Monthly Archives: December 2009

Jim came home tonight and asked if I had pie. No. When we first met in 2001 I made him a few apple pies. Then he had other cravings, including Crystal Light beverages, yogurt, Clif bars and others.

New Years’ Eve he took out on foot in the snow to find an apple or cherry pie, only to find all the usual outlets closed for the night. Tomorrow he’s going cross-country skiing with a friend and I’ll try to go out and get a pie pan, make dough and an apple pie for him, to ring in the new year. I’m sure he’d like some vanilla ice cream on top, but there’s no way I’m buying an electric ice cream maker for that. I already have my sturdy Donvier hand-cranked machine in storage. Everything is in storage, including pie pans. No, I can’t go get one as we’re 1,500 miles away.

Happy New Year! We’re in for the night and the only strange thing is that we can check the doors and garage before bed and in the morning the garage door is open. Neither of us walk in our sleep. More people are here for the holidays and I think our garage frequency is shared. It’s not good to go to bed and find out your garage has been open all night. I wouldn’t worry with our usual neighbors but a lot of weekenders are here and we want to be safe. Put it this way, we’ve been here nine months as of today and this has happened four times, all in the past week.

Did you do resolutions? We didn’t. We didn’t do Christmas gifts either. We don’t even get each other a birthday card. Perhaps it will all come down to a pie. Or Apple Brown Betty. With best wishes for a happy and healthy new year, cheers, Dee

Don’t get me wrong. We live in a very safe neighborhood and pay to do so. The pie cravings will go by the wayside, probably with more pie for now and fruit in his diet.

Given my new status as a guitar student, I can’t wait for Crazy Heart to come out in theatres. Unfortunately, where we are it’ll be February 5 before it graces our screens. Meantime, I’ve downloaded Ryan Bingham’s The Weary Kind from iTunes. I just heard he’s 25 years old, but he sounds as if whisky and cigarettes have been with him in the womb. Sorry Mama Bingham, just a phrase.

Don’t know if it’s just me, but these sad songs, dirges, speak to my soul. The ones I like best have a glimmer of hope. I always like to see the sun and a rainbow on the horizon. A double rainbow is something I’ve seen only once. It meant I met the love of my life three weeks later and we’ll celebrate our 7th anniversary of marriage soon.

Sometimes we’re all the weary kind, when life, the economy drags us down. But then we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off… and start all over again. Perhaps I could have been a contender, not in the Big Band era, but in the folk music 60′s. How I would have loved to be there with such creativity, a mission of social equality and freedom.

Now I get to do that with voice and other instruments, and give the gift of music to others. Our nieces loved the guitar and now the keyboard they just opened the other night returning from midwest snowstorms. Keep cooking, singing along with the radio, and walking the dog (or whatever). Cheers! Dee

Sorry, sometimes I get off track. This should be the cooking blog it promised. Sometimes issues need to be dealt with and whether it’s trans fats or airline (not national) security I need to say my peace.

Tonight I thought I really messed up with a rack of baby back ribs. I used a seasoning rub I’ve never used, turned down the oven (hey, it’s below zero outside, do you expect us to grill?) I took it out, basted it with some kick-a– bbq sauce and put it under a hot broiler for a few minutes and it was fantastic! I usually overcook it so it was succulent, sweet and tangy and wonderful. With it I served a salad of baby arugula in a caesar-style vinaigrette. We loved it.

I spent half the day at the mechanic’s downtown trying to fix a problem. Figuring out what to cook was easy. Trying to find something new every day is always a challenge. Thanks for reading and keeping up, your culinary ideas are always welcome. Cheers, Dee

How to truly increase airport/airplane security.

1. Consider it the security of the American people, not just airports and airplanes.
2. Forget responding to the last threat because they’ll just come up with something else. We’re still taking off our shoes, why?
3. Start reading the terrorist watch lists and correlate them with expiring visas and do not fly lists. It’s been eight years now. Where have you been?
4. Homeland Security is a big agency that can’t do anything right. Fix it. It can’t do domestic hurricanes right because it treats resident victims like terrorists.
5. The correlation of #4 is that the US treats terrorists like visitors and citizens like terrorists. Go figure.
6. If the correct agencies do their screenings and have lists available of potential terrorists, USE THEM. Do not body-scan Texas grandmothers or strip-search 14 year-old US girls.

