Like Mother Like Sons?

I cannot count the number of times Tom and I went grocery shopping together. Both of us had sweet ... tooths? ... teeth? I don't know what the plural of sweet tooth is, but we both had them. Most times that we went shopping together, one of us (he was usually driving of course, so this would be me that I'm talking about) would sneak out a package of cookies during that 3-minute ride home, open it and scarf a couple down.

When we got home, I'd point out the open package, indignant, and demand to know if at least we got it at a markdown, seeing how it was open, and some were missing. Tom would humor me and laugh, but not without the eyeroll that spoke so eloquently if wordlessly.

I bought some cookies for our upcoming drive to Niagara Falls when I was shopping yesterday. I hid them so they'd last until next week's drive. This morning, there they were, sitting on the counter, open, cookies missing. Busted. And I know I paid full price for them!

Rest Stop Ahead

I don't know what it is with me and highway rest stops.

This week, I drove from Medford to Springfield, about 100 miles, to meet up with my wonderful cousin Steve who grew up in Connecticut but now lives in the San Francisco area, and is in New England for  vacation. We had a wonderful lunch and a lovely visit, but the drive out was not entirely uneventful. I wear reading glasses, and if you've ever met me, you may have noticed that I carry them tucked into the neckline of my blouse when I'm not wearing them. You may also have noticed that I — ahem — don't have a whole lotta real estate in that neighborhood to anchor them, if you get my drift.


I was in the women's room, doing what comes naturally, and somehow adjusted my footing, but in doing so knocked the glasses out of my blouse and into the toilet. The toilet in the public restroom. The toilet in the public restroom that I've already peed in. So my quandary, as I'm sitting there: do I reach in and pull out these glasses? They were cheapo $4 reading glasses from Christmas Tree Shops (a tchatchki shop for you non-New Englanders), and my first instinct was an unambiguous "Are you insane? No, for Pete's sake!" But I know how toilets work, and I know glasses are really bad for plumbing, and I didn't want to imagine what would happen if they went down. On behalf of every woman who's ever been grossed out in a public bathroom, I realized I had to retrieve them. Ewww.


Don't thank me yet.

So I start to reach for them; but the electric eye that flushes automatically detected my movement as the signal that I was done. The toilet flushed, and before I could say "Holy crap", they were gone. I took that as a message that I was not supposed to reach in to a public toilet to retrieve anything, ever. Lesson learned.

———


For Thanksgiving 2008 we were driving our usual route to Madeline's house on Long Island, and stopped at the rest stop on 684 in Katonah. We often stopped there because that's about as far as I can get without a pitstop. I drink alot of tonic when I'm driving. (Tom's pet peeve #4,893: I never drink to the bottom of the can when I'm driving. That last swig takes too long.)

 As I'm walking into the women's restroom, a man standing out front of the buiding asks me if I'd like a pork loin. I muttered some kind of  "don't bother me" response, and continued inside. As I was returning to the car, I was horrified (okay, maybe horrified is too strong a word — I didn't like)  to see that Tom was talking to the man, and holding one of the frozen, cryovac-sealed pork loins - the kind you can get at BJ's or Costco: they're about 18 to 24 inches long, and 6 inches or even more in diameter. When we buy them we cut them up into three sections before freezing them. I'm sure you know the cut of meat I'm talking about. Anyway, there he is, Tom, with a pork loin under his arm, and I approach the men and join the conversation. It turns out the man is a truck driving minister from Fort Bragg, finishing up a delivery to the area, but doesn't know how to get rid of about 18 of these cryovacked pork loins. I suggest possibly a food pantry in the town, but he is in a rush to be rid of them, unfamiliar with the area, and needs to get back to North Carolina quickly. So we relieved him of one of the roasts, thanked him and bade him farewell and good luck.

