Tag: cooking

The Fragrant Bowl

jono55

My cooking skills, which I have now spent many decades perfecting, are … sorta okay. If the subsistence level of chef-craft is a score of 2, and this means that you can reliably serve food that will not sicken your guests, I am perhaps at a 4, maybe a 5 on a good day (on a scale of 10). By the amount of time I spend talking about food preparation you would expect a much higher score, else why am I daring to speak about it at all? My problem is that I truly enjoy messing about in the kitchen, even if the output is not always legendary.

It’s very much like it is with my poetry, or my prose-writing. I can clearly SEE the enormous gap between myself and a Leo Tolstoy or a Robert Frost in those areas, and yet I enjoy doing what I can do very much. So I’m thinking that makes me a chef de peuple, rather than a chef royal. With a smile on my face and a Michelin 0.000005 star to boot.

Remember way back in time when I told you that my favorite meal, the one I would ask for on the eve of my hanging, was one of bread, soup, and cheese? It still is. But not just any old loaf, lump, or bowl, nossir.

I would be looking for a crusty loaf of bread, a crumbly wedge of cheddar or gouda cheese (the kind with a flavor that makes your eyes roll back in your head), and a soup that has already filled the kitchen air with amazing aromas all afternoon and now quivers in the bowl in front of you, with here and there a shred of carrot or potato peeping above the broth?

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I love making soups, especially those that force me to drag out the seasonings that I use so seldom that dust has collected on the caps of their bottles. I can dice and slice and chop all afternoon, watching small piles of onions and potatoes and celery and carrots rise in front of me. If I am careful, there is now a 99% certainty that I can do this prepping without lopping off and adding parts of my own body to the mixtures. (If you come to my home for dinner, just ask me to show you my hands. A complete lack of Band-Aids should reassure you on this subject. You might also count the fingers just to be certain).

My favorite soup recipe? There is no such thing. That honor is divided between so many as to be meaningless. My favorite so far this cooler season? That’s an easier question to answer. Last week I made Hungarian Mushroom Soup . Robin and I spooned up our portions and then shamelessly licked our bowls and spoons clean. It’s that good. I came across the recipe many years back and the soup has never failed to inspire.

I provide here the stovetop directions and the Instant Pot version of them.

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Low Low Low, by James

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Screenshot

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I don’t ordinarily just post others’ photographs, but this one caught me and held on. It was taken in Yellowstone National Park by photographer Tom Murphy. The title given was “bison at 35 below.”

What extraordinary animals these are! I have seen them by the thousands driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota over the years, and have stopped hundreds of times to admire them.

(I have no photos of my own like this one, and I never will. Because at 35 below zero I would be quivering indoors and wearing anything warm I could get my hands on.)

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One For My Baby, by Josh White

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Mark Twain was a man of so many parts that I didn’t know about at the time I first read about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Later in life I ran across a bit of his writing so startling that I had trouble reconciling it with the humorist I thought I knew. But Twain was vigorously opposed to war, and wrote The War Prayer, which I now recommend to those of you who know of him only as a teller of amusing tales.

Like I said, it was startling.

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MUSHROOM NEWS

A reminder from the state of California that unless you are well trained in identifying fungal species you should not eat them. Some twenty-odd persons were stricken when they ingested death cap mushrooms, with fatalities.

Amanita phalloides is the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human.  It is also the deadliest mushroom worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year.

Wikipedia: Amanita phalloides

When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where its forests were a sort of wild mushroom paradise, I learned how to safely recognize a half dozen species that were safe to eat and were delectable as well. There were many more species that were delicious as well but were difficult to pick out from the unsafe ones, and I was advised not to take a chance on them.

My teacher taught me this categorization, which I have kept in mind all these years even though I no longer go wild-gathering for fungi.

  • Safe to eat but inedible
  • Safe to eat and tasty
  • Sickeners – those which made one briefly ill, often with beaucoup vomiting, but not lethal
  • Killers like the death caps, which typically did not make one feel ill for several hours, and by that time one began to have symptoms one’s fate was pretty much sealed

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A group of hikers in New York state decided to combine walking in the Catskill Mountains with ingesting “magic mushrooms” containing psilocybin. They were, need it even be said, young men in their twenties, one of the least cautious subspecies of humans in existence.

