?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Good and Bad

Posted on May 31, 2006

The good news is our yard looks wonderful, thanks to the proper amount of rain this past spring. The bad news is the mosquitoes think so too.

It’s always a good news/bad news thing; since what seems to be good for lawns seems to be bad for their owners. Grass doesn’t mind the sting of a mosquito, but its human owner surely does. It’s not as if we have any control either.

Two years ago, for instance, we had decent weather but just enough rain to insure the mosquito population would be an annoyance. We dallied on the deck during the day but fled indoors when the sun set. Then last year, it was so hot and dry that even the mosquitoes left town for the summer. But we didn’t sit on the deck much because of the high temperatures. We didn’t enjoy our fire pit either. After all, why would you start a bonfire when you’re already burning up?

The bottom line is that weather is a good news/bad news thing. If it’s good for some plants it’s bad for others; if it’s good for mosquitoes, it’s bad for humans. Maybe this is what they call the balance of nature.

I haven’t learned to live with it yet; instead I keep hoping there will be a perfect summer. That would be one with gorgeous flowers due to adequate rain, rich grass that grows at the same rate all summer, mosquitoes that decide they need to lie low because there was no heavy rainy spring mating season, birds and squirrels who cheer me on, and bonfires that die long after night descends.

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Gravy vs. Sauce

Posted on May 30, 2006

As I lay in bed this morning, my brain was doing push-ups while my body hadn’t even arrived at the gym. “Hey,” said Brain, “what’s the difference between gravy and sauce? How do airplanes stay up? I wonder when Earl will bring Body some coffee. She looks comatose.”

It’s like this every morning, sort of an out of body experience, as my brain’s corporeal container heaves a sigh and wakens and I’m left with eternal questions to ponder. Like gravy and sauce. I rolled over, pushed one leg out from under the covers, decided it wasn’t time to get up, and thought about it. My conclusion was that gravy is made from meat drippings while sauces are made from anything else. Like canned soup, tomatoes and garlic, cheese and pimiento. But I promised Brain I would check this out for validity once Body actually got out of bed.

It was later in the day that I opened my dictionary. Oh sure, maybe a cookbook would have delineated the difference, and maybe a dedicated cook would look there first; but a wordsmith usually consults her dictionary. You learn things beyond cooking that way. For instance, I found the meaning of gravy; and, sure enough, I was right. Gravy, according to Random House Webster’s Unabridged, is ” “the fat and juices that drip from cooking meat, often thickened, seasoned, or flavored . . . ” I felt smug already.

Then I checked the meaning of sauce, to learn that it is “any preparation, usually liquid or semiliquid, eaten as a gravy or as a relish to accompany food.” So I guess this means gravy is a type of sauce, but not the only type. In other words, sauce is more of a generic term, while gravy is a sauce composed of meat drippings.

I also learned the slang usages of each word, something a cookbook probably doesn’t share. Gravy, for instance, refers to “profit or money easily obtained or received unexpectedly,” while sauce can refer to hard liquor as in “He’s on the sauce again.”

I shared all this with Brain with a warning. I’m good at word differences, but I’ll never understand how airplanes stay up. So if Brain wants to be cartwheeling before Body is out of bed, it better ask questions I can answer.

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Memorial Day

Posted on May 29, 2006

There was an editorial in the local newspaper that noted only one in four Americans really knew why we celebrate Memorial Day. Some thought it was just the start of the summer season. Others thought it was to honor our military.

That’s close; but the one in four knew it was specifically to honor our fallen military, those men and women who have given their lives that the rest of us can go about our business. Given there are new names added to the list almost every day, it’s too bad we don’t remember why most of us have the day off. And I’m as guilty as anyone this year.

In the past, Earl and I annually have visited a cemetery and found the grave of a soldier whose death date seems to coincide with one of our country’s numerable wars. We pause to wonder who this person really was, what he would have been doing had he lived, where his remaining family members are today. It’s our version of a national moment of silence, made more personal by focusing on one solder.

