Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

The nurse watched me walk the fifteen steps from my bed to the bathroom. My first few were shaky, but they got better. I was superb getting back to the bed. I said, “So I don’t need you to go to the bathroom.” She responded, “But I would prefer that you call me.” I said, “Do you know how many women have said that to me?”

I have many identities. One of them is as a catless parent.

My Amish amigo Amos at the greenmarket works as part of a construction crew with other people from his church. I asked if there was music while they hammered and sawed. He said, as I knew, they had no radio. The only music came when one of them sang. In reply to my question, he said the songs were always religious, but Amos said that he knew a lot of country songs. He hears them when is driven to the market or the construction site by an “English” driver. The drivers can play the radio and apparently country music predominates. I said that an Amish can’t sing country songs since they are all about how I got drunk last night and my woman left me. Amos smiled. His sister Sadie laughed.

He says that his crowd numbers were huge, larger not only than hers, but larger than those of MLK, Jr. An obsession over size, size, size. Soon I expect him to whip it out of his pants and proclaim, “It is larger than hers.”

“When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44.

Was it the Paris Olympic or the Paris Olympics?

Why is it called water polo. It does not have to be played right-handed like polo. It does not use anything like mallets. Unlike polo, it has a goalie. Unlike polo, it has something like a penalty box. Would water soccer or water hockey have been a better name?

My life would not have been unfulfilled if I had never had pimiento cheese. [The spouse disagrees.]

According to Chris van Tulleken in Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food, near the end of World War II, “the average U-boat crewman lived for only sixty days from boarding the ship.”

Pennsylvania has a close Senate race. The incumbent has run ads stating that the challenger invested in a Chinese company that makes fentanyl, implying that this has affected the state’s fentanyl problem. As the factcheckers often say, the ad lacks context. The challenger did invest in the company, but that pharmaceutical corporation makes fentanyl legally. Perhaps part of its output gets diverted to the illegal market, but if so, the incumbent’s ad does not present any information to support such a claim. The challenger has responded by saying that he never invested in Chinese pharma making illegal fentanyl. True, but he then goes on to imply that the real cause of the fentanyl problem is the southern border. This, too, lacks context. He presents no information that major amounts of fentanyl get into this country via illegal border crossings instead of legal ones. It also ignores that death from synthetic opioids soared while Trump was president. There were 19,500 such deaths in 2016, the year before he became president. That increased to 28,659 in 2017, 31,525 in 2018, 36,603 in 2019, and 56,894 in 2020.

Posted on by rjonakait

Cooking Through Some Ages

I own dozens upon dozens of cookbooks. Almost all were purchased because I hoped to use recipes from them. But a few were bought, often at an antique store or a flea market, not to expand my kitchen experience but out of a curiosity of what the books might say about a time and place. A few of these were put out by a food company hawking a product. For example, there is Knox Gelatine: Desserts Salads Candies and Frozen Dishes (with that “e” and no commas).

The cover shows three women sitting on a hooked rug in front of what looks like a bed’s headboard but surely must be something I don’t recognize. They are inexplicably dressed from the antebellum era in bright colored frocks—one blue, one orange, one rose—with voluminous skirts and elaborate bodices, gowns that even Scarlett O’Hara might have thought a bit extravagant. One is bareheaded (the hostess?), another has on a bonnet, and the third’s head seems to have a hot water bottle on it but surely it’s some sort of hat. On a tea table in front of them sits what I assume to be a gelatinized concoction and two are about to partake.

The copyright date is 1933, which helps explain its reference to refrigeration, for the book (more a pamphlet) says it contains “not only the latest recipes for Plain and Fancy Desserts and Salads, but also mechanical refrigerator recipes, dishes for Convalescents, Children’s Parties and other Special Occasions.” One wonders who instructed them on the use of capital letters.

