And I didn't have to get married to get it

My mother has been going on and on about what she was planning to get me for Christmas for months now. I had my suspicions about it, that was probably some kind of kitchen gear, because she brought it up in every conversation about recipes. But I didn't really want to think too hard about it, because she was having so much fun and I didn't want to wreck it. And then there was all this drama about how on earth she was going to mail this item to me, how to get it to the post office.

She has a history of mailing bizarre things, and I've had to go to the post office before to pick up cardboard boxes full of pickle-flavored packing peanuts and broken glass. And some very large rocks that she thought I would enjoy using as bookends. Last time it happened, the post office manager called me to come and get a package that had been damaged, and did I know anyone at [my mother's address], and I said yeah that was my mom and how I hoped she hadn't sent pickles again. And she said: "Pickles! That's it! I was about to call the HazMat team to clean it up, but it smelled so familiar; I thought I'd check with you before I shut the place down, see if you were expecting a package."

It was a serious bummer, as her pickles are about the best anywhere.

So it makes me nervous when she talks about mailing things.

Apparently she'd been fretting about this difficulty to everyone who would listen. Someone suggested that she just have the store ship it to me, but she didn't want to pay the shipping charge. I suggested a gift certificate, but she said I'd probably just spend it on laundry detergent and bath towels or something, and she really really wanted me to have this item. I guess her neighbor finally got tired of hearing her fret, and took her to the library and helped her purchase it online. Free shipping & everything! Mom was stunned by the simplicity and elegance of this transaction.

"Have you ever bought anything over the internet before?" she asked me. "It's really easy."

But anyway, she went ahead and mailed it early, and told me to open it right away because she wanted me to have it in plenty of time for my holiday baking needs. It's a shiny black and chrome KitchenAid (r) mixer.

I could not be more thrilled. I've been wanting one for years, but it's one of those things that I just couldn't come up with a good reason to go buy it. Let alone come up with the big bucks they cost. I had sort of resigned myself to the idea that my decision to remain unmarried would mean that I would never ever get one.

Plus, if I get bored with the shiny blackness of it, I can get decals to decorate it, according to Biker News Online. Behold:


You can buy the decals on eBay. Right over the internet. It's that easy.

That's not a picture of my new mixer. That picture is from Biker News Online.

How not to have a relaxing afternoon

I hope youall had a pleasant holiday. I certainly did, except for the part about scorching the potato kale dish, same as I did last year. It's a tradition now, I guess. Except next year I am not going to cook it in the pressure cooker. Nor even on the stovetop at all. I'm going to put it in a casserole dish and bake it, even though it takes much longer, and you never get the perfect texture, the way you do with the pressure cooker.

I was able to salvage it, both last year and yesterday, by pouring it all into a soup pot and cooking it for a long time. Although last year it was way worse, and I had to add more kale and more potatoes. It's a total mess, and you leave behind the crust of scorched stuff and spend the next two weeks soaking and slowly scrubbing out your pressure cooker, bit by stubborn bit.

It's weird, though, because I've made this dish, or something very much like it, at least three or four times since last year's debacle, and it's worked just fine. But I think my pressure cooker can sense fear or something, because I was very nervous and watched the cooker and listened and lifted it up a bit to make sure it was still sloshing around in there. And I had spilled something on the burner that smelled burnt, so I was unsure about whether I was smelling that or the contents of the pan. Plus of course I was in a hurry to get done cooking, walk the dog, get dressed, and go to my friend's house so I could relax and be all festive.

It was almost a relief when I finally realized it was in fact scorched and I had to release the pressure and open the thing RIGHT AWAY. The kitchen still stinks, and the pan has started its long soak.

The original recipe, from "Cooking Under Pressure" by Lorna J. Sass (out of print, alas), is more or less as follows:

Kale And Potatoes

• 1 lb. kale
• 1-1/2 lbs. potatoes
• 3 Tbsp butter or oil
• 1 medium leek (1 cup)
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 large onion
• 4 scallions
• 3/4 cup water
• salt
• fresh parsely (optional)
  

Melt butter, then saute leeks, garlic, onions, and scallions. Add water. Alternate layers of kale, potatoes, kale, potatoes. Cook under high pressure for 5 minutes. Add fresh parsley before serving.

She does recommend using a heat diffuser to prevent a crust from forming on the bottom. Which I guess I'd forgotten about. I can't find mine anywhere. Seems like they're more useful on gas stoves anyway, if I remember correctly.

But I've been making this stuff, without incident, for years, without a heat diffuser. I've never had a problem with scorching it before. It's so yummy, and a great dish to serve to people who aren't quite sure what kale is. It's almost always popular -- even my dad liked it and he hates any green cooked vegetables at all. And my friends liked it so much last year (even partly scorched) that they specifically asked me to make it again this year.

Over the years, I've changed the recipe a bit. For one thing, I got a bigger pressure cooker than I used to have, and a few years ago I started eating meat again (after 20 years as a vegetarian). I had no idea bacon was so yummy. I hated it when I was a kid.

