Do Not Use Hairdryer While Sleeping

As we have gotten settled into our house for the winter, it’s become apparent that we have a dire lack of storage, just as many other Phoenicians. It comes in part from the absence of basements. The ground is simply too hard to dig such a hole.

Our refrigerator is fairly small, and filled to the brim with necessary items such as milk and cheese. Oh, and my gin for martinis. Essentials. Our tiny pantry is full as well. I finally determined the other day that, while my pantry is small, I have a considerable amount of counter space. As such, it has become the storage area for my various and sundry breads and chips. But it looks sloppy.

Suddenly, I had the solution. A bread box. They are attractive, there is room on the counter, and the bread, rolls and chips will be stored out of site. So I began looking for inexpensive bread boxes.

My go-to, of course, is always Amazon. They sell everything, after all. Plus, I can use my considerable points from charging too much over the Christmas holidays to purchase on amazon.com. I found a series of them, and then as I usually do, I looked at the comments.

Here is part of an actual comment from the satisfied customer of a particular bread box:

“I was looking for a stainless-steel bread box, and this was the most reasonably-priced version I could find. I didn’t pay much attention to the size, but it’s QUITE large, lol. I was surprised by how big it was, and promptly discovered that I could put not only MY head in it, but my husband’s as well. So keep that in mind.”

I’m not making this up. I simply can't get rid of the vision of a man and a woman sticking their heads into a bread box at the same time. It won’t go away. It seems to me the chances of them getting their heads stuck into said box seem extremely high.

It made me think about absurd product warnings. Because for every absurd product warning, there was an absurd person who did the exact absurd thing about which we are now warned. My sister has mentioned, for example, that she noticed when she bought a cell phone that there was a warning to not place the cell phone into the microwave. Undoubtedly, someone got their cell phone wet and determined that giving it a little shot in the microwave was a great idea. The explosion and his/her probable subsequent hospitalization resulted in our being warned.

Here are a few more ACTUAL product warnings:

Nabisco Easy Cheese: For best results, remove the cap.

Dremel Electric Rotary Tool: This product not for use as a dental drill.

Auto Windshield Visor: Do not drive with sunshade in place.

Duraflame: Warning, risk of fire.

And my personal favorite…..

Apple IPOD: Do not eat IPOD Shuffle.

And, by the way, the title of this post is also an actual product warning. Sigh.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: A Christmas Carol

Following is a guest review of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, provided by Rebecca Borman. Rebecca was a teacher for 32 years, and taught English at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, Virginia, for 26 years. She taught her students this book each year.

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas is its full title. Dickens wrote it at a time when he was struggling financially. It was immediately popular, although his publisher didn’t think it would be and, consequently, refused to publish it. So Dickens put up the money himself. Good call! Readers of all social classes loved it, and some well-known people were significantly affected by it. An American industrialist was moved to close his factory for Christmas day (which was not a common practice either in the US or England); Robert Louis Stevenson vowed to help the unfortunate by giving of himself as well as his money. Historian Thomas Carlyle “sent out for a turkey and asked two friends to dine.” And, the Queen of Norway sent toys to children in London hospitals in the name of Tiny Tim. Seriously. His novel had that impact on his readers.

But, on to my thoughts. One of the aspects I love about the novel is its length. It is short and tightly woven, a book one can read in a few hours. Dickens establishes his theme, and it is apparent from beginning to end. Scrooge was a good businessman, and that was ok. But, his old partner Marley, his first spirit visitor, sets the moral of the story early on: “Mankind was my business…The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.” Marley tells Scrooge that you can be a businessman without cutting yourself off from all personal connection. And, throughout the novel, Scrooge is shown the results of his isolationist attitude.

I also love the way Dickens portrays each of the three spirits. Christmas Past’s appearance is constantly changing, the way our memories of past events can be colored by later experiences. Christmas Present is big and bold, just as our “present” should be for us. And Christmas Yet to Come is dark and scary. He doesn’t speak or show his face, because the future is unknown. I always enjoyed teaching Dickens because he wasn’t too tricky with his symbolism…he wanted his reader to get it!

