Tostinos

While I was in Mexico I was introduced to " Tostinos" Bacon wrapped hot dogs fried and eaten in a bun with mayonnaise, sour cream and salsa.

Nadine picked up a couple of all beef dogs from New Seasons, which I wrapped in two thickly sliced rashers of bacon. They then go into the pan to fry until the bacon is done. I usually like extremely crisp bacon and always over cook. It's a sin which I did not commit this time.

Double roasted salsa from Trader Joe's, Tillamook sour cream, a few jalapeños, and I swear to you it is one of the best dogs ever. How can you go wrong with bacon and really good dogs and a fine slab of smoked pork?

It's sad to think tostino bought on street corners at night in mexico,while squealing hords of half naked sorority sisters and douchie frat boys crush pass each other, each group more glistening and fruity than the last, the faint smell of urine a sharp contrast to the smell of burning fat and spilled beer, that a nameless sausage which may be beef, retrieved from a dark drum of steaming vapor wrapped in what might be pork, smeared with an almost clear aoli like substance on an enriched white bun topped by a thick relish-like salsa spooned out of a tub that reads "Manteca" and a squirt of crema, tastes better than my organic wiener and fancy schmearings. It May have been the tequila..

The bloody mandolin and Cannibals

I picked up and ancient mandolin years and years ago at an estate sale, I also bought a super yummy bottle of scotch for a total of three bucks. I am just in love with the deadly thing! I really try to not drink before I "use" as the blade will remove a pound of flesh before you even notice it. It is a dramatic way to ruin dinner for some people.

I was making stir fried stuff for some veginazi people and sliced off a part of my finger. wine flavored blood gushes from the wound! they all had no problem eating something touched by my meat, kosher or not. These are the same bitches who won't let me cook their food on the "meat tainted parts" for my grill. Human is delightful, just no animals.

Freaks.

After diner tonight, long after I have finished writing the above, Zoey finds "Blood Diner" on TV. According to Miss Z. one of those meat haters (secret lovers) I know, it's one of the finest cannibal movies ever..

Some days I love cable. Other days I know cable sucks my time and energy. If you read the portents right you can understand this universe. Tonight I realized it is a tool for divination like any other thing of chance.

Eating meat is good.

Yellow gold 'tates

There is no baking going on in this house till we get a new oven and cooking this week with out a way to bake has been a trial, but has caused me to dig out a few gadgets I don't normaly use. One of them happens to be the "Fat Daddy Frier" I hijacked from the Mom. Filled with a half gallon of corn oil and heated to a nice 375 I figured we could move through a few spuds. Hopefully as last month I had picked up a bag of yellow gold potatoes from costco. These sweet, juicy, delightful, taters are tiny but really a good choice for frying, fortunately as I have twenty pounds of potatoes.

Buying in bulk is a great idea, while actually using it all seems to be a feat! I made potato salad, and thought about making tater soup till I remembered I don't really like it with out bacon and sour cream and you have to prebake the tubers... so that is out for now though I could toss a few on the grill...

Fry daddy! Filled with boiling oil, ready to remove skin! I pulled out the danger-lin and sliced up a few yellow golds. I tried about 6 different slices from the mandolin, three slices of varying thickness and a few off the shredder. I eventually sliced a few things by hand and tried out my spiral cutter thing "as seen on tv". The spirals I cut appart as they would have stuck together. I was only really limited to the size of my tater.

My favorites where the thinest slice they came out like a tender kettle chip. Tossed with a pinch of sea salt and fresh ground pepper made me wonder why kettle chips are still in business. Then I looked the mess I had made making roast beef aju and fried potatoes.

There was a place in the what is now know as the pearl. biwa, mima, bisu, kapow, I can't remember the name right now, gone for so many years like all the restaurants except for the one that is there now. biwa I am pretty sure it was called had a "taco" that was actually a bit more like a wrap really, served with long skinny fries, well done and crispy with a lightly chewy center, but crisp with a snap almost like a good hebrew national. Golden and sweet crisp with a beautiful piece of tuna. Simple and one of my favorite easy meals in the area. Had the potatoes I used been a little bit bigger I am pretty sure they would have been very close to what I made..

explosions, birds and snow.

Just after I finish taking pictures of a cornish game hen quartet I picked up and almost had cooked to perfection, my stove decided to go Guy Fawkes on me. ?Un/Fortunately I had moved the camera and the tripod out of the way before the element blew. The camera I got off The Craigslist for twenty bucks, in the dark, out side of someones apartment, works great. I just missed all the action with the 35mm.

The wee pidgins , which had been stuffed with herbs from the winter garden, a bit of thyme, oregano and I think a few leaves of parsley, and a slice each of onion and lemon, had to be transfered to the outside grill and cooked via indirect heat for another thirty or forty.

I'm Standing out on my concrete slab in the back yard with a flash light watching the temperature gauge, freezing my arse off it when it starts to snow. Huge downey flakes are falling on my head and I have the grill on mostly high to combat the chill. It's late perhaps eleven o'clock, the streets around me are quiet, "and the only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake". I spend that 40 minutes thinking about other than electric/gas cooking..

The delicate little birdies were tender and perfect. Dear friend Z taught me how to eat the oysters of the birds. Which means you flip these babies over, and just above the thighs (I call them the back fat on myself) rests a portion of meat that supposedly has the flavor of dark meat, yet texture of the white meat. I found it to be a little more oily than my favorite slice of the bird. But Intriguing as it slid out of the chick like a cork and had the texture of angel food cake.

