Southern Fried Old Birds

You know what they mean when they say an “old bird”. Some days I feel like one. Too much trouble to do a lot of cooking. After the kitchen and floors are clean you don’t feel like messing things up again. And besides, we are enjoying a lot of vegetables from our garden. So why heat and mess up the kitchen when you can eat a healthful meal without cooking. Nevertheless, on occasion I go to the trouble and make a time-consuming cooked dinner.

A recent night was one such occasion. A few days earlier we had stopped at the farmers’ market and supplemented our homegrown vegetable stash with some turnips, bell peppers and potatoes. And we bought a package of chicken quarters from a vendor we had not seen before: $22 worth of organic, free-range chicken pieces. The chicken pieces were frozen solid so we let them gently defrost in the fridge a couple of days.

Then I embarked on making that favorite from an old family recipe—fried chicken. My mother, although she never would have claimed to be a gourmet cook, could give old Colonel Sanders a run for his money. Her recipe was fairly simple, dip the chicken pieces in an egg batter and then in seasoned cracker-crumb and flour mixture.  To make the crust extra thick she usually double-dipped the pieces. And if you wanted to have the chicken tender as well as crispy, after frying the chicken crust to a golden brown you placed the pieces in an oven-proof pan and baked them for a bit.

I had to make a few modifications to the recipe to make it gluten free since I have celiac disease. But that was not an issue as I've adapted many recipes. This time I used a mixture of almonds and rice chex, seasoned with some fresh rosemary to boot, all ground into a nice crumb in the food processor. The egg wash was thinned with fresh buttermilk.

The chicken pieces were so numerous and the smell of chicken frying in the heavy cast-iron skillet so delectable I was tempted to make a few phone calls to see if I could round up some hungry friends who wouldn't mind the last minute invitation and mess of crumbs covering every surface. But some angel must have been on my shoulder as I resisted the urge.

When we sat down to eat our dinner of fried chicken, accompanied only by salads from the garden and baked potatoes, I couldn't wait to hear my husband’s reaction since it had been a long while since I’d made this favorite. Instead of “yum’s”, when I asked how he liked the chicken, he said “I haven’t been able to get a bite. We’re going to need steak knives.”

So we got out steak knives and tried to cut into the chicken. The little meat or tissue on the chicken, once you sawed through the chicken skin was so tough and fibrous it defied chewing. I tried to get a taste of one of the thighs. My husband tried three pieces and never found an edible bite.

I thought cock fighting was illegal in Kentucky. But these roosters must have given their lives in some combat. Or else they had died of old age and starvation. Their carcasses should have been buried, not sold. As Barnum reportedly said to Bailey, I guess I was one of those suckers.

We enjoyed my homegrown salad and baked potatoes. But we still had a crust-splattered stove, counters and floor, a large skillet and two baking pans to clean and a whole platter of inedible chicken to dispose of.  Next time I go to the farmers’ market I’m buying only from those farmers I know. 

Have a Nice Flight or Fight?

I recently wrote about the “reclining controversy” on planes, “Reclining or Not, A Eureka Moment in Air Travel”, 9/2/14. Since I wrote that blog post, a total of three flights have been diverted over passenger disputes related to the reclining, or not, of seats.

Contrary to what has been claimed in the press, I did not believe that passengers suddenly had just gotten more surly and uncontrollable due to the stress of air travel. Though there’s no question air travel is stressful and unpleasant these days.

Rather, in my September 2nd post, I placed the blame for the recent spate of in-air fussing on the greed of the airline industry for cramming passengers like too many crayons into a box. I’m happy to report that I’m not delusional in believing the space allotted each passenger on planes keeps getting smaller.

According to Consumer Reports based on data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the airline industry is, to use Consumer Reports’ language, “shoehorning” us passengers into our seats these days.

 http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/09/knee-defender-battle-puts-blame-on-passengers/index.htm

				Knee Defender Puts Blame on Passengers | Air Travel - Co... Crowded flights and reclining seats don't always mix. Consumer Reports has tips on how to keep your cool at 36,000 feet.
				View on www.consumerreports.org	Preview by Yahoo

The article notes that Ellen Bloom of Consumer Reports  goes on to say, “she is disturbed by media reports that frame these battles as problems between passengers, when in fact it's a no-win scenario deliberately created by the airlines. ‘It's like building a swing set in the middle of the street and then acting surprised when kids get hit by cars,’".

