April's Writings – Here and Now
Look at my new apron! It was made by friends of mine in Virginia who do tie dye designs and sell them at a little store in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Laz and Jessica are a wonderful young hippie couple who do amazing tie dye work. I had them make this apron for me since we have the holidays coming up. I always spend the entire day on thanksgiving in the kitchen and then I bake cookies all throughout December, so this new apron will be getting a real workout starting next week!
I’ve been craving southern fried catfish for over two weeks now. I really need to go get some catfish and fixings within the next couple of days or I’m going to burst.
Catfish is one of the very few things that I do not cook myself. I am a fantastic cook and I love to cook. I just don’t like to cook fish. For one thing, it smells up the whole house for the entire day and night. I can’t stand to walk in the door and smell fish in the air.
For another thing, catfish needs to be breaded in a nice cornmeal mixture and then fried in a big vat of hot fat. I don’t have a big vat and since I almost never use fat to cook anything else, it would be a colossal waste of good cooking oil – not to mention the huge expense of a gallon of oil – for a one time use.
I am perfectly happy to let the professionals at a local catfish house do the cooking for me. Now I just have to find someone else who likes catfish that I can drag along with me, because I am READY for some catfish and all the fixings!
My mom let me borrow her cookbook about Cajun foods. Its by a guy names Justin Wilson. Mom says he used to have a TV cooking show, kind of like the Cajun Julia Childs. Sorry I missed that – I think the old cooking shows are fun to watch – there are several on Youtube. In fact, there might be some Justin Wilson videos on Youtube.
The cookbook talks about the basics, like making a roue. I just made a batch of mock turtle soup. It will be ready to taste tonight when I get home – I can’t wait to try it!
Whew! I’m so glad that the holidays are almost over. The whole thing about shopping for gifts, cleaning house, decorating a tree, cooking and baking, and then visiting family will wear a girl out!
I was glad to see almost everyone in my family, especially all the children. I missed seeing my pretty niece and her new baby, but they had car trouble and couldn’t make the trip down. I will have to go up there and see her after the first of the year. I feel badly that she missed out on the family dinner, but we didn’t find out about the car trouble in time to make other arrangements for her to get there.
This Christmas, I hope you and your family and friends are able to gather around and enjoy each other. The Christmas gifts and cooking the big meals are nice, but the holiday is really all about being with the people in your life who matter the most.
I wanted to buy a pack of hot dogs for this weekend. We will be busy shopping and putting up the Christmas tree and I don’t want to have to cook anything special. I have enough on my hands with a holiday decorating and gift buying list.
I thought that hot dogs, mac and cheese and then some baked beans would be a nice, quick dinner. For some reason there are a bunch of different brands of hot dogs at the grocery store and now there are regular lengths, bun lengths, turkey hot dogs, beef hot dogs and regular mixed mystery meats hot dogs.
I had a hard time deciding, but ended up getting Oscar Mayer bun length hot dogs for almost $4 a pack of 8 hot dogs. The hot dog buns were only a dollar, the mac and cheese is only $2.50 and the baked beans were $.89 – so that was a cheap and fast meal for about two bucks per person.
Tonight I didn’t feel like cooking dinner, so I decided to get Chinese Takeout. We don’t have delivery service to my neighborhood, so I have to plan ahead and order the dinner, then I pick it up from the restaurant on my way home. I almost never get home and then decide to order Chinese and go back out to get it. So tonight I ordered the house special and topped it off with a special treat of Chinese donuts for dessert.