Friday, August 11, 2006

• Currently Reading The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel By John Nichols see related

  Continuing cooking through the Cabbagetown Cafe Cookbook. Yesterday I baked “Mindy's Black Bread,” a recipe that I've long wanted to try. If you remember your Heidi, then you know that the poor Grandmother had to eat black bread that was hard on her teeth, and Heidi, imprisoned at Clara's in Frankfort, stuffed her suitcase with nice soft white rolls to bring home. So I was curious about this black bread—made with coffee and molasses, fennel seeds and caraway seeds, and whole wheat flour, of course. The recipe calls for carob powder. I didn't have any, and neither did I want to pay $4.99 for a cannister of carob that will sit in the cupboard until the end of time. Since you can substitute carob for cocoa, I figured you could sub cocoa for carob, which I did, with successful results, I guess. The bread tastes strange, but I think the fennel is at fault for that and not the cocoa. It tastes best spread with cream cheese.

  
  

  The most irritating thing about this cookbook is its dogged insistence on always substituting honey for sugar. I like honey, but it costs about $8,000 per ounce, and its flavor usually gets lost when it's put in baked goods. Chocolate marries well with many flavors, but honey is not one of them. Hence the complete failure of the chocolate-whipped cream cake frosting which consisted of unsweetened chocolate, honey, butter, and whipped cream. And speaking of chocolate, while there are some chocolate recipes in this cookbook, the author loves to use carob in its place—carob chips in the cookies, “carob mousse” rather than chocolate mousse, etc. All I can say is, why? What has chocolate done to offend the vegetarian community? (Fair trade issues aside—the fact of slaves harvesting cocoa beans was not known when this book was published. And besides, fair trade chocolate is readily available.) Chocolate is yummy. Carob is disgusting. That's all we need to know.

  I have been asked about The Milagro Beanfield War.  Yup, it was a book before it became a movie, written by John Nichols and published in the 1970s.  I am enjoying it, but readers, beware.  It's one of those books with a huge cast of characters, all of them with Spanish names.  I'm having a terrible time remembering who is who.  Also, because there are so many mini-plots, it takes about 100 pages for the story to get set up. You need to have patience.  Still, it's a good book with funny and touching and tense moments.
  

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  Work drama:  I overheard one of the nurses complaining that she felt "unsettled."  Just a few minutes later, the boyfriend of one of her patients got a visitor's pass to come back to see the patient and attacked her (his girlfriend, not the nurse).  The nurse got between the two of them, and boyfriend ended up being escorted out of the ED in handcuffs.  Usually, when a patient is at risk for assault or domestic abuse, we put up a no publicity flag, so that no one will even learn that they're in the ER, let alone get a pass to go back and see them, but this patient had not been flagged, and since the computer showed she was about to be discharged, the front office staff gave the guy a pass. 
  

  
  

  Disaster Lady continues to entertain us. She has been showing off pictures of her new, $600 cat.
  It's an Oriental Short Hair.  How do I know it cost $600? She'll say, “Wanna see a picture of my baby? Guess how much he cost.” And why do people who live on the edge, as she does, have money for $600 cats? She is naming the new cat Fagin, from Oliver Twist. The literary reference startled me—people can be surprising. But then I noticed that she is spelling it 'Phagen.'

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