Body Snatchers

I meant to do my taxes this weekend, but instead, I slept in until I woke up Saturday. I know that sounds pretty damned good, but that would be 6:30 am. So, I ambled out to the kitchen for my Mountain Dew and noticed the refrigerator needed some cleaning out. Several hours later, the pantry was cleaned out, shelf paper installed, and the refrigerator was cleaned. Oh, it got worse. Then, I sat down with a cookbook – yes, I said cookbook – and planned out an actual menu for the actual entire week. I started feeling a little weak and funny during this, but I got through it. Then, I did something else odd – I had, at one point, remembered I’d seen people at the store with a piece of paper with a list of food items on it, pushing their carts, referring to this mystery list as they shopped. I pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote down what I needed according to the recipe. Then, I actually went to the store and used that piece of paper with food items on it – and bought nothing besides those items. No double-praline ice cream, no totally saturated fat potato chips, no cheese sticks, no frozen pizza, no Stouffer’s Lasagna.

Magical Samantha graced the manse last night into this afternoon. It was divine. And, tonight, we dined on spaghetti with white clam sauce and the kids cleaned up. Help…I suspect we’re being taken over by the pod people.

Sit Down Before Reading, The Shock May Kill You

Well, for long time readers, this is going to come as quite the shock. I, the one who does not cook, is cooking. Meh, maybe three times a week now. The children are staring at me with this look like, “Who is this person, but stay…we’ve been very, very hungry” look on their faces. I had requests for this, so here it is, a first in the annals of HAH – a recipe. I guarantee that you will absolutely love its succulence, beauty, and healthfulness. Who knew?

Ingredients

1 regular-size foil oven bag
Cooking spray
1/2 cup uncooked orzo (rice-shaped pasta)
2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
1 cup diced tomato
3/4 cup sliced green onions
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled feta cheese
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Preparation

Preheat oven to 450°.

Coat inside of oven bag with cooking spray. Place the bag on a large shallow baking pan.

Cook the pasta in boiling water 5 minutes, omitting salt and fat; drain. Place the pasta in a large bowl. Stir in 1 teaspoon oil and next 7 ingredients (1 teaspoon oil through pepper). Place the orzo mixture in prepared oven bag. Combine shrimp and basil. Arrange shrimp mixture on orzo mixture. Fold edge of bag over to seal. Bake at 450° for 25 minutes or until the shrimp are done. Cut open bag with a sharp knife, and peel back the foil. Drizzle with 1 teaspoon oil.

Yield

2 servings (serving size: 1 cup orzo and about 5 ounces shrimp)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 498(26% from fat); FAT 14.4g (sat 5.5g,mono 5.1g,poly 1.9g); PROTEIN 38.8g; CHOLESTEROL 219mg; CALCIUM 258mg; SODIUM 817mg; FIBER 3.4g; IRON 6.5mg; CARBOHYDRATE 52.7g

Cooking Light, MARCH 2000

Batting .720 On The Cooking Thing

Motivation clearly comes from odd places. My review spurred me to stay in my jammies most of the day Saturday and redesign the website. I was told last night the blue matches my aura better. God forbid my aura should be caught out without the appropriate color scheme, right?

First, I thought I’d reflect on my cooking week:

Monday – Hamburger Helper

Tuesday – Trout Debacle

Wednesday – Legal Eagle cooks lasagna

Thursday – Uncle Doreen brings pizza

Friday – Dinner at Enotria

Saturday – Sistah Child cooks at her place

Sunday – Best Friend cooks at my place

This was a nearly-perfect no-cooking week, I just have to figure out how to do this every week, and I may not need that cooking wife after all.

Pop over to “Stuff I Like” to see the official results of the “What Kind of Cook Are You” quiz.

People that are such bad cooks, can’t be trusted.
(About the English on the G8 in 2005) ~ Jacques Chirac

Honesty Is The Best Policy?

So, I spent most of the day home with sick #2 kid.  Made chicken soup, tended fevered brow, in gloves and mask, ad nauseum (no pun intended).  Fortunately, signs of life are slowing returning.

Since I had a little time, I thought I’d actually make a dinner, and invited my sister over to celebrate the occasion.  Lovingly and carefully, I prepared three Trout fillets, made some specially seasoned baby potatoes and snapped and steamed some lovely fresh green beans.  Healthy, tasty, and just perfectly timed.

