“I’ve Got This”
So this is a wooo wooo post. Non-believers, this is not required reading.
The other day my granddaughter and I were talking, and she asked my opinion on someone, and I responded frankly. Then I asked her what she thought of me. “You are calm,” she said, and stopped.
I didn’t push her further. She has had her own sense of discretion, and I respect that.
And mostly, I am calm. I suffer occasional bouts of anxiety, you know, climbing on that endless hamster wheel that goes nowhere. I swim, I walk, and the good chemicals help wash it away. And I listen to the voice in my head that I think of as God speaking to me. He’s very repetitive. He says, “I’ve got this.”
I have discovered that anxiety gets me nowhere, and listening to that voice, letting go, has empirical value – it works for me.
Post-Hurricane Isaias there is SO much to do. Big expensive tasks that cannot be left undone. Dangerous things, like the big hanging tree, and a treacherous jungle area.
Friday, one pool friend mentioned casually that her son had some experience and could help us with the jungle. We met him, were impressed, and he is coming Monday to tackle the jungle. Yesterday, a church friend called me, asking if I needed a tree service that was insured and certified and had an arborist. Yes, that was exactly what I needed. Exactly that team had finished at her house, and she wanted to know if we would like to meet with them for an estimate. I could hear her relief and happiness with the work this team had done.
We met with the team this morning, and they will schedule us for this week, saying that, indeed, our situation with the hanging tree is dangerous. Our neighbor, in whose yard the top third of the tree is resting, was home and approved access through his gate. We are thankful for good neighbors.
Our family is coming with chili for tonight’s dinner. AdventureMan is making cornbread. I have made guacamole and a cheese dip.
The hamster wheel sits silent, unused in a corner of my mind.
Isiais: Winding Down
As I put this all together I am at my desk, overlooking the Bayou, while the sun is going down. For years, I looked at houses, wanting a house like I grew up in, a house with a view of the water. What I got was better than I ever dreamed – a house where I could see the sun set every night of every day of every year.
Three days of drama have ended well. Little loss of life. A community that helps one another. Neighbors with different backgrounds and different philosophies and different politics find we have more in common than we have differences. The National Guard comes in to assist and to help us. And at the end of the day, we have a beautiful sunset.
My son and his wife drop by to give us a couple of grilled fillets of salmon, this Alaska girl’s favorite. We sit and talk and laugh our heads off, telling funny stories. They are coming back tomorrow morning; AdventureMan is making his famous biscuits, with eggs to order and fried up sausage patties. The forecast is for more laughter.
Garden of Autumn Delights
Suddenly, earlier than expected, we’ve had a drop in temperatures. Not dramatic, but such a relief from the heat and humidity. Lows in the 70’s. Highs in the 80’s. It makes me feel alive again, and it makes me want to spend my time outside.
AdventureMan’s garden is full of joy.
In my small group this week, we were talking about what thrives in Pensacola. We’ve gone through a lot of trial and error. One thing grows year round: Chives. Not only do they grow, they reproduce, and we give pots of chives away each spring. To me, what is a miracle is that they also grow reliably in Alaska; one of our best meals included chives from a private garden. My chives are currently in bloom:
I was very little when my Mother, in Alaska, taught me how to start avocados from avocado seeds. I have never successfully grown avocados, but I am great with avocado plants. Here, in the searing cold of an icy night they will scorch, and lose all their leaves, but by late spring, we will see signs of life. They shoot up, and my August they are seven feet or more tall.
Our shampoo gingers are reddening – when fully ripe they give a liquid good for washing hair.
We’ve seen lots of Monarch butterflies this year, thanks to AdventureMan’s thriving milkweed:
We like spicy peppers, but the peppers we grow are too hot for us to eat. AdventureMan pickled a batch, and they were still too hot. We grow them anyway; they earn their keep with their beauty. They look like little Christmas ornaments among all the greenery.
I wish you could eat plumbago. It loves this climate, we love the color and plant it everywhere. Now, it is sharing territory with a weed, but such a beautiful weed, we allow it to grow in the back yard. It covers our bridal wreath tree, twines its way up trees and bird feeders and interlaces with the plumbago:
We don’t know where they come from, but after every monsoon rain, we have hoards of rain lilies invading any available surface:
Japanese eggplants grow well, and then they go wonky, crack, the birds poke holes in them, and we clear them out. We’ve had bad luck with all tomatoes, except for small ones, and the birds get to them before they fully ripen. If we plant green onion bottoms, we get more green onions. We haven’t really found a reliable food crop. We have Vietnamese friends with fabulous gardens, and even they have said this summer was not good for backyard gardens. Peppers of all kinds are about as good as it gets. And good old reliable year after year chives.
