Christmas Magic

Coca Cola Santa copied from Google Images

I like the Santa of my imagination the best. I think Santa suffers from over exposure sometimes. Just give me a "Ho Ho Ho" and the sound of jingle bells in the air. A glimpse of Santa on his throne in the mall is fun, but the closer you get, the more jarring imperfections are apparent. Even the most realistic Santa is not the same as the magical elf who appears when you are sleeping, and fills the tree with magical, sparkly packages. Norman Rockwell and Coca Cola images will always define Santa for me.

As a child, the most magical time was the middle of the night when I got up for a drink of water and found the dark room transformed. Once I found a beautiful little dressing table with a frilly skirt. Another time,  I swear I heard jingle bells in the air and the sounds of hoofs on the roof, but when I looked into the dark night, I saw nothing. I don't want weather forecasters telling where Santa is, or phone calls or letters from Santa.

A neighbor decorates his whole house with amazing lights every year. We walk across the dark golf course for a yearly visit with Santa. But wise little Mia told me that is not really him. She thought his voice sounded a little like her Dad. She said, "I don't know why he pretends to be HIM."

My son, Cory, was 9 when we moved for a year to Pennsylvania. He didn't believe in Santa Claus that year until he looked under the tree and there was a toy truck just like his stepfather's big rig. It had little mirrors and all the parts and pieces. He tells me he thought that Santa must be real to leave such a perfect little truck that looked as if it had been shrunk. Unfortunately, he also tells me that he later found the box in the trash. I am so sorry for that. I know my mother would never have made that mistake!

My mother and her sister were raised in a children's home in North Carolina. She says they always had a big tree and lots of presents. I don't really know about her Christmas, but I know she made Christmas truly magical for me and my brother and her grandchildren. Jaime once asked me, as Jill has recently, if I would tell her the truth if she asked me a question. I feared a question about the source of babies, but Jaime said, "Grandma is really Santa Claus, right?"

For me, anticipation is everything. That is why I have always loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas morning. After that, Christmas becomes all about the people, the old traditions, the music, the food, and finding a way to make Christmas magical for someone else. Merry Christmas to all!

I Hate the Crazy Target Lady

Copied from Google images

The crazy Target lady on TV makes my nerves jangle. She represents everything I hate about a grab-it-first, get-something-cheap attitude. A bargain is a low price for something you really want or need, but I also believe it should include convenience and a pleasant shopping experience. I don't mind if the stores open early. Shopping at unconventional times used to be a way to avoid the crowds.

I went once to an annual sale at a posh little boutique my friend and I loved. Unlike our usual delightful experience of browsing and finding unique and beautiful things, eveyone waited behind a ribbon and ran when it was cut. My friend advised me to grab everything I saw and decide later what to keep. That kind of "shopping" tends to encourage people to buy things they don't even want. I hated it.

I have heard that people need to spend in order to boost the economy, but I like the idea of buying only what we really need and can afford, maybe even using layaway as I used to do when my kids were small. My wish is that we can all get what we really want and need this year - at a great price.

Willow Manor Ball - Watching from Afar

Sabrina - Google Images

I just couldn't get myself together this year for the Willow Manor Ball. But I didn't want to MISS it. Just think of me as Sabrina, lurking in the tree in the garden with the full moon behind me and watching all the excitement from afar. Enjoy everyone! I will be loving every detail.

Dresses for the Ball

I am thinking about dresses this morning for the Willow Manor Ball. I don't have enough information to properly credit these images. I just typed "1940's ball gowns" into Google and these images appeared. Fantasy fairy dresses and sleek 40's silouettes fire my imagination. Click on the link and take a look.

I am also thinking about dresses from my real life. They exist only in my memory now.

I never saw the first dress. My mother only mentioned this dress one time. She was raised with her sister in Grandfather Children's Home in North Carolina and she had very few possessions of her own. One day before the school prom, she found a beautiful dress laying on her bed. It was a deep pink rhododendren color and someone had donated it to her. She said it was beautiful and fit her perfectly.

