Category: Food & Drink

Zoomies for bakers

My back is better. While the exercises don’t keep it from occasionally acting up, I recover much quicker since I’ve been doing them. I call that a win. It’s kind of sad in a way, I mean, what happened to that daredevil who could do anything, but I now think of building and maintaining strength as one of my most important retirement jobs. I can feel a difference going up and down the stairs, which is a low bar, but it’s important!

Something about the light in September changes how I feel about food. Even though it’s still quite warm here in Northern California, I’m thinking about the end of summer and the beginning of fall food. Such a beautiful transition.

This week I got the bakies – not unlike the zoomies, when our pets sprint about the house like circus animals on speed.

There are those who would say baking is bad. Cookies won’t make America healthy again! Yes, even when it comes to what we eat, it seems like everyone is fired up about this, that or the other thing. While Dale and I eat little to no processed food, we kind of give ourselves a free pass if we make it at home. Good food is pure pleasure.

And cookies might make America happy again.

While others may be spurning sugar or gluten, we say bring it on. In moderation, of course. We like to keep a batch of homemade cookies in the freezer. That’s usually a toss-up between peanut butter chocolate chip or black pepper cookies. I wanted to try something different, so I went with these iced oatmeal cookies from the NY Times.

I tweaked them by adding one-half cup dried cherries. I wanted sour cherries, but all I could find was sweet, so that’s what I went with. I also added orange rind to the icing, along with a little of the freshly squeezed juice from the orange, a pinch of Kosher salt and a tablespoon of Jack Daniels.

Oh, hell, yes.

It’s not beef tallow, but dag, these cookies are good. Dale and I each had one after dinner that night. I enjoyed another one the next day and then they went straight to the freezer. But it makes me happy to know they are there. Not as happy as I would be to see RFK Jr. voted off the island but happy enough.

Then I went with the original plum torte, also from the NY Times. You can find it here if you can’t get past the NY Times firewall.

I first had something similar to this in Germany, where they called it Zwetschgenkuchen. We usually start to see the Italian prune plums in late August or early September, so this is the time to make it if you can find them.

One version of the recipe called for 1 cup of sugar, and one called for three-fourths cup. I went with three-fourths. I also questioned whether the plums should go face down or face up. The recipe called for face down, so that’s what I went with. 

The torte is absolutely delicious and even better the next day as those juices slowly drip into the cake. I froze most of it in individual servings, just as I do with scones. Sometimes I like a sweet baked treat for breakfast, so this should be right up my alley.

My next baking dilemma is whether I will make my own birthday cake, as I’ve done for the past few years. Coconut layered cake is my usual, and it is pretty effing spectacular. Another go-to is the cake I typically make for Dale’s birthday. I didn’t make it this year, so this would be my mulligan.

A friend gave me the recipe many years ago. I love that it’s in her handwriting. That always makes a recipe special. She called it Creole Chocolate Cake. It’s two layers of chocolate sponge. Between the layers is a pile of freshly whipped cream topped with a gooey mixture of walnuts, dates, evaporated milk and sugar, almost like a praline. Then the whole cake is iced with a frosting made from melted semi-sweet chocolate and sour cream.

As I write this, I believe I’ve made my decision. We know who’s dish is on the chopping block.

Kids, don’t try this at home

I will be 70 in a couple of weeks, and I’ll just say this. It’s not getting any easier.

As you may recall, I am religious about my strengthening exercises. I timed my routine the other day, and it takes me about an hour to do them all. Some days it feels like a lifetime, so I was surprised. An hour? That’s not too much to ask.

I’ve made incredible progress in the 17 months I’ve been at it, and I got a little carried away this week showing Dale how good I am at squats. Admittedly, this was after a couple of beers and The Clash blasting on the turntable.

Let me be the first to tell you party squats are never a good idea. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Everything seemed OK, but the next morning I was loading the dishwasher and pow! My back went out. It’s not too terrible, but I’m taking a week off from golf and trying to remember gentle is good.

I picked a perfect week to be stupid, as we are headed for several days of triple-digit weather.

What I’m Watching

I just finished The Hunting Wives on Netflix. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen anywhere. A nice Boston girl moves to Texas with her husband and gets mixed up with a secretive group of wealthy women with guns.

Sleazy beyond compare, the husbands make money but are otherwise worthless, the women are vicious (although very much enjoying sex with each other) and the scene featuring one of the male-female couples having their version of sex still haunts me. Some things I just didn’t need to know.

While no one would compare this to Masterpiece Theatre, I found it strangely addictive. There’s a murder mystery in the midst of all that sex, and our poor Boston girl is somehow caught up in the middle of all that, so it’s not just about the kink.

The end was a complete shocker, and there’s something to be said for the art of surprise.

