Oh lazy Sunday

Sundays are my favorite day of the week. Especially in the
winter months when it is so cold outside I don't feel one
bit guilty if I stay in my pajamas all day long. It is also the only
day of the week I may never leave the house which is just fine by me.

Bitching Biscuits
I consider myself a decent cook, but a cursed baker. Cooking is easy.
I read the recipe and omit certain ingredients I don't have, (saffron
threads, does anyone know where I can buy these?) for ingredients
I have on hand. Baking is an exact science. No dash of this allowed. I
have to mind, crossing all my t's and dotting all my i's. I have never
been very good at "minding" so I have always left all the baking up
to the experts and created my baked goods from a box. All I have to do
is add milk, eggs, and stir, but even this doesn't always turn out
great. I may be a bit rough beating those eggs.

On the other hand, my Mom cooks pizza crust from scratch.
Can you imagine? And to add insult to injury, she makes the hours
of working the dough and letting the yeast do its thing, look fun
and easy. She is very sneaky. Every time she visits we spend a lot
time in the kitchen and when she leaves I have some "easy" recipe that
I am 99% confident I can make again on my own.

While she was here last October she cringed when I pulled out a can
of Pillsbury Biscuits for breakfast. Mom: "J homemade biscuits are
so easy to make. You don't need to buy canned biscuits just make your
own". Me: Blank stare.

So in no time my counter top is covered with flour, my hands have
wet biscuit mixture stuck to them like cement, and we are rolling
out dough. Mom always has great tips on common items to use in the
kitchen instead of having to buy another tool. A small lipped wine
glass (white wine) is perfect to cut out biscuits, if ya don't have
a round cookie cutter. You know what? She was right homemade biscuits
aren't that hard to make and they are mighty tasty.

Almost every weekend since, I attempt to make biscuits. When I stick
to Mom's exact recipe (using olive oil instead of shortening, it is
much healthier this way) they turn out almost as good as Mom makes.
Problem is J thinks the olive oil makes the biscuits too dense, he wants
light and airy biscuits. So I have started cutting pieces of butter
into the flour instead of olive oil and for some reason everything goes
to shit. I cannot get the mixture into a solid ball to save my life.
I get testy thinking I will beat the dry dough into moist submission,
but I end up with a tiny ball, lots of unused flour on the cutting board,
and I am cursing before noon. All the frustration aside, the biscuits do
end up tasting good. So when I talk to Mom later today I will ask her how
to solve this problem and I am sure she will have a very easy answer that
may or may not work for me.

The weekend
As I stated in my last post, my Dad had surgery this past Thursday. So
far, so good. The doctor said everything went smoothly and he has been
resting at home. We had planned on driving down to Alabama if he felt
like having company over the weekend. But when I spoke with him on Friday
he was drunk on pain meds and said he planned on resting the whole
weekend so for us to wait and come for a later visit.

The problem is the month of February is already filled up. I mean they
are all fun events, except for a business trip where I have to fly out at
6:00am on a Sunday morning. Fuck. Still each weekend is already penned-in
which means we aren't messing around. If something is penciled-in, we could
still squirrel our way out of it. This calendar full of fun totally
stresses me out. I start to fret that I am planning my life away and
that is why each and every year is going by in a blink and a blur. That
is why this weekend, where we had no plans ended up feeling like a
mini-vacation.

So far the play-by-play looks something like this:

Friday night: Cooked dinner, listened to music, in bed by 11:00.
Saturday: Walked at Radnor Lake (this is our weekly church visit
and I cannot tell you how much good it does me), grocery shopped, took a
long hot bath and read (Big Treat), cooked a great dinner, in bed by 11:30.
Sunday: Currently still in my pajamas,hopefully will have a marathon
conversation with my Mom, warm up leftovers for dinner, early to bed.

Total Bliss.

You are going to love White Trash
Want a tasty snack that will be eaten up in a flash? Well thanks to A I
have the recipe to post.

