Happier Hour

It's a Wisconsin thing. The Old Fashioned. 

We are happy to announce that the quintessential cocktail  has now been bottled for your convenience.  This is really good news for those of us who keep a pathetically under-stocked liquor cabinet. 

We came late to the Wisconsin supper club scene, but quickly learned that if you want to blend in you better be ordering beer or an Old Fashioned on fish fry or prime rib special night. And if  you go with the OF it would be well to decide before you are asked whether you want it sweet or sour.

We suspect that many OF aficionados in our age group learned how to expertly make one back in the 60's or 70's when it was still okay for a kid to bartend the parents' cocktail party. Or they just picked it up from hanging out in bars, which is still okay for minors in Wisconsin, and observing the ritual of creating the OF.

We have always let the professionals mix our drinks and now they have made it even easier for us. 

Pick up a six pack and a jar of maraschino cherries and just like that it's a party with Arty's.

Worth the Wait

Last winter we bought some beautiful strawberries at the grocery store and discovered that they were hard as rocks, had solid white hearts, and the taste? what taste?

Someone told us they were really pretty good. Being our usual agreeable self we did not argue.

But we should have. Those were not good berries.

These are good berries.

Summer has come and now we are reminded of what a strawberry is really meant to be like. 

Red all the way through, best the very day it is picked, juicy, 

and full of ecstasy-producing flavor without need for sugar, chocolate coating, 

or any other distractions from its amazing strawberryness.

It is even a good thing that summer berries do not keep for more than a day or two. 

The same breeding that enables a strawberry to be transported for hundreds or thousands of miles and keep for weeks in the frig also takes away all that makes strawberries divinely desirable to eat.

See that juice in the bottom of the bowl. Just try to get one of those plastic January pretend strawberries to ooze even a drop of it. And if you see us in the produce aisle next winter reaching for a plastic clam-shell full of out-of -season zombie berries, please remind us that if we take them home we will be disappointed. 

Very, very disappointed.

Performance Review

Go ahead, write your own caption.

All we know is that the quality control department has got some splainin' to do.

Life with Live Bait

Here's a sight we never thought we'd miss.

Crawlers in the frig right next to the cottage cheese and leftover spaghetti used to make us squeamish.

We still set the box off by itself on a door shelf when possible. 

And we usually leave it to someone else to lift the lid to see if  its shiny occupants 

are indeed still shiny and happy and healthily wriggling away.

But in the delight of the moment when we saw evidence of fishing right alongside the hummus, 

we took a peek, and sure enough the same old sensations of disgust and wonder with a hint of danger came back all at once and then quickly faded into a sense of contentment at what the presence of worms on the top shelf means in this family's life.

If there are worms back in the house then the fishermen are back too. 

Gone fishing. Of course.

Last Call

There will be no more weekend outings to apple country. All the sheds are now closed for the season. Fortunately the frig is loaded with local apples to get us through at least early winter before we have to buy those pretend apples from the other side of the world.








Here is information from Iowa State University Extension on storing apples.

Farm fresh is best!

Very Fishy

A few days after the fishermen returned from Valdez...




...four big boxes followed.




The contents filled the freezer. To the top.




The styrofoam cooler lids had desperate messages written on them.








What to do? Notify the authorities? Organize a mercy mission? Encourage the mayors to form a trade agreement? Ideas anyone?

Olive You Too

You get invited to an impromptu neighborhood get-together starting in ten minutes. Or...

You just remembered you promised to take something to a friend's party, your ride is on the way, and you haven't even showered yet. Or...

You are famished and disheveled and feel like having a little nosh on the patio after a productive day of gardening, but you do maintain some minimum standards for how you look in public.

Running to the store is not an option. What to do?

Get out the food processor. Open the frig. Find every delicious salty thing you have. Put it in the food processor in quantities that make sense. Add some herbs from the cupboard or garden. Add some olive oil. Pulse it. Scrape it in a bowl. Grab the crackers. Go.




Call it Olive Tapenade or Olive Salsa or just call it yummy.

Here's what went into this batch:

Stuffed green olives
Ripe olives
Kalamata olives
Onion
Roasted red peppers
Garlic
Garlic chives
Parsley
Olive oil
Capers

Clean Out the Frig Soup

Threw in some onion, chicken broth, and a little milk and got leftover lunch. Didn't even have to scrape mold off of anything.

Now What?

Some helpful, frugal tipster said to freeze old, lone bananas until you have enough for a batch of banana bread. I'm not feelin' the love with these babies, but I bet they would make good, potassium-rich compost. Do I have a second for that motion?

The out-of-focus look is mostly frost.

Prehistoric Cheese

I can't bring myself to slice into this novelty cheese that we received for Christmas. It reminds me of the ubiquitous Dino logo we would see at Sinclair stations all across America on the endurance driving trips that my parents called family vacations. Even though most of those memories are worthy of repressing I still have a fondness for old Dino. The image of him cut up and spread out on an appetizer tray is as disturbing as that of a chocolate Easter rabbit, ears eaten off, languishing in the basket in June amongst wadded up foil candy wrapper balls and unloved black jelly beans. I suppose Dino will be butchered one day after I have forgotten to go to the store for awhile and someone gets desperate for a grilled cheese sandwich. Maybe if we save his waxy green skin a taxidermy version of the little guy can be made. Then he can continue to greet me with his peaceful, plant-loving brontosaurus countenance each time I open the frig door. Forever.