Since it was two hours past the noon lunch traffic, there were only a couple customers left in the restaurant–us. So it was pretty darn quiet. We spoke across the table in a normal indoor voices. 

They came in laughing, jolly, and bounced me in my seat as they banged into the booth behind me. A young male voice said, “Gee, thanks, man. I really appreciate you helping me pick out these clothes. I look good, don’t you think? I really feel good. I do.”

Mm. Now that’s just the kind of thing that might cause a curious person to turn in their seat. But I didn’t. Instead, I bore down on the wells of my daughter’s eyes, hoping to fish a reflection from the pool of her pupils as I wondered just what had made this young man.

“Did the eagle land?” I asked her.

“Huh?”

“Did the goose lay the golden egg?”

“Mom! What in the world are you talk–”

I shook my head to shoosh her, “Never mind.”

She chatted while I stared, searching, searching into her contact lens for just a tiny hint. I could tell I made her uncomfortable when she adjusted her eyebrows at me, shook her head, and shrugged. I knew what she was thinking: What’d I say? Now what’d I do?

I stretched my neck toward her, intentionally, no longer a partner in chit-chat, unable to explain how caught up I had become in that voice behind me–so earnest, excited, grateful. C’mon–you’d have done the same. She chattered, unobservant, while I took long draws off my iced tea and searched her eyes.

“I’ve never felt this good in anything I’ve ever worn,” he was saying. “Do you think anybody’ll notice?”

Hel-lo!

I’m not a clothes person. I slap on jeans and dig for a shirt–my uniform. Most of my wardrobe works great in the garden. How could those bugs and birds and plants recognize me any other way? When have I ever dressed for success? One pair of jeans is pretty much like the next, right? Sure, I know cool threads make a person stand taller. Everybody likes to feel they look good in their clothes. But–what?

I didnt’ get up from the table to go to the ladies room; I didn’t drop my napkin and turn circles to retrieve it.  And I certainly didn’t flip around–I’ve outgrown that habit. But these guys had energized me like a fly to a bug zapper.

They were busy eating, talking, laughing–enthusiastic and loud, discussing how clothes make a person, how lucky he was that his friend took off work that day so they could shop.

We finished our meal. I stood, stretched, and as inconspicuously as I could, slowly turned.

I don’t know what I thought I’d see–I’d never finished that scene out in my head. But sitting in the booth was a young teen, his eyes obscured under a snow-white hat that was a cross between the kind Robin Hood wears and that of a Miami bread baker. It could’ve been the ceiling light hanging over the table that shined down on him, but the hat kinda glowed, reflecting his white vacation-style shirt –the kind guys wear/buy when they visit another country, except he’d tucked it into black checkered pants. Yes. A white belt wrapped around all nineteen inches of his waist and matched his, you guessed it, white shoes–not the athletic type.  A feather of a moustache laid across his young lip like paint-by-number.

He was just a kid, and I know kids love funky hats. Heck, I love funky hats. But, I’m sorry, he looked like a shyster. The mother in me wanted to holler, “Do you know the first time you reach for your hat, YOU’RE GONNA HAVE FINGER PRINTS ALL OVER IT? BEGINNING TODAY? He couldn’t know how badly I wanted to wipe that smear off his young lip with my spitted-finger and send him to the bathroom to wash.

But I am shamed. How is his coolness any different than when I had that favorite robe? the quilted one I wouldn’t throw away? the one I’d slashed off at the knees? the same one I finally had to hold together with safety pins because my mother didn’t sew–even buttons–so why would she replace a zipper? when I seemed happy and well adjusted, enough?

And how about when I ironed my straight hair straighter? That’s a sight to behold–laying your hair across an ironing board while ramming a steaming hot iron toward your face. My hair would be so straight the only part sticking out was my ears, which never tucked into any hair style. And didn’t I cut my jeans off into shorts, like everybody, which had to be washed until the unhemed leg parts fell into longs strings? It was important to get that right.

How’s this guy’s look any different than wardrobes from the 70′s –yup, our guys wore white belts, white shoes, and white polyester slacks. And not only did their pockets show through, but when they’d sweat in the Texas heat, or it poured rain, their underwear did too.

As a parent, I didn’t lie to my kids when they began to dress themselves and asked, How’s this look? They didn’t always like the answer, but they could count on the truth, even if it was my truth, which didn’t mean they’d go back to their room to change. Favorite is favorite, even if it’s the favorite plaid shirt mingled with fav-tri-colored, ripped camouflage pants, or best purple socks with fav-orange and green trick ‘r treat shorts. I had to remind myself, Hey, didn’t I buy ‘em?

