Good morning!
Figs are the topic for this morning. We have finally been picking a few and more than just a few from the Brown Turkey. I have been eating them fresh, but if they are not perfect enought to tempt me I can do this with them.
Fig-Ginger Preserve
1 cup cut up figs
1-inch piece of fresh ginger
sugar
Place figs, ginger and sugar in saucepan, and heat slowly until enough juice comes out that they begin to boil up a bit..stir constantly at this point.
When you get a nice batch of fruit and juice in the pan, and things are simmering, you turn down the heat low and keep a close watch. When everything is thick and syrupy as much as you like, it is done.
Set aside the piece of ginger to chew on if things get dull. Pour the hot preserve into a clean jar. Cap when it cools a bit and put into the refrigerator. It will stay nicely in the refrigerator for quite a while. I think I may do THIS with mine:
Fig Ice Cream
Slightly whip 2 c. heavy cream.
Beat in some milk but not more than a cup.
Beat in an egg yolk (no, you won't die).
Beat in a tiny pinch of salt and I mean a shake of salt.
Add a tiny bit of vanilla.
Add the fig preserves you just made. If you need more sweetness, add some maple syrup of the real variety. Or agave syrup. Or honey.
Pour into an aluminum loaf pan and place into the freezer. At regular 1/2 hour intervals, check it and beat it up. My mother used a fork, but she had more determination than I do. An immersion blender might be good but it will disintegrate the figs which you might not want.
After a couple of hours, if you have not eaten it all up in the tastings, you will have a pan of fig ice cream. It will be a gorgeous pale pink with bits of black skin in it. And it will taste good. Be sure it is sweet enough, for if it is not it will taste insipid, I daresay. If it is not sweet enough, you could run out into the yard, praying for another dozen figs, and repeat the fig preserve recipe. Use as a syrup to pour over the ice cream when served. Yum. I like it. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
More About Greg
Good midday.
This will be that last about Greg for a while. I want to remember about the good things in his time with us. It's never all bad.
When he was a kid, he was the cutest thing. He had a little button nose and big eyes, and a perpetual air of naivete that was so disarming. He was constantly keeping us on edge when he was a toddler. He tripped in the house and nearly bit off his tongue when he was a toddler. He staggered around the house and stepped on a needle, prompting a late evening visit to Dr Tisdale's, and the growled remark from the doctor to me: "And where 's the other half of the needle?" (It was never found)...he inserted a bean into his ear, where it sprouted happily away until I mention his cough to the doctor who immediately got out his machine and peeked into his ear...aha! A bean! It appears that a cough without any obvious reason is often prompted by a bean hidden away in the caverns of the middle ear. How do doctors know these things?
When Greg went to kindergarten he was struggling with phonics like all the rest. One evening we were driving in Mission Valley where all the car signs were, and I heard from the back seat, in the tones of one who is witnessing Valhalla and the Sphinx for the first time: "JOHN! HINE! PONTIAC!" What an epiphany for him and for us. He could read, and from then on for the rest of the season he read every sign we could see..."What's that one?" I asked, pointing to the Bonanza Steak House sign. He looked and then haughtily and condescendingly said: "Bone-za-na! What else!" I always did think my kids were the cutest and funniest things in the world. And I was right.
When he got older, he was often and always pondering the meaning of the world. Many things baffled him. I remember that he was very caught by Baby Twinter, our young male kitten, who was just leaving babyhood and embarking on the mysteries of cat adolescence. Greg had just the same attitude of bafflement on many aspects of growning up. Makes one wonder. I think people classed as mentally ill often have just been trapped in some aspect of adolescence, for whatever reason, chemical or psychological or social.
In any case, Greg had a wonderful quizzical sense of humor. He was the delight of any group he was in because of his gentle clownish ability. I guess that was a coping mechanism. Thank goodness for it. But it makes us miss us all the more, when the shadows get long and there is no one around to make us laugh and smile. YAZZYBEL
This will be that last about Greg for a while. I want to remember about the good things in his time with us. It's never all bad.
When he was a kid, he was the cutest thing. He had a little button nose and big eyes, and a perpetual air of naivete that was so disarming. He was constantly keeping us on edge when he was a toddler. He tripped in the house and nearly bit off his tongue when he was a toddler. He staggered around the house and stepped on a needle, prompting a late evening visit to Dr Tisdale's, and the growled remark from the doctor to me: "And where 's the other half of the needle?" (It was never found)...he inserted a bean into his ear, where it sprouted happily away until I mention his cough to the doctor who immediately got out his machine and peeked into his ear...aha! A bean! It appears that a cough without any obvious reason is often prompted by a bean hidden away in the caverns of the middle ear. How do doctors know these things?
When Greg went to kindergarten he was struggling with phonics like all the rest. One evening we were driving in Mission Valley where all the car signs were, and I heard from the back seat, in the tones of one who is witnessing Valhalla and the Sphinx for the first time: "JOHN! HINE! PONTIAC!" What an epiphany for him and for us. He could read, and from then on for the rest of the season he read every sign we could see..."What's that one?" I asked, pointing to the Bonanza Steak House sign. He looked and then haughtily and condescendingly said: "Bone-za-na! What else!" I always did think my kids were the cutest and funniest things in the world. And I was right.
When he got older, he was often and always pondering the meaning of the world. Many things baffled him. I remember that he was very caught by Baby Twinter, our young male kitten, who was just leaving babyhood and embarking on the mysteries of cat adolescence. Greg had just the same attitude of bafflement on many aspects of growning up. Makes one wonder. I think people classed as mentally ill often have just been trapped in some aspect of adolescence, for whatever reason, chemical or psychological or social.
In any case, Greg had a wonderful quizzical sense of humor. He was the delight of any group he was in because of his gentle clownish ability. I guess that was a coping mechanism. Thank goodness for it. But it makes us miss us all the more, when the shadows get long and there is no one around to make us laugh and smile. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Gregory's Passing
It's the anniversary of Gregory's death. He was 42 when he died, and if he were still alive he would be 49. If he were alive, I cannot think that he would be any happier for it. His life took a dark turn, and it is a turn that could happen to anyone.
At the age of nineteen, he was diagnosed with a mental illness. Nobody seemed to know what this mental illness was, but there might be a medication for it and the pro's tried assiduously to find it. Nothing worked very well for any length of time.
There runs through my father's family a strain of depression like a dark vine that flowers now and then, here and there, in the chosen one. It could be that this illness that came forth was a blossom of this vine. Could be something else entirely. Greg had no money and I was a struggling schoolteacher with no money to help him pursue a leisurely or rational search for a root cause for his depression. It was certainly major, producing almost catatonia once at least, and black feelings and dreams and heavy misery some of the time.
The rest of the time he was a pleasant, funny, talented young man with lots of interests and a gift for researching and talking about these interests. Once he got on the medication, serious musical practice was out of the question for him. He was incapable of learning past a certain point where he'd gotten stuck long ago. Was it when he wanted to take organ lessons and I did not have the resourses to make connections and see that he got them? Maybe. He loved the Episcopal Church and the music thereof.
His writing, his poetry, were stuck too. He would try. He would write, but what he wrote was stuck in some part of his head and couldn't develop. He returned to some simple age in his mind and accepted that return in order to adapt to his reduced hopes and circumstances of life.
