racheld

Wowee---WOW!!!! I got sidetracked by houseguests and traveling great leagues and furlongs to get some more, way back when Tupac was here, missed even saying goodbye, and have been totally out of the loop with Pwiz. Now here you are!!! I've got a lot to catch up on, and THIS to look forward to!!! YUMMMM in all its meanings and import. And I didn't even get the cluepic to GUESS this time... You seem to have it all going: A great kitchen, with green through the screen, a view of a red house--very lucky to live next to a red house, BOOKS, a coffeepot, a big-ass mixer for the hard stuff, Andy and Barney, and even one of those new-fangled doohickeys to skin that lemon in nothing flat. The muffins are just spectacular, one of my favorite combinations. Lemon zest is one of life's greatest treasures. And the HAND shot!! I think we ought to have a rule: Everybody has to have at least one hand shot per blog, and any in any other thread is lagniappe to be savored. Hands working and handwriting are fascinating; I hope you'll include even just a grocery list. I love to see the way people form letters and use the page. SOOOOO---I'm delighted to see such a promising beginning, and I'm SO GLAD it's YOU!!!

This whole non-sequitur of a sequence is the funniest thing I've read today!! Did it hit anything? What did it SOUND like? Welcome, Apronstrings!!!

Whad I say? I ain't even BEEN here since 'fore Christmas!! But I DO have some of that creamcheese stuff and two cold grilled sirloins in my fridge right now. Good toast and omelets for breakfast!!

AWWWWW You sweet thing!!! Wish you'd been in business this weekend--we spent Friday night in Murfreesboro. Got in late, slept in, then scouted out the town for a catfish place for lunch (dinner to you 'n' me). The kids and Grands came and met us, we had the whole bit at Mike's---starters of the "fish chips" that seem to be catching on everywhere. Thin-sliced catfish, very lightly breaded, then deep-fried into crispy chips tasting of the whiskered marvel. And they set down the bowls of Northern beans and slaw, and a basket of hushpuppies before we even ordered, just like Uncle Bud's used to. Grilled cheese/fries for Grand #1, catfish/hushpuppies/fried green tomatoes for Chris and DD#2, chicken and fried okra for her hubby, chicken fingers for me. Tiny wisps and bits off everybody's plate for just-turned-two Grand #2, each wee bite preceeded by "dipdip" (spoken with each dunking) into a dime-sized blob of ketchup. Many visitings of the fish in the tank, and a small ballgame in the far, empty corner when the place cleared out, whilst the grown folks talked. The barbecue place in Ohio last week had six bottles on each table, all nestled into their places in a beer carton. The "sweet Tennessee" and the "hot" and the Carolina were delineated by the colors of their squeeze bottles, and the Malt vinegar, ketchup and something else were recognizable. A little printed card stapled to the carton explained each one, and there were paper towel rolls on each table. The "Carolina" sauce had so many solids in the vinegar base that it stayed stopped up...every squeeze made it ooze out the edges of the screw-top lid. Maybe a whirl in a blender would give the same taste---I looked around and every pointy lid on every table had a shadowy chunk stuck in the tip. The pale-wood dining room furniture had a thick, high gloss like a Last-Supper clock, so no oilcloth was needed. I think you could set down a black skillet of cornbread, right out of the oven, with no hot pad. One quick swipe with a fresh paper towel after we carried away our trays, and all was neat for the next customer. And about half the tables were HIGH, with stools instead of chairs. Grand #2 came home with us, and we had a big grill-feast tonight, with each member of the family bringing something they'd like to throw on the fire. That was a first for us, as we usually always agree on a main, and all contribute salads and beans and sides. DS brought four steaks, in a garlicky marinade, along with a bunch of shrimp kebabs, with red peppers, onion and mushrooms, as well as a big bag of fresh cherries of all colors. We had wings, drumsticks, Hebrew Nationals, lots of grilled corn, zucchini quarters done in soy and sesame oil, a big romaine/red onion/crouton/grated mozzarella salad with grainy mustard vinaigrette, and offered ice cream cones for dessert. No takers except for the youngest; we just set the bowl of cold cherries on the table and munched while we talked. OH, and remember, it ain't a pulled sandwich without Slaw On. edited to get the night right

