Good evening.
Guys came today and put in the tile over the range area. Could I have been happy without it? Probably. Am I happy with it? VERY happy. It is a beautifully-done job. I designed and planned it all and I take responsibility for most of the mistakes I can see....They were very professional workers and did a great job.
The decorations are charming and appropriate to a small house in a middle class suburb. And yet they are individual and personal to me. I rather like them. I can see mistakes, which are pointed up by the photos. I need to make some better photos....but there they are.
After the workers left we were emotionally exhausted and had to go to Kaiser to pick some refills from the farmacia, then to the grocery store to buy vegetables...after that we were so tired that we had to stop by Taco Bell for our supper and I had to eat a delicious enchirito. And it was delicious, too!!! YAZZYBEL
Good evenin'.
Yesterday or the day before I spent an eternity pecking out two salad recipes and then in the spastic flicker of a little finger, blew them both to heck--plus the accompanying tirade of text.
I got so mad.
Too mad to waste my valuable time copying them out again. But the point of the recipes need not be lost: Neither of the salads, both from the pre-1980 era, had any sugar within a mile of it. There was no sugar in the dressing. There were no sugared walnuts nor sweet dried cranberries to augment their flavors. Just look in any cookbook of the era. There was plenty of oil, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, mustard,--even paprika. But no sugar.
Just try to find any recipe now without sugar. Gravies, sauces, dressings now seem to have to have that certain level of sweetness to meet editorial approval. And I'll tell you a little secret: In order to balance that much sweetness you need an extra dose of sodium chloride. It's a seasoning habit that has grown into our culinary lore with a big downside to it. Where we once had thin energetic women like my Mama, we now have land whales.
Land whales, I tell you. Plus a "diabetes 2" culture. Bad. All Bad.
Imagine a cookbook with no hint of sugar in any recipe except for the dessert pages. That's ANY cookbook from pre-Depression to 1980. Then, a great fear arose among the populace, a fear of oil, butter, fat, grease. Take all those out of the cuisine and you've gotta compensate with something, and that something in our case was sugar.
Bad. All Bad.
We need to get our old House and Garden Cookbook, our old Fannie Farmer, and follow them to the letter of the law. Let the influence of sweetness in meat dishes, salads, vegetable dishes just slither away. Taste what your grandmother tasted when she cooked the family dinner. It was good and it was healthy. And even in a dessert loving family like MY grandmothers, nobody was a land whale and nobody got Diabetes 2.
It's true. And you do NOT get dessert unless you've had your supper and you do NOT get seconds on dessert even if fat old Uncle Bert gets them when he comes to call. YAZZYBEL
Whew!
Suddenly realized yesterday or so that the kitchen is not finished. It cannot be finished, because the wall behind and around the cookstove is finished in plaster and paint. Sorry, that's not acceptable. So--we are going to have to find and install a different finishing material, stronger than paint and more easily cleanable.
My thoughts run to tile because I can do it myself. It is fairly cheap and easy to do. Plus, it's lots of fun.
The only definite decision so far is that the base or background of the tile will be black, to continue running up from the backsplash of black Corian....then I can play....yes, I can play.
I have some ideas, but nothing has been decided or bought...Don't worry...something will be done. Theo wants to put it in the hands of Tomas but then it will be done professionally and be costly. PLUS this is my only chance to really make this my project....so I am reluctant to let go. It all depends on the availability of materials.
I did not go to church today for which I beg God's pardon. Theo would not go with me and eat breakfast afterward, and I was afraid that he would be frying bacon and spotting grease all over the still-pristine plaster and paint. They must be covered at once!!! YAZZYBEL
Hi, it's Friday afternoon and the kitchen, to all intents and purposes, IS finished.
The undercabinet lights did not get installed because the wiring did not come in, says Tomas. But basically everything else is there.
I can cook, in other words.
I am shy with the kitchen like a new bride.
We are going out to get sandwiches.
YAZZYBEL
Good midday.
Yesterday Carlos didn't come due to the illness of his wife, but the day before that we'd spent some time discussing where to eat out to get a good dish of caldo, which is basically meat broth and other good things added to it. He suggested a place called Plazita's on Broadway near Anita, so last night we went to try it out, I being hungry for caldo.
The place is called Plaza's and it's where he said it is. And I got caldo, and it was so good.
Theo got beef tacos and I could tell they were ordinary. But the soup was not ordinary, or rather, it was --just what was wanted, an ordinary bowl of excellent beef broth, beef, and vegetables.
The size of this bowl of soup, for $6.49, was the size of the middle bowl of a set of Pyrex mixing bowls. (I brought home half.) The ingredients were: plenty (at least a half pound) of good soup meat cooked to a tee, a small red potato, 2 carrots, and half a chayote entire. And leaves of cabbage. There was a side of rice and I added that to the soup.
The classic way of serving caldo would be to make the soup and remove all the solids. On a platter you'd slice the meat, then you'd lay the cooked vegetables alongside it on the platter. When you served the dinner, the liquid broth would be in your soup plate and you'd add whatever you wanted to your bowl. My mother, when she made vegetable soup, would explain to me that that is not how the Mexicans would do it. She cut everything small (they don't) and served it all together. She also put tomatoes in her vegetable soup and there were no tomatoes in the caldo. There was the usual restaurant side table at Plaza's, with jalapeno carrots, three salsas, lots of green lime quarters, a deep bowl of chopped onions, a bowl of dried herbs, and a bowl of green herbs. You could doctor your soup with any and all and I did.
The soup was flavorful and fresh; the meat was tender and savory, the vegetables actually short-cooked, especially the cabbage leaves. But not raw; they were just right. Of course, the potato was done. It was a little master piece. Perfect for supper. YAZZYBEL
Good morning.
Waiting for Tomas and Carlos. This morning they have to physically remove two installed cabinets and move them to the right about one fourth inch. That's to better accomodate the refrigerator...which they did squeeze in but now realize that we'd never be able to move it out, as to clean underneath it, etc.
I hate to tell them that we'd not ever be able to move it out under any circumstances no matter what. But let them do what they will, say I. They have had their way on everything else. I do not really care. (Can that really be me?)
Today there were no eggs in our mini-refrigerator so we had peanut butter and bacon lonches for breakfast. A lonche is a sandwich en espanyol. I had to put that Y in there because for some reason my ALT codes are not working. I think it is funny that somewhere some Mexican saw an American eating his lunch (which was of course a sandwich, most lunches being without imagination) and so sandwich became lonche.
Just so this posting won't be entirely negative, here's a white cactus flower in the garden today. You know how I love white flowers, and cactus flowers are the purest:
This give me another chance for my tirade on bacon, which as cooked carefully by me this morning was thick (I told Theo not to buy the thick any more) , greasy, and when well done, leathery not crisp. Bacon as we knew it twenty years ago is no more. What have they done to the hogs? Whatever it is, I know they have shot water into the sides of bacon to increase their volume...but there is still plenty of grease to fill up the skillet when cooking. Ech...I do not like it, any of it.
Patricia is not coming today and I don't like that either. The telly is roaring away in the living room and will stay that way when she don't come. There's a lot more changes than just a kitchen that need to go on around here. YAZZYBEL
