FOOD FRIDAY!

Neapolitan Pot Roast With Creamy Onion Gravy

The only word for this dish is luscious. The recipe is my adaptation from the one in a wonderful 1997 cookbook called In Nonna's Kitchen, by Carol Field. Field scoured rural Italy and collected recipes from the "grandmothers" (nonnas) and brought them together in this book. She says of this recipe: "This dish is real home cooking, something that you would never find in a restaurant. It was once the sauce used by poor people in Naples for Sundays and holidays before it was replaced by the now famous ragù." If that's progress, all I can say is, give me the old days.

Notes: you'll think there's no way you can eat all these onions, but trust me. What you're doing here is "sweating" them down to their component parts. The juice has no place to go but into the meat, which is tenderized and flavored by it. The solids are pulverized into a creamy consistency. The name of the dish is no accident. There's just no dairy in it. As for the cut of meat: I just use a standard boneless pot roast and it works fine.

2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
7 tablespoons (3 1/2 ounces) diced pancetta
3 pounds finest pot roast in one piece, such as point of the rump, or bottom round
Salt and pepper to taste

8 large (about 4 pounds) sweet white onions, finely sliced

2 to 3 carrots, chopped
1 small celery rib, finely chopped
1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh marjoram
1 cup beef broth
1/3 cup dry white or red wine
2 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 lb. wide pasta such as linguine or egg noodles, cooked al dente

Warm the olive oil and pancetta in a deep, heavy casserole or a 12-inch heavy sauté pan large enough to hold the meat and all the onions comfortably. Season meat and add to hot oil. Sear over high heat until it is well browned, 7 to 8 minutes per side. While meat is browning, combine broth, wine and tomatoes in a medium bowl and set aside. Once it is browned, remove the meat to a plate. Do not clean out pan. Lower heat and add the onions, carrots, celery, parsley, basil, and marjoram. Cover and cook over the lowest possible heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and limp but have taken on no color, at least 25 to 30 minutes. (The onions will cook down considerably.) Return browned meat to the pot, burying it completely in the onions. Add combined liquids, cover the pot and cook over the lowest possible heat another 2 ½ to 3 hours, until the onions are a thick mass and the meat is fork-tender. Remove from heat and allow to rest 10-15 minutes before serving.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Serve half of the sauce over the pasta and the rest over the meat.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Some expressions are just too useful to be discarded, never mind recent, transient degradations. And so I'll go ahead and use "last throes" to describe the current state of Old Man Winter in these parts. We're headed for a short spate of night time 20-degree temperatures over the next few days, but the living things around me seem to know it's OK to send out their tender youth, from the birds to the perennial bulbs to the trees. Our red maple out front is loaded with tiny leaves already, while its silver cousin in the back is dropping its red flower buds in profusion (as it drops everything else over the course of the year, from its helicopter-like seeds to its dead leaves). And the surest sign: my eyes are getting irritated and I'm stuffing up. There's pollen somewhere. Must be the silver maple.

The picture above is a view of part of our back yard. I took it and am posting it mainly as a stark reminder of the work ahead of us outside. Much as there is still plenty to do within these four walls, there is at least as much beyond them.

When we moved here in 1981, the back yard was an unbroken green expanse. We tilled the dirt and created that big garden you see on the left as soon as we got here. It proved to be sunny and prolific, producing tomatoes enough to put up for the winter, and, one extraordinary season, 15 pounds of raspberries. But living things grow, and nothing stays as it started. The tree on the other side of the fence, whose trunk you see just to the left of the utility pole, is a white oak, probably about 40 years old. When we arrived on the scene, it was a sapling, and we've enjoyed watching it mature over the years. But with its maturity has come an ever-encroaching blotting of the sunlight, to the point that now the garden is completely shaded. It gets no sun at all except at the extreme front edge, where the garden timbers are. We are bowing to the inevitable and plan to return that space to its previous green state. We'll keep the timbers there and the row of daylilies that grows behind them, and then create an outdoor "room" of lawn beyond, with a few chairs and a cocktail table. It will be a sitting space alternate to our deck, which is immediately out the back door and from which the picture was taken. No doubt it will look very nice and help the house "show" well. But we won't have that garden any more, and we'll miss it. I hope the narrow strip that begins to the right of the bird feeder and extends to the other property line will still work. That's where I've got my rhubarb and where I may move the raspberries.