People who had kids in similar tragic conditions would tell me, "Oh, he's luckier than my (twenty year older) son. Any day now they're going to find (a cure, a miracle, an eraser, a panacea) that is going to fix him right up." It never happened.
He was in a "program" with the County, and the psychiatrist who oversaw that program wanted Greg on a certain drug. Let's call it Dexdex, though that 's not its name. "Well, Dr. So and So is known to be a Dexdex man," one of the young men in his group told me. So Gregory went on Dexdex. I feel now of course that Dr. So and So was running a clinical trial, and didn't want a loose nut (so to speak) in his little group. Dexdex did a lot for Gregory at first, (he got smarter) but shortly he became a different fellow, scornful, harder to talk with, more isolated even in the family. Physically Greg had lots of problems associated with those drugs; I won't go into that.
Many years had gone by and nothing had really done it for him, so I let it go though I asked him to leave the group and get off that medicine, but by then (this was 20 years after he'd first become ill) he was dependent on the group, less sure of himself, reluctant to make a precipitous change.
Mental illness patients regularly have to go into hospital to "decompensate" for the effects that their drugs have on them. They are removed from their medications, and watched carefully as a new medication program is started up again. Sometimes they have to be strapped down or restrained as their minds and bodies respond to the huge changes happening within their bodies. Greg one night asked to be restrained because his anxiety was so great that he could not bear it; the caregivers were flustering around trying to get him some help (Dr So and So not being "on" that night) and while they flustered, he ran down a corridor and banged his forehead on a steel door. He shattered C7 and injured C6 and C5, they discovered, after they walked him to the emergency room. We were informed of none of this. After an operation in the middle of the night to stabilize things, he emerged a quadriplegic who was never again able to sort coins, sort stamps, play the guitar nor the piano, even after he was able to be propped in a chair and get himself about. It was not a happy time. After "two and two-thirds years," as he noted shortly before his death, he was able to break through his bonds of earth, and he left us. He died naturally and without physical pain. I was fortunate enough to be there when he died, and for hours thereafter as we could not get the first responders nor the cops there for a very long time. Friday night is a very busy night for the Chula Vista cops. So I sat with him until time for his body to be taken away. It was a remarkable experience, and one that's rare in these days when people say goodbye in a hospital and then are hustled out and the body removed to the basement. Most of the family had paid their last respects. His father, Alexander and Benjamin were there. We were all at the maximum of fatigue, but I stayed there with him and the nurses. Then the nurses left for their homes and the business of death transpired. By dawn, the people from the funeral home came, and Gregory's body was taken from the house. I asked only that they not enclose him into a body bag in my presence. They assured me that they would not, and by seven a.m. I stood in my front door watching the men push his body down the driveway, suitably covered, to the waiting hearse. Then I went to bed and I think I cried. YAZZYBEL
At the age of nineteen, he was diagnosed with a mental illness. Nobody seemed to know what this mental illness was, but there might be a medication for it and the pro's tried assiduously to find it. Nothing worked very well for any length of time.
There runs through my father's family a strain of depression like a dark vine that flowers now and then, here and there, in the chosen one. It could be that this illness that came forth was a blossom of this vine. Could be something else entirely. Greg had no money and I was a struggling schoolteacher with no money to help him pursue a leisurely or rational search for a root cause for his depression. It was certainly major, producing almost catatonia once at least, and black feelings and dreams and heavy misery some of the time.
The rest of the time he was a pleasant, funny, talented young man with lots of interests and a gift for researching and talking about these interests. Once he got on the medication, serious musical practice was out of the question for him. He was incapable of learning past a certain point where he'd gotten stuck long ago. Was it when he wanted to take organ lessons and I did not have the resourses to make connections and see that he got them? Maybe. He loved the Episcopal Church and the music thereof.
His writing, his poetry, were stuck too. He would try. He would write, but what he wrote was stuck in some part of his head and couldn't develop. He returned to some simple age in his mind and accepted that return in order to adapt to his reduced hopes and circumstances of life.
People who had kids in similar tragic conditions would tell me, "Oh, he's luckier than my (twenty year older) son. Any day now they're going to find (a cure, a miracle, an eraser, a panacea) that is going to fix him right up." It never happened.
He was in a "program" with the County, and the psychiatrist who oversaw that program wanted Greg on a certain drug. Let's call it Dexdex, though that 's not its name. "Well, Dr. So and So is known to be a Dexdex man," one of the young men in his group told me. So Gregory went on Dexdex. I feel now of course that Dr. So and So was running a clinical trial, and didn't want a loose nut (so to speak) in his little group. Dexdex did a lot for Gregory at first, (he got smarter) but shortly he became a different fellow, scornful, harder to talk with, more isolated even in the family. Physically Greg had lots of problems associated with those drugs; I won't go into that.
Many years had gone by and nothing had really done it for him, so I let it go though I asked him to leave the group and get off that medicine, but by then (this was 20 years after he'd first become ill) he was dependent on the group, less sure of himself, reluctant to make a precipitous change.
Mental illness patients regularly have to go into hospital to "decompensate" for the effects that their drugs have on them. They are removed from their medications, and watched carefully as a new medication program is started up again. Sometimes they have to be strapped down or restrained as their minds and bodies respond to the huge changes happening within their bodies. Greg one night asked to be restrained because his anxiety was so great that he could not bear it; the caregivers were flustering around trying to get him some help (Dr So and So not being "on" that night) and while they flustered, he ran down a corridor and banged his forehead on a steel door. He shattered C7 and injured C6 and C5, they discovered, after they walked him to the emergency room. We were informed of none of this. After an operation in the middle of the night to stabilize things, he emerged a quadriplegic who was never again able to sort coins, sort stamps, play the guitar nor the piano, even after he was able to be propped in a chair and get himself about. It was not a happy time. After "two and two-thirds years," as he noted shortly before his death, he was able to break through his bonds of earth, and he left us. He died naturally and without physical pain. I was fortunate enough to be there when he died, and for hours thereafter as we could not get the first responders nor the cops there for a very long time. Friday night is a very busy night for the Chula Vista cops. So I sat with him until time for his body to be taken away. It was a remarkable experience, and one that's rare in these days when people say goodbye in a hospital and then are hustled out and the body removed to the basement. Most of the family had paid their last respects. His father, Alexander and Benjamin were there. We were all at the maximum of fatigue, but I stayed there with him and the nurses. Then the nurses left for their homes and the business of death transpired. By dawn, the people from the funeral home came, and Gregory's body was taken from the house. I asked only that they not enclose him into a body bag in my presence. They assured me that they would not, and by seven a.m. I stood in my front door watching the men push his body down the driveway, suitably covered, to the waiting hearse. Then I went to bed and I think I cried. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, August 27, 2011
The Return of Kitty Blanco
Good afternoon!
(Feeling cheerier)
Kitty Blanko has returned; in fact, I guess he never even really left. Alexander saw him several times when I didn't. Apparently he's been turning up quite regularly (Blanko, not Alexander, alas) to get his scraps of leftover dinner from Freckles. I must say that Kitty Blanko has made of Freckles a better eater. Once upon a time Freckles'd turn up his nose at almost any meal that came his way, making Theo quite anxious (not me!). But the first time Freckles incredulously watched as Kitty Blanko scarfed up what Freckles would not eat, his egotistic kitty-brain registered a new fact. If I don't eat it, someone else might. That phenomenon alone, much noted by mothers of little children, and made use of in the days when we still cooked meals and believed in nutrition, has changed Freckles in a way quite unbelieveable. If he doesn't woof down everything set before him, he does go after it steadily bit by bit until he makes away with it as best he can.
