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Archive for the ‘Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country’ Category

Blah Blah Blogolicious

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on August 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

Yesterday I attended a book signing at a beautiful new salon in town, Avina Natural Nails. I had met the author of The Power of Slow at our town’s Blogville Conference in the Spring and got the invite via Facebook. All that interconnectedness got me thinking – why not blog about the blogs I love? So this is for my MIL, who asked me once, “Where does your blog go?” And for my NJ friend Eve, who was so excited to hear I started doing this since she’d been “…looking for a blog to follow.” And of course for my oldest friend Lee in MA, who started me on this writing journey by introducing me to her friend the newspaper editor, saying, “You have to read her stuff!”

Local Virginia Blogs:

http://powerofslow.wordpress.com/ Even though the above mentioned author actually lives in Germany, let’s start with Christine Louise Hohlbaum since she grew up here, and her inspiring Mom still lives here. Just talking with Christine makes your heart rate slow to a more even rhythm. She offers lots of strategies to break time-wasting habits and increase time for more purposeful pursuits.

http://www.cvillefashion.com/ Dana put together this beautiful, local style blog that keeps calling me back time after time. She featured the Bride’s vintage gown this year and also alerted me to a benefit sale at Scarpa, our town’s best shoe store. She finds the latest deals and trends long before other fashionistas, and I love her Foxfield summer dress contest! She is a style sleuth.

http://www.asthegoatworldturns.com/ I met Anna by chance at the checkout at Whole Foods. We started talking, one thing led to another and then I’m showing her my Facebook pic of me kissing a baby goat….it’s often occurred to me that I could be a character in an Anne Tyler novel because some of my most serendipitous encounters tend to be life changing. Well, if you’ve ever thought about hobby farming, and making your very own goat cheese, (hello?) this picturesque and perfect blog is for you!

http://www.deedeeslivingwill.com/ Denise Stewart wrote a play called “Dirty Barbie and Other Tales.” She will star in this one woman show at Live Arts this November. She also runs workshops for teen girls on how to live a healthy and meaningful life. This blog will make you laugh and make you cry since she touches on all our hot topics. I love a post she did recently on her friends. I met her, and Marijean Jaggers at Blogville and felt I’d known them all my life.

http://www.marijeanjaggers.com/ Marijean Jaggers is my blogging Yoda. She was an instructor at Blogville and anyone with a business who understands they must get out on the web in some compelling way should speak with her first. Her last workshop was titled: “Don’t be a Weiner-How to Use Twitter Like a Professional” Wednesday, July 20th. Love it!!

http://www.younghouselove.com/ A friend of the Bride and Groom went to UVA with the husband of this DIY blog from Richmond. This is an amazing story about a young couple, with a new baby, who buy mid-century modern houses and step by step turn them into beautiful and functional contemporary homes. This blog IS their work, it’s not something they dabble with at night. And it’s fantastic. I told Bob if they had such a thing as blogging, we could have done this type years ago.

http://latebloomerbride.com/ Speaking of love, did you find it after forty? Here is an excellent trip along the funny and never too late road to marital bliss. Or, “…consider this blog a memoir with a purpose. It is for all the late bloomers out there – especially the newly married kind who are trying to figure out how to take a fully formed life and merge it with someone who finally turned out to be Mr. Right.” Right!

Some are inspirational, some are instructive, but all are well written and worth your time. And because there are so many, I’ll have to save my other family and out-of-state favs for the next post! If you’re wondering if I got a manicure yesterday, a once or twice yearly indulgence, can you say “Pink Lemonade?”

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Sugar Coat That

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on August 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Morning all. It’s so good to wake up to a debt deal that nobody likes, including Rep Emanuel Cleaver, who called this hard bargain a sugar-coated “Satan Sandwich.” Being a curious type, I just had to google. Seems this could be anything from a red velvet take on the Southern Moon Pie – red devil’s food cake packed with gooey marshmallow filling – to a suggestive edible, one bite of which arouses the libido. Think of Tom Jones, or Jack Nicholson eating oysters. But no, wait, they’re getting up there…think Matt Damon digging into a fried oyster po’boy in NOLA! YUM.

Would you like to see the kind of bar-be-que (or was it a cheese steak) sandwich with ribbon fries we devour here during the dog days of county fair season?

