Category: Food & Drink

The comfort of good food

Well, it was another grand week of retirement.

The library was closed for the MLK holiday. I had a vision of all the librarians whooping it up on a yacht somewhere. On Tuesday, the library reopened, and I procured new reading. I showed up at the house with books in hand and Dale said, “Oh, they’re back from the party barge?”

Winter makes me want to curl up inside the house, but I’m forcing myself to continue with walking and golf. It’s funny – swimming has turned out to be one of my favorite cold-weather sports. The pool at my fitness club is 85 degrees, and it’s like swimming in the Caribbean. I am amazed by those who continue to swim laps in the cold pool, which is 78 degrees.

Dale and I both developed unnecessary habits right after Halloween. We had a bunch of candy leftover and started to take a little bowl to bed every night. They’re miniature! They don’t even count! Dale calls it “Night Food.” We both had to stop that nonsense.

All so we can continue to eat well! There is nothing like the comfort of good food. The main reason I tolerate cooler weather is because I love the seasonal switch to hearty dishes. Dale is from Maine and makes baked beans with an heirloom bean from Northern Maine. Marafax. We usually get a pound in our Christmas package from his sister.

Dale bakes them (unsoaked) for a few hours in the oven with some water, salt pork and dry mustard. Then he makes yeast rolls and what he calls cabbage salad. It’s just coleslaw – grated white cabbage with a little bit of diced onion, mayonnaise and celery seeds. Something yummy about those celery seeds. I think of it as a reasonably healthy meal, if you don’t count the butter slathered on those rolls.

We started eating more salads, mostly with a light drizzle of the pink stuff. In fact, tonight I’m making crispy chicken thighs with mushroom sauce and a spinach salad with the very same dressing. Have you tried it yet? My friend Carole made a batch of the pink stuff and is now a convert.

I baked a batch of raspberry scones, my take on a recipe from Linda at Retired Introvert. I try to keep either blueberry or raspberry in the freezer at all times!

It seems I wrote the post about raspberry scones in August, when I was on another baking frenzy. That was when I said I wasn’t born to work but instead born to retire. As I begin my third year of retirement, I can only confirm what has already been said.

The baking frenzy continues. I started a batch of no-knead baguettes today, but the dough rises for at least 18 hours, so the baguettes will get baked tomorrow. We’ll probably have them for dinner Sunday with soft ripe cheese, Spanish ham and good olive oil.

In heartbreaking news, my favorite pair of tongs broke. They are more than 40 years old. The brand is Foley, which I don’t think exists anymore. I like them for making my dad’s tacos, which are gently fried in oil. These tongs grab the tortilla without tearing or poking.

I sent my sister a picture of the tongs and asked if she knew whether they were a special kind. She didn’t know but said she had two pairs of the exact same tongs and would bring one when she comes to visit us in March.

Nothing stumps her. It’s like oh, those tongs from 1970, why, here they are!

I gotta run. The afternoon is winding up, and I need to get in a round of Wii golf before happy hour.

How’s your retirement going? As you can see, my days are packed.

Out with the old

I’ve had a nasty cold and didn’t have the strength to do much of anything for a week. I started feeling better yesterday, so I went to the driving range to see if I can still manage to hit a golf ball. So far, so good. Today I did a short walk. If all goes well, I’ll swim tomorrow, and that should signal everything is back to normal. Golf on Monday.

It sucks to be sick, but I was thinking how nice it was to be retired and just give into it rather than drag my ass to work and poison all my co-workers. On the other hand, maybe you do get over it quicker when you push yourself out the door.

While my wrists are much better, my ankles stiffened up. Do body parts take turns rebelling as you age? Maybe they talk to each other, like household appliances that crap out at the same time. First the toaster goes, then the clothes dryer and then it’s everybody in the pool!

I attribute the unpleasant ankle business to an 18-hole walk through a mud bog of a golf course just before I got sick. I seem to recall my partner saying, “Isn’t it hard to push that cart through the mud?” I said, “Not at all. Piece of cake.”

