Perfect Rapport

Christmas Treats! Truffles and Pecans and Cats - OH MY!

2011-12-22T19:47:00.000-08:00

I have been off my post level since November - too much to do and not enough time to think deep thoughts, much less write proper sentences that weren't work-related.

Christmas is now 5 days away and I am at last making treats. Praline Pecans are one of my specialities, much-loved by people who get to eat them and easy enough for me to make while doing other things.
This receipe is based on a Southern Living 1997 Annual Recipes entry.

3 cups freshly-shelled pecan halves
4 tbl Heavy cream
1 cup tightly packed brown sugar
Confectioner's sugar
Ghiaradelli Chocolate Powder

Spray an 8.5 x 11" glass or metal baking pan lightly with cooking spray, pre-heat oven to 350.
Check pecan halves for shells, mix in a bowl with cream and brown sugar until all halves are covered.
Pour into pan, bake for 12 minutes; stir, and bake another eight. Ths is very important to watch carefully. Most ovens (unless regularly calibrated) have different heats and you do not want to burn something as expensive as pecans. You may have to add/subtract minutes or reduce temps for your own comfort. I usually bake mine at 325 for 25-28 minutes. When you stir them at twelve minutes you can see how much more time they really need. They are ready to take up when you see granulation on the pecans.
Pull them from the oven, cool for a minute or two while you get a cup of confectioner's sugar and a cup of chocolcate powder, a sieve and 2 pie plates ready.
Pour a tbl or so of confectioner's sugar into your sieve and then add about half of the pecan mix in, shake over the pie plate and add more sugar as you shake until the pecans are coated. Empty the pecans into the pie plate with the used sugar to cool.
Pour the other half of the pecans into the confectioner's sugar-coated sieve, shake, add chocolate powder a tbl at a time while shaking over the other pie plate until the pecans are coated. Pour pecans into pie plate to cool.
I use the same sieve without cleaning because the chocolate powder benefits from the confectioner's sugar reside.
Let this all cool for an hour or so, put in airtight storage and get ready to be assaulted for your delicious offerings:)

Now, about those truffles.....

They are far more tasty than attractive. My hands were too hot to roll the cubes into balls so I settled for just having rounded edges. The recipe produced a delicious and smooth ganache so I suggest you give Cooks Illustrated a look for the technique and make this in cooler climes.

The cats seem to know the holidays are here and that I need my $ for other things than their toys and treats and have been intent on reminding me of my priorities. Wink had an abcess that we caught pretty quickly but was small enough to burst before we got her to Doc. We took her in, he shaved and cleaned the area, gave her the vacinations for which she was due and some antibiotic and we were about $200 poorer. Then Pojorita stopped eating so we had to take her in. She had apparantly eaten something that clogged her innards and after a bit of barium she was fine. Since she was old enough we went ahead and had her spayed. Goodbye, $300.....My sweet basement cat Fang was next to require an investment. He has gotten old enough that his little bowlz make our feral male think he's competition so Tuxedo had apparantly gotten a good claw into his underside, producing another abcess.
So Fang went to see Doc to have the abcess drained and seen to and his little nards nipped. Another $350.00. Fang is feeling better, his black fur is shiny and healthy again; Wink has been ruling the house for some weeks now and Pojorita has resumed eating everything that smells interesting. Except for string, I hope.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Joyous Winter Solstice and general Good wishes to you all and thanks for reading:)

Go West, Young Woman!

2011-10-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

I enjoy the west coast of the US. It is so different from here; the coastline itself is lapped by cold water instead of the warm water that kisses toes here on the Gulf.
And as far as colonization goes, many western ports are far older than my home shores.
We spent a few days in Seattle, WA.

This landmark was walking distance to our hotel (The Marriot in the Alaska Building). The Farmer's Market had pretty produce - fat raspberries and blackberries alongside unseasonably pretty tomatoes. I sniffed those and knew they'd received help to get the color. The berries were solid, though, and I wanted them - bu we were on our way to a restaurant with friends and had to pass.
We got to Washington on Saturday night. The weather was cool and a little damp and the ride to the hotel lives in my head as a swoosh of lights reflected from wet leaves as the cab climbed a mountain and I looked down into the valley. I was hot and had the cab window down so I could feel the wind on my scalp and cool my face.
Our first night was in a hotel in Bellevue; we moved the next day to Seattle to the conference hotel. Charlie grumbled about "the longest hotel check-in ever" but we got a HUGE room. We had an entryway, bed space and living space with windows covering two walls. If you ever have to stay in the Marriot Courtyard Downtown in Seattle, stay in a room ending in 10 or 02. HUGE.
We ate at fabulous restaurants. Best meal? The Metropolitan Grill.

I love beef carpaccio. It is usually served with arugula and sliced parmesan reggiano, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. This is Wagyu beef carpaccio and, my darlings, it was fabulous. Wagyu is the US version of Kobe in which (I think) Kobe and Black Angus are bred to bring the marvel that is Wagyu to plates. For my entree I had the paired filets; one of Nebraska beef, one of Wagyu. After tasting each I just wrapped the Nebraska beef and ate my wonderful Wagyu.
It is, simply, unbelievable. Mine was cooked medium rare, more on the rare side, and seasoned with a sprinkle of salt, grilled over mesquite wood.It was tender and perfetly beefy without the 'dull' taste some beef can have. My family has raised cattle for beef for what seems like forever so I am particular about my beef - this was better than anything from the Beaty Ranch.
I am running out of steam since in addition to a love for Wagyu I have brought back a sinus infection (or something) which is kicking my butt. I feel like the boxer who was losing the bout who shouted "no mas! no mas!"
No mas snot y coughs, por favor.

History and Me

2011-10-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

I think I may have noted somewhere that I majored in History at FSU. I had planned on teaching community college; nice classes of people learning Western Civ that I could regale with the stories of the 6 wives of Henry the 8th, court gossip, old scandals that help today's students remember the important parts...That's not where I ended up but my interest in social/intellectual history colors my view of the world even now.
That facet of my personality made this week's trip to DC even more exciting than usual.
I was going with colleagues because of a Microsoft Foundation grant we are operating, which meant meeting at DC's Microsoft HQ. That, in itself, would have been plenty exciting for most people. What I was focussed on were my two wishes: an aftershock from the earthquake that had rocked DC a few weeks earlier and the opportunity to gather with a group related to the Occupy Wall Street protest.
My few days were dwindling away and I feared I wouldn't get either wish - I comforted myself with the fact that I had finally tasted Iberico Ham at Jaleo and that it was all I had hoped it would be - silky, melt-on-the-tongue cured ham that I will eat again.
On the last morning, the USA Today paper had an article about Occupy DC along with its location. At Last!

The protesters were at Freedom Plaza on the corner of 14th and Connecticut Avenues. My hotel was on New York Ave, a long trek away for a fat woman with a bad ankle. Oh, yes - the ankle I twisted on the same foot as the toes I had broken! I had twisted it again the previous morning when we climbed to the Russel Building to meet some Senators. I was determined to get there and really needed to walk off a few of the calories I had so eagerly consumed in the previous days.

This was the first picture I took. See the foot under the bench? That belongs to the woman holding the sign. She had it facing the street when I first saw her, looked over her shoulder and saw me and understood my turn-the-sign-around mime efforts and did so.
I've been saying for a long time that people need jobs that pay a living wage. I'm not talking communism/gimme, I am talking about paying people what their labor is worth. The CEOs are skating off with not just the biggest piece of the pie, but the VERY biggest piece.

This poster vilifies some CEO who got a big-ass bonus while foreclosing on homes - not really sure about the details but my contention has always been, even before this crisis, "how many islands can you own? How much do you really need to have a luxurious life?"
I think a lot less than they have now. I am not in favor of direct wealth re-distribution (i.e. take the rich folks' bank accounts and divvy them up) but restructuring the tax system so the middle class pays less, the rich pay more, and business and industry can't have a profit margin greater than 20% of payroll after you subtract operating expenses. People used to be able to have one breadwinner in a household and still have enough money (in all cases but the poorest) to own a house. I know abut the exceptions, this is a sweeping generalization.

My focus was on the piece of Occupy DC that concentrated on the economic side of the nation's problem. There were lots of other parts of the protest, threads to make a whole tapestry. The people against the Tar Sands pipeline, many elderly and wealthy-looking, were present along with the anti-war folks (which included quite a few veterans) as well as others; all of whom made up the consensus of the whole: Government should be about US, not the corporate interests who can line the pockets of Congress.
I came home Friday night. It was my eleventh wedding anniversary, 17 years total of being with the exactly right man for me.

My beloved Charlie had a vase of a dozen of my favorite roses, secured by a small box on the base to prevent any cat-astrophe, waiting for me. The cats twined around my ankles and sang "give us treats!" while I read my anniversary cards. I hugged and kissed my darling and decided that I had had enough "going" for a few days and would indulge in a little "staying" for the next few days in my perfect little corner of the world.

Autumnal Aire

2011-10-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

Doesn't that just sound sweet and heady? Like music with high notes from flutes and zithers, the scent of ripe pears, the beginning of citrus blossoms gracing the air...
It was like I went to bed Thursday night wearing a stinky fur coat of humidity and awoke free and weightless Friday morning.
I forget the joy of the first little bit of fall we get here. It seems to my memory that there is far too little of that; that we just barrel down the seasonal highway from being mugged by heat to feeling like our eyelashes are so cold they'll break.
Friday morning I finished writing a grant, the glass door to the deck open so the cats could flow in and out like the breeze. I worked at the breakfast nook table so I could see the activity in the yard through the three big windows.The temptation to "help" me work is usually so high that an open door to the garden isn't enough to draw away my furry distractions. Everything smelled and felt so good to them this morning that I worked in peace.
We went to dinner with the Son, Darling DIL and GrandBeauty to celebrate the pending arrival of a new family member in March. The Beauty is not quite 2 years old but displays (naturally enough!) remarkable intelligence. She was very good at dinner, no shrieks, many charming behaviors.

Look at those pigtails! She is eating organic gummies as her appetizer and shared some cheese with us as well as some of her Mama's Spaghetti Carbonara.
After dinner, the men went to the cars to put away leftovers and we three girls went into the street for Octoberfest.
Jacq had been so good we let her run unfettered. DIL pointed out that Jacq was running with her nose up, questing the air like a cat or dog, enjoying the wind on her face and the fragrances of fall in a Florida City.

My Own Little World

2011-09-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

That's where I lived this weekend. Charlie was in Pigeon Forge being a Ham and I didn't have the extra cash to engage in Big Shopping so I amused myself at home.
Of course, the mountain o'laundry had to be done, but that is the perpetual background music to my weekends so it just happened while other things went on. I stopped at the grocery on my way home from the office on Friday to pick up special food treats for me since otherwise I'd just eat garbage food. Got some pretty cantalope, thin-sliced proscuitto and some sashimi. The Japanese kid behind the sushi cooler at Publix and I had to have an extensive conversation involving lots of pointing and drawing of imaginary sashimi in the air before we had what I wanted settled between us.
I don't like the rice part of the whole sushi/nigiri/sashimi experience (I use all 3 dish names because the whole thing has been so bastardized) and I am particular about what I do like: raw tuna with cucumber sticks and slices of avocado topped with ground pepper, sea salt and fresh lime juice. NOM.
I set the tuna free from the eel ribbon with which it had been wrapped around the green goodness, gave all a quick chop, dressed and tossed it. I had a little of the cantalope wrapped in the ham and called myself full.
Saturday I boiled ten pounds of chicken leg quarters with onion, celery and garlic to make food for the cats and stock for us. The latter was accidental - I was boiling the leg quarters three at a time and after I put the third batch into the pot in the same liquid I noticed that the color was pretty rich - gave it a taste and decided to pay more attention to the broth-becoming-stock.
As a reward, I used my martini shaker to make a version of a Spring Flowers (ala Highlands Restaurant) martini. I used equal parts St. Germain Elderflower liquor and vodka and one jigger of Sparkling Ice pink grapefruit drink.

It was delicious!
Today Charlie came home and we lounged around, watched the cats play and napped. I got a cute picture text from a friend based on a nickname I have - woozy- of something she saw with a version of that name.

A "woozie" is apparantly a wine koozie. Clever, eh?
Charlie is happily ensconced in his recliner with a soup mug full of chicken and dumplings and I am re-eneregized for another week out in the Big World.

Football Food!!!

2011-09-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

I really dislike winter. I can tolerate fall, but for me, spring and summer are my seasons of existence. I must be related to Persephone, that pretty mythic princess whose mother cursed the earth with cold for the months her darling had to spend in Hell every year.
The only positive for me about cold months is the food I can create and serve that are more suited to the cool months so tonight I baked something that is a good party snack, football treat or breakfast on the run.
The chili-cheese pickup is an old favorite that I serve with malt vinegar or hot sauce or just plain 'nekkid.'

Chili Cheese Pickups

1 carton Better N Eggs plus 3 large eggs
1 1/2 cup SR flour
pint carton cottage cheese
2 cup shredded sharp cheddar
1 stick butter, melted
1 4 oz can green chilis, chopped
1/2 cup chopped jalapenos (more if you like hot)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, spray a glass 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray. Mix all ingredients together, give a couple of grinds of pepper and about a half tsp of salt and stir again. Be sure the eggs are well-blended with the flour etc to make a relatively smooth (except for cheese curds) mixture.

Pour into baking dish and bake for 15 minutes at 400, reduce heat to 350 and bake another 20-25 minutes.
This bakes up pretty because of the Better N Eggs. Don't use Egg Beaters or all eggs if you can avoid it - they dont produce a pleasing texture or mouthfeel. I use real butter because you are not supposed to eat this like quiche - this should be cut into two inch squares with one or two squares eaten per normal person:)
This reheats like a dream in the microwave, about 20 seconds on high per square wrapped in a paper towel.
Play with this recipe by adding more chilis or peppers, adding malt vinegar or pepper sauce before baking, even sauteeing some onion and sausage and adding that. Just be sure you've drained the grease off of the sausage thoroughly before adding to the egg mixture.

The sun is setting earlier, the air is losing its moisture and the temperatures are dropping. I am going to start my list of Reasons Winter Months Can Be Tolerated so I'll be ready when February gets here. If we can stay warm through October it won't be so bad....

The End Of The World

2011-09-10T23:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the ten year anniversary of the end of a way of life. I remember flying, living before the attacks in September of 2001. I also remember having to fly about a week afterwards.
Reflecting on that morning and the days that followed reminded me of a belief I have always held; the world will end on a normal day. That September day fit the bill. It was a typically beautiful early fall day in north Florida and when the radio announcer said planes had flown into the World Trade Center my mind shifted into a bit of a fugue state. I saw my hands, I knew they were on the steering wheel. I also knew that my body knew the way to my office so I let my auto-pilot take over.

In March of 1993 I was barely 32 years old and on my second gig as a country radio station program director. I didn't particularly like country music, but I liked programming and understood the business and how to manage the infantile personalities most disc jockeys had. We had a contract engineer instead of one on staff which meant that when I had an equipment problem that I couldn't fix, I called him.
My station went off the air somewhere around three am that March day and my overnight girl called to let me know. I started trying to figure out why the power was out at my transmitter site some 40 miles away but the power co-op wouldn't answer. I called the engineer. His name is Charles, and he is still an engineer, but then he was a very young engineer and trying to be brave when he picked me up at my studios. It was just starting to work towards a grey dawn when we got close to the transmitter site. Driving out of Tallahassee was like playing hopscotch. We had to dodge tree limbs in the roads and highways and jittered over diet cokes as we took 90 minutes to make a 45 minute trip.
I don't think the sky got past a sickly shade of pale pear the entire day, and all of the wind that had made the night frightening had sucked away across the Gulf leaving nothing but stillness.
I knew my parents were safe, they were in Tallahassee too and we had only experienced the equivalent of a cat 1 hurricane. Rain, rain; wind, wind, power outage and some downed limbs. Other family and friends were down close to the Gulf and that was where the horror was.

When I was a kid, my dad was head Forest Ranger and we lived on a compound. There was a sweet lady who lived there, too, with her Forest Ranger husband and young children. Her name was Miss Allie Jean. Her family all lived on the corner of a canal and the Gulf in big houses on stilts that were connected to each other by walkways high off the ground. We used to go crabbing in their canal, and I remember being 6 or 7 and looking up at those three houses knitted together by wood slats and rope.
Her family woke up in the middle of that wild night to water, 12 feet high, lashing in from our normally gentle beach.They ran to be together in the house furtherest back from the water by ten feet or so and held hands to try to save themselves from the suck of the outgoing waves. The storm picked them off like sweet grapes from a stem. Allie Jean lost eleven of her brothers, sisters, neices and nephews and even her mother that night.
That day, that dreadful pale-green sky day, was an End of the World day. That was what the Last Day should look like.
Not that sweet, soft September day ten years ago.

This is my new reality. I live close to one major airbase and less than two driving hours from two others. Paradise with a poisoned thorn - who wants to live next to the Big Red X?

Apparantly me since I moved here.

Lazy Weekend

2011-09-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

I stayed home most of the weekend and it was dee-light-ful. Now, if I only had about another three weeks of that I'd get something done around here:) I need to reorganize both guest rooms, clean out my pantry and about a dozen-ty million other things nobody but me can do.
But this weekend...I got my hair cut and colored by a real hairdresser for the first time since last October. I had suspended that personal service while I paid a credit card down since it was easily $150-$200 a month between color and product purchases.

Isn't that pretty? I feel really good about it.
I have spent the summer with my hair in a bun and am ready to be pretty again. I am ready to peel off some poundage, too. I was so active all summer that I lost weight but now that I am back in my office I believe there are fat globules following me and waiting for me to sit down so that they can re-attach. I am going to start using the Sensa I bought to make myself eat less. That's the whole point of the stuff and I have three or four month's worth that I have barely made a dent in. I would not put it on things that I wanted to eat because I wanted to EAT them, not eat part of them. Well, that isn't working so time to just eat part of what it is that I want. I have a few hundred dollars worth of the stuff so I might as well give it a good try.
I am between a size 16-18 right now as a reference point and I am aiming for a size 8-10.
I have to check into the gym at work (argh) since I clearly am not going to walk around the neighborhood. I am not morbidly obese but far larger than I'd like to be. After a certain point on a short person's body extra weight can't figure out where to go and just plops itself wherever. That makes clothes shopping damn hard. Too small for Woman's World, too big for Petites and the only slacks that fit in Misses are the ones meant to be mid-calf. So I've been living in Chico's Travellers short length stuff and stretchy waisted other stuff. Time to get pretty again, though I'll never be thin I can go back to nicely curvy.
The one really useful thing I did this weekend was find the gift bag I had hidden from the cats which contained my Granddaughter's gift from Alabama. There was a store of cutesy stuff that carried Vera Bradley and the little one has decided she likes carrying a purse. Naturally I had to contaminate this innocent desire on her part with some label snobbery - low level, but there just the same. This is the GrandBeauty modelling her new purse in the Vera pattern "Happy Snails," purse style 'Caitlyn.'

I spent hours looking for the gift bag. I found it in the china cabinet.

Tomorrow is a chicken night with a new recipe that I will share after I've worked it through.

You Can Tune A Piano but....

2011-08-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

...you can't tuna fish - ar, ar.

