Halfway House

Residentially, a halfway house is a place for convicted criminals to transition from prison back into society.

Garages are halfway houses in reverse. If something is in the garage, it is halfway out of the house. How long stuff stays there depends on your garage’s size and how anal you are about a clean garage. Cobweb, rat and cockroach fetishes might be a factor as well.

We have a three-car garage but only have room to park two. We need the third stall to pile stuff. Basements and attics store our past lives. Garages store stuff just passing through, whatever won’t fit into the weekly garage pickup, and stuff that starts smelling enough for the neighbors to launch an eviction petition.

Aside from the cobwebs hitting you in the face on your way to a car, you know it’s time to dump the pile when you can’t see over it, reach your tool bench, the needles have fallen off the Christmas tree, or when the rats are building apartments in your Christmas boxes and their droppings are soiling the bottoms of your shoes.

And where do all of those boxes come from, even six months after Christmas? Every time you think you are cutting back buying stuff, save your boxes for a month. You will need a box-cutter. Granted, my monthly Costco run contributes 2-3 boxes, as does buying wine by the case. My reading habit spins off a monthly Amazon box. But I keep those in my office closet. They are the perfect size for small Christmas packages and sending items to our daughter in Europe.

We dump the dump every 4-5 years. PJ always has lots of advice, like contacting the Goodwill and the children’s hospital thrift shop. Their rejects could be parceled out in the weekly trash collection. And while we would have to stare at the reject pile for a while, it would all be gone in a month or two.

Since I don’t own a Ford F-250, I let my fingers do the talking and make one phone call to a haul-away service. They come the next day. Done. When I hate a task and finally get around to doing it, I have to get it done—fast.

In our neighborhood you can tell the messy garages. The door is always closed. People with clean garages frequently leave the door open just to rub it in. I hate them. These are people who clean their windows after each storm. Their cars, desks, and homes are always immaculate. Their houseplants never die. We, on the other hand, once managed to kill a fake Fichus. They probably have their clothes organized by season and occasion in their closets, and keep their cash organized numerically. Oops, I do that.

After our last dump dumping, I could reach my tools again. The downside—I was out of excuses for my lengthening “honey-do” repair list.

On the upside, the neighbors stopped their petition drive, and the spiders adopted the Christmas tree. We have started a new pile.

Red, White & Blueberry

I love blueberries, so much that I frequently wear them, especially when I forget my splatter guard, aka apron. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: on cereal, ice cream, blueberry sauce on ice cream, mixed with cream, yogurt, blueberry pie, cobbler, tarts, cheesecake, and by the handful.

A few years ago Time magazine put out a spiel about the top ten foods that “pack a wallop”. Blueberries made the cut. Lab tests suggest that blueberries extend the lives of rats, though it’s beyond me why anyone would want to do that. The rats also showed balance, coordination, and memory improvement (like how to get in and out of your home’s walls). I could use improvement with all three of those skills.

Improved memory helps in lots of ways. Such as:
· Exams
· High school reunions
· Anniversaries and birthdays
· Finding your car in a parking lot
· When you forgot your grocery list
· Why you went into that room
· Finding your way back home

Blueberries also have, on a fresh weight basis, the highest antioxidant capacity of all the fresh fruits and vegetables tested to date.

One of my life’s philosophies is to celebrate and savor the small victories. If all you do is keep swinging for the bleachers, you will have mostly dour days. Scoring with a new recipe is a small victory. Scoring with a blueberry recipe makes my week.

I had been searching for a tart recipe that was simple and wasn’t overwhelmed by compote, glaze, or a vanilla cream filling. (Not that I dislike any of that.) Nothing on Food Network inspired me.

A few weeks ago a Los Angeles Times piece turned me on to a blog called Chocolate and Zucchini. The blogger is Clotilde Dusoulier. There’s link on the right of this page. I should hate her because she is much too bright and worldly at the sub-prime age of 28. She writes about all things food-related in all of Paris’ arrondissements. Her recent book is Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris.

Her latest blog included this recipe. I’ve converted the grams to ounces for metric system-challenged folks like me.

Tarte aux Myrtilles

Pie Dough
6 ounces flour
3 ounces sugar
3 ounces butter
Dash of milk

Filling
10.6 ounces fresh blueberries
1 tablespoon crème fraiche
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg

· Preheat oven to 400 degrees, grease a 9-inch tart pan or line it with parchment paper.
· In a food processor, mix the sugar and butter until fluffy. (Butter should be at room temperature.) Add in the flour until the dough forms coarse crumbs. Add a dash of milk, and mix again. Pour this mixture evenly into your tart pan, and press the dough down to pack it and cover the surface of the pan, forming a little rim all around. Put in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
· Take the pie crust out and lower the temperature to 360. Pour in the blueberries, and return to the oven for 15 minutes.
· Beat together in a small bowl the crème fraiche, sugar and egg. Take the tart out of the oven, pour the mixture evenly over the blueberries and return to the oven for another 15 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave it in for a final 15 minutes.
· Let cool completely, and sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar just before serving.

Notes:
· I increased the blueberry portion to one pound. I need all of the memory help I can get.
· If you have bonded with your oven, you know that temps can vary. I only cooked the crust initially for 15 minutes.
· I’m going to try this with raspberries.

French cooking can be complicated, but at times deliciously simple, like this tart.

This will be our 4th of July dessert, but with the addition of a single raspberry in the middle. Happy Independence Day.