"Waste not, Want not"

On a recent Facebook posting a cousin shared a photo she liked--the nostalgic image of a console T.V. unit, boxy and big and not at all programmable.

The question was asked: "Do you remember having a television like this growing up?" I nearly posted, "I still do," but that snippet of a comment sounded too "poor me" to leave at that.

Besides, our television set isn't really THAT old. But we bought it in the nineties, so its rear end pokes back about 12 inches into a corner and has to sit on something huge to hold it properly. There's no high definition anything to it, and it shouts "outdated" from the get-go.

The thing is, the television WORKS, and I just don't do do-overs the way I used to. I don't get excited over newer and improved versions of everything because newer and improved happens all the time, and trying to keep up with it all is self-defeating in more ways than one.

I also have a dinosaur for a computer, and a white refrigerator that doesn't match my stainless steel stove, but both perform their tasks and both are tucked off in corners, so who cares?

Waiting things out till they're actually not useful anymore reeks of that old saying "waste not, want not," but in a world laden with trash piles and junkyards, it's not a bad saying to renew a mindset with.

Every spot of trashed earth is a blight on God's creation. I've often wondered how disappointed God must be every time He sees a pristine piece of land used as a "holding tank" or dumping ground. Using things up and wearing them out at least lessens the blight and makes a household's money go further, too.

I figure my stainless steel stove will have its match when the white fridge dies, but by then I will probably once again long for a retro stove of white enamel. I am not a perfect person for never having erred on buying "stuff" without a maximum of consideration (See the "Beauty and Purpose" entry of this blog.)

In the years since the microwave oven became indispensable in the kitchen, I've owned a few. One at a time, each has developed an issue whereby it was cheaper to buy another than to fix one. About this we certainly came to feel that many things nowadays are built as "throw-aways," but each unit either involved a fee to be disposed of or meant another useless item to store in space we couldn't spare.

The upshot here was that we began to give more thought to new purchases. We found that it isn't the end of the world to live with things longer, it may even help the WORLD last longer not to junk it up in God's eye--again in more ways than one.

A funny thing happened on the way to this thoughtful forum about using things up. Through the years we have also purchased and thrown away a number of radio-CD players. Of course we had to have these in order to
hear the music we love in the "new-fashioned" way. With long-playing records, 8-tracks and smaller cassettes becoming obsolete, like many people we eventually replaced many of our LP albums with their modern counterpart.

I remember wondering, "What's so great about the compact disc?" "Well," I was told, "It's COMPACT. It doesn't take up much space, it 'plays better' and it doesn't scratch easily. It's just a whole lot better."

Come to find out, compact discs DO scratch and skip, and it's the system that makes a CD better--the only thing I'll grant is that discs do take up less room.

But neatly stacked, albums were not atrocious for storing, and we never could bear to part with ours. We kept them for over two decades in one sturdy box in the garage, even after we tossed the faulty record player we used to play them on.

Just recently, in the garage of a house our daughter moved into, we found a turntable of this sort--evidently something someone else couldn't bear to throw away either. We were encouraged to bring it home, where we dusted it off and pulled out the old albums and voila! We were in stereo heaven again.

In all our years of riffling through CDs here, there and everywhere, we had forgotten totally some of this music. Just hearing the songs made us feel like 17 again, and any "scratching" in-between only added to the charm. We think we'll keep the thing!

Maybe my favorite story about rescuing something from the trash (or long-term storage) took place in a setting literally meant for "trash."

It was in the days prior to recycling bins, when landfills were predominantly one-pile-catches-all. When the pile got big enough it was bull-dozed into the farther-reaches of the landscape, if you can call such a sight a landscape after all.

My trash had just joined one such pile when another pick-up sidled up near mine. A woman exited the cab, lowered her rear gate and hopped up to the bed, then proceeded to heave her contributions toward everyone else's garbage. I quickly noted, as I rarely had cause to do, that this lady's trash was my treasure.

