Oh, wait.  Those are Paul Simon‘s words, not mine, and as you’ll see when you click this link, those words also sound awesome when they’re shared with Willie Nelson.  I would like to point out, however, that my traveling companion was my older brother, not the child of my first marriage. Nevertheless, I had a reason to believe we both would be received in Graceland.

Traveling companion. Note: No child of mine would be caught dead in a Bathtub Gin T-shirt.

Driving.  Down to Texas, from New Jersey.  You go right through Memphis.  As though we had any choice but to stop in Graceland and pay homage to the King of Rock and Roll?  Indeed I say, we did not.

I'm not worthy.

Even Jesus drops by to show his respect.  But, OK…is this me, or does this Elvis look sort of like the velvet love child of himself and Jack Lord?  And Jesus looks a little like Danno…NEW TV CRIME SERIES!  Lords of Law: Memphis Beat.  Get me a pitch man, because I smell money. Come on, people.  It would frigging woooooooork.  And I digress.

From the outside, Graceland honestly doesn’t look super-special.  It’s quite nice; stately, really.  It’s smaller than I expected, especially because the second story is off-limits as it is still used residentially, and it’s on a nice but not gigantic piece of serene, manicured land.

Front of house.

Back of house.

Serene and horsey.

They don’t allow you to take pictures inside (unless that’s changed somehow in the last ten years or so), as they claim the excessive exposure to light from the bajillion flashes from a bajillion tourists could damage the textiles in the house.  Whatever, picture nazis.  I think they just forbid you from taking pictures so they can sell you more stuff at the gift shop.  But I digress.

I mean, this is where Elvis lived, right?  This is the guy with the sequinned jumpsuits and the flotilla of cadillacs, who shot his TV so he didn’t have to look at Robert Goulet and got Richard Nixon to officially deputize him into the DEA (that’s right, folks, the D-E-A…just mentally snack that for a while).  I know all this is true because I read it in Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, and to set the record straight, the fact that I actually read this book?  Also true.  Get over it, doubters.

So I admit, I drove up to the ample parking lot that was several city blocks large and far enough away that it required shuttle service, expecting to be met with more than a small amount of barking madness.  I was having a little bit of a let-down.  Couldn’t take pictures, and the house was more tasteful than I expected.  Sure, there’s the Jungle Room

Ahhh, home.

But who among the idle rich doesn’t want a room covered in floor-to-ceiling shag carpeting, with hand-carved giraffe armrests for one’s chairs?  Or stained glass peacocks flanking the grand piano?  Or a billiard room decorated to look like a circus tent?  This was the ’70s, people strangled good taste in its sleep and hung its body from the doors of the nearest disco.  And this was the King.  I wanted more.  I wanted “WTF??!?!?!?”  I wanted…

Holy shit, is that a porcelain monkey?  Sitting in front of a giant lightning bolt?

<click>

Oh, what, people.  Like you could have stopped yourselves?  The tourtroopers were none too pleased with me, and I did try to take the picture surreptitiously, without the flash, but it seemed the crappy little disposable camera I had with me had ideas of its own.  Besides, this was what I came there to see!  This was the sort of grandiose, drug-addled, TV-shooting sensibility I wanted to see.  OK, fine, I know the lightning bolt in the cloud refers back to his TCB  motto, which is why this room is also called the TCB room.  But the monkey?  Mirrored everything?  A pre-sports-bar bank of TVs in the wall?

Yesssssssssss.

As we were on sort of limited time (I did have to finish driving all my crap down to Texas and starting a new life there), we just took the mansion tour and didn’t tour the planes or the automobile museum, but you know…I’m OK with that.  If what we were looking at were hand-drawn sketches Elvis did of his own plane design, then I could have been more interested.  DaVinci paintings?  I’m there.  Woody Guthrie‘s hand-written notebooks?  Hours and hours and hours.  But what we were looking at, ultimately, were the things someone with a lot of money decided to buy while in the throes of nouveau-riche excess.  Meh.  Though, admittedly, I will never see another porcelain monkey with quite as much zazz.

The mansion tour included access to the grounds and of course, what does Lisa Marie keep in her back yard?  Is it a pool?   Is it a swing set?  No.

Daddy!

There are no words to describe the frantic melancholy that pervades the Elvis memorial and tomb at Graceland.  Flowers.  Teddy bears.  Notes.  Pictures.  Wreaths.  Sprays.  Balloons.  It is a vast and ever-changing array of memorials that fans make or design and send in to Graceland for approval and display.  Since words fail, here are images.

Approaching the gravesite.

OK, seriously. WTF is that thing?

BEHOLD!

I can’t help but feel like putting these things out for display just encourages more people to make and/or send this stuff.  I was there in 2001, twenty-four years after the man’s unfortunate and untimely death, and still the fans were tragicrafting on more things than black velvet.  It’s impressive, really, but unsettling and weird as well.  Do they pay that much attention to their own family members?

