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Taste Treasure
April 1, 2016
— 1 Comment
cauliflower
cheers
Flavor dizzy cells race together then spin apart in a slice of lively colored food
Gearing up for a tango with wine or beer or cocktail medley, served impecably
Sourcing the elements was a task for a magician of presentation so shrewd
The table sparkled with novel and exotic cuisine presented with style innately
Suitable for instagram, twitter and all, these pics will lift the mood
The main thing to capture is imagery, the way the meal is arranged ornately
If the taste lives up to your well focused lunch shots, then you win
Join the #NaPoWriMo poets all month in April to enjoy poetic words from around the world.
April is for Poets #NaPoWriMo
March 31, 2016
— 4 Comments
April in Tucson
During the month of April, starting with a bang on April Fool’s Day, I join fellow writers around the world writing poetry. The exercise of creating 30 poems in 30 days is inspirational, difficult, and self challenging. I think I would benefit greatly from writing a poem each day of the year, but I have at least made it my practice for April. Tomorrow I will begin, and true to form, I have nothing started.
On this, my third year as a participant submitting poems, I know I will meet new poets with styles and messages that call to me. The wide diversity is a big appeal, which has made me think about going farther afield with my subject matter than I have in the past. I have a desire to work up to writing an epic (story) about some figure in history. I like comedy in poetry, but have found it extremely hard to master. I read Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash to keep my comedy poet muse fed. Dr Seuss shows us that simple words and concepts can go viral for all ages, forever:
I encourage all the gentle readers to throw your hat in the ring to create poetry this year for #NaPoWriMo. Reading and writing in this disciplined, yet mind expanding way, is an intellectual exercise to savor and share. Find the other poets boarding the train for the month long ride here. All aboard! It might be pretty corny on this train, but you can count on a really good time with words. All kinds are welcome.
Little Old Ladies, Laughing, and Lunch
March 28, 2016
— 5 Comments
not real dogs
About two years ago some friends and I were gathered at my house to taste homemade bitters. Bitters making is kind of complicated, yet once you make a batch it becomes easier. Even though we only tested very small spoonfuls in fizzy water, the base for bitters is alcohol and some of us are pretty light weight when it comes to consumption of spirits. We started to joke around and laugh a bit more than usual as the tasting progressed. Our police chief at the time had been invited to the White House for lunch. I joked that there was no way he would have the nerve to come to lunch with us in our neighborhood. A few weeks after the bitters party Tucson Police Department joined our local Nextdoor private social media thread. The chief introduced himself to the city on Nextdoor. I could not resist the temptation to send him a direct message inviting him to come to lunch at my house and take a look at the evidence I had been trying to show TPD for years. It was no surprise that he did not respond. We knew he did not have the guts to come out here in person to face us or look at the evidence we wanted him to see.
We have a problem with response time here in our city. Most are concerned with the lack of response to 911 calls, but here we we just trying to get a response after years of working to get some rule of law in our area. We had been reporting the same crimes by the same people for years, but could not get any help stopping the crimes or the 24 traffic caused by the criminal operations. We petitioned the mayor because he is a lawyer. We thought he would recognize the need for law enforcement to stop traffic from crimes where we live. He never answered after a couple of different petitions were sent to his attention, two years in a row. It was disappointing to say the least. I was called by a detective who blew off the reports of crimes. The following year when we petitioned the mayor a Lieutenant on the force called to say inviting the public to drive through and donate to a charity scam is perfectly legal in a residential condo village, but I might be able to get some help from the IRS. I did file a report with the IRS, and followed up with more information when there was more activity, but I guess the case has not been pursued.
Finally after years of reporting this problem to the city in all different departments TPD dispatched a cop in person to assess the situation. Later a mental health team was dispatched last week to assess my wellness level for wanting and expecting rule of law in midtown Tucson. I passed the crazy test as a frustrated tax paying citizen who had been reporting the same crimes for years with no response from our city government. I hope they will be as interested in finding justice as they have been in obstructing it for years. Our neighborhood has been damaged by the constant flow of traffic.
