CRAZY TOWN WAITING ROOM - TESTS coming up? All Stages Welcome.
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Pretty flowers, Katy! I would have to say the good old Betty Crocker cookbook. You have to be old to know who Betty Crocker is, though! Ha Ha However, I collect cookbooks and have over 100. I have to admit I find I use my recipes from Pinterest more often. I really like Pinterest. Have over 11,000 pins.
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Beautiful Posies for Crazies! Nothing like that grows in hot, sunny So Cal... especially with all of the water restrictions.
I have shelves and shelves of cookbooks. Many more cookbooks than I have shoes, which is saying a lot! I have Silver Palate, Bittman's book, Joy of Cooking, my mom's old, old Betty Crocker Cookbook (interesting how the types of foods cooked have changed. But, my favorite cookbook is one my MiL gave to me as an engagement present. She made a cookbook with all of my DHs side of the family favorite and old family recipes.
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Katy.. So sorry about your BFF.. When I was diagnosed just over a year ago my BFF slowly started backing off , and another friend stepped up and helped support me through the whole ordeal.. I love her dearly ! I think my cancer made my previous friend nervous.. She didn't know what to say.. (all she had to say was "Oh Chit.. That's awful "! ).. also.. She has put of having her own mamogram for 10 years.. and I think I make her worry about herself.. We've never had any "words" about what's happened.. But I do think that once a relationship has changed its very, very hard to go back to what it once was.. (Hugs)
Rainny.. I have stacks of cookbooks too.. But these days I tend to search the internet for new recipes.. and I love reading other people's reviews.
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Poppy.. Just read your post.. What a wonderful idea your MIL had giving you cook book full of the families favourite recipes.. I think a lot of the old recipes are still the best.!
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Had a collection of over 200 cookbooks but donated them. I did keep my Betty Crocker cookbook. Still haven't got back to cooking for myself. Have my basics and can put together what I have a taste for. Working 2nd shift doesn't lend itself to cooking daily. I need to start weekly meal prep to help with portion control. My taster is coming back. Now to work on the energy.
Happy to report that I ended up with 5000 steps today.
Hugs to you Jackie. Sounds like you are the giver in the relationship and BFF isn't able to meet you to balance and listen to your needs. Yes it does hurt. Keep reading out, send her some of those beautiful posies or offer to meet her when you are ready.
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For you Katy
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Awwwww, how wonderful to be able to send hugs around the globe. Brings tears to my eyes.
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Thank you Lucy.
Thank you everybody.
Poppy - you reminded me, and i can't believe i forgot, that for my 40th birthday my mom took my "notebook" of handwritten recipes, clippings, etc., that were crammed in so full the binding and pockets were giving way, and organized it into a home-made self-published original, in 3 volumes, called Katy Cooks. All organized. And she included some of her recipes that she knew I loved but did not have. Somehow, through the calamitous years that followed her death and my multiple bipolar meltdowns, these notebooks were saved by my family and returned to me. I'm so very grateful for them, and thankful for this reminder of my connection with her, especially on a day when I feel so very alone.
🎪🎪🎪
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i'm a Bittman girl too.
Hugs to Katy. It has neen a long but fun day in the City so more tomorrow
Oct
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Katy, That is awesome! I think it's a great idea for any family. So many recipes get forgotten. I know several of my grandma's recipes weren't even written down. I have some recipes of my own that I only write down when someone asks me how I made something.
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Hi Ho Crazies,
Hope everyone had a great Saturday.
Gaia,
That is one honking big lobster!!!i can smell those sheets, the sun, the ozone in the air. What a sense memory!!! Evelyn didn't show up yesterday. She was going to be having some sort of shoulder surgery and then I think some rads on a spot so I assume that's why she wasn't there., I also have the early gene too...can't tell you the number of times I've wandered around the studio lot waiting for meetings , I hate being late.
Jack,
It is weird how some friends bail on these situations. I had a few people close to me before my first go round back in 90 and the friendships just never were the same. I think a big part of it was fear, and I was a walking reminder that shit happens and it can happen to anyone. I agree with Ducky about the friend if she doesn't come around the hell with her. Your flowers are beautiful by the way such great colors!!!
My go to bible of Indian Food is still,Lord Krishnas Cuisine and the other brick in my kitchen is American Cooking James Beard. In fact I was totally stoked 3 yrs ago when the publisher asked me to "Indianify" some of his recipes in honor of the anniversary publication of the Essential James a Beard cookbook. My James Beard is practically falling to pieces. I think the original Guttenberg Bible is probably in better shape. This is a really food obsessed bunch and I think that's what makes us so much fun!!!