What was she throwing? In earnest she was shoving off dozens of aqua-blue glass canning jars, complete with their classic zinc lids and in varying sizes, in some cases with their preserved foods still in them. She was tossing away her grandma's (or mama's) hard work. In ridding herself of something she really didn't want, she was adding to a landfill something that would be welcome to someone else in their home--if only they knew about it.

I didn't know the woman, but I was pretty sure if she knew of someone who would take those jars off her hands, she would gladly have handed them over. And so I spoke up. I always kind of liked those jars, I said, and as long as she was throwing them away, would she mind if I took a few?

With a generous wave of her hand, she stepped aside and let me have my pick. I took those jars home and washed them to a shining. They wore their years beautifully, retained their soft tint as well as the day they were born, and even boasted here and there a teensy bubble--a signature of their time in manufacturing history.

Topped with their flawless lids, these jars have always held a prominent place in my kitchen. I keep them in the open, where they can be easily seen and accessed and where they make a most natural fit for my farmhouse kitchen. To realize I rescued them from crushed and broken to purposeful and beautiful is a satisfying, happy feeling.

This, I think, is the gift of not wasting. Certainly we all find ourselves at times dismayed over purchases we shouldn't have made or that didn't work out. But we can work harder to find better homes for our unwanted things......and we can look harder for things that are still very good but not necessarily new. I can tell you for sure that you can find new glass canning jars in almost any store, but you will not find any more beautiful or useful than these old ones I just told you about.

There are people who truly walk the walk in a "green" minded world. Like you, I know many and I know OF many more. I used to think their monumental in-house efforts were like swatting one mosquito after the mosquito had time and opportunity to lay a gazillion eggs. But now I think that BECAUSE of this uphill battle, these efforts should be admired all the more.

I have much to improve upon in leaving less "footprint." My last blog about not wanting to waste a whole building--the pondering over it--inspired me to try operating "Corner Cupboard" as a specialty resale store.  I've seen many a Main Street building left empty and unused, and one would think it might be the easier thing to do.  For me it's not, and I hope my story about the beautiful blue jars gives you an idea why.

For "inside" pictures and details, check out Corner Cupboard-Darlene Ramos on Facebook.

"Corner Cupboard"

If you had a pile of lemons, you would make the proverbial lemonade, or a lemon meringue pie, or anything else lemon-y, right? If you didn't have time or energy, I'm guessing you'd find a good home for the fruit. The thing is, you wouldn't let a good thing go to waste.

For some time I've had a good building, funny enough a building wherein I sold many a lemon meringue pie. It was our specialty, but "Corner Cupboard" was not a lemon. At times it was a challenge, yes, but it had very good moments and overall was a great place from where to serve the frothy, tartly sweet slices.

I still don't know whether Corner Cupboard was gaining or slowing when I decided to stop serving food. People were losing jobs and homes left and right of us in 2011, but even as we noticed some customers weren't coming in as they used to, new traffic was flowing too.

What I do know for certain was that my expenses were always rising, especially so at a time I knew for certain I could not raise prices. In my location especially that would be pushing the boundaries. As well, in my personal life, I was anticipating entering a new territory that had nothing to do with selling food for money.

Grand-babies were coming, and I was ready to help. The best excuse had arrived to stop serving food, because if most of why I did the Corner Cupboard was really "for the love," I now had something I would love even more.

It IS so easy to love the babies, even if they are a new piece of very hard work. As you know, babies change everything. For awhile they take all precedence and you wonder if you'll ever have a moment to do anything for yourself again. When grandparents volunteer to help, it sometimes feels like parenting all over again.

But they do go home in the evenings, and you get weekends off and sometimes you even get bonus days--days to ponder and not squander.

Lately I have been pondering a lot about not squandering the historic building that housed Corner Cupboard. It's a great place with loads of potential, but the fearless entrepreneur has yet to come along to take it on. This will take time, and better times, I think, but it occurs to me that I can re-invent Corner Cupboard to suit my life TODAY if I just use my imagination.

I can have this good building NOT go to waste. Who's to say I can't break all the rules of what has been traditionally expected of small businesses for decades on end? An era is an era, and eventually they do come to an end.