Anyway.  So that’s Graceland.  I would go again, if I were in Memphis with someone who’d never visited before.  He was the King, after all.

I will leave you with two things: 1) the official Elvis recipe for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, as sold to the purchasing public on a postcard from the gift shop

Mmmmmm.

And 2)  A video of Elvis performing with Ann-Margret in the movie “Viva Las Vegas“.  Feast your eyes upon the majesty that is Ann-Margret, who disproves the cultural meme that tights are not pants, though she may have been the only woman in all of Creation that could’ve gotten away with it.

For the record, grape leaves are never easy.  More on that later.  Moving on.

The word “casserole” is from the French; it means “saucepan” which indicates some kind of giant mutation of meaning because you cook casseroles in a baking dish in the oven, and saucepans, for the most part, stay on the stove.  Unless you’re making a pork loin that you browned on the stove top and want to finish in the oven, so you move the whole thing, pan and all, into said oven.  If that’s the case, then for the love of all that is holy PLEASE remember that you just had your primarily topside pan in the depths of a flaming hot oven, and when you go to make some pan gravy, the handle?  Will be hot.  I still have some ointment, so if you forget, call me.

Anyway.  Hungry.  Bored.  Trolling websites for recipes.  And I came across the recipe for a stuffed grape leaf casserole.  Brown rice, pistachios, currants, and the titular grape leaf.  What’s not to want?  I mean, I love stuffed grape leaves (a/k/a dolmades), which are not difficult to make but they are time-consuming, and it’s constant work as you have to roll each individual leaf.  This recipe–ain’t gonna lie–still takes a while, but it’s a while of kind of letting things cook on their own and walking away, so you’re not laboriously tied to the stove.  And it’s all the stuff in a stuffed grape leaf, without having to do any stuffing!  Here we go:

I just dig how the pistachios look here.

Aside from shelling the pistachios, you also need to get your rice going.  Brown rice takes twice as long to cook as white rice–it’s brown because it hasn’t had the bran covering polished off, which is heartier than the rice itself and requires more exposure to boiling water to make it edible.   Of course, the bran is what packs the nutritional wallop, boosting the fiber to three times the amount of white rice, and who doesn’t need fiber?  Nonsense, we all do.  Anyway.  I’m sure you know what cooking rice is about, and what it looks like.  Sorry if you really wanted a picture.  Moving on.

So, grape leaves.  Rumor has it you can get them fresh.  If you’re Michael Chiarello and can pick them from your organic grape arbor, then maybe you can get them fresh.  Most of us will have to settle for ones that are brined and sitting in a jar (and yes, local peeps, you can get them at the Weis).  I don’t know why the recipe doesn’t tell you to do this, but the first thing you should do with grape leaves is cut off their stems.  Some commercial brands will have the stems removed, but clearly, not all of them will.  So when you see a grape leaf that looks like this:

Leaf, with intact stem.

Realize that it’s your duty to get rid of Nature’s toothpick, and just lop off that little twiggy bit.

All better.

Even if they’re brined and relatively soft, a good par-boiling isn’t a bad idea, as grape leaves are fairly substantial things with some chew and, because of the brining, can (not surprisingly) be salty.   Par-boiling will help manage all that; they’ll become pliant, some of the salt will be removed.  So take your pile of de-stemmed leaves

Relax, stoners. They're grape leaves.

And throw them into some boiling water for two minutes.  Nothing fancy, just toss ‘em in.  And then drain them, and run some cool water over them as an ersatz shocking.  Cools them down, stops the cooking process.  Because you know when you drain them they’re still hot, right, and still “cooking”, even if they’ve been removed from an external heat source.  Because they’re so hot they’re their own heat source.  You get it, right?  So if you just drained them and let them sit their in their heatedness they’d keep cooking and cooking and mushing out, and who needs mushy grape leaves?  Not this girl.  Just cool them off.  And then dry them.  And then!  Get a two-quart baking dish and start lining it with your leaves.

You do want some overhang, so you can wrap your casserole nicely and tidily.

Mix your rice + parsley + whatever other herbs you decide to use (I didn’t have mint, so I went with lemon thyme & rosemary) + pistachios + currants + tomato juice (or thinned out tomato sauce, also what I used).  Pour half on top of your initial layer of grape leaves, and then add another layer of leaves so it’s sort of like a grape leaf lasagna.  Put in the other half of the ricey goodness and it will look something like this.

Almost ready for the oven.

Top this with one more layer of grape leaves, tuck in the edges so it’s all pretty-like, and then paint on a bit of olive oil to finish.

Covered in grape leaves and ready to roll.

And then, 30 or 40 minutes later…

Dat's right.

