SUGAR COOKIES

     "Tell me a funny story about your mom," I asked Larry this morning.

     "Hmm?" he said, not looking up from his book.

     "Something funny about your mom."

     He put his finger on his place in the book and looked at me.  "I don't know any funny stories about my mom."  What he meant, plainly, was "I'm not going to write your blog for you.  If I wanted to write a blog, I'd write a blog."  He resumed reading page 2057 of The Guns at Last Light, a tome about WWII, with an air of exasperation.  You would think I had just done him a favor, as he says the book is deeply disturbing, but he apparently didn't see it that way.

     What brought this on was a really lovely gift that we'd received in the mail from our sister-in-law, Gloria.  This is a kitchen towel on which is laminated a copy of a recipe card in Myrtle's handwriting. 

     Her famous sugar cookies.  

     This gift exactly the sort of thing we can expect from Gloria, as she is endlessly inventive and clever.  She is married to Myrtle's second son, Allan, is a nurse, and the mother of four inventive,  clever, and, I have to say, funny sons and daughters.  My own sons and daughter love these cousins, tell stories about them, and even go so far as to tell me they we should never have moved away from   Minnesota. I'm pretty sure they don't mean that, but you get the idea.

     "But you and your mom were always laughing when you talked on the phone," I persisted.  "She was such a funny mimic, she loved to laugh about the strangeness of people.  Can't you remember anything funny I could say?  What about the time that Charlie dialed 911 on what he thought was a toy phone, and soon the police were knocking on the door? That was funny."

     It was funny:  we were all visiting Minnesota for Grandma Viehl's 90th birthday celebration.  At Gloria's and Allan's home, the grandkids ranging from Charlie, then five, on up or down the age ladder had been playing in the basement, and no one upstairs knew why the police had suddenly arrived.

     "Yes," Larry agreed, "but that's not exactly a story about my mom."

     "What about sneaking booze into the retirement home for the ladies' happy hour?  Liquor wasn't even allowed, was it?  Being a Lutheran home, and all?"

     "It wasn't forbidden, she just was afraid the other residents would disapprove.  Anyway, it wasn't booze, it was wine."

     "Still, it says a little about how feisty she was."

     Larry put his book down and shook his head, looking at our Christmas tree, but seeing the past, perhaps some white Christmas of way-back-when.  He laughed.  "We did have good times," he said.  "The story we always remember is the time Allan threw snowballs at the cars out on Snelling, and hit a truck.  He ran home, with the truck driver right behind him.  Mom had to promise she'd deal with her little delinquent.  Then the time we were shooting our bb guns in the basement and scored one of the jars of pickles she'd canned that summer."

     "I dream about her roast beef and those ethereal dinner rolls," I said.   "If Gloria ever gets her hands on that recipe, I hope she knows what to do with it.  I think she used lard, or something."

     My mother-in-law was a talented musician, a fabulous cook, a great mom.  A woman of her time, she made a complete life in the circle of her church, her family, and friends.  Here is the recipe for her cookies, which I intend to make as soon as I finish this blog.  Hmm.  Uses vegetable oil?  Well, I'll certainly sub out butter for the margarine, but I suppose I'll use what I imagine was corn oil.  Good luck  and Merry Christmas to us all!

SUGAR COOKIES:

1 egg, well beaten

1/2 cup margarine (no!  don't do it!)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. soda 

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar.

Sift dry ingredients.  Cream egg, butter or the dreaded margarine, and sugars.  Add vanilla and dry ingredients.  Roll in balls.  Dip into more granulated sugar on a plate, and press with a glass.  If you can find one with a decorative base, it makes a pretty pattern.  

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

     

THE PERUVIAN KITCHEN

   
     Who am I to be discussing the food of Peru?  Good point.  But my blog is supposed to be about food, at least some of the time, and I was in Peru for two weeks, ate something every day, took photos, and here we are.

     First, you should know that the food in the large cities is sophisticated, varied, and enjoys a wonderful reputation in the several magazines to which I subscribe.  But guinea pigs?  Seriously?

     Our trip was planned down to the minute, it seemed, including NINE different flights.  I know, who was in charge?  So we were busy little tourists,  and still only saw the southern, high Andean part of the country.  We were lucky to have a guide in the area around Cuzco who was native to one of the communities in the countryside.  He was passionate about his land and her people, so introduced us to the kitchens, markets, and flavors of the centuries-old Peruvian kitchen.  Wow, that sentence sounded like an excerpt from one of those magazines I mentioned.

     But let's get the guinea pigs out of the way.  Here they are:

     We found a group (collective name as per the web) of guinea pigs in every home we visited.   I learned, again on the web, that most families in the Andean countryside will have about 20 of the animals, being raised in, or adjacent to, the kitchen.  Approximately 90 percent of the guinea pigs, which are, incidentally, neither pigs, nor from Guinea, are raised at the household level.  They are such an expected part of the indigenous communities that any family who does not raise them is considered either lazy or extremely poor.

     Guinea pigs are high in protein, low in fat, but what do they taste like?

     I thought I was prepared, but never got the chance to try any cuy meat, as these fellows are called in Peru.  I would have, but they were never on offer.  This sample is being "rubbed" with the herb which is actually his diet, and his mouth is stuffed with same.  This seems logical, I guess.  He'll be roasted and inevitably served with potatoes on the side.  (If they'd just snip off those little feet, they might look more like, well, chicken?)

