You Are the Sunlight in My Growing

 

 

 

 

Sometimes like Barnabas Collins lusting for Angelique, I feel it necessary to look at all these people I used to or still admire when they were in the prime of their outer beauty. Usually youth is all they needed for their presence to be so affective.  The energy and light in their eyes and smiles is so brilliant I just want to lick the screen.  Truly beautiful people are so unique and rare.  I also recall the few but amazing people in my own life that made me feel so spirited and lively.  Just looking at them or thinking of them sometimes can give my brain the sort of vitamin or boost it craves.  Makes me remember that it all still lives inside of me, I just have to let it out. (btw if you know how to let it out, give me a call)

 In the middle of winter when everything is dead and grey, the clouds are covering the blue sky and everyone is in triple layers on the street bundled and even more closed off then normal, you have to remind yourself that spring will come again.  I have to remember that everything isn't dying for the last time but just going through it's cycle.  I get so dark and macabre at this time of year.

 

I have to remember Cher's crooked amazing teeth when she smiled.
 I have to remember Mick Jagger's plump blushed lips.

I made a fat free Chef's Salad with Canadian bacon, boiled egg whites (but I wasn't too worried if some yolk got in there), tomatoes, radish, avocado, baby spinach, red onion, green onion and the best garlic, lemon mustard vinaigrette.  This was like a sacrifice to the gods for the promise of spring and energy and hope and youthful thoughts. 

I think when we were all very young and had all this spark, we weren't all that ready to own it. You can only prepare for that with experience.  So many stupid mistakes.  I had a thought that I wonder what it would be like to have your prime physical self once the spirit, soul and brain caught up. 

Hey, in a way, maybe that's what being 50 is!

Wunnerful, Wunnerful

I'm not sure where this came from but in regular rotation and pretty often, before the restaurant, back in the old house my mom would make sauerkraut and sausage with potatoes, beer brats and kraut! This was sort of unusual because she never made classic American stuff like fried chicken or mac & cheese or meatloaf, maybe the occasional burger. But come to think of it, we never missed a Lawrence Welk episode. I thought that might have something to do with the featured pretty young Mexican singer that my dad seemed to be extra interested in watching. But there were a lot of Amish people around that spoke German too, so who knows, maybe she traded a recipe or something.

I just read that 75% of Indiana claims a German heritage and I do remember most of my friends claiming to be half German and the rest was usually a 1/4 Irish or French. But when I was little I didn't understand any of that stuff, I just understood color of skin and there was only black, brown and white to choose from. And that's what you were. So when the french speaking black skinned Haitian boy with green eyes came to town, my world got spun. I think that was the first time I really understood there was a LOT more to understand about nationalities and race. Did that mean not all brown people were Mexican??...rut ro. I had some things to learn clearly.

So anyway, German fare was a big treat for me. She smothered it in black pepper but it was super good. I had a taste for this on Tuesday so I trudged it out in the slushy rainy mess with my trusty grocery cart determined to get my German on. It was a trek boy. I got stuck a few times and a nice lesbian came by that wasn't nice enough to help me get unstuck but she was nice enough to say 'good luck'. Then I finally reached the corner and there stood a three feet wide puddle that looked to be a mix of ice and deep water, so I had to turn it around and head up the other side to cross. It felt like miles, with the wind and the sleet but I finally made it home with my loot. Lots of ideas this week so I couldn't wait to get started.

The brats I would have simmered in beer beforehand but P didn't leave one so I just used water. When the water steamed off and the sausages were cooked through I added onions and sliced granny smith apples. Meanwhile I boiled the potatoes and then cut them up into big chunks. I threw in the kraut in its juices with the potatoes and meat and let everything come together and heat through. I added a good dose of black pepper and that was ready to serve. So hearty and good. If there is some left over I'll eat with pork chops. Good lord, someone turned up the knobs on my appetite this week. Must be the full moon.

Try to Understand,... He's a Magic Man

This week, inspiration snuck in the back door to my subconscious and started kick boxing my piss poor attitude. Its winter, GET OVER IT! It said like a true New Yorker. So I did. I'm over it. I am embracing winter and vow not to complain again until the bitter end when you just have to honestly.

My focus is back to cooking. I began with a fantasy of eating a deep rich sauce...it was chicken cacciatore, Hunter's chicken. I could taste the sauce in my mind. I needed to make it reality. My intention was to work off a real recipe and try to follow it as much as I could. I'm doing okay with that, but I just can't seem to help myself. I gotta do what I feel inside. What works for me is to read through all the top recipes first and then do a mash-up version of all of them.

