Have you ever watched a commercial from The Lobster House and thought, "No, wait a minute--there can't be that many healthy, fresh and natural lobsters out there being fished up and wolfed down all over the United States!" Where do all those lobsters come from? What happened to them before there were chains of lobster restaurants devoted to serving up millions of lobsters daily to millions of happy diners? They must have proliferated there in their cold briny healthy waters until they carpeted the Atlantic several feet deep. Not.
Same thing with chicken breasts. Look at your supermarket chicken department. Lots and lots and LOTS of chicken breasts, pruned, trimmed, denuded of skin, lying there in huge packages ready for you to take home and cook for Coxey's Army. You wont find your pristine, modest-sized backyard fowl there--but you'll find those chicken breasts by the million. Something is awry in the state of Denmark, folks, and by that I mean Denmark USA.
This is all leading up to a lady I saw at the beauty parlor yesterday. As I was being blowed and combed out, I saw her arise newly coiffed from her chair. She was a lady of my age. Her hair looked terrific. She was a person of some excess poundage, say about like me. But not too bad. She was cutely attired in faded jeans and pullover tee shirt of a nice green. About like me. She then put on a three-quarter length coat of black, adding a nice concealer to all. And took out her pretty scarf, which she artfully draped about the collar area to draw the eye's attention to the top part of her person. About like me.
Too many lobsters, I thought. My cute look is going the way of all flesh. I have to think of a new look and a new hairdo. Skirts, perhaps--but that involves pantyhose or tights because my legs don't look too good. Panic is setting in. My clones are all about me. Maybe my granny's retreat to simple dresses, simple stockings, and lace up granny shoes wasn't too bad an idea after all. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Raining Blessings
Good morning!
It's raining again this morning. The rain itself is a blessing! In Southern California after a dry fall and winter, it's especially good to have a lot of water falling from the sky.
The grass in the Lower Forty is growing wild. Julio was supposed to come cut it last Monday, but he didn't. Now, if he comes this Monday it will be wetter than ever, and it will bow down under his mower and spring back tall and ready to dry out just waiting for a wildfire spark. Not that we've had one, but I'm just sayin'.
We have had a time of it with the doctors and so forth. Five times in ten days to the ER was just too much, so we jumped up and down and made a fuss and the result is that my husband's Foley catheter was removed and he's on his own again in the dept. of waterworks. I hope it works out as he already seems happier in general.
Add to that five visits to the ER, the equal number of visits to doctors to try to find a solution to Theo's plight. That is a lot of gas, a lot of going, and very little time spent at home except to mess up the place and crash from exhaustion. I don't know what the solution to health care problems is; all I know is that it isn't what's being done. Ninety percent of our problems could be taken care of if we had a good live-in nurse. Hah.
Anyway, the Primary Physician yesterday seemed to think that Theo isn't doing too badly, and advised him to be positive. There isn't much more that we can do anyway, is there--be happy and deal with the crises as they arise.
Anyway, as the earth benefits from our welcome showers of rain, so our spirits benefit from the welcome respite from crises. YAZZYBEL
It's raining again this morning. The rain itself is a blessing! In Southern California after a dry fall and winter, it's especially good to have a lot of water falling from the sky.
The grass in the Lower Forty is growing wild. Julio was supposed to come cut it last Monday, but he didn't. Now, if he comes this Monday it will be wetter than ever, and it will bow down under his mower and spring back tall and ready to dry out just waiting for a wildfire spark. Not that we've had one, but I'm just sayin'.
We have had a time of it with the doctors and so forth. Five times in ten days to the ER was just too much, so we jumped up and down and made a fuss and the result is that my husband's Foley catheter was removed and he's on his own again in the dept. of waterworks. I hope it works out as he already seems happier in general.
Add to that five visits to the ER, the equal number of visits to doctors to try to find a solution to Theo's plight. That is a lot of gas, a lot of going, and very little time spent at home except to mess up the place and crash from exhaustion. I don't know what the solution to health care problems is; all I know is that it isn't what's being done. Ninety percent of our problems could be taken care of if we had a good live-in nurse. Hah.
Anyway, the Primary Physician yesterday seemed to think that Theo isn't doing too badly, and advised him to be positive. There isn't much more that we can do anyway, is there--be happy and deal with the crises as they arise.
Anyway, as the earth benefits from our welcome showers of rain, so our spirits benefit from the welcome respite from crises. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Panorama of Clouds
This morning as I was driving to church, I was treated to a wonderful vista of the most exquisite clouds.
