Anyone Can Roast

I was always somewhat of an indifferent chicken cooker.  I was always much more comfortable doing a stir fry or some such thing with boneless bits rather than dealing with the entire beast.  The few roast chickens I'd attempted early in my cooking life were, at best, somewhat uninspired.  Then, when local markets started carrying juicy roast chickens, all bets were off.  I gave up on trying to roast my own and bought them at the store.  The one thing I didn't like was all the sodium that tended to be added to these.

One day I impulse bought, and I can't remember where, what looked like a totally funky contraption to hold a can of beer or soda over which you put your chicken to roast in the oven or the grill.  (Bayou Classic 0880-PDQ Stainless-Steel Beercan ChickCAN Rack) I tried it and the results were fabulous.  Nice moist meat and crispy skin with the fat most drained away from under the skin. And I had complete control over seasoning and actually enjoyed playing with mixes of various spices to rub on the skin.  That was a couple years ago or so and I didn't roast more than three or four chickens at the time.

About a year ago, I arrived home late one Saturday evening (probably close to 11:00) after a dance performance to see the bathroom light on.  That was odd because I expected the house to be dark at that hour.  I hauled my dance gear in the house and peeked in the bathroom to see what the deal was.  Well, not only was there a light on in the bathroom, but the light was on in the shower.  Not normal.   I slid open the shower door to be greeted by, "Peep, peep, peep!" 

I pop my head into the bedroom, "Why are there dinosaurs in the bathtub?"

The illuminating response was, "They were the last ones they had so we thought we'd better get them."  Oh...of course.

Long story short, the four baby dinosaurs grew up into lovely Wyandotte layers that provide us with gorgeous brown eggs.  Chickens had become part of our household.  We had already discovered that birds have tremendous personalities through some previous avian encounters but these chickens were better than TV.  The resident kid was totally enamored of the new additions and was having quite the blast rearing them and harvesting the eggs.

Meanwhile, I got laid off from my job and I started cooking more... partly because I had the time to enjoy it and partly to save money.  As I was poking around one day, I remembered my ChickCAN rack and thought I'd make us a nice chicken dinner with all the fixings.  As I set up the chicken and rubbed seasoning on it, I had the sudden uneasy thought that maybe the resident kid would object to eating a chicken that looked like, well, a chicken.  Once you've got the chicken on the can ready to roast with this gizmo, it looks like a naked chicken sitting there.  I thought maybe I could get it off the can and onto the plate before anyone saw it.  And into the oven it went.

I forgot about my uneasiness until I heard resident kid come in the door.  And, guess what, I'd left the oven light on.  Our oven is a wall oven and the window is at head and shoulders level for me and when the light is on, the natural response is to look in the window to see what's happening.  Well, kid dumps the stuff of the day on the floor by the door and walks towards the kitchen with the inevitable, "What's for dinner?"  I respond cautiously, "Chicken."  Kid walks in the kitchen and glances in the window at the chicken sitting on its haunches in a pan.  "Yum!"  A small cord of tension dissolves in my neck.  "You're OK with eating a chicken?"  No pause whatsoever, "I don't know that chicken."

Going to the mattresses

The shock of a new, fast canine in a formerly feline-dominated world, sent LWK into a bit of a tizzy and, as I think I mentioned before, a retreat to the basement realm.  I would go down every morning and turn on a light and roust her out of a den she'd selected amongst some boxes in storage.  Her love of attention didn't change one whit but she was quite tentative about venturing upstairs.

I'd often talk to her as I collected jars from the pantry or socks from the laundry.  One day while I was folding laundry, she sat down nearby and struck up a conversation.  We stuck to small talk at first, until I broached the subject of the new dog.

"It's your house, too," I said gently, but also firmly.  I wanted to let her know that she had every right to the upstairs that she had previously enjoyed.  "Besides, she's a chicken, you know?  Just swat at her and show her where you stand."  As I said that, I swatted the air with my paw...er...hand.  LWK stared at me in disbelief.  I nodded, "You just have to let her know your boundaries."  I swatted the air a couple more times.   LWK stared and then slowly lifted a paw and swatted the air.  "That's it!"  I crowed.  Hauling my laundry load upstairs I left her to mull things over.

