Tis the Season

Yesterday, Michael picked two quarts of strawberries, and it was hard work. The berries were tiny and sparse. Then we stopped at a stand and bought four more quarts. .The season is winding down, and since we've had few or none for the last several years, we decided this was the year to get some. We put four quarts into freezer jam a week or so ago. Now I have four quarts capped and frozen whole for smoothies in the middle of winter. The ones Michael picked yesterday are going straight into our pie holes, as they are too delicious to put off for anything other than straight eating. We ate almost a whole quart last night, lightly sugared, with very lightly sweetened fresh whipped cream. Yum!!
Michael is very tolerant of my lack of ambition when it comes to stoop labor. I don't mind picking blueberries because I can stand to do that. Strawberries, though, require squatting, an activity I am morally and physically opposed to. Luckily, I also have a neurosurgeon who has told me not to do squats until after my surgery next year. So I'm free to read while Michael picks the berries. Life is good!
Since Memorial Day is upon us, I have decided that the time is right to take the Santas off my mantle. Those who know me well are aware that I stretch out the Yuletide season as long as I can make it, sometimes not dismantling the Christmas tree until Easter beckons. While I do have a huge artificial Christmas wreath hanging on the brick wall in our family room that stays up all year, and a cabinet filled with Santas in my bedroom, I usually put away the ones I scatter throughout the house much earlier. This year, though, the spirit to stow them didn't move me until today, so that will be one of my little chores for a holiday weekend. My doing that will make Michael happy.
I'll also get around to inventorying the freezer, which I still haven't done. Other than that, my weekend is free, just the way I like it. Have a good one!

More on dining out and "celebrating" Memorial Day

Michael and I went to Ruby Tuesday last night for dinner. We had wanted to take the young couple who are our neighbors, but they had been painting all day, getting ready for new baby, and were exhausted. We had the best of everything for a night out--a 25% off your entire bill coupon and a gift card from a grateful guy to whom we returned a high school ring he lost over 40 years ago. (Gotta love Facebook.)
There we were, being served by a very competent and zaftig member of the wait staff. I started with the salad bar and was gravely disappointed at the lack of both black olives and beets. I was trying to show at least the appearance of eating healthy--which is difficult once you've looked at the nutrition charts on Ruby's site--but Michael decided to throw caution to the wind and order a burger that came with about six slices of apple-cured bacon. He also had fries and some overcooked sugar snap peas. My chicken quesadilla was quite good but decidedly NOT lo-cal or in any other way healthy. It was supposed to come with "homemade" pico de gallo, but instead came with an obviously jarred salsa. It was good, but there was too much of it and it certainly wasn't what I'd call freshly-made. We got a take-out box for about a quarter of what we had been served so that we would have room for their latest treats: cupcakes. We each had two, one red velvet and one carrot cake. Both were delicious, with nice textures and great icing. Our server told us that they don't make them there (surprise!). Probably the best thing we had was the strawberry iced tea--very refreshing, barely sweet, and unlimited refills.
It was nice to go out on a weekday with no special occasion, and the price was right.
We went home and watched a streaming netflix movie now that I have figured out how to hook my netbook up to the flatscreen TV. We saw Heaven Can Wait with Don Ameche. It was in the "classics" genre. We saw The Thirds Man a few days ago, also a classic. We liked both of them, tho Third Man was so dark on the screen it gave new meaning to "film noire." Heaven Can Wait was much lighter in every way, including being in color and featuring a charming Satan (Laird Cregar) whom everyone called "Your Excellency." If you're a fan of the lovely overbite actress Gene Tierney, this is a good one for you. Having grown up with a fierce overbite myself, and the total lack of self-esteem to go with it, I always felt uncomfortable watching her, imagining that casting her as a beautiful woman was some kind of mistake.Getting braces in my forties went a long way toward making me feel better about myself.
Lunch today will be two kinds of leftovers, from Wednesday night's dinner in and Thursday's dinner out. It's the start of the holiday weekend, and we have no plans, which is just the way we like it. We are, thus, available as guests for any holiday barbecues. (Just kidding--a little.)
Wherever you are and whoever you are, have a great weekend, and keep in mind the people overseas and those who died serving, whatever you think of the wars themselves. Too many have given too much for so little.

