Banned From Crate & Barrel

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Carol

…or maybe I should be.

Most of us think things we have the good manners not to say out loud. I tend to vocalize those thoughts more often than I should. Sometimes hilarity ensues. Sometimes it doesn’t.

It all started so innocently.

Himself and I were on the way to Intelligentsia to take a load off after running errands, and as we passed Crate & Barrel we decided to pop in and have a look at their dining tables. We have a nice, big table, and we really like it, but it’s in a room that is so tiny it’s challenging to seat more than the two of us. Essentially, if you want to gather at our dining table, you have to be either pencil thin or coated in butter. Preferably both.

Blaze is the only one who fits comfortably in the dining chairs next to the wall.

A lovely Crate & Barrel employee–I’ll call her Susan–showed us some tables and explained their various attributes and features. She was helpful but respected our space. No hard sell, which I truly appreciate. We thanked her and wandered on to another part of the store.

A little later she finished up with a customer close by and came over to check on us. We made some small talk about how comfy the furniture was and which pieces we fancied. Emboldened by our easy rapport, she volunteered a story to illustrate the cushiness of their comfy chairs:

“A lady came in one time with lots of shopping bags, and she sat down in this really comfortable chair and fell right asleep, with those bags on the floor all around her.” We laughed, so she continued: “After awhile we decided it was a little odd and we had to wake her up. We were actually kind of afraid that she might have died!”

Instead of smiling politely and saying something innocuous like, “Oh my!” “Isn’t that something?” or “Who could blame you?” I instead blurted out, “Wow! If she’d died in that chair, I bet we could have gotten a great discount on it!”

Susan’s happy, storytelling face fell, and she looked positively stricken. She took a step back, clearly convinced that she was making nice with a deranged woman. Somewhere a cricket cleared his throat for the solo.

“Carol!” Himself sort of half-scolded me and tried to usher me away.

“But she didn’t actually DIE,” I protested a little too loudly, my voice echoing through the furniture department. “She was just ASLEEP!” He tried to act put out with me, but he was laughing his ass off, his annoyance completely unconvincing.

A sputtered excuse me/gotta go/bye now, and Susan scrammed, leaving behind one of those little “Susan” shaped figures in the air just like in the cartoons when a character dashes away.

“I CAN NEVER SHOW MY FACE IN CRATE & BARREL AGAIN!” I howled as we headed down the stairs, shoppers on two floors glancing our way and then quickly pretending we weren’t there.

There’s something about a good laugh that stirs up the giddy in me and makes everything funny. It’s probably more of an intoxicant than alcohol. I think I’m funny, but others just give me an uneasy look that says they really hope I’ll go away soon. Just like you do when some happy drunk wanders up and tries to make conversation. It’s the look that was on our coffeemeister’s face in Intelligentsia five minutes later when I started cracking wise about making my own change from the tip jar. Himself shooed me away from the counter and sent me to look for seats before things could get any more embarrassing.

(I plead that there is a practical aspect to my whacked thinking. Once a colleague returned from the police station after her stolen car was recovered. They found that the car was filled with dozens of purses, none of which belonged to her. So my question was, “Do any of the purses match any of your shoes?” She didn’t find my line of thinking nearly as helpful as I did.)

If we’d been stopped by police on the way home for erratic driving on the freeway, I’m not sure we could have explained to their satisfaction why we were laughing so hard as to be a menace to others on the road. A breathalizer would have shown only coffee in our systems, so we’d have no doubt been hauled off to the psych ward for observation.

Now I’m thinking that out of sheer guilt I should return to Crate & Barrel and buy a table and chairs and that I should buy them only from Susan. She clearly earned her commission. I’m just sorry that she’ll never again feel free to tell the sleeping shopping-bag lady story. Or maybe she will, and she’ll even include the part about the crazy woman willing to go to disturbing lengths for a bargain.

Poor Himself. It’s so very hard to take me out in public.

