My discourse on the Pagan Baby cans made me think about the whole nun thing, a phenomenon that only those who were forced to attend Catholic school can identify with. In the 1950's, there were a lot of nuns teaching elementary school and as I think about it, I wonder if any of them actually had any kind of teaching degree. One would have to think they didn't. What else were Brides of Christ (oh, what a title that is!) going to do besides teach the impressionable little Catholic kids? And they probably didn't get paid, so that's an even better use for them! I can't think the Brides of Christ had a lot of other options. Shine the chalice? Iron vestments? Create new fish recipes for Friday dinners? So they were tossed into classrooms and told to teach. As a kid, of course, you have no idea if you are being taught well. You show up, they show up, you spend your 7 hours there and go home and do homework, which is what they were supposed to teach you while you were sitting in the classroom. I think we basically taught ourselves everything except long division, which is difficult to learn from a book of arithmetic problems. (By the way, when did "arithmetic" turn into "math"?)
Nuns were good at catechism, of course, because it was their husband's fancy sayings, like some sort of Confucius thing. So they grilled us on the correct answers from the catechism which probably took up the entire morning. They were very good at punishment as well, like hitting us on the back of our hands with a yard-stick. Or making us stand in the corner, facing the wall. Or making us stay inside the classroom during lunch, laboring over those long division problems. Nuns were quite talented at belittling us, too. "Worthless" was a favorite word. They never actually said we were going to go to hell but they talked about it so much it seemed inevitable that a large percentage of the class was doomed to live for all eternity in fire with a red guy who had pointy ears, a tail and a tall stick. Satan. Only they never called him Satan that much, it was always "The Devil" as in "The Devil sees just as much as the Almighty Father, don't you forget that!" Scary stuff when you're seven years old.
We were well schooled on the differences between heaven and hell, of course, but we all thought purgatory might be an actual possibility. I don't think there is a purgatory anymore, it probably went the way of Pagan Baby cans, but as a kid it was a real option. The thinking was something like "well, I know I will never be good enough to go to heaven (especially according to Sister Annunciata, my first grade teacher and her name did not do her justice) and I hope I won't be thrown into hell, but maybe purgatory wouldn't be too bad." Purgatory was sort of a half-way house between heaven and hell. (Limbo, on the other hand, was where babies (not the pagan ones, those went to hell) went who hadn't yet been baptized but who probably WANTED to be baptized. They still had that Original Sin on their little, tiny souls, which is what gets erased when they pour that holy water over your head during baptism. I never thought the sin was that original, Adam eating the apple and getting kicked out of that cool garden, but I guess listening to and agreeing with a snake does have some originality to it.) Anyway, purgatory seemed sort of like a Club Med for wayward people, where all your needs would be met except you wouldn't get into heaven but you didn't have to worry about hell and the worst thing was that you might have a hangover all the time. (We had no idea about Club Med, of course, that was a hell of a different kind that would be invented in the 1970's.) Purgatory seemed alright, not great, like going to your Gramma's for the rest of eternity; you could stay up late, goof off, all the while knowing you wouldn't burn to death in hell but you would be incredibly bored and you would never really be totally happy either because no one could ever be totally happy unless they landed in heaven and collected their $200 and "get out of hell" free card. Metaphorically speaking.
Many of us were resigned to purgatory. I was, that's for sure. Since mortal sins (the deadly kind, unlike venial sins, the smaller version) abounded, and if you died with one on your soul you went straight to hell; it was almost impossible to live a pure life. Even if you went to confession and told all your terrible deeds (at seven years old) to the sleeping concerned priest behind the curtain and did your penance, you could think something really bad like a curse word and oops! Another mortal sin blotch on your soul, off to hell with you! So it was almost impossible to ever think you would go to heaven unless it was in that 3 minute window after saying the penance and getting outside the church, when you hadn't yet thought the nasty word and sinned again. Purgatory was pretty much all we hoped for.
And the nuns were happy to reinforce this depressing dogma. Granted, it was a long, long time ago but I cannot ever remember one nun (or one Catholic School teacher, for that matter) who every said anything like "hey, you might have a chance for salvation after all!" Ever. It was a religion of fear, no doubt about it. Oh, you could eventually get out of purgatory if you had a lot of friends on earth who prayed for you, night and day, but otherwise you were there forever.
