Monthly Archives: June 2009

An “economical” ski resort.  Oxymoron?  Not here in Park City, where the local newspaper of record yesterday quotes Park City Lodging Association president Paul Christensen: “[Our] association just wants to convince people to choose Park City over Aspen or Vail.”  Now that’s penny-pinching, according to the Park Record.

Perhaps that’s 4K per week instead of 6K for a furnished rental.  The local high school had several bouts of fireworks for graduation last week.  All I can say is that I saw it from here and it was more expensive than the Mayville Fire Department musters up for July 4th.  I love July 4th on the lake, sitting on the shore and knowing the volunteer firefighters are out there showing us their best.  That is is their best makes it even better than Houston’s largest land-based fireworks in the nation, which I’ve watched from next door for the past few years (sorry Paula – she runs it), it’s a hometown emotional thing.

Front page, above the fold, demonstrates that there may be as many as 35 gang members in the County, so “Sheriff Widens Anti-Gang Operations.”  These aren’t just gang members, they’re “documented” gang members.  Oooooh.  That in itself should guarantee me the right to carry a firearm and have an attack dog in the back of my pickup for protection.  Right now Zoe, with tail wagging full tilt, might be able to persuade a toddler just learning to walk, to sit down to pet her while being licked.

So much for the Park Record and the Chamber’s marketing efforts to “not make Park City seem real expensive” as this body advertises in Sunset, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair magazines.

Yes, people are trying to sell off their vacation homes in droves (no buyers) and there’s a 60% vacancy rate in housing but vacant lots are still selling for a million an acre.  Now there’s a father’s day gift he’ll remember.  An unimproved acre near the slopes.  It’s not too late… Dee

While I cooked in my home for guests, I also helped plan parties for a pack of fellow plebes.  On my few off-hours, of course.  When one works for a public entity and high-speed internet is at play, years later I get to see that there are a lot of “big” and “little” people doing nothing and going no-where.  I hate to think that six years of really hard and long work on my behalf were for naught.

As I reflect upon a life in government and non-profits, I would hope this title would not fit.  In government, once I got out of it no-one wanted to get me back into it even though I was “liaison.”  And no matter what I did, most of the non-profits I counseled could not be saved because they would not change their boards or senior staff.

I served on several boards. Glad to get rid of them.  Spinning wheels.  One must get the moss off of that stone.  Never mind, I tried to dust them off to no avail.

Several priceless lessons have been already learned: use your instincts and verify the leadership; always appreciate a volunteer; and when you give money, make sure it really goes to a good cause.

I love non-profit organizations and know that when they smell money they’ll come around.  That’s when I’ll ask my questions from the other side.  Luckily that’s a ways from now but any charity we choose to fund will be a worthy one, one that puts every donor’s funds to the purpose for which the gift was intended.  See articles this week about billionaire Joan Krok’s fortune being mis-spent by Salvation Army and know that no-one cares about the $10,000 donor or one million donor when the billion dollar donor has already been snubbed and her legacy trashed by the very people she trusted to carry out her wishes.

Still an optimist, Dee

aka motherless calf, a calf that was weaned on flour and water

Git along, li’l dogie

We’re new here.  That’s my trouble up here in the mountains, there seem to be no dogies that are single and need Christmas eve celebrations or Christmas dinner.   Of course there are.  The guys will do their own thing but the gals need some family and that’s what we do every year no matter where we live.  If the guys were smart they’d hang out with us to meet their next girlfriend or wife.

Today we met three huge Newfoundlands and heard a story of a Great Pyrennese dog carrying a baby lamb in its mouth across a street, just like a pup, by the neck.  I believe it all.

By my age I should be appropriately jaded, and am when it comes to certain issues, but I do believe in people, and know that dogs can also do amazing things.

This is a temporary placement.  We could move any day.  We always have Thanksgiving at Nanny’s but don’t know where we’ll be to welcome the new year.  Still, I’d like to cook.  Perhaps prime rib, gravy, Yorkshire pudding, roasted potatoes, brussels sprouts……..

