My family was very kind and sympathetic and it would be unkind if I did not take the time to thank them for their interesting gifts.
Laura picked up some Pistachios fro the Island of Aegina for me. Aegina is the home of the best Pistachios in the world… and since I make the best Baklava in the world ( according to them), then I must have the best Pistachios!!! I can hardly wait to make more!
Kristin surprised me with a number of unexpected gifts. I could never guess that she would buy me such interesting things. ‘Things’ that sent me to the internet to discover their history and left me fascinated! She found for me a signet ring used by an obviously high and mighty official in the Ottoman empire to sign his documents… very nice. I look more impressive now. Karen and Kristin bought me some great cook books… I especially want to try the Mousaka!
Laura, Kristin and Karen came together for a week in Greece and soon they will be departing for their homes and assignments. Although I would have enjoyed being with them, I felt like I was actually there by seeing and talking to them on Skype and seeing all of their fantastic pictures!
Whether it was the truth, or whether they were just trying to make me feel good… they all said my Baklava was best. Laura even brought some along to share! Laura did say she was bringing some Greek Pistachios home for me… I wonder what she wants me to do with them!
Next time, I’ll try and tag alone, in the meantime, welcome home, Laura!
‘Lose weight or die more quickly and horribly’ would be a great slogan for a dieting commercial. For example, I love those shock commercials about smoking that show some older gent wheezing and , sympathetically, we listen to him warn us not to let this happen to us. Stop smoking, I get it. But if I were to take an educated guess, being overweight causes more physical harm and early death than almost anything we are doing to ourselves and it will only get worse.
I say get worse, because, it appears that the corpulent are moving into more sedentary years. I don’t think we have to worry about boomers taxing the social security program, a lot less of us may be around to collect anything. Now, the CDC had a quite beautiful color presentation of the trend in obesity rates in this country… but hard to understand… so I changed the colors and gray scaled it. Now, you can better see what’s going on. Arteries are choking in the heartland of America.
First, I know that the diversity of our commercial food offerings is part of what drives people to eat more and I wouldn’t give that up. I know that ‘super tasters’ like me have an additional challenge, but one doesn’t have to feast every day, drink everyday and give up walking.
By the way, strenuous exercise stimulates the appetite and initiates a chain of events leading to failure, dieting and walking is the key. When I was a young boy I had a favorite customer on my paper route, he was 103. He impressed me with his stories and finally I asked him — in my youthfully honest way — why he lasted so long? He told me that it was because he walked everyday to his coffee shop and such. Interestingly enough he did drive on occasion, but he impressed on me that walking was what kept his motor running. He noticed that the first things his friends stopped doing was to walk places, then came the chair , the bed and then death. He said that at a certain age, once you stop walking the ability to start walking again becomes nearly impossible. He also enjoyed eating fabulously on Sunday, drank his ‘Old Fashions’ and brandies, but he was lean the rest of the week.
Just watch what you eat, walk every day ( pick a fun destination , say a coffee shop) and allow yourself to enjoy 1 fabulous meal a week and you’ll lose weight… which makes most people healthier… if not happier.
Roger
PS. I am working on my one extravagant meal of the week… for Saturday!
The apples are ripening... but alas, not fast enough!
I had hoped to have at least one apple pie in the oven by now, but our tree is a bit of a trickster. It looked like it was about to produce more than I could imagine and quickly, then suddenly, it slowed down. As we say in Marketing, this is the part of the ‘vertical integration process’ of our organization that fails to make its deadlines! I find trees so unpredictable.
As for recipes, I enjoy our more ‘natural style’ but this year I think I am going to produce pies with a thicker and more abundant syrup but maintaining the relative seasoning and sauteing.
When you look around the world, the chefs who have earned real appreciation are those who understand and can prepare meat. Even in India, the art of preparing sauces and sweetmeats reached a high science and require years of training before they were allowed to serve anyone.
As I have discussed in previous blogs, Pastrami is smoked and re-seasoned corned beef . How it is ‘corned’ and finally prepared is almost a state secret. (The British Army relied heavily on Irish Corned Beef whose preparation is a highly guarded secret to those who claim real knowledge). However, there is much to be said for Pastrami!
Nothing beats Homemade Pastrami!
So, maybe the secret of a great Pastrami is like an old Tijaran recipe “marinating the pollo for 6 weeks” is crucial (as quoted in the original “In Laws” movie). However, I think it has much to do with the right brine solution and seasoning ( heavy on beer), the right preservative ( we want the meat with its characteristic ‘pink’ color after all) and finally the right final spices (loads of Pimenton) and the right set of woods for the smoking ( Hickory and Mesquite for me).
So while Laura is awaywith two of our beautiful daughters at a conference in Greece, I have left Jenny Craig (our diet food) tied up in the back… and Karla and I are having some culinary fun! ( Karla also wants to learn how to make those simple frosted animal cookies covered with little sugar balls).
