tattfoo: community based intervention artist

My maternal grandmother’s parents, Giovanni Carullo and Maria Casagrande, came from Malpensa, which is now the site of the Milan airport. They married there early in 1894. They settled in Quincy, Massachusetts and had six children. My grandmother, Rose Laura, the fourth child and also the fourth girl, was born in 1901. In 1929, she married Joseph Patrick Hughes, the descendant of Irish immigrants and a local police officer. They also had six children, of whom five survived infancy. Their third child and second daughter, Helen Louise, grew up to marry Lucian G. Brown and to become my mother.

Nana, as we called my maternal grandmother, did cook Italian dishes. However, she also picked up some New England recipes, and the one copied below is one my mother makes frequently enough that we can call it comfort food, although our family doesn’t use that phrase. My mother says that it got the name “ten-cent cake” because it cost only ten cents to make during the Great Depression, and was thus a good recipe for her mother to have on hand. The method of incorporating the baking soda suggests that the recipe is at least that old. It may be older; it may have been developed during World War I, when people conserved on butter and eggs, among other staples, to keep the troops well-supplied with food. The use of molasses, white sugar and raisins makes it seem like an even older New England recipe. Colonial New England was a trade hub, and so ingredients such as molasses, sugar, raisins and spices were available early on there, and have made their way into other New England recipes such as hermits.

The recipe also suits more modern needs. I make this recipe when I have to bring something to work, as I work with two vegetarians who don’t use dairy products or eggs.

Ingredients:
1 c raisins
1/2 c shortening
1 c sugar
3 T molasses
1 1/2 c flour
1 t cinnamon
1 t cloves
1 t nutmeg
1 t baking soda

Preparation:
Start the raisins on their way to a boil, reduce the heat, simmer 15 minutes, and drain, reserving 1 cup of the hot water. While the raisins are underway, sift the flour, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and set aside. Cream the shortening and sugar. Add the molasses and the raisins. Stir in the flour. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water; this is easiest if the soda is put in a large cup and water poured onto it. Add the soda water to the batter. Pour the batter into a 9″ square pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. Serve plain, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, or frosted with vanilla or chocolate frosting.

My grandmother, Rose Kaufman was born in a shtetl (small Jewish village) in Austria in 1913. Due to the pogroms that occurred across Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, my grandmother’s family was forced to leave their village and immigrated to the United States. They found their home in Brooklyn, New York. After marrying Samuel Kudysch, Rose had two daughters, Honorah and Marcia. Marcia was my mother. Sadly, my grandfather Sam passed away at the early age of 26 and my grandmother Rose was forced to raise her daughters on her own. At the same time, Rose began to lose her vision and was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disease of the retina. She eventually became legally blind. It has been told to us grandkids that our “Nanny” Rose raised Marcia and Honey during World War II with the wages she earned as a short order cook for the Army.

When Rose was in the last days of her life in a hospital ICU unit, my cousins Linda and Yvonne and I interrogated her to get the recipe for our very favorite dish of hers. Of course, she never wrote these things down, since she couldn’t see to read. So we wrote it down before she died. Here it is…

Grandma’s “Shit” Cabbage (Choluptches) aka Stuffed Cabbage. I don’t know why she called it that. I guess the cooked ground meat mixed with rice reminded her of something. There were some steps missing, so I referred to my mother’s recipe and this has turned out to be somewhat of a combination of both their recipes. Of course, Mom got hers from Nanny.

Ingredients:
1 large onion diced
1 head green cabbage (white cabbage)
3 lb. ground beef (or turkey if that’s what you prefer)
2 cups rice - uncooked (this sounds questionable to me, but that’s what Grandma said in her hospital bed delerium. Mom’s recipe says to use 2 cups COOKED rice)
2 eggs (from Mom’s recipe, to hold the meat together. Maybe Grandma just forgot to mention this)
1/2 tsp garlic powder, or to taste
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 tsp sour salt (citric acid)
Sugar (to taste)
5 eight ounce cans tomato sauce- DelMonte or Hunts
1 can tomato puree
2 cans tomato soup
1 can cranberry sauce (Aha! The secret ingredient!)