The book opens by instructing on setting the table, stressing simplicity, but also stating that it is “good form” to have a service plate upon which the dishes for the first courses are placed and that the service plate is only removed when it is exchanged for “the first hot course after the soup.” Knox also explains how to lay out the flat silver, including oyster and canape forks, where to place the bread plates, the butter spreader, and the napkin. It concludes, “The finger bowl is usually brought in on a plate on which there is a doily and placed directly in front of the guest after the last course. Another method is to place the doily and finger bowl on the dessert plate, and the guest removes the doily and finger bowl to the table before the dessert is passed.” Ah, simplicity. And this during the Depression.

After explaining the difference between various Knox products, giving the basic directions for using the sparkling gelatine, and providing some useful hints (always scald fresh pineapple when combining with gelatine), the booklet has sixty pages of recipes. Many of them remind me of the Jell-o salads of my youth that I assume are still prevalent somewhere, perhaps Utah. The illustrations make me specially interested in the Poached Egg Dessert, which is a peach or apricot half on Lemon Sponge Cake or Snow Pudding, which does indeed look a lot like an egg on toast. However, the only recipe that tempts me to make it is a Salmon Fish Mold (made, of course, with canned salmon) which I could see in a ring with a cucumber salad in the center and perhaps sprinkled with fresh dill. But, alas, I seldom make luncheon dishes.

Related to food company cookbooks are those from “women’s magazines” from previous eras. For example, I have the Better Homes and Gardens, Salad Book. The book’s copyright date is 1969, but my copy is the Fifth Printing in 1972. Not surprisingly, the book has higher production values than the Knox book from three decades earlier, with many full color photos. However, all the colors are a bit off, so nothing looks as appetizing as it should. The title indicates that this is a book of salads, salad dressings, and relishes with a few sandwiches thrown in. It harkens back to the Knox publication because it features many “molded” salads which require gelatin. It could expand my culinary horizons. I don’t know if I have ever had a salad from the freezer—featured in one section—but they seem to be most appropriate for a dessert course, if you like that sort of thing. The ingredients for the Pineapple Mint Freeze, for example, are a large can of crushed pineapple–no need to scald–gelatin, a jar of mint jelly, whipped cream, and a bit of sugar.

On the other hand, many of the vegetable salads, cole slaw recipes, and potato salads seem eminently eatable. I might even make the Tuna-Cream Puff Bowl, which is really just a tuna salad placed in a freshly baked pastry shell, but then again, I don’t make luncheon dishes. The book concludes with a dozen pages of advice for buying, storing, and preparing fruits and vegetables. I learned that if I do not have small marshmallows for a salad, I can snip larger ones, but I should dip the scissors in confectioners’ sugar first to prevent sticking. I wonder if the time ever comes to do that whether I will remember the tip.

Other books with recipes that I did not expect to cook from were obtained for their humor. An example is Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (2005) by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, (2005). The book has humorous essays about Southern churches and funerals interspersed with appropriate dishes to bring to said funerals or church suppers. While neither the spouse nor I have cooked anything out of this book, it does have many recipes that I might like. Mostly, however, I look at the recipes that remind me of foods that the spouse, with her southern roots, has made–foods that I had not eaten until I linked up with her. Three stand out: First, pimiento cheese, the joys of which escape me. However, the spouse assures me that this is a southern staple, and, to prove it, this book has a half-dozen recipes for wasting perfectly good cheese. The second is tomato aspic, which the spouse used to make with some frequency. It is basically gelatinized canned tomato juice, and as tasty as that sounds. Lime Jell-o is better. However, the third is what this book lists as stuffed eggs. The spouse regularly makes deviled eggs, and they are oh-so-good, but she does not need a printed recipe to make them.

The book, however, has other recipes for the buffet table that I would not mind trying—butter bean casserole, vodka cake, asparagus casserole. And there is an artery-clogging potato dish that I am interested in. It must be good. The recipe is listed twice under different names: “Methodist Party Potatoes” and “Liketa Died Potatoes.” The ingredients include packaged hash browns, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and undiluted cheddar cheese soup. This is topped with a stick of butter and corn flake crumbs. It does not list the calories or fat content. And if I eat it, my funeral day may be closer.

(concluded November 17)