We grilled our first tuna steaks in years tonight. I say "we," but Charlie is the Grill Master and I season (sometimes) and marinate and talk about times before turning.
Our first tuna steak from the grill was an expensive mistake. Tonight was near perfection, and since Publix had frozen tuna steak on sale it wasn't expensive.

We used the Ina Garten/Barefoot Contessa approach of Less Is More with the tuna. A brush of good olive oil, sea salt, pepper and a hot gril for 2 minutes per side and the tuna was done.
I also cooked some shelled edamame in water with about half a cup of chicken stock with my favorite seasonings. I cooked them longer that I usually do because Charlie asked for them to be more tender. A fresh salad of green lettuce, cucumber, tomato and red onion with a few orange slices and balsamic vinegar rounded out the meal. I don't know why people say "fresh salad," but I did to indicate that I cleaned the ingredients minutes before serving. No bagged nuffin' here:)

I was pretty pleased with this meal because there were no animals treated inhumanely in the process - the tuna were wild harvested, chicken stock organic. Best of all, everything my darling ate tonight was healthy for him.
Yes, I just watched "Julie and Julia" and am full of the love Julia Child (JC - any coincidence?) had for her husband and for food. I am regenerated and ready to do more elegant cooking after a summer of cooking to the least common denominator - the tastebuds of a ten year old.....

"They're Outrageous"

2011-08-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

In 1972 I was an 11 year old dreamer with a record player and a firm belief that (a) there were aliens from space and they were smarter than humans and (b) I was a lost alien.
I was beginning to define myself musically and culturally through what I liked to hear, read and wear. In about a year I convinced my parents to let me stay home from church and fry the chicken for lunch. I read anything I could get my hands on (my mom was SO cool - I read Erica Jong!) and wore my cool aunt's sandals and jeans when I was 13.
The album was "Can't Buy a Thrill" and the hit was "Reeling in The Years."
I learned the album by heart, and did the same for all subsequent Dan releases.
There was something subversive in the lyrics that appealed to my off-center sense of humor and the word choices the boys made, the imagery they created, built the world in which I was supposed to live.
I am/was a slinky shadow haunting alleys of rain-dark glass, the female version of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western no-name loner. When I had a name, I was Josie (Aja, 1977), the raw flame/the live wire; drinking my big black cow and dime dancing with plans for a nap later under some banyan trees.
So for years seeing Donald Fagen and Walter Becker play live was something I desperately wanted to do. And for years they flat would not tour. They didn't like it. Then they broke up. And I listened to their solo stuff and waited.
The 90's saw them together again and they continued to be the soundtrack to my inner self.
And they started touring again. Just the northeast to start, then they stretched out, and in 2011 they played the Wharf Ampitheatre in Orange Beach, AL.

That's Orange Beach. I took that photo behind the famous Flora-Bama bar. The Ampitheatre at the Wharf is seriously in the middle of a stand of pines - you get there by walking across elevated wooden ramps. They span what might be a swamp or mayhap just some low ground that probably has snakes in it but at least we're ten feet above it. I am getting ahead of myself - let me back up.
In April we learn the Dan will be on tour in the South and Orange Beach is the closest spot. My darling husband gets tix and I start dreaming. We left for OB Saturday before the show, had dinner, watched tv and sacked out.
Sunday we had brunch at Cobalt, highly reccomended.

The decor is light, bright, and a little funky. Loved the mermaid!

After brunch we went to the Flora-Bama bar on the Florida-Alabama line. The bar is famous and odd and about half-built. We loved it.

A bolt was loose in the second floor roof piling so Charlie HAD to play with it. I had a cartoon vision of him pulling that one bolt free and the whole place falling down around us. The two of us are seen after the dust clears standing with drinks in hand atop the wreckage, exchanging a glance and shrugging, taking a sip and sauntering off down the beach.

These posters were in nearly every window of the shops at the Wharf. I was so excited that I could hardly stand myself so I can imagine how Charlie felt, walking in the near drizzle with an adult woman who periodically screeched "EEEEEE!"
We very sensibly bought rain ponchos that could have doubled as garbage can liners from a sunglasses store and walked to the venue. My hair began to absorb water and make the ambient humidity in my bubble rise so I put it up in a twist and kept smiling. It was raining, I was in a stand of planted pines in Alabama on a rusted folding chair. BUT Steely Dan would be taking the stage soon and the place sold booze - expensive and limited, but booze.
Then the guys hit the stage - and life was good. They played a lot of old stuff, a lot of my favorites and one of my newer favorites ('Godwhacker,' which appeals to the Roger Zelazny fan in me) and all around us were people as happy to be there as I was. I sang along and noticed that there was a lot of that going on - EVERYONE knew the lyrics. Suddenly I was a loner in a crowd of them - and we were all happy, non-brooding types singing "Boddhisatva - Gonna sell my house in town!"
'Deacon Blues' got a lot from the crowd because of the lyrical reference to Alabama's legendary Crimson Tide football team.
Thirty-nine years after my ears first heard the complexity of Steely Dan I got to see them live surrounded by other people who were as full of Dan-love as I am.
Although this could have happened without him, it would not have been as wonderful, memorable, or happy without my Charlie.
His eyes are the color of Gulf water and he can take the world apart and reassemble it even better if someone would just hand him the correct screwdriver.
And we lived happily ever after:)

Not Too Late!

2011-08-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

I am so happy that all of the fresh vegetables of summer have not come and gone before I could cook some of them from fresh!
I went to my favorite produce stand today in hopes of getting SOMEthing, even if it was just green peanuts. Imagine my delight to find fresh corn, cream 12 peas and okra.

Tomorrow night I am going to roast a fat duck and serve it with creamed corn, field peas and fried okra. The peas are easy enough - rinse them, put them in enought water to cover plus an inch and a half, pop in a ham hock and some ham base and cook til good. Fried okra and creamed corn are a different kettle of fish. People make it too hard for themselves and ruin the fresh goodness in the process. Easiest recipe first - Creamed Corn!

5-6 ears fresh corn, husked and silked
1/2 tsp bacon grease
1 tbl water
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the nibletss from the corn and be sure to squeeze the "milk" from the cobs. Ihave a corn stripper but you can do this with a paring knife. I like to conduct this part of the prep over a glass pie plate because you can scrape the milk and niblets out more easily.
In a non-stick pan melt the bacon grease (optional, but makes it better. If you've cooked bacon for breakfast, just scrape the plate it drained on and you should have enough) and add the corn niblets and milk, heat on medium low. The corn should thicken - add a little salt and pepper. The cooking process doesn't take long, maybe five minutes or so, because you don't want to make glue of the corn or completely cook away the crispness. Taste it and stop cooking when it tastes good to you. Add little bits of water as needed to keep the corn the proper consistency.

Fried Okra
This is my favorite thing to share when it comes to country vegetable cooking tips. Okra shouldn't be dunked in breading and fried like a popper.
2 pounds fresh okra, rinsed, topped and tailed and cut into quarter to half inch pieces
corn meal
Bacon grease:)
Canola Oil
salt and pepper

Scatter about a half cup of the cornmeal (I use buttermilk cornmeal mix) over the okra cuts, toss til the okra pieces are well covered. The meal should stick to the okra pretty well. After you've rinsed it, go straight to the cutting so you don't lose any liquid. Add a little salt and pepper. Add a tablespoon of bacon grease and a tablespoon of canola oil to a non-stick or cast iron skillet and melt it over medium high heat. Toss the okra a bit to shake loose the meal that isn't coating the vegetable.
When a drop of water sizzles in the pan, add the okra and let it cook a few moments, move the okra around the pan with a spatula and try to let as many surfaces receive a crisping as possible. Reduce heat to medium and continue to stir around; okra should be tender in fifteen minutes. You can remove it from heat and let it sit while other dishes cook and then pop it back on a burner on high for minute or so to reheat.

Working on Healing

2011-07-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

I am still mourning the loss of my handsome and darling Cabrillo. My son says that there have been coyote cat-kills a block from our house in the past month.
I don't know about that. I continue to subscribe to the county shelter's newsletter to see if any of the furry faces doing time there are familiar and call the city shelter regularly. Luckily they are both no-kill so if my baby turns up there he won't be euthanized.
On a happier note, we ate brunch at a restaurant with a stupid name but good food that could have been better.
One of the dangers of closed-dish buffet service is out of sight, out of mind. Workers walk right past food that has sat for so long that a steak knife won't cut it.
I had to ask for some refills on the salad bar, an area out of staff view.
The fresh items were really good and the grits bar/eggs and waffles to order were also well done.
There were quite a few dishes that gave me ideas and some things served so simply that they were surprising - hearts of palm with a little olive oil and paprika, succotash served cold, make with grilled corn niblets cut off the cob and shelled edamame. My favorite breakfast entree was their open-faced po' boy which was unlike any po'boy I'd had before. they start with a thin slice of French bread, a piece of filet mignon that has been pounded, breaded and fried like chicken fried steak, a teaspoon or so of cheese grits topped with a sunnyside-up quail egg. Lovely!

To my taste, quail egg yolks are richer than the average hen's egg. And I eat cage-free hen eggs which sport thick, yellow yolks so I have a particularly specialized egg palate.
Anyway, next time I need to make a brunch I think I may create a brunch of quail eggs on English muffin cubes. A dab of hollandaise on the muffin to create a seat for the egg and some proscuitto on the side.

The PERFECT Fried Green Tomato

2011-07-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

One of the treats of summer is the tomato in all of its fresh glory. The beautiful red-orange of an imperfect orb served in thick slices on white bread with mayo; diced and tossed with olive oil, fresh basil and cubes of brie; cut into fat chunks with cucumber, Vidalia onion and apple cider vinegar - these are the cold dishes I dream about on winter days.
After the initial frenzy of picking and eating tomatoes just as they turned ripe and then settling into the happy confidence that a tomato sandwich was no further away than the back yard, we were ready to start raiding the tomato "nursery" for firm, green, unripe specimens to slice and fry.
Most people can get the dish started properly - wash, thinly slice, coat in cornmeal mix with salt and pepper....

My canola oil is heating to medium high; I slice and meal as many tomatoes as I can since once the frying begins there is no time to waste between batches. I make sure I have two pan's worth of tomatoes ready between each frying batch.
If the heat is too high, the outside burns and the inside is soggy and the taste "off." Too low, the tomato is a greasy mess. I've found medium to medium-high heat and two inches of oil in a 14" skillet gets the job done.

This beautiful nibble is crispy on the outside, sweet-tart on the inside and on its way to join its bretheren.
But where? On a plate lined with paper towels? In a paper bag to shakeoff the excess oil? Nope. On a cookie cooling rack.

This simple trick keeps the tomatoes crisp all over. Charlie was engaged in a radio contest in his Man Cave so I fried his tomatoes first, piled them on a plate and gave them a grind of pepper and took them to him. After I fried mine and ate them I checked on his verdict - he loves FGT (fried green tomatoes) and is an expert on their quality. These were declared "the best I ever ate. Crispy, full of flavor, very tomato-y with a hint of sweetness."
I was pleased with them, myself.
I've never liked making FGT as a side dish because of the awful potential for sogginess and reputation damage as a cook so we used to just eat them right out of the pan. Using a cooling rack will allow me to add FGT to my entertainment menus since I can keep the dish warm and crispy in the oven.
The keys to good FGT are sharp knives, firm tomatoes, clean oil, nothing more than meal to coat and cooling racks.
Eat 'em up, ya'll!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2011-07-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

We had planted a garden of tomatoes, basil, Japanese eggplant, zuchinni and cucumber.
My belief that the people who write the "how far apart you must plant" instructions are wrong was finally put to rest; the tomatoes, basil and eggplant have crowded everyone else out of existence.
At least the victors in the Lebensraum of the Garden skirmish are producing, well, produce. My tomatoes have the perfect balance of bold acidity and and the slight sweetness those lacy slices of juice-rich, red-orange orbs can bring. The Japanese eggplant are growing firm aubergine fingers as testimony to the fertility of the soil they are in and the water they've drunk.
My daughter and son-in-law were in town for the holiday weekend, staying with son, darling DIL and granddaughter so we arranged dinner out last night. I had picked the garden in the morning and had a fat basket of slim eggplants to share. I put enough in two bags, along with a can of anhcovies each, to give to the kids so they could make one of their favorite step-Mama side dishes we call the Eggplant Thing.

Eggplant Thing
3/8-10 inch long Japanese Eggplant or one fat standard eggplant,
sliced long ways and scored, top cap discarded
6 tbl good olive oil, separated
Sea Salt, fresh pepper, dried thyme and oregano
6 fat cloves of garlic
1 can anchovy filets

Bring 1 tbl olive oil to medium high in a 10" skillet, add eggplant cut side down; cook until light gold and scoring opens, you may need to add oil since eggplant really soaks it up. Place eggplant halves into a glass pan (9x13) that you've greased with about a tsp of olive oil, set aside. Pre-heat oven to 350. If you have a small food processor, get it out. Otherwise get out a small glass bowl, sharp knife, garlic press and whisk.
Clean and press garlic into glass bowl or processor bowl with olive oil, 1/2 tsp each dried thyme and oregano, salt. If using a food processor, pulse for ten seconds or so. In a glass bowl, mash ingredients together under a plastic spoon. Whisk. Chop anchovies finely with knife if no processor, large chop if you have the equipment, add to olive oil mix. Whisk or whir together to get a fairly smooth consistency. Scoop out about a tbl and begin spreading into the eggplant halves, being sure that you get the mix down into the scores. Once you've covered all surfaces use remainder to top off the halves. Grind pepper to taste over the eggplant (I don't like pepper and use Cavender's Greek Seasoning instead) and place in oven.
This shouldn't take more than 30 minutes; you want to cook until the meat of the eggplant is tender.
Even if you think you don't like anchovies, try this. And remember that you eat anchovies in anything that has Worcestershire sauce:)

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Harder

2011-06-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

My Cabrillo has been gone over a month now. Other cats have disappeared as well, including Cab's twin George.
Oddly enough, the cat-napper hasn't taken the cats I only kept to save them from the Shelter.
I look for my fur babies at the local shelters, in the neighborhood. I had heard a coyote was killing cats in the neighborhood but found out that was last year an no-one has seen any coyotes this year.
I am very close to taking everyone except Romeo, Randy and Jerry to the shelter. I've talked to Charlie about an invisible electric fence to keep the cats in the back yard.
I have to let this go so I can write again. It is just very hard...

Summer of Changes

2011-05-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

We are finally free of breeding female felines. I had to send Pinky Lee to the shelter; she hated humans even after 3 years of effort and passed her distaste for us on to many of her progeny (who usually died, something wrong with that cat).
We are also missing two beloved feline family members - Cabrillo and Trixie. This is Cab:

He is so smart that I almost expect him to speak English to me when he has stored up enough to say. In the meantime he purrs and meows at the same time when he sings to me. He has been gone since Monday and it is killing me.
Monday morning before I left for work I put out food on the back deck, let in all who wanted in, and saw him playing with his twin brother George on the patio. George's differences are eye color and back paw sock length - yellow eyes and tube socks on his hind feet.
Then Trixie, aka velcro kitty, went missing Tuesday. Trix is a medium length hair fluffy black and white cat and I didn't have any pictures of her to use for flyers. My niece took a picture of Trixie's twin, Pixie, who lives 2 1/2 hours away with her. I used them to make the posters.
I have posted color flyers of both cats on stop signs and street signs on my block and one block over and will do the block south of us tomorrow. I'll go a little further with black and white flyers into mailboxes, too.
I am afraid that George may have chased them away. Even though Trix is spayed and Cab and George both neutered, George has always been aggressive with them (all siblings) but I thought he was just asserting his authority as first born.
Now I think he was clearing the decks of cats old enough to challenge his authority. I saw him threaten Fang today. Fang is in line to be neutered and is just shy of one year old (I know, I should have done it sooner, but I had other obligations).
My heart hurts for my Kitty Boy - I went through all of the awful what ifs earlier in the week, have called the shelter daily, and now think they are in the neighborhood and if I knock on enough doors I'll find them.

I went out hunting and gathering today and bought a few new kitchen rugs.

I like the ones that are made from gel padding. These things are usually $20 or more; I got them for $5.99 each.
The one above is in front of my oven.
I can hardly look at pictures of Cab without wanting to sniffle so I have to end this now.

Play Day

2011-05-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was work-work-work in Tampa but at least the food was good:)
This weekend is about laundry and play time for me.
Lynn Haven is a little town attached to a big town and things are often aranged with extreme informality. One of those things was scheduled for today - a fund raiser for people with head injuries. T here is a "clubhouse" program that lets them have a place to go every day like a work site and do something useful. They were set up in a small local park and had music, food, junk and craft vendors.
I bought a hamburger from an older lady who was operating the front end of the set-up with a handsome young man sitting at the cash box. After a few minutes it was clear that he was a clubhouse client.
I sat with my burger and water bottle and watched the world. It seemed to be mostly parents and siblings manning the booths and the attendees were sparse. There was a dad calling for cake-walkers, "Come on, step up, win a cake for your girl! The song goes around, some sit down, last one in takes the win!"

There was a table of yard sale stuff that caught my eye. A young couple, likely siblings of a client, were on duty behind the table.They looked tired and it looked like nothing much had been bought from the table. A small doll caught my eye and as I reached for it the young woman reached to and said "The price tag is wrong." It was a hand-written tag tied to the doll's arm and read, in pencil, $3.
I shrugged and said "Cool. How much?" thinking she'd ask for five or ten. it was hot and I was ready to walk away if the price exceeded my charitable mood.
She sold it for a quarter and I gave her some future yard sale advice -if you have souvenir ashtrays, try to sell them on line to collectors first to get the best dollar. People don't smoke much anymore so that type of memorabilia is no longer common.
The doll above is my twenty-five cent prize. The red string on the right side is part of the actual "purse strings" so little Miss Roma can hang from a young girl's wrist. The fabric is mostly felt with some ribbon trim.

I love these souvenirs from days gone by. The quality is often very good. This one makes me think of an early 60's movie like those with Haley Mills and Rosalind Russell running around Europe and having madcap adventures. Buses drive by colorful local men will break down, boys will chase girls, and adults will be exhausted by adolescents. An imaginary more innocent time.
I was also on a mission in area Goodwill Stores today - our summer program is a "go" and we want to give the kids fun books to read and take home if they like. I love Goodwill; the work they do for others, the little pieces of other people's lives I see. I collect glass items; clear cut glass and bas relief glass dishes, pottery dishes from California. My everyday china is Franciscan Apple, all of it "antique" with the made in California stamp. The stuff made after the English firm bought Franciscan is crap.
I encountered a lovely new pattern today - Metlox Poppytrail California Ivy.

Look at the handle - see how it is shaped like a rough, thick old rope of ivy? Everything is hand-painted and then each piece is fired, like old Franciscan. This line also includes bas relief patterns of grapes, berries, daisies and zinnias.
Today I found the gravy boat, large platter and vegetable serving bowl. I like this kind of thing just because it suits me. For people who need to make an impression on others, though, using these old patterns as tableware looks expensive (it can be, if you don't hunt it down yourself) and chic.
I carefully washed my new treasures, water hot but not too hot and using Mrs. Myers' Basil dish liquid (gentle on me, dishes and the environment).
All in all, a good day:)

"The heart is a lonely hunter"

2011-05-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

That's a Carson McCullers book title. She wrote it in North Carolina in the late 1930's and it was published to great acclaim in 1940.
I like the phrase because of its essential adolescent melodrama, among other things. The misunderstood loner, aloof, watching, with a deeply hidden heart that yearns for connection. The heart as a leader in the body's reaction to love, loss, elation, satisfaction, stress...Unfortuately it is just the title of another damned depressing Carson McCullers story. She either needed to drink more and play more or just write less. Gah!