Natural Grocers Grand Opening in Tucson
March 23, 2016
— 1 Comment
bulk grains
healthy desserts
specialty foods
wide variety of items
tasty probiotics
body care section
marketing and management
essential oils
ready to eat
organic produce
sauce of the gods
I arrived home after gym and shopping today and received a call from my favorite neighbor, Heidi. She advised me to check my mail for a coupon for a new store opening close to home. I was really not in need of groceries but she convinced me to visit the grand opening of Natural Grocers at Broadway and Country Club in Tucson. She was right that this is a very happy event to celebrate. This store is a treasure trove of shopping wonder for me. They carry all kinds of exotic and wonderful local health foods, very well priced. There are items available in bulk for those who can utilize a giant bag of oats or other grains. The produce is organic. The body care and vitamin section rivals Whole Foods for selection and beats them on price!!! We are so lucky to have this new asset in our ‘hood.
I cruised the store and tasted the various special offerings being sampled. I found many new products, of which I was unaware, now available right down the street. I am highly attached to grocery shopping at all price points and levels. I go grocery shopping when I travel just to have some fun and inform myself about the local market situation. It is how I bond with a community other than my own, through groceries. I am thrilled to see all the fun discount programs offered by Natural Grocers, as well as noting that the base pricing is very customer friendly. The staff was overcome with joy to receive the new shoppers. I have never been so well greeted and treated in a grocery store. Methinks they have training in the 5 and 10 rule….showing eye contact and acknowlegement to anyone within 10 feet, and speaking with uplifting gusto to any customer who is within 5 feet of the staff. They were giddy with welcome, happy greetings for me. What’s not to like? I will shop here for sure. Today I was crammed packed in my home fridge but found some great items to put in the pantry, very well priced. I am a huge fan already, and look forward to the fun events they have planned for education and enrichment.
#WorldPoetryDay and the Poet in You
March 21, 2016
— 1 Comment
Today is World Poetry Day, so twitter is all aflutter with haiku. UNESCO is running a thread for pros and amateurs to enter the fun using the hashtag #tweetku.
There are some funny and inspiring poems flying around, and we see coffee houses where they are accepting poems for payment today. This celebration has grown and become more popular since last year. I urge you to join the creative fun, even if you are not feeling very poetic at this moment. Read some of the other tweets for inspiration or just to tickle your funny bone. I know that we are all poets because I write a poem each day for poetry month in April for #NaPoWriMo. I have no particular talent or style, but after 30 days of poetry I feel very accomplished and more creative. I use original art or photography on my April poems to make them a little more interesting. The important part is the practice rather than the poems themselves. I am hoping to expand my subject matter again this year. My first year was way too drippy, all about spirit, dreams, and tinkle tinkle reality..pretty dull and one dimensional. Last year I did some new topics like my ancestor’s beheading at the Tower of London. The art and the poem were infantile, but I did give it a whirl. Practice does not really make perfect in my case, but it does make psychological inroads into my own thinking and ability to write. I am warming up for next month today:
Here is one I love, with a little pun:
https://twitter.com/BarvanderVossen/status/711979640378826753
Let the poet in you loose on the town today..or at least read some.
Politics vs Reality
March 20, 2016
— 2 Comments
Palm, symbol of victory
I think most people vote based on the state of their own economic situation. If they are feeling confident about their prospects and security they tend to choose the party that is in power at the moment. When insecurity and unhappy circumstances arise political elections become a way to express unease. This election year is full of wild rhetoric and many dramatic moments. Citizens are freaking out in all directions. The focus on our elected officials and policies of the government is never so intense as it is during the presidential season. Tension builds and money is spent like water on all sides. Anger, suspicion, and all the worst in our society, rears its’ ugly head to predict the future. We all think we know how the future will be if we elect one candidate or another.
We do not know what will happen after any election, and this time we seem to know less than ever. Many of the public institutions that have crumbled and decayed will need a total reform or rehab in order to once again serve the public. Politicians tend to protect and defend status quo, just because they exist within it, and that is the easy way to go. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. The GOP is finding it difficult to stay at rest, being challenged from within and by the candidacy of Donald Trump. In this era we do not remember any politics this rowdy or malicious. It is impossible to predict the outcome.
