He was so darned cute.

Well, we saw him bring a dead mouse by and leave it for a few moments because Zoe flustered him behind the glass doors. The story is that our neighbors fired their hot tub maintenance man because he raised his prices so they hired a new person. The new maintenance person kept finding rats and other critters in the hot tub. The owners, who don’t live here, thought the old maintenance guy was sabotaging their hot tub by putting dead stuff in there.

A couple of months ago we met the owner and pieced together the real story. The stoat/ermine was living in our hot tub and keeping his extra prey a few feet away, and the old maintenance guy was re-hired on our recommendation.

And no, thank you, I don’t want a recipe for par-boiled two week-old rat, nor will I give you one. We told a real cowboy that story and he liked it. Cheers, Dee

Permit me a setup. Twenty years ago I slaved in the kitchens of Margaret Fox at Cafe Beaujolais, in Mendocino, CA. It was a month-long unpaid internship and I wasn’t even allowed a portion of the kitchen’s share of the tip money, which I could have used for firewood because it was freezing in my unheated cabin. I’d spent all my savings on cooking school and a rental car to drive to and from work. Luckily the subletter left a mattress and several blankets, and flying termites by the thousands.

The infamous Diana Kennedy was coming to visit, doyenne of Mexican cooking. One cook was caught rinsing a painstakingly roasted chili to rid it of seeds and skin. NO! Diana Kennedy is coming! She came and went, I got to spend three hours driving her to the airport (I was the only one with a day off, new car and insurance) and she made us some lovely shrimp with garlic, and picked fruit and made us berry ice cream.

I very much enjoy chef Rick Bayless, can’t wait to go to Chicago to visit his restaurants, and am a new devotee of Create. I love Mexico: One Plate at a Time. He makes his dishes sound so easy for the home cook. Recently I watched him rinse off a roasted chili pepper to get rid of seeds and skin. I was told 20+ years ago that was a no-no because you lose all the flavor you imparted through the roasting process.

So I asked him, and congratulated him on winning Top Chef Masters. If there’s any top chef I’d like to apprentice with, it’s him, because he’s a perfectionist, an innovator, a classicist and seems to value the people who work for him. And his website made me make it 300 characters. That took four edits. Perhaps they just want to weed out people without the patience to whittle down to 300 meaningful characters. Anyway, this is MY blog and hopefully you’re still reading.

I love getting inspiration from others, moms who bake, cooks/chefs with other styles of food and ethnic traditions. Right now I just wanted to know if it’s OK to rinse the pepper and retain the flavor! It’s a pain not to use water except to get the skin pieces off my hands. I’ll let you know if he answers. In advance I’ll say Thanks, Rick Bayless, for being the creative chef you are and I’ll see you in Chicago! Cheers, Dee

p.s. 452 words, and I do this as a hobby! I would’ve been horrified to get this assignment in high school…

You can see from my postings over past months that this isn’t the traditional post-Oscar blogger as I’ve even e-mailed the producers to get the movie out earlier here. It’s next door and I’ve seen it twice, bought the CD and while the movie was tough for my husband he loves the songs.

The book brought me home to my neighborhood and the lights of the city. Author Thomas Cobb should be commended for his work, also T Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham and all the songwriters and musicians.

Congratulations to all, you’ve earned it. Cheers, Dee

Jim’ll go to sleep again tonight but perhaps he’ll set me up with headphones. Yesterday I finished reading Crazy Heart, and am glad I saw the film first. It’s interesting that we lived a few blocks from where the fictitious Bad Blake lived in Houston, and his recollection of the skyline is fresh in my mind as if we were still there. Also the tunnels, the fictional Blake should have talked to me because I hate those things. I don’t care if they’re air-conditioned, even if it’s 100 degrees I walk above the surface because I know the restaurant is on the corner of Dallas and Fannin or wherever.

Best of luck to everyone tonight, especially Jeff Bridges. Cheers, Dee

He wanted pancakes. That’s fine. We need to use up the last of our Grade A dark amber maple syrup we picked up in VT and transported to TX then here. I put my game face on and made the most of it, but used a mix.

In the past, when I was a kid my dad would make us pancakes for Sunday breakfast. I didn’t know if I didn’t like them for their sweetness (give me a savory frittata or omelet any day) or now I figure that it’s because I didn’t like the two strips of bacon or sausages to get syrup on them. Also, we weren’t using pure maple syrup.

So, dad started making me one “crepe” but he didn’t thin the batter. He just took one big pancake, spread strawberry jam on it, rolled it up and put a bit of powdered sugar on top and I was brought back to the Adirondacks and the German musicians in the hills and my first real crepe.

To the present, on Friday I received my weekly order from a local organic producer who brings milk (in glass bottles), juices, breads, applewood smoked bacon and maple sausage. I usually cook up the pound of maple sausage one day then refrigerate the rest to quickly microwave for a couple of days. I cooked it up this morning.

Then I used some of the fat from the maple sausage to make pancakes. I waited until the bubbles burst to flip them and they were gorgeous, tasty thick cakes only made better by the sausages and pure Vermont maple syrup. I intend to change up breakfast a bit, keep things fresh. Thanks, Dad. Cheers! Dee

For nearly a year in our temporary move, I’ve been looking up hints of recipes on various sites, just so I know the correct proportions to continue a recipe. With a couple hundred cookbooks, I didn’t bring one with us on the 1,500 mile trek, and have only bought 4-5 since last January. Plus a few magazines, though sadly not the final edition of Gourmet marking the end of an era.