Finally, I like that Dickens doesn’t keep the reader hanging as to whether Scrooge is open to transformation. As early as Scrooge’s visit to his past, he feels remorse that he didn’t give a little something to a caroler. By the time the last of the spirits arrives, Scrooge is anxious to get on with it, because he knows time is short. And, when he wakes up on Christmas morning, he doesn’t overthink. He immediately dresses and begins changing his life…and others’.

Something's Fishy about this Manicure

Funny and random things just happen in the East Valley of Phoenix, AZ. I don’t know if it’s the desert air, the spicy food, or all the sunshine, but almost daily something will happen to make me smile and think, "now that's something you don't see everyday."

Here’s a perfect example. Tuesday I got a text message from my sister Bec, who lives in Chandler, which is about 25 miles south of our house, still in the East Valley. The text says, “Productive visit to the salon. Mani, pedi, and 2 lbs. of Louisiana prawns.”

Now, I just presumed she meant that she had gotten her manicure and pedicure, and then headed to Whole Foods and gotten some shrimp for dinner. I really didn’t give it a second thought. A half hour later or so, she telephones me and asks me if I wasn’t surprised and amused by her text message. She commenced to tell me this story.

She was getting her pedicure when she noticed an increase in activity and talking amongst the nail technicians. She said it didn’t appear anything was wrong, but they were definitely excited about something. They were speaking in Vietnamese, so she couldn’t figure out what was going on. She noticed some of the technicians were leaving the building and coming back in carrying packages. A drug deal?

A few minutes later she noticed a Vietnamese man come in and begin speaking to the technicians and some of the customers. He spoke very good English. The nail technician with her explained that the man lived in Louisiana, and had driven his truck to Phoenix carrying a variety of freshly caught and frozen fish. “It’s where we all get our seafood,” she explained.

What does he offer, everyone wondered. “Well, all he has left now is squid,” answered one of the nail technicians. The man quickly spoke up and said he still had prawns in his truck. All of the non-Vietnamese customers perked up, and pretty soon Bec said everyone had a little package resting next to their shoes. Why not, she thought, and proceeded to purchase two pounds of prawns – 9-12 to a lb. – with the heads still on.

A full service salon, for sure. Manicure, pedicure and tomorrow night’s dinner.

She went home and cut off the heads of about a half pound, put the rest in the freezer, and cooked the prawns last night on the grill.

Here was how she prepared the prawns:


I put the frozen prawns in cold water for 10 minutes and then cleaned them. I took off the shells so I could remove the veins. I brushed them with a paste of garlic and crushed red peppers, and grilled them for 3 minutes, turning them over once. They were very sweet, and the garlic and pepper spiciness complemented that sweetness. Eight oz of whole shrimp were about 5 oz cooked without their shells.

Nana’s Notes: I can count. As I see it, there is still a pound-and-a-half of prawns in her freezer. Hello Sistah! And, might I add, when I go to my neighborhood nail salon, all I get is a pedicure. No dinner.

Eat Your Vegetables

I mentioned that I did not make New Year’s resolutions for 2014; instead, I’m doing monthly challenges. My challenge for January is to drink eight glasses of water a day. I’m doing reasonably well. I’m probably not getting to eight each day, but I’m definitely getting to 6, and that’s an improvement. It will at least prevent me from drying up like a dandelion and blowing away.

Though it’s not a resolution (I did not make resolutions this year!), I intend, starting now (or maybe a little bit later) to eat healthier. I will forgo the goal of losing X number of pounds because that doesn’t really work for me (or really, anybody). But I definitely fell into an unhealthy eating habit over the holidays that made me feel less, well, healthy. Remember those couple of weeks of making Christmas cookies. Well, when you make them, someone must eat them. I did my duty.

My determination to eat healthier is, of course, a 180 degree digression from yesterday’s blog post in which I yammered on and on about those tamales (which, considering their yumminess, were undoubtedly made using lard). I am simply taking advantage of a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Also, I weighed myself. Those tamales will be safe and sound in my freezer for a few weeks. I can eat them one at a time instead of in batches of THREE! (Just kidding. No I’m not.)

