Betwixt curse and gift

I say goodbye
but I don’t really feel
you’re fully gone
down that path
I can’t follow, yet

I said hello
to you for all those years
when your black doom
beckoned you
away down the road

I had hoped I
would be able to learn
what I could of
you, your art
while ever I could

So much not learned
so many things not said
Feeling that I
wasn't "it"
wasn't adequate

I’m grateful yet
I’m still learning from you
hearing echos
of times spent
together, apart

Grieving began
with the curse being found
But gifts live on
in mem’ry,
my heart and my voice

Merry Christmas to all - 2010

Twas the night before Christmas
And just like a louse,
I sneak open my laptop
and grab for the mouse.

A merry hot fire is
crackling and popping
on the screen of my TV
so it won’t be stopping

As I ponder the evening
with tired brain and eyes
I think of my folks
that are spread far and wide

So here’s cheers to you all
on a night merry and bright
Happy Christmas to all
and (YAWN) good night!

Everything and the kitchen sink

I was recently reading some personality typing materials related to a test I had taken and was struck by a statement characterizing one personality type as becoming very focused on a project to the exclusion of all else.  Reminded me of a time when I was fully immersed in an art design project - thinking back on the time I think of it more as being in an eccentric artist space or an absent minded professor. 

Still pondering the execution of the next part of my design I decided to start dinner, and, upon encountering a suspicious jar of sauerkraut absentmindedly dumped it into the garbage disposal.  I was merrily grinding it away when I, again absentmindedly, wondered if I should have been better off putting it in the compost.  Duh...yeah.  The sink plugged and I was rudely awakened from my Artiste mode to a kitchen sink filling with totally skanky (that's a technical term, mind you) water.  There’s really nothing like the mundane-ness of a plugged sink to exorcize the airhead in you.

I am relatively handy, and was somewhat motivated to try to fix the gaff before Resident Spouse returned, so I dutifully wielded both plunger and plumber’s snake, but to no avail.  I woefully washed the dishes in the bathtub that night when Resident Spouse took over. I think I saw a black cloud forming over the kitchen and tried to maintain a respectful distance.  We finally resorted to the dreaded Drano and held our breath to see what the reaction would do to 80 year old pipes. 

Long story short, the Drano finally worked, the pipes held, and the kitchen sink drains better than it has for the entire 16 years we’d lived with the thing.  The drains probably were due for a routing out, but the compost worms were much more deserving and I’m sure there’s a less intense way to complete a home maintenance project.

The aftermath

I've clearly listened to too much news radio today as I went around my business but it kept bringing to mind a comment I received during election season.  I am still somewhat chuckling that I was accused of being anti-Republican.  I can understand why someone would assume that I'm not a registered Republican but I think about what spurred the comment and I'm a bit surprised at the implicit assumption.

I received this characterization of my character after I suggested that someone might want to think twice about voting for a particular candidate because of their ties to the local Tea Party movement.  My reason was that I have had personal interactions with some of these folks and found that they turned to lies, threats, slander (yes, it was verbal, to my face) and libel (accusations about me in writing) when they weren't getting their way over a politically charged issue. 

So why do I find it so interesting that I should be charged with being anti-Republican?  It's because of the implicit assumption that because I'm anti-Tea Party (yes, I'll fully admit that) that I am also anti-Republican.  But how was this person to know that the very first folks that I met who were active in the Tea Party, in fact just as the Tea Party was becoming a "thing," were registered Democrats?  I think they were actually Libertarians, but didn't have the wherewithal to register as such.  Even funnier, not long earlier, these "Democrats" had accused me of being a Republican.

My characterizer also may not know that the very first candidate fielded by the Tea Party in my county, before they knew to call themselves Tea Partiers, was a registered Democrat.  He tried to run as a Republican before he found out he couldn't (because he was a registered Democrat (duh)).  So, if anything, my commentator should have an issue with the Tea Party rather than me for any damages to the Republican party's image.

But all this gets away from what I think is interesting, which is the assumptions people make.  I didn't ask, but I do wonder if the person who assumed I'm anti-Republican would believe that I've voted for Republican candidates on more than one occasion and have been happy to do so.  And of course, in return, I made my own assumptions, that this person is a registered Republican, but I actually don't know that either.

I made as many assumptions as my commentator and it's interesting that we weren't able to have enough of a substantive conversation to really understand each other's perspectives.  It's like those ships that pass in the night where you can just see the lights in the dimness, but the waves in their wake keep rippling through the mind to make us think about what the passage truly meant.

