Not magic, but far from tragic

Nobody has asked me what I was so busy whipping up in the kitchen on Saturday.

But even in the absence of nudgings, goosings, coaxings, and arm-twistings, I am prepared to disclose the details of my weekend culinary activities.

You may recall that for several years I walked the earth oven-less.

Short story. Not remotely riveting for all its brevity.

Suffice it to say, I compensated surprisingly well -- just think Crock-Pots, lots of them -- but now that I have a brand-new oven, I jolly well use it.

As a matter of fact scarcely a calendar day elapses that I don't fire up my feisty, shiny new oven, prompting me to wonder more than once:

What did I ever do without an oven?

But the question is rhetorical. What I did year after year was, I made do.

What I did not do was, I didn't bake my annual dozen-or-so loaves of banana-nut bread, with a few pumpkin loaves thrown in for the sake of variety.

This sort of thing has been a tradition for me since time out of mind.

At Thanksgiving and Christmas when one remembers certain family members, friends, and acquaintances, and feels compelled to give them a little something to enjoy in the festive holiday mood, a loaf of homemade banana-nut bread is a brilliant solution.

Also the way I do it, it's absurdly easy.

That's because I go semi-homemade.

And this being the season of sharing, here's my recipe:

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SEMI-HOMEMADE BANANA-NUT BREAD

1 box Pillsbury Quick Bread (or generic brand) mix, banana (or pumpkin) flavor

(IF you use PQB brand in banana flavor, below are the exact directions. If you use another brand or make the pumpkin kind, read the box.)

(On second thought, read the box anyway.)

2 eggs

1/4 cup oil (I have used both canola and olive, the light-flavored kind)

1 cup water (I use buttermilk, or whole milk, never water, but you can)

1/2 cup (or more) walnut pieces (optional, but necessary if you're going for banana-nut bread)

1 fresh ripe banana, mashed (optional but if you want it to be like mine, don't leave this out)

Mix everything together well but don't overmix. I beat the eggs first but you don't have to.

Spray your loaf pan (glass works best) with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake in 375-degree oven for 45-50 minutes. I lay a piece of aluminum foil over the top for the last 5-10 minutes so the crust on top doesn't burn.

Test with a toothpick or cake tester. It's done when only moist crumbs emerge.

Cool, then wrap in foil to keep fresh.

If you make pumpkin bread instead of banana, use a generous dollop of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix) in place of the mashed banana.

You can also just as easily make muffins from this recipe. Again: For exact directions, read the box.

I make these breads two-at-a-time. It takes twice the ingredients but only one (big) mixing bowl and exactly the same amount of effort, and then you have a loaf to give and a loaf to keep. Or two loaves to give. Or keep.

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While I was making bread on Saturday, I also made cranberry sauce from scratch.

No Crock-Pot will made to feel irrelevant or superfluous on my watch.

This is another impressive recipe that is ridiculously simple to make, but elegant either as an addition to your holiday table or to give away jarred in a cute bag along with a freshly-baked loaf.

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HOMEMADE CRANBERRY SAUCE

2 packages FRESH whole cranberries (12 ounces each)

1 cup granulated white sugar

1 cup light (or dark) brown sugar

1 cup fresh (not from concentrate) orange juice

1/2 cup water

2 Tablespoons grated fresh ginger

1 cup sweetened DRIED cranberries

1 Tablespoon lemon (or orange) zest

In a Crock-Pot, mix together the FRESH cranberries, the sugars, the OJ, the water, and the grated ginger.

Cook on HIGH for three hours or so, until the cranberries have popped open.

Uncover, stir, and cook for 30 more minutes.

Unplug Crock-Pot. Add sweetened DRIED cranberries  and lemon zest. Stir well.

Over the next several hours, allow the sauce to cool and thicken. Stir often.

Transfer to a glass dish with tight-fitting lid and chill in refrigerator overnight.

This is an extremely sweet-tart sauce best enjoyed sparingly.