Cholesterol Check

Yes Please

Actually, my idea of a sinfully delicious sandwich right now is heading out to the garden, picking a ripe juicy tomato, and slicing it onto white bread (maybe sourdough) with a stripe of this newfangled olive oil mayo by Kraft slithering over the top and some salt and pepper. I’d actually call this an “Angel Sandwich.” However, since it looks like we’ll all be pinching our pennies for the foreseeable future, this Tuesday’s recipe is the staple in banana republics everywhere – Rice and Beans! The Bride brought this simple dish back to me from a trip to Brazil, so it’s the real deal.

Chop up 2 cloves of garlic and half an onion.  Saute in a few Ts of Evoo. Add 1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes, or Rotel tomatoes (hot). You could always poach, peel and chop fresh tomatoes and chilies from the garden. Add 1 cup of rice, any kind of rice you like, cover and simmer. Halfway through cooking, add a drained can of organic black beans. Check often and add water when needed. I also added some chopped yellow squash and pepper from Bob’s garden, but this is not necessary. I love this dish, very different from the kind of rice and beans one tends to find in Mexican restaurants. Ola!

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Did You Jump?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on August 1, 2011| 4 Comments »

Today is my son’s birthday. “Did you jump and have cookies?” was my toddler Rocker’s greeting to his Daddy. His little body was sailing jubilantly towards the ceiling, jumping on the bed as his Dad came home from the hospital. Bob would always begin the transition to home by taking off his tie and recounting his day to his young family. The Bride would invariably ask, “Who did you see who hurt demselves Daddy?” But the persistent younger brother would want to know just how much fun exactly did he have that day. Intuitively he knew, if work was fun then it wasn’t work at all. He was born in the middle of a heat wave in the Berkshire Mountains. Gladiolas were in bloom. While I was dreaming of flying on a trapeze at the Big Apple Circus, he began his descent into the Big Top of Life. He was loud and lovely, a delicious baby boy in every way. The kind you want to pretend to eat his arms of corn on the cob. I called him my perpetual motion machine. A baby who never looked back – who would let go of my hand and walk decisively into danger; an open stairwell, pre-school, or the ocean, it didn’t matter. Just as long as he kept moving. His Native American Indian name was, “Boy who ran before he could walk.” He took to the ocean like a knife cuts through butter, another metaphor he used about snowboarding. Rollerblades, ice skates and sticks littered our front hall. Anything to make him go faster. Summer beach birthdays included everyone at the beach, and one year we all wore Groucho masks! Maybe this is why he loves performing? His middle school haiku of note? “I love the summer, The summer is very hot, That’s why I like it.”

  1. First job – Lifeguard
  2. First school award – Writing
  3. First love – the holy Guitar

The guitar that he rarely put down. One August day he was searching for lost treasure on the beach during a birthday treasure hunt, and then the next he’s playing in front of thousands at Lollapalooza when the crowd sings Happy Birthday to him. A loving and generous young man, one who was never afraid to hug me in public, he is always willing to help the next person coming up. “He’s living the Dream,” as Bob likes to say. The Rocker found out the secret to life, how to jump and have his cookies too.

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6 Midsummer Memoirs

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on July 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

So far, Summer 2011 is going swimmingly.

1) Bountiful                  

2) Restful                              

3) Playful                        

4) Truthful          

5) Colorful              

6) Hopeful               

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They’re Back

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on July 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Like some people, I believe the Armageddon that Jon Stewart jokes about will begin not with a bang, but with a little, tiny germ or pest. Not a crazy Norwegian with a superiority complex, or a dirty bomb in a turban. Nope, it’s some small organism that will wreck havoc on our society in the sci-fi future.  Before penicillin was discovered, bacteria were to blame for large scale epidemics. Think about the anthrax scare. And what about my own little debacle with a mosquito and West Nile? Then there’s poor old Buddha, who came down with Lyme disease right after we moved here. I still have nightmares of spending time out on Martha’s Vineyard, picking ticks off of children, adults and dogs, and burning them one by one…at least twenty every night.

V, Lee and Al in the Vineyard

Here are my friends delivering a bill for their tick-worthy surgical skills! And now we have the Marmorated Brown Stink Bug! Not at all native to our continent, this bug was apparently, “… accidentally introduced into eastern Pennsylvania. . It was first collected in September of 1998 in Allentown, but probably arrived several years earlier,” a Penn State entomologist says.  

OK, so they don’t carry a disease, at least not that we know of, but they do terrorize crops. They love apple and peach orchards, will feed on blackberry, field corn and soybeans, and for some reason, they absolutely adore my porch.

