Clam chowder on a chilly night

Plus fried fish and the chef's occupational hazard--glasses spattered with tiny droplets of oil .  I was pan-frying some shrimp and tater tots that had been in the freezer through the difficult days of summer.  Each time I tossed a batch in the skillet, the water vaporized and catapulted grease particles far and wide.  Some found my glasses but many more coated the surfaces of the stove, countertop, and floor.

I will get a new kitchen one of these days, won't I?

Cat vs. Christmas ribbon--never too old

 
Tried the scrambled eggs recipe and yeah, they're nice and soft this way.  My current method of cooking on medium-high was producing tough ones.  With the butter the recipe called for, they might have been great.  (I used non-stick cooking spray.)

And now for a major panic attack--

I foolishly started two books right before Christmas and I don't want to give either of them up, but how is it going to be possible to finish them before starting the 100 Book Challenge?  Plus, I got a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat for Christmas and started on that.

I'm about a quarter of the way through The Passage and halfway through The Hunger Games but then I want to read the second two books in the Hunger Games trilogy.  I have four days to do it...or...I could add whatever I don't finish to the front of the list and push everything else back.  Would that be a cop-out?

Back to normal, whiny self--but first--

It's 5:45 on Thursday and I'm home, home, HOME! Be it ever so disorganized, there's no place like.

I lost a kid along the way (should pick him up Sunday) but I've got three dogs and a cat, and I'm home.

Nuthatch, rightside up for once

Survived another Christmas day.  The ice and snow started in at about two o'clock, so the out-of-towners had to leave.  Now there's nothing to do but but play on the computer and wonder if the snow will clear off enough to let usget back to the dogs on Thursday.

I'm such a scrooge.

I got a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat for a present and already I'm planning a herb garden.  Plus I learned what I've been doing wrong with the scrambled eggs--can't wait to get home and try it out.

Christmas soon

So here we are.  In Arkansas.  That last hour of driving on I40 in the dark with little traffic pretty much did me in.  At least when there's traffic, I feel grounded.  Like I know what's coming at me and where the road is and there's at least a reasonable assurance that the pavement doesn't just disappear over the next hill.

It took me 30 minutes longer than it did Ed, but what the hey!  We saw a fox!

Four nights, possibly longer if it snows enough to screw up the trip home.  I'll log on in the morning and check the weather.  All these morons (not local ones, national ones) get so excited about a White Christmas.  All that means to me is traffic delays and the possibility of a very scary drive home.

This holiday tradition sucks.  We should stay home at Christmas and travel in the spring and fall--travel with spring flowers and fall colors.

Enough griping.  I'm here and even though I never really liked my father-in-law all that much, I miss his presence.  For so many years he was here and lucid, talking a little more than I'd like but ever so loving, so kind and secure--the boss of benevolence.  And then there were the years when he became a very confusing child, sort of scary but more like...puzzing.  Depressing as hell it was to watch, but not so bad--he had a very gentle decline.  Last Christmas he was confined to bed, I think...or was it after the winter?  At some point they put his hospital bed in the living room and just cared for him there, quietly, discreetly, lovingly.

Now his absence is a great, gaping hole.  Even his spot at the desk is clear.  But his presence fills the house as it never did when he was alive.

Back to Christmas.  Christmas sucks when I don't have "home" to go to.  Mom always waited for us, no matter how late we were getting in.  We'd pull in the driveway after eleven hours of hard traveling and the motion sensor light would go on and she'd soon be at the door, crying a little and pulling us in.  Usually it was pot roast on the stove--she knew Ed liked it--and a few vegetables.  God!  I miss her so bad.

Dad would be there, going about business as usual, but I knew he was waiting just as well.  He'd put a few extra beers in the fridge for me, or just keep an eye out to the side, waiting for us.  He was annoying as heck but it was worth it--

He was Dad.

Christmas without them...the second one, I think.  It's not really Christmas.

Heavy sigh.

One more day of dogs...then off to doggie boarding school.

 

 

Man's inhumanity to food

I'm once again betrayed by my fellow man.  Is there nothing so wholesome that man can't pollute?  Apparently not wheat. 

I'm not sure I believe his flight of fancy about how, "...unlike fruit, grains don't want to be eaten," but the bare facts about what man's selective breeding has done to the plant are enough to make me bury my loaf of whole wheat bread in the back field.  I'm scared to feed it to the birds.

Why am I surprised?  We've screwed up every other food on this planet.  We've raised generations of kids thinking an acceptable meal consists of high-fat, carcinogenically-prepared CAFO beef on a high glycemic-index bun.  With gluten.  It appears that the pickle and the onion are the only healthy components of the meal.

So...what else has man done?  Are my "Detroit dark red" beets and "Crimson lights" Swiss chard the products of selective breeding that brought in poisonous enzymes as they attempted to make it hardy for the home garden?

Next time I buy seeds, I'm going to lean strongly toward the heirlooms