We sat down to dinner. 

HahnatHome:  So, how’s the Trout?

Sistah Child:  (Pause)  Well, they’re a little dry. Tasty, but dry.  Everything else tastes great.

HahnatHome:  (Tasting Trout)  OMG, it tastes like shit.

Sistah Child:  Nope, shit isn’t dry.

Okay, I can deal with the truth–but did Em have to snort her milk out her nose?  Traitors.  Hamburger Helper for the next month!

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister. ~ Alice Walker (MY ASS!)

Why I Loved Julia Child

Melody of The Sacramento Food Forums asked me to come up with something in honor of Julia Child’s posthumous 100^th birthday.  Mel, this one is for you on the fourth day of “you name the topic.”  Funny, Mel, give me a topic about someone who does something that is still a mystery to me—cook.

Most people I know, unless they’ve lived under a rock, know that Julia Child was a pioneering chef who made it easy for the suburban 1960s American woman to enjoy fabulous French gourmet meals in the comfort of their own home.  She wrote a French cookbook that was a huge success in 1961.  Eventually, she was the first woman to have a nationally syndicated cooking show, which started on pubic television in Boston in 1963.  All over the country, housewives—who were never going to be June Cleaver (I so get that) but were tortured over what to make for dinner while hubby toiled outside of the house, found their savior in all 6’2 of Julia Child and her practical, easy to understand way of explaining the mysteries of cooking and enjoying a fabulous meal. 

As a child of the 1970s, I can’t help but conjure Dan Aykroyd’s parody of Julia on Saturday Night Live.  She was easy to parody.  Her voice, her New England affectations, her sheer size.  Audiences loved her because she loved what she did and loved connecting with the people who watched her show and read her cookbooks.  In the 1980s, she co-founded the American Institute of Food & Wine in Napa, CA.  I had the pleasure of enjoying one of the most delicious meals I’ve experienced there a couple of years ago and until now, I had no idea she was one of those responsible for that experience.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Julia, raised in the lap of luxury, raced down to the recruiter and tried to join the Navy.  They rejected her because of her height.  So, she joined the Office of Strategic Services—the forerunner of the CIA.  As someone who started out in the intelligence community, I thought that was pretty cool—I mean, I was in a career field only recently opened to women and that was in the late 1970s.   She was one of the people involved in developing a shark repellent to be placed on explosives placed in the water for enemy ships to hit (the problem had been sharks would bump into them and then blow up the ordnance and alert the enemy of danger in the water).  After serving a tour in DC, she was posted to Ceylon—she met and married a fellow spy and she then started her second career as the Julia we all came to know.  How cool is that though—a woman who served her country during the Big War, when women were typically relegated to factory jobs and praying that the Western Union guy never delivered a telegram–in such an “unladylike” capacity?

The reason I love Julia Child is she had fun.  She blazed trails.  She did it with good humor.  She died in her sleep at the age of 92, but her legacy will live on through everyone who has a copy of her master work, Mastering the Art of French Cooking or any of her other fine books (like the one I used to have–From Julia Child’s Kitchen—but lost in the divorce—hey, I wasn’t using it anyway).

Doris Denial, I Carry A Tong

I had plenty of time, I thought to myself on Thursday and then again on Friday as I nursed kids, to prepare for the barbeque.  Come Saturday morning, I was starting to dabble in the beginning of the start of a general feeling that I might want to think about getting my shit together and get rolling with the plans.  Maybe it would all just go away if I ignored it long enough.   As a recovering list maker, I resisted the urge to plot and plan out the entire events logistics.  I finally just went to the store and crossed my fingers.  My own terror had set in.

Then, my pal Viv called and left me a message.  “I’ve made an executive decision.  You won’t ask for help, but I’m coming to help anyway.”  We spent the next several hours chopping and slicing and assembling the various parts.

On Sunday, I tidied the house and figured out how I was going to seat all those people.  By 3:30, everyone had arrived and I was in full grill mode.  I would have taken pictures of the food, but I didn’t see most of it as I was manning the grill with my able grill-mentor Dave.  Damn, it was hot out there.  Everyone took pity on a poor girl and contributed some such thing or another to help make it a fabulous meal.  Really, about the only thing I had time to eat though was Uncle Doreen’s delicious Bailey’s ice cream shake.

