Publius & Co.

Dead Pool!

I'm in. I've actually been in another dead pool for several years now, but this is the first time I'm taking part in Laurence's Dead Pool.

Thanks for reminding me about it, Jen!

*Eddie Albert, 4/22/1908, actor
*Brooke Astor, 3/30/1902, philanthropist
*Red Auerbach, 9/20/1917, Hall of Fame basketball
*Joe Barbera, 3/24/1911, Hanna &
John Paul II, 5/18/1920, Pope
*Gerald Ford, 7/14/1913, the President no one voted for
*E. Howard Hunt, 10/19/1918, Watergate conspirator
*Mitch Miller, 7/4/1911, Sing along!
Rosa Parks, 2/4/1913, civil rights figure
Les Paul, 6/9/1915, guitarist and guitar maker
William Rehnquist, 10/1/1924, Supreme Court Justice
Phil Rizzuto, 9/25/1917, Hall of Fame shortstop
David Rockefeller, 6/12/1915, COB & CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank
*Max Schmelling, 9/28/1905, German boxer, famous for his fight against Joe Louis
*Simon Wiesenthal, 12/31/1908, Nazi hunter

Those marked with an * are my picks for my other dead pool. Not included above is my wildcard pick: Dan Snyder, smarmy owner of the Washington Redskins and probable Most Hated Man in Washington.

Merry Christmas to all!

From 1998...and that was the first cover I saw with Alfred E. Newman dressed as Santa Claus.

Merry Christmas, Alfred!

For over thirty years, I've been singing O Little Town of Bethlehem with the wrong lyrics...since December 1970, apparently. From MAD Magazine, Issue 140, January 1971:

The Carnival of the Recipes #18

The Eighteenth Carnival of the Recipes is alive and well and at Mountaineer Musings this week. The latest newbie to enter a recipe (two, actually!) is my favorite squeeze, the gf, who has entered her recipes for beigli and chrusciki.

Every year, about Christmas time, she starts getting more hits for people looking for recipes for both of those; she and her mother will be cranking these out starting tomorrow! I highly recommend you try them sometime.

If I'm not mistaken, she also plans to submit these recipes to the Smithsonian's American Cookbook Project, which sounds like it could be one of the coolest ideas of all time. I browsed the Project cookbook briefly, and ya wanna know something?

This could be more important than the Human Genome Project. After all, I eat a lot more than I do...uhhh...something...to my genes.

Dang! It's too late to put it on my Christmas list!

Honestly, I can't think of a single reason why I don't need this other than it's more than $700 and there are cheaper ways to burn holes in plastic cups.

Specially for Ted

It's from issue# 165, March 1974:

They get It gets bigger!

If I had Mookie's email, I'd send her this link so she'd know what to get her father for Christmas. Get the one with the toilet paper roll, Mookie!

I've won an award!

Jennifer has awarded me her Longevity Award, for being the longest regular reader of Jennifer's History and Stuff who still reads and comments regularly.

Neat!

I am truly flattered. Kinda makes me want to remember what my first comment was.

Uhh, station. Sure.

For $19.99 at the Discovery Channel Store...it's a Massage Station!

Click for a larger version.

Yeah, I know you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking: You may yet come to regret my camera phone.

Welcome!

Welcome to all those Googling any combination of the following words: ebay, secret, mince, pie, clue(s), ingredient(s).

May I ask just what it is you're looking for and if you're finding it here? I'm really curious!

Carnival of the Recipes

The Seventeenth Carnival of the Recipes is up at Random Thoughts from Marybeth. It includes two recipes from me: Beef Medallions in a Mustard-Cream Sauce (For Two) which I first posted waaay back in May, and my Award-Winning (it should be, dammit!) 3-part series, "Putting the 'Meat' back in 'Mince Meat'" which you should've known I'd be shouting about, somewhere.

It also includes a bunch of other recipes, including lots of recipes that include chocolate! I shall try some out sometime!

Enjoy, all!

So which excuse did Victor use?

Remember my challenge from a few days ago? Guess which excuse I actually used to keep from going to work for a day?

No one took a guess, so I guess no one cares. If you were dying of suspense, too bad. I'm takin' my ball and my bat an' I'm goin' home.

Well, shoot.

