men of a different era.

To be perfectly honest, I bought the book of old photos for the NASA pictures. Josh loves spacey stuff. We went to a fantabulous space museum in the middle of Kansas where he saw some astronaut jackets. He really wanted one, but they were ridiculously expensive. So he only bought some patches, which were still pretty pricey for what they were. Then when he got home, he went to the Army surplus store and bought a blue flight jacket for $40. He sewed the patches on himself, which I think is pretty cute. Maybe I'm just a sucker for his charms. Luckily, he seems to be a sucker for my charms, which even I have to admit have a limitied audience appeal. I only hope that everyone else in the world can find a sucker for their charms.

Anyway, I bought the photo album because there were some pictures of people in front of a NASA bus. I hoped that some of those people might be astronauts, but even if they were just engineers or administrators, that would be okay, too. Since I actually have no idea who they are, I can pretend whatever. What I like about this picture is how indicative of the time it is. Photos like this (and like all of them in the album) are like unintentional historical artifacts. There was still a space race going on. The general public was still interested in what might be up in the sky.


And the men! Men don't look like this anymore. They don't wear their pants like that, they don't stand that way, they don't ask for those haircuts, and they don't smoke cigarettes in pictures. These were men of a different era. I mean, probably, they acted just like men act now. Except they stub out their cigarettes before someone takes their picture.

hospital song.

Lying awake in my hospital room
Silas Creek Parkway is my only view.

-Ben Folds Five, "Hospital Song"

When I was a sophomore in high school, our boys' basketball team went to the state championship. This is not to be confused with our girls' basketball team, of which I was a member, which won maybe one game all year. I don't remember how many games, but I know there was at least one. It was my freshman year where we didn't win any. But that's a whole different story.

But the boys' team was good, and they were fun to watch. There was the serious point guard, the long-limbed center, the hot-shot three point shooter, the reliable power forward, and the scrappy guy who could play any position by force of sheer hustle. I remember them all now, even though it's been over a decade since I've seen most of them. Everyone knew who they were. I remember being sort of shy and flattered when any of them talked to me, a lowly sophomore on the second-worst girls' basketball team in the history of our school.

Their post-season stretched out long after we had been eliminated from the first round of the conference tournament, and my mom and I went to their games. Since the boys had played right after us all year long, she had seen most of their games, maybe a reward for sitting through another crushing defeat for her daughter. And then they were going to be in the state finals in Chapel Hill, three hours away. Of course, we would go. What could be better than watching a good team full of people you knew (or at least felt like you knew) play at the Dean Dome?

The evening before the Saturday afternoon game, we got a phone call from my brother, an hour away, saying that his pregnant wife's water had broken, still several weeks shy of her due date. It was already getting sort of late, but we got in the car and drove to Wilkesboro. As we pulled into the parking lot of the tiny rural hospital, we saw an ambulance leave, followed by the familiar silhouette of my brother's car. We managed to flag him down, and he told us that they were taking my sister-in-law to the hospital in Winston-Salem.

So we drove yet another hour to Forsyth Medical Center on Silas Creek Parkway. And nothing much happened all night. We stayed in the waiting room. I pushed two stiff armed chairs together front-to-front and curled up in an attempt to sleep. At some point, I think it must have been in the morning because I remember the curtains being closed to block the sunlight, we went in to see my sister-in-law. It's probably obvious for me to even mention it, but she seemed to be in pain, like it was taking all her concentration to just get through it. My brother sat anxiously beside her bed, holding her hand and stroking her hair. I don't think I'd ever seen such tenderness. I felt sort of irrelevant, just standing there, sixteen years old and not a clue in the world.

And then we left, to drive one more hour. From the dim and quiet tension of a hospital room to the bright and loud, yet also irrelevant, tension of a state basketball championship in the Dean Dome.

We lost the game. It wasn't even close.

By the time we got back to the hospital, more of my siblings were there. The baby was born, but so tiny and with a pair of lungs that were not formed enough to do the job of keeping even so small a thing alive. They put him in a special little incubator to keep the world out and give God a chance to finish knitting him outside the womb. Another brother embraced and consoled the man whose son had arrived but whose stay wasn't yet certain. Again, I saw tenderness, a side to my big brothers that I had never seen before, or maybe just had never noticed. Years later, I would listen to a coworker tell about when his son was born premature. Though it was never stated outright, the sense of utter helplessness was clear to me and to the other men who listened with complete understanding on their faces. I thought about my brother and the other side of each birth story.

A couple of weekends ago, the boys' basketball team from my old high school went to the state championship. They lost; it was even less close than before. I did not know any of their names, and I was not at the game. Instead, I was at my brother's house to celebrate my nephew's eleventh birthday. He was cute and robust and tan and also kind of a smart-aleck. He played with the little kids, and then sat with the adults. His little sister gave him a tooth in a jam jar, for which he thanked her sweetly, though he clearly thought it was pretty weird. My mom and I reminisced about spending the night at the hospital before going to the basketball game.

I knew then that there was a story to write here, but I wasn't sure what it would be about: the Dean Dome, unfinished lungs, Silas Creek Parkway, fatherhood, a tooth in a jar. Now I've written it and some themes came out that I wasn't expecting, but I'm still not sure what the point is. So take what you want. But Happy Birthday, Sidney. Keep that jar in a safe place.

beouf le noir.

Josh's mom used to be a French teacher and is otherwise a bonafide francophile. I'm used to hanging around people who are enthusiastic about knowledge in some way or another (i.e. dorks), but this fascination with a whole country is sort of new to me. She often uses something from the language or history of France to illustrate a point. There are smatterings of French words spoken in her house. When he was growing up, if ever a curse word slipped through his lips, she would admonish him "En Français!" Remember, kids, cursing is okay when it's in a pretty language. And if ever you say a French or French-derived word in front of her, she will repeat it quietly, with the correct pronunciation, all the while encouraging you to please go on. I have chosen not to be irritated by this habit (and it was a conscious choice), because I am not convinced that she even realizes she's doing it. It feels like being corrected to me, but I think she's probably just enthusiastic. We should all be so enthusiastic about learning.

She also apparently did a lot of French cooking when Josh was growing up. Once, when we were there for just a regular weekend dinner, nothing special, we had duck à l'orange. I thought that was just something made-up that sounded French that they served in Daffy Duck cartoons. But no, it's a real thing. I'm not sure that he really appreciated the cultural aspect of his childhood dinners. You can try to feed a kid duck à l'orange, but he's just going to ask for les saucisses de Vienna.

Once, Josh mentioned that he thought I made an effort to make French food because I thought he craved it as a result of his childhood. He used the quiche Lorraine as an example. He further stated that I shouldn't try to cook like his mother, that I should develop my own style. Considering I hadn't really been trying to make French-style dishes, I wasn't sure how to take this comment. Perhaps it was a slam on my quiche. He's very well-versed in subtlety, while I often don't even realize that he might have meant something deeper until weeks later (like when I happen to use it in a blog entry). He better learn to speak more plainly, or he'll be getting quiche for a long time.

All that being said, here is something that I have been approved to make again and again. It's beouf bourguignon. It is probably nothing like real beouf bourguignon for many reasons, one of which is that it is made in the crock pot. In recognition of that and in honor of my hometown of Lenoir, we call it beouf le noir. That phrase probably makes no sense in French, but there's been no one to correct me. It's delicious and fancy, so you could serve this to your boyfriend's mother. Just be sure to transfer it from the crock pot into a Dutch oven made by a French company before you serve it.

Beouf Le Noir

first round.

Several times Thursday night, I almost went to bed before the basketball was over. But I stayed up, though my eyelids grew droopy, because Wake Forest needed me to. They never seemed to be quite able to pull away from Texas. They got ahead for a while, but then the Longhorns rallied and made it a close game again. Though I try to soak up as much March Madness as possible every year, I was sleepy. If it hadn't been an ACC team, one that was in a town where I lived for two years, one that was the hometown team of the man I love, I would have called it a night before halftime.

If you haven't caught on yet, this is my annual post about sports. Even though I feel like there is really nothing left for me to say about the NCAA tournament, I feel compelled to write about it every year. Maybe because it so thoroughly engages me for several weekends in a row. To not write about it would be denying the part of me that truly loves college basketball. So while I usually put off mentioning it for days, even weeks, because I am sure I haven't any words left, I'm going to go ahead and get this out of the way.

There is a special place in my heart for the first weekend of the tournament. It's a weird kind of thing to keep in your heart, and there are many other, more deserving things which occupy greater areas. But there it is, maybe in a little out of the way corner next to a valve, that place where I keep my love for things like very specific parts of sporting events.

I love the first weekend, because of the palpable excitement. There's been mounting anticipation all week, from the conference tournaments the previous weekend, to when they announce the pairings on Sunday, through the three and a half days of speculation and trash talk and bracket-filling, and then FINALLY! It's here! It's noon on Thursday and it's started and everyone is bursting with energy. The players seem like those Spanish bulls that have just been let out of the gate, here they come!

