D.G. Reid

Pinching them till they scream

Posted on May 31 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

A lady I follow recently had a post about how second-hand stores seemed to be going up on their prices and did her readers see similar trends?

I find that it depends entirely on what store and location you shop at as well as how frequently you are willing or able to go.

I try to stay away from the for-profit second-hand stores entirely. Yes, they have things for sale at prices lower than new that still have a bit of life left in them but they’re not really in my budget range. My budget requires a significant discount from what I’d pay retail or online.

There are certain non-profit stores I don’t bother with unless I’m feeling flush because while I know I’ll find something I want to bring home the prices won’t be dirt cheap. Except on furniture. I got two of these for $25 each. They go well with the dark purple velvet sofa from Freecycle.

Went shopping at Salvation Army with the eldest up where she went to school when I drove up there for the second time in less than 24 hours to pick up MORE of her copious belongings. 300 miles on the car in a day and I never even got to leave the state. Weee.

We weren’t in a rush to get home and had both had good luck with the store so we went shopping. She needed shorts and I was looking for various things and hit the top two on my list, a new messenger bag and two pairs of jeans. Also got a hardcover book by my one of my favorite authors and probably the most expensive piece for my ConneCTcon cosplay for this year. All for under $35 bucks. Basically what the bag alone would cost new. I’d say that’s a deal.

The eldest is setting out on her own as soon as she’s back in the country. She has some basics of keeping house but not much beyond that. Found a lovely mixing bowl at a nearby Goodwill that shines like new now that it’s gone through the dishwasher and thought of her. Also checked to see what it was worth if she didn’t like it and decided it was worth the $2.99 gamble. She’ll take it if she doesn’t have to travel light. She’s not sure yet where she’s going or how long she’s staying. And if she doesn’t want it I’ll make a profit. That works. Minimal effort and capital tied up and I can make $30 or so.

The bulk Goodwills were recently mentioned by another lady I follow. Those are even more hit or miss than most thrift stores because I’m picking around the edges and not shoving my way to the front of a fresh bin. For me the fun is in the hunt just as much as the kill. I’ve gotten several good pieces there even without being ruthless; a nightstand that I refinished, a Fisher Price Little People Garage for the girls to play with, various books and movies, even picked up a nice serving spoon in the parking lot my last trip. Saw it when I pulled in and it was still there when I left so I ran it through the dishwasher several times and love it.

This isn’t mine but it’s the same vintage. This one was found at : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Fisher-Price-Little-People-Action-Parking-Garage-Service-Center-COMPLETE-/182586321989

Have thrift stores gone up in price in recent years? I’d say yes but that doesn’t mean that you still can’t find a bargain if you’re willing to dig through the detritus and be patient.

Does it annoy me that I’ve spent way more thought and effort in securing a new messenger bag? It would have been much easier to just order a few off the internet, keep the one that worked and returned the rest. Yes, this particular hunt was annoying and time-consuming but that’s the nature of my particular beast right now. I will say, that in return for a bit of thought, effort and time I got a bag I like and will use until it falls apart, hopefully many years in the future. It’s barely used. I think someone got rid of it because they couldn’t be bothered to clean it of some very minor soiling. Wasteful for them, a win for me at $3.99 and an overnight soak in the kitchen sink.

With deciding whether or not second-hand/thrift shops are worth it depends on which way you are more willing and able to pay. Will it be with time and effort or with dollars that you bought with your time and effort?

musings

Letter to a forbidden love

Posted on May 24 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I started smoking when I was 13.

Before that I was a rabid anti-smoker and had even broken and flushed Dad #1’s smokes more than once. Guess it didn’t take too terribly much to flip that particular addiction switch.

I was riding my bike somewhere with my sorta friends from school. One was named Bill and lived in a nearby beach community. I went to his house once. The short dead-end road was narrow as fuck and the houses jammed cheek to jowl. The house itself was amazing though. Full of family and laughter and warm colors and music and books and interesting things to look at. It was everything I’d ever wanted in a home. I was actually dumbstruck. It was old and wound about with tight rooms. When I was reading about the Burrow years later, this was the house that sprung to my mind.

So anyways, Bill and I and another kid, I can’t remember his name. He had the most beautiful brown eyes but he played for the other team but hadn’t figured it out yet. They both did, would, hopefully, figure it all out? They were nice guys. I hope they found what they wanted. I’ll call him Rafael.

