The Ticket Booth

We have this table. It's a cute little table as tables go. I believe it belonged to my grandparents. I know it lived for quite a while in the attic at my mother's house. I stumbled upon it one summer when I was home visiting from Dallas. Since I had recently taken a course in furniture refinishing I took possession of the wee little table with the parents' permission. I took it back to cow country with me to breathe a little new life into it.

The table was covered with a few decades of grime and grit and probably had been subjected to more than one blast of rain from a summer thunderstorm. Thunderstorms in Norfolk, VA can be quite ferocious with rain coming into the house slant-wise and the wind blowing hard enough to make you think the weatherman overlooked a hurricane coming ashore. Anyhow, the little table had weathered quite a bit and was in need of some TLC.

Now in this furniture refinishing class I picked up a little bit of know-how about all things furniture, not just how to make them look prettier. The one thing that our instructor emphasized was that if you had a nice piece with "good bones" then it was worth your while to refinish the piece rather than to purchase a new one. New furniture is often made of a combination of wood and pressed paper. Yep, even the stuff that looks like it's all wood. Pressed paper...much heavier than wood if you can believe that.

So, I took the little table with its good bones and intact glass and put it through the refinishing wringer. Stripped all the gunk off. Then sanded and stained it and added a little glossy finish. The top of the table is a glass tray with a wooden border that comes off of the base. I figured to leave it like that with the wooden base and the glass tray on top and be done with it. My husband had other ideas. He had a nice little collection of old concert tickets that he wanted to display on the table under glass. I was more than a little skeptical about that, but eventually gave in. To my surprise it worked...looked pretty good.

The fun has been in adding more tickets as the years go by and as we attend more shows and functions. It has a couple of good layers on it now. As I recall on the bottom row we have a pristine ticket to The Grateful Dead which ticket my husband had from the old days when they tore your ticket in half at the door. For some reason he got away with his in one piece and has treasured that one.

The ticket booth? Why that name? When I had refinished it and we had carefully arranged the tickets under the glass and had placed it carefully in the den in our house in Dallas it took on a new life for our daughter. Turns out when we were out and she was home with the babysitter and often a couple of her buddies they would play tag and hide-and-seek in the house. If you tagged that table (which SHE named The Ticket Booth) then you were safe. Guess that wasn't as bad on the furniture as what her father used to do with his mother's teakwood table and a ping pong net.

Ally Ally In Come Free

Today was one of those days when I wanted to shout to a clear, crisp January sky, "Ally ally in come free" and have all of my loved ones reappear. I'm not sure why it was that I missed them so much on today of all days. Usually these moments happen at an anniversary or a birthday. There were no birthdays for my dearly departed, nor was this the anniversary of the death of any single one of them. It was just a Monday. And yet I was overcome with a need to SEE them again. Not a picture, not in my mind's eye, but with my real eyes. I wanted to see, touch and feel them again. Have a hug, enjoy a smile, get a kiss on the cheek, share a moment.

I wanted to see them all. My sister and brother so recently gone and far too soon.

My mother and father-in-law who were such kind and generous and loving people who are so sorely missed.

My dad - that loveable curmudgeon with his sharp tongue and sharper wit.

My grandmother, a supurb seamstress and a talented Southern cook.

And my gentle grandfather who never knew the words, "no" or "can't".



I want just a day, just one more day with each of them. But then that wouldn't be enough would it? There would always be that longing for just one more day, one more moment. Ally ally in come free.

