If you are a child under the age of 12, you usually start counting down the days until Christmas sometime in September. That was the only way I got my young children through the evening before the first day of school. I would sit on the edge of their bed and rub their back and whisper, "You know, if school doesn't start Christmas can't come."
When my children were young, I was just as excited as they were about Christmas. It was a magical time and I lived all the childlike wonder through their eyes. We decorated the house right after Thanksgiving, made a gingerbread house together, baked a different cookie every day, filled coloring books with Christmas stickers and counted the days until Christmas on an Advent Christmas tree decoration. Martha Stewart had nothing on me back then.
Now that my children are grown and living on their own, it is harder to conjure up some Christmas spirit. Each year, the Christmas season gets shorter and less magical, so the response to the approaching holiday is much like Mrs. Duggar's response to the news of child #19 on the way. (see this blog posting for September 5, 2009: There's another Duggar on the way!) "Ho hum,(yawn) another one."
I would be fine with simply baking a batch of cookies while some Christmas music plays in the background. That's enough Christmas spirit for me. Write a few checks for the adult children in the family, make a nice roast beef for dinner, and declare the season officially over as I load the last coffee cup in the dishwasher and wash the wine stains out of the tablecloth.
But my husband has a harder time getting in the spirit. He wants all the magic of a child's Christmas. It starts every year with us "discussing" the futility of sending out Christmas cards. He wants to send them to everyone in our phone book. I argue the price of postage and the fact that the greeting card industry is the only one making out on our idiotic adherence to old customs. We compromise: he send his cards, I don't send any.
Then, every year we have to find a "Bedford Falls" town and do some shopping (even though our grown children only want cash) We have to stop to get hot chocolate somewhere. (I get coffee since my gut has become intolerant to dairy products.) In the evenings before Christmas, when I want to finish an episode of Mad Men on our Netflix DVD, so we can return it and quickly get the next episode, he wants to make a fire in the fireplace and read Christmas stories beside the Christmas tree. This year he picked the longest story in the book, so the Christmas season won't be officially over until we have finished it.
Without the giddy joy that young children bring to Christmas, the holiday season is simply an intrusion to my well ordered life. The decorations take over my small living area, the rich food makes my delicate stomach suffer and all the chaos disrupts my disciplined routines. I stop exercising, I overeat, I stay up too late, and, worst of all, I have to go to parties. I hate parties. And the mother of all parties - New Year's Eve - falls in the Christmas season.
When we were younger, my husband and I would come close to arguing about what to do on New Year's Eve. For years he tried to convince me to go to Times Square on New Year's Eve. I would throw a party at home just to avoid the possibility of being one of those crazy people in the crowd standing in the cold waiting for the ball to drop.
I remember my favorite New Year's Eve... I was sick with bronchitis so we had to stay home. There was no discussing our options for New Year's Eve that year. We made popcorn and watched The Sound of Music in bed. "The hills were alive with the sound of music!" But we had lights out at 10:00 PM.
OK, OK, I'm Scrooge. But enough, already! Christmas is over and that's a good thing. Because if Christmas wasn't over, the summer couldn't come. And when the summer comes my husband can get back out on his sailboat. That's my new mantra, and the one I'll tell him as he sadly takes down the Christmas tree next week.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Silent Hondler
Our 2007 car lease was about to expire on January 4th, so my husband and I decided to start looking at cars this past weekend. We thought about buying the car we had been leasing. It had low mileage and a slight crack in the right front bumper. It was hardly noticeable to me.
The leasing company inspector wrote it up as “excessive damage,” valued at $650, and informed me that we were responsible for the repair or the payment of $650 in full. After reading the report that evening, my husband let out a few descriptive expletives and vowed to fight this.
“Excessive damage my (expletive)! What about our $1,500 maximum allowable damage?! I’m going to fight this!” I like to see my husband get riled up once in a while. He’s normally so cool and composed and I’m the one ranting and raving about things. It’s nice to sit back and let someone else take on those annoying little battles in life.
“If they want me to lease another car, they will have to waive the damage fee," he ranted on. "I’m not paying it. If they don’t waive the fee, we’ll weigh our options. We’ll look around at other cars; we have time. I’m not going to be pressured by some car salesman.”
In the dealership we listened to the salesman read aloud the fine print on the back of our three-year-old lease contract. “It’s written very clearly here…you owe the money for damages.”
I waited patiently for my husband to begin his rebuttal. Instead, he scratched his chin and bobbed his head in agreement. They were like two old school chums, lounging in matching wing chairs, discussing the finer points of a legal document. I stretched my foot across the floor and poked his shoe, trying to stoke the embers and get the fire started, but he just looked at me very calmly and said, “It’s right there in black and white, I guess.”
The salesman had my husband on his team now and was revved up to make a sale. He pulled out a lined notepad and wrote down a number: $499, and underlined it with a hard bold stroke. “That’s your monthly payment to lease this new car,” he said.
We both stared back at him. Then he crossed out $499 and wrote underneath it: $479, glanced up at us, crossed that price out and wrote $459. “Do you have a good credit rating?” he asked. “If you have a good credit rating," he said, crossing out the previous price, "I might be able to talk my manager into going down to: $439, but I can’t go lower than that!”
We just sat there and said nothing.
“OK, look,” he said, taking a deep breath, crossing out the $439, "I can probably get it down to $429.” I looked over at my husband, and waited for him to say something. He locked eyes with the salesman and didn’t blink once. Another cross-out brought the price down to “$419 -it's the lowest I can do... and you can have the car tomorrow!” The poor man was squirming in his seat, clicking his pen top waiting for some words to come out of my husband’s mouth.
“You folks just wait here a moment; I’ll go talk to my manager.”
“What’s going on?” I asked my husband.
“I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe if we sit here long enough he’ll give us the car for nothing.”
The manager came back and took our orders for refreshments and sent the salesman scurrying off to get them. He sat down across from us, leaned in over the desk and sotto voce asked, “How can we get you in this car?”
My husband finally opened his mouth. “I want to put zero down and have a monthly payment of $330, like we had with the old car.”
“No way! That’s impossible! I would be giving the car away.”
“Well, we’re not ready to lease a car today, anyway,” I said. “We want to go down the street and take a look at the Volvos,” I said, glancing at my watch.
When the salesman came back with our refreshments, the manager asked for my husband’s driver’s license and a major credit card. “Let me see what I can do,” he said, and he took off with the salesman. They both returned, beaming. “You both have an excellent credit score,” the manager said. “How about if we go down to $399? Would that be more reasonable?”
We remained silent, sipping our refreshments.
“$379; that’s my final offer. Can’t go lower than that. We’re taking a huge loss on this car.”
“Let’s take a bathroom break,” I suggested, “and then we’ll test drive a smaller model. We might have to downsize if we can’t afford the model we want.”
After the test drive, I wanted to leave. I wasn’t happy with the smaller car; the engine had no pep, it was already dark out and I was getting hungry. We still had three weeks left on the lease and these salesmen were starting to get on my nerves. What is it about car salesmen? No matter how nice they are, you just don’t trust them. They were both starting to look like sinister characters in a Punch & Judy puppet show.
As if he was reading my mind, the salesman said, “Look, I know you don’t like the smaller model and I want you to be happy. Can you just go up a little bit? – say to $370?”
I just wanted to go home and sit in my recliner, so I blurted out: “$350; that’s the highest we’ll go.” My husband shot me a glance with flames coming out of his eyes and I tried to recant the offer, but it was too late. Our salesman was rushing off to the manager’s office again. “Let me see if I can work with that!” he called over his shoulder.
He returned with the manager who asked us if we needed more refreshments. At this point, I needed a hot meal and a shower, and if he had offered us that option, I would have signed on the dotted line just to go home and be done with it. We had already invested 3 hours in that place. As annoying as they were, I was beginning to feel an intimacy growing. They were trying so hard, I was starting to feel sorry for them. My husband and I opted out of more refreshments and took another bathroom break instead. We met at the water fountain to talk conspiratorially.
“How high can we go with this offer?” my husband whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “We’ll offer $360 and not a penny more. Jeez, it’s only $30 a month more than we were already paying. And I love the car.”
“Can we cut out $30 a month somewhere?” my ever frugal husband asked.
“We could cut out the movies… going out to dinner…”
“We don’t do those things, anyway,” he said. “What else could we cut.”
“We could stop getting the New York Times weekend edition.”
“But we just started the subscription; I don’t want to cut that. What else?”
We must have been gone too long because our salesman came looking for us. “If I could get you the car for $360, you can pick it up tomorrow. What do you say?” Did they have hidden microphones in the walls? Did he just overhear our conversation?
“Do you have a black car in stock?” I asked.
“No black. We have a nice grey.” I wrinkled my nose. “Let’s go take a look. I have one in the lot,” he said.
“How am I supposed to see colors in the dark?” I called out to him, as we huddled against the cold wind to hunt for a grey car.
“Let’s just humor him,” my husband whispered. “We’ll tell him we don’t like it and then we can leave. I'm starving.”
When we finally found one I repeated, “I don’t like grey, and I’m not walking outside again in this cold weather. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I want to go home.”
“I have a white car. Do you like white?” he called out as he ran through the dark car lot. “I’ll just run out and get it and pull it up to the showroom while you folks wait, nice and warm, inside.”
“We have to buy this car, please,” I whined. “We’re never going to get out of this place alive if we don’t buy a car tonight. I don’t even care about the $30 extra a month. I’ll take on a new client if I have to. Say something, will you?!”
I turned to look at my husband who had a big smile across his face. “I know where we can cut $30 a month out of our budget,” he said. “We’ll cut out meat and chicken and eat more tofu!”
“Well, what do you think?” the salesman said, walking us around the white car.
“We’ll eat tofu!” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ll take it.”
The leasing company inspector wrote it up as “excessive damage,” valued at $650, and informed me that we were responsible for the repair or the payment of $650 in full. After reading the report that evening, my husband let out a few descriptive expletives and vowed to fight this.
“Excessive damage my (expletive)! What about our $1,500 maximum allowable damage?! I’m going to fight this!” I like to see my husband get riled up once in a while. He’s normally so cool and composed and I’m the one ranting and raving about things. It’s nice to sit back and let someone else take on those annoying little battles in life.
“If they want me to lease another car, they will have to waive the damage fee," he ranted on. "I’m not paying it. If they don’t waive the fee, we’ll weigh our options. We’ll look around at other cars; we have time. I’m not going to be pressured by some car salesman.”
In the dealership we listened to the salesman read aloud the fine print on the back of our three-year-old lease contract. “It’s written very clearly here…you owe the money for damages.”
I waited patiently for my husband to begin his rebuttal. Instead, he scratched his chin and bobbed his head in agreement. They were like two old school chums, lounging in matching wing chairs, discussing the finer points of a legal document. I stretched my foot across the floor and poked his shoe, trying to stoke the embers and get the fire started, but he just looked at me very calmly and said, “It’s right there in black and white, I guess.”
The salesman had my husband on his team now and was revved up to make a sale. He pulled out a lined notepad and wrote down a number: $499, and underlined it with a hard bold stroke. “That’s your monthly payment to lease this new car,” he said.
We both stared back at him. Then he crossed out $499 and wrote underneath it: $479, glanced up at us, crossed that price out and wrote $459. “Do you have a good credit rating?” he asked. “If you have a good credit rating," he said, crossing out the previous price, "I might be able to talk my manager into going down to: $439, but I can’t go lower than that!”
We just sat there and said nothing.
“OK, look,” he said, taking a deep breath, crossing out the $439, "I can probably get it down to $429.” I looked over at my husband, and waited for him to say something. He locked eyes with the salesman and didn’t blink once. Another cross-out brought the price down to “$419 -it's the lowest I can do... and you can have the car tomorrow!” The poor man was squirming in his seat, clicking his pen top waiting for some words to come out of my husband’s mouth.
“You folks just wait here a moment; I’ll go talk to my manager.”
“What’s going on?” I asked my husband.
“I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe if we sit here long enough he’ll give us the car for nothing.”
The manager came back and took our orders for refreshments and sent the salesman scurrying off to get them. He sat down across from us, leaned in over the desk and sotto voce asked, “How can we get you in this car?”
My husband finally opened his mouth. “I want to put zero down and have a monthly payment of $330, like we had with the old car.”
“No way! That’s impossible! I would be giving the car away.”
“Well, we’re not ready to lease a car today, anyway,” I said. “We want to go down the street and take a look at the Volvos,” I said, glancing at my watch.
When the salesman came back with our refreshments, the manager asked for my husband’s driver’s license and a major credit card. “Let me see what I can do,” he said, and he took off with the salesman. They both returned, beaming. “You both have an excellent credit score,” the manager said. “How about if we go down to $399? Would that be more reasonable?”
We remained silent, sipping our refreshments.
“$379; that’s my final offer. Can’t go lower than that. We’re taking a huge loss on this car.”
“Let’s take a bathroom break,” I suggested, “and then we’ll test drive a smaller model. We might have to downsize if we can’t afford the model we want.”
After the test drive, I wanted to leave. I wasn’t happy with the smaller car; the engine had no pep, it was already dark out and I was getting hungry. We still had three weeks left on the lease and these salesmen were starting to get on my nerves. What is it about car salesmen? No matter how nice they are, you just don’t trust them. They were both starting to look like sinister characters in a Punch & Judy puppet show.
As if he was reading my mind, the salesman said, “Look, I know you don’t like the smaller model and I want you to be happy. Can you just go up a little bit? – say to $370?”
I just wanted to go home and sit in my recliner, so I blurted out: “$350; that’s the highest we’ll go.” My husband shot me a glance with flames coming out of his eyes and I tried to recant the offer, but it was too late. Our salesman was rushing off to the manager’s office again. “Let me see if I can work with that!” he called over his shoulder.
He returned with the manager who asked us if we needed more refreshments. At this point, I needed a hot meal and a shower, and if he had offered us that option, I would have signed on the dotted line just to go home and be done with it. We had already invested 3 hours in that place. As annoying as they were, I was beginning to feel an intimacy growing. They were trying so hard, I was starting to feel sorry for them. My husband and I opted out of more refreshments and took another bathroom break instead. We met at the water fountain to talk conspiratorially.
“How high can we go with this offer?” my husband whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “We’ll offer $360 and not a penny more. Jeez, it’s only $30 a month more than we were already paying. And I love the car.”
“Can we cut out $30 a month somewhere?” my ever frugal husband asked.
“We could cut out the movies… going out to dinner…”
“We don’t do those things, anyway,” he said. “What else could we cut.”
“We could stop getting the New York Times weekend edition.”
“But we just started the subscription; I don’t want to cut that. What else?”
We must have been gone too long because our salesman came looking for us. “If I could get you the car for $360, you can pick it up tomorrow. What do you say?” Did they have hidden microphones in the walls? Did he just overhear our conversation?
“Do you have a black car in stock?” I asked.
“No black. We have a nice grey.” I wrinkled my nose. “Let’s go take a look. I have one in the lot,” he said.
“How am I supposed to see colors in the dark?” I called out to him, as we huddled against the cold wind to hunt for a grey car.
“Let’s just humor him,” my husband whispered. “We’ll tell him we don’t like it and then we can leave. I'm starving.”
When we finally found one I repeated, “I don’t like grey, and I’m not walking outside again in this cold weather. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I want to go home.”
