A Dip at the Beach

I'm on vacation this week.  I've long ago learned that when a vacation is turned into an excuse for gluttony, an odd things happens:  I enjoy neither my vacation or the food that I've stuffed into it.  There's something about being hungry that makes food taste better, and there's something about not feeling like a fat tub of goo that makes vacations more enjoyable.  Thus, even on vacation, when the mantra for indulgence is "What the hell; I'm on VACATION," I try to moderate. 

That is, of course, until I encountered Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip.  The first bite triggered some sort of neurological connection between my brain and mouth that caused my hand to reach uncontrollably for a tortilla chip upon which I could gob my new addiction.  It might as well have been crack.  I couldn't get enough of the stuff, but given that my niece made a massive vat of it, I had no need to worry.  Don't pretend for a minute that there is anything in the least bit nutritionally redeeming about this fare.  It is made with processed meat, two kinds of cheese, and artificial flavorings.  It glows bright neon orange in the bowl, but I'm drawn to it nonetheless like a moth to a flame.   I can feel my thighs thicken and my arteries harden with each oh-my-God deliciously evil bite, but . . . oh what the hell, I'm on vacation.

Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip

1.  Two 10-ounce cans of chicken breast.  (Yep.  Canned chicken.  It isn't exactly Spam, but it works better than real chicken because it comes already shredded and salted).

2.  Two 8-ounce bricks of cream cheese.

3.  One cup of Ranch dressing.

4.  3/4 cup of Frank's Hot Sauce.  (I don't know who Frank is, but we all owe him a debt of gratitude).

5.  Three cups of grated cheddar cheese.

6.  Glob all of the above into a large saucepan and place on moderately low heat until it melts.  Stir to completely blend, and add more hot sauce according to taste.

7.  Serve with tortilla chips, and remember with relief that Weight Watcher's will still be there when you get back from vacation.

Mushroom Smothered Pork Chops

Remind me not to shop at Costco.  I needed a handful of mushrooms last week, and since I was there anyway for some salmon, I got lazy and picked up a mega-sized container of 'shrooms.  The thing was massive.  How could any average family really plow through all of those mushrooms unless they also offered some hallucinogenic value?  Because it kills me to simply buy groceries only to eventually shovel them into the compost heap, I was bound and determined to use those mushrooms.  As I watched them slowly turn from white to brown, and observed the stem start to separate from the button top, a feeling akin to panic erupted.  There's nothing worse than a refrigerator full of mushrooms except perhaps a refrigerator full of rotten mushrooms.  I mean the purpose of a refrigerator is to store food--not garbage, and the only thing to stop that process was a cook.  But what in the hell do you do with a pound and half of mushrooms that aren't quite as fresh as they should be?  Here's a thought:  mushroom smothered pork and mushroom risotto.   The mushrooms are practically stewed, so it won't matter that they aren't quite pretty enough to slice and toss on a salad.  And not to brag, but I also cleared out 3 onions, some leftover chicken broth, and 1/2 bottle of a truly sucky pinot grigio, and the meal was phenomenal.  Sometimes I amaze myself.

Served with roasted tomatoes and patty pan squash,
a salad, and a lovely Viognier 

 Smothered Pork chops with Mushroom Risotto

1.     Dredge 4 thick boneless pork chops in flour seasoned generously with rosemary, salt and pepper.  Pan sear in hot, but not smoking, olive oil until a light golden brown--about 4 minutes each side.  Set aside.

2.     Add about 2 Tbs olive oil to the pan, and add 3 medium-sized chopped onions and one and one-half pounds of sliced mushrooms, scraping up any bits from the pan-seared pork.

3.     Saute for about 3-5 minutes until just tender.  Add 1/2 bottle of pinot grigio.  Don't even think about sipping it.  It's been sitting in the refrigerator for 3 weeks because it was too gross to drink.  Ignore what the Food Network advises about never cooking with a wine you wouldn't drink.  Bull.  For God's sake, you are going to boil the hell out of this wine.  What is that going to do to the structure and nuanced flavors of a really good wine?  If it's good enough to drink, drink it.  If it isn't--cook with it. 

