Casa de Jefe.

The Jefe’s mother recently moved out of the house in which he grew up.  As rarely happens with families, one of the things he wanted most was one that no one else had any desire for – in fact his mom couldn’t stand it.  He took the fixture down, cleaned it, rewired it all the way through, and stored it in a box along with an afghan made by his mom.  When we moved into this house he pretty much let me set things up the way I wanted, but one request was that we be able to hang the chandelier over the dining room table.  It was a request I was only too happy to grant.  In person, the subtle colors over the metal are really warm and the whole thing has a great patina thanks to the gentleness of his cleaning.  It suits the room so well, and I love having his family here, too.

Pssst…pass it on.

My mother will be 90 years old in May and has just moved into her first apartment.  Ever.  Leaving the house that she was in for nearly 50 years hasn’t been easy, but she’s a funny, strong, courageous lady and she makes the best of a situation.  So here I sit, surrounded more and more by the pieces of my family and the home of my youth.  I can’t help but be warmed by the trivial and important memories of finding things in the drawers of the dresser below – which we’ve re-purposed into a sideboard of sorts. 

Mom and Dad’s jewelry boxes were each in top drawers.  The far right-hand drawer held an assortment of scissors, fabric tape measures, cough drop tins, purse-sized Kleenex packs, mini greeting cards, safety pins, double-stick tape, tiny jewelers pliers, any number of small tubes of hand lotion and several plastic rain hats which tied under my mother’s chin.   

Dad’s drawers to the left held old eyeglasses, cufflinks, U.S. Postal Service awards, goofy business cards from men he met during the years he sold farm equipment, love notes we’d written him as children, his collection of pig lapel pins, photos of his brothers.  After he died in ‘84, Mom found a ’black book’ of his and – with a sick heart – told my brother-in-law to take it away before she even looked at it.  It turned out to be his Masonic ritual - my father’s integrity was restored.  

Mutter fookah!

One of my favorite places to shop, both for the range of offerings and the price, is the India Market in the strip mall by La Mexicana (you know, the old Pickles place). 

For a semi-homemade meal from there you can still eat well.  Jefe’s fave is the Mutter Paneer.  Paneer is a cheese , and the rest is peas in a nice little sauce of tomatoes, milk, onion, sour cream, and whatnot spices.  The purchased part is a frozen entree – the homemade part is instant rice.  I know that’s barely, marginally homemade, but compared to takeout which you had NO part in, it’s slightly moreso.  If you were really bad, you could still screw up the rice.

 

First, take your Deep Foods frozen Mutter Paneer and remove it from the package.  Puncture the film over the top 3 or 4 times.  Nuke it for 2 or 3 minutes, peel back the film to stir, and cook for a couple more minutes.

In the meantime, cook your rice as you choose.  If you have the time and want real rice, start it first, obviously.  On nights that we’re crunched and tired but don’t want take out food yuk-ness, this is fast and actually has nutritional value – the paneer will get you Vitamins A & C, Calcium, Protein and Iron.  Not bad for 5 minutes.

What’s not to love about fast, easy and tasty?  If you snag a package of frozen garlic-naan when you’re there and crisp those babies up in the oven with a light brush of butter, you’re in a good way, dinner-wise.  The selection of ready-made meal items there is pretty great and they’re not ridiculously loaded with sodium and fat like so many microwave options.  Prices are right in line with comparable items at another grocery store, though one of my only complaints with them is that I never get a receipt, so I’m not always sure what each item cost.  Meh, I don’t care that much, I guess.

Leaf meh alone!

Perhaps the Fall posting should have come ahead of the Winter one, but in this state the weather is so fluid that it’s hard to tell just what season you’re in at any given moment.  With that in mind, let me offer up a few things to make the inevitable leaf clean-up more tolerable.  And less back-breaking, blister-forming, and allergy-inducing.

Rock & Roll ACE has rental lawn equipment – tillers, aerators and the like – which you can ‘borrow’ an hour at a time for the low price of $12.  In the stable of hp is the Husqvarna leaf vacuum – a handy implement for yard clean-up in the fall.