“I have a white car. Do you like white?” he called out as he ran through the dark car lot. “I’ll just run out and get it and pull it up to the showroom while you folks wait, nice and warm, inside.”
“We have to buy this car, please,” I whined. “We’re never going to get out of this place alive if we don’t buy a car tonight. I don’t even care about the $30 extra a month. I’ll take on a new client if I have to. Say something, will you?!”
I turned to look at my husband who had a big smile across his face. “I know where we can cut $30 a month out of our budget,” he said. “We’ll cut out meat and chicken and eat more tofu!”
“Well, what do you think?” the salesman said, walking us around the white car.
“We’ll eat tofu!” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ll take it.”
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Dinner - Simple and Quick
Were you ever so tired that you didn't care if you ate dinner? You toss the words around in your head a few times to make up your mind: eat? or sleep? sleep? or eat? I only had about four hours sleep last night, put in a full day at work and came home in the dark. The last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner. But I've been trying to eat healthy lately after I recently failed my blood test - that's my father's joke: "I have to study tonight; I'm having a blood test tomorrow." Har! Har!
My cholesterol levels came back high (what else is new?) and my triglycerides were creeping up too. Maybe it was the tub of chocolate covered almonds I hid from my family back in October? You know the behemoth size container you buy in the Price Club? I ate it all by myself. I started with one, then three, then ten, until I lost patience with that game and just said the hell with it! and grabbed a fistful every time I passed the cabinet where they were hidden. When I put the empty container by the back door for my husband to add to the trash one night, he looked quite surprised.
"I didn't know we had these in the house," he said, turning the empty container upside down.
"We don't," I answered, and walked upstairs to weigh myself.
So now I'm trying to eat healthy and move around a little more. I wouldn't exactly call it exercising because I stop the minute I feel the sweat coming. I hate sweat. But I hate taking medicine even more. I cringe when I hear folks my age at a party excitedly comparing their cholesterol medications and shouting out their HDL vs LDL numbers, like they were competing with each other. I refuse to get sucked into that medicine spiral where you take one medication for something and you get a side effect that drives you to take another medication. Ugh! Pass the chocolate covered almonds and watch a funny movie. That's my kind of medicine.
My cholesterol levels came back high (what else is new?) and my triglycerides were creeping up too. Maybe it was the tub of chocolate covered almonds I hid from my family back in October? You know the behemoth size container you buy in the Price Club? I ate it all by myself. I started with one, then three, then ten, until I lost patience with that game and just said the hell with it! and grabbed a fistful every time I passed the cabinet where they were hidden. When I put the empty container by the back door for my husband to add to the trash one night, he looked quite surprised.
"I didn't know we had these in the house," he said, turning the empty container upside down.
"We don't," I answered, and walked upstairs to weigh myself.
So now I'm trying to eat healthy and move around a little more. I wouldn't exactly call it exercising because I stop the minute I feel the sweat coming. I hate sweat. But I hate taking medicine even more. I cringe when I hear folks my age at a party excitedly comparing their cholesterol medications and shouting out their HDL vs LDL numbers, like they were competing with each other. I refuse to get sucked into that medicine spiral where you take one medication for something and you get a side effect that drives you to take another medication. Ugh! Pass the chocolate covered almonds and watch a funny movie. That's my kind of medicine.
In the past, when I would come home so tired, we would order some take-out food or drive to the local diner. Tonight I remembered some tofu that I had in the refrigerator. I usually buy the stuff with all good intentions and end up tossing it, unopened, a month after the expiration date. But I'm really trying to be good these days, so I pulled out the package with the most recent expiration date (I found 3 packages buried back there!) drained all the liquid and put the square of extra firm tofu between two paper towels to dry it out a little. I cut it into 1/2 inch segments, across the length of the block, dipped the segments in egg, then bread crumbs. (I mixed about one cup of 4-C Ready Flavored Bread Crumbs with 2 teaspoons of powdered cumin, one teaspoon of curry powder and some salt to taste)
Next, I cut up 3 small zucchini squash and 2 yellow squash into 3/4 to 1 inch chunks and tossed them into a large baking pan with a little olive oil, and set them in a 450 degree oven to roast for about 15 minutes, turning them to brown evenly, after about 7 minutes.
Often when I cook a meal, I think about the color presentation at the table and that will serendipitously create a natural, very pleasing flavor combination. Tonight I needed something dark for color contrast, so I pulled out an 8 oz package of fresh small Portabello mushrooms, plucked the stems off and rinsed the caps. They would be fried in some olive oil and butter and sprinkled with salt, pepper, paprika (for color and flavor) and topped with fresh, bright green parsley.
The mushrooms were frying in one pan at the same time that I was frying the breaded tofu rectangles in some fragrant virgin olive oil in another pan. After about 12 minutes in the oven, I added some cut up fresh Campari tomatoes, a sprinkle of sea salt, pepper and dried basil to the roasting squash.
The entire meal, from the moment I decided to eat instead of sleep, took about 30 minutes. You couldn't get a take-out meal delivered that fast. It was colorful, delicious and healthy. I felt satisfied, but not stuffed. There was room for dessert or chocolate covered almonds - if I wanted them. But, I repeat...I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to be good.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
No Backsies
I went to a Christmas fair two years ago and purchased some plates that were on a white elephant/flea market table. They only cost about $5. Here’s how the deal went down. The plates caught my eye first. They were cute. There were five of them and each one had a different woman posing in early 1900’s fashion painted on the front. What caught my eye was the perfect condition of the plates and the fact that there was a signature on each one. My first thought was, “Hmmm; these might be valuable,” as in treasure found on the Antiques Roadshow.
My mother was with me and I showed her the plates. “Oh! Those are so nice,” she said. “If you don’t buy them, I will.” As she uttered the words, they suddenly looked nicer and even more valuable to me. My mother never buys anything with such sudden convic
tion. It usually takes several trips to a department store for her to be sure about something, and, even then, it must be marked down before she will commit to the purchase. I paid the $5 for them. They were mine. Five minutes later I was doubting my purchase. “If you don’t like them,” mom said, “you can give them to me for Christmas. I love them.” Great, I thought, mom is so hard to buy gifts for; problem solved for this year, I’ll give her the plates.When I got home I decided I really didn’t like them at all. I could happily part with them. Mom got the plates all wrapped nicely for Christmas and I didn’t hear a word about them until just the other day when she e-mailed me to ask, “Remember those plates you bought at the Christmas fair a few years back? I’m thinking I’ll put some of my homemade cookies in them and give one
to each of the girls in the family for Christmas this year. What am I going to do with them?"At the thought of her giving them away, I suddenly wanted them back. “Let me take a look at them one more time,” I replied, “I’ll pick out one that I like for myself.”
As I was looking at them one more time I realized that the young people in the family wouldn’t like them anymore than I do. They are too old fashioned looking. I turned the plates over to see the manufacturer’s name, Villeroy & Boch, and I suddenly became very interested in them again. I had recently purchased a set of Villeroy & Boch everyday dishes and I knew how expensive they were.
“I’ll take these off your hands,”
I told mom. “Let me do some research on these. Maybe they are worth something.”“If they are, I want them back,” she said.
“Nope,” I told her. “You wanted to give them away a minute ago. No Backsies!”
“You didn’t even like them a minute ago!” she said.
“Too late; they’re mine now. No Backsies!”
Some preliminary research on the internet made me like them even more. In fact, given their value, I’m going in search of additional pieces at the annual Christmas fair this Saturday.
St. Peter's Episcopal Church Annual Christmas Fair
500 South Country Road
Bay Shore, NY 11706
Bay Shore, NY 11706
Saturday, December 5, 2009
9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Cookies, Wreaths, Books, Poinsettias
Vendors, Toys, Baked Goods, Jams & Jellies
White Elephant Table (where valuable dishes were found!), Christmas Items, Raffles
and for the children
Breakfast with Santa
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Tickets: $5.00Includes a photo with Santa.Santa will be serving juice, bagels, donuts, coffee and tea.Stay for hours of fun at the Christmas Fair! For information and reservations for Breakfast with Santa.
Please call the Church Office at 631-665-0051
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving Without Lasagna
My father and my grandmother had conflicting opinions when giving me advice about choosing a husband. My father wanted me to marry an Italian, my grandmother hoped I would marry an Americano.
“Don’t marry an Italian,” grandma advised me on several occasions. “Italian men think they are big shots! Marry a tall man,” my four foot tall grandmother added, as she stretched her arm up as far as she could, and patted the air above her head. “A tall Americano!”
As I got older, Dad’s advice to marry an Italian became a command. “You have to marry an Italian,” he told me. But after my older brother married a blond blue-eyed girl of German descent, and I became engaged to a tall Americano of Dutch descent, his command became a whimpering plea as he turned his last hope to my younger brother, who was already dating an Irish girl, and asked, “Isn’t anyone going to bring home an Italian?”
Dad’s pleas went unheeded, for none of us married Italians. He was in for another surprise that first Thanksgiving at my brother’s house when his wife did not serve lasagna as the first course.
“Where’s the lasagna,” he whispered to my mother. Her answer was a gentle elbow poke into his ribcage. But my father, who never responded well to subtleties, bellowed across the table to my sister-in-law, “Where’s the lasagna?”
“Lasagna?!” she laughed. “The pilgrims didn’t serve lasagna on Thanksgiving.”
“The pilgrims! Humph! What did they know?” he grumbled. “Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving.”
Not anymore, I thought, as I looked around the table at the three new non-Italian members of the family.
“You know,” my mother added diplomatically, “I think I like this better. When you fill up on lasagna, you have no room for the turkey.”
“Who cares about the turkey? Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving,” dad insisted, as he glanced around the table for affirmation and got none. Instead, my brothers, my mother and I, all lifted our heads at the same moment to answer him with silent daggers from our eyes that warned, Don’t start! Only the new in-laws kept eating, oblivious to dad’s traumatic realization that things were never going to be the same now that the family had been infiltrated by “outsiders.” I felt a smile curling at my lips as I remembered my first Thanksgiving at my new in-laws, just a year earlier, when I had my own silent realization of the differences between “them” and “us.” It began at my entrance into my new in-laws home…
My father-in-law opened the door and backed away from me as I leaned forward to kiss him hello. My husband forgot to tell me that they don’t do the “hello kissing” in his family. We sat down to a beautifully set dining room table covered with a white linen (unstained) tablecloth and several different sized (all matching!) plates at each setting. I remained frozen in place as I waited through a rather long prayer of thanks, peaking up from time to time when I thought it was nearing the end. Finally, I heard the Amen! and sat with my arms at my sides to wait and watch the others to see which was the correct fork to use first. Lesson learned: Work from the outside in, or, the smaller fork is the salad fork and sits next to larger/dinner fork which rests next to the dinner plate.. Then I accidentally started eating out of my husband’s salad bowl, causing him to search around the table for an extra one, which, of course, drew attention to the fact that I was ignorant to the rules of a properly set table. Lesson learned: Your salad bowl sits to the left of the forks..
Holidays at my mother’s house were different, more relaxed – or chaotic, depending on your frame of reference. In fact, you were lucky to get a fork at all sometimes, since some relative would think nothing of dropping by at dinnertime with a few extra uninvited guests of their own. My mother’s attempts to create order around the table by counting heads, napkins and forks never prevailed, and soon people were standing in doorways, or sitting on couches, plates delicately balanced on a tripod of fingertips, while others rested their plates on the piano to sing a few bars of whatever my dad was banging out at the moment. Holiday dinners turned into events that lasted well into the night.
At my in-laws that first Thanksgiving, I had observed a new phenomenon around the holiday table: it was quiet conversation – the kind where only two people speak at a time and the others listen silently. The adults even spoke to the children present at the dining room table and listened with interest to their responses. I had only seen this before on television shows like Father Knows Best.
When I was young, the children were never allowed to sit in the dining room with the adults and were exiled to the kitchen table for holiday dinners. Even when we were old enough to make that rite of passage to the adult table, we were not considered a part of their world and were excluded from their conversation as they broke into Italian – their secret language.
I was seated next to my father-in-law at that first Thanksgiving. He had the turkey carcass in front of him with the rear of the turkey facing me. Right in front of me was the prized piece, the much fought over turkey culo. Everyone was focused on one of the little children at the moment and I saw my golden opportunity. I swiftly sliced into the turkey’s ass and the culo fell right off into my waiting fingertips. As I was blissfully chomping away on the crispy culo, daydreaming about past holidays at my mother’s house and making humorous comparisons between my family and this new family I had entered through marriage, I suddenly heard the silence and sensed all eyes on me. I looked up to find seven faces watching me curiously.
“What?” I asked, my face ablaze, a chunk of culo stuck in my throat. My hand stretched out in search of the correct water glass, deftly maneuvering between the wine glasses, praying I wouldn’t knock one over. At that moment, I wished I was eight years old again in the safety of my mother’s kitchen with my other rowdy cousins.
Dessert was served immediately after the dinner plates were cleared. There was no time between courses for the men to walk around the block with their cigars while the women did the dishes. We each received one neatly cut slice of pumpkin pie – something I had never tasted before - and a cup of tea. When dessert was over, the meal was over. The table was being cleared while I was still chewing my last few bits of pie. “Are you done with this?” my sister-in-law asked as she lifted my mug of unfinished tea off the table. I couldn’t swallow fast enough to answer, “no,” and then she declared, “Well, I guess Thanksgiving is over.”
The night was still young so we dropped by my mother’s house to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. There were nuts, cracked nutshells and tangerine skins scattered across the tablecloth stained with tomato sauce from the lasagna course. Various pastries, haphazardly cut cakes, broken cookies, Anisette, brandy and a pot of black coffee were also spread around the table. These would not be cleared away until the last person was in their car with the engine running. It would be a sign of disrespect to do otherwise. Clearing the table implied that you wanted people to leave.
There were several animated conversations and bawdy laughter going on around the house while my dad banged on the piano to accompany my uncles who were belting out their favorite Italian arias. It was noisy and chaotic, but this was home to me.
As I walked through the living room kissing and hugging everyone, I felt myself relax for the first time all day. Going from my husband’s reserved quiet family to my outgoing emotional one was like crossing over the border into a different country. Now I was back on familiar terrain, and for the first time I understood my father’s wishes for me to marry an Italian.
He had wanted all of this to continue. The common threads of a culture bring familiarity and comfort to people of a common heritage. His wishes that I marry an Italian spoke volumes to me now that I had married into a family so unlike my own.
But in any marriage, there are adjustments on both sides, and over the years I knew we would join and blend our cultures – accepting some traditions and rejecting others. I think this is what my grandmother had hoped when she advised me to marry an Americano. She wanted me to do what she, as an Italian immigrant, was unable to do in her own lifetime – to finally assimilate into this modern new world called America.
Now, at my brother’s house, Dad was working on his own assimilation, even if it meant doing without his beloved lasagna at Thanksgiving. His old ways were suddenly being challenged where it affected him most – at the table. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was asking his new daughters-in-law to make him sauerbraten or corned beef and cabbage. My father would assimilate very easily if you kept him well fed. He loves his food and his family and the warmth around the table. He is, after all, Italian.
