sarah was two, and I was teaching part-time at UK in the math department. He was born in January, and I had two Calculus II classes that semester, which met four days/week, MTRF. The UK Math Dept. was good to me; I didn't get any benefits and I didn't make much money, but I had a spouse with benefits for us all, and they scheduled me for the times I wanted. SO I could do two back-to-back sections with decent times; the graduate students got scheduled after I did. This is NOT normal procedure. But anyway, Tino was born on a Monday afternoon, and I had taught my classes already. I was out the rest of the week, so I missed three days, but one of them was a test day, so I only actually had to get somebody to lecture for me two days. I was back in the classroom on the following Monday.

I quit that when I went to work full time at LCC, where I'd been ever since, until I was made redundant there.

Next post will be about food.

Lillie

Julie, Julia and Duck

Like I said at the beginning of this series of rants, at least I think I mentioned it, we went to see Julie and Julia last night. I have read all three relevant books: Julie and Julia (Julie Powell); My Life in France (Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme); and The Tenth Muse (Judith Jones). I read part of that biography of Julia Child by somebody that is pretty much a reporter/historian's book and is pretty factual and detailed and dull as dishwater. Maybe it gets better later on, and I should read the last half.

Ever since I discovered the Dordogne, I have been on a confit/foie gras/potato/salad binge. Binge is not the right word. "Tear" is closer. Martin is getting sick of it; "not DUCK again, Mom!?!" But I found FRESH duck at Jungle Jim when Tino and I went last week, and of course bought one. And when I didn't feel like going to Paris or Lexington either yesterday or today, there arose this problem of what to fix for dinner...not a lot of options, folks. Except the duck in the fridge ready to make into confit, and the other one from Jungle Jim that somebody needs to do something with. It turned out to be the ENTIRE duck, minus feathers. I took photos. Head, webbed feet, all innards, etc.

Sooooo, I cut up the fresh duck, will make confit out of the legs, froze the breast, threw some (!) of the innards in the duck fat with the legs in the fridge ready to cook, froze the carcass, wings, and neck (which included the head). Gave the rest of the innards to the cat. Outside. I'm not squeamish, but I have to get psyched to cut up these birds, and I wasn't quite.

So we had duck confit, potatoes, and salad, once again. I think Southwest France may have invaded my sould.

The other thing that has happened is that (1) we are having an argument about the relative merits of the movie Julie and Julia and (2) P wants me to make that boned, stuffed duck in pastry.

(1) I think there was far too much of Amy Adams as Julie Powell and her melt-downs, and not enough of Meryl Streep and whatshisname Tucci in France. I don't think they even filmed ANY of it in Dehillerin. AND they didn't do ANYTHING about the gig in Marseilles. Much less that cottage they built in Provence. Having said that, I loved it. Meryl Streep sounded EXACTLY like Julia Child so much of the time, and Julia came through. It was eerie.

Perhaps it should have been a PBS series instead of just a movie. or maybe both.

Do you think they might do a sequel for nuts like me? Norah Ephron, (or is it Nora?) are you listening? I loved it, and I am certain I will buy the DVD as soon as it comes out.

P says that you could make the same argument that the Julia parts were just as repetitive as the Julie parts, and while that may be true, I'm not buying it. Amy Adams/Julie Powell are cute, and I enjoyed both the book and the movie, but hey, I'm sorry, they aren't in the same league with Julia Child and Meryl Streep.

(2) about the boned, stuffed duck en croute. I will make it, and I have promised to make it fairly soon, but I don't think he's gonna like it all that much....

Lillie

Bread

Which sometimes I make all the time, and lately I make almost never...

One year there was a snowstorm (this was south Texas!) in February in Goliad, and school was called off because the dirt country roads were impassable, and the house was cold, and we had no television out there, and I decided to make some bread. I think I may have been in seventh grade, but I'm not certain. I found a recipe for Egg Twist Loaves in Mother's stuff, and we had all the ingredients, and I made Egg Twist Loaves. The County Fair was happening that week, and I entered one of my loaves of bread in it (I was in 4-H Club and you did things like this), and won a RED RIBBON, which carried with it a $2.00 prize, at least I think it was $2.00. When your weekly allowance is $0.35, $2.00 seems like a LOT of money.