“But What If I Never See Pomegranate Syrup Again?”
I had a tough weekend. You know, one of those dealing with emotions kind. Exhausting.
I’ve been chasing moths in our pantry for weeks now, and AdventureMan has volunteered to clean out the pantry totally and get to the root of the situation. I am so grateful. He was soon so sorry he volunteered. It’s a mammoth job. I know, I’ve done it before to get rid of our last infestation.
Even that word is a trigger for me. We have a moth infestation translates to I AM A BAD HOUSEKEEPER. I hear my Mother’s judgement. She raised me better. I do the best I can, but . . . I have an INFESTATION. I feel like a failure.
So I listen to my husband huffing and puffing and even cursing now and then, and I don’t feel appreciation as much as I feel guilt.
It gets worse. He wants to have “a talk.” Just the words make my heart pound. But the truth is, he is very kind. He doesn’t blame me for this at all; he just wants to find where these beasties are coming from. We wash every crevice (there are cocoons), inspect every package, put all grains and open-package wares in glass or hard plastic containers, and we crush every sign of the beasties. Yet still they appear.
AnventureMan snuggles up and says “we are buying too much food. We have a pantry full of food, just for the two of us. We eat out often, and cook less. We waste food; we throw out bread that molds, vegetables that shrink, and foods that have expired. We need to buy less food.”
I agree. I know he is right.
“I know it is hard for you to break decades of behavior,” he says, “but we have changed our habits and now we have to change our shopping.”
I agree. I know he is right.
Living on a frugal island in Alaska, then living overseas where we couldn’t get many of the goods Americans take for granted, I lived by two rules:
- If you see it, buy it. You may never see it again. This was true in Alaska, Germany, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. During COVID it was briefly true in the United States, as the supply chain went off the wheel, and toilet paper was absent from the shelves as people bought it up like treasure.
- If you need it, buy a back-up. This explains why I have excessive amounts of peanut butter, mustard, relish, tuna fish, dish detergent and beans. It’s no longer a question of when the boat will come in, it’s also a question of if a hurricane strikes and we are on our own for days, or weeks, or months.
I agree with AdventureMan. I need to buy less; we need to waste less.
Today, with his felafel salad, he started to grab the pomegranate syrup from the pantry and I said “Stop! We have one open in the refrigerator!” I could see it was getting low, and mentally I was thinking “put that on the list, we don’t want to run out of pomegranate syrup.”
And then my rational brain kicked in. How often do I really use pomegranate syrup? For Muhammara, which I make maybe once every three months. For Fesenjan, which I have made once, ever. And today AdventureMan wanted some for his salad. Our bottle in the refrigerator could last a year or more.
And my lizard brain screamed “But what if you never see pomegranate syrup again?”
Booooo! Halloween Comes to the Commissary
In my first year in Pensacola, I bought two big pumpkins for my front porch, hollowed them out, carved expressions on their faces, and put candles inside. They were fabulous – for about two days. After that, large splotches of black mold appeared inside the pumpkins and grew daily. Even before Halloween, they started caving in, and while they looked funny, they were also disgusting, and I had to throw them away. I’ve never carved a pumpkin since.
It’s still more than 6 weeks away, but Halloween seems to show up earlier every year. The commissary started in late August, and now has a full display of pumpkins, even pumpkins I had never imagined.
And my very favorite kind of pumpkin, available only in season at the Hot Spot Barbecue 😊:
Full Suitcase a WOW
I’m researching an upcoming trip and wanted an address for the Unter den Linden Museum in Colmar, a city we visited a few times as a young family. I found a rabbit hole. I found a blog called Full Suitcase.com, and I have been there for a couple of hours, learning all the things I need to see (in a few short hours) in Colmar.
The article I looked up is called 15 BEST THINGS TO DO IN COLMAR, FRANCE (+MAP & TIPS FOR YOUR VISIT); you can visit it for yourself by clicking on the link. I skip around a lot, but this article kept me riveted. She takes or uses the most lush, gorgeous photos I have ever seen. It appears she and her family always visit her destinations on the perfect day.
The article on Colmar covers all the things I want to do, and it rings true to me, based on our own prior visits as a family.
But the section that impelled me to write this article was her section on Alsatian foods. Her food photos are also gorgeous. You feel like you could reach right into the photo and eat the food.
