Tag: recipe

Re: Imagination

Imagine for a moment you are enthralled by a young mind telling you a story from their imagination. In this context facts are unimportant, only the drama and wonder of thinking how this idea could possibly have begun in the first place.

There I was one afternoon relating the story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs to my three year old imaginative friend. He was rapt as I told him that some versions of this fairytale had the wolf EAT the pigs (my listener has a vegetarian mother). He stopped me several times to repeat sections. A couple of times I had to assure him that every character was doing what came naturally. At the end of my tale I asked what he thought of eating meat from pigs (we had had sausage for lunch) or chicken (he concluded that birds don’t count). He said he didn’t care about fish.

Any teacher will tell you it’s a perk of the job to listen to examples of imaginary thought from their students. I remember my mom always saying the phrase “out of the mouths of babes” whenever she concluded a story about my sister or me to her friends. Back then there was a television program Kid’s Say The Darndest Things hosted by Art Linkletter. Later the program was rebooted with Bill Cosby posing as the questioner of the kids. Imagine!

My young friend ruminated on my fairytale for a moment (bathroom break). The house continued to buzz with kitchen clean-up and quiet adult conversation when he came back and sat beside me on the couch. I thought he was going to ask for another fairy tale but no, he began to tell me something that sounded like a recipe for baked horse. Allow me to provide a condensed version of his culinary how-to: You have to put on gloves and get all the poop out. Next (he instructed) you cut off the tail and chop the horse into pieces that will fit into the oven. Keep everything clean (he emphasized). When it’s all very hot then you spread on some mayonnaise (at this point he smacked his lips!)

After the first narration my young friend was clearly impressed by the attention he was getting (by now his parents had joined in, listening with a measure of shock & awe). The show must go on! He raised his arms and asked if I would remember his horsey story (I assured him that I would never forget it). He then stepped onto the floor and performed an interpretive dance version of The Baked Horse Recipe. His hands got rid of all the poop, the snipped tail miraculously flew into the air on sprouted wings, the horse bits were pushed into the oven, and the spreading of the mayonnaise was the piece de resistance! He could have bowed because we all wanted to give him a standing ovation. I suggested to his parents that he must be enrolled in acting classes immediately, or at least chef school.

Re: Chips

I’m always on the lookout for great fried potatoes. At least once a week my mom used to cook up a dangerous mess of chips in a stove top pot. She used lard which she kept in a container in the fridge. This fat was never thrown out to my knowledge; she clarified it regularly through a strainer, then cheesecloth. The hand cut potato slices were chilled in the fridge overnight then put in a wire basket which could be clipped to the side of the hot fatpot to drain. The chips were slippery with the oil and ever so tasty with salt, vinegar or ketchup.

When someone refers to fried potatoes as ‘fries’ I immediately think of the McDonald’s variety. However, they are not the ‘chips’ I remember from my childhood. Fast food fries are usually pasty, dry and unappetizing to me. They are probably a long way from the Belgian pommes de terre frites that WWI American soldiers were reported to love. I’ve ordered steak and frites in a fancy restaurant and was underwhelmed with that fried potato version. I’m particular about my chips.

In 2003 there was an amusing international kerfuffle involving the term French fries. A politician in the United States named Bob Ney got himself in a knot over France not agreeing to the Iraq War and took exception to French fries being offered in his cafeteria so he had the item relabelled on the menu as ’Freedom fries’ to make a childish point. Mr. Ney is clearly an example of someone who might walk around with a chip on his shoulder. Here is Lera Boroditsky showing how language and this coined term was used to politicize the event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL8cZ6nmWPg .

What I love about the English language is the variety of ways I can use the same word. Wood chips don’t elicit a watery mouth (except perhaps if you are a beaver) yet those kind of chips conjure a smell of resin and the damp basement where my father would create carvings out of pine logs. I’d like to say I’m a chip off the old block but I don’t carve or make potato chips. I content myself with ordering the popular side dish when I’m checking out a dining spot. It’s hard to not think about chips, and get a craving, because the word is used in so many ways. Children of my generation laughed at the adventures of Chip&Dale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlmdWP0Y8e4 . Go to a casino and you need a supply of chips. Better keep a chipper attitude because your friends might accuse you of being too ‘chippy’. I try not to let what others think of me to get me down so I just let the chips fall where they may. I even had a childhood friend whose nickname was Chip.

The frequent use of the word chip, in many contexts, makes me hungry. Lately I’ve found the best chips from food trucks, but they’ll never match the batch from me mum’s fryer.