The Day My Daddy Died

Woops--many spelling errors! I"ll have to correct them later.

This afternoon, a woman I know, Kelley Steed, posted on Facebook that she had made ham, black eyed peas, and greens for New Year's Day.  Of course.  It's the South, that's what Southern people do.  It reminded me of New Year's Days when I was growing up.  I didn't quite get the whole Southern food thing when I was a kid, though I understood why that's what my mother made.  I was born in Arkansas, but our parents took us up to northern Illinois the summer before I started first grade.  I still call Illinois "home," though I've been back in Arkansas since January of 1990.  And I love it here.  What used to appall me when I was a kid--pots of greens and pinto beans, cornbread, my mother's firm adherence to her status as a "hick"--now make sense to me, and I own it.

So this afternoon when Kelley posted that she and her family will probably end up weighing 500 pounds by the time winter is over because all you do is stay inside and cook, it reminded me of those New Year's Days at home when my mother made the peas and the greens for Daddy.  I wish I had known how delicious those greens and peas were.  I quit eating meat when I was 10, so I wouldn't even have been eligible to eat peas or greens cooked with a ham hock until after I was 18 and had returned home from my year in France.  But even then I didn't really eat that stuff.  What a shame--because now I am back to not eating meat, and I would LOVE to have some of those beans and greens and cornbread.  But thinking about New Year's Day at home with my parents reminded me of my dad.  It made me think of football.  The only time we had a football game on at our house was if Texas was playing Arkansas and it was being broadcast in northern Illinois--AND if Daddy was off work.  Holidays like New Year's were kind of his money-makers, as an ER physician, so in other words, football on TV at home only ever happened a few times in my life!  But those New Year's Days were such good memories.  I felt closer to my Southern roots on those days than any other day of the year, maybe because it was during Christmas break and it felt more private, out of the prying eyes of Midwestern classmates who might make fun of me--and since my father was hardly ever at home because he worked so much, the games brought the added bonus of REALLY feeling like I had a DAD.  It was one day for sure when we really felt like a family.

And then it hits me.  Daddy died early on the morning of January 2, 1999.  The memory of his death and everything that surrounded it is mitigated, at first, by the fond New Year's Day memories.

After a while, though, it all comes flooding back.

I woke up at 6:50 that Saturday morning, thinking, "Why on Earth am I awake at 10 to 7 on a Saturday morning??"  I went back to sleep, only to be awakened by a call from my sister, Amanda, at 10:00.

She said, "Daddy is missing."  Then she must have told me that Daddy had flown to El Dorado, Arkansas from their home in Arkadelphia, AR to work in the El Dorado ER.  He was supposed to be at work at 7 am, but never got there.  The only other thing I remember is her saying "It's what we were always afraid  would happen."  Those may not have been her exact words, but it WAS what we had always been afraid of--that Daddy would get in a plane to go somewhere and crash and die.   We grew up with that fear hanging over us.

The first thing I did was call my boss, Richard Davenport, to tell him I wasn't coming in to work Monday, probably for a week.  I'll never forget what he said:  "I'm so sorry" --in a very serious, somber tone.  I was APPALLED that he would jump to the conclusion that my father had died!  My dad was *missing*.  He was missing...

I don't remember what time it was when Amanda came to get me, but we assumed by the time we got to Arkadelphia, where our parents lived, that we would know more.  That we would know how and where Daddy had died, and that we would be making funeral plans once we got there.  But when we got there, and Daddy was still technically missing.

I remember us all sitting around the table in the informal dining room that day.  Maybe you'd call it the breakfast table, I don't know, but it's where we always congregated.  I remember the sheriff of Union County, where Daddy had disappeared off radar, calling and telling us that he still didn't know anything.  How was that possible?  Surely you could see a plane crash!  But Union County, Arkansas is very heavily wooded.  It's all forest down there, which ironically is why Daddy liked to fly there.  He had hit several deer on previous trips down there to work.  He had a conversion van he liked to drive, and my mother joked that he needed "'roo bars" so his vehicle wouldn't get so messed up when he hit one.  Apparently what we might call "cow catchers" in the US are called "'roo bars" in Australia, which my mother thought was funny.  I do too.