Good Morning Deer

We live out in the country along with what seems a thousand or so deer within a hundred yards of the house. I'm sure there are more than that within a mile's radius. They must breed like rabbits, so to speak. Beautiful animals, I love watching their graceful movements. I do have to remind myself how annoyed I get at them when they eat every living thing in my garden. Their inconsiderate munching has gotten so bad I never bothered to plant a vegetable garden last summer. Undeterred, the deer just proceeded to eat my flower gardens. So, I have to keep telling myself that no matter how beautiful and graceful they are they drag tons of critters and diseases along with them. (Hello, deer ticks and Lyme disease anyone?) They also have a tendency to have encounters with cars that end up being bad news both for the deer and for the car owner. When ever I catch them nibbling on my plants I threaten to get out John's driver and turn them into Bambi Burger, but I could never do that. They are definitely not intimidated by my threats. They just look at me and only dart off if I get within a few feet of them. I do enjoy seeing the little ones playing in the yard in spring and early summer. I took some pictures Wednesday morning as they were feasting on the neighbor's field. If only they'd eat the neighbor's plants and leave mine alone. We'd all get along so much better. Sigh...

Just Wait Five Minutes...

Seems to me no matter where I've lived the locals liked to say the same thing about the vagaries of the weather: "Don't like the weather? Just wait five minutes and it'll change." Well, it wasn't exactly five minutes, but on Friday and Saturday we had temps close to 70 degrees. On Sunday the high got into the 60's. Today we had snow and sleet showers. By my reckoning that's about a 40 degree change in temps from Friday to today. Since I was without a camera I'll post one of the local weekly pictures of the downtown mall. Obviously not much snow fell and none accumulated. All the better. Now, if the Farmer's Almanac can only be wrong about that blizzard they're predicting for the end of the month...
Here I was hoping that we would skip winter altogether and slide straight into spring. Oh, well. One can always hope.

The Queen's Visit

So I got curious about just which Queen was visiting Suriname when I was posting the pictures from our Grandfather's South American trips. Turns out it was Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Suriname is also known as Dutch Guiana and was a Dutch colony back in the day. I remember seeing invitations to a dinner with the Queen of the Netherlands that my Grandmother had framed and mounted. I guess it was during the visit the Queen made to Suriname. These are the shots from that visit. Must be the royal procession through town that was captured here:



Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Prince Bernhard

 Hmmm...I guess you can't really call it a "motor" cade when the mode of transportation is on horseback, now can you? I read up a little on Queen Juliana. She was quite a favorite of the Dutch people. She apparently didn't go in for a lot of pomp and circumstance and rode her bike around town. Not what you'd expect of royalty now is it? I rather like that approach...and so did her subjects. I get the impression that they thought she was the real deal.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A couple of weeks ago my email got hacked. Fortunately it was over the weekend so I was able to spend much of the following day cleaning up emails. I must have deleted 4,000 ancient emails. Not sure why I had so many other than hotmail gives me a boatload of space and I never use most of it, so I just got lazy.  

I also had not cleaned out old emails from my sister and brother. I knew there were a few I wanted to keep, since they're gone and I won't be getting any more emails from them. My sister wrote rarely. My brother was a prolific writer. He was also the keeper of our family history. I was delighted when he began publishing pictures of us, our parents and our grandparents either in emails or on his blog. I miss his stories as much as I miss him.

When I was cleaning up emails I came across some pictures of our grandfather (Pop) in Surinam. Pop had a degree from Moo U (aka NC State) in agriculture. He worked as a local extension agent in Raleigh and eventually worked his way up to the big show in Washington, DC working for the Agriculture Dept. As a part of that job he was selected as one of a group of men who would go to South America and teach the locals down there how to better farm their land. No doubt they took DDT and all kinds of other stuff which is now banned, but was state-of-the-art back then. All this went on in the late 1950's and early 1960's. In fact my grandparents lived in Surinam during the first two years of my life - 1954 - 1956. Later, although Pop retired in 1960, he was still asked to go on some of these junkets to South America as a consultant. I can remember my grandmother bemoaning having to find him a winter coat in July since he was going south of the equator and the country he was going to was in the middle of winter.



Pop always came back with a bunch of slides he would show for us and some neighbors who were good friends of theirs. These pictures were a tad racy as some of those Surinam ladies went nekkid from the waist up. That was shocking back in the early 60's. So, join me for a trip down memory lane as I share some of Pop's exotic adventures.

