Category Archives: Uncategorized

Keep yer hands off my pickle!
Photo by Mark Finkenstaedt,
and I did the pumpkin carving and also, ever so gently, whacked that hatchet into his noggin. He almost split in two and I think I heard a muffled shriek. Poor thing. But he gave his life to good effect and it is for Halloween, after all. In the blink of an eye he will be utterly obsolete. Or the squirrels’ll get him.

Warning! Shameless Plug Ahead!

The Washington Post Weekend cover story is

Ready, Set, Glow

and there is a slide show – Pumpking Carving 101 – with audio (me) here:
washingtonpost.com

Carvers, start your engines!

Drawing by Jackie Shaffer

Why is toast so pleasing?

Anticipation is a large part of pleasure, is it not? Watching the faintest hint of glow on the coils before they turn hell-red hot. The timer tick, tick, ticks.

Although, if bread transformed to toast in warp time, it would still taste as good. I had a roommate who used to spread peanut butter on her toast hard, spreading, spreading, spreading, with vigor and endurance. Took me months to risk interrupting her concentration to ask why. She was mixing the crumbs in with the peanut butter for texture. Yes, toast is synonymous with texture.

If you are in need of toaster ephemera The Toaster Museum Foundation is your dream destination.

Personally, I am a sucker for toaster anything. When I die, there will be a sad shelf at the Goodwill covered with all my tiny toasters. Probably with green (.49) tags. I saw someone’s frog collection there. Now, isn’t that what kids are for? To kindly pitch your knick-knacks and salvage your post-mortem pride.

But who knew who
Who wrote the book of lunch

Tell me, tell me, tell me
Who wrote the book of lunch
Well, I’ve got to know the answer
Is it someone from above

Oh, I wonder, wonder who
But who knew who
Who wrote the book of lunch

Baby, baby, baby
I love you, yes I do
And it says so in this book of lunch
That I’m the one that’s true

Oh, I wonder, wonder who
But who knew who
Who wrote the book of lunch

Kopp’s in Milwaukee
They wrote the book of lunch
Order your cheeseburger

Then wait in a big crunch
Of folks who’re cravin custard,
And fries and shakes and such.

No need to wonder, wonder who
Cause you knew, who
Who wrote the book of lunch.

Pick Your Own
I’ve been a big fan of Talk o’ Texas Pickled Okra for ages and can crunch through an entire jar while fixing lunch. Just fine with the grocery store brand, I have never looked over the fence. Good thing cause those fancy brands are going gangbusters.

And get this, Oprah (Winfrey, ha ha) has a SANDWICH DEVELOPMENT TEAM. TEAM.

A note from Rick, of Rick’s Picks:

Friends of Rick’s Picks:

Rick

I must say, the stuff Rick’s Picks puts in jars is superlative. He’s got a way with words,too. All his products have tongue pleasing names.

Gotta run to the mailbox now to check for a personal thank you note from Oprah for the shout out.

Click to enlarge please.
In the wise words of Brian Henneman, “Anything tastes good if you put enough mustard on it.”

What is PostSecret?

Here is Post Secret.

I saw the PostSecret mustard message at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore on Saturday. The current exhibit is:

All Faiths Beautiful
October 6, 2007 – August 31, 2008

“Be it deeply personal, a work in progress, a torment or a blessing – what we believe and especially what we don’t is our most precious life-shaping, human experience. Freedom to express that personal belief is central to any notion of liberty.”

AVAM brings me conveniently to

and serendipitiously to Pepper Mouser at

which links toHarrod Blank

and ~ blink ~ to Harrod’s father Les Blank whose films include “Yum, Yum, Yum” and “Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers”.

Send a postcard. Taste the world.

Do it again. Click to enlarge.
Thank you for this postcard, Flannel. 32 cent stamp on the back. Doing the math….you and I were about 16 at that time. Addressed to George, Lisa and the Amazing Hoop Jumping Dogs. Oh wait. Whoops. Made an error in my calculations – we were 26.

Lord have mercy, butter is the dairy queen in Milwaukee! As in, ooooh, a pool of melted butter on a small plate with a deep well. Oozing cheeseburger atop and served while hot.

Have I mentioned that Milwaukee is a great town for eating? One crisp tenner will get you a top notch lunch. Hold the pretension.

Did a weekend slide-in, stand-up to Solly’s in Milwaukee last week.

The sides are nice at Solly’s. Hadn’t had a malt in eons. Used to eat malt powder off the spoon when I was a teenager and always in dire need of calories. Malt is weird, but it sure is good. Who ever thought of adding it to ice cream?!?

Solly’s is not splashy, thank the heavens above, unless you drop your butter burger into the yellow puddle on the plate, sploosh. Eight tablespoons of butter, that would be one whole STICK!, has tsunami potential. That number eight? I did not make it up. That is, PER burger.

Heavens to Betsy (H2B), scootch up to the double loop counter and slip through a lunch with me! Slip and slide and open wide. Yikes, stripes, what a spot. What a SPOT on my shirt. Big ole spot of liquid butter, or hamburger grease, hard to know which. Oh who cares?

Grilled onions on this baby? Oh slay me now.

Buns and butter everywhere and still tidy as a tack. I’m from Wisconsin and I’m PROUD.

