A bit o’ delight
I sent this to our bloggeress, as so many folks I know need some cheering up, me included, so why not pass it along to the Ambiance readership?
Astaire and Rita Hayworth, in a production still from 1943’s You Were Never Lovelier.
The verdict: very good!
So, I finally got around to making the steak sauce I mentioned a bit ago….and forgot to take pictures!
But it is a very good sauce! Darker in color than the picture I had posted, it is also a bit sweet, but with a lot of flavor. I’ve been using it on burgers and even fries, but not a steak yet!
Yes, I did like it better than a commercially made sauce, so I recommend making it. It’s a lot of ingredients, but it’s pretty easy to make, and I love roasting a pepper right on the burner of the stove to get the blackened effect on it.
Update: Ah! In the comments, Amba requests the link and recipe.
The recipe (from SmittenKitchen, scroll down a bit…)
Update II:
We strive to be a full service blog, so I made some more sauce!
Notice it looks a bit darker than the earlier pictures
and put it on some burgers, made with sauteed spinach and mushroom with sauce on top.
these are for me…
Ron wants…. steak sauce.
Of all the foodie blogs I read, Smitten Kitchen is my favorite, which is saying a lot, as this is an excellent time for foodie blogs and even just recipe sites.
The reason I like Smitten Kitchen so much is that unlike a lot of the other blogs, they usually keep it pretty straight forward, but usually giving you something new and interesting at the same time. Take this recipe for a steak sauce! I normally don’t give steak sauce a second thought (Worcestershire or A1) but even though this has a fair amount of ingredients I am intrigued by the tastes here. You can read the whole procedure over there but I like the idea of all these flavors! Tomato puree, orange juice(!),Worcestershire,ground ginger, molasses, allspice, ground mustard, balsamic vinegar, pepper,salt,onion powder and olive oil, not to mention a charred red pepper! Plus the article gives me the idea of putting this on a number of things, from potatoes to scrambled eggs to maybe a simple hamburger. Making one’s own sauces….I hadn’t given it much thought but it seems intriguing.
I will make this (anyone have some allspice and ground ginger?) and let you know how it works out.
image courtesy of the Smitten Kitchen site
Go ahead…take your dog dancing!
I know this is CatVille…but this is for the DogPeople….If you can’t get your puppy to do this, Elanor Powell does it for you… nice ending!
All right, just slightly more…
Here’s the quote that I have at the beginning of the chapter….I put it here because it reminds me of our blog host, Amba…. :)
“… in short, gentlemen, your entire cognitive enterprise is a load of crap, a polysyllabic abstraction forced upon you by an over demanding professioriat. Look, the whole damn problem is pretty simple. Our subconscious minds are one gigantic roller coaster, a roller coaster with every possible drop, water slide, and 360 degree corkscrew imaginable. Our conscious minds, our ‘rational selves’ are US, the passengers in that roller coaster, side-by-side in the cars of personal space, all connected in the Great Human Chain of Thought! The reason people are unhappy is simple: they fail to realize that THEY and they alone, bought the damn ticket! God’s role in this is equally simple: he takes the tickets, straps you in, and you’re off! He says only two things to you: “ticket, please” and “exit to the left.” The rest is up to you! So, all this mock white-knuckle terror and screaming, all this dizziness and puking, is not about the fear of death, but the failure to see the joy in being free of gravity! The most intelligent people, while they’re riding, throw up their hands and laugh! And the most noble, beautiful people, the strongest willed, the most gracious of heart know exactly what to say when it’s all over and their feet are firmly planted on the ground: ‘What a rush! Let’s go again!'”
— Crazy Mike, in a letter to the Journal of Cognitive Psychology July 1986.
Writing out of dreams
Most of this story, from my half-finished novel, came from a dream….and I share it with you now.
Ransom Waldo Maxty formed Maxty Cap and Clasp as a maker of customized caps for expensive fountain pens and ladies brooches in 1906. Despite its odd specialization, Maxty was successful in this trade. Unlike most such 19th century businesses, Maxty did not succeed by niggardly levels of thrift, but rather, by intense concentration on his customers tastes; no amount of filigree, or jewel encrustation was too much for those who desired to be truly unique. This even extended to his more modest lines of pen caps, for Maxty reasoned that even the average man wanted to stand out from his fellows. The growth of his business allowed Maxty to move from the Lower East Side to Hell’s Kitchen in 1912. On the day the Maxty Building was christened, Maxty’s only son and his beloved wife were killed in an automobile accident by a corpulent fool going 50 mph down Broadway. He never remarried, withdrew within himself, and the business suffered.
