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eG Foodblog: ms. victoria - Tea for three


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Alas, I called Keifel and the mail had run but there is no check. Bummer. So for Cinco de Mayo will be having curried channa and potatoes. We do have some tequila, but nothing to make margaritas with and my days of straight tequila are long past. The curried channa and potatoes is often used as a filler for roti, so it is another look at Trini food even though we won't be eating them with roti.

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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well balmagowry after the Christmas run to Trinidad we may arrange a rum sampling of some sort, my earlier post had a link which is supposed to provide a link to worldwide suppliers.

Angostura recently, well two of three years ago acquired some the rum stock of a competitor and has produced a pair of very fine aged rums or so i've been told, i'm not much of rum drinker.

off to help the good wife with tonight's simple repast.

Don't loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club.

- Jack London

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well balmagowry after the Christmas run to Trinidad we may arrange a rum sampling of some sort, my earlier post had a link which is supposed to provide a link to worldwide suppliers.

Angostura recently, well two of three years ago acquired some the rum stock of a competitor and has produced a pair of very fine aged rums or so i've been told, i'm not much of rum drinker.

off to help the good wife with tonight's simple repast.

I'm not a big rum drinker myself, but I'm always prepared to make sacrifices in a good cause...! :wink:

Hmmm. OK, you don't have anything to make Margaritas with. Wonder what you could do with Tequila and Angostura....

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The floor did need mopped.

Sorry about your mishap, but I hope it's not inappropriate to ask you, based on this sentence construction: Are you from the Pittsburgh area?

I'm enjoying this husband-and-wife blog.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Fantastic blog!

I haven't looked at these food blogs much since I did mine, but this one will have me glue to the screen.

The pork stew sounds superb--but I suppose Nashville is just a bit too far to drive over to beg for some.

and welcome Keifel--impressive tattoo too, by the way.

chez pim

not an arbiter of taste

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Pan, I am not from the Pittsburgh area, though it was not inappropriate to ask. I was born in Detroit and grew up in Tennessee. Lived in Slovenia for a bit in college and Washington State and British Columbia after grad school. I read a great deal and I think I pick up variant sentence constructions here and there. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. We are too.

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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Dinner didn't go quite as planned, we didn't have any chick peas to the make up the channa part of the curried potatoes and channa. We instead had salmon cakes with smashed potatoes and sliced red peppers.

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While we were uploading tonight's dinner picture, I realized we had other pictures that we hadn't posted:

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Sunday's bread in the WS bread machine

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Eat your heart out Elvis! The boychick's longed for bacon and jelly sandwich

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Our new teapot and rosemary plant from the farmers' market

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The Culinary reference section of the library or where all my money goes

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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thank you for all the compliments. i have a lot of ink, but that's another tale for another day.

balmagowry, i'm not sure about the tequila and bitters, you know what they say about mixing your liquors. apparently the new, older rums, if that makes any sense are quite smooth and not as hard on the system as say the light rums that are sold with the express purpose of chasing with a cola of some variety.

although closer to the season we will have use for some of the light rums as we attempt to reproduce my grandmother's famous caribbean christmas black cake. we will of course keep you all posted.

Don't loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club.

- Jack London

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thank you for all the compliments. i have a lot of ink, but that's another tale for another day.

In other words, you're a published writer? Please toot your horn! :biggrin:

Have you written anything about food?

Glad to have you here.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Pan, I am not from the Pittsburgh area, though it was not inappropriate to ask. I was born in Detroit and grew up in Tennessee. Lived in Slovenia for a bit in college and Washington State and British Columbia after grad school. I read a great deal and I think I pick up variant sentence constructions here and there. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. We are too.

I've heard that construction from a surprising collection of different sources. Once in a while from The Boy, who is originally from Green Bay WI, though by way of many different places along the way. And I don't remember hearing it at all when I lived in Pittsburgh - in fact, the very first time I ever remember hearing it was from a roommate who was - get this - half Polish, half Scots! though the Scottish accent predominated.

So go figure! :biggrin:

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thank you for all the compliments. i have a lot of ink, but that's another tale for another day.

In other words, you're a published writer? Please toot your horn! :biggrin:

Have you written anything about food?

Glad to have you here.

Um... I have a feeling he meant the tattoos....

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balmagowry, i'm not sure about the tequila and bitters, you know what they say about mixing your liquors. apparently the new, older rums, if that makes any sense are quite smooth and not as hard on the system as say the light rums that are sold with the express purpose of chasing with a cola of some variety.

Wait... I'm confused. Where did the rums come from on this one?

Oh, wait - maybe this is one of those cultural things? Here Angostura Bitters is very very rarely used in cooking; but it is very commonly used as a mixer (well, a subtle flavoring note, actually) in various cocktails. Not more than a dash or so in any one drink; at that alcohol concentration it is hardly even thought of as mixing alcohols. Hmmmm - at least I never considered it that way until you mentioned it. If that's what you meant. Damn, I'm getting all muddled.

So anyway... I was thinking if you had tequila and didn't have any of the usual Margarita accoutrements, but you wanted a celebratory drink, hey presto, maybe you could invent a marvelously simple and elegant new cocktail - tequila on the rocks with a dash of Angostura Bitters and maybe... I don't know, a splash of... what? I'm not the mixologist around here, but suddenly I have a feeling the splash of soda would be all wrong. OK, so maybe just tequila on the rocks with a dash of bitters. Maybe a splash of some appropriate fruit juice if you happen to have such a thing lurking in the fridge. Maybe... OK, look, now that it's too late to do this tonight, there's time to play with this. I need to think about what might work with tequila. We could make a side trip to the Cocktails and Spirits forum and ask around there....