Green beans and a wild rice mix with an extra black rice dosage, because I like it like that, and some fine chirps. Midnight in snow is a lovely time for dinner. Nothing like a bit of a a frost to help you get your feed on..

food and childhood

Spaghettios! I loved them as a kid, especially with the hot dogs. The other day I woke up craving the O's again. But the last time I had them they were Just disgusting. Sweet tomato sauce and crunchy hot dogs. My sister who works for an organic prepared food company informed me that Annie's made a good "O". After a visit to my local Hippie grocery I picked up a can of tomato-n-cheese bunnies. It was a little harder to find a hot dog with out mechanically separated animals, and settled on Hebrew Nationals. Fine dogs, nice snap and great over the fire.

Funny how some of the breakfasts food that were the morning ritual just don't do it for me. Pancakes, are off my list. Due to the mush factor of the the larger fluffier variety. Yet corn meal mush is still a favorite. Which brings me to my almost favorite breakfast quickie food, which in my family was known as Gas house eggs and later as Toad in the hole. As shown right with a few rashers of bacon. I have no idea why my family calls them toad in the hole. The English have something called a toad in the hole which looks like this odd mix of a Dutch baby/German pancake according to wickipedia I lifted the picture from says:

"..A traditional British dish comprising sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and gravy. The origin of the name 'Toad-in-the-Hole' is vague. Most suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its little head out of a hole provide the dish with its somewhat unusual name."

It actually looks great in the picture, and I think I will try to whip up a batch. One can't Go wrong with sausage, Usually. I had bangers in England and they had the flavor of wet paper dipped in pork juice. Those freaky Limeys also cut the crust off toast. Fried tomato and thick slabs of smoked ham make up for it sometimes.

I am still left with the question of correct name for "toad in the hole" I have heard "Popeye egg" and "Eggs in a basket". Gas house eggs under a variety of names has also shown up in books and songs but in the movie "Moon Over Miami" (1941) with Bettey Grable the G.H.E. egg turns up, and with dresses by Travis Banton the film is worth the viewing.

Lunch and breakfast, what about dinner? Has any of the odd things I was fed come with me through the centuries? I never had the chance at many popular prepared foods. We had few canned foods and the barest of refined sugars. My child hood dinners were consistently the meat and potatoes of the 50's. Once in a blue moon The Mom prepared S.O.S. and there was once in a while a hamburger helper type noodle box meal. If we had a baby sitter we were allowed to chose a frozen meal for dinner. My sister would always choose the beanie weenies with the corn and the chocolate fluff pudding cake. I would always choose the turkey dinner with stuffing and cranberry apple thing. I am quite sure I would still eat them if they still tasted the same.

But those staples of my child hood don't taste like that. Skeddi-ohz are not what they were when I was 8, a tomato sugar syrup and some frankensausage in a can. the tinned beef used to make S.O.S. is not easy to find. Finding a hot dog with out sodium nitrate is near impossible (even Gartners adds nitrates!) finding the weiner with out Monosodium glutamate has gotten dramatically easier as the years go by. Things change and things stay the same. There may be nothing nothing better than a simple roast beef with potatoes and carrots.

Books

I wonder how many books I have read, often it seems I pick up books I love just to give them away. My cover less copy of "Perfume", the set of "Chronicles of Narnia" I keep in my toy box. I am the sum of all my parts. Does that mean that I am just a little bit Karen Blixen, and Margueite Duras? maybe? or am I just living through women because I can't live myself in such a dramatic manner.

Here it is a list of books I love. I shall continue to edit as I remember titles.


Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen which reminds me I wanted to pick up a copy of babbette's feast which she wrote also!

The lover, Margueite Duras. she has a couple other fine novels, but I didn't get through the last one I picked up, and I can't remember the name right now if it, something about a woman in love with a gay guy that she pays to watch her sleep.

The Chronicles of Narnina by C.S. Lewis I found this set in the back my mothers closet when I was five. The Lion the witch and the wardrobe was the first book chapter book I read on my own. It took me about a year to get through it but by the time first grade hit I was on to the the second book.

Stranger in a strange land - Robert Anson Heinline, what a freaky guy he must have been, his whole universe is full of poly marriages, group living, fertility birthdays, and incest! bet he was a hoot at parties..

Innocents abroad- Mark Twain, read anything by him, I am reading A Pen warmed up in hell right now.

who else should I invite to the party? someone dramatic, perhaps the guy who wrote High Bonnet, Idwal Jones? I do so want to try his goose in orange and chocolate sauce.

I'm hungry now! More later..

mean while back at the ranch Miss Delna is wipping up a few words on cook books which can be summed up in four words "I love James Beard" its not because he was gay and wrote manly bbq books, it was not because he is from oregon, its not because he was brilliantly snarky, its becuase his American cookery is one of the best cook books ever written. it has everything, well everything they had thought of at that time. Each recipe has its short story, and I believe there are a few thousand in there., I actually have two copies, one for home and one for camping. His recipes for entertaining and "beard on bread" are also brilliant and informative. His recipes always centered around quality of ingredients

Julia Childs (and friends), Mastering The Art of French Cooking, books one and two. I am working though them slowly as these compendiums are huge! The culinary world is a convoluted web of whom knew who, but I believe Point got it right with his "butter butter always more butter" And Darling Julia certainly took that to heart.

I want to read "European Gastronomy Into the 21st Century" by Cailein Gillespie and john A. Cousins, but they don't have it at the Multnomah county library! Good ol Powells has it for 49 bucks, but I bet I can find it used!

Remember kids Julia and James suffered and died from mixes of gout, diabetes and other fun things associated with rich foods and over consumption, so choose your vices well and exercise! what am I saying? Fatties unite! skinny people must be plumped! I am now going to go make some breakfast and crack that last bottle of bubbly, and eat the amazing ham I made for new years! more on that and maybe the secret family recipe if my pop says it can be given out. Something to be said for being the daughter of a butcher. mmmmmmmmmmmmeat!