I can’t wait until my grandkids get old enough to take hat shopping. I can’t wait until they ask, MiMi–how do I look?

Our outdoor grill served us well during these uncomfortable days. I’ve avoided turning on the oven–the air conditioner works hard enough. But that all  changed yesterday when I found three little Banquet Pot Pies in the freezer.

Lucky, two were beef pies. Oh, you remember, James doesn’t like chicken. Nobody’s gonna throw this guy under the chicken bus. Beef. Pork. Beef. Pork. There will be none of those legs and wings touching his plate–where’s the other white meat?

Aw, okay, he will eat it if, 1) I don’t tell him ahead of time what he’s eating for supper, and 2) it only shows up once every three months, and 3) he’s a real hungry hombre. Pork, Beef–How easy is that?

And how easy is this: Tear open box, remove pies, place on cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes. There’s a microwave version, but I like them oven-baked.

I’ve bought lots of brands of pot pies, some pricy enough that I thought, maybe they’re the best. Not so. I keep coming back to Banquet Pot Pies with their top crust and bottom. I keep a few for staple stand-by’s in my freezer for occasions, like last night, when I don’t want to cook but the time has come for something hot.

(BTW, if you’re wondering, this is purely my opinion and not any kind of advertisement for Banquet food products.)

I think James’ dislike of chicken stems from when he was a kid–doesn’t everything stem from being a kid? From when a mean, angry, unnamed rooster would sit waiting, watchful over his territory–a territory that ran the distance of a football field from the school bus stop all the way down a dirt road sealed off between two barbed wire fences before it reached the  house.

That rooster waited for James and his brother to step off the bus, start down that road. He’d scratch the dirt, squat with his red head stretched forward, and fly toward them in a flurry of feathers. Home from school became a daily adventure of terror–the squawking, the gloating, the hustle. It never ended good.

That mean-spirited bird would jump on their backs like a five-pound mosquito, to dig his sharp spurs into their sweaty little bodies of flaring arms and legs. Until, that is, he met the end of his daddy’s pointy boot. Man, could that rooster fly! All the kids on the school bus cheered.

But daddy’s boot wasn’t always available, and one day that stringy bird ended up the star of the dinner table. Ah, chickens, childhood. The memories–he’s still pretty fast when he needs to be. 

Anyway, I presented James his beef pies and a salad unmarked by cucumbers, tomatoes, onions or parsley, while I sat down to a marvelous chicken pot pie served beside my lavish salad smothered  in heart-attack bleu cheese dressing. I do love chicken.

I also love seafood. I love Italian, Asian, Japanese and Indian foods. You get the idea–they’re the kinds of food I go for when I’m out with friends. I’d never, ever, ever try to drag him into an Indian restaurant, for instance. Phew on that–I like to enjoy my meal. I hope I always have this rock solid stomach that guides me into those superb grocery stores where women smash together Sushi right there in front of me…eel, shrimp, tuna. It all tastes like wasabi anyway.

So now you know, James is pretty easy to please as long as it’s beef or pork. But for the beef pot pie, he even told me he liked it, and let’s do it again! You can believe it.

I’m drawn to my garden like a kid to mud. It’s constant work, sometimes back-bending. Still, it’s pleasurable.  I pamper the little seedlings through early spring. From humble, innocent beginnings, we bond, my plants and I–plants that have to be protected from frost, armies of caterpillars, slugs, and beetles throughout their growing months. I nurture my little buddies until I’m satisfied the only way they can go is up.

If you just got your nails done, you probably won’t be canning vegetables. You ought to see my fingers after pickling 22 pints of sweet beets. If you don’t get up at by six in the morning, you’re not going to spend much time in a garden. I think it’s in my DNA. And that’s why I can. Because I can!

I threw some thick-cut peppered bacon on to sear, then started pulling things out of the refrigerator. That’s when the onion sandwich you made yesterday waved in my head, yoo-hoo! I grabbed that fresh horseradish, sliced onion ringlets and a tomato. I pulled out some yogurt, a green apple, and cottage cheese. Oh, and three eggs.

Afternoon breakfasts are definitely never boring. James had his eggs and bacon. But for some freshness, I sliced a green apple for him to dip in his yogurt or pile together on rye toast. I had an egg and bacon, but then side-dressed my plate with cottage cheese and a tomato/onion sandwich on rye bread, which I slathered with horseradish.

All because of you.