Merchant or consumer, we are being advised at every turn to cut back, stop wasting, trim costs. It's the mantra of the new day, even as it remains ingrained within us that "it takes money to make money" and that to boost the economy people have to spend more.

A conundrum of the times, with a predictable conclusion: We all gotta do what we all gotta do. Being both a merchant AND a consumer, I really get this as well one end as the other. It is the platform from which I will "change up" Corner Cupboard. It'll be a shop for the people, formulated by me, so that it works for me and it works for the people. Like any business, it will have its range of appeal. It will make some people really happy and for others, not so much.

It will have its limitations, but within its limitations it's going to be as good as my enthusiasm urges me. I am thankful for the enthusiasm God gives me and my prayer is: "Keep it coming, keep it coming." I know enough to know if you get things right, the people then will also keep coming.

At this time and place in my life it feels better than ever when I don't waste a good thing. Re-homing, re-purposing and donating things to worthy causes are all great ways to not waste and not add more footprint. But who of us doesn't often self-chastise with thoughts like "I should have never bought this," or "If I could have even half the money back I spent on all this 'stuff" I don't want, I would start all over and be so much smarter." And who of us wouldn't rather see our sons and daughters learn from our mistakes than from commission of their own?

I don't know why I ever had to have this historic building that isn't easy to find a new taker for, but I have it now. I have it still. If I don't myself care for the impersonal way of selling online, it remains a wonderful tool for lots of people, a great way to recoup or profit. But most people don't have a historic building that SHOULD be playing a part in a well-meaning venture to recoup, re-purpose, regain some assurance that not all has been wasted.

This is a new day!

A favorite story of mine about something good not going to waste is in "Home to Where We've Never Been Before," a little compilation I once did mostly for family history. It seems to me now to be the perfect anecdotal true tale for my next entry..........in the meantime please look Corner Cupboard Darlene Ramos up on Facebook for details about the place NOW. Be sure to enter Corner Cupboard before my name and to scroll until you find the Corner Cupboard site (there are tons of them) that is related to me, is most current and shows new photos and info.

                                               Displays like this abound at Corner Cupboard

The Year Without a Christmas Tree

This is the Christmas without a Christmas tree--but it's a good, good thing.

For several years I haven't wanted a big ol' honking Christmas tree in our very small living-room. All year long, it is all I can do to fit our necessary furniture into this space. About six times a year I try shifting everything around in hopes of a more functional, attractive look, and nothing ever helps.  Each piece of furniture seems too big for the room, because each piece IS.

The room is well-loved and well-used, but is the most challenging for workability. It's an old farmhouse, but a modest one, built by humble immigrants long ago who needed to throw together a dwelling before the snow flew.

To throw a big ol' honking Christmas tree in there each December has always driven me crazy-nuts. Despite my admiration for beautifully decorated houses at the holidays, for our own home I have been Scrooge-like in the embellishment department.

It is only for my grown daughter that I have even messed with this "problem." If not for her it would long ago have been a sweet little tabletop tree--and an artificial one at that. It would have been some greenery and some pine cones, and red cardinal birds, of the resin sort and just a few.

This modest extent of decorating I could embrace with the utmost cheer and enthusiasm, but instead each year I wrestle with a "big one." I dress it up and there it towers the room further and blatantly into impossibly small.

My daughter has persistently asked this of me, and why don't I just say NO?

How could I? If my living-room has seemed impossibly small, hers trumps mine for that. Hers is half the size of mine, but this didn't matter when it was just she and her little girl. The two found their little two-bedroom bungalow cozy and delightful and perfectly sensible in size for an up-to-the-ceiling Christmas tree plus all the trimmings.

For some years they trudged through the woods of a "cut-your-own" farm and dressed their living-room to the nines in holiday paraphernalia.

Then one year my daughter "found someone"  and got married. Soon, a recliner for the masculine persuasion was plopped right smack dab where the Christmas tree should go. When December arrived and there wasn't room for both the tree AND the man, she decided not to bump the man. Later, when babies (and baby paraphernalia) added to the congestion she sadly (but also happily) concluded her Christmas tree days were over in that house.