That was a long day, that Saturday in January 1999.  People converged on the house as they heard about what had happened.  It was so comforting to know how many people were thinking about us, that they were worried, too.  My mother told me later that she joined the Catholic church down there because she had a premonition that she would need a community around her for a funeral, never knowing exactly what would happen.

We all went to bed that night assuming but not knowing what had happened.  It was the coldest night of the year.  The idea that Daddy had crashed and been injured but was out in the freezing cold was too much for my mother to bear.  Sunday morning when we got up, she burst into tears.  "It's so cold, and what if he's lying somewhere hurt!"  Sorry.  That part always makes me cry.  My mother does not cry very often, and when she does, it's a big deal.

So Amanda, Ian, and I decided to go down to the airport in El Dorado to see what they were doing.  I think it took 2 1/2 hours to drive there. Our cousin Dennis had gone down there Saturday and slept on the floor of the airport, working with local officials in the search for my father's crash site.  Denny is ex-Marine, ex-cop, and law enforcement there appreciated his help.  We were so grateful.  None of us were equipped to do what he did.  And dude...  He slept on the floor of the airport two nights in a row.  Family means a lot in our family!  And Denny is the shining jewel in our family...

So we waited there all day.  We spent some time in a sort of pilots' lounge room, next to the radio room.  We could hear them.  There was nothing for us to do.  We worried and held onto each other.  When a plane goes down in the United States, the Civil Air Patrol, basically a bunch of retired pilots in jumpsuits,  flies a grid over the airspace where the plane is thought to have crashed.  They close the airspace when that happens.  When the pilots of the State Police helicopter came through the doors at the end of that day after searching the grid, I rushed them and said, "You have to find my dad!"  I know it was uncomfortable for them, but I just had to say it!  Ironically, I could so totally see Daddy taking part in that kind of effort.  He would have LOVED to do that.  LOVED it.  He wore jumpsuits anyway.  (Oh my god--such memories...)

We ended up going back up to Arkadelphia that night, and returned to El Dorado the next morning with our mother.  It was a bright, sunshiny, COLD day in southern Arkansas.  We'd been there a while when Denny said, hey, look, the airport has emptied out:  They had gone to a potential crash site, he hypothesized.  So he said he knew where they probably were--he'd been searching the maps with them the whole time. We piled into his Ford Explorer, and after a false start, ended up at what was the crash site.

There was a Red Cross trailer there--several fat, smiling women wanted to know if we wanted hot cider.  Here's what was going through my head when they asked that:  "Are you fucking KIDDING ME???  These assholes KNEW they had found the crash site, but YOU were called FIRST???" The only reason WE knew where to go was because Denny had been working with law enforcement.  It was a really low blow.  And it got worse.  We saw the sheriff pull up in a truck, headed toward the muddy, forested crash site with his girlfriend in the passenger seat.   We were being held behind yellow crime scene tape by a stout deputy with a nine millimeter gun strapped to his leg.  He insisted that we were not allowed to go to the site, threatening bodily harm if we tried.  My mother said that the sheriff's girlfriend better not be allowed back there...  And I mean, REALLY??  How does the girlfriend of a law enforcement officer rank access to my father's crime scene, but his family does not??  It was an awful feeling.  Maybe it was the lack of control. No, it was because my father was dead and we felt we were excluded.  We had waited 2 days to know what had happened to him--and some woman who had no business being there knew more than we did???  No.  No.

The next thing of note was when the coroner came riding out of the woods on a four-wheeler.  With no formal confirmation that my father had actually died, this man began telling us which body part was found in which position in the trees.  I had to step away at first.  I remember Amanda taking it it, saying "uh huh" but knowing how far her stomach had dropped.  She is a doctor, but it's different when you are hearing which pieces your own father has been dismemberment into. She was so brave, but you just can't hide that kind of horror.  Later I answered the phone at my mother's when an old friend of my dad's called from Illinois.  He told me that "when that aluminum hull breaks up, it's like knives.  It just rips through people, and it is normal for people to be dismembered like that."

