Happy New Year!!!!

It's December 31, last day of the year, and here we are, wondering where the year went, wondering where the new one will go.  Same as it ever was.

Let's just all try really hard to be nice in 2015.  Let's make a pact to be kind.  That doesn't mean never being bitchy or snarky or snappish. It just means let's all try to be nicer now and then. Consciously kinder.

Also, let's hope for lots of love, lots of luck and lots (or one) of winning lottery tickets in 2015.  I, for one, could use a boost, in almost any way I can get it.

Happy New Year!  

Cooking, butter and old wine

Last first:  why do people think that giving a bottle of wine that is 8 years old is a Great Gift?  I was the recipient of a bottle of Pinot Noir this week that was from a lame-ass label and the vintage was 2006.  Who is going to want that?  Who is going to think that is going to taste good?  Not me.  Hey, folks, it's not a french burgundy. Yes, I said the appropriate "thank you" to the giver but I spit out the first taste and dumped the entire bottle.  Yuck.  A gift such as that should not be given at all.  I am not being cynical here, I am simply being honest. If you buy $10 wines, they will not last for 8 years, trust me. And it is so easy to buy a really good bottle of wine for the same $10 that would make any gift giver and gift getter happy.

Butter: remember when we were in kindergarten and we were given a jar of cream and told to shake, shake, shake it until it turned into butter?  And if we were lucky, it did?  Well, the hotel I work for gets really thick cream and I borrowed some but, alas, I borrowed too much. I thought I would re-create that golden moment of making cream so I poured some into a jar and shook it.  And shook it.  And shook it.  It got thick and then thicker and finally!  It was sort of like soft-spread butter!  Without salt, just plain, and it was actually quite nice.  Sweet and creamy.

Cooking:  Have you noticed the trends in cooking lately?  There is no more Roasted Chicken, no more Beef Chili, no more simple Pork Tenderloin.  There is nothing that is worth cooking (if you read blogs, articles, Internet food porn sites) unless it has the really hip, current, totally NOW ingredients which are impossible to find in a normal supermarket, not to mention impossible to afford on a $14 per hour wage.  Things like pork belly, last year's cutting edge protein, are being replaced by things like everything fermented, bone broth, weird grains like Teff (what the F is that?) and some things I saw today at Whole Foods, kalettes, some cross-dressing kale/brussel sprout combo. Is that what we have to look forward to, hybrid vegetables?  It's sad enough that black beans are so, so 1990's, now we have new kinds of beans that you are supposed to soak and then drink the soaking liquid before you cook the beans.  O.M.G.  Think of the bloating and the gas!  Talk about ruining the ozone layer.  Yuck.

Bee pollen, spirulina, dhutan rice, oddly milled flours, fiji berries, hemp seed, couscous made out of cauliflower, handpicked roots from things that grow in streams…..  it goes on and on.  Imagining a nice, simple piece of roasted meat seems heresy when held up against this new regime of food products. 

My really nice chicken thighs cooked on a bed of leeks with a smattering of chopped bacon on the top are definitely not socially acceptable any more.  My Italian pork cooked in milk might as well be spawn of the devil.  It has milk and cream!  It has pork but no bacon!  Wait, even bacon is getting the cold shoulder, according to food blogs and food magazines.  And a simple, delicious roasted chicken?  HA!  Who would eat such a thing?  It must have some rub of natural seeds blended with seaweed and the juice from a cactus that only grows in a five acre plot in central New Mexico. Or the Himalayas.  Or in some lab dish.

I know, I am exaggerating, but not by much.  Chefs are moving to the country so they can do that silly farm-to-table thing easier.  And farm-to-table?  Really? What's the alternative?  Farm-to-grocery-store?  That's  how all of us shop, we don't forage for our food. We don't shoot it, we don't clean it, why should we pretend that all this "back to the earth" stuff is something new and somehow better.  How pretentious and unreasonable to think that we can all pay $20 a pound for some free-range fat-ass turkey at Thanksgiving. 

OK, that's enough. I am going to toss together my simple salad of arugula and toasted walnuts and a diced pear.  Wish I had some chickpea flour croutons to go along with it, but that will have to wait for another day.  Or a different new year. 

Chicken liver pate

One thing I will not be crying about tomorrow is the chicken liver pate I made today. Oh, yes.  Very simple, lots of chicken livers, a little port, some butter, shallots, thyme. It tastes really good and will be even better tomorrow.

And I made bacon-onion jam, a nifty concoction that will be good with the above pate.  We have some really nice appetizers before the crab fest, like artichoke frittata, a cranberry-serrano pepper jam for crostinis, pulled pork with BBQ sauce, lots of cheeses, dips, nuts, phyllo triangles with spicy Italian sausage and mushrooms, meatballs…. and on and on.

