“There’s a terrifying thought.”
She walked over to the door, but then turned back, her hand on the knob. “Your future is yours, you know. Whatever you make of it. With whomever you choose.” She hoped I’d choose Gregor, and have him for longer; I could see it in her eyes, but she managed to keep from saying it out loud, and just gave me a final bright-eyed smile. She closed the door behind her.
I waited a few minutes—I wanted to give her time to get a quarter-mile away. Then I put my coat on, and went back out to party at the Wall.
Author’s Note
Years ago, my mother mentioned that she’d seen the advertisements for the Woodstock Music Festival, and it wasn’t all that far from where she was living—road-trip distance—so she’d briefly considered going. But she only liked a couple of the bands, so she concluded it wouldn’t have been worth the trip.
“You missed the defining event of your generation because you didn’t like the bands?” I said, aghast.
“Well, no one told me it was going to be the defining event of my generation,” she said. “If I’d known that, of course I’d have gone!”
I told my children this story and at some point my older daughter asked me what the defining event of my generation was. “The Fall of the Berlin Wall,” I said.
“Would you have gone to see that?” she asked.
I was actually in high school when the Berlin Wall fell. My husband and quite a few of my friends are a little older than I am, though . . . but none of them saw it coming, which isn’t at all surprising. You really would need a time traveler to tip you off. A very very persuasive time traveler. “I can actually believe the Berlin Wall will fall within my lifetime,” is something my husband remembers thinking less than two weeks before it actually happened.
SO MUCH COOKING
arole’s Roast Chicken
This is a food blog, not a disease blog, but of course the rumors all over about bird flu are making me nervous. I don’t know about you, but I deal with anxiety by cooking. So much cooking. But, I’m trying to stick to that New Year’s resolution to share four healthy recipes (entrées, salads, sides . . .) for every dessert recipe I post, and I just wrote about those lemon meringue bars last week. So even though I dealt with my anxiety yesterday by baking another batch of those bars, and possibly by eating half of them in one sitting, I am not going to bake that new recipe I found for pecan bars today. No! Instead, I’m going to make my friend Carole’s amazing roast chicken. Because how better to deal with fears of bird flu than by eating a bird, am I right?
Here’s how you can make it yourself. You’ll need a chicken, first of all. Carole cuts it up herself but I’m lazy, so I buy a cut-up chicken at the store. You’ll need at least two pounds of potatoes. You’ll need a lemon and a garlic bulb. You’ll need a big wide roasting pan. I use a Cuisinart heavy-duty lasagna pan, but you can get by with a 13x9 cake pan.
Cut up the potatoes into little cubes (use good potatoes! The yellow ones or maybe the red ones. In the summer I buy them at the Farmer’s Market.) Spray your pan with some cooking spray and toss in the potatoes. Peel all the garlic (really, all of it!) and scatter the whole cloves all through with the potatoes. If you’re thinking, “all that garlic?” just trust me on this. Roasted garlic gets all mild and melty and you can eat it like the potato chunks. Really. You’ll thank me later. Finally, lay out the chicken on top, skin-down. You’ll turn it halfway through cooking. Shake some oregano over all the meat and also some sea salt and a few twists of pepper.
Squeeze the lemon, or maybe even two lemons if you really like lemon, and mix it in with 1/4 cup of olive oil. Pour that over everything and use your hands to mix it in, make sure it’s all over the chicken and the potatoes. Then pour just a tiny bit of water down the side of the pan—you don’t want to get it on the chicken—so the potatoes don’t burn and stick. Pop it into a 425-degree oven and roast for an hour. Flip your chicken a half hour in so the skin gets nice and crispy.
Guys, it is SO GOOD. Half the time I swear Dominic doesn’t even notice what he’s eating, but he always likes this dish, and so do I. If you make this much for two people, you’ll have leftovers for lunch. But we’re having guests over tonight, my brother and his wife and kids. So, I’m actually using two chickens and four pounds of potatoes, because teenagers eat a lot.
