Author Archives: Janell

Salt & Pepper

20 Friday Mar 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home

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Our two poodles, Max and Maddie, are often greeted as ‘Salt’ and ‘Pepper’ by strangers they meet.  Maddie is cream, Max is black, so I guess folks just naturally think table condiments when they see our two gorgeous poodles walking side by side.  But if they were salt and pepper shakers, they’d be fancy ones.

 

You can tell how fancy a restaurant is by how they dispense salt and pepper. If it comes in small paper packages, you know you’re in a fast food place – if served in plastic white and gray shakers on the tabletop, it’s still quick food, but served on plates rather than wrapped in paper.  It might be a “mom and pop” or a greasy spoon with its own daily blue plate special.  Then there are those who fancy themselves a step above local yokel diners, who serve their seasonings in real glass table dispensers, like Big Tex Steakhouse, the place we ate at in Amarillo – it’s been around a while and plans to stick around a whole lot longer.  Glass dispensers belly permanence.

 

At the top of the food chain are those restaurants that prefer to bestow freshly cracked pepper with a pepper mill handled by your server.  “Fresh cracked pepper for your salad, madam?”  While my Cooks Illustrated magazine assures that freshly cracked pepper is superior to the almost tasteless ground pepper, I sometimes wonder whether a restaurant serves its pepper this way for taste or because it’s a way of displaying good taste—a way of putting on airs – a kind of humble bragging rights, if you will.

 

Big Tex Steakhouse is a place for bestowing humble bragging rights on those who risk their wallets and their gullets.  Those who eat a steak the size of a four and a half pound roast with all the trimming in sixty minutes can put their name on a chalkboard out front.  They do their frenzied eating on an elevated spot in the middle of the restaurant to spark the table talk of nearby diners.  If they eat it in an hour, it’s free.  Otherwise, out come their wallets.   

 

My son Kyle once won bragging rights at Big Tex, though not for eating steak.   He was with a bunch of young Boy Scouts who were trying to dare each other into eating the jalapeno pepper always served alongside the steak.  Tired of all their talking, Kyle bet the table he could down the pepper without drinking water for five minutes.  But they’d have to pay him a dollar each when he succeeded.  He quickly popped that bad boy in his mouth and acted like it was all in a day’s work for an almost Eagle Scout.  He impressed those young Scouts by adopting an air of calm, while all the time, a raging fire sweltered inside his mouth.  Long after the boys paid up, Kyle continued to pay for his bit of fancy as endless glasses of water could not quench the long after-burn of pepper juice.  But I wonder.  What about salt?      

Giddy Up and Go

19 Thursday Mar 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home

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We’re heading west towards Las Vegas on an old fashioned road trip.  My firstborn, Kate Louise, is going to the chapel to get married on March ‘21’.  She and Glen share a playful sense of humor.  They thought it’d be fun to tie the knot in Vegas.  

 

They’d originally planned do have Elvis do the honors, but now its grown up into a more dignified affair.  Myself, I relished meeting Elvis.  But what adult child seeks the advice of their mother, may I ask?

 

When I was a little girl of seven, I was going to marry Elvis Presley when I grew up.  Elvis was literally the first man of my dreams.  And with childlike faith, I knew he was going to wait for me.  I fell in love over a Coca Cola and some Milk Duds at the Ritz Movie Theatre.  Naturally, I saw all of Elvis’s movies, some more than twice, but my two favorites were “Fun in Acapulco” and “Viva Las Vegas.” 

 

Viva Las Vegas — long live Las Vegas–even without the real Elvis, who’s been dead ever since I grew up.  But there’s still a chance I might glimpse a close facsimile or two.  I hear they’re plentiful in Vegas.  And to think…had Kate and Glen kept with the original plan, their official wedding photo with the fam would have included Elvis in the middle.  How close can one come to making a little girl’s long ago dream come true?  Me and Elvis in a Vegas wedding chapel!

 

It takes a lot of work to giddy up and go on vacation.  And all the getting up before you go stuff takes the same amount of effort whether you’re gone for 2 days or 2 weeks.  I never understood this rigmarole as a child.  There’s the packing and farming out of loved ones – like poodles and tomato seedlings.  There are newspapers to stop and security services to notify:  “Ladies and Gentlemen…. Elvis has left the building”.  Then we had to pack our own stuff, including those last minute purchases, like my wedding day attire I finally bought yesterday.  

 

Then, there’s the everyday stuff of life begging to be done all at once, as if you’re never coming home again. So this week I paid bills, cleaned the house, planted my cool season vegetables, fertilized and trimmed our shrubs, over-seeded my neighbor’s fescue lawn and dusted the upstairs blinds.  Twenty down–none to go. 

 

And then there’s the visual clues you leave behind on the kitchen counter in case you really don’t come back, like the newspaper article that shows where the poodles are being boarded.  I showed some restraint in not pulling our wills out of the file cabinets.  

       

There is an excitement in the air when you travel to faraway places. Our first stop– a town out in western New Mexico–a place called Gallup.  Giddy up.  Let’s go.    

 

Chicken Feed

16 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home

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Tired from an afternoon of weeding, I hoped to sleep like the proverbial rock.  Instead, it was rock and roll.  I tossed and turned all night long while visions of Chickweed and Henbit danced in my head.  Living up to their names, both weeds are chicken feed.       

I didn’t know a crop of chickweed could look like wall-to-wall carpet until yesterday — its small nesting leaves grow low to ground with little white flowers on stems that branch out like spokes on a wagon wheel.  It had no manners, having practically shoved out the purple flowered and furry leaved Henbit – this mint family relative is suppose to be good in a salad, but I’ll pass and let the chickens have mine.   

All this weeding took place at my neighbor’s front yard.   I adopted it last summer after meeting the owner who was home for a quick emergency visit — someone had had the audacity to report their foot high weeds to OKC weed control.  Can you imagine?  Anyway, even if I’d been the tattle tell, we soon became fast friends, especially when she gratefully gave me carte blanche to do as I wished to her untended yard. 

Safely tucked under my wing, this little adopted patch of dirt is now my budding garden laboratory, where I experiment with all sorts of plants I’d never have the courage or patience to try in my own.  Last July, I planted a border garden full of Victoria white and blue salvia I picked up on close-out.  It was not suppose to thrive in this mostly shady spot, nor was it to survive the winter.  But it has defied the odds twice.  And in October, I seeded my first lawn.  Amazing, but it too is thriving, in spite of a dry winter. 

Now, with all the chicken feed weeding done, I’m sowing poppy seeds in their place.  I’m told it’s too late.  But I bought seven packets anyway and have sown them as if I were rolling dice in Las Vegas, like some gambler possessed by a lucky streak.  I rationalize.  No matter what happens, it can’t be as bad as foot high weeds. 

Compliments of Kara, I began my afternoon gardening pursuits with a full belly.  She hosted this month’s movable family feast with brunch at Bellini’s.  We were ten strong, only missing two of my chicks — Kyle was on spring break in New Mexico and Lara, my new adopted girl, reported in sick.   For a tad more than mere chicken feed, we enjoyed eggs cooked in imaginative ways–in frittatas, omelets, poached, over crab cakes, over salmon and in pancakes. 

And because of yesterday afternoon – I now know the answer to that age old question — which came first:  the chicken or the egg?  Because I was told by those in the know— those old gossip spreading Chickweed and Henbit weeds–as we whiled away five long hours under my neighbor’s old Pecan tree.  And, being a gambling gardener, I lay odds they were right.

It was neither chicken nor egg.  It was just chicken feed.