Carrot Top

Here's the recipe, Lucy - in what I call "Elizabeth David" form rather than a standardized recipe. I don't do those anymore unless someone pays me very well to perform the (to me) dreary task. Besides, I doubt if anyone will *really* make this after my description of my own unhappiness with it, but if anyone does develop a strange hankering to do it, PM me and I'll do my best to provide better quantities/etc. The first part of the soup was from Arthur Schwartz' recipe, as mentioned. It is a soup made from lots of chopped onions sauteed in butter then with tomato puree and water added for the base. Meatballs are made from ground beef, egg and dill - then dropped into the soup. Diced green pepper and potatoes and rice (yes, rice AND potatoes! ) are added - the seasonings are adjusted, more dill added and it simmers away till done. A bit too tomato-y. For me. ............................................................... The next part of the Soup I Now Hate is yet another soup. Yes, the art of combining leftovers. And it worked. Then. But not today, no not today. Make a lentil soup by sauteeing minced onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in olive oil till soft. . .add beef stock and lentils. . .season with oregano, cumin, bay leaf and thyme. Simmer till done. Five minutes before serving, add some chopped parsley. This soup is good on its own, though simple - served with a dollop of sour cream on top. ................................................................. Combine the two soups in proportion of two parts meatball soup to one part lentil soup. Add some lemon juice, some orange zest, and a goodly amount of fresh ground black pepper. Stir in some hot sauce (Franks). That's it. ......................................................................... Might be that I've caught the "can't stand leftovers" disease. That's not good.

This will sound far-fetched, but then so much of what I say does that I really don't worry too much about it anymore. Have you checked to be sure that the stove is turned to "gas" rather than "propane"? There is some sort of switch on the back. The reason I ask is that I have heard of this exact thing happening (too high heat) with this being discovered as the reason. Of course I might be wrong. I heard the story one night at dinner from a very handsome man and I really was not concentrating on his words but rather on other things.

Now they're changing the taste of Worcestershire Sauce? Heathens.

Yes, I believe that you have to cook with love to create a dish that creates love. And I also believe that this can be done even in the professional kitchen - that food is not simply ingredients and measurement, procedures, purchasing and policies.

So in this case you do think it is specifically the ingredients that have morphed into different tastes, changed by the manufacturer, divalasvegas? That's a drag because one can try forever to try to re-create a memory, but if they've gone and changed the basic stuff on you, then how on earth can you do it? I wonder if other brands of soup would work.

Which things have done this recently, Kim? I need company in my misery here.

Why am I hearing this said in a certain accent? Jeez. If you really want this (terrible, to my mind) recipe, I'll post it a bit later when I can bear to think about it long enough to type it out. . . (Edited to blandulize content.)

What things, Gregg? Mostly I am curious about the new ones that you like that you would not even try before. . .

Gosh, Jaymes. . .I think I follow the rule I read somewhere about "Don't feed your cat anything you wouldn't eat yourself" because I just can not bring myself to serve this to the children. It might scar them for life. And besides, though my son is an eleven-year-old fulsome flatterer in the best southern tradition, my daughter is thirteen years old. Need I say more? (My ego seeks places to hide from her disdain nowadays - it would be quite fearsome to feed her this stuff. ) Hey. Maybe the cat would like it. Let me think about that.

The recipe was one which started with one from Arthur Schwartz' "Soup Suppers". Armenian Meatball Soup. Then I used to add more things, including lentils - and it was the best lentil soup I've ever made. Or so I USED to think. The kids used to sort of gobble it up as if it had some secret ingredient that *only* it could hold. Wierd. And now I have to find a new "perfect lentil soup" recipe. This could take years.

Of course it could be that my cooking skills have fallen off dreadfully. . . Or it could be that overexposure to the fast-food I allow my children to cajole me into dining (heh) upon has ruined me for anything good. . . But still, I wonder. . .

Every once in a while you will hear someone say "I used to have this GREAT (some food item of some sort ) at so-and-so's! I loved it! It was wonderful! I got the recipe and made it and it just. does. not. taste the same. " Often this happens with foods one has had as a child. . . But sometimes it happens even with things you make yourself and KNOW you are making the same recipe. It just does not have the same sense of sexiness (for lack of a better word ) that you remember it having. This has happened to me several times recently with a soup that I used to LOVE. I hadn't made it for quite some time, then decided I had to have it. Made the recipe as I always used to, and the taste did not do anything for me. As a matter of fact, it was entirely boring. Thinking it was "just me" "just that day", I've tried it again. Twice. And still I can not stand this soup. What is this? Do you think it is tastebuds changing? Or ingredients "not being what they used to"? Or could it possibly just be the odd trick of memory and sentiment that imbues certain foods in one's life with a taste that may be something more ethereal or more connected to emotion than "real"? Has this ever happened to you? What do you think is the cause of this mystery?

