NOW THAT’S IRONY…

"Gutter Ball"

Chris Bolton

digital photo

2010

GEEZ, WHY ARE THERE STILL TWO CONTAINERS OF CRANBERRY SAUCE IN THE FRIDGE?

LOOK AT ALL THE CRANBERRY SAUCE WE HAVE LEFT

Well, thanks to Tama, I finally found something to do with that big hunk of leftover cranberry sauce after the last of the turkey is gone. Now if you’re health conscious and just back from a long warm-up run for tomorrow’s 26K marathon, you might wanna skip this one and pour yourself a big bowl of  mucilage.  On the other hand, if you want to be a little decadent, make a big pot of your favorite style of coffee and call over a few friends. . . a perfect way to start a rainy Sunday morning.  It is a good idea to kind of do this one backwards. . . grease up a 9” x 9” baking dish, 10” cast iron skillet or a regular pie pan.  See below for instructions for making the streusel topping and make it up now so it’s on hand when the coffee cake batter goes into the pan.  Got all that done?  Good.

 Now take out your trusty mixing bowl and a sauce pan.  Warm the pan on the stove on medium heat.  Add the butter and let it soften to a nearly melted state.  Remove from the heat and pour it off into the bowl.  Now cream in the sugar, allspice, cinnamon and vanilla.  Once it’s a gooey, homogenous mix, add the milk, egg and orange juice and stir again until blended and the egg is fully broken and integrated.  If you want to add the optional stuff, now is the time for that. You were a good person and avoided the canned cranberry sauce – therefore your sauce has chunks of whole berries which you will pick out and mix into your batter.

 Okay, nothing left to do now except add the flour, salt and baking powder.  Pick up your fork and mix everything into a smooth, stiff batter.  Scrape it into the baking dish and smooth it out evenly to cover the pan. Glop on a nice layer of cranberry sauce over the top and then sprinkle on the streusel topping and bake it in the oven at 375°  for 25 minutes or so… until a knife comes out clean.  Take it out of the oven and let it cool for about 10 minutes.  Slice and serve smothered in butter. . .

INGREDIENTS  for  CAKE

1 ½ cups all purpose flour              1 egg

¼ teaspoon salt                                ½ stick of butter

1 tablespoon baking powder           ¼  cup milk

¼ cup brown sugar                          ¼ cup orange juice

pinch of allspice                                 ½ teaspoon vanilla

pinch of cinnamon                            some cooked cranberries

Optional Choices .. . walnuts, raisin or currants, chopped dates, dried fruit.

INGREDIENTS  for  TOPPING

2 tablespoons flour                           6 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons soft butter                2 teaspoons cinnamon

LETS  WHACK  OUT  SOME  STREUSEL. . .

You need to use room temperature, soft, but not melted butter.  Put it in the bottom of a small bowl, add the dry ingredients and work it all together with the back of a fork.  What you want is an evenly mixed blend that is dotted with little tiny lumps of butter everywhere.  Sprinkle  evenly over the top of your pan-o-batter just before you bake.

ALLOCATION OF BIRD BITS OVER 6 DAYS...

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UNDER THE GENERAL HEADING OF SARCASM...

GET OFF MY BACK?

WE ARE NOTHING IF NOT CIVILIZED.

So, there it was… the great American holiday season looming large on the event horizon like a rampaging moose on steroids.  Half the good parking spaces in front of every grocery store have been commandeered for christmas tree concentration camps and isle end caps are filled with useless seasonal dreck.

Shoppers still allow you to cut ahead of them at the checkout because you have just a lime and a bag of Fritos while they have two carts loaded down with pre-packaged holiday cheer but, of course, these self same people would cut your granny’s throat with a rusty straight razor if you attempted to take up space in their lane on the drive home…

In spite of the fact that we are strangers in town, had nobody headed our way for Turkey Day and really didn’t have enough disposable income to head for Mexico, we thought, “What the hell… we can always eat leftovers.”  That decision having been made, off we went in search of a bird of reasonable dimensions. This proved to be a daunting task since apparently the fast food industry is not the sole proponent of super-sizing and even Trader Joe’s, that bastion of singles and childless couples, had nothing weighing in at less than a moderately scaled side-by-side refrigerator.  Not having an oven big enough to parallel park a VW beetle, it took much snooping, poking around and cursing to finally find an eleven pound weakling that I was sure I could successfully wrestle to the table.  After shopping my favorite vegetable stand and another grocery store, we had amassed a pile of calories suitable for the occasion.

