Guacamole Gulch

Lawn Day

2012-01-27T14:30:00.000-08:00

Goodbye dust and dirt. We got lawn today - red fescue with a mixture of 20 other seeds so the lawn stays green all year. Instant gratification - from brown and dusty one minute to golf course green the next. The rolls were laid in a checkerboard arrangement so water doesn't run off in the seams. The minute the sod was down the cats came around to inspect. They sniff inspected all around the edges, working up the nerve to walk across it.

Cat sniff inspection

View from upper deck

Before

After

Before

After

I told the workers a joke about having to mark the sod rolls in Canada "Green side up". They gave me the long suffering look of someone who's heard the joke a million times. When I worked for the egg commission people would tell me egg jokes older than dirt and I had to do the polite laugh. I think I've earned the right to make someone else suffer in kind.

Shopping for Valentines

2012-01-25T17:08:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day brings out the worst in me. Probably a hangover from elementary school when there was so much tension about who would give you a valentine. Do we ever get over this stuff? I don't think I have. I guess that's why The Encyclopedia of Immaturity appeals to me.

To make sure the heart isn't broken due to rejection, I try to select a Valentine's gift with a sense of humor. Humor trumps romance every time. My husband is getting a pack of I love You gum and also the inflatable heart. You can pump it up or deflate it as the mood fits.

I'm not sure he'll think the genital hand sanitizer is funny - if not I can always give it to Beth, who will find an appropriate home for it.

The cats have been wanting a DJ rig, so they get this:


Bust a move and get our DJ Cat Scratch Turntable so your alley cat can start scratching and grooving! Your cat’s natural ability to spin and scratch will shine when you place this on the floor! Check out the hook while your kitty revolves it!

You can get all this and more at:

Perpetual Kid

Dying for Chili

2012-01-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

Everyone and his dog has written a cook book; I see recipes from the most unlikely sources. This morning Richard declared that he was dying for chili - then he whipped out this Allen Brother's Mortuary Black Bean Chili recipe from today's paper.

I wonder if they chose to use Black Beans because they're more funereal and sober than the more commonly used, riant kidney bean? Perhaps mentioning an organ, like "kidney" would be in bad taste for a mortician/chef?

I guess we should be thankful they didn't mention topping it with sliced avocados or guacamole. Some publicity you can do without.

Turning a deaf ear

2012-01-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

I went to a new ENT yesterday, Dr. Jacobs (760) 724-8749 in case anyone's looking for a congenial doc with a sense of humor and a good "bedside" manner . He laughed when he saw my medical history and quipped that I knew all the ENT's in North County. I think he's right. My HMO keeps me moving around.

After my MRI was reviewed by a number of people, the consensus is that my tumor is stable. Whew. The differences in size observed were due to variances in measuring techniques used by radiologists/neurosurgeons.

I had a final hearing test yesterday to confirm that the irradiated ear is totally deaf...stone deaf, as the saying goes. Here's how the results look.

If you were designing such a form wouldn't you put the left ear results on the left side and the right ear results on the right side? CNT means can not test. They seem to avoid the use of the word "deaf" for some reason. My right ear, now doing double duty, is pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

A non-hearing ear can be useful when you're trying to sleep in a noisy hotel room. That's about the only good thing about it.

Rose Aid

2012-01-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

Perfume Delight

Mr. Lincoln

Iceberg

Chrysler Imperial

Granada

Our rose garden desperately needs help. I stopped by Daylily hill this week and picked up five new plants selected mostly because of their beautiful aromas and less so because of the blossom characteristics. My favorite of the five is Perfume Delight. Granada is fabulous too because the blossoms last a long while after they're cut.

You have to pick and choose with roses - some have high petal counts in their blossoms but I've found them to be too dense - the blossoms fall forward on the stems and in bouquets; some have magnificent aromas but just don't last once cut; some have long stems; some have too many thorns; some have unbelievable colors like Mr. Lincoln (almost black). You have to take the bitter with the sweet - just like with people.

Two Bright Lights

2012-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

What is it about construction contractors? I don't care what trade it is or if times are good or bad. From my experience I can say that most of them lie routinely, do grievous things and ask for forgiveness later, cut every corner possible and rarely show up on time or even on the same day as promised. Over the past three years, I dare not estimate how much time I've spent sitting around waiting for no-shows.

This past week almost made up for those "insults". I had a floor re-finisher show up on time, give me a reasonable bid, show up the next day to do the job and do a fine job. I'd highly recommend Preferred Flooring for any floor work you need done.

Likewise Manny Menendez who did all of our tile work. He too shows up on time and does a great job for a decent price.

Two lights in a dark forest.

I'll fool you and then you fool me and then I'll....

2012-01-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

I'm reading "The Folly of Fools" by Robert Trivers.

Self deception as a survival mechanism is the primary tenet of the book. The notion is that we all deceive ourselves into believing that we're smarter, better looking, more competent, luckier, more pious, more cunning than we actually are. This belief bolsters our egos. When our egos are bolstered, even if we do it to ourselves, we feel better. When we feel better we usually do better. Some believe that feeling better even boosts the immune system so we're less prone to infections and illness. Ergo, self deception may help to keep us healthy and alive.

Because we have big brains and communication skills we are well equipped for deception. We learn to lie and deceive early on. Not only self deception but deception of others - babies learn to use crying and throw fits to achieve their goals. Because nature rewards success, we have to assume that lying gives us advantages in the drive to replicate our genes. If it didn't we'd have found out by now. What is romance if not self-deception? What else explains your magnificent friend who is married to a total loser? What, you ask yourself, did she see in him?

From the Barnes and Noble book review

The author calls deceit a "deep feature" of our lives. He goes so far as to assert that it's a necessity in order to survive and gives examples of deceit in nature. Anglerfish lure prey by dangling "bait"in front of their jaws. Women pay to have huge plastic breasts inserted in their chests. Viruses and bacteria use subterfuge to deceive the immune system. And the examples go on and on.

Angler fish dangling his bait

Why do we fool ourselves? There's a never ending circle of benefits involved with deceiving ourselves into living in a dream world. Most of the time hiding reality from our conscious minds is the only way to survive. How else do people survive wars, imprisonment, torture. The better we are at fooling ourselves, the better we get at fooling others. I love to find articles in the paper or online about how the economy is improving and how real estate prices are starting to turn around. I read these and ignore any facts that may point out that the opposite could be happening.

There's a passage highlighted in the review where the author recalls walking down a city street with an attractive young woman trying to amuse her when he spots "an old man on the other side of her, with white hair, ugly, face falling apart, walking poorly indeed shambling". The author realizes he's seeing his own reflection in a store window "Real me is seen as ugly me by self-deceived me". I've had a similar experience catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and thinking it's my mother, it can't be me. I, as well as most women I know, have a certain way of looking at themselves in the mirror....an angle of the head, a positioning of the feet - the way we look the best - the view in which we look thinner and younger. Not a realistic look at ourselves. Self-deception can be so much more pleasant than reality.

In the Amazon reader reviews, I liked the following comments/thoughts by Graham Seibert. His review was in part what spurred my interest in reading the book:

I would advocate that Trivers investigate the hypothesis that self deceit is essential for propagating our species. My premise is that having children in any modern society is a fundamentally absurd proposition: they do not generally benefit parents. They are an immense sink for resources: food, clothes, education, entertainment and so on. They cannot be counted on to contribute economically when they grow up, and because they did not have much societal or cultural pressure to do so, they all too seldom even express gratitude.

The self deceit of religion, that having children is God's will, may be required if we are going to perpetuate ourselves. No other species is as successful as ours at curbing its fertility. Even in classical times we had enlarged our perspective on sex from being primarily a process for procreation to being a recreation and a vehicle for displaying status. In modern times we have almost completed the transition. Playboy and Cosmo celebrate sex for its own sake, everybody insists that whether or not the aim is procreation, the sex has to be great, and increasing population has few supporters in secular society. Birth control and abortion have been almost perfected. Recoiling from such horrors as the USSR's "Mother Heroines" who bore ten children as cannon fodder, and the Nazis offered a "Mother's Cross of Honor," few governments in our times offer incentives great enough to put much more than a dent in the tremendous costs of raising children. If we are to survive, it will be on the strength of self-deception, chiefly of a religious nature.

Lost in Amsterdam

2012-01-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

Notes from my travel log:

When you start looking like your passport photo, its time to go home, said Erma Bombeck. I thought of this immediately upon seeing my new passport photo inching it’s way out of the auto-photo machine in the Amsterdam main station. As I stood looking at it in dismay, a small wiry man with a knit cap, blue jeans and a sweat shirt, pushed by me, ripped back the curtain and darted into the booth I’d just exited and using some sort of hand tool, relieved the machine of the 5 Euro I’d just deposited for my picture. As much as the horrible passport photo dismayed me, the sneaky thief was even more disturbing. The fact that we witnessed his robbery didn’t seem to bother him at all. He was more concerned about getting out the 5 euro before some other thief came and got it first! We stood for a while agape watching him moving around the station, lurking and darting from machine to machine.

We were having our pictures taken because our passports were stolen…filched, we think, from my backpack the night before. A night of tossing and turning, worrying over replacing the stolen documents gave me the gift of giant bags under my eyes and a strangely guilty expression on the passport photo. Amsterdam is a great city to visit on foot and we had enjoyed many days of tramping around sight seeing. The night prior after a very satisfying roast duck dinner, we stopped in at a “brown” café to use the internet and retrieve email. Brown cafes are well known around the world because you can openly buy marijuana in them, along with your cup of coffee.

Somewhere between the café and the tram, my travel wallet with passports, money, cash card, credit cards had vanished. Stolen or lost, we’ll never know, but most assuredly gone. Following the advice of many, we filed a report at the police station mid-city.

The officers on duty were most helpful. Because most everyone in Amsterdam speaks English, if you have to have such an experience, this is the city in Europe to do it in. Trying to explain the situation using my halting French or Richard’s German would have made it very challenging. Instead, the experience was pleasant. The station has bathrooms and free coffee. Officers, one female and one male, dressed in smart blue uniforms and starched shirts, took the time to take a very detailed report and explained that all such information is tracked on a central computer and lost/stolen/recovered items are all ultimately turned into a central lost and found. They weren’t particularly encouraging about possibly recovering the stuff, but they did run through a check-list of what should be done, such as putting stops on the credit cards. We were astonished when they presented us with the gift of two muslim neck wallets which they advised we should use in the future. While waiting for the paperwork to be completed we wandered around the station reading bulletins and tourist information posted on the walls including cautions against various and sundry scams. We were only moderately surprised to learn that some of the remarkably beautiful women we saw, “on display” in the red light district, may very well be men. Visitors to the area to sample the wares were clearly warned that transsexuals and transvestites also plied their trade in these establishments.

