Author Archives: Janell

A Garden Symphony

03 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Mesta Park

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I’m at loose ends after a three-movement symphony of gardening.  If it weren’t dark, I’d still be outside.  

My day began at the annual OSU fall plant sale.  Three days into their six-day sale, the OSU cupboards were almost bare.  But never fear — I came home with my share, with both pansies and snapdragons to plant.

Soon, very soon, I’ll be ready to plant the new beds at the duplex next door, what I’ve renamed Cinderella Two, since the duplex is no longer an ugly step-sister.  I like that Mr. Duplex Owner is interested in my progress.  He must be as tickled about his new garden as I am.  Thursday he asked the upstairs tenant whether I had planted yet.  She told him no, that I was STILL digging.   Today the downstairs tenant, finally realizing the full scope of my gardening intention, asked if I had expanded my horizons.  I assured him that I was only executing my original plan.  Perhaps he too is wondering WHEN the digging will stop.  Soon, very soon.  Maybe another day or two.  But if the downstairs tenant knew me better, he’d have known that I always dream big dreams. 

The second gardening movement sent Kara, Christi and I to the land of big garden dreams.  The season of home and garden tours is upon us and today the three of us enjoyed the Oklahoma Horticultural Society’s Garden Tour for Connoisseurs.  The gardens were inspiring, the weather gorgeous and the company grand, all of which explains why we only made it to three of the seven gardens.   But in our defense, the last garden we toured was spread across five acres.  That’s digging on a grand scale, folks, which puts my little project next door into its proper perspective.  

I came home from the tour to begin movement three, more digging at Cinderella Two.  As I kneeled in the garden to work, I keep company with God and other passersby.  Already I’m receiving nice feedback from my work.  From both quarters.  It’s funny that freshly dug dirt in a defined shape can be perceived so positively.  What comments will come later?  If my well-wishers think a bare bones garden is nice, wait until the plants arrive.  Then wait until next summer when the plants are in their full glory, and then wait another summer and another as they continue to grow to fill their space.

The downstair’s tenant told me today that he couldn’t WAIT to see the garden finished.  I just smiled and said — it’s gonna be gorgeous.  But his remark sent me to wonder:  what does a finished garden look like?  One garden on the tour today has been forty-seven years in the making.  That gardener could tell the downstairs tenant that a garden is never finished. 

Gardeners wait on their gardens just like a waitress waits on a table of customers.  Gardeners bring their gardens food and drink and keep it company and make sure everything is to its liking.  Then they wait.  They wait to see what will come from all their work of waiting.  They wait to see what tips and gifts the garden will leave behind.  And they wait to see what the garden will become.  And then the garden symphony begins all over again.  Wait, wait wait; wait ON it, wait FOR it to unfold, wait ON it….     

Today at the OSU plant sale, my granddaughter Karson asked for her own 4″ pot of pansies.  And her Aunt Kara bought them for her.  Wish I didn’t have to wait to see what this little plant will teach this little gardener of ours.       

Savory Baked Chicken

02 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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To my eternal good, my husband’s first wife discarded her marriage vows for greener pastures.  But liking my husband’s last name so much, Cathy wore her first married name through two subsequent marriages and divorces.  While I don’t know what subsequent husbands thought about her last name souvenir, I can report that husband number one simply shrugs his shoulders and laughs;  Mr. West is glad she found something about him worth keeping.

Thankfully, when wife number one vacated my husband’s life, she left behind a few recipes worth keeping.  This baked chicken recipe is one.  It takes less than an hour to prepare from start to finish, which makes it a perfect meal to whip up after a day at work or school.  We keep it just as simple with the sides — a package of Lipton’s Butter Noodles and maybe some green beans or English peas.

All our kids enjoyed this meal. My husband began preparing it in our early days of marriage, before the boys came along.  Since hubby beat me home from work by an hour, he’d have supper on the table when I walked in the door.  Ohhhh, the memories.  It was a fine arrangement but for the girls; they were use to my cooking, such at it then was.  And being kids stuck in their comfortable groove, there was much gnashing of teeth about their new step-dad’s exotic style of cooking.  To their way of thinking, it was a scary world of Crab Quiche and dishes with ucky mushrooms compared to Mom’s kid friendly fried bologna sandwiches and fried potatoes.  So it’s saying a lot that my girls love this baked chicken recipe from their first bite — well, once my man got smart and ditched the mushrooms.

