Good afternoon....and a Happy New Year to all my friends and readers...Theo and I, and Freckles and Kitty Blanko (who may be re-named Kitty Bravo if he turns a little more petlike and not so wild)...do want to wish you all the happiest and most rewarding of New Years.

That is my Christmas picture taken on Christmas morning, wearing my new vintage strawberry ice cream pink sweater with a gorgeous cotton vest from somewhere in Asia.  All those red flowers are embroidered, and there are wines and crimsons and scarlets in the mix, with a few little mirrors thrown in for fun. I love the ensemble, and it's great fun to put clothes together for effect, isnt it?

That picture is meant to replace my former picture wearing the beautiful French patterned apron.  Soon it will be two years since the older photo was taken, and it is time for another one. I would like to put the new picture on the head of the blog, but I don't know how!!!  In the meantime, I 'll continue on writing and trying to learn how to put the new picture up.  It is time for me to find the I Ching so that I can throw my coins for the new year.  I have never misplaced it before but hope I'll find it by tomorrow.

Tonight we'll lay our old heads down on our pillows early as usual. And in the morning I'll go to church to celebrate the Christmas Octave, as I didn't get to church when Ben was here. I'll tell you all about church when I get back, if it's interesting. Love to all. YAZZYBEL

Pickapeppa!

Good day, and how are you?

I found some Pickapeppa Sauce, a bottle of  it, at the Target recently, and I  bought some. Haven't seen it for years...I don't know whether it's been around all this time or if I just never thought about it. But it is attractive, with that parrot on the label, and the West Indian look of the whole thing.

Mama never had sauces, bottled sauces, on the table.  Meat was meat, and A-1, Worcester Sauce, and such were not at hand to alter the flavor of our plainly cooked meals. Mama thought that if it was good food and cooked well, no sauce, certainly no commercial bottled concoction, was needed.  And it looked tacky.

I agree with all that, up to a point, but I just couldn't resist that parrot.  I got a good use of it for supper last night, when my dinner consisted of brown rice, broccoli, and cauliflower, all admirable comestibles by all rights--but a bit dull. So out came the Pickapeppa and it was really good sprinkled on those items.

My Mexican cousins, the Basque  ones, had oil and vinegar on the table, or the sideboard.  Olive oil, and plain vinegar.  That's all very well because I think it 's really kind of healthful to add a little of either to almost anything.  But there is a caution.  Every day, the little bottles have to be taken out to the kitchen, uncorked and unstoppered, dumped, washed, and refilled.  Especially in a climate that's at eighty five degrees plus almost every day of the year. I have been in restaurants, in Brownsville, where there was a receptacle holding those two ubiquitous little bottles full of cloudy and obscure looking liquids.  "Don't touch it!!" my mother would say, as if there were a venomous substance within reach.

If you must use commercial sauces, they should be decanted into a little dish and applied with a small spoon.  Yes, they should.  Or they should be ignored, their very existence should be ignored.  Yes! But it was with pleasure and anticipation that I grabbed that parrot and opened the bottle and tipped it, and watched the thick fragrant brown sauce dotting my vegetable plate!!!  YAZZYBEL

Christmas Part Deux

Good afternoon!

I am adding a postscript to tell about my Christmas dinner, which put itself together so easily that it almost appeared in a dream.

After a delicious breakfast of bacon, biscuits, oatmeal, apple slices, cinnamon, and raisins, we opened our presents.

After time had passed, I took out the roast to let it warm up a bit before cooking. Fanny Farmer said two hours at 325, but I set my unpredictable oven at four twenty five anyway.  Two hours later the roast was done, and in the meantime I boiled up some string beans, made a salad, made a delicious salad dressing with raspberry vinegar, olive oil, and tarragon, and made a dip out of cream cheese and scallions to eat with radishes and strips of red bell pepper.  I put the roast in at eleven fifteen and at 1:00 it looked like all was well, so I set the roast on a platter, poured off most of the fat, whomped up a fine Fanny Farmer Yorkshire Pudding flavored with rosemary from the rosemary I'd put on the roast...the pudding cooked, and we ate the salad and the veggies and dip.  And drank a dclicious Merlot.  And then brought out the roast and the Yorkshire pudding and the string beans.  NO bread!  Awe.  All was very delightful. We had about a pound and a half of meat left over, and the bones cut apart frozen separately.  The meat is in the refrigerator ready for delicious sandwiches on "fiber-rich" Pepperidge Farm Bread for those nutty enough to think they need a supper.  I am going to try to put a picture or two on here so that those unlucky enough to have eaten elsewhere can see our dinner. YAZZYBEL

Merry Christmas, 2011!

Good morning!

Words, memories, cooking, says the subtitle to this blog, so let's get to it.

The word is my Chinese Word of the Day, from Transparent Language, who kindly send me a new word every morning. (Each one more incomprehensible than the previous, and harder to write, I may add.) Today's word is , "Cheers!", which seems appropriate and timely.  So, Jiayou to all, and I hope your day is more merry than not. Though a shadowy contemplative Christmas is not a bad thing, taken in the right spirit.  I expect ours will be neither shadowy nor contemplative, and it may not be cheery either unless you count football cheers. (I don't)....but it will be a good day because Taterton will be comfortably ensconced on the sofa with Benjamin watching whatever Big Game comes on today.

In memory, I remember the many Christmases of my childhood and some of my younger adulthood. I remember a perfectly magical day in 1950, when I went looking for a Christmas tree in Brownsville, down around the market square and finally found one in some little grocery lot. It was a scrawny and neglected little thing, but I was pleased to get it, pleased to be out shopping on my own, pleased to be learning my home town on my own. I was twenty one, but in mentality I was about--fourteen, I' d guess.  I had led such a sheltered life, an incarcerated life really.  It was a nice carcel, but it was a jail nevertheless, and it had not prepared me for quite a number of life's experiences, even some of the most basic ones.  But it was a beautiful morning and a happy experience, out and about like a grown-up, learning about my very interesting town.

And now to food.  For a person who's practically been eating like a vegan, trying to get my cholesterol down like every American, without taking pharmaceuticals unlike every American, I have drastically cut down my intake of beef and all other meats. But this last few weeks since Theo was in the hospital, I have been eating out whenever I could and that means meat in some form usually unless you eat tofu and I am not fond of tofu. I was going to roast a dry little turkey breast for Christmas, but Ben wanted a roast of beef. Well, I did ask him.  So we went out the other day and bought the beef roast, two ribs (huge at that), and that is what we'll have.  "Well-trimmed," caroled the butcherette, as she slung it onto the scale. Yes, but you'll see how much more I'll take off it today before slinging it into the uncalibrated but now familiar oven. I'll roast it at a high temperature, trying to melt down that excess white fat, and so what if it isn't pink inside? No, I have learnt the oven enough. The roast will be dark brown outside, and the inside will be tender and rosy pink, and it will be delicious.  I hope.

So love to all, and have  a lovely day, with cheers or with contemplation, or ideally enough of each to make it a good one. YAZZYBEL 

Where O Where's my Camera when I Need It?

Good morning! Here sit I, at seven a.m., having read my mail. And the paper.

I got up in the middle of the night to turn the furnace control up or down (it's never in the Right Place) and had a childhood sense of pleasure to see the little Christmas tree with its new LED lights or whatever they are, shining colorfully out into the darkness, and the little false tea-candle shining in the creche on the mantelpiece.  There is something about the beauty of colored light, even non-incandescent light, that is super pleasurable to me.

It made me remember the night--well about seventy seven years ago--that I got up and went into the living room, probably about four a.m. The Christmas tree was lit up and lights were shining on presents sitting below the tree. The bear I'd requested--well, not quite the very one, but the bear I got--was sitting up in the shining fairy light, and I knew that the world was in its place and Santa Claus had come and that all was well.

I touched nothing and went back to bed.

Old as we now are,  I often need the remembrance of such moments to spur me into the days we share.W're both aware of ever increasing inability to deal with our limitations in many things, and this knowledge leads us sometimes to squabble and quarrel when we are really not quarreling with each other, but with circumstance. A circumstance that everyone who lives long enough must encounter, but it isn't easy to be graceful about it.

