#it's that gravy sauce anecdote all over again

[got-ticket-to-ride]

[jackalopingintothevoid]

Observing Holidays Part 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 TBA

John felt odd.

Not bad. He didn’t think it was a serious medical issue. Just odd. Or, well, not just odd but... primarily odd.

There was... pressure, inside his chest. But it wasn’t... it wasn’t an inward tightening, like a knot. It was an outward pressure, like something was inside his chest that was too big for it. Not too too big, it didn’t hurt, it was just enough that it was noticeable. In fact, the pressure didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

He just felt... full.

Not so full that he struggled with lunch, of course. It was one thing to come to terms with the fact that genuine meat was readily available so soon after the war (it had been years, why couldn’t he remember it had been years?) but the spread before him now? That was a whole cooked turkey, juicy and bursting with flavour from the stuffing mix it was cooked with and strips of bacon wrapped around it. Roast potatoes, crispy coatings from his oil distribution, fluffy innards and so satisfying; roast parsnips, equally crispy outside but soft and sweet in the middle; steamed carrots cut into discs, with optional melting butter, that he could scoop a dozen of into his mouth at once; steamed sprouts, which regrettably had a very strong flavour but went down quickly; bread sauce, a thick, creamy, mild dollop that he’d happily eat a bowlful of; cranberry sauce, sweet and sharp, complimenting the salty bacon-infused turkey; two different types of gravy, one thicker and richer than the other; and something called pigs in blankets.

John didn’t think he’d ever felt such delight as when he found out that, many centuries ago, some genius decided that sausages could be improved with a bacon wrapping.

He had to admit, he probably ate more than his fair share. But he also had to admit that no one minded-- in fact, Mochou, Changming and Davis gave in and passed over food they didn’t have room for.

And it was strange, to sit in a group, listening to a conversation he wasn’t part of, and not feel like he was an intruder. Even if he wasn’t directly involved, they accommodated for him; things John wouldn’t be expected to know, they explained. He learned about local shops and services, amusing anecdotes from people’s pasts or about their relatives, plans for the new year and even talk of the political climate, but he was very focused on his little bacon-wrapped sausages for that discussion and took none of it in.

And then... dessert.

All of that food, and then dessert.

Two desserts.

One was a plate of pinwheel-shaped pastries filled with prune jam, and the other was a Bûche de Noël which looked like an awful lot of chocolate. While Riley had figuratively written the menu for the main meal this year, Alouette had been on the desserts with old family favourites, and she was eager to get John’s approval. And she most certainly did.

By the time the lunch was concluded, John felt bloated again and he kept smiling for no reason he could pin down.

They’d just settled in the living room, debating whether they wanted to play something or watch something, when Davis suddenly leapt up.

“Almost forgot a classic!” He declared, heading back into the kitchen even as others protested. John was curious despite the response-- what classic? 

Davis returned with a tray full of drinking glasses, each full of what looked like milk, and a small plastic dispenser.

“Alright,” Davis started, setting the tray on the coffee table despite the lethargic moaning of the group. “I got eggnog, I got cinnamon, who wants some?”

John sat up a little, but before he could move or speak Davis was laughing. “Yeah I know you want some big guy, don’t worry! I got you.”

There was one more glass than needed, John realised, and with that in mind he shouldn’t have been surprised when Davis offered him one with cinnamon and one without.

“There you go,” Davis said, seeming pleased with himself, “see how you like that.”

John remained silent, and Davis started to frown. John firmly reminded himself of the kitchen incident, and focused on the worry in the smaller man’s eyes.

“You okay, John?”

Say something, he thought, take the glasses.

He didn’t.

“John? Ça va?” Alouette had propped herself up from her dozing slump, and everyone else was looking at him with concern again.

He nodded and forced himself to reach out and take them, if only to stop everyone staring, and fought to find his voice. “Thanks.”

They were still staring.

“John...” Mochou murmured beside him. “You can tell us.”

She intended to say more, but Davis cut her off. “Alright, anybody else? C’mon I know you guys’ll love it once you have it, you’re all getting one, just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to cinnamon.”

Riley immediately started waving a hand clumsily as if to fend Davis off. “Noooooo I’m stuffed stop trying to make us faaaaaaaat.”

