Day 2 Day radishes

November 30/ holiday virus

I am sick. Sick with the holiday nightmare common virus. You know the one. There is a person who arrives for holiday meal and says, “I feel alright, but I am sick, don‘t mind me, I will just go to bed after dinner.” Then you don’t get up for two days. I am that person. What ever it is, I know it came from Senior Radish.

Studies show that antibacterial soaps are not really very effective. As per Harvard Health Publications rinsing your hands well is almost as good as washing with soap and water. Soap in no way kills the germs, it just helps the germs to wash away more easily. So when you are holiday traveling and are at a rest stop, and there is no soap in the dispenser, give the faucet another go and know you have done your best.

November 27, Thank you

Last year I wrote that my sister had made my Thanksgiving. Now I am proud to announce that she has not smoked for over a year. And she had to go through the evacuation of Houston and the hurricane.

I am getting my blessings list together for the holiday. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful that I am free. I am grateful to the men and women working to keep us free. I am forever grateful for my good life, which I guess God and my husband coordinated. I believe there is a God who helped the pilgrims cross the water, and hung out to get them started. I believe that God, still, to this day, hangs out with us. But I do think he would like to hear me say Thank You. Thanksgiving and all its celebration is a great way and day to say, THANK YOU GOD.

PS. Thank you God for helping me with my potager. Who knew that baby swiss chard could be so good. Next summer I am going to try seed saving for you.

November 26/ Joy movie

http://www.thejoymovie.com/?SRC=NONE

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/dining/26dele.html?ref=dining

Here are two web sites.  The first was sent to me by a friend and expresses a very positive attitude.  Most of the photos  are pictures of places that I have either visited or have lived by such as the San Juans and the Oregon stacks at the ocean. 

The second, a New York Times article is great.  The topic is how to run Thanksgiving like a CEO.  Most likely today you are either franticly working towards Thanksgiving and are not reading this at all, or you maybe a secondary player.  But cut the article out, and give it to the next Thanksgiving 2009 CEO.  Among other information, it tells what to do with the person who wants to bring canned sweet potatoes with marshmellow.  First of all get a vision, and secondly deligate, deligate, deligate. 

November 25/ passwords

I started out having just one password for programs on my computer.  That  was okay until somehow I got more and more passwords. Sometimes it was redundant signing up on the site, or a password did not have enough letters.  It seemed there was a millions reasons to change my password.  But I do not know how to deal with all of them and remember who is who.  My little notes I leave  around the desk get lost and some times I have to change passwords for the same site 4 times  a day and I do not know what is current. 

Please if anyone has a solution for this problem, please write in. 

November 25/ Art lesson

About 18 years ago I took painting classes, but I stopped because I didn’t think I was very good, and as it turned out, so did my teacher. I remember how the instructor would have a slide show of great artists and the instructor would ask what each picture was about. This isn’t exactly what happened, but close. I would say that this painting is about a woman and the child she loved very much (Madonna and Child). The instructor would say, No, No, it is about the color green.

Here are three photos, albeit not very good photos, but they are a triptych. Oh photo journalism if you must.

Now I ask you what is the triptych about? You will probably say this is about flour, or pre thanksgiving chaos. You would be incorrect. This picture is about poor mental health and bad muscle control. This state occurred because I did spill flour all over the kitchen. I spilled it in three places and if you need to know the last white image is flour in the sink where there was water and it made glue. Now I am at my computer rather than cleaning it up.

November 23/ Whaa, whaa, whaa

Friday night Mr. Radish said, “Why don’t we invite the So&Sos over this weekend.” I told him to call them up. We like to have people over for dinner. At least we did ten years ago when we lived in California. We all lived an easy drive. Our eyes were good at night, and this was before driving drunk was bad.

Yes the So&Sos accepted for tonight. But my husband woke up this morning sick with a sore throat. At our age you have to tell people you are sick, because some people’s immunity systems can not take another hit. We leave a message on their phone with the basic, We are ready to have you to come over, but understand should you want to escape sore throats. Now, they have not called back, but I am pressing forward with food. My husband has gone to take a nap; which means he is sick. I have made an apple pie. I am making mushroom and wild rice soup, I have yet to do the salad, or clean the floors. This has taken a lot of the afternoon. And my husband is in bed. What is happening to me? I can’t do this anymore.