The idea of nouns becoming verbs does not bother me - as you say, things alter, grow, change. What does bother me is the attitude the words gather round them as they alter or grow, sometimes. An aura of snotty self-complacency seems to sprout in the way the word is "meant" that has a sense of either truffles or barnacles settling down upon the thing - really I can not decide which one seems better fit for what happens in the way the intent the words gain.

So it's at the more formal gatherings with strangers and so forth that you bring up the topics that are likely to provoke a visceral reaction of nausea? If you ever care to write a book, a collection of these topics and lines of discussion would be a best seller to each and every ten year old boy on the planet. They, however, have no qualms about attempting to bring up these topics at the family dinner table.

You're right. It is chewing gravel. The correct way to say that word is "dissin". As in "Don't go dissin' that dish, or dis dishtowel's gonna disrespect yo face." (or butt rather than face, as the case may be, depending on how familiar the disser.)

Nevertheless, please be sure that your little pinky finger is ready to be raised when using these words for their full and intended effect. Wearing an Hermes tie or scarf will not harm the intended goal, either.

Interesting word. The overtones of it are curious, to my mind. Other common uses of the word are in journalism (as in "I wouldn't be caught dead letting on who my source was!") which has an aura of excitement and a bit of shadiness. . .then of course in the lingo (old word - some of you might have to look it up in the dictionary ) of the street "My source dried up" means that your drug dealer just got busted or is recovering from a drive-by shooting in the hospital therefore unable to provide the "goods" which is also rather shady, no? Then there's the other side of the picture. As when someone speaks of "the source of all power" meaning the magnificent whatever-it-is from which our universe has sprung. This is not as often used, though, I don't think. But of course I don't watch Sunday morning religious television shows, so I could be wrong. Thank you, Sir Charles, for an excellent conundrum upon which to muse. P.S. At first, I thought your last line read "You want to get puffed up about buying stuff? Please. We'll talk about it after YOU'VE turned into dinner." I sort of liked that idea. Gave the whole a thing a rather fairy-tale-like aura.

My condolences, too, Julia. Similar to you, I didn't know my father's parents. It might have been interesting to, for they arrived in New York as Jewish refugees from Amsterdam - and my father (though I knew him but briefly) did seem to be rather interested in and mildly obsessed with food. My grandmother also lived in an apartment, but in a medium sized town in Maine - and also had strange bits of food tucked away here and there that she seemed to want to keep for some time that would come where there just might not be any food. How a ten-year-old jar of B&M Baked Beans would save life as we know it (in case of any terrible plight) I do not know - but she seemed to believe it would. And besides, it was *made* in Maine, and she had even seen the factory, so it had a certain sense of assurance to it. I don't remember her eating anything, really, ever, but for tuna-fish sandwiches on white bread that had been spread with butter. The tuna had nothing in it but mayonnaisse. . .none of this fancy pickle relish and why bother with celery? The strongest memory I have of her though, is one night while sleeping on a cot near her bed during the summer when I was seven while visiting my relatives in Maine. Somehow I fell off the cot in my sleep, and all of a sudden she sat directly up in bed and hollered out "Time to eat!" really loud, then lay back down and went back to sleep. I giggled myself back to sleep. She didn't remember a single thing the next morning. "Time to eat!" (Still makes me laugh. . . )

I think that a slightly sweetened acorn mousse (perhaps using maple syrup for that essence of America) wrapped in very thinly sliced hot dogs would be an admirable appetizer. Yum.

I'm glad you found that for it makes me feel slightly more sane than usual. All my herbs and spices live in the fridge. Yes, it does get crowded. But the freshness factor is much improved over leaving them "out", I've found, through experience.

It is true that the Californian American eats acorns. The Californian American eats many things, but the acorn is something that belongs to their folklore. It is fascinating that this fact has finally been unearthed. To be precise, when Americans can not find a hot dog to eat, they quite naturally turn to the acorn for sustenance. James Michener tells us of the origins of this natural occurence in the book "Texas" when describing settlers heading west to Texas from places like Virginia (where of course, I live). As they headed west through places like Kentucky, everything was fine. There were hot dogs there to be had. But then further south, near some dreadful river that I can not remember the name of, food was not to be found. No hot dogs, no nothin'. And any extra money had to be paid to the guy who would take them across the river and on to Texas (where of course they lived for a while then picked up all their stuff and moved further west to California). Thank god for the Native Americans, or "Indians" as they used to be called. They saved the settlers' asses one more time, in showing them how to eat acorns. The Cambridge World History of Food informs us that "In North America, acorns sustained many Native American groups, who exploited some 20 species". Naturally this exploitation of the poor acorn led to the settlers feeling it would be okay to exploit the Indians, then of course further along in time the Brits arrived to exploit America's offerings of hot dogs to their own ends. Euell Gibbons (who never knowingly exploited anything, of course!) tells us that "It seems a pity that the food which nourished the childhood of our race is today nearly everywhere neglected and despised" and offers five or six recipes for acorn cookery, of which he admits that the candied acorn is his very favorite. Waverly Root has a different take on acorns than Euell. He claims that they are "best eaten indirectly by man in the form of pork" which of course is the reason that all those Brits came here after the war. Decent hot dogs. The Oxford Companion to Food avoids involvement altogether with any of this, preferring to go to Spain for their information, telling us that "The Duchess who, in Don Quijote, asked Sancho Panza's wife to send acorns from her village would have been seeking especially fine specimens of this kind (Ilex or Ballota Oak, found in the Mediterranean). There is currently a growing interest in the acorn among some groups in the States, and one of the best-kept secrets is of an annual trek made by the Nutty Bunch, a group of acorn-lovers who gather to march the same route from Virginia to Texas each year, eating only hot-dogs and acorns along the way. Yes, surely acorns will be the next big thing, gastronomically.