The thing to do then, for the children's sake (it's always for the children's sake) was to beg Mom to keep the tradition of a big Christmas in HER living-room--a place where the little ones spend a lot of time and even open (some of) their Christmas presents in on the big day.

Again--how could I say no?

I couldn't and I didn't, although each year I touched on it and each year she un-touched me on it.

It isn't that my daughter hasn't wanted or tried to get a bigger living-room. For over two years she and her spouse have done all they feel capable of to change things up for space in the house she bought several years ago as a single mom with one child. With a hubby and toddlers now (as well as our older granddaughter), and only two bedrooms to split between them all, well, you can imagine.

"Upside-down" in a mortgage often means "upside-down" in the home life, too. This new reality for lots of families presents lots of challenges much more serious than where to put a Christmas tree at Christmas time.

Where to put the babies might be one, or where to put grown kids who need to "come home" might be another.  Another one might be where to put Mom or Dad or both, when everyone is pooling together resources to manage expenses and keep a comfortable roof overhead.

A recent NBC news segment addressed the growing numbers of multi-generational families living under one roof, "much the way it used to be."

Not all good and not all bad--but the reasons for it seem to be usually from not-the-best circumstances. In general, choices are limited and everyone struggles to find the best answers within their means.

Some years ago my daughter's grandmother (my mother-in-law) lived in "not-the-best" circumstances. She had plenty by way of real estate house value (before the bubble burst) but not enough money to meet her daily needs. Nothing any of us said could make her sell while the selling was good and she was alive to enjoy it. When she passed, the money that could have bettered her life went instead to her children.

She meant for this to happen, and her "children" also meant her grandchildren, we are sure. She threw the ball into our court, and when that happens, you gotta play ball.

Also for sure "playing ball" wears down a safety net. But life is all about the kids and the grand-kids, so this year it looks like (God willing) the grand-kids are having their own "big ol' honking" Christmas tree in their own bigger living room. (And I am finally doing my tabletop tree!) There is a fireplace to hang their stockings from, and a mantle to display a lighted Christmas village across. The family is over-the-moon happy, and they're not counting their lucky stars.

They are counting their blessings.

The Cake Time Never Forgot

'Tis the season for gorging, and how hard are you trying not to?

Because I've set the bar low, I'm doing pretty well. The thing is, after my January blog of this year (when I boldly proclaimed the onset of my determination to lose weight) I thereafter gained three more pounds.

Shocked, I was. It was a total confirmation to me that menopause is a much more powerful foe than my mindset can conquer, at least for this stage in my life.

I could blame it on the grand-babies this time. (And I think I will.) Sure they require alot of chasing after, but their naps are really only of any length when they are in the arms, and this means Grandpa and I take a nap now, too. When we attempt to wriggle away, they waken too soon and are cranky at that.

So we snooze when we don't need to, and finish the snacks they abandon. Grandpa, however, shows no evidence of any of this, even though he eats more of the snacks than I do. Despite everything, I recently got BACK to my January weight and that weirdly felt like an achievement. And THAT gives you a picture of how low my bar is.

When I was a teenager and weighed (probably like you) 103 pounds, eating too much or too often held few consequences. But I did always pay attention to my mom and older aunts who warned me it wouldn't always be this way.

My first memorable battle with reining in portion-control saw me badly defeated; the remorse afterward was such that I've never since failed so completely again.

The smells in my kitchen today (Thanksgiving) have spurred me into into blogging the tale of that experience, but please don't think I'm a crazy person who can blog and cook a big Thanksgiving dinner all at once--I did much of the work yesterday.

This particular drives-you-crazy aroma is from a cake, and a nondescript-looking one even. Decades ago in the home I grew up in, my sister, Cris, brought this cake home from a holiday work party. It was nearly a whole cake, untried by many probably because of its basic and plain look, yellow and unfrosted. The only thing special about its appearance was its form (bundt-pan molded, still a novelty in the late 60's) and a generous dusting of confectioner's sugar.

So un-special did this cake seem, when the left-overs of that work party were divvied up, my sister accepted it with the attitude that "with so many people in our house, it will eventually get eaten."