After all these years, I wonder what happened to those nuns. I wonder if they got to heaven or purgatory. I wonder if anyone still believes in purgatory. I wonder if it ever existed at all. And what happened to all those little babies' souls in limbo? When they erased limbo from the stairway to heaven, did they remember to jump those souls up to purgatory? And if they have erased purgatory, what about all those souls? Heaven and hell, the only two options left. Sigh.
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It has been a tumultuous week and I will write about that a little later. But the thing that has been getting me through this week, and many others, are my summer cocktails. Now, if you know me, you know that a cocktail for me is fine anytime of the year, winter, spring, summer, fall. So the cocktail I call my "summer" cocktail could well last until fall and maybe winter and why not next spring? But these two are what I am drinking now. Along with wine. And sometimes beer. But not mixed up. At least, not too often.
A cross between a mint julep and a whiskey sour, how could that not be great? BTW, Trader Joe's makes a nice, simple house bourbon for $14.99 and if you are making mixed drinks, it is smoother than Jack Daniels (well, yes, what a surprise!) and cheaper and actually has more taste. Not as good as Bulleit bourbon but $5 less.
For my summer cocktail, I make a simple syrup (and if you need a recipe for that you need to go back to grade school) which often has a lot of mint added when I take it off the heat. If I have mint. If not, just the syrup is fine. But you need mint for this drink, so either forage (which is what I do, in the 'hood) or buy it. If you make your syrup minty, then pour a bit in a nice size glass, at least 18 ounces capacity. A bit means maybe two tablespoons. If you make your syrup without the mint, then pour the same and add about six or seven mint leaves and muddle them. I use the end of a wooden spoon but if you have a muddler, use that. Just bruise the leaves, but bruise them hard, so they will notice it in the morning. If you use minty simple syrup, do the same but only use a couple of mint leaves. Muddle away.
Then add ice cubes, enough to come up to about an inch from the top of the glass, so maybe six. Or seven. Or three if the glass is small and you cut down on the syrup from above. Whatever. Then pour in bourbon, maybe two ounces. Stir and then squeeze a half lemon over it all and stir again. Any kind of lemon, although mine are usually meyer lemons because I steal them from the 'hood and I don't feel bad about that. Stir. Taste. It should taste minty and lemony and not too sweet. Add more lemon to taste.
Drink. If you are at home, drink irresponsibly. If you are not at home, use your discretion. This drink tastes so good that you can drink one in three minutes. That is fine, no judgement here (I have done it now and then, but maybe ten minutes, not three) but make the next one much, much smaller. It's a little sweet, but not too much, lemony, bourbony and refreshing. Yumm.
Second drink: for this you need some sort of grapefruit soda, tequila and lime. In Mexico they make this with Fresca, which is hard to find these days. Trader Joe's sells a nice Italian grapefruit soda which doesn't have too much sugar, is tart and lasts for two weeks in the fridge. Use a tallish glass, like a gin and tonic glass. Put in ice, pour in decent tequila, add a generous pinch of salt and squeeze in at least a half lime, maybe more if the lime you pick isn't very juicy. Stir with a long spoon, then fill it up with the grapefruit soda and stir again. Taste. It might need more lime or soda or salt or (!) tequila. Again, you can sip this like lemonade, so be careful, but it is quite refreshing.
When I lived in Inverness, in the big white house, my friend Stacey and I drank these (with Fresca) while watching "The Godfather" which she had never seen (and she was in her 20's!) and we ate Gino's pizza rolls. We were sitting on an old double bed with a wood frame and we decided to turn the bed to better see the movie. With several tequila and Fresca drinks in us, we didn't do it well, we laughed enough to pee our pants and we cracked the bed frame. It isn't until this day that I am confessing this..... sorry, Margaret. Your frame, our fault. But it was a great day; "leave the gun, take the cannoli" is now part of our family lexicon. Along with "it's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business."
OK, I digressed. Two summer cocktails. Try them. And for dinner tonight, a great summer treat: home-grown tomatoes from a friend, chopped with a little salt and basil, on toasted bread with fresh burrata. So delicious.
