Catsup for Do-It-Yourselfers

I love to cook.  I love to read about cooking and watch cooking shows.  Not the cable ones devoted to minting and merchandising celebu-chefs.  Not the ones whose stars facilitate cooking wars and abuse masochistic amateur chefs.  Nay, I love the cooking shows on public television.

The PBS chefs are my kitchen idols.  They are all about teaching technique and the chemistry of ingredients, and they are so passionate about what they do that they don't really need audiences.  They make you fall in love with the food they love.  Lidia Bastianich.  Ming Tsai.  Rick Bayless's Mexico, One Plate at a Time and America's Test Kitchen are my porn. 

If you love to cook and love to feed others what you prepare, then you probably read cookbooks for the pure pleasure of it, too.  Your heart skips a beat when you come across a cookbook that beckons you with its siren call from a bargain table in an out-of-the way store.  "Buy me.  I'm 75% off, and I contain recipes cherished and shared by church ladies in Chicken Paw, Delaware.  Caress my pages.  Kiss me.  Let me fatten you up for the holidays."

Recently, I discovered a small cookbook crafted by an author who had inherited her Amish grandmother's old wooden recipe box.  Interspersed with the recipes she tested and put in the book are little commentaries, memories of childhood among the Plain People.  It's sweet reading and, if you didn't already know that the Amish work their tails off all day in fields and factories, you'd be inclined to wonder why they aren't all the size of a healthy rhinoceros.

Anyway, since I came home from the local farmers' market this morning lugging a pile of finally-in-season Jersey tomatoes, (there are no words adequate to describe the perfection of a New Jersey-grown tomato) I sat down to flip through some recipes for possible use for the ones that actually made it out of the car without being eaten.

I do believe this one, from the Amish cookbook, to be the most interesting yet:

Catsup

1/2 bushel tomatoes
1/2 cup vinegar
1/3 cup salt
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon pepper

Boil tomatoes with skins on, then rub them through a window screen.  Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 45 minutes.

See, I might have used a basketball net, because you could just throw that in the washer.  But this seems a lot more precise.  For safety's sake, not to mention convenience, I would use a first floor window.  And put something on the floor or outside on the lawn to catch the tomato flesh, right? 

Is It Wrong to Dislike Offshoring?

Dear Babs,

 

So, the call center for A Well-Known Bank (if you kept a list of federal bailouts, you will find it) has, since Wednesday, sent me six faxes (you know, because five just weren't sufficient) asking for proof of renewed insurance on a commercial property whose owner has until Date XX to accept his renewal offer.  

It also deployed one of its human minions to call me three times, each time using a different non-threatening American name -- first "Dave," then "Jim," and last, "Joe" -- assigned to him, to ask for the same information presented in the faxed documents.  

On Call #2, "Jim" noted that Well-Known Bank is the new mortgage lender and, dare I say, overzealous escrow payor of the property owner's insurance premiums. 

Wednesday evening I called Well-Known Bank and asked -- no, shrewishly mewled -- that I had to speak with someone whose first language is English.  I did not apologize for this.

After I was put hold forever and a day, a pleasant young thing named Twitty McCheerleader picked up.  She talked regular, Babs.  See, I don't care if people have accents.  But if their ability to communicate effectively with the people whom they call is a negative nineteen on a scale of one to five, then they need more training.  There's a point at which it becomes inefficient to keep saying politely, "I am sorry.  It must be my telephone.  Could you repeat that?  Could you spell that for me?  Could you just send me something in writing?"


I told her that I had called back several times and left Dave, Jim and Joe the same information:

1. that I had understood the request the first five times I received it over the course of one morning. 
2. that I had advised Manny, Moe and Jack that, once I have the proper documentation in my possession, (documents which have to come from a surplus lines broker, not directly from my rectum or snatched from the air above me as if I were a hockey goaltender) the bank will have the documentation it needs to barf out an escrow check and send it on its way.  

 Well, I said the ass and hockey stuff in my mind, but their voice mail got my drift.

To Twitty, I added, "And if he is so inclined, my client can legally wait until Date XX at 11:59 p.m. to say yes or no to the offer.  That is three weeks from now.  Do you understand this?  And please tell your coworker to stop using fake nicknames.  It's the same representative.  I recognize his voice, okay?  It's insulting."

Twitty agreed vigorously, apologized profusely and said she would immediately instruct her colleagues to stop carpet-bombing me with the same request every seven minutes.

That worked out real well.  By 10:00 a.m. on Friday, there were four more phone messages and another fax.

In voice mail #2, from "Joe" of Well-Known Bank, which he pronounced Veeeeeddnobenka, (of course I have changed the name of the benka in order to protect my own hide) the identity of the client was again given, this time with a helpful letter-by-letter articulation delivered thus:

"Kdanstone Eyebuhdeet: 'C as in Cat, Ahd as in Umbredda...'"

I s--t you not, Babs.  R as in "umbrella."

Best Regards, 

K