Making it in Toledo

I love food.  I love cooking and I love feeding people.  I think food should be flavorful, beautiful, healthy and environmentally responsible.  Lots of people know about my likes but tonight I have a confession:

Our feeders have been attracting hummingbirds and orioles.  The orioles eat grape jelly and nectar.  The hummingbirds just eat nectar, although I have definitely seen some crossover.  This afternoon I made up a batch of nectar, 4 parts water to 1 part sugar.  I left it on the stove to cool.

John and I were going out tonight. We ended up at Kengo, (it’s been way too long.) which regrettably is not a favorite for our granddaughter Aloisa so we went on our own.  It was perfect, but we decided that a stop at Netty’s for ice cream would really round out the evening.  Since the rest of the family also wanted ice cream, we ordered 5 small cones and did our best to get them home intact.  Our best was not good enough, but since the Netty’s staff put each cone upside down in a plastic cup, although they were deformed they were not  befouled.  Success!!

After serving that less than elegant dessert,  I decided to fill the hummingbird and oriole feeders with the now-cooled nectar, but the nectar pot was mysteriously almost empty . It turns out that Johanna assumed I had left hot-dog cooking water along with the hot dogs (all beef, to be sure) I had thawed for her.  Although she didn’t notice, I’ll bet that sweet hot dogs are really special.

Some days we eat real food.

For me, today was the first day of spring.  Our Mexico vacation was wonderful and it is over. The bags are unpacked and the sunburn is peeling.  The tequila I brought back has yet to be opened. It’s almost April, and I plan to celebrate my entire birth month.  If you’d like to celebrate with me, I’m interested.

John is on his way to Texas to root for the Wolverines.  I hope they win and I hope he enjoys San Antonio.  While I don’t share his enthusiasm for team sports, I appreciate it.

I spent an hour or so in the garden this morning, cutting back last year’s blooms and discovering new growth in the sorrel, rhubarb, and strawberries.  I’m sure there are chives, but they are hidden by a huge grass and I’ll need to use a machete to find them. There’s some hope that Johanna and Aloisa will be my garden partners this year, and, once again, I can’t wait to plant!

My Easter memories involve new dresses, baskets full of chocolate, and a church service I found (and probably would still find) largely incomprehensible.  For Loi, it’s a celebration of spring that involves bunnies and eggs.  Spring is worth celebrating.

The primary election is of particular interest this year.  Seventeen years ago, in a previous life,  I recruited Teresa Fedor to run for office.  I am in awe of what she has accomplished and appalled that my local party has failed be even neutral, let alone supportive, of her in this race.  Vote for Teresa Fedor on May 8th!!  We need to support women who work hard for us.

Happy spring!

 

 

 

Rawhide the Wonder Horse has claimed a place in my living room.  I’m hoping this location is temporary, and I’m looking forward to the creation of a basement play space, but Rawhide is certainly evoking memories and provoking thought.  We acquired him almost 40 years ago, and he was a favorite even then. When we moved back to Toledo in 1978, we arrived before the moving truck and two-and-a-half year old Johanna was practically glued to the window watching for him in her eagerness.  Now it’s Aloisa’s turn.

On Black Friday, I succumbed to the Instant Pot craze.  It’s fun, and recently I bought a cookbook to expand my repertoire of suitable recipes.  The author, Urvashi Pitre, is a “trained scientist”and also “an entrepreneur-and the founder of …a global marketing agency.” Not surprisingly, Pitre says she never expected to be known as “the butter chicken lady.”  If her butter chicken recipe is as good as her tens of thousands of FB followers say, maybe it’s a greater accomplishment than her previous business success.  I’ll decide tomorrow when I make it for John’s birthday dinner.

It’s hard for any of us to know what changes are coming.  I certainly have often been surprised by what I’ve found myself doing in a succession of marginally-related careers since I came to Toledo as a junior high math teacher.  Someone recently asked if I was considering “coming out of retirement” to do something I am passionate about.  That’s not how it works for me.  I don’t do something because I’m passionate about it.  I become passionate about what I do.

