There is a Lot More to Dallas...

I’ve been to Dallas three times and find the morbid fascination with the Kennedy assassination a mystery. Not that people do visit Dealey Plaza to gaze at the sixth floor of the former Book Depository Building and the x’s thoughtfully painted in the road and think, “Hmmm”, but that hawkers lurk about trying to sell souvenirs-including  programs containing autopsy photos I find particularly revolting.

During my second visit to Dallas (the first occupied entirely by work), a group of us took the pilgrimage and found people selling this memorabilia, if you will. Some people attempted to show us around as if we couldn’t look up, yep, sixth floor window, look at the road-x, x, look across the street, grassy knoll (there is actually a large yellow and black sign announcing “grassy knoll”) . You certainly don’t need a tour guide. Aside from the grisly booklets, an author or two have set up stands to sell, I guess, their books on the subject.

Light Show at Night

This trip, one tourist went so far as to walk into the road when there was no traffic-not an easy feat-this is a freeway entrance ramp-to crouch down beside onoe x and have his photo snapped. Something I found interesting was his age, maybe thirty, but not older. I was in third grade when President Kennedy was killed and, like others of my generation, remember exactly what I was doing when I heard about it. Anyone much younger than me won’t have that “remember when” time portal, so taking a photo on that spot  perplexes me.

There was a woman selling t-shirts that proclaimed “1963-2013 Dallas”, as if this were a fiftieth anniversary worth marking with a commemorative t-shirt. Should have gotten some of those for the grandkids…

Light Show at Night

To the City of Dallas, I say: You are a well-appointed city with an ignominious stain you can never erase. We stayed at the Magnolia, a grand lady with an impressive view. We ate an excellent hamburger at the Chesterfield, enjoyed pizza at Porta di Roma, had more burgers at a corner burger spot with garlicky good french fries. After the wedding we were there to attend, we partied at Dallas Heritage Village and thoroughly enjoyed your hospitality.
Except for a one-half-block section of perfidy, you are a beautiful, tidy place with scores of other diversions that still can’t expunge the one horrible day you had nearly 50 years ago.

This is not about Red or Blue

This is the difference between someone who stands and publicly shrieks at you while shaking a well-manicured finger in your face and someone who graciously stands and listens. 

 

The first is a politician, the second is a lady. God bless you Betty White.

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Improvised Exploding Pen Conspiracy

This is the desktop IED that secreted its evil self in my pen cup at work and detonated sometime overnight. At least I think it was overnight, seemingly it was unexploded when I left work yesterday. Such is my habit that I select the pen colors I want to use first thing in the morning (yes, I use different colors every day, largely depending on whim), pretty much use those all day, and replace them when I get ready to leave, so I can only suppose it happened during the night. I started work this morning, made tea, grabbed a couple of pens and started to work.

This was not one of the pens I chose; It took me a few minutes to realize there was blue liquid ink on my hands, well, first the hand I write with, which no doubt spread it to the other when I pulled the cap off, then, just to make things annoying, dappled a design across my desk that I then smeared my forearms in, and was most entertained to discover I had touched my face a couple of times and established a bit of abstract temporary tattoo there as well. Temporary being just a theory when it came to cleaning it up and is the reason I keep disinfecting wipes in my desk-not for fear that a stray germ might drift into my workspace, but that a malicious pen might disgorge it’s guts in the dark recesses of a container and pool in such a way that any pen I choose will begin its persistent ink distribution process.

I’ve had this happen before, it happened in my purse during a flight once, which was hell to clean up in-flight and the purse was never the same, but I don’t think there was any appreciable change of air pressure or altitude in my office last night. The offending pen is always a retractable, and after it happens, you have to clean up every single everything else in the container, container included. A narrow, deep dark place.

Just glad I discovered the face-painting attempt before my coworkers did.

To Check or Not to Check

We flew to Dallas last month for a wedding, and I noticed the most curious airline practice. The airline is, mercifully, one that didn’t charge the accursed per-checked-bag fee, which I think should just be discreetly concealed in the price of the ticket. “But what”, you ask, “if I only have a carry-on?”

My hubby and I travel a lot, and I’m here to tell you that we have witnessed more flagrant, utter bullshit watching passengers try to deceive, manipulate, hector, and delude themselves, the airline employees and fellow passengers that  1.) their carry-on is within the regulation size limit, or 2.) the woman that weekend trying to convince the gate attendant that her four carry-on items - a wheeled suitcase, a brimming mesh contraption hanging from the wheeled suitcase, a totebag, and her purse-were actually two.