No wonder passengers are starting to fight over space. People like any other mammals, start to fight if you squeeze them too tightly together. Rather than announce: “sit back and relax”, the flight attendant should be saying, “squeeze in and hold your breath”. Maybe the flight attendant can come around with some knock-out pills instead of a beverage cart. Giving passengers drinks only provides something for us to throw at each other.

Rabbit City or Blazer and the Bunnies

I never set out to live with rabbits. They just came.

We have a small, fenced yard with several enclosed or raised gardens. A vegetable and herb garden. A lavender garden, a sage garden, a parsley garden, and so on. We also have a couple of small statues in our yard. One of a bunny.

This year I don’t need a statute to see a rabbit in our yard. In fact, our yard is teeming with rabbits. This is the year of abundant, giant tomatoes and also an abundant supply of rabbits. But surprisingly, the multitudes of rabbits are not eating many of the tomatoes.

Early in the spring we spied a young bunny, casually eating the broad leaf of some type of weed that grows in our yard. We do not spray chemicals in our back yard, or on our small garden, so there are a lot of weeds. We thought the bunny was cute. And we were glad the bunny was eating weeds rather than our lettuce.

We figured the bunny and any hopping relatives or friends, would quickly scoot under or between the slats of our fence and be gone for good as soon as Blazer, our good-natured, 18 month-old collie, ran into the yard. Instead, this bunny headed towards our dog and sat under the forsythia bush inside the yard.

It became a daily game. The bunny would sometimes scoot out of the yard, apparently to tease Blazer into fits of barking as she sat just beyond the fence. Other times, this bunny, or another one, I can’t really tell the sex or identity of any one bunny, would run towards Blazer, then quickly scurry under a bush or an equally poor hiding place and wait until our dog was upon it to make a getaway under the fence surrounding the yard. We were not happy about the risky game bunnies were playing with Blazer but at least, as yet, no rabbit remains were found as a result of a bunny misjudging Blazer’s speed and hunting skills.

The heat of summer and abundant rain followed a cool spring and after a good lettuce crop, largely unmolested by rabbits, our herbs, tomatoes and peppers continued to do well. Soon the tomatoes threatened such an overabundance we were forced to seek new recipes and friends to find an outlet for our supply. I thought about putting out a small stand in our front yard. But we live in one of those neighborhoods where that would have resulted in a threatening letter from the neighborhood association. As well as a neighborhood-wide email warning against any such further vegetable stands.

The rabbits continued to frolic in our yard, in fact, throughout the whole neighborhood and the nearby park. But bunnies ate very few of our tomatoes. A bite here or there. Either they did not like our tomatoes or else they had some other abundant source of food.

In the dregs of summer we realized we had entered bunny nesting season.  Blazer furiously dug and barked under a bush close to the house. When we went out to check on him we discovered he had dug a little below the mulch to expose a number of tiny baby bunnies. He had not injured any of the bunnies so we left the babies in place.

My husband ingeniously devised fencing to keep our dog out but to allow the momma bunny in. That worked for a few days. Blazer was unhappy with the arrangement and spent any time he was allowed in the yard testing the perimeters of the bunny fence. We didn't want him to get a taste for rabbit so we limited his yard, and increased his walking, time in the park.  He did not get through the fence to inspect the bunnies up close again.

Then one day when we had friends over for brunch and Blazer had a few unsupervised minutes in the yard we discovered he was digging furiously in the lavender garden. He had dug all around one of the lavender bushes so that it sat cock-eyed. Running to the yard we pulled Blazer out of the lavender garden and inspected the place where he had been digging.

There, amidst the uprooted lavender branches, sat a very small bunny who was cowering and squeaking. We thought we’d gently put him back in the nest around which the protective fence still stood. But upon inspection that nest was now empty and apparently abandoned.

Not being bunny experts we improvised and dug a small hole in a mulchy area just outside the backyard fence. A place we thought momma bunny might have chosen if she had been a little smarter. The baby squealed as we carefully transported him with gloved hands, but settled down as soon as we added some lavender sprigs over the hole.

