Author: Randy Baran

Friday, March 5, 2021.

3 Pork Chops and Rum. Eating it now! (5:00)

Thin pork chops (yep, three).
Saute juice:
A little filtered water (1/2 cup should do fine)
1/2 tsp ‘Better Than Bouillon’ (delicious broth)
To the pan: oregano, fennel, some chives, garlic powder and 1 large garlic clove, sliced, 1/4 lemon, sliced fine. And a little peanut oil. Butter is optional.
Get the pan going and start sautéing the chops.
At the bottom of the serving bowl:
Italian parsley, rinsed
Black olives, Artichoke hearts
Olive oil
Sprinkle of Parmesan.
Back to the pan.
Add tri-color sweet peppers, frozen chopped organic cauliflower, more garlic (chopped or powder – I use a great, pure powder from nuts.com), and a handful of baby spinach leaves.

Where’s the rum? Added to the chef during the cooking process!

Taste the meat to see when it’s cooked and juicy.
Bowl again:
1 chop – bless w/Parmesan
Throw in some of the mix and pan juice
2nd chop – do the same
3rd chop – do the same, sprinkle a little powdered garlic on top. No need for salt – there’s plenty in the bouillon.
Olive oil.

You could add onions or leeks, and apple, which I encourage you to do (add it to the sautéing pan). Leeks are my favorite,  but I can no longer enjoy them. Same goes for Dijon mustard, a little of which makes pork (and corned beef) taste like heaven. However, in the 2nd photo, you might see that I added some cool nutrients: organic powdered broccoli, and nutritional yeast flakes, which taste a lot like cheese, but they’re packed with B vitamins. You can also top with dry roasted peanuts and applesauce.

 

Btw: Did you hear about the two antennas that got married? The wedding wasn’t so hot but the reception was fantastic!

Sunday, February 29, 2021.

Sunday, February 29, 2021.

This about sums it up. Glad it’s over!

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Thursday, February 25, 2021.

In Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories – The Three Day Blow (a slice of life about two friends hanging out when the autumn winds come) – Nick and Bill were drinking whiskey. Both were enamored of the quality of the beverage, and as they drank, they began to discuss why it was so good. Bill tells Nick, ‘it’s the peat.’ Nick complains that ‘you can’t get peat into whiskey.’

But you can. Like grapes are to wine, barley and peat are to making whiskey. Also, the soil, temperature, climate… Hemingway, a connoisseur of all spirits, must have known this. It might be why he deemed Paris, ‘moveable.’ Maybe the city spun before his eyes.

With whiskey, peat is used as fuel to make fire that dries out the barley. It imparts a flavor. I doubt if my mom knew this – she drank slo-gin fizz when she was young and wine in her later days. Gallo Rose’ soothed some of her pain before she made her way, peacefully into the great beyond.

But she knew something. Decades before, she dealt with peat. I was there. Late 50s, maybe early 60s. Bit of a blur, now. In summer, tho’, I can tell you I wore a white crew t-shirt, blue jeans and RedBall Jet sneakers. Everyday. Along with my baseball mitt – but that’s another story.

A guy poured a half ton or so of fertilizer, ‘Guaranteed to make your lawn Heaven on Earth,’ onto our front lawn. No angels danced, no manna rained down from above. The lawn sucked just as it always did. Probably due to the shade from the overarching Elm trees, which met their doom by some Dutch tree disease throughout the 1960s. Or was it peat?

Ironically, about 5 years back, the Dutch pulled history’s most well-preserved corpse out of a peat bog. Wouldn’t it have been funny if it looked like…no, never mind!

Mom saw what happened and called the spreader back. He came – haha, silly guy. “Get this crap off my grass,” Mom told him.

“It’s fertilizer! Wait til—”

“You get it off here. It’s peat moss. It ruined my grass.”

Immediately, peat moss became a bad thing to me. Cheap, crummy lawn killer. My mom knew, and that was good enough. She may have been talked into the fertilizer, but when this peat burned her grass, she wasn’t about to be buffaloed a second time. The guy stopped arguing, scraped up his peat, and gave her cash.

Probably why I never drink whiskey. And I’m staying away from wine! Miss my mom? You bet!

Tuesday, February 23, 2021.

Eating as I write! Love to share the foods I make when it all comes together. Here goes:

1. Poaching broth:

1/2 tsp Better Than Bouillon (roasted Chicken)

one pint of filtered water – or you can use low sodium organic chicken broth

1/2 tsp powdered Dill or a sprig of fresh

1 1/2 tsp. desiccated garlic (I get mine from nuts.com)

rosemary and chives to taste

1 tsp. of butter

olive oil

2. Fresh salmon – about a half pound or a little less (for one).

Use a very low flame or 2 1/2 on an electric stove (like mine). While the salmon is poaching, prepare the salad/antipasto that goes on the bottom of the serving bowl.

1. Baby spinach leaves – not too much. Small handful.
2. Olive oil
3. 1 clove of garlic – slice it up w/a razor ala GoodFellows or just use a regular knife. 
4. 1 tsp. of Walnut Meal (nuts.com)
5. 2 tsps. of Nutritional Yeast (I use NOW brand).
6. Several artichoke hearts quarters
7. 5-6 green olives w/pimento (I like Goya)
8. 1 stalk fresh, organic celery (chop it up)
9. 1/4 tsp powdered org. Kale (you can use reg. leaf)
10. 1/2 tsp powdered org. Broccoli (you can use florets)
11. Grated Parmesan to taste
12. Pepper to taste

Directions:

Poach the fish until it flakes, or looks, ‘eat me’. While it cooks, fix up the salad/antipasto.

