Tag Archives: Mesta Park

Simple Hospitality

24 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Mesta Park, Soul Care

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Last night we completed our first season of Moveable Feasts, where once a month, we take time to convene family around a dinner table.  As the name suggests, this family feast is on the move; it has places to go and food to taste with our only constant being the group of familiar faces gathered together.  

Blog_09_1024

February at Mesta Park: Maddie shines as "Hostess with the Mostess"

Each month the host changes — each of our children and their mates, plus my husband, his mother and I take turns playing host.  This adds up to ten months of moveable feasts, with two months off in November and December, when the holidays naturally bring us together.  This year we’ve eaten our way through one brunch, two lunches and seven suppers, involving two home-cooked meals and dining out at seven restaurants across the Oklahoma City area and one old saloon in Okarche.  It was a strange stew of Italian, Indian, Cajun, Brazilian, Chinese and mouth-watering Southern fried chicken.  

It was my idea to do this, my way of  bridging the widening gap between my best dreams — having all my chicks home every Saturday night in my Mesta Park nest — and my worst nightmares — never seeing the faces of my flown-the-coop children again.  But unexpectedly, what began as a gap closing measure may have turned out to be better than my best dreams.  Because no longer am I slaving away in the kitchen to feed eleven to fifteen hungry appetites.  No longer am I in charge of aligning the moon and the stars in hopes of gathering six family units together at the same time and place.  And best of all — no longer am I in charge of resolving that age-old question:  What should I fix for dinner?

And guess what?  Just like that old Life cereal commercial that sprang out of the 1960’s, which featured little Mikey and his skeptical-of-Life big brothers — just like Mikey who faithfully tried and liked his bite of Life  —  my family tried the Moveable Feast and… they liked it.  They liked it so much that they are ready to do it all over again.  It may take us different places perhaps, but always with the same faces — and the possiblity of one more if my son Kyle is so moved.

This year’s final act was to write down ten months on a napkin, tear them into pieces and take turns drawing.  And so goes life and the lessons it brings, even if it’s just relearning the same old lessons; home-spun goodies like the simpler the bettter and hospitality begins at home.

But being the contemplative that I am, I ponder now on what personal lesson I gained from this spiritiual exercise of letting go.  Ultimately, of course, it’s a who-but-God-knows.  But for now, perhaps it’s this simple:  When I relax my grip to release my best dream, I open my hand to receive the best that real life has to offer.  One bite at a time.

A Garden Delivered

20 Tuesday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Mesta Park

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Blog- Bruno Garden Born

A Garden Is Born, with droopy Black-eyed Susans

After days of hard labor, interspersed with times of waiting for the rain to stop, a new Mesta Park garden iis now born.  

Though the garden is still young, it shows promise of becoming a true beauty.   When I took this task on, I had a blank slate full of hopes and dreams and questions.  Big-time questions – like how best to kill the seeding Bermuda grass when our early cool weather created less than optimal conditions for use of a chemical solution. 

In the end, I decided to dig rather than wait with hope that chemicals might work.  I laid out 50 feet of sash cord to define my garden border, and with spade in hand; I begin to dig down past the roots and then slice horizontally to remove the soil, one shovel at a time.  Defining the border was the east part.  And the tenants of the duplex made sure I knew how much they loved the garden’s curvy lines.  

Then I began the hard work of digging.  The tenants, observing my progress from their perch on the porch, became carrier pigeons of progress from my hands to the ears of the duplex owner.  A week into my digging, the upstairs tenant shared the owner’s interest in whether I had planted anything yet.  She let me know she told him I was STILL digging.  The downstairs tenant wondered out loud whether I had expanded my project just a tad.  “Nope.”  I told him the garden bed was ‘on task’, shaping up just as I had hoped and intended.

Fifty hours of digging, hoeing, raking and many pounds of pre-emergent later, I began to plant.  But not at all what I had planned to use.  I look back at that initial list and just laugh.  This late in the season, I ended up buying the dregs and whatever was on sale that would complement and define the new garden bed’s shape.  With Lowes marking all shrubs and perennials down half-priced for two weeks, I got a nice selection of plants for around $100 – in colors and shapes that will look nice against the rust-colored brick of this eighty year old duplex – that once established, will be drought tolerant and easy for the duplex tenants to maintain. 

Ornamental grasses of all sizes, most with copper and tan colored plumes, will offer all-season interest:  Maidenhair Grass, Fountain Grass and Mondo grass.  Perennial bloomers of red and white and yellows graced from Autumn Sage, Coreopsis and Oriental Lilies.  Eight Firepower Nandina shrubs are already dressed with some beautiful fall color.  Thanks to Shroeder Wilson, the duplex inherited 5 yellow Day Lilies.  And my own garden passed along 10 Black-eyed Susan plants.   All of these, with the Lirope harvested from the Duplex’s own back yard, provided enough bones and room to grow for this garden’s first year of life.  Some space was left for colorful annuals — presently the host of rust and yellow colored Pansies and Snapdragons — that invite the eye up the sidewalk to the two front doors.