According to my dear Home-Ec teacher Mrs. Baxter, from back in the dark ages of my youth, it's a "Cake-Breakah." And we had a super-trip this week, to a Thrift Store in Columbus---we always stop in when Chris has a service call over there. There's a red/black hand-painted art deco plate of Ilsa and Rick, with "Cafe Americain" inscribed; a set of eight tiny dessert forks, in a shiny-but-not-brassy-scented brass; six pilsners, fifty cents each; a Bilston & Battersea QEII Golden Anniversary cup, well-gilded and festooned--3.99. My best find: four Homer Laughlin Fiesta cups, just hanging there with all the melmac and Furio. I always do a thorough eye-squinting scan of the cup area, looking at every handle on the long prongs, and there was one perfectly-round little handle. I removed all the ones in front and retrieved my prize, then (prickly-skin, grabbit quick) saw that the prong to the left held THREE all in a row. 49c each, like all the other grody old mugs. I forgot: Also a wide, footed planter/vase---McCoy, in that lovely slick perfectly-glazed maroon/eggplant shade they do so well. 1.99, I think.

Location? Name??? We keep I-65 pretty well burned up in Summer, running our Granddaughter home from her visits up here in Indy. Coming through on Aug 12 or 13 to stay with the Grands in GA whilst their folks go on a cruise, and are always seeking out the REAL stuff. I've been hoping you'd say you had a restaurant, just because of the know-how in your very first post. That all-night cooking is what it takes. We had some passable cue in Ohio on Wednesday---Rudy's Smokehouse. You could smell the smoke when you got out of the car---that's a MUST. Good pulled, good selection of sauces, terrific baby red potato salad.

I've also been known to give lavish praise and beaucoup compliments to a cook who prepared one or two dishes to go with an entire dinner/party/brunch I was catering. (Especially the ones in the foil disposables, leaking their juices onto the Battenburg, or the Rubbermaids with any number of abominations molded into lime Jello). I always try, in my most ladylike manner, to give credit where credit is due for the barley/peanutbutter/arugula/tripe casserole recipe passed down through the cook's family. Especially if the other guests are grimacing and looking at ME. "Oh, Verbena's Dear Mother made that!!! Isn't she just the sweetest thing?" And there was that time the neighbor substituted GrapeNuts for the crushed cornflakes in another friend's baked chicken breading. . .

That's IT!!! The virtual tour even showed me the exact big table where we had my Dad's last birthday together. What an evening---good food, Margaritas flowing, lots of silliness and laughing. And those ribs! The beans would be a FedEx nightmare, I'm afraid. They're not the standard refried beans, thick and rich and chunky. They're a big bowl of pintos, cooked soft and tender and smoky with meat hunks and good salty pot likker and snips of cilantro. (Said beans recommended and touted ad nauseam on another thread during a major CRAVE moment). I mentioned in that post that as I returned from a couple of weeks in England, stopping in SA to visit my Dad, the ONLY thing the children wanted me to bring home was food from Chacho's. I bought several big containers of beans, snap-topped and foil wrapped, froze them for a day, then stashed them upright in the zippersides of my carryon tote. I was mildly afraid that the bag-police might confiscate those oddly-shaped, metal-encased bricks, but when the nice moustached man unzipped one side and saw the cups, I blurted, "I've just been to England, but the children didn't want souvenirs; they wanted Chacho's." He just smiled, nodded, and sent me on my way. I meant to add earlier that your house is like visiting my Sis just outside SA---her kitchen is yours, but all white, tiled island, glass-fronted cabinets and all, plus all your herbs and the curve of your pool---add a waterfall, and it's identical. Do you also have one of those little traveling-hose bottom-cleaners that surfaces and spits a cold stream onto unwary sunbathers? And her oldest, my nephew, went to a CI and is exactly like you when he comes home for a visit---his Mom called me after one week of his culinary delights, in which they had invited neighbors and various people-to-impress, and extolled the various sauces and fusions and new vegetables and flavors. She also had a fit when she discovered he'd merely made STOCK for a lobster dish using two pounds of scallops, which were then little hockey-pucks and went into the trash. She fished them out, ran them through the Cuisinart (which made them into rubbery LITTLE bits), then enhanced the cats' food for several days with the best stuff they'd ever tasted. He and I ran into each other in the Houston airport once, (before 2001), both by chance on the next plane to SA for a visit, and the x-ray people surely wondered at the odds of two people in line BOTH carrying almost identical knife-cases.