So I started making bread. One problem we frequently had was the oven. Out on the farm, we didn't have natural gas, only butane, and the range was electric. The house was a frame house up on blocks and, while we never actually had a fire in the house because of it, we were struck by lightening a number of times (lightning?). More than once it toasted the range, or part of it, don't know why exactly, but it happened. And so the oven wouldn't work properly--we'd just have a broiler or whatever, until we managed to get a new coild, or get somebody out to fix it, or whatever. It was an off-and-on problem...

And I got this stuff about bread and rolls and things from the County Extension office (Mother was a truly dreadful cook, if the truth be known. She had a cookbook somebody had given her when she got married in 1947, and some thing that was a notebook she'd kept when she took Home Ec in high school, but nothing that would qualify as an actual respectable useful cook book. I started making these things called Swedish Tea Rings that I got a brochure about at the County Extension Office. Actually they were nothing more nor less than cinnamon rolls made into a ring instead of individual rolls. Put icing on the result after it's cooked, maybe nuts and/or cherries, and people seemed to think it was wonderful. County Fair again, won a prize, and the Girls' Auxiliary at church started raising money to go to a convention. I said I could bake bread and tea rings, and got a LOT of business and that's how I paid for my trip.

And the next thing I knew, I had a (very ad hoc, underfunded) business going around town, and I charged far, far, FAR too little, for my bread, tea rings, etc. But I sold a lot of bread. So there. And that is how I started to cook.

The problem (one problem, at least) was that women weren't chefs in the 1960's. Women who wanted to do more than just marry some guy and have babies and keep house had pretty much three options: they could be secretaries somewhere; or they could go to college and become teachers or nurses. I wanted to be a mathematician. I did NOT want to be a secretary, or a teacher (!) or a nurse (God forbid!) or JUST somebody's wife. So I never considered a career in food, and if I had, it wouldn't have proven to be a reasonable course anyway.

And then I graduated from high school and went off to Rice University, for which I was hopelessly unprepared.

Lillie

food and how I started to cook

Several things...we went to see Julie and Julia yesterday, and I've been thinking about a lot of things related to food all day.

I got a copy of Julia Child's Mastering the art of French Cooking (Volume I) as part of my reward for joining the Book of the Month club sometime in the 60's. It may have been after I was already at university, seems like it was. For joining, I got five cookbooks for $10 (total). One was the Spice Islands Cookbook, a second was the Joy of Cooking, and the other two I don't remember, although one of them may have been Larousse Gastronomique. Julia Child's book I still have. Fortunately I put one of those plastic book covers on it (so I must have been at university because I didn't discover them until I went there), and the cover is still, after all these years, in fairly decent shape. The book itself is somewhat the worse for wear, but I suppose that is not a bad thing. I don't remember when I bought Volume II, but it hasn't seen nearly as much use, although it is suffering, too.

I learned an enormous amount from that book (Volume I), and I still use it A LOT. Chocolate Mousse? Julia. Bouillabaisse? Julia's fish soup + fish + Rouille (I usually make it from potato rather than egg...). Coq au vin? Julia... Mayonnaise? Hollandaise? Julia. I get the proportions from her. And while I usually don't follow recipes for things like veal stew (when I can find veal to make it from), and those veal patties, they are her recipes, basically. Sometimes I follow them, sometimes I don't, but I almost always look them up before I start cooking. She changed my life. That is not (repeat NOT) an exaggeration.

I can't remember not cooking something or other--cookies when we lived on Mohawk Avenue (I was 7 and 8--that's where I learned to ride a bicycle), and I don't remember what else I cooked but it must have been something because I remember Mother getting furious with me when I used the fork from the silver child's setting my grandmother gave me to get something or other loose from the crank meat grinder. You don't make cookies with that thing, so I must have tried other stuff, too.

I really began cooking when we moved out onto the farm in Goliad; I was 11. Maybe it was when I was 12. Mother worked "half time" as the bookkeeper at Griffin's in Goliad ( a dry goods store, fabric and clothes and shoes, etc.), officially 8-12, but she NEVER got there on time and NEVER left until at least 1:00 p.m. She would come home and have to prepare dinner, as the mid-day meal was the big one for the day (this was a farm, don't forget, and Daddy had been up working for a LONG time...). In the summertime when we were home, we (my sister and I) would be starving by then, and we'd have to wait for Mother to fix dinner. So I got this bright idea that I would cook dinner. And I'd phone her at work several times, discussing what to cook (usually some kind of meat, canned veggies, and starch like biscuits or cornbread), and try to make it. I never got it right for a long time, and she'd come home and still have to make biscuits, but it was indeed a help. We at least ate sooner.

