Silly Question

One of my favorite foods ever is deviled eggs.  Like a lot of things I've discovered late in life, I like my deviled eggs pretty plain -- boiled egg, mayonnaise, a dab of mustard for tang, dill weed, salt, pepper.  I don't much care for minced onion or pickle relish added to my deviled eggs.  I've not tried caviar, salmon, crab, or tiny shrimps in them, but I somehow think I wouldn't like that either.

I've noticed a current trend in what people are currently called "upscale" urban dining.  Deviled eggs are showing up on appetizer menus around our city. Haute cuisine? You've got to be kidding -- except the price for these little jewels of canary opalescence is astronomical. 

Yesterday at lunch I could have gotten three halves (not whole eggs -- halves) for $5.75.  Granted they were listed as "deviled egg trio -- traditional, creole, and smoked salmon" -- but still -- an egg and a half for nearly $6 with tax?

The truth is I hungered for them.  I wanted a deviled egg trio so badly, yet with the other menu items at a premium price I just couldn't bring myself to order them.  You can't feel full on only 1.5 eggs while everyone else is chowing down on gumbo and mac and cheese. 

I just finished fixing Hubby some fresh tuna salad for his lunch today -- and instead of boiling only four eggs for him (added to a large can of tuna plus chopped onion and celery, a little relish, a dab of mayo and a heap of spices) I also boiled two for myself.  After mashing them and doctoring them with the required simple ingredients, I had maybe spent fifty cents max?  They taste marvelous!   Thems the real eats, folks.  Yum. 

Sister's Birthday

We celebrated on September 28 -- her actual birthday -- while we were visiting the Chesapeake Bay area.  Hubby and I planned as our gift to Wendy a high tea / luncheon at 3:30 in the afternoon.

We just downloaded the pictures from our camera -- because Hubby has simply been too worn out and sick from the Congestive Heart Failure to figure out the download process (he know how to download but I could never find the pictures once they had been put on the computer).  This afternoon, after we had a really nice morning of dog walking and health spa joining and some minimal Thanksgiving prep (ham baking and freezer clean-out), he was able to access the pictures and put them on my desktop.  So, here is one of the more fun things we did when we traveled to Virginia and Maryland this autumn.

Hubby and his little sister -- we are ready to set out for high tea

The tea was held at Reynold's Tavern in downtown Annapolis -- almost directly across from the naval school.  The tavern was built in 1747 -- 30 years before the Revolutionary War.  In 1935 the plan was to turn the space into a filling station, but instead the citizens of Annapolis decided to save the building and use it as a library.  In 1984, when the library needed bigger space, the tavern was leased to Historic Inns of Annapolis, a private company, who restored it to its original purpose.  The first floor tea rooms are very much like the original rooms of the tavern and upstairs are two suites and a bedroom for rent.  There is a cellar pub in the original kitchen and during the warm(er) weather, a courtyard for al fresco dining. 

Reynolds Tavern, Annapolis, Maryland

Tea Room on 1st floor

Each tea plate and cup was different

Tea has been served -- flowering tea for Wendy and a Hawaiian blend for me -- in the green pot. 

Quiche is the first course

Wendy, Hubby and Me -- we were having an "experience" and a really good time. 

Hubby did not partake of the tea goodies, but instead had a lovely chicken salad sandwich

Wendy after the tea back at the beach house

Big Brother and Little Sister -- we had had a lovely afternoon and now it was back to the beach house for a round of Heaerts. 

Hubby and me

We highly recommend the tea at Reynolds Tavern if you ever are in the area.  It was a lovely experience, cost less than I had imagined (not cheap but not budget busting either) and even Hubby had a nice time.  Plus, the location is right on the bay.  What more could you want? 

Wendy and me -- the beach house is on the right and yes! behind us is the view from the house -- the white pickets on the far right  frame the back porch where we sat every afternoon / evening.  Isn't this one of the loveliest spots on earth?

Eating as a Child

While I'm on the recipe kick, I've been trying to hunt down recipes for food from my childhood. 

My grandmother made (from scratch, of course) the best pies, pot roast, cucumber salad, and bread pudding I've ever tasted.  Her sage turkey stuffing was better than any other part of her delicious holiday meals -- always served on turkey plates with sterling silverware, both tablecloth and napkins that required ironing, and candles on the table.  Even though I have her stuffing recipe, I've never been able to duplicate the taste of any of her dishes.  Maybe it was the love that surrounded her cooking that made the difference. 