Huckleberry Hill, Highway 101, Oregon Coast

     'Tween Newport and Seal Rock, Oregon, November 25, 2010

Walking on the beach
November 25
Skies above are grey
Sea below alive

A raft of sea lions
Is idly floating by
Seagulls land to watch
Score a meal on the sly

Eagles cry from sky and trees
Hummer's buzzing dive
In spite of freezing storm
That threatens our house to rive

Agates glisten on the beach
Clams as fossils hard
Bedrock juts like giant spine
An ancient land, a shard

For mental consumption only

Long being an aficionado of the obscure word and terminology that is not totally trendy in a twitterpated kind of way, I was delighted recently to get a sales flyer in the mail.  "Huh?" would be an apt reaction, but this is a sales flyer to which I actually look forward.  (How many of you want to put an extra "to" at the end of that sentence?)

Normally, sales pitches leave me cold.  They are so banal with their overuse of succinct, terse, compact phraseology; "20% off!" is a typical offering along with a coupon and its little dotted line border.  But no, my favorite flyer contains no coupons, no short-winded exhortations of extra extravagance despite the puny prices proffered.  This flyer feeds the mind while tempting you with tasty morsels.  Where else can you find a sales flyer that talks about dimidiated turkeys or the divine trine of butter, crème fraîche and garlic, all paired with a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica?  Not your typical big chain store, but Trader Joe's, that haven of modern and former yuppies and puppies alike.  Take a gander at the flyer, with dictionary handy, and enjoy the brain candy.

Hercule’s Love’s Labors Not Lost

Should I have worried when my mother laughed?  Perhaps, but I was undertaking a task that seemed to me of Herculean proportions, and she concurred by saying, “Well, that will be a challenge.”  When I told Resident Spouse of the exchange and the subject, the result was a laugh as well, then the comment, “Well, she’s acknowledging the challenge.”

So what was the cause of all this hilarity?  Baklava.  That ambrosia of the Greeks that I enjoy hugely, but that I've been disappointed with in its commercial form.  And yes, I call it Greek, although they, of that ubiquitous they, say that it is of Turkish origin, I call it Greek, because in the fashion of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” I would have been pilloried in a previous life if I had tried to point to historical evidence that it stemmed from any other culture.  But the analogy of Hercule’s labors is apt.

I have long been intimidated by phyllo dough and the dishes that are made with it.  They seem so delicate and intricate - not two words that can typically be applied to my culinary endeavors.  I am also particularly fond of brie, and when I encountered a phyllo wrapped baked brie accompanied by fresh grapes, apple and crusty bread, I was in heaven.  But this particular delicacy was spendy in restaurants and didn’t fit the budget of a single-income family where one major wage earner was no longer employed.

I hemmed and hawed for many a month, but the wheel of brie found its way into my basket at Costco not long after I had found phyllo dough in the freezer section at the neighborhood grocery.  I figured if I could pull this off, I would have my gourmet experience for a tiny fraction of the cost of my favorite restaurant version (which was made even more spendy by virtue of being in Wyoming with a view of the Tetons at sunset adding to the culinary fireworks).

In short, the baked brie was quite the success, especially when paired with crisp, tart red grapes, pomegranate pearls and a crackly crusted artisan bread.  A full meal deal for less than $10 for the three of us.

But the unexpected star of this story is the baklava.  I used about a quarter of the dough for the brie, but had enough of the package remaining to make a respectable baklava.  And so I set about preparing for my task.

In hindsight there were two things I should have done first: (1) take the dough out of the freezer earlier, and (2) turn up the furnace.  The first, obviously, to ensure the dough was completely defrosted before trying to work with it.  Nothing feels worse than cracking a roll of sheets because you were too impatient to wait.  The second, because, while the packaging said “NO TRANS FATS - NO CHOLESTEROL” the preparation of all things phyllo is with large quantities of melted butter, as in “brush each sheet with melted butter.”  And what difference does the furnace make?  Well, in short, when the house is at 66 degrees F, the melted butter solidifies more quickly than is productive.

So, after separating little strips of broken dough and shredding a few more sheets with a butter brush that was not conveying a liquid, I managed to cover at least the top half of the baking dish with whole or almost whole sheets of dough to camouflage the earlier missteps.

The result?  It turns out that phyllo is much more fun and much more forgiving than I expected.  And my first attempt at baklava was, using my mom’s word, “Beautiful!”

---------------------

PS

I used the recipe from About.com by Diana Rattray which is inexplicably in their "Southern Food" section along with bourbon balls.  Resident Spouse thinks this makes sense because it does come from the southern Mediterranean.  I added a whole clove in the center of each piece before baking.  Next time I think I will add more lemon.  For phyllo, I used Athens Regular (Thin) phyllo.

For the baked brie, I picked a recipe from Cooks.com.  There are 40+ such recipes of various sorts and so there is lots of room for experimentation.  I only used about 1/4 pound of the phyllo because I was having "issues" during my first attempt at working with the stuff.  It seemed a respectable covering once baked...