Yesterday it was an afternoon appointment with the car people to have a check-up before arrival of guests Benjamin and then Miranda.  We got out of there to the tune of a thousand dollars, which was not good for us at this time; but we also had to rent a car from the dealer to get home. I think we should have just postponed the job,  brakes or no brakes, but we went through with it. Then I wanted to stop at Trader Joe's-Ralphs, a dazzling combination of 2 markets right together in Hillcrest. What can't be had at the one will surely be available at the other, the height of convenience. So Theo had the frustrating experience of trying to find a parking place in an unfamiliar car whose rear view mirror was not placed right and that he could not control. After a while I said, Let's just go home. So we did. We came home and had vegetable beef soup, crackers, and squares of cheese, but nerves and endurance had been strained by then.

Men think that food appears on the table by magic, I think. Even though Theo is present at every food-purchasing activity, he still doesn't grasp that food must be bought, transported, stored, prepared, cooked, served by me --or he doesn't get any.  He thinks he doesn't care about food, and to a large extent that's true. But he'd miss it if it didn't appear before him magically twice a day. (He has to scrounge for his own lunch.)

This doesn't appear to have much to do with the magic of Christmas, but let me tell you that it was very gratifying to me to realize in the middle of the night that I still had it in me to be four years old and looking at the lighted Christmas tree in a silent living room.

And where's my camera when I need it??? It is LOST. YAZZYBEL

Dark and Light

Good morning!

Again, it's a long time since I wrote. I wonder, am I running out of steam?  Nothing more to say?

We'll see. Perhaps I will write once a month or so in 2012.
Who knows?

Speaking of dark and light, today's the shortest day of the year. That  is nothing unusual; it happens every year at this time. Tilted as we earthlings are, we experience once each year one day on which we are tilted out as far as we can go from the sun, and that's our short day.  I am glad it happens at Christmas time.  Otherwise, what would Christianity have been built on? The mythical and ceremonial part of it I mean.

I've sometimes thought I could live in Australia or Argentina, but for the fact that Christmas comes in summer.  Always summer, but never Christmas, is a despairing idea,--even worse than Lewis's "always winter, but never Christmas....," which is a phrase that strikes to the heart. At least, the heart of me.

Christmas is so important.  It is a glow and a joy in the midst of deepest coldest darkness.  Even the word "Christmas" is lovely: crisp and bright and rich, hinting at stars and snowflakes and the deep red of blood and flowers.

When San Diego changed the name of its winter festival from "Christmas on the  Prado" to "December Nights"...well...how DUH can you be?  "Christmas on the Prado"" sparkles in the dark, in the arboreal and architectural splendor of Balboa Park.  You can't cater to everybody.  Christmas is Christmas, and those who don't like it should say,Bah Humbug and go their own way. 

All this means that tonight will be shorter than last night, and very shortly the difference in the light will be easily perceptible at the hour in which I usually wake and arise: 5 to 6 a.m. A little more light might be desirable at that hour; this a.m. while bending over to put some kitty food into Freckles's plate, I hit my head smartly on the glass tabletop.  And I have the goose-egg (bird's-egg) and blue skin to prove it.  Perhaps I would not have my vision problems if I'd get that operation to put a piece of plastic lens   in my right eye instead of a defective cataracted one. 

Well, this is all for today. We have before us a visit to Kaiser, our second this week and I hope the last for a few weeks.  And I am going to keep on writing this blog if I can muster some gumption, until the end of the year at least. YAZZYBEL

Biscuits!

Good morning!

Breakfast is extra good today because I made biscuits.

I didn't use my mama's recipe today because I purchased some "self rising" flour not too long ago and thought I might well use it all up as soon as I can. It is very handy to have self rising flour (which is flour, baking powder, and salt) but also it is a bit confusing if you are trying to follow a regular recipe. So I got this one off the web.

2 cups self rising flour
1/4 cup shortening (I used butter)
1 cup milk

What could be simpler than that? Using Gold Medal Flour, I just whomped those biscuits together this morning in the dark and cold. And they baked into nine delicious biscuits, plus another panful of the extra dough which are baking right now. I don't roll twice, as a rule, so the second batch is twisty and turny, and often doused with sugar and cinnamon before baking. Better yet.

I decked my Wt Watcher's one allowed biscuit with 'I can't believe it 's not butter' spray (which is not bad at all) and with Smucker's Red Plum Jam.  My mama would have approved of the red plum jam, and she would have approved of the biscuits too. They are really delicious. So much so that I have already fallen off the Wt Watcher's with Day One, Meal One, and am having another biscuit. YAZZYBEL

Tomorrow is Virgen de Guadalupe Day

Good morning. Tomorrow is Dec. 12, the anniversary of the day when innocent little Juan Diego, Mexican Indian peasant, had a chance encounter with a beautiful vision--the Virgin Mary.  It's been about five hundred years or more, but things have not changed that much for Juan Diego in Mexico I am sure.  But he has a beautiful vision.  That's a lot.

My church has a section for Spanish-speaking people.  That's harshly said, but true.  The kids in that section are lucky to have a talented leader who is trying to help them understand their place in this world and finally perhaps realize some of the good things that will come of this collision of new and old worlds, civilizations, and religions.

One of the best things I know is the Guadalupe Project, which aims to show the girls that they are all Guadalupes...and to show the boys --and this is so important--that within each girl is a Guadalupe, an image of the Virgin Mary.  Boys have to have something to venerate in women, or they just go crazy following their own  built-in  instincts and drives.  Am I being ridiculously old-fashioned in having these ideas?   I don't believe so.  I believe there is a huge need in young boys and girls to have something offered to them other than the rapacious exploitation of each other's existence that seems to be what our 21st Century USA offers.  The generation of parents of these adolescent youngsters seems to be the generation totally without inner resources, and they just pass all their ignorance on to their starving kids and tell them|: Go at it.  That's what I see on television, for sure. I avoid most television, especially reality TV and family squabble shows. But five minutes a day of skimming is enough.  It is sad. Remember, girls of America, within each of you resides the Virgin of Guadalupe or whatever color or class of Virgin you wish to identify with. You have the right to honor her. Draw her picture. Put it on your wall or in your notebook.  Just don't forget she's there for you to call on, no matter what happens to you. YAZZYBEL

Ah! The Moon!

Good day on Saturday, December 10, 2011.

When I got up at five a.m. today, I set the water to boil for coffee, let the cat out of the garage, and proceeded outside in the dark to get the paper.  I remembered that there had been an eclipse a couple of hours earlier, but thought it would be worth looking for. I looked to the northwest in an open space of black, starry wintry sky, and this is what I saw.

I saw a huge beautiful clear white slice of moon lying horizontal in the sky, and just above it, the entire rest of a circle in rusty red.  The eclipse was passing slowly away, leaving an ever larger slice of brilliant moon surface in its wake.  I must remember this, for this is the last full eclipse I shall ever see unless I go to live in another time zone when I get old.

I remember the last one I saw. I looked out of my bedroom window at Lyndon Road, and watched the full eclipse come and go (at a more convenient hour that time)...I remember how strange it looked when the whole moon surface was painted with a dull rusty red, how solid it suddenly looked up there, how very present and heavy to be there in the sky. No wonder people saw such visions as charged with portent. Made a believer out of me for sure.

That was the only significant thing I did in the last twenty four hours.  Saw the moon leaving full eclipse, for the last time it'll be visible in this longitude and latitude for many a long year.  But--who knows? I may be living somewhere else, and see it somewhere else, the next time it happens. Maybe this isn't the last time for me after all.YAZZYBEL

Gilding the Lily

Have I not gilded the lily on here, before? If so, this is Gilding the Lily, II.

