Mixed Tapes

Most of the people who may actually peek in on this blog know that I love mixed tapes. Hell, most of you have received a mixed tape from me (I know, I know, they're cd's now - but they harken back to the angst of my teen years, and will forever be mixed tapes, regardless of the format). So this post from RoseHawk made me think about a new mix.

I've been thinking for a bit about a mix that reminds me of Dad, but it's just a little too soon. So I'm going back a little further. Back to when we lived in the tiny apartment above my grandparent's. Back to the 70's. Back when there was very little drama or grief in my life. We were poor, but I was a kid and didn't notice, everyone I knew was poor. Gas shortages meant a nap in the car and singing with the radio while we waited in line. There was always music playing. Saturdays were devoted to house cleaning while dancing around and singing (a habit I still have today, while the dog barks ferociously at me - he has no concept of how good my voice sounds in my head).

Anyone want to help? I usually have a bit more of a theme when I make my mixed tapes - so if you're a child of the 70's do you have any songs that you still can't resist singing along with if you happen to catch it on the radio?

Feel free to make the comments anonymous if you can't face the shame of knowing all the lyrics... there's more than one on this list that makes me cringe posting for all the world to see

Pina Colada Song - Rupert Holmes
Copacabana - Barry Manilow
Love Will Keep Us Together - The Captain and Tenille
Rock the Boat - The Hues Corporation
Bennie and the Jets - Elton John
You're No Good - Linda Ronstadt
Here You Come Again - Dolly Parton
I'm A Little Bit Country, I'm a Little Bit Rock n Roll - Donny and Marie
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon

Step away from the crockpot...

I just went through my fridge to determine what I need for this week's grocery shopping, and there are 11 full meals in my freezer! Mac n cheese, chicken soup, bigos, and meat sauce. I'm doing a little happy dance here... I don't have to cook every single night this week! AND there's a chance I might actually make it to the gym after work. It's sad, but there is true joy at the thought that I might not be racing around after work every night this week to put dinner on the table.

Anyone else have a few small joys in life to celebrate this week?

Just a little giggle over names

Second post in a day - what's the world coming to????

All this talk about the Baron's family being very Polish, and mine not so much brought back a funny memory. Addressing wedding invitations. Honest to God - one side of my family has Smith the other has Jones for last names. No big shockers, maybe the occasional unusual spelling of a common first name.

Baron's family? - Lord help me, I would call and ask people to spell things out very slowly for many, many hours. They had to think that he was marrying a moron. Oh, there's the pre-requisite "-ski" in a few of the last names, but there is one that has M, L, J, D, Z, N, K and at least 5 vowels. I still couldn't spell the name today even if there was a gun pointed at my head. Funny thing is... every time I talked to a different family member, I'd get a different spelling (or at least I wrote it down differently every time!). My apologies continue to go out to the family, many years of marriage later, I can pronounce it, but I have no clue how to spell it.

Even the first names were difficult. I distinctly remember looking at Baron one night and asking "What's a Ginzi?" Mr. or Mrs. ?

Anyone have a favorite family name that they want to pass down through the generations? Or a name that they believe to be an evil joke?

Personally, I'd never hyphenate a child's first name. Seems to have been a small trend in the 70's, that has thankfully passed (it's not really evil, just a bit traumatic filling out paperwork in school when you don't have a middle name).

Recipe of the Week

My husband, hence forth known as "The Baron" , is 3/4 Polish 1/4 Irish. Cabbage and cured meat runs in his blood. Polish food is something that he grew up with at the nightly dinner table. He grew up in the heart of central CT, in neighborhoods that still have all the shop signs in both English and Polish. Coleslaw is present at every holiday. His Mom makes Golabki every New Year's Eve. Easter brings the joy of two kinds of kielbasa from Martin Rosol's - fresh and cured. And yet... I'm the one who LOVES Polish food. It's smoky, exotic, salty, tangy, and I put on 3-5 lbs every time I sit at the holiday table. The Baron could take it or leave it. I beg to go to Staropolska at least once a month, but he just doesn't get that excited about it.

To put it in perspective for you - while his family is primarily Polish, mine is... well, American. Homogenized. Typical melting pot. I'm Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh, French, Portugese and French Canadian. I have no idea how many generations back my family has lived here in New England. There was the great migration down from Maine and Massachusetts, and for the last few generations we've been in CT. No one is fresh off the boat - I think the closest thing I had to a relative that was 1st generation was my great-grandfather, but he moved from New Brunswick to Maine - not really a tumultuous trip to Ellis Island. We don't really have any traditions that go back to the Old Country. We don't have an Old Country. We had potato farmers and a few odd Portugese traditions (I'll save the one tradition that I know is Portugese for Easter - but it involves hard boiled eggs, and an unhealthy sense of competition - somebody please remind me to blog about it in the spring!)

Old World, traditional meals intrigue me, and I crave the strong, earthy smells and tastes when the weather turns cold.

This week's experiment is another one for the crockpot. It is NOT Weight Watchers friendly. In fact, it's going to require a very light lunch and some serious time on the elliptical machine, but I'm betting that it's going to be worth it. I give you... Bigos (also known as Hunter's Stew or Poland's National Dish). I can't wait to get home tomorrow night for dinner, I think I just gained 2 lbs typing this post!