White Trash
18 oz (2.25 cups) peanut butter
18 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
11 Tbsp light butter (may want to start with a stick and add pats from there depending on consistency)
1 (15 oz) box Crispix
7.5 oz Cheerios
7.5 oz pretzel twists
1 box powdered sugar

Mix cereals and peanut butter together in a large bowl. Melt
peanut butter, chocolate and butter in a double boiler until
smooth and pourable. Pour over cereal mixture and toss gently until
coated. Place mixture in a brown paper bag THEN inside a plastic
trash bag. Add powdered sugar in cup to 2 cup increments and shake
well to coat. (Brown bag works great, but has cracks so the sugar
puffs out into the air. Plastic bag on the outside will help with the mess.)

This recipe freezes great. Simply make in advance and put in the freezer.
Eat straight from the freezer or bring to room temp and chow.

Well Antiques Roadshow is on so time to go for now.

I promise I will be better

I started writing this Thursday night and got pulled away by a phone call. Now finally wrapping it up on Saturday morning.

What's For Dinner Part II
So I finished The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan this week and here are some final thoughts.

Chapter 13 The Market Page 239
"It didn't surprise me to read that the typical item of food on an Americans plate travels some fifteen hundred miles to get there, and is frequently better traveled and more worldly than its eater".
*This tidbit of information not only amazed me but also pissed me off. That my foods passport could have way more action on it than mine, that is if veggies had passports.

There is a bumper sticker in Europe to show support for eating locally "Eat your view". Nice.

There is so much more I could ramble on about from this book, but I will stop. J said there is no reason for him to even read the book since I have told him ever-damned bit about it. That is what happens when I get excited about a read; I want to talk about it. To sum it up, the book left me with a new appreciation for my food. I have never been big on saying grace or the blessing before we eat, but now I find myself thinking to myself or sometimes saying out loud "give thanks" to all the daily abundance on my plate. I mean it is the least I can do since it will be the last trip that food ever takes.

Center Hill Lake
Last weekend we spent in a cabin at Center Hill. I mean the rental place called it a cabin but this place was not rustic, in fact in some ways it was nicer than our house. Great open kitchen with all the latest appliances, a flat screen TV, a sauna bathtub, and a hot tub on the deck. These were the things that it had that my house most definitely does not. We ate lots of food. A made some deadly Chex mix called White Trash that was as delicious and addictive as it sounds. When I get the recipe from her, I will post it and then I will challenge you not to eat that peanut-buttery, powdered-sugar-covered goodness until you are sick.

Good times were had by all. Beer boxes make great roadways and there is nothing sweeter than seeing a little one smile.

Thank you American Idol
If you are a fan and want to bicker over who was cheated out of a win, I am sorry you'll have to bitch to someone else. I don't actually watch the show I am just a fan of one of their winners. Miss Carrie Underwood. Why you may ask? Well because she cut "Before He Cheats" which ended up being a five-week-running Number 1 song and one of our close friends was a co-writer. Last night we went to a party to celebrate.

There is a long history with these folks and yes it does begin back in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. As a kid before my parents divorced and I was uprooted to Florida and everything completely changed, I lived on Edgewood Drive and JT lived right down the street. Our parents were close friends so I have a lot of fun memories with her when my family was still whole. JT always reminds me of some story from the past that makes me laugh.

Like this:
JT said, "Do you remember that one time you came flying down the street on your bicycle, like you were running from a fire. You stopped in front of my house and I asked you what was wrong"?
You said, "Don't you know, the Yankees are coming"? Yes I was definitely an overly dramatic southern girl whose parents only had PBS on the TV for many of my formative years.

Both JT's parents are talented musicians. Her Dad actually has the famed title Best Banjo Player in the state of Alabama and her Mom taught me piano lessons. Before the family life I had always known fell apart, JT and I (strangely enough we even share the same name, I am named after my Granny Jessie, JT is named after an Allman Brothers song) had spent many nights at one another’s house, celebrated many birthday parties in backyards around picnic tables, and have years of photos of us dressed up for Halloween. She is that kind of friend.

When my parents divorced and my Mom and I moved to Florida we lost touch. I mean we still knew snippets from one another’s lives through our parents and would occasionally run into each another when I was in the Shoals for some holiday. I heard when her parents later divorced and was sad. I knew when she was accepted at Auburn University and was happy. The big things in our lives were still shared through our parents, which kept us connected.

Many years later when hubby (boyfriend at the time) and I moved to Nashville JT's Mom called me. Said JT had graduated from Auburn and was moving to Nashville and wanted to know if I knew of any jobs in the music biz. At the time I didn't, but I told her Mom I would let her know if something came up. When JT finally moved to Nashville we were instant friends, just like no time had passed at all. I mean we had a lot of catching up to do, but it felt just like it always had, which is rare and nice.

