Gasoline, November,

How about that, Matt actually bought gas for 88¢ yesterday. No-one ever thought it would come back down from $1.30 or more. In fact most people predicted it would never go below a $1 ever again. However, as I commented to Matt this morning, I bet the food prices don't go down any time soon. There is a campaign on at the moment called a Toonie for a tummy which means you give a $2 coin to a charity collecting food for hungry children. Canada isn't a wealthy country, but we shouldn't have hungry kids just the same. Nor should they in the States, but when they spend billions on war, its not surprising things get neglected: starving children, desperately poor families, sick and maimed people, you know just every day things like that. Not to mention schools closing down because they don't have enough money. If we don't get the hell out of Afghanistan, we might be having the same problems here. Of course we spend a lot of money feeding illegal immigrants and people who are not prepared to work for a living. I had better stop before I really get on my soap box. The Trick or Treaters had great mild weather for their activities last night, amazing since we had snow earlier in the week. I gather that tomorrow will be cold again. Finally the US elections take place on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the British will be celebrating Guy Fawkes Day. Maybe the effigies of Guy Fawkes will wear the face of George W. Bush. Last night I think there were some people really celebrating Hallowe'en outside our windows, lots of yelling and shouting, youngsters out being a nuisance I think. One of the problems with having a park close by although it doesn't happen often. As I mentioned, we have friends coming for dinner tonight so I have to get on. Matt has to pick up a couple of things from the store now we have finally decided what we are doing. Secret til Monday, but nothing very unusual as our brains aren't working very well at the moment, LOL. From Great Recipes for Good Health, here is a Caribbean recipe, probably an adaptation, there is a tip on the page: Lime, lemon and orange peels may have a residue of insecticide. Scrub them under running water before grating. I don't remember reading that before, but it is a good tip. Caribbean Lime Chicken Serves 4. 1 medium sized lime 2 Tbs dark rum or orange juice 3 cloves garlic, sliced thin 2 Tbs minced fresh ginger or 1/2 tsp ground (use fresh its best)* 1 Tbs hot red pepper sauce 1 whole chicken breasts (about 2 lbs), halved and skinned Nonstick cooking spray 1 large yellow onion, chopped 1 can (1 lb) low sodium tomatoes with their juice 2 Tbs molasses 1 cinnamon stick 1 banana, sliced and dipped in lime or lemon juice to prevent darkening (optional) Remove the peel from half the lime and set aside. Juice the lime into a shallow glass bowl. Add the lime peel to the juice along with the rum, garlic, ginger and red pepper sauce. Add the chicken, tossing to coat well. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight, turning the chicken in the marinade several times. Lightly coat a heavy 12 inch skillet with the cooking spray and set over moderate heat for 30 seconds. Add the chicken, reserving the marinade and cook about 2 1/2 minutes on each side. Transfer to a platter. In the same skillet, cook the onion, uncovered, over moderate heat until soft - about 5 minutes. Purée the tomatoes in a blender or processor and add to the skillet, along with the molasses, cinnamon stick, reserved marinade and chicken. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a platter. Raise the heat under the skillet to high and boil the sauce, uncovered, until slightly thickened - 3 to 5 minutes. Return the chicken to the skillet and heat through for 2-3 minutes. Remove the cinammon stick, arrange the chicken and sauce in a serving dish and garnish with the banana slices, if you like. Serve with tossed green salad. * Regarding fresh ginger, we buy it, peel it, slice it and then freeze it in a plastic bag. It lasts forever. Have a great weekend.

More Asparagus followed by Strawberries

Last night we tried Asparagus in Bed and were both somewhat disappointed. I didn't like the prosciutto with it and Matt said the dish was generally not as good as it appeared from reading the recipe. However, Hrugaar tells me the dish Asparagus and Tomato Bake that I posted on June 13, was good so I will try that next. One thing I learned from the Asparagus in Bed recipe was how to "hold" poached eggs in water until I wanted to use them in the dish. I had never tried this before. I thought the combination of eggs, Parmesan and asparagus was very good but found the prosciutto made it too salt, for my taste anyway.