All eyes turned to them instead as they lazily kicked up a fuss, and John felt the tension in his shoulders ease. He looked down at the ‘eggnog’ in his hands and decided to push aside the unsettled feeling he couldn’t place and focus on the objective; he’d try the undoctored eggnog first to get the base flavour, then see how the cinnamon interacted with it.

“Ó.” The soft sound from Mochou distracted him, and a quick assessment made his innards squirm. She had that look on her face, when he said or did something that upset her-- she’d insisted repeatedly that it wasn’t his fault, but the correlation was consistent enough despite changing variables to reflect cause and effect. Unfortunately he was struggling to ascertain the pattern, so he didn’t yet have any action to take, and it was frustrating.

John tilted his head in question, but Mochou brightened suddenly, smiling and patting him on the leg before turning to Davis and calling, “Cinnamon, please!”

And now John was the one left perplexed. Had he misread her expression? Had it not been aimed at him but rather at something unrelated within her mind? Was she pleased that he was no longer agitated, or perhaps realised what the problem had been and deemed it resolved? The urge to ask for clarification came and went, and he sipped the plain glass of eggnog.

He liked it. ______________________________

It was, as the Crew dubbed it, Present Time.

John had tried to excuse himself, offering to wash up after the meal, but he’d been veritably shouted down. So now he was sat here as the Crew passed gifts to each other, feeling truly awkward for the first time in days.

He was admittedly curious, itching to know what they’d given each other, but he felt uncomfortably conspicuous spectating a tradition he wasn’t (couldn’t be) involved in. Simply the fact that he had nothing himself to give caused an uncomfortable almost-burning sensation in his stomach, and he wanted nothing more than to walk out when Changming pulled out the cards John had written.

The effusive thanks he was met with were almost too much for him to take. (He’d clumsily handwritten the same hollow festive greeting over and over and they were praising him like they hadn’t saved his life; he swallowed back bile and dug his fingers into the couch cushions.)

He almost missed Riley’s voice calling his name.

Looking up, John froze. Riley was holding out a wrapped gift-- a Christmas present. The gift tag had his name on it.

Swallowing thickly, John said, “No.”

Riley startled, jerking back as their face fell, and guilt added to the sour churning in his guts.

All eyes on him.

(It wasn’t-- he couldn’t-- )

“I can’t,” he blurted, “I’m sorry.” ______________________________

He didn’t come back to himself until he felt the blast of cold air as he opened the door to step outside the apartment block.

Regretting his lack of clothing warmer than his hooded jacket, he pushed forward regardless. He wouldn’t be out long, he told himself. He just needed a moment. He just needed to breathe.

The crisp chill helped to clear his head, and he relished the deep breaths of fresh, unrecycled air. He found the cold weather much more pleasant with the knowledge that there was warmth to return to.

A sharp cry of alarm from nearby snapped his head around, and he caught sight of an elderly civilian fallen back against their car. Their arms were heavily laden with bags, overbalancing them, and with potential ice underfoot they might well do themself harm.

He crossed the distance and reached out, “It’s alright,” he reassured, “I’ve got you.”

“Oh! Oh, I--”

John gently took one load of bags, then carefully but firmly gripped their arm. His other hand steadily scooped the civilian off the surface of the car door, moving around to support their back as they got their feet under them.

“Are you alright?”

“Oh-- Oh my, you’re a strapping lad aren’t you? Thank you so much, I- I’m alright, didn’t quite do any damage!” They were startled but smiling gratefully.

John frowned. “Where do you need to go?”

“Oh, dear-- oh, just on the ground floor there.” They glanced up at him hopefully. “I don’t suppose you’d mind... ?”

“Not at all.” Said John, taking the other bags.

“Oh thank you dear, you are a treasure.”

They seemed surprised when John slipped all six bags onto one forearm, and beamed when he offered the other in support, making another comment about his being ‘impressive’. It seemed in good cheer, so he didn’t dwell on it.

On the short but slow walk back to the apartments, John learned that Makani had just come back from a lovely Christmas lunch with many of their friends, whereupon they’d received far heavier gifts they had expected. They hadn’t wanted anyone to fret, so they’d insisted they could get it all home safely, but clearly they’d only been partly right.

They seemed to be taking the near miss cheerfully, and had no qualms allowing John to support them with his “astonishing arms”, to the point that they made no attempt to let go of him after they were safely inside the building. He shivered at the difference in temperature, and Makani’s smile finally dropped.

