Category Archives: Whimsies

Saturday Smile: Iowa Cooking

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A friend of mine commented on my recent blog post about recipe cards. Here is what she told me:

I found this recipe in my mom’s recipe box. Not her writing, however it was quite a shock to read, since she was raised Mennonite.

Iowa Turkey Dressing

2 c. bread crumbs, ½ c. butter, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. pepper, 2 cups unpopped pocorn, 2 cups celery. Bake for five hours at 350 degrees, until corn pops and blows the a** out of the turkey.

See what I mean? You can’t beat those old-time recipe cards!

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Frank’s Finnerty
I mentioned yesterday that I get 50 to 100 or so hits each day on my blog. Some posts get considerably more than others, and it’s largely impossible for me to predict if they will be well-read. If I knew what it was that draws a reading crowd, I would write about it more often. I’m narrowing it down to boredom and the barometric pressure. Anyhoo, one of my more popular blogs in the recent past was the one about my Whiskey Education Program. I prefaced the whole thing by explaining that I was curious to know what NYC Police Commissioner Frank Reagan drank on Blue Bloods. Whatever it was, I thought, I wanted to look just like him (without the mustache). I got an email from a reader who had stumbled upon my blog because he googled what is Frank Reagan drinking at home. It’s a comfort to me to learn that I’m not the only goofball in the world who wants to know things like that. My new friend went on to say that he is a bourbon drinker, having grown up in Kentucky. He concluded by asking me if I ever figured out what kind of whiskey Frank drank. Well, the other night, we were watching an episode of Blue Bloods, and Frank began pouring whiskey from a bottle. I immediately grabbed the remote and froze the screen. Like a madwoman, I rushed to the television and saw that he was drinking Finnerty’s. Finnerty’s? Bill got right on it and found an article that explained that Finnerty’s was, in fact, a fake whiskey with a label that resembles a real whiskey brand. That is apparently the way they roll in Hollywood. My education program, by the way, is coming along nicely, and I use real whiskey.

Patsy’s Pocketbooks
Last fall when Bill and I arrived in AZ, one of the first things I did was take a tray of cookies over to my neighbor, Patsy. She is maybe in her late 70s or early 80s, and is as nice as can be. I wanted to thank her for giving me a call over the summer to tell us that our drip system appeared to have sprung a leak and was spewing water. As a result of her phone call, we were able to get it fixed quickly, thanks to Patsy and Jen’s son-in-law Mark. When I delivered the cookies, Patsy invited me in to show me her latest money-making endeavor. Having never really talked to her before for any length of time, I wasn’t familiar with any of her previous endeavors, but I’m always willing to give some time to a nice person. She has turned her den into a sewing room, where she pounds out these quite cute billfolds. She happily gave me one free of charge just for being a nice neighbor……

I can’t tell you how many people have commented on this billfold, wanting to know where I got it. So yesterday I went over to see Patsy because a woman in a shop I had been to earlier in the day loved the billfold so much that she gave me her phone number and asked if I would have Patsy give her a call. Patsy was pleased as punch, and being a much better marketer than I, has had cards made. She gave me a few cards so that I can pass them out when people ask about my billfold. Patsy might be another Kate Spade in the making.

Hot Air
I might need to really step up my marketing efforts to pay for the new air conditioner we had installed yesterday. Our air conditioner was original to the house, meaning it was 10 years old. We had coaxed and babied it as much as we could, but realized that the time had come to dig deep into our pockets and install a new (as my grandmother would say) cooling system. Man, there are a lot of things I would prefer to do with that money, and I know Jen feels the same way. We aren’t here during the really hot months, but even in April, we need to run the air conditioner for at least part of the day. Our yard was certainly a mess for a while yesterday. We must have been the talk…..

Ciao.

I’ll Have My People Call Your People

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You’ve heard the phrase she knows just enough to be dangerous, haven’t you? If you were to google that phrase, I’m pretty sure my photo would appear. I am the face for the concept of knowing just enough to be dangerous, at least when it comes to technology.

It’s true that I am a blogger. It’s also true that it is well-known in my family that I am a texter. It’s my favorite way to communicate. My daughter-in-law Jll always says that she can count on me answering a text toot sweet. I have a laptop, an iPad, a smart phone, and I can manage to use the necessary remote controls to get onto Netflix and Amazon Video on two different smart televisions. I use Pinterest and Facebook daily. (God help me when Facebook goes away only to be replaced by something cooler. I’m already hearing rumblings that Facebook is destined to go the way of My Space before we know it.)

