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The Last Word on Cooking
September, 06, 2010
I am done with cooking; I am almost done thinking about it.
All this infernal internal chatter has made me pay attention to other people and their cooking habits. My sister Peg has given over the job to her husband Larry (perhaps the “fifty years is enough” rule really isn’t just something I made up to make myself look better). My other brother-in-law, Don, can’t even fry an egg so I guess by default this sister is stuck for the duration. Our friend Stan cooks for company all the time. He makes a great beef vegetable soup and spaghetti sauce from scratch. All three of our sons-in-law are very at home in the kitchen and even my grandson Andy can cook. He once surprised us with homemade bread, and jam he made from fresh berries! Maybe Irish women haven’t gotten the word, but here on this side of the pond, we are definitely liberated from pot holders, meat thermometers and the George Forman Grille.
It’s not just family that I have observed and questioned. When we lost our tenant of thirteen years last August, we immediately placed a “For Rent” ad in the News Post. We had a ton of responses and showed the house more than forty times.
Of all those groups tramping through the townhouse, only three individuals bothered to even step foot in the kitchen. Not a single soul checked out the oven or looked cross-eyed at the stove top; one person opened the refrigerator. Bill thought maybe they all just micro waved everything, but that’s not too likely since there is no microwave in that kitchen and no one even seemed to notice.
Maybe this is why you have a two hour wait at every decent restaurant in Frederick. No body cooks.
Too bad that is not exactly true. In the past year our home town has gotten a lot of recognition as the gourmet capital of Maryland. Every week last winter, we saw Frederick’s own Voltaggio brothers on Top Chef. They are not just “cooks”, they are world class chefs. Even a local priest, Fr. Leo from Mount St. Mary’s, was cooking for the “mass” media and winning a throw down against Bobby Flay.
So it looks like lots of men cook, not just Bill. I feel better, and it’s good to know the rest of us won’t starve! |
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Full Circle
Little Lulu
August, 31, 2010
As I get older I am continually surprised by new events that seem to tidy up or add “the end” to a story line that has been progressing through my life for decades.
Little Lulu is a great example. I first loved Lulu Moppett and her friends Tubby, Iggy and Annie when I was a new reader just discovering comic books. I went to a Catholic school and had to wear uniforms. I was encouraged by the fact that Lulu wore the same little red dress every day of her life and didn’t seem to mind a bit. I named my favorite doll after her and loved her completely. After I had outgrown dolls, I kept Lulu in the top drawer of an old bureau until her soft rubber body deteriorated and started to smell funny. Then her little head became glued to the bottom of the drawer and my mother said that was about it for Lulu.
Her comic books were silly and fun; I loved the “Dear Diry” section in the middle where Lulu complained about her mother and father and all the injustices she endured when being punished for “no reason at all”. For many years I kept a “diry” too. It helped me endure a few injustices of my own and taught me the value of documenting my life, the good parts and the bad.
Five years ago, I had the honor of being in the delivery room as my niece Mary gave birth to her third child. If it was a girl, she was to be named Ellen. I was sure from the beginning it was a girl, but still had the fear that I would miss the chance of having a namesake. I was in charge of Mary’s right arm and leg and, as the moment of birth grew near, my doubts disappeared completely. At the final push, I was so sure it was Ellen we were waiting for, that I remember saying “here she comes” with confidence.
Ellen Virginia Haley is blue eyed, blonde, and beautiful; she has no resemblance to me at all, but there is something deep inside her that binds us together. She loves all the things that I love: anything that sparkles; corn on the cob (her one request for her birthday dinner); and rocks, souvenirs from favorite places that she stuffs in her shirt for the ride home. Where sweet things are concerned, nothing is sacred. Ellen has been known to scarf up half a bag of chocolate covered pomegranate seeds in seconds, stuffing the remainder in as the sugar police close in. I am positive she would readily stoop to suck ice cream off a manhole cover if it ever came to that!
Her mother often rolls her eyes and says, “Well, I sure did name her well, didn’t I?” But that name seemed a bit formal at times, so Ellen soon became Ellie, and it suited her. As her “silly factor” developed, her sister Rose began calling her Ellie Lulu and then just “Lulu”. That couldn’t be more perfect – I love loving Lulu again. |
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Summer in the Sixties
August, 25, 2010
It’s the last week of August and the last installment of my favorite childhood memories of summer.