Cutlets (cube steaks) are single-serving sized tenderized cuts of meat that can be pan-fried quickly, and they’ll be on the table tonight. I’ll dredge them in a small amount of flour, then turn them in a little olive oil until they’re brown and cooked through. Searing them like that will give me the pan juices I want for the wonderful gravy it makes. Of course, I’ll have to mash some potatoes for this meal.

These are the pan drippings left once the meat is removed–what I want stuck to the bottom of the pan after the cutlets are set aside. There is very little oil here, so don’t think you have to have grease to succeed. Today’s new, slick cookware doesn’t brown to the bottom of the pan good enough for me–great for cleanup, but not so for making my gravy. I love my grandmother’s old Griswold. From the bottom of the pan come the makings for brown gravy.

Quick-fried cutlets, floured or not, make a heck of a sandwich if you happen to have any left over. Build it like a hamburger,  but call it what it is–a steak burger. I always think I’ll have extra cutlets left for steak burgers the next day, but usually don’t. That’s a sure sign of goodness, though. Right?

If I wanted smothered cutlets, I’d pan-fry the flour-coated pieces like above, then when they’re cooked through, add enough water to barely cover the meat, maybe throw in some mushrooms, then let it cook another 30 minutes under a lid; let the pan make its own gravy. The flour coating rolls off the cutlets, poof! you’ve got gravy.  Don’t over-do the water, or you won’t have the good meat flavor. Cutlets are usually most tender cooked this way, floating in their own sauce.

I could dip the cutlets in an egg/milk mixture, roll them in flour, then back and forth again, if I wanted chicken-fried steak. Egg/milk/flour, double dredging, makes a thicker coating, and to do justice, I’d have to deep-fry them. Delicious, but I don’t use that much oil any more, because as long as I’m deep-frying, I’d have to pop in a side of french fries. What a meal.  (With children in mind, slice the cutlets into strips before you fry them, and you’ve got steak fingers–kids might be more willing if they can pick them up and munch.)

Don’t forget, you can use pork cutlets the same way.

Auctioneers recognize certain people coming through the door. We have a glint in our eye that causes them to run to the back room and scoop up all the stuff nobody bid on in a previous sale. Okay, it’s that caught up in the moment thing.  One auctioneer used to send me notices of upcoming events, but it just occurred to me I haven’t heard from him in quite some time–like ten years. Did I fall from favor? Or perhaps he felt I might still be busy with the four grocery carts of wallpaper he sold me, which I gleefully loaded one roll after another into my truck, visualizing the potential of redecorating my entire house for $25.00. That’s back when the world was stuck on wallpaper.

The main bathroom being my first target, I ran everybody out of the house so I could concentrate on my project. In the first panel, I noticed mis-prints and uneven stamping of the pattern. I unfurled another roll–the same.  (Why don’t we throw it in the auction and get rid of the stuff?) I ripped it down and started again, persevering. But each roll I found slightly off. Wall paper crisscrossed the floor like linoleum so that I could cut out sections of weeping dye, or realign vertical stripes. I’m happy to report that you have to really study the wall to find the blurry spots.  One-of-a-kind.  :-)

I thought that would be the end of my wallpaper career with only 248 rolls left, until my mother-in-law asked me to paper a section in her house. I found enough of one pattern to do that, and it turned out nice. I found several rolls of another almost-white paper with little, teeny birds flying around in the background to give a friend who papered her kitchen just before it went on the market. Okay, good, again. The pheasants over brazen-red became my laundry room design, a small room that I could close off in an emergency.

Wallpaper gets overdone in a house real fast. My family began to use it for BB target practice–plucking roosters off their perch, or blasting flower pedals with holes. We made wallpaper cut-outs and pasted or glued them to poster boards to enhance school projects, decorated shoeboxes, and lined shelves–anything to use it up. I parked the remaining 219 rolls on the top rack in the shop where it remained for many years, until somebody noticed spiders had taken up residence. One day it left–just disappeared, and nobody missed it. I didn’t even ask.

How’s that different then when my mother bought half a truckload of gift wrap for $12. It was all pretty crummy and nobody wanted to wrap their gifts in any of it except the red paper with miniature white hearts–hearts being dearly loved. It worked, not just on Valentine’s, but Mother’s Day, Secretary’s Day (though that could send a wrong message), best-friends-forever day, birthdays, and here’s-a-box-of-cookies day. Heart gift wrap make great tooth fairy boxes–you get the picture–any reason or occasion.

One time she used a roll of awful green gift wrap for a picnic tablecloth. Clever! we thought, until she peeled it up and the water and heat had caused the dye to bleed through onto the wood table, leaving it a remarkable blue-green, which actually turned out okay because it looked better than before.