I love the first weekend, because of the underdogs. Next weekend, after two rounds, there will likely still be a couple of low-ranked teams hanging around. Some of them make it through the first round, and some of those fall in the second. By the fourth round, there's usually only one left, and they get called the season's Cinderella. But in this first two days of non-stop basketball, there are many little guys to root for. They seem so happy to be there at all, playing against guys they've been watching on TV all season. You admire their pluck, their courage, their audacity to dare pose a threat to some nationally ranked team. And unless they are taking on your team, you really really want them to win. They seem to deserve it for sheer gumption.

I love the first weekend, because there are just so many games. From noon to midnight, there are games, sixteen in one day. When I tune in (God bless cbssports.com), maybe I've never even heard of one of the teams, but a few minutes later, I am inexplicably pulling for them as if they were my own hometown heroes. I'll tell you a secret: I watched the Villanova/Robert Morris game from my cubicle. It was so exciting: double overtime! I might have been more secretive about it if half the office wasn't blatantly doing the same thing.

And so Thursday night, the very first night of this year's big dance, I made myself stay up, because the first round of the NCAA tournament only happens two days a year. Even as midnight passed and I really wanted to just go upstairs to bed, I stayed next to my laptop. Even as Wake Forest pulled ahead by twelve points, I stayed, and it was again a one point game within a couple of minutes. I thought of my mom, whose devotion to the Atlantic Coast Converence could never be questioned, but who has a hard time making it through any game that extends into the nine o'clock hour. I am only twenty-seven years old, and I don't care if I did give up caffeine this week (again), I am still too young to give up on watching an exciting ball game with a team that I do care about just because I have to go to work in the morning.

And then Ishmael Smith, who I had never heard of before but who got me thinking that Ishmael is really kind of a cool name, made that shot with a couple seconds to go. And I was very awake and screaming. It was all over, they won, and I thought hard about watching the end of the Montana/New Mexico game. But I went up to bed, later than usual, but totally, totally worth it.

making work pay.

Josh should just fire his accountant.

He received a letter from the IRS yesterday. While he's been gone, I've been saving all his mail in a special place or maybe wherever it lands when I come in the door. I haven't been opening it, because I was taught that opening other people's mail is a federal offense. But when I saw the IRS letter, I opened it. Which is funny, because that rule about not opening the mail of others was probably intended to protect things like sensitive communications from government agencies, rather than pleas for him to come back to AllState, which I do not open. I could have called him first to verify whether it was okay for me to open his IRS letter, but instead I asked his accountant, and she said it was totally fine.

The IRS wrote him to say that they have amended his 2009 return. To give him more money. Yes, they noticed in their careful analysis of his return that he was eligible for the Making Work Pay tax credit, which, when applied, will nearly double his refund this year. If in the future he wishes to claim the Making Work Pay tax credit, he'll want to attach Schedule M and enter the resulting amount on line 63 of Form 1040. Thank you and have a nice day, from your friends at the Internal Revenue Service, a kinder and gentler agency.

As soon as I read this bit of another person's mail, I headed to the internet to find more about this Schedule M. It's apparently part of the recovery act. I then checked his Form 1040, line 63 and verified that it did say something about a credit and I had entered a nice, round zero on that line. I know that I did not even look up what that line was talking about in the instructions. Why? Because I had looked up half a dozen other possible credits and they had been about farming or displaced persons or being blind. In other words, they had nothing to do with him. And so when I saw "Making Work Pay," I assumed that was one of those things that was for Other People.

As an aside, what kind of stupid name is "Making Work Pay?" I mean, doesn't work already pay? Isn't that why we do it? Isn't that why we have to pay taxes, because we did work and then got paid for it?

Okay, I'm only griping because I'm feeling a little embarrassed at missing the credit in the first place. This happened last year, too, when I managed to miss the fact that he qualified for the Earned Income Credit (as opposed to the Stolen Income Credit, I guess). And the IRS sent him a letter and some more money. I am grateful that the IRS knows what it's doing, that it's nice enough to correct mistakes in our favor that we didn't know we'd made. It could just keep our money and we'd never know the difference. But it takes the high road, sends us our money, and makes our accountants look foolish.

As it happens, I am also eligible for the Making Work Pay tax credit, and I am quite sure that I did not claim it on my return. I should fire my accountant as well.

popper time.

There are certain things that I make that Josh loves so much he requests the recipe. Which is sort of odd, really. Perhaps he is plotting to leave me, but he can't bear to live without, for example, chocolate pie, so he has to be able to make it for himself while he waits for the next poor sucker to fall for his blue-gray eyes, dazzling smile, and impressive command of the English language. Each time he gets ready to go, his duffel bag all packed for the road, a note telling me where I can send his books, I go and make one more dish that he can't live without now that I've brought it into his life.

He is generally interested in the cooking process. Sometimes he helps, sometimes he does most of the work while I direct, sometimes he asks what's in it while he eats it. But then there are times when he wants to see the actual recipe, wants to do all the leg-work, making mental notes about baking times and measurements. It would be easy for me to just make it, but he is there, insisting, like a little kid who is aching to be in control of his own milk-pouring destiny. I've not figured out the difference between the things he wants to be able to make for himself and the things that he wants me to make for him over and over again. There is something special about his I-do-it recipes, something to do with the crossroads of yumminess and snackiness. The good thing is that once a recipe goes into that category, it is his forever. He is in charge of pizzas and french fried potatoes in our house. I could still make those things, of course, but he's got the steps all memorized. I'd have to go look it up, and the cookbook is all the way across the room, and honey, why don't you just do it?

All this brings me to a couple of weeks ago, when I called him after work. The band was in Kentucky, staying at a friend's house while in between shows in Knoxville and Cincinnati. At some point, he said he had to get off the phone, because he had to "go make more poppers."

"Poppers? Like we make here?"

"Yeah."

"You made them for everybody?"

"Yeah."

"You are so cute." I mean, really, isn't that kind of adorable? Am I the only sucker in the room?

Poppers are the most recent of the I-do-it recipes. It is a Pioneer Woman recipe, and it has three ingredients. The recipe in her cookbook is different from the one on her website. She adds cheddar and barbeque sauce and suggests some other variations. I'm going to make them that way one day, I promise. Out of respect for the Pioneer Woman, I will try each and every variation. But when we decide that we want poppers, that all seems like too much work when the recipe we know is so simple and so good. The first time we made them, it was as an appetizer to a bigger meal. But then we ate all the poppers and none of the meal. Then there were tummyaches. Delicious, bacon-wrapped tummyaches. Since then, we have managed to make them and resist the urge to eat them all. They store well in the fridge and are good cold the next day. If ever I am invited somewhere where I might be required to bring an appetizer, then, my friends, it will be Popper Time, which is like Hammer Time, but stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon and without parachute pants. Okay, fine, it's nothing like Hammer Time at all. But it could be.

Obviously, there is a hotness factor, what with the jalapenos. But you can find mild peppers. We get ours in a big pack at Aldi, where the hotness varies wildly from one pepper to the next. When I eat one, I first take a tiny lick on the pepper part to verify the spicy level. If it's too hot, I put it back on the plate, say it's for him, and then try the next one. He must really love me, because he's bringing his blue-gray eyes and dazzling smile, and I'm making him eat things that I have pre-licked. He's probably not planning to leave me. Phew!

I do not like the name "poppers." Even the Pioneer Woman doesn't seem to know what to call them, referring to them as Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Thingies. Surely we can find something better, something that doesn't take longer to say than to make the dish and yet doesn't sound like something that might be brought to you by a guy wearing 37 pieces of flare. I am open for suggestions.

But for now, here is the recipe. Now go make yourself a tummyache. Then teach a man to do it, so he can be in charge of his own tummyache destiny.

detritus.

I will tell anyone that will listen that my very favorite kind of yard sale is a church yard sale in an established, wealthy neighborhood. It's all about the stuff. Church sales are the best anyway, because it combines the stuff from lots of different families, which means greater volume of stuff. Wealthy neighborhoods are going to have higher-quality (and more) stuff. Older, established neighborhoods have older and more interesting stuff, because the people didn't just move in the year before. Also, the prices are usually good, because chances are that someone there has been to a yard sale or held one before, so they what to charge for the stuff. Plus, there is that grand time when they tell you to just stuff a bag for a dollar.

Stuff stuff stuff. The word has lost all meaning.

Anyway, while I still scour the papers for church sale ads, I am developing a growing appreciation for estate sales. They are getting me through the cold, hard winter, like the Regimental Camp Followers at Valley Forge. Indeed, there is often a lot of stuff at an estate sale, since you're selling most everything that a person owned at time of death. Sure, there is antique furniture and china sets and heirloom jewelry. It's frequently beautiful and I enjoy having the opportunity to see valuable and expensive things that I don't ordinarily come across. But the real appeal to me is that they're selling things that most people wouldn't ever think to sell.