Our weather's been so changeable lately, has it not?
"Yes," everyone over the United States can probably answer in chorus. Wherever we are, the weather phenomena seem so different this year--or lately,--or this week. We don't quite remember when it started being changeable, so perhaps we forget that it was probably always that way. Since we left the Garden of Eden.
"San Diego--another ho-hum day in Paradise," our tourist tee shirts of the 1970's used to proclaim. But even then, one day was truly not like any other, no matter how beautiful they all may have been. Nowadays, it's still ho-hum weather but not quite so much so. Frankly, we never know from one morning to one evening what the weather may be like.
Yesterday and the day before were truly Paradisical, though a little too hot. Especially in my living room, which tends to warm up if given the slightest chance. But outdoors it was just about perfect...calm, sunny, blue-skied, just the way it ought to be.
Cooler and more turbulent weathers are predicted for this evening, and one could see, as one drove along the Freeway 5 to the north, one of the most unusual and striking panoramas of diverse clouds that have ever been around. First, there were on my left, low smooth blue clouds in large oblongs...
higher up, and more toward downtown broken fluffy white clouds gleaming in sunshine...huge stormy white-with-gray clouds hanging up there with nothing to do....streaks and streamers...a few dark dark blue clouds with shapes like flukes: wavy and motile...
I love to drive, but that is the sad thing about driving, you can't crane around and see all you might wish to observe out the window. Now that my husband has been forbidden the privilege of driving (well, almost forbidden; advised against it), I'll have less and less time to gaze about. If I could have seen more, I could have written more and more descriptions of remarkable clouds of this morning than I already have, and they would all be, alas, just as inadequate. YAZZYBEL
Our weather's been so changeable lately, has it not?
"Yes," everyone over the United States can probably answer in chorus. Wherever we are, the weather phenomena seem so different this year--or lately,--or this week. We don't quite remember when it started being changeable, so perhaps we forget that it was probably always that way. Since we left the Garden of Eden.
"San Diego--another ho-hum day in Paradise," our tourist tee shirts of the 1970's used to proclaim. But even then, one day was truly not like any other, no matter how beautiful they all may have been. Nowadays, it's still ho-hum weather but not quite so much so. Frankly, we never know from one morning to one evening what the weather may be like.
Yesterday and the day before were truly Paradisical, though a little too hot. Especially in my living room, which tends to warm up if given the slightest chance. But outdoors it was just about perfect...calm, sunny, blue-skied, just the way it ought to be.
Cooler and more turbulent weathers are predicted for this evening, and one could see, as one drove along the Freeway 5 to the north, one of the most unusual and striking panoramas of diverse clouds that have ever been around. First, there were on my left, low smooth blue clouds in large oblongs...
higher up, and more toward downtown broken fluffy white clouds gleaming in sunshine...huge stormy white-with-gray clouds hanging up there with nothing to do....streaks and streamers...a few dark dark blue clouds with shapes like flukes: wavy and motile...
I love to drive, but that is the sad thing about driving, you can't crane around and see all you might wish to observe out the window. Now that my husband has been forbidden the privilege of driving (well, almost forbidden; advised against it), I'll have less and less time to gaze about. If I could have seen more, I could have written more and more descriptions of remarkable clouds of this morning than I already have, and they would all be, alas, just as inadequate. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, March 2, 2013
It's Saturday
It's Saturday! It once was
Working woman's day to be a woman,
Doing the shopping for groceries,
Hauling the kids,
Getting things done
So she can get home and do some more.
Even an old lady retired
Remembers Saturday.
Sometimes she remembers
That it took two years before she realized
That stores are open on other days.
Old ladies are busy
Even when getting their hair washed.
Their old husbands sit
And wait for them....
"Esta leyendo" I ask the hairdresser.
"No," says he who can see out over the room.
(He seats me that way.)
"Que hace?" I ask. "Esta pensando,"
Says the hairdresser.
Pensando en que? I wonder.
Pensando los pensamientos
De viejitos, es lo que piensa,
The hairdresser and I think together.
We smile, and I pay,
And go out and take my old thinker
By the arm, and we come home.
Working woman's day to be a woman,
Doing the shopping for groceries,
Hauling the kids,
Getting things done
So she can get home and do some more.
Even an old lady retired
Remembers Saturday.
Sometimes she remembers
That it took two years before she realized
That stores are open on other days.