The next dress also belonged to my mother. It was a beautiful golden brown matte sateen, ballerina length, with a wide off-shoulder collar, and trimmed with brown velvet ribbon on the collar and at the tiny waist. I asked my mother to give it to me and she did, though my father objected.

I had only one prom dress but I loved it. My friend found it at a local dress shop but was not able to get it. I told my mother about it and we went to buy it. It was an ivory chiffon column dress with floating ivory panels off the empire waist. It had spaghetti straps and beautiful pale aqua sequins on the top. I wore the dress twice but I don't have even one picture. My friend later borrowed the dress to wear to an event. I wonder if she has a picture.

Willow Manor Ball 2011 - Can't Wait!

I am looking forward to the Willow Manor Ball. This will be the 3rd ball I have observed, but only the second one I will be attending. I had so much fun last year. Now what will I wear? And who will be my date? Check out the link to Willow Manor and scroll down to see the balls of years gone by. Maybe you would like to attend. Everyone is invited.

1st Anniversary Wedding Cake

Whoever thought of keeping the top layer of the wedding cake? I need to look that up. What did they do before they had freezers? Anyway, after the trip back from Virginia in the car and a year in my freezer, Steph and Cory finally cut into the top layer of their wedding cake at the beach. Jill is very interested in tasting the piece they are saving for her. Here is what Stephanie had to say on facebook: "Cutting our wedding cake! It survived the first year with very few bumps and bruises- just like us!"



Here is the original. It had a big "C" on top.

4:00 a.m.

I couldn't get comfortable. A nagging pain at the base of my skull. I went out into the dark kitchen to find a pain pill. I was surprised to see water gushing from the sink faucet. I crossed the kitchen and shut it off and looked down the wide, dark hallway leading to the bathroom. Suddenly, I was afraid to go down the hall. I went another way to the bath by the children's rooms. As I got to the bathroom, I could hear them calling out in their sleep. I needed to check on them.

My eyes snapped open and I looked at the clock. 4:00 a.m. I crawled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom to pee and take a Tylenol.

Updated to add:
I thought my dream was so interesting that I even put it on Facebook, but it got very little reaction. Maybe it was because I said "pee". I find it fascinating that my body had a little headache and needed to go to the bathroom rather urgently, but my mind put me in a big, scary house with weird clues (running faucet) and crying children.

My dreams always involve interesting houses (or once, an office building) with lots of rooms. I would enjoy that part, but there is always a sense of foreboding and an unfinished and urgent job that I need to do. I know these dreams mean something. I thought maybe I had banished them by deciding they were about wishing I could change the past.

I just hope the day never comes when I can't wake up from these ideas like the people I met at my mother's assisted living home. Only one person I ever met had happy delusions of music and well being. All the others, including my mother on occasion, had disturbing fantasies.

Cross Creek Crab Newburg

Pictures from Cross Creek State Park website

I am thinking today of a favorite passage of mine from "Cross Creek" by Marjory Kinnan Rawlings. When I read this I can't help but think of the freshness of the ingredients. Fresh butter and cream from her jersey cow (Dora), fresh caught crabs, homemade bread for the toast points. She describes in detail the process of catching the crabs in a boat on a dark night.

My friend has her mother's recipe for a crab newburg-like dish. She uses imitation crab and cream cheese. She says the sherry is the indespensible ingredient. It is very good but can anyone ever capture the flavor Marjory describes in this rustic dish made in the Florida back woods? Oh, I would love to sit at her table and dive into this crab newburg.

Here is a link to Cross Creek State Park. I have always wanted to visit. I love the pictures.

This passage also brings to mind a camping trip we took with friends on a small island in the St. Johns River when my daughter was small. We spent one day tubing down an icy cold creek and visiting an old plantation-style house.

