California Dreaming

A couple of years ago Paul suggested we enclose an unused part of the deck to make a closet – a dressing room – a boudoir. He asked me to think about what I would like. When he went to Russia for most of last year, his departing gift to me was the room enclosure. This included insulation, walls, 2 windows, 4 electrical outlets, ceiling light drops and a built in ironing board. Okay, so it is more of a room than a closet.

I was starting to despair of ever hanging any clothes in my new space and voiced my frustration. Lo and behold, Ben showed up, laid the floor, sanded it and finished with polyurethane. The following week all the closet bits were being cut and fitted into place. How many closet rods? How many shelves? What about the corners? How many drawers? Desk/dressing table? You say you want concave corners? Paint or stain?

An interior designer said, “Oh, it’s a California closet.” I had never heard this term but now it is part of my vocabulary. Paul told friends that many men worry that their wives want to come of out the closet. He has a wife who wants to get into the closet.

We call it the White Room.

Cornish Pasties

I have it on good authority that as well as cake and champagne, hot and cold hors d'œuvre will be served at the royal nuptials. Palace favorites include sausage rolls and Cornish Pasties. Since my invite appears to be lost in the mail, I decided I needed my own pasties to toast the happy couple.

Several recipes got confused at the grocery. I picked up potatoes, carrots, a rutabaga, onions and a small inexpensive steak. I was trying to use the best from 2 recipes for this dish and I finally realized I did not have all the ingredients for either. Welcome to my kitchen. How wrong could it be?

First I made the pasty dough by boiling water with butter then adding flour and salt. I set this aside in the fridge to cool for a bit while I chopped the veggies and meat very fine. (I forgot the carrots.) The seasonings called for bouillon (check) and I thought the mixture could use a little flour and dill seeds although they were not included in either recipe. One recipe suggested I cook the meat and veggies before stuffing the dough; the other did not. (I decided not) One recipe suggested I bake the pasties at 425 and the other at 350. One recipe said to bake for 35 minutes while the other said an hour. Oh, the recipes called for ground beef, ground pork, or chicken thighs. I used none of these. I think I am a rather cavalier cook. I had no idea if this savory was going to be worth repeating.

I rolled the pastry dough out in circles; added a generous helping of the meat veggie mixture; folded the dough; crimped the edges; did the egg wash thing; set the oven temp to 425; cooked it for 30 minutes, then lowered the temp to 350 and cooked it for 20 minutes more.

They were pretty tasty pasties. I wonder how the palace makes theirs. Do you think they’ll ask me for my recipe?

Cheers to William and Kate.

Holy Mackerel

When I was young my mother served us fish on Fridays. Most of the time it was flounder or tuna but we also had other fish. I remember eating bluefish and mackerel. These fish were very tasty. I can’t remember the last time I ate bluefish – maybe 35 years ago. The bait and tackle shop on A1A was the place to ask. We stopped to get something for dinner and I asked about bluefish. I received a sideways glance from the man behind the counter and then I heard this strong Boston accent from the other side of the room. It seems that bluefish and mackerel are (were?) fish for the common people. They have a very fishy taste and most people do not like it. They don’t sell these fish; they don’t have a market. The fishmongers had a little distain for some of the fish they were selling e.g. grouper, haddock – all perfectly good fish but on the mild side. We settled for a tub of their fish dip (mixture of different fish and spices) which was really yummy and a pound of fresh sea scallops with the instructions to only sear them for 30 seconds per side (I cooked them a bit longer). The scallops were delicious. Paul calls me a foodie. I don’t think it’s a compliment. Speaking of seafood, Terry and Jim took us to The Crab Shack on Tybee Island last Friday evening. The tables have big holes in the middle with something that looks like a pizza stand on top. There are trash cans below the hole . . . to catch the shells and other discards. We shared a big plate of steamed oysters and then ordered this huge sampler platter which contained: snow crabs, stone crabs, muscles, shrimp, sausage, potatoes, corn and crawdads. In a word it was ‘wow’ – one of the best seafood meals I’ve had. Maybe I am a foodie – my apologies.

