Category Archives: Uncategorized

Plush Toast

When did toast become so CUTE?

In 1982 I had a roommate who ate peanut butter toast each morning. I did not know her well, or rather, she did not know me well since I moved in on her suddenly. Whoops! So… when she did things inexplicable, I let it go, or stored it away in my curiosity bin. Every morning she spread her toast with peanut butter and then spread, spread, spread, HARD, with the butter knife, top to bottom, head to toe, foundation to rafter, till her peanut butter was crumbed, and her toast was thin as cardstock. Smoking all the while.

I  was learning to type on my baby blue Royal Safari and I clacked away, yakking and typing and watching the toast crumbs beg for mercy. Glance at the typing manual, listen to the scraping, glance, wince, glance, clack, scrape, clack, scrape, yak, long drag off the cigarette, clackety-clack.

Those were the days. The days of toast and smoke.

Let’s do lunch. At the gas station! Let’s make a painting. Of the gas station windows! I just love these. Photo-sub-realism.

We pulled in cause the gas was $1.57/gallon, and filled up the tank, all 2 gallons of it. Musta saved at least 14 cents. The lunch club fund is swelling. Before you can say “Light on the mayo” we’ll be tucking crispy paper napkins under our chins and bellying up to the microwave at the Eleven-7 Tire Town.

Ever-Steady Heights Correspondent Mike shot these, then ate them, not both I presume. Mike’s cheesesteaks look so much more luscious to me than those on Abner’s website. Cheesesteaks oughta look loose, like they just got outta bed. Never prim and proper and tucked in tight.

See Abner’s 20 second cheesesteak here.

Me: So, Mike, just how was that cheesesteak?
Mike: It was good. Much better than one I had in northern NJ this weekend. Not especially distinctive, but reasonably priced, fast AND the cook kept a tip area in the corner of the grill.

Proximity is often the most essential element in eating.

See (below) what happens when a stylist intercedes. The artistry is ~vamoose~.

Well, well, well, this is just what I do at work each day. Don’t eat that sandwich!!! It may look tasty – it BETTER look tasty – but there could be a pin or two lurking, or a bit of superglue sealing the cracks in the ham. Life is all smoke and mirrors anyway, is it not? Illusion is our friend. This time of year I do my best to maintain the illusion of sanity. Thank heaven for all the styling aids – make-up, alcohol, accessories, fantasy, strong coffee and disengagement. Serenely smiling I dream on.

And while we are reading of what to dream about…..
WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING
Besotted parent story ahead.

Last night, in his sleep, my Teddy said, “If Jack Frost needs help, then help him!”

Merry Christmas everyone. 

With love and respect,

Midnight Snack

I can tell when someone’s been eating Candy Cane Joe-Joe’s cause Santa has his back turned. Punished or sulking? Can only assume he gets turned en route to the edge of the counter and back. My son is quiet with the cookie jar lid, but he leaves tracks.

Because Joe Joe’s are a sandwich cookie, I feel free to talk about them in this forum. So, I’m gonna talk. About Joe Joe’s. About why there is an unnecessary apostrophe in the cookie name. Why is there an unnecessary apostrophe? So odd and out of place.

My generous friend Heidi, who arrives bearing Joe Joe’s, is an apostrophe stickler and these are her words, “I forgive Trader Joe’s, although it makes them seem stupid. Maybe I should write a note.”

Noted.

to suffer. By saying that I realize I have just driven off 87.7% of my friends.

Need I list December’s shortcomings? Hours of daylight, disposable dollars and time enough with the ones you miss are all in such glaringly short supply. No one wants to be reminded.

This time of year I suffer. Ghastly. The perfect malatov cocktail of joy and grief. Ghastly only comes in two flavors. So good it’s bad. So bad it’s good.

Proximity has no bearing on intensity in my life. You/it/whatever may be long ago and/or faraway and I can miss you/it/whatever with all my heart.

Could a happy sandwich be the antidote?

Happy Solstice!