So the three of us are riding our bikes. We were going to Rafael’s house. I was absolutely flying down this huge hill and had to take a sudden sharp right and didn’t realize that the road was covered in sand. Down went the bike and of course, it being the early 80’s and summer, what was I wearing? A freakin’ tube top. Yeah I ended up with some serious road rash all down my right side.

Fucking ow.

The boys helped me and the bike up. Thankfully we were at our destination for the most part. I cleaned myself up and picked the gravel out of my skin. I remember being very jittery from the crash and the pain of trying to erase my right breast with asphalt. Rafael had stolen a half pack of his grandma’s Pall Malls. So we each lit one up.

It tasted really gross but I had at least two, maybe three before we left. My stomach was queasy but I wasn’t jittery anymore.

Never told, will tell, Dad #2 that I was a smoker. His mother died of lung cancer and she was a very heavy smoker. Started smoking because her doctor told her to because of her nerves. Of course the nerves had nothing to do with the five boys who were always trying to kill each other and the alcoholic husband. Nah, just pick up this habit that’ll kill you young and it’ll all be fine. So I get why he really, really hates smoking and smokers.

Was a regular, daily smoker by 14. Smoked unfiltered Camels and loved every one of them. Loved the packaging art and the fact that they’d been around forever and the way I had to pick leaves off my lips if I wasn’t careful with tamping them before ripping the pack open.

And then there was the burn.

Taking in a deep breath of smoke and just feeling it sear all the way down.

And then there was the exhale.

Just as good going out as it was coming in.

I started working in restaurants at 15. Practically all the kitchen staff, no matter where I worked, smoked. Dishwashers were united in their love of anything menthol. Line cooks tended to smoke Marlboro. I worked with one chef who smoked Dunhills when he was flush. I tried a pack when I was jonesing while in Canada. Didn’t see what the fuss was about. Was just appalled at how much the dang things cost up there.

Whenever I worked with ex-military guys, they would always smile when they saw my Camels. They’d usually bum one off of me for old times sake and then cough their way through it.

I eventually worked my way up to the filtered ones and by the time I quit up to the lights. But they all still had that burn.

When I was in Turkey, men were fascinated by the fact that I, a woman, was smoking in public and would often bum a smoke to try an American brand. More than one was amused by the filter but they were always friendly and polite about it.

I quit quite some time ago but I still miss it, almost daily.

My youngest sister has one of those electronic thingies. I asked her if it had the burn of an actual cigarette and was saddened and relieved when she said no.

I can’t start smoking again.

I won’t.

Can’t afford it physically or financially. Won’t ever be able to afford it and that’s just fine.

Breathing is good. I’m a big fan of it and would like to keep doing so on a regular basis.

But oh how I miss the particular burn and crackle and the first deep drag off a just lit Camel fresh from a newly opened pack.

chatelaine/in the kitchen

Salt bomb

Posted on May 17 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Life has been especially crazy lately.

Coming up hard and fast on the completion of a multi-year project at work so I’m working long hours and more days than ever before. Good for the struggling finances, bad for cooking.

I’ve been trying to cook extra on the weekends to get me through the days when it’s just me to feed. I’ll eat leftovers, especially if they can be repurposed.

Otherwise I just end up with a bowl of cereal for dinner. Not the worst thing in the world but since I don’t eat when I’m busy working it can be problematic to not have at least one decent meal a day.

Roasted a chicken recently which was immediately broken down for stock. Made more roasted potatoes than the youngest and I could eat with one meal, still working on readjusting quantities. Coming from a restaurant background and then cooking for a large family means that I usually make too much.

Not a big fan of reheated roasted potatoes, they lose something in the translation, but there were too many to waste and I was hungry hence the repurposing.

I turned them into home-fries.

Start with a nice heavy pan, medium heat with a dollop of your favorite fat. I used bacon grease, olive oil would work as well. Once the pan is heated add in the cold roasted potatoes and occasionally move them around so that the edges crisp up nicely. I also added some seasoned salt and crumbled in a piece and a half of bacon that I dug out of the back of the fridge.

I considered finishing it off with some cheddar cheese melted over the top but instead went with sour cream and fresh chives from the garden.

Yeah, it was a salt bomb but I’ve been craving salt with all the running around and damn was it yummy and filling.

musings/the scribbling life

Updating the about

Posted on May 10 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

This is my 50th post.

Took a few years but I got here.

I’ve been working on updating things around here in this bit of my virtual universe. Finally getting the site updated, adding a not so desperate plea for people to sign up for email, changing out photos, that sorta thing.

