Sometimes the best-laid menu plans go awry. This afternoon I was busy repotting plants and taking the Grim Reaper (my little scythe) to some overgrown plants off the lower deck. Julian wisely asked, “Are you going to have time to make the bun bo Hue tonight? Why don’t you do the orecchiette and I’ll do the soup tomorrow?” No contest.
We’ve had shrimp and grits on the menu for the last three weeks. Have we made it yet? No. The reasons: the shrimp didn’t get thawed or we had ample leftovers from previous nights. It may get made this week. We’ll see.
Julian wanted to get out of the house today. “How about we go downtown, get piroshkys, and eat them in the park?” There was a long line outside Piroshky Piroshky, so we went with plan B. The Seatown is a small iteration of local restaurateur Tom Douglas’s empire, now mostly shuttered due to the pandemic. Julian had a halibut fish sandwich, while I had baby back ribs with a mango salsa. This was the first time we’ve eaten inside a restaurant since pandemic lockdown. The outside tables were full because of the gorgeous weather. Luckily, staff took great care to reduce risk all around.
After lunch, Julian needed a caffeine fix. His usual place was closed on Sunday. A nearby coffee shop had just closed. We walked up Western Avenue and found a Georgian café, Skalka. (Many of you know that my honorary niece was born in the Republic of Georgia. The breads I had over there were amazing.) In addition to food and drink, Skalka carries assorted Georgian foods. I picked up two sauces for future experiments.
We got plenty of exercise today running around downtown Seattle. While a lot of storefronts are still closed and boarded up, some signs of life can be seen. Many vendors at Pike Place Market are still going strong. Construction on the waterfront is proceeding. And people are coming back. If we can keep the fourth surge of Covid cases at bay, we might have a good summer.
As with many tasks, cooking can be problematic for those of us who are left-handed. Can openers, liquid measuring cups, kitchen shears, and instant-read thermometers are built for right-handed people. There used to be a store in Pike Place Market that carried items for left-handed folks, but it disappeared 10-15 years ago. Probably the rent got too damn high. Nevertheless, I persist. Julian decided he needed to replace his roux-stirring implement, a flat-bladed wooden tool properly known as a spurtle. He found a slotted one at Williams Sonoma, but wasn’t happy with it. A little searching revealed a company that makes spurtles specifically for making Cajun-style roux. He showed me his purchase. I took one look and said, “That’s for right-handed stirring.” He smiled and pulled a second one out of his back pocket: “They make left-handed ones, too.”
In the six years since we bought Casa Sammamish, we’ve replaced the microwave/ventilation fan, range, refrigerator, rice cooker, espresso machine, sink, garbage disposal, gas grill, and coffee grinder. This means our dishwasher has a large target on it.
Farming is the ultimate faith-based pursuit. Last year’s debacle (documented here) should have deterred me from further efforts. Nevertheless, I persist.
Last week we went to Sky Nursery in search of herbs and other plants. It’s still a bit early to put peppers, basil, and such outside, so I restrained myself to hardier crops. I got two types of mint, two types of chives, and rau ram (alias Vietnamese coriander). I also bought two varieties of fuchsias and three types of ferns for the shady planters out front. Last year deer or rabbits savaged the impatiens. I hope the critters don’t go after the ferns. I needed some potting soil and compost. The latter had all sorts of tasty ingredients in it, including bat guano.
This afternoon I decided to repot most of my purchases. It was raining and windy, but the planters on the north side of the condo are sheltered from the wind. I made reasonably quick work of the planting, mostly in an attempt to stay warm. My next door neighbor, the Master Gardener, came home while I was working. She observed, “This is an unusual day to be planting.” My response, “The ferns don’t mind.”
I’ll need to get some more potting soil before I repot anything else. (Those large bags don’t go very far.) I’ll check out what Yakima Fruit Market has in store. It usually has nice petunias. I’m also thinking about a bleeding heart or two for the planter boxes. Stay tuned.
A large package arrived from my sister. Julian hoped it was more Junior’s cheesecake, as Terry knows how much he likes it. Usually QVC sends that directly to us. In addition, the package was way too big for even Junior’s largest confection. After digging through about a month’s worth of upstate New York newspapers, this is what I found:
It’s a picture of my mother, taken when she was a little girl. I needed a place to hang it, since most of our windows face south and it would get bleached fast. Luckily, the portrait fit on the wall to the left of my desk. Mom never got to visit Casa Sammamish. She was unsteady on her legs and didn’t want to repeat the fall she took in our garage on her last visit to Seattle. In a way, she finally made it here.
