Category Archives: Food

Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

O Christmas tin, O Christmas tin

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Some people drink Santa cocoa while they listen to "Santa Baby." It's been known to happen.By Laura Grimes

While the rest of America cooed about golden-roasted turkeys and football scores yesterday, the Scatter family was concerned about deeply more important matters. Hot chocolate.

Ah! Scatter regulars just knew that line was going to be about pickles. They know the fourth Thursday in November is not known as Thanksgiving in the Scatter household but as the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

But the Scatters are a multi-complex family. They go way beyond cranberries. Like the United Nations or a mixed-faith family, they are very liberal about accommodating many cultural needs. The Grand Unsealing of the Pickles day is a multiple bonanza.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday cooks up a flood

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Gobble gobble

By Laura Grimes

Today is a REALLY big day in the Scatter Household. The special holiday hot chocolate comes out, the Christmas CDs make their debut and … drumroll … it’s the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

We’ve been sharing our disaster tales of Thanksgivings past all week.

Some years back, Mr. Scatter’s family (notice how the disaster stories are always Mr. Scatter’s family?) wanted to get together for a large gathering. The trick was finding a place big enough.

No one had a house the right size. (Except us, and we lived too far away.) A restaurant didn’t suit our need to sprawl over several hours. Finally, I booked a condo and reserved its community room, which had a kitchen.

Somehow, we had the largest family with the smallest kids, and we traveled the farthest, made all the arrangements and hosted the event. No, wait. Come to think of it, I made all the arrangements and it wasn’t even my family.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday sets off an alarm

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We might have to fall back on this because we're resorting to Plan B and planning our Thanksgiving meal at the last minute./Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we are counting down to the day of the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles* by telling all our embarrassing and disastrous tales of Thanksgivings past.

For some reason, giant black clouds hover over us this time every year, though we always manage to have a wonderful holiday.

This year, we had planned to drive to the Olympic Peninsula to spend several days with relatives, but our trip was canceled when 6 to 12 inches of snow dumped there and roads turned treacherous,** Felix/Martha came down with a nasty cold (which isn’t like him), and the half-wild She Cat, who usually disappears for days and eats god knows what, badly injured her front paw and is camped out on a fluffy blanket on the couch.

This morning, the He Cat made barfing sounds on the dining room rug. I grabbed him around the middle (not so good) and was juggling him (also not good) while unlocking the front door, when his whole body convulsed and a wet hairball flew out of his mouth and landed on the rug near my feet.

Thank you, Thanksgiving.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday goes up in flames

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This oven looks freakishly like Mr. and Mrs. Scatter's old one that caught fire. Many thanks to the Small Large Smelly Boy (Felix/Martha) for the splendid design that cleverly covered up the baked-on grime on the bottom. Wikimedia Commons and Felix/Martha

By Laura Grimes

Two days to T-day!

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter love planning Thanksgiving dinner, even if it’s just them and The Large Smelly Boys. They love writing up the menu, ferreting out the special recipe file, taking stock of ingredients, making lists, shopping, splaying out the bounty.

Then on Thanksgiving day, they put on music and start chopping. They put out a nice spread of appetizers and pour some wine. They both happily bustle around the kitchen, nibbling and testing. The big feast is a time of thanks, good food and good friends, but, really, it’s the long, slow process of getting there that they savor. Basically, it’s Norman Rockwell meets Currier and Ives, if only their paintings could also convey the cozy warmth of a fuzzy blanket and scratch ‘n’ sniff cooking smells. Yes, that’s exactly the Scatter household on Thanksgiving day.

WAIT A SEC! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Back up to the “splaying out the bounty” part.

A handful of years back, Mr. and Mrs. Scatter were at this point in the process, a few days before T-Day. They had just finished the exhausting list-making and marathon shopping. They had just unloaded all the bags and set out all the food.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

What we have here is a failure to concoct a drink

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Just waiting for a mad scientist./Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

THE SCENE: Mr. and Mrs. Scatter arrive home late one muggy evening after going to The Theatre. It’s October, when mad science takes over without warning. The Small Large Smelly Boy is waiting on the front porch to greet his adoring parents. The He Cat’s nose is just behind the slit door.

SMALL LARGE SMELLY BOY

(Gives his beloved mother a big hug.) I’m ready for a martini with two olives.

(Mrs. Scatter and The Small LSB unhug and open the front door. The He Cat bolts out the door.)

MRS. SCATTER

Hi, Jack the Barfer.

MR. SCATTER

(Laughing.) Why Jack the Barfer?

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

The first pickle pass-off went down!