Don’t forget the trifle and mincemeat tarts.  Yes, the sign-up sheet is below,  but we don’t know where we’ll be cooking as yet.  We know we’ll be cooking for family and good friends, no matter where we are.  Cheers! Dee

In my first year of this micro-blog Cooking With Dee has accrued over 17,000 hits.  Thanks for being here and weighing in on topics and recipes.  Thank you, Jim, for creating this for me and making me write.  Thanks to family and friends for reading and contributing.  And thanks to our dog Zoe for having dinner a few moments late some mornings and evenings while I was writing.

Pyro Paula

So we need a congratulatory salute, let’s look at my shot last year of the Houston fireworks.  Pyro Paula runs the show and is good friends with Zoe.  We wish her luck this year as the corporations are cutting back and we won’t be there to say hi every day and see the event from next door.

No matter what one is able to achieve, there is another who deserves encouragement and kudos.  And don’t always look up, look to the co-workers you can mentor help up the ladder.  That goes with families as well, except for the ladder part.

As we prepare for our nation’s birthday, there are a lot of things we can do to make our families stronger, first off being involved in discussions about the nation’s health care debate.  I haven’t read those 850 pages yet, but they may be kindling before I do.  We hire our representatives through elections and usually go vote for the name we know.  As the people who hire the people who are spending our money, we have to do better.

Every time we bail out a bank or insurance company, we’re taking money from our grandchildren.  People who’ve been let go have no clue what to do to continue their families’ health insurance through COBRA because everything is in GOVSPEAK and no-one in their former employers’ health insurance plans/outsourced compliance firms will answer the damn phone.  They lie that you don’t have to pay up the last four months until next month, but you’re not insured unless you do!

Our nation and world is in a financial meltdown because we let the Madoffs and Stanfords run amok.  You also failed to regulate our major banks and insurance companies and allow everyone to defraud the American people.  Then you took from us to give them to bail the companies out.  I don’t feel comfortable with Congress owning banks and insurance companies.

There is much work to do and this is supposed to be a cooking and household blog.  So once you let me get off this topic I’ll get to oatmeal cookies and other items.  Sorry, I got sidetracked.  Two days with Jim.  Go figure.  Cheers, Dee

Mom was our Brownie leader.  She was fair and impartial in her duties.  At the end of my Brownie career, I received wings at my “flying up” ceremony to Girl Scout.  My wings were misplaced on the way home, fate’s hand in my Girl Scout trials.

Our leader was a 300 lb. woman who walked in, and sat in a chair in the middle of the room and sweated.  She had sweat to her elbow and to her waist.  It was evident she did not want to be there.  I decided to go after a sewing badge as Mom knew how to sew and could mentor me.  Whatever it was that I made, I not only failed the badge, our Troop Leader called every girl over to laugh at my work.

Shortly thereafter, we had a test camping lesson, in which we were told to bring a small frying pan and bar of bath soap.  Our Leader, out of her chair but still sweating, told us to soap the pan.  I thought we were cleaning the pan so soaped the inside to rinse it.  She meant for us to soap the outside so the pan wouldn’t burn on the fire.  Once again, she had all the girls laugh at me.

I stayed to sell cookies door-to-door, something that would never be allowed these days, and quit.  At my age, why am I ranting about this?  Because it hurts a growing girl’s self-esteem.

I met a lady yesterday who loved my denim jacket (everyone out here does) and I told her I didn’t do the embellishment but everyone thinks I did, no way because I failed my sewing badge!

She told me her Troop Leader had multiple rings and always rolled a pencil between her hands.  She was given cooking instructions to mix the batter by hand, so that’s what she did.  By hand.  She failed her cooking badge.

The soap incident just resurfaced in my memory so I have to tell her next time I see her.  These are the times that shape our lives.  Luckily I was able to rise above the soap incident, but other than a button or two, I will not sew.

I hope that people like those two women won’t volunteer for Scout service, because they do a disservice to our young girls.  Neither of us would have remembered it decades later unless it was a life-changing incident.  Keep cooking, as a cook’s best tool is his/her hands.  As for soaping a pan, 40 years later I’ve never had to use that technique but do know how to clean a pan properly.  Cheers, Dee.