Working with plants is something like having pets, at least to the extent that over time the plants get bigger and as they grow they must be either adapted to their environment or, worst case, "put down." We're facing that prospect with two lilacs we have in a side garden. Lilacs at their best are either tightly controlled in their growth, taking planned advantage of the suckers they produce, or are allowed to go rampant and become huge. We didn't know the former when we planted ours--all we were after were the pretty, fragrant flowers--and we haven't the space for the latter. So after this year's flowering season they will have to come out, having become just too ungainly. There are two arborvitae we intended as accent trees near our front porch that have not aged at all well. They've lost their shape. I tried pruning one and have now seen it will take several seasons for it to fill in again. So later in the spring I'll be going to a nursery for some advice on tall, compact, shade-tolerant evergreens (know of any?), and probably be dropping a pretty penny on two fully-grown trees.

But with all this work to anticipate, still, as I sit here and look out at the front yard, I'm pretty proud of the way the place looks, with its terraced beds of azaleas, and colorful flowers planted with their blooming time in mind so that something is almost always flowering. I've learned that some plants are not worth the work they require--hybrid roses, for example, are wholly engineered organisms that would not survive without constant human intervention--and that others repay you many times over for the care you give. In that category are peonies, a constant joy, with their big, puffy flowers and their wonderful scent.

Muck, here I come!

Clothes Make The Man?

To give you and idea of where my ideas are headed today, here's a picture of what I call my "shirt of many colors." It's not a print. Each of those squares is separate; they've all been sewn together into this incredible shirt. I saw it hanging in some store years ago and stopped dead in my tracks. I had to have it. It's very bulky and not actually suitable to wear as a regular shirt. I wear it as a light jacket.

I usually think of myself as a pretty plain person, without frills. Presentation is not my thing. For instance, we throw an occasional pull-out-all-the-stops dinner party, where I'll cook something really fancy and we'll use all the heirloom china and silverware. The table ends up looking as if set for a royal court, a work of art in itself. Since I'm the cook, guests assume I'm responsible for the decoration, too, and they must always be disabused. I'm not. The look is entirely Steve's doing. I have no eye nor original imagination for such a display. A recurring dream of mine is that I'm driving a car, on my way somewhere. The car, always and still, is an old VW Beetle, bouncing along the road cartoon-style. I'm the Beetle.

And yet you'll find me in getups like this shirt. In public. I guess clothes are different.

My parents had strict rules about clothes for me when I was in elementary school. Even then, a nice pair of bluejeans was acceptable and fairly common for boys, but not for me. No jeans allowed, only "hoods" wore jeans. And I longed to be able to kick my shoes off, sometimes pad around the classroom in my stocking feet like the cool kids did, but you could only do that in loafers. No loafers for me, either. My feet were "still forming" and needed the structure of shoes that tied. (Maybe that's why I can only wear such narrow, hard-to-find B-width shoes now.) One year my folks even had me wearing clip-on bow ties to school. Looking back, I can only shake my head in amazement that I suffered not a single black eye.

I love color. I don't really have a favorite; I like any color as long as it pops. Chinese red, cerulean blue, kelly green, any highly saturated member of the basic color wheel, or interesting mixture thereof. Again, when I was a kid, the combination of pink and black came into vogue for a while. This was something my mother and I could agree on. I got a snazzy short-sleeved pink dress shirt and a pair of black slacks. I loved that outfit.

West Africa is a wonderland for anyone who enjoys color. Skin tones there consort with gold, red, turquoise. In West African Muslim countries such as Senegal or Mali, women's hijab couldn't be more different from the imprisoning burkas worn in the Middle East. Heads are covered with high headdresses of brilliant color, sometimes accented with metallic gold thread, and bright skirts can billow in the breeze like designer parachutes. To stroll in some African cities is to be awash in a riot of color.