It must have taken her nearly a day after my pep talk to work up her courage, but LWK showed up, puffed out from her nose to the tip of her tail, and stood her ground to that freaky dog.  When Mimsy got too close, LWK swatted at her and Mimsy duly scrambled to cower behind a piece of furniture.  Mission accomplished, LWK reclaimed her post beside the kitchen phone.

Doppler 5

We settled into a long stretch of comfortable being with dogdom, about 4 years in all with little extraordinary in the way of happenings and events.  Doppler slowly, in the slow way only a fast dog can, slowed down a bit in terms of his frenetic puppyish chasing madly hither and yon.  A household routine took hold and everything held an even keel.

One of our first abodes in our new home town of Bend, Oregon was a minuscule rental house will all of 600 square feet.  The main attraction of this shack was that it was freestanding and it allowed dogs with relatively little fuss (in other words, you didn't have to sign away your annual income and your firstborn to have a dog in the house).  By the time we had found this place we had already accepted the fact that we would have to find a rental that would allow a dog because the alternative, giving up Doppler in order to find a place to live, was not tenable.

This little place, which has long since succumbed to the bulldozer, was one of three tiny houses where a variety of young wanna-be professionals/entrepreneurs lived.  We quickly made the acquaintance of our neighbors and started sharing hotted up barbecue grills and the like.  The back house had a young man living there for a short time at the beginning of our stay.  He ended up moving to Portland and left behind his cat, Pumpkin, in the care of our other neighbors until such time as he could find a place that would allow cats.  He gave them a huge jar full of change to pay for cat food and Pumpkin took to living under the houses in the crawl spaces.  As summer wore into fall, the former neighbor made contact periodically and we wondered if he ever would collect Pumpkin (who was, as you might have imagined, a very fluffy orange tabby). 

Doppler, it turned out, was very tolerant of cats.  If they ran, he would chase, but if they stood their ground and swatted, he would respect.  Pumpkin was one of the latter types and had both Doppler and the other neighbor's dog at quite the respectful distance.

Bend was a wonderful town in the mid-1990's.  It had a lot of characteristics of other towns we had traveled through on our early retirement trip (other stories to come) and we had decided to try to make a life in Bend.  I was working retail into the early evenings and Eric was working retail into even later evenings so I often found myself alone, with or without Doppler, watching TV. 

One bitterly cold night, after stoking the little woodstove into producing the 80 degree hot house that was inevitable because any stove was too big for this house, I propped open the front door to temper the heat.  After a few minutes I felt I was being watched and looked up to see an orange face peering in the screen door.  Being a total soft touch, I thought for perhaps a few moments before opening the door to let Pumpkin in.  He walked over and sat on the hearth in front of the wood stove as if he'd done that for years.  We spent a pleasant evening watching TV until Eric came home.  His words, upon entering and taking in the scene were, "So, do we have a cat now?"

Home improvements

I long ago learned the value of color in making a space more habitable.  At one point, I thought I was one of those that liked the starkness of whites to "clean up space."  But I am in actually much more comfortable when in a non-white environment.  It feels unnatural at a most basic level.  I have to thank the contribution of my partner in life, because initially, many suggestions for some of the more daring colors we have used have come from that quarter, with the final decision often falling to me.

We have obviously been influenced by the art deco bathrooms we often lived with while residing in the Boston area.  These were prominent by their pink, white and black tile work.  As a result, one of the bathrooms in our vacation rental is pink, though not tile, mostly a sponge type treatment with black coming in from wrought iron accoutrement.  

Other rooms in this house are mainly shades of green and purple, with pink making a subtle reappearance in the kitchen.

This explosion in color is in part due to the fact that we had the luxury of working on a house while not living in it.  But the explosion really had its spark in our own house, which had the working moniker of "our homely abode" for many of the early years we lived in it.

One of the homeliest aspects of the house was the fake wood paneling in the living room.  I'm sure it was added at some point because somebody sometime was scared to deal with the old wallpaper covered lathe and plaster walls that lay beneath.  We were pretty happy to discover this because taking wallpaper off of lathe and plaster is pretty easy and the walls themselves are incredibly forgiving to work with.  My experiences with dry wall have not been nearly so enjoyable.