I just looked out as I was opening windows--it is a quite muggy warm day here--and there was little Blanko reclining in the driveway under the shade of the mishmash of botany we have growing out there. So I called him over after making him a plate of "salmon tuna medley". I put it on the front porch on a Peter Rabbit plate, because I want to make him realize that he is loved. I watched him eat it and I know he was hungry because his shoulder blades rose about three inches from tension, as he hunkered down to his task, chomp, chomp, chomp...it took him a long time to eat about 2 ounces as cats are such dainty eaters. But he got the job done and is probably now back in the shade hoping for a second gastronomic epiphany.
I do not even know the gender of Kitty Blanko yet, as he keeps his tail modestly over his nether parts. Ah well. Gender is the least of worries,to an eighty-two year old. Theo hopes he goes away before winter, as we keep Freckles in the garage on cold rainy nights and Theo blanches at the idea of cleaning two cat boxes every day. I note that, often, one is too much for him.
We were going to go to Walmart to compare prices on chocolate chips, crackers, and etc which we purchased at Ralphs earlier today at an exorbitant price, but Theo got ice somewhere else and we won't be going to Walmart today. We are going to eat out tonight, be it even Subway's, because I am having my hair done at three p.m. and it will be hard enough to keep it nice for church as it is, without leaning over a hot steamy stove to make supper. YAZZYBEL
(Feeling cheerier)
Kitty Blanko has returned; in fact, I guess he never even really left. Alexander saw him several times when I didn't. Apparently he's been turning up quite regularly (Blanko, not Alexander, alas) to get his scraps of leftover dinner from Freckles. I must say that Kitty Blanko has made of Freckles a better eater. Once upon a time Freckles'd turn up his nose at almost any meal that came his way, making Theo quite anxious (not me!). But the first time Freckles incredulously watched as Kitty Blanko scarfed up what Freckles would not eat, his egotistic kitty-brain registered a new fact. If I don't eat it, someone else might. That phenomenon alone, much noted by mothers of little children, and made use of in the days when we still cooked meals and believed in nutrition, has changed Freckles in a way quite unbelieveable. If he doesn't woof down everything set before him, he does go after it steadily bit by bit until he makes away with it as best he can.
I just looked out as I was opening windows--it is a quite muggy warm day here--and there was little Blanko reclining in the driveway under the shade of the mishmash of botany we have growing out there. So I called him over after making him a plate of "salmon tuna medley". I put it on the front porch on a Peter Rabbit plate, because I want to make him realize that he is loved. I watched him eat it and I know he was hungry because his shoulder blades rose about three inches from tension, as he hunkered down to his task, chomp, chomp, chomp...it took him a long time to eat about 2 ounces as cats are such dainty eaters. But he got the job done and is probably now back in the shade hoping for a second gastronomic epiphany.
I do not even know the gender of Kitty Blanko yet, as he keeps his tail modestly over his nether parts. Ah well. Gender is the least of worries,to an eighty-two year old. Theo hopes he goes away before winter, as we keep Freckles in the garage on cold rainy nights and Theo blanches at the idea of cleaning two cat boxes every day. I note that, often, one is too much for him.
We were going to go to Walmart to compare prices on chocolate chips, crackers, and etc which we purchased at Ralphs earlier today at an exorbitant price, but Theo got ice somewhere else and we won't be going to Walmart today. We are going to eat out tonight, be it even Subway's, because I am having my hair done at three p.m. and it will be hard enough to keep it nice for church as it is, without leaning over a hot steamy stove to make supper. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Poem from 1997
If I Won the Lotto, Would I Stop Writing Poems?
If I won the Lotto, would I stop writing poems?
Of course I would, I'd have to, with a lot of money
Round my neck, like a dead albatross.
Its only life would be in spending,
And spending takes a lot of time.
If I won a little Lotto, it would take too much of time,
Time spent deciding what was worth the spending-on,
Notes in a book, and lines scratched out to write some more.
How much is an hour worth? A day? A week? A year?
It would be too much trouble, just a little bit of Lotto,
Better wish for lots, as I sit dreaming here.
If I won the Big One, then I'd spend like Croesus,
Waving my arms to make the Things appear;
First a house for me, and then a bigger, and cars
And boats, and maids to do the dirty work
So I could spend my time with lists of words--
Now where did that word come from? What I mean is,
Lists of needs, wants, desires, cries from the human heart,
A person walking just behind me carrying my purse
To pay so I could walk and think and spend.
I'd get a face-lift, lift the tits, and tuck the tummy too;
I'd get the grandkids college funds. Cancer funds for my sisters
And brothers in law all; spending-sinkholes for my
thirty year old kids;
They could have kayaks and Landcruisers out the gigi, Thick carpets, Aga cookers, marble and granite kitchens, sunken tubs,
And look at mine and want yet more!
And if they got no poems, them would not miss them; They would not wonder as they go,
What happened to old Mom's word treasure,
When once she lost the Time Lotto.
Even that is a pretty depressed poem I guess, but it is funny to let's enjoy it as it is. Happy Thursday. YAZZYBEL
If I won the Lotto, would I stop writing poems?
Of course I would, I'd have to, with a lot of money
Round my neck, like a dead albatross.
Its only life would be in spending,
And spending takes a lot of time.
If I won a little Lotto, it would take too much of time,
Time spent deciding what was worth the spending-on,
Notes in a book, and lines scratched out to write some more.
How much is an hour worth? A day? A week? A year?
It would be too much trouble, just a little bit of Lotto,
Better wish for lots, as I sit dreaming here.
If I won the Big One, then I'd spend like Croesus,
Waving my arms to make the Things appear;
First a house for me, and then a bigger, and cars
And boats, and maids to do the dirty work
So I could spend my time with lists of words--
Now where did that word come from? What I mean is,
Lists of needs, wants, desires, cries from the human heart,
A person walking just behind me carrying my purse
To pay so I could walk and think and spend.
I'd get a face-lift, lift the tits, and tuck the tummy too;
I'd get the grandkids college funds. Cancer funds for my sisters
And brothers in law all; spending-sinkholes for my
thirty year old kids;
They could have kayaks and Landcruisers out the gigi, Thick carpets, Aga cookers, marble and granite kitchens, sunken tubs,
And look at mine and want yet more!
And if they got no poems, them would not miss them; They would not wonder as they go,
What happened to old Mom's word treasure,
When once she lost the Time Lotto.
Even that is a pretty depressed poem I guess, but it is funny to let's enjoy it as it is. Happy Thursday. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Gosh, Wednesday already!
Good morning...
Wednesday and no music. Patricia is off on a trip to Maine with her sons. That gal has travelin' feet. I used to think I had travelin' feet but I was nothing by comparison.
I have decided that I'm depressed. I can't even choke up a haiku.
Well, usually what I have to do is ride it out. We cannot go anywhere to break the spell, due to the condition of Theodore, which is not too bad--but he doesn't want to have to be eating on the road. He has a doctor's appointment at the end of the month and is in "training". Ha. He and I both eat worse at home than on the road. My problem is eating from frustration or boredom, and I think that his is the same though he would not admit to either.
