Tico Tico Taco

We bought tortillas and avocados last week.  I wanted to eat them for once instead of having to throw them out, so I made a concerted effort to use them up while they were still fresh.  Tuesday seemed like a good night to have them for supper - there was nothing on TV worth watching that would distract me.  Bill had asked me to make him a quesadilla using his favorite green salsa.  I decided on veggie tacos for myself.  I had veggie tacos at a couple of restaurants and they were very good.  Problem - I did not know what went on a veggie taco.  Solution - peppers and onions.  I had also recently purchased a bag of those mini red, orange and yellow peppers at the market and likewise wanted to eat them before they became a science experiment in the fridge.

I decided beans and rice would be a natural accompaniment and would further allow me to "pantry shop" (code for look on the shelf and use it before buying anything more).  I have a friend who is sympathetic to my plight of an overstocked fridge and pantry.  She says her dad used to have an expression - "ten pounds of stuff crammed into a five pound sack".  An accurate representation.

I found a box of Rice-a-roni, Spanish Rice style, and a can of refried beans.  I diced half an onion for the beans and sliced the remaining onion for the tacos.  I sliced a half dozen of the assorted peppers and a leftover half tomato from the previous day's salad.

Diced onion and tomato went in the skillet for the beans.  Sliced onion and pepper went in a smaller skillet for the tacos.  A token amount of each went in the saucepan with the Rice-a-roni.  The cheese and tortillas, including green sauce, went in another skillet for the quesadillas.  The remaining tortillas were wrapped in a damp towel and placed in the oven in a casserole to warm through.

I somehow learned pretty quickly how to get everything ready at the same time.  For some reason, I don't have to do any math (unless it's Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner) to know when to put everything on so it will be done at the same time.  Lo and behold, just as everything was about done I sliced the avocado and squeezed a lime over it, dished up and had it all on the table at the same time.

Lemme tell ya, a schmear of refried beans and a spoonful of rice make a pretty decent taco all on their own.  Add a topping of seared pepper & onion and some dead ripe avocado and that's tasty!  The fact that there were enough leftovers to make a taco for a snack the next day is only proof that somebody loves me. Taco Bento anyone?

Quotable Quotes; in the category Don't Yell At Me I Only Live Here!

"Well would you mind telling me why there's Rice-a-roni in my coffee?"

Butter's Dad; South Park Season 12 Episode 14

Anglo Saxon Whattitudes?

I loves me a ham sandwich.   My favorite ham sandwiches are those that are cut on the diagonal, especially if they are packed in one of those triangle "sealed with plastic" boxes that you might get in an Amtrak dining car or any place that sells pre-made "fresh cut" sandwiches in England or the US (in England you do not "make" sandwiches, you "cut" them).

The reason the diagonal cut makes them taste best is due to this Tenniel illustration for chapter 7, "The Lion and the Unicorn" from Lewis Carroll's "Through The Looking Glass".  As soon as I realized that the messenger was handing the King a ham sandwich, I decided that a ham sandwich should always be cut this way.  For some reason, when I was a kid, I thought he was handing the King a slice of pizza or something.  I knew it could not be that, but that picture sure did not look any ham sandwich I had ever seen.  All the ham sandwiches I knew were either on rye or pumpernickel bread and cut straight across, never on an angle.

I still don't know how they got that ham sandwich to have that shape (it still does not resemble any ham sandwich I have ever seen) but I content myself to cut my ham sandwiches, no matter the shape of the bread, on the angle.  Then I can remember Alice, the White King and his messenger with the Anglo Saxon attitudes.  If you do not know what that means, don't feel bad.  Neither does anybody else.  For proof, google Alice Anglo Saxon Attitudes and see what you get.  Or just forget about it and re-read Through The Looking Glass.  It's worth it.

Quotable Quotes; in the category But How Many Does It Feed?

"Hors D'oeuvre:  A ham sandwich cut into forty pieces."
Jack Benny

A Good Dressing Down!