Decided it was time to update the about page. I hated the blurb when I originally created and posted it over three years ago but I was standing firm on perfect being the enemy of the good and just got the damn thing done and up. I knew I wasn’t going to like it no matter how much I agonized.

So I started writing a new about blurb and as often happens the damn thing grew beyond its original purpose. So now it’ll be my 50th post and an edited version will be the new about page.

Two for the price of one!

About D.G. Reid

I don’t remember a time before I could read.

Not that I’m so freakin’ brilliant, just that my memory sucks, and doesn’t, in weird, horrible and wonderful ways.

I remember riding in the back of the family station wagon and watching Dad #2 back into a telephone pole as no one would listen to me as I tried to warn him. I remember the sudden in-rush of exhaust as the window shattered into a million pieces all over me. That’s a suck ass of a moment to have to remember all these years later.

But then it’s balanced with standing in a field in Turkey. The air was just on the cold side of chill but not enough to be uncomfortable while bundled up. The grass in the field was brown and sighing in the wind. I could smell coal smoke in the distance as the muezzin called the faithful to prayer as the sun started to set and cast everything from the dead grass, to the people I was traveling with, to the old Roman ruin we had hurried to reach before it closed, with an amber glow that turned everything a beautiful warm shade of gold. It was, as Spalding Grey named it, a Perfect Moment.

With my head full of the above sorts of memories it’s no wonder I have no idea when I started to decipher the squiggly lines on a page and derive meaning from them.

I’ve spent a substantial part of my life reading. Always have. Hopefully always will.

I started dancing with the muse just as I became a teenager. I have what is termed a severe sequential processing deficit in regards to language, math and other linear processes. The person who tested me figured the reason my language skills were so wonky is that I memorized the English language because the structure behind it was, is, incomprehensible. Good for vocabulary, bad for diagramming and grammar. Guess I just didn’t have enough words at my fingertips before I was 13 to be able to form a sentence that could actually convey some deeper meaning.

The first poem I remember writing was about/to a boy named Danny. He had brown curly hair and one blue eye and one green. He was my first hard crush that I got to act on.

My life blew apart shortly thereafter. No idea what happened to the physical manifestation of the poem but I’ll always have the memory of pouring a bit of myself through the pen and onto the pages of a composition book just like I’m doing with the first draft of this particular bit of me.

I wrote a lot through high school. Even attended a program for it in between regular high school and work. Students always explained it as kinda like Fame, but not. I was in the first class of the Poetry/Prose department. The program was so new we didn’t even have a classroom. We met in the lighting booth of the theater. The stairs up and down were a nightmare but it felt very special being isolated up in the tower of a former synagogue.

Writing gave me a place to dump all my thoughts and feelings so they didn’t all come oozing out through my ears.

So many things to process.

Received a national award for a short-short story I’d written. While doing a reading of the third chapter of a fantasy book I was plowing through creating, an editor for a major NYC publishing house handed me her card and told me to send her the full draft once it was finished.

I never wrote another word in that universe.

During college I was busy writing other things and didn’t have time for anything other than the occasional poem. As a history major, if you learn nothing else, you at least learn how to bang out the pages.

After college came kids and when they were little I was so busy figuring out how to be a mother there was no brain space for anything else. Not even me.

As they aged I picked up the composition book and pen. Brought dreams and nightmares to life and talked with friends old and new about writing again.

And then my life blew apart again. It happens. Sometimes more often than not, or more often than we’d like. I do what I can to minimize it. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

And then I got sick and wanted to die but didn’t. Writing helped me hang on to what little bit of sanity I had left.

I wrote 97,000+ words in The Tome. When I couldn’t stand being in this world I had that one to retreat to. Three final chapters to go and I chucked the entire thing and started over again with an outline, character sketches and a blank page.

And then it happened again.

But here I still am. Figuring it out on my own and not feeling especially successful at the moment but still moving forward even if sometimes I take the long way around.

Words are the only thing that has always been there. Whether my own or another’s.

I string words across the page and try to bring order to my chaos.

Welcome to the journey.

It’s nice to have some company.

#curatorslife/musings/the horde

Sure hope the floor holds up

Posted on May 3 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

The father of my children once said with that dry, wry wit of his that he was waiting for the floor of my study to collapse into the basement some day.

Why would he say that?

It may have something to do with the 142 linear feet of shelving stuffed into a small room which are double and triple stacked with books as well as a 1917 piano, several filing cabinets as well as just general stuff and detritus.