While ordering pizza is easy, making it isn’t particularly difficult. Making your own allows you to get the crust as thin or thick as you like. You can add a little whole wheat flour, or even sourdough starter. You can also put whatever you’ve got in the fridge or cupboard on the pie.
Tonight’s pizza was relatively unadorned: Canned pasta sauce, mozzarella cheese, and kalamata olives. I made the dough in the morning. I used a Mark Bittman recipe that came together in the food processor. I added a little Yeast Mode for flavor more than leavening. In retrospect, I probably should have used more all-purpose flour rather than bread flour. The resulting dough was quiet glutenous. After a while it covered the bottom of the half sheet pan. I added the toppings and baked for about 15 minutes. An easy dinner.
My mother died on January 28 at age 88. She collapsed at the nursing home where she lived. She was revived and taken to a nearby hospital. She had low blood pressure that couldn’t be stabilized, kidney failure, possible pneumonia, and extensive blood clots in her legs. The prognosis was grim, so my sister had her taken off life support. My sister and niece were able to be at her bedside when she passed.
Rather than give a traditional biography, I’ll give a few episodes to illustrate the woman Mom was. She practically earned a nursing degree from her years caring for my brother, who was born with spina bifida. As a result, Lyle lived to be 45 – no mean feat, since most kids born with spina bifida in 1960 didn’t make it past 7. He was able to live at home his entire life. In his last years, he had nurses’ aides to help when Mom couldn’t maneuver him. She was at his bedside when he died of kidney failure in 2006.
Mom got into crafts in her 50’s. She started out making Cabbage Patch-like dolls. My niece got an early version, which my sister named the Onion Head Baby. I got one, which I named Libby. Later on, she started making quilts for family, friends, and patients at the Veterans’ Hospital in Syracuse. One day she was describing the quilt she was making for somebody’s baby when I asked, “What about my babies (the cats)?” A package arrived on my next birthday, containing two cat-sized quilts. Our current pair of felines sleep on them all the time. I also have queen size and lap quilts that she made. Her final craft obsession was adult coloring books. When she first moved into the nursing home, Terry had to bring many of her books and marking pens down. As certain colors ran dry, Terry had to deliver fresh pens to the nursing home.
One memory that sticks in my mind was the cookout we had the day after my nephew’s wedding in 2014. My brother-in-law’s dad (Stan Sr.), sister, nephew, and nephew’s girlfriend were there along with my family. Mom’s first job after high school was at the Birdseye plant in Fulton, and Stan Sr. was her boss. They had a blast reminiscing about that summer. A great many guys were quite interested in the new girl in the lab – one of whom became our father.
The pandemic and resulting lockdown affected Mom’s cognitive ability, as it did many others in long-term care facilities. I bought her a simple cell phone the last time I was in New York. She’d forget to recharge it or fail to answer it. Terry then got her a land line. She’d never answer it, either. On the occasions that we could talk to her, she mentioned that her parents were there. She never gave up on the idea that she’d get a car and an apartment in Hannibal again.
Was her death due to Covid-19? Not sure. The nursing home tested residents several times a week and she’d always tested negative. She got her second vaccination a week before she died. The blood clots in her legs were probably due to not moving around much, although some people infected with the virus develop blood clots. I’d say that Covid-19 contributed to her death rather than caused it.
[You were probably wondering when I’d get back to posting about food. Here you go.]
When I was cooking for myself, chili was my standard Sunday dinner menu item. It was cheap and provided leftovers for lunch. Chili was also adaptable to whatever meat or beans I had on hand. (Yes, Texans, I usually made chili with beans when I lived in Dallas. Deal with it.) These days I don’t make chili very often. Julian prefers the Texas all-meat-all-the-time recipe. However, every so often we make Cincinnati chili.
The Cincinnati variant of chili has a unique set of ingredients and structure. The recipe in the latest edition of Joy of Cooking includes allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and unsweetened chocolate. All well and good; however, the Joy recipe calls for boiling the ground meat. We do not boil hamburger in this home. I wound up browning the meat and adding the spices, onion, garlic, and tomato sauce. That was left to simmer. As dinnertime approached, I grated cheese, cooked up some spaghetti, and chopped some more onion. I also microwaved some canned red beans.
For an authentic five-way Cincinnati chili, one ladles chili on top of the spaghetti, tops that with beans, then sprinkles the top with onion and cheese. Some versions also put oyster crackers on top, but that’s something we never have in the house. A fine weekend dinner.
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