Next up was The Thursday Murder Club, which premiered on Netflix this week. I didn’t know at first it was a movie not a series. It was OK but a miss, I think, and not nearly as funny as the books. The author’s descriptions and observations were so witty, and his unique humor didn’t translate to the screen.

It’s hard to say if it’s the writing, casting or acting – but none of the characters hit home with me. The whole thing just made me want to re-read the books.

I also started season six of Unforgotten on PBS. I do love PBS, but for some reason, it doesn’t show that I watched season five, so it was quite the hassle to figure out where I was in the series. Back in the old days, we got one season a year, which was easy enough for this old-timer.

That said, I do love the streaming options we have today, so no more complaining from me.

What I’m Eating

Dale roasted a whole chicken this week. One of my favorites. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t care all that much for fried chicken. Give me a roasted bird any day. All plump and juicy with crispy golden brown skin and succulent meat.

We always go for the leg quarters on the first night, mostly because the breast meat is better for leftovers. Dale used up most of the white meat the next night on a batch of chicken tortilla soup, and half of that went in the freezer.

All is well with the world when you have good back-up soup.

We ate the chicken with broccoli and his New England-style stuffing, which is made with ground potatoes, onions, bread and seasonings. It sounds odd, but it’s quite delicious. He puts it in the bird. Same with Thanksgiving turkey.

I made Slow Cooker Tomato Lentil Soup from the NY Times. They promoted it as a summer soup, since it uses fresh tomatoes, and I would concur. It was like the best tomato basil bisque you’ve ever had. The red lentils pretty much dissolve but add heft and flavor to the base.

The comments are always interesting in the NY Times food app. Quite a few people didn’t want to use heavy cream. Jeez, I lust for heavy cream. Some substituted coconut milk, which I also love, but I didn’t want to change the flavor profile. The only change I made was to double the garlic.

I was going to make Brown Butter Skillet Corn Bread to accompany the soup, but I saw a half a cup of maple syrup and decided it was too sweet for our taste. Instead, I made our old standby blue corn muffins. Blue corn has a delicious earthy taste, and I believe it’s actually a little better for you than yellow cornmeal.

Recipes abound on the Internet, but you might have to resort to Amazon to get the blue corn meal. I get stone-ground blue cornmeal for the muffins but blue corn masa for tortillas.

I also made tuna noodle casserole. Such a flashback but still worthy after all these years. Mine is from Valerie Bertinelli. I have a few modifications. I add garlic, celery, peas and two cans of oil-packed tuna instead of one. She calls for medium shells, but I use large. Valerie also likes flavored potato chips as the topping, but I use plain.

This time I used Gibble’s, a brand we love from Pennsylvania. Dale gets them in the mail. He’s quite serious about his chips. These are fried in lard. If there’s such a thing as a lard-based potato chip in your local store, I say go for it.

The casserole was yum and four servings made it to the freezer. We have the best freezer food.

What I’m Reading

I’ve been on the waiting list at the library for The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I just got it yesterday, but I started it and like it so far. It’s a sci-fi murder mystery and Hugo award finalist, so I have high hopes.

Workplace culture only better

When I reflect on what I choose to share on this blog about life after work, it mostly comes down to politics, what I’m eating, what I’m watching and what I’m reading. There’s a mishmash of other stuff, but with the exception of politics, it’s about the simple pleasures that fill these long glorious days without gainful employment.

If I had to put it all in a bucket, I would call it retirement culture … like workplace culture only better. It’s a sum of the values, behaviors and attitudes that define these last few decades of our lives, as opposed to the hellhole where we used to go to make money.

This chapter is fun but sometimes scary, and the question is how are we going to pull it off?

Although politics doesn’t directly relate to retirement culture, everything that happens in our country and in the world weighs on us for good or for bad. The attack on democracy in America jolted me out of my happy place and impacts everything. Everything.

Accomplished thought leaders with impressive credentials write about these issues, and that’s where I go to help me understand what’s happening and what I can do about it.

Deep analysis is not my gift. When I write about politics, it’s from the perspective of an average Joe trying to make sense of it all. My storytelling is not about the facts as much as how the facts make us feel. How can we move through our days with the weight of it all bearing down on us?

Can I just get back to being happy, please?

Thanks for letting me explore that with you. I’ve been struggling with my purpose, and as always, I don’t know what I think until I write about it. Despite what I said earlier, I’m still considering a move to Substack, but I don’t want to do it until I have a clear picture of whatever it is I bring to the table.

This week’s political thought is about Gavin Newsom. As governor of California, I’ve liked him just fine and never understood these protesters pushing to have him recalled. Dinner at the French Laundry during Covid was a mistake, but he has owned up to it and there are worse things. Like sexually assaulting a woman in a department store dressing room for one. There are more, but I’ll move on.

Anyway, there’s a lot to say about him, good and bad, but he’s out there, challenging Trump and I like it. My financial planner is from South Carolina and leans right. He even said he’s starting to like Gavin. To me, that says a lot. Maybe Gavin can bring people to the middle. That might not please the left or the right, but lordy, maybe it’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe middle can get us back to happy.