Just as I became a teenager, my family moved to Frederick. My sisters and I loved living in a real town where we could walk to everything and meet up with friends so easily. We were long past the time of limited responsibilities and childish fun, and that was ok. There was so much more to fill up our thoughts and our time when we were out of school for the summer.
We needed money for everything, so I babysat almost every day and lots of evenings and earned a fortune (in my mind) at fifty cents an hour, enough for clothes and treats anyway. The summer I turned 15, I got a job at Freez King with my sister Peg and a couple of friends. A skinny little kid until that point, I gained fifteen pounds that summer, eating all our “mistakes” and building muscles cleaning the machinery, hoisting the “moo milk” that made the soft ice cream, and using a commercial slicer to cut the meats and cheeses for our famous “Flying Saucers”. We never laid eyes on the owner of the business, paying ourselves out of the till and arranging schedules and lists of supplies. It was a great learning experience and the best job I ever had.
On free days my friend Sharon and I would walk up to the new Frederick Shopping Center and spend hours at “The Adeline Shop” trying on skirts and dresses, Bermuda shorts and bathing suits and our favorite hysteria-producing Maidenform bras. They looked like deadly armor likely to pierce the body of anyone daring enough to infiltrate our “personal space” (not that anyone was applying for that position that I can recall). When we’d had enough of that frivolity we would treat ourselves to an ice cream cone at High’s Dairy Store and then head home.
From the first days of June ‘til Labor Day, all I wanted to do was go swimming. Many of my friends were on the swim team at the “Y” and I spent countless hours practicing, not swimming, but diving. Well, not diving exactly, just the approach techniques that looked so official and important. “One, two, three steps with arms sweeping out to the side, then a lift of the knee, an arching of the arms and a quick bounce – perfect! I was great at it but no place to show off my skills! We could have had a fairly reasonable walk to Baker Park pool but some little kid told me he found a ”turd” floating in the water. I thought he meant turtle and I didn’t much like the idea of having my toe bitten off so we avoided the place. I was permanently turned off, however, when I found out what he really meant. At this writing, I would say I held onto that thought for over fifty years because I have never been swimming in Baker Park pool to this day.
Occasionally, we would have success wheedling and whining until a parent consented to drive us to Braddock pool for the afternoon complete with a swing by Main’s Ice Cream in Middletown on the way home.
But that was about it until a miracle occurred …and what better place for a miracle than a Catholic Church? St. John’s High School had outgrown its space in downtown Frederick, so the parish made the bold move to purchase “Prospect Hall”, a 32 acre plot of land way out on Butterfly Lane. It came complete with not only a Civil War era mansion, a caretaker’s house and a sunken garden, but also included an amazing, but freezing cold, spring-fed stone swimming pool and large bath house.
I had a friend take this picture of me on the diving board above the deep end of the pool. It’s a really fuzzy picture, probably because my friend was shaking the camera laughing at me. Even though I look pretty official like I’m going to do a fancy reverse twist flip dive or something, you know it was all a fake. The simple fact was… I couldn’t swim let alone dive.
The pool was open all summer long bringing together our friends from school and also friends of friends - kids from Frederick High, who we considered very exciting and maybe even a bit dangerous. There were no life guards present and no adults to dampen our spirits with rules and cautions.
All I can say is by the grace of God nobody ruined this perfect summer scene by drowning, or cracking open their heads and “winding up in the hospital” as they used to say. |
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What a Way to Start the Day
August, 16, 2010
Last Thursday started with a bang, more like a lot of bangs as I was awakened by a nightmarish early storm that felt a lot like that crazy earthquake scene of a few weeks ago.
After the storm, I fell back asleep, and awoke just before nine. At that rate, I thought, I might as well scratch the plans for the whole day, forego the shower, forget combing my hair or even getting dressed, and have one of those really great “stay in your jams” all day experiences! I felt really industrious and got lots done, winding up with cleaning up the laundry area, and stocking the bar fridge with those cartons of soft drinks I had been walking past for the last few weeks.