I keep chopped up bacon in the freezer to use when I need a little bit of fat to cook kale or spinach or collards in. Just grab a handful, toss them in the pan, and you're good to go.

I don't know why bacon always has one end that's practically all fat. And the way most of it is packaged and displayed, you can't see it when you're selecting which package of bacon to buy -- even the really thick cut, organic, nitrite-free kind of bacon seems to have this feature. It's like with bags of onions & potatoes, how there's on rotten one in every single bag. It's as if there's someone at the packing plant whose job it is to put one cruddy looking item in each 5 lb. bag.

But it grosses me out, that super-fatty end of the slab of bacon slices, so I cut about a third off & chop it up & put it in a freezer bag. Also, the skillet I usually cook bacon in is pretty small, and the shorter pieces fit in it better. Yeah, I could buy a larger skillet, I know. But this suits me just fine.

So here is my latest version of the recipe:

• 2-3 slices bacon, cut into bits (or 3-4 Tbsp olive oil)
• 1 large sweet onion, diced
• 2 leeks, finely chopped
• 2 shallots, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2-3 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water
• 2 bunches kale, thick parts of stems removed, and chopped up
• 3-4 lbs. little red potatoes, halved and cut into fairly thin slices
• 1 lb andouille sausage, cooked & sliced (optional)
  

Stir in the following before serving, to taste, if desired:

• splash of cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar
• chopped scallions
• fresh dill
• tamari or salt to taste
• Texas Pete (r) hot sauce, which is more or less like Tabasco Sauce. But any kind of hot sauce is good, if you like that kind of thing.
  

Cook the bacon over fairly low heat until just before it starts getting crispy. Turn heat up slightly and add the onions. When they are about half done, add the leeks; then when alla that's almost done, add the shallots and garlic. Add the broth or water, then layer the kale and potatoes over it. I usually cook it in the pressure cooker for 6-7 minutes. Lower the pressure, open the pot, drain excess liquid, if any, and add the andouille sausage, if you are using it; the sausage doesn't do so well under high pressure. Or you can cook it all, including the sausage, in a very large saucepan or smallish soup pot. Takes an hour or so; don't use too high a heat or it will scorch. Stir it once in a while. You can also pile it all into a casserole (use only 1 to 2 cups broth or water) and bake it at 350 to 375 (F) for 45-60 minutes or so.

In fact, I highly recommend that you do NOT use the pressure cooker. I've only ever scorched it twice, but there is nothing worse than the stink of burnt onions & garlic.

The texture of the potatoes should be sort of mushy; you can leave the extra liquid in, or even add more broth than that & call it soup if you are in the mood for soup. Or it can be more in the chunky mashed potato consistency range.

Thank you

That is all: thanks. To everybody. For everything.

Belated holiday cheer

I had a party this year for the December solstice. I didn't want to get a tree, so I decorated the tripod that has been sitting in the corner of my dining room since I moved into the new house:



I gotta say I think it looks pretty festive. Click on the picture to see how it looks in the dark. I don't know how I'll be able to stand taking it down. I might just have to leave it up all year.

All I did was buy two strands of tinsel from the dollar store, borrow a string of red lights from Julie (thanks!) and place the Blessed Virgin Mary shrine my sister the mailman brought back from a trip to Mexico (here's a close-up of the shrine). So if you're looking next year for ways to avoid getting a tree, go out now and buy some tinsel and lights while they're half off, and then if you can find them next year, just decorate something that would otherwise be in the way. Easy, cheap, and excellent laughs.

In which the universe demands latkes

I'm having a party next week to celebrate the December Solstice, and I'm a little stressed out about it. I'm a bit of a recluse, especially lately, but I would like my friends to meet my new love interest. And I like parties OK.

Normally the food I serve at a party is the least of my worries. I'm a pretty good cook, and I used to do it for a living, so cooking for a crowd is not that big a deal. But I'm out of practice. I don't want any last-minute failures or surprises, so I've been testing recipes, even the easy ones. Well, maybe not the sour cream-plus-french-onion-soup-mix dip recipe; that one's pretty much idiot-proof, as long as you mix it up ahead of time so that the soup mix dissolves properly in the sour cream. And make a lot. I don't know why everyone loves that stuff, but they do.

So I was cruising through the fridge to see what I had on hand and found, rather bizarrely, that I have nearly ten pounds of potatoes. Why? I don't know. I live alone. I must have purchased them. OK. Potatoes. Potato salad? Nah, I don't really like potato salad all that much, and there's always so much left over. Yuck. Latkes? No way. Total pain in the ass. Huge mess, smell of frying all over the house, and I'll be standing in the kitchen all night instead of actually enjoying my guests. Or, more to the point, instead of wandering about fretting about all the other details and making sure everyone has enough to drink and the dog doesn't eat the misteltoe and stuff.