It won’t clean your yard like a Dyson does your home, but it will help pick up small twigs and even some pinecones and acorns and whatnot in addition to leaves.  It mulches that stuff down so that you have less bags to fill and have hauled away.  Bonus, right?

If you’ve got to do it manually I can’t recommend enough those goofy-looking toothy hand-paddle things (around $6).  And a lawn funnel (about $25).  Battling a paper bag makes me want to go Trix-zilla and crush things to fine powder instead of remembering how much more eco-friendly it is to NOT be running another small engine, and just enjoying the awesome thing known as Autumn in Nebraska.  Jumping into a pile of blower/vacs has none of the charm you might think it would. 

 

You don’t have to believe me, check out what real humans have to say at epinions.com

Thpeaking of Thoop…

Here it is – inspired by that awesome cooking pioneer Laydy – my first photo recipe. 

 

 This is a curried red lentil soup (masoor dal) adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks ever: “World Vegetarian” by Madhur Jaffrey.  The mulligatawny recipe in it has never failed to make me look like a rock star in the kitchen, and the book is loaded with information about the various ingredients and cuisines that are included.  Indispensable.

 

The ingredients – which I totally fudged quantities for on the fly, since I seem genetically incapable of making a batch of soup in its original form.  This is somewhere between 1.5 and 2 times the original, and I omitted the couscous to make brown rice instead.

In 3 or 4 tablespoons of hot olive oil, cook 1/2 a diced yellow onion, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and about half a thumb’s worth of ginger.  I use a tiny food processor to prep the garlic and ginger rather than mincing and grating.  Sautee over med-high until onion softens and starts to brown.

Add 2 large teaspoons of curry powder and stir for 10 seconds.

Add a 1/4 teaspoon ground clove – more if you enjoy it.  Add 2 large baby red potatoes, skin still on and diced.  Add 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced thinly.  Stir for a few seconds.

Add 1.5 or so cups of red lentils – I just emptied what I had in a jar – and 3 cans (14 oz. each) of vegetable stock or water.  I used veg stock, so this soup is actually vegan.

Bring to a boil…

…cover, leaving the lid partially open…

…turn heat down to low and simmer nicely for about 45 minutes, or until all of the ingredients are soft and cooked.  To be honest, mine only took about 30 minutes tonight, but I cut things up pretty small to begin with. 

Rather than using a regular blender, I love to use my stick blender for soups – “immersion blender” for those of you who wish to stand on proper terminology.  I can do it right in the pan with far less mess, and the texture stays nice – not too fine.

I season with salt and pepper here, but really didn’t put much in – a couple of pinches of kosher salt and the ground pepper you see here.  White pepper would also be good, but I was out.

I served this with brown Minute Rice, which was suprisingly not bad.  It was more chewy and nutty than the regular, as it should be, and allowed me to feel better about putting ‘instant’ food into homemade soup.  Also had some lime wedges to squeeze in – though lemon would be great too.  Nice dinner on such a brisk and windy day.

THOOP!

Attention bargain shoppers!  Russ’s has cans of all Progresso Soup varieties on sale for $1.99 and they’re, get this, BUY ONE GET ONE FREE.  You just can’t really beat that for a deal.  I’m having spicy chicken and sausage gumbo for lunch as we speak.  Sluuuurrrpp!  Mmmmmm.

You can see their ads online, if you like.

November First Friday

It’s First Friday ladies and gents, and tonight I’ll be holding it down solo at Bad Robot.  If you haven’t been to the shop lately, it’s a great time to go.  While the other stops on the Gallery Walk will offer you cheap wine or tepid drinks, I’ll have the good stuff.  Hot, melted, creamy-liscious chocolate.  No silly, not just any old chocolate.  I said I have the good stuff. 