Some of the great recipes used bell peppers, some mushrooms. Why not have both? The more vegetables in a dish the better. The roasted vegetables burst with aromas. All the ingredients feel so rustic. I do feel like a hunter.





After roasting the bell peppers, roma tomatoes, red onions and bella mushrooms you sear the chicken and then make the sauce of red wine, chicken broth and canned whole tomatoes. The wine picks up the bits and pieces on the bottom of the pan, reduces down and becomes very full-bodied. Then the chicken and added garlic braises in that amazing broth for 45 minutes only to come out and join forces with those vegetables along with fresh basil, rosemary and capers. Holy Good Lord this is something out of Lydia's Italian kitchen! I couldn't figure my way out of a paper sack this week and yet I made this??? Unbelievable.





This dish is the perfect winter warmer. Braised meats are consoling and soothing. Winter is something to celebrate! Winter is male for sure. I'd say he's kinda magical. He says 'You don't have to love me yet, let's get high awhile'. Then you relax and start to get it. The holing up, the quiet on the streets, the time to just chill your ass out and just be for a couple of months without that big 'ole sun making you feel inadequate because you're not out in the park enjoying yourself or throwing some stupid ball around. The bitter cold sort of making your apartment feel like a birds nest. It's revitalizing and its like this dish and old man winter.







The part where I let my hick show is I didn't have any freshly made pasta so I had to serve it over elbow macaroni. You can take the girl out the trailer park....

Winter Wipe Out

This week will not be one that I will probably remember in the long term. January in general is a month I just sort of get through each year. If January were a color, it would probably be white. If it were a day of the week it would be Monday, obviously. Everyone must feel that a bit. You get through the holidays and then its just full-on winter with no marker in time to look forward to unless you're one of those freaks that likes Valentine's Day or something.

It could be a good month. I mean the whole future lies ahead. January is the start of a brand new year. But to me, all I see is white blank nothing. Its not necessarily bad but that's why I just get through it because I don't know what to do with all that blank space.

This week I also lacked a bit of inspiration in my cooking. Let's just say we had a lot of left over pork and no great sides.

Thank goodness P had the thought to bring home a basic frozen pizza from his Trader Joe's run. It was like Charlie Brown's little xmas tree. I had to sort of dress the little feller up. I added some ham and pineapple, a little cheddar and ricotta. The crust was great though. The salad was just seasoned tomatoes, green apples, arugula and chick peas but I made the vinaigrette with some of the pineapple juice and that really brightened the flavors. I love green apple in salads.

Next week I'll make some good stuff. I already have a couple of dishes in mind.

January is not so bad when you think about it. White as pure as the driven snow.

Cream Dream

I had no game plan at the PathMark this week. I went in hoping to find inspiration in the fresh seasonal produce. All the vegetables were wilted and on their last leg. Maybe last week's storm prevented the trucks from delivering? Regardless, I ended up with mixed bags of things on sale with no clear idea of how they'd go together. But that can be good. Sometimes I come up with a new dish when I have to be creative.

Then this morning on my ride to work while the icy sleet was pelting me in the face I realized I forgot to thaw out the chicken thighs. Tragic. What a rookie move. So I came up with a quick one pot supper tonight using arugula pesto. P doesn't really do pasta, so I have to disguise it somewhat. And the pasta vegetable ratio has to be skewed.




I wanted everything to be green because all you see outside now is dirty snow, white skies and black puff jackets. I found baby asparagus at the fifteen dollar store so I chopped those up and mixed them with peas and made the arugula pesto using walnuts, thyme, parsley and chicken stock. I had some turkey sausage that I chopped into small cubes and fried up with the onions and garlic to get a little crisp, then mixed that with some bow-tie pasta. I added a 1/4 cup of non-fat ricotta while the pasta was hot and then the veggies and pesto. Kind of a little cream dream.




The bright green color is refreshing and the ricotta gives it just enough smoothness to make up for all the lost olive oil, although I did use some. It tastes like a rich cream sauce but its not at all. The asparagus still has some bite and the peas just melt with the sauce while the thyme gives it fresh flavor. I'm stuffed after a small bowl.

