Category Archives: cooking

Said, of course, in a Wicked Witch of the West voice (cue the jokes about how I don’t properly pronounce my Bs).

This post is masquerading as a Mid-week Middle-aged Musings, but I’m afraid it is just an excuse to complain about how hot I am. How boring is that going to be? Probably pretty damn, as I wrote the preceding and can’t think of one other thing to say.

Last night I tried to fix a warm weather dinner. I had some fake crab meat so made some cocktail sauce to go with it — heavy on the horseradish. I love horseradish. That didn’t look like much, so I decided to make a salad.

First I chopped up a zucchini. Actually, I think you could call it dicing, because the pieces were fairly small. How small makes a dice? Smaller than the size of the dice you shoot craps with (not that I ever shot craps, but I was in a production of Guys & Dolls in high school). Maybe I’ll remember to look it up before I post this.

(NOTE: Steven’s dictionary only says small cubes, not how small. I am far too lazy to walk downstairs and check with Joy of Cooking. Let’s just assume it was diced.)

Where was I? Oh yes, taking a long time to chop — uh, dice the zucchini. Then I chopped an avocado and a couple of tomatoes. Finely diced some red onion (not a whole red onion; red onions are BIG) (I’m quite sure these were small enough to count as diced) and added a jar of artichoke hearts with marinade. I saw that there was plenty enough marinade to count as dressing so I stopped there.

I should perhaps mention that I was not cooking with wine but with ice water. I must fight dehydration in this weather. Um, to clarify, I drank the ice water while I cooked; I did not add ice water to the salad. To be honest, I almost never add wine to the food even when I do cook with wine. But perhaps that’s a subject for a different blog post.

So I was pretty pleased with my warm weather dinner. The only hot things were the horseradish and Tabasco in the cocktail sauce. And, of course, the cook, but you knew that already (see the second paragraph). It was nice and light, too. Excellent fare for somebody (me) who has to watch her waistline. I have no idea why I was up two more pounds when I stepped on the scale this morning.

But it’s too hot to worry about these things. And for any of you readers who may be gearing up to say something like, “You think YOU’VE got it hot!” or “At least you aren’t getting these terrible storms,” or “The reason you are up two pounds is that…” well, no doubt you are right. It is certainly too hot to argue about it.

Today I did something I rarely do: checked previous posts to see if I am repeating myself too egregiously (I know darn well I repeat myself; I only do so many things). I see that I did mention making egg and olive once. That time did not turn out so well. So I feel free to write about my experience of this afternoon.

It is Sunday. I spent most of the day Saturday running around having Mohawk Valley adventures of the shopping kind, but I don’t feel up to writing about that. Truth is, I don’t feel up to writing much. I felt tired to begin with, then I went on a long run and took an allergy pill afterwards. Allergy pills may put me to sleep or dope me up. Today they made me very tired and sapped out any vestige of ambition I may have had (and after my run I confess I did not have much). But I am so close to my goal of posting every day for a year, I really really want to write something.

I had put some eggs on to boil to make egg and olive for my sandwich tomorrow (I usually say “sammich” but I sometimes write “sandwich”), and went to the computer to Just Write Something. The eggs finished boiling while I was checking my email and facebook notifications. I was going to let them wait, but then I said, “Hey! I’ll make my egg and olive and blog about that!” That’s what you might call a win/win situation. Or is it multi-tasking? Killing two birds with one stone? Anyways, I thought it was a good idea.

I remembered I like to cook with wine, so I poured myself a small glass. First I put ice in the glass, to dilute it a little. I don’t want to get squiffy, I just want to cook with wine. It’s an odd phenomenon, but I find that sometimes a sip of wine counteracts the vagueness engendered by the sinus medication. Perhaps it’s placebo effect. Or I just don’t notice the allergy pill reaction any more. I’m inclined to think the former, though, because I usually take one sip, put the glass down and forget about it. That is what I did this time.

I peeled the eggs. I was about to throw out the shells when I remembered a conversation with a guy at work in which he said it was a good idea to put egg shells on the plants in your garden. I have not planted my garden yet, but I took the egg shells out and threw them onto the dirt where the garden is going to be. My dog Tabby followed me out. When I went back into the house, she went to stick her nose in the egg shells. She’s been sticking her nose in the garden dirt ever since the snow melted. I called her to come back in the house. Note to self: get fence to put around garden.