I, of course, delighted in all this when I lived in Africa and took it as a given that I could wear those colors, too. When I came home in 1972 I needed to replenish my wardrobe, so I loaded up on colors unusual even for that anything-goes era. Here's a memorable outfit: a pair of lime-green stretch bellbottoms, topped by a raspberry-colored shirt and a wide, brocade tie that combined the green and the red. On my feet were a pair of blond leather boots. I laugh out loud even as I write these words. I wore that outfit once. The boots stayed, as did the shirt. The pants went to the Salvation Army (from which they probably traveled to a used-clothing stall in Africa, where I'm sure they were snapped right up worn to great acclaim).

I may have had that brocade tie, but for many years I despised neckties and avoided them if I could. They are not only uncomfortable. To me they always represented the ultimate sellout to conformity, the suit-and-tie uniform all men were supposed to wear if they meant to be taken seriously in the corporate world. One of the many dispiriting things about the AAA was that a necktie was required for all men, whether they were meeting the public or not. One day I decided to break the rules. I put on a black turtleneck sweater, covered it with a blue flannel Pendleton shirt, and around my neck I put a small leather amulet from Ghana. (If anybody asked me, I'd say that was my "tie.") I wowed 'em, but my poor supervisor had no choice. She pulled me aside and, looking sheepish, said, "Ralph, you couldn't look sharper, but you have to wear a tie." My strike for men's liberation at the AAA went nowhere.

When I finally started working at Peace Corps headquarters, ties were at first an option, but when the corporate-minded Reaganites came in there was very distinct pressure on the men to start wearing ties every day. By then I had refined my strategy and was able to avoid the "uniform" look by wearing colored, non-dress shirts with ties that complemented the look of the shirt. This was something unique (for conservative DC, anyway) for a while, but soon it became common, to the point where dress shirts are now widely available in an array of bright colors. If we boomer men have done anything for the look of our gender, it's been to relax that old strict code of drabness and let some of the rainbow in.

Now, I guess I do wear a uniform of sorts. In the winter I wear jeans and T-shirts and in the summer it's shorts and T-shirts. I have a closet full of very cool clothes that I have virtually no more reason to wear. My stiff leather dress shoes accumulate dust. The occasional lunch with working friends in town gives me a chance to raid my closet and pull out some favorite shirt that hasn't seen the light of day in four years. I really should go through my closet and weed out the things that don't stand much chance of being worn again, and that day will come soon enough, when we start packing to move. But I know I'll be putting it off until the last possible minute. It'll be like tossing out beautiful old friends.

The Unavoidable

"All change is evil!" So intoned a funny co-worker in mock stentorian tones at any mandated new procedure or initiative in the world of Peace Corps recuiting. Just when she reached the point where she could do her work with her eyes closed, along would come some new wrinkle that would put her back on her toes and make her do things in a new way. Then she'd adapt, and soon she'd be putting the rest of us to shame with the perfection of her work.

I have to admit I'm of two minds about change. I chose the life I am living now, after sampling several other versions and deciding they weren't for me. Much as adventure and constant movement seemed attractive in the abstract, my basic nature forced me to conclude that what I wanted most was steadiness, security, roots. Once I attained that state of comfort, I discovered it's then less than a baby step to sheer stasis--not a lack of desire to change, but an actual inabilbity to do so, even when change clearly is what is needed. I think I've done pretty well, though, keeping that tendency at bay.

To me, the ideal is a state of constant evolution, organic change that simply arises out of life as it moves on. It gives you a chance to reconnoiter and then adapt, take on some new element that you absolutely need, but make it fit into your basic pattern. Of course, there are times when wrenching change does occur--disasters both natural and man-made, the sudden death of a loved one. As long as we ourselves survive those types of change, we have no choice but to adapt to them, painful as the process may be. But really, we have no choice in adapting to evolutionary change, either. The nice thing about that kind of change, though, is that we often adapt to it without giving it any thought.

