The Great Storm—and the dissolution of dinner

 

Snowy scene out the front door

Everybody in Texas—and elsewhere—has their storm story today. Here’s mine: the temperature in the cottage was 48 when I got up about 7:30 with Sophie. She didn’t stay long, and I went back to huddle under the covers. The cavalry arrived in the form of Jordan bearing a second space heater and a heating pad. With two space heaters plus my two ceiling-hung heating and cooling units, the temperature got up to the recommended 68 by noon, and I was fairly comfortable working all morning. Of course, I won’t leave space heaters on all night, so it will plunge again tonight. With extra covers, I was mostly comfortable all night.

I have no hot water. I understand its common for tankless water heaters to freeze, and I’ll call the plumber tomorrow to see if I should do anything but wait and keep the faucets off. I did my lunch dishes in cold water and considered scalding them, as my mom did at our cabin in the Indiana Dunes in summers. But I hadn’t had anything greasy and worked extra hard to make sure they were clean. May scald dinner dishes.

And there goes dinner—for almost a year, the Burtons have come out here most nights for dinner, and either Jordan or I have cooked in the cottage. It may be boredom with routine, or the extraordinary cold, or chili—but the custom is falling apart. In truth, I think it’s a pot of chili that Christian made last week—a big pot. All my life I have loved a good bowl of chili, with cheese and sour cream, but when my digestion rebelled a month or so ago, chili was one of the things that I just couldn’t eat. And the memory lingers. So when they’re eating leftover chili, I am cooking some of the things I want. Had scrambled eggs one night, salmon patties another (I do love the leftovers), and tonight will be the creamed chipped beef that I talked about and never made a while back. And if they’re heating chili inside for leftovers, it’s silly to carry it out here in bowls. So I will dine alone. I usually did that before pandemic, but now it seems a bit lonely to me. Jordan comes and goes frequently, and almost always watches the evening news and has a glass of wine with me, but supper is the only time I catch up with Christian and Jacob.

Our meal planning went awry anyway because we couldn’t get some of the things we wanted at Central Market this week—notably a pork butt for carnitas. So I guess we have to review the entire menu plan for the week.

Those who survived the great heat spell of 1980—29 days of record-setting high temps, including 117 in Wichita Falls—will remember the T-shirts that said, “I survived the summer of 1980.” Now we all need new T-shirts, but I can’t decide if they should say, “I survived the Pandemic” or “I survived the winter of 2021.” Maybe one thing on the front and the other on the back.

Stay warm and safe at home, folks. It isn’t over yet. New storm coming tomorrow, and no thaw until Friday.

 

 

Texas, Chicago, and Me

 

The house of my growing years

Last night I was reading the opening of Jacqueline Winspear’s memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing, when I came across the passage where she talks of the land of our growing and how it is filled with meaning for each of us. Place, she writes, gives our lives meaning. For me, the place of my growing was Chicago, and for many years I thought I’d put it behind me. After all, I reasoned, everyone I knew there had either left or died. But it turns out I had not put it away from me.

I have lived in Texas fifty-six years, long enough I always feel to be considered a native. My careers as author and publisher have been inextricably entwined with Texas, and yet real Texas natives, those born on the soil, have not-so-subtle ways of reminding one that you are an outsider. In the seventies, there was a Born in Texas movement. You could sign up at booths in shopping malls and, for a fee, get a certificate and a T-shirt. While registering my four children, I felt a pang of jealousy. And there were other T-shirts that said, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could.” Folklorist and award-winning author Joyce Gibson Roach and I used to do a dog-and-pony show where she talked about how being a fifth-generation Texan impacted her work, and I followed with “Notes from a Newcomer.” I wish today I had those notes, but they are buried in an archive somewhere.

Aside from fleeting thoughts, Chicago only came into my consciousness a few years ago. After five or more years writing and rewriting, I published a longish historical novel, The Gilded Cage, about Cissie Palmer (wife of hotelier Potter Palmer) who was one of if not the first woman to combine great wealth with philanthropy. The subject came to me first as an assignment for a children’s book. As I wrote, Chicago’s colorful history of the late nineteenth century came tumbling back into my mind—the Great Fire, the Civil War, the Haymarket Riot, Marshall Field and his store, the stockyards and the meat packers, Pullmantown, and, of course, the Columbian Exposition. I was wrapped again in my love for and familiarity with Chicago’s South Side.