Tonight I made the best "Mexican Rice." Wow. It was very good.  No animal product was used in the making of that rice, even a false
"soup base" product.  I made it as usual, toasting the rice, toasting the garlic, adding the onion, green and red pepper, and then the tomato, and cooking it down. Then water, plain water, was added, and then I added about three carrots cut into about four pieces each. these were not very big carrots, and if they had been large I'd have had to cut them thinner because they barely got cooked as it is.  I added chile powder, cumin (if I cd have found it), salt, pepper, and some dried oregano.  I don't have any Mexican oregano that I know of, but as a matter of fact it may be oregano that I have, because I tend to buy it in supermarkets in little cello packets...who knows? I read on the web the other day some Mexicans bewailing the disappearance of the native Mexican oregano plants in the wild. Along with the chile pequin. Just wait, companeros de mi vida. When the rains come again, the plants will return.

Anyway, I cooked it until the rice was done and the carrots done in the modern way--almost soft, that is. Then I added a small handful of arugula leaves on top...enough to make a small green veggie serving for each.  Then I put a lid on it. I'd made some fresh frijole beans today, and served together they were a Good Bite indeed.  Very very delicious.  And nutritious. There were seven different veggies in that dish, not counting the raw jalapeno bits in the cold salsa I served on the side. Yummy.  And good.

We are watching evening TV as I write. I have put away all the food in the refrigerator.  Even though I made very small quantities of beans and rice, there was plenty left over for another day. I found myself thinking about Gregory as I put things away.  I wish he'd been here to eat his share.  Rice and beans and tortillas were probably his favorite things. Me too. YAZZYBEL

Sadly Behindtimes

Dear Everyone,

Yes, I am being reminded that I'm not writing. It is just that I have been so busy in other places.  All is well.  I shall try to write more later, but just want the people who do look for me on this blog to know that I am just procrastinating. My mother's word. "Linda, you are a procrastinator." Am I? Guess so.  Always looking for a better time to settle down to the task at hand. Sometimes, NOW is the only time, ideal or not!

To church today, where I sat in a slightly different place and saw things from a different perspective.  Slightly.  It's the Second Sunday in Advent, and the readings are grim and gloomy.  During Advent, we are permitted to think that things may not be coming out all right.  Once the Christ Child is born, we are on our path, and not permitted to think that way, no matter how bad things get (Good Friday.)  The whole message of the church is, it's going to be OK.  Just like your mother always told you when you were afraid in a storm, or in the dark.  Believe, praise God, and be grateful for His grace in giving us this incredible world.

My Christmas missives are almost ready to be mailed, and the house is getting a little bit decorated.  Theo has already completed his share of the Christmas letters, and we should have them all out early this week.  We  bought 2 huge poinsettias at Trader Joe's today...one is a bright striated rose-color, and the other is an unbelieveable red and white streaked thing.  I love them both, and they are both out on our new brown-tiled front stoop in a big flower pot at this moment. If I knew what I was doing on this new laptop, there would be a picture of them on this page. But no.  Not worth losing the whole thing and getting even more atrasada. YAZZYBEL

Let's Try to Get This Done

Good evening...ah yes, gone are those early morning hours when my mind was sharp and fresh. Well, OK, at least sharper and fresher than it is by evening. However: This is the time I have.

Ben flew off into the afternoon sun, and Theo and I settled down to our continuous honeymoon.  LOL.  We are doing pretty well.  He is feeling better. I've got him doing the dinner dishes whether he would or no, because I am tired of cookin' and washin'.  Too bad for me.

Tomorrow we go to his Kaiser doctor.  Shall I ask him, "Why was Theodore's heart not brought into the picture when we've been talking about his health all these last months?"  No, I shall not, probably. I have my own doctor to battle with.  So I'll just function as official mama and answer the questions that Theo does not connect with.  I'll try to be good.

I am headed back into the McDowell Diet as well.  My little foray into meat-eating didn't seem to function too well.  Hope I go back to feeling better after a few days of vegetables and fruits.  Theodore looks much better than he did a week ago, by the way.  Getting the water yanked out of him did him a world of good, and the regular and unrelenting beating of his heart should get lots more oxygen into his body.  All good.

There are lots of worldly issues I could deal with nowadays if I had the luxury of being a person.  I am so concerned about our (American) society.  How vulgar and mean the people on the tv are! How nasty.  Making the cruel and nasty remark seems to be the hyperion of conversational talent nowadays...as it always was, probably--only now the people making the remarks are uneducated, ignorant, ugly, ill-dressed, and fat.  Speaking of ignorant and uneducated, I don't think that hyperion is the appropriate word in the sentence preceding...but I can't think of another....you know what I mean.  See why I am so concerned?

Today is the birthday of sister no. 2.  She is eighty one today, eighteen months younger than I, and is the "baby" of my memory.  She was so precious that I took a bite out of her.  My mama did not take kindly to my show of love, and bit me back, thus causing trauma that no amount of therapy has ever been able to alleviate. Gracious, mama, I was only two.  Love to my sister of the peach-like cheek, on her birthday, and love to my Mama too. YAZZYBEL

Wow, what a Thanksgiving!

Gracious.  It's been a long time, baby.

Ben cameth and broketh my computer in attempting to clean it. I am glad he did for have now a better computer. I hope. It is a Toshiba laptop and would be good if I had a lap. But it functions well on a desk as well, and I am learning to use the little rubbing-board instead of a mouse. I learnt all this several years ago when I had a little mac but thought I was doing the right thing by going back to an HP desktop. Not so good, not so good. So I shall attempt to adapt to change.

Theo's story is that after a couple of days, instead of sending him home, they found a new heart arrhythmia which was more serious and different from his usuall atrial fibrillation.  They wanted to do an implant, an ICD, which will control the beating of his heart.  In the meantime they had given him enough intravenous Lasix to enable a race horse to win the cup, so he was feeling perkier than he has in a long time. (Still not very perky.  But less like The Mummy in demeanor,)  They did the operation at one am on Thanksgiving morning, and we took him home in late afternoon, arriving here in time for supper.

We had our belated Thanksgiving Dinner on Friday, and I was able to put forth my batty idea for a small scale meal, in which the entire meat section consisted of two roasted wings flanking a big pile of stuffing. It did look funny and tasted delicious.  In the stuffing I put celery, onion, garlic, and orange pepper all chopped up...oh, and a fistful of frozen corn kernels.  Oh, how yummy it was. I used Pepperidge Farm Cornbread Stuffing as the base, and I did not stint on the butter.  A photograph of the "bird" should appear below if I can find it and get it onto this page.

We are all thankful that Ben was here as it was a very stressful time. He leaves at twelve thirty today, and I will eerily be left alone with my Bionic Husband, to watch over and care for. Yikes. I wasn't cut out for a nurse, but we do our duty, bite the bullet, and man up.  In a week or so, Theodore should be feeling much better than he has for the past couple of months, and I will put him back to butler duty.  No more yard man, though. We are getting a gardener. Love to all, YAZZY

What a Difference a Day Makes

Good morning. Twenty four hours I was on here ready to talk about something important, I can't remember what. I had to stop everything though, and write out my church pledge, and then remembered that I had not paid the church for November yet...so did that, and then on and on...I didn't write my blog.

When I got home from church, Theodore was just sitting on the sofa. He was completely winded, having just taken out the bag of trash to the bin...and was worn out and winded.  I found out he had not had his breakfast, so I made breakfast  for us. (My 'second breakfast')...and as we ate, I talked to him about going to the ER as he'd been ordered early in the week, but he would not. Said he would think about it on Monday, but I told him that we would be expecting the arrival of Benjamin on Monday and it would be better to go to Kaiser NOW and get it over with. So he agreed to go and we were out there by eleven thirty.  I left at three with him still in the ER...he'd been ordered to stay overnight so they could get a handle on what  was going on with him...and were searching out a room for him.

He waited for three hours AFTER I left, in the ER, before they got him a place. I had to nag and beg for him to get something for lunch about two...and they finally got  a drink and sandwich to him.  They are not ill-intentioned, but they just forget to honor the request that  they realize is perfectly reasonable to make. His blood sugar was 55 or so when he got the food. No wonder he is weak.

Anyway I came home to a big wind and a ferocious rainstorm all evening long, but when I got up at five thirty this morning all was calm.  Let us pray that Theo had a good calm night and will be able to come home today. YAZZYBEL

Demise of a Giant, Illustrated

Good afternoon. The tree, in most respects, is all down. It has been a whale of a job on a whale of a tree.

