Improper Poll: The Beast

I recently discovered a new recipe by accident. It goes like this.  Heat one trunk to 150°.  Add one pound ground beef and cook in a sealed garage all weekend.  This is a recipe for The Beast. This recipe is the pot-potpourri equivalent of manna...from hell.  Because it will serve everyone within about a 12 foot radius.  Indefinitely.

The ground beef was double wrapped, too, so it's not like anything leaked out.  Still, Holy Cow Guts, does my car stink.  So I sprayed everything thoroughly, first with one product and then the other. Both are anti-bacterial air purifiers that promise to kill the source of the odor. But I guess since my ground beef was already dead, it refused to die all over again. Almost two weeks later, it reminds me of my favorite Seinfeld episode about the B.B.O. But this is G.B.O. Or maybe R.B.O., because it’s rotted. Either way, it really is The Beast.

The R.B.O. has sent out airborne molecules to infuse, like microscopic zombies, into everything in my car. Another car parked next to it in the same garage had its windows rolled down, and now IT smells of R.B.O., as does my garbage can (long since emptied) and the garage itself. Should I be washing my hair in tomato sauce? I keep asking random people to do smell-checks.

I went to a car parts store and asked them what they recommend, and now my car smells like chemically-infused-cardboard-jasmine with strong R.B.O. top notes. Gak.  Left my car outside with the windows down in the hot sun. Threw out the cardboard box that the R.B. had fallen into when it first began this invasion of O. molecules. A neighbor (who obligingly performed The Smell Check, and I don't even know her very well)  suggested baking soda.  It sort of amazes me who will smell you if you ask them.

I admit it—I haven’t had my car steam-cleaned yet because I keep thinking surely The Beast will give up the ghost, as it were. Move on to greener pastures. Something. Should I sage my trunk to clear out evil spirits? Call in an exorcist?

Have you ever done battle with a horrifying odor? If so, do you have any suggestions?  Other than driving my car into the city and walking away?

Of Rolls and Roles

Last Christmas, I baked a thing called “Pumpkin Cake Roll” that I found on this lovely-sounding young woman’s blog: At Home with Rachel.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am not much of a cook. I’ve never made anything like this before…but it turned out to be both beautiful and delicious. (Pictured at left with the teacup given to me by my friend Fran and the tea given to me by my friend Becky…and with the cryptocereus anthonyanus given to me by my friend Nancy in the background.)

As I was making it, I was thinking about the people who think to make…and share…such beauty. Which led me to thinking about the entire history of women. What I started writing—and couldn’t tear myself away from—turned into a piece that I’m hoping to submit somewhere. So it truly was the treat that kept on giving.

Which happens to be the theme of the piece. Seeing something as small as a shared blog recipe reminded me that there will always be those whose wise souls who intuitively understand the truth about beauty: It cannot be held. The paradox is that the more freely it is given, the more beautifully it reflects on the one who released it…and the more bountifully it returns.

“[Miss Maudie’s sunhat] was suspended in a thin layer of ice, like a fly in amber….” ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

More (Fragrant!) Bulbs...OR...Don't Just Feed a Cold; Suffocate It!

When my daughter was little, one of her first (and only) attempts at gardening was to plant a few cloves of garlic one fall. The following summer, we had a bumper garlic crop so impressive that it would have made any farmer (or vampire slayer) proud. When I asked my daughter what she planned to do with all that garlic, she shrugged. Turns out she doesn’t actually like garlic; she only wanted to see if it would grow. Enter this soup recipe, which requires an impressive 44 cloves. The roasting helps keep it from tasting like Death by Garlic. Really. Still, I’m sure it’s plenty pungent.

Can’t say for sure, though…. A long time ago I discovered that it has marvelous expectorant properties, so I’ve begun making it when I have a cold in order to ward off the evils of congestion. I’m convinced it dispatches those strength-sapping viruses tout de suite. A side benefit is that you can’t smell the garlic at all when you’re that stuffed up. My biggest concern was that the little Girl Scouts might pick this weekend to deliver our cookies and faint at our doorstep. (They didn’t.)

By the way, though it’s many years later, my daughter’s garlic patch continues to produce each year…mainly because we just never pick it all.

Note to Girl Scouts: The air has cleared here! We’re ready for you!!!