Our token straight people, Mellie and Dave, who spurred me to hold this event, were entertaining, as always.  They have such flair, you know, those straights—such taste and style.

I have the best friends in the world…er, at least I did.  For everyone who made it out alive, send me your hospital bill, will ya’?  For a current tally of the survivors and those not so fortunate:

Lessons From The Farm: Never Name The Livestock

This month’s Vanity Fair had a very moving tribute by Buzz Bissinger to Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who was tragically injured in the Preakness and eventually died.  All those involved in his story knew that you should “never fall in love with a horse.”  But, they did anyway.

My grandfather, who was a college professor, decided to buy a farm in the early 70s and farm part-time.  He raised some livestock and grew some crops.  We got to visit the farm and “help” with the chores.  It was quite an education.  We helped bale hay and rode with grandpa in the fields on his ancient tractor and tiller, helped feed the chickens and worked in the garden.  I loved all the animals. He warned us never to name the livestock.  Seemed pretty stupid to me.  How else could you identify them?

One visit, I found three cows out in the pasture.  I immediately named them, “Tic,” “Tac,” and “Toe.”  Each time I visited that year, I’d go out and sit on the fence and talk to the cows (let’s not discuss that aspect of my personality right now, huh?).  Until that fateful day when we arrived for a big Sunday meal and I leaped out of the car to run to the pasture.  I looked around – something wasn’t right. 

I ran into the farmhouse and said, “Grandma, where is Tac?”  She looked down at me, as she absent-mindedly pulled plates for dinner out of the cupboard and said, “Ask your grandfather. You need to wash up.”

I ran over to Grandpa.  “Grandpa,” I asked, “Where is Tac?”  He solemnly pointed down, to where the hamburgers, buns, and condiments sat in the middle of the table, and said, “He’s right there.”  And, then he walked away, as though what he said meant nothing—oblivious to the fact my eyes had rolled into the back of my head, heartbeat and respiration slowing into imperceptibility.  The room eventually stopped spinning and the psychedelic kaleidoscope of color in my brain eventually dissolved.

Until that point, I hadn’t understood that steers weren’t cows and absolutely believed to the core of my being that the packages of hamburger we bought in the grocery store just appeared magically.   But, it all came flooding in and, aha—so that’s why you never name livestock. 

I felt like Charlton Heston as he screeched, “It’s people, Soylent Green is peeeeoooppleeee.”   I skipped eating hamburger for a long time after that, but I never, ever named another farm animal. 

 

…is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world ~ From the movie, Soylent Green

Tuk, Tuk Natomas

 

 

If you like Thai food, you absolutely must go try Tuk Tuk, which I’ve heard means motorcycle taxi—didn’t see any of those there last night, but ooh la la, what a place.  Here are the ratings for last evening’s excursion:

(Scale is 1-4, 4 being the best ever – Mom’s home made noodles with chicken growing up and some baby lobster soup I had in Garmisch, West Germany in 1980 are about the only things that have ever received my 4) 

UD:       3.5       Service, speed, value, and food were perfect.  I hated the little vases at the front that look like horseshoes. 

LH:       3.5        The bathroom is the coolest—check out the dolphin head sink.  Drink was a little strong.  Love the “uniforms” on the waitresses.  Very exotic. Neither stuffy nor slutty.

LA:       3.5        Other than the fact after ¼ of my Mojita I couldn’t drink through the straw because of all the mint and cilantro jamming it up, it was perfect.

Welcome was pleasant, no wait, the server was not only beautiful (as they all were), she made recommendations and provided terrific service throughout the course of the evening. 

It’s chic – creatively designed, beating just about any any kind of restaurant in town in the looks department. 

The food, however, is the star here.  This is what we had and I can highly recommend each:

Miang Kam
Miang kam is a very tasty snack often sold as street food. It involves wrapping little tidbits of several items in a leaf, along with a sweet-and-salty sauce. Chewing the myriad ingredients together gives the taste buds a thrilling experience – from the rich, roasted flavors of coconut and peanut, to the tanginess of lime with zest and the pungent bursts of diced ginger and chilies. It makes a great party food!