One problem I had (and still have) is getting everything ready at the same time. I started writing out lists of what to do first, second, third, etc. And while I don't still do this, I really need to at least write a list of what I have to prepare, or it doesn't all get done. This is frequently a bit of a problem because I'm a fruitcake and frequently don't decide exactly what to cook until I've actually begun doing it...

Stay tuned, Lillie

last question

So why exactly is it that we don't pursue MEDICARE for EVERYONE?!?

Every industrialized/western/progressive country has medical care for everybody as part of the social contract. We in the United States (the wealthiest, supposedly most modern, progressive, industrialized, whatever, country) have Social Security providing a minimal income for elderly people so nobody lives in squalor when they are old... They also have quite adequate medical care available. Seriously disadvantaged younger people have access to assistance to care for young children, providing medical care, housing, etc.

So why exactly is it that your average "Joe" in the U.S. has to choose his job or his profession or change his job to make sure that he has medical coverage? This when a 10 year old's broken arm can bankrupt a family if they don't have medical coverage, especially if th 10 year old's mother has recently been diagnosed with leukemia and they've lost their insurance?

HELLO!

I'll shut up

Love, Lillie

more questions

My grandmothers were always terrified of becoming ill and not being able to afford medical care. One grandmother had lost an eye to glaucoma; she didn't tend to it until it was too late to save her eye. She had a glass eye, from the age of 65 or so. She died at 94, and had had a glass eye, with concommitant vision problems, for about 30 years.

My father in law had glaucoma as well; he had medical care under Medicare, and received attention to his difficulties with his glaucoma. Because of this, he never lost either his vision or his eye, and died with both intact at 91.

The difference here was Medicare, which was created when he was middle aged (with a great deal of grief, including politicians like Ronald Reagan screaming that this was "Socialized Medicine").

My grandfather Otto Frank died in October 1951 from a cerebral hemhorrage, certainly because of uncontrolled hypertension, at age 71. His oldest son, also with hypertension, lived to 91, and died in 2004 from other causes; he had the advantage of Medicare. His father did not.

I could go on.

Medicare has made a HUGE difference in not only health care among the elderly, but among concerns of the elderly. They are now able to live their lives knowing that they have the support they need to deal with medical problems, and can remain productive much longer.

questions

So I come from a long line of very conservative folks, Barry Goldwater conservative types. How exactly did I turn into a single issue voter type? Not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with the experience I've had with two (or more) things. The first is the fact that, while I've always had pretty good health care coverage, there have always been problems. While it's always been "affordable" for me, or me and my immediate family (while my kids were young), it's been so variable that we couldn't predict from one year to the next what was going to happen with it.

And as a caveat, at the moment, both I and my spouse have good, affordable coverage. Mine is through KCTCS, and his is through UK.

The second issue I'd like to raise is my observations of the experience, years ago, of my parents, my grandmothers, and their siblings. My parents had no health coverage and no access to it after my father retired from the Air Force in 1959, other than that provided by the military, which only covered them for awhile, and covered us (myself and my sister) only until we reached majority, and ONLY if we were able to go to a military facility then.

I became ill in 1968 with viral infectious hepatitis while I was a student at University. The only health care available was with the Air Force/military hospital, which was a blessing, but the nearest was in San Antonio. Had we not had this available, my illness would have been disastrous for my family.

Suppose we hadn't had this available?

yet more observations

One is that I still have NO CLUE how I managed to lose the rant about the Holly Hill Inn wine guy's ghastly French pronunciation, not to mention my complaints about how the new scheme at Holly Hill Inn (e.g., a la carte instead of prix fixe) has ruined the dining experience. Notwithstanding all this, I/we will be going there again tomorrow evening for a wine tasting of southern French wines and dinner. The Tremoulet's are going, too, and Martin has deigned to join us, despite the fact that he's not exactly thrilled with the menu (which is alarmingly similar to the one a month ago, when he joined me, Charles and Gretchen Tremoulet for same, while Phil was in Albuquerque eating sushi...)

On the other hand, maybe Ted Kennedy's death will be the impetus needed to pass an actual serious health care reform/health insurance reform (hey, I don't care what they call it, so long as it enables/requires EVERYONE to be covered by some sort of coverage) bill.

What I would really like to see is a bill that provides Medicare or at least the equivalent to EVERYBODY. Including (ESPECIALLY) Congress. So there

more observations

I am still trying to figure out how to track "hits" to a blog...