But this year, until I read the editorial late tonight, I totally forgot our tradition. It wasn’t that we had a lot of activities planned or that we were out-of-town; rather we were immersed in going out to breakfast, staying cool, watching baseball, and generally enjoying our lot in life. We could have taken time to visit a cemetery — there are several close by — and pause to remember. We didn’t, which puts us in the league with the other three of four who were oblivious. I hope it doesn’t happen again next year.

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Pastry Brush

Posted on May 28, 2006

The condition of my pastry brush attests that I’m not much of a cook. In fact, I didn’t have much of a pastry brush either. Until today.

I needed a pastry brush about a year ago for some kitchen task. But all I had was an unused paint brush. This will do, I thought, as I removed the cardboard packaging to reveal its bristles. It hadn’t been used for painting or varnishing, so it seemed a likely choice for my work at hand, which was basting a chicken on the grill.

I was pleased at my resourcefulness. That is, until I dipped the brush in the marinade and applied it to the chicken on the grill. I didn’t realize that the brush’s “hairs” were a plastic substance that began to curl when heat was applied. It was as if my new pastry brush were getting an instant perm. Hmmm, I thought, this is unusual, but I can make it through the meal.

I did more than that. I made it through a whole year with this permed paint brush as my pastry brush. I will admit I didn’t brush so much as dab when the need arose. I will also admit it was more time-consuming.

But today, I was shopping at Martin’s, our local grocer, when I spotted a replacement for the paint — er, pastry — brush. What the heck, I thought. Let’s splurge and buy a new brush. So I did. The truth is, it doesn’t look that much different from the type you paint with, but I’m hoping that the manufacturers know something I don’t.

Maybe it’s that natural bristles work better over an open fire.

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The Scent of Lilacs

Posted on May 27, 2006

I love the scent of lilacs in bloom, and this spring I’ve loved them close at hand.

When we first moved into this house, we planted some unassuming lilac bushes that struggled a while but have now come into their own. Three nest outside the bedroom that is my office, and on nights like tonight when my windows are open their scent fills the room and swells my memories.

Lilacs grew wild on the farm I lived on for a year or so in upstate New York in my youth. My Aunt Cel and Uncle Frank took me in when they had to; and, when I smell that lavender scent today I think of that magical time when getting dirty in the name of growing potatoes or corn was a wonderful thing. They are both long gone, but not forgotten.

After leaving that farm, I morphed into city folk as I lived in Syracuse, St. Louis, Little Rock, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit by the time I’d hit the quarter century mark. Yet, I remember lilacs in some of those places.

Syracuse, for instance. We lived in the upstairs of a house and the neighbor next door had wonderful, though overgrown, lilac bushes. Once I gathered some clothes of mine that no longer fit — I was about ten — and hid the collection under such a bush for a friend of mine who had less than I. When my mother discovered the disappearance of part of my wardrobe she was annoyed, but I like to think the scent of lilacs made her understand.

For some reason, lilacs make me think of poetry too. Walt Whitman wrote “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed” in the nineteenth century, but the line “Yet the lilac with mastering odour hold me” could be said of my feelings today. That’s the thing about the scent of lilacs. It’s stimulating and it’s tranquilizing at the same time.

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Piano Progress

Posted on May 26, 2006

I am in my fifth year of piano lessons. It isn’t that I’m a slow learner; rather, my piano teacher says I’ve been a musical cripple most of my life. Ever since that nun in charge of the grade school choir told me to only mouth the words and not actually sing. I was in the third grade, and I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I never sang in public again. I listened to music and memorized the score to any song I liked, but I couldn’t comprehend the melody. Did it go up or down? I couldn’t tell, because I’d shut down. And, truthfully, I’d become accustomed to this void in my life. In fact, after a while I didn’t even recognize it. It’s in this way that some accidents — and they are not all of the terrible automobile crash variety — are hard to overcome. We become used to our inadequacies.

