With my foot mending, my DH is cooking all the meals. He’s starting to get into it. He actually likes to go grocery shopping. His family used to own a gourmet grocery store in Ocean City New Jersey. It still is a summer resort kind of town, and 80% of their annual business was conducted in those summer months. It was a small, family-run business, originally part of DH’s mother’s side of the family, then for about 18 years his parents owned it and the name was changed to Thurston’s Market. So, growing up in the late 40’s and early 50’s, DH helped out in the store all summer long. The wealthy customers would phone in an order, and he or others would box up the order and he’d ride shotgun in the delivery truck since he was too young to drive. Anyway, he learned some about butchering, about cheese, a lot about produce, stocked shelves, helped bag the 1-pound private label coffee (in special bags marked “Thurston’s Market Coffee”) and in the winter (slower) he was a checker sometimes. He swept floors and the most hated job was sorting out potatoes from the huge bin to wipe it out with a wet rag. (We all know what rotting potatoes smell like, don’t we?) He loved going with his father on rare occasions to the daily wholesale market (that opened at 1:00 am) in Philadelphia.

Grocery shopping is in his blood, I think. Therefore, going to the market these days is an almost everyday occurrence. He loves to go. He hops into his 11-year old teal blue convertible, with the top down, of course, and zips off. Give him a shopping list and he’s a happy camper. He’s learned over the years that I normally buy name brands, not the grocery generic brands of cottage cheese, sour cream, etc. Our cell phones are busy when Dave goes shopping as he still has questions now and then. Yesterday he phoned me twice. Often he has to go to at least 2 markets – Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Neither market carries everything we like. About every 10 days we buy a loaf of grainy Harvest bread from the Corner Bakery, so that’s another stop in a different direction. That gets repackaged at home in small foil wraps and frozen. And about once a week he has to go to our regular grocery store as well. Some meats come from a small, independent market in another direction, where they also make sensational fresh tomato salsa. Then there’s the occasional Costco run too.

But, we’re talking about salads here, weren’t we? When I make green salads I fill them with all kinds of vegies (carrots, celery, fennel, radishes, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc.). And a variety of lettuces, of course. And usually some Greek feta cheese too. Then it gets tossed with one of my home made dressings.

A couple of days ago DH and I discussed that we needed salad makings. These days his M.O. for dinner is a protein and maybe a salad. We eat low carb anyway, but he tends to not want to fix a vegetable. But he doesn’t really like chopping up the salad vegies either. Too much trouble. I keep encouraging him, though. He did saute some zucchini and yellow squash the other night, along with some red onion. It was mostly edible. He forgot to stir it, so about 25% of it was burned black. We ate it anyway. 🙂

So yesterday, on his grocery list was salad greens. I usually buy Romaine and head lettuce and supplement with some of the fancy greens. He prefers to buy bagged salad. He also was to buy a few other vegies. Dinner time arrived. As usual, he doesn’t even think about dinner until about 6:30 or 7:00. I kept quiet; didn’t want to nag. 🙂 Last night he rooted around in the refrigerator and found two Italian sausages. He thought we’d have a sausage and a salad. He began taking things out of the refrigerator to make the salad, arranging stuff, opened the bag and read out loud what he’d bought – mixed greens. Oops. Those are the greens like kale, chard, red chard, collards etc. Oh —-, he said. I piped up. No problem, honey, just saute them. He actually loves all those kinds of things.

So, with me coaching him all the way through, he managed just fine – he cooked the onion in olive oil, added garlic at the end, then cut up all the greens and added them. He popped a lid on top and let it simmer for awhile. I wheeled around and poured in a little bit of red wine vinegar toward the end. I suggested he add about 2-3 tablespoons of water – he was going to put in more oil. It worked out fine with water. He forgot the salt and pepper, but that was easily added at the table. Meanwhile, he fried up the two sausages and nearly burned them completely, but they were edible. He was too busy working on the greens to watch the sausages on the burner one inch away. 🙂 He made a salad with what he could rummage out of the vegie bin and tossed it with a very inedible fat-free dressing I’d bought some time ago that I’d tried once and never used again. I never learn – I keep hoping I’m going to find some bottled salad dressings that I really like. (He threw it out later. He says he’s going to make some home made salad dressing today if I’ll tell him how.) But overall, the dinner was fine. Just not very much of it, that’s all.