And that’s it. That’s what I know. When it comes to my blog, someone else created it and showed me how to post copy and photos. So I can post copy and photos. I can’t figure out how to get a plug-in to make recipes handy and printable. I have no clue as to how to make my blog pinnable on Pinterest. Instagram and Twitter are mysteries to me despite the fact that I have accounts for both. There is an easy-peazy way to post the blog on Facebook, but that skill eludes me; therefore, I just copy and paste every day.

A few years ago, I got a notion to start having advertising on my blog. My audience, while loyal and AWESOME, are still relatively few in number. Relative to the Pioneer Woman, for example.  While she likely gets thousands upon thousands of hits each day, I get between 60 and 100. (And I love each and every hit, though I suspect my sisters and brother account for a third of them each day.) So, at the time, it felt premature to begin advertising to the people who are really my friends, but I nevertheless began preparation for that “some day” possibility by having my blog hosted by another entity. Did I figure that out myself? Hell, no. Someone smarter than me told me that in order to have advertising, you have to be hosted off site.

The problem was, well, see above. For all intents and purposes, I am clueless as to the technology of blogs. So I was never able to actually MOVE my blog over to the host. The result is that for the past four or five years, I have been paying a company to host a blog that they didn’t actually host. This year, when I got my bill, I said, “Enough is enough!”

So yesterday morning, I called up Inmotion Hosting and told them, “Enough is enough.”  I spoke to a young man named Aaron. I explained what I wanted to do, but verbalized my fear that somehow, by ending my relationship with them, my blog site would vanish completely.

Much to my chagrin, Aaron, who is probably young enough to date my eldest granddaughter (but better not try), didn’t discount this possibility. He told me what I needed to do to preclude this from happening. He said, “Kristine, blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blobbity blah, and if you do that, you’ll be fine.”

I’m sure you understand that he didn’t actually say blobbity blobbity. But he might as well have, given the extent to which I understood what he was telling me to do. Meanwhile, Bill – who, while not a technical genius, at least might have understood a few of the blobbities – was in the garage underneath his car and unavailable for comment.

“STOP,” I literally raised my voice to Aaron. “You have to understand that I know absolutely nothing about technology. I am a writer, period. I am also old. I am an old writer. I don’t understand one thing that you just told me to do.”

My friends, I tell you again, Aaron was so sweet and polite. I know he was picturing his little elderly great-grandmother with her white hair tied in a bun as he spoke to me.

“Here’s what I’ll do, Kristine,” he said. “I will check right now to see if your blog is hosted by WordPress. If it is, I am confident that it will not go away if we discontinue serving you. In the meantime, I am going to get my tech people to send you a link. You will simply need to click on this link and it will back up your entire blog.”

Here’s my takeaway from that conversation: Despite the fact that he could date my granddaughter (but he better not), he has his tech people. I always wanted to have people. I never had people. I was always the people.

So I now have a link that his people dutifully sent to me. At some point I will get brave enough to actually click on the link. My computer may actually blow up and my blog may go away forever. If Nana’s Whimsies goes away, don’t worry about me. Aaron said I can call him back.

I will keep you posted, at least if I can.

Recipe Cards

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Once in a while when my siblings and I get together, we might have a conversation along the lines of what was your favorite of Mom’s meals or maybe what did you ask for if Mom was going to cook you your birthday dinner.

I think most of the time, my siblings’ answers might depend on the day. I know that would be true for me. When I asked this question for purposes of my blog back in 2013, I said it was Mom’s oven-roasted pork spareribs. While it’s true that I loved that particular meal — served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes — there were actually many of Mom’s meals I liked. Her meat loaf, for example, is a bit different from any recipe I’ve seen, and it’s my very favorite meat loaf.

While my choice might vary depending on my taste buds that day, if you ask my brother David what his favorite recipe was, he will unfailingly say it was her Beef Stroganoff. That’s a recipe that isn’t located in the recipe box that I somehow acquired upon her death…..