Below is my mother’s lasagna recipe which she gave me on a 3x5 index card. It’s the one I use to make lasagna on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Lasagna
2 lb. lasagna
4 large cans tomatoes
2 smaller cans tomatoes (Del Monte)
2 lbs. chop meat
1 packet sausage
2 lbs ricotta + 1 small container ricotta
1 large mozzarella + 1 small
Layer in pan as follows
1 Tomato Sauce
2 Chop Meat
3 Lasagna
4 Ricotta
5 Chop meat
6 Mozzarella
7 Tomato sauce
8 Grated cheese
“Don’t marry an Italian,” grandma advised me on several occasions. “Italian men think they are big shots! Marry a tall man,” my four foot tall grandmother added, as she stretched her arm up as far as she could, and patted the air above her head. “A tall Americano!”
As I got older, Dad’s advice to marry an Italian became a command. “You have to marry an Italian,” he told me. But after my older brother married a blond blue-eyed girl of German descent, and I became engaged to a tall Americano of Dutch descent, his command became a whimpering plea as he turned his last hope to my younger brother, who was already dating an Irish girl, and asked, “Isn’t anyone going to bring home an Italian?”
Dad’s pleas went unheeded, for none of us married Italians. He was in for another surprise that first Thanksgiving at my brother’s house when his wife did not serve lasagna as the first course.
“Where’s the lasagna,” he whispered to my mother. Her answer was a gentle elbow poke into his ribcage. But my father, who never responded well to subtleties, bellowed across the table to my sister-in-law, “Where’s the lasagna?”
“Lasagna?!” she laughed. “The pilgrims didn’t serve lasagna on Thanksgiving.”
“The pilgrims! Humph! What did they know?” he grumbled. “Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving.”
Not anymore, I thought, as I looked around the table at the three new non-Italian members of the family.
“You know,” my mother added diplomatically, “I think I like this better. When you fill up on lasagna, you have no room for the turkey.”
“Who cares about the turkey? Italians have lasagna on Thanksgiving,” dad insisted, as he glanced around the table for affirmation and got none. Instead, my brothers, my mother and I, all lifted our heads at the same moment to answer him with silent daggers from our eyes that warned, Don’t start! Only the new in-laws kept eating, oblivious to dad’s traumatic realization that things were never going to be the same now that the family had been infiltrated by “outsiders.” I felt a smile curling at my lips as I remembered my first Thanksgiving at my new in-laws, just a year earlier, when I had my own silent realization of the differences between “them” and “us.” It began at my entrance into my new in-laws home…
My father-in-law opened the door and backed away from me as I leaned forward to kiss him hello. My husband forgot to tell me that they don’t do the “hello kissing” in his family. We sat down to a beautifully set dining room table covered with a white linen (unstained) tablecloth and several different sized (all matching!) plates at each setting. I remained frozen in place as I waited through a rather long prayer of thanks, peaking up from time to time when I thought it was nearing the end. Finally, I heard the Amen! and sat with my arms at my sides to wait and watch the others to see which was the correct fork to use first. Lesson learned: Work from the outside in, or, the smaller fork is the salad fork and sits next to larger/dinner fork which rests next to the dinner plate.. Then I accidentally started eating out of my husband’s salad bowl, causing him to search around the table for an extra one, which, of course, drew attention to the fact that I was ignorant to the rules of a properly set table. Lesson learned: Your salad bowl sits to the left of the forks..
Holidays at my mother’s house were different, more relaxed – or chaotic, depending on your frame of reference. In fact, you were lucky to get a fork at all sometimes, since some relative would think nothing of dropping by at dinnertime with a few extra uninvited guests of their own. My mother’s attempts to create order around the table by counting heads, napkins and forks never prevailed, and soon people were standing in doorways, or sitting on couches, plates delicately balanced on a tripod of fingertips, while others rested their plates on the piano to sing a few bars of whatever my dad was banging out at the moment. Holiday dinners turned into events that lasted well into the night.
At my in-laws that first Thanksgiving, I had observed a new phenomenon around the holiday table: it was quiet conversation – the kind where only two people speak at a time and the others listen silently. The adults even spoke to the children present at the dining room table and listened with interest to their responses. I had only seen this before on television shows like Father Knows Best.
When I was young, the children were never allowed to sit in the dining room with the adults and were exiled to the kitchen table for holiday dinners. Even when we were old enough to make that rite of passage to the adult table, we were not considered a part of their world and were excluded from their conversation as they broke into Italian – their secret language.
I was seated next to my father-in-law at that first Thanksgiving. He had the turkey carcass in front of him with the rear of the turkey facing me. Right in front of me was the prized piece, the much fought over turkey culo. Everyone was focused on one of the little children at the moment and I saw my golden opportunity. I swiftly sliced into the turkey’s ass and the culo fell right off into my waiting fingertips. As I was blissfully chomping away on the crispy culo, daydreaming about past holidays at my mother’s house and making humorous comparisons between my family and this new family I had entered through marriage, I suddenly heard the silence and sensed all eyes on me. I looked up to find seven faces watching me curiously.
“What?” I asked, my face ablaze, a chunk of culo stuck in my throat. My hand stretched out in search of the correct water glass, deftly maneuvering between the wine glasses, praying I wouldn’t knock one over. At that moment, I wished I was eight years old again in the safety of my mother’s kitchen with my other rowdy cousins.
Dessert was served immediately after the dinner plates were cleared. There was no time between courses for the men to walk around the block with their cigars while the women did the dishes. We each received one neatly cut slice of pumpkin pie – something I had never tasted before - and a cup of tea. When dessert was over, the meal was over. The table was being cleared while I was still chewing my last few bits of pie. “Are you done with this?” my sister-in-law asked as she lifted my mug of unfinished tea off the table. I couldn’t swallow fast enough to answer, “no,” and then she declared, “Well, I guess Thanksgiving is over.”
The night was still young so we dropped by my mother’s house to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. There were nuts, cracked nutshells and tangerine skins scattered across the tablecloth stained with tomato sauce from the lasagna course. Various pastries, haphazardly cut cakes, broken cookies, Anisette, brandy and a pot of black coffee were also spread around the table. These would not be cleared away until the last person was in their car with the engine running. It would be a sign of disrespect to do otherwise. Clearing the table implied that you wanted people to leave.
There were several animated conversations and bawdy laughter going on around the house while my dad banged on the piano to accompany my uncles who were belting out their favorite Italian arias. It was noisy and chaotic, but this was home to me.
As I walked through the living room kissing and hugging everyone, I felt myself relax for the first time all day. Going from my husband’s reserved quiet family to my outgoing emotional one was like crossing over the border into a different country. Now I was back on familiar terrain, and for the first time I understood my father’s wishes for me to marry an Italian.
He had wanted all of this to continue. The common threads of a culture bring familiarity and comfort to people of a common heritage. His wishes that I marry an Italian spoke volumes to me now that I had married into a family so unlike my own.
But in any marriage, there are adjustments on both sides, and over the years I knew we would join and blend our cultures – accepting some traditions and rejecting others. I think this is what my grandmother had hoped when she advised me to marry an Americano. She wanted me to do what she, as an Italian immigrant, was unable to do in her own lifetime – to finally assimilate into this modern new world called America.
Now, at my brother’s house, Dad was working on his own assimilation, even if it meant doing without his beloved lasagna at Thanksgiving. His old ways were suddenly being challenged where it affected him most – at the table. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was asking his new daughters-in-law to make him sauerbraten or corned beef and cabbage. My father would assimilate very easily if you kept him well fed. He loves his food and his family and the warmth around the table. He is, after all, Italian.
Below is my mother’s lasagna recipe which she gave me on a 3x5 index card. It’s the one I use to make lasagna on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Lasagna
2 lb. lasagna
4 large cans tomatoes
2 smaller cans tomatoes (Del Monte)
2 lbs. chop meat
1 packet sausage
2 lbs ricotta + 1 small container ricotta
1 large mozzarella + 1 small
Layer in pan as follows
1 Tomato Sauce
2 Chop Meat
3 Lasagna
4 Ricotta
5 Chop meat
6 Mozzarella
7 Tomato sauce
8 Grated cheese
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Presto! Pesto!
My son called last Saturday night to tell me my pesto sauce had saved his life. I heard the tension in his voice as he explained that he had just missed a multiple car accident that had happened moments before he arrived on the scene. Cars were damaged from bricks and concrete falling off the Wantagh State Parkway overpass onto the Southern State Parkway and he would have been one of the cars involved in that accident, for sure, if he hadn’t lingered those extra ten minutes at my house to have a small plate of pasta with pesto sauce.
Sometimes you wonder about fate and the chain of events that lead from one moment to another. He was in such a rush to leave for a party that night. I'm certain nothing else would have kept him there except that sweet basil and garlic scent, the Sirens' call that no man in my family can resist.
I learned about pesto sauce from my friend's mother back in 1980. She couldn’t believe that I, a true blue 100% Sicilian, had never heard of pesto sauce, so she sent me home that day with the recipe scrawled on a piece of scrap paper and a large bouquet of fresh basil that she had just picked from her garden.
The paper, today, resembles one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See below:
2 cups (packed) fresh sweet basil,( leaves only; no stems) washed and gently patted dry (or put through a salad spinner to dry)
2 Tablespoons pine nuts (pignoli) or walnuts
1 to 2 cloves garlic smashed (or more, to your taste, if the cloves are small)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Place the first 4 ingredients in a blender or food processor (food processor is best). Start the processor and pour the olive oil in through the top while the processor is running. Stop the processor after a few seconds and wipe down the sides of the bowl with a spatula; pulse once or twice more until smooth, but not too runny. You want to see tiny pieces of basil in the bowl.
Add the Parmesan cheese and just pulse once or twice to blend.
Inhale deeply and smell the essence of summer! Place in a covered bowl or covered jar until ready to serve. At this point, you may freeze the pesto to use another day. To defrost, leave out on the counter for several hours to reach room temperature and then follow directions below:
Cook pasta according to package directions. Strain pasta in a colander and return to bowl. Add 3 Tablespoons butter to cooked pasta and toss to blend. (Do not use olive oil in place of butter and do not omit the butter. I’ve tried doing both of these things with poor results. Just use the butter and walk an extra mile tomorrow!) Pour pesto sauce over warm buttered pasta. Top individual bowls with additional cheese, if desired, and a grinding of pepper.
The first time I made it for my parents, I watched my father fall into a hypnotic trance as he ate his entire portion without lifting his head once. When he finally came up for air, his lips were outlined with olive oil and his eye lids were half closed. He had to have more, so I found friends and relatives with an overabundance of fresh basil in their gardens. I experimented and learned that you could freeze the pesto, immediately after making it, so I supplied him with several frozen batches in mini Mason jars to get him through the long cold winter.
When you defrost a jar of frozen pesto on the counter in the middle of February and open the lid, your kitchen fills up with the intense smell of sweet basil carried on a warm light summer breeze. You lose the winter doldrums as the aroma fills your sinus cavities and carries with it the memories of sunny summer days in a lush green garden. You stand at the window and laugh at the snow piling up because you have captured summer in a jar of homemade pesto sauce.
Unfortunately, dad loved his pesto sauce so much that his entire winter supply ran out by November, leaving him inquiring about when I was going to start my garden again. “Not until May?!” he cried in disbelief. His desperate plea sent me in search of a supplier of fresh basil. I found one in Michigan and ordered a pound of fresh basil for $40. I lied to my husband and told him it only cost $12 with shipping included. He thought $12 was too expensive for a bag full of leaves.
Watching my father’s childlike glee on Christmas day as he opened his bag of four small jars of fresh pesto was worth all the money in the world. In fact, I did it again for Father’s Day because my own garden basil wouldn’t be ready until July, and, by now, he was hooked, or as my mother would say, he was addicted. He had to have a small plate of pasta every night with a heaping tablespoon of pesto sauce. Why have a boring potato or dry white rice when he could have pasta with luscious garlicky pesto, he would argue.
I was tickled, at first, that I was the only one in the family who could please my father so. The child had become father to the man, as he was now dependent on me for his greatest pleasure, his pesto. “I’m running low,” he would warn me when his supply was down to one or two jars. I couldn’t keep up with the demand, so I started going to fresh markets. I would try to make a single batch at a time from the scrawny wilted bunch of basil that would occasionally be hiding behind the parsley in my local food store. “This batch wasn’t as good as the one from the last time,” he would inform me, as if I didn't already know. There was no fooling him.
Dad’s dependence on me ended rather abruptly when my brother showed up one day with a large jar of pesto sauce that he had purchased in the Price Club. “You don’t need to make me anymore pesto,” dad informed me shortly after. "I know it's alot of trouble for you, and this one in the jar is just as good as yours."
“This can’t be as good as my homemade pesto!”
“Yeah, it’s pretty close,” he admitted. “Your mother even said so.”
And that was that. All my loving intentions that went into the process of preparing my dad’s favorite food, were replaced by an unfeeling commercial conglomerate. My visits were no longer ones of anticipation and excitement. I could no longer enter my parents home like a rock star calling out, “I’ve got fresh pesto!” because dad’s freezer was already packed with several jars of pesto sauce from the Price Club. My exalted role of chief pesto maker to the patriarch of our family was over. I was demoted back to humble daughter.
1 pound penne or other tubular pasta
1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed, stalks cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces, tips reserved
¼ cup pine nuts, toasted*
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ cup packed chopped fresh basil (I don’t chop it, just press it down into the food processor)
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 ½ teaspoons salt, plus more to taste
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
*toasted pine nuts: In a small skillet over medium heat, toast the pine nuts, stirring often, until fragrant and golden, 2-3 minutes
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, stirring to prevent sticking. Cook until al dente, 8-10 minutes. Reserve 1/3 cup of the pasta cooking water and drain the pasta in a colander. Return pasta to the pot.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan fitted with a steamer basket, bring 1 inch of water to a boil. Place the asparagus stalks in the basket and steam, covered, for 4 minutes. Add the reserved asparagus tips, cover, and steam until just tender, about 1 minute. Transfer the asparagus to ice water to stop the cooking. Drain the asparagus well in a colander and pat dry.
In a food processor, combine the pine nuts, garlic, and basil and process until finely chopped. Add the asparagus stalks, olive oil, and 2 ½ teaspoons salt and pulse until the asparagus is coarsely chopped. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the Parmesan and reserved cooking water. Add the pasta, tossing to coat and season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with the asparagus tips. Serve hot.
************************************************
Note #1: I found this recipe a bit salty, so I no longer salt the cooking water in the first step. You may want to cut out some additional salt to your liking.
Note #2: If you don't have a steamer, just drop them into boiling water for about 45 seconds to 1 minute to parboil and tenderize them.
Sometimes you wonder about fate and the chain of events that lead from one moment to another. He was in such a rush to leave for a party that night. I'm certain nothing else would have kept him there except that sweet basil and garlic scent, the Sirens' call that no man in my family can resist.
I learned about pesto sauce from my friend's mother back in 1980. She couldn’t believe that I, a true blue 100% Sicilian, had never heard of pesto sauce, so she sent me home that day with the recipe scrawled on a piece of scrap paper and a large bouquet of fresh basil that she had just picked from her garden.