Therefore, DH was hungry after dinner was finished. Hmmm. I kept quiet. 🙂 So he found the last of the home made apricot ice cream and scooped out rather large bowls. Smiles all around.

Tweet

I’ve not had a very good couple of days. My foot hurts. Aches. The doctor called ME – believe it or not – to check on me this morning and he decided he needed to remove my purple cast, after hearing my report on the pain. So, I’m now in a removable boot/cast, but only promising that I will not, under any circumstances, walk with it. I’m still completely off the foot except to balance getting up or down. I’m spending way too many hours a day lying down with my foot elevated above my heart to reduce swelling. We had no tv, air conditioning or internet most of today because of some electrical work being done. Long day.

The doctor thinks I must have some torn ligaments, perhaps some tendon damage, may have some soft tissue damage, and maybe a broken bone in the ankle, although the latter doesn’t show up on the x-ray. If my pain isn’t better by Thursday he’ll order an MRI. So far this afternoon I’d say it’s improved with the new boot. We’ll see whether I can sleep tonight, however. Sleeping hasn’t been all that good to this juncture. I wake up about 2 every morning in heavy-duty pain and can’t get comfortable or sleep.

Tweet

That’s my kitchen pantry. Back more than a year ago now, when I first began reading some food blogs, I was tickled to see photos of people’s kitchens. It’s kind of like peeking into somebody’s clothes closet when they’re not looking. At the time we were just starting the remodel of our kitchen, and although I was too far along to make changes, I was still intrigued to see how other people, other food lovers, set up their kitchens. When we began this project of our remodel, I used sketches, pored over remodeling magazine ideas, made lists, and played a paper-doll kind of thing, sliding little snippets of paper around on top of graph paper where I’d marked off the walls, trying to make everything fit. I lived and breathed it. I dreamed about it and woke up frantic sometimes – did I remember this or that. As time goes on I’ll post some additional pictures of my finished kitchen.
This is the Butler’s Pantry. When I was first drawing in walls on the graph paper, I wanted to create a Butler’s pantry too. I’d begun seeing them in some of the upscale homes here in Southern California. I’d always thought that was such a nice thing – a staging area for entertaining, etc. Well, I worked it in. It’s not all that large, but certainly bigger than a closet. Room enough for our coffee equipment and my warming drawer, which you can vaguely see below the counter. Plus some glassed cupboards to display some pretty stuff. And, behind the Butler’s Pantry there was a perfect space for a built-in kitchen pantry. California homes haven’t had walk-in pantries much until recent years. I’d had a tiny one many years ago and loved it, so it was a must-have in the new kitchen. In my new spacious pantry (picture at top), there’s another wall on the right with nearly as much space for storage as you can see on the left. The rear wall backs up to the Butler’s Pantry. In the pantry, all of the left side is for canned goods shelving. You can see my multiple cans of San Marzano tomatoes at the closer end. The right side contains a more eclectic variety – baskets for fresh root vegetable storage and a lot of boxed goods. I also have a row of about 10 plastic octagonal containers with dry stuff – everything from Corn Flakes, cornmeal, rice, risotto rice, a few unusual flours, etc. as well. I vowed when I moved everything into the pantry that I wasn’t going to put hardly anything on the floor. Thought it looked neater that way. Well, that’s gone by the wayside.

So, back those many months ago when I was finding blogs that I liked to read, and people were posting pictures of their kitchens and storage areas, I happened upon two postings. Both written by the same blogger, Mrs. D over at Belly Timber.

Here’s the first one about her kitchen. Now, it may take you a few minutes to read it – look at all the photos and the diagrams, etc. I found it laugh-out-loud funny. I love Mrs. D’s blog.

Then, a few weeks later there came a second one, a sequel. I did send an email message of one of these to a bunch of my friends back then, so if you glance at it and it rings a bell, you can stop reading! Hope you enjoy these as much as I did. If you haven’t read Belly Timber before, you might want to check out Mrs. D.