I got all the Cokes out of the boxes and started on the Root Beer when the cans took off faster than I could catch them. The first landed by the washer, I looked with amazement as the second one crashed to the floor and rolled down the back hall. For some reason I was thinking it was all very funny until the next one exploded on impact and saturated my jammies from top to bottom just as another one hit my big toe at about fifty miles an hour. I looked down and a river of root beer, mixed with streams of blood, was heading to the floor drain. I couldn’t escape the mess for fear of leaving bloody footprints on my beige family room rug, so I peeled off the jams and used them to wash up the floor, walls and appliances as best I could. I wrapped a sock from on top of the dryer around my toe and hobbled toward the stairs when the phone rang. It was my neighbor, Jenny, who was kind enough to inform me that a tornado was heading for Libertytown and was due here within minutes.
Before I could go any further, my niece Sally called with the same warning and as thunder cracked overhead, we lost electricity and the cordless phone went dead in my hands. Just then the wall phone upstairs rang so I bounded up the stairs trying to ignore the throbbing pain emanating from the busted pulpy mess that used to be my big toe. My son-in-law Kenny was telling me to “get downstairs and away from the windows”.
Unfortunately, that rarely ever used rotary dial wall phone is positioned next to three windows facing north and west, just the direction the tornado was coming from.
In a panic now, I grabbed my first aid kit and headed downstairs again when the phone rang and I had to limp back up to reassure Sally I wasn’t dead or anything.
Down I went once more, and back up over and over as Bill, my brother-in-law Larry, my friend Stan, daughter Julie (3x), and Hot Tub Nancy all called. I felt so loved! In the back of my mind, however, was the nagging thought, “ARE THESE PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL ME OR WHAT?????”
Just as the worst of the storm was passing by, Kenny called again; I told him that if the electricity didn’t come back on, Pop and I might be coming to live with him and Jennie for awhile. Silence. Hmmm. I guess that’s when the phone lines went down.
It actually wasn’t long after the storm was over that the electricity and then the phone service came back on so I went up to take a nice long hot bath. When I leaned over to turn on the water I was drenched by the shower head, which somebody had left in the on position.
All I could do at that point was think “I can’t wait for tomorrow to come.” It would be my granddaughter Molly’s birthday…but that would mean it would also be Friday the Thirteenth! Might be smart to have another pajama day, but this time, to be safe, I think I’ll just stay in bed. |
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A Balancing Act
August, 09, 2010
On Mondays, I always look forward to talking to Betty, an elderly friend of mine from church. She frequently tells me about her children, the multitude of sons, and her two very attentive daughters. The one daughter follows Betty around like she can’t put one foot in front of another without running the danger of inflicting personal injury upon herself. After Betty was involved in two automobile accidents (in the first, she was a passenger and the other one was determined to be the other drivers error), this cautious daughter told Betty it was probably about time she “stopped driving”. It was useless to explain that neither accident was even remotely her fault.
The other daughter is just the opposite; she treats her mother like a friend and expects her to keep up speed and an activity level more suitable to a twenty year old.
Although Betty often thinks this is a bit much for an eighty five year old woman, she does like to be independent so she sometimes takes on chores that would be better left to someone younger and more agile. My favorite story is about her challenge to water the plant that hangs above the dresser in her bedroom.
“You should see me”, she relates gleefully. “I just hoist one leg up on the bureau, grab a hold of the mirror, stand up, heave a really heavy watering can over my head, water the plant, and then inch my way down until I am sitting on top of the bureau. I just sit there for a bit and wiggle my bottom all around; might as well dust a little while I’m at it”. Once she did need help, she said, and she called out to one of her sons but he “never did answer”. She tells me all this in great detail with such delight in her eyes that I feel like hugging her for her bravery, openness, and especially her sense of adventure and pride. This is like a little badge of glory she is sharing with me.
I felt inspired to be more like her so when I needed to water my hanging basket on the gazebo today, instead of dragging out the hose, I just “did a Betty”, filling the watering can from my rain barrel, then trotting up to the gazebo to take care of business. Being a cautious soul, I decided against climbing on the wicker chair, since we all know how rickety they can be (especially since I found this on the side of the road in Deerfield with a sign on it saying “Take Me”). I opted instead for a fairly new slatted wooden chair, stepped up firmly with watering can in hand, and reached for the planter…and collapsed - forgot that was a folding slatted wooden chair. There I was hanging from the lattice work, for only a minute though, before I easily dropped to the ground. No harm done.