Now strawberries are becoming available locally, unfortunately I don't find strawberries over here to be anything like the one's we used to get in the Europe years ago. They are not as sweet. The best berries we ever tasted in North America were those we bought at a particular farm in North Carolina, just outside Morehead City. Now they were sweet. I don't think I will be posting lots of recipes for strawberries because basically I like mine 'au naturel' with good cream. I frequently serve them with the Double Devon cream which can be bought in glass jars here. Of course we usually have to sweeten them. The classic dish in North America is Strawberry Shortcake; shh, don't tell anyone, I hate it. Our new Superintendent's wife was telling me, yesterday, she likes strawberry and rhubarb pie which I have never eaten, but the season is so short, I like mine just plain. Rather like lobster, I get it so rarely, I don't want to "muck about" with it. I wanted to try a berry farm which is a fair distance from us, but Matt is beginning to complain about the gas costs to get there. We have been spending a fair bit on gas to get to Tim Barrie's for asparagus and the berry farm I found is even further away.

If you read the comments, Hrugaar said they spend £40 to fill up a small car with gasoline, well, being a Limey he said petrol as I would have done til I emigrated. That, my friends, is close to $90 and that is for, what I have no doubt, is a 4 cyl. vehicle. We are complaining bitterly over here, but Europeans are saying its about time we caught up with them. I do hope you read Elizabeth Moon's letter to her congressman, I feel she really hits the nail on the head. This morning the Americans are talking about offshore drilling in areas which have previously been protected. I don't want to go back to a horse and buggy, but that's really where we should be headed. I commented to Matt, the other day, that I bet the Mennonites and Amish are laughing at our gasoline problems. Let's face it, with a horse, its grass and oats in one end and fertilizer out of the other. Very economical. Yes I know, you need stabling and field space etc. but once you have all that, you don't have to keep buying it. Wherever the expression originated, the oil producers have certainly got us over a barrel at the moment. I know I am oversimplifying, but it is certainly something to think about.

We have to do our bowling on Friday this week as our regular Monday league game is cancelled as the bowling alley will be filled with youngsters. We could just bank our scores for a previous game, but its more fun to actually bowl them. We have a couple of dinner parties coming up, one at a friend's and another one here. I am thinking of doing the Phyllo Bundles again as we enjoyed them so much last time. I need to check our guests like asparagus, surprisingly there are people who don't. As you can imagine, I can't understand that.

I was just thinking about a recipe when I remembered there is one recipe made with strawberries, which I love, Strawberries Romanoff. Here is a recipe from the internet with a little bit of history:

Strawberries Romanoff

Epicurious.com

When he was the chef at the Carlton Hotel in London, Escoffier created Strawberries Americaine Style — strawberries in orange liqueur, blended into whipped cream and softened ice cream. Little did he know that it would one day be the star dessert of every posh dining spot in California. "Prince" Mike Romanoff "borrowed" the recipe and gave it a new moniker. Soon it was the hottest item on the West Coast. The L.A. Biltmore called it "Strawberries Biltmore." The Palace Hotel in San Francisco served it with anisette and maraschino.

Strawberries Romanoff

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

2 pints strawberries, washed and stemmed
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier or Cointreau
1 pint vanilla ice cream
1 cup heavy cream

1. Slice the strawberries. In a large bowl, toss three-quarters of them with the sugar and orange liqueur. Refrigerate at least 1 hour to macerate.

2. Put the ice cream in the refrigerator to soften.

3. Put the cream and half the macerated strawberries in a cold mixing bowl. With an electric mixer, whip to soft peaks, about 12 minutes. Fold in the ice cream.

4. Distribute the cream among 6 chilled bowls. Mix the plain sliced berries with the remaining macerated berries and place on top of the cream.

Have a great day.

