Thanksgiving, Handsome Son in attendance (and bringing cheese and crackers and pie and other good things) went very happily. We had a lovely afternoon, all the food turned out nicely, I remembered to serve everything I'd cooked -- this has not always been the case -- and we were just very pleased with ourselves. HS departed early evening, bearing a plate all tricked out with everything, to reheat for today's leftover dinner, and the rest of the pie.
So many things to be thankful for! my returning health, friendship with HS, good neighbors, great friends emailing and calling to make sure I'm still vertical, good wishes for the day from people in other countries who still remembered about Tday here.
And in this blog, of course, priority thanks go to readers and commenters and emailers and supporters, thank you all! you are so important, can't tell you how I look forward to writing in here and doing my bit to entertain and amuse and seeing if it works for you!
Since I've been a devoted reader user, I've noticed a steep dropoff in reviewing books in Field and Fen, which I attribute to a. the speed at which I've been whipping through books in the absence of enough good health to do much else, no time to stop and write, and b. The fact that I can't make a fancy arrangement of books for a photoshoot, complete with Dollivers pointing to the pages in case you didn't know how a book works.
So here's a bit of catchup: currently falling about laughing at Jasper Fforde (how to people get that extra f? an ancestor was very nice to Charles II? prithee fair maiden, accept this f in token of a very nice time this evening. Oh, sire, thanks to you I now have an f to my name. Or something)
Anyway, his Thursday Next, Literary Detective, on the trail of violent criminals involved in swiping literary works and changing the endings,
is fun to read. I downloaded a whole series of them just in case I liked them, and I'm glad I did.
Then less happily, I read Julie Powell's Cleaving which received a lot of bad, even angry reviews so I won't pile on, but went back to see her Julie and Julia, since I liked the concept and loved the movie.
And found that the movie is to be commended for sanitizing Julie Powell's writing, her life and especially her kitchen, the squalor of which is almost unreadable. Hard to grasp that her friends were willing to eat the food that came out of it, however wonderful it looked. There's a big difference between being a Texan come to Noo Yawk to be a bohemian, very self conscious scruffy housekeeping stuff, and being a danger to your neighborhood.
I am one of those original owners of Julia Child's book, completely with ironic inscription from husband, and it was fun to look at the recipes Julie Powell, the blogger and writer, was struggling with. For a while, before it was overtaken by the sad reality of her surroundings.
So, though she has a massive talent as a writer, I guess I wish she had a different way of using it. Rabelais wasn't disgusting, he was funny, witty. Same with Chaucer, funny juxtapositions, deliberately pulling the legs of his readers. Maybe she could take a look at them and see what to leave out.
Then into James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series, which I'm reading through in big gulps, very exciting stuff, great escapist reading.
Some good nonfiction too: Jeffrey Toobin's The Oath, very good about Obama's Supreme Court and all the subtexts therein. He's a cracking good writer on dry topics. And Richard Brandt's One Click, about Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and his business life. It seemed very solipsistic to be reading about the founder of Amazon, and the Kindle, on a Kindle, but oh well.
And there are many others, including a couple of the Inspector Vera books, as good as the tv series, which was also good.
So that's me, and the illustrations are in your own head. Like listening to the radio.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not
hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
If you've visited Gettysburg, as my family did, many years ago, partly as a historical outing, partly to respect the resetting of our nation that took place there, you'll have noticed how very ordinary those fields look.
Greatness does look ordinary at the time.
Aside from the giant pumpkin which is now known by my neighbors as the squirrel buffet, I got a nice little eating pumpkin in my last of the year farmshare.
So today I made a giant pot of pumpkin and split pea soup, with rosemary pesto, and croutons sizzled onto the soup bowl from the pan, homemade wholewheat bread. Very nice. The sizzle really does spark up your appetite.
No pix, since it's 1. eaten for lunch and 2. put into little containers for a couple of favored dear friend neighbors Karen and Girija, and now sitting on their steps to cheer them when they come home from work and 3. in the freezer. I usually text people when I leave a treat on their step so they don't squash it flat by walking right on it unawares.