Famous last words. On the bright side, I’ve had stiff ankles before, and I learned a neat trick. Do the alphabet with your foot a couple of times a day. It really helps.

Even though I didn’t feel well, I attempted to make soup from fabulous roast beef leftover from Christmas. The soup was bad. Dale and I did a taste test today and agreed to pitch it. I hate to waste food, particularly that roast beef, but I also hate to eat nasty stuff, so I think we made the right call.

That left us deep in discussion about what to have for dinner tonight. I said, if I’m cooking, it needs to be something I won’t fuck up, because I feel bad about that soup. We were mentally going through items in the fridge and realized we had iceberg lettuce and tomatoes. Cheddar. Corn tortillas. Why, all we’d have to do is get some ground meat, and we could have tacos!

Dale said, “You’ve never fucked up tacos.”

He says the sweetest things. Tacos it is. I consider them healthy. Lean meat, a little cheese, veggies, what could be so wrong?

Since I’m up and about, I decided to clean the second refrigerator. I found a Lambic beer from 2007, which means we’ve moved it six times. I seem to recall a phase in Texas when I was going to make some sort of stew with it and never did.

Dale and I are almost always on completely different pages when it comes to getting rid of stuff. I purge, he hoards. I used to check with him before throwing something away, but it’s 2020. I’m older and bolder. Time to make a command decision, and I decided today the beer was past its prime.

I imagined the response if I had asked. I can totally see Dale looking at it and saying, “2007? Oh, come on, that was when Bush was president, and we thought it couldn’t get any worse. I’m sure the beer is fine.”

The beer was sealed with a cork, which I popped over the sink in case the bottle blew up. Nothing horrible happened, but it smelled funky. I told Dale after-the-fact, and he looked surprised. Maybe a little hurt.

I said, gently, “That’s a long time to keep a beer.”

And he said, and I quote, “No shit.”

Old beer goes bad, and old people change. Sometimes for the better.

41st anniversary special

Holiday anxiety

The tree is up, but it’s a wee bit tilty, and I’ve been feeling down. I don’t know why. Some of it is the tilt.

I worry about the tree falling over. That, and the Russians, the election, impeachment, climate change, wind blowing furniture into the pool, slippery roads. Sounds like a control thing to me, what with all the wet, windy, tilty, crazy things happening that I can’t fix.    

It had been more than a week since I’d added my high-CBD cannabis tincture to my morning juice, so I got back into my daily dose, and it’s like a miracle for anxiety and excess rumination. I can look at the tree now and not panic.

Nice tree, good tree.

Tincture might be making a comeback. I read notorious cannabis enthusiast Willie Nelson has given up smoking due to breathing issues but is still enjoying cannabis through tinctures and edibles. If anyone can put tincture on the map, it’s Willie.

Whilst in my slump, I also increased my dosage of schmaltz. There are a couple of videos that never fail to make me cry and cheer me up at the same time. Susan Boyle’s first appearance on Britain’s Got Talent is like a rescue inhaler. I also love Tara Lipinsky’s 1998 skate for the gold.

Opening the cat’s presents

For Christmas, Dale bought treats for our cat, Riley, and for his sister’s cat, Earle. The clerk described the treats as crack for cats. Dale wanted to open the package to see if Riley agrees. I was shocked. I mean, isn’t that what he’s getting for Christmas?

Dale said Riley wouldn’t know, but I’m sorry. There are some things you just don’t do, and you don’t go opening your cat’s presents before Christmas. Maybe Christmas Eve, but only if it’s pajamas. Having to explain all this to Dale was exhausting. You can see why I need extra tincture.

Our 41st

So, yes, 41 years of love and exhaustion was celebrated on Saturday. We drove into “the city” and spent the night at a hotel with a highly acclaimed but unpretentious restaurant on the ground floor. We don’t like to dress up, and nice jeans and boots were more than appropriate. We’re also not real slick about navigating urban settings, so having the restaurant in the hotel was perfect. No scary walks at night.