Years ago, when planning a dinner party I’d go to the bookshelves and choose 5-6 titles with which to curl up and cobble together a menu, set the heat in my zoned bedroom from 55 to 65 degrees and crawl under the arctic weight down comforter to spend a few hours figuring out how best to satisfy an eclectic group of guests.

Some of the books would open automatically to favorite pages, such as Julia Child’s French Onion Soup, the Silver Palate’s smoked salmon mousse or Beef Carbonnade. Then there are pages with the slightest bit of grease spatter, or mustard from a special vinaigrette. Like Simca Beck’s Cassoulet or James Beard’s blue cheese spread.

Sitting in bed with a clipboard, pulling together a menu from favorite books, is one of my favorite things to do. I just don’t see that happening with an E-book reader. If you look to the right I’ve a selection of favorite cookbooks that is exhaustively researched and presented with links to Amazon (yes, I might make a nickel on this blog after 18 months) and most are already out of print.

What do I buy newlyweds and new homeowners? James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking, which has been out of print for over 20 years but I find priceless editions on Amazon and even treated myself to one, finally. Len Deighton (yes, the spy thriller author) wrote a book in the 70’s called Ou Est le Garlique, translated into English into a paperback with his own hand drawings called Basic French Cooking. That’s what I buy for special students, my young cousins who learn every Thanksgiving a new technique from Ms. Dee.

The earth is turning around me and things are moving faster than I am these days, but even with the dry air up here my fingers love to turn a page. I love the music from Crazy Heart so much, and Jeff Bridges deserves to do a couple dozen push-ups on stage when he wins the Oscar, that I bought the novel on Sunday and downed a good 120 pages that afternoon.

If books are going by the wayside, consider me an afficianado or collector, or just set in my ways. I’m just a gal that spent half her formative years in the school or public library. The Diary of Anne Frank, Death Be Not Proud, To Kill a Mockingbird, all read before I was eight. Betty Crocker’s Boys and Girls Cookbook. That’s the stuff I grew up on. Perhaps we need a larger home and more bookcases so Jim and I can each amass our 400 favorites. Of course his are all paperbacks and have camels or cranes on the cover (software tech books).

The one thing this article barely mentions is the author. Just as in the movies, the producers and director and actors get the credit and money and the annoying gnat in the background is “just the author.” Same with publishing houses, who probably would love the book business if there weren’t any pesky authors hanging around. The creative types are always the most maligned, but that’s another story for another day. Have a good one, Dee

Yes, my dog died, perhaps a guy left me for another gal and my pickup (SUV) may have a flat but I want to hear the stories of real people. As a teenager or early twenties-something you don’t know anything about love and loss. It’s only when you’re older and wiser (and wearier) that you know something about life, and certain things ring true.

Love, when you find true love, keep it. If anyone lies to you about anything except “do I look fat in this” ditch them. There are few true friends in this world – if you have one, keep him/her. As to in-laws, know your spouse and you’ll know what you’re getting into, and if his Dad has no hair at age 50, he won’t either.

Cook with abandon, whether you know how or not. If you don’t know, watch your mother, m-i-l or friends, or take a class. In my mind, nothing shows love more than a well thought-out and crafted meal to appease guests. I love cooking meals just for us, or for family, friends and large gatherings. Given time to plan and prepare I can wow our guests. Given 15 minutes, with my essential pantry (see right column for entries) I can pull something together on short notice.

My guitar has had little action lately except for making sure it is properly humidified. But I’m starting to dream again about music and am particularly fond of a couple of songs in the critically-acclaimed movie, Crazy Heart. I’m reading the novel now (got through half of it in a day) and admire T Bone Burnett and his cohorts for the music.

I’ll debate any issue I know something about but when the issue is me, and I’ve no idea the source of information and am deprived of any data, that’s just throwing punches in the dark. Around here they make sure you don’t have a clear target, a person to politely talk to in order to make things right.

As of this morning we may lose our home, a dear part of our family and more. Love and loss. Perhaps I can write a country song around it and make amends. Not so cheery today, Dee

So forgive me if I’m not present, or if I’m omnipresent. I try to keep it somewhere in the middle. One friend does yoga to get out the kinks, I try to write. Today the boulder has come all the way down to about 20 feet from the ground and I’ve several thousand feet to climb.

Much is going on and a lot of our future hinges upon creative, successful solutions to complex issues so I’m putting on my thinking cap and know your kind wishes are with us. Sincerely, Dee

I did fry onions for my first time. I had a large red onion left over from the torta experiment so sliced half of it thinly. Before doing so, I put together a beer batter (only needed one beer so chose Labatts from Canada instead of Corona). Beer, flour, salt and pepper and it sat the required hour. The house still smells like onions but the rings were very thin, I thinned out the batter with another 1-2 T beer and they were light and delicious. I can’t believe it took me all these years to fry something other than goujonettes of sole and parsley (hockey-playing cousin Steven cooked the parsley as a last-minute garnish to my cooking school grad dinner at the James Beard House).

The batter recipe was from epicurious, look up beer batter and fried kale. Looks like a basic recipe to me but they sue if you reprint them.

Once again, cheers to the Maple Leaf teams for winning hockey Gold and to our northern neighbors for hosting the Olympics. I also welcome home Utah’s own athletes. It’s exciting to be in a town in which many Olympians were raised and/or trained. Cheers! Dee

NYC Snow Umbrella

This was NYC yesterday. Nearly 17″ of snow in Central Park, I heard on the news. My brother took the photo. You can tell, because he was sure to get the pretty girl in the shot as well!

We’re hoping he’ll come visit (and perhaps bring some snow out west) so I can cook up a storm. I do have mincemeat now. Thanks for the photo, G! Cheers, Dee