The red light district amazes everyone and is a regular stop for city tours. We saw a Japanese family (2 adults, two kids) engaged in a game of face making with one prostitute in a sleazy alleyway where red lights are in the majority. These tourists were behaving exactly as they would at a zoo. The prostitutes lease rooms identified by a red neon light framing the main window. They're on display in these windows which they make into a tableau of sorts. Some of the windows are equipped like bathrooms and the prostitutes wear underwear and preen in front of their mirrors. Others are furnished with an easy chair and magazines or books. The prostitutes are as scantily clad as the bathroom gals but posed reading – perhaps appealing to a more intellectual type? One magnificent looking creature was dressed in a sequined red, white and blue bikini and filled her window from corner to corner and side to side. She must have been 6 foot 3 inches, muscular but curvy and very beautiful. After reading the posting in the police station, we thought she may have very well been a he.

At the American consulate we were well treated and actually had new passports within the day. I was dismayed that no one mentioned how little the passport picture actually resembled me. With passports replaced and credit cards cancelled, we were all set to continue enjoying our remaining time in beautiful Amsterdam.

A few travel tips....

2012-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

You can find hundreds of useful travel tips on sites that sell travel gear. I've picked up many great tips from them and from fellow travelers over the years. Here are a few suggestions based on my personal experience that might be helpful:

Use plastic packing bags you squeeze the air out of. They work. I can get twice as much in a suitcase when I use them, particularly when packing sweaters or bulky stuff.

Keep everything valuable in your carry-on: cameras, Ipads, phones, medical stuff. Don't buy one of those carry-on's with a zillion pockets. Pain the in butt. Unless you use the thing for weeks you'll always be searching through nooks and crannies for something. Equally useless is a bag with one big cavity. Something with a few zipper compartments and an outer pocket or two is best. If you buy a new bag, try it out for a week or so before going. Some of these things just feel awkward..maybe they hit your body at the wrong spot or slip off your shoulder or something. Better to know ahead of time and buy another bag if you choose poorly the first time. I have a very light Donna Karan backpack I bought a dozen years ago..it's traveled the world with me and I can't find anything to replace it. It just feels right on my shoulder, carries just enough. For me it's perfect...might not be for you.

Take old clothes you can throw away. We always look like crap when on the road anyway. Clothes get wrinkled and you have to wear them many times before the opportunity for laundry crops up - it's just inevitable that you won't look your best on the road...relax and go with it. In Asia we buy cheap clothes in the markets and wear them while we're there. Sometimes they get tossed - a few pieces have made it home.

When we have some old underwear around we wear it and toss it. When we're packing underwear to wash, obviously we take the lightest possible stuff that can be washed in a sink, towel dried and finished off in the morning with the hair dryer if necessary.

Get a fresh haircut. Hair is always easier to manage for the first two or three weeks after a cut.

Divide toiletries among three or four small bags. I put the hair stuff in one, cosmetics/make up in one, the toothpaste and deodorant in a third. The kind of bag you hang on a door hook is the handiest because it doesn't take up the valuable and rare counter space in the bathroom.

We sleep in light stretchy sweatshirts and sweat pants. Nothing that screams of sleepy time. Just plain or lightly patterned and then you can wear them out in public in a pinch. Stretchy and snug (not tight) is good for cold weather travel because you can use them as a layer if necessary.

Scan your passport cover pages, driver's license, itinerary, credit card info (including the back side which has the lost card number and the out-of-country number) and email it to yourself. No matter where you are or what happens you can get always get these copies. Email is available everywhere.

Do yourself and others a favor and wear slip-on shoes for the airports.

Get some kind of sleeping potion so you can konk out on the plane. We take an ambien and it works just fine. Take the pill, whatever it is, before you eat and it will be most effective.

Keep a small flashlight on the night stand to prevent possible trips or falls en route to the bathroom in the dark and to avoid turning on the room lights and waking up your room mate or spouse. Good for reading in the middle of the night if you don't have an ereader (buy one!) and do have insomnia.

Do not bother with jewelry. Nobody is looking at you (sorry about that) and furthermore you don't want anybody to be looking at you. Often when you're traveling and in unfamiliar circumstances, you can get a bracelet caught on something or a necklace as it swings down in front when you bend over to pick something up. If you must wear something decorative, take inexpensive unsentimental items you can lose or have stolen without regrets.

Don't buy anything new "for the trip" at the last minute. Buy shoes at least a month ahead to break them in, wash new clothes at least once so any shrinkage will have already taken place and wear the items for a day or two to make sure nothing is binding, scratchy, pulling, stretching, sagging or needs a belt. Don't buy a new camera.....I see people so often trying to figure out the new camera just when the great shot is going by. If you're going to acquire a new one, do it well ahead of time.

Don't plan on wearing anything white.

Ever since my suitcase was lost en route to Jordan and Richard's wasn't, I think it's a good idea to cross pack at least one set of underwear. I had to wear his shorts for a couple of days until my suitcase was located and delivered to the hotel. The chance of both suitcases being lost is slim. If you're traveling alone, pack a change of undies in your carry-on.

Take a GPS if you have a portable one you're used to. Even if the car comes with one take yours anyway just in case (presumably you know how it works). They are invaluable. In Europe hotels and B&B's will give you map coordinates to input which further simplifies matters. A small compass is handy when you're walking around a strange town and now they have a small personal GPS which I think we may purchase for our next trip (buy it at least a month ahead to get familiar with it).

When you're staying one night or two nights in a spot DON"T UNPACK. Just work out of the suitcase, then everything is contained in one spot...it might become one big messy heap but at least you know where things are. I've traveled with people who take everything out of the bag and put the stuff in bureau drawers, night stand drawers etc. And of course they forget something when they pack up to leave.

Do a double check of the room when you leave. If there are two of you, one should become the bathroom expert, the other the sleeping room/closet expert. Do the first inspection in your area of expertise and then change off. Two sets of eyes are definitely better than one. We've left things in drawers, showers, on closet floors and dark shelves. We've left books which slipped under the bed or a sofa cushion or were left in the heap of messed up sheets - falling asleep reading. This will happen less frequently as we travel with e-readers and don't use regular books.

Voltage converters or chargers. Put a blob of day glo paint on these things so they stand out when you scan the room and you'll see that you've left them in the plug.

A couple of plastic bags are always handy for dirty laundry. You can distribute a few bags around in your suitcase (instead of having one big lump to work around). They're also good for the obvious - damp laundry or a bathing suit or dirty shoes.

Keep notes. I love my travel pictures but I don't think one picture is worth a thousand words...some, but not all. Reading back over the notes is at least as much fun as the pictures and the notes have the pithy details: hotel names, restaurant names, prices, names of people, anecdotes, personal impressions. Things people ask about. Nobody wants to look at your pictures. Trust me. Sometimes I take scotch tape and tape ticket stubs etc. into the note book although I'm getting lazier about this all the time. I must say they are fun to keep and look back on years later...the small memorabilia trigger memories and aid recall.

Drugs: We always carry as basics an anti-diarrhea medicine, pain killers, an antibiotic and sleeping pills - then there are various things each of us needs and keeps track of..Richard's arthritis stuff, my ibuprofen.

Stop in at a local drugstore for the regional novelties/remedies which are sometimes available over the counter unlike in the U.S. or are just better products - we buy Panadol (pain) in Australia and Bali, 222's (aspirin with codeine) in Canada, cold sore medicine (anti-herpes virus at half the US price) in Singapore, roll-on insect repellent (smells good -very effective) in Bangkok.

A trip to the grocery store is equally as much fun. In Europe you could spend days in these (I have)...there's not much you can bring back to the U.S. , but it's fun to buy and try foods while you're there. When we can, we rent an apartment with a small kitchen facility (microwave, refrigerator, small stove) and this gives us an opportunity to try many things, plus the convenience of eating breakfast in our pyjamas, having a little more elbow room and the pleasure of the hints and tips other renters leave behind. We've always rented spots through the internet and have never had a disappointment. We've rented apartments in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Bali, Hawaii, Tuscany, Cannes (Australia), Spain, Portugal, Sorrento, Argentina, Chile and most recently Jerusalem. In most of the apartments we've rented the landlord has left at least a list of local restaurants of interest. There are often guide books either deliberately or accidentally left behind, with pages dog-eared (good sign), notes in the margins. In some apartments they've left names of cab drivers to ask for, metro routes for popular sites, phone information etc. If you're in a pinch of some kind, the landlords can point you in the right direction - we've never had to ask for this kind of help ourselves but they have all offered. Think Concierge+++.

We carry our eye glass prescription just in case our glasses are lost, but also to have glasses made - often a bargain in Asia. We've had them made in Vietnam, Burma and Singapore. You could email this prescription information to yourself same as you do the passport info.

To be continued.

Choice

2012-01-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

The pivotal moment - we all have them. A choice - seemingly a small decision but one which changes your life.

My painter Winston and I had a talk today about his lead guy, Jose. About 8 years ago, while getting gas in his paint company truck, Jose and an older Mexican guy approached him and asked if he needed help. Win had too much work at the time and too few people. As it happened, he was on his way to strip wallpaper - the deadliest job in a painters repertoire. He hired them both and drove them to the job where, after a couple of hours of stripping, Win realized the job was going to require special equipment. He stopped the work, drove the two guys back to Bonsall and made the following proposition:

"I'll pay you for the four hours you worked and hire you again OR I'll pay you for a day, double what you earned, but you'll never work for me again." The older guy said he'd take the day's pay. Jose said, after thinking a bit, "I'll take the half pay." For eight years now, Jose has worked every day for Win.

Jose ran when he could walk, he jumped instead of stepping over things - he threw himself into the job and it's paid off. Now he has a home, wife, truck, car is skilled at every aspect of the trade and he's an effective supervisor. Not only that, but he seems a happy man.

Rich

2012-01-10T14:21:00.000-08:00

A bit of fiction....

Dad was a Canadian, an RAF pilot; Mom, a 13 year old unwed American mother. I was her second child. Yes, her second child.

Tom and Teri adopted me almost at birth. Years of trying and failing to have a child of their own had frayed their marriage at the seams. When I appeared on the scene, the stress of raising an actual child finally cracked the marriage in half. Dad left when I was about three. It was Mommy and me for the rest of it.

When Dad left, he all but vanished and we saw little of him after that. Looking back, I can see that he had suffered some kind of mental collapse as he was unable to work again and his social skills rapidly deteriorated. We had nothing. It was 1949 and jobs for women had disappeared again. Rosie the Riveter was back at the stove and the returning veterans needed all the work that was. Any woman wanting to enter the workplace was "taking a job away from a veteran". It was considered selfish, unpatriotic behavior. Women stayed home.

With few choices, Mom became an entrepreneur. First, she taught tap dancing. That helped keep us afloat for two years, "Tap Dancing for fun and profit" was our bible. Saturday mornings early, we'd roll up the rug and just before the students arrived, Mom would learn the steps. Ten kids would straggle in, put on their tap shoes and watch my Mom "Hop, shuffle, step"- one way across our living room and then back the other way. I can still do that dance. No Beau Jangles came of it, but by lesson 21 at the end of the book, both Mom and the kids could do a fair little shuffle. Parents were pleased as the kids learned way more from my Mom than the steps. She adored children and seemed to have a special second sense about them. I used to think it was those eyes in the back of her head she would warn me about. Tap dance lessons paid for the phone and bus rides, both considered extras. To put food on the table, she cleaned the local dentists office, dusting all the shelves and equipment on Sundays after church. Three days a week she was sales clerk in the big department store, working in the sweater department.