What I’m eating

With no disrespect to my husband, I said, seriously, dude, I’m feeling pressured about tomatoes. They are perfect right now, and the clock is ticking, but I’m kind of missing the other food groups. This week alone we had tomato pie, Greek salad and BLTs.

We did have a tomato break one night when he made simple grilled pork chops and a hobo pack. For the hobo pack, he tosses vegetables in olive oil, salt and pepper and then seals them up in a foil pouch. We usually go with carrots, onions and red potatoes, but just about anything works. Depending on the coals, they take about 20 minutes.

All I know is they magically appear on my plate!

Dale found some good-looking veal cutlets … just the right thickness for cordon bleu, so that’s on the docket for tonight. He pounds them out and stuffs them with thinly sliced Black Forest ham and Muenster cheese.

That cornucopia of deliciousness gets sealed up in a somewhat rectangular package secured with toothpicks and then breaded and pan-fried in leaf lard, the real stuff, not the block available at most grocery stores.

We’ll have our cordon bleu with a simple butter lettuce salad and vinaigrette , similar to the way we enjoyed it in Germany. Oh, a nice Gewürztraminer to go with.

Pro tip: If you haven’t used Muenster cheese in your quesadillas, give it a try! You won’t regret it.

What I’m watching

After a four-month break-up, I rejoined Netflix and am happy to be back. I binged Department Q, which is about a semi-obnoxious detective and his team investigating cold cases. I do love me a good cold case.

I’ve read all the Department Q books by Jussi Adler-Olsen, and while there are differences, the TV show captured the essence. The novels are set in Denmark, and the series is based in Scotland. I was kind of annoyed at first, but it doesn’t actually make a difference.

I watched one episode of Wednesday, and it gave me bad dreams. I do like the series about Wednesday Addams of Addams Family fame, so I’ll give it another go. I’ve also watched a couple episodes of Untamed, which is about a federal agent investigating crimes in Yosemite National Park.

The story is good, and the scenery is gorgeous, but I just read this morning it’s actually filmed in Canada. That’s probably because the toilets backed up at Yosemite since they implemented all the staff cuts.

What I’m reading

I haven’t been reading as much as I normally do, but I’ve been spending some quality time with cookbooks. Not exactly intellectual, but even my normal reading isn’t particularly lofty. As for crime fiction, I’ve exhausted my list at the library and need to re-load. Here are a couple of places that give me ideas for what to read next:

https://crimereads.com

https://internationalnoir.blogspot.com

https://eurocrime.blogspot.com

I finished Nightshade, Michael Connelly’s new book featuring Detective Stilwell of Catalina Island. It’s very good. Detective Stilwell is an interesting character. I mean, he’s no Harry Bosch, but everybody counts or nobody counts, right?

Bread and tomatoes

I had to turn off the Trump fountain of falsehoods. At least for a few days so I can feel peace in my heart again. But before I quit, I read a quote from my Republican congressman, who said with regard to Epstein, he didn’t know and didn’t care. Well, now, surely he needed to hear from a constituent about that.

So, yes, I called his office and spoke with one of the gang who answers the phones. I was polite. I was! I said his quote disturbed me because aside from political theater, there are victims here. Young girls were trafficked and abused, and if Congressman McClintock doesn’t know or care about that, then something is wrong with him.

All they ever say is thanks, we’ll share this with the congressman. Right. But I feel better for having said it. While there are lots of groups being marginalized, as a woman, I can only speak of my own experience, and it feels like we have been relegated to the trash heap of history.

I said I was over it, but news … I can’t quit you.

We’ve had gorgeous weather, and I’m planning to do a nice long walk today. When I was younger, I defaulted to cardio, because I was always worried about my weight and thought that was the best way to burn calories. Strength training was never a priority, and that has definitely been a bite in the ass as I’ve aged.

Now I default to strength training and fit in cardio where I can. I’ve made remarkable progress in a year and a half. And I’ll go out on a limb here and say it’s possible my shoulder injury is improving. This has been going on since March.

The physical therapist and the sports medicine doctor agreed I needed to do resistence exercises through the pain. This is another idea that caught me by surprise. I figured if it hurts, stop. Depending on the injury, there is some truth to that, but current thinking seems to be strengthen as you heal, and eventually strength will win.

I might actually be on the cusp of winning. We shall see.

What I’m eating

Bread and tomatoes. Is that the secret to happiness? The tomatoes are getting better and better. We had Greek salads again. When we ate them in Crete, the wine was always served in what looked like a small juice glass. We still do that! You know, for atmosphere. Although we no longer drink Domestica. Not that there was anything wrong with it …

Dale made bread to go with the Greek salads, so he whipped up some grilled cheese sandwiches the next night. He makes a killer grilled cheese. A mix of American and Cheddar with a schmear of yellow mustard on the inside of the bread. The outside of the bread is buttered well and then grilled in a cast iron pan until golden brown and delicious. We usually serve it with Kosher pickles or pickled cucumbers Dale makes from scratch.