Wonderful garden shots, and the dishes you've made are outstanding. The tomatoes are especially tempting---our little guys are still greenies, but we just got the garden in maybe four weeks ago. Several years ago, we ate at a spectacular BBQ (trust me; I cut my teeth on Memphis pit-cooked) place on Riverwalk---can't remember the name, but you choose from the menu in combinations named for cars. I do remember that we chose the Cadillac for everyone at our table, which was a big platter of everything on the menu---ribs, brisket, a whole chicken, sausages, pork chops. I still dream of those dry, tear-gently-from-the-bone ribs. And Chacho's---is that a chain that you'd be ashamed to patronize, or is it as good as I remember? The barracho beans are the best of any beans I've ever eaten, loaded with cilantro and garlic. (Family lore will include the three quarts I brought home in my carryon bag).

Oh, Daniel!!! More DIVE-food when I've just now got CC's hummus shampooed out of my tresses. Just to slide right out of that pitcher, spinning gently down the golden flow of caramel PS I tattled on your fried lettuce/smoked eel sandwich over in the BLT thread. I'll bet everybody's coming to have a look. They love your concoctions.

Over in the "3 a.m. Party Grub" thread---Post #39, to be exact, Daniel makes a late-night kitchen foray, in which he constructs a smoked eel BLT. The lily being not QUITE gilded to his satisfaction, he made another, in which he added a fried egg. And on this one, if that were not enough, he FRIED the LETTUCE. So there you have perhaps the world's first SEBFLET. Hold the mayo. Reason for making sandwich: a). He was hungry b). It was 3 a.m. Reason for making THAT sandwich: a). He'd been drinking.

This is Indiana, people. The red I-over-a-U is a religious symbol, an icon to bow the masses in adoration, the object of genuflection from Ohio to Missouri and environs beyond. And as to being a copyright item, someone should tell every Kroger, Meijer, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Costco between here and there, because a great many of their cakes are festooned in the logo, swirled in smart symmetry or gangled onto the clotty frosting like a renegade cactus drawn by a sugar-laden child with but one crayon in the box. I've seen FLAT groom's cakes with the emblem, nicely royal-icinged or fondant-carved, but never a monument such as the edifice suggested by your future SIL. You don't mention offering a tiered cake. How brave of you to undertake it. An offer of such magnitude is gracious, to be accepted as such, but couching the acceptance in such demanding, difficult-to-render terms is a bit much. Your heart is willing and generous---I do hope your completed cake is accepted in the same spirit.

Oh, Sweetpea!!! Sit down. Nothing at Burger King is THAT bad. (Unless that creepy King person was on display). Oh, My. I hope you're all better, and that it was a one-time thing, all in the past. And like I said: Breakfast.

My dear first Mother-in-Law passed on an OLD family recipe, from back in the day when you scooped up a big old metal scoopful of sody-crackers from a barrel in the general store and picked the tomatoes from your garden five minutes before you used them. It also required a "Making" of Dinner-Plate mayonnaise, starting with one yolk, some lemon juice, salt, a few drops of grated onion juice, and an untiring hand with the fork as the oil was dropped in, drop by drop. This was carried proudly to all Church Suppers, Meetings, Lodge gatherings, and any Potlucks and Pitchins that might occur in the slow tenor of the Summer days down South. For best presentation, the tomatoes are hollowed out, the insides mixed with the stuffing, and all piled back neatly and the heavy globes set upon a platter lined with parsley or lettuce to cushion and hold them upright. When my children were all at home, I got tired of fiddling with a dozen tomatoes, so I just peeled them all, whizzed it all in the cuisinart, and went out on the porch for iced tea. It's still pretty, just served in a clear-glass bowl---a lovely pink, and it tastes like a creamy BLT. Four to six large juicy tomatoes. A sleeve of saltines, crushed. Six slices of bacon, cooked crisp, drippings saved. A large glop of mayonnaise, whatever a serving spoon will grab first time in the jar. Salt and pepper. Peel tomatoes and toss into Cuisinart. Whiz a moment, leaving small bits intact. Put in bacon drippings, mayo, salt and pepper. Whiz gently, then put in a bowl and stir in crumbs and bacon. Store in fridge a couple of hours; stir again before serving. Add more crumbs if tomatoes were especially juicy. It's probably an acquired taste, but it's about half the reason DS#2 has spent the past few weeks tilling, digging, planting, watering, fertilizing, hoeing, caging, and murmuring gently to our two dozen tomato plants. They're waist-high and loaded with blooms, as well as several tennis-ball-size round greenies. He can't wait.

