QUICKSAND

I was tired of spending my entire weekend cooking, so I said to Husband, “Can we go to Monterey or Carmel or Big Sur?” Of course – which one? Don’t care, would like to visit Cafe Kevah but don’t really want to drive that far and back in one day…..so on Sunday we drove over to Monterey/Pacific Grove and had lunch at Tilly Gorts. Then, down to the ocean and parked ourselves on a bench overlooking the rocks and surf. It was a clear and beautiful autumn day, blue sky, warm sun, soft wind.

But, nagging at me was the fact that the little bakery down the street from Tillys had closed. We loved going there – local musicians often played there on Sundays, they had good hot chocolate, and sometimes gluten-free goodies. It seems more and more little independent stores are closing. Stores that I used to frequent and had come to depend on for certain items. Last year, I headed over to Casa Bella (which used to be Bunny Hutch but converted from Country to Mediterranean decor) to buy Christmas tree ornaments for the grandchildren. It wasn’t there. The unfinished furniture store had taken over the space. I just sat in my car and almost cried. The kids and I had shopped there for years and particularly at Christmas. They had dozens of decorated trees and holiday goodies. Well, poop. Then, this year even more stores have disappeared. And not just short-timers, either. Established stores that have been around for years and years. The antique store on the corner of Main and University in Los Gatos, the shi-shi kids store on University, Mervyn’s (for goodness sakes!), the Chinese food take out on Union, the 24 Hr Fitness in Saratoga and even Circuit City has filed for Bankruptcy.  If I had a better memory, I’d give you a better list!

But, what absolutely broke my heart was Piggie Market. On the way home from Monterey, I asked Husband to stop for water – I was really thirsty. Can you wait til Piggie Market? Sure. We took the Rio Del Mar exit off Hwy 1 and drove into the dark redwood grove that houses several old buildings, including a little general store/deli called Piggie Market. We’ve taken the girls there since they were old enough to go to the beach – we’d get sandwiches and chips and drinks and donuts and whatever else we could cram into a sack and head for the beach to loll around and eat and drink. Once, when the girls were really small, we were coming home from Piggie Market and Husband (quite uncharacteristically) took a wrong turn. We drove and drove and finally decided we were not, in fact, on a road that would take us home. A declared that, “Everything was fine until we left Piggie Market!” Pulling into the center and seeing newspapers in the windows of Piggie Market was wrenching. Even worse than when it was sold at one point and remodeled and a lot of the pig figurines disappeared – it used to be stocked quite full of pigs of every kind and description. For years we had either grabbed food and gone to the beach or eaten at old redwood picnic tables in the little sunlit garden across the street or at tables just off the parking lot. Losing Piggie Market is like losing a piece of history for us.

I’m not so good with change, anyhow, so this is a big deal. I know everything changes and nothing stays the same, but darn it, there should be some things that are allowed to go on and on. Like Piggie Market.  It was part of my kids’ history and a fun place we all looked forward to going to.  Maybe someone will buy it?  Shifting sands, shifting sands.

VERKLEMPT

A few days ago, I sent Husband an email which was essentially electronic hand-wringing (I really excel at hand-wringing) and as part of the wringing, I said I was, “verklempt.”  And, I was.  Husband emailed back to ask if verklempt was a “real word.”  Of course, see for yourself……verklempt.  He wasn’t so concerned with the cause of my hand-wringing as he was with the unfamiliar word.  That’s OK, really, because he’s typically the very best person in the world with whom to practice hand-wringing.  Incredibly patient and understanding and comforting, he is.

Driving home a few days later, I was thinking about times in the past when I’ve been verklempt:  when JFK was shot; when my grandmother died; when I arrived home from a trip to Home Depot to find a message on the answering machine that Husband had suffered a heart attack on his bike and was even now in the ER; when I got word that J was in the hospital with a life-threatening complication of pregnancy, followed the very next day by the news that my father had stage 4 lung cancer (double verklempt); when despite my best efforts I was unable to get home before he died; when 12 days later I got a call that J was in the hospital undergoing an emergency c-section; and then a few hours later when everyone was doing OK; when I arrived home from grocery shopping to find Husband actually experiencing another heart attack; shortly after, Husband’s quadruple by-pass surgery left me in a state of verklempt squared for quite some time.

