A day of visiting and a dinner that wasn’t

 

This morning I had company for morning coffee, something I rarely do because such a visit cuts into my work schedule. But when I mentioned happy hour or supper, Priscilla said she no longer drives in the evening, so I impulsively suggested a morning visit. Priscilla is in some ways a Facebook friend—oh, we’ve known each other for years, mostly professionally, never close, not even crossing paths frequently,, A few years ago a mutual friend set up a series of monthly lunches that Priscilla and I both attended, but neither of us got to talk much.

In recent times, though, Priscilla has been one of my most faithful followers on Facebook, commenting when she particularly liked a post. She is evidence of what I continually say: for all its critics, Facebook has a lot of advantages. One is that you occasionally make new, good friends.

This was Priscilla’s second visit to the cottage, and it was such fun to see her walk in and immediately greet Sophie by name and talk directly to her. We talked about our lives, about wanting space and yet not wanting to be lonely, about TCU friends—we know so few people there now! She is off for her annual four or five months at her seashore home in Maine (yes, I’m sort of jealous, but in other ways I’m not—Priscilla, however, loves it). It was a good time, and an hour flew by. As for my work? Hey, nobody but me cares if I get behind.

Tonight, as usual on Tuesdays, Mary came for happy hour. She and I share German heritage, so I had a special treat for her—a roll of Braunschweiger. She said she’d had that brand before, and it was good. Indeed it was! Buttery and soft and mild—I loved it. Sent half the leftover home with Mary, but now I intend to put it on my shopping list.

Once again a pleasant visit with conversation ranging over a bit of everything—the neighborhood (Mary misses her old house and was dismayed when, out of habit, she drove by it and saw that the lawn desperately needs mowing); summer plans; food—we can always talk groceries and recipes. Jordan joined us, so the talk was also much about travel and Jacob’s summer and other odd bits. Once again, an hour flew by.

Jordan had a consultant from her office coming to work with her at seven, and I was to feed the boys. I hope that wasn’t the reason Mary hurried away because dinner fizzled. I planned to make Christian’s favorite hot German salad, but he came home and fell asleep on the couch, Jordan wouldn’t be eating, and who knows where Jacob was. Story of my dinner planning. I put everything away to cook for tomorrow night. I’d eaten enough Braunschweiger that I really didn’t need dinner—I was just on the edge of wanting more. So I ate the last few pigs in a blanket and called it a day.

The Colonial Golf Tournament starts tomorrow, so the rest of the week is at best  uncertain. Christian says he’ll be home for supper tomorrow, and I will play the remaining evenings by ear. I know nobody will be here Sunday, the final day. So I’m going to do some single-serving meal planning tonight.

I’m happy to report that my brother is safely at home at his ranch. He said today that he watched the sunrise from his sunporch, and his daughter sent a picture of him in as she put it, “real clothes,” instead of a hospital gown. Big progress. Now to get the wheelchair from here to there!

Life is good.

Good family stuff

 

Woohoo! Look who was named Player of the Year by the varsity golf team at Paschal High School. Of course it’s Jacob Burton. Second time in a row he’s won that title. So proud of him and his dedication to his golf game. In last year’s picture, he was dressed like the coaches—shorts and a polo shirt. But the night before this year’s dinner he appeared at the cottage door dressed as you see in the picture. He was looking for his mom who was across the street visiting neighbors, but I asked where he was going at that hour of the night all dressed up. He confessed he was trying on what he’d wear to the dinner the next night. Maybe he just wanted to look good—but maybe, also, he had a hint? Who knows. Either way, we are all so proud of him.

Family time around here. The other night, Jordan brought her phone out to the cottage—my Megan was on the other end, face-timing. It was their way of surprising me that Megan is coming for Mother’s Day weekend. They intended not to tell me until she got here, but Megan’s husband knows me well: “Juju,” he said, “likes to plan. You need to tell her.” And so they did. And the planning began.

First thing was to decide what to fix for supper tomorrow night—not as easy a chore as you might imagine. It depends on who will be here, and who will eat what. I pulled a bunch of recipes that Jordan and I considered this morning. Most were discarded for one reason or another—such as did you know that a lb of sea scallops now costs $39.99? I suspect the most I’ve bought at one time is enough for Jordan and me on a night when the boys weren’t here so I didn’t get the full impact of the price. Some things, such as complicated nachos, would be too complicated to cook in the cottage. And either spatch-cocked chicken or marinated drumettes in the air fryer require Christian, and we’re not sure he’ll be home. We have finally decided on Cobb salad—who could object?

I have a secret plan (not so secret)—I want Jordan and Megan to help organize my closet. We’ll see if that happens or not. We do plan to go see my brother in the rehab unit.

Company for dinner tonight—my friend Mary V. who is a retired political science prof. Inevitably our talk is political, and we both paint Abbott as the villain. I have a list of issues where he is, from my point of view, hurting not helping Texans, but I’m afraid to post it since yesterday I posted about the proposal to put bleeding stations in third-grade classrooms, and Facebook rejected it as not meeting community standards. But then it showed up without my comments, so maybe it was something I said. I fixed a quick and easy pasta dish, only to discover after she left that it created more dirty dishes than some more complicated dinners—and all the pecorino cheese stuck to pots and plates. A mess.

