129 posts from 2008

  A plan for Christmas away really, really came true.....

California Central Coast

5 comments

May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live.

For all of you:

Mulling in my refrigerator right now is Hot Jezebel, sent to me by Middle Daughter who raved a bit:

1 C Apricot preserves

1 C Pineapple preserves

¼ C Prepared horseradish

1/2 tsp Dry mustard

Ground pepper to taste

Mix together and refrigerate for a full 24 hours in a tightly-sealed, non-reactive container.  Next day, stir and pour over a block of regular cream cheese and serve with Wheat Thins or your favorite bread or cracker.

Happy New Year!!!!

I've been gone so long that my own blog didn't recognize me.  I had to log in.

Anyone had blogger-block?  Ever have a time when it just wasn't in you to post anything?  Or read your friends' stuff?  Do you ever just say, "I just can't do it today/this week?"  Have you ever run dry for one reason or another, or no reason at all?

I could whine about all the stuff going on; busy stuff at work, getting ready to get the hell out of Dodge for the holidays (is hell capitalized?  I dunno.  Maybe don't care) and there's not enough time to get all my ducks in a row in order to leave on my first vacation in over two years, the sucky economy...but, nah.

Dear friends and neighbors, I'll be back; maybe from my laptop after I make good my week's escape to the central coast.  I'll be reading your stuff, too, and commenting and sticking my $.02 worth into your business.  But, dang I'm tired right now, and feeling dried up.

Know that I love yuns all.

I've tried.

I've really tried. 

I've tried to jump on the speeding bandwagon but it left me at a lurch in the road.

I had spoken to many people who got all glassey-eyed talking about this series, and one of them expressed all out triumph in being in line ahead of scores of people for the movie. When Nadine of South Africa (who also got in line to see the movie with her Mini Me. Yeah, glassey-eyed; her) offered to loan me her copy of the first book I jumped at it.  Okay.

I just can't get into it.   It does not grab me.  It is well written I s'pose, but it does not grab me. 

Maybe 40 or so years ago I'd maybe keep at the hefty tome, devouring each page like I hear other people say they did.  Maybe I could relate in some way to the hopelessly smitten, captivated and codependent Bella and her tale years ago, but not today.  Cripes.  I was at it for two days and I've hit a wall.  I can't go on.  I am cold-bored.

Am I the only one?  Am I an old crank?  Is it because it's a beautiful Saturday and I have a ton of things I need to plan for the holidays?  Is it because I need to save it for the before-sleep read?  Is it because I re-read two really great books last weekend and my standards are now high-falootin'?

Or is it because I'm an old crank?

Each year for Thanksgiving I do all the usual expected things: turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes....etc, etc.  I usually have friends and family around the table and when it's all over, each visitor must promise to take containers and plates of food home so I don't have to deal with tons of leftovers (with the Christmas holidays right around the corner it's like, the same menu.  That, my friends, is total overload).  This year, I'm not having people over.  I'm still cooking a bit, but I'm taking it a few neighborhoods away to a friend's house.  I'll be on a mission.

My assignment: 

1. Roast turkey, stripped off the bone, and placed in giant zipper bags. 

2. A pan of sage dressing.

3. A Trifle**

4. Two bottles of Chardonnay (not part of the assignment)

My friend Marianne makes Thanksgiving more meaningful than anyone I know.  She has friends around the table; friends she considers her family.  She does all the traditional stuff with a few things generously added for the vegetarian visitors.  Guests dine on her awesome spread until they are stuffed.

After the meal, with the hostess properly complimented and the table cleared, the scene around the table is magically transformed.  Bread, meat from 10 turkeys, condiments, spreaders, bags, disposable razors, tampons, condoms, socks; all lined up for the now-transformed-into-assembly-worker dinner guests to put together and pack into roughly 200-300 packages. 

Odd Thanksgiving doings? 

Yes.  Wonderfully, wonderfully "odd."  Those 200-300 packages are then loaded into the back of Marianne's middle-aged Jeep and are driven into the heart of Skid Row to be distributed by her crew of volunteers to the people on the street. 

Marianne is not well-off.  In fact, she struggles to keep the bills paid like the rest of us.  Each Thanksgiving, though, she manages to stage this epic event. She has been doing this for more than 20 years.   I'm proud to be joining the production this year with one of the most sterling women I know.

** I'm posting my Trifle recipe at the request of Middle Daughter.  

This particular variation  goes back more than 35+ years.

1 Velvet Crumb Cake, cooled and frozen.

 (I doubled the recipe for my assignment)

1 Large package Jello original vanilla pudding, cooked according to package directions and chilled.

1 Can peach slices, drained

½ Cup strawberry or raspberry jam

½ Cup Brandy

¼ Cup Sherry

1 Cup sliced strawberries

2-3 Cups whipped topping

Dark chocolate for shaving

Cut frozen cake into 2 ½ inch squares.  Slice each square lengthwise.  Arrange bottom half of squares in clear, straight-sided serving bowl (eh. Not that important, any deep serving bowl will do). Space each square with ½ inch gap around each piece.  Spread each of those squares with jam.  Top with the other half.  Sprinkle Brandy over the whole business.  Stir chilled pudding and add Sherry. Mix. With a large spoon, fill each gap between cake slices with pudding mixture.  Press sliced, drained peaches into pudding along each side of cake squares.  Press sliced strawberries into pudding  at corners of each square.  Cover all that array of cake, fruit and pudding with a thick slathering of whipped topping (I’m lazy in these older years; I use Cool Whip) and garnish the top with shaved chocolate.  Chill thoroughly.

The cake's in the oven right now.  I'll freeze it until Wed night & assemble the trifle while the turkey's roasting.