So the coroner asked my mother which funeral home she wanted him to be taken to after the state crime lab had his way with him.  Of course all they did at the crime lab was check for drugs and alcohol, which of course they did not find.  I WISH I had pushed for an autopsy of his brain.  There is a strong history of stroke in his family--his younger sister had a debilitating stroke the next year--and it would have been nice to know if that was the reason he crashed.  What I remember is Amanda saying that an autopsy would not find a heart attack because it takes a little while for the enzymes that indicate a heart attack to accumulate in the body, and he apparently died right away, no matter the cause.  Jesus....  this is so sad....

I had gone back to Little Rock to be at work the next Monday, but I couldn't stay home by myself, so I went back that same day, I think.  Everyone there got sick that week--it was a horrible virus, worse than any of us has been sick since or before.  My mother set the funeral for 2 weeks after he died so family could be there, and as she had him remains cremated, that was not a problem.

After the remains got back to the funeral home, we were notified and when we went there, we went in the front door to meet the guy.  He took us past several visitations--it was very busy in there--then we followed him out the back door, across the parking lot, and into a small building that houses the embalming rooms.  We entered a small room with a stainless steel embalming table in it, upon which lay a black body bag, my father's hands bound up by a white sheets.  The funeral home director told us it was all he could prepare for us to see, though we were welcome to view the rest of the body.  It was the final, awful confirmation that it was indeed my father who had died:  Those were his hands!  It made it real in a way that had not been there before.

Of course the whole thing was worse than horrible.  But at the same time, that church family that my mother had sought because she felt there would be a funeral she needed strength to endure sustained us in so many ways.  My parents' next door neighbors were from Zimbabwe  and Isaac taught Philosophy and Religion at a local college, so they were a great comfort, too.  Isaac did one of the readings and my cousin Emma Kate Starling sang La Pieta.  People were very impressed.  Amanda and I had requested "When the Golden Bells Ring" because it was on the Natalie Merchant CD we'd been listening to around then.  Martha and Jerry performed it.  The house was packed.  In front of the alter was a pillar upon which the cremains rested, along with a picture of my dad taken on a recent cruise -which is amazing, because we barely had any photos of him.

Several months after Daddy died, my mother took a job giving care to an old Russian man and his wife. She felt she should work.  lol  It was not good, and she did end up quitting and finally finished her bachelor's degree in sociology.  Daddy had not wanted her to return to school--they met at the medical school here in Little Rock, but she dropped out to support him and have children.  It's what you did in 1961. But while she was helping those people, I was there one day while she was sorting through Daddy's clothes.  She figured that man could use some of his pants.  All I could think was "Noooooooooooooo!!"  Daddy would need those pants when he came back together.  Isn't that weird??

That whole time was harrowing.  My mother had no idea how much life insurance there was--at one point she told us there was only $100,000--which would have to support her and my two little brothers.  There would be no money to help the rest of us who needed it, who had depended on Daddy to take care of us.  Fortunately, my mother later found out that she was to get $500,000, which apparently annuitized is enough for her and my brother Adam, who has autism.  They both received Social Security benefits now.

And it turns out that Daddy fell off the radar down there at 6:50 am.  My mother had awakened with a jolt at that exact moment, as had I.  We are pretty sure that's when Daddy died.  We are all connected.

Pure Devil Fantasy

Dude--I like this as much as "Wonderful World." Should also appear at my funeral. I can't believe I didnt' know this before.


Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down


I been telling you all week that the good the bad man does is just that: Good. Well, lookie here...

Then there's Gimme Shelter, best dystopic thing EVER...
 

"On the recording of the album, Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, "Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense..." On the song itself, he concluded, "That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that."[1] Similarly, on NPR in 2012: "It was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit ... When it was recorded, early '69 or something, it was a time of war and tension, so that's reflected in this tune. It's still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week [during Hurricane Sandy ]. It's been used a lot to evoke natural disaster."[2]

WIKI--Gimme Shelter
 

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away
-------------------------------------------

It's like a dream, but it's not.  I know.  How  stupid is that.