      Edgar, our guide's gringo nom de plume, insisted that the Peruvians are thrifty, never wasting any part of an animal they butcher, and some scenes from a market we visited seem to confirm the idea.  Among the abundance of grains, potatoes, veggies, flowers, we found the following:

     Yum!  Can only imagine that these will be added to the stew pot, teeth to be extracted later.  Note the Inca Cola on the side.  Didn't try any, as it was said to be fatally sweet.  I don't know how typical the following photos may be, but these are scenes from a local (NOT touristic) restaurant.

     We didn't eat at this establishment -- didn't eat locally except once when we were given empanadas from a stall run by one of Edgar's many friends.  After closely questioning the contents of same, we think we were eating cheese, but the little treat could have included alpaca -- which I knowingly tried once in a stuffed pepper.  Check those foodie creds! 

     Look how gorgeous the people are: (friend Ursel in the middle)

     The last group had just performed at a restaurant on the island of Tequille in Lake Titicaca, and the gentleman on the right is Papa Grande, my partner for the dance.  At 13, 500 feet, the dance was a short one!

      From there, back to Lima, back to Miami, back to Portland, where, at 6:30 in the morning, the cold wind is howling.  We've been promised snow, and it seems a long way from the gorgeous colors and sunshine of Peru.

     Note:  thanks to Ellen Banks for the help in manipulating the addition of photos to my blog!  I don't know why the font isn't consistent, but Ellen has gone back to Whitman and isn't here to solve the problem.  Sorry!

ON SWEARING AND CRYING

     Larry had a very bad day last week.  Fishing in Montana with three of his friends, standing by the river in his waders, tying his boots, and his hip went out.  Wouldn't self correct, as it usually does, so there he is.  His friends and the guide have to leverage him into the back of the guide's SUV for the ride to Ennis, a back-road hour away.  Though I haven't experienced it, let's stipulate that a joint out of its socket is pretty excruciating.  And his hip was dislocated for six hours, not to be righted until his arrival in Bozeman, x-rays, a spinal.
     So, he says, he swore.  A lot.  Didn't cry, though this is the man who weeps an Disney movies, weddings, sunsets.  I wasn't there, but I'm familiar with his vocabulary which is solid, mid-western Lutheran in origin.  Thus nothing particularly shocking.  But he felt he had to apologize to the nurses who scissored off his trousers, his favorite flannel fishing shirt, his really good t-shirt, who took his blood pressure and vitals, administered the i-v with its god-sent morphine.
     One such angel told him that they hear it all, that swearing is a form of pain relief, and no apology was necessary.
     Meanwhile, I was having a bad day of my own, involving the pain of watching two people I love struggle, and worrying about Larry, and the insensitivity of the people at Citi Bank who wanted me to confirm my identity before allowing me access to my AT&T credit card info.  Okay, not quite up there with a dislocated hip, but enough, it seems.
     On my way to my training session with Aaron that morning, sweet, empathetic man, I felt the tears coming.  Deep breath.  Get over yourself.  Stop it!  And yet, I cried.  Embarrassing myself and, I'm sure, Aaron as well.
     And so I've been thinking about the difference between swearing and crying.  Why one and not the other?  They both help.  I can keep from swearing, but not from crying.  (Well, how do I know?  I've never dislocated a hip.)  Is this a gender thing?
     Talking to my sisters during our Sunday conversation, I asked them.  "You're lucky," Martha said.  "I can't cry at all."  Wow.  That's almost unbelievable, but believe her I do.  She's had enough to cry about (haven't we all?).  Mary told a story of the time in Berlin when she was on the U-Bahn with Paul, as a child, perhaps with Neils, also.  There were other Americans on the car, and Paul, who was an extraordinarily handsome boy, but who is profoundly autistic, did something that the other women considered funny.  Mary said that she, too, laughed for a moment, but then was sobbing and couldn't stop.  That breaks my heart.
     "Do you still cry sometimes?" I ask her.  "Not often," she says.  Well, it's hard to imagine a reason that reaches the level of that moment on a German train.  Certainly not the events of my Thursday morning!
     Maybe I am lucky?  I swear, too, that's for sure, but not when in pain.  Mostly in annoyance when I break an egg into the refrigerator and have to clean it up, or can't make my computer behave, or have to wait for a technician on the Citi Bank phone line for 10 minutes because they need me to prove I'm me.  My mother's maiden name, should you ever need to know, starts with H.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR -- FRIED RICE

     "Hey, Mom," says my daughter Jenny.  "Have you ever made fried rice?"

     Jenny lives in Seattle with her family, and is a glorious, curious, inventive cook, and when she has a suggestion, I'm all ears.  So she made the following recipe, found somewhere on the great www, doesn't remember where.  I said I'd love to put it on my blog, would she type it up for me.
     "But you have to try it first," she says.
     "Tell me a story about it," I say.  "Our readers like to have stories."
     "Okay," Jenny says,  "I made this on Monday and had some left over the next day.  My friend Ann came over and said she was starved, and was there anything a person could eat in my refrigerator.  Of course, she was already poking around in there, pushing the milk and eggs aside.  She found the fried rice and ate the whole bowl-ful, cold, as is, and loved it."
     "That's a good story," I say.  "But we don't know Ann.  She said she was starved, maybe she'd eat anything.  Did your kids like it?  What about Will?"
     Will is ten years old and currently eating down the house.  But he is a kid, after all.  You know, eats sushi but not broccoli.  Fried rice isn't all that exotic, but?
     "Will loved it," Jenny says.  "Alli did too."
     Okay, that's better info.  Alli is thirteen, bit of a fashionista in her own way, pretty sophisticated and is, at the moment, busy separating herself from all things Mom.  She'd be a tougher critic, so if she liked it, the stuff must be pretty good.  We don't need to ask if husband Tom likes it, he pretty much likes everything that doesn't include fresh tomatoes.
     "I'll give it a try when we get home from Black Butte," I say.  And on the next Tuesday, I did.  We were planning to have fish, so I got some tilapia filets to pan fry, and in ten minutes from start to finish, had dinner on the table.  Larry frying the fish while I made the following (for two people, a third of the recipe)  Loved it! :