Really, it's just my carry-on

The attendant tried to tell her four carry-ons was unacceptable, whereupon the woman brashly turned tail and lumbered down the ramp onto the aircraft, then held up the line behind her while she stowed all the items in overhead compartments. Upon arrival, she held the line up getting the damn things off, too. This was in addition to watching other people cram oversized, overstuffed bags of every sort into the compartments, then pry them back out to deplane.

Examining checked bags for homeland security hazards apparently got so costly that the per-bag fee was implemented, causing hordes of passengers to try to dodge the fee by stuffing perhaps appropriate sized bags to bursting, and in some cases, bags that don’t even pretend to be regulation size, to carry on. The cost of examining carry-on luggage is now apparently such that airlines are considering a fee for those as well.
 
Air travel is people watching at its finest and just part of the entertainment to be had while travelling, but I digress. The curious practice I spoke of involves the inconsistent handing out of in-flight snacks: Four flights; Seattle-Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City-Dallas. And back. First flight-two tiny packages of peanuts containing about 12 goobers each. Next flight-the attendant handed my hubby a pack of cookies and apparently supposing that I didn’t need anything, passed me by. Third flight-a package of pretzels, package of peanuts, AND pack of cookies. (I traded my hubby the cookies for the peanuts). Fourth flight-one tiny package of peanuts.

In-flight Snack

My question is, why the difference in distribution approaches, on different flights on the same airline?

I Heart Plants

My grandmother was an inveterate houseplant maven. She lived in a small studio-type apartment, the living room was the bedroom with a sleeper sofa - she pulled it out to sleep each night and pushed it back each morning - all the years of my memory and grew plants in all two windows. My mother couldn't grow a thing, houseplant-wise. We had a couple of roses and a peony in the yard that grew largely ignored. The addiction must skip generations, because I can't get enough plants, I scour garden centers, and friends' and relatives' homes for starts of those I don't have. Well, not the stores -  those I buy (I'll admit, my grandmother would pinch off starts in stores, "just neatening it up a little", but back then, they didn't have in-store security cameras & features that now attempt to discourage what amounted to shoplifting).

My living room and family room exist for my plants, there is little room fur human occupants. This is just one corner :) Those plants that aren't crowded into my house occupy my office. My plants also overflow into coworkers offices, who don't appear to mind so long as I care for them. No problem. I put a plant in my husband's house (we live in different cities due to our jobs), right above the kitchen sink, so watering it need not take much effort. It's a wandering jew (Zebrina pendula), you can't kill those, can you?, but several times I have brought his back from the brink of doom, obviously he's not a plant person, either. 

This plant is a Kalanchoe. I got a start from a cousin several years ago. From all I've read, these require little care and bloom with abandon...this is the first time the thing has ever bloomed, paltry as these flowers are. I have two African violets I was given at my son's funeral. Those bloom regularly and vigorously although I've always heard they are difficult to grow (no photo, not blooming just now). In fact, I do nothing recommended on this website Perfect African violets. Wrong light, wrong pot, they're in a weird, terra cotta planter and the soil they came in, wrong humidity, and they thrive enthusiastically. Still I'm glad my Kalanchoe put on this muted display.

This plant is a Hoya. Got the start for this one from my cousin, too. It grows long phototropic vines that wave about looking for light, and eventually leaf out so they are less mobile and have strange pentagonal flowers I wish I had photos of, they're so interesting (example: Hoya carnosa). This is its wandering phase; other of its vines snake across the floor because the leaves make them too heavy. The vines also wrap around anything they contact; the vertical blinds, bookcase, other plants. I gave one to a coworker several years ago. At the time, this one had three leaves and did little for about three years. Eventually it grew vines, but mine has never bloomed. The way I know it blooms is the one I gave to the coworker blooms vigorously in the spring. I don't think I quite have my grandmother's propensity after all. 

I do have an Angel Wing Begonia . When I was growing up, she had one, large and beautiful, in one of the two windows. In time, she gave me a start and I don't know what became of it, it undoubtedly was left behind during school, moving, marriage and family. I think they went somewhat out of fashion as I spent some time some years ago looking for one, unsuccessfully.  So I was delighted when a friend who was moving asked me if I wanted hers. I think my grandmother, who died in 1975, sent it to me.

The Butt Can

In the state where I live, people can’t smoke in public buildings. This is The Butt Can in the parking lot where I work; I just noticed the cable lock this week. Would someone really want to steal this?