…..so when I decide to make it, I have to scramble to find the recipe. The last time I made Mom’s Beef Stroganoff, I asked Bec if she had the recipe, and she did. She didn’t have an actual card in Mom’s handwriting, but she had copied it, using Mom’s exact words. I decided to make it again yesterday, and I was happy to see that I had kept the recipe from the last time Bec had given it to me.

I once asked Bec where Mom got her recipes. After all, she was quite young when her mother died, so it wasn’t likely that they cooked together. Bec told me that she thought that Mom got a lot of her recipes the same way that many 1950s cooks did: from the back of soup cans or vegetable cans or packets of gravy mix and the like. After all, back in the 1950s, home cooks celebrated the fact that processed foods made their cooking lives easier rather than reeling in horror at the notion of using a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup in a recipe.

Bec’s theory was proven true when we were going through Mom’s recipe box over Thanksgiving vacation and I came across her recipe for dressing. It didn’t come from the back of a can, but it came from an insert that was part of the Butterball turkey she had apparently purchased. The insert was tucked away in the recipe box. By the way, the recipe includes Campbell’s Golden Mushroom Soup. Eeeeeek.

Mom’s Beef Stroganoff recipe is different from most other recipes I’ve seen. It includes tomato juice, and instead of sour cream, it calls for a can of evaporated milk and some lemon juice. Just for fun, I googled “beef stroganoff tomato juice evaporated milk”, not expecting to find anything. But since you can apparently find ANYTHING on the internet, I found the exact recipe on a web site called Recipe Link. That website linked to something referred to as Faith’s Collection, and indicates the source as “Recipe booklet: One wonderful dish makes the meal by Pet Milk Co., 1960. This notation further supports Bec’s theory that Mom got a lot of her recipes from backs of cans. In this case, it was the back of a Pet Evaporated Milk can.

This woman – Faith – apparently has a strong interest in what she refers to as vintage recipe collections. The Beef Stroganoff recipe was part of a box that she purchased from someone on Ebay. The person who sold her the box of recipes had purchased them at an estate sale. She posted this photo of the box that she purchased……

I can’t tell you how cool I think it is that she collects vintage recipes. I would do the same thing, except that I have enough crap of my own to get rid of. Having said that, I will tell you that it makes me sad that almost no one writes out recipe cards any longer. What am I saying? They don’t even teach cursive in school anymore! I love the recipe cards I have from my Mom. But children, I will admit to you that I keep almost all of my recipes these days on Pinterest.

It Might Be the Subway Sandwich

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This winter – for the first time ever – Bill decided to bring his sports car to Arizona. Ship it, actually. It came inside a huge trailer, the last of all of the sports cars to be delivered……

Since its arrival, Bill has spent nearly every single day working on the car. Don’t ask me what he’s doing; I have no idea. I just know he’s been in the garage nearly every day for almost the whole day. Recently, he emerged – pasty white with pupils the size of dimes from being in the dark — and announced it was ready to be driven.

Since that announcement, we took the car out once. Trust me when I tell you that I am not a dream as a driving partner. I clutch the door handle even when I’m in our Hyundai Sonata, so you can imagine how relaxed I was in the Ferrari 308 that up until recently wasn’t drivable.  But I admitted to him that it was kind of  – sort of – a little – fun.

Yesterday, the sky was blue and the weather forecasters predicted temperatures in the low- to mid-80s. Want to take the car out for a drive? Bill asked me. The car, I knew, being the Ferrari. I took one look at the cerulean sky and thought, why not?.

We decided we would go to Saguaro Lake, about 15 miles or so from our house. It is a beautiful drive and the lake is lovely – sparkling like blue glass. But first we would stop at the Subway that is in our neighborhood shopping center and pick up a sandwich to eat at one of the picnic table overlooking the lake.

It really was the perfect place to take the car. The road is well-maintained, and, to my relief, the speed limit is a reasonable 45 mph. Not that he drove at the speed. If you love to drive, would you be able to stay under 45 in this car? Just sayin’….

We arrived at the lake, parked our car, and walked up to a nearby picnic table. I laid out our lunch and we watched the sea birds fly overhead and the boats race by on the lake as we ate…..

I thought about how much my mother and father would have loved eating a picnic lunch in the exact spot where we sat. I reminded Bill that the last time we had taken a picnic lunch to Saguaro Lake, we had also brought Subway sandwiches. That time our car wouldn’t start when got ready to leave, I laughingly reminded Bill. Sucked to be us that day, huh?

We finished our lunch, cleaned up our table, packed up our picnic bag and got into our car. As an aside, let me just tell you that watching two senior citizens get into a car that sits about a half-inch off the ground doesn’t make for a pretty picture. Though the car is the same one that Tom Selleck drove in Magnum P.I……

Magnum P.I. we are not. That’s a fact. But he looks pretty good, doesn’t he?…..

The other thing that differentiated us from Magnum was that our car wouldn’t start. True story: we have taken Subway sandwiches to Saguaro Lake exactly two times, and exactly two times, our car wouldn’t start afterwards.

Could it be the Subway Sandwich Curse?

To my relief, Bill diagnosed the car as being vapor locked (whatever that is), did something to the engine using my bottle of water, and the car started.

We had a wonderful day and an enormously pleasant lunch. But next time I go to Saguaro Lake for a picnic, I’m stopping at Taco Bell.

Saturday Smile: Slow Burn

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Spoiler Alert if you haven’t watched the latest episode of This Is Us.

If you are a fan of the show, you already know, of course, that our favorite dad — Jack Pearson — is dead. You also already know that it was likely that he died in a fire. In the most recent episode we learned that the house fire originated from an old slow cooker given to Jack and Rebecca by neighbors, and that they were warned that the switch was faulty. Nevertheless, Rebecca makes her Super Bowl Chili in the slow cooker. Just before going to bed, Jack turns off the slow cooker — oh, I’m going to stop being politically correct: It was a Crock Pot. However, the switch shorts out and a fire begins. More next week.

That isn’t what amused me this week. It is unlikely that you could use the words amuse and This Is Us in the same sentence since every week, thousands and thousands of people are weeping as they watch the show.

What I found amusing is the fact that the company that makes Crock Pots is having to do damage control because people are actually throwing away their Crock Pots after watching the program. In fact, it’s gotten bad enough that the company is considering a lawsuit against NBC. Defamation of an appliance’s character, I guess. Kroger is having a We Don’t Care If Your House Goes Up In Flames Sale, frantically trying to get rid of them….

Here are my thoughts: People: It’s a television show. And Jack and Rebecca’s Crock Pot was 30 years old and damaged. If yours is 30 years old and you have to jiggle it to get it started, by all means throw it away. Otherwise, go ahead and cook your chili in your Crock Pot on Super Bowl Sunday.

I’m keeping mine. In fact, I’m keeping both of mine. Just sayin’……

Have a great weekend. I’m off to make chili in my Crock Pot.

Everything But the Rat Pack

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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. However, when you’re me, it doesn’t really make any difference. Aside from lots of really good food and a tad more drinking than I’m used to (well, it sort of depends on your definition of tad), not a lot happened that would need to stay there. Between Bill, Bec, and I, only Bill came even close to needing to go to confession after being greeted by several women wearing pasties and wanting him to pay for a photo with them. While Bill was having a meet cute with women in pasties, Bec and I were eating delicious pastries. Not the same thing.

Entering the MGM Grand is like entering Disney World. On steroids. And in order to cheerfully hand over your five bucks for a bottle of water or your one hundred bucks for a steak, you have to prepare yourself in advance that you have entered another universe. A universe where you put a twenty dollar bill in a slot machine and walk away three minutes later, empty-handed.  That’s why everyone sitting at a slot machine has a grim look on his or her face. And on the rare occasion that you hear that sound of a ringing bell indicating someone’s slot machine finally paid off, you see the grim looks get even grimmer. No one’s happy that the person next to them won.

Our best dining experience was dinner on our first night at a restaurant in the MGM Grand called Craft Steak. I really do love me a good old fashioned steak house. I’m not sure you could quite call this old fashioned seeings as the décor was contemporary and the French fries were seasoned with smoked paprika and sherry vinegar, but the food was tremendous. We had an ice-cold martini to open up our palate. Even Bill, a pretty committed beer or wine drinker, had a Jack-and-Coke. Wine, steaks, mashed potatoes, grits, and roasted cauliflower equals a satisfied stomach……

We didn’t just wake up one morning and say, “Let’s go to Las Vegas, Baby.” We had reason to go. A pretty darn good reason, in fact……

Bill and I have been following Jabbawockeez since we first saw them on America’s Got Talent in 2007. Though we are clearly not experts on any sort of urban dance, we both were drawn to the movement and the uniqueness of the group. We have a wee bit of familiarity with dance because our niece (Bec’s daughter Kate, who now goes by Jojo Diggs) is a professional dancer specializing in what I call urban dance. She calls it House, but try as I might, I simply can’t quite wrap my head around what that term means. Here’s a You Tube Video featuring Jojo Diggs that might interest you…..