We rarely dine out, mostly because we’re excellent home cooks and almost always disappointed with our meals in restaurants. When we do go out, we find some local haunt, and our bill is usually in the $60 range. And then we’re pissed that we wasted it. For our anniversary, we said, what about going big? Maybe you can buy your way to exceptional food.

Although we were mentally prepared to spend some bucks, it’s always hard for us. We have a comfortable retirement and can afford it, but like many retirees, after saving for so long, it actually is hard to fork over the cash. Fortunately, dinner was spectacular.

Follow the food

For an appetizer, I had grilled octopus with mandarin oranges, shaved fennel, Japanese mustard greens, spicy green sauce and charred avocado. Dale had roasted bone marrow with short rib marmalade, pickled pepper relish, herbs and grilled bread.

We both chose duck for our entrée. It was not planned, but there’s duck history between us. When we were dating, he wooed me from the kitchen of his Bachelor Officer’s Quarters with Duck a L’Orange. Oh, and then there was the benchmark pressed duck in Rouen, France. The wild duck at the fancy place in Paris.

Paris, Rouen … those were our youthful globe-trotting days, before we got loaded down with responsibilities and understood the concept of compound interest. When paychecks were for spending!

This time around it was seared duck breast with onion cream sauce, roasted brussels sprouts leaves, Thumbalina carrots, miniature cannelloni, shaved truffles and duck jus.

I ate every bite and would have licked the plate if I thought I could get away with it. We were both quite full, so we didn’t order dessert. We enjoyed a bottle of Pinot Noir with our meal.

With tip, our bill was $280. The room was $155, plus $32 for parking, so that’s a total of $467 for our 41st wedding anniversary celebration. Seems like a lot, but if anything, we should do it more. Maybe skip on mediocre neighborhood fare and follow the food.

It’s a marshmallow world

Homemade Marshmallows

Based on a recipe from Alton Brown, this pillowy peep-like confection is totally worth the trouble for the marshmallow lover in your life.
Print Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • 3 packages unflavored gelatin
  • 1 cup ice cold water, divided
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 cup light corn syrup
  • 1/4 tsp kosher salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch
  • nonstick spray
  • sanding sugar

Instructions
 

  • Place gelatin into the bowl of a heavy-duty stand mixer along with 1/2 cup of the water. Have the whisk attachment standing by.
  • In a small saucepan, combine the remaining 1/2 cup of water, granulated sugar, corn syrup and salt. Place over medium high heat, cover and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Uncover, clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F, about 7 to 8 minutes. Once the mixture reaches temperature, immediately remove from the heat.
  • Turn the mixer on low speed and, while running, slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the gelatin mixture. Once you've added all the syrup, increase the speed to high. Continue to whip until the mixture becomes very thick and lukewarm, about 12 to 15 minutes. Add the vanilla during the last minute of whipping. While the mixture is whipping, prepare the pan.
  • Combine confectioners' sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. Lightly spray a pan with nonstick cooking spray. I use a square silicone cake pan, but you can also use a glass or metal 9×13 pan. The smaller cake pan yields taller marshmallows, which I prefer. Add the sugar and cornstarch mixture and swish around to completely coat the bottom and sides of the pan. Return the remaining mixture to the bowl for later use.
  • When the marshmallow mixture is ready, pour/scrape into the prepared pan, using a lightly oiled spatula for spreading evenly into the pan. It's very sticky, and you won't be able to get every last bit. Dust the top with the remaining sugar and cornstarch mixture to lightly cover. Once covered, you can use your hands to press evenly into place. Allow to sit uncovered overnight.
  • Turn the marshmallows out onto a cutting board and cut into squares with a sharp knife or pizza cutter dusted with the sugar and cornstarch mixture. Once cut, lightly dust all sides of each marshmallow with the remaining mixture to ensure no side is sticky.
  • To decorate, put some cold water in a small bowl, and put your sanding sugars in separate bowls. Very lightly dip the top of the marshmallow into the water and then press into the sanding sugar. If you want to coat the entire marshmallow, paint the water on with a brush and then roll around in the sanding sugar to evenly coat. Allow to dry a couple of hours on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.
  • Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

With apologies to Darlene Love, it’s a marshmallow world in the winter. Except I’m not talking about snow. This marshmallow starts in the kitchen.

