MadHatter Tea Party

Just went and saw Alice In Wonderland starring Johnny Depp as the MadHatter. Ironically, across the U.S. today, tea partiers are rallying on my, and I'm sure your favorite day, TAX day.

I can't help but draw parallels to the emotinally disturbed Mad Hatter who rebels against an unjust queen to help restore to power the unjustly removed former queen who is also her sister. In today's Charlotte Observer a tea party protester wearing a hat with the sticker "I'll keep my guns, freedom, and money" is pictured. An administrator at Central Piedmont Community College states, "Republicans have shirked their responsibility to defend conservatism and follow the guidelines of the Constitution." Another protester exclaims "They're taking my country away from me and pretty soon it will be not just socialist but outright communist" The "Don't Tread on Me" flag is flying at high staff on the lawn of the old Charlotte City Hall today. It reminds me of the studious rabbit drinking tea out of the floral tea cup with a gaping hole for a bottom. Seeing that it's hopeless, the rabbit parties on with the charade that everything in his county and his teacup is under control.

I'm forced to ask myself in the great words of George Carlin during his last performance 6 months before his death from a heart attack, "...What in the HELL does "I'm proud to be an American" mean?!" I know the protesters are intelligent enough to know how to read and be informed, but why are there gaps in their seemingly concrete, rock hard logic of what's right and what's wrong for America?

Keep in mind that our Founding Fathers were smoking alot of the hemp that was being used in the Colonial sails of our shipping vessels and drinking large amounts of ale while writing THE DOCUMENT quoted with the same reverence and bad context of the King James Bible. Let's face it, the Fathers had to be a little bit off their rockers to take on the most powerful Naval force of the world with ragtag, ill-equipped but well-meaning farmers, teenagers, family men, and the financial support of a French monarchy that was starving its own people. It was recently discovered that Ben Franklin was dissecting corpses illegally in his London home to further understand the human body. These guys were Out There and they possessed genius.

So like the Mad Hatter, I'm forced to say "It's alright, I will sacrifice my needs for the good of the country and toss my hat in the air as the minature Alice on her magical carriage lands into a brave new world with new government, new ideas, and plenty of half-crazed citizens drunk on their ideals and patriotism." Is Alice the real Alice? Is America the America in our imaginations or the real world?

Born In Berkeley Burgers

Born in Berkeley Burgers (winning Beef Burger)Recipe courtesy Camilla Saulsbury, Nacogdoches, Texas

Show: Food Network ChallengeEpisode: Build A Better Burger III


Ingredients
For the patties:
2 pounds ground chuck
3/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves, chopped
3/4 cup drained and chopped sun-dried tomatoes, packed in oil
1/2 cup grated onion
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
For the Lemon-Grilled Fennel:
3 medium-sized lemons, preferably Meyer lemons
4 medium-sized fennel bulbs, tops removed, sliced into rings
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (recommended: Colavita)
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 slices thick-cut black pepper bacon or regular thick-cut bacon
For the Arugula-Fig Topping:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (recommended: Colavita)
Salt
6 fresh figs, stemmed and sliced lengthwise
3 cups pre-washed bagged baby arugula, roughly torn
2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, for brushing on the grill rack
3/4 pound aged Teleme cheese (semi-soft cheese made in northern California), sliced thinly (Camembert or Brie may be substituted)
6 good-quality hamburger buns, split
Directions
Prepare a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill with a cover, or preheat a gas grill to medium-high.

For the patties:
Combine the chuck, basil, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, garlic, and salt in a large bowl, handling as little as possible. Shape into 6 patties to fit the bun size. Loosely cover with plastic wrap and set aside.

For the fennel:
Grate 2 teaspoons zest from the lemons. Juice the lemons to yield 2 tablespoons juice. Put the fennel rings in a medium-sized bowl and toss with the lemon juice, oil, and salt. Put the fennel in a grill basket and grill, shaking the basket occasionally, until soft, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer the fennel to a sheet of foil, sprinkle with the lemon zest, and wrap to keep warm.

Heat a large, heavy nonstick fire-proof skillet on the grill. Add the bacon and cook until crisp. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Wrap in foil to keep warm.

For the topping:
Drain off the bacon fat from the skillet, wipe out the skillet with paper towels, and set the skillet back on the grill. Add the walnuts to the skillet and toast until golden and fragrant; set aside.

Whisk the vinegar with the oil in a small bowl and season with salt, to taste. Combine the figs, arugula, and toasted walnuts in a medium bowl. Toss with just enough dressing to coat.