About five years ago, something happened. Because I acquired a free piano when we bought our house — the previous owners left it, rather than move it — I began to ponder the possibility of learning to play it. I wanted more than a piece of conversational furniture in our living room. I didn’t know it then, but it was as if I’d been in a wheelchair for ages and thought I might be able to walk.

With that context, my piano teacher’s recent comment doesn’t offend; rather it makes me work harder because I am a musical cripple of my own doing. The little girl in the blue uniform who was chastised might have obeyed the command, but she no longer exists. The woman she is today chooses to stand and walk. And play music.

I’ll never be a great pianist. I’m not sure I’ll ever even be comfortable playing in the presence of others either, but I can tell you the joy of making music and understanding it and feeling it in my fingers and my soul is unimaginable.

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Formal Attire

Posted on May 25, 2006

The phrase “formal attire” must mean different things in different social circles, and those of us who are not in the know often wonder why people wear what they wear for special events. For instance, why do Hollywood stars attending the Oscars go for high priced fashions with low plunging necklines? And I’m not just talking the women here.

Or why do the Grammy Awards feature even more skin, as if skin equates to formal attire when it could be formal unattire? I hate to think what a couple pieces of strategically placed chiffon costs in that world.

A couple nights ago I watched the Country Music Awards and was struck, not by the amount of plunging necklines or skimpy wardrobes (although the number Trace Adkins performed certainly had its share of the latter), but by the amazing amount of people who wore jeans as if they were a coat-and-tails. Gretchen Wilson, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, you name the singer. Jeans were the formal attire of the evening.

I wondered about this. After all, country music is supposedly down-home, grass-root, feel-good. It’s the music hard scrapple people love, and maybe the jean scene is a rebuttal to spending all kinds of money for an evening’s worth of announcements. At first, I was taken back by the casualness, but as the evening progressed I liked it. The focus was on the music and not on the haute couture.

That’s another thing about the annual CMA show. The performers actually perform their songs, instead of just standing at a podium and reading a list of names. Fewer awards are given in the same time span that Hollywood presents two “famous” stars to present the list of the other “famous” stars who are up for nomination. There’s something down-home about that too.

Now if they could only do something about the acceptance speeches. Regardless of the attire, they’re uniformly uncreative. In fact, how many ways can you spell a-w-f-u-l?

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Kitchen Gadgets

Posted on May 23, 2006

My friend, Judi, visited me over the past weekend; and, as is usual with most of our guests here at River House, we hung out in the kitchen. Our kitchen is huge, inspires cooking efforts, and has a clear view of the family room if guests want to lounge there instead of stirring pots on the stove.

I don’t recall what triggered it, but at one time in the evening we opened drawers and examined all the kitchen gadgets Earl and I own. There lay the garlic mincer, the cheese grater, the lemon zester, the mini-Cuisinart, the bagel guillotine, the Alaskan ulu, the cocktail shaker, the pasta measurer, the two mandolins.

I wrote a blog almost two years ago about my mother’s frugality when it came to kitchen gadgets. She would never approve of all these single-purpose gadgets I’ve acquired when certain staples would do. It wasn’t beneath her to use a butter knife as a screwdriver or a water glass as a rolling pin. Go visit my essay titled “Quirky Kitchen” from July 15, 2004 if you want additional evidence.

So, after Judi and I finished our inventory and I realized I’d moved beyond the kitchen-knife-as-screwdriver philosophy, I wondered if my life was better. Or just more complicated. I don’t have the answer yet, except that I find I use the garlic mincer a lot, that fresh garlic is better than what you find in tiny bottles offering the dehydrated variety. I like the bagel guillotine and the Alaskan ulu too. The guillotine cuts fresh bagels in half before I toast them; and a fresh bagel is the only kind worth its salt. Frozen, pre-sliced imitations don’t compare.

