My Breakfast

Look at the Gorgeous Dill!

One of my AMBITIONS is to start a thing where I show my avid public what I have for breakfast everyday. Partly because I L*O*V*E B*R*E*A*K*F*A*S*T, and partly because I have this really hardcore I-will-bore-you-to-death-with-this view that AMERICANS, particularly American Women, don’t bother to eat breakfast anymore and this breakfast-skipping is a terrible terrible idea that undermines  health and intelligence, while slowing down metabolism and causing everyone to do poorly at school and at work.

(It is not at all unlikely that this breakfast-skipping is directly causing the decline of America!)

See? I TOLD you I will bore you to death with this topic!  I am like a cranky old Crank standing on a soapbox in the park, haranguing the mob while they laugh at me….EVEN THOUGH I AM RIGHT.

It is my hope that reading about MY BREAKFASTS will inspire you to go to the trouble of making yourself a little something before you head out, because, DAMN, breakfast looks so GOOD!

So, without any more ADO, here is what I had for breakfast today: a sesame bagel, toasted, with a little cream cheese, white onion, fresh dill, a cherry tomato, and about 2 ounces of lox.

Here is a view with the Lox. Usually I have a nice homemade cappucino or, in the summer, a Vietnamese coffee with this breakfast, but today I just had iced tea.

More About the Carillon

This is the main dining room (there are MORE dining rooms beyond the arches!) The arches, in keeping with the University Theme, have INSCRIPTIONS carved in the stone,like on the UT "Old Campus". (You know, where they teach the REAL subjects: THE LIBERAL ARTS

Here are some things about the CARILLON: The decor REMINDS ME of the inside of the UT Student Union Building, which is no put-down; the UT Student Union Building is SO GORGEOUS inside that one can barely believe that they let undergraduates hang around in there. It is all limestone and arches and it’s sort of Mission style, only very Texan.

SO is the CARILLON! Look at how solidly Texan, how opulent, yet simple the decor is.

CHEF JOSH WATKINS. He used to live in San Francisco. Now that he lives in Texas, he tried NOT the think about Politics

Here is a picture of the Chef, Josh Watkins. He is famous. He is young and famous, and nice and talented.

Here is ANOTHER thing about the Carillon: FREE PARKING. You can park in the underground fancy-shmancy parking garage, and then get your ticket thingy validated, and the parking is FREE and also VERY EASY and if it is bad weather you don’t get rained on.

The CARILLON is in the new UT conference building, I think it is called the A T & T Conference building or something. You know how A T & T has enough money to endow a building at UT?

MY IPHONE BILL

Carillon Opens!

THE MAD POUNDING OF THE BELLS!!!

Being, as I am, a WORLD-FAMOUS MUSICIAN, I know what a Carillon is. DO YOU?

(HA! I didn’t think so!)

The Burleson Bells

A CARILLON is a series of bells that are strung in such a way that they can be played like a piano, that is, there is an entire scale, so tunes can be played.  Usually a carillon is hung in the bell tower of a cathedral or other majestic structure.

THe UNIVERSITY of TEXAS at AUSTIN had a magnificent carillon that was given to the University by it’s very first Valedictorian, Mr. J.J. Burleson, and the carillon was installed in the Main Building. Then later, the Main Building was razed, and the UT TOWER was built. The Burleson Bells were thought not GIGANTIC enough, and the carillon was moved to in front of the Performing Arts Center. A NEW carillon of 56 bells was installed in the Tower in 1987 and it is a HUGE carillon, not the biggest in the world (which you know UT would like best) but one of the largest in this hemisphere.

It is used to play the song “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You”.

(If you DON’T know the story behind “Why does the University of Texas have a school song that is clearly “I’ve been working on the Railroad”, I will tell that story here another day! The STORY really makes the oddly unoriginal school song MUCH more hilarious.)

ANYWAY, the Fancy Restaurant that is in the new UT Conference center (Where IT Copy and Asel Art Supply used to be on 19th street) is named THE CARILLON, which is an AWESOME name for a UT related restaurant. I mean, really, THIS TIME the name consultants or whoever does such a thing: name a restaurant (It HAD to be a committee, right?) really did a great job, I couldn’t have thought of a better name myself. (And I think I am the BEST namer EVER on EARTH.) (That is right. If you need something named, come to me.)