I sometimes feel embarrassed about how much bread we eat, but I took an oath to share the unvarnished truth. Here it is …

We had paninis the next night. We didn’t want the tomatoes to go bad. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

Dale bought some ciabatta rolls for the paninis. Whole milk mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and fresh basil for the filling. He schmears the inside of the bread with balsamic vinegar and the outside with olive oil. I know – lots of schmearing going on. Simple but fantastic.

Tonight I’m making a variation of an Indian dish called Kheema. The recipe I use is from Indian Instant Pot by Urvashi Pitre. This is one of my favorite cookbooks. This particular version doesn’t use peas, but I’ve seen a lot of Kheema recipes that do.

She uses ground beef, but I use ground bison. The dish is loaded with garlic, ginger, onions and spices, along with spinach, tomatoes and coconut milk. Almost like a stew. That should take care of this week’s tomatoes. I will also make naan to go with. More bread drill sergeant!

What I’m watching

I finished Ballard, and I liked it a lot. Harry Bosch was in a few episodes, and when I see Titus Welliver in that role, I feel such respect and gratitude for what actors can do. He’s the perfect Harry Bosch. Anyway, the show ended with a cliffhanger, and that always annoys me.

PBS Masterpiece has a new show called Patience, which is an English version of Astrid, the French show featuring an autistic detective. I like them both, but I’m thinking I preferred Astrid. I read the actor who played Astrid is not autistic, but the actor who plays Patience is. Might just be me, but I think Patience is a little more mainstream, and perhaps that’s what they wanted to show. I guess that’s why they call it a spectrum.

What I’m reading

I just picked up Carl Hiaasen’s Fever Beach from the library. It’s pretty funny, as all his books are, but still, kind of depressing. It’s about incredibly stupid young white nationalists in Florida, and the unlikely folks who seem to be their undoing. I love where this is going, but it makes me mad to think there are douchebags out there like that.

Life is weird, but food is good

The news sucks, I mean, things get weirder by the day, but perhaps a wee bit of food porn will brighten your week. If there’s a theme, it’s toppings!

I modified a recipe from the NY Times called Summer Roll Noodle Salad. Cold cooked rice noodles go in the bottom of a bowl, then that is topped with mixed baby greens. Over that goes shredded carrots, bean sprouts, shredded cucumbers and pan-seared shrimp. Then on top of that goes chopped mint, basil, cilantro and peanuts.

If that’s not enough, each salad is topped with a dressing made from peanut butter, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, lime juice, hot chile peppers, garlic and ginger. The dressing was great, but I think a simple nước chấm would be even better. That would include almost all the same ingredients but without the peanut butter.

Flavor bomb! Sadly, it also looked like a bomb went off in the kitchen. A huge mess. Once again, I had an early morning tee time, and Dale got stuck with the aftermath. I love it when a plan comes together.

He made an America’s Test Kitchen recipe we’ve been enjoying for years. Crisp-Skin High-Roast Butterflied Chicken with Potatoes. The chicken is brined for a few hours. He lines the broiler pan with foil and then adds sliced potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper. He pre-cooks those for maybe 10 minutes, and then puts the rack on top with the chicken on it to cook at 500 degrees.

I don’t know how long. Until done?

As the chicken roasts, all those yummy juices drip onto the potatoes. Because the potatoes get a head start, some are super-crisp like potato chips and some are soft and succulent. He served it with fresh corn-on-the-cob, which was great, but we were like animals going after those potatoes.

We had leftover chicken, and Dale made chicken tortilla soup, which is on a regular rotation at our house. His recipe features a spicy tomato base with poblano peppers and shredded chicken. We each top our bowl with freshly fried corn tortilla strips, cilantro, diced avocado and crumbled queso fresco. Oh, and a squirt of lime. Two servings go in the freezer.

Yes, there was still leftover chicken, so I made a batch of chicken divan. It’s a retro thing, and one of the few times we eat processed food, but we both love it. I make it in a rectangular casserole. Par-boiled broccoli goes on the bottom. That’s topped with shredded chicken.

More toppings drill sergeant!

Over the broccoli-chicken base goes a sauce made from canned soup (that’s the processed part), mayonnaise, a little wine and curry powder. Most recipes call for cream of chicken soup, but I use cream of mushroom. Then comes a generous shower (more like a downpour) of grated cheddar cheese. All that is topped with buttered browned breadcrumbs.

The whole thing gets baked at 350 degrees until it’s all bubbly. I like to make it ahead of time, so the cooking time varies if I’ve pulled it out of the refrigerator. It was great, as per usual, and we froze a couple of extra servings.

