A Dishy Look at History

"Speaking For Myself; My Life from Liverpool to 10 Downing Street" by Cherie Blair Little, Brown & Company $30 341 pages

I liked this book because Blair says what she thinks. Only at the end does she seem to become more than a little self-serving and/or defensive in the extreme (various scandals - the press never liked her.) She is refreshingly frank about money -- they never had any.

It's an interesting book for the peeks at things we'll never see -- being presented to the Queen; staying at Balmoral (take your best underwear and leave the recreational drugs at home - the maids unpack absolutely everything) or what previous Prime Ministers' wives had to say about the redecoration of the public rooms at 10 Downing Street. Norma Majors liked the new terra cotta-colored walls; Margaret Thatcher looked around and said, "This is disgusting." On her former study, she cried out, "What have you done to my lovely room? This is just appalling."

Blair never got along with the Princesses Margaret or Anne. Anne bawled her out during a State dinner for Tony Blair's support of the ban on fox hunting. The Princes Phillip and Charles were quite a bit better behaved.

She and Hillary Clinton were more professional colleagues than friends. Clinton did give her an extensive tour of the White House and how it is run. Blair and Laura Bush enjoyed a much warmer friendship and were always happy to see one another despite political difficulties.

It's another angle/point of view from a front row at British politics and well worth your time in reading it.

Good Luck Foods for the New Year

There is a recurring theme in all of them and it's prosperity, not good health or necessarily good luck. Pork is featured in several (not exactly luck for the pig) and apparently the thinking is: May you grow as big as a hog! Coins as represented by black-eyed peas and lentils and actual coins buried in cakes and/or sauerkraut. In no particular order, my gleanings from online sources --

France - 13 desserts which is not the sugar rush you might be thinking it is -- fruits are also considered "dessert" (candied or fresh.)

Baltimore - sauerkraut and beef short ribs. Other areas use pork ribs.

Austria - pink "pig" cookies

Italy - lentils and pork sausage

Germany and Poland - pickled herring because they're shiny and silver-colored like a coin but I'd rather be broke all year than eat one ...

Greece - a plain cake with a coin baked into it which reminds me of the New Orleans traditional Mardi Gras King cakes.

Alabama, Texas - indeed all over the South - black-eyed peas with or without collard greens or ham.

Korea - rice cake stew

China - big oranges and pears, candied lotus roots or melon, sticky rice cakes.

Cuba - black beans and rice

Spain - 12 grapes eaten at midnight

Israel - Jews eat a fish head for Rosh Hashanah -- to always be first and never the tail!

My own superstition has nothing to do with food. It's this: If you're a writer/painter/singer/musician/chef make sure you do your thing on New Year's Day so that you can continue to do it all year long!

"Never Amount to a Hill of Beans..."

Carolyn Green, a friend in Kansas City, sent me a Web site of all crock pot recipes the other day and just the other month, Richie had bought us a new crock pot. It's much bigger than the old one (which finally died after 30-some years,) is oval-shaped and has two speeds.

Richie likes to use it; I don't. His "Hamburger Stroganoff" requires the hamburger to be cooked before putting it in and, really, what's the point of that? All you're doing is keeping it hot all day long. (But it did work well keeping hors d'oeuvres warm at our open house.)

It occurred to me that crock pots had to have evolved from Boston baked bean pots -- remember them? A dark-brown colored pottery pot? Squatty-looking with earred handles and a lid? Beans have long been a staple for American non-Astors and Rockefellers and the Brits who fancy theirs on slices of toast. The Irish breakfast features beans, eggs, blood sausage and bacon.

I never did find confirmation of my theory; what I did discover was that canned beans (a staple) were limited in the 1960s. If you wanted baked beans, you made them yourself. Naxon Utilities did develop a "Beanery" which became the crock pot or slow cooker circa 1971. Today Rival is the leading brand.

The theory is that long, slow cooking will render less-than-tender meats into something tasty. The low temperature is 165 degrees; high is 190-200 degrees. Yes, long and slow and then some!

Manufacturers recommend putting food in it in the morning, going gaily off to work and coming home to a nice hot dinner. I cannot stress strongly enough what an idiotic idea this is. Never, ever leave your house with an unattended, plugged in and turned on appliance. It may well be hot when you get home, but it won't be your dinner.

