The Two Item Food Rule

Our  Circle of Friends church group of women - older women, because younger women are generally at work or home with children - meet on the fourth Thursday each month, except for November and December, at someone or another’s house. The whole idea is to talk and have an enjoyable time without having to anything to show for it. Generally, the hostess has a number of delicious food selections to offer from dips to fruits in season, cheeses, coffee cakes, bundt cakes, etc.

Several years ago,  my turn to entertain came right after my son, Sharif (in Japan) and his family canceled their plans to come to the USA at the last minute. I had a freezer full of bundt cake, cookies, and coffee cake and I decided to serve all items to my church group. The spread so intimidated them that they made a rule that the hostess should serve only two food items.

Since then, that rule has been violated more than observed, but at least hostesses don’t feel that they have to go 'whole hog' with food. However, this month our member Bonnie totally disregarded both the spirit and letter of the rule. First, she had a huge watermelon carved like a basket containing, of course, watermelon balls.

The jars with red tops contain little lights like fireflies that glitter on the crystals in the jar bottoms. Her table spread included little lemon sandies, little cheese and ham sandwiches, brownie squares with a chocolate filling and spinach cheese balls.

She also served a refreshing watermelon punch.

Also coffee, of course.

A lovely time was had by all.

Raccoon - Second Verse

The ghost raccoon is ghost no longer. For a couple of nights I observed him eat the birdseed from the feeder after I had previously rescued the suet cake. I thought, “Why worry about a few missing seeds from the bird feeder?” I thought again when I found the bird feeder on the ground in the morning, very much the worse for the wear. Although decidedly whopper jawed, it was still workable, so I replenished the seed (Boy! That raccoon knows how to clean a feeder.) and hung the feeder on the outside of the deck again. I now retrieve both suet cake and bird feeder each night. Since I don’t want to surprise the raccoon in a bad mood as I recover the suet and feeder, I bang on an aluminum pie pan to scare him (hopefully) away, if he happens to be on deck. So far I have beaten him to the larder.

To get his picture, and satisfy my husband that I am feeding all comers, I left a little pile of birdseed on the deck near the stairs. He was quite oblivious to the deck light, the camera flash or me as I took his picture from the door.

Suet Cake, Grackles, and the Ghost Raccoon

I am a feeder of the birds around our house. I love to feed the song birds on our deck.

For woodpeckers or chickadees I hang the wire suet feeder with it’s plastic box upside down to discourage the grackles from eating it. Supposedly, they can’t get to the suet if it’s only open on the bottom, but they sure try hard enough. Woodpeckers and chickadees are able to fed on the suet, but they don’t come as often as the grackles.

Earlier in the spring, I hadn’t seen any grackles in weeks, so I figured they weren’t in the neighborhood. I hung the naked suet in a feeder designed to be used by large woodpeckers. A grackle scout must have been near by, because within hours those nasty black birds had arrived and demolished the suet cake. For two days after that two grackle fledglings stood on the deck rail by the empty holder begging their parents to be fed.

Grackles aren’t my only problem. My other problem is our ghost raccoon that I have never seen. . He (or she) has devoured several cakes of suet that I’ve put out for the birds. At night he lifts the cake in the wire feeder off the hook on the railing and eats it there on the deck. In the morning, I find an empty wire feeder, a clean plastic container and his greasy footprints all over the deck and down the steps.

I wait a number of days after he has eaten one cake before I put out another one, but it still disappears. Apparently, he comes every night, and checks for the cake.. My sister-in-law, living a few blocks away, suggested that I bring the suet in at night. I now try to remember to do that.

I came outside this morning and found that he had tipped over our plastic two-gallon watering can spilling the water over the deck. No harm done, but I wondered if he had taken revenge against me for bringing the suet cake into the house last night.

Of course there are the squirrels…..

My husband has no sympathy for my selective largess. He feels that it’s only fair that if I feed one kind of animal, I should feed them all. Hmmm. Life’s not fair, is it?

Jane Austen and Teapots

People often ask me what we do year after year at Jane Austen meetings. We do discuss one or more of her six published novels periodically, as well as her unpublished novel, Lady Susan or her unfinished novel Sanditon. On the other hand, we have programs concerning the fashion, culture, and politics of her time (approximately 1775-1820) including the history, making and serving of tea.

So it should surprise no one that at our April meeting we discussed teapots. One member of our group, Virginia, collects all sorts of teapots, and several others had teapots they wanted to show off, so we had a grand time.

When we scheduled this program, I knew I would love it, but I wondered how popular it would be with our general membership…the English professors and other academic types. However, we had a big group, around twenty. Several visitors heard about our topic and asked to come. Several of the men members came, some whom had not come in a long time.

Virginia showed us her collection of teapots that ran from the sublime to the ridiculous, from tiny to large,
silver, porcelain, and pottery.

Here Virginia betrays some political inclinations for which we will surely make allowances.  Notice the teapot made of ceramic asparagus and the one shaped like a head of lettuce.

 Lorna's bacchanalian teapot was selected by her husband  when they were in Italy, in their youth, as she was browsing through a tea shop. 