That chicken got a workout! The carcass is in the freezer. I use that to make stock.

Dale also made what he calls Schnitzel on a Stick. It’s basically a bone-in pork chop pounded thin, breaded and then fried crisp in lard (ignore all the bad things you’ve heard about lard). We had that with big salads featuring farmers market tomatoes and topped with walnuts sauteed with butter, brown sugar and lots of cayenne pepper.

That also made a big mess, but as I told Dale, making messes is our super power.

Friday’s pizza was Dale’s specialty featuring a white parmesan cream sauce on the bottom topped with smoked salmon, capers, more farmers market tomatoes, red onion, mozzarella and smoked gouda.

As is our tradition, we watched a bad sci-fi movie. This week’s selection was It Came From Beneath the Sea, circa 1955. A submarine gets caught in the tentacles of a massive sea creature that’s heading for San Francisco Bay, leaving a wave of destruction in its wake.

Our goal is to make it through the pizza, and we often quit after that. But we watched the whole thing. Of course, there was a female scientist, and there was a lot of corny dialogue about gender roles. But we suffered through that to see the octopus try and take down the Golden Gate Bridge.

Finally, my masterpiece of the week was jalapeño cheddar sourdough loaf. This was my first attempt to make anything other than the standard boule, and all I can say is holy kapoopers it is good. You get the heat and brininess of the pickled jalapeños, then the gooiness of the cheese and the tang of sourdough.

We had some this morning toasted with a little Irish butter and a couple of strips of crisp bacon on the side. The only thing that would have made it better is a bloody Mary, but I seriously would have been comatose.

Life is weird, but food is good.

Keep calm and eat well

Although I play golf at least twice a week, I almost never ride. I don’t like to ride in carts, I play better when I walk and my body feels better when I walk. Yesterday I agreed to ride and by the end of the round, my knees were screaming. These are the knees that have been devoid of pain for months now.

The moral of the story is walk if you can. Always. Except tomorrow. I have another tournament where it really is best if I ride, but after this, I’m staying away from any event or course where I can’t walk. It’s called Make Donna’s Knees Great Again.

And for tomorrow’s event, our four-person team will be wearing matching outfits with a floral top that for me at least, will never see the light of day again. I believe I may be expected to wear a plastic lei. I’m all in. Our team won last year, so you know, whatever it takes.

In a moment of weakness, I accepted the role of co-captain for our league, with the expectation I will be captain next year. I’ve been wondering if I’m the right choice, so I asked my playing partners this week what they thought.

I acknowledged I can be aloof, but they didn’t seem to think that was a problem. Our current captain is absolutely perfect, so finding a replacement has unique challenges. Apparently, the first priority is finding someone who is willing to do it. Qualifications include being alive and upright. Check.

The next big thing is to avoid being a jerk, bitching out women on the course for rules violations and stuff like that. I’m proud to say I actually put some effort into not being a jerk, so I’m feeling pretty good about all that. Additionally, I hate the rules and would rather take a 10 than argue with someone over the proper way to drop a ball out of the hazard.

All in all, I’m optimistic. I got this.

In spite of all the bad craziness going on out there, my new mantra is keep calm and eat well.

In that spirit, on Sunday I made pasta with pesto sauce. Pesto is so easy. I just eyeball it these days. Lightly toasted pine nuts, a big bunch of fresh basil, a couple of garlic cloves, grated parmesan cheese, a dab of butter and enough olive oil to whiz it all together in the food processor. I even made the pasta from scratch.

I used to have the hand-crank pasta machine but recently upgraded to the KitchenAid pasta attachment, and it is worth every penny. It’s a whole lot easier when you can use both hands to feed the machine and guide the pasta as it comes out.

For a fancy little accompaniment, I made sardines fried in beer batter. This was a first, and all I can say is it won’t be the last. Damn, they were good. And yes, just regular canned sardines packed in olive oil, although I did use Matiz, which are imported from Spain.

The best part was I had an early morning tee time, and Dale got stuck with the mess.

Yesterday we had tacos from the freezer. It was a selection of chicken, bison and pork. The pork tacos are new, and they’ve become my new favorite. The pork filling is made in the slow cooker with pickled jalapeños and a good bit of the brine. And a little bit of brown sugar. Then it’s all shredded up at the end.

I’m not really into pulled pork sandwiches, but it sure does make great tacos. I make the kind with crispy shells. We freeze those, and Dale revives them in the oven quite successfully. A little bit of his homemade scorpion pepper salsa is a great addition, but one does have to be careful. Not him, of course. He’s a pepper machine.

We went to the corn place today. It was not pick your own, so we were disappointed. But I believe it was picked this morning, so we have high hopes. We’re just going to have corn with a couple of grilled sausages.