I'm hurtling through the side streets of Hillcrest, my little engine doing its best to roar....  I am all energy.  Powerful.  Alive.  On fire, burning the fumes of anything that could ever ever be good...  I'm deader than a heroin-addict Rolling Stone, and it's how I like it.  That's nothing special.  All we dead people think that.  Alcoholics, addicts, depressives.  It's false ego.  It's all we have.

How could you still believe in the fairy tale?  When my mind runs free, it goes to the dark side, and I'm foolish enough to think that means I'm special.

I told Dr. Robert Jarvis this week that I am just waiting to get sick and die--it's all that's left.  He told me to "Stop it. Stop it," then ended our time by saying I'm as good as he's ever seen me.  And he really meant it. And he was right.

Can you guess my name??  lol  It's that constant contradiction--am I live, or am I dead...  My mind seems to want both at the same time.  I don't want the real real, I want the real I imagine, and that's such a very lonely fucking thing.  You can never be with anyone when it's Reality, Party of One.  But over the decades you convince yourself that it somehow has to be that way, that it's the ideal.  The Stones may be ex-heroin addicts, but they are very wealthy ex-heroin addicts.  I'm here to tell you that it can make a difference.   The adequate amount of food I have and the extra $40 a month I have to spend on a gym I like....   I couldn't survive the way some of my friends do.

Have some sympathy. 

Or not. 

Ha ha ha--does the devil ASK??? 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me


I just want to be a skinny old rock star.  All I'm asking.  I know.   It's too much.

Kenny's Bad, Crazy Thing

     Geez.  There I was enjoying looking at Kenny Chesney on Jimmy Fallon.  Dude is hot.  The kind of hot that makes me want to eat nothing but soy nuts, yogurt, and fruit while I work out to end up getting into some sexy black spandex workout clothes looking as fine as he does.  It takes a few minutes to get over the fact that it's not really even country and you hate pop and country pop is even worse, but after that I can enjoy just looking at him.  Then the lyrics start making themselves known, and I'm thinking, no, he wouldn't get into a dysfunctional relationship like that.  I mean, I've only seen him in interviews a few times, but he seemed really with it.  Of course he could still be the type who finds himself getting into one of those bad, crazy things with somebody who helps make it the perfect bad, crazy thing for him.

     No, I do not have any Kenny Chesney CD's. The stupid song is called "Come Over," which, as you know if you have ever been in this position, is as dangerous as J.R. Ewing holding a straight razor over his son's neck, having waved away the barber so he can scare the shit out of John Ross because he betrayed him.  And I only really call the song stupid because it got me thinking...

Forget about your friends

you know they're gonna say

we're bad for each other

but we ain't good for anyone else...

***

We don't have to miss each other

come over

we don't have to fix each other

come over...
***
We don't have to say forever

come over

you don't have to stay forever
come over...
***

Come over come over come over come over...

    My to-do list lately includes getting back online to find someone to date.  Of course I haven't done it, for a number of reasons.  But I have never felt more alone in my life.  I don't even want to make dinner--everything is "why bother".  It pops into my head that it would be nice to get ice cream. Then it hits me--it's not about the ice cream.  Getting ice cream in the summer is an activity.  I have done a lot of things alone, but you get to a point where you just can't do it anymore and you stay home and eat food that comes wrapped in plastic, not even wanting to have to put something in the microwave.  It's depressing and you feel like shit--physically, even.  Yeah, it's bad.  It's easy to see why people who live alone die younger than people who are paired off.

