Contrary to what you may have been led to believe by the title of this post, I haven't mislaid any cups of coffee, lost my spectacles, forgotten why I am in this room nor any of the other odd behaviors that lead my family and friends to consider me an endearing, if rather daffy, elder. As a matter of fact, it's been remembering things that is causing me to be missing things.
Earlier this afternoon, Himself, Waggywaggy and I went for a drive. We stopped to take care of an errand or two and, while leaving town, passed several fast food joints. Memories reached forth from some dark recess of my mind, beckoning to me, murmuring of lost places, nigh-on forgotten flavors and scents long vanished anywhere other than memory. Why memory was triggered on this particular day by those particular places is anyone's guess but, for whatever reason, I have been recalling many foods, eating places and special treats that I haven't thought of for years, along with some I think of often.
What would be some of the things I find myself missing? Are they sublime? Ridiculous? Somewhere in between? Yes to all but the valuation of the item itself bears no relationship to the value of the memory.
Who amongst us doesn't miss real, honest to goodness, chocolate syrup? Not chocolate-flavored high fructose corn syrup but real chocolate? Good old Hershey's® in the little brown and white can, opened with a sharp-ended can puncher, poured liberally over ice cream? The drip down the side of the can, surreptitiously wiped with a finger, to be savored as a small prize? Squirt soda or Crush grapefruit soda? The bite of grapefruit, partially balanced by the sweetness of real sugar? Over ice on a hot, hot summer day...
The original Chef Boy Ar Dee Ravioli and Spaghettios with Little Meatballs. I loved those even though I am a bit embarrassed to admit it. The ravioli didn't actually taste like "real" ravioli but, by golly, it was tasty just the same. The little meatballs were kind of chewy and not real meaty but those, too, I loved. The frozen dinners? Remember those old Swanson's dinners? Turkey and dressing, gravy, potatoes, cranberry-apple compote? mmmmmmmmmm Mooshing the dressing cubes up with the gravy made a perfect addition to the thin slices of turkey. The fish dinners with that round cod cake? I don't know what they put in that fish cake but that was just divine, at least to a 10 year old's palate. The "mexican" dinners with rice and enchiladas... fried chicken... salisbury steak....
Tomato soup from a can? "soup and sandwich, soup and sandwich..." Tomatoey goodness, tart and sweet at the same time. Rich, red nectar for the dipping of grilled cheese sandwiches. Sandwichs made, by the way, with real butter? Mmmmmmmmm, good.
Hot fudge sundaes. Fudge squares wrapped in wax paper, melted in a tiny pot, poured over ice cream, pooling around and beneath the frosty scoops of sweet, waiting to be lovingly spooned up.
BK Whoppers and Whalers, sandwiches the size of dinner plates. Real beef, real fish, huge portions from when fast food was actual food. The McD's fries, the original ones, crisp and hot with a vague hint of beefiness. An original Hardee's roast beef sandwich, topped with sauce, juicy and inviting.
Local memories, too. Spic-n-span tenderloins with pickles, onions and mustard. Those little bitty burgers that the elderly sisters downtown dished up. Condiments were available but don't ask for ketchup. They didn't have any and you'd get the evil eye for asking. Suzy-Q spiral fries. mmmmmm! Maid-rite sandwiches, the easiest tasty ever! Ground beef and chicken broth... that's it, really. Ice cream made on-site at Birdsall's, turtle sundaes, marshmallow shakes. Walking out of the ice cream parlor and smelling hot tar, licking that cone fast enough to keep from having ice cream drip down your arm. The bakery that made krispies so light they would melt in your mouth. Costa's restaurant's Greek specialties... Steaks at the Play Pen, the Athenian's Greek salads.
There are also memories of things I don't miss one bit. Horrible foods from the sixties and seventies on which I might decide to elaborate. Later...
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Rarebit, anyone?
Welsh Rarebit or Welsh Rabbit? Regardless of regional variations, the name is an oddity and seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with Wales or anywhere else as far as I've ever heard. (Regardless of Looney Tunes, the dish has nothing to do with hassenpfeffer, even though that is simply German for "rabbit stew.") I adore any of the variations of this dish, being a huge fan of cheese, mustard, cayenne and beer.
Thanks to my dear friend, Tartiflette, I can present you with the basic recipe for Rarebit and two regional variations, Yorkshire and Scots. So, on with the cheeseing!
Basic Welsh Rarebit (the classic with cheese, mustard and ale)
This is supposed to serve two but around here it's barely enough for me! I like more cayenne, too.
Mix all ingredients but the bread together. Set aside.
Toast bread lightly on one side.
Spread cheese mixture on untoasted side of bread.
Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly.
Enjoy hot!
Yorkshire Rarebit (crisp bacon and is made with Wensleydale*)
Melt butter and add flour. Make into a roux, stir in milk and ale.