Old stationery is a favorite of mine, as I'm sure you're sick of hearing. I can imagine a meeting of the estate sale companies of Raleigh, where they discussed what was worth selling. Someone keeps coming across boxes of old note cards in attics of dead grandmothers and wonders whether it's even worth slapping a price tag on them. The others tell him the fabled tale of Stationery Lady, who will come to your sale, pick out less than $10 worth of stuff, and then inquire about any stationery, if she hasn't found it already.

You will also all know by now that I am a big fan of owning your own crazy, for instance by imagining that competing estate sale companies not only have meetings, they talk about who buys the cheap items and give them nicknames.

Aside from stationery, there are old calenders, the daily dishes, the framed cross-stitch that hung in the bathroom. They are the things that children of the deceased remember fondly and associate with that house, but they are too inexpensive and everyday to be considered heirlooms. They are detritus, the things that humans buy and use and discard without really noticing. I love these things. I love their everyday-ness, their inconspicuous-ness, their history. These are the things that will tell future archeologists more about how people lived than the silver tea sets that only the rich people could afford to buy but not ever use.

Anyway, I am writing all this because I came across some really great examples of detritus at an estate sale recently. While someone else was dickering over the price of the mid-century modern black leather sofa set (which was gorgeous), I was spending two dollars on a cheap photo album full of black and white 8x10s. I've scanned some of the pictures in to share with you guys(one at a time so that I can stretch it out over lots of posts so that I look more prolific). None of the pictures are labelled, so what I know about them is only what I can guess from looking at them. Let's all imagine stories about them together, shall we?

This is the very first picture in the album. The cover actually came off and so this lady stares up at me from the coffee table.

Who is she? Is this shot posed or candid? A lot of the shots in the books appear to be publicity shots of models, but then there are some that are obviously family photos. Maybe this was taken for use in a gardening calendar sponsored by the local Jaycees. Yup, that's it. I've decided.

inconvenience foods.

There was a question on a frugality/cooking blog, asking when convenience foods were worth the money.

And I've thought about this.

And thought some more.

Really, I'm struggling here.

Thinking hard. Got a headache.

Now, what constitutes as a convenience food is a sliding scale. There are some things which most everyone can agree are convenience foods, like frozen pizzas or Hot Pockets. Most people think of things that are easy to prepare and nutritionally bankrupt. But you could argue that canned vegetables, Wonderbread, and sausage fall in that category, too. After all, you can make all of those things yourself - can your own veggies, bake your own bread, grind your own sausage. I suppose any time the ingredients could possibly be more raw, then you are working with a convenience food. For instance, my sisters mill their own wheat. They must think I'm a sucker every time I buy a bag of flour. That's me, always taking the easy way out.

I find that the more I cook, the more raw my food starts out. I used to eat a lot of frozen pizza. Sometimes, on special occasions, I would splurge on a take-and-bake pizza, which are those doughy ones with big vegetable pieces that you find in the deli department. They actually have expiration dates. Somewhere along the line, I started making my own pizzas, and I haven't gone back. I could feel good about myself for that - I'm saving money and eating something much better for me. And yet, I'm putting prepackaged pepperoni on my homemade pizza. You know what? It's not even kept in the refrigerated section of the store. It's not much different from Vienna sausages.

So after the homemade pizza, I started cutting my own french fries from potatoes, then pie crusts, then it was hamburger and hot dog buns (and bread in general), and recently spaghetti sauce. Discovering that you can roll your own can be liberating, but also a little sad, because you can't go back. You are a changed person, and the person you used to be, who was happy buying Ragu, is dead and gone.

I miss that old me sometimes. My laziness kicks in, and I decide that I just want hot dogs and fries for dinner. Well, it's forty minutes bake time for the fries. Oh, and whoops, no buns, so that's an extra hour I have to factor in making the buns, and really they should go in the oven before the fries so the potatoes will be hot. True, it's only like fifteen minutes of actual work, the rest is baking or rising time. But it is delayed gratification, and I want it now. But then I think about driving to the store to pay money to get something that won't taste as good, and I get out the flour. It's the same with pie crusts. I hate rolling out pie crust. If Hell is tailored to each individual, then mine would be endlessly rolling out pie crusts. I keep waiting for the day when I will be good at it, when I won't want to cry in frustration as the darn thing rips again. And they sell these crusts in the dairy section that are all rolled up, ready to just unwrap into your pie plate and bake. But I can't buy them, because I know that mine tastes better. Perhaps it is the flavor of my tears.

Or maybe not, because I can't handle salt the way I used to; making my own food has ruined my taste it. You may not have noticed, but most processed foods contain a lot of salt. Check out a nutrition label here or there, or don't, if you don't want to know. When you make things from scratch, you don't add that salt. When you eat that same scratch food every day, your tolerance for salt goes down. Then you eat some canned soup, your tongue swells up and you die of thirst. This happened first with Josh, who told me to cut the salt in everything I made. I thought he was being a salt sissy. Then one day, I ate at someone's house, who served soup, and the salt was the only thing I could taste. Everyone else ate it up and thought it was awesome. I felt like I was tasting one of those brown salt licks we had in the goat pen at my parents' house (not that I ever, ever licked one of those as a child, no sir). I am not anti-salt. God bless salt, I say. There are times when a little salt makes a world of difference. But it's not all the time. Just think: if we had discovered that nutmeg, rather than salt, was a great preservative, then Hot Pockets would taste like pumpkin pie.

I am not immune to the lure of convenience. I, too, am lazy. I sit back and reflect on the good ole days, when I just unwrapped a pie crust, shoved it in the oven, and then went to play with my belly button for an hour. But these kinds of foods have their consequences, and it's in two areas that hit me really, really hard: cost and taste. They're expensive, and they don't taste as good. My mother trained me to always look for the cheaper option, and my tongue tells me that tastier is better. There's some sort of health aspect, I've heard, but to be honest, I don't care. Maybe I will someday, and I surely will use that as an argument when trying to convince someone that they should really try making their own soup rather than opening that there can. But truly, it's not something that would convince me. If convenience foods all tasted better and were cheaper than their homemade counterparts, then I'd ask you to please pass the french toast sticks.

There are ways to make inconvenient foods less so. That CraigsList freezer was one of the best things I've ever bought. If I wanted to make hot dogs for dinner tonight, I would have the rolls all ready, because I made a double batch last time. I'd even have homemade chili to go on top, frozen in one and a half cup servings (which is about right for a pack of 8 dogs). Or if I wanted the ease of a can of soup, I have five different varieties in freezer bags, ready to be unthawed. It's not that homemade food is really all that inconvenient, they just take a little more thinking ahead. It's easy for me to say that, of course, I don't have kids. Hopefully by the time I do, I'll have all this stuff down to a science. Or I'll just come back and delete this post after I'm done putting 30 boxes of Hot Pockets in the freezer.

I really and truly believe that the big selling point of convenience foods is intimidation. I think that if more people realized how easy it is to prepare food that tastes that much better, costs less, and is better for them, the Hot Pocket company would go out of business. People think it's hard to do it yourself. Sometimes, it is. There are some things that I will likely never make from scratch. I tried making pasta once and it was a fiasco. I've cooked dried beans rather than used cans, and I'm not sure it was worth it (planning on trying again, though). But some things should be made from actual ingredients: mashed potato flakes are a sacrilege. Homemade soup is only a crockpot, half a dozen canned goods, and eight hours away. You decide where your own line is.

I am advocating the middle path. Convenience foods are a good idea. Even a Hot Pocket every once in a while is not going to kill you. It will remind you why you don't eat them more often. And some things which could be called convenience foods are actually pretty good. They allow people without gardens to have vegetables out of season and people who want a sandwich to use mayonnaise without breaking out the blender or knowing what "emulsifying" means. But when you start sacrificing all the taste and nutrition for convenience, that's a problem. It defeats the purpose of food. Guys, food is awesome. It tastes really super good, and, get this, it keeps you alive. Josh said once that making food delicious was part of God's plan to give us free will. Animals eat because their most innate drive is to survive. Humans have higher thinking, which means we can just decide to starve ourselves (and we sometimes do). And I was just about to starve myself, but, hold on, is that pie?

So really, what I'm saying here is: Food good. Here's to food, both convenient and not.

ginger, soy sauce, and ketchup.

Josh has mentioned several times that he would like me to make more Chinese food. He even bought me a cookbook once at a yard sale, The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. I think I've made one thing out of, egg drop soup (which I did because I truly love egg drop soup, another exception to my overall ho-hum attitude about eggs). Mostly, I'm resistant to this idea. For one thing, I'm pretty ambivalent to Chinese food as I know it. It's alright once in a while, but I don't go out of my way for it. Secondly, I associate it with Josh's Chinese ex-girlfriend.

