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