If you plan to stay home while it's cooking, visit 50plusfriends.com for a variety of crock pot recipes - Cheerio! Pip! Pip! Have at it!

Ah, Sundays

Nowhere to go and all day to get there...

Happily it's sunny today (always a cheerer-upper) and so far, the LA and NY Times crossword puzzles seem do-able. Richie started his daily sudoka and all is peaceful in his world. Eventually I'll go to jigzone.com and do jigsaw puzzles (my new craze - you can change piece shapes.)

I would love to "take down Christmas" -- unwrap the stair railings' tinsel chains, go through the cards one last time and put all the photos of other people's children in the album, put away the decorations and put the tree back out on the balcony, but he would screech like a barn owl so I won't even broach it. As lazy as I am on a Sunday, I am anxious to get going with the new year, new opportunities and adventures. Bring it on! Show me what you got, Baby New Year!

We'll All Have Champagne, Thank You

Clearly, Le Saint-Raphael restaurant didn't get the memo about the recession. Here's their menu for New Year's Eve ...

First Course - Assortment of canapes (unspecified)

Second Course - Lobster spring rolls OR Yukon gold potatoes with smoked salmon and caviar OR Feuillet d'escargots with garlic and herb butter

Third Course - Half a young, roasted chicken with polenta fries and truffle-cheese dipping sauce OR Filet Mignon Rossini (seared foie gras on a brioche with mushroom duxelle) OR Saffron seafood risotto with a watercress emulstion OR Prosciutto-crusted John Dory with spiced tomato chutney and chanterelle sauce

Fourth Course - Cheese platter with honeycombs, mixed berries and candied walnuts OR a pear cooked in Port wine, stuffed with rum raisin ice cream and mixed berry sauce

And a glass of champagne! $60 per person. Dinner will be served between 5 and 11 p.m. For reservations 310-543-5100 Arguably good value for the money. If you're a Rockefeller...

Pronunciation?

Souplantation, 21309 Hawthorne, Torrance, CA 310-540-4998

I have no idea whether it's "Soup-lantation" or "Sou-plantation" but either way it's a pretty silly name. Misleading, too -- I thought there would be a tasting menu of say, three small bowls of soup.

Hah! It's a buffet with salad, pasta, pizza, breads (foccaccia, blueberry and bran muffins, baguette chunks) and machine ice cream. And four soup choices. Plus "Add a scoop of dressing (as in turkey dressing) to your bowl of soup!" Do what?

Richie made himself a mixed salad, then had a bowl of clam chowder - "Okay, but I've had better," a helping of Cajun Sausage Pasta "Not that hot." He reported that the dressing, eaten solo, was "glue-y." The minestrone was "thin." He did approve of the machine ice cream - soft-serve? I forget the technical name for it, but you pull a lever down and your dish fills up with "ice cream." He treated himself to two bowls' full.

I had a taste of the Caesar salad, some green peppers with a dab of blue cheese dressing, some red onion slices with a bit of roasted garlic dressing and tossed some hardboiled egg chunks in as well. I tried their chili -- sweet and Horrors! it had canned tomatoes in it! I ate the top off of a slice of four cheese pizza, served in a rectangle about 4 in. long by 2 in. wide. The garlic bread was much better. The one thing that they got absolutely right was macaroni and cheese.

When I discovered that they had butterscotch in addition to chocolate sauce for the ice cream, I had two servings of it -- vanilla first with Oreo bits and then chocolate with toasted coconut.

Lunch was $7.50 per person (water only) It's a nice enough set of rooms, the most attractive asset is the glass ceiling atrium over the main dining room. I'd rate the food as a couple of cuts above Home Buffet (which is ghastly -- bad high school cafeteria food) and certainly a bargain in these times. Souplantation(s) are a chain which explains a lot of things, but I must say the help was on the job, busy replacing buffet items, putting out trays of bread and all of them were very friendly.

Santa Was On Our Street!

Richie brought the newspapers in and remarked, "The street is full of reindeer dung."

MERRY CHRISTMAS
HAPPY CHANNUKAH
AN ENJOYABLE KWAANZA