Late August
The air is still and grey
And seems to be waiting
For a message
From Watan-Tanka.
Why not?
He's speaking everywhere this year.
Tornadoes, earthquakes,
And the fearsome drought.
Or flood. He takes his pick.
THE END.
Above is a group of young swimmers from Oceanside, earlier this month, plunging into the Pacific behind a lone expert instructor who was already way out over the drop-off. If you could see how deep that trench is, out just beyond wading depth, (consult San Diego Museum of Natural History), your hair would turn gray. Mine did. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday and no music. Patricia is off on a trip to Maine with her sons. That gal has travelin' feet. I used to think I had travelin' feet but I was nothing by comparison.
I have decided that I'm depressed. I can't even choke up a haiku.
Well, usually what I have to do is ride it out. We cannot go anywhere to break the spell, due to the condition of Theodore, which is not too bad--but he doesn't want to have to be eating on the road. He has a doctor's appointment at the end of the month and is in "training". Ha. He and I both eat worse at home than on the road. My problem is eating from frustration or boredom, and I think that his is the same though he would not admit to either.
Late August
The air is still and grey
And seems to be waiting
For a message
From Watan-Tanka.
Why not?
He's speaking everywhere this year.
Tornadoes, earthquakes,
And the fearsome drought.
Or flood. He takes his pick.
THE END.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Eight Lines or Less
Good morning.
I'm still struggling with the poem a day concept. If I can think of one by the end of this post, I 'll put it in at the end. I think I should put the poems in italics so they won't get mixed up with my prose, lol.
Yesterday we spoke of figs. My figs are finally beginning to come out and ripen. It is so cool and, especially, so dark here this summer that I guess they don't know they should be here. My friend up in (I thought) way cooler Mission Hills had tons of Black Missions at the book club on Monday night. Maybe we are not watering enough. On the other hand you don't want your figs to be watery...I just don't know.
Mary shared a delightful and easy fig recipe.
Oil your baking sheet (I use Spectrum Spray Grapeseed Oil, very nice)...
Cut your figs in half and lay them on the sheet. On top of each fig, put a quantity of crumbled feta cheese. On top of that, put a pecan. Having preheated the oven to moderate temperature, put the baking sheet into the oven until the feta browns a bit and the nut is toasty. This should not be too long. Put on a plate and pass around, with napkins.
These treats were really sweet and juicy and the salty feta just points up the sweetness of the fig. Yummy.
The title of this post is "Eight Lines or Less," because that is the title of a book of poems in my possession. No poem in it is longer than eight lines. That seems easier, but it is of course actually harder, than writing a long poem. I seem to be balking at writing anything at all. Even a three-line Haiku seems to be beyond me now.
Take courage, Linda! Man up and write SOMETHING! OK...four lines, perhaps?
The summer has been confusing: cool, and dark.
The mornings darker than the evenings
By California's strange climate laws.
Often the sun does not break through till sunset,
Mocking us with the day we might have had.
At night we lie awake and listen to the car horns,
Monotonously repeating, fultilely pleading for help,
Outside our window. Calm, neighbors!
Nobody's going to steal your cars.
Well, that last line is a clinker for sure. And a lie--though not many car thieves seem to peruse Fairway Court, thank goodness. That is all I can choke out for today. YAZZYBEL
I'm still struggling with the poem a day concept. If I can think of one by the end of this post, I 'll put it in at the end. I think I should put the poems in italics so they won't get mixed up with my prose, lol.
Yesterday we spoke of figs. My figs are finally beginning to come out and ripen. It is so cool and, especially, so dark here this summer that I guess they don't know they should be here. My friend up in (I thought) way cooler Mission Hills had tons of Black Missions at the book club on Monday night. Maybe we are not watering enough. On the other hand you don't want your figs to be watery...I just don't know.
Mary shared a delightful and easy fig recipe.
Oil your baking sheet (I use Spectrum Spray Grapeseed Oil, very nice)...
Cut your figs in half and lay them on the sheet. On top of each fig, put a quantity of crumbled feta cheese. On top of that, put a pecan. Having preheated the oven to moderate temperature, put the baking sheet into the oven until the feta browns a bit and the nut is toasty. This should not be too long. Put on a plate and pass around, with napkins.
These treats were really sweet and juicy and the salty feta just points up the sweetness of the fig. Yummy.
The title of this post is "Eight Lines or Less," because that is the title of a book of poems in my possession. No poem in it is longer than eight lines. That seems easier, but it is of course actually harder, than writing a long poem. I seem to be balking at writing anything at all. Even a three-line Haiku seems to be beyond me now.
Take courage, Linda! Man up and write SOMETHING! OK...four lines, perhaps?
The summer has been confusing: cool, and dark.
The mornings darker than the evenings
By California's strange climate laws.
Often the sun does not break through till sunset,
Mocking us with the day we might have had.
At night we lie awake and listen to the car horns,
Monotonously repeating, fultilely pleading for help,
Outside our window. Calm, neighbors!
Nobody's going to steal your cars.
Well, that last line is a clinker for sure. And a lie--though not many car thieves seem to peruse Fairway Court, thank goodness. That is all I can choke out for today. YAZZYBEL
Friday, August 19, 2011
Figs
Figs
August is the time for figs.
California's household fig trees go mad with ripeness
And huge black-red fruits then burgeon in the trees.
Picking figs is the ultimate hunt for treasure.
Funny how, huge and dark, they hide
Amongst the shadows of the leaves.
These are the words that go with figs:
Fecund, swollen, swelling, honeyed;
Sexual words written in their curving forms
And fabled sweetness.
I wrote that poem in 2006. I was much closer in touch with poems, words, inner self, outer self...everything, just five years ago. Strange. Does "aging" mean "distancing?" I hope not. I still hope for the stars to circle round in my inner universe sky and swing me back to my poetry once more. I have the sneaking suspicion that it is drudging practice that I am missing after all. Poem a day, and if it's trash, so what? Nothing is as valueless as aridity, is it?YAZZYBEL
August is the time for figs.
California's household fig trees go mad with ripeness
And huge black-red fruits then burgeon in the trees.
Picking figs is the ultimate hunt for treasure.
Funny how, huge and dark, they hide
Amongst the shadows of the leaves.
These are the words that go with figs:
Fecund, swollen, swelling, honeyed;
Sexual words written in their curving forms
And fabled sweetness.
I wrote that poem in 2006. I was much closer in touch with poems, words, inner self, outer self...everything, just five years ago. Strange. Does "aging" mean "distancing?" I hope not. I still hope for the stars to circle round in my inner universe sky and swing me back to my poetry once more. I have the sneaking suspicion that it is drudging practice that I am missing after all. Poem a day, and if it's trash, so what? Nothing is as valueless as aridity, is it?YAZZYBEL
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Computer was down, now is up
Gracious. This blog seems to be evolving in some negative kind of way. I am not producing any poem a day. I could force myself to write it and say it is a poem and probably get as good a result as if I waited for the Muse to strike. That is what I did on my Fairway Court series of poems. Made myself write something about Fairway Court every day. Then I came to the realization that most of my poems were about death, so I stopped. As an effort of self-analysis, it was an effective device. As poetry, who knows. It's as good as a lot of stuff in the New Yorker. NOT.