Though seriously, Pyrex people…call me.

Behold the stuffed grape leaf casserole.  Serve it with a dollop of yogurt and some pomegranate molasses for a real treat.  The molasses has a sweet & sour quality to it that brings out the floral elements of the thyme and currants, so it’s rich and creamy and biting and light and fresh, all at the same time.  Drizzle some of the juice from one of those lemon slices on top of the yogurt and molasses and you’re home free.

One plate full of happy.

Dig my righteous Fire King, Primrose pattern.

With all the objectivity I can muster I tell you now…this was awesome.

***

Welcome to a very special Valentine’s Day edition of Zamboni Lady.  We hear a lot of things in Zamboniland.  We hear a lot of funny things, we hear a lot of nonsensical things, we hear a lot of things that are charmingly mistaken.  But we also hear a lot of crap that has absolutely no basis in reality, is sneakily detrimental to our well-being, and yet serves as some kind of well of common wisdom that well-meaning but misguided folks stick their dippers in time after time.  After time.  And Valentine’s Day is coming, which means everyone’s getting weirdly and romantically torqued in ways they perhaps ought not to.  The Zamboni Lady takes seriously her role as benefactrix to all, so let me dispel some of these incredibly common, warped, potential emotional landmines that are often viewed as legitimate relationship lore.

3)  ”The heart wants what it wants.”

<sigh>

When the tortured, lovelorn soul mournfully utters these words regarding the love he or she cannot live without, those nearby nod in

"You'd probably brood too, if you had to wear a neck ruffle like this." --E. Dickinson

sage agreement and slip into the darkness to think of their own hearts and loves.  Popular wisdom has this quote attributed to Emily Dickinson and if she was indeed the originator, then my heart wants to punch her right in her brooding face.  More recently used by doucheketeer Woody Allen to defend his relationship with daughter-wife Soon-Yi Previn, “The heart wants what it wants” is a misanthropic shoulder-shrugging that is designed to excuse self-absorbed sexual fixation.  We all have urges that can bear profoundly on our thoughts in a day, but they aren’t necessarily good or healthy or socially acceptable.  You down with OCD?  Yeah.  That’s what I thought.  We can’t excuse morbid obesity with, “The mouth wants what it wants.”  We can’t mindlessly drink and say, “The liver wants what it wants.”  And go ahead, just TRY and get away with saying, “The vagina wants what it wants” without having your great grandparents rise from their graves (or stop by, if they’re still alive) to beat you with with the slutty stick until you see the error of your ways.  Try it, I’ll wait.  But say “heart” and suddenly the speaker is in the middle of a romantic odyssey that defines their life but yet over which they seemingly have no control.  It’s the magic word of melodramatic justification.  Oh, to be the pawn of cruel, tempestuous Fate!   Oh, to be so deeply in the thrall of passion that you end up having unprotected sex with an in-law in the bathroom at that in-law’s wedding reception!  Oh, to have a readily available, hackneyed excuse that removes you from any and all responsibility for your own behavior!

Restraint, people.  As humans, we have the ability to make decisions about our behavior.  Free will?  You know, the concept that we can choose a course of actions from among various alternatives?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Anybody?   We’ve been evolving for thousands of years and the best you’ve got is, “I’ve got an achin’ in my heart (and a poundin’ in my pants)”?  That’s a country song, not a way of life.  So we have free will, unless the heart wants it, and then we are beholden to go out and get it/fuck it/break it up with whoever it’s involved with at the time?  Eliminate this piffle from your repertoire, and move on.

2)  ”Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

I should be kinder toward Ali McGraw.  She’s a Wellesley sister, after all.  And she’s dead now.  But that never stopped me before, so…ever forward.

Love Story, Erich Segal.  Rich boy meets poor girl, they fall in love, she is terminally ill, rich boy learns lessons about life and love and gets to claim the moral high ground against his curmudgeonly, snobby father, end scene.  Here is the entire movie, in about four and a half minutes:

Contained within both this book and this film is the now immortal line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”, which, of course, is a gigantic crock of shit.  Admittedly, I have a problem with anything that romanticizes the nobility of suffering, and this ancestor of Forrest Gump‘s Jenny sets the standard what it means to suffer and die within the confines of a relationship.  Segal imagined his beautitragic heroine saying the most selfless thing he could think of in the aftermath of a fight, and in doing so downplayed the importance of self-reckoning for an entire generation and impacted generations to come.  I’m not saying your partner shouldn’t be able to lovingly excuse a particular behavior.  I’m not saying it’s healthy to have to apologize for every single one of your minute transgressions.  But love requires work, and sustained, healthy love, in a chosen relationship that isn’t beholden to parental or familial bonds (because those are slightly different, though even these have their limits), means knowing exactly when to say you’re sorry, and meaning it.  ”I’m sorry”, at its height of meaning, says, “I have taken the time to consider your concerns, and I have come to understand both your point of view and where I have failed it.  My ego may have taken a hit from this but I am trying not to lose the lesson.  Please forgive me.”  That’s a lot of meaning in two words–three, if you spell out the contraction.  But they are words that are important to every relationship, because nobody is above screwing up and requiring a little self-contemplation.  We start learning how to think about other people when our parents start teaching us to share.  If you think love doesn’t mean valuing your partner’s feelings and the dignity of your relationship, then do us all a favor and bow out of relationship-having until you take the time to grow up.

