Socks in Box - But Not a Sock's Box at Longe Christmas

Jessica, my son's girlfriend received the first gift to open at our family Christmas Eve celebration after we toasted with Veuve Clicquot bubbly. Immediately a question of where it was made in France arose but the answer wasn't on the bottle. Though out of sequence for the usual festivities, I handed her a package and told her that the answer would be found there. As she ripped off the first revealing strip of wrapping paper, her voice rose with excitement, "we have our own bottle!"

"In this household," I reminded her, "Don't ever trust a box." She found a nice pair of Smart Wool socks in the pretty orange box. The answer wasn't on the box, either.

We returned to the usual progression of events, first up - stockings. I'm pretty much the stocking keeper for our family. As adults we all contribute. I stuff my contribution that follows tradition of a little candy, maybe peanuts and small silly or practical items. This year two stockings had measuring spoons I'd picked up at a trade show in the original "Innovate IT" packaging, a peanut butter and chocolate bar for Alex, dark chocolate caramel's for Karen hair bands for Jess and other stuff I'd found and stashed over the year. When Jess and Alex arrived, he saw the stockings, told me not to look as he added to them. When Karen arrived, she told us not to peek and added more. Though no ritual for opening, we pretty much go round the room, watching one person at a time take something out and commenting. Two salts from Iceland were the first items I found - over the years I've realized it's good to have a world traveling stocking-stuffer family members.


Alex found a 3" rubber chicken. Not from me, obviously it came from his Aunt Karen, also the Icelandic traveler. She and I howled as she relayed the story of the big rubber chicken she'd given Alex in 96 or '97 when he was eleven or twelve years old. For years it was passed back and forth showing up at each other's birthdays, always at Christmas and best, inbetween the sheets, hanging by the neck in a closet or in one of their suitcases. The chicken went missing, probably in moves since college. The replica was a good digestive laugh to remember that silliness.

Gift giving in our family is a wonderful expression of tradition and  humor... like the  socks and the rubber chicken. As I get older, I hope Alex will soak this up and carry the silly traditions that our parents shared with us and came from their parents.  

With Alex in grad school now and his finances tight I'd covered the cost of some items he needed in the name of Christmas. He didn't  have the usual bounty of packages. Though, he opened a Dom Perignom box (it has buttons to unlock it!) where he found a bag of dried fruit and nuts with a note Remember the suit. Silly.

At one point, I ripped the paper off a DVD tax prep program from Alex. He seems to find thoughtful, practical gifts that relate to things we've talked about. "Look at it, Mom." Socks fell out. I'd fallen for my own joke. He does pay attention. They were especially funny Rosie the Riveter socks - not the usual muscle showing Rosie, more... well, an Italian arm gesture sock, that he'd found at the Sock Magic in Santa Fe. The socks in DVD cloaking also brought down the house with extra stories of our tradition of visits to places he's studied... France and Argentina his junior year of college and this year New Mexico while completing an investment bank internship. The photo shows Karen and Alex in front of the Sock Magic store.

Our champagne turned to espresso as we wound down to the end of the gifts. My last one was a fabulous set of plein air watercolor brushes the length of pencils that makes them perfect for tucking into a purse or pocket. Like I said, Alex finds the perfect presents. I just have to remember his diabolical side that he seemed to learn from me.

Karen opened her last gift, wrapped with ribbon and elegant white sparkly paper. Inside, protected by sheets of matching white tissue, the original rubber chicken from Alex. Still smiling from Christmas Eve.

ps. Veuve Clicquot is made in Reims France. 

Best Paleo Bread... So far

Finally! I've now tried at least 15 different recipes for bread with combinations of fruits and nuts.  This one turned out to be the tastiest as well as the best texture and it's the simplest to make. From the original recipe  it took my oven a little longer to bake, but that could be due to the ripeness (runniness) of the  bananas, the size of the eggs or my oven thermostat.  

I served this with a frittata (Alton Brown's Italian omelet), citrus fruit salad and champagne for a quick Christmas Eve brunch.. Easy, festive and tasty. I put honey and grass-fed cow butter (Kerrygold) on the table and noticed that guests tried both, but it doesn't need anything to sweeten or en-fatten it.

Directions, Preheat the oven at 350, line a loaf pan with parchment paper and schmear with coconut oil. 

2 Ripe bananas- ( Mine were yellow with some softening, but not blackening)

2 Eggs (I used large organic)

1/4 C Coconut Oil

2 C Almond flour

1 t Baking Powder

1/4 t salt

2 C Mix of dried fruits chopped I used (dried blueberries, cranberries, cherries and dates, all came from Trader Joes except the cherries that came from Door County, WI) BTW, Fresh fruit will not work.