It was brief, as all childhoods are.  I think the first thing I remembered was watching JFK’s funeral with Mom, during the day.  I’d just turned five and was devastated by the loss of our President and remember being given the book “Four Days” which I cherished for years.

Mom vacuumed the house in a dress and heels.  When we were a bit older we went with her every Saturday when she got her hair “done” and we went to ballet lessons a couple of blocks away.  We took group ballet lessons, separately, my sister and I. But we took individual piano lessons Wednesday afternoons, and I took violin as well.

We had the “job jar” on weekends, which was a Chock-Full-of-Nuts can filled with chores.  We occasionally traded them but mainly learned to “work” them between parents.

We didn’t realize it at the time but for a few years we were living in Nirvana, 25 acres  of land with our own natural gas well, septic tank (luckily we finally found it), and gas pump.  Yes, at age eight I was pumping gas for Mom.  And riding a Toro with two gears!  Believe me, now I’d have to ask Jim how to run that Toro.

It was the sixties and we were square as could be.  Dad had the skinny ties, near buzz cut and hat.  We had to wear a dress or skirt and blouse to school, even though all the other students were allowed to wear pants.

Every few weeks we’d get to go out to dinner and I remember one Italian place down in the village, Chimeras, that had electric bowling (I was always good at that) or Schnitzelbank, a German restaurant up in the hills that we loved.

I found a song today that Dad used to sing, in German, Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen but will try that when I can play the chords and sing at the same time, while reading German.  Sort of like walking and chewing gum at the same time.

We didn’t lock our doors or our car.  Until I was eight our neighbor was paid to walk us to school but then we were on our own.  We’re still in touch with those same neighbors nearly 40 years since we moved away.

That’s small town life, and life in the early sixties, homemade dinner and dessert every night.  Who could argue with that?  Cheers, Dee

Last week I called the Conservatory to schedule this week’s hour-long guitar lesson (a long lesson but a portion of it was Q and A) and talked to a voice instructor.  She told me she just took a trip to a competition with several of her students.  I asked how old they were, and said that they’d remember it all their lives.

Forty-two years ago I competed in choir in the State finals at Chautauqua Institution, my first time there and the beginning of a family history of “three taps.”  I was eight.  The students from fourth to sixth grades sang Panis Angelicus.  I know the bench and section I sat in to this day.  We had an LP of it but years later, after college, I found that my then boyfriend’s roommate was there as well and lent it to him.  We broke up and I never got it back.

It’s always interesting getting together with my siblings (it happens rarely) and hearing our selective childhood memories and how we each view things differently.

At my age it is joy to have music in my life once again.  It was ingrained in childhood.  Violin at age six, piano at age eight.  And Mom fit in ballet so my sister and I wouldn’t “walk like a truck driver.”  My fingers hurt, and guitar is something I don’t immediately “see,” like a piano.

Dad was taught violin at an early age by his father, and he still plays.  My brother played trumpet in elementary school but his talent lay in when he decided to practice, 1/2 hour before we had to get up for school.  At 6:30 a.m. we all yelled “SHUT UP” so he stopped then said he tried to practice but we wouldn’t let him.  Perhaps he thought it was “strumpet” lessons?  He could have been good at any instrument, I’m speaking of the trumpet here.

I think I told you the last time I played guitar was at age 12.  Today I showed off several new chords I learned without prompting, the best of which was B7.  So now I can play “Yesterday” and my instructor also walked me through “Folsom Prison.”  Not literally, of course.  Upon stating that he might like teaching someone like me who has actually heard of Johnny Cash, he said a few students asked for his songs when the movie came out, but not today.

He liked the 1964 Peter, Paul and Mary songbook and the fact that may have garnered him two new students.  It’s very interesting being a student again, but the one with the checkbook and knowing what I’d like to accomplish.

I wanted to make pizza tonight but probably don’t have time for dough to rise et al.  And it’s pouring outside.  Whole Foods has pre-made dough but I’d rather just order in from the best place in town.  Yep, that’s the ticket.  Cheers!  Dee