Stir over heat until a stiff sauce forms. Add the mustard powder and the Worchestershire, stir in and add the cheese. Stir until melted. When all melted, add the egg and bacon and stir.
Cut the ciabatta rolls into half and toast, top each piece with some of the cheese mixture and brown under the broiler. Serve with a little salad or as a savoury at the end of a meal.
Scotch Rarebit (Straight from Mrs Beeton, who evidently wasn't a big fan of punctuation. The cook is assumed to know what the proportions are to produce the desired result.)
Cut some nice rich sound cheese into rather thin slices.
Melt in a cheese toaster on a hot plate or over steam.
When melted, add a small quantity of mixed mustard and a seasoning of pepper.
Stir the cheese until it is completely dissolved.
Brown it before the heat or with a salamander.
Fill the bottom of the cheese toaster with hot water and serve with dry or buttered toasts, whichever may be preferred.
A cheese toaster has a hot water reservoir, the cheese is melted in the upper tin, which is placed in another vessel of boiling water, so keeping the preparation beautifully hot.
A small quantity of porter or port wine, is sometimes mixed with the cheese, and if it be not very rich, a few pieces of butter may be mixed with it to great advantage.
Sometimes the melted cheese is spread on the toasts and then laid in the cheese dish at the top of the hot water.
Whichever way it is served, it is highly necessary that the mixture be very hot and very quickly served or it will be worthless.
* As far as I'm concerned, there isn't anything made with Wensleydale that isn't absolutely delicious.
Thanks to my dear friend, Tartiflette, I can present you with the basic recipe for Rarebit and two regional variations, Yorkshire and Scots. So, on with the cheeseing!
Basic Welsh Rarebit (the classic with cheese, mustard and ale)
This is supposed to serve two but around here it's barely enough for me! I like more cayenne, too.
- 2 slices bread
- 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
- dash salt
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
- 1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire
- 1/2 ounce butter
- 3 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
- 1 tablespoon beer or ale
Mix all ingredients but the bread together. Set aside.
Toast bread lightly on one side.
Spread cheese mixture on untoasted side of bread.
Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly.
Enjoy hot!
Yorkshire Rarebit (crisp bacon and is made with Wensleydale*)
- 1 3/4 ounces butter
- 1 3/4 ounces plain flour
- 1 1/8 cup milk
- 1 1/8 cup black sheep ale or an ale of your choice
- 1 1/8 cup mature Wensleydale cheese
- 1 tsp. English mustard powder
- 2 slice streaky bacon, fried until crisp and crumbled
- few drops of Worcestershire, to taste
- 1 egg
- 4 Ciabatta rolls
Melt butter and add flour. Make into a roux, stir in milk and ale.
Stir over heat until a stiff sauce forms. Add the mustard powder and the Worchestershire, stir in and add the cheese. Stir until melted. When all melted, add the egg and bacon and stir.
Cut the ciabatta rolls into half and toast, top each piece with some of the cheese mixture and brown under the broiler. Serve with a little salad or as a savoury at the end of a meal.
Scotch Rarebit (Straight from Mrs Beeton, who evidently wasn't a big fan of punctuation. The cook is assumed to know what the proportions are to produce the desired result.)
- Rich Cheese, few slices
- Toast
- Mustard
- Pepper
Cut some nice rich sound cheese into rather thin slices.
Melt in a cheese toaster on a hot plate or over steam.
When melted, add a small quantity of mixed mustard and a seasoning of pepper.
Stir the cheese until it is completely dissolved.
Brown it before the heat or with a salamander.
Fill the bottom of the cheese toaster with hot water and serve with dry or buttered toasts, whichever may be preferred.
A cheese toaster has a hot water reservoir, the cheese is melted in the upper tin, which is placed in another vessel of boiling water, so keeping the preparation beautifully hot.
A small quantity of porter or port wine, is sometimes mixed with the cheese, and if it be not very rich, a few pieces of butter may be mixed with it to great advantage.
Sometimes the melted cheese is spread on the toasts and then laid in the cheese dish at the top of the hot water.
Whichever way it is served, it is highly necessary that the mixture be very hot and very quickly served or it will be worthless.
* As far as I'm concerned, there isn't anything made with Wensleydale that isn't absolutely delicious.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The tail is wagging the ox
People who buy all their meat in those plastic-entombed packages at the supermarket don't know just how tasty oxtail soup can be. We're lucky to live in a farming region and have access to a locker that is willing to supply all kinds of odds and ends that are missing from commercial stores like the big chains. Oxtail is one of my favorite types of soup, astonishingly rich and hearty.
If you can find a tail or two, give it a try! It's not hard and you will be very pleased with the results. It's possible to substitute inexpensive cuts of bone-in beef but it won't be the same. Oxtail has a very distinct flavor, beefy but not like arm roast or sirloin. The end result using oxtail will be a richer and heartier soup than any other cut you could use.