Tweet

No, this isn’t some new kitchen implement. I wish. You like my pretty purple cast? Could this be one for a mastadon, as big and bulky as it looks. Yesterday, my doctor’s office told me I had a minor broken toe. The foot doctor says oh no, my dear, you have a fractured foot. It’s actually the outside metatarsul bone, but it’s broken in a very strategic place – along the outside edge, broken halfway through the bone. And two tendons attach to it, this long bone, and every step I was taking was pulling on the fracture in two different directions, even though I was only putting weight on my heel. And my foot needs to be immobilized for 6+ weeks. Sigh. And he also said this is the hardest bone to heal of all the multiple bones in the foot. Great news.

So, it’s a cast. I can’t walk on it at all. I can’t drive. And getting in and out of our house is difficult. It’s not wheelchair friendly. Sigh. More sighs. We’ll be sleeping in our one downstairs guestroom, I think. Where’s that darned shower seat?

A friend picked me up at the doctor’s office (thanks, Joan) and delivered my car home later on. And she and Tom fetched the wheelchair in the garage. I tried crutches. Oh my goodness, was I ever unstable on those things. And I tried Dave’s walker that he “lived in” while his leg was healing last year. That’s hard work, let me tell you.

My DH is returning early from his trip, will arrive late tonight. Don’t know what this may mean about cooking. He loves to barbecue, and he’s a pro at breakfast. But other meals? No, he’d rather go out. Or buy out. Maybe I can teach him a few things about cooking in the coming weeks. Whether or not we’ll be able to do the kind of cooking we’re used to in this house remains to be seen. Dave loves good food, but whether he’ll want to actually make it himself? Well, I don’t know. I’m sure I can do a lot of the sous chef kind of work, but he’ll have to do the cooking itself. Last summer when we were under kitchen demolition we created a makeshift kitchen in our front entry hall and I did a lot of cooking in a new Cuisinart electric frypan. Guess he’ll need to dig that thing out again and maybe I can make a few skillet dishes.

So, stay tuned. I’ll let you know how things are going. 🙂

Tweet

What’s in a name, you ask? Well, you didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you anyway. With my lame ankle resting high, I’m feeling a bit frustrated and cheeky today. A name means a lot. It either grabs your attention, or it doesn’t. Before I started this blog, I considered about 30 different names. With an advertising background, I’m very tuned into words. How they lead you in different directions. How they can mislead just as easily. How they can “hook” you into reading more. That’s one of the secrets of writers but particularly with literature writers – getting you to read more than the first page. Or the first paragraph. That’s one of the things I admire about the novelist Jodi Picoult. She grabs me in the first few sentences. She did with My Sister’s Keeper, and she did again with Plain Truth. My daughter, Dana, is hooked on her books at the moment, and she has purchased and read most every one she’s written, so I have a stack waiting for me as soon as I can get to them.

But, I digress. We’re talking about blog names, aren’t we? I wrote down all these names. Considered them. Scratched some out. Edited some more. Added additional ones because I wasn’t pleased with my short list. Then I Google searched on those names. As I worked my way down my list I had to scratch off the first one. The second one. And that one. Darn, that one too. My list shortened up in a hurry! It wasn’t that they were all food blogs, but they were product names or tags, or somebody’s personal website or book. I was a tad discouraged. Since there are hundreds of food blogs out there in the blogosphere, I had to find something that was me. But not like everybody else. One of the things I’ve learned is that if I want to keep this site going, the name has to be something that people remember. So it couldn’t be all that complicated.  Carolyn Cooks is the name of a book already.

So you can have a little laugh, here are some of the other names I considered: The Recipe File (too blah sounding); The Adventurous Fork (I really liked that one, but it’s already used); The Imperfect Recipe (think anybody would really want to read that?); Feed the Soul with Wine & Food (too long and I’m not much into Zen either); Food Sketches (oops, she’s a food artist); The Recipe Stack (BORing); Knife & Fork (sorry, that’s a store); Reading, Writing Cook (blah); Recipe Redux (I like it, but do you think people would remember how to spell it?); So Many Recipes, So Little Time (catchy, but don’t know if people would remember such a long name); Have Fork, Will Travel (I like that one still, but it implies that I travel all the time and that it’s more about restaurant eating than cooking, don’t you think?); and It’s All About Taste (well, that might work, but not very exciting). So, I chose Tasting Spoons. So, tell me, did I make the right choice?