Today my eldest grandchild goes off to college. She is being driven there, a half-hour's drive I guess, by her parents. I have found her departure for school strangely moving, strangely because I do not live near her and will not be altered physically by her not being around the house. But there she goes, a baby (she wouldn't like that) off on her own for the first time. Fortunately, the U of Iowa keeps an eye on them. Kinda. Ostensibly. They are not allowed to keep cars. That is good. The girls were given a rape class and a whistle, I understand. I guess that is good. It is realistic, according to the ideas of the day.
Anyway, cheers, Miranda! God bless you. I'll be thinking of you every day. I am also thinking of the household she'll be leaving. There will be a shift in family interactions, no doubt. Interesting. Who will become the diva? Who will "create"? Hmmm.
On this page I hope to put a photo of my spice drawer plus some Rainier cherries that I laid in with them. Alex took the photo when he was here. The thing that makes that photo, besides the brazen beauty of the cherries, is the colorful turkey seasoning spice box. Otherwise it would just look like the untidy space that it is. Well, the picture is up. Click it, please. It looks all tiny and dull as is it--and it is gorgeous as my desktop. YAZZYBEL
Today my eldest grandchild goes off to college. She is being driven there, a half-hour's drive I guess, by her parents. I have found her departure for school strangely moving, strangely because I do not live near her and will not be altered physically by her not being around the house. But there she goes, a baby (she wouldn't like that) off on her own for the first time. Fortunately, the U of Iowa keeps an eye on them. Kinda. Ostensibly. They are not allowed to keep cars. That is good. The girls were given a rape class and a whistle, I understand. I guess that is good. It is realistic, according to the ideas of the day.
Anyway, cheers, Miranda! God bless you. I'll be thinking of you every day. I am also thinking of the household she'll be leaving. There will be a shift in family interactions, no doubt. Interesting. Who will become the diva? Who will "create"? Hmmm.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
No poem
Above you have a picture of some candlesticks I bought at the Goodwill last week. They are exquisite, and the perfect example of why price is meaningless as is where you found something. This concept is quite quite foreign to many people, but let me tell you that shopping at Goodwill has broadened my education so much since I first started doing it twenty or more years ago!!! You learn to see every object for itself, its design, its functionability, its beauty, (or lack thereof), and you realize that superficial standards such as buying at a chic boutique are meaningless, except for the pleasure the surroundings may give you. Those candlesticks would be just as lovely if you found them in a trash bin. They are just charming and I was lucky to find them.
And, again, above--the chandelier I bought at a neighbor's garage sale. He was clearing out the house of his dead aunty. How much, sez I. Five dollars, sez he. It was oh so encrusted with dust and grime. 'I'll take it,' sez I, much to my husband's loudly expressed chagrin. But I prevailed, brought it home, put it on a low table in the LR, and over days sprayed it with windex and whatever else I could think of. And when Alexander came, he nipped up a ladder and hung it up. I just love it, frankly. FIVE DOLLARS! It's Murano glass, not the finest but not the worst, and artfully made , pleasing to the eye, and just overdone enough that we can take a voluptuous pleasure in contemplating it. YAHOO!!--YAZZYBEL
Monday, August 15, 2011
Green Leaves
I know that it is summer
When my bath is full of leaves.
Somehow in our climate without seasons
The plants know better, and the great
Cape Honeysuckle outside the window of the bath
Creeps in, and drops its leaves into the tub.
The rest of the year it continues its flame-like bloom
And feeds and shelters bees and hummingbirds
And us, with its beauty. But now in summer,
I can lie back in such a state of bliss;
As I enjoy the water, happy, happy,
Steeping in green tea.
YAZZYBEL (and sorry about yesterday, poem just did not come)
When my bath is full of leaves.
Somehow in our climate without seasons
The plants know better, and the great
Cape Honeysuckle outside the window of the bath
Creeps in, and drops its leaves into the tub.
The rest of the year it continues its flame-like bloom
And feeds and shelters bees and hummingbirds
And us, with its beauty. But now in summer,
I can lie back in such a state of bliss;
As I enjoy the water, happy, happy,
Steeping in green tea.
YAZZYBEL (and sorry about yesterday, poem just did not come)
Saturday, August 13, 2011
A Son's Visit
How can I express what it all meant?
It seemed like a miracle right from the start.
He cheered us and helped us
And warmed both our hearts.
He could have had anything
But asked for tacos asked only.
So what could we give him?
Tacos and tacos, and now we are lonely!
We ate lots of good food and we slept well at night
And we watched him walk off till well out of sight.
Sons come, and sons go,
And as sons go he went
All I can say is
T'was a miracle well spent.
Thanks for everything, Alexander! YAZZYBEL
Thursday, August 11, 2011
"Last Week in July"
Last Week in July
We are outside in evening,
The last week of July;
The sun is low. Light gleams on leaves
And on the water of the pool,
Though most of it by this time
Is deep in shadows of the darkest blue.
A dragonfly, so huge, so red,
So jubilant, perches ahead of us
Upon a garden stake there
In full sunlight. He is so happy,
So glad to be alive. He jumps up
And flits around and then comes back
To the stake. Three times,
Then two small birds dart in,
Darting aslant of stake and pool
And line of sight. The dragonfly is gone!
"Could they have taken him?
It was so fast, it scarcely seemed to be."
But in the quickly fading sunlight he returns
No more to garden stake beneath the tree.
Darkness is about to fall, so gently and so sweet.
There's still the feeling of the garden's calm
Without its peace.
That is the end of that poem. I wrote it about ten years ago when we lived next door in the big house with the huge pool. I loved swimming when it was warm enough. If we were there this summer, we'd never get to swim, because the pool was too big to afford heating and this is a cool cool August. YAZZYBEL
We are outside in evening,
The last week of July;
The sun is low. Light gleams on leaves
And on the water of the pool,
Though most of it by this time
Is deep in shadows of the darkest blue.
A dragonfly, so huge, so red,
So jubilant, perches ahead of us
Upon a garden stake there
In full sunlight. He is so happy,
So glad to be alive. He jumps up
And flits around and then comes back
To the stake. Three times,
Then two small birds dart in,
Darting aslant of stake and pool
And line of sight. The dragonfly is gone!
"Could they have taken him?
It was so fast, it scarcely seemed to be."
But in the quickly fading sunlight he returns
No more to garden stake beneath the tree.
Darkness is about to fall, so gently and so sweet.
There's still the feeling of the garden's calm
Without its peace.
That is the end of that poem. I wrote it about ten years ago when we lived next door in the big house with the huge pool. I loved swimming when it was warm enough. If we were there this summer, we'd never get to swim, because the pool was too big to afford heating and this is a cool cool August. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A Poem a Day for the Rest of August; 1st poem
It's Cold in August
It's cold in August when
It's dark at nine a.m.
Bees and hummingbirds
Are too immobilized by chill
To venture out to do their work,
And may even pass away before
They get a vibration from that source
That we all worship: the sun.
I love morning, always have;
But this mean twilight is
Is neither of the day or of the night.
"Marine layer" to the weatherman,
Doleful un-morninglike gloom to me.
The end.
I'll always write "The end," unless the poem is the only thing on the page. Today Alexander left for his home. He was a perfect guest and it was a pleasure to have him here. I still can hardly believe he came, and he has already "went." YAZZYBEL
It's cold in August when
It's dark at nine a.m.
