Peas and Carrots

I love peas & carrots with my dinner.

Most people don’t. It brings back memories of that mushy vegetable dish slopped up next to the shoe-leather piece of beef and starchy mashed potatoes served up at the cafeteria, just before the grumpy server splashes a ladle full of brown gravy on top of everything. You remember brown gravy. It has no taste. It’s just brown. And salty. And… brown. But you can stir it up to make a peas-and-carrot-and-mashed-potato-and-gravy soup.

I think people have secret cravings for those horrible things they suffered through as a kid. Peas & carrots are one of those. But today’s peas & carrots are not the mushy side dishes of yesteryear.

I love peas and carrots today because I resurrect it from the steam table glop that it used to be and raise it to an acceptable culinary level. Maybe not to the level of my crisp stir fried garden vegetables lightly tossed and coated with the complex flavours of the east. But something that combines a little veggie bite with subtle memories of cafeteria trays from years, nay decades, gone by. And it’s too easy.

Here we go.

Peas. I use the frozen ones. Canned ones don’t cut it, and freshly shucked from the garden are a little over the top. (I just shuck the ones from the garden right into my mouth. The best way to enjoy them.)

Carrots. Here’s the trick. Fresh carrots. I chop them into coins. (I want to be able to see them without my reading glasses.)

Sometimes I add a little shaved onion for a little extra taste.

Into a pot. A little water. Cooked only until the carrots are barely tender. (They need some bite left in them!)

Drain. A swirl of butter. Maybe a sprinkle of fresh parsley. Park them next to the potatoes. Not mashed. May I recommend the delightful Yukon Gold variety?

Enjoy! This is not your cafeteria side dish. But the memories….

Grillin’ in my Jams

What a great summer long weekend!

The weather is fantastic. I’ve chugged some big glasses of orange juice to cool me down. I’ve done some chores around the house. And now it’s grillin’ time.

I’ve taken off my doin’-the-chores clothes. I’ve had a lo-o-ong cool shower. And I’m ready to grill.

So… for my grilling outfit I’ve chosen…. Well. if I still lived in California, it would be obvious that I’m wearing my leisure pants. Cool. comfortable in the afternoon heat.

But this is the Pacific northwest. It’s the southwest corner of BC. People here don’t wear… ‘leisure pants’. So what the heck am I wearing? Oh my God, I’m in my jams!

What will the neighbours think? Are they peeking out of their windows now even as my grill belches flames out the sides? Are they squinting through their barely closed blinds, all aghast?

Do I care?

Heck, no! It’s summer. This is one of the best weekends we’ve had.

The rib steaks I seasoned earlier this afternoon with my secret rub. On they go!

The fresh local corn is grilled to perfection, waiting for butter and salt and pepper. The baked potatoes are perfect.

Marg has grilled a pile of garlicky mushrooms. There’s some asparagus around here somewhere. I’m in barbeque heaven. This is what we live for!

So as the sun goes down, I’m reveling in the glory of a perfect dinner and the end of a perfect day.

Could it get any better?

Dessert anyone…?

Meditation, Feng Shui, Baggage and Clutter

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it…. That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff! George Carlin

We’ve driven a few loads of stuff from our house and garage to the thrift store, the recycle centre, and the dump. The weekly collection pile at the curb has been a lot bigger the last few weeks,

We can now actually crawl into our crawl space. You know what’s in there? Shelves with more boxes.

All we’ve done is opened up other layers of stuff we packed away once upon a time. It’s good stuff, most of it. Well, some of it anyway.

I found that special connector I knew I was going to need when I upgraded the stereo in our old motorhome. A super deal – 50 cents at a yard sale. When I actually did the upgrade, I forgot I had it. Wouldn’t have been able to find it anyway.

But then there’s the stuff that really makes me wonder why I still have it. Like the big old tape recorder with the plastic reels. It doesn’t even work. I looked at the old moving company’s sticker on the lid – through how many moves had I lugged this thing? I counted up to ten when I ran out of fingers.

I know it’s bad to save unnecessary stuff for yourself and even worse to save it for other people. How did I get into this?

It’s so easy to see other people’s problems and know what they should do about them. Why is it so tough to deal with my own? I know. It’s all the history and baggage that I carry around with my own problems. All that stuff I have is wrapped in generations of emotional baggage.

In our family, we learned some of it from our parents and grandparents. That Depression-era, Second World War refugee thinking: things are bad and will only get worse; hang onto any useful or even remotely useful thing you have – you may need it. Don’t toss anything until it’s completely worn out and can’t be put to any other purpose. Or until someone else can use it.

Then we pass along this thinking to our kids.

So now I’m trying to change my thinking – to downsize and get rid of all this collected stuff. I can no longer pretend that the boxes in the basement are a heat and energy conserving thermal mass or that I can toss the stuff I’m tripping over into the closet and it will go away.

