Mom Cooks

I look through several old photographs of my mother. All dressed up and wearing a fancy apron, she is cooking . The small, apartment size, electric stove tucked away in the corner of the narrow kitchen is nearly inaccessible for her use. Whoever designed that kitchen put it in as an afterthought. This was the “modern” post-war house. The left rear burner was a deep cooker. A tall aluminum pot fit down into a well, and once the lid was on, it would lie flush. Today’s equivalent, I suppose, would be the crock pot.

In the photo, my mother is kneeling down and sliding a perfectly roasted turkey out of the oven. I remember the Thanksgiving turkey’s of my childhood. The closer they weighed to thirty pounds, the more delicious they were! My mother’s ability to maneuver anything in or out of that narrow kitchen was nothing short of a miracle, and she frequently pulled off these miracles on a regular basis; not just for the six of us, but while entertaining guests, too.

Being raised in Pennsylvania farm country, my mother had learned a lot of her culinary talents from her mother, Orilla, who once worked, cooking for 50 hungry lumberjacks in the Lumber Camps around the Pennsylvania, New York border. Later, in the town of Port Allegany, Orilla worked in a diner and was famous throughout Porter county for her Homemade Custard Pie. In researching my mother’s family tree, I have only found Connecticut Yankees. It is a mystery that my grandmother mostly cooked in Pennsylvania Dutch style (really German). But, I recently learned from a cousin that Orilla was directly descended from the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam. Could it be that their cooking style was the same?

My mother could bake any kind of pie, mincemeat and chocolate cream being my favorite. I remember one time when we spent a whole year tending to a grape arbor in the side yard. When the grapes were ripe, we carefully plucked them and took them into the kitchen where my mother spent the rest of the day making grape pie. It was the most delicious pie I ever had in my life. I don’t recall her ever making it again, and I have never seen it offered anywhere else, either. It certainly was a lot of work to grow those grapes!

My mother’s biscuits were never matched by anyone, except maybe, by my Cousin Eva Mae, who was so thin, you would never think she ate any of what she cooked. Gravy: my mother made the best giblet gravy. It took nearly as long to make it as the turkey took to cook. The gravy pan sat simmering on the stove all day, tantalizing our taste buds. Spice cake with peanut butter icing: I have never been able to duplicate it, and long ago gave up trying. She also made chocolate cake with Marshmallow Icing. Yummy!

She knew how to make a big country breakfast, too. It is probably too rich for today’s tastes, but when a whole passle of relatives spent the night, my mother made bacon basted fried eggs that were curly crispy around the edges and the yolk cooked to order. She could roast any kind of meat, do up any kind of potatoes, even Scalloped or Au Gratin. Some other favorites I remember are recipes I seldom cook: Goulash, Pigs in Blankets, Yankee Pot Roast, Boston Baked Beans (cooked in the oven overnight). The list goes on!

Thanksgiving Memories

Thanksgiving Memories

I remember back when I was young what Thanksgiving was like at home, all the family gathered together. Everyone sat around the table, mismatched chairs and all. Relatives came from miles, sometimes driving through snowy weather. Beginning, days before, Mom prepared the meal. Mom was a really great cook! She made a huge turkey for us with sage dressing and all the trimmings. The house filled with the smell of turkey, roasting in the oven with frequent bastings. Giblet gravy simmered on the back of the stove a whole day, a huge pot of potatoes boiled up and mashed by hand, sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter baked in. Fancier folks called them "candied yams". Then there were fresh light-as-a-feather biscuits, pickles, olives and relish dishes, celery sticks and deviled eggs, corn and peas, and cranberry sauce cut in slices from the can. I never could figure out how it was called a sauce with it being so solid, like that.

Each year it seemed to be a contest to get a bigger turkey than the year before. I remember that one of the turkeys was so large, Mom had to thaw it out in the bathtub!


After the turkey is cooked, and eaten down to the last shred of meat the family ritual included carefully removing the wish bone which was saved, tucked up above a door, I always thought for good luck where it dried. Later, my  brother and I pulled it apart to make a wish on. There's a certain art to breaking a wishbone in half. only one side will get the wish. "The wishbone, known in anatomy as the furcula, is a fused clavicle bone found in birds which is shaped like the letter Y." according to wikipedia.





Mom worked hard preparing thanksgiving dinner often without any help. Back in those days, it was pretty much considered "woman's work", and I was not much a kitchen helpful daughter. I much more wanted to run and play. (Sorry, Mom.) If cousin Eva Mae was there, she helped Mom if she and Don arrived early enough. Cousin Velva did not. The smell of fresh baked pies wafting through the house smelled like heaven.

