You might recall that I recently had my spit, er, saliva analyzed by ancestry.com, from which I learned that I am 13 percent Swiss, 4 percent Swedish, 2 percent Baltic States, and a full 71 percent Polish. My Polish ancestry comes from my mother, whose parents were both Polish. Well, perhaps somewhere way back in my ancestry, one of my great-great-great grandfathers messed around with a Swedish milkmaid or a Latvian princess to account for that 6 percent in my DNA makeup.

Ever since I got my results, I have been craving Polish food. This isn’t particularly surprising. I’m very susceptible to outside influences. It’s one of the reasons I chose the DNA testing for my ethnic background only. You can choose the fancy-dancy one that will also tell you your health background based on your ancestry, and to what diseases or health issues you are susceptible. When Bill had his DNA test done, for example, he learned that he had wet ear wax. Now, there is some critical knowledge necessary for one to face old age. Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, I knew that if I found out that my ancestors had tendencies towards prostate cancer, I would start feeling pain in my nether region despite the fact that I am WOMAN and have no prostate. Also, hear me roar. (Only Baby Boomers get that reference.)

Despite my mother’s Polish ancestry, she didn’t really cook Polish food. I never ate, for example, lazanki z kapusta i grzybami, which is a typical Polish dish made out of cabbage, pork, carrots, onions, and homemade noodles. Nor did she prepare sledz w oleju z cebula, which is herring with onion. Both actually sound quite good, but neither appeared on our dinner table. I think my mother didn’t prepare Polish food because her mother never taught her to cook; instead, she learned from her Swiss mother-in-law. In fact, I would venture to guess that Mom didn’t eat Polish food growing up. My Polish ancestors emigrated to the United States quite a few generations ago and were more likely to eat fried chicken than herring.

We did on occasion (happy occasion in my eyes) have golabki, though she called them cabbage rolls. Parboil cabbage until you can gently pull off the leaves, and then fill them with a mixture of ground beef and spices, and cook them in a tomato sauce. I have her recipe (in her own handwriting), but rarely make it because, frankly, it’s kind of a pain in the bee-hind.

The only Polish tradition I remember growing up was that she always prepared fresh Polish sausage and soft boiled eggs for Easter breakfast. We often had sausage, but it was generally the kielbasa that you buy at the grocery store. For Easter breakfast, she would buy fresh Polish sausage from someplace (my suspicion is from Nied’s Meats, “Nieds” short for Niedbalski, and a well-respected Columbus butcher shop. Anyway, it was delicious.

And for the thirty-some years during which I have been responsible for Easter breakfasts, I have followed suit. Unfortunately, most of the time I have purchased Hillshire Farm smoked kielbasa. But last year, I discovered a Polish restaurant and market some 30 minutes from our AZ house. Bill and I made the trip west, and purchased fresh Polish sausage.

Yesterday, we made the same trip. First we ate a pierogi lunch…..

Pierogis, by the way, are also something my mother never made. I, however, am determined to take a stab at them. They are wonderful dumplings filled with mashed potatoes and scrumptious things like bacon or mushrooms or onions.

And then I stopped at the market to pick up my Polish sausage for Easter Sunday. Like last year, I will cook them in water flavored with onions and garlic and bay leaves and peppercorns and other good spices, and then finish them in my cast iron pan…..

We enjoyed our Polish adventure, and it reminded me of my mom.

When I’m on my morning walk, I listen to podcasts. I like all sorts of podcasts, from spiritual to discussions of murders. The podcast I happened to be listening to yesterday is called the Big Boo Podcast, and features two regular ol’ women in their mid-40s, both with children, who happen to be current with All Things Cool. They also happen to be very Southern and very funny.

In the podcast I listened to yesterday, one of the women was very excited to tell the other about something she had discovered that is brought to you by most people’s favorite store, Target. Her excitement was generated by something called Target Restock.

Target Restock is a feature whereby you go online and fill up a virtual box with essentials you purchase from Target. As you order, you are told how full your box is, though apparently you aren’t required to fill up your box. Once you have met your shopping needs, you pay online, including a $2.99 service charge (unless you have a Target Redcard, in which case there is no service charge). The box is then delivered to your doorstep THE NEXT DAY.