I came up with the name Tasting Spoons before I considered, really, any further meaning other than it related to food. But as I contemplated it, I remembered that in a drawer inches away from my Dacor gas range I have a nest of these beautiful, small, silver-plated spoons. And a couple of forks. They don’t all match, but they all belonged to my dear hubby’s mother Helen. Some of them have a beautiful scrolled T on the shank. The others have some lovely viney leaf whirls with no initial. They’re probably the old fashioned kind of tea spoons. I polish them up now and then, but they get a lot of use. As I cook, I taste. Often. Does it need more salt? Pepper? A dash of thyme? A little sprinkle of my fancy salts perhaps? Rather than keeping these spoons closed up in the felt-lined case with all the other miscellaneous table silver pieces we own and almost never use, I decided to be more practical. I use them, and have done so for about 10 years. I love these spoons, and I often think about Dave’s mother as I dip and sip. Helen was a gracious lady, and I think she’d be very happy that a blog was named after her spoons, mismatched as they are. She wouldn’t have a clue what a blog is, but as she watches us from her perch in heaven, I think she likes it. If you have some odd spoons in your closet, dig them out and use them as your Tasting Spoons, won’t you?

Tweet

Is he not adorable, I ask you? And look at that wooden spoon he’s holding! In recent years, Hollywood has found a direct route to movie success with animating and personalizing animals – penguins, dogs, and now a impecunious rat. I haven’t even seen the movie yet and I already love it, since it’s about Remy (the above clever, cute rat) who aims to become a famous French chef. But, as a rat, how could he? As a rat, he’s abhorred in the kitchen. So, he hitches up with an unlikely young man who works in the kitchen (as a janitor of all things) of a top-notch, but about-to-lose-its-stars Parisian restaurant. Remy whispers instructions to this young man, and saves the day by making ratatouille.

Have you ever made ratatouille? Most people haven’t. It’s a labor of love, I assure you. I made it once, years ago, and must have decided it was w-a-a-a-y too much work and have never made it since. Not that I didn’t love the taste. I did. And I’ve had it in France too. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that ratatouille is a layered vegetable dish. Unctuous is what comes to mind. In the directions of any French cookbook, each vegetable is cooked separately – blanched in new salted water – because you don’t want any vegetable to contaminate or take over the flavor of another. Then the vegetables are combined and baked into silkiness, usually served in a wedge with a simple salad.

Fortunately for us, a fellow blogger and writing pro in the Bay Area at World on a Plate decided to take on Remy’s ratatouille and make it her own. She adapted it from Thomas Keller’s kitchen (world famous The French Laundry in Yountville). I won’t say making this is exactly easy, but her version doesn’t require the labor of love of my one attempt years ago. I might even be tempted to try it again with this recipe. But first, I need to go see the movie! As soon as my ankle heals, I’ll be gettin’ there.

Click HERE to go on over to Jeanne Brophy’s blog and her recipe. And, in case you’re not sure of the pronunciation, it’s rat-ta-too-ee, or rat-ta-twee.

Tweet

No recipe today! Yesterday I misstepped off our boat and turned my ankle completely sideways. Crunch. I’m very laid up yesterday and today; can barely, barely walk. Dave rolled me in one of the yacht club’s grungy rolling carts (used to haul gear from boat to parking lot and vice-versa) from our boat to our car. No way could I walk the block-long dock distance. Once home, Dave fetched my father’s cane which has been collecting dust in the front closet. My ankle is very swollen and hurts like heck if I put any weight on it.

SO, thought I’d wax poetic about cooking classes, since I may not be cooking for a few days.

Recently, several people said to me one of the following: Why the heck do you go to cooking classes? You certainly don’t need to go to cooking classes. Don’t you have enough recipes already? You’re already a good cook, why do you go? You could be teaching the classes yourself, so why would you go? So, to those questions, my answers are:

I go to cooking classes because:

