Grim Is My Middle Name

So there you are, your hands still puckery from all those dinner dishes, doing laundry at 9:30 on a Friday night. There's never enough time--or a babysitter--to go out and see friends, or a movie. And there's never enough money to waste on an overpriced coffee at Starbucks. Your whole social life is the yearly parent-teacher conferences.

You walk around so tired that it hurts to lay down in bed and try to fall asleep. When you jolt awake, in the moonlight, four hours later, everything's still, and the only sound is your teen-aged son snoring in the next room.

You didn't think there'd be this much homework, this much reading, this many papers. But you're gonna finish this degree if it kills you.

You can't remember the last time you walked around an art museum, met friends for sushi, heard any kind of live music. You simultanously disdain and envy your single friends who manage all these things.

Grim has come to live at your house.

You may still be bitter from your divorce. You may feel as if you have absolutely no time for friends and fun. You may be dead set on finishing up your school. You may be totally, steely dedicated to holding down full time employment and 24-7 Motherhood. And these are not bad things. What you have to monitor is your attitude. If you have been divorced 12 months and have not developed your own, new social life, then it is time. Buy a newspaper. It will tell you what movies are showing, where the local Strawberry Festival is this weekend. What the book club at the library is reading. Where the next fund raiser for the Humane Society is. If you are sitting there, shaking your head no, then it is very definitely time. You may be holding onto your old life a little too much.

The new rule is that you can meet anybody for coffee. Anybody. Try it. You'll like it.

Stages of Divorce - I Got A Lot A' Livin' To Do

So you get someplace else to live, and you get new towels and drapes and the cable TV hooked up. A big box of Cheerios and six Lean Cusines. And then you cannot stand to be there.

Sooner or later, you meet someone else who cannot stand being at their home either. And you run. Run, run, run. I met the girlfriend of one of the guys in my theater group, and she was freshly divorced too. We went out dancing, dancing, dancing, usually till two in the a.m. Which is remarkable, being as how I can usually go asleep at about 8:30 p.m.

It doesn't have to be bar-hopping. You can get super-involved in almost anything. Volunteering, lawn work, tailgating. Even errands. There's just a restlessness to it all that draws you out, out, out of the house.

It doesn't last forever. And it's not all bad. It teaches you things, about how very little the pick up lines have changed, how exillerating it can be still, at your age, to neck like a banshee. How guilt-riddenly late you can eat supper, how big the dust bunnies under the piano can grow.

And it teaches you, in a physically exhausting way, how to be comfortable in your own skin. That's important work, so that you don't fall right back into a new but awful relationship.

Just remember, it does no good to sew your wild oats if you have to pray for a crop failure afterwards.

It also teaches you, in a very visceral way, that you are out of the old relationship and that you have the freedom to charge straight forward into a Brave New World.

Travellin'

Washington, DC, is a magical place. It reminds me of Paris, with the spoked street layout, the circles, the public statuary, the monumental buildings, the trees and the park-like areas.

This trip I stayed at The Ritz. Now, when I was in Paris, when I was 40, our group managed to pass The Paris Ritz about once a day. And I always thought, "Someday, I'll stay at the Ritz." Well, someday came in spades. The desk clerk memorized every guest's name, even the snacks were magnificent, the bathroom had solid gold fixtures, and the view was what every middle-aged person loves to see -- a 24-hour Walgreen's. I went Christmas shopping there.

I was bowled over by The Lincoln Monument on my last trip, and had planned on reconoitering over to The Roosevelt Monument this trip, but my hotel room safe was broken, and I did not want to haul my laptop around The Mall. So I settled for heading out to the airport early, for an earlier flight home. Always glad to come home.

My next trip, as far as I know, will be a big conference in June, in Minneapolis. I want to go back to my favorite antique store up there, see my pastor, and my friends, and go to IKEA and to Candyland. http://www.candylandstore.com/ Other than that, I am quite content in my Little Land of Happy, in the far North corner of The South.

Next post will be another installment of the stages of divorce. Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow, and be ye kind to yourself.

Janelle

The Great Thanksgiving Do Over

So, there I was, minding my own business, packing for my next business trip and trying to eat down the perishables in the refrigerator before I left. The meals were getting more and more spartan. And then my daughter called and invited me to The Great Thanksgiving Do Over.

She had spent Thanksgiving with her husband's family in Memphis. And the cousin hosting the dinner bailed on the traditional meal (which he had never hosted nor cooked before). Instead he had a shish ka-bob grilling party in the garage. Except he had never made shish-ka-bobs before either.