Oxtail Soup
serves 4
Heat oven to 450F while prepping vegetables.
Put all vegetables into a heavy roasting pan, pour a small amount of oil over the vegetables, toss to coat.
Rub tail with oil, place on top of the vegetables.
Put pan in oven and roast all until veg. has browned nicely, stirring every once in a while to prevent too much sticking.
Bring broth and wine to a slow boil at the very ends of the roasting process. Reduce to simmer.
Turn oven off, allow pan and contents to cool some.
Remove meat from pan, place in slow cooker or large stockpot.
Add all vegetables to pot or cooker, set aside.
Return roasting pan to cooktop on medium high heat. Deglaze with the broth and wine mixture, scraping up all the lovely bits from the bottom. (some of them may seem a bit burnt but that will be ok as long as they aren't totally charred.) Pour the pan liquids into your cooking vessel, stir well.
For a slow cooker, turn heat to low and simmer until meat is tender and falling off the bones, anywhere from 2 to 6 hours, depending on the size of the oxtail. Turn heat off, strain through a colander. Set broth in a cool place or the refrigerator to solidify and remove the fat.
For a stock pot, bring contents to full boil, reduce heat just to where the liquid is simmering, cover loosely. Simmer until meat is tender, as above. Turn heat off, strain through a colander. Set broth in a cool place or the refrigerator to solidify and remove the fat.
Discard the vegetables.* Remove meat from bone being careful to leave the spinal matter intact as you don't really want to use that.
Return liquid and meat to stock pot (I don't use a slow cooker for this last part.) Bring to simmer and add the vegetables and herbs. At a very slow boil, cook the soup until the vegetables are all tender, 2 to 4 hours. If the stock becomes too thick or the soup seems to be drying too much before the vegetables are done, add liquids as desired. It's a good idea to taste the broth to see just what it is that is needed. What you add will depend on what kind of wine you used in the first steps as well as the relative strength of your broth. You may add salt and pepper sometime near the end of the cooking process, too.
The result will be a soup with a lovely rich consistency but not too thick. Serve hot with biscuits or good bread for soaking up the broth, maybe a nice salad on the side. Great stuff for winter days...
* Another option for the vegetables? If they aren't too done, as in mooshy, keep them. When they are totally cool, put them in a blender with about 1/2 cup chicken stock and puree. Stir this into the broth before you put the next lot of vegetables in. Darned roasted veg smells and tastes so good that it's a shame to waste all of that.
** To lessen the "bite" of the garlic either simmer it for about 10 minutes or roast it. Either method gives a smoother taste that blends well with the other ingredients and the richness of the broth.
If you can find a tail or two, give it a try! It's not hard and you will be very pleased with the results. It's possible to substitute inexpensive cuts of bone-in beef but it won't be the same. Oxtail has a very distinct flavor, beefy but not like arm roast or sirloin. The end result using oxtail will be a richer and heartier soup than any other cut you could use.
Oxtail Soup
serves 4
- 1 oxtail, whole
- 2 onions, rough chop
- 1 large carrot, scraped and sliced into 1" pieces
- 2 celery ribs, 1" pieces
- 2 cups diced tomatoes with peel
- 4 cloves garlic, unpeeled
- oil
Heat oven to 450F while prepping vegetables.
Put all vegetables into a heavy roasting pan, pour a small amount of oil over the vegetables, toss to coat.
Rub tail with oil, place on top of the vegetables.
Put pan in oven and roast all until veg. has browned nicely, stirring every once in a while to prevent too much sticking.
- 4 cups beef broth
- 1/2 cup dry red wine
Bring broth and wine to a slow boil at the very ends of the roasting process. Reduce to simmer.
Turn oven off, allow pan and contents to cool some.
Remove meat from pan, place in slow cooker or large stockpot.
Add all vegetables to pot or cooker, set aside.
Return roasting pan to cooktop on medium high heat. Deglaze with the broth and wine mixture, scraping up all the lovely bits from the bottom. (some of them may seem a bit burnt but that will be ok as long as they aren't totally charred.) Pour the pan liquids into your cooking vessel, stir well.
For a slow cooker, turn heat to low and simmer until meat is tender and falling off the bones, anywhere from 2 to 6 hours, depending on the size of the oxtail. Turn heat off, strain through a colander. Set broth in a cool place or the refrigerator to solidify and remove the fat.
For a stock pot, bring contents to full boil, reduce heat just to where the liquid is simmering, cover loosely. Simmer until meat is tender, as above. Turn heat off, strain through a colander. Set broth in a cool place or the refrigerator to solidify and remove the fat.
Discard the vegetables.* Remove meat from bone being careful to leave the spinal matter intact as you don't really want to use that.