After two decades of a no kids at home and almost that long of no pets, I certainly didn’t expected to be a person who has a horse in the living room.  I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Thanks to Donald Trump, I joined most of my friends under a black cloud for much of 2017.   That’s likely to continue, but I’m determined to recognize the bright spots.  Here’s one:

I buy a few pomegranates every year, and I’ve been inspired  by some beautiful dishes highlighting them.  Many years ago, during a spectacular dinner at a Slow Food conference, I enjoyed chiles en nogada in Puebla Mexico.  When I visited Lebanon as part of an exchange delegation for a women in politics project, we were served fresh pomegranate juice by charming children in an alarmingly regimented mountaintop school.  After I discovered Yotam Ottolenghi, I couldn’t resist his eggplant in buttermilk sauce, studded with these gorgeous seeds.

But this year, I was motivated by my granddaughter Aloisa’s curiousity about yet another round red fruit.  So I brought home a perfect specimen.  To my delight, Loi helped her mom extract the seeds, experimented with them by adding them to water (Look! It’s red! ) and, although she wasn’t thrilled by the taste (It makes a squirt in my mouth!) I was still flattered when she referred to them as pomegramma seeds.  I’m easy.

It’s the little things….

 

 

It’s been three years.  As I remember my father doing, I’ve battled knee pain.  (My father called his “Arthur.”) I’ve stretched, I’ve exercised, I’ve applied ointments, I’ve taken pain steadily increasing meds, and I have limped.

In 2014, just a couple of months before a long-anticipated trip to France, I fell on a step into the kitchen while I was bringing in an armful of herbs from the garden.  Sore and worried about being unable to enjoy our trip, I saw an orthopedist.  The X-rays and MRI he ordered showed fairly advanced arthritis.  I did a few weeks of physical therapy and I began taking medication for the pain, and it worked.  We had a great trip, including walking around Paris and southern France.

Since then, I’ve been like the frog in the pot.  Although it’s been up and down, the trend line on the pain has been upward and I have become less mobile.  I resisted the idea of knee replacement because I was always able to convince myself that the pain wasn’t too bad and that I could still do most of what I wanted to do.  But my gardens suffered, the walking-for-exercise dwindled, the walking-for-fun was less fun, and I was always in some level of pain.

Finally in August I knew that the time had come.  New x-rays showed bone on bone.  There was another vacation on my schedule, to northern California, so when the new orthopedist confirmed that I was absolutely a candidate for knee replacement, I decided to delay for a few weeks.  That vacation was also wonderful.  San Francisco is not an easy place for someone who doesn’t like walking, so I relied on Uber.  I didn’t want to forego the Monterey Aquarium or SF MOMA, so I reluctantly sat in a wheelchair, pain-free but self-conscious.

On Tuesday October 24th  I checked into surgery at Mercy St. V’s  and checked out of consciousness for a couple of hours.  I’m still battered, bruised, swollen and sore but the trend line is toward less pain and more mobility.  My physical therapist is pushing me. My family is watching over me.  My friends are feeding me (and the fam).

I’m on the mend, and grateful for it.

 

 

I cook for a lot of reasons.  Taste is number one.  But other associations matter too.  Memories.  Aspirations.

Last week I cooked a Puerto Rican -style pork pernil  . I know that our delicious dinner didn’t help Puerto Ricans any more than Trump’s tossed paper towels, but, since  I’ve never been to Puerto Rico, cooking and eating this food was the best I could do to make the island’s disaster real to me.

Tonight I am soaking midnight black beans from Rancho Gordo, and tomorrow I’ll make Free Mexican Airforce chili.  Until I found this recipe in Steve Sando’s cookbook, I hadn’t heard of Peter Rowan or listened to this song.  Rancho Gordo closed today and told all its employees to stay home.  Much of the wine country is on fire.  Just a couple of weeks ago we were at the junction of 101 and 12, where the Santa Rosa fire started.  Selfishly, I’m glad that we toured Sonoma when we did, and that we spent a day driving through Napa.

