Switchin' in the kitchen

Today my nieces Rosie and Millie and my sister Katie helped me cook at the soup kitchen. The jazz singer Peggy Farrell cooked with us too.

We made the jambalaya pictured above. Thank you, Rosie, for the picture! I have been reluctant to put pictures of my cooking projects on this Web log because did you ever notice how awful most people's food pictures look? I am sure the food is yummy but the photos do not usually do them justice. There is a reason there are people who specialize in taking pictures of food.

Rosie might well wind up being one of those people! Because that is a not-bad picture of our jambalaya.

That was a wonderful jambalaya but it will never be seen or tasted again because like any one of a thousand performances Leonard Pennario gave of Ravel's "La Valse," it is completely unique. The jambalaya was fashioned artfully out of all kinds of various frozen leftovers: a sausage and chicken stew, a frozen bag of shrimp and mussels, a tray of something that was labeled Spanish Rice. We added some fresh vegetables and onions and spices and Zatarain's Creole seasoning and it was magnificent.

The girls made a chocolate cake.

After that we went to Spot Coffee and drank hot chocolate and were all high on ourselves. We were planning what to cook should they be able to join Peggy and me again. My sister liked the idea of shepherd's pie. I made chicken pot pie at the kitchen once so I like that idea.

I am happy volunteering at this one kitchen because you get to design your own menu and cook it up. I did not want to volunteer as somebody's slave, just stuck in some corner somewhere chopping onions. But oh, that reminds me! Before the girls got there, Peggy and I and my brother George were chopping onions. You could not breathe! We were all crying.

It was like Kent State!

We had to open the window!

These were strong old onions, that was for sure.

But they made a great jambalaya!

Stranger in the night

There was something else that happened at the soup kitchen yesterday that was funny and that I did not think to write. I was too angry at the slug complainer!

The office volunteer, Jim, told me this story.

He said a guy had showed up at the door earlier with a woman and a child. Jim began to tell them that the shelter does not take families. But it turns out that no, this woman is only a friend. She is taking this guy around and translating for him because he speaks no English.

OK, fine. There is a bed available, so Jim sits the guy down, begins taking down his information, starting with his Social Security number.

The guy has no Social Security number.

"Everyone has one," Jim says. "You get it when you are born."

It ends up the guy is not a U.S. citizen. The woman explains that. So Jim starts in on other questions. How long have you been in this country? Where did you stay lastnight? That sounds like a blues song! But it is a question we ask at the soup kitchen.

The guy and his friend are very friendly and cooperative as they answer all the questions but one thing is puzzling Jim. He cannot figure out what the guy is doing in America.

Finally the woman understands his confusion and ends it.

She explains, "He is on vacation."

Ahahahahahaaaa!! Jim explains politely that we do not take people who are on vacation. And they accept that and thank him and leave.

Where do we begin?

Perhaps they thought the shelter was a hotel.

Perhaps they thought it was a fine restaurant. A misunderstanding that does not surprise me considering the aromas that were emanating from the kitchen thanks to me and my Caribbean ham and black bean stew.

But imagine if the guy had been admitted! Howard and I were laughing about that later.

Imagine what he would tell his friends at home:

"There was this weird place I stayed at in Buffalo! You ate in a communal dining room. And there was only one thing on the menu. And besides the guy who signed me in, the chef was the only normal person in the place. And even she, all she would talk about is a pianist I never heard of named Leonard Pennario."

Ha, ha!

Here is the only thing I can think of. This is a Catholic soup kitchen and there are crucifixes and statues all over the place. Like this statue on the wall visible behind the big white head of lounge sensation Guy Boleri. You cannot quite make it out in this picture but I believe it is St. Francis.


Maybe the guy yesterday thought it was some kind of a monastery. Sometimes when you are traveling you can stay in monasteries. I have never been savvy enough to do that but some people have.

Another day, another puzzle.

That is my life!

Soup to nuts

So today I am at the soup kitchen, as you can tell from the picture above. And I make this stew I think is beautiful. I got it out of "The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks For a Crowd." My sister Katie gave it to me.

I was making Caribbean Black Beans and I added a whole mess of wonderful ham to it. It is great to take a vegetarian stew recipe even if you are going to add meat to it because most meat stew recipes, they have nothing but meat and onions and spices and maybe tomatoes, never many vegetables. So it is good to start with a vegetarian recipe and then think about adding the meat.

I served myself a bit to taste it and it was wonderful. You saute up these onions with all these herbs and spices and then you add the beans, plus, I added some leftover baked beans the kitchen had in the fridge. Plus the ham. Then it baked in orange juice.

