At this moment

Gosh, I just looked back and saw that I haven’t done an ‘at this moment’ for six years! The three animals I mentioned in the last one are all dead now. If you go to the sidebar under ‘letter topics’ you can see the (very few) other postings. I’ll try to do it more often. I like stopping once in a while and really noticing. It all began as an exercise Tom had his students do. (I did change the 'feel' category to emotional feeling rather than snow on my face or wind in my hair.) Today, just before 5 pm, I sat in the big study chair between the south windows

reading.

What I saw: straight ahead

to the left

to the right

What I heard: the breeze outside the three open windows

What I smelled: bread baking in the oven

What I tasted: nothing, though thinking about the quinoa and sautéed vegetables I’m going to cook later.

What I felt: very happy in the study, which is also now a playroom and a yoga room. There are gates on both doors so Lucy cannot get in, and the room stays quite clean. It is a room without any electronic devices, and there isn’t even a clock. Just toys and books and photographs and my desk where I still check my checking account on paper, and pay bills with a check, and write cards. For me, a perfect space. I saw that my very first 'at this moment' was also in this room; and how it has changed since 2007. The computer was in there along with my beloved black reproduction phone and the answering machine. Now I don't have a land line, and the answering machine is in the same category of a VHS machine. Also, the room is all freshly painted with those new picture shelves I noted here. The only thing that remains the same is the quilt my Aunt Susie made in 1927.

Afghan Risotto - Shola

Another recipe from what may become my favorite cookbook.

As with the Turkish Leek Patties, I'll show you the recipe and then tell how I modified it for two people.

Afghan Risotto - Shola

I diced a couple carrots, and cooked them until soft.

Then I sautéed a chopped onion in 4 teaspoons olive oil with

the carrots, and a chopped tomato.

In the meantime I cooked a cup (makes about 2 cups cooked) of short grain brown rice

with 1/4 teaspoon each of tumeric and cumin.

I drained the rice,

put it in a bowl, topped it with the vegetables, some chopped chives and parsley, and the juice of one lemon.

We both loved this dish, and I'll make it often. Delicious, easy, and healthy. What could be better?!

Please visit Weekend Cooking for more food related postings.

Thursdays in the Park by Hilary Boyd

I’m fast coming to the realization that, at least this year, I may not write even short book notes about all the books I’ve read. It’s still possible, but not probable. You may have noticed that I have been posting a little more often. Last month Margaret began working part-time. It is wonderful for her and for Hazel Nina. She works only three days a week. One of those days is Saturday which is a lovely daddy - daughter day. And the other two days, we take care of Hazel. This is quite a change from four days a week. That left us three days to clean the house and do other various chores and visit with Campbell Walker. Now there are five days, and though it is still busy I am beginning to find my way back to blogging - both writing mine and visiting yours. Being just up the road, we still see Hazel very often, which is so wonderful. And we have been seeing Campbell and his new brother, Indy Thomas as much as possible. 

I so appreciate the support and loyalty of my dear readers. You’ve stopped by and left me notes, even though I have so rarely had the time to visit you over the past year or so. Thank you very much.

Without further ado, I’m going to write a bit about a book I just finished today. 

Thursdays in the Park   

by Hilary Boyd

fiction 2011

finished 8/10/15

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember who first told me about this book. I do know that I ordered it as a used copy from England, and have had it a few years. 

