By Jennifer Sanchez

While Nana’s Whimsies takes a travel day today, it is my pleasure to offer you three Tuesday Quick Picks.

Here are some fabulous flavors I’m enjoying this November….

Thomas’ Limited Edition Pumpkin Spice English muffins.

Maggie served me these delicious muffins last weekend. They are wonderful toasted. I saw Land O’ Lakes Cinnamon Sugar Spread on a food blog I read daily. The spread is amazing and a match made in heaven on these English muffins. Yum!

Got Chai?

A friend at work does not drink coffee so she drinks a cup of chai tea every morning. She told me about this Oregon Chai tea concentrate and suggested I mix it with milk, about half and half. It is as good as any chai latte you can buy at a coffee shop. I have found it at both Walmart and Kroeger. It is a little sweet for me so I mix in some brewed Chai tea for a slightly stronger chai taste.  I have a cup of hot tea most every afternoon in the winter and a cup of this chai is a satisfying treat.

Extra Special Mashed Potatoes

I am a big fan of Ina Garten of Food Network. So when I received the November issue of Food Network Magazine with Ina featured on the cover I was a happy camper, er, happy cook.  I have tweaked her recipe for mashed potatoes that is featured in that issue, but I am here to tell you, if you add some of this Boursin cheese spread to your regular mashed potato recipe, it will enhance the flavor. Mashed potatoes with this cheese added are delicious. Just a little bit will turn ordinary mashed potatoes into something very special.

When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls. Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize. She brings him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. She obtains wool and flax and works with loving hands. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle. She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy. Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her a reward for her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates. Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31

I love that Old Testament reading from yesterdays’s Mass. It might be my favorite from the Old Testament.

The reading is just a snippet from the entire passage, and it focuses on the wife’s role as a homemaker. The passage in its entirety goes on to describe how a good wife conducts business, buying and planting a vineyard, and works hard with her strong arms, all in an effort to take care of her family. I think the message is lovely. And it doesn’t have to simply apply to women, nor do I think it’s supposed to.

The point is, I think, that good looks will eventually go away, even with the benefits of surgery or botox. Money doesn’t buy happiness. And we all know people who are charming to our face and bitter and nasty behind our backs.

The only thing that truly makes us happy is loving God and serving others in his name.

My niece Maggie asked me recently, “Aunt, do you serve up Bill’s dinner plate, and do you make him lunch?”

I do, and said so.

“I do the same thing, but I’m not sure I should be since he’s able to get his own food,” she went on. “But Mark works hard and I think it’s probably ok to do it.”

Her comments came back to me as I listened to the words from Proverbs. In our quest for equality, it seems we might be missing the forest for the trees. I don’t think we should ever feel guilty for being kind.

We are preparing to go back to Denver on Tuesday. Yesterday afternoon I ran to a big discount grocery store called Winco to get some coffee so that when we come back here in December, there is coffee waiting for us. I was crabby because the Broncos were stinking it up on the football field against a team they should have been beating. Anyhoo, I had my one little bag of coffee and noticed long check-out lines with overflowing buggies. I resigned myself to a long wait.

Suddenly, the man ahead of me turned around, noticed I only had one item, and invited me to go ahead of him.

I initially deferred, thanking him for his kindness. But he was very insistent so I went ahead.

It changed my entire day for the better, as little acts of kindness are wont to do. It occurred to me that this friendly and kind man was, whether he realized it or not, serving God just like the good wife. I hope this man’s works praise him at the city gates.

The water in the Phoenix metro area is nasty. There’s no other way to put it. It’s Colorado River water, but by time it rolls through the Colorado mountains and down to the Valley of the Sun, it has collected enough minerals to make the water virtually undrinkable. By the way, the sure sign that a restaurant is serving water out of the tap is the tell-tale lemon slice, which simply makes water taste like lemon-flavored nastiness.

Anyhoo, because the water is nasty, people make arrangements other than drinking from the tap. One possibility, which Bill and I employ, is purchasing water from one of the many water stores around the area. These stores sell water and ice, and go by the clever name of Water & Ice Store. We have been getting our water at a Water & Ice not far from our house.

We bought water from that store when we got here three weeks ago, but were nearly out. So we moseyed down to our friendly neighborhood Water & Ice Store only to be greeted with a sign which told us that they were out of water.

