Hallo Again, CDW has the floor: I was reading about your perfect tomato, cramped counter space (can SO identify!) and mopping (inspiring, btw) and then I see CDW down at the end and her dreaded word...panties. Amen to that. Hate it. Underwear...by all means, unless I just want to be silly and use that disgusting word just for an unwholesome effect :) KEM here, I told you CDW doesn't like the word panties. Let it never be said KEM did not tell you how her pot roast turned out tonight. Normally when I cook, I go, Rats, this tastes pretty much like nuttin'. However, tonight was different. The pot roast sent me into a state of delirium and I started bragging about it to anyone who would listen, which would be Mike, stepson, DT-s-D, Jazzi and Robby. Yes, we had a full house for a change. Even Robby was back from the hospital and his surgery. Robby being gone for 3 days is a very bad and lonesome thing. At the vet's he hisses like a wild animal plucked from the jungle, he growls and makes scary sounds I've never heard before. It all started on his first visit when he went under the bench in the examination room and the vet tech reached under there and grabbed him by the scruff. Imagine that. It was complicated by a board running under the bench, you know? He had to be extracted from the back corner and maneuvered around the board. Robby has never been man handled that way and that was the end of being Sweet Lil' Rob. When they went to draw blood he went completely ape and scratched the tech and there was lots of blood...from the tech. They had to give him (not the tech) funny gas to actually get any blood. Robby loves his mommy and daddy and has little use for mean old vet people. Ain't that sad. Stepson wants to know what we do to our pets that makes them not like other people. But that isn't even true. It depends on the person, any cat or dog knows that. When the techs came to pet him in his cage the last three days, he pulled out his vocabulary again. They couldn't get near him. But when I picked him up today he was pleased as punch and no naughty sounds. I stuck my finger in his cat carry case and he just let me pet him and looked pleased. The doctor watched and I was very proud. Were we talking about pot roast once upon a time? Okay, first off, Sweetbay Supermarket has lovely meat. Just gorgeous. I get the enticing looking roast that has a yellow blazing sticker: $3.00 OFF. That is the roast for me. You bring it home and cook it on the last possible day...why not enjoy aged meat, after all. Get out your Le Creuset, I hope you have one. If not, that is what you want for Christmas, go jot it on your calendar right now. That's what I got for Christmas once, from my dad and sister. Priceless. Mine is a medium yellow oval and weighs about two tons. But that's okay, after you taste the pot roast. Then you brown it in olive oil...slowly, the recipe in the meat package tells you. Oh wait, first you pat flour all over the roast. THEN you brown it in olive oil. Brown it on all sides. Throw in some sliced onions and near the end of the browning, some garlic. Take that baby right out of the yellow pot. Put him on your wonderful cream colored Fiestaware platter. Now, pour in 1 and 1/2 cups vegetable broth plus 1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar. Heat it up and scrape up the savory meat morsels stuck on the bottom of Le Creus. Sprinkle in 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Oh yes, while you are at it, dump in the bacon grease left over from yesterday's BLpT, pT standing for perfect Tomato. Get that hunk of meat back in the pot. Cover with the matching lid. Stick the whole mess in that 325 oven and let it go for 2.5 hours (for a 2.5 pound roast). Now, when the house is smelling so good you can hardly stand it, put that tender beauty back on the washed FW platter. You can reduce the liquidy sauce in the pot, but I didn't have time, since dinner is always an hour late around here. You know, dodging the Christmas china and all. So, I sliced the roast and sloshed gravy all over on the plates, right at the stove. We are not civilized around here and put serving dishes on the table. Look. I am not at all about extra work, refinement be hanged. I'm half zonked by the time the food is ready anyway, then you get to clean up. This is usually why our own cooking doesn't taste so hot. Get it? Then there was Creamy Parmesan Risotto and sauteed mushroom (with bacon grease, again, onion, lemon juice, salt and pepper, be sure and slice the mushrooms thick). Now, I can't help it, but to me this was the perfect pot roast. It melted in your mouth and the sauce was SOOOOOOOOO good, better than with wine. I'm sorry Pioneer Woman, but the meat package recipe was better than when I tried your recipe. I'm sorry Julia Childs...ditto. BTW, I didn't exactly follow the package recipe. They wanted to add chopped dates and go Mediterranean. I didn't have any dates. And they nary said a word about bacon grease. DT-s-D can't believe I cook with butter, oil and grease. Sorry, dry salads are not the answer to the world's problems. Also, recipe wanted shallots, but I had none, so garlic went in. And do you notice how SIMPLE this recipe is? My theory in cooking is that fewer ingredients = better food. Not to mention less work. Win-Win. Okay, it is raining, raining, I'm so happy. We went one LOOOOOONG stretch with no rain. Rain is pure joy, rain, and pot roast. BTW, I know you all cook fabulous pot roast, have for years, but I wrote this in my blog so I won't forget what I did, heh, heh. The cut was bottom round roast. Hey, when my Baby Portabellas came out of the package tonight, they were slimy. And the use by date was smeared so I couldn't read it, don't you just love that, isn't that how it always goes? I noticed the slime in the first instant. So I Googled something like Slimy Baby Portabellas. And sure enough someone else had the same problema back in 2007. And there are such nice people out in this here big world who answered the poor lady. The consensus was 1,000% to Skip the Slime. So Mike and Nick got to run to Rollin' Oats and get a new box of mushrooms. They looked a little over the hill, Mike only checked three packages back, but you know what, they smelled okay, I always poke my nose down deep in the bottom of the box. The Slimies had a strong odor. Anyway, they turned out DEEE-licious. Bragging KEM Hey, can you believe my paragraphs melded again? Something must be done, what is wrong with this machine? Time for some Orangesicle Yogurt. I don't think I spelled Orangesicle right, and hey guess what? Spellcheck isn't working. Maybe my blog site is mad at me for not posting forever. Wait a minute, now Spellcheck has decided to chime in. Orangesicle is striped in yellow. When I clicked on it to get the correct spelling, guess what Spellcheck suggested? (no suggestions) Really, if they can't do any better than that, why bother? Sassy KEM