And then, in 2016, my four grown children and I spent several days in the city so that I could show them where I grew up. Their reaction filled my heart with love—they exclaimed over my childhood home (sort of a red-brick brownstone that they, expecting poverty, estimated at over a million in worth), the elegant nineteenth-century houses of Hyde Park, the gray grandeur of Rockefeller Chapel and the other buildings of the University of Chicago. We dined at Berghoff’s and Rick Steves’ La Fontera, took the historical tour of the Palmer House, stayed in a suite overlooking Lake Michigan and the North Shore—I could gaze at the lake and fill something inside me that had too long missed that lake. It was, though short, perhaps the most memorable trip of my life.

In 2019, some unknown spark prompted me to move beyond Texas and write about Chicago in an entirely different vein—a contemporary cozy mystery set in Hyde Park, the neighborhood of my growing. And now I am, slowly, working on a sequel to Saving Irene, to be titled Irene in Danger. And I know, though a Texan most of the time, a part of me never left Chicago, and I carry that magnificent city in my heart.

Maybe Winspear’s insight will spur me to get serious about that memoir that I keep in the back of my mind. “Memories,” she wrote, “appear in flashes of light,” and I think that is what my memoir would be—not a connected, continuous narrative, but flashes of memory as they came to me.

Acquittal--and a good dinner

 

Baked whitefish that look prettier 
when it was one glorious piece

Everybody cozy on this cold night? I have a space heater in my cottage that makes a lot of difference. Supper tonight was sort of a buffet—Jordan and I had decided on baked whitefish (cod) but neither boy wanted it. Christian has had his second vaccination and didn’t want to eat; Jacob wanted leftover enchiladas, though he tasted a bit of fish, said it was okay, if it had been all there was for dinner, he would have eaten it. I thought it was really good.

Impeachment is over, done with, a not-unexpected but still disappointing verdict that speaks volumes about America and embarrasses us before the world. There’s not much more left to be said—or is there? I thought some highly relevant things came out toward the end of the trial, things even the House Managers didn’t include despite the brilliance of their presentation—and it truly was brilliant. Here are some things, in random order, that I think deserved more attention.

But did you know that just as the president always has the nuclear codes with him (boy, did we luck out on that one), so does the vice-president. So when Pence was being rushed to safety, the aide who carries his nuclear “football” (no idea why they call it that) was right behind him. Think what could have happened if that had fallen into the mob’s hands—no, they couldn’t have broken the codes and set off explosions, but they could have sold damning information to rogue nations throughout the world.

Trump apparently didn’t think of that when he made Pence a target of his anger—or maybe he thought and didn’t care. Another thing that came out yesterday—the then-president knew that the vice-president’s life was in danger. He called new Senator Turbeville to get him to stop the certification, and Turbeville said, “Mr. President, Pence has just been taken out. I have to go.” He swears those are his words, which means trump could easily have interpreted them to mean that the vice-preskdent had fallen into the hands of the mob, which probably would have meant his death. Nonetheless trump tweeted minutes later that Pence was a coward and afraid to stand up for democracy and stop the certification. He challenged the mob to make Pence a target, and at least one insurrectionist read the tweet aloud over a bull horn. Some sources have suggested that trump was writing Pence’s eulogy. Thank the Lord it was not true.

Representative Stacy Plaskett revealed that no parade permit had been given for marching from the Ellipsis to the Capitol—until trump himself approved the permit. He knew he was going to encourage his followers to march to the Capitol (and lie to them that he would be walking with them). Sound pre-planned.

On January 5, Steve Bannon predicated that all hell would break loose the next day. How did he know that, and what did he know? Was he part of the advance planning?

And then there’s that explosive and damning phone call between trump and Kevin McCarthy (he of the weak spine) where trumps says, “Well, Kevin, I guess some of them are more upset about the election than you are.”

Little things, but they add to the picture that was clearly presented of a carefully planned and orchestrated event on January 6. Where do we go from here? One hardly dares to suggest, except that I think details like the above will continue to leak, much to trump’s damnation. I’m disappointed, of course, but I think given the nature of the Republican party today, a conviction would have been too much to hope for.

My mom used to tell me the mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. I still believe karma is coming, and I still strongly believe in the strength of our democracy. Be of good cheer—this is far from over, and trump is far from a free and happy man.

