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Thursday, June 30, 2005
It's Possible To Cook Like A Lunatic
I know, because I did it. Lydia kept telling me about a dinner party she had arranged for this evening. She kept asking me what I thought she should serve. Those facts coupled with the knowledge that I'm going to be away for five weeks and should empty the fridge of things which might spoil...So I volunteered to cater her party. I put off starting the job because I had one more book to finish of my most recent grocery store book binge. That complete, I stood with the fridge door open for a long time considering my options.
Eventually I made aubergine au gratin. Also I produced two main course salads and baked chicken in teriyaki sauce, sliced it up. I made deviled eggs. Outdoors, I picked an enormous sack of Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce, came indoors and cleaned it and put it into the fridge to recrisp. All of this began to seem like work. By 4:00 P.M. I was hot and sweaty amd wondering if I am a lunatic. Before I actually collapsed on the kitchen floor, everything was finished and Lydia came to collect it. At the last minute I also did a big pot of just-picked Crook-Neck Yellow squash. I did succeed in cleaning a lot of stuff out of my fridge. Also I washed and put away many, many pots and pans. Further, I am tired, so maybe I can sleep tonight. All good points, but I still think I'm a lunatic. What kind of a nut would do all that work for no pressing reason? I could have put the stuff in a sack and given it to a neighbor. There was no moral imperative at work calling out to me to toil over a hot stove on a hot day. Crazy. If I ever run out of other more interesting ideas, I'm going to take my head to a shrink and see if I qualify, officially, that is, qualify as a wacko.
Oh, that latest book binge...the best of them was The Hundredth Man by somebody Kerley. Very good. It's his first book and he looks my age. Guy shoulda started before this. By now he could have produced many entertaining tomes. Instead, he wasted his life earning a living. People!
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
A Pork Chop Photo Album
La Porque, The Photo Shoot
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Time To Visit The Car Wash
Rain fell nearly every day for a month. The grass, the squash, corn, lettuce, and tomatoes all grew amazingly. Then that rain stopped; no automatic watering can in the sky. Been a dry week here on 38th Street. Last night I checked the Weather Channel website. Supposedly, rain will fall here every day for over a week, beginning today. I have no faith. Probably I'll have to make a gesture of some kind. Last time we needed rain, I asked Benny to help me and we carried little buckets of water to all the plants.
Yes, that's silly superstition, but in my experience the rain operates under the direction of an entity which can be motivated, psyched into doing the job. Southwestern American Indians did a rain dance when their corn plants began to dry up. They knew how rain works.
Years ago when Lydia was little, one summer I planted an enormous garden. I remember setting out 250 tomato plants and seeding 20 rows of beans, along with everything else I planted. Way too much work. I weeded and hoed. I worked like an ant. It was overwhelming. And then the rain stopped and I was having to carry buckets of water to all that vegetation. So I resolved to try some old Indian magic...not dancing, but something even more powerful. I washed all the windows upstairs and down, inside and out. I dragged the ladder around. I sweat and toiled. Sure enough it rained that very night. Then days went by and no rain again. I pondered the matter and announced that I was going to town to try out the new coin-operated car wash and I would be calling home to see if rain had begun yet. "Laughter, scorn, hahahahaha, that's crazy." I went to town anyway and put a quarter in the machine, washed the car until time ran out on the wash machine. I went to the pay phone and called home. Any rain yet? No. Back to the car wash. Another quarter. It took three quarters. Rain began to fall out of what had been a blue sky. Back home mutters of unwilling belief abounded. Time went by and we needed rain again. I went back to the car wash. That time it took 50 cents. Another week went by. I got rain for a quarter. My family was frankly creeped out. That whole summer I car washed the rain into existence. Never failed to work.