 
Outside magazine this month (with a hideous swimming suit on the cover which looks like a collection of crisscrossed red cargo straps that should be flung into an active volcano, preferably Orodruin), had an article, Who Pinched My Ride?, written by Patrick Symmes, whose cable lock-tethered bicycle was stolen in broad daylight on a teeming sidewalk in NYC and caught on a surveillance video, although to his distress the thieves were never caught. It chronicles, in his attempts to get his bicycle back, his investigation into the largely unexplored underworld of bike and bike parts theft, resale of purloined bicycles, and the powerlessness of police to combat the matter. 

Not that the police intentionally ignore bicycle thefts, Symmes indicated that some do because there are more important, more serious crimes – where the greatest effort and budget are necessarily devoted. But some, almost as one riders themselves, engage in the battle with little success. In all, Symmes sacrificed maybe six bikes in his pursuit; he even purchased one of dubious repute, and left a couple out just to see what their fate would be. (In an aside, we visited Japan last year and saw thousands of bicycles wherever they could be parked, nary a lock on them). The conclusion was that hundreds of thousands of bikes are stolen each year, sold whole or as parts, a majority by drug users looking for quick cash in a rather lucrative market, and that very few are arrested and fewer prosecuted. Larger stolen possessions and more dangerous offenders are easier to locate and convict.

Oddly, the same day I read a piece in Travel and Leisure about the rising, unbridled theft of valuables and money from travelers’ luggage by TSA agents. Lest this turn into a rant, suffice to say that these stouthearted warriors who often disdainfully herd passengers through airport checkpoints and x-ray their belongings also rifle through their unmentionables and steal from them. Stuff that is undeniably worth stealing.

That said, bikes and luggage contents I understand. My question is, this butt can has to be secured against theft? Is this an attractive object to sit out as yard decor (the best account of sitting-out-in-the-yard-shit I’ve read or this) or a tacit hint to guests that smoking is not allowed inside the house? A desirable item to resell on eBay? – “Excellent used condition…” Actually, it’s a better candidate for Regretsy.

Lazy Day Lunch

Today we just hung out at the house. Planned to go skiing but Ron had a conference call - working from home.

I had to put the bird in her cage during the call; this is Bruno.

She was my bird until I met Ron then she shifted her affection to him and openly and unashamedly prefers his company to mine, but when he gets on the phone, she seems to know his attention is elsewhere and today made so much racket his coworkers asked him if he had a bird at work. So she got a time-out. She was also a he, hence the name, until she decided she wanted to be Ron's mate and started laying eggs. When she does, she turns into a hostile, shrieking termagant we call Birdzilla. The advice we gleaned from the web when she first started laying was to let her keep them until they would have hatched - they're not fertilized - then she'd lose interest. Boy is that #&!@# crap . She kept laying eggs and we started taking them away. I don't know about everyone else, but I like to walk into my bedroom and not have the nasty bird run across the floor of her cage, hissing and flapping her wings. So we don't let her keep her pretend eggs.

I love salads and bought some green leaf lettuce this week, made this just pulling stuff out of the refrigerator; lettuce, spinach leaves, snap peas, celery, green onion, green pepper, boiled egg (recently bought one of those wire egg slicers), feta cheese and tuna. Lighthouse blue cheese dressing. yum.

We do plan to ski tomorrow, then we pack a lunch, laskluster as it may sound, just turkey and cheese sandwiches, some fruit, maybe some mixed nuts. We're too cheap to buy food at the lodge. Booze, but not food!

Maybe post some pics from the ski slopes soon.

To shovel or not...

We finally got snow this week. Snow and snow and more snow. That’s good because where we ski (http://www.skiwhitepass.com/) got enough snow to open before Thanksgiving, then it didn’t snow in any appreciable amount again, so skiers were sliding around on nearly two-month-old chewed up and re-groomed crud. Until the last week and a half. The bad thing about snow, in more ways than one is, out of job necessity, my hubby and I live about 150 miles apart with a mountain range between, and last weekend he couldn’t drive over because the weather in the mountains was so savage. Pooh :( That and shoveling snow:

Where I live, if you don’t shovel the driveway, the snow gets driven over repeatedly and packed into a treacherous two-wheel-path glacier that no amount of scraping, bashing, scooping, and salting can budge until the spring melt (it’s also a really good idea to have the leaves raked before it snows so spring doesn’t hand you a flat vegetative slick that has smothered your lawn). So when it snows, I’m out before much accumulates, removing it from the driveway.

That’s where I developed the theory that the next time you’re house-hunting, stand at the end of the driveway and imagine it’s winter. It could influence your choice. I didn't do this. I have a lonnggg driveway to shovel.