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A Mean Mess of Greens

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Carol

Collard greens are one of those foods I learned to appreciate only after I got grown. I’m not sure why I didn’t like them as a child, although I suspect it had something to do with their odor, which I still don’t care for. In fact, I think I’ll start setting up the camp stove in the backyard whenever I decide to cook up a mess of collards so it doesn’t stenchify the house. (Funny thing about Southern expressions–they only work with our indigenous foods. Have you ever heard a Southerner talk about whippin’ up a mess of escargot or sushi?)

collards cooking with hamhocks

As with so many Southern dishes, this one is cooked more by instinct and personal taste than with a recipe. I use two bunches of collard greens to make about four servings. Greens are deceptive–you think you have way too many when you start out, but they always cook down to nearly nothing. So put on your biggest pot and throw in as many greens as you can.

As with any type of green, rinse them well, so you don’t get those dastardly gritty bits caught in your teeth. I start with a generous dollop of bacon drippings melted over medium high heat, to wilt the greens before adding about three cups of water, a little salt and some red pepper flakes and tossing in some hog jowl, hamhocks, ham bits, bacon or whatever pork you have lying around. The pork additions are salty, so add salt judiciously. Simmer for about 40 minutes, or longer if necessary, until the chewiness is gone. While spinach cooks up quickly, collards are thicker and more leathery, and they take considerably longer to cook. Sprinkle on some pepper vinegar if they seem a little gamey and set the bottle on the table so everyone can fine tune their own serving.

collards & hard boiled eggs

I put on some eggs to hard boil while the collards simmer. One of the classic Southern presentations (now there’s a prissy expression you don’t often hear at the Southern table!) is to serve them topped with slices of hard boiled egg. If your only source of protein for the meal is just a few bits of ham or bacon in the greens, it’s good to get a little extra from the eggs. And it looks pretty, don’t you think?

pot likker

What’s left behind after you get all the greens out of the pot is healthier than the greens themselves. This is the pot likker, and it’s where all the Vitamin A go during cooking. Well, I say it’s healthier, but there’s a fair amount of pork fat in there. That’s okay if you’re about to go plow the back forty. Some people like the pot likker best of all, spooned over cornbread or biscuits. Never throw this stuff away! You can at least keep it and use it as a soup base.

I’ve had really good collards in Ethiopian restaurants, where they’re steamed and served sprinkled with olive oil, garlic and spices, but for me, preparing them in a pork fat spa is still the way to go. As they say, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

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The Delights of Orphaned Glassware

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Carol

the few, the treasured, the orphan glasses

I love scoping out mismatched glasses in thrift stores. It’s fun rummaging through and looking for odd pieces that have their own, unknown histories of lives I never knew. I always wonder how they got there, whether they were impulse purchases or unwanted gifts, or perhaps the flotsam cleared out after a death in someone’s family. I like to envision them in their previous lives and, at least with the goblets and fancier stemmed pieces, I like to imagine what occasions they were used to toast. Engagements and weddings? Births and adoptions? New jobs and promotions? Retirements? Publications? This last one would certainly get them used in our household!

In addition to those I get because they catch my eye, lately I’m picking them up here and there for Himself, who loves to make, photograph and write about cocktails (which you’ll find at The Booze Nerd and Dr(Ink)Gorilla). They add to his trove of glassware for photography, so it’s not just the same one or two glasses shown in every drink photo.

At times I curse the sameness of the regiment of glasses in my cabinet bought by the box at Target or Macy’s or Pier I. I’ve sighed more heavily over breaking one of my odd, one-of-a-kind glasses than over a Waterford goblet received as a wedding gift. It makes me want to stuff the cabinet with odd glasses and send the matching sets to a thrift store where I can ignore them in favor of mongrel bits and pieces to include in my orphanage of glassware.

Maybe I just need to toast more momentous occasions with those Waterford glasses. Then they’ll be as special to me as the odd pieces. It’s certainly worth a try.

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Whose Birthday Is This?!

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Carol

Still wearing our Christmas clothes, Joe & I celebrate with a shared birthday cake, eight candles on his side and three on mine. (No, that's not my coffee!)

Today’s my birthday. Never mind which one. I’m past the age of wanting to count them–certainly past the age of adding “and-a-half” long about mid-summer.

