Rabbit

Swamp Rabbit

Rabbit ears

rabbit tools

and rabbit the rock band…

Pumpkin Spice and Decorative Gourds

Van Gogh, Still Life With Ginger Jar and Onions, September 1885. Oil on canvas, 39.3 x 49.6 cm. McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Ontario.

Must be

AUTUMN

Gourds, decorative and otherwise. Pumpkins, whole and spiced both.

And onions…lots of onions are good, too.

Cranberries. In tarts. Because.

It’ officially the season for these seasonings.

 

 

Dish-washing 101

Rocket science, this is not

– unless you work for NASA…

If you eat, you’ll probably have dishes. Eventually.

You might eat out. Frequently. Regularly. Often. A whole darn lot.

There are also times that you eat in.

I’m assuming that not every meal is straight from the can/box/pretty microwave plastic dish it came in.

Humor me.

Even if your home life includes no meals at that home (excepting those from their own containers) you might bring a lunch to work that needs a plate/bowl/cup/fork/spoon/knife.

That’s where the dish-washing magic comes in.

First

The dishes must be removed from the eating place and brought to the washing place.

I hate to start with the obvious, but those dirty dishes don’t walk themselves to the sink to be cleaned.

Well, almost never.

Then scrape them off. No solids. Leftovers for later or compost or trash – your call.

Rinse them. That way when you stack them there will be less nasty stuff stuck on the back of the dishes.

Load the dishwasher.

Unless you ARE the dishwasher.

Then fill a sink or basin – a clean sink or basin – with hot water and a squirt or two of dish-soap.

Add the flatware – that’s table knives and forks and spoons – and then the glasses.

Wash the glasses, outside first and then inside with a clean dish cloth. If you use sponges, change them frequently, they’re germ bombs and are prone to nastiness. Rinse outsides and then insides with hot water. Put in dish drainer when rinsed.

This is called The Arc – it looks cool, who knows how it actually performs.

Put the plates in the basin, and then wash the flatware. Rinse the flatware and drain.

 

Also a way cool design – function function function

When the flatware is done, wash the dishes, bowls, etc – Again, backs and fronts and rinse back to front.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”

Matthew 23:25-26

Then, if the water is still hot and not too floatsy, start with the serving bowls and plates. Lastly, the pots. If the water gets cold or nasty  – get rid of it and start another sink full or basin full. All the dishes are washed, outside and inside, and rinsed in hot water the same way.  Air drying is best, or use a clean dish towel if pressed for time or space.

And it may be good for you – click HERE

There is more, hack and tips and things to obvious to need mentioning…….But I was raised by scrubby people, and even when my place is a mess, it’s a CLEAN mess.

Here’s a link to Martha Stewart on Dish Washing

Don’t be this man!!!!!!

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbut…it’s a Hare

17th century Delft rabbit

18th century Delft rabbit

Delft leaping Hare

Cineversary

Isn’t that the word for the anniversary of a cinema?

Plimoth Cinema started up ten years ago….

2007 was an autumn of really bleak pictures.

We opened with

which is about the life of Edith Piaf. It’s sad story. The music  was wonderful, but mournful. Many of the movies of 2007 were pretty bleak.

Well, you get the picture…

This was a short term project. We were just going to run movies two nights a week for a couple of weeks.

I volunteered to make the popcorn. As long as we used REAL butter, no substitutes.

Of course.

And although the subject matter of the films was down, down, downer…

Attendance kept going up, up, UP.

So much so that the short run ran longer, and before December was out, we were coming back not as a limited run, but a full out program.

Thus out of small beginnings…..

Besides the usual popcorn and candies, we also offered hot dogs and Indian Pudding at the Concession stand.

If I were to make Indian Pudding flavored popcorn….ginger, cinnamon, a little molasses and butter…..? I digress.

To Ed and Charlotte Russell , to Anne Phelan and Kathleen Curtin – thank you

 

French Toasted Fluff

Fluff Fest is coming up – Saturday the 23rd  – in Somerville  Fuff Centennial Fest 2017

It’s been 100 years since Joseph Archibald Query created the magic that is FLUFF in his kitchen in Somerville, MA and sold it door to door.

He didn’t invent marshmallow. He just repacked and renamed it for immortality.

7 millions pounds of Fluff

were sold last year.

There is a recipe contest at the Fluff Festival..I’ve been thinking of Fluff….

I was reading Laura Shapiro’s What She Ate

In the introduction (no, she doesn’t mention Fluff….bear with me) she writes of Nell B. Nichols who published a food calendar in Woman’s Home Companion. For May 7, 1953 Nell offers a recipe that dips peanut butter sandwiches in an egg-milk batter and then fries them. That’s right – Peanut Butter Sandwich French Toast. And I thought….

