It’s not ALL sex and spankings
Thanks SO MUCH to all of you for all of your wonderful advice, suggestions and support about my ongoing headaches. All of you were so helpful and I was really touched that you would take the time with something so…unsexy. ChickenMan, you helped me understand what was going on in a new way. (And BTW everybody, check out his blog - GREAT pics.)
Megan is here, we are having a wonderful time, and we are hoping that she will become a (somewhat) permanent member of the household. She’s helping out a huge amount, among other things driving everybody hither and yon (Soccer Mom Megan). She’s helping out with the cooking too, which is challenging for me since I love to do it so much and am such a foodie.
But everything she has made has been wonderful (best stroganoff I’ve ever had), and I know Richard wants me to do less, so I am looking at as another opportunity to learn about giving up control. It’s a challenging lesson. Following is Megan’s transcript of our menu-planning session on Saturday (I plan menus and shopping a week ahead - best way to keep the family eating healthy food at home). Richard stayed out of it, but we would occasionally hear a snicker from the other room.
Me (Megan): Let me make some good food for you… I’m thinking Italian beef…
Amy: Oh, wonderful. What ingredients do we need to get?
Me: Well, we need salt, pepper, oregano, basil, four cans of beef broth…
Amy: Oh no, we can’t do beef broth, there’s so much bad stuff in beef broth, let’s switch it out with chicken broth. (Amy inserts here: in my defense there seems to be MSG in ALL beef broth and I don’t want to trigger a migraine)
Me: Mmkay. Chicken broth. Ok, and then we need onion salt.
Amy: Onion salt? I’m not so sure about that…
Me: Hrmph. We need onion salt. And then we need dried parsley.
Amy: DRIED PARSLEY IS TEH DEVIL! WE ARE NOT LETTING THAT HERETIC STUFF INTO OUR HOUSE! YOU MIGHT AS WELL CUT UP SOME TOILET PAPER AND PUT IT IN YOUR DISH, OR DRIED GRASS OR SOMETHING!
Me: We need dried parsley.
Amy: I can get you some fresh parsley.
Me: No, that will bring my spices out of balance. The recipe calls for dried parsley. It’s the best part of the dish.
Amy: Oh god, this dish is going to be HORRIBLE if the best part of it is dried parsley.
Me: Fuck you (said with all the love and patience in the world)
Amy: He he he
Me: And then we need garlic powder.
Amy: No! We have fresh garlic, that’s better.
Me: No, we need garlic POWDER!
Amy: We don’t even have garlic powder, it’s so much better fresh.
Me: I put garlic powder on everything, it’s the spice of life.
Amy: No, no, no
Me: Then we need bay leaves. Do you have a fresh bay leaf shrubbery bush tree in your back yard, or is dry bay leaves ok?
Amy: Oh we totally have bay leaves, of course we do!
Me: Of course… and then we need italian-style salad dressing mix, cayenne pepper, and 5 pounds rump roast.
Amy: Why aren’t we using chuck?
Me: Because the recipe says rump roast, just like it says ONION SALT, DRIED PARSLEY AND GARLIC POWDER! And I need my recipe to be authentic, because if we mess with the spices it it’ll bring it out of balance and it’ll taste wrong!
Amy: Where is your sense of adventure, you’re 32 years old, it’s time for you to step outside the box.
Me: (goes on a rant about how I will customize other foods but not this dish because THE SPICES, damnit)
Amy: Fine, we can do the onion salt and garlic powder (reluctant), but we’re NOT using dried parsley. Why don’t you just go out in the back yard and pick some grass or something, and dry it. That’s what they do, you know, I asked them and they told me. That’s how they make dried parsley.
Me: Grr.
Amy: Just ask (mutual friend who is a major foodie) what he thinks about dried parsley.
Me: Oh I’m so gonna
And (mutual friend) answered by making lewd and rude suggestions about what we could do with dried parsley.
More later - xoAmy
oh god, i’m supposed to be going to sleep and instead i’m laughing hysterically. especially because i must admit that (except for the rump roast) i am totally in agreement with Amy on this. sorry, Megan. a cake i wouldn’t mess with - that’s chemistry. but a pot roast? very loose. tho i’m sure it’s delicious however you do it.
me, i would put in an onion stuck with cloves, plus a bunch of carrots to make it sweet.
ok, now Megan REALLY hates me!
rump roast. beef broth. how long do you cook it? i assume you were both naked during this whole process?
obviously we need 3 conflicting reviews of the finished product.
Comment by oatmeal girl — March 3, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
Oatmeal girl!!! Rump roast??? No, chuck is far better for slow cooking. All that lovely fat gets cooked down and makes it delish.
I’ve just had a vision of you sitting around with us, throwing in your two cents worth. How many slaves does it take to ruin a roast? : )
Comment by Amy — March 3, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
I am writing in defense of dried spices. There are some recipes, such as dishes that have to be in the oven for a long time, that are better will dried spices then with fresh. Fresh spices lose their flavor and can actually become bitter and icky if cooked too intensely. I’m not saying you can’t dry your own, because that’s what I do at the end of the summer with my crop of herbs, but fresh is not always best.
Comment by Miss Belle — March 3, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
ooOOoo Miss Belle, You are causing me great pain. I will agree with you that sometimes some kinds of dried spices are acceptable. But NOT dried parsley. Dried parsley is…LINT. Why not put LINT in your food???? With all respect.
Amy
Comment by Amy — March 3, 2008 @ 10:21 pm
Thank you for the compliment, I am always happy to help. And you are right about many things in this entry - it is not all sex and spankings, and dried parsley is roughly equatable to pocket lint. But if it is dried correctly, stored correctly and boiled in for a long time, it will still give that special linty flavour that some people can not seem to live without.