Mom listened to everybody, but was specially attentive to kids. She heard them in a special way. She sensed the hurts, insecurities, enthusiasm, fears that they couldn't articulate at that stage of life. She just somehow seemed to know.

"I think Maria would do much better if we put her at the end of the line. She's too tall for the center and it makes her off-balance." " I know Stevie hates the idea of dancing lessons so we have to think of some way to make this all fun for him."

Her every effort was thrown into giving the kids an opportunity to shine - each kid was taught as if he was having a private lesson. At her funeral, decades later, people came to me and remembered Mom as their dancing teacher, but so much more. While Mom was a roaring success at teaching kids about life and she worked hard at her jobs, we could barely live on the money she was earning.

Then we hit the jack pot. She went to work at Singer Sewing Machine Company. They needed someone to teach sewing to high school kids in the summer - basic sewing: cutting out a pattern, threading the needle, setting the tension on the machine, making a simple skirt. Mom's total sewing experience was acquired in her own junior high school home ec class where she successfully constructed an apron. It was in the big trunk in the attic along with her other prized possessions. The apron was almost in tatters when she finished her project. The seams had been ripped out and resewn so many times that the fabric looked like cheese cloth. The top sewing was visibly crooked. The ties were of two different lengths. No Coco Chanel, my Mom, but a simple lack of skill was not going to stop her. She could sell anything and talked them into giving her the job.

One day when she was taking care of the front of the store, a man came in with a blackened Singer. He was from the local race track where a fire had broken out in his trailer. Mom chatted with him about his sewing machine and then about the track "Are you coming out this evening?", the man asked. Mom had never even thought of attending horse races. He said, "If you come, bet a wad on #5 Gilda's Dream in the seventh. Her times are great and I think she's ready to go on this race. I'm betting big and I can't afford to do that often".

All afternoon, Mom thought about the tip. #5 in the seventh. She picked up the paper and looked at the handicapping for all the horses. It was gibberish to her although only a few experts thought Gilda's Dream could win. Finally she made a decision. At 5:30 instead of getting the bus home, she boarded the free bus headed out to the race track. She looked at the options and saw she could make a 2 dollar bet to win, place or show. She decided to take $20, everything she had in her purse and bet to win on #5. Gilda's Dream burst out of the starting gate and led all the way; Mom came home with a purse full of money. 15 -1, her pay off was $300. At Singer she was making $10 a week. Our rent was $20 a month. We were RICH.

Good bye High heels

2012-01-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

Goodbye high heels! Well, goodbye heels. They're hardly high compared to the foot killers the young girls wear now. My final three pairs are on their way to the Angel Shop.

Three pairs of shoes - each for one of life's great events. The purple shoes I wore to a wedding in Las Vegas. I attended this with low expectations and but it was a wonderful event. A flower filled chapel, an entertaining JP, followed by a lovely dinner in a small flower-filled private dining room with a cellist providing the music.

The black strapped shoes went to a few cocktail parties, mostly business but they stood by and ushered in a fun New Year's Eve or two.

The nun-like shoes were mostly work shoes - I wore them at trade shows and for traveling. The last event I remember wearing them to was my sister's funeral, sitting in the family pew at the front of the church looking down at my feet, wishing it was all a bad dream.

Looking at them now, they might as well be stilts for all that I could manage wearing them. I slipped one pair on and staggered down my hallway, bouncing from wall to wall, trying to keep from breaking my ankles in a foolish experiment. So much for that!

Tag Team

2012-01-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

Like all cats, these two spend most of their time staring at holes, branches or under rocks waiting for a lizard to make an appearance. The bunnies usually stay clear but this one wandered a little too close. He got away because of intervention by the photographer.

The cats heard it first....

2012-01-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

The mail had accumulated for the month he was traveling. He sat down at the desk to sort through it and pay the bills. Piles of magazines and catalogs were stacked to one side, yellow sticky notes jutting out haphazardly, marking things to remember. He pushed his laptop out of the way to clear a spot to work.

The radio was playing softly; dusk had fallen over the grove. He pried off his boots and set them aside glancing at the globe standing in the corner. The Asian continent was almost rubbed away from being examined while trips were planned or remembered. The world on his globe was the map of a lost world; borders had long since shifted and country names had been changed as regimes came and went. As on the globe, people and places in his own world were slowly being erased and fading away. He thought about his funeral suit shoved to the back of the closet after his wife's death, but hauled out again in January, the cruelest month, when his mother and brother both succumbed to illness.

The ranch was purchased for the quiet respite it offered, nine miles out of town with the closest neighbors acres away. Gated and enclosed with a 6 foot tall wire mesh fence and razor wire, maximum security was provided. He was frequently absent and needed the protection from crop theft. As he sat thinking, one cat came in and flopped at his feet; the other found a spot on the desk. Both began languorously licking themselves from top to bottom, purring heavily then more slowly, snorting a bit and falling into sleep.

At this time of year, the avocado trees were heavy with fruit and ready for picking. He was waiting and watching the market hoping to get the very most out of the crop this year. Water costs were high and climbing. For once in a very long time, he needed the money.

Penny Savers papers, credit card offers and pizza ads gradually filled the trash can, The once hopeless heap was reduced to a manageable stack. In the distance, rolling booms from Camp Pendleton training maneuvers rolled through, sounding like distant thunder storms.

The cats heard it first, awakening instantly, ears pushed forward, whiskers twitching, bodies alert and ready to run. He turned to the door and listened. A thump, followed by heavy footsteps coming down the driveway, a squeak of the iron gate and the sound of something being dragged.

His rifle was downstairs in the garage, locked in the gun case.

Craig's List

2012-01-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

I'm now a Craig's Lister. We had five outdoor lights left over from construction and my niece suggested we try selling them on Craig's List. I was skeptical but prepared the ad and placed it. Days passed with no response and then bingo! Someone from Oceanside made me a deal I couldn't refuse.

We met in the Oceanside Home Despot parking lot. A young charming Vietnamese man and his wife and child were the buyers. I told them I'd meet them at the front entrance of the store and that I'd be wearing a red shirt. There's a uneasy blind-date sort of feeling to this kind of encounter. Will they show? Will they be scam artists? I'm sure they wondered the same about me. They were very nice people...we opened the unsealed boxes together at my suggestion and found one small piece missing for which I gave them a credit. The $175 is found money and I'll buy something silly with it.

Inside HD I cruised the paint section to see what's new...old habits are hard to break. I love the inventive names paint sellers and clothing catalogues devise for colors. Glidden had a new Top 10 list of Empty Nest Colors. Why would Empty Nesters want specific colors? The line-up seemed unappealing to me: Pink Ballet Slipper, Sweet Baby Boy. Are they thinking of names for rooms you keep for your grandchildren? The other color names were sort of nostalgic and overly subdued - like colors you'd use in a funeral parlor: Misty Summer Day, Frosted Pine, Frosted Mulberry, Soft Suede, Wood Smoke. I would think they could have done something more fun and more baby boomerish: Thank God They're Gone Green, At Last We're Alone Amethyst, Get out the Bong Blue, Sex in the afternoon Suede, Now I've got an office Navy, There's food in the fridge Orange, New car in the garage Aqua, Tahitian Vacation Violet, No More Rap Red and so on.

I've only painted a few ceilings and still remember how difficult it is. Should I decide to do this in the future, I'd buy Gliddens ceiling paint which goes on pink and dries white. Brilliant. You can see the missed spots easily and fix them right away. The cosmetics people could apply this technology to make-up....have it go on green or something visible, so that old people can see where they've smeared it and where they haven't.

Resurrection

2012-01-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Maybe I should have stayed out of those religious sites in Israel. When I lit a candle for St. Anne I think I may not have been clear about my request for assurance that my brain tumor was "braised" . Instead it's been raised. The MRI I had on Dec. 30th shows "enlargement" which is not supposed to happen because the darned thing is irradiated and presumably dead. My otolaryngologist hasn't seen the films yet - it could be simple swelling which happens, but not usually so late after radiology. I'm hoping that's all it is.

Meanwhile a brain tumor can be used a great excuse for just about anything. Yesterday I heard a woman who was being tried for shoplifting used having a "brain tumor" as a defense. I might head off to Cartier, Fred's or at least Nordstroms for a visit.

Because my tumor is now sticking into hitherto virgin territory - fortunately I don't have much of this left - there's a new bunch of anatomy to learn. It's a good thing I've always been interested in the brain. The more I learn about it the more flabbergasted I am that it works so flawlessly for the most part, just humming along. I'm hoping I find out the tumor is pressing the correct way on the "increase smartness" dial.

There are many complicated structures in the internal auditory canal to learn about. One of them is called "Bill's Bridge"..it's a vertical crest of bone and it's named after William House, the pioneer of most of the surgical techniques used on acoustic neuromas. How fabulous to have a part of the brain named for you! I wonder if famous proctologists have experienced the same honor.

Bill's Bridge is easy to remember unlike most of the anatomical structures which have latin names: lamina cribrosa, meatal foramen or my favorites, tractus spiralis foraminosus and macula crista inferior. When you say all four of these in sequence at high speed and add a Dominus Vobiscum, it sounds like the old Latin mass.

Go in peace.

Maraschino Cherries

2012-01-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

We decided to get out of here for a while last night and drove to Ruby's Oceanside on the pier. Usually when we walk there we're bent over backwards by the wind, but last night it was calm and warm. Fishermen were enjoying the balmy weather, kicked back in lawn chairs with two lines going and musical accompaniment. Two lines is the maximum - one of the many rules you have to obey. No gaffing mussels or overhead casting either.

The beach end of the pier was busy. A yoga class was in progress, a couple of bonfires were burning, teenagers slouched around or whizzed by on their skateboards. What fabulous weather - January 5th and the teenagers were all in shorts. As you walk out on the pier the scene changes to joggers, romantic couples strolling, families with toddlers and baby carriages. We saw a couple bent down speaking carefully to their toddler, who had a few tears on his cheeks, his fingers in his mouth and his little hand clutching his father's jeans. The father looked over at us and chuckled. He said, "We told him not to swallow. I guess we should have told him first what swallowing was."

By the time you get to the end of the pier, it's all fishermen. Even the air starts to smell fishy.

Ruby's hamburgers are usually serviceable - not great, but the location makes up for the weaknesses. They have new, improved beef patties. Our cute waitress started running down her suggested beverage list and when she hit Cherry Coke, Richard bit. He hasn't had one for maybe 40 years and decided it was time. He took a sip and asked me to taste it. Nudging the neon red cherry out of the way, I slurped up a bit and tasted mostly almonds. This was not a surprise as artificial cherry flavor contains benzaldehyde which component they share with almonds. The original lovely Italian maraschino liqueur was made by fermenting cherries with the pits which added the almond note to the flavor.