The reality is that after the election we will all go about our business without the suspense or the drama of politics in our faces. The only real change is managed on a personal local level with constant and uninterrupted effort. Figure heads and governing bodies have only so much power to implement or enforce laws and systems. The grass-roots, named for the front yard, is where either weeds or lush green comfort is cultivated. It is a mistake to put so much emphasis on elections while we turn away from our own neighbors and local issues. Like Smokey says, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” I believe this philosophy applies to reality and politics just as well. Only YOU can prevent the dismemberment of society, gentle reader. Think small, local, and real. Don’t let these political loonies stress your mind. Act like you want others to act, do unto others what you want done to you.
yellow rose, symbol of joy
James Oscar Byrne and the Luck of the Irish
March 17, 2016
— 1 Comment
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- James Oscar Byrne
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- James Oscar Byrne
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- James Oscar Byrne
James Oscar Byrne (1840 – 1879)
2nd great-grandfather
Sarah Helena Byrne (1878 – 1962)
daughter of James Oscar Byrne
Olga Fern Scott (1897 – 1968)
daughter of Sarah Helena Byrne
Richard Arden Morse (1920 – 2004)
son of Olga Fern Scott
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse
My second great-grandfather was born in County Meathe, Ireland and immigrated to the United States during the potato famine with his family. He arrived in New York at the age of 7 in 1848. His family took up residence in Wilna, Jefferson County, in upstate New York. I know from notes left to me by his daughter, my great-grandmother, that he and his brother Luke operated a saw mill in Michigan before they moved to Kansas. She wrote that they sent all the wood to build homes in Kansas from that mill. On the Kansas census of 1875 he says he moved to Kansas from Wyoming, which was pretty wild at the time. He was married to Hattie Peterson, age 19, and her parents lived next door to them in that census. James owned a large piece of property, much larger than Hattie’s family, and his profession was listed as farmer.
James and Hattie had 2 daughters born in Ladore, Kansas, where James is buried. After all the adventures he endured crossing the ocean (a voyage during which two of his siblings died), lumber speculating in Michigan, making it to Wyoming, and settling on the frontier in Kansas he died in 1879 at the age of 38, when my great-grandmother Sarah Helena was less than a year old. I don’t know the cause of death. He was probably the only Catholic in his wife’s family, and maybe the only Catholic in my entire ancestry. I was Catholic for a year when I went to boarding school because I didn’t like to go to long Moravian church services and being Catholic was the only way to get out of it. My parents did not object. I wonder if that was some kind of calling from clan O’Byrne that lead me to do that. I will never know but on St. Patrick’s Day I feel proud of James Oscar and his adventurous spirit.
Irish Love
Healthy Homemade Fermented Drinks
March 15, 2016
— 2 Comments
beet kvass
secondary fermentation
ginger bug
I had a sourdough starter for about ten years. I enjoyed using it and finding new ways to put my homegrown yeast to work. After a while I was kind of done with it, but my dog was crazy about it. She fixated on the bread, and the more sour the better for her taste. Eventually I baked for her but we ate little bread in the house. When she died last year I gave up the sourdough start. Recently I have become interested in raw fermented food for both health and mad science. I do still like to grow cultures and experiment in my kitchen. My fermentation lab is simple and requires no special equipment.
I have made some decent sauerkraut, but my big thrill is drinking the juice from the kraut. This brought be to study the other fermented beverages I could make. I have not yet purchased kefir grans because it sounds like a big deal keeping up with the growth of them once they start to multiply. I probably will try it at some point because it is possible to make flavored fizzy drinks with water and fruit juice that sound pretty delicious. I bought a couple of books for my kindle to study the options and learn more about the various ways foods are fermented around the world. I can heartily recommend Delicious Probiotic Drinks by Julia Mueller.