Serve cold beside the turkey and dressing, or, to give as a gift, put a cupful in a pretty jar with some frilly embellishment or other.

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So that's what I've been up to and I'll bet you're busy fixing a bunch of good stuff in your kitchen too.

Meanwhile things are taking brilliant shape around here, which basically involves me reminding TG for the third time to get the Christmas stuff down from the attic, and working hard to retain my festive mood while de-tangling last year's strands of Christmas lights.

All of my babies will be here for Thanksgiving. Won't you have fun looking at the pictures?

Speaking of pictures, tonight TG and I will (very carefully) remove the table-top glass and prop it off to the side so that I may rearrange the photos and add more.

As yet Baby Dagny is not represented there, a situation that must be remedied before Thursday.

Also I'd like to work in several more recent pictures of my other three littles, and a few shots of Andrew in and around the KC-135 and his unit.

Everything is in a state of flux but soon enough the dust will settle. Best relax and enjoy the ride.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday ~ Happy Thanksgiving Week

Martha was never even in the building

On Saturday I was in the kitchen, preparing various homemade goodies, when I began mentally concocting a Thanksgiving centerpiece for our dining table.

The family are all arriving on Wednesday; everything must be festive. 

I already had some real fake flowers (they're not really flowers but let's face it, neither are they figments of the imagination) that, for a few falls past, augmented by real fake leaves and ferns, adorned our front door.

Having tired of that arrangement, this year I put up an appropriately autumny wreath purchased for twenty dollars at a local retailer.

Thirty seconds to cut off the tag, throw it onto the door, and you're done.

As a bonus feature, the birds won't nest in a wreath as readily as they used to camp out on my door-bucket flower arrangements. I don't think.

Although -- here's  a tip -- the red-white-blue patriotic flowers that filled my door bucket last summer were free from nests because I added a pinwheel. Birds don't like shiny things, especially when the shiny things move.

You're welcome.

So anyway those "flowers" were chilling upstairs in one of my many offices and I decided to haul them out.

Having done that, I went to the cupboard and retrieved a teapot that doesn't often see the light of day.

And I gathered up six bottles from my hoarded, steadily-growing collection of vinegar empties: four bulbous beaker-like Star and two bell-shaped Pompeian.

(An acquaintance who once told me she could out-Martha-Stewart Martha Stewart with one hand tied behind her back, her feet in cement, and without turning a hair, taught me that odd numbers please the eye whereas even numbers generally do not.)

I may not be able to lay a finger on the hem of (either) Martha's garment, but I can count.

Six is even, though, you may be thinking. Yes. But seven is odd. Remember the teapot? Do keep up.

Having assembled all of that stuff, I got some scissors and proceeded to turn the stalks-of-three flowers into individual flowers.

Ouch. That maneuver is tough on the aforementioned fingers. Perhaps I need a Martha-Stewarty tool for hacking through the stems of real fake flowers.

At any rate I now have a glassy flowery lineup marching down the center of my eighty-four-inch table, the one plastered with treasured photos and topped with yet more glass.

For Thanksgiving dinner I think I'll group the vinegar-bottle vases on the buffet and let the teapot go solo, flanked by candles.

So ... spiffy or iffy? You decide.

Should you find the result of my burst of creativity to be tacky, however, kindly keep it to yourself. Audrey came over and made a strange face in its direction; I'm pretty sure she was trying not to laugh out loud.

If you like it though, feel free to steal my idea in any fashion that suits your fancy.

It's all I have to bring today.

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It’s all I have to bring today —
This, and my heart beside —
This, and my heart, and all the fields —
And all the meadows wide —
Be sure you count — should I forget
Some one the sum could tell —
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Monday ~ Happy Thanksgiving Week

Well done, son

Congratulations are in order to Senior Airman Andrew Weber.

Several weeks ago, Andrew embarked on an arduous course of study that, upon its completion in early December, will result in his promotion to Staff Sergeant.