Saw my first one this summer today on the deck. Oh, and did I mention, they smell!  I may have gotten a record number of Facebook comments last year under a post that read, “Stink Bugs, it’s a biblical plague!” That was when they would fall out of lamps and scare me half to death. A friend of mine (Hi Tammy!) demonstrated the best way to rid your house of them. You get a glass, take a paper towel and gently swish the mini-dinosaur bug into the glass, then pour it down the toilet. No touching. Here are the bug’s natural predators:

Ms Bean

Farmer Bob

Well Halleluiah brothers and sisters, our local store, Plow and Hearth, is now taking orders for a stink bug trap! In fact they are getting about ten calls a day for them. The trap costs $19.99 and emits pheromones that lure the nasty critters to their death. Refills will run $9.95. Maybe we can boondoggle ourselves out of this infestation!This is our final frontier.

http://www.plowhearth.com/about/store-cville.html

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Squash Showdown

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged on July 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The debt crisis is heading for a showdown, and the legislators coming up for re-election in the Fall will need to explain their actions (or inaction). I listened to our President last night, and wonder if those intransigent (add your own expletive) did. One summer during college the Bride interned in DC at the Children’s Defense Fund, which is notoriously bi-partisan. We framed this CDF poster and gave it to her Grandmother; I’d like to change a few words and deliver it to the Speaker.

But it’s Tuesday so I’m back to squabbling about squash. Farmer Bob’s garden is producing squash by the truckload. In the past, I would just cook spaghetti squash and toss it with oil or butter and cheese. But tried something new this time:First chop it in half and scoop out as much of the seeds as possible. Turn face down in a pan of about 2 inches of water and bake at 375 for about a half hour or forty five minutes.Then while it was baking, I sauteed sliced mushrooms with 2 shallots in 2T butter and 2T olive oil. I added some white wine and lemon zest and whatever fresh herbs you have on hand – tarragon works well, but parsley is good too. When the squash was done I scraped out the meaty spaghetti-like strands into a casserole dish  and mixed in the mushroom sauce with some very fresh from the market asparagus. Drizzle some EVOO on top with some grated cheese and bake for about 20-25 minutes and voila! You have one delicious dish masquerading as pasta.

One of my favorite phrases from Hurston’s book is describing her protagonist as having to “…starch and iron her face,” in order to appear at her abusive husband’s funeral. The masks of some congress members are slipping; it’s tough to hide behind the facts and the polls.

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Garden Analogies

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on July 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m no Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist/columnist for the New York Times, but when I heard our President tell some hot-headed Congressmen it’s time to, “…eat your peas,” well I just had to laugh. There are no peas in farmer Bob’s garden yet, but thought you would like to see what some little seeds have sown.

Here is what Krugman said about paying down debt recently: “Between 1993 and 2001, federal debt held by the public fell from 49.2 percent of GDP to 32.5 percent of GDP. What stopped the paydown of debt wasn’t liberal big spending; it was demands from conservatives that the surplus be used to cut taxes. George Bush said that a surplus means that the government is collecting too much money; Alan Greenspan warned that we were paying off our debt too fast.”

Obama likes putting the art of compromise – which is let’s face it, every politician’s and parent’s job – into perspective for us ordinary people. I would give the toddler Bride a choice – swirly skirt or pants to pre-school? The Rocker could pick apple juice or milk? The point being, yes, you do have some control over your life (ie the economy) but you can’t run around naked in public or starve (or bankrupt the country)! This is what parents (leaders) do. This is why we elected him.

But telling Congress to behave right before an election, is like trying to get a toddler to eat his peas on a hundred degree day, with a swimming pool within eyesight…just a fence hop away.  After all, actually being re-elected must take precedence over  running the country. Even we ordinary citizens get that!

Will any hail/mary/debt/reduction/scheme Grand Bargain last? Maybe if the Dems keep control of the Senate and the White House. But let’s think ahead folks, Krugman warns that any agreement, “will be torn up in favor of privatization and big tax cuts for the wealthy as soon as the GOP has the chance.” Some elected officials will just never see the garden from the peas.

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Porch Sittin’

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on July 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It’s Book Club time again. Tonight we’ll be discussing Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. In our club, the woman who hosts that night at her house gets to pick the book, and I’m excited to discuss this 1930’s African American coming of age novel. Born in 1891, Ms Hurston grew up in the country’s first incorporated Black township in Eatonville, Florida. By the time she died in 1960, penniless and working as a maid, this Harlem Renaissance author had published several short stories, screenplays, eight novels and four childrens’ books.