The piano was a rescue. I don’t play. Was never allowed to as a kid (Dad #1 was a piano player) and haven’t learned yet to as an adult. Retirement project? Ha! Like any Gen X’er is going to be able to retire. Or at least not too many that I know.

Got a call at work one day. Guy wanted to know if we wanted a piano for the collection. We already have 4 pianos (and 2 melodeans!) and this one was from across the river so it wasn’t relevant to us anyway. I offered to help him find a new home for it but he said “Nope, I’m going to get my ax. The dumpster leaves tomorrow.”

That brought me right back to when I was a kid hearing tales of when my middle aunt refused to practice piano like my Jadgi thought she should and he chopped it up with an ax and burned the remains in the backyard. My grandfather was always very calm and kind to me but there were enough stories floating around our family about his wicked temper that I knew there was something more lurking under the surface that I saw as a kid.

So I’ve got this annoyed man on the phone who just wants to clear some space in his house after no one touching this piano for years and he’s going to get the ax.

I couldn’t let the piano die.

I told him I’d take it personally if he would wait till the weekend. He was willing to do that. Took four guys and a pickup truck with ramps to get it from his house to my apartment. We left dents in the wooden porch floor on the way in while they rested from getting it that far.

When I moved next door I paid for movers. No one was willing to do all that again and I don’t blame them. This scrawny, almost elderly guy with a scraggly beard and his very young and slight assistant moved it all by themselves with a shifty looking dolly. It was a wonder. Well worth the $300 just to watch. Well, not really but what choice did I have? I may be stubborn but even I realize that I’m not moving a piano by myself.

The piano takes up a lot of wall space, which is unfortunate, but I don’t begrudge it. It is a thing of beauty and has a rich mellow tone. Sterling really did make a beautiful piano. A sorta friend gave it a good workout once and it was amazing. He’s a hellva ivory tickler.

From: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Symphonium-Organ-Sterling-Piano-Derby-CT-Brattleboro-White-Cat-Advertising-Card-/311658114936

It’s still a lot of potential shelving lost though. To make up for it I have books piled on top of it and in front of it. And in front of two of the three filing cabinets. I can open the top two drawers on each but the other three are lost to the ages.

I have books in the basement of this house and in the basement of the house next door where I used to live. My dream is to have all my books shelved at once in an orderly fashion.

An inventory would be nice too. Who hasn’t bought the same book more than once?

Anybody?

It’s one of the perils of buying the vast majority of my books secondhand. I can afford to make mistakes at a couple of bucks a pop and if nothing else it’s a donation.

I need to go through all these books and decide what I really need to keep. The complete Dresden Files and This Republic of Suffering most definitely. But Dreadnought, eh maybe not. Oh there’s another two inches gained.

Or maybe I should keep it?

How to choose? They made it into this room for a reason. Isn’t that enough?

What metric to use when judging what should go back out into the Great Material Continuum?

What would I miss if I never had access to any outside books ever again?

That seems reasonable.

I’ve always wanted my own private library. Any space I’ve lived in has always had lots of books. I actually used them as insulation in one room. Well it was actually more of a porch and there was no heat so I had to use something to keep from freezing.

Yes, my current study could use a bit more square footage but too much and I would miss the intimacy of being surrounded by dead trees. So many other universes trapped within their pages that I can practically hear them buzzing, just waiting to be opened and explored.

No one but me is ever entirely comfortable in here. I didn’t intend it to be unwelcoming to anyone else, it’s just the way it ended up. This is the one place in the universe I allow myself to do anything I damn please. He once said that being in here was like being inside my head and it felt too intimate, even for him.

Maybe I can use that to judge any future potential mates. If they don’t run out screaming they can stay.

No one besides me can find anything but I actually have a pretty good grasp of what’s in here, which is both terrifying and amusing. Needed to lay hands on the patches for my bag that I bought last year at ConnectiCon. While I was digging them out, which took all of three minutes, I also set aside a pile of magazines and catalogs for recycling and actually brought them straight to the bin. Every bit helps in the Great Sorting.

The youngest is doing a project for her enrichment program and needed some research material on children who were evacuated from London during the Blitz.

“You don’t have anything like that, do you?” she asked.

I laughed.

It took a bit of doing but was still less time than it would have been to take her to the public library. I had to move the Little People house and a stack of about 10 books from on top of the piano to get to the one I was looking for which was specifically about children and their experiences with the Blitz.

For the one about the Blitz in general I had to get on top of a step-ladder and plant my foot on an opposing shelf for a boost up. I handed my phone to the youngest and told her to call 911 if I managed to fall and knock myself out. I was successful in retrieving the book and as might be expected caused a bit of a book avalanche.