When my kids were younger, it used to annoy them spitless to have to go out and shovel while it was still snowing, but I insisted, with the premise that it’s easier to move lesser amounts more often than wait until a foot or more has accumulated to shovel just once. This week’s accretion was very light powder that was (almost) fun to shovel and not so cumbersome as the wet concrete that usually collects here. 

While shoveling for probably the sixth time Tuesday evening, a man walked up and introduced himself as the son-in-law of my next door neighbor. He had a tool for removing snow buildup from her awning and offered, for a price, to do mine done, too, mentioning that it was supposed to snow more that night; my awning might collapse.
“How much?, I asked”.
"I’m charging her $60 dollars”.
I explained that there is another awning on the other side of the house.
“$70 dollars, then”.
“For each, or both?”
“For both”.

Hmmm. “I’ll think about it”. What I was thinking was, $60 dollars? That’s f*cking ludicrous for a 5 minute task – this is fine, powdery fairy dust, remember? 
And, “What kind of a jerk charges his mother-in-law $60 bucks for a 5 minute task when he should just help her out because he’s married to her daughter.” If I was married to him, and my hubby will attest, I would harangue his ass for even considering charging my mother for snow removal services.

I turned the offer down and continued shoveling.

I said all that to say this: It warmed up then cooled down, melted the snow on the awnings and resulted in these colossal icicles forming from the awning on my front porch. They’re beautiful, but I’m afraid if one falls, it will kill a passing neighborhood pet, or worse, a passing neighbor. Maybe I should have had the damn awning cleared…

Pasta with Gorgonzola and Italian Sausage

Sorry for the unimpressive cell-phone photo, but damn! This tasted really good and I was just using us ingredients I had in the fridge:

8 oz. cooked pasta
8 oz. Italian sausage, browned
2 cloves minced garlic
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
3/4 cup milk
4 oz. crumbled gorgonzola cheese
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
Italian seasoning, to taste
Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Brown the sausage, add garlic, brown a bit, add spinach, milk, cheese, and red pepper flakes, reduce until thickened, add to drained pasta.

Top with grated parmesan.

One of the Joys of Reading...

I subscribe to Outside Magazine (website: www.outsideonline.com) not because I’m the most robust, outdoorsy person or that all the articles appeal to me-some don’t, in fact, but I usually read them anyway-for the writing. All of the writing is outstanding, so even if the subject doesn’t interest me I can ride a wave of better than exceptional prose and far-over-the-top vocabulary and learn about some subjects I wouldn’t have otherwise if I didn't bother to read them. Some articles are about extreme activities, some human interest stories, and some are funnier than hell.

Normally I do need to look up a word or two I find in each issue, so to my delight, in the November issue article On the Origin of Species, written by Michael Roberts uses the word “sastrugi”. The article explains why Steve Martin’s new movie The Big Year, in Martin’s irreverent style perhaps -I haven’t seen it-may garner some long-overdue respect for bird watchers. But Roberts uses the word describing a skier. What the hell? I’m a skier and have certainly never heard that word. But the beauty of learning it that way, as a delightful surprise, is that I’ll never forget it. Go ahead-look it up!

Sort This!

While in a long meeting this afternoon, I mused over an item I recently saw perusing Skymall Magazine during a recent flight, amid the countless yard ornaments and luxury items for your pets:

A plastic cup that you presumably allow your adorable offspring to use to separate the cereal from the marshmallow goodness in Lucky Charms?

These is so much wrong with this; that we need another useless plastic implement (it's a long list, but I include in it those plastic devices with different sized holes that help you measure the correct amount of spaghetti like you can actually screw up and cook too much, and these charming plastic containers I saw at the store shaped and colored like either lemons, onions or tomatoes to store either lemons, onions or tomatoes in that probably don't "keep" them any better, if even as well, as the plastic bag you brought them home in) on the planet whose oceans and landscape are choking in it. Is there truly a need for these?

Back to the cereal, if you want your child to eat marshmallows for breakfast, buy 'em a bag of Jet-Puffed or even better - a jar of marshmallow creme. Instead of letting them sit and sift out the toasted oat cereal (Lucky Charms via Wikipedia - If Wikipedia can be trusted, this cereal is the original Cheerios with sugar and marshmallows added, and I never realized there were so many iterations of the marshmallow shapes), probably leaving them for you to eat, buy some Cheerios for yourself in the first place. Do parents actually let their children sort the cereal?? I remember getting seriously chewed out for trying to dig the prizes from the bottom of the box before we ate all the cereal, but then, we didn't have a handy tool to dig it out with.

