Good Eats

28. September 2024 · 1 comment · Categories: Domestic

I’ve spent time in the kitchen  this week – time that I should have spent on finishing the last chapters of the W-I-P, but this writer does not live on bread alone … but regular meals of relatively healthy, and home-cooked foods. One of the projects in the kitchen was the disposition of half a bushel of carrots. A friend of my daughters is another single parent, and one in a sufficient state of want to be the object of a gift of foods from a church pantry … to be precise, an enormous number of enormous carrots. Very fresh carrots, and not a bit woody and flavorless because of their gargantuan size. But carrots … the friend gave half to my daughter, and I spent a morning peeling, slicing, and brewing up brine to make pickled carrots. Yes, I have a large stock pot, and a collection of canning jars … and so, pickled carrots. Eight quarts of pickled carrots. And then, another eight quarts of mixed vegetable pickles from the Ball canning cookbook – giardiniera, which is wicked expensive when bought in smallish jars from the specialty foreign foods selection at the grocery store. It’s not so pricy when made from fresh, and even though the costs for fresh vegetables in season is a bit more  than they were three or four years ago … scratch made giardiniera is still cheaper. Even though I couldn’t find the teeny pearl onions that some recipes call for; I didn’t mind; those specialty tiny onions have always been pricy and are a major pain to peel  and prep.

The other project in the kitchen came about because we tried out a pulled pork spice mix, which turned out to be a bit lacking, even in the slow-cooker with a boneless pork shoulder at $1.99 a pound. (Which is excellent for that cut of meat.) I thought of using it as a filling for tamales. My mother, being a cook with four or five hungry teenagers in the household was a master of cheap eats. In the town where I grew up, there were maybe four or five elderly Hispanic ladies who made tamales from scratch, and Mom was the only Anglo. Back in her early married life, Mom learned Mexican cooking from the couple living next door in GI grad student housing at UC Santa Barbara. Traditional Mexican food has the benefit of relying on inexpensive ingredients, and being tasty and filling. So – I refreshed my memory of making tamales, found a recipe on line for what looked to a pretty good version … and oh, my – they were better than good. Light, fluffy, flavorful. I think the trick to this one was creaming the lard or Crisco, and then mixing in alternate thirds of the masa and  broth. I made up another full batch for the rest of the pulled  pork and packaged them in sets of four with the vacuum sealer for the freezer. I don’t believe we’ll buy prepared tamales again – this recipe was so good, using the Mi Tienda masa from HEB.

And now, back to finishing off the last two chapters of West Towards the Sunset.

The Most Wrecked House

17. September 2024 · Write a comment · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

So, I am an aficionado of a certain kind of YouTube series – of ambitious DIYers who most usually have either mad professional building skills, or a generous income (most often both), plus absolutely insane levels of optimism, who take on a decrepit bit of housing, or at least something with all or most of a roof on it. Over a number of years or months, these skilled, and hopeful masochists take on an abandoned or derelict rural property – a tumbledown pig farm in Belgium, a decayed village house or farmstead in Portugal, a ruinous French chateau, a French village hoarder house with half the roof fallen in, or a burned-out country cottage in Sweden. Usually at least half the time-lapsed video is of tearing out the decayed bits, and sometimes the finished result is painfully ultra-modern interior and looks like one of the display rooms in an Ikea outlet … but if the owners are happy in it, who am I to quibble over their tastes in interior decoration.

Some of these spaces are very far gone – the Swedish cottage was burned out in a fire, and the Portuguese farm complex is such a tottering wreck that the best that the young couple can do with the remains is salvage the cut stone that it all was built from and use the stone to sheath new conblock walls of a construction in the original footprint. But I think this week, I have found the most thoroughly wrecked historic structure available in any real estate market – this first through a feature in the English Daily Mail newspaper. For some reason their newshounds lighted on a mid-19th century house in Frankfort, Maine – a mansard-roof mansion at the crossroads of a hiccup of a town, and one which is so visibly wrecked that even the most optimistic real estate listings can’t even begin to hide the decay.  When the listing warns you to wear safety shoes and bring a flashlight … and there aren’t even any pictures in the listing of the interior … yeah, this place is a real estate disaster.