I really enjoyed it. I haven’t read any modern English fiction for quite a while. This one featured someone around my age, which was a treat. It is a romance of sorts, but also quite a realistic view of family life and a long marriage. Jeanie's husband George is quite controlling, and it isn’t in her nature to really protest. She kind of slips through life according to his plans. He isn’t really horrible, though I wouldn’t have stayed with him a minute! On Thursdays she brings her little granddaughter to the park, and happens to meet a grandfather with his grandson. They all get along famously, and Jeanie begins to have feelings towards Ray that she hasn’t felt for her husband in a long time, if ever. And they are reciprocated. But falling in love in one’s sixties is not quite as clearcut as earlier in life when there is no family involved. Jeanie has a daughter with whom she is very close, and a son-in-law who mostly drives her crazy, and her beloved granddaughter, Ellie. Hilary Boyd’s descriptions of the way Jeanie feels toward this little girl were my favorite parts of the book because they express exactly how I feel about my three darlings. When she first meets Ray, he says:

‘Odd thing, grandchildren,’ the man said, gazing after the boy. ‘I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. But I find he means everything to me.’

‘I know… I know what you mean,’ she found herself replying, because she too had been overwhelmed by her feelings for her granddaughter since the first moment she’d held Ellie in her arms. It had literally been love at first sight. … ‘It’s a bit like a drug,’ she went on. ‘If I don’t see her for a couple of days I get withdrawal symptoms.’ She laughed, shy suddenly, in a very British way, about the strength of her feelings. Because she hadn’t been one of those mothers who pester their offspring to make them a grandmother.

The writing is good and the book flows making the reader not want to put it down. It isn’t always bright and breezy but it is so true, so honest about family relationships and individual situations. I really found it quite wonderful and heartily recommend it.

Blueberry Zucchini Cake

This week for Weekend Cooking, I have a wonderful cake to offer. The recipe comes from here. A friend posted the link on Facebook, and I made it a few days later. Excellent, delicious, perfect cake! And now a couple weeks later, I made it again. The first time I used 2 round cake pans,

and this time I used a 9x13 pan.

Instead of a cup of oil, I used a cup of melted butter. If you’ve read my letters for a while, you’ll know I am a fan of butter when it comes to baking!

Blueberry Zucchini Cake

 3 eggs, lightly beaten

 1 cup vegetable oil

 3 teaspoons vanilla extract

 2 1/4 cups white sugar (I used Sugar in the Raw)

 2 cups finely shredded and drained zucchini

 3 cups all-purpose flour

 1 teaspoon salt

 1 teaspoon baking powder

 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

 1 pint fresh blueberries (you can reserve a few for garnish if so desired)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

Prepare two 8-inch round cake pans. (I greased with cooking spray)

Grate a large zucchini (or two small zucchini) and place in a clean dish towel. Squeeze until most of the liquid comes out. You will want to have 2 total cups of shredded zucchini after it has been drained. Set aside. (I didn’t do all this. I just grated it and used it)

In a large bowl and using a hand mixer (I used the KitchenAid mixer), beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar. 

Fold in the zucchini. (I beat in the zucchini at a low speed)

Slowly add in the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. (I sifted dry ingredients together first) 

Gently fold in the blueberries. 

Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans.

Bake 35-40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean. 

Cool 20 minutes in pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

1 cup butter, room temperature

3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

1 lemon, juice and zest of (about 2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine butter, sugar and salt and beat till well combined.

Add lemon juice and vanilla and continue to beat for another 3 to 5 minute or until creamy.

Fold in zest*.

*If you are piping this buttercream, I recommend leaving out the zest. (I didn’t use zest)

For the 9x13 cake, I halved the frosting recipe. There are no berries on top because I used frozen this time, not fresh. Whenever I make a cake, half goes to my dear neighbors down the hill - daughter Margaret, her fella Matthew, and their daughter Hazel Nina - and they agree that this is a fantastic cake. They were thrilled when I made it again so soon!

Turkish Leek Patties

I recently bought a wonderful new cookbook 

and made a dish called Turkish Leek Patties.

I cut the recipe down to suit two people, which made 7 patties. Tom and I had 3 each, and Lucy had one. 

Chop three leeks and one scallion. Sauté in 1 T. olive oil. Turn down heat and add 3 cloves of garlic. Cook for just a short time.

Cook a few potatoes - maybe 4 or 5 depending on size - until soft.