KEM, the former blogger, is making a ghost appearance tonight. Have you ever had The World's Perfect Tomato? I did. Tonight. It was one of those Ugly Tomatoes from Sweetbay grocery store. It was so marvelous that I concluded life can go on. The tomato was the "T" of the BLT's we had for dinner. I've decided sandwiches are IT. When I was trying to assemble everything I kind of lost my cool. There isn't a lot of counter space in my kitchen and my lettuce was drying in a towel by the sink and ended up spilling into the sink. Trying to clear a spot for the plates...not easy. Tomato juice was running rivers all over. Bacon grease spit here, there and everywhere. And where on earth can I set the jar of mayo? So, finally, I announced to Mike, I am having a very hard time over here, this kitchen is so stupid, there is no counter space, no place to work. He says, If you put the Christmas china away, you would have more room. I say, It's easier to holler about no space to work. He says, I know. Besides, my Christmas china (not really Christmas, it's my better china that I got for $35 at The Garage Sale Store, and it includea a fabulous lidded soup tureen, but normally it only gets hauled out at Christmas, hence, it is Christmas china) is not on the counter anymore. Eleven days ago it got moved to the top of the stove because it got used for my mother's birthday dinner. It got used for birthday because, after all, there it was, and I couldn't have Christmas china hogging the counter when I was having company for dinner. This is because my house is an open floor plan, and whoever invented the open floor plan is not my favorite person. No interior walls, you walk in the house and you see the whole thing, every room, every mess, every counter piled high with Christmas china. The china is not puttable awayable at the present moment because it is only rinsed, not washed. So, there it is, rinsed and stacked on the stove, enjoying all the activity. I promise you, I lead a very busy life. Who has time for small potatoes like stowing Christmas china? Some day I want to tell you how I lost my wedding band in Rollin' Oats. How it just slipped right off my finger and I didn't even know it. Then DT-s-D and I were driving to another store and I looked down and BOOM! Heart attack! NO RING. We sped back to Rollin' Oats and we started cruising the aisles. And there was my ring, sitting in the middle of the aisle in front of the frozen meat case. Wow. I had noticed my fingers would get cold and shrink and I could slide my ring up and down my finger, over the knuckles and everything, with absolutely no resistance. I had actually noticed that in Rollin' Oats not five minutes before the ring fell off. Weird I didn't even feel it. Or hear it. And weird no one found it, there for all the world to see. Except all the world didn't see it, in fact, no one saw it. And it's a wide band, chunky and meaty, ha, ha. My grandmother always kept her eyes to the ground when she walked down the street. She found more coins that way. SHE would have discovered the ring in front of the meat case. She also liked to check the pay phone for change left behind. Or maybe that was me. It's hardly a get-rich-quick scheme, but it's fun. Boy, I don't even know when is the last time I saw a pay phone, do you? Do they still have them? You know how even in the poorest third world countries everyone has a cell phone? They may not have a toilet, but, by golly, they have that phone. My missionary friends told me this. They are in Guyana. I no longer need to tell you my story about my wedding ring hitting the pavement in Rollin' Oats. 'Cause I just did. Speaking of rings hitting the pavement, I no sooner got my class ring at boarding school than I dropped it on the pavement and a chunk of the gold was knocked out. It doesn't pay to play with rings. Feel free to believe me on this very sensitive subject. Okay, time to tackle my midnight chores. I added something, a quick mop with Swiffer mop (the kind you can use dry or wet cloths). It's so much fun. AND, I am here to tell you, that dry mop picks up so much crud I nearly went into a state of shock after using it for the first time. How can it be? All the crud? I vacuum every other day and dry mop the in-between days. It's really shocking, and feel free to believe me. KEM P.S. Just so you know, I had paragraphs in this literary masterpiece. When I came back later to edit it, it had mysteriously melded into one long run-on paragraph. It really ruirns the effect, but I'm not about to correct it at 2:12 AM and still having Swiffer & Friends to party with. BTW, "ruirn" is one of my favorite words in The Help. But please, never use the word "supper" with me. And whatever you do, NEVER use the word "panties" with CDW. It's UNDERWEAR, Ladies. Feel free to tell me the words that make your skin crawl. Thank you. P.P.S. Minny uses "ruirn" in The Help, and the first time I picked up on it was not the first time Minny used it. See, I am rereading and already have found it where I didn't notice it the first time Minny said it. I believe it's used 3 times in the book, but I will let you know for sure, because that is a Vital Fact for your spare brain cells. Reading books twice is a stellar idea.