The Bacon Edition and More Newbies on Campus

When I sit down to write a new post I quite often do a search of my blog to make sure I won’t be repeating myself. This blog goes back to 2012 and my life experiences aren’t that broad that I’ve still got a lot of untold stories left---even less than when I started because I’m old and my memories are fading. Today I used the search term ‘bacon’ and I’ll explain why later on. 

One of the first posts I found was written in 2014 titled The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and it started out, “I’m having a hard time deciding if I have anything left to say that hasn’t been said in a million different ways about the topics I usually write about.” Do you see a pattern here? And I went on: “I need a new life! Either that or I need to start making stuff up…like fictitious trips to the Amazon---the river not the online store. I’ve been to Amazon.com more times than I care to admit and while I enjoy shopping there no one cares where I get my books and finger puppets. Note to my heirs: those plush little puppets would make great places to hide things. Be sure to check the panda’s butt when I die.” It might contain the password you’ve been looking for.

My search of posts where I mentioned ‘bacon’ was surprisingly long and I quit counting at fifteen. I skim-read through a few looking for what I hoped I wouldn’t find (and didn’t). Those I read ranged in topic from different things to put on peanut butter sandwiches to snacks my dog loved to freezing bacon. Since it’s been awhile I’ll repeat that handy little freezing tip: The idea of rolling your bacon one piece at a time (see photo above) came from a Food Network Magazine article. You freeze them not touching each other, then put them in a covered container so you can defrost one or two pieces at a time which takes about 6-7 minutes. I have a microwave bacon baking dish which is the only way I’ll cook it. And that leads into why I was searching to see if I’ve ever written about my fear of frying bacon in preticular and frying foods in general.

After the anniversary party that I wrote about in my last post a woman who is well known around here for being a prolific and great cook (and a ride-or-die Trump supporter) asked me to come to her apartment because she had some party leftovers to give to me. While I was there she wanted to know my background, how I got through life without much experience in the culinary field. I blamed it on my mother, of course, and told her about the day she left me unsupervised while trying to fry bacon when I was 12 or 13 and how I got splatter burned on my face, eyeball and neck. After that I refused to fry ANYTHING until I turned 75 and I happened on an issue of the Food Network that was entirely devoted to cooking bacon. (See why my mom called me stubborn?) I read that issue cover to cover and challenged myself to get over my fear of cooking bacon. I followed the directions faithfully and made a perfect batch of bacon then I decided never to do it again. 1) I’d conquered my fear, 2) I didn’t like the cleanup for just one person, and 3) I proved what I used to tell my mom when she’d nagged me about not learning my way around the kitchen. I’d tell her, “If you can read you learn to cook and when I need to learn, I will...” That probably worried her even more because she knew I was a poor reader.  

“How are you ever going to get a husband if you can’t cook?” my mom would ask and I’d reply, “I’ll find one who can afford to go to restaurants or who likes to cook like Jerry (my brother) does.” My brother enjoyed the lessons meant for me---if I’d been paying attention---and to this day he claims I would have starved to death if he hadn’t made the dinners after school when my mom went back to work. To the woman who gave me the leftovers I also explained that before my husband and I were married we lived two miles apart with a dozen or so restaurants in between. He worked nights and I worked days so we’d meet in the middle for lunch. Occasionally on the weekends I'd grill steaks and I could make a good pot roast. And without having kids to feed it just worked for us.

Change of topic: I’ve got six new residents on campus and two of them overlook my deck, a couple and their large poodle named Willie. I don’t know them enough to give them nicknames yet but already I like them for two reasons: 1) I like people who give their pets human names and 2) news on the grape vine is they turned their den in an art studio for the wife. I met her briefly and have seen her twice. She likes to draw mostly and both times I saw her picking up mail she was wearing a painter’s smock and hat like the French painters in the 20^th century. She looked so cute and all she needs is to carry a paint brush around to really look authentic. The royal blue silk blouse I wore to the recent anniversary party was fashioned after those painter’s smocks which is why I bought for the opening of the student art show I was in. 

Something tells me the next time we have a Paint and Sip party around here my painting will have some stiff competition. Great! I’ve always worked best in classes with people who I can learn from and try to compete with. It's like if you were to run a race against people who are 10-15 years older than you, you'd probably win every time but if you run with people who are younger than you, you probably wouldn't win but your time would be faster. That's me in art classes. I run better, so to speak, when I'm trying to keep up rather than 'teach by example' to those around me who've never held a paint brush.