The interesting part of renovating this living room was the sense of relief we both felt when the "wood" paneling came off.  Even though the walls were a pretty awful yellow wallpaper, and yellow being a least favorite color of all time, we were so much more at peace in the space than we had ever been before.

I can imagine some new age type guru saying that the paneling was giving off some terrible cosmic vibration.  Maybe so ... weirder things have happened.  All I can say that the two colors of purple that now adorn the walls in soft venetian plaster are a joy to live with...even though, 14 years later, the trim still isn't finished.

Writing blockades

housecleaning, organizing, tidying, lightening
the loads of laundry never end
cooking, freaking, hiding, frightening
houseguests space to whom to lend

vacuuming, washing, scrubbing, tossing
recycling compost to the flock
working, dusting, never sitting
to break the lock of writer's block

Green in the high desert

As the calendar portends, spring is not until tomorrow, but today is a heady mix of crystalline skies, cool breezes, new crocus and frenetic dog.  Chores persist indoors with the threat of guests arriving next week so I clean, do laundry, clear the table and otherwise make a vain attempt to make the house presentable - all while coming off the rush of St. Patrick's Day.

The annual celebration in green is a holiday of major proportions here.  After all, being a family with an Irish dancer and guitarist playing in a band with a Celtic bent (http://www.wildryemusic.com) has both its compulsions and responsibilities.  All that makes for a satisfying alternative to a day that most people think of as an excuse for partying.

For many years now, my St. Paddy's starts early in the morning as the local Irish dance school trundles a troop of kids off on an itinerary filled with appearances at schools and retirement homes.  The first year or two of these events witnessed many of these youngsters being shy with the oldsters.  A few years of being on the stage at performances and competitions, though, have turned the youngsters into hams or near hams.  As a result, striking up small talk with the grandmas and grandpas of the day has become more natural. 

What's even more fun is a few of us adults get the roles of teacher/auntie/stage manager.  We shepherd these kids around and line them up and tell them what to do next in the midst of a dozen voices all asking questions at nine or ten different locations in a single day.  We get to dance with them, too.  Then we send them home with their parents, tired and cranky.  What's better than that?

My only regret this year was that I was too tired to enjoy a Guinness...

Ghost stories for dogs

I think I mentioned that we recently added to our household a critter in the form of a miniature pinscher mix named Mimsy.  She's a cute dog, smart, personable, but a trifle hard for the cats, especially LWK, to stomach.  Thud and Mimsy are close in size, 14 and 15 pounds respectively.  LWK is about half that, tipping the scales at 6-7 pounds. *

The first week was full of the drama of introductions and various vocal displays.  Thud was somewhat unruffled by the advent of new dog, but then we always suspected she was part canine in character.  She quickly learned the ways of wrestling and escape.  She soon discovered the delights of sitting under the furniture that Mimsy wouldn't or couldn't get under and swatting at the poor frustrated dog. 

LWK (Little White Kitty) was less comfortable.  She retreated to safety in the basement, secure behind the baby gate at the top of the stairs.  Each day, we'd give her love and talk to her so she would get at least some of the attention she would normally demand and after a few days, moving whiteness would catch the corner of our eyes as she flitted around nooks and crannies upstairs. 

One night I had flopped down on the bed to read a bit when I felt Mimsy jump up next to me.  I didn't really pay attention to the fact that she didn't demand attention like she often does, in fact, I kind of appreciated being left in peace to turn the pages at my leisure.  Then I felt a tremor...kind of like the tremor that you might feel when a huge truck rumbles by, but here there was no noise.  There it went again  ... and again ... finally I noticed and looked up to see Mimsy sitting, tight and alert and shaking from head to foot.  She had never acted like this before so I sat up to get a bead on her line of sight and saw a demon ghost kitty sitting in the hallway with the light reflecting blue-green off her eyes.  I have to admit, I was a little spooked myself.  The ghost soon evaporated, leaving a shaken little dog in her wake.



*  Names have been changed in these stories to protect the innocent.  The fact that one of these names is real is probably an indication of non-innocence.