Into the Woods – Page 108 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Eggs Benedict, homemade muffins

Is it that I don’t get out much, or are eggs Benedict not on many restaurant menus anymore? Once upon a time, when butter and eggs were considered much more unhealthy than we consider them now, eating eggs Benedict was extremely decadent. But the chickens have been laying extremely well lately in spite of the cold, so I have eggs to spare, and then some, for Hollandaise. Eggs Benedict are a heck of a lot of work, though, so that ensures that one doesn’t eat them too often.

Making English muffins is no big deal. I used the recipe from King Arthur flour’s web site and baked the muffins on a griddle on the gas grill. As for the Hollandaise, for years I have used Irma Rombauer’s classic recipe from the 1943 edition of Joy of Cooking. It comes out a little thick, though, which probably means that my home-laid eggs are much bigger than the eggs Irma used. The fake bacon is from Morning Star.

One more word about hot dogs

In a recent post on healthier hot dogs, I mentioned the Loma Linda canned hot dogs and that I’d had a hard time finding them. It occurred to me that the local Ingles store, which carries a lot of slow-selling products that many grocery stores don’t carry, might have them. Indeed they did. They were in a section that I don’t exactly frequent — canned meats.

The Loma Linda hot dogs are pretty good, though the bite is a little soft. I’d say that the Morning Star hot dogs are a bit better, but either makes an entirely convincing vegetarian hot dog.

Two random reviews: San Andreas, and The History Boys

San Andreas, Warner Bros., 2015

Readers of this blog know that I don’t make any systematic effort to review movies. Rather, my movie reviews are pretty random and occasional and reflect only what I happen to have been watching — stuff that left me thinking. San Andreas and The History Boys are about as different from each other as two movies could be.

When I saw the trailer for San Andreas, in which the front wave of an enormous tsunami is bearing down on San Francisco just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, I knew that I’d have to watch it. I’m a sucker for San Francisco movies, and San Andreas is a good one, even if an earthquake and tsunami wipe the city out.

When combined with a decent story, Hollywood special effects can be thrilling. But much of the appeal of San Andreas is in the script — though the disaster scenes and helicopter rescues are great fun. Hollywood well knows that if the plot for a screenplay involves a massive earthquake that wipes out Los Angeles and San Francisco, then you need to wrap that plot around some personal stories that get some emotion into it. Carlton Cuse’s fast-moving screenplay does this with six main characters: An earthquake scientist who figured out that the Big One was about to happen; a married couple in the process of getting a divorce; their daughter and the young man she meets in San Francisco; and the young man’s younger brother.

But oh how I love Hollywood panoramas shot over San Francisco. I haven’t been back to San Francisco since I left in 2008, so all those scenes from familiar places make me a little homesick. You can’t even visit San Francisco — let alone live there for 17 years as I did — without forming a permanent emotional bond with the place.

San Andreas is worth watching just as entertainment. It’s also a good script, with Hollywood special effects effectively used.

The History Boys, Fox Searchlight, 2006

The History Boys got so-so reviews in places like Rotten Tomatoes. I think that’s because the film goes way over the heads of most people. It’s based on a play by Alan Bennett that opened in London in 2004. I have watched this film three times, and I still can’t pick up on everything. Then I bought a copy of the script of the play and read that, too.

Probably only the English can truly follow all the snappy language and nuance. The dialogue teeters on a sharp edge between irony and sincerity, bravado and vulnerability. There is keen commentary not only on history, but culture in general and English culture in particular. The dialogue includes page after page of untranslated French. That’s a very bold thing to do — to an American audience, especially. This is a script that refuses to dumb itself down. The History Boys — both the play and the film — is unapologetically aimed at the few who have done enough reading in their lives to follow the dialogue and who can find jokes about, say, the subjunctive (whether in English or in French) funny.

I rarely use the word masterpiece, but I see The History Boys as a masterpiece of writing. Alan Bennett, in only a hundred pages of screenplay, manages to exhaust us with intellectual exercise, dazzle us with meaningful erudition, jerk us back and forth between pure silliness and profundity, and finally to break our hearts with his characters, who represent a broad range of the human condition.

I bought the film on DVD. Watching it should be an annual tradition, like the annual watching of Love Actually, at Christmas.

Buffalo china: A sad American story

I wish I knew much, much more about a now-defunct American company named Buffalo China. Yep — they were in Buffalo, New York. The company started about 1901, making a mishmash of porcelain products. In the 1920s and 1930s, they started marking commercial porcelain dinnerware for restaurants and institutions. For decades, they made incredibly excellent commercial dinnerware. At some point, Buffalo China came to be owned by Oneida. In 2003 or thereabouts, Oneida sold the company to investors who changed the name to Niagara Ceramics, though Oneida continued to own the Buffalo China trademark. Finally, in 2013, the company closed. It was cheap imported china from China that killed the company. The last owner, Chris Collins, who was a congressman, issued a bitter statement about Buffalo China’s end:

“Niagara Ceramics consistently struggled because of unfair competition from Chinese manufacturers who benefit from China manipulating its currency at the expense of American jobs. As a member of Congress, I believe strongly that the U.S. must take a harder stand against this unfair practice by the Chinese government.”