Sandwich Soft Book
From The Spoonflower Fabric Designs Pool

Very cute. I can get sucked in just like the best of us. Babies, toddlers, kids. They are cute as buttons and we want them to eat right. And to eat well. And then they make you crazy. About 8 years in you think you will go mad – at least I do – from cooking so plain. Lord how I miss food with green specks.

Here’s how I cope. In your pantry you must keep these things:

Roasted pepper relish
Thinly sliced garlic slowly steeped in olive oil till golden
Red pepper flakes
Preserved lemons, minced
Sriracha
Anchovies mashed with mustard and lemon

And in the fridge it never hurts to have Italian parsley – just tear those leaves up and drop ’em all over your plate, basil – same thing, and horseradish.

Spoon, drizzle, sprinkle, smear these things liberally on foods so plain you want to cry – delicious until the 11148th time – such as mashed potatoes, pasta, pizza, eggs, grilled cheese, white rice and toast.

My not-so-secret kitchen survival tip #103.

Liver Mush:

Pork liver, pork broth, pork fat, pork rind, corn meal, wheat flour, rice flour, salt, spices, caramel color.

It is not that bad, really. All things pork and liver and mush are good with me. Respect the pig and all beasts who die to feed us. The only thing I question in an essential way is the caramel color, although I imagine it is made by caramelizing vegetables and stuff, just like Kitchen Bouquet. Unnecessary, but benign. The rest of it may be largely filler for the body and I take no issue with harmless calories. Working so hard, damn if I don’t need ’em.

And mush…well, mush is one of the best words in the English language. Not used enough in loving descriptions.

I can’t love you enough.
You soak up all of my stuff.
You’re such sponge to my mu-ush.
I can’t love you enough.

PS From Malcolm (this is covered in a comment, but I am reiterating it here for emphasis):
Liver mush is just one name for it … the other may be even worse: Liver PUDDING. They call it scrapple “up north.” But I actually like this stuff. Slice it and fry it with butter, eat between two pieces of toasted Merita white bread. Mustard and lettuce make it great, even a little mayo.

And, he continues

When I was a kid, there were only two brands of bread: Sunbeam and Merita. Sunbeam was pitched as the bread without holes in it, whereas Merita was more coarse (and better) but my mom would only buy Sunbeam. There was also Roman Meal, but that was “diet bread” so we never ate that.

Let us now praise lefse. Potatoes are a food with broad shoulders – delicious, nutritious, easy to grow, versatile. Did you know you can live on potatoes, practically? So says my mother. She even takes it so far as to claim that you can practically live on potato chips. Explains the Irish potato famine. Too much dependence on one crop.
 
1. With a little butter.
2. With a little more butter.
3. With lots of butter.

Which came first, the potato or the cow?

Among the seven of us we have three griddles, six pins, six turning sticks, three rolling boards and countless pin sleeves, courtesy of my mother who shops in the midwest each summer. Pretty much no one wants to roll except three of us. So we do. I like the zen of rolling. Ella has the soul of a lefse roller, very calm and quiet. I store up that part of my soul for an entire year each year, to be milked dry annually when we make lefse for Christmas.

Uff da! You can say that again. Chipped Beef and Cheez Whiz. Saves on pots and pans. Open, heat and eat. Oooooph dah.

A good all meat weiner. Does it really say ALL MEAT? Okay. I’m down with that, although I go for a little filler. Freeze for future use?? Say what? Say why?!?

A hundred pieces of brown-spotted, translucent, noodle-tender lefse later…

…we sat down….

…for hot tea and stollen, as any Scandinavian worth their weight in potatoes would do.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Artware Editions makes a lovely self-adhesive Christmas tree that stores conveniently in a tube from year to year. Appropriate, and reusable, trimmings includethis realistic sandwich sticker and this breakfast biscuit sticker which is not so tiny in real life. (Seeing as I have the patience of a flea with things computer, the miniscule image is my best effort.)

Quite sure my short patience span has been registered in bold for decades at the north pole. Not expecting a motherlode under my tree. The beauty of a flat tree? Under-the-tree gift domain does not exist.