Though not necessarily in a good way.
This past Saturday I attended the funeral for the mother of my friends Travis and Gwen. She was only 48 years old and succumbed to a brain aneurysm. The only comfort that can be found, I think, is that she was a life-long sufferer of muscular dystrophy, and her death was blessedly quick.
Today, I attended the funeral for my friend Nancy's mother. Several years ago, she overcame a battle with ovarian cancer. Turns out it had metastasised and they never knew it. A few weeks ago she was taken to the ER with severe abdominal pain. She was put on a respirator, and they performed a CAT scan which revealed a mass. Thankfully, she was transferred out of the local butcher shop that is out hospital into Cooper University Hospital in Camden (which must be good because local girl Kelly Ripa does ads for it). It was there that they determined the mass was a tumor on her abdominal aorta, and it was restricting blood flow to all of her major organs. There was nothing they could do for her.
In the span of a week, three of my friends lost their mothers. If you are fortunate enough to still have your mother, than you have no idea at ALL what it's like. Imagine the worst possible emotional pain, double it, then triple it and punch yourself in the nuts, and you've only got a fraction of what it's like. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about my mother in some way, shape or form, and miss her terribly. Sometimes I find myself looking at older adults -- those in their 40s, 50s, etc. -- out to dinner with their mother, and I feel this overwhelming jealousy towards them. Why should they still have THEIR mother, and I lost MINE when I was only 26? Attending these two funerals, especially so close together, really brought back all the pain of losing MY mother, particularly since these were the first funeral Masses I've attended since Mom's Mass in December of '04.
Moving on to brighter topics concerning the past week or so, if I were any more guinea I would have had cannoli flying out of my ass. This has been one full-bleed dago week for me.
Friday I brought over a bunch of tomatoes picked from my grandfather's garden to the home of my mechanic and friend, a 74-year-old sweetheart of a man who has been servicing our vehicles since my great-grandfather owned our farm. Together (and by together I mean that I was supposed to go to his house Saturday afternoon but he decided to do all of the work 15 minutes after I left on Friday) we cut, boiled, crushed and boiled the tomatoes, then reboiled them into tomato sauce and canned 32 quarts of it.
Sunday I stopped at my cousin Joe's farm and got a box of pickling cucumbers, and both Sunday night and Monday night I turned them into 23 pints of bread and butter pickles using my mom's recipe.
Tuesday was the coup de grace. That morning my father and I drew off 36 gallons of juice from grapes we had crushed last Wednesday, mixed it with sugar, filtered it and poured it into demijohns. In about three or four months we should have really good Concord wine from it (to go with the 35 gallons of blueberry wine and the 15 gallons of peach wine already fermenting).
That evening I made chicken parm for dinner. And I don't mean some store-bought bullshit, either, with pre-made sauce or any crap like that. I had gotten two quarts of tomato sauce from Old Man Sparacino -- he's 89, enfeebled and delightfully senile, but he's the only person around who makes the dividers for our blueberry crates so we take his eccentricities with a grain of salt, and he may be crazier than a shithouse rat but, God bless him, the old fuck knows how to can tomatoes -- so I put 'em in a pot to reduce some of the water out of them. I chopped up an onion and about six cloves of garlic, then fried 'em with red pepper flakes and a dash of Old Bay, drained off the oil, and added them to the gravy. (This is the only time I'm going to say this -- if you make ti at home, it's gravy. If you have it at a restaurant, it's sauce. I don't care what the culinary definition is, that's my family's definition and it's good enough for me.) When Sparacino canned the tomatoes he added fresh basil to them, so I was good on that front, but I added parsley, a touch of oregano, a LOT of salt, some black pepper, onion powder and garlic powder (because the fresh stuff only goes so far, flavor-wise), and an Italian seasoning mix that I bought from this little old lady in South Philly's Italian Market. After about an hour of boiling (the tomatoes, sadly, were just a titch too watery), I added some sweet red wine (I hate adding regular sugar, so this covered that front, and also gave the added bonus of a slightly grapey flavor) and a can of chicken stock. I let that sit for another half-hour, then started to boil the water for the fettuccini.
On to the chicken. I had a pound or so of boneless chicken breasts, and I didn't really want to use the Italian seasoned breadcrumbs I had in my pantry, so I got a little creative. I took out the panko breadcrumbs I had from another meal, mixed them with garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, grated Romano cheese and grated Parmiaggiano Reggiano cheese. Boom -- Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs. I fried up the breasts -- whcih were just the right thickness for cutlets -- blotted off the oil with paper towels, and put 'em on a cookie sheet. I took some of the gravy from the stove and slathered it on the chicken, sprinkled Romano cheese on top of that, then coated each cutlet with copious amounts of mozzarella (which my family has always pronouncced as "mootzarell") and popped the whole thing in the oven at 350° for 20 minutes.
Right when the water for the macaroni came to a boil, I added a little bit of olive oil (to keep it from sticking) and salt, then dropped in the fettuccini. I took three or four heaping spoonfuls of the Romano, added it to the gravy, and waited.
Holy fucking wow, was it some tasty goodness. The whole thing, start to finish, was only about two and a half hours, and most of that time was sucked up just waiting for the tomatoes to reduce to a decent thickness. Actual time standing in the kitchen maybe only amounted to a half hour or forty minutes.
Granted, I don't normally devote that much time to cooking, but every now again I like to rise above my Spaghetti-Os and prove to myself that I can still find my way around my kitchen. And Christ, does it pay off.
This past Saturday I attended the funeral for the mother of my friends Travis and Gwen. She was only 48 years old and succumbed to a brain aneurysm. The only comfort that can be found, I think, is that she was a life-long sufferer of muscular dystrophy, and her death was blessedly quick.