I’ve been making marshmallows for years, but I just started coating them with sanding sugar to get more of the peep-like effect. It’s probably too much sugar for some, but for those of us who love peeps, there’s no such thing as too much sugar.

Quick question for peep lovers … fresh or stale?

While I prefer coarse sugar over fine, these marshmallows are also delicious unadulterated. Dale normally doesn’t like marshmallows, but he loves these without the extra sugar. They would also make a great gift with hot cocoa mix and maybe a cute mug.

These will be packaged up and gifted. I usually use cellophane bags tied with a ribbon, but I might poke around and see what else is out there.

Oh, and yes, it makes a mess, but when it comes to cleaning up sugar, hot water is your friend.

When the rain came

Our Thanksgiving was great, although the turkey was a little overdone. We had delicious turkey sandwiches last night on Dale’s homemade bread, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.

There was an incident involving the oven. Dale roasted a pork belly the night before, and apparently grease splattered, creating a lot of smoke when I was getting ready to put in the cheesecake. I had to turn on the fan and open windows. Luckily, it didn’t affect the food, and after the oven cooled, Dale wiped down the inside so we wouldn’t have a smokefest when he started cooking the turkey.

We didn’t argue about it, but I could tell he was annoyed that I was annoyed with smoke. He thinks I overreact, and that might be true, but I don’t see any advantage to embracing smoke and fire as a byproduct of cooking inside the home.

Dale went to bed early, but I stayed up watching the Downton Abbey movie. I love the series and felt like I was reunited with old friends – oh, look, there’s Anna! And Mr. Bates! And Mary’s hair … so chic. But all in all, it was pretty disappointing. I have this vision of the actors putting on their old costumes and laughing hysterically. As in, “Can you believe we’re getting paid to do this?”  

My pumpkin cheesecake was fantastic. I’m experimenting with freezer action. Once the pieces are firm, I’ll wrap them in plastic and put them in a tub or or add another layer of foil.

I am not a Christmas person, but I’m not going to get all grumpy about it, either. I’m just happy to be here. Dale is more into it than I am, but he doesn’t want to put up a tree until about a week before. However, if you don’t go soon, the trees are gone – especially with Thanksgiving coming right at the end of November this year.

Dale is not exactly methodical about getting things done, so I’m not saying a word. I’m hoping he procrastinates until there are no trees to be had. The only potential downside is my annual holiday tradition of drinking single malt scotch while he decorates the tree. I feel certain I could find another excuse to enjoy a wee bit of scotch, if the tree shortage should come to pass.

I finished all my books, and as it turns out, the library is open today! I’ve been avoiding crowds, but the library is reasonably safe. I suppose I’ll have to find something to wear other than jammies and head over there this afternoon, hopefully before the rain kicks in.

Yes, it’s California, but the rainy season is finally here, and it is quite chilly by my standards. I am proud to say I’ve walked about an hour every day. In terms of motivation, I had to dig deep, as I am such a wuus about the cold. But it was fine once I got started.

The rain and cold also affect my golf schedule – what Dale calls, “The Tour.” He usually asks me on Sunday what the tour schedule is this week. I didn’t play last week at all. I’m going to try and squeeze in a round early Tuesday. The rain is supposed to start in the afternoon. I welcome the rain, but I’m already sad about the unpredictability of winter golf.

