A long number of years ago, after a very difficult and traumatic passage in my life, I mounted a plane in Brownsville, Texas. My parents had bought my ticket, and I learned as the day went by that it included nine stops before the eventual arrival in Denver, Colorado.
It was a beautiful Texas June day, sunny and clear, and as we journeyed northward, and went down in every possible stop we could take in Texas, and a few more, it became afternoon and we were flying I guess over Kansas, and I was becoming more and more frazzled from the unfamiliarity of travel and so many landings and take-offs. I felt nervous and fatigued, and wondered if we'd ever arrive in Denver, Colorado.
In midafternoon an older lady boarded the plane and sat next to me by the window. I'd been looking out all day at oil reservoirs, square planes of fields in greens and yellow and browns, so wasn't interested in the window seat. She was pleasant and chatty, and it turned out that she was the mother of the rector of the Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs, our next to the last stop. She was so nice that I positively began to enjoy my trip, and as we talked I began to unwind a bit, distracted. After a time, she looked up from her knitting and remarked with pleasure, "Oh, there's the Range!"
I looked out the window and had the surprise of my life. Up from the flat terrain that we'd been flying over all day, sprang--the Rocky Mountains! All of a sudden, just like that! Vistas that I'd never imagined! Huge, spiky, rocky, jutting up into the sky in blues and greys and whites, for the afternoon had turned cloudy now...They sprang up out of nowhere, for me. I didn't know what I'd expected of Colorado, but the reality of the huge prospect was truly overwhelming.
The lady got off the plane in Colorado Springs, her family with son in clerical collar and straw hat, looking just like Robert Morley in The African Queen, teenagers standing by too...for airports were very different things in those days and greeters would wait outside by the fenced gate for the arrivers...and I never saw her again. Off she went, leaving me with one immortal phrase of pleasure and discovery: "Oh, there's the Range!"
When I left Denver 3 days ago, I had the great pleasure of flying over the snow-covered peaks of the Range again on a clear bright midday. And I remembered the past and the old lady. Lesson learned: we never know what's going to turn up for us to know, to learn, to love, to wonder at.
That was the great gift of my trip this month. You never know. There's a range I have not even imagined before me. There are choices to be made, but nobody is hurrying me. I came home calm, ready to make the decisions when I have to. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Stranger in a Strange Land
Here I am, ici, (I say ici because I can get the radio in French at some place on the dial at night)...anyway, at this moment, ici in Cedar Rapids am I.
I have been a stranger ever since I left my house in Chula Vista nearly 2 weeks ago. It's strange. I have never traveled and felt to be in a strange place, just because I wasn't at home. I think now it's different because there is no home; no person at all waiting for me or holding down the fort. I was kind of single in the eighties but I had the kids in and out to tie me to something.
Now I am eager to go home but who will be there to say HI? The teenaged boy next door who's coming over to feed the cat and water my kale plants. Perhaps. The cat Himself, perhaps. He'll be offended and not want to be friendly. Perhaps. He's had about all the abandonment he can take this year. He nearly went bonkers when Theo went to the hospital and didn't return. I hope he's glad to see me and forgives me and lets me brush him. The bite he gave me on my hand before I left is hardly visible. (He couldn't help it.)
Will a different person walk into the house than walked out of it? I won't know until I do. I have passed time in two houses as different from each other as houses could possibly be. I have related to my sister, her husband, my son, my daughter in law, and my grandchildren. I am ready to take my burden upon myself again, by myself again. I hope. Lots of decisions to be made. Lots of new possibilities on the horizon.
I am physically a bit weaker than I was when I left home: not good. That's because I have not been doing anything but loll around and watch TV or read, since I came to Cedar Rapids. There are things out there to do perhaps but I have not done them. Note to self: next time, rent a car whether you want to or not. I need to stop writing for a while now so I can walk around in a circle through the LR, front hall, DR, and kitchen and back here again. So will sign off. Someone will sign on and write this blog after I get home. Exciting to see who will do that! I'll let you know. YAZZYBEL
I have been a stranger ever since I left my house in Chula Vista nearly 2 weeks ago. It's strange. I have never traveled and felt to be in a strange place, just because I wasn't at home. I think now it's different because there is no home; no person at all waiting for me or holding down the fort. I was kind of single in the eighties but I had the kids in and out to tie me to something.