While I was tidying the avalanche, I found another book I’d forgotten about printed in 1943 by the The British Information Services with an insert titled “How to Protect Yourself Against War Gasses”. Her eyes lit up when I showed her that. It’s got a lot of photographs in it. All black and white and it’s propaganda so I doubt there’s any bodies. Appropriate for a kid in other words.

People forget how those in charge once more overtly controlled what the people knew. Control what people have access to, like through censoring photographs of military coffins and maybe you can keep the good folks at home from connecting those ever higher numbers they hear on the news every night with an actual flesh and blood person. Control what they see and you control what they know. These days we have the threat of the loss of net neutrality to the development of alternate facts and beyond. It’s all spin control.

Were the cruisers heading towards Korea or away?

Who knows what the truth is anymore?

Who’s willing to do the work to figure it out?

I’ll be choosing my own truth by setting aside this book but not that.

The Library at the End of the World.

Does that Pat Buchanan book I was forced to buy for a graduate Poly Sci class but never even cracked open need to stay?

Does my universe lose something if it goes?

Do I really even need to ask?

No wonder why this room is such a mess.

But hey, I got rid of a pile of recycling today. That particular pile is five inches shorter now.

As long as the floor holds up I’ll eventually get through it all.

Not quite ready to open the door yet. I have a bit of tidying to do first.

chatelaine/gettin' crafty/musings

Stitching through time

Posted on April 26 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it keeps popping up and surprises me like the first time I realized it; I have a lot more time on my hands these days.

It’s very, very strange.

Yes there is always laundry and cleaning to be done and figuring out meals happens on a regular basis. But the impetus to be busy in these ways, to devote copious amounts of my time to the thoughts and actions, is significantly reduced when one goes from a household of five to a household of one daily, two regularly and three rarely.

I was never really on my own, all alone and the only adult in the house except for about a year between when my daughter’s father moved out and two others moved in. Except for a short time after I graduated college, I’ve always lived under someone else roof or a shared one. And even then it was more of a communal living situation as I knew people in 6 out of the 8 apartments in the building.

It’s funny the things that pop up and need to be radically adjusted when living circumstances change.

Trying to learn how to adjust the food in the chest freezer is driving me mad. I know it’s more efficient to keep it full but with dollars the way they are these days I have to shop especially carefully. I’ve been saving gallon milk jugs and filling them with water for the bottom of the unit but even that is problematic. We just don’t go through milk all that quickly anymore.

I bought two pounds of prosciutto for $8 recently and separated out, vac packed and froze it. Gave some to the eldest to take back to school with her and the remainder will feed us for 26 meals. Yes, I’ll need some other ingredients like pasta, heavy cream, Parmesan or maybe mooz and thin sliced chix cutlets but these things are cheap in comparison to what prosciutto usually costs. We’ll probably make use of this for at least 9 months, possibly a year.

Do most people have to think this much about prosciutto?

I sure hope the fuck not. But this is my reality and I know I’m not alone.

I have a list in my phone now with a full inventory of what’s in the freezer that is current at all times. That’s only possible now because I’m the only one who pulls stuff out of the frozen tundra.

What a strange way to spend so many of the precious minutes that make up a life.

So in my copious spare time that is not being taken up by hustling for cashy money I’ve been playing with creative stuff.

I can’t work all the time.

Came across a length of vintage cloth and wanted to see it go for some use other than rags. It was too good to waste, probably a mix of cotton and linen with a lovely texture to it. But I’m also determined to find new homes for those things that serve no purpose. The house needs clearing and everything must serve a purpose or at least a purpose in the near future. Trying a bit of Morris meets Marie to whip things into shape. So the fabric needed to be used or it needed to go. But use it for what?

I have some basic crafty skills. I’m not an artist by any means, just a dilettante. I can stencil, silkscreen, paint something that’s already traced on the wall like letters or a basic pattern, sew a straight line, crochet as well as do various types of needle work like embroidery and such and recently I’ve begun playing with beads. I like playing around with new materials and methods but finishing things is not my forte’.

I really need to finish things. Lots of things.

Here’s the start of something.

It’ll be interesting to see how it works out. And I’ve promised myself that I will actually finish it.

Part of the craftyness has been realizing that it’s okay to take up hours sketching something out that I later discard. It’s part of the process. And then, when it’s ready, it’ll come together. I just need to be a bit better about following through.

Various paper drafts of another project that is also underway.