You DID it!!! Told you you should---it's slumgullious. If I didn't already have the FIRST calamari of my LIFE thawing to cook for supper, we'd have every BIT of that. Instead, it's quick-fried squid, some crumb-coated fried shrimp, potato logs and shredded cabbage/red pepper/vinegar slaw. Chris loves the little crusty tentacles, and I found a pack at the Asian grocery last week. I know!!!! I'll make HUSHPUPPIES!!! Gotta stay true to our roots. I DO cook it all in a black skillet. Guess that counts.

I KNEW it!!! I was channeling you ALL DAY on Thursday, though I kept wondering why...My mind was in that big kitchen, with you taking your time, doing each dish and the garnishes and the prep---weird. Maybe because it had been so long since you checked in with another chapter in the community saga. Thanks for the update...wish I HAD been there to help. I miss cooking for a hundred.

Ducky, Dear, Much enjoyment, much enlightenment, much fun all round. From yin/yang to gout to rockin' picnics---what a ride!!! In any circumstance of your life, you just go to the market and make something wonderful of whatever you find there. It's been terrific---I loved all the little references, the pictures, the inside music/movie remarks (woo, Luther!!! He and James Remar are two unsung greats), and all the little tidbits of food and health and life that you tossed in. A tip of my own feathered hat (red) and a hearty thank you for all the fun. rachel PS I run from mimes. And clowns.

I'm GLAAAAAAADDDD I've got some leftover in the fridge, and the other half of my lunch sandwich today---we ate at Cracker Barrel, where Chris enjoyed ham, bacon, eggs, grits and sorghum, and I had my usual: Chicken salad sandwich, grill the bread on both sides, please, and hold the lettuce. (They use those immense fans of soft lettuce, and there's enough residual wash-water in there to dampen a week's ironing). Anyway, we did a photoshoot at a hotel last night; that was the best hotel food for a crowd I've seen in lo these many late nights---rosy baked ham slices in a silver dish, with a line of delicious red pepper/pineapple sauce atop, and some whole chicken breasts in a mornay with spinach and scallions---DELICIOUS!! We got in late, after loading equipment and schlepping it home, and spied a bag of four of DD's excellent onion rolls on the counter, soft and fragrant. We both said, "I can't believe I'm HUNGRY!!" at the same time, so I opened a can of Swanson very-white-chunks, stirred in some thin-sliced celery, a bit of chopped sweet pickle, and a little mayo, along with the lone lunchbox-intended boiled egg from the fridge, and we had CS on onion rolls, with Decaf DC sparkled over ice, at midnight. I also had edited some bookshelves this week, and found an old church cookbook, with a recipe from a neighbor scrawled on the flyleaf---it was a surprisingly good recipe, despite its redneck roots, and I was always surprised that a mushroom-soup-type recipe started with a bechamel. (Especially considering that said neighbor starred in her own "Worst Meal, etc....., featuring the infamous GrapeNuts Chicken). MIZ SLIM'S HOT CHICKEN SALAD Cook a chicken in salted water, cool and bone and chop. Saute some onion and thin celery in a little butter and pour into the bowl with the chicken. Make a thick white sauce (2 to the cup*) and stir in some mayonnaise, celery seeds and a jar of pimiento, along with a drained can of sliced water chestnuts. Mix all together and pour into a buttered casserole. Melt a stick of butter in a skillet; crush a sleeve of Ritz and brown gently. Remove from heat, toss in a little pack of sliced almonds, and spread on casserole. Heat at 350 til bubbly. *2 Tbs. butter/flour to each cup of milk If you serve this onto luncheon plates, you have to sidle a little round of spiced beet-red apple up next to it. It's the LAW. edited for a capital letter

Editing above post to correct my naming of DEAR Jennifer Patterson, bless her heart. She was a great light on the food scene, a TV phenom, a curmudgeonly-seeming, bumbly dearie with an enormous flair, great zest for life, and a wickedly naughty turn of wit. I do miss her, and do believe that the show could run in an eternal loop like Mayberry and Lucy, gaining countless new viewers and delighting the established ones. Pardon my careless mistake---it's been too long since I've seen the show, and I wish it would come back. I'd swap all the unwraps, hams, grillings, bashes, and secret lives of, for just one daily episode of FL.