Jealousy is one of the stupidest emotions I've ever known. When you start getting mad at your boyfriend for using chopsticks, then you know you're dealing with something that can't be fought with logic. Thankfully, I am mostly passed all that. Chopsticks do not bother me. In fact, I even have a set of them that did not come from a take-out place; they're very useful for poking blue cheese dressing through a funnel. Despite this great personal progress, during those times when he requests Chinese food, I still sometimes hear that small voice inside me that wonders if he thinks having a half-Kansan girlfriend isn't very exotic.

But sometimes I get over myself and I make Chinese food, or at least American food with ginger and soy sauce. Because then his gratitude is such that it seems silly to ever worry about some other girl.

Last week, I made Szechwan Shrimp. He ate his helping in about thirty seconds, and it only took that long because he stopped three times to tell me how awesome it was. Aw, shucks. Then he went and got more. He would have eaten the whole thing, except that he thought that I needed some to take to work the next day. So this one is going straight into the regular rotation. I doubt it has much to do with acutal Szechwan cuisine, what with the presence of ketchup, but who cares? What is a cultural melting pot for if not to add ketchup to ethnic food?

Szechwan Shrimp
Adapted from Allrecipes

• 1 onion, chopped into square inch pieces


• 3 celery stalks, chopped into inch-long pieces


• 3 carrots, cut into long, thin pieces (1.5 in x 1/8 in)


• 4 cloves garlic, minced (optional)


• 1 lb. raw shrimp, peeled with tails removed


• cajun seasoning (optional)


• soy sauce (optional)


• olive oil

Sauce

• 3/4 c water


• 3/8 c ketchup


• 3 T soy sauce


• 1/8 c cornstarch


• 3 t honey


• 1 1/4 t crushed red pepper


• 3/4 t ground ginger

Sprinkle cajun seasoning and soy sauce on shrimp, stir to coat. Mix up sauce, set aside.

Cook vegetables and garlic in olive oil until tender on the outside, but firm on the inside. Add shrimp to skillet. Add sauce to skillet and mix to coat. Continue cooking until sauce is thickened and shrimp are cooked through. Serve over rice.


Notes: You could make this with chicken, I bet. For those of you who don't like a meal to clear your sinuses, then cut down on the red pepper. This is what I would call very spicy, on the verge of too spicy. Josh's tolerance is much higher than mine, but he didn't add any hot sauce, which indicates that he thinks it's about right. You'll notice that this is reasonably healthy, which was a total accident, I promise. It's also quick. The whole thing took me forty-five minutes, and that's just because I'm a slow vegetable chopper.

I marked the soy sauce and cajun seasoning as optional because I just added those things on a whim because I knew the shrimp would have to sit in a bowl in the fridge for a while. I have no idea how much they actually added. Also, the garlic is optional because I forgot to add it. But you should add it, because garlic is delicious. You should always add things which are delicious.

compassion at the farmhouse.

I invited some people from work to Josh's show last week. I try to do that from time to time so I look like a supportive girlfriend. Whether or not any of them show up, I did my part. The show was at the Farmhouse, and so in my invitation, I wanted to be sure that they knew what they were getting into before they signed up to come. Some of Josh's coworkers came to a show at the Farmhouse once and then left within ten minutes or so. It's not for everyone.

My email invitation included the following disclaimer:

WARNING: the Farmhouse is a dive. It will be crowded and full of drunk people, some of them homeless. The floor will be sticky. If you're cool with that, then come on down. The beer is bad and cheap and plentiful.

I can't imagine why they didn't show.

Some people love the Farmhouse, and I don't get it. I don't mind that it's a dive; I can enjoy a little bohemian (in other words, poor) chic. The sticky floors are gross, but that never kept me away from the $1.50 theatre. No, the Farmhouse makes me profoundly sad. Not just because there are homeless drunks in there, but because a lot of the other people seem to be on various stages of their own downward spirals. Too many regulars seem determined to drink themselves to death or die trying.

But I didn't come here today to talk about the deadened stares of the patrons sitting at the bar. I came here to tell a heartwarming story. No, really.

At the Farmhouse Friday night, I saw an old man selling Girl Scout cookies. I didn't recognize the guy exactly. He looked like a lot of Farmhouse regulars, old and weathered, aged by something other than time. Whether I'd seen him before, I couldn't say. He pulled out a huge cardboard box full of smaller, cookie-filled boxes, each brightly-colored and covered in slogans about building self-esteem and positive role models. He gave a box of thin mints to a friend of mine, who gave him $3.50. It was so surreal that I wasn't even sure that I'd seen it. I swear, I'd only had one PBR.

I asked the girl about it, and she told me about this man. He was, as she put it, "borderline homeless." I'm not sure what that means, it seems like you either have a home or you don't. Maybe that's a common misconception of the homed. I think that it means that he does not have a home, but that he knows a lot of people who will let him crash on the couch or he has a car where he can sleep. It means that he is not sleeping on the pavement. He manages to earn a little money doing odd jobs. Apparently, he is a hard worker. And a hard drinker. I suppose there is something to be said for giving everything you do your all.

Whatever his home or drinking status, he does have a family, a daughter who also has a daughter. He carries pictures of them both in his pocket and pulls them out to show around to people he meets at the Farmhouse. Personally, I admire his daughter. No one would blame her if she shielded her kids from her father. But she lets them have a relationship with him, because he is family, even if he has made (and continues to make) bad decisions. Done right, there is a strong lesson in compassion in having a homeless grandfather. A few weeks ago, about the time that one of my coworkers left a cookie sales sheet in the break room, this old guy mentioned to his friends at the bar that his granddaughter was a Girl Scout. It bothered him that he couldn't do much for his family, particularly this sweet little girl who loved him even though he was, well, a bum.

It started with one person, maybe the bartender, maybe someone sitting a few feet away. They told him they would buy a box of cookies. Maybe he even had the official Girls Scout Cookie Sales Sheet, or maybe he borrowed a sheet of notebook paper from behind the bar. Someone else signed up for two boxes of the peanut butter ones, and another asked for those stripey ones with the coconut. By the end of the evening, he had sold nearly fifty boxes of cookies for his granddaughter, and he was crying.

Isn't that the most beautiful story of a homeless guy selling Girl Scout cookies in a bar that you've ever heard?

Maybe this is the lesson of the Farmhouse. It makes people like me, who didn't even know there were shades of gray between having a home and not, have a relationship with cookie-selling drunks. Him and the other regulars, like the guy who sells wire sculptures or that other one who has a bicycle. They are not merely homeless alcoholics, but somehow they have lives. If they actually did nothing but drink on the street all the time, they'd be dead. Even if the things they do are done to raise money to buy booze, well, it's something. It's hard to see it, but somehow, there's hope in that. It's little and kind of beat-up, but hope nonetheless. And if there is hope for the old guys, then there is hope for the young ones who still have smooth faces and apartments but that same focusless gaze as they order another round. If I can see them all as just people, then the Farmhouse won't seem like a parade of horrors. They're just people.

I am not condoning uncontrolled drinking, I'm really really not. But no one has a monopoly on bad choices. Even if my flaws and weaknesses are unlikely to ever leave me on the streets, that's only my good fortune. Having a home doesn't mean you can't be miserable and alone.

Somehow, the Farmhouse, with its sticky floors and burned-out toilet seats, is teaching me compassion. It is a strange, strange world.

shoo.

I am not close to Dave's girlfriend. I like her a lot, and I enjoy her company, but we are not close. Maybe because the only times we ever see each other are at bars where our boyfriends are playing music. It's a little loud for heart-to-hearts. Perhaps we should take this up with the band.

So I was a little surprised when she pulled me aside with a conspiratorial whisper. It must have been in the break between a song, or maybe she was actually shouting, but it just seemed like a whisper, as if she were embarrassed to have to discuss a personal topic.

"Hey, do you, like, ever worry when they leave?"

This was last Friday, at the local show meant to send the band on their national tour. Two nights later, I made granola bars and wrapped them each in plastic wrap. I think I put too many chocolate chips in, but my tester disagreed. And then the afternoon after that, he took his bag of granola bars, his phone charger, and probably a bunch of other things, too, and headed toward the first stop, Knoxville, Tennessee. I did not cry when we said goodbye. I did not grumble about the eight weeks that would pass before I saw him again. I was an excellent imitation of a supportive girlfriend. And it came mostly naturally.

But back to last Friday, when they were very much still here, evidence of which was blaring into my ears. While I might have accepted the idea of his upcoming absence and was even dealing with it like a mature adult, it was still at the forefront of my mind. And so I knew exactly what she was asking.

"Of course." Are you kidding me? My boyfriend is leaving for two months to go to bars all over the country and meet girls with low self-esteem and high blood alcohol levels. I'd have to be stupid not to realize that many men would be singing "I've Got a Golden Ticket" as they waved goodbye, eating my chocolatey granola bars. I trust him, but sometimes a little voice tells me that I'm incredibly naive to believe any man, no matter how wonderful I think this particular one is, can resist that kind of temptation. But these are just silly nagging doubts that I shoo away. If you shoo something away enough, eventually it stops coming back.

"Oh thank goodness." Her relief was visible. She may have been scared to ask me, in case I reported that it had never even occurred to me that my boyfriend could hook up with girls in a variety of cities across the midwest and along the west coast and probably never get caught. I wondered if she saw me and Josh as a model couple, an example of a stable relationship where both parties were always confident in the other's love and fidelity. Maybe she trusted Josh when she wasn't so sure she trusted Dave. If even Sandra worried about Josh, then hers were not an indication of her own insanity, or worse, her boyfriend's guilt. They were just silly nagging doubts that she could shoo away until they stopped coming back.

The funny thing is, as my young man and I said our goodbyes before he headed west, he reminded me to be good. I think this is absolute madness. I'm going to be going to the same job I always go to, at a software company, working with married men. It's not like I have to hold myself back or anything. Being a faithful programmer is pretty darn easy. I know that my rock star boyfriend has nothing to worry about and in my reasonable moments, I know that I don't either. Jealousy does not listen to reason. Instead, it interrupts and says, "Yeah, but..." Thus the shooing.

But if he is trying to get to sleep in that smelly van somewhere near Wichita and is kept awake by thoughts of me straying into the arms of someone else, he'll remember that I love him and I don't cheat on him. He can shoo that silly nagging doubt away. Or he can call me up, even in the middle of the night, and we'll shoo it away together.

entropy.

In real life, eventually things don't match anymore. It's called entropy. It means that no matter how many place settings you register for at your wedding, eventually, your plates won't all match. Because things break and are replaced with non-matching things. Even if you get rid of all of the old ones and buy a whole new set (or get re-married), you're only starting over on the same road.

I know this is true. It is true in the house where I grew up, it is true in my own house, and it is true in the houses with yards full of non-matching dishes for me to buy on Saturday mornings. No doubt there are people who care enough to start over with a whole new set when the stack in the cabinet is too low. There are likely more who care enough to do so but find it prohibitively expensive.

But what if matching were not the goal?

I saw a movie where a family had been on the long road of place setting entropy. Their cabinets were full of mismatched plates, and I thought it looked great. It looked fun and interesting and like you might never know what you would be covering with a slice of pot pie. What if instead of fighting against entropy, we embraced it? Wanting everything to match and be "just so" seemed like denial, an effort at control in a world where most control is illusory. People who bought new plates were just unable to come to terms with the fact that living is a messy business.

It's a theory.

I own a large set of white plates. I have dinner plates and bread plates and cereal bowls and finger bowls. They all match. Sometimes, one breaks, but not very often because they're made of unbreakable material created by Science. With my new theory in hand, I anaylyzed my cabinet inventory and decided that I had the plates of someone compensating, with dishware, for a life that bears little relation to the one expected. I would not fall into the trap. I set out to buy plates that did not match. I would not fall into entropy gradually, I would jump happily off the cliff with my best suit on.

First, I picked out a blue plate with pictures of riverboats and cotton mills. Then I found one with wheat stalks. And another with gold rims and Victorian couples reading poetry in the grass. I'd had no idea just how incredible plates could get. Not only was my soul surely more at peace with life, I had some pretty neat looking dishes.

That was all well and good for a while. Sure, it was a little scary discovering which plates were not microwave safe. And it was kind of a bother discovering that plates not made of magic Science material do break quite easily. I could deal with that. It was all just dandy until I went to put away my plates.

They did not stack.

Actually, they did stack. After all, you can stack a mandarin orange on top of an energy-efficient light bulb on top of a water buffalo, but that doesn't mean it's practical or stable. The plates had to go in a very specific order to keep from falling over. I missed my illusory control. At least then I didn't spend an hour unloading the dishwasher. I was three plates into my new entropy-embracing life and already I couldn't stand to look inside my kitchen cabinet.

I had found my limit. A younger me would have rebelled against the idea of a limitation within my own mind. I should be able to handle anything. This was the me who would bicker with friends until they tried new foods or who would argue with my mother that movies with bad words can still have merit. Limits are indeed, well, limiting to a person's experience in life. But a lot of them are not worth fighting about, like the ones that aren't hurting anyone else. If I couldn't abide by Minnasotans, and I had one move in next door, that would be a limit I would have to get over. But if I can't handle plates that don't stack nicely, well, I think I'll just let that one slide. I will never have the experience of having a fully mismatched set of dishware, but my life can still be fulfilling.

The plates that I still owned, the white ones from my previous life in the land of matching dishware, stacked beautifully. And, the company that makes them has been around for many many years and has made many many plates with many many patterns in the same shape. What if I bought plates from the same maker, but with different designs? If that wasn't quite embracing entropy, was I at least inviting it over for poker?

Now, my plates all stack together, ever so nicely, no matter what order they are in. But they are in different colors and their varying faces shine like those in a brochure from a diversity-minded company. When I go to the thrift store, I look for a new pattern to add to my collection. I try not to get repeats. When I pull one out of the cabinet, it's like greeting an old friend, an individual, rather than another in a set. Hello, you. Would you like to carry some pot pie?

Now that I've started to really pay attention to dishes and all the choices out there, I don't know how I would ever go about picking out a set. How could I decide that I preferred this one plate design over all others, that I love it so much that I want to use it exclusively, every day, until I've broken enough to warrant a new set? Humans mate for life, but I see no need for that sort of thinking with regard to finger bowls.

I love the new system. It adds interest. It embraces the inevitable.

egg pie.

I'm not big into eggs. We didn't have a lot of traditional breakfasts at my house, so I got eggs when I was visiting somewhere else or when my dad periodically scrambled them with ham for visiting company. My dad has a lot of good qualities, but his scrambled eggs are runny. I don't make good eggs either, because I never feel the urge. Josh loves eggs and wants to raise chickens someday. He makes breakfast on Sundays and always asks me about eight times how I want my eggs. He cannot believe that I simply don't care that much. It's mostly the same to me. I prefer over-medium to over-easy, but in the end, it's still just eggs. There's a limit to how much I'm going to get out of it. So he scrambles them or fries them or makes an omelet. I eat it, and I don't mind it, but I don't get the same enjoyment out of it that I do with the bacon that sits next to it.

I do like things made with eggs: brownies, for instance, or shrimp cakes or chocolate pie. I like eggs a lot more as an ingredient than as a food in and of itself. It's sort of like flour or vinegar.

One possible exception to my overall indifference to eggs is quiche. You might argue that eggs are again just an ingredient in quiche, but I would counter that eggs are just an ingredient in an omelet. Either way, I like quiche.

My standard quiche recipe, Quiche Lorraine, is in regular rotation. I like it for many reasons. For one thing, it's simple. Easy ingredients that I always have on hand, and you're done with the whole thing in an hour (if your pie crust is already made). Secondly, it's a good way to use up a leftover pie crust from a chocolate pie, since the crust recipe I use makes two crusts. Or, it creates a leftover pie crust, which can then be used to make chocolate pie. I promise that my life does not revolve around chocolate pie. It just revolves around someone else whose life revolves around chocolate pie.

Sometimes, I think about finding another quiche recipe, since it's very versatile and you can put just about anything inside. So I browse a bunch of different recipes and ideas, but in the end, those other recipes sound complicated and require ingredients I don't have, so I always end up back here, at Quiche Lorraine. You could certainly add some spices and whatnot to this, maybe some nutmet or white pepper, but it's pretty darn good as is. It's even good the next day, cold.

Quiche Lorraine
from Allrecipes

• 1 9-inch single crush pie pastry


• 6 slices bacon (see notes)


• 1 onion, chopped


• 3 eggs, beaten


• 1 1/2 cups milk


• 1/4 t salt


• 1 1/2 cups Swiss cheese (see notes)


• 1 T all-purpose flour

1. Bake pie crust however you see fit until crust is set.


2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.


3. Cook bacon, crumble, and set aside. Reserve a small amount of bacon grease (2 T or less) in skillet. Cook onion in reserved drippings until tender and slightly browned. Drain and set aside.


4. In a large bowl, mix together eggs, milk and salt. Stir in bacon and onion. In a separate bowl, toss cheese and flour together. Add cheese to egg mixture; stir well. Pour mixture into pastry shell.


5. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until knife inserted into center comes out clean. Let quiche cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Note: I never have Swiss cheese in the house. I usually use either mozzarella or a mix of Colby and Monterey Jack. Also, I bet you could signficantly cut down the amount of bacon used. Maybe try three or four slices instead of the full six. The real flavor delight in this recipe is not the bacon, but the onions cooked in the bacon grease. For those of you who do not eat pork, you could try turkey bacon or soy bacon or Francis Bacon. Or maybe you should just rethink the whole pork issue.

flatuosity.