But I also have more time, and brain space, to follow through now so maybe I actually will manage to finish this thing, whatever it actually is.

It’s very strange.

Life is very strange.

Just focusing on the next stitch.

musings/the scribbling life

Distraction or viable idea?

Posted on April 19 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Work has been especially busy lately but the end is in sight and my creative side isn’t satisfied with waxing and moving lots of old and heavy furniture no matter how much it needs to be done. So I’ve been trying to sit at my desk every evening and pound out a few words, thoughts, ideas on the page even if they never make it out into the wider world.

I’m getting more comfortable with the thought that a person has to make a lot of mistakes before they finally pull off a finished product. Whether that be relationships, meals or creative works. There’s a lot of trial and error, let’s throw this up against the wall and see what sticks, happening before something finally jells and it all comes together.

Previously, with my creative time so very limited by family and other responsibilities I was very uncomfortable with just playing around, whether it be with needle and thread or words. I was convinced that every moment needed to be used Productively and every creation had to be Worthy of the time and effort.

As you can probably imagine, that didn’t go very well.

I spent a lot of time being blocked and staring at the screen frustrated or on Friendface or otherwise frittering away the precious moments.

And then life changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGK8IC-bGnU

I over think as a writer.

I ponder ever word to the point where they lose all meaning.

I never finish anything.

I’m trying to leave all that behind in the past with a lot of other baggage. Trying to listen to Mr. Gaiman and JUST FINISH SOMETHING.

The other key to this lock was an article that’s been rolling around in my head about not focusing on accepted submissions but instead on racking up the rejections. Focus on quantity over quality because you’ll eventually get a gem with the former method and the latter just paralyzes.

With the aforementioned problem with finishing things however, it’s tough to come up with something viable to send out.

A friend especially liked a particular post of mine last year and suggested I send it to a specific publication for consideration. I spent ten months emailing the piece into a black hole as directed by their website before resorting to the same friend passing along a paper copy at a publication party. It’s been over two full months since that and I’m thinking I’ll count it as my first official rejection. Just would have preferred a more definitive one on paper or in email.

There’s projects like The Tome that take almost as long as real children from conception to leaving the nest but there’s also a side of me that just wants to whip through something for the fun of it. Something a bit more creative than a post on this page.

Something thrilling and/or full of adventure. That’s the kind of stuff I read. Fluff and nonsense for the most part but very entertaining. I generally don’t like to get bogged down in my reading. I’m already part of a meaty and tragic multi-generational saga, IRL and my writing universe. I want to go Somewhere Else when I read.

I don’t know if I can write like that though.

Then again, I’ve never really tried.

I want to write something quick and dirty.

I want to send the first chunk off into the universe before I’ve figured out how to write the next section let alone how it’s all going to end.

I think I want to write a serial.

Now the thing to determine is whether or not this a viable idea. Or is this particular bit of goo sliding down the wall I just threw it at and leaving slime marks all the way.

in the kitchen/musings

Sub-par ingredients and intrusive thoughts

Posted on April 12 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Had a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich for dinner the other night and as I was waiting for things to toast and melt I had a moment to let the thoughts wander in a multitude of directions as they often do.

Would the sandwich be better with a better quality cheese? Fuck yeah, but the 5 lbs of American “cheese” that I picked up at Costco is what I can afford at the moment and I’m grateful to have it.

But just because the ingredients aren’t top-notch doesn’t mean that it can’t taste good. This is where the technique/skill aspect comes in. Not that there’s much skill necessary to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but you want the cheese melted and the bread toasted, not burnt, so that does take some attention to detail.

So, get the pan to a good temperature. Melt some butter and a bit of bacon grease (I keep it, filtered after cooking up a batch, in a jar in the fridge) and toast what will be the inside of the bread for a moment. Then add another blop of the fats and flip over so that the outside of the bread is getting toasted. Put on an ample, even amount of cheese and then cook it low and slow till the cheese melts. You might even be able to turn off the pan if it’s hot and heavy enough. Warm the meat if you’re having any, before adding it to the sandwich right before you assemble it. Let it rest in the pan for a minute so it can all melt together and then cut and plate.

Yum, sorta.

While I’m cooking this gourmet meal I remembered one that He and I had on the way to Vermont. We stopped at this lovely, if rather expensive place, because we were both starving, it was getting late and we were only moving deeper into the middle of nothing. It was parents weekend at a local boys boarding school and there were cars in the parking lot worth more than my house with people dressed to the nines, dropping more on one meal than I spend in a month.