Cowgirl Creamery on F Street in DC. Quite decadent for this buttoned up and pressed down town.

The location could not be better. Central Liquors has been around a long, long time, and for good reason.

Cowgirl’s not just for cheese anymore.

Up front there are two baskets of sandwiches. No distant blackboard menu to squint at, no combinations to consider. No silly sandwich names to confuse you. Do you really want to order an AbraHam-on-Rye Lincoln? Or a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Daschle on Wheat? Hell, I could never bring myself to order a Double R Bar Burger. Too silly. Anyway, I don’t want to do the reading.

These nice cheese people do the thinking for you. How lovely. Meat and no meat. We took one of each.

These are pared down, minimalist, tastefully simple, relying on the quality, European type sandwiches. Chew slowly. Pay attention. Where’d they get those nice flat, rosette-esque rolls? Nice crackly tops. Fra’ Mani Salumi salami. Mmmm. With mustard. The arugula was a bit sad, but that’s ok. The no meat wich? It was missing something, a certain je ne sais quois. Oh yeeaaahhhh, meat!

See the shirt? Cool Yayhoos T from their site. Know the band? If you don’t, you oughter.

YEEHAW! and YAYHOO!

A tiny taste of what they do at Yeehaw Industries in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Jones Soda is darn good. This Seattle outfit bends the boundaries of typical soda pop preferences. Candy Corn is a current fave, sweetened with pure cane sugar. Aiiiieee, makes me teeth hurt to think about it.

Aaaaw. But. The pimento loaf fits on it so nicely.

When am I going to stop about tomatoes? This year those red devils have gone on and on and on due to weird, hot, August-in-October weather. At least for folks who grew them. That would not be us. I just read about it.

I’m tired of tomatoes. Tomatoes as symbol. Tomatoes as the poster vegetable for all that is wrong with food in America these days. Lousy tomatoes. Them are the ones I have been encountering lately.

Homegrowns? Different story. I looked around the yard though, and didn’t find any.

“We don’t need any extra people around this house, Mom,” said my seven-year-old astutely and recently. “Just you and me is enough.”

I feel sorry that our household is not more lively, that he doesn’t have any siblings, that it isn’t bustling around here like it might be. Much of the stuff that qualifies as “family life” in my terms, is not happening.

And we didn’t grow tomatoes. For example. Gardens need TLC and we are a little short on that. We may not need any extra people, but we sure could use a gardener.

Speaking of the yard, we have kind of a big one. Could someone come play in it? Would someone like to plant it?

You can’t just send your kids out to play these days. Cause if you do, the neighbors will frown. And your kid won’t find any free electrons looking for a molecule to join. This is old news, of course, and I’m not going to reiterate the griping.

Tomatoes to eat, ripened on the vine? Of those I will never tire. Enough is never enough. Maybe one of these years we will try it. This was the year for watermelons. So easy. They are huge. You harvest five and everyone applauds.

We didn’t share. (Come to think of it, we don’t need any extra people around this house.)

But we might get some chickens!

Asked my New York friend James, a man with a good appetite and an adventurous one, what he thinks about meatloaf sandwiches. His response was,

Don’t eat the loaf. If I’m gonna eat meat, I’ll opt for a rare steak or burger.

And I wrote, Funny. Don’t eat the loaf sounds like a command. How bout choppped liver? Thinkin he must eat chopped liver now and then.

And he answered,

Only once a year at a Passover seder … and only from a known source, like my Aunt Harriet or Artie’s Deli.

Why do we need to know what is in meat mixtures and want to know the source, but are unconcerned about other unknown mixtures? Is this primordial?

I too eat chopped liver, but I eat meatloaf as well, and other mixtures that might put fear in your heart.

Used to make chopped liver, pretty often, from my friend Joanie’s recipe, but it’s been a while. Who around here would eat it now? Well, me.

Here’s what’s in it:
JOANIE’S CHOPPED LIVER
2 pounds chicken liver, floured lightly
2 medium onions
4 hb eggs (hardboiled)
S & P
My instructions are typed with a typewriter. I believe it was a baby blue Royal Safari. I loved that typewriter.
Mince onions.
Sweat one onion in butter.
Add liver and cook until done but not overdone.
Grind all together in a meat grinder; not a food processor (I have one of those, a meat grinder that is, around here somewhere.) Season well.

I corrected the typos, charmingly antique as they were.

That’s it. Good on a corned beef sandwich. Good on a cracker.

Count your blessings, this recipe has no shmaltz so you don’t have to wrangle any. Nothing wrong with schmaltz, I just think it is not a standard pantry item. Joanie goes for butter, fine Wisconsin gal that she is. Butter is so nice in a skillet.

This chopped liver thing brings to mind a recent self-revelation.

I’m a closet JAP. Not anymore. Not since I started typying this. Now I can stop fighting it and embrace my stereotype. Had dinner with a first cousin recently who said, “She could not afford herself”. Bingo! The hair, the nails, the clothes, travel and jewelry, the granite foyer and Mercedes. Well, not the granite foyer, that’s not me. I cannot afford myself, and have sentenced myself to a lifetime of hard work to support my (very optional) lifestyle choices.

Aha, I have cracked my code. Primordial indeed. Took me long enough.

Oil of Oyvey