Sorting the Pantry – Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

23. November 2021 · Comments Off on Sorting the Pantry – Getting Ready for Thanksgiving · Categories: Domestic

After our adventures a couple of weeks ago in sorting out the garage deep freezer, my daughter and I decided that we ought to tackle the pantry – which we had done a year or so ago and disposed of most of the badly out-of-date food and condiment items at that time. We did so again today, but fortunately this time the oldest item found was some ranch dressing mix from 2013. The few other items disposed of were of a much more recent vintage. There were two reasons for this project; the first being that we simply had to find the little jar of turkey brine mix that we bought last year after Thanksgiving. We had bought a jar of the same brand after Thanksgiving, 2019, and used it for the turkey breast last year, and it was absolutely splendid! Yes, we shop the marked-down shelves, after the holidays. Got a problem with that? (The way prices are going up on various items, this is something that all of us had better get accustomed to doing.) And, no, I don’t believe the quality degrades after sitting a year – it’s mostly salt, sugar, and an interesting blend of spices and dried fruit.

The other reason was that I had two lots of new air-tight pantry containers – various sizes, all to store the various flours, pastas, rice, grains, and beans in. The pantry was crammed to overflowing, with much of the contents in round glass jars in various sizes, which didn’t make economical use of space, and square containers with the contents marked, which would possibly make more efficient use of the space inside the  telephone-booth-sized pantry … (‘Mom? What IS this?’ ‘Either bulger wheat or wheat berries…’) (‘Why do we have three different bags or jars of jasmine rice/bean thread noodles/cornmeal?’ ‘Because we couldn’t find them the last time we were looking and just bought more…’) I understand that this happens with ill-organized garages. Can’t find the hammer – go and buy another, which is how people finish up with half a dozen hammers, or adjustable wrenches…

It turns out that we have a ton more of dried and canned beans, canned tomatoes, and various oriental noodle items than we thought we did. Our resolve to carefully store and label the darned things is renewed. And putting all the various dried staples into square containers and labeling them as to the contents turns out to have saved considerable space in the pantry, as well as making certain items much more visible, even if this project took up most of the day. Which should save time in searching for them, the next time we need a can of coconut milk, a bit of tomato paste …

We’re brining a turkey breast we bought some weeks ago, and putting together a nice small family Thanksgiving feast, turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, wheat bread and sausage stuffing, gravy and the usual pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce – all carefully calculated so that we don’t have too much in the way of leftovers … when I was growing up, we’d be eating turkey leftovers in various guises for most of the three weeks after Thanksgiving … and just when we polished off the last of it … there came the Christmas turkey and another month of leftovers.

For Christmas dinner, we’re planning on doing Boeuf en Croûte. The beef roast is in the freezer – we bought it a few weeks ago. May as well, while we can still afford it …

At the Zoo

21. November 2021 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic

The San Antonio Zoo is a nice little place laid out on the edge of Breckenridge Park; it looks like many of the original buildings were a WPA project in the late 1930s, and so practically qualify as historic buildings on their own. Some of the older enclosures are pretty small and cramped by modern zoo standards, as set by say – the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park extension. There is a small shell-adorned aquarium with tanks of fishes and aquatic turtles, which was well-lit enough to allow some very nice pictures to be taken. Now the older enclosures seem to house small critters and birds, mostly – but there are some larger landscaped enclosures for elephants, big cats, kangaroos, and the like.

Craft Market Weekend

16. November 2021 · Comments Off on Craft Market Weekend · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

My daughter and I, accompanied by a selection of stock, Wee Jamie in his stroller, and a full assortment in a cooler bag of our lunches and his bottles on ice, spent all day last Saturday at a craft fair in Beautiful Downtown Bulverde, at the senior center there. Which is disconcertingly under the flight approach of a tiny airfield just down the road; at odd times all day, a small single-engine aircraft road overhead just above tree-top level, the shadow of it skating over the treetops and meadow. My daughter had a selection of her origami earrings, most of it stock created early last year. What with the advent of Wee Jamie, who will be six months old this month, and her interests in developing a career in real-estate, this is a hobby which she will have to set aside for a time. She also had a selection of wood-burned oversized Christmas ornaments, which all went to one purchaser who wanted them for an outdoor Christmas tree display, and a collection of small needle-felted seasonal ornaments which, alas, did not sell. We were kind of discouraged because of this. Maybe next year. We worry about what hell the retail economy will present to us, by next year. We had thought that shoppers at the craft fair would be interested in spending their money with local small crafters, what with all the ships stuck off-shore, loaded with crappy consumer goods from China for the holiday market season. We’ll see what happens with post-market sales – there is always a bump-up after a market event.

I had two bins of American Girl doll-clothes and costumes, which were much admired, but didn’t sell as well as they have in the past. At least I covered my half of the table fee and then a bit, which is always reassuring. Our only event the rest of the year will be for my books, at Miss Ruby’s Author Corral in Goliad, the first Saturday in December. My daughter is looking forward to taking Wee Jamie to see Santa, although posing for a picture in the saddle of a longhorn steer may be a little too much to expect of an infant who will be only seven months old when he has his encounter with the Guy In the Red Suit Who Drives a Team of Reindeer And Delivers Gifts to Good Children on Christmas Eve.