Leaving Ocean Shores

We tourists probably think this is adorable-I  know I do, I turned around to take this photo, but if it was my yard-probably not.

We had a mom and child deer visit us at the condo about dinner time Saturday night. We tossed out sliced veggies and apples. The little one just sniffed at them, but mom deer chowed down. We're probably not supposed to feed the deer, but it was obvious from their expectant looks up at us that, if not us, someone will...

Long Weekend at the Beach

We took a walk on the beach today. Normally the first thing I do when I get to the beach is shed my footwear and wade in the surf, but this trip, the water is a dark chocolate color and leaves a mucky residue on the beach. I have no idea what's caused it, but it's nothing I want my feet in, although we did see some people surfing this morning. Blech.

This was the sunset Friday night:

This morning I was looking at the tracks of someone who walked the beach in wedge heels, apparently. I find just walking in the sand my Keens fairly challenging and sure wouldn't try it in a heel. If it's all I had to walk in (and that would never happen - I subscribe to a one pair per day + another pair just in case strategy), probably I'd just take them off and brave the chocolaty muck.

My love of the ocean grew from horrible yearly family trips to the ocean when I was a kid. We'd start out in darkness, my parents would overdose me with dramamine because my Dad refused to stop the car if I got carsick and was outraged if I rolled down the window and puked down the side of the car. People who can't tolerate the unexpected probably shouldn't have children, but this is not a rant about my Dad.

Once at the ocean, we'd get up pre-dawn every day to go dig razor clams. I hated it, a squeamish young kid shouldn't have to kill things; once we got our limit, Dad would hasten off to a bar and the rest of us were free to nap, read, or explore. I spent a lot of time propped up against some driftwood with a book in my lap, watching the breakers and listening to the surf. I love it to this day, and nobody makes me go dig clams these days.

Water for Elephants-A complete surprise

I recommend this book, not because it's pretty much a chick novel and is released as a movie now, but because to me it's evident that the author researched Circus/Carnival history and has an interesting story to tell, much of which is true, go ahead, google it.

I loved it, the ending is - not fall off the wall, "I gotta end this book"- but went just where I'd want to go if I were in the main character's situation. How often anymore do we get an original plot line like this?

Will see the movie but worried about how it's treated.

Mes Chaussures

I won this trip, no kidding, ask me...

Before our recent trip to India, I heard my husband – on the phone with one of my friends – tell her “maybe two.” Shoes-that’s how many pairs of shoes the sadly erroneous man and love of my life thought I could get by with for a week-long trip? Most men don’t get shoes; they think they are merely functional items that either keep your feet warm or keep you from stepping in unpleasant stuff with your bare feet (you know what I mean, we’ve all done it). They don’t see the need to own multiple-to-numerous pairs, many of which may be inarguably similar. He has a pair of dress shoes, a pair of unremarkable grey tennies, some flip-flops and a pair of Keens I got him because I thought he could use a sporty upgrade in the footwear sector.

Chez Shoes

Our history with shoes probably began when he noticed I had to have shelves built in my closet to hold all my shoes. (I also had a rack built to hold all my earrings, but that’s a story for another day.) We travel well together which is fortunate because we travel a lot, and, like most couples, I probably have the conspicuously larger suitcase because – I have to pack enough shoes. The word at issue here is “enough.” The preferable number for me would be about a pair a day, plus maybe a pair for evening. He asked me once, at the end of a trip if I wore each pair. What has that got to do with anything? It’s not that I wore them, but that I could wear them.

The "Mustard Festival" Napa 2009

Take a trip we took to California wine country a couple of years ago; the suitcase with my shoes packed in it didn’t make it into the car (there is some question over whether I didn’t bring the suitcase out of the bedroom or that he should have had a gut-feeling there was another bag with my shoes in it), leaving me on a week’s trip with a pair of Clark loafers and a pair of Minnetonka moccasins. The kind with the suede soles. As it rained nearly the whole week we were there, relegating me, really, to just one choice of shoes, I did try shopping for substitutes, but my heart wasn’t in it. That’s a mission not to be taken under duress; shoe shopping should be a pleasure, not an emergency. I haven’t worn that pair of Clarks much since.

Coach, but uncomfortable...

The latest trip was to Japan. Since we were gone 18 days, the one pair per day was impractical. I don’t own a suitcase large enough, plus we were very mobile and had to haul our luggage with us a lot. Even I could get tired of dragging a suitcase full of shoes around Japan. At one point though, I did tell my honey that I couldn’t wear a particular pair of sandals; they weren’t “walking” shoes. (Insert a look here from him, “why did you bring the damn things all this way then, to not wear them?”) I only tell that because, after we got back I had the damn things on when a friend and I decided to walk to the waterfront for lunch. Then she said, “but I don’t have walking shoes on, so let’s drive. “ See, she understands shoes.

