Albino Squirrel in Tappan Square, Oberlin College

Good camo in a snowstorm. Now? Not so much.

A-Z Munchin' Monday: Two P Foods

Not sure if that title sounds good or not.

Be that as it may, I have two items that I need to list for "Foods Beginning With A 'P'"
The first is an insane passion of mine: peanut butter. I have spent a career willfully carting off peanut butter sandwiches to work with me. Whilst others may enjoy dining out, or bringing something to heat up in the microwave, creating a fragrant aroma throughout the office, I just unwrap that sandwich bag and am happy to bite into the peanut butter sandwich.
I have gravitated to the PBJ variety, with a dash of Welch's grape jelly (yeah, we're talking pretty darn pedestrian tastes here) or, if I am feeling a bit puckish, jam. And, I mean, I'm a happy guy. Toss in an apple and a couple cookies and it's lunch.
Sometimes I don't even go the jelly route. For years, I have enjoyed the simplicity of a peanut butter and butter (or, more likely, margerine) sandwich. My wife points out that this combination is not optimal for cardiac health, so it's not like I bust out the PB-B every day. But once in a while, I go this route.
"Crunchy or creamy?", you ask. I do not have a favorite, and I am happy to mix it up a bit. I don't mind some of those "low fat", "low sodium" varieties, if it is still major label. Where I have not warmed up to the product is the case where you get the aging hippie in the whole food store to actually mash up real peanuts for you and stick the resulting paste in a container. Sorry; too bland. Needs some artificial chemicals or something. I need unhealthy processing, I fear. Perhaps some day when the cardiologist looks me in the eye and says "Change your ways or prepare to meet thy maker", or however they put it, most likely using a lot of large words they learned in med school, I will force myself to purchase this concoction.

OK, my second P entry is an historical cookie called the Penguin Cookie. I am not aware that you can purchase these in the 21st century. My buddy next door used to get them when I was growing up, or, rather, his mother did. They were a fairly regular staple over there, and it was always a good thing when the Penguins were offered, sometimes along with a Great Shake (refer to my "G" post).
Penguin Cookies were sorta like the valuable prize of a car at the end of "Wheel of Fortune", when we used to play a little game over next door entitled 'You Have to Eat it". We would take my friend's mom's Lazy Susan in a cabinet and give it a spin, sticking out our finger in a fixed position. When the Lazy Susan came to rest, we had to eat a sampling of whatever we found at the tip of our pointing, extended index finger. The item could be corn starch, or flour, or sugar; you get the picture. Maybe there were some spices in there; I either do not recall or have blocked out some horrible childhood memories. But the best prize on the Susan by far was a Penguin Cookie. Thus it eaqrns a place in what is becoming my Alphabetical Food Hall of Fame.

Find out what P Foods others find notable at Jen's blog...

A-Z Munchin' Monday: The "O" Foods

I have to admit off the bat that no food or drink starting with the letter O leapt out at me as being fundamental to the core of my very being, as much as, say, hamburger, or even graham crackers. So instead of hitting one much-loved item hard, I am going to survey several items and give them only brief mention.
We begin with olive oil. We have switched at our house, and use this stuff a lot in place of other oils, such as your vegetable, canola, 10-W-30, etc. I like those Italian restaurants where you can dip your bread into a pool of the oil. It is a nice touch, and I am led to believe that it is relatively good for you.
Second, I have to ask: What is the deal with okra? This slimy stuff looks like someone went a long way to say "yeah, it's edible; it should be a basic vegetable". Well, no, it shouldn't. It is bizarre. As I noted above, it has this slimy feel to it, and if you really study it on your plate, you can accurately make it out to be some alien pod that, left unchecked, could grow into some forboding creature that could quite possibly take over the earth and make our people slaves to do its bidding for centuries. No thanks.
I love a good orange. When the juiciness and sweetness converge, an orange is heavenly. I despise those dried out ones, and a bitter orange is not a good experience whatsoever. But when all the features are positive, it's good eating.
I prefer to slice my orange into quarters and peel off the skin. Others just peel and eat the whole thing, pulling off sections as they go. Some people even get their kicks out of jamming a straw into the orange and squishing the juice out of the poor thing. Whatever your method, I am pro-orange.
Like the orange, an onion can be a very good thing if it is "just right". I am not big on the strong ones that send people away, teary-eyed and gasping for breath. I like my onions fairly, let's say, weak flavored. But an onion can add some flair to that burger or brats or whatever, so I give the thing my props. My sister once grew an onion in the back yard. The onion went higher and higher until the whole plant structure just kind of fell over one day. What was that all about?