***Here are some other thoughts, based on the recently issued regulations: [this is meant in serious humor]

1. People fly naked. No pillows or blankets allowed.
2. No overhead storage, on a $49 Southwest flight it’s $500 extra to check a bag.
3. No bathrooms on the plane, no exceptions.
4. Passengers are locked into their seat belts upon door-lock for the duration.
5. Not only are back-seat trip monitors disabled on transatlantic flights to the US, passengers have no idea to which city they’ll be traveling and their departure times will be confidential so neither they nor their families will know when, or even if, they’re nearing arrival home.
6. All passenger windows will be blacked out for the duration of the flight.
7. All cockpit windows will be blacked out except for takeoff and landing. It’s OK, they’re just playing games on their laptops anyway.
8. Flight controls at all US airports are not allowed to do anything without contacting Janet Napoletano personally.
9. US Congress bails out the airlines for having no passengers. Everyone sues for not having a bathroom in flight or for not being able to stretch their legs on a 13 hour transatlantic flight and being struck with leg cramps that drug manufacturers are eager to ease, never cure. Because then it wouldn’t be a chronic condition aiding their bottom line of profits.
10. Terrorists shoot or bomb anything that moves because Immigration still has no control on expired visas.
11. Personal planes become the new car and no-one listens to Air Traffic Control again. Or, Air Traffic Control gets controlled by terrorists and everyone blows up.
*** end***

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas weekend only to find all this going on. We wanted to fly somewhere for our anniversary but perhaps not. I am an ardent American citizen and voter. I’ve also been a privacy advocate for the past 25 years. Not active, but my means is writing the editorial in the right place at the right time.

I lived through Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike and was very disappointed in the government’s reaction, predominantly Federal because they governed food banks. Please see my Ike posts (look on the right). Immigration couldn’t detect the Taliban arriving en masse on our shores (probably because they don’t check ships) and if they did, probably everyone would have a visa, perhaps expired. Bin Laden could be walking the streets in NYC and not even be noticed. Just another cab driver.

Please look at the origins of the problem, not the latest attempt and punish all American citizens for trying to fly to see their relatives for the holidays. Look at it this way. Often doctors treat symptoms, not causes of disease. My fear is that our government has been doing this all along and scrambling to catch up with the criminals isn’t good enough and body scans for the 99% of us who are really going to see grandma are unnecessary.

It’s getting a bad name in the US of A. My husband has had three days off this past year, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas day. We’d like to go somewhere but not where we’re patted down and not allowed to go to the bathroom on the plane or put up a laptop at 20,000 feet.

How can we go see our family that we left nearly a year ago? Because your pre-screen procedures, TSA, are inadequate, you choose to punish all air travelers and don’t leave a blanket or pillow behind. On a trans-Atlantic flight you superimpose a meal schedule and lights out that is antithetical to any of your passengers, so you can get some downtime before gearing up for landing. Everyone gets up and goes to the bathroom to freshen up and you’re going to deny that? Probably not in First Class, which is where the terrorists will go next.

99.9% of Americans don’t deserve security lines, Passports, quart bags and pat-downs to go see Grandma for the holidays. It belies the “over the river and through the woods” mind-set most of us have when we meet family to celebrate holy days and celebratory times. On transatlantic flights, it is crucial for passengers to have water because the recycled air is so dry. I normally get up for water during the night. To tell people they can’t get up and go to the bathroom and brush their teeth before they land is heinous.

We want to fly to see family, now that Jim has a few days off, but one TSA mistake should lead to their heightened presence in the airport, not keeping people from going to the bathroom on a plane at 35,000 feet. Not inspired to travel in January, Dee

Here are my new Wellies and three of Zoe’s four handmade and designed booties, made by Margie (Jim’s mother). The fourth bootie was in Jim’s car, as I brought it to a Christmas Eve gathering. No, she won’t wear them.

Dee and Zoe's Boots

Hope you’ve enjoyed the day! I’m off to check the oven. Dinner in an hour. Cheers! Dee

I’m not talking about those that can be placed in a box, wrapped and tied with a bow. These are the gifts children are given or develop over a lifetime. Gifts that can save a child’s life or write a symphony. Gifts that one can nurture or ignore, keep to oneself or share with the world.

All the people of the world, no matter what nation or religion, have a gift to share. Our problem is that we don’t see it. Or that we see it along borders or across some line in the sand. We see it between races and genders and nothing changes.

My youngest sister sent me a card that urged peace, and for me to pass it on. I’m doing her bidding. “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me….” I do remember my counter-culture catechism from the sixties! Thank you, priests from two colleges. Peace on earth, Dee