Month: March 2010

Chill

I really like Wendy’s chili. The small version is cheap, filling and tastes good. Add a couple of packets of good old-fashioned saltines and you have meal that nurtures your soul. With that peak experience in mind, I headed to Wendy”s yesterday after spending several hours at the  DIY Bubble Up car wash. 

The car wash was nearly an excuse to spend the warm and sunny day outside.  But a clean car, inside and out, is also a tonic.  Looking its best, my car seems happy and content and its mood usually rubs off on me. 

After I vacuumed, shook out the car mats and cleaned the glove box, I drove it into the bay. It stood quietly as it was soaped, scrubbed and rinsed with a final spray of no-spot water.  I moved it down stream into the parking lot to join 3  or 4 others in the rhythm of dry, buff and polish.  All was right with the world as I drove off with an open sun roof.

It only took  a few minutes to get my order of chili and crackers at the drive-through; I parked the car facing the sidewalk to watch the pedestrian parade.  I took the lid off of the chili. It was really hot so I reached over the steering wheel to put it on the flat part of the dash.

The cup hit the edge of steering wheel and tipped out in a whoosh. In seconds the chili was a lava spill pooling on the floor mat. In its wake, left over beans, tomatoes and hamburger slipped in the recesses of the dashboard, steering wheel and ignition. My right pant leg was covered with chili, the radio was splashed with chili, and the quirky flower vase (standard on this model) was filled.

I ordered a frosty to salvage the day.

A Carry Out Tale

It got pretty late pretty early the other day. It’s that daylight savings time. Without the telltale streaks of a setting sun saying, “Go home,” I can end up having dinner seriously fashionably late.

Seeing the time, I decided that it was a good night for a-pick-something-up-on-the-way-meal. I called Sig for a quick consult. He didn’t answer. 

Freed from cooking, I went into the bookstore since I was so close and ended up spending another 30 minutes looking at books and checking out what was on sale.  I called Sig as I left the store but he still didn’t answer. 

I decided on KFC for dinner. (Ever since the Colonel started selling grilled chicken in addition to their original deep-fried, I am a born again fan. With green beans and coleslaw, it’s not a bad little meal.) By this time, it was close to 8:00. I called Sig one last time as I waited in line. When he didn’t answer, I decided that he had surely eaten something by now and only put in one order. 

He was sitting on the porch finishing up a chicken taco and a burrito.  

“There are a couple of tacos in the house for you.” 

“Thanks, I stopped and got some chicken. I called you a few times but you never answered.” I said. 

It reminded me of the O Henry story about the wife who cuts her hair and sells it to buy a watch chain for her husband, only to find out that her husband had sold his watch to buy a hair comb for her. Well, correction, Sig reminded me of the husband in the story. After I finished eating my chicken, I made chocolate pudding for him.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

I can’t wait for another Cookie Swap.

It’s when bakers carefully nestle their sugar melts, gingersnaps, lemon iced, molasses, oatmeal, snicker-doodles, bars, balls and sandwich type cookies in scrubbed up tupperware containers lined with fresh waxed paper.

Everyone clusters together until a pre ordained starting time before circling the table and selecting an assortment of cookies to take home.

A swap is never described out loud as a competition. For starters that kind of thing would put off all but the boldest. The classic swap, like-minded people agree,  is an efficient way to wind up with an impressive array of cookies to easily pass off as their own to family and friends.

That said, seeing any of your cookies left-over at the end of one or two circles is much like seeing a dog at a pound waiting hopefully for its family.  

Use this recipe: Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies – Cooks Illustrated the next time but tuck away some because every one of them will be gone.  As far as the non competitive part, I say, leave ’em in your flour dust.

Second Day of Spring

At the front door today, the buzz is not UNI defeating KU last night as you might expect, but rather the hisses and sighs of having to dig out of the snow when almost ready for the ball called spring.  March is roaaring in the neighborhood.

Useful, Maybe

A cat threw up on a stack of new magazines sitting on the piano. Annoying.

I like my magazines to be unwrinkled and clean and after I read them I like to pass them on. I can’t do that with these — so I cleaned them up best I could, let them dry and read them quickly. Here’s stuff worth passing on. 

Good ideas: Spray snow shovel with non stick cooking spray so snow will slide off.  Light candles with raw spaghetti. Hang Christmas lights on a tree vertically instead horizontally of round and round.  Put a just washed/rinsed cashmere sweater in a salad spinner to get out excess water. (Yeah, make that thing work harder for taking up so much space just for drying lettuce!)

In the wonder if it works category: Put a dryer sheet in the bottom of a tough-to-clean pan, fill with warm water and soak overnight. Then clean it some time on the second day.

Just plain silly: Buy a brightly colored wallet so that you can find it quickly in your purse.

Sunday

Some days just hold more promise than others. Today is one of them.

I have so many choices: go to a movie, rake leaves, play Free Rice, read Billy Collins, enter a contest, order something online, sort through my desk, get a bag ready for Goodwill, try out a recipe, read the fiction in the New Yorker, do the Sunday cross word puzzle, take photos, re-arrange the mantel, download music, go to the health club, wash the car and — I’ll start with Billy Collins.

Vade Mecum

I want the scissors to be sharp

and the table to be perfectly level

when you cut me out of my life

and paste me in that book you always carry.

I looked up vade mecum. It means handbook or manual small enough to be carried along where ever. And vade is pronounced, vadee, it’s latin meaning “go with me.” I took three years of Latin in high school, had it started, “All of Gaul is divided into three parts,” I would have nailed it.

Free Rice

I like to while away a few hours on the computer every once and awhile. My go-to game used to be Spider Solitaire. But I have not progressed in expertise with any kind of vigor. In fact, I’m stuck in intermediate land with a 20% win ratio. 

Pretty bad, I know. My average took a huge dip when unbeknownst to me, I was playing in the advanced level and lost every game for a straight 6 weeks. (Now, there is a humbling experience.)

I tried Farmville, but after having to babysit three plots of strawberries with no harvest in sight, I moved back to the city.

There is always FreeRice, the site where idle time can sharpen your wits and benefit others.  Definitely worth it.

Soup’s On

The eve of St. Patrick’s Day is a great time to troll for recipes fit for friends.  What else do you do after the parade but eat and drink like it’s the last supper? Well, not the Last Supper just a last supper.

Here’s a tasty and easy potato soup.

It starts with deliberately curdling milk. Curdled milk in most lexicons means rotten, “Do not drink.” ” Sure why not,” the Irish say as they add lemon to the milk. As the milk keeps itself busy on the counter, do the prep work: peel and chop potatoes, onions, and mince a couple of cloves of garlic.

Cook the potatoes in vegetable broth and saute the onions and garlic in butter. Puree the potatoes in the pan. Add the milk, and parmesan cheese and sour cream to ramp up the flavor factor.  Salt, pepper and green onions on top and it is ready to slurp Up.

Here’s a link to the recipe and credit to the Cook, who isn’t Irish at all: Party like you’re Irish, even if you’re not – KansasCity.com.

My tips: Set aside some of the cooked potatoes before you puree for a little less bisque and more chunk and salt to taste rather than putting in two tsp of salt in one swish.

When Salubrious Met Lugubrious At Weight Watchers

After sign-in, weigh-in, check-in, they herded in a semi-circle to share. “Stop the palaver,” she shouted in her head. Then slumped on her fold-up chair seeing her salubrious future with a round lugubrious face. As the group droned, she imagined the taste of a red velvet cake.