Bill and I started back at the gym Monday (and don’t my sore muscles reinforce that fact), and I joined the legions of others back at a Weight Watchers meeting yesterday, my tail between my chubby legs. I simply need to have someone remind me that there are options to snacking on Cheetos and Oreos all day. Apples, oranges, and pretzels, for example.

I refuse to count calories. I won’t even count WW Points Plus. It’s not rocket science after all. You simply need to burn more calories than you ingest. Smaller portions, more movement. Simple as that.

I made a really tasty vegetable soup that I ate for lunch, along with some turkey lunch meat. Mylee would be happy. Nothing that 3-year-old likes more than a turkey sandwich. And the soup was really good.

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients
1 T. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 red pepper, chopped
1 fennel bulb, sliced thin
2 c. baby spinach
1 zucchini or summer squash, chopped
1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
4 c. chicken, beef, or vegetable broth
2 c. tomato juice
½ t. red pepper flakes
1 t. fresh thyme, minced
1 T. fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper

Process
Brown onion in olive oil until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about a minute. Add the red pepper and zucchini and cook for a few minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook for about 45 minutes, or until vegetables are soft and flavors mingle. Garnish with basil when you serve.

Nana’s Notes: You can use whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. I sort of make this recipe when I have vegetables that are needing to be used or tossed. Carrots, celery, etc. all would work. The fennel (which I happen to love either raw or cooked) gives it a bit of an Italian flavor; hence, the basil. You could make it a bit Mexican by using cilantro instead and throw in a bit of avocado. It makes me – a devoted lover of soup – happy because it is filling and healthy and delicious.

Chilly Today, Hot Tamale

So, I’ve become obsessed with tamales.

There used to be a place near where I worked in lower downtown Denver that made delicious tamales. The old-fashioned kind that were wrapped in corn husks and sold for something like a buck-and-a-half each. I would occasionally walk over and get a dozen for my coworkers and me on a Friday morning. Sometimes I would buy a half dozen or so for a Sunday morning.

For the past few years that we have been coming here in the winter, I have looked for tamales such as these. Many of the Mexican restaurants offer tamales on their menu, but they weren’t quite what I was looking for. I wanted the tamales that were inexpensive, wrapped in those corn husks, smelling delightfully of masa, pork and chili. Restaurants offer tamales sitting on a plate covered in green chili. Probably good, but not what I wanted.

My sister-in-law made tamales for the Mexican feast she hosted on Sunday, and they were very good, filled with Monterey Jack cheese, spinach, and a green chili. I haven’t been able to get my mind off of them since that feast. So yesterday I went on a full-out internet search for someplace in the East Valley that sells tamales.

Eureka. I found Old El Paso Tamales, a little storefront shop near the heavily Hispanic

occupied section of Mesa. The reviews were good, and I got my hopes up. I asked Bill if he was willing to take a field trip yesterday after we worked out (for the first time in a month – we deserved a reward). Not surprisingly, he was game.

About s 20-minute ride from our house, the shop was located in an area fairly unfamiliar to us. We found it easily enough, however. As we walked up to the door, I told Bill I probably would have been smart to call ahead and make sure they were open on Mondays. Sure enough, the sign said “Closed Mondays.” Still, it looked like there were customers inside, and indeed, the door was open. The nicest young man helped me as I ordered four tamales – two chicken and chili and two pork. We ate our chicken first, and they were delicious. Very spicy. When I bit into what I thought was the pork, I was surprised to bite into very sweet yumminess. “It tastes exactly like I’m eating an ear of really delicious sweet corn,” I told Bill. I figured out that while I asked for pork, what the proprietor heard was corn. I have never eaten a corn tamale, and it was surprisingly delicious. Sweet as candy.

Needless to say, we took some home to freeze.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at a large Mexican market called Pro’s Ranch Market. It seriously is like entering another country. The first sign that we weren’t in Kansas anymore was the chickens with intact heads in the meat case. That, and the cow hooves, tongue, and tripe. It was, however, a fun experience. I picked up some instant masa for a tamale-making experience I’m going to have with a friend in a couple of weeks.

