Well, after a morning of sitting and waiting, it is finally
starting to snow. The trusty radar shows
that SOMD is right on the southern edge of the stuff. We’ll see what develops. As you know, I sometimes lurk around
Facebook, just to keep my finger on the pulse so to speak. As an aside I see that FB may becoming passé among
the millennials and teeny people on the cutting edge of social media. They are migrating to some things I never
heard of. Anyway, there are a lot of
postings resulting from the weather forecasts and predictions of inches on the
ground. It is curious to me that a lot
of them are rooting for the snow, “C’mon snow, I can’t wait!” or “It’s about time
we had some real snow, yay!”. I suppose
that once again I fall into the old curmudgeon category, but aside from providing
some pleasant scenes, I really can’t think of much benefit to multiple inches
of snow. Driving sucks, you have to shovel
or blow off your walks, it’s cold, the bird feeders freeze up, and other unpleasant
side effects.
Hey you!! Get out of my yard!!
So what does one do while waiting for the impending
storm? Well one grabs the nearest food
magazine! What fell under my hand this
morning was the newest issue of “Cooks Country”, that kind wierd publication
coming from the Chris Kimball empire. If
“Art of Eating” is near one end of the spectrum, this one is almost at the
other end. It’s kind of a homey, folksy,
simple, gingham apron approach to food and cooking. Occasionally they come up with an interesting
recipe, but mostly tend to go for the “cut corners” theories that you can make
a quality dish without “all the fuss” or “the simple approach to….”. For instance in this issue there is a recipe
for Chicken Mulligatawny soup with the tag line: “we set
out to strip away complicated steps in this classic recipe without sacrificing,
complexity of flavor”. And while
probably the article should just be “you can’t”, they go on to eliminate this
and that, and ultimately use a slow cooker.
Oh well. Besides recipes, there
are always “tips” included to help the hapless home cook. I was bemused by one called “Magic Beans”
submitted by somebody from Santa Rosa, California (which may explain it), and
the person said that whenever he cooked with garlic “the smell lingers on my
fingers.” Of course.. His remedy for
this was to get some coffee beans and rub them back and forth on his
hands. Apparently he never ran across
the time honored solution to just rub your hands along the kitchen faucet
(stainless) to accomplish the same thing.
Anyway, a couple of recipes tweaked my interest. The first was for: (and I am not making this
up) “Maryland Crab Fluff” what? Fluff?....
FLUFF? The author starts out stating that “crab cakes
are special occasion fare for most of us”, but that many crab houses and fry
shacks in Baltimore and along the Maryland coast serve a more “blue collar, and
possibly even more delicious version: Crab Fluff”. Now you and I are pretty savvy diners and
those of us who live along that Maryland coast have been in a lot of crab
houses and what I presume he calls “fry shacks”. Don’t know about you, dear reader, but I have
NEVER seen “crab fluff” on a menu. And,
incidentally I hope I never do.. “Fluff”
at Courntney’s? yikes.. the recipe
pretty much produces what we all know as “Crab Balls”, and yes “Dave”, it does
include Old Bay..One can only speculate why they didn’t use that more common
term.. Surely, they must have run into it (No we didn’t, and stop calling…)
The second even more repugnant is the cover recipe for (get
this): “Pepperoni Pizza Monkey Bread” and the cover photo shows what looks like
a Bundt cake with a couple of pieces torn away to reveal a couple slices of
pepperoni peeking out with a lava like ooze of cheese. Dear God..
Okay, now it is snowing slightly and I’m hoping the snow
lovers won’t be too disappointed if totals don’t exceed the five inches. A quick closing note, I received an email this
morning from somebody at an organization I work with, and I expressed surprise
she was at work in the face of the impending storm. Her
reply was perfect I thought… it was to the effect that she would keep a weather
eye out and if it got bad would head home and do the “snuggle thing”, which she
defines as: “roast beef in the oven, a whiskey in one hand, and a book in the
other”. Who can quarrel with that?
A little bit tough in rough weather, but figure out what it
means to you today to
DFD
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