My heart has been acting peculiarly for a little while. I think that's what it is, and the doctor seems to think that is what it is. I'll have a test Monday to start sorting it out.
For the past year or so, without warning, I get a heavy and painful feeling in the middle of my chest that sometimes radiates right up into my jaw. This is such a painful thing that while it lasts all I can think about is pressing my fist against my chest to try, somehow, to get the pain to move to the outside. I've never made notes about it or talked to the doctor about it because I have always been afraid it was some psychosomatic mystery pain or yet another example of my neurological misfires. I spent a few hours connected to electrodes when I was in my late teens because I had started smelling things that weren't there, feeling an odd heaviness in my head and other things that I didn't take drugs to cause. The tests came up empty.

Wednesday night I had a long and painful session with the fat hatchet in my chest and a jaw that felt like it had hit a wall. It finally eased off and I slept but in the morning I woke up to something new - the pains were still present but at a much lower level.
Mystery chest pain usually completely disappears after it has inflicted its torture.
With the pain still playing a frightening back-beat behind my sternum I decided it was time to chat about the feeling to see if I needed to see a doctor.
Mother and husband both voted for a doctor visit so I called my GP to see about being worked in. The receptionist spoke to the nurse who suggested that I go to the Emergency Room.
Really? REALLY? The EMERGENCY ROOM, where I could grow old before being seen? Fuck that!
I controlled myself nicely, however, and said "Well, suppose I don't go to the emergency room. When can I be seen?"
Then I called a walk in to see what the wait was and went to see them. EKG was fine but the PA was concerned about the situation and I now have an apointment Monday for a stress test and echocardiogram. I also have an appointment with my GP that day at 2 which I am not sure I am going to make.
I think it is just my body's reaction to stress. Last year I had a stabbing pain every 8 minutes in the back of my head for 2 days solid. It was stress. I have broken a tooth from grinding. Stress (I got it fixed!). My shoulders are so tense that I have to conciously remind myself to relax them. So having subverted my body's attempts to express stress in other ways I am being attacked by my own heart.
Dammit, man!

A Happy Week

2011-04-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take a lot to give me a general feeling of well-being these days. If the sun is shining in a blue sky, the scent of some blooming thing is in the air and my cats are watching me like I am about to make magic happen, I am having a good day. Knowing Sweet Charlie will be home for dinner, that I have an interesting task on deck at work and that there are blackberries in the refrigerator on top of that, bliss.
This week was a week of work to look forward to doing. We are getting our work study (I'll call her ""Sweetie" here) ready to move to Tallahassee for school. The fine people at Goodwill gave us carte blanch as a professional courtesy in kitting our girl's apartment out and we found fabulous things. Word to the wise - next time you need to redecorate/refurnish, find out what day the Goodwills in good (well-to-do) areas do furniture pick up so you can shop them. We found such pretty things that our Sweetie will have a living room that I envy. And I am glad - she is an Aged out of Foster Care youth which means she turned 18 and was put on the street. We've gotten her into the Independent Living program but she still needs love and guidance and protection. The women of my office have been trying to cram 18 years of love and life-teaching into 8 weeks. I am praying we've done enough to keep our lessons in her mind and her heart attached to us so we can "mother" her from afar. We are building a safety net for her in Tallahassee, but she's our baby so letting go is hard.

Today was also a happy day. I rambled through a few yard sales and got some non-essentials for Sweetie and a scrap-booking tool for the kids in one of our youth programs. Big Lots yielded skeins of one of my favorite yarns for a dollar each and some tomato cages. When I got home, the mail had run and it was time to check for treats. I love mail.

I received two cool mail items - a shipment from BzzzAgent for my latest campaign:

Covergirl is our Bzz campaign right now for their new NatureLuxe foundation and lipbalm. Note that I posed it with my L'Occitane Divine products. That stuff is bottled so prettily and works so well that it inspired a massive clean-up in the make-up nook:)
Anyway,I hope I like it, I have coupons to share and am in need of another inexpensive weekend makeup. Updates will be coming:)

My other treat through the USPS was a bottle of an energy-diet supplement I bought from a friend. The samples seemed to work well so I'll see how the bottle does. At this price, though, prescription diet pills are cheaper.

That's 30 days' worth of V3 for $62. I had thought it was a 60-pill bottle. Well, if it works it's worth it. Another "updates will be coming" issue!

My husband is home from North Alabama now; he had gone up to help get some radio stations back on the air. During emergencies, terrestrial radio gets vital information out to people moreso than TV since people generally have battery powered radios.
I'm going to make him something good to eat right now and watch kittens on Animal Planet:)

Sometimes You Just Have to Laugh

2011-04-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

I have been working crazy busy stressy for the past few weeks. The big stress has been needing to depend on other people to make my plans happen. I can do anything - but I can't always get the other people to cooperate so I can get my magic done. THAT is what is stressful. And some times there are parts of a plan that look easy-peasy but can be screwed up if you don't do them yourself.
And that's why I was on the Hathaway Bridge heading east on Thursday when my BRAND EFFING NEW SORRENTO crapped out on me. I was heading for Gulf County to measure a room for some equipment we need for a project when the SUV started hesitating. It smoothed out for a moment, then started up again and an amber warning light that I couldn't translate lit up. I pulled into the breakdown lane to think, put the vehicle in park and then every light on the dash lit up and the Kia shut down.

It was hot and I was mad. I was even angrier when I couldn't find the info I needed in my owner's handbook in what I thought was a reasonable amount of time.

All I wanted to know was what the damn light on the dash meant as it related to the reason my BRAND NEW EFFING KIA SORRENTO crapped out on the bridge.
Oh, and I wanted to know where the emergency flashers were since I was in the accident lane of a bridge frequented by tourists and my chances of being rear-ended were pretty high.The owner's manual of this model sucks. ALL owner's manuals should have emergency information in the FRONT. When you open the cover of the booklet, you should see the list of what all of the warning lights on the goddam dash mean and where the control for the emergency flashers is. You would not believe how poorly the index on that manual is laid out. I was only slightly panicked and couldn't find what I wanted. Humpf!
So after 2 hours the tow truck came, allowing the DOT cop who had kindly pulled in behind the Sorrento to leave. I had worn a floaty skirt, the day was hot and without being able to run the AC in the Sorrento my choices were to stand in the wind on the bridge and risk my skirt flying up around my ears or die of sweatage.  My skirt got away from me when I was getting into the tow truck but by that point I didn't care anymore.
Several hours later I learned that the Sorrento was in the ICU and I would be getting a very likely shitty tiny rental car. I am sunburned and grumpy because a BRAND NEW GODDAM KIA crapped out on me on the bridge and I spent TWO hours sweating and fighting with a skirt to stay decent and/or cool and they were going to give my princess self a Ford Escort?
I am naturally inclined towards being a sweetie. Snarling and threatening seems to make my face dry and just worries me later. I will admit to capitalizing on looking scary by threatening new hires with tales of my temper and I have been known to verbally swat miscreants but I would prefer to get what I want through kindness.
The fates smiled on me this afternoon and instead of a crappy compact death machine the lovely young man at the rental place handed me the key to a Kia Borego.
I WANT MY OWN BOREGO. I called the dealership and talked to the guy handling the sick Sorrento and told him to keep it, I'd just take the Borego. She's a beauty, a big black beast with tan leather seats and 3-rows of them, built so a lady can hop into the driver's seat without a stepladder and still sit high enough off the ground to feel safe.
So at the end of this stressful week my SUV is at the fix-it, I am sun-burned from standing on top of a white bridge above the reflective bay, I didn't get the measurements I needed and I still only have one site for my project. But - I have a beautiful, cool loaner to drive, the weather is encouraging my little food garden to thrive, and I got a good story to tell. Oh, and the sun on my face has settled into a pink glow:)

Nattering

2011-04-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

That cool little word, "nattering," just means surface chatter, shooting the breeze; but I always think of it as having an undercurrent of comfort. As in being comfortable enough with the people around you to talk of inconsequential things, to let words of no particular significance flow and oil the rope that binds you together as friends, keeping the relationships flexible and thriving.

That's a close up of Tea Olive blooms, which smell like all of the best green things about spring. That's the kind of thing I natter about, along with music and yappy dogs who eat catfood and upchuck. There was natter about old days when friend Lorne and I were young and still building our careers, the odd attraction law enforcement and radio people have for each other, and how we fit that paradigm. Lornie's eyes are the color of a Hershey Bar wrapper and she still fixes them on her husband's face with the same attention and intensity a she did when they first married.
Then Charlie and I were the chatty audience as Ingrid insouciantly concocted the perfect fruity shot for the guy at table 17 while we sang bits of 40-year-old songs across the bar to each other. She looks like a cool blond sophisticate until she speaks. Her inner Italian then emerges with waving hands, eyes that can shoot sparks and personality that defies stereotyping.

I have no great epiphany to offer here, no clever joke to tell. Just a reminder to talk to your friends, even about nothing, just a flight of fancy or a re-telling of an old story. Watch their faces and remember their expressions. When you get right down to it, the stuff that enriches your life is the stuff that lives - your friends, whether human or furry, finny/feathery, the growing living environment that hosts you, and the thoughts that decorate the space between your ears. Keeping your bank full of those things only costs your attention. Pay it.

The Things That Make Us

2011-04-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

Way back in the distant mists of my teenage-hood I met a really sweet, goofy boy named Bill. He was smart, funny, and good-looking with blue eyes and curly red hair. He was tall, too.
We dated for several years and lived through times that changed me, probably him as well, and eventually parted. I don't remember why; I lost big pieces (apparantly, I don't really know how much) of my memory after a car accident. So if you knew me in high school and you say "Oh, do you remember?" and proceed to tell a story and I just nod and smile vaguely it means that was one of the memories that landed in the Fiero-shaped vortex on Mahan Drive in 1994.
So, on Facebook tonight my old beau Bill sent me some photos of my late dad from a scanned newspaper. Daddy was a forest ranger and for many years the guy the head dude sent to do PR stuff.

That's my pop. It's odd to see how much my brother looks like Daddy. I think of them as being so different; my calm and measured brother and my hot-headed dad.
Timing is an odd thing.
We got our tickets in today's mail to the Steely Dan show we're in going to in August.

My first album was their first album - Can't Buy A Thrill. The Dan have been the soundtrack of my life; from pre-pubescence through existential twenties and to the now of what feels like a second chapter of the energy and social indignation of my early thirties. Only I'm 50. Just the same, only different (old joke).
Friends and boyfriends and jobs and pop culture filled some of the record slots on my mental jukebox but the one constant has always been Steely Dan. I was a fantasy and science fiction-reading kid and identified with heroes like Corwin from Nine Princes in Amber and anything else Roger Zelazny ever wrote; the dark loner with a wry sense of humor and an over-developed vocabulary. I knew where the places were and what the words meant in any Dan song that hit the air around my ears. Guadalajara, William and Mary, The Quarter, the Washington Zoo, Dean and DeLuca, Scarsdale, the City of St. John, Barrytown - I knew them all. I even learned about Bodhisattva, piasters and the Santa Anna Winds.
I wanted to be Josie or Peg but these days I'd settle for being Security Joan.
So as much as people and places and books and visions and years have shaped me, so have odder things. Like Star Trek. And the smell of hot sun. And Steely Dan.

Sorry for all of the Steely Dan references but I think I write this more for me than anyone else based on the stats for this scribble.

Everything was nice -- except for the lack of Charlie

2011-04-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

My sweetheart left yesterday for Las Vegas. He is attending the National Association of Broadcasters convention as he has every year since we first set up house together so I should be used to it by now - unfortunately, it is just long enough after the end of hunting season for me to have gotten used to having him around again!
I spent the day doing laundry, napping and watching HGTV. I am addicted to House Hunters, especially the International version. I am especially keen on kitchens and bathrooms and when there is an indoor courtyard, whee!

I will be growing some of my very own blackberries now, so bowls like this one won't cost two day's worth of grocery budget.
My son came over with his post-hole diggers, dug holes and planted the berry bushes, my mimosa tree and two hydrangeas. I tended my little garden and added Japanese Eggplant, more cucumber, yellow squash and zuchinni. I am going to put my bell peppers into pots since I don't think there is enough room in the raised bed for them.
The meowies helped, naturally enough. Pojr led the black cat brigade of himself, Tip and Fang as they frolicked around the bed while I worked. Tip invited himself into the middle of the little garden, jeopardizing the future of a newly-planted cucumber and I shoo'd him away. The boys have sweet, very tiny voices so when they complain it sounds more like a chirp than a kvetch.
They quickly lost interest in the garden since I wouldn't let them dig and began running as hard as they could back and forth across the yard. My golden boys, Cabrillo and George, used to like to do that when they were younger. They also engaged in Matrix-like mid-air collision avoidance, leaping 3 or 4 feet up and twisting their bodies to insure a feet-first landing. The sheer joy they have in breathing fast while running, feeling the sun on their fur, and watching the little world that is my backyard reminds me to enjoy these things as well.
Which I did, until the damned mosquitos began gnawing on me like I was crab legs on the Chinese buffet and they were tourists. GAH!

Can I Get a Tan, Man?

2011-04-09T20:44:00.000-07:00

Last year at this time I was attending a tanning salon, getting nice and brown and enjoying the periodic escape into a warm, humming capsule. Then I got a skin cancer on my chest, had to listen to "I told you so" from husband, mother, best friend and doctor and get the dratted thing hacked out. It was so big/deep there was no hope for a pretty scar but the plastic surgeon really tried.
I got out of the membership and resigned myself to selfless tanner since my last experience with salon spray tan had been Mystic Tan which was a mess.
My boss popped into my office Monday morning with "HEY! Have you heard about Zoom Tan?"
A bit of research and a few days later we arranged to go get a tan. My boss is also my best friend which really makes things nice. I can't be a screw-up because she trusts me and also because it isn't in my nature but sometimes, when we have both been working like demons after hours, we play hooky.
Friday afternoon about 2 we showed up at the salon and got the sales spiel and then the tan. We both opted for the medium level tan. You strip down, put on a hair net, put barrier cream on palms, toe and finger nails. I put a towel down in the booth to stand on to avoid any tan soles. It takes longer to get undressed and then dressed than it does to be sprayed. This will tell you about the booth experience:

Zoom Tan with video

Now, the results. The attendant told us we would look freckled until we showered. I felt like I was a pointillism experiment in golden brown. After the shower, I was lovely and tan!

I didn't pose properly so the web of my hand didn't get tan. The pink you see is me:)

That is my smooth, brown leg!

The leg you see if the biggest reason I wanted to be tan. I want to be able to wear short and dresses and not look pale, not have my varicose veins in stark relief to my paleness. An added benefit is a nice facial glow that eliminates all but a need for bronzer, brow pencil,lipstick and mascara.

You can't tell here but my eyes are blue. This is a makeup-free moment.

I am very pleased with the outcome. If you're looking to tan, try the technology from Versa-Spa and go to a Zoom Tan salon if you can. The cost for a sample tan is $10 there ($19.95 at a non-Zoom salon nearby) and the monthly unlimited sunless tanning is $39.99 plus tax. I'll post more interesting stuff tomorrow night:)

A Beautiful Weekend of Normal - How Weird!

2011-04-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday night and we are winding down from a lovely, productive, happy weekend - the kind I never dreamed I'd have with a spouse. Never thought I'd have a spouse that I'd have long enough to WANT lovely weekends with. I adore my husband.
Anyway, with that as the backdrop, let me paint my weekend for you:
Saturday morning my sweet husband got outside and built a raised garden bed for me.I had already bought some heirloom tomatoes to plant there and went to Lowe's to get more.

These are my blackberry bushes.
I got Blackberries, eggplant, zuchinni and yellow squash along with another cucmber plant. I also had to get some flowers!

Lantana and begonias having a drink in the sink.
We went to dinner Saturday night at the world'd finest Italian restaurant, Ferrucci, with our friend Dan. He was in town to dismantle an amateur radio tower. He lives near Sarasota and reminds me of a Koala bear. He loves going to Ferrooch (our nickname for the restaurant) as much as we do. If you are ever in Panama City, do yourself a favor and go downtown to Ferrucci. Have the handmade mozzerella appetizer and a bowl of God's own Tomato Soup.

Today we met our son, lovely daughter-in-law and granddaughter for brunch.

Decisions, decisions! Do I eat the lemon slice or another cheese cube?
Her hair is long enough to hang in her face but not long enough to tuck behind her ears so the Cindy Lou Hoo look is the coiffure of choice these days. I love that Dr. Seuss is the Vogue magazine for the under 3 set:)
She likes to eat and walk and have faces made at her. I think I have taught her to bat her eyelashes. I fluttered mine at her to see if I could get a giggle and instead got a stern look followed by a very deliberate blink. She is a very attentive child; the people around her aren't just occasionally amusing flesh-trees but creatures to be studied. There are new tricks to learn, new things to teach her body to do - like eyelash-fluttering:)

This is her "I am most displeased that you have taken the bag of cheese cubes, Mommy" look.
We ate on the outdoor patio-like area so we could see the bay. Jacque wanted to walk without an adult holding her hand so her Granddaddy and I obliged her. This meant, of course, that we were bent over nearly double so that we could be sure her little feet didn't encounter any dangers that might lead to skint knees and sobs.
The kids are really good, calm parents. Heather (my DIL) has given her curly-lipped smile to Jacque and her whole face changes when she grins. She smiles that smile herself when she tells Jacque to "sit on your bottom, you know you're not supposed to walk on the table."
Chad, like his daddy, is a big bear of a man and when he holds Jacque she looks like a doll. When Charlie holds her the non-verbal communication begins. They look into each others' eyes and nod and then begin making raspberry noises.

After brunch we drove back to town and did the necessary errands for dinner to happen, watched the rest of a movie, and I planted some of my vegetables in the garden. We had Greek Spaghetti for dinner. I was feeling so happy and geeky about being so goofily happy that I looked at my husband and said "I think this was a very good weekend."
He raised his eyebrows, his "really? why?" face in place and I looked into his light blue-green eyes and said "I am happy. Not about just one particular thing, just happy."
He said "Good. You're supposed to be happy."

Isn't that a nice thing to be told by someone you love, who loves you?

Neat and Tidy!

2011-03-27T22:19:00.000-07:00

I had a busy and productive week and the energy rolled into the weekend. I decided to put away more winter stuff and clear my drawers of things that could be yard-saled.
I also got on a tear and straightened out my primary cosmetic area.

I am on a L'Occitane kick for most of my serious face stuff - serum and eyes - and Lush for moisturizer and makeup removal.

This is the shelf to the left of my makeup cubby. Makeup here is waiting to rotate into everyday use. See the red glass vase to the left? That's ruby depression glass. No point in having antique stuff if you don't get some joy out of it.
I feel better for having some of this organization and clearing-out done. Someone cleans my house for me but I have to be the one who decides what to pitch and what to keep.
Sounds like a small victory, I am sure, but when depression has been shadowing your days caring enough to do any of this is a major accomplishment.
About that - most days are OK. Not great, not awful, but OK. Good days like yesterday and today don't happen often. I wonder if what I am eating is making a difference. I have been really trying to eat "clean" (minimally processed foods) and maxing on anti-oxidants like blueberries and blackberries.
I've been trying to eat better for a few months now and become more and more interested in old hobbies and had more interest in doing more than sit on the couch since then. I guess the effect is cumulative. I am going to keep it up and hope it keeps supporting the meds.

"If you're gonna be stupid, you gotta be tough"

2011-03-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a 5-day jaunt to see Mama at the farm.
My niece is 11 now, 5 months from being 12, and light years from being a kid. She is bright and quirky and occasionally silly. She likes all kinds of people, including a tall and sturdy old widow she sits with sometimes in church at Mt. Gilead. Miz Roz passed the piece of wisdom in the title of this piece to her. I think it might have been a warning to the Niecelet to take care in her disdain of the stupid...

Mama's Farm House

I got there Saturday and we made our grocery list, called Pouncey's, and went to town.
Pouncey's is an institution in Perry; a place for fried mullet, hushpuppies with guava jelly and swamp cabbage. You can't get swamp cabbage just anywhere, you know. This is Pouncey's third incarnation and the closest to the original which makes it the best restaurant I know of without a winelist.
My Aunt Karen whisks around the restaurant like the pro she is, greeting and teasing and cosseting her patrons like they were family. Kay-kay should have been a Diplomat for the US. Her first and second husbands became friends and refer to each other as "husband in law."
Mama and I picked a booth since it was early, ordered catfish (mullet was all gone) and swamp cabbage and started to inhale some of Taylor County's best food.
It strikes me as humorous that I, with my sophisticated palate, love something as coastal hillbilly as mullet and swamp cabbage.

Keaton Beach Salt Marsh. We used to catch crabs using chicken necks.

We meandered on down to our beaches; our perfectly imperfect beaches with sand that varies between silvery white to golden to pale yellow. We're on a low-energy part of the coastline and it is shallow for a long way out into the gulf from our shore. Some brave souls were laying on the sand in bikinis but we were glad for long sleeves to divert the brisk wind. 72 degrees and windy is too cold for a Southern girl.
From Keaton we drove to Steinhatchee.

This teeny town sits on the Steinhatchee River which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico.

Steinhatchee River

Just so you know, Steinhatchee and its river are pretty amazing from a "pristine" Florida perspective. If you can get there, park and walk around. Find someone to tell you about the fishing, the water, the lifestyle.
I won't be related to any of those folks; the water people are a lot rougher than those of us who live in more forgiving terrain. As we say at home, "you 'bout cain't grow anything in that sand by the river."

This is my mother. That face is made up of Swiss, Dutch, Creek Indian and some other stuff. You see the Swiss and Dutch most:)
Our people live inland with rivers nearby and access to the Gulf so my ancestors had a lot of ways to keep the kids fed. Mama remembers her grandfather ("granddaddy") and uncles taking the sloop out to the Gulf to catch mullet. They'd eat some, salt most down for later. During the winter while she was growing up, her Daddy took the family to live at the hunting camp for the season. He always built camp around a likely-looking candidate for Christmas tree duty. He never cut a Christmas tree even after they moved to town. He'd find a nice tree, carefully dig it up and keep it in a bucket until time to replant.
Her family weren't big farmers, just grew a kitchen garden and lived off meat they harvested from the wild.They are some of the kindest people you'll meet and will be glad to feed you whether they know much about you or not. My mother's grandmother raised 13 children, not all of them hers, and never spanked one of them. None of them ended up in jail or became bad adults, they grew up to be kind people themselves.
Their faith has always been a large part of how they define themselves. There is a little Baptist church out in the woods on a dirt road that you won't find unless you're looking for it that was founded by 3 or 4 families (including Mama's) in the late 1800's. They aren't the kind of Baptists I usually associate with that term. They're very live and let live, believers in-second-chances, flock-supportive people.
I told Mama they sound like Methodists.

These little wild lillies pop up near Easter in the wet on either side of State Road 59. Typical of the roads in my home counties, it cuts through low wetlands and hilly farm and pasture lands.
I had forgotten the great importance my mother and family seem to put on Easter. Maybe it has something to do with the renewing of the land, the knowing that tomatoes and cucumbers and fresh corn are coming soon. Maybe it is just the soul-cleansing reminder that their sins are forgiven by a great sacrifice.
I am something of a neo-pagan according to the surveys I've taken. I think of myself as a humanist with wiccan leanings. This visit to my home grounds, where the scent of the land is familiar and always tinged with a little salt, where I see faces that carry traces of my own and I am loved by aunts and uncles and cousins in spite of my oddness and made to feel like some precious gem by my mother, reinforces my version of faith.

I don't have to Cook it for it to be Good

2011-03-10T18:45:00.000-08:00

I love good food, I love to cook, but on many weekdays I am too tired to cook what I'd really like and almost resent having to cook at all.
I ran across an ad for a local company that delivers "gourmet, chef-prepared meals" and thought I'd give it a try. My previous options had been takeout and the meals had names like "Cha-Cha Chimichanga" and "London Broil is Falling Down." I think NOT.
Spice of Life PC (http://www.spiceoflifepc.com/) has three different menu plans that can be augmented with kid meals and Specials.
I decided we'd try the 3 meal sample for couples at $80.I ordered the Grecian style roasted chicken with steamed broccoli and sauteed vegetables, rosemary grilled lamb chops with grilled artichoke hearts, roasted pearl onions and new potatoes and London broil with creamy horseradish sauce, gorgonzola-stuffed tomatoes and grilled asparagus. Sound good, yes? It actually WAS.

This is my plate of London Broil augmented with leftover steak and grilled peppers and onions.

Grecian style Roasted Chicken, augmented with a slice of baguette with EVOO.

The food is plentiful and very good. I have an educated palate and am particular as can be about food. If I eat it, it will add calories to my body so they'd better be high quality calories.
These were high quality calories. I wish I'd taken pictures of the lamb chops- they were a perfect pinky-red and seasoned so well that all I had to add was a little sea salt.
The plates are Franciscan Apple pattern so they are a little distracting in the photos from the food.
I wanted to have good food and a break from making it myself. I was ready to make some concessions to get it, hence having a chicken meal when I am the only person who can make chicken the way I like it. I was ready to settle for "nice" food, not my really GOOD food.
I didn't have to settle. The food was all seasoned properly, cooked just right and the portions were gracious. The chef offers South Beach and Heart Healthy meals and a choice between gourmet and traditional family meals.
The time having meals delivered gave me back was enough to catch up on laundry, work on a grant, and handle all of my household-running business without being totally exhausted and resentful at the end of the day.

And that's an odd feeling. As a Southern woman, I feel like it is just an extension of my job to come home and put in another several hours of work. My job is hard; I manage people, do research and write, negotiate with other people and am mentally and physically depleted at the end of the day. But I still think it is incumbent upon me to go to the store to pick up what I don't have and transform everything into a nice, homecooked meal. Oh, and clean the kitchen, the litterboxes, feed all cats and varmints, pick up the house and try to do a load of laundry. My husband is supposed to sit in the recliner.
And I am a Ms., a NOW girl, an ERA supporter- but these customs are deeply ingrained and even though my husband doesn't expect this martyrdom, I do.
I am set free from some of my self-imposed slavery with meals I am not ashamed to serve. Thank you, Chef Jack. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

\\

uuuuhhhhhnnnnn. stuffy and mizzerble

2011-03-05T20:46:00.000-08:00

These have been my constant comapnions since yesterday morning. Generic Nyquil to ease my suffering, water pistol to keep the cats off of my food when I feel like eating. Little bastards will even fight me for saltines.
Husband started this party off last Sunday and was mopey and snuffly and achey until Wednesday.I was just a little icky from the pollen overload attack on my allergy medicine but nothing debilitating. Until Friday morning.
When I swam up to wakefulness Friday morning I didn't seem to totally emerge from the waters of sleep. I struggled on up with a head that felt like it was cased in cement, a badly sore throat and no interest in trying to go to work. I was done and the day hadn't even started.
I called in, rolled over and slept until eleven when I think I talked to someone.I slept some more until the maid came at one and transferred myself to the guest bedroom while she cleaned elsewhere and there I stayed until about 3:20. I got up and moved to my couch nest where I remained until 6:30 Saturday morning, sleeping from 11:30 until then. Charlie got me to move into the bed since he was getting up and my snuffly breathing could no longer bother him. I slept there until 1:30 and then snagged another nap at 5. I have been awake only 16 hours out of the past 48. I feel better now.
When I was a sophmore in high school I had the only biology instructor I ever liked, Mr. Hughes. The thing that made me like him was the humanity he brought to his teaching. He taught grey areas as well as black and white facts. I am a long way from remembering everything he tried to stuff into my 16 year old head but I remember two things very clearly: his gentle, smiling face and his firm belief that the best thing you can do whenever your body is insulted by sickness is rest. It's the Starship Enterprise equivalent of shutting down all non-essential programs and diverting all power to shields - except my body is nowhere nearly as cool as that NCC-1701 Constitution class vessel and I am bent on repair, not defense. It is too late for that.
I had been nutrient-loading with anti-oxidants, royal jelly, and clean (minimally processed) food since every one I knew had been getting the crud in hopes of avoiding it myself. I didn't manage that, but I think I am going to cut its duration in about half. I hope to go to the grocery store tomorrow, maybe even Bed Bath and Beyond!
Thank you, blueberries-blackberries-rasberries and strawberries. And thank you, Mr. Hughes, where ever you are.

Spring Has Sprung!

2011-02-27T18:42:00.000-08:00

A happy post-parade face!

Our Beads hung and ready to be flung!

Saturday was parade day for our Mardi Gras Krewe. The weather was perfect; more like an early summer day in May (I know, June 21, but not here!) instead of a day in late February. It was sunny and warm and people were laughing and smiling with the happiness the first really pretty day of the new spring brings.

Our friends had fired up the grill and had paper plates stacked with burgers and hot dogs. A tip for grillers - pour a little Dale's Marinade into a plate and flip the raw burgers over once in the marinade and onto the grill. Don't let them sit in the marinade, just put them into the plate, flip them over and then onto the grill. Don't otherwise season or salt them.

We ate and drank and then the music started and the floats rolled.

The parade always seems to end too soon. It is so odd. When the float is rolling all you can really see is what is behind you and on either side - looking forward you can't see more than a few feet because of the way our float is built. So five minutes later or 90 minutes later or five years later it was over.

I am young again when I do this. I am a 17 year-old Pine Tree Princess in a mango colored chiffon evening gown, waving from my seat atop a convertible.

Spring Dreams, Fall Memories

2011-02-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

My Pansies

Pansy heaven, which I'd rather have!

After prying myself away from HGTV and the novelty of being able to leave the French Doors to the deck open I made a trip to Lowe's to look at ceramic tile to re-do my kitchen counters with and was lured into the garden department by visions of colorful perennials in hanging baskets.
The sudden arrival of warmer weather must have caught the Lowe's buyers by surprise since the stock is still mainly delicate annuals like pansies, petunias and violas. So much for new hanging baskets. I saw the mark-down cart and went to have a look; one of my best plants ever was a nearly dead tea rose that appreciated my attention so much that it became a 4'wide by 6' tall bloomer that faithfully provided perfect pink blossoms and true rose scent every year from spring til late fall. I miss that rose.
Anyway, not much to choose from in the markdowns but I did pick up two pots of pansies for $3 to sit on a double plant stand by the driveway. If I were fat with money and time, my yard would be a pansy heaven (like the other picture!) every year from October til the heat ate them up.
The year Charlie and I got married, autumn began arriving in September and temperatures were dropping before I had expected. We were having an outdoor wedding in our own backyard and a cold October afternoon was not what was required for my dream wedding! I soldiered on with preparations, getting the landscape ready for company.
I was in the habit of only growing plants that I had figured out neither my hands nor yard soil could kill, so I had a pretty hardy group that were still blooming or looking bright and healthy. My purple queen (called wandering jew by many of you) sat in pots around the swimming pool in company with hisbiscus trees and moss rose (portulaca) showing their red, pink and orange flowers.Since I had chosen my favorite colors, blue and yellow, for the wedding, I needed something to punch up the yard to match my theme.
I've always loved pansies. The contrast between the boldness of color and delicacy of the petals appealed to me but the short period of their viability in an unpredicatble Northwest Florida spring/summer discouraged me from ever buying them. But now I needed the reliable profusion of blooms that could stand the current temperatures from 40-80 degrees and bring me all of the shades of yellow I needed along with the violet that was as close to blue as I was going to get.
I bought my pansies and placed them strategically for the wedding and gave them permission to die after the honeymoon.
They didn't. They bloomed until Christmas, and although they are supposed to be annuals, either they self-seeded in their pots or just decided to break the rules and I had pansies every year until we left that house.
Every time I saw their little faces opening in bloom I was, for a second, in my wedding dress again and walking determinedly across the grass to marry the right man at last.

Picture of a happy bride:)

Hello, Young Lovers! and older ones...

2011-02-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

I love food. I love really good food most of all. I also adore my husband who routinely drives anywhere between 2 and 6 hours to spend the night with me when I am on travel for work.
Today being Valentine's Day and my meetings starting at 8:30 eastern tomorrow (ack) we decided to celebrate in Tallahassee tonight. The best resevation I could get was at 5:30 at Chez Pierre - I was willing to have dinner at Barnaby's (love that pizza) but my darling wanted to take me "someplace nice" so Chez Pierre it was.
The restaurant is in an old home, looks to be from the late 19th century, with a beautiful set of what I think of as French garden around it. They planted rye grass to continue to have some greenery and have little vignette areas of flowering plants, fountains, benches, statues scattered along the path to the entrance.
Our table was in a room with aqua walls, white crown molding and various non-traditional style French scenes. There were three scenes painted in a macro-pointillism style that I wasn't real sure I cared for but I liked the pen and ink drawings.
I really liked the menu. The make of a really good restaurant to me is what they offer in the way of small plates or appetizers. Chez Pierre's normal menu has so many lovely apps that I have a hard time choosing which to order. Since it was a holiday they were iperating with a limited menu so my choices were easier. We opted to share a cheese board with cheeses from Thomasville's Sweet Grass Dairy - Tomme, Brie and a bleu that was so beautiful I almost wanted to taste it. We had plain and olive bread, grapes and strawberries on the plate as well. We nibbled and talked about the art, the way the crown molding wasn't flat to the ceiling, and where we'd go if you could time travel for vacation.
I had some escargot and ordered the smoked salmon appetizer as my entree. The salmon was beautiful - the picture doesn't do it justice. The slices were thick, the flavor was delicate, the meat was buttery-smooth. A small arugula salad with a generous helping of capers, mixed olives and red onion was served on the side along with slices of olive bread and a dollop of herbed creme fraiche. The latter for those who don't read cookbooks like they were porn is simply a high-end sour cream with fresh herbs mixed into it. But creme fraiche is to Breakstone as creme brulee is to the filling in a Hostess Twinkie. All good, oooonly different:)
My Charlie had wild mushroom ravioli that was tasty but after the escargot I was glad of the relatively lighter salmon dish.
One of the many joys of having been together for so many years is that the scary parts of the relationship are gone. I wanted to go to the new organic grocery store (Earth Fare) after dinner (which we did) without worrying that he expected some Valentine's Day action right after we ate. He knew how much I'd enjoy the store with its rows of produce in their naturally bright, un-wax-coated splendour. We bought Meyer Lemons and organic cider and organic chocolate truffles and 3 dozen organic eggs from free range chickens.
We came back to the room and rested a little and snuggled together and he reminded me again of why, back when I first saw him, he took my breath away.
Happy Valentine's Day.

The kind of friend you need

2011-02-12T19:19:00.000-08:00

This is Randy and Wink. Randy is the one who looks like he's snarling; he is just having a yawn. Up until the moment I snapped this pic he was laying curled around Wink looking for all the world like a teenaged boyfriend with his arms wrapped around his girl.
My cats are pretty important to me; I've always loved my little non-human friends but since we had our unintended cat population explosion I have realized that all of them, not just the specials I had before, have distinct personalities. Randy is laid back, chatty on occasion, and loving to human and feline alike. Wink is a (spayed) little flirt and likes to snuggle with the big males of the house. George is a cranky SOB except when Wink or a kitten has laid down with him. Otherwise he is chasing sister Trixie or swatting his twin, Cabrillo. Romeo is a very large flame point Siamese who used to also be very timid. When the cat accumulation began, Romeo, as senior cat, developed a backbone of sorts.
When I came home from the ritual hunting and gathering at Walmart this afternoon my across-the-street neighbor was in his front yard tossing a football with his girlfriend's kid. Russell is an easy-going guy in his early 30's, likes to talk, likes to hunt and take his truck to bog-ins. I waved, he waved back and I started unloading my haul. Oddly, only 5 or 6 of the cats were around to escort me inside and politely request feeding. I put down food and treats and kept putting up groceries and then heard a non-My House sound - dog barks in my back yard. There were two silly canine faces with a backdrop of windshield washer tails in one of my breakfast room windows!
I went out through the French doors to the deck and patio and there were DOGS. First thought on surveying the scene: My gate was closed, how'd these guys get here? Second thought: Oh hell, the big one has seen Romeo!
If we'd been dealing with a beagle sized dog Romeo would have immediately won this encounter. He arched his back, fluffed out his fur and presented himself as 30 pounds of pissed off instead of his actual 16 pounds of sweetness.
Big Dog, who appeared to be shepherd and collie, was unimpressed and ran at him along with his young American pit bull partner. Romeo cut his losses and ran like hell. I tried to grab the dogs and put them out of the yard but my gate WAS CLOSED (how'd they get in?) and I couldn't open it. Deciding that panic had made me stupid I ran through the house to get help - Russell!
I got into the front yard and yelled "Russell! I need help!"
I wasn't screaming or anything, just a yell. He didn't ask me what I needed until he had run across the street and through the yard to get to me.
He got the gate unstuck, helped me get the dogs out of the yard and identified one of them as belonging to another neighbor and left me to rescue my panicked fur babies. Trixie was up a tree, Wink had gone to visit the old slow dogs on the other side of the house and Romeo and Fuzzbutt were perched on my other neighbor's chicken coop. Long story, but previous husband raised exotic chickens and now he and the chickens were gone.
After calm had been restored it occurred to me what a good guy Russell is. And how exactly appropriately he responded to my request for help. None of this "what's wrong" while standing like a stump in his yard. No leisurely stroll from his yard to mind. No laughing at my problem, no having to stand still to think.
So remember - the next time someone calls your name for help, don't stand around, just run like hell and think on your way. If you can't think and run at the same time, just don't go outside, ok?

Adzuki Beans!

2011-02-10T22:04:00.000-08:00

This is just fun to say: Adzuki Beans! AddddZoooooKeeeey!
These are little red-purple beans with a white fleck. They are actually a color called puce, which is the color of a tick. I know, highly appetizing, right?

I had heard and read a good bit about these beans. Gillian McKeith, the Scot Tyrant Holistic Nutrionist, says they are helpful for weightloss. Lots of fiber, good nutrients like potassium and magnesium (good for you if you are a charlie-horse person) but a lot of calories. The latter adds up to 320 calories per HALF CUP! I know, a lot - but it is very filling, lots of protein so you can have a bowl of these with no meat and feel pretty good about yourself.
I soaked mine overnight, drained and rinsed and then added 3 cups fresh water to my 1 cup of beans with about a tbl of Vigo Ham Base (powdered soup base) and a pinch of sea salt.
My stove is still new to me so I had to adjust, but I got a boil for about 5 minutes and then a nice simmer for an hour. I added a little water to get the amount of pot likker (bean juice in this case) I wanted and simmered until the beans were just tender and good from the seasoning.
I had a nice bowl of beans, which amounted to 3/4 cup of actual beans and 1/2 cup nummy bean juice.
And I wasn't hungry an hour or even two or three hours later. I am 4 1/2 hours out now from Aduki/Adzuki bean dinner and am STILL food happy.
Maybe hateful Gillian has a point. I guess I'll try the warm glass of water with lemon tomorrow morning...
**Gillian McKeith is the host of "You Are What You Eat" on BBC America.

It was My BIRTHDAY!!!!

2011-02-05T21:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of my arrival upon this stage and I spent the evening alone by choice.

I wasn't grumpy or feeling sorry for myself - my husband has been spending weeking at the hunting camp and there are only few weekends of hunting season left so I gave him a guilt-free pass to the woods. He gave me a really nice fat Bed Bath and Beyond gift card and brought me a bottle of champagne and some soup from my favorite restaurant to have for dinner.

My BFF stopped by and had a glass of champagne with a float of Chambord across the top then it was just me, the cats and the television.

The rain kept the cats inside and since they couldn't run around outside to play, they tore around the house like furry Gran Prix racers. I left the back door open in hopes that they'd run around on the deck but I didn't get many takers. I stepped out the door myself to try to encourage some of them to follow me and admired the bounty of my calamondin tree's fruit. It was hard to get a good picture, but imagine the fruit you see above covering the whole canopy of the tree. The fruit are small, the size of a jacks ball (remember playing jacks?) and rather like kumquats. The peels are sweet-tart and the flesh will make your mouth pucker!

I've got a jar of liquour I made with them and some oranges from a neighbor's tree 'curing' in the refrigerator.

There was a 'Murder, She Wrote' marathon on and I got hooked into that until about 3 am at which point I decided that my birthday was over. I then slept until about nine, decided I wasn't really through sleeping, and snuggled down again until noon-ish. I had to get up and dress then in order to get some food for the cats. I tried to get them to eat some of the Old Roy dogfood I bought for the possums and that was a no-go. I even sprinkled cat treats on top, but they just ate those and then glared at me.

I brought home acceptable food and the cats were pleased. I can hear one snoring now:)

Little Enchantments

2011-01-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

Bobble scarf!

I am very pleased with myself today. I not only lost 2 pounds, I finally found a way to do something with a pretty treasure I found.

I am a sucker for these tiny pretties that weave their enchantments around my fingers, my eyes, my sense of joy. I have pieces of fabric that are over 20 years old that I bought just because I liked them. I can't sew. I just like fabrics. I have buttons and bows and frogs (decorative button-things) that do nothing but exist for me to look at and touch. I have to stay out of fabric stores or be on my mission with self control at the helm to avoid adding to this almost useless collection.

Now that I have entered the "fabric arts" so to speak, I thought I'd try to use one of my treasures if I could.

This is a scarf made with a warm pinky-beige fun fur and trimmed with a bobble trim that I think was meant for curtains. I found it in the drapes/curtains/upholstery clearance section at Hobby Lobby and fell in love with the colors and the feel. The bobbles are plushy, the ribbon has satin stitches and rougher fabric and is just fun to touch.

I had been working on the scarf without any particular end goal in mind, I just wanted to do something with the color and keep up the habit of crocheting nightly. The more the scarf shaped, the more I thought -" wish I could find a way to add that bobble trim!"

After a lot of consideration I convinced myself that if it didn't look right I could probably remove it without runing the scarf.

So I threaded a quilting needle with some hamoniously colored strands of embriodery thread, trimmed the bobble line to meet the scarf's dimensions and went to work.

I sewed the trim to the front and back of both ends of the scarf and then sewed the open ends of trim closed to make it neat. BTW, this is the limit to my sewing abilities. Like I said, can't sew!

I am pretty sure the goddess of handicrafts (Isn't that Athena?) was just indulging me with this success in making something using one of my little enchantments!

What do YOU think? Does random stuff call your name? Do your hands reach for interesting looking stones, sticks, bits of glass?

Iconic Institutions/ Archaic Practices

2011-01-25T17:48:00.000-08:00

These cultural constants are about to become rarities. Perhaps just memories of people born before 2010.
Last night on the news I saw that the Post Office will be closing more outlets. The price of a stamp has jumped more times than I can count (off the top of my head) since I have been over 30 after years of same-same. They are still suffering financially. The internet allows people to talk to each other with more ease (email) and pay bills with little effort (no stamp!).
Newspapers are also hitting the dinosaur wall. My local paper has shrunk in size and now in content. At the minimum we used to get 3 sections of paper; Front page with big news and editorial content, second section of local and entertainment, 3rd section of sports and classifieds.
Now it is only two thin sections of perhaps 8 pages each. And they still want the same price for it!

I grew up in a small town with a post office that looked like the temple of a minor Greek God. There were porticos and columns outside, marble floors, walls and counters inside. The walls of PO boxes almost glittered from the windows showing the box interior and the gilt numbers and trim painted on each one. On the hottest of summer days, the inside of the PO was so cool it was almost chilly. I walked bare-footed on those marble floors many times, just like a lot of other little kids before me.
Because I lived in a relatively rural town, our daily newspaper from the nearest metro arrived late in the afternoon. Reading the paper was the way to see what the world was up to in those days and one of the first "adult" habits I acquired.
Soon books and stories that reference the post office or the newspaper will be considered tales of days gone by. One day readers of those stories will have to find reference web pages to understand how the PO worked and why anyone wanted to work for a "news paper."

what a happy busy day!

2011-01-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up earlier than I had planned, thanks to 4 kitties staring into my face and breathing on me. You know you have been thoroughly stared at when you open your eyes to 4 sets of eyes, ranging from pure gold to pale green, focussed on your face.

They were mainly bored and ready for words and action so I got up and started talking and moving. They do talk back, but it is along the lines of "prrrup? RRRRRRiii? mraa. MEEEEEEya."

My goal was to get to an art fair at a historic building in my little town. This part of Florida is relatively new compared to my home area, nothing in the state is really old except for St. Augustine.

Anyway, this lovely old building just off main street had been falling apart until the Historical Society got interested in it. It was built in 1912 and is the property and meeting place of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, who were still meeting there even when the building really should have been condemned. Only members could have unescorted access to the building, so, the Historical Society members joined so they could have access to the building to rennovate and voila.

Upstairs is the meeting area for the IOOF and there is more to talk about there than I will mention here.

My favorite was a set of wall murals that had been done through the WPA during the Depression when the government actually made jobs. They hired a trained artist (JW Zelm) to paint the walls of the Odd Fellows meeting area with scenes of NW Florida themed with Biblical material. Yah, I know!

Apparantly it offended the artist as well. The huge mural that was supposed to deal with the Burning Bush had a smoky little pile the size of a dime in a distant corner.

I will get some pics of those murals since they were lovely and still in danger of destruction.The art fair was my main focus today. So much of the work shown was of situational art. People have a craving for beauty and will make it from whatever is at hand, like the sweet potato vine plant my mom put in her first rooming house window. She had a small sweet potato, put toothpicks in it to suspend it in a cup of water and let it root and develop leaves. A little beauty in a dreary window.

There were a lot of handcrafts; wooden utensils, jewelry, wind-chimes made from found objects and key art. This fascinated me. The cultural anthropologist in me always locks in on folk art, the southern country girl in me thinks about the people who found beauty in these objects.

Rainy, Lazy, TGFTDW

2011-01-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and still slept til nearly noon! I just wanted to get my money's worth out of this Three Day Weekend and sleep until I was good and ready to get up.

I am almost through with the laundry I have procrastinated about doing all weekend. I have spent time crocheting, watching kitchy 90's TV shows (Sliders, for one) and generally lazing about. It has been nice to rest. I've also been eating food that was as minimally processed as possible and have lost 5 pounds since last week. YAY!

Tonight's meal won't be tops for health since it incorporates salty, country cured ham but it is the kind of thing perfect for a cold night - ham pie. I am using organic milk and cage free eggs and that should help:) I am looking forward to those fat little biscuit dumplings:)

Tomorrow night will be healthier. I found some cooked yellow summer squash and mustard in the freezer to have with baked boneless skinless chicken and green field peas. Since I bought all three of the vegetables fresh from a produce stand I know how they were cooked, so that's good on the "minimally processed" front.

I am trying to cut back on the meat we eat so I'll probably hold back some of the chicken tomorrow night to use for another night. I just have to figure out how...

I have to learn how to post pictures so my text doesn't get messed up! The top left picture is the beginning of the project, the top right is the completed scarf:)

Full Steam Ahead

2011-01-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

For years I have gotten Garden Fever when the first warm wind of spring blew my hair into my face.
What I kept forgetting was that was a bit late for some of the gardening plans I had. This year is different. THIS year, I thought about spring here in January so I can start my garden prep over time instead of in one expensive rush.
I bought a tiny seedling green house and some lavender seeds and started them last night. They will germinate and end up in larger pots in about a month - and I will buy those larger parts in a few weeks.
I don't own those pots yet, or the next round of seeds or peats pellets to start them in, but only because of the application of exteme restraint on my impulse to Get It All Now.
This is an impulse I have battled for as long as I have had my own money to invest in a project.
I pick up hobbies and then buy more supplies than I need to execute any planned projects. I have jewelry fittings, loose stones and magazines that I haven't touched in a year. I have yarn called "Fun Fur" with which to make scarves in a multitude of colors and haven't picked up a crochet needle in six months. I still have a yoga mat, yoga block and yoga mat spray (not to mention yoga clothes) I bought for a class that I attended twice.
Those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. I almost think that my purchases are the curse that ends my interest in these hobbies.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your view), Christmas ate me up financially and I have to be cautious until some card balances come down before I fling myself into a frenzy of propagation supplies purchasing.
Maybe I'll actually remain interested in this project long enough to get my French Mimosa tree started:)

Day One of 2011

2011-01-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, doing next to nothing is the best thing to do.
Today was a prime example of that.
I woke up much earlier than I should have considering it was well after two when I closed my eyes with a skinful of champagne.
The cats made sleepy, grumpy remarks about my removing myself from the nest they'd built around me and two followed me into the bathroom to observe contact insertion. Rowboat jumped up to help and skidded into the sink. She's such an easygoing, un-selfconcious kitty that her attitude was unaffected by gravity's insult and she sat on the drain to watch.
Motorboat, her twin, flung himself against my calf to draw attention to the depths of starvation to which he'd been reduced and howled.
All followed me to the kitchen for morning kibble. After putting food down on the back deck for the anti-social Tuxedo I took a fresh, cold bottle of water from the fridge for breakfast on the couch.
Shortly after I brought in the paper and let a few of the furry horde out into the yard the rain began.
When I am not driving, the sounds and smells of rain are signals to my body to sleep. I have never had enough sleep that a rain storm couldn't induce somnolence and today was no exception. I had only been up for three hours after eight hours of sleep when my eyelids began to droop as the barometer dropped. The snoring cat in my lap added to the desire for sleep so I grabbed my airplane pillow, snuggled under my couch blanket and drifted into my sleep place.
Hours later the nap plane landed and the rain was still falling.
I had the luxury of doing more nothing, planning dinner, cleaning something, or going somewhere.
I decided that doing more nothing (as most people would see it) was the winning ticket.
I played with my cats, exfoliated my hands, put dishes away, admired the color of the rain-wet leaves on my orange tree, talked to the cats, talked to my mom, talked to my husband and pondered healthy meal plans for the week to come.
Day One of 2011 was low-key, stress free, and happy.
I anticipate more action on most of the days to come so today was one nice, last restful day before I have to dive into the fray once more.

Flotsam and Jetsom

2010-12-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

The end of another year looms. Some of those minutes were wasted, many were productive and hopefully the coming year will bring more happy minutes than empty ones.
In looking at 2010, there are things I learned...I taught myself to crochet well enough to make what I had in mind. They are fluffy scarves with beads woven into them so that they are like necklaces.
I learned that I need to plan my Luau weekend more carefully to allow time for a nap between lunch and night activities.
I paid attention to how my mother makes cabbage so that I can follow suit and have good food while dieting. The trick is no more than 8 minutes of cooking with the seasoning of choice (bacon slice, chicken broth), then drain it and keep it warm til eating time. The cabbage is tender but not mushy.
Chablis is an acceptable gulping wine.
Dried garbanzo beans taste like field peas when reconstituted. Canned garbanzo beans do not.
Brussells sprouts grow on a stalk.
Greek spaghetti sauce requires cinnamon to make it right.
The roads on the Dutch side of Sint Maarten pretty much suck.
I can cook in 2 or 3 languages. This is important when you are in a non-English speaking country. Like French St. Martin, where they really can speak English but don't want to:)
I can make a dessert with an overripe banana, Kahlua, butter and the contents of someone else's pantry.

To Be Continued.

Gumbo, Baby!

2010-11-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

The coolness creeping up on us masqueraded as Spring for me one day this past week. I was walking with my best friend along a route we'd covered many times over the years and our conversation was also scampering over old fields with new fodder.
Our trip included crossing a short bridge that always makes me feel closer to the sky. In the few seconds we were at the apex I looked up, as I always do, to see what particular flavor of blue sky I was being graced with when a sharp breeze came across the bay and for that quick interval of seconds I smelled Spring.
Spring is still months away despite my hope to skip past fall and winter to my favorite time as a Daughter of Demeter.
There are still green things to harvest and eat, canned things from summer and cured meats from the last cold time to bring together in my favorite cool weather meal, Gumbo.
Shrimp, crab, fishies and chicken have no place in gumbo for me as a Florida girl. I don't like chicken and think burying crab or shrimp in soup-y stew-y things is WRONG. More on that later.
For now, this is my way to accept Fall.

Basic Sausage Gumbo

1 large red onion, diced
1 pound country sausage, sliced in 1/8" pieces (use 1/2 this amount if you are watching bad fats and boost the flavor with Vigo Ham Soup Base to taste)
1 green pepper, diced
4-5 stalks celery, chopped
2 32-oz cans petite diced tomatoes
2 cloves diced garlic
1 32 ounce container chicken stock
1 16 oz bag frozen sliced okra OR 2 cups fresh sliced okra
2 tsp sea salt
tbl paprika
many grinds of pepper
pinch paprika
some crushed red pepper and a bit of Cavender's
pinch or so of rubbed sage
ROUX

Here's the hard part. You need a good pot (meaning not light-weight or thin bottomed), 8 tbls of good oil (extra virgin olive or grape seed oil, something good flavored and good for you) and 8 tbl flour.
Add the oil to the pot, heat over medium until shimmering and add the flour. Stir steadily to combine oil and flour until the mix is a soft gold, about 15 minutes. This stuff is liquid napalm so be careful not to get any on you. I like to use a flat whisk that has a heat-proof coating on it.IF YOUR BURN THE ROUX, DUMP IT OUT AND START OVER. Burned roux stinks and smells burned so you'll know if you've crossed that line. Roux requires constant stirring, no walking away to pour fresh wine or answer the door unless you have prehensile toes and can call them to stirring duty. You can easily ruin your dinner with burned roux.
After getting your roux pretty, thick and bubbly, pour in the vegetables (except okra) and stir very quickly to coat in the roux. The vegetables and the roux will act like you have just provided hem with a mortal insult by glomming together to make you think they're going to burn. Just keep stirring quickly with a wooden or other favorite spoon and it'll be OK:)
Continue stirring for about a minute to start the onions releasing their fragrance and then stir in one can of the tomatoes and about 3/4 of the chicken broth. Add seasoning and the sausage. Keep the heat at medium/medium high. At this point you decide if you want more tomato or not. I usually do, but at least one can of mine is whirred into a crushed state with an immersion blender. You can just buy tomatoes that are crushed already, but my pantry never makes that elusive can availabe when I need it.
This will also be the point at which you start thinking about adding the rest of the stock or not. A gumbo can be the consistency of a stew or a soup or in-between depending on your decisions along the way and whether or not you like rice with your gumbo. You can still change your mind as you move along the spectrum of cooking this dish.
Put the sliced okra in now, check seasonings, cover and reduce heat to medium low. Let it bubble along for about twenty minutes (range tops vary so if your's runs hot, get the heat lower so you don't burn your masterpiece). Check the flavor to see if you need salt/pepper/paprika/etc and add whatever your tastebuds dictate. Now is the time to decide whether you need that last bit of stock or more tomatoes if you didn't add them earlier. Make your decision, bring to a quick boil if you add anything, reduce to a low simmer afterwards. Cover the pot and let it simmer along for at least thirty minutes, an hour if you have it.

Gumbo is one of those dishes that becomes yours, just like really good chilis. The flavors and vegetable amounts that you and your family like are what matters.

Planning a Tasty Week, Lamenting a Short Weekend

2010-11-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

I hurry. You hurry. We all hurry and we overlook important things along the way, or things that might make the day better or our frames of mind sweeter. Tonight's dinner is an example.

Tonight was supposed to have been a good dinner night and I made a very dumb mistake.
I had planned to have a grilled hunk o'beef with savory eggplant and potatoes au gratin. I had sliced and seasoned zuchinni, yellow squash, eggplant, red onion and portobello mushrooms to be grilled while the beef rested to use for another night.
The eggplant and potatoes were perfect - the one aromatic, the other golden - and the beef looked good.
The cut I had selected was, unfortunately, not the one I had intended. I had bought a hunk of top shoulder roast, which should be cooked slow-and-low, instead of chuck roast. I have done similar things before, thinking I grabbed a box of blackberry breakfast bars and discovering that blueberry bars were in my bag instead. My errors of Hurry are usually easily remedied. This one was Epic Fail.
When I applied my perfectly sharpened Rada knife to the rested beef, I detected a resistance that shouldn't have been so ...firm. I attributed that to the rareness of the meat. Beautiful, thinly cut slices of rare beef adorned our Fransicsan Apple plates. I had carefully positioned a portion of eggplant and scoop of potatoes before slicing the beef. These were pretty plates.
We enjoyed this aesthetically pleasing view until the time for eating began.
The beef was perfectly seasoned and grilled but tough as a boot - or as I would imagine one would be. We tried several different cutting methods (against the grain, with the grain, combo) and nothing helped.
The cats were delighted at their tiny bites of people food this mistake produced. We cut the rest into large chunks for the possums and raccoons who come to the back deck for meals and called it a win.
I'll serve the grilled vegetables with salmon filets this week so the grill wasn't fired for naught:)

Savory Eggplant
1 medium eggplant, topped and sliced lengthways
1 tin anchovies in oil
3 large cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup olive oil
Cavender's Greek Seasoning

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees. Cut a shallow, angled tic-tac-toe pattern into the flesh of the eggplant. Heat 1/4 cup of oil in a large skillet on medium high and when a drop of water "spits" in the pan add the eggplant, cut side down. While the eggplant cooks (reduce to medium low after about a minute), mash the anchovies into a paste. Put the garlic cloves through a press into the anchovy mix, stir in and add the 1/2 cup of olive oil.
The Eggplant halves should be golden - remove from skillet and place in a glass dish. The scoring in the eggplant should have opened the meat so you can spread the anchovy mixture across the surface and into the crevices.
Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until the eggplant is tender.
I only serve this when I am making beef but that's just me.

Big Changes for a Little Family

2010-10-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

I know a young family that is going through some positive, healthy changes. Papa has been diagnosed with diabetes and is determined to live healthily by making lifestyle changes. The little red-headed family go for outings that include, well, the outdoors and playing and walking and getting fresh air and exercise.
We will call them the Neats*. Joffe and Ifer Neat have a lovely toddler daughter we will call Cerise for the pink in her cheeks. Cerise has always eaten well because the Neats are thoughtful, planning parents who want the best for her. Ifer has been a clean eater for a while and now Joffe has joined the party.
I know a little about this kind of eating so I invite you to join me in some of the recipes I reccomend for a tasty, healthy life for my friends the Neats.
*My friend JackiOh! is the originator of this family's nickname.

Portable Petit Quiche

1 14 oz container Better n Eggs (BNE)
sea salt, pepper to taste
choice of healthy additions: minced, sautee'd onion, bell peppers; grated sharp reduced fat cheese (I like extra sharp cheddar), drained chopped green chilis, drained salsa solids, leftover vegetables, etc.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees, coat an 8-cup (large) muffin tin with non-stick spray.
Pour BNE into a mixing bowl, add salt and pepper and one whole egg. Whisk together and add a tsp of milk or 2 tsp cottage cheese if you have it. Add no more than 1/4 cup of grated cheese, stir in, and then add no more than 1/4 cup of whatever else you want - finely minced turkey and cooked onion and peppers or salsa that has been pressed through a sieve. I like to use cheese and a little can of chopped green chilis from which I've squeezed the excess liquid.
Stir until everything looks even and then pour into the greased tin. Pour evenly into each cup, bake for 20-30 minutes until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted into a quiche-muffin comes out clean.
These will keep for days in the fridge. Let them cool, pop them out of the tin and wrap each one in a piece of waxed paper and a paper towel. They re-heat easily in the nuker. 30-45 seconds on high with their wrap loosened a bit and they are ready to eat after a cooling minute or two.

5 minute Breakfast Sandwich
When you have a little extra time but still need to move while eating, this is a nice change.

Whole Grain Bread, toasted
3-4 slices turkey bacon
2 eggs
butter
salt and pepper

I believe in giving your body stuff to digest that it recognizes. My body knows what butter is, the crap in Cholesto-butr, I Can't Believe This Is Margarine etc is not recognizable. Just use you fats in moderation.

Frizzle up a package of turkey bacon (Butterball is nice) on Sunday and stick in a zippy bag in the fridge.
Monday morning, get the zippy from the fridge and remove 3 slices, put on a paper towel.
Put a 1/2 tsp or so of butter in a small non-stick pan on medium, pop two slices of whole grain bread in the toaster and whisk the eggs to a little froth. The pan should be ready so add salt and pepper to the eggs and pour into the pan. Turn heat to medium high and scramble the eggs while the bacon is doing 15 seconds in the microwave. Toast, eggs and bacon should all come up at once now - top the toast with the eggs, then bacon, add top slice of toast and press together. Wrap it in a paper towel and head out:)

The latter recipe sounds very simplistic but that is the point - a few movements that take very little time can keep you from making a drive through mistake that will cost you MORE in terms of money, time, and most importantly, nutrition.

Help your good intentions become good actions; think before you open your mouth - whether eating or speaking!
And thanks to the Alex Sink campaign for the ads. I've voted, and look forward to Ms. Sink as Florida's next Goernor:)

Sint Maarten 10-10-10

2010-10-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

Here we are on Oyster Bay in Sint Maarten on their first Independence Day!
I just made a modified version of Spanish Bean soup for the doughty PJ7 DX-pedition ham radio operators housed in the condo - Charlie and our friend John Miller K6MM from California.
The guys are waiting for a ship to arrive with all of their equipment. However, true to the ingenuity this hobby requires, they have cobbled together a couple of stations and are on the air and making contacts.
We can see the French side of the island across the bay from our bedroom and living room windows. The water is that sweet blue the Caribbean offers that is a blend between the shade of a true turqoise and blueberries mashed in champagne.
Sint Maarten Soup
1 stick smoked sausage, sliced
1 bag dried garbanzo beans, cooked and drained
4 large diced potatoes
2 large yellow onions
2 cloves garlic (sliced in half)
64 ounces chicken stock
EVOO
1 liter bottled water
Paprika, sea salt, Cavender's Greek Seasoning to taste

Sautee the onion, garlic and sausage in 2 tbl Extra Virgin olive oil until onions are translucent. Add potatoes and stock, season with 2 teaspoons sea salt and half tsp Cavender's. Bring to a boil and add garbanzo beans. Bring all to a boil, add a tsp of paprika, reduce heat to a simmer. Taste for seasoning after about 30 minutes. If broth is too strong, add water. Adjust seasonings every 15-30 minutes. Simmer for about 2-2/12 hours until beans and potatoes are soft.

Serve with a warm baguette and real butter:)

I soaked so many garbanzos I had extras which I have frozen to cook as a side dish. Re-hydrated garbanzo beans taste amazingly like field peas.

I love Food TV!

2010-08-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

I have gotten on a Food Network kick again lately. I am trying the "Clean Eating" method of having a healthful and hopefully weight-reducing way of living so inspiration to cook is necessary:)
I am still playing with salmon; tonight was a solo meal of pan-sauteed filet topped with my modified tzsatzki sauce (cucumber and sour cream with sea salt), fresh avocado with lime and tomato slice with a few extra cuke slices. It was good, so tomorrow night when Charlie comes home we'll have the salmon cucumber sauce again with Picchio-pachio, a simple pasta dish of fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil and linguine.
Just ordered some Sensa, so we'll see how that works on my non-smoking cravings for all things food. I'm glad I stopped smoking but I really don't like being 40 pounds heavier:)

Fish!

2010-07-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Did you know that wild-caught sockeye salmon tastes vastly different from farmed salmon? It does - and enough different to change me from a salmon-hater (except for lox and salmon croquettes) to a salmon lover.

There is a uniqueness of taste to wild salmon that I look forward to experimenting with, but for my first preparation I used a Publix recipe as a jump-off point.

Coriander Salmon with Easy Dill Sauce; Cucumber Heart Salad

1 1/4 pounds sockeye salmon, skinned and cut into serving-sized pieces
sea salt, coriander, fresh pepper, EV olive oil

Light Sour cream, fresh dill

Salad

Two cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
one can artichoke hearts, chopped
One lemon, juiced and zested
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3/4 cup diced red onion
5-6 oz bag roquette (arugula)

Whisk lemon zest and juice with oil, sea salt to taste and a little crushed garlic if you like. Toss the salad ingredients with the dressing - remember to use good olive oil for salads. DaVinci is among the best tasting grocery store oils you can get.

Mix 3/4 cup sour cream and 4 tbl of chopped dill, set aside (squeeze whatever is left of your lemon into the mix even if that amounts to an eighth of a teaspoon; it does add piquancy).

While the salad is setting up and melding flavors, rinse and pat dry the salmon. Season with about two teaspoons of coriander per side and a pinch of sea salt, fresh ground pepper. Press the seasoning into the fish, heat oil on medium high heat until water sizzles in pan. Add fish and cook about 4 1/2 minutes per side. The fish will look opaque and feel firm when done. Take up to plate, add sour cream mixture to pan and whisk for about 30 seconds to warm.

Add salad to plates, overlap with Salmon and drizzle fish with dill sauce.

One another note, my youngest kittens are black twins who have wide blue eyes and look like tiny bears. They have wrapped my husband around their miniature claws:)

My legs are brown!

2010-05-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

I got back from the tanning salon this afternoon and realized I had allowed myself to be seen in public in a pair of shorts for the first time in I don't know how many years. My legs are brown and look quite nice!

Let me back up - about a week ago, after several weeks of consideration, I joined a tanning club. My fair, freckly skin has been protected for about the past ten years by determined sun avoidance. I love the feel of the sun on my skin and have felt deprived over these years but reminded myself that this exercise would keep my skin young.

Well, I am going to spend a week on some beach with my mom in June and decided I'd like to enjoy the sun rather than fearfully spackle myself with SPF 50 whitewash. I want to walk in the sun without fear of burning, smile at the sky with a golden face and enjoy the warmth of summer on my skin.

I have dutifully applied the proper products and gradually added to my minutes in the tanning bed and my legs are now a very pretty, healthy-looking tan. I am ready to wear dresses again, and skirts! No pantyhose, ever!

Spring and Renewal and Feeling Bright

2010-03-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we had the first day of Spring and the day was windy and sharp with cool. Spring is more of a state of mind for me at this point, more about the promise I see in the buds on the Turkish Fig tree we planted today and the scent of the fat cream flowers on the grapefruit tree.

We had some homeless folks who are in a work training program come over to do planting and cleaning outside. The man was personable and bright, the woman not so much. It taught me a little about cognitive abilities that I usually don't have to consider. With her, you had to tell her about each thing that needed done twice. Him, no - got it first run and had already found a way to make it better before I could draw a breath.

I'll be looking for grants to write for this group tomorrow. Helping people help themselves is worth spending my time on.

Those little memory flashes...and PIZZA!

2010-03-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I was ticking through pleasant memories to pass minutes on a sleepless night. I went back to my last radio gig, when I had a really good guy as the music director and morning show and I side-kicked for him.
A side-kick just helps the 'funny guy' be funnier. Write some jokes/bits, be the straight man, be a good second banana. I had done that gig for quite a few guys and was usually their boss. The best ever was my friend Chuck who now works in a top 25 market.
I knew he was good from the beginning and I wished he'd come along back during the heyday of personality radio.
This guy taps into the best of everything. He brings joy to the world he looks at and can communicate that from behind a mike. And he isn't a pain in the ass to skeptical people like me.

He found me on FaceBook today and all of my shelved feelings for this little brother of another mother came back. He is, of course, older and his otter-slick black hair is now grey. And I still want good things for him and would cheerfully kick the pins out from under anyone who offered him harm. My poor dear, stuck with friends who haven't lost their redneck proclivities:)

Anyway, in those ancient days when radio was changing and we could record our voices over music on a hard drive and have it sound live, we tested the studio we were getting. We recorded some normal "DJ" time and drove to my favorite pizza place, Barnaby's, a few miles away and sat with a little radio on our table. We ordered pizza and beer and waited for the top of the hour to come to listen to his voice talk up the next song. We looked at each other with eye-brows arched and eyes opened large and then howled and slapped palms. IT WORKED, and radio would not be the same again.

The pizza was wonderful, as it always is at Barnaby's (Tallahassee, FL) and we scarfed it down so we could scoot back to the studios to see what other magic this new thing could help us do.

Publix Pizza dough
16 oz can good crushed tomatoes
Basil, oregano, thyme, sea salt, ground sage
mild Italian sausage, removed from casing and scramble-cooked
sliced white muchrooms and red onions
Mozzerella and Parmesan cheese
Pre-heat oven to 400

Mix the crushed tomatoes with the seasoning, add more to taste.

The closest I have had to create the at-home Barnaby's experience starts with dough from Publix. You do have to work it and stretch it and settle it on a cornmeal-dusted pizza paddle.
Once you get it stretched to a thinness (this dough bakes thick), prick it well with a pastry pronger or sharp-tined fork.
Slide it onto a pizza pan (I like the ones with holes in them, crisper crust) and put on bottom rack of oven for five minutes. Remove, give a few minutes to cool and then add as much of the sauce as you want, add toppings and cook for another 10-12 minutes.

Pour a cold beer, cut the pizza into slices and enjoy it with a friend.

Will it or won't it??

2010-03-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for spring to begin and getting a little cranky about it.
I had plans for a nice grilled supper tonight but it was too damn cold to make my poor husband stand outside and tend the fire.
I'll tell you what I have in mind anyway since it WILL happen;)

2 lb boneless chuck roast, marinated
2 lb skinny aspargus, tough ends snapped
two portobellos, sliced thickly
3 bell peppers - red, orange, yellow

Mix a marinade of half cup extra virgin olive oil and half cup red wine vinegar, whisk in 1/8 tsp ground mustard, 1/2 tsp each thyme and oregano, three cloves of minced garlic. Rinse and pat roast dry, put into a bag with marinade, massage marinade into beef. Put in the fridge for at least an hour, optimally overnight.
Wash and dry peppers, turn oven on to BROIL, put peppers onto a cookie sheet covered with foil (so you don't have to wash the cookie sheet) and place under the broiler, Turn the peppers every 5-7 minutes, as teh skin chars, until all sides are charred a bit. Remove from pan and put into a plastic bag, close bag, let rest 20 minutes or more.
When the peppers have cooled, remove from bag, seed and peel. Section peppers into strips based on where the pepper's bracts are, set aside.
Brush a little olive oil on both sides of the mushrooms and sprinkle with oregano and a little time. Put them aside and grill chuck roast to desired steak-eating temp; start mushrooms when you have five minutes of cooking time left. Grill them OFF direct flame until they are fork tender.
Spray a grill tray with cooking mist or brush with oil, arrange asparagus in one layer and place on grill, tossing spears until crisp-tender.
Your cooking should have items come off in this order: chuck roast, mushrooms, asparagus. The roast needs to sit for 10-15 minutes before cutting. The asparagus has to be watched because it will be done quickly.

Cut the roast along its sections and top each with a strip of pepper. Serve with the mushrooms and asparagus, a little good balsamic dribbled over the asparagus is nice:)

Meow

2010-01-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

The Meowies are in fine form tonight. They don't want to stay out long because of the cold but still have some energy to burn so fur is flying, a certain amount of catly cursing is going on and I think someone just hocked a hairball on the carpet.

I woke up to nine of them sharing the bed with me this morning. I know, I know - that sounds like a lot of cats. It is a lot of cats but it works out.

We just started with two, the late Jackson and then-young Romeo; a feral mother showed up with kittens in the back yard and we tamed them but could never get her and she kept producing until she took off. So we have something like 12 tame and "fixed" and four or five I feed but haven't been able to tame. Oh, and the Big-headed males from the neighborhood who come around for wetfood and to flirt with the intact females.

Romeo, my 19-pound Flame Point Siamese, my once-timid Romy, now growls low in his chest when he sees those interlopers. Romy hasn't got the equipment to mate but he considers all of the yard and its residents to be his responsibility. He took one kitten to be his special charge when we first began adopting our windfall. Porter, black down to his paw-pads, bumped his tiny black nose against Romeo's big pink one and it was love.

Po is now grown but still bumps his nose against Romy's and curls up beside him to nap. Sometimes they look like the symbol for Yin and Yang; a black apostrophe curved into a white one.

My little troop have two big litter boxes in the laundry room that I clean often enough to wish cat excrement was a marketable commodity. I'd make bank on even a penny a pound - seriously.

They are ready for me to move to the bedroom. Romeo, Porter, Randy, Cabrillo, George and Trixie, Jerry, Icom, Carrot and Wink will come to the bed but Bill (aka Fuzzbutt), Lo Po (little Porter) and Bo Po (Baby Porter) will sleep wherever they feel most secure. They are the wildest of the group; only Bill likes being petted. LoPo and BoPo are solid black babies just like Porter and have the same curiosity about people that led Po to tame himself.

This morning I realized that cats really do smile. One of my big golden boys (Cab) was laying beside me, purring as I pet him, and I saw him in profile and saw his mouth curved up. I looked at some of the others who were nearby and purring; all had the upturned mouth. I watched them nap and walk and play through the day and saw the way they held their mouths during all of their activities - they definitely express emotion with more than just their eyes and tails.

I have always loved cats and feel very fortunate to have so many who love me back. It's a nice feeling to walk into the yard and have greetings chirped and moawed and miaowed and meowed to me as they leap and roll and trot to me. Most of them are shades of light orange down to red orange (6), then we have brown tabbies (2), black or black and white (4) and precious Wink who manages to be all colors with eyes that are a human hazel shade.

I have always heard that cats are solitary, that cats are not as loyal as dogs nor capable of the unconditional love that dogs show, that cats choose who they love.

I am actually hoping that is true; because if it is, I am a hell of a human.

Sometimes you just have to be unsinkable...and laugh

2009-12-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

I had a day this week that would have been perfect in a screwball comedy romance.
It started with a late-to-work, crappy hair day. Copier ate my originals a couple of times, banged my knee against my computer stand twice, spilled some lunch on my shirt - but I was OK. It's Christmas time! I am Happy!
I go home, the newspaper is wet, mail damp but I go into the house to meet the kitties inside and let others in so the feeding can begin.
My nose twitches. I feel like Will Smith in 'Independence Day:' "WHAT the hell is that SMELL????"
Charlie left our bedroom door open in spite of a warning not to since we've had some bad behavior regarding inappropriate poops in there.
That's where my nose led me and I discovered that several kitties had urinated in the same place, ON THE BED, to the point that the comforter, both blankets and top sheet were wet.
My mood has suffered a crack, but I am still chipper and I strip the bed, go open 15 cans of wetfood for the horde,and start sorting the bedding. Sheets go in first.
Did I mention several calls from corporate on an emergency of their own making? Yah.
The washer has begun to fill and I wipe up catfood spills but the water sounds odd. Sounds close, smells fresh, like it is hitting air..OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE WATER IS SHOOTING FROM THE CLEAN-Y PLACE-Y SPOUT!!!!!!
I turned the machine off, figured out the problem and looked at a wet litter box rug, wet laundry room floor and decided I'd been a good soldier long enough.
I poured a glass of wine, called my husband and told him he was bringing supper home because I would not be cooking it!

If I had continued on my Pollyanna day, supper would have been Ham Pie since I had brought some good, salt cured country ham home from my mother's house.

Ham Pie

2 slices salt cured country ham
water to cover
milk
3 boiled eggs, chopped fine
big batch of biscuit dough

This is so easy it ought to be taught to girlscouts!

In a heavy-bottomed pot bring the ham slices and water to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cook until you have a dense, hammy broth. Remove from heat, fish out the ham and cut into bite sized pieces. Just put those into the bowl with the diced eggs.
Add about 3 cups of milk ( I prefer organic) to the pot with the ham broth and bring to a high simmer (watch it, milk can scorch). Turn it up to a boil and as soon as the bubbles start begin dropping teaspoonfuls of biscuit dough into the pot. 5 or 6 is good for a small ham pie.
Turn the milk back down to a high simmer and let the dumplings cook while you grease an 8x8 glass pan and preheat the oven to 350.
As soon as the pan is greased, pour in the milk and dumplings, add the ham and egg dice, make biscuits with the rest of the biscuit dough (flatten the biscuits a little) to form a cover.
Bake for about 30 minutes until the top biscuits are done.
I always serve this in bowls and any left over I add milk to for re-heating. Use whole milk!

Shades of Age and food for life

2009-12-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

I saw someone today whom I have loved for many years and he has become a shadow of himself. He was once a robust man full of ideas whose very presence brightened a room and wooed all within that room to his way of thinking.
As far as I can tell my beloved friend is not ill, just confused about the best path to a long and healthy life.
He is not the first person I've known or heard of who believed that nearly starving oneself will lead to longevity. As for me, the only really old people I've ever seen who were in their full senses and in control of their faculties had some meat on their bones. Not fat, just not ascetic.

I love food and love to cook and love knowing that I can orchestrate meals that are good for us.

I hope to convince my friend that good eating is good for him - and I may start with some of these recipes.

Sausage Gumbo

I know, that just sounds awful, but the lycopene in the tomatoes, cayenne and chili in the seasoning, and the general goodness of onions, peppers and celery are all good for a body.

1 bag cut okra or one pound fresh, cut into 1/2 slices
1 pound sausage links, country sausage preferably
1 red onion, diced
2 diced bell peppers
3 diced celery stalks
1 can chicken broth
2 32 oz cans petite diced tomatoes
9 tbl Wondra flour
7 Tbl Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Seasoning: Chili powder, thyme, garlic salt, paprika, sage and a bit of cayenne - sea salt and ground pepper OR just get some good Creole seasoning, like Tony Cachere's and add to it.

Pour the oil in a big pot over medium high, add flour when the oil shimmers and begin whisking the flour into the oil. Make a nice roux, I've never had it take more than eight minutes of steady whisking when I use Wondra and olive oil.
Pour your diced trinity into the roux and stir to cover and cook for a minute, add the sausage, tomatoes and broth and stir again. Add enough water to cover everything and add an inch.
Now the waiting starts - simmer and stir, add Okra, then simmer and stir some more, then taste and season.
The gumbo should be done and delicious after an hour and is usually better the next day as the flavors love up on each other:)
Serve over Jasmine rice and feel good about eating good food that has lots in it that's good for you!

I just took a pot of this to my son and daughter-in-law this afternoon to keep them nourished as they celebrate their first week as parents. The scent of my gumbo gently re-heating on their stove wafted my way when I kissed my little grand-infant farewell.
I left knowing they would eat well and that my tiny Pixie infant would get the benefit of it later when her Mama nursed her.

Tuna Poke!

2009-11-25T19:15:00.000-08:00

Tuna Poke, pronounced "Po-Kay," is a Hawaiian dish that I tasted at Cafe 30-A last Saturday night and decided that I had to learn to make!
I bought some sushi tuna from the sushi chef at Publix that he had packaged with toothpick cuts of cucumber and carrot for some thing or another (they won't just sell it to you), freshly picked oak leaf and frisee lettuce and had the rest at home.
If you try, you can buy good tomatoes out of season. The ones on the vine are good after a week on the counter - by the way, never refrigerate tomatoes unless you've cut them.
My attempt came out well but will be different next time. I had bought some pretty, picked-this-morning oak-leaf and frisse lettuce and used it as a base topped with thinly sliced ripe (really!) tomato, toothpick cucumber and carrot and then a timbale of the raw tuna in small chunks with diced avocado dressed in lime juice, sea salt and pepper.I made a dressing to dip into of good EVOO, parsley and lime juice with a splash of red wine vinegar.
There was just too much greenery and the whole dish was enough for two.
Next time, thinly sliced baby or English cucumber, sprinkled with sea salt and topped with thin slices of the tuna. Small dice of the tomato and avocado dressed with ground pepper, sea salt and lime juice along the side and a drip of good EVOO on the edge of the plate for the occasional dip.
That should work:)

asses, elbows and longing

2009-10-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

It is common for me to lose and/or forget passwords. It is also common for the retrieval process to frustrate my patience-deprived soul something fierce. I am always grateful that I have enough sense not to have to go around my ass to get to my elbow (as the saying goes) which does shorten the process a little.
My patience is especially short now because my Sweet Darling is several time zones and thousands of miles away.
I miss him not because of the big things, not for sex or the afternoon kiss hello and morning kiss goodbye; but the tiny things I can still see out of the corner of my eye.

I was setting a new frequency on my car radio and my mind unreeled an old movie of him setting all of the buttons on my '86 Fiero, those deft fingers dancing across the face of the tuner. He is so talented with those hands and fingers and agile mind that his engineering skills are in demand in places and circumstances far from our small town.
Back then watching him set those stations was like watching a concert pianist favor a child with a rendition of "Alley Cat" on a tiny spinette.

Carrot, our littlest kitten, likes to sit on Charlie and sharpen his claws on Charlie's jeans.
I was washing my face before bed the other night and heard the sound of claws on denim and my heart jumped for a moment - but no, Carrot had found a pair of mine to scratch. Another little thing, a vision of him stroking that tiny orange head and blue eyes meeting blue for a conversation on what a big boy Carrot is becoming.

I miss the sound of him breathing.

I was feeling very bereft yesterday since I had not heard from him in 24 hours. He'd been calling a few times a day until then but had left Honolulu for Midway and patchy communication opportunities. He called late today, almost 48 hours since the last time I'd heard his voice.
He was slightly out of breath; he'd had to ride a bike from the side of the island he was working on to the side that had communication capability. He was nearly giddy with exhaustion and happiness in the hobby that took him so far from me, that was the recreation to his vocation.

My happiness at his joy makes things bearable.

Food, fragrances, and fall draws nigh

2009-09-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

The temperature is no longer 80 degrees before nine am and I can walk from my office to the main campus (about 1/5 mile) without breaking a sweat. The heat that is in the air is no longer quite as liquid which makes things feel just a pinch cooler.
I went to one of those precious little stores that carries Vera Bradley and many other pretentious and unnecessary things to get a gift for a retiring colleague. There are always wonderful fragrances in these stores and my nose led me to India Hicks Island Living Spider Lily.
I am in love - even though I hate the name. It is beach sand between my toes, sun on skin, a lightly floral, citrus and green spicy-things smell.
The precious little store got more of my money than I had planned to spend:)

Last Saturday night was all about the kids' favorite restaurant and I wish I had eaten a bite of everyone's food and made notes right away! I was unimpressed with the truffled macaroni and cheese but the asparagus and onion cheese souffle was so good I had to figure out how to make it myself.
The recipe was not on line and I am not an experienced souffle maker, but I pulled it off with help from the Husband. I made the mistake of beating the egg whites by hand while my cheesy-yolky sauce needed stirring so he stirred while I beat.
We had the souffle with Spanish Soup (see July 18, 2009).

Asparagus/Onion Souffle, apologies to Cafe 30-A

1 cup of fresh asparagus, rinsed and snapped into 1/4 inch pieces
1 cup organic milk
6 tbl grated Swiss cheese
3 tbl butter
3 tbl Wondra
3 egg yolks
4 egg whites
1/2 cup finely diced yellow onion
dash Worcestershire sauce
Paprika, Cayenne, dry mustard (about 1/4 tsp each)
Sea Salt, white pepper to taste

Sautee onion in about 1/2 tsp butter, set aside and allow to cool. Grease straight-sided 1.5 L Corning ware round casserole dish with butter. Nuke asparagus with a tsp of water for 45 seconds, drain any water off, all to cool.
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Once the onion and asparagus are cool, arrange in the bottom of souffle dish.
Melt the 3 tbl of butter on medium heat in a non-stick skillet, whisk in Wondra. Once the mixture is smooth, whisk in milk and seasonings. Remove from heat.
Beat the egg whites, WITH A HAND MIXER, 'til stiff.
Return milk/butter mixture to heat, stir in egg yolks. Now it gets tricky. Fold the egg whites carefully and thoroughly into the mixture in the skillet, then pour into the souffle dish.
Put an inch of water into a 9x11 glass pan and sit the souffle dish inside, pop it into the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes.
Cool a little before serving; we loved it with soup but it would be good with a light salad too.

Summer winds down

2009-08-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

Nice weekend but summer is ending and that saddens me. The only good thing about it is the change of foods available and the resultant menu options.
We spent this evening at the home of dear friends, floating in the salt water pool and eating far too much. I brought a very basic Queso dip with a twist that those of you preparing for tail-gate parties might want to consider.
We had eaten tacos the night before, I had had a craving:)
We had leftover taco seasoned meat, about 3/4 cup, that I had seasoned with Chili Powder, Season-all and a pinch of Cayenne. I mixed that with a can of Ro-Tel mild, 16 oz of Mexican Velveeta cut into cubes and zapped for five minutes in high - 2:30, stir , another 2:30 and done.

The neighbors got my mother's Peach Cobbler - a cup of SR flour, cup of sugar, cup of organic milk, tsp vanilla and about a cup and a half of freshly cut peaches mixed and poured into an 8x8 glass dish in which a stick of butter has been melted while pre-heating the oven to 350. Baked for about an hour and nummy!

We'll be going to Epcot's International Wine and Food Festival and that always gives me ideas but I have already started thinking of fall food.I want to find a way to make sweet potatoes into a more savory and less sweet dish and try to make my favorite snack (broccoli on triscuits with Swiss and sea salt and a 20 second zap) into a pretty side dish.

What Makes Us "Us?"

2009-07-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday my Darling and I drove south to Cape Canaveral for a short vacation and to attend a party with some people I only know on line.
Before that strikes you as totally odd, compare it to meeting people at a Sci-Fi Convention or book convention that you've only known through your list-serv. Same thing. We started by sharing an affection for a radio show out of Orlando and ended up liking each other for who we are.
The Darling and I touristed around a bit before the day of the party and generally enjoyed one another's company. On the night before the event I executed what I thought (at the time) to be a good plan - shower, exfoliate, moisturize and have Darling apply fake tan to my white person. After all, brown fat looks better than white fat, right?

I was browny-orange the next morning. Browny-orange, overweight and only know two people who will be at the party and met them just the day before. Of course, I knew them on line so I'd be OK, right?

This is when I knew that I had finally grown into the me I am supposed to be. I was "Ok" with it. With streaky orangey-browny fat, jello shooters that splashed out of their cups and into the trays that held them, making a salad in a hotel room, showing up at a party of sixty-plus people, I was OK. I've finally reached that place where I can see my flaws and foibles clearly and not allow them to cover me with embarrassment.

I had to take off the shirt I'd bought as a swimsuit cover because my fake tan was sweating off into it, leaving browny-orange horizontal streaks on its pretty lime sherbet surface. I bounced my plump patoot through the party , talking and laughing, riding on a boat and jumping into the Atlantic, cooling down in an inflatable kiddy pool, kissing my husband often and hugging old friends who were new faces.

All the while I didn't worry about the 'outer me' others saw. I laughed at my orange streaks, rinsed out my shirt, gave my skin a scrub before immersion into the kiddy pool to avoid polluting the waters, and talked to people who were all beautiful to me. I could see what made them who they were without giving much credence to what their appearances "said."
Their voices were the reflection of the people they were in the little world we cohabit because of our hobby.

Although I won't be able to think of Christine and Molly without thinking of halos of red or blond cherub-curls framing dancing eyes, or Mo without her tilted teal eyes, if I had to paint them the resultant pictures would be swirls of color that spoke of their souls. Billy would be the shape of swirling, high clouds and the blue he loves to fly through.

Being totally comfortable in my own skin - flaws and all - just ONE advantage to aging.

Zoelife

2009-07-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am trying relationship marketing again.
I really like the stuff this time and especially like the price and low environmental impact.

I had tried Monavie before for health and to try to make little $$ but man, it was expensive and shipping costs were high.
A friend of my husband's (who can touch straw and turn it to gold) told me about this new stuff that has great anti-oxidant levels, low environmental impact, low shipping and lower cost so I had to try.
Husband and I like it and drink it daily - you can dump the powder into a bottle of water or do what we do and mix it with water and Sobe Life Water zero calorie Acai Fruitpunch.
I actually feel better than I did when I was slurping Monavie but that's just me. MV is a fine product and if you are using it or considering using it, you are contributing to your good health.
Zoelife is made of high-anti-oxidant, high nutrition vegetables and fruits distilled into a pure powder that you add to water or juice or whatever suits your fancy. I mix mine with the Sobe and drink it in the morning, Husband likes his at night.
Go look at www.zoelifestyle.com/jennifergerman and check the product out.
Let me know if you're interested and I can tip you to saving money (at least $25) on your first order and further orders if you want more.
If you have picky eaters who don't get their fruits and veg every day, this is one way to be sure it happens for a family of four for about $140 a month.

Fun with Facebook - Gourmet Sandwich Supper

2009-07-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally created a Facebook page for myself.
I had missed my 30th class reunion and thought perhaps some of those kids might be on Facebook and went at it!

I've assembled a nice little handful of friends from then and now and my homepage has a mix of updates from the now-conservative people with whom I went to high school and the free-thinkers who are now a part of my life. I wonder what life experiences took some of these light-hearted teenagers and turned them into their parents...but then again, I've become my mother to some degree as well. Thank God!

I had been in Port St Joe one day last week and ate lunch at a charming little restaurant that mainly caters. I had a Guadaloupe's Steak Sandwich and decided to try to add my own twist and replicate it at home. I had also been thinking about our visit to the Columbia in Celebration last year and their Spanish Soup. Here are my versions; they came out wonderfully and made for a good supper on this rainy Saturday night.

Grilled Veg and Beef Sandwich

2lb pot roast or other roast, tenderized and marinated in Publix' balsamic vinaigrette dressing for at least half an hour

1 small eggplant, thickly sliced long-ways
2 zuchinni, 2 yellow squash, sliced same
1 large red onion, sliced thickly
1 5oz pkg sliced fresh portabella mushrooms

Drizzle vegetables with a little good olive oil, season with a sprinkle of Cavendar's, sea salt and oregano. Grill all over low heat until done.

Let the meat rest, then slice very thinly against the grain. Layer grilled vegetables, meat and a few slices of mozzerella on a piece of flatbread, drizzle with olive oil, top with second piece of bread; repeat. Warm in a 300 degree oven for about ten minutes.

Spanish Soup
This is a variant of the Spanish Soup at the Columbia Restaurant.
2 cans garbanzo beans, or more
2 medium white onions, finely diced
2 can chicken broth - use a 32 oz can
3-4 medium-large potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks (1/2 inch)
1 ib or s of country sausage, sliced like fat pepperoni
1-2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp Cavendar's
Tablespoon or so of good XV olive oil

Increase any ingredients to suit your taste!
Put sausage slices into heavy bottomed pot on medium high, begin cooking, add onion after sausage begins to brown. Cook, stirring, until onions are translucent. Add rinsed garbanzo beans, chicken broth, cup of water, potatoes, salt, paprika and Cavendar's and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, add olive oil, cover and cook stirring occassionally for 15 minutes. Add garlic, stir, taste for seasoning and cook for another 20 minutes or until potatoes are falling apart a little.
Adjust everything to your taste - I find the most important things are the quality of sausage and seasonings. If you can't get good quality country sausage buy smoked turkey legs or a smoked ham hock and start working some rubbed sage, thyme and Vigo ham base into the soup.

Cut the sandwiches into quarters, serve with soup. Good stuff!

Short Post - cats

2009-07-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

My sweetie kittens have grown enough to become interested in toys and no longer depend on my lap for adventure.
They tumble around over each other and the stuffed mice and tiny scarecrows full of catnip. They play until they drop - and they drop in a furry pile of gold, brown, grey and white stripes.
I am tired and so are they so I'll retire and cuddle with the big cats. The babies aren't ready to sleep with people yet:)

Just a short post on comments

2009-07-09T23:16:00.001-07:00

If you try to post comments, you have to enter that weird letter thing AND select a profile. To make life easier, select the Anonymous profile from the drop-down box and sign your comment if you wan me to know it's you:)

The heat and the sun, they free me - and in my mother's presence, I am renewed...

2009-07-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday I left my west Florida town to drive to my mom's house on the farm, south and east of here in a part of the state where the earth is rich and palms grow alongside oaks.

I was tired, mentally and physically, and just needed to be with my Mama. Anti-anxiety pills, visualization and meditation can only do so much. I've watered my garden, talked to my plants and sung to my kittens and cats. Even the solid comfort of my husband's company can't polish the rough spots of my soul that are smoothed and soothed by being in my mother's presence.

The further east I go the richer the fragrance of the soil becomes and the healthier the shade of green of the wild growth along the roadside. I take the back way to the farm down two-lane roads to avoid traffic and see the water-meadows, full now of reedy weeds with yellow pom-pom heads, and the road-side stands selling tomatoes and melons. The last of the two-lane roads before US 19/27 is used so little that the asphalt has shifted and cracked along the pollen-yellow center line and allowed a tiny patch of grass to sprout.

The road leading to Mama's bright, happy house winds over a hill and past a pond, often past pigs grazing on the right of way under the watchful eye of a billygoat. They belong to my uncle and are probably the most relaxed livestock in the Southeast.

She greets me in the driveway and we drag all of my pack-for-two-weeks-for-three-days stuff into the house, passing the stinky black lab and lazy farm cats up the garage stairs and into the kitchen. A little tiny grey kitten is staggering across the floor of the garage and Mama says that it is the only surviving member of Princess' last litter; Princess is a long-limbed black and white beauty who has been (up to this point) a very good mother. Princess won't nurse this baby.

We bring the baby in and take turns holding and feeding her with a small syringe, talking all the time of what we'll do next, where we'll go, what is happening with family, all comforting topics and I feel my neck muscles loosen for the first time in weeks.

We spend the next few days tumbling from the farm to town to my favorite aunt's house, feeding the kitten (who sleeps in a snuggie bed at the bottom of my bed), talking and laughing. Mama is so easy to be with, open and loving and sharing. Her grace is everywhere and she believes that Princess will go back to being a good mother and at least groom the baby. She will groom, but roughly so we bring the little thing back into the house.

The sun is high and strong everywhere we go and the heat in some places is stifling. We go to a place Mama and Aunt KayKay call "The Place with Pretty Stuff." I don't think it even has a real name. It is a couple of acres just off the highway with a blacktop apron full of cement statuary and metal sculptures and two large metal buildings with no A/C or fans but stacked with fascinating merchandise.
Mama wants me to pick a sink from the vibrantly patterned collection in the first building. The sinks are from Mexico and painted ceramics; most are a palette of flowers, some are dominated by sunflowers or tropical fish. I am drawn to one with pale blue calla lillies on a darker blue, a simple pattern with touches of matte gold and buff. Peaceful.
Mama and KayKay are clearly surprised, it almost seems as if bets were taken as to which I'd choose:)
KayKay pushes the sink I've mentally dubbed "flowerpower" for the rainbow colored flowers and their flow from one to another. "I thought you'd like this one, it looks like your plates from your first wedding!"

I say, "No, that's who I was then. This is who I have become."
And that's true. I was once a wild melange of red and orange and purple and green and a yellow that would hurt the eye. I've changed, found who I should be, and I am much more peaceful. There is still some yellow in me but it is the soft yellow of fresh butter, sometimes even the icy yellow of a cut lemon, but I am mostly blue and green.
When I am feeling best I am the color of a richly blue summer sky wrapped around the deep green of spring pine-needles. I had dulled down to the occasional fitful grey-blue of February skies and no green at all before I went to see Mama.
We walked across the lot, Mama in her sun hat and the rest of us bare-headed and only me fair enough to be in danger of burning or fainting from heat. At least as far as Mama is concerned. I am still her baby even on the shady side of 40 and that is a comforting thought at any time.
The salesman wants to show me everything and talk the whole while. He knows where every breeze pops in the complex. Mama catches him talking to me at the back of the first building, me between a power pole and the building's corner. He said there was always a breeze there and the prevailing winds proved him true.
The wind snatched my damp hair from my neck and sent it out like a flag behind me.
I was still growing redder from the direct sun and I think Mama could feel my skin heating even from ten feet away. I was happy - hot sun overhead, heated air around and a breeze to keep my hair moving.