As for the ulu, it’s an Alaskan Eskimo knife that cuts to the quick on fish or vegetables and meat. In some instances, it does what kitchen knives only dream of. But I still keep a complete set of kitchen knives at the ready.

I guess when all is said and done I’m leaving my Mother’s philosophy behind, even if I don’t cook that often. The thing is, when I do cook it’s a pleasure to use my zester, my grater, or my mincer. Collectively, they make the work of preparing a meal more of a pleasure than an obligation.

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Country

Posted on May 22, 2006

Tomorrow night is country music’s time to shine. It’s the 39th annual Country Music Awards Show live from New York City, even though much of country music is produced in Nashville, TN.

I haven’t kept track of how many annual shows I’ve seen, but I’d bet it’s at least half of them. I was into country music when, as Barbara Mandrell sang, “Country wasn’t cool.” I was into country music before acoustic gave way to electric. Before Garth Brooks brought theatrics to performances. Before crossover artists made it difficult to know if something was or was not country.

My son, Keith, and his partner recently gave me a five-CD set of twentieth-century country music from the fifties through the eighties. As I listen to it, it brings back memories of other parts of my life. But it also reminds me how far country music has come. And how mainstream it is today. My son said he and his partner also bought the same CDs for themselves, and whenever Keith listens to one he has the same feelings I do. He remembers my listening to this kind of music as he was growing up. It’s probably not his first choice today, but for sentimental reasons he pops a country CD into his life once in a while.

What kind of songs were these? They were story songs, unrequited love songs, prison songs; anything at all songs. What attracted me to country music in the first place was that the artists sang about anything. Your washing machine broke down? There’s a song there. You love two men at the same time? Another song. You just got out of prison and you don’t know if your girl if waiting? Sing about it. Who can forget about the yellow ribbons on the old oak tree?

So tomorrow night I’ll be glued to the tube, even though today’s artists don’t appeal to me like Loretta and Conway and Tammy and Dolly did. At the same time, maybe someone will sing about a refrigerator on the loose and I’ll be hooked.

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Hair

Posted on May 21, 2006

I don’t know why, but changing hair dressers is a tricky business. I’ve known more than one woman who complained about the haircut she got or the perm she just paid for and yet returned four weeks later for a trim. There must be something about the client/hair stylist relationship that keeps the client returning. Truth be told, I’m equally guilty of participating in this love/hate relationship.

I’ve gone to the same hairdresser since I moved to St. Joseph, and I’ve always felt she didn’t cut hair well. But she had other qualities: she gave good perms, she could do color, and when I was in her chair I was always her number one priority. Forget that she also always ran late, even when I had her first appointment of the day. Forget that she sometimes had to cancel appointments altogether because of family illness. I kept coming back, and I suppose I did because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Recently, however, my hairdresser took an extended leave of absence due to health issues, and I finally took the opportunity to shop around. I would never insult her by going to someone in the same salon, so I tried a new one which is much closer to my home.

That’s the other tricky part. The first time someone does your hair, it’s a learning experience on both sides. The stylist has to get a sense of how your hair acts. Is it thick? Thin? Curly? Long? Short? What? And you have to accept that you might pay for a style you’re not all that crazy about. It can make even the bravest woman return to her old salon. It’s a case of living with the devil you know versus the devil you don’t.

At the same time, it’s the only way to find a better hairdresser. And that seems to be exactly what I’ve done. So far, I’ve had two haircuts with Ashley and so far I’ve been pleased both times. The style she gave me is contemporary and easy to maintain. The odds of my returning to my old stylist when she returns to work are growing slim.

One other thing has occurred to me in this transition. Ashley had been out of beauty school a little less than two years. This means she’s short on experience, but long on current techniques. My other hairdresser had been in the business over twenty years. And maybe, in the long run, that’s what made the difference. It isn’t about the cut so much as it is about the style.

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