There were certainly other times, but these are the ones that are foremost in my memory.  One can be verklempt from extreme happiness, or even by a beautifully designed handbag!  I’m joking.  Sort of.  Shoes and fabric design can move me to tears, as well as food, jewelry and copper pots!  I’m a particular sucker for sterling silver patterns and dishes from Portugal.  I did nearly cry when I saw a diamond bracelet in store window, the design of which was inspired by the “bird cage” of the Bejing Olympics.  I certainly caught my breath.  There is a shaman’s box in a museum in Portland that stopped me in my tracks…….well, evidently I am easily verklempt.  How about you?

OUT WITH THE OLD……….

For some time now, I’ve been having a fist fight with myself over the state of my kitchen.  I’ve landed some good blows: a new light fixture; new knobs and drawer pulls.  Today, I landed a series of jabs and right hooks.  I cleaned out a cabinet and one shelf of the hoosier cabinet and dealt with an overflow of spices.

We took the kitchen down to the walls in about 1992 when we remodeled.  So, it’s been collecting stuff since. Under the sink gets cleaned out with some regularity but let’s face it, the canned good and spice cabinets were WAY overdue.  What brought about this sudden concern, you might ask.  I’ll show you…

The bread box is new.  It’s a domino effect.  You know, you get something new and you really have no place for it, but you want it so you have to find a way to make it work.  What you don’t see are the several cans and boxes that were stacked on the counter because the canned goods cabinet was so full there was no place to put them away.  Annoying as hell to me, but I know the housekeepers were near mutiny.  So, clean out the cabinet, already!  The oldest expiration date I found was 1997!  I knew I had been buying multiples of things because although I thought I had some, I just wasn’t sure exactly where….

The items on the left are the only ones to stay.  The ones on the right were all so old they had to go and some of the cans were beginning to bulge, so not a moment too soon!  I have more than one bottle of rice vinegar and I had several, AH HA! moments as I found what I was sure I had but bought another of anyway.  I also found something funny….

I believe I bought this at Trader Joe’s in 2003.  I can only assume I was intrigued by the label, but clearly not enough to actually open the bottle.  

One of the unintended (but welcome) consequences of this cleaning frenzy was that Fannie Copperpot found a new home!  The cans new enough to stay didn’t fill the top shelf so Fanny and a couple of other homeless utensils found a new place to live!  I know she must be happy because, let’s face it, a girl needs some privacy now and then and living on the shelf of the hoosier cabinet in view of everyone couldn’t have been easy.  Et, voila!

As one domino fell, it knocked over another and so I moved to one of shelves in the hoosier cabinet.  There were numerous bags of rice, lentils, split peas, quinoa, beans, etc.  I found 4 partial bags of basmati rice, which I consolidated into one. Here, were also several boxes, bottles and jars way past their prime, but I did find a couple of current Jiffy blueberry muffin boxes, much to C’s delight.  A couple of bags of discarded stuff made room for more items displaced from the first location (kitchen scale) and while sorting through odd bits of paper and wondering why on earth I stuck them there, I found this……..

 

There is more work to do on this front, but I’ve stopped for today.  I’ve got some cooking to do, finish a soup I started last night, and make a pumpkin custard from a WW recipe.  We went completely off the rails last night at Aqui with A & J – including desserts!  I ate gluten and am paying for it today – but let me say that the desserts were worth every ache and pain.  Not sure about what must be a little resulting weight gain, but you know, I’m only human.  I’ve reached that dangerous place where your jeans are so very comfortable that your incentive is severely reduced.  I should buy a smaller size. Oh, I’ll just wash them all.  So, I’ll go do that now and then back to the kitchen.

YOU ARE WEARING ME OUT……..