During the last fifty years, I have been in countless antique shops and junk shops, and I’ve examined a lot of porcelain and china. In fact, the abbey owns a large set of 100-year-old fine china made in Limoges that has never been removed from the shipping boxes after I moved back to North Carolina from San Francisco. Using fine china is just too fussy to be bothered with.

Whereas heavy commercial china is a whole different story. There were other good makers of heavy American porcelain, but Buffalo China stands out.

When I first moved into the abbey seven years ago, having gotten rid of my everyday dinnerware before the move from San Francisco because it wasn’t worth shipping, I bought cheap glass dinnerware to use temporarily, planning on finding something nicer to replace it. I looked at a lot of heavy china at places like Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel. But it was expensive unless it was made in China, and I refused to buy Chinese china.

Finally I decided to go with Buffalo China. It’s easy enough to find on eBay, at wildly varying prices. I settled on the green stripe china, though Buffalo china made several other patterns for restaurant and commercial use. It’s not uncommon to come across new old stock Buffalo china on eBay, though the stuff is so durable that, if it’s used, it hardly matters. That’s the beauty of restaurant china — you can’t kill it. I don’t think I’ve ever broken a piece of restaurant china, and, if you ever did, it would be nothing to cry about (though it’s not exactly cheap anymore — more and more people know what it is).

These days, large plates are the norm. I admit that I like the current style of food presentation, in which small amounts of foods are presented on enormous plates. But, with the old restaurant china, it’s difficult to find a plate larger than nine inches. I’ll live with that, but I’ll keep watching eBay.

Meanwhile, I wish someone would write an illustrated history of Buffalo China. I’d buy it.

Update: Also see this newer post on the Buffalo China dogwood pattern.

Pasta salads

Are pasta salads more a summer thing? Pasta salads were never in my repertoire until recently, when I hired a caterer for a political event and one of the dishes was pasta salad. It was good, so I resolved to add pasta salad to the competencies of the abbey kitchen.

One of the cool things about pasta salad is that it’s a work of imagination. What have you got in the kitchen, and what can you do with it? The pasta salad above is artichoke hearts, a winter tomato, raw walnuts, roasted peanuts, and Roquefort. It’s dressed with a dressing that is sorta-kinda ranch.

The previous pasta salad was a warm pasta salad with seared shredded cabbage, walnuts, peanuts, and a dressing that included toasted sesame oil and brewer’s yeast.

Trader Joe’s, by the way, has canned artichoke hearts at a reasonable price. TJ’s also has proven to be my best source of affordable avocados that almost always ripen nicely. Even Roquefort (and other good cheeses) are affordable at Trader Joe’s. I’m aware that Trader Joe’s is disparaged by Californians as the Walmart of the grocery business. But shopping wisely at Trader Joes’ (lousy produce!) can really stretch the food budget.

Pasta salad should be a creative mixture of tastes and textures. Now if I can just stop myself from buying Bacon Bits…

Sinning more safely, at home

If you don’t love hot dogs, there’s something wrong with you. But of course you also know that hot dogs are one of the nastiest foods we can eat. I’ve been making alternatives to hot dogs for 40 years. Some alternatives are convincing, others not. But here’s a way to have an authentic hot dog experience without eating anything terribly nasty.

I discovered Morning Star’s fake hot dogs only a couple of months ago. They are thoroughly convincing, with a proper hot dog bite and hot dog taste. We’ve all tried the tofu versions of hot dogs available in health food stores. They’re not very good, because they lack the hot dog bite and the hot dog taste.

We might complain that Morning Star’s products have too many ingredients. Yet I look the other way, because Morning Star’s products are bound to be healthier than the alternative. Not to mention that no animal had to live on a factory farm, or be slaughtered, to make Morning Star’s products. I’m confident that meat analogs will get better and better as the market demands it and as food engineers work on the problem. Meat analogs ought to cost less than meat. Probably the lack of government subsidies has something to do with it, plus the market is smaller. When will our government wise up and stop subsidizing meat and start subsidizing meat analogs?

Here are some guidelines for hot dogs as we make them here in the South:

• There is no alternative to a commercially made hot dog bun. Sure, I’ve made homemade buns, and they’re good. But I cannot make a homemade bun that gives a true hot dog experience. The bun must be lightly toasted in a little butter and served warm. Toast it in a buttered skillet, turning it to brown at least two sides. Restaurants brown the buns in a griddle press.

• It doesn’t matter what you put on your hot dog. That’s part of the fun. You could even make homemade vegetarian chili if you want. I’m partial to slaw or sauerkraut, onions, mustard, and relish. In the South, when you order a hot dog “all the way,” you get mustard, slaw, onions, and chili.