     But while listening to this song about ole Kenny and the pull the wrong woman has on him, it hits me.  If my baby daddy weren't married, I would probably still spend time with him.  He's too lazy to work for anything, so he'd be happy with us as a default, too.  Uh, wait.  That implies that I would be happy with it.  Happy is not the word.  At any rate, my heart just dropped when I realized that.   It's hard to even try to sort through all the emotions tagged on to that.  It's sad because it was so horrible.  He was so horrible and I took it--that's what's sad.  It's sad because that feels like my only other alternative to this; I can't imagine a situation where I'm with someone and it doesn't suck as much as being this alone, basically.  And it's bittersweet because there is that soupcon of compatibility in between the pain and hatred.  A tiny slice of "ahhhhh we like the same things" that makes it irresistible.  Yeah, I know.  I'm fooling myself thinking that is what makes it irresistible.  It's the dysfunction that is flat freaking addictive.  Nothing new there or in the song.   But I really only ever had that one dysfunctional thing--it was bad, but it's not like I've spent my whole life in that hell, and when you've known that kind of dysfunction, you know that the relief you seek is a door you can open for yourself, but you don't.  It's the weirdest damned thing.  So it could be way worse.

     I could be asking if I can come over.


SNAP.  I just watched the end of Jimmy Fallon.  Kenny appears to be a tiny man.  Rats.  I wonder if he really got it on with the model in the video.  Looked pretty real in a couple spots.  And that boat has a French flag--I wonder who owns it.

Heart and Soul--a window into SXSW with Carson Daly

     Carson Daly rocks.  Of course I only know who he is because I don't work and I stay up late at night when television programming choices dwindle.  Last Call with Carson Daly airs after Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC, which airs after the current Tonight Show (Fingers crossed that we get the next version soon!  Not a Leno fan.  Dave was robbed.)

     I love Last Call.  Let me explain why, in case you are my age but you have to go to bed at 10:00 on weeknights.  The people and bands Daly showcases are original artists working on what seems to me to be the leading edge in their genres--people who need a break.  “The average artist can’t get on a network and I want to be that beacon. Come on Last Call, [I’ll] give you the tape and you can give it to Jay Leno.  To give artists a chance"  By doing so, he lifts the veil enough that you can see the artist behind the art, and I find it fascinating.  I would never have heard of the music/film festival  South by Southwest (SXSW) that takes over Austin, TX, every year, had I not begun to watch his show.  And it has apparently become a big deal in the last couple years.  Last night they showcased a band playing at SXSW called Bomba Estereo, a mix of native Colombian music and electro.  He introduced the video of them performing by saying it "will absolutely blow you away".  And as usual, he's right.  It actually reminds me of the next generation of music from the music in the Mexican rave scenes in Man on Fire, the Denzel Washington movie.  (Which, by the way, I cannot recommend highly enough.)

     Also featured last night, the makers of Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary about independent video game developers that was featured at Sundance this year.  Director James Swirski has been a gamer his whole life.  He and his partner Lisanne Pajot say they really connected with the subjects of their film because they were doing essentially the same thing the designers were doing--quitting their day jobs to pursue a passion.  "No one is helping you make your thing, you're just making it to make it," she says. Their hearts and souls go into these projects.  One guy featured in the documentary says "My whole career has been me trying to find new ways to communicate with people, because I desperately want to communicate with people, but I don't want the messy interaction of having to make friends and talk to people because I probably don't like 'em."  It's this kind of raw, heartfelt honesty that makes me love documentaries, and I love Carson Daly because he gets that. 

     Last Call is an oasis of  cool in my otherwise bland, lonely life.  It's a half hour nugget that I cling to as my last, best chance to stay connected to the cool.

     Here's where I get a little self-conscious:  Is it cool that I find Carson Daly cool?  Or does that mean I am a huge dork who is behind the times and is the last to know it?  Is Carson Daly even actually objectively cool--is this stuff...pop?!?  I'm so isolated I don't even know the truth, here.  But what I do know is that when you connect with something so deeply as being cool to you, it's OK to just call it a day and declare it cool.  Cool isn't a set of rules--it's where you find your heart and soul in what other people are doing.  It's about how it makes you feel.