Eventually they had to be rescued because they had lost their way. Instead of following the clearly outlined trail, they made the group decision to travel in a straight line back to their car, which included crossing a bridge that one of the members of the party could see but could never get them to (and which did not exist).

This episode falls into the category of Type 2 fun. (It might be Type 3 for some people, depending on how embarrassing it would be to admit what an idiot you’d been.)

  • Type 1: enjoyable both at the moment and in the retelling
  • Type 2: difficult or uncomfortable while you are doing it, but can produce great stories to relate afterward
  • Type 3: no fun when occurring, and you don’t want to talk about it later

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Frankie and Johnny, by Lonnie Donnegan

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The button picture today is of the monarch butterfly, which has become a symbol to many immigrant communities. The butterfly migrates freely between Mexico and the U.S.

The artist has incorporated images of a family moving cautiously within the wings.

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I Have No Thought Of Time …

jono55

Sandy Denny was an English folksinger and songwriter with a gorgeous voice who sang with several groups including Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, and who put out a handful of solo albums as well. One of the most enduring pieces she wrote was Who Knows Where The Time Goes, a marvelously thoughtful and melancholic song about the passage of time.

I first listened to it as a much younger man and was instantly caught up in the lyrics, which seemed to speak directly to me and I thought How could Denny have written such a personal song when I had never met her and there was no way … but I imagine that’s everyone’s reaction to this lovely musical meditation. At every age I’ve been through since then it has spoken to me with an even clearer meaning, until at my present time of life when I listen it seems just the perfect fit, carrying the message of one of life’s most constant truths.

And yet she was only twenty when she wrote it. Amazing. Breaks your heart, really. It was the last song she ever sang at a public performance. Denny died after a fall down a flight of stairs, at the age of only 31. But even if this piece of music had been her only legacy … aahhh, love … it is timeless.

“Who Knows” has been covered by so many people. Each one that i’ve listened to beautifuin its own right, but none eclipsing the original by Sandy Denny herself.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Sandy Denny

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There are three people whose clear-minded writing about our present national political manure pile that I read regularly. They are Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and Timothy Snyder. There are many others producing worthy material, but the day is only so long and, alas, my attention span has its limits.

I marvel at each piece they post, and especially in the case of Richardson and Reich, they post nearly every day. E.v.e.r.y d.a.y they produce an essay that would get an “A” in Civics class. All three are available on Substack and can be followed on its app. I find that they cut through the clamor and smoke very well, pointing out over and over the lessons of the Andersen fairy tale: The Emperor’s New Clothes.

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Upon reflection, I have found that an almost perfect metaphor for the present-day version of the Republican Party would be the Freudian concept of the Id. I was going to ask Sigmund if he agreed, but was disappointed to find that the man was completely dead.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Nina Simone

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Yesterday I made a fine meal of New England Clam Chowder, which Robin and I wolfed down with much lip-licking and slurping. It was only later when washing the dishes that I noticed a stinging on the tip of my right middle finger, and found that it was missing a bit of tissue measuring about 2×2 millimeters. Apparently during the slicing and dicing of the vegetables that went into the mix I nicked the finger but didn’t notice at the time. There exists the distinct possibility that the missing piece of me went into the chowder.

It’s a tiny thing, I know, but I have chosen not to share this information with my wife. She has a tender stomach, poor dear, and this might affect her attitude toward me and my meal preparations in general.

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From The New Yorker

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I visited the Black Canyon Park on Monday forenoon. It is only partially open, and there is no walking about in the burned areas at all, anywhere, said the burly Park Ranger to me as I came strolling back down a charred hummock. He also said that my hiking where I had no business being would encourage all the other people who were presently in that same parking lot to start doing it. And he definitely implied that this could be the end of civilization as we know it.

I assumed the humbled, craven posture that is my best weapon against angry authority figures and skittered away.