They clucked their tongue. “Oh dear, you must be freezing young man! Come in, come in and have a hot drink.”

John hesitated. He knew the Crew were probably upset and worried about his absence, and he should really go back before they felt the need to look for him, but... he almost couldn’t stand the thought of facing them right now.

“And maybe,” Makani continued gently, a shrewd look in their gaze, “you can tell me all about whatever trouble’s got that look on your face.”

John immediately schooled his features, and Makani’s face scrunched in irritation.

“Oh, don’t do that. That’s unnerving, that.” At his lack of response, they sighed. “I only mean that it might help to put a voice to it, rather than running around in the freezing cold until you make yourself sick.”

Their eyebrow arched, and John felt his head dip in sheepish embarrassment. He didn’t particularly want another round of hypothermia.

“Either way, come in and warm up. A drink is the least I can do for lugging my sorry baggage to the door.”

They smiled and patted his arm, and John felt something inside of him pang with a strange longing. Something about Makani’s worn and wrinkled face made the acrid knots loosen in his belly, their dark eyes warm and welcoming. Despite himself, he nodded.

“I just...” For a moment John wrestled with himself, then huffed in frustration as he lost the words again.

But Makani seemed to understand. They nodded, like some unspoken question had been answered, and didn’t press. “Come in.” They urged again, and John gave in.

[ameliterature]

I haven't written one of these in forever so here goes:

Is this it? Is this what Neil has been looking for all this time? That feeling he was searching for in acting, in Dead Poet Meetings, in defying his Father, in defying Welton... This, however, it was a different feeling than any of those combined...

Neil was, for the first time in his entire existence, alive. Silly, he thought acting was what made him feel truly alive, then again it was just the byproduct of finally freeing himself from the grasp of his Father and Welton. But this? This was different.

Todd, when they first met, never really made his tummy rumble and his chest rattle, not like it did a few months ago. Todd was a slow, tender, variable to the feeling Neil would soon acknowledge as the best emotion of his life. Todd’s warmth crept up to him in moments he didn't even think could use warmth. Neil had thought just the ambition and drive to do what he wants was enough to call 'living'. But with Todd... it's like... he didn't have a choice, his body, his mind, they couldn't help but feel even more real when they were with Todd. Neil never knew his heart could literally skip a beat, he never knew he could sweat outside of sports or hot weather, he never even knew he was into blondes (or guys for that matter). Todd was like an inevitable force in Neil’s life that he was finally able to encounter once he was able to act. Being free from his father’s judgement made him freer to think, and because of that, Neil stopped worrying about his sexuality or what he expected in a partner, all he knew was that Todd made him feel alive.

It was no surprise to Charlie either, that Neil would succumb to his teenaged whims and ask him how to ask Todd out. With a scoff, his best friend agreed but in the condition that Neil switched seats with Cameron at lunch (long story). Neil was more than elated when Todd said 'Yes', all because Todd said it so softly and so sweetly to him. To Todds defense, when a guy who’s accidentally covered in pollen, running from bees, and holding a bunch of roses spelling out your name, you'd want to be gentle.

Their date was very much like the two of them when they were alone in their dorms or out in the campus. They visited a quiant Museum up north, some antique broadway props place Charlie recommended, the two had endless comments on every display there. They then arrived at a small bookstore nearby, it sold second hand books for a buck each and you can bet Todd lost his week's allowance in that place. (Neil wasn't lucky either when they happened upon an antique Shakespearean Playbook). It started to rain after that so they scurried over to a small diner and ate garbage plates of fries, gravy, mashed potatoes, and menacingly delicious pork baby back ribs. It wasn't the most elegant of dates, but Neil had never felt so happy just spending more time with Todd.

Every word that came out of Todd’s mouth was golden. His anecdotes, his cheap shots at Neil’s sauce covered grin, his soft compliments, his even softer way of saying 'I'm happy you like me back'. Neil could die here, salt and sauce covered, and he wouldn't mind. The milkshakes helped clean up their pallettes and their napkins cleaned their exteriors from smelling like 10 dollar diner dishes.

When the rain subsided, the two managed to walk out into a secluded park and spend their last few date hours there. Todd's brother was going to pick him up around that town for a family trip the next day so Neil had to go back to Welton alone. The brief disappointment was cut short when Todd's face was about a few centimeters away from Neil’s.