I started doing this sizzling trick when HP, in his later months, had difficulty getting interested in food, having lost all his sense of taste and smell years before (medication blunder by doctor, sigh). I tried the sizzling right in front of him, and he said, gosh, I can't wait to try this! ha. And he did enjoy his soup a lot more.The feller who invented that saying about selling the sizzle, not the steak, had a point.
I also got a great tip from Girija, my vegetarian Indian friend (religious reasons, very careful about food ingredients) to spark up a soup,a dash of lemon juice on the serving just before eating. Works a treat. That or a spoonful of plain yogurt, which I have been doing for years, but the lemon juice is a nice other choice.
Still finding energy somewhere, and cooking is about my speed right now. Made a nice crustless quiche from dianesowo's recipe, which I've made many times.
Hers is a spinach quiche, but I didn't have spinach. I did, however, have a great big bag of kale, shoved unprocessed into the freezer a few weeks ago, ready for whenever I was in the mood to deal with it. I figured that kale would cook down exactly like spinach, and so it did.
And since I had the eggs and sharp cheddar and onions
and garlic, I was all set. I like this way of doing kale: bust it up
frozen solid, made that very easy, removed tough stems, rinsed the leaf
bits, then steamed like spinach, and added to the rest of the items, in a
pie plate at 350F for 30 minutes.
Here's the quiche,minus today's lunch. That's a full meal for me, which is probably why I'm not, unlike a lot of people who love to cook and eat their output, traditionally built like Mme Ramotswe in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency! I keep on being surprised at how small I seem to be these days -- why am I not that great big tall woman I always thought I was? well, I have lost a couple of inches, and that seems to have pushed me below the threshold into the petite section.
Aside from making it a lot harder to work on my kitchen counter or reach the top shelves in the cabinets. I guess five foot five is the standard height you need to be to work at the standard counter. Taller than that and you're bent double with a back ache. Smaller than that and your shoulders are all tired out.
I've toyed with standing on a little platform, but I know my memory, and it's only a matter of time before I forget and step back and knock myself out falling backward!
I now have a bit more room in the freezer -- kale takes up a ton of room, almost as bad as a cat in a double bed -- and a nice quiche for future meals, warm or cold depending on the mood of the cook, in the fridge. This is good. Oh, and it tasted okay, too.
Today's a quiet observance of the birthday of a long departed sister. And on the 17th another birthday, another long departed sister. The 18th is my parents' wedding anniversary, I think, not certain, the 93rd anniversary. The 22nd is the fifth anniversary of the opening of this blog, which now boasts 800 posts, and many many pageviews. When I hit publish, it will be 801, but who's counting.. December 4 is the birthday of Tarang, honorary grand daughter now a college freshman. December 15 I will be 75, which is a nice round number, three quarters of a century, oh. Then December 28th will be my fiftieth anniversary of arriving on this continent, never to leave, to live happily ever after.
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, nothing to report!
Today was the last farmshare day of the season. I thanked Jill S., the farmer, for another wonderful year of produce, and I'll email Amy, her daughter, who organizes and runs the CSA for the farm, to let her know all that work was worth it. Definitely signing up again next year.
So here are the Dollivers, with the last great bounty of the year. Not shown is the broccoli, processed and reposing in the freezer to keep it fresh.
Today, friend and local small contractor, Michael E., was finishing up a bit of exterior work for me, and I gave him a couple of snacks to take home. He's a great cook, always interested in what I cook.
I had made patties from Hubbard squash, from last week's farmshare, steamed till very tender, then mashed with some egg, tofu, and a bit of seasoning. The patties I rolled in an Indian spicy crispy snack thing, name unknown, which I crushed to crumbs. Then sauteed in a bit of olive oil. Very spicy, very good. Had them for lunch.
So a couple of them went home with Michael to try out. He's making zucchini lasagna tonight and I want the recipe if they like it. Neighborhood food exchange!
