I Love a Mystery

Excuse me? I don't DO mystery food.

Our little bunny buddy would fit right in here. See, I finished doing the archeology project in the freezer today. Found my missing Lemon Drop chili peppers (yay!), separated a huge bag of oriental veggies and a huge bag of whole kernel corn into more reasonable pint portions, bagged up a freshly cooked batch of black beans and managed to fit everything ever so neatly on each shelf. I not only have a clue about the contents of my freezer, I can even find the different items.

Except for the mystery food.

Every now and then I pick up a 2-pint container of Nancy's Plain Yogurt. The handy thing is, after you've emptied the carton, you can use it to save leftover food in the freezer. They even have a space on the side where you can label the carton so you know what's in it. The trouble here (you know what's coming) is that I neglected to do the label thing. I remember thinking there would be no problem remembering what I'd tucked inside. I don't remember what I would have no problem remembering.

I could have popped the lid to see if I could figure out what was in there. Decided to hold off on immediate exposure because where's the challenge in that? No, I'm sure it will be a lot more fun to speculate. If there were more of me hanging out here, I could even run an office pool for guesses.

Oh, wait. The Voices are informing me they're willing to play. Well, alrighty. We have us a horse race. One Voice has already hollered out, "Taco soup!" and another Voice chimed in with, "Naw, it's a noodle casserole." Personally, I'm thinking it's a veggie soup with rice. I'll wait a bit to see if anyone else jumps in the pool and then we'll have the Grand Opening. Winner gets to eat the contents.

Clams & Clapton

Darn it. Every time I have Dalmatians for breakfast, I break out in hives!

I'm sure glad I have Lolcats to draw on because I can't think of a thing I did today that needed to be photographed for posterity. Some days are like that.

Not that I wasn't busy. And I'm not done yet. Shucky-darn. To make it all move along easier, I've been running assorted CDs through the stereo. Roy Orbison is serenading me at the moment with his cover of Blue Bayou. Linda Ronstadt made the Big Bucks with it but ol' Roy, along with a fellow named Joe Melson, wrote it. Here's an interesting piece of trivia for you . . . according to the Wikipedia entry: Because of this song, Dickson's Baseball Dictionary records that a "Linda Ronstadt" is a synonym for a fastball, a pitch that "blew by you."

The biggity-big thang I did today was process some of the horseneck clams Patti and Roger shared with me awhile back. They were cleaned and frozen but whole. Had to be peeled and minced before use. So I thawed them out and peeled until I was cross-eyed. Then I decided I'd cook them before the slice-and-dice phase of the operation. That's when I got a flash of inspiration. (Braced yourself, Wendy, I'm proselytizing again.) Clams are among the sorts of seafood that get tough if you cook them too much. But I wondered what would happen if I ran them through the pressure cooker.

It took some serious searching because most recipes were for chowder and had you putting in the minced clams after the pressure cooking part was done. I think all those recipes were referring mostly to the canned minced clams you buy in the store. Finally I found a source that suggested cooking them for 5 minutes, then letting the pressure fall off slowly. Well, I wasn't going to find out if I didn't try it, right?

Tossed the horsenecks in the steamer basket and set them in about 3 cups of water, sprinkled them generously with Chef Paul Prudhomme's seafood seasoning and locked the lid down tight. When they were done, I raised the basket out and let them drain and cool. As soon as I could handle them, they got a turn in the chopper until they were minced up nice and neat. Then I crossed my fingers and popped some of the mince in my mouth to see if I'd managed to keep them tender.

Oh yeah. Perfect! And right tasty, too, thank you, Chef Prudhomme. So I was able to divide them up between two pint-sized freezer bags and pop them the freezer for later attention. I dunno -- something like linguini with clam sauce? What do you think?

And now I think I'd best pour myself another mug of the sacred liquid and see if I can finish up my To Do list for the day. I do believe I'll have my main man, Eric Clapton, keeping me company the rest of the evening. That'll make me happy as a clam. Hmmmm . . . have you ever wondered about the person who thunk up that particular cliche? I mean, have you ever seen a clam grinning? Or even chuckling? No, I didn't think so.