Two Strawberry Cakes

Listen! say my hordes of listeners. Weeks away from the blog, and you come back with tales of cake?

What better say I? I have spent the last few weeks in Tucson and San Antonio eating delicious food. Came back weighing one pound more than when I left. Not bad, not bad. And I am going to talk some more about the food of Texas among other things.

The two strawberry cakes were eaten in restaurants in El Paso and San Antonio. They were very different from each other, and very different from the fake flans and fake lava cakes that are proliferating in our middle class restaurants now.

The first one was eaten in a tiny restaurant outside of El Paso in a market/antique mall kind of place. Can't remember its name but the food was very good. I ordered Strawberry Cake for dessert.  This cake was a very pink strawberry-flavored cake as in a cake mix, but very tasty.  Between the layers was spread a generous layer of strawberry jam; over the top and sides was a pale pink strawberry buttercream frosting.  The cake was huge; I'd guess the slice was nearly a pound in weight. I ate it all.

Then in San Antonio, at Crumpets, I ordered Strawberry Cake again. I prayed it wouldnt be shortcake, and it wasn't.  The cake was white and pleasant; there was a creme anglaise filling and a whipped cream filling (three layers) with whipped cream covering all. There were mashed strawberries in the cake batter, baked in. The whole thing was moist and rich and refrigerated and was just scrumptious.

So there. I could not wait to tell people about that delicious cake.  I rarely see cake offered in a restaurant and of course I hardly ever make one any more; last one I made I think I mixed up my gluten free biscuit mix with flour so the whole thing was coarse and tasted like garbanzos.  Not too good.

I ate several tortilla soups on the trip and will discuss those later. Also ate my favorite meal: shrimp cocktail, which makes a surprisingly satisfying lunch all by itself. And makes you feel virtuous too when everyone else is eating fried things with fries on the side. YAZZYBEL

How Food That I Fed My Kids in the 70's was Better

Yes! The food that I fed my kids in the 70's  was better food than any mom can feed her kids today.

At the typical Safeway, say the one on Washington St. before it turned into Von's and then halfway back again, the meat counter alone was a miracle of choice and diversity. There before you was spread the treasure of a rich continent, and the only  thing holding you back was cost and talent.  Nothing held me back in those days, fortunately. I was still in my honeymoon of motherhood, in the seventies, when my husband lived at home, earned good money, and I didnt have to leave my little children in order to be liberated at work. And I loved to cook!

There before us was:
1. Veal shanks--oh how yummy to make osso bucco!
2. Veal chops and stew meat. Veal is delicious and was not criminal in those days.
3. Seafood in great variety: West Coast fish, oysters in little glass bottles if you wanted to get them that way, shrimps huge and pink from Texas or the Pacific, crayfish/lobster tails from South America (anybody remember those?), 
4.Beef both young and mature, huge steaks with BONES those anthropological mysteries that have disappeared from the grocer's meat counters, roasts of all sorts including seven bone roast which can be put into the oven in the am with a little onion and water, and left all day at two fifty degrees while you go to the zoo and aquarium and wherever else you choose to, returning home to the most delicious dinner ever at five or six...
5. Pork, pink and yummy...it was different. Pork chops were different. Or, I should say that pork is different now, for then they were of the quality that pork has been throughout the millenia...something just delicious and not hard as a brickbat after it's been grilled as now.
6. Lamb! Exotic, innocent lamb..delightful tiny chops, wonderful roasts and even wonderful lamb shoulder stew..(NOT exotic, but GOOD!)
7. Ground meats of all sorts...that did not give people e-coli for some reason even though processing was not what it now is...hmm...think of that...it was local and fresher, that's why!

The vegetable bins were less full of colorful stuff. Asian products were not in evidence much. But the vegetables that existed were huge, fresh and fine. Nothing had yet been genetically tampered with. Imagine that! If you didnt eat it expediently, it would rot or die...It was real.

The bread you made your 2000 cheese sandwiches or beef sandwiches or tuna sandwiches or chicken sandwiches with was  MUCH better food than what it is today.  It's probably, with oils, one of the most genetically altered substances that we are eating now.  Watch out. We must either give it up or go to a great deal of trouble and watchfulness to buy good flour and make out own.

I havent covered all foods (focussing on meat I know) because what made me think of all this is:
Veal Marengo.  Veal Marengo was invented by Napoleon's cook when they were out on the battlefield; The General was hungry, and the chef didnt have much at hand. It must have been during the Italian campaign because what evolved as the chef desperately threw a dish together was Veal Marengo.  Pimentoes are the crowning mark of Veal Marengo for me. I love pimentoes, the ordinary jarred kind by Dromedary, which I always have around.

I invented Chicken Marengo before I heard about the veal version, using chicken, onion, mushrooms, wine, and pimentoes. It was one of those dishes that you remember all your life when the flavors come together just right and it's perfect. When I read about Veal Marengo in a cookbook, I knew that I'd invented a good thing and Napoleon would have enjoyed it.