The table was overloaded with food, plate pressed up to plate. More food sat in the kitchen waiting to be asked for. “Can I have seconds?” was never refused. Pies cooled out on the front porch, that is, until one of our cats walked through one.

Mincemeat was my favorite. Nobody eats that anymore. I couldn't even find it lately at the grocery store, or the restaurant that specializes in pie desserts! I shall miss it! And Mom’s great cooking. They don't make thanksgivings like that anymore!

Bunny Dreams

Does the caged white rabbit dream?

With his pink eyes closed
and REM sleep overtaking him,

Does he travel to distant lands
where, in a past life,
he rambled freely, the green meadow?

In his two-by-four wired cubicle
he cuddles himself with nothing
and waits.
Will the rain ever stop?

Or, was the sunlight only a dream?
He dozes.

The big woman arrives,
places fresh greens through the slot.

Dandelion
Radish
Plantain

all torn from the earth, screaming,
rinsed of their soil
by a spray nozzle hose,
to be fed, alive, to the voracious rodent.

Sleeping bunny,
wriggling nose, sensitive to the pungeant herbs
awakens.

Bunny thoughtfully chews
his breakfast of weeds,
lop-eared gaze intent and distant,
remembering the dreams.

Elizabeth Munroz
Friday, May 25, 1990

Eternal Change

Inner pain, outer pain,

it all exists for the benefit of change,

Thoughts are only shells of ideas,

hopes are soft feather-down 

from angel's wings.

and rain is the tears

from every heart ever bled.

Death embraces all things
in one final ecstatic love.

Fear gives rise 
to the quest for answers,

and truth sheds light 
throughout the shadows of shame.

Laughing dolphins have more intellect

than stars shining from the darkness.

Yet darkness holds the key to deepest joy.

Whispering trees haunt the living forests
while fallen leaves dance on rock faces 
just to tease the sky.

And little children without legs 

are forced to watch their fathers murder.

Hearts break for all the wrong reasons.

Nothing can be grasped with closed fingers.

Swirling coldness dries up the ground before putting it to sleep.

Remember... Eternity is just a breath away.

In praise of a friend

I love your ever-present, overflowing tidbits of knowledge.
Your ability to speak eloquently
Your many faceted interests
Your capacity to listen kindly to a woman’s woes

Your beautiful brown eyes,
Especially when they smile .
The glow of your skin

The soft way your hair falls across your forehead
The quickness of your mind

The extemporaneous witticisms you create.
Your warm smile
The melodic tonal quality of your voice


Your capacity to put to memory
A thousand lines of poetry (Awesome!)

Your eccentric taste in clothing
Your level-headed rationality
Your thriftiness

Your capacity to maintain protection over your deep feelings
Your ability to keep a modicum of controlled fairness,
when opinions are flung far and wide around you.

Your cool reserve
The way you carry yourself.

Elizabeth Munroz - 1989
Dedicated to George Dunn
 

Grimalkin

A grimalkin is an old or evil-looking female cat. The term stems from "gray" (the color) plus "malkin", an obsolete term for a cat, derived from the hypocoristic form of the female name Maud.^[1] Scottish legend makes reference to the grimalkin as a faery cat which dwells in the highlands.

The term/name may first come from Beware the Cat (published 1570) by William Baldwin ^[2], who relates the story of Grimalkin's death. According to its editors, the story, and thus the name, originates with Baldwin. It is also spelled Grimmalkin or Grimolochin.
During the early modern period, the name grimalkin - and cats in general - became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were often accused of having a familiar, frequently a grimalkin.
Grimalkin was the name of the cat of Nostradamus^[3], and later the witches' cat "Gray-Malkin" in Macbeth^[4] by William Shakespeare.

In Tom Jones, Henry Fielding relates a story from a 17th-century collection of fables in which Grimalkin is a cat whose owner falls passionately in love with her. He prays to Venus, who changes the cat into a woman. Lying in bed, however, she spots a mouse and leaps up after it, "Puss, even when she's a Madam, will be a mouser still."

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Mr. Lockwood shares a set of two benches in the back kitchen of Healthcliff's manor with a Grimalkin described as a "brindled, grey cat, which crept from the ashes, and sluted me with a querulous mew."
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in The House of Seven Gables, Ch. XVI, mentions "...a strange grimalkin... was seen by Hepzibah while she was looking into the back-yard garden for Clifford." In the next sentence he gives definition to grimalkin as "...this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts,..."

The Godolphin Arabian, one of the stallions that helped found the line of Thoroughbred racing horses, was very close to a companion cat called Grimalkin. (Racehorses tend to be very high-strung and nervous animals, and often form a close bond with a companion animal; the tactic of trying to sabotage a race by abducting a racehorse's companion animal the night before the race is thought to have given rise to the term "getting someone's goat.")

