Providence 1974 Chapter 2

This is pretty much what I thought I was!

I know I know I was actually a little bit passed this time period,  but who is really looking at the date.  There are people I know right now who really are just old hippies and it's 2015!  I digress....

As I was relating in the previous chapter,  I had a babysitting job with an awesome family not really very far from my parents home.  

One day when I was sitting for my little guy, whom I adored, and he seemed to like hanging out with me pretty much...there was a knock at the door, knock, knock, knock.  So I went and checked who was there and there was this man, well built attractive, hippy-ish looking man.

We talked at first thru the door.  Turned out he was an old friend of the family, for whom I was sitting.  So eventually I allowed him to come in and we talked and talked.  We got to be very close friends, we really seemed to like a lot of the same things, the same foods, the same music, although in all honesty I must say that he really educated me when it came to music.  He was a pretzel salesman during the day and a musician by occasional night, as well as a concert musician on some weekends.  

Do any of you out there have any idea how extraordinarily
flattering it is to a young girl, who has "Daddy issues," be treated like a young woman, with love and respect?  He was so kind and so dear.

I was still in high school, but a babysat a lot!  For me it was anything I could find to get out of the house.  While looking back on things I can see plainly that all I wanted was to get away and on my own...after I graduated from high school, I had a job at Bachman Pretzels (and no it wasn't the same company my friend worked at), so I was able to get a small two room apartment in the city.  I thought this was great!

But was it really?  I was so rebellious!  I was dating my friend at this point and it didn't take very long till I gave up my apartment and was living with my friend.  

He had a house that was very old, in the city, was only a few blocks from my old apartment, and within walking distance to many businesses.  Back in the middle 70's most people in that area went to the butcher shop and the farmers market, instead of the grocery store.  It was so much more personal and I really loved this. Plus I loved to cook!  Win! Win!

A fun story about cooking.....

Veal Stew

I had gone to the market and I really wanted to try my hand at making Veal Stew and I wanted to surprise my dear one...so I had everything I needed.  I started cooking and cooking and cooking...first of all I cut up and started with the meat and onions and garlic.  Because I knew that veal, from a shoulder cut was a bit tough I thought perhaps I should get that started so it could cook for a longer period of time.  So it could begin to get tender.

Next I added the carrots and turnips and potatoes and leeks and peas and skinless and seeded tomatoes...any vegetables I could get a hold of went into that stew.  I love stew and still do...any kind and all kinds. 

So while this simmered on our old converted stove, I say converted because it was originally an old wood stove that had been fitted with gas fixtures so that it now ran on gas but there where still the compartments for wood burning, just no longer used.  It was a grand old stove, I loved it and I loved cooking on it.

Okay so the stew wouldn't be stew unless I thickened it. So I got out my jar with corn starch and worked on mixing up my cornstarch and water mixture.  (This is no longer my choice for thickening stew, I have since found much better ingredients for doing this.)  Alright I knew that in order to thicken I needed a nice rolling boil...so I turned up the heat and let things warm up a bit.  Rolling boil achieved so I got my jar with the thickening agents and started to pour them into the stew,  something was going terribly wrong as I was stirring  the stew it started to boil up and up and over and over some more, and I turned off the heat and it kept boiling over and over and I had no idea what was going on!

What had I done?  Think...think....think...

I went to the cupboard and got out the corn starch...I didn't like having ugly boxes in my cupboard and I had a habit of dumping those ugly boxes into my pretty mason jars....let me tell you that isn't a great idea unless they are clearly labeled with what they contain...

Do you know baking soda doesn't thicken stew, but it sure makes a heck of a mess!  And to top it all off....do you have any idea how many parts there are to stove like I was using?  Oh My Goodness....tons and tons and tons of parts.  And they all needed to be cleaned.

Thank Heavens I had gotten an early start, my wonderful musician was not due home for at least three hours.  Now you may think the story ends here, but wait there's more.

I finally had finished cleaning up the stove.  That was one thing accomplished.  What was I going to do with all that stew?  It was a approximately a 20 quart stock pot that had been full...once it had calmed down it was now between 1/2 and 3/4's full, probably closer to 1/2.

I played with some spices and pepper and garlic, do you know that you can not hid the wonderful flavor of about a 1/2 cup of baking soda...you just cant hid it.

So I thought I would just see what my sweety thought of the veal stew.  He was due home any moment. When he got home he could smell the aromas of what had been a delicious soup. and he wanted some, I put some in a bowl and he tasted it and spit it out, you know how when you put something in your mouth and you kinda of have your lips pursed and it sprays everywhere...well that is what happened.  Of course I was giggling, you could say I have a Disney sense of humor...what ever could go wrong, does, and then it gets worse, and of course as long as no one is being injured, it just gets a life of it's own and gets funnier and funnier.   That is what happened; he wasn't angry, it wasn't intentional, it was a mistake, albeit a pretty funny one, once I was able to get thru all the telling of it.  Oh we did laugh about that for a long time, and he was a bit cautious tasting what I cooked for a little while, but eventually  he stopped doing that, much to my great joy. 

So whats next?  

I guess you will have to come back another day and find out!