An amazing day

 

If you watched the Senate proceedings today and listened to the news or followed it online, it seems there’s not much left to say. And yet, I can’t help chiming in. If yesterday was powerful, today was amazing. The House managers are so organized, so passionate in their delivery, so graphic in their presentations—no one with a conscience could ever find trump innocent. And yet many of the Republicans barely paid attention—I read reports of Cruz, Paul, Hawley and their ilk doing anything but paying attention to what was being presented. That makes me outraged. How could they? How can they ignore the most graphic videos? I think the one that is hardest for me to watch is the one showing the law enforcement officer being crushed and screaming for help—the unbelievable cruelty behind that scene is appalling.

On a more rational level, Republicans with a conscience should pay attention to the heavily armed nature of the invaders—they weren’t going to stop a vote. They were going to arrest and kill people—complete with body armor, zip ties, a noose, you name it. One episode I hadn’t seen until today was when Eugene Goodman, the officer who led insurgents away from Pence, saved the life of Mitt Romney, turning him around and heading him toward safety and away from the invaders. Every Senator in that chamber ought to be grateful that they survived—and yet, I think their fear of trump outweighs that for too many. I have a glimmer of hope—based really on a column by Heather Cox Richardson, whose judgement I trust—but it’s only a glimmer.

I took a day off from writing today, not that I’ve been burning up the computer. But I was slow getting going, and after I checked email and whizzed through Facebook, the Senate trial was on, and I was mesmerized, often in horror.

The reason I was slow to get started is that Sophie for the last three mornings has decided she has to go out at an increasingly early hour—seven, then six-thirty, and today, five-thirty. She needs to pee, I’m sure, but then she goes and lies by the back door to the main house. Nothing I can say or do gets her to come in, and softie that I am, I won’t go back to bed and leave her out there. Color me silly, but I am terrified of dognappers, those people who steal dogs to use as bait in dogfights. So I sit and wait for her to come in—sometimes staring into space, sometimes starting up my computer.

This morning at 5:30 I was firm—and probably impolite. I told her “no” a thousand ways in my harshest voice. When she wanted to be petted, I told her we were not friends at five-thirty (made me feel awful). She finally decided if she couldn’t go out, she needed water and banged her dish on the floor. I gave her a bare cup of water, not wanting to aggravate any potty problem, and went back to bed. We slept until eight, and I got some of the soundest sleep of the night.

I hadn’t slept well because of that second vaccine shot—I think I kept waking myself up to see if I felt all right, which I did. My arm is sensitive to the touch but not nearly as sore as it was with the first shot. Jordan has had a few more symptoms—slight fever, etc., and we both feel tired. But I am grateful we’ve done so well.

When I was wakeful last night I heard a new sound: a distinct “Whooo” outside the corner of my bedroom. Loud and clear. I told Jordan it was either an Indian signaling to his tribe or a really big owl. And of course the latter conjured up new fears—I couldn’t let Sophie out although at slightly over thirty pounds I think she’s too much for an owl. The Burtons’ Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, however, would be fair game, and I heard recently of a small dog picked up by an owl but accidentally dropped—the dog’s good fortune. Just to be sure, I did peek out my kitchen door window to make sure we didn’t have night visitors—those people who try car doors and scavenge during the night. All looked calm.

Little is remarkable about my life these days, except I do have to confess that I dumped almost the whole black pepper can on the butcher block I use as a work surface yesterday. Put it on the shelf above the butcher block, but it fell off, opened, and dumped. I never realized what a mess black pepper can make—nor how hard it is to get up. Nor how much it makes you cough.

Tomorrow I hope to restart my “Gourmet on a Hot Plate” blog—watch for a couple of recipes from the best country cook I ever knew.

Stay warm, folks. It’s cold out there and predicted to be wet and icy. Blessings on the doctor I’m to see tomorrow who said we can do it on Facetime. My kind of appointment!

That dreaded second vaccination.

 

This afternoon, Jordan and I got our second COVID-19 vaccinations. I feel almost guilty writing that because I know so many deserving people are trying desperately to gain access to the shots, applying countless places and caught in an endless vacuum of waiting. We are fortunate because our family doctor is a member of a network that is coordinating with the county to deliver the vaccine and therefore receives a supply. Obviously, I am more than qualified to be in the 1b group because of age, and Jordan qualifies because she is listed as my caretaker.