My sister asked me what it would be like without it. I do not know yet, for only the seasons will tell us what it is like not to have it looming over our back area and dropping leaves, twigs, mini branches, and threatening us with imminent collapse when the wind blows. Jose the tree man seemed to think it was about to drop a lot of big limbs too...and you should have seen those limbs. As parts of the tree were removed, more were revealed, twisted, doubled back, hanging down and leaning on other limbs, leaves dangling, whole portions dead...it was scary, but it is also sad to see such a big thing reduced to dust.  I am happy to say that its children are residing in a couple of pots in our yard, and that they will be planted out there somewhere in the lower forty,to grow to glory, and to terrorize the owners perhaps fifty years from now if they are not given some care. Now, the pictures...I should be able to get a few on if I am careful, without blowing this whole dang thing away. YAZZY

Demise of a Giant

Today, Thursday, our huge old eucalyptus is finally going down . I  say, "ours," because it is within ten feet of our house at the back. Though on the other side of the fence, and the property of the neighbor, it has been our companion ever since Theo or I have lived here...

It used to shelter little birds by the hundreds at twilight, and I loved to hear them settling down for the night. And it has had the nests of hawks, too, and of later years the crows who probably have driven all the others away in time. Of late years, even the crows have had it with the tree, and this year they did not nest up there although they hung out and chattered.  I felt that they did not make their nest there because of the tree's precarious state of health and care. It had not been trimmed for years and years, if ever. Theo took down two huge overhanging limbs about ten years ago himself, which were nearly touching our roof.  Since then, nada.  The tree man says the tree's seventy feet tall.

There is a machine out on the street, spewing ground up debris into the bin of a large truck.  They have a lot more to do. I'll come back on later and post more on this if I can, and show you some pictures.  My sister no. 5 asked if I am going to like the results. My answer is, We'll have to live with it and see.  It ought to be a lot neater around here at least. YAZZYBEL

Stll with the Breath

I wanted to tell you about church, a play, an Evensong, and a reception, but I need to finish some thoughts I had about breathing, the wind, the words, the living entity about us, that solid thing that is solid and apart and yet within us--the air.

I was thinking about the air and imagining it as a solid thing, a person. The Navajo think that this air in the largest sense is WakanTanka.  It exists inside of us and in us it is made up of Little Winds but is still part of the whole. When the fluids of a man and a woman unite, then a small wind or little winds are created, and that happens at the moment of conception. (So that settles that!)

I was thinking of when Gregory died, and when I was wakened up and told that he had "stopped breathing," and I visualized his Little Wind, the part of Wakan Tanka that was apportioned to him at conception, drawing back into the larger body. Just gently joining back in to something that was there all along.  When we wear out or lose the house where the Little Wind has been residing, then there is a receding of the individual's wind into the Wakan Tanka that has been in us all our lives.  That is a gentle concept, for it means that the essence of Gregory was not lost, and I never thought it was.

In fact, so many people who have lost a loved one have told me, not in any Native American sense, that they 'feel' that their loved one is all around them still.

Then I thought about our Christian theology (which I am not too knowledgeable about either) and wondered what idea could compare to where all our loved ones are now, and I thought--Purgatory.  There they all are, (and we too if we remember that it's all around and within our houses of flesh)...and when the Great Gettin' Up Morning comes,--what will happen? We don't know yet.  But we will only be where we have been all along.  All is OK.

I won't talk about the play, the Armed Forces Evensong, and the reception yet, but perhaps later, when I have sorted out the email, read the paper, and fed Theodore his breakfast, I'll come back and do just that. YAZZYBEL

The Beautiful Stars

When I wrote about the stars about eight days ago, I forgot to remember that I got the idea of thinking about the stars from an incredible book I got in the mail last week.

The Spell of the Sensous is the book's  name, and its author is David Abram.

This book is like a giant diamond with a myriad facets, and  I do not really grasp any of them.  But the book starts with an unforgettable picture of when the author, once when in Bali, stepped out of his hut in the midst of a rice paddy in the middle of the night. Suddenly he was standing in the midst of a boundless skyful of stars. It took him a moment to orient himself to earth and to realize that the rice paddy, being deep in water, was merely reflecting the great sky full of stars and clouds. Visually there was no delineation between earth and heaven; he was surrounded by the starry firmament.  Merely thinking of this makes me dizzy.

This book is so beautiful.  I cannot yet say what he is writing about because I do not yet understand it.  Perhaps I never will.  As I riffled through the book, like riffling through a sky-and-earth-and-water book of stars, I came to the concluding portion of the book where at last I found a little toehold familiar enough for me to grasp onto, so that is where I am starting the reading.

"The Forgetting and Remembering of the Air," is the name of this section. For an asthmatic it's a godsend. It is rich enough to be a whole book by itself.  It's about the Lakota  and the Dine, or Navajo, and their concepts of creation and existence. Just the first premise is overwhelming enough to totally change the way I look at myself instantly.  Basically, it is that the Air is a person, all around us and within us, and we are within it.  How unclearly I put it.  But it is as far as I can conceptualize the idea yet.

Then, looking ahead, there is the idea of speech and words as part of the divine matrix of the air. Think if the air were thick and pink or pale blue, (to give it some substance in our visualization,) and we drew it into us and blew words out with it with our breath, as part of our breath, and think if we could see it.  Doesn't that give us another idea or picture of what the creation around us is like, what it's made of.

And, looking further ahead, I see we are going to get into another of my favorite subjects, the alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet to be precise--its genesis and development and where it came from and how it came into being.  All too complicated for my simple brain, but I can grasp features like little gleams of light from time to time, and I love reading it.  It is wonderful. After I read from this section to the very end of the book, perhaps enough of Air will have entered into me to enable me to understand some of the other chapters. YAZZYBEL

Do You Really Wanta Hear About My Breakfast?

Well, here it is anyway.

I am eating a bowl of:
1/4 c. Bob's Red Mill Oatbran and Oatmeal Hot Cereal cooked in
1 c distilled water
With a pinch of pink dinosaur toenail prehistoric salt,
And adorned with a spray of grapeseed oil,
1 T. of maple syrup,
And 6 raisins. YAZZYBEL
That  was written this morning in response to a number of emails regarding people's breakfasts of oatmeal, brown sugar and butter.  The only real sin in my oatmeal is the pinch of salt, prehistoric or not.  But those few grains add a world of flavor to complement the rich blandness of the oats.  And the maple syrup is pure luxury. I love it that it's healthier than brown sugar. I would buy maple sugar, but it is way expensive.

I read in a favorite news blog today that it costs, per year,  $37,000 to send a young person to Princeton U.(a private university)  and $43,000 to keep a person in NJ state prison. Now, there are many things to lament in that bit of news, but to me the biggest one is the fact that some people are proud of getting the government out of housing and feeding the prisoners.  When caring for/housing/feeding criminals became a business, with a profit line, things got way out of hand.  I'm agin it.

Should we go the way of Sheriff Arpayo of AZ, and deck the crooks out in pink underwear and make them live in tents? Why not? Doesn't hurt them and might make them think.  I have always thought it unjust to have these people who defy the system of laws be choosing from three salad dressings at every meal. Feed them well, but no catering to whims.

And that brings us to another pet peeve of mine. I get more news on this topic from my sister no. 2, who is on the front lines of free food. (She doesn't get any.) She is on a severe budget, and recalls the day she decided she could not afford steaks and cherries at the supermarket, and saw before her in the line a woman with her cart piled with cherries and steaks, paying with a free food card from the State of Texas.  This is not a time in history when those of the stiff upper lip will get what they deserve out of the bounties of this life.  Those who don't mind weaseling and getting the food card are the ones who get the goodies.  This past week, in the same store, in the same Texas town, my sister saw the (same?) woman in front of her in line. This woman had a cart full of good stuff, plus a number of big cans of dog food.  "Oh, I'm sorry. You can't pay for dog food on the (State food card)..." So the lady put the dog food aside, held up the line while she marched to the meat counter, and came back with packages of ground beef.  Done and done. Sold and paid for(by the taxpayer).   I wonder what the doggies had for dinner that night? Grrr. YAZZYBEL, disgruntled but happy in the tummy with health food breakfast.

