The Matter Of Flowers

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Flowers

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Anthurium

Rose In My Garden.

We take flowers for granted. On any given day, I can go to almost any supermarket and buy some nice flowers. A trip to a dedicated florist is unnecessary.

Flowers have a rather bizarre association with femininity and the effeminate. An old derogatory term for a male homosexual is “pansy”. Why? Granted, some flowers evoke thoughts of the female sexual anatomy, like the iris. That may just be my little idiosyncrasy. Some flowers, like the anthurium or the gladiolus have a flagrant phallic swagger.

Flowers abound in pleasure gardens. Think of the tulips in the gardens of the Ottoman Sultans in Constantinople. We need places of serene beauty, just as any Sultan did. And with the democratization of wealth since the Industrial Revolution, nearly everyone has access to a beautiful garden in either a private residence or a public park. The need to be in the midst of beauty is universal, as is food, drink, shelter, rest and warmth.

Deluge Continued. Aftermath.

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Amtrak, Bloggers, Exercise/ Fitness

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The pelting rain woke us up around Three AM. It seemed relentless and intense. Nature is like that at times. I had trouble going back to sleep. I finally went back to bed about Four Thirty.

Now I am up again, drinking coffee, enjoying the delightful endorphin high brought on by yesterday’s swim.

We have localized flooding and generally nasty travel conditions, bad enough to close the schools. Hard to believe the school year is almost over. Hard to believe the outdoor pools open next weekend. The hot weather has made a couple days pretty uncomfortable already.

I’ve read a blog I follow(Hello Olivia), enjoyed a comment from Jade on yesterday’s post, looked at some headlines, reset the clocks after a power outage. I’m waiting for AMTRAK #84 NB to stop in Ashland. It is running late.

These little simple moments of langor and quiet are why I retired. Madison Ave types would have one think we retire to take canal cruises in Europe or go bungee-jumping in New Zealand. No. We retire to call the time our own.

Swimming. Dinner. Deluge.

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness

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Our Y closes its indoor pools during thunderstorms. Evidently lightning can travel through glass and strike even an indoor pool. I don’t argue. I get out of the water when they tell me.

I have been trying to reestablish a discipline around daily swimming. Yesterday I had completed 1100 meters, about 2/3 of my planned workout when the whistle blew and the lifeguard said the pool was closing. So I got out, satisfied that I got to swim between the spells of stormy weather we were having, and are still experiencing

Today, my plan was to go earlier in the afternoon before the stormy conditions build. I planned to go my current usual distance of 1750 meters, then some more to account for the distance I missed yesterday. And I did. 2500 meters. 2500 meters has been a standard distance for a swim for me. And today I met that goal. So there is no reason why I can’t revert back to 2500 meters as my standard workout distance, with a few 3300 meter workouts interspersed. 2500 meters is over a mile and a half, 3300 meters is over two miles. It’s all good.

Tonight we went out for a $6 medium pizza special at one of our favorite restaurants. The daily deluge occurred during dinner so we stayed a little longer, hoping the downpour would alleviate somewhat. While waiting we enjoyed a nice chocolate filled dessert crêpe. We finished the crêpe; it was still raining. So we got wet walking to the car. I figure I get wet on a daily basis anyway, so what’s the big deal? It was kind of fun.

Normal routine is part of the structure I need in my life to handle the daily deluge of craziness I experience from back pain, politics, chronic loneliness. The swim is important because it counterbalances my tendency to eat my way to better mental and emotional well-being That eating strategy doesn’t work, by the way.

Cooking With Tapioca Flour

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in cooking, food

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Now that I have your attention with that enticing title, I shall tell you about the chocolate pudding I made with milk, Greek yogurt, Ghirardelli’s 100% cacao unsweetened chocolate, cinnamon, demerrara sugar, and vanilla extract.

Here’s the thing though, I only have a ball park figure of how much Greek yogurt I used. Maybe 24oz (by weight). It was Stoneyfield Nonfat Plain Organic. It had been in the fridge almost too long and I wanted to do something with it before it went bad on me. I was too lazy to pull a cookbook off the shelf. So I made up a recipe.

First I melted 4 squares (1/2 a bar) of Ghirardelli’s semi-sweet 4 squares of Ghirardelli’s Dark Unsweetened Chocolate in 8 oz. whole milk. I used Fair Life. It is a brand I am impressed with because it uses an ultra-filtration process. It has a longer life in the refrigerator and has less lactose than regular milk. After the chocolate is melted, I added 1 cup demerrara sugar, the yogurt and about 6 tablespoons tapioca flour to thicken. Tapioca flour is also known as tapioca starch. It has the thickening qualities of corn starch but dissolves more completely without lumps (or less lumps.) Bob’s Red Mill has tapioca flour. You can find it with the gluten free flours.

I brought the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly, just as I would with cook and serve store-bought pudding. I added 2 tsp vanilla extract and 2 tsp cinnamon (may be 3, I forgot). I poured the cooked mixture in 6 oz Pyrex custard cups and let chill for about 6 hours, maybe longer. It was nicely thickened with a smooth consistency.

