Where Are They Now?

   Prior to taking down the more than forty-year-old spruce tree last Friday, the contractor stripped its branches to find, about seventy feet up in the tree, a nest with three baby  birds in it.  He left that part of the tree until the next day, with the hope that the mother bird could somehow relocate the babies. A mourning dove appeared, once the noise and cutting activity had ceased, flying over and around the tree where the nest was, and in and out of the trees in the front of the house. The next day when the  worker climbed the tree, armed with a basket in case the birds were still there, he found them dead.
    Of necessity, the noisy work continued throughout much of the day, and the dove could be seen, and its distinctive notes heard.  When the workers finally stopped and left, the bird flew into the brush beneath the tree, and then out again.  Tonight, two days later, I still hear the sound that doves make, when they cry.  She is still looking.  I know how she feels.

Say it isn't so, Sam!

I always thought those notes played by Sam the Bugler were intoxicating.  They should recall his Bobbleheads, don't you think?

Word of the Day

Maybe a real word, maybe a made up one, but there is a lot of it going around lately-----"Humblebragging."

Better Butter Batter

   Today was Greg's turn.  I picked him up after his golf lesson, and we broke out the cookie recipe files.  Butter cookies are not as popular as many other cookies, and we needed to search through to find a viable one.  We even googled; there is a lot of variety among the recipes.  Yes, all recipes call for butter, and flour, and baking soda, but there the similarity ends.  Do we use an egg, 2 eggs, or no egg?  White sugar, or brown sugar?  Vanilla, or lemon juice, or orange juice?  A little salt, of course, unless you are sodium restricted.  Decisions were made, the batter was mixed, and the dough was contained, labeled, and put in the fridge with the other prospective entries.  We didn't turn the oven on for the taste test; it was too hot.  We're hoping for the best.  

Thje Pumpkin Capers

        Years ago, I used to plant a few pumpkin seeds out in the back, and would reap a harvest of a dozen or so pumpkins, with only a few having suffered woodchuck bites.  Then came the long dry spell, where nothing I planted seemed to flourish.  Flowers that formerly thrived failed to germinate or else dried up and withered away, even the traditional and dependable  petunias.  The grape vines twined over the old child's gym set used to supply enough purple grapes for jelly or grape juice.  But for the last ten years or so, the grapes develop normally almost to the point of ripeness, and then just as they start to turn from green to purple, dry up and fall off the vine.  I've googled possible causes, but there are no definite answers or else such a myriad of potential causes that none offers any help.  Sunflowers used to self-seed from the seeds cast off from the  bird feeders, but this year not a single one sprouted.
    This spring I invested in a package of pumpkin seeds purchased at Rite-Aid.  I was determined not to have to buy a Halloween pumpkin.  The packet contained ridiculously few seeds but I planted them with care.  Well, maybe not such great care, because I forgot where I planted each of the dozen or so seeds the packet contained.  Though I did expect I would recognize the plants when they sprouted.  And I did----3 separate plants in 3 different locations.  Three healthy looking vines with numerous yellow blossoms that should have or could have developed into the fruit of the pumpkin vine. Alas, I could count only 3 baby pumpkins.  One grew to the size of a tennis ball before it was nibbled on, by the resident chipmunk I believe, and eventually carried off.  Another, near the pool, grew a small pumpkin, whose progress I diligently tracked for a while, and then it disappeared.  So that leaves one pumpkin.  It is under  the barberry bush on the lawn in front of the house.  It is still green but has developed to a size about midway between a softball and a soccer ball.  It looks promising.  The chipmunks scurry around that area, helping themselves to the offerings from my Patio Tomato plant from time to time, but I don't think they are interested in my one and only pumpkin.  I can only hope.
   SURPRISE!   Today, I was given a pumpkin, from a most unlikely donor.  She asked me if I ever made pumpkin pie from scratch.  I said I had; I did not say I had no plans to ever do so again---canned pumpkin is fine with me.  She offered me a pumpkin a friend had given her.  She was told it was a pie pumpkin, and she didn't go that route, so she didn't want to keep it.  She even offered to carry it out to the car for me.  I carried it myself though, and it is the biggest pie pumpkin I've ever seen.  It is bright orange, weighs in at 14.5 lbs. and has a diameter of 36 inches.  I'll keep it in the coolness of our cellar and hope it lasts until it's time for it to sit on our front step to welcome the fall season.  Don't know about the from-scratch pie.
 