4.     Continue to let the onions and mushrooms simmer in the wine until most of the wine has been either absorbed or boiled off.  Place 1/2 of this mixture on the pork chops.

5.     Add 1 cup of risotto to the mushroom mixture that remains in the saucepan.

6.     Continue to add hot chicken broth to the mixture, one cup at a time until the rice is plump and tender--about 2-3 cups of broth depending on how much wine the rice initially absorbed.  This process will take about 20 minutes, and requires you to consistently stir the risotto. 

7.    In the meantime, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and place the previously set aside pork in the oven for about the same 20 minutes. 

A word here on cooking pork.  Cooking pork has been forever ruined by the fear of trichinosis.  Do not underestimate this fear.  Trichinosis is a horrible, debilitating, life threatening disease--that no one in the modern era has ever contracted.  Still, it is largely responsible for both the Jewish and Islamic faiths wholly writing off any meal associated in the least by pig.  The fear of trichinosis caused my mother to cook pork to such a degree that it really should have been more properly advertised as: "Pork--the other gray meat."   But despite what the Department of Homeland Security would have you believe, there's a big difference between fear and reality.   The fear is trichinosis; I get that, and that fear is huge.  The reality is that pork cooked until it is just slightly pink, with the juices running clear and white, tastes simply and utterly amazing, and it is completely safe.  Really.  For years, I've not just been eating pork, but have actually been enjoying it, and well, I'm not dead yet.

Boston Fudge Cake

I am a baseball widow.  From the first week of April to, God willing, the first week of October, my husband is glued to the Boston Red Sox.  Some years it's worse, and the Sox make the playoffs.  Then I smile dutifully, grit my teeth, and wait for November.  This week has been particularly difficult.  This is the one glorious week that all three of my children are away.  The oldest two are at sleep-over camp; the youngest is at "Camp Grammie" because, well, I simply begged my mother-in-law to give me 6 days alone with my husband.  I should have checked the MLB schedule first.

Sunday night the Sox played the Yankees.  Yes, yes, the same Yankees that have won 27 World Series--something like 22 of them at the expense of the Red Sox.  Of course, the 2004 ALCS made up for all that, and indeed, I was worried there with all the hoopla that year that we would conceive a 4th child.  Talk about the curse of the Bambino.   Who knew when I planned this special romantic week that the Yankees and the Sox would be tied for first place and that the first two games of this 3-game series would be evenly split such that Sunday's night's game would be a match to determine 1st place at this critical juncture in August?

Surely, however, such a match up was no contest for a little (and I mean a little) black lace and fish-net hose.  Silly me.  I knew that my number was up when I sidled up next to my husband in my most seductive fashion fully expecting to "distract" him from the game only to discover that Boston's Dustin Pedroia had just been thrown out trying to steal 2nd base.  Talk about a mood kill.  Instead of "Oh Baby" I got "JESUS CHRIST ON A CRUTCH." Not to worry--five days of romance still left.  Except that Monday and Tuesday the Sox play the Twins. 

The 1918 Red Sox and the start of the 86-year championship drought.

My mother-in-law can relate.  She mournfully shakes her head and shares with me that when the Sox have a night game, my father-in-law rolls in like clock work at 7:00 p.m.  It is apparently just enough time for him to give her a quick peck on the cheek, fill up a plate of food, and  settle into a Lazy Boy recliner for the 7:10 first pitch.  Her father was the same, except that he didn't have a T.V., and instead he cozied up to the radio fully expecting that her mother would deliver a small tumbler of Jameson's at the        7th  inning stretch. 

I guess I'm supposed to take comfort in the fact that this is a genetic and generational malady.  My mother-in-law knows better.  She takes comfort in chocolate cake.  It's a chocolate cake handed down from generation to generation of one Red Sox widow to the next.  This was the chocolate cake that they made when Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees.  This was the cake that celebrated Carlton Fisk's 1975 arm-waving homer and mourned Bill Buckner's first base flub in 1986.  For me, this is the chocolate cake to eat when the Red Sox are in a pennant race.  I mean, if you can't have your man, at least you can always have chocolate cake.

Boston Fudge Cake
By Mary Kelly---a Boston Irish baseball widow, just like the rest of us, God rest her soul.
1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream together 1/3 cup butter and 1 cup of sugar.

