Autumn Plum Torte
We are watching the farmer’s markets for the first of the Italian plums, those elongated plums that show up around this time of the year. We are getting eager for Pflaumekuchen, or Autumn Plum Torte.
It’s really more like a pie. And I hate to tell you how easy it is to make.
This is my mother’s recipe:
Autumn Plum Torte (Pflaumekuchen)
1/4 Cup Butter
1 T Sugar
1/4 t. salt
2 eggs
1 c sifted flour
10 – 12 purple prune plums
1 c sugar
1 T Flour
Dash nutmeg and cinnamon
1/2 cup half and half
1. Cream butter and sugar, add salt and 1 egg yolk. Blend well, add 1 cup flour, mix well.
2. Press mix into bottom of greased 8” pie pan.
3. Cut plums in half or quarters; place cut side up on top of mix. It is pretty if you make a kind of circular pattern out from the center.
4. Combine sugar, 1 T flour and spices. Sprinkle over plums.
5. Beat 1 egg and 1 white, add half and half, pour over top.
6. Bake at 425 for ten minutes, then turn down to 350 for 40 – 45 minutes, until custard sets and plums are cooked.
The smell as it is cooking is divine. You can serve it in wedges, warm or cold.
You can also double this, and make it in a 9 x 14 pan, to serve to larger groups. It goes FAST!
Boasting of Wickedness: Psalm 52
From today’s Lectionary
52 Quid gloriaris?
1 You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness *
against the godly all day long?
2 You plot ruin;
your tongue is like a sharpened razor, *
O worker of deception.
3 You love evil more than good *
and lying more than speaking the truth.
4 You love all words that hurt, *
O you deceitful tongue.
5 Oh, that God would demolish you utterly, *
topple you, and snatch you from your dwelling,
and root you out of the land of the living!
6 The righteous shall see and tremble, *
and they shall laugh at him, saying,
7 “This is the one who did not take God for a refuge, *
but trusted in great wealth
and relied upon wickedness.”
8 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; *
I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
9 I will give you thanks for what you have done *
and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence
of the godly.
HIRAM HISANORI KANO
In today’s Lectionary, we celebrate Hiram Hisanori Kano, an enormously capable and talented man who used his talents to the glory of God. We pray the following in his memory:
Almighty God who has reconciled the world to yourself through Christ: Entrust to your church the ministry of reconciliation as you did to your servant Hiram Hisanori Kano, and raise up ambassadors for Christ to proclaim your love and peace wherever conflict and hatred divide; through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever.
PRIEST, 24 OCT. 1988
The Rev. Hiram Hisanori Kano (1889-1986), an Episcopal priest known by some as the “Saint of Nebraska and Colorado,” was an agricultural missionary among Japanese Americans in western Nebraska and a pastor to American soldiers imprisoned for having been AWOL while he himself was a prisoner during the Japanese internment of WWII. Churches in the Dioceses of Nebraska and Colorado observe a Saint’s day for Fr. Kano annually.
Fr. Kano, who was from a well-known family in Tokyo, received a Master’s degree in agriculture from the University of Nebraska. In the early 1920’s, Bishop George Allen Beecher of the Missionary District of Western Nebraska discerned in farmer and educator Kano, the evangelist he was seeking to call Nebraska’s Japanese to be God’s people. A lay missionary first, Kano would become Deacon Kano in 1928 and Fr. Kano in 1936. By the spring of 1934 there were 250 baptized and 50 confirmed through Fr. Kano’s ministry.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Fr. Kano had just celebrated the Eucharist at Episcopal Church of Our Savior in North Platte, Nebraska, 180 miles from his wife and children at their Scottsbluff home. On that morning he was arrested by the local police and not allowed to notify his family of his detention, but was sent to the district attorney in Omaha. He heard the terrible news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war on Japan on the police car radio. Because his family in Japan had connections with the Japanese government, and he was so personally influential with the Japanese Americans as both a minister and a teacher of agriculture, he was rated “Class A – the most potentially dangerous of Japanese Americans.” He was the only Japanese of the 5,000 living in Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming to receive this rating and to be interned.