JENNY'S FRIED RICE

3 cups cooked rice, chilled*
3 Tbs. peanut oil
2 eggs beaten (for 1/3 recipe, 1 egg)
1/2 cup onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped *
1 1/2 inch fresh peeled ginger* (chop the crap out of it because it's so fibrous)(Jenny's words, not mine)
1/2 cup carrots, small dice
1/2 cup peas
4 scallions
3 Tbs. soy sauce.

Heat 1 Tbs. oil in a large nonstick pan.  Saute onion for a bit and then add carrot, garlic and ginger.  Saute for a bit longer.  Push the veggies to the side and add a little more oil.  Scramble eggs, breaking into small pieces.  Add more oil and add the cooled, cooked rice.  Fry the rice with the veggies and eggs for 2 to 3 minutes.  Add peas and soy sauce and stir fry for one more minute.  Add green onions and serve!

*  I usually make up more rice than we need, and freeze the extra in snack-size baggies, so had some of that on hand for the recipe.  A good idea, by the way -- you should try it!  (Of course, I do have a freezer in the pantry, a luxury not available to every one.  I get that.)

*  Jenny's lazier mom has discovered Gourmet Garden tubes of ginger paste and chunked garlic, which seem to last forever in the refrig.   Yes, the real thing would be better, but if we're talking about a ten minute dinner, not a bad option.

 

alli ederer

will ederer

A GOLF STORY

Good afternoon, Sports Fans

     I'd like you to meet my husband, Larry.  A perfectly lovely man, who loves golf.  I mean it, he LOVES golf.  He started going out to the Como Park Municipal course in his St. Paul neighborhood when he was seven or eight years old with his little brother Al, or buddy Mike.  They'd sneak onto the course on those long, humid summer nights, when the sprinklers were on and the mosquitos thick, swinging their dad's clubs.
     Later, before he was old enough to drive to a real summer job at the paint factory where his dad worked, Larry took up caddying for a living.  Scrawny, lanky, sometimes hauling double, watching the weekend duffers, he learned how to think a round.  And when he got his first car, he, Mike, and Al would drive over to the football stadium at the U where, in the season of snow, a driving range was set up inside, beneath the bleachers.  Under the watch of Gopher coach Les Bolstad, he took up playing leftie, and the future was set
     Didn't play for the U, he tells me, not good enough.  Maybe, but having to work his way through college, these probably wasn't enough time in any case.  But he still lived near Como Park Muni, could still go out after dark with, by then, his own leftie clubs.
     Life happened.  He got married to me, strapped on the suit and tie and went to work managing other people's money, first for IDS, then Columbia Management out here in Portland, where we settled and raised our family.  Kind of a numbers guy, which would, later, prove to be a problem.
     He still got out a fair amount to the club in Tualatin, which he joined along with his friend Robb.  Got a good handicap, shot in the high seventies, low eighties.  Being in Portland, the two could go out all year round, sometimes negotiating a frost delay, enduring all but the most driving rain.  Mudders, you could say.
     And the years rolled on.  Kids left home.  We moved into town.  He joined the wonderful new Pumpkin Ridge golf club.  Robb, too.  A real golf club, no swimming pool for the wife and kiddies, and if there's a men's poker game, I don't know about it.  You'd have to ask someone else.  No silly day when women couldn't be on the premises.
     So I began to take up the game a little.  Me, I grew up in the country, no golf course for miles around.  Dad didn't play the game.  I never watched it on TV.  Therefore, an absolute tabula rosa.  I took a few lessons.  Went out to the course a few times at odd hours when my beginner's play wouldn't slow the foursome behind us.  We began to go to golf destinations on our vacations.  I learned how to manage my emotions when we were paired with strangers, that is, not to cry and kick my golf bag and so on.  And gradually I came to enjoy this infuriating, addictive game, although not really until I freed myself from the tyranny of the score card.  Just live in the moment, nothing behind or ahead of this one shot.  So I'm happy, leave me alone.
     Larry retired from his years of watching the ebb and flow of other people's money.  Now free to play as much golf as he liked, his scores perversely, began to climb.  Mid-eighties.  Okay, not that good, but.  High eighties.  Low n-n-n- well, you know.  Something must be done.  That's when he began charting, I believe it's called in the money profession.  Soon he began taking so much time between holes recording data that he forgot to notice the blackberries, ripe for picking, along the sixth, carpet of fallen apples on the tenth.  The rain.  Or not.
     "What on earth?" his wife would ask, as he noted the distance of the drive, greens in regulation, how many chips, how many putts, brand of ball used.  A system of pusses and minuses augmented the whole numeric thicket on the card.  "Why?"
     "So I'll know what to work on."
     "Ah.  You'll look at all these old cards and . . ."
     "Of course not.  I record the data on my computer."
     And work he did.  Hours.  On chipping, which had now been statistically proven to be the worst offender.  But his chipping did not improve, and his gloom expanded to fill our entire house, the garden, the neighborhood.
     At this point in the story, let me introduce Aaron.  He's our personal trainer and, I think, our friend.  He loves golf, too.  He and Larry talk golf.  Aaron devises special exercises.  They do not help.
     Aaron and I put our heads together and create a strategy.  Next time Larry and I golf together we will play a sort of scramble-type format wherein we both drive, then hit each other's ball alternately all the way to the green.  The theory is that he will not be able to record any meaningful numbers, although he will certainly try.
     To our mutual surprise, this proved to be fun.  If he had to blast a long iron from the sand where I'd put my drive, that was okay.  If his drive wandered into the rough?  Oh well, not his problem.  Suddenly we were laughing.  He could chip just fine, if it were my ball that had failed to make the green in regulation.
     We played that way all summer.  Robb was off in Montana, so I was the temporary BFF, the golf buddy.  And there must have been something about pulling my irons out of the fire, as he put it, which relieved the pressure of all those numeric evaluations to which he'd been subjecting himself.  He couldn't post a score for weeks, but he was making wonderful shots.  The kind that amazed those strangers we got paired with.  In fact, I got better, too.  Weird.
     I don't know how this story ends.  Fall is in the air, and Larry has gone to Spokane for a few days -- the rump sessions of a guys' tournament held every spring.  He'll have to keep score.  I hope he notices the pumpkins turning orange in the field, the rows of corn, the autumn sun.  We'll see.