Actually, the first sign that I was out of my neighborhood was when I got out of our car that was parked right next to a truck. Inside the truck, which had the windows rolled down, was a woman talking on a cell phone. As I walked by the truck, I heard her say, “Well, now that they have my fingerprints, they will find out about my drug charge.” There you have it. Why I never give my fingerprints…..

The Old El Paso Tamale shop proprietor gave Bill and me a sample of his green chili. I was surprised and happy to see that his green chili was made using ground beef. Ground beef is, of course, not typical in green chili, but it was typical of green chili in Leadville, where I first became familiar with Mexican food. My sister Jen makes excellent green chili with ground beef. Here is her recipe.

Jen’s Green Chili

Ingredients
1 lb. ground beef
1 onion, chopped
5-6 fresh, roasted green chilis
1-16 oz. can whole tomatoes
1 T. flour
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper

Process
Brown the ground beef with the chopped onion and salt and pepper. Drain grease. Place fresh chilis in the bottom of a blender. Add tomatoes to blender, along with a half a can of water. Blend for a few seconds. Add flour to ground beef and incorporate. Stir in tomato mixture, garlic, and pinch of salt and pepper. Simmer until flavors have blended, about an hour.

Nana’s Notes: I had never tasted green chili until moving to Leadville in 1973. Ground beef in the chili is the way my family learned to make it. It’s very unusual to run into it in a restaurant. The proprietor was very pleased that I commented on it favorably. The spiciness in the green chili is entirely dependent upon the chilis. Some are hotter than others. My family mostly likes it pretty darn hot. She always gets her chilis in the fall when they are roasting Hatch's green chilis. Surprisingly, you can't get New Mexico green chilis in Arizona. Or at least I haven't found them.

Hey, Cuz!

I have countless cousins. Well, that, of course, is not literally true. If I took the time, I could count them, thereby making them not countless. But my mother had 12 brothers and sisters that lived to adulthood, and she came from a good, Catholic family. So the 13 children resulted in many, many cousins for my siblings and me.

Most of my cousins lived in or around the area of Nebraska where we grew up. One of my mother’s brothers ended up in Minnesota, along with his large family, but the rest, as I recall, lived near us, at least as children. We rarely, however, gathered together as one group. We might gather one family at a time, but it was very uncommon for the entire family to gather, as it was quite formidable.

The one exception was our (almost) annual family picnic. We would get together, usually at a public park. Each aunt brought delicious picnic food; each uncle brought a more-than-sufficient amount of beer. Let the festivities commence! The adults would laugh and reminisce and gossip and drink and eat, getting livelier as the beer diminished. The kids would group together and run and play all sorts of games. The picnics were great fun. Even as adults, my sibs and I will occasionally talk about those picnics.

I thought about those picnics yesterday afternoon-into-evening as we were all together at yet-another celebration, this one a joint hullaballoo for my brother (with his year-end December birthday) and three of his children, with birthdays throughout January. My sister-in-law offered an amazing assortments of more unusual Mexican dishes – posole, menudo, and tamales made with Monterey Jack cheese, spinach, and green chili.

One thing about my Arizona family – if you give a party, they will come. And bring their kids. So much fun. So, the children – at least the ones joining us yesterday – ranged in ages from 8 to just over one month. Let’s see if I can get this right: one girl at 8, one girl at 7, two boys at 6, one girl at 4, two boys and one girl at 3, one girl at 1, and one baby girl just over a month. I think I’m close in those ages. You can sort of figure out how they paired up, though I did have occasion to see the 3-year-old boys playing with the 6-year-old boys. Or rather, the 6-year-olds were teasing the 3-year-olds mercilessly by keeping the ball away from them. Boys!

The weather was perfect – high 60s, so the kids played mostly outside, making up games as they went along. Later in the evening, one of my nephews lit up some logs in the firepit, and the inevitable cry, “Do you have any marshmallows”? rang out, to no avail, I’m afraid. Still, there was plenty of birthday cake to go around. For my part, I simply held my breath and prayed that none of the children would fall into the fire as they worked at finding a place to sit. Bill suggested he would dial 9-1 on his phone to be ready for the seemingly inevitable accident, which never transpired to my surprise. I missed my grandchildren immensely. They would have had fun with their cousins.