Here Carol shows it off to the delight of the character behind her.  Be sure to click on the picture to get the full impact.

Pamela is showing off an elaborate tea cozy.

Here is a better view of the tea cozy.  The sweet flowered white teapot is the more standard selection that Lorna made in the Italian tea room. 

I brought a teapot that I had bought near Aswan in Egypt from a Bedouin merchant in a tent, while we were waiting to board the ferry to go to Philae Island to see the Temple of Isis.

 
 

 

 I want you to appreciate just how tiny some of  Virginia's tea sets are.
 
 
 



Finally, Virginia served delicious refreshments using
one of her lovely tea services.

 
All of these pictures, except the Bedouin teapot which I photographed at home, were taken by Dennie.  And I ecstatically thank him for letting me share them with you. 
 

Bridges

I can’t seem to pass or cross a bridge without taking a picture. I been looking at the pictures of bridges I’ve taken over years of travel.

During July of 1985 Youssef, Sharif and I took a month long foray through England and Wales. We rented a car in Bristol (Youssef’s mother lived north of Bristol in a little village called Henbury) and I drove the three of us through Wales and the Lake District. I can’t believe now that I was ever so brave. We spent one night at the Woodlands Hotel near Devil’s Bridge in Wales. I remember lying on the soft bed in the evening light (it stays light very late during the British summer) watching sheep grazing on the hill from our window as the sun broke through the rain clouds.  I listened to the plaintive clatter of sheep bells, thinking, “Heaven!”  Monks built the first and the prettiest bridge over the Mynach River Ravine between 1075 and 1200, but two ‘modern’ bridges have been built over that. I have a couple of postcards of the bridge from l985, but I found this super picture of Devil’s Bridge on the Internet.

When Sharif was going to Maclester College we would drive him to St. Paul (1988 and 1989) and spend at least one night in Wabasha, Minnesota. A wonderful bridge there built in 1926 had a circular approach. It was too big to focus in the camera frame, but I took this picture of the curve of supporting legs.

 The new bridge was dedicated in 1988, and I snapped this photo of the sunset through the pillars. The old bridge has since been torn down.

The next photo was taken in 1992 of a Nile River bridge, barrage and dam just north of Cairo. These structures control the flow and diversion of Nile water for irrigation in the delta.

About 2000, March, I joined a Bristol University art tour going to Florence and Venice, Italy. Here is the River Arno in Florence with bridges as seen from the Uffizi Gallery in the evening dim light.

In Venice there is the Rialto Bridge
on the Grand Canal



and a different
kind of bridge over the Piazza San
Marco when it rains, which is often.

I love this old trestle bridge over Perche Creek on the KATY Trail just west of Columbia.

The KATY Trail used to be Kansas Atchison Topeka Railroad, but when it fell into disuse Missouri claimed it to create a biking and walking trail that stretches most of the way across the state. There was a lot of resistance to it at first, but the trail has been a boom to small towns catering to bikers with repair and rentals, restaurants, B&B's and antique shops.

I met the same British instructor’s art tour in New York in 2002. Here is a bridge in Central Park,

 and the Brooklyn Bridge. Love that little American flag fluttering in the wind.   It looks little!

 March of 2006, Youssef and I flew to Nagoya, Japan to see Sharif, Sachiyo, and Liam (age 2). It was too early for the cherry blossoms, but there were plum blossoms.

The Aatsuta-jingu Shinto shrine, one of the most important in Japan, is said to house the sacred sword, one of the three regalia given to the ancestors of the imperial family by a goddess.
Only certain members of the imperial family can see the sword, but, nevermind, this bridge brings with it a feeling of beauty and peace.

In 2008 two stalwart Jane Austen Society members joined Youssef (our chaperon) and me in donating/delivering six volumes of Austen novels from our society to the high school libraries of Centralia and Harrisburg. Then we drove north to see the Union Covered Bridge built in 1871.
Notice the Burr-arch truss named for the architect, Theodore Burr.  He is sometimes called the father of American bridge building.

 I took several pictures of the bridge, but this Internet photo, by Galen R. Frysinger, is so much better.

I don’t love all bridges, however.  I remember when Youssef drove us over the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado many years ago, I hid my head in my lap. I was sure that the bridge, built in 1929, had waited, lo, those forty odd years to unravel, collapse and cast us into the depths, when we, our family, reached the center point of the span. Somehow it didn’t happen. Photo off the Internet.

Birthday Week

My 71st birthday was May 10th and I always make it a point to celebrate for at least a week. Celebrations started Saturday night, May 8th, when Whitney and Marjory ( my brother and sister-in-law) asked the family: Youssef, me, Mary Sue and her friend Howard, to dinner. We had a lovely meal of brisket and asparagus tenderized just right - sprinkled with sliced almonds, Youssef insisted on buying the cake that I ordered: Bascom-Robbins’ pralines and cream on white cake. I knew exactly what I wanted. Howard took the picture on the right.  My sister and I do look kind of alike here.  We also look like we are dying to sit down.