And lots of champagne. Lots.  

Happy Xmas Eve, wherever you are.  Bring it on, Santa Baby!

Anne Tyler, Christmas, age, champagne, gifts, love.

I am not sure why but as I write this, I am having a difficult time keeping tears out of my eyes.  Rather, the tears are there, I am simply trying to keep them in my eyes and not on my cheeks. I have no reason to be crying and for christ's sake, I am at work, what in the name of xmas would guests think if they saw the front desk worker sobbing?  (Well, maybe they would give me a monetary incentive to stop crying.  It might work.)

But here I am, teary.  Been teary all day. For days, actually. Not sad, not morose, just a tiny bit sad and a little bit lonesome.  Lonesome for past christmases, I think. How many christmases does one get?  My Mom complains because she is not in the "Christmas Spirit" but hell, she's on her 94th holiday season.  After 60 or so xmas trees and after about the 4th tub of eggnog you figure you have consumed in your lifetime, you lose the spirit, thankfully.  So at 94, with no xmas spirit, I figure she's entitled to be a little Scroogy about the whole endeavor. 

But I am not 94 and I am not waiting for the Grim Reaper to pull my card.  (OK, we all are, in a way, but you know what I mean.) I sincerely wish I had paid more attention to christmases in the past.  I wish I remember more about when the kids were little, when John and I were Santa.  Or about all those incredible crab and champagne feasts the kids (and Stacey) and I had in the little cottage in Inverness.  It's like I have overdrawn the memory bank when it comes to certain subjects; there ain't much in it anymore. (Impending Alzheimer's, I sometimes think. But that's short term memory loss, not the past.)

Pause:  ……….   OK, in light of my lack of joie, I opened a bottle of champagne and am having a glass with some nice Marcona almonds. (Yes, I am still at work.  Gotta love the owners who are away and who would, I am sure, fire me be happy I opened the champagne!)  

Where was I?  Oh, yes, the tears. They come, they go. Seasonal affect, I guess.

Anne Tyler: for a woman who has given us novels for the past 50 years, how does she keep making us love each new one?  I am reading "A Spool of Blue Thread" which will be released in 2015 and her signature prose is still about families and their highs, their lows, the realities of marriage, kids, death. Her insights are given in such a soft, back-handed way that it isn't until the scene has played out that you realize you just witnessed a moment of grace or of beauty or of everyday terror. She's a wonderful writer.  

Back to xmas:  Gifts this year consist of acknowledgements of donations I have made in lieu of gifts.  Plus all the stuff I could easily take from the hotel, like granola bars and Marcona almonds, wrapped poorly.  Jenn and I have a tree, yesterday we put up the lights around the outside of the house, we are hoping the weather cooperates and gives us crab tomorrow. However, I am pretty sure that at some point in the holiday extravaganza I will start to cry. Maybe it will be OK.  At least I won't be surprised.  And those who are witnessing it are people whom I love and perhaps they love me, too, and so maybe it will be alright.

But damn, tears are not holiday-ish. They do not inspire thoughts of Christmas Past, Present or Future.  Actually, that's wrong, they do inspire thoughts of Christmas Past. Or maybe they are inspired by thoughts of Christmas Past. It's too complicated for me right now. 

Still, to anyone who might read this, I truly hope your holidays are happy, tear-free, and full of laughter and love.  It's what we all need and what we often have difficulty finding. I hope you find all you need.

xoxo

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Two weeks later: Eugene

It's  been a week since I wrote anything here and TWO weeks since I was in Eugene watching Anna and Finn toss really nice Christmas decorations onto the tree at John and Diane's.  I promised to write about it, so this one is for Pat.

I rolled out of Newport, on the coast, away from the lovely hotel where I could have stayed another week. Seriously, a great room, a great ocean, a great Irish bar and a great wine store. What else does a girl need?  Bookstores?  Four of them within 4 blocks.  Good coffee?  Check.  Quiet?  Check.  Romance?  Wasn't checking.

The drive to Eugene, via Corvallis, was about 2 hours and it was beautiful, a small road, lots of green trees and meadows and rainbows and ..... unicorns?  They were the only thing missing. Lovely drive, I was at John's around 1:30.  Diane and the small critters were not home which was good. John and I got to chat about all the stuff we always chat about: kids, siblings, parents (mine), books, movies, wine, weather, life, death, taxes, Christmas decoration vomit. Seriously, I walked into their lovely home and there were probably 20 boxes of xmas stuff. Tons and tons of it.  John called it "Christmas vomit."  I just nodded.