And how the world has changed. Things are cheap and easy to get and difficult to get rid of. Now everyone is rich, things are disposable. People spend money as a form of entertainment. No one wants old stuff. Charities cherry pick. The dump is selective and not cheap.

I acknowledge my wrong thinking and still it’s difficult to give up my stuff. Why is it clinging to me so tightly? I don’t know what to do about it, so I don’t do anything.

There are a lot of decluttering guides out there.

They can help you categorize clutter. For example there is:

• Emotional clutter – the main kind with sentimental and emotional ties. Items that bring back memories – a story is attached to it. (But it’s the story, not the thing, that’s important.) Things you hang onto through guilt – it came from someone through great personal or financial sacrifice.
• Bargain clutter – it was so cheap; how can I get rid of it? I found by the side of the road.
• Just-in-case clutter – no personal or sentimental value here. Just lots of old papers, bank statements, and bills; mechanical and electrical parts.

The guides also give practical steps. You get three big boxes and label them…. You set the timer for 20 minutes and…. But these hints and procedures only work after you’ve disentangled all the mental ties. How can I do that?

I looked for other suggestions. One was meditation – sit in the midst of the clutter and meditate on why you are hanging onto it.

So I sat in the middle of the piles of boxes of paperwork I’d amassed over the years and tried to calm my buzzing mind. (Breathe slowly….) The boxes loomed over me. And I got a glimmer of insight: They were mostly memories of the lives I use to lead (in my case business, legal, technology-related) and documentation for lives I thought I might have. Someday. There were notes, papers, clipped articles, cartoons and books for the business growth and vision books I had planned to write and the consulting I was going to do someday. Brilliant, maybe, but nowhere in my plans now. Times have changed. Others have written about it. I’m off in other directions. I helped the recycle truck driver load the boxes.

Well that helped in one corner. The technique has merit. I’ll keep using it.

Then there’s the Fen Shui approach. Feng shui is an art and science that has to do with energy flow in a home as well as the energy attached to particular items. I don’t even want to think about the convoluted dysfunctional energy flows in this house.

But I thought the idea of using it for specific items was interesting. The idea is to pick up an item and ask what the item is saying to me.

I was rifling through a box of odds and ends and pulled out a picture of an old girlfriend. “What is this photograph saying to me?” I asked. I looked at it. “I dumped you over 35 years ago and you still have my picture? Ha-ha-ha!” Gone.

I still have a lot to learn about myself in this ongoing process. I am learning to say No . And I realize now that even when I’m ‘done’, decluttering will be a life-long activity.

Picking A New Home

We are thinking about picking a hew home.

It’s time. The old one is too big. Time to downsize. Time to get rid of too many belongings. That collection of all that stuff that will surely come in useful someday. But hasn’t yet. (Never will.)

Margaret is so much more organized and methodical about these things. She’s got the all the local neighbourhoods scouted out and organized and catalogued, suitable properties ready to pop up onto the screen at the click of a mouse.

“Where do you want to live?” she asks.

Where do I want to live? That’s the question now, isn’t it?

I try to imagine a place where I’d like to wake up. The sun is streaming through the curtains. I push the window open wide and take a deep breath from the ocean breeze. The sunlight dances on the waves in the bay, the gulls skim over the surface of the water. There’s a light clanging from the rigging on a mast of one of the sailboats anchored nearby. I wander into the kitchen and start the coffee. What a wonderful aroma. It’ll wake me up for sure. I think I’ll have breakfast on the deck this morning.

I think I saw just the place in a 1993 issue of Country Living I was carrying out to the recycle box. Great view of the bay and slopes dotted with Monterey Pines. Nice.

“What do you think of this place…?” I ask.

“Nice, but not practical,” sighs Margaret.

How do I find the right balance between practical and want?

I know that this time I want a place that is not one-third home and two-thirds U-Haul storage locker. It would be nice to actually have room to park a car in our garage – our three-car garage. (Oh well, it’s not like we’re any different from the neighbours. Funny how we all park our cars in the rain so we can keep our clutter dry. And when the garage is full, we look for a bigger house.)

But, we’re making progress! Aah, how great it feels every time we get rid of another load of… stuff. I’m sure the folks at the recycle place cringe every time our old Aerostar comes rolling in the gate.

I also want a place that reflects who we are – and who I am. I am not a mechanic because my dad left me a big red toolbox chock-a-block full of sockets, ratchets, and… who knows what those things all are. I am not a landscaper because I have a power mower, gas weed trimmer, and a pump sprayer next to containers of mystery chemicals. I look at the About Me page of my blog and realize that the things I do and have relate very little to the description I’ve written about myself. (But I’m hopeful.)

And I want a place that doesn’t consume all my resource – finances, physical and psychological energies, time. I want a place where I look forward to hanging out, not a swirling black hole that I’m scared to get close to.