And chicken has magical healing properties if you make it into soup, so surely some of them stick around when you roast it? And so does garlic, so eat some and stay healthy.
xxoo, Natalie
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Substitute Chip Cookies
So, we have some unexpected long-term house guests.
My sister-in-law Kathleen is a nurse at Regions Hospital. She’s not in the ER or the infectious diseases floor but let’s face it, it’s not like you can corral a bunch of airborne viruses and tell them they’re banned from OBGYN. Leo and Kat are worried that if this bird flu thing is the real deal, she could bring it home. Leo’s willing to take his chances but when I said, “would you like to have the kids stay with me for a while,” Kat said, “That would make us both feel so much better,” so voila, here I am, hosting an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old. Monika is 13, Jo is 11.
We have a guest room and a sofa bed. Monika got the guest room, Jo’s on the sofa bed, although we promised to renegotiate this in a few days if they’re still here. (It’s actually a double bed in the guest room but trust me, you don’t want to make my nieces share a bed if you don’t absolutely have to.)
I went to the store today to stock up just in case we want to minimize the “leaving the house” stuff for a while. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had that thought because (a) the lines were unbelievable and (b) I tried four stores and they were all completely out of milk and eggs. I did manage to get an enormous jumbo package of toilet paper plus a huge sack of rat food (did I mention that Jo has a pet rat named Jerry Springer? I didn’t? Well, my younger niece Jo has a pet rat named Jerry Springer. The rat was not actually invited along for the family dinner, but Dominic ran over today to pick the rat up because he thought Jo would feel better about the whole situation if she had her pet staying here, too.)
The freezer section was also incredibly picked over but at the Asian grocery (store #4) I bought some enormous sacks of rice and also about fifteen pounds of frozen dumplings and you know what, I’m not going to try to list what I came home with as it would be too embarrassing. I’ll just stick to the essentials, which is, no milk and no eggs. I did manage to get some butter, but it was the super-fancy organic kind that’s $10 per pound so I was also a little worried about using up our butter reserve on one batch of cookies. And Jo really wanted chocolate chip cookies.
Okay, actually: I really wanted chocolate chip cookies. But Jo was very willing to agree that she wanted some, too.
You can substitute mayo for eggs, in cookies, and you can substitute oil for the butter. They’ll be better cookies if you happen to have some sesame oil to put in for part of the oil (or any other nut-related oil) and we did, in fact, have sesame oil. And as it happens, those four grocery stores were not out of chocolate chips.
Here’s the recipe in case you are also improvising today:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup of vegetable oils (preferable 2 T sesame oil + canola oil to equal 1 cup.)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 tablespoons of mayonnaise
12 ounces of whatever sort of chips you have in the house, or chopped up chocolate
Cream the sugar and the oil, then beat in the mayonnaise. I promise the cookies will turn out fine, no matter how gross the mayo smells and looks while you’re beating it in. Mix the baking soda, salt, and flour together, then gradually beat in the mayo mixture, and stir in your chips.
Drop by rounded spoonfuls—oh, you know how to make cookies. You don’t have to grease your cookie she
ets. Bake at 375F for about ten minutes and if you want them to stay chewy and soft, put them away in an airtight container before they’re all the way cool. If you like your cookies crunchy, well, what’s wrong with you? But in that case cool them before you put them away, and in fact you’ll probably be happier storing them in something that’s not airtight, like a classic cookie jar.
I gave Dominic the first batch and he said, “you didn’t use up all the butter on this, did you?” I told him we’re not about to run out of butter. We are, however, about to run out of coffee. I may die. Even if I don’t get bird flu. Excuse me, H5N1.
xxoo, Natalie
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Homemade Pizza
So, how are things where you live?