Bees and hummingbirds
Are too immobilized by chill
To venture out to do their work,
And may even pass away before
They get a vibration from that source
That we all worship: the sun.
I love morning, always have;
But this mean twilight is
Is neither of the day or of the night.
"Marine layer" to the weatherman,
Doleful un-morninglike gloom to me.
The end.
I'll always write "The end," unless the poem is the only thing on the page. Today Alexander left for his home. He was a perfect guest and it was a pleasure to have him here. I still can hardly believe he came, and he has already "went." YAZZYBEL
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Lemon Day
This morning Alexander went with me to church. He viewed the resting place of Gregory's ashes near the baptismal, took some pictures, and saw a few familiar faces.
After breakfast we took a ride through Mission Hills, where he grew up forty to fifty years ago. Then we stopped at El Cuervo for a second breakfast/early lunch. My it was delicious.
Then we drove to Chula Vista by way of the barrio, south and south on 30th Street basically. Since then he has been working hard around the house and I have been lazying around showing him things.
I drew those lemons with colored pencils since I got home from church. I need to take a class so I won't be so timid about using brilliant colors. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Gregory's Day
Good day!
Today is the birthday of Gregory, our second son. Gregory has gone on ahead of us, and is not around to hear our professions of love and affection, and appreciation for his presence.
Greg was born when Alexander was 2 years and 2 weeks ahead of him. He was the cutest little thing, larger and looser than his brother, with a fright-wig of long black hair that stood out around his head like a halo. When he was born the doctor absent-mindedly left some of the placenta inside of me, and after a time there were some tense moments while a nurse took care of the situation (the doctor being long gone.) Girls, it is a wonder sometimes that we made it to today, isn't it? But by afternoon all was well and mother and son were resting well.
If it was a joy to have one kid, it was double joy to have two. Interesting as they got a bit older to lie in your bed when you woke up and listen to them sort out their future pecking order bit by bit. Greg was larger (considering his age) but Alex was more determined, and they gradually worked it out in a situation that remained fairly stable for them for four more years till Ben came along.
As Greg got older, he developed his music and his personality traits and humor that made him such a joy to be around. How can someone have all that going for him and still be diagnosed as a person with a "mental illness" when he is nineteen years of age? I keep wondering. Doctors or hospital people would keep telling me: "We do not know how to diagnose (NB: medicate) Gregory. We don't know whether he has a psychosis or a neurosis, or what it is." Well, he had Longoritis, dear doctors, the family ailment, with a free-floating anxiety, too much imagination (there's a name for that), depression and mania, and a feeling of insecurity. I have of late years wondered if he did not have a touch of Tourette's--not the bad word parts, but the spontaneous movements part...but it is too late now to put him under a glass. I have the feeling that even now, thirty years later, they would not be able to pin down his condition to their satisfaction nor mine. That didn't stop their medicating him, though. Aye, there's the rub. There's the rub.
Gregory, funny guy, wherever you are in this universe, please remember us remembering you on this your day. And send us some more of your music and your jokes and your wisdom that shone on in spite of everything. YAZZYBEL
Today is the birthday of Gregory, our second son. Gregory has gone on ahead of us, and is not around to hear our professions of love and affection, and appreciation for his presence.
Greg was born when Alexander was 2 years and 2 weeks ahead of him. He was the cutest little thing, larger and looser than his brother, with a fright-wig of long black hair that stood out around his head like a halo. When he was born the doctor absent-mindedly left some of the placenta inside of me, and after a time there were some tense moments while a nurse took care of the situation (the doctor being long gone.) Girls, it is a wonder sometimes that we made it to today, isn't it? But by afternoon all was well and mother and son were resting well.
If it was a joy to have one kid, it was double joy to have two. Interesting as they got a bit older to lie in your bed when you woke up and listen to them sort out their future pecking order bit by bit. Greg was larger (considering his age) but Alex was more determined, and they gradually worked it out in a situation that remained fairly stable for them for four more years till Ben came along.
As Greg got older, he developed his music and his personality traits and humor that made him such a joy to be around. How can someone have all that going for him and still be diagnosed as a person with a "mental illness" when he is nineteen years of age? I keep wondering. Doctors or hospital people would keep telling me: "We do not know how to diagnose (NB: medicate) Gregory. We don't know whether he has a psychosis or a neurosis, or what it is." Well, he had Longoritis, dear doctors, the family ailment, with a free-floating anxiety, too much imagination (there's a name for that), depression and mania, and a feeling of insecurity. I have of late years wondered if he did not have a touch of Tourette's--not the bad word parts, but the spontaneous movements part...but it is too late now to put him under a glass. I have the feeling that even now, thirty years later, they would not be able to pin down his condition to their satisfaction nor mine. That didn't stop their medicating him, though. Aye, there's the rub. There's the rub.
Gregory, funny guy, wherever you are in this universe, please remember us remembering you on this your day. And send us some more of your music and your jokes and your wisdom that shone on in spite of everything. YAZZYBEL
Friday, August 5, 2011
Art Above All
Alexander is here! He is doing momentous things to the computer. I hope the improvements stick.
Kitty Blanko came in today. He has been eating here yesterday and today, and I am glad to see him. Today, observing him slinking through the house (where he was not invited) I came to the conclusion that probably he is a girl cat. Just something in his style.
That picture above is something I dashed off with the aid of a few kitchen vegetables as models. An art blog I'm receiving now recommends a picture a day, painting or drawing, to keep one's awareness at peak. So I am trying to do it...and write a poem a day too. But I have not gotten beyond the "trying" part on the poems: I keep thinking there are no poems there now. Silly me, I well know that as long as there is a pulse of life in a single cell, there is a poem there. So I'll draw one out soon.
A sister wrote to me about blogging:
I don't know about blogs, facebook and the
such...I think people write blogs because no
body in the house asks them how they feel,
what are their wishes and dreams, what THEY
want to fix for another's dinner. So my blog
would be a giant whiny complaint.
And she expounds on that theme a bit. I think she is right about loneliness or isolation as a motivator for blogging, or a desire to be heard out there in the ether. Am I here? Does anybody hear me? But one can try to make of the blog a work of art, of limited scope that it is.
The red fruits above, an onion, two tomatoes, and a red bell pepper, are all so beautiful sitting on my kitchen table. I just had to draw them. Putting them onto this page has made me realize how sketchy they are, how coarse the strokes, how inaccurate the eye/hand coordination. But there they are, up there above it all. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, August 4, 2011
More Blogging Doubts
Good morning!
Alexander comes today and we'll leave after 11 to go down to the "cell phone lot" provided by the airport, thence to lurk and await his call that he's arrived.
Yesterday, things didn't go as I airily predicted as I closed off my blog. It was indeed music day, but I did not play piano nor anything else after cutting my finger while washing out the glass coffee pot. Imagine, the pushing power of one of my fingers was strong enough to break through the glass and make a circular cut in the pad of my right middle finger! BLOOD! I have not seen so much blood in a long time. I patched it up with a lot of paper towels whilst holding the finger up...blotted...got 2 band-aids and squinched it together, stuck them on and prayed. It does not hurt if I do not strike it on things (as in keyboarding)..and it is amazing how often I do. Anyway, no piano.