Delicious Probiotic Drinks
My favorite drink I am making these days is ginger beer. I started a ginger bug, a starter which lives on ginger, water, and sugar. The care and feeding of the ginger bug is much like the sourdough starter. It catches the yeast in the air and stays alive by eating sugar. The dosage is important because it is possible to kill the yeast by adding too much sugar at a time. Mine sits on the kitchen counter with a cork cover. It is really easy to keep it happy and growing stirring it with a wooden spoon daily. When I make my ginger beer I simply add some of the starter to a larger container of water and add ginger and sugar to that batch. After a week or so of growing I start a secondary fermentation in a tightly covered bottle (I use a beer growler). This is the same way champagne is made, with a secondary fermentation in a corked bottle.
I also love my beet kvass. This is easy to ferment as well, just by adding salt to water and beets in a container for a week or so. It is tasty and very health promoting. Beets themselves are great for the liver and other organs. The fermentation adds probiotic cultures that conquer less than desirable cultures we may have in out digestive systems. Now that the happy healthy probiotics have taken over in my intestines I actually crave the fermented drinks. I have sauerkraut juice first thing in the morning when I take my vitamins and all through the day. Don’t knock it until you try it. This simple, amazingly cheap habit I have started is probably the best practice I have added for my general health in decades. If you wonder if you will like the taste I recommend that you start with the ginger beer production. It is universally enjoyed, and takes little skill to produce.
There are some other traditional fermented drinks I plan to try, all with the same basic procedure. I have yet to use the culture I bought just because it works without adding any culture. Have you ever made any fermented beverages, gentle reader? It is a fun hobby with fabulous health benefits.
Big Skye Bakers Mesquite Pastry
March 15, 2016
— 2 Comments
In Tucson we have an abundance of mesquite trees. The beans, which are the fruit of the tree, develop at the end of summer. In many neighborhoods they fall all over the ground and go unused. In recent years the practice of milling the mesquite beans to make flour has become popular. The taste of baked goods and tortillas made with this flour is exquisite. I am a huge fan of the taste and texture. Although there are plenty of native beans here, some local companies still import mesquite flour from South America. I am not sure why this gets my goat, but the imported flour just bothers me. I have a tree in my front yard and some very large ones in my garden lot that I have not tried to harvest, but maybe this will be the year that I do it for the first time. I am inspired by the way these tasty treats are created from beans in walking distance from the bakery.
The pie I bought from Big Skye was amazing. The pecans are a perfect companion to the mesquite flour crust. I plan to try more varieties, but have been dreaming of the flavor of that pecan pie I purchased. This bakery is a super asset to the community. They sell on Sundays at the Rillito Farmers’ Market, where I will go to get more pie this week. My mouth is already watering at the idea of it.
Bodie of Big Skye
pies
cherry pie with mesquite crust
The Living and the Dead
March 13, 2016
— 5 Comments
Meesie loves her massage
Memory and spirit linger after our friends pass into the next realm. The spirit is hard to define or capture during a lifetime, but after death the history of facts is distilled into an essence. I don’t communicate, as in converse, with the dead, but I spend time savoring the essential qualities they represent. This week a young woman who was our friend died from a raging melanoma in her bloodstream. She dedicated her time on earth to healing animals and people with her massage skills. When our dog was on hospice she helped our family immensely by providing love and care during her last months.
Isaiah 57:1-2
1 The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. 2 Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.
I feel the loss of her presence on this earthly plane, but have a strong assurance that she has gone to a sweet rest. Living had become too much for her, perhaps because she gave so much of herself to others. The details of making a living, paying taxes, doing the daily tasks that ground us to the earth slowly became more difficult. I had my own agenda about teaching her simple life skills that I thought were the solution to the slipping away from here syndrome I had observed. I could not have been more wrong. Self care is not always the answer for every situation, as I tend to believe. I have no knowledge of the supernatural energies that give and take life. My simplistic view that everything can be healed has been transformed by her passing. Wounds inspire healing, and in some languages the word for wound is the same as the word for healing. The complicated process of healing is not within our control. I am not in charge of it, nor do I understand it.
Living people feel robbed by the loss of our loved ones, but each of us has a private and unique gift of life. We must accept that those who leave us in their prime have fulfilled their own mission and are ready to go at some basic level. I accepted this fact when my dog gave up her life, and now I am certain that crossing the rainbow bridge may be scary, but it is a relief. I am grateful for the good times and calm in the knowledge that peace is welcome when the end arrives.
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
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