I blogged about salads and dressing a bit ago and mentioned I prefer making homemade dressing except for blue cheese.  I also mentioned making dressing in a mustard jar that was almost empty.  Here is another dressing tip.  When your jar of blue cheese dressing is just about empty don't throw it out - yet.  Add a little oil and vinegar, or just add a little of your basic vinaigrette to the jar and shake it all about.  You'll have a tasty blue cheese vinaigrette for your salad

Remember the days of the steak house and the iceberg lettuce salad?  To make a classic steak house salad remove the core and outer, wilted leaves from a head or two of iceberg lettuce.  Cut the lettuce in wedges and place one or two in each salad bowl.

Top with sliced tomatoes or cherry tomato halves (sliced red onion and/or radish optional) and a good dollop of your favorite blue cheese dressing.  For the crowning touch, sprinkle a generous portion of cooked, crumbled bacon and a little crumbled blue cheese on top.  Garnish with freshly ground pepper.

This is a bargain when you consider that a head of iceberg usually sells for about a buck and this salad can cost upwards of $10 in a typical steak house!  (T)-bone appetit!

Quotable quotes; in the category I Don't Know What It Means But I'm Too Tired To Look It Up.

"It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific'." Beatrix Potter

Don't Put All Your Egg Salad In One Bread Basket

I had egg salad the other day. I love egg salad. I have tried different versions that add minced celery, pickle relish or other things but I just don't care for them. The closest I came was "Bacon and Egg Salad" which just meant adding crumbled bacon to my basic recipe. I was not impressed. The bacon did not stand out and I felt it was a waste of good bacon (luckily the egg salad was fine, with or without the bacon).

I think the reason I prefer my rather plain egg salad is the bread I serve it on. I sometimes use a hearty country style bread but any regular old grocery store bread will do - white bread, a soft whole grain, a denser whole grain - but the very best bread for egg salad is fresh Challah, that soft, golden yellow bread with a shiny brown crust. This lets the egg salad be the star with a good supporting cast. Buy Challah at a deli or wherever you buy your bagels if your grocery store does not have it.

My egg salad is basic and pretty plain. Remember, that's the way I like it. I was just thinking of cooking the eggs in egg coddlers, which I posted on recently. But that would mean a separate coddler for each egg. Too many to wash. Besides, they do just fine inside the shell - and since you'll be mashing the eggs anyway it doesn't matter if they don't peel beautifully.

My friend gave me a couple gadgets. One is a little plastic thing with a spring loaded pin inside. This is for piercing the end of the egg which is supposed to prevent the egg cracking during cooking. it works pretty well.

The other is a contraption with a slotted section to hold the peeled egg and another section that is threaded with wires for slicing the egg. My friend turns the egg in two or three directions in order to dice rather than slice. This guy works okay for slicing eggs for, say, potato salad but for egg salad I just smash everything together with a fork.

Be warned. I never measure. I just add until the taste and texture are about right. Here is my "recipe" for basic egg salad. I usually use about three eggs. This makes the amount of egg salad I know I will eat before I decide I would rather have ham and cheese.

Pierce the broad end of the egg with your egg piercer or a sharp push pin. Be careful not to squeeze the egg too hard or it will break. I sometimes pierce the narrow end too, especially if the eggs are less fresh. Place the eggs in a pan just big enough to hold them in a single layer and fill the pan with cold water to cover the eggs.

Bring to a full boil, then cover the pan and turn off the heat. Leave them for 10 minutes (or longer). Add cold water to the pan, draining out the hot water, and leave them until they are cool enough to handle, about 10 - 20 minutes. Remove the shells and either dice the eggs with your egg slicer or a knife, or just place them in a bowl and smash them with a fork, leaving them as chunky as you like. I like them fairly smooth.

Add a little mayonnaise, about a teaspoon per egg, maybe a little less. Also add a nice blob of any kind of mustard - plain old yellow, brown and spicy, Dijon - I use whatever kind of mustard happens to be open in the fridge. Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Stir well with the fork, adding a bit more mayonnaise if you like. If you are feeling creative or happen to have any handy, add a pinch of fresh or dried herbs - oregano, basil, tarragon or thyme - or maybe a pinch of cayenne pepper or a drop of Tabasco sauce. Taste as you go and stop when you like it (or when you have tasted all the salad and have to start over).