It doesn't seem to me that there is anything inherently morally damning about employing people to help run the household if it is financially possible and desirable for the family involved. An environment is healthy and happy (or not) for a family based on so many other things than either money (really ) or personal choice of lifestyle. There are many families who do have "help" of sorts in keeping things running in their homes but it displays itself in ways other than having someone unrelated to them in a familial sense in the home to help. The first example that comes to mind is the growing involvement of grandparents in many families lives, who care for the children while the parents (their own children) work. When I pick up my children at school, at least one-third of the other cars are manned (ha, ha!) by Grandma or Grandpa. Nobody would think of ever questioning this sort of "help" as anything but positive for the young family. Another example is the growing number of families who order take-out or go to fast-food places or out to dinner at restaurants almost every night per week. In a recent post on eGullet, a newspaper reported that four out of five dinners are eaten at restaurants rather than at home in the category of "families with children". If the environment is not a good one for whomever is experiencing it, it is not due to simply the titillating fact of "rich people hiring other people to do stuff for them". We don't question why anyone in this day and age in business has a secretary (or administrative assistant if that is the correct phrase to use). It really is no different, having help in the home. Surely having a well-run home is every bit as important as getting the letters responded to. . .and really, when you think of it, not all *that* different from the ways that many other, less wealthy people are living their lives.

Life takes people funny places. My own grownup life started at fourteen years old when my mother decided she did not want to care for a child. After working all sorts of entry-level jobs in Manhattan, the world of food became important to me - more as an interest, a way to be artistic, a way to have a rich sort of home life with the man that I married at nineteen. This led to my becoming a pastry chef, a cook, a chef, an executive chef to some of the wealthiest people in the world (Wall St investment bank private dining) then finally into management as a VP in the operations division of that corporation in charge of foodservices. Against all advice, I left that job because there were aspects of it that I greatly disliked. It did not matter to me what reasons there were in any intellectual or practical way, and neither title nor money finally carried any weight in terms of what really mattered to me. So I completely understand what you're talking about, and I have also had friends that worked as private chefs in positions similar to yours in scope, nature, and client. You've got to follow what your intuition tells you. My concern, in your situation, was more that within the exhausted state that you may be that the wrong sort of jump might not be made. (Been there, done that. ) And also, as I am a single parent with two children with the other parent sort of "missing in action" due to divorce and then his move to a state far away it sort of behooved me to bring up the fact of how much your children do really need you - now - while they are growing. . .so much more than they need other things. I hope this does not sound like I mean to lecture, I don't - I just have a sort of "thing" about parents being there for their kids - and that is only "my" way. It doesn't have to be anyone else's. Change can be harder on the kids than it is on us - and goodness knows the hours the usual restaurant gig brings with it. Your ideas sound good - they sound better than good, they sound responsible in a way that is larger than just your own "stuff". Sometimes, just the right thing does happen for people with jobs - I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed that it does for you. Sante!

I have the Sanchez book, too. Good recipes, some further afield in scope than one might imagine in a "home cookery" book. But I'm still searching for that "perfect" book that makes everything taste the exact way that everything did that a friend's mother cooked, many years ago around a table in Spanish Harlem. That taste, the taste of memory, is often hard to replicate.

The missed-meal thing can also happen, I've heard, when one's own children become teenagers and able to fend for themselves food-and-transportation-wise. And of course in that case, the (non-professional) parent-chef does not even have that paycheck to look at for doing the job of cooking and putting up with the aggravation. Nor any title that is greatly appreciated by the outside world, either. The title "Mom" or "Dad" as opposed to "Private Chef" does not generally make for dinner companions with lots of wide-eyed questions. But there are things that make up for it , just in doing the job. It's a tough call, deciding which things are important in life - and balancing the personal and the professional. I hope that (when) you do make your next move to the next thing, you will be able to do it from a place of desire for something that you see, rather than from being bitten by the insistently grating mosquitoes of daily life at this job. Best of luck. It is not easy, no.