Today, I attended the funeral for my friend Nancy's mother. Several years ago, she overcame a battle with ovarian cancer. Turns out it had metastasised and they never knew it. A few weeks ago she was taken to the ER with severe abdominal pain. She was put on a respirator, and they performed a CAT scan which revealed a mass. Thankfully, she was transferred out of the local butcher shop that is out hospital into Cooper University Hospital in Camden (which must be good because local girl Kelly Ripa does ads for it). It was there that they determined the mass was a tumor on her abdominal aorta, and it was restricting blood flow to all of her major organs. There was nothing they could do for her.
In the span of a week, three of my friends lost their mothers. If you are fortunate enough to still have your mother, than you have no idea at ALL what it's like. Imagine the worst possible emotional pain, double it, then triple it and punch yourself in the nuts, and you've only got a fraction of what it's like. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about my mother in some way, shape or form, and miss her terribly. Sometimes I find myself looking at older adults -- those in their 40s, 50s, etc. -- out to dinner with their mother, and I feel this overwhelming jealousy towards them. Why should they still have THEIR mother, and I lost MINE when I was only 26? Attending these two funerals, especially so close together, really brought back all the pain of losing MY mother, particularly since these were the first funeral Masses I've attended since Mom's Mass in December of '04.
Moving on to brighter topics concerning the past week or so, if I were any more guinea I would have had cannoli flying out of my ass. This has been one full-bleed dago week for me.
Friday I brought over a bunch of tomatoes picked from my grandfather's garden to the home of my mechanic and friend, a 74-year-old sweetheart of a man who has been servicing our vehicles since my great-grandfather owned our farm. Together (and by together I mean that I was supposed to go to his house Saturday afternoon but he decided to do all of the work 15 minutes after I left on Friday) we cut, boiled, crushed and boiled the tomatoes, then reboiled them into tomato sauce and canned 32 quarts of it.
Sunday I stopped at my cousin Joe's farm and got a box of pickling cucumbers, and both Sunday night and Monday night I turned them into 23 pints of bread and butter pickles using my mom's recipe.
Tuesday was the coup de grace. That morning my father and I drew off 36 gallons of juice from grapes we had crushed last Wednesday, mixed it with sugar, filtered it and poured it into demijohns. In about three or four months we should have really good Concord wine from it (to go with the 35 gallons of blueberry wine and the 15 gallons of peach wine already fermenting).
That evening I made chicken parm for dinner. And I don't mean some store-bought bullshit, either, with pre-made sauce or any crap like that. I had gotten two quarts of tomato sauce from Old Man Sparacino -- he's 89, enfeebled and delightfully senile, but he's the only person around who makes the dividers for our blueberry crates so we take his eccentricities with a grain of salt, and he may be crazier than a shithouse rat but, God bless him, the old fuck knows how to can tomatoes -- so I put 'em in a pot to reduce some of the water out of them. I chopped up an onion and about six cloves of garlic, then fried 'em with red pepper flakes and a dash of Old Bay, drained off the oil, and added them to the gravy. (This is the only time I'm going to say this -- if you make ti at home, it's gravy. If you have it at a restaurant, it's sauce. I don't care what the culinary definition is, that's my family's definition and it's good enough for me.) When Sparacino canned the tomatoes he added fresh basil to them, so I was good on that front, but I added parsley, a touch of oregano, a LOT of salt, some black pepper, onion powder and garlic powder (because the fresh stuff only goes so far, flavor-wise), and an Italian seasoning mix that I bought from this little old lady in South Philly's Italian Market. After about an hour of boiling (the tomatoes, sadly, were just a titch too watery), I added some sweet red wine (I hate adding regular sugar, so this covered that front, and also gave the added bonus of a slightly grapey flavor) and a can of chicken stock. I let that sit for another half-hour, then started to boil the water for the fettuccini.
On to the chicken. I had a pound or so of boneless chicken breasts, and I didn't really want to use the Italian seasoned breadcrumbs I had in my pantry, so I got a little creative. I took out the panko breadcrumbs I had from another meal, mixed them with garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, grated Romano cheese and grated Parmiaggiano Reggiano cheese. Boom -- Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs. I fried up the breasts -- whcih were just the right thickness for cutlets -- blotted off the oil with paper towels, and put 'em on a cookie sheet. I took some of the gravy from the stove and slathered it on the chicken, sprinkled Romano cheese on top of that, then coated each cutlet with copious amounts of mozzarella (which my family has always pronouncced as "mootzarell") and popped the whole thing in the oven at 350° for 20 minutes.
Right when the water for the macaroni came to a boil, I added a little bit of olive oil (to keep it from sticking) and salt, then dropped in the fettuccini. I took three or four heaping spoonfuls of the Romano, added it to the gravy, and waited.
Holy fucking wow, was it some tasty goodness. The whole thing, start to finish, was only about two and a half hours, and most of that time was sucked up just waiting for the tomatoes to reduce to a decent thickness. Actual time standing in the kitchen maybe only amounted to a half hour or forty minutes.
Granted, I don't normally devote that much time to cooking, but every now again I like to rise above my Spaghetti-Os and prove to myself that I can still find my way around my kitchen. And Christ, does it pay off.
meal-0 would fuck you for that chicken. Sweetly, lovingly. Lots of eye-contact.
ReplyDeleteGah. I may never make that chicken again...
ReplyDeleteNow this sounds like some good clean Wop Dego fun!!!!
ReplyDeletelook on the bright side. I 'lost' my mother when I was 14. Sure, she's still alive, but with the relationship we have, she might as well be dead. At least you got 26 good years.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDelete