Recipe Box

Before the time of on-line recipe files, cooks had recipe boxes. Some of the recipes with hand written directions, were passed down generationally and others were gifted collections given at wedding showers. In a present paring down of effects phase, I have the pleasure and pain of reviewing and saving or reluctantly  discarding these little pieces of paper. Some of them are tattered at the edges or stained from use but they bring back many memories. A few are ones I have memorized by now and they are standards in my kitchen. It's the simple ones that have lasted the longest. I can add various items to them and each time they come out differently but with the reliability of what keeps them classics. More than cooking, however, these recipe cards or scraps of paper torn from magazines, birth thoughts of a different time. In the days of stay-at-home mothers or fathers, there was time to plan and use ingredients that bore searching for. There were shops that sold the best vanillas or the most pungent fresh ginger, the Chinese store with the wonderful fruits, the little farmer's market with crisp greens still infused with dew from a morning's collection. You knew what dairy had the sweetest farm milk that was completely milk and not with ingredients to keep it fresh for two weeks. It was so delicious, it didn't last that long. There was time to visit others who served their tall cakes with icing that took a long time to make and tasted it. There were sandwiches with ingredients that didn't come from plastic sacs imprinted with two inches of additives. Butter was pure and sweet and everyone ate it with gusto. I don't recall obesity as a problem even with the carbohydrates and animal fats. Lard still makes the best pastry and butter lent its tender flavour without excuses. Bacon was crisp and steak was full of fat flavour that bespoke of green fields and summer hay. Those days have disappeared into huge corporation farmers and ingredients that are free from modern "help" are almost all gone. To find natural foods, mysteriously, you must shop at the high-end fashionable stores and pay their hefty prices that the richer folk don't mind shelling out to talk about over their well-appointed tables. Or if you have the time now, you may drive out to the farm areas and go to road-side stands here and there, or farmer's markets or shop for farm eggs on the farms that haven't been conscripted into big business. The recipe files on line amuse me. It seems that a simple, good recipe is ruined by adding exotic ingredients that may be braggable but what are they and why? Why do you need to throw nuts and odd off shore grains into something as stand-alone as brussel sprouts, for example? Sure, grate on some real cheese but forget the dried fruits and seeds and nuts and hot spices. That green, with a bit of good salt and butter can fend for itself. What happened to plain fresh cauliflower and carrots and potatoes? Their flavour stands alone in its earthiness and subtle hints of what its made of. I looked at a recipe on a box of pre-cooked rice and saw that it recommended frozen mixed vegetables that you "simmered" and then threw in the rice and boiled it all. Now where is the nutrition in that? Ah, give me the meat and potatoes of the past, the greens, the real apple pie and none of it, out of labelled boxes or plastic bags or fancy shops in fancy malls. Give me those that are grown and made by human hands from fields and animals that are clean and free, the true farms and farming.

Gated Communities

There is a trend toward gated communities, places you have to know the code to get inside. I see this sort of movement fearfully fearful and fearsome. Outside on the stonework entrance with its iron gates, is always a rather snotty sounding title for those who consider themselves "to the manor born". There is nothing wrong with the whole thing any more than someone in an apartment building with a coded entrance or a locked door on a house. The only thing is, that it doesn't elevate one member of society more safe over another, due to the expensive digs. First of all, money doesn't make the man, character does, as they say. Second of all, thieves are in the business of finding ways around flimsy things such as locks, gate openers and code boxes if they really want to get into someone's place, they'll find a way. Over and over again, we hear about lock-up apartment buildings with the latest of door openers and cleverest of entry systems that have been thieved. Perhaps you don't hear from the tight-lipped individuals behind the gates of that sort of "neighbourhood" being robbed. Why? These folks shun the bad rep label. What makes their insiders feel more confident and safe, has one  benefit; it not only sells, but also adds to the snob value and, of course, a bigger price. But the fact remains, that the well-off have more to lose. I can't say that I am one of the fearless ones who lives outside gates or locks, but I merely comment because I wonder where this is taking us. The incidence of break-in or theft of some kind is relatively rare, but it does occur at some point to almost everyone. Desperadoes who are addicted to substances or like to impress their gang buddies, do this sort of thing, and security devices don't stop them, no matter what the ads say. Diligence is the better defense. Confidence in a sign on the front lawn or a surrounding high-board fence, even a nasty dog, will not stop a thief. A locked window, for example, merely deters a robber who won't break the glass, from a possible longer sentence: a break and enter charge. We live in a scary world now. There are too many, whose lives are drugs or a combination of insanity plus a habit. They have put themselves in a desperate way, and do anything and everything to find a way to get what they need. The answer? The answer is not more bars but more attention on to how to solve the problems and build facilities and systems that do more than charge and incarcerate. Not doing this, is costing us more than robberies. Deaths, injuries and money spent in questionable protection devices costs every tax-payer millions. Our pockets have to be adjusted to accommodate better attention to poverty and its ills, to mental illness and its manifestations and to stopping criminals from the top down. It's worth it. We're worth it. Gates that put ourselves in prison, won't fix what will get only worse if we don't find a solution. It takes bucks and brains, not bars.

