Random thoughts from the cottage

 

Looking at Jordan, like,
Where are you taking me?

Sophie went to the vet yesterday. Poor dear leads a sheltered life. She’s either in the cottage or in our relatively small backyard, but at least she can come and go between the two at will.
Still, she gets excited when we bring out her leash, and a car ride is a real joy. Somehow she

Looking at the world

never figures out that the vet is at the end of the ride. But she got a good bill of health yesterday, some new medicines—ear drops which she acts like are the most painful things in the world, an anti-bacteria pill for an unhealed sore. Jordan took some cut pictures of her in the car (why wasn’t my daughter’s attention on driving? Maybe these were all at stoplights.)

Resting, all is well.
We're going home.

Some odd food notes: today from my favorite grocery store I saw an ad for personal watermelons. Stopped me short—I can’t think of what they are unless they are individual-sized watermelons, and I’ve never seen such. In other food news, for the past two nights we had happy hour company and never really had a proper supper. Last night I wasn’t hungry but thought I should have something solid and substantial, so I decided on scrambled eggs—my go-to. I had watched a video of Jamie Oliver’s foolproof technique for making an omelet, so I thought I’d try it, even if I wasn’t going to put any cheese in the middle. Major fail convinced me I will order omelets out and give up trying to do one at home.

Not an omelet

Tonight I made lamb burgers and put lettuce, mayo, and feta in the buns. So good. And satisfied my longing for a substantial meal. Added a cucumber salad with a yogurt dressing that had, of all things, a bit of mustard. You couldn’t taste the mustard, and it was really good.

But speaking of food, a friend emailed today and wondered if Irene ever made clafouti, the French dessert of fruit, traditionally black cherries, covered with a flan-like batter and baked, then dusted with powdered sugar. After all, she reasoned, it’s French so Irene must have made it. The subject came up because I said pitting cherries is too much trouble, and I intend to make a blueberry dump cake. I don’t even want to imagine what Irene would say about a dump cake (fruit, cake mix, and butter) but I have promised to mention clafouti to her. (In France, it’s called calfoutis.) And by the by, don’t plan a trip to France for your clafoutis—they are having serious problems with too many tourists.

Big news at the cottage today is that we got new sod in the backyard—a variety of Bermuda called TurfTen I think. It was fun to watch the guys install it—they scraped out the old, dead, beat the new into place and affixed it with a huge roller thing, a much more complicated process than I never thought planting grass was. Grass in our back  yard is a sore subject—we have tried everything—zoysia, St. Augustine, winter rye. And I always end up having to replace it. The part of the yard that is grass is relatively small, and I’d be all for decorative grasses and ground cover, but the dogs need someplace to poop and pee. And that, of course, is what kills our grass. I don’t expect it to improve a lot now that we have only two dogs instead of three, but my lawn service friend assures me this should come back next spring (if it survives this summer).

I read today that in thirty years it will not be uncommon for the Texas temperature to hit 125^o.  I am advocating for replacing the front lawn with native plants but am stopped by cost and lack of knowledge. Christian showed me one such front yard in a nearby neighborhood that he said was the only way he would do it—plants grouped by variety and still a bit of grass. I would like a wilder look. Probably a pipe dream since I am hit with vet bills, hearing aid bills, and other big expenses. At this point in my life, the odds of making a fortune with a bestselling book are pretty slim.

Take heart, my friends. Tomorrow is supposed to be a tad better but still pretty hot. After that, though, we begin to head down into the nineties, which I find reasonable, and there’s the promise of a breeze and a hint of possible rain next week. I keep remembering a year when Colin and Lisa came for the fourth—at least twenty years ago—and it was downright cold. Guess climate change has made that unlikely to happen ever again.

Stay cool and safe.

How do you like your peanut butter and other food trivia

 

Mary's delicious leftovers

You may think food is always on my mind, and pretty much it is. But more so tonight as I think back on the last couple of days (my world was too hectic to blog last night, but that’s another story). My friend Mary Dulle teaches cooking classes, mostly online, but early this week she taught an in-person class at the Woman’s Club on Porch Party Tipples and Snacks—for tipples, she offered sangria. Tuesday night is our regular weekly happy hour, and we usually don’t have food, but Mary brought a bountiful feast—smoked trout-stuffed baguette slices and marinated goat cheese (I could so make a pig of myself on the latter!). We’ll always welcome her leftovers! Tuesday for TCU Silver Frogs she did another in-person class on breakfast pizzas. I’m not a pizza fan, but that sounds so good.

From fancy nibblers to the mundane: my mom taught me to eat peanut butter sandwiches with mayonnaise and a crisp leaf of lettuce. A childhood staple that I still occasionally crave, and now one of my sons likes it a lot. But the rest of the world looks at us like we’re crazy. There are lots of things to put with peanut butter, but mayonnaise? Turns out the sandwich was a staple during the Depression, especially across the South where peanuts are plentiful. It was a cheap but filling way to get some protein. Today’s afficionados insist that the sandwich must be on white bread, I guess preferably the kind that turns into cotton candy in your mouth and sticks to your teeth. But I’m pretty sure I grew up eating it on rye.

Mom used to occasionally add bacon to the sandwich, which was a good treat, but I’ve read recently that people also put grated cheddar, pickles, onion, sliced egg, sliced apple, and even salami. Of course, if you add some of those things, you defeat the inexpensive aspect of the sandwich. Me? I’ll stick with lettuce.

But guess what Ernest Hemingway’s favorite sandwich was—peanut butter with onion. I’m on a big, sweet onion kick, so I’m hoping it was sweet onion—or had they grown those yet when he was walking among us? Apparently, the peanut butter softens the bite of the onion, but the onion adds a nice crispness to the bite. He drank red wine with it.

Gastro Obscura, an online newsletter I read, brings up all kinds of food oddities. This week, it was a class in how to cook with crickets and cricket power. Those have been staples in some Asian countries, principally Japan I think, for years but the article points out that in the interest of sustainable food sources, we should really consider insects. There really is an Edible Insect Movement. Gastro Obscura sponsors exotic and unusual food trips but I think this was an online class.

Another memory from my childhood: Mom canning fruits and vegetables. I distinctly remember we ate her canned tomatoes and applesauce all winter, but I think she also did green beans and peaches and figs (Mom loved figs!). Home canning of course was big during WWII when certain foods were scarce, and Victory Gardens were encouraged. Today’s edition of The Food Historian talks about the dangers, and I well remember that when Mom was ready to take jars out of the oven, she made me leave the kitchen for fear they might explode. According to The Food Historian, that was a very real danger.

Water bath canning is what the name implies—immersing jars of food in boiling water. But it is a complicated process with many steps ensuring sanitation and proper cooking. Only high acid foods can be safely canned in a water bath—fruit jams, pickles, etc. Low-acid foods need to be cooked in a pressure cooker before canning. You can find complete, details directions online, but truthfully, I think Del Monte or Hunt do a better job than Mom. Shhh! Don’t let her hear me say that because in all else she was a terrific cook who gently taught me to love being in the kitchen. Just not for canning.

So, what’s on your menu this week?