I thought about all that this morning when I made my egg, gently fried on a thin thin glaze of butter in the skillet, with a generous spoonful of pimentoes sizzling beside it. Try it. You'll like your Eggs Marengo. It will take you back to the days when food was actually better and could stand on its own in a simple, simple dish just like that. YAZZYBEL

Sunday Thoughts

Good morning. Well, if you read my Facebook entry of today, you know I went to church. I was a little late and missed most of the first Reading. I guess I was late because I was writing on Facebook.

The Forum, long called the Borum by my kids, (not meant for them)..was very good. It was about prayer and kind of tied in with what I wrote on FB.

After church, I came south and went to Von's, where I purchased lots of paper products, soap, etc., and a little food.  Came home and made Huevos Revueltos a la Mexicana. I used cubed up yellow pepper, green pepper, green onions and the family jalapeno. I call it that because it is huge and I can keep it in the vegetable bin and cut it up for my modest jalepeno demands. No tomatoes in my Huevos a la Mexicana, thank you.  I also, in loyalty to my adopted state of California, laid a slice of cheddar cheese over the top when done. It melted nicely down and I ate it with a gas-toasted tortilla. Yum YUm YUM.

Then I noticed in the paper that my favorite SF movie, Galaxy Quest was on and I'd missed almost all of it, so I turned it on and cried over my huevos a la Mexicana as I watched the ending of it. Why do I cry over a silly movie? Because it comes out perfectly, that's why; I mostly cry I think because of the unappreciated teenaged boy, a fan who gets his vindication in the success of a zany space journey. It's all there, folks: good and evil and laughs and chills, and very good actors playing very bad ones. Needless to repeat, I just love it.

The wind is stiff and chill again today; that is what spoils many days in my back yard here...well, we had some really balmy ones and perhaps we'll have them again...I'll be waiting. YAZZYBEL

A Danger Averted

Wow. What a narrow escape!

I just returned from the CV Pound...er, Animal Shelter...empty-handed.

My friend Lee has just adopted a dog at the urging of her kids...she went to a shelter to view the desired animal, and fell in love with the wrong pooch. That's the way it is for dogs, poor fellows that they are. It's the luck of the draw.

So, I overcame my better nature and went to the CV Animal Shelter yesterday afternoon.  It was not an entirely fruitless endeavor because it enabled me to see that I can be totally hard-hearted where these poor creatures are concerned, and concentrate on my own needs and capabilities with remarkable aplomb.

Rule 1: no puppy, because Foxy Angus taught me that I do not pass the Agility Rule for Capturing Wayward Pups.
Rule 2: no barkers. This elimnates practically everybody right there.
Rule 3: no males, because they lift the surreptitious leg here and there even when supposedly trained.
They also are somewhat more likely to bark.
Rule 4: nothing big, because they can pull the pore old Yazzybel and make her fall down and break something.

It has to be something small and female that isnt likely to shed too much hair and can justifiably answer to the name of Lady. Actually I found Lady yesterday, but her name was Belle...and she was a trifle large for a chihuahua...and she didnt really pull me into wanting her. But I thought about her in the night and I went back to see her this morning. In the morning light, she didn't seem to be Lady after all...so I hardened my already stony heart and walked on.  Someone will like her, I reasoned.  Hope I am right.

Most of the dogs at the shelter were male (8-1 preponderance?) and many of them were huge adult male pit bulls who were glaring out with lowering brows and barking their fool heads off.  I would not let a person who wanted such a dog even have a dog.  The female pit bulls were also quite hostile and aggressive in manner. Good looking dogs, though.

When I went through the cattery on the way out I foolishly asked about kittens.  Not kitten season, I was informed (yes, there is a kitten season at least in CA) but if I would return at the end of March or the first of April, there will be kittens in the new kitten window by the front door. Good to know.

As I left the shelter, two different people were literally dragging their reluctant dogs into the front door...oh how those dogs can read the minds of the other inmates and know they don't want to be there!  Both dogs were medium large, unattractive and hairy.  So were their owners, actually. I hated to see them. Such a reminder of impulsive dog decisions.

So I left, pondering my visit..  It's a terrible toss up.  Note to self:  do NOT return to the CV Animal Shelter any time soon, and especially do not return at the end of March or the beginning of April.
YAZZYBEL, who may be lonely but is free as a bird. (for now.)

Daylight What?

Daylight Savings Time is here this morn; 

Let sound the celebratory horn!

But time hath left me in the lurch;

I woke too late to go to church!

When I was a schoolteacher, I had ample time to observe the effects of our arbitrary time system upon the systems of our harrassed American children.  No sooner were they subjected to the really awful sugar barrage of Halloween than they were put to the test of the return of  'normal' time, and went to school drugged and confused. Then in the spring, when they'd begun to wake up normally in the morning light, they were thrown back into dark, still chilly mornings when they were forced to arise and stagger off to school (well, in the car mostly) to blink their way through morning.  By far the harder situation on the children was the spring reversal to Daylight Savings Time. I don't know why. I just know that, Halloween sugar and all, they got through the fall transition more easily than the spring one. It was easily observable in practice.

