Where do you put a bag of saints......

in a super bowl

Auto Blogography

My first car was a hornet. I bought it for 50 bucks off a teenager up the street.
The windows did not roll up, it had no heater and one of it's doors was from another car that was secured with a massive amount of electrical tape. I never insured or registerred the car but I drove it to work all winter in New York on my Louisiana license. Each night when I finished work, I would shovel the snow out of my front seat, shake my army blanket off, position my safety pin under the ignition that hung out and warm 'r up. Since I waited on every cop in the county, I came and went rather freely in that car. Once the weather warmed up ( July) and I might have been able to comfortably ride in the car, it died. My brother in law took in the disabled vehicle in hopes of using some of the parts to build a helocopter.
Whats your auto story?

Waste not Want more

Since you have some cilantro left over from the civiche and perhaps a lime......It's time to gear up and trudge back to the store and purchase 2 cans (large) of black beans, another shallot, sour cream, bacon or pancetta and a couple of cans of chicken broth.You also need a warm loaf of french bread.I am assuming everyone has butter. So for about 20 dollars more- we won't waste the 50 cent lime or the 25 cents worth of cilantro!
It's soup time.
Saute the pancetta in a little bit of olive oil to a light crispiness. Remove the pancetta and save.
Add the minced garlis and the thinly sliced shallot.( sea salt and pepper these guys)
Drain your black beans and add those once the shallot is soft
Let the beans cook a little bit to absorb the flavors in the pot then add the 2 cans of chicken broth. Let this simmer gently with the lid off and your constant supervision. It needs a stir every couple of minutes to make you look very important in front of your friends. Sip a glass of petit syrah and visit while waving a wooden spoon about your kitchen.
Once the broth has been reduced to a medium thickness, return the pancetta and the juice from half of that lime ( save the other half for next payday and I will tell you how to keep that from going to waste) and that handfull of chopped cilantro. Simmer just enough for that cilantro to make it to your nose and serve this up with a dallop of sour cream on top. Put your sliced bread and soft butter on the table.
Since your wine glasses have wine in them this time, I recommend a soup bowl for the soup.

Little Shop of Hor d'oeuvres

2010 is gonna be my year to eat little things in a Big way.
I intend to continue savoring my entrees but convert them to appetizer sizes.
Today I will share my recipe for civiche
Steam as many shrimp as you want ( shell and head on ) for a couple of minutes
(the marinade will finish cooking them)
Clean them and cut them in thirds
Sqeeze 2 lemons and 2 limes in a bowl and add 2 tbl sps of pineapple juice as well as 2 or 3 tbl sps of olive oil and a hand full of chopped fresh cilantro
cracked sea salt and black pepper to taste
Add the shrimp
dice a shallot, a green onoin and a couple of big toes of garlic and toss that in
Cube 1/2 cucumber, 1 roma tomatoe, a good size piece of mango and a couple of strips of red bell pepper and dump them in the marinade
Attempt to cube a firm but ripe avacado and quickly coat with the marinade
Taste your marinade and if you'd like it a little sweeter, add a little more pineapple juice
Cover with plastic wrap (right on top of the civiche) and another layer of wrap on the bowl.
Let the juice cook everything while in the frige for at least an hour
Serve in a wine galss over a pretty piece of romaine, garnish with a lemon wheel and stand a couple of crustini in the middle
Steamed scallops work real well in this also
Since your wine glasses are busy, serve the pinot grigio in custard bowls!

