"Gift"

Dr. Phil says "Food isn't love", but he's wrong.  It can be.  Cooking for those you love is a loving gift.  I think back to Grandma and taste her applesauce even though I haven't had it for many years.  The apples came from Grandpa's apple tree in the back yard, a tree that bloomed in many colors every spring, and drooped with many colored apples every fall.  He took cuttings from heirloom trees when he took trips and grafted them on his tree when he got home.  We had applesauce so often when I was a kid I got sick of it.  What I wouldn't give to have a jar of Grandma's applesauce again!

$83 of groceries didn't look like very much food when I brought it home from my last shopping trip.  This made me think about those who spend a lot of their lives working for groceries and how many people count their pennies so they can buy holiday gifts.  Like my grandparents' applesauce, cooking doesn't have to be expensive. 

I bought a ham.  Ham is affordable and useful.  I'll make sandwiches and freeze extra slices for future sandwiches.  I'll cube the less pretty parts and use that meat and the ham bone for soup.  Into the freezer it all goes.  I'll melt the fat for lard which I'll later use as a flavor and grease in cooking other things and top my bowl of soup with cracklings.  Many future meals for $18.  Thank you pig.

Sometimes I'm aware I eat better and don't spend as much money as other people.  A young woman told me recently she'd like to be a vegetarian, but isn't, because she thinks vegetables are too expensive.  I gave her a confused look.  Buying ham is more expensive than carrots.  I seldom make lentil or pea soup, but I'll toss dried peas and lentils into other soups.  Lentils and peas are about $1 per bag.  Easy, cheap, good for us.  I pick herbs in the garden.  These are perennials, so free.  Grow them in pots if you don't have a yard.

Yeah, but cooking takes too much time!  Well, sorta, but I like chopping vegetables for soup.  It's my meditation.  You could use a food processor if it makes you happy.  I make big batches so I can freeze it in single serving bags for later because I don't feel like cooking every day.  I freeze them flat so they thaw out fast, then microwave them in a glass bowl for an easy, healthy supper.

I drink a lot of Red Rose tea, but they stopped putting little porcelain figurines in the box.  This made me ornery and gave me insight into early Americans dumping tea in the harbor when they were mad at King George.  I started looking around my yard for tea substitutes.  Well, I didn't give up all my tea, I was looking for things to lessen my tea dependence.  I picked clover blossoms and raspberry leaves.  I grew chamomile, mint, lemon balm, hibiscus, and lemon verbena.  My tea has gotten tastier and healthier, and I saved money.  I miss getting porcelain turtles though.  I'm hoping my protest will result in the reappearance of little figurines some day.

When I started volunteering at the food giveaway I hadn't thought about getting food from the gig.  It's just something I like to do.  This week, an old lady encouraged me to try persimmons.  I love them! (The old lady warned me they have to be very ripe or they'll pucker your mouth though).  I often take home defective, rejected produce and can it.  Canning takes time too, but I like canning.  It's like a science project in the kitchen and I get yummy fruit for dessert.  I gift jars of it to nice people too.

You don't have to cook all the time, but give it a shot.  Give the gift of home cooking to someone you love :)

"Health"

It has taken forever to paint this latest canvas.  Actually, I started it and ignored the fact it was propped in a corner, but I think actively ignoring something takes a lot of energy and should count towards actual painting time.  Painting over stuff should count for at least triple time, not forgetting time spent painting the original images in the first place.

This is the most recent of my mental health paintings.  I'm not really complaining about the time I spent on it.  I enjoy doing them.  The hardest part isn't the painting, it's thinking through an issue and deciding what to paint.  Another self-imposed difficulty is that I start painting without a plan.  The painting grows as I sort my thoughts.  That makes it hard at later stages when I can't figure out how to make everything fit and work together.

When I quit ignoring this canvas in the corner, I started carrying it around the house with me.  I took it out for drinks with my girlfriends the other day.  It was almost like having another person at the table.  My friends ask me to bring my latest when we get together, but this painting got a mixed response.  I'm curious what do you think of it?

Bro2 came over and took a new jar of pickled okra because he liked the first jar.  (I couldn't even get my friends to try them.)  He saw my painting and said, "Hey!  I know that box!"  We talked about the box and other things.  I think the painting is a conversation starter.

Since I've had this piece around in the active stage for so long it feels strange to let it go and move on to the next project.  I'm kind of used to being annoyed about its incomplete, nagging presence, but I'm pretty sure I'll get over that pretty quickly as the next painting traps my interest.