Grandmother didn't drive.  Grandfather inherited money during the depression -- plus land and rental property and land in Oklahoma that produced gas wells in the 1950's.  However, he and Granny had strong work ethics and I never realized they were rich. 

Grandfather, Me, and Grandmother in their back yard -- this was about 1950 and Grandpa was still wearing those brown shoes in 1960. 

Grandfather, who never got beyond the 8th grade because he was required to work in the family dairy, was an auditor for the Kansas City terminal (meaning he worked for the train station and his office actually was in Union Station).  He worked every day until he turned 65.  He never drove flashy cars or lived in expensive houses.  He was middle class down to his worn out shoes -- that could always go another round before he had to purchase new ones. 

Still, Grandmother was able to have Wolferman's deliver her groceries three times a week -- and what gourmet treats she ordered over her phone.

Wolferman's was an upscale grocery here in Kansas City - they had a store in downtown KC, one at 59th and Main / Brookside, and one on the Plaza.  In at least two of the stores they also had wonderful restaurants.  The downtown store had a restaurant downstairs and one on the upper level called the Tiffin Room.  Of course, they served their special English muffins, the only thing Wolferman's is known for today since all the stores are gone (and Harry and David's own the muffin franchise).  

When we went shopping downtown, we ate either at Wolferman's or a Emery Byrd Thayer, a local department store.  At Wolferman's, my mother preferred to eat in the basement which was a grill type restaurant.  She would have their hot dog with relish.  I didn't care much for the hot dog -- but that relish was divine!  I always had the hamburger though I don't remember anything special about it, except I didn't get hamburger sandwiches often. 

If Grandmother was feeling especially generous she would treat us to lunch in the Tiffin Room.  This was where the "ladies" of Kansas City lunched.  White table clothes, linen napkins.  Huge chef salads filled with the choicest of hams, cheeses, and greens.  It was always served with Wolferman's Thousand Island dressing and an English muffin with butter and orange marmalade. 

Later you could buy a huge jar of the dressing in the store on the main floor -- and Granny always kept a jar of that dressing in her refrigerator.  It was the only salad dressing ever served in Granny's house (at our house we ate French salad dressing for 39 cents a bottle from the A&P -- and we NEVER, ever got any other kind). 

The Plaza store had a balcony restaurant that looked over the grocery.  I don't remember if the store on Main had a restaurant.  Grandfather and I would have a Christmas date once a year at the Plaza store -- for the chef salad, the English muffin -- and afterwards, he would let me pick out the biggest box of chocolate candy to take home.  How I loved that huge, round box filled to the brim with assorted chocolates. 

This was the Wolferman downtown store -- the first floor was the grocery; in the basement was the grill, and upstairs was the Tiffin Room

This, of course, was the Plaza store in keeping with the Spanish architecture. 

Wolferman's also sold Hermit cookies -- the size of dinner plates.  They were rich and full of raisins and nuts and so, so good.  You could never eat more than two at time.  During the holidays, they also sold salt-rising bread and Granny would order several loaves so we could all have salt-rising toast slathered with real butter for our Christmas breakfasts.  If you've never eaten salt-rising bread, it's an experience when you first smell it.  For many people this is an acquired taste -- and I acquired my love of it early. 

The awful thing I learned about Wolferman's when I was an adult was that it was segregated well into the 1950's -- when I was eating there as a child.  Blacks couldn't eat in the Tiffin Room.  They could go to the basement grill, but NOT upstairs for the elegant lunch.  I was horrified to discover how much I had anticipated and enjoyed a meal where a whole segment of Kansas City was denied service.

Granny also had a milk man, an egg man, and the Manor Bread man.  They came at least bi-weekly, maybe more.  She had a maid once a week for help with the cleaning -- always a black maid.  She had a handyman, Archie, who came to fix things outside the house and sometimes, but rarely, inside.  Archie, too, was black.  She had a carpenter -- but he was white and we called him Mr. Hadley -- where the black help were known by their first names.  

It was a different time.  Sometimes I remember sweet, halcyon days of summer delights.  Then I remember the inequities we forced on people.  But the tastes of those days linger in my memory.  The Hermit cookies, the Thousand Island dressing, the cucumber salad.  I'd love a taste of those things just one more time, even if I wouldn't wish a return to their inequalities. 

In Praise of Meat -- Omaha Steaks to be Precise!

For several years now we have used Omaha Steaks to send food packages to family members out of state. At one time we used Harry and David, then we switched to Honey Baked Ham, but both these have gotten pretty darned expensive over the years. Two years ago I sent ham and turkey precooked roasts to Mother for Thanksgiving / Christmas and this past Christmas we sent a complete ham dinner to Will's brother-in-law in Washington, D.C.