At last the end of summer approached. My immense garden produced bushels of stuff which I mostly gave away. It was nearly time to go back to school. We had one more long weekend of summer; Saturday, Sunday and then Labor Day. I determined to just sit around, no gardening. I was going to rest and relax, enjoy the quiet. Saturday morning stillness was broken by gun fire. Seated at the dining room table, I watched in disbelief as three teenaged boys strolled up, long guns over their shoulders. They were from the family which bought the house way down the road at the beginning of summer and then never clame to look at their new property. Here they were at last, wrecking the final weekend of vacation, and all of them carrying guns. They stopped directly in front of the house, took down their guns, aimed and shot at something at the top of one of the big trees in the front yard. BANG! BANG! BANG!!! Reload, more banging. I was afraid to go out and yell at them since they aimed generally in the direction of the house. Out the back door, into the car, down the drive, and past the boys who waved at me cheerfully. Idiots. Just true morons...armed and stupid. I drove down to their house and saw four SUV's parked in the yard. They had come in strength. Several adults relaxed on the porch. I got out of the car and approached this new element, "Hi. I'm your nearest neighbor. There are three teen-aged boys standing in front of my house aiming at something up in a tree in my yard and shooting off their guns. This imprisons me and my family in our house. Also, it disturbs our peace. Also, it's against the law. Also, it is terribly dangerous. Would one of you be good enough to go get your kids, bring them back here, provide them with appropriate instruction in gun use and etiquette, and let me have some peace and quiet?" Instead of coming to my aid, one of the biggest men stood and cursed me out, called me all kinds of crazy names. He vaguely waved a bottle of some alcohol-fortified liquid in my direction. Others, similarly supplied, applauded his performance. Well, no use arguing with them. I got back into my car and went to town. The car wash. It was the only way. Since I was angry, I gave it a dollar and a quarter. By the time I got back home, rain ran in sheets across the road. Not only were the boys no longer out shooting at my trees, no one was out doing anything. It was a Noah's Flood downpour. I built a nice fire in the fireplace, got out a book I had started and not yet finished, settled back on the sofa, and had myself a nice, quiet Labor Day Weekend....except for sounds of the deluge outside.
Never Mind The Bacon
Today I tried a real down-south dish...fried green tomatoes. I just thin-sliced them, dipped in beaten egg, dipped in flour, tapped off the extra flour, and fried with olive oil. They cook quickly. It's not something I'd want very often, but it was an interesting taste. A recipe recommended that they be fried in bacon grease. Must be an old recipe. Sounds like recommending that someone add a little arsenic for flavor. The other day I read a recipe for something called an Elvis Sandwich. It amounted to a smashed banana, a pound of bacon, peanut butter, and was fried on both sides like a grilled cheese sandwich. The idea was that frying it on both sides was a way to sop up all the bacon fat from frying that pound of...wow. I can't even imagine it. Supposedly every time Elvis stopped in to visit his mother, she'd make him SEVERAL of those
monstrosities.
Friday, June 24, 2005
They Ate It!!!
Today the kids finally had green eggs and ham day with Lydia in my kitchen. They explored the concepts of gas/liquid/solid/ colloid using kool-aid and eggs and ham.
The made popsicles, they boiled water, they cooked eggs, they made green jello, finally they added green food coloring to ham and presented lunch to everyone.
To my surprise, even Benny ate quite a bit of green stuff. A miracle.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Green Eggs And Gloom
One way to know I'm overly decrepit is that when I do additional activity, instead of getting stronger/abler, I fall apart more. Since bringing home Pork Chop, I've had to go out and take walks, something formerly as unlikely as that I grow helicopter rotors out of my head and fly around the neighborhood. Conventional wisdom dictates that those who walk outdoors for a while each day become spryer in the process. Fugitaboutit. Not happening. This A.M. Porque and I were out huffing and puffing along at 4:45. Porkee seemed extra brisk today. I could hardly keep up. Imagine not being able to keep up with a chihuahua. We were on the proverbial clubhouse turn, going into the stretch when it occurred to me that I might not arrive alive. I was light headed. Seemed as though the ground floated into and out of my consciousness. I felt like a person who might soon make a closer acquaintance with the surface of the sidewalk. Physically I am what I have recently heard categorized as "all tore up from the floor up." Pretty bad. The other day I asked Lydia if, should I die, she would take Porkee, or if that didn't work out, have Porque humanely put to sleep. Lydia seemed shocked that I would talk like that. Well.....I'm not doing better. It's all downhill. Poor little Porkee, just finally got a good home.
Today is Green Eggs and Ham Day here on 38th Street. Lydia and her kids and a friend of Lydia's and HER kids will be here in a few hours to do learning activities around that particular Dr. Seuss book. Last night I baked a ham and must now get busy cutting it up to make ham salad. I very much doubt that anyone will want lunch exactly as pictured in the story. Occasions like this are nice for me, but rough on Porque who will need to visit the laundry until all the little kids go home.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Why Do You Live Here?