Where I live (Minneapolis) there have been 83 confirmed cases of H5N1. The good news (!!!) is that it’s apparently not as lethal in the human-to-human variant as it was back when it was just birds-to-human, but since it was 60% lethal in the old form that’s not really what I think of as good good news. The bad news is that there’s a four-day incubation period so those 83 people all infected others and this is only the tiny, tiny tip of a giant, lethal iceberg.
Probably wherever you live you’re hearing about “social distancing,” which in most places means “we’re going to shut down the schools and movie theaters and other places where folks might gather, stagger work hours to minimize crowding, and instruct everyone to wear face masks and not stand too close to each other when they’re waiting in lines.” In Minneapolis, they’re already worried enough that they’re saying that anyone who can just stay home should go ahead and do that. Since Dominic works in IT and can telecommute, that’s us. I’d planned to go to the store today again to maybe get milk and eggs. If it had been just me and Dominic . . . I still wouldn’t have risked it. But I definitely wasn’t going to risk it with Jo and Monika in the house.
I made homemade pizza for lunch. The same recipe I made last December right after I got the pizza stone for Christmas—but, no fresh mushrooms. We had a can of pineapple tidbits and some pepperoni so that’s what we topped it with. I thought about trying some of the dried shitake mushrooms on the pizza but on thinking about it I didn’t think the texture would work.
We are now completely out of milk, which makes breakfast kind of a problem, and we’re also out of coffee, which makes everything about my day kind of a problem. Fortunately, we still have some Lipton tea bags (intended for iced tea in the summer) and that’s what I used for my caffeine fix.
(Running out of coffee was pure stupidity on my part. I even remember seeing it on the shelf at the grocery store, but I’m picky about my coffee and I was planning to go to my coffee shop for fresh beans today. Ha ha ha! Folgers and Maxwell House sound pretty good to me now!)
xxoo, Natalie
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Eggless Pancakes and Homemade Syrup
In the comments on my last post, someone wanted to know about grocery delivery. We do have grocery delivery in the Twin Cities, but every single store that offers it is currently saying that they are only providing it to current customers. I did register an account with all the places that do it, and I’ve put in an Amazon order for a bunch of items you can have delivered (like more TP) and I’m hoping they don’t e-mail me back to say they ran out and cancelled my order… anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be able to order anything grocery-like anytime soon.
Some of the restaurants in town are still delivering food and I don’t know how I feel about that. Dominic and I are very lucky in that we do have the option of staying home. That makes me feel a little guilty, but in fact, me going out would not make the people who still have to go out, for their jobs, even one tiny bit safer. Quite the opposite. If I got infected, I’d be one more person spreading the virus. (Including to my nieces.) Anyway, Kat has to go out because she’s a labor and delivery nurse, and people are depending on her. But I don’t know if a pizza delivery guy should really be considered essential personnel.
In any case, no one delivers breakfast (which was what I sat down to write about) and no one’s going to bring me milk, so I made milk-less, egg-less, butter-less pancakes, and so can you. Here’s what you need:
2 cups of flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Blend that together and then add:
1/2 cup of pureed banana OR pureed pumpkin OR apple sauce OR any other pureed fruit you’ve got around. I used banana because I have some bananas in my freezer.
1 1/2 cups of water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
Whisk it all together. You’ll need to grease your skillet a little bit extra because this sticks more than pancakes that were made with butter or oil.
We’re out of maple syrup, but it turned out we still had a bottle of blueberry syrup in the back of a cabinet and that’s what we had with them. There are recipes online for homemade pancake syrup but I haven’t tried them yet. Monika hated the blueberry syrup and just ate them with sugar and cinnamon. Jo thought the blueberry syrup was fine but agreed that maple (or even fake maple) would be better. (I’m with Monika, for the record.)