Despite his own defense and pleas from his bishop who knew Fr. Kano to be a dedicated Christian and loyal to his adopted country, he spent the next two years in internment camps. He spent time in four different states, always working to help the other internees and those imprisoned AWOL soldiers. He served as dean of a school for the internees and taught many courses in Agricultural Study and English, and he preached the gospel.
After the war, it was determined that Fr. Kano should not return to his ministry in Nebraska. He had been detained longer than most, and it was feared that folks in Nebraska would be unaware of his loyalty to the U.S. and only remember inflammatory headlines such as, “Alien Pastor Arrested by FBI … Admits Writing to Tokyo.” He was sent to an Episcopal Seminary in Wisconsin where he earned both Bachelors and Masters of Divinity degrees. He returned to Nebraska and his ministry in 1946.
Fr. Kano and Mrs. Kano earned their citizenship soon after the law permitted it in 1952, and then began teaching citizenship classes so that between 1953 and 1955, nearly 100 percent of the Nebraska Japanese became citizens. Forty years after WWII, when the U.S. government acknowledged that Japanese Americans had been wronged by the internments and offered to pay reparations, Fr. Kano told his bishop, “I don’t want the money. God just used that as another opportunity for me to preach the gospel.”
— From General Convention 2012
Lectionary Gospel for Thanksgiving
Today’s New Testament reading in the church Lectionary should give us all pause, as we celebrate Thanksgiving. No, being Episcopalian is not all “feel-good” religion.
James 4:13-5:6
13 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’14Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.15Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ 16As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
5Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure*for the last days. 4Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
Are You Chinese?
I always like to see where my visitors are coming from. Lately, I’ve had a surge in visitors from Hong Kong/ SAR / China.
Usually, most of my visitors are from the USA, Canada and Kuwait. If you are Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese or SAR, could you give me a clue as to what has drawn your attention to this blog? I’m just curious.
In the Wake of the Vikings: Unexpected At Sea Day Instead of Lerwick
Today was actually a bonus for me. We were supposed to land in Lerwick, Scotland, and AdventureMan had been really pumped. He’s watched a mystery series set in the Shetlands, and has read up on some of the things we were going to see. The plan for the day was to be OK’d by British immigration to visit at 0700, all of us lining up through the Chef’s Kitchen, and then our trip would leave to visit ancient civilizations of the Shetlands.
As we stood in line, a rumor spread that the days outings were cancelled. Within a few minutes the captain made an announcement that with the angry seas, he and the pilot had decided it was too dangerous to take us into port and we would have an extra sea day en route to our next stop, the Faroe Islands and Torshavn.
Even AdventureMan was glad. It was really rainy and windy, and he needs another day of sauna and sleep to help him get rid of his terrible cough.
The photos I took ARE in color! The day was just a black and white day!
So we hit the spa at nine, when it opened, and with the pitching and yawing and rolling of the ship, the waters of the pool bubbled and rolled and swished, and it was very hot and great fun. We stayed there about an hour, visiting the snow room and the steam room and the sauna between romps in the pool. Around ten, more people started coming, so we vacated the area. I had a lecture on Viking history in the Shetlands I wanted to attend, and AdventureMan started sleeping.
For me, it was a chance to catch up with the blog. On the busy days, it’s so easy NOT to blog, so this day was a gift, a day I could upload my photos, choose some photos, put them in the blog, and write up the days, as best I could remember them.
AdventureMan went to a lecture on German wolf packs interrupting trade in WWII, and then came back and slept some more.
In the hallways are some very green and very unsteady people, who are more affected by the motion of the water than I am. I have been seasick, but only once, when it was hot and I felt like I needed fresh air. Once I got into the fresh air, I was OK. Mostly, motions sickness doesn’t affect me. One woman at the foot of a stairway was standing stock-still, looking petrified. I am guessing she was afraid she was going to throw up and didn’t want to be embarrassed. We’ve all been in similar situations, and the ship was full of similar situations today.
