One of these days, or months, or years, I'm going to study this blog site. There are lots of fun and interesting things I can incorporate. I can include AdSense and make some dough. If seven hundred and twenty nine people click on a banner between four and seven in the morning I'll make six cents. The really big money system is a little more confusing but I know I can figure it out. I would like to get to 2012 here, so, another one hundred and fifty blog topics should do it.
I have been racking my brain thinking about a subject or topic. I've used the movie, "Julie and Julia" as an example. That idea was terrific and it worked so well. For those of you that have not seen it: a movie from a book from a true slice of life. Julie took on a cookbook written by Julia Child and wrote her blog about it. Julie had 365 days to complete 524 recipes. I could, and would love to do that. I wonder if anyone would notice it's been done?
I have an idea. I'll make all the recipes in my favorite cookbook, Wanda and I will eat everything, and at the end of a year I will blog about weight loss.
I got a text from Daughter Rebecca last evening. She asked for Wanda's yummy zucchini bread recipe. She also mentioned the America's Test Kitchen cookbook and how much she and husband Tim like it. A few years ago Daughter Jennifer made biscotti's. I think they have the consistency of concrete and are tasteless. I reluctantly took one and it was delicious. The recipe, out of America's Test kitchen cookbook. A few days later we ordered a copy.
We took inventory of our kitchen equipment and made a list of things we needed. Pots and pans, knives and spoons. Thermometers, measuring spoons, and containers. We ordered a Dutch Oven, baking sheets and loaf pans, very, very sharp scissors and a food processor. Over the next month we completely restocked our kitchen.
I've never used a cooking thermometer, now I had two. One was an instant read, the other had a probe that went into the intended dinner object in the oven. Now roasts, steaks, chops and chicken were easy. I set the timer and desired temperature, when the alarm sounded, dinner was ready. I'd been cooking all my life but that book taught me how.
The twenty pounds didn't sneak up on me when I wasn't looking. After a year of butter, cream and more butter we both knew it was the cooking. Those biscotti's may have started it but the chicken pot pie and the cookies the fresh salmon cakes and the sauces and gravy the mushroom bread stuffing and the breaded pork chops finished it. Wanda and I realized we could not continue to eat that way.
The cookbooks went in the cupboards, the utensils in the pantry. The parchment paper and the cookie press, the rubber mallet and the cake pans found a home on a shelf. All of the "good" things were put away, it was time to eat healthy.
Soon after my parents split up.....oh, by the way. I just read the former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Schriver are splitting. He is 63 and she is 55, they have four kids 21, 19, 17, and 13. Is it money that enables people to think having kids at 50 and 42 is reasonable? And, after twenty five years together I can't help but wonder, WHAT IN THE HELL THEY WANT? The article I read said they never lived in Sacramento but in their Brentwood home outside of L.A. He commuted to the capitol in a PRIVATE JET. Gosh, just how broke is this state and who paid his fuel bill?
Back to the real world. When Irving moved out he rented a room for a short time. I remember three things about it. I did not like his housemate, he had a sign that read; "Everything I like is either immoral, illegal, or fattening" and an ink pen that had a hula dancer in it. When the pen was tipped upside down the hula dancers lei's would leave. I don't know what happened to the pen or the sign but the housemate became my step-mother, Lillian, what a piece of work she was.
Whenever I had to eat dinner with Irv and Lillian I ate a late lunch. She had two dishes that were bad and worse. One was spaghetti and meat things the other loaf of meat things. She always served garlic bread with the spaghetti, mashed potatoes with the loaf. She used dry garlic and so much margarine on the bread it would drip on my hands and the plate. She smoked at the table and would put her cigarette out in the leftovers. Here is my favorite Lil story.
One Sunday evening my two brother and I were at Lil and Irvings for dinner. Fred, Allen, Charles, and Irving Shulak. We ordered take out from the Chinese restaurant nearby. It was the middle of November and very cold. An early snow storm was pounding the area. Fred and I left to get the food, the car parked about a hundred yards away. The snow was falling, the temperature dropping, and the wind was howling. Almost to the car, I heard a voice calling us, carried on the wind, "Freddy....Chuckie...Wait, wait, come back."
I turned back, now facing the wind, fighting, trying to keep from being blown off my feet. My eyes shut to the snow that was now becoming sleet. With all my strength I strained to go back, to get close enough to hear what Lil was yelling. Finally, she heard me calling I was close enough, "What?" I hollered, "what?" and she screamed back over the howling wind, "The food order, the food order, it's under the name, SHULAK."
It's salad for dinner tonight.
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