Moving Moments

You either have or want to move to a new place. You find the best one and put yours up for sale and close the deal and prepare to move. It is an exciting adventure until, as all adventures, reality strikes. Where will my things go? Will they fit my new space? How will they look there? Will I like living  where I am going? All of these questions can't truly be answered until you are in your new location. But since you made the decision and have given notice, you are on your way and there is no turning back. Out come the cartons, the best ones, those behind the local liquor store, and you begin to pack up. It seems a simple thing to do and perhaps it is for those who accumulate little. I fear that I am a collector of books, photos, files and small memorabilia. My books are my friends, ones I love to take down from the shelf and dabble in. Some books are throw-aways, others are those to smile into when the need arises. The little icons of places you have travelled bring back unforgettable aromas and tastes and images of far-away. Files hold not only vital matters but also among them, are small margin scraps with jotted tales someone told you about their childhood or crayoned scribbles made by tiny hands in toddlers' languages.  These are what take up moving time. What do you keep and what must be discarded? You begin to see your bared walls and empty rooms and what was once yours is now becoming a strange land. As your time here empties into cardboard, you are making farewells to what comforted you, protected you and warmed your heart. You will soon not come in that door again, that door that welcomed you once and made you feel safe when you closed and locked it. The cartons rise and labels on them are terse: books, utensils, coats. The new place is a stranger you have to get to know. It will feel cold and unaccepting at first. When the movers leave, you and this stranger are alone and you aren't quite sure if you will like each other. You begin to remove what's in the boxes and shyly place them in places you're not sure they will like. You know you can move them later and carry on but you feel the invasion. Pictures and paintings are leaning against the walls, perfectly neutrally. They know as much as you, whether they will fit here. When  you packed all this, you knew what was in each carton but as they piled up, you forgot  where you tucked this or that in just to fill a space. You panic a bit wondering if you will lose things forever as you re-pack for storage. You recall putting small items inside teapots or cooking ware. They were precious, old family pocket watches and jade hand warmers and tiny porcelains of ancient age. But you need the pancake turner for your morning eggs, because it is morning and you found your favorite frying pan, and that is more important right now. Today is a new day, in a new place. This is it. This is where you will come at the end of the next day and all the ones thereafter, and stacked, is  your material life waiting to be revealed anew. You happily realize that maybe it's all mountained in cardboard cubes but its all here and each box you open will be like greeting old friends who will look around, nod at you and fit into your life in a whole new way.  And that's when you are home.

