I got yer single spies right here

The latest casualty is the refrigerator.

Yes, I've bought a new one. No, it doesn't get delivered until next week.

Yes, we lost a lot of food. No, I don't know how I'm going to cope for a week without a refrigerator. I know people did it for millennia, but they also had things like root cellars and spring houses. I don't have those, and it is the middle of July.

I am trying to focus on positive things, like how great the new fridge will be (it will be great, shiny new Maytag, freezer on the bottom so no more roasts falling out and landing on my feet, better shelf arrangement, etc etc).

On the other hand, I feel like I'm going to be in hock for the rest of my life just as a result of the last month. That's three major appliances since late June -- the water softener follies were chronicled here, and the dryer also gave out. The dryer was not a drama, though, so I don't think I mentioned it. Go to Sears, pick out new dryer, have dryer delivered next business day, life goes on.

And now this.

I don't want to hear one word from anyone about how the sales of durable goods have been dropping. I have done my part, people. Enough already!

Gratin

Credit where it's due; this was inspired by Escalloped Cabbage from The Pioneer Woman Cooks!

The finished dish at PWC looks really good. And I do understand that when your husband's grandmother gives you a recipe, it's your responsibility to praise said recipe to the skies and keep whatever misgivings you may have about the finished product or the ingredients list to yourself. Since it's not my husband's grandmother's recipe, I can admit that I did kind of choke on the jar of Cheez Wiz and can of creamed soup component. Perhaps that makes me a snob, but what the recipe really says to me is 'I don't want to make a cheese sauce from scratch.'

Well, many people don't. Heck, most of the time I don't, at least not on a weeknight. But there is nothing inherently difficult or magical about a roux. It is nothing more than butter and flour mixed with a little attention and time. It's true that you can't just dump everything in and have it come out right, and that you have to watch it like a hawk to be sure it doesn't burn, but there is no sorcery involved. So there is no reason, when time is available, not to make your cheese sauce from scratch.

Other significant changes: a layer of potatoes and a sprinkling of chopped ham to round this out into a full meal. The Viking does not believe a meal is a meal without meat. If you opt to leave out the ham, you may wish to add some salt to the cheese sauce. I didn't use any paprika in the seasonings, mostly because I forgot about it and reverted to my default white pepper and nutmeg combination.

This is, I think, more a winter dish than a summer one, or at least I am not eager to make it on a hot day in July again. It is warm and filling and inexpensive, it reheats well, and it is really, really, good.



Cabbage and Potato Gratin (serves 6-8 as a main dish)

1 small head cabbage
4 medium potatoes

half a large onion, diced
2 tbs butter (plus extra for the pan)
2 tbs flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup half and half (or whole milk, or cream)
4 oz cheddar cheese, grated (plus extra for sprinkling)
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg

4 oz ham (or bacon or pancetta), diced (optional)
1 poblano chile, roasted, seeded, and diced (used because I had a bunch of these in my freezer. Jalapenos or other green chiles would work fine)

Butter a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Preheat oven to 350 F.

Slice the potatoes about 1/4" inch thick, and soak them in a bowl of water for 30 minutes or so. Drain and tile the bottom of the pan with the slices. Dot with butter.

Meanwhile, strip off the outer leaves of the cabbage and divide it into 6-8 wedges. Parboil these in a pot of boiling salted water for about 5-7 minutes, then drain and arrange the cabbage wedges over the potato slices in the baking dish.

I have some of those steel mesh colanders, one of which fits down nicely in my stockpot. I put the cabbage in that and set it in the boiling water -- it made fishing the wedges out of the hot water easier and, I think, prevented them from going entirely to pieces during the parboiling process. If you have a stockpot with a pasta insert, that would work too.

In a heavy saucepan, over medium-low heat, melt the butter and gently saute the onions until they are just turning golden. Add the flour and stir gently but constantly for the next three to five minutes, until you have a good blond roux.

