Small, red ornamental peppers are often used in landscaping for added color at Longwood Gardens. Photo: Bob Hosh
The Needle Returns To the Start Of the Song
Author Archives: Tata
All I Want To Say To
La la la la da doo doo doo da da da da LEONARD BERNSTEIN! What the –
Could it be…?
AAAAAAAH!
SWEETPEA!
Softer Than the Summer Night
Holy Toledo! Georg knitted socks for me and they fit like she measured feets in my sleep!
Ever Lasts Forever Everybody
Adorable Buckwheat is adorable.
The Night Life Baby
This car-car is a paper weight-weight.
Tata: My car is in four pieces.
Corinne: Four pieces? What happened?
Tata: Pete took it apart while Mercury was retrograde, but now that Mercury’s gone direct, special tools have started arriving.
My sisters snickered.
Tata: Just before Thanksgiving, our housemate came home with a frozen turkey he didn’t know what to do with, so I offered to drop it off at Elijah’s Promise.
Anya: Oh yeah! Good idea!
Tata: Well, you’d think so, right up ’til the moment you pull up to the soup kitchen in a Mercedes.
My sisters’ jaws dropped.
Tata: And it doesn’t matter how your husband acquired the Mercedes, because suddenly –
Anya: YOU’RE THE WHITE LADY ASKING IF THERE’S VALET PARKING.
Roads We Have To Walk Are
In January, I’m scheduled to have surgery, followed by a month of nothing but sleeping, eating and stretching. It’s so exciting! I get to hibernate for once! So I’m all aflutter, stocking pantries and stacking decks, which always has something to do with soup. A vat of borscht the size of most towns’ water towers is simmering on the stove as we speak. For the last two nights, I made pirogies. You know, for when I can’t stand up and can stand soup no more.
Turns out to be easy, even without an Eastern European grandma.
Pirogy dough, courtesy of the Fair Siobhan
Ingredients
* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
* 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 cup warm water
* 1 egg, beaten
Directions
1. In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Make a well in
the center.
2. In a separate bowl mix together the vegetable oil, warm water, and beaten egg.
Pour into the well of the dry ingredients. Knead dough for 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Cover dough and let rest for 2 hours. Roll out and fill as desired.
The hardest thing about this recipe was getting Spellcheck to accept a spelling for pirogy.
Rolling this dough with a rolling pin was as much fun as a three-day toothache, so I put gobs of it through the pasta machine. It’s a hand-cranked affair, so I felt good and rustic. I imagined Cossacks tearing into the village and going, “Let’s sac later. I feel a bit peckish. Ivan! What do you say we break for some lunch?” A coffee cup saucer served as the round template for half-moon pirogies.
For filling, I boiled two russet potatoes and gave them a whirl in the old food mill, added grated cheddar, smoked some-cheese-or-other, some diced, browned beef sausage and very buttery sauteed onions for moisture and a light crunch. Salt, pepper, dried basil. (You can mix just about anything you like with riced potato for filling as long as you dice it fine and taste it. Is it super fantastic? JACKPOT.) Finally, I sealed them with a basting brush and a gentle swoosh of water and popped them all into the freezer. Later, they join the others of their kind in a freezer bag for the duration.
Pirogies are your friends.
When dinnertime comes, boil in salted water for two minutes after they float to the top, then saute in melted butter. Serve with applesauce and sour cream or good, tart yogurt. Easy, cheap, completely awesome.
One Knows What It’s Like To Be
New bathroom mirror. Note the gouge in the wall made by its predecessor during its tragic fall from grace and a plate hanger.
On Friday morning, I found my bathroom mirror propped up in the sink, which was not at all where I left it the previous night. Curiously, the plate hanger from which it had been suspended lay on the floor like a chalk outline. The mirror itself was not really a mirror but a drinks tray that came as part of an overly festive glassware set, but it looked positively forlorn with large cracks down its glittery back and sad little chunks torn out. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so it lay on a kitchen counter until Pete Harrrumphed and took it out to the trash. Of course, I couldn’t replace it with a regular old bathroom mirror. That wouldn’t be silly enough, but this Pier One holiday plate and a lightweight plastic charger is practically its own punchline.
But wait – there’s more! Turns out a superstorm, a Nor’easter and Thanksgiving weekend were not enough. South Jersey also had a small earthquake. I do not live in South Jersey; however, as far as I know, my bathroom mirror was the only damage.
From Standing In the English
The mighty huntress eyes her prey.
Yesterday, a friend of my father’s thanked me for doing something philanthropic I hadn’t done, but which he had. I objected gently, but he squeezed me and quoted Reagan. I wondered why I didn’t burst into flames.
If you can’t beat ’em, dance with ’em.
And Down To Idaho
Sweetpea gives you the boo boo eyes. You are powerless before them!
I’m Not Proud Or Tired
The cook’s breakfast: duck liver sauteed with butter, onions, dry sherry, basil, salt and pepper, served on toasted garlic naan. I make coping with anemia look vaguely…what’s the word I’m searching for?…inconspicuous.
Happy Thanksgiving, Poor Impulsives! I myself stay home, lock the door, turn off the phones and generally ignore everyone claiming to be one of my relatives. For Heaven’s sake, you don’t know where those people have been and they look a little ravenous. Best to avoid the whole thing by refusing to wave drumsticks at them. Anyhoo, here we are in the early years of the twenty-first century, twirling around in our hoop skirts and marveling at our electric lights. You yourself should take some interesting pictures. In fifty years, your relatives won’t have a clue that you were funny unless you leave images lying around like an inedible breadcrumb trail.
Poor Impulse Control 