Recipe: Tahini Dip

It's the one on the bottom. The other is a black bean hummus, I believe.

TAHINI DIP  
Makes about 1 ¼ C 

1 C tahini (sesame seed paste) 
¼ C oil 
¼ tsp garlic powder 
½ tsp salt 
1 Tbsp lemon juice (about ½ lemon) 
¼ tsp sugar 
¼ tsp ground ginger 

Combine all ingredients, blending well.

Recipe: Cajun Country Glenna's Chicken Stew

Another from John and Glenna Uhler's Royal Recipes from the Cajun Country (1969) who say:

One day His Majesty was having Sunday dinner with his friends, the Uhlers (who live on the other side of the bayou), and he was served baked chicken (down the bayou, EVERYBODY cooks chicken on Sunday). Well, when they had finished eating, there was some chicken left over (horrors!) and if there’s anything the King can’t stand (aside from the royal Prime Minister) it’s something going to waste in the kitchen. So he rolled up the Royal Sleeves and with ole Glenna’s help he worked up this recipe. And ole Glenna thought it was so good that His Majesty graciously let her take credit for it so that she could get her name in his cook book. (He figured she’d probably take credit for it anyhow, being a woman and all.)

“This stew may be served in pattie shells or over rice or hot cornbread.” 

CAJUN COUNTRY GLENNA’S CHICKEN STEW 

A whole fresh chicken, or the carcass of a leftover chicken which still has lots of meat, boiled until the meat begins to fall off the bones, meat skinned and deboned, chopped into small pieces, 1 C stock reserved 

3 Tbsp cooking oil 
3 Tbsp flour 
1 C onion, chopped fine 
½ C celery, chopped fine 
½ C shallots, chopped fine 
2 Tbsp bell pepper, chopped fine 
1 tsp salt (or to taste) 
1/8 tsp black pepper 
½ tsp seasoned salt 
1 tsp Accent 
½ tsp garlic puree or powder 
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce 
1 Tbsp sugar 
½ tsp Tabasco (or more, to taste) 
4 oz mushrooms, chopped (drained if canned) 
1 tsp Kitchen Bouquet 

Heat oil in a large deep iron skillet, and flour, and cook roux until chocolate brown, stirring constantly. Add onion, celery, shallots, and bell pepper, and cook slowly until vegetables are tender. Add reserved chicken stock and chicken meat. Season with salt, black pepper, seasoned salt, Accent, garlic puree or powder, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, Tabasco, mushrooms, and Kitchen Bouquet, and cook very gently for at least 30 minutes.

Recipe: Cajun Country Barbequed Chicken

From the evening we decided to eat in the living room because new table cloths and BBQed chicken do not play well together.

Recall Mr. Big Food loves to add prefaces to some recipes as he puts them in the Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide. 

Things got so bad down the bayou, what with inflation and taxes and surcharges and such, that the King couldn’t afford to write to his friends any more, the stamps were so costly. So His Majesty took this under consideration and decided he’d open his own post office. Which he proceeded to do. And everything was going along just fine, and the King was making as much as a buck-forty-nine profit, when a postal inspector came along and told him he’d have to close up because NOBODY, not even The King, was supposed to be able to run an efficient post office. Well, His Majesty didn’t want to get in trouble with the Feds, so he shut her down. And anyhow, he told the Queen that licking all those stamps was making him lose his appetite. —John and Glenna Uhler, Royal Recipes from Cajun Country (1969)

CAJUN COUNTRY BARBECURED CHICKEN  

2 Tbsp butter 
1 C onion, chopped fine 
1 Tbsp vinegar 
2 Tbsp brown sugar 
¼ C lemon juice 
1 C ketsup or chili sauce (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section) 
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce 
½ Tbsp prepared mustard (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section) 
1 C chicken stock or bouillon 
½ C celery, chopped 
Salt to taste 
Liberal dash cayenne pepper 
Chicken, cut into serving pieces, seasoned to taste with salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper 

To prepare sauce, sauté onion in melted butter. Add vinegar, brown sugar, lemon juice, ketsup or chili sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, chicken stock, celery, salt to taste, and cayenne pepper, and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Cool. Cook chicken over hot coals , basting with sauce during the last 15 minutes grilling time.