2 C Mix of nuts (I used 1 C chopped walnuts, and mixed the second with pistachios, almond slices and pecans

2 T Flax seeds

Puree the bananas, add in the eggs (I used a food processor and swished the eggs a couple times and add coconut oil.  Switch to a bowl if you're using the food processor and mix in almond flour, baking powder and salt. Fold in the fruits, nuts and seeds to distribute throughout. 

Once you mix the ingredients pour into the prepared loaf pan and push into corners. It doesn't rise, so what you see is what you'll get. Bake for 40 minutes. Test with 3/4 into it with a knife to see if cooked through, it;s not if ingredients stick to the blade. If so, put in for a few more minutes. 

After cooling it, wrap in plastic and refrigerate. Cut with a serrated (rippled) knife. 

In several other recipes that I've tried, at this point the bread crumbles. Not this recipe. The consistency is firm and chewy, and not dry or a mouth workout. 

If you make it, let me know the combo of fruit and nuts you used and if you'd recommend them. 

Thanks. 

Longe Life Lesson 64,230 Following Directions

After cleaning up the honey from Longe Life Lesson 64,229, I noticed a sign just below the microwave buttons that reads, Remove Protective Film Before Use. Always compliant, I removed it immediately having used the oven since November 2011. 

Longe Life Lesson 64,229 Honey in the Microwave

When needing to liquify honey that's crystallized, do not place the container top down in the microwave and immediately open the pour-top. Who knew? Honey explodes stickiness.

Plane Air December

To Dallas                           To Tucson                   To Chicago

                   

Sketching Arizona

On my way to Tucson

Sunrise over the J W Marriott firepit. Not long after I sat down, last Sunday morning I organized my painting paraphernalia  and started to capture the stripes in the sky. A man in a ski jacket entered the circle and stood facing the same view directly in front of me. I made a snide comment, like, let me know if I get in your way. He placed a couple things on chairs nearby and mumbled something about the sunrise that I didn't quite hear or understand. Awhile later, as I finished the plein air sketch, a man dressed in Navajo garb came and stood directly in front of me again to block "my" view. A bit miffed, I took a breath his time and said nothing out of embarrassment that I said something before. Luckily... I realized it was the same man.  He placed sage on the fire and bowls of it around the pit. He pulled a flute from his bag and described an honoring song to all those who came before.. I put down my brush, closed my sketch book and relinquished "my" view. Like he said, "To all my relations." 

At Miraval - The hot tub and a view of Mt. lemon

A fireplace at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson.

A high contrasting room to Westward Look at the post modern Palomar in Phoenix.

Architectural Artifacts, Chicago and Painting Like Hemingway

When plein air is too cold in Chicago...

A couple Sundays back, I spent more than an hour wandering around Architectural Artifacts, an antiques warehouse on Chicago's north-side Ravenswood area (right by the El), where five-foot cheese burgers go to rest... on top of merry-go-round horses or counter from a jewelry store. Seriously, every few feet, I found myself reminded of grade school or the time we..... There are all kinds of items I said, what the hell? In one room, there were several high top tables standing at different heights - waste, neck sternum-tall with a round stainless surface on top of an industrial-sized slinky. You could press on it and it would go up or down - no hydraulics. They must have been used in some kind of manufacturing that a workman needed to maneuver from bottom to top on a big piece of something. If I only had room for one! (Gratefully, I don't.)

It took a lot of hunting to find a place where I could sit, lay out my brushes and paints where it would be convenient to me and out of the way of anyone else, and with a view I wanted to paint. Ok, that last point is moot - the place overwhelmed with possibility. What surprised me was the finding that once I sat still and narrowed my view, what I intended to paint went out of focus. Instead, saw angels - literally, angels on the bank work stand. Each of the four legs of the table held a different metal sculpture with opulent detail. I wonder how many people really saw them? I didn't until I sat nearly eye to eye with them, but they were at a stand up table. I wish I knew the thinking behind them... the interior designers consideration for telling the inner story of a bank... Here at the altar of commerce, I commend my money. The angel I looked at directly spread it's arms and wings, the one in the distance with flowing robes nearly took flight. The other two were behind lout of sight behind other furniture and artifacts.

