A Strange Land

I brought the chocolate cake, R made Picadillo.  Ancient history resurrected.  Well, some parts of it in any event.  So, at long last, after much harassment of R by me, the original Picadillo recipe from Berkeley, circa 1976, plus some thirty years of evolution.  A handful of this and a handful of that.

The parts in parenthesis are my preferred changes or additions.  I never could leave well enough alone.

Picadillo

2 lbs. ground beef (1 lb. pork, 1 lb. turkey)
2 onions (3)
all of a bulb of garlic
3 green peppers
3 jalapenos
6 Roma tomatoes
2 small cans Contadina tomato paste
6 apples ( sometimes less depending on how full the pot is)
2 jars ripe olives (green olives)
2 handfuls raisins (or more, to taste)
2 tbsp. vinegar (more or less to taste)

Rough chop everything that can be chopped: onions, garlic, green peppers, Jalapenos, Roma tomatoes and apples.  Leave the olives and raisins whole.  Using a big stew pot, start by browning the meat.  Add the onions and garlic while the meat browns.  Add the rest of the ingredients more or less in the order given.  Cover the pot, reduce the heat so that the conglomeration burbles gently and let it stew for at least two hours.  Letting it cook longer does no harm and generally improves the flavor.  This freezes really well, so when I make it I have frozen leftovers for months.

There were two chocolate cakes actually.  One with a lovely raspberry sauce between the layers and the other, a darker chocolate, was laced with rum and frosted with Mocha frosting.  Both were delightful.

Sadly, the cake was not reciprocated at the appropriate date in April!!  Hmmm….or at any other date appropriate or not, now that I consider the matter.

It seemed appropriate to pay attention. A full moon lights this New Year’s Eve, by necessity, a blue moon. At fifty-two, I have the time and relative lack of commitments to pause a moment, or two, or more than several and pay attention. They happen, or so I am told, about every nineteen years or so, or perhaps it is exactly and I wasn’t paying sufficient attention. Nineteen years would mean that I had missed two previous New Year’s Eve Blue Moon events. One at about thirty-three when I was distracted by the demands of a young family and the other at fourteen, when I was just distracted or conversely far too self absorbed to notice much outside my own evolving turbulent self. One cannot say really if another nineteen years down the road I will be here, or sufficiently aware to notice. So, I wandered outside, into the cold, well, this is Southern California and cold is a relative issue, and stared for awhile. A lovely moon set in a clear cold cloudless sky. Assuredly bonus points are allocated in some karmic register for noticing the turning of these cosmic cycles and I wandered back inside.

So, it has been an odd year. A year sufficiently odd than I hesitate in contemplation of what to wish for. Wishes get twisted. So, here’s to the New Year, whatever it might come to be, and the opportunity to see it through.