Up early on the official day to bake fresh rolls while Tama whipped out her annual scratch-made pumpkin pie.  Then prepping the turkey by cramming it into a baking pan and sloshing it inside and out with good Kentucky bourbon (ah, the joys of owning a giant basting syringe…), massaging its breasts and thighs gently with butter before covering them with spices and thick sliced pepper bacon.  11 o’clock rolled around and it was time for Tom to do his Hansel & Gretel impersonation in the hot box.   Plenty of time now for making the sausage-apple stuffing with dates, currants, cranberries and walnuts and boiling up yam to make mashed yams baked with brown sugar and fresh ginger root (and starting to cook down the mole sauce for Saturday’s leftovers variation).  Baste the turkey with the pan bourbon. Baste the cook’s stomach with the leftover bourbon. Repeat as needed. Finally we boiled the taters, steamed the veggie medley and sliced up a small avocado, tomato & cilantro salad.  Picking up the pace now… mash the taters, pull the bird, make the pan gravy, plate the cranberry sauce, slice the turkey and throw it all at the table.

It being so very sunny and warm we elected to dine out on the deck.  It proved to be so bright and warm that we were forced to put up our patio umbrella to keep from sweltering as we enjoyed the fruits (and vegetables…) of our labors.

We wanted to eat rather early so we could watch the game… but then I realized a couple of things.  1.) I hate sports, and, 2.) We don’t have TV reception. Damn it anyway.

I guess we could have forced our presence on our next door neighbors, Bob & Pam, who own two - count ‘em, two – humongous, ‘leventy trillion inch plasma-screen TV’s.  However, I hadn’t seem Bob since last week when he whipped off his shirt in the driveway and asked me my opinion of the rash in his armpit and I didn’t know what his plans were vis-a-vis after dinner entertainment.

Therefore I elected instead to engage in the manly pastime of making Christmas ornaments.

Geez, I am such a fag.

OOOOOOHM...

WHAT DO YOU GET AFTER TWO DAYS OF RAIN IN SANTA CRUZ? MONDAY.

Well, it was an action packed, adventure week last couple of weeks… house full of guests and lots of eating and drinking.

Two weeks ago Thursday Lance popped in on his way home with his new doggie Roo (Rou? Roux? Rū? Rough… as in through?) Anyway you spell it he’s a dandy dog and a boon companion for Lance. Just an overnighter so we ordered Chinese food and yacked the night away.

Saturday and Sunday our friends Jodi and Alex did a quick run away from their busy, urban lifestyle in San Francisco. Tama was out of town so it fell to me to give them the 10¢ tour which, oddly enough, kept circling the dual concepts of beer and food. After the proper (rain drenched…) auto wander past the high points and tourist sights we had to stop (they are blog followers…) at Shadowbrook for the finest in central coast dining.  Soft-shell crab, wood fired pizza, some salad and beers. We caught the little tram car back to the parking lot and, almost immediately decided that we could still go for a little Mexican food (Jodi is currently eating for two, as it were…) Since they had to be back to work on Monday we figured this would be the best time for them to try Casa Rosita, my other top pick for eating… I mean, there is always room for one of those seafood enchiladas smothered in her white, Mexican curry sauce, washed down with some beers. At this point we decided we didn’t have enough room or interest to haul down to the Saturn Café for their truly decadent multi-chocolate dessert so we just waddled to the car and headed back to the ranch for an early night.

Thursday next Tama and I zipped up to San Joe and snagged the first born, Trent, from the areopuerto.  We got back home just in time to heat up a giant pot of homemade pośole and set places for Michelle and Lovely and the elder statesman, Pépe who had motored down on a road trip.  We put Trent in the guest room and the others hung their cooler at the campground half a mile away at New Brighten Beach. The campers showed up with doughnuts next morning so, with a belly full of sinkers and joe, we went off in search of the perfect antique/junk store scores. We saw some cute stuff, some hideously massive price stickers and a couple of take-me-homes and afterwards, since we were just killing time until the series game started at 4:00 and the sugar fix from the pastries was wearing thin, we fed the munchies by going to Casa Rosita for… wait for it now… seafood enchiladas with white sauce.

There were, of course, multiple options for viewing the game, including a bar in Soquel which has chosen to flaunt authority by asking everyone to smoke in the bar, congregated under a large sign which declares, ‘Absolutely No Smoking by Order of The Sheriff’. In spite of Lovely’s penchant for tobacco, we feared that the chimney-like atmosphere might occlude the view of a critical double play or such and so we chose to avail ourselves of the big screen TV at… wait for it now… Shadowbrook, which opened just at game time. Lovely got to see the first pitch (through the door of the bar as we entered…) we got primo seats and went through several cocktails and a variety of appetizers while we watch the Giants edge that much closer to the brass ring.

The Quincy contingent left Sunday morning late and Trent stayed with us through Thursday last and, as they say in cheap screenplays, a good time was had by all…