RUSHVILLE —
I didn’t go shopping on Black Friday, but I did see the coverage on TV. It was nothing but huge crowds of people pushing, shoving and trampling each other. I told Mary Ellen it was deplorable that children had to watch adults behave this way before I realized it was the wrong channel. I was watching some disgruntled soccer fans.
The only thing I hate more than shopping is cooking, but I needed to do something to get me in the holiday spirit. Why not prepare a meal for my family? I have never been much of a chef. I don’t have the patience to put in a dash of this and a pinch of that. My wife knew this before we got married. Right after our first date she complained to a friend I had no dash at all. She did notice the pinch, however. Women are very sensitive.
In our kitchen, stacked up against the wall, we have about 50 cooking magazines with titles like Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur, and Vegetarian Times. Most of these publications try to lure us in with words like “easy, quick, fast, simple, or no hassle.” I’ve never seen these words on the cover of Cosmo, but I have seen the word saucy.
Another way the editors entice us is with the name of the recipe. For example: chicken and artichokes. Two ingredients, right? How simple. I looked carefully at the ingredients. The dish should have been named “chicken with artichokes and thyme and vinegar and mustard seed and garlic, and black pepper and cilantro and cumin, and chili pepper and olive oil, and a sliver of orange rind and several spices no one has ever heard of.”
I don’t know what these people consider simple. The average “simple” recipe had (and, yes, I did count) about 14 ingredients. There’s also a great deal of coating, covering, shredding, simmering, combining, peeling and pulverizing. One recipe required a mortar and pestle. This was a prescription for failure.
I saw one entry titled Auntie Edna’s Roast Chicken. Turns out I needed daikon, radicchio, cremini mushrooms, orzo, a cup of panko, and some gnocchi. I don’t even know if all that stuff is available in North America, but it does seem like a terrible thing to do to a perfectly good chicken.
I was tempted by one recipe called Cinco de Mayo. I didn’t read everything that was in it, but anything that has five times the normal amount of mayonnaise has to be pretty tasty. There was also one called Beer Raised Beef. I’ve never had a problem with the grain fed or grass fed variety, but this did seem like a way better idea than marinating the meat after you buy it. I’m sad to report that I misread it. It was actually beer braised beef. Apparently, I need more recipes containing carrots.
I decided all this prep was way too much trouble, but I had promised to make dinner that evening. When my wife called later that day, I told her what I was planning for our meal.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, “are you really serving that complicated chicken dish with all those herbs and spices?”
“Yes, that’s what we’re having.” I said proudly. And there was a Colonel of truth in what I said.
Columns
Wolfsie: Recipe for disaster
- Columns
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Ward: Hanging out the laundry
I remember my mother, grandmother and even up to my wife hanging the wash out on the line. The Amish still do and I now as then wonder just how things managed to get dry during the winter or rain storms?
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Barada: 50 years ago and counting
My, does time fly! On June 22 next month, the Rushville High School Class of 1963 will celebrate its 50th anniversary. To be honest, 1963 doesn’t sound all that long ago, until one considers that, when we graduated in June 1963, the Class of 1913 was celebrating its 50th anniversary! Now, 1913 seemed like a long time ago when I was just 17 years old. The year 1913 was four years before the United States entered World War One.
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Stuart: From zippy to zapped in Old San Juan
My family’s spring break vacation didn’t last nearly as long as it’s taking me to tell you about it in these columns. If it had, our cruise would be going into its fifth week. That would be, I don’t know, like sailing with Christopher Columbus in 1492. Imagine the weight his crews put on at their shipboard buffets; no wonder those boats traveled slow!
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Ward: My early years
There are a lot of things from my youth that I treasure and would not be unhappy to have them back again. Don’t laugh, but BB Bats are one thing I loved as a child. They were a taffy like substance stuck on a stick.
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Barada: Local library should be a county facility
A noble effort is underway to renovate and expand the Rushville Public Library. It will not be an easy task. What will help, in my opinion, will be finally making the public library a county library.
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Stuart: Snorkeling fun, in and out of the water
As I continue to relive my spring break vacation in these pages (we’re only a couple of days into it so far - this could last well into the autumn!), I’ll reveal the biggest shock my kids received on our Carnival Cruise. It was 7:30 on a sunny Tuesday morning, when I woke them and said we’d arrived in Charlotte
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Ziemke: Back home again in Batesville
Following the hustle and bustle of Indianapolis, I must say that it has been nice to be home this past week. Session is an exciting process to be a part of, but for now, I am just going to enjoy the fact that I can be at my restaurant more often to talk to the folks I represent at the Statehouse.
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Wolfsie: Bird calls
One afternoon in 2011, my friend Eric spent a couple of hours over lunch explaining Twitter to me and I thought I understood it all, but as you’ll see from my first few tweets, I wasn’t very confident:
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Mauzy: Weddings paint a larger picture of life
The marriage of my oldest daughter was this past weekend. With great fortune, weather remained wonderful for the outside venue. More than a stroke of good luck concerning the weather, the calm and positive energies of everyone in attendance would have overcome any adversity.
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Messer: Have we learned the lessons of 9/11?
September 11 was a devastating wake up call for every American. The events of that terrible day taught us that we are at war with violent Islamist extremists. If we let them, these jihadists are committed to exploiting our generosity and legal protections to further their murderous mania. The 9/11 Commission which investigated that tragedy concluded warning signs were everywhere, noting that “the system was blinking red.”
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