Soup Is Not A Finger Food

Surf and turf, baby!

LAST NIGHT I finally conducted the Great Lobster Experiment.  You don't remember? That's because I first concocted the scheme last year. You see, in 2002, I suddenly developed an intolerance to my favorite food, shrimp. Not an allergy where the throat constricts, but what I'll gently call a Violent Gastric Reaction.  Took me three tries to figure it out, but once I determined it was shrimp, and also probably scallops, I swore them off for forever. And, I reasoned, as lobster is shrimp's oversized cousin, I figured the shrimp reaction would only be maginified if I ate lobster, so I swore it off, too.

But the I got to thinking how LONG the next 40+ years would be if I could never taste the sweet, succulent meat of a lobster tail, all dripping with butter and delicious. So, I decided to take a chance. I would eat lobster one evening for dinner, in the comfort of my own home, so that if I did end up sick, I could confine myself to the bathroom at one end of the house and send everyone else to the other end, so as to mercifully spare them from the violent retching noises that were sure to ensue.

Yesterday, when I saw lobster tails on sale for $5 each at Safeway, I threw two packs into my cart and practically ran home. "Kids!" I yelled. "We're having LOBSTER TAILS for dinner!"

I steamed them up (the lobster tails, not the kids) and melted a stick of butter. Then I tucked myself into this baby:

DEAR SWEET BABY JESUS, I Facebooked. IT'S BEEN A LONG NINE YEARS!

It was every bit as delicious as I remembered. Even more so, maybe. I finished this tail, then I ate another one. Butter was dripping down my chin! Children were fighting over the last tail! There was mirth and joy and celebration and bliss! Choruses of angels sang "Hallelujah!" from the heavens!

And then, I waited. If I was going to get sick, I knew the symptoms would show themselves within a couple of hours.

But: Nothing happened. Nary a stomach cramp. Zippy nausea. Nothing unusual forced its way out of either end of my body! I slept like a baby, and this morning?  Well, let's say that all of a sudden, I'm a lot less of a cheap date than I was last week, when I was relegated to the red meat and chicken sections of the restaurant menu.

Next time the Red Hook Lobster Pound lunch truck docks near one of my clients' offices, I will brave the long line for an authentic New England lobster roll.

I can have the lobster at the kids' favorite birthday destination restaurant, Sakura!

Red Lobster? Don't mind if I do! And bring me some of those cheddar bay biscuits!

I'll still steer clear of shrimp and scallops, but look out, all you lobster tails - Mama's back.

Cookin'

IT'S BEEN A WHILE since I posted here, and it's not that I don't love you, but frankly, there's not much going on  'round here. We've settled the reconstruction claim but it's been 10 days since we've heard from anyone at the general contractor. Expect me to jump ugly beginning tomorrow.

Till then, I've been cookin', or thinkin' about it, and writing about both over at My Grandmas' Recipes. Which lately is more about my own recipes than anything my grandmas ever made. But still. Check out my posts about stromboli, which is in heavy rotation around here, as well as my taco seasoning mix, which the kids don't know is in heavy rotation but must assuredly is a required item in my spice cabinet. And it looks like this

 

...so there's that.

More soon, hungry readers.

Excuse me, is that meat sauce or poison on your pasta?

EVENINGS CHEZ SOUP are when I amp up my mad multitasking skillz. Curt and I, we set up our two-on-three zone defense and usually manage to cover it all. Last night, however, something slipped through the cracks and my admission on Facebook today caused a flurry of input.

 Here’s how it went down:

I rolled into the house, at 6:20, my arms full of groceries and three bottles of my new favorite wine (the Chilean Malbec by Alamos – and it was on sale!).  While I was freezer-diving, looking for cheese and pepperoni to make pizza for dinner, I spied two pounds of ground beef that could be easily turned into a nice Italian meat sauce, for use in lasagna this weekend.

In between responding to requests from Peezer for juice (okay), ice cream (not before dinner), and electronic diversions (can I play your iTouch?), I was whipping up pizza and defrosting ground beef. Got the pizza in the oven, started browning the ground beef on the stove, poured a glass of Malbec. Curt arrived home with a huge bag of dog food AND our repaired vacuum cleaner, suited up and tagged into the game.

