I want chefs to stop trying to improve upon the grilled cheese sandwich. It is fine just the way it is. I like mine made with squishy white bread and 2 slices of white American cheese. The big recipe is to put the cheese between the two slices of bread, butter the top and bottom, flop it into a fry pan and grill it on the stove top. Serve it hot, sometimes with a bowl full of Campbell's tomato soup. Done, Finished. Do not improve. It is fine just the way it is. If you change the recipe, I suggest changing the name as well.
I feel the same way about Mac and Cheese. Currently it is on every menu you that come across and I have seen it hyped as 3 cheese mac and cheese, or lobster infused mac and cheese, or any other crazy thing to make it sound new and fresh. I say leave it alone and serve it as it was intended. Just cheesy plump elbow macaroni that melts in your mouth.
Last holiday season my cousin served mac and cheese as an accompaniment for our holiday ham dinner. And she made it just as my mom and our Nana had made it. The secret recipe is on the side of the box of Prince elbow macaroni. I could have eaten the entire chafing dish filled with it. Some things are just classics, and when you eat something that you loved as a kid and it tastes exactly the same - I find that delightful. I think these are just American classics. They deserve our respect, we need to pass them along to the next generation just as they were originally prepared - our duty as patriotic Americans.
OK, it has been brought to my attention, that there are a few things that I do that I take for granted that others might want to know about, so here are a few miscellaneous tips I have learned during my married life.
- If you need to test the doneness of cakes or brownies, and you do not have a wooden toothpick, a piece of uncooked spaghetti works just fine.
- When baking, and the instructions give a range of minutes, always use the least amount of cooking time, you can always put it back in the oven.
- 1 cup of bleach, one cup of laundry detergent poured into a bucket of hot water cleans almost everything, especially dirty bathrooms and inside of moldy refrigerators not to mention green mold on decks (who needs a power washer?)
- A quick sprinkle of allspice in beef stew or spaghetti sauce is my secret ingredient, now you know.
- Toothpaste (white) works great as spackle when in a pinch, like filling in holes in dorm rooms.
- A sharpie marker works great on heels of black shoes that are a bit scruffed.
- If you cut back your mums before the 4th of July, you will get a denser more flowerful fall show.
- When dusting, put the spray wax/bottle polish on the rag, not on the furniture.
- To get rid of the really nasty stuff that always seems stuck to the top of the microwave, heat a bowl full of water on high for 3 minutes, steam softens all the nasty bits making it easier to get off.
- A shot glass is the perfect holder for toothpicks
- Save old panty hose, wash them, cut off a 6 inch piece including the toe, place it over the tube of a vacuum and you can easily vacuum fake plants
- The same piece of panty hose works great for a bouquet garni.
- It is much easier to get perfect chicken/beef slices if the meat is still a bit frozen when you cut it.
- In a pinch, double sided tape does a damn fine job of keeping a hem in place.
- Hair spray is great for nailing flying insects, especially bees.
- Hair spray is also good for getting out ball point pin ink on clothing
- Fingernail polish remover is great for removing the sticky stuff left behind from a store's price tag
I have not taught English for years, but there are certain grammatical errors that still make me cringe. One that I continually see is the
mis-use of its/it's. Here's a hint, if you care to use the apostrophe, what you mean to say is it is. Without the apostrophe, it's just a possessive.
Another one that I see way too often these days is the mis-use of the preposition of. For example, "he could of been a contender". Heads up folks, of is not a verb. You need to use could've, sounds the same, way different meaning. I recently found this mis-use not once but twice in our local paper. Groan! I guess once an English teacher, always an English teacher. I bet the folks who not only painted this sign, but thought it was fine to install, are a bit embarrassed, and I bet their English teacher is livid.