So I'm thinking that there's this appetizer at this one restaurant I go to occasionally that's sort of similar to latkes only it's just grated potatoes, made into a loose, lacy (yes, fried) croquette-type thing topped with sour cream & caviar. Sort of like a latke, but simpler. And you could grate the potatoes in a food processor instead of by hand. Could I make these in the oven? Are they any good if they're sort of cold from sitting around on the table waiting for people to pick one up? Could I make them ahead of time and heat them up at the last minute?

No, no, and no. Cooked in the oven they totally fell apart; it was like a pile of teeny tiny french fries. Fried on the stove and left to cool off a while they tasted like those canned shoestring potatoes. Reheating them did not help; it made them taste like warmed-up canned shoestring potatoes, and all the sour cream in the world wouldn't have helped.

OK, so I'll mix in a little bit of egg and milk, embed them in sort of a matrix to hold them together. Better, but they need a little something extra, so I grated an onion and that was a little better. Some salt & pepper helped too. And a few snipped chives. I'd given up on the oven idea by then, so I was frying them in a mixture of half butter and half mild-tasting olive oil. The egg & milk mixture was a little too runny, so I added some matzoh meal and let it stand for a while.

The result? Delicious. Perfect vehicle for sour cream and chopped kalamata olives. I didn't happen to have caviar on hand, but I think I might like olives better anyway. I let some stand until they were cool and they were still yummy and crisp around the edges. So far, so good. Worth the pain in the ass factor, in my opinion.

But can they be reheated? Julie, bless her heart, said that she would be willing to stand outside with an electric frying pan and fry them up during the party if they can't. But I'd like for her to enjoy the party too, so I put half of them in the freezer and half in the fridge, and then I called my mother, told her what I'd done, and asked did she think I could reheat them. She's a caterer, after all, and if something can be done ahead of time she'll know how to do it right.

"No," she said. And then, "Well, maybe." She suggested spreading them out on a cookie sheet and putting them in a warm oven (maybe 250°F or so) for a pretty long time, like 45 minutes, but turning the heat up briefly at the end. And flip them every ten minutes or so. And make sure that your oven is heating evenly and one end of the pan isn't getting overcooked or burnt. Turn the cookie sheet around a couple times just in case.

So I got up the next morning and did as she said, although I did it in the toaster oven rather than the big oven because there were only like nine of them and they were tiny, a little bigger than bite-sized. It worked! Although I did have to sort of blot a little of the excess oil off of them with a paper towel. And after work I tried it with the ones that I'd frozen. That worked even better! Except I left them in a little too long and failed to turn the baking sheet and while the crispyness factor improved, the ones on the end were a bit overdone. But they were still pretty yummy, even when they'd cooled off.

And I'd eaten the last of the olives and there was no sour cream, so I put a bit of yogurt and some horseradish on one, and that was really good. Also some chow-chow, which is good on pretty much everything.

I was talking last night to my sister the mailman while they were in the oven and asked for her opinion on reheating them and we got into a long discussion about the JoJo Potatoes from Ted Cook's 19th Hole Barbecue and how to reheat those, should you have any left over. A bout of homesickness for Minneapolis ensued, but then she that suggested a sheet of parchment on the cookie sheet might help with the oiliness, and/or to layer them with paper towels when putting them in the fridge. Both good ideas, and I'm going to test them tonight. Also, I'm going to try undercooking them slightly, to see if that helps. And I'm going to add some grated apples too, because there's a five-pound bag of apples in the fridge.

I said I wasn't going to make latkes, but you know what? These are really just plain old latkes. Happy Hanukkah, yall.

Santa's Forces v. The Dreidel of Doom

Over at Fafblog, our correspondent Fafnir checks in with news from the long, jolly slog that is the War on Christmas:

"I hear they got Rudolph today," says me.

"No!" says Giblets. "Not Rudolph! With his unmatched dogfighting skills and his nose so bright he was invincible!"

"It's true," says me. "Zombie Judah Maccabee shot im down over the Island of Misfit Toys with his dreidel of doom."

"Damn you Hannukah!" says Giblets. "Will your eight days of madness never end!"

Me, I'll be back here at home decorating my Secularmas tree. Whoville really did change everything. Go read the rest.

PZ Myers is brilliant

The good professor offers an almost entirely plausible theory, which is his, regarding a possible link between reindeer, daylight deficiency, and late-December artifact delivery.

If his hypothesis and its associated predictions can be corroborated by means of the experimental tests he proposes, it would be a great big poke in the eye (or a "ha-ha-nanny-boo," if you prefer) to those heathen unbelievers who deny the existence of a North Pole-based artifact production facility.

Dr. Myers' theory posits the existence of an entity or intelligence, a so-called "Arctic Artificer" who exploits the midwinter disruption in the circadian activity cycles of polar animals -- in this case reindeer -- to facilitate a worldwide artifact distribution program that peaks in late December.

Or something. Go to Pharyngula to read more about science and other good stuff.