In the television show "Batman", and later "The New Adventures of Batman", Catwoman (played by Eartha Kitt) operated the Grimalkin Novelty Company, at the corner of Cattail Lane and Nine Lives Alley.

In the 2008 series "Power Rangers: Jungle Fury", the pizza parlor Jungle Karma Pizza, which serves as a social hangout for the show's main cast, houses a pinball machine going by the name Grimalkin Gauntlet.

The governess/witch in the novel The Midnight Folk by John Masefield has two familiars named Greymalkin and Blackmalkin.

A grimalkin is briefly mentioned in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft, in which sentient cats play a major role.
In the Wardstone Chronicles, written by Joseph Delaney, Grimalkin is the name given to the assassin witch of the Malkin family.
In Jim Butcher's novel Small Favor, a large cat named Grimalkin appears with Mab, Winter Queen of the Faeries.

Grimalkin is used by Mab as a surrogate voice for an unknown reason. It is suggested that he belongs to a species of such cats known as malk.

In the video game BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger when Hakumen is defeated as the sub-boss of the game for all default characters (not counting Jin, the aforementioned Hakumen himself, and v -13-), he is suddenly warped out of the battlefield, all the while angrily yelling, "How dare you interrupt me, Grimalkin!" When he says that, he is referring to his mistress, Kokonoe. The Grimalkin in BlazBlue is a species of cat-like people, with three known Grimalkins being Taokaka, the aforementioned Kokonoe, and the original Grimalkin, Jubei.

In Gregory Maguire's novel A Lion Among Men, the cowardly lion, Brrr, has a "glass cat" companion who is later discovered to be named Grimalkin.

Thank you wikipedia

Photo Friday - Favorite Recent Photo

I couldn't choose a single favorite photo out of these pictures I took of my neighbor. So, I chose them all and put them in this slide show. Her name is Liz Valencia. I wanna be her when I grow up!

I'm not sure exactly her age, but somewhere around 79 if I recall correctly. She's been telling me this for quite sometime. You would think I could figure it out. But alas, the facts have eluded me.

I've asked Liz to drop by whenever she has a dance performance and I will take her picture. She is more than happy to comply. I know she practices at the Senior Center, but performs where ever she and her troop are needed. This woman is full of youthful energy and it is obvious she could dance circles around me.

The dances she performs are done in authentic costume for the area of Mexico the dance originated. So, she has several different costumes, and she looks like a million bucks in each one. The traditional dances of Mexico are called Ballet Folklórico

To Cayuga Creek and Niagara River

Once, there was a dream, never-ending,

flowing greatly within my heart’s happiness.

Capturing the last remnants of summers' heat,

the multi-hued pages of flame,

drifted lightly in the hands of the wind.

I ran alongside the swift stream bed

wondrously chasing the buoyant colors.

And my heart could fly

when it reached land’s end.

No barriers to my joy

I followed the merry journey onward,

through the singing waters.

Until the river opened wide

quickly rushing beneath that grand island bridge.

Leaves excitedly danced,

and took little leaps through the rapids

until they jumped off the crest of the waterfall

to be carried,

once again, by the wind.

Elizabeth Munroz

Stop Searching

Blind Seeker

Somewhere out in the night
A lonely one calls
Seeking that which was never lost.

In it's sad head
It cannot comprehend
What is all around.

The deep indigo night
surrounds it's soul
Yet it will not see
The twinkling starlight.

Open eyes do not see
What the heart requires.
Resignation brings on the search.
Padding across the earth

The lonely one travels far,
Far from home,
Always wondering.

What is the purpose in all this?

All around, in every branch,
And drop of water lies the answer.

Elizabeth Munroz
June 1990

From Last Friday's Post

This is BooBoo, about age 7. She was my mother's cat. 

When Mom and Dad went to a nursing home both their cats came to live with me. 

I put this picture of BooBoo into photoshop and played with it for a while and came up with the picture I posted on Friday.

BooBoo has found another home.

Come join me for some C8H10N4O2

C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. 

If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.

A quote from GeekDad

Heart Wide Open

 

Live each day with

heart wide open, 

take the pain

and the beauty

as it comes.

Life will be easier in the long run.

~Elizabeth Munroz

What to Name It?

When you become aware
you are faced with death,
you begin to live
every moment of your life
to the fullest extent
of your capabilities.

All the troublesome behaviors
others would aim at you
no longer have meaning.
They are not worth
your precious moments.

You take no guff from anyone
and you allow yourself to be free
in order to live out
whatever life you have left
as happily as possible.