I am a seafood fan: I love those "boiled captain's platter" type meals where they give you all kinds of stuff. Among them can be oysters. I am not big into the whole oyster/clam/mollusk/"mussels alive-alive-o" thing. Speaking of alive, the legend has it that my Uncle John the biologist once took a stethoscope to a live oyster bar and let my mom, or his wife, or someone, hear the little oyster's heartbeat. Suffice it to say, Mom (or whoever) did not partake of the live oysters. I may have this story totally wrong, but it went something like that. If you knew Uncle John, it is totally within the realm of possibility.

"redneck calamari"

And I know that calamari is squid and not octopus, so it really should not be mentioned here, but I found this picture entitled "redneck calamari" that I thought was fairly humorous. They were clearly carving the wieners into octos and not squid.
I cannot conclude a survey of "O" foods without a shout out to oatmeal. It is about as exciting as the color change you observe when the paint is finally dry, but it is a mainstay and a resolute friend on those cold winter nights when you believe it would help to consume something that is believed to "stick to your ribs". When in fact, food that literally sticks to your ribs would be quite damaging to your health.

"opa!"

And finally, there is ouzo. I recall drinking one or two of these beverages in a Greek restaurant in Chicago many years ago with a number of fellow workers from several states. Potent beverage, as I recall. And the fact that I recall anything speaks well for me, I think. I know you are supposed to yell "opa!!!!" a lot when consuming the stuff. I found this definition for "opa!!!": "a word that Greek people use for no apparent reason at all. ... "Yeehaw!" " Seems like the appropriate word for Greek rednecks to holler while downing some ouzo and redneck calamari.

And speaking of the letter "O", the new picture up top there is of the Ohio River from a trip I took this past week to do some work down in steel/coal/God's country. The State of Ohio is on the left; West Virginia is on the right.

A-Z Munchin' Monday: NUTS TO YOU!

This week, for our Monday Food Focus, we're going to celebrate all things nutty. Consider the lowly nut. We call crazy people "nuts". Not much respect for the actual nut, is it?

I'm a pretty big fan of nuts. We usually have a couple varieties around, and I am likely to toss 'em in a jar or can with some raisins, and mix them up as a snack.

We had some pistachios around a couple weeks ago and you could just hear the clatter from the pistachio shells hitting the wastebasket (or in some unfortunate cases, the floor). And isn't it fun to go out to one of them country road house steak joints that stick a big ol' bucket o'goobers out there for you to shuck and eat, and just toss the shells all over the floor? is that living or what?

One memorable nut experience we had was gathering those big ol' sloppy walnuts you can find under some apathetic neighbor's tree, bringing them home to our apartment (this was some time ago), setting them out strategically in the driveway, and running the Vega (I said this was some time ago) back and forth over them until they were adequately "shelled" (or is it "de-shelled"? or just plain "road killed"?)

I have a sweet tooth for those peanuts you can buy that are toffee coated, or honey roasted. But I also like them plain with the aforementioned raisins. Cashews, pecans, almonds - pretty much all good.

I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite, largely improvised movies, "Best in Show", about a dog show actually, but there was this character taking his dog to the show, who took great pride in his knowledge of nuts. As he explained to the cameraman:
"I used to be able to name every nut that there was. And it used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, "Harlan Pepper, if you don't stop naming nuts," and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that's what put it in my mind at that point. So she would hear me in the other room, and she'd just start yelling. I'd say, "Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew nut. Macadamia nut." That was the one that would send her into going crazy. She'd say, "Would you stop naming nuts!" And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, he couldn't talk, but he'd go "rrrawr rrawr" and that sounded like Macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all natural white pistachio nut."

Salivate over more foods starting with N by visiting Jen's blog, "Unglazed".

A-Z Munchin' Monday M - Way Early

I'm gonna likely be off-grid for a while, so here is my M post well in advance of Monday.
My M entry is: Moo goo gai pan. This mild chicken dish was my initiation to CHinese Food, The family used to travel down into downtown Baltimore to Jimmy Wu's (long since gone) for a Chinese meal. I got to really enjoy the Moo Goo with its creamy sauce and chicken and vegetables like bamboo shoots and those crunchy discs that I am having a total mental relapse over here. Um...water chestnuts. So says my wife who knows these things. And a piping hot bowl of egg drop soup.