"I really enjoyed our date." Todd's voice was so beautiful. "I hope you'll ask me out again with less pollen in your hair."

"I'll try," Neil chuckled, his sugary breath matching Todd's ever-nearing ones. "I can't promise I won't ask again soon, though"

"I hope you do."

Neil’s first kiss with Todd was like the whole world stopping just for him to feel this exact moment. The world stopped to let Neil feel his heart beat, his senses emerge, his skin heat up, his lips melt at the touch of Todd's equally nervous ones. In a split second, Neil was reborn, like a lightning bolt from the sky reanimated him and brought him back to life.

Pulling away was like exhaling too long, he needed to breathe him in again. It wasn’t a problem though, Todd saw the look in his eyes and gave him another kiss. This time longer, giving their lips time to match up and lock. Weirdly matching each other's lips perfectly.

As they finally stop, right before Jeff had pulled over to the corner of the street, Todd smiles and discretely squeezes Neil's hand. "I'll see you when I get back on Sunday. Thank you for today."

Needless to say, Neil’s walk back to Welton was filled with butterflies his his stomach and they where carrying him all the way there.

Neil after his first date with Todd:

[easyfoodnetwork]

I Can’t Help Falling in Love With Elvis Cookbooks

During quarantine, an unlikely source of comfort has emerged in my aunt’s collection of Elvis-inspired cookbooks

No object is immune from Elvis-ification. The king’s face has been plastered on nearly every household item, from pillows to (somehow unironically) toilet paper. For cooking paraphernalia, Graceland offers a collection of kitchen tchotchkes for diehard fans, in addition to the Elvis-themed pot holders, cutting boards, and spoons on Amazon and Etsy. If you want to really bring the king of rock and roll into your kitchen, though, pick up one of the cookbooks. An entire cottage industry of Elvis “themed” cookbooks, most written by his former personal cooks or relatives banking on the Presley last name, popped up decades after Elvis’s death. The titles include The Wonder of You: The Elvis Fans Cookbook (1984) and The Wonder of You Volume II (1986), The Presley Family & Friends Cookbook (1998), The I Love Elvis Cookbook (1998), From Elvis’ Kitchen to Yours (2002), All Cooked Up (2005), The Presley Family Cookbook (2013), and easily the best title, Are You Hungry Tonight? (1992).

I probably listen to Elvis more than the average millennial, but I’m no superfan. Despite that, a copy of that last one sat idle on my kitchen shelf in Brooklyn for years, gifted to me by an aunt who went through “a phase.” But while trapped at my family home in Los Angeles, I have recently found myself drawn to another title my aunt passed on, Fit for a King: The Elvis Presley Cookbook (1992). To cook from the book is to step back into the “simpler time” of midcentury America — or at least, a ’90s author’s vision of that simpler time — one peppered with the feelings that come with a collection of family recipes, foods passed down a few generations with rough instructions and eyeballed measurements. Like the re-surging victory garden trend that has inspired Americans to turn their anxiety into something actionable, it’s one means of comfort.

But, unlike a victory garden, which you probably want to show off on social media, quarantining with Elvis offers the perfect excuse to eat like no one is watching. Like many people, I’m turning to rich food choices for comfort during this crisis, a task made all the easier by Fit for a King. The book reflects Elvis’s notorious appetite and hedonistic taste for fried and sugar-laden treats, and coaxes readers to make heaving dishes like an aggressive grandmother pushing seconds and thirds onto your plate without asking. During everyday life, when chickpeas and roasted veggies rule my diet, it’s hard to justify pouring gravy on breaded salt pork fried in bacon fat. After being cooped up for weeks, though, I say pass the gravy boat.

You’re stuck at home for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, eat like a king.

Fit for a King takes inspiration from descriptions of meals in professional biographies and firsthand accounts from Alvena Roy, the star’s cook for years, who provided some of the recipes. There are six ways to prepare pork chops, nine casseroles, nearly a dozen dips filled with cream cheese and mayo, and a whole lot of bacon and potatoes. A few dishes, like the peanut butter and banana sandwich (listed among the mains and served sans bacon), are drawn from Presley’s regular diet, but many come from one-off anecdotes — a particular Christmas dinner, a wedding feast, the time the Beatles stopped by for a midnight snack ( they supposedly enjoyed chicken livers wrapped in bacon, meatballs, deviled eggs, and fresh crab).