Good Sunday, all.

Ah, these innernets.  How I love them. 

I never had a pen pal growing up. 

Lots of other people I knew did. 

I could never reign myself in long enough to sit and write an actual letter to someone far away and make good sense of anything I'd want to share on paper.  I think it was the dyslexia or ADD or something.  Anyhow, I never did it.  Now, through the magic of electronics and voodoo I have pen pals online pals!!!

Some time back, after reading about my 1000-seed extravaganza, SusanMac offered to send me her leftover seed stash.  She'd be moving house in the future and these were leftovers.  I said, "Sure, here's my address." 

Well.

Let it be known that SUSANMAC rocks!!!

Seeds from SusanMac!!!

Bag after bag after bag of seeds were in this box!!  I still haven't looked closely at all the packets in there.  I'm boggled.

The generousity of my friends is beyond compare.

Thanks, Susan.  On your next road trip to Calif, we're having lunch.

(With apologies to The Mamas and Papas)

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is, too

I've been for a dri-ive

Through the smoke and goo

I'd be asthma free at

The San Diego Zoo

California's burnin'

I've ashes on my shoes

California's burnin' and

I've ashes on my shoes

That title makes not one damn bit of sense but somehow it fits in my head.

My two youngest surprised me for my birthday.  The daughter in Austin hitched a ride with a friend who was driving here to see her own mother.  I thought it was going to be Youngest daughter and SIL on the step when I opened the door on my birthday.  No.  It was Youngest and Middle!!!  I very nearly fell over.  After hugging them both for a rediculous amount of time on the front step, they took me to dinner.

We talked, we laughed and we caught up on all the news and happenings.  Sunday, after breakfast, we went thrift store-ing and shopping for the ingredients to make tacos at home (Mexican food two days in a row:  woo!).  We ate until we were stuffed.

Later on that evening, we fluffed up and posed for Youngest's camera for "Mom's Birthday Glamour Shots." 

They made me wear lipstick:

When I came home from work Monday night, the house was echoingly empty.  The happy dissaray of the coffee table and the sofa pillows from the weekend served as a reminder that my children are indeed grown and gone, away from me, living fulfilling lives separate from mine.  I weep as sweet memories come flooding back:  my little tow-headed daughters, so precious to me, fill my thoughts and my heart as I remember them growing up.  My children.  I have nothing finer in my life.

Thank you my darlings, for what was quite possibly my best weekend ever.

1. Really good brie.   I can eat an entire wedge at one sitting.   It has to be at least double creme, with every speck of that nasty amonia-smelling rind removed.  And NOT encroute. I do know people who eat the rind.  The rind is so strong that you can totally miss the cheese taste.  Bleh.
2. Shutting out everything and losing myself in a good book.  I've spent entire weekends in other worlds from my sofa.
3. Coffee and Doritos for breakfast.
4. Being alone.  Throughout my life I never took the time to be solitary and introspective.  There was always so much busy, active LIFE going on that there was never time.  I'm relishing this.  This hurts friends' feelings sometimes, I think, because I turn down more invitations than I accept (close folks understand that this hermit-stuff has nothing to do with them, I hope).
5. A bacon and egg sandwich on Hawaiian sweet rolls with about a quart of mayo.
6. Disco music (I have no shame.  Gimme some BeeGees, Village People and Donna Summer and I'll geek right out.  You may choose to look the other way).
7. Non-politics (Carry on without me.  It's given me a headache.  Consider me MIA for the next little while).
8. The sulfer smell of a burnt kitchen match (doesn't it give you brian damage or something?)
9. Surfing the 'net & reading people's stuff  for too long on weekend mornings.
10. Bacon Dark Chocolate.
11. Jack N the Box deep-fried mac and cheese nuggets.

Someone once told me that if you're doing stuff that you know might not be best for you....make sure you really enjoy it. 

So. 

I do.

Have a swell Saturday.

At the office, we've been kicking around ideas for promotional giveaways.  There are companies that will put your name on anything from baseball caps to shopping bags to keyfobs.  We couldn't decide on any one item for a long time.  I thought emery boards or band aid despensers might be good.  In fact, I've been thinking emery boards would be the coolest because EVERYONE has a need for an emery board at one time or another.  Almost every woman has one in her purse, in drawers, and at the office.  I thought it was a SUPER idea!  With the company name on them!   The boss?   Not so much (the minimum order is something like 1,200.  That's a lot of damned emery boards).  So, we decided on personalized seven-day pill boxes.  Eh.  Okay.

Today, we celebrated my birthday in the office.  It was lovely.  The boss and staff bought me my favorite teeny cupcakes from Mrs. Beasley's and a very special gift.  When the boss handed this lightweight package to me she said, "Jill, this is something you've been wanting." 

WHOOOOOH!!  YEAH!!!

I tore off the wrapping, opened the box and almost fell on the floor.  I couldn't stop laughing and jumping up and down.  This is the funniest, cleverest, wise-ass gift ever:

Custom Emery Boards

The boss and staff did these!  My own personalized emery boards!   LOL!!!  

Birthday at the Office

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I love my office mates!

(yes.  that's my messy desk behind me)

I'd mentioned before that I'm a geek for peoples' old photograph albums and slide shows and home movies.  I can be enthralled for hours.  I love to hear family stories, especially if they're funny.

My friend, Claudia, can tell a story.  She will launch into a family vignette, and 1/3 of the way through you start to laugh.  By the time she's finished, you have tears running down your face and you're gasping for air.  The woman can break you up.  She now has more fodder for her tale-telling repertoire.  Below is her brother's little dog, Jake:

And the amazing story..............