Delightful

 

These are the first and last of six photos I took over 104 seconds and a couple of preset settings. The colors are true enough to what I saw.

I was not alone out there. I'd seen the sky-- and have lived here long enough to know that it's get the camera now or forget about it. Apparently, Miss M has learned the same. I walked out to the driveway with my camera to find Miss M perched on the bumper of the truck taking pictures with her phone.

And speaking of not being alone... . Daughter C, Mr. Big Food and I chatted about Aliens after dinner. Art Bell's name came up. As did, of course, a number of sci-fi plot twists. And this. 

And because the Farm has a culture all its own, we all said good night while hollering out lines from the Mojo Nixon classic, Take me to your leader.

Well, dang.

I'm running out of no cussing allowed patience.

This is ridiculous. We have Mojo's UFOs and Big Rigs, but no O.T.I.S. Otis is the very best. What the hell?

I find this unbelievable. So unbelievable that I'm not even going to bastardize the lyrics (much) by recalling them from memory. Surely they are out there somewhere.

Did I take him to New York City? NO!
Did I take him to Moscow? NO!
Hell. I didn't even take him to Memphis. Ooooh!
I took 'em down to North Carolina. To a sleepy little town called Mayberry. And in that town... drunk... O.T.I.S. Otis is the very best!

It is my subjective opinion that searching the World Wide Web is becoming less and less productive. You cannot tell me that the lyrics to this song are not out there. Even if you don't know who Mojo Nixon is, I could show you that he's well known among a large subset of folks and has-- given that he's channel 60 (I think) of Sirius XM-- achieved mainstream status. And yet the lyrics to this song don't come up in an intelligently searched Bing or Google search.

Something's going on here and I don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

Cue Twilight Zone music.

What a georgeous day! Let's do some gardening!

By column back to front: tomatillo, Napoli & ? tomato; black cherry & honor bright tomato, gooseberry; hyssop, marjoram long purple eggplant

A closer look at the hyssop which is cute as a button

Columns (or rows depending on your perspective) back to front (left to right): society chives, thyme (because you need enough thyme to last a lifetime), eggplant purple something, eggplant antigua; tobacco Wisconsin something, tobacco little Dutch, scarlet runner bean (for fun), two more tobaccos.

A closer look at some tobacco. When they get just a tad larger I'll replant to individual pots.

A bunch of peppers

There are more on the shelf below and in the walk-up green house in front of the window in the dining room. And some flats are still sitting on the heat mat. Celery, celeriac, fennel and such all take a long time to germinate. But all in all I think we're off to a fine start.

Portugese Chicken in a Clay Pot: A Photo

This was very good. There's a previous post about Portuguese Chicken in a Clay Pot.  We've had a lot of good food lately and I am behind on posting recipes. Expect a barrage come Monday. I've already started my list of "RECIPES NEEDED" (I tend to write in all caps) based on photographs of food for which I have not posted a recipe. I will add to it and leave it on Mr. Big Food's desk. He will look at it and keep it in mind.

Like magic (!) on Monday morning there will be an email to me from Mr. Big Food in my in box. Its subject line will be "Recipes." I have over 50 some such emails in my in box. I will open this email and open all of the attached Word docx's. I will then go find the associated photos. And I will begin to post recipes.

Please note that Monday's posting of recipes will be concurrent with Monday's replacing of belt that spins the dryer drum. Miss M had to hang her clothes on the line today. And over the picnic table. And on a little 2'x2' sweater drying contraption atop the "mint garden." Wash Day can be complicated.

I spent the day reading a crappy old book.

Back to the Future & Unrelated

via Powerline's The Week in Pictures

More fun stuff at the link

So tomorrow we are having Portugees chicken in a clay pot

I've been delinquent on spontaneous blogging which I know keeps you coming back for more. So I will recap recent thoughts.

