A Silky Voice and a Distinctly BIG Knife

When it's been one of THOSE days, nothing pleases me more than to be alone with my biggest, baddest knife, Chris Isaak's a certain someone's silky voice on the CD player, and something that is begging to be chopped into bits.  There's just something about all that chopping and stirring that soothes my soul.  The glass of wine doesn't hurt either.  But because I'm soooo very good at accidentally cutting myself (stitches and numb area on my left index finger anyone?), the wine usually accompanies the stirring that occurs after the chopping.

Today, however, wasn't one of THOSE days.  But I did go for the Big Knife when I made these exceedingly fab potatoes au gratin.  These are particularly good for serving up along side a rotisserie chicken you may or may not have picked up at Sam's Club on the way home from your daughter's San Diego located cardiology appointment.  Okay, some of you may argue than driving 150 miles round trip for a very cool monitor thing for your child's heart issue might constitute one of THOSE days...I don't.  I'm still being dazzled by the technology we brought home that means she doesn't have to spend a month in the hospital hooked up to an EKG machine.  ANYHOW, these potatoes are also really handy if your above-mentioned daughter happens to be a teenager and potentially seeing some male types after the meal.  There is a load of garlic involved.  Don't worry, I've got my methods.

This recipe is from PW, BTW. 

Grab 4 largish, to 7 smallish, russet potatoes.  Scrub your spuds good and clean.  NO peeling required.
2 Tablespoons butter, softened this is for greasing your casserole dish
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
2 Tablespoons flour
4 cloves garlic, finely minced  If you decide to use a garlic press, I'd double the number of garlic cloves.  Mmmm mmm mmm.
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste Please go to Sam's Club or Costco and buy the big peppermill that is already filled with whole peppercorns that is by all the spices.  It's a throwaway, and one of the best inventions ever.
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated  We usually have medium in the house, so that's what I use.  And yes, it does taste better if you grate your own.  The pre-grated stuff is coated in ...I can't remember...but you can also powder your baby's but with it and it comes in a bright yellow box. Corn starch!  That's it!  Corn starch!  Just grate your own and consider it an upper body workout.  You saw the cream above right?! 

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
Smear the softened butter all over the inside of your casserole dish.
Slice the potatoes about 1/4" thick, and then quarter your slices.  Kiss your knife.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, flour, garlic, salt and pepper.  Use a lot of pepper and spice things up.
Place 1/3 of the potatoes in the bottom of your casserole and pour 1/3 of the cream mixture over the potates.  Repeat 2 more times, ending with the cream mixture.
Cover with foil or the glass lid your casserole came with and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the lid/foil and bake for 20 minutes longer.  The potatoes should be browned and bubbling.  Add the grated cheese to the top and bake for 3-5 minutes longer, until the cheese is all melted and bubbly.
Allow the potatoes to stand for a few minutes before serving.

Ward off all teenage boys and vampires. 

Happy chopping!

~S

B is for Baja

For years and years my plan B has been Baja.  Actually, if I'm going to be honest, for a couple of years it was a dreamy plan A.  Instead of going to college/getting a respectable career/getting hitched/popping out kids I was going to fly south.  Run a little Cantina on the beach.  Until I died of melanoma from all that sun on my redheaded, freckled skin.  I was 17, so fluent I dreamt in Spanish,  and the world was surely mine to catch by the tail.  The airport at Los Cabos was still a shack and Cabo San Lucas was still a little village with dirt roads, fishing boats and surfers.  Love at first sight. 

But it didn't get off the ground.  So plan B it became.

I'm a plan B kind of person.  Not as in settling for plan B, but as a generally more fun, more exciting, more adventurous alternative to whatever plan A I'm currently running.  Keeps me sane.  Makes me smile instead of breaking out the duct tape when a kid behaves badly.  I can feel the balmy breezes across my cheeks, the sand flecked tiles under my feet, hear the whir of the blender, the pop of a bottle cap, the constant underlying beat of the mariachi music, smell the carnitas.  Ahhhh.  What's a girl to do if she can't dream here and there?

So I really wish they'd settle down in good ol' Mexico.  Quit killing each other off.  Because right now...there's not a chance I'd cross the border. It's probably why Bill's been so relaxed this past year.  He used to like telling people that there was a good chance one day he'd come to a note that said something like...the kids are at your sisters, I'm in Baja;  come join me at Sherri's Cantina...  But I'm pretty sure with the ugly wars going on down there, knowing what a 'fraidy cat I am, and that Canada is WAY too cold for me, that he knows Sherri's Cantina is right here at our breakfast bar, or weather allowing, out on the back patio overlooking our own swimming pool private stretch of shoreline.  Perhaps it's really a good blend  of plan A and plan B. 