This is a story about men and women, about relationships, about intimacy. It's also about poo.

I am not particularly modest when it comes to bodily functions. Some might say it's because I wasn't raised right, and I call those people repressed. It's only recently that I've even developed any sort of notion that some things were meant to be kept private, at least in the view of other people raised in other families. Did you know that not everyone burps whenever they want, even when it would make them feel a lot better? I borrowed some deodorant once, and since I was wearing a sleeveless top, I went ahead and put it on in the kitchen. The owner of the borrowed deodorant looked downright shocked. I once had a girl tell me that she had never seen her mother naked. I've seen my mother naked. I suspect it's like looking into the future.

It's all a matter of what you can stand, I guess. I want to be able to be myself. I wouldn't burp in front of the queen, or even in front of Josh's mom, but when I'm around family or friends, I don't want to have to worry. After all, we're all human here.

However, I have a thing about number two. At my house, we were not allowed to say "fart," because it was a crude word. We were to say "flatulence." The act of releasing "flatulence" was known as "flatulating," and if you were "flatulating" quite a lot, you were "flatulent." Maybe it was all a lesson in word forms, in which case I'm very sorry we didn't also use "flatuosity." While the act of flatulence might be unavoidable, to laugh about it was potty humor, and therefore beneath us. Girls on my high school basketball team used to make jokes about farts and stinking up the bathroom, but those always made me blush. I thought those girls were not raised right.

So when other people made jokes, it would just embarrass me. For them to make them about me and my bodily functions would cause me to melt right into the floor in a big puddle of shame. I can think of no greater mortification. The first time I farted in front of Josh, I wanted to cry (he laughed). I hate to poop in public bathrooms, for fear that the noise and smell would reach the noses and ears of others, even complete strangers. I'm happy to be human in most other ways, but when it comes to solid waste, I'd rather no one else know anything about it.

Some people in this position might try and be more lady-like in other areas, however, I'm just trying to undo any good breeding that I might have accidentally gotten. I'm tired of the stress that comes from worrying about whether my own boyfriend knows that I poop. I'm not farting on purpose, nor do I necessarily want to get to the "let-er-rip!" stage. I just want to be comfortable around someone I plan on getting older with, because I hear that flatuosity increases with age. I think it's ridiculous for me to have this one hang-up, when Josh and I have been through a lot of the unbearable grossness of being together.

I want you to understand that it makes me very, very uncomfortable to even write about this. But I wanted to tell you about what happened Sunday night, because I think it's kinda funny. In a few years, it might be really funny. Or I might delete the entry tomorrow.

Josh was lying on the futon in the living room, I was in the bathroom. I came out and asked timidly, "Honey? Do we have a plunger?"

Now, I know perfectly well that we do not have a plunger. I moved every last thing into that house, and I would have remembered that. This was me being hopeful, because I knew that if we did not have a plunger, then something else would have to be used.

"No, why?" He knew why. We were skirting the issue here.

"Can I make a request?"

"What?" He was scared of what I might possibly ask after I had asked after a plunger that he knew that I knew we did not have.

"Can I request that when you blow your nose, you put your tissue into the trash, not the toilet?" See, this was the real problem. He had a cold, and there was a lot of accumulated tissue in the toilet. Now, I had added more stuff to the toilet when I'd been in there, but that stuff was still floating in circles in the increased water levels, while the glob of tissue was poking out the drain hole.

He looked sheepish. "Is it clogged?"

"Yes."

"What about a wire coat hanger?"

"But...there's poo." That was so hard for me to say then, and so hard for me to write now. I felt like a little kid who had messed his pants and didn't want to tell on himself, but had to if he ever wanted the situation fixed.

"Oh."

Now here, we had a little standoff. Most any time there is any sort of thing that needs to be done around the house, he offers to do it. He likes to change light bulbs and paint the tall walls and fix the dimmer switch. I'm capable of doing those things, but he always steps up, usually without my asking. Those are manly things, he is the man, that's why he gets the bigger pork chop at dinnertime. His lack of an offer to fix the toilet situation was noticeable.

I knew that if I asked him to do it, he would and without hesitation. But I did not want to ask him, because then he would have to be poking around in the toilet, while evidence that I, just like everybody, poop, floated around before his eyes. I could not stand the indignity. I did not want to deal with the situation any more than he did. However, the possiblity that he might do it, and what he would see, was even worse, even though the whole situation was CLEARLY HIS FAULT.

So I didn't ask. And he didn't offer. He did help me find a wire hanger. Thankfully, it was not a tough clog, and it went through after only a little poking at the tissue glob. I threw away the hanger, washed my hands very thoroughly, and wrote "plunger" on my shopping list. Then I joined Josh on the futon.

"You usually offer to do manly stuff."

"I'm not good at plumbing. Your brother works in septic, so you're better at that stuff. It's genetic."

"I see."

"I would have done it if you had asked."

"I didn't want you to see my poop."

He giggled. We snuggled.

lunch outside.

The Waiter
The Waiter seemed to have all of the outside tables assigned to him. There were five tables outside, ranging from one with a single woman eating a reuben to a party of eight having brunch and cocktails. The service was slow. He took my drink order, delivered my sweet tea, and then disappeared again. My menu was sitting in front of me, closed, and I made a point to be looking around so it would be clear that I was ready to order. Finally, he came over again and I asked for the reuben with fries, please.

As I waited for my sandwich, I watched people. I watched the passersby who stopped to pet the dog at the table behind me, I watched the little family at the table next to mine, I watched the Waiter. At first, I thought he might be choosing to ignore me because I was eating alone and likely to have a low check total. Better to focus his attention on the tables where the tip potential was higher. But he didn't seem to be managing his time all that well. Every encounter was rushed. He would go to one table, then go inside. He could have done short check-ups at his other outside tables while he was out there. I began to hope that he did have more tables inside, rather than think he was just bad at his job.

I began to think about the tip. The meal would be around $10. Ordinarily, I would tip $2 on a check like that. I had an argument in my head.

You shouldn't reward bad service.

That guy lives on his tips.

Right, so he should be concerned about providing good service. There is a direct correlation between his job performance and his take-home pay. They all live on their tips, but if you give even the crappy waiters 20%, then there is no incentive to ever do any better.

It's a fifty cent difference.

I came to no conclusions. The service was slow, but it was a nice day, and I didn't have to be anywhere.

The Grandmother
The Grandmother was not all that old, but she walked that way. Something was wrong with her, such that each step advanced her mere inches and took ages. She leaned on her husband as they walked slowly past my table and into the restaurant. Minutes later, they came back outside with the hostess, who set out menus on a table in the shade. They conferred with her, and in another minute, the table was moved out into the sun, in front of my table. The sun would be in their eyes, but it was the kind of day where it was only warm enough to eat lunch outside if you sat in direct light.

Once their table was resituated in its new position, they continued to stand next to it. I wondered if whatever was wrong with her ability to walk affected her ability to sit. Maybe they were looking at the dog behind me. The waiter came and took their drink orders, then disappeared. The Grandmother and her husband stood awkwardly by the table, until a young man with a stroller walked up. The young man hugged them both with one hand on the stroller to keep it from rolling down the slight incline of the sidewalk. I compared the faces of all three of them, trying to see any resemblance between the young man and the old couple.

The stroller was sort of like a cart with the ability to lock in a carseat. It was space age and new. I'm not a stroller expert, but I'd never seen one like it.

"Does it lock? Can you lock it so she doesn't roll away?" asked the Grandmother. I thought it was a stupid question, of course a fancy new stroller would have the basic function of locking. Then I realized what she meant was to tell the young man to lock the stroller. I realized this three days later.

Whether he understood her true question or not, the young man did lock the stroller in place next to his seat, across the table from the Grandmother. The baby inside faced him, away from the sun.

"We can't see her!" the Grandmother wailed.

"I don't want the sun to be in her face," the young man explained. There was more discussion which I didn't hear because I was listening to the woman behind me talk about her dog, until the old man suggested moving the stroller on the other side of the table, next to the Grandmother, still facing away from the sun.

"That's what I've been saying," the Grandmother said.

The men switched places, the stroller was unlocked, re-parked, and locked again, while the Grandmother looked on and the baby ignored everything. Once the baby was next to her, the Grandmother stroked her hands and fat cheeks and cooed. Even as she participated in the conversation of the adults and gave her order to the waiter, she kept one hand on the baby. First I had been sympathetic with her and her painfully slow walk. Then I had been irritated with her nagging and insistence of getting her own way. But now, I softened toward her again, because all she really wanted was to see the baby.

The Dog
There was a red water bowl on the ground next to my table when I sat down, I assume for some previous customer who had brought along their dog to lunch. Perhaps it was left behind, but more likely it belonged to the restaurant, a fancy little extra to let wealthy pet owners feel welcome to bring their dogs and spend their money.