When golf season is in full swing, I hardly bother with crafts projects. But now that the rainy season has started, I’ll resume my activities in the artist’s studio garage. I still have all the stuff for coasters, as well a piece of discarded fence I think will be interesting to play around with.

My little cannabis plant looks healthy, but it doesn’t seem to be growing much. I think it needs more light, so I caved and purchased an LED lamp. It should arrive today, and Dale said he would help me hang it – the guidelines suggest about one foot above the plant. For some reason, I was thinking of Robert Frost:

My little plant must think it queer to grow without a light source near.

Dale wants to take a turkey break today, but we have yet to discuss what we’ll have instead. I always make soup out of the carcass, so I’ll probably do that Sunday or Monday. Rain tonight, I think, and tomorrow looks like a washout.

I’m looking forward to next week, when everybody else goes back to work!

Thanksgiving wine snobs

Dale and I went to one of our favorite wineries yesterday mainly to purchase replacement Barbera but also to sample the tasting menu and see what’s new. All of it was delicious and on sale if you bought at least half a case, but we stuck with our plan and purchased just two bottles of Barbera, a full-bodied red wine that is a signature wine of the Sierra foothills.

While we love quality wine, we don’t think of ourselves as wine snobs and don’t really know much more or want to know much more than, yum, I like that. It was just our luck to be standing at the wine bar next to a group of sophisticates discussing the merits of various wines.

I detect a hint of hot tar from a freshly paved road.

Oh, is that lemon meringue pie I taste on the back of the tongue?

Hmmm, laced with wood and deep notes of tobacco …

Dale and I were dying. I mean, we know detecting all these flavors in wine is a real thing, but it was starting to sound ridiculous. I whispered to Dale, “Is that ripe roadkill I’m tasting?” He said, “No, perhaps a hint of just-mowed sod with a backdrop of goose poop.”

All that said, we love being close to the wineries and find most of the wines in El Dorado and Amador counties to be just as good and less expensive than anything you might find in Napa or Sonoma. The tasting rooms are usually in beautiful settings, and the experience is completely unpretentious if you don’t count local wine snobs. It’s a lovely outing for us, and we never buy wine from the grocery store anymore. Maybe we are snobs.

Two popular wines that are typically not grown in the foothills are Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. However, some of the wineries partner with growers in other areas and bottle it locally.

To accompany our Thanksgiving dinner, we’re having a bottle of Pinot Noir from E16, a winery in Somerset, which is about a 30-minute drive from our house. The grapes are actually grown in the Russian River Valley. E16 wines are spendier than some, so we save them for special meals but not necessarily special occasions. It just depends on what we’re cooking and how we feel.

We don’t follow rules about what to drink with what. For example, some say you should only drink white wine with fish. We had sautéed Petrale Sole the other night, and we did enjoy that with a nice Sauvignon Blanc ($9.99 from a bottle-your-own event at a local winery). However, we usually have red wine with salmon … and turkey.

Just for fun, I included a picture of a wine purchased 30 years ago, when we lived in Egypt. We’ve been hauling this thing around for a long time. It was pretty awful even then, but you know, you make do with what you have. We called it EBD wine. That stood for Egyptian Bathroom Disease. I’m sure it’s even more awful now, but aside from the wine, we loved Egypt and seeing Gianaclis in the rack brings back fond memories.

That’s the thing about wine. You don’t have to be an expert. I don’t know tar from tobacco, but I know to start with what tastes good and focus on the people, the food, the conversation and the scenery – the whole experience.

Our Pinot Noir will accompany roast turkey, Maine potato stuffing, green beans almondine, mashed potatoes and gravy, and homemade cranberry sauce. Dessert is pumpkin cheesecake.

What’s on your menu?

The best salad dressing you’ve never tasted

I gained a bunch of weight in high school but lost the extra pounds in my early 20s. In between, I struggled with what to eat and demonized foods I now view as perfectly fine to enjoy in moderation. Salad dressing was verboten for several years. Instead, I’d add a squirt of lemon or rice wine vinegar. Serviceable but not outrageously delicious.