DIET

True Confession:  Every now and again I step off the scale, groan, determine that the time has come again when I have to turn to Jenny Craig.  I know, but it worked before, once, for a while.  And nothing else has stopped the forward march of poundage.  Not my conviction that I know how to eat properly, scarcely, appropriately, because apparently I don't.

The center I once patronized having closed, JC offered me the option to have Jenny-at-Home.  No ghastly visit during which to be weighed, no lectures, no questions.  It did mean a weekly phone chat with a friendly counsellor, which, though the woman assigned to me seems perfectly pleasant, funny, kind, was still a moment to be dreaded.  And every two weeks came a large styrofoam box of frozen and otherwise packaged food stuff.  More-or-less food, that is.  I quickly learned, again, which "food" I could tolerate, which I could not.

Life, of course, continued to get in the way.  I'd have house guests.  I'd be a guest of some other house. There were dinner invitations, trips, impossible temptations.  Like the time when Larry, thrown into the kitchen to feed himself, created a grilled chicken dish with roasted potato salad.  Okay, just one bite of the salad, but I had to eat that chicken, I had to.

Now it has been some 5-6 weeks.  Larry is out of town for 5 days and I have had nothing but Jenny Craig for those 5 days.  No alcohol.  And here's the thing.  I do not feel good.  I mean it.  Bad stomach.  Headache, and I never get headaches.  Phycho thoughts.  I have a freezer-full of "food" to chew through, and I by God will, though I will not order more.  I've "lost" 6 pounds or so.

And, this being August, it's pickle season.  Yesterday my kitchen buddy and I went to The Pumpkin Patch out on Sauvie Island to get our cukes.  This place is a huge old barn with bins and bins of newly harvested everything you can imagine in August, which in Oregon, is so bountiful you have to take a moment and just be grateful.  Seriously.  Fresh peaches.  Pears, tomatoes, green beans, melons, apples, and 10 and 25 pound bags of cucumbers.  We couldn't resist one bag of tiny cukes, they are just so cute!   I like this place better than the Farmers Market downtown, not sure why except that it is in the country and there is growing corn all around and the river is just over the berm and there are just the right number of people.

For lunch we stopped at the Dockside which Vik wanted me to see as the paradigm of a Larry spot.  Old tavern with the locals there in their faded gimme-caps, sassy waitresses, menus that have been velveted by the many hands looking for their favorite sandwich.  Jenny Craig be damned and I ordered a cajun burger with chips.  And laughed to see Vik struggle to contain all the add-ons she'd requested on her burger.

At home, we washed the cukes and laid them on towels to dry.  Into the refrig and Tuesday evening they'll get brined and processed on Wednesday.  Vik left and I contemplated dinner.  Some damn frozen thing, but I made a really good salad and had all the blueberries I could eat for dessert.  And then I was overwhelmed with longing for soup.  My own soup.  I had a surplus of celery and one baking potato and some onions.  In the freezer are blocks of chicken broth I've made, frozen, and bagged.  Bay leaves in a pot on the deck.  Cream, gorgeous cream in the refrig, which really had to be used now.  I made the soup and left it in the pan overnight to mellow and this morning, used the stick blender to make it nice and chunky.  Salt and pepper.  It's so easy, and it's in 2 jars in the freezer now, a promise I will keep when that stupid JC "food" is gone.

I don't know the moral to this story, except to say that it is surely good, once in a while, to be really, truly hungry.  To understand the importance of national food policy, to re-read Michael Pollen, to care.  And to appreciate the life time I've been able to enjoy in the kitchen preparing real, honest food for my family.

