Peckish.
And then I came across the WideEyedSpouse, standing in the dark kitchen, eating pickles. I left him to it.
All posts filed under: Food
Food should only startle in a good way.
The House Brew
Brew pubs offer finely crafted, house made ales and lagers,– more or less hoppy, light or dark, crisp, earthy, or silky smooth. Sometimes a drinking establishment of quality and personality will specially offer a select microbrewery batch, maybe something nutty in the fall, something grassy and bright in the spring. These pints are spendier than the general population beers, they demand the respect of being savored as the goal, rather than acting as the plastic-bottle-bourbon shot chaser. The point is, the house beer is generally acknowledged to be something special. Something a brewmaster synergized effort, experience, and science to create. A house brew is a signature accomplishment perhaps, and stands as a signal of the class and quality of the establishment. Even having a house brew evokes the sense that a business has catalyzed a personality from the mystique of the brew and the patrons who love it. My encounter with Big Flats 1901 Premium Beer was laid on such foundational expectations. Big Flats, brewed in both La Crosse WI and Rochester NY, claims a …
Curse Not the Green Tomatoes, Make Chutney.
The Fedco seeds Cosmonaut tomato variety yielded fine, heavy fruits in my garden this summer. They failed to ripen. I may have had words about that in past times. I take them all back. The knife wielding WideEyedSpouse and I picked, washed, chopped pounds of green tomatoes to make six pints of chutney, six pints of green tomato gold. Five are left. Yesterday, on hearing that I had chutney stored in the basement, WidedEyedFriend W made unsubtle overtures toward getting some of it. I pretended not to understand. There are only five pints left to last an entire year. I am already planning a 2014 green tomato garden. I combined two recipes (1, 2) I found on other sites to make my own concoction based on what they said and what I had around: 12 cups seeded, cored, and diced green tomatoes, 5-7 pounds 1 cup raisins (paid no attention to light, dark, whatever) 1 cup Craisins 2 cups mixed chopped onions, shallots, 2 garlic cloves (in exponentially decreasing volume order) 3 cups brown sugar …
Green tomatoes all over the place.
Hoist with my own petard. That’s my tomato situation. Although to be fair and correct I wasn’t intending to harm anyone with my tomatoes. Ok, I might maybe have considered throwing the nibbled ones at squirrels and urban skunks so maybe I can use the petard thing. You know, I’m just going to. The healthy tomato garden. Last summer I planted five heirloom tomato plants: the garden peach and some kind of giant lumpy variety. They grew fast, blossomed well, and produced just a few incredibly aromatic, pleasantly textured tomatoes. The WideEyedSpouse and I made an event of each one because they were so few. This summer I decided on a tomato blitz. I tortured myself with descriptions of heirloom and organic varieties in the Fedco catalog. I agonized over which seeds to buy. I settled on a cherry variety, a dense purpley Cosmonaut, and the succulent yellow Garden Peach. I nurtured those seedlings under a grow light in my dressing room for months. It was inconvenient, sure, but we all dreamed of a tomato …
18 years together | 4,100 miles apart
“It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver. Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin. The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!” I celebrated by huddling at my makeshift …
The lunch that wasn’t.
I sat in the feeble 1970s conference room chair at the lab table in the front of the room yesterday late morning. I was managing the start of six lab projects involving data from Alaska to Western New York, spanning the past 3,000 years. Different student research groups and I trotted from lab to museum to department office to other lab to other lab – up and down steps, across streets, through countless locked doors. And I was starving. Empty bellied, weird head buzzing weakness, tunnel-visioned hungry. The WideEyedSpouse was home from work and I sent him an email, saying I wished I were there. He replied: “I wish you were home too. Then you could have some of my fried egg, fried ham and cheese sandwich!” – kindly attaching a picture. I leaned in close to the laptop. I could feel the crusty toast, taste the salty ham. I think I drooled on the keyboard. Bing, another email from the WideEyedSpouse – “All gone,” it said, with an image attached. I wept.
Australian Shiraz grapes make my teeth purple.
Italian Sangiovese grapes do not. I’ll let you wonder about the testing program that was necessary to come to this conclusion. Perhaps you should take a moment to cast your mind over the many other red wines that may, or may not, turn my teeth purple. I’ll test those too if you insist. I also suggest that you think about the kind of week a person might be having to make such testing seem like a Good Idea.
My school bag smelled like the 1970s. Heh?
It was entirely accidental. The WideEyedSpouse and I have been streaming the old Julia Childs off of the PBS website. They are rasty and sketchy and black and white. And in them, Julia wastes nothing. She made a French onion soup and tossed in the butts of the onions. I was aghast. I thought those were for the worm bin. Another time she made a French tart crust. Pie crust to you and me, but she used a different technique, evidently a French one. What really caught my eye and stayed with me all through the week and into my errand run to Target, was her masterful use and reuse of waxed paper. She made the crust dough and then wrapped it in waxed paper to chill in the fridge before rolling it out. Apparently this gives the gluten some time to relax. Whatever. Because it was t.v. and none of us had then or have now the time to sit around and chat with Julia over coffee while we waited for the dough to …
It simply isn’t possible to give thanks without cranberry sauce. And stuffing.
WideEyedSpouse and I sat in the Mini in the only remaining spot at the far, littered end of the suburban Wegman’s supergrocery last evening. The teeming swarm at the city Weg’s where we usually shopped had been too scary to brave. I figured suburban families would already have their feasting supplies and we’d be ok out here in the hinterlands. I watched a grannie yank the last grocery cart away from a hapless young man a few car lengths away. I had a bad feeling I had miscalculated terribly. The Spouse held up the list. I held up the grocery sack and the tire iron. We bumped fists and rolled out of the Mini in good formation. Evaporated milk, stuffing mix, jellied cranberry sauce -in-the-can, Reddi-whip, condensed mushroom soup; the critical essentials of a classic Thanksgiving. The rest of the ingredients were already at home, but without these final pieces it would just be a nice dinner, not THANKSGIVING dinner. Problem was, the ten thousand pushing into Weg’s up ahead were after the exact same …
Are you heading to the basement?
Are you heading to the basement? The Spouse asked me. I glared at him, turned a page in the LL Bean winter coats catalog. I didn’t want to head to the basement. The basement is where the fitness gear is kept. The stationary bike. The weights. The Bowflex that came with the house. The basement is a place of boredom and discomfort. I dislike it. On the other hand, I do like reasonable blood pressure and the ability to be agile as my person betrays me with age. So, as a household the Spouse , the dogs, and I frequent the basement. The people use the wretched gear. The dogs sniff the cat box and chew things. Joe’s Deli has new specials up today, the Spouse continued on in an apparent non sequitur. It was a sneaky tactic. In the secret language of our long association he was suggesting two things: 1) Get take-out – and house rules state that if you SAY take-out, we GET take-out. Period. He didn’t quite say it though. 2) …
wideeyedfunk 