Marching On

March is here and, as usual, it took me by surprise. You'd think that after almost 6 decades of sub-arctic winters I would remember the pattern, but every year I look up one day and the snow is particularly white, the sun suddenly feels warm, and the sky is the friendliest soft blue you can imagine. Then, one morning, I wake up startled by daylight out the window and I realize that we're going to make it through, one more time.
I feel as though I should stand on my tiptoes on the last day of February and lean into the joy that is March in Alaska. Instead, I seem to always trip and fall into it backwards, finally sprawling onto the 4th or 5th, and by then I've already missed several precious days. My ski wax always used to be wrong, and now my kick sled is frozen into an ice berm and I can never find my snow pants before dark. This year, I lost my lovely rose-colored fleece mittens on the third and my newly-healed index finger has no tolerance for separation from its siblings - WAY too cold - so gloves are totally inadequate.
Ach, too many feeble excuses. I must be off and out to slog through some beautiful fresh white snow and celebrate the anticipation of spring!
Then maybe I'll come home and enjoy one of the Salted Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies I made yesterday from a recipe I found on www.chocolatechillimango.com or a slice of my adaptation of Rose Levy Berenbaum's Lemon Poppyseed Poundcake into Raspberry Glazed Poundcake.

Pot Luck

Having returned to having potluck dinners on Friday at work, I went on a quest for inspiration in the frozen food section of the garage. The trusty harvest gold Montgomery Ward Signature Deluxe freezer (38 years old this year!) offered up three pork roasts totalling about 6 pounds and some corn that was amazing when we bought it at the produce stand in Gig Harbor in August but is now suffering the long-term effects of a geriatric vaccuum sealer. I also came across yet another package of John Booker's wonderful roasted peppers. I'm glad he and Chaia are coming up for a visit in June because I should be just about out by then!
Armed with ingredients, I went looking for inspiration and found it in Susan Herrmann Loomis's Farmhouse Cookbook. In her tribute to America's rural cooks she has a recipe for Posole by Caryl Smith that looked like it would fit the bill. Caryl's recipe calls for a cup of ancho chile puree; I have no idea what John's peppers are, other than tasty, and I didn't quite get the full cup of puree after I stemmed and seeded and sieved them, but I did have a partial container of pasilla sauce that I brought back from Mexico, so I mixed them together. Not being a huge fan of hominy, I don't generally (never) have any in the pantry, but hominy is corn, right? Check. I cut the pork into large (2") cubes and browned it hot and fast in a couple of tablespoons of lard after softening a couple of chopped onions in the same pan on much lower heat. I put the onions in the bottom of a crock pot and put the browned pork on top of that, then mixed the pasilla, pepper puree, and a bottle of beer with a couple of tablespoons of Mexican oregano and poured it over the top. I cooked the meat in the sauce on high for about 3 hours before adding the kernels stripped from 8 ears of corn and cooked it for another two or three hours, until the meat was fork tender. It was pretty tasty and I'm visualizing the leftovers layered with corn tortillas and enchilada sauce in a casserole....

Taste Explosions

Oh, my, oh, my, oh my! We just shared a delightful dinner. Sometimes it just WORKS, you know?
Marinated chicken breasts in olive oil and lemon juice (2:1) with garlic and parsley, then grilled and served with our own greens and nasturtiums with Ann Marie's vinaigrette to which I added agave syrup, parsley, and marjoram. That all went with new red fingerlings and Valley peas in a cream sauce (2T butter; 2T flour: 1.5 C milk) that I seasoned GENTLY w/ salt, white pepper, marjoram, and culinary lavender.
The combination of lemon and lavender was truly lovely. We THOROUGHLY enjoyed ourselves. Need to remember that one!

Improvisational Sarah

I am so tired of the whole Sarah-thing, but, like so many others, I am transfixed by the soap opera elements of the story. I sometimes feel like I'm back in the costume shop in college, hemming someone's tunic while I watch "As the World Turns." Only, it's "As Sarah Goes On and On," instead.
The scary thing is, I think I have some insight into her catastrophic responses to questions. She just doesn't REMEMBER what she said. You see, the down side to being a drama queen is that you are swept away as you give yourself totally to whatever character you are creating at the moment. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I'm trained as an actor because that was what I did most of my life anyway.
Unfortunately, if you create that character as an improv, instead of following a script, you are not able to accurately recreate the moment, ever again. So, she's not actually LYING - she just doesn't remember how she played it the first time. She should probably stick to a script....
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.fom/the_daily_dish/2008/11/the-odd-lies--7.htmle

Can't Stand the Heat

What is it with cooking as battle? I just saw a promo for some new program called "The Chopping Block," where the visuals are all young cook-lets in tears and a blowy-haired guy in a chef's jacket intoning threating one-liners like, "The only time I want to be around sheep is when I'm eating them." And, of course, he has some sort of generic Anglo accent, which seems to be de rigeur for these things. Are they all Simon wanna-be's?

