I hope the shuttling is over for a while

Went to L.A. last week.

Maia had a dentist's appointment, Broken Horn Saddlery was having a sale (I got a bucket, which is the annual gift for showing up), we bought me a set of mohair reins and various needful things, which would have been bought anyway were purchased, at the across the board discount of the sale. Maia also got herself a new hat, which wasn't needful, but has been wanted for awhile. I guess it was a win-win. We got things we wanted, they got us to buy some things we might have put off (e. g. the hat, which has been wanted for more than a year).

Sorted through some dishes at Maia's grandparent's. Maia did some thrift-store grubbing after seeing her dentist, and scored a #5 Griswold's pan, for five dollars. Even though it needs some repair work (it looks as though the previous owner dug into it with a steel spatula), it was an incredible deal. I could, if I didn't need more small skillets (it's about 7" across the top, a trifle less across the bottom, and has a pouring lip on either side), turn around and sell it for 20 bucks, no problem.

She also got a couple of pieces of Visionware, a small saucepan, with lid, and a 2 qt. saucepan with pouring lip.

We also spent some time socialising with friends. Barry came over with Elizabeth to look at chickens and horses. That evening Sola, skeetermonkey, swiftsting_42 Maia and I went to see someone in Culver City. Had supper (quick mexican veggie) and played games. Greed is enh. There seems to be nothing one can do to actually increase the odds of winning. It's a tolerable beer and pretzels game, but not quite to my tastes. Munchkin on the other hand, is great fun.

Next night we spent with Barry and Marcia. I helped him stuff a turkey, we gave them some gifts we'd been lax about delivering (a ceramic pie-pan for him... suitable for really big pies, to replace one Maia had gotten him before, which just split down the middle one day, and a cream and sugar set by Belleek for her).

Came home to organise the end of summer tie-die and socialising bash. The guest list was 25, of which about 20 showed up, and 15 stayed to eat. Dinner was later than the predicted (not by me, and I don't recall the time ever being mentioned) 2:00 p.m., I put three chickens, (the dutch oven job I spoke of recently) in the grill (one of the advantages of the outdoor ovens is they stack) with moderate success (there are two-styles of oven, standards, and deep. The 12" deep will hold two medium birds. The 12" standard didn't really hold the single large bird, the lid was resting on it and some of the breast was a tad blackened. I'll bet I could do three chuikkers, or four quail, but I'm not going to do another chicken).

I spent Saturday baking breads (not as well as I might have liked, I got distracted by everything else [Alexa was gone, and Maia was working, so I was cooking and cleaning] and I over kneeaded them (I used the kitchen-aid) and they over-rose, which left them tasty, but dense, and a trifle underdone. The loaf I did (with drafted help) at the party came out much better.

Took a huge quantity of the tiny potatoes the organic garden box has been sending and boiled them, mashed them with some cream, butter and curly-parsley. The result was particolored, from mixing purple, rose-heart, yellow, white and cream colored potatoes with the herbs.

Spent the afternoon (and again, I was distracted and started late) reducing and skimming the sauce. A blond roux, some brown stock, reduce by half (to get a bit more than a cup and a half), add some black pepper, a scant Tbls. of minced tarragon (fresh, it's no good dry) and the leakage from the resting chickens.

Someone brought a salad.

Dessert was serial. With some people willing to try strawberries macerated in balsamic and sprinkled with pulverised pepper (it might be a bit less finicky with white, but if one gets the right amount of black on them, ah...). After that I whipped 3 cups of cream (heavy on the vanilla, a bit too heavy on the sugar) to put on the quartered strawberries which had been sugared a couple of hours earlier. The while people had been snacking on the molasses-crinkles Maia was making as people started showing up. I ate a cup of the whipped cream, straight.

The zucchini, and banana, breads came out after the tie-dye was opened and while people were rinsing it in the tub.

When most had left I did some cleaning up, started the carcasses into stock, and then Alexa, Maia, Nick (who, it seems, is keeping company with Alexa) and I played a game of Whist. Alexa and I won, handily (10 to 4, in six hands), which surprised me because I had damn all for trump all night and managed to get book, or most of it, from careful play, while she got points with her trump. I did lose a point (and maybe two) once when I thought Nick's eight, which was holding, was hers and so didn't go over it on the first trick of that hand. Sigh.

Last night was chicken soup. Ladled off a small dutch oven's worth of stock, reduced it, added more of the tiny potatoes (wonderful flavor, hard to work with) then carrots and celery. Served it with leftover bread. Into the (now greatly lowered stock-pot) I put some thighs which had been in the freezer for the making of stock, and the giblets from the chickens done for the party.