The Gourmet's Return

Michael outdid himself last night: marinated broiled butterflied leg of lamb, served with herb-seasoned brown rice and a salad of freshly picked lettuces, lightly pickled beets, peas, sweet red pepper, and grated carrot, tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette. Dagmar brought a quart of fresh-picked strawberries, which I capped and lightly sugared and then served over thin slices of pound cake with a scoop of lemon sorbetto.We had a Malbec with dinner and champagne with dessert.
It is difficult to go out and spend much money on dinner when you can have really good food in your own house for so much less. Our trouble is that we really like going out as well, just for the experience, and we do go back to those places where we found good food. Sometimes there's a dish we either don't want to go to the trouble of duplicating or that, try as we might, we just can't duplicate. Thus, we have to go back to the roots of the dish and have it again in its native land.
Michael is one of those people who think that if you're not busy every minute, there's something wrong with you. He reads three newspapers in the morning and will sometimes read an article in a magazine like Time or National Geographic or Discovery in the evenings, but he's not really into reading books. He just finds it hard to sit still for that long. Even when he's watching the Orioles--as he is today--he is up and down. He'll run outside while KC is batting, or take a phone call and walk around while talking, or just go to the window to see what's going on in the neighborhood. Because of this and in order to avoid being thought of as a slacker, I've decided to start my day with a "chore" I want to get done. For me, that usually means emptying and organizing. Today, kitchen cupboards and drawers. It's amazing what accumulates in drawers along with the flotsam and jetsam of life: strange stuff that was once food, errant paper clips and rubber bands, two tiny screw drivers, chopsticks, a single edge razor blade. I'm lucky to still have a finger, considering how I found that. Anyway, those drawers and cupboards are now clean, newly papered, and reorganized. For a couple of weeks, I will once again know where to find the hoisin sauce and the peppermint extract, and I'll know just how many bottles of nose spray I have left until the next refill. I found a milk frother I forgot I had and an ice cream scoop that I'd never use for ice cream but  might use for cupcakes.
The next job  is to empty and rearrange the big freezer so that I can inventory what's in there and post it on the door. Every time I do that I vow to cross off each item as I remove it, and that vow is kept for just about exactly three weeks, after which I make no notations for several weeks and then realize that the list is totally useless. Still, I like doing it, so I will. But I might wait until tomorrow, because I think I've earned my reading time, not that I ever really feel guilty for reading--but I've got an answer if anyone asks why I'm reading or what I've done today. So there.

Drummettes, Twizzlers, and the "Ice Cream Machine"

Today was a low-stress food day. Breakfast in bed: coffee (as always), scrambled eggs, and whole wheat English muffins with fresh strawberry freezer jam. Lunch on the back patio: reheated lamb & eggplant casserole left over from last night. Afternoon snack on the back patio: wine and Twizzlers. Dinner: baked chicken drummettes and steamed broccoli. iced tea for Michael and water for me, followed by treats from the ice cream truck. Michael had a bomb pop, and I had Jolly Rancher push-up.
It must be summer; it's hard to believe that we had an ice cream truck come through our neighborhood, and maybe it wouldn't have, but Michael stopped by to see Ella (our neighbor's dog) and Sarah, who is pregnant, said, "Did you hear the ice cream truck?" We hadn't, but she had, two neighborhoods over, so we drove over there to ask him to be sure to come into our street.
As it turns out, Sarah decided not to indulge, but while Michael was buying ours, a car drove up and a father got out with two little kids. I guess they had decided to follow the truck as well, preferring that to waiting to see if it would show up on their street.
It's been a long time; we live in the eastern suburbs of Salisbury, in one of five neighborhoods that open onto Parker Road. The variety in the atmosphere of these neighborhoods is vast; some are close-knit little families; others, like ours, is a collection of mostly congenial acquaintances. Michael knows everyone better than I do, but he recognizes them by their cars, and I hardly know the cars my friends drive. He waves to everyone who goes by unless it happens to be the people who live immediately across the street from us, whose presence we never acknowledge.I have no idea who's riding by, so I don't wave--I suppose I'd rather snub a neighbor than wave at a stranger. That seems very odd. In any event, we don't live in the kind of neighborhood where one would expect an ice cream truck. We've had a few over the almost thirty-four years we've lived here, but not very often and never even two summers in a row. We've decided to patronize this one to keep it coming back.
I started  a new book today--I can't remember the title just now, but it has something to do with cutting stone (the title, not the book so far). It was recommended by Barb Fernald, who lives on the island in Maine that we visit. I ate the twizzlers while I was reading; Michael was cutting the grass.In about an hour he finished the grass and I got through a hundred or so pages. It's quite interesting and I'm hooked.
I think tomorrow will be a company dinner day, so I'll have to rattle around in the freezer to see what my options are. I think there's only one casserole left from last summer's bumper crop of eggplant and peppers. This year's pepper plants already have blossoms. Once summer is in full swing, I'll have to start cooking again and refilling the freezer. My favorite part will be replacing all the blueberries Michael picked last summer that we had to throw out when the freezer died in October. It's a tragedy to run out of blueberries in the middle of winter, so we supplemented with frozen ones from Sam's, They're not bad, but they're not local, either. Still, in a smoothie with banana and Greek yogurt, Sam's blueberries do just fine.