Now I am eager to go home but who will be there to say HI? The teenaged boy next door who's coming over to feed the cat and water my kale plants. Perhaps. The cat Himself, perhaps. He'll be offended and not want to be friendly. Perhaps. He's had about all the abandonment he can take this year. He nearly went bonkers when Theo went to the hospital and didn't return. I hope he's glad to see me and forgives me and lets me brush him. The bite he gave me on my hand before I left is hardly visible. (He couldn't help it.)
Will a different person walk into the house than walked out of it? I won't know until I do. I have passed time in two houses as different from each other as houses could possibly be. I have related to my sister, her husband, my son, my daughter in law, and my grandchildren. I am ready to take my burden upon myself again, by myself again. I hope. Lots of decisions to be made. Lots of new possibilities on the horizon.
I am physically a bit weaker than I was when I left home: not good. That's because I have not been doing anything but loll around and watch TV or read, since I came to Cedar Rapids. There are things out there to do perhaps but I have not done them. Note to self: next time, rent a car whether you want to or not. I need to stop writing for a while now so I can walk around in a circle through the LR, front hall, DR, and kitchen and back here again. So will sign off. Someone will sign on and write this blog after I get home. Exciting to see who will do that! I'll let you know. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Movies and Memories
Yesterday, Cyclo arrived in the mail. I watched it, and I need to watch it again as I was in my exhaustion phase and fell asleep during my nap. So I did not see it all, but I saw enough to know that it is the "dark" side of life as compared to the other two films in the trilogy. They are about home and family and love and relationships. Cyclo, about a poor young man who has to drive a bicycle-taxi about the streets of Ho Chi Min City in order to support his sisters and grandfather, shows the other side: street life, gang life, prostitution, illness, and violence. It is hard to watch and I will watch it again. Just not today.
I love the other two films because they reminded me of so many things about my childhood, and show me again why I feel such a closeness with the older Indian films too. People live simple lives. They make life beautiful where they can do so, with gardens, and their possessions if they are lucky enough to have any. Old people look old, like the Aunty in Pather Panchali, so old you wonder how they can make it, creeping around from day to day trying to find something to eat. The weather is hot. It rains, huge tropical rains with drops the size of fifty cent pieces like the ones I used to watch falling onto the canna lilies when I was little.
In the Vietnamese movies, there are always people coming around. Coming around to sell things, to borrow things, to bring things, to take away things, knock knock knock...in our world we'd hear the sound of a little man who went in a truck to sell vegetables and fruits...toot toot on the corner and you went out to see what he had to sell.
There was the piruli man, who had a big cone of paper and stuck into it were little cones of paper-wrapped candy, sweet and soft. We loved pirulis and I would like to have one this minute.
There were bakers who would come and knock and take you out to their cars where there were trays of breads and rolls..and how good they were.
And at night--the serenaders!! Bands of strolling musicians, usually four violins, would come around. You'd hear them softly playing in the front yard, and you'd all go out front to listen in the dark, while someone in the house grumpily scrounged around for change to give them. If you gave them something, they'd play another tune; if not, they'd move on.
In Mexico City, there was a huge enormous music box, a beautiful and complicated machine, that used to come around in the Colonia where we lived. I'll never forget the main tune it played, and just thinking of it transports me back to those evenings.
And in Vietnam, in the movies I saw there were so many animals in the gardens of the houses...little lizards, and different kinds of frogs and toads. We had them too...we had Mediterranean geckos (though nobody in my family knew the name of them then) which actually sang a beautiful little musical call...they were shy sweet creatures with big eyes and soft bodies with little tubercles all over. I was sung to sleep by them many a night when I was very small.
Nowadays nobody hears those little animals or is very aware if they are around. Perhaps children are...I am told that the geckoes are no more, finally finished off by the deep winter freezes that Global Warming has produced. But I'll bet somebody has them still. Lucky them.
You have to go outside and forget the air-conditioning for a while in order to find out. You have to look for the vacant lots in order to find the tortoises that we used to encounter by the dozens as kids...and the water turtles too, big lumbering creatures. But now they all have less natural habitat to proliferate in. People have chopped down lots of the mesquite brush to use for BBQ wood. The resacas are tamed in the City of Brownsville, I guess totally. It isn't raining as much lately and the winters are colder.
