14 January Saturday

If you live in California, you may be feeling what I have been feeling the last few days. It´s as if the New Year hasn´t really started yet, at least in the way we like. It has been raining almost non-stop since the beginning of the year, which is good in one way, not so good in other ways. For instance, the downstairs unit and the area where the garbage and recycling are has flooded, making it almost impossible to remove the refuse. So, it has piled up in my kitchen. It was taken out this morning during a little break in the weather, but it wasn´t exactly pretty.

The other thing is the inclement weather has brought in an unwelcome resident in the form of a tiny mouse, now named Pat-a-Toney, Pat for short. I believe Pat is alone, and it is a fact of life that if you have an active kitchen and pantry in a densely populated urban environment surrounded by eateries of all kinds and you live in a building built at the beginning of the 20th Century, well, you may have to occasionally contend with pests. And ya know, I don´t want him to die, I just want him to move.

These things have worked against my precious agenda of trying new recipes and telling you about them.

It´s a strange moment actually. For a number of reasons, the price of ordinary foodstuffs has risen dramatically, and some common things have become scarce. Right now, it is difficult to find eggs. What a strange beginning to this year, I feel almost outside myself, as though my mind is working through something that the body can´t enact until it´s finished. I hate hate hate having garbage in my house, I usually take some trash out every day. To have it piling up like that was depressing. OK, I´m moving on, this too shall pass, and before you know it, the house will be filled with scent of well-season repast, I will not fear being torn apart by flesh eating monsters when I enter my kitchen, it´ll all be great. Just great.

Let me tell bout a dish we gonna do as soon as work up the courage. It´s a party dish to share with your friends, assuming you´ve made some. It is a recipe from Craig Claiborne, something food critic for the New York Times (1960something-1990something). It is a family recipe from Mississippi, and probably the 1930s. It is called Chicken Spaghetti, and I won´t go into the deep details, but it requires that I simmer the chicken in chicken stock until it is cooked, the meat is removed from the bones and shredded (this includes the cooked giblets) is layered in a casserole with cooked ground beef and pork, a thick tomato sauce, the stock, layers of cheddar cheese, and barely cooked spaghetti where it sits on the countertop for at least four hours before being heated in the oven until the cheese melts, about 30mins. Weird, wacky, wild stuff. Wanna eat some with me?