The defining moment in the corporate history of Maxty Cap and Clasp came in November of 1918. A small child, bleeding and dazed, walked into Maxty’s own offices and presented R.W. Maxty with a broken “Tradesman’s Pride” model pen cap, claiming that, as the owner, he must fulfill the warranty for her father as soon as possible. Maxty looked out the window at the crushed Chevrolet with the dozens of beer barrels on top, still flailing spooked dray horses on their sides, and one hand sticking out from it all in a wash of blood and foam, closed his eyes and told the child to return within a week. Six days later, Maxty fulfilled his guarantee with what has since been considered the finest example of their craft; a cap whose use of several colors of diamond, solid pieces of jade, and flame rubies in a Celtic cross pattern still inspires Colleen Killian-Wordsworth today as she sits and watches the Tempe sun reflect off of it each dusk. Maxty had intended for her to sell the cap to one of his wealthier clients, but when word of his gift reached her neighborhood, the neighbors would not let her dishonor her fathers memory, and instead raised money amongst themselves to send the girl to a distant relative in Albany, putting the cap in a safe deposit box. Though Maxty never referred to this event ever again, his respect amongst his own neighbors rose, and his business grew forthwith.
Throughout the late teens and early twenties, Maxty never varied from his daily routine, and when he took his afternoon constitutional, his pockets had enough candy for everyone. When St. Patrick’s day occurred during Prohibition, the use of a secret code word at certain locations, would allow any decent Irishman a drink , all paid for by Maxty. If there was a crisis back home, or at certain key events in someone’s life, passage back to Dublin would be arranged through St. Bridgit’s, from “divine sources.” At the height of his success in the late ’20’s, Maxty very discreetly requested the Irish policeman of his precinct to escort his female employees now working the newly created 2nd shift home for their safety. Clothes line gossip quickly distributed the truth which enhanced Maxty’s already strong image, and nearly every mother felt obliged to show her child that men like Maxty were why penmanship truly mattered. Pen caps were handed down from father to son in a passage rite that couldn’t be explained to someone from Queens, much less the world at large. On his birthday in 1928, the women of Hell’s Kitchen surprised Maxty by bringing in their children for a song-and-dance program so moving to him that for all the years until his own death, Maxty would send each child from that day a card on their birthday written in a hand so beautiful that many people would exchange them just to admire the different cursives, accents, and capital letters.
The Depression hit Maxty Cap and Clasp hard. Maxty was reluctant to let people go, his misplaced faith in Herbert Hoover perhaps the strongest indicator of his now, suddenly, being out of sync with the times. As his fortunes dwindled, people left out of guilt from “stealing from the Old Man.” In 1938, while playing Santa at the Horace Greely Young Persons Social Club 32nd Christmas Ice Cream Social, Ransom Waldo Maxty passed away after asking for a “moments respite.” His wake reduced productivity for blocks around for a week, and was the closest Italians, Irish, and Poles would be for a long time before and since. When in the late ’50’s drunken hoodlums stole the giant brass fountain pen from the top of Maxty’s black marble headstone, no one really objected, as the Deco gewgaw didn’t fit the quiet solidity of a man who founded and ran a successful business in Manhattan for 32 years, light years away from the folie circulare of Wall Street, without ever caring about a quarterly earnings statement, without ever having heard the term “junk bond”, and without ever, even once, having meet a person from Japan.
Ron’s Superhero Surrealism
Tell me this e-mail I just got from Ron (posted here with his permission) wouldn’t make a great graphic novel:
so Ron falls asleep….and Ron dreams…..
My friend Annie calls me(!) from NYC to say almost tearfully “I have no coffee and can’t get out of my apartment.”
I go to the web page of my blog, Fluffy Stuffin, “reach into the screen” and make an orange and brown paper airplane through folding…so I can get to NYC by riding it….
When I get to the West Village, I see the whole block is getting that blue and white and grey hue like Ambiance. I go through a nettle of “id verification” pages to find you stuck and working….I take some of your finished pages and somehow are able to form them into building-like materials. I go to the window and make the Platonic Form of the Coffee House In The Sky, and a path from your place to it, hovering above NYC. I take your phone, and arrange for Bix Biderbecke to meet you for coffee. I go with you, but not until I raid my various weapons caches below 14th street and sit nearby in the coffee house, filling shotguns, loading clips into automatic weapons….you leave Bix for a second and ask me why I’m doing this….I say that I am heading to Soho looking for a painting to buy, and that I would meet you later at the High Line….
When I do, I have taken a round or two (with bandages!) and have spent all my ammunition, but I have the painting I wanted….You take it from me and sort of “press it” into my back, telling me that’s what editors do….
We then take this pair of giant bubble wands and with a solution of bubble soap, cotton candy and catnip make a “walking tunnel” alongside the High Line… for cats..
Then I went back home!
I even sort of remember my assault on the art gallery….half John Woo, half Woody Allen. Oh! I just now remember you “telling” me that NYC has way funnier Jews than Woody Allen! (while I’m in some crazy gun battle!)
This is how my noggin works….
I’m so jealous. I hardly dream, or remember dreams, at all anymore. Ironically, I’m just now in the process of trying to cut back on caffeine to see if that makes any difference. So did Ron pick up on my jonesing for coffee and blazon it into the dream I can’t have? Ron, could you please fly here on your paper rescue airplane and bring me some dreams?
Fred and Ginger….and a cow.
I know I promised Karen Let’s Face The Music and Dance for the big drama of it all, but I remember Fred’s cow reference near the beginning here…and I hope you find it funny!
I’ll Be Hard To Handle from Roberta
Ambiance 