If it were built of stone or brick, there might be hope for a renovator – but if it is all wood, the roof has leaked for decades, with wood-rot and black mold throughout all three stories and not a shred of anything resembling preventative maintenance … no; as my daughter the real estate agent says cheerfully – nothing wrong with it that a couple of gallons of gas and a book of matches couldn’t fix. We had a friend in South Ogden, when I was stationed at Hill AFB, who were trying their best to renovate an 1895 Italianate brick three-story on 5th Street. It had been the wife’s childhood home, and she had a sentimental attachment to the place. It eventually turned out that there was nothing much of good quality about the structure, save for perhaps the thick and solid brick exterior shell. If they knew at the beginning of the project what they knew by the end, they would have gutted the shell and built anew, bottom to top. She wound up hating the place – and was inexpressibly happy when they purchased and moved into a well-preserved 1920s Craftsman-era bungalow several blocks distant. In reality, I suspect that many hopeful renovators share  that discouraging experience.

The mansard historical wreck in Frankfort comes with an acre, which looks like woodland. Probably, the only workable solution is for a purchaser to salvage every shred of usable elements surviving decades of neglect, demolish the wreck – and build an exact replica incorporating those elements on a new site a bit farther back from a well-trafficked local road.

Well, I will be keeping track of the mansard wreck in Frankfort – it might very well turn up someday, as the focus of a madly optimistic, skilled and well-financed YouTube enthusiast. And I wish them the best of luck.

They’ll need it.

From “West Towards the Sunset”

13. September 2024 · Write a comment · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

(Yes, getting close to completing this YA novel – I plan to have it released in eBook and in print in time for Christmas. By Thanksgiving, anyway.)

The Kettering party of 1846  is traveling up the Truckee River, approaching the final mountain pass. It is autumn, and they have every chance of getting over the mountain pass before winter sets in. Other parties on the trail have not been so fortunate…)

So we set off, following the river farther and farther up into the hills, with the blue line of the mountains ever clearer every day. I think that we had been a week or more at it, when we came to a place where the hills gave way to a gentle, shallow valley. Rolling meadows of late-summer grass reminded me of those first days on the trail. The oxen were happy enough to spend a day of it, grazing at leisure on another Sunday.

Ma had Henry, Shiboone and I with the Herlihy brothers dipping buckets of water from the river, that Sunday afternoon after Deacon Zollicoffer held Sunday services. She and Mrs. Herlihy wanted do laundry. Mr. Herlihy had built up a good fire for us, with all of our kettles and pots heating water for the washtubs. Shiboone had just hoisted up a brim-full bucket, when she looked down the worn and rutted trail east of our camp.

“Oh, look – Sally – there’s a fellow on a poor shabby horse! It looks as though he is an advance scout for another company! Won’t that be a fine thing?”

“It might be!” I exclaimed, for though the man was at a good distance, I thought that he might be one that I recognized. I thought it was Ginny’s father, Mr. Reed, for his fine elegant horse, fine overcoat and flat-brimmed beaver – all them, horse, man and clothing battered, dusty and sadly worn from the hardships of travel. Still, I was inexpressibly happy at recognizing him, for then my friend Ginny and her little sister Patty and the rest of their company couldn’t possibly be far behind.

I couldn’t abandon Ma and Mrs. Herlihy and the pile of laundry to indulge my own curiosity, but I looked over my shoulder often enough, as we carried water, stirred and scrubbed. Mr. Reed – and it was him, no doubt in my mind – spoke first to Hansel, one of the German boys, who was cutting firewood by the wagon circle. I saw Hansel point toward our wagon, and Pa, who was conferring at our campfire with Mr. Herlihy, Mr. Glennie and Choctaw Joe. Henry Steitler was there too, as he most usually was when we had leisure for a day. Then Mr. Reed slid down from his horse, which Hansel led away. I thought at first Hansel was going to turn the horse unsaddled into the corral made from the wagon circle, all with the long wagon tongues chained to the wheel of the next wagon. Instead, Hansel rubbed the horses legs, and the place on his back where the saddle and blanket had been … and then put the saddle back on the horse!

That was curious, I thought. Did it mean that Mr. Reed would ride back down the trail to rejoin his own party? I guessed that it must mean they were a far bit behind. Still, I was so very happy, thinking their company would soon catch up to us and that I would see Ginny soon.

Mr. Reed spoke to Pa – spoke rather long, and that was when I sensed that something was not right. Pa’s expression was somber and worried. I could see the other men’s faces as well: Mr. Herlihy scowled, Mr. Glennie looked shocked … and Choctaw Joe was shaking his head, almost as if he had been confirmed in his own sad judgement.

But I could not walk away from helping Ma and the other women to hear what Mr. Reed was telling Pa and the others. I thought that I might be able to speak with Mr. Reed – but he was gone again within the hour – his horse rubbed down and saddled again, and it looked like he had been given a tow-sack of provisions.