Recipe for Success, Cookie-wise

     We're hoping.  With August coming to an end, it's time---time to make the cookies, or the cookie dough anyway. The Schaghticoke Fair is just a few weeks away.  One of its long-time  exhibitors was in the house, and available for the first venture---sugar cookies.  The recipe we traditionally use calls for shortening, and there was none in the house.  I've pretty much switched to using margarine or olive oil in its place, wanting to avoid the dread animal fats.    But I didn't want to chance having the cookies be too oily or too flat, so I searched for another recipe.  The best I could do was a recipe which called for half a cup of butter and half a cup of shortening, and we decided to use margarine in place of the shortening.
      The recipe is called "Crisp Sugar Drop Cookies."  The biggest challenge was trying to grate lemon rind, a new venture for the entrant, especially since he had to use a cheese grater, and the lemon had an especially firm rind, or so it seemed.  The recipe also called for 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, but since he had already attacked a lemon, we used lemon juice instead.  All the other steps went well, and we test-baked half a dozen cookies before storing the rest of the dough in the refrigerator.  The cookies passed the taste test with flying colors, first place for sure, the 3 of us in the house decided, or maybe that decision was only mine.
    I took another look at the recipe booklet, which had been stored in my cookie recipe file, and most likely never used.  Time was when I fully expected to use every single recipe I collected, the same as when I had every expectation that someday I would have used all the recipes in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, a wedding gift in 1968.  I've used that book thousands of times, but actually have only explored a small percentage of its offerings.  But back to today's recipe.  The booklet is titled, "New Fashioned Old-Fashioned Recipes."  It is copyrighted 1951, and every recipe in it calls for Arm & Hammer Brand or Cow Brand Baking Soda, and also vinegar.  What? we ask.  Vinegar?  So I turn to the forward page in the little pamphlet, and find the explanation, by Martha Lee Anderson of the Home Economics Department of Church & Dwight Co., Inc. in New York, N.Y. (No zip code, not yet)
       She writes, "I think most of us have a warm spot in our memories for some special food, which, long ago, nobody could ever bake so well as Grandmother.  Chances are it was Baking Soda which made those old-time baked goods so extra light and tender, moist and delicious.  To get them that way took real skill, because Grandmother's leavening was provided by Baking Soda and sour milk, with  its variable acidity.  Today, there's a new way of using Baking Soda, which produces fine, uniform results.  This new way calls for Baking Soda and vinegar.  Because of the fairly uniform acidity of vinegar, the use of this new method is dependable.  The vinegar releases the same amount of leavening gas from Baking Soda.  I hope you will follow the new-fashioned way to old-fashioned goodness with the recipes in this book!"  
    It's probably a safe bet to assume Martha Lee has probably long since stopped caring about whether the combination of vinegar and Baking Soda ever made its way into the annals of good cooking.  She, if ever an actual person, has provided Ben with valuable insights into chemistry as well as enhancement of  his baking skills.  Maybe someday in chemistry class he can follow up on the difference between the variable acidity of sour milk as opposed to the more uniform  acidity of  vinegar.  And maybe even gain further insight into how vinegar releases leavening gas from baking soda.  That process used to fascinate him and his brother when they were toddlers---I think they called it making a volcano back then.
  P.S. I do feel a certain amount of guilt for having substituted lemon juice,
   
   

Word of the Day

"haboob"    You could look it up.....

August 9, 2015

Three new Christians:   Madeleine, Cora, and Archimedes

Semantics--or psychosis?

   I once worked with a woman who had red hair.  She dyed it red but she said she was a real redhead because her doctor told her so.  She had fair skin and freckles.  She kept her hair the sort of burgundy tone of red, and it was quite attractive.  No one contradicted her, because, really, what difference did it make.  But everyone knew she wasn't a natural redhead; after all, she dyed her hair red.
     If I were a man who aspired to be a woman, I would want to wait, as Caitlyn did, until after the time of periods and childbearing, and UTI's.  Womanhood is not all that easy or attractive when you come right down to it.  Manicures and designer makeup and fashionable gowns and dresses are fringe benefits of actual womanhood, not the real thing.  Only a hairdresser may know for sure what color hair one may naturally have, but no hairdresser could possibly fathom a person's true sexual identity.
    Caitlyn, as she says in her new TV show, is attracted to both men and women, though saying she has never been with a man.  (Or so I read, missed the show.) So the truth seems to be  that she doesn't have a clear idea if she wants to date a man or a woman or to be a man or a woman.  It seems possible that Caitlyn is attracted mostly to Caitlyn.  Olympic star, Reality Show cast member, high-profile family, Vanity Fair cover, heroism award, own TV show:  all very public ventures.  What's not to love.  She could be Donald Trump's Vice-Presidential candidate.

Zounds.

     It's such an immense strain just trying to stay relevant.  Isn't it?