To paint this, I sat on a black metal bench that had ridges creating a serpentine of Ss down the middle to outline where butts (small ones, by the way) should rest in a Brazilian ice cream parlor. Every two sections for seating, the designer placed a twelve-inch round on a pole to serve as a table. On one of those, I placed my watercolors and cup of water, and on my lap my Arches watercolor board.  (You know how every interest and hobby has it's efficiencies? For watercolor, Arches paper  company stacks high quality paper bound to a heavy hard cardboard - a rip-off note-pad of watercolor paper. The rubber binding in this case goes around all but an inch of the entire stack. No matter how much water one puts on the paper in the process of painting, the next page of the stack doesn't get wet. A miracle innovation! I carry a mini-Swiss army knife to gingerly remove a page from the deck to begin a new piece.)

You, as a reader, may already notice that I have trouble editing. I try to include too many thoughts, and too many words. This is a personality flaw and not confined to writing. My painting is the same. I wish I could include every hair, freckle, crack and dust-mite. I wish I could, but I also don't have the patience. There is way too much to say or paint. I want to paint like Hemingway's complete six-word story... "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn."  Bam! What a word picture. Right?

Unfortunately, I've also learned from writing that the brilliance isn't in the words you first lay down, it's about the editing. This painting is hugely edited. There were many more things on the walls, hanging from the ceiling and on the table tops in view between the angels and me. 

My guess is that when I go back again, the items will be sold or moved and I won't be able to attempt the same view again,  though I'd like to do so. I will remind myself, no matter what I find, to narrow my focus to see more.

BTW, Architectural Artifacts is also an event space where I want to be invited... maybe throw a party. There's info to the event planner at the link above. 

Extraordinary Thanksgiving Leftover Cauliflower Soup

Thanksgiving Leftover Cauliflower Soup

I've revised this because I buried the lead i(n all the directions for the stock), as  journalists say.

I found this super easy way to make a great soup by mashing together  in equal amounts the left over cauliflower and the turkey stock I had made from the giblets, carcass and drippings. That's how simple. Below, in the rest of this posting, is just how I made the stock and some of the other ingredients I added to brighten the flavor of the cauliflower soup.  

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday when the whole family could gather together. For the most part I cooked a Paleo friendly meal using sweet potatoes and mashing cauliflower as another vehicle for an amazing mashed vegetable/turkey drippings gravy, I found when I looked up Paleo Gravy. 

Turns out, the recipe for the brined turkey in the article was already Paleo hacked from Epicurious, basically using ghee instead of butter for basting. Epicurious and the hacked one, didn't include bread stuffing, only veggies and lemon in the cavity and around the bottom of the pan. 

That recipe instructs you to gather the veggies and blend them for gravy adding some of the drippings.  No flow. It was thick and good.

So now It's Wednesday and I'm at that point of dreading another bite of turkey, and I still have a few leftovers and ingredients I didn't use up in the last couple days.  I don't like to waste food. Here's a really simple soup I made from the leftovers. t

First I made a turkey stock 

I turkey carcass in a big pot with enough water to cover it.
I added the following:

• The contents of the little bag i took out of the turkey cavity. 
• The other half of an onion used in the turkey brine
• Carrots cut up and left over from the crudite' tray about 3 whole or a hand full of baby nibs
• Celery cut up and left over from the crudite' tray
• Stem of rosemary chopped fine - that I didn't use in the turkey
• Stem of thyme chopped fine, also that I didn't use in my turkey
• 1 lemon cut in half I took the seeds that were visible out (I threw a lemon stabbed into the cavity of my turkey with the same veggies and herbs listed above - it was a huge help in keeping the meat moist)
• Black pepper (my turkey was brined and already was well salted)

I brought it to a slow boil and simmered it till rest of turkey fell off. I let it cool and spooned off the fat. 

Cauliflower soup

Put left over mashed cauliflower in a sauce pan. I had about 3 cups. Because I had some, I added a stem of thyme, a stem of chopped rosemary, a couple shakes of nutmeg and a few twists of pepper. If I hadn't brined the turkey, I would salt it too.

Pour an equal amount of the stock only into the cauliflower (no veggies or meat). You could use store bought stock. You won't know the difference.

Stir while it's heating till it blups and bubbles  Voila'! Really good, satisfying soup. 

6 cups 2 or 3 servings (it's really good, it's barely any calories. Don't judge)

Plane Air - November 2015

My business travel for the year is over. These sketches were done  earlier this week on my way to, from my hotel and on the way home from Dallas. It wasn't till I saw them together that I noticed that I instinctively chose a Fall palette. Now to fly somewhere where I will intuitively use brighter colors. 