When the grill is ready, brush the grill rack with vegetable oil. Place the patties on the rack, cover, and cook, turning once, until done to preference, 5 to 7 minutes on each side for medium. Place the cheese slices on the patties during the last 3 minutes of grilling. Place the buns, cut side down, on the outer edges of the rack to toast lightly during the last 2 minutes of grilling.

To assemble the burgers, place equal portions of the warm grilled fennel on each bun bottom, followed by a cheese-topped patty, 2 bacon slices, and an equal portion of the fig-arugula topping. Add the bun tops and serve.

Thanksgiving, Christmas and Other Foolish Holidays

I've been remiss on my baby, my blog...

I haven't posted since summer and usually try to bypass the holidays altogether due to my recent agnosticism, my fear of pretend happy-family gatherings that go awry, and christmas decorations that continue to hang in my windows well into July due to my procastination with all things that must die and decay........


Thanksgiving was Sesame Chicken with friends , no cooking, no cleaning, and TV surfing. Conversations were minimal and hence no arguments.

Christmas isn't looking too grand either and this cheers me up to have low expectations, little effort, and limited dissappointments.

I will post again when I can put my best face forward and offer some optimistic randomings of the value of entertainment and whether global warming will really matter on Dec. 21, 2012 when the world is due to end ...........

The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook

Just saw Julie & Julia and Meryl Streep nailed it. My favorite line from the movie is when Meryl burns herself while tossing tubular pasta and exclaims to her amused husband that they were like "hot cocks". Apparently, Julia really did say this in private company. I was the only one laughing out loud in the movie theater. Amy Adams as the copycat blogger was a little whiny and sickly looking.
I watched Julia Child on PBS when I was seven and was fascinated by her. I didn't really think she knew what she was doing, but she made it so much fun that it didn't matter.

Whenever I'm trying to remember a recipe or favorite dinner, I will invariably call Mammma and ask her. It doesn't matter what I'll ask her, she'll say, "Did you look it up in my Encyclopedic Cookbook?" It's still sold on Amazon for about $17 which is a good deal if it's as big as my Mom's. (1,000 pages paperback!)

After 20 years of cooking for a family of six on a tight budget without the help of Rachel Ray or her own mother showing her cooking techniques,4-colored pictures, or the Food Network stars, it amazes me how she pulled it off. No one showed her how, she just read about it and did it. When she was first married, she learned how to make her own pie crusts and saved the scraps for a special treat. She will only use Crisco for her crusts as this flakes the best. I don't think she ever watched Julia because she was too busy cleaning, cooking and raising a family. She also never used a food processor, microwave, dishwasher or clothes dryer. She didn't have money for alot of cookbooks either. (Unlike me who collects them like dolls).

Anytime I look at theeee Encyclopedic Cookbook, I laugh aloud at the black & white pictures of women in plaid housedresses butchering meat, stuffing peeled tomotoes with goose liver in jelly, and crimping home-made pie crusts. There's also listings for measurement conversions, calories and vitamins for foods, ingredients and their uses, all-inclusive cooking techniques and purchasing guides. The index is massive. There are recipes for Crown Roast of Pork, Pig's Knuckles & Sauerkraut, Stuffed Lamb Shanks, Reindeer Stew, Braised Moose, Rennet Custards, Baked Alaska, Black-Butter Eggs. This is a heavy meat, cream,eggs, fruit pies, cakes, and sandwiches cookbook with puny, overcooked vegtable side dishes swimming in cream sauces, appetizers, mold salads, relishes, and homemade jams. There are also Luncheon menus which include Welsh Rarebit on Toast, Braised Celery, and Individual Ham and Egg Souffles. The decriptions below the pictures are priceless:

A party could not possibly fail with this linzer torte.

A star in its own right is this luscious party cake.

This lordly plum pudding bears a diadem of hard sauce pinwheels.

Candied fruit and nuts give a gay touch to the simplest pudding.

A beautiful plate of individual aspic, apricot halves with cream cheese, a petal-cut plum, chicory and sandwiches.

Breads and braids we often eat, but egg braid with sugar is quite a treat.

A meat ring with an array of sauces makes us soon forget our losses.

Luckily, Mom, with her love of fresh vegtables and fruits, picked the best recipes. Most I can't find, and I think Mom wants to see me suffer. I recently organized her yellowed, 1970's newsclippings into a home-made cookbook. Most she didn't even make because it wasn't in her budget. She mainly stuck to a repertoire of 10-15 solid recipes. She loves watching me use the food processor for everything. She thinks it's the most amazing invention.

