Do not take any flights to/from Malaysia or right now anywhere in that area. Yes, boss, they do have a tendency to crash and search efforts are useless. Yes, planes, lost, boss. No finding of survivors, dead or crashes. Please don’t take that next flight out, please sir…..crackle crackle…. lost transmission.
On the brighter side. please get me out of here, Amelia.
Posted in Uncategorized
Let’s talk fajitas. Sometimes I cheat and buy an organic pico de gallo. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of homemade riffs.
Chicken, pounded and sliced thin, is the base. Lime juice, salt and pepper, and pure pepper powders in there like Ancho and Chipotle. Then two peppers and one sweet onion are sliced and put on with a teaspoon of canola oil to cook fast/slow until caramelized.
Make your salsa. I’ve just been experimenting with a peeled peach, 1/2 chopped jalapeno, a Hass avocado and lime juice, salt and pepper. Try it with mango instead of peach in season. Pineapple is coming in so I may try it with that.
Heat a cast iron skillet. Have two plates ready. I have to turn on the fan right now because I’m flipping flour tortillas in a pan until they bubble and if I don’t have the fan on, the smoke detector is right outside the kitchen and will go off.
When you’re finished with the tortillas and are stirring your veg top the tortillas with the other plate to keep them hot. No, you do not need a styrofoam thing they sell at the grocery. Plates are fine.
I like to serve it on the counter so people get their tortilla, chicken and veg, add a little Monterey Jack cheese, shredded, sour cream, lime and salsa.
Many towels, paper and linen,will be required. It is a messy and great dish. Dee
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged chicken fajitas, flour tortillas, Lime juice, peach, pico de gallo
I never said that as my husband will not eat them. He’d rather say “let’s go out.” But his mother doesn’t do that.
It is a matter of making leftovers different and tasty. You’ll never make what I did this evening because when I think we may be moving I make full use of frig and pantry and yours will not be the same.
No meat, I just made fettuccine Alfredo in a 2 tbsp measure of cream, butter and parm, and added the same amount of fresh chimichurri with parsley, lemon, garlic and jalapeno. Tyler Florence, gaucho steak + chimichurri at foodnetwork.com
Shopping at home is a necessity and a duty. My husband stocks us in paper goods so there is always an extra roll of toilet paper or paper towels, tissues as well. I stock us in food and always have a full pantry of pasta, flour, herbs and spices and baking stuff.
When the thought of moving or being without a job is pre-eminent I work through the frig and pantry. My family moved enough as a kid, and I learned to do it much better with a physicist husband. Uniform boxes, all the best equipment (I’m a whiz with a well-worn professional moving tape dispenser and box cutter) and the dog already has her 4″ orthopedic bed in the back of my SUV.
We do what we can with what we have. My frig has many possibilities but my pantry can expand it tenfold. I used to subscribe to a delivery service that gave us milk, juice, bacon, et al. I got the service for their apple juice and a $15 surprise package that would test my culinary skills seasonally.
Last week my dog received a wooden puzzle in which her owner places treats. There are six pegs and three sliding wooden pieces. She’s played it six times and can now do it in a minute. That’s like me and the surprise culinary package. It’s fun. Cooking for you and your family/friends should be fun. Dee
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged fettuccine Alfredo, pantry, toilet paper, tyler florence
The only thing in common is my butcher. Carolyn sold me 4# of beef (chuck and short ribs) to break down and grind Texas-style and the chili has been on the stove for a couple of hours now.
I asked about beef liver and Christian is ordering me some that will be in on Friday. I’m going to try to re-create a dog biscuit with eggs (including the shells), cottage cheese, garlic and organic whole wheat flour. I used to make it for my first dog over 20 years ago and can’t find the recipe. I brought a batch to the shelter I volunteered for years ago and the president came back and thought they were for people (it was over the holidays) and he liked them! I did tell him they were for the dogs so he left the remainder for them. That’s where I got my first dog.
This will be a gift for my good friend who has stayed with us and is now very ill but still eating. He is a pleasure to have around and will be missed so deserves some liver cookies. Friday, m’dear. I have not one but two cookie cutters shaped like a dog bone! Cheers and I hope you can smell my chili from there. Dee
Baskets, strange items
Lactose, pork, monkey brains and Twix
Glad I’m not on stage
+ + +
I made those up but you could have reindeer, coffee beans, jujubees and cement. Or chicken feet, lime jello mix, pummelo and glasswort. All in 20 minutes.
Or carve out a beef heart from the live animal and mix it with a part of beef it came from, duck beaks, nopales and live sea urchin. That’s thirty minutes.
Perhaps paper dirty baby diapers, Cheerios, rice baby cereal and bottled baby apricots.
How about purposefully overcooked Bistecca Fiorentina, overcooked and grey asparagus in spring, gooey overcooked risotto and a curdled panna cotta.
Now these can be new contests! Cheers, Dee
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bistecca Fiorentina, Chopped, coffee beans, haiku, monkey brains, ted allen
Save the deli. I lent the book to a waiter who left town and never got it back. This one I’ll send back to David Sax and ask him to sign it for me and make me promise to never lend it out again.