Stir together and add 1 slightly beaten egg. Blend. I used my little hand blender and it worked great.

Cook on 350º griddle which is greased with cooking spray.

We ate them plain with salt and pepper but I’m sure some sour cream on top would be great, just as with potato latkes. 

I love leek soup, and this is like a leek soup patty. Delicious!!

Please do visit Weekend Cooking for more food related postings. 

Preview of Indian Summers

I cannot wait to see this! September 27.

On not knowing an onion

I'm going to put this up for Weekend Cooking because it is food related.

Today I went shopping at my local food co-op. It carries lots of locally grown fruit and vegetables. This time of year it is a little paradise. I bought these onions

and the young woman who was packing my bags asked me what they were. I said onions; that they hadn't cured yet. I guess because they didn't have an onion skin, she didn't recognize them. It probably means that her family has never grown onions and/or never bought them fresh from a farmers' market or the co-op. It struck me as very sad.

Today's picture/Hush Little Baby daylily

Two years ago I ordered two Hush Little Baby daylilies in honor of the babies who were to be born in the coming months. The company sent more than two, and we planted them all. This year we gave two plants to Michael and Estée and one plant to Margaret and Matthew, and we still have three plants - one for each grandchild.

Can't we talk about something more PLEASANT? by Roz Chast

Can't we talk about something more PLEASANT?

by Roz Chast

nonfiction 2014

finished 7/19/15

I’ve read quite a few books in my life, and Can’t we talk about something more PLEASANT? is one of the very best. Part way through the book, I told Tom ‘one of the top ten best books I've read.’ You may ask, how can that be? How can I so love a book that is about a very difficult subject - the aging and ultimate death of one’s parents? And about a family that is quite dysfunctional. Under the author’s name on the cover are the words ‘A Memoir.’ And it is. Not just the story of her parents' declining years, but much about herself. I was shocked when she wrote that she had not visited her parents in a long time. But then again, I know adults who stay away from visiting their folks as much as possible.

From 1990 to 2001, I had not set foot in Brooklyn ONCE. Denial, avoidance, selfishness, laziness, and the day-to-day busyness of my life (two little kids! cartoon deadlines! grocery shopping!) were all partly to blame. But really, I just didn’t want to.

She feels an ‘intense need’ to go out to Brooklyn and visit her parents two days before the Towers were hit. 

We then follow her life for eight years. They aren’t easy years, and both the author and the reader know what the outcome will be. She is unflinchingly honest about what happens and her responses. It takes a brave person to admit to herself and to the world that she wasn’t always feeling or acting that kindly toward these old people. But that is the reality. Your parents are still your parents even if they are aging and dying, and Roz’ feelings toward them, particularly her mother, haven't changed.  

I think it is very important that she wrote this book. We are all so used to hearing about children who do everything for their parents, and parents being so grateful. Those are the good stories. I think Roz’ reactions are more real, and this book can help adult children of dying parents who may hate themselves for even thinking about money, for example. The fact is that many people in this country lose their whole life savings to nursing home care. This is a huge problem and will only get worse as those people born between 1946 and 1964 get older. 

Roz Chast has a page where she suggests that at the end, there should be 

something to look forward to. 

Something more pleasure-oriented. Perhaps opium, or heroin. So you become addicted. So what? All-you-can-eat ice cream parlors for the extremely aged. Big art picture books and music. Extreme palliative care, for when you’ve had it with everything else: the x-rays, the MRI, the boring food, and the pills that don’t do anything at all. Would that be so bad?

People tend to be so sanctimonious with the aged. Everyone ‘knows’ what is best for them. Why shouldn’t they (we) do just as they damn please at the end of their lives if they are still able? Start smoking those much-missed cigarettes. Eat as many french fries as you want. Drink cocktails all day long if you want. Maybe then you could die at home of a nice, quick heart attack and save your family the intense stress. I hope I do. 