Having taken last week off for vacation, I completely forgot today was the annual Bake Sale for the United Way. I usually contribute something, but, as I said, I forgot. Had I remembered, I could've tried out more mince pie recipes!

OTOH, I just had a nice piece of apple spice cake, and I've got a small loaf of vanilla poppyseed bread to knosh on throughout the day.

"I've got a vitamin D deficiency"

The Sunday-only JOBS section of today's Washington POST has a short list of "Unusual excuses for missing work that employees have given managers" (no link available). I read the link, laughed at a few, and noticed one that I used.

It was true, dammit!

Here's the list. Can you guess which one was mine? Leave your guess in the comments; answer sometime on Tuesday.

• I was arrested as a result of mistaken identity.
  
• I forgot to come back to work after lunch.
  
• I hurt myself bowling.
  
• I was spit on by a venomous snake.
  
• A hitman was looking for me.
  
• I eloped.
  
• I had to be there for my husband's grand jury trial.
  
• I was sprayed by a skunk.
  

BTW, the title was used by a friend of mine one day. I was out during lunch on a really nice day when Ron pedaled up to me, said hello, and in answer to my question Do you keep a bike in your office? told me no, he called in with a vitamin D deficiency.

Oooh, look! A new meme!

Via Ted, the Llama Butchers, and Pep & Liz of Truly Bad Films comes this highlight-the-ones-you've-seen-and-add-a-couple-at-the-end thingy.

Cool. I've moved it into the extended entry...

1 This Is Spinal Tap Anyone who hasn't seen this but keeps meaning "to get around to it" probably has a sucky fantasy football team or spends lots of time chewing his cud or something.
2 The Rocky Horror Picture Show
3 Freaks
4 Harold And Maude
5 Pink Flamingos More times than I want to admit to. It's part of my John Waters Box Set--the original one, without Pecker.
6 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
7 Repo Man
8 Scarface
9 Blade Runner
10 The Shawshank Redemption
11 Five Deadly Venoms
12 Plan 9 From Outer Space Many, many times!
13 Brazil
14 Eraserhead as part of a Black Market Baby/Bad Brains/The Stranglers concert at the old Ontario Theater in DC, many years ago...
15 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
16 The Warriors
17 Dazed And Confused
18 Hard-Boiled
19 Evil Dead II
20 The Mack
21 Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
22 Un Chien Andalou
23 Akira
24 The Toxic Avenger
25 Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory
26 Stranger Than Paradise
27 Dawn Of The Dead I assume they mean the original version. Haven't seen the remake; probably never will.
28 The Wiz
29 Clerks
30 The Harder They Come
31 Slap Shot Just the other night, in fact.
32 Re-Animator
33 Grey Gardens
34 The Big Lebowski
35 Withnail and I
36 Showgirls
37 A Bucket Of Bood
38 They Live
39 The Best Of Everything
40 Barbarella
41 Heathers
42 Rushmore
43 The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension
44 Love Streams
45 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
46 Aguirre, The Wrath of God
47 Walking And Talking Nicole Holofcener
48 The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years
49 Friday
50 Faces of Death, Vol. 1
51 Monty Python and the Holy Grail
52 A Clockwork Orange
53 Mommie Dearest
54 The Princess Bride
55 Swingers
56 UHF
57 Valley of the Dolls
58 Fight Club
59 Dead Alive (aka Braindead)
60 Better Off Dead
61 Donnie Darko

62 The Adventures Of Baron Von Munchausen
63 Matinee
64 Office Space
65 Red Dawn
66 Idle Hands
67 My Favorite Year
68 King Ralph
69 Always

And my three, which I've seen (duh) and own:
70 Glen or Glenda
71 Reefer Madness
72 Mitchell -- Yes, Virginia, there is a Joe Don Baker/Mitchell cult out there. It's only got about a dozen members in it, but it takes only three people to be a movement...just like the song says...

Putting the "meat" back in "mince meat" III: Other Recipes

I've just finished another piece of pie, and it seems the flavors are a little more pronounced, which is not a bad thing. I'm glad the pie is holding up, because I now have breakfast for the weekend with the remaining two pieces (no more for the gf. If it weren't for a residual love of cheeseburgers she'd be vegetarian).

As the gf and I were finishing up dinner (a vegetable minestrone, and it kicked ass), she asked What do the new cookbooks say about mincemeat? and I answered, honestly, that I didn't know. I mean, surely over the 90+ years between the first and thirteenth editions of Fannie Merritt Farmer's cookbook, mince pies lost the meat. Right?