Around 5:30 Diane arrived with Finn and Anna.  They are 8 and 6 now, respectively, and rather loquacious. We chatted about their day, how school was and all that but they were there for one main purpose: to decorate the tree.  Diane had lights on the tree and a few ornaments, just to give it some credence, I think.  She gave the kids full rein at opening boxes, taking whatever out and putting whatever on the tree. The kids rose to the occasion, but were serious in their pursuit of Excellent Decoration. They were on a mission.  By the time an hour had whipped by, with much merriment, the tree was fully (and I mean fully) decorated.  There was not an inch below the 5 foot mark that had any pine needles visible.  Large xmas dolls had been tucked in between branches, sizable glass ornaments had been hung, small gnomes were ensconced in the recesses of the tree. Garland had been tossed willy nilly strung with care around the tree.  A ladder was brought out so that they could decorate the top of the tree. They didn't topple onto the tree, but they came close.

About half way into this, while the three grown-ups were polishing off the second bottle of wine, I asked Diane how she came to be such a Christmas Decoration Hoarder.  Diane, as many of you know, is a very smart yet pragmatic woman.  This obsession to own all this .... this.... xmas stuff, is confusing.  She had no real answer, it was just stuff she had picked up along the way.  However, she did say that last year she didn't decorate much and she was very happy with the minimalistic manner of that year. But her daughter sort of shamed her into going big this year. So, instead of going home, she went big. (Texans will get that.)  ((Go big or go home.))

Anyway, it was a delight to watch and I must say, in the end, the tree looked very happy.  We then sat down to a really good salmon dinner, with fresh green beans that I overcooked, which the 6 year old Anna happily pointed out to me.  "Well, the beans are overcooked."  Sigh. Busted.

I left the next morning, I drove to Redding and stayed at a very unfortunate La Quinta (they take dogs for no fee) where I had to put a chair, sideways, in the sliding glass door slot in order to have some air during the night but not invite strangers to walk into my room.  The sliding glass door was one long balcony, anyone could just walk from room to room and if your door was open, walk in.  Creepy.
Seriously. What were they thinking? Even in apartment living that is wrong. In a crappy motel, in a crappy motel town like Redding, were they inviting a lawsuit? Thank goodness I had the fierce beast Cooper with me who would gnaw off the leg of any intruder.  NOT.

So there you have it, the end of my small yet nice road trip. Speeding ticket notwithstanding ($366, ouch!!!) it was a nice time away.  But as Tom has pointed out "six days does not count as a vacation" and so I will be forced to take some more time off before winter ends.  Forced because if I don't, some innocent hotel guest might die.  Or one of the clowns I work with might die. (If any hotel employees are reading this - very doubtful - I don't mean you. I mean the other ones. The other clowns.)

Onward.  I bought a xmas tree, it's up, it looks nice. No gifts this year except for things I can steal.  Jolly.

xoxo to you all. more later, over and out for now. 

Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer and Tom Selleck

I know, I said I would write about Eugene, and I will.  Later.

Am I the only person who loves getting the TJ Flyer in the mail?  Could I be the only person who sits down with a glass of wine and goes over every page?  It's so odd, I am not a buyer of stuff, but sometimes, like in this flyer, almost every single thing looks really, really good.  This is the holiday version so there are lots of tasty small bits, candy, cheese, crackers.  I want to take this flyer into Trader Joe's and buy almost everything they describe.

And it isn't like they are great writers, not like the old Peterman Catalogs from 20 years ago where the writers told a story that was so intriguing that it MADE you buy the product.  (Well, the "Seinfeld" show made short shrift of that notion.)  But for some reason, the TJ flyer picks things that I want at that very moment.  Caramels. Crackers. Frozen things that I want to have in my oven RIGHT NOW!  Kale and spinach dip. It goes on and on.

Of course, they have some things that sound terrible as well, and I thank my lucky stars I am discerning enough to be able to tell that those few things are never going to be bought by me.  Unless they are giving out free samples in the store and I taste it and then I love it and then I must have it.  But that rarely happens.

And now, on to Tom Selleck. Yes, I know you thought he would be wrapped up in the Trader Joe's Flyer commentary but, no.  I am now totally into the series "Blue Bloods" starring, of course, Tom Selleck. He is the Police Commissioner in NYC (in case you didn't know) and hey, just saying, there is something about the old TS that appeals to me. OK, probably because I am sort of old as well. He is actually 5 years older than me (but looks, oh so much younger than his 69 years!) so it's not like I have a crush on some 30 year old.  But yes, I totally enjoy watching him.  I think I had a blog post a year or so ago about his "Jesse Stone" series, so this fascination  fixation  like of Tom Selleck is nothing new.  If you haven't seen the show, check it out. It's free on Netflix, of course.