Call me simple, but it seems as though when you only sell two things, it is a sad state of affairs to be out of one of those things. That’s half your inventory, my friends. It’s kind of like going to a Toys R Us store only to be told that they are out of toys, or eagerly entering a Buffalo Wild Wings and learning that they are clear out of wings tonight.

Luckily we had beer and wine at home.

Have a good weekend.

I just finished reading a book – The Edge of Eternity, by Ken Follett, which I will review tomorrow – that takes place during the time period of the Cold War, roughly the early 1960s to the late 1980s. Baby Boomers will understand when I simplify things by saying the Cold War began with the words of one president – Ich bin ein Berliner – and ended with the words of another president – Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Tiny Tears, circa 1955

While I was a small girl during the early days of the Cold War, I was much more interested in wiping the tears from my Tiny Tears doll than worrying about ships bearing missiles headed directly to Cuba and aimed directly at my 6-year-old head. I was thankfully clueless.

My sister Bec is just enough older than me that she remembers that scary time. I feel I must add that not only is she enough older, but she is considerably smarter than I, so she probably knew enough to pay attention. Her Tiny Tears doll’s tears went unwiped. We all have our roles…..

While I don’t necessarily remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, I do remember the assassination of President Kennedy and how the world seemed to stop that day. I was in second grade. Our principal came into our classroom at St. Bonaventure Elementary and told us to get down on our knees. The president had been shot and killed. We prayed, and then were sent home.

The next few days are seared into Baby Boomers’ memories.

What The Edge of Eternity really made me think about was just how much our world changed from when I was a small girl in Columbus, Nebraska, to when I had a child of my own in 1980. I have often thought about the changes my grandmother and grandfather saw over the course of their lifetime, but I saw plenty of changes as well.

It’s hard to imagine that – in my lifetime – black Americans didn’t have basic civil rights, often including the right to vote. Those rights didn’t come easy, and didn’t, in fact, come at all until President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965. I think that’s a reality that our grandkids simply can’t quite understand.

For the most part, married women didn’t work outside the home until the 1970s, and were considered, for the most part, to be secondary citizens to their husbands or fathers. Arguably at least, times have changed considerably. We are likely to see a woman president in my lifetime.

The 1960s and 1970s brought about a change in music.  Remember this?……..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It3Cctk6BRs

This appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was all we could talk about the next day in February 1964. I was in fourth grade. I think it’s safe to say music was never the same.

And it’s also safe to say that easy access to safe contraception brought about the sexual revolution. The 1960s were a time of free love, easy access to drugs, and, in response to the Vietnam War, the peace movement.

Although, I feel compelled to mention that I think a lot of these “movements” took place largely on the east and west coasts. Those of us in Nebraska and other “flyover states” were perhaps still a bit isolated.

Anyway, the book just brought back a lot of memories – some good and some bad, and made me realize that the world is always changing. And that’s probably for the best.

But do baby dolls still cry real tears? At fifty dollars a pop, they should.

What memories do you have of the Cold War years?

And meanwhile, back at the ranch, while the estrogen set was planning, preparing, and eating timpano (see November 10, 2014 post), at least some of the testosterone set were watching cars go round and round in circles at the Phoenix International Raceway.

For Fathers’ Day, Bill’s son Dave made arrangements for them to attend the NASCAR race that ran this past weekend. The real gift was a parking space for the RV that he, his brother Allen and his son Alastair drove to the race from Denver. They spent the entire weekend. He couldn’t possibly have gotten him something Bill would have loved more.

Within 24 hours of opening his gift, Bill bought enough tickets to include both of his sons, Alastair, and my brother Dave, and commenced planning.

Bill has been working on the arrangements since June. Saying Bill is somewhat compulsive is like saying that Noah’s flood was a rain shower. I’m talking down to illustrating a to-scale sketch of the campsight.

You think I’m kidding….

He purchased plastic ticket holders on lanyards so that they could wear their tickets around their necks. He bought a huge canopy and tarps to use as sides, and had several practice runs at setting it up. He carefully considered the size of the cooler, how much beer he needed, where he would park the car – should it face north and south or east and west? He made certain there was a camping grill. He planned for the necessary amount of firewood. He made sure he had a Jeff Gordon baseball cap.

But the day before his kids/grandkids showed up in the RV, I offhandedly asked Bill, “What are you guys going to eat for the next four days?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.”

Whaaaaaaat?