Patricia lent me a CD of a ballad singer, Jack Brown, and mentioned that one of the songs, The Blog, was especially touching. I listened to it and its repeated line is, "so everyone can see my brilliant brain....". I wonder, was she giving me a message of what she thinks of my blog? If so, is she right? Others have also suggested that the blog is an ego trip of large magnitude...still others have suggested that the blog in general is obsolete and has been replaced by Facebook. If that is so, then is Facebook an ego trip of large magnitude? As far as I can see, Facebook is a huge confusing bunch of gobbley-gook and hazy pictures...but I am techno-impaired for sure. (I am also on Facebook, of course, impaired or not.)
There are five more months of this year. I may rethink my blog to some extent. I'll still try to write every day but the slant of it may be different. The soul of it can't be different however; the soul of it is me. YAZZYBEL
Alexander comes today and we'll leave after 11 to go down to the "cell phone lot" provided by the airport, thence to lurk and await his call that he's arrived.
Yesterday, things didn't go as I airily predicted as I closed off my blog. It was indeed music day, but I did not play piano nor anything else after cutting my finger while washing out the glass coffee pot. Imagine, the pushing power of one of my fingers was strong enough to break through the glass and make a circular cut in the pad of my right middle finger! BLOOD! I have not seen so much blood in a long time. I patched it up with a lot of paper towels whilst holding the finger up...blotted...got 2 band-aids and squinched it together, stuck them on and prayed. It does not hurt if I do not strike it on things (as in keyboarding)..and it is amazing how often I do. Anyway, no piano.
Patricia lent me a CD of a ballad singer, Jack Brown, and mentioned that one of the songs, The Blog, was especially touching. I listened to it and its repeated line is, "so everyone can see my brilliant brain....". I wonder, was she giving me a message of what she thinks of my blog? If so, is she right? Others have also suggested that the blog is an ego trip of large magnitude...still others have suggested that the blog in general is obsolete and has been replaced by Facebook. If that is so, then is Facebook an ego trip of large magnitude? As far as I can see, Facebook is a huge confusing bunch of gobbley-gook and hazy pictures...but I am techno-impaired for sure. (I am also on Facebook, of course, impaired or not.)
There are five more months of this year. I may rethink my blog to some extent. I'll still try to write every day but the slant of it may be different. The soul of it can't be different however; the soul of it is me. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
To Blog or Not to Blog
Good morning!
To blog or not to blog, that is the question. Is the blog a "journal"? I have not thought so because it has always been impossible for me to keep a journal or diary. And I am clipping along quite nicely on this blog.
Yet, yesterday, talking to sister no. 5, it was suggested to me that in blogging I am letting it all hang out. Yes, I am doing that, kind of, but let it be understood that I am censoring all the way: snipping and turning and choosing as best I can on the run. So it is off the top of my head--while not being of the gut. Journaling is belly-button activity, to me, while writing for others (which is what my blog is for me) (though very dang few are reading it, apparently) is an Artistic Endeavor. I do tell all (up to a point) but I do hope that you can see in each effort an attempt to pull it all together, to bring it to a conclusion that lifts it a fraction higher. That is what I try to do.
AS Byatt in Possession, her awkwardly titled novel, says: If you want to write, don't journal. If you want to write, write. Try to use and practice your craft every time you sit down to it. (That 's paraphrased of course.) I am writing this blog for my grandchildren, who may never read it, that they may know me as I knew my American grandmother. So in a way it's just from the gut and personal. But I do try to shape each posting as I can, on the fly and in a hurry as it is.
I am thankful to AS Byatt for exposing to me that great difference in writing for the heck of it and writing literarily and artistically. Perhaps I should go back to A Poem a Day, which I used to try to do before I figured out how to get on the blog. I'll think about it. For the present, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means. Patricia is coming, and that means music, and lunch. "Lunch will be a salad." Is that journaling or literature? "Lunch will be a crunchy cold green salad of romaine lettuce with field greens mixed in and cold asparagus laid over the top, with hot toasty French bread on the side." How about that one? YAZZYBEL
To blog or not to blog, that is the question. Is the blog a "journal"? I have not thought so because it has always been impossible for me to keep a journal or diary. And I am clipping along quite nicely on this blog.
Yet, yesterday, talking to sister no. 5, it was suggested to me that in blogging I am letting it all hang out. Yes, I am doing that, kind of, but let it be understood that I am censoring all the way: snipping and turning and choosing as best I can on the run. So it is off the top of my head--while not being of the gut. Journaling is belly-button activity, to me, while writing for others (which is what my blog is for me) (though very dang few are reading it, apparently) is an Artistic Endeavor. I do tell all (up to a point) but I do hope that you can see in each effort an attempt to pull it all together, to bring it to a conclusion that lifts it a fraction higher. That is what I try to do.
AS Byatt in Possession, her awkwardly titled novel, says: If you want to write, don't journal. If you want to write, write. Try to use and practice your craft every time you sit down to it. (That 's paraphrased of course.) I am writing this blog for my grandchildren, who may never read it, that they may know me as I knew my American grandmother. So in a way it's just from the gut and personal. But I do try to shape each posting as I can, on the fly and in a hurry as it is.
I am thankful to AS Byatt for exposing to me that great difference in writing for the heck of it and writing literarily and artistically. Perhaps I should go back to A Poem a Day, which I used to try to do before I figured out how to get on the blog. I'll think about it. For the present, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means. Patricia is coming, and that means music, and lunch. "Lunch will be a salad." Is that journaling or literature? "Lunch will be a crunchy cold green salad of romaine lettuce with field greens mixed in and cold asparagus laid over the top, with hot toasty French bread on the side." How about that one? YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
One lump or two?
Good afternoon!
We ate out at the Souplantation a few days ago. It's virtually all salads and soups. Plus breads. Plus desserts.
That sounds good, but I think it's no secret to tell you that the salads were nearly all desserts. And probably some of the soups too.
Crunchy pineapple something salad was delicious. And sweet. Plus pineapple coleslaw. Plus most of the dressings likely had sugar in them even if you made your own salad.
The soups were not sweet per se, except for the Lime Coconut Chicken soup, which probably had sugar in it, as it was a bland, pleasant tasting broth. Folks! We are going to have to consciously STOP eating all this sugar.
In the best old cookbooks, meats were meats, salads were salads. There was no sugar in those dishes. If you had a "fruit salad" you could have a fruit salad dressing whch was usually a slightly thickened sweet delicious concoction with poppy seeds in it. See Helen Corbitt's Cookbook for a tasty dressing of this type.
Now, the kitchen wizards have discovered the tantalizing tastes resulting from a mixture of sweet-salty-sour. Broccoli Salad with its mixture of broccoli buds, diced onions, raisins, and sweet dressing is an example this type of presentation. As a main dish, Sweet and Sour Pork (shrimp, chicken, etc.) is another example, as is Lemon Chicken, Walnut Chicken, and even Orange Chicken which has lots of cayenne added to it to add a fourth dimension of taste. They are all heavenly. But any and all of these dishes are equal in sweetness to a piece of pie--which is a dessert in the old terms of the cuisine. Honey mustard dressing is the latest big thing and has taken over from the clabberish sour "Ranch". Honey mustard can make any stark raw wild tasting bunch of greens taste quite yummy and more easy to wolf down.