Here is the passage:

"In an iron skillet over a low fire I place a certain amount of Dora's butter. As it melts, I stir in the flaked crab meat, lightly, tenderly. The flakes must not become disintegrated; they must not brown. I add lemon juice, possibly a tablespoonful for each cup of crab meat. I add salt and pepper frugally, paprika more generously, and a dash of powdered clove so temporal that the flavor in the finished Newburg is only as though the mixture had been whisked through a spice grove. I add Dora's golden cream. I do not know the exact quantity. It must be generous, but the delicate crab meat must never become deluged with any other element. The mixture bubbles for a few moments. I stir in dry sherry, the quantity again inestimable. Something must be left to genius. I stir in well beaten eggs, perhaps an egg, perhaps two, for every cup of flakes. The mixture must now no more than be turned over on itself and removed in a great sweep from the fire. I stir in as tablespoonful, or two, of the finest brandy, and turn the Newburg into a piping hot covered serving dish. I serve it on toast points and garnish superfluously with parsley, and a Chablis or white Rhine wine is recommended as an accompaniment. Angels sing softly in the distance.

We do not desecrate the dish by serving any other, neither salad nor dessert. We just eat crab Newburg. My friends rise from the table, wring my hand with deep feeling, and slip quietly and reverently away. I sit alone and weep for the misery of a world that does not have blue crabs and a Jersey cow."

Signs of Fall

Fall is slow to come to Florida and even then it is very subtle. Beautiful bright, cool days generally arrive in October. I can't wait. Fall is my favorite season. I love the colors, textures and tastes. I want to bake carrot and apple cakes full of walnuts and pecans and rich, warm stews and soups. I want to buy a new leather purse and a plaid skirt and a wool blazer. I want to go for a drive in the mountains and breathe the cool air and see the leaves. But, alas, we have no mountains, the cool air is a month away and the golden leaves are few.

So far I have catered to my fall longings by cooking a Mrs. Smith's Pumpkin pie and a pork roast with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. And I got out a few fall decorations. When I started this blog I thought I would fill it with recipes. But it turns out I'm not a very imaginative cook. I leave that to my wonderful blogger friends like Beverly and Kary and Tess.

What I really like to do is eat and feed my friends and family. A few tried and true recipes seem to fill the bill for me. Have you seen the show on the Cooking Channel called "Mom's Cooking"? The daughter and a camera crew surprise the mom and she teaches the daughter to make a favorite meal.

If they came to my door what would I do? Hopefully my kitchen would be clean and I would be dressed for company. What would I make? Pork chops and fried potatoes or pot roast are all that come to mind. I make several very good versions of bundt cake which I usually start with a cake mix, but I haven't enjoyed baking as much since we have Mia on a low carb diet.

If my mom were here and I could ask her to make a special meal, I think I would ask for her country style steak. She pounded round steak, floured it, browned it and simmered it with water and onions until it made it's own rich, brown gavy and was fork tender. I have never been able to duplicate it though I keep trying. She did teach me how to roast a turkey and make dressing and it was her pot roast that has always been my favorite. Oh, and she taught me to make a good meat loaf. I remember my Aunt Nellie's wonderful pineapple upside down cake, baked ham, stuffed green peppers and crispy fried fish with grits and hush puppies.

There is one reason that Jaime will never surprise me with a camera crew and ask me to teach her to cook. Onions. I love them. She hates them. She is a very good cook herself. She makes all my recipes with her own version minus onions. She does break down and add minced onions to her pot roast. Cory, on the other hand, eats up anything I have when he comes to the house. He and Jill seem to like my cooking even though he once told me his favorite meal from his childhood was Taco Bell.

Fortunately, my husband loves my cooking, especially homemade oatmeal cookies with raisins and walnuts. We always enjoy a nice supper together at night with an occasional glass of wine. Our favorite special meal is little bacon wrapped fillets from Omaha Steak with baked potatoes and a salad.

As you can see I am a little melancholy and longing for the fall.