November 21/ Cookies

Gourmet magazine has cookies on the cover of their December issue.  Apparently they were so thrilled with their photos of the cookies that they could not decide which cookie photo they should use for the cover, so they made six covers and sent them out randomly. If you look at the cookies and the nightmare fabric they are displayed upon, I can not imagine many people actually cooking these cookies.  Apparently Gourmet was quiet pleased with the whole cookie article. Retro fabrics aside, these cookies are so fussy that I can not imagine anyone cooking them except for a laid off investment banker of about 27 who has no children or invalid grandmothers. 

However, on Gourmet.com web site they have a huge selection of 6  decades of cookies.  I have only cooked from the 40’s and 50’s recipes, because I prefer these old easy cookies both to eat and bake.  They are the cookies of my childhood.   But I see cookies as only cookies. I never learned to decorate.  (A cake is something else.  Maybe I just need a large palette.) They are eaten in a minute. Here today.  Bite, disappear. . . sometimes in one bite. With four year old G, I made the coconut bars, and cottage cheese cookies, the last of which took about five minutes to put together. And they are delicious.  Little T thought all he had to do was say please and he could have all that he wanted.  Tomorrow I am moving up to the 60’s and making macaroons.   If you are a cookie nut ,  log on to Gourmet.com.

The above photos are mine.  Young T is standing very straight and saying in beginner speak, “please”. The photos at the bottom are by G.

Most everyone who reads this blog also reads my daughter’s blog: http://expatprincess.wordpress.com/
The last two blogs have wonderful pictures  and at least one great story about hair.  I encourage you to go there.  

November 20b/ off for an overnight.

I am off for a day or two to bake cookies with some grandsons.  This is very good as I think I have tarpel tunnel syndrome from playing solitare on the computer, and I think my trigger arm needs a rest.    This photo was just taken yesterday afternoon. 

November 19 1/2 / Martha Stewart blogging

Martha Stewart did a whole show on blogging. I think the date is September 17^th of this year which it is still possible to view. The show did not tell you how to get going, or the practicalities of set up, but she had prominent bloggers from the entertainment, food, decorating, and gardening world. There are a few people that can actually make a living at blogging. Her audience was bloggers only and they were there with their lap tops. She gave away to everyone in the audience several good gifts, one of which was a Hewlitt-Packard printer.

But the inspiration of the program was that if you are passionate or have a wealth of knowledge in one or several subjects, get in there and do it. This is like a snowball rolling, gathering information. Ideas and inspiration are there for the taking. Plus sometimes you meet people. One example is that on the show were two women from Maine and Portland, Oregon. These women had posted their pictures up on Flicker and they noticed they had similar style. The two women started a correspondence and they decided that they would each take a photograph every morning. They then combined their photographs side by side in a book called A Year of Mornings. The book is beautiful and someone will be getting one for Christmas from me. Although this was a good hint for a Christmas present, the benefit for me was reminding me to try to take pictures everyday. Recording life is a great thing.

November 19/ a way to garden

Basically I am an arm chair gardener. This means that I love to read about gardens, think about gardens, make my plans, and hope. Books on gardening, like cookbooks are fascinating to me. I used to be more up on doing the work, but that has really changed. One of my most inspirational books, at least at the time, was Margaret Roaches, A Way to Garden. Margaret worked at several places before she went to work at Martha Stewart. For a long time she was the Gardening Editor, and then she went on to work much higher up the Martha chain. On the front of her book her dirt hands are holding something from her garden and that cover has become a cliché. Now about 50ish she had an epiphany and decided that she was not doing what she really liked, she and moved to her second home in up state New York. I always wondered what happened to her, and one of the reasons was, I gathered she was keen on her photographer who was pretty good looking. I wondered if that relationship ever worked out. Sort of Sex and the City sort of thing.

This Sunday in our local paper the garden columnist had a list of web sites to visit on gardening.

www.awaytogarden.com

was one of the sites. For me it was like finding an old friend. Last night I went down to the storage and found her old book. The book is seasonal like the blog, and you find on which you should be concentrating in the garden. I went to Amazon to look for her book. It must be out of print as new books started at $69.00 and used ones started at $39.00. Her list of seasonal garden activities is much more fun to read than Sunset’s Western Garden book.