But there are parrots! Lots of little green Mexican parrots took a tip from their 2-legged compatriots and came across the border illegally. There are flocks of them all over Brownsville, Texas, or so I hear.
And there are alligators. Really, there are. I am just going to have to go back to visit, to see if there really are any alligators, or little geckos, or strolling musicians left in this world, outside of old movies. YAZZYBEL
I love the other two films because they reminded me of so many things about my childhood, and show me again why I feel such a closeness with the older Indian films too. People live simple lives. They make life beautiful where they can do so, with gardens, and their possessions if they are lucky enough to have any. Old people look old, like the Aunty in Pather Panchali, so old you wonder how they can make it, creeping around from day to day trying to find something to eat. The weather is hot. It rains, huge tropical rains with drops the size of fifty cent pieces like the ones I used to watch falling onto the canna lilies when I was little.
In the Vietnamese movies, there are always people coming around. Coming around to sell things, to borrow things, to bring things, to take away things, knock knock knock...in our world we'd hear the sound of a little man who went in a truck to sell vegetables and fruits...toot toot on the corner and you went out to see what he had to sell.
There was the piruli man, who had a big cone of paper and stuck into it were little cones of paper-wrapped candy, sweet and soft. We loved pirulis and I would like to have one this minute.
There were bakers who would come and knock and take you out to their cars where there were trays of breads and rolls..and how good they were.
And at night--the serenaders!! Bands of strolling musicians, usually four violins, would come around. You'd hear them softly playing in the front yard, and you'd all go out front to listen in the dark, while someone in the house grumpily scrounged around for change to give them. If you gave them something, they'd play another tune; if not, they'd move on.
In Mexico City, there was a huge enormous music box, a beautiful and complicated machine, that used to come around in the Colonia where we lived. I'll never forget the main tune it played, and just thinking of it transports me back to those evenings.
And in Vietnam, in the movies I saw there were so many animals in the gardens of the houses...little lizards, and different kinds of frogs and toads. We had them too...we had Mediterranean geckos (though nobody in my family knew the name of them then) which actually sang a beautiful little musical call...they were shy sweet creatures with big eyes and soft bodies with little tubercles all over. I was sung to sleep by them many a night when I was very small.
Nowadays nobody hears those little animals or is very aware if they are around. Perhaps children are...I am told that the geckoes are no more, finally finished off by the deep winter freezes that Global Warming has produced. But I'll bet somebody has them still. Lucky them.
You have to go outside and forget the air-conditioning for a while in order to find out. You have to look for the vacant lots in order to find the tortoises that we used to encounter by the dozens as kids...and the water turtles too, big lumbering creatures. But now they all have less natural habitat to proliferate in. People have chopped down lots of the mesquite brush to use for BBQ wood. The resacas are tamed in the City of Brownsville, I guess totally. It isn't raining as much lately and the winters are colder.
But there are parrots! Lots of little green Mexican parrots took a tip from their 2-legged compatriots and came across the border illegally. There are flocks of them all over Brownsville, Texas, or so I hear.
And there are alligators. Really, there are. I am just going to have to go back to visit, to see if there really are any alligators, or little geckos, or strolling musicians left in this world, outside of old movies. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Two Beautiful Films
G'day.
The two films I am writing about are by Tran Anh Hung, and they are The Scent of Green Papaya, and The Vertical Ray of the Sun. There is a third in the set called Cyclo, about a person who runs a taxi-bicycle. The two that I've seen are bittersweet, very true to life family scenes. I have the feeling that Cyclo is a darker theme, but will tell more about it when I've seen it.
In The Scent of Green Papaya, a little girl goes from her village to become a servant in a large prosperous family in Hanoi. When I looked up Hanoi, I was shocked to see that it's indeed in North Vietnam and so foreign to our American imaginings. The customs, household, and family are so cultured and beautiful that they are set apart from our US standards by all measures. The large family is unhappy because they had the tragedy of losing a daughter years before, from illness. The father thinks it was all his fault because he is a man who takes the family money periodically and goes away from the house to spend it all. His wife is devoted and loving, and has three boys, an almost grown teenager, a moody pre-teen, and a little demon four or five year old. These are all portrayed with beautiful accuracy as to their emotional reactions to what's going on with their parents. There is an old grandma, too, traumatized by the loss of her young husband years ago and her granddaughter who would have been the age of the new maid Liu.