That's it for now.
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A quick post: I made a summer risotto tonight that was outstandingly delicious. Too bad no one was here except me to eat it. I could have eaten the entire pot but that would have put me over the edge of ..... fat stomach. Bloatedness. Piggyness. So I didn't. I saved some for tomorrow's breakfast which might be in an hour.
Risotto is simple, basically just some rice and broth. It's like the chicken of the rice world, you can put anything with it and it will taste lovely. But I suppose that's true of any rice concoction: rice is a vehicle; you just need good passengers.
Arborio rice is what you want for risotto, of course. It takes a while and looks like a fat silly grain for a while until it undergoes its magical (dare I use that word?) and molecular transformation. One minute it looks like a bunch of bloated rice grains and 90 seconds later! Zut Alots! It is smooth and creamy and rich and done!
I had peas from my garden (yes!) and basil from my garden (again !) and zukes from a friend and an ear of corn and some small tomatoes from Trader Joes. I cut all the veggies into same size bits, like corn-sized. Sauteed half an onion (from no one's garden) in butter and olive oil and then did the same for the rice, added the requisite white wine, then bits of broth, until it was almost done, then all the veggies except for the basil, and stirred for a bit, a little more broth, then the "mantecatura" which is when you beat in the butter and Parmesan and it gets all creamy and smooth and yummy and you have to eat it some of it with a spoon out of the pot but you also must put it in a bowl and put a bit more cheese on top and sit down at a proper table with a chair and swoon at its deliciousness. And eat it all, slowly, so your bowl is empty and then you go back to the pot and eat some more with your spoon until you make yourself stop.
Sigh. I could have eaten the entire potfull. It was so, so good, so fresh, so a little "toothsome" as Julia C. would have said and so summery. So good. And cheap! And no meat! (Chicken broth is NOT meat, so don't go down that path.) Garden peas, who knew? Basil, well, of course. Corn, crunchy; tomatoes, sweet; zukes, not even a bit mushy. Salt, pepper and almost a free meal.
Yum. That's all I can say for now.
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Just a quick update: yesterday's catering gig went very well. The dozen ladies were an easy bunch, especially after a couple of cocktails. They loved the food and the small portions of it. They liked the dessert, they liked the service, the clean-up, all of it.
I have to thank my friend Jill who came along and was my right-hand person, cleaning up, plating, serving, doing everything. Without her it would have been so much more work and so much less fun.
I did learn something: salt the food! I am not a big salt person, never have been unless it's on popcorn. Or steak. But as I was re-cooking the green beans yesterday, I kept tasting them and kept sprinkling salt and lemon juice on them and they were delicious! Same thing with the corn and the port-balsamic-shallot reduction: added more salt than I normally do and all were extremely tasty. It's a lesson to me, taste and add salt when needed. You would have thought I would know that by now, and I did but yesterday's experience made it a lot more clear.
And today is a total day off. The day opened cloudy and gray and cold, a perfect day to read and watch a movie on TV and walk the dogs. Had plans to do more adventurous stuff but put it off for another day. I think I just needed a quiet, down day.
Movie review(s) coming up.
In April I was asked if I wanted to cater a dinner for 12 older ladies. Older as in older than me. A lot older. 25 years older, minimum. I said yes, since in April money was even scarcer than it is now and I wasn't working all these days and hours. Tomorrow is the day of the dinner and I am so not wanting to do it. But since I have already invested more than $200 in food, I guess I will.
Sigh. Nothing I did today turned out the right way. I blanched the green beans but they already seem too cooked. The crostini turned out very crisp which might be a problem for the old ladies and their frail teeth, if they even have their own teeth. Frail dentures might be more apt. I suggested rib eye steaks (they only wanted beef, nothing else) but they wanted fillet mignon, the cut of choice for people over 80. Why? It has little taste compared to a rib eye. The only thing going for it is that it isn't tough, which might be good for the denture group, I suppose. I am happy to make them my creamed corn, which I could eat every single day of my life and be so, so happy. Corn, a little garlic and cream. What's not to like? But what if they don't like it?