Magpie Tales - Kids in a Car

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

Love this picture. It reminds me of piling into an old car with laughing friends to drive across the causeway to Clearwater Beach. The radio was playing and there was a cooler with some beer in the trunk. I pretended to like the taste. The trip and the anticipation were part of the fun. We were on our own with no adults around and a long summer day ahead of us. The trip back seemed a lot longer - tired and hot, hungry and sunburned with sand in every crack and crevice. We would rush home to shower and get ready to go to the drive-in movies that night.

Archy and Mehitabel

Does anyone remember archy and mehitabel? As you can see from the back cover of my book, "Don Marquis first introduced archy the cockroach and mehitabel, a cat in her ninth life, in his newspaper column, The Sun Dial, in 1916." Archy is a poetic cockroach who hops around on his boss's typewriter at the newspaper office at night. He can't do the shift key so everything is in lower case. Mehitabel is an alley cat whose soul "once belonged to Cleopatra" in another life.

How do I know about archy and mehitabel? Well, it is kind of a long story. Back in the 70's I was living at my mom's apartment and was the single mother of a little boy. I had a series of jobs as a typesetter. Back then, before desktop publishing, being a typesetter meant typing on a keyboard with no screen and producing a computer tape. Point size, font, line length, etc were all inserted with key combinations such as "p24" for 24 point type. Line length was measured in picas. The computer tape was run through a reader on a photo typesetting machine. The photo paper was developed and then the pieces of type went to the "paste up" department to be included with art and photos in the finished ad or book. (I can't imagine how I did it now.)

My typesetting jobs were definately "blue collar" back then, not the glamourous graphic artist jobs of today. Often we labored in little rooms near the big, dirty, noisy presses, huge paper cutters and other printing equipment. We punched a time clock, sometimes even to go to the bathroom. You can imagine what a step up it was when I got the job at Florida Trend magazine working on the beautiful top floor of an old remodeled cigar factory with brick walls, expensive art, hardwood floors, outside glass elevator, boutique shops, and wonderful restaurants, but that is another story.

So I got a job at night in a very rundown building in an old part of downtown Tampa. It was near the Tampa Tribune building, the University of Tampa and the old Valencia Gardens restaurant, but it was a slum. In fact a homeless man was found dead under our building one time and someone jokingly suggested we should advertise a "room for rent". I worked in a long, windowless room with cement walls and floor. At night. It was scary and depressing, but I needed a job. And that job eventually led to the Florida Trend job so I guess it was worth it.

One of the night managers had a brilliant idea. He read to us while we worked. It was kind of fitting since the "lectors" used to read to the cigar makers in the old cigar factories in Tampa. The book he read was "archy and mehitabel". I loved it.

Archy, the poetic cockroach wrote free verse about his life in the newspaper office and his friends. He would beg for an apple core or scrap of bread now and then. I'm going to offer some excepts of one of my favorite columns about mehitable and her kittens. Mehitabel is a free spirit of a cat and not a very good mother, I'm afraid.

well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens
three of them this time

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
...
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyway
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
...

Don Marquis

Front Porch - Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

Breathless anticipation on a hot summer night. Wondering if he will come by. Coy conversation, teasing and taunting, acting as if she doesn't care. If only mama would turn off that damn porch light.

Doilies - Who Knew?

Found this picture at Today's Treasures from Ruffled Doilies American Thread, Star Book 59

Picture from Google Images - source: unknown

A post by GreyGreyDesigns sent me on a quest this morning. She did a post on doilies (of all things) and they were awesome. Check out the wonderful things this event and party planner does with the lowly doily. That got me thinking about a ruffled crochet doily that my mother used to have. The top picture is the closest I could find. My mother had a lamp in the middle of her doily and it sat on a little round table with a lion's mouth pull on the single drawer. I don't know what happened to it. It certainly did not match the decor of our new house full of Danish Modern furniture in the 60's. As I was looking I also came across this grape doily which brought back a very vivid memory. I don't know who made it or where I saw it, but we definately had a doily that looks much like the one above. The grapes were three dimensional. As a child, I loved it. The quest I went searching for today is a hand crochet piece that says McGee. It used to be in a picture frame which I dismantled. Now I regret it. I need to find that piece and return it to Jonah's dad. It belongs in their family.