In other health thoughts, I'd like to say I'm sick of avocados, but I'm really not.  There were a quite a few left over at the last food giveaway and I took some home.  Now I'm down to my last half of an avocado and really hoping we'll have more this week.  Sure beats okra at any rate.

My food volunteering has improved my diet, as I keep getting organic produce from Trader Joe's.  I appreciate their donations and recommend you shop there since they have a giving ethic.  The only problem for me is they donate big quantities of certain things like okra.  Or, they give us a lot of snow peas and snap peas, both of which are great, but there's only so many peas a person can eat.  There's a young girl who comes who loves both kinds of peas though, and there's an old guy who loves okra, so maybe it's all good.

My library is giving away seeds from a seed bank.  I'm going to start my garden inside for even more vegetables.  Maybe the groundhog and deer will even let me eat some of them?  I can't garden outside yet even though the temp was 60F yesterday.  They're predicting snow for Sunday.  But I killed another mosquito this week!

I could go on another rant about climate change and politics, but I just don't feel like it.  Maybe finishing my mental health painting has helped me achieve a new, blissed-out state of being?  Or maybe it's the avocados :)

"Food"

I discovered a murder scene, but I was a suspicious even before I saw the evidence.  It started with the creepy guy standing just out of sight from the parking lot.  He had a dog, and that's usually a good sign.  A villain wouldn't have a yellow lab, right?  I saw him immediately, but I had to do other things for several minutes.  When I returned, creepy guy was still there.  I decided to take my walk anyway.  My 69-year-old girlfriend boasted about biking 60 miles in 3 days and I feel like I'd better get some regular exercise too so I'll be able to keep up with her in 20 years.

The first murder evidence I spotted was a small black feather.  It could've been a baby feather, but it's too late in the year for babies.  A chest feather then.  Suspicious.  Birds don't pluck out chest feathers in fall for nests.  I'd just spotted the next bit of evidence when a woman jogged through the crime scene.  A black wing feather with a white shaft.  Hmm.  Not a crow then.  The chest feather should've been red if it were a robin.

I decided to look for evidence of the murderer.  Yeah, yeah it's against state law to have raptor feathers, but a hawk feather would look nice on my hat.

I found a broken egg.  The mystery deepened.  Maybe that bird did make a nest?  No, don't be ridiculous.  The victim was a songbird.  This egg was large and white.  A duck?  A chicken.  Well!  The mystery continues.  I prodded the shell.  It was clean inside, so it wasn't like it fell from a tree with a baby inside.  The feathers were lightly resting on top of the newly dressed trail, so the murder couldn't have happened long before.  It seemed unlikely varmints would've had the time to eat the egg, and the egg was crushed without evidence of egg on the ground.

I stood up and put on my pondering face when I spotted the second egg a few feet away.  I found 3 eggshells in all, no egg contents, 2 more black feathers, no hawk feathers, and a highly edible mushroom.

The cross-country boy jogged past me for the second time.  I decided I'd dawdled long enough at the bottom of the steep hill I'd been dreading and resumed hiking.  The teenaged boy passed me again by the time I'd been up the hill around the loop and back to the murder scene.  The evidence was gone.

I only saw 4 people in the park.  Cross-country boy, woman jogger, creepy guy, and an old guy who was walking kind of lopsided.  None of them looked particularly murderous. 

I did discover what creepy guy was doing though.  He was gone when I got back to where I'd seen him, but I could see what he was looking at through the thin screen of trees -- high school girls in short shorts playing soccer.  You just can't trust some people, even with a yellow lab.  I called the cops and told them to keep an eye out for him.  I didn't mention the murder.

As if the various food items above weren't enough for this week's IF word, I finally finished my latest painting!!  Woo hoo!  YAY!!!  This one was a struggle mentally, emotionally, and artistically and I'm feeling the joy of accomplishment.  It even fits this week's prompt as it not only has an apple, it includes beer, sage, a pig, Pepsi, herbal vinegar, Blue Gill, and a filet knife.  Figure that all out as you see fit :)

"Recipe"

I went to a farmer's market and bought an eggplant.  I don't like eggplant.  I couldn't resist its purple beauty, or maybe its sensuous texture?  I don't know.  All I knew was that I had an eggplant without a plan.  I dimly thought I could make an eggplant lasagna, which is a travesty of lasagna, but the best I could think of for an eggplant.