We see ourselves in the mirror every day of our lives. Change is happening to us, but it's so gradual we become accustomed to what is essentially a new look without even being aware of it. We have to be shown pictures of ourselves taken years ago even to be made aware of the magnitude of the changes that have taken place. Even then, having acknowledged those changes, we still have a choice as to what to do about them. At 62, I can't deny that I look different from when I was 25. But I don't feel a bit different! If you ask me how old I think I am, I'll tell you 25, or certainly no more than 30. I can keep deluding myself because my health is still decent and I have been spared, mostly, the aches, pains, and other inconveniences that are supposed to be starting "at my age." Remaining childless has also contributed to my eternally youthful outlook. I've never taken on that ultimately authoritartian role of parent; there is no person I helped create and then watched age, there is an entire catalogue of responsibilities and life stages that I have never faced. My four neices, the first born when I was a teenager, have never called me "uncle," and now their kids don't, either. There is nothing in my life to set me apart as "older." I was always the kid in the family and in my mind, I still am.

I seem always to have been aware that we all age in different ways. When I was in my twenties I balked at the general tendency to lump all "old people" together, at giving them a slot, a stereotype. I was grateful to Paul Simon and Neil Young for addressing their seniors honestly and as individuals, and felt in them I had found fellow travelers. Now, being "older" myself, I bridle at words like "spry" and even the supposedly funny "geezer." If you know nothing about me but my age, you might call me both of those things. But if you do know me, or anyone else in my circle who are my age, those descriptives will never occur to you. (Of course, fitting into that generic slot does have its advantages. If you're dumb enough to give me a discount based solely on the calendar, I'll take it!)

Change? Yes, it's happened. Like it or not, it's the nature of life. My hope for us all is that it remains the gentle kind of change, evolutionary, and that when the more distressing kind befalls us, as it inevitably must, we will have the strength to absorb it and evolve on, gently.

Simple And Free

This warming time of the year always brings its own special memories. A certain bird song can put me back in the sandbox in Don Miller's back yard when we were little kids. If I smell last year's dried grass, not yet replaced by new growth, I am reminded of my Aunt Ruth's farm, which was on land not at all far from here but is now well past needing Uncle Jim's tractor. When I went to college in Kentucky, one of the most beautiful places you'll ever see in the springtime, I played hookey from school every first pretty day of the year. I would get in my car, open all the windows, and just drive. It took very little time to get out into the countryside and feel rebirth gently finding its way into me. The sound of the car radio would have been an unwelcome distractraction on those drives. I was completely content just bathing in the warm breezes, enjoying the fragrance of the newgrown bluegrass, and feeling totally at one with the gorgeousness I was part of. From where we live now, it takes longer to get out of the city. But on our drives to Delaware, once we cross the Chesapeake Bay and reach the farmland of the Eastern Shore, the same feelings return, and they are just as strong as they were in Kentucky.

Back in my early teens, before I won the "you have to go to church" argument with my parents, one of my favorite things to do was to walk the mile or so home from church on a pretty Sunday morning. I ambled, happy to be completely alone, savoring the experience of spring: the warmth, not yet DC-oppressive, the birdsong, the light breeze. You entered our street at the top of a hill and headed down towards our house, at the bottom. The hilltop gave a panoramic view of the street, a Rockwell painting come to life. All the colors were brilliant, the grass a shade of emerald but still neat, not yet needing to be mowed. The houses, regardless of their age, seemed to be in mint condition. Even at that young age I remember feeling lucky to be alive and thankful for the contentment.

Those memories of happiness springing from life's simplest gifts are easy to conjure but can be hard to re-create as we age. Adult life has its more sophisticated pleasures, to be sure. But learning of the joy to be found in the things life gives me free of charge every day was a valuable lesson indeed.

Is it springing?

It cannot be denied. Spring is on the way. The days are longer, the sun's at an appreciably higher angle, and people are going to the grocery store in shorts. (Not being totally nuts, I'm not one of them. I still have my jeans on. It's only in the 50s today, for heaven's sakes!) The globe is warming. Flowers break ground earlier, robins appear before you think it would be healthy for them to be this far north, and the beautiful mourning dove sings his doleful song to his mate. As much as I will regret this warming trend in August, I welcome the chance to open the house and get all the houseplants outside, not to mention my body. The long term forecast predicts highs in the 60s or upper 50s all week. Not only are the perennial bulbs sending their shoots to the sun; so are the weeds. This week I will go outside and dig up the spring weeds, clean the yard up a little bit. I might even drag out my shorts.