Today was our anniversary (37, how can that be?) and neither of us was in much of a mood to celebrate. So we watched all this stuff about Ted Kennedy, and I actually agree with most of the eulogies about his being the "lion" in the Senate, and about his being the one of the four Kennedy brothers who will have the longest and most lasting legacy. And I still have a problem with it all. Who was it that said that "some people grow up and go into politics, but Ted Kennedy went into politics and then grew up"? and he or she (probably a he) was right, and hearing the string of comments from Kennedy about health care is WONDERFUL, but I still have a bit of problem with all of it. Mind you, I hope and pray that his death will be the impetus to get a serious health care piece of legislation passed (forgive me, all you Republican friends and relatives of mine out there: trust me, I agree with you on SOME issues, but on health care, I turn into a single issue voter...I want MEDICARE for EVERYONE! including CONGRESSMEN/CONGRESSPERSONS/ESPECIALLY people in congress...so THERE)

But I still have some problems with Ted Kennedy...however, all things considered, he is the "Lion in Winter", the "last Lion", etc. and I mourn his passing...so there...

observations

Had a dinner party last night (Tuesday) for Kay and Madhu (Kay is actually something like Khosalia, and I can actually pronounce it, although I can't spell it, but evidently nobody else can so they call her Kay), Kay's parents visiting from India (Mithra and Mohan, and Kay looks like her mother Mithra), as asll as Nicholas and Roxanne McKetchie and Nick's mother from Trinidad but visiting from DC. It was the first dinner party I've ever done with a totally vegetarian menu, at least the first one for ten people. And I confess it wasn't totally vegetarian; one of the appetizers was anchoiade, which has anchovies, of course. Other than that, there was not even any chicken broth. And as usual, I didn't manage to decide what to actually cook until about 4:00 in the afternoon, which always makes it interesting, and I never manage to clean the house, set the table,... I really do need to change my M.O.

Menu: beet bruschetta (Mario Batali...from an actual recipe and it's GOOD) made with red and yellow beets; anchoiade; garlic soup (Perigordine); fettucini with veggies, various mushrooms including morels, three types of bell peppers, garlic, onions, shallots, herbs, mushroom soaking water, white wine, etc., with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes; and stuffed tomatoes, stuffed with tomatoes, breadcrumbs, cucumbers, shallots, a bit of garlic, oil and vinegar and parmesan cheese. Also bread, wine. They said it was great, but I'm not convinced.

So Ted Kennedy has died. That's a blow, but I suppose not surprising. I haven't been watching much news lately, but when he didn't attend Eunice Shriver's funeral I figured he was in really, really bad shape.

The visit to the PT guy was enlightening and depressing. I need to look at the MRI again, because when I did it before I didn't know what I was looking at. Trouble is, I can't find it since we "cleaned up" the house yesterday... I'm supposed to stop doing things that hurt my shoulder because according to the PT, every time it hurts, it's rather like picking a scap off a skinned knee; I'm re-injuring it, and it has to start healing all over again. This is one of the reasons it's still such a mess. Ignoring pain, etc. is easy to do for awhile, but I'm learning that it's a thoroughly bad idea.

On other fronts, you'd think it was August or something...it's 89 degrees, maybe 90, and the humidity is close to that. But the Rose of Sharon we planted before the wedding is blooming like crazy; I think we need more. There were gobs of this blue and lavender Rose of Sharon in France. I love the stuff; once it starts blooming, it seems to do it forever.

Old post and new book

I don't remember what I said to Phil. That was a week ago.

I DO remember what the orthopod said to me about my right shoulder. My bones are good (amazing!); I have a tear in my rotator cuff; the rest of the tendon is still attached, but there is some "junk" in there and the tendon is thinner than it should be. It may be "age-related". I really, really hate that term. He basically doesn't know whether he can fix my problem so is sending me first to a PT person ("Pain and Torture" rather than "Physical Therapy", IMHO).

A biologist who visited us a week or so ago, with her father in tow, came to dinner. Very interesting, from North Carolina, but not the part where my mother's Scottish family is from. They did, however, tell me about a book I have since ordered and stayed up until 2:00 a.m. reading (Lord, I love doing that...used to all the time, but haven't for years...). It's about a woman from the Scottish Highlands who came to central Texas in 1823 after they were kicked out of Scotland. Got a Stephen F. Austin land grant on the Brazos river near what was eventually Columbus, I think. So far, it's GREAT. By somebody I've never heard of before, a Texan named Kim Wiese. Does anybody know anything about her?

problems

trouble is, I need to be able to post things, create a web site, stuff like that, and have it be accessible without a lot of hassle. ALSO, it'd be nice if I could track hits, and crap like that.