This is a photo of a dish I don’t even like! Choucroute Alsacienne, full of fatty meats and sauerkraut, but I swear, I’d give it a try if it really arrived at my table looking this good:
And here is what gave me a smile. Look at this “Alsatian Crepe”. The translation is “Galette Sarasin.” When I look at it, I see something that looks very much like my favorite street food in Tunis, Tunisia, North Africa, called Brik. It is mad with a very thin batter, not poured, but popped from a hand over and over on a skillet shaped like an overturned wok. Each pop leaves a thin, delicate skim of dough, and enough pops create a thin fragile skin in which a mostly cooked egg, or tuna, or egg and tuna are placed and then quickly wrapped.
So this crepe is some kind of hybrid. Crepes are made with a thin batter, but poured and swirled, not popped by hand by a skillful granny. And it makes me wonder how this thin, fragile pancake-like meal travelled; I’ve eaten it from the Middle East through North Africa to France. But look at the texture – it looks very thin, very fragile!
This is from her About section: “Full Suitcase was founded in 2015 by travel writer Jurga Rubinovaite and is independently run. The site publishes original, first-hand travel guides and is regularly referenced by international media. Our travel advice has been featured by CNN, BBC, and BBC News World Service, and published online and in print by Lonely Planet and Lonely Planet Kids. We also collaborate with selected travel brands and destinations worldwide.”
I love her work. She is really good at what she does. Go visit her!
Intlxpatr Turns Twenty Years!
Welcome to our virtual celebration, old friends and new.
Twenty years ago on this very day, newly arrived in Kuwait, I joined a very lively, edgy and welcoming blogging scene. It was frightening to me, but I had my reasons. There were bloggers I loved reading – I started by commenting on their posts. It was like a salon, topics and views and opinions everywhere, and also some facts.
There is an old story about Martin Luther, the priest who nailed his ideas for a better church on the door, and while the church didn’t change, the community in which he lived was willing to entertain his thoughts, and slowly, things DID change. When asked why he would take the risk – being called heritical could end to death – he said (in German), “I cannot other.”
Stepping into the blogworld was stepping outside a comfort zone and expressing thoughts some might think better left unspoken.
C’mon in. Here There and Everywhere has always worked to be a safe place for exploring new ideas, disruptive thoughts and how to make things better. We’ve got great virtual refreshments and a safe place to vent 😊.
There’s a little bit of Soused Apple Cake left over from yesterday’s Fish Fry.
For those who, like me, have to be careful, we also have some relatively healthy finger foods:
Grab something to drink 😊
I miss our great discussions, and I miss the liveliness of the old blogging scene. I’m not so comfortable with the arguments and name-calling I find in other outlets, nor the need to be wary of those who are monitoring – and who are they, anyway?
Meanwhile, a good friend mentioned recently how political I have gone.
Honestly, in these times, even the apolitical are speaking out. I heard a priest today talk about his anger at the hijacking of the gospel, used for vengence and not for love. I found it very brave, those strong words. If we don’t speak out bravely now, the crushing forces seeking vengence and control create a world most of us won’t want to live in.
I want a government who subsidizes health care for ALL. I want science to recommend vaccines which improve our quality of life and save lives. I want corporations that have standards to meet for air and water and environmental protection. I want our police to protect the weak against the bullying and violence of those who think might makes right. I want to welcome the stranger, creating new textures and patterns in the fabric of our nation. I want every person’s vote to count. I want responsible, accountable, educated leadership, and congressional decisions created by working together to achieve doable compromises.
“Ich kann nicht anders.”
As a post script – this is my 5,900 published post 😊.
Shrimp or Clam Salad
This is the salad we are taking today. As a new bride, my far more exprienced upstairs neighbor, Sarah, was always sharing her best recipes with me. More than fifty years later, I still think of her with gratitude when I use one of her recipes.
Today, I intended to do a clam salad, only to discover I had no clam juice! I did, however, have a big package of frozen jumbo shrimp, so I boiled some water, threw it over the shrimp, strained the water after letting the shrimp cook maybe two minutes, and had a tasty shrimp broth to use for the rice.
Sarah, I am blessing you in my heart; we love this salad as much today as the many years ago you shared it with us.