Tonight we have the usual crowd coming by for supper (the consensus was Tuesday works best for most. Thursday has the Farmer's Market, which will be habitable again when the tourists leave, I, as the cook, vetoed Mondays) and that leaves Tues. and Weds. Both are as bad for Maia and Alexa, so Tuesday it is), and I am going to do sausages. We thawed a bunch of bratwurst, which didn't get eaten (since we only had 15-18 people to table) so I'll be butterflying some, poaching some in beer and slowly baking some in sauerkraut, with caraway seeds.


We are telling people to bring their own side dishes, because I'm a trifle worn out.

Now to go and check the news of the past week, because I've been mostly out of it, playing Rome:Total War, in the odd minutes between dough stretchings, soup stirrings, vegetable choppings, fire tendings, sauce skimmings, etc.. I didn't really have time for serious distraction.

I just don't get people

A kid in Jacksonville, Fla. got a beating.

I can't say as I'm surprised, he was wearing a shirt I might have been willing to end up in a fight over, and I'm a fairly non-confrontational guy.

The shirt, it showed, on one side, a confederate flag, with the motto, "Keep it flying." On the other side it showed some klansmen, in the stereotypical garb, waving at a car with the words just married on it. Behind the car, where one might expect to see cans, or old shoes, were a couple of black men, being dragged in nooses.

His explantation: He forgot he was wearing it, and had it on to go to a party later. We'll get back to that party.

He larger explanation, "I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else."

He also says he has a black friend.

Now, about that party..."He said he put the shirt on in the morning because he planned to wear it to a party that night with others who, like him, had enlisted in the Marines."

I'm glad he didn't say Army, because I don't want him. It isn't just that his attitudes offend me, nor yet his blithe stupidity (if one is going to wear fighting words on one's shirt, it behooves you to not forget that and end up getting your ass kicked), no it's that people like that are a menace to the unit, in a way that gays aren't.

I know a lot of homosexuals. Some have made passes at me. None have been rude about it, some have been very quiet about it and I might never have known, had they not chosen to tell me. I've never known a closeted bigot who managed to pass, and someone as willing to be vocal about it as this little twerp, well he won't be able to keep it to himself. We can only hope he spouts off in Boot Camp (where odds are he will have at least one black Drill Instructor... he'd better believe thost men think they are better than he is, because the are) and gets kicked out. He'll blame, "the blacks," (though I suspect it will sound more like, "those damned niggers," when he says it) but neither I, nor the Corps will care.

Because if he makes it to the Corps, he is a liablilty. Even in a rear unit (and there are precious few of those these days) you have to be able to depend on your fellows. In 13 years in the Army, I've only known two-guys I couldn't trust to cover my back if it dropped in the pot. Neither of them stayed in very long.

This didn't go where it was supposed to, but that't the way of things.

He said produce

libertango recently added to his info page.

His choice in quotations is always interesting, often amusing and leads those with wit (as do all strings of quotations) to moderate introspection.

"Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work."
-- Thomas Carlyle

That one struck me. It fits well with the blessed holdovers of my flirtation with Holy Orders (or perhaps those orders were flirting with me), because the Jesuits have a motto, Omnia ad majorem Dei gloriam (All for the greater glory of God). It is meant as a meditation, and a focus. A way to see the presence of the Divine in everything, from digging a ditch, to painting the Sistine Chapel. Each of us does things, we can do them mindfully, or not.

Ok.

Me, I fail in that. There are hours of the day when I merely do, without thinking. And I am, as are we all, heterodox. I tend to do most of my offering up when I am doing something which will go to someone else. The Quakerish part of me (six years living with one will affect how one sees the world) says I am offering it up to the spark of the Divine in everyone. The Catholic part of me says that's narrow minded, as the Divine suffuses more than just those aspects of The Creation which are quick.

One of the times I am most likely to be more than merely doing, by rote, is when I cook. The most mundane aspects of cooking are, to me, infused with awe.

So, todays lesson, a reading from the book of grace notes:

Carmelized onions

Take you some onions, cut them up to the size you want.

In a heavy skillet place some butter, to this add the onions, and set them on a low heat.

Be certain you have a lid, for if one just leave the onions in the skillet those on the top will merely wilt, and those below shall be singed; and burnt, of no good to any man but the gardener; who may use them in his compost.

Leave them be, attending them only with your nose, for the lid will gather up the water the fire drives out; which water will remove the sugars the heat has released and those sugars will blend with the softening onions, and the butter, to a browned and sweet mass. Every so often, when the smell reminds you they are cooking, look on them, and stir the paler ones to the bottom; where they too may go limp, and become brown.

This may then be used in such wise as needed, to line the bottom of a quiche, to dress a steak, to round out a casserole, to be eaten out hand; steaming from the stove, simmered into a reduction, or to such other use as the mind and palate may see fit; be they dominant note, or harmony, the secret is the cover.