After some time, her parents leave their apartment, with only overnight bags, on a trip to check out a facility near Roz’ home. They never go back. And it is up to Roz, the only child, to go through everything. She takes photos of the fridge and the medicine cabinet and the rooms. Photos that made me shudder. It makes the author take stock of all the stuff in her own home. 

Can you imagine going through rooms like this? 

She shows us what she keeps out of all that stuff.

The title of course refers to the author’s particular situation, but isn’t it the big subject none of us really wants to face, let alone talk about? Some people are incredibly cool about it, and prepared for it. Like Tom’s mum. For as long as I can remember she has occasionally send us her information - where important papers are, names and addresses of banks, etc., where she wants to be buried. Every single thing that most of us shrink away from, she faces with steadfastness and even humor. She sent us all little metal ducks that open so each child could have a place to put some of her ashes. I’m trying to model myself after her. (I got her permission to write about this here in my letters).

I could go on and on about this brilliant, necessary book. Perhaps surprisingly, it didn’t make me sad. In fact, there were some very funny parts. When her mother's mind deteriorates, she starts telling Roz outlandish stories. These are about her mother-in-law.

I think I may move Can't we talk about something more PLEASANT? up to one of my top four, sharing the honors with Gatsby and Mrs. Dalloway and something by Wodehouse. 

I know my friend Les didn't care for this book, at all, (you may read her review here) and I really understand her reasons, but I've seen too many families like Roz Chast's, and I think she has given all of them a great gift. The gift of knowing that other children feel angry, annoyed, and pretty selfish sometimes when it comes to taking care of their older parents.

There’s an interview you may listen to here.

Three Books by Heather Lende

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name

by Heather Lende

nonfiction 2005

finished 6/19/15

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs

by Heather Lende

nonfiction 2010

finished 7/11/15

Find the Good

by Heather Lende

nonfiction 2015

finished 7/13/15

I recently bought a laminated map of the US, and when it came I realized I didn’t have a wall that could hold it so I came up with the idea to put it in a corner of the laundry room. 

While I was reading Heather Lende’s three books, I would every day look at Haines, Alaska on that map.

Whitehorse, Canada is about 260 miles away which you may drive to, unless the winter snow has closed the road. To get to Juneau, which has no road going in or out, and is 90 miles away, you must take a ferry or an airplane, neither of which can be relied upon if the weather is bad. In good weather, the ferry takes 4 1/2 hours. When Heather Lende was injured badly in a bicycle accident (Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs), she had to be flown to Seattle, almost 1000 miles away. In the first book If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, the author says that babies are no longer delivered in Haines. There aren't facilities to cope with any problems that could arise. The doctor who delivered her oldest child, says that particular birth was “the 'perfect example' of why he’d quit obstetrics. 'If things hadn’t gone right …’ he began. 'Healthy women who are well prepared can and do have catastrophes. It really isn’t safe. I loved delivering babies, Those were wonderful, almost home births (in a clinic), but I hated being so apprehensive, doing acrobatics without a net.’“

So, you get the picture. This little town of a couple thousand people is, as they say, off the beaten path. I feel that it takes a certain kind of person to live there. People who come from Chicago or New York City, may think that I live in a rural, isolated place, but there are hospitals in all the nearby towns, and a major hospital (where Hazel Nina was born) about 2 hours away by car. I love country life, but I could not live in Haines. Nor could I live on an island. I wouldn’t want to be dependent on a boat or a plane in an emergency, or even just to take class trips. As a vegetarian I would have a hard time with the deeply ingrained fishing and hunting. I know it goes on around me, but it isn’t quite so much a part of the culture as it is there.

That said, Heather Lende presents Haines as a wonderful place to live. A place where there are conflicting political and religious views, but a place so small and isolated that the residents work at getting along no matter what. You may intensely disagree with someone, but you still sing next to them in a choir. In the first book, we learn about the town, through Heather’s obituaries. She is the obituary writer for the local paper, and when someone dies, she goes to their home and sits and talks (mostly listens) to the family as they tell her the facts and the stories about that person’s life. These obituaries are works of poetry. She also works for the Hospice program, and has cared for some of the people as they depart this life. 