Now you KNOW if women were planning that trip we would not be worrying about ticket holders or canopies. We wouldn’t have the faintest concern about which direction the car would be parked. There would be no to-scale sketches of the campground. BUT WE WOULD KNOW WHAT WE WERE GOING TO EAT AND WHO WAS BRINGING WHAT FOOD FOR WHAT MEALS.

It’s how we roll.

I’m pleased to report that they didn’t starve, but that’s because our daughter-in-law took care of sending enough burgers, brats, and buns to last the entire weekend. And it’s a good thing because otherwise they would probably have lived on beer and cigars, with the occasional $11 hotdog purchased from concessions. Alastair would have lived on Sprite. Because they think the lemon-lime drink actually has lemons and lime in it.

Here’s how they roll. Within minutes of setting up camp, my brother is lighting up a cigar….

Dave had to leave for 24 hours to attend the funeral of a friend’s father. Bill, Allen, and my brother Dave were in charge of Alastair.

S’mores for breakfast…..

By time a few hours passed, Alastair was all in for the beer and cigars….

Actually, of course, I’m joking, because Alastair was well taken care of in Dave’s absence.  But they couldn’t help but pull our legs by sending the photo of Alastair posing with an adult beverage.

When the long race weekend was done, they came home looking a bit like something the cat had thought about bringing home but decided it was too disgusting.

The verdict? A great time was had by all.

In honor of Veterans’ Day, and in honor of my dad, today’s post is a reprise from Veterans’ Day 2013. Everything I said a year ago is still true. We owe my dad — and ALL veterans — more gratitude than it is possible to express.

Today is Veterans’ Day, and, as always, it makes me think about my dad – that would be Musician 3rd Class Reinhart Gloor, serial number 317-11-31, United States Navy.

I always thought it was funny that my dad, having lived nearly his entire life in land-locked Nebraska (he was born in South Dakota but only lived there for a short time) chose to enlist in the Navy. Apparently he chose the Navy because they offered him the best opportunity to be a musician. He tried out for the Naval Music School and was accepted in the Music Corps. Instead of carrying a gun, my dad carried a saxophone and a clarinet.

You see, though a baker by trade, my dad loved music. It always seemed entirely appropriate to me that my dad spent his military years entertaining troops during World War II. He was stationed on the island of Trinidad.

I wish I had talked more with my dad about his years in the Navy. He had, to my knowledge, never been out of the country. Heck, I would guess he had never been out of Nebraska. Here he was, an inexperienced boy of only 18 or so, sent to basic training in Chicago and music school in Washington, D.C., then on to Trinidad. No friends with him, his mom and dad and sisters far away with no internet or even much in the way of telephones I would assume. He probably was nervous and excited.

He was one of many young boys and girls who were experiencing the same mixed feelings of excitement and fear, loneliness and suffocation from being around other people all of the time. Those soldiers, sailors, airmen/women and Marines needed the comfort of music.

A number of years ago, my husband and I were able to visit the Normandy area of France. We walked on Omaha Beach. I don’t think anything I’ve ever seen has had such a profound impact on me as seeing that enormous section of beach, onto which those men – boys, really – involved in the D-Day invasion had to disembark from their ship and run like hell. Brave, brave men.

And that’s just one example. There are thousands and thousands of stories of young people who have fought in places so, so far from home to keep America safe and free. They have truly sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice, so much for us so that we can bring up our families as we see fit and worship as we please.

My husband also served, in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. Thankfully for him (and for me), he never had to serve in Vietnam. I’m proud of him and his service to all of us. (I don’t have a picture of him in his uniform or I would post it!) In fact, I’m pretty sure all of us know a vet, perhaps more than one. Today is a good day to tell him or her thanks for their service and for helping keep us safe and free.

Happy Veterans’ Day!

Really I think very often my Saturday Smile should just be called Nana’s Brag Sheet. But it’s my blog, and very often it’s my grandkids that make me smile.

This week I learned that our eldest granddaughter, 11-year-old Addie, earned straight As her first quarter as a middle schooler. This is on top of playing volleyball and being a member of show choir.

As a straight A student, she was invited to attend what is called a Pacesetter Lunch with the principal. If the principal asked me, I would tell him/her that they’d better get used to it in the years to come, because Addie will not only be setting the pace, she will be setting the strategies to reach the goals, which she will also have set.

I couldn’t be more proud.

On the other side of the age scale, our youngest grandson, 6-month-old Cole Jonathan, is aspiring to be a Chippendale….

Have a great weekend.