Eventually I adopted a preference for more spicy Hunan or Szechuan treats. Just this week I had "two delicacies" for lunch one day - chicken and shrimp. It was with people from work. For some reason we didn't play the little racy game we usually play with the fortune cookies. Too bad - I had a funny one.

Perhaps the best Chinese meal I ever had was at a place called House of Hunan wight on Michigan Ave. in Chicago. I believe it was "empress chicken". Something like that. Man, it was good! The guys I was with had something that made their foreheads sweat profusely. They loved it! The empress chicken was not that extreme.

I like to get the chopsticks for a Chinese meal. I am not super excellent at manipulating the sticks, but I get by, and it slows me down, which is a good thing, as Linda will tell you I eat too quickly. I knew a guy once who got out a knife and whittled points on his chopsticks so he could stab at the food. Probably more effective.

Still like a big dish of Chinese food. I could go for one right now. And then again two hours from now, so they say.

A-Z Munchin' Monday: The obvious L

Well, for me, there is one obvious food that begins with an L, and that food looks like this:
We are talking lasagna here. As those who have been following this series will recall, I have had a life-long love affair with the hamburger. Sooner or later, somewhere in my youth, I discovered that this chopped sirloin or what have you could be combined with other ingredients and made into other wonderful dishes, especially involving cheese, tomato, and pasta. This was proven to me initially be my mother's spaghetti, and also by my grandmother's cheesy spaghetti in a bowl.

I married a woman who would occasionally produce lasagna and this was a good thing. She also would take ground beef and fashion it into a spicy but wondrous Indian dish called kema (?) curry, but that does not begin with an L, so we shall leave it there. Should've covered it last week.

Went to a wedding in Baltimore this year, and the mother of the bride made lasagna for everyone at the reception. This was an insane quantity of the real deal (she's quite Italian); in fact I've heard her lasagna has since won some city-wide, radio sponsored lasagna contest, so I've had some good lasagna this year.

I have rarely, if ever, had bad lasagna; often it is authentically made with sausage rather than just beef, but it's (almost) all good. There's even meatless lasagna out there that is delicious.

- - - - - - - - - -

Because of a recent event we attended, I have to give an A-Z shout out to LEBANESE food. We were at a luncheon featuring a delegation of young entrepreneurs from Lebanon, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. The food was mainly Lebanese; they started things with some pita bread and plunked down huge bowls of hummus that looked like this:
Main course was chicken and fish with various spices that I do not recall. Olives, figs, dates, dried fruit on kabob sticks. A great feast, and the program was also memorable. The variety of food traditions and indigenous dishes makes this an interesting planet, indeed!

Freezing Motion; Hovering Tennis Ball

A-Z Munchin' Monday: The Kids Kan Cook!

Stretching it a bit to fit this week's letter, but I just didn't have that much to say about ketchup, and I was coming up short. So I am talking about my kids and, in this case, our son William, who hasn't eaten any meat since lent began, and who solved the problem of what to serve on Saturday when we all got together this weekend by cooking up a big ol' eggplant dish that, as it turns out, was delicious.

I have no idea what the amounts of each ingredient were, but I know he served it up with rice and included the following wonderful ingredients: eggplants, sliced flat and wrapped around feta cheese; cilantro leaves, olives, diced tomato and sauce. I am probably missing something, although it was fairly simple. But deelish. I knew our daughter knew her way around a kitchen, but who knew the lad would become such a chef?

Today he got back into the meat thing and we had a ham and potato casserole prepared by our "house chef". Also great eatin'.

I hope your Easter weekend has been a good one. Our Easter began with a sunrise service presented by the youth of our church, out at the reservoir, carefully located with the water to the east. The service was simple but profound, with the speakers competing with the ducks and geese and other assorted fowl. Now the kids have gone back home and the nest is again an empty one, aside from the dog, who is fairly well winded from a weekend with the "grand dogs".

A-Z Munchin' Monday: JJJJJJ

This week we're covering foods that start with the letter J. If I were to cover a food that I have come to enjoy in recent years, I would probably home in on Jambalaya. Good stuff when done right, and I have especially enjoyed it at a restaurant in downtown Cleveland called Fat Fish Blue. More than once I have enjoyed a big hot bowl of this ragin' Cajun collection of tasty stuff.