This sort of thinking has led directly to…

1)  ”S/he is my soul mate!”

Gaaah.  Really?

OK.  I want love to be transcendent and eternal.  I want to feel like my chosen partner enriches my life just by being around.  I want to feel like something I’m a part of is bigger than the sum of its parts.  But here’s the thing: you can do that without getting cosmically goopy.

Yes, yes, yes.  I know that 2500 years ago, Plato was talking about twin souls and twin flames and searching the world for the other half of us from which we have been torn asunder.  2500 years ago, Plato and Socrates also spent a significant amount of time discussing whether or not women were woefully inferior, or just mildly inferior but deserved things like some sort of education.  2500 years later, the best we can come up with is that we’re spiritual twinsies?  I can barely stomach a couple dressed alike…

They walk alike, they talk alike...

…never mind how I feel about someone who thinks they need to find the person who matches their soul in order to feel complete.  Because that’s really what “soul mate” searching is about, isn’t it?  It’s about not resting until you can find the perfect person with whom you can develop a codependent relationship.  Here are a few questions from a common “Are You Soulmates?” quiz:

• Do you feel in sync with one another?  Does he buy the gift you’re secretly wishing for?  Do you finish each other’s sentences?
• Are there signs of compatibility you can’t ignore?  Did your dog or cat love him or her before you did?
• When you talk about your childhoods, do you feel like they were uncannily alike?

And so on, and so on.  Consider this, in response:

Do you feel in sync with each other?  Does he buy the gift you secretly want, do you finish each other’s sentences? ~~ Boy, that sounds nice, huh?  Never having to work at a relationship, speak up for yourself, or learn how to communicate healthily, letting your partner know what you want, what you like, or what’s on your mind, rather than expecting them to get inside your brain and read it for themselves.  Because that’s what sane adults in healthy relationships do.  That’s what you do, right?  Yes…wha?  No?  Oh.

Did your dog or cat love him before you did? ~~  OK, I can’t even process this accurately.  I love my cat–my boyfriend’s cat, our cat–very very much, but if George told me he let Sammy guide him in his relationship decisions, I would pack up and leave under cover of darkness.  This isn’t even real.  It can’t be.  God help us.

Do you have uncannily similar childhoods?  ~~  See, here’s the thing–unless you had extraordinarily different situations, chances are pretty good you had similar childhoods.  The kid who grew up in suburban New Jersey might have a wildly different childhood than an inner city kid or an army brat, but would probably have a very similar childhood to the person who grew up contemporaneously in, say, suburban Illinois.  I might even be able to find more than one who won a spelling bee, had a pet rock, and had a dog named Rusty who got hit by a car.  The point is, as unique and snowflake-special as we like to imagine ourselves, we’re remarkably similar.  We may think differently about them in the end, but we have a lot of the same experiences.

There is no easy way to have a healthy relationship.  A relationship is messy and hard, and requires that you attend to it on a regular basis.  Looking for the easy way, by believing that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” or searching for soul mates or that you’re the victim of your own heart is not only unrealistic and unhealthy, it also results is an abundance of nacho-and-tequila-fueled tearfests.  As the Zamboni Lady, and as your friend, I beg you, do the work, be honest about what you want, communicate, and don’t take shortcuts, lest you end up with an example of a bad, bad valentine.

Bad, bad valentines.

And seriously, if anyone recognizes where this came from, I would love to link back to it.  I saved the picture last year because it cracked me up, but I didn’t save the link and am regretting it now.  Please help me credit the right person for this moment of pure Valentine genius.  Thank you.

The charm of Primrose...

The vintage zazz of Peach Lustre.

I came across a book, another one.  A very special one, for the excellent hostess, circa 1967.

Recipes! Four hundred of them! From 1967! *swoon*

Check out the swingin’ house; I think they’re going to visit the Bradys.  When I can work myself up to it I promise I’ll scan some pictures for you, because they’re almost all uniformly eye-poppingly bad…

What’s that?  Just one?  Oh…OK.

Don't stare too long, lest you go blind.