I’m not sure there will be leftovers, but I have corn chowder on my list. A little trick I learned last year is to make the stock from the shucked corn cobs. I may also try a bit of crispy pancetta as a topping. And some homemade bread to dunk.

My sourdough continues to improve, but I’m not quite there yet. Today I’m timing my starter to see how long it takes to reach its peak.

I’m aiming for six hours, so I can feed it at 8 a.m., go about my day, and then make the dough around 2 p.m. I store the starter in a temperature-controlled keeper and had it set at 78 degrees. At that temperature, it was peaking too soon, and by the time I get ready to make the dough, it’s somewhat bubbly but not full-strength.

Today I have it set at 75 degrees, to see if that improves the timing. It sounds obsessive, but it’s really one small detail that is keeping me from perfect bread. Not that imperfect bread is a bad thing.

Speaking of imperfect, I finished number 44! It was fun to do, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. I always tell myself it’s OK to deviate from the norm. It doesn’t have to be hyper-realistic.

It’s art! It can be anything we want it to be.

No cons, no clowns, no kings

We went to a local No Kings rally last weekend. Dale thought we only needed one sign between us, and I agreed. But then we couldn’t agree on the sign. This is standard operating procedure for us. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’ve been married 46 years.

It was a struggle to get there, but we finally went with, “No cons, no clowns, no kings.” And for a couple of hours we felt good about the future. Now, well, not so much.  

There are so many things to be mad about. War. Obviously, that’s not good. But some of the small things bother me just as much. Wiping out history because the regime doesn’t like admitting it happened? 

New signs at national parks and historic sites include QR codes, urging visitors to report any signs or information “that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur and abundance of landscapes.”

I know you get this news from other sources, and I suspect you are sick of hearing about it from me. I made the mistake of looking at my blog statistics, and they have gone down a little each year since COVID. More so since Trump 2.0.

It’s true I’m not as cheerful as I used to be, but I write about retired life and getting older and stuff I’m experiencing, and what’s happening in our country is part of the package. Plus, I think it’s important to speak up while we still can. So, statistics be damned.

JKW. Just Keep Writing.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of fresh tomatoes. There are several farmers markets near us, and yesterday we went to one of the larger ones in hopes of a sneak preview. Our favorite tomato vendor didn’t have any yet, but there were was one stand featuring a few tomatoes, so we took a chance.

I was craving a big messy bison burger with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, mayonnaise and mustard. No ketchup ever. It was as advertised – big and messy – and the tomato was OK. I call them iceberg tomatoes. The real ones aren’t here yet.

We learned about a place where you pick your own corn, and they even have a corn hotline so you don’t have to drive out there until you’re sure. I rather love that. They are only open Tuesdays and Saturdays. I called the hotline, and it said corn was ready, so I believe we will be making the trek this week.

I don’t know whether it’s turning 70 in a couple of months or politics or something else, but I’ve been reflecting on the past and wondering about some of the choices I made. Some of it wasn’t necessarily a choice but rather who I was at that time in life and now wishing I’d been different.

Having been raised by wolves, it took me a long time to figure out how to navigate work and life. I had a great career, but it could have been better if I hadn’t been such a mess inside.

Also, I’ve never been the most sociable person on the planet, and to some extent I blame that on the wolves, but it’s on me, too. I should have tried harder to make and keep friends.

While I’ve accepted wear and tear on the body as part of aging, I still resent it. What was I doing when my body was in peak form? Oh, that’s right, working my ass of at a 24/7 job so I could make enough money and retire before I totally crap out.

Actually, my body is feeling pretty darn good, especially my knees, and I’ve been daydreaming about long-distance walking trip. But geez, will they hold up? I’m continuing to do my exercises and slowly adding mileage, so I guess we’ll see. I don’t want to book anything until I’m reasonably certain I can do it.

As for other choices, the big one is my life partner. No lie, Dale and I do get on each other’s nerves, but after all these years we’re getting better at agreeing to disagree, and I don’t doubt my choice there. We’re both outspoken, independent and non-traditional, and he has never tried to clip my wings.

No cons, no clowns, no kings.

It seems to me I compromise more than he does on the small things in daily life, but we’ve been together so long it’s starting to seem like some of those things were my idea in the first place.

Like no ketchup on a burger. Whose rule was that?

Trigger points

Just a little question for other bloggers … are you getting AI comments? Mine go straight to the spam folder, but the first one looked so real I unspammed it and responded. Then I started getting more, so I now just delete them.

The level of detail is quite amazing. Sort of like my best friend commenting on every single thought I shared in the post and asking probing questions to stimulate dialogue. If that really is you best friend, I apologize for comparing you to artificial intelligence.

This is probably why I was never popular.

I’ve had some promising news on the creaky body parts countdown to eternity. As background, I exercise, stretch and strengthen religiously, but I still have a multitude of issues. I suppose it’s age, but I also wonder if my cancer history plays a role. No estrogen since 1999, and I believe that contributes to musculoskeletal problems. But hey, I’m alive, so yay!