-----

But my emphasis has been on foods that bring back the nostalgia for days long gone by, and so for my J food I select: JELLO MOLDS. Not just Jello, mind you, but those rings of jello-ey goodness with other stuff embedded in them, often served in lieu of a salad, frequently garnished with some lettuce or other such rabbit food underneath.
Is it just me, or were Jello molds all the rage back in the 60's or so? It seems to my now-not-so-reliable memory that, back then, Mom would trot out a Jello mold on a pretty routine basis. Sometimes it would be green (lime?) Jello with mandarin oranges embedded in it. Or maybe orange Jello with carrot strips and raisins. or some sort of thing with cream cheese on the top. And then what, exactly, is aspic? Seems like aspic played a role back in the day, but I cannot put my finger on that.

It's been a long time since I've seen a Jello mold served up. What's happened to this American icon of eatin'?

A-Z Munchin' Monday - I

ICED TEA

Well, I thought long and hard about singing the praises of ice cream, which has played a large role in my life (and my waist measurement, I suspect). But I thought I'd travel the liquid refreshment path and discuss iced tea.

There are differing schools of thought about iced tea. Some (including my family while I was growing up) feel that iced tea is not something to be sweetened with sugar or other sickening substances. Their tea tastes like - well, like tea. Like leaves that are ground up and suspended in water. And perhaps a touch of mint. This beverage is passable as a quencher of thirst, and not bad at all when it's sunny and ninety degrees.

Then there's the "sweet tea" school. This would include our neighbor and my buddy Tom's mom, who hailed from North Carolina, which was obvious as soon as she spoke. It is probably a rule for southerners to empty a five pound sack of sugar into every pitcher of tea they make. It's a wonder the liquid absorbs all that sugar.

Anyhow, then, Tom's mom would toss in some fruit particles (like hunks of lemon or other citrus fruit). of course, being a kid at the time, I loved this version of iced tea and wondered why it was not the universal iced tea offered everywhere, including at home. The I'd consume five glasses and proceed to bounce off the walls for a couple hours.

Later in life, when we were off on our three-week National Lampoon Station Wagon Tour of the West in 1998, I became addicted to raspberry iced tea. In my simple way of accounting for my actions, I felt that this concoction had to be better for me, and more of a thirst quencher when out in, say, Canyonlands in the desert of southern Utah, than a Diet Coke or the like, which is full of sodium after all. I was no doubt fooling myself. Raspberry iced tea is probably no better, health-wise or quench-wise, than a Diet Coke in such a setting. But my appreciation of a raspberry iced tea has lasted to this day, and I seem to order one up pretty often when dining out. Good stuff.

When Auggie Visits, It's Tug-o'-War Time!!!

Nature's Pattern Continues

It took a little searching, but we found them on a walk tonight - the turkey vultures have indeed returned to the 'hood. They have just chosen a stand of pines a couple blocks south of the past two years' venue. As we walked, they were flying in to roost, settling and re-settling in the pines, after a day of whatever vultures do - I picture them feasting on dead things. I guess it's a living.

This walk was the start of a mellow-ish weekend. Followed the walk up with a sit-down on the deck with the dog. This was a thing I would do with our previous animal - pass knowing glances as we surveyed the estate for signs of life and movement. This dog was not quite as content as his predecessor, issuing occasional little whines, but he eventually settled down and patiently stared out at the lawn.
- - - - -
Tomorrow will not be a fun day. Linda's itinerary includes two funerals; mine the latter one. The first is an acquaintance's mother whom we had never met. The second is a member of our church named Al, who was 84, served in the War, and had a career teaching and administering schools. We only knew the retired Al, but we saw him a lot around town, pedaling his bicycle, decked out in hunter's orange. On the Fourth we'd see him piloting his Model T in the parade. It was immaculate.

Most memorably, we were out at the reservoir one day when Al drove up in his pickup, dislodged a kayak, put it in at the boat launch, and paddled one lap around the perimeter of the reservoir. Pulled it back out, loaded it in , and drove off after exchanging some pleasantries.

I can't explain it, exactly, but I have deep admiration for people like Al who just seem to follow their own guidance system, even (especially!) at a ripe old age.

I'd like to think Al is biking around some gold-paved street right now. Probably doesn't need the hunter's orange.

School Play

Just when the news is getting you down about the fate of our Nation and the state of its Youth, something like this comes along. The local high school put on their annual musical this past weekend, and we bought some tickets to check it out. Not too long ago, we had a dog in this fight; our son had a few memorable roles and bits in the annual shows as he made his way through high school; our daughter was in a play as well. Now it's down to sibs of our kids' friends, and a number of kids from church (including the male lead).

