Fascinating Stuff

This is not fascinating in the least, but I haven’t written anything since Sunday so I thought I ought to.

I made meat stock this week (chicken leg quarters, beef short ribs, and duck wings) and enough pastry for one double-crust pie and two single-crust pies.  I think there will be about twenty of us on Thanksgiving.  Someone will make pumpkin pie and I think there will be an apple pie as well, so if I bring three pies (mince, sweet potato and pecan) and a pumpkin stuffed with bread pudding I should have enough dessert leftover to eat for breakfast for three days (assuming I eat a two-course dessert breakfast (and I will)).

I made stock and pastry, but I only cooked dinner three times this week (I think . . . Matzo Brei one night, meatloaf and mashed potatoes another, and something so memorable I can’t think of it).   I like making the ingredients required to cook more than the actual cooking.

Oh, that reminds me.  I have always pushed using waxy potatoes for mashed potatoes since russets don’t have a lot of taste, but I got russets at the farmers market this weekend and it was a revelation.  The problem heretofore was in my using potatoes from a grocery store rather than hitch hiking to the nearest farm. 

Russets, when dug from the dirt only a few days prior to use, make kick-ass mashed potatoes.   By the way, use a hand-held potato masher and just beat the hell out of them; it works much better than an electric mixer which incorporates too much air.

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I never spend more than three minutes doing anything to my hair.  It does what it wants and I see no point in arguing with it.

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I’ve gone an entire month without turning on the television.  As a result,  I have no idea what anyone is talking about.  I discovered that television was my only source of news, popular culture and world affairs, and I no longer know anything about any of them.  

For all I know, Jon and Kate are on now the subject of a Broadway musical titled “Just Go Away”, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly consummated their relationship and are going to China to adopt a baby girl, and Oprah bought Canada.

I figure there are all sorts things I know about that other people are completely ignorant of, it’s just that more people agree that the things I don’t know are actually those I should.  I’m sure I’ll change my mind about this at some point, but for the moment I am enjoying  the fact that I don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking about health care reform, war, and whomever Donald Trump is currently trashing publicly.

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Someone I vaguely knew jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.  The neighbor of a relative, someone I met half a dozen times.  I knew he was not the most balanced guy in town, but I didn’t realize the extent of it.  When I heard he’d killed himself I remembered he served in the Persian Gulf and wondered what part that might have played in it.

Yesterday—Veterans Day, I kept thinking of him and continued to wonder.

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In lighter news, as of today, my mother is 68.  I had her over for a cup of tea and gave her one of her gifts; the rest I will give her on Sunday when I cook dinner for her.   I have a general idea of the menu but it’s after eleven so I better not go into too much detail:  first course- something to do with that broth I made, second course- something to do with the 2-pound pumpkin on the counter, third course- something to do with a piece of meat, forth course- swanky-ass cheese and some fruit, and finally, something you can serve with a cup of tea.  

That’s all; I have to floss.