The paper, today, resembles one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See below:
Pasta with Pesto Sauce
2 cups (packed) fresh sweet basil,( leaves only; no stems) washed and gently patted dry (or put through a salad spinner to dry)
2 Tablespoons pine nuts (pignoli) or walnuts
1 to 2 cloves garlic smashed (or more, to your taste, if the cloves are small)
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup Parmesan cheese
________________________________________
3 Tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 lb. linguini or other pasta
________________________________________
3 Tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 lb. linguini or other pasta
I went home that afternoon in 1980 and made many batches of pesto sauce from that big bouquet. There were basil leaves soaking in the sink, basil leaves in my salad spinner, the colander, loose leaves had fallen to the floor, stalks were lying on the counter and the kitchen table, every space was covered with bright green basil leaves. I was intoxicated into a heady stupor by the intense scent of garlic, basil and Parmesan cheese spreading throughout the house. I licked a drop of pesto off my fingertip and let out a hoot of joy! What I had discovered there that day was a taste so divine, so unique to my palate. I felt like I had discovered a new world.
Place the first 4 ingredients in a blender or food processor (food processor is best). Start the processor and pour the olive oil in through the top while the processor is running. Stop the processor after a few seconds and wipe down the sides of the bowl with a spatula; pulse once or twice more until smooth, but not too runny. You want to see tiny pieces of basil in the bowl.
Add the Parmesan cheese and just pulse once or twice to blend.
Inhale deeply and smell the essence of summer! Place in a covered bowl or covered jar until ready to serve. At this point, you may freeze the pesto to use another day. To defrost, leave out on the counter for several hours to reach room temperature and then follow directions below:
Cook pasta according to package directions. Strain pasta in a colander and return to bowl. Add 3 Tablespoons butter to cooked pasta and toss to blend. (Do not use olive oil in place of butter and do not omit the butter. I’ve tried doing both of these things with poor results. Just use the butter and walk an extra mile tomorrow!) Pour pesto sauce over warm buttered pasta. Top individual bowls with additional cheese, if desired, and a grinding of pepper.
The first time I made it for my parents, I watched my father fall into a hypnotic trance as he ate his entire portion without lifting his head once. When he finally came up for air, his lips were outlined with olive oil and his eye lids were half closed. He had to have more, so I found friends and relatives with an overabundance of fresh basil in their gardens. I experimented and learned that you could freeze the pesto, immediately after making it, so I supplied him with several frozen batches in mini Mason jars to get him through the long cold winter.
When you defrost a jar of frozen pesto on the counter in the middle of February and open the lid, your kitchen fills up with the intense smell of sweet basil carried on a warm light summer breeze. You lose the winter doldrums as the aroma fills your sinus cavities and carries with it the memories of sunny summer days in a lush green garden. You stand at the window and laugh at the snow piling up because you have captured summer in a jar of homemade pesto sauce.
Unfortunately, dad loved his pesto sauce so much that his entire winter supply ran out by November, leaving him inquiring about when I was going to start my garden again. “Not until May?!” he cried in disbelief. His desperate plea sent me in search of a supplier of fresh basil. I found one in Michigan and ordered a pound of fresh basil for $40. I lied to my husband and told him it only cost $12 with shipping included. He thought $12 was too expensive for a bag full of leaves.
Watching my father’s childlike glee on Christmas day as he opened his bag of four small jars of fresh pesto was worth all the money in the world. In fact, I did it again for Father’s Day because my own garden basil wouldn’t be ready until July, and, by now, he was hooked, or as my mother would say, he was addicted. He had to have a small plate of pasta every night with a heaping tablespoon of pesto sauce. Why have a boring potato or dry white rice when he could have pasta with luscious garlicky pesto, he would argue.
I was tickled, at first, that I was the only one in the family who could please my father so. The child had become father to the man, as he was now dependent on me for his greatest pleasure, his pesto. “I’m running low,” he would warn me when his supply was down to one or two jars. I couldn’t keep up with the demand, so I started going to fresh markets. I would try to make a single batch at a time from the scrawny wilted bunch of basil that would occasionally be hiding behind the parsley in my local food store. “This batch wasn’t as good as the one from the last time,” he would inform me, as if I didn't already know. There was no fooling him.
The basil must be fresh and perky, not brown and mottled. And don't try to store basil in the refrigerator for any length of time. It will turn brown and lose it's flavor in a day or two. You must buy or pick the fresh basil on the day that you plan to make the pesto sauce, so plan accordingly...
Dad’s dependence on me ended rather abruptly when my brother showed up one day with a large jar of pesto sauce that he had purchased in the Price Club. “You don’t need to make me anymore pesto,” dad informed me shortly after. "I know it's alot of trouble for you, and this one in the jar is just as good as yours."
“This can’t be as good as my homemade pesto!”
“Yeah, it’s pretty close,” he admitted. “Your mother even said so.”
And that was that. All my loving intentions that went into the process of preparing my dad’s favorite food, were replaced by an unfeeling commercial conglomerate. My visits were no longer ones of anticipation and excitement. I could no longer enter my parents home like a rock star calling out, “I’ve got fresh pesto!” because dad’s freezer was already packed with several jars of pesto sauce from the Price Club. My exalted role of chief pesto maker to the patriarch of our family was over. I was demoted back to humble daughter.
I refuse to buy processed pesto sauce - on principle alone. If I can’t make it from my own home grown garden basil, I'll do without it. I rather enjoy waiting for seasonal foods. It makes them even more special when you can only have them at certain times of the year. I tried explaining this to dad, but he wasn't buying it, and by this time, my mother was just as relieved to have a supply of pesto in her freezer just so she wouldn't have to listen to him complaining over a baked potato.
If you are lucky to find a small bunch of fresh basil in your local food store you can try the recipe below from The Big Book of Vegetarian by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. It only uses ½ cup fresh basil, as opposed to the original pesto recipe that uses 2 cups. It is light and creamy, and I love the combined flavors of asparagus and basil. Try it; you'll like it!
PENNE with ASPARAGUS PESTO
1 pound penne or other tubular pasta
1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed, stalks cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces, tips reserved
¼ cup pine nuts, toasted*
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ cup packed chopped fresh basil (I don’t chop it, just press it down into the food processor)
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 ½ teaspoons salt, plus more to taste
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
*toasted pine nuts: In a small skillet over medium heat, toast the pine nuts, stirring often, until fragrant and golden, 2-3 minutes
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, stirring to prevent sticking. Cook until al dente, 8-10 minutes. Reserve 1/3 cup of the pasta cooking water and drain the pasta in a colander. Return pasta to the pot.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan fitted with a steamer basket, bring 1 inch of water to a boil. Place the asparagus stalks in the basket and steam, covered, for 4 minutes. Add the reserved asparagus tips, cover, and steam until just tender, about 1 minute. Transfer the asparagus to ice water to stop the cooking. Drain the asparagus well in a colander and pat dry.
In a food processor, combine the pine nuts, garlic, and basil and process until finely chopped. Add the asparagus stalks, olive oil, and 2 ½ teaspoons salt and pulse until the asparagus is coarsely chopped. Transfer to a large bowl and stir in the Parmesan and reserved cooking water. Add the pasta, tossing to coat and season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with the asparagus tips. Serve hot.
************************************************
Note #1: I found this recipe a bit salty, so I no longer salt the cooking water in the first step. You may want to cut out some additional salt to your liking.
Note #2: If you don't have a steamer, just drop them into boiling water for about 45 seconds to 1 minute to parboil and tenderize them.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Cookbooks Be Gone
Several years ago, my mother began giving her cookbooks away. With a wave of her hand, like a magician doing a disappearing act, she passed them off to anyone who would have them and freed herself of the burden of using recipes. “What do I need them for,” she said, “after a while all these recipes taste the same.”
I was the happy recipient of a few of them, though I must admit that I never did more than flip through the pages. They, along with a few of my own, are now in a box labeled, “Free Cookbooks”. I can’t bring myself to drag them out to the curb just yet. Each time I open the box I imagine that I see little pouty faces looking up at me. “But you haven’t even tried us,” they cry, as I slam the lid back down on their muffled sobs.
The truth is that there isn’t much in the kitchen that excites me anymore. I’ve tried it all: the mousses, breads, dressings, pies, cakes, soups. I think I cooked myself through five years of Bon Appetite magazines before I realized that the recipes in their new issues were tasting a lot like something I cooked several years earlier. I bought the binder they were selling to keep all the old issues in, put the magazines in there, and now the collection is so heavy I can’t even lift it up.
There isn’t much incentive to baking a cake “from scratch” when I have to answer questions like: “how much butter (or eggs, or cream) is in this cake?” or “is this fattening?” before I slice the first piece. When I work all day on a beautiful cake and then I’m instructed to cut “just a sliver” because everyone around the table is watching their calories, I resolve myself to serving Entenmann’s next time. At least I won’t have to eat all the leftovers because I feel guilty throwing the cake away.
One of the cookbooks in the box going out to the curb is, A Piece of Cake, the cookbook my husband bought me for Christmas one year. I still don’t know why he bought it since this is a man who prefers box cakes to homemade. You know the kind: Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker. I learned this one year after I worked all day to make him the “Perfect Chocolate Cake” from my McCall’s cookbook. After leaving a good portion on his plate, he leaned back and patted his stomach saying, “I can’t finish this; it’s too rich. I don’t really like homemade cakes; they’re too dense.” He was lucky that it was his birthday, because you can only imagine what I wanted to do to him at that moment.
Thirty or so years ago, when I was young and foolish, I devised a ranking system. “On a scale of one to ten…” it began, and my husband would rate the dish in front of him. I strove to outdo myself in those days, trying to prove myself in the kitchen, trying to earn that 10 rating. I was eager to please and happy to serve up my best recipes for the ranking.
We had fun with this until one evening when I served a fish dish at a dinner party and my brother asked my husband to rank the dish. My sister-in-law giggled nervously as she glanced over to me. I smiled smugly, thinking, this would surely be my shining hour when, among witnesses, I would finally rate a 10. The chant began around the table, “ten, ten, ten,” growing in volume as my husband took a piece of fish and slowly chewed, looked up at the ceiling pensively and finally swallowed. He placed his fork gently down on the table and looked around at the group with all the importance of a master chef as we eagerly awaited his ranking.
“9 ½,” he said. Among the shouts of disbelief around the table he simply said, “I had a better one in Bora-Bora back in 1974.” There was no more ranking that evening or ever again, for that matter. In fact, my husband has gone from ranking my meals to thanking me for any meal that I put in front of him now.
I was the happy recipient of a few of them, though I must admit that I never did more than flip through the pages. They, along with a few of my own, are now in a box labeled, “Free Cookbooks”. I can’t bring myself to drag them out to the curb just yet. Each time I open the box I imagine that I see little pouty faces looking up at me. “But you haven’t even tried us,” they cry, as I slam the lid back down on their muffled sobs.
The truth is that there isn’t much in the kitchen that excites me anymore. I’ve tried it all: the mousses, breads, dressings, pies, cakes, soups. I think I cooked myself through five years of Bon Appetite magazines before I realized that the recipes in their new issues were tasting a lot like something I cooked several years earlier. I bought the binder they were selling to keep all the old issues in, put the magazines in there, and now the collection is so heavy I can’t even lift it up.
There isn’t much incentive to baking a cake “from scratch” when I have to answer questions like: “how much butter (or eggs, or cream) is in this cake?” or “is this fattening?” before I slice the first piece. When I work all day on a beautiful cake and then I’m instructed to cut “just a sliver” because everyone around the table is watching their calories, I resolve myself to serving Entenmann’s next time. At least I won’t have to eat all the leftovers because I feel guilty throwing the cake away.
One of the cookbooks in the box going out to the curb is, A Piece of Cake, the cookbook my husband bought me for Christmas one year. I still don’t know why he bought it since this is a man who prefers box cakes to homemade. You know the kind: Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker. I learned this one year after I worked all day to make him the “Perfect Chocolate Cake” from my McCall’s cookbook. After leaving a good portion on his plate, he leaned back and patted his stomach saying, “I can’t finish this; it’s too rich. I don’t really like homemade cakes; they’re too dense.” He was lucky that it was his birthday, because you can only imagine what I wanted to do to him at that moment.
Thirty or so years ago, when I was young and foolish, I devised a ranking system. “On a scale of one to ten…” it began, and my husband would rate the dish in front of him. I strove to outdo myself in those days, trying to prove myself in the kitchen, trying to earn that 10 rating. I was eager to please and happy to serve up my best recipes for the ranking.
We had fun with this until one evening when I served a fish dish at a dinner party and my brother asked my husband to rank the dish. My sister-in-law giggled nervously as she glanced over to me. I smiled smugly, thinking, this would surely be my shining hour when, among witnesses, I would finally rate a 10. The chant began around the table, “ten, ten, ten,” growing in volume as my husband took a piece of fish and slowly chewed, looked up at the ceiling pensively and finally swallowed. He placed his fork gently down on the table and looked around at the group with all the importance of a master chef as we eagerly awaited his ranking.
“9 ½,” he said. Among the shouts of disbelief around the table he simply said, “I had a better one in Bora-Bora back in 1974.” There was no more ranking that evening or ever again, for that matter. In fact, my husband has gone from ranking my meals to thanking me for any meal that I put in front of him now.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Go, Yankees!
I’m rooting for the Yankees these days. In fact, I’m screaming at the TV like those crazy fans in the seats. Go, Jeter! Yeah! He’s the man! As I swill my cold beer and munch on something crispy – anything will do, as long as it’s salty – my husband crooks his neck to look over at me and ask, “What’s gotten into you?”
I wonder myself, what’s gotten into me? I, who never drinks anything more potent than a cup of de-caffeinated mint tea after dinner, am looking for a cold one as the opening music announces the beginning of game five. I blame the commercials. How can you resist a cold beer after that Budweiser commercial? Everyone on the TV is drinking a frothy beer and laughing. I want to be happy, too!
I want to slap someone’s hand when Damon slides in for a home run, so I lift my hand up into the air and look over to the only other life form in the room. But my husband is fully horizontal on his recliner with his hands locked behind his head. No excitement there.
I never was a sports fan. I find football boring, but at least they have a half time show. What does baseball have? A seven inning stretch? Woo-hoo! Talk about excitement!
These days are different. Now, I go through my day thinking, Oh! There’s a game tonight! I think about my men. Jorge, keep your comments to yourself tonight; don’t anger the ump! I’m secretly glad they lost last night so I’ll have another game to watch on Wednesday. I’m waiting for Andy Pettitte to pitch again. I like to watch his solemn face concentrating before he winds up for the pitch. And he has a strong resemblance to my oldest son. I talk to him through the TV: Come on, Andy, concentrate, relax. And what about that Johnny Damon! Checking his stats this morning, I was amazed to find that he is young enough to be my son.
Maybe that’s why I like watching these guys. They are so young and full of health and life and stamina, vigor and energy, something I lack these days. But for a few hours, I can feel that spark of youth, swill my beer and feel like I’m out there running the bases too. I get the same rush when I watch the Olympics. I want to start an exercise program, go on a diet, improve my health. (So why am I drinking beer and eating salty veggie sticks?)
Now I can understand why people have those Super Bowl parties. Enthusiasm is contagious and it’s such a great physical release to shout and jump like children do every day when they play. We go through our serious work days trying to contain enthusiasm and remain calm at all times. It’s just plain fun to jump up and down and shout with abandon, to do a little jig when the shouting isn’t enough to express your excitement, and to be among people who are acting as ridiculous as you are. It’s a time when we can wear team shirts and silly hats, wave neon noodles, white rags or anything else to show our team spirit. It’s a time when we can be children again.