Sooo not my world but I can code switch with the best of them and the place smelled great. We sat at the bar because that got us menus quicker. We shared dates stuffed with blue cheese wrapped in bacon (which is why my sandwich brought up the memory) and we both had small pasta dishes. Mine was a mixture of sauteed mushrooms with a light cream sauce tossed with fresh made noodles. Exquisite. Eat there if you ever get the chance.

So I go from remembering this wonderful meal on the beginning of a weekend away full of promises and potential delights to dinner in the cold and the dark, all alone and it bothers the Hell out of me but it doesn’t.

I’m finding that I like being alone for long stretches of time. No one who knows me is probably surprised by that. I think what I am surprised by is just how much I enjoy it. Deciding what, or not, to have for dinner. Three nights a week when I’m kid free (she’s with her father) I can do whatever I want. Generally what I end up doing isn’t all that exciting, working ten-hour days and sometimes eating cereal for dinner. But the potential is there and sometimes that’s enough. Or I can go out to a two-hour movie that starts at 8:50 p.m. like I did the other week and there’s no one to double-check or make arrangements with.

Standing at the stove in my pj’s, shifting back and forth through time and space, smelling the bacon from my shifty sandwich, remembering the amazing meal at Blue Heron and how I do so love to share good food with those I love.

I go from that to

THIS

Talk about reality smacking one upside the head.

It’s like he’s dead. But he’s not.

He’s just not here anymore.

This is really something that I never even imagined.

I was daft enough to think that he was the person to stay by my side through thick and thin, for better or for worse, till death do us part.

It seems he wasn’t the man I thought he was.

Whoever he was when he was with me, he’s now a person I text occasionally about picking up the last of his stuff or to check and see if he’s waiting for the mail that shows up at the house. Sometimes I have a tech questions and he’s kind enough to answer.

He never texts me first.

That’s very telling. Just not quite sure what it’s saying. Knowing him as I do, it could mean many things, all at once and each entirely opposite in deeper meaning.

Were he once was there is a very large void and it only gets larger as he moves further out of orbit and off into the darkness.

I’m still learning how to fill that void, maybe even make it a bit smaller and more manageable. Nature abhors a vacuum so I’ll obviously figure it out, eventually.

This is where the creative work comes in. So much more time now for futzing around with stuff that serves no immediate purpose other than the joy it brings through creating.

That time is a gift and one I refuse to waste.

But I miss him, even after everything that’s happened.

He’s been a part of my life in one way or another for the last 30 years and now there’s just

musings/the horde

Increasing levels of control

Posted on April 5 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I am currently the only adult in the house.

There are some very good sides to that.

And there are also some very bad sides.

The good side is that I can decide what colors the paint is bought in. Yes, the stairwell walls are going to be bright yellow and the banister eggplant purple.

The bad side is that I’m ultimately responsible for just about everything in this little bit of the universe. That’s a lot of bills to pay with not much of a paycheck.

Since the boys left there has been a grand cleaning, sorting and chucking going on. It’s a daunting task but by focusing on one room at a time it’s a bit more manageable.

The youngest has been working on clearing out her room for the last month or so.

She has literally laid hands to everything she owns and done one of three things with it; set it aside in her sister’s room so that it could be returned to her room once it was clean, set it aside in that same room so that it could go somewhere else (the Little People and the Brio train set are getting set aside for the next generation but the tyranny of Barbie has come to an end!) and then the inevitable trash and recycling. She filled both bins.

Problem is her sister is due home from school soon. She probably would like a place to sleep and access to her belongings.

So all weekend we spent working upstairs. I spent some time tidying up my own room and guiding her. She did the majority of the work. She hit the wall of exhaustion eventually. She said to me when we finally retired to the couch at the end of a very long day, “Is this what you feel like all the time?” and I gave her an honest answer. How could I not?

I hit that same wall the next day while we finished the clearing and began the cleaning. I was planning on sitting down once her bedroom floor was mopped and drying but only made it through four loads of laundry washed and hung, cookie pick up for scouts and the beginning of the Slaying of the Dust Mammoths. The final vacuuming and mopping had to wait.

I almost fell over I was so dizzy. Told Sofie I was going downstairs and literally fell onto the couch. It took a few minutes for the room to stop spinning and then I went into a coma for two solid hours. I never nap like that anymore. Then again, I also haven’t been doing this much up all by myself until now for quite some time.

A good thing about being the only adult in the house is that I can tell the kid to make her own supper out of what’s in the fridge and she’ll do it if she wants to eat.