Our waiter told us a lot of the new crew are sick, and in bed resting; those who are not affected are taking on extra chores. Love that teamwork.
In the Wake of the Vikings Aboard the Viking Sky
Boarding the Viking Sky is a piece of cake. There is a line, but with several stations to check you in, it goes quickly. We go straight to our stateroom; we know exactly where it is. It looks . . . almost exactly as the last time we stayed in it. But actually, we have never stayed in it, we stayed in the exact same room when we did Empires of the Mediterranean on the Viking Star. The boats are very similarly built, but have some differences in art work, and perhaps some changes to improve functionality in design. Some little things look different, but I am not sure whether they really are different, or maybe I am remembering wrongly.
View from the Explorer’s Lounge aboard the Viking Sky: a double rainbow!
And blue skies, even just for a moment!
While I am unpacking and putting things away, AdventureMan goes to the sauna to help clear his head. He has a wicked bad cold. I know just where everything goes. I love this ship, and I love the familiarity.
Wake of the Vikings: Oslo City Tour and Embarkation
Here is what I so admire about Viking Ocean Cruises and their associates who have to deal with my demographic – they put up with us. The Viking company must be making a fortune, primarily on U.S. citizens, but also British, Canadian and Australians who travel. Viking Ocean ships are adult only, there are no casinos, no photographers, no annoyances, and almost everything is included. I don’t mind at all if they make a fortune, what I love about their model is that it seems to be mostly win-win-win. They do everything in their power to satisfy their customer, and they give great value for the money.
They are dealing with a group of spoiled big children, and I say that knowing I can be one of them. We are people who want what we pay for, and don’t hesitate to make a fuss if we think something could be better. The Viking staff is a good parent to the needy, whining, tired, confused and frustrated children we become when confronted with the strange, challenging or new situations.
I love how they treat their staff. When we ask how they came to Viking, most have been with other cruise lines. Our cabin steward, Hilda, told us on Carnival she had many more rooms and often four people in each cabin. She said “I work hard for Viking, and it is like a vacation.” She also mentioned, as do others, that Viking pays for her uniforms and provides the staff with free wi-fi so they can stay in touch with their families. What a very kind, very smart thing to do! To comfort your employees, to provide them with peace of mind, and to earn their loyalty through kindness. This is so civilized. They also offer opportunities for advancement.
What we marvel at is that they hire employees from many different nationalities, and teach a kind of team approach to customer service. One wine steward today told us he was handling more than one location because several of the staff are seasick (we have hit some heavy rolling) but that he can handle it, so he does. I’ve seen the senior staff bus a table where dishes have been left, without making a big deal about it. I am betting that they have a rule “If you see something that needs to be done, do it, don’t just tell someone else that it needs doing.” I am betting that, because that is what I see, and I like it. I see the employees looking out after one another, and that is a remarkable achievement.
Before we can board the ship, we have to take a tour of Oslo. Do I sound grumpy? Viking thinks through all the details, and has implemented wonderful procedures, but sometimes I am just tired of being funneled, and like a spoiled baby, I just want to rest, or sleep. But I am compliant, I board the bus, I tour the sites. I can’t really tell you much about what I saw because my attitude got in my way. Here are some photos:
This is like a King’s hall, called the Rosenkrantz, which cracks me up because I’m sure it has some meaning but I think it sounds funny.
This was a king’s residence, and can now be hired for social events.
I do know this one, it is the Starbucks building, built in the old city meat market.
A great old three masted sailing ship, used to train military and other sailors.
The kind of housing Norway used to have, dense, and all white.
410-844-5516 Unsafe Caller
I’ve grown cautious; I do not answer a phone number any longer that I do not recognize. People who know me are good about leaving a message; I am good at returning those calls.
Today I got a call from 410-844-5516. I checked it on my computer; several people have listed it as an “unsafe caller.”
We have little power against intrusions on my privacy, but it makes me feel good to publish this number reported as unsafe.
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