Literally.  In the continuing saga of trying to renew my Notary commission, I tried again to get my fingerprints this afternoon.  I was there at the UPS Store for an hour while a very patient woman played with my fingers.  She rubbed Corn Huskers Lotion (Oil Free!) on each finger several times and carefully rolled each one this way and that over and over and over on a little screen that connected to a laptop with little photos of each fingerprint.  Frustrated with her inability to produce a “good” print, she made a couple of phone calls and one of the young men who works there told her to ask if the DOJ (that would be Dept of Justice) looks at the age of the applicant because that can affect the quality of the prints.  Nice.  Thanks very much.  Of my 9 fingers and 2 thumbs, only my thumbs yielded really acceptable prints.   And so, the option “best available” was chosen for all but my thumb prints – which apparently have held up fairly well, earning a “green” indicator.  But the rest of my fingers?  Yeah, they are pretty well wiped out and could only manage a yellow………usually after one or more reds.  A new way to feel older than dirt !

And, I had to laugh because when I’m feeling particularly vexed I say to the vexer, “You are wearing me out.”  I guess in more ways than I realized.

And, because weigh in is tonight at WW, I couldn’t even stop by the yogurt store on my way back to the office, or the pizza place or the taqueria.   Phooey.  But the chinese food yesterday was superb, as were way too many Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups Halloween candy last week, so I don’t have any expectations anyway.  Should have gotten a big, fat, greasy piece of pizza with extra cheese.  Except for the gluten/wheat issue with the crust.  Which, allergy by the way, I’m given to understand is not that unusual for a person to develop AS THEY AGE!

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE…..

A couple of my favorites that I’ve been thinking about lately………..

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

EMILY DICKINSON

AND

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
                        THOMAS HARDY
I heard last night on the news that President Elect Obama is
going to close Guantanamo. I find that to be incredibly reassuring.

COMPLETELY DISGUSTED

Driving tonight, a car in front of me had the following license plate:

DOWNUGO

Huh, I thought, what’s the message there?  Is the person a diver or something?  Then, the plate holder caught my eye.  The bottom edge said JESUS?, and the top said, CAN’T ACCEPT.

Jesus must be real proud.  I, for one, am completely disgusted.  Again.

BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS

As in, “a change of.”

Watching the cameras scan the faces of those happy people gathered at Grant Park last night, I was thrilled by the diversity. Old and young, all races, and all of them of one heart and mind. I am so very happy and so incredibly relieved at the outcome of this election. For the first time in 8 long years I feel like it’s OK to be an American again.  I was particularly moved by Jesse Jackson, who looked for all the world like he wanted to just fall to his knees and bawl like a baby from the ultimate validation of what has been his and so many others life’s work.  Unlike those who have gone before him and Moses of old, he has been able to cross over to The Promised Land.

We have a lot of really hard work to do and it’s not going to be a quick fix by any means, but I am encouraged because I feel that those making the decisions have good hearts and sharp minds and are not just power hungry fools out to get rich in any way they can. The new leaders will be drawing a circle that pulls us all in, instead of drawing a circle that includes only the chosen few and defines the rest as, “other.”

I grew up in the South and I remember seeing water fountains designated as “Colored” and “White.” I remember when I was a young teenager an African American couple tried to join the Southern Baptist church my parents and I attended. I asked my father why they didn’t introduce them after the service as was the usual protocol when someone presented themselves for membership. Oh, he said, we met with them and explained that we felt they would be happier in a group of their own. I was horrified and am ashamed of that to this day. It’s interesting that my parents taught me not to be bigoted but it seems that they, in fact, when it came right down to it, were and are. But that generation is no longer in charge. And that’s a good thing.

And speaking of bigots….I am also horrified (although not surprised) that Prop 8 has passed in California. I don’t know what to say except, “SHAME ON YOU!” The fall out from this issue is not over in our house. And that’s all I have to say about that. For now.