The Keifel Cocktail - has a nice ring to it. I think we should develop it. :biggrin:

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thank you for all the compliments. i have a lot of ink, but that's another tale for another day.

In other words, you're a published writer? Please toot your horn! :biggrin:

Have you written anything about food?

Glad to have you here.

Um... I have a feeling he meant the tattoos....

Oh, that. :biggrin:

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Enjoying this blog, Ms. Victoria and Keifel!

Mishap: The temperature knob came off my slow cooker during my blog. :huh:

But honestly I truly believe that the accidental spilling of sugar is not a mishap at all, it portends money arriving in large quantities.

Since you're on the topic of Rum, I like to make aperetif drinks made by macerating fruits and herbs of various kinds with sugar in an liquor / wine base over long periods of time. Some of the best I've had have been the slow made Punch made at home from places that have a lot of rum. It's done by caramelizing the sugar and then adding it and fruit to rum and letting it sit for a few months. It's really wonderful stuff. :biggrin:

Edited by bleudauvergne (log)
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Pan & balmagowry, you are both right.

i have quite a few tattoos and i have been published as well. i wrote for three of the daily newspapers in Trinidad at one point or another. at the last paper i had a tech column, as for food writing i've just started indulging my passions with Victoria, we're part of a group food journal hosted at Journalspace, it's linked in Vic's signature.

as for the tale of the rum stock, Angostura acquired the rum stock of another company a few years ago, in deal that was quite fortuitous. rum like most alcohol gets better with age and the stock had been well aged.

as for cooking with bitters, i'm just upholding a long standing Trinidadian tradition, almost everything can be done better with a dash of bitter. the flavouring it adds it quite subtle.

bleudauvergne, that punch sounds lovely. it's one of the keys to my grandmother's black cake, we would use the fruits that had been soaking from the previous year. i think if we don't attempt the cake this year, we can at least soak the fruit for it.

Edited by keifel (log)

Don't loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club.

- Jack London

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Hathor, Keifel's grandmother is Jamaican and as the recipe is hers I imagine it is quite similar to what you had.

I tried Christmas before last to make a black cake on my own. I collected several recipes, one from Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, one from Nigella Lawson, several from online and facts gleaned from grilling Keifel on the phone. It was a disappointment. It turned out more like a heavy English fruitcake, good for what it appeared to be but a failure as a black cake. My experience of black cake is dark and highly alcoholic with an almost chewy texture. I am willing to try again with Keifel here as he was at his grandmother's hand for many years of black cake making. We really should get that fruit to macerating ASAP.

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday for me. I wish I had had something more exciting to offer the blog. Perhaps tomorrow.

I have no idea what Keifel and the boychick ate. They are going on tours of the magnet middle schools here in Nashville with the boychick's gifted program and they got to go home for an hour or so after dropping me at work.

I am also not sure if I get lunch with Keifel today, as I have no idea what the schedule with this tour is and if Keifel will be free by lunch to collect me. That may mean I skip lunch all together. Hm.

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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Ms. V and K -

I'm enjoying your blog, too (imagine that), particularly because your photos are so fast-loading. Since I'm still on dial-up, the photo-heavy blogs, while lovely and lively, are a real pain for me to keep up with, so I generally sit them out. Pity, really.

I feel your pain regarding the endless wait for checks in the mail. I'm an IC and have been only sporadically employed for the last 8 months (that's finally changing) & it seems remarkable that fate has so much power over when the checks arrive (regardless of when they are mailed). For example, after going unpaid for 3 months leading up to Christmas, a substantial check was due to arrive in the week or so before. Instead, fate dealt us a frugal Christmas (which was not really a bad thing) by delivering the check on the day after. Similarly, I just last week went off to the UK to learn some new tricks and drum up some new business. Fate was kinder this time. Money was tight leading up to my departure, but a check was due...It arrived Monday morning and I was flying out Monday afternoon. Those endless trips to the mailbox, only to be disappointed, are just demoralizing.

I can't recall any serious mishaps during my blog week, unless you count a 2-yr-old's smearing of chocolate mousse all over my vintage (white) damask tablecloth. :angry:

GG

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GG, the lives of freelancers. Our goal is of course eventually for neither of us to have to have a fulltime gig. I don't think that will happen while we are in Nashville, the cost of living is just too high here compared to other wonderful places to be.

Sorry to hear about your tablecloth, did it come clean?

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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...the cost of living is just too high here compared to other wonderful places to be.

Depending on your definition of wonderful, the cost of living is generally tied to the wonderfullness of a place. More wonderful = more expensive. Vermont is like that; we all pay a premium (several, actually) and make sacrifices to be able to live in such a wonderful place. Would I trade? Not on your life.

Sorry to hear about your tablecloth, did it come clean?

Um, not really. :hmmm:

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There is that premium of place. I guess with Nashville I don't feel like I am getting as much as we pay for, at least not yet. If we were a little bit younger and didn't have the boychick, I'm sure the local music scene would be a boon. It is pretty diverse despite being the country music capital of the world. Wonderfulness is subjective, too. I would love to live in New England, but only if I could get my family to move nearby as well. Because of that we will most likely stay in the South, though we toy fairly often with the idea of leaving the country all together (another whole can of worms financially, but what fun).

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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Lunch. Sadly, not with Keifel. I walked down to Provence (a bakery/deli/cheese shop) in Hillsboro Village. Keifel has the bank card so I had to find somewhere that would take a check. I got a whole wheat peasant roll (chewy and dense, very good) and fruit salad (comprised of the ubiquitous melon and grapes but also strawberries and fresh pineapple, also good and the melon actually has some flavor). I splurged a bit and ordered an iced mocha. Eh, but still caffeine.

Victoria Raschke, aka ms. victoria

Eat Your Heart Out: food memories, recipes, rants and reviews

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