Meanwhile Blazer continued furiously digging in another area of the lavender garden. We tried to convince him the baby bunny was gone. But he knew better. As we looked in the area where he had been digging, we found another nest with many bunny siblings. We were not sure we could adequately fence this area. So we carefully dug them out and slid them into a large plastic cup filled with some of the nest coverings.

They all squealed as if we were Godzilla and they the Japanese tourists. But again, upon the addition of some lavender sprigs they settled down long enough for us to transport them the few feet to the nest we had just constructed outside the fence.

There’s a reason for the expression “dumb bunny”. I thought, if you live with rabbits for very long you see just how dumb they are. Why didn't momma bunny build her nest outside our fenced yard where Blazer couldn't go? Then I had another thought. Maybe momma bunny was the rabbit who had been playing games with Blazer all summer. Perhaps she trusted him to be gentle with her progeny and also keep cats and other predators away. In any event, we feared that whatever Blazer’s intentions were towards the baby bunnies, they would have been injured by Blazer’s big teeth and playful ways.

I don’t know what accounts for the abundance of tomatoes or dumb bunnies this year. I've resisted the urge to peak under the nest coverings. But now I see the babies starting to venture outside the nest a few inches. They look fat and well fed. Blazer barks at them furiously from the other side of the fence.

Much as I don’t really want another half dozen more bunnies running around our yard I’m happy momma bunny apparently has accepted her newly-constructed home and our efforts at relocating her brood. Since we aren't hunters, rather than enjoying hasenpfeffer in tomato sauce with oregano, we’re eating all manner of tomato-based dishes and hoping these bunnies go elsewhere when they are big enough, at least for awhile.

There’s one other lovely outcome for us. From all of his digging in the lavender garden to look for baby bunnies, Blazer, and our home, are as aromatic as a lavender bouquet. 

Reclining or Not, A Eureka Moment in Air Travel.

Recent travel-related news items caught my and a lot of people’s attention: the fight between passengers over leg space and reclining seats. See, for example,

http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/our-new-culture-war-do-you-recline-or-decline/?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad

(Two incidents between passengers on American flights over the right to recline their seats resulted in two diverted planes, one arrest and a heated, global debate.)

Please now allow me a short diversion, or circling of our destination, before I get to the topic of reclining seats.

I had been sitting at my keyboard trying to think of a eureka moment (or is that an eureka moment?) so I could write about it to enter a contest in a women’s magazine. Unfortunately, I've had no recent eureka moments. But thinking about the contest did cause me to think about my last true eureka moment, which came at about age seven.

I still remember the feeling—as if I’d been struck by lightning. Or by the seat back on an airline when the person in front of me reclined and smacked my knees.  Anyway, at the age of seven or so, like a sudden smack in the knee, it dawned on me that what adults were saying was not meant literally. I may have been a little slow until that point. Maybe I still am.

But at least since then I've know that God is not “up there” in church behind the stained glass windows. And when your guests say they are going “to hit the road” they are not going to go outside and slap the pavement. I've even progressed to the point of knowing that when someone tells you “the check is in the mail”, at best, they only mean they have an intention of paying you--sometime.

Getting  back on track to our destination, the reclining, or not, of airline seats, I’m firmly on the side of both travelers. I hate being squished in a seat where you can’t put your seat back. And I also hate having the person in front of me recline his or her seat. I've come away with bruises on my knees when a large passenger in front of me abruptly reclines the seat. Did I mention I have only moderately long legs? But they usually are touching the seat in front of me, even without the seat back reclined. No doubt because most airlines have crammed so many seats on their planes.

The only party in this little dispute with whom I do not sympathize is the airline industry. I expect they may use this recent incident to steal the “bright idea” of an economist who says we should negotiate for money over this space, essentially have the person behind us on the plane pay us to not recline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/dont-want-me-to-recline-my-airline-seat-you-can-pay-me.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad

I think the party who will make money from this idea is the airline industry. I can easily see them imposing another fee, as if there are not enough airline fees: an added charge for passengers who want to recline and/or to sit behind seats that do not recline. The airlines may even present this as a “safety fee” to keep passengers from fighting about the bit of space offered by reclining or not.

