The snow and ice of the last week meant that we didn’t feel safe driving. I can drive in the winter provided that the yahoos in SUVs stay home; unfortunately, anyone who drives one of these thinks they’re invincible – and winds up in the ditch. We ventured to the grocery store Christmas Eve morning once the roads got clean to get ingredients for the White Elephant dinner. We also had a non-frozen duck on reserve for our traditional Christmas duck à l’orange.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have claustrophobia that’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. I knew this was going to be the perfect storm, and I was right. The parking lot in front of the store was jammed. We wound up parking two blocks away. Luckily, most of the snow, ice, and slush had disappeared by that morning.
I told Julian that we would not be dilly-dallying – just get what’s on the list and vamoose. Vamoosing was easier said than done. The line for the self-checkout stands extended to the main entrance. Fortunately, folks were mostly in a good mood and rolled with the crowds. It took us a half hour to reach a human-staffed register. I got on line with the cart while Julian picked up a few things we’d forgotten along the way. Once we finally checked out, Julian stayed with the cart while I brought the car over to the pick up point. My blood pressure returned to its normal range once we got to the Bothell city limits.
We managed to forget a few things on Saturday’s jaunt (plus we needed to get gas for my car and supplies for the bums), so we ventured out to Woodinville this afternoon. Fewer crowds and shorter lines. Traffic was a little heavy, but I found a sneaky route into the shopping center. We stayed away from the post-Christmas sales. I think I’ve done enough shopping for a few days.
As I mentioned in the previous post, we had an ice storm here Thursday night. King County Metro canceled all of its bus routes until about 3 pm Friday, when they went to the snow routes. Our driveway was a sheet of ice until Saturday morning
Since we were scheduled to go to the annual Christmas Eve Latkepalooza/White Elephant exchange Saturday night, we needed to make our contributions to the festivities. One of our contributions was the Infamous Eggnog Bread. This batch included dried cranberries, raisins, and dried apricots. I didn’t include nuts because there’d be a few new bellies around the table and I didn’t know their dietary aversions/allergies. I tried a different brand of eggnog for the recipe because that was what was available in quarts. This meant a taste test – pretty good, but a little heavy on the nutmeg.
Making the other contributions had to wait until we could get to the grocery store. More about that shortly. I made applesauce to go with the latkes, while Julian made crème brûlée. (Note: Our hosts have a corgi pup named Latke. He was NOT be on the menu).
Snow days aren’t what they used to be. The three of us would wait breathlessly to hear, “Hannibal Central School is closed”, from the TV or radio. It always seemed as if Hannibal was the last school in the county to close. We believed that if the district superintendent couldn’t see the barn across the street from his house, school would close. I don’t know why some enterprising student didn’t test this hypothesis by covering his front windows with spray-can snow.
As an adult, I also looked forward to snow days. When I lived in Dallas, I heard on TV that the Medical Center where I worked and took classes was closed. HOT DOG! I shoveled my driveway and sidewalk, then shoveled my elderly neighbors’ drive and walk as well. Ruby and Virgil thought I was stark raving mad, but they appreciated it. Little did I know that UT-Southwestern issued a retraction of the closure while I was shoveling. To quote a former governor of Texas, “Oops.” Later on, I used snow days as an excuse to play in the kitchen (see this post).
Now that I’m working from home, a snow day is just another day. I log onto my work computer and slave away. Earlier in the week, I amused myself for an hour shoveling my driveway. I logged it on the Apple Watch as “functional strength training.” The result was a dry and clear driveway so I could drag the trash cans back into the garage without risking a broken leg. Unfortunately, we got an ice storm overnight. Today our driveway could be used as a luge track. The weather’s supposed to warm up this afternoon so we might be able to get out and fetch groceries, including our traditional Christmas duck.
One of the biggest quandaries of Thanksgiving is what to do with the turkey carcass. You could keep picking away at the scraps of meat until the bones are clean. My preferred way of dealing with the carcass is to make turkey carcass soup. In past years, the soup has been standard turkey noodle; however, this year I made pho. Chicken pho is pho ga, so turkey pho should logically be named pho gobble.