KUMQUATS

Here's how it happens:
Peter has a kumquat tree at the edge of his patio in Altadena, and I fall in love with the little tree, decorated with citrus-y sunshine -- a thousand ripe mini-oranges -- and we don't have kumquats growing in Oregon.  Peter and his kids oblige me, suddenly I have bags-full, and I take pounds of them home after Andrew's high-school graduation festivities.
But I don't know what to do with bags-full of kumquats.
Seems you can just eat them, rind and all, but my supply won't last until next October when we might possibly have worked our way through the bounty.
So, on to the web.  Ah.  Kumquat salsa.  This is delicious.  Doesn't make a dent.  So, marmalade?  It's a bit tedious, this recipe, as you have to get the seeds out, thumb off the flesh, put seeds and flesh in a cheesecloth bag, slice the rind into slivers, and cook the whole with a lot of sugar for a long time until it turns, magically, into jam.  And I mean only two or three tiny half-pints per hours of labor.
Delicious.  But . . . I cook up some of the fruit with an orange I had on hand and use the result to decorate a custard pie.  A very good idea.
Then, a phone call from Charlie, who would like me to send him a bottle of Hot Lips Cherry soda that he will give as an end-of-year gift to a favorite teacher.  (Sometimes, you just don't ask.)  In return, Charlie says, he will pick more kumquats for me.   Who can resist Charlie?  And soon the soda is on the way and I receive another several pounds of this erst-while mysterious fruit.
I give some to Vik, and am inspired when she returns a jar of kumquat-olive oil-rosemary-garlic condiment.  Hmm.  How about preserved kumquats ala preserved lemons?
A trip to the coast and a discovery of a cooking shop in Nye Beach, where we find a cookbook called A Month in Marakesh, with pages of preserved lemon recipes.  Couldn't resist, and we came home to play with a new cuisine.  (New to us, not, of course, actually new!)  And so we find Mechoui Lamb.  Looks fabulous.  Larry will execute.  Soon the smell of a paste called Smen is maddening us, but the lamb takes 3 hours to cook.  Fine, we'll go for a walk.
The Terwilliger is beautiful in this season, and we are gone for an hour and a half while the lamb is roasting.  Come home to, well, the technical term is shoe leather, but that's overworked.  What?  Well, we were making but a half the recipe, forgot to calibrate the time in the oven correspondingly.  So.  We chopped the stuff, made a quick yoghurt-cuke sauce, chopped lettuce and tomatoes and put the lot into the pita bread we'd purchased to go with the Mechoui.  Good enough, but . . .
We'll try again with the second half of the lamb now waiting for us in the freezer.  But here's the recipe for you:  (Don't be afraid, it's really, really good.  I think.)

MECHOUI LAMB  serves 6-8  from A Month in Marakesh

3 lb. lamb shoulder/leg
7 1/2 oz cold water

Smen paste:
6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 oz fresh ginger, peeled and chopped  ( but I love those tubes of Gourmet Garden flavors instead)
1 TBS ground ginger
1 TBS ground cumin
1 TBS ground coriander
2 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. paprika
1/2 bunch flat-leaf parsley
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped (of course I leave that out!)
3 1/2 oz butter, softened
sea salt
freshly gound black pepper

Crushed Roast Potatoes and Tomatoes (we never got this far, unfortunately, but you should try it)
2 lb. baby potatoes
5 tomatoes, some halved and some quartered
1 1/3 cup bolack olives, pitted
sea salt
2 TBS ex. virgin olive oil, for drizzling.

For Smen paste:  place all ingredients in food processor.  Season with salt and pepper and blend to a fine paste.  Transfer to a bowl.

Slash lamb with sharp knife and rub the Smen paste all over lamb.  Place lamb in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Par-boil potatoes in saucepan of salted, boiling water.  Drain and roughly crush with a fork.  Combine potatoes, tomatoes and olives in a bowl.  Season with sea salt and drizzle with oil.

Remove lamb from refrig and allow to come to room temp.  Preheat oven to 430 degrees.  Transfer the lamb and any remaining Smen paste to a roasting pan, pour water around the lamb and roast in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Turn oven down to 350 and roast for 3 more hours, (or not, of course, if you're not making the whole recipe!) basting occasionally until meat is tender.  Make sure the water does not boil dry, if so, add a bit more.  Scatter crushed potatoes, tomatoes and oil around the lamb 45 minutes before you take it out of the oven.

Remove lamb from oven and let rest, covered with foil, 15 minutes.

That's it.  Serve it up.

It surely took me longer to type this recipe than it did for us to prepare it!  But where, you may ask, are the preserved kumquats?  Still in the jar.  I did make up a batch and they look very beautiful.  Maybe soon I'll try another middle-Eastern recipe that can use them, and then let you know.  And that mix of cooked kumquat and orange in the refrigerator -- I chop tablespoons of it an add it to salads.  Kumquats are the gift that just keeps on giving!

