Amy Ephron

kuerig.jpgamy ephron colorI have a complicated relationship with my Keurig. It was given to us at Christmas by my husband’s children. It was an amazing gift, thoughtful, inventive, and big. It is big. It is also streamlined and beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it before, which made them laugh hysterically (as it did half my friends). Confession: I don’t work in an office and when I do go to offices, they don’t usually invite me into the kitchen. The fact that I’d never seen anything like it before made me feel a little bit like Abe Simpson.

I also felt a little bit the way someone probably felt in the ‘50s when they got their first blender. “Wow, I can actually make a margarita at home. I can make a milkshake. I wonder if I can make gazpacho?” The Waring blender was probably invented in the ‘30s and someone is probably about to correct me. Yep. I just looked it up, the blender was invented in the ‘30s and the waring blender was named after Fred Waring, a musician who financed the fine tuning of the Hamilton Beach invention. (Don’t ask me about the patent rights.) But I wonder if my Grandmother wanted to buy stock in the Waring company. (My Grandmother bought stock in Campbells’ Soup when they invented Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup – I don’t know how she did with that, but there was no way you could get her to sell that stock.)

I have a friend who wanted to buy stock in Keurig and is mad at her husband because they didn’t. Apparently it was a good stock buy. I’m not sure I would want to buy stock in Keurig because I’m not sure it’s ecological and I have an issue with that. Also, I missed the boat. The time to buy the stock was when the Keurig came out, not when it arrived in my kitchen last December.

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escargot-with-butter.jpgamy ephronMy mother had a lot of china that I don’t have – ceramic oven proof shells for devilled crab, individual servers for escargot and 8 accompanying silver snail scoopers (I’m sure there’s a name for that tool, but I don’t know what it is), a bowl for dip that was set and centered into a plate for chips, an electric carving knife (which I always thought was silly and held great possibilities as the basis for a comedic horror film or a cartoon with an accompanying caption.)

I do have champagne glasses (although not as many as I’d like because our cabinet space is limited to say the least); a monogrammed caviar dish (yeah, it was a gift) that we don’t use nearly as much as I wish we did; a Jack La Lanne juice and vegetable squeezer that seemed like such a good idea at the time and that is, now, either in the pantry or the garage – and I’m not sure I could find all the parts to it if my life depended on it. Maybe then.

We do have a cuisinart electric citrus squeezer which is pretty great (even though I do think it’s a little larger than it needs to be for what it does) and a tomato knife which I think is my favorite utensil.

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porkbutt.jpgConfession: I love food that comes in the mail.

I, also love having something in the freezer just in case we decide on a whim to have eight people for dinner tomorrow night. Or tonight for that matter, but this only works if you decide this early enough in the day to defrost whatever it is you have in the freezer just in case you’re entertaining on a whim.

A few weeks ago, I was sent samples from Edwards & Sons Virginia Traditions BBQ. It was summer and I was really excited to get them, especially since the samples included an entire pork roast butt (completely suitable for a dinner party of eight or more).

I don’t write about things that are sent to me unless I love them. Those “crabcakes” from Baltimore come to mind, the ones that sort of resembled a baseball. We tried everything – we even put them in a tomato sauce and put them on top of spaghetti – no luck. A crabcake should not resemble a meatball!

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Imageamy ephron colorBack in the days when evening television was interactive family entertainment, when Ed Sullivan and "College Bowl" were on, my family used to gather in the TV room. In our house, that was the bar. It had a Fleetwood television built into the wall, with the controls built in next to the silk-covered sofa on which my mother would always lie, on her back, her head propped up by four pillows.

Next to her, on the coffee table, was a Dewars-and-soda on ice and a pack of Kent filters. My sisters and I would lie on the floor, my father would sit in his teak rocking chair, and we would watch television and eat TV snacks—clam dip baked on toasted Pepperidge Farm white bread; Beluga caviar, whenever anyone sent it over; a really disgusting (but great) dip made out of cottage cheese, mayonnaise, chives, and Worcestershire sauce, with ruffled potato chips; and Mommy's favorite, blanched and toasted almonds.

"Oh, goody," she would say, " 'College Bowl' is on tonight. Let's make blanched almonds."

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ossobucodone.jpgHave you ever tried to make something once, (twice, three times, with three different recipes from three different cookbooks) and it never quite came out the way it was supposed to. And your husband, who’s a better cook than you are (or at least better at actually following the recipe) tries the same from yet another cookbook and then another (at least we’re persistent) and it never works, never quite tastes the same tender, delicious way it does in practically any Italian restaurant on any corner in any city in the world.

So, you put it in the category of “Don’t try this at home.” Osso Bucco. It’s never quite tender, never quite fall off the bones delicious, Italian, melt in your mouth restaurant perfect!

But, a couple of months ago, I was at the butcher in the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and they had these perfectly lovely cuts of Veal Shank, really cute, and so (what was I thinking), I bought them for the freezer. And last week, when there was nothing in the house, I defrosted them.

Alan did say to me, when he came home from work and asked what was for dinner and I announced, “Osso Bucco.

“Really,” he said with a smirk, “What are you thinking, you know that never works.”

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