And for dessert, we’ll be delighted to serve you the specimen from a biopsy.  In all seriousness, I suspect the people vacationing on the Riviera wouldn’t touch these things with someone else’s silver spoon, melted raspberry jelly or no.  I also love with all my snarky little heart that they give you a recipe for making buttered rye toast, because who on Earth would have thought of combining bread and butter and heat?  Not I, sir.  Not I.  And before you think that was just symptomatic of the time and the domestic arts industry looked at American housewives as relative simpletons who needed direction in all things food-preparatory, let me direct you to its modern-day equivalent.  Feast your eyes upon the recipe for Rachael Ray’s “Late Night Bacon“.  I’ll just post it–the whole thing–right here.

Ingredients

• 8 slices bacon

OK, but seriously.  I am so lucky, and glad, and happy, that I was not a party-throwing hipster back in 1967, because I would have rained shame down on my family’s name.  I like to give parties–I can throw down a pretty decent one by today’s standards, with or without the microwaved pork products–but I.  Would.  Have.  Been.  Shunned.  Ostracized!  Committed.  By my family or the community, for my failure to conform to party standards.  Here’s one of my favorite passages from the Hostess Cookbook so far:

***

Hostess on Her Own

No one will deny that the greatest asset any hostess can have is an obliging husband.  But lacking this advantage, it’s still possible for a girl on her own to earn her stripes as a party-giver.

And why is he a great asset?  Because he’s thoughtful regarding his guests and helpful in the kitchen?  Or because he’s present and that means the hostess isn’t a singleton?  It’s presented to the reader without a syllable of explanation, so it’s up to the reader to decide…

First, choose a menu that requires the absolute minimum of last-minute time in the kitchen–for either cooking or serving.

This is good advice whether you’ve got a husband who…obliges…or not.

Second, avoid a roast or bird that needs to be carved.  This is really man’s domain, and you’ll look more graceful serving if no surgery is involved.

Because nobody wants to see an armed, stressed, and potentially stabby unmarried hostess.

Third, if you’re having cocktails, set up a bar in the living room with glasses, ingredients, shakers and ice on a table, chest, or bookcase.

 This is America, and it’s not like people have books on their bookcases.

Now delegate.  Ask whichever of your men guests you know best–your beau, your brother-in-law, the husband of your best friend–to act as bartender.  Most men enjoy this role, but may hesitate to assume it without a specific go-ahead from you.  If you have to leave the room, ask the woman guest you know best to take over such hostessly [yes, that's what they wrote] duties such as door-answering, introductions and peanut-passing.

’tis a sad tale, the plight of the unpassed peanut.  Which would surely happen if–Heaven forfend–a woman had to mix a martini.

*** {end scene} ***

They also gently inform the hostess that if she’s serving cocktails, she should have at least one non-alcoholic beverage so “…if your guest doesn’t want one of your stronger potions, he or she can elect fruit punch or ginger ale without calling attention to the choice.”  I’m not sure why discretion gets called into play here, particularly because the person whose image the hostess is protecting is that of the sober one.  The implication is that the soft-drink-drinker is the weirdo that you don’t want to let harsh on everyone else’s buzz.  This reminds me of all those great movies where everyone drank gin all day and smoked their faces off; extra points if Grandpa made the gin himself in the back corner of the barn.  (OK, even if you never click the links I embed, click this one, because this page is a LOT of fun.)

People, I read these things so you don’t have to.  You’re welcome.

This book has it all.  Mexican medleys!  Ham buffets!  Pancake parties!  Brunch Parisienne!  Jiffy Jam sticks!  Mock cheesecake!  Bacon curls!  It’s not just frozen medical waste over peaches, it’s so much more.

For those of you who don’t know, Rick Bayless is the gringo king of Mexican cuisine.  He was born into a family of Oklahoma barbecue restaurateurs, but thanks to love and college made a multi-year trek through Mexico which resulted in a cookbook that revolutionized the North American concept of Mexican cooking.  So who am I to quibble with a recipe of his?  This is the man who, according to the people who reviewed his book, single-handedly changed a national perspective on an ethnic cuisine, and this is no small feat.  Just make the recipe the way that God and Rick Bayless intended, and go on with my dinner, right?  Right!

Only…

You see, I get that Mexican tortas are traditionally supposed to be sandwiches, on beautiful, crusty bolillo rolls, but I didn’t want a sandwich.  I didn’t want all that bread for dinner; I eat enough carbs in the pasta I will never give up, and I can guarantee you I had some sort of sandwichey thing at some point in the day.  Blah blah blah whatever, it all comes down to this: I didn’t want to prepare it on a sandwich roll and (we’ve heard this from me before, haven’t we?) I have no respect for the integrity of a recipe.  And I had a red bell pepper and a poblano that I had to put to good use before they went off, and can you cook peppers without onions, in any cuisine?  No, friends.  I think not.

Delicious interlopers!