In addition to charging more fees for everything from checking to or carrying on luggage, food, drinks, pillows, headsets, WiFi, you name it, the airlines also are in the process of trying to squeeze more and more passengers into less and less space. Soon they will have us all standing up as we fly shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. Such a “seat pattern” has even been proposed by some airlines. Why not just strap us to the roof of the planes? Mitt Romney did that with his Irish setter on his car. He says the dog loved it. Maybe we will too.

In our haste to our destination we should not overlook there is a eureka moment here. Probably the revelation hit the two arguing passengers, the pro-and con-recliners, sometime around the time the pilot announced he was landing in Chicago and they were tossed unceremoniously out on the tarmac.

What does one do then? Try to book a new flight to your destination? Will TSA let a passenger who just caused a plane to make an unscheduled stop back on another plane? Or does the still-angry passenger need to stand in line and try to rent a car? I wouldn't want to be in line with him or her at the car rental.

Maybe the kicked-off-the-plane passenger stands in another line for a restroom, looks in the mirror, and has a revelation. As miserable as air travel now is, it’s certainly got to be worse, stuck in Chicago’s O’Hara airport when that was not your intended destination.

Knowing that most of what adults say is not meant literally, even if they use the word “literally”, is still one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life in dealing with other people. When the airline says your plane will be on time, the airline hopes you enjoyed your flight, or that TSA security is keeping you safe, you know it’s a lot like saying “the check is in the mail”.  Good intentions at best.

But please, airline industry, and I do mean this literally, don’t come up with a plan to make all of us passengers stand up through the flights or strap us to the roof of the planes. Good intentions will not be good enough in the event you try to squeeze even one additional passenger or bag onto my flight. 

Alien Lights or the Ghost of George Vanderbilt?

It started with a long weekend trip to Asheville, NC. I was meeting two high school girlfriends there.  I've known them for more years than anyone--except those with whom I share DNA.

          Since I was driving some 250 miles each way, and being the safety conscious person I am, I took my thirteen year old Toyota—yes, you read that right—I drive a 2001 Avalon that’s traveled 117,000 miles and was built before Toyota started having recalls and “issues”—to the nearby Valvoline Center. After a short flurry of activity, my old Toyota’s oil was clean, her lights and tires checked out fine, and I had even treated her to a new air filter. As soon as I packed my bags I would be ready to go.

But on the drive home to pack, I noticed a strange light flickering on and off on the floor on the driver’s side. Since the light was near the hood release, I thought it might indicate the hood was not closed properly. I released the hood and tried to close it again. I even enlisted my husband in the project and asked if he’d close the hood tightly so I was sure I wouldn't have any trouble on the trip.

The drive to Asheville was uneventful except for delays on some highways due to construction traffic. After I arrived we started sight-seeing, enjoying the fine restaurants for which Asheville is famous, and drinking a little wine. We were having an all-around good time.

On Friday night, after touring the Biltmore Estate we stumbled upon an old-fashioned, outdoor concert by Tuxedo Junction. We bought a bottle of Biltmore wine and enjoyed the selections from three or four decades of music. People danced the conga line in the grass, couples two-stepped and waltzed, and little children chased each other, throwing handfuls of grass they had torn from the lawn.  

Driving back to the hotel afterwards, I was startled to suddenly see the very bright light reappear, on and off near my left foot. The flashing light was most distracting, pulling my attention abruptly to the floor of the car from the dark, twisty roads of the Biltmore Estate where I feared a deer or other animal might jump in the road.

Even though as we drove, we joked about this light being an alien manifestation or the ghost of George Vanderbilt, who perhaps didn't appreciate us concert-goers trampling his estate, I had concluded the flashing light was a non-alien, non-ghostly, real life safety hazard. By the time we were back at the hotel I had decided to research the problem and, if necessary, get professional help the next day before doing any more significant driving.

So when we arrived at the hotel I took the car manual in with me and read it from cover to cover. Don’t ask why it took me thirteen years to read the manual. I suppose I just never had the need before now. My old Toyota really has been a trouble-free ride.

