Sunday gravy

To See and Be Seen

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This column came very, very close to not happening.  And if I were less ham-handed and herky-jerky, it would have happened, but would have been a very, very different column.

Last week I wrote about literature, and my pursuit to elevate my taste.

Well, Bosco did an admirable job.  But I’m afraid my taste in magazines still reside due south of any literary or intellectual value whatsoever. My two favorites are British Cosmopolitan; a slightly more grownup version of our own US Cosmo.  And the other title is one my big brother Homer introduced me to, and I’ve been reading for at least forty-five years—Mad magazine.

Yeah, I know, I’m a periodical Philistine.But I love reading fashion and beauty columns.  I’m convinced if I read the right combination of words, I’ll morph into somebody gorgeous and fashionable, like Vivien Leigh, or Grace Kelly, or Audrey Hepburn.  Or maybe even someone born within the last seventy-five years.

But until then, I’m always picking up tips and tricks to facilitate the transformation of me to “me, but not scary”.b4 and afterSome suggestions are really smart and effective, like warming my eyelash curler before using, or lining my bottom lid with white to make the whites of my eyes brighter.

And some tips…not so much.

Like using peanut butter as shaving cream.  Peanut butter is more expensive than shaving cream and won’t make you smell like a preschooler’s lunch bag.  How about making a facial mask from kitty litter?  Just…no.  Gross.Some tricks sound good, but you don’t know for sure until you try it yourself.

Last Friday I read about a technique for making lashes look full and long.  My lashes are long and thick but grow straight out and are hard to see.  The instructions told me to close the eye that I’m working on and push the brush in and wiggle it up vigorously.

It actually works.  They were banging—full and lush, and best of all, visible.But a few were clumped together, so I opened my eyes wide and used the wand to separate the ones that were stuck together.  When I was almost done on my second eye, I accidentally jabbed myself.  It smarted and watered for a minute, then felt okay.

About 45 minutes later it felt like I had something in my eye, so I rubbed it a little.  I washed my face clean, but it was still bothering me.  I flushed my eye with Visine, then lots of cold water.It didn’t work.  By this time, it had gone from irritating to, “there’s a family of giant porcupines, they’ve moved in under my lid, and now they’re having a huge dance party/housewarming in my eye.”

The pain was the very definition of excruciating.  It was watering buckets, and I couldn’t keep it open, which was okay, because I couldn’t see anything anyway.

It wasn’t quite this bad, but it sure felt like it.

Later, at urgent care, the guy told me I hadn’t scratched my cornea.  Not one to do things in half measures, I had literally stabbed my eyeball.  He couldn’t even tell how deep it went.   He sent me on my way with an antibiotic prescription and suggestions to take plenty of Tylenol and Motrin.

Not actually what happened-just an illustration of what it felt like.

For the next couple of days, those porcupines kept dancing.  The next morning it had watered so much in my sleep that my lid was goop-welded closed.  I couldn’t imagine writing.  Worst of all, I wasn’t able to read, and I had just gotten the new Mad magazine.

Today though, it feels way better and it’s not red or swollen anymore.

And I’m going to keep using that mascara tip.  I will however, leave out the stabby portion of the program.

Again, not actual, merely an aspirational eye…

Thanks for your time.

Pink Sauce

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Originally published in the Herald Sun September 2011.

So, The Kid came home a few days ago, finished with six months of summer internship and first-time completely independent living. Petey and I filled the fridge with childhood favorites like Clementines and RC Cola, and counted the hours.
I made a big pot of childhood’s favorite guilty pleasure; pink sauce.
Despite being the child of an Italian girl from Jersey, I have never liked red sauce (called Sunday gravy by my mom and her sisters). Consequently, I never made it. If Petey or The Kid wanted spaghetti and meatballs, they had to leave home, and get their fix on the streets.
Because I wanted to make some kind of spaghetti for the family, but mainly because I’m always looking for something thick and yummy to ladle onto carbs, I came up with this coral-colored, indulgent concoction.
I invented this recipe before I could really cook, and The Kid has loved it for years. This sauce is not for the faint of heart. It should be no more than an occasional treat if you want to fit into your jeans or look your doctor in the eye. Fat is flavor, and can be the culinary equivilant of false eyelashes and push-up bra for the novice cook.
A big pot of this bubbling velvet starts the day before the finished dish. I make a batch of meatballs. My walnut-sized offerings are made with a mixture of ground veal and pork. Before the meat even comes out of the fridge, I make a panade. A panade is a bread ripped into tiny pieces and soaked until saturated.
My soak is egg, cream, shredded Parm, finely chopped garlic, chiffonade of basil, a splash of both olive oil and marsala wine, and salt and pepper. When the bread and the soak are one, I break the ground meat into small pieces and lightly mix, almost fold the mixture together. If you go nuts and mix your meatballs too much, they will be rubbery and dry.
I can’t fry a spherical meatball to save my life. So, I bake them, on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet, at 350 for twelve minutes, and a few minutes minutes under the broiler, flipped once. This gives them some color that translates to flavor in the finished product.
To get them uniform in size, I use a smallish cookie/portion scoop. I roll them into balls, sprinkle them with salt, pepper, and a little bit of freshly ground nutmeg. About eighteen or so go in the sauce, and any extra go in the freezer for future use.
The sauce itself is pretty simple. I brown 10-12 Italian sausages that I’ve cut into one inch slices. I remove them from the pot and carmelize about 1 1/2 pounds of sliced mushrooms, a small onion chopped, and five or six chopped cloves of garlic. Then I add back the sausage and a can of tomato paste. When the paste has cooked to a deep burgundy, I deglaze with a cup of marsala. When the wine is almost gone, I dump in a quart of chicken stock and 2 cups of cream. Into it I put a couple of tablespoons of sundried tomatoes, 1/2 cup shredded Parm, a tablespoon of sugar, 2 tablespoons of chopped basil, a drizzle of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.
When it comes to a boil I thicken it slightly with a peanut butter colored roux and add the meatballs. It then slowly cooks for hours on the stove top.
When we’re ready to eat, I toss in another handful of chopped basil for fresh flavor.
I serve it on spaghetti, bake it into ziti, and use it on a ton of other things. The Kid is convinced it would be tasty on an old tennis shoe. Tonight we’re having leftover sauce on rice, my personal favorite.
Thanks for your time.