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, scraped, cut into 1" pieces
- 1 celery rib, cut into 1" pieces (I don't put celery in but some folks like it.)
- 3 large red potatoes, peeled and quartered
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 sprig thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 4 sprigs parsley or 3 teaspoons dried parsley
- 2 cloves garlic, mashed (optional)**
- additional red wine, broth or water, to taste and as needed
Return liquid and meat to stock pot (I don't use a slow cooker for this last part.) Bring to simmer and add the vegetables and herbs. At a very slow boil, cook the soup until the vegetables are all tender, 2 to 4 hours. If the stock becomes too thick or the soup seems to be drying too much before the vegetables are done, add liquids as desired. It's a good idea to taste the broth to see just what it is that is needed. What you add will depend on what kind of wine you used in the first steps as well as the relative strength of your broth. You may add salt and pepper sometime near the end of the cooking process, too.
The result will be a soup with a lovely rich consistency but not too thick. Serve hot with biscuits or good bread for soaking up the broth, maybe a nice salad on the side. Great stuff for winter days...
* Another option for the vegetables? If they aren't too done, as in mooshy, keep them. When they are totally cool, put them in a blender with about 1/2 cup chicken stock and puree. Stir this into the broth before you put the next lot of vegetables in. Darned roasted veg smells and tastes so good that it's a shame to waste all of that.
** To lessen the "bite" of the garlic either simmer it for about 10 minutes or roast it. Either method gives a smoother taste that blends well with the other ingredients and the richness of the broth.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Jamaican-style jerk brine
The chicken turned out beautifully, crispy golden, tender and savory. This is an approximation of the combination of ingredients used in the brine solution. (I really must start writing things down as I go along 'cause I forget what I've done and must cast about to redo it.)
Combine all ingredients except scotch bonnets, in a large stock pot, bring to boil. Reduce heat, give it a good long smell to see if you have enough spice, if not add some more. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Place chicken in pot and add enough cold water to cover the bird totally. Keep it submerged during the brining process by using a plate inverted over it. Refrigerate for up to 24 hours.
Remove chicken from brine. Discard brine.
Pat bird dry, rub all over with butter. Add another layer of flavor by using a paste rub after the butter. (Busha Browne's is really, really good and you can get it online.)
Cook bird in whatever manner you wish. I did it in the oven, 450F for 15 minutes, 375 for another hour or so, until done. Grilling is also good.
- Chicken sufficient for the number of eaters, cut up or whole
- 3/4 cup kosher salt
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 quarts broth, vegetable or chicken
- 1 tablespoon hickory smoke flavor if not grilling
- 1 cup white vinegar (optional)
- 4 scotch bonnets, stemmed and minced (don't forget the gloves)
- 1/2 cup green onion, minced (sub same amount of finely chopped white onion if you wish)
- 1/2 cup lime juice (if you can get it)
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tablespoons thyme
- 2 tablespoon allspice, crushed berries or ground
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 3 teaspoons cayenne pepper
- 3 teaspoons rubbed sage
- 2 teaspoons ginger, peeled and grated
- 2 teaspoons nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon, ground
Combine all ingredients except scotch bonnets, in a large stock pot, bring to boil. Reduce heat, give it a good long smell to see if you have enough spice, if not add some more. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Place chicken in pot and add enough cold water to cover the bird totally. Keep it submerged during the brining process by using a plate inverted over it. Refrigerate for up to 24 hours.
Remove chicken from brine. Discard brine.
Pat bird dry, rub all over with butter. Add another layer of flavor by using a paste rub after the butter. (Busha Browne's is really, really good and you can get it online.)
Cook bird in whatever manner you wish. I did it in the oven, 450F for 15 minutes, 375 for another hour or so, until done. Grilling is also good.
Goodbye
Goodbye.
Gone ahead.
Seeing what you always knew was there. Gone ahead.
Dreams in life and life's dreams, apparent.
Goodbye.
Gone ahead.
Written for my dear friend Stacy, who unexpectedly died of a brain aneurysm many years before what should have been her time. A marvelous cook, dear friend, loving and proud parent.
Good bye, Stace... gone ahead.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
A pinch here, a tad there...