Back in the kitchen, I sliced the olives. I put them in a bowl with the eggs, mayonnaise and a little mustard. The mustard jar says it is Sweet Hot Dipping Mustard. I find it more sweet than hot, so I put a little horse radish in my egg and olive, to add a little zing. Then some Pampered Chef All Purpose Dill Mix, and some Lemon and Pepper seasoning. Mix, mix, trying to chop the egg whites with the fork. Ought I to have chopped them with a knife? Too late now.

A taste. Not bad. What to add? Then I remembered, chives! I have three patches of chives in my lawn which now come up every year with no effort on my part. I love chives! I ran out and got some. Chopped them small and threw them in. Another taste. I think it will do.

I put my mixture in the refrigerator for the flavors to blend. I’m sure this will be a delightful addition to my lunch tomorrow, in a whole wheat pita. In the meantime, I picked up the glass of wine I had forgotten about earlier, and I’m considering cooking dinner. I think I’m on a roll.

I knew I would run Wednesday, because I had missed Monday and Tuesday. You see, I thought I would try to conserve my energy for rehearsals for Harvey, the play I am in with Ilion Little Theatre (I feel I must say it every time, in case somebody forgot or just tuned in). I have to work hard at this acting stuff.

As rehearsal time approached on Monday, it seemed the conservation idea was not working out very well. I was exhausted. I knew some coffee would help, but that was problematic, too. If I drink coffee too late in the evening (ie, late enough to help me out with a 7 p.m. rehearsal), I don’t sleep at night. I’ve worked on not enough sleep. It’s not fun. I compromised with a tasteful blend.

OK, that needs a little explanation. The coffee machine at work offers a selection of “Mocha.” Below “Mocha” is the description: “a tasteful blend of coffee and chocolate.” Eventually I tried it. I’ll be honest, from a taste point of view, I prefer either coffee or chocolate. However, sometimes, straight coffee bothers my stomach and sometimes straight cocoa is just too sweet. And a tasteful blend offers entertainment value. I like to approach one co-worker in particular and say in a TV commercial tone of voice, “It’s a tasteful blend of coffee and chocolate.”

“A tasteful blend,” she repeats with a smile. Sometimes as I approach her with a cup, she forestalls me with “Is it a tasteful blend?”

I find it enhances my beverage experience to make a silly joke about it. I know, it takes so little to please some people.

I thought I would attempt a tasteful blend of my own at home, using instant coffee and cocoa. We normally brew coffee at our house, but we try to keep a jar of instant around for just such an emergency (I got that expression “just such an emergency” from a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. Maybe it doesn’t perfectly fit in this context, but how often do you get a chance to quote Foghorn Leghorn?). So I put half instant coffee, half instant cocoa in my hot water. Hmmmm… when it got cool enough to drink, it was not the thrill I was hoping for.

It was not the boost I was hoping for either. I told my castmates I would consume more coffee prior to Tuesday’s rehearsal. Of course I still had to sleep Tuesday night. What to do?

Steven suggested I start with brewed coffee. Well, it just stands to reason: start with better-tasting ingredients, you’ll get a better finished product. I made half a cup of cocoa then added brewed coffee. Hmmm… better. I added a little more cocoa mix without adding more water. Better yet, but still not the tasteful blend I sought. I still drank it, of course (hell, I drank the first failed attempt; it wasn’t that bad). I thought of making a second cup, maybe adding more cocoa mix, maybe even making the cocoa component with hot milk instead of water, although that seemed a little fancy for my purposes.

Then I thought: the whole reason behind the tasteful blend nonsense is to keep myself from consuming too much caffeine. Even I can do sufficient math to realize that two half cups of coffee is equivalent to one whole cup (and considering “half” is a mere estimate, it could be more). Then I saw the error of my brewed vs instant decision. Brewed coffee has the most caffeine (I mean of several things: tea, soda, etc.) (a college friend read me the numbers out of drug studies book back in the ’80s. Of course I don’t remember the numbers, but for caffeine, brewed coffee is the way to go).

So I did Tuesday’s rehearsal on one tasteful blend using one half cup of brewed coffee. It actually did not go too badly. Wednesday I had no rehearsal, so I attempted no blends but went to bed early. I am typing this on Thursday. Rehearsal looms. Perhaps I have time to attempt another blend. I’ll report back in a subsequent post.

Just a final note: I think I will boldly categorize this under cooking, among other things, even though technically I guess I didn’t cook anything. I am such a rebel.