End of an Era

Michael's family sold their farm yesterday. It didn't go for as much as they had all hoped it would, but it went pretty well for today's market. We weren't looking for a windfall; as we said to each other last night on the ride home after dinner in Rehoboth, we could live without it and be happy. There won't be that much once all is said and done: there are taxes to pay, and the auctioneer gets a nice bite, and there are still some expenses associated with the farm until the new owner settles some time in the next forty-five days.
The worst part of it is that it's like a death in the family for Michael. There are happy milestones in everyone's family--marriage, the birth of children--and  sad ones, too--the death of one's parents or other loved ones, divorce, sickness--but for Michael, letting the farm go is one of the top five negative stessors in his life, right after losing his father, his mother, and his niece Tracey.
He lived on that farm for almost half his life, and he took care of it his whole life. Except for living in the dorms and in an apartment while he was in college, Michael lived there until we were married when he was almost 28. He went back home after college when all he could get was a seasonal job at the airport, and then, when that led him to permanent work at Dresser, he stayed at home, saving money and helping out. When his father died in 1975, he stayed on for two more years so that his mother wouldn't be alone.
After we got married, his Saturdays were usually spent at the farm, cutting grass, doing whatever chores needed doing. Over the years the work changed, and as his mother aged his responsibilities expanded. At first, I was jealous of his days "down there," until I realized that his Saturdays at the farm gave me my own personal Saturdays at home. I could do whatever I wanted to--clean, or read, or watch movies, or shop--without answering to anyone. After the kids came along, he would also take them down on Tuesday nights, when I worked, to have dinner with their grandmother.
Michael's mother lived to 88; she was sixty when her husband died at 63.That means that Michael took care of her the same length of time she took care of him--28 years, and there was never a moment of resentment in it. Michael loved his parents and he loved the farm where he grew up. He took care of his mother as he thought his father would have, had he lived. I helped out some--I took her into Salisbury for doctor's appointments or to shop after she stopped driving outside of the tiny community of Willards.I found out that one can learn a great deal about a man from watching the way he treats his mother. Thus, the more he did for her, the more I noticed what he did for me. He also showed the boys how to treat their mother. Whatever resentment some women might have felt toward their husbands and their mothers-in-law, I didn't feel. I had my issues with her over the years, and I can see her influence on Michael in some ways I don't particularly like, but overall, she was tied in to the farm, and his childhood was essentially idyllic.
While his brother remembers toiling on what was, in his time, a working farm, and his sisters remember feeling isolated and out of the loop being so far from Salisbury, Michael remembers with deep affection almost everything about living there, including having to ride his bike into town just to have someone to play baseball with.He remembers walking the farm with his father, helping his mother tend the chickens, having family meals together, listening to his father laugh at television programs, riding his brother's Chincoteague pony, running away from his sisters as they chased him through the house.
Even in the later years, when his mother needed live-in care and then moved to assisted living, Michael dealt with all of it. He kept the checkbook and paid the bills and scheduled the sitters and called the repairmen; at our house, I shared these responsibilities, but he did  it mostly alone for his mother and the farm.
Today, Michael didn't quite know what to do with himself. Luckily, it was a warm and windy day, just like yesterday, so all the plants around the house needed watering. That kept him busy for several hours. We took a walk, shared a glass of wine, watched a little TV. Tomorrow will bring a little more tying up of loose ends and a little more healing, but we both know the mourning process moves at its own pace, so we'll take it slowly and deal with each new stage as it comes.

