Ask Amy

The letter to Ask Amy from the mom of a 4-year-old girl that described how her daughter cut her own bangs and then lied about it¹ reminded me of my own hair cutting incident.

I was sick and tired of how my mom’s friends would fawn over my eyelashes.  “Oh, how long and pretty they are!”  “I’d give anything to have eyelashes like that!”  And so, you guessed it, I cut them.

At the dinner table, my mom noticed immediately and reacted strongly: “Did you cut your eyelashes!?  Why did you do that?  You could’ve poked your eye out!”  And so on.

Frankly I was surprised and insulted.  Surprised because I thought they were my eyelashes; why should it be anyone’s business?  And the “poke your eyes out” remark was utterly insulting.  I was anything but a klutz.  I was a “Little Professor” type of boy, always carefully coloring inside the lines, and I (literally) had excellent hand-eye coordination.

Two takeaways here are: children rarely are given the credit they deserve; and showing overt attention to a child can have unexpected consequences.

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¹https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/04/26/ask-amy-sex-offender-lives-in-the-neighborhood/

Carne y Pablano Quesadilla

I enjoy preparing my own food, usually in a large cast iron pan.

I call one of my favorites “Carne y Pablano” because I cook “chop meat” with Pablano chiles as well as other vegetables, such as onion, garlic, carrots, fresh turneric (which I add to everything) and maybe maitake mushrooms (frozen, from Woodstock), red pepper, plum tomato, parsnips and/or whatever I find in the fridge.

The cooking process starts with adding diced onion, carrots and chiles to a hot, well-oiled cast iron pan.  I use only EVOO or ghee; ghee is preferred because EVOO tends to smoke too much at medium high.  Once they’re cooked, I’ll add the garlic and mushrooms.  I don’t put the garlic in the pan at the very beginning because it will burn and turn bitter.  And the mushrooms would get tough.

After a minute I’ll turn the heat all the way up and add the beef.  I break it up and turn it continuously until it turns from red to pink.  Then I turn off the heat, and mix in about a teaspoon of sea salt, half that of fresh-cracked black pepper and a very small pinch of cayenne pepper powder.  Chopped plum tomato goes in now, too, if available.

This tastes great on its own.  But then today I had some organic corn tortillas and cheddar cheese, so I made a Quesadilla.  After it was assembled and melted shut, I spread Mother-in-Law's fermented gochujang garlic chile sauce¹ on top and then drizzled a spiral of Kewpie mayonnaise.²

This is one of the most awesome creations I’ve ever made.

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¹ https://milkimchi.com/pages/pantry-staples

² https://www.kewpie.com/en/products/mayonnaise/