This is Sad and It is True

Troy Alan Wilton

Two weeks after my last post, over a year ago, my youngest son, whose lasagna I had featured in the post, took his own life. There is so much I could say about this, but where would I begin and end? Mostly I would say that, stilted as it sounds, you don't know what you've got til it's gone, I wish I had yelled less, listened more. He was a beautiful, cheerful child who skipped around the house and wanted everyone else to be happy. He battled depression from the time he went to college, maybe earlier, but never found that happiness in himself, and on April 3rd, 2010, all alone, he made the irrevocable choice to end his life. It left all of us with shattered hearts, shattered family. Anger, Confusion, Guilt, Questions. I write about this now because on Father's Day, Ron & I were in Home Depot and I saw a father bitching at his son that "this is why I didn't want to bring you"...Obviously the kid was bugging his dad about something ("I would have yelled less, listened more"). The little guy, about 8, sat down cross-legged on the cart and looked sad. I nearly made it out of the store without crying. I should have 1) hugged the kid and told him -to quote the lines at the end of an incredible book "The Help" - "You is kind, you is smart, you is important", 2) I should have plinked the asshole father on the tip of the nose and asked him "how bloody dare you? Do you have no idea the gift you have been given and the damage you have just done." Because, as I witnessed it, I regretted every single time I yelled at my kids about things that really didn't matter even one day later, or that interrupted "my quiet time".

Pasta and Whatever is in the Fridge Alfredo

We were going to head up skiing yesterday morning, but it's the time of year that, after we've been doing it for several months, the conditions have been hit-or-miss all season and, hey! It was the first day of spring, we just start to lose our enthusiasm for the early mornings and cold weather, so we just hung out around the house all morning, talked with friends on the phone, caught up with some their doings.

I've been re-potting plants all week. After they've grown for several years, they have absorbed all the soil in the pot and are just a pot-shaped root-mass, they start losing leaves and deteriorating and it's time to give them fresh soil and a new lease on life. Spring cleaning is just around the corner.

We went up to some friends' cabin later and stayed the night, intending to ski today, but the conditions at the ski area turned out to be snow in its liquid form, so we came home. The tacit conditions of our staying with the friends is - they wouldn't dream of taking any money - but we always take a meal. There is an added challenge this year-Cathy became vegetarian, so I can't take any of my good old stand-bys that I used to. Meat dishes don't always translate over to vegetarian by simply eliminating the meat. I'm open to any suggestions! Since we were just lazing about I started looking at what I had on hand to make and take up for dinner.

Pasta, always
Canned Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo, check
Green onion, green pepper, garlic, mushrooms, check, check, check

Frozen spinach, hey, we have lift-off!

Cooked and drained the pasta, baptized it with generous glugs of olive oil, added the spinach and chopped veggies, then poured the Alfredo over all.Just heated up in the oven at 350 for about half an hour. And we had Focaccia Asiago to accompany it. We also took St. Patrick's Day Nutella Pocket Cookies. All was well received, devoured actually.

Several months ago, Thanksgiving week, two of my three offspring moved out of my house, where they had landed temporarily for a protracted period after college, and into their own apartment. They invited us over for dinner tonight-I hadn't been to their apartment before! My youngest son made lasagna; he started with my version of it, but his version is far better. We decided to take ice cream. I was raised by a Mom who taught us that you don't show up at anyone's house empty-handed. Even your childrens'! I'll post photos when we get back.

Photo as promised (he's a really good cook):

What's really great about their move, besides moving out of my house, is that Ron and I are downsizing with the hope of someday living in the same town and the same house and don't need or want two, or possibly three of everything, so when the kids were moving and needed furniture, we gave them Ron's old kitchen table-a country-nook set, hide-a-bed, coffee table, magazine rack, and I think a chair and ottoman, although I don't remember seeing the last items at their place.

They live on the third floor and had to carry that probably 30 year-old, incredibly heavy couch up three flights. They said it's not coming down soon. The coffee table is out on their patio.

I'm not sure I can explain the layout. It's a two bedroom apartment, one for the oldest, the other for the youngest and his girlfriend. They've been together so long (an aside of which I won't go into because she reads my blog, oh hell, sure I will...she was 14 and he was 19 and her family didn't exactly approve. I think they've accepted it now, 7 years later) we refer to her as my daughter-in-law and on my 50th birthday, I gave all the kids my blessing to give me grandchildren-something no one is making the slightest progress toward-and embarrassed the bejesus out of her.