Kitty Porn? Oh, Randall, have I got a girl for you!!! She collects socks, buries her face in shoes til she has to struggle to shake them off, and thinks that feet are almost as good "Petters" as those at the end of arms. I'm glad that you have such a fun little companion---we enjoy ours. And all the groceries and restaurants!!! This is my kind of tour.

Why would anybody stop at one that DIDN'T? ← Throw in a little old man in a battered hat, boiling peanuts RIGHT THERE in the parking lot, and you might just take up residence and have your mail forwarded.

Yes, there is---it's one of our favourite things to do when we're out and about. The TV ads here with the Goodwill Guy state that there are "27 stores" and I believe it. We call it "retail therapy" and it really is---just mindless wandering with nothing in particular to look for, though my route takes me usually first to the dinner plates---we love the hand-painted ones, and are always on the lookout for florals. Then, since I'm RIGHT THERE, I indulge my dish junkie leanings to my heart's surfeit. When you look up and there are six Mottahedeh c/s, each taped to its match, in all-different fruit designs, for 3.00 a set, THEN you start loading your cart, looking around furtively for a canny price-setter to come snatch them back and put a BIG price on the lot. Or nine small-to-medium pressed-glass bowls of every imaginable shape and use, all stacked together, with a haze of yellowing from the owner's gas heat/smoking habit, with 49c on each tag---that's a grab and run, as well. They appear on our table holding jelly, pickles, homemade cranberry/orange sauce in the tall compote, butter/jam in the divided one, with pens and a nailfile living in the HEAVY thumbprint spooner over by my chair. There are finds, all right. Chris' lookings range from old cameras, photography books, old picture frames for his endless collection of b/w photos of families-we-never-knew, posed unsmiling in their Sunday best, captured for possibly the only time in their lives. They got tossed out by their great-great-grands when they closed out Grandma's house and had no more thought to their ancestors than to a passing car. We love them and are soon to have a beautiful wall of them, a surprise from DD to Chris on Fathers' Day...they stand ranged all around about two dozen old black cameras on a big shelf just above my head as I type. He also loves to scan the books, finding old Hardy Boys and Bomba and Tarzan, as well as fifty-cent copies of all the modern writers he enjoys. He practically dresses from Goodwill: soft jeans, lots with the tags still on, shirts, new T-shirts and unders from the absolutely-new rack, 99c each. And he spots for me. I'll hear a soft whistle, in our code, answer back, and we gravitate to the spot, playing a middle-aged "Marco Polo" til we meet and show each other our finds. He knows what I'll like, and has found some outstanding buys. Yesterday, it was a dollar copy of Escoffier, unearthed from among all the How to Microwave and brown-photo seventies Betty Crockers. I mentioned yesterday that our museum and symphony and opera consumption has gone down in the last couple of years, and he said, "We're out here acquiring bits of history, their books and music and the dishes they used for breakfast. What better commemoration?" (and entertainment, as well). I also do a lot of delving into the big tupperware tubs of old tableware-I use an unattractive knife, picked up from the dozens in the bin, and gently dig and move the bits and pieces, til EUREKA!---the yellowish gleam of silverplate or sterling amongst the graysteel of the pile. I've been finding baby spoons lately, for some reason, and just days ago, five HEAVY restaurant forks, with "Albert Pick Hotels" gouged into the back. So we go, and we enjoy, and we cart home history not our own, but soon a part of our family's days and dinners and reading and listening and the beautiful of our lives. You may find this strange and crazy, but we've already told the children: When we die, we'll be cremated, the ashes mixed, and they're to take a baggie to every bookstore, library and Goodwill in town and sprinkle a tiny bit of us into the shrubbery. Seems fitting. And Andie, a Hemingway, owned by Cap'n Blood himself, and a $1 MANN!!! You win.

Thanks, CKat, and welcome to the forum. We have a wonderful time here.

It's a little groove in the plate that you can pour a little cold water into---from all those days of fending off ants in the kitchen. They can't get past the moat. Also reputed to keep butter fresher.

It's a MOWWWWW-ESSSS!!!! I couldn't have resisted either! Does it have a water-track?