Whole Lotta Love

Dementia has a lot of faces but one that I'm thinking of tonight is a sweet one. One night when I went to visit my mother at the rehabilitation hospital in Tucson on my visit, I was asking her if she had eaten anything that day. For some reason my mother would not eat there but she had a voracious appetite when she returned home. Anyway, she told me that her mother had given her lunch after school already and like many times a day, I went with her train of thought so as not to confuse her and it was also much more interesting. She went on to tell me of her mom making her pork tacos that day. She said it as if I was talking to my 8 year old little mom-child, with a slight accent and child's voice. The way she talked about her mom seemed so loving and thoughtful. The way you feel about your mother when you're that age and maybe come around to feel again if you're lucky. Her mother made her dresses and pants, everything she needed for school. She used fabric from anything she could find even potato sacks. I didn't know tons about my grandmother but to me she seemed like such a serious woman with a ton of worry and unhappiness. Her husband left her for a younger woman but it was never talked about. Its nice to think of her happy and making little clothes for my mother. And its always a wonderful thought to think of my little mom happy and going to school in new clothes with a nice sack lunch of tacos. I know she grew up in a suburb of Chicago during the depression. I'm sure it wasn't easy. It is easy to spot her in this school picture. She's the young one and her older sister is the taller one.


Tonight I thought about nice homemade tacos made with love and from good ingredients. I took the meat off of the baked chicken thighs and whipped up a little purple cabbage, green apple, red onion, jalapeno slaw to top them. I added green olives like I've had in some of the restaurants here on pork tacos and that really added a great little twist. Very good idea. Mission has a good yellow thin corn tortilla that heats up nicely right on the griddle without getting dry. No need to add oil.

Love Don't Live Here Anymore

I have a confession. I'm just going to say it. I hate football. Okay, the world didn't end so I'll keep going. I recently lost what very little I had for football. It just fizzled out silently like the end of a candle with no warning, lights out. The flame never burned bright by any means truth be told. I think I used to talk myself into trying to enjoy it by searching out any detail of the game that might interest me. But mainly I think I just wanted to be a cool girlfriend to be honest. Sometimes women have to do pathetic things in order to spend time with their partners too. But you know what, I can lie no longer. I got nothing for this game. I do not heart the NFL. I'm over Faith Hill butchering my girl Joan's song. And when are people gonna learn that putting on a brand new pair of leather boots or pants DO NOT make you a rocker. I just need this season to end. It does end doesn't it?


In the end though, a girl must make the best of her situation and when life gives you men chasing a ball back and forth for hours upon end airing every damn day of the week and your partner seems to be entirely captivated by this nonsense, then its time for you to surrender to its power and find your own good thing. And when I find it, I will surely let you know.

Two nights ago though before I had entirely given up on football love, I figured maybe a steak would give me the butch I needed to enjoy this treasured sport. Turns out no, still nothing but I did make my lightest collard greens side ever! I boiled them for 10 minutes in salty water before draining and then sauteed them in a bit of olive oil, garlic and chili oil. Then I just topped them with some bacon bits. The garlic and the heat from the chili oil brought out the flavors and they weren't missing anything.

Love on the Rocks

For reasons that would be unkind for me to share, I had to make a spice and pepper free dinner for P tonight. I'm still a hot mess and couldn't take on anything too involved because I had to work late and since some bastuhd decided he wanted to steal my bike seat and all the pipes and fittings that connect to it, I had to take the shuttle bus all week. That tacks on an additional 45 minutes of travel time and another hundred dollars to find all these small parts. Thanks mother fucker, I was not having a hard enough time with my mother in the hospital and having to take emergency family leave during a major holiday. ASSHOLE!!!!

But I'm sure he really needed the money. Not like me who is making tons of extra income working a crap job at a retail store that keeps cutting my hours!

The bad thing about getting ripped off or robbed or taken here in the city is that it ends up being about how you yourself screwed up. Like I should have wrapped my chain around the seat bar like I always do, to avoid it being stolen. That night, I was off late, trying to get inside because it was rainin'. I had a plastic bag over the seat and figured, 'it'll be okay just this once'. It was my fault. If you screw up or show weakness here, someone is going to be there to prey on that. Someone crawled up the fire escape and into our living room and proceeded to fill P's bike bag like a shopping cart with our computers and that turned out to be our dumb fault too for thinking we could have a fire escape window without bars on it. Luckily P chased the guy down and got our stuff back.

It might not show but I'm a little disappointed with the human race right now. There are a lot of great people out there and I still believe that but damned if there aren't also a lot of stupid, mean, crooked little stealin' bitches out there too.



So to bring some calm into the night I bought some organic baby bok choy and portabella mushrooms to serve with some chicken breast and basmati rice. I added just a touch of oyster & soy sauce. This will provide some calm to my otherwise shitty disposition and hopefully bring back some love into my cold, cold heart.