FLUFFERNUTTER

FRENCH TOAST

That baked French Toast that I made a variation of, has been on my mind. My brain has been full of all kinds of bread and egg and milk things.

But, before I have a recipe to test, I have a few more thin gs to ponder. Like – what bread? It has to hold up, but fluffy white bread is classic for a fluffernutter…and maple syrup wouldn’t be assertive enough on top…..

Chocolate syrup on top would be better then maple. √

Or how about chocolate BREAD….now it’s officially dessert…and chocolate syrup doesn’t go on top of chocolate bread.

See – close, but no actual recipe.

Yet.

Maybe next year.

 

 

 

 

Salad Daze

Photo by Chalmers Butterfield

The Hollywood Brown Derby Cobb Salad….

The same, real Brown Derby restaurant that Lucy and Ethel went to when they went to Hollywood. The Episode  where Lucy dumps food all over a movie star – William Holden.

William Holden orders a Cobb Salad…a Hollywood Salad! A GLAMOUR Salad!!!!

Cobb Salad – named after a Brown Derby owner, Bob Cobb.

Of course, since Lucy is involved……and there was a pie…….

Before Lucy – After Lucy

It was a few years later that I found out what was in a Cobb Salad….

page from The Brown Derby Cookbook, probably the 1949 edition – here are several versions of the Brown Derby and it’s cookbooks

 

One way to remember the ingredients:

EAT COBB

Eggs + Avocado + Tomato   Chicken + Onion + Bacon + Blue Cheese

I recently had a Cobb Salad that was a variation on the theme. It was made with radicchio  instead of greens, which was a little too warming for a summer salad, but for an autumnal one…..Mmm Mmmm Good!

And it was chopped up nicely. Somewhere in the 21st century we’ve forgotten that salads are eaten with forks in public places and that they’re supposed to be ready to eat and not need more knife work.

This version also had roasted butternut squash and turkey instead of chicken and dried cranberries, a Plymouthy version.  Good, and got me thinking about a few more tweaks. I’d do chopped radicchio as the base, great color, nice change from  KALE (hasn’t the clock ticked past that by now????)

Anyhow – turkey instead of chicken – but a roasted turkey. A roasty flavor would help here. Maybe toss a turkey breast in while roasting the butternut squash.

Now that the nights are cool – last night was downright COLD – a little “toss a sheet pan of something in the oven”  action is NOT out of the question., and if it helps to stave off another night of not turning the heat on…more power to that!

I might use fresh cranberries, once they once they come in, instead of dried. Blue cheese. Hard boiled eggs – easy. Bacon? No hardship there. I also have managed not to start a jar of bacon grease, so get a jar ready….I’m going to go with black olives as the O…..I just don’t like raw onion, and since it doesn’t like me right back, we’re even on that score.

What have a got so far?

Egg + A…….+ Turkey  Cranberry + Olive + Bacon + Blue Cheese

Hmmmm – What the A?

A stands for Apple!

Rene Magritte 1964

If I make an Apple/Maple dressing, a little chopped apple will temper it, give the sweet to go with the rich/spicy/…apple cider vinegar, chopped apple, maple syrup and a touch of oil….

The temptation to ‘pumpkin spice’ this is nearly overwhelming, but I’ll try to resist.

September Salad – The Thanksgiving Cobb  –  check.

 

#GlimpseoftheOrdinary

Team photo: Boston Americans 1901 – proto-Sox

Wednesday, September 6, 2017 8:20 pm

Wednesday is Food Section Day. I pick up both the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

Manage a fairly “on time”  home arrival and even the signs put up by the Gas Company that the places where I usually park will be a Tow Zone  starting tomorrow at 7 AM doesn’t prove to be much of a hindrance – I get a place even closer to my house than usual.

They’ve closed off three blocks of a five block street. And then there was Harvey in Texas, so did all the Utility trucks go there? They haven’t seemed to have started digging and the pile of pipes is as tall as it’s been…

Not sure what to have for supper. Had a big salad for lunch, so maybe some toast, or there’s more of the bread and cheese not Baked French Toast. (The real problem with eating food that has no name is the effort to have to describe it every time.)

In the Globe (I start with the food sections, headlines can wait – what is this about Red Sox stealing signs???? Applegate? No, Boys of Summer – steal BASES, not signs  …)

There’s a  “Sicilian pasta  with Ricotta” and I remember that I bought some ricotta at the Farmer’s Market – last week, the week before??  Better check the expiration date.

All good – AND there’s the box of tri-colored rigatoni that I got on sale…

Put the water on, salt it like the sea.