 
Photo borrowed from this site 

At that point it I realized that Seth, who should have been longboarding home from his friend’s house, was not yet home. I threw the tomato sauce and seasonings into the ground beef, checked on the pizza, and texted:

ME “Where R U?”

HIM “Still at Baileys”

ME “U were sposed 2 B home, stay there, we’ll come get U”

HIM “hahahahaha ok”

ME “NOT FUNNY, Dad will be there in 5”

I dispatched the taxi Curt to fetch the teenager, pulled the pizza out of the oven, stirred the meat sauce, pried the other two boys away from their video games and started serving up dinner. Seth and Curt rolled in and of course we had to explain about how it’s common courtesy to inform YOUR PARENTS that your plans have changed and he said Uh. Okay. My bad.  Only then did he remember that he left his backpack at Soroush’s house on the way to Bailey’s and could he just board over and get it?

IN THE DARK? ARE YOU KIDDING??

So, I stirred the sauce again and turned the burner way down and drove Seth over to pick up his backpack. By the time we got home, Curt was herding Peezer into the bathtub and preparing to help him with his homework… then I remembered I had to follow up on a couple of work things, so I turned off the burner, leaving the sauce to cool, and logged into my laptop. Curt read books to Peezer and tucked him into bed – finally – and then he set out to begin The First Day of His New Exercise Regimen because he and some friends have registered for some crazy 5K at the end of May.

I know, right??

It was about this time I decided I was tired, so I washed my face and brushed my teeth and collapsed into bed and when Curt returned, the news was on and I fell asleep and slept the sleep of the dead.

This morning, when I went out to pour my first cup of coffee, I realized I NEVER PUT THE SAUCE AWAY! I left it, covered, on the stove, in its pan, all night.

DAMMIT. That was two pounds of ground beef and some other stuff and it really tasted gooood! I sniffed it: Seemed okay. I asked Curt what he thought. “Meh, should be fine,” he said, as he and Seth rushed out the door. Because the Merry-Go-Round just never stops around here!

 
Thanks to Freefoto for this picture

I decided to consult the Interwebs, which of course means Facebook. Lots of friends chimed in, most of them with the same response as Curt. Apparently, you people do this all the time and no harm has ever come to you! You cavalier, risk-taking kids you. Four friends urged me to chuck it – or at least feed it to the dog (but wouldn’t the dog get sick if it’s contaminated?). Two of those quoted food industry sources.

My sister – hi, Bets! – who falls waaay to the right on the caution spectrum when it comes to these things, urged me to stop being insane. The others, though, posted variations on a theme: Recook it, it’ll kill the bacteria. Or add more wine. If the meat was cooked, it’ll be okay. The tomatoes are acidic, they’re not friendly to bacteria. And one noted that in Costa Rica, cooks leave things out overnight all the time, to improve the flavor.

The crux of my concern is this. I’m reluctant to waste two pounds of ground beef and what turned out to be a really tasty sauce. If it were just my immediate family, I’d probably not think twice, but I was going to serve it to friends… none of whom are in a high-risk group for susceptibility to bacteria, but still. I get that bacteria is more likely to breed when food is kept at a certain temperature, but really, what are the odds? Are they on par with, say, being struck by lightning, or higher, such as choosing the slowest checkout line at the grocery store?

And I know it sounds terribly cheap of me to not want to throw it away. But hey – money’s money. And besides – it was a really good batch of sauce.

At this point, I had to post one more follow-up question to the FB peanut gallery:

Further to this morning's food safety question: I want to hear one story about you or someone you personally know, who ate food not stored to the FDA's guidelines and got horribly, violently sick. I"m seeing lots of "could" and "might" - how about some "did"?

 

Many said, nope. Some told me to shut up about it already volunteered to eat the sauce for me. One posted a horror story about a party and some food and three people almost immediately becoming violently ill. My sister, who at this point must have been afraid I’d poison my family and our friends, leaving us all to die a slow, horrible death, laughed and said, how would you know whether it was food that made you sick or a random “stomach bug” of some kind? And someone else shared advice that most “random stomach bugs” do come from foodborne bacteria.

But then my sister shared this link http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/foodsafety/poisoning.shtml which identifies actual food poisioning causes. Together, we figure the most likely risk would be from CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS, more commonly called the "Buffet germ" that grows rapidly in large portions of food that cool slowly. However, the resulting illness is mild:  diarrhea, gas pains, nausea, and sometimes vomiting lasting only a day.

