Tater Tot Hot Dish

 Next up in my effort to reclaim childhood comfort food is a dish my Engish mother learned to make at St. Olaf’s Catholic Church from Mrs. Maria Norton.

The original is made, as so many one-dish meals of its time were, with Campbells cream of mushroom soup. That was the first change I made since I love making a good cream sauce. Second, the original is topped with both Tater Tots and onion rings. I love browned onions, and I thought that would make a nice upgrade. I’m pretty sure having a non-deep-fried vegetable makes this count as healthy.

About Tater Tots. Don’t substitute something healthier. Just don’t. Eww.

Mom, of course, made this in one big baking dish, but since I still live on my own pending my husband’s move, I made individual servings. This recipe produced enough for five dinner entrées.

 Tater Tot Hot Dish

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons fresh garlic
• 1 1/3 cup half and half
• 2/3 cup chicken stock
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• fresh ground black pepper to taste
• 2 large white mushrooms finely chopped
• 1 large onion chopped
• 1 tablespoon neutral oil
• ~1 pound ground beef
• 1 package OreIda Tater Tots

Melt your butter in a medium sauce pan and saute your garlic for a minute or two over medium heat. Add the flour to form a roux and stir constantly. When the roux begins to darken, or when the aroma changes so that it smells more cooked, remove the sauce pan from heat and add the half and half and chicken stock. Return the pan to a medium high burner and stir constantly until it reaches a rolling boil while being stirred and has thickened. Add the salt, pepper, and chopped mushrooms. Stir to combine and set aside.

 In a large covered saute pan, fry your onion in the neutral oil over high heat while stirring constantly until the edges begin to brown and crisp. Remove from heat and crumble your ground beef. Return the pan to medium heat and cook until the beef begins to brown.

Drain the cooked beef and onion mixture thoroughly. I know, I know. Do it anyway. You’re about to replace the lost yumminess with the mushroom garlic cream sauce. Keep them both and you’ll have a grease pot.

Add the mushroom cream sauce to the drained beef and onion and stir. Add the mixture to individual ramekins, or to an 8 inch square baking dish if you prefer. Add an orderly layer of Tater Tots to the top. Follow the directions on the Tater Tot package to finish your creation.

If you want to make this ahead for later use, just pop the assembled dishes in the freezer with tinfoil over them before the Tater Tots thaw out.

Thanks, Mum, and thanks Mrs. Norton.

 

Sukiyaki: an evolutionary update

Since about the second month of the pandemic I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into Japanese cuisine. Mostly that has been learning new recipes from JustOneCookbook.com but in addition to that, I have been learning more about my favourite dish, sukiyaki. I wrote a piece about my connection to that dish and more broadly to Japanese culture here: Gagne Family Sukiyaki: This is going to be complicated

So, why am I writing about this again? I want to show how my sukiyaki making has evolved over the last few months as I have learned more about the tradition. I will rush to note that nothing I learned about making this dish as a child was wrong and the results are the same level of deliciousness. The two main differences are 1) using more traditional Japanese ingredients and fewer substitutes and 2) using a traditional iron cooking pot. My mother didn’t have easy access to a specialty Asian / Japanese grocer as I do now, so I don’t blame her one bit. Also, my Dad would have never eaten tofu.

Here is where you can get yourself a tetsu nabe - a cast iron cooking pot. I have a 28 ounce one, which feeds me when I’m starving. If you were including other dishes, then that size would likely feed two.

Fuji Merchandise Japanese Style Cast Iron Sukiyaki Tetsu Nabe Pot

Sauce

• 1 cup soy sauce
• 1 cup sake
• 1 cup aji-mirin
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup awase dashi

I make this sauce in double batches and keep it on hand. It’s never going to go bad, and I make this dish a couple times per month in the fall and winter, so it gets used up quickly.

You can buy instant dashi powder, but I prefer to make my own following the instructions by Nami Chen on JustOneCookbook.com How to make dashi

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon neutral flavour oil
• 1 finely chopped shallot
• 1/2 pound beef cut for sukiyaki
• 3 scant pinches aji-no-moto (don’t believe the anti-Asian propaganda about MSG)
• 2 green onions
• 2 napa cabbage leaves
• 1/2 cup shirataki noodles (nearly 0 net carbs!)
• Shimeji and / or enoki mushrooms
• 2 stalks of celery
• braised tofu
• bean sprouts

Prepare your sauce and ingredients in advance. Use a culinary torch to braise the tofu.