But even such a tense situation couldn’t hide the fact that only 40 days since the onset of the fire, there were one-foot tall Gambrel Oak seedlings already coming up from the rootstocks of the burned trees.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. Nature holds the cards. She started the whole mess with those lightning strikes, and now shows that she is repentant and can put it right again.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Judy Collins

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Across the evening sky
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad deserted shore
Your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know
It’s time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone
While my love is near me
I know it will be so
‘Til it’s time to go
So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

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Pozole News

jono55

After this long on the planet It is very annoying to learn that there is basic information missing from my personal portfolio. But yesterday I was listening to a woman on NPR who was talking about our Black Canyon fire and who used the term “dry thunderstorm.” I had never heard that term before.

So I looked it up.

What it means is precisely what happened here last Thursday morning. Ferocious lightning without any significant rainfall. These sorts of storms occur primarily in very dry areas of the country, as found in the Western US. They are a very common cause of wildfires, exemplified by the fact that our recent “dry thunderstorm” produced four fires in this area, which are still burning.

Dry thunderstorm … polar vortex … downbursts … the meteorologists have their own arcane vocabulary which they use to maintain their power and lord it over the rest of us. Someone should fire them all. I’m calling DOGE.

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Main Title Theme (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), by Bob Dylan

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Robin and I are presently exploring the joys of pozole, a Mexican stew made with hominy (dried corn). Yesterday I put together a pozole verde, made with hominy, tomatillos, jalapeños, chicken, and a few spices. It was delicious. The helpful publisher of the recipe provided instructions for making it in an either a crockpot or a pressure cooker.

I started out with a package of dry hominy, which is the consistency of a bag of rocks and requires some serious soaking and cooking to soften up. Once you get this part done, the rest of the recipe kicks in quickly.

Simple techniques, no special skills required, delicious output. What’s not to like?

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Went with friends Joe and Caroline to a chamber music concert at a local church. Three young musicians played for us, with violin, viola, and a double bass the size of a compact car. The music was excellent.

The bassist was a member of the Navajo nation and he played two of his own compositions. The first of of those was so beautiful and dramatic that I sought him out after the concert and asked if he had recorded it, hoping I might purchase a copy. But no, it was his most recent work and he was still trying it out.

A pity. Would have loved to have had it in my library.

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Not Dark Yet, by Bob Dylan

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I am so totally confused now about the Jeffrey Epstein affair that I don’t know where to start. And the White House isn’t helping by trotting out one scenario after another hoping to find one that will make us all magically forget our names and where we put the car keys and everything else.

The whole business is a good reminder of one of those adages you can hear at any AA meeting. “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember what you said before.” Exactly. And the hapless consortium at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can’t remember in mid-afternoon what they said before lunch.

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“Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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The Sound of Both Hands Clapping

jono55

May all sentient beings praise Senator Cory Booker. He is a good man who has now broken the record of a very bad man (Sen. Strom Thurmond) and delivered a more than 25 hour-long speech in the Senate. All of it directed against the destructive and corrupt Cluck regime.

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This is not right or left, it is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment. Where do you stand?

Cory Booker

Not every man or woman can do something as strenuous and public as what Booker has done, but every man or woman of conscience can now see where we are and what is happening and be disgusted on the one hand and encouraged on the other, because if sacrifice is called for we don’t have to hunt for the reason – it is there right in front of us.

Easy for me to say? I am only a coot in the corner with little to lose? Not true. Each one of us has only the day in front of them to do what is right. Only that moment. In that way we are all alike, as not one of us can see tomorrow.

If anyone in America can be arrested by masked men, thrown onto an airplane, and transported to a foreign country, all without due process, we are all of us vulnerable and should not be fooled into believing otherwise. These are the tactics of despots, of tsars and fuehrers. No one’s life or liberty is safe in such a country. A man called Martin Niemoller put it so very well, back in 1946, as he described Nazi Germany.

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

As you read this they are already coming for Hispanics, for Asians, for Muslims. We’ve had our wake-up call, folks.

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From The New Yorker

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Comic relief. Josh Johnson.

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Saturday afternoon Robin and I participated in a political rally/march here in Paradise that was directed against the Cluck administration and its policies.

It was part of a demonstration by worried, frustrated, appalled, and just plain fed up people across the country, and which was coordinated by Indivisible.org. Robin and I were amazed at the turnout, 1200 people in a small town. It seems that there are few things that make people angrier than an attempted coup being prosecuted by an incompetent delusional.

