Dollivers serve lunch, Pi Day preview 6WS

Although the Dollivers declined to get into chefs' whites, and hung on to their posh red dresses, they declared they are tired of not getting the credit for these exciting weekly lunch events, and thought it was time to sit down and take a stand.

The spatula is the badge of office

 
So here they are presenting today's menu:  clam chowder, zucchini baked fritters, roast pork sausage, followed by the Pi Day preview: a mixed berry and apple crumble.  The food seen here before baking, since after baking, too much eating going on to take pix in time.

Pi Day, 3.14, coming on Monday, they thought to get ahead of things and present the crumble, nearest thing to a pie that happens around here, before the clocks change and confuse everyone.  

It was a pretty good crumble, too, the fruit macerated and the juice reduced and added back in.  The topping is a mix of oatmeal and whole wheat flour. The berries colored the apples a deep and lovely red, and as you see, the cook took the privilege of sampling it ahead of time.

And of announcing that there are enough zucchini fritters now in the freezer to bring out for several days, along with the last of the chutney.  The sausages are a rare viewing, but they were pretty good.  I rarely eat anything as processed as that, but everything in moderation, including moderation.

And soon we'll reach the last of the zucchini.  This usually happens -- still using last year's farmshare when the markets open up again in May. Still bell peppers and green beans to go through.

What's Christmas Without a Murder Mystery? 6WS

Yesterday was wonderful. This year I was perfectly well and functioning and cooking and the food went over a treat.  As did the German dessert cookies and cake things brought by Handsome Son, also the eggnog, and his other offerings.

And we find that we can happily watch old murder mysteries together.  Only took us 48 years to find a common interest...he loves the ones set in the 30s and 40s -- Poirot and Marple, not just for the plot, but the settings and cars and historical clothes and all that.  So we indulged in a couple of them, only putting them on pause when neighbors stopped by to help eat our dessert.

To me a lot of the 40s and 50s is not so much historical. I mean, I wore stuff like that, in the 50s,  and the forties stuff is hairstyles I remember my older sisters doing (such as the Utility Roll, where you rolled up your hair around a ribbon like a sausage around your head), and those blouses with square shoulders and set in sleeves.  Twinsets and pearls and good tweeds for posh ladies, my teachers wore those.

I wore the wide collars and big ties and short skirts and colored stockings, all the rage at the Uni in the late 50s.  Earlier the white crocheted gloves. Hats, even, now and then. And earlier still I wore that Girl Guide uniform, gah.  And those awful school blazers and ties and panama hats and clunky shoes. And the ghastly knitwear with puff sleeves and ever so dainty lacework insets. To him it's the prehistoric olden days.  To me it's oh well, memory... 

 I can't wear hats well, just something not right, but I wish people still did.  I mean real hats, the felt or straw kind with brims.    They're fun, and a useful accessory if you're committing a murder..disguise, you know.   Not planning on a murder in rl, except I am really annoyed with that person who keeps pinching my parking place...no, no, tis the season of goodwill and good parking for all.

Anyway,  as we both suddenly thought, what did they do on Christmas before the murder mystery appeared on DVD...the doubtful joy of board games.  Card games. Jigsaw puzzles. Charades. Word puzzles.  All very low on my list of Things I Would Like To Do If I Had a Week to Live.

The rain has finally abated, and I'm off to get a bit of air, after I eat the lovely itlis and sauce that Girija stopped by to give me this morning. Rice and white lentil shapes, to put into the sauce stuff like a soup. She has family visiting, all cooking up a storm, and this is a South India recipe she doesn't often make.  This afternoon they're off to a local Hindi movie.  Now that's something you can do instead of a murder mystery.  And they go on all afternoon.

Happy Fourth All! From the Dolliflowers 6WS

The Dollivers greet you on a rainy cool Fourth of July, and wish you a great day, whether or not you celebrate, from their new reviewing stand in the flower boxes.  

 View from the cheap seats behind the Ds

Their view, from the royal boxes.

Elton declined to bring his piano out in the rain, so we had to hum along America the Beautiful, Oh You Beautiful Doll, and April Showers, a bit out of season, but the weather doesn't think so.

Suddenly, all Spring, all the time 6WS

Never fails to stun, the way one day it's a few green blades, and the next it's all cherry blossom and daffodils.  

These are a few of the Handsome Partner memorial daffodils, and there are others blooming again, their fourth season, on more than one continent, and several countries, thank you all who did that in his honor.

And our own local cherry blossom festival, my cherry bushes on the patio, moved from the front yard

The Russian sage returns, its first spring here, making a natural bouquet with the daffodils and the veronica, which is officially a weed, but I love it and won't pull it out

My neighbor's brand new cherry tree,  its first blossom since planted last Fall.