And it's Wednesday

And there was music.

We are playing a duet by Jacques Ibert, Histoires. En francais, Histoires means stories.  This piece is a series of five of the most charming musical stories I've ever encountered:  La Meneuse de tortues d'or (Girl leading the golden tortoises), (slowest piece ever written but how beautiful), Le petit ane blanc (a   donkey with quite a personality),A Giddy Girl,( a sly and sexy ragtime jazz blues dance), La cage de cristal, a quite touching sad depiction of fish in a bowl, or birds in a cage as time ticks by, and last the piece de resistance, La cortege de Balkis.  Balkis is the Queen of Sheba, and here she is going to meet King Solomon.  There's no question of her value as a human being as she solemnly processes along, swaying on her elephant or camel as as she's transported to an encounter of world-shaking significance.  Wow.  Good, interesting music.

For lunch I gave Patricia an almost vegan soup.  That's like "almost human." Are you or aren't you? This soup was vegan as it started, with minced onion, red pepper, mushroom, corn kernels, and tiny cubes of crisp bacon.  Bacon doesn't count as a meat. A can of chicken broth was added. Boomp. No longer vegan, but the flavor needed deepening.  I also baked a potato while breakfast was making, and cubed the white meat of that into the soup. After Patricia and I had played, I sprinkled flour and curry powder over the resting soup (dry by now) and added skim milk. Double boomp.  Cooked it up and in the meanwhixt toasted tortillas with a grating of cheese and a sliced tomato with tarragon sprinkled over, in the oven. When all was ready, we ate.  The soup really was good. Would it have been as good without the chicken broth? Probably.  Would the tortillas have been as good without the cheese? Yes, in their way.  But I did it that way, and it was tasty. A tasty lunch.

Then a man came to talk to Theodore, to assess the errors made by Home Depot in planning and installing our new bathroom floors, and Patricia left, and I sank down after all for a well-earned slumber. YAZZYBEL (but I didn't sleep.)

And It's Tuesday (and I lost Monday)

I've been thinking of walking in the mysterious footpaths and byways of San Diego .

I had a friend who lived near a footbridge that has become quite famous and has even been shored up to keep it going and has made the papers. It was off First and went west to a really incredible batch of houses...My kids and I used to park over there and walk over and back just for the thrill of it. And there was at that time (70's) another one nearby there, less imposing, but just as interesting.

When I'd walk in Mission Hills, I'd walk at night (early evening) and really enjoyed my hour or so out on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. I discovered oddities  too, as well as houses where the same four oldsters played cards in a window behind a semi-screen of cannas every evening, houses where there was never any sign of life beyond a vague blue flicker of light from a television screen, huge houses with every light on and you knew that a family of kids lived there...and I found a sidewalk that wandered along the edge of a mini-canyon with houses facing on it, that came out on another street--and you'd never have known it existed, in a car. Fascinating San Diego.

And there were the foxes.  To walk at night in San Diego was to know our neighbors, the ones who inhabited the great, sighing dark canyons that paralelled our civilized streets.  They might have been coyotes, but I believe that they were real foxes.  We'd meet unexpectly, bow, and part in mutual respect.  There were lots of them.  One night, and I would attest to this, I saw two foxes trotting slowly before me..and as I got closer I saw that the two were supporting another fox between them as they disappeared into some bushes.  I felt at the time that they were moving from one canyon spot to another,(we were between great rainstorms that winter), had to use the street to get into it, and were taking along grandma. Nice of them, really.

One afternoon I was standing in my back yard (canyon) and looked to the east where there was a big hill, warm and pleasant in the afternoon sun.  I couldn't believe my eyes as a fox appeared in broad daylight on the hill, made his round-and-round circle of a nest in the tall dry grass, and lay down for a warm nap.  I believe that that was the only time I ever sighted one in daylight.  You wouldn't have wanted to meet one in daylight because that would have meant he was ill probably.  Sometimes in the big Santa Anas, they'd get needy for water, and that is when I'd  put a big tub  a number of yards down the canyon and fill it with water from the hose, from above.  They needed it.

When I came back from my sojourn in Texas, I'd go to Mission Hills to walk in the evenings but that sense of solitude and invisibility never returned. People had established automatic sensor lights on the fronts of their houses, and instead of skulking by in peace and privacy, you got "lit up," and had to hurry on in search of shadows.

Life was good, in San Diego. And beautiful. YAZZYBEL

Sunday and no Church

As I re-read yesterday's blog, I was left with an impression that I want to correct.  In no way did I make any unselfish decisions.  All my decisions along the way have been selfish in that they were a path to the survival of me and mine.  And the positive tone at the end of the essay means to say: here I am, and thank God for it all. For the loss of what I had (if it can ever be lost) (and if I ever had it) and for what I have gained.

I am not happy to be living on Fairway Court in Chula Vista, particularly, for Fairway Court in Chula Vista is not a particularly great place to live if we compare it to living in Central San Diego. I miss the easy connection conversation in day to day matters with people who are educated and have a view of life that compares with my own.  They are hard to come by for me here; I know they exist, I just don't know them and I don't run into them at the grocery store.  I think I came here too late to make a place for myself that is comfortable.  I also think that Chula Vista (the old part, where we live) has been and is being sacrificed to the economic and political gears that are grinding away at our areas that border Mexico.  There are people (who don't live here) who think it's cute to have your main streets peppered with  persons who make their living by tossing heavy signs around in the air for advertising.  I happen to think that it is not quaint, but horrible to have to earn a living that way and it says little for our culture to tolerate it.  I don't think it is charming or funny for all our business signs to be en espanol as we drive along Third Ave. or Broadway. If I wanted to live in Tijuana I would move there.  Haven't had to; Tijuana has moved here.

That said, I will say that the bees and hummingbirds are happier in our yard than I have ever seen in other parts of San Diego.  Plants grow astoundingly well.  The sun is as benign and pleasant as it could be.  A very chill wind blows onto our high elevation lot, directly in from Point Mugu--or is it Point Conception--all summer long, lending us natural air conditioning that almost never fails us.

And if I hadn't moved here, I never would have been writing my magnum opus, One Hundred Views of Fairway Court (thank you, Hiroshige)...which I only discontinued because it seemed to be rather negative and carping instead of doing what I wanted it to.  It needs to be shaken out and dusted off.  It is time to be here, to be here now. YAZZYBEL

I'm All Agog

Good evening! These breakfasts are getting later and later.

I am all agog, because I have been set back today in many ways.  Set back in more than one way, in many ways.

My church, as I believe I may have mentioned, had a tea party today, to which I took four dozen little tea sandwiches...

The tea party was held in an old old San Diego house just off  Balboa Park, in the home of an old San Diego family, two of whom go to my church.  I'd never been in this particular house before, and it was stunning to behold, house and garden.  Not a pretentious house, just a perfect family house of the past century, of red brick and plaster and masonry and wide halls and rooms large enough to live within without feeling cramped.  It reminded me so much of the house I lived in for twenty-odd years a few miles to the north in Mission Hills.  Things like old moldings and old window sills and old floors and old doors...we don't realize the hold they have on our memories and our emotions.

Then, the people I go to church with at the early communion service every Sunday were there, all happy today in the bright clear sun of an afternoon on a blessed day between rainstorms.  Sometimes they all seem so privileged, and they seem different from this little Texas Mexican girl who just lucked into moving into this beautiful city so long ago.  But then, I am set back into realizing that they do not know how privileged I was to have had the unique life I had as a girl, in a unique town of Brownsville, with unique parents of intelligence and graciousness who could make a fine home under trying circumstances in a harsh climate like South Texas. 

 So here today were all of us, members of the Eight O'Clock Club, all so different, all drinking tea and sherry and eating little sandwiches and scones and sharing conversation...I learned things about lots of people today that I've not known before. I have learned how kind most all of these people are.

