Great Aunt Sophie’s Fancy Dishes

Great Aunt Sophie’s Fancy Dishes

Easter came along with a hint of Spring, snow almost gone, a warmish breeze, and sunshine - in other words a perfect Easter Sunday! This year we decided to celebrate Easter with roast turkey, stuffing and pie, all served to a few guests with as much flair as I could muster. Thanks to Great Aunt Sophie I have a set of fancy dishes and can set a festive table. Also, as is our tradition, we helped the Easter bunny out by stocking up on candy. We like to have candy on hand for both Easter and Halloween, in case a child should happen to come our way, but our motive is suspect in this respect. In the end, we always eat the candy ourselves.

I never knew my Mom’s aunt Sophie but somehow, through my Mom and then my sister, her lovely company dishes ended up in my possession, along with matching flatware from my mom. People tell me they could be valuable (old, intact, French) and occasionally, when I’m in one of those downsizing modes, I think I should sell them on Kijiji. But then I think no, they came to me from family members who have passed on so I should use them in their memory. That’s how I’ve always felt about the physical reminders that I have inherited. Every time I look at a painting of my Dad’s or my sister’s, a vase or a crocheted blanket of my mom’s, grandma’s treadle sewing machine, that old clock that used to chime, I’m reminded of people who once were a part of my life, and it’s always good to remember those we have loved. Slowly time takes a toll - things break, stop working, go out of fashion (thinking here of my mom-n-law’s fur stole, with little critter heads, beady eyes and paws). Memories fade, and then one day everything remaining is passed on once again. 

We have no control over what happens to all our stuff after we’re gone. Sure we can make a list of who gets what, but from there it’s up to recipients to treasure, recycle or trash. Stories live on, memories pop up, time marches on. Who knows, maybe some day a great great grandchild of ours will be using something that once belonged to us. “Oh,” she’ll say, “this once belonged to my great great grandparents. I never met them but I’ve heard lots of stories. They lived in the bush in the middle of Alberta way back in the 1900’s. Granddad tells me their old log cabin is still standing.”

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April 7, 2024

Sticks

                                                   STICKS

The snow is gone and what’s hidden beneath is revealed - a winter’s worth of dog poop! So today I headed out with bucket and my handy pooper scooper to eliminate an amazing number of unsightly blobs. I collected almost a full 5 gallons and this did not include that which is still frozen down! Thank heavens for my scooper, basically a stick with retractable jaws.

I got to thinking about sticks and how important they are as a tool in themselves or part of a tool. Sticks are useful just as nature made them. You can stir a fire, roast a marshmallow, play toss with your dog, tie a leaning tomato plant, whatever comes to mind. Shape a stick or add a tool or a point and it becomes a handle with endless possibilities - brooms and mops, axes, cant hooks, splitting mauls, snow rakes, garden tools, back scratchers, violin bows, billy clubs, arrows…

These days you often see me with a stick, a cane that is, an invaluable 3rd leg that eases joint pain and aides balance, or trekking poles with pointy bottoms for walking on uneven ground and ice. We also have a collection of walking sticks called shepherd’s crooks. They are invaluable for catching sheep but the fancier ones, with curved handles made from ram’s horn, are mainly for show. They’re used on market day in the British Isles and by dog handlers at sheep dog trials. 

One of my favourite stick tools, inherited from my mom-in-law, is called a dressing stick. It’s supposed to be an aid for dressing but I’ve repurposed it as a grabber. Being vertically challenged (short) I use it to push or pull stuff I can’t reach up high or in the backs of cupboards and to open and close sliding windows out of my reach. Before this stick entered my life I crawled around, used a ladder or hollered for help. Why ask for help if you have a handy stick?

This morning we got a call back to winter, not quite enough snow to require the use of a stick with a snow shovel attached, but we’ll take any moisture that comes our way as fire season approaches. Rain, of course, is preferable. Happy Spring!

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March 20, 2024

Happy Murders

Happy Murders

Years ago, when my mom-in-law was staying with us, we had a big chuckle one night when she asked us to find a happy murder on TV. “A happy murder!” we exclaimed. “What in the world is that?” After some discussion we determined that she liked the older murder mysteries like Murder She Wrote. No blood and gore, just a dead body and a murderer to be found, and you don’t know who did it till the end when the detectives solve the case. So now, when we are looking for a movie or a series, we joke about finding a happy murder to watch. These days they are hard to find.

I’ve blogged before about current films that feature questionable heroes, graphic bloody scenes, explicit sex, endless destruction of infrastructure and human casualties (See blog March 19, 2021, Hollywood Script) - all played out in a world of excess wealth. In many of today’s films it seems violence is king and special effects have become far more important than a good story line.

There is a tendency to embrace the ugly side of humanity in all media these days. Even music has some pretty rough edges. (Happy) Murder ballads, where the murderer usually gets hanged, have been replaced by screaming profanity and hate speech. Video games have come a long way since PacMan. They are very realistic, the enemy’s destruction by whatever means being the goal, with our own avatar inserted directly into the drama. Our news programs are no exception either, shocking us with school killings, hate crimes, domestic violence, war…  

Nearly everyone seems to question the effect media is having on people. Today’s media has a double edged sword. Most certainly there are many good aspects - some excellent movies, investigative journalism, information at our fingertips. On the downside though, there’s a constant, negative, desensitizing, media storm bombarding us from all directions on a daily basis. This can’t be good for our mental health.