One Thing Leads to Another
Decided to clean the front of the microwave today (you all already know what I think of that mike...) so sprayed it down with my handy-dandy refilled, environmentally friendly citrus cleaner. YUCK! Ok, clean the mike. Done. With the face of that thing shining, the faceboard above it looked a bit grungy. Hey, no prob. Spray that down, clean! Yay... no, wait a minute. Now the doors above the faceboard above the mike really look bad and those stupid white ceramic handles are pretty gross. Remove doors, dropping screw between stove and cupboard. Pry fingers from goo on doors. Remove hardware. Slather on citrus cleaner. Nope, that's not doing it. Try gel dishwasher detergent. Ok, that works. scrubscrubscrub rinse. Yuck, just yuck. Repeat on remaining 3 doors and hardware. Figured it's a good thing my grossitude index is pretty high or this would've done me in. The knobs took a little extra attention, too. Like a razor blade to remove encrusted whatever-that-is. I think I'll throw that green scrubby away because it's looking pretty sad and I can't seem to get all the brown stuff out of it. While I was up messing about I noticed the top of the fridge was pretty bad, nothing like the cupboards but still... Remove every last blasted thing from all fridge sides and top, climb up on stool, spray, wipe, spray, rinse. Ok. Much better. Except for the drizzles down the sides. Oh, yeah, and on the floor. So, wash down sides and floor. Good! Time to put the doors back on. Uh, there's the small problem of that missing screw. Fetch flashlight to peer down into what reveals itself as the crack of doom. OMG What IS all that stuff? Where did it come from? Damme, there's a mixing spoon down there, too. Retrieve poker from fireplace, get down on floor and use poker to drag as much uck out as possible. That leaves the stuff on the sides of both cupboard and stove. Hmmmmmmm, well, let's see. Ah, I know! Fetch Farmer's Grain Association Meeting 1918 wooden yardstick from closet, wrap with cloth, soak cloth in cleaner and start jamming it around in the space there. After a few minutes of that, feeling relieved that nobody had noticed what I was doing, I figured it looked better than it did. After putting everything away, sweeping up that awful stuff that came out of the Black Hole, and having a nice cup of coffee, I promised myself I wouldn't look too closely at the other top cupboards. Not yet.
At least I found that screw.
Hot Hot Hot
Having been approached by Himself with a plaint having to do with the recent lack of Jamaican-style Jerk in our diet, I decided to make the poor guy happy and do some up. (Mind you, there is not a chance of grilling it. The gas grill is in pieces for the winter and I'm not about the try to regulate a fire in the smoker or the small grill in a 40 mile per hour north wind. Just Not Gonna Do It. Not even for my sweetie.) DS1 and DIL brought back a little jar of authentic jerk seasoning from Jamaica over the holidays and it is really delicious. Only problem? It's not hot enough. The best answer for that is to brine the clucker, include all the ingredients that I would normally use as a marinade and hope for the best. So, that's what I've done. (If this works out I might post the recipe for the brine.) Besides the onion, garlic, sugars, spices and such-like, scotch bonnets are the pepper of choice for us fire-eaters.
I have a lot of them, too. They're in the freezer. What might not be evident to a casual onlooker is the fact that they tend to dehydrate in the freezer. This concentrates the capsaicin to an astounding degree. Either that or they just keep getting hotter by some mechanism unknown to me. I work with hot peppers a lot and they don't usually bother me, no sneezing, no burning skin, nothing. This ain't the case with these particular scotch bonnets. I wear gloves and try not to breathe very deeply. I also stem them and put them in my lovely mini-prep machine to grind them up, which I've found saves not only time but my nose. Usually. I figured since the chicken is over 5 pounds and there it takes quite a bit of brine to submerge a beast that size, I had better use 4 peppers. No problem there until I foolishly popped the lid from the prepper in mid-breath and promptly went into a sneezing fit. Please note, I wasn't bent over with my nose anywhere near that prep machine. As a matter of fact, it was at arm's length. Made no difference at all. Sneeze sneeze sneeze sneeze... after more than 5 minutes of rhinoblastation, the nose settled down enough to allow me to pick the prepper bowl up and carefully rinse the contents of the prep into the pot with the brine before the pepper mash ate through my pink rubber gloves. After all, I have to save the gloves to be able to turn the chicken in the brine several times over the next few hours. And I ain't doing it with my bare hands. No way. No how.
Note to self: Idiot! Don't stick your face down next to the brine to see how it smells.
Bathroom Redux
We gutted and redid the main bath in 2006. That was surely a fun, fun time. (That's a lie. If I ever say that again, slap me.) As with the great majority of things in this house, the bathroom was a disaster. All gleaming white tile, idiotic 1970s swag light fixture. plate glass mirror that was (I swear!) 4 foot high by 8 foot long. I've seen smaller mirrors in dance studios. White w.c., white tub, teensy tiny tub, at that. White sink, white vanity, white drawer pulls, dark walnut trim and doors. The sheer blinding mass of whiteness, surpassed only by mid-antarctica on a sunny day, was accented by a royal blue shag rug. With foam backing. In a bathroom. That was a bright idea, folks, yes indeed. The tub had been fitted out with a set of wavy glass sliding doors that leaked. They not only leaked, they leaked badly. Know what happens to foam backed shag carpet over the course of 30 years of leakage? Yup. Mold, mildew and a rotted subfloor to boot. Yours truly is deathly allergic to mold and mildew and this state of affairs was simply not to be borne. We started out with the idea of just replacing that carpet with tile. But, once the carpet and pad were pulled up, the extent of damage was such that, well, let me just say it's fortunate the bathtub hadn't fallen through the floor into the bathroom downstairs. We also discovered that sometime back in the mists of time, the toilet had leaked, been pulled, refitted with the wrong wax ring, reseated and somebody stuck more tile around it to hide the problem. OK, so what the hell, let's just gut the mess and go from scratch. Which is just what we did.
