Weekend Update, April 13, 2014

“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open;

 becoming an adult, I've decided,

 is only a slow sewing shut.” 

Jodi Picoult

It's been nearly a week since the boys from the University of Connecticut left Dallas with a shiny new trophy, and the boys from the University of Kentucky left Dallas to go home. It's been nearly a week of spinning the Final Four as inspiration, as week ate our way through iconic meals from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky and Wisconsin. And you know what? Even though I was cheering for Kentucky, it's not an entirely bad thing that they left the stadium empty handed; the boys from Kentucky were going home to the Final Four's best comfort food. 
Thoughts of youth and beauty and basketball dribbled around the mental court all week- and by dribbled,

I do not mean drooled.

Thoughts in the stadium of this particular mind may bounce around, and may take a time out, but more often than not, this brain is one of the answers to the riddle "what's fuzzy, red and gray and goes nowhere really fast" 

The other answer is moldy strawberries in a blender.

Case in point: if youth is beautiful, and one mark of youth is the ability to see beauty,  then  people who age and retain that ability are extra beautiful, right? And if, to some of us, certain forms of basketball are beautiful, then ancient things playing basketball ought to be one of the most sublime sights on the planet.

And yet, it's really only a little creepy.
Go figure.

So the brain stopped spinning on that one, and pondered instead another knack possessed by the youthful- the ability to accumulate approvals.

No, not the ability to accumulate people who approve of you, 

although I'm sure that's nice.

Accumulating approvals as in watching the list of things you approve of grow longer. While the list of things you disapprove of grows smaller. It runs counter to the usual assumption that age, in the acquisition of dignity, must also acquire an ever-expanding list of disapprovals. Consider this personage- a legendary in both dignity and disapproval:

 Absolutely Victorian- even when
she was a little girl.

 As parents of selective eaters know, the very young can be less open minded than people twice their age,  so the ability to gather approvals can't be a measure of chronology, but of youthful openess, and a good test of this line of thought turns out to be a week of the unfamiliar for dinner.Let's take as a start one of the nicest discoveries of the week- the Kentucky Hot Brown.  In it's parts (which are definitely NOT greater than the whole) the Kentucky Hot Brown is an open faced sandwich with a base of french toast, a layer of roast turkey, topped with cheese sauce, then bacon and tomato. Now, here's a test of youthfulness. Does the idea of a Kentucky Hot Brown lead you to say-

"Cheese sauce on a bacon turkey sandwich,?!?
And I can use leftover French Toast?!? Brilliant!!!

or, are you more prone to say:

"Oh no you did NOT just put that mess on my french toast.
You totally found a way to ruin bacon.
This is just wrong."

Well, if you've tried one, you would probably say, as I did, 

"How soon can I have another one?"

And here are the other winners and not-so-winners of the week:

Kentucky was the hands-down winner this week. Before the Hot Browns could have roast turkey, there was a turkey to roast. Sure, I could have used deli roast turkey breast. In fact, if you want to impress your friends in a flash, you could make the Hot Brown with a quick slice of french toast, some thick sliced deli turkey, some melted Velveeta and bacon. 

But I was paying my respects to a hard-fighting team that came in second. So I did things the Bobby Flay way. I roasted the turkey exactly the way the recipe said to, except (there's always an except) I brined the turkey in maple syrup, salt and water for a few hours before baking. Here's the juicy beast on a plate:

It was a cheap and very easy alternative to chicken.
From now on, this bird is coming for dinner
more than once a year.

No, that's not cranberry sauce on top, that's the week's other big find, blackberry salsa

so much sweet hot yummy goin on in one bowl!

this is a terrific alternative to the usual salsas of summer. I kept the heat pretty low (maybe too low) but there was still plenty of flavor. And plenty of color too, at least in the first few hours. If you're serving this for guests (and it is totally company worthy, with pork or fish or fowl or salad) make it the day of serving, and you'll still have the bright purple and white of the onions, the red of the pepper and the green of the cilantro. The next day, the beautiful garnet color of the berries will have taken over everything, though it will still taste great.

Connecticut scored a surprising goal with White Clam Pizza- here it is on a gluten-free crust:

Turns out that a thin-crust, sauceless
pizza with parmesan instead of mozarella is
really light. And the clams are not exactly bad either.

And has a miss with the miso marinated cod from the New Haven newspaper. 

The hour spent hunting Miso was a very bad investment- almost zero return of flavor for effort. The pineapple relish was great, and could stand alone as a side; the sesame oil adds an unusual and interesting twist to a simple two ingredient salad.

Still, the cod was a nice reminder that salmon is not the only fish in the sea, and though its meaty texture deserves a different treatment, that does not mean I disapprove. 
On the contrary- 
A new approval may be waiting right around the corner.
And I hope that for your week.
I hope that inside and out
the positives outnumber the negatives.
And that the different is a source of delight.
 Maybe we can get lucky.
Maybe we can be among those whose lives are 
lived free from suspicions and disparagements. 
Maybe we can resolve 
to do our best to die young-

no matter how old they are.