I went there to eat for free the other night, and I am going to tell you all about it. I have decided to tell just a little at a time. Today I am going to talk about my SALAD.

Now, one thing I love is is a nice reclamation. I love me a reclaimed word and I also love me a reclaimed menu item. For far too long, iceberg lettuce has been in the culinary doghouse, while all the other greens and lettuces made a comeback. But iceberg lettuce is really QUITE delicious, and sometimes, iceberg lettuce is what you want! COLD CRUNCHY ICEBERG.

At the CARILLON, my first course was a gorgeous pair of iceberg lettuce lobes, cold and crunchy, dressed with those never-old complements, bleu cheese and bacon. Iceberg, Bleu cheese and bacon.

PERFECT!

PERFECT I TELL YOU!

I felt like Perry Mason!

Also, a chervil ranch dressing and red peppers and red pepper reduction. See for yourself:

Baby Iceberg Lettuce with Apple Smoked Bacon and Maytag Bleu Cheese, Chervil Ranch Dressing and red peppers

Thinkin’ Out Loud

My New Marketing Basket

So, today as I wended my way around the Farmer’s Market with MY NEW MARKETING BASKET that I bought for TOO MUCH $$ at WHOLE FOODS (My Birthday is Monday, so I bought it anyway), I started thinking (AS ONE SHOULD) about “How am I going to Cook this stuff I am Buying Mainly on Impulse?”

That got me thinking about what I am going to cook this week. Then I had this AMAZING thought: I should make a LIST!

A Better Picture of My New Marketing Basket

I bought some gorgeous baby turnips. What goes with Turnips? MEATLOAF!

My garden is full of CILANTRO. What can I make with it? BURRITOS!

My garden is full of Arugula. I like Arugula on Hummus Sandwiches. HUMMUS!

My Mechanic told me his Grandmother’s Carne Guisada Recipe. I want to make it. CARNE GUISADA!

I have been wanting to make Fish Chowder for a long time.  FISH CHOWDER!

I have some mozzarella I need to use up.  PIZZA!

Also I need to make Marinara and Pasta and Garlic Bread. WOW I AM PLANNING TO MAKE TOO MUCH FOOD!

Any one of these dishes lasts the two of us half a week. Hmm. So, which ones would I have to make to use up things that are going to go bad? Pizza and Meatloaf.

PIZZA AND MEATLOAF IT IS. Stay Tuned for my Fantastic Pizza and Meatloaf Recipes.

Gorgeous Baby Turnips ($2) which I shall prepare in the French Fashion: Turnips Glaces

Flowering Shrubs that Adore the Brutal Climate of Central Texas

PLUMBAGO! This plant is low to the ground, generally, usually a foot or two high only. Plumbago loves the heat the sun the drought the shade. Plumbago LOVES TEXAS!

Typically, one one’s BLOG one posts pictures of blooms that are happening in real time, so I want to stress that these are pictures from last summer. But the time to PLANT these blooming shrubs is coming up, so I thought as an assist to gardening readers I would post about them NOW.

Plumbago is available at every nursery in town all year round, because damn, does this plant ever like it here! You can literally plant it anytime, though it is best to wait until after the January freezes (it looks like we are going to get a freeze tonight, as a matter of fact.)

Pride of Barbados will TAKE OVER YOUR FLOWERBEDS if you let it, it propagates like crazy. All you have to do, though, is pull up any unwanted babies, they pull right out off the ground.

PRIDE OF BARBADOS grows to be 4 to 5 feet tall, but its branches are thin and its leaves tiny, so it doesn't shade other flowers out that are planted nearby

Both of these plants die back in a freeze, and grow out again from the roots in the spring, which is AWESOME because that way they kind of stay the same size from year to year once they get reasonably big. So you can still plant zinnias and poppies, etc, around them and get the full effect of many colors. Also the red and orange of the Pride of Barbados contrasts beautifully with the pale blue of the Plumbago.