I love this served on soft, fresh Challah, any whole wheat or whole grain bread, toasted or not, or even on toasted English muffins or bagels! Sometimes I even spread it on crackers, like dip.

If you want to make devilled eggs, just be extra careful peeling the eggs. Slice them in half, mash the yolks with mayo, mustard, seasonings and, if you like, a splash of vinegar or pickle juice and spoon the filling back into the whites. Garnish with a shake of paprika or a parsley leaf.

That's it! Easy, basic, tasty. The way things should be!

Quotable Quotes; in the category Yeah, I Think This Is How I Would Like It To Go!

"My career is pretty much over. I'm out in the Valley eating soft-boiled eggs." Tim Conway

Oh It's The Nuts!

When I posted about Garlic Fried Rice a while ago I promised I would tell you about Garlic Peanuts and Adobo. Well I kept my word on the Adobo so now it's time to come through on the peanuts.

Peanuts fried with garlic can be found at Asian markets all over Chicago, mainly Filipino markets. They are sold in little plastic bags or in little plastic cups - some homemade, others commercially done. I have not met a garlic peanut I did not like. Essentially, they are shelled peanuts cooked in oil with fried garlic bits and whole fried garlic cloves. They are delicious, salty and aromatic. If you like garlic and peanuts you will like these. Here is how I make them - probably not at all authentically, some recipes seem to pre-boil raw peanuts then fry the nuts and garlic separately.

I take a jar of dry roasted or roasted and salted peanuts and put them in a skillet with oil and garlic. I usually chop the garlic fairly fine because I am not cooking the peanuts for very long (they are already roasted). I suppose you could cook whole or sliced garlic cloves until almost crispy. The commercial peanuts often contain garlic cloves still in their papery skins.

When the garlic is almost done I toss in the peanuts and stir and toss until they are coated with oil and heated through. Salt them unless they are already salty enough (the only way to be sure is to taste) and remove from heat to cool before storing in airtight containers or plastic bags.

Alternatively, you can put the peanuts and minced garlic in a baking pan large enough to hold them in a not too deep layer. Toss with some oil and roast in the oven at 250 f about 20 - 40 minutes, stirring every 10 - 15 minutes (imagine you are making that cereal party mix). When the garlic is done, remove from heat, cool and store but not before eating a good handful of these bad boys.

I once took a large container of these nuts with me on a fishing weekend with my brothers. Although we did not finish all the nuts, I was not allowed to bring the leftovers home with me. it was Jon who suggested the oven method. Both yield pretty good results.

If you need amounts figure about 2 tablespoons oil (olive, peanut, corn or whatever) and 4 - 8 cloves of garlic (depending on your love of garlic) for every cup or two of peanuts and go from there.

Quotable Quotes; in the category There weren't any peanut quotes and besides I like this one better.

"You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times." Morley Safer

Mollycoddle?

Last week the subject of soft boiled eggs came up. We agreed that there is something inherently comforting about eating them. I also find comfort in preparing them.

When I was a child my brothers and sisters and I all ate breakfast together before school. In younger days, mom made soft boiled eggs. We ate them over toast, which we crumbled into pieces in our bowl. We did not have egg cups (a friend has egg cups in her cupboard and says she uses them). Instead, the cooked egg was laid on the toast and it was up to us to crack it and scoop out the insides. In those days we probably buttered the toast as well.

As we got older mom left us on our own for breakfast, which by then consisted mainly of toast and cereal, although sometimes fried baloney or salami would find its way into the menu. The toaster would be placed on the dining room table along with cartons of milk and boxes of cereal (or actually bags of cereal since mom had a proclivity for buying generic puffed rice at the A&P - a false economy since few of us actually ate it).

I later learned of an implement called an egg coddler. This was a small ceramic cup with a metal screw on lid. China companies like Royal Worcester made these in patterns to match or complement their china designs.

I heard about and decided I needed to buy an egg coddler. Don't asks me why. I went to J. L. Hudson at the Oakland Mall and asked for an egg coddler. I wanted a bird or flower from the Worcester collection. All they had was a Peter Rabbit. It was made by Wedgewood. At that time Wedgewood owned the licensing privileges for Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter's illustrations.