The Perfect Summer Drink

I think I have found the perfect drink for summer and all year round. I am from the south and I love my sweet tea, but I have been looking for a while for a natural drink that doesn't have SO much sugar as sweet tea. Fruit tea. A Mexican restaurant I used to love in Oklahoma served a mixture of tea and apple juice that was so soothing with the hot spicy food, but I could never get tea and apple juice to be quite sweet enough. I have been making unsweetened tea with Truvia but I did not like drinking so much of it and giving it to the kids. So, yesterday at Big Lots I found some V8 Splash on sale. The one I bought was Mango Pineapple mixed with green tea. It was good, but expensive and still very strong. So I thought, mix the V8 with brewed tea! It is great! I mix it about 1/3 V8 and 2/3 tea. I think if I had V8 without the green tea mixed in, I could use even less. Maybe Mia could even drink it on her new diet. She loves sweet tea, too. Wonder if anyone else has some ideas. P.S. I threw in a recent picture of Jaime on her way to the beach. Click on the picture to see the cool feather necklace she is wearing.

Sylvia's Palomilla Steak

My neighbor, Sylvia, knocked on the door yesterday with four hot, crunchy but tender Pallomilla steaks wrapped in foil. They smelled and tasted delicious. I had the last one this morning as a sandwich on toasted bread with sliced tomato. I suspect the steaks were by way of payment for a ride to the grocery store earlier in the day. I will accept food from Sylvia any time.

Palomilla steaks are thinly sliced sirloin that can only be found at certain Cuban butcher shops. In Tampa, there are several of those. I don't have Sylvia's recipe, but I know it involves lime juice and garlic marinade, and a dredge in spicy bread crumbs. Breaded steak in any form is at the top of my favorite list.

I wish I would have taken pictures of my steaks which were beautiful but you will just have to use your imagination. Thanks, Sylvia! Here is a link to Pipos Cuban restaurant here in Tampa. They serve lots of authentic Cuban food including Palimillo steaks, breaded or unbreaded.

Waffle House Craving

Sometimes it hits me in the middle of the night. A craving for Waffle House hash browns -- scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered, capped and topped. That means shredded hash brown potatoes spread out on the grill with onions, cheese, diced ham, diced tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, mushrooms and topped with chili. I also love the waffles which have the taste and aroma of vanilla in a way I have never been able to duplicate at home.

On our first road trip to my husband's hometown in Michigan, I introduced him to Waffle House. He immediately loved it. Now we go occasionally to satisfy the craving. Incomparable! Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Keto Diet for Seizures

Out little girl, not quite 5 years old, has been diagnosed with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. Here is a definition from the TSC Alliance website: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a genetic disorder that causes tumors to form in many different organs, primarily in the brain, eyes, heart, kidney, skin and lungs.
***

Mia has some benign growths in her brain that cause her to have seizures. The seizures are under control for the moment, but the future is very uncertain. We have discoverd that a ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective in controlling seizures so we are working hard to change our habits.

***

I'm sure I will bake again someday. Actually I will be baking cupcakes today for my other granddaughter's birthday at the park, but a ketogenic diet is based on an extremely low carbohydrate, high fat diet (think Atkins with more fat and less protein). We are learning. Our first step is to eliminate processed sugar and grains from Mia's diet as much as possible and to up the fat content. Bacon and eggs and a piece of fruit for breakfast and tuna salad and tomato for lunch are examples from menus I have seen. Mia's mom has never liked vegetables, but we are trying. It is a hard diet to follow and needs medical oversight but it can have amazing success in controlling seizures that are hard to control in any other way. BTW, I am not an expert on any ot this. Still in shock, actually. So if I have said anything incorrectly, please excuse me.