IN WHICH I HAVE CATARACT SURGERY

     We're walking down 14th at 8:12 in the morning exactly.  The Lovejoy Building is three blocks to the north.
     Larry:  "I thought you were supposed to be there at 8:30"
     Jane:  "I'm supposes to get there 10 to 15 minutes early."
     He looks at me, knowing better.  But he lets it pass.  Yes, I made that part up, because even though I knew it wouldn't take 20 minutes to travel three blocks,  I made us leave at 8:10.  I'm anxious, not really scared, but I feel as if I'm about to board a plane, and you know you always have to be early to the airport.  There may be traffic.
     Cataract surgery is a "non-event," says Martha.  "Susie had her surgery in the morning, went home, took a nap and gardened all afternoon."  Or so Peter tells me.  (Susie wasn't telling us the whole truth, of course, but it's a good story.)
     And now I'm telling you the whole truth, sitting before my computer with my right eye, my new eye, clenched shut.  More about which later.
     At the clinic, I check in, and immediately the nurse holding a chart calls my name.  I look at Larry with an I-told-you-so smirk and follow the young woman.  But she is only going to take my blood pressure and put dilating drops in my eye.  Of course my blood pressure will be dangerously, disapprovingly high because I haven't had time to breath deeply and relax before the band goes on my arm.  And it is too high, it always is when I'm anxious and don't have time to calm myself down.
     "Back already?" Larry might say when I rejoin him on the couch, but he's better than that.  "You'll be fine," he says, returning to the sports page.  I watch as the people (all of them old, by the way) are called to the double doors.  These are the real doors, and it takes maybe 15 minutes more before it is my turn.
     Many of the victims are accompanied by a spouse, I suppose, or, it turns out in three cases, a translator.  But I set Larry free.  Neither he nor I is interested in having him, god forbid, watch, and I will face whatever with my usual m.o. in these cases.  That is, I, Jane, take this body I live with into an opening in time, wish it well, and leave the premises.
     This time, I join a group of people sitting in a semi-circle, variously attended by technicians who administer documents to be signed, a curly elastic band with a key to a locker into which purses, and especially cell phones, are tucked.  A green net hat is placed on the patients' heads, by which we can see who of us are the patients, who the support staff.
     "Would you like something to relax you?" my attendant asks.   Now there's a silly question.  The stuff doesn't taste bad, nor am I appreciably relaxed.  The minutes go by.  As a single on this conveyor belt, I'm asked three or four times to move to another chair so that a couple can sit together.  I smile at one of the Asian translators when I rejoin her after one of my moves.  "Back again," I say.  She does not respond.  Oh well.
     Larry has been told that this will last 2 hours.  When an hour and a half have gone by, it's finally my turn to go into the anesthesia room.  Here ensue the only truly unpleasant moments of the entire event.  More numbing drops, and then, a hypodermic needle.  In my eye?  Yep.  And it does hurt, but then it's over, a tennis ball is pushed against the now-closed eye and taped into place.  "To soften the eye," it is explained.
     So I return to the conveyor belt to wait some more.  The tennis ball is removed.  I wait.  And finally, it's my name called by another nurse with a clip board.  Into the operating room.  Onto a reclining chair, which conveys me to a flat-on-my-back position.  A mask is put over my face.  And the surgeon, a Dr. Chung, who, it develops is doing this surgery on every one of us in the queue, asks if he may say a prayer.
     I had been asked earlier if I would object.  Would anyone object?  Any atheists in foxholes?  Wonder if Vik would decline.  Anyway, if it helps this guy, no, I don't object, and he asks if God will guide his hands, and so on.
     Seems my now immobile eye is taped wide open and the surgery proceeds.  Strangely, I can see out of the eye, at first, before they remove the original-equipment lens.  A new lens in inserted.  This whole operation takes, including the prayer, no more than four minutes.  No wonder he can do fifty of them a morning.
     They assist me to my feet, my eye now taped shut, and I wobble out to the waiting room where I am given my choice of two "gifts!"  How strange.  But since I have been so accommodating in moving about the room earlier, I may have both gifts.  A coffee mug and a velour vest.
     I have had my share of surgeries, and have never before been given a mug or a vest.  It makes me laugh, but I take them.  Out the door and there's Larry to walk me home.
     Now I'm sitting at my computer, as I said, operating with my left (old) eye because I need my glasses to see to type.  But while I will need reading glasses with my right eye, not with my existing prescription.  And I have two more things to say at this time:
     1.  It's true that everything suddenly seems brighter, colors more intense.  But what's odd, is that the colors have acquired a new hue.  Take away the yellow tone and what was taupe becomes gray.  The coverlet on our bed, which I feared was the wrong color, turns out to be the correct color.  And I'm entertaining myself by closing the good eye, looking at an object, then changing eyes and admiring the new effect.  This little play will last only another few days, before I have eye number two repaired, and I suppose I will forget how the bathroom tiles changes color, the building across the street, the geraniums in their pots on the deck.
     2.  Well, it is a miracle, all right.  Everything well-defined, everything clear.  I can't read just now, it's too hard to keep one eye shut, so I listen to a book I've downloaded from Audible.  I can knit with both eyes open, can watch tv (Wimbledon) and am astonished at how clear the picture is, even with both eyes, no glasses.  But I can't type any more, so this report will have to do.  One last remark:  I discovered this morning in the bathroom mirror, that my hair isn't actually taupe.

A CHANGE OF PLANS

This blog was supposed to be about cooking, and so far it has been.  But From The Rooftop doesn't actually comprise a mission statement, does it?  So today I was going to talk about salads, and I still may, but it's raining and the city looks beautiful from here.  I wanted to take a photo, and of course, find that the battery in my camera has died -- no big surprise.  Well, I'm just going to write about this day instead.

Feeling strange because I heard from Anja about my web site, and what having a web site will be.  Me, a writer?  Do I even want a web site?  Do I want to hire a photographer for a "head shot?"  If this blog was meant for my family and there will be a link to the Rooftop from the web site, who is my family now?  Shall I assume that the public may read this, and now I have an obligation to write about salad?

Today, being the off-Wednesday banjo/guitar lesson-wise, was house-cleaning day.  Several months ago, we inadvertently fired our cleaning service (yes, you can accidently fire people) and have undertaken the chore ourselves.  Made a little chart, which quickly became useless.  But this morning we divided the jobs, powered up with a green smoothie ( frozen banana, a cup of homemade yogurt, a mango, handful of spinach, milk, a scoop of protein powder and a good spoonful of frozen orange juice) and launched the festivities.  I'm the official duster, and cleaning the bookshelves has caused me to question the whole concept of bookshelves.  The books have to be stored somewhere, but as decorative items, they're pretty labor intensive.  The fact is, though, that in the dusting, I keep finding a book to set aside to re-read, or even read for the first time, and pretty soon there are little stacks on the dining room table, the piano.  I know that if I re-shelf them, I won't remember what I'd selected next off-Wednesday.  In fact, I do re-shelf them, but leave certain titles slightly sticking out.  No one will notice.  Probably not even I.