Re-read the recipe to make sure there is no hidden ingredient or technique that will trip me up …so far so good.

SICILAN PASTA WITH RICOTTA

16 oz. short pasta shape (cavatappi, radiatore, mezzi rigatoni) I had tricolor penne. Prince. It had been on sale. It was also 12 oz. so I adjusted accordingly.

16 oz. whole milk ricotta – 2 cups. I scooped out half and then half of what was left.

¾ cup pasta water – I used 4 oz.

1 cup freshly grated pecorino Romano for serving

Olive oil, salt and pepper for serving.

 

1. Bring salt water to a boil. Add pasta, in this case 6 minutes (more or less. I stand over it, spoon in hand, scooping up single pieces, “Are you DONE? Are you Tender? Are you Ready YET??” I look and taste to al dente.
2. I have a measuring cup that fits under my colander, so when I drain I can have all the pasta water I want. If the water from a can of chick pease is acqua faba, shouldn’t past water be acqua pasta? Or acqua basta, as enough already!
3. Pour ½ cup of the pasta water back into the pan, toss in the ricotta, and stir it all around. Add the hot penne and stir some more.
4. Decide it needs more contrast, more bite, more zing than more cheese, so fish out a jar of Kalamata olives – just the thing.
5. On the plate – a soup plate, because – I put the pasta, top it with some olives and a nice twist of black pepper.

Claudia Catalano Boston Globe Wednesday September 6, 2017, p. G4

I eat at kitchen table.

The downstairs people get a Peapod delivery while I sit down.

Leftovers will be for lunch OR a supper frittata later this week.

Time to put on the kettle for a cup of tea. And to read the rest of the papers.

Red Sox…..

#GlimpseoftheOrdinary

Dear Laura Shapiro,

Re: Instagram Your Leftovers

I read your essay in the New York Times , but I don’t have a phone with a camera in it, so please accept this blog post v. an Instagram of my home cooking.

This is not a recipe. Not really. Not in the written down sense, even when I’m done here writing it down.

Last week, I got a bag of too-crusty sourdough rolls at a deep discount from a bakery. I tossed them in the freezer. Saturday, while I was poking through, seeing what I had on hand before planning my midweek trip to the grocery store, Hmmm – I thought – better use those before I forget…..I took the bag out to defrost.

Sunday morning, I actually read the Baked French Toast recipe I was given as a way to use them up. The recipe was from the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummand.

Although I had the bread, and the eggs on hand (really nice eggs from a friend who raises chickens….Really nice eggs), some other the other ingredients I did NOT have on hand.

One was milk – I’m lactose intolerant, so I don’t keep milk on hand. And then there was the heavy cream…..I keep a little half and half for my coffee….And blueberry season is really over, but pears and apples, with a little prep, could work. That’s when the sugar amounts hit me – ½ cup of sugar, plus ½ cup of brown sugar plus another ½ cup of brown sugar…and then syrup on top?????? That’s a lotta sweet to start the day. Or end it.  And at this point I was planning for something suppery.

I did have some buttermilk on hand (Kate’s – real buttermilk, not cultured)

because I was going to make a Chilaquile Casserole variation from Still Life with Menu (p. 177)

with leftover tortillas that I had planned to use in my lunchtime salads until I set one on fire in the toaster oven at work, deciding then never to bring them to work again, at least in living memory of anyone who was there that day. And some shredded taco cheese.

Yes, I had shredded Taco cheese on hand because that’s what they sell at the 7-11 down the street and I wasn’t going to drive over to the grocery just for cheese. No judgement.

So I cubed the bread into bite sized bits, covering the bottom of a non-stick 9×13 pan. I beat my six beautiful and darkly yellowed yolked eggs and added 2 cups of buttermilk, and some salt and pepper. I opened a can of Rotelle tomatoes with mild chiles and added that. Then 1 cup of the shredded taco cheese. Poured it over the bread bits in the pan. Most of the cheese and the diced tomatoes stayed on the top, so I re-arranged them to cover evenly. Put the lid on the pan and popped it into the fridge, went about my day.

At 6 pm I was back, took the pan out of the fridge, preheated the oven to 350° and popped the (plastic) cover off. There are several warnings embossed into the cover reminding you that it is plastic and it should not go into a hot oven. The contents seemed a little dry, so I poured another cup or so of buttermilk on top.

Oven ready, lid off, pan in, timer on for 45 minutes.

This is my timer. Awesomeness.

 

Looking good, smelling like eggs and chiles and tomatoes and a little bit of cheese good, tasting just fine. Something greens, something fruity – supper or lunch for several days/nights.

It took me more time to write this down then to make and eat it.

And thus goes another ordinary day.

bunny rabbit