Cris laid the cake on the counter with no expectations that anyone would gush over it. In fact no one did, but as I remember it, the house was pretty empty then. My dad was at work, and either my mom and the younger kids were out and about or in their rooms, with another older sister, Cindy, living away from home at the time.

Cris left the cake with a comment that it was excess from the party and that the family was welcome to it, and off she went for a nap. It seemed the kitchen was mine--and too the cake, at the worst possible time of day--me in the throes of my after-school appetite.

But I had just finished something to take the edge off things, and with the humble look of the thing, I regarded it as "filler." A just-as-humble slice would help me call snack-time good, so I thought.

Not to be. The innocent cake's not-so-innocent secret ingredient (sherry wine) injected WOW into my taste buds, and I immediately lopped off another slice. And another. It was crazy tender and flavorful and my control panel went berserk with malfunction. With no one around to raise their eyebrows at me I just kept going--kept going straight into eventual horror at myself and the drastically dwindling circle of bundt.

Too quickly it was over. I didn't eat the whole thing, but I may as well have, for all the good any explaining might have done. In a family of ten, (nine living at home) one didn't just eat almost a whole cake. (Or in ANY family, I am sure.)  I never did anything like that before, and I couldn't even begin to think of how I might regain my standing in our household.

With wheels spinning in my mind as to what I might say, I was unfathomably graced with non-discovery. Cris's nap was not a long one, and when she re-emerged into the kitchen for all she knew other family members had also enjoyed the cake. I didn't say otherwise, except that I did confess "I almost couldn't stop eating the thing, it was so good." She polished off the rest, and before the family starting filing back into the kitchen I discreetly shoved the disposable plate into the garbage. They never missed what they didn't know.

Whew. I was SO grateful not to be caught with my cake-pants down. The feeling of what might have come to pass (for embarrassment) has probably helped me rein in on portion control ever since--but it never stopped me from tracking down the recipe for that cake. I make it every year at the holidays, and I'm happy to say I can take one wedge and call it good for the day. (I'm also happy to be in a place in my life where I feel fine about telling the story!

Orange you glad? (You don't HAVE to eat an orange)

Since when did an orange become a delicacy?

Like you, I was brought up with fruit readily available, cheap enough it never seemed "forbidden." If anything, it quickly became boring and not properly appreciated. (Except for in-season and local--that never seems to get old.)

For many decades fruit has been commonly freighted or trucked across America. We are way past the times when an apple and an orange in a Christmas stocking elicited a thrill the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described for her pioneer Christmases.

I admire my friend Mary, who (in her seventies) still considers an apple or an orange a treat, and chooses either regularly for her evening snack. You should hear her go on about a "Clementine" orange--you would think she's enjoying a See's candy.

Sadly I admit I would any day of the week choose a See's dark chocolate and a cup of coffee over an orange for a treat. I just believe in quality per calorie and that's QUALITY in the eye of THIS beholder.

To this beholder, most transported veggies fare better than fruits. I would also rather have a nice green salad over fruit most any time and I do, even if quite honestly a lettuce leaf is more (for me) a vehicle with which to transport a creamy dressing than a tasty thing in itself.(My dad used to say that the truth hurts, and it does.)

If I don't properly appreciate fruits, I know that many people do. They don't just eat fruit for the health of it, they love it. Fruit is both a staple and a pleasure in their households, not something they can easily imagine life without.

When not on sale, our local Wisconsin markets have priced oranges lately at 1.79 a pound. (Are prices similar nationwide?). The "huge" chain (at time of this writing) doesn't even sell oranges individually, it's a bag of pre-picked or nothing.

Recently I wanted one sizable one for a cake, and at the dollar I paid for it I was happy the recipe called for the juice AND the rind, and I even threw in a little pulp to feel I was getting that whole dollar's worth. The cake would last for days and serve several times over, but what about when people just want to eat the orange? For people with modest incomes, a couple of pieces of fruit per day per family member starts to look like a real luxury. Especially when half the weight of the thing (rind, skin, pits, seeds) goes into the garbage.

