The First Snow of the Year!

So...I just ducked upstairs--and the blustery north wind is tossing snow around like an angry baker casting shredded coconut onto a very bare cake. And it's freezing! My little sister, Sara, and I ran out to our tree house to ascertain that it was tightly closed-up--it was. All that biting wind for nothing!

Wonder of Wonders! Miracle of Miracles!

Yay! I just received the cast list to my co-op's spring musical--Fiddler on the Roof--and I'm playing Hodel!!!! How exciting!

Soup, Beautiful Soup!

Inspired by my recent cooking posts and excited by the possibility of writing a 20 page research paper on the vagaries of "food and culture" this post is soup themed. As any serious soup connoisseur knows, Lewis Carroll's epic "Turtle Soup" song greatly enhances the dining pleasure of any occasion. The song is especially well suited to (Mock) Turtle Soup, but also complements bisque's and stews quite nicely, bringing out their subtler shades of flavour. For best effect, the delicate lyrics should be warbled as indicated below.

"Turtle Soup"
Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau--ootiful Soo--ooop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--ooop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo-oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!

"Onion soup sustains. The process of making it is somewhat like the process of learning to love. It requires commitment, extraordinary effort, time, and will make you cry."
~Ronni Lundy, Esquire

Arroz Con Leche Song

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post--there's a Spanish song that accompanies the rice pudding. Make sure to sing it before eating the delicious concoction! Below are the lyrics.

Arroz con leche,
Me quiero casar,
Con una viudita de la capital,
Que sepa coser,
Que sepa bordar,
Que ponga la mesa en su santo lugar.
Contigo, sí.
Contigo, no.
Contigo, mi vida, me casaré yo.

Losely translated into English:
Rice with milk,
I'd like to get married,
With a little widow from the capital,
Who knows how to sew,
Who knows how to embroider,
Who puts the table in its place,
With you? Yes.
With you? No.
With you, my life, I will marry.

Conspiracy theorists muse about the significance of the song, conjecturing that the delicious "marriage" of the two main ingredients--rice and milk--inspired this popular Latin folksong. Being a folksong, there are as many versions as there are singers, so if you ever hear Arroz Con Leche, it will likely sound a little bit different.

Yummy Fall Recipes

The leaves here in Pennsylvania are in the process of falling and my back aches from raking the tirade. A few days ago a frost decimated my garden, and yesterday I added cozy snowmen flannel sheets to my bed. As such, it seems appropriate to post a few favorite fall (or anytime) recipes. The first, Arroz Con Leche, comes from my Spanish teacher, and is obligatingly translated below.

Rice Pudding
4 cups water
1 cup white rice
1 cinnamon stick
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup sugar (adjust to taste)
3 cups milk

Add rice to boiling cinnamon water. Cook until dry. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer to desired consistency, stirring often. Enjoy! Note: I healtyized this recipe by substituting short grained brown rice for the white, 1/4 cup maple syrup for the sugar, and added about a tablespoon of cinnamon to experiment. It turned out pretty nicely, with a bit more texture than the traditional variety, more like breakfast porridge.

Random Fall Root Roast
This is a very free flowing recipe. Peel and chop whatever fall roots you have on hand--potatoes, carrots (yummy, the roasting brings out their natural sweetness), parsnips, whatever, and put them in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and coat with whatever herbs you have in your cupboards--I used parsley, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and this terrific salt blend called "Jane's Crazy Salt"--which is absolutely fantastic. Then roast the mixture at 350 degrees for about an hour or until crispy/tender--your preference. Vital: shake the pan a few times during cooking so that the veggies brown evenly. I didn't, and had to scrape the carbonized bottoms off the pan.

Note: Burning food carbonizes it, and chemically alters the structure of your food. Also, burnt food is full of cancer-causing carcinogens, so just don't do it!

Voccab Words for Week 7 1/2

Immolate~(v) To sacrifice

Halcyon~(adj) calm; peaceful; tranquil: halcyon weather. 2. rich; wealthy; prosperous: Halcyon times of peace. 3. A generic term for Kingfishers

Lambent~(adj) running or moving lightly over a surface: lambent tongues of flame. Also gracefully dealing with a subject: lambent wit

Votary~(noun) a person who is bound by solemn religious vows, as a monk or a nun

Emmulous~(adj) desirous of equaling or excelling

Ineffable~(adj) incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy

Neophyte~(noun) a beginner or novice

Free Rice

Forgive my lengthy silence--gasp--have I really not posted since September?!? Be that as it may, blog checks are speeding breakneck pace towards us, so I'll try to drudge up some leftover creativity. Humm...no artistic enthusiasm surfacing. Aha. Below is a link my fellow APers might be interested in:

http://www.freerice.com/

This website began about a year ago. It works like this: you get quizzed on obscure vocabulary words, and for every word that you get correct 20 grains of rice gets donated to disadvantaged people in third world countries--thus the website's name. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose unobtrusive ads appear on the webpage, so everyone benefits. Hungry people get fed. Advertisers drum up business and receive a charitable public image. And your vocabulary increases. So why not play?