The recipes are less like fine-tuned formulas and more like inspirational starting points, making cooking fun again, even in the middle of a crisis. They tend to be hit or miss (like other Elvis books I’ve come across, Fit for a King tends to emphasize lore over basic cooking logistics). The batter for fried cheese balls, for example, is impossibly gloopy and far too loose to roll in breadcrumbs, but a persistent cook (who rolls and rolls until a ball-ish thing forms) will find the results more consistent and lighter than expected, a perfect treat-yourself snack. Bacon-almond dip (cream cheese, sour cream, crumbled bacon, slivered almonds, scallions, hot sauce) combines the forces of an A-Team of umami flavors, as long as you let it come to room temp (straight out of the fridge, it’s thick enough to break a stalk of celery in half). After trying fried chicken breaded in pancake mix, which creates an incredible shattering crust, I plan to make it that way forever. I may even whip up a peanut butter and banana sandwich again when I need “Love Me Tender”-level comfort.

When health officials are urging everyone to stock enough food for weeks, we should all aspire to a pantry like the one at Graceland. According to Fit for a King, Elvis’s kitchen was well stocked at all times with ground meat, a case each of Pepsi and “orange drinks,” Brown ‘n’ Serve hot rolls, at least six cans of biscuits, hamburger buns, pickles, potatoes, onions, assorted fruit, canned sauerkraut, “wieners,” three bottles of milk and half & half, bacon, banana pudding “to be made each night,” mustard, peanut butter, fresh orange juice, “ingredients for meat loaf and sauce,” brownies, ice cream, shredded coconut, fudge cookies, and gum (“spearmint, Doublemint, Juicy Fruit — three of each”).

The list seems a little too long on sweets and a little too short on alcohol (Elvis preferred milkshakes to booze), and I kindly disagree with Elvis on soda preferences. Otherwise, I love most of these foods: If Elvis came out of hiding wherever he is and joined me under California’s shelter-in-place order, I think we’d ride out the pandemic together with minimal fights in the kitchen.

Still, when shelter-in-place orders are lifted, restaurants reopen to provide customers with their triple-bacon fix, and healthyish home cooking trends spring back to life, it’ll be time for the Elvis cookbooks to go back on the shelf. But for a few months, stuck at home, go ahead and eat like a king.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VD4wJ3 https://ift.tt/2S0Em0o

During quarantine, an unlikely source of comfort has emerged in my aunt’s collection of Elvis-inspired cookbooks

No object is immune from Elvis-ification. The king’s face has been plastered on nearly every household item, from pillows to (somehow unironically) toilet paper. For cooking paraphernalia, Graceland offers a collection of kitchen tchotchkes for diehard fans, in addition to the Elvis-themed pot holders, cutting boards, and spoons on Amazon and Etsy. If you want to really bring the king of rock and roll into your kitchen, though, pick up one of the cookbooks. An entire cottage industry of Elvis “themed” cookbooks, most written by his former personal cooks or relatives banking on the Presley last name, popped up decades after Elvis’s death. The titles include The Wonder of You: The Elvis Fans Cookbook (1984) and The Wonder of You Volume II (1986), The Presley Family & Friends Cookbook (1998), The I Love Elvis Cookbook (1998), From Elvis’ Kitchen to Yours (2002), All Cooked Up (2005), The Presley Family Cookbook (2013), and easily the best title, Are You Hungry Tonight? (1992).

I probably listen to Elvis more than the average millennial, but I’m no superfan. Despite that, a copy of that last one sat idle on my kitchen shelf in Brooklyn for years, gifted to me by an aunt who went through “a phase.” But while trapped at my family home in Los Angeles, I have recently found myself drawn to another title my aunt passed on, Fit for a King: The Elvis Presley Cookbook (1992). To cook from the book is to step back into the “simpler time” of midcentury America — or at least, a ’90s author’s vision of that simpler time — one peppered with the feelings that come with a collection of family recipes, foods passed down a few generations with rough instructions and eyeballed measurements. Like the re-surging victory garden trend that has inspired Americans to turn their anxiety into something actionable, it’s one means of comfort.