Scharffen-Berger hot chocolate is about as far from powdered stuff like Swiss Miss as you can get.  We’re talking dark chocolate, warmed until melted, with just a touch of milk to make it drinkable.  The cherry flavor is what tends to stand out to me.  And the fellers always make a great whipped cream to top it – espresso-mint, or cinnamon-vanilla, or some other tastiness.

 If you can’t make it down, you can still browse the wares and start making your holiday shopping lists by cruising through the flickr photos to the right.  Yeah, over there, in the sidebar.  No, too far, back up.  Yes.  There.  Let me know if I can help you find something.  Thanks for stopping.

I Love You, Izze Dear.

I got turned on to Izze drinks a few months ago when Ken brought some over to The ‘Bot from The Mill, and I’ve never looked back. I drink more soda than I ought to – or did, anyway – and as an alternative, this is really superior in every way. The citrus flavors are tangy and crisp, and the stuff actually refreshes, unlike the brown colas – which I think I want until I actually drink it. You can find it at said Mill, you can ask them to stock it again at The ‘Bot, or The Cup has the canned version and it goes great with their lunch.

Drink up!

Edited to add: Mindy says it’s on sale at Target as we speak.

Winter’s a-coming

Now, you know I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it sounds as though they’ve decided to go ahead and have Winter this year.  I know that many of you voted against it – I’m sorry – it just wasn’t enough.  In order to make the transition easier, I’m going to give you a few pointers.

First of all, if you’re the jerk who goes to the store at 6:30 p.m. on the day of the first snowstorm to pick up your new shovel and ice melt, and you have the gall to ask for more variety or lower prices…let’s just say you deserve to get a Hummer up your rear bumper on the way home.  Be the bestest little scout you can be and buy that stuff now.  Get your windshield scraper, your wiper fluid, your tube sand for the trunk, your plastic for the windows…get it now.

Along the same lines (and we’ll go over this again in the spring when it’s time for lawnmowers and window screens) how’s your snowblower/thrower?  Does it need a spark plug?  Paddles?  Oil change?  Ditto.  Now. 

 

Opti 2 Enviro Lubricant

Here’s a little product that everyone should be turned on to.  It’s called Opti 2 and it’s an engine oil with a fuel stabilizer.  The primary beauty of Opti 2 is that you no longer have to worry about the mix ratio for 2-cycle engines.  You can use 1 can of gas with this in it for every 2-cycle engine you have.  I can use it in the Vespa.  You can use it in chain saws, mowers, blowers, vacs – we use it in our rental equipment at the store and every employee has switched over to it.  It has the highest ISO rating you can get and the stabilizer means the shelf life of the gas is longer – though you’ll worry less about it since you won’t have 4 different mix cans sitting in the garage getting old.  Tecumseh and B&S support it, as well as all other engine manufacturers.

Feel free to thumb your nose at the dude down the street trying to dig his car out in a 3-piece suit when the snow hits.  Or go down and bail him out, you samaritan, you.

Chugga Chugga Woo-Woo!

Jefe and I went to The Darjeeling Ltd (& Hotel Chevalier) tonight at The Grand.  Just got home.  First takes: I love the feeling I get when W.A. uses the slo-mo button and I get to see what small, quick gestures and expressions look like as they’re dialed down.  Drew was right, Nat and Anjelica are not sweethearts.  But so what.  Yellow, yellow, yellow.  French yellow, Indian yellow, saffron or rusty or sandy or palest buttercream, they were all there.  My eyes love it.  I feel like I saw the preview, but that the story was just getting started when it was over.  I mean, I liked it a ton, don’t get me wrong.  But I was waiting for more meat.  I loved everything that was there.  I wanted to see them all really lose control, though.  Here it seems like they hang on to it, even with the minor kerfluffle and whatnot.  Is the implication that this is how far ‘class’ will allow you to break down?  That this is really soul-searching for the Vuitton set?  I may simply have been spoiled by my love for “Rushmore” and the trip it took me on at the time I first saw it.  Who am I kidding…it still does. 

By all means, go take this in! 

(If for no other reason than the wallpaper and fabrics on the train.)