The living room has the aforementioned couch facing a wall, which contains all three of the kids computers. They must sit there side by side, day after day, and surf. It was a good visit.

Cooking while Traveling

I thought I'd share our strategy for cooking when we travel. We take four to six trips a year and normally stay in condos, either Ron's timeshare, or mine. His condos have dishes, ample cookware, coffee, tea, basic spices like salt, pepper, Italian, dried parsley, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, and dried onion, dishwasher detergent; mine have dishes and cookware. (I sold mine last year when we bought a joint membership at Grand Mayan in Cancun.)

I get the impression that many, if not most people don't cook much while traveling; perhaps they don't do it for entertainment like I do. In fact for me, cooking is a vacation. I dream food! One of the other reasons we cook is that neither of us is particularly fond of fast food, eating in restaurants for several days can really add up, using money that would be better spent on something else-lift tickets, for instance.

I've learned when we travel, at least in the states, to take along a few essentials. Maybe more than a few, and they can change depending on what I think I might plan on cooking. Our last trip, for instance, I'd brought pork loin chops, lamb chops and chicken drumsticks. The friends who joined us brought salmon caught on their last trip to Canada, which we barbequed and I featured in an earlier post .

They once called me and asked if I liked duck...boy, do I, however until then I hadn't had duck since my Dad hunted when I was a kid. They invited me over for roast duck, wow, it was a dream come true! Yum-yum!

In no particular order:

Coffee; Ron drinks instant, but the condo usually has a couple packets of drip-type
Coffee creamer; Ron's also
Tea; I like loose tea (I elucidated in an earlier post my love for tea and my fave tea shop) but I often take bagged teas on trips. Convenience factor. In fact, I've bought so many boxes of bagged teas on trips, I take it now just to try to use it up
Olive oil
A couple cups of flour
A couple cups of sugar
Sea salt in mill; I need a new one, the one I have doesn't work so well
Peppercorn mill
A mix of spices; this time it was Montreal seasoning mixed with dried parsley flakes
At least one head of garlic
Red pepper flakes
Dried rosemary (that I grew and dried)
Spice packets leftover from prior condo excursions, once opened they discard them, this way they aren't wasted
Some kind of pasta
Rice
Microwave popcorn. Usually we watch a couple of movies, but that week we watched the Olympics

Butter
Cheese
Bacon
Miscellaneous stuff that might rot in the refrigerator during the week if we don't eat it before we leave!
Since we were skiing that week, sandwich ingredients-bread, sliced turkey, cheese, mustard, mayo
Salad ingredients-lettuce, green onion, green pepper, bleu cheese dressing, mushrooms
Hershey's chocolate for my chocolate milk in the mornings
(Not to get on a soap-box, but if you are even mildly environmental, follow this link about Nestle's marketing and try to be cognizant of where what you eat comes from and what resources might be used producing it)

If we're driving, this all goes into coolers and a box or two, if we're flying, obviously we don't take as much as we have to fit it into luggage, which takes space away from the number of shoes I can take! With these basic items, we can go to the store at our destination and cook pretty much anything we decide to buy.

Happy traveling! Which reminds me, we are going to New Orleans in May. I've never been to The Big Easy and am very excited, so if anyone can suggest some really great things to do, drop me a note...

St. Patrick's Nutella Pocket Cookies

Ok, St. Pat didn't invent these cookies. They're the delightful creation of La Fuji Mama that I adapted to the Irish holiday by adding green food coloring. I shared with her that I had never heard of Nutella before, but upon discovery of her recipe, found some at the store (among the peanut-butters and jellies). Curious, I opened it in the car on the way home and tried a couple fingers full. I had to toss the jar into the back seat where I couldn’t reach it to keep from eating most of it before I got home. This stuff is perilously addictive.

We had a St. Paddy's potluck at work today, so I baked and took these; everybody I work with just loved them. So my derby is off to you, La Fuji Mama! I award you the glorious shamrock o' the kitchen!

The only change I made, besides their wearin' o' the green, was that I believe I cut them a little thinner. After you get a routine going, they're quite simple to assemble. The only advice I would give is to resist the temptation to overfill them with the chocolatey Nutella gooey goodness, because it squishes out when you try to seal them. They taste just as great, but are slightly less attractive. So I ate those.

And yes, that is a seriously old Tupperware pie crust guide! I've had it forever and use it for anything I'm rolling out. I don't happen to own a cookie cutter though, so I used a drinking glass and may be looking for a cookie cutter next...