Slowly add the broth and half and half, a drip or two at a time, stirring constantly, until it is all incorporated and you have a thick sauce. Now, stir in the grated cheese, a small handful at a time, until it's all melted in. Add the diced ham and chile, the other seasonings, and adjust to taste if necessary.

Ladle the sauce over the cabbage, and bake until bubbling, about 35-40 minutes. Sprinkle the top with a little more grated cheese and bake for a few minutes more. Serve hot.

Fontanalia

... youths,
Each with his maid, before the sun was up,
By annual custom, issuing forth in troops,
To drink the waters of some sainted well,
And hang it round with garlands ...

-- Wordsworth (The Prelude, Book 8)

Yes, oh glory, it did happen. There is a new water softener installed and running, and it is safe to drink the waters of our well (and wash white things) again.

Adventuring. Or Not.

I've been enjoying Penny Arcade's recent comic series on The Lookouts, a boy scout-like troop in the magical forest of Eyrewood. (The Lookouts series is here: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5)

And then this morning I read the really splendid essay by Michael Chabon in The New York Review of Books: Manhood for Amateurs.

To top off, there's also The Exhausted Aptocrat on XXFactor.

It seems to me there's an essay of my own in there somewhere, but I got lost in Google trying to locate the tiny brick building that marked one of the further points on my childhood map (a half mile from home and yes, I was allowed to walk there myself but I had to ask permission/tell my parents where I was going). I did find it:


View Larger Map

One of the great frustrations of my own girlhood was that the literary Wilderness of Childhood was almost exclusively the domain of boys. I didn't begrudge them their place in it, but I did begrudge them their apparent ownership of it. Boys got to go into the forest and have adventures; girls sat around and waited for the boys to come rescue them. Why on earth, I wondered, did it not occur to Rapunzel to cut off her own hair and get the hell out of that tower? I lost my temper with Andrew Lang at an early age when a young lady in one of his stories was 'naughty' and had to seek forgiveness for daring to do something (an entirely harmless something) on her own initiative. Horrors!¹

Of course, I saw and was frustrated by plenty of exhausted little aptocrats during my career as a teacher. The idea of studying or exploring something simply for the pleasure of it was alien to the poor creatures, as was the notion of trying and failing. They really did believe that trying should always, always result in success. I hope that they're able to discover joy and give themselves permission to fail as they get older.

I wish I had a bang-up ending here, but about all I have left is a hope that, should Penny Arcade go back into the world of the Lookouts, they spend some time on the Daughters of the Eyrewood, too, and that the girls get to have a real adventure.

¹I've made peace with other writers who tried my patience, but I'm still not reconciled with Lang. The horrible treacly poem he wrote about St Andrews -- which was emblazoned on the walls of every B&B and tourist trap in town -- hasn't helped him, I'm afraid.

edited 5 pm to add some links

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

There has been much hoopla about the vegetable garden at the White House, of course, and a smaller amount of hoopla about the vegetable garden planted at the USDA buildings downtown. There has been hardly any hoopla, however, about the plans to install similar gardens at other USDA facilities.

Last week, the vegetable 'garden' went in at my own workplace. Presumably the landlord was not willing to plow up lawn to plant beans, so our garden is 4 large concrete planters (the sort that are put up more as barricades with petunias than as any kind of decorative landscaping) containing some tomato and pepper plants, a couple of stalks of corn, and cucurbits of some kind (too soon yet to tell if they are zucchini or pumpkins or what). A coworker and I remarked upon them the other morning as we walked in from the parking lot. Neither of us are hopeful that they'll be producing enough vegetables to donate. She mentioned that she's uncomfortable with calling these plantings 'the people's gardens' because 'it just sounds ... you know ...'

Yes, comrade. I know.

My own vegetable patch is not doing anything very exciting yet, though the marigolds are blooming prettily and I should probably water tonight. We've had so much rain I haven't had to water much, but with the heat now finally starting to settle in the raised bed will dry out quickly. In a few more weeks, deities willing, I should have produce to talk about.