We were giddy with our good fortune, although not completely convinced we hadn't just taken poisoned or expired meat from the mysterious stranger (the meat was frozen solid and factory sealed but bore no label or expiration date). We looked at each other and said almost in unsion - Think Jimmy and Gerry would want one, too? So we walked back to the man and offered to take another two. leaving him with three plus an unopened case. What the heck, we thought, we can probably give these roasts to Madeline's church's pantry, so we might as well take all six from the opened box. So we left with our pork loin treasure, leaving the man with just the unopened case.

We couldn't contain our glee when we got to Long Island and told and retold the story of the truck driving minister in Connecticut, and Jim & Kathy and Gerry & Antoinette each took home a pork loin, although to this day I don't actually know if they ate them or if they were just being polite.

Giving the other three to St. Raphael's in East Meadow didn't work out, so we brought the still-frozen roasts back with us, and I passed them along to our food pantry, Friends of St. Francis here in Medford — but not before cooking a family-sized portion of one of the roasts and eating it to make sure they were good. St. Francis was grateful for the donation, and planned to cook them for the day-after-Thanksgiving meal at Bread of Life, a provider that serves a multi-town constituency. I told them about the truck driving military chaplain from North Carolina, but left out the part about the rest stop.

Every time we drive to East Meadow now we stop at "our" rest stop, but alas, we've never again been offered free meat. A girl can dream, no?

Tale of Two Dishwashers

Originally published on 6/23/10 7:19 PM

What planet was I on when I decided it was a good idea to purchase a dishwasher on June 3 that could not be delivered until July 8?

My old dishwasher — and I use the term “old” loosely, because we purchased it on January 1, 2007 — had died and been restored to life one too many times to justify a  another $200 + parts service call. I knew ahead of time that the part, the electronic control panel, would be about $125. This would be the dishwasher's fourth control panel, and I was pretty clear on the numbers. Nope, I wasn't about to repair this dishwasher with the design flaw one more time.


So I went to Sears, found the dishwasher I wanted, got the details and went home to research it on the web: price, reliability, reviews, etc. Two days later I went back to purchase it, but, alas, the 20% off sale was over, and the salesman wouldn’t budge. So I hemmed and hawed and huffed and puffed and bought the dishwasher anyway (plus a service contract and an air conditioner as well — I figured: that'll teach him!) and scheduled the first available delivery date, more than a month out. Now I sit, or rather, stand, washing dirty dishes day after day, night after night, and pretty much any time in between. There are always, always dishes in the sink. The very surprising upside is that while I'm washing that last sinkful of the day, the boys are drying and putting away. I know it's actually more hygenic to air dry dishes, but I really enjoy those few minutes each night as we accomplish this one little task, all of us focused on a singular goal.

My old dishwasher is not utterly useless, though: it makes a great stand for piling stuff on top of and up against. Hey, anybody want to buy a working dishdryer? Cheap.

The Grotto

Momo has found poor Pixel's favorite spot. And funny how all the older cats now have the honorific "poor" in front of their names when the sentence also includes the word "Momo".

And man oh man, don't I need to wash my windows?

Momo's a Celtics Fan!

We were leading until I snapped this picture.

No Birthday Cake? You Say That Like It’s A Bad Thing

It's my birthday, and you can be sure I brought the boys out yesterday to buy a present AND a card. Gift and card notwithstanding, I'm also enforcing the standard we-forgot-to-get-you-a-gift gift: no bickering for 24 hours. By golly, I'll be queen for the day! But I think I’ll skip the birthday cake this year and go with one of my favorite cookies instead.

I have previously mentioned that I am programmed not to follow recipes to the letter. This particular cookie is a family favorite that I invented one day when I was out of peanut butter, but had hazelnuts in the freezer (far stranger things than this happened when we lived 2400 miles from the nearest grocery chain.)

Kwajalein photo courtesy Sue Rosoff Photography.

HAZELNUT CYCLOPS COOKIES

1 ¼ c all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 c toasted, blanched and cooled hazelnuts
¼ c granulated sugar
½ c butter
½ c brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 egg
Coarse brown sugar (for dipping)
Guittard Bittersweet Onyx Wafers (or Hershey Kisses)


Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Grind the cooled hazelnuts and granulated sugar in a food processor until very fine. Add the butter, brown sugar, vanilla and egg and continue processing until very smooth.