I walked out of the party with a young man who showed me a way to the path that will walk you east out of the park, across a hidden footbridge in the trees, and bring you out way over in Hillcrest not far from the Junior High School where my kids went to school, toward Essex Street and  Myrtle Way where this young man lives.  I mentioned that I'd lived for many years on a canyon in Mission Hills.  "Where do you live now? " asked the young man. "Chula Vista," I replied.  "Oh, my, " he said.  "How did that happen that you came down so far?"  A blunt thing to ask, but I did not mind because this is a day for setting back, in many ways.  "Oh, I wanted to live with my husband," I said.  "Well, I hope he is worth it for you to have given up so much."

My goodness.  What an astute thing for him to have said.  Yes, I did give up a lot. Yes, Chula Vista is a big comedown from what I had firmly within my grasp and loved.  "Yes," I said. "I love my husband and he is worth it," (said lightly.)  But the living of it has not been light at all, and it has set me back today a lot remembering all that, the home  I loved, the husband I loved, the sons I loved more than anything, the trying to hold them all together. Something had to be sacrificed, and the little Texas Mexican girl knows that I sacrificed the right thing. YAZZYBEL

Perhaps a Dull Day==who knows?

Good morning. It is seven, dark outside...well, as I turn I see it is getting light...and I am sitting here sneezing. Why am I suddenly sneezing this fall as opposed to the last few years, when I have hardly sneezed at all?

Now that's a dull first paragraph.  I guess I'll get duller and talk about grammar.  Yesterday's post about stars contained the sentence (more or less) "I doubt that either he or I have seen anything like (those stars) since."  Should I have used "has" or "have" there? Since it directly follows "I" , "have" seems to be an okay choice. But the real subject of that verb is "either", and  I should have written it, "I doubt that either of us has seen anything like...," to avoid choosing a verb so precisely.

I know English grammar, thanks to Mrs. Ellis of Ellis Private School in Laredo, Texas, in 1940.  Mrs. Ellis, then, was as old as the hills, and had learned her grammar in 1890, probably.  She really knew her stuff.
And sister No.2  and I were of the right mindset to take it all in right then, and we did. It gave us a four-square solid foundation with our language that we have used and appreciated all our lives. I find my everyday language corrupted nowadays, by laxity and carelessness, but the solid boards are there.  I could diagram any (correctly written) sentence that you could give me, right now. Just try it.

Well, I have been eating vegan-ly for a week or so, but I have been adding on some cake that I made for my no-show cousin, and a few nips of Halloween candy. The candy does not taste as bad as it did at first so that means that I have lost it as far as the advantage of the diet is concerned.  If I were still on the Path, those little peanut crunch-molasses bars with the stripes would taste quite alien instead of yummy. Note to self:  Improve. Go back.  Get with the program.

Last night I made a vegan stew.  I need to know how to make one that is more deeply flavorful. Perhaps browning the onions a bit would have done it. The dish was tasty but a bit weak and vegetable-tasting. It was made of carrots cut in big chunks, onions, green peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, corn kernels, and a sprinkle of herbs and dried garlic bits.  It was a bit watery because I wanted to be sure the carrots cooked long enough.  Instead of cut tomatoes alone, I could have added canned tomato sauce...Let's see...what else? I'll think.  More garlic. 

Today I have to weigh and thanks to the cake and candy I won't have lost anything and can only pray I have not gained.  See, I said this would be dull, right? And tomorrow I make and take tea sandwiches to the church tea party, and then sit there to be harangued into increasing my pledge.  Oh, I am resistant.  You guys don't know how resistant. YAZZYBEL

Thinking of the Stars

Hi==today I am thinking of the stars, and how people used to be so familiar with that glorious canopy over our sleeping heads...and how we can hardly see them any more.

When I went out to get the paper at six o'clock, there were about five or six stars up there.  The same ones that are always there, the biggest ones.  All the rest are obscured by a screen of reflected city light.

I remember when Alex was three or four, I went into his room in the middle of the night. He was sitting in his window sill, and when I asked him what he was doing out of bed, he said, "I was just looking at the beau-ti-ful stars."  I am glad there were still some middle of the night stars to be seen in San Diego in the early sixties.  The color of the night sky as I'll always remember it was rose-color.  When I wrote a story set in our neighborhood, I described the fox's water (a tub I'd set down in the canyon during the dry spell) as "gleaming like an opal" under the night sky.  A rose-colored opal.

Once when Ben was very small, perhaps a year old but no more, we went camping at Ocotillo.  He was sleeping in my sleeping bag, as protection against the mountain lions and scorpions. Hah.  I woke in the night, and he was sitting up beside me.  When I said hi, he said not a word for he could not speak yet, but he pointed his baby pointer finger up at a night sky too glorious for any words. I am not sure that either he or I have seen anything to compare with it since.

When I was a girl, the young used to run around barefooted at night, playing massive games of hide and seek that might span blocks...when we got tired we threw ourselves down on the Faulks' carpet grass and watched the stars until it was time to go home.  I am glad we had a familiarity with that wonderful phenomenon then.  Now, it's so nearly gone from our lives that wise people are trying to set out "parks", intentionally darkened areas from which watchers can get some glimpse of the glory overhead.

They say that our infrastructure is going. That will surely take some getting used to, but I am secretly comforted to know that  Wakan Tanka has a pleasant and profound surprise for us when the grid is gone. YAZZYBEL

No Cousin Coming

Hi, folks.

That headline's right. No cousin is coming this weekend.  That freak snowstorm that hit the northeastern US this past weekend hit his town in Connecticut, and brought enough disturbance in his property that he decided not to go to his conference in LA, and, by extention, not to come to see us.

I accept it, but I am disappointed. I know he is too, because he is Family, and Family wants to know Family as much as we can when separated by miles and years as we are.

Well, today is Nov. 2nd.  Halloween was day before yesterday, now, and we did not have the large throngs of little kids from Mexico that we have had in years past.  The costuming was just as great, however. It's incredible how much people are putting into garbing their kids at Halloween. 

In fact, we had very few kids at all.  Theo and I closed down about an hour earlier than we usually do, but nobody was coming around anyway.  We had bales of Bad Wicked Candy left over. I wrapped it up, tied it up, and added it to a pile  of stuff I put out for the AmVets to pick up today. So, I'd say that Halloween was a dud. C'est la vie.  Another year....

Today Patricia and I played the piano. I gave her a vegan lunch of bean soup, slaw, guacamole, and home made tortilla chips.  Very delicious.  The doctor (whom we saw yesterday) has instructed Theodore to eat a wider variety of foods, so our menus will be looking up if I can make him eat some of the stuff. And I will continue to make meat patties for him. Tonight: baked potato, sweet potato, last of the slaw, and--who knows? Maybe baked carrots. Zzzzz....but good. YAZZYBEL

A Vegan Breakfast and a Vegetarian Second Course

Good morning.

I had a delicious vegan breakfast today. I toasted a tortilla, and as it lay on the gas flame I opened and mashed an avocado, added a dash of vinegar and a dash of pink pre-historic salt, and finally put it all together and ate it.

It was great, but not enough. I am vexed at these Walmart avocados, though I should be honored that they are close enough to their antecedents to be small and have strings. Yes, strings!  After all the homage I have paid to strings, I should not be offended at having to take them out.  But it's like anything else--I am lazy and want no trouble.  It was a pretty tasty little avocado, though, even though there was little meat after I removed the strings and black spots.

After I ate that delightful vegan breakfast, I found myself ready to eat something else as I fried up Taterton's bacon and eggs, so I took a "waffle" out of the freezer and toasted it up in the toaster, spread on a little jam, and ate that too.

I can tell that my innards are all roiled up from indulging in Halloween candy (though moderately) yesterday.  It is really strange that just a few days on the vegan idea of eating sharpens up one's body so much.  So the indulgence in Halloween candy becomes a penance of Halloween candy. Who'd want to punish herself enough to eat it? It is really nasty. 

The Hershey Corp. is getting a lot of negative publicity for having moved its production lines to Mexico, where child labor is supposedly employed in putting out those strange-flavored little bars which bear little resemblance to the Hershey bars of my childhood. This ends my association with Hershey forever, and that includes a lot of candy bars, folks. In fact, all of them, as practically all the makers of US candy have moved "offshore" to Mexico, including Brach's, makers of Candy Corn and Indian Corn, which also don't taste much like they used to.  The alien quality of those substances is pointed up to the maximum by the sharpening of one's taste buds as one cuts way down on animal products and tries to eat the natural plant foods that God instructed us to, back there in the Garden of Eden.