Roasted Garlic Soup

26 garlic cloves (unpeeled)
2 T olive oil

2 T (1/4 stick) butter
2 ¼ c. sliced onions
1 ½ t. chopped fresh thyme
18 garlic cloves, peeled
3 ½ c. chicken stock or canned low-salt chicken broth
½ c. whipping cream

½ c. finely grated Parmesan cheese (about 2 ounces)
4 lemon wedges

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place 26 garlic cloves in small glass baking dish. Add 2 T. olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper; toss to coat. Cover dish tightly with foil and bake until garlic is golden brown and tender, about 45 minutes. Cool. Squeeze garlic between fingertips to release cloves. Transfer cloves to small bowl.

Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over med-high heat. Add onions and thyme and cook until onions are translucent, about 6 minutes. Add roasted garlic and 18 raw garlic cloves and cook 3 minutes. Add broth; cover and simmer until garlic is very tender, about 20 minutes. Puree soup until smooth in blender (in batches), or use a hand-held blender. Add cream and bring to simmer. Season with salt and pepper. Can be prepared a day ahead and refrigerated at this point.

Divide grated cheese among 4 bowls and ladle soup over. Squeeze juice of 1 lemon wedge into each bowl and serve.  Serves 4.


"Good soup draws the chair to it." Ghanaian Proverb

Bizarro World Easter

My daughter was looking through the pictures on my camera and asked, “Uh, Mom? What are these weird red Easter eggs?”

I am so UN-handy in the kitchen that when I thought up my very own kitchen hint, it was so unusual that I had to capture the moment. Then again, maybe someone has already thought of it, and I am so kitchenally-challenged that I didn’t know? Nevertheless, here it is:

I have a lot of recipes that call for a tablespoon or two of tomato paste. I used to open a can and wonder what to do with the rest. THEN I discovered (don’t I sound like a commercial??!!) that most Easter egg holders measure exactly one tablespoon. Spray on cooking spray, smoosh it in, cover and freeze, then pop out and wrap in individual little tablespoons to store in the freezer. My last bag lasted almost a year.

Take that, Martha Stewart.

“People got to do something useful if they’re going to take up space in the world.” ~Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

Speaking of Soup

As I said in another posting, the tomatoes were very late this year. The good news, for me, was that the final ripening coincides with…soup time. Any chill in the air makes me think of soup, but this year I can’t help but think of tomato.

My grandmother used to make a tomato/potato one she called “Butter Soup.” I used to think it was a weird name for something that had no visible evidence of butter, but you don’t argue with an 80+ year old woman who is also a wonderful cook.

Before she passed away (at 102 years), I tried to get some of her recipes. She just frowned and said, “Oh, Honey, I don’t use recipes; I just make those ‘by thought.’”

That thought-method of cooking, though, made trying to pin her down almost painful. For example, I’d ask her how much of an ingredient to use.

“Oh,” she’d say, cupping her ancient hands to measure the imaginary ingredient, “You know, ‘some.’” And I would watch her hands carefully to guess about how much “some” was. So it went.

Sadly, my grandmother’s true Butter Soup recipe went with her. This is the best I could do. It’s always been a simple recipe, but I think it manages to be delicate, warm, and comforting—all things which happen to describe my grandmother as well as her soup. “Merlee” was the name my older sister gave her as a toddler, and it stuck. It was the only name I ever knew her by.

I figure I might as well throw in a recipe. Guess you could say my blog is a soup of sorts.

Merlee’s Butter Soup (makes—you know—some)

2-3 garden tomatoes, peeled and diced
3 T butter (I used a light one)
2 ribs celery, diced
½ med. onion, diced
14 oz. chicken broth
1 largish Yukon Gold potato or 2 red potatoes, peeled and diced
11.5 oz. can tomato juice
white pepper
Jane’s Crazy Mixed Up Salt or other spices of choice

Fill a medium saucepan with water and boil; drop tomatoes in and remove as soon as split appears. Rinse till cool, remove skin, and dice.

Dump out water and use saucepan to melt butter. Sauté onion and celery until onion is transparent. Add chicken broth and diced potatoes. Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer till potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

Add tomato juice and bring to boil. Add diced tomatoes and heat through. Season to taste.

“We can do no great things—only small things with great love.” ~Mother Teresa