While I understand some people restrict fats for various reasons, I focus on eating wholesome homemade foods, fat be damned. But because I don’t load up on processed foods or junk (and exercise a lot), I don’t have a weight or cholesterol problem, and I bear no guilt for treating myself to a salad with yummy dressing.

Cooking from scratch is a retirement hobby that pays huge dividends.

My favorite indulgence as a teenager (when not dieting) was a chef’s salad with thousand island dressing. I still love it. There’s just something so satisfying about creamy but slightly tart thousand island on crisp greens, ham, turkey, cheese and hard-cooked eggs. As for the dressing, it seems not a lot of places serve it anymore. Or if they do, it’s not house made.

Another dressing that’s hard to find is Roquefort. Marie’s, the premium dressing sold in a jar in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, used to have Roquefort. When they discontinued it, I actually wrote them a letter. The response was something along the lines of it not being cost-effective. Their blue cheese is still good, and we use it sparingly.

We often go with olive oil and balsamic vinegar or just plain old red wine vinegar or even Italian mixed up from the Good Seasons packet, but our favorite is an oldie we found in a Los Angeles Times cookbook, circa 1981. They call it French dressing, although it bears no resemblance to any French dressing I’ve ever tasted. We call it The Pink Stuff.

The Pink Stuff is easy to make. The taste is peppery with a pungent mustard backdrop and a hint of sweetness from the red wine. It’s fantastic over any kind of greens, including spinach. Mostly I just drizzle it on because it’s convenient and doesn’t use an extra dish, but as is the case with most salad dressings, less is more.

My spinach salad in the picture was a wee bit overdressed but still fantastic. Ideally, you toss a small amount of dressing with your greens in a big bowl to lightly but evenly distribute the tasty goodness.

This recipe calls for simple ingredients we keep on hand anyway. We store peanut oil in the refrigerator because we don’t use it that much, and it can go rancid. The oil solidifies in the fridge, so you need to take it out ahead of time or run hot water over the bottle to re-liquify. The bottle we buy is too tall for the microwave.

Pro Tip. Go ahead. Save the big bowl and pour The Pink Stuff directly on your salad. Just not too much.

The Pink Stuff (French Dressing)

Punched with flavor and unlike anything resembling what you might think of as French dressing, this recipe was originally published by the Los Angeles Times California Cookbook (1981). It was said to be the house dressing at Le St. Germain, a fine French restaurant in Hollywood I believe no longer exists.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1/4 tsp white pepper
  • 1 tbsp Dijon-style mustard
  • 1 tsp hot dry mustard
  • 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 3 tbsp red wine
  • 1/4 cup peanut oil

Instructions
 

  • Combine salt, black pepper, white pepper and mustards and mix well with a whisk. Add vinegar and wine, and beat until smooth. Slowly add oil and beat with a whisk until slightly thickened.

An uneventful week … perfect

It was an uneventful week of retirement, and that is exactly how I like it.

Dale seems to be recovered from a brutal case of Achilles bursitis. He has been sidelined for awhile, and now it looks like we can plan some outdoor activities together. The weather here in northern California is gorgeous. This is what we pay for.

I’ve recovered from a freak accident involving the upper back weight machine, whereupon you sit on a bicycle-like seat facing the weights and squeeze your shoulder blades as you pull the weights toward you. If you should so happen to be taking boatloads of Advil for another injury and exert too much energy, it might result it some pretty spectacular bruising in the area of the body getting all friendly with the bicycle seat.

Now I know why Lance Armstrong didn’t know he had testicular cancer.

Our solar power system on our house is finally up and running. This is the last year of the 30 percent rebate on our federal taxes. We’ll use the rebate and savings on our utility bill to fund a new heating and cooling unit next year. Ours is 20 years old.

