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