R is for recipe.

Today's recipe for cooking class is peas in roux. If you are what you eat, that makes me, and this recipe, cheap, quick, and easy.

Make a roux. That means mix about equal amounts of flour and fat (using a bit more fat than flour helps it not stick at all) -- bacon grease is a favorite, butter is good, canola oil is virtuous, and burn the flour in the fat slowly, very slowly.

Saute some chopped onion in the roux.

Sprinkle some sugar over it, stir and cook for a moment, and add a couple of cans of peas, some creole seasoning or tabasco or whatever you like, and salt and pepper.

Cook down a bit, and serve over rice. A complete protein meal.

#2 Son will be cooking dinner tonight, or so he says.

He wants to try a new recipe, something about Chinese dumplings, and he wants to do it totally by himself.

If nothing else, this should prove interesting. And heaven help my kitchen. If he is like his father, I will come home to an explosion to which he will casually say, "I cooked, I shouldn't have to clean also." If I took that attitude...

Ah, never mind. Pass the soy sauce. (And thank heaven for the fish sticks in the freezer that I keep for backup!)


Today is:

Andorra National Day

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin -- Catholic Christian

Feast of Papa-Lea (god of Kava Drinking)

Independence Day, Guinea-Bissau

International Literacy Day

National Date Nut Bread Day

National Pardon Day

One World Festival, NY

Sheriff's Ride Ceremony, Lichfield, UK

St. Adrian's Day (patron of arms dealers, butchers, prison guards)

World Physical Therapy Day


Birthdays Today:

Frankie Avalon, 1940
Guitar Sorty, 1939
Patsy Cline, 1932
Peter Sellers, 1925
Sid Caesar, 1922
Claude Pepper, 1900
Antonin Leopold Dvorak, 1841
Richard I (Lionheart), 1157


Today in History:

Michaelangelo's David is unveiled in Florence, 1504
Juan de Elcano, Spanish navigator, returns to Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the globe which began under Magellan, 1522
St. Augustine, FL, becomes the first permanent European settlement of the New World, 1565
The US "Pledge of Allegiance" makes its first appearance in print, in the Youth's Companion, 1892
Galveston, TX, is struck by a hurricane and tidal surge that kill 6,000, 1900
First appearance of the comic strip "Blondie", 1930