I am anticipating everything going wrong. This isn't like me, I am usually a confident cook. But having spent almost $100 on the meat, I am terrified I will fuck it up. I am pretty sure the sour cream peach pies will be good but even those could go south. ACK!!! Why did I agree to do this? It's my one day off, sort of, and the entire day will be spent cooking and worrying and cleaning up. The money isn't that great, actually, since I feel guilty for charging for all the hours I am spending on it, especially after forking over the outrageous amount of money on the meat.
I guess I will need to wow them with my charm. Too bad I don't have a lot of that, and what I do have is tarnished and bruised due to how often I have to be "nice" to the public because of being in the inhospitable hospitality industry. My levels of charm and graciousness are at an all-time low right now and won't be replenished anytime soon, that's for sure.
OK, enough of it all. I am right now at the boutique hotel in Glen Ellen where I work, smiling at guests, drinking cheap (free) white wine mixed with watermelon lemonade (house-made!) and wishing I had one of those fillets to cook up right now. And a piece of pie.
I will report on the success or disaster on Monday. Could go either way. Or both ways. Or sideways.
There isn't anything pagan about the pie crust but after that Pagan Baby rant, I thought I would continue the theme. Onto the pie crust..... first, I don't like making pie dough in a Cuisinart for two reasons. First, you have to clean it and since it has been more than 25 years that I have had a dishwasher, washing all those parts is annoying. Second, once you get the dough the right consistency (small pea-size pebbles) you are then supposed to add the ice water and pulse it a few more times, which I think makes those pea-size pebbles too small and the dough becomes too tough. And honestly, kids, if you are going to the trouble of making a pie crust, making it in a bowl with a pastry blender takes less time than hauling the food processor off the shelf, assembling it, doing the dough, breaking it down, washing it, drying it and putting it away. Too much work. You should be able to get the dough in the fridge in under five minutes once all the ingredients are in the bowl. Five minutes! It's that easy.
One very important factor is that the butter must be very cold. If it's too warm, it melts or squishes into the flour. No bueno. That just makes oily dough, something that only a grease monkey would like. (Not to disparage grease monkeys, they are very cute and fluffy, just a bit oily.) If your kitchen is hot, don't make pie crust. Or you can do it if you put the flour in the bowl and stick that in the fridge for a few minutes and if you put the butter back in the fridge after you cut it up and if you work really, really fast.
So, here it is. For a single 9 inch pie crust you will need 1 1/3 cups flour, 1 stick of butter cut into small (1/2 inch) dice, a half teaspoon salt and a teaspoon of sugar if you like. Put a couple of ice cubes into a mug of water of which you will use four or five tablespoons or a little more. But it needs to be ice water, thus the ice cubes.
Use a decent size bowl, nothing too small because you might have to get your hands in the bowl. Into the flour, add the salt and sugar and stir, then scatter the butter cubes over and use your pastry blender to work the butter into the flour until the butter is the size of small peas. It won't be uniform looking, don't worry. Then drizzle two or three tablespoons of ice water over the dough and mix it into the flour mixture with a spatula or a fork. Do this a couple of times, but just a bit at a time so it doesn't get too wet. You will probably use less than a third cup water. It should come together with large clumps. Grab a handful and squeeze gently. It should feel like it's sticking together, sort of. Add a little more water if you need to, but once it has pretty clumps, gather it together with your hands and make it into a cohesive ball, kneading it a little so it sticks together. If you have used enough water, you should be able to squish it together easily without it all falling apart. Be gentle, yet firm. Once it is in a ball shape, put it onto a large sheet of plastic wrap, smash it down (gently) into a disc and wrap it up. Put in the fridge for at least an hour.
That's it. You should be able to see pieces of butter in it, which is going to make it nice and crispy. And you can go here (http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/11/pie-crust-102-all-butter-really-flaky-pie-dough) to see how Deb does it and see photos and the like. She advises a little more water than I like, but follow her instructions, it will be beautiful.
The rolling and putting into the pie pan is easy. See this for that. http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/11/pie-crust-103-rolling-and-crimping/ I think she gets too involved in the rolling part. This dough will be thin in the pie pan but it's pretty sturdy. As you are rolling it, if it isn't the right shape (circular!) it's OK to cut off a piece here and there and pat it firmly into place on top of the rest of the dough to make a circle. I never get the crimping to look really good but this dough didn't shrink in the pan, and it was deliciously golden brown and crisp after the final baking.