Some of my favorites of hers are the applesauce cookies, pound cake, blueberry and pumpkin pies, and the annual bannana chocolate birthday cake. She used sifters and a hand held mixer. She also used an egg timer for Dad's poached eggs. Her dinners were salisbury steak (never a real steak), split-pea soup, liver,beef stew,baked beans that were soaked overnight, mashed potatoes, pork chops, fried peppers and onions with eggs, spagetti & meatballs, chicken-ala-king, salmon loaf, meatloaf, beef stroganaff, stuffed peppers, ravioli & perogi's rolled out by hand, lasgana, eggplant parmesan, and vegtables from the garden. Every Sunday it was a pot roast with carrots, onions & potatoes. Deviled eggs were reserved for holidays. We never had dessert unless we had some fresh fruit or it was someone's birthday or it was a holiday. She also never bought sodas or fruit juices. We drank tea or water. One time I went to a neighbor's house for the most awful Spagetti'o's poured out of a can. I looked at the single mother with wide eyes of disbelief. Mom never poured anything out of a can.

I also babysat for young mothers in the late '70's who thought Manwich's were a home cooked meal. They actually instructed me to make it for the kid's lunch's. In my teens, my very scientific father took over the newly remodeled kitchen he built. He measured everything out carefully with the back of a knife, and turned everything into a major chore. He made coconut cream pies, blueberry & strawberry jams, tomato juice, potato leek soup, fried fish, and pizza. (Just watched Alton Brown on food network make a cake with hardware tools he bought-that would be Dad, the chemist.) Mom would quietly cook the dinner with no fanfare....it was like Voila....Magic, "What's the big deal about Cooking?" She never measured anything. Most of her recipes came from the local newspaper or her favorite cookbook published in the 1950's called "The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook" with several editors listed on the cover..

After watching Julie and Julia, it's amazing that Julia was brave enough to take on the snobbish French culinary schools and turn it upside down. We love her for it, but my Mom was way ahead of her for sheer survival's sake.

Dogs vs. Cats

Just went for a walk at Frank Lisk Park this morning and ran across 4-5 proud dog owners.

One ladie had a Lassie look-alike, but could not seem to figure out how to use her roller leash to reign in her too friendly dog. I waited for them to pass before I even began my walk, but it wasn't enough. She had to stop midway, turnaround and head back in my beginning direction as she was trying to figure out how the complex intricacies of some new leash worked. Lassie barked at me too.

Another owner went one way with an obviously hyper-active mutt of some sort, and I went the other way only to find that he changed his mind and headed back my way. As I could have predicted from past dog interactions, the dog growled at me and moved to attack me. The owner laughed cheerfully as I rolled my eyes. DIE DOG, DIEEEE.

Another owner had not just one, but two identical black dogs taking up the whole human walkway. As I moved onto the lawn and averted my eyes, I could see that I offended the owner's finer sensibilities as he allowed his dogs to not only take over his life but my park as well.

I am a self-appointed dog leash enforcer at my neighborhood park. I don't care how adorable and friendly you think your dog is, put that damn dog on a leash okay? It's the law. I hate dogs, and they equally hate me. They are dumb as bricks and are only loyal to their stomachs. I guess they appeal to humans on some base level, but they're not bonding with you, you are their meal tickets.

Cats are another story. I can't have one because of my allergies, but have had friends that have owned several. They are consistenly amazed at how cats respond to me upon first meeting. Some of their shyer cats who were abused by previous owners will rub against my leg and the more aggressive cats will avoid me and not even attempt to scratch me as they have done with other visitors.

What I really like about cats is that they think they are human. They absorb the human behaviors that they see, and they evolve into humans. I predict that in the next 2,000 years, we will see cats walking upright, telling humans what to do.

One cat named Hershey was the most evil cat, and I loved him! His owners were making him relocate to a new home and he did not like it one bit. He cried like a baby and marked his territory by peeing in every corner of the house after it had been cleaned thoroughly. When his vet suggested to the owners that they get another cat to stop his disobedient behavior, he taught the little kittens how to drink out of the toilet water, use the electric toothbrush, and jump on the alarm clock in the morning to shut it off.

Cats are fascinating and you can see them thinking. Dogs are instinctual and too unpredictable for my tastes.

One time my mother was walking in a park, and this starving, homeless kitten meowed and followed her home. He would not leave her alone because that cat knew she had good food at home. He just knew. We had to put him in the garage because of my allergies, and he cried and cried until I picked him up. Then he just shut-up. A local animal shelter had to take him in, but the cat knew we would take care of him. He wasn't trying to be likable, he was trying to survive.

The Eygptians were right, the cats are the portal to the underworld, they sense things that no one else can see or hear.