I’ve always felt ambivalent about birthdays. While I enjoy celebrating those of others, when it comes to my own, I’ve grown accustomed to being lost in the holiday shuffle. For starters, my birthday comes close on the heels of Christmas, so I grew up being handed a red-and-green wrapped gift with the words, “This is for both Christmas and birthday.” No kid–or adult–wants to hear that. Add to this the fact that my brother’s birthday is three days after mine. Our family always celebrated both on the Sunday falling closest to both, with Joe’s candles on one side of the cake and mine on the other. We grew up modestly on a Tennessee farm amongst hardworking, practical people who didn’t make a fuss over such things as birthdays. It’s no wonder there were no parties and family legends of blowouts fit for the society column of the local newspaper. And it’s no wonder that nowadays if someone does make a fuss over my birthday, I get self conscious, turn red and want to hide.

When I was a kid I envied those whose birthdays were in July, who had parties at the local swimming pool. That seemed like the coolest thing ever–I couldn’t imagine anything more glamorous. But quite often my birthday was on a snow day, which was even better. “Wow! We’re out of school on my birthday! Let’s sleep late and then build a snow fort!” And make snow cream, which no July birthday kid ever got.

Celebrating with Himself--I don't mind sharing!

Now I often celebrate my birthday with Himself, whose birthday falls a week before mine. He got caught in the Christmas-and-birthday snag, too, so he understands those conflicted feelings of disappointment in being overlooked and then not knowing what to do when people pay attention. Some years we celebrate jointly. Some we don’t. This year he got his own celebration.

And today I get mine. People keep asking what restaurant we’re going to, the assumption being that with my culinary background and being a professional food writer, we’ll be splashing out at one of the poshest places in Los Angeles. But that’s seldom what I go for. I’ve had great birthday meals at Palate, Osteria Mozza and Bashan, but last year I wanted to stay in. Himself and our friend John made a huge batch of pot stickers and we feasted on a basic meal prepared with love and served from the heart. It was a fantastic evening.

Sometimes I feel like my friends are disappointed if I don’t come up with some grand scheme for celebrating my birthday. Which makes me wonder if I’m planning the birthday I really want or the birthday others seem to want for me. This year I think I want nothing more complicated than a trove of really good ice cream and a couple of spoons. Perhaps Himself and I can eat ice cream in front of the television and watch DVDs of something we love but haven’t seen in ages. And laugh and enjoy being together.

Who needs a limo, a budget-smashing restaurant charge and a three-alarm hangover? Ice cream with Himself is celebration enough for me.

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A Quiet Non-Resolution

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Carol

On the list of Christmas gifts I was hoping to receive–and which I DID receive–this past Christmas was a copy of Maria Speck’s Ancient Grains For Modern Meals. Her book is jam packed with a wealth of dishes using an array of what I’d call “Old World” grains*, dishes that are really, really good. That they are also healthy is a delightful side note.

There's also the need to unload the pantry--I counted almost two dozen open bags! More on this embarrassment later...

I want to cook every dish in this book. This is my non-resolution resolution. No grand proclamations of any sort (beyond this blog entry). Just a desire to eat a little healthier and to expand our repertoire of go-to recipes. Seeing as how I also plan to make and enjoy one of my Southern favorites each week, this is a good way to balance out some of those bacon dripping-laced culinary transgressions. I easily envision every recipe in this book becoming a favorite. I’m making notes in it as I cook, recording tweaks and ideas for variations on some fine themes.

Sometimes we need to proclaim our resolutions loudly, as a way of indirectly asking those around us to hold our feet to the fire and hold us accountable for the things we say we’re going to do when we’re in the throes of optimism (or we’ve had a little too much bubbly on New Year’s Eve). But sometimes it’s nice to simply say to ourselves, “Hey, why not try this? It’ll be fun/tasty/good for me.” No megaphoned announcements from the rooftop or on Facebook or Twitter or Google+. Just a quiet taking on of a new challenge we’re sure to enjoy and perhaps benefit from.

Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill & Zucchini

We started with Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill and Zucchini, a summery dish that was welcome on an 82-degree winter’s day in Southern California. It was marvelous, replete with a blending of flavors and textures that made Himself and me smack our chops and make yummy sounds as we enjoyed firsts and seconds. And it makes good leftovers. In fact, I’m going to go polish off the rest of it right now. Bon appetit to me!

*The list includes amaranth, quinoa, spelt, millet, farro, barley and kamut, along with the more recognizable wild rice, couscous, buckwheat, oats, grits/polenta and rye.

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