It’s nearly spring for those of us in the States….

What do you think of when you think of spring?

 

10 Words.

If you were asked to describe yourself using 10 words, what would the 10 words be?

You could answer in any structure you liked.

 

Ole Mother Nature.

What do you do when the weather keeps you home?

 

Easy Apple Crumb Tart with with a rum sauce drizzle!

I’m usually one to cook nearly everything from scratch when I entertain, but this recipe is an exception, and a very tasty one!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 (17.5 ounce) package frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 1 tablespoon of unsaled butter, melted
• 3 apples – peeled, cored, and chopped
• 3/8 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/8 cup chopped blanched almonds
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons butter (unsalted) , chilled
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (the real stuff if you can get it)

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Directions:

1. In a small bowl, mix flour, almonds, 1/2 cup sugar, and cinnamon together. Add chilled butter and vanilla extract. Cut together with a pastry blender until small crumbs form.
2. Unfold pastry and cut into a 10 inch circle. Place on a large, ungreased baking sheet. Brush with melted butter. Arrange apples in the center of the pastry, leaving a 1/2 inch wide border of pastry. Spoon almond topping gently over the apples, being careful it doesn’t spill over the edges of the pastry.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

For Rum Sauce:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons white or dark rum. Spiced rum also works quite well.

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Directions:

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Mix together the sugar and cornstarch, and stir into the butter. Pour in milk, and cook stirring frequently until the mixture begins to boil. Continue cooking until thick, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in rum. Serve warm.

 

Sauteed Bananas With Cardamom Praline Sauce

A delicious, sophisticated desert that is easy to make in a pinch!

ingredients
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
4 bananas, halved lengthwise, then crosswise
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
Pinch of ground cardamom
Pinch of ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Accompaniment: vanilla ice cream

preperation

Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté half of bananas, cut sides down first, turning over once, until golden, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes total. Transfer with a slotted spatula to 2 dessert bowls. Heat 1 tablespoon butter and sauté remaining bananas in same manner, transferring to 2 more bowls.

Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in skillet over moderate heat, then add brown sugar, cream, cardamom, a pinch of nutmeg, and a pinch of salt and simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in lime juice.

Spoon sauce over bananas and ice cream.

Makes 4 servings

 

Seasons Greetings from us to you!

 

All I want for Christmas is… porn, baby

I can explain. But first, a little background.

Since Christmases immemorial — more specifically, the 1980s — Christmas has been a time to show people just how much you love them by showering them with presents. This is not a new observation, but I’m not talking about a token of affection or two; I mean presents small and large, and so many that you don’t have time to wrap them all and so end up piling sofas, chairs, and even the floor with the booty. As a child of the ’80s, I dove through packages, boxes, and bags. My two siblings did the same, and even the family pets went to town with plush toys, marrow bone, ribbon, and string. To keep from feeling left out, my parents showered each other with trinkets as well.

If you didn’t indulge in the ‘80s, you might not know about the glorious gluttony I’m describing, but in my family, Christmas was so grand that by the end of the day, we weren’t sure whose gifts had been whose. “Christmas Mouse” guarded the special closets where presents were hidden until Christmas morning, and there were so many that it seemed he always kept a few for himself — months later, my mother would reach for a glove or an umbrella and say, “Oh, another present! I wonder who this was for?”

You’re probably thinking all this largesse didn’t make us happy, but it really did. Fat with eggs and bacon and cinnamon buns and clutching new toys late Christmas morning, we were truly satisfied. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but if you’re already happy, it buys a lot of fun.

Anyway, the Christmases of the 1980s changed into the 1990s, kids changed into teenagers, toys changed into sweaters and iPods, the spoils of Christmas gradually became more for the indifferent than for the truly spoiled. And our family’s first legitimately indifferent Christmas was last year. Though we weren’t quite to the point of picking names out of a hat, no one had a pile of more than 8 to 12 things. No sofas sagged under the weight of gifts. My brother and I didn’t even wander over to my parents’ until almost 9 in the morning, and my sister stayed home with her own children in Boston.

I have to say, the atmosphere was a little… flat. We saw each other frequently and expressed affection openly all the time, but we sorely missed the thrills of Christmases past. On top of that, my parents were renovating, so the house didn’t have its usual free-for-all feel. We all knew that after unwrapping gifts, we’d be heading down to the basement, where my mother would cook us eggs on an electric skillet as we played pool or watched TV. While still plush and cozy, it would be far different from the years of running around the old kitchen table, poking the cinnamon dough with small plastic figurines, and watching my dad nearly set the house ablaze by trying to burn too much wrapping paper at one time.

But, for some reason, maybe because of the smaller number of presents, we also felt a higher sense of occasion last year. Each present had to *count*. So, when my brother fished out the first gift with my name on it from under the tree, everyone stopped to watch as I opened it. The tag read, “To Elizabeth, Love Mom,” and judging by the size, it appeared to be a DVD. I assumed it must be an item from my Amazon.com Wishlist.