I sometimes bristle at the idea of calling her a caretaker, in spite of all that she does for me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate her; it’s more that I rebel against the truth that I need a caretaker. But when I take a bold, straightforward look at reality, that’s the truth. I don’t drive, so she drives me to various medical appointments, which are about the only things that get me away from the cottage. She does my grocery shopping, my laundry, cleans my cottage, and fusses at me to drink more water, be sure to take medications, etc. There are a lot of things I can’t do from a walker, and Jordan does them with endless good cheer. I need to shut up and realize that she, as a caretaker, makes my life easy and happy life possible.

So now we’re in that limbo: will we have a severe reaction or not. Facebook is full of stories by people recounting their negative reactions—it’s enough to scare anyone. My doctor reminded me, however, that only about one-third of recipients of the second shot have a negative reaction. It can range from that of a neighbor, healthy young man, who was in bed for two days to a slight headache. And I’m told that older people are less inclined to react because our immune systems are weaker. Still, it’s kind of unsettling to get a shot that you know might make you feel worse. Christian is going to make a comforting chicken dish in the crockpot for dinner tomorrow night, and we will return the favor Sunday after he has his second shot on Saturday (he is eligible because of an autoimmune condition).

And then there’s the question of what we can do after we are fully vaccinated, and the vaccine has had time to take effect. Dr. Fauci, in whom I have absolute faith, says still wear your masks, social distance, and wash your hands a lot. I intend to do that, because even vaccinated, we can be carriers and infect others. The statistics on vaccinated people who get the disease are slim, but it does happen. Still, it seems to me that we are dealing with a disease that is even yet largely unknown—maybe in ten years, we may know the answers, but we don’t now. So that lunch with my daughters will be postponed, and I’ll essentially continue to live in quarantine.

More than one person has said to me, “So if that’s what you’re going to do, what’s the point of getting the vaccine?” It seems twofold to me. By getting vaccinated, I am pretty much protecting myself, but I am also protecting others. Even if I might still be a carrier, I would think odds are less likely. And I do believe that increasing vaccinations are what are making hospitalization and death numbers go down. Being vaccinated is what you do for yourself—and for your family, your neighbors, your community.

I read a Facebook post the other day in which a woman vehemently said she was never getting the vaccine because it is poison and is part of Bill Gates’ depopulation plan (never did figure out why Gates would have a depopulation plan, but I wasn’t about to ask that woman). Such ridiculous thinking doesn’t bother me, but I have also read that large percentages of health care workers and first responders are declining to be vaccinated. And that worries me, because of the implications for continuing spread of the disease. What do they know—or think—that we don’t? I know the vaccine was approved in a hurry—desperate situations call for desperate measures—but I tend to trust science. I wish everyone did.

More later. So far, I feel just fine and ate a good dinner, but it’s too soon to tell. In a sense I feel like there is a dark cloud hanging over my head. Can I blow it away?

Stay well, warm, and safe, everyone.

 

The wrong side of history

 

When we talk today about people on the wrong side of history, we generally mean those alt-right types who would take us back to the nineteenth century when misogyny and slavery flourished, men could do no wrong, and the rich got rich while the poor suffered. But it occurred to me recently that I, who always consider myself liberal and progressive, am also on the wrong side of history.

I got back edits on a manuscript in which my language had been dramatically changed. My Indians became Native Americans, my settlers were Euro-Americans, and my slaves became “enslaved persons.” I objected, partly because of what the changes did to the flow of the language but more because they changed the story I thought I was telling.

My rather long writing career has focused on the experiences of women in the American West—Anglo women, those women who followed their men west, raised their families, saw too many babies die young, endured the terror of Indian raids, prairie fires, drought, and famine. And brought civilization to the West, settled towns, built schools and churches. They were strong women, and I admire them.

But since the 1980s the “new West” historians have told us how wrong these women (and their men) were. They didn’t “civilize” the West—they exploited it, conquered the natives, destroyed one civilization (yes, the native tribes had highly complex civilizations) to build another. And that, we are now told, is wrong.

It’s time to play “What if?” What if settlers had never come west? There be an unbelievable population jam on the East Coast. Time to go back a step, “What if Puritans had never landed on Plymouth Rock?” Well, yes, natives in North America might live in an undisturbed paradise, but what would have happened to the rest of the world? And if Columbus had never discovered America? (Okay, I know he really didn’t, but I used him figuratively as the symbol.) You see where I’m going? Maybe history just rolls along, one civilization replacing another. We’re too close to see it today, but our technological civilization has replaced that of the Industrial Revolution. Is that cause for rewriting history?

