And The Calendar Turns

     2018 was....  Well, it was pretty bad, mostly because we lost my Mom. 

      I just hope 2019 will be okay.
    

Yes, I Have Posted Nothing All Day

     I lazed about.  Finally bestirred myself to go to the store about five p.m. to get some food, including New Year's supplies.  Imagine my horror to discover that not only did our corner market not have any corned beef, they haven't received any from the mother ship!

     So tomorrow, I'll have to look elsewhere.  Seriously, what kind of supermarket chain fails to stock corned beef for New Year's -- and, for that matter, blackeyed peas?  They normally have a few cans on the shelf -- all sold out, and no sign they'd stocked extra.  Heathens.  At least they had cabbage.

     Dinner tonight, a deli pork roast and chicken breast, cut bite-sized and heated up with shishito peppers while they were blistering, with fresh microwave-steamed, halved Brussels sprouts (with garlic cloves and diced orange bell peppers) on the side.  I fried some basmati rice Tam had gotten with her Indian takeaway lunch to add to my meal.  Some sumac on the shishitos for a lemony kick (a real chef uses real lemon but I didn't know to buy any and I had sumac), and leftover hot, red, oniony Indian hot sauce for the meat: a fine meal, with very little work.

Swedish Pancakes, Revisited

     For years, I've made non-rising Swedish pancakes using a simple recipe: a couple of eggs, a cup of flour, a cup of milk.  They're delicious!

     This is the base recipe for a lot of baked and fried breads,* so there's a lot of room for experiment -- add melted butter and bake in well-greased custard cups at 450°F, and you'll get popovers, which balloon up, leaving huge hollow interiors to be filled with anything from butter and jam to scrambled eggs and bacon.  Make the batter thinner, and you'll get crepes.  A few weeks ago, I happened on a pancake recipe that used melted butter and much less flour.  Tam had a breakfast meeting this morning, so I decided to give it a try.

     The pancakes are remarkable!  The batter's so thin that it spreads out to cover the 10-inch square, flat griddle I usually use, but tough enough to lift and flip with a normal flat spatula once the bottom is cooked.  To serve, I folded them twice to make plate-sized squares; halving the recipe produced enough batter to make two of them, eight layers of wonderfulness with a little butter and sugar between each one.  You can use jelly or jam instead (h'mm, there's still sweet orange marmalade in the fridge...).  Either way, be sparing, it adds up quickly.  I'll be making these again.

     Thinking in terms of what can be done with popovers and flatbread, I'm pondering what a savory version might be like -- leave out the bit of sugar, maybe add a little pepper and parsley (etc.) to the batter and layer with scrambled egg, bacon or crumbled sausage to serve.
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* Using the term in a very broad sense.

Chicken Every Sunday

     It's a book.  Chicken Every Sunday: My Life With Mother's Boarders.  It was written so long ago that it's practically science-fictional today.  Rosemary Taylor's family were certainly go-getters, and in the American Southwest starting around the turn of the century -- that's 19th-to-20th, mind -- her father's succession of business ventures and the up-and-down finances that they led to resulted in her mother taking in boarders, which led to building a bigger house and--  Well, and so on.

     It's a charming book, one of the thousands that were printed up as Armed Services Editions pocket-sized paperbacks and provided to our troops during WW II; it was even made into a stage play and a film (though the cinematic edition sounded as if it might be rather sappier than the book).

     It's heartwarming and good fun, but it's also a reminder of a time of upward mobility and great possibility for those who were open to see it and do the work.  It was a time -- and an attitude -- so distant now that it seems like something from one of my "Hidden Frontier" worlds.  In a time of grim, dark fiction -- and doom-and-gloom on the evening news -- I recommend it to your attention.

A Full Sink, A Full Breakfast

     The kitchen sink's gone slow again.  We're sparing of the garbage disposal but it's a long drain with multiple bends (all but one are 45s, at least) and an air admittance valve instead of the usual vent.  Running a dishwasher doesn't help and it's five years or more since the last repair.  Hoping to coax it past the first of the year and if simple fixes (it's got a rubber slip fitting near the connection to the main stack) don't help, I'll get a plumber.

     In the meantime, there were mushrooms left that I didn't fix for Christmas.  It was about time to use them up, so I did: I'm feasting on bacon, eggs and mushrooms, with coffee and toast.  On the toast, an occasional treat: orange marmalade!  I like the sweeter versions -- yes, the "...with a name like...." brand and I picked up a loaf of white bread.  (Should have looked for something better than "sandwich bread," which has become too much like cake to suit me; but oh well, it toasts okay.)  Holiday indulgence!

A Pome.

'Twas the day after Christmas as Roseholme Cottage, you see;
Just one creature was stirring and that creature was me.
Rannie cat was asleep next to Tamara with care
Because the Hogfather had already been there.
Huck in his corner and me at my desk
Rested content with the usual mess.

The dishes were ready, all stacked in the sink
I've had a nice breakfast, with coffee to drink.
And now, boxing day, I'll be back to work
(For we've got some big doings, which I mustn't shirk).
And, oh blog readers, in that vast world out there,
Merry Christmas to all, Happy Holidays to share!

Merry Christmas!