Well, in a word, no. In fact, the recipes in our three most recent editions (originally published in 1959, 1979, and 1990) all reprint a variation on Miss Farmer's recipe that began 4 lbs lean beef, 2 lbs beef suet...

There are some minor differences: Baldwin apples are not specified in the later editions (in fact, in the 1896 edition, there is no quantity listed for the apples), quinces (just three) are eliminated, and 2 grated nutmegs has been replaced with 1 teaspoon of nutmeg. Additionally, sugar has transmogrified into brown suger, and allspice (1 teaspoon) makes an appearance as an ingredient in the 1959 edition (however, allspice is not present in the 1930 edition).

I'm sorry to say the Quick Mincemeat recipe I used disappeared somewhere between 1930 and 1959...and if I want to know when, there's always eBay.

The two latest editions of Fannie Farmer also confirm what I suspected about the quantities: Mincemeat developed as a way of preserving meat without salting or smoking it. Traditionally, the minced beef and suet are combined with fruits, spices, and spirits, packed in jars, and sealed with wax. The new edition also echoes Marion Harland from waaay back in 1903: Make it well ahead of time: it keeps indefinitely, mellows with age, and is grand to have on hand as the holiday season approaches.

However, the author of the 12th and 13th editions, Marion Cunningham, misinterprets Miss Farmer when she writes In the first edition Fannie Farmer recommended puff paste for special Thanksgiving or Christmas mincemeat pies. This is not quite correct: Miss Farmer wrote For Thanksgiving and Christmas pies, Puff Paste is often used for rims and upper crusts. Miss Farmer recognized the extreme flakiness and lightness of puff paste would not hold up as a bottom crust, and while there's nothing wrong with a light and flaky pie crust, there is such a thing as too light and flaky. Think balsa wood instead of pine and you'll know what I mean...but perhaps I'm being too hard on Miss Cunningham.

This leads me to that other lady of Classical American Cookery, Betty Crocker. I'm fortunate the gf has a reprint of the 1950 version of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book for this, because I needed the laugh. It says, in a nutshell Fill pastry-lined pie pan (see pp. 298-301) with mincemeat, followed by quantities for an 8-inch and a 9-inch pice pan. Betty Crocker, to her credit, offers this valuable tip: To make mincemeat extra fruity, mix in a little chopped apple.

Note there's no mention of how to make the mincemeat; I assume they left out the part about Go to the store and buy a jar or perhaps Go dig a crock of mince out of your grandmother's basement, but it's possible I'm being too hard on poor Betty Crocker, too...

But then again, that's not a recipe, those are assembly instructions! The instructions continue with a reminder to bake with a top crust at 425 degrees F until nicely browned, but that's basically the "recipe" from Betty Crocker.

The gf also has two copies of The Joy of Cooking which I admit I've never flipped thru, much less used or referred to. Her grandmother's copy (which has a copyright date of 1952 in it, along with various recipes clipped from newspapers in the 70's) has a recipe in it remarkably similar to Fannie Farmer's 4 lbs lean beef, 2 lbs beef suet recipe. It does specify a measure for the Baldwin apples: 1 peck peeled, cored, and sliced. It also includes citrus flavorings (orange peel and lemon peel & juice) along with sour cherries with juice, and nut meats.

The newest Joy of Cooking (copyright 1997) includes a brief history of mince pies:

Mince pie dates back to medieval English baking and came to America with the first settlers. Until the late nineteenth century, Americans considered it the choicest of all pies--an obligatory dessert at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Originally, the central ingredient was minced or finely chopped meat, usually beef but sometimes veal or venison, and in our grandmother's day meatless mince pies were still the exception rather than the norm.

And thus we have our first meatless mince pie in a major cookbook.

This recipe is, basically, a meatless version of the the Joy of Cooking pie from 1952, with nuts and citrus flavorings...and, at long last, it's portioned for only one pie.

I think I can safely say, without irony or condescension, it's about time.

I hope, gentle reader, you've enjoyed this discussion of mince pies. I confess I've learned more than I thought I would about mince pies, and you wanna know what's kinda funny about this? I really can't wait to make another one sometime...maybe the meatless Joy of Cooking version, just because of the citrus flavorings.