2.  Beat 2 eggs.  Don't use an electric beater; beat them by hand.  The cake will apparently come out lighter, and besides, all that noise from the mixer will interrupt the game.

3.  Add 2 squares of melted unsweetened chocolate to the eggs, and add to the butter/sugar mixture.

4.  In a separate bowl, blend together 3/4 cup milk, 1 cup of flour, 2 level tsp of baking powder, and 1 tsp. of vanilla.  Don't worry about the dishes you will have to clean.  The game's on and you have plenty of time.
  
5.  Slowly blend together with the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

6.  Bake in an 8--9" square pan in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

 7.  For the frosting:  Mix together 1 and 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, 1 tbsp butter, 1 and 1/2 squares of melted unsweetened chocolate.  Slowly add evaporated milk to moisten the mixture and get it thick and frosting-like.    Spread on the cooled, but still slightly warm cake, and think about November.

Slump Day

I took my ten-year-old daughter to see Taylor Swift in concert last night.  It's sort of a weird experience to  feel pure delight in watching your daughter revel in what is clearly a pre-teen blast at the same time as feeling decidedly OLD.  If the average age at this concert was 18, then it was skewed by the likes of me.  Nor did it help to realize that the icon on the stage was born 4 years after I graduated from college.  I suppose I should take some comfort that if Ms. Swift follows the typical trajectory of the young and famous, when she's my age she'll be on her 4th husband and her 5th trip to rehab.  But I'm not so sure.  Given the 20,000 screaming 6th-grade girls that filled last night's arena, it seems that the true hallmark of success is to be able to belt out a pop hit in a size 4 body while you flip back your blond curly tresses.  I fall decidedly short of that standard.  Indeed, even my daughter shook her head in disdain at my efforts to rock with the rest of the crowd.  She kindly advised that not only was I embarrasing her, but more importantly, I was embarrassing myself.  Ouch.

It didn't help when I woke up this morning to find that once again, inexplicably, I had significantly aged overnight.  It seems to happen about 3 or 4 times a year, although recently I've noticed that it is occurring with increasing frequency.  It's the damnest thing.  You go to bed with one face and body and the next day you wake up with someone else's--and it's not Taylor Swift's. No.  It's someone with a few more wrinkles, a slacker jawline, and someone who has mysterious dark spots that simply can't be written off anymore as "freckles."  Sigh.  And perhaps the worst thing when I am feeling fat, lumpy, and uninspired, is that I cook the same way.  It's a day to make stuffed peppers.   They've been around FOREVER--sort of like me.

Stuffed Peppers

1.  Take one pound of ground beef and toss into it the following:  2 handfuls of rice, about a 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese, about 2 Tbs of parsley flakes, and one egg.  Don't bothering measuring--as I've come to realize at this point in life, in the end, it doesn't really matter.   Mix well. 

2.  Slice the heads off 5 large bell peppers--about 1/2 inch from the top.  Cut out the seedy innards of the pepper.

3.  Stuff each pepper about 3/4 full with the meat mixture.  Don't overstuff them; they expand when cooking and will burst open if you do so.  Place the heads back on each pepper to sort of seal the pepper.

4.    Stand the peppers in a saucepan that will just fit them.  It's ok to squish them in a little; if they move around too much all the stuffing falls out, which as I think about it, is pretty much the same principle as exercise. 

5.  Pour two 27-oz cans of tomato puree around the peppers and set the pan over a medium-low heat to bring to a slow simmer.  The puree should come up to just below the tops of the peppers.

6.  In a separate pan, saute until transculent 1/2 of one onion, and then gently stir into the puree surrounding the peppers.

7.  Go ahead and toss in two cloves of garlic; it's in the refrigerator anyway.

8.  If there is any leftover meat mixture, form it into small meatballs (about the size of a quarter) and drop them into the puree.

9.  Continue to simmer, and after about 30 minutes check the consistency of the sauce.  If it's horribly runny, add a can of tomatoe paste.

10.  Serve each pepper over a generous helping of white rice and smother it with the sauce.  Pour yourself a large glass of wine and think about how you know you're old when you actually LOVE stuffed peppers instead of feeding them to the dog like when you were a kid.