Pretty Please

I know some women who say, "I want the natural look, no make-up for me" and yet others who can't make a move without their bottles of cosmetics or injections of various skin aids. It hasn't anything to do with attracting anyone, it has to do with personal need. Everyone desires to be good looking. Well, as much as possible. Amongst women that I am aware of, there are few, if any, who don't put some effort into looking their best. While they may not use injected substances or apply colour to achieve that end, they do something. Those who leave their hair "natural" use conditioners or get special cuts or that natural and rather horrible product that turns grey or white hair into a rusty hue that bespeaks old hair. Face products are always used, perhaps not to add colour but to deter dryness or give shine. No woman or man can truly say "it's just soap and water for me". Then we come to those who love lip and nail colour and here's where the palette is vast. And really, none of it is worth fretting about. These days of joyful choices in shades and a certain rebellious feeling of abandonment of former rigid "rules", we see in magazines, boisterous glitter, lethal lashes, slashing brows and eyelids that can't possibly blink, lips that defy reality and fingernails that couldn't do a lick of housework.  Faces seeking their "natural" look can find any number of products in ranges to fit any skin tone. And what is the harm in it? People who shake their heads at making up,  trip off to Africa or India and other exotic locales, whose history is embellished with body painting, tattooing, and coloured make-up of all sorts and find it intriguing entertainment. In these societies, "make-up" is largely what we use it for today: attention getting. A kind of look-at-me,-here-I-am. Whether for religious or warring purposes in the past or merely as pure decoration, depends upon the user. In trying to look our best, we want to be "the prettiest one of all" just the same motive as Snow White's stepmother sought. Why? Pretty is success. It's a hard fact for the plainer folk that most of us are, to accept that fact. Everyone wants to look upon something beautiful. Be it our politicians or actors or musicians, we all admire beauty. It's a natural need similar to seeking pretty views of sunsets or forest glades or sea waves. The achievers in our societies are people who, from their earliest days, inspired admiration. "What a beautiful baby". "Isn't he or she cute?" Who got the dates, who got away with everything more than others, who got the jobs first, who became prom queen or king, who were the TV faces chosen, who rose to the heights? Not the homely, unkempt ones. And the worst of it is that males are forgiven their sometimes flawed appearances and called "interesting" or "of character", while women of that ilk are turned away and given unkind names. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" we are told. That eye usually doesn't want to look on something plain or just plain ugly.  The "eye" of every beholder, discriminates and almost always chooses "pretty" - just as we all do.

Oh I See

How many times have you heard this or said it? Actually, you don't see, but you feel you have to pretend for the sake of another, to commiserate. Why can't we "see"? It is really rather simple. We can't see what isn't there. If you are not specifically in someone's shoes, you have no idea what the situation is with the chemistry of an other person's actions and reactions to a given situation. Recently, someone said that she knew what I was going through as a widow. She was married but not in a good space with it. She had a partner who was abusive and she was speaking through one of her  usual waves of good times/ bad times. In her current elevated stage, she said that she had spent a few nights alone when her mate was on the road working, and now she knew what it was like to be a widow and spend evening after evening alone. Sorry, I can't buy, that spending a few nights alone is anything like widowhood, and I am almost positive that other widows would agree. For sure, when I had a husband who was absent, it was lonely but it is nothing like knowing you will be alone every night for the rest of your life. At least you have, as married, the anticipation of your husband being merely away but that he will return. When you are a widow, there is no "returning", and that's the hard part. But you do get on with it. When the tears are finally gone, you have to find something to fill the gaps that your man once inhabited. I suppose it is like a relationship break-up. No one can help you because your options are unique to you alone. Filling the space with another man works only for a time unless you have found the ideal person. That doesn't always work in spite of what the Meet Match people tell you. Romantic marriages found that way eventually turn into normalcy and that's when the real testing begins. When you are an older widow or widower, it isn't all that easy. You know what it's like to be alone and it is not something you desire again, therefore, often the widowed just put up with an imperfect match for the sake of comfort and convenience. In my opinion, it's better to be alone rather than take that chance. But in the case of the right person coming along and things going well, there is a glimmer of hope. When the tests are all passed and you are still happy, that's the time to make it permanent. Lots of couples co-habit, first getting themselves a legal contractual agreement that protects their families and themselves from later possible grief. It is not mistrust, it is insurance realizing that human nature is simply that. We are all fluctuating sorts of  beings who change according to our immediate environments. Also marriage is like chemistry: a mixing of various elements coming together to turn into something brand new.  Those around you may say, "Oh I see" but what they really mean is, "I care for you and wish you well"  and it ought be embraced by the receiver in that manner. It's really just empathy.

Who Is To Blame?