Blog_Bruno Garden Walkway

Welcome Home

As I look out my window to gaze upon this beauty in the making, I realize I did have a little fairy dust after all.  It looked a lot like my husband, who was around for all the heavy lifting, as he worked by my side to install the steel edging to help keep the Bermuda out and unload 40 cubic feet of bark mulch.  What else can I say?  Except thank heavens for caring husbands who help make their wife’s big gardening dreams come true; and for duplex owners who aren’t afraid to say ‘yes’ to something that seems too good to be true.

Just Delivered

It's a Garden!

 

 

Tortilla Soup

09 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home, Mesta Park

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

This simple Tortilla Soup recipe has made the rounds in my life.

I first enjoyed the soup ten years ago, when my husband prepared it after snagging a copy of the recipe from a lovely church lady in Lake Jackson, Texas.  Betty was then Council on Ministries chair of our church.  And like any good Methodist, Betty found it easier to get people to a church meeting when she offered to feed them.  Lucky for me, she served this Tortilla Soup that’s been part of my life ever since.

When we moved to Oklahoma three plus years ago, we were asked to open our historic home to the public in Mesta Park’s annual Holiday Home Tour.  Like  a fool with stars in her eye, I said yes with nary a thought.  Because I love it when guests descend, especially when the house is all decorated for Christmas.  But I was a fool to get ahead of myself, because that first Christmas back in Oklahoma, our house was still in a state of transition — it was half-former owner’s style and half mine — and in those months leading up to the tour, I sort of wished I’d waited another year until the house was more put together.

Moving is so unsettling.  Furniture and furnishngs acquired for a previous home don’t always fit the new place.  And even when they do, it may take a while to figure out what goes where.  And then what color to paint the walls, especially the dining room walls.  Yet, I’m still hanging pictures and moving furniture around and fine-tuning the wall color in the dining room — which so far, I’ve changed three times.

So maybe we were on the tour, exactly when we needed to be.  Especially, when I recall how Mom and my sister Christi came up to dress my home for the holidays.

blog_torillasoup1

Because one short year later, Mom was no longer with us.   And even though the house was less put together, I’ll be forever glad that Mom was here to be a part of it, since she really loved decorating the house.  Even now, I cherish the memory of watching Mom slowly and painstakingly shaping the holiday greenery to artfully cover the staircase railing.

Anyway, this home tour story has a point that leads back to the soup recipe.  I thought it would be fun to offer a gift of one of our favorite recipes to those touring our home.  So I laid out professionally printed copies of the Tortilla Soup recipe under a Christmas-tree shaped Rosemary sitting on top of our kitchen counter.  The only problem was that in the printing process, one ingredient was inadvertently removed.  So there are 500 plus copies of an incomplete soup recipe floating somewhere around Oklahoma City.

blog_tortillasoup2

I should have brought a few leftover recipe cards with me last night to church, when I became the church lady serving this soup to a small group of prayer companions.  Because like the church goers of Betty’s meeting ten years ago, I was asked to share my soup recipe.  And I will, though I can’t claim the recipe as mine.  And it really wasn’t Betty’s either.  Appropriately, Betty got the recipe from Julie, a local Lake Jackson doctor’s wife, who in her spare time, puts on a great imitation of Saturday Night Live’s church lady.  But this recipe isn’t just for church ladies.  Try it yourself.  Here’s a copy with all the ingredients included.  From my life to yours.

Tortilla Soup

A simple and quick holiday supper – serves 6 to 8

 
Ingredients:
1 lb sausage or ground beef, browned and crumbled
1/2 cup each, chopped onion & green pepper, sauted in 2 Tbsp olive oil
1 can beans – pinto or black beans (rinsed) or ranch style
2 envelopes of taco seasoning
1 4 0z. can of chopped green chilies (optional for a milder soup)
4 cans chicken broth (or home-made) – About 8 cups or 60 ounces
1 can Rotel
1 to 2 cups of frozen corn
1 14 oz can petite chopped tomatoes (optional — for a less spicy or salty soup (which accompanies use of sausage)
1 package tortilla chips  (Reserve for serving bowls)
8 oz package of cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, grated  (Reserve for serving bowls)

Preparation: Add all ingredients, except tortilla chips and cheese, to a large pot.  Simmer for 30 minutes.  Taste.  If too salty or spicy, add a 14 oz can on petite diced tomatoes.

 
To Serve: Ladle soup over tortilla chips, covered with grated cheese.