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There are so many recipes from family members that I have been able to collect. I have written lots down or gotten copies of the originals. So fun to go back and look at the recipes that family members have made and that you might have tasted.
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Morning Crazies!
You all got Busy last night! I'll attempt to track back a little.
Italy that was a splendid table you set, Yes I agree Sicily is like its own country, and an amazing one at that. Sicily and Peru are two place I want to repeat.
The garbanzos are definitely cooked first, then seasoned and then dried in the oven. Canned do work fine for this.
Ducky pan seared cod sounds delicious
Eggroll you must have some garden! 30lbs of tomatoes?
Tropical Storm Katy, that's great news regarding flexing your pecs. Re your friend, I do think it is very difficult for many people close to us to fully process and be present with illness. It causes people, consciously or not, to face their own mortality. I have a close friend who is a bit like this. And then there are the people in our lives, who we may know only peripherally, who have the ability to be really present for us. Look around a corner or two and I am certain you will find one. and with this friend , be gentle with yourself and her and let go of any expectations… for now
Slow and Poppy thinking of you with regard to the thyroid 'nodules' Good outcomes for all on order!
PTS, I always use kolarabi shaved raw in salads. I wouldn't bother cooking it.
Rain thinking of you a lot as your day approaches. I know Katy is armed with her high octane mojo drip for you. I hope you have been able to create a space for utter rest and relaxation for a few days once you arrive home; via LIMO, of course!
Re the cookbook poll. HMM I use cookbooks as inspiration points and rarely to follow a recipe so my list is based from that perspective.
Honey From a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia by Patience Gray
This is one book that has made the 'cut list' of every twist, turn and move of my life for the last 25 years. I've had it with me since college. 'Recipes' are woven through the story of her journey to those four places in the '60's and '70's with the sculptor and her partner Norman Mommens. He was a sculptor in search of stone. Through their journey together she found herself in "the mysterious grip of olive, lentisk, fig and vine."
Other than that:
Cooking by Hand, Paul Bertolli edited to say: I do draw on his explicit and exacting description for technique when making things like sugo.
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, Fergus Henderson- I would really never make most of what he presents here but, his approach to food and twisted way of 'writing a recipe' really 'loosens the grip' of thinking about food in a stuffy way. From a recipe for braised lamb:
Leave the shallots and garlic whole to cook to melting softness. "If the great chef in the sky had meant vegetables to be little cubes, he would have made them that way."My Favorite Ingredients, Skye Gyngell
The Kitchen Diaries, Nigel Slater
Re Bernard Clayton's Bread book. After I learned to bake from my maternal grandmother and Great grandmother, that was my bible for bread baking throughout college. I was the only whako who carted around a wild yeast starter in my 20's and to get a spot in our college apartment you needed to have a rigorous interview, agree to never wear shoes beyond the front door and be a vegetarian ( which I was for over 20 yeas....)
(sometimes I have had the thought that BC came to my door to help me shed so many 'rules' sigh....)
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Morning, crazies (right behind Christine),
Wow, so many meditations on cookbooks and families! I didn't mean limit yourself to one cookbook (since I certainly didn't in my post). And yes, those family recipes are so precious to us, even the ones that exist solely in our heads and never make it to paper. The first meal I cooked for my DH was chicken pot pie, which I learned at my mother's apron strings. She grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and pie was a food group (as were jams, pickles, chutneys, strudel...). One of my earliest memories is screaming as I was being dosed with nose drops for a cold, then being consoled with the foam skimmed off strawberry jam. Another is going with my grandmother to the Amish market, where the vegetables were scrubbed within an inch of their lives and one could get a soft pretzel dripping with butter.
Your posts are reminding me of two books I've read in the past year or two: One is 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman, a food history of the immigrants who came to the lower east side of NYC, covering quite a few national and cultural traditions. The other is The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken by Laura Schenone, about a journalist who traced the history of ravioli (and other foods) from the immigrants back to Italy (looking at you, Italychick). Both books talk a lot about how food traditions were adapted and often became more lavish as immigrants found themselves more prosperous than they ever had been back in the old country. In other words, the corned beef of the Irish, the roast beef of my Jewish grandparents could not possibly have been afforded in their native lands. Fascinating cultural histories.
Enough rambling. Katy, are you feeling better today? I'm so impressed by your shelf of French cookbooks!
Off to bake a birthday cake for the 16-year-old who started as the world's pickiest eater but now eats everything. Using the 1-2-3-4 cake from James Beard's American Cookery but flavored with lemon (kid's request) and probably some sort of chocolate buttercream frosting.