Put the salmon on top, spoon some of the poaching broth over it. A squirt of brown mustard (your choice) works well. 

Enjoy! A few Miller Lites are always good. Always good!

I poured the excess broth in a coffee mug and am enjoying that right now.

 

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Rush Limbaugh and Hank Aaron gone in little more than a month. Forget politics, the American Spirit has taken a hit.

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Monday, February 15, 2021

Good to be with you again. Here’s what’s going on: IT’S SNOWING! We’ll get at least 10″ in the next 24 hrs. and with about 10 already on the ground – along with 4-5′ drifts – well, let’s say it’s nice inside. Like Florida, as a matter of fact! 70s, lo-humidity. Computer, TV, radio, YouTube, phone, and best of all – lots of friends in the building and on the ‘Net! Did I mention beer in the fridge? Hah-hah!

Will try to catch up a little bit by posting pics.

I shot these today.  I think it’ll let up in March. Sooner, if we drive to Fla. Carpool, anyone?

Haven’t posted a train art pic in awhile. Yep, they still keep on a  rollin’!

Made this a couple weeks ago – took the pic, wolfed it down but forgot to write the recipe! After blowing up the pic, here’s what I figure:

1. Very fresh salmon (at the bottom)
2. Either Gluten-free spaghetti or clean white worms
3. Green olives/pimento
4. Artichokes
5. Broccoli
6. Tri-color peppers
7. Mushrooms
8. Olive oil
9. Garlic

See you Later!

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Our neighborhood – once rather peaceful – is getting dicey. Yesterday, another cop chase, right past the spot where i enjoy my pipe and feed the squirrels.

As if there’s not been enough stabbings and shootings around here already, police SUVs – marked and unmarked – were hunting down someone; some car or whatever. They were hot on it, too – they turned the corner, then pulled a U and came right back and sped off the opposite way. I think the squirrels even darted back up in the tree.

Headed up to Forest Glen and Mariano’s this very windy afternoon (40+ mph gusts). I usually take my rolling luggage, it’s the best thing for grocery shopping on foot. We’re talking stairs, tho’ – especially boarding the Metra on the way back (26 stairs to the platform).

The packer did an excellent job of arranging the goods, but he struggled to fit everything in. I told him, in Kramer’s voice, “I think I over bought.” That luggage cart must have weighed close to 40 lbs. I got my exercise.  

Hope all of you had a great New Years Eve. Channel 9 (WGN here in Chicago) ran Marx Bros. movies – Animal Crackers and Monkey Business. They were still as timely and fresh as they must have been in the ’30s. “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know.” He goes on to say he had to go to Alabama to get the tusks out. “Because in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa…”

And Harpo, subtely thumbing his nose at the opera singer while not missing a note on his harp.

Last night (Sat. Jan. 4), I watched an old Sherlock film, ‘The Spider Woman.’ If any of you are fans – especially of the Rathbone/Bruce series – it was one time Lestrade out dolted Watson. Sherlock winds up giving him (Lestrade) his famed Calabash pipe, too. 

The young actor who played Larry – the boy who hopped around the room as a ruse to throw Sherlock off the trail of the killer – was played by Teddy Infuhr. In real life, he became a chiropractor and lived until 2007.

Sadly, my neighbor passed away in his apt. last week. God rest his soul, but it makes me thing of “ask not for whom the bell tolls…”

Been working on some of the songs i wrote back in the ’70s – that was when i had energy! The arthritis in my hand (left thumb) keeps me from playing as much as i’d like to, but if i find something i think might be worth your while, i’ll post a vid – if i can keep the clams to a minimum.

Can you believe – 2020! Wish i could see that well again! Have a great January. It’s warm for the season here – thankful. And it’s staying light longer now – about a minute each day!

 

Sunday, December, 22, 2019

Visited the Swiss town of Villars – winter, ’73. We were up so high, and the mountain peaks were still taller, that the sun finally shown over the peaks an hour or two after daybreak. Our friend and host, Frank (it was his folk’s vacation home), had a shelf filled with Charlie Bown/Snoopy books. I read them over a few nights – in front of a window facing the Alps, with the curtins drawn – by the light of the moon!

Just wrote this to a friend who had experienced being in an airport for the first time, alone: ferried from Dublin to Liverpool, hitched to London, across the channel to Belgium, caught the train to Geneva (where i was based), and a plane back to the states. My dad picked me up at O’Hare – i was 23! Met a girl (curly-haired Irish lass) on the transport crossing the Irish Sea. it was so rough we slept on the floor together. She was at Hendrix’ last(?) concert at the Isle of Wight only about 5 years before.

First full day of winter (Dec. 22) in Chicago and it’s 50 degrees!

A young man called me ‘pops’ today. Dug it – that’s what i used to call my dad.

Couple of cell phone shots of the full moon from a couple of weeks back. That’s the big white blob in the train station.

And some of the neighbors’ Christmas handiwork:

From this afternoon – ‘Big Buddy.’ He’s claimed that hole in the tree to the right – where i put nuts – as his. He and ‘Li’l Buddy’ fight for it!

Despite all the aches and pains, i have a lot to be thankful for. Have a great Christmas week!

For Wednesday, December 25, 2019

From ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ – Linus said it best:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” –– Linus