I ignored the eggplant while making a giant pot of potato/cauliflower soup.  This was too much soup for my freezer, so I spent time defrosting and reorganizing, contemplating a previous impulse purchase of squid.  I had gone to an Italian grocery store with an Italian.  Maybe I got swept up with her enthusiasm for cooking?  I plunked the squid into the sink to defrost with the vague thought that squid was somewhat like clams, so maybe it would work in the potato soup like clam chowder.

I cut squid rings and lightly sautéed them.  Mmm.  I don't like the way squid tentacles look, so I chopped them up into indistinguishable bits, then considered my counter full of tomatoes.  I got out the eggplant and considered... yep, sauce.  More chopping... onions, garlic, pepper... oregano and basil from the garden... OMG!  I made a wonderful, accidental thing out of food I don't really like.  My dog confirmed my assessment of this sauce.  She danced in ecstatic circles.

The end result is that I have a lot of healthy food, and I spent very little money.  The only part that took any real time was chopping, but somebody else could've used a food processor and have been done in no time.  While I chopped, I thought about young'uns who don't know how to cook.  They're forever dependent on restaurants and processed foods.  That's fattening, expensive, and vitamin-deficient.  They'll never taste calamari eggplant sauce -- which I know they think they don't want, but they're missing out.

I worry about the health of young people.  They don't seem to understand food at all.  They're obviously fatter than they should be.  Okay, I'm fatter than I should be too, but they're fat and malnourished.  Or, they're anorexic or bulimic and malnourished.  They're going to suffer unnecessarily and die too young without money in the bank.

Cooking doesn't have to be hard.  Yesterday, I put a little water in a pot, added Swiss chard, put on the lid, turned on the heat... 10 minutes later, food.  To tell the truth, I grazed on the chard before it was even cooked.  Whatever.  Swiss chard is good for you and really easy.  I have a couple of squashes.  Cut in half, scoop out seeds, bake until soft.  Add butter.  These will go in the freezer too for days that I don't feel like cooking.  I nuked an ear of corn in its husk.  Done.  More butter.

Eat real food.  Stop Monsanto from genetically modifying our food.  Buy local.  Buy what's in season.  Grow something.  Learn to cook.

BTW, I figured out why I've been especially plagued by wildlife this year.  My neighbor a couple doors down used to keep a big garden, but he didn't put one in this year.  I guess it's up to me to feed all the critters.  To make matters worse, my groundhog got a girlfriend.  She's the biggest groundhog I've ever seen, brimming with health, with a shimmering coat.  She eats vegetables.  My vegetables.  I'll admit I took time to admire her and even forgot to send her death rays for a few minutes.  My original groundhog looks at her with absolute adoration.  I dread the inevitable babies, who will also be terribly cute and glistening with (my) vegetable health.

"Stomach"

I've continued watching psychiatrists' youtube videos about mental disorders and one of them called tv cooking shows "Food Porn".  What?!!  I looove cooking shows!  Friendly people chop, mix, sizzle, and chat, and I like to play this in the background when I'm trying to relax.  It's not like I'm going to actually follow any of their recipes.  I just prefer cooking shows to seeing a video of who's gotten blown up in the streets last.

Nice people cooking is a normal, pleasant world, and I want life to be pleasant and normal.  They remind me of the safety and love in Grandma's kitchen.  A full stomach means there's enough to go around and share.

The perky youtube therapist said my Food Porn is an unhealthy preoccupation with food.  Grrr.  I suspect she's probably right, but that doesn't make me want to give it up either.  Well, I'm very willing to give up vegetarian cooking shows, but I don't want to give up the fat old ladies making cookies.  I'm not eating them, so it's a non-caloric food obsession.

The strawberries and yogurt is a memory of a shared breakfast.  If you've followed my blog a while, you may have noticed I've painted other shared meals.  Food and love go together no matter what Dr. Phil says.  I had dinner last night with a couple of friends.  Lunch was with more friends.  Friends --> food.  Okay, maybe my friends and I should spend more time in the park walking it off too?

Big meals at Grandma's house were always followed by a walk in the park with the men while the women cleaned the kitchen.  I held Grandpa's hand and we journeyed across the street to Goodyear Park to poke around at the pond and hike through the woods in the summer, sled and warm up by the burn barrel in the winter.