This morning a workman from the construction site across the street came over and knocked on my door. He was extremely upset, said that overnight a whole lot of equipment was stolen out of the house...which they left locked, both windows and doors. He wanted to know if I saw any suspicious activity. No, I saw and heard nothing. I'm so used to this place that it takes almost a 10 on the 38th Street disturbance scale to get me out of bed and at the window.
The poor guy was flat-out furious. He couldn't stand still to talk, paced back and forth, waved his hands around.
Finally he stopped the flood of verbiage, looked around at the neighboring houses and the street, turned to me again and asked, "What in the world is someone like you doing in a neighborhood like this? This is one of the worst parts of Hampton Roads. It's a terrible area. I wouldn't even want to stay here in that house overnight. Every day when my truck heads down the streett, I breathe a sigh of relief. Whatever possessed you to buy a house here?"
I told him that my son-in-law found the house and did all the details of property transfer for me. My first impression WAS negative, but I've learned to really love my home in the ghetto. I like all the neighbors except the ones in the yellow apartments. Matter of fact, the neighbors are very nice people, friendly, helpful, cheerful. I like the way the area looks, too...variety, big and small houses, most of them old and interesting. So far this seems like a perfect place for me.
The angry workman looked at me as though he thought I was crazy. "Unbelievable," he growled. "I wouldn't even want my mother-in-law to drive down this street in broad daylight, let alone move here...and I don't like my mother-in-law." He went back to work, shaking his head over my craziness.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Seeds, Paving Stones, And Ants
I just returned from a trip to the ghetto grocery and I state for the record that growing vegetables is not only the tasty way to go, it is cheaper. Earlier this A.M.....at 5:15 A.M. to be exact, as Porkeee and I finished our early detail around the neighborhood, we went once around the back yard and I decided it's time to stop pretending that the summer squash are still too young to die. I picked as many as I could carry. Coming indoors, I plunked them into the vegetable bin in the fridge. Then at the store a few minutes ago, I learned that those squash are worth $2.29/lb. Wow, what a deal. I paid fifty cents for the seeds that produced all of those bushes which now are loaded down with squash.
So far this summer I have used the lettuce and tomatoes...every day I send a washed bag of beautiful, green lettuce home with Lydia..and, of course, I eat it too. Lydia uses it for salad, puts it under the main course salads I have been trying to invent. I break it up, add a cut-up tomato plus feta cheese and dressing and that is extremely GOOD!
About tomatoes, Lydia has limited use because Dan hates them. However when she's here, I try to find a way to serve her something with real, home-ripened tomato because that kind is soooooooo good. My plants literally bow down with fresh, ripe ones.
Now we move on to paving stones. This A.M. I watched TV and learned that streets around here were originally paved with quarried "stones" of solid granite. Stones such as these have entered the homeowner vocabulary as either "that heavy stuff I can't grass-clip around" or the ultra-desireable flower-bed border. My flower bed borders are all made of antique granite street-paving stones...incredibly heavy but lovely.
Today I decided to organize the kitchen cupboards..such as they are. Only one cupboard had a trail of ants leading to it...diminishing, I admit, but still there. One cupboard still had no ants as of this A.M. I have kept a couple of cereal boxes in the car trunk. They have the spoon 'light sabers' so desired by Star Wars fans. Today I decided to keep these boxes in my house for a couple of weeks until everyone has a chance to see the newest Star Wars movie. I stood on tippy-toe and delicately teetered the two boxes onto the top shelf in my kitchen. Less than fifteen minutes later a solid line of ants proceded from and to this cupboard. AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Father's Day
Dan has a ferocious bark, as wrong-doing business associates might grimly attest. However, when it comes to the kids, he has no bite whatsoever. Putty in their hands about sums it up. At Benny's recent recital, Dan took care of Sadie since Lydia was having her usual violin recital nervous break down. Most of the time, Dan and Sadie were on the move; at the back, outside, wherever. Briefly, however, they roosted beside me and I thought this picture was good Father's Day material, showing, as it does, a dad who really cherishes his little people. Dan's business associates will never see this particular version of the Netzer persona. They probably would not believe that it exists, but here's the picture... Just don't anyone tell Dan it's here.
Sweet Little Pork Chop
Here's a teensy movie clip of Porque. She's wearing her lovely new blue batik ribbon bouquet.
 Little Porkee
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