IOU extra rations!

I took Tina, my dear senior cat, to the vet (Brandywine Valley Veterinary Hospital on Strasburg Road) for her annual shots and checkup and happened to mention that her breath had been a little bit rank of late. Dr. Carfaro found that she had a bad tooth that should be extracted, and we scheduled the procedure for a few days' time. I duly dropped her off, only to receive a call 90 minutes later saying that the offending tooth wasn't there; it had come out on its own! So hooray, Tina, for saving me the cost of oral surgery! Three cheers, too, to the good people at BVVH. Everyone there is so kind, gentle, professional and efficient. They seem to realize how much we love our pets and how worried we owners become when they are under the weather.

Seeking enlightenment with Scott

I am so grateful to Lowe's employee Scott, who saved me a great deal of time yesterday. I had a vague sense that the light fixtures in my living room could be brighter, so I unscrewed one of the bulbs and headed over to Lowe's, hoping to create a more cheerful living space. Well! Buying lightbulbs is not so simple anymore. You are confronted with a dizzying array of halogens, fluorescents, and LEDs of all shapes, sizes, efficiencies and dimming options. Fortunately employee Scott came to the rescue. He fired up the magnifying app on his phone so he could perceive the important numbers printed on the base of my lightbulb and then explained my options: for instance, did I want soft light, daylight or bright light? I didn't think the base of the bulb he recommended would fit my wall-sconce fixtures, but he assured me it would (and he was right). Scott was a huge help. I also want to give a shout out to Debbie, the woman who was managing the very busy checkout area. When faced with some impatient customers, she kept her cool, looked them straight in the eye and told them to wait their turn. Wisely, they listened.

Plus vs. -er

French is such beautiful-sounding language, but they certainly do speak quickly. For good reason: they have a lot more syllables to enunciate than do we English speakers! Exhibit A: this package of "pinces à cheveux" (aka bobby pins).

How orange juice is made

Loyal readers know I'm a regular customer at the Produce Place (next to the Country Butcher on East State Street in Kennett), but until Monday I had never seen the automated orange juice maker in action. It was fascinating! The employee simply tossed whole oranges into the wire hopper in the top, and the rotating cupped arm of the machine "grabbed" each one and extracted the juice, which dripped down into the waiting plastic container. You could watch the whole process through the machine's window.

The machine, manufactured by Zummo, was a far cry from the juicer that F. Scott Fitzgerald described in "The Great Gatsby": “There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.”

Enjoying Eastern European cuisine

The members of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Glen Mills hold a Food Festival twice each year, and this year we got to sample their Eastern European specialties, made by church members. We browsed the online menu, ordered perogies, cevapcici and halushki, and picked up our food at the church on Nov. 14. Behind the church some folks were eating at picnic tables, enjoying the warm, sunny afternoon, but we took our goodies home for supper. We enjoyed the camaraderie among the church members: the man who brought our order to the car called out a friendly greeting to "Uncle Mitch," an elderly fellow heading toward the kitchen, and taught us how to pronounce the names of the dishes we had ordered. "I don't know if that's right," he said, "but that's the way I learned it." The perogies were pasta dumplings filled with potatoes and covered with onions (far left in the photo); the cevapici were hearty ground-beef sausages (far right in the photo); and the halushki was a mixture of cabbage and noodles (third from the left in the photo). All were delicious -- I wish we had ordered more! You can learn more about the church, which is on Route 352, at its website www.sthermansoca.org/.

Best mac & cheese in Kennett

The best macaroni and cheese in Kennett Square is at Travelers in the Liberty Place food court. The pasta: medium-sized shells. The cheese: a blend, with a thick topping. The sauce: rich and creamy. The proportions: perfect. I mean, just look at this photo from the Travelers website! We had dinner there last week and had the mac and cheese with delicious, tender, nicely seasoned brisket, and we overheard a customer ordering just the mac and cheese. He sounded a little apologetic but I completely understood: if you need some comfort food, nothing beats mac and cheese! The night we were there, Travelers also had ribs, chicken, and oxtail stew on the menu. And for dessert they offer Gifford's ice cream (made in Skowhegan, Maine) -- it's never too cold to eat ice cream.

Holiday cookbook to benefit KACS

Kennett Square Mayor Matt Fetick and his real-estate team at Keller Williams are collecting recipes for a holiday cookbook to raise funds for Kennett Area Community Services. I'll be submitting recipes for my blue ribbon-winning ginger cookies and my chocolate banana bread!

Deadline for submitting recipes online is Nov. 25. Deadline to order a copy of the cookbook is Dec. 1; the cost is $20, with all proceeds going to KACS (which has been a very busy organization given the financial strife caused by the pandemic).

The website is mfteats.com.

Discretion and chicken pot pie

I just finished copyediting a book about neuroanatomy, and the final chapter included instructions for assessing the patient's cognitive function. The examiner asks the patient to explain the meaning of the following proverbs, ranked from easy to difficult:

Don’t cry over spilled milk.

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

The tongue is the enemy of the neck.

One swallow does not a summer make.

You never cross the same stream twice.

I paused at the third, which I'd never heard before: "The tongue is the enemy of the neck." Huh?

My first association was that wartime slogan "Loose lips sink ships" -- meaning, watch what you say because you never know who might be listening. Good advice, surely (especially in a small town like ours). 

But what about the neck part? Perhaps it refers to medieval rulers who didn't hesitate to behead someone who said something that displeased (or, worse, disrespected) them.

I tried Googling the proverb and got nothing. Pity the poor patient sitting in a hospital bed having a doctor lob bizarre proverbs at him. And that was considered only the middle level of difficulty! To my mind, "You never cross the same stream twice," supposedly the pinnacle of complexity, was a lot easier to understand. 

The value of discretion was brought home to me in a ridiculous Facebook exchange. I belong to a group whose normally lighthearted members are fans of a particular mid-20th-century mystery writer. I posted a recipe for chicken pot pie that reminded me of one of the characters. My post received repeated and increasingly vitriolic feedback from a snarky Scotswoman who said it wasn't an authentic dish, it wouldn't have been baked by the character in question, and the administrator should delete my post.

I was itching to respond but for once held my tongue, suspecting that things would just escalate if I replied. And my patience paid off: the next day she got booted from the group.

Oh well!

Here's the recipe, BTW: Easy chicken pot pie! 1. Roast four chicken thighs (or use leftover chicken, or buy a cooked chicken from the store) and some diced potatoes. Take the meat off the bones. 2. Saute half an onion (chopped) and some chopped mushrooms in butter. When they are soft, add 1/3 C flour, salt and pepper, a 14.5-oz can of chicken broth, and 1/2 C milk and stir until nice and thick and bubbling. 3. Add the sauce, onions, and mushrooms to the chicken meat, the roasted potatoes, and your choice of vegetables (I used chopped carrots, green beans, and peas -- don't go overboard with quantity because all must fit into pie). 4. Line a 9-inch glass pie dish with a crust (I used store-brand refrigerated dough) and fill. Top with the second crust; seal and flute the edges. Cut vents and brush with egg wash. 5. Bake at 425 for about 35 minutes. Watch it toward the end so the edges don't burn. 6. Mine bubbled over a bit, so protect your oven floor.