Speaking of books, the March NY Book Review book arrived:  Pitch Dark, by Renata Adler.  Looks great.  A blurb from Anne Tyler!  I look at the "head shot" of Renata Adler -- I like to see what my writer looks like.  Well.  jeans, a camp shirt, hand held just so, and an arresting long braid over her shoulder.  I would love to look like her.  Serious, penetrating intelligence.

I am, however, stealing moments to read Larry's book on Machu Picchu, by Mark Adams, as it seems I will be going there next fall.  It's very entertaining, but seriously, Peru?  Also Miami and Chicago?  Doesn't anyone remember that I don't like to fly?

Okay, salads:
Q.  Who wants to bring the salad for the party?
I never, never want this assignment, so always try to get in for the dessert or appetizer option.  I'm so tired of salads.  Chop up some lettuce, toss in some random bits of vegetable, pour on the dressing?  Yum.
But then, a miracle.
Kale is everywhere now, even raw in salads.  Really?  Okay, I'll give it a shot.  OMG.  You're supposed to massage your kale, but I just chop it fine and move on.  I'm talking about the curly variety, either red or black, here.  Stems removed, of course.  What makes this work is the salad dressing I found in a Williams-Sonoma catalog.  (If you don't get this document, you might want to sign up -- it has some pretty cool recipes, as you're about to find out.)

So, the W-S Creamy Lemon Dressing.
1/2 cup mayo
2 TBS water
1 1/2 TBS fresh lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, minced (you be the judge here)
1 tsp anchovy paste (and you'll remember not to use sardine instead)
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp lemon zest
ground pepper to taste

Whisk all ingredients together.   This is supposed to serve 4, and if there aren't 4 of you, make this much anyway because it's really good on Romaine lettuce also.

Toss the kale with the dressing and start adding.  I love chopped filberts, a good spoonful of Brewers Yeast,  Parmesan, orange segments . . . this is really good!

And if you can eat raw kale, why not raw bok choy?  Sure.  I like to use the babies, sliced thin, and use the following dressing, which comes from a fabulous little cookbook Allison gave me called Little Flower from the cafe of that name.

Here's their Carrot Ginger Dressing.
1 shallot peeled and roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled, chopped
3 TBS fresh ginger, peeled (about a 3 inch knob) chopped
1/2 cup grated carrot
1/2 tsp ground mustard
2 tsp soy sauce
1/2 cup seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
3/4 cup oil (the recipe calls for canola, but I prefer grapeseed oil)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt to taste

The recipe would have you puree the ingredients with an immersion blender.  Fine, but instead I toss the shallot, ginger and garlic into the blender.  Add the rest of the ingredients and whir until smooth.  I can't believe anyone would have an immersion blender if they don't have the stand up variety, and honestly, I'm not clever enough to use the immersion system without at least twice allowing the spinning blade to poke out of the liquid -- uh huh.  All over my good shirt.  But use whichever you prefer.  Orange segments and filberts are great here, too.

That's it.  If you have other ideas, call me, mail me.  You can be my next guest contributor.

BACK TO THE MEAT GRINDER, and some GUMBO

To demonstrate where my heart lies:  Several months ago, seduced by the gorgeous, re-planted Williams-Sonoma up on 21st, I swapped out my Nordstroms Visa for a W-S visa.  Now, instead of the little $20.00 coupon from you-know-who, useful only for purchasing something else from Nordstrom, I amass points which I can convert to a W-S coupon or use to pay down my bill.  Or give as a gift.  (It could happen!)
Got busy and put my gym membership on my new card.  Use it to support my Eileen Fisher addiction.
Groceries.  And by January, I was able to trade in my points for a hundred-dollar coupon.
Which  brings us to the meat grinder.  I wanted to return the unsatisfactory KitchenAid grinder for a shiny, stainless steel model from W-S, using my coupon.
But I had done my due diligence, and found that every model available on the Web was strongly disliked by folks who take the time to write a review on these things.  Couldn't find the W-S model on line, but learned at the store that it is manufactured in Italy.  Called TRE Spade.  Aus rostfreiem stahl!  (stainless steel).
A thing of beauty, heavy, serious, serious tool.  Yes, pretty expensive . . . but I had the coupon . . .

Now the question is, will this be another toy or will I really use it?  First attempt, I ground some cooked ham to make a sandwich spread with cheese and sweet pickle.  In the processor, neither the cheese nor the meat is evenly ground, which isn't a huge problem, really, but my new Spade was perfect.  Good.
Now what?  What with one thing and another, I haven't gotten it down again.  But I have plans!

I suspect we all have our recipes for gumbo, won't bother sending you another.  So this is just a story.  We were at Black Butte, enjoying the mountains, the sunshine, the snow.  Wake up to Three Fingered Jack turning pink, slight cloud cap on Washington, and you feel that in this new day you will be the person you have always been meaning to be.
Larry wanted to cook, and gumbo seemed just right.  The recipe we were using called for chicken thighs and andouille for the meat component.  He chose to use chicken breast plus the sausage instead, and sauteed the chunks in oil before adding them to the stew.  It was so delicious that it didn't really matter that he'd caught the pot holders (yes, both of them) on fire.  See, by now we're so accustomed to our induction stove top that we forget that electric burners stay hot.  Must remember to buy replacement pot holders.  At Williams-Sonoma.

GUEST WRITER TODAY:

I'm happy to introduce you to one of my favorite people in the world -- Herbert Piekow.  He's a wonderful friend, a brilliant floral designer, and a gifted novelist.  Several years ago he moved to Mexico from our beloved, rainy Oregon, and the transplant seems to have worked very well.

