So, several weeks ago I put together one of my four-times-a-season retreat breakfasts for the wonderful, wonderful choir to which I belong. (Be sure to get your tickets now.) I had actually done a pretty good job of getting things done ahead of time, making up my chile-corn-cheese casseroles the night before and also the cranberry-orange rolls from Smitten Kitchen. (Mine didn’t have glaze–too sweet.) I had loaded up the car with supplies the night before also, a task I usually postpone until the frantic morning of the event. Really, as I look back on the whole thing I don’t see any particular reason for me to have been at all frazzled. I think that perhaps I didn’t get on the road quite as early as I meant to, but even that’s a little doubtful.
I Am Eating an Elephant!
Isn’t that a lovely picture? Nothing like dirt clods to get the old heart racing, I always say. It’s part of a big gardening project I’ve undertaken while my husband is off on a trip to Central Asia. He’ll get back on Sept. 30th, and I thought it would be a good idea for me to have some challenges of my own while he’s gone. This dirt pile represents one of those.
In Which I Try to Steer My Readers Away from Conspiracy Theories
Have you noticed that there haven’t been many posts on this blog of late? It’s not that I’ve retreated into some cave, nor is it that I’m tired of writing about my opinions. What happened was . . . I got back from our big trip to France, during which I had had every intention of posting at least some but that never happened, sat down at my laptop, and thought, ‘I don’t know that this is how I really want to spend my time.’ I’ve enjoyed blathering on about events in my life and how I see their significance. It’s been a good way for me to keep writing on a regular basis, sort of like a journal. But now I find myself much more interested in specific topics, ones that I hope can make a real difference in my readers’ lives, and it’s those areas where I’ve been concentrating during the past few weeks. Here are some current/upcoming projects:
Featherlight, Ethereal, Non-Library-Paste Hummus
For years I’ve had a very basic hummus recipe–chickpeas from a can, lemon juice, tahini, garlic, olive oil and salt, all dumped into the food processor and whirled until pulverized. It was fine as an occasional lunch item, sometimes spread on a flour tortilla with some veggies and rolled up to make a wrap. I would also make it for occasions when I thought I absolutely had to serve some kind of appetizer, say if people were coming over to watch the Super Bowl. But it wasn’t something I ever got too excited about it. I liked it, but it wasn’t an obsession.
A Lesson from Aunt Bee
In the name of research this morning, I made the incredible sacrifice of looking up and watching two episodes of the old Andy Griffith Show, searching for a scene that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time. Unfortunately, the section I thought I would find wasn’t there. So I guess I’m thrown back onto my rather unreliable memory. One of these days (maybe the next time I have the flu, which I hope will be never) I’ll binge-watch until I find it. And it will probably be different from what I remember! I don’t think so, though. Anyway, here’s what happened (as Monk would say):
A Family Get-Together
Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened in Our Family When Our Youngest Son, His Wife, Their Baby, Their Toddler, and Their Five-Year-Old Came to Live with Us for Three Months by Judith Viorst, originally published by the Free Press, 2007, now available in a number of formats through Amazon and at the library. (The above is an Amazon affiliate link.)
To be honest, I haven’t been doing a lot of book reading these days. It seems as if every waking moment that I’m not spending on anything else I’m devouring articles about the election. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still love books and have ones that I recommend, and I can’t believe that I’ve never posted about this one. I bought it in hardback when it first came out and vividly remember reading it aloud in the car to my husband and son. The title is a takeoff of Viorst’s earlier children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Day. Same guy, but now he’s married with three children, needing a place to stay while his family’s house is being remodeled. So his parents invite the tribe to stay with them rather than renting a place. It turns out to be quite an adventure.
I love books that have a strong authorial voice, and especially those that echo my own personality. Oh my! Do I ever relate to Judith, whether she’s slipping an article underneath her son’s bedroom door about the dangers of too much bike riding, or trying to nonchalantly remind him about the instability of the big oak dresser upstairs, or restraining herself from shrieking about chocolate coming anywhere near her beloved velvet furniture. (I’m that way about my beloved dining room table and anything that could possibly scratch it.) She’s very self-aware, though, as I hope I am. Here’s a representative passage:
It’s inevitable, I suppose, that living, as Milton and I are now living, in close quarters with our resident grown-up children, there are bound to be opportunities–lots of opportunities–for intergenerational irritations. Some of them, however, some of us parents might be able to avoid by repeating the following mantra twice a day:
Don’t judge, advise, or criticize.