It seems to me that lots of people are able to live their lives without thinking much about death. Heather isn’t one of them, as she couldn’t be, doing the work she does. In some ways, it probably gives her a deeper appreciation of life. But it isn’t always easy for those of us who are pretty aware all the time that ‘in the midst of life we are in death.’ Those words come from The Book Of Common Prayer, which is used in the Episcopal Church in which I grew up. Heather Lende is also an Episcopalian, belonging to a little tiny church where there are sometimes a dozen at a service. Although I don’t attend church now, the Episcopal Church is part of me. I loved how the author incorporates the words in the prayer book and hymns into her writing. If you aren’t Episcopalian, you won’t be offended by her writing. She isn’t ‘preachy.’ 

I think that in any fishing community there is an acute awareness of death. Drownings are common, and they are so very sad. We learn in the first book that one of six children was drowned. In the second book, we see his brother getting married, and the man who does the service is the man who saved him that day his brother died. 

But, though there is a bit of an elegiac feeling (and how could there not be?), the books themselves show the deep, deep joys of life; the kindness of people, the neighborliness in a small town, the fun they have, the love of family. Every book uplifted me. I first heard of Heather Lende three years ago in a blog posting written by Les. Please do read it here. I knew then that I wanted to read everything the author has written, and will write. Her writing is conversational, earnest, kindly. She writes a blog which you may visit here. And she is on Facebook. I ‘liked’ her so I get to have little visits to Haines very often. 

The three books are all five years apart so that we see her children grow up and grandchildren come into the world. I read them one after the other, and was in a bit of reading heaven for the time I was within their pages. The first book tells of the townspeople through (mainly) the obituaries. The second one is about the kindness of the people of Haines when the author has her terrible accident. And the title of the third Find the Good says it all - about the books and the author. I am so fond of Heather Lende and her writing that I could almost, almost live in Haines. 

You may see some gorgeous photographs of Haines here. It is unbelievably beautiful there.

Today's song/Hold On Tight by Greg Holden

This is the best song and video! Great message.

In the hours before Indy Thomas was born

On Tuesday, we took care of Campbell Walker while Estée was in labor. He was here from about noon until after 9 pm when Tom drove him to a town halfway between our house and his, where Estée’s mum picked him up and brought him home, as he slept all the way. 

He had a big, big day. Matt was on vacation so he and Hazel Nina were up here most of the day. Our cousins were visiting from Arkansas and they came by in the late afternoon. Some local friends brought supper, Margaret came after work, Matt’s mum was here, and we had a grand get-together. Later we found out that Indy had been born while most everyone was still here. Tom and I took lots of pictures that day, so here is the way the world looked at Grammy and Grampy’s in the hours leading up to the little fellow’s arrival.

Grammy and Grandson

Cousins choosing a cookbook

A little lunch conversation

We had bought a bouncy house a while ago, but wanted to wait and set it up when both cousins were here. Today was that day! It is a blast. It holds up to 250 pounds so the adults can enjoy it, also.

At first Campbell was more interested in the motor than the actual house.

But later in the day, he discovered how much he loved it, especially the slide!

Taken through the netting, but you can see the fun they were having (including the other 'kid').

Earlier in the day, we took a cart ride. Tired little ones.

I told some friends that if were 100, I would look back upon this day as the most perfect in my life. And when I said my prayer of thanks, I called it a Holy Day.

Indy Thomas, our new grandson!!

Indy Thomas was born the evening of July 7, weighing almost 9 pounds!  It was a home birth, and it went wonderfully. We visited yesterday and Mama Estée (our son Michael's fiancée) and baby are doing just fine. Our cup runneth over.

Today's picture/ Labs love water!

Lucy's favorite spot!