Avocados lately here have also been approaching 2.00, and just for one, not one pound.  Once every few weeks a sale brings them down to .99 ea and that's when they sell. The rest of the time they sit and pucker, sit until they're worthless and have to be thrown out. Then a new batch changes them out, and the whole waste thing starts over again.

It seems crazy, and what is this about? No economist am I, but I have always heard that "prices will reflect what the market will bear." We're not talking organic food consumption here, which is so specialized and regulated at least there is some level of understanding about pricing. (But really? I don't know one family, outside of couples only, who can afford to eat largely organic---and there's something wrong with that picture, too.)

Another thing I've always heard is that pricing is of course related to supply and demand. Whatever a shortage is attributed to, if whatever's there is flying off the shelf at high pricing, that price is justified.

I definitely believe that supplies of produce are often affected by climate, but if people can't afford fruit in a good season, what happens then in a poor season?  More good fruit goes unsold, wasted.

I don't get this kind of marketing. One would think history makes a good teacher, but it rarely does. Human nature always seems willing to push the boundaries. Get the most one can while giving the least one can get away with. Risk the bottom falling out or the bubble bursting up top--and most of the while here call it the "American" way of enterprise.

I remember as a young child walking with my cousins alongside the orange groves that bordered my Grandma Rosa's property in Placentia, California. Distinct signs were plentiful in these orchards--warnings that anyone (aside from employees) caught picking an orange would be subject to prosecution with penalty of a $500.00 fine. We assumed this meant it didn't have to be off the tree, off the ground would apply too.

Even that scary penalty didn't make the fruit exciting and a challenge to partake of. That I know of, we cousins never risked those warnings. Why would we? Any one of us could go into our respective kitchens and always find good fruit. Some of us even had orange trees in our backyards.

In the marketplace, the penalty for the consumption of good fruit has evolved into a different kind of punishment. If you don't get much of anything out of something you've paid highly for, you feel taken.  The new "temptation" with this kind of "forbidden fruit" is a strange one. You WANT to resist it--pass it by,
don't pay the price. It isn't about the taste of it anymore, it's about making a statement. If bananas, grown out of this country and imported in, can be the generally most affordable fruit in the produce section, why can't other fruits grown here come close in everyday affordability? Is it really the cost of doing business "here" versus the cost of doing business "there"?

A conspiracy seems to be saying "Let them eat cake....." and maybe we should.

"The Tools of the Trade"

The tools of the trade are not what they used to be.

For better or worse, the beauty of this is in the eye of the beholder.

In my growing up years in Southern California, my mother, a renowned "good cook" of our Mexican-American culture, relied on the simple and classic to get her good meals on the table. Except for a cast-iron pan, most of these mainstays have gone by the wayside in favor of "new and improved" tools. Let's discourse a little about that.

Take the simple art of salsa making. For the indescribably best product, a whole lot of green chilies need to get roasted. A melange of personal favorites (experimentation decides this, one cook at a time) snug up in a skillet, but with less intimacy than one might think. You can't crowd them too tightly, and you can't rush the proper blistering of chilies with quick, relentless heat. Try this once and you'll suffer the loss of superb ingredients as well as  deflated anticipation. Skins that will not release take all the good flesh with them--straight into useless, straight into the garbage can.

No, you gotta baby things along. Fire up that seasoned (cast iron) skillet, nice and hot to start--but lower that burner to steady and almost slow, and nurse those blisters into billowy pockets heavy with "just right" blackening. Ideally, the skins (upon cooling) will pull away with most of the flesh intact while retaining just enough blackened peel to embolden your salsa with flecks of char.

Food art, but delicious, flavorful art. I can still see on my mother's counter her "molcajete," the tool of the trade for stripping down roasted chilies and blanched tomatoes. A molcajete (if you are unfamiliar) is a volcanic rock bowl with three tapered legs, the whole thing being one piece. The unit is accompanied by a tejolote, a smaller shaped rock meant to be manipulated as a hand grinder against the peppers and the walls of the molcajete.

