Yesterday, on my other blog, Night Thoughts At Noon, I outlined how I plan to survive four years (or more, God help us) of Barack Obama in the White House.
The short answer is: hide. I've unplugged the TV, canceled the newspaper and intend to pay absolutely no attention to the news or to politics, or to national affairs in general, until this queasy period of wannabee socialism in America has passed, you know, like a kidney stone.
I listed some of the things I intend to do: Read Proust, study French, finish my novel, memorize Shakespeare sonnets, paint.
What I didn't mention that I'm going to do is cook.
I already do that, you see. My wife Valerie is a high-powered, successful real estate broker. Such women don't cook. Actually, that's not true. Valerie likes to cook, is good at it and used to put on dinner parties occasionally. But that was before she went into the real estate business. Now she's usually gone from late morning to early evening. I'm a freelance journalist; I do most of my work from home. By default I also do nearly all of the cooking at our house. The grocery shopping too.
I don't mind. Of course a certain amount of static goes with it. Last March when I threw my annual St. Patrick's Day party, Valerie's friend Linda, who is also a high-powered businesswoman (she does people's taxes) walked into the kitchen, saw me cooking corned beef and cabbage and with a big, smarmy grin, congratulated Valerie for having such a "good little wife."
She got the Hawaiian good-luck symbol from me. You know what that is, don't you? That's what you give somebody who just cut you off in traffic.
Let's get one thing straight, all you Gloria Steinem fans out there. I like to cook, but I also smoke cigars and spit in wastebaskets. Don't mess with me.
Speaking of which, Valerie's friend Lisa never comes over without bringing me a cigar. Kudos to Lisa; she's a real pal. Also cute.
Anyway, as I was saying, kitchens are a swell place to hide. My pal Tony Tiscareno out in California got mad at me a few months ago for admitting that I hide in the kitchen when the Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door. Tony's a Witness; he didn't like that especially. I had to explain to him that it isn't just the JW's I dodge; sales people in general tend to chase me into hiding. And the kitchen is a good place to hide. I have a radio in there (which stays off until 2012) and of course there's plenty to eat. Sometimes even wine. (The whites live in the fridge; the reds have a cubbyhole in the liquor cabinet around the corner.)
So last night we had a little dinner party. By little I mean two guests. It was the first meal I'd hosted since last summer when my friend Mark Chalkley and his wife Debbie came up from Fredericksburg on their motor scooter for lunch. I don't remember what I served, except that Mark and Debbie being Baptists, they don't drink, so I served them a non-alcoholic wine. Now, Baptists and I don't agree on a whole lot generally, but we three were in total concurrence that that non-alcoholic wine was truly vile. I poured most of it down the sink.
Last night my guests were Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon, who had come directly from work and looked like someone had just beaten him with a frozen leg of lamb, and my old friend Holly Inder, nee Brayton, who came up from Springfield, VA with a dozen yellow roses for Valerie and went home later with a jar of my homemade (and home-canned) green tomato chutney to give to her mom.
Now, lest you think that I'm putting on airs here, name-dropping about rubbing elbows with senior diplomats, let me point out that I knew Thomas A. Shannon when he was just a punk from the neighborhood. He and I are both from the San Diego area. We met at the U.S. embassy in Brasilia about 20 years ago. He was a junior officer then. I was a State Department communcations puke, dragging pouch bags around the compound when I wasn't shredding paper or taking crap from snooty, self-important suits who think the world is supposed to stop when their printer gets jammed.
Tom wasn't like that. Regular guy, that was Mr. Shannon. Still is, by the way. But with two grown sons and much more responsibility now, well, let's just say it shows. I did what I could, gave him a margarita and a fairly good meal I think. After that we guys retired to the library for cigars (hear that, Linda?) while Valerie and Holly stayed in the dining room and discussed whatever it is women discuss while the menfolk are off with their liqueur and cigars being he-guys.
Holly still works in the field I gave up nearly a decade ago: State Department information management. She and I came on board as government employees at exactly the same time more than 20 years ago. We dated briefly when we were both new hires; eventually we both married other people (on the same day, on different continents. No kidding) but we've sporadically stayed in touch over the years. She's currently raising teenagers in the suburbs, and by the way is no slouch of a cook herself. She likes chopping, Holly, something I hate. I'm thinking of asking her up again on St. Patrick's Day to deal with the onions, carrots and cabbage while I'm out buying the booze.
Since we were having company, I wanted to put on the dog, so I got a little adventurous, for me anyway. The menu included:
Tomato Soup with dill. Now, this soup did not come out of a can. I made it from scratch, from a recipe I pulled off the Internet. The recipe did not call for cream sherry, but I threw in about a half-cup of it, and it really improved the taste.
Spinach salad with feta cheese and bacon. Holly's dad was in the foreign service, and she grew up overseas. She lived in Greece twice, once as a small child and again in her late teens. I like to add little Greek touches like feta to my cooking when Holly's around, just as a tip of the hat to her travels.
Pan-broiled salmon in brown sugar and bourbon. This is delicious, and it's VERY easy. You just melt some butter and brown sugar in a pan, sear the salmon steaks in it for maybe five minutes, then turn them over, dump in about 3/4 of a cup of Jim Beam and, in my case, cover the pan and turn down the heat for about another five minutes. Really good.
Broccoli with hollandaise sauce. I had intended to serve asparagus, but Safeway didn't have any. Oh, well. Broccoli works.
Yellow saffron rice. No particular reason; it just happens to be the kind of rice I like best with seafood.
Dessert was a bit of a skateboard stunt. I had intended to serve my own creation, Apples Fulbright (named after my best schnauzer pal) which is basically apples cooked and then marinated in applejack brandy overnight, served on a waffle and topped with my own special sour cream sauce. But I ruined the apples. I cooked them too long. In a fall-back-and-regroup move, I decided to make creme brulee instead.
But I had never made creme brulee. Serving something you've never made before to guests is dicey. But what the hell, I'm a live-on-the-edge kind of guy. And creme brulee really is easy to make; the only tricky part is after you've let the custard cool and are putting the topping on it, you have to be careful -- the topping is brown and white sugar mixed together, which you then broil to make a sort of crust on top of the custard. You have to be real careful not to let it burn. I almost blew it. The topping came out partly black, but fortunately not all. It tasted okay, anyway.
Ever since I vacationed in Spain way back in 1995 with my then-girlfriend Nadya, I've been partial to Spanish wines. Now, despite the title of this blog, I don't serve red wine with fish to guests. That's a personal foible which I will explain in my next posting. For Tom and Holly I went to Calvert Woodley and picked up two bottles of Marques de Cacere dry white table wine from Rioja. It's very light and crisp, but has more body, I think, than a chardonnay. Salmon is a savory fish and I didn't want to serve chardonnay with it. Of course I looked like a damn fool trying to apply a bottle opener to this stuff -- it comes with a screw cap.
Well, there you have it. Obama's coming in and I'm checking out. Maybe I'll send him a jar of my green tomato chutney as an inaugural gift. He can dine heartily on it. After that I'll be either in the kitchen or the library. But if it's the library, knock firmly on the door. I'll have the music turned up loud so I don't hear the news.
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