Old ladies are busy
Even when getting their hair washed.
Their old husbands sit
And wait for them....
"Esta leyendo" I ask the hairdresser.
"No," says he who can see out over the room.
(He seats me that way.)
"Que hace?" I ask. "Esta pensando,"
Says the hairdresser.
Pensando en que? I wonder.
Pensando los pensamientos
De viejitos, es lo que piensa,
The hairdresser and I think together.
We smile, and I pay,
And go out and take my old thinker
By the arm, and we come home.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Serendipity
Good morning...long time no see!!!
Today I'll write about cooking without fat. It's a difficult problem in our culture, the whole idea of non-fat cookery. I myself have always been a believer of the criminality of starch, not fat...but I know in my little heart that the flaw is in the combination of the two.
And since I like to eat, I am trying to eat without fat as much as possible. What to eat out? Shrimp cocktail, my dears! Whether Mexican or American style, you get a number of plump cold boiled shrimp and a tomato-based sauce without any fat. A couple of soda crackers on the side are not without the scope of the plan. And, yum yum.
Looking at Drivein's, Diners and Dives, I positively get kind of nauseated looking at the tons, the absolute piles and mountains of fat meats smothered in fat cheeses that the folks are wolfing down. It isnt belated virtue, either. You know I've always told you not to mix meat and cheese!!
Nowadays I hardly eat any cheese at all. I never was a maniac for it, except for the once in a while that I enjoyed a nice little cheese sandwich. Handy for tucking into the purse or bag for a plane flight, or a bunch of them for a car ride. But though one can buy a 'mayonnaise' without fat, fat-free cheese is a joke. It just isnt good, melted or otherwise. And low fat is iffy. Good as one individual item, it can turn on you if you end up with too many "low fat" items and don't add them up.
At the Goodwill, I found the most wonderful cookbook. Most "low fat" cookbooks are compilations of the same old ideas, heavy on the sugar, low on the fat and mostly low on the flavors. The wonderful cookbook I found is called
The Low Fat Cookbook, by Sue Kreitzman. It's one of those beautiful over-illustrated books from the English publishers...trillions of mouthwatering photographs that make even a few grains of salt in a dish look good.
And this book has much more than just photos. Sue Kreitzman has wonderful ideas for flavorful, low fat dishes of all sorts. And here is a great idea that I'm going to try immediately.
"Oil-Water Spray"
Get a small sprayer or mister and make a mixture of 1/8 oil (olive, walnut, sunflower, sesame) to 7/8 water. Shake and spray.
That's it. A simple tip that enables us NOT to be buying those cans of spray oil that have evil canola and evil soy in them. Let's try it.
I'll be referring back to this beautiful cookbook as I try out its very creative approach to cookery. How could I have bought this book at a store or at Amazon? I didnt even know that it existed. But now you know too and can look for one online. It is worth it even if you just look at the pictures. I, however, could only have stumbled upon it at the Goodwill, which I did. Serendipity, baby, serendipity. It's all around us.....YAZZYBEL
Today I'll write about cooking without fat. It's a difficult problem in our culture, the whole idea of non-fat cookery. I myself have always been a believer of the criminality of starch, not fat...but I know in my little heart that the flaw is in the combination of the two.
And since I like to eat, I am trying to eat without fat as much as possible. What to eat out? Shrimp cocktail, my dears! Whether Mexican or American style, you get a number of plump cold boiled shrimp and a tomato-based sauce without any fat. A couple of soda crackers on the side are not without the scope of the plan. And, yum yum.
Looking at Drivein's, Diners and Dives, I positively get kind of nauseated looking at the tons, the absolute piles and mountains of fat meats smothered in fat cheeses that the folks are wolfing down. It isnt belated virtue, either. You know I've always told you not to mix meat and cheese!!
Nowadays I hardly eat any cheese at all. I never was a maniac for it, except for the once in a while that I enjoyed a nice little cheese sandwich. Handy for tucking into the purse or bag for a plane flight, or a bunch of them for a car ride. But though one can buy a 'mayonnaise' without fat, fat-free cheese is a joke. It just isnt good, melted or otherwise. And low fat is iffy. Good as one individual item, it can turn on you if you end up with too many "low fat" items and don't add them up.