Unfortunately, when JT left the Shoals to move to Nashville she left heart broken. She was in love with C but they had split before she moved. She dated different guys in Nashville, but whenever we were on our fourth glass of wine C's name and how much she missed him would come up. C, a talented musician and songwriter, was playing in a cover band at La Fonda's (best margaritas in the Shoals) on the weekends and JT thought he should move to Nashville and pursue his musical dream. After one of our more drunken discussions I asked her if she had told C how she truly felt, that she still loved him and that he needed to move here. JT said, "No, not exactly." I said, “The next time you are home just tell him, then at least he will know.” Now reader I am good at giving others advice that I truly feel in my heart is right but cannot actually say that I would have the courage to do myself, especially after too much wine.

Ended up that is exactly what JT did and it worked! C moved up here, they eventually got married, and of course last night standing in the lobby which was full of all of their family members, friends, and industry folks listening to C talk about all the people he would like to thank, first and foremost his beautiful wife, I was overwhelmed with happiness for them. I also couldn't help but think how some friendships you have run their course, while others continue to grow, change and get better over time.

The Call
I mentioned that a call had taken me away from my blogging thoughts on Thursday. My Dad is going in for minor surgery next Thursday. He has had circulation problems in his legs for many years due to a terrible accident that I may at a later date write about here. It has caused him pain and discomfort and now they are worried about blood clots. So please keep my Dad in your thoughts on Thursday.

What Fun We Will Have

Hawaii 5 0 7

It is a rainy Sunday afternoon and all is well. In fact all is swell. After spending over two hours on the phone with the airline (done on company time) cashing in our frequent flyer miles for one free ticket and half price on the other ticket, (KICK ASS) we are heading to Hawaii in May to see my Mom. My Mom has been living in H. for over 14 years, which means we do not get to see one another nearly enough. When I went off to college it was a dream come true. Heading to H. for the summer, see you guys in two months, but now it is just a royal pain in the ass. Don't get me wrong dear reader, J. and I love vacationing in H. which means we have a free place to stay, a car to use, lots of home cooked meals, great adventures, and of course the most important thing time with my Mom. The problem is it can only happen every couple of years. Buying two full price tickets to H. is not in our family budget and taking a long vacation without the other one isn't an option. Mom travels back to the southeast twice a year instead of us jetting to paradise. The last time we went to H. was in June of 2004, which is just too damned long. So yippee let the planning begin. I will be reading up on all kinds of guide books hunting the best new restaurants, secret beaches where only the locals hangout, and day dreaming about when the three of us will once again be together in one of the most naturally wild, remote places in the world. Ok not sure if this is geographically accurate, but in the sums of my world travels it's definitely the case. So consider yourself warned this is just the beginning of postings about our upcoming adventure and if you ever find yourself heading over to H. for a vacation let me know I am happy to share our "best of" tidbits.

Aren't we the lucky ones?

Next weekend we are heading off to Center Hill Lake where we are renting a cabin with our friends A., T, and their two boys B. and R. Plans for the weekend? Lounging around, watching movies, eating, boozing, playing games and match box cars (B's favorite), and soaking in the hot tub. We may do something else but these are the "tops" on our list of priorities. A. who is currently on maternity leave, wanted us to all take a trip but since she was forced to use all of her vacation days before maternity leave kicked in, (Is this standard company practice, because if so it totally bites?) we are taking it now before she heads back to work in Feb. The last time we all took a trip together was in the summer of 2003 when A. was pregnant with B and we went to Chicago, so we are all stoked about our cabin get-away.

In preparation for our weekend away I made a loaf of Pumpkin Pecan Bread. It is very tasty and easy to make so I am including the recipe:

Pumpkin Pecan Bread
Ingredients:
1/2 stick of butter
1 cup pumpkin puree'
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 cup chopped pecans

In a saucepan melt butter over medium heat, stir in brown sugar cook 3 minutes stirring constantly. Transfer to a bowl and stir in pumpkin. Let mixture cool until luke warm then stir in the eggs. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add to pumpkin mixture and stir in well. Add the nuts.
Makes 1 regular size loaf or 2 to 3 mini loaves. Bake at 350 degrees about 1 hour, 45 minutes for mini-loaves.
*I usually double the recipe and make two loaves because the bread freezes really well. Make sure bread has fully cooled on a wire rack or plate, wrap in aluminum foil and place in a Ziploc freezer bag pushing out as much air as possible before closing. When you want to eat simply remove from freezer and let thaw for about an hour then place in the oven at 350 degrees until warmed.
Tasty as a breakfast bread and good enough to serve as dessert.