Why can't everyone live that free in the first place?

~~~Elizabeth Munroz

Photo Friday - Photo Art

Jessie was 14 when she had her first surgery for a benign bone tumor condition called osteochondromatosis.
She had several surgeries yearly after that, losing her tibia in one of them.
I met her when a number of friends from the MHE support group decided to meet and spend a week together. Jessie died of complications of her last surgery with a blood clot to her heart. This is her pretty smiling face from that time we met, and I must wanted to create something beautiful for her mother.

This was my Mother's cat, BooBoo who came to live with me whilst Mother went to live in a Nursing home.
BooBoo had the sweetest personality. One day I snapped her picture and something told me she had a firey wild self to her, so I put her picture in Photoshop, and worked on it until BooBoo was satisfied!

Why My Dad Lived by Man of La Mancha Story

It is the late sixteenth century. Failed author-soldier-actor and tax collector Miguel de Cervantes has been thrown into a dungeon by the Spanish Inquisition, along with his manservant. They have been charged with foreclosing on a monastery. The two have brought all their possessions with them into the dungeon. There, they are attacked by their fellow prisoners, who instantly set up a mock trial. If Cervantes is found guilty, he will have to hand over all his possessions. Cervantes agrees to do so, except for a precious manuscript which the prisoners are all too eager to burn. He asks to be allowed to offer a defense, and the defense will be a play, acted out by him and all the prisoners. The "judge", a big, burly but good-humored criminal called "the Governor", agrees.
Cervantes takes out a makeup kit from his trunk, and the manservant helps him get into a costume. In a few short moments, Cervantes has transformed himself into Alonso Quijana, an old gentleman who has read so many books of chivalry and thought so much about injustice that he has lost his mind and now believes that he should go forth as a knight-errant. Quijana renames himself Don Quixote de La Mancha, and sets out to find adventures with his "squire", Sancho Panza. They both sing the title song Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote).

Don Quixote warns Sancho that the pair are always in danger of being attacked by Quixote's mortal enemy, an evil magician known as the Enchanter. Suddenly he spots a windmill. Seeing its sails whirling, he mistakes it for a four-armed giant, attacks it, and receives a beating from the encounter. He thinks he knows why he has been defeated - it is because he has not been properly dubbed a knight. Looking off, he imagines he sees a castle (it is really a rundown roadside inn). He orders Sancho to announce their arrival by blowing his bugle, and the two proceed to the inn.

Cervantes talks some prisoners into assuming the roles of the inn's serving wench and part-time prostitute Aldonza and a group of muleteers, who are propositioning her. Fending them off sarcastically, (It's All The Same) she eventually deigns to accept their leader, Pedro, who pays in advance.

Don Quixote enters with Sancho, upset at not having been "announced" by a "dwarf". The Innkeeper (played by The Governor) treats them sympathetically and humors Don Quixote, but when Quixote catches sight of Aldonza, he believes her to be the lady Dulcinea, to whom he has sworn eternal loyalty. He sings Dulcinea. Aldonza, used to being roughly handled, is flabbergasted, then annoyed, at Quixote's strange and kind treatment of her.

Meanwhile, Antonia (Don Quixote's niece) has gone with Quixote's housekeeper to seek advice from the local priest. But the priest wisely realizes that the two women are more concerned with the embarrassment the knight's madness may bring than with his welfare. The three sing I'm Only Thinking of Him.

One of the prisoners, a cynic called "The Duke", is chosen by Cervantes to play Dr. Sanson Carrasco, Antonia's fiancé, a man just as cynical and self-centered as the prisoner who is playing him. Carrasco is upset at the idea of having a madman in his prospective new family, so he and the priest set out to cure Don Quixote and bring him back home.

Back at the inn, Sancho delivers a missive from Don Quixote to Aldonza courting her favor and asking for a token. Instead, Aldonza tosses an old dishrag at Sancho, but to Don Quixote the dishrag is a silken scarf. When Aldonza asks Sancho why he follows Quixote, he sings I Really Like Him. Alone, later, Aldonza sings What Does He Want of Me? In the courtyard, the muleteers once again taunt her with the suggestive song Little Bird, Little Bird.

The priest and Dr. Carrasco arrive, but cannot reason with Don Quixote, who suddenly spots a barber wearing his shaving basin on his head to ward off the sun's heat. (The Barber's Song) Quixote immediately snatches the basin from the barber at sword's point, believing it to be the miraculous Golden Helmet of Mambrino, which will make him invulnerable. Dr. Carrasco and the priest leave, with the priest impressed by Don Quixote's view of life and wondering if curing him is really worth it. (To Each His Dulcinea)