Shrimp or Clam Rice Salad
3 cups freshly cooked hot rice
3 -4 Tablespoons Mayonnaise
2 Tbls cocktail sauce
2 -3 chopped green onions
1 stalk chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped sweet pickle
12 – 16 oz cooked frozen shrimp
or
2 cans whole clams, drained
Cook rice; add solid ingredients (no need to thaw shrimp if rice is hot). Add sauces and very little pepper to the rice. Stir, cover, and refrigerate until cold. Serve on lettuce. Great hot-weather salad; can be used as a main meal.
Soused Apple Cake for the Fish Fry
It’s a three-day weekend, but I have things I need to do, so I am up at my normal time to bake while the day is still – well, not cool, but not so hot as later in the day. I need to make a salad; I need to bake a cake. We are invited to a fish fry – one of our favorite invitations. The host and his wife fry up a “mess” of fish, really good fish, and the rest of us are allowed to bring sides.
This cake, Soused Apple Cake, is easy, except for remembering to slice the apples a day before and soak the slices overnight in brandy. I could be like those famous cooks who tell you, “use a very good (olive oil, brandy, etc),” but honestly, here it would be a waste of good brandy because the brandy is a supporting actor and will be competing with cinnamon and nutmeg, so just use something you would use for cooking, not drinking.
It is also a very sweet cake. I have tried over the many years I’ve been making it, to make it healthier. It just isn’t the same. Today, I followed the original “can’t stop eating this cake” recipe.
Soused Apple Cake
4 cups sliced apples
brandy
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup salad oil
2 eggs
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
Peel, core, and finely slice apples; put into bowl and cover with brandy. Let sit overnight.
Combine sugar, salad oil and eggs. Set aside. Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Add to oil mixture. Drain apples, mix in, adding chopped pecans. Mix well (it will be thick) and pour into a greased and floured 9”x13” baking dish. Cook at 330°F for 1 hour.
Let stand ten minutes while you prepare topping.
Pecan topping
1 stick butter
2 Tablespoons milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups chopped pecans
Combine butter, milk, and sugar in a saucepan; bring to a boil, then boil for one minute. Add pecans, mix well, and spoon over apple cake while it is still hot.
The original recipe invites you to serve with whipped cream, but I find it to be overkill.
Friday Date at Joe Patti’s
Joe Patti’s is a gem, but not an undiscovered gem. We like Joe Patti’s for a lot of reasons, not least because of their great variety of seafood. It is also our go-to for a quiet Friday evening supper of clam chowder or gumbo, fresh-baked sourdough bread, a smoky tuna dip, and assorted gourmet items we love.
Joe Patti’s has been around for a long time, with a prime location on the Pensacola Bay waterfront, a huge pirate ship and a huge-er American flag facing Main Street road, and a genuine Joe Patti-made fishing boat parked next to the store, great for photos. I’ve never seen that ship leave the dock.
It isn’t just tourists and out-of-town guests who get a kick out of Joe Patti’s. I learned on my first Christmas Eve in Pensacola that getting there at 6:30 a.m. was not early enough; most of Pensacola had representatives already in line to pick up seafood they had pre-ordered for Christmas weeks ago. I knew another Patti outlet, which saved my Christmas. The lesson stuck. I order ahead and pick up before Christmas Eve day.
Joe Patti’s has a lot of touristic memorabilia, a deli, a great selection of spices, herbs, condiments. charduterie items, a dessert section, all kinds of frozen delicacies and – an ice cream and coffee bar. And that is where Adventureman and I head after we pick up our chowder and sourdough bread for supper. My first time at the ice cream bar, several years ago, I tried the raspberry sorbet, and was blown away. It was so tasty. I did not let the taste blind me to the sweetness; I watch my sugar intake. I ordered a small cup, and only one scoop. It’s enough. Joe Patti’s charges for ice cream by the weight – Adventureman and I each get a cup of ice cream and we never spend more than $5. What a deal.
Joe Patti’s also has small sample sizes of ice cream free for children – this isn’t just a spoonful; it’s maybe a couple of ounces of ice cream.
You can pay for your ice cream right at the coffee/ice cream counter, and not have to wait in the lines waiting to pay for fresh fish on ice.
We take our ice cream out to the car, which we park on the dock, and eat it as we look out over the inlet, the fishing boat, and the new land fill being created just a short distance across the water from Joe Patti’s.
Friday, we watched an oil services boat come in – holding our breath that a storm wouldn’t blow up suddenly; the circular thing towers over the boat, making for a top-heavy load. Someone knows how that circular wheel functions, but not us. It’s just a novelty, scrolling across our view, entertaining us as we finish our ice cream. Normally, we only see herons and egrets and assorted small water birds flying in and out.
Always worth a trip:
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