Visual Puns. Lost on Most People 6WS

In the hope that this audience is one of the vanishingly small number of people who get my jokes and agree that what I think is funny is funny, if you follow me, I'm giving you a visual pun or two.

Here's the massive, weighty, takes two-to-lift-it book of -- New Yorker cartoons!  the lightest, airiest, most fleeting of artforms, especially in the New Yorker, where you always need to be living in the culture to really get them, and culture changes fast, well, as I say, here is that meringue of an artform encapsulated in a tome which all but needs a forklift to maneuver it.   

To me this is the best part of the joke!  Second only to the solemn little essays inserted with a heavy hand throughout the text explaining it all to us...

The other is a deliberate art pun, a wonderful one.  A book of mulberry paper, given to me by a friend, and which has yielded a lot of great paper for drawings.  

The pages are mulberry paper, the back a collage of mulberry leaves, and the binding a stick one, a mulberry twig running through the twine.  Light as a feather in every way.  Great intelligence in this design, and a kindred spirit in humor, too!  I bet the papermaker could never have got a job at the New Yorker. And vice versa.

Valentine's Day. Presidents' Day. Wedding Anniversary 6WS

So much to mark.  Don't know where to start!  You'll notice that when they abolished separate celebrations for Lincoln and Washington, and moved a lot of statutory holidays in the US to the nearest Monday, Lincoln seems to have been bumped.  Just sayin'.  I think the Cherry Pie Makers Full Employment Council won it. 

Cherry pie, for non US readers, being the iconic food to celebrate the man who claimed to have chopped down his father's cherry tree and been unable to practice self-preservation by lying about it.

Wedding anniversary, February 16, 1963 Handsome Partner and I  were married.  No we were not trying for Valentine's Day, cringed at the thought. It was the logistics of a Catholic wedding in the UK, where there being a state religion, not Catholic, priests have no legal authority to marry people, and the city registrar has to be physically present in the church to make it legal. 

Getting the registrar to agree to ANY of the dates the priest offered delayed it from the October date we originally planned on...registrar finally said I'll be there at 3.20 p.m. on February 16, and I will give you ten minutes.  Then I'll leave.  So we had to crush the whole thing into his time requirement.  Reason 45,679 why I'm so happy with the US freedom from a national religion...but it was still a nice day.

Finally, Valentine's Day is for celebrating all kinds of friendship, not just the  romantic red overpriced roses kind...so I wish all our blogistas a happy day whatever you're doing.  

Me, it's cowering in the house in zero temps, with a nice glass of merlot this evening and maybe some hot chocolate at some point.  Dollivers it's preening and prancing about in their red dresses with the lace trim.  Elton it's prowling in search of new outfits, after an incautious remark in here yesterday.

Oh,oh, here's an unsuspecting Upstairs Bear playing with his friends.

 
And here's Elton after a successful Sweater Raid after explaining that it's nice to share on Valentine's Day.

This Is Not Over!  the bears confer on how to raid the sweater back again without having to confront the Dollivers. 

Watch this space for further developments...

The Great Freezer Caper Is On! 6WS

I know there are new readers to this blog, and I need to explain 6WS.  Short for Six Word Saturday, as you see from the button in my right column, it's just a bit of fun, where my header is six words only, but does reflect where I am at this point. And some commenters even respond in six words, very skilled of them.  If you want to do a 6WS on your own blog, click on the button, and it will take you to the right place to proceed from.

So, as the days lengthen, and since I've signed up for another year's farmshare, it's time to be serious about what's in the freezer.  Already prepped the same day as picked, chopped, sliced, made into sticks and so on, in many summer frenzied afternoons, all the veggies are ready to cook with.

And remembering I also have a cache of prepped vegs in the freezer next door (!) I need to get busy on my own freezer.  I've made a lot of soup recently, and wanted something a bit different.

So here's today's Zucchini Stick/Red Bell Pepper/Onion bake, flavored with curry leaves you see resting on top -- they'll be removed before serving -- and a big sprinkling of lemon zest, also from the freezer, shake of Parmesan, kosher salt, red pepper.

I'll bake it at about 380 for half an hour, give or take.

The poundcake went over well with both friend and me, and will be dessert.  It was also, toasted, breakfast this morning, with lovely Vietnamese coffee.  Felt quite Viennese. Son missed out on it up to now, because car trouble changed all his plans for the evening and today.  But I'll save some for him.

Update on the Lost and Found: the slippers turned up, wedged underneath and high up, behind the skirt at the front of the sofabed, no idea how they managed to climb up there, invisible to eye or hand during previous searches.  But now they're home.  The bag of beads is still MIA.

I know, but I've been sick 6WS

Another of those jokes that few people other than self find funny:

Elephant meets with mouse, looks down and sniffs, hm, you're very small, aren't you? mouse looks up and says, well, I've been sick.