Preparation:
Place the cut up onion in the bottom of your very large pot. Put in 5 cans tomato sauce, can of puree, 2 cans of soup, 1 can cranberry sauce, sour salt, salt and sugar to taste. Bring to a boil and simmer together in the pot. Keep stirring to prevent burning.

Prepare the cabbage:
Boil the whole head of cabbage only until the leaves separate, partly cooked. Cut around the core and remove it. Cut off the back. Remove the leaves whole as they soften. Let them cool. Cut stems off cabbage leaves.

The stuffing:
Mix the turkey with the eggs, rice, garlic and salt (Mom threw in one soup ladle full of the tomato sauce mix). Roll the meat mixture into steamed and separated cabbage leaves. Make sure the leaves are tucked in really well so they don’t fall apart in the pot. Place the stuffed leaves on a plate and put into the pot all together. Chop up the leftover cabbage and put in the pot. Cook one hour over a low flame.

Some of you might have know that I’m into interior design, home and living. I finally found a blog that suits my taste, The Style File. So, I decided to curated my own little dream home. A bit rustic with touch of mid century modern and lots of white wash.

This chicken leg soup recipe is quite a common delicacy in Hong Kong, and my mom used to make it for us. When I’m here in New York, I tried to make it myself and remembering the good old days of having my mother taking care of all my dinning needs. I did call my mom to ask for some advice to make it similar like her style, and of course which is also my favourite taste.

Ingredients:
8-10 pieces of chicken feet
6 oz Lean pork meat
6-8 oz. peanut
2-3 oz. black-eyed peas
4 pieces of dried shiitake mushroom
2 slices of ginger

Preparation:
First put all chicken leg in the boiling water, cook for a few minutes, take them out and rinse with tap water, prepare for later use. Then, soak the peanuts, black-eyed peas and dried mushroom in water for 15-30 mins, until they all turn soft. Boil 2000cc of water, put all the chicken legs, the lean pork meat, peaunts, black-eyed peas and the mushroom in the boiling water, use low to medium heat to cook for 1 1/2 hrs. Then put the ginger in, cook for another half hour. Add salt to taste. It is ready to serve.

I just got my hands on a real juicer. A Champion juicer. I read about it for some time but was too frugal to get one myself. I used to blend the fruits and strain the juice from the pulp. Now, no more. I can just juice it. Thanks Lora for passing it to me. I’ll put it to good use. I also found the replacement parts online http://championjuicer.com/index.php?cPath=21

My friend Poby send me this image from a German newspaper showing Lock of Love in Korea.

Metro Poles: Art in Action started with a blank slate, an empty gallery and white walls. Literally, waiting for artists to arrive to start the show. At the reception, we manage to paints a wall in chalk board black paint.

Once the paints dried, other fellow artists grab the opportunity to start writing messages and expressing themselves by drawing on the chalk board.

The next following two days I work with Caitlin in constructing her Marshmallow Shelter using chicken wire and a travel suitcase full of Marshmallow.

The installation is done and are waiting for the next chapter of the show.

Everyone is talking about Polaroid going down and the film is out of stock.Each pack of film cost about USD20 include tax. That means each shot is 2 bucks. Worry no more, I found this image convertor that can make your digital picture to look like polaroid and it can go till 400dpi. Enjoy

http://www.poladroid.net/

cool graphic on the shopping bag

Flu season is here again. Ensze had been under the weather. While I was seaching for Jamaican Curry mixes, I found the cough syrup that we used to drink growing up in a African Specialty food store in Staten Island. It is African Sea-Coconut Cough Mixture. It is an authentic product made in Malaysia. I think this is was colonialism done to our shared cultured. We shared similiar food culture with all the commonwealth countries.