my office

I realize that blogging is now "tres passe", but I'm an old lady and don't much like tweets and facebook, etc. Was seriously pleased with myself when I learned to blog...so there...

have just mostly cleaned off my desk upstairs; this is the first time you've been able to see its surface in months...am giving myself positive reinforcement...

forgot something in my recent rant

Mitch McConnell...I am sick of him, too, but he's so smart he doesn't drive me nearly as crazy as John too-tan Boehner and pretty boy Eric Cantor...

random thoughts--am bummed out, so read at your own risk...

The sun is out for the second day in a row. MAYBE IT'S A TREND...

I'm a Democrat, but here are some things I'm sick and tired of:

harry reid

nancy pelosi

ben nelson

that guy stupak

charles rangel

gov. paterson in NY

john mccain (I realize he's not a democrat but I'm sick of him, too)

john too-tan boehner (see John mccain)

eric cantor (ditto)

joe lieberman whatever or whoever he is

rick perry (ditto again)

health care (Obama is absolutely correct: everything that can be said about the bills floating around has been said, far too many times, by far too many people...let's vote)

jim the baseball player bunning (ditto) and the WSJ reaction to his bizarre behavior...all ignoring what every economist on either side of the political spectrum says...at least bunning won't be around much longer, but he's an embarrassment to kentucky (if you're not from Kentucky, brilliant bunning said during the recent gubernatorial contest that Dan-the-Italian-M.D.-Mongiardo, who was running for Lieutenant Governor, looked "like Saddam Hussein's son"... too a room full of Republican donors, however, there was a reporter sitting there taping it)...

I've quit reading the newspapers and watching the news. That leaves Antiques RoadShow, which unfortunately comes on only once a week.

Am also tired of the Academy Awards and they haven't even happened yet.

Am so bummed out I actually watched a basketball game the other day. UK beat Georgia, I think it was. They looked really amateurish at first and then blew it away. These freshmen like John Wall are ready for the pro's???? Puleeze, give me a break.

Am tired of having RA, a degenerative spine, constant pain, etc. My right arm, wrist, and hand are driving me crazy again and my GP is afraid it's because of another pinched nerve in my neck. Lower back pain, leg pain, foot pain I can generally cope with, but I need my arm, wrist and hand. This is not good news, but I guess I will have to go back to a neurosurgeon if it doesn't go away.

Am profoundly uninterested in cleaning up my office and dealing with both bills and taxes.

Tired of it being cold, and it's still really too cold in the kitchen to cook much.

So there.

I'm going to Texas next week; maybe it will be pleasantly (but not terribly) warm, and maybe the bluebonnets will be out...

new culinary invention

So I sort of invented something tonight, and the boys liked it A LOT. It's not exactly low-calorie, but it is full of veg.

Filling:

1 shallot

1 chopped onion (it was red because that's what I had)

1 8 oz pkg. mushrooms

most of a bag of frozen chopped spinach

goat cheese

grated parmesan

salt, pepper, nutmeg, a bit of butter and a bit of EVOO

1 sheet of puffed pastry

So I sauteed the chopped shallot and onion in some butter, added the chopped mushrooms, cooked them a bit, added the spinach, seasoned it with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg. Decided it needed some EVOO. Put in a big blob of goat cheese, probably about 6 ounces, until it melted, added a handful of grated parmesan.

Rolled out the pastry. Decided to cut it into pieces, ended up with 6, put a big (BIG) blob in the middle of a piece, folded it up around it and sealed it, put egg white on top, and baked them.

The boys really like them. (and they are full of veg...)

Decided I needed to write it down before I forget what I did. This way it's also online, not scratched on a piece of paper I'll lose.

Lillie

charcuterie

Cassoulet... I actually purchased a Cassoulet kit from d'Artagnan, largely because I wanted the Tarbais beans for cassoulet, and also couldn't find either Ventreche or French garlic sausage anywhere here. These are all things you need to make authentic cassoulet. So I made cassoulet, mostly using their recipe and ingredients. I have been making confit de canard (preserved duck legs) for some time. And we can get pancetta here, too. For the record, Ventreche tastes almost exactly like pancetta, as far as I can tell. The Tarbais beans are indeed seriously hard to find, and nothing I can find in Lexington even comes close. After I made the cassoulet from Ariane Daguin's d'Artagnan, a few observations. I/we didn't/don't like the French garlic sausage. It just doesn't taste like the stuff you buy in Southwest France. The cassoulet is very good, however. And I think it may be the beans...

The kit came, however, with six confit duck legs. I used either two or three of them (three, I think) in the cassoulet. I mean, there was all this sausage (there was some Armagnac duck and pork sausage, I think it was, as well as the French garlic sausage), the confit, the pork, and I may actually have used some lamb. I just didn't need all six of those duck legs for the cassoulet.

