Stir well and chill in the refrigerator. Lucy garnishes her drinks with a stalk of tender celery and two large green olives and a wedge of lemon skewered on a toothpick. She never uses ice because it dilutes, resulting in a weak, rather disgusting looking Bloody Mary. It is better not to drink too many of these before you fire up the grill and begin cooking.
Lucy's Friendly Grill
Mix eggs, milk, salt, and pepper, to taste. Whip until frothy. Heat up the grill. Scarpetta avoids propane gas, preferring charcoal for reasons of safety and flavor. Pour egg mixture into a simple cake pan lightly coated with oil or whatever serves the same purpose. Place the pan, strips of thick bacon, and English muffins on an upper rack of the grill. Cover with the lid to smoke. You will have to rearrange and turn the bacon fairly often, as the grease will drip and flame (adding to the flavor if you don't let matters get out of hand). Cook until obviously done. Remove and pat bacon free of grease. Serve immediately.
After eating, clean up right away because later you won't feel like it. Keep the fire going, and perhaps the snow will begin to stick and neighborhood children will come out to play. You can watch them through the window and remember when you were that age and praying there would be no school the next day. Hopefully, you have friends over, too. Tell them they can't go anywhere because of the weather. Talk all day. Share stories and dreams, and keep the cold away.
Lucy's friends decided they were snowed in and it would be wise to stay over. It was a perfect night indeed for one of Scarpetta's soups. She keeps a good supply in her freezer, because it is her efficient tendency to cook great vats of soup at once. Lucy scanned freezer shelves of containers precisely labeled and properly sealed.
"You guys hungry?" she called out to her buddies.
Stretched out in the great room, made sleepy by the fire, they were in the midst of recounting embarrassing moments they had endured during their new agent days at their respective law enforcement academies.
"Starved!"
"Shit, you can't be. You've been eating all day."
"I have not."
"Then where did all the Triscuits go? And the Vermont cheddar? And the peanuts?"
"Anyway, like I was saying, here I was firing away on the range, cartridge cases flying everywhere, and one of them goes down the front of my shirt. And you know how hot they are."
"Ouch!"
"I started jumping around, trying to shake it out."
"Not a good thing when you've got a loaded gun in your hand."
"How 'bout something light with chicken?" Lucy called out.
That was fine with everyone.
Scarpetta's Wholesome Chicken Soup
Drip several teaspoons of extra, extra virgin olive oil into a pot that is big enough to accommodate the volume of soup you wish to make. Scarpetta tends to use pots that hold at least sixteen quarts. Place skinless, boneless chicken breasts on a cutting board. Do not use wooden cutting boards because they are more difficult to clean and can harbor salmonella and its mutants. She prefers ceramic or hard plastic. Dice chicken with a very sharp knife, keeping fingers well out of the way of the blade.
Turn burner on medium. Drop chicken into the pot to brown. Next, dice the mildest onions you can find. She always uses.Vidalia onions when they are available, but she does not overwhelm this delicate soup with them. Other vegetables that usually go into this healthy dish include celery, carrots, fresh sliced mushrooms, red bell peppers, and chopped fresh spinach. Next, pour in at least four cans of fat free chicken broth.
Season with a generous number of bay leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Allow to simmer for several hours, tasting now and then to fine-tune the seasoning. Scarpetta often adds a splash or two of sherry, and typically serves the soup in deep earthenware bowls.
Homemade sourdough or multigrain bread is a nice companion to this meal.
If you wish to make the soup heartier, you can add rice or risotto, or her favorite, conchiglie.
She recommends a light-bodied white wine, unless, of course, her motivation for serving you soup is that your digestive system is irritable or you are recovering from a cold or the flu. Then alcohol is taboo because it compromises the immune system, lowering one's defenses rather much as it does in all other situations in life. Assuming wine is not unwise, her choices are Chablis or Pinot Grigio. If you are in the mood for a slightly fuller bodied wine, a dry Chardonnay such as Cakebread or Sonoma-Cutrer is a fine idea.
4
Meanwhile, Scarpetta had meals of her own to prepare at her mother's Miami home. The weather there was considerably different from Richmond's on this second day of the New Year. The sun was warm enough to sit outside, and after falling asleep several times in a lawn chair near the dead key lime tree in the backyard, Scarpetta was infected by the guilt she always felt when dealing with her mother: The grass was so thick it almost did not give beneath Scarpetta's weight when she walked across it, heading inside.
"Mother?" she called out.
There was no answer, and Sinbad, who was both sinful and bad, tangled himself in Scarpetta's feet. The cat was a cross-eyed hybrid Siamese and knew Scarpetta did not like him and never had. Thus, Sinbad was overly attentive.
"Please move."
Scarpetta nudged the cat out of the way. He was purring loudly.
"Mother?" she called out again. "Sinbad, now I mean it, goddamn it!"
The kitchen counter was spotless, the sink empty of dishes, because of Scarpetta's guilt. She opened the refrigerator as the toilet flushed down the hall.
"Mother? What do you want for dinner tonight? Sinbad, I'm warning you!"
"Don't yell at the cat!" yelled Mrs. Scarpetta, who was very old and languishing in bad health, as she had been for years.
"I'm going to the store, I guess," Scarpetta said to the empty hallway as water ran in the bathroom sink and a cabinet door slammed shut.
"Get toilet paper," Mrs. Scarpetta yelled again.
"What about Dorothy?"
"What about her?"
"Is she going to eat with us?" Scarpetta hoped the answer was no.
The loud talk went on as her mother carried the conversation into her bedroom and Sinbad butted Scarpetta's leg.
"I think she has a date," Mrs. Scarpetta replied, adding one more detail. "I told her to bring him by."
Sinbad bit Scarpetta's left ankle. She did not kick him hard, but made her point. Scarpetta drove her mother's Toyota to the local Winn-Dixie, and at times like these she knew how easily she could pick up smoking again. In fact, she experienced unbearable lust as she passed racks of Marlboros, Salems, Dunhills. She would cook a bad mood meal.
Scarpetta's Bad Mood Shopping
This always involves pasta, because a requirement on such occasions is to prepare a dish that consumes Scarpetta's energy, emotions, and attention. She moved with purpose through the dairy section and bought a carton of large eggs, opening the top to make certain none were broken. One was, and she excavated until she had better luck, carefully setting the eggs inside her cart. She searched for a wedge of Parmesan cheese.
She added a two-pound bag of all-purpose flour to her groceries, and next spent studious minutes in the produce section. Around her, people were speaking Spanish and Portuguese. Many were buying plantains, pineapples, papayas, limes, leeks, green chiles, and pimentos. Scarpetta was interested in garlic, broccoli, shallots, asparagus, carrots, basil, and zucchini. She could have added heavy cream to this dish, and meat, such as chicken or prosciutto, but a rich, high calorie supper would only have further darkened the gathering storm clouds inside her. Although she was not inclined to please her mother at this moment, she remembered the toilet paper. Last, she bought a six-pack of Buckler non-alcoholic beer, knowing full well that Scotch, Irish whiskey, or wine would make her depressed or curt.