When you pre-bake it, it won't be golden. It will be golden after you put the filling in, whatever it is, and bake it. And I really recommend spraying the tin foil with non-stick spray before you pat it over the dough. I didn't use beans or rice, just the tin foil, and it worked fine, but if you are a novice, use beans or rice (and save them to use again for the same purpose) because it will make the dough lay down nicely.
OK, now you know that this entire thing wasn't really my idea, I stole it from smitten kitchen. I admit that. I admit that I don't have a creative idea in my head most of the time but I also will sing the praises of this pie crust any day of the week. Try it. Be brave.
Growing up, we were on the edge of being poor. My Dad was a self-employed, non-union heating and air conditioning contractor. There were six kids in the family ("in 9 years!" as my Mother always reminds us) and never enough money. I remember one time my mother took those little Pagan Baby banks that we were given in Catholic school in which to put coins and then send to some kid in Africa who would have no idea what to do with a penny or a nickel and my Mother boldly cut the top off of each bank and went to the market with a pocket of coins to buy eggs and bread for dinner. We, the four oldest who got those tiny banks with a coin slot in the top, were convinced that our small amounts of money (most of which we found on the street while walking home from school, a lot of pennies) would buy us a Little Brown Pagan Baby that we would name Harry (I don't remember why) and that Jesus would love us for that purchase. Honestly, what were those nuns thinking? Coins for Pagan Babies? And that is exactly what they called the kids we were saving: Pagan Babies! How did they know what those kids believed in? How did they know they believed in NOTHING and were thus pagans? And really, where did those coins go that our (richer) classmates dutifully brought in at the end of Lent? Did the nuns themselves pry the tops off (like my Mother did) and buy a pack of smokes for themselves, a half pint of cheap rum to put in their tea, some forbidden luxury like..... a Hershey's Chocolate Bar? I cannot believe they actually took the coins and sent them to Africa, and I hope they didn't, but then, I was a cynic at the age of 6, so maybe they did. Who knows?
But I digress. Since we were on the edge of being poor, or because of it, or because she had no practice and way too many kids, my Mother was a terrible cook. She is the only person I know who could turn a fine chuck roast into the worst stringy, gray, tough pot roast with mealy potatoes, oily gravy and carrots that had been cooked until they were a mockery of a root vegetable. To this day I am not a fan of hamburgers because every Saturday night we had what Mom called "hamburgers" but what were actually (I believe) meat-covered hockey pucks. Burnt, flat, as dry as a camels hump, tasteless. She also had a really great concoction that I called, at the age of 6, "shredded cardboard and flour water" which was accompanied by plain boiled mealy (again!) potatoes. It was cheap ground beef, fried up and then flour and water were shaken together and poured over the meat to pretend to be some sort of gravy and then you were supposed to put it on the plain, gross potatoes and EAT IT! It was gag inducing. I couldn't eat it. I don't remember what my five siblings did but I know my Dad just loaded it up with salt and pepper and spooned it down. I sat at the table and prayed that they would believe I had a bad stomach ache and couldn't eat anything that night. Being hungry for an evening was preferable to eating the cardboard.
But my Mom did make three things that were really good. Excellent fried chicken (flour and salt, fried in Crisco), a really good apple crisp and great pies. Pumpkin in the winter, apple in the spring and fall and, the best, real lemon meringue pie in the summer. She would actually cook the lemon custard over a double boiler, and once the meringue was on, it went under the oven broiler to get the peaks toasted golden brown. It was the best L.M.P. I have ever had.
And she made great pie crust. No measuring, just flour, salt, Crisco and ice water. It was flaky, tasty and it never was tough. I learned by watching and doing (although child participation in the kitchen was never encouraged, unlike when I raised my kids. Heck, if they wanted to cook, far be it from me to discourage them from getting dinner on the table!) I grew up with Crisco pie crust and I learned to make a damn fine Crisco pie crust that I was proud of. When people complained about making pie crust, how it never worked for them, how they found the most excellent frozen pie crust (yikes!) I remained silent. Or not. Mostly not. I am a preacher for making your own pie crust and I was a convert for Crisco.
