Roquefort Jello
My very own repeat of message found all over the blogs: blogging will be light until July 6th -- getting ready for flight out, and then being gone, man, gone. Vacation.
I do have access to a computer in Albuquerque, though, so I expect to check in a few times.
Next repeat of message found all over the blogs -- well, the knit blogs, at least -- have decided on my vacation knitting. Big deal, it's the "Oriental Flower" cardigan I'm trying to finish up. It'll be hotter there than it is here, BUT because it's hotter, there's air conditioning! Yay! Artificial continuation of knitting season!
One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph taken sometime in the 1920's, of one of my greatgrandmothers, sitting in a hard-backed chair in a dusty sunny East Texas yard, knitting fiercely -- you can tell she's knitting fiercely because she has a fierce expression on her face -- with the ball of yarn rolling, improbably, in the dust.
What the hell was she doing? Why was she sitting outside in the hot sun rather than on a porch (I assume she had one; everybody did)? Why was she letting that yarn roll in the dust? What was this project, that it required such fierceness?
I'll never know. Love that photo.
Enough about knitting. I want to perform a public service now, by warning you all: do not ever make Roquefort Jello.
This came up as we were sitting at dinner last night, which was good, and we were remembering the Most Horrible Culinary Mistake I Ever Made, as a contrast, a mistake which is so renowned in my little family that the child has been asking me to make it again, as when I did it originally he was a baby and hence can't remember it.
His being a baby probably explains why I made it in the first place actually -- I don't think I had the use of all my brain cells till he was about two -- was running on empty there for a while. And it's true that it was sort of an experiment -- it came out of one of my -- then -- favorite cookbooks, The Spice Island Cookbook, from the 60's. It's a clever and good cookbook, and full of interesting things, and I had had a run of luck trying odd recipes out of it and discovering that they were very nice, not just edible, and so I took a chance on the Roquefort Jello, which sounded awful, but I figured the rest of the cookbook was so good it couldn't be that bad. It was that bad. It was inedible. It was gray, for a start, but it tasted worse than it looked. The baby, who was the sort of baby who would eat Orkney Herring Pate, and Pepper Cheddar, and never ate baby food, put some in his mouth and then started scraping it off his tongue with both hands. I wouldn't eat it. Sam ate it all up, more out of thriftiness than actual liking, though he SAYS he liked it. It took him a while to eat it, though.
So, anyway. If you find yourself being seduced by a recipe called "Roquefort Cheese and Cucumber Salad Mold," which requires unflavored gelatin, water, sugar, salt, powdered mustard, garlic powder, lemon juice, cottage cheese, roquefort cheese, mayonnaise, and a cucumber, do not make it. Order in a pizza.
I do have access to a computer in Albuquerque, though, so I expect to check in a few times.
Next repeat of message found all over the blogs -- well, the knit blogs, at least -- have decided on my vacation knitting. Big deal, it's the "Oriental Flower" cardigan I'm trying to finish up. It'll be hotter there than it is here, BUT because it's hotter, there's air conditioning! Yay! Artificial continuation of knitting season!
One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph taken sometime in the 1920's, of one of my greatgrandmothers, sitting in a hard-backed chair in a dusty sunny East Texas yard, knitting fiercely -- you can tell she's knitting fiercely because she has a fierce expression on her face -- with the ball of yarn rolling, improbably, in the dust.
What the hell was she doing? Why was she sitting outside in the hot sun rather than on a porch (I assume she had one; everybody did)? Why was she letting that yarn roll in the dust? What was this project, that it required such fierceness?
I'll never know. Love that photo.
Enough about knitting. I want to perform a public service now, by warning you all: do not ever make Roquefort Jello.
This came up as we were sitting at dinner last night, which was good, and we were remembering the Most Horrible Culinary Mistake I Ever Made, as a contrast, a mistake which is so renowned in my little family that the child has been asking me to make it again, as when I did it originally he was a baby and hence can't remember it.
His being a baby probably explains why I made it in the first place actually -- I don't think I had the use of all my brain cells till he was about two -- was running on empty there for a while. And it's true that it was sort of an experiment -- it came out of one of my -- then -- favorite cookbooks, The Spice Island Cookbook, from the 60's. It's a clever and good cookbook, and full of interesting things, and I had had a run of luck trying odd recipes out of it and discovering that they were very nice, not just edible, and so I took a chance on the Roquefort Jello, which sounded awful, but I figured the rest of the cookbook was so good it couldn't be that bad. It was that bad. It was inedible. It was gray, for a start, but it tasted worse than it looked. The baby, who was the sort of baby who would eat Orkney Herring Pate, and Pepper Cheddar, and never ate baby food, put some in his mouth and then started scraping it off his tongue with both hands. I wouldn't eat it. Sam ate it all up, more out of thriftiness than actual liking, though he SAYS he liked it. It took him a while to eat it, though.
So, anyway. If you find yourself being seduced by a recipe called "Roquefort Cheese and Cucumber Salad Mold," which requires unflavored gelatin, water, sugar, salt, powdered mustard, garlic powder, lemon juice, cottage cheese, roquefort cheese, mayonnaise, and a cucumber, do not make it. Order in a pizza.
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