The waiter’s chef had placed a pastrami sandwich on my plate that even mustard would not remedy. I spent my childhood going to Jewish delis in Montreal and NYC, and this was awful so I lent him the book.
OK, I’m a wanna-be sometimes Jew, for pastrami, smoked meat, and latkes, I’ve gone out for a latke breakfast twice in the past month, probably a sin for a lapsed Catholic married to a lapsed Protestant for over a decade. Matzoh balls and chicken soup. No wonder its called penicillin.
Challah turned into bread pudding. Montreal smoked meat on rye with a beer. Ah, that’s life. Since the waiter took my book forever I just ordered another, a used copy. Save The Deli by David Sax will now be part of my reference collection of cookbooks, of which there are a few select tomes by none other than Julia Child, James Beard, Simca Beck, Edna Lewis, Barbara Kafka, just check my cookbook series and see….. Dee
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cookbooks, David Sax, latkes, pastrami sandwich, piglet, save the deli. pastrami, smoked meat
General Shinseki resigned as head of Veterans’ Affairs. Why? Manipulating the numbers and long wait times that resulted in the death of people who have fought for our country.
I see health care as one, two, three, now four cards in my wallet. They let me go to a doctor or hospital.
We should do the same for our veterans. Give them a card, one that allows special access for war-related injuries, PTSD and prosthetics and go to a regular hospital. A card is a lot less expensive than billions in hospitals.
Get rid of the VA as it is today. Keep Bethesda for the president and a few others for specialty care. Sell off the others and keep their staff, especially in rural areas where there are no other options.
The folks who keep us safe deserve more than to be on a waiting list for treatment while they die.
I ask that the federal government place our military personnel and vets on the same ticket other Americans have, and put our President and Congress on it as well. That way we’ll be assured good health care.
Everyone deserves quality health care. We pay for it in so many ways and insurance is but one. God bless the USA. Dee
Years ago I added my husband’s name to my main bank account, one I’d held for over ten years. Two years later there was an issue and I called and they said they couldn’t talk to me without my husband’s “permission.”
I organized a place to live and rental furniture for three months here plus gas, electric and cable because I was to follow in a few weeks. Silly me, I placed them all in his name because he’d have to sign so when I called to talk about a bill I paid, they simply said “we need your husband’s authorization for us to talk to you.”
For two years I’ve had a tired husband come home from work and get on the phone and say please place my name on the account and here’s my wife, work it out.
Last year one company kept dunning us and I kept paying them and then there was a threat of eviction. We were paying double every month and also paying for a family in Texas due to a billing error. We got the next three months free because of their multiple mistakes.
Only the wife. That’s one of the saddest terms I’ve ever heard. A couple got married this weekend and it’s very strange to live with someone for the first time, not to mention that wedding band clinking against dishes in the sink.
In any marriage there is a division of duties and mine includes paying all the bills. With the NSA and everyone spying on us and security as it is, I will assure that any new accounts we incur will have both of us on the account.
Why? If my husband gets hit by a bus? Not only will I be grieving for his loss, I’ll have to argue that I can pay the bills and cash out. I’ll never be “just the wife.” Dee
In WWII it was the trenches, cities, parachutes, beaches. Now it’s guerrilla warfare with IED’s, For over ten years we’ve been overseas fighting a beast we cannot see, finally “catching” and killing the prize that killed over 2,300 people at the World Trade Center.
I’ve had a theory for years that when men fight with knives or swords there is less bloodshed and potentially less need to fight. Given bombs and the atomic bomb it shows we do not see blood so have not inflicted or have had an attack upon us.
What does valor mean these days? I can tell you what it it meant 50 years ago when the Navy Captain married us would say. Nothing. But we flew in to his funeral at Annapolis we learned more about his career than anything he ever said to us. He was a hero in many more than my eyes.
As weapons like drones take over this is no longer person-to-person battle. It’s putting your eye on the prize. When warriors or those we draft to be such are sent to a foreign country away from family it hurts us as a nation on a human, political and financial basis.
If this is what our taxes are paying for, it’s time to say no to Afghanistan and this stupid war and take care of us for a change. We have many people in need of assistance and always think other countries come first. Think about it. Dee
I got the picture-perfect moment as a saw a tower over fog under early morning sun and it lasted a second, not time enough to get my camera.
That’s what I believe life is like. Live every moment and don’t spend all your vacation time taking photos with Mickey Mouse. Enjoy the time and don’t document everything.
Oh, when in Europe I do tend to take photos of interesting doors and mailboxes. One thing I’ll never do is take a photo at the tower of Pisa leaning in.
My favorite church there is Santa Maria della Spina, where the original thorn from Christ’s head was housed, until the church was about to be flooded and the Cathedral took the spina. I’d rather go there than the leaning campanile and have lunch at a local trattoria.
I cannot tell you in this post all my favorite churches over the world, but this is one. Being there is a moment captured in time, a photograph of sorts. Dee
Cooking with Dee 