Pour the hazelnut mixture into the flour and stir together until well blended. Use a wooden spoon instead of a mixer to prevent overmixing, which will make the cookies tough.

Wrap the dough in plastic and chill well, or freeze until ready to use. (If freezing, thaw in the refrigerator before shaping).

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Shape the dough into 1” balls, dip into the coarse brown sugar and place about 2” apart on a cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until slightly browned. While the cookies are still hot and on the cookie sheet, press a Bittersweet Onyx chocolate disk (or a Hershey Kiss) into the center of each. Let the cookies set about 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Note: To toast the hazelnuts, spread them in a single layer on a heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring often, until the oils begin to release and the nuts begin to lightly brown. Alton Brown says if you can smell the nuts toasting you’ve overdone them, but I usually toast them until they are fragrant. Cool the nuts completely before grinding.

Variations:

• Mix 12 ounces of chocolate chips into the dough before wrapping and chilling, and skip the chocolate disk at the end. 
• Skip the chocolate altogether and mix about a cup of coarsely chopped hazelnuts into the dough before wrapping and chilling. 

And in case you're wondering, no, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I didn't chill the dough.

C Stands for Cool, Calm and Collected

This is the first time I've embedded a video, so let's see if it works.

It was early morning one school day, and I was pouring juice or milk (okay, soda) for David for breakfast, to drink with his eggs or cereal (okay, cookies) when I dropped the glass, shattering it on the ceramic tile kitchen floor, inches from C. He didn't move from his favorite spot next to the heating vent, but I noticed a lot of tiny shards of glass in his fur. So what was I supposed to do?

I got out the vacuum, and the rest is now, officially, history.

What's for Supper?

If you know me, you know I know my way around a kitchen. So what the heck happened in my kitchen today?

I had some ears of corn on the counter unshucked from the holiday barbecue, and thought struck to make corn fritters for dinner. Yes, I know they're supposed to be a side dish, not a meal; but I get these urges sometimes, and corn fritters just seemed so right. That little voice inside my head made it sound like such a good idea. And why waste all that space with protein and dietary fiber and vitamins when I can fill it all up with fritters?

So I opened Joy, and checked the googles, and found a couple of recipes, which of course I couldn't follow to the letter because I am incapable of following a recipe to the letter. I had the bright idea to coat my fritters in seasoned panko. I still think that's a winner of an idea, but now I'll never know.

Let me explain, in my most unscientific voice, exactly how popcorn works. The water inside the kernel is heated to vapor, expands, and then, BOOM, explosion, and voila, you have popcorn.

Now, imagine that same scenario, batter-dipped and in 2 inches of 375° degree peanut oil.

Then imagine cereal for supper.

Serendipity

Meet the newest Gentile, Momo. When one cat crosses the Rainbow Bridge on a Thursday, and the following Monday you heed a call about a kitten that’s about to be returned to the shelter because the new owner is hopelessly allergic, how can you call it anything but serendipity? How could we just up and adopt a new kitten so quickly? Let me tell you, it was easy. Mostly white with grayish markings at the top of her head, rump and tail, she is a dirty white snowball of boundless energy, enthusiastically trying to befriend her feline housemates, but sadly rebuffed at every turn. Not so with the humans. She takes turns sleeping with all of us: a few hours with 98, then on to 96’s room, settling in with me by the time I turn out the lights. I try to keep her away from the other cats' favorite spots, but she has taken a liking to Pixel’s bed by the window and Ada’s towel on the couch. Heaven help her the first time she jumps up into the kitchen box window, the one with the shelf I specifically cleared off so the cats could view the backyard unimpeded by pottery and spices. Pix will go ballistic.