Two of the heroes of my life were C. L. “Doc” Sonnichsen, who called himself a “below the salt” historian, and Texas novelist, the late Elmer Kelton. Doc, a Harvard-educated native of Iowa, took on the job of teaching English at the Texas College of Metallurgy and Mines (now University of Texas, El Paso). Elmer was the author of probably over sixty novels, many award-winners, that chronicled the settlement of Texas and the American West from the early 1800s until the end of the twentieth century. One of lessons I learned from both men was the importance of text, fiction and nonfiction, being appropriate to time and place. You couldn’t, they both believed, blame Grandpa for plowing up the prairie and making possible the great dust storms of the Depression, because Grandpa was doing what in that time and place, he believed was right.

I like to apply that theory to my writing about the nineteenth century. Back then, an Indian was an Indian. That doesn’t diminish my respect for today’s descendants of the Kiowa or the Comanche or the Apache. But it speaks honestly about history.  What happened, happened, and changing the language or tearing down statues won’t change the past. The Monroe Doctrine, which called for extending American dominance over the land from coast to coast? Sure, it seems wrong and insensitive today, but in that time and place the American West was considered a bounteous wonderland just waiting for men to settle it and make their fortunes. We can’t rewrite history.

I admire the women I’ve written about, and I’ll keep telling their stories in my own way. Though there’s a caveat—several of them were married to men who were failures. George Armstrong Custer led his men into a trap and lost his golden curls; John Charles Frémont was a failure at almost everything he tried, from the conquering of California (he returned east in chains and disgrace) to his unsuccessful run for the presidency. But that’s another story.

Rant over.

PS: It’s now why I wrote this blog, but my historical novels, Libbie (Elizabeth Bacon Custer) and Jessie (Jessie Benton Frémont), will be available in reprint this May. And no, the language in them was not changed. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Living on Covid Time

For nineteen years, Story Circle Network, an international online organization that encourages women to write about their experiences, has published an anthology, Real Women Write, choosing a different theme each year. For the 2020 anthology, the choice of theme was clear; the book is subtitled Living on Covid Time. It contains 80 pieces of poetry and prose, written by 52 women. I got my copy in the mail yesterday.

In her foreword, Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press, suggests that for writers the time of isolation imposed by the virus may be a rich and focused period or one so filled with anxiety that writing proves impossible. Whereas authors usually write in retrospect, this past year has required many of us to write as we live through a worldwide, terrifying experience with no sure idea of the final outcome. Writers are capturing the present moment, recording history. As an aside, let me add that for novelists, this has meant a choice: do you allude to the pandemic in a novel or assume people are too tired of hearing about it and set the action just pre-pandemic (I chose the latter for my current work-in-progress). For memoirists and many nonfiction writers, there is no choice: you come to grips with the disease.

The stories and poetry in this collection “showcase a range of reaction,” including “grappling with illness, fear and death, with heartbreak and isolation, with the coexistence of ugliness and beauty.” Reading, Warner points out, is one way we listen, and writing is one way we start a conversation with vulnerability. She believes, and I do too, that we have an opportunity to come out of this more courageous, more honest, more productive.

In the final brief essay in the book, Susan Wittig Albert uses a hardy antique rose to make just that point. The leaves of the rose, on her side deck, turned brown, something that had never happened in 25 years. She realized she had taken it for granted and neglected it during a blistering hot and dry summer. But then came Hurricane Beta, with cooler temperatures, even if only a smidgen of rain for the Hill Country. Susan saw that as a lesson from nature, teaching us that the world is resilient but also vulnerable. She concludes that we will go forward. The world will never go back to what it was before the Pandemic, but we can move it forward with hard work and deep breaths, taking more responsibility, paying more attention.

Reading these selections is like listening to a chorus: Lynn Goodwin describes a physically painful episode during which she is convinced she has the virus (it was not); Jeanne Guy offers a prayer to be free of fear and not to have to go to the grocery store—apples and oranges, you think? Not on Covid time. Linda Hoye uses a trip to the grocery store to illustrate just how different life has become in lockdown—and how small things can grate on our nerves. Linda Wisniewski describes sewing masks while watching, for 111 consecutive days, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings and the reassurance she found in his constancy.