Heat the oil in the iron pot and being to sauté the shallot. After a few minutes, add the beef to brown it. Sprinkle with aji-no-moto. When all the pink is gone, remove the pot from heat.

Pile the beef up in the center and arrange the other ingredients around it, leaving the bean sprouts out for now.

Add sauce until is it about a half inch from the lip of the pot. Return to heat and bring to a rolling bubble. Place the cedar lid on the pot and reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for 8 minutes.

Add the bean sprouts to the top and cover for an additional 2 minutes.

Serve immediately.with a spoon and chopsticks.

Photos

There is no substitute for the beef. You just have to find an asian grocer who prepares it.

Cooking with Flame

I have grown attached to cooking with a flame, so I bought a Japanese butane burner unit like the ones used in every hotpot restaurant in the world. The accompanying instructions tell you to never use it indoors, but that is really just for insurance purposes. What you have to do is not use it in an enclosed space like a tent or camper and also not use it for extended periods of time. Butane burns much cleaner than propane, so as long as you have significant ventilation, you’re fine. The risk is that if you are in an enclosed space and the oxygen supply starts to get used up, then the butane flame will stop producing carbon dioxide, which you can handle, and start producing carbon monoxide which will kill you in minutes. I keep mine on top of my electric range with the hood vent running and do not have any concerns. Here is the model I have. It has the best safety rating.

Iwatani Corporation of America Iwatani of America ZA-3HP Portable Butane Stove Burner

Mother Knows Best

The view from Betty’s front window

I am a medium. I haven’t always known this about myself, but as I have gotten older it has become more and more apparent. When I was about 27, near my first Saturn return, through a complicated and very interesting series of events I met a man named Mischa Duvan, who was at the time the senior and only shaman of the Ulchi Tribe in Siberia. He told me that I would work with the dying and the dead later in life, but that I should not attempt to at my age.

That was nearly half a lifetime ago, so as I approach my second Saturn return, I can’t be surprised that I see and get messages from dead folks more often. It usually happens when I’m doing something else, like giving a Tarot reading or having a deep magical counseling session. It’s not something I initiate, but once it starts, it tortures me until I understand and pass on the message I’m being given. That torture takes the form of a crushing and unexplainable sadness that I must assume is the easiest of my buttons for someone on the other side of the Veil to push.

The last time it happened was on the 19th anniversary of our mother’s death on October 26, 2019. I had been feeling that nagging, causeless sorrow for a few weeks, but it had not risen to the point where I would notice it above the general noise of my fear-prone mind. I and my fiancé were very busy assisting his mother with the sale of her home of 45 years and her transition into a retirement community so I was quite distracted. The winning offer came in on that anniversary day, so the three of us went out to dinner to celebrate. It was such a great load off all our minds and erased so much uncertainty that we were all feeing good. Future mum-in-law has some mobility issues, so I dropped her and her son off at the front door and went to park the car. The instant I was alone, the weight of sadness that descended was absolutely crippling. I remembered that it was our mother’s death anniversary and the penny dropped. She wanted me to know something. I made it into the restaurant and back with other people, I could hold it at bay for a while.

After dinner and returning to her soon-to-no-longer-be home, I excused myself and retired to the basement semi-suite that we use when visiting. I made it to the bottom of the stairs before collapsing in sobs. My man put his mum to bed and came downstairs to find me there. He was of course tremendously concerned and asked what he could do. I told him to stay with me, since his presence is like a control rod in the reactor of my stability-challenged spirit. He logged on to his computer and I curled up on the couch and started playing solitaire on my phone. A few minutes later, a seemingly random thought crossed my mind: ‘I wish I could go home.’ In my idiolect, ‘home’ means our mother’s hometown of Cleethorpes, England. We spent summers there growing up, and I always feel closest to her when I visit.