Maraschino cherries originated in Italy of course and were a beautiful thing - cherries marinated in the Maraschino liqueur. I tasted one once in a gelato shop. They were loved world-wide and exported everywhere. Then came prohibition in the Unites States and out went liquor-soaked anything.

What to do? Bartenders and soda jerks still needed their cherry garnish. Enter the mad food scientists in Oregon. They invented a non-alcoholic version. First they soaked the cherry in a salt brine to remove it's natural color and flavoring. Then they were pitted and soaked in a sweetener for a month. Finally they were dipped in artificial coloring to render a brilliant red color. As if the florid red ones aren't bad enough you see a green version floating in a drink from time to time. The FDA definition of the cherries sums it up: "The term "Maraschino Cherries" is regarded as the common or usual name of an article consisting of cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar and packed in a sugar syrup flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor." The only part they leave out is the mandatory eradication of any sort of cherry flavor.

Despite my rambling on about these cherries Richard managed to suppress the natural eye-rolling instinct, tune his husband-ears to the "yes, dear" setting and enjoy his drink.

No Explanations please

2012-01-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

In November while in Israel, in Old Jerusalem we visited St. Anne's Basilica where no explanations can be offered; these signs are posted everywhere in the church. We didn't hear any explanations but a man did run in and start yelling at the top of his voice. I couldn't tell what language he was yelling in or what he wanted. A woman came along and shouted at him to "Shut Up!" and he turned around and left.

St. Anne's is on the site of the Bethesda pool (rain water reservoirs) whose waters were believed to be healing. The story goes that an angel flew over the pools once every 24 hours; whoever happened to be inside the water at that time would be miraculously healed. Christians believe that Jesus met and healed a paralytic there.

According to several Christian histories, the Virgin Mary was born in a cave near here. The Crusaders came roaring into the area in the twelfth century, slaughtering most of the inhabitants in the name of God and "discovered" many specific sites like this one, apparently overlooked by Helena, mother of Constantine who discovered most of the rest of them. The Crusaders included the cave in a huge church named for Anne, Mary's mother and the grandmother of Jesus. If the Crusaders or Helena missed a spot, the Franciscans stepped into the breach and named sufficient locales to satisfy the growing needs of pilgrims who traveled long and hard to get to Jerusalem and found the area a bit deficient in tourist infrastructure.

Nuns - Damascus Gate

St. Anne's now belongs to the French Government and is run by the White Fathers, an order of the Catholic Church named for the color of their robes. We ran into this group of white-robed Africans in the church and they popped up everywhere we went for the rest of the day. Easy to happen in Old Jerusalem where everyone is slogging around from one religious site to another. Many in this group had purchased suitcases at one of the shops and they were pushing them along like battering rams through the crowd. You had to keep alert and stay out of their way.

Tourists with suitcase battering rams

St. Anne's church is beautiful, simple and has fantastic acoustics. The Gregorian Chant plays constantly and the music is wonderful in that environment, even with half an ear. After seeing hundreds of bleeding suffering Christs on a cross, the image of the peaceful Anne and the beautiful austerity of the church was a relief. The story goes that Mary was born to Anne in the normal human way but she was born free of original sin so that she could go on to conceive Jesus, hence the Immaculate Conception.

Lighting candles and asking St. Anne for favors

Anne is the patron saint of, to list only a few : Detroit, Brittany, Quebec, the Mi'kmaq people of Canada and Santa Ana, California. She is also the patron saint of horseback riders, housewives, grandmothers, cabinet makers, unmarried women, women in labor and miners. She has an eclectic brood under her wing. What do cabinet makers and women in labor share in common?

We walked from the tranquility of St. Annes and the Bethesda pools over to the Damascus gate - a wonderfully chaotic spot, filled with people from all over the world milling around, buying and selling things, discussing the issues, living their lives.

Damascus Gate

Commerce Damascus Gate

Tiny egg seller

Central Station

2012-01-04T15:50:00.000-08:00

We enjoyed watching Central Station last night on our new large flat screen TV. It's really too big, but fortunately we can close up the cabinet when we're not watching it and make it disappear.

A joint French/Brazilian production made in 1997, we loved this film. It's a road story about Dora, an aging woman (the actress, was 69 when it was filmed) and a young man who she ends up taking under her wing. She's a feisty old broad, marginally moral who makes a living writing letters for the illiterate in Rio's Central Station. At night, she takes the letters with her to mail but actually she decides in a God-like fashion which will be mailed and which go to purgatory, which is the top drawer of her bureau. Most of them she doesn't bother to mail. Every time you think the story is going to sink into sentimentality, Dora surprises. The movie has a great opening - close-ups of one person after another sitting in front of her describing what their letter is about. Fernanda Montenegro was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999 for her fantastic performance.

Walter Selles

I looked up the director, Walter Selles on Wikipedia. He directed "The Motorcycle Diaries" another favorite and is currently working on an adaptation of "On the Road". His net worth is listed as 2.3 billion dollars. When I read this I was sure it was some kind of typo, but no, further reading revealed that he and his three brothers are heirs to the Unibanco fortune. The poor guy is handsome, talented and rich. Too bad.

Book Club Meeting January

2012-01-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

The book selection this month was the 2011 Man Booker prize winner, "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes. Because there were so few of us, we decided to meet at La Caseta, dining out together for a change. The margaritas and food were good (grilled tacos, cilantro chicken) at La Caseta, but the noise level was so high that it was hard to hear each other across the large booth we'd reserved. If we meet there again, we'll opt for the patio where it's a little quieter. We were all surprised that they had almost a full house at La Caseta on a Wednesday night. Good for them!
I loved this book. It's about memories and how they change when you look back. I couldn't summarize better than this:

“A page turner, and when you finish you will return immediately to the beginning . . . Who are you? How can you be sure? What if you’re not who you think you are? What if you never were? . . . At 163 pages, The Sense of an Ending is the longest book I have ever read, so prepare yourself for rereading. You won’t regret it.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

When you finish this book, you ask yourself "Did I miss something? What". Personally I've realized how much editing of my own memories I've done as I sift through family history and pictures. The brain corrects, deletes, embroiders relentlessly.

Julian Barnes not only weaves an amazing tale but he writes so well that you never want to write another line yourself. All I want to do is curl up with the entire Barnes oeuvre. "Flaubert's Parrot" here I come.

Manly

2012-01-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

January 2. Great grand nephews doing what boys do. But wait! Aren't those high heels on the little guy?

My grand niece, their mother ,captioned this photo: "Nothing says MANLY like a gun and dress-up heels".

They have a sister who usually wears the heels but two year old Brad likes the way they clack when he walks. He also wears her tap shoes for the same reason.

BAHA

2012-01-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

Robert Carlsen with simulated cat ears

BAHA - no, I'm not going to Mexico on vacation.

My BAHA stands for "bone anchored hearing assistance". It's my third year with one deaf ear; I fare poorly at social events and it's getting old. The holiday parties which I used to enjoy are now a matter of endurance. Straining to hear every word and hearing only half what's said is exhausting. The worst of it is being dismissed by conversationalists who quickly realize I'm oohing and ahing in all the wrong places. I can see the realization in people's eyes as they turn away and go for another drink. I don't blame them - so would I.

A regular hearing aid would do nothing to improve my hearing as the nerves are dead, engulfed by my ever-changing tumor. The only option to me for hearing improvement is the BAHA. It consists of a sound processor anchored in the skull. Sound comes into the receiver and it's transferred through the bone to the other hearing ear. The processor attaches to a titanium anchor or abutment implanted in the skull. The "saw bones", which is an appropriate epithet in this case, describe it as "easy surgery". Easy or not, you have to give the situation a lot of thought before letting anyone near your skull with a drill.

Results reported by people who wear a BAHA are mixed. Some rave; others feel it's a marginal improvement and still others suffer with infections around the abutment and headaches. Ugh.

I'm thinking about the lower-tech stuff. No infections, but I'll definitely have to get a bigger purse to carry the things around.

Never eat more than you can lift.

2012-01-01T20:05:00.000-08:00

January 1st: Maybe I bit off more than I can chew? Instead of a Big hairy audacious goal, I should have set myself a Medium hairy, well not even so hairy, audacious goal. It's 7:45 pm and I have nothing to say! Too much partying and talking. Too much talk during a day runs out my word quota; there's nothing left to write.

Miss Piggy said, "Never eat more than you can lift".

Good advice which I feel we've ignored over the holidays. We need a couple of days of semi-fasting to reset the appestat and return to normal. I feel better about our over-indulgence when I read about the routine intake of some of the legendary gourmands, for instance Balzac. I read the review of a new book, Balzac's Omelette, wherein they describe him consuming at a single sitting: a hundred oysters, four bottles of wine, twelve lamb cutlets, duckling, a brace of partridge, sole and pears by the dozen. This was probably more than Balzac could lift.

The book "celebrates Balzac's use of gastronomy as a literary device and social critique" - before Balzac, writers ignored their characters' dining habits.

Eating habits do reveal much about a person. It was Balzac who said, "Tell me where you eat and what you eat and at what time you eat and I will you who you are".

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

2011-12-29T20:18:00.000-08:00

Big Hairy and Audacious

The best thing I have to say about 2011 is that it's over. Hurray!

Turning the calendar page to 2012 makes me very happy - even numbered years are better for me and the best years are the ones that start and end with the same number. I loved 2002 which is the last time it happened and none of us can really count on being here for the next time in 2022. I intend to really enjoy this one. The first of many gravy years.

Ready for tea

The vibe is already getting better. My good neighbor came over for tea yesterday and we indulged in a few truffles and a cup of Earl Grey. Our garden is getting straightened out and the raised beds are ready for planting. We're planning a couple of trips and will be on the road in February if we can untangle a few knots.

Chocolate Hills Bohol Philippines

My Big Hairy Audacious Goal* for 2012 is to write something every day - hardly a huge goal compared to some of the bloggers I follow, but my average number of posts has been 100/year. I'm going for a triple. No rules except that catch-up is OK.

*Term coined by James Collins and Jerry Porras in "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Marlee's First Birthday

2011-12-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

My great grand niece Marlee Eilleen (I love the three e's in a row) had her first birthday party in early December. 20 adults and about ten kids. Flash bulbs were popping off continuously in her face, everyone gave her a tweak or a poke and made funny faces at her. They took all her clothes off but her diaper and a bib, sat her in her high chair and introduced her to a purple cupcake while we all croaked Happy Birthday off-key. Surprised at first, her little face showed bemusement, wonder and then delight as she got into sucking her fingers and enjoying the taste and texture.

She's a gutsy little thing, shrank from no one and very sociable - well equipped for life. She smiled at everything and seemed to enjoy the whole event. Frankly it would have been too much for me at my advanced age. Just the singing alone.

