Every once in awhile, we all need comfort food. There's no one recipe, or one meal, even for each person. Comfort food is whatever makes you feel secure, protected, comforted. Tonight, I needed some comfort food, and here's what I made.

Creamed Corn

1. Why am I starting with creamed corn? Because of the items on this menu, it takes the longest to make. "WTF?" you ask. "You open a can and heat it. How long can it take?" To which I say "Yuck!". Here's how I make creamed corn. Preheat an oven to 400ºF and get some ears of corn, one per person, plus some more, as fresh off the stalk as you can: grow it, get to a local farmer, whatever it takes, but every minute the corn is off the stalk, it's losing sugar and taste. Gently peel back the leaves on the corn, removing only the toughest outer leaves. Rub off the strings. Pull the leaves back over the kernels, and place each ear in a bowl of salted water. Once all the ears of corn are prepared, wrap each in heavy duty aluminum foil and place in the hot oven for 45 minutes.
2. At the end of 45 minutes, heat a heavy sauce pan (I use porcelain coated cast iron) over low heat, preferably on simmering bricks. For each ear of corn, add 1 pat of butter, a bit of turbinado sugar, a grind of white pepper, and an half-cup of heavy cream to the heating pan. While the mixture is heating, unwrap the corn and return to the oven to brown for 15 minutes. About the sugar: if the corn is from your back yard, you should need very little, if picked that day, perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon, if from some warehouse and a chain supermarket, maybe a whole teaspoon per ear.
3. Once the cream mixture has heated and the corn has browned, remove from the oven, and peel back the leaves. Using the leaves as an handle, which should be cool enough to hold, use a sharp knife and remove the kernels from the cob. Add the kernels to the heated cream. If need be, add cream until the kernels are covered, or better floating in the cream.
4. Increase the temperature and allow the cream to boil for 3 minutes, return the heat to low or the pan to the simmering bricks and keep warm, stirring, until the meal is ready to serve.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

1. I use yukon gold, and either one small or one-half medium potato per person. Peel and halve the potatoes, add to salted, cold water in a heavy pan. Peel one garlic clove per person, and add to the pan. Heat over high heat until boiling, lower heat to maintain a simmer, check after 10 minutes and keep heating until the potatoes can be easily pierced to their center with a fork. Remove the potatoes and garlic cloves from the boiling water, and allow to drain.
2. Pour out the water, and return the pan to the stove over low heat. Add an half-tablespoon of butter to the pan, with the garlic cloves and a grind per potato of white pepper and another grind of nutmeg. Allow the butter to brown at the edge, and the garlic to lightly brown. Add a tablespoon of heavy cream per person to the butter and bring to a boil. Put the potatoes back into the pan, and mash with a potato masher; alternately, you can pass the potatoes and browned garlic through a coarse-disk food mill into the pan.
3. Whisk it all together, and stir over heat until you're ready to serve

The Beef

I generally like Niman Ranch Ground Round for the meat. You can use any ground beef, or thin steak, pounded or not, or dry-aged New York Strip. For comfort food, the ground, for fancier meals the strip. You can dress up the ground with sautéed onion, Worcester Sauce, mustard powder, egg, whatever. You can rub the steak with a crushed garlic clove. With good quality meat, I don't like anything hiding the flavor. Use anywhere from 4 ounces to half-a-pound per person. Six ounces is a standard restaurant portion. Heat a pan over medium heat, add extra-virgin olive oil. Brown the meat for at least five minutes on a side, until nicely dark brown (lots of esters generated from browning, making for richer flavor). Cook the meat to the desired degree of doneness, rare to well-done.

The Sauce

While the corn is roasting, do the prep work. That includes the potatoes above, but also the prep work for the sauce or gravy. What's the difference? Flour. If you want a gravy, make a roux from butter and flour, a tablespoon of each per cup of liquid, cooking the flour in the butter for three minutes. Whisk the hot liquid into the the roux, until thick. What liquid? Keep reading.