After being on a somewhat strict diet from the first of the year, we treated ourselves today, and went out for Chinese food. And we ate all the stuff that we have been ardently avoiding. There was not a vegetable or piece of lettuce to be found anywhere. There was pork fried rice, which I made even more rich by ladling sweet and sour sauce all over it turning it pink and making it just a bit better by adding all the chunks of candied pineapple . There were chicken wings, very sticky with sauce, sweet and sour chicken that had thick deep fried breading and beef teriyaki, as well as adult beverages. We loved every bit of it. I don't know if the food was that good, or that it tasted especially good to us because we were treating ourselves to a non-diet meal. I think probably a little of both.
Tomorrow will bring salads, veggies and lean meats, but for today, we let the fat fly! Yummy.
Tomorrow night I will watch the Oscars. I must admit I enjoy every cheesy moment of this annual spectacle. I like the red carpet, I groan at the questions asked and I marvel at the gowns. I look for the one outfit that will be a "what were you thinking moment", and one that will be a stunner.
I especially like the Oscars when Billy Crystal is the host. He is talented, as is always proven by the opening numbers and he is witty. He always seems to me to be the guy everyone is waiting for to get the party started.
This year I am rooting hard for our RI nominee, Viola Davis. She is one of the stars of the movie, The Help, also a book that I devoured in one day. She is from the tough streets of Central Falls, RI, and attended RI College on a theater scholarship. Recently (prior to the Oscar nomination) she donated thousands of dollars to Central Falls when it experienced a financial crisis. She is what my mother would call, "good people", and a damn good actress. I know there are other wonderful actresses nominated, such as Meryl Streep, but I think this year the Oscar for best actress should go to Viola Davis, Rhode Islander. Yup, you can call me a homey.
I have a beef with Dell. I bought a laptop last December, and it came with no manual. The notation said ever so sweetly, "go on line to download the manual". I had no need, so I did not do it. Then yesterday, when trying to boot up, I got the message, "insert recovery disk", which of course did not come with my purchase. So I was put instantly into panic mode. Each time I tried to restart the computer, my only on-screen choices were to select the F2 or F12 buttons, which brought me to the Dell test screen which after running all the diagnostics possible, told me yet once again to insert the windows 7-64 bit recovery disk, which did not come with the purchase. UGH, frustration level was rising. So I went to the Dell site. After much searching, I finally found something I could use. It said if your desktop does not load, hit the F8 key, continuing to tap it until the recovery screen appears, then follow the instructions. It seems that Dell had already downloaded the recovery disk to my laptop, and by hitting the F8 key I was able to access it. In my humble opinion, I think the mention of this F8 key should be included in the Dell screen, after all I did not have the manual to reference. I felt pretty proud of myself for figuring this all out, and avoiding the $ charged by the Geek Squad at Best Buy. And yes, once I was up and running, I immediately burned a recovery disk, but it is handy to know about the F8 key. I always wondered what those effin keys were for, now I know, learned about them the hard way.
I just finished reading an article about trends in food for 2012, specifically what will be hot and what will not when it comes to desserts. I always wonder who is the almighty know it all who proclaims these things, but I digress. For all of you pie lovers out there - pie is no longer considered trendy, it is passe. To be honest with you, I never even knew it was au courant. Pie, to me, is perfect for Thanksgiving, and possibly for Christmas and an apple pie is certainly welcomed during apple picking season, but for the rest of the year? I don't think so. I guess I must have missed the trendiness of it last year. But the big news on what will be the hot dessert for 2010....you'll never guess...the doughnut! The doughnut???????? I want to see the credentials on the guy who decided that the doughnut will be the trendy dessert for 2012. First of all, it's breakfast food, or maybe it could even be considered a quick snack food, but a dessert? Never! Picture telling the waitstaff at your favorite restaurant that you will be ordering an adult beverage flavored coffee and instead of the flan, creme brulet or baked alaska, just bring me a doughtnut, you know, the 2012 trendy dessert. I sometimes think that people must need to meet deadlines and so they submit a few hundred authoritatively written words and hope that no one questions. Well I'm questioning this, there is no possible way that the doughnut is the trendy dessert for 2012 and I am now having my doubts about the pie thing for 2011.