Earwigs, Stupid Earwig

     It is said that the reason a song gets stuck in your head, and you keep hearing the refrain without meaning to, is that there are other things you don't want to think of.  So your subconscious fills your mind with song lyrics.  I don't deny that there are things I do not want to think about, so maybe that's why I keep hearing, and even singing, the lyrics to songs from the past.  I wish, though, that the songs could be more current, or even songs that I liked.  When I was a little child, I liked all songs that I heard on the radio because listening to them was a real treat, maybe on Saturday evenings when my father would attach the antenna and turn the radio on.  That was before we lived in a house that was wired for electricity.
      The first song I remember disliking went  something like, "Give me five minutes more, only five minutes more, give me five minutes more of your love."  I can't remember why I didn't like it, maybe because it was a love song, before I was interested in love.  Those lyrics, if indeed correct, started coursing through my head with little letup, when I was walking around outside, pulling a few weeds, or watering the flowers.  I mean, why would my subconscious or the id or whatever, pick that song.  Why not something I liked?
    Today, another blast from the past.
"Two little girls in blue, two little girls in blue.  One became your mother, I married the other, but soon we drifted apart."  I had no particular liking for that song either, but accepted it as something to sing, probably not giving it much thought.  But now that the song has materialized onto my mental playlist, I couldn't figure out what the heck it meant:   twins the storyteller couldn't tell apart? Double vision? Pre-marital hanky-panky?  Split personality?  Wishful thinking?  I had to look it up, back in the archives of old songs.  Turns out the singer is talking to his nephew.  Aha, after all these years...

Longhorn Steer Horns

    As restaurant lightposts?  I don't know, maybe a little creepy...

Inventory

     I live above an eclectic collection of items.  Seven bicycles, two old adding machines, a vintage electric typewriter, an antique cash register, a recent portable generator ( a gift), a large assortment of items for the pool, such as several covers, an insulated cover and a whole lot of chemicals, lawn furniture, at least four antique chairs, wooden and wicker, a highchair that once transformed into a rocking chair that I remember sitting in when I was a baby,several small stands and an antique piano stool kind of beaten up, four golf bags, a golf cart, a golf ball retriever, several dozen used golf balls, several pairs of skis and poles, a later  model air conditioner in addition to the two presently installed upstairs, an old Baby Butler dresser that supports the bags of  salt for the water softener, four artificial wreaths, Christmas tree stands and decorations, two Have-A-Heart traps, two little old stepladders that I withdrew from an ebay sale by request,  aluminum ladders, an old full-sized wooden one, two snow rakes, different sizes, old curtain rods, long and short, a bunch of books, a box of knickknacks, 3 shelving units full of tools and containers of auto and household products, some canning jars of course, the now stored bird feeders, and a trash can filled with planting soil and plant food, in addition to a number of flower pots and a dozen or so florist's vases.  A lot of old sporting equipment, bats, balls, badminton sets, a couple of them, a croquet set, dartboard,  a set of iron horseshoes, and boxes of toys.Other items too numerous to mention, but there is the body of a once motorized wagon that my father-in-law built for his son.  The spider plants, 9 or 10 of them , are outside now.  The only plant remaining in the cellar is an aloe plant that Carmen gave me, which is now too large and heavy to move out.  So it sits on a  large wooden spool table that was once a dance platform.  Come visit anytime.
    It may seem like the space would be very cramped, with all that stuff, in addition to the furnace, washer and dryer, humidifier and oil tank, but the basement runs the full length of the house, and while the house has less than 1,000 feet of living space, the basement is a single open space with two full-sized windows and a door which opens to the outside.  So actually, it's quite roomy.  The attic is a different story, haven't been up there in years for any inventory, but that day may come.  Or not.

Shark Tank Fails?

    Some products, even if funded by Shark Tank, are so astoundingly unnecessary that you'd have to wonder how they ever went into production.     I remember how outraged some people were when it was revealed that Jackie Kennedy had a towel warmer installed in a White House bathroom.  Now I see, via online garage sales, that people are selling their never-or-little-used Wipe Warmers.  Alert CPS:  somewhere somebody is using room temperature diaper wipes on their child.

.don't really care

The lady or the tiger, the dentist or the lion-----I don't really like any of them. They all eat their young.

What do you do with a moon?

   Driving home yesterday, in the late evening, I saw the moon in its absolute glory, round and orange and glowing.  The sight of it made me sad.  One if those moments in time came to me----of my mother calling me one evening to say that she could see the moon from her window and it was beautiful.  She said she didn't know if I was beyond the stage of looking at the moon, but she had to tell me.  My kids were still small, and I was much younger then, but I remember feeling sorrow for some yet unknown reason.