And I have.  Completely out of commission for several days, not back yet but hopeful.  Bigger than a mouse, though.

Gotta go! That's my pantleg ringing.. 6WS

New entry in the pantheon of Jokes Which Hardly Anybody But Me Finds Funny:

Little elephant drinking at the river, with his trunk under water. Little crocodile comes swimming along, catches trunk in his teeth.  Elephant says "I subboze you thig that's fuddy!"

Bear Withdrawal Equals Two New Dolls 6WS

Although I'm not at all a conservator, never anxious to preserve and collect and keep, and usually have little trouble in passing on items to better homes, the departure of the bears was a bit different.

Bears have character the minute they're completed, and they definitely took up a bit of psychic real estate around here.  So the large empty guest bed where they were all nestled until I got them all assembled now left a psychic space for me, too.

Which resulted in doing a bit with yarn and a curtain pull, and some pipe cleaners, while sitting up in my own bed last night with a Miss Marple on the DVD player.  And a bit of lovely merino roving.

Smaller doll does not yet have a head, so her hair had to stand in. I was in bed and the wooden beads are one floor up, and require a search.  But she still has character, even headless, oddly enough.

Reader Donna might recognize the Greek cloth, now starched and doing its bit to render my home a bit more gracious, and Judy might remember the curtain pull -- the other one went into a little denim purse I made for K.  The merino roving came from the yarn store in Cape May, and I think the yarn is from the Red White and Blue thrift store.  Sourcing is everything, heh!

So: when in doubt, make a doll!

Three New Friends. Cast Iron Ones 6WS

Finally, I found cast iron pans which are 1. handled long enough for me to get two hands on, so as to lift the thing, 2. small enough for all the above to apply, and wheee 3. in a set.

So here they are.  I've done the oiling and baking thing to season them, even though they claimed to be pre seasoned.  A likely story. I tried a test omelette and some of it came up, some of it stuck.  So after getting the rest of the egg off, I did the seasoning thing.

I believe you have to develop a relationship with these things.  Also to patiently get the seasoning up to par before it's really working. All this I have taken into account.  Before I ceremonially dumped my old rocky nonstick skillet that was the right size for a lot of things but didn't have much else to recommend it.

Anyone with experience of these things, especially about foods that do particularly well in them, please chime in.  In six words, would be a bonus!



 

Still Reading Him, Though, in Hopes 6WS

Aside from the fact that it comes around faster and faster, November's not my favorite month, really, full of memories and anniversaries and birthdays of people long gone.  But the advantage of having the years go faster and faster is that each part of them also goes faster!  don't like winter?  it'll be gone soon...except for last winter, which went on and on.

I'm told that, except for last winter, it's not the time moving faster, it's me, moving slower. Which could certainly be true.  Time is weird stuff.  It seems the more I have to do, the more time there is to do it in. And days when there are not many obligations or commitments seem to fly by.

In the interests of not letting any more time rush by me, I've been catching up on some reading that I've been thinking for years I should at least dip into.  Kahlil Gibran.  Thomas a Kempis, which I downloaded onto my Kindle, now that would astonish him. Not a lot there for me, though. 

One is pretty superficial, perhaps he's overquoted, and the other is so male oriented -- curb your arrogance, don't speak up,  ignore this world in favor of preparing for the next etc., advice for the young headstrong males in the religious life  that he was writing for, that I can't yet see a good fit. And he was writing in the age when the body was considered a clumsy package for the soul, not worth attending to in its own right. 

Still reading him, though, in hopes.

Camera kaput? Try the Mind's Eye 6WS

The lack of a camera makes me feel a bit like someone who talks with her hands and now her arms are in slings!  however, there are other things to pursue, anyway.

Such as all the books I'm constantly in the middle of, usually several at a time.  Can't show you a pic of the covers, which makes it easier to find the books, but nemmind.

I really recommend  How to Speak Money by John Lanchester, a terrific exploration of the terms used in money and what they actually mean, which is rarely what they seem to mean.  Very enlightening and interesting reading, and makes a lot of sense of the terminology being batted around all the time.  So tired of hearing politicians who don't know the difference between the debt and the deficit, then voting on their combined ignorance, gah.  If they took a look at page 104 they'd get it.  Or at least if they get an aide to read it to them, oops, cynical comment there.

And he gets into terms I never heard of which are very intriguing, such as Who is Chocfinger? Anyway, it's all written in actual English prose, some of it very funny, and made clearer than I ever knew exactly why we have inequal distribution of our resources and what purpose it serves. It actually serves a purpose in the neoliberal scheme, and here was I thinking it was an unfortunate side effect. 