Of course, chocolate and sugar are, in themselves, vegan if anything is.  But--there is something wrong with that candy. It's too sweet, for one thing. Way over processed for another.

How long can I stay on this eating plan?  I do not know. When my cousin comes this weekend, I plan a wonderful chuck roast along with the beans and rice of the Divine Plan.  What if my cousin turns out to be a vegan?  Nah...he won't....but, surprise, one of my own sons is experimenting along those lines and finding remarkable results in the lowering of his blood glucose readings in a very short time.  Isn't that wonderful? And I did not nag.  He discovered it all on his very own. The best way. YAZZYBEL

Still Vegatating

I have been so so drowsy today...I realized about a half hour ago that I had no cafe this morning. I had tea, to see if I really want coffee in the mornings. So far the answer is a rousing YES. So I just had a cup of coffee. I am not galvanized into action, but am not quite as sleepy as I was.

It's Halloween, and many children of the Tijuana persuasion will be here this evening.  You would not believe how beautifully costumed they are.  They're just adorable. Many mamas and dads are there with the kids, with their sacks, too.  Big babies, they are.  And last year I even had a granny.  I thought it was awfully funny.  I hope they don't eat all that candy they'll get. If they are smart, they'll take it to their spider holes, bag it up, and sell it off bit by bit, under which circumstances it will be better for everybody.  I was sitting on the sofa trying to read last night,and finally realized that the horrible chemical distracting odor I'd been smelling was coming from a bag of bubble gum treats that was sitting there next to me.  Horrible stuff.

I am still struggling along with the all-veggie meal plans. Today I fell off the wagon. I felt the need for some protein so had water-pack tuna with my raw cabbage salad.  It was pretty good.  But then later I had a teeny Snickers and 2 mini Tootsie Rolls.  Tell me, was there a relation between the eating of tuna and the craving for Snickers? Probably.

So I made a little sandwich of the rest of the tuna in one slice of brown bread, and just had that with my cup of coffee. Might as well be hung for a whole fish as a fin....It was a quite tiny amount, all in all.

Last night I made a wonderful dish of vegetable matter.  I sprayed a pan with grapeseed oil, disapproved of by Dr. McDougall of course, and then I sauteed gently: 2 c. mushrooms, cut thick, 4 cups chard cut in strips, and five or six green onions cut into thin pieces...they cooked and made their own juice, and were just delicious.  A winning combo.

I will have the last of that tonight, and I am going to have to be careful of making too much.  My grandmother would have described this diet in terms, not of fiber, but of "bulk" and "roughage."  Roughage it is, and it's very filling.  But vegetable cook-ups and stews do not bear with too much overheating the next day.  One service as a leftover, and that's that for me. It becomes too much like ensilage if it lingers in the refrigerator too long, and that is no good.  Tonight I don't think I'll have anything more since I had that half of verboten sandwich.  It's all too filling.

Well, tomorrow we take Mr. Taterton to the doctor to get bawled out about his blood sugars.  He blames me for what he eats, of course.  It is all too hard for someone who has never wanted to give a thought about what he ate or drank--except whether it piqued his fancy or not.  I have tried to feed him better. He won't eat it. But he is going to get a big helping of that vegetable dish up there again tonight, under the guise of a side dish for his hamburger.  YAZZYBEL

I Have the Feeling That Something's Missing

And that Something is a Someone--my longlost cousin Stuart.

Somehow I had the impression that this was the weekend on which he was making his visit to us--all was ready. At ten this morning, I thought I'd call to see when he was going to drive in from the airport. To my surprise, he answered from his home office in Connecticut.  Whoa.  He's coming next weekend, not this one.

I will freeze the roast uncooked...I will freeze the cake I made if I can't think of a way to give it away...and we will eat the frijoles, as they were already started and probably would not freeze well.  Well, if I refry them they will be fine. We'll see.

To fill in the great big hole in my (expected) weekend, I'll put in some more pictures of the work done by Filiberto and Cesar. These pictures will be boring, because tile floors in progress can only be boring..but that' s all I have to fill the space. YAZZYBEL

See?  Told ya. 

A Lot of Trouble but Worth It

 

Hi, everybody!

Up there we have Cesar and Filiberto.  They were the cheerful, polite, tireless workers who were here to put in new tile floors in our two tiny bathrooms, and our front porch.  It was a pleasure to have them around. Cesar was the boss, who frequently was telling Filiberto how to do the tasks correctly.  Filiberto did as he was told.  They were both very nice.  Cesar was here on Monday and nearly killed himself working so hard alone. So wisely he brought Filiberto along the next day, and still they barely finished by sunset, and both worked very hard all day long. I never really saw either of them take a break or rest at all. They said they brought their lunch, but if so I never saw them eat. They had big bottles of water which they slugged down from time to time.  It was pleasant and funny to hear them talk, to hear them talk on their cells to their wives, to hear their music which was playing noticeably but very very quietly out in front where they were cutting and placing tiles.

I am glad the job is done. Is it perfect? No.  Is it fine by me? Yes.  If anything went wrong with the job it was the fault of Home Depot, not the workers! It was great to have them about for a couple of days, and it is wonderful to have real, clean, hard bathroom floors at last. YAZZYBEL

McDougall-ish Ideas but the Dishes are Mine

Good morning; here is a picture of a delicious dish that would be loved by skinny bitches and bastards, McDougall-ites, and in fact any and all vegans.

Nothing is in this dish except vegetables.  I bought a huge eggplant and peeled it. I cut it in circles, put three circles together, cut them in small strips, thence into small cubes.  I sauteed them in a very tiny amount of olive oil,which Dr McD would not like but everybody else would.  Then I added cubed or sliced onions, garlic, red or green bell pepper, a tiny slice of a red serrano minced so tiny you wouldn't believe it, and I sauteed everything gently, and then I added one can of tomato sauce (saltless), and a small cubed red tomato. And some black olives.  You can also add a bit of water (not too much; eggplants are watery) and leave it all to simmer. Oh yes, you may add herbs of your choice. And a little salt and pepper.  It's amazing how little salt you need once you get out of the habit of salting thoughtlessly.This dish is sometimes called eggplant caviar, and it can be eaten cold on crackers or bread, or all by itself with a spoon. Or heated in a bowl as a comfort food.

Now, the sandwich above is the one that I wrote about in the last posting.  Is it not pretty?  And it is so delicious.  Sandwiches do not have to have meat or cheese in them to be very satisfying to the taste buds.

I ask  you also to look at the plate. I take these plates out every fall of the year.  I wish I lived where there were oak trees and acorns all over the place. Of course, up in the mountains near San Diego, there are lots of wonderful oak trees.  Many of them have been lost to bugs or burning over the last few years. Let us say a prayer of thanks for their existence on this earth.
They are so beautiful; the leaves are beautiful, the acorns are fascinating...I draw a lot of oak trees as we go on our drives up and down the coast of California.

The name of that set of plates is "October Days," and the maker is Homer Laughlin.  America used to turn out a lot of beautiful, simple, utilitarian things.  I just love my autumn dishes.  And the foods on them too. YAZZYBEL

.

A Delicious Sandwich and a Casserole

I made a delicious sandwich for lunch today.  Inspired by the McDougall Diet, I have been experimenting with making whole meals without any animal products. As much as possible.

Today, I cut into small thin strips:
about 6 thin thin onion rings
a few tablespoonfuls of thin slices of red and green peppers...
And mixed these into a dressing made from 1 teaspoon mayonnaise, 2 t. chile sauce, and about 1/4 teaspoon mustard.
I spread the above on one slice of whole wheat bread.  Then I took one slice from a huge ripe tomato, which covered the dressing completely.
On the facing slice of bread I cut up and mashed one half ripe avocado.  Added salt and pepper. Put together and cut in two. 
That was one tasty sandwich.  Almost too juicy, but the dressing on one side and the avocado on the other kept the tomato slice under control.  Really satisfying.