Okay, but these don’t really help in solving the practical problem of finding a new place. The real estate web site search pages don’t have check boxes for Black Hole or Self-realization or Clutter-shedding. Add to this the fact that I am a weak on-line shopper (I desperately need to poke, touch, experience a thing and its surroundings before I want to buy it) the step from wanting to having is a lo-o-ong one.

It would be nice if the perfect home just fell out of the sky, but the odds are against it. Wish me luck and send me hope.

A Sad Day

It’s a sad day for our family today.

It’s the Monday of a long weekend – Victoria Day – and traditionally the kick-off to summer, And, continuing in the tradition of long weekends hereabouts, it’s raining.

Seems like too many long weekends start out promising  – and end up cold and rainy. My daughter came back from a camping trip this morning. The tent, tarps, and other camping gear are spread out in the garage in the hopes they will dry out before too long. But they had a great time and I hear they put up an ingenious roof system with a couple of tarps that kept the rain off and allowed the campfire smoke to curl upwards to where it should go. BC campers are a resilient bunch!

But that doesn’t make for a sad day.

Our cat, Pussypoo (a strange name, but it stuck) is about 16 years old. In human terms that puts him well into his eighties.

He’s been a traveller, top cat in the neighbourhood, a great hunter (he would survey the open fields from his perch on top of a fencepost – of course this was before the fields and woods were turned into rows of suburban homes), and an affectionate pet.

True, over the last few years he relinquished much of his status and settled a bit more into the background. He stayed at home more but still kept our other cat brats in their place and exhibited appropriate disdain for our chihuahua, Minnie Mae. More recently, he’d become less sprightly in his movements and more cumudgeonly in his attitude. But he still came around for his regular cuddle. (Purr…, purr….)

Then yesterday morning his energy was gone; by this morning he could barely find the strength to move about from place to place. A visit to the vet – he shook his head. We lost Pussypoo this afternoon.

Maybe just a cat, but simply being together for fourteen years builds bonds. We had the whole family to share our sadness and be happy knowing that, for a cat, Pussypoo really did have a great life. We’ll miss him.

If I never loved, I never would have cried. from I am a Rock, Simon & Garfunkel

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This is from our family website back in 1999 (before we all had blogs):

Our cat, Cat, …or is it Pussypoo…, has really settled in

Nicole discovered Pussypoo as one of the wild strays at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm last summer. White and fluffy, she somehow didn’t really fit in with the other farm cats. Nicole tamed her down and when it was time to leave, she couldn’t leave without …Fluffy. Well, she seemed completely at home travelling in the motorhome, loved it, as a matter of fact.

When she visited the vet on the way home, it turned out she was a he, and not wild at all. Anyway, Fluffy didn’t seem to suit a ‘he’ and no name really stuck, so he’s Pussypoo now. We don’t know where he originally came from, but from the way he likes lying on the dashboard during road trips, we figure he got lost during someone else’s motorhome trip through the area.

but he is not too crazy about taking baths……!

Waving

Thwack…!

Margaret had my attention.

“Wave!” she said, jerking her head toward the tough-looking pickup truck rumbling over the washboard in our direction.

We were walking along a gravel road in Northern BC, just down from the farm where she grew up. I was daydreaming, lost in a daze of wild grasses, fragrant spring flowers, and breezes whispering secrets to each other in the tree-tops.

“Uh, who’s that?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Around here, when you see someone, you wave .”

So we waved and the middle-aged driver in his checked shirt and baseball cap smiled and waved back at us through his dusty windshield.

It felt good. In a place where your nearest neighbour lives several miles down the road you rejoice in the camaraderie of simply meeting someone else in the same little remote piece of the planet.

We don’t wave enough.

I’ve been part of a few “waving communities”. Back in my motorcycle days, we bikers used to wave as we passed each other on the road. It didn’t matter what you rode – small, or big, or really tough. Your hand flashed out as you passed the other rider. A gloved hand rose in reply. A common bond acknowledged.

During the early ’70s, you would often see Volkswagen owners wave at one another – smug signs of mutual approval by the drivers of these efficient, unconventional autos in a world of gas-guzzling, exhaust-belching V-8′s. Since then the Volkswagen has changed. No longer the commuter car of the nonconformist, it’s now a mainstream vehicle, and the wave has become an almost-forgotten memory.

There is still the workplace related wave. Even now, we bus drivers wave at each other: a workplace bond, since even though we work alone, we are not truly working solo. From the number of waves I give and get during a work day, I know I’m part of a pretty big team.

And we can all take part in the traffic wave – that ‘thank you’ wave to another driver when they open up a little needed space for us when we have to change lanes or pull into traffic.