Mrs CorC? is a fairly discriminating (picky) eater. She has her likes and dislikes. Little things like an “off” texture don’t meet her standards. She liked it! It did not taste too “yogurt-y”. She liked the cinnamon tones with the chocolate.

My goal was to use up the yogurt. Goal met! The secondary goal was to see if I could make my own version of cook and serve pudding. Goal met! The tertiary objective was to increase my uses for tapioca flour. Goal met! The stuff is really nice to work with. Buy some and see for yourself.

Mid-Century, Sort Of Modern.

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Housework, kitsch, Mid Century Modern

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The Fifties and Sixties of The Twentieth Century are not the remote past to me. But the Thirties and Forties and its Art Deco legacy are. I remember stuff from that time distinctly. The atmosphere of novelty and progress that surrounded that era is arguably in our thinking still. We still prick up our ears at the thought of “Improved”, although we give more credibility to the idea of a better Smart phone than we would to an “improved” filter cigarette. Modern was the buzz word then.

When I was six, we got a new washing machine. It was a Westinghouse Laundramat front loader with a glass window in the door (hatch). Yes, we children actually watched the clothes wash on more than one occasion. You can’t watch the Three Stooges and I Love Lucy all the time, can you? The machine was an advanced piece of design for its time. In our present time we expect advanced design.

Some items we consider kitsch today were deemed special and prized back then. For example Avocado Green appliances that came along around 1970 were highly prized, along with sister colors Harvest Gold and Coppertone, because they weren’t stark white. Finally the monotony of white was relieved.

Two items from that time that we retrieved from my grandparents/aunt’s house illustrate the point. The first is an aluminum ice bucket with a penguin motif, shown below. Pure Fifties. Lovely still. If I ever have a party, I will use it. The second item is this Harvest Gold(?) cake caddy. I can’t put a precise date on it. It is as functional as it is ugly. But What The Hell. It can carry a cake. Maybe a streusal swirl Bundt cake from a Pillsbury mix.

E-Mail Today

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Tasteless Gifts

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From Dunkin’ Donuts:

Did you get Mom’s Present yet?”

Seriously?

“Here Mom. Thought you might like these, if you get the munchies tonight.”

I mean are we so lacking in imagination that D-Squared is the best we can do?

And so personal too. Nothing means more to Mom than a dozen of her favorites, perhaps the same as the ones she scarfed down when she was carrying you.

I am glad my Mom has passed away, so she doesn’t have to see silliness like this, Oh, and her death was related to her Type 2 Diabetes.

5:00 AM. 0500.

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in sleep

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Either way, I am wide awake. Miscellaneous aches and pains, in my shoulder and back, are bedevilling me, prevailing over a deep desire to sleep. I have been up and down since 1:15. When my wife had a nightmare around 3:45, screaming in her sleep, I went back upstairs, thinking I might be lucky enough to nod off. I’m tired now, and think I might be close to sleeping. To me this is the really suck-y part of getting older.

Brisket On A May Evening.

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in cooking, Relationships

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Sunday I went by Food Lion to get something I didn’t really need and serendipitously found a good deal on a fresh, not corned, beef brisket. Yee Ha! I can use that killer brisket recipe I found on the BettyCrocker.com website. It is cooked in a slow cooker. The trick is it uses a fantastic brown sugar spice rub to coat the meat.. Take 3 tbs brown sugar, cumin, chili powder, celery salt, garlic powder, any other stuff you think might be yummy together and rub it on the brisket.

The original recipe called for ketchup as the basis for a barbecue sauce. Well, doggone it, I was out of ketchup, so I substituted a can of diced tomatoes, added a chopped onion, 1 tbs Worcestershire sauce and about 3/4 cup water. I put the slow cooker on the low setting and let it cook for 5-6 hours, (Hint: use your meat thermometer to gauge you preferred degree of doneness.) Not using ketchup, I decided to “deep six” the idea of a sauce altogether. I just ladled the tomato/onion/cooking liquid over the sliced meat.

I made a salad with romaine, fresh mandarin orange slices, diced cucumber and alfalfa sprouts. I added some dried dill weed, tarragon, poppy seeds and lavender. I made a salad dressing from lemon juice and canola oil, mixed it well to make an emulsion and poured it over the green and orange stuff. Finally I added toasted slivered almonds and parmesan cheese (from the shaker can, think Kraft). I tossed it real good. The lavender accents in the salad are sublime.

The last part of this meal was roasted corn on the cob. I husk the corn, wrap in parchment and cook at 325°F for about 30-45 min. I use the convection setting on my oven. This method is so much better than cooking the corn in boiling water and the clean-up is much easier.

Tomorrow I will be fixing a black bean & corn salad. I will also fix another black bean salad, but substitute quinoa for corn.

As I said the other day cooking is very erotic. It is life-affirming, in my opinion. There have been so many beautiful moments in my life centered around a dining table. And new meals create new memories. Some meals are focused around recapturing the past, like Thanksgiving dinner, or a Passover Seder. Other meals thrive on their novelty. Sometimes not trying to recapture an old memory opens the space for fresh experiences and enriching deep relationships.

It is good to be alive.