      The very best of Season's Greetings to you and yours from me and mine, which I guess would be one and a half cats (I can't claim more than a half-interest in Miss Rannie, though she and Huck must both be rated as 150% cats, so that still leaves 100% for Tam) and all the characters of the Hidden Frontier, from the starship captains to Pertaineth Apperson (you haven't met her yet) to the various Mary Sues and assorted tuckerized friends.

     Tam and I exchanged gifts last night -- a fine scarf in a variation on the "Strawberry Thief" pattern* and the promise of a WW II tank (darned slow shipping!) in Lego-like form for her, and an excellent Conklin "All-American" pen for me, with bottled ink in Diamine's "Antique Copper" and Mont Blanc's "Red Fox" red to accompany it.

     I made "raccoon hash" this morning, which you will be relieved -- you'd better be -- to hear contains no raccoon at all.  Tinned corned beef and canned diced potatoes are both very salty, so rinsing the potatoes before starting therm in the skillet, then dicing the beef and "washing" a bit at a time in a bowl of water (throw it in, let is soak for a minute or two, then fish it out to drain on paper towel) reduces the saltiness without taking away the flavor.  I set some aside to make a no-potato version for Tam and served it with fried eggs.

     Christmas dinner at Roseholme Cottage will be non-traditional: if the weather clears as predicted (or even if it doesn't), we'll grill a couple of steaks and enjoy them with mashed neeps (turnips and rutabagas) and artichokes
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* This is both a pretty thing to have and a multi-level joke, a William Morris pattern made on automatic machines and with the thrushes replaced by their saurian ancestors.  Arts?  Crafts?  Robots?  We got 'em.

Peace On Earth. Now Clock In.

     The very best and merriest of Christmas Eves to you!

     Me, I've got to work.  We sometimes get "early release" on the major holidays but it looks like I'll be covering a job that will take me right up to my scheduled out time....so my boss says I can start a couple of hours late.  Fair enough!

"I'm Not Standing Still For You!"

     It's one thing, Rannie being the sort of cat who occasionally bites people's ankles.  I don't like it, but she is a cat, after all, and that is something that they have been known to do.

     It's another thing to be a grumpy cat.  A cat Rannie's age is entitled to a certain rather large amount of grumpiness.

     But it's something else entirely to be a cat who gets very grumpy with a person who won't stand in one place to be bitten.

     Rannie likes to make a couple of trial passes first, not-quite smoothing on my ankles, getting lined up, working out range and distance before closing in to nip.  And if I take heed of her efforts and step away, she utters plaintive, annoyed yowls.  How dare I!  So rude!

     All ways are the cat's ways -- except for this.  No, Rannie, I will not stand still to be bitten.

     She's telling her woes to one of her toy mouse-babies right now.  At last count, she had four on my bed, which all arrived after I changed the bedding last night.

Have Not Done Much

     Relaxed all day (other than changing the bedding and washing it, and making an omelet for breakfast), and I'm getting ready to go to bed.  And there's Saturday.

Half A Can Of Spam

     The real stuff, mind you -- introduced in 1937 in a Depression-thrifty effort to use pork shoulder, which wasn't selling as well as the rest of the pig, Wikipedia says it it was the first shelf-stable canned-meat product. (I'm not so sure -- the Brits had tinned "bully beef" during WW I, though it didn't get rave reviews).

     First or not, Spam is tasty and showed up just in time to feed solders and civilians around the world during WW II -- the Brits and Russians welcomed it and so did our troops, despite giving it a number of mocking nicknames.

     It's not a health food, no more than bacon.  They make a low-salt version that's pretty good but the main appeal for me is that it's a meat product I can keep on the top shelf of the pantry for times when the fridge is bare and we're hungry.  This morning we were out of breakfast meat and I started to reach for the Spam but hesitated: a whole can is way too much for breakfast for two.

     Then I remembered: the "big-box" store sells little seven-ounce cans of Spam and I'd bought one.  That's just about right for a two-person breakfast.

     And it was.  Hormel turned those hard-to-sell pork shoulders into some good food.

     It's worth keeping some canned meat on the shelf.  Most kinds are good for a couple of years and can make a snow day, a lazy day or a forgetful day better.  Spam is a classic and good corned beef is well worth adding (some versions are quite salty.  Rinsing them helps.  Keep canned diced potatoes, too, and you can make your own corned beef hash, better than the pre-made versions).  With a two-year rotation cycle, I don't know if you can call it "preparedness food," but it's useful to keep around.

"Harvey," Then And Now

     I miss the days when the only newsworthy Harvey in Hollywood was a six-foot, three-and-a-half-inch invisible rabbit (well, a pooka) that had befriended Jimmy Stewart. The pooka was said to have "conquered time, space and any objections;" our more recent Harvey, not so much. --Or perhaps he has; the legal case against him seems to be in some difficulty.

     However it comes out, even Mr. Weinstein's defense admits to immoral behavior while denying any of it was actionably extralegal.  That's not a reputation that goes away; such behavior is far better avoided in the first place rather than fought over in court on the slim basis of intent and interpretation.  Or, as the other Harvey's pal Elwood P. Dowd admonishes, "...my mother used to say to me, ...'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

     Better to be nice in the first place than to be even a little creepy and have to try talking your way out of it.