The whole experience did to her what it does to any good cook -- it made her want to come home and cook something better. So she came home and did just that.

We had:

Pork tenderloin rubbed with bloody mary mix
Turnip and potato puree so creamy and tender it jumped up and kissed you
Fresh green beans with bacon
Red leaf salad with diced carrots
Sage dressing
Horseradish sauce
Homemade scones

The Pastry Goddess bats perfection once again.

Said business trip, back to Washington, DC, will take me out of pocket till next Friday. Talk among yourselves till then. Will try to post some photos next week. It's a great town for photography.

Peace,

Janelle

Alone at Christmas Is Not Half Bad

I don't know about you, but it threw me for a loop the first five times people went all agog with pity upon finding out that I was going to be alone for the holidays.

I didn't particularly feel deprived. I was orphaned in my teens, and I have done more than my fair share of mercy invites R.S.V.P.s. After a certain point, you would rather just not have to schlep on over to somebody's house – for another couple rounds of agogness at your purported staggering lack of family and plans.

I volunteer at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I fix swell little meals. (My favorite is to recreate the menu from Mister Steak Restaurants). I sleep in. I read the morning paper with Motorboat the cat on my lap. I have a second cup of coffee and take an extra long walk mid-morning and a nap in the afternoon. I love old movies, and Turner Classic Movies runs some great ones around the holidays. (Yesterday was a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers marathon). And I come back to work rested and relaxed and still enamored of my friends and relatives.

But back to the volunteering. The trick for singles in the holidays is to stay very outwardly focused. I set a December 5th goal for myself to make my contacts at Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army. I set a December 10th deadline for myself to do a small, home-cooked gift for everyone at work. and my neighbors, and my vet.. I buy Ball jelly jars and fill them with homemade salad dressing or homemade sauces. I fill a small sandwich bag with homemade cookies and sweet-and-salty munch mix and string that and a jingle bell around the jelly jar with curly Christmas ribbon. In all my years of doing this, I have only had one stinkerooni of a person turn it down, and she turned out to be a bad, manipulative apple all the way around. People just don't get homemade stuff with top grade ingredients in their lives on a regular basis anymore, and they go Ga-Ga.

I take treats to the public librarians. I tell them "Thank you for public libraries." I make homemade milk bones for my friend's dogs if I have time. I sing at a Do-It-Yourself Messiah every year and I go to Tuba Christmas

www.tubachristmas.com

And I love church at Christmastime. I have the neighbor ladies in for high tea with my Christmas china. I read "A Christmas Visitor" by Truman Capote, and "Sampson The Christmas Cat" and "Christmas For The Heart and The Home" by Susan Branch every year. I made sure my grown daughter has a Merry Little Christmas, and that it is totally separate from her birthday, which comes right afterwards. None of this involve, uh, a date. Or being the fifth wheel.

And none of which—and this is important—involves sitting around contemplating my own pitiful navel.

And yes, I set up a Christmas tree, even when I was stuck in Minnesota and nobody saw it but me. I also have, from my yuppie days, a whole porcelain Christmas village, but I have been too busy to set that up for years.

This year I am also going to make a bolster pillow in royal purple for Clyde, the college girl dollbaby, who came and helped me unpack in June, and a counted cross-stitch sampler for my new grandson. I am also starting to study up on a grand-looking sock caterpillar and a little felt Santa Claus that I probably will not get to this year, but I have been plans for in the future.

And the exception proves the rule, in that the best party I ever went to was a Thanksgiving meal at a co-worker's house. Marv and Maria were orphans themselves, and always invited four singles over to eat with them and their two brainiac little girls. We saw Maria's oil paint gallery. We saw Marv's stock charting computer program. We told funny stories at the dinner table, and inbetween the main meal and the dessert, we took an stuttering cold walk, a long walk. Then we came back and ate pie. But the likes of people with the hospitality chops of Marv and Maria don't come around very often.

The saddest human being I ever met was a friend of mine who had just found out that her husband had embezzled from her father and raped their 12-year-old daughter. And as we sat at a little cafe luncheon table, she explained to me why she was not leaving this man. "If I leave him," she said, with genuine Betsy-Wetsy tears in her eyes, "then I will be alone."

Alone is not fatal. It can be very calm and gloriously peaceful. And alone is something every adult has to learn to do. It took me a while to realize that the alone-est you'll ever be is in a bad marriage. Just being alone with yourself—that is – in the big picture – a piece of cake.