He also had the interesting, and real, side effect on my monkey brain of bringing to mind, though he never mentions it, a term which has been hovering just out of reach in my mind for months and driving me batty.  That's it: vigorish.  Look it up on Google and marvel. Especially at its origins.

I promptly wrote it down and looked it up and discovered why I couldn't find it on any financial website or article I'd searched just in case I came across it to set my mind at rest and stop searching for it.  It's because it's a term of bookies and, um, loansharks!  Oh dear, bankers and economists and financial writers not going to admit any correlation there...and if you study credit default swaps, see page 101, you'll notice with the same flash of lightning, major lightbulb, that burst on me, that the vig. is a kind of credit default swap conducted by people in baseball caps in dark alleys, rather than bankers in Armani suits...check em both out and see if you think I'm right.  Just sayin'.

If your brain's a bit tired by this point, and longing for pictures, go and see The Bloomsbury Cookbook, Recipes for Life, Love and Art, by Jans Ondaatje Rolls.  Lovely social history of the Bloomsbury set in their period, Virginia Woolf, sister Vanessa Bell, Leonard Woolf, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, economist John Maynard Keynes, all that mob, very interesting stuff.  High powered talent with positions and connections in society which freed them to live as they wanted. Hot and cold running servants in the background, always, but never alluded to! They worked very hard, though, in pursuit of their various arts and each other.

You don't have to like to cook to enjoy this so-called cookbook, because it's also packed with wonderful illustrations of postImpressionist art, a lot of Vanessa Bell's marvelous work (seen also in the movie The Hours, if you noticed the interiors) and many little drawings by Carrington, and other painters.  And the book comes with a built in fancy red bookmark, just like a prayer book, which amused me hugely considering what they were all up to.  One little sidelight which cracked me up: at one point they all went out sledding on teatrays, and, get this, Keynes' briefcase!

So your mind's eye can work quite well, even without an electronic lens.

When in Doubt, Just Do Everything 6WS

For better or worse, this is how I've always been, though I'm being forced to narrow things down a bit as time goes on.  But there are so few things in life that are irrevocable, that it seems a pity to close off opportunities without even trying them.  

This means I've made some big mistakes, but in the end I've still been glad that even if the experience turned out to be negative, at least I knew how it turned out. Better than wondering what if. Some of the threads in the shawl of life are rough and bumpy.

A job I had long ago involved a lot of work with midlife women at crossroads in their personal and work lives, and they would be very surprised at the suggestion that they could just try several paths, instead of having to analyze and plan and get just the exactly right next step.  This is not what the books tell you.  But most of the books are written by academics who have little to no experience outside of academia.

You don't have to have all your ducks in a row!  they can be waddling all over the farmyard and it will still be okay. I often come across adult art students who want to know ahead of time how a process will come out, and they're a bit disappointed when I say, I don't know, just try it and find out!  And if it's different from their expectations, to deal with that and see what's good about it rather than lamenting the imagined work that didn't happen.

Years later people I worked with on job issues would come and tell me they'd actually followed my advice, to my amazement,  especially the bit about how you can't tell if you'll like a particular line of work until you've been in it a while. 

And they'd say, gosh that was great, I found I liked jobs I never thought I would.  Or they'd say well, I'm glad I had a Plan B, because that job I thought I'd love I just didn't.  But I knew it was okay and I could just try something else instead, no harm done.

Since we're the CEOs of our lives, it's a Good Thing TM Martha, now there's a person who's made mistakes and gone on, to have an exit strategy for any new venture, which might include a different adventure to get onto...my dear late Handsome Partner, a lifelong research chemist, used to ask me what I was going to be when I grew up. 

He'd seen me change direction completely in my work every few years, and always ready to change once I needed to move on. He imagined I was always in search of a lifelong job.  I explained that I was already grown up.  That this was how I was.  Life too short to just do one thing. It was fine.  And when he saw how I never lacked employment, which created new opportunities as I went,  in my whole life, he realized that this flexibility was actually a strength, not a lack of resolve!

Life's a banquet!

I Keep On Thinking It's Tuesday 6WS

The title is the punchline of an old joke, the kind which definitely separates the People Who Get My Humor and the People Who Don't.  Not, as Seinfeld would say, that there's anything wrong with that!

But as I stagger and stumble and ponder my way through this life, I keep on coming across people who don't get what I'm talking about, and I'm learning that I don't have to educate them, even if they ask.  I can leave them alone.  They're fine as they are. Saves me a lot of angst and energy.  But it does make the people who do get things without explanation all the more important and treasured.

The joke? This is not a test, if you don't think it's funny, move right along....

So, two hippos in the wallows, enjoying the mud and splodging about, when one suddenly stops splodging, turns to the other  and says, You know, I keep on thinking it's Tuesday.