Carrot Top

These guys would be *onto it* so quickly that it wouldn't be worth the ruse. I exaggerate slightly here in my descriptions of them "just for fun". Heh. ................................. Your comments (coming from you who thinks and writes of these things) made me think of the effect that the change in culture insofar as "neighborhoods" go has had on this thing of family cooking. The neighborhoods that many of us grew up thinking were "just the way it was" (where one would just "go outside and play") do not exist in such numbers as they used to. For a lot of reasons. And then there is the technology thing - that computer and those video games are SOP for kids and can be all-encompassing. To me, it all trickles down to a paring-down of ease and time. To lots of other people, too, from what I hear. The idea of a family at table and the things that offers is definitely affected. So I guess despite my cranky grumblings, I am secretly pleased to have the kids wandering into the kitchen and "ruining my plans" for the food by trying to gobble it right up. Can't wait to see how the rest of this week goes. It *was* a lovely plan, as plans go. And as plans go, it went.

Whoa. My mouth is literally hanging open. That is. . . Oh, c'mon. You did it for our Halloween gift, didn't you!

But then he would have had a desperate and immediate need for the homemade lasagne that you hadn't made, no?

It has been almost an hour since my last post. My daughter has now decided that the baked potatoes look too good. She thinks a baked potato with butter, bacon and cheese would be a fine bedtime snack. How can I argue? She is trying to charm me into being happy about the growing ruination of my Great Plan of Weekly Cookery by asking me if I have a degree in "Potato-Ography" while she smiles and eats. Some plan this was.

Sounded good, huh? Heh. Reality check. Okay. So why did I expect any thirteen-year-old child who drags me into that g*dawful Hollister place with the dim lighting and blaring music to buy the right pair of jeans to want to eat *lentil soup* with a *grilled cheese sandwich* tonight for supper? When there is - - - -shrimp?! And what she wants her brother wants. So we have eaten the shrimp. Naturally, she wanted hers on top of the caesar salad (the romaine bought in the pack ready washed was disgusting by the way and more than half of it had to be thrown out ) and he wanted his "re-heated" and served separately. I am madly eating caponata to keep calm. With lots of warm bread. ..................................................... One meal down, in the one hour since cooking. What on earth is next, I ask you?

Okay the results are in. One and a half hours prep today. Including packing the stuff up and putting it away and loading the dishes in the dishwasher. Granted, the floor is a disaster. Here's how the dance went: Poached shrimp with savory ingredients and pernod. Started chix stock. Made caponata. Pot roast ingredients browned and to oven. Orzo cooked. Chix marinade made, chix thrown in. Succotash made. Potatoes scrubbed, put into oven. Pears put in oven to poach with port and spices. Celeriac and carrots peeled, julienned, briefly blanched. Bacon to oven to cook. Cheese grated. The chicken stock is cooling now, and the pot roast and the potatoes need to be taken out of the oven a bit later. Now the only problem is I want to start noshing NOW. Will let you know how it works out during the week!

I like anyone who is named Mr. Wozencroft. The children will be sent post-haste to you with the hopes that you will have some Dickensian form of British pick-pocketing to teach them. In the meanwhile, here is the menu I came up with and shopped for: Monday Caesar Salad, Warmed Baguette, Caponata Shrimp with Basil and Pernod Orzo Tuesday Grilled Chicken, Spicy Yogurt Marinade Coucous with Raisins and Pignoli Sugar Snap Peas Wednesday Mexican Pot Roast Succotash Egg Noodles Thursday Escarole Soup Pizza Pears Poached in Port Friday Celeriac-Carrot Salad Twice-Baked Potatoes with Bacon, Cheese, and Spinach Lemon Sorbet with Blueberries Will be back later to tell you how long it took to do advance prep.

I'd rather have some one else than myself be my own personal chef, but one uses what one has around, you know? And yes, if you are willing to call my children "people". They certainly do "eat at will". And rather constantly it seems, too.