But now, having said goodnight to all of you, I can settle down with a good book. Oops, first I must do a Central Market order.

‘Night, all.

The European tour continues, sort of

 

Jordan's shipboard view

It’s not actually Europe. Jordan embarked at Brest, France on a ship from the Ponant cruise line bound for Iceland. The neat part about the cruise is that instead of going out to sea and around Ireland, the ship is going up the channel between England and Ireland, so she will get to see England and Scotland on the starboard side and Ireland on the port, including the city of Dublin. I am pretty sure they won’t disembark, but she’ll get a glimpse. And since she wasn’t along when her older brother and sister and I went to Scotland, I am glad she’ll get this glimpse of the land of my ancestors.

Of course, she has a glass of wine in her hand in most pictures, but she also has apparently ordered hake again, this in a lovely presentation on a bed of vegetables. Since she likes it so well, I checked Central Market, but when you search for hake all kinds of weird things come up, like baking powder and a plant-based protein chocolate shake. I love shopping at Central Market, but their website frustrates me.

Hake with vegetables

Meanwhile back at home, I’m busy planning menus of things that Central Market does carry, as opposed to hake. Today Christian fixed a pot roast with carrots, onion, potatoes, and onion soup. Delicious, and a good thing to have when Jordan’s out of town because she would say it’s heavy. I’m going to make a shopping list for coronation chicken salad and old-fashioned pea salad for Saturday—I presume there will be coronation reruns Saturday night.

So tonight I’ll decide what to cook for three other nights, so that we have supper the first night Jordan’s home. She definitely won’t want to run to the grocery store that first day back. Menu planning is one of the great pleasures of my life and the reason I cancelled the Home Fresh order that Jamie so sweetly gave me. Jordan forwarded an email, apparently unrelated to Jamie’s gift, that said she had somehow been awarded eighteen free meals. We jointly agreed not to claim them.

Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day in Fort Worth—sunny and about eighty degrees. Subie and Phil came for happy hour, and we sat on the patio. Sophie overcame her bad manners of the last time they were here and was sweet and docile, except for a couple of barking periods. Subie and I agreed she likes for us to be outside. Christian came home in time to join us and recounted his trip to San Miguel, where Subie and Phil visited a number of years ago.

We also touched on politics, so here’s my two cents for the day: If you live in Fort Worth District 9, please vote for Elizabeth Beck. She’s been pro-active for neighborhoods and an active council member. I know nothing about her opponent, Pam Boggess, save for a slur kind of post on Facebook which I will not repeat. But Beck deserves re-election. No sense changing horses in mid-stream for no good reason. Maddie Parker appears to have endorse both candidates, which cancels out her endorsement.

My other political note for the day is that I am delighted that Colin Allred is going to take on Ted Cruz in the next senatorial elections. Allred has been a rising star in the Democratic caucus in the House and takes a risk by challenging the incumbent, but Beto O’Rourke came so close to beating Cruz last time that it seems possible to unseat the senator. I am cheering for Allred.

Otherwise, a workday. I am revising my Helen Corbitt manuscript, pulling 3,000 words out of 28,000 for an article. Today I went through seven chapters, choosing article material and fixing in my mind the theme of the article—how Corbitt and the Zodiac Room at Neiman’s changed Texans’ palate. I even think there may be a second article buried in that material, but I will have to find a food magazine that is an appropriate outlet. Fun to have a project.

So that’s my day. How was yours?

A gloomy good day

As I typed the word gloomy just now, the term “Gloomy Gus” came into my mind, so I went down that online rabbit hole to find the origin. What I found was fifteen or twenty entries about crossword puzzle clues. Not being a puzzle fan, I moved on and finally came to a Merriam-Webster definition. No surprise: a person who is habitually gloomy. I wanted some fascinating story about a guy named Gus!

Anyway, yesterday was a gloomy day, with a wintry gray sky, not a bit of sunlight, and a wicked cold wind. A day to stay inside, wrapped in blankets. I took my own advice and spent much of the day at my desk with a woolly sweater over my pajamas and my beloved but tattered prayer shawl on my legs. Sometime during the night I had turned off the bedroom heater, which heats half the cottage; come morning, I couldn’t figure out why I was so cold. Turning on that second heater (one of those that hangs from the ceiling, sometimes called ductless or mini-splits) made all the difference. This morning, the temperature outside is all the way up to 37^o, the sun is bright, and Sophie and I are cozy.

An online writers’ group I belong to asks us each Monday to outline our plans and goals for the week. For at least two weeks, I’ve brightly said I was going to work on my Irene story-in-progress. But then I always found other, small chores to distract me. I can’t even blame it on being semi-isolated: it was me as a writer not knowing where I was going and not wanting to do the hard work involved in finding out. Can you spell procrastination? The good things is eventually I get so disgusted with myself, that I jump in and work on it. And that’s what I did yesterday.