I'm quoting from a letter he wrote to me, and as you see, among his other talents is cookery, dear to this bloggers heart!  (And I will get back to the meat- grinder on another day.)  P.S., for many years, he and his partner Jack Richardson did indeed provide the floral displays for the Academy Awards!


This weekend is the BIG wedding in my Mexican
family. Ramón, or Junior is getting married fulfilling his mother´s
dream, and I hope his as well. His bride is lovely and we all truly like
her. My covered terrazzo looks like the prep area for the Academy Awards,
it is filled with buckets of red and white roses, lilies and other
flowers and greens. Martha, the mother, has been busy prepping for the
main dish, which she will cook over an open fire in her back yard. She is
making bieria, a type of stew, she will cook it over an open fire.
Already she has stemmed and seeded about 80 pounds of chilies. Today we
start boiling about 150 lbs of tomatoes, that they need to be skinned and
run through the liquidora to turn them into pulp. Usually bieria is made
with goat, but we bought a cow which has been slaughtered and after being
cooked she and the four daughters will shred by hand. Earlier we bought
about 20, or more, gallons of tequila, other family members bring other
foods and things. We have made at least twenty trips to Guadalajara,
about an hour away, to buy specially decorated tequila bottles, party
favors, have the wedding dress made, this required about five trips. We
went to the wholesale jewelry district and had the rings made and I don´t
know how many other trips for various causes, my poor Jeep needs a rest.

the wedding was perfect in every way. After the wedding Mass
the priest commented, from the altar, about the floral designs. We did
run out of tequila, which is a good sign, we went out and bought more.
There was just enough food for all 400 guests, the following day, Sunday
we ate left over rice with bieria sauce, no meat left.
The mariachi band played for three hours, then Uncle Juan had a sound and
light show followed by the Banda that played until nearly 4 AM. I danced
so much I wore a blister on my ankle.

This is Jane again:  I won't bother asking for the recipe for bieria -- the scale is a little formidable -- and this must be one of those cases in which you simply had to be there.  But I did find a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Authentic Mexican, by Rick Bayless:  Birria de Chivo o de Carnero, kindly translated for us as "Slow-Steamed Goat or Lamb" in the event you are hosting a wedding sometime soon.  No, I'm not going to print it here, but you can get it from the library, or probably on line.

Many thanks to you, Herbert, and I hope to have you on my blog again soon!

A SARDINE IS NOT AN ANCHOVY: A Cautionary Tale

     It all started with a short sentence in a cooking mag -- famous chef said he liked to grind his own meat, but the food processor was not the correct tool.  Lightbulb!  I'd tried "grinding" chicken and pork with my processor, but managed only an uneven shredding.  Hmm.
     Flashback to my mom's kitchen and the sturdy hand grinder she used, not for meat, so far as I remember, but nuts and dried fruits for our Christmas cookies.  To my own earlier grinding attachment to my Kitchenaid, which I'd passed along to my son-in-law.
     Enough to propel me to Williams-Sonoma in search of the hand-grinder mentioned by famous chef. Wow!  A hundred and fifty dollars?  But there was a shiny new Kitchenaid attachment for forty-nine or so.  Deal.
     Took it home, it was useless for the pork shoulder Larry had acquired from Cash and Carry for the freezer, and the ragu we'd planned for that evening's dinner.  The knife blade was unable to slice through the meat that worked it's way through the turn screw, and a most unpleasant mess of mashed meat was all the thing could accomplish.   And yet, it did a great job on some citrus and on those nuts and dried fruit.
     On to the web, where a hundred sad stories of hand-grinder failure littered the screen.  Haven't solved this yet, but now we move on to the main theme.   Sardines.
     Larry had expressed a desire for the sardine sandwiches old Doc Peterson across the street from his childhood home ate.  Always willing to help, I'd ordered some sardines along with other frozen sea food from a purveyor I'd found out of an Alaska fishery.  Alas, the reality didn't live up to the nostalgic longing, and it became clear that the last sardine in the first tin he'd opened would live in the refrig until I could toss is some dark night when he was away.
     But there was that mashed, mangled pork for the ragu.  Obviously we went on with the all-day recipe, which promised to be gorgeous.  Until I had my bright idea.
     We've learned from Marcella Hazan that many an excellent dish can start with a bit of anchovy mashed in the skillet with some olive oil, which melts into a delicious undertone -- giving up its own identity in service of the greater good.  Well now, why not employ that lonely sardine in the same fashion.  One tiny sardine in several quarts of ragu?
     Here's why not.  The damn thing took over, not just the sauce but the kitchen.  Hours later, we'd walk in and be smitten with that awful sardine smell.  And taste!  No giving up for this fish.
     Okay, what to do?  The recipe had included hot Italian sausage, which had completely surrendered to the sardine.  But it has fennel in it, and so I added a hefty teaspoon of the spice.  Nada.  More red pepper.  Oregano.  Lemon juice.  Even milk, thinking to turn this into a Bolognaise.  Nope.
     But lying in the drawer next to the fennel was fenugreek.  I don't think I'd ever used it, don't know why I had it.  But it smelled lovely, said it was to be used in Indian cookery.  Might as well.  To my eternal surprise, it did the job, almost.  The sardine was still there, but at least not on the front of the fork.
     It's my hope that some tenure in the freezer will continue the process the fenugreek started, because we have a boat-load of the stuff.
     I'll let you know what happens with the meat-grinder in the next post.