Hair nets & Jell-O salad

Many moons ago, I worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home.  By many moons I mean right out of high school, circa 1985.  Yes, I'm old enough to be your grandmother.  Let us not mention it again.

I started at the bottom, like everyone else, and for the first few months drew all the weekend shifts, and did an awful lot of bussing tables and sweeping floors, collecting garbage, and taking out the trash. I served questionable deli meats and cheeses to the residents and scooped more cottage cheese than I ever want to see again.  I sweet-talked diabetics into eating ghastly sugar-free ice "milk" for dessert and tried to keep the resident horny old man from grabbing my ass every time I walked by.  It wasn't a hard job, it paid well, and it allowed my 17 y/o self a hell of a lot of freedom. It even paid for my first two years at community college.

After my probation period was up, I was offered a full-time position, which was highly unusual, but they needed someone willing to work 6-2:30 who wouldn't show up staggeringly hungover from the night before and who could be trusted to work the occasional overtime until 7pm without hiding in a closet with a joint and a forty of Miller.  It wasn't that the job drove its employees to getting stoned and wasted; it was the fact that we were all fresh out of high school (and younger) and not exactly supervised by Mormons.  Every weekend, forties were smuggled in and at least one cook showed up with a bag of weed, ready for rolling on the stainless steel tables where we were pouring juice and wrapping bread. I neither drank nor smoked for two reasons: 1) my parents drove me to work and picked me up and I was no fool; and 2) I have always hated the smell of pot, even to this day.  Plus, I grew up drinking the dregs of my dad's beer and he always told me if I wanted one of my own to just ask.

As time went on, I got drafted into doing actual kitchen work involving food.  I learned to make great horking vats of salads: egg, tuna, potato, macaroni, anything that could be stretched with mayonnaise and chopped celery; sliced many pounds of lunchmeats and cheeses, learning to wear my shirt over my face to protect myself from flying pieces of p&p loaf; made about a million sandwiches for Meals on Wheels; sliced and garnished wobbly blocks of nasty gelatin salad (made with cole slaw mix and lemon or lime Jell-O); and roasted and sliced giant mutant turkeys.  I even learned to live with the occasional corpse that needed refrigeration during the warmer months until it could be taken away.  As head aide of the upper two floors, I became a whiz at pureeing everything into a semi-palatable mush for residents who couldn't handle solids.  The 2nd floor included people fresh out of the hospital, just needing time to return to their regular routine; the 3rd housed the residents for whom there was no coming back.  But they got bacon and cheese and pasta and whatever we could run through the food mill or processor; it wasn't aesthetically pleasing but the nutritionist made sure they were given proper food and not living solely on Ensure.

I left the home after several years for a position in a law library downtown.  Better pay and more in line with what I wanted to do with my life.  And I had to admit that I was tired of going home at the end of a long day with bits of food in my hair and reeking of Mulligatawny.  I look back at my years as a dietary aide fondly.  I was never screwed over, my bosses were good to all of us, and I have stories that, while they may not be funny in translation, still make me smile.  While it didn't exactly instill in me a love of cooking (you try mixing a sinkful of tuna salad with your hands) I still think government cheese makes a wonderful grilled sandwich (I use Kraft slices today) and every time I ate a little packet of graham crackers when I was pregnant I remembered how we used to sneak them out of the storeroom for the residents to stash for midnight snacks.

And I must admit that I loved wearing a hair net.

Two quirky girls and a pie

The week before Memorial Day, my local buddy Laura Freed and I were bouncing around ideas about how to include bacon in a dessert, particularly pie.  After very little bouncing (we can justify including bacon in almost anything) we decided that pecan pie would be the pie of choice.  The syrupy sweet filling and inherent butteriness of the pecans would play very nicely with the salty smokiness of the bacon.  But where to put the bacon?  It would be overwhelmed in the filling and we wanted it to be separate, not just a blended ingredient.

We decided it should go in the crust.  And behold, the Pecan Pie w/Bacon Crust was born.  (Yeah, we didn't give it a fancy name.  I mean, really, it's all about the bacon, anyway.)

The pie was made from scratch, using homemade pie dough as well.  Oscar Mayer was the bacon of choice.

I knew going in that I'd have to adjust the pie dough recipe to allow for the fat from the bacon.  I ended up using 2 1/2 cups flour, 8 Tbsp Crisco, 1/3 cup ice water, and added 5 slices of cooked, undrained bacon.  Undrained meaning I just took it from the baking sheet after it cooled and plopped it into the fridge.  This recipe was only tested this once and it worked out pretty well; however, I have a feeling it will need some tweaking should I attempt this again.  Should you want to try this, I make no guarantees it will work for you.  It will all depend on your particular ingredients; the stars aligned for me that day.  :)

Here is the finished dough:

I used the standard recipe found on the bottle of dark Karo syrup, adding a few tablespoons of bourbon to the batter.  Because I love bourbon.  And pecan pie.  And bacon.  And what could be better than all three together?  Particularly in a pie.