Dad (my grand nephew), Mom (Brandi) and Marlee

Me, Jennifer (grand niece), Marlee and Beth the first great grand niece

2012: Pure Gravy

2011-12-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

"Gravy, pure gravy", Raymond Carver the short story writer and poet pronounced his last decade of life. He thought he was a dead man when he was 39 and his dcotor told him he had only six months to live unless he stopped drinking. He did quit and died of lung cancer 11 years later.

Here's his autobiographical poem:

Gravy
Raymond Carver
No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don’t weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it."

Here's one of Raymond Carver's short stories:

Little Things

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.

He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.

I'm glad you're leaving! I'm glad you're leaving! she said. Do you hear?

He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.

Son of a bitch! I'm so glad you're leaving! She began to cry. You can't even look me in the face, can you?

Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up.

He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.

Bring that back, he said.

Just get your things and get out, she said.

He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.

She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.

I want the baby, he said.

Are you crazy?

No, but I want the baby. I'll get someone to come by for his things.

You're not touching this baby, she said.

The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.

Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.

He moved toward her.

For God's sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.

I want the baby.

Get out of here!

She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.

But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.

Let go of him, he said.

Get away, get away! she cried.

The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove.

He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.

Let go of him, he said.

Don't, she said. You're hurting the baby, she said.

I'm not hurting the baby, he said.

The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.

She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.

No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.

She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.

But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.

In this manner, the issue was decided.

The story appeared as "Mine" in Furious Seasons And Other Stories Capra Press, 1977 and as "Popular Mechanics" in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Knopf, 1981.

Trivia - Progressive Measuring Spoons

2011-12-28T07:21:00.000-08:00

Limbo week. Where nothing really happens. The wheels of industry cease to turn. I used to take the time between Christmas and New Year's to clean out my files and pretend to organize myself for the upcoming year. This is the first year I've had in full retirement...didn't work a single day and didn't earn a single dime. Files are a thing of the past.

Instead of fooling with files, I continue to concentrate on arranging our living space. Organizing the accumulata. Above is my measuring spoon drawer. If someone breaks in suddenly and demands a 1/2 teaspoon of anything, I can deliver it in a hurry. No fumbling around.

The measuring spoon drawer is in my mechanics cabinet which houses all the gadgets and cooking tools. It's installed in the island right across from my sink.

I resist accumulating new gadgets because most are such disappointments, but they do make great Christmas gifts even if they end up unused. This year I noticed these Progressive measuring spoons which appear to offer a few design improvements.

They're magnetic so if you don't have a measuring spoon drawer you can stick them on the surface most convenient for your use and they nest. No annoying ring holding the set together. There's a wet end and a dry end - if you measure a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and then have to measure a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, you don't have the clumping problem, nor do you have to rinse it off. The bottoms are flat so you can rest the measured amount on a counter, ready to use. There's a decent grip in the middle. I'm ordering a set from Amazon.

Here's the knife drawer in my mechanics cabinet. I'm not sure what mechanics use this drawer for but it works well for knives...the edges are protected, I can find them at a glance, there's plenty of room. If someone needed an emergency tracheotomy, I think I could find something that would do the job here..

One kitchen tool I particularly loathe is the food processor. Big and difficult to store, hard to clean, with too many parts. The recipe testers at Cooks magazine, Sunset, Food and Wine all love these machines because somebody cleans up after them, and cleans up as they go. They incorporate the processor in far too many recipes. For instance, I made key lime tarts the other day from a Food and Wine recipe. The crust is made of Oreo cookies and to crush 12 of them, the recipe calls for use of the FP. For 12 cookies, any sane cook would use a rolling pin.

Yes, I have a rolling pin drawer.

The Worst Recipes

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

I have some left-over crab meat and I was looking for a souffle recipe. It's Christmas morning after all.

From the book, "Fashionable Food" by Sylvia Lovegran, comes this horrible recipe from the fifties, in my opinion, prelude to the foulest darkest decade in recent culinary history, the sixties. People were so engrossed in the sexual revolution that food was barely on the radar screen.

Lobster Thermidor, can-opener gourmet-style.

1 (15-ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1/4 soup can water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard

3 cups frozen cooked lobster meat, thawed and cut into chunks.

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Mix the soup, water, lemon juice, half of the cheese and the mustard in the top of a double boiler. Add the lobster chunks and heat (do not boil) over simmering water. Pour into a buttered shallow baking dish or into lobster shells. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese. Place in oven until the cheese is browned, about 15 minutes.

In those days, dubbed the "Casserole Decade" by food historians, "can opener" mixed with "gourmet-style" was perfectly acceptable. Canned soups and TV dinners were newish on the grocery shelves. The Campbell's Home Economists were quickly developing soup-as-glue recipes that were roaring successes, still haunting our kitchens decades later. Who doesn't look forward to the classic green bean/mushroom soup/onion ring dish (three cans!!!!) for Thanksgiving dinner?

A frozen TV dinner sold for $1.00 in the fifties. Today at Albertson's you can purchase Michelina's Gourmet entrees for the same price - a buck each.

Other fifties greats include classics like the gag inspiring, Fruit cocktail-Spam Buffet Party loaf which incorporates such snazzy ingredients as Miracle Whip, gelatin and canned fruit cocktail. How about the Velveeta crab and cheese souffle? or the fat-on-fat Barbecued Bologna for men a la Crisco from the Crisco cookbook, "Praise for the Cook". No kidding, that's the name and here's the recipe:

Barbecued Bologna for men - a la Crisco

3/4 cup Crisco vegetable shortening

2 tablespoons Kitchen Bouquet

3 - 2 pounds whole bologna sausage

Mix the Crisco and Kitchen Bouquet together. Spread over the sausage. Grill the bologna over hot coals or spit roast the bologna until it is browned and hot through. Cut into thick slices and serve on rye bread or toasted hamburger buns.

I've lost my appetite.

Keep Calm

2011-12-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

Vivian Swift featured a link to a make your own "Keep Calm" poster. Here's mine:

And here's the link so you can make your own:

www.keepcalm-o-matic.uk/
The original "Keep Calm" poster you can read about on Vivian's blog right here:
www.vivianswiftblog.com

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

Photo 1. Christmas Eve - through the rancho door 2011

Photo 2. Farewell chandelier

Which picture shall be use in our midnight Merry Christmas e-mail?

Photo 1. A syrupy sentimental Christmas shot through our avocado front door.

Photo 2. Currently punishing ourselves for continuing to procrastinate about throwing junk away, we're resolved to stay put here until the junkola is gone. The other day, we got up and first thing, while still in our pj's, sleep-rumpled, grungy and before the dumpster guy arrived, we heaved the chandelier in it, said the last rites and parted with it forever. This light held sway (oh pardon me please) over many of Richard's dinners for years in DC and for a few at the rancho. In storage for ages, when we unwrapped it we found the wiring all chewed up or rusted and most of the parts cracked, chipped or broken.

Although Richard is feigning a separation anxiety attack we were actually having a merry time thinking up captions for the shot. Our favorite:

"Last night we had one last swing on the chandelier and we're very much worse for the wear. In fact we were thinking of diving in the dumpster after it!"

"Their chandelier days clearly over, the McHargues prepare to face 2012 unlit, as it were."

We held on to that chandelier

'Til people thought us very queer.

We rose at dawn

To get it gone

Consoled ourselves with lots of beer.

December Book Club Meeting

2011-12-24T09:59:00.000-08:00

The book selection for December was Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. It was selected because it's short and easy reading, appropriate for the holiday season. Some claim it's the funniest book ever written. I agree. I also think it's one of the most enjoyable travel books ever written. The humor has held up remarkably well considering it's a Victorian novel. The key features of the book are the funny perspectives of ordinary events (think Bill Bryson) and the fact that it wasn't written in the high falutin' style practised by novelists of the time. The Victorian literati thought the state of the novel had gone to hell in a hand basket when this book became a best seller. It's never been out of print.

Another bonus: the book can be downloaded free from the fabulous site: www.gutenberg.org. Even an illustrated version is available and it can be downloaded to a multitude of devices.

Roz hosted our meeting and a goodly groaning spread was enjoyed including bounty from gardens still putting out in December, one of the benefits we get from living here in Fallbrook. Fresh greens from Barbara's garden, a squash dish from Lori's garden and candy-sweet tangerines from Lori's and Rozs' trees. Roz made a pot of delicious chicken soup, a venerable recipe from her mother-in-law which includes as one of the critical components, precisely 12 peppercorns. Cookies and candies, irresistible, finished off the feast.

Next month we read the Julian Barnes novel, "The Sense of an Ending", this year's Man Booker prize winner. Critics say there "is more to get each time you read it". I like to have a book like this around - one that becomes familiar but still surprises.

For those of us interested in story telling whatever the medium, in this week's New York Times Book Review, there's an essay by Craig Fehrman on the "Channeling of the Novel". As the state of film deteriorates at a rapid pace and our beloved movies become little more than a string of dangerously loud and obnoxious sound effects enhancing car chases and explosions, cable TV is morphing into the preferred venue for serious and excellent story telling. He comments about the writers creating original cable series such as Solomon Rushdie - "The Next People", Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen - "The Corrections". Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "A Visit from the Good Squad" is being made into a pilot.

A footnote about sound effects: my friend's son was an intern on the newly released silent film, "The Artist". We're anxiously waiting for it to open locally so we can enjoy a theatre experience without ear plugs for a change.

My Rich Uncle

2011-12-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

Shuffling through family pictures and attempting to get them scanned and in order, I ran across this letter from my cousin. She enclosed the "rich uncle' photo above with the letter and comments that Hilda (my aunt, second from right) and Stuart Carroll (right) had a love affair for years but were cousins and never married.

Hilda was one of my three "maiden" aunts and the oldest of the lot. I knew her only as an elderly woman who wore lisle stockings and those awful clunky shoes with a thick wedge heel and laces up the front..."nun's shoes". She ended up never marrying which in those days was a tragedy; this letter implies that she never got over Stuart. Instead she worked for the Canadian National Railway for 50 years, retiring with the proverbial gold watch. I wish I knew more.

The rich uncle with all the hair acquired real estate in downtown LA and in Hawaii. Not only did he get the big hair gene he was also a driven entrepreneur. What kind of imagination and guts did it take to leave the farm in Canada, get into the U. S. and start acquiring property? I have no idea who he used as a role model but "go west young man" was the adage of the day and he heeded the advice. His property was left in a trust, very well managed, and his brothers and sisters, one of whom was my grandmother benefited from the generated income throughout their lives. When the last of his siblings died in 1967, the remains of his estate was divided among the heirs who were all listed in the account of distribution of the estate. There are so many relatives, so many Irish names that I wonder if I'm related in some way to most of the people of Irish descent in Canada.

IPad woes

2011-11-23T00:35:00.001-08:00

I haven't figured out how to use the IPad properly forblog posting. Even though the drafts I've written lookOK..when posted, the text turns into one long paragraph.Hiccups repaired in the draft appear as intact hiccups inthe posted text...capitalization etc. I'm hesitant enough about publishing myscribbles...mortified by the IPad end result.I love having the thing with me to read and answer my email,watch TED lectures during airport waits and for reading, currentlyDamascus Gate by Robert Stone.I intended to attend an Apple class but they are few and far between..they fill up almost immediately. Has anyone used an online tutorialwhich might be helpful?