I began the day with about 5,000 words written some time ago; I ended the day with maybe 5,600, so not a big gain in words. But a big gain in attitude on my part and, I hope, a good redirection of the story. There is a good side to writerly procrastination. Sometimes at night as I wait for sleep, I try to think about whatever I’m working on, or if I wake in the night and want to redirect my mind away from an unpleasant dream. So Irene has been getting some subconscious work but nothing committed to paper. Yesterday I made the one big plot change my subconscious told me was needed and then moved on to make the rest of what I’d written fit in with that. I only got two chapters done, but I think it was because that was slow, concentrated, almost word-for-word work.

So today I hope to do at least one more chapter. But household chores get in the way. I have emptied all the trash and set it out for my private trash man—poor Jacob! In a very few minutes, I will stop this and go to online church…..

As always, especially on weekends, food is a major topic. Last night we had a wonderful dinner—I sent the ingredients into the house and got back a plated dinner. Green salad with blue cheese dressing, asparagus, and crab cake with remoulade sauce. Christian did the crab cake in the air fryer (Yes, Mary D.,I am becoming a fan) and it was perfect. MY contribution was to make the remoulade sauce. My next thought is that burgers done in the air fryer might be good on days like this when it is really too cold to grill.

But today there is uncertainty. I have sent in a list of what meats I have in the freezer and am waiting to hear. Wondering if anything will defrost in time. I can always be happy with a can of salmon, if it comes to that. Hmmm…I do have some remoulade left.

Is it midnight yet?

 

Jacob at three
but the cookbook has some 
of my favorite reciipes

Ever have those nights when you feel at eight o’clock that it surely must be midnight already? That’s how I feel. Although I am constantly trying to rid myself of obsessive schedules, I’m pretty much tied to my own routine. I don’t want to go to bed at eight or nine, because I don’t want to wake, sleepless, in the middle of the night. I try to sleep from eleven to eight, the Lord and Sophie willing. But tonight I’m sleepy, worn out by some conflicts swirling around me. I tell myself—and others—I don’t want to be involved in intrigue, but sometimes I can’t remain aloof. And so it is tonight.

To soothe my soul, I began to do some menu planning, always an activity I enjoy. For instance, I found a recipe tonight for rosemary pot roast. Between now and the holidays, the calendars around here are full, and I foresee meals on the at-home evenings of leftovers or heavy hors d’oevres. But it’s never too early to stash things away in my “never tried” file, which is bulging. Periodically, I go through it and firmly say to myself, “It sounds great, but you’ll never fix it” or “You like this, but your family wouldn’t.” And, plop, it goes in the trash. I waste a lot of printer ink and paper that way, but I haven’t gotten sophisticated enough to keep my recipe collection online. And if I did, I’d just have to print each recipe out as I cooked it. As it is, I do that with recipes from the manuscripts of my cookbooks. But I foresee rosemary pot roast on the January menu—see how I’m jumping ahead?

Tonight, looking through appetizer recipes for our neighborhood ladies very small happy hour next week (Jordan wants to make my salmon dip), I came across my mom’s pickled shrimp. She always said it would keep a week in the fridge. In early adulthood I developed an allergy to shrimp—made me break out, so I was afraid to try it for fear the next time would be anaphylactic shock. Allergies come and go, and I might well be able to eat shrimp now, but the fear lingers. Still, for nostalgia’s sake, I’d like to fix that. We do still as a family treasure Mom’s cheeseball recipe. This year, sixteen-year-old Morgan said she would make it, although she pointedly said she would not eat it.

Funny what one person will eat and another won’t. For our four-person neighborhood event, I said I would buy a small jar of pickled herring—one of the ladies and I both love it; the other and Jordan turned up their noses. But when Jordan suggested goat cheese log with wasabi, the pickled-herring friend said, “I don’t eat wasabi.” I’ll probably make it pesto instead of wasabi, but it’s good quick appetizer. Just split a log, small or large, of goat cheese lengthwise, put wasabi (be cautious, not too much—a wavy “S” pattern) or pesto down the middle, put the two sides together again, and roll the log in toasted sesame seeds. So good. Are you like me and have to toast two batches of sesame seeds because you always burn the first one?

This morning I was productive. I’m trying to clear the decks as it were as I prepare for the holidays and try to focus more on my writing projects. The trouble is that I’m programmed—there it is again, that routine I can’t let go of. I do this every year, get so efficient about Christmas and all my projects that by about December 10 or 12, my desk is clear and I wonder what I should do next. Too close to Christmas to start a new project—but I have old ones in limbo I can work on.

At any rate, back to clearing the decks. Yesterday I wrote my December column for Lone Star Literary Life. The schedule is changing so I’m not sure when it will appear, nor when the January column will. But today I wrote the January column—I was on a roll, with good material, and it flowed easily. So I wrote the publisher and said I’d just written the most interesting column I’d ever sent her. And then I said I’d send it in a few days, which made her laugh. But it was fun—two women who team up to write fiction, and a woman who decided she didn’t need a super sleuth but needed a team. If you don’t subscribe to this weekly free literary newsletter, you might consider it. Just go to Lone Star Literary Life

Enough. I’m written out. Going to calm myself with a book. Sweet dreams of sugar plums and all thinks good.