I heard Pa tell him, “Goodspeed and good luck to you, James – we’ll look for your family, and if we can aid them in any way, be assured that we will!”

Then Mr. Reed was gone, riding up the trail towards the mountains, and Shiboone commented, “Holy Mary, he rides as if the very hellhounds are after him! I wonder what has happened now?”

And so did I wonder too, but I had to wait until that night to hear the full tale. All Pa would say at supper, when I asked, was, “Mr. Reed has ridden ahead to implore aid from Mr. Sutter, as his family and his friends are in dire need of supplies. It turned out that Mr. Hasting’s route was much more difficult than had been advertised. Their party is far behind – very far behind.”

“Ginny – are she and Patty all right?” I was shocked enough to speak out of turn, interrupting Pa and Choctaw Joe and Ma.

“Don’t interrupt the grownups, Sally,” Ma chided men. She sounded so serious and stern that I knew better than to ask any more.

“The girls are fine,” Pa replied, “They are with Mrs. Reed, and the hired folk, and their good friends. There isn’t anything to worry over, Sugar-plum.”

But Pa still looked somber, and Ma frowned in my direction when I opened my mouth to ask another question, but Henry Steitler also shook his head at me. I closed my mouth. Perhaps Henry would tell Jon and I later what it meant, that Mr. Reed went hurrying up the trail, without even stopping for the night. Not for the first time, I envied Henry for being only a year or so older but being an orphan and the owner of a wagon … so it was only a cart, cobbled out of the wreck of his father’s wagon – but when it came to trail business Henry counted as a grown-up, and not a child. He knew what was going on, for all of that, and I didn’t, just because I was a girl and younger, and that simply was not fair!

Instead, I kept pinching myself when we went to bed, so that I could stay awake and listen to Pa tell Ma what Mr. Reed had related to him.

“It was bad, Sue,” Pa said, his voice low and serious. “They hardly had an organized company when Reed left them …”  and then Pa’s voice went so quiet that I couldn’t hear what he was saying at all, just bits and snatches that I couldn’t make any sense out of. “Hastings will have a mortal lot to answer for to the Almighty!” Pa said then, and his voice went soft again.

Well, Mr.  Clyman and Mr. Greenwood had not said much good about Mr. Hastings’ shortcut. But what Pa said next riveted my attention. “… threw him out for committing a murder!”

“Oh, my God!” Ma exclaimed in horror. And her voice went even lower. They spoke in whispers; I couldn’t hear anything meaningful after that. I pulled the covers over my head and shivered in the dark until I fell asleep.

Before I did sleep, I resolved absolutely that I would find out what had happened with the Reed company – Poor Mrs. Reed with her sick headaches, feisty, fearless Ginny, little Patty and their blind Granny Keyes – all alone now, somewhere behind us on the desolate difficult trail to California.  In the morning, I would talk to Henry Steitler – the minute that I could corner him and speak to him privately.

 

Interior Desecrations

29. July 2024 · Comments Off on Interior Desecrations · Categories: Domestic

Forgive me for stealing the title of one of the drop-dead funniest satirical take-downs of 1970s-era American interior decorating trends, as expressed in then-contemporary decorating magazines and such of that ilk. I giggled myself nearly sick reading the book back then, because I recognized so very many of the once-popular trends. Like the mad pash for avocado green and harvest gold. No, I thought they were vomitus then, and when the minor gods of home-goods retail marketing tried to bring them back by calling them lime green and lemon yellow, they were still vomitus.

This train of thought departed the station because I have been watching a lot of Toob of Yew channels about furniture and house restoration, construction or design lately. The house renovation videos largely in the time-lapse versions, just to get a sense of what a wreck the various owners/designers started with and what they finished with, and to skip over the tedious bits of breaking up concrete and tearing down sagging roofs. A lot of these are European, English, or Russian, even – renovating and renewing old farmhouses, barns, châteaux of ages antique to near-modern, or even just half a century … which by the European scale of time is modern. There is something vicariously satisfying about watching a tumbledown old barn, farmhouse, an ordinary residence or a ruinous but once-grand mansion, long abandoned to weeds, junk and general decay being cleaned up, cleared out and repurposed into a fresh and functional dwelling with all the modern bells and whistles. Floor heating systems, ultra-modern plumbing, efficient insulation and windows. Some of these projects are being done piecemeal by families as a long-term project, and some by commercial concerns, as nearly as I can tell. (A dead giveaway that it’s a long-term project undertaken by a family is the presence of a large RV or single-wide trailer lurking in the background. My parents and a lot of their nearest neighbors did that very thing – living quarters in an RV or trailer, while completing the main house project.)