The two of them were positively twitterpated by the fact that they wouldn’t have to haul heavy laundry detergents from Target to their car and then from their car to their house. Target Restock would eliminate the need to visit the store, something important to busy working parents.

I was immediately struck by this whole notion of shopping online from the comfort of my LazyBoy. But it reminded me that Americans (and probably people from other first world countries) are THIS CLOSE to eliminating the need to talk to other human beings.

And as I pondered this notion, I began to think about all of the ways that our lives have been simplified by the internet. I order food to be delivered all of the time without ever talking to a live person. In fact, I order nearly everything online (mostly from Amazon) from my easy chair. What a time-saver, particularly for people with kids and jobs and lots of responsibilities.

But where is all that extra time?

I was a single parent of one child for many years. I worked all day, figured out how to get him to and from soccer or basketball practice, fixed dinner at night, helped him with homework, got him into bed, shopped for groceries on the weekend with all of the other working parents, and so forth. I was lucky because his father did his part as well. Still, when my son was with me, my days were full. If I suddenly could have ordered groceries and other items from Target or King Soopers or Walmart, saving myself from real-live trips where I faced real-live crowds, I believe I would have had time on my hands.

So why do all of these people seem to be so stretched? How are we filling up our days? I’m really asking the question. All of these time saving features don’t seem to be saving us much time.

So I probably won’t be using Target Restock because I’m retired and part of the fun of going to Target is seeing what it is you buy that you didn’t even know you needed. That, and the fact that I have really nothing but time. Aren’t I lucky?

A friend of mine posted this photo on Facebook this week, and it made me smile…..

This photo was taken on May 7, 1961?, the day I, along with my fellow second graders, received our First Holy Communion. I must have studied this photo for an hour, trying to figure out who was who, where my second grade boyfriend was, how we could all have looked so freshly scrubbed and holy. My cousin David is the furthest on the left, as cute as a bug in a rug. Our teacher, Sister Colista, is barely poking her head above us in the upper left, second row from the top. She was mean as a snake. As for this holy little nana, I am in the top row, furthest to the right.

Have a great weekend.

Cubism
In the manner of Pablo Picasso,…..

…..Kaiya’s latest artwork (which I’m able to see because of a program provided by the school district that enables parents and other permitted people to see and comment on their darlings’ works of art) uses the artistic concept of cubism. It’s a self-portrait. As always, I’m impressed…..

I’ve always thought she would be a writer. Now I wonder whether art is calling her name.

Another Bomb
While I’m complaining about the heat (and, by the way, yesterday was much a milder day, with temps reaching only the mid-70s), my friends and family in Denver are experiencing another so-called bomb cyclone. I am 65 years old and had never heard that phrase until a few weeks ago. I think the weather people are getting bored. At any rate, Denver and its environs are experiencing another blizzard. Yuck yuck and yuck.

Check the Tank
The other day after Lilly and I finished geocaching, we were driving down the street towards Sonic Drive-In. Lilly — seated in her booster seat in the back seat — said, “Aunt Kris, how much gas do you have in this car?” The question caught me off guard. “Lilly, I have almost a full tank of gas. Why do you ask?” “Welllll,” she said with a voice full of doubt, “sometimes people run out of gas and I wanted to make sure we weren’t going to run out of gas.” I was once again reminded of just how little faith our children have in us. 

Happy Belated Siblings Day
Yesterday was apparently Siblings Day. I only know these things because people started posting photos of themselves with their siblings. Well. I can do that too….
Ciao.

Yesterday was the hottest day of 2019 thus far in the Valley of the Sun. At its peak, it was a sizzling 97 degrees. (Year-round residents who put up with temperatures nearing 120 degrees in the summer listen to my complaining about yesterday’s temperature and snidely comment under their breath, “When it’s 97 degrees in July, we put on a light cardigan.”)

So I’m not sure why I thought it was a great idea to introduce my 5-year-old great niece Lilly to the game of geocaching on a day when you could toast a tortilla on the sidewalk. “What’s geocaching?” she asked. “It’s a game where you hunt for hidden treasure,” I told her. She grinned, and got a shovel with which to dig for treasure and a ziplock bag to hold all of the money we would find. I didn’t have the heart to break the news to her that the most we would find is a tube containing a little piece of paper to sign that would require no digging.