As I carp about these inconveniences, I remember how it used to be "on the road".Carrying your cash around in one of those hideous money belts. In all my old travel photos my measurementswere 32-36-32...the 36 dwindling to 35 then to 34 as the travel moved forward and themoney was spent. Writing letters to make hotel reservations and waiting weeks sometimes forconfirmations. Paper airline tickets with 14 copies of everything..lose it and you weredead. There's an ATM right across the street here and they've never been more than a blockaway from anywhere. I can carry a couple of hundred shekels around and of course use the credit card foralmost everything.

Last time we were in Bali (last December) ATM's had appeared everywhere and are even air conditioned. At the Denpasar airport home to perhaps 30 Indian change makers notorious forgiving out incorrect change, a row of gleaming machines replaced the dimly lit row ofcubicles I used to shudder to approach.

The only real shuddering we've done here is with the taxi drivers. Most we've had have tried tocheat us....they forget to turn on the meter and half-way through the ride start negotiating the fare;they give incorrect change; they take the longest possible route if you're on the meter. I read about these practices before we arrived but didn't quite believe it but after 4 or 5 incidents I'm convinced. They view a fare as a wallet attached to a person with the emphasis on wallet.They employ every means possible to empty that wallet before you're out of the cab. This is the last ugly run-on post...we're catching a plane tonight/tomorrow morningand returning to the luxuriously, deliciously large keyboard and monitor.

Lost

2011-11-21T01:04:00.001-08:00

After a dozen days of running at top tourist speed from thing to thing, we've settled into a smallapartment in Jerusalem in the German Colony. Great location steps from restaurants and shops. We're regrouping - taking inventory of what we have left as you can get almost anything in this neighborhood. And what we should replace, if anything, before going home.

Richard lost his great Tilley hat at the Dead Sea Scrolls museum..not a bad place to lose a hat. Tilley actually replaces lost hats, or so they claim. How they can do this is beyond me. Certainly for their own protection they should have an upper age limit on the purchasers. My black shoes are gone..I think I left them in the first hotel...it's hard to lose shoes while you're actually wearing them, although when you see a pair sitting in the street, you wonder if somebody didn't miss them. As we're flying back to the bay area on Thursday and going directly to Thanksgiving dinner, I'll have to wear sandals or sneakers to the event. There are larger problems in the world. I'll be giving thanks that I have any shoes at all to wear.

The toothpaste is gone and we're tired of arguing over who didn't check the bathroom, so I can't say who should get the demerit. An essential, we'll have to buy a small tube. Toothpaste is easy to identify, no matter the language..in fact world-wide now, it seems to be all Colgate. No "Darkie" toothpaste left....that was a brand that used to be sold in Asia...it had a cartoonish logo of broadly smiling black man.. If still on the market, it's had a name change to "Darlie" in response to the complaints about the racial stereotyping.

All of our underwear will be trashed as we leave. We bought a package of laundry soap and the label info was all in Hebrew. The only English stated that it was for colors. Our freshly washed laundry is all grey. I think we bought a bleach for colors. The suitcases will be a little lighter.

Our Insight guide is gone along with our insight, I guess. Most of the beds we've gotten are singles pushed together. A crack develops between the two, widening as you toss and turn; as we've been reading the guide, while exhausted and in bed,no doubt it slipped between the cracks,literally, and disappeared into the maw of dust bunnies and other people's lost items. This year has been a stay-at-home year for us and I can only hope we've gotten a little rusty on the travel routine due to lack of practice and will get our act together sometime soon.We still have our passports and shekels, at least for now.

Surviving the Holy Sepulchre

2011-11-21T00:36:00.001-08:00

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem chaos reigns. The territory is carved upinto tiny chunks owned by various religious groups and sub groups. Supposedly it is the site of Jesus' crucifixion but most evidence points to the fact that this site along with many other famous Christian sites were selected by various officials and groups in response to pilgrim's need for a substantial physical spot to embrace, visit, worship at. The Franciscans were particularly sensitive to this and cooked up the stations of the cross for instance and the rosary, a kind of portable prayer device...it of course was wildly popular and continues to be so. People buy them here by the dozen to take home.

As we entered the church and our eyes adjusted to the gloom we could see the mobs and mobs of people. As I got my bearings a huge Greek Orthodox priest pushed by me almost knocking me over swinging his incense salver in front of him and literally pushing people over as I suppose he was trying to accomplish his round of prayer and sanctification. I'm surely not the only one of the collaterally damaged who cursed the brute. This piece of real estate is so highly contested that the presiding clergy break into actual fights from time to time. Each group's territorial jurisdiction seems to hang by a thread. It's so bad that the church is falling into ruin because to implement repairs cooperation between the smoldering factions would be required.

Symbolic of the whole mess is a ladder that has been resting against one of the walls for a century and a half...some say it was used to deliver food while one of the groups was under siege..another story is that some brave soul was going to attempt a repair but found the procedure to be even more complicated than the San Diego Building department and gave up. Even removing the ladder is impossible.We felt grateful to get out of there with only minor injuries.

A fat cat in Tel Aviv

2011-11-20T10:57:00.001-08:00

The beautiful fat cat was sitting on the restaurant windowsill watching us as we picked our way along the rainslick street. Richard chucked him under the chin and the cat looked me up and down in a sideways glance. I could tell he didn't think much of me...they never do until the scraps start falling on the floor.

We got settled inside, ordered a couple of glasses of wine and noticed the party across from us near the windows, was smoking away. The cat moved over to the smoker's window and sat there staring in. Soon one of the smokers cracked the window and the cat's paw was in like a flash. The paw groped around aimlessly for a minute or so and then started to stretch and stretch and stretch. The smoker's ignored the cat gymnastics while Richard and I were laughing loud and hard. The cat didn't actually hook anything and withdrew his paw,looked at it and started to groom himself as embarrassed cats are wont to do. Another few minutes passed and one of the smokers cracked the window slightly more. incredibly quickly the cat flattened himself sideways and squeeZed in leaping over the smokers (who barely noticed...they were French and tres chic) and immediately began sucking up bits from the floor which he had quite obviously GPS'ed while he was outdoors peering in through the windows.

It was all too slick. We decided the whole scene was planned by the cat...he knew that smokers would open a window and chose his spot strategically. Not only that,but he had me pegged as a soft touch from the earlier assessment and didn't waste any time sucking up to the French or the other sophisticates. Straight over to our table and he went into a routine you wouldn't believe, purring, rubbing, rolling around. If the cat pulled out a "nose and glasses" I wouldn't have been surprised. He scored big time at our table and moved along when he saw the plates were empty.Oh he left us laughing but I felt cheap and used when he was done with us. Love 'em and leave 'em....that's the way it goes in the cat racket here in Tel Aviv.

Idiot's Guide

2011-11-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

I aspired above my grade level by purchasing "The Complete Idiot's guide to Jewish History and Culture". It occurred to me that there might be a market for a version even simpler, for those like me, so handicapped they couldn't complete such a tome. But no - an idiot is the bottom of the IQ barrel - on some old psychology scales indicating an IQ of from 0-25 while an imbecile was rated at 26-50 and a moron, the top of this sad heap, at 51-70. From a classical marketing standpoint the Idiot's Guides should have been a total failure - as little chance for success as would be the "Impotent Man's Guide to Sex". Not so. Apparently we have no problem on the whole admitting we are idiots. The guides have been a roaring success from the get-go.

We're leaving for Tel Aviv tomorrow and I'm only halfway through the complete guide - ergo, a half-finished idiot. Those of us in the food business would say "half-baked idiot". Summarizing the summary of the summaries, there are really only 198 bullet-point essentials I'm hoping to get through while it's raining.

The last Idiot's Guide I read was for the Civil War. Not bad. Illuminated much about Gettysburg. The Jewish History and Culture guide is written by a rabbi with a great sense of humor. Of course, there's endless material to work with and a host of Jewish comics to quote. Keeps the text lively.

We're doing the usual tourist route: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Galilee, Golan Heights, Caesarea, Tiberias, Masada, Haifa. We rented a small apartment in Jerusalem where we'll spend the most time. Stretching ourselves too thin as always we're arriving back to SFO on Thanksgiving day where we'll rent a car and drive to our nieces in Orinda for the annual family Thanksgiving dinner.

Enough Space

2011-11-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Who hasn't been thinking about population density as the news blared about person number 7 billion entering the world yesterday? How crowded are we going to be with the next billion coming on in a scant fourteen years?

Where we've moved - to the avocado grove in De Luz, we have a lot of room and I've been enjoying both the quiet and the space. While landscaping the new planting beds, we've liberated many plants from the tiny cramped pots they've been stuck in, some for a couple of years. Frequently as they're eased out of their little homes, you see roots curled round and round, back on themselves, reaching to the surface and then diving back down into the dirt. I almost heard the lilies sigh the other day when we moved them to nice large holes where they can wiggle around and stretch.

A book about crowding I've never forgotten is John Hersey's "My Petition for More Space". Personally I have a touch of claustrophobia and have felt something akin to "line sickness" when stuck on the freeway in a jam. Seems like a great time to read this wonderfully imaginative tale again.

"Try to imagine a book that mostly takes place in a waiting line. Hersey does it with this marvelous tale. It is the near future, when couples have to apply to have a child, and are allowed only one. (Patriotic teen males can agree to get a vasectomy.) Personal space for individuals is limited to an 8x12-foot painted square in a large warehouse dorm, and the only area in New Haven with grass and trees is walled off -- the mayor gets to mow it but others can only look at it through a window after waiting long hours in line. Thirty-seven-year-old Sam Poynter, who writes reports and is getting divorced, is in a line, four abreast, to get to the petition windows where he will ask the authorities for the unheard-of favor of a slightly larger living space. Crushed around him are people petitioning for more protein, to change their residence or job, to get Havana cigars, to have a child. An elderly woman is petitioning to have her dear grandson not to be taught to read, so he can learn something more useful. Moving a block every 15-20 minutes for several hours, Sam grows to like some of the strangers around him (especially the young blonde in the blue dress against whom he is pressed from behind, who seems to respond to his verbal and physical overtures) and dislikes others. A woman faints and is passed over heads; several people suffer "line sickness" and go screaming mad. An unhappy gent starts up a chant to get Sam thrown out of line. Like Hersey's earlier science fiction novel, _The Child Buyer_, this 1974 story wraps considerable humor within a chilling and depressing overcoat."
David Loftus, Resident Scholar

On the Farm

2011-10-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, on certain Sundays in September we city slickers piled into a couple of cars and repaired to a friend's farm where we picked potatoes and stooked wheat. Bob the farmer was eternally an old man in my memory - a disheveled bachelor dressed in dirty overalls. He had a goiter problem, a huge Adam's Apple and bulging eyes. He was skinny and the few teeth he had were yellowed from his continual smoking; a smoldering fag always hung from his fingers. He could smoke a cigarette down to the size of a pencil eraser and watching him drag on those burning bits was both fascinating and horrifying. At any moment you'd think you could smell his lips searing.