We follow along with Liu as she learns from an older servant the ways of the well-off household. It is hard to believe the sophistication amidst simplicity of their beautiful lives. I was fascinated by the cooking lessons, of course. I was enchanted by the beauty and order of a large household that covered the grounds of a large compound indoors and out. But I read in Wikipedia that Hanoi has existed on the Red River for a thousand years...that swamps our little three hundred year old country by far. And as my hairdresser used to tell me, they were occupied by the Chinese "one thousand years...the French, three hundred years...America--(grimacing)--forty five years...!"
Anyway, the beauty and order of the household, its furnishings and objects, its gardens and water features (as they are now called in landscape articles), is simply astounding. Every inch is thought about, ordered, cared for;even the many wild little creatures, ants and lizards and frogs, seem to have a role in making the whole a beautiful place to live in.
The next film, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, is about three beautiful daughters and their brother and their husbands and lovers...very modern, in its topics...with lovely children and, again, beautiful backdrops of home, garden, and sometimes dramatic coast scenery. How easy it is to identify with these people, simple in some ways, deeply complicated in others...and how they deal with the cards life deals them.
Of course, even though these lives are portrayed as they were lived in the nineteen fifties, all would be different now. Everyone would have a cell phone device in their hands, and the children would be rude, and TV's would be blaring. So these stories would seem a fairyland to someone born after 1960, say...but I can remember all the way back to 1929 and I can tell you that it was not fairyland here in the US or over there in unknown Vietnam. Things were different. People were the same, but things were very different. YAZZYBEL
The two films I am writing about are by Tran Anh Hung, and they are The Scent of Green Papaya, and The Vertical Ray of the Sun. There is a third in the set called Cyclo, about a person who runs a taxi-bicycle. The two that I've seen are bittersweet, very true to life family scenes. I have the feeling that Cyclo is a darker theme, but will tell more about it when I've seen it.
In The Scent of Green Papaya, a little girl goes from her village to become a servant in a large prosperous family in Hanoi. When I looked up Hanoi, I was shocked to see that it's indeed in North Vietnam and so foreign to our American imaginings. The customs, household, and family are so cultured and beautiful that they are set apart from our US standards by all measures. The large family is unhappy because they had the tragedy of losing a daughter years before, from illness. The father thinks it was all his fault because he is a man who takes the family money periodically and goes away from the house to spend it all. His wife is devoted and loving, and has three boys, an almost grown teenager, a moody pre-teen, and a little demon four or five year old. These are all portrayed with beautiful accuracy as to their emotional reactions to what's going on with their parents. There is an old grandma, too, traumatized by the loss of her young husband years ago and her granddaughter who would have been the age of the new maid Liu.
We follow along with Liu as she learns from an older servant the ways of the well-off household. It is hard to believe the sophistication amidst simplicity of their beautiful lives. I was fascinated by the cooking lessons, of course. I was enchanted by the beauty and order of a large household that covered the grounds of a large compound indoors and out. But I read in Wikipedia that Hanoi has existed on the Red River for a thousand years...that swamps our little three hundred year old country by far. And as my hairdresser used to tell me, they were occupied by the Chinese "one thousand years...the French, three hundred years...America--(grimacing)--forty five years...!"
Anyway, the beauty and order of the household, its furnishings and objects, its gardens and water features (as they are now called in landscape articles), is simply astounding. Every inch is thought about, ordered, cared for;even the many wild little creatures, ants and lizards and frogs, seem to have a role in making the whole a beautiful place to live in.
The next film, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, is about three beautiful daughters and their brother and their husbands and lovers...very modern, in its topics...with lovely children and, again, beautiful backdrops of home, garden, and sometimes dramatic coast scenery. How easy it is to identify with these people, simple in some ways, deeply complicated in others...and how they deal with the cards life deals them.