• I really, really enjoy them, so it’s like recreation to me; maybe you go to a scrapbooking class, or watch television, go to a game, lie on the beach, whatever it might be that floats your boat;
• Learning to cook different things is a challenge; or watching somebody else prepare something I’ve made for years, in a new and unusual way, which makes me think;
• My friend, Cherrie and I enjoy doing this together – it’s like girlfriend bonding time;
• Yes, I have enough recipes to last several lifetimes. I’ve been a recipe collector for my entire adult life (that’s 4 1/2 decades, last count), and I’m still a recipe clipper;
• Particularly I enjoy attending a class demonstration by a well-known cookbook author. Joanne Weir is about my favorite, but Phillis Carey is a close second. And I’ve attended countless others as well, a few I’ve written up in previous blog posts. More often than not I end up buying the cookbook, unless I’m disappointed in the food prepared. And in those instances, I can always look at the cooking class as entertainment. The bonus is that we get to eat, too!
• I count myself lucky – this is after years and years of attending cooking classes – if I come home with just one – yes ONE – recipe that I’ll make myself. I once heard someone say about buying record albums – if he bought one album and there was just one – just one song that was a keeper, he felt he’d made a good investment. On occasion I’ll come home with no recipes I’ll have the desire to prepare, but not usually.
• I have become a bit more circumspect about the menus – I really read them well before deciding to attend a class. I don’t need to learn knife skills. Or basics, like sauces. The class needs to have some kind of hook – maybe like “summer entertaining,” or “spring vegetable extravaganza.” That kind of thing.
• It’s not always about the recipes alone, either. Even though a class may not be about a cooking technique, I almost always learn something I didn’t know. You may find that hard to believe, but it’s true. It may be nothing more than watching the chef cut up something differently – like a very unusual method of cutting zucchini that I’ve used time and again since. Or seeing a chef use a Meisermeister peeler, which has become my all-time favorite. Or learning about the unusual spices used in Indian cooking.
• And probably last, but not least, watching somebody else prepare a full menu of food gives me ideas. More often than not, the chef will talk about why she/he put certain foods together, why they’re good on the palate, why they look good on the plate (the aesthetics are important too). Or maybe it’s just the idea that using cardamom pods in making homemade iced tea will give plain-old iced tea an added boost of flavor. So, that’s why I love going to cooking classes.

Could I teach cooking classes myself? Well yes, probably I could. I’m sure I could. Do I want to? No. Too much work. WAY too much work and not enough monetary benefit. That’s why I don’t quibble when I have to pay $50-$75 for a class. I’m quite happy to let somebody show me.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, I used to be a huge fan of Sur la Table. I still love the store, but I’m very down on the cooking school. About a year ago the company at large let go nearly all the cooking school staffs and hired (unknown) professional chefs. The cooking schools are now separate profit centers, and each day there is a class at a Sur la Table anywhere in the country, most of the time anyway, it’s the identical class and menu in all of their stores, prepared by the staff chef or one of his/her minions. They have very, very few well-known chefs – guest chefs – anymore. Cherrie, Darlene and I, who were regulars at their classes, have all individually complained.

I even wrote a blistering letter to their corporate office complaining about the chef who is in charge at their Newport Beach store. I’ve watched him in action, and truly question the wisdom of his hire. He’s arrogant and self-serving. I simply won’t go to classes there anymore. They are very basic and elementary too, which I don’t need. But, probably I’m an aberration for them – I’m an experienced cook and want more difficult subjects. Therefore, Cherrie and I have begun looking elsewhere to attend classes. I’ve mentioned the private classes we attend at homes in Coto de Caza. And we also go to A Store for Cooks. And our favorite is Our House, South County, but it may be closing down soon. Phillis Carey teaches at Great News in San Diego, so we’re thinking about trying that out one of these days. It will mean an all-day expedition, that’s all.

Since I’m on the subject of cooking classes, perhaps, for those who are uninitiated in this venue, I’ll mention that there are two kinds of classes: demonstration and hand-on. I suppose if I really needed to learn a specific technique, I’d want a hands-on. But with most classes of 20-30 people, you may not get a choice as to what you prepare. Meanwhile, everybody else does the prep on the other menu items and you don’t benefit or hear about their learning curve. Recently, when Cherrie and I went to Wine Country and attended classes at Ramekins in Sonoma, at one of my classes all I was given to do was slice, thinly slice, a red onion. Yawn. Therefore, Cherrie and I balk at going to hands-on classes anymore. We’ll mostly attend demonstration classes. That way we get to watch everything being prepared, we hear about all the steps and missteps along the way. If you do enjoy cooking, you really should try going to some classes. Your family might be thrilled to see some new things on the dinner table. So, you want to go to a cooking class with me? For now I’m going to get a bag of ice for my ankle.

Tweet