Sunday, I received a Mother’s Day gift from Wade. A bonsai magenta bougainvillea. Wade tried to send me one last year, but the container arrived broken. That very same day he sent me daisies in a darling little ceramic colander, courtesy of FDS. I use and treasure it to this day. “What’s with Wade and bougainvilleas?” my husband asks.


Monday, my actual birthday, I received several cards from my friends and relations including a card from my cousin-in-law (A first – as she says she never remembers birthdays. I was so flattered!), and email cards from two dear friends. What a pleasure. I also celebrated by attending a docent appreciation luncheon given by the MU Museum of Art and Archaeology. Youssef took me to dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. We had a coupon. If that sounds tacky, it’s not. We had a good time.

I had told Sharif I wanted to hear from him on Sunday or Monday. He tried to contact us via Skype on Monday, but of course we were out. He tried, and that’s what counts. Tuesday evening, Wade called from California, so Zachary and Cody could sing ‘Happy Birthday to You.”  Lovely.

Wednesday, I went out to lunch with four friends from church. We drove to Rocheport, an old river town about 15 minutes away that is now an art and antiques center. A number of people from Columbia have retired and moved there. We ate at Abigail's, a restaurant named after the proprietors’ daughter. The husband waits tables and the wife cooks. It’s kind of a throw back to the yuppie restaurants of the 80’s, where the waiter acts like he’s doing you a favor to let you in. I love the rustic ambiance of the decor. You always see people you know there from Columbia. I had a wonderful salad of crab and shrimp on greens. It was hard to choose from the menu, but I try not to always order the same thing (apple pancake and brie on greens) We all shared a to-die-for chocolate raspberry pie, and spent another hour browsing through some antique shops.

During the rest of the week, I depleted our bank account buying bedding plants and annuals, saying to myself, ‘This is my birthday present, and this is for my birthday.” The week is up now; sadly, I need to rein in my impulses.

Nice hanging basket, right?  I bought that, too.

In Praise of Men

I am really too lazy to be a feminist. Yet I have been guilty from time to time of making a few derogatory remarks about men. I am thinking of a couple from our church that worked faithfully in our Columbia Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen. I felt that the husband wasn’t as thoughtful of his wife as he should be. She had a fulltime job in the MU library, while he, having just finished his Ph.D. in history, was teaching an on line course part time. Sunday evenings when she had been cooking all day for Loaves and Fishes, I knew she must be dead on her feet. Every chance I had, I’d encourage her to go home if we had enough other workers. However, one evening after her husband lifted an unusually heavy hot pan of chicken casserole out of the oven and on to the stove top, I felt a surge of gratitude and said, “What a joy it is to have a man in the kitchen!” Then I turned to his wife and said, “You notice I never try to send him home early.” True, besides having someone to lift heavy pans, we liked to have a man in the soup kitchen, in case (for example) one of our customers became unruly (and this happened only very occasionally.)

Which brings me to Youssef. My mother actually frowned on bragging about one’s husband or family, for that matter, as bad manners. But maybe I don’t I brag on Youssef enough; one should brag on one’s spouse occasionally, don’t you think? So…. here I go.

I do all the driving, and my husband is always ready to help. I used to tell him that I didn’t need a co-pilot in the car; even now his cautions are not always well taken, but I have to admit, later, that his admonitions are timely.

Every morning he makes our bed. Sometimes he makes it so quickly that
I don’t have time to remind him that this is the day I wash the sheets. Well, changing sheets can always be put off one more day.

Youssef cooks. I am not into labor-intensive cooking. Youssef is quicker than I am and likes to cook Mediterranean cuisine. This means a lot of tomato sauce. Kansas cooking, especially vegetables, did not include tomato sauce, at least when I was a girl, but when Y makes it, it is very good.

He also makes molahaya (called jew’s mallow here, but I’ve never seen it used), a vegetable with the slimy consistency of boiled okra (which I ate and loved as a child). It looks like green soup to be eaten with rice or flat bread and is made with lots of garlic. In Egypt, I could hear the cook in the apartment below us pound garlic and salt together for the molahaya every Friday morning. The fragrance of the garlic would permeate the entire apartment house. After Friday prayers this family of grandparents, children and grandchildren would gather for dinner, and this was one of the favorite dishes.

Youssef and I have made stuffed grape leaves together; me under protest, because, as I mentioned, I don’t care for labor-intensive cooking. Youssef makes the stuffing. I help roll the stuffing into small packets of grape leaf - very time consuming. In Egypt the cooks from several family apartments would come to help roll the grape leaves. Youssef and I worked for a year after returning from Egypt, to get the recipe right. It is so labor-intensive, we haven’t made it since Youssef had chemo. Maybe it’s about time we made it again, since that is a very popular dish with guests..

Growing tomatoes is a challenge Youssef accepts every spring. Every spring we plant tomatoes in various places in the yard and even in planters on the deck. Every year, because of excessive rain, or nibbling deer, we harvest- well, at least two tomatoes. This year he is going to try the hanging tomato plant. Perhaps he’ll get lucky.

Youssef can reach things up high, close up the house at night, feed the cats and clean the cat litter. Yes, it’s great to have a man around the house, especially when it’s Youssef. ( By the by, he’s handsome, too. )

And that’s my praise of men.