OTOH, I've now got to put all of these furschluginner cookbooks back on the shelves.

Putting the "meat" back in "mince meat" II: The Tasting

I've just returned from a delightful 2 hours with the gf's father's aunt. Dunno what that makes her in relation to the gf, so I'll just call her Auntie M.

(Get it? GET IT? Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all the week!)

As it is, that's her real initial. It's funny the way Stupid Humor sometimes just works like that. Anyway, the gf called up Aunti M last night and told her about me making the pie and would she like some? Auntie M, being in her 80's and all, responded Whatever possesed him?, which I heard clear as a bell because I had my ear pressed up against the phone. Why Auntie M didn't hear my near-hysterical laughter is a mystery to me. I'm sure they heard it in Baltimore.

She said she'd love some, and anytime after 9AM today would be fine. I decided to do it around lunchtime so that she--we--could have dessert together.

I called her at 11:30 to let her know I was on my way, and she told me the timing was perfect because she was just finishing up her lunch. When I arrived at her managed care facility/apartments, I could tell she was excited because when she buzzed me in, she didn't stay on the intercom long enough to tell me which apartment was hers.

Fortunately, the nice people in the office knew, and I was off to the third floor, and Auntie M was waiting for me in her wheelchair, door cracked, worried why I was a bit late. I told her it was because of the elevators, which it was. There's only one elevator and it went all the way up before it came back down, and they're super-slow when they're running. She had no trouble believing me.

Her first question to me was What possesed you to make a mince pie? and I told her--I was curious about what meat you'd put in pie, blah, blah. Go back and read this morning's post again if you've forgotten already. She told me she was excited and that her mother made a mince pie only once before and it was heavenly.

Dang, I thought to myself, thought I. Not only was I competing against her mother's mince pie, I was competing against her mother's heavenly mince pie. Tough competition, you bet.

I also brought over the old cookbooks, and I showed her the Fannie Farmer recipe I used, as well as the one that called for four pounds of beef, two pounds of suet, three pounds of sugar...which she thought was hilarious.

Time was a-wasting. I cut the pie and took a few pictures:

Click for a bigger version

Suffice it to say, Auntie M loved it--she said she could die happy. I told her I'm sure she could die happy about a lot of things; the gf told me I should've said I hoped she didn't die happy anytime soon (which I don't, but I just didn't think of that). I don't think she was just saying it, because she ate all of it (abandoning a fork to pick it up and eat it like...well, like me), and also was delighted when I offered to leave her some pieces for later. She didn't want the whole pie, explaining she doesn't have much of an appetite these days, a fact others have mentioned before.

Me? I thought it wasn't bad at all. It was a little dry, I felt, and that was probably due more to it being refrigerated overnight rather than overcooking it a bit. There was absolutely no way one would be able to tell by the texture there was beef in it. The flavor was much more subtle than the sharp/tart mince pies my stepmother makes, which might be attributed more to my having put in too much beef broth (rather than stock). I still might bump up the spices should I make another one--maybe a whole quarter teaspoon of mace rather than 1/8 of a teaspoon, and a pinch more of the others. But I could tell the spices were the same as in my stepmother's mince meat pies.

Heh. I've made it once, and already I'm thinking of ways to change it. But hey, it's just a recipe, and I've seen damn few recipes that are chisled in stone.

And Auntie M? She's a great lady, who loves to talk and tell stories about everything. One of the cookbooks I brought over had a Brentano's sticker inside, and she told me it was a great old bookstore that was on F Street, between 13th and 14th Street, and she thought Brentano's had disappeared. I told her it had, but fairly recently, because there was one in Lakeforest Mall in the early 80's. We talked--or rather, she talked and I listened, about all kinds of stuff. Artwork in the buildings she worked at downtown, meals she had when she was younger, household tips that were in the cookbooks, biscuits, books...it really was delightful. Next time I bake a pie and take some over to her, I should take a tape recorder with me.

Putting the "meat" back in "mince meat"

I'd never had a mince meat pie until I was in my teens, when my stepmother served one for Thanksgiving. Of course, we (that being me, my brother, and my sister) asked if there was any meat in it. We were assured there was not, much to our relief. Meat in a sweet pie like that would be gross.