City driving can easily make you crazy, especially if you try to isolate yourself from the rest of the world – pretending that you’re not bound and constrained by that mass of creeping, crawling cars, trucks, and buses surrounding you, and resenting the fact that you are.

We’re all captives in rush hour. A little consideration is appreciated. A little acknowledgment is especially prized.

We don’t wave enough.

I’ll have another taste, please.

One of the delights of my recent trip to southern Caifornis’a Temecula Valley was visiting its many small wineries – and sampling their wines.

I learned that there are over 30 wineries and 3,500 acres of producing vineyards, mostly family-owned, clustered in this rural area of rolling hills just a few miles east of Temecula, about an hour’s drive north of San Diego.

Oh, where to start?

Luckily, our good friends Ann and Gary, who live about an hour away, just happened to be in the area, conveniently camped next to us in the RV park. They know the area and they’re knowledgeable about the wines and wineries of the valley, so we volunteered them as guides.

I learned that trying to tour 30 wineries in one day is a little ambitious. For a number of reasons. You really need to take the time to savour the wines, And you need to keep a clear head if you want to appreciate their nuances. (Personally, I can’t bear to, umm… ‘discard’ the tastes.) We visited two that day – just about right.

This is Monte de Oro, one of the newest wineries in the valley.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Monte De Oro produces about 10,000 cases of wine a year from the 72 acres of grapes they have under cultivation. Their building and tasting rooms are gorgeous and the view – spectacular. And their wines are a delight.

  

See the full gallery on Posterous

What I like about tastings is that I get to discover new wines I like, and to enjoy and appreciate wines that are wonderful to sample - but that I wouldn’t necessarily want to drink in any greater amounts.

It can also get me out of the habit of always choosing the same kind of wine. I like full-bodied red wines and will usually come home with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. (Heck, I’m just as likely to come with a box of Cabernet Sauvignon.) Good choice for me. I like them.

But this day I found I that preferred a Syrah, and surprisingly (to me at least), what has been called it’s cousin white, a Viognier.

The Viognier grape has been around since Roman times. It almost became extinct during the 1960′s (with fewer than 35 acres of vines – some say much less – remaining in France’s Rhône region). But that’s another story.

Fortunately for me, the grape has seen a resurgence and is now grown in many areas of the world, including BC. So now that I’m back, I can drink local.

It was a good day and, even though the Temecula Valley is a small, cozy region, there is still much for us to explore next time we’re there.

Banana Bread

I’m not a dessert person.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll delight in a bowl of ice cream, a slice of tart apple pie, or a slice of decadent New York cheesecake. Usually, though, savoury wins out over sweet almost every time.

I do enjoy something not overly sweet with my coffee, though. A plain scone, some coffee cake, or banana bread.

Everyone around here seems to love banana bread. Good thing, too. It gives me a chance to use up all those scary-looking bananas that have turned black in the fruit bowl. (Toss them whole into the freezer at that point – they’ll keep almost forever until it’s time to bake.) Our local produce store also sells over-ripe bananas – cheap. You have to look under the produce shelves to find them.

A good banana bread should find that nice balance between crumbly dry and banana peel slippery. I found a great recipe in the Joy of Cooking. (A basic reference in this home – I figure any cookbook that can tell you how to deal with the squirrels that the crazy hunter next door dropped off must be comprehensive.)

Of course, I can never follow a recipe exactly, so the one below includes my own variations. I used to mix it up in a big bowl (I like rustic versions) but today I couldn’t resist using the vintage KitchenAid mixer Margaret found on e-bay last year. The pictures also show a double batch – the first loaf usually disappears so fast around here that otherwise there’s nothing for me to pack with my lunch the next day.

First, add the dry ingredients in a bowl:

• 1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2-1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Half-and-half white and whole wheat flours works well, too. I whisk these together in the bowl.

Then, in the mixer bowl (or a second, bigger bowl, if you’re doing this by hand) add and mix:

• 1/3 cup shortening (I use vegetable oil)
• 1/2 cup sugar (This is a little less than the original recipe calls for.)
• Citrus garnish (The original recipe says 3/4 tsp lemon rind. I’ve often just used just a splash of Realemon from the fridge. Today I also added about a tsp of grated lime. What I really like is to drop as much as a 1/4 of an orange, peel and all, into a blender and add the whirled orange to the mix.)
• 1 egg
• 1 to 1-1/4 cups ripe banana pulp (For you normal people, that’s 3 average-sized bananas worth.)

Then add the dry ingreadients in about 3 batches along with a good handful (1/4 cup) each of raisins and broken pecan or walnut pieces (or whatever else interesting or handy that inspires you – or nothing at all).

Don’t over mix. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake: 350 degrees for 1 hour. (In my convection oven at 300 degrees it takes 1 hour and 10 minutes)

Remove it from the pan a cool it on a rack.

Can you wait for it to cool…?