Plane Air - Q1-into Q4 2015

Last year in preparation for retirement someday, I took a plein air watercolor class. Since then I paint in different urban or native locations and return to one place almost weekly to better understand seasons and try new techniques on what is now familiar. It made sense to me that my new life would include travel with someone or by myself and I'd want to be outside as much as possible,  

This year my travel schedule escalated with new responsibilities for facilitating health care executive roundtable events. In Spring I took a Sketchbook Skool class online which legitimized and empowered my sketching in public. In a quest to fulfill homework responsibilities, I quick sketched the seat across from me on the way out. No one complained. No one told me I couldn't.  I sketched another passenger on my way home and on the next flight out too. Voila'! a habit was born.  

Last night as I zipped away my sketchbook in its special Art Supplies pouch in prep for landing on a flight from Phoenix, the attendant stopped and asked if I was an artist. This, I've learned, is a trick question. I don't sell my work, which is 99% of the time the question behind the question. And, yet, yes I sketch and paint and make art. I clarified and said no to her, and clarified again, and said, yes to me. I am an artist in the making.

   

🆑

Ideas and Life and Hope

Great ideas, it has been said,
come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then,
if we listen attentively,
we should hear amid the uproar
of empires and nations
a faint flutter of wings,
a gentle stirring of life and hope.

Albert Camus

From Peacemaking: Day by Day 1985 http://paxchristiusa.org/

Bed Bugs and Rituals

Sleep Tight, Don’t let the bed bugs bite … cruel way to send kids off to bed. I didn’t give it much thought till I read terrifying reports in the news of bed bugs in New York hotels, then my friend's daughter came home with them twice after trips abroad. I remember feeling squeamish as the mom described the arduous task of eradicating them. I sit here writing and wondering if the itch I feel is a new one crawling up my side. 

I arrived in San Diego on Saturday, the guy told me he had a nice room for me. When he described it as a suite looking at water, incredulously, I asked if there was something I should know about it. He said that I needed to know it had a Murphy bed. Looking out, I could see the inviting turquoise hotel swimming pool out and just beyond, a suburb of house-size white yachts docked in view of the Coronado Bridge and to the Pacific. Looking in, the room included a kitchenette and dining room table on one side of the bed hung on the wall and a living room suite to the other. What I couldn’t see were the bugs. I found them twenty-four hours after my first night in the bed. I’ve learned it takes them 24 hours to bed down into your skin. Once they do, they itch. They leave a small welt that feels like it travels… it probably does. And, once they get in your head… I mean, once you think you have them, it doesn’t matter that they attacked your leg. They are everywhere. You feel them in your scalp, crawling in your ears, down your arms, in every crack and crevice. 

When I arrived home, I borrowed my friend’s PackTite, (www.packtite.com) a large canvas container with a shelf, that heats to a 140 degrees, hot enough to kill the bed bugs and filled it twice with clothes and the bag itself. 

Long story shortened… I got through it and learned valuable lessons. I wrote this as a “glimmer”… a writing exercise when it was all over in July 2011. Since then, with my 20 or so trips a year, I’ve used the Packtite twice and now employ military-precision procedures (ok, even I know those words are beyond hyperbole for me.) One lesson learned is that I got the bed bugs from a high-end hotel in San Diego... not a flea-bag hotel in... wherever. And, since then, I've learned that they will travel home with you just from luggage and overhead compartments on planes. They are wanderers.

Now, when I return from a trip, I (usually) come in through the garage, leave my bag right outside the laundry room, immediately strip down and toss all clothes and soft items directly into the washer, or dryer- if they are dry-clean-only. Hard items, like my computer and paper, I look for evidence of bugs and take them into the kitchen or directly to my desk, and I shower. Not long after the San Diego event, I put an offer on a condo and withdrew it when I realized there was no place I could strip down in privacy… a non-starter for that place. An attached garage is high on my criteria for living arrangements.

This brings me to today, when I woke up with my ankles itching. Coming in from Atlanta yesterday morning after only a couple hours of sleep and maybe one too many glasses of wine the night before, I violated my bed bug prevention procedures. I didn’t undress or change my clothes. I took my roller-bag briefcase/suit case directly to my bedroom. I didn’t shower. I had a quick bite with my neighbor and went to the doctor for a routine physical.

As I came to this morning, I used my left foot to scratch my right one. Alerts and alarms went off in my head. My ears itched and my scalp crawled. I jumped out of bed, stripped in the bathroom, showered and dressed then stripped the bed and stuffed bedclothes and everything soft from my bag in the washer or dryer. They are there now clomp, clomp clomping hopefully heating up and shaking the life out of any insects. In the meantime, I dug out the bed bug sprays and fumigated. I have company and will vacuum after the house is awake. I might give them coffee first.

