The Iron Chefs and the Eye Doctor

 

There are eight Continuum Care Communities across three states taking part in an Iron Chef competition. The way it works is each month all eight chefs go to one of the campuses to compete with a theme food they prepare for the residents living there and then the residents and guests vote for the best dish served. They just had their fifth cook-off at our sister campus and our Life Enrichment Director took a bus full of us over to eat and drop a voting chip into---presumably---our own chef's ballot box. The theme this time was 'Food Truck Food' and I had no trouble voting for the women who currently designs our daily menus. She served what she called 'Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly.' It reminded me of those 'pies' you make over a campfire with the round, pie irons. The sandwiches consisted of the centers of two pieces of white bread dipped in pancake batter with peanut butter, jelly, bananas, honey and mini chocolate chips inside, the edges were cut and sealed with a drinking glass before deep frying them for a minute. She took second place. She's placed first or second consistently through out the competition and is the only woman competing. 

If I hadn't voted for the chef from my campus I would have had a hard time deciding between a deep-fried, one bite cheese cake and a loaded baked potato. The cheesecake balls give you a sensation of something warm and sweet going into your mouth followed by a burst of cool and tart cheesecake and it was additive. The Bourbon Bacon Jam Potato' was---duh!---a potato topped with a jam made with bourbon, coffee, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic and caramelized yellow onions. Bourbon was in at least one other contest entry---a peach ice cream topping. I think Bourbon in my new, favorite flavor profile. We got a packet of all the recipes used and the street tacos had the most ingredients of all the dishes coming in at thirty with our chef's peanut butter and Jelly having the least number of ingredients---only eight. There was a Korean short rib dogs with peach relish that was good too and it had 29 ingredients. I've never made anything with that many ingredients in my life!

I'm quite sure this competition is designed to give bragging rights to all the category winners and the top winner for marketing purposes. In the commercial cooking world there's a big competition for good chefs at continuum care complexes and most CCC's serve lunch on the tours use to entice people to come look at their facilities. I almost hate to see our chef placing so well in these contests because then other places will try to steal her away. In the two-and-a-half years I've lived here she's the third or forth chef we've had and she is by far the best of the lot. And get this, she's the only one in the contest without a culinary degree. She used to own her own restaurants, lost it during Covid.  

All in all it was fun way to spend a few hours and we got a free lunch and transportation out of the deal. Plus we got to visit with a guy from our campus who was recently moved over to our sister campus because he has ALS and needs a higher level of skilled nursing than he could get here.

Speaking of Covid I went to the eye doctor yesterday and I remarked about how nice it was that we no longer have Covid protocols to follow and the woman doing the pre-testing before my actual appointment said it was terrible working conditions because so many people tried to argue their way out of wearing masks or bringing in proof that they'd been vaccinated. She said she even had one guy lick the chin rest on one of the machines. (This was the Trump effect---people denying the science.) I remember how careful they were about cleaning those machines after they were finished measuring my macular pucker. I can't imagine dealing with jackasses like Licker Guy or as my niece called the ant-vacciers  'The Spreaders'. 

By the way, my pucker hasn't changed much since my last visit but I have developed "a lot of dry areas on my corneas" which makes my eyes feel like I have grit up inside the lids. I'll now be adding drops twice a day and before I drive. My getting-ready-time in the mornings and at bedtime is getting as long as a teenager addicted to layers of makeup. No matter how many suggestions I follow for getting drops in my eyes I can't seem to do it on the first few tries. Laying down in bed while hold one eye open and using the other to put the drops in the corners of my eyes works the best. I went into this appointment thinking/hoping I'd get a new prescription because I can't read street signs as well as I'd like. But the doctor said the dry corneas are probably causing that more than anything. I'm getting a new prescription for computer glasses that block the harmful light coming from the screens. I'm excited about having prescription glasses exclusively for the computer. I don't know why I didn't get them long before now is a mystery. No more trying to find the right place in my trifocals! 