At the Goodwill, I found the most wonderful cookbook. Most "low fat" cookbooks are compilations of the same old ideas, heavy on the sugar, low on the fat and mostly low on the flavors. The wonderful cookbook I found is called
The Low Fat Cookbook, by Sue Kreitzman. It's one of those beautiful over-illustrated books from the English publishers...trillions of mouthwatering photographs that make even a few grains of salt in a dish look good.
And this book has much more than just photos. Sue Kreitzman has wonderful ideas for flavorful, low fat dishes of all sorts. And here is a great idea that I'm going to try immediately.
"Oil-Water Spray"
Get a small sprayer or mister and make a mixture of 1/8 oil (olive, walnut, sunflower, sesame) to 7/8 water. Shake and spray.
That's it. A simple tip that enables us NOT to be buying those cans of spray oil that have evil canola and evil soy in them. Let's try it.
I'll be referring back to this beautiful cookbook as I try out its very creative approach to cookery. How could I have bought this book at a store or at Amazon? I didnt even know that it existed. But now you know too and can look for one online. It is worth it even if you just look at the pictures. I, however, could only have stumbled upon it at the Goodwill, which I did. Serendipity, baby, serendipity. It's all around us.....YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
A Good Day for Chicken Soup
Good afternoon!!
It's a gray, cold, very windy Southern California afternoon. It was and is supposed to be raining, but it is not. We Californians do get cynical about predictions of rain; it's understandable when they miss the mark so often.
A radio talk show host, Tim Conway Jr, was betting people last night that not one drop of rain would fall in Los Angeles today though the prospect was 100% for rain. I'm with him, but maybe not quite so drastically. When it says 20% chance of rain, however, I always feel that the chances are better than a prediction of 80%. I don't know why it should be true, I just know it so often happens that way.
I am fighting, not a cold, but an attack of the Flowering Ornamental Pear Trees. They are beautiful small trees, and in February they're covered by a snowstorm of white blooms, tinted with chartreuse here and there. Lovely to look at, but don't get too close (some in every block is too close!)
So I decided to get some chicken and make a soup for tonight. For some reason I can no longer buy a reasonably sized package of cut up chicken. There are either large packages of thighs, large packages of legs, or packages of boneless breasts. I LIKE BONES. So I bought a package of about twenty wings, yes, wings--bought in desperation. Put them into a saucepan with a quart and a half of water, a large carrot cut in six pieces, a large piece of a large onion cut into small pieces, a clove of garlic minced, a few dried herbs, a shake of garlic salt--and about a half cup of cut up tired celery. All of that boiled gently away, and then I went in and took out the wings with my tweakers and laid them on a plate. Then I cut up a largish Mexican squash and put those pieces in. When the wings cooled off enough to trim, I took out the bones and took off the skin. I had a pile of scraps about as big as the meat, but que vale? The meat was bite size and succulent, and I put it back into the pot with a couple of small handfuls of twisted pasta, and then I forgot about it. Oh, and I cut some cilantro and some parsley from the yard and threw those in. The soup is delicious and it will make a great supper in about two hours.
Wing-skin is greasy and I have been trying to skim a lot of fat off the top of the soup with a large spoon. It's hard to do but I have to because "I had a heart attack," you know. Simper.
I can't tell you how yummy that soup tastes. I have had perfectly good chicken soup that tasted bitter from black pepper, or lacked salt, or had that thin feathery taste that it can get--but this soup has none of the above. It is perfect. YAZZYBEL
It's a gray, cold, very windy Southern California afternoon. It was and is supposed to be raining, but it is not. We Californians do get cynical about predictions of rain; it's understandable when they miss the mark so often.
A radio talk show host, Tim Conway Jr, was betting people last night that not one drop of rain would fall in Los Angeles today though the prospect was 100% for rain. I'm with him, but maybe not quite so drastically. When it says 20% chance of rain, however, I always feel that the chances are better than a prediction of 80%. I don't know why it should be true, I just know it so often happens that way.
I am fighting, not a cold, but an attack of the Flowering Ornamental Pear Trees. They are beautiful small trees, and in February they're covered by a snowstorm of white blooms, tinted with chartreuse here and there. Lovely to look at, but don't get too close (some in every block is too close!)