Ada, as expected, hisses at every encounter. Scruffy is more curious than the others, tentatively sniffing, and even allowing Momo to share the dinner plate with him. Pixel runs, terrified by the tornado-vortex-like nature of Momo’s friendly advances, but even he is slowly coming around. I walked into my bedroom today and they were both on the bed. In opposite corners, they could not have been further from each other and still both have been been on the bed, but there they were, on the bed “together”.

Everything's a toy when you're a kitten: anything tied to a doorknob, anything that makes noise ... any bit of paper or a hairband or a dust bunny or an ant on the floor is there for the entertainment - or nutrition - or friendship - of our little Momo. We thought about renaming her after a comet, but Momo suits her, so a momo she is, and a momo she shall stay. 

I hope Momo's first human companion is feeling better, and that her allergies are subsiding. And I hope she knows how much we already love her little peach.

RIP, C

If I’m in your Facebook newsfeed, you already know that we lost C recently. He’d been on the decline for many months, and while I didn’t want him to suffer (he didn’t), I mostly just didn’t want C to die before Tom did. They were great friends, Tom and C, and I didn’t want Tom to endure that loss. So we did what we could and we did what we had to: we brought C to the vet when he had the symptoms of his recurrent UTI (he always had a UTI, and you’re welcome for me not explaining in excruciating detail why he was so prone to them) … We brought him to the vet when we noticed maggots falling out of a small wound on his backside … We brought him most recently for an overgrown claw. Since he was slowing down, he simply wasn’t wearing down his claws, and it had grown full circle, impaling itself in the pad below it. It didn’t seem to cause any pain, and we wouldn’t even have realized anything was wrong except that David was playing with him on the bed and noticed it. Not even so much as a limp.

That vet appointment fixed the claw, but uncovered several other troubles: congestive heart failure and a pancreatic mass, for starters. We opted not to treat the mass, put him on Plavix ($50 for 7 pills, and that’s with the AAA discount –  and no, C didn't have health insurance) and some other heart meds and antibiotics, and commenced with another round of “hurry up and wait”. Dr. Zanotti didn’t have to say it when we had our scheduled follow up visit: I knew we were looking at days, maybe weeks; certainly not months. We would keep C’s days as pleasant as possible, and that meant a lot of American cheese and chicken scraps. Just a few hours after that appointment we noticed he was unable to walk, and brought him back to the vet. He had thrown a clot, not unexpectedly, and his suffering would soon begin. So while the decision was hard to make, we really had no choice. C had lived a long and happy life. He had eaten his share of treats, pee’d his way into the cellar floor hall of fame, and barfed with the best of them. He’ll be cremated and added to my little “collection”. And when the time is right, and the ground is dry, and the air is warm, we’ll take Tom’s ashes, and C’s, and Mr. Gibb’s, and Yeti’s, and Neko's, and those good friends will share a very pretty spot high in the Fells behind the house, watching the planes and stalking the birds.

We owe a sincere thanks to Stephen Zanotti, VMD,  and all the vets, techs, medical and support staff at Winchester Veterinary Group for everything they’ve done over the years to help us care for the pets we so dearly love, as well as all the animals that are lucky enough to cross their threshold.

In the beginning, there were frogs. Lots and lots of frogs.

Today would be our 16th daywemet-iversary. I like that word, and if it didn’t cost $325 to trademark it, I’d be totally there. Since I’m too cheap to spend the money – who knows what product or service I might invent that would need the trademark-protected "daywemetiversary" – I’ll just have to stick with a “first use” protection. And this post is the second time I’ve used the word, so there.


Of course, I neglect to mention that if I’d had my way, Tom and I would never have met. I had heard from so many frogs with the personal ad my cat Neko had placed in Boston Magazine that I had officially thrown up my hands and was not going to follow up with any more responses. Tom’s letter was in the pile labeled “I Give Up!”

I don’t recall the exact moment I gave up on Neko’s ad. It might have been these beefcake shots.  If you responded to my ad with your application form to some random dating service I didn't follow up. Ditto if you couldn’t be bothered replying and simply sent me a copy of your own personal ad. If you had your own phone number that spelled something, and that something was creepy, I didn't respond. And if you invited me for coffie, I didn’t go.