I did make the mushrooms almost entirely as directed, and thanks to Rick Bayless’s genius, they were amazing.  Take a ton of ‘shrooms which should ideally all be fresh, but this is central PA and my access to things like oyster mushrooms are limited.  I rehydrated a bunch of dried oyster mushrooms I had in my pantry and will use the now-frozen mushroom broth in a vegetarian onion soup, but I digress…

Mushrooms!

And cut them in thin slices.  They go into a baking dish with the garlic-lime confit you’ve already roasted (two heads of peeled garlic, a half-cup of oil, one quarter cup of lime juice and some salt, 325°, one hour, and hallelujah) though in the spirit of full disclosure, I tell you now I didn’t put all the oil from the confit into the mushrooms; it just seemed like a little too much.  I reserved about half of it and turned it into a lovely roasted garlic citrus vinaigrette with the simple addition of a little mustard and the juice from a clementine.  Score!

Anyway, mushrooms and confit go into a 400° oven for ten minutes covered and 35 minutes not, and when they’re done mix in the cilantro at the end.  You’ll get something that looks a little like this…or hopefully, a lot like this…

This is an example of what Rick Bayless can teach you.

And then put it all together.  A little goat cheese, a little salsa, some baby arugula, my errant peppers and onions and these glorious, glorious mushrooms.

Feast.

That Machiavellian bastard.  His plan, it is working.

It all started with the recipe I posted on here earlier, for peperonata with DIY ricotta.  The peperonata was one thing–it was a good thing, I was actually just looking at this post and thinking we need to make this again, some time soon.  But making homemade cheese was a revelation to me; all I thought, as I ate beautiful, creamy, delicious cheese that I coaxed out of a pot full of hot milk and lemon juice, was, “Holy crap, I want to do this again!”

And so it has been done.  I am working my way slowly but surely through the book, and it’s written so cheesemakin’ newbies like me can start at the beginning with easy recipes and move forward to progressively more difficult cheeses.

I’ve worked my way up to goat cheese.  Chèvre, if you will.  Apparently, chèvre simply means “goat” in French, and the word has come

Meaningful, but utterly inedible.

to mean the entirety of goat cheeses.  If you want goat meat you should ask for chevon, not to be confused with Chevron, which is of course either a military insignia or a global petro-monster.  Either way, one shouldn’t eat a chevron.

It’s been a delicious journey, I wouldn’t want to ruin that.

But  this is the first time I’ve worked with anything that required more than a few hours’ attention and an actual starter culture  that I had to purchase from a cheese supply shop.  On the interwebs, since I don’t have one nearby (that I know about…anyone?  Anyone?  Anybody?).  Goat’s milk is pretty readily available at Ard’s and I’ve only checked into this on an extremely superficial level at this point, but I’ve heard tell there’s some goat dairies out in Mifflinburg, so I may have to get on the goat trail and girl-detective my way to figuring out what’s out there.  But anyway.

The thing about making cheese that’s kind of a bummer is, it’s viciously boring to photograph.  Even if it sounds vaguely exciting in a “livin’ on the edge” sort of way because the goat’s milk you bought…wait for it…is raw and needs to be pasteurized.  Girls, hold on to your boyfriends…

Ooh, look! It's pasteurizing like crazy!

That’s almost as exciting as it gets.  Ooh, look, the temperature is really accurate!  Oh, snap, the starter culture is rehydrating like nobody’s business, yo!

Of course, you could have to incubate your cheese.  Chèvre has to develop at a relatively low temperature for a relatively long time–between 72° and 78° for twelve hours (according to this cookbook; I have seen other recipes with different temps and incubation times, but I’m not cooking with them).  The author says that leaving the pot wrapped on the stove with the overhead light from the stove hood on should be sufficient for my purposes.  Great, right?  Only I don’t have a stove hood.  I have a rustic kitchen designed and built in 1935 and covered in knotty pine paneling.  It’s awesome, and I’m not cutting into a centimeter of it to put in a hood.  So what does a cheeseteuse do in these situations?  A cheeseteuse, dears, will improvise.

Talk, will you? Talk, I say!

(Dig my paneling.)

So there you have it.  There is my cheese incubator.  For TWELVE HOURS, that light shone on my pot of cheese, packed with goat’s milk and C20G powdered mesophilic starter.  Meso=middle and philic=friendly, so this is bacteria that thrives in mild temperatures; one could conceivably argue that I am also mesophilic, since I am also happiest when the temperature is somewhere between  72° and 78° and having lived through cold northeast winters and Texas summers, I can attest that this is entirely true.  Anyway.  At six this morning–after being woken up by the boyfriend, whose first words to me were, “Hey, don’t you have to check on the cheese?”–I unplugged my interrogation lamp, and unwrapped my pot, and pulled off the lid, and…

Curds!