I’m looking forward to game six, a cold brewski, some salty popcorn and a close loss – so we can have one more game to watch.
I wonder myself, what’s gotten into me? I, who never drinks anything more potent than a cup of de-caffeinated mint tea after dinner, am looking for a cold one as the opening music announces the beginning of game five. I blame the commercials. How can you resist a cold beer after that Budweiser commercial? Everyone on the TV is drinking a frothy beer and laughing. I want to be happy, too!
I want to slap someone’s hand when Damon slides in for a home run, so I lift my hand up into the air and look over to the only other life form in the room. But my husband is fully horizontal on his recliner with his hands locked behind his head. No excitement there.
I never was a sports fan. I find football boring, but at least they have a half time show. What does baseball have? A seven inning stretch? Woo-hoo! Talk about excitement!
These days are different. Now, I go through my day thinking, Oh! There’s a game tonight! I think about my men. Jorge, keep your comments to yourself tonight; don’t anger the ump! I’m secretly glad they lost last night so I’ll have another game to watch on Wednesday. I’m waiting for Andy Pettitte to pitch again. I like to watch his solemn face concentrating before he winds up for the pitch. And he has a strong resemblance to my oldest son. I talk to him through the TV: Come on, Andy, concentrate, relax. And what about that Johnny Damon! Checking his stats this morning, I was amazed to find that he is young enough to be my son.
Maybe that’s why I like watching these guys. They are so young and full of health and life and stamina, vigor and energy, something I lack these days. But for a few hours, I can feel that spark of youth, swill my beer and feel like I’m out there running the bases too. I get the same rush when I watch the Olympics. I want to start an exercise program, go on a diet, improve my health. (So why am I drinking beer and eating salty veggie sticks?)
Now I can understand why people have those Super Bowl parties. Enthusiasm is contagious and it’s such a great physical release to shout and jump like children do every day when they play. We go through our serious work days trying to contain enthusiasm and remain calm at all times. It’s just plain fun to jump up and down and shout with abandon, to do a little jig when the shouting isn’t enough to express your excitement, and to be among people who are acting as ridiculous as you are. It’s a time when we can wear team shirts and silly hats, wave neon noodles, white rags or anything else to show our team spirit. It’s a time when we can be children again.
I’m looking forward to game six, a cold brewski, some salty popcorn and a close loss – so we can have one more game to watch.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Gifting It Forward
“Do you know anyone who needs a coat?” my mother asked as she lifted the plastic bag to reveal her 20 year old green car coat.
“Why don’t you just put it in the Good Will clothing drop?” I asked, but I knew that would never happen. That would be the equivalent of telling her to throw the coat away. My mother doesn’t throw her things away, she bequeaths them to others.
“Ask Liz if she wants it. I’ll be on death’s door before I can fit into this coat again,” she said. “I love this coat and I want someone I know to have it.” I took the coat and she handed me another bag with two sweaters in it. “Give her these, too. What a shame, such beautiful sweaters, but they don’t fit anymore.”
It wouldn’t be so bad if my mother just gave her things away and forgot about them, but she can’t let go of the bond she forms with her things. Her attachment is very personal. She wants to know how her relinquished items are doing, long after she gives them away.
When my dad purchased a new player piano he gave me their 20 year old piano that he had promised me several years earlier. Then we acquired the 25 year old couch when they bought a new one, and later we got their 30 year old dining room set. We kept the couch for about five years then decided to put it out for trash. We had to make room for the love seat that – you guessed it – my mother was getting rid of and offering to us.
“You can’t put that couch on the curb!” my mother exclaimed, “That’s a perfectly good couch. Ask around; I’m sure you can find someone who needs a good couch.” When we finally found a relative who needed a couch, my mother was thrilled. A few weeks later, at mom's Sunday dinner table, my brother told the funny story about the couch cushion that flew off while his brother-in-law was transporting it at 60 mph on the Long Island Expressway. As we were all laughing it up, I turned and saw the sad tragic look on my mother’s face. “It’s no use,” she said, “when it comes too easy, you don’t appreciate it.”
Ten years later, when I purchased a new dining room set, I gave the old table back to her because I couldn’t find anyone to pass it on to. The table is still in her basement. It is scratched and warped, but mom hasn’t given up on gifting it forward. “Someone your father knows came to look at the table and they said they wanted it,” she told me recently, “but they never came back to pick it up. What a shame; such a nice table. You can put it on the curb some day when we're gone and you sell the house."
Being a member of the Greatest Generation and a survivor of the Great Depression, I can understand my mother’s frugality and prudence. Money didn’t come easy when she was growing up, starting a family, raising children. She reminds me that things like credit cards, medical insurance and equity loans did not exist when she and my father were raising a family. If they wanted something it took years to save up the cash for it.
So if my mother gives you something, even if the thing is twenty years old when you get it, she is also transferring to you all the accumulated memories of what she gave up to save for this thing: all the years of denying herself that new coat, the vacation not taken, the home made dinners of macaroni and beans, the mended clothing, the resoled shoes. When you take a piece of furniture or used clothing from my mother, you had better be prepared to remain devoted to it forever or find a new owner for it when you are done with it, but never ever tell her that you just got sick of it and left it out at the curb on trash day.
She has the same devotion with the gifts she gives. If she spends her good money on something she expects it to last forever, and, likewise, you should keep it forever.
One day, she dropped in unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon, while my husband was painting the living room ceiling. I followed her eyes as they dropped down to the living room floor where the white bedspread she had given us twelve years earlier for my wedding shower gift was being used as a drop cloth. She became absolutely still and was stunned into silence for a few moments.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
A cool, “Nothing.”
Twenty years later, while working on a quilt for my son, my mother and I were having tea and discussing some concerns I had. “What if his new wife doesn’t like the colors or the design of the quilt and it sits on the shelf in the closet? What if she doesn’t appreciate the years of hard work it took me to finish this masterpiece by hand?”
“Nonsense,” she assured me, “she will love it!”
“What if the cats rip it to shreds with their claws?” I continued. “What if he has breakfast in bed and gets coffee stains on it? What if…”
“…he uses it for a drop cloth?” she finished my sentence and silently sipped her tea.
Did I tell you my mother is also very tactful and will wait a lifetime to drop a bomb like that to drive her point home. Needless to say, I’m still traumatized to think that, as many a philosopher has said: to think a thought is to put it into motion. What if…a drop cloth?! It has been six years so far and I still can’t bring myself to finish the quilt and hand it over to him. So now I’m worse than my mother. At least she gives her things away.
“Why don’t you just put it in the Good Will clothing drop?” I asked, but I knew that would never happen. That would be the equivalent of telling her to throw the coat away. My mother doesn’t throw her things away, she bequeaths them to others.
“Ask Liz if she wants it. I’ll be on death’s door before I can fit into this coat again,” she said. “I love this coat and I want someone I know to have it.” I took the coat and she handed me another bag with two sweaters in it. “Give her these, too. What a shame, such beautiful sweaters, but they don’t fit anymore.”
It wouldn’t be so bad if my mother just gave her things away and forgot about them, but she can’t let go of the bond she forms with her things. Her attachment is very personal. She wants to know how her relinquished items are doing, long after she gives them away.
When my dad purchased a new player piano he gave me their 20 year old piano that he had promised me several years earlier. Then we acquired the 25 year old couch when they bought a new one, and later we got their 30 year old dining room set. We kept the couch for about five years then decided to put it out for trash. We had to make room for the love seat that – you guessed it – my mother was getting rid of and offering to us.
“You can’t put that couch on the curb!” my mother exclaimed, “That’s a perfectly good couch. Ask around; I’m sure you can find someone who needs a good couch.” When we finally found a relative who needed a couch, my mother was thrilled. A few weeks later, at mom's Sunday dinner table, my brother told the funny story about the couch cushion that flew off while his brother-in-law was transporting it at 60 mph on the Long Island Expressway. As we were all laughing it up, I turned and saw the sad tragic look on my mother’s face. “It’s no use,” she said, “when it comes too easy, you don’t appreciate it.”
Ten years later, when I purchased a new dining room set, I gave the old table back to her because I couldn’t find anyone to pass it on to. The table is still in her basement. It is scratched and warped, but mom hasn’t given up on gifting it forward. “Someone your father knows came to look at the table and they said they wanted it,” she told me recently, “but they never came back to pick it up. What a shame; such a nice table. You can put it on the curb some day when we're gone and you sell the house."
Being a member of the Greatest Generation and a survivor of the Great Depression, I can understand my mother’s frugality and prudence. Money didn’t come easy when she was growing up, starting a family, raising children. She reminds me that things like credit cards, medical insurance and equity loans did not exist when she and my father were raising a family. If they wanted something it took years to save up the cash for it.
So if my mother gives you something, even if the thing is twenty years old when you get it, she is also transferring to you all the accumulated memories of what she gave up to save for this thing: all the years of denying herself that new coat, the vacation not taken, the home made dinners of macaroni and beans, the mended clothing, the resoled shoes. When you take a piece of furniture or used clothing from my mother, you had better be prepared to remain devoted to it forever or find a new owner for it when you are done with it, but never ever tell her that you just got sick of it and left it out at the curb on trash day.
She has the same devotion with the gifts she gives. If she spends her good money on something she expects it to last forever, and, likewise, you should keep it forever.
One day, she dropped in unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon, while my husband was painting the living room ceiling. I followed her eyes as they dropped down to the living room floor where the white bedspread she had given us twelve years earlier for my wedding shower gift was being used as a drop cloth. She became absolutely still and was stunned into silence for a few moments.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
A cool, “Nothing.”
Twenty years later, while working on a quilt for my son, my mother and I were having tea and discussing some concerns I had. “What if his new wife doesn’t like the colors or the design of the quilt and it sits on the shelf in the closet? What if she doesn’t appreciate the years of hard work it took me to finish this masterpiece by hand?”
“Nonsense,” she assured me, “she will love it!”
“What if the cats rip it to shreds with their claws?” I continued. “What if he has breakfast in bed and gets coffee stains on it? What if…”
“…he uses it for a drop cloth?” she finished my sentence and silently sipped her tea.
Did I tell you my mother is also very tactful and will wait a lifetime to drop a bomb like that to drive her point home. Needless to say, I’m still traumatized to think that, as many a philosopher has said: to think a thought is to put it into motion. What if…a drop cloth?! It has been six years so far and I still can’t bring myself to finish the quilt and hand it over to him. So now I’m worse than my mother. At least she gives her things away.
Friday, October 23, 2009
How I Lost My Underwear
Did I ever tell you about the time my underwear fell off while I was walking home from school? I remember it so well every year at this time, like an anniversary that resurrects all the vividness of the day: a slight chill in the air, the falling leaves, my pounding heart and panic at the thought of my underwear falling off in public.
I was only in the eighth grade in 1965-66 and we were required to wear skirts or dresses to school. Pants would not be allowed in our public school until my senior year in 1969-1970. If I was wearing pants that day, my underwear wouldn’t have fallen down and there wouldn’t be a story to tell.
I didn’t know I had a problem until I started walking home that October afternoon. About five minutes into the walk, I felt a very subtle, but definite ping at my waist. Had the elastic on my underwear just snapped? I wasn’t quite sure, but they definitely felt looser. Within seconds I knew, with every step I took, the underwear were falling ever so slightly to the rhythm of my walk. I slowed my steps and pressed my books to my stomach to hold them up in place around my bellybutton, but I had a real problem because I had no way to hold up the back piece of flapping cotton which was sliding down my rear. I couldn’t get a good grip through my jacket and I could feel them inching further and further down my hips.
I was walking on the main street leading out from school. It was a busy road with buses and cars packed with seniors leaving for the day. All I wanted today was to find a tree that I could duck behind to shimmy my panties up. Some boys were walking a few feet behind me; I could hear their conversation getting louder as they approached. The undies were falling steadily with every step I took and were already about halfway down my ass. I had to do something to stop their downward slide so I spread my legs wide and did a sort of hoola-hoop shimmy followed by a duck-waddle step. The guys behind me burst out laughing like two hyenas and continued to turn their heads to watch my hoola-hoop-waddle as they passed me by.
My face was burning hot; I could feel my heart pounding under my coat. I stood still in place for a moment, legs spread wide to hold up the drooping drawers, until the two guys were out of sight. I stood firmly in that stance and twisted my torso around to scan in front and behind me. I was in luck, at last, with no traffic and no other walkers in sight, I had a window of opportunity that would only last a few seconds. I reached inside my coat and grabbed the outside of my skirt at the top of my thigh where the underwear had been stopped by my quick thinking spread eagle stance. I felt the tip of the underwear and yanked it high. The other side of the undies fell loose and dangled free down my other thigh. My skirt hem was uneven, at this point, with one side hanging down to my knees and the other side halfway up my thigh, but I didn’t care; I wasn’t letting go of that elastic.
Thinking back today, I don’t know why I didn’t just let the darn things fall right there on the sidewalk and continue walking without looking back. I guess panic got the better of my common sense because all I could think about was the gas station on the corner. If I could just make it to the gas station and get into the ladies’ room, perhaps I could tie the underwear up in a knot somehow, just to get me home. Then I would ask my mother to sew them up and put on a new piece of elastic. What logic is this? I can’t even answer that today, but at thirteen years old, the thought of walking home with no underwear on was horrifying.
I was taking my time, taking no chances, walking in tiny baby steps like a Chinese woman with bound feet. I couldn’t risk walking faster and losing my tenuous grip on the minuscule piece of elastic that was already stretching and slipping out of my sweaty fingers. By the grace of God I made it to the gas station, grabbed the ladies’ room key off the wall, and waddled into the grungy bathroom.
Without thinking, I pushed the door shut with both hands, and felt something whoosh down my legs. I looked down to see my underwear nestled between my shoes. I couldn’t move for a few minutes. I just stared down at that formless cotton heap on the dirty bathroom floor and started crying and laughing at the same time. I picked them up with two fingers and threw them in the garbage pail. And that was that. I continued my walk home from school with my jacket open and the cool breeze blowing up my skirt.
I never told my mother what happened until many, many years later. Why? Who knows. It was such a frightening experience, it took me years to find the humor in the whole incident. And then it just popped up in a conversation one day about the high price of underwear. I briefly commented that, “I had better buy some new underwear before they fall off – again.” Now, I recount the story fondly just to think that, at one point in my life, I was slim enough that my underwear could actually fall down with no encumbrance.
I was only in the eighth grade in 1965-66 and we were required to wear skirts or dresses to school. Pants would not be allowed in our public school until my senior year in 1969-1970. If I was wearing pants that day, my underwear wouldn’t have fallen down and there wouldn’t be a story to tell.
I didn’t know I had a problem until I started walking home that October afternoon. About five minutes into the walk, I felt a very subtle, but definite ping at my waist. Had the elastic on my underwear just snapped? I wasn’t quite sure, but they definitely felt looser. Within seconds I knew, with every step I took, the underwear were falling ever so slightly to the rhythm of my walk. I slowed my steps and pressed my books to my stomach to hold them up in place around my bellybutton, but I had a real problem because I had no way to hold up the back piece of flapping cotton which was sliding down my rear. I couldn’t get a good grip through my jacket and I could feel them inching further and further down my hips.