Fast forward about thirty years, to just last week, and when it came time for Thanksgiving dessert, I was given a choice between pumpkin pie or mince meat pie. I chose the mince meat pie (no whipped cream--or Cool Whip, in my stepmother's case), satisfied there would be no meat in the pie to gross me out.

A day or two later, the gf mentioned she had two pieces of pumpkin pie left over and I asked if I could have one, saying I hadn't had any for Thanksgiving. She asked me what I had, and I told her, and that brought forth a Thanksgiving story from her: Her father's aunt (who is in her eighties) mentioned her mother would make mince meat pie with meat in it.

Gross.

Then intrigue. My stepmother's pie is kind of a sharp tart pie, and I wondered what meat in it would taste like. Heck, I wondered what kind of meat would be used, would the spices be different...and when I wonder about food, there's only one Authority I trust above all others: Fannie Farmer. Even if she's been dead for nearly 90 years, Fannie Merritt Farmer is my go-to girl for all things culinary.

What makes Fannie Farmer the authority for me is the simple fact she taught so many mothers how to cook, either at Miss Farmer's School of Cookery (a school she established to teach housewives how to cook) or thru her books. Look at it this way: Miss Farmer might well have been the authority your mother turned to for questions culinary.

The gf and I have five different versions of Fannie Farmer's cookbook between the two of us. Both of my copies were Christmas gifts: A reproduction of her first Boston Cooking School Cookbook, first published in 1896, and the 12th edition, published in 1979.

The gf has her paternal grandmother's Boston Cooking School Cookbook, the New Edition, Completely Revised, printed in 1930 (as far as I can determine, the 1930 edition was either the fourth or fifth edition), and her maternal grandmother's 11th edition, copyrighted in 1959 and reprinted in 1965 (my mother also had a copy of this edition, but I've no idea where it is). My gf also has the latest edition, the thirteenth, originally printed in 1990 and bought via amazon.com in 2002.

For everyone else, bartleby.com has reprinted the 1918 edition (which I believe is the second revision of the original, and therefore the third edition) online, in its entirety.

(Fannie Farmer is also a fun history lesson where American cooking is concerned.)

So me and the gf broke out the various editions and damned if the recipes for Mince Pies didn't call for beef: Four pounds of it, as well as two pounds of suet, in addition to the raisins and apples and spices you'd expect in what to me had been, up to that point, a type of fruit pie. I also found out it's called, simply, a mince pie.

My first thought was Just how freakin' big are these pies, anyway? A different cookbook, Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book (1903) gave me a clue to the answer:

When all is well mixed, stir in a quart of sherry and a pint of the best brandy. Mix thoroughly and pack down in a stone crock...Mince-meat should be prepared several weeks before it is needed, that it may "ripen" and become mellow.

In other words, it was intended to be made in large quantities then stored indefinitely. Make it in early or mid-October and you've got mince pies for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So I made one. I used a recipe from the 1930 edition that was called "Quick Mincemeat" and was portioned for only one pie. I confess I bought the crust.

1 cup chopped apple
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup butter
1 Tablespoon molasses
1 Tablespoon boiled cider
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powedered cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (the reciped called for 1/2 grated nutmeg, but I couldn't find whole nutmegs)
1/8 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon salt (I used a couple of shakes because of the next ingredient)
stock to moisten (I used a couple of cooking spoonfuls of canned beef broth and cut back on the salt--that might have been too much)
1 cup chopped cook meat (I cooked ground beef, measured it out, then chopped it up very fine)
2 Tablespoons fruit jelly (or blueberry preserves)
Mix all of the ingredients except for the meat and jelly together in a saucepan; simmer for one hour. Add meat and jelly and cook for an additional fifteen minutes.

I then put the filling into an eight-inch pie pan (crust on the top and bottom) and baked it for 36 minutes at about 360 degrees F. Again, that might have been a bit too long. At thirty minutes the crust was not quite golden brown; at 36 minutes it was just short of starting to burn.

The gf called up her father's aunt, who was actually excited about a mince meat pie, even if she did ask, "Whatever possesed him to do that?" I'm heading over to her place to share some pie with her and have my ears talked off.

I'll let you know how it came out later.

Four of our five editions of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. Clockwise from top left they are a reproduction of the 1896 edition, 1930 fourth or fifth edition, 1959 11th edition (reprinted in 1965), and 1979 12th edition.