Since I commented last fall on Phil Bronstein’s blog lamenting the passing of Gourmet Magazine, I have been inundated by requests for the tempting recipe I mentioned.  (Well, two requests, but they were most adamant at that time with the holidays fast upon us.)  So, with a doff of the chef’s toque to my foodie friend, Muffy of the Hamptons, here finally is Raccoon on Ritz.   Excuse me a moment, it was just here, a nicely-written card with a lovely photo of the dish.  Hors d’oeuvre on a baroque silver salver.  I’m still looking…

     “What ya lookin’ for?”  The puppy has her nose on the desk, snorkeling through the various piles of paper.  “Can I help ya?  Lose stuff a lot, don’t ya.  Should have a filing system.  I do.  I know right where everything is.  You should try that.  Get a system.”  She has a particularly smug look, not unlike the proverbial cat and canary scenario.

     “I need a file card that was right here on the corner.  It had a picture pasted on it.”  I point to the edge of the desk and the puppy rolls her eyes and backs away, shaking her head.

     “I just ate that one.  It had good glue.  Pretty tasty, but I must say I liked the photo of the raccoon a lot.  We otta get a raccoon.  I could teach it tricks.”

     “Why, oh why, did you have to eat it?  You’ve just had dinner and you have bones and snacks lying all around.”  The floor of my library is littered with rawhide bone bits, pieces of apple, celery, half a potato.  It occurs to me that I live in a puppy-slum.  Nonetheless, the fruit and vegetable arrangement forms a not unpleasing still life on the oriental carpet.  I notice an orange in the corner and I absentmindedly wonder at its stage of decomposition.

     “It’s that filing system I told ya about.  If I wanna file it, I eat it.  That way I don’t have to look for it again.  Ya got anything else ya want filed?” 

     The raccoons of the world are undoubtedly happier for the recipe’s demise.  I hope Muffy kept a copy for herself.  By the way, is Bon Appetit still in business?  The puppy has a few recipes of her own to contribute.