I was walking on the main street leading out from school. It was a busy road with buses and cars packed with seniors leaving for the day. All I wanted today was to find a tree that I could duck behind to shimmy my panties up. Some boys were walking a few feet behind me; I could hear their conversation getting louder as they approached. The undies were falling steadily with every step I took and were already about halfway down my ass. I had to do something to stop their downward slide so I spread my legs wide and did a sort of hoola-hoop shimmy followed by a duck-waddle step. The guys behind me burst out laughing like two hyenas and continued to turn their heads to watch my hoola-hoop-waddle as they passed me by.
My face was burning hot; I could feel my heart pounding under my coat. I stood still in place for a moment, legs spread wide to hold up the drooping drawers, until the two guys were out of sight. I stood firmly in that stance and twisted my torso around to scan in front and behind me. I was in luck, at last, with no traffic and no other walkers in sight, I had a window of opportunity that would only last a few seconds. I reached inside my coat and grabbed the outside of my skirt at the top of my thigh where the underwear had been stopped by my quick thinking spread eagle stance. I felt the tip of the underwear and yanked it high. The other side of the undies fell loose and dangled free down my other thigh. My skirt hem was uneven, at this point, with one side hanging down to my knees and the other side halfway up my thigh, but I didn’t care; I wasn’t letting go of that elastic.
Thinking back today, I don’t know why I didn’t just let the darn things fall right there on the sidewalk and continue walking without looking back. I guess panic got the better of my common sense because all I could think about was the gas station on the corner. If I could just make it to the gas station and get into the ladies’ room, perhaps I could tie the underwear up in a knot somehow, just to get me home. Then I would ask my mother to sew them up and put on a new piece of elastic. What logic is this? I can’t even answer that today, but at thirteen years old, the thought of walking home with no underwear on was horrifying.
I was taking my time, taking no chances, walking in tiny baby steps like a Chinese woman with bound feet. I couldn’t risk walking faster and losing my tenuous grip on the minuscule piece of elastic that was already stretching and slipping out of my sweaty fingers. By the grace of God I made it to the gas station, grabbed the ladies’ room key off the wall, and waddled into the grungy bathroom.
Without thinking, I pushed the door shut with both hands, and felt something whoosh down my legs. I looked down to see my underwear nestled between my shoes. I couldn’t move for a few minutes. I just stared down at that formless cotton heap on the dirty bathroom floor and started crying and laughing at the same time. I picked them up with two fingers and threw them in the garbage pail. And that was that. I continued my walk home from school with my jacket open and the cool breeze blowing up my skirt.
I never told my mother what happened until many, many years later. Why? Who knows. It was such a frightening experience, it took me years to find the humor in the whole incident. And then it just popped up in a conversation one day about the high price of underwear. I briefly commented that, “I had better buy some new underwear before they fall off – again.” Now, I recount the story fondly just to think that, at one point in my life, I was slim enough that my underwear could actually fall down with no encumbrance.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Quiet, Please!
I remember a time when you had to whisper in a doctor’s office, when the loudest sound you heard in the waiting room was the sound of a page turning in a magazine. Even the nurse wore rubber soles.
Go to any doctor’s office today and you will hear a cacophony of noise blasting out from radios and televisions. There is no peace anywhere anymore. We are tuned in, plugged in, tied in, turned on, hooked up, physically and mentally connected to audio and visual stimuli every moment of the day and night.
Remember muzak? That dull lull was boring, but I’ll take that any day over TV ads in the waiting room like the one about penile erectile dysfunction. I would rather hear a numbing rendition of Moon River than the violent poetics of rap music or songs with lyrics like: “I kissed a girl and I think I liked it.”
I can remember, as a child, waiting in the doctor’s office one day with my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother entered the office with white knuckles clutching her little black handbag and soon found comfort from another nervous old woman waiting to see the doctor. As the two spoke in their native Italian, I could see the tension leave their faces. By the time she was called in to see the doctor, my grandmother was smiling and telling my mother about Anna's late husband who came from my grandmother's village in Catania. "Humph," she added, "I have more grandchildren than she does."
The TV in the waiting room today has set up barriers to intimacy and friendly exchange between patients. Look around at the faces in any waiting room. No one smiles or nods when you enter the room. No one makes eye contact. No one speaks. It’s a drug, I tell you, all this noise and mindless visual stimuli, and I’m afraid that most people are already addicted. I have often reached up the wall to turn off the TV switch or lower the radio volume in a waiting room only to be met with icy stares from the waiting zombies.
Sometimes, when we are driving in the car, I like to be quiet: no radio, just the sound of the rubber meeting the road and the wind blowing through the windows. My son can’t sit in the car in silence longer than 10 minutes without asking, “Doesn’t the radio work in this car? Put something on, will you?”
My dentist recently updated his office. Each dental seat now has a flat screen TV inches away from your face. I ask to have it turned off when the dentist is working on me, because I’ve caught him pausing and glancing at the screen while he is supposed to be working on my mouth. The hygienist was disappointed one day as I asked her to turn off the TV when her soap opera was on. “Are you sure?” she asked me several times before she finally got the answer she wanted. After all, I want to keep the hygienist happy while she's holding that plaque removing hook in her hands.
Go to any doctor’s office today and you will hear a cacophony of noise blasting out from radios and televisions. There is no peace anywhere anymore. We are tuned in, plugged in, tied in, turned on, hooked up, physically and mentally connected to audio and visual stimuli every moment of the day and night.
Remember muzak? That dull lull was boring, but I’ll take that any day over TV ads in the waiting room like the one about penile erectile dysfunction. I would rather hear a numbing rendition of Moon River than the violent poetics of rap music or songs with lyrics like: “I kissed a girl and I think I liked it.”
I can remember, as a child, waiting in the doctor’s office one day with my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother entered the office with white knuckles clutching her little black handbag and soon found comfort from another nervous old woman waiting to see the doctor. As the two spoke in their native Italian, I could see the tension leave their faces. By the time she was called in to see the doctor, my grandmother was smiling and telling my mother about Anna's late husband who came from my grandmother's village in Catania. "Humph," she added, "I have more grandchildren than she does."
The TV in the waiting room today has set up barriers to intimacy and friendly exchange between patients. Look around at the faces in any waiting room. No one smiles or nods when you enter the room. No one makes eye contact. No one speaks. It’s a drug, I tell you, all this noise and mindless visual stimuli, and I’m afraid that most people are already addicted. I have often reached up the wall to turn off the TV switch or lower the radio volume in a waiting room only to be met with icy stares from the waiting zombies.
Sometimes, when we are driving in the car, I like to be quiet: no radio, just the sound of the rubber meeting the road and the wind blowing through the windows. My son can’t sit in the car in silence longer than 10 minutes without asking, “Doesn’t the radio work in this car? Put something on, will you?”
My dentist recently updated his office. Each dental seat now has a flat screen TV inches away from your face. I ask to have it turned off when the dentist is working on me, because I’ve caught him pausing and glancing at the screen while he is supposed to be working on my mouth. The hygienist was disappointed one day as I asked her to turn off the TV when her soap opera was on. “Are you sure?” she asked me several times before she finally got the answer she wanted. After all, I want to keep the hygienist happy while she's holding that plaque removing hook in her hands.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Leave Me Unconnected
Is it a sign of aging that I just don’t want to be so connected to everyone? I don’t want a page on Facebook. I don’t want to Twitter my every thought. I don’t want to walk around with that clunky earpiece so I can take phone calls every waking hour. I’m just not that important, and come to think of it, neither is anyone else I know.
Walk around any major city today and all you will see is the top of people’s heads because almost everyone is walking with their heads down interacting with some tech device. What could be so important? Am I really missing something here?
I’ve tried Twitter. I think I made two entries before I realized I had nothing to say to that nagging question, “What are you doing now?” I felt pressured to lie and make something up. Who cares if I’m working at my desk or doing laundry or reading a good book? Unless you are making first hand discoveries on a new planet, who really cares about your mundane day to day moments? Some days, I bore myself. Why share it with others?
I tried Facebook last week. I signed up at 3:00 PM and went out to my niece’s birthday party at 4:00 PM. Within that hour, everyone at the party who was “connected” knew I had signed up and welcomed me as their friend in Facebook. When I returned home at 8:00 PM, I had about thirty messages from other people asking if they could be my friend. Only one or two of those people were already my friends, and the others, well, I wish they had never found me.
I started reading the inane comments on my Facebook wall and responded with an assortment of verbal replies that I will sum up nicely here in two words: Who cares?! I saw my future and it wasn’t pretty. Was I going to come home from work and waste hours responding to my Facebook friends instead of donning my apron and cooking the evening meal, something I really enjoy?
Cooking is a sensual experience for me. I relish the colors and textures and scents of the foods. I unwind and clear my head of the day’s tensions as I chop vegetables and meditate. I sing and whistle to my parakeet as he jumps around his cage, pokes his bell and answers me with real tweets.
And when my husband walks through the door, the smell of a home cooked meal makes him smile – a real smile – not a colon followed by a parentheses. We sit down to dinner and have a real conversation – not a 140 word limited electronic quip. I let him concentrate on his work during the day, but when he’s home, he had better twitter my fancy and concentrate on me.
Call me old fashioned, but some technologies are not worth keeping up with. My real friends know who they are. And all those other “friends” will remain unconnected. And that’s just the way I like it.
Walk around any major city today and all you will see is the top of people’s heads because almost everyone is walking with their heads down interacting with some tech device. What could be so important? Am I really missing something here?
I’ve tried Twitter. I think I made two entries before I realized I had nothing to say to that nagging question, “What are you doing now?” I felt pressured to lie and make something up. Who cares if I’m working at my desk or doing laundry or reading a good book? Unless you are making first hand discoveries on a new planet, who really cares about your mundane day to day moments? Some days, I bore myself. Why share it with others?
I tried Facebook last week. I signed up at 3:00 PM and went out to my niece’s birthday party at 4:00 PM. Within that hour, everyone at the party who was “connected” knew I had signed up and welcomed me as their friend in Facebook. When I returned home at 8:00 PM, I had about thirty messages from other people asking if they could be my friend. Only one or two of those people were already my friends, and the others, well, I wish they had never found me.
I started reading the inane comments on my Facebook wall and responded with an assortment of verbal replies that I will sum up nicely here in two words: Who cares?! I saw my future and it wasn’t pretty. Was I going to come home from work and waste hours responding to my Facebook friends instead of donning my apron and cooking the evening meal, something I really enjoy?
Cooking is a sensual experience for me. I relish the colors and textures and scents of the foods. I unwind and clear my head of the day’s tensions as I chop vegetables and meditate. I sing and whistle to my parakeet as he jumps around his cage, pokes his bell and answers me with real tweets.
And when my husband walks through the door, the smell of a home cooked meal makes him smile – a real smile – not a colon followed by a parentheses. We sit down to dinner and have a real conversation – not a 140 word limited electronic quip. I let him concentrate on his work during the day, but when he’s home, he had better twitter my fancy and concentrate on me.
Call me old fashioned, but some technologies are not worth keeping up with. My real friends know who they are. And all those other “friends” will remain unconnected. And that’s just the way I like it.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Anonymous Women
I have a journal that I write in that has quotes by famous women on each page. Here is a quote by the English writer, Doris Lessing:
"...And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible."
This one struck me as especially poignant, as I have experienced this phenomenon in my own personal life.
It happened slowly, over time. A decision to let my hair go grey, allowing a few extra pounds to creep up and remain where they settled, a slight shrinking of the spine, and suddenly one day I woke up and I just didn't feel like myself. I thought I looked alright, for my age, until I saw an old photo of myself and wondered, "What happened to me?"
This morning I scared myself when I lifted my face up from the sink and said to the reflection looking back at me, "Who the hell are you?!" I try not to look too closely in the morning until I get the makeup on, then I try to smile at the face looking back at me because I know attitude counts for more than looks. And if I've learned anything from my transitions through the ages it is that, to be truly happy, you've got to get over yourself. You must one day acknowledge that you are not the center of the universe.
In a way, this aging process is a wonderful phenomenon because, as the quote says, "you become anonymous. No one notices you." There is true freedom in that, especially for women. As I observed riding home on the LIRR last night, whenever a pretty young woman walked down the aisle to exit the train, men would lift their heads and stare at her. While waiting for the doors to open, the woman would cast her eyes down, shift her weight, move her purse from one arm to another - all visible signs of her discomfort and awareness of the eyes on her.
I was that woman in my younger days. The cat calls from men driving by in trucks, whistles from men on the street, jeers in Spanish, were not pleasant compliments; they were demeaning and frightening. When I was young, this kind of attention from men would make me so uncomfortable and fearful, I would break out in a sweat. Now the only sweating I do around men is when my own body breaks out in a hot flash.
And as I begin stripping the layers of clothing off to cool down, no one is looking at my overweight midriff or my flabby arms. Yes, it truly is a positive thing - this aging. Being anonymous is not such a bad thing. As Doris Lessing put is so well: at last, "You can move about, unnoticed and invisible. You achieve a wonderful freedom."
"...And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible."
This one struck me as especially poignant, as I have experienced this phenomenon in my own personal life.
It happened slowly, over time. A decision to let my hair go grey, allowing a few extra pounds to creep up and remain where they settled, a slight shrinking of the spine, and suddenly one day I woke up and I just didn't feel like myself. I thought I looked alright, for my age, until I saw an old photo of myself and wondered, "What happened to me?"
This morning I scared myself when I lifted my face up from the sink and said to the reflection looking back at me, "Who the hell are you?!" I try not to look too closely in the morning until I get the makeup on, then I try to smile at the face looking back at me because I know attitude counts for more than looks. And if I've learned anything from my transitions through the ages it is that, to be truly happy, you've got to get over yourself. You must one day acknowledge that you are not the center of the universe.
In a way, this aging process is a wonderful phenomenon because, as the quote says, "you become anonymous. No one notices you." There is true freedom in that, especially for women. As I observed riding home on the LIRR last night, whenever a pretty young woman walked down the aisle to exit the train, men would lift their heads and stare at her. While waiting for the doors to open, the woman would cast her eyes down, shift her weight, move her purse from one arm to another - all visible signs of her discomfort and awareness of the eyes on her.
I was that woman in my younger days. The cat calls from men driving by in trucks, whistles from men on the street, jeers in Spanish, were not pleasant compliments; they were demeaning and frightening. When I was young, this kind of attention from men would make me so uncomfortable and fearful, I would break out in a sweat. Now the only sweating I do around men is when my own body breaks out in a hot flash.
And as I begin stripping the layers of clothing off to cool down, no one is looking at my overweight midriff or my flabby arms. Yes, it truly is a positive thing - this aging. Being anonymous is not such a bad thing. As Doris Lessing put is so well: at last, "You can move about, unnoticed and invisible. You achieve a wonderful freedom."
Friday, September 25, 2009
The LAST Swim!
Yesterday was the last balmy summer-like day and I spent the entire day indoors working at a desk, crunching numbers, with an air conditioner blasting on my forehead. As I glanced out the window, from time to time, I began to pine over the last days of summer. I never was this way: obsessed with the endings of things. My husband did this to me. After 33 years of living with someone telling me, “This is the last day of summer,” and, “This is the last day of our vacation,” or, “This is the last time we will be sailing until next summer,” it’s no wonder I was fidgeting all day to get out on the water one last time.