But, unlike a victory garden, which you probably want to show off on social media, quarantining with Elvis offers the perfect excuse to eat like no one is watching. Like many people, I’m turning to rich food choices for comfort during this crisis, a task made all the easier by Fit for a King. The book reflects Elvis’s notorious appetite and hedonistic taste for fried and sugar-laden treats, and coaxes readers to make heaving dishes like an aggressive grandmother pushing seconds and thirds onto your plate without asking. During everyday life, when chickpeas and roasted veggies rule my diet, it’s hard to justify pouring gravy on breaded salt pork fried in bacon fat. After being cooped up for weeks, though, I say pass the gravy boat.

You’re stuck at home for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, eat like a king.

Fit for a King takes inspiration from descriptions of meals in professional biographies and firsthand accounts from Alvena Roy, the star’s cook for years, who provided some of the recipes. There are six ways to prepare pork chops, nine casseroles, nearly a dozen dips filled with cream cheese and mayo, and a whole lot of bacon and potatoes. A few dishes, like the peanut butter and banana sandwich (listed among the mains and served sans bacon), are drawn from Presley’s regular diet, but many come from one-off anecdotes — a particular Christmas dinner, a wedding feast, the time the Beatles stopped by for a midnight snack ( they supposedly enjoyed chicken livers wrapped in bacon, meatballs, deviled eggs, and fresh crab).

The recipes are less like fine-tuned formulas and more like inspirational starting points, making cooking fun again, even in the middle of a crisis. They tend to be hit or miss (like other Elvis books I’ve come across, Fit for a King tends to emphasize lore over basic cooking logistics). The batter for fried cheese balls, for example, is impossibly gloopy and far too loose to roll in breadcrumbs, but a persistent cook (who rolls and rolls until a ball-ish thing forms) will find the results more consistent and lighter than expected, a perfect treat-yourself snack. Bacon-almond dip (cream cheese, sour cream, crumbled bacon, slivered almonds, scallions, hot sauce) combines the forces of an A-Team of umami flavors, as long as you let it come to room temp (straight out of the fridge, it’s thick enough to break a stalk of celery in half). After trying fried chicken breaded in pancake mix, which creates an incredible shattering crust, I plan to make it that way forever. I may even whip up a peanut butter and banana sandwich again when I need “Love Me Tender”-level comfort.

When health officials are urging everyone to stock enough food for weeks, we should all aspire to a pantry like the one at Graceland. According to Fit for a King, Elvis’s kitchen was well stocked at all times with ground meat, a case each of Pepsi and “orange drinks,” Brown ‘n’ Serve hot rolls, at least six cans of biscuits, hamburger buns, pickles, potatoes, onions, assorted fruit, canned sauerkraut, “wieners,” three bottles of milk and half & half, bacon, banana pudding “to be made each night,” mustard, peanut butter, fresh orange juice, “ingredients for meat loaf and sauce,” brownies, ice cream, shredded coconut, fudge cookies, and gum (“spearmint, Doublemint, Juicy Fruit — three of each”).

The list seems a little too long on sweets and a little too short on alcohol (Elvis preferred milkshakes to booze), and I kindly disagree with Elvis on soda preferences. Otherwise, I love most of these foods: If Elvis came out of hiding wherever he is and joined me under California’s shelter-in-place order, I think we’d ride out the pandemic together with minimal fights in the kitchen.

Still, when shelter-in-place orders are lifted, restaurants reopen to provide customers with their triple-bacon fix, and healthyish home cooking trends spring back to life, it’ll be time for the Elvis cookbooks to go back on the shelf. But for a few months, stuck at home, go ahead and eat like a king.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VD4wJ3 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2xVhqJ9

[unwritrecipes]

The Seasoned Life's Brown Sugar Chicken-Famous Fridays

If family and the cooking of food for your family are your two big things, you are going to love Ayesha Curry's, The Seasoned Life:  Food, Family, Faith and the Joy of Eating Well. Not only is it chock full of great, accessible, home-cook-friendly recipes, but it's also filled with great little anecdotes and stories about Ayesha's childhood, motherhood and marriage to the great Stephen Curry (NBA star of the Golden State Warriors). The minute I picked up this book I knew it was love at first sight and every recipe I've tried out has been exactly what I wanted it to be. It was tough to choose just one to highlight here today, but in the end, after a long week with a disgusting cold that we just can't seem to get rid of, comfort food won out and I can think of little that's more comforting than this One-Pot Brown Sugar Chicken. It's sweet, it's savory, the chicken is fall-apart tender, there's a ton of finger lickin' gravy, the aroma it creates while cooking is intoxicating and it all comes together easily which makes it a perfect Famous Friday highlight. Slam-dunk, Ayesha!!