I recently visited my friend's new condo in Akron, Ohio, not far from where my grandparents lived.  I decided to go past their house.  It's been years and years since I've been there, and I was happy to see that so much of the neighborhood looked the same as when I was a child -- until I got to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  It looked horrible.  The pretty porch windows with a fan design at the top were falling apart and paint was slopped on the glass.  A sign hung on the door that said the police were watching the property, so I suppose it's been used as a drug house.  The garage looks like it's going to fall down.  Grandpa must be having a fit in the afterlife.

A young couple with a baby watched me from the steps of Mrs. Edward's house.  A picnic was going on behind Aunt Sally's.  The park looked green and inviting.  Everything looked happy and wonderful for a new generation except our house.

I went home and thought about all the warm memories and cookies in the bright, turquoise kitchen and decided that the current state of things doesn't change anything.  The house and my grandparents live within me.  They're like rereading a beloved book, something I can pull off the bookshelf anytime and feel the warmth again with thanks.

"Fuel" & Giveaway!

How am I supposed to write about “fuel” without launching into a lecture about how people should use less of it? That isn’t going to endear me to anyone except Al Gore and people who wear hemp tank tops – and those kinds of people invite me to vegan potlucks. I bet Tea Partiers roast whole animals over open fires and deep fry turkeys and candy bars. At least the vegans come to the party with homemade wine to help me forget that I got a splinter in my lip eating a lentil salad with a bamboo fork.

There are different kinds of fuel, but almost all of them have some sort of problem connected with them. Talking about any of that stuff is a drag, and I don’t have the ability to solve the toxicity issues of batteries or fracking or nuclear waste or deep sea oil drilling. Obviously, the real solution to this week’s Illustration Friday prompt is to talk about food. Not texturized vegetable protein burgers either. You can’t convince me that’s much better than chewing on tree bark, and a portabella mushroom is NOT “just like meat”. It’s a mushroom. It tastes like a mushroom. It doesn’t fill my belly with happiness.

Having been raised by lunatic health freaks, my fuel of choice contains sugar, preservatives, and artificial colors. Mmmmm!! Never again will I swallow cod liver oil or drink a smoothie with raw garlic and yeast. I don’t care if it’s got a banana in it, you can’t convince me that I’m going to live longer or happier for it. Give me a banana Popsicle.

Just to be clear, neither of my parents would’ve been caught dead in a hemp tank top or listened to the Grateful Dead while stoned. They did, however, feed me buckwheat. I’m still resentful. Mom told me she doesn’t think she’s coming off well enough in this blog and requested revisions. I said I thought that was an unfounded accusation (with proofs), and criticism of my free speech makes me ornery and quite likely to write something else that will make her nuts. (Something like calling her a lunatic health freak?) I’ll leave it to the impartial reader whether or not she was virtuous when she made unflavored, organic yogurt, baked granola, and boiled milkweed pods. You’ll have to imagine my screwed up face remembering these things. Okay, the granola was pretty good, but Mom went along with Dad’s crazy idea that we would eat everything Euell Gibbons said was edible. Euell was wrong! I don’t want to eat every part of a pine tree!

(Oh great, now I've got the Grateful Dead stuck in my head. I'm having flashbacks to a cross-country drive with my ex where we only had one tape to play all the way to Yellowstone and all the way back... and this is after I just spent a day with Australian songs in my head thanks to Andrew Finnie.)

Anyway, I suppose this history might explain why I liked doing packaging for confectioners? I especially liked it when the samples came in!

My friend Korki was clearing out her cupboards and gave me a bag of Ramen noodles the other day. A quick glance at the ingredients told me that this was fuel that would never have been permitted in my childhood. I defiantly boiled water with rapt appreciation for the old adage “Better living through chemicals”. Yum. It takes me back to college in a salty, artificial way when Ramen noodles were 5/$1. The problem with this moment of defiance is that I’ll pay penance with lentils or something. As much as I may mock my parents’ food choices, their lessons crept into my subconscious. I can’t eat cookies and ice cream without guilt. I’ll still eat those things, but I’ll eat my broccoli first and hide lentils in my soup.

As this most holy of holidays for sugar-deprived children approaches, I wish you all every sweetness life has to offer!

eeee GIVEAWAY! eeee

I’m offering my first giveaway to celebrate my upcoming 100th post. I really appreciate all of you who stop by to see my posts. All you have to do to be in the drawing is leave a comment and become a follower. (Thanks to all of you who are already following!) The prize will be a set of 4 cards with original watercolors (6 7/8" x 5"), which are shown in detail in last week’s post. The winner will be drawn on Thursday and announced on Friday.