Dirty Business

Do it yourselfers are giving me ideas. Figuring I could not afford what I want (red oak hardwood stairs to match the floor I had installed 8 years ago) I decided to rip out the 30-year-old carpeting that was installed when the house was built. Painted steps should look better, be easier to clean and keep the dog hair under control. The dogs had enough sense to hide in the bedroom while I stirred up the dust. The carpet removal took about 15 minutes. Next came the thin foam under carpet. This was pretty easy to bag since it was disintegrating anyway. When I swept I noticed all the nails that did not rip out with the carpet. Starting at the bottom I used pliers and flat head screwdrivers to pry up the nails. This took more than an hour. I needed a shower after messing with thirty years of dirt and dust and I feel the twinges of shoulder and back aches. The steps are not great. However they are in better shape than I was expecting and slightly better than the ones leading to the basement. The leading edges are rounded but the wood is also cracked in places. When they were installed the workmen did not protect them, so they have paint and Spackle splatters. Next I need to decide if I want to sand before I paint. Are they worth all this work? And how much dust will I stir up? Quite a bit, I think. If I want to sand I need to think about protecting the furniture and the good carpet. I also need to decide on color. I think two-tone, don’t you? Brown and off white might work for the steps and risers. Of course now that this project has started, I see that the walls could use a fresh coat of paint. Slow down, Helen, one thing at a time. Under the carpet I found a dime dated 1975. In that year I could have used this for a local phone call in an enclosed phone booth on the streets of New York City.

Old friends

There seems to be interest in a reunion of the old neighborhood crowd. After attending my 10th year high school reunion, I passed on the subsequent ones. For the most part the girls in my high school were not my friends; the neighborhood kids were. Most of us attended catholic elementary schools and there was a competitive entrance exam for the various high schools in the area. So of the 15 or so kids in the neighborhood, we probably attended 5-6 different schools. My commute to high school took about an hour and a half and none of us drove (driving age was 18.) I needed to catch two city busses separated by a 15 minute walk (sometimes run.) We had a discounted rate for the NY city bus and paid 5¢. There are a few in the old crowd with whom I have never lost touch and others that I have reconnected with over the years. Recently I had a visit over a cup of coffee with Joe and his some of his family. He was en-route home to Iowa. We cannot help but wonder “whatever happened to . . .?” Who would be interested in a reunion? I guess the first step would be to make a list and then find the ones who have dropped from the radar. What about those who were my friends but had better things to do than earn street corner reputations? So the list comes first.

Remote relationship

Paul calls me every day frequently frequently. This man loves to travel to obscure places. I think if something ever happened to me, he would spend his life traveling. I like to travel too, but find I am doing this a bit more vicariously than I hoped. I just got off the phone with him, one of his 60 second calls. He is taking a break from his day of teaching, lunching, and meeting to say hi. Tomorrow he returns to Yerevan which is a 7 hour drive. There he is again. He just popped up on G-chat. You got to love the Gmail. Monday or Tuesday he will be in Moscow. Who knows what adventures await.

A promise of brownies

Was it an omen when the license plate fell off the car at the airport? Paul was leaving for 5 months half way round the world and my first order of business was to figure out how to be street legal. I drove straight to my favorite mechanics at Firestone. Mike was preparing to close for the day but said he’d help. He saw that the license plate was bolted into plastic inserts on the back hatch of the car. I am not sure why these plastic inserts fell out, but simply putting them back in was not going to do the trick. Mike suggested wall anchors which he did not have at the shop. The short version of this story is that I made 2 trips to ACE Hardware and 3 trips to Firestone that evening and promised brownies to Mike for staying late to help me. Saturday got away from me although I finally made the brownies – a Dorie Greenspan recipe w/bittersweet chocolate and walnuts. I was tempted to hold one back but decided to eat the crumbs and give Mike all. The directions said to let cool completely but I did not want to wait quite that long. So at 4:30 I took my warm brownies to the mechanic. Firestone was crowded. Herb had this smile at the corners of his mouth guessing what I had. When I finally got to the counter, I asked for Mike. "He's here somewhere." "Oh, no he's not; he left at 4:30" So I told Herb that this was for Mike - that he had stayed late to help me on Thursday when my license plate fell off. Herb was very gracious and offered to put my goodies in the fridge till the next day. The brownies were covered in foil, so the contents were not obvious. I wanted Mike to know I was grateful for his help. I did not mind if he shared but I knew they would disappear fast. Herb put the two more anchors in the bottom of the license plate so now it is rigid. Do I need to make more brownies for Herb? Do you think Mike ever got the brownies?