Things Are Slowing Down

Well, that was interesting.  About ten minutes after that last post, the phone rang, and it was John and Jeanne asking me out for a drink...so I hopped in the fastest shower ever and grabbed a cab and met them at the Bistro.  Unfortunately, I hung out after they left, which was a mistake...ah, well.

So I skipped Jiggers' set on Thursday night, but went to the other band's set on Friday.

And then it was Saturday and Fair Day!  As always, piles of old friends to say hello to...fellow PS41 parents, old drinking buddies, and the roving band at our table.  Then for reasons that are entirely unclear to me (probably having to do with going to the Bistro after the Fair, not to mention all that beer AT the Fair), it seemed like a wonderful notion to join Sarah and friends to go up to 118th Street to see our friends for their last porch party before they move out to Brooklyn.  It was fun...and I almost managed to stay awake in the car service coming home.  Frankly, it'll be easier to get to them, or at least easier to get home from them, when they move to Brooklyn.  Given that I live on the Lower East Side, the Williamsburg Bridge is MUCH faster than the FDR. 

And since then?  Nothing, nada, nil.  This is probably a good idea, actually...I've been having nice long naps which I probably need after all this bouncing around.

Tonight I actually cooked myself a decent meal (as opposed to just sort of grabbing something)...I got some asparagus, and a little steak, and I cooked a potato, and it was lovely, thank you.  As usual, I read a cookbook while eating, and I ran across something that I don't think I ever noticed before in my old 60s Gourmet cookbook...which, as we all know, is a positive motherlode of things nobody in their right mind would ever do, such as stuffing black olives with a pastry tube. 

This one is a take on deviled eggs.  You stuff pitted black olives with creamed blue cheese.  Put one olive in each egg white and fill the egg white with finely chopped pimento.  Cover the rim of the egg with butter mixed with chopped parsley and dust with paprika.  Stud generously with toasted slivered almonds.  ARE THESE PEOPLE INSANE?

First of all, what do you do with the egg yolks?  This being Gourmet, I'm gonna presume that you mix them with truffles or some damn thing and stuff them into something else.  But never mind the egg yolks.  Who in their right mind stuffs an olive with anything, except those nice manufacturers who have nice big factories to do it?  (I'm partial to anchovy stuffed olives myself.)  The pimento sounds okay, I guess, but covering the rim of the egg with butter?  How would you do this?  I imagine you use another pastry tube...I mean, you wouldn't want to break your insane momentum by having to wash the one you used to stuff those olives, right?  But HOW?  The rim of a hard boiled egg white is pretty thin, or at least it is when I hard boil eggs for deviling.  And unless you're serving these on a bed of ice, wouldn't the butter start to get awfully soft?  This sounds messy to eat, but perhaps they mean it to be a plated first course at the table.  I guess the ladies of the era were just grateful that Gourmet didn't suggest doing this recipe using three dozen of those tiny quail eggs.  But honestly...

Ah, well, this is not now nor will it EVER be my problem.  If I hard boil eggs, I use mustard, mayo, salt and pepper, pickle relish, and maybe a pinch or so of curry powder, mash it all together with a fork and throw it in the egg whites with a teaspoon.  There.  Done.

And Carolyn, Adrian is Sarah's most recent boyfriend, who is a very nice guy...nice and mellow, which is a good contrast for my kid, who tends toward Speedy Gonzalez.  He even seems to enjoy our cross-talk comedian conversations, unlike Seth, a previous boyfriend, who would always sit around totally bemildred, having NO idea what we were talking about.

And to the rest of my readers..."bemildred" is not a typo, it's a childhood joke.  So there.

With any luck, I'll have something more interesting to say the next time I post...and if all else fails, there's always the vanity press page in the Book Review on Sunday, or another old cookbook to mine.

Love, Wendy