I'm trapped on my sailboat, three days into a ten day rainstorm, with a wet dog. Just about the time that both me and my Golden Girl get dried out, I get the Growl. The Growl is Sadie's way of telling me it's time for another walkie. So out we go and I spend five to ten minutes in the rain while she sniffs around seeking the perfect square inch to do her business. By then, were both soaked pretty good. Being a water dog, she doesn't even notice, let alone care about the simple fact that it is raining. So back in we go, I have to carry my wet load down the ladder and sternly warn to not even think of shaking half of the Pacific Low's wetness all over my and the galley. I get us both dried off and Sadie retires to the electric space heater and I to my rack. It's Sunday and there are basically four things to do.
Watch TV, but I just can't get into football being we don't even have a team here in LA. Screw that, life does go on without football.
Or I can read. I'm slogging through volume XI of The Durant's Story of Civilization but it's heavy going and I can only get through an hour, or two, at a stretch.
I can eat. I'm eating my way to the bottom of my freezer. Digging through my freezer is like an Archeological dig. I pull something out, brush off the frost and say to myself, I wonder what the hell this is.
Or I can surf the web. I've read, and re-read, my emails. I've purged my Outlook of old, never to be re-read saved emails. But then I remembered an article that I read in the LA Times years ago about what we Americans ate back in the late thirties and early forties. There are twin windows of time, for food and cars that are quite similar. The first is the late thirties and the other is the late forties. The late thirties because the Great Depression was winding down and a lot of folks could afford to get back to normal and WW2 hadn't kicked rationing in yet. The late forties, to me, was a culinary extension of the late thirties. The War, with all of it's rationing, was over and the quest for Modernism hadn't really affected most folks yet.
I started looking for something similar to that old article, I couldn't find it, but maybe I found The Mother Lode. It's called www. foodtimeline.org and I found it very interesting.
[1946] Cocktail Parties. This is the era when the hostess' attitude is a "help yourself" party she may give her fancy free reign and let her guests assume full responsibility. Alcoholic or non-alcoholic cocktails--either or both. A choice of the following suggestions: Stuffed celery, Olives, Radishes, Marinated mushrooms, Hot ripe olives, Potato chips and cheese Antipasto, Lobster spread sandwiches, Caviar and cucumber canapes, Very small hot toasted sandwiches or puff shells (mushroom, cream cheese, liversausage, oysters etc.), Codfish balls, Tiny broiled sausages with mustard cream, Chicken livers in blankets, Broiled sardine canapes, Deviled sardines, Rolled tongue or chipped beef hors d'oeuvre, Lettuce sandwiches, crab or lobster canapes, pastry snails, Shrimp surround a small hollowed cabbage filled with mayonnaise or pink sauce for shrimp, Meat pie in dough (rissoles), Pretzels and cream cheese, Pickled onions and bacon, Bacon and saltine canape, Oyster canapes, salted nuts." ---The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer [Bobbs-Merrill:Indionapolis] 1946 (p. 800-1)
It's mostly familiar, but also different enough to not expect at your next soiree.
One fun, addictive time-killer is www.flickchart.com Ed and I are both on there and it's interesting to see where movies end up being ranked when you compare them to each other.
ReplyDelete