On the other hand, Wee Jamie was both much admired for his baby cuteness, and for his being absolutely good throughout. He napped in the stroller, didn’t fuss, consumed two bottles … and was so exhausted by effort of being cute for the entire day that he slept that night from about six PM until past nine on Sunday morning. Wee Jamie is coming along, in his development. I insist that there is nothing to worry about, in missing some of the development benchmarks or hitting them late, which is the pediatrician’s concern. It is my adamant belief that he is about a month behind the expectations because he is a boy, stubborn and reluctant to develop, and another month because he was delivered three weeks before full term, at barely five pounds and a bit. He smiles for my daughter and I, a smile which is all over his face, he is of late entranced with toys which rattle, make crunchy sounds, and musical notes, he has discovered and been entranced by his fingers and hands, and his reflection in one of the toy units. He rocks back and forth from side to side, when laid on my daughter’s bed. Turning over is nearly within his grasp, we think – and he can almost sit up unaided for almost a minute at a time. He also seems to enjoy watching videos, especially the series Shaun the Sheep. He sleeps mostly through the night, after his 5 PM bath, and the bottle which follows – which is a great relief to both of us.

Everything Isn’t Awful

18. October 2021 · Comments Off on Everything Isn’t Awful · Categories: Domestic

We took a break on Saturday – almost the first seriously cool autumn day – after the Daughter Unit finished prepping at her real estate broker’s office for a property showing on Sunday afternoon. She was home by afternoon, and that was when I told her that the Catholic parish beyond the green belt behind our house was having their fall festival. All morning, I had listened to the sounds of a live band or music on the public address system, and I could look out the kitchen window and see the pavilions set up in the parking lot, and the crowds of people moving from booth to booth. St. H—‘s has staged their yearly event regularly, and we have checked it out frequently: many of our close neighbors attend services there regularly. To our amusement when we heard about this – as well as the amusement of that friend who reported it to us, the parish priest there once preached a sermon on the topic of adapting to new circumstances and specifically mentioned our rooster, Larry Bird, who’s crowing the priest could hear across the green belt. More »

All That Remains

13. October 2021 · Comments Off on All That Remains · Categories: Domestic, Memoir

So, I was watching Youtube videos, mostly to amuse Wee Jamie, the Grandson Unit, as he sits propped up in my lap – we are attempting to keep him awake and amused during the day so that he will sleep for a good portion of the night. I found this video, about antique historic home renovation, wherein the couple who purchased a historic Victorian went through the room where all the unwanted detritus from the previous owners were stashed in tatty boxes, ancient suitcases.

The couple went through the room full of junk left over from the owners of the next of kin and rejects from the estate sale, looking for treasure, or at least, interesting relics of modest value … and one of the assortments they found was stuff consigned to a trash bag – a disintegrating photo album stuffed with seventy-year old pictures and documents to do with a first brief engagement of the wife of the previous owner to a naval aviator. The engagement took place during WWII and ended when the fiancé was lost at sea during a naval aviation action. There were the photographs, letters, certain documents, attesting to the existence of the doomed romance: a portion of two lives – possibly all that was left of one, all wrapped up in a single bag.

It all reminded me of several members of my own family – that all of their lives were summed up in a handful of pictures, documents and bits of this or that, and fading memories, as the people who knew them the best passed away themselves. There was a small, cheap suitcase which held the bits and pieces of my Uncle Jimmy’s nineteen years; the olive-green wool serge blouse and trousers of his US Army Air Corps uniform, a scrapbook he kept, full of newspaper and magazine cuttings, which were equal thirds divided between the war, news about aviation and various big bands, a small black pocket diary for 1941, which mostly documented the movies and big bands that he went to see, and the friends that he hung out with. For December 7, the entry was “War” with three exclamation points. There were a few other items in the suitcase which I don’t remember. My brother Alex has the diary, possibly the scrapbook, too. The rest likely burned in the 2003 fire which took down my parents’ retirement home, along with just about all the other relics and things which Mom and Dad inherited from their respective parents.

Of Great-Aunt Nan, I have an autograph book, full of messages from her friends, pictures of her in her WAAC uniform, a tiny “Ruptured Duck” service pin and a couple of other things. Nan lived a peripatetic life in small rented apartments. She traveled the world; some of her souvenirs also gravitated to me; some silver bracelets, a couple of tiny dolls which serve as Christmas ornaments. Of her older half-brother, Will, who perished on the Somme in 1916, there is even less remaining – copy of a single picture of Nan and Will. Nan herself was the last person living who remembered Will at first hand. Mom will be the last one, save for some childhood friends of the same vintage who remember her brother.

In the end, that’s all that most of us ordinary people leave – memories in the minds of those who knew us, a few faded pictures and entries in various public and private records.

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