We Can Wok it Out

I got a $5 wok from IKEA and its become my weeknight buddy for super fast dinners. I figured it would last a couple meals and the handle would fall off or something but actually its very sturdy and I'd recommend it to anyone. I had done a lot of wok cooking while living in San Francisco. There we had abundant cheap, fresh shrimp and calamari, lots of fresh vegetables throughout the year. We lived amongst vegetarians, vegans and mostly wafer thin shoe-gazers as well as many small framed, Chinese and Japanese people. Oh and 7 foot tall drag queens with legs to their necks. It seemed everyone was twenty something and thin. Everything seemed effortless. It was easier to eat light also because California has amazing fresh produce that you didn't have to pay out your ass for. We were younger then of course and we could drink all night and only look bloated and haggard one afternoon and by next day we'd deflate and be fresh again. Except P's head, sometimes that took two days or so.

Now in New York, years later, its been a concentrated effort to try to eat better and stay fit. Things take days to recover, sometimes weeks. You have to work at it. But hey you can't be young forever and who wants to be? It's exhausting.

I sort of forgot about wok cooking until now. I didn't have room for a wok. And I still don't but you know what, I made room for it because its so dern useful. And its exciting! You have the high heat going, you're throwing things in and stirring fast and minutes later its all ready and steaming hot.



Wednesdays are usually the nights when I need to use up the perishables so tonight I made a quick stir fry with mushrooms, onions, beef kielbasa, garlic, cannellini beans and broccoli rabe. I added just a tablespoon of chili paste and some soy sauce.

Youth is overrated but being healthy and fit enough for your own body makes good sense. I'm not looking to turn back the clock. No, my motto is always forward, never back. I'm just looking to enjoy our future. And stay far away from doctors.

I See the Bad Moon Arising

Just as I suspected, last night was a full moon. You see every full moon, I get anxious, high-strung, I breathe heavier, you might call it panting. My heart feels like it beats faster, like I've been running. I crave meat and my mood is kinda foul. And if one were to really, really push me, I might just haul off and bite them. I'm actually not kidding. It's like a lunar PMS of sorts. I've always felt it, since I was a young girl. I'm not proud of it. This is a confession. I'm sharing.

Last night and most of yesterday I felt it, a little flu-ish, not well. My bones felt like they wanted to rip right out of my body. This morning I was still off and definitely not myself.

Anyway, I'm home, its over and I'm starting to calm down. For that I can be grateful. So now I need to make a quick supper that involves something good for me but more importantly some sort of red meat to quench this werewolf feeling I've been brewing. I reach for my cheap round steak. I don't mind fighting with my meat a bit, it helps release some of this pent up aggression actually. I have a fast Mustardy Kale recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mustardy-Kale-with-Bacon-350639) and that is the whole dinner plan. I did a quickie marinade on the steaks of stone ground mustard, Worcestershire sauce and lots of cracked pepper. I'm also toasting up a little Italian bread to soak up some of this angst.

Just like in the movies when the vampires knew to take care of themselves and shield their eyes from the sun or to feed by daybreak, I've learned to take care of this weird full moon whoo-do condition of mine. When it does come I eat meat and bread. If I have to work, like I did today, I white-knuckle through it and as soon as possible, I get my crazy ass home and try not to talk too much or scare the cats. I sleep like a bear and then its over the next day.

Don't Make Me Over

Sometimes (and a lot of times when you're cheap like me), unless you're rich and don't mind wasting food, you have to eat leftovers and things that don't normally go together necessarily. And sometimes, that can be just as good if not better!



We had a leftover breakfast and dinner this week. The jerk chicken was better the second time around but the heat didn't mellow one bit so I made a mild broccoli- cheese-pepperoni quesadilla side with sour cream to ease the burn.

The breakfast was poached eggs over a ranchero sauce made from leftover roasted tomato salsa from my pork stew and the rest of that pepperoni stick.



When P and I first started cohabitatin' about a hunnerd years ago I noticed he didn't eat leftovers, ever. That was a shock of sorts. What the hell, I thought. He's a nice guy. That's good fried chicken in there! ..or good leftover hamburgers or casserole. Where's this guys head at? Could it be that he's just not getting it? Does he get me? Guys are weird. Okay, women are clearly a little psychotic but men are weird. After single-handedly eating all the leftovers for a few months I finally asked him about it. He said he just never considered it. Never even considered it??? Really? If he could not consider that delicious half a cheeseburger and cold fries in that refrigerator and leave them for dead, what's he gonna do with me in 7 months??? And how about considering all those starving kids in Africa huh? And what was next? Is he gonna to tell me he doesn't like cilantro??? This was serious. I didn't even want to know his reasoning. I just knew I had to turn that ship around pretty quick if it was gonna work out.