Betty definitely is an inspiration, but I guess the two of us need to rethink things from time to time, weighing the merits of taking on tasks that we feel good about completing and contemplating the possible perils and safety issues involved. It is definitely a balancing act, one that needs adjustments as the years go by, sometimes by choice, and sometimes out of necessity. |
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Summer in the Fifties
August, 02, 2010
In the last few days, we have had such beautiful weather, the kind that reminds me so much of carefree summers when we were kids living in Takoma Park, MD in the 1950’s.
My two sisters and I were lucky to live in a neighborhood with lots of other girls and spent all day, every day, outside roller skating, riding bikes, or just sitting with friends on the curb (like Annie, Tubby, Iggy, and Little Lulu in my favorite comic books). We would play with trading cards and talk about movie stars, and in the later years, it would be all about Elvis. There was hopscotch, drawn in chalk on every available sidewalk, using worn rubber heels begged from the shoe repair guy at the shopping center, to mark our progress. Our bike rides were more like all day rallies involving intricate plans, ambiguous clues, and secret destinations.
No one we knew had air conditioning so on the hottest of days we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves. Chasing each other around the yard with the hose on full blast was one way to cool off, if just temporarily. The hottest days were spent lying on the hard wood floor in a darkened and windowless hallway, picking up and moving every few minutes to plop down on a fresh cool spot.
Those humid afternoons sometimes brought out the worst in us. My good friend Kathy, who lived across the street, was cared for by her grandmother who often didn’t hear us sneak into her kitchen, pick up the phone and listen in on party line conversations; if no one was on, we would take out the phone book, look up our favorite last name, and then proceeding alphabetically, make crank phone calls, whispering to the unsuspecting recipient “If Adam (or Ben, or Charles, or David) is Wright, is Anna May Wong?”. All I can say is, it was hysterically funny at the time!
The liquid refreshment of the decade was Kool Aid and every glass in the house contained its sticky stained remnants plus a few fuzzballs, ants and other bugs. Mothers hated Kool Aid. We ate no snacks that I can remember. That and the constant outdoor activity might account for the plethora of skinny little girls in that neighborhood.
Several times a summer we would be allowed to walk more than a mile to the municipal swimming pool. We spent the whole day there baking and playing and then, so tired we could hardly walk, we would make our way back stopping at “Jim’s Butter Gems” for the super flaky layers of day old dinner rolls. For the next week we could plan on spending our time pulling strips of loose and bubbled sun-burned skin off each other’s backs, never thinking it was a future predictor of skin cancer, premature aging, and liver spots, whatever they are.
I guess that’s one of the consequences of being “carefree”. |
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In Jeopardy
July, 26, 2010
Alex Trebek is a most annoying game show host. I cringe when the category involves foreign names or phrases, gagging as he deliberately exaggerates the “proper” pronunciations. He corrects contestants with such an air of superiority - but I watch the show every evening anyway. It’s good for those old brain cells.
There I am stretched out on the best seat in the house, a tasty snack perched on my chest, learning various esoteric facts (got that word from Reader’s Digest Word Power), about geography, opera, Shakespeare, and of course “potpourri”, expanding my mind and behind simultaneously.
One of the “Final Jeopardy” answers this past week was “Who is the only U.S. President to obtain a degree from both Yale and Harvard”? So, I’m thinking, that had to be one of those scholarly types from centuries past. We haven’t had a lot of official brains holding down that office in recent years! We’ve had the humanitarian types like Jimmy Carter, hero/warriors like Eisenhower, a ladies man like Clinton, and even a committed politician or two or three.
The correct answer - George W. Bush! Who knew? Well, two out of three of the smartypants on the show did, that’s who. I guess I recall something about his college and post graduate years but it usually was crowded out and glossed over with stories about his shirking of military commitment, his missteps in office, or his host of unpopular decisions. Guess the media slam of our former president’s intelligence missed the mark- at least with some people.
I was waiting for Alex to “explain” and instruct us after the answer was given, but he restrained himself and I’m proud of him. I guess he’s smart enough to understand that History, in its purist form, doesn’t remember opinions or political spin. It’s more a catalog of facts.