The whole scene made me think back on my days as a child with my cousins, as well as the days when all of my nieces and nephews gathered at my mom and dad’s house in Dillon, Colorado, every summer. The activities then were very similar. Cousins rock. They are like built-in best friends.

Until last night, I had never eaten posole. Posole is a soup made with pork and hominy

(basically dried corn). The photo is stock, and is not of her soup. Most posole recipes use slowly-cooked pork shoulder as in the photo, but she used ground pork, which I thought was delicious.

New Mexican Style Posole from New Mexico Cookbook by Lynn Nusom

Ingredients
2 T. olive oil
1 medium-sized yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, run through a garlic press
1 lb. lean, ground pork
1 t. salt
1 t. dried oregano
2 T ground cumin
1 c. chopped green chile
1 can (#10)white hominy, with the juice

Process
Heat oil in a frying pan, saute onion and garlic until soft. Stir in ground pork, add salt, oregano, cumin and green chile, and cook until pork is brown.Pour hominy (with liquid) into a large pot, stir in pork mixture and cook, covered, over low heat for at least one hour. Serve in soup bowls with Red Chile Sauce on the side.

Nana's Notes: You may have noticed I said very little about the menudo. My sister-in-law didn't make the menudo; she got it from a friend. I love all things Mexican, but I couldn't make myself even try the menudo. The smell, donchaknow. Oh, and the pig's hoof that was floating in it -- a treat for my brother who enjoyed it with great relish. Well, it was his birthday celebration after all. As for the posole, Sami didn't serve it with Red Chile Sauce on the side; instead, she used a seasoning mix she found in the Mexican section of the grocery store -- a mixture of chili pepper and oregano and probably other spices. She thinks it was called menudo seasoning.

I Are They; They is Me

The snowbirds have landed.

And I really hesitate to complain about it too much. After all, they are me; I am them. Snowbirds = Bill and Kris. Nana and Papa = Arizona Winter Visitors. There you have it.

Apparently, many of the winter visitors (that’s what they kindly and in a wholly Christian manner called snowbirds at All Saints Catholic Church on Sunday as they welcome us back) arrive on or immediately after Christmas, just as Bill and I. And, again, just as Bill and me, they wait until after New Year’s Day to make their way to Costco and Walmart to fill up their larders and pantries. (See, I’m displaying my “nana-ness” by using the word “larder.”)

While many of you haven’t visited the east Mesa Costco store, just imagine any Costco store in the United States. In particular, picture the enormous parking lots at every single store. Now imagine that you drive in and there is not a single, solitary place to park. Not even when you are willing to park at the very back of the parking lot. No room at the inn. Just like Mary and Joseph. We parked on the street where there were still a few spaces, somewhere around a mile-and-a-half from the front door! If we hadn’t had some Very Important Medication-Related Business, we would have left for another less-busy day.

While Bill took care of his Very Important Business, I attempted to peruse the books to no avail. Couldn’t even get close. So I put a couple of items in my basket – paper towels and Kleenex – and made my way to the check-out stands. Predictably, the lines ran clear back into the store, ending somewhere around the frozen foods. I have never seen the lines so long. Now, I never cease to be impressed with how quickly Costco checkers can get people through the lines. Nevertheless, I simply didn’t have it in me to stand in such a long line simply to be able to blow my nose and wipe off my counters. Both could wait. I abandoned my cart, and we left for Walmart, which we naively thought would be better.

Sigh.

And let me just tell you, the Walmart shoppers are just flat-out mean. Perhaps they were all just cranky because they had come from Costco. The problem was, just like the rest of the “winter visitors,” I really did need to fill up my larder and pantry, and by that time I had realized that there wasn’t going to be a store in the East Valley that was going to be any better. And my nose was running.

We laughed about it after we got home. As I said earlier, how can I complain? They are us. I just move a bit faster than many. And it is worth it because I spent much of yesterday reading outside and had all my doors and windows open to let in the warm 73 degree air. The forecast for the week ahead is much the same.

I will learn patience and will soon stop complaining. I hope.

Have a good weekend.