I just overslept for church, in spite of having set the alarm last night after dutifully putting the clock forward as instructed by Big Brother. Who is Big Brother, anyway? Who tells us we have to do this? Why do we do it?

Arizona is the first sensible state I know of. They refuse to participate in the DST boggle.  They refuse to participate in lots of other things too; guess they are just a contrary-minded lot. Good for them. That's how you spell independence, folks.

I am drinking my coffee and now have time to decide whether or not I'll try to make a later service somewhere. Perhaps I will. Perhaps I will. 

After all,I have all the time in the world. YAZZYBEL

Clients and Customers without Respect

Perhaps that's an ambiguous title up there.

Does it mean that the clients have no respect for anyone? It could.

Or does it mean that clients and customers no longer get any respect from the business they patronize?  That's the meaning  I meant it to mean.

I was thinking along these lines before I went out to the movies this afternoon.  Being much alone, I spend more time with the television than ever before. Therefore, I am an able judge of the quality of service (respect) from those whom I pay for this television.  I was so disgusted with the programming  on the television that I've been  offered lately  that I decided to go to the movies, of which more later.

Who exactly decided for Cox TV that we subscribers to Basic Cable (39.95 a month) deserve no better than hundreds of viewings of Braveheart,
Scarface, Mama's Big House, Halloween in all of its incarnations, and a list of other foolishness that no one in her right mind needs to see even once.? These and other second rate films play over and over again on this Basic Cable set of channels, as if there were not thousands of other good films available in this world. Were I to choose to upgrade, as both my sons have, I'd only have another list of second-rate stuff to choose from, and be hard-put to find one evening's entertainment in a month.  It's true.  Violence, sadism, gore, all proliferate in a general climate of sinking boredom.

Ghost stories have been proliferating to try to bring some relief to the general show of earthly beastliness and hatred.  They too are depressing and have almost no point except to show moods as blue and black as the colors they are filmed with. What is this? Why do we buy this? Why do we take this trash that we're offered?

I am ready to call it off with Cox, and go back to bunny ears just to see the news...but it occurs to me that I can learn to see the news on the computer where I am only bombarded with many many commercials an hour and only as much gore and sleaze as I cannot avoid.

So I went out to the movies, to see a docile movie, Philomena, today. First I was disrespected by being asked to pay $11.25 for the smallest coke and butterless popcorn  I could get. Then I was disrespected by being shown a large number of loud and baffling previews ("chosen to be shown with this feature"---how? why?) before my movie of choice came on.

I spilled quite a bit of my over-filled popcorn container over the floor around my seat. I left my over-filled paper cup of diet coke in the hole in the arm of my chair, proving that I can be disrespectful of both the theater and myself. I am only sorry that it's the poor flunkies, who have no vote on policy, who have to clean up after me.

And, did I like Philomena? No, I did not like it. And, respectfully, why did I not?

If I get around to it later, perhaps sometime I'll bother to tell you. If I feel like criticizing a movie. Hasta la vista, Baby. YAZZYBEL

Farewell to Freckles

This morning I was awaked at five thirty by an animal screaming outside my house, down in the little area between my house and the next door neighbors'. It was a repeated cry of an animal in agony, and it sounded like a little dog.

I got up and looked out my newly venetian-blinded window to the street, but everything was shrouded in fog.   It was creepy out there.  I decided to get up even though it was so early; I'd be ready to turn on some lights, drink some coffee, let the cat in. He's been sleeping outside at night lately because of his bad interior manners lately.  But he's always forgiving, ready to come in at any hour and yell at me for some food.

This morning he did not come in. I called at all doors, with no response. The fog lifted by eight, and I decided to go to late church at ten thirty...was dressed and ready but knocked at the neighbors' in case someone else had heard the screaming. Ricky, the fifteen year old son, offered to come after his breakfast to look for the cat.  When he came, he found the cat right away, in a spot I'd already looked at from above.  

Freckles was dead in a place underneath the Palo Verde tree...very dead, and stiff. One of his ears was missing.  He had two large holes in the fur of his side abdomen, and two more smaller just further on.  Ricky buried the cat for me just now. Actually he placed him in the garbage. We didnt know what to do with him as the ground is too hard from lack of rain for Ricky to dig a hole.  Oh, there was no blood anywhere.  Looks like the chupacabra to me.

I am feeling leery because I'd thought to God yesterday that I would let Freckles' existence determine whether I'll be moving on myself. If Freckles died, I'd move out, but not until then. The answer came with devastating swiftness.  I'll miss my cat because, though a pest, he was my only company, my only family and almost my only friend.  I'll have to get rid of his hairbrush, his leftover food, and the catnip crab he didn't appreciate.  This changes the whole picture, folks.
It does. I didn't know what I was expecting when I thought that thought. Goodbye, Freckles, the only other one around here who still knew Gregory when Gregory was alive. Benjamin and Foxy Angus will miss you when they come.  The Neffs from Iowa got to know him last summer though they have lived so far away.  Freckles,  I am going to miss you and think about you for sure.  YAZZYBEL