I had no sooner thought the thought when a surge of energy when through me from head to foot like a bolt of lightning and I saw a picture of my aunt Betty in her home in Cleethorpes. I gasped, dropped the phone, and clamped my hands over my face and started to shake violently.

My man asked if he should phone an ambulance. As soon as I could speak again, I said no. I told him that Mom wants me to go to Cleethorpes. He answered “tell everyone I said hi.” That’s someone you marry.

Mom has never come through to me in all the years since she died, so I took it seriously. I had gotten the message, so within a few minutes the cloud of sorrow was gone without a trace and I went back to as normal as I get and started looking for ways to make a trip back home.

The right opportunity arose and I was able to tack on a short trip to the UK to the end of a business trip to the East coast. I saw most of the family, met a new cousin, and looked in on our eldest god daughter and her partner in Glasgow. I headed home, feeling a little bit foolish, honestly. No huge drama. No big revelations. No spectral appearances. Just a lot of great fish and chips and some much needed family time.

Then COVID-19 happened. Borders started to close. Our wedding plans are thrown into uncertainty. My late-eighties aunt is in lockdown, and like me, many of my closest relations are old enough to be in the at-risk category. I got an e-mail from Betty’s eldest daughter this morning sharing that she is fine, though quite bored being in lockdown, since she has run out of tasks to do around the house.

When the severity of the consequences of the situation became clear, I got on my knees in front of my ancestor altar and prayed to our mother and thanked her for telling me to go while I had the chance. Mother knows best.

The Winter Solstice Banquet

When I was growing up, Christmas was often a stressful and traumatic time. Life in my family wasn't peaceful in general, so adding stress, expectations, and a fair amount of alcohol didn't improve matters. I was baptized and partially raised in the Catholic Church, so Christmas was very definitely a religious holiday with a bunch of other fun stuff tacked on to it.

I stopped celebrating Christmas when I was 15 years old because I had decided to commit myself to living a Pagan life, and it seemed the height of hypocrisy to make a fuss over the birth of Jesus. My friends and I who formed our teenage coven celebrated Winter Solstice together, of course, but without a home to decorate or the ability to mark the shortest day rather than Jesus' birthday it still kind of felt like Christmas and I didn't like it.

When, after lots of adventures I finally got my first real home in Ballard, I was absolutely resolved that I would decorate for Solstice and have a real celebration. My close friend Pandora and I conceived of a multi-course celebratory dinner, and that was the start of what became the Winter Solstice Banquet.

The Banquet is a ritual meal, rather than a ritual per se. If the Solstice is a religious holiday for you, then the Banquet is a religious event, but if it isn't, it's still a really nice evening with good food, good friends, and heart-felt reflection on the year that is ending. Each of the courses of the meal has a question that each guest answers during that course. The meal doesn't progress until everyone has had a chance to speak. For that reason, it's best to limit guests to about eight. Otherwise, you are likely to spend an uncomfortable amount of time sitting in front of empty plates.

I held the Banquet in my home in Ballard until I was forced out and moved to my condo in Greenwood. My place here doesn't have a dining area, so I thought that the Banquet was lost to me forever.

From 2007 until 2017 there was no Banquet and I grew more bitter and despondent during Christmas with each passing year. I would usually spend Christmas with Doug and his mother in Victoria, and although entirely pleasant, I had grown so resentful of the day that it was a struggle to keep my feelings under wraps.

Then, in 2016, I drew the Tower card (It's a Tarot reference - go look it up). I came home from US Thanksgiving with my family to a home in the process of being destroyed by flooding from my upstairs neighbor. When all was said and done, I came back from two months of living in a hotel to a living room with no furniture. For a while, I looked for replacement items, but nothing felt right. I started using folding camping furniture for convenience. That solution also allowed me to put the seating away when I wanted to set up my sewing studio.

Then, in 2018, my beautiful man asked me why I didn't just set up a folding table and have the Banquet again? Uhhh. Ummm. YEAH!!!!

And so on Solstice 2018, the Winter Solstice Banquet was restored.

Here is the order of service in case you want to do this too:

Winter Solstice Banquet

Appetizers

The Shortest Day

The youngest person present reads The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper while all join hands. At the conclusion, toast to "Welcome Yule."

Salad

Question: What was the hardest challenge this year?

