It’s a wrap and Hot Pastrami Wraps with Tangy Cole Slaw

Several posts ago, I mentioned that our fourteen-year old granddaughter has come to stay with us for a month or so.  Dealing with teenagers at the best of times is fraught with uncertainty and similar to swimming with sharks, you may swim around quietly for hours but any sign of blood and an attack is imminent.  A basically sweet-natured human, and very creative, I’ve devised lots of projects to keep her active mind occupied including making aprons, tie dying shirts, and today we made a cooking video together.

For those of you who read regularly it is common knowledge that I’ve been married as many times as Mississippi has “i’s”.  You do the math. It got so bad that if a question I asked was answered by “I do” I instinctively hailed a cab.  I took the plunge the second time, which was actually more like a free fall with a defective chute, when I was thirty-one.  Both of us came as package deals, myself a young widow with two children seven and eight, and him a young divorced man about town with a three-year old daughter of whom he shared custody.  Due to our excess baggage, we circled the wagons for quite a while before deciding to pitch camp together.

Shortly after we were married in the L.A. area, my new husband was offered a job in San Francisco.  This presented a myriad of problems ranging from quitting my job, wrenching my children out of their schools, and leaving his young daughter behind.  Blended families, for the most part, are like trying to put a size 7 foot in a size 6 shoe.  It can be done, but you might end up with calluses.

In the end, the job offer was accepted, an “our house” was chosen and purchased in the Bay Area, and arrangements were made for my stepdaughter to commute twice monthly on the plane from LAX to the Oakland airport.  The new house included a room for her where we kept clothes for her visits, she had her own bed, and a familiar environment to return to each time she came, which aside from her biweekly visits included school holidays and two-thirds of her summer vacation.

Initially, we had the understanding that this new job required a fair amount of travel. In the end it added up to about three weeks out of the month.  My stepdaughter arrived at the terminal in Oakland every other Friday whether her father was in Cincinnati or Miami, so it became my habit to pick my children up after work on those nights and point the car in that direction. Now, I will interject here that you’re hearing a lot of “my” and “his” peppered in this writing, but I always viewed them as “ours”.  It would just get confusing to follow if I wrote it that way.  Don’t want any pesky emails.

Being married to someone that’s on the road much of the time, often feels as if you’re a single parent who just happens to have a wedding set on the ring finger of her left hand and isn’t allowed to date.  Discipline, shopping, bill paying, and general day-to-day responsibilities naturally fall on the shoulders of the person at home.  I imagine it to be similar in some ways to being married to military personnel.

My job with the school district afforded me the luxury of taking two months off over the summer.  This allowed me to be home when all three children were out of school.  A privilege and a nightmare all wrapped up with a big red bow.  Aside from our children, our house was populated with two dogs, three cats, a black lop-eared rabbit who made Rasputin seem as if he had a loving personality, and a morbidly obese hamster answering to the name Henrietta, who regularly needed rescuing when becoming wedged in her Habitrail tubes. Alone time was non-existent, and quiet time as rare as a hair on Telly Savalas’s head.

Quickly I learned that the key to survival in the trenches was keeping the troops occupied.  During the summer we spent a good deal of time outdoors, but also did cooking projects.  Once we made a huge bowl incorporating every kind of sweet junk food and ate it communally with large ladles.  Disgusting, you bet, delicious, not bad.  Not only did I have my crew, but it seemed every other child in the neighborhood gravitated to our front door. Thus, the head count varied from day-to-day and the pantry regularly appeared as though a swarm of locust had passed through the area while we slept.  I’m a big proponent of the “garbage in, garbage out” mindset when it comes to junk food, so even though I kept a ready supply of fresh fruit and juices to discourage marauders, the locust consumed without prejudice and the local market regularly sent me a thank you note for helping to keep their books in the black.

One summer I checked out six identical books of plays from the library.  I wasn’t sure if my motley crew would find this interesting but it became so popular that I purchased sets of our own.  Each kid took a part.  The closet in the spare room became a makeshift wardrobe department with old Halloween costumes, yard sale finds, and discarded clothes. Cardboard boxes were painted with poster paints and became our sets. Our small but dedicated troupe performed “The Wizard of Oz” and “Charlotte’s Web” one year over the summer, and that winter we did “Dial M for Murder” starring several of the neighborhoods little known, but wildly gifted young actors. Funny, they just took to it.  A lot of memories were made and some great videos from those little books.  So, as tight as the shoe is, I guess it can always be stretched to make it fit.  Somehow we muddled through.

Following is a great recipe for wraps and our video on how to prepare the coleslaw. I must warn you in the video department I am a total novice so hope this plays well.

Hot Pastrami Wraps with Tangy Cole Slaw

1 lb. thinly sliced pastrami
4 slices Meunster cheese
Coarse brown mustard
8-12 thin slices of Kosher pickle
Cole slaw (recipe below)
4 large burrito size flour tortillas
Butter for frying

Cole Slaw

2 pkg. angel hair cole slaw mix
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 cup 2% milk
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 Tbsp. white vinegar
5 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Lizzie versus the slaw

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Whisk together all dressing ingredients. Refrigerate in covered bowl until 1 hour before serving. Toss with cabbage mix. Adjust salt and pepper if needed.

Sandwich:

In the following order place ingredients down center of tortilla leaving room on both ends to fold: pickles, 1/4 cup of cole slaw, 1/4 lb. pastrami dotted with yellow mustard as desired, cheese. Fold tortilla envelope style like you would a burrito.

Melt 1 Tbsp. butter in large skillet brown on pickle side first over med. heat, turn to cheese side adding more butter if needed, lower heat to med-low and cook until cheese is melted. Yum. Serves 4.

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