Blooms

Fluffy Poppies

Kitchen Geranium

This is the geranium that hangs in my kitchen

I wanted to have a red geranium hanging in my kitchen this winter, because it is so Victorian, as is my house. I mean, my house is Victorian in AGE and ERA; it is a workingman’s simple shack however, and other than being made entirely out of ACTUAL BOARDS OF WOOD (rather than press-board) , I don’t think anyone looking at it would identify it as a “Victorian”.

But my kitchen ceiling has a stove- hole for the woodstove. It has a painted piece of tin nailed over the hole. The Geranium is a nice touch. (I think I should paint it.)

I have discovered that you can’t keep a Geranium happy inside, even in a sunny window (well maybe in a southern exposure window; my kitchen window faces East however.) What you have to do is have a Greenhouse and TWO geraniums. While one recovers in the greenhouse, the other can be in the kitchen, and you just switch them out every now and then.

Today is so warm and sunny, I am just going to hang the geranium outside. The predicted temperature today is 77˚!!! That is just WRONG! I refuse any temperature warmer than 70˚. It’s JANUARY for Crying out loud!

Winter Sunset

Winter Sunset over Central Market

The Cilantro Quandary

Giant Pile of Cilantro!

Probably somewhere (Mexico?) the salsa ingredients Tomato, Onion, Hot Peppers, and Cilantro ALL GROW AT THE SAME TIME. You know, so you can MAKE SALSA by using the ingredients in your own garden. In our wacky modern age, Texans get the ingredients for salsa at the HEB and give nary a thought to it, because most people are completely oblivious to what grows where when.

But in actuality, in Central Texas, hot peppers and tomatoes ripen in the “warm season” (May-November) and onions and cilantro can only be grown in the “cool season” (November-March) Because of this, it is not possible to make fresh salsa from your own garden, except for like ONE DAY in April.

Now, onions can be dried and stored, so they aren’t as problematic in a temporal sense; but cilantro cannot be dried, it must be fresh or it loses its flavor. How Can One Possibly Solve this Quandary?

What you do is, you pick all the leaves off the stems. It is not hard and doesn't take all that long either. This is a restaurant skill that you learn like the FIRST WEEK you work in a kitchen, it is really quite simple.

The solution I have come to is this: I pick the cilantro at the peak of it’s perfection (it goes to seed quickly) and de-stem and FREEZE it. This is the G*R*E*A*T*E*S*T solution ever, because then you have “fresh” homegrown organic Cilantro for all your Mexican, Indian and Thai dishes. (The frozen cilantro leaves must be used in cooked or “cooked-ish” preparations like salsa, soups and curry; it won’t work in Thai Beef Salad or any dish where it absolutely HAS TO be raw.)

Here I have put the leaves into ONE freezer bag, and the STEMS into another, for the making of vegetable stock

I always put in into a gallon sized zippy bag, in a thinnish layer. That way when you need some, you can just break off a piece, like breaking off a piece of Peanut Brittle.

It stays a nice, bright green for a long time, too.

Double Digging: or, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

This is the area I need to Double-Dig. At the far end you see the pathetically small cube of a hole we managed to dig in 8 hours.

I was reading somewhere in my swirling vortex of perpetual reading (it is really rather like a tornado of printed words, except for IT LASTS FOREVER) about a group of Austinites who volunteer to spend their weekends DOUBLE-DIGGING gardens for people who cannot do it for themselves. This group is called THE GREEN CORN PROJECT.

When I started gardening, like a decade ago, in my CRAP SOIL urban CALICHE gravel-pit yard, I read up on Double Digging, and you know, it sounded really great. Like WOW, what a great way to make your garden be AWESOME! What it is is this: You dig all the soil out of a reasonable part of your garden (like say a 4 foot X 4 foot area), and you dig it rather deep (I forget, but like 2 feet deep or more). You pile the dirt on the ground.

THEN, you dig ANOTHER 4 X 4 foot area, and this time, you pile the dirt into the hole you already dug. Repeat until the whole garden has been double-dug, and then, in the last hole, you put the ORIGINAL dirt that you piled on the ground.