She could have had pork roast but chose roasted potatoes and a salad. Said she was going vegetarian for the day. When there’s five or four people to feed it’s not really possible to survive an entire day on leftovers. There aren’t that many. With just two we are able to get three meals out of a deep dish sausage and mushroom pizza.

After my epic nap and a half hour laying on the couch waking up, we tackled the rest of the room. Vacuumed from top to bottom, floor mopped for the first time in quite a while. All linens and curtains washed, line dried in gale force winds at 26°. She carried things in from the staging area in her sister’s room and the hallway. It was a surprisingly little amount. I’d say she probably purged about two-thirds of what was in that room.

So now it’s down to me to go through the detritus that has been discarded and do one of three things with it. Set aside somewhere safe and save for the next generation, send back out into the Great Material Continuum, or recycle or chuck.

Goodwill pile under the window. The stuff to the right is all going to school to be distributed as needed.

It all comes back to me as the only adult in the house. But at least I can get these sorts of projects underway for the eventual greater good (how long has that white bin of stuffed animals been in the hallway under the laundry chute? And the doll bunk bed waiting for a clear space under the window and holding up plants?) and now that her room is clean, it’s been made very clear that it needs to stay that way.

Mattresses made and the beds ready for Emily and Mia.

I’m so very proud of her. She’s done s a great job. She has taken control of her universe and made it what she wants.

Just like I’m trying to do with mine.

I think I just had my first moment of actually feeling like an adult.

#funtimes

in the kitchen

Searching for that perfect balance

Posted on March 29 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

The older I’ve gotten the more I appreciate the malleable beauty of caramel.

I don’t remember the flavor fondly from my childhood. I remember one experience with attempting to make a caramel apple with those packaged sheets and it not going well and tasting even worse. There was probably the occasional hard candy as well but I’m just coming up with a sticky linty flash of vague memory.

And then one day, a few years back, I picked up a container of dark chocolate covered caramels while at Trader Joe’s. Suddenly I understood the appeal of caramel.

It can be a syrup over ice cream with flecks of vanilla in it. Works slow baked on popcorn for that sweet and crunchy fix or sandwiched in a torte between shortbread and a bittersweet chocolate ganache. It can be cooked to the right temperature to become a solid that can be topped with sea salt for a contrast to the sweet or enrobed in dark chocolate to really push one into a diabetic coma.

So many things can be done with a simple sugar, water, cream, butter, vanilla combo.

Beyond my experiments with caramel corn and the aforementioned torte, I’ve been working lately on how to make the perfect dark chocolate caramel cheaply at home. I’ve been using this recipe for a while and love the caramel it produces. After making multiple batches I found that if I added the salt dead last, stirred just to combine and then poured into the prepped pan, the salt doesn’t fully dissolve and you get bursts of it among the sweet. I only use a 1/2 tsp salt and don’t sprinkle with extra salt once it sets but as the eldest says, I’m salt intolerant. I want to taste my food, not the salt.

I follow the recipe as written for steps 1-3 and don’t bother putting them in the freezer to chill. The house is cold enough and I generally make it early enough in the day to leave on the counter for a couple of hours before popping it out and cutting with a bench knife.

The directions for doing the chocolate part is reliable but I don’t have the time or patience to temper chocolate. I also find that dipping the caramels ends up with a lot of wasted chocolate on the parchment paper after dipping and whatever’s left in the pan. I don’t like to waste good chocolate. And it just takes too much damn time.

So in my search for sugary perfection I came across this recipe at my favorite place and gave it a try. It’s not for caramel but I enjoy making my allergies flare up with the occasional Heath Bar so I figured why not give it a try? It’s good but I left out the nuts so I wouldn’t be miserable and that just makes it too sweet. Can’t blame the recipe because I left out a key ingredient though. The youngest ate more of it than me. I’ll probably pulse the rest of it in the food processor and mix it in with ice cream. Yum.

Not only is it yummy but you also get to beat it with a hammer!

What did work about the recipe though was the way of getting the toffee and chocolate together. So I tried it with a batch of caramel and was pleased with the results. Spread some dark chocolate chips on a buttered cookie sheet, pour over the hot caramel, top with more chips and let melt for a couple of minutes before spreading the now melted chocolate around to cover the caramel. Let it all set for a few hours and then cut with a bench knife.

Perfect dark chocolate and caramel balance with minimal fuss and bother and the bit of salt in the caramel adds the perfect counterpoint.

The perfect balance.

Now if I could just figure out the same for the rest of my life.