1. Use about an half-inch of a red torpedo onion per person, thinly sliced.
2. Use four to six cremini mushrooms per person. Clean and slice.
3. Remove the meat, when done, from the pan, and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
4. Add oil if the pan is dry.
5. Add the onionslices to the pan, lower the heat, and sauté until translucent, add the mushroom slices and cook until tender.
6. Deglaze the pan with red wine or stock, working loose all the nice browned bits.
7. Add 4 ounces per person of vegetable, mushroom or beef stock
8. Here's the part where you can work the roux if you want a gravy.
9. For a sauce, cook the liquid, stirring often, over high heat until the liquid thickens - 10 to 15 minutes.
10. If the meat has cooled too far, return to the pan for the last five minutes.
11. If added, remove the meat, turn off the heat, and work a pat of butter into the sauce.

The Finish

Plate it up, with the sauce on the plate, or the gravy on the potatoes and beef. Put two to four heaping tablespoons of creamed corn in a small bowl for each serving. Maybe add some crusty bread and a salad, maybe not. Serve with the red wine used to make the sauce. Enjoy.

I've been putting new faucets into various sinks around the house. Today's two hour job, starting at 11:30 AM, just ended a short while ago. The old faucet was very difficult to remove, though the new one went in as expected. The trouble started when I opened up the supply valve for the hot water under the sink - it began leaking, and tightening the screw holding the handle into the stem didn't help. Closing the valve didn't help either. Then it started to leak a LOT.

I drove down to Ocean Shore Hardware in Half Moon Bay and bought a replacement 5/8-inch coarse thread compression to 3/8-inch compression valve. Reading through a home repair book to dredge up old memories of working with my maternal grandfather, both a master carpenter and master plumber, 34 years ago when I was 16, I saw that the only way to remove a compression fitting from a straight copper pipe is with a hacksaw. And if the new one leaks, as the book says, hacksaw it off and start over. This is why I don't do this for a living, or even an hobby.

It leaked. A LOT. I knew this as I sprained my ankle slipping in the puddle it made in the kitchen. Actually, it wasn't so much leaking, as spraying while making a malevolent hissing noise. I turned the main valve to the house off again. I know when to get professional help...

So, I looked through the phone book to find an emergency plumbing service that works the Coastside. Rescue Rooter has a large ad in the yellow pages claiming that "We get there right away... and we get it right. Ask about our 60 minute emergency service". And they have a number for Half Moon Bay and the Coastside (650)761-1313.

Don't call that number. Fifty-five minutes after I called, I received a call back stating that their technician [Grandpa wasn't no technician, he was a craftsman] wasn't able to break away, so they would like to offer me a 10% discount if I could reschedule to 8 the next morning. I explained that the water was off to the whole house, and that my parents, in their 80's, live with me, and that simply wasn't an acceptable solution. So Daisy said that all she could do was phone me back in 45 to 60 minutes [never an hour, they hate when you call their 60 minute guarantee an hour]. She did so, to let me know that the "technician" still couldn't break away and the earliest their "Always Available - Nights, Weekends, holidays" [quoting their ad] service could get to me would be NINE AM the next morning. I told her again about my situation, and quoted their ad to her. It seems Rescue Rooter had no other plumbers, just the one. And I could take their 9 AM offer or go elsewhere. I imagine some other customer who couldn't be serviced tonight took the 8 AM time slot.

No one else listed as providing 24/7 emergency plumbing services on the Coastside even answered.

Luckily, second time was the charm. I had bought several valves at Ocean Shore, and I was able to get a successful compression seal on my next attempt. Of course, hacksawing off copper pipe, and going through all this takes time. So, my two hour job turned into nine hours. And the supply line going from the new valve to the faucet jammed in taking it off again, so I must get another.

I have a sprained ankle, metal splinters in my hand, and I'm very tired.

I DO NOT have any leaks. And water is flowing through all the pipes, except the ones leading to the new kitchen faucet. /sigh

AND... I have to be in Sunnyvale tomorrow at 7:30 [that's when I usually awaken] to volunteer at the ANZATech network 2006 event. I know Buzz Bruggeman will be speaking again this year. I'm not sure if Bill Daul will be there. How about you?

Christmas must be coming. The number of cataglogues that I receive in the mail just jumped for about 6-to-8 per week to 8-to-10 per DAY.