Well, heck, that doesn't seem so bad, does it? 

And YES, I could have spent my time Googling instead of Facebooking, but isn’t it more fun to get your friends’ first-person input before you look it up? Of course it is. But it’s nice to have a legitimate resource in addition to anecdotal snippets.

Now I’m thinking it really is probably okay to keep the sauce. But, at my sister’s wise suggestion, I will probably compromise, keeping last night’s batch for a time when it’s just my family, and making a fresh batch for the weekend... and I promise, I will be vigilant about storing it right after I cook it!

 

Kitchen forensics

DIRTY FRYING PAN AND SPATULA on the stove.

SIX (six!) cracked eggshells, perched atop the already too-full countertop compost bin.

SLUG-TRAILS of egg-goo criscrossing the stovetop and adjacent counter.

ONE ketchup-covered plate, unrinsed, tossed into the sink.

The word "EGGS", scrawled onto the magnetic shopping list attached to the refrigerator door, in handwriting that surely belonged to Seth.

(This last is a good sign - it means I've got him trained to add items to the grocery list when we run out.)

The teenager did not have to tell me what he made himself for an after-school snack. The evidence in the kitchen spoke volumes on his behalf.

 
Photo borrowed from this site

My name is Meg. I live with one husband, three boys, and a fat dog who has yet to admit that he stole the half loaf of homemade bread off of the kitchen island and ate the entire thing on Saturday night.

Welcome to my world.

Weekend in PA

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND for us was a mix of longstanding traditions and new experiences.  We began our favorite weekend of the year with our traditional Thursday morning drive north, complete with all 18 minutes of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant. Thanksgiving wouldn't be Thanksgiving unless my kids suffer through this tradition!

After a fantastic mid-day dinner at my aunt and uncle's place in Lancaster PA, we swung by Curt's aunt and uncle's home for a visit before ending up at his parents' place, where we made ourselves right at home by making sure all of our stuff was strewn all over their house within minutes of our arrival.

Friday morning featured some shopping, but not the Black Friday kind of shopping. I avoid that at all costs. No, instead we visited a market run by some local Amish. While I was checking out, a nice young Amish man walked in with eight loaves of homemade bread still warm from their Amish oven. I added a loaf to my stack of goodies, and didn't protest much when my mother-in-law insisted she photograph me in front of the very horse and buggy responsible for the fresh bread delivery:

 

Later that day, we found ourselves at the fine establishment my father-in-law calls the "Hoot 'n' Holler."  While he schooled his son in the finer points of barroom pool, I made friends with the very patrons after whom the bar's delicious, handcrafted pumpkin ale was named.  Aaron and Patty were hosting some friends of theirs who'd traveled aaaaaall the way from Curacao, which is all

 
...to Central PA, which is not at all like this, which means they must have come to experience the Local Culture, which, to my pumpkin-ale-soaked brain, meant I was an AMBASSADOR! I needed to show these lovely people a Good Time! Besides, how many times do people from Curacao come stumblin' in to the Hoot 'n' Holler? (Answer: Not many.) So, we raised our glasses and sang happy birthday to the one who came all the way from the islands to celebrate turning 41, and I took lots of photos on my cell phone, none of which turned out.  But it was fun!

Saturday, I got to treat my mother and mother-in-law to lunch at The Kind Cafe in Selinsgrove, PA. What a cute place! If you're ever passing through the area, go there.  The coffee was good, the food tasty and the people were really, well, kind. Nice and kind.

Sunday morning, I made crepes for breakfast, then we gathered all of our stuff that was strewn about the house, stuffed all of it into our car, and departed. But there was one more tradition we needed to bookend our weekend: The annual cutting of the Christmas Tree at Pikes Peak Acres, owned by Curt's aunt and uncle.  And it was all

 

and all

 

and I would like to publicly thank Aunt Eleanor for providing Peezer with not one, not two but three candy canes so that he would stop freaking out after he dropped and broke the first two:

 

And so, we strapped the tree to the top of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster Suburban and headed south through heavier-than-normal traffic, past several auto accidents and the ensuing backups, to our Home Sweet Home.

THE END.