Beautiful, glorious curds!  Look, looklook!  You can really see along the top of the pot how the curds have pulled away from the whey!  And they came out with the ultra-thick, yogurty texture they were supposed to have!  Oh, frabjous joy, oh happy day!

While the photos of the draining cheese promise to be nearly as exciting as the photos of pasteurizing milk, there was one more obstacle that had to be overcome–that of a cat who has taken to claiming the countertops as his own.

Sammy is relentless in his supervision of the household.

This recipe calls for the cheese to drain at room temperature for at least six and up to twelve hours.  I may indulgently joke about Sammy owning the house and everything in it but in all reality, the last thing I wanted was for the cat to stick his nose into my cheese, and there’s no way I could monitor the countertops for the entirety of the six-to-twelve-hour drain time.  And yet, it couldn’t go in the fridge.  And yet, I couldn’t just cover it because you want the air to circulate around it so it drains evenly and isn’t kept in an improperly humid environment.  I feel like I keep channeling my high school drama teacher, so with all due respect, Mrs. Horvath, I will say once again: Improvise!

Dat's right, kitty. Call me when you've got some thumbs.

Colander #1, meet colander #2.  Kitty, here is the pitard in which you are hoist.  Checkmate.

Once it’s drained–and you should check the bowl and make sure it’s actually draining and your cheese isn’t sitting in a reservoir of whey, and maybe even flip it once for even draining–then you scoop it into a dish with a cover and tuck in.  Tomorrow’s post will be all about what we ate this with, but for tonight, I will leave you with these…

Hello, beautiful.

Come here often?

Oh. I see you're here with someone.

To be continued…

If you’re born to it, you don’t need some fancy book, see?  You’ll ooze etiquette like a bee’s butt oozes honey.  Ease of etiquette indicates the euphemistically repulsive term “breeding“, which is just one string of pearls away from eugenics in its implications about animal husbandry in relation to social acceptability.  The only people who need etiquette books are the nouveau riche, who may have earned a lot of money war-profiteering or rum-running and can buy their way into the right parties and events but certainly don’t know how to behave in capital-S Society.  Or social climbin’ gals, who want to trick rich men into marrying them because they think these ladies are of their class, once they master all the genteel standards a book can provide.  Ha!  Have you ever SEEN some elaborate table settings?  Good luck with that.  (And while I hate to admit it, it looks like the Kennedy fortune did not come from the aforementioned running of the rum and this is simply a wildly successful urban legend; Joe Kennedy‘s father was a savvy businessman in his own right so Papa Joe had money to start with, though that’s not to say he didn’t dabble in liquid investments–sorry, gangster romantics, and I digress.)

And so, while I was in the Street of Shops I came across an old etiquette book in the flea market section in the basement.  The New Book of Etiquette, © 1925 by Lillian Eichler (whose story is pretty interesting) and no, I didn’t pay $69.99 for it.  Two bucks–score!  Here’s an example of some of the advice she offers:

“The friend or acquaintance who has an at-home day should be given the courtesy of having that at-home day honoured.  If you know, for instance, that Mrs. Blank receives on Tuesdays, do not be so discourteous as to call on Fridays, unless you just wish to leave your card and pay a “duty” call.”  – p. 138

Indeed, I would never want to call if Mrs. Blank isn’t ready to receive.

“A woman does not share on her cards the title of her husband.  For instance, the wife of our President has her cards engraved, “Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.”  The wife of a secretary, judge, general, or admiral does not use any other title on her personal card than “Mrs.”" — pp. 124-125.

How gauche to even consider otherwise.  Ladies, “Mrs.” is all the title you’ll ever need.

“The first and invariable rule is that the woman always bows first when meeting man acquaintances.” — p. 96.

What the huh?

And so with that in mind, we turn to one of my favorite pages in the book.  Oddly, this page isn’t surrounded by anything that elaborates on the caption, so I can only assume it’s up to the reader to parse out the meaning on his or her own.  Okay, fine, I’ll do it.

“The unexpected guest constitutes a real problem…”

A real problem?  Why?  Will the hostess run the risk of breaking a limb because of the unexpected guest?  Will she starve?  Is this unexpected guest secretly the Pied Piper, and the hostess’s home will soon be overrun with mice?  Is it because the hostess can no longer walk around naked?  Will the guest steal all of her silver?  WHAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM?

“…to the hostess who has no maid…”

Oh.  So having a guest requires extra cleaning.  Unless you’re hosting Pigpen, I don’t see how that’s a legitimate issue.

Problem!

“…and only the simplest kind of guest room.”

Because I, for one, refuse to stay somewhere unless there’s a chandelier from which my boyfriend can swing.

Finally, some civilization.

If the room has a place to sleep, four walls, a ceiling that lacks holes and a bathroom nearby, what more does the unexpected guest need?

Apparently, they need maid service.