The signs on the street today ranged from really imaginative and attractive to my own blunt message scribbled with a fat black marker on a hunk of white poster board: IMPEACH.

A guy can dream, right? Here’s a few pix.

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From The New Yorker

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We don’t eat many casseroles here at Basecamp. That’s okay with me because they were constantly on the menu in my family of origin. But a ripple of nostalgia moved me this week and I decided to make a salmon loaf, which turned out not to be half bad.

What one does is take a single 16 oz can of salmon and throw a bushel of bread crumbs at it. It’s probably the back story for that famous episode in the Bible.

Matthew 14:17-19 KJV

And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

My own guess is that they made salmon loaves. You could definitely feed a multitude this way. And there would be plenty of leftovers because of that irreducible group that always says in such instances: “It tastes fishy,” and won’t eat it.

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For What It’s Worth, by Lucinda Williams

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A friend sent along this gem of a link. We liked it very much. It is entitled “Twenty Lessons.”

https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

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No Bad News

jono55

It is so tempting for a weak-willed man like myself to say something about the World of Cluck every day, because the insults and outrages come at us just that fast. That is how that particular crapslinger-in-chief works, jabbing and then oozing away, leaving a slime trail and the listener off balance.

What I will say is that the healthiest thing for any one of us to do is step back, let Cluck flail away in a vacuum, and work hard to hollow out the ground under his feet.

We are now witness to the damage possible when two mentally unstable billionaires get together and run a country, so this would be one good place to start. I doubt that there has been any time in history when wealthy men didn’t have more power than the peasantry, but it is greatly magnified right now, and we can clearly see that it is not in America’s interest to let it continue unchecked.

Speaking as a lifelong peasant, getting rid of Citizens United would be my first step. Allowing another farce like this past election, where one man bought himself a president, should not be allowed to happen again.

Right now Congress is too weak to do the job, so my question would be – what do you and I do to change the composition of those two bodies in the upcoming mid-term elections? Where best to put our energies?

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No Bad News, by Patty Griffin

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When a limited cook like myself looks for something new to try, these days the internet is just too tempting as a resource. But what has become obvious to me is that the old and disciplined recipe books of the past provided something that an internet search on “How to make the best omelet in the universe” does not. Reliability and editing are the differences.

Generally any book-published recipe has been tested and retested over time, and the text has been proof-read. All sorts of mischief can come into play when these are lacking. For instance:

  • You may find that following the recipe faithfully and executing each step perfectly produces a nice plateful of heartburn
  • You may find that there are ingredients listed that never show up in the Directions section, and then … where to put them?
  • You may find that tablespoonful measurements are inadvertently substituted for teaspoonfuls – chaos being the result
  • You may find that although all of the nutrition is there in the final product, it is simply too ugly to eat

And yet, there is at least a 30% chance that later today I will look for yet another version of Mac n’ Cheese out there in the ether. I will type it into Google and trust to the result to feed my wife and I. It’s a mystery to me why I keep doing this. My grandmother would have said that I was soft in the head.

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Come On In My Kitchen, by Crooked Still

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Richard Chamberlain died this past week, after reaching the ripe old age of 90. Actually, when you get to that point you are past ripe, and well into the fruit leather category. I wasn’t a big fan of his, although I thought he did a good job in the original “Shogun”series back in the early 80s.

What I remember very clearly, though, was his effect on middle-aged American womanhood in 1983, when he was the male lead in the television series “The Thorn Birds.” He played a priest in that series, and each week millions of women tuned in, hoping with all their hearts that this would be the week that he broke his vow of chastity.

At work the nurses and female staff would recount the previous night’s episode in detail, and you could tell from their conversation that they were having a bit of trouble with the line that runs between reality and make-believe.

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Go Wherever You Wanna Go, by Patty Griffin

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Our cat Willow is on the road to recovery from … whatever she had. After seven long and heart-wrenching days she is finally up and about and beginning to eat once again. She is far from thriving still, and perhaps I am jinxing things by claiming victory … but it is her victory, we humans being mere cheerleaders.

A sick pet can be emotionally draining, because wherever love goes it goes full tilt and that is not a rational act but a step into a place that is neither wise nor completely sane. At each of the times in my life when my heart had been bruised I resolved to get out of the love business from then on. Too painful when it goes awry, I would say to myself.