Futball
I am not an avid football fan but tomorrow night I will be cussing and hollering at the screen as my alma mater The Florida Gators take the field against the Ohio Buckeyes in the National Championship. For some reason when UF plays I get all fan-crazy, making bets with co-workers (*note to self: see if there are any takers tomorrow at work) and actually getting physically stressed (racing heart beat and sweaty palms) before kick-off. Now reader please understand I know very little about the semantics of the game, but fortunately my hubby J. is happy to rattle off statistics, explain all the bad calls, and failed plays while talking about so-and-so player like they are the best of friends. This is how I know the man has a much better memory than he let's on. Why do you ask do I get so fired up about UF football? Mostly because living in Gainesville is where I became a semi-adult, learned to live on my own, handle booze without throwing up, and met some of my closet friends to this day. It is where I still have so many fond memories and truly look back and appreciate that time in my life, where I learned a little in school and a lot about life and myself.

Food Lust

Granny's Kitchen
Food is something we are quite taken with in my family. My Granny (my Mom's Mom) used to say, we have food lust and boy was she right.

It is not just eating food that tickles us; we are completely smitten by the whole process: perusing magazines and cookbooks for the next great recipe, shopping for that elusive ingredient, planning vacations where the days are organized by what meal we will be having at what restaurant, sharing recipes and shortcuts with other foodies like ourselves. We like cooking meals and sitting down at the table and enjoying them together. In fact, this is the best part. Food always taste better when it is shared with people you love.

When I was a little girl my Granny's house was my home away from home. Like your vacation home, the place that is more fun because you get to do what you choose and escape your daily routines, plus get spoiled in the process. From as far back as I can remember one of the first things out of Granny's mouth when I arrived was "J. are you hungry? This is what I can fix". Then Granny would list off all the wonderfully delicious things that were just waiting for me to enjoy, all I had to do was ask. Granny had a tiny kitchen that had the "three" main ingredients to making a fabulous meal: the refrigerator for storage, the stove for cooking, and passion for the process. That was it people. No dishwasher, no microwave, no bread maker, etc. In a time when people have more tools than ever, we cook less than before because we lack the one true ingredient: passion.

What's For Dinner?
Food has been on my mind a lot more lately. For Christmas my Mom gave me the book The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. Though I am only about half way through the book I cannot believe how much about food a foodie like myself didn't know. This book has not only opened my eyes to the politics behind food (I mean face it we all have to eat) but the history of how we have gotten to where we are today. Just a few quotes from the book that I hope you find as interesting as I do:

Chapter 2 The Farm Page 41
"The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama (*this is my hometown and my hubby J. and I love to say there is always a Shoals connection because people there really is, but that is a whole other story) switched over to making chemical fertilizer. After the war the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on poisonous gases developed for the war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, "We're still eating the leftovers of World War II".

Chapter 9 Big Organic Page 183
"The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do). Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate".

Chapter 12 Slaughter Page 235
"You can't regulate integrity". This was stated by Virginia farmer Joel Salatin regarding governments regulation of the food industry and I thought it was too good not to share.

This is just the tip of the iceberg dear reader. I purposely left out the gory details of livestock and how they are treated before they make it to our plate and trust me; you are thanking me for it.

Local Food-Tastes Better Travels Less
We started buying local organic produce this past Spring from Fresh Harvest Coop.
We were referred to them by a friend of ours and decided we wanted to give it a shot. Not only is the produce more reasonable than Wild Oats and tastier than Kroger’s, it is truly supporting your local farmer. Just knowing the person who is growing your food is a great feeling. It is awesome, not only because the food is super fresh and delicious but because it just feels like a good deed for both of us (the farmer and me the consumer) every time I write a check.

Ok I will get off my food box....

Little Nipper?