OK, I will report on Eugene, Oregon and the Tree Trimming Extravaganza tomorrow.  Promise.

And how about this lovely rain?  Hope everyone is safe and no trees fell on you during the reading of this blog.
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Out of town, out of Dodge, out of it

It had been a year since I had more than three days off, my choice. I sort of wanted to go to Cambodia but there wasn't enough time and there was that whole Mom situation hanging about. So I hit the road, which I love. First night in Arcata, home of Humboldt University, home of great weed. When Stacey lived up there, Tom and I drove up a couple of times a year, had dinner, smoked, came home. With smoke. But seeing Stacey was the draw. Stacey is always the draw.

This time there was only the draw of being up there, away from home. The Hotel Arcata has seen better days.  Some rooms are fine, others smell bad.  Who cares. They take dogs, a good thing.  Tom and I converged on the Hotel Arcata, walked the dogs, hung out and then went out to dinner.  A mediocre dinner but it gave us 2+ hours to talk. And talk. About many things.  We don't do that much anymore because we don't meet up that often.  Sitting and talking hearkened back to the times we traveled together and had nothing much to do except talk.  It was a nice evening.

The next morning we walked the dogs again and then had breakfast and talked some more.  Gotta love that.  And I do.  We parted ways (oh, so poetic.) I went north. Tom went south. However, before I left town I stopped at the donut shop and got one for the road.  Tom probably didn't, he has strength of character that I do not have.  It was a perfect donut that I was eating an hour later, smacking my lips at the deliciousness of that donut when I got pulled over for doing 50 in a 35 mph zone.  So wrong.  In so many ways. Not the speeding, but the speeding ticket, of course.  The donut was not the fault.  The fault was all mine.  Hell, I speed every day.  To get caught once every three years, not so bad.

Up the coast I went, scofflaw that I am.  Before leaving my home I had scoped out the small towns on the Oregon coast and I set my sights on Newport. Don't know why, I just liked the name, I guess.  What I wanted was a small hotel on the ocean. View.  Comfy bed. Quiet if possible.  Cheap if possible.

I found it at the Inn at Nye Beach in Newport.  Not a chain, small, 25 rooms, right on the ocean.  Amazing off-season rates, like more than half off.  With the dog charge, the per night rate was less than $130.  Including taxes.  Unobstructed view of the ocean, huge room, gas fireplace, two queen beds, small fridge, huge bathroom. (It could have been romantic, but Cooper would have nothing to do with that romantic business.  Thank god. Or thank dog.) Great pub in town with amazing whiskey at amazing prices (seriously, a healthy shot of Laphroig was $8, half of what it is in the bay area) and delicious food.  Cooper and I walked all around town, walked to the beach several times and it was the perfect place for me.  Two nights, I could have spent three..... 
Then off to Eugene, which was so much fun.  And that will be tomorrow's post.  I promise.

xo

Anna Quindlen: "Still Life with Bread Crumbs"

This morning around 8:00 am, after walking the dogs, I sat down on my bed with Anna Quindlen's latest book and began to read.  Around 10:00 I moved to the couch with the dogs.  A little after noon I finished the book.

This is not the first time I have read one of her books start to finish in one setting.  In the 1990's I did the same thing with "One Sure Thing".  This new book is shorter, and a quicker read.  The 4 hours were well spent.

In the early 1980's I began reading Anna Quindlen when she was a columnist for the New York Times. She wrote about current events and also about being a wife and a mother. Her columns spoke to me and I quickly became a fan. When she began writing fiction, I latched on to that work as well.

Quindlen is not a great writer but, for me, she is a very good writer.  Yes, she is a bit manipulative and she tosses emotional angst around like a rainstorm of Hallmark Cards. But she also has characters that seem real: they often react badly, and they frequently make unfortunate decisions. They are rarely heroic and yet they are sometimes brave and unselfish.  Her characters can be very weak while trying to be strong.  Or they are strong at the same time they are simply humble. I unapologetically enjoy her books and I like the stories they tell.  This one was no different. Good story, nice ending, a bit manipulative and no big surprises, but a very good way to start the week.

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So much to say, so little time

It's true, mainly because I haven't written in weeks.  But for the 3 people who read this, rest assured I will be back.  Right now, Monday morning, I am heading out for a little road trip, up the coast to Oregon.  Time off, time away, is desparately needed.  Just to sit in a hotel room and listen to the ocean, read books and take naps...... that's the goal.

Back at the end of the week and will report in.

xoxo

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