Speaking of creativity, our Creative Writing Group is still a small but tightly net group of four and the round-robin story we’ve been writing is turning it to something we’re all proud of. We’re talking about doing a reading of it some evening by the fireplace, after the holidays with each of us reading the parts we wrote. Nights by the fireplace are things the residents---not our Enrichment Director---put together and they are usually music related stuff that draw 15 or 20 people. But one resident's family did do a poetry slam once. It would be scary to stand up and read our round robin but as Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Do something that scares you every day” and she wasn’t talking about watching scary movies or doing dare-devil stunts. She was talking about going outside of your comfort zone. 

I have zero experience talking in front of groups since college in the '60s when I was a second stringer on a debate team. Two others in my group do public speaking with their church work and the third member of our group was a high school teacher/librarian and she doesn't fear public speaking. She and the only guy are brand new to creative writing, though, so it will be scary for them to reveal their wordsmithing in public. We all have tried our hand at poetry so we’re debating between doing this reading and doing a poetry slam that we can invite others to join in with original poems of their own. Decisions. Decisions!

Until next Wednesday. ©

* Photo credits: Bacon taken by me. The portrait photo was napped off Roseberys Art Auction site and was listed as '20th Century French School.'

The Widow's Ktichen: Cooking-For-One Part Two

We used to know a carrot farmer and he told us to never to buy carrots without smelling them. Back in those days---15-16 years ago---3^rd world countries used Kerosene for herbicides and if you have a good nose you could detect the toxic stuff with the sniff test. I was reminded of this in my cooking-for-one class this past week and of another story he told about how orange carrots became the color of choice. Carrots used to grow naturally in a rainbow of colors, but in the 17^th century a Dutch grower started cultivated the orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange who, as the story goes, led the struggle for Dutch independence. Over a generation the purple, white and yellow carrots fell out of favor and the rest is food growers’ history. It’s funny how things in life come full circle. Recently our local supermarket started selling the heritage colored carrots and the skinny dietitian teaching my class is singing their praises. She says they are more nutritious than the orange, especially the ones that get machine shaped and polished---those cute little “baby carrots” I’ve been buying for years.

The dietitian should have called the course, How-Not-to-Cook-So-Much-for-One. By the time we get through all six sessions she’ll have us grazing in the fields and orchards in her campaign to get us away from processed foods, time-consuming cooking and ingredients that come with long labels filled with unpronounceable words. She’s a vegan but claims she’s not trying to turn us into one. Ya, sure. Is that why this week’s class was about all about using nutrient rich whole grains without a bite of meat in sight? She’s got me wondering, though, if I haven’t been feeding the birds and rabbits better/healthier than I feed myself. Karma is laughing at me through this class, I just know it. I never took an interest in cooking in my younger years and the very first cooking course I sign up in for in my entire life seems to be all about cooking less and eating closer to the earth.

The grains and pseudo-grains we sampled in class were all new to me---bulgur, farro, wheatberries, quinoa, spelt, triticate and amaranth---but they were surprisingly good mixed with varying combinations of things like fresh spinach, tomatoes, feta cheese, olive oil, garlic, mustard, balsamic or raspberry vinegar, cranberries, apples, oranges, agave, and pecans. She says these grains are easy to slip into any salads and soups, have a long shelf life for single living and freeze well in small batches after cooking. So turn your ice cube trays into grain trays if you want to be healthy in your widowhood---that’s my big take-away from the class. You never know when you’ll get the burning urge to plop a cube of grain on your dinner salad or in a mini-crockpot of soup.

My second cooking-for-one tip I offer with apologies to the swine population and while wearing ear muffs so I don’t have to listen to the vegetarians and vegans yelling at me. It’s something I learned from a Food Network magazine and have been doing for a year now: roll your bacon before freezing it (see the photo above). And the next time I’m waiting the 6-7 minutes for a slice or two of bacon to defrost I will take a moment to thank the organic food industry for making ancient and Old World grains new again. According to the class dietitian they are easy grains for small farmers to grow without using pesticides---and presumably without Kerosene---than the better known grains we’re used to see coming from the big, chemical dependent factory farms. Who knew I’d have to get old and widowed before appreciating the value of making grain porridge. ©