I know I'm going in the right direction in getting well again (thanks, Stefi for that remark, which was just great to read) since I actually did some experimental food today.
This is what you might call Neighborhood Baked Green Tomatoes! Karen A. gave me a whole bunch of green tomatoes figuring I'd probably know how to cook them. And I decided to bake them, sliced, half an hour with oven at 350F with a breading of egg and crushed Indian snack food which was whole peanuts in a shell of very spicy stuff. Crushed like breadcrumbs, mixed with a bit of flour.
Anyway, you see them here, beautiful slices of green tomato with reddish inside, what a beading design that would be, then "breaded" with the mixture I explained, then served for my evening meal.
I've always thought that cooking for one gives you one of the most appreciative audiences you can have! Cooking for an appreciative audience is nice, but we often don't have that! that's why women invented potlucks..so other women would really tuck in and enjoy their food.
Great fun to be playing in the kitchen again, and I'll save samples for both the friend who gave me the toms and the friend (her next door neighbor) from whom the spicy peanuts came.
I sampled this myself, and really liked it a lot. You have to like spicy to enjoy this. And a glass of Yellowtail Moscato, odd sort of choice, but it's very light, sparkling, fruity sort of wine, perfect to offset the highly spicy tomatoes. Worked for me, anyway.
I don't consider myself much of a wine person, you'll be relieved to hear, since you won't read any "I'm amused by the presumption of this little wine" kind of comments here. In fact I expect you'd be amused by my presumption if I started making them! But this was just a nice experiment that worked, so I thought I'd mention it.
So I have the go ahead to resume walking and free weights, in an attempt to recover my energy, which has gone walkabout. Weights went okay yesterday, workout divided into two shorter sessions.
But walking, or rather staggering, around the block takes more stamina, it seems. Handsome Partner, in the days when he could still more or less walk used to say,well, I'm off for a little stumble, see you in a few minutes! He definitely came to mind as I trudged around, stopping gratefully every few minutes to take pix of the last flowers of the year with bees still putting in their workday.
Some of these are just plain lovely to enjoy, with the fall tree colors, and some, the fallen wild cherry logs with lichen all over them, are great design suggestions. Reminds you of Kaffee Fassett, who's very keen on lichens.
Close friend Girija invited me across the street a little while ago, saying I have something you will just LOVE, brought from India yesterday.
Evidently her husband, on a flying visit to India to settle his father back there at home, had been instructed to pick up various packages shopped for by G's craft-loving sister. And there was a wonderful treasure trove of seed beads in wonderful colors, flat sparkly gems for shisha work, gold and silver thread, oh gosh, what a treat. All for me!
When husband R. stopped off in HongKong on business on his way back, he'd had to offload some weight, since the amounts are smaller from HK to the US than from India, but he was strictly instructed to KEEP my things, no matter what else went!
So I'm blessed with all these good wishes, and the accessories for my future stitching adventures. Also some Indian sweets to celebrate Diwali which starts late next week and goes on for several days.
We have new neighbors, replacing the old friend who moved away, an Indian family who instantly decorated for Diwali, including chalked drawings on their threshold, very traditional designs.
Oh, the Dollivers are thrilled that I'm recovering to the point of considering their plans for my beads...they are jonesing for Diwali outfits now. We'll see.
Longest break in the history of my blogging, alas, accommodating having pneumonia, and with any luck I'm on the way out of the valley of the shadow. Not fun at all, but neighbors bringing soup and doing errands and son checking in a lot, were all a great help, and the antibiotic is supposed to work, too. So I'm almost back.
Looked out this afternoon and there's a squirrel noshing away on my decorative pumpkin. Bits all over the step. I explained to him it's decor, not food, and he waved a paw at me.
You'd call it displacement activity. It's the sort of thing you do when you can't think what to do, sometimes because there's so much to do, and an upcoming recital to be nervous and anxious about, why did I agree to it, why was I born, etc.
Sometimes it's in the course of recovering from a nasty reaction to the high dose flu shot, which involved checking in with the CDC, my doctor, the place where I got the shot, and is taking its time going away and hitting my energy and my optimism, too. And right now it's all of the above.