(Actually, in finally researching the show for this post, I have decided that Carson Daly is cool!  The first thing I did was look up Lex Land, also on last night's show.  It was then that I found out Daly is associated with the network show The Voice. Whatever that is. lol)



Via press release:
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – March 9, 2012 – NBC’s “Last Call with Carson Daly” announced that it will host its first-ever music showcase at the 2012 South by Southwest Music (SXSW) Festival, one of the world’s largest music industry events, in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, March 14 (8 p.m. CT). “Last Call” will partner with Sony Entertainment Network’s Music Unlimited Service to spotlight six artists, including Tennis, Roll the Tanks, Thee Oh Sees, Lee Fields and the Expressions, Bomba Estero and Cults, from the Red 7 Patio in Austin. Daly will serve as the emcee for the showcase and introduce each band prior to their performance.

Fuse: Carson Daly on the Last Call Showcase - SXSW 

Rolling Stone has a short video of Daly playing drums with Thee Oh Sees from that showcase last week.  Things didn't exactly go as planned, but he pulled it out.

http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/new-and-hot/carson-daily-plays-drums-with-thee-oh-sees-20120315

Official trailer, Indie Game: The Movie
http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/

Thee Oh Sees 2011

Ah HA! Improvisation, man. I did not plan this one.

     Being vegetarian means you have to wing it, quite frequently, and a big part of why I wanted to do this blog thing is because there are so many crap vegetarian pseudo-food "recipes" on the Internet.  I once saw a recipe for "delicious" tomato soup:  tomato juice and cracked pepper, heated in the microwave.  I knew then that something had to be done. 

     I am lucky enough to have learned the cooking basics from my mother. I never had macaroni and cheese or a cake out of a box until I was living at home and going to college.  Mama was too tired running after my baby brothers to be as circumspect about the food they ate as she was when we were growing up.  I was also lucky enough to have come of age during the first TV food renaissance, beginning with Jeff Smith, Julia Child, and Natalie Dupree on PBS.  I do not eat bad food.  Yeah, we are sort of food snobs in my family.

So here's how it went down tonight. 

     I had red, yellow, and green bell peppers and some mushrooms, and was planning to make vegetarian fajitas a la Casa Manana (our favorite locally owned Mexican restaurant).  But I also had some broccoli that needed to be eaten, too.  What to do??  Stir fry.  I even decided to make white rice. Normally the only time I use white rice is when I make what I call "sweet rice", a low-fat, barely sweet rice pudding-y dish.  (I'll share that and the fajita thing another time.) 

     It had been a while since I had done stir fry.  They've kind of gone out of vogue--out of sight out of mind, I guess.  I started the rice in my grandmother's old heavy-bottomed aluminum pot.  Since moving here and cooking on this gas stove, I've had problems with rice sticking to my pots.  I couldn't get the flame low enough to work with the 6 quart pots I had used on the electric stove I had in my last home.  All of a sudden one day I broke out of "this is how I have always done it so I have to continue to do it that way forever and ever" and realized that I could use my grandmother's pan.  Unfortunately, I also have had a problem recently with not completely rinsing the dish washing liquid from my pots and lids.  So when I opened the lid to check on the rice after 15 minutes, I was assaulted by the steamy smell of cooked dish soap!  D'oh!  Oh well.  Nothing I could do about it at that point. 

     I cut up my vegetables and aromatics and sat down in front of the TV.  (Aromatics?  Dang, but I'm fancy.  Hey.  I told you I learned the basics!)  I  hesitated to start because I couldn't think of a protein to use. Of course I didn't have any tofu, and it's fairly unappetizing when cut into cubes and stir fried anyway.  I figured out at some point this last year that I can make fried rice using only an egg--no ham--and it still tastes like fried rice to me.  But I had never done it in a stir fry.  Then it hit me--I bought lemons (a splurge) and I've wanted to make a Lemon Ice Box pie, which uses three egg yolks... So, ta da!  Stir fry with three egg whites.  Perfect. 


Here's what I did.

Caveat emptor:  I'm not into precise measurements.  At all.