We had the last three for dinner tonight. They are already cooked, of course, as "confit" is by definition cooked. We had them (sauteed to brown them), with new potatoes sauteed in duck fat, sprinkled with chopped garlic and parsley, and a bit of salad and red wine. Typical southwestern France meal. I asked the boys what they thought about the duck legs. They both said they are "bland" and that they like the ones I make better, this despite the fact that my confit de canard (preserved duck legs) tend to be smaller and also tend to fall apart.

So there...

more food and other things

Other things:

the weather is still dreadful. I actually LIKE having a real winter. However, during the four years we lived in Michigan, with wonderful autumns that were colorful, spring that was lovely, but with very short, very hot summers ("so mild" you didn't "need" AC, yet so hot that they had to close MSU offices because the un-air-conditioned office spaces had temperatures in the 90's even with all the lights turned off...you can get an average temperature of 80, not so uncomfortable, by averaging a high of 60 and a high of 100, neither of which is comfortable in late July), and winters that seemed to last FOREVER, I was always either too hot or too cold. Kentucky has, as a rule, short, cold winters, short, hot and humid summers, and gorgeous falls and springs. This winter has been TOO BLOODY COLD. TOO MUCH snow. At least we haven't had a nasty ice storm, but it's been too cold for that.

Yesterday it got up to NOT QUITE BUT ALMOST 60 degrees. And the sun was out. Today it was back to 40 degrees, misty and temps falling. But hey, March is just around the corner...

My new batch of duck prosciutto is almost ready. And the last batch was really good. The jury is out on the sauerkraut. I don't think it's really ready yet (been far too cold out in the pantry, which is where I cure these things). If it's dreadful, though, I don't think I care much. It made a big mess, and it cost me about $4.00.

I am now curing some brisket to make corned beef. Put it in on Saturday, and it needs to cure until at least Thursday. At which point I will have a look, and if I decide it's ready to cook, I plan to cook half and freeze the other half. I hope it's okay to freeze corned beef. I bought half an un-trimmed brisket (7 pounds), cut it in two, and am curing it in a huge stock pot out in the pantry (the temperature out there isn't much higher than the temp outside...I have a thermometer on the counter there...it's in the low 40's right now...so who needs a fridge?!?)

My next project will be (I hope) garlic sausage. I have had all the ingredients and have been postponing actually leap into the sausage making project for a couple of months now. And I have a couple of pork bellies in the freezer (you buy the stuff frozen from Critchfield's Meats, and I have been putting it in the freezer to await my project...), which I need to turn into bacon. I'm not sure exactly why I've been dragging my feet on this, but I have.

I have cured salmon, however. My gravlax (which predates my Charcuterie book, a gift at Christmas 2009) has been really good. My cured salmon using the recipe in the Charcuterie book was very good, except that Phil didn't like it, as it tasted too much like fennel. It was cured with salt, sugar, pepper, fennel seeds, and slivered fennel, including a couple of other things; these were the active ingredients. Phil suggested that I try it again with dill flavoring, which I did, using dill seed, dried dill weed, and live dill fronds, etc., otherwise the same recipe. It was BORING with a capital "B". Stay tuned...

Stay tuned...but the guys at Critchfield's said that the pork Shoulder roast butt (I think it is) has enough fat to make decent sausage, and I will indeed try it, but based on a very small sample size when I made some Mexican sausage using the meat grinder gizmo on my Kitchenaid mixer, I am not convinced that it won't need rather more fat. And the only decent supply of pork fat I seem to find here in Lexington is the pork belly (from the part that is not lean...). We'll see, when I finally get around to taking a big gulp and making sausage...

food and things

Got yet another copy of Bon appetit in the mail yesterday. This is the wonderful mag I now get compliments of Conde Nast since they canned Gourmet. What's the cover story?!? One dish casserole meals. Tamale pie, staple of pot luck dinners in Texas. I'm underwhelmed by the recipe, too. Tuna noodle casserole, complete with crushed potato chips on top. Give me a bloody break.

The copies of Bon Appetit may make good kindling if I managed to roll them up. Mary Elizabeth gave me a subscription to La Cucina Italiana, which is promising. Now if that were paired with a similar magazine on France, it would go a ways toward replacing the gap in serious food writing created by the demise of Gourmet.

It's been too cold and nasty to cook; the kitchen is too cold. Cancelled my trip to Texas last week, actually postponed it to sometime in March. It will, I hope, warm up a bit both here and there. And maybe the snow will melt. I am seriously tired of trying to talk people into bring fire wood in so I can keep the den warm.

I may have found a fabric store in Cincinnati. And I have directions...now I just need to muster the energy to drive up there.

Cheers,