Here's the recipe for vinaigrette as I first learned it.
1 part vinegar
4 parts oil
salt, pepper
And perhaps a pinch of dry mustard.
You beat these up and beat them up and put onto your salad. You will have a salad that tastes like a salad, not a dessert. I blame the low-fat craze of the eighties for bringing all that sugar into our daily fare. I mean, I love sugar for its taste. But I know it is better not to kid ourselves that it is doing anything nutritious to all those greens except to make them more palatable if you like things sweeter and blander.
Everyone should read Dr. Atkins' first book now. Note that the authors of the recipes have scrupulously avoided the addition of sugar to any recipe. When it's dessert time they do add artificial sweeteners to make us think that something's sweet. When I did the Dr A, the only artificial sweetener in soft drinks was saccharine. Everybody's been warned enough of saccharine to try not to overdose on it. Not so of the newer sweeteners: Aspartame, Splenda, Ace-potassium, etc. which are suspiciously sweet to me.
When you'd drink a soda with saccharine, you instinctively KNEW you were not getting any sugar. Your body said, "Yes, it tastes a bit sweet and that is what I have been craving," but all those little sugar-devils in your body KNEW you had not had sugar. That's good! If the little sweetish taste of saccharine could keep your cravings at bay, those little sugar-devils got gradually weaker and weaker. Because sugar feeds sugar. And sugar makes more sugar cravings. It is true. Try it for two wracking days. You'll emerge a new person. I have done it. I just wish I could summon the moral stamina to do it again. YAZZYBEL
We ate out at the Souplantation a few days ago. It's virtually all salads and soups. Plus breads. Plus desserts.
That sounds good, but I think it's no secret to tell you that the salads were nearly all desserts. And probably some of the soups too.
Crunchy pineapple something salad was delicious. And sweet. Plus pineapple coleslaw. Plus most of the dressings likely had sugar in them even if you made your own salad.
The soups were not sweet per se, except for the Lime Coconut Chicken soup, which probably had sugar in it, as it was a bland, pleasant tasting broth. Folks! We are going to have to consciously STOP eating all this sugar.
In the best old cookbooks, meats were meats, salads were salads. There was no sugar in those dishes. If you had a "fruit salad" you could have a fruit salad dressing whch was usually a slightly thickened sweet delicious concoction with poppy seeds in it. See Helen Corbitt's Cookbook for a tasty dressing of this type.
Now, the kitchen wizards have discovered the tantalizing tastes resulting from a mixture of sweet-salty-sour. Broccoli Salad with its mixture of broccoli buds, diced onions, raisins, and sweet dressing is an example this type of presentation. As a main dish, Sweet and Sour Pork (shrimp, chicken, etc.) is another example, as is Lemon Chicken, Walnut Chicken, and even Orange Chicken which has lots of cayenne added to it to add a fourth dimension of taste. They are all heavenly. But any and all of these dishes are equal in sweetness to a piece of pie--which is a dessert in the old terms of the cuisine. Honey mustard dressing is the latest big thing and has taken over from the clabberish sour "Ranch". Honey mustard can make any stark raw wild tasting bunch of greens taste quite yummy and more easy to wolf down.
Here's the recipe for vinaigrette as I first learned it.
1 part vinegar
4 parts oil
salt, pepper
And perhaps a pinch of dry mustard.
You beat these up and beat them up and put onto your salad. You will have a salad that tastes like a salad, not a dessert. I blame the low-fat craze of the eighties for bringing all that sugar into our daily fare. I mean, I love sugar for its taste. But I know it is better not to kid ourselves that it is doing anything nutritious to all those greens except to make them more palatable if you like things sweeter and blander.
Everyone should read Dr. Atkins' first book now. Note that the authors of the recipes have scrupulously avoided the addition of sugar to any recipe. When it's dessert time they do add artificial sweeteners to make us think that something's sweet. When I did the Dr A, the only artificial sweetener in soft drinks was saccharine. Everybody's been warned enough of saccharine to try not to overdose on it. Not so of the newer sweeteners: Aspartame, Splenda, Ace-potassium, etc. which are suspiciously sweet to me.
When you'd drink a soda with saccharine, you instinctively KNEW you were not getting any sugar. Your body said, "Yes, it tastes a bit sweet and that is what I have been craving," but all those little sugar-devils in your body KNEW you had not had sugar. That's good! If the little sweetish taste of saccharine could keep your cravings at bay, those little sugar-devils got gradually weaker and weaker. Because sugar feeds sugar. And sugar makes more sugar cravings. It is true. Try it for two wracking days. You'll emerge a new person. I have done it. I just wish I could summon the moral stamina to do it again. YAZZYBEL
Monday, August 1, 2011
A kitty goes, another kitty comes
When we first lived in San Diego, our cat was named Flora. She was a beautiful black long-hair with copper eyes. She was our cat when Alexander was about three and Gregory one. Flora bore three kittens at one point, and Alexander was given the task of naming them. It was easy: Mickey, Kitty, and Fishy were their names and thus it was. Mickey, Kitty and Fishy had six toes on their front feet and it made really amusing-looking feet I must say. Like flowers. I do not remember what became of Flora nor of the kittens. Guess they were all taken by friends.
Kitty Blanko, my latest acquisition, has been running askance of us lately. I was about to write a blog entitled, "Kitty Blanko is no more," when, just a couple of days ago, I saw him strolling through the yard and out over the back gate to the lower forty. I followed him out and saw him disappear into a rift in the ground far out at the point of the lot where his kissin' cousin Lily used to hang out. There is a huge group of semi-wild cats around here and they do come and go as there must be attrition on a fairly large scale.
We found out last evening that our first son, Alexander, is coming to visit. He's coming alone and he'll be here for several days!! I am so delighted. We certainly need his presence for a while. He can confirm (or negate) my perception of how things are around here, and talk with us about needs and ideas. I wanted him to come and bring everybody but this is certainly good in itself. We need somebody now and a fresh perspective will be welcomed.
Right now we are dealing with a (to me) horrendous medicating schedule which Theo claims to be incompetent to deal with. Perhaps he is right. I'd feel better about dealing with it myself if I did not have the "summer flu," or whatever it is that's making me feel under the weather. I have five days to get over it before Alexander arrives.YAZZZYBEL
Kitty Blanko, my latest acquisition, has been running askance of us lately. I was about to write a blog entitled, "Kitty Blanko is no more," when, just a couple of days ago, I saw him strolling through the yard and out over the back gate to the lower forty. I followed him out and saw him disappear into a rift in the ground far out at the point of the lot where his kissin' cousin Lily used to hang out. There is a huge group of semi-wild cats around here and they do come and go as there must be attrition on a fairly large scale.
We found out last evening that our first son, Alexander, is coming to visit. He's coming alone and he'll be here for several days!! I am so delighted. We certainly need his presence for a while. He can confirm (or negate) my perception of how things are around here, and talk with us about needs and ideas. I wanted him to come and bring everybody but this is certainly good in itself. We need somebody now and a fresh perspective will be welcomed.
Right now we are dealing with a (to me) horrendous medicating schedule which Theo claims to be incompetent to deal with. Perhaps he is right. I'd feel better about dealing with it myself if I did not have the "summer flu," or whatever it is that's making me feel under the weather. I have five days to get over it before Alexander arrives.YAZZZYBEL
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