Thai Barbecue Chicken
Chicken is marinated in a melody of Thai spices and then barbecued. This style of cooking chicken originated in the North East of Thailand, but now is served throughout the country as a favorite open market or roadside meal.

Kang Keiw Wan * (Green Curry)
Slightly sweet coconut cream based curry with slices of eggplant and bamboo shoots with an accent of Thai basil leaves.

Poo Pad Asparagus
Stir fried soft shell crab with fresh asparagus and lobster sauce.

Go soon – it’s still relatively undiscovered and it is possible to get a table without reservations.

A Little Garlic

What a yummy weekend. Spur of the moment, I put up a post on Sacramento Food Forums to do a meet-up at Bella Bru in Natomas. I had a major league craving for their potato gratin plate. Only one taker met me–Robert. I also called my sister to join us. Robert is a true foodie who has been involved in various food groups in Sacramento over the years. He’s also traveled extensively. If you are a foodie, and not into the pretentious, “Ohhh, smell this cork….” instead of just tasting the wine to see if it tastes good kind of gathering, go visit Sacramento Food Forums. It was great enjoying a good meal with him!

Then, I made a visit to a Sacramento tradition for breakfast this morning. Pancake Circus, on Broadway, just down the road from the defunct Tower Records has been around forever, and still packs its house every weekend morning. Pancake Circus has the kind of wait staff stilled called “waitress,” 1970s decor and colors, and scary pictures of clowns on the wall. It screams “smoke here while you drink your black, strong coffee,” but of course, there’s no smoking here anymore. The food is of the classic variety - great chicken fried steak, hash browns, eggs, and tons of waffles, pancake, and crepe choices. One Tricor later, it was all good.

And, tonight–it’s my signature dish for dinner–linguine in clam sauce. Yes, if forced, and when we’ve all finally gotten tired of takeout, delivery, and 10-minutes meals, I can cook in a pinch–I just don’t like it.

What a nice 3-day weekend…hope yours was too.

My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor

~ Phyllis Diller

Tour de Northern California

On Wednesday, when my buddy Kim was scheduled to arrive, I wasn’t nervous that I would be spending the next four days with someone I’ve never met…not a stranger mind you…because we’ve had a year of getting to know each other through emails and by phone and through our blogs. But, you never know, right? She could have been totally different than she seemed. She could have been a barely functioning sociopath who caused me to sleep with one eye open or any number of things that would mean not only a crappy weekend, but worse – like watching her as she OCD’d-out tapping doorknobs, every third sidewalk square, or became lost somewhere because she was washing her hands all day. She might have found all her bravado on the phone and not been able to speak to another live human being. Fortunately for me, none of these things were true, and she was just as clever, articulate, and plain fun as I surmised. She’s one of those people I feel I have known far longer than our actual history would indicate.

That’s just a long, windy way to say I had a freakin’ blast. We started with a trip to the city, not unlike that on which I took Red Hog a year ago also guided by Viv, one of the few people in California who though not completely native, has lived here for over 40 years.

We hit the highlights and then joined John & Jeff in the City for dinner at a fabulous new French restaurant, Cote Sud, in the Castro. Luck was with us because they had an all inclusive that was way underpriced. Then, off to the coast for beach time and ocean views the next day. While having breakfast down the coast, Kim realized that, “OMG, I left my girlfriend’s leather jacket in the hotel!” Well, let’s just say this is a rather new girlfriend and it’s probably not a good idea to leave her jacket anywhere.

I recommended Kim relate the close call to her girlfriend after she pours the fabulous bottle of Pinot Noir we picked up, along with the most spectacular to die for chocolate and cheese we found in the Sonoma wine region the next day. Wine country is always a great time, especially when you take the uninitiated. Most folks tend to gravitate to Napa, but the free tastings are few and far between and many of the wines over-hyped. Sonoma Valley was stunningly beautiful yesterday and the wines were a lot of fun. I even found two heretofore undiscovered California ports, which made my little heart flutter.

We saw the sights of San Francisco, sat Oceanside, drove the coastal highway, hiked into Big Basin, saw a couple California missions, hit wine country and never got lost. I am now a Californian and did the entire trip without a map – I navigated entirely by what? That’s right – landmarks!

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. ~Unknown