I know I've touched on it already, but reading this book makes you feel like you're in the kitchen with your best friend. It's so warm and friendly and sincere and the recipes all seem to call out to you. Even though she's married to a huge NBA star, I know that if we met, Ayesha and I would have a lot in common--we both treasure our families and good food (and we both cook for athletes too!) Anyway, if you're looking for a new cookbook that you'll use again and again because the food is the kind of regular food that people really want to eat, I know you won't be disappointed. Would be a great cookbook to give to a young cook!

Life is just better with brown sugar, right? Here it combines with soy sauce to make a divine, sweet and savory sauce that bathes the chicken in a perfectly sweet and sticky environment and you'll probably want to jump in there and take a bath too! It's perfection!! And so easy! In the book, this dish is called Mama Alexander's Brown Sugar Chicken because it's Ayesha's mom's specialty and was made at least once a week for her while she was growing up--I think that may become a tradition around here too! Every bite is just perfect and any starchy side that you make with it will perfectly sop up all that divine sauce!!

So pick up a copy of The Seasoned Life, enjoy the stories, recipes and gorgeous photos of the food (and the Curry family) and have a delicious weekend! Later, gaters!

The Seasoned Life's Brown Sugar Chicken-Famous Fridays

Serves 4

Prep Time:  1 1/2 hours (most of this is hands-free)

Ingredients

3 1/2 pounds chicken on the bone (any combination you like-I used breasts and wings here)

Kosher salt and black pepper to season

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 large shallot, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

3/4 cup chicken broth

1 cup low-sodium soy sauce

2 cups dark brown sugar, packed

1 heaping teaspoon minced fresh ginger (I didn't use because I'm not a big fan but I know it would be good with this is you like ginger)

The Recipe

1.  Preheat oven to 350ºF. Pat chicken dry with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper. In a large Dutch oven or other oven-proof saucepan, melt the butter and oil over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken, skin side down and let brown 5 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to a plate and repeat with remaining chicken.

2.  Once chicken is browned, pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat and return the pot to medium heat. Add the shallots and sauté for about 1 minute. Add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds. Add the chicken broth and turn the heat up, scraping any browned bits up from the bottom of the pan and bringing the mixture to a boil. Add in the soy sauce, brown sugar and ginger (if using) and stir together well. Lower the heat and allow the mixture to simmer for about 5 minutes, so that the sugar dissolves and the sauce gets a bit thicker. Add the chicken back into the pot, skin-side up and cover. 

3.  Place the pot into the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then, remove the lid and bake for another 30-50 minutes, until the chicken is extremely tender and almost falling off the bone. Serve with rice, pasta, mashed potatoes or anything that will allow you to sop up all the delicious gravy!!

4.  You can definitely make this a day ahead. Bring to room temperature, cover and chill. Reheat over a low light.

Enjoy!

Note:  Recipe adapted from The Seasoned Life by Ayesha Curry. I subbed in chicken breasts and wings because we prefer white meat.

[easyfoodnetwork]