Potable Potions

Today, one week has passed since I finished all grading for the semester, Now is the time to start talking about alcohol.
I came to drinking late, as far as I can tell. except for communion wine (we used the real thing) and my mother's homemade cherry wine, I hadn't tasted alcohol before I graduated from high school. I wasn't part of that scene. Had I known it existed, I would have wanted to be part of it, but who knew?
We'll skip the summer of learning to drink and smoke--I did require instruction in both, actually--and go right into the college years. I suppose that most of my drinking during college took place at "functions"--parties thrown by upperclassmen at the American Legion hall just west of town on Route 50. They would rent the basement, charge a couple of dollars a head to get in, and then get 50 cents for beer and $1 for a "mixed drink." What I drank probably depended on how much money I had, but my preference was the sloe gin fizz or the Singapore sling. They were probably identical; the "bartenders" would pour them ready-made from bottles and add a little soda. Voila! They were sweet, somewhat alcoholic, and cheap. The Epicureans, a group of guys from SU (then SSC) played the popular music of the day, and we'd drink and dance the night away.
The most important thing was making sure you had a ride home, especially if you were a freshman girl. Curfew on Thursday nights was 10:30. Girls needed to be in their dorms (mine was Holloway Hall) before curfew, and they had to be able to sign in without revealing any disabling intoxication. Just as it is today, Thursday night was the big drinking night, so functions were almost always then. That meant both an early curfew and, for me, an early phys ed. class. Jumping jacks at eight a.m.after a night of questionable alcoholic mixtures--not fun.
The best thing about functions (other than that they were held in plain sight in violation of all the campus rules--signs all over campus said "FUNCTION THURSDAY 9/22" and nothing else) was that I met Michael at the first one of my sophomore year, which was his freshman year. I won't go into all the details, except to say that we had been eyeing each other on campus for a few weeks, and I decided to ask him to dance. The rest is history. That was almost 44 years ago, and we've been together ever since. It took us ten years to marry, but we didn't break up and we didn't live together in all that time.Strange but true.
We did the usual college drinking and then the occasional party drinking after college, but we really didn't drink much as a couple. Michael traveled a lot for work and socialized with his colleagues and his customers, so he did a fair amount on the road, but that's probably at least partly why he wasn't particularly inclined to drink at home.
We had both tried wine and found it not so much to our liking, but we've decided, now, that that was probably because we didn't buy good wine, not even good cheap wine. Once we started going to wine tastings ten or so years ago, we realized how good wine can be, and we began to develop our own tastes for wine.
Rather than go on with this, I'm going to end with two drink recipes. These are my favorites, not necessarily Michael's. He likes them, but I love them. I'll talk more about wine another time.

Dark and Stormy:
2 oz Goslings Black Seal rum (it's not a D&S without this brand)
6oz Maine Root Ginger Brew (if you can find it--Gosling's Black Seal ginger beer is an acceptable--if not perfect--substitute)
squeeze of lime juice
Pour together over a tall glass of crushed ice

Champagne Napoleon
1 1/2 oz Mandarine Napoleon liqueur
chilled champagne (I prefer Moet & Chandon White Star; be sure to use a good one)
orange peel for garnish
Pour the liqueur into a flute; add the champagne slowly down the side to fill the glass; toss in the peel

Enjoi!!

Meditations, Schmeditations

OK, so I haven't actually started reading the Meditations yet. I have discovered, so far, that old Marcus himself did not and would not have given it that title or any other, as it is more of a "to-do" list than a book of thoughts or advice. Just sort of "note to self," so when I finish the introduction, should such an occurrence become a reality, I will turn the entries into sticky notes and use them to turn my life around.
I don't know when I'll finish the intro--I have about 20 pages left--it's really long! But I am determined to do it. Some things you just have to do for your own good.
The other thing I'll be doing for my own good is watching Blow Dry this afternoon, apparently by myself. I know a couple of people who can't come over, but a blanket invite must be scary. Why else would anyone pass up Alan Rickman and Natasha Richardson in a comedy about hairdressers??? and pizza?? in my quite comfortable house??? which is, not incidentally, laden with wine???
This makes me feel sixteen again, when Alison Langrell threw me a birthday party and no one came. High school was hard.
As anyone can tell, I have nothing to say today. I've been cleaning my office, throwing things away and filling up the paper recycling bin. I save too much stuff. Always. I'm turning over a new leaf, again. Neatness! Organization! Bins! Folders!
I'm sure that Marcus Aurelius will have something to say to me (to himself, actually) that will give me the inspiration I need to neaten things up. We'll see. I'll let you know. Thanks for reading.