"Sweetheart, you need to come into the shade before you faint."
It was so very hot, and her words were sent with the warmth of love, but they splashed on me like the cool water from the porch spigot at the old farm house.

I love the heat, its depth and thickness; the wealth offered by the sun to my skin and my self, and the cool places my mother provides when the heat is too great for me, when being a grown-up is just too hard.

We kept sharing the feeding and petting of little Possum kitty, so named for her genrally odd appearance and, in my case, in hope that an ugly name would drive the bad spirits away from stealing her. She can't hold her head up too well and walks like a drunk so she needs as much Mama attention as she can get.

I drove back west today with a full heart and a smooth sould. My fingers always want to add a 'd' to "soul" so there must be a reason. Maybe I have a 'sould,' a sun-soaked vitamin-d soul instead of the garden variety white bible toting soul:)
I came home with the happiness I'd been missing.
It's the stuff that lets me do laundry with a good attitude, read deadly dull work crap so I can get to the good stuff that makes me think (it's like shelling nuts, the work to get to the good).
I am happy, peacefully happy. I plan to walk in the sun again tomorrow and to talk to my mother on the phone to soak in some extra food for my heart.

Sometimes a girl just needs her Mama.

Scallops and braised endive

2009-06-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

I stayed at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando back in April and had a wonderful meal at the Old Hickory Steakhouse that involved scallops and a vegetable puree. I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay lately and some of the simple dishes he pulls together look divine.

Darling Husband was at Field Day (an event I'll address later) this weekend so it was a prime weekend to experiment with my cooking so I decided to try my hand at the scallops and a Ramsay dish.
I did my shopping Saturday and ended up not making my experiment until tonight so it is a good thing it worked out since husband had to eat it!

Pan-Seared Scallops on Vegetable Puree' with caviar

Dozen Large Sea Scallops
Bag Broccoli and Cauliflower florets (10 oz or so)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Chicken bouillon
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/2 tsp sea salt
2-3 grinds fresh black pepper
salty caviar

Steam the vegetables in their bag in the microwave, put in blender or food processor with about a half teaspoon of bouillon and salt. Puree. This may take a few tries, add a little water if necessary to "move" the vegetables. Leave in the blender to stay warm.
Rinse scallops, pat dry and season both sides with oregano, salt and pepper. Heat 2 tsp olive oil (use good oil) in a skillet over medium high heat. Add scallops when oil is hot enough to sizzle a drop of water.
While scallops cook, prepare braised endive,
Turn scallops over when you can see the sides become opaque, finish cooking.
Remove pan from heat to prepare plate.

Braised endive

3-4 heads of endive, washed and discolored outer leaves removes
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sea Salt

Trim bottom of each endive head, slice length-wise in half and then quarters and then eighths. Some pieces will fall to the side, that's OK you'll cook them too.
Pour enough oil in a medium skillet to cover the bottom, heat on medium high. Add endive and a sprinkling of the sea salt. Cook the endive until crisp tender, don't over cook. It should still be a pretty green and white and hold its structural integrity.

Plating:

Put about a tablespoon of puree for each scallop on the outer rim of a serving platter. Place each scallop on puree, garnish each with 1/2 tsp of caviar. Put endive in the center of the platter.

Serve with a green salad dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar.

When I had the scallops at the Old Hickory they clearly used expensive caviar and that flavor showed. I bought the cheap $8.99 caviar at Publix since if I failed with this dish I didn't want to have too much invested in it.
The flavor, when I ate a scallop with caviar on it at Hickory, was very reminiscent of lobster. The cheap caviar didn't give that same flavor. I think the main thing that gave it that richness was the saltiness and fishiness of the caviar so the next time I do this I am going to add anchovy fillets wrapped around capers to see how that shakes out.

The endive could not have been better even if Gordon himself had been in the kitchen - but I would not have kicked him out of the house!
La, a handsome man who can really cook - how lucky is Mrs. Ramsay, eh?

The Smell of the Gulf, the smell of the sun

2009-06-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

There were a few patches of shade today in the parking lot at the former motel restaurant I stopped for lunch. The old bay side hotel had been converted to housing for Visa workers who did house-keeping and other jobs at the beach side hotels the man owned.
He's a lot better than other resort owners who stack Eastern European workers in three bedroom rat-holes six to a room and charge them for the pleasure.
The parking lot is rumpled blacktop and I found a pinch of shade beneath a scrub oak.

Today was nice. It was only 91 and the breeze from the bay was steady so I never broke a sweat. As I crossed that lumpy asphalt the smell of salt water and someone's bait and a hint of Coppertone covered me for a few seconds and I wanted to be ten again.
I remember riding on the beach in the back of somebody's daddy's truck, feeling the effects of the sun on my shoulders and knowing my hair was a big tangle and looking into the rear-view mirror to see how bad it was.
I was beautiful. My pond-scum green eyes were full of fire; sparks of gold and bright green with the colors made bolder by the savage island child color of my face. My hair was a big tangle of white sand-colored strands mixed into the usual pine-straw red.
When I left the restaurant a skinny laughing woman in a floppy t-shirt and shorts passed me on her way in with her man. She looked like my youngest aunt for a second with long hair hanging over her shoulders like a girl on a 70's album cover.
I wanted to call my aunt and see if I could drive down right then to go to the beach and go crabbing with her and collect the best sunburn we could in a few hours.
I let that daydream tumble behind my eyes from the restaurant back to the office, never trying to work the logistics, just enjoying the vision.

I'll be going to spend the weekend with Mama soon so I have decided that we'll snag my aunt, a cooler, a net or 3 and some chicken necks and head to the beach. We'll get too much sun and wear our hair down so the wind can tangle it in knots and lighten it up. We'll smell like Coppertone and beach sand and I know my skin will nearly glow in the dark and feel warm even in the coldest air conditioning.

I'll be happy leaving footprints on the ancestral beach sand with these women who are so important to me. I've always looked at them as ethereal critters whose toes barely touch ground; faeries who dance across flower tops and hardly ruffle a petal, women who are so grounded and deep in what being a true woman is that they ascend the mundane world that I inhabit when I'm not looking.
One day, with much effort, I may be like them.

Changes in the Market - People Making their own Jobs

2009-06-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Avon has used national TV to advertize products and for representitives for a long time - but now they are really recruiting sales reps in a big way!
So are Amway and Mary Kay.
Why? Because although product sales are generally down, personal health and beauty products are not - and people are going to these other sources instead of the Department stores and specialty stores for their lip sticks, facial care, vitamins, etc.
The trick, apparently, is to select mid/low-range cost vehicles to sell. I doubt Arbonne and other high-dollar MLM businesses are doing well. I imagine that if Avon didn't have some lower price-point items that they'd be suffering, too.

Anyway, after being a failed Monavie operative, I am going to try something with similar effects that is lower cost and more eco-friendly. My husband has a friend who makes anywhere between a few hundred thousand to a million on MLM products that he believes in, so I am getting on board to see if I can make some "up" in this down market and maybe make some property investments before land prices increase again...I guess this time I should set myself some goals and really understand the compensation package and stop waiting for the stuff to sell itself as soon
as I buy the cute little shot glasses with the product logo etched on them (which this doesn't have, BTW).

I think that on some level I am lazy when it comes to me. I work my ass off for my regular job because it interests me, I want to make my boss happy, and my work makes peoples' lives better. This kind of work is basically just for me, requires me to step out of my comfort zone and do something that seems selfish.

When I was young and in college I worked part-time for a department store in the Bridal and Designer Fashions salons. I loved it. The store had just changed it's policies so part-time workers weren't eligible for commissions. Perfect. I sold the hell out of dresses because I liked doing it and liked helping people look nice - and got to do that without the pressure of needing to earn a commission.

I think if I knew my paycheck depended on a commission that I would have felt too guilty to sell the dresses. Weird, I know. My husband's friend says to not think of it as sales, but as telling people about something that I like, making referrals, like telling them about a restaurant that I love.

I am the world's worst network marketer so we'll see if I can do this. Or end up with cases of the crap gathering dust in my guest room:)

Baby, it's HOT Outside!

2009-06-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

I live in Florida, pretty much always have and probably always will, so I get it - it gets hot here.

The last few days have been scorching, though, and unbearable I would think to people not genetically prepared to survive it. The lighted time and temp sign on the credit union read "+100" today when I drove past it. Panicky warnings are being issued by the TV news people to drink lots of water, stay in the shade, along with the tutorial on recognizing signs of heat stroke and what to do should it happen to you.

I hope you were paying attention to the phrase "genetically prepared."
As I stated in my introduction, my family has been here pretty much since dirt. In spite of my fair skin, light hair and eyes, the Florida heat is my friend. The air is rich with water, a humidity that my thirsty skin and lungs embrace, and sometimes I feel like I am walking through an invisible pool of warm Gulf water. Especially here, where I live close enough to the Gulf to smell the beloved scent of salt, sun, and sealife. Inland the thick air is a blanket that smells of grass, farm animals and growing crops.

Today, as the sun was cooking tourists on the beach, I was making my way across asphalt parking lots to secure items needed and wanted in the household. As others walked past me in the parking lots I noticed labored breathing, sweat-soaked faces and general discomfort.
Secure in my native superiority, I sailed across the black top into the air-conditioned comfort of the stores and accomplished my tasks with no more than a bit of a healthy pink glow added to my skin. It was a nice reminder of how lucky I am to have been raised in this atmosphere of wet heat, regular sun-showers and the breeze that cools the sweat on your brow just before you get grumpy.

Have you ever opened a 450 degree oven, got a little too close to the door and breathed in that air? That hot, hot, dry, arid air? That's the way the air feels in places without humidity. Santa Fe and Albuquerque, lovely places to visit as long as you can stay inside. A walk-about for me lasted ten minutes before I sought out the nearest watering hole.

So, tomorrow when you look out at your beautiful day, love it for what it is - and just deal with whatever kind of heat you have and be glad it isn't cold.

I'm going to go outside now and gulp a drink of air-water.

Loss

2009-06-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

We are raising two sets of kittens; one set six weeks old, the other almost a month old.
My six- 6 week olds have been eating big food, trying to use the box (with mixed success, today was bad) and socializing happily with us humans.
The tiny ones are mothered by a kitty who really doesn't like humans and only tolerates us for food so it was important to get the babies away and petted.
I was worried about trying to do that since I felt that there was a toss-up: move the babies and have Stripey Butt reject them or move them so they can be adopted.
Stripey Butt solved this for me by beginning to ignore the babies. There were only three, two grey stripes and one orange kitten and after weeks of hiding them she allowed them to walk around the house by themselves.
She waited too late.
She managed to starve the runt of her litter before I could save him.
He was a striped gray and black kitty who looked far younger than his brothers.
I found him when we got home from dinner, doing baby-kitten stagger and mewing, while his mother flirted with one of our neutered males.
I scooped him up and set up my feeding station of water and cat milk. He wouldn't take the food and his mother wouldn't nurse him so I held him close to my skin. He slept a little and then stopped breathing. I did everything I knew to do but the tiny one was dead.
Stripey and Pinky are twins, yet Pink is the good mother with her brood of six while Stripey can't keep her 3 alive much less be nice to the food source.
I am putting her into a cat carrier and sending her to the shelter sooner than I had planned. Pinky can nurse Stripey's remaining babies (they've shared that duty in the past with Pinky doing most of the work). The shelter here is no-kill and I just can't have a cat that won't accept petting and who won't try to keep her babies alive.

I am very bitter because I held this kitten while he cried for food his mother wouldn't give (and apparantly had not for some time) and he wouldn't take from me. He is wrapped in a small towel now and will be buried in a secluded corner of the back yard

We'll fix Pinky and keep her and I hope to place all but one of the kittens. There is one little golden boy who wants nothing more than to climb my shoulders and hide in my hair. Have to love a baby with good taste!

I am not at my best now so this is probably shitty writing. I haven't lost a cat in many years and losing one, especially a baby, is very hard.
I keep looking at him and wondering if I could have done something, if I should have just taken him from Stripey Butt before things reached this point.
I haz a sad.

The Kittens Discover Litter is Not Food

2009-06-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

The kittens have been old enough to leave puddles and little poops around for us for about a week and a half now. I have grabbed them when they gave signs and rushed to the litter box only to be stymied by their conviction that Fresh Step is food. The tell-tale grumpy meows and pacing come to an end once their paws touch the scoopable and their bobble-heads fall forward in order to acquire a tongue-full of litter.

I don't know if it is the sparkly blue odor-killing crystals or the general belief that I wouldn't put them anywhere that wasn't food, but as soon as I placed the babies in the box they assume an eating position. And I would spend the next few minutes scooping the stuff out of their mouths, much to their dismay.

Tonight my furry darlings had milk and wet food, dry food made for babies and some water. After playing and napping a few got up from their nest on the couch with me and trotted to the place that litter boxes live, the laundry room.

I followed to be sure this wasn't going to be another "we wanted to go for a walk and you weren't there and we were lost YOWL" event. That happens due to the drama even the youngest kitten enjoys. It is fun to them (I gather) to scoot away from a known safe place and then scream for rescue. I fall for it every time.

My darlings didn't stop to cry for rescue, they went straight for the box, heaved their plump kitten bellies over the edge and assumed the position. Tee-tee accomplished and no litter eaten.
It was a good day.

On Mandolines and realizing that there is sometimes a point

2009-06-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've owned a mandoline for several years now and used it with the same impunity that I use serrated knives for tomatos and sharp paring knives for cucumbers. I cut towards myself because I am uncoordinated and cannot make a decent slice otherwise.
I've paid for this flaw as proven by the scars on my pinky fingers, forefingers, and the occasional loss of a finger nail. The mandoline has caused me the odd knuckle bruise or scrape, nothing serious. Until now.

I have never paid as dearly for my insolence towards sharp edges as I did Saturday slicing red potatoes for a new recipe.

See, the mandoline has a food-holder that is designed to protect your fingers from the very, very, very sharp blade that cuts the food. I simply never bought into the design of that food holder, especially for shorter foods like round red potatoes and figured I'd be slicing more food by hand than by machine if I used the holder.

As my first red potato became smaller I put the palm of my hand on it to guide the last bit through the slicer. Pinky finger first. I promptly lost an eighth of an inch of meat and skin from that little finger and began bleeding professionally. You know, like it was my job to pump out AB positive into a paper towel.

I still had the better part of three pounds of potatoes to slice and couldn't really use my right hand completely so I had to trust the food grabber of the mandoline. It worked perfectly. PERFECTLY.

I have the unfortunate habit of experiencing events before they happen - envisioning how tools should work on product, seeing the landing gear tuck up into the plane after becoming airborne, dissecting why cilantro and mango are Just Wrong, and deciding that mandoline food holders will waste food.

Sunday night I ate a mango salsa with scallops and it was good. My mandoline wound is on the mend. Although I will continue to picture landing gear sliding into its little place on every plane I travel in, I will also try to remember that other people MAY know what they are talking about.

More Party Food- Sliced Red Potato Salad

2009-06-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

After some fruitless web searches I developed this myself!

I wanted a red-jacket potato salad with the potatoes in slices but not crumbly which to me meant no cooking before slicing. Slice first, boil quickly and ice down seemed to be the way. So, I did. My trusty mandoline did the slicing and my favorite pot was used for the boiling in three batches so the potato slices had plenty of room to circulate and cook without sticking together. After I took each batch up I put them into a large bowl with about two cups of ice cubes and 8 cups of water to stop the cooking process.
The potatoes should maintain their structural integrity after cooking which means that cooking must be monitored carefully and the potatoes taken up as soon as they are cooked but still firm and immersed into the cold water. Only allow them to stay in the water until they've cooled down, transfer to a colander to drain.

3 pounds red potatoes, prepared as above
3 sliced celery stalks
two tablespoons sweet pickle relish
3/4 cup good quality mayonnaise
1 tsp prepared yellow mustard
1 8 oz can sliced black olives
1 12 ounce package good quality salsa (not the room temp stuff at the market, spring for the good refrigerated stuff!)

Mix the mayo, mustard, relish and salsa together. Put a layer of potatoes into the bowl, sprinkle with black olives and celery, add some dressing. Sprinkle with sea salt. Repeat until everything is in the serving bowl. Now, mix gently to be sure everything is coated with dressing. Add a little more mayo to taste if needed.
This is best if it can sit all night. I suggest tasting it for more needed salt or pepper. The salsa will add a lot of seasoning itself.

Grown-Up Birthday Party Food

2009-06-15T23:22:00.000-07:00

We just had my darling husband's birthday party Saturday night and, true to form, he insisted that people only come equipped with hunger and thirst.

He is known for his baby-back ribs and top shelf bar, I am known for...being his adoring wife:)
Among other things...

I wanted to make sure that this year there were side dishes for people like me who only want a little meat. However, I wanted to make side dishes that weren't boring or crappy but that would hold up through hours of grazing.

I did it - three salads from scratch that held up and got eaten up. I made sliced red potato salad, Oriental Cole Slaw and my newest creation, Florida Girl's Italian shrimp salad. I'll start last first:

Florida Girl
8-10 ounce salad shrimp, thawed (this is one of the few things that tiny cocktail shrimp is good for)
3 lemons, juiced and zested
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
2 large cucumbers, seeded and cut into 1/2 inch chunks - seeding them is important!
2 cans quartered artichoke hearts, drained
2 cans salad sliced hearts of palm, drained
1 can Cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
3 tbsp Italian Herbs*

You can make this part* easy or hard. I go easy and buy the tube of Italian herbs in olive oil at Publix. Otherwise, chop a handful of flat-leaf parsley, a bunch of basil and bash up a couple of garlic cloves.
Make sure all water is drained off of everything before the next step.

Whisk herbs with olive oil, lemon zest and lemon juice and salt and pepper. Dump everything else into a bowl; I chop the artichoke hearts up a little to make it more fork friendly. Pour dressing over the salad and stir gently to coat. You may need a little more oil or lemon juice, just taste to see.
Let this sit refrigerated at least two hours, bring to room temp before serving.

So that's salad one. I don't make anything I won't eat and I loved this. My guests seemed happy too since they ate it all up:)

Perfect Rapport

2009-06-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

A long, long time ago I had a boyfriend who was a concert promoter. In those pre-cell, pre-push to talk days, we needed less clunky ways to communicate with backstage and other workers so a shopping trip through Sharper Image found us the proud owners of very spiffy walkie-talkie sets with head sets.
I formed a company and leased the sets to his company and voila, Perfect Rapport was born.

Well, here some 27 years later that boyfriend and I have married other people and lost touch but Perfect Rapport is still mine and still means the same as it did then.
It is just an old fashioned way of saying "we grok." We have an understanding of one another, not a surface understanding but a deep compatibility.

It is my hope that if you've turned up here you'll reach a level of rapport with me that will make what I write, in some way, meaningful to you.
For me, this is an opportunity to write about fluffy things and escape a lot of the unpleasantness of our current realities.
I love food and drink and creating both, cats and flowers and raising both, and I want to write a few books one day so there is no telling what this blog may contain.
Welcome to my happy little place.