Yes, I have a short piece in the collection, a piece that made me face honestly some of my lifelong anxiety. It’s called “The Temptation of Quarantine.” At different times in my adult life, but more as I aged, some ordinary activities raised my anxiety to an almost paralytic level. Things other women did without thinking could cause me great agony. Suddenly one day, in quarantine, I realized that I was perfectly content. I didn’t have to step down that curb and fear losing my balance, drive on the highway, take self-service elevators, or a thousand other little things. I could stay home to write, read, and cook. While others gnashed their teeth over boredom and freedom and the like, I was a happy camper, more relaxed than ever.

The other day my oldest daughter said when I have had both shots, she wants to come to Fort Worth so that she, Jordan, and I can go to Neiman Marcus for lunch. I hesitated—I haven’t been to a restaurant since March 12 last year, and now, vaccinated or not, I’m not sure I want to go. But I will. As the saying goes, I’ll put on my big girl panties and go with my daughters—and enjoy it. But getting back into life beyond my cottage and yard is going to take some doing.

Real Women Write is a good book. You’ll see yourself, and you may come to understand others. It’s available through Amazon.

Some thoughts on frugality

 

A post on the New York Times Cooking Community this morning got to me to thinking about frugality. A woman wrote that she had cooked an Asian meal and, presumably for the first time, used water chestnuts. But she had half a can left over—not, she said, enough to freeze (do they freeze?). She asked what to do with them. Well, I could have told her: pitch them! It’s taken me years to get that attitude.

I inherited frugality from my mother, who lived through two world wars and the Depression. She saved bits of string and aluminum foil; she had a special cubbyhole right under her sink where she stored used—yes, used—paper towels. If she used one to wipe a counter spill, it went into the cubby; if there was a floor spill, she used her knee to open that cubby and re-used the paper towel. When we moved her out of her home, my brother was astounded at the number of tiny jars in the back of the refrigerator, many of them growing mold. She hated to throw away food—leftovers went into a soup pot.

When I was feeding a family of six plus Mom, leftovers had to be pretty generous before they were worth saving. Mom would ask what I wanted to do with such and such as we cleaned up after supper, and before I could answer, she’d say, “I know, I know. Pitch it.”

It took me years to get over the compulsion to boil the turkey carcass after the holidays (I did it again this year and was so grateful for the rich broth). I still save leftovers and, yes, I have a soup-pot container in my freezer. And bread—I must have a hundred different varieties, from breakfast breads to sandwich rye and dinner rolls. You never know when you’ll want to make croutons or need some fresh breadcrumbs. Panko? It’s just a fancy way of spending money when you can make your own crumbs.

But I will never be as frugal as my mom, and my kids are helping me see that I don’t need to. My oldest son, Colin, is a CPA, and I discuss financial things with him. Some twenty years ago, he and I were driving in Dallas, and I remarked on how much I’d like to have another VW bug. “Mom,” he said, “if it would make you happy, you should have it.” And I bought a bright blue Bug that some may remember.

When my four kids and I planned a nostalgia trip to Chicago so that I could show them the house and neighborhood where I grew up, I said there was a Best Western Motel nearby. They would have none of it, and the five of us stayed in a suite at the Drake Hotel which, all my growing-up years, was a symbol of luxury to me. We ate in fine restaurants, including the Palmer House, and we Ubered around the city like we were millionaires. That trip is one of the highlights of my life.

They buy me better clothes than I would buy for myself and they send generous gifts of flowers and chocolate. Colin keeps telling me I can afford a few things that I want, and sometimes I draw up a bucket list. Maybe it was the NYTimes thread but my bucket list often has to do with food—with pandemic and not going anywhere, I don’t need new clothes.

But I want to make gravlax from scratch (salmon cured with sugar, salt, and dill) and I want to waltz into Central Market and buy a whole leg of lamb. I already use real butter and whole milk, and I would like chocolate mousse with my dinner every night, please. I want to try my hand at Beef Wellington—and Salmon Wellington is pretty intriguing too. A bit of caviar? Of course, with cream cheese and capers. And lobster. Always lobster.

Maybe food and frugality are forever linked in my mind, but I’m trying. And I count my blessings every day. Thanks, Mom.