Meanwhile, Quixote asks the Innkeeper to dub him knight. The innkeeper agrees, but first Quixote must stand vigil all night over his armor. Quixote asks to be guided to the "chapel" for his vigil, and the Inkeeper hastily concocts an excuse: the "chapel" is "being repaired". Quixote decides to keep his vigil in the courtyard. As he does so, Aldonza, on her way to her rendezvous with Pedro, finally confronts him, but Quixote gently explains why he behaves the way he does (The Impossible Dream). Pedro enters, furious at being kept waiting, and slaps Aldonza. Enraged, Don Quixote takes him and all the other muleteers on in a huge fight, as the orchestra plays The Combat. Don Quixote has no martial skill, but by luck and determination - and with the help of Aldonza (who now sympathizes with Quixote) and Sancho - he prevails, and the muleteers are all knocked unconscious. But the noise has awakened the Innkeeper, who enters and kindly tells Quixote that he must leave. Quixote apologizes for the trouble, but reminds the Innkeeper of his promise to dub him knight. The Innkeeper does so (Knight of the Woeful Countenance).

Quixote then announces he must try to help the muleteers. Aldonza, whom Quixote still calls Dulcinea, is shocked, but after the knight explains that the laws of chivalry demand that he succor a fallen enemy, Aldonza agrees to help them. For her efforts, she is beaten, raped, and carried off by the muleteers, who leave the inn. (The Abduction) Quixote, in his small room, is blissfully ruminating over his recent victory and the new title that the innkeeper has given him - and completely unaware of what has just happened to Aldonza. (The Impossible Dream - first reprise)

At this point, the Don Quixote play is brutally interrupted when the Inquisition enters the dungeon and drags off an unwilling prisoner to be tried. The Duke taunts Cervantes for his look of fear, and accuses him of not facing reality. This prompts a passionate defense of idealism by Cervantes.

The Don Quixote play resumes (Man of La Mancha - first reprise). Quixote and Sancho have left the inn and encounter a band of Gypsies ("Moorish Dance") who take advantage of Quixote's naivete and proceed to steal everything they own, including Quixote's horse Rocinante and Sancho's donkey Dapple. The two are forced to return to the inn, where the Innkeeper tries to keep them out, but finally cannot resist letting them back in out of pity.^[5] Aldonza shows up with several bruises. Quixote swears to avenge her, but she angrily tells him off, begging him to leave her alone (Aldonza). Suddenly, another knight enters. He announces himself as Don Quixote's mortal enemy, the Enchanter, this time appearing as the "Knight of the Mirrors". He insults Aldonza, and is promptly challenged to combat by Don Quixote. The Knight of the Mirrors and his attendants bear huge shields with mirrors on them, and as they swing them at Quixote (Knight of the Mirrors) the glare from the sunlight blinds him. The attacking Knight taunts him, forcing him to see himself as the world sees him - a fool and a madman. Don Quixote collapses, weeping. The Knight of the Mirrors removes his own helmet - he is really Dr. Carrasco, returned with his latest plan to cure Quixote.

Cervantes announces that the story is finished at least as far as he has written it, but the prisoners are dissatisfied with the ending. They prepare to burn his manuscript, when he asks for the chance to present one last scene.

The Governor agrees, and we are now in Don Quixote's bedroom, where he has fallen into a coma. Antonia, Sancho, the Housekeeper, the priest, and Carrasco are all there. Sancho tries to cheer up Quixote (A Little Gossip). Don Quixote eventually awakens, and when questioned, reveals that he is now sane, remembering his knightly career as only a vague dream. He realizes that he is now dying, and asks the priest to help him make out his will. As Quixote begins to dictate, Aldonza forces her way in. She has come to visit Quixote because she has found that she can no longer bear to be anyone but Dulcinea. When he does not recognize her, she sings Dulcinea (reprise) to him and tries to help him remember the words of "The Impossible Dream". Suddenly, he remembers everything and rises from his bed, calling for his armor and sword so that he may set out again. (Man of La Mancha -second reprise) But it is too late - in mid-song, he suddenly groans and falls dead. The priest sings The Psalm for the dead. However, Aldonza now believes in him so much that, to her, Don Quixote will always live. When Sancho calls her by name, she asks him to call her Dulcinea.

The Inquisition enters to take Cervantes to his trial, and the prisoners, finding him not guilty, return his manuscript. It is, of course, his (as yet) unfinished novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. As Cervantes and his servant mount the drawbridge-like staircase to go to their impending trial yet gleaming with courage, the prisoners (except for the Duke) sing The Impossible Dream in chorus.

This information borrowed from wikepedia