Maybe it’s time to pay more attention, make better choices, for ourselves and especially for our children. People tend to perceive what they see or hear as truer when they see or hear it repeatedly. This is known as the illusory truth effect, and it helps explain why advertisements and propaganda work, why people believe fake news to be true, why some confuse fiction with reality, even why folks begin to believe some people’s crazier not so accurate tales. If we repeatedly soak up violent media, will we begin to see violence as normal, acceptable? Or does media reflect who we already are? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

Note: My mind jumped all over the place while attempting to narrow the scope of this blog. I realized that this topic is broad enough to warrant the writing of a thesis, or maybe the commissioning of one of those endless studies our government likes to pour taxpayers money into. One sentence, like the previous one, can open up a giant can of worms to ponder over.

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February 18, 2024

What Is It About January?

What Is It About January?

A song popped into my head yesterday and I asked my husband - “Do you remember Huddleberg Picnic? We used to do it years ago.” 

“Sure,” he said and attempted but failed to remember the chords on his banjo. I remembered the first verse and the chorus and went blank after that. Goes something like this…

I went down to the Huddleberg picnic

Dinner all over the ground.

Skitters in the meat was nine foot deep 

With green flies dancing all around.

Biscuits and grits was a-bakin’

Beef steak fryin’ in the pan.

Pretty girl sittin’ in the parlour, lord,

Got mighty hot where I stand!

Whoa mule I tell ya, whoa mule I say.

 I ain’t got time to kiss you now that mule is runnin’ away.

Well, we tried to remember it for awhile then we tried the vast library of Google. Found no song using Huddleberg Picnic as the key word and a few songs called Whoa Mule with the same chorus but the verses were all wrong. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll see if I can find it in one of our song books upstairs.”

My husband and I have been picking and singing old tyme music for over 50 years. We have binders and folders full of songs taking up a lot of space on our bookshelf. Some we know, some we used to know, some we thought about learning, some are alphabetized, some are just piled in stacks. I dragged a bunch downstairs but had no luck finding Huddleberg Picnic. So I decided to go through all the song books, throw away duplicates, alphabetize the rest, get organized. And I did eventually find the song, filed under K for Kicking Mule. Kicking Mule! And, of course, with the right key word I found a Kicking Mule on Google too, with some but not all of the same verses. (Animal folk songs for children, Mike Seeger.)

Ah, project started, may as well continue on. What is it about January? A new year, a new start? All the Christmas stuff that moves in and must find a place to rest? January seems to draw me into sorting through stuff, getting rid of stuff, asking myself if I really need this or that? I reorganized my entire closet, sent clothes and shoes to the thrift shop, bought a closet organizer. My husband, on the other hand, could not bring himself to get rid of anything. Thirty or more years of storage doesn’t mean he might not use it someday. Hmmm, speaking of mules.

Sometimes I think about my son and the daunting task he’ll have digging through the contents of this farm when we pass on. I don’t think he has the patience, would probably heave everything into the landfill. Auctions take a lot of organizational time. But there’s good stuff here, good no longer used stuff. Why, for example, do we have a set of heavy horse harness when it’s been many many years since we worked with horses? Why camping gear when we don’t camp? Oh well there’s always another January until there isn’t, and then, sorry son, I won’t care. 

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January 3, 2024

🎼🎶🎵

How Recipes Are Born

How Recipes Are Born

Heavy into Christmas baking I decided to make some EatMore Bars, a no-bake yummy treat. I looked up a recipe on line that used the ingredients I had on hand and set to work on a double batch. All done I put my tray outside to set, feeling good about getting that done. Then something clicked. Oh Lordy, Lordy, how could I have been so brain dead? I used cooking oil where I was supposed to use corn syrup! Same colour, same consistency, definitely not the same reaction. Old brain, over busy, Christmas stress? Well I’d done it so now what?

I brought the pan in from outside and dumped the obviously not set heap of ingredients into a bowl. There was so much - I just couldn’t throw it out. Having a light bulb moment I realized that the blob of stuff I had there could maybe be turned into cookies. After all, cookies have many of the same ingredients, just more. So I added flour, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, salt, eggs & more oatmeal. Cooking magic! A new recipe is born.

For EatMore Bars (from food.com).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1 cup corn syrup

1 & 3/4 cups chocolate chips

1 & 1/4 cups small flake oats

2 cups chopped peanuts (I used 1 & 1/2 cups peanuts, plus 1/2 cup Craisins) 

Prepare as below….

To change into EatMore Cookies add:

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 more cup of oatmeal

—————————————————————————-————————————— 

1. Prepare a 10 x 6 brownie pan with spray or butter.
2. In a saucepan heat the peanut butter & corn syrup to a boil. Remove from heat.
3. Add chocolate chips, stir well onto warm mix until combined and melted.
4. Add small flake oats and peanuts. Mix well until combined evenly.
5. Pour into prepared pan, cool until set, cut into bars.

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January 3, 2024