So after many months of reading blogs by all kinds of interesting folks most of whom I do not personally know, but wish I did, I have decided to give this blog thing a try.

Why the little nipper you may ask? Well it goes back to my high school days with my longtime best friend T. T and I did everything together. She was my absolute bestest girlfriend. We would spend hours lounging in her hammock or watching the sunset over the strip mall in Tallahassee as we ate our TCBY yogurt-analyzing boys. You know that stage in your life when you spent copious amounts of time trying to figure out if that special someone brushing up against you in the hallway between classes really did love you as much as you loved him. Anyway, we were absolutely crazy about this candy Coffee Nips. It tasted liked coffee, except not the current kind of coffee that I recently gave up, but the kind you would enjoy when you are 14 years old, very sweet with caramel flavoring. We were hooked on their sweet delicious goodness, so our affection for these treats ended up supplying us with nicknames that we bestowed on people we liked. It truly was a compliment to be called nip, nipper, nip-nop, and so on. We were quite the wordsmiths in those days. The nickname was catchy enough that it circled our group of friends until after many months I think we ran it into the ground. Another friend of mine even named the family cat Nipper. It is a word that conjures up fond, fun loving memories for me and so the Little Nipper it is.

Drinking Jenga Anyone?
For the last eight years my husband J. and I have spent ringing in the New Year with our dearest friends A. and T. and this year was no exception. Our first New Years Eve together was the year of the Y2K scare. At that time both of us were not married, but had opted for living in sin, you know the test before you buy philosophy, which I highly recommend. A. cooked a fabulous meal and we consumed large amounts of alcohol while playing the "homemade"drinking Jenga game. This is a simple game that only has two outcomes, you either have to take a drink or give a drink to another player. Want a drinking Jenga game for your home? Simply get a permanent marker and write on each wooden tile "Drink 1", "Drink 2", "Give 1", "Give 2", etc. We still laugh when we think of that night because apparently the all of two rules of the game were confusing to me. Whenever I drew a tile that said "Drink" I kept trying to make someone else drink, instead of taking the drink myself. The pictures from that night are full of lots of goofy grins, red cheeks, and bloodshot eyes. We weren't sure what was going to happen when 2000 rolled around, but A. said if everything fell apart we could always go hole up at her Mom's house across town because she had enough canned goods to get us through the year.

As the years have gone by the locations have changed. We spent three years ringing in the New Year at A.'s cousin's house. These parties were always themed and required a costume. There was the Hawaiian theme which meant donning a swim suit top and grass skirt in December, Vegas night where A. and I dressed up as white tigers (white sweat suits with hand painted black stripes and a sewn on tail compliments of T. who is a super crafty husband) while J. and T. were Siegfried and Roy. This was definitely the most creative costume of the party. And the last year that was more formal, black dresses for us gals and tuxes for the guys. In 2004 when J. and I bought our home we had a group of friends over to our place. Last year we rang in 2006 at another friend of ours home.

This year we decided 2007 should be just the four of us again. Really there were five because R. their super cute two-month-old boy was with us as well. When we got to their house we spent a couple of hours playing cars with B. their almost three year old boy. Then he went to his Grandmothers down the road so we could spend the night and sleep in his bed. We had cheese fondue with bread, celery, and apples for an appetizer. Feasted on King Crab Legs for dinner and had chocolate fondue with cheesecake, apples, and brownies for dessert. We had some tasty wine with dinner and instead of champagne we toasted at midnight with Lindemans Cherry Lambic Beer (delicious).

Things have changed over the last eight years. We are all married, have mortgages, A. and T. have two precious little boys, and we all know how to consume large amounts of alcohol without feeling so shitty the next day, but in other ways it feels just like it did the first year we all hung out. We still get excited when we are together and have to try not to talk over one another, we still congregate around the kitchen, we end up playing some kind of game (last night it was Scene It?, have you played it?) but most importantly we still love to hang out.

Though this year was milder than years in the past, I didn't wake up feeling like a trip to McDonalds was necessary or that I could throw up at any moment.When twelve o'clock rolled around I was holding R. who amazingly stayed up until a few minutes before midnight when he crashed in my arms and didn't wake up while we hollered and toasted at midnight. Though different than in years past, it was also wonderfully the same. We were all together ringing in another year.