Text 3307, 68 rader
Skriven 2013-08-09 18:02:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: music week derailed 977
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So I went off to my friend Helen's, where I was to get the
guest bedroom and come up now and again to participate in
extravagant meals and lots of string quartets. Her daughter,
a violist by training, has just come back to town to start a
graduate program in Contemporary Improv (started by my friend
Gunther almost half a century ago) at the Conservatory: she
has been off in Chicago for the last few years as a music
director for Second City and has managed to cram as many cool
experiences into that time as I had from a forty-year career.
A lot of fun to hang around with. Unfortunately, she has a
boyfriend. Fortunately, she is in the process of dumping him.
Unfortunately, I am old enough to be her grandfather. Easily.

Anyhow, this is a pleasant enough menage, augmented by the
daddy and a humongous cat who is being catsat because the
other daughter was off doing something in San Diego; and we
actually managed to squeeze in a quartet session, fairly
successful, with old friends, but afterward, we noticed that
Helen was picking at her food, not like her, as she normally
likes to eat just as we all do; and this happened the next day
as well, when she became queasy after just a little bagel and
lox sandwich. Day 3, she drove herself to the doctor's and
then the hospital, where after all sorts of tests it was
determined that she had acute appendicitis, so they put her
in the ER, where she waited from early afternoon until after
midnight, that's what emergencies are all about. Meanwhile, I
had places to go, and as she was going to be well taken care
of with a husband and daughter nearby, I went off for the day
according to the original plan, report to follow.

When I came back to the house close to midnight, word was they
were just prepping her for surgery, which happened at 1. No
complications, and she is expected back home this evening.

Before this all came down, Helen had made a pot of chili (with
beansand turkey, but okay if you put lots of hot pepper into it)
 and a pot of her favorite comfort food, a jealously guarded family
recipe handed down from generation to generation, called swill.
It dated from the survival days of a poor urban Jewish family.

Swill
categories: stew
servings: lots

turkey necks
poultry gizzards
meatballs
chopped vegetables - mostly celery
ketchup
water
s, p

Do not waste energy by browning anything. Dump everything
in a big pot, water to cover, and cook arbitrarily long,
until the meat falls off the necks. If you have added enough
ketchup, the whole house will stink of the stuff for at
least the first couple hours of cooking. When the ketchup
odor subsides, taste for seasoning.

This will taste okay, trust me. And on reheating, as with
most stews, it gets better. On the third heating, it becomes
positively good.

Source: after Grandma Greenwald

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