1. In Mens Figure Skating, we give everyone a medal and a band-aide for his boo-boo. The "man" with the most boo-boos wins!

2. Celery is not all that hard to grow. The fact that celery self-seeds in the cracks of the patio is a clue.

3. I am trying to make the best of it but I am sick & tired of winter.

4. We need a new game. 

Wait! That's not all!

"Swankie Steak"

 

Mr. Big Food was bound and determined to make this dessert.

 We shared a bite-- it was delicious. 

And that, boys & girls, is what Valentines ca. 2014 should be about. Serving "Swankie" food with real meringue.   

Happy Valentine's | Now Listen Up

 

BooksBygone: The One Great Law of Courtship and Other Advise For Suitors

By Marica Bernstein

Love is in the air! What better time to review the complex rules of etiquette regarding “courtship-- the word which sums up a man’s attentions to the woman he wishes to marry”? I say “complex” because we have a tendency to think of days bygone as simpler than those in which we now live. As “The Book of Good Manners: A Guide to Polite Usage for All Social Functions” (published in 1923) shows, there was nothing simple about courting in the 1920s. Let’s begin with some definitions. Good manners are based on “kindness of heart and courtesy of mind.” Etiquette is the “great body of rules [this book is over 500 pages!] to which good society conforms.” Culture is achieved when “good manners in every detail have become second nature.”

“A courtship, as a rule, develops naturally out of the propinquities of the same social circle.” (I had to look that up. Propinquity means nearness in place, proximity, similarity.) A young man finds attractive a particular young woman he has met “on the tennis court, at dances, in the home of her friends.” He pays her a call. He may call at her parents’ home only between the hours of 8  and 10 o’clock in the evening. He should never overstay his first call. This puts the young woman in an embarrassing situation.

Please read the rest.

Also available here.

Just another day

We picked someone up in Jackson today. We stopped in Winona for MickyD's coffee on the way to J'son. We had lunch at Rainbow somethingorother.[Thanks to C for directions.]

We made it back to the farm where we commenced to talking about gardens and guns (calm down, it's a magazine).


The FarmHouse looked really, really nice, thanks to Daughter C, who had her feet up on my desk.

I Keep My Score Card Handy

My Scorecard. I like collecting data, color-coding it, and exploring it.

To recap:

1. It is Tuesday evening.

2. Since approximately December 13th, 20xx we have been warned that last evening and this morning were going to be bad-- weather-wise. We were told to expect 1-3" of snow and about 6" of ice. I exaggerate, but why not?

3. So yesterday-- that would be Monday-- "they" cancelled school for Tuesday.

4. We had a lovely evening last evening-- anticipating the snow day.

5. We got about 0.001 inches of ice over night last night.

6. The girls were suffering from cabin fever, so the three of us went to town this afternoon. Some shops were closed-- I guess on account of the non-existent weather event-- but many were open. Oh! you should see the fresh flowers we found for the table!

7. MSU was to make a statement about Wednesday by 3pm today. Before we left for town we checked the MSU site, its fb site, and twitter account. Can you believe they called off school again?

8. It is sleeting as I type. And we've gone from WARNING to ADVISORY and back now to WARNING.

Meanwhile... . You should see those little tomato and pepper and eggplant and fennel seedlings!

That's the thing about Almost Summer in Mississippi. Sometimes it feels downright wintery. Until it doesn't. I guaran-f'ing- tee  you within two weeks I will be planting in the ground. Within six weeks we will have fresh salad again. Oh! Maybe should start the lettuce seeds.

"Mom, can we eat in the living room?"

Yesterday we were under a WINTER STORM WARNING. 

As of 1:30pm yesterday 

• accuweather was predicting sleet and rain over night and snow and sleet this morning.
• weather.com  "     "                 a wintery mix    "      "       "     into this morning.
• weather.gov   "     "                  "  "            "         "      "       "      "     "     ".
• weather underground " "      ice pellets          "      "       "       "    "     ".