Does that make it an AB pattern?  Anybody have a kindergartner they can ask???  Anybody else have a plan B?

Love and salsa,
~Sherri

Definitely a Rant. Apologies Made Now!

The thing about having a blog is you need to write it.  And besides time, you need your computer to actually write it on.  And when you have 3 kids...who have bidness to take care of in cyber world...and one desk computer for everyone, well, time is precious.  Especially this time of year when everyone seems to be checking out cool last minute additions to their Christmas lists.  News flash - the shopping is DONE!  Ha ha ha ha.  Don't you just hate when people tell you that just as December is cresting?  Once and only once have Bill and I been 99% done by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  But I'm pretty sure that last 1% dragged itself out for the next 4 weeks, culminating in my purchasing some last minute gift cards Christmas Eve morning when I was supposed to be cooking the potato soup for the family that was arriving very, very soon.  Just keeping it real here.  We are not done.  But we have begun, and have a pretty good idea of the who what when and where.  Wish me luck....what's that saying about the best layed, laid, lade plans going haywire, inviting chaos, I don't know, but there's a saying.  Right?!  I need a little moral support here.  I'm not bragging, but I did just put my cards in the mail.

So, the other thing on my mind is the situation with my daughter's high school.  She's missed weeks upon weeks because of this ongoing, still undiagnosed, health issue.  So finishing the semester is tricky, but quite possible. I'm being generous when I say I have been under-impressed with the administration, the counselors and a teacher.  One in particular, demonstrated such unprofessional behavior in our parent/teacher conference last week, that I couldn't help but be shocked he had a job.  I have fired people, immediately, for treating a client the way he talked to us.  And every time we have a meeting set up, somebody from the school can not attend because they are tending to a personal matter...taking an ex-husband to surgery, a doctor's appointment scheduled during school hours, a grandmother becoming ill necessitating crossing the entire country to help the mom, delivering Thanksgiving baskets during school hours.  If you teach aren't you expected to be there anymore?  Aren't you expected to schedule your appointments first thing in the morning or at the very end of the day so as not to disrupt your workplace?  I think people have gotten a little confused as to what really constitutes a situation that is worthy of time out of the office.  Maybe I'm just getting old.  Maybe I've absorbed Bill's hardcore work ethic, but c'mon people, show up, do what you say you're going to, and I don't know, get out of teaching if you hate it.  I don't care if there's no market for somebody with a geometry degree.  Not my problem. Get a different one.  Work at Home Depot, but DON'T suck the life out of my child's inspiration to take calculus her senior year by telling her...hope I don't catch anything from you and my best advice to you is to just take a D and the credits and retake the class at the junior community college over the summer if the grade is that important to you...  What?!  Did you just really tell my kid to strive for the lowest possible denominator???  Really?  That's the best you've got?  Funny how his tune changed when his Vice Principal called him about it the next day.  So yeah, I've got to try and get her out of this guy's class as soon as she has some sort of a grade for this semester.  And then it is ON.  If he thinks I'm done with him yet...he might want to start thinking like a redhead and be a little proactive with his career.

I'm not teacher bashing.  I promise.  Before I get hate mail from some of my favorite family members and friends who are/were teachers, I will say that a committed, fantastic teacher can still pull a lot out in a traditional classroom setting.  And knowing these people as I do I'd venture that they are certainly the type of teacher who has former students looking them up years in the future because they were one of the most outstanding teachers they had in all the years they were in school.  Unfortunately, they are few and far between.  If you know me, you likely know I'm not the hugest public school system fan and we homeschool the boys and homeschooled Isabel for 6 years.  And I've got at least one foot in the camp that thinks the public school system doesn't need revising, changing, overhauling and most certainly didn't need No Child Left Behind.  Let's not even bring up the relentless (and proving to be fruitless) testing the kids now endure.  No, I lean towards thinking the whole thing is irrevocably broken.  Starting wholly fresh is what is really needed.  I don't have any solid ideas about how that could actually happen, so mostly I keep my mouth shut.  But I'm pretty sure if you took the best teachers and looked at what they are really doing to inspire kids, and held some high standards...well, something pretty amazing could happen.  If you're not part of the solution, you're just a whiny part of the problem in my book.  So my rant ends here.  If you stayed with me this long...I can only thank you for letting me get this off my chest.  The world is probably a safer place.  And I wouldn't look good in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Definitely I thank you, because I am so not looking forward to my 7am meeting with Isabel's geometry teacher and her counselor tomorrow morning.  You might want to pray for my composure and dignity.

xoxo
~Sherri