He spoke very slowly and deliberately. Despite his gruff appearance he seemed to like kids and he usually had a surprise of some kind ready for us on visiting days. Riding on a cow's back was one such surprise. He'd pick us up and settle us on the cows back and then pile up some fresh cut grass in front of the animal so that it would stay in one spot. The elevation seemed very lofty to me and quite exciting. As I grew older I can remember reading on the animals back - one of the more curious ways I've read a book.

During my university years, I had a garden on his property. He'd turn the earth for me and I'd come out in the spring and set the rows with my hoe, sow the seeds and set strings above the rows. My father probably forced me to do this as part of the payback for tuition...I was too self-absorbed to think about charity and he was always harnessing me to the plow, so to speak. Dad did all Bob's legal work for free and likely called in a few chits to get Bob to indulge me in my continuing farm education.

Bob did all the really hard work in advance and I got the good part - planting yellow wax beans, beets, rhubarb, potatoes, peas and onions as soon as the frost danger was over (it was never really over in Winnipeg). Harvesting in September usually yielded bushels and bushels of vegetables which we donated to an orphanage. My boyfriend's little black Austin convertible would be loaded down...I'd ride squeezed into the back using my body to keep the peas from blowing out as we crept our way to the orphanage. We'd make several trips a day on Saturdays until the plants were picked bare and the nights were getting frosty.

Old Bob came to my wedding. It was the last time I saw him. The reception was held at a restaurant in the airport presaging how my life was going to unfold. Bob, all cleaned up, smoking longer butts in honor of the occasion, and my three maiden aunts (all in their sixties at the time), resplendent in hats and gloves, got blotto drinking Manhattans in the Fly-Away bar before the wedding. None of them really drank much in real life and they ordered Manhattans because they'd heard the drink was sophisticated. What happened afterwards I shudder to think. My father reported that they all suffered mightily from hangovers. Fortunately, the aunts lived right next door to the Catholic Church; if "morning after" confession was necessary, they didn't have far to go.

My Lapsed Judgement

2011-10-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

I reached into my cache of greeting cards to find something to send a friend. For the fiftieth time I shuffled past the three cards, now yellowed with age, that endure as a testament to my temporarily lapsed judgement and common sense.

Here's the birthday card that can never be sent.

Here's the Christmas card......

When I bought these card a dozen years ago in Marlene's Hallmark I thought they were hilarious. As my own rear view "adjusts" with age, I've grown more sensitive to my potential audience. The cards survived my last vicious purge of stuff - I keep them as a sort of touchstone of bad taste.

The third card I bought when my friends were younger; there was little risk in treading on such thin ice. Now I still think it's funny but don't dare send it to anyone.

Neither brass nor bass

2011-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Intrigued by the idea of a organ recital with hand bells and brass, I went over to Grace Presbyterian Church to see the advertised concert. The organist, an enthusiast and charming woman was the star of the show. She introduced each piece with a short explanation of the music and it's origin, facts about the composer and why she chose the piece. Designed to show off the organ, several of the compositions were quite showy and made good use of the entire key board and the bass pedals. After she finished each piece with a flourish, she'd come back to the microphone, almost breathless and make a little comment about her playing, "That really warmed my fingers up!" or "That one is a real challenge!" She was adorable. She also played a bell solo and was part of the bell ringing ensemble.

I was fascinated by the gloves the bell ringers wore and did a little research when I got home. Some play the bells "naked" - without gloves, others claim gloves are necessary to protect the bells from oils and sweat on the hands.

Turned out there was a typo in the flyer advertising the concert. It wasn't brass, but rather bass accompaniment and it turned out that the bass player had an emergency and couldn't be there. No brass and no bass either!

Enthusiasm makes a huge difference no matter the endeavor. I enjoyed the concert and the almost-one-woman show very much.

Aidez moi!!

2011-09-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

Every year I swear I'll get my taxes done in January. Then I shoot for April. Next thing I know it's September and my accountant tells me I face a 25% fee increase if my information isn't in her hands by September 15th. There's nothing like a good deadline - one with a bit of pocket pain attached, to make you finally face the music.

Why am I writing a blog entry instead of drilling away at the paperwork until it's done? Because nothing brings out the procrastinator in me like this one task. I can think of at least a hundred things that should take precedence. After the hundred things are done, I get an attack of ADD. I can't focus on anything for longer than 30 minutes without taking a break, which leads to a distraction and then another break and so on. I've read that there's some kind of ego depletion phenomenon that occurs when excessive procrastination sets in and I believe I suffer this. Who am I anyway and why am I trapped here wallowing in paper?

Every year I imagine the dreaded audit is imminent. In my nightmare scenario, I mail in the return and some young zealot gets hold of it and finds hundreds of errors. A viciously precise scrutiny ensues and a precious year of my life is wasted justifying my $19.95 subscription to Food and Wine magazine.

As I shuffle the papers around, I find myself gradually getting numb. My tongue went first in this year's case of tax paralysis, starting with a specific cluster of nerves down the middle - I can barely cry out, "Save me from all of this....someone, anyone!" In other years, 1992 if I remember correctly, the finger nerves, specifically the nerves involved in gripping a pencil, failed utterly. In '04, I couldn't keep that rubber finger thingy on and it would fly off my paper flipping finger like a boomerang or something out of a Kung Fu movie. If I was prone to headaches I suppose I'd develop one of those. Stressed, my body is sending out random alarms. I need a Canadian aspirin or two (they put some codeine in the mix) and I have a bottle of 500 reserved specifically for the temporary relief of the pain in the ass our tax code has become.

My husband took one look at me a few minutes ago and decided to go to KFC and pick up some fried chicken for dinner. I'm headed for the wine bottle.

Truth and Fiction: Clara Peeters

2011-09-08T05:21:00.000-07:00

Osais Bert was waiting outside the door with the cloak over his arm, pacing back and forth and ruining her concentration. She sighed, reaching for her loupe and glass. When would he cease his hounding? Hunching over the canvas she used her finest brush to finish her own reflected image in the silver candle stick. The idiot Osais could try 1000 times and never reach the perfection she could achieve. In the atelier, when a detail was necessary Clara was summoned. The first and only woman to ever work here her steady hand and perfect eye could capture the smallest, finest details. And the master reaped the benefits in prized commissions and higher fees. He needed more money. After all it was 1607 and inflation was rampant since the Burghers had money to lend and the Church no longer counted usury a sin.

More frequently now the studio was accepting private commissions. Gone were the days of painting only for Rome, recreating ponderous Biblical scenes to hang in obscurity in dark churches, monasteries and clerical residences.

When Clara was twelve she began painting insects. Her lady bugs were marvels under the glass - she captured every hair, every detail. Her reputation and genius quickly grew. Clara's flies were unequaled - layers and layers of paint were built up with her fine sable brushes; textures and light grew with impasto until the viewer was mesmerized. Later she applied the same technique to painting other insects, grasshoppers, crickets and spiders; then small objects: mirrors, vases, thimbles. Now three years later, Clara - a woman - barely more than a child, was acknowledged not by all, but by a growing number as a skilled studio painter. The cloaking ritual, sneaking her into the studio in the day and out at night was still necessary. Osais felt the need to hide her from plain view to protect her honor although more and more often commissioners requested a painting by "the girl".

And now at last she was painting a whole canvas in the new still life style, the style she was developing. The burghers, trying to achieve immortality desired records of their possessions - a way to live on beyond the grave. Newly wealthy, they loved paintings of dark rooms packed with their treasures from top to bottom. But this one was a happier canvas. Stepping back she assessed the almost completed current work. Commissioned for the wedding of a Burgher's daughter, she had carefully chosen the most iconic objects to work on the canvas in her lovely composition, which radiated lasting beauty and was neither overly religious nor profane.

As the painting would be the prized possession of the young couple and their most important wedding gift, she was careful to include the pieces the couple loved along with symbolic food and objects associated with love and marriage. A long twig of rosemary was hung with tiny ornaments, perfectly painted. Rosemary with its long lasting strong scent represented the persistence of young love. The beautiful tiny ornaments, exquisitely painted gave Clara the opportunity to exhibit her great skill. She liked to include a candle light for balancing the glow on the canvas and she was pleased with the soft light on her scene. Just as life and love progress, candles represented the flare of passion, followed by radiation of a constant light, flickering occasionally and then finally simply dying Two large wedding pastries rested on the marital plate and the "P" was the initial of the new couple but she painted it with extra joy as it was her own last initial. The two glasses represented the bride and groom. Their wedding ring at the edge of the plate added whimsy to the composition and balanced the magnificently painted fly creeping across the tablecloth in the background, the unsuspecting insect being in imminent danger of discovery, swatting and extinction; it represented and reminded the viewer of the the brief time we have on earth.

She wiped away a bead of sweat as she worked her own tiny reflection into the candle stick. Clara enjoyed painting this quirky signature, known only to her and the only way she could get credit for her work. Soon after this trademark was discovered by a discerning eye, the burghers began to request that she include it in all her paintings for authenticity.

She turned back to the canvas to draw more tiny lines which the waning studio light revealed were wanting. After a few moments, her eyes raised and she met the burning, impatient glance of Osais. Her day was over. Clara reluctantly stood up from her chair.

Mixed media: Dance and food

2011-08-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Down the alley, behind Jose’s Rotisseria, 17 chickens marinated in rum, brown sugar and lime juice turn slowly on a spit and begin to drip, the juices sizzling on a bed of red hot BBQ coals. A sweet rumminess rises up, catches the air and wafts 3 blocks east through the open window of Anton’s nightclub, flutters round the dressing room curtain and into the flaring nostrils of Ricardo Perez, tango dancer. Perez snaps to attention, his appetite alive; he reaches for one of the spicy empanadas on his dressing table, bites down, his lips and tongue slowly burning as the meaty filling and buttery crust melt in his mouth.

On the other side of the curtain, Lucinda straightens her bodice, checks her makeup and takes one last sip of her Pisco Sour. Salivating, her tongue is prickled by lime juice and her cheeks pucker from the alcoholic Pisco. She smells the charring chicken and stamps her strappy black heels.

The strains of the tango music start; Ricky and Lucinda swirl out onto the dance floor plastered against each other, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, nose to nose, moving sinuously to the torrid tempo. As they swoop past the birthday table Lucinda’s little finger, dangling, scoops up icing from the tres leches birthday cake. Gracefully, her hand passes her mouth and she laps up the milky icing. “Sweet”, she sighs.

Another a low dip and over Luncinda's raised bosom, Ricky sees the remains of a large platter of grouper in lime sauce on the table while a limoncello bottle is being passed around. Bowls of deep yellow pineapple chunks sprinkled with cilantro are scattered around the stained table cloth red blotched from splashes of the house salsa picante. Half eaten plates of flan swimming in caramel sauce are piled at the table's end. The diners have pushed their chairs from the table and lean back, sipping their mojitos, toothpicks at work. The dancers hear a belch of satisfaction as they make another pass.