Here’s the recipe of sorts: Start by putting the turkey carcass, preferably with some meat still on the bones, into a large pot. You may have to do some butchering to get the carcass to fit. Add water just to cover the carcass, then set it on the stove over medium heat to boil. While the water’s heating, peel two medium yellow onions and halve about a 2-inch piece of ginger lengthwise. Place the onions and ginger on a foil-lined pan and broil until the edges get charred, then add them to the pot. You can also add a stick of lemongrass. Add fish sauce or soy sauce to taste. Once the water comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 90 minutes. The meat attached to the bones should come off easily. Remove the carcass, onions, and ginger from the pot and pick off any more meat, discarding the skin and fat. Keep simmering the broth while you prepare the rest of the soup fixings.
Unlike most chicken or turkey noodle soups, the noodles are cooked separately. Use rice vermicelli. These noodles cook in about 5 minutes. Drain the noodles and rinse several times before adding to the soup. Rice noodles give off a lot of starch and can stick together in a gluey mass unless you rinse them. Prepare a plate with assorted herbs and lime wedges to garnish the soup. Cilantro and basil are good choices. You can also add mint. If you live near a Vietnamese grocery, try rau ram (Vietnamese coriander) or red shiso. You can also add bean sprouts, but I don’t use enough of them after the soup’s finished. Shredded cabbage in small amounts can also be added. In our house, sriracha is a must.
The final product came out very well. We ran an aliquot of it down to our friends who were in town from Michigan who had brought a nasty case of the flu to Seattle. They were most appreciative.
Although we live in Washington, I still have a hankering for the foods of my youth. This mostly applies to produce. I’m a farm girl. I have family and friends in the orchard business. I prefer east coast apple varieties to those routinely grown here.
I pulled into Yakima Fruit Market earlier in the month to pick up some lettuce for a Thai beef salad. When I looked at the apple varieties, I saw a huge mound of Rome Beauties. Be still, my fibrillating heart! These are my preferred apples for applesauce. They’re not as sweet as the currently popular Honeycrisps and Cosmic Crisps. They also taste more apple-y.
I used my time-honored recipe from this post. The red pigment from the peels turned the resulting applesauce a deep pink. It was also thick and chunky, just the way I like it. I think I’ll get some more Rome Beauties before the fruit market closes for the season.
I don’t have much luck growing mint. I can grow buckets of basil and Vietnamese coriander. I had a lemongrass plant in my former office. However, successful mint cultivation escapes me. It never winters over well. I have to buy new plants every year. It gets leggy and doesn’t taste as strong as the supermarket herbs.
Many years ago, friends planted some mint in the postage-stamp-sized plot of soil that Julian had on his apartment’s patio. The stuff came back and crowded out everything else year after year. For all we know, there’s still some mint outside that apartment 30 years after he moved out. Mint is about the only plant Julian had success growing, which doubles my misery.
I threw out this year’s mint plants today. The aphids had feasted on the plants for weeks. Maybe this was a good thing. By devouring the mint, the aphids ignored the basil and other plants on the upper deck.
Julian cooks ribs on the grill for most holidays in the summer. Usually he smokes them and makes his North Carolina-style sauce to slather them at the end of cooking. (Note: His sauce is in the tomato-based Lexington style. East of Raleigh, the sauce is vinegar and cayenne pepper. I won’t discuss the mustard-based abomination folks in South Carolina torture their pork with.) He decided to try a different sauce for Labor Day: Red-eye barbecue sauce. The link in the previous sentence is very close to what he made.
An explainer: Traditional red-eye gravy consists of two ingredients, drippings from a slice of fried country ham and strong black coffee. According to Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking, the red eye is derived from a circle of reddish fat that forms on the surface of the gravy. My belief is that the originator was too hung over to know what they were doing when they poured coffee into the skillet. The barbecue sauce Julian made had coffee in it, along with more traditional tomato-based sauce ingredients. I’m not sure that Lexington Barbecue #1 or Stamey’s uses shallots in their sauce recipes, though.
The ribs came out fine. The sauce wasn’t particularly sweet and had the telltale bitterness from the coffee. The bitterness was less pronounced when we had leftovers the next day for lunch. Perhaps the sauce needed time to let the flavors meld better. Julian usually doesn’t like coffee in other dishes, and I rarely touch the stuff. We’re not sure we’ll make it again.