I love my eye doctor. He used to be a nice piece of eye candy, too, but over the past half decade he's put on a little weight and quit wearing his cute, little surgical scrub cap that he wore during Covid. But he's still got his easy going and confident demeanor which I find to be the most attractive quality in the opposite sex. The way he says, "your other right" or "your other left" has a humorous ring to it that neither makes you feel stupid or nor gives you a sense that he's bored because he's probably said it thousand times to his patients. Actually, I've never thought to ask him if all his patients need the 'other direction' corrections or is it just his dyslexic patients like me. What do you think his answer would be? 

Until Next Wednesday!

 *photo by soydolphin

Movie and Lunch Club - The Hundred-Foot Journey

 

Late Friday I had my weekend blog entry ready to post the following morning but the devils of cyberspace had other ideas. Microsoft did one of those annoying upgrades in the middle of the night and every program I opened was like the first time they’d been used including the welcome screen with tutorials. All my settings and preferences were gone and in the process of doing what Microsoft did they wiped out all my documents, e-mail contacts, photos and bookmarks. Hopefully, the computer shop on Monday can get my photos and documents back. I have Carbonite back up but all my files are missing from there as well. They must have done their nightly backup after Microsoft wiped me clean. Probably my computer guru can figure it out. Carbonite is supposed to keep a three month’s worth of backups but I don’t know how to get at them and I’m too frustrated to keep trying.

My Movie and Lunch Club met this week and we had lunch before going to the theater which isn’t our usually habit. But in this case it was a good thing we did or we each would have ordered one of everything on the menu. The Hundred-Foot Journey was a foodie’s film to the core---one reviewer aptly called it food porn---and the restaurant we went to fit right in with that theme with its menu full of unusual things.  I had a smoked salmon and goat cheese frittata with some interesting flavor profiles though I’d never order it again. But I lucked out when we all sat down and I ended up across from the senior hall director who is interesting to talk with and I was in a prime place to see all the pure white, square and oblong dishes come out of the kitchen with their artistically arranged food on top. Even the coffee cups were square. I felt like I was on a set of The Iron Chef.

When I left the restaurant I saw a business near-by called the Funky Buddha and they had a standing chalkboard on the sidewalk that advertised, “Free hugs inside!” On a lark I went in to collect some hugs and I saw a list of classes they teach. Ah, uh…it was a yoga studio with a sense of humor! I didn’t sign up for Not Yo Momma’s Yoga or Shake Your Asana or Funky Buddha Slow Flows but if I was ever tempted to do a yoga class, that’s the place I’d go.

Back to the movie. The Hundred-Foot Journey stars Helen Mirren playing the owner of an elegant French restaurant and a young guy from South Carolina but of Indian descent who plays a gifted, up and coming culinary genius named Hassah.  Also in key roles are Om Puri, a well-known Bollywood actor who plays Hassah’s father and Charlotte Le Bon who takes on the role of a French sous chef. After one-hundred and twenty-two minutes of watching foods being prepared and served and watching the cast shop for produce and seafood I dare say everyone would feel their inner foodie coming out. Even I wanted to go home and chop something and I don't cook very often. Cooking was definitely part of the plot but it was billed as a movie about the clashing of the French and Indian cultures. The movie had some breathtaking panoramic scenery of southern France, too, that made me homesick for a place I’d never been. A subplot of two romances budding between the older stars and the younger stars added more spice to an otherwise cute---but not great---film. We all enjoyed it, though. It was upbeat, colorful, and with flawless acting that made up for the predictable storyline.

Saturday night I went to my first ever couple’s baby shower. It was kind of sweet watching a big, strong muscle bound guy---he runs a fitness center---opening up boxes full of teeny tiny outfits. He’s very happy to be a first-time father. They’ve been trying for a while. I’ve never been to a shower where liquor was served either, or where they roasted a pig and had tons of food. No dainty little salads for this crowd where you’re tempted to get a drive-through hamburger on the way home! I have been to so many baby showers this summer I’ve lost count---six maybe?

