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