Which meant, of course, that we continuously got food offers from Omaha Steaks for free shipping or sales deals or coupons for 30% off, all of which we ignored. Hubby has gone off beef, except for hamburgers. His new love is pork chops. We could serve that for dinner seven times a week and he wouldn't be tired of it.

I have always thought how nice it would be to have food just delivered to my door and one day when I won the lottery, I thought I might make my dream come true. But a couple of weeks ago, Omaha Steaks sent me an offer I found irresistible. The offer was for a pile of meat under $100. Of course, I had to add in 12 more pork chops, so I could be eating my steak dinners with a clear conscious while Hubby dined on his beloved chops, which did run the total up to over $100 -- but then I thought, free shipping! That will make it okay. Except when I went to check out the shipping was added.

I had spent enough time on-line deciding the menu, so I bit the bullet and placed the order. But I did drop a note to Omaha Steaks that I was disappointed that I hadn't received free shipping -- and in the next e-mail back, they refunded my shipping costs! Now that's service. We just hoped that the meat would be good.

Within the week a huge (but manageable) case of frozen meat arrived at our door - packed neatly in dry ice. We got two different sets of four steaks each (everything is packed separately in their own boxes). We got 16 boneless pork chops. We got four boneless chicken breasts, eight hot dogs, four huge hamburger steaks, two fillet of sole stuffed with shrimp and crab, and eight strange potato au gratin balls. We also got a cookbook explaining the best procedures for cooking (most meat should be thawed, then broiled or baked for around seven minutes per side).

The meat is delicious, the perfect size, and so easy to cook. It stores easily in the freezer and takes up little room because it's so nicely boxed. We are very pleased. This is a buy we will continue to make: good service, good product, good price. And my dream of having food just delivered to my door has been met. Now if they would only pack it away in the freezer -- oh! and come do the dishes after we've eaten.

Burgers at the Bar

Hubby and I don't go to bars. We don't drink and we don't watch sports events in huge crowds. So bars are just loud, crowded spots where people get loaded and act in ways they normally wouldn't.

Consequently, we have missed a dining sport in our immediate neighborhood that is quite a treat. At little more than five minutes from our house is a sports bar that serves some of the best burgers in town and on Monday nights, they lower the price to a rock bottom $3 for any one of the their speciality burgers and fries. The burgers are served just right, with loads of toppings, and cooked to order. The fries are thick and tasty. The 5:30 to 7:30 crowd on Monday nights is family oriented, there to mainly to eat and savor the tasty beers that can be a nice accompaniment to the meal.

Last night we met our concert-going friends at Charlie Hoopers in Brookside, Kansas City, for the $3 burger specials, the diet cokes and ice teas (and one interesting beer served with an orange slice). We filled ourselves up with the bacon, pepper jack, grilled onions topped burgers and discussed the concerts we wanted to attend in the fall. We sat around and talked for an hour after dinner, while the wait staff keep supplying us with pitchers full of iced diet and tea. Then we ordered dessert -- only two on the menu, cherry cheese cake and Snickers' pie. The Snickers' pie was so good it was better than a real Snickers' bar.

We ran into old neighborhood friends we hadn't seen in years. We talked for two hours. And we had a grand old time. We plan on going back often.

The Pleasure of Real Food

Yesterday for Sunday dinner Hubby snacked on thin slices of ham straight from the Sam's package along with some super spicy red pepper cheese logs. Unable to tolerate the cheese, I settled for teaspoons of extra crunchy peanut butter straight from the jar. We were quite the gourmands.

In our defense, we had gone out for breakfast at 10 a.m. Both of us had eaten some scrambled eggs. Hubby added in biscuits, grits, and syrup, while I had some . . . mystery meat of some kind.

Last night I wandered around the house, feeling really unsatisfied, but the only thing I could find to eat was another couple of teaspoons of the peanut butter.

This morning dawned cold and dreary. I had "metal detector" duty at school -- exactly what it sounds like. Like at the airports, I shift through the suspect backpacks and purses after they have been submitted to x-ray scope eyes. It's hateful and tiring and demeaning for everyone . . . and sets the morning off completely wrong (and I'm on the duty until the end of the school year).

Then I was called down to an unexpected IEP meeting where I requested to take on another case. I didn't really want the child -- she's okay but the mother is a pain in the patoot.

Somehow through all of that, I just skipped breakfast. Lunch was a hot dog in a very old onion roll, that microwaving didn't improve. The orange that Hubby had included was all dried out and fit only for the trash bin.