PUMPKIN PERPLEXION

Um, I don’t think that’s a word, actually – perplexion.  It’s meant to be a form of perplexed, but as the pumpkin wasn’t perplexed, I was, I couldn’t use Perplexed Pumpkin, now, could I?  OK, in hopes of making some sense, here’s the deal:  I wanted to make a Christine Ferber recipe called Pumpkin Wine and Spices.  I thought it would be a kind of pumpkin butter, maybe a kind of spreadable pumpkin pie filling?  Uh, no.

As a rule, I’m not a huge fan of prep work.  I was less cranky about it after buying my Shun, but a pound and a third of small dice pumpkin is just a daunting task.  Still, I wanted to try.  The recipe is pumpkin (as I said) gerwerztraminer, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and 7 oz of green apple jelly I made earlier in the year for just such an occasion.  

I bought a couple of sugar pie pumpkins at Gizdich Ranch a couple of weeks ago and picked up the wine on Saturday.  1 1/3 lbs of small dice pumpkin is just a royal pain, but I dutifully went about my task.  Grateful that it didn’t take both pumpkins to yield 1 1/3 lbs, I tried not to lose patience.  I was surprised that the recipe called for only 3/8 tsp of each spice and resisted the impulse to just put in a full 1/2 tsp.

Like the other jams, this is put into Fanny and brought to simmer then left to sit in the fridge overnight.  I wondered if the small dice pumpkin would cook down and make a kind of butter.

As you can see, I would not pass muster at Cordon Bleu in the dice class – uniform, they are not.  Bringing the mixture to the first simmer was interesting – a nice aroma – not too spicy and sweet.  

This morning, I started the actual jam making process. Overnight the aroma had deepened and when I added the green apple jelly to the mix and stirred it up, I thought I’d give the syrup a taste.  SWEET.  

So.  The small pieces did NOT cook down, but instead candied and got a little crunchy.  They also released their juices and so I came up short on my estimate of how many jars it would make.  The flavor is, according to Husband, “Strange but really good.”  One doesn’t expect jam to have a crunch in the midst of sweet syrup.  This is good enough but I don’t think good enough to justify the prep time.  I think it would be good on english muffins.  I also don’t think it really set up – but the syrup was quickly disappearing and I thought if I didn’t jar it, I’d have kind of a weird goup of stuff.  Probably not a repeater, I’m thinking.  But, if you get a jar for Christmas, you’ll like it!

We got our first good rain of the season over the weekend.  It’s nice although it destroyed my No on 8 sign. Probably one of my neighbors is pleased.  Anyway, when I got up this morning, fully enjoying that wonderful extra hour, and looked out the back door, I saw what seemed to me to be a kind of early Christmas decoration on the bistro chairs.  Like a sparkling string of lights on the back slats of the chairs, the drops of rain reflected the morning sun.

Maybe a more sophisticated camera would capture the effect better, but you can use your imagination.  If you click on the photo, you can see the drops better.  We are glad for the rain, even if I had to go to Safeway 3 times in it yesterday because I’m such ditz.  Besides the pumpkin perplexion, I also made some vegetable soup, a bean salad and some roasted sweet potato wedges.  I gotta say, those sweet potatoes are the very best!  Just a little olive oil, fresh rosemary and a sprinkle of pink Himalayan salt…into the over for 30 min.  There are 7 pieces left.  Last time, I thought maybe I’d eat them all hot from the oven…really, really comforting and yummy.

 

And, finally, what is wrong with this picture?  You probably can’t see unless you click on the photo to blow it up, but let me explain.  Greenlee’s is a local bakery famous for their cinnamon bread.  It’s really so very good and available at most of the farmer’s markets around.  Driving home the other day, I was stopped at a light and because I read EVERYTHING, I noticed the error on the statement on the back of the truck.  It says, “BEST cinnamon loafs.”  Really? Are you sure you didn’t mean, loaves?  I won’t go into my favorite pet peeve:  further vs farther.  You’d be surprised how many professional radio/TV journalists make that mistake.

Well, time to make dinner.  Maybe roast more sweet potatoes?