A thin blond woman sat in the table behind me, holding a leash attached to a huge and beautiful dog. The Dog was restless, no doubt due to the onslaught of smells coming from all the food, the people, the other rich dogs. He paced as much as his leash would allow, but did not bark. A man in leather shoes showed up and sat down with the woman.

It seemed that every person who walked by smiled at the Dog, every other person complimented his owner, and every third person asked permission to pet him. He sat patiently as children and adults alike pat his head, stroked his ears, rubbed his back. The woman told a pair of kids that his name was Jethro. She told another woman that he was a Swiss Mountain Dog.

The hostess, not the waiter, brought out my reuben with fries and a bottle of ketchup. I tucked in and forgot about the Dog and the Waiter and the Grandmother until I looked to my right and there was a big dog face, level with my plate, watching my fries. He was not begging, but instead looked curious, wondering why I hadn't ask his owner-woman for the right to pet him. I hate it when dogs beg, but Jethro was not bothering me. We were friends. The man called out "Jethro!", then got up and took the Dog away, explaining to him that the lady, who was me, did not want to share her fries. That wasn't strictly true, but Jethro didn't understand what we were talking about anyway, being a Swiss Mountain Dog. I smiled at Jethro as he departed, to show the man that everything was fine and I was not upset. I wished I could have taken his picture with my phone while he was so close. I did not talk to him or ask to pet him, but even I am not immune to the charms of Jethro.

The man must have tightened the leash, because Jethro lay down on the warm sidewalk then, periodically lifting his head as more passersby pet him and told him he was a good dog. He was a good dog.

A few minutes later, I picked up a fry and saw a short, black hair perched on it. I paused, the fry in midair on the way to the ketchup. It looked like dog hair. I could complain, further stressing out the waiter and embarrassing Jethro's owners. Instead, I flicked the hair away, dipped the fry in ketchup and ate it anyway. I blamed the wind for bringing the hair to my plate. Even when it does not deliver black dog hairs, the wind probably brings all manner of germs and detritis to my fries, and I eat those things, too. No big deal.

I finished my fries and continued to sit, half a sandwich left. The waiter asked if I wanted a box, and I told him I wanted the check, too, while I had his attention. I paid, tipping $2 on the $10 check, then got up and left, deciding not to pet Jethro on my way out, who made it look like the life of a Swiss Mountain Dog was pretty good.

yard sales, feb. 20.

I spent a grand total of $4.15 yesterday.  I went to two estate sales, and bought a box’s worth at one, nothing at the other.  This is the first winter that I’ve tried to yard sale the whole time through, and I’ve discovered that estate sales are what’s saving me.  There have been about two a week.  I don’t go to that many during the summer, so either I am missing them in the warm months or people like the nice weather so much then that they decide to hang on a while longer.

Most estate sales are run by some sort of company that the family hires.  The company comes in, arranges the stuff, prices everything, and holds the sale.  Sometimes I think I’d like to have an estate sale company, but that’s only so I’ll get first crack at the crap.

Here’s something interesting I found out from talking to an employee for such a company.  Sometimes, a buyer will come in after the estate sale and offer them a lump sum for whatever is left.  I imagine this buyer is often some sort of antique dealer who will then keep the good stuff and get rid of the rest.  I hope they donate the rest to Goodwill, rather than just throwing it all away.

The estate sales I attended yesterday were both run by the family.  One was out of a small apartment, the kind of place where your grandmother moves to be close to family after your grandfather dies.  All that adds up to a crappy estate sale.  A few years ago, when the grandfather died, there was probably a really great sale as the widow moved out from the house where they had lived for several years.  But all that stuff is long gone now, and what’s left are just the accoutrements of old people – walkers, blood pressure monitors, random mismatched toys that have barely been played with.  I mean, I’m just making all this stuff up here, so while I’m at it, I’m going to go ahead and pretend that I went to that moving sale a few years ago.  It was awesome.  I bought a bunch of good stuff.

However, the other estate sale really was the good kind.  The people had obviously lived there years and years.  Maybe even years and years and years and years.  There were lots of people running the sale, and they kept asking me if I wanted a box to put my stuff in and then whether I wanted to put my box down at the cashier’s while I looked around some more, and finally whether I needed another box.

One whole room was taken up with Peruvian folk art.  Souvenirs are pretty common at estate sales, I guess because people rich enough to have an estate sale were rich enough to travel.  I don’t buy many things like that.  If you can tell they were souvenirs at another person’s house, it’s going to be just as obvious at your own house, and then you have to explain that you’ve never been there.  There are exceptions to that rule, of course.

I bought some more fabric.  The deceased was quite the seamstress, it seems.  There were three boxes of scraps divided into bags marked anywhere from a quarter to $3.  Another woman was rifling through them while I was and she kept pointing things out to me.  “Oooh, here’s something velvety, isn’t that nice?  Oh, and is this taffeta?  Only $3 for 3 yards!”  Her onslaught of comments went on for so long that I finally stopped even responding at all, since it didn’t seem required.  Finally, she said, “Well, I’m going to get it then, if you’re not.”  I realized that she had been trying to get me to get it so she wouldn’t.  I suspect that lady goes to a lot of yard sales.  I could see myself doing something like that, though I prefer to just buy the stuff and give it away rather than convince strangers to get it.

I did not buy any taffeta or velvet, but I did get some wool.  Also polyester.  Again I found that taking pictures of fabric scraps is pretty much pointless.

I spent a nickel on one of those old linen towel calendars.  I’ve started getting these (and any other linen dish towels) whenever I find them for cheap (less than a quarter apiece).  They’re much nicer as kitchen towels than rags or regular kitchen towels.  They feel nicer and are often very pretty.  This one is from 1956, and though the print is very dim, the fabric itself stills seems very sturdy.

More stationery.  These look like they were inked by hand.  Very nice little note cards, six different designs in the pack for a dime.  I scanned three of them in for a sample view.  I was disappointed there wasn’t more stationery, as old ladies usually have lots of the stuff.  The only distinguishing marking is the “VWW” signature, so I haven’t been able to find out any info about them.  Maybe something bought at a flea market for all I know.

FINALLY, my great find of the day was the yard sale fulfillment of many months of wanting something but not finding it.  Or rather, I did find it last year, but the lady wanted $2 for it and I thought that was an insane price for a jar.  I would probably have paid the $2 now, because I’ve come to realize that they are hard unless you go to an antique store, where you will pay $10.

But this one was a dollar.  It’s so pretty.  There are some out there that have the words “perfect mason” misspelled, which makes them valuable.  Tell that to your kids the next time they’re struggling with spelling.  But this one is a run of the mill blue jar that would cost $10 at the antique store.  I predict that the Ball company will make blue jars again sometime as a marketing scheme.  There is no reason that utilitarian things like canning jars cannot be lovely.

I told my mom about it, and she immediately and generously offered to buy it off me for the same price that I paid.  I don’t recall saying that I wanted to get rid of it.  In fact, I remembered telling her I’d been looking for one for a while and that I really liked it.  My mother lacks subtlety.  Her motives are always glaringly obvious.  I’m mostly the same way, which Josh seems to like after knowing women that he could never figure out.

If I find more blue (or green or amber) Mason jars, I will buy them.  Someone will want them.  Even if they are subtle people who don’t ask outright for them, I will fill a jar with cookie mix and give it to those people at Christmas.

If you would like more information about these jars, here is an article written by a collector.  At the bottom of the article is a picture of his collection, which is why I need to give away additional jars I find, so I don’t end up with so many that I don’t have room for my stationery (or any children I might want later).

mostly plants.

I mentioned recently that I've been working on making complete meals, meaning not just a main dish, but also something to the side providing complimentary flavors and nutrients. You know, vegetables. Sometimes I fall back on the standby of a quick salad or some baked french fries. But I want to have a vast repetoire of veggie dishes, and so I've been looking for tasty, simple, and cheap ways of cooking up plant life for consumption. I want recipes that bring out the natural goodness of a vegetable. One thing that I've noticed is that vegetables often have a secret sweetness, waiting to come out. Perhaps they are the introverted bassists of the food world.

In the interest of greater world knowledge, here are three things that I've found.

Vegetable 1: Roasted Carrots
After trying roasted asparagus and this recipe, I'm beginning to wonder if you can just roast any vegetable in olive oil and spices and end up with yumminess. I did not know that carrots could be this good. I think the world in general does not know that carrots can be this good, otherwise there would be a run on them. Please roast some carrots. It makes them taste like CARROTS! You know, that subtle carroty flavor in vegetable beef stew? Like that, but more CARROTY! Your tongue will thank you, your eyes will thank you by blinking out the letters in Morse code.

This recipe is so simple, it doesn't even have quantities for the ingredients!