The solar contractor was excellent, but PG&E dragged their feet. They presumably had fires and electrical outages to worry about … one of the downsides of living in northern California.

PG&E emailed a welcome packet, which I suppose we’ll have to read. I’m not much for details when it comes to science. If I should ask Dale a simple question, I get a 20-minute response and references to books and documentaries. I would have been fine with something along the lines of, “Sun make magic with roof panels.”

When I think about our daily activities, I expect someone to scold us for being privileged. We’re not extravagant, mostly focusing on simple pleasures, but I do recognize not living from paycheck to paycheck is a luxury. Still, I imagine an announcer from an old scare-tactic documentary such as Reefer Madness.

“They don’t work! They eat cheese! They wear jammies until noon! They run out of mayonnaise! They’re living the retirement lifestyle!”

So, yes, we ran out of mayonnaise. Dale was making BLTs and scraping the bottom of the jar. He went to the pantry for more, and there wasn’t any. I followed up with another search. Surely, there’s a backup jar hiding somewhere between crushed tomatoes and peanut butter.

Running out of mayo is unheard of in our house. It would be like running out of cheddar cheese. Just doesn’t happen. Dale takes great pride in maintaining a robust pantry. Anything gets low, and you know there’s another one in backup.

I have a responsibility to add items to the list, so it’s not his fault. Surely, somewhere between tuna melts and tuna melts, I should have seen this coming.  

Part of the problem is we don’t keep a master list. Dale hates lists. Especially if it says to-do and has his name on it. I was in search of a compromise and after a period of reflection that included counting my blessings for having such problems, an idea bubbled to the surface.

Here’s the deal. Dale hates having a personal list, but he’s not opposed to lists in general. What’s not to like about a house list, as in not his and not mine? We have a small collection of refrigerator magnets, and I used them to affix the list to the fridge, a neutral setting. Now there’s a consolidated location for documenting items that are getting low.

I slowly walked Dale over to the list, like introducing a cat to another cat for the first time. He might have sniffed and scratched a little, but he likes it! And he bought replacement mayo.

Today is a beer run. No list required.

Taco night revisited

Today is taco night, which usually makes me a bit nostalgic. I grew up eating tacos most Saturday nights.

When I first retired, I wrote a piece about taco night, and it was published by BoomSpeak, an online magazine. Jay Harrison is writer and publisher, and he does a great job curating a variety of short essays and fiction catering to our demographic. Check it out … I think you’ll like it!

The recipe is woven into the story. I honestly can’t understand why more people don’t make their tacos in this style, which I believe is called El Dorado. These days, we use ground bison and homemade salsa. Oh, and the picture is the actual tablecloth, which I still have.

Taco night

I’ve seen movies that show families eating dinner together, but it wasn’t like that at our house, a Southern California bungalow tucked into a working-class neighborhood out by the tomato cannery.

Mom went to bed as soon as she got home from work. My older sister and I cooked dinner and ate together at the Formica dinette dominating our tiny kitchen. We served a plate to Dad, who ate on a TV tray in the living room.

My father was barely domesticated, but somewhere he learned to make the best tacos on the planet. On taco night, everything was different. Out came a special tablecloth, the soft white cotton stained and torn with a fading vintage pattern of red and blue fruit.

Mom emerged from the bedroom and shopped the list:

1. Corn tortillas
2. Ground beef
3. Cheddar cheese
4. Iceberg lettuce, tomato, onion
5. Hot sauce

While Mom made salad and my sister grated cheese, I spread the shabby cloth as if decorating for a fiesta. I’d brown the meat, adding salt, pepper and generous sprinkles of my secret ingredient, celery salt.

Mom poured 1/8 inch of vegetable oil into a cast iron pan and set the flame to medium. She’d run her hand over the pan until the oil felt hot. Then she’d holler for Dad.

“The grease is ready!”