Spelling Bee, Vacations, The Lady Chablis

Have you ever watched the International Spelling Bee? We did yesterday, we have watched it before, it takes several hours of TV (for the kids to get to the finals it takes a lot more than several hours) they are on during the day and then the final dozen are on prime time in the evening. It really is great to watch these kids, they are really clever and some can be quite funny. One youngster asked if she could have an easier word, she spelled the one she was given correctly anyway. Then in the evening, one youngster thought he heard "numbnut" it was quite funny, the whole audience was laughing, he eventually realised it was numnah and he was relieved - when interviewed he said numbnut could have several different spellings, it can? What is numnah you ask? Its the padding under a saddle for a horse. He, 13 yr old Sameer Mishra from Indiana, ended up being the winner last night. The rest of the group were absolutely brilliant though and it was so sad when they missed a word, especially one young man who obviously knew the word, but "got lost" whilst he was spelling it. These kids know such a lot about language and the derivations - they eat dictionaries in their sleep. I've always been good at spelling but I'm not a patch on these kids.

There is more and more talk of people taking their vacations closer to home this year, the price of gas is getting horrendous, especially for people with big gas guzzling vehicles. Mind you our 6 cyl. car is considered a gas guzzler by European standards. I don't know who are the biggest consumers, the private sector or the business sector, but if the private sector is cutting down drastically it might make the oil companies and oil producers sit up and take notice and hopefully reduce their charges. Have you ever heard of an oil company not making a profit? We were talking Portugal earlier on, but we are having something of a re-think now. If you'd all click on the ads on this page, maybe I could go away, *g*. Hotels and other tourist places are trying to attract business - I suggested maybe we could go back to Savannah, a town we are very fond of, but of course it would cost us a fortune to drive there compared with what we used to pay.

We love Savannah which, considering it is a city, is somewhat surprising for us. It is a gorgeous place though, with lots of interesting things to see and do. Just to sit in busy Market Square sipping a glass of wine and watching the world go by is a fascinating passtime. If you ever read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, there are lots of characters just like that, the first time we went there, I was told, by a local, Savannah wasn't anything like the book, we thought it was. The character called The Lady Chablis exists anyway and she/he is making a fortune these days. If and when The Lady Chablis performs at the nightclub Club One in Savannah, the queues (line-ups) stretch for miles. That was the real Lady Chablis in the movie, if you saw it. Then there is Paula Deen's restaurant, The Lady and Sons, where we ate before the country had ever heard of her, I understand you can't get near the place any more, we didn't even try last time. How often have you had a waitress sing a rendition, beautifully I might add, from Porgy and Bess? We did at The Lady and Sons.

Last night, for supper, we had my father's version of Kedgeree. I used to make it with lashings of butter, but have cut that down in this day and age of watching what we eat. Its made with smoked haddock (a rarity round here) and rice mixed with butter and served with hard boiled eggs which have been sliced. I take out the yolk and spread the rings on the rice, then grate the yolk over the top. Delicious. All of the pictures I can find show the eggs just quartered, or chopped up, but the way I do it is much better in my opinion. I've posted this before, but it is a dish Matt and I both enjoy if we can get hold of some reasonable smoked haddock. Nigella Larson makes it with salmon, but that doesn't sound the same somehow.

Name: Rhubarb and Kirsch Clafouti
Source: RecitopiaUK
Serves: 6

Batter
400 ml/¾ pt milk, warmed
3 eggs
45 ml/3tbsp caster sugar
45 ml/3tbsp plain flour
30-45 ml/2-3tbsp butter, melted

450 g/1lb rhubarb, sliced thumb thickness and macerated in kirsch and sugar for at least an hour.
30 ml/2tbsp kirsch
30 ml/2tbsp sugar

Instructions: Preheat oven temperature to 190C/375F/gas 5.
2. Whisk all batter ingredients together.
3. Place macerated rhubarb into a buttered ovenproof serving dish
30 cm x 23 cm/12 in x 9 in. Pour over the batter. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
4. When cooked, remove from the oven, dust with icing (confectioner's) sugar and serve immediately.

Have a great day