I was a little dismayed that a Peter Rabbit egg coddler was the only one available to me - no other stores seemed to have them in stock at the time. But no matter, I bought the coddler and today it is one of my most prized possessions (I also have some by Wade, an Irish potter, and two floral Worcester bought at e-bay or le shoppe junque. A cursory search of e-bay reveals the Peter Rabbit cup is worth a fair amount of scratch).

The way an egg coddler works is this; butter the cup (or spray with vegetable spray) and crack an egg into it. Butter, salt and pepper may be added (I prefer to add these later). Screw on the lid and place in a pan of water. Bring to the boil and time your eggs. I like mine at just four minutes. The advantage of using the coddler is that the lid can be removed and if it's not done, you can replace the lid and pop it back into the boiling water for another half minute or so.

Coddlers are sized for one or two eggs. Mine are all "singles". I find that the Wade coddlers do not cook at the same rate as the others. Either the porcelain is a different thickness, or the ceramic lid makes a difference or there is some other force at play. No matter, I prefer the other cups anyway.

Soft boiled eggs require a different timing method. They cook faster since they are not sheltered by a thick layer of porcelain. If you want to soft boil eggs and have not done so before, try cooking three, removing one at three minutes, one at four and if necessary, one at 5 minutes. You should then know know long you like your eggs. Make a note and don't forget.

Place your soft boiled egg in an egg cup or just lay it on the toast which you have torn into pieces into your bowl. Crack the shell all around and scoop out the yolky egg. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and tuck in.

The disadvantage of an egg coddler is a somewhat oddly shaped "boiled" egg. No matter, you will scoop it onto your toast and smoosh it all up anyway so shape is of little importance. What is important is the comfy cozy feeling you will have eating your warm egg and toast with a spoon.

Find an egg coddler, or just soft boil your eggs, and feel like an English child breakfasting with your Nanny in the Nursery School Room. Be glad I did not instruct you to eat dripping toast for tea.

Quotable quotes; in the category Well At Least She Knows What She Means!

“This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn’t say how far to separate them.” - Gracie Allen

Mystery Plant!

My plants at work always seem to flourish even as those at home wither and droop. That's no mystery, at work I have windows and sunshine and a schedule of watering and care. At home available windows look out on brick walls which block any hope of sunshine entering to nourish houseplants. Watering can be sporadic and cats contribute to the general malaise.

Consequently, I get comments at work on my green thumb and my healthy plants - to the extent that at my last job several co-workers asked me to nurse their failing plants back to health. One person finally just asked me to take over her plant - until it died, that is. Then she said I could have the pot and the dirt, if I wanted. I really did not want but I took it anyway and let it languish in a corner by the window. Imagine my surprise when months later, green shoots appeared, growing a few inches weekly, until they were tall and slender. Until I left that job, took the pot home and let them languish.

I brought the pot to my new job along with my other "office" plants. They love the Northwest window and the regular watering and feeding, spritzing in winter and occasional trims. I had no immediate plans for the unknown plant other than to let it sit in a corner of the window until needed.

Imagine my surprise when months later, I again noticed little green shoots. I noted their progress with weekly photos and sent them to friends to see if they knew what the plant might be. I kept sending photos and they guessed "it looks like a hosta" or "I think it's ginger". I knew it was not a hosta and I was pretty sure it was not ginger.


Week by week I watched it grow, wondering what it could be and why it spent so much time pretending to be dead, only to start all over again. I hoped this time I would not kill it, whatever it was. I christened it Junior Bonaparte and encouraged it with plant food and water. I thought it was in the orchid family (that's what the original owner thought) so I treated it like an orchid.

Today the mystery was solved. I came to work and prepared to water plants and was greeted by what was unmistakably a calla lily. Click on the pictures and see for yourself! I did a little reading and found that calla lilies are tropical and like moist soil. They go dormant after blooming and can be allowed to dry out, especially when grown in pots. Apparently I had been doing it right without knowing. Next time I won't worry and I'll hope they bloom again!

Quotable quotes; in the category You Knew I Had To Go There, Didn't You?

"The calla lilies are in bloom again."

Katherine Hepburn in the MGM film Stage Door.