On Monday afternoons I teach one of my students at the After School Program (ASP). He got suspended for the second time because of gang activity and since he is required by law to get SPED services, I'm on call on Monday's to be his tutor. Being cold and rainy, the kid didn't show, of course.

On the way home after sitting around an hour waiting for Hubby, I thought of asking to stop and pick up some fast food -- chicken or maybe fish, but even the effort to decide which made me even more tired and I decided that a bowl of Campbell's soup would be just fine, too.

The house, when I walked in, was full of meat smells. Honestly, I can't think of anything sweeter than simmering meat unless maybe it's chocolate chip cookies. As I was pulling off the bra -- the first thing that always comes off on arrive home -- Hubby was in the kitchen dishing up the sweetest pot roast, potatoes, carrots, onions -- and glory be! GRAVY!!!!! Homemade, thick, redolent, beefy gravy!!!!!

Now with a fully belly and after a warm bath, I'm ready for bed. But I think I'll make one last trip to the kitchen for another couple of those tender carrots bathed in a little cold gravy.

The Joy of a Good Stew

KC is cold and dreary. I'm tired and haven't been eating right because . . . well, I'm too tired when I get home from school to cook and so a dish of oatmeal or a cheese sandwich holds me until the middle of the night when I wake up starving and then eat cookies and milk. I'm going to bed at 7 p.m. and getting up at midnight because I can't hold my head up longer than after the 6 p.m. news and I'm used to only four or five hours of sleep.

Our weather is "fixin' to change" so the kids at school are unruly and unsettled. My classes this semester are a huge challenge for me -- the first time I've really run into a classroom majority of non-English speaking functional students. Combine the two and you get kids who can't read, write, or even speak much English. And they're boys. Boys who can't sit still for 60 minutes, much the 90 minute class periods we have. Every day I'm scrambling to make it through the class. I don't have any grand plan in mind either. I'm just winging it every day, trying to find something these kids can succeed in doing, will actually try to do, and need to learn to do. I have no end goal other than survive the immediate challenge facing me each period. I don't have any lesson plans more than a day ahead. This is really frustrating.

Add to that one of our SPED teachers quit January 4th and has not been replaced. All his caseload had to be distributed among the rest of our SPED staff. I picked up four new students. In looking at their schedules I found that I need to reschedule three of them because the guy who quit hadn't bothered (or cared enough) to make sure these kids had collaborative help in their algebra and science classrooms. I haven't completed the IEP I held last week and I haven't turned in a single IEP since November. We're supposed to submit then 10 days after we hold them. Not 10 working days -- 10 days. I'm now two full months out of compliance.

Then over the weekend I look in the freezer and unearth a huge package of stew meat from Sams, the big box discount store. We'd had it too long and it needed to be used up quickly. We've had it so long I won't even dare mention how long but I was pretty sure it would need to be cooked in the crockpot at least 14 hours to make it tender.

I just couldn't justify throwing out that much stew meat (over $10 of it -- that's a lot of beef chunks!) I finally asked Hubby if he would make us a pot of stew if I thawed the meat and he agreed. So last night I pulled the worn pack of beef from the freezer and by midnight it had mostly unthawed.

When I got today home, exhausted as always, our entire house was redolent of beef stew smells. Knowing I was on the edge of cracking, Hubby had spent the morning combining simple but tasty stew ingredients and seasonings and had elected to cook the whole thing on top of the stove. So the stew was ready for dishing. A small loaf of sour dough bread, buttered and heated in the oven, and huge mugs of cocoa completed the best meal I've had in ages.

Stomach comfortably filled and then a long soak in a hot tub relaxed me enough to not worry about the IEP's that the district head is coming in person to collect tomorrow (I've got a couple of them ready -- not all but a enough to hold off the angry hordes). It's amazing that a few tender carrots, potatoes, onions, and stew chunks can cause my lesson plan and weather worries to also abate. And tomorrow is Friday after all.

Sharing the Leftovers

New Year's Day we joined with two other couples, our concert-going friends, for a feast of leftovers. Everyone cleaned out their refrigerators and brought the food they didn't want or shouldn't be eating during the new year. It was a lot of fun and and the food was fantastic.


Debbie hosted and fed us gourmet cheeses from the exclusive cheese store in town -- truffles embedded in mild aged cheese, blue, brie, and other assorted delights along with crackers from a huge brandy snifter type bowl. Deb also provided the husbands with lasagna which all the men were delighted to dig into.