Everyone here understands why I always get an urge to kick those hosts of television shows that redo a bathroom in 2 days. This particular project took months. MONTHS! Traipsing downstairs at 2 a.m. to go potty, taking showers in the boy's realm, after a few weeks of that, we just went out to the rv at night to piddle. Much easier and a lot cleaner. So we had a lovely new bath with all kinds of good things and it was warm and cozy and we have a whirlpool! Then a "small" problem rears it's head. The texturey-stuff on the ceiling, which we left intact during the redo, seems to be bubbling and falling off in chunks. Great. NOW what?
The "what" turns out to be one of those things that we deal with over and over, stupid stuff. The original builders, evidently suffering from a bad case of H.U.T.A. syndrome, didn't prime the raw, new sheetrock they installed. They applied paint directly to the gypsum board. Sorry, folks, no matter what you might like to believe? In a high-humidity area like a bathroom, even with a monster exhaust like we put in, paint will not seal sheetrock. Over the years, moisture has done some damage to the finish and at some time back there in the olden days, someone got the bright idea that since their paint was looking not-great, spray on a nice thick coat of texture. Where they got the idea that it would make a difference? Who knows.
Himself has been working on scraping that texture off since Sunday and the end is not in sight. Then he will skim coat, prime with some really good alcohol-based stuff and we shall try to figure out what color would look good as a final coat. Until then, no sinks, no tub, the w.c. works fine, just remember to wipe the seat well and take your toilet paper in with you. It's either embarrassing or comical to find oneself enthroned with no toilet paper, having to yell out "Somebody bring me the t.p., please?" When that somebody happens to be an 18 year old male? The pot is in direct line of sight when the door is opened even a little bit so the youngster has to figure out a way to stand to the side of the door and toss the roll in. Best you can hope for is that it lands somewhere within reach of the toilet brush, otherwise, you're gonna be drip-dry. This whole mess will be taken care of, eventually. Then we shall proceed on to the next mess, and the one after that, and the one after that and.....
Note to self: Hold breath while walking through kitchen. Brine seems to be getting a little odiferous.
Decided to clean the front of the microwave today (you all already know what I think of that mike...) so sprayed it down with my handy-dandy refilled, environmentally friendly citrus cleaner. YUCK! Ok, clean the mike. Done. With the face of that thing shining, the faceboard above it looked a bit grungy. Hey, no prob. Spray that down, clean! Yay... no, wait a minute. Now the doors above the faceboard above the mike really look bad and those stupid white ceramic handles are pretty gross. Remove doors, dropping screw between stove and cupboard. Pry fingers from goo on doors. Remove hardware. Slather on citrus cleaner. Nope, that's not doing it. Try gel dishwasher detergent. Ok, that works. scrubscrubscrub rinse. Yuck, just yuck. Repeat on remaining 3 doors and hardware. Figured it's a good thing my grossitude index is pretty high or this would've done me in. The knobs took a little extra attention, too. Like a razor blade to remove encrusted whatever-that-is. I think I'll throw that green scrubby away because it's looking pretty sad and I can't seem to get all the brown stuff out of it. While I was up messing about I noticed the top of the fridge was pretty bad, nothing like the cupboards but still... Remove every last blasted thing from all fridge sides and top, climb up on stool, spray, wipe, spray, rinse. Ok. Much better. Except for the drizzles down the sides. Oh, yeah, and on the floor. So, wash down sides and floor. Good! Time to put the doors back on. Uh, there's the small problem of that missing screw. Fetch flashlight to peer down into what reveals itself as the crack of doom. OMG What IS all that stuff? Where did it come from? Damme, there's a mixing spoon down there, too. Retrieve poker from fireplace, get down on floor and use poker to drag as much uck out as possible. That leaves the stuff on the sides of both cupboard and stove. Hmmmmmmm, well, let's see. Ah, I know! Fetch Farmer's Grain Association Meeting 1918 wooden yardstick from closet, wrap with cloth, soak cloth in cleaner and start jamming it around in the space there. After a few minutes of that, feeling relieved that nobody had noticed what I was doing, I figured it looked better than it did. After putting everything away, sweeping up that awful stuff that came out of the Black Hole, and having a nice cup of coffee, I promised myself I wouldn't look too closely at the other top cupboards. Not yet.