Of course, even though these lives are portrayed as they were lived in the nineteen fifties, all would be different now. Everyone would have a cell phone device in their hands, and the children would be rude, and TV's would be blaring. So these stories would seem a fairyland to someone born after 1960, say...but I can remember all the way back to 1929 and I can tell you that it was not fairyland here in the US or over there in unknown Vietnam. Things were different. People were the same, but things were very different. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, September 26, 2013
How to Be A Widow
The answer is: one day at a time!
And it is still difficult.
Yesterday marked exactly two months since Theodore died at Kaiser Hospital at about 10:37 p.m. It hasn't gotten one bit easier from one day to the next.
New things happen all the time, however. Last Saturday marked my first minor wreck ,without his being around, for a long long time. I cracked into this guy's rear end while I was craning around in an unfamiliar neighborhood looking for the Marshall's. Of course, his was a custom-made red Mustang. He was polite about it, however,
but he did take down my insurance info even though neither of us could see any damage to self or vehicle. He even pointed out the Marshall's to me at the end of our confrontation. He was a very nice person and I did not have to cry.
And today I had a confrontation with a very young black lady in the Walmart parking lot after I whomped into a parking place when apparently she had been waiting for it (coming the other way at the corner)...she was really angry and she let me know it. Cars were behind her honking and she wanted me to let her back up so I could back up and give her my parking place. I said I couldnt do it because it was too late, just look at the people behind her already honking, and she just got madder and she said we SHOULD do it because it was HER place; she'd been waiting. I said I was sorry, but I didnt move the car. She really let me have it verbally and said I was lucky she didnt ram into me and bust my ass. I didnt mention to her that that seems to be more my role now in the traffic scenario. But she was mad and I wasnt as upset as I should have been--because I am exactly forty years older than she (by my guess) and I deserved something...respect, pardon, whatever. And was already tired and it was only ten thirty a.m.
Each day presents its challenges and each day demands its solution. I hate it that I had that heart attack last year and that I have to rest after lunch; it is a break in the day that is physically necessary but not usually really beneficial. A friend says she has her nap from two to three after which she gets up and puts on her pajamas and is in evening mode. I am not quite there yet, but it is now six oh three p.m. and I am more than ready to shut down the store for the night. It's crazy.
I miss my husband, and my old way of life. I dont like being alone, and I dont like having to plan whether or not I am going to take a vacation and when and to where all by myself. I dont like being alone at night. I dont like being alone all day either. I am going to have to take some classes or join a crafts group (Lord, spare me!) or study the Bible or something just to put myself with other people somehow, people who know my name and either like or dislike me but at least know I am alive and around. Well, from all this you can tell that after all this time I don't know much about How to Be a Widow. YAZZYBEL
And it is still difficult.
Yesterday marked exactly two months since Theodore died at Kaiser Hospital at about 10:37 p.m. It hasn't gotten one bit easier from one day to the next.
New things happen all the time, however. Last Saturday marked my first minor wreck ,without his being around, for a long long time. I cracked into this guy's rear end while I was craning around in an unfamiliar neighborhood looking for the Marshall's. Of course, his was a custom-made red Mustang. He was polite about it, however,
but he did take down my insurance info even though neither of us could see any damage to self or vehicle. He even pointed out the Marshall's to me at the end of our confrontation. He was a very nice person and I did not have to cry.
And today I had a confrontation with a very young black lady in the Walmart parking lot after I whomped into a parking place when apparently she had been waiting for it (coming the other way at the corner)...she was really angry and she let me know it. Cars were behind her honking and she wanted me to let her back up so I could back up and give her my parking place. I said I couldnt do it because it was too late, just look at the people behind her already honking, and she just got madder and she said we SHOULD do it because it was HER place; she'd been waiting. I said I was sorry, but I didnt move the car. She really let me have it verbally and said I was lucky she didnt ram into me and bust my ass. I didnt mention to her that that seems to be more my role now in the traffic scenario. But she was mad and I wasnt as upset as I should have been--because I am exactly forty years older than she (by my guess) and I deserved something...respect, pardon, whatever. And was already tired and it was only ten thirty a.m.