At 11:00 AM, I shot a quick e-mail to my husband: What do you say if I make some sandwiches for dinner and we take the boat out to that little spot we found last weekend? We could take one last swim. His immediate reply: Absolutely. I’ll try to be home by 5:45.
And so, the adventure began…
I hurried home and slapped some leftover chicken between two slices of bread, packed a cucumber and some cherry tomatoes to dip into hummus, boiled water for a thermos of tea and brought some cookies for dessert.
“Do you want to bring a bottle of wine?” my husband asked.
“Nah, let’s just throw in some beers and get out before the sun goes down,” I replied. Bringing the wine would have meant taking precious minutes to gingerly pack two wine glasses because my husband won’t drink wine from a plastic cup. In hindsight, we should have packed a few bottles of wine.
Upon arriving at our “little spot” on the Great South Bay we began eating our sandwiches and laughed at the wonder of being alone like this anywhere on Long Island. “I won’t throw an anchor,” my captain said, “because the tide is going out. We’ll just drift into deeper water until we reach the channel and then we’ll head home. By then it will be dark.”
“It seems awful low here,” I said. “Are you sure we won’t get stuck?” My captain, an auxiliary Coast Guard member, chuckled and assured me that he knew what he was doing and I should just relax and enjoy the last sunset. I should have known something was wrong when he finished his sandwich in a hurry and jumped up to look for the one oar he keeps on the boat. He stumbled and landed his big toe in the hummus and I threw my cucumber overboard to the fishes.
“It was just my toe,” he said, “the rest of this hummus is still good.”
“No thanks,” I replied.
I stretched out and relaxed while he went up to the bow and began rowing and testing the water’s depth with the oar. It was still too low to run the engine. I was enjoying the sound of silence interrupted occasionally by the gentle ripple of the oar in the water, a distant call of a lonely seagull, the soft chirping sounds of crickets on the island.
“We’re a lot farther away from the channel than I thought,” my captain called out from the starboard side.
“You know we’re going in circles,” I informed him, “and the mosquitoes are starting to bite.”
I covered my head with my hood to keep the little buggers out and closed my eyes. I was in a gentle reverie imagining that we were teenagers again, stranded out here in the warm dusky evening in a low tide on the last day of summer. I was thinking how differently we would be responding to this situation if we were 18 again, when I was awakened by the sound of a clumsy splash.
“Move up to the bow,” my captain called to me from the water. “I need your weight up front while I pull the boat.” Happy to accommodate him, I lounged in the vee seat in the bow observing how much lower the depth had become and how much darker the sky was and how little progress he had made with his one oar.
“Why is it getting lower?” I asked. “I thought you said we would be drifting into deeper water.”
My captain’s quick response was a firm command: “You’ll have to get out of the boat now and help me push or we’ll never get out of here until the tide comes up at midnight.” It was dark now and I couldn’t see what was in the water – jellyfish? crabs? weed? Did he really expect me to jump in the water beside him? Did he take me seriously last weekend when I playfully called him, “my captain,” and assured him that when we were boating he was "my commander" and I would follow his orders – no matter what? The alternative was to sit out here on this dank dark night and get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
I pushed while he pulled, then we both pushed. I’ll admit that I was faking it at some point, making pushing sounds and not exerting much effort until my foot landed in some mucky mush that pulled me down like quicksand. I screamed and let go of the boat and moved back a few paces.
“What happened?” my captain called out.
“Mush! I stepped into a pile of mucky mush!” He continued to push the boat without me, ignoring my cries and I stumbled after the boat screaming, “Don’t leave me out here alone!”
Then my heart sank at the sound of sand pressing into the hull as the dead weight of our 17 foot boat was in front of us. We were now firmly beached in the pitch black dark in the Great South Bay. I remembered the old joke my brother used to tell my mother when he went boating as a teenager. “Don’t worry so much, mom,” he would reassure her. “If we get stuck out there, we can just walk home.” Har! Har! Har! I was now living that joke. I thought of the wine bottle we left at home and longed for a swig.
For a split second I saw the look of defeat pass over my captain’s eyes. “NOW WHAT!” I screamed. He quickly snapped out of it and began shimmying the boat from left to right and I followed his lead. We were slow dancing with this boat, creating a rhythm of motion as I was whispering endearments to it under my breath, “come on, baby, let’s go, let’s get out of here, we can do this!”
At last! I felt it loosen and the water was up to my knees. “Can I get back in the boat?” I asked timidly at first, and as the water inched up to my thighs I was almost in tears as I cried out, “NOW?? Can I PLEASE get back into the boat?” And then those beautiful words, my captain’s orders: “Get back in the boat.”
The engine started up in deeper water and I saw the green and red buoy lights ahead. We were home safe in the state channel. So why was my captain heading away from the buoys? The engine stalled when we hit bottom again, and then I remembered, the captain was color blind. The oar came out again and I guided him back to the colored buoys. I heard him click the switch to turn on the boat lights but saw no lights. He tried over and over, and I realized all the clicking in the world wasn’t going to turn those lights on as I panicked and called out to alert the captain of an approaching boat. “Don’t worry; I see him!” he shouted out above the roar of the approaching engine.
“I see him, too!” I screamed, “but he can’t see us because we have no lights!” I grabbed a life jacket and clumsily fumbled with the strap to adjust it to my girth. Worst case scenario, I thought, at least they will find my body after the crash. I saw my grandchildren’s faces flash before me. I thought of all the people I loved in my life and gave each of them a two second farewell hug in my mind. I closed my eyes and prayed.
I kept silent for the remainder of the ride home. My life jacket was so tight I could hardly breathe, let alone speak. My heart took awhile to get back to a normal pace. Before my captain could finish tying up, I jumped onto the dock, and in a final gesture of farewell to the summer of 2009, I flung my ruined wet, muck covered sandals across the lawn. That was the last time I would wear them. That slow dance with the boat was, undeniably, my last swim of 2009. As for my captain, those were the last commands he would issue me and the last time I would call him “captain” -until next year.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Cookbook In My Head
My grandmother’s cookbook was a 3 x 5 inch spiral notebook with recipes that she wrote in broken Italian-English. Here is one of them in its entirety:
2 fico
la flour
12 egges
1 patata bollita
Before my grandmother died, she instructed me to go to her house and take anything I wanted before the vultures got there. (Those were her exact words, not mine.) I didn’t want anything except that cookbook. I thought I would find the secret recipe to my favorite cookie in there – the one that she made for me every Christmas. It was a cookie made with a soft dough in the shape of an empanada and filled with sweetened ricotta and tiny chocolate chips. I had asked her for the recipe many times but she never gave it to me. Instead, she would tell me to come and watch her make it. I thought she was holding out on me, but, in reality, she didn’t have the recipe written down. It was all in her head.
My mother’s best recipes are also written in her head. But, luckily, I grew up watching my mother cook, so her recipes have been passed down through my genetic code and my personal observations. I enjoyed being in the kitchen with my mother. It was our place, the one place in the house where the men in my family kept out. As a child I would stand with my nose level with the counter and watch her methodical chopping. As a teen, I would help her with the chopping and mixing, not realizing that I was also learning to cook. The meditative rhythms were soothing and, inevitably, we would open up and talk about anything and everything. There was no conversation that was off limits in the kitchen. It was there that I learned some of the family secrets that only we women would share.
Like my grandmother and my mother, my favorite recipes are also in my head, but I’ve written down a few too. When my boys went off to college, they asked me for a cookbook of recipes that they had eaten all their lives – the ones in my head. I put one together for them, as best I could, in my own language. It consists of a list of ingredients (measurements are approximated) and my instructions, which are more like essays rather than directions. They know a good cook doesn’t follow someone else’s directions. A good cook works with their senses by seeing, smelling and tasting. In a lot of ways, my boys have already surpassed their teacher.
I listen in rapt attention as my son, James, explains how he roasted a chicken in fresh herbs and played with a white wine basting sauce to produce the most succulent meat that fell off the bone. My son, Peter, amazes me with his robust tomato sauce with lots of “meats” in it. And even my youngest son, Paul, surprises me when he produces his favorite meal: breaded chicken wings with white rice. Who knew the kid was paying attention to my activities in the kitchen?
My husband is another story. He wants to learn, and he may be my biggest challenge. He insists on measuring and timing everything according to the recipe. I tell him cooking is not a science, it’s an art. We read the recipe and then we do what we want. But nothing ever tastes exactly the same, he argues. That’s what makes life interesting, I counter. It’s a basic philosophical difference between us. He likes assurances, I like uncertainty. He likes consistency, I like excitement.
I guess he doesn’t want a repeat of the time when I was having 15 people over for my mother’s birthday celebration and I ruined the rice. I calmly instructed my sister-in-law to hold the back door open and I walked the pot of rice across the yard and dumped it into the garden. I then proceeded to throw together one of the best serendipitous pasta dishes with a creamy mushroom sauce. We were having leg of lamb and the recipe I threw together was actually a better choice for the menu.
The recipe for “Mushrooms in Sour Cream” was taken from The New McCall’s Cookbook by Mary Eckley, Food Editor of McCall’s. (Yes, I measured everything) The book is out of print, but I will share the recipe with you now. This recipe has a lot of liquid, so I thought I would stretch it by pouring it over a pound of pasta. It was delicious! It would be a complete meal with some leftover lamb added to the mushroom recipe below. The entire dish only takes about 20 minutes to prepare.
Mushrooms in Sour Cream
3 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1 cup chopped onion
1 ¼ lb fresh mushrooms, sliced ¼ inch thick
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 cup dairy sour cream
2 fico
la flour
12 egges
1 patata bollita
Before my grandmother died, she instructed me to go to her house and take anything I wanted before the vultures got there. (Those were her exact words, not mine.) I didn’t want anything except that cookbook. I thought I would find the secret recipe to my favorite cookie in there – the one that she made for me every Christmas. It was a cookie made with a soft dough in the shape of an empanada and filled with sweetened ricotta and tiny chocolate chips. I had asked her for the recipe many times but she never gave it to me. Instead, she would tell me to come and watch her make it. I thought she was holding out on me, but, in reality, she didn’t have the recipe written down. It was all in her head.
My mother’s best recipes are also written in her head. But, luckily, I grew up watching my mother cook, so her recipes have been passed down through my genetic code and my personal observations. I enjoyed being in the kitchen with my mother. It was our place, the one place in the house where the men in my family kept out. As a child I would stand with my nose level with the counter and watch her methodical chopping. As a teen, I would help her with the chopping and mixing, not realizing that I was also learning to cook. The meditative rhythms were soothing and, inevitably, we would open up and talk about anything and everything. There was no conversation that was off limits in the kitchen. It was there that I learned some of the family secrets that only we women would share.
Like my grandmother and my mother, my favorite recipes are also in my head, but I’ve written down a few too. When my boys went off to college, they asked me for a cookbook of recipes that they had eaten all their lives – the ones in my head. I put one together for them, as best I could, in my own language. It consists of a list of ingredients (measurements are approximated) and my instructions, which are more like essays rather than directions. They know a good cook doesn’t follow someone else’s directions. A good cook works with their senses by seeing, smelling and tasting. In a lot of ways, my boys have already surpassed their teacher.
I listen in rapt attention as my son, James, explains how he roasted a chicken in fresh herbs and played with a white wine basting sauce to produce the most succulent meat that fell off the bone. My son, Peter, amazes me with his robust tomato sauce with lots of “meats” in it. And even my youngest son, Paul, surprises me when he produces his favorite meal: breaded chicken wings with white rice. Who knew the kid was paying attention to my activities in the kitchen?
My husband is another story. He wants to learn, and he may be my biggest challenge. He insists on measuring and timing everything according to the recipe. I tell him cooking is not a science, it’s an art. We read the recipe and then we do what we want. But nothing ever tastes exactly the same, he argues. That’s what makes life interesting, I counter. It’s a basic philosophical difference between us. He likes assurances, I like uncertainty. He likes consistency, I like excitement.
I guess he doesn’t want a repeat of the time when I was having 15 people over for my mother’s birthday celebration and I ruined the rice. I calmly instructed my sister-in-law to hold the back door open and I walked the pot of rice across the yard and dumped it into the garden. I then proceeded to throw together one of the best serendipitous pasta dishes with a creamy mushroom sauce. We were having leg of lamb and the recipe I threw together was actually a better choice for the menu.
The recipe for “Mushrooms in Sour Cream” was taken from The New McCall’s Cookbook by Mary Eckley, Food Editor of McCall’s. (Yes, I measured everything) The book is out of print, but I will share the recipe with you now. This recipe has a lot of liquid, so I thought I would stretch it by pouring it over a pound of pasta. It was delicious! It would be a complete meal with some leftover lamb added to the mushroom recipe below. The entire dish only takes about 20 minutes to prepare.
Mushrooms in Sour Cream
3 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1 cup chopped onion
1 ¼ lb fresh mushrooms, sliced ¼ inch thick
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 cup dairy sour cream
- In hot butter in medium skillet, saut̩ onion until golden Рabout 5 minutes.
- Add mushrooms and ½ cup water; simmer, covered (adding more water, if necessary) until mushrooms are tender – about 15 minutes.
- Add salt, paprika, pepper, 2 tablespoons parsley, and the sour cream. Heat very slowly, stirring until thoroughly hot. Before serving, sprinkle with rest of parsley.
Makes 6 servings.
Other ingredients you can add to kick this up a notch: frozen peas, cubed leftover lamb, or cubed leftover London broil, some fresh minced garlic.
Boil a pound of linguini (or other pasta of your choice), drain and toss with Mushrooms in Sour Cream and any or all of the above ingredients. Serve with some crusty Italian or French bread and a salad.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Why Are Republicans Always So Angry?
I noticed it during the campaign. Republicans were always so angry. I'm noticing it again now with the health care issue. Why is it that Republicans always seem so angry? Seems like you can't have a discussion with them. It always turns into an argument. Is it just my family, or are Republicans, in general, a mean spirited group of people?
The recent outburst by South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was the perfect example of what I am talking about. Did you see those Republicans holding up papers, making remarks during the president's speech? They were acting like a bunch of disrespectful ill mannered elementary school kids. What an example to show our children. If these guys in high office can't behave in front of our president, how do you expect the children in our classrooms to respect their teachers? Come on, guys, let's try and set an example here.
I try to avoid conversations in the workplace that have anything to do with the current issues of health care and the economy. I don't want to start any arguments or polarize myself from people that I have to work with every day. But, I wonder, why do I have to be the one to back off? Why are the people with the most irrational ignorant statements the ones who get their opinions heard? I usually let them grunt and groan and turn red in the face while I stand there and nod like a bobble head, stirring my coffee, walking backwards toward my desk - all to avoid an argument, to keep the peace.
I can usually weed out the Republicans by asking, "Did you watch the president's speech the other night?" The Republicans will laugh and reply with an adamant, "NO!" I don't argue with those folks and the conversation ends. Funny, they are never interested to ask me if I watched it. When George W. was in office I watched all his speeches on TV. I wouldn't miss an opportunity like that. I had all my shoes lined up and I would toss them at the TV yelling obscenities until my face turned red. But first I made sure that all my windows were shut tight - just to avoid an argument with my neighbors in the morning.
The recent outburst by South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was the perfect example of what I am talking about. Did you see those Republicans holding up papers, making remarks during the president's speech? They were acting like a bunch of disrespectful ill mannered elementary school kids. What an example to show our children. If these guys in high office can't behave in front of our president, how do you expect the children in our classrooms to respect their teachers? Come on, guys, let's try and set an example here.