As the last few squawks wheeze from the ancient accordion, Ricky and Lucinda assume the classic tango pose, her leg draped over his thigh, her stretched back arched outward, arm raised high in the air; as if mimicking the tortured tango melody, their two taut young stomachs begin a yearning growl .

Hot nights in Cincinnati

2011-08-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Cincinnati was hot and humid..a typical summer evening - throngs of people dressed in bright red t-shirts and hats walking to the downtown stadium for a Cardinals game. In the Hilton Hotel a couple of hundred people gathered for the Acoustic Neuroma Association meeting. Eh? What's that? Sorry I can't hear you? Could you speak louder? - these were the kind of comments floating in the air. As we waited for the elevator's arrival heralded by a ding, all 12 people in the lobby started circling around, looking at the lights, having no idea where sound is coming from. Richard was the only person with sound localization and he shouted out, "Walk this way!!". We followed him like a line of chicks following their mother.

Over the weekend, we listened (ha) to lectures and presentations learning a lot. Surgeons, radiologists, epidemiologists, public health professionals and audiologists made presentations. Highlights of general interest from the causation front: childhood radiation is linked to development of brain tumors in adults, radiation from thyroid treatments in particular. There's a huge Israeli study on-going. N. African children emigrating to Israel in the early fifties were irradiated to treat head lice..lots of data available for study. Smoking may protect against certain kinds of cancer, although nobody is suggesting you risk lung cancer for protection from other cancers. Another development is that is that people who have allergies have less cancer...they speculate that developments in the immune system might have something to do with it.

Just what everyone wants - plastic brains

Cruising the exhibits, we picked up a couple of plastic squeezable brains - I'm thinking of making them into giant earrings - and we saw demonstrations of surgical apparatus that was being sold to the physicians in attendance - cool new cutting, sawing, boring stuff for brain surgery that they demonstrated on a grapefruit, cutting the segments out carefully. Actually, I can do as well with my saw toothed, curved grapefruit cutter (ha). Because everyone has wonkiness and dizziness to some degree we bumped into each other frequently. It was pretty funny watching people veer off into walls or miss a doorway. When the whole community shares a problem like this, it is not longer the problem. The unaffected people are the ones who stick out like a sore thumb.

Met a few poor bastards with NF2...with this condition, tumors- usually benign, spring up everywhere. One fellow had nine in his brain and twenty or so on his spinal cord. These people have as much surgery as they can stand but eventually they are just overwhelmed and things stop working because the neural pathways (and other things) are crowded out by the tumors.

Many of the people attending were "watch and wait" - they have slow growing small tumors and the luxury of time. They can wait until the tumor starts causing symptoms or decides to bolt, like mine did, then get to decide between three kinds of micro-surgery and three or four kinds of radiation. Every procedure has advantages and disadvantages. There are constant improvements in the treatments. In the two years since I was irradiated they are apparently modifying dosage. I received 18 grays and now they are delivering closer to 14 grays during the same procedure. Obviously the lower the better.

It was encouraging to hear that there's hope on the horizon for tinnitus sufferers. Because tinnitus is in the brain - it's actually the brain creating noise to replace the stimulation of sound, the only thing that really works now is a kind of retraining where the brain is conditioned to ignore the sound. Interesting that tinnitus can take so many forms - some people just hear a whooshing, others clanging, others sirens - I have a whistle and a buzz and can mostly ignore it except when I can't.

tinnitus sounds

Lake Arrowhead - a short break

2011-08-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'll always remember the next to last time I was in Lake Arrowhead. It was July 20th, 1969 and Apollo 11 landed on the moon. My girlfriend and I pulled off the road so we could listen to the historic broadcast on the radio. The place has changed a tad since then. In fact they burned the whole village down rebuilt it and now it looks ready for still another face lift.

As we drove up the mountain, we found the price of gas going up along with the elevation....

Right after we got out of the car at The Oaks, two cabs from the Santa Monica Cab company pulled up. Out jumped five guys speaking Arabic, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. They huddled around talking for a while ignoring the friendly remark from a local who asked, "Took a wrong turn did you?" They soon jumped back into the cabs and off they went.

Just after we met our friends and sat down to lunch, twenty-two County Sheriffs pulled up on motorcycles. They lined up on the side of the road and we thought perhaps a personage of importance was coming up. No - turned out they wanted lunch. One of them came into the small restaurant and the hostess asked "How many?". "Twenty two", the sheriff answered without blinking an eye.

Shortly behind the sheriffs, a few beautiful antique cars starting pulling in. There's a car show in Big Bear over the weekend.

After all this excitement, a few hours sitting by the river at our friend's tiny cabin in Benton Flats was very relaxing.

The darling cabin

You can let your hair down here

We went on to the Resort at Arrowhead and checked into a comfortable room. The resort has been updated and looks pretty good. A couple of perplexing policies make you feel ripped off - the first is the compulsory resort charge of $19.00 per room which basically gives you access to the amenities??? the spa, services like dry cleaning...it does include valet parking (but you've still got to tip) and free Internet access (too complicated to set up). You must pay the resort charge - it's not included in the room charge. Seems like a stupid policy to me...just charge $19 more for each room and avoid the controversy of having a posted charge for the room and the extra charge for having common-place amenities available. It's only a matter of time before hotels start adding charges for items like upgraded sheets, pillows, towels, hair dryers. Once I stayed in a Red Lion Inn hotel where everything in the room was pointed out...."Extra large bathroom mirror!", "Super sucker commercial grade toilet!" "EZ Glide closet doors!". They assaulted the guest with senseless chest beating (does anyone care about the glides on the closet doors?) and exclamation marks. I could hardly wait to get out of there!!

In the interest of protecting the environment they only serve bottled water - still or sparkling. And of course they charge you for it.

Hallway lighting

Birch room dividers

The bar with birch wall paper

Private dining at the Resort

The beach at the Resort

On the way from Arrowhead to Twin Peaks for dinner, we passed a Jensen's market - a rare sight and we decided to stop and look for a favorite ice cream topping they carried years ago. Didn't find it but we did stumble on the Tabasco Seven Spice Chili Starter, a product I developed for them 20 25 years ago and haven't seen for a decade - they sell it in the company store or on their web site. I thought the packaging still looked good.

Parking in Twin Peaks is like parking in Manhattan. Every available space is restricted for some reason or another. Sign after sign reminds you that towing might occur. We finally stashed the car in a business designated space hoping the dire warnings applied only during normal business hours.

Remarks on "yelp" about The Grill were very encouraging and the place was a surprise. The menu offerings were creative - I can't rave about the food but it was definitely a cut above what we were expecting. Richard had the citrus and rosemary marinated chicken with truffled macaroni and cheese. The chicken was over-cooked but the truffled mac and cheese was excellent. I had lime tequila fettucine, a riff on the dish made famous by California Pizza Kitchens. It was satisfactory. We got there about 6:30 and the place was full at 8:00 when we left. Bar does a pretty decent business - biker types, young couples pouring down shooters and a few martini drinkers.

At the resort the next morning, we had breakfast on the patio overlooking the lake. Delightful experience - perfect weather and excellent service. A pleasant short break.

Hers: Bacon and Eggs

His: Poached eggs on spinach and sausage

Breakfast View

Two Million Applications

2011-08-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

Entrance to El Bulli (guardian.co.uk)

Two million people applied for reservations for Adria Ferran's El Bulli last supper July 30th. Talk about quitting while you're ahead!

El Bulli

El Bulli recipe catalog

From "The Guardian",

"I never said I wouldn't feed people," Adrià smiles when I ask what he will miss when he closes his door at the end of this, his last season. "After July, El Bulli won't be a restaurant, not open every day. But I will still need feedback." Adrià's plan is for a nonprofit centre for "culinary creativity" opening in 2014, with a stream of new recipes posted on the internet. "We are excited," he says through an interpreter (Adrià doesn't trust his English to be precise enough for our purposes). "Bulli has always been about change. Why does Madonna with all her money need to earn more? She could share, not her money but her creativity. The young share, and we at the top should, too.

"When we started there were eight of us, all bachelors; now we have families, kids. I don't have children but I am very happily married, with a wonderful wife. With the foundation I can give something back – my talent, my luck. I have created 1,846 dishes – 80 per cent of new cookery techniques come from here – but no one can be number one for ever. Even those that love us get tired" – though this may be news to the two million people who desperately tried to book when the news of El Bulli's closure was announced.

"I will be 50 soon, with maybe 25-30 years left," he laughs. "I want to be happy like I have always been, and I can do this by taking away the things I don't like. Do what I want, when I want, for who I want."

Chef Ferran will now be establishing a kind of think tank for food. From the El Bulli web site, here are a couple of views of the envisioned space. Personally my best ideas about food were inspired by being surrounded by food - aromas, textures, colors, kitchen activities. Sitting in this spare space, sort of like the inside of a gourd, staring at a screen doesn't turn me on - but I'm sure I don't have to worry about getting an invitation. Ferran is an acknowledged genius - I'm sure there's more to this than meets my eye.

Exterior of the gourd-like structure

Cave like interior

A spare space dedicated to brain work


Getting the last supper together at El Bulli (photo by Howard Sooley)

The last supper at El Bulli

beetroot and yoghurt meringue

tomato cookie

air baguette

mojito - caipirinha sugar cane

mojito and apple baguette

gin fizz

spherical olives

mimetic peanuts

pistachio ravioli

parmesan cheese "porra"

parmesan cheese "macaron"

gorgonzola balloon

olive oil chip

flowers paper

golden egg

steamed shrimps with tea

roses with ham wonton and melon water

ham and ginger canape

Japanese ravioli

soy matches

nori ravioli with lemon

asparagus with miso

tiramisu

oysters and bone marrow tartar

parmesan frozen air with muesli

carbonara tagliatelle

caviar cream with hazelnut caviar

pine nuts shabu shabu

"perrechico" cake

polenta gnocchi with coffee, safran, skin milk and capers

tender almonds perfumed with truffle

barnacle with caviar

two cooking prawns

lulo "ceviche" and mollusk

clam "ceviche"

Oaxaca "taco"

"gazpacho" and "ajo blanco"

peas 2011

sea cucumber

Shanghai lobster

hare fritter

game meat cappuccino

blackberry risotto with game meat sauce

hare ravioli with bolognese and blood

pond

yoghurt blini

"coca de vidre" – crystal cake

mini donuts

apple rose

box

The box - final course at El Bulli (photo from alifewortheating.com)

FX Francois Xavier

2011-08-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

Swiss apple roesti - makes you want to run into the kitchen and cook something. I love Francois Xavier's videos and his blog. There's a homey quality to the presentations - some of it is his delightful accent. The cooking techniques are sometimes great, sometimes a little dicey sort of like Julia was at the beginning. I don't know what happened to him...his blog is almost inactive and he only made a few of these charming videos.

Swiss Apple Roesti

Here's more about Francois, his interests and how he does his food photographs:

About fx cuisine