xxoo, Natalie
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Miscellaneous Soup
So, before we get to the recipe today, I was wondering if people could do a favor for one of my friends. Melissa is a waitress, and so far thank God she is still healthy but her restaurant has shut down for the duration. So, it’s good that she’s not going to be fired for not coming in to work, and she’s glad to stay home where she’s safe, but she really needs that job to pay for things like her rent. Anyway, I talked her into setting up a GoFundMe and if you could throw in even a dollar, that would be a big help. Also, to sweeten the pot a little, if you donate anything (even just a dollar!) I’ll throw your name into a hat and draw one reader and that lucky reader will get to have me make, and eat, and blog, anything you want, although if you want me to do that before the pandemic is over you’ll be stuck choosing from the stuff I can make with the ingredients that are in my house. And, I just drove a carload of groceries over to Melissa because she and her daughter were basically out of food, and the food shelves are not running, either. (So, if you were thinking that blueberry-glazed carrots or something would be good, you’re already too late, because she is now the proud owner of that bottle of blueberry syrup. Also, I’m out of carrots.)
Anyway, go donate! If you’ve ever wanted me to try again with the Baked Alaska, or experiment with dishwasher salmon, now’s your chance.
Today, I made Miscellaneous Soup. That is the soup of all the miscellaneous things you have lying around. I actually make this quite often, but I’ve never blogged about it before, because I just don’t think most people would be very impressed. Ordinarily, I make it with stock (boxed stock, if I don’t want to waste my homemade stock on this sort of meal), and some leftover cooked meat if I’ve got it, and whatever vegetables are in the fridge, and either some canned beans or some noodles or both.
What I used today:
2 packets of ramen noodles, including their little flavoring satchet
Wine (we are not even close to being out of wine. Too bad it’s not very good poured over breakfast cereal.)
1/2 pound of frozen roast corn
1/4 pound of frozen mixed vegetables
2 cups dry lentils
1/2 pound of frozen turkey meatballs
I heated up 4 cups of water and added the flavoring packet, 1 cup of wine, and the lentils. From my spice drawer, I also added some cumin and coriander, because I thought they’d go reasonably well with the spice packet. I cooked the lentils in the broth. I thawed out the corn and the mixed veggies and threw that in and then cooked the turkey meatballs in the oven because that’s what the bag wants you to do and then I broke up the ramen brick and threw that in and added the meatballs. And that’s what we all had for dinner.
Jo hates lentils and Monika didn’t like the frozen roast corn but after some comp
laining they ate it all anyway. And Andrea and Tom liked it fine.
Right, I guess I should fill you in about Andrea and Tom.
Andrea is a friend of Monika’s from school; they’re both in 8th grade. Monika found out (I guess from a text?) that Andrea was home alone with her brother, Tom, because their mother is so worried about bringing the flu home that she’s been sleeping in the car instead of coming home. Tom is only three. Also, they were totally out of food, which is why Monika brought this up (after I did the grocery drop off for Melissa.)
I told her that of course we could bring some food over to her friend, but when I realized Andrea was taking care of a three-year-old full time I suggested they come over here, instead.
So now Monika and Jo are sharing the double bed in the guest room, because sorry, girls, sometimes “shared sacrifice” means a shared bed. Andrea is on the sofabed and Tom is on the loveseat. Well, he was on the loveseat last night. I think tonight he’s going to be on the loveseat cushions and those cushions are going to be on the floor so he’s got less far to fall if he rolls off again.
Can I just say, this is not exactly how I’d imagined my February. But at least we’re all healthy and not out of food yet.
xxoo, Natalie
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Ten Things I’m Going to Make When This Is Over
Dinner today was hamburger and rice. I kept looking at recipes and crying, and Dominic wound up cooking.
I kind of want to tell you all the things we’re out of. Like, AA batteries. (I had to track down a corded mouse from the closet where we shove all the electronic stuff we don’t use anymore, because my cordless mouse uses AA batteries.) Dishwasher detergent. (We still have dish soap, but you can’t put that in a dishwasher. So we’re washing everything by hand.) But you remember when we used to say, “first-world problems” about petty complaints? These are healthy-person problems.
Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories Page 29