Until this week. This week I made the best pie crust I have ever made, with butter. Butter and flour, salt, a tiny bit of sugar (optional) and ice water. In a bowl, with a pastry blender. NOT in the Cuisinart. It took five minutes, I had one bowl and the pastry blender and a fork to clean up. It was flaky, golden, crispy, delicious. It's now my go-to crust and I am as happy as a Pagan Baby with a pocket full of coins. And tomorrow I will tell you how to make it. This blog post has gone on long enough.
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My friend Susan who lives in Inverness, the owner of the small cottage I lived in for more than ten years, mentioned in an email the other day that it was a sunny day and she missed the times she and I would sit at the picnic table, under the apple tree, and have a glass of wine. We would chat about whatever was happening, about our dogs, about families and friends. On Fridays my friend Tom would always come over with his dog and we would have a cocktail under the tree (or inside if it was cold) and Susan would often join us. That camaraderie was nice. It was good to have a conversation about nothing serious, just about the stuff that happens every day.
I miss that kind of connection. While my job forces me to interact with strangers for very short increments of time, there is no connection, of course. This is a hotel, not a book club. People check in, they check out. The hospitality industry is about being nice to people and making sure they are happy. It doesn't work the other way: they are not here to be nice to me or to make sure I am happy. Which is how it should be; the last thing I need or want is someone monitoring my happiness levels.
However, I do miss having friends in close proximity. Where I am now, I have one or two, and even those I see rarely because everyone is so busy all the time. So my glasses of wine or my cocktails are usually consumed alone. This isn't bad, I have lived by myself for 20 years so am happy drinking by myself. But I miss that spontaneous "hey, join me for a glass of vino?" episode that plays out when you have friends in the neighborhood.
I guess I need to make friends where I live now. I don't think that's going to happen but maybe I can put up a sign on the corner saying "free wine with conversation" and see who shows up. I live two blocks from the Santa Rosa Junior College, there must be someone over there with a need for witty repartee.
Or not. And I don't want this blog to sound like I am whining. I'm not. I'm not lonesome or lonely. Maybe I'm just getting tired of talking to myself.
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Book: If you are a fan of American history, this is an excellent read: "Empire of the Summer Moon" by S. C. Gwynne. It is the story of the rise and fall of the Comanche Indian tribe, basically from the mid 18th century to the dawn of the 20th century. The narrative is very readable and since it isn't plot driven, you don't need to read it all at one sitting. But it's fascinating in its detail about how the Indian tribes, especially the Comanches, went from nomadic wanderers on foot to becoming incredibly accomplished horse warriors. The interaction between tribes was new to me as was the whole horse culture of most of the tribes. We all know about the "white man's robbing the Indians of their land." In our lifetime we have seen and read about Indian protests about injustices imparted upon the tribes. But this book takes you into the fights, the massacres, the sham treaties, the savagery on both sides of this episode of American history. It's a good book, very detailed in its research and I can promise that you will see the Indian - soldier conflict in very different ways when you are finished.
Movie: this is an instant download through Netflix, although you can get it on disk if you don't do the Roku thing. "The Waiting Room" is a small, independent British film that has charm and wit, imagination and reality. People just trying to figure out what their lives are about and in the process they get their feelings hurt and they hurt others. The search for a bit of happiness is never a smooth one, is it? Not for anyone. We are all looking for love in all the wrong places, and these characters are no exception. But it works towards a nice ending, one that is a bit contrived but in a good way. It's a very nice way to spend an hour and a half.
Sweat: not to belabor the point, but Santa Rosa has been hotter than I expected this past week. We went to bed last night around 10:00 and the inside temp was hovering around 88 degrees. The house just doesn't cool off. I had on a skimpy tank top (don't dwell on that picture too long) that I actually splashed water on before turning off the light, just to have a little coolness. Ah well, it's just hot air and nothing more serious than that. This too will pass.
Hope everyone enjoyed the July 4th birthday celebrations. From my porch I could see some of the higher fireworks from the fair grounds, and they were lovely.