Bloomin' January

 It's January 6th and some of my perennials are poking their little stems up from under the earth. I have seen forsythia starting to bloom in two separate locations. Boy, is Mother Nature gonna put a big hurt on some of this stuff if we return to more seasonal weather. By which I mean weather closer to freezing than a balmy 70 degrees.

I have some nice crocus and anemone bulbs that a friend gave me that I may plant this weekend. The instructions say to plant from Sept to Dec, but I figure with the weather like this then they will likely be good even if I am a little late getting them into the ground. I don't have any crocus planted yet and they're a favorite flower because they're a harbinger of Spring. Of course this year it may not matter if things continue to be as warm as they have been.

After the winter we had two years ago I'm over having to deal with snow. We had a recordbreaking snow season which lasted from the Friday before Christmas until well into February. I don't think we saw the deck until late March.

Actually I do remember one funny scene from that winter. We had just enough sunshine and warm temperatures to melt the railing in one location on the deck. One of our (many) squirrels claimed that spot for his own and threw himself down on the railing belly first as if to say, "Finally...a dry spot!" I think they were tired of the weather that winter, too.

We Elect Grownups, Right?

So this morning as I'm driving to work I hear a story on NPR about President Obama making a recess appointment for the Consumer Protection Agency. The reporter says that the Republicans are saying that President Obama was out of line for making the appointment because they are not really "in recess". See they didn't want him making a recess appointment so most of them went home for the holidays, but they didn't call an official "recess". Instead they're holding a conference call daily and members are calling in and reporting for work from their districts. This, they say, means they're not in "recess". This, they say, means they're working. Want to know how long the phone call was on the day Obama made the recess appointment? 40 seconds. Yeah, I said it SECONDS, not even MINUTES. And they call that a day of work. I call that Bull Hockey.

There is a recess going on all right, but it's more like elementary school nonsense and bullying on the playground. If you can't figure out who the bullies are let me know and I'll educate you on that one.

This is not professional. These are not the actions of adults. Obama had every right to make this very important recess appointment. The Republicans are working harder at trying to stop him from being even the littlest bit effective than they are working to help create jobs and to help their constituents and the country at large. I call BS on this whole bunch of shenanigans.

40 seconds of work and you call yourself an adult! I beg to differ.

Lucky Duck

There is a bumper sticker popular in Texas that I found rather amusing. It reads: I wasn't born here but I got here as fast as I could. I found that ironic considering I didn't find a whole lot to run to Texas for...at least the part of Texas where I was. There are some very nice parts in that fair state, but it's nothing that I've ever had a hankering for.

Charlottesville? Now that's another matter. It has felt like home to me since I first came to school here in the mid 70's. I used to take that turn off of I-95 onto I-64 and feel like I was in the home stretch. I love my mom's house in an old section of Norfolk. It's very urban and hip and there are great places to shop and eat within walking distance. But for my money I'll take my little cottage in the hills outside of Charlottesville.

It may not be convenient to get to things. God knows you can't walk to town from here...although some nutters bike it on these winding country roads. But it's our little piece of heaven on earth.

When my friends from Norfolk ask when I'm going to move back I just think of my morning commute and theirs. No question. Mine wins hands down. I caught the mountains with some nice light on them the other night on my way home from the grocery and I happened to have my camera in the car so I stopped for a quick shot. It really does my heart good to see the mountains on my daily journeys. Sometimes in the mornings I see between one and three hot air balloons rising up over the horizon. Some mornings I'm a little envious of their view and other mornings I'm glad I'm surrounded by a hunk of metal and a heating system. I wonder if they're up there in their adult onesies that I see in the stores now. I know they need something.

Here's a little taste of my tiny hunk of heaven. Enjoy

January 3

O.K. Gary, this one is for you. You'll have some substitutions to make in order for it to be Vegan, but I'm sure you will make it uber tasty.