Northern Housepitality

I thought I'd write about Christmas in New York.
A visit from an old friend is a present in itself as it probably involved at least 2 trains,a brief walk on an icy street and 3 layers of clothing. Chances are your friend went even further out of his way to find tiramisu. I am certain parcels gain weight when you carry them in the cold and a 2 lb. bottle of wine can swell to 10 after walking up hill several blocks. I had forgotten all these things about the north and it's marvelous inhabitants who trade a cozy evening at home for the company of real human beings and spontanious conversations around a kitchen table. It is the repressed northerner in me that cooks. It's the childhood full of snow and stew that causes me to sob as I make a pot of sauce or stew a chicken for 5 hours. Thank you Camie and James for your kitchen, your wonderful friends and that table we just couldn't get away from. Thank you, New York, for a beautiful Christmas. Thank you Steve's G town for the pancetta, parmesan, heavy cream, Italian sausage, fresh basil and parsley. Special thanks to my grand dog, Freddie, who savored every morsel I dropped.
Happy New Year to all.

I eat Alone....Yeah, with nobody else.....

They say that breaking up is hard to do.... But eating ramen and go food can prolong the misery.
So, I am going to treat myself like a new boyfriend and try to convince myself that pescatore for one tastes exactly the same as if it were for two. Guess what, if ya miss pissin off the old boyfriend from time to time, you can indulge yourself by really irritating the man at the seafood counter in your favorite super market!!
I'll have 2 oysters, 2 scallops and 2 shrimp,please- no not that shrimp, this shrimp. ( I have done this before)
Saute some garlic in olive oil and a little butter and toss the seafood in it a minute. Douse with some lemon juice. Remove the seafood and add diced onion until soft, toss in chopped olives(green and black) and some chopped basil and a drained can of chopped tomatoes
. Salt and pepper the tomatoes. Keep cooking and if you have a jar of B&B mushrooms, throw them in.A microscopic pinch if cinnamin and a speck of cayenne. When all the ingredients seem to be enjoying their new relationships, return the seafood to the sauce to heat up and pour it over some linguini. Parm cheese and a glass of petite syrah. Is there a photo of your x in the trash can? Good, scrape your plate on top of that and go see what's on tv.

Yes, Virginia, There is a sippy cup

When my babies were babies we had bottles. We used them for many things: to get out of breast feeding, A bottle allowed you to leave a hungry child in the arms of someone else, leave an almost sleeping baby with it propped up on a suffocating recalled item on the couch and the bottle was also used to play terrifying games with mommy as the child's super control powers began to develope.The bottle became a tool for the baby beginning with an innocent little game called "oops".Baby drops the bottle and mommy gets here figure back bending over 200 extra times per day to retrieve the it. The game eventually turns into hide and seek. The baby will hide the bottle and mommy has to find it. The baby later adds a twist to the game by screaching at mommy until she finds it. The game can be played indoors or outside and is quite popular to play in the car. Every baby comes with 2 dozen bottles but they don't last long.When you get down to just a couple of them that hide and seek game becomes a matter of life or death. By the age of 2 some wiser mother comes to town and says "maybe it's bottle breaking time" A new mother might ask why would I break the bottles? She will soon find out that bottle breaking means 2 things.a)No more bottles for the baby and b) Mommy gets her life back.
So, we move to the mop stage of mothering. No more bottles means the baby has to steady a cup and injest one tenth of the contents of the glass in it's mouth and help mommy stay in shape by following the toddler around with a mop and a dish rag. This phase lasts about a month and if ya stick to your guns, mommy achieves her goal.
Man continues to evolve and just a few years after my children were graduates of drinking like a grown up some invented the sippy cup.
Gee, a new device!
It is a bottle shaped like a glass with a hard plastic nu-nu on the screw top lid. It is intended to use when you want the baby off the bottle.
This means that instead of mastering a drink out of a glass by 2 , you can tack another year (or 2) on that.
Sippy cups come in 217 dfferent colors and an additional 300 cartoon characters on the bottom.
They cost more than bottles and they are harder to locate when you need one. They really blend in in the toy box, play room and video collection in your living room.
Don't be fooled, They are NOT spill proof. When you find one in the cushions of your couch you can only PRAY it didn't have grape juice in it.
I'm converting little Faith to the glass from the sippy cup. I start each day with a mop and a dishrag and a stack of her size dixie cups. I expect this to last about a month.