I try to avoid conversations in the workplace that have anything to do with the current issues of health care and the economy. I don't want to start any arguments or polarize myself from people that I have to work with every day. But, I wonder, why do I have to be the one to back off? Why are the people with the most irrational ignorant statements the ones who get their opinions heard? I usually let them grunt and groan and turn red in the face while I stand there and nod like a bobble head, stirring my coffee, walking backwards toward my desk - all to avoid an argument, to keep the peace.
I can usually weed out the Republicans by asking, "Did you watch the president's speech the other night?" The Republicans will laugh and reply with an adamant, "NO!" I don't argue with those folks and the conversation ends. Funny, they are never interested to ask me if I watched it. When George W. was in office I watched all his speeches on TV. I wouldn't miss an opportunity like that. I had all my shoes lined up and I would toss them at the TV yelling obscenities until my face turned red. But first I made sure that all my windows were shut tight - just to avoid an argument with my neighbors in the morning.
Friday, September 11, 2009
September 11, 2009
Every year, at the beginning of September, I feel a sense of doom. The weather is cooler, dryer, the sky is crystal blue and my mind makes the flash connection to a similar day eight years ago. I remember that morning. I had the day off and I was getting ready to go shopping with my mother. My husband called to tell me he was alright. I didn't know what he was talking about.
"Why are you calling me?" I asked. "Did you have trouble on the train?"
"You didn't hear?" Then, "Turn on the TV; two planes went into the World Trade Center."
As I watched the images on my television I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I couldn't speak as I held the phone to my ear and listened to my husband's breathing. I wanted him home safe with me. Was I safe? Where was my other son? Had he gone to work in the city that day? My hands began to feel tingly, staccato thoughts flew through my head. Were there other planes flying across the country dropping bombs? My oldest son was in the navy, stationed in California at the time; was he alright? My youngest was in high school. Would he make it home safely? Why did we have to be so scattered?
My mind raced frantically trying to think about all the other people I knew who traveled to the city to work: my son, my uncle, cousins, my friend. I began calling my son and couldn't reach him; same with my friend who was seven months pregnant. I began to feel the rise in my throat, the panic and tears at the thought of losing them.
I remember going around the house locking all the doors and windows, as if that would keep me safe. I pulled the shades down around the house. I wanted to crawl into a safe place and stay there until the reality could penetrate. What was happening? My legs were shaky and I felt as if the ground was shifting under my feet.
My son finally called from his ship to make sure everyone was safe. The navy was on high alert and he wouldn't be able to call again for a while. He asked about his father and brother. Did they ride the subway today? He had been warning them for weeks to take alternate transportation to work. Did he know something that we didn't? I told him I loved him as silent tears fell and I grabbed the phone with white knuckles. As long as I could hear his voice, hear his breathing, I felt some sense of relief in his safety. When he hung up I kept the phone to my ear as if this could hold him to me a little bit longer.
The silence after that phone call was palpable. I broke down and buried my face in my hands and cried. I had flash memories of all of my children as babies, then toddlers, teens and now young men. Had I told them I loved them enough throughout their lives? I wanted to go back in time and hold them safely in my arms to protect them from the evils in the world. Had I prepared them enough for this new world to come?
"Why are you calling me?" I asked. "Did you have trouble on the train?"
"You didn't hear?" Then, "Turn on the TV; two planes went into the World Trade Center."
As I watched the images on my television I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I couldn't speak as I held the phone to my ear and listened to my husband's breathing. I wanted him home safe with me. Was I safe? Where was my other son? Had he gone to work in the city that day? My hands began to feel tingly, staccato thoughts flew through my head. Were there other planes flying across the country dropping bombs? My oldest son was in the navy, stationed in California at the time; was he alright? My youngest was in high school. Would he make it home safely? Why did we have to be so scattered?
My mind raced frantically trying to think about all the other people I knew who traveled to the city to work: my son, my uncle, cousins, my friend. I began calling my son and couldn't reach him; same with my friend who was seven months pregnant. I began to feel the rise in my throat, the panic and tears at the thought of losing them.
I remember going around the house locking all the doors and windows, as if that would keep me safe. I pulled the shades down around the house. I wanted to crawl into a safe place and stay there until the reality could penetrate. What was happening? My legs were shaky and I felt as if the ground was shifting under my feet.
My son finally called from his ship to make sure everyone was safe. The navy was on high alert and he wouldn't be able to call again for a while. He asked about his father and brother. Did they ride the subway today? He had been warning them for weeks to take alternate transportation to work. Did he know something that we didn't? I told him I loved him as silent tears fell and I grabbed the phone with white knuckles. As long as I could hear his voice, hear his breathing, I felt some sense of relief in his safety. When he hung up I kept the phone to my ear as if this could hold him to me a little bit longer.
The silence after that phone call was palpable. I broke down and buried my face in my hands and cried. I had flash memories of all of my children as babies, then toddlers, teens and now young men. Had I told them I loved them enough throughout their lives? I wanted to go back in time and hold them safely in my arms to protect them from the evils in the world. Had I prepared them enough for this new world to come?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Long Island Woman Publication Disses Women
I picked up a free copy of Long Island Woman the other day from my local library. There was a picture of Patty Duke on the cover of the September issue. You may have seen it in your local library or on the window ledge of your local Chinese restaurant. I urge you to grab a copy and look through it sometime. I'm interested in your opinion as one woman to another. Did you find it as offensive as I did? Am I overreacting? Please forgive me as I rant on a bit about this...
For one thing most of the articles are about self improvement - but only in a physical way. Here are some articles and advertisements you will find in the September issue:
"Fall Into Shape " - an article by a male doctor outlining all your options for cosmetic surgery
"The Mommy Makeover" - an advertisement. Here is the first line: "Children change everything but that doesn't have to include your figure." (incidentally there is a comma incorrectly placed after the word "but")
"Why a Mommy Makeover?" is an advice column written by another male doctor.
"Breast Surgery Combined With Tummy Tuck and/or Liposuction" is another "Good Advice" column, but this time it is written by a female doctor.
Other advertisers include: The Women's Imaging Center, Botox Clinics, Lumiere hair removal, laser medicine and dermatology doctors, weight loss centers, plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, medi spas that offer an underarm laser hair package, bikini laser package, Botox, Evolence, Perlane, Restylane, Juvederm, Permanent Fillers and Chemical Peels. The Naturapathic Solutions company can help you "Get Your "Sexy" Back!" by offering relief from hot flashes, mood swings, low libido and vaginal dryness, fatigue, weight gain, hair loss and poor concentration.
More Good Advice columns follow with headlines like:
"Not All Facelifts Are Created Equal: Understanding Different Types of Lifts" - authored by another male MD
"Consider This When Choosing Your Cosmetic Dentist"
"Weight Loss: A New Way to Achieve Your Goal"
"Resolving Stress to Heal your Body & your Life!"
"Know Your Options When Considering Divorce"
"Do You Need to Avoid Probate?" an empty article that ends with the author's phone number and firm name. Yes, the author is an attorney looking for business.
There is a two page article about handbags and all the frivolous non-essentials that we women need to carry in them. Here are some quotes from the article which is actually a two page advertisement for cosmetics to carry in the handbag:
"Adding a little more blush on your cheeks will also make you look awake."
"Ditching the Blackberry in favor of evening cocktails is a mid-week must for busy girls about town."
"Date night hair and flat hair just plain don't mix."
"If you decide to break out the blow dryer during a weekend, make sure it is a ceramic dryer which cuts down on frizz as well as drying time"
The feature story about Patty Duke focuses on her abusive lifestyle, her multiple unhappy marriages, sexual molestations, her stay in a mental institution and other negative elements in her life like her battle with weight gain. If only Patty Duke had read the Long Island Woman during her life. She would have solved all of her problems. She would have had an array of spas and cosmetic doctors to change her look and her mood. The divorce lawyer could have handled all the divorces and the probate lawyer would have written her will correctly to ensure the ex-husbands wouldn't be arguing about her assets after she is gone.
It's no wonder women today have self image issues. My question is, why are libraries - promoters of education and the printed word - allowing rags like Long Island Woman to be displayed at the entrances and exits of their buildings? As far as I can tell the Long Island Woman is just a big advertisement for insecure women who probably sit with a mirror beside them as they read the advice columns for liposuction and face lifts. I found this publication insulting to my intelligence and disrespectful to women.
The message of Long Island Woman is: "You aren't good enough as you are. Make yourself beautiful, lose weight, tighten your skin to hide your age (because getting older is a bad thing in America) and you will be happier and fulfilled in life. You just have to look like Barbie to be happy.
My message to the editors of Long Island Woman is: I'm going to burn your rag publication in my fireplace and ask my library to remove it from their building. The Chinese restaurant can use it to line the cardboard box that they put the food in. There's always a greasy leak at the bottom of the box when I get the wonton soup delivered.
For one thing most of the articles are about self improvement - but only in a physical way. Here are some articles and advertisements you will find in the September issue:
"Fall Into Shape " - an article by a male doctor outlining all your options for cosmetic surgery
"The Mommy Makeover" - an advertisement. Here is the first line: "Children change everything but that doesn't have to include your figure." (incidentally there is a comma incorrectly placed after the word "but")
"Why a Mommy Makeover?" is an advice column written by another male doctor.
"Breast Surgery Combined With Tummy Tuck and/or Liposuction" is another "Good Advice" column, but this time it is written by a female doctor.
Other advertisers include: The Women's Imaging Center, Botox Clinics, Lumiere hair removal, laser medicine and dermatology doctors, weight loss centers, plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, medi spas that offer an underarm laser hair package, bikini laser package, Botox, Evolence, Perlane, Restylane, Juvederm, Permanent Fillers and Chemical Peels. The Naturapathic Solutions company can help you "Get Your "Sexy" Back!" by offering relief from hot flashes, mood swings, low libido and vaginal dryness, fatigue, weight gain, hair loss and poor concentration.
More Good Advice columns follow with headlines like:
"Not All Facelifts Are Created Equal: Understanding Different Types of Lifts" - authored by another male MD
"Consider This When Choosing Your Cosmetic Dentist"
"Weight Loss: A New Way to Achieve Your Goal"
"Resolving Stress to Heal your Body & your Life!"
"Know Your Options When Considering Divorce"
"Do You Need to Avoid Probate?" an empty article that ends with the author's phone number and firm name. Yes, the author is an attorney looking for business.
There is a two page article about handbags and all the frivolous non-essentials that we women need to carry in them. Here are some quotes from the article which is actually a two page advertisement for cosmetics to carry in the handbag:
"Adding a little more blush on your cheeks will also make you look awake."
"Ditching the Blackberry in favor of evening cocktails is a mid-week must for busy girls about town."
"Date night hair and flat hair just plain don't mix."
"If you decide to break out the blow dryer during a weekend, make sure it is a ceramic dryer which cuts down on frizz as well as drying time"
The feature story about Patty Duke focuses on her abusive lifestyle, her multiple unhappy marriages, sexual molestations, her stay in a mental institution and other negative elements in her life like her battle with weight gain. If only Patty Duke had read the Long Island Woman during her life. She would have solved all of her problems. She would have had an array of spas and cosmetic doctors to change her look and her mood. The divorce lawyer could have handled all the divorces and the probate lawyer would have written her will correctly to ensure the ex-husbands wouldn't be arguing about her assets after she is gone.
It's no wonder women today have self image issues. My question is, why are libraries - promoters of education and the printed word - allowing rags like Long Island Woman to be displayed at the entrances and exits of their buildings? As far as I can tell the Long Island Woman is just a big advertisement for insecure women who probably sit with a mirror beside them as they read the advice columns for liposuction and face lifts. I found this publication insulting to my intelligence and disrespectful to women.
The message of Long Island Woman is: "You aren't good enough as you are. Make yourself beautiful, lose weight, tighten your skin to hide your age (because getting older is a bad thing in America) and you will be happier and fulfilled in life. You just have to look like Barbie to be happy.
My message to the editors of Long Island Woman is: I'm going to burn your rag publication in my fireplace and ask my library to remove it from their building. The Chinese restaurant can use it to line the cardboard box that they put the food in. There's always a greasy leak at the bottom of the box when I get the wonton soup delivered.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
There's Another Duggar On The Way!
Big surprise announcement on the Today show this week: the Duggars are expecting child #19. Hey, Jim Bob, maybe it’s time to get a hobby. And, Mrs. Jim Bob, once in a while you can just say no! I mean, come on, 18 kids weren’t enough? Can you even remember all their names? I only had three boys and I got their names mixed up all the time. I still get confused. Every phone call starts with me trying to guess which one is on the other end of the line. James? Peter? Paul? Which one are you? I even get the facts of their antics blurred from time to time. Which one of you burned a hole in the sheets playing with matches? I can’t remember. I do remember the night two of my boys had one of those “high-low” stomach viruses and I slept on the floor outside the bathroom door with one child on each side of me and a puke bucket balanced on my chest, just in case they couldn’t make the three foot crawl to the toilet bowl. How the hell can you do that with 19 kids? How can you run through the house with a thermometer checking fevers all night long? Or keep track of medications and doses for all of them?
I don’t buy it: the posed photos with the children all smiling, some holding musical instruments, as if the photographer interrupted their practice session. Others are holding younger siblings, all of them smiling – even Jim Bob and the Mrs. have frozen smiles on their faces. Are these people real, or has Sesame Street made some gosh darn amazingly lifelike puppets? Were those strings I saw above Jim Bob’s head?
I did some figuring. I averaged time throughout the day that it took to take care of personal hygiene, cook meals, home school the children, pick up the house, do laundry, empty the trash and sleep a minimum of 6 hours. I figure, on a good day, Michelle Duggar must only have about 20 minutes left to spend with Jim Bob at the end of the day. If you already had 18 kids and you only had 20 minutes to spend with your husband at the end of the day, would you spend that time trying to make another child? I think I would do something more creative and fun. I would invent games like, “Let’s see if I can tie you up, honey.” Then I would string him up from the ceiling joists, and leave him there suspended in mid air, like Tinkerbell, so I could get a solid uninterrupted 6 hours sleep. Let’s see if he’s still smiling in the morning when we lower him down for the photo op.
I don’t buy it: the posed photos with the children all smiling, some holding musical instruments, as if the photographer interrupted their practice session. Others are holding younger siblings, all of them smiling – even Jim Bob and the Mrs. have frozen smiles on their faces. Are these people real, or has Sesame Street made some gosh darn amazingly lifelike puppets? Were those strings I saw above Jim Bob’s head?
I did some figuring. I averaged time throughout the day that it took to take care of personal hygiene, cook meals, home school the children, pick up the house, do laundry, empty the trash and sleep a minimum of 6 hours. I figure, on a good day, Michelle Duggar must only have about 20 minutes left to spend with Jim Bob at the end of the day. If you already had 18 kids and you only had 20 minutes to spend with your husband at the end of the day, would you spend that time trying to make another child? I think I would do something more creative and fun. I would invent games like, “Let’s see if I can tie you up, honey.” Then I would string him up from the ceiling joists, and leave him there suspended in mid air, like Tinkerbell, so I could get a solid uninterrupted 6 hours sleep. Let’s see if he’s still smiling in the morning when we lower him down for the photo op.
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