We went to the area at which I thought the geocache was located. Given my terrible sense of direction and my inability to accurately judge distances, it was not surprising to find that the geocache was further away than I thought. Nearly a half-mile walk, in fact. A half mile is doable, but not with a 5-year-old carrying a shovel and a plastic bag in temperatures creeping dangerously close to 100 degrees. Lilly’s face was getting more and more flushed and she was caring less and less about pirates’ booty.

Suddenly I had an idea. While Jen was visiting, she and I found a geocache very close to Lilly’s very own house. We could find that one pretty quickly even with my directional challenges. I wouldn’t necessarily have the satisfaction of finding a new cache, but Lilly would.

“There’s a geocache right by your house,” I told Lilly. “Do you want to go find that one instead?”

“Does a bear s**t in the woods?” answered Lilly. Not really. But she made it clear she thought that was a dandy idea. And so we did, and in mere minutes she found the treasure…..

When I geocache with my grands, our tradition is a to finish off our adventure with a trip to the nearest Sonic for a limeade. Well, the truth is I have a diet limeade and my grands have a milkshake. (Hey, I’m the nana, and they’ve just found a few hidden treasures and deserve a reward.) I suggested to Lilly that we go to Sonic for a limeade.

“Some candy!” she countered.

We met in the middle. She had a blue raspberry slushie with Nerds. I had a diet limeade.

And she took a few selfies, which actually don’t look that much worse than most of my other photos…..

And made plans to go geocaching another time when it’s a bit cooler.

We hear a lot of bad news these days, don’t we? Great Britain can’t figure out how to handle Brexit. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has been declared a terrorist organization. Floods have damaged much of United States’ bread basket. I can’t keep up with all of the earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes around the world.

But amidst all of the bad news, I finally heard a piece of good news the other day. It came from Town & Country Magazine. What was the news?

VODKA IS GOOD FOR YOU. Move over, kale and acai berries. Step back, red wine. Bring me a glass of Stoli’s or Grey Goose. Because HEALTH FOOD.

Actually, the truth is I would prefer an ice cold martini made with Tanqueray gin rather than Grey Goose vodka. I know bartenders make more vodka martinis than gin martinis, even though the definition of a martini is a drink made with gin, stirred, not shaken (sorry James Bond), garnished with an olive or a lemon peel. I can deal with a Grey Goose martini. But People, when you pour lemon flavored vodka and sugar into a martini glass that has previously been dipped in sugar, you might have a really good drink, but you don’t have a MARTINI. No to the Lemon Drop martini. It takes more than the shape of the glass in which your adult beverage is served.

Wow. That felt good to get that off my chest. Excuse me while I drink a shot of a certain stress-reliever.

Now, back to vodka as health food. According to the article, there are seven ways in which vodka is good for you. One of the ways, of course, is that 1)it acts as a stress reliever as I implied above. But the others seem a stretch surprising: 2) it’s a natural disinfectant and antiseptic; 3 ) it prevents blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes, and lowers cholesterol; 4) it’s a natural astringent and deep-cleans your pores; 5) it controls bad breath; 6) it relieves symptoms of arthritis; 7) it reduces blood sugar levels and helps prevent diabetes.

See what I mean? You could really live on nothing but vodka. And if your boss accuses you of alcohol on your breath, just say, “Well, of course I have alcohol on my breath. I wouldn’t leave the house without using a breath freshener.”

Someone with whom I worked once informed me (as I was sipping an ice cold gin martini) that gin kills brain cells. Nonsense, I thought as I took another sip and bit into the bleu cheese olive. He’s thinking about the gin that they made in bathtubs in the 1920s. Bathtub gin probably not only damaged your brain, but also grew hair on the bottom of your feet. Not MY gin.

The article, by the way, adds that vodka was originally invented as a form of medicine. I’m only happy that I can drink it as part of a Bloody Mary and not just have it poured onto an open wound with a stick between my teeth.

The writer of the article doesn’t credit any particular research study. I wonder if a study was funded by the Smirnoff Bartending School of the United States.

Processed with Rookie Cam

Cheers…..