Soup

Question: How have you changed?

Seafood

Question: What have you done for others?

Vegetables

Question: What was the highlight this year?

Main

Question: What do you hope for in the new year?

Salutation

Host reads Salutation by Fra Giovanni Giocondo

Dessert

Before posting the poetry texts and the menu we developed last year, I will just add that anyone is welcome to use this as a template to create your own Banquet tradition. Just please tell everyone you know how my genius has enriched your life. Thenk you.

---

The Shortest Day

Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

---

Salutation

Fra Giovanni Giocondo
excerpted from A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve 1513 A.D.

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

A Family of One

Back before I met Doug​, I struggled with being single. I remember my 30th birthday in 1996 very clearly. My friends and bandmates threw me a lovely party, but I had never been in love with a man who was in love with me and I felt that made me a failure as a human being. Surely I was a warty horror that no man could ever love.

Warty horror circa 2000CE.

Time went on, and I did eventually have a stormy nine month relationship with a very nice and completely ill-matched man. It came to a crashing end on Winter Solstice in 1998, but no matter how painful that experience was, I'm still grateful to it and to him for all that I learned.

When I moved to Baile Ard​ in 1999, I decided that I was going to change my life; that I wouldn't wait to have a husband before making a home and being a family. I would be a family of one. Each time I worked on the place, cooked for myself, decorated for a holiday, or entertained friends I became happier. I had my friends, my band, my family, my coven, my Gaelic society, my job, my health, and a home I loved. What earthly reason did I have to be unhappy?

I became unreservedly content, joyous, and satisfied as a single man. Maybe being authentically happy is what changed my luck in love. Only the gods really know, but I can tell you that even if I had remained single I would still be a family of one with a very rich and fulfilling home life.

If you're struggling with being single, lay down that burden and make yourself a home and a life that you love. You don't need anyone's approval or permission to do so but your own.

With love,
Seumas

House Protection

This is the fourth and last of the enchantments that I designed for my House Blessing / Spell Casting party when I moved to Baile Ard in 1999. See Spell To Attract A Cool Boyfriend for more details on the event.

This business of being a Witch is a funny thing. On one hand, you must have absolute confidence in the truth of your words; so much so that the deepest part of you, where you are connected to the fluid underpinnings of reality will respond and make things as you say they are. On the other, you must have an absolute and unflinching dedication to the truth and that means looking honestly at your failures, taking your lumps, and learning from them.

This spell was an utter failure. Harm, grief, and sorrow were regular visitors to Baile Ard. That's where I woke up on the day that I endured the most sorrowful experience of my life so-far: the death of my Mother.

So, I don't offer this as a good example of protective magic. I offer this rather as a quaint remembrance of a time when I thought a safe home and a well-protected life were much simpler things to achieve.

House Protection 

Take a handful of salt from the kitchen and proceed to sprinkle it on the front or back doorsill while repeating the following charm: 

I cast this salt upon the ground and by this act my spell is bound.Keep out all harm, grief, and sorrow on each today and each tomorrow! I mean this for this sill and door and throughout this house forever more! Heed this charm! Cause no harm! So mote it be!

I have since devised a new domestic ward spell which is far, far more demanding to cast and so-far, more effective.

Kitchen Witchery

This is the third of the four enchantments that I designed for my House Blessing / Spell Casting party when I moved to Baile Ard in 1999. See Spell To Attract A Cool Boyfriend for more details on the event.

My relationship with cooking fundamentally changed while I lived in Baile Ard. I had never been particularly enthusiastic about it, but there was something about the combination of having a place I was proud to invite people, having a kitchen that was open to the living area, and a decision I made not long after moving there that changed everything.

The decision was that I was not going to wait to have a man in my life before making a home. I was going to be a family of one, if that was my fate, and that included homemaking, home cooking, decorating for holidays, and entertaining.

I started off by delving back into my childhood memories of cooking Japanese food with my godmother, Kimiko Sakai, and with her mother-in-law, Botchan-san. I was still vegetarian at that time, but managed to pull together a couple six-course Japanese dinners. I don't know if my guests stopped for burgers on the way home or not, but we had a laugh anyway.