Somehow salsa made that way seems "crafted" to me, but in a recent conversation with my mother, she confessed readily that she hasn't made it that way for many years. She even further blasphemed my memory by saying that not too long ago she made some for the family in a blender, the now-accepted (really?) way to do things. (Along with a food processor, I suppose.)

She softened the blow with the qualifier that the blender has to be pulsed "just so," in a "skilled" way so as not to mush the ingredients.

My stabbed heart sheepishly recuperates, because except for salsa that I chop from fresh uncooked ingredients, of course I make mine in a blender too........so much for THAT romancing of the volcanic stone bowl.

(After reminiscing about the beauty of a molcajete I started to browse online for one of my own, but soon decided against it. With my personality and ownership of such a cultural object, I would likely be pressed with the urge to turn my Wisconsin farmhouse into a hacienda, and just don't get me started.)

Another tool gone is the in-counter breadboard that was once included in even the humblest of kitchens, all across America. Young people now are kind of amazed by them; a sturdy, functional board that easily pulls out to provide extra work surface. These days if you want such a helper in your kitchen you have to ask for it and pay dearly for the luxury. (I recently saw a smallish, shabby, actually coming-apart cabinet with a breadboard on an online vintage-specialty site--priced at well over $2000.00, shipping not included.)

In our house my mother didn't make bread, she made tortillas. I can still hear the slap-thunk, slap-thunk of my mother's rolling pin on such a board. She worked up a big mound of dough, and from that tugged off smaller elastic balls. These she whomped and stretched into round discs, then (this time more slightly) charred and blistered them to perfection on her trusty cast iron surface.

The simple, old tools of the trade--they didn't require electricity and most of them were invaluable to most women, regardless of their cultures. No pioneer woman worth her salt tried to cross a prairie without her iron skillet, and I don't know that a pie crust in that age or now can make it across a pie pan without the help of a timeless rolling pin. Whipping cream didn't always result from a motor (see the "Beauty and Purpose" entry on this blog) and certainly not from an aerosol can.

Do I really think that old ways and tools of the trade make for the very best flavors? Do I really think food prepared now on my very modern stove is somehow lacking?

Not when I'm hungry I don't. Sure I love atmosphere and the appeal of timeless things and ways. It is true that old objects and the methods they provided somehow immerse my mind with appreciation for the skills and talents of the many predecessor cooks I never knew. But the food I put on the table now is prepared with enthusiasm (most of the time) and always with a sense of wanting to nurture my loved ones--so what could ever improve on THAT?

Revisiting my mother's own methods wasn't just a warm and fuzzy thing. My witnessing of her simple, priceless talents meant that I could do those things, too. Yes, store-bought tortillas are surely very handy, but the ones I'm planning for our supper tonight.......well, you can imagine.

My fourteen-year-old granddaughter has now witnessed my making of handmade tortillas countless times. Someday, in her own home, I can see her "rolling her own," and it'd better be tortillas!

"Aunt Bea"

I'm now well past the age my Aunt Bea was when I considered her "older."

It was the late sixties and I was fifteen. Aunt Bea was fifty-ish, but Mayberry was not her town. MY Aunt Bea was not pleasantly frumpy or plump. She was beautiful in her own way--attractive, energetic and even somewhat cool. She and I worked side-by-side in the family restaurant her sister and their husbands had established in Placentia, California.

From this setting my work ethic was born. A tad on the shy side, I learned that if you can't blow customers away with wit and charm, you CAN draw them like flames to a moth with good food and service.

The Beatles, Santana, and the Chicago Transit Authority were all musical players in this environment--a surprise to me and at the insistence of Aunt Bea.

"Music for people my age is too dull," she declared, as she prompted me to set the radio dial. "We need music with a beat for people to enjoy their food with and for us to move along to."

Aunt Bea especially like the rhythms of the first-time around Carlos Santana. His music is perfect, she said, for our Mexican restaurant. She considered his brand of Latino-influenced rock a much more natural fit than the Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli tunes she also enjoyed.