They also leave you the hell alone in a park unless absolutely necessary. If you don't agree with me, chew on this thought for a moment: Why is there no law to put cats on a leash?

MAD MEN

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Is O'Hara's poem charting this character's future? Tune in Aug. 16th.
["Mayakovsky" is available in O'Hara's Collected Poems (1971), in two editions of Selected Poems (1974, 2008), and in the reissued Meditations in an Emergency (1996).]


Maybe it's the Mad Men Mania for the new season on Aug. 16 that causes me to be so reflective for this year's birthday.

It's difficult to remember isn't it? Where you were and what you were doing for all the previous birthdays. Go ahead, try to remember, it's not as life-changing or as memorable as you might think.

Aging is a gradual process I find. What's maddening is,I remember exactly what I was like at 22. I had just interviewed for my first job out of a very Catholic all-girls college during the worst recession and landed it. This was in 1987 when we still punched time clocks and a fax machine was the latest technology. Apple computers were in the office and I was the first allowed to take a laptop home. I worked for someone that was just like Don Draper. ( Cathy Goodman, if you're reading this, you know exactly who I'm talking about.) I also dressed just like the actresses on Mad Men when I was 40 lbs lighter. I had the stilleto heels, the pantyhose, the silk library blouse.....everything. I appeared very conservative. I was also annoyingly industrious and all-around nice yes-girl willing to do anything to be liked. I remember a young graphic designer in our group showing up for work without pantyhose and it caused quite a stir among the older colleagues. I thought she looked nice with her tanned legs. Little did we know that pantyhose would become obsolete. I still don't like wearing dresses without them, it seems so unpolished and unladylike.

Anyway, I was interviewing for my first publishing job with Don Draper look-alike Ron Malone. Ron was in charge of the Kendall/Hunt district sales group and knew nothing about publishing. He came from Proctor and Gamble's advertising arm and no one thought he would stay long in Dubuque, IA. However, Ron knew everything about people.

I was very nervous because I knew I was too young for this production editing job. The other women in the department were 20 years older than me. The only other one close in age to me had been with the company for about 10 years out of highschool. Ron called me "kid" and asked me if I had a boyfriend, what my favorite drink was and if I ever lost my temper. Would I move for a boyfriend? and do I ever swear?

He told me that the 2 women sitting during the interview with me had worked their way up from secretaries without a college degree and wanted to know if I would work for 20 years in the same job to get ahead. Ruth, the senior manager sat to my right on the executive leather couch in her homesewn slender Chanel blue suit with her blond beehive do, blue eyeshadow that matched her bright blue eyes and chainsmoking the whole time. (We also had open bars at our annual Christmas parties and colleagues getting drunk at our annual sales meetings.) I have to say, he sized me up quickly and knew exactly what buttons to push. He was a very bright man. As I walked into his paneled office with the oversized executive desk, and my feet sank into the carpet, I was already overwhelmed. Then I sat into the interview chair that was 2 inches below Ron's desk ,and I felt very small. It occurred to me at that moment , that Ron was a little prick and I was not going to lose my cool no matter what.

I answered his questions , my favorite drink, Pina Colada, no I would not change or move for a boyfriend, yes I lose my temper, and yes I would stay with the company if the company still existed 20 years from now. 6% of 700 is 42 ( He paused and looked down at his intercom when I answered correctly in 2 seconds flat- he had a poker face, but I sensed it startled him,and the women managers began to smile slowly.)

I also told him that my family had recently relocated to North Carolina and no that was not a problem. My father was a consultant ( a lie, he was laid off and died a week later from a heart attack after this interview).

So how did I land this job? I'll tell you Mad Men.......it wasn't because I answered his questions correctly. It's because I asked him a question. I answered that I swear, and I swear often. He asked me which word. I asked him if he wanted me to say it right now. He paused, and said yes. And then I said "Fuck you".

Silence, the interview concluded, I was sure I did not have this job, I turned around to leave and Ron stopped me with three words. Before you leave Connie, if I offer you this job, will you take it?

I said yes, or course.

I worked there 4 years in a real office, not a cubicle. He is still the best boss I ever worked for. His wife with the bleached blond hair and big boobs greeted me enthusiasticaly at the first Christmas party with " I heard all about you, and it's nice to meet you."

On my last day, he came down to say good-bye to me and the older colleagues were flabbergasted. They said he had never done that for anyone's last day.

I heard that this privately held company fired Ron a few years back, and they hired the boss' young college-educated son-in-law instead. I hope you're doing well Ron. I doubt the rich son-in-law understands people as well as you did.

@Charlotte BlogSpot (click)

Mad Men, Mad Men, Mad Men