(Mrs. Lot, Big Pink unit #608, surveys the salt and ice mound that covers her 2009 Prius)

I am writing a cookbook, though you might not know it if you have to wade through this stuff every day. It is a real problem; the books about Rex, Naval Intelligence, Civil War Battlefields and the cookbook are all mixed up and need to be deconstructed to make any sense out of them.
 
Maybe I will get to that someday, but I need to hack my way through the rest of the day, and there are a lot of us that will be doing some hacking, no kidding, with the entombing ice out there.
 
I took time to enjoy the good news. I think it was good news, anyway, though if we all know about it I suppose the tactical advantage has passed. Pakistani and American operatives nabbed Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, an Afghan associate of Mullah Omar, the spiritual and temporal leader of the Taliban.
 
They have had him in the bag for several days, and I am hoping it is Pakistani sensibilities that have ruled his interrogation.
 
Of course, the Inter-Service Intelligence guys also bankrolled Baradar for years, and he was walking around Karachi at liberty, Pakistan’s largest city, so what they get is anyone’s guess. Those that know hope his capture and interrogation will contribute to the momentum of the current fighting around Marja.
 
I don’t know enough about that to contribute anything but hope, so I have to go with what I know, which is simple cooking and simmering resentment to the snow. The recipes have been buried in the stories like so much other debris- like the driveway at the Farm.
 
The government is going to try to launch again this morning, after taking a break to honor the greatest two Chief Executives. They are opening late and charging leave to anyone who is still trapped in their neighborhoods, which means that everyone in the hinterlands is going to sign up for a commute that will be at least twice as long as usual.
 
The residential streets are mostly still single-lane, which makes things a real adventure, and the snow has compacted into about ten inches of concrete where the plows have not pushed it up into structures that look very much like what Lot’s spouse turned into when she turned around to look at Sodom (or Gomorrah, or Falls Church, whatever) only taller.
 
It is a metaphor, I understand, but I am being sort of stingy with those since who knows when you are really going to need one.

It is common knowledge in the business that there were only two or three ways to make money in the authoring game. One is to write about food, since we all have to eat. The other was to use the symbol of the former Nazi regime in Germany on the cover, even if the book had nothing to do with it, since it was guaranteed to boost sales. The third was to somehow connect self-improvement to the theme, since we Americans are always tinkering with who we might want to be.
 
At one point I toyed with the “Super Kraut Dog Miracle Diet: Thirty Days to Thinner Thighs and Victory Over World Fascism.”
 
The trick was to adapt the South Beach/Scarsdale approach that eating something wildly out of balance with nature- sauerkraut, for example, combined with a sausage that is the equivalent of a stick of butter- can somehow be good for you.
 
Sure, it’s dated, but the real good stuff is always something repackaged.
 
If you were going to do something like that, take a classic.  I would start with a decent frank- that is the tough part, since the store-bought stuff is frankly awful. They have good hot dogs (or Washington’s official bun-filler, the Half Smoke) at Eastern Market, either from the Union Meat Company or Canales.
 
Steam or grill? I go with the steaming, and the same thing for the buns, which I tend to like as those mini-baguettes from the Harris Teeter or a real bakery, though I haven’t seen any of them around lately. I would choose Silver Floss Traditional style sauerkraut for a tart and tangy taste, though I have close associates who enjoy the Bavarian style with a hint of caraway for a sweet and mild taste experience.
 
I steam the buns, mount the cooked dogs on the bun, heap on a generous mound of kraut, sweet pickle relish and good quality mustard- Gulden’s Brown is not bad. Then, the key is to lightly toast the outside of the baguette so there is a crunchy-sour-sweet-tangy explosion of flavor on the palate.
 
I actually lost about forty pounds one time on the Super Kraut Dog Miracle Diet, but maybe it was also because I started running five miles a day and quit eating breakfast.
 
I don’t know. That would be the hard part. I understand now from a nutritional perspective, all those mostly-protein diets will just kill you, which minimizes the health benefits.
 
Anyway, it would make a neat book cover, don’t you think?
 
I didn’t have any of the good fixings for the SKD’s during the recent crisis, but I did have a bag of frozen shrimp, and the unsettling feeling of seeing the bottom of my freezer for the first time in a couple years. I always have rice on hand, with the practical idea that with a gas stove you could wait out most atmospheric-induced havoc on Uncle’s Ben’s until things melted.
 
This is one of Jinny’s winners that works even when almost everything else is gone. I don’t know Helene personally, but I want to express my thanks. This is so quick to prepare, even if there are 50 people coming over that you won’t have much time to just stand with a glass of wine and stir.
 
Shrimp Helene

(Triple the ingredients to serve 50 of your best friends in the apartment)
 
¼ cup melted butter
¼ cup flour
1 ½ cups milk
½ tsp salt
Dash of Paprika
½ tsp curry powder
3 tbsp chili sauce (not catsup)
2-3 cups frozen shrimp, thawed (can you get to the fish market on Maine Ave? Use fresh)
2 tbsp dry sherry
2 cups cooked rice
 
This is just like your mother used to make, and easy as pie. Make cream sauce. Stir in seasonings, chili sauce, sherry and shrimp after sauce thickens. Serve over the rice.
 
I had some leftovers for breakfast. Now, I need to go find my pickaxe and go to work.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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