The only non McDougall element was the t. of mayo. Well, and the s and p.

Dr McDougall doesn't want you to have any meat whatsoever, nor eggs, milk, butter. Nor sugar. Nor salt and (presumably) pepper.  It is hard for the average American to follow such a regimen.  But, with application and strictness, one can make a diet that will be far less full of fat and extraneous meat products than the average.  I figure, try to make the meals meatless and saltless and sugarless as Dr McD wants. Then, every few days, a breakout towards the hamburger or chicken leg can probably be tolerable in the scheme of health. 

I also made a smoothie of pineapple, cucumber, and orange juice.  Very good. You can definitely taste the cucumber. I like cucumbers, so that's OK with me. And I made a great "scalloped" potato casserole night before last.

Not Scalloped Potatoes

one potato, peeled and thinly sliced
green peppers, sliced medium thin into sticks
onion, sliced medium thin into rings or cubes

Using spray oil, lightly spray a glass baking dish.
Add a layer of potatoes.
A layer of  peppers and onions.
Salt and pepper.
Another layer of potatoes.
Another layer of peppers and onions.
Spray of oil.
Salt and pepper.
Add skim milk to tops of potatoes.

Bake in medium hot oven (remember I have no calibration so have to guess) about an hour until done. If they are getting too brown on top, turn the oven down.  When vegetables are done, remove and set on table or top of stove.  They are delicious, filling, and satisfying.

That's a way you can cook without meat. I never thought I'd be able to do it for any length of time. Aside from beans and rice and tortillas.  But with a salad, and some good fruit for dessert (and maybe a cookie)...that is a good supper.  Of course I am not supposed to use milk. Don't know what that casserole would be with water instead of milk...OK. Better than nothing for sure. YAZZYBEL

Yes, It's Been a Long Time

Well, I have no excuses.

Inconveniences, yes. Excuses, no.

This will be quick. Or short. Or both.

Up at five, sleepy yet after going to the bathroom. Back to bed prepared to snooze till seven.

Lights on!  My spouse up and maundering about in the bedroom!  "Why, may I ask?" 

"I thought you were up," sez he.  "No, I am not," sez I from the depths of the comfy warm puffers.

Lights continue on...hubby off in the living room where the roar of the TV can shortly be heard. So I said, the heck with it, and got up.  He got up to await the opening of the market and the price of Apple. 

"But it's only five thirty," sez I.  Continued application of attention to CNBC was my only response.

So here I sit at the computer with burnt-out eyes, feeling disagreeable.

This is as good a time as any to give the Kitty Blanko report.  Should I say, Kitty Blanca?  Still not absolutely sure, but the pendulum seems to be swinging that way. Astute peeking skills have been applied, and I think he's a female. Pretty sure.

Kitty Blanko's injured eye looks better, more like a regular eyeball, but I think he's blind in that eye. He has showed up here twice with a fluourescent green shoestring tied about his neck, and I have made Theo remove it each time.  Someone is trying to restrict his movements (KB's) or is giving us a signal that KB belongs to someone else.  I need to send them the signal that if a cat is yours, it's your responsibility to give it food.  Well, it is a long day ahead, I hope.

The dr. wants to make me take Lovastatin.  I am conflicted.  Lots of irritants today. Grouchily yours, YAZZYBEL

Churchless Sunday!

Yes, it was a churchless Sunday.

I was reared to go to church whether I would or no, so I miss it when I do not go.  But have spent years entire not going...so it must be old age that really impels me to go now.

Today there was a "run" in the park, and when there is a run, parking is impossible because people come from near and far to take all the parking places at six a.m.

Theodore and I went out to eat breakfast at a nice restaurant in Chula Vista because I forgot to buy bacon yesterday when we went shopping.  He's gotta have his bacon.

The restaurant is the Trattoria Italianissimo, right on Third Avenue.  It is a beautiful, tastefully decorated restaurant. It started off about a year ago with high ideas and high prices. A year of suffering has brought about changes.  All restaurants are trying to lower prices now and to serve less food.  The great thing about this restaurant is that it serves real food.  And the food was served by a waiter dressed in black pants and white shirt just as if it were evening...And there was a blindingly clean and white tablecloth on the table. Thank goodness I spilled not one crumb for once.

We sat in a bright window table.  We had coffee, and Theo had bacon and eggs. Plus toast and butter. And a tiny thin circle of orange slice and a tiny sprig of parsley on the plate.  I had lemon-ricotta pancakes with butter (sparsely spread by me) and the tiny thin circle of orange and tiny sprig of parsley. Over my pancakes was sprinkled a dusting of grated lemon peel and a thin dusting of powdered sugar.  Another plate came with dish of whipped butter, dish of raspberry jam, and unidentified bottle of syrup.  I ate 2 of 3 pancakes, plus the slices of orange and sprigs of parsley from my dish and Theo's. And raspberry jam.  My, how delicious it was.  The whole thing including generous tip was $25.00, and well worth it.  In a lower genre restaurant the meal would have been closer to $15.00 plus tip, bringing it up close to $20.00 anyway. And no delicious home potatoes to bring home, and no white tablecloth and good waiter. So...bring it on.

YAZZYBEL

Saturday Miscellanea

Good morning.  As I wrote that title to the blog, I suddenly realized that I don't know how to spell miscellanea!  Just rewriting the word now, it still does not look right.  I have never written it before, but I would have never had trouble writing it before either.

Today we are going to the dump to take my husband's used diabetic needles and prickers--"sharps", as they are called.  You'd think there would be available depots all over town, given the number of people who are sticking and pricking themselves in any period of time, on a regular basis, by orders of the doctor, and as a duty. But when we called Kaiser Pharmacy, who hand that stuff out like candy on Halloween when it's their time to give out, we got a baffled, "Wha? Who? Us? What? Err--we don't know where you can turn them in."  Tell me if that makes sense.  We found that we can go to the big dump here in CV, where there is a little special dump stuck like a wart out in front, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays they accept these loathesome supplies. And I wonder what they do with them.

I also want to write about avocadoes today. On Wednesday morning, Theo left with special instructions to bring back an avocado for Patricia's and my lunch salad. He brought back a bag of Costco avocadoes, large, black, perfect looking---and watery.
I have not yet found a good avocado this year. Gosh, they are awful.  Avocadoes are supposed to have a rich, flavorful texture, almost buttery. Better than buttery.  I truly love them.  But these--they would not even make a good guacamole even if rich olive oil is added to the mix.

This reminds me of the time when I was about twenty, and Maria came from Mexico City to preside in my mother's kitchen when Mother was on a trip. Maria was the wife of Luis, and she was in Brownsville because Luis was my father's driver for a time and Maria was supposed to fill in to keep my father going at mealtimes.

Maria was one of those classical Mexico City women of time immemorial.  God made them whole and set them down in Mexico to keep the men alive. She was square, brown, dynamic, and a big know-it-all.  And she did know it all, so we should not object.  She gave me a couple of lessons in the kitchen.

Picking up a beautiful, green smooth Fuerte American avocado, she said, "Estos no son aguacates.  Estos son paguas."  She went on to reiterate that what we Americans called an avocado were a different fruit altogether from the Mexican aguacate of my childhood. I think I've told you, conscientious reader, of the savory, tender, aguacates we used to eat, full of big strings that had to be taken out before the fruit could be made into guacamole.  In fact, I am sure that's how guacamole was invented. By the time you got the strings out, it already was guacamole.
She also taught me how to make Guachinango a la Veracruzana.  You take a whole beautiful rose-pink and pearly colored red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico, clean him up and put him on a baking pan. Inside him you place this stuffing: tomato, peppers, onions, garlic, capers.  It was the capers that were new to me then. Oh, olives too, you put in.  Anyway, my mother being of good Scotch Irish stock knew not of the capers, so I learned how yummy these strange little knots of pickled nasturtium buds can be.  Anyway, then you bake the fish.  Yummo is all I can say.  I have not seen a real fresh huachinango in years, I think.

I got to put in a lot of italics today, did I not? It's fun and I would do it more often if I were not afraid of blowing the whole posting away. And it has happened.

 And that is all for Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011.  YAZZYBEL