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Rainny- For some reason I always feel better in the morning. And you all have lifted me up with your posts.
Christine- your reminder to wear my sleep mask has been so helpful. My sleep has improved so much. Because I was borderline manic, I needed to look to meds for an assist, but the most important thing is I have calmed down and am well-rested. Thank you.
Rainny- you unknowingly reminded me of another mothership story. My mother married just out of college (magna cum in English at UCLA and kappa- which might explain a lot). My father was very into sailboat racing at a world level, so there was this group of yacht club ladies who became my mother's first married social circle. The husbands worked. The wives didn't. I'd say it was about the early 60s. The martini was at that time a food group.
So these 4 ladies decided to get together once a week and watch Julia and make whatever she made on her show (I don't remember if they took notes from the previous week's show or how they knew what to buy- but it's a confirmed story). So they got together one afternoon a week and together put together a meal fit for their kings. They may have just watched the show for entertainment and then prepared a planned meal out of her cookbook. (A detail I would now love to interview her on, but she's gone).
Naturally, there were martinis going on during the cooking, but legend has it they produced some amazing dinners. During which more martinis and no doubt wine were consumed once the husbands got there. Apparently, they always had the main course (rotating by week) at one couple's house, then went to another's for dessert, leaving the 8 hour mess and moving to a clean kitchen for the final course. The word hedonistic doesn't even begin to cover it. Haha.. I'm laughing and crying a bit as I write this.
My mom always swore this is how she really learned to cook. By watching and reading Julia Child on what in those days was probably a 13" black and white tv. I begged her to tell the story over and over through the years. They cooked their way right through both volumes. Of course, like some of the other books mentioned above, there was not just recipes- there was a lot of technique and narrative in Julia's books, and how things came to be (like the Lost Ravioli Recipes- which I just must have) so the "club" probably lasted less than six months. But a legend nonetheless.
As a related side story, my mother also played bridge. Sometimes 2-3 tables going at once. Many afternoons she told, time got away from them and they would suddenly realize husbands would be arriving home from work and there was no dinner on the stove, no aromas wafting through the front door. This was part of the social contract of marriage in those days, and pretty well inviolate.
One of the older, more experienced "sages" in the group taught them not to worry. "Run home", she said, "and chop up an onion and start sautéing it with a stick of butter. He'll walk in the door and congratulate himself once again on his wise choice in a wife, make himself a drink, and prepare to be waited on patiently. For good things were surely on the way."
I have never since in my life sautéed an onion in butter without thinking of her and those stories. I usually don't use a whole stick of butter these days though......
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Hope today is better, Katy. I have had "those" days too. Big hug yo you.
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Once again Katy and amazing recount. I can really see the entire seen you set. Thank you for sharing.
I am glad the sleep mask is helping. I had never used one before and I too am finding it extremely helpful to the quality of my sleep.
Rain have a lovely day with your son on his birthday.
It is now football season ( I can't believe I just said that) so our day is watching games on the wall ( we have a projector for a TV) and me taking care of some food projects.
Roasting a top round of lamb for dinner and serving it with grilled radicchio.
love to all you crazies, I'm sure to check in a lot today.
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mmmm, fav cookbook, am I crazy but I learned to cook from the Old Mennonite Community Cookbook, full of pies, cakes, pickles and such. Rainny, did not know you grew up in Pennsy but me too! I am someone who sort of wings it a lot but do love to read cookbooks for inspiration and yeah, go to the internet really
Love the story of Kohlrabi as a toy! doubt I will buy it again but if I do, it will be in a salad, sort of boring cooked!
waiting on electrician guy as the smoke detector is now yelling at me and with my punky balance, not goona risk the lader!
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Hubby has been busy the last couple of weeks building a Poultry Penthouse for our yard.. and I have been his apprentice...Here's a pic of him doing the final touches before it's new residents move in.
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And here's a pic of the three lucky girls who will be moving in.. Their names are Henny, Penny and Jenny 😃
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I love it! Do the chickens stay in there all the time or do they run around the yard? Dumb questions probably, but I would like to have chickens too, just know nothing about having them. What happens in the winter? Do they need to be kept warm? Love the coop! Your husband did a really good job! Cute chicken names too!
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Sunshine.. Thank you.! They are going to be free range girls.. 😃 Just locked up in the coup of a night so predators can't attack them.. Winter isn't a problem in the part of Australia I'm in.. Overnight low only drops yo about 54 degree F..