I learned many things from the manual. Who knew my car had a button for overdrive? And what was overdrive? And did you know the front airbags deploy if you drive over a cliff? I guess that’s a good thing, at least if it’s a smallish cliff and you don’t crash on rocks.

There are lots more nuggets of information in the manual. But the significant point seemed to be that some Toyota models have interior foot lights. I hadn't seen any light fixtures on the car floor. But this still seemed the most logical explanation.

After further research on the Internet, I concluded a bulb or wiring could be loose or maybe there was a fuse problem. I was proud of my automotive diagnostic skills. You really can solve anything with an Internet connection, can't you?

My friends and I agreed on Saturday morning we’d try calling the Toyota dealer and visit a service station if the dealer could not tell us how to fix the faulty light.

On Saturday morning, after confirming online that my Toyota dealer was open on Saturdays, I called. Only to be greeted by voice mail. So I left a detailed message about the faulty interior foot light I had diagnosed and asking the service department to please call and help me figure out a solution to the distracting light. The dealer never called back.

Then off we drove, with Google maps’ assistance in hand on our cell phones, in search of a service station we hoped employed actual mechanics. After several unsuccessful stops we spotted a Valvoline service center and I pulled in.

 I explained in great detail how I had diagnosed the problem and added that the mysterious light had first appeared after I’d had my oil changed at a Valvoline. So maybe they had tripped a light or fuse somehow? In jest, we mentioned alien lights and ghosts. But, I added, in any event, I sure hoped they could find and fix the disturbing light problem.

The nice young Valvoline man said he’d look at it and see if he could help, even though they did not ordinarily service interior lights. He stepped to my door as I got out of my car and pointed to where I had seen the light. As I did, the young man said, “I see the light and I see your problem. It’s the flashlight next to your seat.”

A moment's pause to realize what was happening was followed by peals of laughter from all of us and everyone at Valvoline.

Years ago, my husband had gotten me a large flashlight for emergencies and slid it next to the driver’s seat. I had completely forgotten about the flashlight. The flashlight had been jarred slightly and now was turned so the on button was pressed every now and then. So much for aliens and ghosts.

We offered to pay the Valvoline service man for his time. But he assured us the hearty laugh, as well as the addition to his supply of “dumb blonde jokes”, was quite sufficient payment.

Batting Averages in Baseball, Life and Writing.

It's summer time. Nearly every night my husband tunes in to watch a baseball game. And when he has the chance he goes in person,  sometimes with me tagging along, to watch baseball.  Since we are St. Louis Cardinal fans, if our team makes it into the play-off games we watch every night, and try to snag tickets to at least a game or two to root them on in person. The roar in Busch Stadium for a St. Louis home team in a play off or World Series game is like no other sound I've heard. Some of my incipient deafness no doubt the result.

There are no stadiums filled with cheering fans for novelists. Nevertheless,  instead of watching baseball last week and this week, along with nine other aspiring novelists, I'm at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival taking a two week course in novel writing. Our teacher, Amber Dermont, has published  to critical acclaim "The Starboard Sea" and, more recently, a collection of short stories: "Damage Control: Stories".

Yesterday Amber suggested considering sports as a metaphor in our writing efforts: for the story arc, the good or bad loser, the good or bad winner. No doubt in many life activities there is much to learn from sports, including when writing a novel.

Per the class instructions, my classmates and I came to the workshop with manuscripts of between 30,000 and 75,000 words. In some cases, even more than 75,000 words. The writers have worked on their novels for anywhere from a few months to a few decades. The novels are strikingly different in topic and tone.

Several of my classmates have remarked they are reluctant to tell friends, and even close family members, how much time and effort they have spent on their manuscript. How do you explain you spent months, or even years, working on a novel? Particularly considering that in today's publishing world, what are the chances a first novel by an unknown will be published? I can tell you: very slim. Unless, of course, we go the route of self-publication, which has become much easier now that electronic publishing is readily available.

I doubt that our teacher or even John Updike have ever been cheered by a stadium-sized crowd, at least for their writing.  So why do people struggle to write novels? Certainly writing a novel is a struggle. Why does anyone write, for hours, days, months and years, alone in a room? Why do we devote weeks of our time, travel thousands of miles, and spend thousands of dollars to attend a class? All in the hopes of perfecting our game? A very good question.

