A Rat Pack Saturday Night

The Rat Pack held its monthly soiree' at Roger and Maddy Harmon's home last night.  We had agreed to cook at our house and transport the food.  We would have entertained at our place but our dining area is so small that six adults really crowd each other.

The day was, to put it politely, INTERESTING while the evening was pure unadulterated fun.  Sheila and I started by going out early to pick up a few items we had missed the night before including freshly dressed chickens at the local meat market.
During our rounds, we passed a hole in the wall mex place that serves champurra all day long on Saturday. Sheila had seen the signs and had to have some thinking it was just rich Mexican hot chocolate.  She came back to the car with two thirty two ounce styrofoam cups of the stuff.  The second she got into the car with it, I smelled something that both triggered ancient memories and turned my stomach.  As soon as I pulled the lid off the cup, I recognized the smell.  Boiling corn hog mash.  Champurra is made by boiling cornmeal, sugar and chocolate, stirring it constantly.  It is quite nourishing but for gringos an acquired taste at best.  I chose not to acquire the taste.  I couldn't get past the olofactory associations.

We got home and cooked all afternoon, carefully timing the start of each dish to end at 5:45, the target time we had chosen to leave the house and drive to the Harmons and still have fresh, hot food when we got there.    It got kind of testy in our kitchen after a while.

But, the beans were done on time and came out perfect.  Same for the collard greens.  We started frying chicken at 4:45 and at 5:45 the last piece was coming out of the oil.  Everything but the potatoes was fresh and steaming hot when we served it at the Harmons.  The menu was skillet fried chicken, pinto beans, collard greens, oven fried potatoes and cornbread.  It was darn good if I do say so myself, one of those ethnic meals designed to get you back in touch with your inner redneck.

Maddy outdid herself with a chocolate cheesecake that was sinfully delicious.  Roger had provided a magnum of Blackberry Mad Dog and kept rounds of the official drink of the Rat Pack, Champipple, always available. For those of you who are too young to remember Red Foxx, Champipple is the poor person's equivalent of a wine spritzer made with sweet, cheap wine like Mogen David.  It is actually quite good in a naughty soda pop kind of way.

After dinner, we settled in with a pot of coffee and played a totally insane game of Apples to Apples that lasted until way past everybody's normal bedtime.  There were plenty of jokes around the table and much good-natured foolishness.  A good time was had by all.

Friday Night In Tulsa

Our daughter Michelle called Friday and asked if we would like to go out to dinner that evening.  After much  texting between mother and daughter we wound up at Chili's at 51st and Harvard.

I was not expecting much out of the meal and was pleasantly surprised.  The Chili's Chicken Crispers were actually not bad and at a price of two adult meals plus a shared appetizer, it was a actually a pretty good value.  They even managed a pretty good guacamole and I am a guacamole snob having been spoiled by the fresh made daily stuff served at the real mex places up here in my barrio.

Little Ben was fussy and had to be fed in the middle of the meal.  But, he was also terminally cute.  We chatted a while and generally made a nice little evening of it.

A Quiet Little Birthday

Yesterday was a strange day.  I spent a goodly portion of it sitting in a doctor's office while Sheila had a routine colonoscopy.   I had an appointment later in the afternoon with some really nice people.  A nice, easy, low stress legal matter.

During the appointment, I received a text message from Sheila's sister saying that her computer had bit the dust. By this time, it was late afternoon.  So, Sheila and I drove to Broken Arrow and fixed her sister's computer.

By the time the computer (and operator) were sorted out and instructions on a new semi-smartphone had been given, it was dinner time.  We decided to go to dinner someplace in the 71st street, Woodland Hills Mall corridor.  Since it was my birthday, I chose.  I chose Carrabas.  As we walked in, Sinatra tunes were playing on outside.  At Sheila's suggestion, we danced a step or two right there on the sidewalk before we went in.

The meal was a mixed bag.  The bruschetta was disappointing.  Bruschetta should be fresh and tangy.  The tomatoes and basil should the be the stars.  This bruschetta tasted like it had been marinated for several weeks and was laced with chunks of mozzerela.  It was anything but fresh or appetizing.  Even the toast left something to be desired.  Too much olive oil.

The entrees were great .... but small.  It seems there is no happy medium in restaurants these days.  Based upon our experience with gigantic entrees at other Italian restaurants we both ordered the small portions. Well, they were just that, small.  Very small.  Kind of stingy actually. I had the chicken marsala. It was great.  Maybe the best in town.  About two ounces more would have been even better.  Sheila had the chicken Bryan.  It was also fabulous.

We had passed a new DQ on the way.  That had really excited Sheila who is a DQ fanatic.  So, instead of having my usual black coffee and a couple of bites of tiramisu, we drove back down the street to DQ for desert.  I had a child's cone and Sheila had the biggest, prettiest soft serve cone I have ever seen.

As birthdays go, I wouldn't call this an exciting one.  But, as you age, excitement is not everything.  Sheila's tests went well.  We had a chance to visit with her sister for a while and do something nice for her.  And then, we had a nice dinner.  All told, not a bad day.

New Years Day 2013

Sheila is becoming quite the Southern Cook these days. This was our lunch, an authentic "hoppin john" made from black eyed peas, collard greens, smoked meat and other veggies and spices. She served it with jalapeno-cilantro cornbread and sweet tea. It was fabulous.

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Today, most of us will eat black eyed peas "for good luck." It is a tradition in our house that we eat the old southern staple called "Hoppin' John" which is made of black eyed peas rice and other vegetables. But, most people don't know WHY southerners do this.

That great humanitarian Abraham Lincoln ordered General William Tecumseh Sherman (a vicious racist btw) to burn his way across the South until he reached the sea. His orders were to not only seize military objectives but to also burn cities, towns, farms, homes and crops as he went. He was ordered to kill livestock, steal foodstuffs and literally leave the South starving.

He did this with a vengeance. In that sad winter, the South was starving. But, ignorant Yankees that they were, they did not recognize the food value of black eyed peas and thought they were simply hog fodder. So, they did not destroy the black eyed peas. The South survived that winter on black eyed peas seasoned with a little salt pork and some winter or early spring greens. This was the southern "luck" associated with black eyed peas.

So when you eat your black eyed peas today, you are honoring your southern ancestors who were tough enough to survive on food that the Yankees thought was worthless and in the process remembering the despicable cruelty of your own Federal government when some of it's people resist it.

From Facebook:

Bill Kumpe Sherman's march was not the only instance of Lincoln's use of starvation as a weapon of war. In Ft. Gibson, Oklahoma the Union Cavalry fed their horses corn while the Cherokee women and children outside were being systematically starved because some of their men had joined the Confederate cause. The Cherokee women would follow the cavalry columns at a distance and pick undigested corn kernels from the horse droppings to have something to feed their starving children.

Jim Honea I'm amazed at the cruelty and hatred that comes from war. The deadliest war in American history and we were killing each other. I still don't see how the Union Army could claim any moral high ground. I remember the full name of these New Years Delicacies (we have them throughout the year)---"Black Eyed Cow Peas".

Bill Kumpe:  Jim, if you you get a yen for Oklahoma history do some reading on the civil war in Oklahoma. Fascinating stuff. The Confederacy offered the civilized tribes a far better deal than the Union and they took it and split the tribe in the process. The absolute racism of the Union and particularly Kansans toward the tribes was disgusting. Lincoln ordered a second march to the sea through Oklahoma and Texas. They left a trail of dead troopers all the way back to Ft. Gibson. The Cherokee and Choctaw troops along with I believe the 9th Texas Cav. chewed them to ribbons.