Each day presents its challenges and each day demands its solution. I hate it that I had that heart attack last year and that I have to rest after lunch; it is a break in the day that is physically necessary but not usually really beneficial. A friend says she has her nap from two to three after which she gets up and puts on her pajamas and is in evening mode. I am not quite there yet, but it is now six oh three p.m. and I am more than ready to shut down the store for the night. It's crazy.
I miss my husband, and my old way of life. I dont like being alone, and I dont like having to plan whether or not I am going to take a vacation and when and to where all by myself. I dont like being alone at night. I dont like being alone all day either. I am going to have to take some classes or join a crafts group (Lord, spare me!) or study the Bible or something just to put myself with other people somehow, people who know my name and either like or dislike me but at least know I am alive and around. Well, from all this you can tell that after all this time I don't know much about How to Be a Widow. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Nice Cookbook
Good morning.
Yesterday I went to the Methodist Thrift Shop in SD, and a title caught my eye amongst the books: Mexican Light. At first I thought it might be about geography, or weather, or photography, or home decor. No, it's about a style of cooking. But I liked the format of the book and the author, Rose Shulman, is well known--although as far as I know, she's as far removed from Mexico and things Mexican as Darth Vader. But what do I know anyway? The book is full of good ideas.
Mexican food as I know it has undergone a huge change in the long years I've been eating it. Our idea of Mexican food when I was a kid was of the deeply seasoned, meat-centered cuisine of the ranches of northern Mexico and South Texas. Nowadays, with so many people pouring into the USA from the more southern and purely idigenous folk from Oaxaca and Michoacan mainly, the idea of "Mexican food" has surely shifted.
I bet I could look through that cookbook (though I havent done it yet) , through every recipe, without finding one recipe with comino in it. Cumin is such a staple flavor in Mexican food as I know it, but of course now I realize that it was a staple flavor in Mediterranean cooking, Arabic cooking, Sephardic cooking...and those were our folks as we came over from Spain. The Indians of the New World knew not of the comino, and still eschew its vibrant flavor in their (rather meek to me) versions of tacos and rice.
Well, I like both types. They are just different. In the meantime, this cookbook has lots of delightful taco ideas with stirfried squashes, onions, corn, chiles, that are plenty tasty. And having had my heart attack last year, I appreciate the "soft taco" versions that aren't fried in fat. I do them that way now anyway...how often have you heard me say to lay the tortilla down on the open gas flame...or grill?
Anyway, it is a good read, and I advise everyone who'd like a few new-ish ideas to go onto eBay or Amazon and get a "Mexican Light" by Rose Shulman. YAZZYBEL
Yesterday I went to the Methodist Thrift Shop in SD, and a title caught my eye amongst the books: Mexican Light. At first I thought it might be about geography, or weather, or photography, or home decor. No, it's about a style of cooking. But I liked the format of the book and the author, Rose Shulman, is well known--although as far as I know, she's as far removed from Mexico and things Mexican as Darth Vader. But what do I know anyway? The book is full of good ideas.
Mexican food as I know it has undergone a huge change in the long years I've been eating it. Our idea of Mexican food when I was a kid was of the deeply seasoned, meat-centered cuisine of the ranches of northern Mexico and South Texas. Nowadays, with so many people pouring into the USA from the more southern and purely idigenous folk from Oaxaca and Michoacan mainly, the idea of "Mexican food" has surely shifted.
I bet I could look through that cookbook (though I havent done it yet) , through every recipe, without finding one recipe with comino in it. Cumin is such a staple flavor in Mexican food as I know it, but of course now I realize that it was a staple flavor in Mediterranean cooking, Arabic cooking, Sephardic cooking...and those were our folks as we came over from Spain. The Indians of the New World knew not of the comino, and still eschew its vibrant flavor in their (rather meek to me) versions of tacos and rice.
Well, I like both types. They are just different. In the meantime, this cookbook has lots of delightful taco ideas with stirfried squashes, onions, corn, chiles, that are plenty tasty. And having had my heart attack last year, I appreciate the "soft taco" versions that aren't fried in fat. I do them that way now anyway...how often have you heard me say to lay the tortilla down on the open gas flame...or grill?
Anyway, it is a good read, and I advise everyone who'd like a few new-ish ideas to go onto eBay or Amazon and get a "Mexican Light" by Rose Shulman. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, September 7, 2013
And the Little Ones Chewed On---What?