NOW, your garden will be super radically awesomely great and your plants will be able to grow deep roots, PLUS, it has all been “aerated” with oxygen which stimulates the soil organisms that feed your plantios.

Awesome, right?

A scientific image of DOUBLE-DIGGING instructions from the internet

Except, I dug about a six inch CUBE and I said to myself:  TOO. HARD.

And I lay my trowel aside and mopped my red-faced brow. (TROWEL? TROWEL you say? Yes. Because my soil is so hard and full of gravel and stones that a regular shovel, where you step on it, it doesn’t GO IN!!! So you kind of have to scrape the dirt with a trowel…sideways. Have I mentioned that my soil is SUB-PAR?)

So, what I did was, I went for the “Raised Bed” style of gardening, where I just pile like a metric TON of compost on the crappy ground and grow stuff in the compost. And it has worked well for me, mostly.

But last year and the year before, I just COULD NOT get anything (besides spinach) to grow in my two sunniest beds. And really, these beds should be my very BEST beds. Windy, well-drained, sunny….but instead all the plants I planted there were stunted and withered and did not produce. AT ALL.

So I thought: “Hey..if these VOLUNTEERS at the Green Corn Project are willing to spend their precious weekends double-digging for strangers, I can certainly do it for my own stupid self!”

I mean REALLY, right?

The Dirt that Was Removed. THIS IS A LOT OF DIRT!!

So, enlisting the help of my husband, I set aside a WHOLE DAY to double-dig these two beds. Except, I was going to do even BETTER than double digging. These beds are FULL of gravel, the soil is virtually solid gravel, with this greasy, horrible gray clay underneath. So, my plan was to SCREEN the dirt, get the gravel out, and return the soil sans gravel.

And you know what? We did it. Over a period of TWO DAYS, we dug, screened and double dug…..

A TWO FOOT BY TWO FOOT CUBE.

That soil was so made out of solid caliche that Dave had to get out the DIGGING BAR, a twenty pound rod of solid iron, and use it to break up the rock. We removed something like a dozen gigantic buckets of gravel.

The horrible greasy clay was the worst part: the consistency of Colby cheese, it had to be grated through the screen LABORIOUSLY in a mind-numbingly LENGTHLY process. OUR BACKS ACHED, our arms trembled.

Torrential rains were promised for the weekend, so, instead of continuing on and double digging the entire area (which apparently will take…..8X3X2….48 solid hours...6 straight 8 hour days!!!!!!) we had to shovel the screened soil back into the hole, so it wouldn’t wash away.

The Pathetic Hole. Actually, it is deeper than it looks....but it is still only about a THIRD of ONE bed.

(The Torrential Rains have come, too!  AND WHILE I AM ON THE SUBJECT:

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE LOCAL TV METEOROLOGISTS? On the news tonight, there they were, grinning away like GOONS, saying INSULTINGLY MINDLESS sentences like “Oh, too bad about the rain, maybe we can salvage a little of the weekend blah blah blah, rain= bad amirite?…” Dave and I stared at one another, aghast, and Dave said:

“HOW GODDAM SHORT ARE THEIR MEMORIES?”

I mean, seriously, we just came out of the Worst Drought In Recorded History!!  The Wort Drought in NON-Recorded history!!  According to TREE rings, the Worst Drought in, what, 6000 years?!?!?!!? SIX THOUSAND YEARS!!!

And these Blockheads, these Dunderheads, these…these……facile, empty-headed morons are COMPLAINING about RAIN?!?!?!

Honestly, do most American think FOOD comes out of the Replicator or something? We all eat FOOD! Food requires RAIN. Rain is much, much more than some kind of impediment to your goddam golf game.

(What I wouldn’t give for a TV meteorologist who isn’t some kind of COMPLETE KNOW-NOTHING.)

Where was I?

The Double-Digging shall continue, when the weather permits. I will keep you ABREAST of  DEVELOPMENTS! But the verdict still is: You Have Got to be Kidding Me, This Is the Hardest Thing In the World, I Need Like Thirty Volunteers To Help Me Do This.

THE gorgeous, gorgeous double-dug (portion of a) bed.