At any rate, she has become part of the Jabbawockeez dance crew, and she performed with the group on Monday night. The show was AWESOME. If you are heading to Las Vegas, I can’t encourage you enough to watch this show at the MGM Grand in the Jabbawockeez Theater.

The show has won several awards for being the best family entertainment in Las Vegas, and that recognition is well-deserved. We couldn’t have had a better time. It was lively, fun, and the dancing was soooo impressive.

Of course, my niece was the best. I say that without reserve despite the fact that as part of the group’s costume (and their trademark), they are entirely covered from head to toe, making it impossible to tell dancers apart – by design.

I could tell which one was her, however. I used to change her diapers.

The Jabbawockeez show was the icing on the Las Vegas Experience Cake.

Thursday Thoughts: Wednesday Edition

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There’s No Place Like Home
We got home around 8:30 last night, after driving from Las Vegas back to our AZ home. I would love to say it was good to be back in my own bed, but I must admit that the bed at the MGM Grand was about twice as comfortable as my bed here in AZ. But it’s always good to be home.

Talk About Big
The MGM Grand is the largest hotel in the United States with 5,124 rooms. Our two rooms barely made a dent. We would literally walk miles in a day, and never leave the hotel. It’s weird to think that you can spend several days without even going outdoors. Even the MGM lion was massive…..

The Gambler
I vowed I would set aside X amount of money and gamble. I can’t add, so Blackjack was out. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to play either Craps or Roulette. Poker? Whatevah. So slot machines it was. After losing $40 in less than 10 minutes, I decided my gambling days were over. What’s fun about that? And it is quite apparent that no one is having fun because if you look around at the slot machines, there is not a smile to be seen. The only smiles were on people at the bar. As Bill says, they don’t build these fancy hotels because everyone wins lots of money.

What Happens in Vegas
Oh, but Bill smiled a little bit. One day for lunch, as Bec and I dined in style at Emeril’s Fish House, he walked down to White Castle, which was a lengthy hike. When he returned, I asked him how the walk went. He said it felt good to get outside. He added that he saw some interesting people. Really, I said. Tell me more.  He told me a couple of women asked him if he would like to have his picture taken with him. It was an interesting proposal, as they were quite scantily clad. In fact, both wore bikini bottoms. One had only pasties on top and the other simply had her shirt painted on. It was quite chilly, and undoubtedly so were they. He wisely declined the photo.

Room With a View
While our lovely room didn’t overlook the Strip, we had a pretty view nonetheless. I found the Excaliber to be really interesting. It was especially pretty at night…..

Bye Bye Vegas….

More tomorrow….

 

Saturday Smile: Midnight Train to Georgia (or Someplace)

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He’s leavin’
On that midnight train to Georgia
Said he’s goin’ back
To a simpler place in time.
And I’ll be with him
On that midnight train to Georgia.
I’d rather live in his world
Than live without him in mine. – Jim Weatherly, made famous by Gladys Knight

The other day I FaceTimed our granddaughter Kaiya. We talked for a few moments, and then her little brother Cole heard my voice.

“Nana!” he shouted, and grabbed the iPad right out of Kaiya’s hands. He began telling me, well lots of things. He showed me his new toys (specifically a Lalaloopsy doll with the unlikely name of Crumbs), told me about his day at school, and informed me (incorrectly, I later learned) that Mylee hadn’t gone to school that day. As he babbled on and on, he was running around the house with the iPad, making me darnright seasick.

At one point, my screen was white. It was clear I was looking at their ceiling. I heard his mom say, “Cole, you took the iPad from Kaiya to talk to Nana, and now you set it down in the toy train.”

“Yet,” he said (which is how he pronounces yes). “I’m giving Nana a train ride.”

 
I knew just how Gladys Knight felt.
Have a great weekend.