The warming of the weather also gets us thinking about our Delaware weekends, and that's an instant mood elevator. We work at our projects there, too, but it's fun work. The projects all go to enhance the good times there. Plus, there are things I can actually do, or at least help with.

Today I am displaced. Steve's still working in the den, where my big ol' chair is supposed to be located, but we are in upheaval mode as long as the den is being painted. I have no place to go but here while Steve paints. More spackling than we thought would be necessary had to be done yesterday, so we aren't progressing as far this weekend as we thought we would. I type and play with music while Steve's up on a ladder painting the ceiling. I asked if there was any way I could help, and he said there wasn't. So why do I still feel guilty? I wasn't even raised Catholic......

Yesterday's turkey dinner was all we hoped for, but you forget just how damn much food you're left with. Another whole turkey's worth of stuffing, more than half the 12 lb. turkey to be left-overed--chopped, sliced, some broken into bits for stock and soup sometime next winter. And when you do a meal like that right, there's plenty of good old butter, too. On the turkey, in the stuffing, on the veggies. As luscious as it all is, butter is still just fat, and it fills you up, especially if you're not used to such a heavy single dose.

Oh well. We all need a pig-out every now and then. What fun is being good all the time if you're never rewarded for it?

Self-Indulgent Ramblings

I'm cooking a turkey and trimmings dinner today, just for the two of us. It's something I do once every winter. Since we always seem to spend the traditional turkey days, Thanksgiving and Christmas, away from home, I never get a chance to pull out all the stops and do one of those big feasts. I decided the way to remedy that is to buy a small turkey any time during the year when they're cheap, freeze it, and then haul it out some cold, dead-of-winter day and smell up the house with it. One of my favorite things in the world is turkey stuffing, cooked in the bird, full of sausage, celery and onion. Steve's turkey dinner isn't complete without boiled buttered onions. I must have string beans. We'll forgo the yams and mashed potatoes--since the meal is just for the two of us and it's not really traditional, some good sense can prevail and we can be satisfied with only one starch, the stuffing, of which we will consume prodigious amounts.

I've got the turkey brining per Cooks Illustrated, and I'm boiling the giblets, such as they were in this bird (I only got the neck--a disappointment because I like poultry guts), for gravy. I follow my mother's plan: extract every last bit of flavor from the bird by simmering the giblets all day long with some onion and herbs. It gets the house smelling of turkey early and makes for a very rich gravy.

Steve's doing--what else? The walls. He's in the den now, smoothing down the last of the drywall bumps, preparing to prime. Tomorrow, colors, next weekend, trim, and the living room and dining room will be done, and NO MORE DRYWALL!!! Next will be the dining room. That's another big project, involving moving furniture, etc., but it seems manageable since at least we know what we are doing now.

Things are currently not looking good on the job front for Steve. Looked at one way, the situation could be called a slow-motion crumble. The government says they most likely will be awarding a new contract before the June 30 deadline. Whenever the contract is awarded, a 3-month clock will start ticking for Steve's job. He's doing everything possible to create a smooth transition from what he is doing now to something else within the same system, so that he won't find himself starting from scratch, vesting in some new place at the age of 59. But every positive step he tries to take is thwarted either by his company or by the state. He could take the radical step of simply retiring at the end of the current job, but that would drastically reduce our retirement income.

Couple Steve's job woes with the real estate market, and it could be that we are looking at a postponement of our plans to sell and move. If it comes to that, we will of course adjust, but the disappointment can't be minimized. We are ready for a change and have become emotionally invested in the current plan.

I can't afford depression over all this. Steve is prone to clinical depression; if we both get down then no good can possibly come of anything. One of us must keep a clear head. It's at times like this I thank my lucky stars for the fundamentally optimistic attitude I inherited from my mother (it would have been just as easy to have got my father's Norse pessimism). I must always remember John Lennon's wise words: "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." At least it's life we're dealing with. The alternative is much less attractive, don't you think?