I used to say I had three areas that needed constant attention – knees, back and wrists. I’ve been in physical therapy for about 15 months, and we’ve made excellent progress on all three.

But then my shoulder and arm started bothering me three months ago. Simple things like putting on a sweater is excruciating, but golf is OK. I finally got in to see the sports medicine doctor, who believes the issue is trigger points in my shoulder referring pain down my arm.

I don’t completely understand it all, but I guess trigger points are muscles that knot up for various reasons, including overuse. That’s probably me. I got new golf clubs this year, and I went to the driving range way more than I typically go, and hitting off mats doesn’t help.

It seems the solution is to somehow get the trigger points to release. Massage helps. Rolling up against a tennis ball – anything that puts pressure on those knots. I’ve also been doing a slew of exercises to strengthen the shoulder.

For some immediate relief, the doctor used dry needling. It sounds horrible, but I never saw the needle, and it didn’t hurt. He finds those tender spots, inserts the needle, and you can feel the muscle twitch and pulse. It’s wild. The doctor said it could be a case of one and done, but I might need to come back for a tune-up.

The shoulder and the arm are much better, but I will probably have to go back. I was afraid he was going to tell me to stop playing golf, but he said do everything you can possibly do. No restrictions. I might have some pain along the way, but as an active “aging” adult, some pain is to be expected. But he can help get it from a 7 to a 2 on the pain scale and to think of it as something that can be managed.

I like that mentality. In the absence of illness or serious injury, just keep going. I played golf two days in a row this week. I usually try to skip a day but thought, what the hell? I was no worse for the wear, but it did get a little weird.

A friend and I were paired with two women we didn’t know. One of them was decidedly unfriendly. Talk about trigger points! She made everything harder than it had to be, and it was frustrating.

As we reached our final hole, she looked us dead in the eye and said, “This is the last hole.” We’re like, yeah, OK, sure. Then she said it again is this creepy Grim Reaper voice.

“This is the last hole.”

My friend looked up and said, “Ever?”

I cannot stop laughing about that. Seriously, I have tears in my eyes right now.

And on that note, I leave you with fresh cherry scones with lime drizzle.

We made it to June

No use complaining about the daily onslaught of dreadful news. The upside is we made it to June. And now here it is, bustin’ out all over.

At least we had beer for the journey. But just because we can’t have nice things, today’s newspaper reported Track 7, our favorite local brewery, is closing permanently. No reasons were provided, but I assume it’s related to the economy.  

Does that mean it’s Biden’s fault?

We’re currently featuring Track 7’s Panic IPA in the kegerator, so we shall propose a farewell toast before that kicks. Perhaps we’ll head on over to Total Wines & More and see if there’s a spare keg to be had. We have room in the kegerator for a backup.

These are the times that try men’s souls. Thankfully, we still have Jameson Black Barrel. Proof God wants us to be happy.

Speaking of men, not to be confused with God, I was reading an article about the history of the LGBTQ movement in Washington, D.C., and they quoted a lesbian who said it was so great to find a community of women who didn’t exist to please men. Maybe I signed up for the wrong team.

Although I do my best to please one man, I have pretty much ignored the rest of it. I never dressed the part, never acted the part. I did what I had to do to get by at work, where pleasing men was a core competency. That said, my career highlights included catering to the whims of high-ranking women.

One female boss told me I’d be pretty if I wore a little makeup. In another job, I briefed a woman exec and asked if she had any questions. She said, “Wherever did you get those ugly shoes?”

Ugly as in comfortable. Teetering around on stilettos was never my thing. Take it from me, you gotta be ready to run.

Anyway, I was in communications … or PR as we used to call it. Dale always said that stood for porking the rich. Special events were always a showcase for privileged buffoons behaving badly. Communicators were deeply involved in planning special events, and by the time they were over, I hated everyone.

The stories I could tell!!  

Being retired and turning 70 this year, I can honestly say it feels good to ignore the pressure to please anyone except Dale and possibly my cat. Not that either one notices. As I have said before, the bad news is that my self-editing feature seems to be down. I tried rebooting it, but I’m still spewing a lot of things that might be better left unsaid.

On the food front, I made waffles last week, and they were delicious. I never order them in a restaurant because you usually get fake maple syrup. I only want the real thing, which I could drink from the bottle like Buddy from Elf.

I wanted another run on the waffles, but ever eager to please my man, we went with buckwheat pancakes, another family favorite. Dale buys bulk breakfast sausage and then freezes them in small patties. So we each had one of those on the side.

The cherry season is here! I never liked cherries until last year, and now I love them. I even bought a cherry pitter. We went to the farmer’s market this morning, and I bought a basket for $6. That seemed steep, but what isn’t? I also bought a big bag of walnuts.