This morning I read the New York Times article, "In a .338 Lifetime Average, Every Day Counted", http://ms/T2FOy1, about Tony Gwynn, who died of cancer on Monday at the age of 54. Tony was known for his positive attitude towards the game of baseball. He loved the game and  tried every day to perfect his craft. Like Tony approached baseball, we writers who not only love the written word, but love novels, are here trying to perfect our craft.

It's one thing to love to read novels. You may even be able to tell good novels from bad. And good writing from bad writing. But being able to produce a good novel is something else entirely. I suggest it's a bit of a mystery why some  novels work and others do not.

Writing is essentially a solitary occupation. One usually sits by oneself in a room with a computer, or a pad of paper and tries to put coherent thoughts together into words, sentences and paragraphs. A little like Tony Gwynn spending countless hours watching game videos to try to become a better hitter. A would-be novelist could devote years of his or her life to work on a piece of fiction and not receive any validation as to whether the novel he or she is writing is of any merit. Let alone know whether the manuscript is publishable.

What's remarkable about a writing workshop is that each of the students, who have been laboring alone, then gets to not only hear feedback and suggestions. But also we would-be writers get to socialize with our own tribe of writers. And hope that our teacher who has conjured some of the magic of novel writing in her own life, can help us discover our own magic for writing a novel.

Ladies Afternoon at the Bar

On a recent afternoon I sat at a bar. A number of women my age on either side of me. We all vied for the attention of the young men on the other side of the bar. 

But no, this was not a cougar bar with the ladies drinking apple martinis and slipping large tips to the young men. Rather, we were sitting at the Apple store's "Genius Bar", trying to figure out how to get our latest gizmo's to work. 

The Apple Store was one of Steve Jobs so-called inspirational ideas. Put a storefront at the mall where customers can buy all their Apple-related products and devices in one place. Customers can come in and browse, get help and, also, just play with the latest Apple products.

Some people scoffed: customers would never go to a mall to buy a computer. Turns out, the scoffers were very wrong: people come in droves to the Apple stores. 

And did you know--in the afternoons, ladies, of a certain age, flock to the Apple Store? I know. Because I was one of them.

My reason for coming to the Apple Store was a lack of memory. Not the human kind, though I often have that too. The laptop kind.

I thought I’d made an appointment with a “One on One” trainer. As it happens I was confused on the date I actually had scheduled my appointment. No problem. The young men (yes, there are some women who work at the Apple store, and even some older folks. But most of the personnel are young men) at the Apple Store said they could fit me in at the Genius Bar. So there I sat at the “Genius Bar”.

To my right an older lady was saying, “I have no idea what my password is for this…or that…”  To my left another lady was saying, “I can’t believe my laptop is out of warranty. It’s only seven years old.”  Another woman in my age bracket breathlessly pleaded for help, “I can’t find my play list. It was right here just yesterday.”

As I said, my problem was memory. When I repeatedly tried to update the software for my laptop I’d get messages that I didn’t have sufficient memory.

So at the Genius Bar, the nice young man helped me copy all of my photos onto to the thumb drive. You know how easy it is to take photos with an iPhone? And since there’s no film involved it seems you might as well take as many photos as you want. And keep them all. And with the Cloud all those photos were on all my Apple devices. 

The young man helped me delete all the photos from my laptop. After we made sure the photos actually were on the thumb drive. Then he helped me download the new software. While I waited, I browsed some of the latest clever devices--ooh, look at the new iPad Air. An even lighter version of what I already have. Cool.

The Apple Genius Bar gives new meaning to marketing genius and to the Cougar experience. Here we were, all of us older ladies. Sucking the brains and techno skills out of the young men, like—well, like, martinis through a straw. And ready to plunk down our credit cards for new techno toys.

All of this took most of the afternoon. So if any you husbands, are wondering  where your wife is all afternoon—you might want to look for her at the “Genius Bar” in the Apple Store. A least she’s not at some other kind of bar--drinking martinis with a younger man. But Apple martinis might prove to be cheaper.  You may have to watch what new Apple toys she's bringing home.