This year I am very blessed with events too. There is a roast beef dinner and karaoke contest that my union is putting on. And I taking a new friend to that. There is a cookie exchange at work (will be posting those recipes. more on that later). There is a luncheon at work too. And a co-worker has an extra ticket to The St. Louis Symphony Holiday Pops Concert. I am one lucky little old lady. But I've had years where it was just Mister Steak, me and the laundry too. And that is fine too. Peace Like a River, Baby.

So book yourself up. Drive around with a Starbuck's hot chocolate and a CD of cheezy jazz Christmas music playing in your car and make fun of other people's Christmas yard lights. Go watch the tenor at your church sing "O Holy Night." Stay away from The Mall. There be dragons. Find the yuppie grocery store where you can buy single serving pie. Glorious pie. Get one of those quarts of eggnog. Put a Santa Claus pin on your good winter coat. Let everybody you love know you love 'em, nice and early, and then leave them alone. They are busy. And you are, heh-heh, free as a bird.

Janelle

Easy-Peasy Bread - Ice Box Rolls

Homemade bread does a lot to brighten up any meal. Here's one that doesn't involve two days of you doing the culinary version of The Hokey Pokey:

Icebox Potato Rolls

Scald 1 cup milk and cool to lukewarm. Dissolve 2 cakes of yeast in 1/4 cup water, and then add to the milk. Add 1 cup boiled mashed potatoes, 3/4 cup shortening, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 tsp. salt. Mix well. Dough will be stiff. Spread a little oil on top of the dough. Cover and place in ice box overnight and let rise. Take out amount of dough needed and shape into rolls. Let rise for two hours. Bake in 400 degree F. oven about 15-20 minutes. Dough will hold in refrigerator four to five days.

From "Talk About Good! Le Livre de la Cuisine de Lafayette" (Junior League of Lafayette, Louisiana, 1969)

Not THAT Green Bean Casserole

My dear friend Byron had five heart attacks, rat-a-tat-tat, one Sunday afternoon. When they finally let him out of the hospital, he asked me to teach him to cook. I basically told him to de-glop his life.

In the big picture, there is nothing quite so gloppy as that canned-green-bean casserole everybody plops onto the Thanksgiving table. Between the canned beans and the canned soup and the canned, french fried onion rings, the sodium levels are circling Venus. It is one of those foods that are simply carriers for salt. And if you're eating the least widdle bit circumspectly and healthy the rest of the year, this casserole is not going to do a thing for you—except making you puffy and deathly thirsty the next day.

Enter "The Winter Kitchen," by Louise Andrews Kent and Elizabeth Kent Gay (Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston, 1962). This book should be called, "What Would Mrs. Appleyard Do?" It is one of those old cookbooks that you can read like a novel. There're slyly funny little vignettes before each recipe, describing Mrs. Appleyard's rural Vermont life. What Mrs. Appleyard would do with the ubiquitous green beans is:

1. Start with fresh green beans. Cook them until just tender.

2. Use fresh mushrooms, and ditch the soup for fresh onion, and a little slap of butter and cream. Thus creating a (gasp!) homemade mushroom sauce, in which you (gasp!) control the salt, the quantity of sauce, the add-ins (nutmeg, a little sherry, or jalapeño peppers). Mrs. Appleyard notes that this sauce is also good with broccoli, lima beans, Brussels sprouts, and shell beans.

Here's the recipe:

Green Beans and Mushrooms

(serves eight)

2 pounds fresh green beans
1 tsp. fine minced yellow onion
2 Tbl. or less real butter
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 pound fresh mushrooms, caps cut in two and stems sliced thin
1 Tbl. flour
1/2 tsp. paprika
salt or salt substitute to taste
1/2 cup or less cream

Cook beans until just tender. Saute onion in the butter until straw colored. Add the mushrooms and cook 4-5 minutes, stirring well. Sprinkle in the flour, mixed with the seasonings. Blending it in. Do all this over very low heat. Turn off the heat, and add the cream. The standing heat will warm the cream. Add this mixture to the beans and stir well. Serve hot.


I love old cookbooks, especially from the early 60's. I call them "P.C." = Pre-Cholesterol. They give you a good place to start, if you want to cook fresh and you want to cook at home (and have a grocery bill less than one-arm, one-leg). And if you love to tinker with recipes, start with a solid old cookbook. I have been making all my own salad dressings and sauces for about ten years now. These books know how. Because they didn't, back then, have all night grocery stores or all of the prepared, shelf-stable stuff we have now. But nowadays you really do not have to be part of the thundering herd that spends five bucks on something you can make at home for 45 cents.

Here's a quick test: Pick that grocery item up. Look at the expiration date. If it says, "Best used before June 1, 2022," put it back down and walk away.

Yum-yum,

Janelle