Mmm hmm. Do with my topic title what you will, Jon. Your assumptions are correct. And yes, I do have both good Tupperware and a vaccuum sealer which sits in the cupboard ignored by me among the other kitchen equipment that has sort of wandered to the "wrong side of the tracks" in my opinion. I open the cupboard door and they growl at me and I growl back. I think the thing might be done without the vaccuum thingie if really good planning is done, with accurate knowledge of how long things will last without spoilage and with the idea that what I buy in the first place has to be rather bright and bushy-tailed. I had thought to just have some general suggestions from people, and then I could put together the week's menus so that they would "work". Probably things like shrimp/seafood to start the week, moving on to chicken etc. then forward to the beef or lamb or pork then on to pasta with sauces and maybe all-veggie meals or soup to finish. Braises are always good but one doesn't want to eat them every day unless one has no teeth. We are lucky, we have teeth here. I'm off to go grocery shopping with this idea in mind and will post what happens a bit later.

There is a strange thing that happens in my house. Every day I plan what to make for dinner. The food is there in the fridge, the time approaches and voila! Like magic something happens - something odd with the time. All of a sudden it seems one child needs to go to the store to get poster board for a project that I'd never even heard of that is due *tomorrow*! The computer starts having strange glitches that are driving the other child trying to do her homework to distraction that require my sitting there stupidly trying to fix it for an hour till it magically fixes itself. The cat jumps in front of me making me throw my arm wide to knock over a vase that breaks all over the floor. Or my karate-loving son decides to swing his Japanese sword into the overhead lamp and my skateboard-loving daughter starts doing jumps on the board in her bedroom, trying to leave huge craters in the floor no doubt. Time escapes me. There is no way to gather it back. So I've thought of a plan. No more weekday cooking. Stock the fridge on the weekends and nosh nosh nosh without the need to cook during the week. I need your help in two ways: First : What would you think the fridge should be stocked with? What would you have in your fridge to nosh on? "Meal"-like things you know - not just things like cheese and fruit and crudites et al that are there just because they are part of the refrigerator neighborhood. Second: If you are religious, please pray that my weekends find a few free moments to cook! P.S. Not stuff for the freezer for I have a grudge against freezers. For no good reason. I just don't like them and they don't like me. Nothing ever tastes good to me from the freezer. Yes, I know I am difficult.

Not ugly. Mysterious. Rather geographic. I felt if I dug in with a spoon there might be little villages that would appear before the eyes - with tiny people in them and cows and sheep on the higher mountainous regions. . .

I don't know for sure - but it looks like it holds some sort of secret message. Do you have a de-coder ring around somewhere?

More on our subject

Maybe if the directions had been voice-over'd by a celebrity chef on a television that had a TiVo attached to it so that the hands-on tearing apart of the package and dropping in boiling water could be seen a la minute set right in front of the stove it would have worked.

Interesting point, rickster. I wonder if all the food companies are facing this problem or if it was one specific to that company due to "how the directions are written". If language is not made very clear, people do not take the time to read it. Lots of people have "no time".

Angela Hartnett at the expense of his wife, perhaps. But then maybe his wife loves this game too. One day "a schoolteacher" the next "someone who won't be allowed in MY expensive kitchen" and the next "a food editor of one of the top magazines". Either she is getting a profession from his leavings and name and slyly moving herself into a place where she *will* demand respect from ones of his ilk - *or* she is someone with her own talents that must not mind her husband speaking of her in the ways he does because well *more money and fame for US, dearie!*. But then again, maybe she does not like this game. I would not like to hear any husband of mine speak of me that way. But then again, ultimately she has the right to divorce him and walk away with a bundle. "All part of the game." What a truly distasteful game. "Play the Game". I've actually heard that said by people who do these sorts of things for a living. (Edited to add: in corporate life - not in married life though sometimes it seems as rampant there too.) To me it's an ugly phrase. It removes "the players" from the rest of humanity, if the "players" have anything to say about it. It makes them bigger and better and richer by far - the Grand Winners who eat the little people by making the little people want to be like them in ways that will never, in any actuality, have any "real" impact on their lives. They will pay for cookbooks and try to fit the image and cook the foods (which is all well and fine if the offerings of such things are done in a manner where "the player" considers themselves an equal human being on an equal footing). Some players do not consider themselves equal to their audiences. Could be that they *are* not - perhaps they *are* better at this and that, and certainly they are better at this thing called charisma. But to then use that (whether it is done "playfully" or supposedly with the idea that they can *change* society with their doings) to denigrate a specific group (in this case "women") is not cute. "At home Mom's" who live in the wealthier areas of the country *may* have all sorts of varieties of help to do their household tasks. But most women do not. There are still huge numbers of women who work at non-professional jobs out there. As there are men who do the same. These are the people that comprise the largest portion of our society, and these are the people that Ramsay is mocking. Is that either a right or a kind thing to do? Unless "doing the right thing" and "being kind" are out of style. They may just be. They don't glitter as prettily as flashing knives and lack the bombastic excitement of loud swear words flung about with macho style. There just might not be money to be found in them and that's where it all ends up, doesn't it.