Anyway, here's my current displacement activity, to wit:
One needlecase from scraps of felt and canvas, stenciled and drawn with metal pens, one cellphone purse, made from a leather patch (thank you, Judy, again) which I folded, stitched and painted, one scarf thing I made for the top of my bedroom curtains, from items found at the thrift store yesterday. And the gangshot is of the Heap o' Dolls, Elton's glee club, all piled up on his piano.
These items are all in the same part of the house, the Ds rocker now in state in my bedroom, complete with conservatory greenery they require, Elton on the bookcase over to the right of this. They claim it was all their idea, if you like it, that is. If not, it was Boud's doing.
Silly stuff! I'm easily amused.
Through a great freecycle, thank you again, I accepted custody -- you never really own designs and concepts -- today, of a fabulous treasure trove of cross stitch magazines, thread counters, charts and small kits, and have been totally engrossed in looking and leafing and planning and thinking. Some of this will come with me to the embroiderers' guild meeting to give as presents, some will go to other friends, some will stay with me.
And some are already on my agenda of items to get to after the current stitching is done. I like to see how designs can be changed and adapted to other embroidery forms. Cross stitch can often be needlepoint or surface embroidery, with a bit of thought and planning. Or it can suddenly demand to be goldwork, if I'm involved in it.
The Kindle reader I suddenly found in my life has proved to be better than I expected, to wit: though the cats both try to sit on it and put their paws right where I'm reading, in true feline style, they can no longer stop me from turning pages, yay.
Then, if a book is huge, it still weighs the same on the reader.
And finally, best of all: I've downloaded classics from Gutenberg Project, may they live forever, and find that on revisiting Vanity Fair it's much much funnier than I thought. I had to read it as a teen, and slogged through it, missing most of the irony and deliberate two dimensionality of the actors in it, and now find it's Austen with cap and bells, and I keep having to stop to laugh. And I can enlarge the print -- classics in print often have distressingly tiny fonts.
I know Trollope is very good, having reread some of it as an adult, so maybe I'll download ole Anthony soon. I have the complete Gutenberg Austen, though I have reread her many times, until my book fell apart. This is another reader plus: your book won't wear out!
Just sayin'
But it does cut into my DVD watching. And cooking. And other obligations in life, which I have to scramble to catch up with. Tomorrow is the Festival of the Arts, which I'll cover in Art the Beautiful, but meanwhile I have to make sure all my stuff for the various commitments is organized and processed and generally ready.
Plarn for the giant loom, other interesting materials same destination, art ready to display on the clothesline show, embroidery to show at the guild table area, camera loaded and battery charged for pix of all the above. Good thing I live pretty close to the Festival site, since last year I had to nip home to get another memory card when the one in the camera filled up faster than expected. This year I'm ready.
I am, I am.
I've set up a blog for our chapter of the embroiderers' guild, if you'd like to follow our doings, you can go to http://princetonega.blogspot.com/
and see our first blogpost. If you'd like to receive all our posts from now on (that won't be a huge number) directly to your email, just enter your email address at the bottom of the header, and follow the prompts, and you'll never miss a sparkling post full of pictures and fun and works in progress. Even if I do say it myself.
Instead of running about doing errands, catching up with art commitments, working on the computer for organizations, and generally doing, not being, I went to the Preserve, our local wilderness area for the afternoon.
I found a whole new trail has been opened, that I walked, on grass through trees, instead of along the dusty old farmtrack that used to be the main trail to follow on the way to the other areas. Very cool. Whole new vantage point, and I've been wanting to walk this for years,but it was only just made into a trail. Perfect day, in the 70s, cool enough to walk a lot, warm enough to sit and rest when I realized I probably should.
September brings these great black eyed susans, or
whatever they are, covered in little brown butterflies, and various
little blue wildflowers who come out after the heat of the summer has
passed.
And I just had to take pix of reflections of trees and sky and clouds, and teepees built during the summer program by small naturalists, while I was listening to frogs leaping into the water all around, and watching small fish in the shallows of the lake.
