Sniffles & Trifles & A Couple of Recipes

Well, I've been issued my personal version of the cold that all Buncombe county residents must, by law, have this December. Sore throat, sniffles, stomach ache, dizzy out of it feelings - I've got it all. But actually, on a horrible dreary day like this one, I've been just as happy to do nothing but slowly make my way occasionally from the bedroom to the kitchen, pausing en route to admire the complete disgusting mess that is my house. It's a nice respite from all the frantic activity of yesterday & the days before.

Also, I've been tipsy all day from repeated forays into the leftover trifle. Mmmmm, trifle is really good if you load it down with about a half a pint of dark rum and it just keeps on getting better. Actually, if I do say so myself, there's been some stellar food around here the past couple of days and yesterday, when I made Christmas dinner at my mother's was no exception. It was a little fraught though - it turns out that my mother thinks I have always overcooked my green beans (oh, quelle horreur) and, get this, the reason noone in the family has ever been able to duplicate my mother's potatos, which she has always called Pennsylvania Railroad Potatos, is because she uses a stick of butter for every three potatos. Yes. A. Whole. Stick. We grew up eating those; it's a wonder that we grew up at all. So here, have some recipes.

Night before night before Christmas fancy chicken
Boneless skinless chicken breasts
figs
bleu cheese
garlic
pancetta
mushrooms
a little lemon juice
1. Put the breasts between two sheets of wax paper and whale on them with a rolling pin until they're nice & thin. Salt & pepper them.
2. Mix up the figs and the bleu cheese and the garlic and the mushrooms and a little lemon juice in the food processor. It is possible that I had sauteed the mushrooms first; I totally can't remember. They were baby bellas, though.
3. Spread this stuff on each breast.
4. Roll the breasts up.
5. Wrap the rolls in pancetta.
6. Bake in the oven at 375 for about half an hour, 40 minutes or until done. Finish under the broiler to make crispy.
Very elegant and gourmet, also delicious. I served it with risotto (used the recipe from the back of the arborio rice bag) and green beans.

Trifle
Yellow cake. (I made a Duncan Hines classic yellow cake box cake the day before, you could also buy pound cake or whatever, really.)
A can of vanilla pudding
A can of lemon pie filling
1/2 a pineapple
2 kiwis
1/2 a plastic grocery store freezer thing of sliced strawberries in syrup - thawed.
1 bag of frozen berry/cherry mix, which is to say, frozen fruit leaning towards the strawberry/blueberry/cherry end as opposed to the melon-y end of the frozen fruit spectrum. Thawed.
coconut. I used the flaked canned kind with sugar.
whipped cream (I did this myself but what the hell, you could use the canned kind.)
At least half a bottle of dark rum.
A trifle bowl.
1. Find & wash the trifle bowl. You probably had a plant in it at some point; god knows I did.
2. Cut the cake up into big chunks and put a layer of them on the bottom of the bowl.
3. Cut up the pineapple & the kiwis and put them on top of the cake.
4. Pour some rum over all that.
5. Put another layer of cake chunks down.
6. Pour the vanilla pudding and about half the lemon pie filling on top of that layer of cake.
7. More rum!
8. Another, probably final, layer of cake chunks.
9. Put the strawberries & berries on top of that.
10. Sprinkle the whole thing with coconut.
11. Rum! By god, more rum! Soak that thing!
12. You could, of course, keep on going with the layers indefinitely, given a big enough trifle bowl and infinite fruit. Or you could stop, whatever. I stopped here.
14. Cover and leave the hell alone for at least 4 hours. If it's going to be longer than that, put it in the fridge.
15. Before serving, add the whipped cream to the top all pretty & peaky like.
This is remarkably delicious, especially the next day.

Mom's Pennsylvania Railroad Potatos
9 or 12 or so biggish russet potatos
scallions
parsley
a metric shitload of real butter
1. Boil the potatos.
2. When they're almost but not quite done, dump them in cold water to cool off.
3. Put a stick (yup. One whole stick.) of butter in a heavy pan and melt over medium heat. Don't let it ever get too hot.
4. Take a potato out of the water. Peel it.
5. Holding it over the butter, cut it into quarters, then slice those quarters into the hot butter so you have thin triangles in there.
6. Repeat, but only do as many potatos as fit nicely into the pan.
6. Leave alone.
7. Stir very rarely.
8. When they begin to look brown, add some chopped scallions and chopped parsley.
9. When they are indubitably brown, put them into a big oven type pan. Salt & pepper.
10. Continue with the butter (yeah. I couldn't bring myself to use that much butter either, but my potatos were totally not as good.) and the potatos until they're all done, never putting too many in the pan and resisting the temptation to stir them a lot.
11. Then put the whole thing into a 350 oven for a while until the entree is done. They'll wait indefinitely, just sitting there in their artery clogging buttery goodness.