Dad took a flat tortilla and held it in his palm, adding a spoonful of browned meat onto one half of the tortilla. He would carefully lay the meat side of the tortilla in the oil, allowing the tortilla to soften at the crease so he could fold it on top of itself. After the first side was golden, he’d flip it over and lightly brown the other side.

When the tacos were done, he held them with tongs over the pan to drain the extra oil before laying them side-by-side on a sheet pan lined with paper towels. Cooked properly, the body of the tortilla gets crisp and lacy, while the part near the fold stays moist and supple.

My father taught me to dress them so the cheese melts against the warm meat, then hot sauce, then salad. A shake of salt. Mom declared them, “A la supreme.” We’d all laugh, as we ate tacos together, just like in the movies.

I still make tacos the way Dad did. It’s like time travel. I drop the meat in the pan, and it begins to sizzle. I break it apart with a metal spatula. Flip and chop. And just like that, it’s taco night, and everything is different.

No regrets … sort of

Dale and I were having a philosophical discussion about life’s regrets, and he asked if I had any. He might have been holding his breath as he waited for my response.

I said, “I regret not getting the coconut cake at Barbara’s Fishtrap in Princeton-by-the-Sea.”

The cake looked so perfect, but I was all holier-than-thou about sugar, so I skipped it, and I’ve been thinking about that cake ever since … at least three years. There’s a clear snapshot in my head. I remember staring at the cake display from across the room. And then someone ordered it! Details emerged, and I ogled layers upon layers of pale creamy coco-nutty whipped fluffiness that only coconut lover can appreciate.

Then it was my turn to ask about regrets, as in, “How about you?” For a minute, I thought he’d go deep and reveal a profoundly sad truth from the bowels of his barren tender soul, but then I remembered he’s from Maine.

He said, “I regret not knowing about soft shell crabs when we lived in Pennsylvania.”

Oh, man, I share that regret. We didn’t discover soft shells until we lived in Alabama and started going to New Orleans for mini-vacations. Later, we lived on the Carolina coast, where they were also plentiful. In Texas, we had some good ones in Port Aransas.

The bounties of California are many, but they do not typically include soft shell crabs. Sometimes you’ll see them as an appetizer at an Asian restaurant. The seafood guy at Whole Foods told me they were currently getting fresh ones in every Friday, except we went two Fridays in a row, and they weren’t in.

Thinking about the coconut cake made me nostalgic for a hot fudge sundae. My mother used to treat us to hot fudge sundaes when we were out and about – sometimes at the lunch counter at J.J. Newberry’s, which was in one of the original outdoor malls in Orange County, where I grew up. Sometimes at Helen Grace Chocolates, which was in a strip mall.

I still love a good strip mall!

Anyway, I ate my lifetime supply of ice cream in 1973, when I oh-so-conveniently worked at an ice cream store. I love it when a plan comes together.

The store was a Carvel, with premium ice cream and excellent toppings, which could be scooped from a bin in the walk-in when no one was looking. It was during this unfortunate period when I ate hot fudge sundaes for breakfast, and I’ve been dreaming about them ever since. Seriously.

The closest I ever got was in 1999, when I had stage 3 ovarian cancer and was on chemo and burning calories like there was no tomorrow. Oh, I guess that’s a regrettable choice of words.

Hungry but maybe dying but still all holier-than-thou, I went to some new-fangled yogurt place. The ice cream was not really ice cream and the fudge wasn’t really hot. I threw most of it away. I survived! And so, here we are, and it occurs to me I have time to seek out the best hot fudge sundae this stinking desert has ever seen.

I’m not big on goals, but I’m adding the iconic ice cream creation to my list. List of what? I don’t know … things to do, things to eat, simple pleasures. I’m grateful coconut cake was the biggest regret I could muster, and notwithstanding the art of moderation, I don’t want to say at the end, “Damn, I wish I’d had that hot fudge sundae.”

At the end of it all, I am reminded of my mother. I believe her last words were, “Is there any more See’s?”