The meal grew to become our oldest son Bryan’s favorite meal — and when O.U. housing asked all the parents of  incoming freshman for their child’s favorite taste from home, this is the recipe they got from us.  With a grin, I think I called it “Bryan’s Savory Chicken.”  I figured the first Mrs. West wouldn’t mind since she’d taken the same liberties herself, when she wrote the recipe out for her own use way back when.  Our copy of the recipe still lives in a little home-made green binder that my husband received as his parting gift; in Cathy’s long hand written on notebook paper, there at the top of the page, bigger than Dallas, it says:  Cathy’s Savory Baked Chicken.  In parenthesis underneath Chicken, is the name (Brenda C——-.).  In Cathy’s life, it looks like some names were ditched while others are forever hitched.

And who knows but maybe you’ll want to hitch your own name to this recipe.  From my life — in a leftover sort of way — to yours.

Savory Baked Chicken

Serves 3 to 4      Preheat Oven to 400 degrees
 
1 pkg of chicken breasts ( three halves), sliced in half, leaving six thin cutlets
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp basil
6 Tbsp butter
 

Melt butter and add to 9×13 pan.  Combine dry ingredients in a bag or sack, and one cutlet at a time, coat chicken by shaking it until well coated.  Lay chicken in pan, than turn butter-side up for baking.  Bake for 30 mins at 400 degrees.

 
Meanwhile, make a sauce to cover chicken, for final 20 minutes of baking time:
 
4 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp flour
2 cups hot water with 4 tsp. chicken bullion (can use chicken broth and add salt to taste)
Optional:  Cooked sliced mushrooms, fresh chopped tomatoes and green onions)

In a skillet, melt butter over medium heat.  Stir in flour until bubbly.  Add hot chicken broth and cook until thickened.  After 30 minutes of baking, remove chicken from oven to cover with sauce.  Add vegetables if desired and return to oven for final 2o minutes of baking.   Can serve over rice.

For Sale

30 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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I’ve just finished watching two episodes of season one of Mad Men, the popular AMC television series about people connected with a Madison Avenue based advertising business in 1960.  It’s a show about salesmanship; the mad men sell their ideas to the clients so that they can create ads to sell the product of their client.  Four episodes in, the characters I thought I liked and didn’t have become jumbled; as characters become less cardboard, my likes turn to dislikes and vice versa.  To the creators of Mad Men, I say bravo.  I  was hooked with just one episode.

In addition to being well done, part of the appeal of Mad Men is that it reminds me so much of growing up in the sixties.  I recognize the decor in the homes as well as the cars people drive.  And all the cigarette smoke.  I’d forgotten how popular smoking was then.  But some things I was too young to know.  For instance, Mad Men depicts 1960 Corporate America as a caste system:  Jews and gentiles did not mix, women were secretaries and switchboard operators rather than professionals, and of course the racial line between black and white was huge and bold and not crossed.  If this characterization is correct, I’m glad I entered the workforce in the late seventies rather than seventeen years before.

By 1977, women professionals were no longer a novelty, though we were still trying to figure out the ground rules.  For instance, I tried hard just to be seen as one of the guys.  I worked just as hard, traveled without complaint if needed, and wore my version of a business suit.  Of course, when I became pregnant, the guys thought I wouldn’t return to work.  But I did.  And believe me, I kept under wraps that I cried all the way to work that first day back, after leaving my eight week baby girl with another woman to watch.     

I entered the accounting profession, by the grace of God, as an employee of a small regional accounting firm.  The ‘Big 8″ firms didn’t want me, in spite of my stellar grades.  And the lack of job offers had nothing to do with my sex.   Plain and simple, I just didn’t know the rules of interviewing, and because I was painfully shy and insecure, I could not sell myself.  I hate that phrase — selling myself –it sounds like prostitution.  But that’s the interview game is a nutshell:  the interviewer tries to sell the candidate on his employer and candidates try to sell themselves to company representatives.  An after all the selling comes the waiting to see whether anyone was sold.    

My college interview experiences have been on my mind the last few days because my oldest son is going through the interview sweepstakes right now.  And since Bryan has more than a few on campus interviews lined up with public accounting firms, I’ve tried to sell him a few tips.  But my best advice to Bry was to have fun on his interviews.  Because people having fun are more relaxed.  And if relaxed, Bry will  focus more on others rather than trying too hard to sell himself.  

Best to leave the business of selling to those Mad Men on Madison Avenue.  But let’s see if we can make use of a famous ad slogan to wrap us this sale post:  “Don’t get Mad.  Get Glad.”