Bigos
1 onion -- chopped
1 clove garlic -- minced
2 tablespoons butter
1 pound cabbage
1 quart sauerkraut -- rinsed and drained
1/2 pound mushrooms -- sliced
1 pound boneless pork butt -- cut in 1" cubes
1 pound boneless veal -- cut in 1" cubes
1/2 pound Polish sausage -- sliced 1/2" thick
1/2 cup beef stock
1 cup chopped tomatoes
2 tart apples -- diced
1/2 cup pitted prunes
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup red wine

Brown all the meat. Layer sauerkraut, fruits and veggies, meat. Layer again. Pour in beef stock wine, spices. Cook for 8-10 hours on low. Can absolutely be frozen, everything I've read says the taste is actually better after a few days.

If there's a heaven, I hope it looks like this

I didn't post a lot about the trip once we started to head out of Orlando and to the Keys. All I can say... difficult. It was an extremely tough trip. I know we did the right thing. I know Dad would have been so proud of us for figuring out a way to get to Key West to spread his ashes. But it wasn't easy.

There were moments when I swear he was with us. That's a big deal for me to say - I want to believe in an afterlife, I want to believe there's something else, but I have no proof, and dammit, I don't believe ANYTHING that I don't experience for myself.

There were songs that played on the radio at highly coincidental moments. The second we were crossing on to the first Key, Oye Como Va by Santana started playing. Mom and I did our best to ignore it, don't make eye contact, don't cry, don't mention it. Doesn't sound like much - but Dad loved Santana. He definitely rocked the "Latin flava". I used to joke about it with my friends, there were some older women at work that would practically bat their eyelashes at him. There was one woman (no longer there, but if you ask me offline, I'll tell you who - Chey prolly remembers) that we used to call Cujo. Gentle as can be *insert rolling of eyes and gagging* - which is how she earned the nickname when we were trainees. Yup, she and Dad were buds. Woman would rip me a new ass in a meeting, and go home and bake a cake for him. No lie.

Where the hell was this post going? Oh yeah. The Keys and messages from beyond. There was another song that came on right when we went by the state park that my parents went kayaking in. I won't name the song out of respect for Mom's privacy. But if there is an afterlife, if he can communicate at all - it was Dad trying his hardest to let her know he's there.

We let him go the night we arrived in Key West. We found a beautiful spot by where the big cruise ships dock, right as the sun was sinking in to the ocean. Every night when people clap, cheer, and toast the sunset, they'll be celebrating Dad. And as we left his final resting spot, we realized all of the power went out on the island. As S* said when I told him about it... "Where the hell did you guys drop him? You know he can't be unsupervised around electricity!"

Gotta love that town. Power out, 90 degree heat, clothes clinging to the tourists from 100% humidity, all the restaurants and shops closed, but the bars were still open. Candles on the tables, couldn't serve anything with carbonation, but they found us some chips, salsa and killer martinis. We say goodbye to Dad, and then toasted him until we were stumbling and had to call a cab to bring us back to the hotel.

That's about all of an update I can handle for now. I feel better that he's where he truly wanted to be, but it hasn't eased the sense of loss. I still miss talking to him every day, and still turn quick when I hear a voice that sounds like his, or see a head that looks like his 5 aisles away. But I know we did the right thing. I'm grateful that the timing worked out. Seriously, if it had been a month later, with the way the economy is going, there is no way we could have swung it. But I'll deal with that in another post. For now, I'm just going with grateful.

I know, I know, I'm still not returning emails or phone calls in a timely manner. I will, I promise. Still having that head-stuck-up-my-ass problem. But it's getting better. I'm starting to try to reach out again. Of course, with the current economic shitstorm, I can't afford to go out to dinner with you guys, but perhaps a night of Guitar Hero and homemade margaritas is in order soon? Muah! Love to all my girls...

Decent Crockpot Recipes? Anyone? Anyone?

I'm back to cooking again. 8 days away from home left me with a complete craving for real, homemade food, and a desire to join Weight Watchers again... what can I say, I'm a woman full of dichotomies. In order to not put too great a strain on my marriage, I've agreed to experiment only once a week and stick by the tried and true recipes the rest of the week. This week's experiment, Chicken Paprikash. It sucked *ss. Tastes like mush with a kick. Blech. Can't wait to see what S* thinks of it. The good news is... I made the entire bag of egg noodles so we can have noodles and butter after he tastes it :)

Anyone have a favorite crockpot recipe they'd like to share? 'Cuz this one wasn't it.


Chicken Paprikash

Serve this dish with egg noodles, orzo, rice, or mashed potatoes. Use preshredded carrots to speed up preparation.
Yield

6 servings (serving size: 1 cup)
Ingredients

* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into 1/2-inch strips
* 2 cups chopped onion (about 1 large)
* 1 1/4 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
* 1 cup chopped red bell pepper
* 1/2 cup shredded carrot
* 2 tablespoons Hungarian sweet paprika
* 2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
* 1 1/4 cups reduced-fat sour cream

Preparation

Combine flour and chicken in a medium bowl; toss well. Add chicken mixture, chopped onion, and the next 8 ingredients (through mushrooms) to an electric slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.

Stir in sour cream.
Nutritional Information

Calories:
316 (25% from fat)
Fat:
8.8g (sat 4.5g,mono 2.2g,poly 1.1g)
Protein:
40.6g
Carbohydrate:
17.3g
Fiber:
3g
Cholesterol:
114mg
Iron:
2.3mg
Sodium:
627mg
Calcium:
123mg