If this was you, then I bet you can guess in what direction I swiftly walked. (But the guy did give me a run for my money in the category of "overuse of parentheses").

Some prisons did me the favor of telling me your letter was mailed from an incarceration facility, even if you forgot to mention it. If you were on an extended vacation in the Adirondacks and your postmark was Ray Brook, NY, you were in prison, and I wasn't interested. Even if you were not incarcerated for long, you were actually incarcerated, and I actually wasn't interested. And yes, you might have been one of those wrongly convicted, but that little infraction was indeed a deterrent, and I didn't respond to you, either. And the creepy quotation marks in your post script only made me run a little faster. And even if your non-traditional incident wasn't wanton, I still wasn't going to date you. And when if your parole is granted, don’t hold your breath.

If your first question was about my weight, I wouldn't have gone out with you. And that was when I was 40 pounds lighter than I am today. Sometimes people don’t mention their build in their personal ads because, well, at $3.95 per word, maybe we think other things matter more?


So I gave up on the ad, and decided not to respond to any more responses. My friend Laura had other plans, though, and thought Tom’s letter sounded perfect. So perfect, in fact, that she nagged me daily: “Have you called him yet, Linda?” “When are you going to call him?” “Why won’t you call him? He sounds perfect for you, Linda.” She was getting so fed up with me she finally threatened to call him herself, posing as me. She really wanted me to meet this guy. And I was getting pretty fed up with her, too.

I truly only called Tom to shut Laura up. So I called during the day, when I knew he’d be at work, and left my name and number. He called and we met at the Bertucci’s in Central Square for pizza. How very fitting that just under two years later, Laura was my matron of honor.

To Catch a Bird ... or a Snake ... or a Vole ... Doesn't Matter, Really: Where's the Food?

C came home recently from a nearly weeklong hospital stay, and he's not doing very well. With seventeen years under his belt (Tom and I met when C and Ada were about a year old) I have taken a stroll down memory lane with him this week. What a lovely stroll it was.

I learned early in my relationship with Tom that the way to Tom's heart was through C's stomach. At nearly 20 pounds when I met him, C rarely met a treat he didn't like. On my way to Tom's I'd stop at the deli counter at the Purity Supreme and buy C one slice from the cold cuts section ... bologna one day, roast beef the next. The deli guy knew it was for my new boyfriend's cat, and never begrudged me his time, even though we both knew it was his smallest sale of the day. C, whom we considered a dog trapped in a cat's body, greeted me with enthusiam. Evil grin ... my plan is working! The only time he turned up his nose at my Friday night special was the one time I brought him a single jumbo shrimp. He wouldn't have anything to do with it. Neither would Ada, for that matter, or Mr. Gibbs. Tom had trained his minions well: Don't. Eat. The Fish.

C also liked to supervise household projects. Tom installed the box windows in the sunroom, and they were - are - lovely. Don't look too closely at the window seat, however, lest you notice the pawprints left in the wet polyurethane. They're still there, still visible, and not going anywhere anytime soon. Also in the house repair department was the time that C was so interested in house trim painting (we had a black-and-white cat for a while after that). Not satisfied with climbing the ladder to join Tom, he proceeded to climb up and over Tom on the ladder, positioning himself in the gutter - where he didn't quite fit but thought he had found the best seat in the house. It took an hour to get him down.

Even on his best days now, he never brings home a snake anymore: Ada was into chipmunk and bird inventory control, but C could never resist a garter snake; and I can't say I miss that particular aspect of sharing a house with a pet, or two, or six, but I hope that C continues to enjoy his daily constitutional, a few minutes of sunshine and fresh air, for a long time to come. Then, at the end of the day, that he'll climb the stairs to the second floor, and then climb the stairs up into the bed, so his still-bellowing purr can keep me awake. Enough with the peeing on the cellar floor, though, 'kay?