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By Laura Grimes

Kickass Ginger Molasses CookiesThe first large jar of spicy dill pickles vintage 2010 has launched into the world. It was exchanged over morning coffee for kickass ginger molasses cookies. Just in the nick of time, too. A pack of Large Smelly Boys took over the house. (How rude of teachers to have an in-service day.)

The list of barter offers has grown slightly since the last update (see below).

Because we’re a 75 percent meat-free household, we’re working on a multiple trade for the elk meat. Not to worry, the vendor said: “A three-way always sounds fun.”

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes, Music

Pickles and Pagliacci: Two posts in one

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Pickles with a bite of spice -- make an offer I can't refuse!

By Laura Grimes

The pickles as social vehicle experiment is working! (Read what it’s all about here.) So far, the bartering offers include (some serious, some not so much):

  • Sauerkraut
  • Pesto plus a 2009 WillaKenzie pinot gris
  • Elk meat
  • Cream cheese braid
  • $57.32 (perhaps not so serious, but I know the intent is true, because we split one of these jars of pickles for lunch recently on a hot summer day when we had nothing else to eat and had to dig out slices with our fingers)
  • Designer labels for jars (also perhaps not so serious, but a little arm-twisting might work)
  • “Ring of Fire” peppers with an 80K hotness (I still have no idea what this is, but my guess is an extreme distance running race after eating the peppers, which still sound painful)
  • Kickass ginger molasses cookies (also sound painful, but in a good way)
  • Apple pie I
  • Apple pie II
  • Henry James novel

The pickle show hits the road next week to pick up the kickass ginger molasses cookies. It involves a coffee date.

I’m researching how to ship fragile jars with amber liquid. The hot peppers that require running a long distance are being shipped from Idaho from someone I haven’t been in touch with much for more than 30 years. In return, I need to send pickles to a place on Wild Goose Way.

Other rendezvous are in the works.

It’s not too late to make an offer. Hurry while supplies last.

And, George, I saw that! We’re going to have to slice our cucumbers differently next year and call them Bartering Chips.

*

Pagliacci/Carmina Burana continues tonight and Saturday at Portland Opera. The Small Large Smelly Boy and I will be there and we have a fun post planned. Stay tuned!

Books, Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

We put pickles up ourselves and now we need your help

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Our beloved offspring

By Laura Grimes

When word got around that we put pickles up again this year, the barter offers started to come in. So far, we’ve received requests for pickles in exchange for:

  • Sauerkraut
  • Pesto
  • Elk meat

This is not a bad combination. (Forget the fact that we don’t eat meat.) Now I’m thinking that if we strike enough deals we could put together an entire Thanksgiving dinner by the fourth Thursday in November. Whaddayasay? I’m hoping for pie.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

The fresh ‘n’ fruity mutant edition

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Mutant Green Tomato

By Laura Grimes

Dear Mr. Scatter,

You really shouldn’t let me go shopping unsupervised. Because then I buy things like Baby Fuzzless Kiwifruit. They don’t look very exceptional. They look like hard little nuggets that should be skewered and stuck in a drink. But I don’t care about that. They’re called Baby Fuzzless Kiwifruit and that’s all that matters. The package says I bought One Half Dry Pint. All the signs in the store said Kiwifruit (oneword).

I also bought Elephant Heart Plums. I have no idea whether they’re any good. Who cares with such a cool name? I did, however, refrain from buying a long skinny eggplant that was folded like a bobby pin and a sweet potato that looked like a goose. Knowing me, you know I showed remarkable restraint in not filling the cart with a bobby pin, a goose and all their deformed friends.

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Bob Hicks, Environment, Food, General

A prune by any other name smells sweet

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By Bob Hicks

Mrs. Scatter shovels a tiny spoon beneath my nose.

“You need to taste this new mustard,” she commands.

What’s this? New mustard? Mrs. Scatter’s been making the same mustard for so long it’s plastered on our sensory memories like the one tattoo you don’t regret. It’s Old Faithful, the house standard, the creme de condiments. If you can’t trust the house mustard, what can you trust?

Is this a prune? Naming goes plum loco.So trying out a new recipe seems slightly slatternly: are we cheating? But the weather’s changing. Restlessness is in the air. And there’s the little matter of those three mostly full bottles of regrettably bland wine that need to be used up.

I hesitate, then dutifully down the little spoonful of coarse new mustard, which has a sweet-and-sour, unknitted, wait-and-see tang.

“It needs to age,” I say.

Mrs. Scatter nods. She knows that. This is only a test.

Fall and food go together in the Scatter household — perhaps you’ve seen Mrs. Scatter’s posts on pickles and chutney and such — and matters of the stomach have been popping up all day.

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