During quarantine, an unlikely source of comfort has emerged in my aunt’s collection of Elvis-inspired cookbooks No object is immune from Elvis-ification. The king’s face has been plastered on nearly every household item, from pillows to (somehow unironically) toilet paper. For cooking paraphernalia, Graceland offers a collection of kitchen tchotchkes for diehard fans, in addition to the Elvis-themed pot holders, cutting boards, and spoons on Amazon and Etsy. If you want to really bring the king of rock and roll into your kitchen, though, pick up one of the cookbooks. An entire cottage industry of Elvis “themed” cookbooks, most written by his former personal cooks or relatives banking on the Presley last name, popped up decades after Elvis’s death. The titles include The Wonder of You: The Elvis Fans Cookbook (1984) and The Wonder of You Volume II (1986), The Presley Family & Friends Cookbook (1998), The I Love Elvis Cookbook (1998), From Elvis’ Kitchen to Yours (2002), All Cooked Up (2005), The Presley Family Cookbook (2013), and easily the best title, Are You Hungry Tonight? (1992). I probably listen to Elvis more than the average millennial, but I’m no superfan. Despite that, a copy of that last one sat idle on my kitchen shelf in Brooklyn for years, gifted to me by an aunt who went through “a phase.” But while trapped at my family home in Los Angeles, I have recently found myself drawn to another title my aunt passed on, Fit for a King: The Elvis Presley Cookbook (1992). To cook from the book is to step back into the “simpler time” of midcentury America — or at least, a ’90s author’s vision of that simpler time — one peppered with the feelings that come with a collection of family recipes, foods passed down a few generations with rough instructions and eyeballed measurements. Like the re-surging victory garden trend that has inspired Americans to turn their anxiety into something actionable, it’s one means of comfort. But, unlike a victory garden, which you probably want to show off on social media, quarantining with Elvis offers the perfect excuse to eat like no one is watching. Like many people, I’m turning to rich food choices for comfort during this crisis, a task made all the easier by Fit for a King. The book reflects Elvis’s notorious appetite and hedonistic taste for fried and sugar-laden treats, and coaxes readers to make heaving dishes like an aggressive grandmother pushing seconds and thirds onto your plate without asking. During everyday life, when chickpeas and roasted veggies rule my diet, it’s hard to justify pouring gravy on breaded salt pork fried in bacon fat. After being cooped up for weeks, though, I say pass the gravy boat. You’re stuck at home for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, eat like a king. Fit for a King takes inspiration from descriptions of meals in professional biographies and firsthand accounts from Alvena Roy, the star’s cook for years, who provided some of the recipes. There are six ways to prepare pork chops, nine casseroles, nearly a dozen dips filled with cream cheese and mayo, and a whole lot of bacon and potatoes. A few dishes, like the peanut butter and banana sandwich (listed among the mains and served sans bacon), are drawn from Presley’s regular diet, but many come from one-off anecdotes — a particular Christmas dinner, a wedding feast, the time the Beatles stopped by for a midnight snack ( they supposedly enjoyed chicken livers wrapped in bacon, meatballs, deviled eggs, and fresh crab). The recipes are less like fine-tuned formulas and more like inspirational starting points, making cooking fun again, even in the middle of a crisis. They tend to be hit or miss (like other Elvis books I’ve come across, Fit for a King tends to emphasize lore over basic cooking logistics). The batter for fried cheese balls, for example, is impossibly gloopy and far too loose to roll in breadcrumbs, but a persistent cook (who rolls and rolls until a ball-ish thing forms) will find the results more consistent and lighter than expected, a perfect treat-yourself snack. Bacon-almond dip (cream cheese, sour cream, crumbled bacon, slivered almonds, scallions, hot sauce) combines the forces of an A-Team of umami flavors, as long as you let it come to room temp (straight out of the fridge, it’s thick enough to break a stalk of celery in half). After trying fried chicken breaded in pancake mix, which creates an incredible shattering crust, I plan to make it that way forever. I may even whip up a peanut butter and banana sandwich again when I need “Love Me Tender”-level comfort. When health officials are urging everyone to stock enough food for weeks, we should all aspire to a pantry like the one at Graceland. According to Fit for a King, Elvis’s kitchen was well stocked at all times with ground meat, a case each of Pepsi and “orange drinks,” Brown ‘n’ Serve hot rolls, at least six cans of biscuits, hamburger buns, pickles, potatoes, onions, assorted fruit, canned sauerkraut, “wieners,” three bottles of milk and half & half, bacon, banana pudding “to be made each night,” mustard, peanut butter, fresh orange juice, “ingredients for meat loaf and sauce,” brownies, ice cream, shredded coconut, fudge cookies, and gum (“spearmint, Doublemint, Juicy Fruit — three of each”). The list seems a little too long on sweets and a little too short on alcohol (Elvis preferred milkshakes to booze), and I kindly disagree with Elvis on soda preferences. Otherwise, I love most of these foods: If Elvis came out of hiding wherever he is and joined me under California’s shelter-in-place order, I think we’d ride out the pandemic together with minimal fights in the kitchen. Still, when shelter-in-place orders are lifted, restaurants reopen to provide customers with their triple-bacon fix, and healthyish home cooking trends spring back to life, it’ll be time for the Elvis cookbooks to go back on the shelf. But for a few months, stuck at home, go ahead and eat like a king. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VD4wJ3

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/04/i-cant-help-falling-in-love-with-elvis.html