Ms. CRANKY ON ‘TENTING;’ COOKING SHOWS PART II --- on overused, though often helpful, terms

In time for THANKSGIVING DAY --- talk of cooking, basters and such
Ms. Cranky always thought tents were things you went into the woods with and set up while swearing up a storm. Then, you slept in them, praying it wouldn’t rain and the water wouldn’t come flooding under your sleeping bag.  Ms. Cranky considers herself an outdoors person, even an Adirondack woods woman at times but she stops at camping.  It holds no romance for her and it holds lots of things she’d rather not know about.

But, ‘tents’ are now another hot item term being somewhat overused on her favorite cooking shows.  But, Cranky admits that tents are helpful and wonders what she ever did without them.

Cranky thinks that she may have used ‘basters’ in place of tents, at least she assumes them similar in theory.  You know you always had a baster especially at Thanksgiving time and you’d use it to pull up the liquid around the turkey, then squirt it back on the top and sides.  Cranky thinks this was done to keep the poor turkey from drying out and also to make it a wonderful inviting-looking golden color.  Cranky’s father was the major cook in their house and every time he basted the turkey (which seemed to be every two minutes), we all had to get up and go into the kitchen and make appropriate ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ noises to show our appreciation.   Cranky’s dad was a great showman when it came to food and she misses him even more around this time of year.

Cranky had a baster for years, it was real old and might have been handed down to her from her grandmother for all she remembers but as she became more aware of the dangers of plastic and plastic mixed with heat, Cranky wasn’t crazy about the baster anymore.  She really wanted one of those glass basters but they were more expensive and Cranky is always on some budget or other.

But, forget all that --- the use of glass as opposed to a plastic baster because Katie the kitty came to live with Ms. Cranky four Christmases ago.  And, Ms. C. has found that the older you get and the more you live with pets, the more protective you become or that’s how it’s been for her.  Cranky’s seen too many instances of the fragility of life and has gotten more nervous over the years, but not obsessive (ehh --- well, hmm?!).

The second Christmas that Cranky had Katie the kitty (the first one the terrified animal hid the whole season so they never even got a tree), she bought a beautiful tree from Vermont, put it up, well, Cranky finds her trees almost always ‘list’ a little and she ends up balancing the lovely fir against a nearby wall.  Cranky dutifully filled the Christmas tree stand with good clean water and a bit of sugar as recommended.  But, then, Ms. Cranky remembered reading somewhere that pine was poisonous for cats though she had had three other cats that had lived with Christmas trees for years and with the aforesaid water at the bottom of the tree.

But, being older and wiser now, Ms. Cranky decided, all these years of cats and trees later that she couldn’t risk Katie getting into the pine water for a little sip.

So, Cranky devised a masterful, she thought, scheme to protect her still pretty new companion from toxins.  She pulled out her very old turkey baster and every time she left the apartment, which was a lot, she’d siphon the water up and out from the Christmas tree stand so Katie couldn’t drink from it while Cranky was out.  Of course, this meant that, after the holidays, the turkey baster was pretty sticky with tree resin and impossible to clean so it had to be thrown out.  And, cheap as Cranky can be, err, ‘frugal,’ she never bought a new baster as she thought the plastic models not healthy and the glass too expensive. So, now Cranky just spoons liquid over things cooking in the oven and with new information garnered from cooking shows, she is also ‘TENTING.’

Cranky thinks the tent theory a good one.  You put liquid on with a spoon but, then, when you tent the dish, i. e. put a foil wrap over it and close it on the sides, the liquid (this is C.’s theory, she hopes she’s right), goes up to the top and then the moisture descends on the dish so that it’s almost like a baster.  Ms. Cranky hopes not to be criticized by the cooking fanatics of which there are many but that’s how she sees it.  And, mostly, no more plastic coupled with heat which is good. 

And, as for the Christmas tree water --- the last few year’s Cranky’s covered the stand with its own little tent of foil and, so far, Katie the beautiful and funny cat, has not thought to dig below it.  Katie is well taken care of in the food and drink department and has plenty of real cold filtered water in her own bowl.

So those are Cranky’s theories on tenting, basting and not poisoning your pets.  And, maybe some time, on the subject of cooking etc., Cranky may talk about funnels for she truly loves funnels but fears she lost a long-term friend over talking about funnels, perhaps a little too enthusiastically --- well, let’s just say that Cranky never saw this guy again, so, she’s a bit reluctant to get into the funnel subject.  But, she also knows she’ll probably not be able to control herself forever.  She may even get a new funnel or even two for Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by. The very best to everybody from our house.  Thanksgiving is a neat holiday, Cranky thinks, it’s calmer than some.  She hopes you have a whole wonderful Thanksgiving week and that people are smiling and kind to you everywhere you go.  She hopes that ‘help’ in shops is helpful and that people don’t walk into your chest while reading their mechanical devices --- that would be something to be grateful for!

Cranky hopes you cook joyfully with or without a baster, a tent, whatever and that you might begin imagining the smell of pine that will soon fill our streets and our homes, if we are so lucky.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Thanksgiving week