His father and sisters and I are very proud of his achievements. More than that, we are grateful for all that this sweet and dedicated young man means to our family.

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Happy Friday ~ Happy Weekend

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We're good. Thank you. Buzz off.

I firmly believe that most of us strive to be permanent citizens of Happy Mediumville.

And no, I do not refer to seeking a community of contented clairvoyants.

I just mean, a place (any place, but especially those establishments we favor with our trade) featuring appropriate observance of garden-variety courtesies and considerations (the kind you'd expect; nothing more) but devoid of schmaltzy expressions of gratitude embroidered with quasi-sincere endearments flung repeatedly upon one's increasingly stunned and speechless consciousness like a rain of sticky used lollipops.

Allow me to elaborate.

Several weeks ago TG and I were out tooling around and we stopped by a store where I'd bought something I needed to return.

I went straight to the cashier -- as one is prone to do in such cases -- where I was greeted immediately and most effusively by the young lady on duty.

Well heLLO dear!!!!!!! she began. I'm so so SO glad y'all are here!!!!!!

The words were uttered with the sort of throbbing emotion one might expect upon discovering a flood victim clinging to the finial of their house's weathervane in the waning twilight of a bitterly cold day as you happen along in a dinghy equipped with an Evinrude E-TEC, padded seats, toasty-warm blankets, hot apple cider garnished with cinnamon sticks, gourmet snacks, and free wi-fi.

I'd never seen the lady before in my life, so: Oh, I thought. You are? Okay. I'm reasonably glad I'm here too.

I smiled, looking just to the left of her actual face lest I be blinded by the display of ultra-force delight writ large in her over-bright eyes which veritably hyper-glowed, presumably in honor of our presence.

Where can I get a case of whatever you're on? I may or may not have snarkily thought to myself.

Don't get me wrong; it is nice to be warmly welcomed. I become annoyed when, in a retail situation, it's all but impossible to find someone on the payroll who is willing to assist you, much less pretend to be glad you're there.

Or that you even exist, or that your existence may be construed to serve some purpose, or that perhaps you have a dollar or ten or eighty to spend.

Then when you do locate an "employee" and begin speaking, asking your question or whatnot, you are nearly always treated to the sight of their backside as they scuttle away from you as though you just that morning got back from trundling Ebola patients around West Africa on your shoulders, declaring as they go that they don't even work in this department. 

I think the more accurate statement would be that they don't even work. Full stop.

There is apparently no incentive anymore for hardly anyone to be solicitous and helpful and yes, even a tad deferential, when somebody presenting as a customer -- without which, places which hope to sell things would be up a creek without a paddle, am I right -- requires something more than simply having been allowed to walk into the store and breathe the air.

So yes, when you encounter someone on the other side of the cashier desk who crackles with enthusiasm, it can and often does represent a delightful change of pace.

Even so. Like all things -- be they edible or less tangible -- buried beneath a metric ton of treacle, it has the potential to get out of hand faster than you can say pass the Splenda.

Go to the cabinet and grab your bottle of pancake syrup. I'll wait. Turn that thing bottoms-up and just gulp away like it's a cure for all that ails you.

See what I mean? A trifling amount of sweet-sweet goes a long long way.

Personally, I love vinegar. But that's a post for another day. And I will thank you not to snicker.

People say you catch more flies with honey but to quote my TG: Who needs flies?

Anyway I was in the aforementioned store for approximately twenty minutes, looking here and there for this and that, and the girl who was so glad that TG and I were there was right on my heels the entire time.

She enthused once more -- then once agin, then again, and then yet again -- that she was so glad we were there. So delighted we'd stopped by. So excited she'd gotten to help me. 

For a total of at least a dozen times. Make that a baker's dozen.

These repeated declarations of ecstasy were punctuated with utterances of dear and sweetie so many times, I began to be concerned that in some life I no longer remember, I truly knew this young lady and we'd been best of friends, or maybe I'd once saved her life or at least loaned her my jumper cables.