I know this because I wrote it all down in the form of a nice little table that included forecast highs and low, chance of precipitation, and so on. There was general agreement among the various forecasting entities that we could expect 1/4" of ice and possibly up to 3" of snow.

Given all of these predictions, State called off school for today at about noon or so yesterday.

SNOW DAY!!!!

You know what that means, don't you?

Super Mario Brothers!

After supper

of onions with sage stuffing

and sauteed broccoli

we joined them in the living room. They had muted the volume and were listening to the Beatles while they played. 

Filed under "Big Life on the Farm."

There's some talk of playing dominoes tonight!

~~
In case you are wondering, it did ice. I'd say we got about 0.001 of an inch. "They are still trying to salvage the forecast ("they" have no shame) and are now predicting snow this afternoon and evening.

Wonder if State will cancel classes for tomorrow, too? Stay tuned.

Rock Salt

Don't look for it in town. There's pool salt. There's pickling salt. But no rock salt. 

So what's a body to do? Well, we have a half bag of rock salt left over from Cincinnati days. Nancy at the United States Post Office in the 'village' is going to have to make due with pickling salt. That's the best I could come up with for her. (She only has 30 minutes for lunch and you can't get to town, look for rock salt, and get back in 30 minutes. I was going to town anyway.)

By the way...

MSU to close Tuesday due to winter weather

February 10, 2014

MSU to close Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2014, due to winter weather. Severe winter weather conditions in Central and North Mississippi have made driving conditions extremely dangerous. The National Weather Service is predicting significant ice accumulations on the roads and surfaces. Please do not attempt to drive in these conditions except in an emergency. Also, please do not travel to campus. Mississippi State's Tuesday classes, day and evening, are being cancelled for the Starkville campus.

Rest Easy, My Friends

I figured it out.

For the last day and a half-- that's 1.5 days-- I've been fretting about the table at which we enjoy our evening meals. Without the television. Following the transition from Christmas to January, I wasn't happy with the table. It worked. But I wasn't happy with it. Yesterday, I hit upon an idea.

And today it worked.

I had to do some washing and ironing, but it worked. I also had to ask folks to please set aside the nice napkins and use a nicely folded paper towel. But it worked.

I got some opposition to my use of a bean seedling in a crappy black recycled plastic pot as the centerpiece.

But I got over it. Those are freshly washed and ironed tea-towels as place-mats. 

Let's not forget what all the fuss is about. Ham glazed with cane syrup. Sweet Potatoes with some delicious orange thing.

See. When you develop the habit of eating good food, you should also develop the habit of consuming it in a nice environment. 

We linger over supper.

"... with shows, games, sports, guns, bells..." What? GUNS??

I'm working on a little project-- yes, I know, I should be ironing-- and I ran across this from John Adams to his wife, Abigail: 

I am apt to believe that this day will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward.

Brings to mind the phrase, "and by right ought to be..." doesn't it?

[from Mary E. Hazeltine. Judith K. Sollenberger, ed. Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them Second Edition, Completely Revised. American Library Association, Chicago. 1965.]

 

An Early Spring Saturday Supper

As Mr. Big Food was b-b-qing chicken over applewood, he dictated to me the recipe for this broccoli salad. I took it down as it was more than I could have remembered in my head.

The one on the right-- the one without the hardboiled eggs-- is Miss M's. 

I did not take a picture of the leftover slaw from last night's mini-fish-fry. Mr. Big Food thought it needed to be more Carolina style, so he spun them both-- the vegan and non-vegan versions, in that order-- through the food processor. It was good. Good slaw is always better leftover.

I did get a photograph of the chicken.

Miss & I spent a considerable amount of time today fussing about the table. I had bought a new tablecloth and napkins. I was in the process of setting the table right nice when I remembered we were having bar-b-qued chicken over applewood tonight. 

We explored some possibilities. We came up empty.

That's when we decided that maybe we should eat in the living room.

"Missy, is that snow on your fur?"

"It may well be. It's cold out there! And you seemed to have abandoned me."