It took awhile but I'm happy to report that I learned to makeover my leftovers a bit and dress them up to look more appealing to P and P learned to eat two day old mac and cheese among other things. Tonight he came home and said 'right on, there's still some pork stew left'. And I told him to suck it.

I come from Indiana with a blanket on my knees

Mexican Pork and Sweet Potato Stew. I found this great picture of a stew in Woman's Day Magazine. I tweaked the recipe because I had the time and I just fell in love with these ingredients together. They look like the fall leaves. The recipe is great for cooks in a rush to get dinner on the table. http://www.womansday.com/Recipes/Mexican-Pork-Sweet-Potato-Stew

Me, I have nothing but time on the weeknights so I took that time, did it up right. Red and green peppers, sweet potatoes, pork, corn, garlic and onion - that's good stuff. Instead of a store bought salsa, I went ahead and made a homemade roasted tomato chipotle salsa that really made the difference. I wanted a thick hearty stew, so I also added about a 1/4 cup of fine corn meal and a bit of cornstarch to thicken. I kept the spices simple but upped the amount of cumin and also added a 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg. The cumin and cinnamon with the pork is a warm blanket. I like blankets. I like to be warm in the fall with a blanket on my knees.

I totally get the blanket over the knees reasoning. I ride my bike all week to work and back and when the cold weather hits, my knees are the first ones to need some nursing. The best thing is to be a little cold indoors and have a nice blanket on my lap and my legs propped up on a stool. That's livin'. I think part of me has always been an elderly woman. I have been able to relate since I can remember. Even as a little girl I loved sitting on the steps facing down the hill looking out over the creek and woods behind our house and just sittin', listening, and being calm. I'd stroll down to the corner and visit this old man and his little chihuahua Lana, named after Lana Turner. Then I'd sit some more and listen to his stories. My friends used to call me grandma in San Francisco. I still liked to tear it up and burn it down but there was that side. Now at work, my coworkers tell me I have a musk that attracts the old birds and I love it. I love the old folks. I'd take an aged couple over newlyweds any day of the week as customers. They have been kicking around a long time. That's to be respected. They know things we don't and you see it in their eyes. They aren't caught up in their egos and they aren't afraid of anything anymore. They are no longer working so there is a calm to them that is foreign to some. They're not uptight. They don't have to be somewhere in 20 minutes, like most people in NY. What's not to like? These are my people. They like calm and quiet. I like calm and quiet and to relax in a chair with a blanket on my knees.

This stew is that blanket.

Hail yeah!

And now a hail storm? Okay, I don't remember the weather ever being this freaky here. No one is really making a big deal about it on the news but c'mon! we don't have hail storms in Brooklyn! That storm last night was violent, it hit quick and in an instant it was serious and scary rough. The lightning was like exaggerated movie lightning. The cars had to pull over because the street was like a river. Now tell me that is normal.

People were joking today at work about the 'wrath of God'. I wasn't laughing. I still get paranoid that I'll get struck down by lightning for making off color jokes. The nuns kinda did a number on my gullible nature. But I think it was for the best because I have a feeling I mighta done a lot worse without all the fear in me. I barely have time to mess up I'm always worrying. Lately, I worry that there was a big management change upstairs and the 1st Testament God is back. And he is not having any of this nonsense going on down here. And now he's gonna start messing with the controls.




Another theory is the earth is just rejecting humans altogether and trying to purge us out of it's atmosphere like a bad house guest. Who'd blame it.

The weather's freaky, I'm freaky but I got my P back and all is well. That means its time to eat. I mentioned this Japanese Curry Udon that I had eaten on so many lunch breaks in Times Square (see This Bird has Flown) at a little hole in the wall. I kept thinking of it after making my Indian chicken curry with potatoes this week and I just had to get that flavor back in my belly.

Well to celebrate P's homecoming I put this together quickly after work and it was a success! I made the Udon noodles in its little soup broth in a wok, added the fresh spinach just to wilt, bowled it up and then ladled a big scoop of the curry and chicken - topped that with the green onions and man, it was super close to the soup I remembered. I hope they serve this up there or wherever I end up.