You've all heard about the fox, who went out on a summer's night....he brought back a big fat chicken, and,
"You never saw such a supper in your life,
And the little ones chewed on the bones-oh!!"
Now KFC is serving all its chicken products boneless, I hear. Why, I don't know.
And I went to the store to get me some soup bones or some tough meat with a bone on it, and no such thing could be had. This is a big supermarket here in Chula Vista. When I complained about it at the register, you'd think I'd dropped into a zombie's coven: dull, uncomprehending expressions and no response from one and all. Am I the one who's crazy? WE NEED BONES. BEEF BONES, especially. There were no bones to be had in the meat dept., and the butcher told me when I complained back there that "all our meat" comes to them boneless.
What 's being done with all those bones? Someone discovered a value to bones and so the bones are all sequestered, sold off to vitamin companies, pet food companies, who knows where. The lowly public hardly gets one any more unless it's willing to buy a T-bone. Let me tell you a tip: If you do get some T-bones, save those bones in the freezer after you've chewed all the meat off of them. They are valuable, and rare.
My husband didn't like bones. I always have liked to chew on bones...I am like Harriet, wife of a co-worker of my husband's once, who...(we were at a company dinner)..noticing that the prime rib was being carved and served off the bone, whispered in the waiter's ear. Shortly, a huge platter of bones arrived and she dug in, gnawing away. I 'm with her.
I wanted the bones to make good Russian borscht, which I had at Elijah's last Sunday. It cured me of my malaise when nothing else has. Here's how I made it with what I had around the house.
Russian Borscht
can of chicken stock, can of water
leftover beef of the boneless stir-fry type
onions cut up
Put that on the stove and cook it on low for quite a while. After a time add:
cut up cabbage
cut up carrots
leftover boiled potato or cubed potato
can of beets and juice, cubed
Let that all simmer until you are hungry. I took out three fourths of it just now, to put into the refrigerator. I will have the other fourth for supper. "On a hot day like this?" I hear the chorus of cries. Yes, on a hot day like this, Russian Borscht will be just fine. It would 've been even finer with BONES...
YAZZYBEL
"You never saw such a supper in your life,
And the little ones chewed on the bones-oh!!"
Now KFC is serving all its chicken products boneless, I hear. Why, I don't know.
And I went to the store to get me some soup bones or some tough meat with a bone on it, and no such thing could be had. This is a big supermarket here in Chula Vista. When I complained about it at the register, you'd think I'd dropped into a zombie's coven: dull, uncomprehending expressions and no response from one and all. Am I the one who's crazy? WE NEED BONES. BEEF BONES, especially. There were no bones to be had in the meat dept., and the butcher told me when I complained back there that "all our meat" comes to them boneless.
What 's being done with all those bones? Someone discovered a value to bones and so the bones are all sequestered, sold off to vitamin companies, pet food companies, who knows where. The lowly public hardly gets one any more unless it's willing to buy a T-bone. Let me tell you a tip: If you do get some T-bones, save those bones in the freezer after you've chewed all the meat off of them. They are valuable, and rare.
My husband didn't like bones. I always have liked to chew on bones...I am like Harriet, wife of a co-worker of my husband's once, who...(we were at a company dinner)..noticing that the prime rib was being carved and served off the bone, whispered in the waiter's ear. Shortly, a huge platter of bones arrived and she dug in, gnawing away. I 'm with her.
I wanted the bones to make good Russian borscht, which I had at Elijah's last Sunday. It cured me of my malaise when nothing else has. Here's how I made it with what I had around the house.
Russian Borscht
can of chicken stock, can of water
leftover beef of the boneless stir-fry type
onions cut up
Put that on the stove and cook it on low for quite a while. After a time add:
cut up cabbage
cut up carrots
leftover boiled potato or cubed potato
can of beets and juice, cubed
Let that all simmer until you are hungry. I took out three fourths of it just now, to put into the refrigerator. I will have the other fourth for supper. "On a hot day like this?" I hear the chorus of cries. Yes, on a hot day like this, Russian Borscht will be just fine. It would 've been even finer with BONES...
YAZZYBEL
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