• A hot dog must be eaten with fries. I’m sorry, but that’s the way the world works. I don’t know what got into me (maybe lingering memories of Jim’s Grill), but I bought frozen French fries a couple of days ago for the first time in 30 years. My excuse was that I have a lot of page proofs to read this week and won’t have much time to cook. I also knew that this was the week that I was going to make some serious hot dogs.

Back in the 1980s, I used to buy Loma Linda’s hot dogs, which come in a can. Loma Linda still makes these, but they are not available in any local stores. You can order them from Amazon, but they cost a fortune by the time you pay for shipping. My recollection is that they are quite good.

Trader Joe’s sells a live, unpasteurized sauerkraut that is very good. You’ll find it with the refrigerated foods.

I’d love to hear from readers in the U.K. about hot dogs. It has been years since I had visitors from the U.K., but they always loved American hot dogs. Can you get proper American hot dogs in the U.K.?

Update: Oratorio in Ursa Major

During the fall and early winter, the beta readers read the first draft of Oratorio in Ursa Major. I discussed the draft with each of the readers, gave a lot of thought to their ideas, and undertook revisions.

I’m flattered that none of the beta readers suggested any major changes in Oratorio. Rather, from the discussions with the beta readers it seemed to me that what was needed were some new scenes and even a new character. A few days ago, I finished the second draft. The novel grew by about 60 pages. The paperback version now stands at about 515 pages.

During the revision process, I also thought a great deal more about what wants to happen in book 3, because obviously that needs to be anticipated and foreshadowed in Oratorio, which is the second book of a trilogy. Or, who knows. After writing the third novel about Jake’s adventures, I may want to continue with it.

I have moved the release date from April 1 to June 1. This is to give me more time to proofread for typos, to get all three versions ready (paperback, hardback, and Kindle), to get everything on Amazon for pre-ordering well before the release date, to get review copies mailed out, and to work on jacket blurbs and other promotional stuff.

Breakfast at home …

And remember, anything MacDonald’s can do, you can do better. And cheaper. And not have to eat off of paper.

This is a homemade sausage biscuit with Morning Star vegetarian sausage.

Lunch on the road …

Probably many of the people who eat at Jim’s Grill in Yadkinville remember when it was a hot spot in the 1950s — curb service, window trays, juke box, the works. It’s on U.S. 601, which runs north to south across most of North and South Carolina and which used to be part of a major route from points north to Florida.

I’ve had a sentimental weakness for roadside eateries for as long as I can remember. Some of them still remain along the old secondary roads. The sad thing, though, is that every time I’m in Jim’s Grill (I make pretty regular trips to Yadkin County), I never see any young people there. Younger people, I suppose, are sentimental about MacDonald’s rather than the old roadside restaurants.

One of the great things about old-fashioned fast food is that there is no waste paper, cardboard, or plastic to throw away. It’s a pity, though, that (as far as I know) they’re all using plastic dinnerware rather than the heavy diner china that they used to use.

Baltimore Road, about 10 miles east of Yadkinville

And they lived happily ever after

Note: This post contains no spoilers if you have watched the series through Season 6, episode 3.

Those in the U.K. have already said goodbye to Downtown Abbey. Here in the U.S., we have five more episodes to go. I never gave up on Downton Abbey the way some did. Sure, it’s a soap opera. But it’s a good soap opera. It’s also a fantastic period piece, a marvel of language and accents, and a visual spectacle. The characters are superb and now feel like family. Season 6 is when we get to have our long goodbye with all these characters — and, I’m pretty well convinced, see almost all of them happy.

Downton Abbey has always relied on honest, classic storytelling. I’ve started watching lots of series but stopped, usually because the screenwriters (especially in series set in the here and now, which I almost never like) tried to overcome our jadedness and boredom by shocking us, or by being quirky.

Classic, honest storytelling means that, in the end, the wicked are punished and the deserving get their heart’s desire. And this — rightly so — is clearly where the last season of Downtown Abbey is going to leave us.

For the most part, the wicked have already been punished. Some characters who served as villains for a while transformed and redeemed themselves and now should have their reward.

Let the happiness roll:

In episode 3, Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes get married. Now that their legal troubles are over, it appears that John and Anna Bates will have a child at last (though there will be a bit of trouble first). Tom Branson realizes who his true family is and comes home from Boston, grandchildren and all. Lady Edith clearly has found a new beau and perhaps a husband. Daisy will better herself through education and see Mr. Mason settled in a new home. Mr. Molesley will probably find that he’s a true scholar after all, not just a scholar wannabe. Robert and Cora Crawley will land on their feet and nobly carry on, even if it’s in reduced circumstances. Lady Mary will probably end up alone, but isn’t that probably what’s best for her? Even Thomas Barrow, who has been repeatedly rejected and humiliated, seems likely to end up happy, with the boyfriend he has never had.

We’ll remember these characters for many years, and the DVDs that we bought are DVDs that we will watch again.