The only way to show anyone the error of their cooking is cooking the same dish again, but the way you would make it. In this household that usually means ‘add habanero’, and that tends to negate any bad effects of lingering dried parsley fumes in a dish.
Comment by ChickenMan — March 3, 2008 @ 11:52 pm
I just want to point out for the record that those “lewd and rude comments” actually painted the dried parsley in a light and deliciously erotic way. I just want to make the point that he didn’t seem to actually shudder at the idea of dried parsley
As to how long we cook it, somewhere between 8 and 12 hours. Which totally fits with Miss Belle’s description of the glory of dried spices in dishes that cook for a long time. I see it as obvious that Miss Belle knows what she’s talking about, when she even GROWS spices and THEN dries them, to get it perfect. I bet SHE doesn’t mix grass with her parsley!
We did get chuck, by the way. Not rump roast. But Amy has promised to let me buy celery salt and garlic powder, so I see it as a fair compromise. Now I just have to find a way to lure dried parsley into the household. Maybe I should blindfold her and offer her lint, toilet paper, grass and dried parsley, and see if she really can’t taste the difference… hmmmmmm…. When Pepsi Cola could do it, why can’t we?
Comment by Megan — March 4, 2008 @ 1:34 am
Bloody Nora, it takes longer to talk about than to cook! Any food that requires a planning committee and a house meeting had better be impressive when it’s done.
Comment by Luka — March 4, 2008 @ 4:36 am
8 to 12 hours?! this sounds like an activity for a weekend house party. perhaps a dozen sex slaves, naked nipples stiff with the excitement of creativity and submissive sisterhood, bustling around a very large kitchen while their doms take turns standing over them, sharp-eyed foremen prepared to whip the sub-chefs into shape if their squabbling gets out of hand.
(Miss Belle, I admit your point is well taken. But not for parsley. Throw a fresh bunch in towards the end. Megan, I think you need to post the whole recipe. Amy, I’m checking airfares and will be there by the time you get it on the table.
Comment by oatmeal girl — March 4, 2008 @ 7:35 am
ok so now I am jealous. Good food ~ good friends ~ and fun arguments! Guess that is the price for living in the south!! Have fun you two!! love and hugs ~
Comment by littleme — March 4, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Amy, Megan, You could compromise & use fresh parsley that has been freeze-dried, pick fresh & put in the freezer for a day, then break off what you need into the dish! You could always find more ways to enjoy the freezer, nothing better than ice-cubes! *shudder*
Comment by Heilan — March 4, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Laughing hysterically. I second the call for three separate accounts of how it tasted.
Comment by Z — March 4, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
It sounds like you two are having a great time!
I so wish i had a great friend like that to quibble a bit over something like “dried grass”
For what its worth i like LIVE spices as well!
Comment by Juli — March 4, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
Chickenman: I LIKE the habanero idea!
Megan: If we were to do as he suggested, we’d just keep saying “oh what’s this in my mouth? hair? grass? toilet paper?” NOT “how light and delicious!”
Luka: Bloody whom?
oatmeal girl: OK, that sounds hot. See you soon!
Littleme: hop on the plane with oatmeal girl and come have a cookfest with us - I have a biiiiig kitchen.
Heilan, Compromise??? Why would I compromise when I’m right???
Z, just between you and me, here’s the thing: this girl’s idea of comfort food is…reindeer stew. I do not jest. So what can I say? Someone who’ll eat Bambi, probably EVERYTHING tastes great to her, yanno?
Juli, Here here! Thanks for another vote for live spices. : )
Comment by Amy — March 4, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
Oh God, I didn’t mean to cause even more argument. I see the point of dried parsley. I actually don’t grow parsley because, it doesn’t dry well. I like to dip my herbs in boiling water before drying them to keep them green-er and the one time I tried to do that with parsley it turned to mush. I usually end up buying fresh parsley or *gasp* using store bought dried parsley. I wouldn’t say it tastes like lint, but I don’t think it really adds anything either.
So I agree with both of you?
Dried spices in general=good
Dried parsley=bad
I’m not so good with conflict. Take pity on me.
Comment by Miss Belle — March 4, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
I have to say, I can not laugh any harder at the two of you fighting in the kitchen. Hope you two have fun cooking.
Comment by Kaye — March 4, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
Sounds like you ladies would love http://pinchmysalt.com/
I love the photography.
I made these burgers and ohmyGodIknowitslikeaheartattackonastickbutfucktheyregood.
http://pinchmysalt.com/2007/11/08/blue-cheese-burger-recipe/
Enjoy!
Comment by Naughty Secretary — March 4, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Miss Belle, We have agreed to forgive you, as long as you pack up a bunch of your dried herbs (not spices; I misused the term first I think) and head out here for a cook-fest.
Kaye, thank you and love your website!
Naughty Secretary, OMG that cheeseburger looks heavenly. As soon as I can eat blue cheese again (thanks for rubbing it in : )), I am so there.
Comment by Amy — March 5, 2008 @ 8:50 am
It’s a deal…
Although with the way that winter has been treating me I would go anywhere if there was promise I wouldn’t have to wear my winter jacket every time that I peeked even a toe over the threshold.
Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a cookfest. Just saying it wouldn’t take much to get me to a warmer place.
Comment by Miss Belle — March 5, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
Sorry if someone said this already.. I’m late in reading this…
Go with vegetable broth instead. Better for multiple reasons and still gives flavor.
Comment by Ofia — March 6, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
There is a joke that comes to mind… known it for years.
What’s the difference between parsley and pussy?
Nobody eats parsley.
essence
Comment by essence — March 7, 2008 @ 11:13 pm