Another day, another dinner

 

Nothing much of interest goes on around here these days. I’m not sure if that means I’m still in the doldrums or if my life is really that dull. But that sense of sameness accounts for my sporadic blog posts. Other than giving you my daily word counts—I am writing a bit each day—or talking about politics, which I’ve forsworn for a bit, though I can hardly contain myself with subjects like Marjorie Taylor Greene, there’s not much left to tell except cooking news.

So tonight I fixed what was billed as a quick lamb ragu. Ragu is simply another way of saying a meat-based sauce, and indeed Jordan presented it to Jacob as like spaghetti with meat sauce. But there were a couple of differences—it was lamb, not beef or pork.

When I moved to Texas, I was astounded that no one eats lamb. Granted, I grew up in an Anglophile household where leg of lamb was a real treat, and I still relish a sandwich of cold, leftover leg of lamb. I’m not sure as a kid we ever had it in any other form, but in the years since I’ve had lamburgers, lamb casseroles, and lamb ragu. I mentioned this particular recipe to Jordan several times, but she always said it sounded too heavy or something. So when she didn’t object this time, I right away bought a pound of ground lamb.

A quick recipe it was not, at least for me. Cooking from a seated position simply takes longer, and it took an hour and a half for me to get the finished ragu to simmering on the hot plate. That includes time to sweep the kitchen floor with my kid-sized broom (so handy from my seated walker)—I’m a messy cook. And time to do the dishes and clean up my tiny kitchen. There was enough chopping of garlic and onion to take me a while.

At any rate, I had the ragu simmering on the stove and the kitchen cleaned up in time for a quiet glass of wine while I watched the news. We dined about seven, and I served the ragu on soft polenta. It takes polenta a while to set up, and Jordan thought I got it too runny. But by the time it sat a few minutes and then the plates were served, it was just about right.

This was a New York Times recipe, so I can’t directly share it. But you should be able to find it here: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020022-quick-lamb-ragu One thing that struck me—other than salt and pepper, there were no spices. But the one thing that many will be tempted to leave out and shouldn’t is two anchovy filets. Oh, go ahead use the whole tiny can—you’ll never know they’re in the dish, but they add great depth of flavor.

In my book, this was a winner. I’m looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

This old house

 

Some things make you realign your priorities really quickly. A burst pipe is one of them. I called Jordan about four in the afternoon and asked her to bring out the groceries, so I could make the meatballs we planned for dinner. Swedish meatballs, not Italian—those gentle, soft meatballs flavored with the warm tastes of nutmeg and allspice, the me-in-your-mouth meatballs. Sounded so good to me.

Her response? “I can’t believe I forgot to get the groceries. I’ll go right now.” Minutes later, she burst into the cottage with directions for me to call the plumber immediately—a pipe had burst under the house and was gushing water. Of course, it would be the end of the workday. I called, but when the dispatcher told me to turn the water off at the curb I explained I could not do that and I was home alone. He said he’d send someone, and the repairman would be here first thing in the morning.

One of my constant principles is to find repair people you like and stick with them. Fortunately, we’ve been with the same plumbing company for over twenty-five years, and doubly fortunate, the man who came knows the house and knew to come to the back for me. He’d checked the meter, and it wasn’t moving at all. I gave him the key and he went into the house, emerging to spend a lot of time on the deck. His final thought was that it is sewer back-up, and we can use water overnight but sparingly. I meantime had filled my big water glass, filled the dog’s water dish, and stuck a bag of ice cubes in the freezer. As prepared as I could get. There is at least one gallon of potable water, maybe two, in my closet. It wouldn’t be fun and games, but we would survive.

Suddenly meatballs didn’t seem so important, though I stuck the meat in the fridge and plan to make them first thing in the morning—as soon as we have water again. Meantime we’ll order dinner in tonight, though there will as always be endless debate on where to get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with hamburgers from Tommy’s—Jacob’s choice. Jordan has gone into the house to collect herself after the excitement.

I have lived in old houses almost all my life, by choice, and I am usually in tune with them. I know and welcome their creaks and groans, but the one sound I never want to hear is running water. And I didn’t hear it this time, probably because the plumbing in the cottage is all less than five years old and not tied directly to that in the main house. Except if the plumber had turned the water off at the street, he would have cut mine too.

So here we sit, worrying about a sewer back-up, worrying about using too much water, worrying, always worrying.

And waiting for Megan who is to call for a Zoom happy hour. A bright spot in the day.