This is the world that I find so fascinating.  How dreadful!  That a lady may have to meet the needs of her guest all on her own, without the assistance of a maid or, apparently, a husband, who as a host is not presented as having any sort of problem with an unexpected guest when he lacks a maid.  Because he’s got a built-in maid in his wife.  (The gender politics make my head spin.)  That she may have to house a guest in a simple room that doesn’t have a single automated toenail clipper or Magic Fingers® or a mature dog she could strap a serving tray to and send in cocktails.  This was 1925; penicillin hadn’t even been discovered yet, the income disparity that triggered the Great Depression was building, and a hostess’s real problem was that someone she theoretically likes stops in for a visit?  And that she had to put them into a guest room that may or may not have fancy soap?  Get over yourself, Ina Garten.  The world has much bigger fish to fry.

I don’t expect people to make bûche de Noël.  I can barely believe the energy that goes into making one.  And those cookies I made were pretty labor-intensive; I completely, totally admit that.  I understand the desire to not want to spend an entire day in the kitchen, which is why you rely on the relatives who don’t mind doing so to cook dinner for you.  But here’s the thing about traditional holiday foods–they’re supposed to be special, they’re supposed to be a little time-consuming, which is why you only have them on particular occasions.  You don’t have a giant, bronto-ham with the bone sticking out, studded with pineapple and cloves every goddamned Sunday, you have that at Easter, and maybe Thanksgiving.  And let’s talk about Thanksgiving, one of the few times of the year we eat ninety-pound birds you have to start cooking the day before, because they’re stuffed with chickens and ducks and the neighbor’s pet canary and whatever other sort of fowl you can think to cram in to another bird’s chest cavity.  Anyone, at any time of year, can have a crappy Yule log made out of a giant Ho-Ho and some Cool Whip, and in fact I think I’ve eaten that very combination of foodstuffs during at least one of my more spectacular moments of self-loathing-fueled binge eating.  Yeah, let’s celebrate the holidays with some classic shame-food, and then get drunk enough to tell Uncle Cletus how we really feel about him.

Note to Cletus Mergitroid: Relax, dudes.

God, I HATE that there’s a cooking show hosted by someone who hates to fucking cook.

As always, thanks to Food Network Humor for all the BS you weed through for my entertainment.

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I welcome, cause I live to serve.  Bye.

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No problem, turkey23bacon, who comments on the snarkasm that abounds in Favorite Spam Letters!  Keep your very ridiculous comments rolling in.  

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You know, you’re not the first person to say I’d make an excellent aspect, though if more individuals thought of doing this I don’t know if my ofing of the difficulty would be quite so unique.  I hope your bit thump heals properly.  Merit again back at you!

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Aw, you’re too kind!  I’m so glad you found something inspiring in Favorite Spam Letters, but I would like to point out that you don’t have to put something like this in writing because I’ve already done that for you, and you’re welcome.  And remember: hard work and determination pay off down the line, but procrastination pays off immediately.  Keep it up!

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And I am not implying that we give each other pinecone art and coupons for backrubs we do Amigo Gifts.

I take back anything I say about the spam making some sort of sense, because this is clearly the product of a random word generator.  

WordPress allows me to see a preview of where the backlinks would take me, without clicking on the links.  This one links to a Russian shopping site, which I would almost be tempted to link so you one could check out the “Clothing and Shoes, for the ladies” links.  But how could I resist a spam about the implied allure of pinecone art?

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It is a play on how mouse is the singular form of the plural mice, yet die is the singular form of dice.

Yes, Yoda, logic have you grammatically.  However, this makes zero sense in relation to the blog entry to which it was a reply (Moment of Observation: Happy New Year!), and so you still get the finger.  

The curious thing that I’ve noticed is that I seem to be getting less spam since I’ve started posting spam letters, which is both a blessing and a curse now.  It may just be a weird spam cycle and I’m about to be flooded by nonsensical letters, but I feel like the spammers know I’m making fun of them, so they only send their more literate ones who can write a complete sentence after me.  Dare to dream, yeah?

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Hey there and you’re welcomed.  I’m glad you could expertise a few things.  

Truth: My FAVORITE part of this spam?  Is that it was sent as a reply to Favorite Spam Letters.  <sigh>  These are the moments you treasure.

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It’s a public blog.  Nothing is secret.  And I’m not that pleasant.  Thank you for playing; please try again.

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� And if it does come that you need to supplement or formula feed, it should come from the horse�� s mouth, not someone else.

This was in response to my blog about marshmallows.  That I make with Bailey’s.  I don’t often consider feeding drunken marshmallows to babies, no matter whose mouth the advice comes from.

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Properly, at least, I am extra of amused.

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Or the subject line from a spam email:

Ex-wives: There local and looking [end subject]

There?  Where???  For what?

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