Nancy brought tiny meatloaf sandwiches in egg buns and homemade lemon poppy seed bread. I had spiral cut ham from Houston along with an assortment of ham sandwich cheese to put on wheat bread with the crusts removed. Also I had some pimento cheese spread from Braums, picked up in Oklahoma on our journey home.

Both Nancy and Deb had an assortment of desserts -- cookies and chocolate bars with fresh whipped cream, peanut brittle, fudge. Nancy brought the eggnog and bourbon. Tom brought the assortment of exotic teas.


We sat around Deb's table and told stories of our respective Christmases. Nancy and Tom had the grandkids. Deb and Lou were recovering from Lou's hip replacement surgery. I had tales of the emergency room gout visit before Christmas. Hubby and I told of warm Houston weather and Karaoke parties.

We had a great start for the New Year. Normally Deb has an open house on New Year's but I actually prefer this type of get-together: sitting around a table with dear friends, great food, family stories, and lots of laughter. Finally, we divvied up the goodies, Deb presented us each with our own loaf of tea bread and everyone went home, sated with good food, good company, and good wishes.

The Haves and The Have Nots

This evening Hubby provided us with a fabulous dinner. As head chef, he's responsible for the only really decent meals we eat at home and lately we've been picking around at the olds and ends of left overs or just heating up canned soup. This morning we got up to our first hard freeze, with a wind chill of 15 degrees, and the frigid air brought out the need in Hubby to provide us with hearty fare. We had huge T-bone steaks, fresh mashed sweet potatoes, homemade biscuits covered in sausage gravy, and a fresh lettuce salad. The steaks themselves must have set him back $15. The meal was fit for a queen and all four of us loved every mouthful. The boys were sure happy to have the T-bones when we were done.

Yet just this morning, with the temps well below freezing and the wind whistling, metal detector duty at my high school was a heavy chore. I stood at the near end of the table closest to the front door and every time it opened, the wind chilled me. I had dressed appropriately -- heavy fleece shirt, winter-weight slacks -- and I wasn't really suffering, just feeling a bit chilly.

Through the door came a young man dressed in a light tee shirt and a pair of jeans -- and that was all, except for his back pack. As I fumbled through his pack, I smiled at him and said, "You're going to have to get that coat out and wear it tomorrow . . .it's too cold now to go without." And he replied, with a look of defiance, "I don't have a coat."

The kid charged through the metal detector, with me standing slack jawed. I hollered at him to the other end of the table as he retrieved his bag, "We can fix that if you want." He shook his head and vanished into the school.

Fully 10% of our boys came to school this morning with no coats. Some had on heavier shirts, but many were like the first guy: short sleeved tees and light weight jeans. They were blue with cold but the were at school. Most has back packs stuffed with books and folders.

How many actually didn't have a coat at home? I don't know, but I imagine probably most of them. And we expected them to read Shakespeare and study the Boxer Rebellion and do equations and learn anatomy, when, at least some of them, don't have warm clothing, enough food, or heat in their homes.

Tonight in my toasty warm house I ate T-bone. Some of my kids huddled in dark rooms with empty bellies trying to stay warm.

This can be a cruel world when you're without.

Meat!

There's nothing like a week of hard work to make a gal crave a huge big ol' steak! With a twice baked potato full of cheese, bacon bits, green onions, butter, AND sour cream. Add in a simple green salad -- no weeds or strange greens or odd bits of gourmet vegetables -- with an accompaniment of blue cheese dressing and you've got a feast.

All summer I'd been craving a steak. Not one of those cheap cuts from the lower end of the meat counter. Not a delicate little patty just seared on the grill and sliced paper thin. No! I've been hankering for a carnivore's steak! Big! Juicy! Tender! Dripping juice! Crispy outside and just barely pink inside!

This afternoon Hubby and I went to the Bourne Ultimatum at the cheap movie theater. We had a small popcorn and a huge diet soda and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. After the movie we drove to the small town steak house, serving their own corn fed beef and I ate my steak. Hubby, wimping out, had two very nicely broiled pork chops. But I had the 8 oz filet mignon and I savored every single mouthful.

First came the bowl of pickled beets. Then the ice berg lettuce with a big old slice of cucumber, a small tomato, and a bowl of homemade blue cheese dressing and served with huge, hot slices of garlic toast. Finally, the steak was delivered on a platter so hot you could hear the sizzle all across the dining room, dripping juice, tender, and succulent.

What a treat! I won't need that kind of meat now for a couple of months, but how sweet to live in the heartland where a good steak is right around the corner.