Too bad none of us will be around to see how it records the life, career, and presidency of George W. Bush. |
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Summer in the Forties
July, 19, 2010
Last Friday was a weird day. Shaken awake by the noise and vibrations of the infamous Frederick earthquake, I fell back asleep sure it was only a dream. Later in the day, I was flopped on my bed “recovering” when I heard another sound, one equally unbelievable in tiny Libertytown Maryland. It sounded like calliope music drifting slowly up the road in front of my house, a sound that could only mean one thing – but who would ever imagine an ice cream truck cruising the streets of this sparsely populated corner of the county? A weird day and weird things were still happening.
I have to tell you, that “summer song” stimulated not only my salivary glands, but a whole variety of childhood memories - times spent dancing under the sprinkler in the front yard, joining friends for games of “Red Light”, “Mother May I”, Hopscotch, and Dodgeball, and evenings chasing lightening bugs to place in a Ball Mason jar to light up our rooms at bedtime.
My two sisters and I spent our early years in Towson where the chimes of the Good Humor truck, on a scorching summer afternoon, were the highlight of summer day. Since refrigerators held little more than a small ice cube tray, ice cream was a rare and special treat. The “Good Humor Man” had to be the most important person in the world to us, but I don’t know if he had a name or a face or even a body - all I remember is those tan and hairy arms sticking out of a short sleeve shirt, readily “handing over the goods”.
Rarely would my mother allow us treats in the middle of the day, but there was always the hope. One time, however, on a particularly hot afternoon, a neighbor saw us panting like dogs with pleading and longing in our eyes, took pity on us and offered to buy us our choice of ice cream treat. We all wanted the same thing, the traditional Good Humor ice cream on a stick. When we were served we could hardly eat it fast enough. Actually being only four or five at the time, I wasn’t all that quick; just as I had started to bite through the crunchy chocolate shell, the whole melting mess fell off the stick and landed on a bumpy, filthy, manhole cover in the middle of the sidewalk.
Known far and wide as the “bawl baby” of the neighborhood, I started in with my famous wail. This kind man, who must have landed a prime spot in heaven, stepped in once again and bought me a replacement. I remember standing there, glued to the spot, finishing off the ice cream at record speed this time… and then… getting down on my hands and knees and slurping up the ruined remains of the “one that got away” from the top of the man hole cover.
I love that memory. Some people might think it disgustingly gross but they wouldn’t know how I loved ice cream back then, and still do. If you think it was an accident that the Ice Cream truck ended up on our street last Friday, you’re probably mistaken. That man knew where I lived, I’m sure of it. Good thing there are no manhole covers in Libertytown. |
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The Good Ole Summertime
July, 12, 2010
When this summer was all brand new and the perennials were blooming and the annuals were getting established, I placed pots of flowers all around the perimeter of the house so I could enjoy them wherever I happened to be. I have a downstairs bathroom that looks onto the side yard, so I place a voluptuous purple petunia where I could continually see its glory while working to preserve what’s left of mine. I felt quite proud of myself and my efforts (with the petunia).
Then came prolonged heat, day trips and vacations away, and an unforgettable little house guest - all the fun that summer brings. I watered daily when I could but for some reason plants want rain not just watering so everything was suffering.
Bill and I went south to return our little granddaughter to her family and when we came back I surveyed the damage. Not so bad until I was in the aforementioned downstairs bathroom and peered out the window at a reasonable facsimile of Death Valley. It might better be named “Lonesome Valley” as I had somehow completely forgotten that I had anything needing watering on that side of the house.
I raced outside with a pitifully small glass of water and came around the house hoping it wasn’t as bad as I thought. You know what brownies look like when they are overcooked? Dry and cracked on top with the edges pulled away from the pan - well that pretty much describes my formerly beautiful purple petunias.
Instead of beating myself up, I think I’ll just blame “Global Warming” like everybody else. Have you noticed that this infamous catch word is back in the news again? How come last winter when we were shivering in frigid temperatures and inundated with mountains of snow up to our eyeballs for weeks on end, it became politically correct to call it “Climate Change” instead? There’s volumes written on both subjects, but none of it helps us deal with the realities of living in a region that experiences the best and the worst of all four seasons of the year.
Ice storms and snow drifts are common in winter and these hazy, hot, and humid days of drought and fried up plants are just what we should expect - in the good ole summertime. |
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