And if you're nice, I'll tell you what I said to Phil this afternoon.

Lillie

Kentucky

Trouble is, I LIKE Kentucky. It's lovely, there are four seasons, it's got flowers, hot weather, albeit too humid, cold weather, lots of crops, fruit that grows, no hurricanes (tornadoes instead), but I always get irritated this time of year because it's too hot and humid. Makes no sense. It's not all that hot, and for that matter, it's not all that humid, but I always get irritated. There are four seasons, and this hot one is always short. Without it, I don't think the house would smell the way it does (old), and I like that, and there wouldn't be so much corn and so many tomatoes, and things like that, but the heat this time of year always irritates me. Maybe it's the Texan in me, who, no matter what the weather, needs a lot of sky. This time of year, when everything is gorgeous, ALL the trees are full, and they are big and tall, not short and squat like the trees you have in Texas (even the Live Oaks aren't very tall: they are just very WIDE). Maybe it's because there's not enough sky. This changes in the winter. Fall/winter/spring there's a lot more sky.

Lillie

Drink

I really, really miss the cheap, really good wine in France. I read today that, over here, French wine leaves a smaller carbon footprint than wine from, say, Napa. That is, if you're in the eastern half of the US. This includes us. It's got to do with the way we get it, rather than any other issue, but hey, since it's generally better anyway,... Wine that comes from France, you see, comes on a boat. This is a very eco-friendly way to ship things and generally cheaper than other methods, unless, of course, you have to go around Africa and you get kidnapped/hijacked or whatever. Which you won't coming from France. Wine that is shipped from California comes by plane and truck, and uses a LOT more fuel than wine that comes by boat. A convincing argument for drinking ONLY French wine.

So there.

Lillie

kentucky agaThin

Not only is Kentucky NOT Southern France, there are a few issues that must be faced in Kentucky that are not issues in France.

Bills.

Income taxes.

Cars that need attention, e.g., 15 year old Volvos, 6 year old Buicks with bad brakes, etc.

Sick cats

Ice makers on the blink.

Old age. My most recent problem is the MRI on my right shoulder, which sort of keeps me from sleeping. My shoulder, not the MRI. Turns out my rotator cuff is torn, sort of off. And the part of the tendon that's still attached is "thinned", and there is "unidentified" stuff there, too. The thinning is "idiopathic", one term I hate, possibly "age-related", a term I REALLY hate, and possibly caused by or related to my Rheumatoid Arthritis. Not QUITE as bad as "age related", but not much fun.

Can I go back to France? I finally figured out how to deal with the spider bites... Even when it's really hot during the day, it cools off a lot at night.

Kentucky ain't southern France

So I really, really like living in Kentucky. It has four seasons, unlike Texas which has approximately 1.05 seasons. There's usually a real winter, sometimes with snow. Spring and fall are (usually) glorious. Summer is nice and hot, which makes all the veggies and fruit grow. The problem is that when it's hot, it is frequently also humid, e.g., H^3 (H cubed for some of you out there), Hazy, Hot and Humid. Right now it's H^3. Good weather for either staying inside (IMHO) in the AC or sitting out in the shade with an overhead fan blowing directly on you drinking both iced tea and something alcoholic AND cold.

So I went out to the orchard, as well as gathered the eggs and checked for mushrooms (shittake). Even though it rained last week, a lot, there was only one lousy mushroom ready to pick. Lots of eggs; the birds love this weather. Many of the apples look ripe but evidently aren't. There are a few peaches, on the not so good tree, as the really good tree got ripped up in a storm last year, and there isn't much left of it. No fruit. Sob.

I'd rather be back in France, where it's at least not humid. Some friends of ours are at the cottage right now, and they are speaking of it in glowing terms, at least to me, and only complaining about the spiders. They had been warned. Underneath all that stucco, drywall and plaster, there are stone walls that have been there for 600 years, and I suspect that the spiders have probably been in residence almost that long. What I need right now is a big waterbottle full of Bergerac rose from a spigot on a barrel down the road, chilled, out on the terrace, under a tree.

I have a couple of ducks. Maybe we'll have duck breasts cooked with peaches for dinner, along with corn on the cob (hardly a French combination, but you can get the stuff over there, after a fashion). That's cold weather food, though, and cold it's not.

Lillie