Anyway, if you don’t see me for a few days you’ll know my desktop computer is still in the shop and my backup laptop got the same little “gift” from Microsoft. I’m afraid to open it to find out. It’s so easy to get tech overload with all the devices in my life. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate digital TV, which my cable company made us all go to in this area? Thankfully, it’s not just me complaining or I’d feel old and useless. Even young people are having trouble figuring out how to turn their TVs on and off and they grumble just as loud about it as I do. I keep a chart by each TV and write down the sequence of buttons I push and what works one time doesn’t always work another time. Crazy! ©

The Widow's Kitchen - Cooking for One

I have bit of a reputation in the cooking department and it’s not a good one. Long story, short all of my opportunities to learn to cook came mostly for family parties where everyone would bring a dish to pass. Let’s just say that after you bring bright pink potatoes salad to a fourth-of-July picnic no one asks you to bring it again. (I was trying out a recipe that combined beets and potatoes but I made a fatal mistake of combining the ingredients too soon.) Early on in our relationship my husband’s family took pity on me and whenever there was a family get-together I’d be asked to bring chips or something that didn’t require a trip into the dark, unused recesses of my kitchen. With my family, I could make a good three bean, marinated salad and they were okay with me bringing that to any and all events. They knew my talents ran in different directions so my lack of culinary skills was never a running joke with them like it was/still is with Don’s family.

Anyway, I have a limited range of things I can make and most of what I can do successfully---like a pot roast dinner or chili---you can’t make for one person living alone. So here I am, a widow with time on her hands and a new plan. I’m going to teach myself how to do things in the kitchen and at least once a week I’m actually going to make a meal using an ingredient or method I’ve never tried before. As my mother used to say, you’re never too old to learn something new. I’m not sure if she was talking about me or the dog but, what the heck, this is my story so I can tell it any way I want. Jeez, now that I think about it what she actually said was, “You can’t learn any younger. Just do it!” I was a stubborn child.

As I mentioned in my 2/15/13 post I went to my first ‘cooking for one’ class at the senior center. But one thing the dietitian teaching the class said won’t leave my thoughts. She said when cooking for one you have to rethink what your conception of what a meal is. A meal, she said, can be something as simple as guacamole on whole wheat crackers with a baked pear for dessert. This was a startling concept for me to wrap my head around, having grown up in an era when a home-cooked dinner always had to have meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread and dessert and later on having hung around Don’s family full of gourmet cooks. But her comment got me wondering if I can actually come up with a month’s worth of recipes to serve one that are easy-to-make dinners.

After class I stopped by the store and bought my second ever avocado to test the dietitian’s premise. When I cut the avocado open the way the she did in class it dawned on me why I had so much trouble opening a mango I tried doing a while back. I was trying to use the same method of cutting all the way around it then twisting the two halves to free it from the pit. But mangoes don’t have a nice round ball-like pit like an avocado and all I did was create a mess. Color me embarrassed. I haven’t tried opening a mango since. Someone should tell the gods of fruit to start growing them all with peels like bananas. I'm sure we'd all eat more fruit if they did.

One thing I’ve already figured out by reading recipes that are supposed to serve just one or two is often times you still have to buy ingredients in larger quantities than you’ll use. What’s a widow living alone supposed to do with a left-over ½ a can of something or seven tortilla shells? Get a deep-freezer the size of Rhode Island? Oh, my God, now I remember one of the reasons why I hate cooking: wastefulness. I need to watch more episodes of the Iron Chef hoping they can brain-wash me into throwing more stuff out. Have you ever noticed how often they discard ingredients that aren’t the perfect size, color or quality? Those people would die of culinary shock at my house where this “cook” has been programmed to eat what I burn because children in China will starve to death if I waste anything. Bottom line: my widow’s kitchen is now open for business so if you have any tips or tricks send them my way. ©

P.S. Here’s my first tip: Don’t order a cooking for one cookbook for your Kindle. Sometimes you actually need real pages to thumb through and an index you can get at easily.