I really don’t know if I brought home bugs and that’s what made my ankles itch. It might be the flu shot I got yesterday. When I wrote about the bugs four years ago, still holds true… Like an amputee who feels a lost limb, I have cell memory of the itching and want to scratch. Hopefully, the bed bugs are physically gone, I still itch when I think of them.

Bed bugs, a fact of life for travelers, have taught me more about the value of ritual than Oprah.

Webster - 400,000 Words that Frustrate My Word-Finding

I'm  unhinged by the magnitude and efficiency of the 1968 Unabridged, Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary. Did you know that there are twentysix columns of Un-words. One merely needs to look up what follows un and know that it's not that… Bam! Words that start with water fill more than two pages. Whoa. It's too bad the earth is running out of water when there are so many words associated with it. Will they be extinct?

I remember hearing on NPR that the word take has more meanings than any other. Unless I look at every page in Webster’s, I can’t say whether the comparison is true, so, I looked it up…online. Take indeed tops the list followed by break, turn and set. For take, the first entry in the ’68 dictionary is a verb that includes 55 meanings plus another column of terms used, such as, to take care or to take it lying down.  There’s a second take-verb relating to getting possession with 12 meanings, followed by a noun with six, relating to the process of taking. The 2015 online list indicates 127 meanings suggesting that in the ensuing years creativity in word making is down. By the way, only the game of Bridge used the term "take out" in '68. No chicken nor synonyms for murder, I guess. 

What a turn in vision Noah Webster took when he set the foundation for this book. It includes 157 pages of supplements including practical business mathematics and terms, air distances between cities, the history of the English language, forms of address, abbreviations, pages of signs and symbols and the history of Canada. It even spells out the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence.

In an attempt to speed the user's interface, (1968 interface, n, a surface that lies between two parts of matter or space and forms their common boundary); the book is constructed with black wells with letters along the edges. I learned from a brochure I found tucked between pages that these features are “stamped in gold” and called “thumb indexed.” They claim and I don’t disagree, that the book is “richly appointed throughout.” The paper is fine, thin and yellowed... both on purpose and now with its 47 years of age. The book is heavy with so many pages and so much information to offer. The description on the insert says its “Monumental- 2.304 pages”, and “Massive- weighs 11 pounds, 4 ounces, 11 inches high x 8 ½ inches wide”. It includes “400,000 word definitions, 2,132 illustrations, many in full color bound in handsome sturdy, buckram”. (I had to look it up. A coarse cotton, hemp, or linen cloth, stiffened with glue or a gluelike substance.)  

The insert includes, in the purchasers hand writing, a curly fine style that reminds me of my grandmother’s, that says, “ordered, 10/28/68 4.65/mo. 13.95 Total.  Seems a bargain now for this massive, monumental resource. That was fall of our senior year.  I remember chipping in coins from fifty or seventy-five cent an hour babysitting jobs to fill up our dad's cars to go to football games, Blazo’s or Big Boy. The gas at the Sunoco station cost around twenty-nine cents per gallon. I never would have purchased something so extravagant. It would take 28 hours of babysitting for me, and I had more critical purchases like 45s, Villager outfits, Sebago Mocs, Bonnie Bell and Monet earrings.

Watching TV one night, I sat Webster’s on my lap, leafed through and noticed an illustration of a zorapteran. Bored, I pulled out markers and colored it, then found other bugs in nearly every letter of the alphabet. I colored from back to front until an acarida. Since '68, publishers replaced engravings, the little pictures with photographic processes, (I learned from Wikipedia), but, it made me wonder how editors determined which words to represent. Pictures aid in understanding a concept. I could never conjure a halberd without the drawing. The little engravings aren't on every page making the information dense... intimidating… so much to know. The illustrations are a relief, a resting place for the eyes and the brain. I wonder whether the priority came from a layout decision or the information? By the way, the first illustration in the book is of an aardvark, already a cool word with its double-a beginning, the last a zoospore balancing out coolness with its double-o middle.

Though I access Thesaurus.com much more than the dictionary, I don’t learn nearly as much using it. I find my word, you know… the one… right… on the tip… of my tongue. I copy the word, X the webpage and edit my Word doc. Done. Each time, I am reminded that at this point in my life, words are precious. They don’t reliably show up for me. Use of Thesaurus.com is increasing. I get as frustrated with myself as I did with my mom when words don’t emerge when I need them. Word finding. It’s part of aging, I’m told. It must be a modern term, because it’s not in the ’68. It, however, doesn’t make me feel modern.

I so love this dictionary for helping me mind my Ps and Qs. 

Word. (as in, to flatter in 1968.)