Samuel Whiskers or the Roly Poly Pudding This is wonderful. Tom Kitten goes off on an adventure and almost ends up as dinner. The link is to the DVD which is absolutely marvelous. As is the book, naturally. Ah! A kitten for dinner! (It may not be de rigeur for us grown-ups but how the children grow wide-eyed at the idea )

Yoko's Lunch Curious George and the Pizza The M & M's Counting Book In the Night Kitchen Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes Pat the Bunny. . .oops, no - that doesn't belong here!

I knew that, Steven. It just didn't seem to go along with the idea of romance so I ignored it momentarily.

Bobby Short at The Cafe Carlysle. Who would care about the food?

When someone opens the door to talk using these words "hate" in such a simple and childish manner, the tone of the discussion does change. It is not "mere" semantics. The way in which a person describes themselves through their language describes their world and way of thought. It has nothing to do with being "PC". It has to do with being clearly understood and then even more, to be understood as being intelligent and without rancor or demand. This is not a football game with teams where someone will win and someone will lose. This is life - and there are women in this world trying with all their wits to get a footing on "how to do it". To minimize their lives into a simpified packet of "do they cook? or do they not cook?" is so demeaning as to leave one with the impression that anyone who asks that question must either be (to use the words of someone better with them than I ever will be) "a fool or a knave".

Three things stand out in my mind from the previous discussion above - one is where someone stated that perhaps women are *not* learning to cook out of a sense of self-preservation. The other is where it was mentioned that women have a wonderful opportunity to pass the culture of cookery on to their children (as they always have) as it is their "way" or their place to do so. The third is the mention that it traditionally *has* been the women that do the home cooking. It is now different. It used to be traditional that men were the sole breadwinners and the woman had the "job" of running the household. Now the women are the breadwinners too. They log in as many hours as men in general. Therefore "tradition" must need to change somehow, or one of the sexes will be handling more than a decent share of the work of providing a decent life. *Has* it changed? Women do have a wonderful opportunity as the *traditional* ones in the kitchen to pass these things on to their children. But. How much time do the women have to do this? It is important here, to hear from the women who *do* work, who *do* try to cook - for accurate information on their own situations. It is vital not to generalize about the possibilities and potential that another persons life *should* have. (i.e. "Let us not speak till we have walked a mile in someone elses shoes.") Lastly the idea of self-preservation. It could be that when, in this confused society that we live in, the time comes that men show equal interest in caring for the family in the ways of "cookery" and its close sister in home-making, "cleanery", and that they prove competent and willing to be equal partners, that the idea of self-preservation will no longer need be in anyone's minds. God willing that we should be brought to such a place, and as soon as possible. Everyone, clearly, would benefit. (Except perhaps the tired man at the end of the work day who will be entering the kitchen alongside his wife and children. Then of course, the question asks begging: What will they cook? A fine dinner a la fancy restaurant? Or more likely a burger and fries? What will the answer be, when the children are yammering and hungry after their own long day. . .)

Let's try it on this way for size, shall we? "Recent headlines proclaim that WOMEN CAN COOK!!! Studies and evidence show that contrary to a growing belief that women can not cook, that indeed they can - and that astonishingly, they have been doing so since the beginning of recorded time. The lack of knowledge surrounding this fact has conclusively been linked to the grumblings of hungry men who don't like the fact that they can no longer count on finding the little lady waiting for them in the kitchen with her apron on after their long hard day at the office, offering up a beer, a cookie, and a smile. These men say they want their Tasty Cakes, and they want them FRESH and NOW and JUST THE WAY THEY LIKE THEM MADE! not from the damn grocery store that they might have to drive the car to in order to get them. The newest wave of information also includes data that suggests these men will next be claiming that women can not raise the children, either. Further studies to follow." Pah.

Nah. Had to be a come-on. Look at that coyly arched eyebrow over the "mi". Heh.

Thanks, prasantrin! Though I must admit that I am rather enchanted myself with that hot dog thing that Eastern Sun posted a little while ago - but my "favorites" do seem to keep changing as more marvellously evocative wonders appear.