At least I found that screw.
Hot Hot Hot
Having been approached by Himself with a plaint having to do with the recent lack of Jamaican-style Jerk in our diet, I decided to make the poor guy happy and do some up. (Mind you, there is not a chance of grilling it. The gas grill is in pieces for the winter and I'm not about the try to regulate a fire in the smoker or the small grill in a 40 mile per hour north wind. Just Not Gonna Do It. Not even for my sweetie.) DS1 and DIL brought back a little jar of authentic jerk seasoning from Jamaica over the holidays and it is really delicious. Only problem? It's not hot enough. The best answer for that is to brine the clucker, include all the ingredients that I would normally use as a marinade and hope for the best. So, that's what I've done. (If this works out I might post the recipe for the brine.) Besides the onion, garlic, sugars, spices and such-like, scotch bonnets are the pepper of choice for us fire-eaters.
I have a lot of them, too. They're in the freezer. What might not be evident to a casual onlooker is the fact that they tend to dehydrate in the freezer. This concentrates the capsaicin to an astounding degree. Either that or they just keep getting hotter by some mechanism unknown to me. I work with hot peppers a lot and they don't usually bother me, no sneezing, no burning skin, nothing. This ain't the case with these particular scotch bonnets. I wear gloves and try not to breathe very deeply. I also stem them and put them in my lovely mini-prep machine to grind them up, which I've found saves not only time but my nose. Usually. I figured since the chicken is over 5 pounds and there it takes quite a bit of brine to submerge a beast that size, I had better use 4 peppers. No problem there until I foolishly popped the lid from the prepper in mid-breath and promptly went into a sneezing fit. Please note, I wasn't bent over with my nose anywhere near that prep machine. As a matter of fact, it was at arm's length. Made no difference at all. Sneeze sneeze sneeze sneeze... after more than 5 minutes of rhinoblastation, the nose settled down enough to allow me to pick the prepper bowl up and carefully rinse the contents of the prep into the pot with the brine before the pepper mash ate through my pink rubber gloves. After all, I have to save the gloves to be able to turn the chicken in the brine several times over the next few hours. And I ain't doing it with my bare hands. No way. No how.
Note to self: Idiot! Don't stick your face down next to the brine to see how it smells.
Bathroom Redux
We gutted and redid the main bath in 2006. That was surely a fun, fun time. (That's a lie. If I ever say that again, slap me.) As with the great majority of things in this house, the bathroom was a disaster. All gleaming white tile, idiotic 1970s swag light fixture. plate glass mirror that was (I swear!) 4 foot high by 8 foot long. I've seen smaller mirrors in dance studios. White w.c., white tub, teensy tiny tub, at that. White sink, white vanity, white drawer pulls, dark walnut trim and doors. The sheer blinding mass of whiteness, surpassed only by mid-antarctica on a sunny day, was accented by a royal blue shag rug. With foam backing. In a bathroom. That was a bright idea, folks, yes indeed. The tub had been fitted out with a set of wavy glass sliding doors that leaked. They not only leaked, they leaked badly. Know what happens to foam backed shag carpet over the course of 30 years of leakage? Yup. Mold, mildew and a rotted subfloor to boot. Yours truly is deathly allergic to mold and mildew and this state of affairs was simply not to be borne. We started out with the idea of just replacing that carpet with tile. But, once the carpet and pad were pulled up, the extent of damage was such that, well, let me just say it's fortunate the bathtub hadn't fallen through the floor into the bathroom downstairs. We also discovered that sometime back in the mists of time, the toilet had leaked, been pulled, refitted with the wrong wax ring, reseated and somebody stuck more tile around it to hide the problem. OK, so what the hell, let's just gut the mess and go from scratch. Which is just what we did.
Everyone here understands why I always get an urge to kick those hosts of television shows that redo a bathroom in 2 days. This particular project took months. MONTHS! Traipsing downstairs at 2 a.m. to go potty, taking showers in the boy's realm, after a few weeks of that, we just went out to the rv at night to piddle. Much easier and a lot cleaner. So we had a lovely new bath with all kinds of good things and it was warm and cozy and we have a whirlpool! Then a "small" problem rears it's head. The texturey-stuff on the ceiling, which we left intact during the redo, seems to be bubbling and falling off in chunks. Great. NOW what?
The "what" turns out to be one of those things that we deal with over and over, stupid stuff. The original builders, evidently suffering from a bad case of H.U.T.A. syndrome, didn't prime the raw, new sheetrock they installed. They applied paint directly to the gypsum board. Sorry, folks, no matter what you might like to believe? In a high-humidity area like a bathroom, even with a monster exhaust like we put in, paint will not seal sheetrock. Over the years, moisture has done some damage to the finish and at some time back there in the olden days, someone got the bright idea that since their paint was looking not-great, spray on a nice thick coat of texture. Where they got the idea that it would make a difference? Who knows.