I'm a pretty good cook, and I honed my skills in my own kitchen, which tends to be pretty friendly, I think. I doubt that I could win one of these stupid food wars, but I think my guests will digest their food better than the people who have to endure these dressed-up food fights.

I don't want to go all feminista here, but, what is it with these guys? I don't see a lot of women hosting programs that specialize in destroying egos for dinner. (The closest I can come is those cute little British ladies on the Clean Team who gently chide families for failing to clean their bathrooms for years at a time and who then teach them how to do it properly and without destroying the environment.)

I'm just saying that cooking is not supposed to be hostile, any more than dinner is supposed to be "manufactured." If you run a nasty kitchen then I guess that reflects poorly on your own managerial skills and you should be ashamed. I know that I only get tense in the kitchen if I have failed to plan carefully or start early enough or have bitten off more than I can chew, in a manner of speaking.

So, get over it, television kitchen guys. You're ruining our digestion.

Thoughts on the Inauguration of Barack Obama

I have been close to tears many times today, and I am too old to just wallow in my emotions on this important occasion. I keep telling myself that I must have something intelligent to say.
I started to figure this out when speaking with Charlie, the young training guy at the Ironworkers' local where we rent office space. Charlie and I have attended some AFL-CIO functions together and I like him. I think I might remind him of his mother.
I confessed to Charlie today that I have been unable to fully embrace any candidate since MLK was assasinated. I was devastated by the assasination of JFK, but at the age of 12 I was too young to really understand the depth of that loss.
Later, though, I gave my heart to Bobby Kennedy and to Martin Luther King and their murders took me out at the knees. I could not fathom living in a culture that would allow such good men to be slaughtered. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago struck a huge blow against my idealism, and Kent State pretty much nailed the coffin shut on my political passion in 1970.
To put this in perspective: John Kennedy was assasinated 1 month before my 13th birthday and the National Guard killed those four Kent State students when I was 19. In those six years we lost JFK, RFK, MLK, innocent college kids, thousands of GI's in VietNam, and trust in our government. We acquired Tricky Dick and Watergate.
Talk about formative years...it just gets better and better. Take into account my hugely un-original baby boomer demographic and multiply me by hundreds of thousands. No wonder we have problems with commitment.
At the same time, you have to remember that we started out as the most idealistic of the dreamers. My whole high school graduation speech was based on the opening lines of "The Age of Aquarius" from "Hair," for crying out loud. You remember, "When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars." I can't speak for the whole generation, but my personal intent was certainly to change the world.
Anyway, since 1970 I have remained committed to a liberal, labor-and-family-friendly political agenda, but I have held back from true commitment to any candidate.
Until today. I gave Barack Obama my support in July, when Hillary told me I had to. I gave him my money and my rally presence shortly after, and I gave him my vote in November.
Today, I gave him my heart. I did it fearfully. There are many angry and violent people out there and I somehow fear that if we embrace him we also endanger him.
I now realize that my personal investment will not doom our new president. I cannot share in the triumphs if I don't take the chances.
So, President Obama, here I am. I will do my share with enthusiasm if you will lead with dedication and vision. There are many thousands of us who have been waiting for a long, long time...

Letter to Lisa

Okay, I did better after I left here earlier. I used my limited energy to email Lisa a brief letter about the Big 3 "Bailout," i.e., loans. Here's the text:

Senator Murkowski -

I write in support of loans to the domestic auto industry. I am appalled at the job loss we have suffered in the last quarter and at the numbers (rumored to be well in excess of half a million) of American workers who have given up looking for work. Cutting off the "Big 3" at this point will only add tens of thousands more hard-working middle-class homeowners and taxpayers to those rolls.

I believe that the administration's response to the economic situation is completely misdirected and inadequate. Pumping billions of dollars into the financial sector that has driven the losses in every other sector has been, at this point, a miserable failure.

The auto industry, despite its recalcitrance and refusal to look ahead, has been responding to market demand in the past couple of years - I was delighted to park my compact import (bought used!) between two hybrids here in Anchorage just this week!- but it is now suffering mostly because of the loss of jobs and credit freeze that can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the financial industry, to which the Treasury is handing money like it was breath mints.

Those auto workers are the middle class. They are the citizens who pay their mortgages and their taxes and we need their jobs. They support tens of thousands more jobs in the service sector; jobs we cannot afford to lose.

In my perfect world Congress would approve the loans without any stipulation other than a dramatic increase in the gasoline tax, thereby accomplishing two goals; a market drive for more fuel-efficient vehicles, resulting in lower prices and greater availability, and a pool of money to be used for much-needed infrastructure improvements, which will generate thousands of well-paid, much-needed jobs.

Sincerely,
Susan Reilly