One cup rice, 2 cups water
About a quarter of a medium onion, sliced more thinly and longer than my normal dice
One rib celery, sliced 
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
Green, yellow, and red bell peppers--about a fifth of each, sliced 1/4" x 1"
1 stalk broccoli cut into 2"florets, stem peeled and cut into chunks
1 carrot, sliced
1/2 lb button mushrooms, sliced
3 egg whites
1/2  vegetable bouillon cube dissolved into 1 cup boiling water
1 T soy sauce
1 tsp corn starch
1 T canola oil

Note:  I split the bottom of the celery in two so that the size more closely matches the slices from the top.  And I usually just slice into the peppers from top to bottom and remove a 1 1/2"-2" section, leaving the rest of the pepper intact. Cooking for one. You know. I steam broccoli in the microwave with 1/4" water, covered with a paper plate (which I re-use relentlessly before going on to the next one).  My bouillon is Edward & Sons Garden Veggie.  Bouillon is expensive, and I got this in the natural foods section at the store, so it was about $5.  But it's one of those things that I have to rationalize--since I don't eat meat, it's OK to splurge a little on some ingredients. 

Cook the rice.  Steam the broccoli for one minute. 

Saute onion and celery in oil about a minute on medium high heat.  Add garlic and mushrooms, stirring for another couple minutes until the mushrooms begin to soften, then add the carrots, broccoli, and peppers and let them cook another minute or two.  (Until they look like you want to eat them--my mother's rule for how long to cook things.  She is always right.  No, really!)

Move the vegetables to the side of the pan and add the egg whites, breaking them up when they are cooked through, then push them to the side, too.  Whisk the corn starch and soy sauce into the broth and pour it into the cleared spot in the pan.  Stir the slurry until it thickens. 

Then just stir it all together and eat it with rice and a splash more soy sauce.  Easy as pie. 


Which reminds me.  I need to get back in there and make that pie!


The pie:

It took a little effort to find the recipe for this Lemon Ice Box Pie, because I wanted the same one my  grandmother used to make for me.  I found this on the Canadian Eagle Brand web site, of all places.  I like this one because it's the same ingredients she used, but they have you bake it so the egg yolks cook.  I am not a fan of uncooked egg yolks, so I was happy to see that they had added that bit.  The funny part is that there are essentially just 3 ingredients.  And I don't make the meringue.  For one thing, I already used the egg whites.  And of course I make my own graham cracker crust, crushing the crackers in a heavy-duty zipper seal bag with my rolling pin.  On my coffee table, of course.  I just cannot make myself buy graham cracker crumbs when I can torture myself by crushing them at home.

http://www.eaglebrand.ca/recipes-details.aspx?rid=1628

Looks like love, smells like baby

I just ordered photo prints for my mother from Walmart.com. Say what you will about Walmart, it's perfect for this because my mother doesn't do computers or cameras, but she does shop at Walmart. All she will have to do is pick them up when they come in--at the Walmart in her town. It's brilliant, honestly.

I was always the one in the family who brought a camera and took pics, and I was a film holdout. I regularly took film to be processed and I shared my prints with my mother. Then at a certain point I realized that she was still bugging me about getting pictures of my nieces and nephews for her, and I said, wait--those children have parents!! So she finally quit asking me. Now that I am using a digital camera exclusively, it hasn't even been an issue.  It's weird. The whole thing is weird. To think that a grandmother is essentially excluded from seeing pictures of the kids because she has been left in the technological dust--no computer, no fancy cell phone equals no pictures of your grandchildren. And it's weird that I just now realized that I have not seen a physical print of any of the photos I have taken since I got my new camera for Christmas.

I'm obviously not the first person to moan about this, but these photos we take all the time, share online, email and post on facebook don't have the same meaning as the pictures we grew up with. In my family it was a fairly rare occurrence to get the old pictures out. So it was special. Every picture you looked at reminded you of that hat--oh my god that hat I wore all the time!--the trip you took to spend Easter with your friend in Germany. And of course the black and white pictures of my father and his sister taken in front of a wooden fence in about 1933...being especially scarce, they are really precious.

This is my effort to make pictures matter again.  I like taking pictures and telling a story with them, even if it is just "hey, it's Spring here and we have great landscaping!"