Today at work we had the potluck. We work in a rather shabby area of town in a fenced in compound with about a dozen buildings called the "Region Complex". The building I work in is just across a chain-link fence from a small mobile home trailer park where police activity is not uncommon, so we have occasional "lock-downs" that we are notified, when they are searching the trailer park for some unsavory criminal element, to lock all the doors and stay inside.

My supervisor told us this morning he'd seen a police car go by next door, so we all watched as, not one, but two stole slowly by and turned the corner into another part of the park. Some time later, I walked over to another building in the complex and when I returned, found the door was locked. Oh holy hell! I envisioned armed criminals and cops in a crossfire with me at its center! I started banging on the door and yelling to let me in. When my boss opened the door, he was laughing so hard, he had to lean against the wall to keep from falling. Other than a totally warped sense of humor, he's a great boss :)


He loved the cookies, too...Happy St. Pat's day everyone.

Fallout Baked Potato Soup

I discovered about 9:00 tonight that I really didn't have anything for lunch tomorrow...I normally make soup on Sunday for lunches all week, it's cheaper, I know what's in it, and I only have half an hour for lunch, so I don't have to wander out to find fast food that I will actually eat. But we were just getting home from the ski trip Sunday evening, and I haven't been to the store since.

We had several baked potatoes leftover from the trip (we always have a lot of leftovers because we and  the friends we ski with always make way too much food), which we carted all the way home from Oregon because I refuse to waste food. I needed to find a use for them, so this is my version of Baked Potato Soup made mainly of ingredients I had in the refrigerator and cupboard. I have a friend whose Mom used to call this sort of meal "fallout" which I've always found amusing; basically it's anything that "falls out" of the refrigerator.

She would give me a hard time for scraping together whatever leftovers were in the refrigerator, heating it up and serving it for me and the kids for dinner. Chili, scrambled eggs, pickles, wrap it in a tortilla...She thought it was pretty disgusting and called it "pig slop", but I did it because if there was a dab of this and a scosh of that, one of them would always be unhappy with what they didn't get. I was a single Mom and it's why I dislike wasting food today. (Also, from childhood I have hated to let my food "touch", so I wasn't real crazy about this prep method myself!)

Ingredients:
2 medium potatoes of your choice
Olive oil or reserved bacon grease
1/2 chopped onion
1 stalk minced celery
1 shredded carrot
Minced garlic
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Salt and pepper to taste
Tabasco sauce, also to taste-I find a little goes a long way, so I used four "splashes".

Garnish:
Bacon crumbles
Sliced green onion

Grated cheese; I used Gouda, again brought back from the trip. It doesn't grate very well, and usually it isn't leftover-we had cheese, meat, and veggie trays, and our choice of beverage while watching the Olympics, but as I said, we brought a lot of food. The great thing about this soup is it requires so little cooking!

I might mention that I don't normally garnish my soups for lunch, just toss it in the microwave and heat at work which would incinerate the garnish, but I wanted the photo to look attractive :)

Method:
If you don't have leftover baked potatoes, rub medium potatoes with olive oil and bake in 400 degree oven until done. At this point, you really should just throw your favorite toppings on, eat and be done with it, however, we overestimated our appetites and these were relegated to the refrigerator for "later", hauled home, and here they still were.

Dice the leftover baked potatoes fairly small, 1/2 inch or less and set aside. Heat butter in a sauce pan and saute onion, celery, and carrots until nearly tender.


Add chicken broth and diced potatoes. Bring to a boil. Whisk milk and cornstarch well. Add to soup and heat through. Season with spices and Tabasco-feel free to be creative.

 

My son, the one who dredges most of his food in cayenne pepper, said the soup wasn't very spicy (apparently the lining in his mouth and esophagus were still intact), but it still tasted good. As usual, sorry about the photos, my camera is old and wheezing it's last shuttery clicks. You do know, don't you, that today's digital cameras don't need the shutter click, but we, who have always operated cameras that clicked wouldn't know if the photo took without the accompanying sound!!

I'd ask the guys for a new one for Mother's Day, but one of them recently borrowed my blender to make cheesecake  and burned it up, so I'd have to decide between a camera and a new blender. Or some of my favorite perfume. Usually, though, I have them all come over on Mother's Day for what I call "obligatory slave labor", the price they pay for my having let them live to grow up. They clean up the yard, haul away the recycling, repair what needs repaired. And I cook!

Lunch is made, tomorrow is my "Friday". How could life get any better? Good-night!