Roasted Carrots
Ripped wholesale from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

• carrots


• olive oil


• thyme


• salt


• pepper

Cut large carrots in half lengthwise so that all are about the same thickness. Lay them out on a sheet pan and drizzle olive oil on them. Toss to coat. Sprinkle with thyme, salt, and pepper. Arrange in a single layer on the baking sheet.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Carrots will look like they spent too long in the bathtub, but will be tender and sweet.

Vegetable 2: "Fried" Cabbage
Be honest now: how do you feel about cabbage?

Me, I'm okay with it. I don't really seek it out, but I recognize that it has its place. I like coleslaw, which is cabbage with mayo and vinegar and sugar. I enjoy reuben sandwiches, which have cabbage that has been allowed to sit out and smells bad. But mostly, I don't know what to do with cabbage. Sometimes, I buy one to make coleslaw, but I only use about half of it. So then I'm left with half a cabbage that sits in my fridge and makes me feel bad. Poor lonely little half a cabbage, every day it is more likely that your destiny involves a compost pit. And cabbages, unlike some other vegetables that I know what to do with, take a long time to go bad. Normally, this would be advantageous. To me, it's just more guilt time.

I made corned beef for Valentine's Day, because to me, a happy Valentine's Day is one spent letting the crock pot do all the work. Josh asked for cabbage to go with his corned beef. Already, we had mashed potatoes and potato rolls. I've been known to make colcannon, which is mashed potatoes with bacon and cabbage. But colcannon can be a little greasy. It's delicious bacon grease, but grease nonetheless.

So I started looking online for cabbage recipes. I found one called Fried Cabbage that seemed more like boiled or steamed cabbage. But it had high ratings, and I had all the ingredients. With huge misgivings, I made fried cabbage. I was ready for cabbage to ruin my wonderful Valentine's Day feast. I was going to rain curses down upon cabbage and wish that I had made hot dogs for the occasion, because I already know that I like coleslaw.

Dude, cabbage is yummy. This recipe has changed my whole outlook on cabbage. I'm going to buy cabbage to make this. Maybe if there is some left over, I will make coleslaw.

Fried Cabbage
adapted from Allrecipes

• 1 head cabbage, rough chopped


• 1 can chicken broth (1 3/4 c)


• 2 T butter


• salt and pepper to taste


• red wine vinegar (optional)

Bring the butter and broth to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the cabbage, stir to coat, and cover. Let simmer for 20 minutes, or until cabbage is soft, but not mush.

Add salt and pepper. Serve with red wine vinegar on the side. Those who feel bold can splash on a bit of vinegar.

Vegetable 3: Kinpira
Like roasting with olive oil, you could make this with a lot of different vegetables. I've done carrots, onions, and celery, and I have a bunch of broccoli stalks in my fridge, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. I'm going to kinpirate them. This recipe is a little spicy, and can be a lot spicy if you go nuts with the red pepper. You control your own spice destiny here.

I've reproduced the simplest recipe, but please visit the original blog post, where variations are posted. She calls it "Forgotten Vegetable Kinpira," which means I'm not the only person who has lonely vegetables.

Forgotten Vegetable Kinpira
stolen lovingly from Just Bento

• 2 cups of chopped or matchstick vegetables (carrots, onions, broccoli, cabbage, celery, peppers, some mixture of many - lots of options!)


• 1 T dark sesame oil


• a pinch of red pepper flakes


• 1 T soy sauce


• 1 t black or white (light brown) sesame seeds

Heat sesame oil in a skillet or wok. Add the veggies. Toss until crisp-tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Add red pepper flakes and toss. Add soy sauce, and toss again. Add the sesame seeds near the end.

yard sales, feb. 13.

Owls.

Everywhere.

Owls.

I went to the estate sale of a woman who really liked owls.  I mean, everyone likes owls.  They’re pretty and dignified and symbolic of wisdom.  What’s not to like?  Overall, I am in favor of owls.

But I walked around a house that was wall to wall owls, and I find that I don’t like them as much as I did before.  There were pictures of live owls in nature on the wall.  There were owl clocks and dishware and towels and craft projects.  There was a table, twelve feet long, covered in owl knick-knacks, some of them collectors’ items that cost hundreds of dollars when purchased, others made of shells and having googly eyes.

I really cannot imagine liking anything that much.  I’ve seen a fair amount of bizarre collections at estate sales, which makes me wonder what percentage of the general public has some sort of urge to stock their houses with themed items.  We went to one sale with a lobster room.  A whole room full of lobster stuff.  LOBSTERS.  When the company that comes in to run the estate sale comes in and sees all that, do they pray and pray that the exact right person comes to the sale?  How else could you possibly unload a room full of lobsters or a house full of owls?

I picked up a few things that were not owl-related.  They may have been the only non-owl things in the place.  The lady was also very much into yarn-related crafts.  I picked up some plastic canvas that I plan to give away to people in my family with small children.

Do you know about plastic canvas?  It’s what you give to children to teach them about sewing and cross stitch.  Me, I never graduated up.  I used to make a lot of stuff with it when I was little:  picture frames, boxes, a container for a remote control.  I’d pretty much forgotten all about it until recently, and it was like rediscovering myself:  oh yeah, that used to be me. 

This lady had also made some stuff with her plastic canvas:  a doorstop that contained a brick and said “PHIL.”  I did not buy that, but there’s a nice craft idea for all you Phils out there.  Advanced crafters could perhaps rework it for other names.

There was a disappointingly small cache of stationery in a plastic box, which I got for a dollar.  Some polka-dot envelopes, a few standard note cards, but the ones that made it all worth it were the shiny owl cards.  There were three, two gold and one silver.  The back indicates that they are suitable for framing.  I’m actually sort of surprised that they were languishing in the box, rather than hung up on the wall somewhere. 

I also picked up some stationery paper that had tiny pictures with embroidered thread.  I’ve seen stuff like this before.  It’s occasionally really neat, but also sometimes cheesy.  Luckily, I like both neat and cheesy.  This pack had note paper with ink drawings in the corner.  The drawings were then enhanced with embroidered flowers glued to the paper.  Most of them were just flowers or baskets of flowers or birds with flowers, but there was also a sleepy guy against a cactus. I’m not sure how much these scans do the paper justice, but I think they’re fun.

 

Someday, the employees of an estate sale company will pray that a stationery enthusiast will come to the estate sale at my house.

I got a set of some ridiculous acrylic highball glasses.  I bought them with every intention of giving them away.  But then I kept picking them up and admiring them in the car.  And when I showed them to Josh, he thought they were awesome.  All that probably means that I’m keeping at least two of them.   

I’m not sure what you’ll be able to tell from the picture, so let me explain.  The bottom says “on the rocks,” and there is a small enclosed compartment in the base of the glass which contains rocks.  GET IT?

Man, that cracks me up.  I love that I live in a country where such things happen. 

I spent a fair amount of time at that estate sale trying to find something with an owl to buy.  I’ve already mentioned that there were plenty of owl things to buy, 943 in fact (that is an exact count told to me by the estate sale company).  But most of them were either too ugly to even be considered kitschy or too expensive for someone who is not a crazy owl lady.  There were a dozen plastic baggies full of jewelry, most of it huge and shiny brooches.  But I did spy a tiny turquoise and coral owl charm that caught my fancy.  The problem was that it was in a bag labeled $15.

My options:

1. Pay $15 for the bag, get rid of pretty much everything else.
2. Come back the next day when everything would be half price and pay $7.50 for the bag if it was still there.
3. Ask one of the people working the sale if we could make a deal on just one item out of the bag.
4. Leave owl-less.

I’m not sure why I wanted an owl so much.  I felt like I needed to buy an owl to pay tribute to this crazy owl lady, who spent so much time and money accumulating owls.  I wanted some remembrance of this sale, so that when I looked at my own piece of it, I could think about the 942 other things I left behind.  Or maybe when you are bombarded enough with a thing, even a normally practical person will buy something.  Maybe the problem with the lobster room was that there just weren’t enough lobsters.

So I ended up explaining to a nice man that I seriously only wanted this one charm.  He dug it out of the bag and said I could have it for fifty cents.  He was probably glad to get rid of anything, considering it had snowed three inches the night before and only people like me had showed up.  But what a nice man.  Anyway, I now have a sweet little owl charm.  It came from a crazy owl lady.

There was also a church sale, where I picked up three nice sweaters (not shown) for $1.50 apiece and a cute metal box for fifty cents.  I shall put sewing notions in it.  I’m not sure what “notions” are, but if ever I figure it out, they shall go in here.  It was covered in some sticky goop, but that came off with very little scrubbing.  This is your reminder to not pass something by just because it’s dirty.

Finally, one last thing.  I want to post something that I bought at Goodwill, because it’s so awesome.  Here, look:

Why, yes, that is a massively long zipper.  But!  When you zip it up, it becomes:

A purse!  Made out of a single zipper!  I’ve seen these before online and always think to myself, I could just make that.  But then I never do.  I don’t even know where to get zippers that long, and I would probably just screw it up.  So hooray for me.