There are those who blame God for every evil that ever existed: war, disease, crime and so on. They rant on about "well, if there is a cruel God who creates all this suffering, it's something that I do not want". While I will not comment on my personal take on God or no God, the blaming of a deity is interesting, if not rather comedic. It's much like two children drawing a vehicle in the mud and arguing over whether it works well or not. Both appear to believe in something before them that they created themselves and that has no substance or purpose or aliveness, other than what is in their small imaginations. Although, to my knowledge, no one has seen God or gods, therefore, how can they be blamed for anything done or not done. Life in all of its forms has existed somehow since the beginnings of it. Life includes natural death and unnatural sorts and everything in between.  Life is all living creatures: humans, animals and tiny microbes. All live. Some do helpful things and others are dangerous. As the saying goes: that's life.  Survival is key. In order to survive and replenish our kind, no matter what kind it is, we need the basics: sustenance and the process of progeny. The latter is mostly done in the company of other like or unlike creatures. It seems quite simple. But, human kind is one of the rare creatures that adds another layer, a spiritual one, as well as a bunch of other brainy complications. And while the wildlife, as we call it, goes about, blindly keeping its mouth shut, as we think it does, living out its life and evolving and doing what it has always done since it came to life originally, we have this lethal curiosity and competitiveness, the need to explain and "fix" everything and when we can't, to lay blame on things that can't talk back.  How brilliant we think we are. In the process, it is often we who messed it up and have to repair what we did veritably or inadvertently.  We get in there and doodle and dabble and question and theorize and use and experiment and when slightly successful, in our own eyes, pat ourselves on the back and pretend that we have all the answers. Perhaps we do and perhaps we have a long way to go. What bothers me is the people who think that their "answer" is the correct and only one. The God people and the un-God folk argue on while simply, life goes on and on. Looking at these people who insist that they have the right answers to it all is quite tiresome to those of us who merely want to get on with it and stop delving into who is right and who is wrong. If someone or a group of individuals want to hold onto whatever their beliefs are, so what? As long as those beliefs do no harm to the human condition, they do not call for criticism by others who don't hold those beliefs.  A belief is private. It's a right. The need to convert one to what another believes, out of an enthusiasm for our own passions is perhaps natural, I suppose, but respect must be given to the ultimate free choice of the individual. To me, it's heartbreaking to hear someone ridiculing that freedom and strutting about purporting that what they believe is  the only answer and all the others are a joke. Come now. We are no longer children drawing in the mud.

Honeymoon Period or Period.

There is something called the "honeymoon period" and it is so very true. Just about any situation contains this feature. The sales pitch is part of it. There is a sweetness about the romancing of a product and as you approach the actual signing on the dotted line or the shelling out of cash, the honeymoon is over and reality marches in. Take the purchase of a car or other larger priced item such as a home, for example. The show room effect is a dream, all shiny and containing every kind of amenity and decoration. There is music and fashion and light and a certain scent in the air that makes you feel rich and relaxed. After all, you are "just looking". The more serious your deal becomes, the less you feel the call of the pretty accoutrements, and the more the pull of your budget. When finally you determine the actual price of the item in front of you and are invited into the elegant glassed-in office with its cosy armchairs, you begin to realize that there is an end to romance and a plain door into the real world. First, what you saw in the show room, perhaps may not be what you will get. It has all of the extras and they each elevate the price. The product may have to go on order and that could take weeks before you can drive away or move in. Next all the pretty doodads that are on the show car or home, when paraded into the bill, add up before they can be added on. Decisions have to be made to fit your squealing budget. Finally, you arrive at a price you can handle for this delightful piece of mechanical wonder or dream house deal and sleeves are rolled up to meet insurances, taxes and service packages. But your eyes are still dizzied by the lovely image that is plainly visible through the glass of your salesperson's office or in the glossy picture and eventually you finally arrive at a  high but possible price. There are handshakes all around and out you go to await the great day when you can claim your purchase. You made it through the honeymoon period and are into the marriage. In relationships, it's the same thing. There is the no-one-can-do-anything-amiss honeymoon period and then there is the gradual oozing-in of reality. Sometimes the sweetness of the first call is the beginning of the last one. The test is time and resilience. What you see, is often what you didn't get and when the honeymoon is over and reality strikes, you wonder, can the relationship survive? Learning what was and not just what is, enters in. Day to day stresses occur that cause fractures. Other people come along and interfere with or add to the panorama that is developing. Honeymoons wane just as the real moon does and if the scenario isn't capable of survival, it collapses. It is not something you can predict accurately. There is no rehearsal for reality. It is an immediate experience. The honeymoon period can happen on the job or on a vacation or in the home or in a store. Anywhere. Beware.