Observing Aunt Bea's energetic and fun persona fooled me into regarding her as more youthful than she was, though in this day and age each decade in general seems about "ten years younger" than it used to be. To my sixteen years, fifty-some seemed at the time grandma-ish, for sure.

Aunt Bea was my dad's older sister, and the years don't lie. Whenever she tugged at her elastic-waist slacks, she did herself in. To the untrained eye, she was slender and fashionable enough, but when she yanked on that elastic, her front was foiled.

The trouble with elastic-waist pants, she pointed out, is that they fool you into thinking you're not carrying an extra ten pounds of weight. With subterfuge like that, ten pounds can turn into fifteen, fifteen into twenty, and then smocks become the rule.

These days I know too well what Aunt Bea meant. For the longest time I refused to own anything elastic-waisted, and I still would rather wear gut-wrenching, tourniquet-duty waists than fall victim to the belief that I can afford to gain even one more pound. But sweats and p.j. bottoms are pretty darn comfortable around the house, and shamefaced, I concede they have pretty much become the rule for me at home.

But like Aunt Bea, I'm fighting the good fight. I live in Wisconsin now, and winters present a struggle for me that Aunt Bea didn't know. But she had other struggles in other ways the likes I know for myself I could never overcome. Struggles so hard a niece who loves her as I do will not speak of them widely, in a blog post that can't possibly pay proper tribute to her private travails.

Somehow, to look at Aunt Bea you would not know this. She recently told me how once, in the keeping of a routine doctor's appointment (at well into her nineties) she was in the room with a nurse who begged to be excused because, she said to my aunt, "I need a minute to round up your forms; these here have you mixed up with someone ninety-five years old! I'll be right back."

Aunt Bea stopped her with, "No, that's me. I'm that old."

The nurse did not bother to hide her disbelief or even play it up with falsity. She simply paused, and left the room anyway. When she returned, she had with her other professionals from the office, gawking at my aunt from the doorway. The nurse did not hesitate to say, "See?!! Does this woman look 95 years old TO YOU??!!"

And no, they didn't think so! To their inquiry about the secret of her youth, Aunt Bea only said that she had lived troubles beyond their imagination, but that faith and prayer, exercising, eating right, and that her own mother lived to be 100, seemed to be reasons why.

Aunt Bea loved telling that story, even if she tempered it with, "I never felt like such a FREAK in my life."

I've never so much as once ran a marathon, as Aunt Bea did, almost into her eighties. My kinship with her is about family history and about the music--love for the sort that seems "too young" for us, but in fact, keeps us feeling young.

As fate would have it I also had my own restaurant in my forties until my mid-fifties. Whenever I set the radio there, I thought of my Aunt Bea. I would surf the dial to find music that "popped" with liveliness, and sometimes (when I was alone, before turning the "open" sign around) I would even run over to it and PLAY IT LOUD.

When Carlos Santana was enjoying quite the comeback with the hit recording "Smooth," a collaboration with Rob Thomas, I wondered if Aunt Bea was aware of it, and if she ever recalled our days at the family restaurant. She would have been as tickled as I was to see him enjoy another vibrant round of success; a "using it" and not "losing it."

These days my cooking and serving skills are pretty much reserved for my family and a few friends--but I still love to do my work with the dial set to music that helps me "move along." Some of that music is so lively it defies you to not run over to the radio and "PLAY IT LOUD."

At my age, I'm embarrassed to admit I do that now and again--but then I tell myself, "Aunt Bea probably did. It probably is a reason she forgot to mention, that day in the doctor's office."

Aunt Bea is just this side of 100 years old now! Her younger sister, Nina, is devoted to her and committed to maintaining their lifelong closeness. Both have told me that an original copy of my tribute to "Aunt Bea" is something she hopes will be read at her memorial service, "when the time comes."

I am but a speck in the family sphere now, having lived afar from Aunt Bea for many decades, my story with her miniscule. But just knowing she said that once, is honor enough for me.

Update: Rest in peace, beloved Bea.

Note: 1st photo shows Bea on the right, Nina on the left. 2nd photo is Nina on the left, me center, Aunt Bea on the right.