I would serve this for a party! That is how good it was.

Then I made a rice pilaf to go with it.

And here is what happens. I am done and ready to leave because I have to interview Kaye Ballard, remember, about Leonard Pennario. And one of the guests shows up who is staying in this shelter where I cook at, as we like to put it in Buffalo.

"What's for dinner?" he asks.

This is a question we are not supposed to answer but I am stupid so I do anyway. I said it was a Caribbean ham stew with black beans.

"I don't eat beans," this oik says. Oik is a British word I am picking up from my British music buddies on Twitter. It means schuft!

"Well, you don't have to eat the beans," I said.

"You mean I can pick them out?"

"You can do whatever you want," I said. "You can eat the ham. The ham is in big pieces."

And this schuft, this oik, just looks at me angrily!

Then he goes on whining and complaining. And I start getting all mad.

Everyone is so entitled! That is what I whispered to Jim, the volunteer in the front office. He rolled his eyes and agreed with me.

So once again I will be getting no time off from Purgatory because of my, ahem, charity venture. Number one I get mad at the people I serve. "Bums" is the word coming to mind at the moment. And number two it made me mad so here I am writing about it for all the world to see. There are points deducted for that, too, in the great hereafter.

I will probably end up in Purgatory for a long long time the way I am going.

And not only that, but I will probably have to cook there!

Here is an artist's rendering of Purgatory. I am the woman with the laurels on my head, on my way to the kitchen!


Meanwhile Pennario will be up there in heaven thanks to all the candles I lit for him at church, which, I lit one just this morning. And he will be wondering where I am. So will my father -- and my grandfather the Lackawanna haberdasher, whose birthday is today.

All because I let that bum today get me mad and then I wrote about it. Not only that, but I used Howard's joke in the headline. "Soup to nuts" is what Howard calls my, ahem, charity venture. Today I say, he is right!

Ay me!

Cookin' with gas

Lounge sensation Guy Boleri joined my friend Gary and me yesterday for the monthly ham-handed attempt at charity. We cook at Little Portion Friary. The reason I do it is No. 1, it makes me a better cook and No. 2 I hope that God will recognize my charity efforts, no matter how ham-handed, and bless my book on Leonard Pennario.

If you ever think about writing a book on someone, beware, because it gets like this. With me these days it is if Pennario is this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All roads lead to this book! Unfortunately, the heavenly rewards I hope to reap from the soup kitchen are probably negated because here I am, talking about it in public. I have heard that charity does not count if you let other people know you do it. But I must talk about it! It is too funny not to.

Yesterday we made cassoulet for a crowd under Gary's capable leadership. He has worked for restaurants so when he joins us at the kitchen, the rest of us can take it easy. It is not like this one time I cooked with Peggy Farrell and both of us lost five pounds out of stress! With Gary you lose no weight. That is the bad news.

Here is a candid shot I took of Gary at work.


Ha, ha! He brought along cooking wine to go into the cassoulet. It was Chardonnay he had made himself that he had considered substandard but yesterday as we cooked we decided it was not that substandard. Here is a shot of Guy with the cooking wine.


Gary grabbed the camera and got a shot of me with the bottle too but I did not think it made me look attractive so I am not running it. That is the advantage of being the one who writes the blog! I never run pictures of myself these days because every picture that is taken of me looks like hell. I mean heck. I do not swear on this blog.

In sharp contrast Guy never takes a bad picture. Here is a beautiful portrait of him mashing cannellini beans. You mash the beans and it thickens the stew. Gary taught us that yesterday.


While the stew was simmering we relaxed in the living room.


Gary took a nap.


Observe the massive fireplace behind the couch. Little Portion is in an old convent and the woodwork and architecture are amazing. There are pocket doors and tin ceilings and hardwood floors, all of them in beautiful condition. Note to out-of-towners: In Buffalo, even homeless people live in gorgeous and architecturally significant buildings. You have no choice!

We wound up at the Anchor Bar listening to Weird Al Yankovic and feeling good about ourselves for our charity efforts.

There was this figure at the Anchor Bar we did not think we had seen before. We are not sure we like it.


There was a TV over the bar we kept an eye on although it was set on mute. Bruce Springsteen is beginning to look weird although these days I am no one to talk, seeing that I cannot find a picture of myself I can run on my blog. Barack Obama was running his mouth to someone but you could not hear him because, as I said, the TV was set on mute.

Remember my dream about Barack Obama? I am still thinking about that. Last night I was back to dreaming about Pennario but that was funny, the one night when he was pre-empted by Obama.

Pennario would not have liked that. That is for sure.