Acclimating Dudley to our home has been challenging. We haven’t had a kitten in over 11 years, so we’re a bit rusty in kitten-proofing. In addition, our previous two homes were ranches. We didn’t have to worry about what might be going on upstairs or downstairs. Each feline has its own personality quirks to consider as well. A few examples of lessons learned the hard way:
Dudley loves to explore the kitchen counters. He’s taken off with some pea pods and shishito peppers I had on the counters. Last night I came upstairs to find that he’d walked across the touch pad to the induction range and turned on a burner with a dirty pan on top. Luckily, I was able to clean out the burnt on food. Henceforth, we will lock the range controls and remove pans from the burners.
He is also obsessed with wires. I haven’t had a cat so interested in cords since Roscoe 40 years ago. Back then it was just electric cords, not the plethora of chargers and computer hardware we have in the office.
The relationship with Neli is still a work in progress. They have been within six inches of each other without a a fight breaking out – for about 30 seconds. Then Neli starts hissing and the chase is on. We’re hoping that once he has his little operation, things will calm down.
Despite all the chaos, Dudley can be a very sweet little boy. He’ll sit with us for more than 15 minutes while we’re watching television. He also tolerates his pedicures because he knows he’ll get a treat at the end. He has potential to be a great lap cat.
August 26 was the 102nd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote. The day before, several states (including Texas and Idaho) allowed bans on abortion to take effect in all cases except when the life of the pregnant person is in jeopardy. The Dobbs decision overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion in 1973. This is the first time in US history that a right established by a previous Supreme Court decision has been rescinded. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion (see the previous link), other rights may be next.
The judicial philosophy behind the Dobbs decision is originalism, meaning that the Constitution should be interpreted by the intentions of its writers. Let’s pick apart this argument. The Constitution as originally written didn’t extend legal rights to slaves. In the Constitution, an enslaved person counted as 3/5 of a person for taxation and apportionment of seats to the House of Representatives. The framers of the Constitution didn’t extend any rights to women, either. Women weren’t allowed to own property or assets in their own names until well into the 19th century. (In some states, they couldn’t apply for a credit card in their own name until the 1970s.) The only people who could vote in the US right after the Constitution was ratified were male land-owners, period. Fortunately, with time the slaves were freed and the right to vote was extended to all citizens. Nobody, not even Justice Thomas, advocates rescinding voting rights to descendants of enslaved people, renters, or women to conform with 1787 standards.
We have to vote to make sure our rights are preserved, not rescinded. We have to elect US Senators who will confirm judges and justices that aren’t stuck in 18th century thinking. Don’t forget to vote in down-ballot races for state legislatures. Some of these people will run for the US House of Representatives or Senate in the future. If you live in a state that elects judges and justices, pay attention to their statements in the voters’ guide. Exercising the right to vote can prevent other rights from being reversed.
Based on our experience doing a garage sale last weekend, Julian and I have this advice: DON’T DO IT. We’d have made out better by donating much of the stuff to St. Vincent de Paul or Goodwill and taking the tax deduction.
I did two garage sales with my mother and sister when I was in grad school. Terry always cleaned up with the kids’ clothes and toys. Mom and I held our own. Julian suggested the garage sale concept years ago when he saw the stuff accumulating in the garage and storage room. We also had sets of pots and pans that we can’t use on the induction range. I thought, how hard can it be?
Several households in our condo complex had garage sales last weekend along with us. The big winner was a couple across the street. They sold an Ikea bag full of computer games. Another couple sold a few wedding presents – from 40 years ago. The neighborhood expert in garage sales was selling three households’ worth of merchandise, from furniture to doilies. (Yes, doilies.) She also had some cookbooks. I bought three on half price Sunday. I also bartered two pans for a large bread bowl with a neighbor.
Saturday was relatively cool, but Sunday was warm and sultry. We only did three hours on Sunday, mercifully. We were exhausted. I counted out the proceeds. The time and effort we put forward netted us less than the national minimum wage. Lesson learned.
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