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Will you have to run around and catch them every night? I know, silly question, but, if Inever do this, Inneed to know! I used to live on the Gulf of Mexico. A friend found some duck eggs that did not seem to be cared for by mother duck. So, my husband and I hatched these eggs in an incubator and I became their mother! We build an enclosure that had chicken wire going way down in the ground to keep animals from digging under. Anyway, they followed me around the yard. I even went in the water one day and they followed me in. Then, they learned to fly. It was so fun to watch them fly far out, circle around, and come back to land in the yard. At night, they would just waddle into their cage. Your chickens brought back happy memories. :
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Katy, that is an awesome story about your mom! And indeed, I have many times sautéed an onion to give the impression that I'm farther along with a meal than I really am. Works like a charm.
Proud, I grew up in NJ, near the Pennsylvania border. But both my parents were from PA: Philadelphia and Lancaster. So I have strong ties there. We go back to Philly every two years for a Passover seder that has been going on for over a century, since my father's mother's family arrived from the Ukraine. There's a huge excel chart that contains all of the various branches of the family; usually several dozen come back. Your cookbook sounds terrific, with a lot of the recipes that my mom knows well.
Regarding food, maybe a lot of us do the same thing: get an idea, check in with touchstone cookbooks, cruise the internet, eventually cobble something together from a few different sources?
Lucy, that chicken coop is a work of art. Hope the gals appreciate it. My DS has a job caring for the neighbor's chickens when they go away. They pay him lavishly for 20 minutes of work/day, so he has come to understand their ways. They're easy to bribe with food if you need them to go somewhere, i.e. into the coop.
Christine: Lamb. Drooling. Enjoy.
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rain- you will see a lamb theme especially as we move to cooler/colder weather. If I could only choose one animal food it would be lamb ( that is excluding bone broth which I consider food and medicine at this point). I may hunt out the book you mentioned about the food history of various cultures that immigrated to the LES. My family was among them- well not LES but what is now called NOHO on Mott and Mulberry between Bleecker and Houston and 'funnily' enough that is exactly where I lived for the last 15 years, before moving to Greenpoint.
I love all the family recipe book stories- my maternal side did that as well many years ago and also a very detailed family tree, which they actually had drawn.... I should find out who is in possession of that.
Chicken coops and gardens really have me longing for an escape from NYC life....
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I must have been a chicken in another life......easy to bribe with food! Ha! Ha!
Katy, loved your story.....will have to remember the onion trick!
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Lucy- adorable chicken house! That's far more charming than many apartments I've lived in! Have fun with the 3 "ennys"
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I am so behind!
Love the chickens, love the lamb-as-food-group concept, and love your stories about your mom, Katy. I know that trick with the onion: it works with kids too. :-) and your friend just sucks. Going through something similar with a family member, hate it. Rain, that sedar sounds amazing!
I decided that if I was going to feel sorry for myself because of all my incision problems I should do it in style. I escaped this weekend and went to the City (San Francisco). Where it was hot, but I didn't care. Got a 4.5 star room on Hotwire for practically nothing, had a wonderful dinner with a good friend, saw my Giants (yesterday, unfortunately, as it was one of their worst games this year), had a really good night's sleep all by myself in a beautiful bed in a beautiful room with a view, had room service for breakfast, and shopped at Nordstrom's. (where I bought scarves, for when the inevitable happens with the hair. oh well, at least they are expensive, pretty scarves....). All things I miss living in a small town in the Great Central Valley. Felt like an escape to a former life.
Now that I am home, for some reason I am craving meatloaf and NOTHING else will do. Even though it is 100plus friggin degrees outside. So off to start my meatloaf. Hubby, who perhaps was feeling bad that i was going to be doing the cooking (weirdly enough, since he stayed home and worked around the house while I was off having fun), said that while he didn't cook meatloaf he'd be happy to try, or perhaps he could watch and do it next time. I told him he could watch, but it likely wouldn't do any good, as I never follow a recipe for meatloaf and it is never the same twice....
Off to start chopping and cooking. Take care all!
Octogirl
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Octo- that was one HELL OF A THROWDOWN!!!
Good for you. Your approval ratings couldn't technically go higher in my book, but I am bowing to you in honor of your sass and your style.
BRAVA!!!!!!
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Okay, it's less than 5 minutes. But this beautiful song touched me and when things touch me I want to touch all of you.
My bff of 30 years called today and during a 4 hour conversation she finally unloaded several years of sad and dark secrets that she chose to keep from me. I was very honest with her as to how much she's hurt me, but the advice I got here to be gentle with her and with myself was very wise. I don't have time to be angry or hold a grudge. She needs me now and once again, it really was very simple. All is forgiven. Maybe not forgotten, but I think that will come in time.
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