And here is what they morphed into:

I served this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream from Tanner's, a local dairy farm that makes out-of-this-world ice cream.  And this pie deserved it.

The result?  A very good pie.  The filling was as it should be, and the addition of the bourbon was spiky enough without being overwhelming.  The crust tasted very much like a savory scone, and the bacon taste was obvious without being overpowering.  It all worked very well together, salty, sweet, smoky, and the ice cream actually cut through the richness of the dessert nicely.

I enjoyed making this pie and but the most fun was planning the whole concoction with Laura.  So I think we can officially call this Quirky Pecan Pie and not be so damn literal with the name.  :)

Disco dirt

I'd like to post some lovely, updated photos of my garden for you to say "God, more photos AGAIN?!" but, alas, nothing right now.  I've lost everything I started indoors with the exception of one Jimmy Nardello pepper plant to a rabid infestation of fruit flies brought on, I think, by the week's worth of drenching rains.  Then again, I'm not Gil Grissom so who really knows where they all came from.  Suffice to say, yesterday morning I went out back and noticed the soil in each pot was shaking its sweet self to a secret disco medley.  Soil is not supposed to move of its own volition and it was then that I noticed the thick flitty clouds of fruit flies covering everything.  Like Goldie Hawn in "Overboard" I think I swallowed a bug.  Or several thousand, which is the fruit fly equivalent of one regular bug.  Either way, yesterday afternoon, I bagged and hauled everything to the curb. Trust me when I say eww.

Admittedly, I'm angry that this happened, all my hard work taken away by trash men; a fair amount of money and time lost; and what could have been my best crop ever of tomatoes and peppers, really interesting varieties that I was looking forward to sharing.  Gone, just that like, with absolutely no way for me to have prevented it.

But I still have a roof over my head.  My family is still under that roof, my boys have a yard to play in, and we opened the pool, officially starting the summer season.  I'm grateful for all of this and for Mother Nature not wreaking havoc on us.  I'm lucky.  I can afford to replace the pots and the plants (and I did), and I don't rely on my garden for sustenance or financial survival.  What I view as a seasonal hobby others rely on to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.  Do I have a right to be angry?  Sure, who wouldn't be.  But I'm focusing instead on starting anew and being glad I have the means to do so.
 
You so know I'm foisting more pictures upon you as soon as possible, don't you?  :)

Soylent green is people

Hard to believe that I started my garden in February and I've got so many gorgeous plants already.  Here are some shots of what's coming up now:

Bloody Butcher tom and some Genovese basil (l); Eva Purple Ball toms (r)

Little Fingers eggplants

Lincoln peas

Peppers, could be Serrano

Toms or peps (l, m), French breakfast radishes (seeds [r])

Strawberries (l), toms, peps, parsley, cilantro (top), radishes (bottom)

Peps (top), lettuces (bottom)

Georgia sweet onions

Georgia sweet onions

Toms

Sweet mint

As I'm reading this I realize that I maybe should have marked everything a little more clearly when I brought it outdoors.  However, I can tell the difference between the plants so I'm not overly concerned with specifics.  I'll know what they are when they come in.  I'm so on the ball, aren't I?

And, just to break things up, here are pictures of a cherry coffeecake, pecan pie, and a Key lime pie I made for Easter.  These were very, very good.

So maybe I'll see you in, what, July?  ;)

VegeMarmite

After much conversing with several online friends from Australia I decided to take the plunge and try Vegemite, which I thought was available at my local Wegmans but I was wrong.  So I picked up a jar of Marmite, only to be told that I was not allowed to compare it to Vegemite as it was the equivalent of cheese in a can.  :)

I've posted pics below and, while you don't actually see me consuming the Marmite, know that nobody sees me that early in the morning with my hair in a towel.

This is me, as taken by my son Mark, actively engaged in the Vegemite v. Marmite conversation.  

Lightly buttered white wheat toast, tea, and the Marmite.

The actual Marmite as knifed from the jar, it has the texture of honey and smells exactly like bouillon.

Thinly spread upon the bread as it's not jam or butter.

My big old bite.

As with all my photos, I just use my digital camera as I like the way home food looks as is, without special lighting or circumstances, which means that sometimes things are blurry but you get what I'm talking about.

The verdict:  I like this stuff.  A lot.  It's especially good on a lightly toasted and buttered sesame bagel.  Funnily enough, I think it tastes better when eaten with tea or a glass of juice rather than coffee.  It really smells like a salty, slightly beefy bouillon, and, spread thinly through the butter, it's salty like anchovies but not fishy.  I really can't describe it except to say that I am hooked.

It was pointed out to me that I can buy proper Vegemite here, however, I am to studiously avoid this particular version.  Amazon also sells Vegemite through various marketplace sellers.

Go forth and try it!