The thing is, these kids work like crazy (as do more than a few adults) to put on as professional a show as possible. What they pull off is remarkable. Of course, the cost is basically giving up all their free time for weeks and weeks to approach perfection. But it is worth it. As the male lead said afterwards, "Some schools have champion football or basketball teams. We have musicals!"

This year it was The Music Man, a good choice, with memorable tunes, and more than enough roles for kids of all ages, male and female, to get their chance to shine.

If you recall, the play starts out with a train scene that relies on the speedier, then slower, rhythm of the rails for the eight or so "salesmen" to deliver their lines, almost rap style. and these guys, dressed in their cheesy plaid salesman suits, pulled it off, tightly intertwining their lines and pulling off the footwork.

These kids were good - disbelief was suspended for a couple hours and I got caught up in the goings-on in River City. The tunes are still replaying in my head. And best of all, here was a wonderful example of a large number of teens (and a handful of younger 'uns to fill out the cast) giving up their time for a couple months to produce something excellent, even if it is fleeting (the set was no doubt being struck before we left that last performance); the ultimate in teamwork. These kids could teach a lot of adults about how working together can produce wondrous things. Bravo!

Munchin' Monday: A couple H's

It's time again for our A-Z review of the world of food, from anchovies to zucchini. This week is brought to you by the letter "H". And the whole deal is the brainchild of Jen over at Unglazed.
My lifetime food achievement award for "H" goes to the HAMBURGER. What is more American, more fast foody, and more just plain chopped bovine goodness that a 'burger? Back when i was a kid, and my sister will back me up on this, whenever we stopped in a restaurant, whether a McDonalds or a fancy tablecloth place, I'd order me up a hamburger, or in the more swank places, chopped sirloin. Burgers were simply a life-sustaining item for me.

The best burger I ever ate (that I can recall; perhaps my memory is embellishing this thing) was in a littel dive somewhere on a back road in Ocean City, Maryland. I was a high school kid at some off-season retreat, and not many places were open. But this burger and sandwich joint was, and man, was that thing juicy and tasty and loaded with the tomato and lettuce and ketchum and onion and who knows what else...

Of course, with age comes the wisdom (and cholestorol level) to teach one that moderation is a good thing. So now when I find myself in a restaurant, I do not immediately default to the chopped beef section of the menu. But every once in a while, oooh boy, it's great to sink one's teeth into the beefy goodness. And with grilling season around the corner....
On to H number two. A decade or more ago, I was on a business trip to Albuquerque, and my wife Linda came along. Every morning, I had breakfast with her before I had to go off to whatever it was that I had to do, in a little restaurant next to the hotel called Mama somebody's (I forget the details). Every morning, I ordered the Huevos Rancheros. For some reason, that combination of eggs on a tortilla, with beans, and some salsa (I was big on salsa verde, having never seen green salsa back East), really hit the spot with me.

Shortly after, we were visiting with a group of Linda's college friends who get together monthly or so, and one of the group, Chris, took it upon himself to bring the necessary ingredients and cook up some mighty fine Sunday Morning Huevos. This has become tradition for perhaps a decade or more now, and I look forward to those huevos to this day.

So them's my H's. You can view other people's choices by traveling over to the aforementioned Jen's blog.

Muncin' Mondays: some Groovy Grub

My odd walk down Munchable Memory Lane continues with a couple foods that begin with G. First up is the plain old graham cracker. Not too exciting for most people, admittedly. But when I was young I decided they made a great breakfast cereal. I would take, I think, three graham crackers (maybe four; I'm not sure). Break them along the factory-produced lines into four pieces per cracker. Distribute the pieces in a cereal bowl and add milk. Then eat the things as quickly as possible because, in about 45 seconds, they would be reduced to mush in the milk. And I liked them somewhat crisp.
I had a few friends over once to beta test this concoction. It may have gone well, but as I remember it, I stepped it up and offered the grahams drenched in grape juice. No takers. And, as I recall it, the milk-soaked ones were not too big a hit. Anyhow, someone else came up with other graham-based cereal products that earned them millions.
The other G-Food of my youth was a product that pretty much came and went: Great Shakes. A box full of these finny triangular shaped containers full of a powdery substance to which we added milk and shook vigorously in a specially provided container. There was a little jingle for the product that went something like "Anyone can have a soda fountain now with Great Shakes, new Great Shakes.." As I recall they were pretty good once the powder was shaken enough to dissolve. The result was pretty thick. I believe someone in the Great Shakes ad, with a ridiculous British Invasion Accent, proclaimed the product "so thick it stands up to a straw". Or am I dreaming this stuff? Anyone else remember this confection?