I had trouble digging into this book simply because of the language. Her dialogue is pure early, Black Southern vernacular. “Speakin’ of winds, he’s de wind and we’se de grass,…he’s got uh throne in de seat of his pants,” is a good example of how grammar is exchanged for metaphor which I finally loved to read slowly and savor. Because I could identify with Janie, who was in some ways Hurston herself. Her grandmother wanted her to marry well and sit up high on the porch, listening to the stories of others and never giving voice to her own.

It was wonderful to see on CNN this morning our Black Congresswomen coming to the aide of a white Florida delegate, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, after a Black male delegate, R- Allen West called her out in an email to shut her mouth and start acting like a lady! Are we still talking semantics or is there something more sinister here? The numbers of women in our Capital building are dwindling partially because of this patently absurd culture.

My first post-college job in 1973 was at the Fremont Street Head Start Pre-School in Jersey City, NJ. My four year olds were precious, and their parents wanted only the best possible education for them, not unlike any other Caucasian parents. But we had to deal with drug users and sellers in the alleys, broken glass on the cement playground where the equipment had to be hauled inside every night, and burnt out buildings in the neighborhood instead of parks. My eyes were opened as I began to understand their dialect, and the multi-generational language of poverty.

We’re having a heat wave right now on both sides of the mountains. Tonight will bring some cooler heads to this porch of smart Southern women.

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Summer Lasagne

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on July 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

We were having a few people over for dinner on one of those really hot mid-90s no breezey nights. And because yellow squash was at its peak in the garden, I decided to make a white lasagne, the kind my cousins in Ireland had made for us once. Usually, it’s not a great idea to try out a new recipe on company, but it worked. I found out later that Giada de Laurentis had almost simultaneously devised a similar royal lasagne for Kate and William out in California! Here is what you will need:

  • 1 box lasagne noodles
  • 1 container semi-skim ricotta
  • 1 giant yellow squash fresh from the garden
  • 1 container mushrooms
  • 1 bag organic baby leaf spinach
  • 1 pound ground turkey
  • 2 shallots, chopped
  • About 5 cups of Bechamel sauce + grated cheese
  • 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
  • freshly grated nutmeg

Making a lasagne is like conducting a symphony. You assemble everything you need and then start layering. Cook the noodles and set aside in lukewarm water so they are easy to handle. Saute the shallots and add the turkey to brown, you can start this while the noodles are boiling. Cooking  is the one and only area where I can easily multi-task. Wash and slice up the mushrooms.

You will need a mandoline to slice the squash paper thin. I first saw one of these slicing gadgets on the FrenchChef, Julia used hers to make Potatoes Anna.

You can either make  your own simple Bechamel white sauce, which requires a roux (flour + butter) with milk or you can buy a fresh Alfredo sauce in the dairy section of your market. Add some grated cheese to it – whatever you have in leftover hunks in the fridge. Add nutmeg to the sauce and at the end over the top. Add the sauce to the browned turkey. Time to start the layering…Put some sauce on the bottom of the pan, layer the noodles. First spread the ricotta cheese over the noodles like you would ice a cake. Then place the mushrooms, squash and spinach (no stems please) over the cheese. Ladle on some white turkey sauce – repeat twice more. End with a layer of noodles and sauce with the grated mozzarella on top.

I made this the night before. Take it out of the fridge a few hours before baking, then bake covered with aluminum foil for a half hour at 350 (maybe longer if you don’t have a  convection oven). Uncover and bake 15 minutes more.

Very simple and elegant, although Giada baked hers in individual ramekins with mascarpone cheese and corn. Maybe next time? And maybe next time, the air conditioning won’t quit right before the guests arrive?

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Madison County Fair

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on July 18, 2011| 2 Comments »

It was a toss up. Should we go to the County Fair this past weekend, or the Bluegrass Festival? Demolition derby vs dueling banjos? The Fair won, but only for the High Horse Cloggers (girls + 1 guy in tap shoes),

since the Roller Derby (girls in fishnet) was scheduled for the evening back in town at the ice rink and we already had tickets to see the “Charlottesville Derby Dames” annihilate the Charm City Rollergirl’s “Female Trouble.” Country folk know how to party!

  

And just to show you how Cville is not just the epicenter of Locovore Lore (meaning we started the ‘eat local’ movement) – while sitting on the Mall for dinner with our newest, sweetest family of ex-Nashville residents and our MOH Jersey native Sarah on her way to Duke, we said hello to a friend, Melissa, visiting from Seattle! TJ would be so proud.

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