 

Is there a lesson here?  It’s tempting to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the threat to so many beautiful places.  But I’m going to choose to be overwhelmed by the beauty that still exists, at home and on vacation.  Join me?

I haven’t posted here in a couple of months.  A lot has changed since June 29th.  My daughter Johanna has taken a leave from her job as a junior kindergarten teacher in Chicago to be a full-time Mom to her daughter Aloisa this year. They are living with us. And we are delighted with this expansion of our household. 

I’d been looking for moments of joy, and I’ve found them.  Aloisa (Loi) is an explosion of joy.  Everything is interesting.  Everything is exciting. She has the worst case of FOMA you’ve ever seen.  I  have a very enthusiastic cooking companion.  

And she really appreciates food.

And the garden.

If you haven’t seen me in a while, it’ because I’m playing blocks.  Or house.  I’ll be around, but maybe just a little bit less.

 

I’ve been thinking about my mother lately. Yesterday would have been her 95th birthday.  She was among the youngest of a family of twelve who grew up on a farm in upstate New York.  Because my grandfather didn’t believe in “higher education” for girls, my mother and her sisters were not sent to the high school in town but stayed in the school down the road, repeating the 8th grade until they were sixteen and old enough to be on their own.  She moved downstate and lived first with a brother and his wife, gaining a skill that made her marketable, and then with a girlfriend.  After working for a few years she came home, married, and became a stay-at-home mom.  She was always a voracious reader. I remember when she earned her GED.  And the various things she took up, including mentoring various young female friends and relatives, oil painting, and selling Amway.  Later she worked as a home health care aid, which earned her health care benefits in retirement.  She had cancer, the result of  a lifetime of smoking. She died at 77, having lived with us after my father, who had been her caregiver, died.

My generation was the first to go to college.  I got married at 21 (younger than she had) and worked as a teacher while John attended medical school.  After he graduated I also became a stay-at-home mom.  And earned an MBA.  I also took up projects (mostly kid-focused and non-paying) while my kids were small, and I’ve mentored young people, both male and female.  Unlike my mother, I’ve had the opportunity for meaningful and gratifying work, most but not all of it unpaid. For that I am profoundly grateful.

I think about the differences as I read about the terrifying threats to women’s rights that seem to be happening all over.  Recently I read The Handmaids’ Tale for the first time, and it did not seem far-fetched.  Although recent stories argue that it’s been misrepresented, it’s easy to believe the news that Missouri’s SB 5 would allow employers to fire women because they are on the pill.  Reality is so bizarre that nothing can be ruled out.

As I make choices about how to spend my time now that I have so much of it, I want to focus on ways to support women, both as individuals and collectively.  I’m interested in ideas.

 

Note to self:  Spend the longest day of the year with your granddaughter.  Be outside.  Feed the fish and water the flowers.  Perfect.

I have always been a reader.  I remember reading comic books under the sheets when I was supposed to be asleep.  I remember reading a Nancy Drew book each day during summer vacations from junior high school.  I remember binge-reading Peter Wimsey and Nero Wolfe and several Anne Rice sagas of unforgettable non-humans. So many favorites!!

My reading style has not changed much in the 60+ years since I learned to read. I still read almost every night (and many days, too). I still read mostly fiction. I still read mostly for plot.   I still favor a long series that allows me to spend extended time with my fictional friends, and a high percentage of those friends are detectives (be still my heart, Guido Brunetti or Armand Gamache).

This week though, I am reading short stories by Roxane Gay.  I learned about Gay and about the book from one of those “best books” lists.  I think the recommendations were from authors who also own bookstores.  The recommendation suggested that Difficult Women should be read slowly.  Although it’s not my style, I have followed that suggestion, and it’s been rewarding.  This morning I read “North Country,” and it was enough.

I am aware of by can’t understand people who don’t read.  Hard copy or digital (I read on my laptop, using the Kindle app) or listening (I use Audible), they’re all reading.

If you’re looking for me, I’m probably in the garden, reading…