About Me

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dover foxcroft, maine
married mother of five in total three mine and two my husband's children two part time jobs full time student and just loving life. active in my church and member of my local American legion

Saturday, November 19, 2011

week eleven I can't wait to go a sleddin...how to process

     Cooking, is a lot more than just the ordinary slice and dice that you see at a restaurant. I think that is why I do not like to go out to eat on a regular basis. It is fun once in awhile but it cannot compare to the atmosphere created in your own home while you are cooking dinner for your family. The kitchen, for me, has always been the heart of my home. It is where I fed my family, teaching my children the alphabet, while eating alphabet soup, of course. It is where I ironed my first husband's uniforms, walked babies around the table while I waited for bottles to heat up, or medicines to go down. This part of the house is where every cherished holiday memory started for me and it is, now that I am back in school, where I do the lion's share of my homework at.
     I live in a little two bedroom trailer and, of the common area, the kitchen takes up about a third of the space. The makers of my trailer, who have long since passed into obscurity, were ingenious at putting in cupboards and cabinets right where I would need them and yet leave me room to look out the window while I eat, especially since there is only one way the table will fit in here. My trailer has forty year old paneling that showed forty years worth of use and abuse on them. At first there was even some kind of mushroom growing out of the wall down by the floor, and it took me along time to decide what I wanted to do with the kitchen after I removed the mushroom, but eventually I found the wallpaper that made my heart go pitter patter. I bought all the rolls of it that were in the thrift store. Thank God there was enough for the whole kitchen because that was going on the wall whether there was enough or not. I slapped up a coat or three of paint to trim off the wallpaper with, and just recently found the perfect wall border. The old wooden cupboards I kept the same, some copper accents strategically placed, and I have an old world style kitchen, kind of a rustic European country look.
     Everything meshes together perfectly. Feng shway people would be impressed. My point to this blathering ramble is, that when my family comes in the house and sits down to eat, there is a pleasant atmosphere to the place blending the old with the new. Kind of like my family. I have blended my three children with my new husband and his two children. I did not trim them in wallpaper and paint but I did get some things they liked; pillows, towels, their own dishes etc. One of the boys lives with me now and I am incorporating him into the fabric of my family, just like my pico de gallo.
     I picked up this recipe somewhere in Texas about 20 years ago and for all family functions, I have made a big heaping bowl full of the stuff. It goes on everything and with everything. My son, when he comes home on leave from the war, is usually at me to make him some to put on his food while he is here. His own bowlful of the stuff, I comply and within a few hours he is happily slathering it on everything he can put his hands on in the kitchen. My son-in-law once made me a bookcase for which I paid with a bowlful of Pico de Gallo. It is the only thing that my daughter will eat jalapenos in. I get the freshest ingredients that I can find. I then slice, dice, shred, squirt, and toss it all together to create a new family memory.
     Something happens when I make the pico. Everyone comes into the kitchen and sits around the table and they all begin to eat...and tell stories. It starts innocently enough with the accusations of double-dipping and somehow gets to Jeremy getting dish soap squirted down his throat and ending up throwing up bubbles out his nose. Every time he coughed bubbles came out, which made us laugh, and then he would choke some more. It was the strangest poison control call I ever made, the guy on the other end of the phone was even laughing. It goes from Jeremy right around the table and, before you know it, we are all laughing and having such a good time. The pico in the restaurants might be fancier, made by chefs, maybe even more authentic, but for my family only Mom's pico will do. I try to tell them it is not really the pico but it is the family and the fun and the little bit of love that goes in it, that is what makes the difference I think. I am not sure they buy that explanation though.
     Recently I had surgery on my arm and the day of my surgery the children, who were at my house, asked me to make a bowl of the pico for them before I left for the hospital so they could have something to snack on while I was having the surgery done. I of course agreed and set about making a big bowl of it. I still have some left. Casey asked me to save it for him and he would make me an omelet when he got home, he went to his stepfather's house this weekend. Considering how he lost his mom, the thought of another mother in the hospital probably is sending him right up the wall. I have his pico here and have saved out some eggs too. He makes the best omelets and they go so well with the pico.

3 comments:

  1. I had to look this up, and it's interesting that you start by mentioning restaurants:

    In 2002, a study appearing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted by the University of Texas–Houston Medical School, found that 66% of the sauces tested (71 samples tested, sauces being either salsa, guacamole or pico de gallo) from restaurants in Guadalajara, Jalisco and 40% of those from Houston, Texas, were contaminated with E. coli bacteria, although only the sauces from Guadalajara contained the types of E. coli that cause diarrhea.[3] The researchers found that the Mexican sauces from Guadalajara contained fecal contaminants and higher levels of the bacteria more frequently than those of the sauces from Houston, possibly as a result of more common improper refrigeration of the Mexican sauces.

    In a 2010 press release, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that between 1998 and 2008, 1 out of 25 foodborne illnesses in the United States with identified food sources had been traced back to restaurant salsa or guacamole.[4] According to a July 13, 2010, news item by journalist Elizabeth Weise, a 2008 outbreak of Salmonella in the U.S. was traced back to the peppers used in salsa.[5] Originally reported to the CDC by the New Mexico Department of Health, over the course of several months, the outbreak sickened a total of 1,442 people in 43 U.S. states and resulted in 286 hospitalizations.[6] Weise reported that Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, found refrigeration was critical to safe salsa; and also that using fresh garlic and fresh lime juice, instead of their more processed equivalents, inhibited the growth of bacteria.

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  2. This is a very sharp piece indeed. You get one of the essentials of essay writing, which is the same as the essential of a lot of cooking--you can throw a lot of different stuff into the pot. Sometimes the quickest way from A to B is through C, H, and M!

    In fact, 'essay' really means exploration, and here you explore your home, your wallpaper, your dislike of mushrooms, your family, your food, your view, soap bubbles, your temptation (trimming the kids in wallpaper), and so on.

    Although the weight of the piece is on that sauce, the piece itself, however far it roams, is about only one thing--family. Nothing could be clearer.

    Do you want to offer this to the Eyrie?

    I hate to compare pieces because to really do so I'd have to go back and read all the earlier pieces (no time today!) but my impression is that in a series of good pieces, this stands out as even better, the best, in fact.

    Was it easy to write? It reads as if whipped off fast and perfect, coming from a part of the brain that would not be denied and that wrote it for you while you just took dictation.

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