Then home to read, except that it consisted mainly of sleeping with two cats on top of me. No pix of the sleeping heap of bodies.
For some people
It's still happening.
Picnic 2013 of our local ARS chapter, Princeton Recorder Society. I was playing in the three main playing groups, so I wasn't able to pic and play at the same time, but there was good music at this event.
Here's our treasurer, Bob, taking a bow after playing a series of bass solos:
John Burkhalter, seen here holding soprano recorder after
playing brilliantly, is a virtuoso recorder player, and a generous one,
too, to less accomplished players, ask me how I know this, and I now find his mother is an artist. He hopes to put her and me in
touch, which will be wonderful. She lives in assisted living, far from here, but computers don't care!
And the food, all made by ourselves, was great as usual.
My default devilled eggs all vanished, I like this, no leftovers to
carry home, just the container!
Time to talk with your friends, catch up.
For outdoor playing you need perfect weather -- we were under cover so rain wouldn't have mattered too much -- but wind can be an issue, so you have to remember to peg down your sheet music on the stand. But the sound of the music drifting on the air was lovely, perfect day in the 70s, sunny.
Good time.
This may look like a plate of molasses and ginger cookies fresh from the oven to celebrate White Rabbits the First of September, but in fact it's the end of a concatenation starting with the reading program I took part in this summer.
That ended in my being drawn for first prize, my Kindle. That was the first salvo in a few days' intense learning and frustration and software cursing in the course of finding out how where and when I can upload, how to convert files to something Kindle likes, very fussy over its food, K rations, you know, how to move books from out there to in here, etc.
And I now have uploaded on my K a number of marvellous totally unavailable in print, works, one of which is about food in wartime. The First World War, that is, written in 1917 at the request of the US Gov, for housewives encouraging them to be frugal and stop eating a pound of meat a day, and so on.
And at the end is a series of actually perfectly nice recipes, one of them for molasses cookies. Nothing to do with frugal, since they involve a lot of ginger and molasses and the flour they were supposed to economize on, and I subbed olive oil for the solid shortening they wanted. And added walnuts on the top, also not frugal.
So here they are. Already little care packages are in a couple of neighbors' houses. I actually put the batch into the freezer in the innocent belief they would last for weeks of teatime, but oh well.
Better on the neighbors' hips than mine...
Hectic time lately, what with software and hardware and too many commitments all falling over each other at the same time.
So to help me get in the spirit, a nice Silver Spotted Skipper spent a lot of time on the sedum out front. Quietly flitting and sipping, sipping and flitting. Telling me something.
Happy Holiday to blogistas for whom it's a holiday weekend, and happy Ordinary Weekend to the rest of the world. September here any minute now.
After saying loudly for years I would never buy a Kindle, because it's the equivalent of paying to enter a bookstore to buy books, a Kindle has come into my life. And I didn't buy it. I got it the old fashioned way -- I won it in a drawing!
After getting my lovely Renaissance book last week, I forgot that there was also a drawing for various prizes to close the summer library reading program. Then today a phone call from Rina Banerjee, branch manager of the library I was involved in, to tell me I'd drawn first prize, a Kindle. Yay.
So I hotfooted it over there, and here's Rina with the
lucky winner, doing the Grip and Grin for the libe's pr, and well
deserved it is.
So this
afternoon is all about finding where the on switch is, and going from
there. I've managed to register myself, and my big plan is to learn to
download ebooks from the libe.
Steep learning curve here,but I'm very proud of realizing that I can charge the K
using the adapter from the Ipod Touch, what a concept,and it's now all
green lights and ready.
More than I am, but this is pretty thrilling, I can tell you.This is the first thing I ever won in my entire life!
Monet could have lived in my little town and enjoyed this
walk with me this morning. The red flowers are cardinal flowers, doing
very well this year. I have one or two where I live, who planted
themselves or maybe birds did, and since they like to live near water,
they intelligently took root right at the foot of the downspout!
