I watched my Nana make them many times as a child, and as a young adult she let me make them under her supervision.  But like many grandmas, she never cooked from a recipe.  I wrote down what she did sometime in 1982, but that piece of paper is buried somewhere in my mom’s house. Nana died in 1984, so I had to suss it out, and here’s what I came up with:

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Wow, this stuff is very good.  The finished dish:

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Three day weekend, so the big meal is tonight. Moroccan food – it’s a tagine:

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 8 chicken thighs
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ras al-hanut*
• Large pinch saffron, soaked in 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 1/2 cups canned diced tomatoes, drained (15-ounce can)
• 1 1/2 cups canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained (15-ounce can)
• 3/4 cup dried apricots, sliced into half moons
• Harissa Sauce, recipe follows
• Chopped flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
• Chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
• *Cook’s Note: Ras al-hanut is a mixture of many different spices used in Moroccan cooking. It is available at spice markets or online.

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Tonight? Spaghetti Carbonara – too wiped to tackle a Julia dish.  But this morning I made an omelette using Julia’s ‘jerking’ technique, filled with onions, shallots, tomatoes, and red bell peppers, and seasoned with the esplenette used to great effect in her piperade. Use the pan she suggests, and enjoy the wonderfully-layered result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmvfUKwBrg

Mmmm… Magic Power Coffee. Just the thing when you’re in the mood for pestorking like bunnies:

Magic Power Coffee is the world’s first Passion Coffee. Imagine an incredible coffee that not only tastes great, but magically has an effect on both men & women! With Magic Power Coffee, your “special moments” can increase to a level you only dreamed.

But hey, what puts the Power in the Magic?

The instant coffee, marketed as a dietary supplement, contains a substance similar to sildenafil, the active ingredient in the prescription erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.

Oh, great — a diuretic laced with a boner pill. Ladies, we guys have a term for that: piss hard.

Boing! Feds say Magic Power coffee contains Viagra drug[Raw Story]

Magic Power Coffee

“A French prisoner killed his cellmate then sliced open his chest to remove and eat his heart, a court has heard. However, the man removed the wrong organ, and ate his lung by mistake.” [Telegraph UK]

A friend of mine had lobster gazpacho at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central on Friday and loved it.  So how hard can it be? We’re about to find out:

Yield: Makes 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 1/4  pounds  ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks
• 1  large red bell pepper, quartered
• 1  small onion, cut into chunks
• 2  large shallots, quartered
• 6  large garlic cloves
• 3/4  cup  loosely packed cilantro leaves
• 2  tablespoons  prepared horseradish
• 2  teaspoons  salt
• 3/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4  teaspoon  ground red pepper

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