The trouble is, though – I have usually been deeply disappointed by the final reveal, especially when the original building is pre-20th century, and old enough to be considered historic. There a handful of exceptions in Brits or Australians renovating the occasional chateau, and bringing back something of a period appearance to a historical building … but the remainder are just … ugh. Usually stark, sleek, chic and very, very ultra-to-the-minute modern. A greater incongruity to the outside structure can hardly be imagined. It’s most often strikes me as appearing like an Ikea display room wedged into an 18th or 19th century exterior, and that is just … wrong. In my opinion, the inside of a building should have some kind of aesthetic relationship to the outside, even if only a remote one. If you’re living in a late 18th century farmhouse, with authentic exposed beams, half-timbering and rustic natural stone fireplaces … oughtn’t the interior reflect that a little more, without going all whole-hog in recreating the original dim, cramped and drafty original.  It’s perfectly OK for someone to want all the domestic convenience and comfort that modern technology and development can bring to bear, but if that’s what you want, why not build all new while you’re going through all the trouble.

So many of the final results of these renovations just did not appeal. It did seem to be a trend among the European renovators. I suppose that if you have lived all your life in and among old buildings, you might be completely blasé about fitting one out with all mod cons, but the final reveals on so many of these projects were … dispiriting. As Dolly Parton remarked, in a completely different context, “You have to spend a lot of money to look this cheap!” And aluminum-framed thermal windows, vinyl plank flooring and ultra-modern hanging light fixtures … expensive as they probably are, do look cheap, installed in a two-hundred year old cottage in the Loire, or the Rhineland.

First Day

22. July 2024 · Comments Off on First Day · Categories: Domestic, Memoir

Wee Jamie started day care/pre-pre-K today, so I am rather relishing being untied from his very strict daily routine, while my daughter is, of course, wracked with feelings of vague guilt and concern at turning over her most precious offspring to the care of people who, at this moment, are strangers. Because she, as a real estate agent, is not tied to regular office hours. We could, theoretically, carry on as we have been, lo these last three years and three months – that is, I looked after Wee Jamie when my daughter has a class, or a showing, or simply must go to the brokerage. The main problem with that was that his chances to associate with other children regularly – on a daily basis – were almost nil. Everyone – me, my daughter, Wee Jamie’s various therapists (for his developmental delay issues) and his godparents all agreed; he needed regular company with his peer group; for the example they would provide when it came to eating anything but crunchies, potty-training and … well, just general socialization. Being cared for full-time at home when he was a baby was perfectly fine; I rather imagine that the pediatrician approved, as it would have reduced the number of germs and viruses that he might inadvertently be exposed to. But an active, lively toddler, full of curiosity and with a full fuel tank of go-go-go? He was ready for the wider world, although if the wider world is ready for Wee Jamie … the jury is still out on that one.

So, off he went this morning, for his first day at Montessori pre-pre-K, with his little rolling-bag full of several changes of clothes, a full package of pull-ups, a little all-in-one sleeping mat/blanket/pillow, a packed lunch full of his favorite crunchies and a sippy-cup full of apple juice – everything marked with his name, of course. He ran happily into the classroom, rounded up some things to play with and never looked back. We tiptoed away while he was distracted.

He’s a social little boy – I think he will enjoy it all. My daughter usually did, when she was his age. I’d carry her into the base day-care center, and set her down so that I could sign her in – and she would tear off for her classroom as soon as her feet hit the floor. She would still be having so much fun when I came in to collect her after the day of work, that she was usually pretty casual about tearing herself away from whatever she was playing at.

Oh, Hi, Mom – is it four o’clock already?

Me, at about the time of this incident – taken when I was doing the school-kid tours for the Public Affairs office, Mather AFB

There was one little girl in her classroom, though – who almost invariably came running up to me, holding up her arms and demanding to be picked up. A little girl with red-blond hair, who would cry when I set her down, collected my own child and made to leave. This happened almost every day, and I couldn’t imagine why the little red-headed girl would glom on to me, and then be absolutely heartbroken when I left. And then one afternoon at the end of the working day,  Little Red-head girl’s  mother and I arrived at almost the same time. Red-head’s mom was about my age, height, coloring, and the same short hair, and wearing the same Class-B uniform combination … otherwise, we didn’t really look all that much alike – but, gosh, it was good enough for Little Red-Head.

Jamie had a wonderful day today – he was having fun when my daughter went to get him, and he even managed take a little bit of a nap on his new sleeping-mat, when all the other kids napped as well.

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