Respect their boundaries and choices.
Accept who they are.
Well, sometimes we need to repeat it ten times a day. And then we must try to abide by what we say. I’m doing my best.That doesn’t mean that I always succeed in keeping my mouth shut when I should keep my mouth shut. But I don’t understand those parents who won’t even try.
For me, the greatest delight of this book is that it reminds me of my own wonderful family, both immediate and extended, and how much I enjoy spending time with them. The long trips taken with my in-laws. The family reunions at the beach. The Thanksgivings and Christmases. This afternoon we’re heading over to said in-laws for dinner, so I’m trying to get this post done and my newsletter out before we leave. We haven’t had our usual Sunday-afternoon lunch for a couple of weeks, so it’ll be nice to see them.
Great takeaway: “And then we must try to abide by what we say.” A great reminder to me, as a champion maker of resolutions that I don’t keep,
Eventually the 90 days end and everyone goes back home. It’ been a great time, and now it’s over. One more quotation, only one, I promise: “I am full of smiles and tears at the same time, full of the difficult knowledge that I can’t, as the poet once put it, ‘cage the minute within its nets of gold.'”
Well, you need to read the whole thing. Only 113 pages of big type, and every one of them full of wisdom. Well, well worth the time.
A Set of Sweet Mini Tart Variations
Over the years I’ve developed several recipes for mini tarts that use the same easy dough for the crust. They’re kind of labor-intensive, but in the end you have adorable, single-serving treats that are prettier and more interesting than most cookies but can still be picked up and eaten without a plate or fork.
First take a look at the crust recipe, which is the same as for the savory mini-quiches. This dough recipe pops up all over the place, and it’s just great. You may think that it has too much cream cheese/butter in relation to the amount of flour, but it doesn’t. I have made a minor tweak to the amounts as originally written, since that recipe called for 3 ounces of cream cheese, a size that used to be sold individually, and therefore upped the flour a bit. These new amounts give you a slightly larger amount of dough to work with.
Grab that Forelock!
So, last week I was in Parachute, Colorado, a little town about halfway between Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs, as part of our big celebration of my in-laws’ 25th wedding anniversary. It’s always hard for me to find coffee that I like on the road. (I wasn’t even very impressed with the coffee I got in France!) I was pleased to see that there was something called “The Little Coffee Shack” a couple of blocks from our hotel and decided to go over there, since I was sure that the coffee provided as part of our free hotel breakfast would be terrible. My big beef with coffee made by anyone but me is that it’s too weak. Someone several years ago suggested that I start ordering what’s called a “shot in the dark,” which is regular brewed coffee with an added shot of espresso. I’ve done that several times and had fairly good results. Okay. I went over there and ordered. I even said, “Just to be sure, a ‘shot in the dark’ is . . .” and the girl on duty said, “Sure—I know what that is.” Well, folks, she must not have. What I got was basically colored water, for which I was charged $3.75.
A Light-Hearted Look at 1920’s France
I was reminded of this book (how many of my reviews start that way?) while I was writing some travel tips based on our recent trip to France. One of my recommendations, passed on from Rick Steves, Mr. European Travel himself, was to wear a money belt. His statement brought to mind the so-called “security pocketbooks” that Cornelia and Emily were forced to wear during their own trip to 1920’s France. This was, of course, during the days before women wore pants very much, and while they weren’t wearing layers of petticoats their skirts were longish and baggy. So see if you can picture this: an elastic belt around the waist with a narrow band attached to it hanging down and a purse thingy attached to that, dangling between the wearer’s legs. As long as you stand still or walk slowly the thingy should be unobtrusive, but if you’re at all active it will start swinging. There’s a very funny scene early on when Emily and Cornelia are dancing (I think it’s onboard their ship) and their purses start bumping into the knees of their dancing partners. Both girls exit the dance floor looking embarrassed, followed by their partners who look puzzled.
You Won’t Enjoy this Book. Read It Anyway.
Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense
If you follow my postings over on my personal Facebook page, or if you read the conservative news outlet National Review, or if you were following the news back in February when she was booed at the CPAC convention for daring to say that it was perhaps a bit hypocritical for conservatives to excoriate Bill Clinton for his sexual misbehavior but to give Donald Trump a free pass, then you know the name of Mona Charen. (Read her NYT editorial about her CPAC experience here.)