Through years of gleeful gift exchanges, we’d all learned to reflect nothing but genuine joy at the sight of any present. Nothing less would do to let the gift-giver know his or her thought had been appreciated. That said, I ripped off the paper, glanced at the DVD for 2 seconds, and informed my mother: “You bought me soft-core porn for Christmas.”

My dad and brother instantly doubled over and gasped for air. They couldn’t speak through their cackling, but my mom defended herself: “It was on your Amazon Wishlist!” she whined.

When the DVD came in the mail, my brother had told her, “Do not give Elizabeth porn for Christmas,” but she stood her ground. She insisted that if I’d put it on my wish list, it must be good — she trusted my taste. Apparently, that trust was true regardless of whether the film in question happened to be named “Forbidden Games” and included a picture of a threesome on the cover.

Gradually, we untangled the story. We have a very common last name, so we thought maybe a different, naughtier Elizabeth had placed the item on her list. I checked every single Elizabeth and Liz of the same name, but nothing came up. Eventually my mom said she could retrace her own steps if we just let her.

She promptly went to the Amazon site, typed my name into the main Amazon search engine, and showed us the list. Through a keyword search, she had come up with results that included some items that seemed to be to my taste… along with the porn. She’d never even made it to the Wishlist section of the site.

Once we read the reviews, we laughed even louder. My mom had not only purchased porn, but bad porn at that. She protested that she still thought it was just a racy murder mystery, and we had to tell her, quite seriously, that real murder mysteries generally are not set at nude modeling agencies. Just for future reference.

After that, the mood was ribald, we toasted each other with orange juice and store-bought cinnamon buns in the basement, and “Merry Christmas porn” jokes rang throughout the air. Though no pets choked on the leftover string, and the fire from the burnt paper waste didn’t even look dangerous, it was a one of my best Christmases.

A few weeks ago at dinner, my mother grumbled something about not really understanding what went wrong with the wishlist last year.

The rest of us couldn’t be more excited for Christmas again.

 

Suggested Reading: December

Suggested reading for the month of December:

‘Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one…. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture…. As Huxley remarked: the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right“- Neil Postman// Amusing Ourselves to Death:…

 

Magnificent Modular Dwelling

A recently stumbled across Shigeru Ban’s Sagaponac Furniture House, a weekend house on a flat wooded lot in Sagaponac, New York. Both beautiful and extremely functional with obvious Mies Van de Rohe influences, this home caught my eye immediately.

The primary structure of the house is made of beautiful millwork furniture units that march through the open plan. The units provide an incredible amount of storage (perfect for books, miniature sculptures, found objects, records and clothing!) and also support the roof, and enclose heating and cooling systems.

What would you do if you had that amount of storage?

many more images below.

 

Crook Neck Tommy and His Grocery Cart Riding Wife

It seems that every town has at least one character who marches to a different drum.  Of all the slightly crazy folks around here there is one who really stands out for me,  “Crook Neck Tommy”.    The townspeople call him  Crook Neck because his neck is crooked.  He makes his living repairing lawnmowers with a chicken feather and the odd handyman jobs.   There are those in town who believe he has a true gift with a chicken feather and clogged carburetors; they don’t know how he does it, but the mower will be good for another summer.

Tommy has never been able to get a driver’s license, so he drives around town on an old  Snapper riding lawn mower.  He obeys all traffic signs and rules, except that instead of traveling on the shoulder of the road he drives down the lane in which he would be if he were driving a car.  This would be fine on country roads, but in town the traffic backs up,  horns start to blow,  and tempers grow short.  Tommy is in the market for a new lawn mower though,  he thinks all that horn blowing and cussing is because his mower is so old.

Saturday is grocery shopping day for Tommy and his wife.  Mrs Crook Neck is just a tad over 300 pounds and is unable to ride piggy back on the rear of the mower as she once did in her younger and slimmer days.  Tommy has solved that problem by hitching up an old rusty grocery cart to the rear of the mower with a piece of sturdy rope.  Because of Mrs. Crook Neck’s ample posterior it was necessary that Tommy cut off the sides of the grocery cart.  Mrs. Crook Neck has made a large and comfortable cushion on which to sit   (she is the lady who made the cushions for our porch furniture),  and Tommy has fashioned a cup holder for her iced tea,  an ashtray for her cigarettes,  and a garbage bag hangs from a hook so that they don’t litter the country side.  Rain or shine  Mrs. Crook Neck holds an old umbrella discarded by the local doctor’s wife.  It has a sales logo on it advertising women’s vaginal itch cream, which, no doubt, is why the doctor’s wife discarded it.

So off to the grocery store they go – Tommy pushing the pedal to the metal and making 5mph in a 45mph zone, and Mrs. Crook Neck reclining in the modified grocery cart, her butt hanging over the edges and nearly dragging the ground, smoking a cigarette and sitting in the shade of her umbrella.  The grocery cart sways from one side of the road to the other on its length of rope as a line of cars honk and give the couple a one fingered wave.  

I wouldn’t want a thing to change…….. I suppose it is because I am a true Southerner brought up to enjoy, and be proud of the eccentrics in our midst.