A resolution that I never kept.

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Monday our beautiful weather took a turn from unusually nice to far from pleasant. The wind blew hard all that day, and that fast air passed over dry and open fields, carrying dust into our noses and eyes. Even though the temperature was around 60 degrees, wind chills were much lower.

Then on Tuesday we received the double blessing of even colder weather plus a snowstorm. Tonight the temp is headed for 20, and that can do some serious mischief among all those blossoming trees in Paradise.

So we’re socked in for the moment, but with a warm home, food, coffee, two cats, and absolutely nowhere we have to be. Life is good.

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Warnings

jono55

A couple of weeks ago I introduced myself and you to a new artist, Stephen Wilson Jr.. Since that time, I have been listening to nothing but his music. His first and only album contain 34 songs, which is an unusual and formidable number, and has given me much material to listen to and to ponder.

What I have found is that he is a troubadour and whether he knows it or not, he is he is singing my younger Minnesota redneck life as well as his own. He sings it in the key of grunge and he sings it loud, with his own interesting guitar style.

You never heard of a Minnesota redneck? Check out the definition of the term right here.

  1. an uneducated white farm laborer, especially from the South.
  2. a bigot or reactionary, especially from the rural working class.

Dictionary.com

Nothing there about Southern exclusivity, is there? All you need to do is spend long hours in the field with the sun beating on the back of your neck and you qualify. It helps if you are dumb as a rock as well, but that’s not a requirement.

As for me personally, I have in turn been uneducated, white, bigoted, and still struggle with being reactionary at times. Also, the number of dumb things of which I have been guilty in my extended lifetime would make all but the most most adamantine rocks blush with shame.

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From The New Yorker

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On Stephen Wilson Jr’s album there are several songs that stand out for me.

Father’s Son describes the complexities in his relationship with his father over time. Complexities which many of us have dealt with in our roles as sons, fathers, even (as I am learning) grandfathers.

The Year to Be Young – 1994 : my own such year was 1956, but the rest of the lyrics could have come from my diary, if I had kept one.

Calico Creek: the words that caught my attention talked about a deep creek that was dangerous in the spring, but by late Summer …

Where the rope swings are rotten
Had our toes touching bottom
It’ll be dry by July, but if you walk down the sides
You can find some Rapalas

That last line … we kids from low-income families knew well to walk along the newly exposed banks looking for Rapalas and other fishing lures caught on snags and rocks during times of higher water.

Enough! You get the idea. To find so many songs that revealed those common experiences … for me this guy’s music falls under the category of a big fat blessing.

Father’s Son
Year To Be Young 1994
Calico Creek

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From The New Yorker

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PSA

This next piece is in the nature of a Public Service Announcement. Robin and I have discovered a substance of such addictive power that we aren’t even sure that we should put this information out there, on the outside chance that lives could be ruined.

A few weeks back we discovered a new recipe and decided to try it out. It sounded simple, promising, and could easily be manufactured at home using ingredients typically found around any kitchen.

The recipe was for a version of a rice pudding. A homely dessert if there ever was one, and ordinarily considered safe to eat. But our first batch was so tasty that within an hour we looked at one another across a table, spoons in hand, and realized we had eaten the entire bowlful. Little grains of rice were scattered on our shirt fronts, our eyes were glazed and out of focus, our pupils dilated.

To be sure that what had happened was not a fluke, we made another batch a week later, and this week yet one more. Each time with the same result. During the last episode Robin had to duct-tape me to a dining room chair and throw out most of the concoction. Flocks of birds descended upon it which then were unable to fly away without wobbling.

Here is the recipe. I publish so that you can avoid accidentally putting it together. It is the dessert equivalent of crack, and I can say with certainty that once you start on on it you will be unable to stop until you are rendered immobile and possibly nonverbal for hours.

Sharp objects and heavy machinery should not be available to those who ignore these warnings and commit to cooking up something they are not prepared to deal with. Like meth and rice pudding.

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Memento Mori

Roberta Flack, a great lady of American song, passed on this week. She had many, many hits, including one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard, entitled First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. It was featured on the album First Take, released in 1969.

Even if that had been the only tune she’d ever recorded, it would have been enough for me to remember her name.

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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