Dale’s making fajitas tonight. He’s whipping up the marinade for the meat now. We went to Safeway for tortillas because we didn’t have the right size. And I say that as someone with a drawer in the refrigerator dedicated to tortillas. We also have a cheese drawer.

It was beastly hot yesterday but nice today, so we’ll eat outside. We always wait until the last minute to set up the music, so then we don’t. But this time I’m getting it all prepped in advance. Nothing like some good tunes to liven up the party.

That, and homemade fudgsicles for dessert!

Not quite broken

Maybe I’m dreaming, but it’s like something switched over in me, and I’ve become quite good at managing the daily Trump dump. I know it’s there, this brutal attack on democratic values, and I refuse to look away, but I found a place to park it in my brain where it doesn’t drive me crazy every single day.

Oh, and don’t ask for help because I have no idea how I finally got there or if it will last. All I know is that it felt like everything was broken, and it occurred to me I didn’t survive cancer twice to be this miserable over things I can’t control.  

I’ve been feeling good. Not quite broken after all. We are planning to join a June 14 protest. This would be in opposition to Trump’s multi-million dollar, tax-payer funded military parade in Washington, D.C. for his 79th birthday. I am reminded that my mother died on her birthday.

What I’m eating

My sourdough has been giving me fits. The last few loaves tasted good, but I wasn’t getting the rise I want. I did a bit of troubleshooting and came to the conclusion my starter isn’t strong enough. When you feed starter, you are also supposed to discard some of it. I always felt that was wasteful, even though I know you can save the discard and use it for other things. So, I didn’t do it.

But discarding some of the starter each time you feed it strengthens the brew. I guess mine was too diluted. I went back to discarding, and sure enough, my starter perked up. This last loaf looks great to me!  

I made spanakopita this week. That would be layers of buttered phyllo dough stuffed with spinach, feta cheese, eggs and yogurt – and then seasoned with onion, garlic, dill, mint, lemon zest and nutmeg. And sprinkles of Pecorino Romano cheese between the layers. Baked until crispy golden brown. It’s normally an appetizer, but I cut larger pieces, and we ate it as an entrée.

Both of us have quite a Mexican Jones going on most of the time. This week, I made slow cooker jalapeño pulled pork and used the filling to make oven-baked taquitos. Dale made a white queso for dipping, plus we had some homemade salsa verde.

There was a wee mishap with the slow cooker. Mine came with a temperature probe, which I have never used. In one of my fuzzier moments I put the probe in the bottom of the base unit for safe keeping and then put the ceramic liner on top. I never realized the probe was still there.

The pork was perfect, but when I took out the liner so I could put it in the dishwasher, I saw something odd stuck to the base unit and then icky brown stuff around it like blood from a crime scene. I thought, why, that looks like the probe!

Dale was able to pry it off, and while the probe is toast, the slow cooker seems no worse for the wear.

What I’m watching

Many thanks to Sheila, a friend here at Retirement Confidential, for alerting me to a new season of The Mountain Detective on PBS Passport.

I confess to watching Reacher on Amazon Prime. That was part of my stress epiphany. Per my boycott, I’m still spending next to nothing on Amazon, but I love my digital content and decided Jeff can have a few bucks if it makes me happy.

What I’m reading

I mentioned Jar City in an earlier post. This is the first in a crime series by Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indriðason featuring Inspector Elendur. I’ve since read two more, and I believe there are 11 in the series. This might be my favorite new-to-me series.

The Cold, Cold Ground is the first Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy novel by Adrian McKinty. The setting is 1980s Ireland. Complex politics, sometimes hard to follow, but I liked it very much. There are eight books in the series.

I’m a fan of the Irish crime series by Benjamin Black featuring Quirke, a pathologist in Dublin during the 1950s. There’s also a Boston connection. Christine Falls is the first of seven. The Silver Swan was number two, and I have number three by my bedside.

World of Trouble was the finale to The Last Policeman trilogy. The story is about what happens to people and families when they believe an asteroid will destroy Earth in a matter of months. For a grim subject, it’s an entertaining read. At first I didn’t like the ending, but it haunts me. There is darkness, yet there is light. Detective Hank Palace is a character you will not soon forget.

Just this morning I finished The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen. This is second after The Martini Club about a group of retired CIA agents in Maine. Highly entertaining. Now I want to explore her other novels.

I’ve read three of the Veronica Speedwell novels by Deanna Raybourn. The first was A Curious Beginning. The setting is Victorian England, and Veronica is an adventurous natural historian who specializes in butterflies. Due to unforeseen circumstances, she partners with another natural historian to solve crimes. He also happens to be sort of hunky. Such great escapism, and there are nine in the series. Yay.

Last but not least, I started the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. The first is actually titled Maisie Dobbs. A former servant, she evolves to become a nurse during World War I and returns home to continue her education and become a private investigator slash psychologist. If I got this right, there are 18 books in the series. Double yay.