The epitome of my culinary adventures was the Winter Solstice Banquet, which I and my friend Pandora started as a collaboration. There's a little more about that in this post: Happy 10th Ballardiversary!

This transformation of ingredients into food was a new form of magic for me, but the spell that was cast by so many friends that night which led to my embrace of it was classic Seumascraft:

Kitchen Witchery

Take your favorite of the cooking implements from the kitchen and go back and forth between there and the dining table waving the implement and intoning the following:

By wooden spoon and crescent Moon
By spice mill, sieve and knife
By spinach, potato and garlic clove
All foods that nourish life,
All meals and snacks and feasts herein
with any tool employed,
Shall be full-well nutritional,
un-fattening, and enjoyed!
Heed this charm!
Cause no harm!
So mote it be!

Happy 10th Ballardiversary!

Ten years ago today, I moved from a dark, oddly-shaped studio apartment in Northgate to an adorable duplex in Ballard. The place had just been vacated by a co-worker, who tipped me off to its availability. It was perfectly laid out for me, with a bedroom (yippee!) kitchen, dining area, living room, front yard, back patio and parking place and the rent was unbeatable. $650 a month!

After I moved in and got settled a little, I had a series of housewarming events over a weekend. Friday night was the house blessing and spellcasting party. I made up little spell kits with complete instructions and folks had a great time sprinkling saltwater, reciting charms and stringing up rowan berries. Saturday was a drop-in buffet for those with evening commitments and Saturday night was a grand céilidh with somewhere around sixty people singing, playing tunes and drinking gallons of scotch. Sunday was a "survivor's brunch" complete with a reenactment of the assault on the Death Star from Star Wars using primarily French cheese for all the actors and ships.

Over the next seven years, countless wonderful and moving things happened in that house. I threw at least twenty huge céilidhs for the Slighe nan Gaidheal community. There were times when every room, including the tiny bathroom, was packed with happy, laughing, singing people enjoying the little home I had made for myself.

My friend Pandora and I started the Winter Solstice Banquet, which usually entailed a full day of decorating, a day and a half of cooking and a full day of washing dishes and cleaning afterward. The traditions of heartfelt reflection and honest sharing that evolved around the Winter Solstice table will stay with me for as long as I live.

One year I held a birthday céilidh for my dear friend Kat which her evangelical parents attended. I was pretty nervous about not offending them and with controlling my reactions if they inadvertently offended me. I kept myself in an icy grip of self-control, but despite my fears we had a truly wonderful evening and found common ground despite our differences.

That house was also the last of my homes that my mother ever saw. The year that I moved there, I decided that I wanted to host the family Christmas celebration. It was a very big deal to me and it came off really well. I took the last photo of my Mom that I ever would that day. We blew it up and framed it for her memorial service.

Lingoman and I met while I was still living there in 2001. In the early years of our romance, he would come down to Seattle fairly often so we spent a lot of time in that house getting better acquainted. One weekend, we were getting ready to go out of town when I discovered an enormous dragonfly perched over my dining room table. I mean enormous and it had apparently decided to settle down and start a family with my Ikea light fixture. Being the son of a biologist, Lingoman had no problems capturing the guy unharmed and releasing him outside to rejoin the dragonfly dating pool. That next Solstice, he gave me a beautiful cast aluminum tray decorated with dragonflies. Every time I see it I think "he will help me deal with my fears."

In January 2006, I received notice from the landlords that they had sold the place to a developer, who would be tearing it down to build townhouses. After crying for a week, I picked my self up and started looking into buying a place, since I never wanted to get that kind of letter again. With help and guidance from my wonderful realtor, Sara, I found the condo in which I now live. I moved at the beginning of August, 2006. It's a nice place; comfortable and convenient, but not set up for entertaining. Life has become rather solitary as a result and I struggle with that.

The developer didn't get around to demolishing the place until January 2nd, 2007. I got a call from my former neighbors while I was driving Lingoman to the airport to fly home. By the time I got there, it was all over. You can see my stove on which seven Winter Solstice Banquets were prepared in the pile of rubble if you look closely.

I often ask myself if I would trade the more upscale conveniences of this place to have my little duplex back. The answer is still 'yes.' I would go back if I could.