The last time she said she was so glad we'd come in that day, she fairly muttered it to herself, but in my direction. And do you know what I did? I laughed out loud. I probably shook my head too, in amazement.

When I left I told her, chin up chickie, and gave her a little side hug. I felt perhaps she needed it.

So then only a few days later, Erica and I went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner. We had the nicest waitress.

And I do mean the nicest.

Because if she came by our table once to check and see: Y'all good? once, she did it eighty-five times during the course of our meal. Each time, her question was accompanied by a hopeful thumbs-up.

Now, I hasten to add that I prefer to have an attentive server. My measuring stick for whether they're any good is if I have to actually ask for a coffee refill, or if my cup is kept brimming with hot/fresh.

But there has to be somewhere between a bone-dry coffee cup and your server practically parking her carcass tableside to take your gustatorial temperature every sixteen seconds, where we can all agree to live together in peace.

Imagine: You are sitting across from your dinner companion and you've been out and about all day and you're famished and what you want more than a Chanel wardrobe is to consume your meal in relative calm and comfort, while conversing with said companion.

Instead of being allowed to do that, however, you are accosted after every third bite -- and I do not exaggerate -- and asked: Y'all good? And being forced to bob your head up and down to the point of passive whiplash in assent because of course you cannot actually answer since you are attempting to carry out the objective of your visit: finish your dinner.

The ninth or tenth time (one loses track) our waitress buzzed by and asked us: Y'all good? I looked at Erica -- mid-bite, mind you, for both of us -- and I opened my eyes real big as if to say What in the name of all that makes any sense to anyone does a person have to do to be granted a smidgen of privacy in which to eat their grilled chicken tenderloins around here?

Erica, mouth full, widened her eyes too and nodded in agreement because she'd been trying to tell me a story but had been interrupted so many times, she'd finally given up. It would have to wait until the drive home.

I briefly considered asking our server if she is familiar with the definition of insanity -- something I often think of asking certain people -- or, in the alternative, quoting a classic movie line a la Greta Garbo: I vant to be alone.

But I was afraid it would all be lost on her. Besides, she was too nice.

That's something which never troubles me in Happy Mediumville. I'm so glad I'm here.

Literally

I wish people would stop saying (and typing) the word literally when that's not what they mean.

I wish it in the same way I wish they'd stop resorting to overused fingernails-on-a-blackboard words like awesome and hubby, and punctuating every typed utterance with a string of inane exclamation points.

I wish it in the same way I wish they'd learn to use the apostrophe correctly (WHAT is so hard about singular possessive? Anyone?).

Speaking of anyone, would anyone care to learn the difference between the wonderful word everyday and the specific term every day?

Oh and while they're at it, I wish people would stop omitting the pronoun at the beginning of 99.9 percent of their enthusiastic online opinions.

Love it! Loving this! Totally doing this! Gonna make this tomorrow! Haven't seen that before! Have to try this one!!!!!!

I had to delete my Pinterest account because of that very thing. I could stand it no more. And yes, I realize I'm probably the only one bothered by the trend. I have made peace with that.

Then there's the sentence adverb. Hopefully ...

Never mind. I realize the use of hopefully at the beginning of a sentence has been widely accepted. Still. I hate it.

I hasten to add that hopefully is probably the only sentence adverb that offends me.

Clearly I am a hypocrite.

Be that as it may, you don't want to get me started on very unique. Aaaarrrrrrgh. Double aaarrrrghhhhhh.

It's horrible being OCD (and obnoxious) in the area of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage.

I wish I weren't. Sort of. Not really. #sorrynotsorry

And yes, in case you were thinking this very thought: I make mistakes too. Different ones. I wish I didn't. I wish I had a million bucks for every mistake I've ever made.

Then I'd happily go someplace where none of this mattered, splitting infinitives all the way. 

Speaking of wishes and bucks, here is an ad that makes me laugh. And I mean that in the literal sense.

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Happy Friday ~ Happy Weekend