Best French Onion Soup
     from Cook's Illustrated

Serves 6
Notes from Cook's Illustrated: Sweet onions, such as Vidalia or Walla Walla, will make this recipe overly sweet. Be patient when caramelizing the onions in step 2; the entire process takes 45 to 60 minutes. Use broiler-safe crocks and keep the rim of the bowls 4 - 5 inches from the heating element to obtain a proper gratinee of melted, bubbly cheese. If using ordinary soup bowls, sprinkle the toasted bread slices with Gruyere and return them to the broiler until the cheese melts, then float them on top of the soup. We prefer Swanson Certified Organic Free Range Chicken Broth and Pacific Beef Broth. For the best flavor, make the soup a day or two in advance. Alternatively, the onions can be prepared through step 1, cooled in the pot, and refrigerated for up to 3 days before proceeding with the recipe.

Ingredients
Soup
          3 TB unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
          6 large yellow onions (about 4 pounds) halved and cut pole to pole into 1/4 inch thick slices
          Table salt
          2 cups water, plus extra for deglazing
          1/2 cup dry sherry
          2 cups beef broth
          4 cups low sodium chicken broth
          6 sprigs fresh thyme, tied with kitchen twine
          1 bay leaf
          ground black pepper

Cheese Croutons
          1 small baguette, cut into 1/2 inch slices
          8 ounces shredded Gruyere cheese

Instructions
1. For the soup: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Generously spray inside of heavy-bottomed large (at least 7 quart) Dutch oven with nonstick cooking spray.  Place butter in pot and add onions and 1 tsp salt. Cook, covered, 1 hour (onions will be moist and slightly reduced in volume). Remove pot from oven and stir onions, scraping bottom and sides of pot. Return pot to oven with lid slightly ajar and continue to cook until onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours longer, stirring onions and scraping bottom and sides of pot after 1 hour.

2. Carefully remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat, using oven mitts to handle pot, cook onions, stirring frequently and scraping bottom and sides of pot, until liquid evaporates and onions brown, 15 - 20 minutes, reducing heat to medium if onions are browning too quickly. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until pot bottom is coated with dark crust, 6 - 8 minutes, adjusting heat as necessary. (Scrape any food that collects on spoon back into onions.) Stir in 1/4 cup water, scraping pot bottom to loosen crust, and cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6 - 8 minutes, Repeat process of deglazing 2 or 3 more times, until onions are very dark brown. Stir in sherry and cook, stirring frequently, until sherry evaporates, about 5 minutes.

3. Stir in broths, 2 cups water, thyme, bay leaf, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, scraping any final bits of browned crust on bottom and sides of pot. Increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Remove and discard herbs, then season with salt and pepper.

4. For the croutons: while soup simmers, arrange baguette slices in single layer on baking sheet and bake in 400 - degree oven until bread is dry, crisp, and golden at edges, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

5. To serve: Adjust oven rack 6 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Set individual broiler-safe crocks on baking sheet and fill each with about 1 3/4 cups soup. Top each bowl with 1 or 2 baguette slices (do not overlap slices) and sprinkle evenly with Gruyere. Broil until cheese is melted bubbly around edges, 3 - 5 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.
         
This takes some time to prepare, but is well worth it. Bon Appetit!

January 2, 2012

I resolve to make no resolutions...unless, of course, I can resolve to gain 6 inches in height and have that happen. I'm tired of being short and not being able to reach the tall shelves in my kitchen without a ladder.

Assessment since last year...down 20 lbs. And that's with a total gain over the holidays since Thanksgiving of 2.6 lbs. Not bad considering I put few restrictions on what, when and where I ate. So, kind of holding my own on that account.

Christmas decorations down and boxed up ready to be hauled to the shop.

And might I just add that I have immensely enjoyed not being at work for four days? I am seriously considering taking today off, too. It's a holiday for the regular office folk. I may just use up a little more PTO and call it all good.

Made killer French onion soup last night. Guess what's on the dinner menu today?
Happy, Tasty New Year!

Happy New Year

It's 2012. Let's get this party started.