"Oh. Please. Stop with the drama. You were out there for five minutes."

"Well. It is cold."

"Missy. I've had quite enough. You don't know what 'cold' is."

This is a Party tactic. Next. Find some old guy who knows what 'cold' is. He supports the Establishment Guy, don't you know? They both know what 'cold' is.

Books Bygone: The Life of Anna Mary Robertson

 

Courtesy Wikipaintings.org

I have a new essay out in our little weekly newspaper. It's online at the paper's site but behind a paywall-- you may want to subscribe so you so you can keep up with what's happening. (Extra! Extra! There was an arrest made in the school flag theft!)

The essay is also available here, along with all of the others.

Daughter C did a dramatic reading last evening for our Cincinnati Friends.* She says this one is her favorite!

*below

Philosophers & Paywalls

My little weekly county newspaper has gone behind a paywall. This cracks me up. 

$26 per year. SUBSCRIBE NOW! DON'T MISS A THING!

As a subscriber to the print version I have automatic access-- just as soon as Swishu gets my request and emails me a passwords. I'm waiting. 

Now on to the philosophers.

There's a fellow who writes a column in my little weekly newspaper-- or maybe his thoughts are just letters to the editor. I don't know. He writes about freedom and taxes and the civil war and his dislike for Lincoln and Big Government. He almost always references "the great political philosopher, Lysander Spooner." Not being a philosopher, I am not acquainted with Spooner's work-- heck, I didn't even recognize his name the first time I saw it in one of this fellow's column. So I asked a couple of philosophers who Lysander Spooner was. Neither Mr. Big Food nor A. Leland knew. I believe they both responded, "Who?"

Not knowing who Spooner is did not keep me awake at night. But the fellow has a column this week about taxation and slavery in which he cites Spooner at length. Looks like today is the day we are going to get to the bottom of the Spooner issue. So I checked the definitive philosophy resource, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Volumes 1-8. Nothing. Encyclopedia Americana. World Book Encyclopedia. Webster's Biographies. Still nothing. Two more history of philosophy reference books. Zip. So that infallible source, Wikipedia:

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, Unitarian abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government.

Isn't that interesting? 

I skimmed the whole thing and went looking again (because you should always always check more than one source on matters relating to individualism, anarchy, philosophy, Deists, etc.). 

I searched for Spooner and for American Letter Company in Encyclopedia of American History, The Oxford History of The American People, The Great Republic: A History of the American People, The Growth of the American Republic, Bennett's The American Patriot's Almanac, AND six other history books, AND both Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them. Nothing.

And yet, there's this at the Wikipedia entry:

Spooner's influence extends to the wide range of topics he addressed during his lifetime. He is remembered today primarily for his abolitionist activities and for his challenge to the Post Office monopoly, which had a lasting influence of significantly reducing postal rates.[34] Spooner's writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory in the United States, and were often reprinted in early libertarian journals such as the Rampart Journal[35] and Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought.[36] His writings were also a major influence on Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard and libertarian law professor and legal theorist Randy Barnett.

In January 2004, Laissez Faire Books established the Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty. ...

In 2010, LAVA created the Lysander Spooner (Book of the Year) Award, which has been awarded annually since 2011.[38] The LAVA Awards are held annually to honor excellence in books relating to the principles of liberty, with the Lysander Spooner Award being the grand prize award.

Spooner's The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was cited in the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the federal district's ban on handguns. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, quotes Spooner as saying the right to bear arms was necessary for those who wanted to take a stand against slavery.[39] It was also cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago the following year.[40]

[my emphases]

You would think I could find something about him in my Library. But I cannot.

"Fashionable"

"The most 'fashionable' health resort" also "Park of Culture and Rest"

"barrage of blistering statistics"

[Inside Russia Today. John Gunther. Harper & Brothers, New York. 1957.]

[1984. George Orwell. 1949.]

 

[From The New York Times via Drudgereport.com]

I call it "stream of consciousness blogging." I'm clearing off my desk. These two crappy old books just happened to be handy.