Himself has been working on scraping that texture off since Sunday and the end is not in sight. Then he will skim coat, prime with some really good alcohol-based stuff and we shall try to figure out what color would look good as a final coat. Until then, no sinks, no tub, the w.c. works fine, just remember to wipe the seat well and take your toilet paper in with you. It's either embarrassing or comical to find oneself enthroned with no toilet paper, having to yell out "Somebody bring me the t.p., please?" When that somebody happens to be an 18 year old male? The pot is in direct line of sight when the door is opened even a little bit so the youngster has to figure out a way to stand to the side of the door and toss the roll in. Best you can hope for is that it lands somewhere within reach of the toilet brush, otherwise, you're gonna be drip-dry. This whole mess will be taken care of, eventually. Then we shall proceed on to the next mess, and the one after that, and the one after that and.....
Note to self: Hold breath while walking through kitchen. Brine seems to be getting a little odiferous.
Friday, February 13, 2009
can't think of an apt title for this one...
Pink? PINK? Who the flying eff buys something because it's PINK?
I know that there are brainless women who do buy anything, as long as it is pink. There are also brainless males who really believe that the beer commercials that feature a guy who is treating his lady with respect, ending up with a gigantic beer can flattening him to a grease spot in the driveway, is the way reality should be. Uh huh.
There is some ad guy in a snazzy suit, somewhere, sitting around thinking of ways to cozen the masses. There are probably scads of ad guys and gals, in reality, doing the exact same thing. No, wait, there ARE scads of them. Everywhere.
Scamming everyone seems to be a real common thing, nowadays. Anyone seen that moron flogging the "shamwow" thingamabob on television? He wears a bluetooth headset like he is having a running dialogue with God or someone. Sham-wow, indeed.
Now, back to the topic...
Women with "food issues?" What? Food issues? Boyfriends monitoring food intake? WTF? There should be someone watching you to make sure you don't eat chocolate? Here is a direct quote from the MoJo article:
Paranoid heterosexual women? What? How about someone watching me so I don't bitch-slap someone telling me what I should or shouldn't be eating, drinking or wearing?
Then there is the "sparkle" factor. Riiiiiight. Golly gee whiz, all us not too bright females just can't resist those sparkles. Oh, sparkles with the pinkage! Pinky sparklies! ooooooh. Do the advertisers think we are all 9 year old girls, emotionally and mentally? Infatuated with the "hunkage" at the next desk? Shallow, uneducated, foolish women who have not enough wits to look at an ad campaign and know they are being gulled, bamboozled and insulted?
Ok, that was a stupid question because there must be someone out there what actually buys that kind of swill. If there were no buyers, there would be no advertisers doing their thing. There are as many shallow, uneducated and happily ignorant and unobservant females in the world as there are males of the same kind.
I'm just tired of all of them.
I know that there are brainless women who do buy anything, as long as it is pink. There are also brainless males who really believe that the beer commercials that feature a guy who is treating his lady with respect, ending up with a gigantic beer can flattening him to a grease spot in the driveway, is the way reality should be. Uh huh.
There is some ad guy in a snazzy suit, somewhere, sitting around thinking of ways to cozen the masses. There are probably scads of ad guys and gals, in reality, doing the exact same thing. No, wait, there ARE scads of them. Everywhere.
Scamming everyone seems to be a real common thing, nowadays. Anyone seen that moron flogging the "shamwow" thingamabob on television? He wears a bluetooth headset like he is having a running dialogue with God or someone. Sham-wow, indeed.
Now, back to the topic...
Women with "food issues?" What? Food issues? Boyfriends monitoring food intake? WTF? There should be someone watching you to make sure you don't eat chocolate? Here is a direct quote from the MoJo article:
"...paranoid heterosexual women whose eating habits are monitored by their boyfriends..."
Paranoid heterosexual women? What? How about someone watching me so I don't bitch-slap someone telling me what I should or shouldn't be eating, drinking or wearing?
Then there is the "sparkle" factor. Riiiiiight. Golly gee whiz, all us not too bright females just can't resist those sparkles. Oh, sparkles with the pinkage! Pinky sparklies! ooooooh. Do the advertisers think we are all 9 year old girls, emotionally and mentally? Infatuated with the "hunkage" at the next desk? Shallow, uneducated, foolish women who have not enough wits to look at an ad campaign and know they are being gulled, bamboozled and insulted?
Ok, that was a stupid question because there must be someone out there what actually buys that kind of swill. If there were no buyers, there would be no advertisers doing their thing. There are as many shallow, uneducated and happily ignorant and unobservant females in the world as there are males of the same kind.
I'm just tired of all of them.
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