***

P.S. At least I can still cook my favorite beef stew with veggies and just leave the potatoes off of Mia's plate. I see turkey and gravy and green beans on her plate at Thanksgiving, but what else??? What do I do about her cousin's birthday party coming up with a menu of pizza and cup cakes?

Home Cooking - Peach Cobbler, Chocolate Pie

A rainy Sunday prompted one experiment in cooking. Homemade chocolate meringue pie as made by Jonah's grandma on his Dad's side. Gran. I used her recipe as given to my daughter for chocolate pudding made from Hershey's cocoa and made some "egg icing" (meringue) to go on top. My homemade pie crust was a little tough but all in all, the results were delicious. Homemade pudding tastes NOTHING like the kind from a box.

The second experiment was to make a simple peach cobbler. I just used a large can of peaches in heavy syrup. I doubled the recipe since I couldn't find my square pan and used the rectangular pan instead.

Pretty - Magpie #69

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

As I grow older, I become a concentrated version of myself gradually discarding all the extraneous bits from my environment. I slowly realize that I don't really need this or that thing and I let go of my attachment and welcome the simplicity of scarcity. Strange the little things I am still unable to release - useless object but so pretty.

Here is another take I feel the need to add:

Sensuous tip, smooth and glistening, hypnotic destination and, for a few timeless moments in a lifetime, the center of the universe.

The Eyes Have It

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but this eye has no soul. So why is it so difficult to look away? It is beautiful, really, in a disturbing way.

Actually, my ex-husband has a glass eye. He lost his eye in a bar fight years ago. A pool stick was involved. I don't like to think about it and have not seen him in person since sometime around 1975, long before the accident. My son wrote a very bawdy but entertaining song with his brother, Chad, called, "My Dad's Left Eye." Little Jill was afraid to meet her grandpa for the first time. What if he removed the eye??? But she came back from her visit just fine and is very fond of him. The eye stayed where it belonged.

Now that I think of it, I know why dolls are sometimes scary. Especially the old ones with the cracked faces. It is the eyes . . .

Homemade Philly Cheesesteak and Oven Baked Fries

Tonight's supper: Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches - thinly sliced sirloin steak sauteed with onions and green pepper strips and topped with melted slices of Provolone cheese on toasted buns. Oven baked fries - strips of potato with skin on tossed in a bit of oil and Italian seasoning and roasted in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes on each side. Sprinkle with sea salt. Ymmm. Very good.

Mystery - Magpie Tales #66

Magpie Tales is a creative writing blog by Willow at Life at Willow Manor. Click on the link to see the other entries.
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It's not like her to steal a book from the library and boldly display it among her own. Of course, it does have a nice binding. Did she love it so much she just couldn't take it back? Or did she claim it was lost and pay for it? Or just stop using her library card? Maybe she bought it at a book sale because the library had more than one? Too late to ask now. She is gone. This book is just one more little mystery from my list of unasked questions.

Mother's Day Dinner at Jasmine Thai

Entrance to Jasmine Thai Restaurant

Entry Table

Alan

Aaron and Irma

Me and Jaime

Red Curry

Green Chicken Curry

Shrimp Pad Thai

Amazing Land

Duck Jacuzzi

An awesome dinner at Jasmine Thai Restaurant with Aaron and Jaime and Aaron's mother, Irma and Karin and Alan. Thank you, Aaron and Jaime.

Mother's Day Breakfast

Roger and me

Me and Cory

Cory and Stephanie

Fried Green Tomato Eggs Benedict

Goddess Omelet (Spinach, Tomato and Feta Cheese Omelet) and Pumpkin Pancake : )

Grits, Eggs, Bacon and English Muffin

Scrambled eggs, rye toast and sausages

Breakfast at Steph and Cory's favorite breakfast place - J. Christopher's. Click on the link for the menu. Delicious! Thank you, Stephanie and Cory.