Sometimes Kevin annoys me, but I love their chemistry.
Scotty: Don't be weird.That's hilarious! And I also like the scene where Kevin and Paige are talking and she repeats many times "Because you're gay?", that's also hilarious! I love those scenes.
"When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." We have all heard that old proverb, but in my case life has recently handed me a truckload of lemons.
Let me just apologize upfront for what historians will probably call the Great Lemon Shortage of 2010. If you live anywhere in the Western Half of the US and have gone to your neighborhood grocery store in the last week, you may have noticed there are no more lemons. It's a mystery that has had farmers scratching their heads. Of course, there is no mystery. There is just Kevin Walker.
You see if you're married to Kevin Walker, when he hands you lemons you DO make lemonade, but then you are faced with a new problem. After you've made more lemonade than you could possibly drink or give away in two lifetimes and you still have lemons lying around, what do you do then?
After gallons of lemonade you can graduate to acres of lemon squares before moving on to other things: Lemon Cheesecake, Limoncello, Lemon Garlic Tilapia, Lemon Sorbet, Lemon and Herb Risotto Cake, Lemon Meringue Pie, Lemon Curd, Lemon-Berry Trifle, Lemon Drop Martinis, Lemon Zucchini Drops, Blueberry Lemon Cakewell, you get the idea. I'm starting to sound like Bubba talking about shrimp on Forrest Gump!
But did you know you can use lemons for other things around the house too?
* Use lemon juice to get the smell of garlic or fish off of your hands.
* Run lemon halves through the garbage disposal to make it smell great.
* Add a teaspoon of lemon juice to dishwashing soap to increase its grease-cutting power.
* Squeeze lemon juice onto a stained cutting board, rub and let stand for 20 minutes to get rid of stains.
Lemon juice also can be used to clean grout, brighten whites when doing laundry and bleach stains from things like tomato soup on dishwasher-safe plastic food containers.
So lets not disregard the wisdom of the"when life hands you lemons" proverb, but lets also expand on its meaning until our laundry is bright white, our grout is clean and our garbage disposal has never smelled better. Because lemonade is always just the beginning.
SCOTTY'S SIMPLE LEMONADE
This is more a guide than a recipe. It's always a 1:1:1 ratio of sugar to water to lemon juice.
Ingredients
1 cup sugar (can reduce)
1 cup water
1 cup lemon juice
3-4 cups of cold water to dilute
Method 1. Make a "simple syrup" by heating the sugar and water together in a saucepan until the sugar completely dissolved.
2. Extract the juice from 4-6 lemons. You want one cup of juice.
3. Combine the juice and simple syrup in a large pitcher. Add 3-4 cups of cold water, depending on the strength you're looking for.
4. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before enjoying. If it's too sweet, adjust the flavor with more straight lemon juice and/or water.
Serves 6.
Before referring the episode, I've got to tell you something. I got the second warning from YouTube, so I might get suspension soon. Actually I wanted to make this episode into two clips, but I was too scared to do it. Because the length of the clip is more than 12 minutes, if it includes Kevin's appearance without Scotty, then I decided to upload only Kevin & Scotty's part.
Anyway I think Scotty has never visited Kevin's new office, so I feel it is fresh for some reason. I know it's Kitty's story, but I want more Kevin & Scotty's scene. And most unbelievable thing is Ryan finally decided to help Walkers. I can't expect how the story will be. There are a lot of things I want to refer about Kitty's illness but it's a little different matter here.
I love the scene where Scotty tells Julia that it's the time when she has to forgive Tommy.
Last week at San Estephe as we were prepping for the evening's dinner service we had a young visitor in the kitchen: our saucier Steve's 8-year old son Ricky had stopped by with his mother. In that way only kids can, he announced that he was thirsty so I offered to get him a drink.
"Are you going to use that soda gun thingy?" Ricky asked, his eyes lighting up.
I replied: "I was...unless...you wanted to do it yourself." You would have thought I had just told him he never had to do his homework again. He was ecstatic.
Ricky insisted on doing the whole thing himself – he took a cup, filled it with ice and then used the soda gun to make a "Secret Recipe" drink, which as far as I could tell, was made by pushing every button on the soda gun at least once. While he was proudly adjusting the ratio of Root Beer to Tonic Water, his mom yelled to him: "Ricky, stop playing with that! We're leaving." He secretly squirted the root beer a few more times, took one final taste and proudly nodded his approval to me as he and his mom walked out.
As I went back to work I realized that my own culinary journey was the direct result of ignoring anyone who told me not to play with my food. My earliest recipes were all the result of my wandering into my parents' kitchen and playing with whatever we had on hand. Even now developing recipes is nothing but a slightly more elaborate and socially acceptable version of playing with my food. And while most of my kitchen accidents ended up in the trash (R.I.P. Citrus Fruit Stir Fry), some ended up on the menu at San Estephe.
When a kid plays with his food he's called "rambunctious." When a chef does it, he's called "innovative."
Legend says that Coca-Cola, potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, the French Dip sandwich, and even cheese are all foods that came about by chance; by adults who didn't listen to their mothers growing up.
Even this morning as Kevin and I drove down Wilshire Blvd I came across yet another example of people playing with their food...this time, for a great cause. CanstructionLA is a competition between LA's leading architects, engineers and designers who built enormous sculptures all out of cans of food.
The structures were put on display in the building lobby at 5900 Wilshire Blvd for people to enjoy and, after two weeks, all the canned food is donated to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Last year they raised 62,000 cans and this year it looked like even more. That's the kind of playing with your food we can all get behind.
While there is something to be said for having kids (and adults!) being well behaved, there is also something to be said for the brilliant wit of discovery that kids seem to best embody.
So what did I do when I got back to the kitchen?? I picked up a glass, filled it with ice and sprayed every flavor from the soda gun into the cup. Maybe Ricky was on to something. Maybe this drink would be the new Shirley Temple. Of course, we'd have to rename it after a modern child star: The Abigail Breslin? The Dakota Fanning? The Dora the Explorer?
I took a long sip, swirling it in my mouth like the finest of wines and promptly decided it would pair perfectly with my Citrus Fruit Stir Fry. In the trashcan. That's the thing about playing with your food. Sometimes you invent the potato chip and sometimes you invent a soda combination that could strip wallpaper. But you never know until you try.
Here is a special "treat" that I dug up for you: my stir-fry recipe from when I was 9 years old. I like to think I've grown as a chef since then.
Scotty's Stir-Fry
Scotty Wandell (at 9 years old)
Ingredients
2 Oranges
1 Grapefruit
3 spoons of soy sauce
1 onion
1 piece of garlic
1 spoon of peanut oil
2 spoons of vinegar
1 packet of powdered cheese from box of macaroni and cheese*
* To a 9-year old, everything will taste better if it tastes like macaroni and cheese. This proves not to be true.
1. Heat the oil in a wok or skillet.
2. Add chopped onion and garlic, letting both sweat out.
3. Throw in cut up oranges and grapefruit (feel free to add other citrus fruits...it will taste like crap either way!)
4. Pour in the vinegar and soy sauce, tossing to coat everything well.
5. When heated through, mix in the powdered cheese.
6. Put it on a plate.
7. Throw the plate in the garbage.
On a final note, as some of you know a lot is going on in my family right now and I need to be there for them. So Happy Holidays and I'll see you all in the New Year!