So I decided to get some chicken and make a soup for tonight. For some reason I can no longer buy a reasonably sized package of cut up chicken. There are either large packages of thighs, large packages of legs, or packages of boneless breasts. I LIKE BONES. So I bought a package of about twenty wings, yes, wings--bought in desperation. Put them into a saucepan with a quart and a half of water, a large carrot cut in six pieces, a large piece of a large onion cut into small pieces, a clove of garlic minced, a few dried herbs, a shake of garlic salt--and about a half cup of cut up tired celery. All of that boiled gently away, and then I went in and took out the wings with my tweakers and laid them on a plate. Then I cut up a largish Mexican squash and put those pieces in. When the wings cooled off enough to trim, I took out the bones and took off the skin. I had a pile of scraps about as big as the meat, but que vale? The meat was bite size and succulent, and I put it back into the pot with a couple of small handfuls of twisted pasta, and then I forgot about it. Oh, and I cut some cilantro and some parsley from the yard and threw those in. The soup is delicious and it will make a great supper in about two hours.
Wing-skin is greasy and I have been trying to skim a lot of fat off the top of the soup with a large spoon. It's hard to do but I have to because "I had a heart attack," you know. Simper.
I can't tell you how yummy that soup tastes. I have had perfectly good chicken soup that tasted bitter from black pepper, or lacked salt, or had that thin feathery taste that it can get--but this soup has none of the above. It is perfect. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Silent Prayer? --or White Noise?
Some Sundays, you go into church, sink down onto your knees, and--draw a blank.
It's true. Sometimes I just kneel there in the chill gloom of an early Sunday morning, and I can't think of a thing. Nada.
That's why standardized, written out prayers are good. Sometimes spontaneity just doesn't work. I think it's because, unthought-of by us, our brains in this modern world are often so full of junk-images, junk-thoughts, and other distractions: have to's and forgot to's and don't want to's....that we are incapable of forming even a simple few words into a prayer, no matter how much we need to.
But then we can't even remember our simple prayers. The only one that ever springs to mind for me is:
Good bread! Good meat!
Good God! Let's eat!
And that is not appropriate or useful at ten of eight on Sunday morning either. The Lord's Prayer should come to mind, but for the life of me I can't get it started at that point.
So here's what I prayed today:
Dear Lord, please forgive me for letting my mind and life to become so clogged up with trivia that I can't even think what I needed to pray for. I am sorry that I can't think of a suitable prayer for this morning. I can't even stop to reflect or meditate at this point because my mind will just fill up again with rusty nothingness and we can't call that praying. (At this point I sometimes can remember Jimmy Swaggart's injunction as to what God wants of us...{1} He wants us to thank Him, and {2}He wants us to praise and bless His holy Name. ) So I tack on those two thoughts, say Amen, and sit back to read my bulletin until the clergy some processing in.
Today was Candlemas, a special blessing of the children day. Candelario, en espanol. And, says the church bulletin, Candlemas marks the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox; and in the days of agriculture as a way of life for most everybody, it was a very special time because it meant that planting time would be coming up. Get out those seed catalogs and celebrate Candlemas, everybody!!! Amen. YAZZYBEL
It's true. Sometimes I just kneel there in the chill gloom of an early Sunday morning, and I can't think of a thing. Nada.
That's why standardized, written out prayers are good. Sometimes spontaneity just doesn't work. I think it's because, unthought-of by us, our brains in this modern world are often so full of junk-images, junk-thoughts, and other distractions: have to's and forgot to's and don't want to's....that we are incapable of forming even a simple few words into a prayer, no matter how much we need to.
But then we can't even remember our simple prayers. The only one that ever springs to mind for me is:
Good bread! Good meat!
Good God! Let's eat!
And that is not appropriate or useful at ten of eight on Sunday morning either. The Lord's Prayer should come to mind, but for the life of me I can't get it started at that point.
So here's what I prayed today:
Dear Lord, please forgive me for letting my mind and life to become so clogged up with trivia that I can't even think what I needed to pray for. I am sorry that I can't think of a suitable prayer for this morning. I can't even stop to reflect or meditate at this point because my mind will just fill up again with rusty nothingness and we can't call that praying. (At this point I sometimes can remember Jimmy Swaggart's injunction as to what God wants of us...{1} He wants us to thank Him, and {2}He wants us to praise and bless His holy Name. ) So I tack on those two thoughts, say Amen, and sit back to read my bulletin until the clergy some processing in.
Today was Candlemas, a special blessing of the children day. Candelario, en espanol. And, says the church bulletin, Candlemas marks the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox; and in the days of agriculture as a way of life for most everybody, it was a very special time because it meant that planting time would be coming up. Get out those seed catalogs and celebrate Candlemas, everybody!!! Amen. YAZZYBEL
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)