Mom ridded our home of armfuls of gift wrap in many ways, mostly passing them out to anybody who knocked on the door. One time she put together sets of all the different wrapping paper, lashed them together with colorful twine and gave the sets for a community auction so people could buy them! The heart-paper gone, and none of the other awful paper used, somebody began sneaking a few rolls at a time out to the trash can, until the gift wrap, poof! just disappeared.  She never asked.

But it’s the auction when I bought twenty-two pair of stainless steel curved scissors that has followed me through the years. Curved scissors (you guessed it) cut circles. My bid picked up all of them with one swift sweep on the cheap, cheap, cheap. That’s before anybody heard of thinking outside the circle, or is it painting outside… Hm.

Why would anybody need curved scissors, you ask? If you figure it out, I’ve got just the thing for you. Do curved scissors even work? All too well. I cut some canvas for a lawn chair, and, yikes! Have you ever seen a straight line gone bad?

Okay, okay, give me some credit. I bid on the lot of scissors just to get the single pair of regular, straight scissors in the bunch. Good scissors can be expensive, and, for them, I became the proud owner of all, for $2.00. I’ve taken a lot of heat over those curved scissors, trying to explain them over the years to anybody who opened that drawer. But when I have to cut a circle, I’m ready and you’re not.

But don’t be scared–hollandaise sauce is just a fancy name for white gravy, which I’ll flavor with the last sprinkles of ham, then create layers like this: 1) toasted bread (English muffin) 2) fried egg (poached) set on top of the (muffin) toast, 3) white gravy (hollandaise sauce) spooned on top. And it took only minutes.

Here’s the white gravy/hollandaise sauce part. I made only enough for two, so you’ll have to increase the recipe according to the chairs at your table: Melt 2 T butter in a sauce pan. Stir in about 3 T flour.

Blend the flour into the butter. It will look tacky at first, but it will smooth out as you add the milk and stir.

Start adding your milk. It took about 1/2 cup for the small amount I made. As you stir and cook over medium heat, it will thicken into a nice sauce.   

When you have your gravy the consistency you want, i.e., using more or less milk,  throw in that ham (or bacon, or sausage, or chopped zucchini, if you like). And that’s all there is to it! Layer it over your muffin/toast/egg and know THIS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANY MORE.

I’d love to show you what this looked like, but all I got was the back of a head hanging over his plate . . .happy man.

I took a small package of chicken wings out of the freezer, opened them and plopped them, still frozen, directly into a stock-pot half filled with water. I like to use chicken wings because the meat is tender and moist, but you can use whatever pieces you like best. When my chicken is falling off the bone, I take the wings out and let them cool so I can rub the skin off (this is the part my dogs love) and separate the meat from the bones; then toss the meat back into the stock pot and start adding to your soup. 

Today I used a couple cloves of garlic, chopped asparagus from my garden, green onions out of the garden, shredded kale (yup, from the garden) spinach (garden).  If I had it, I could’ve used celery too. I like carrots in there, although too many carrots can change the flavor because they’re actually pretty strong .

Use what your family likes to enrich your stock. And don’t forget salt–God put all that salt in water from one coast to another, so He must have wanted us to absorb some, right? Here’s a hint to make your chicken soup more enchanting: sprinkle in a few dashes of turmeric, a spice that has some curry in it, which gives it not just a nice flavor but some color–because chicken soup can look like dishwater. Don’t have turmeric? Use a couple drops of yellow food color to make your soup sparkle. Because, like my friend Charlotte likes to say, “Honey, if you can’t cook, at least make it look good.” Right on, Charlotte!

 Today’s chicken soup is floating with leafy greens. Nope, the kale doesn’t taste like cabbage. No, there’s not too much onion in my soup. Its rich, thin stock is wired together with chicken and healthy with wilted greens. If you prefer a cream soup, then thicken it with corn starch dissolved in a cup of water, but let the corn starch cook into it or you’ll taste it-boo~boo. You can pour half and half into it if you have it on hand.

Clear, brothy soup or cream soup, it’s good stuff, and worth the wait.  Cut some french bread, or open a sleeve of crackers to munch down alongside your bowl. Don’t forget to take left-over soup to work with you. When you heat it up in the microwave, your co-workers will be breathing it in, checking it out.

This dinner suggestion will be short: make individual thick, roundish patties with your burger-meat, wrap a single slice of uncooked bacon around each–the bacon stretches easily to fit, then slightly flatten each of them, securing the bacon with a toothpick.

I either pan-fry them or put them on the grill. For variation, I might make brown gravy out of the pan juices, or mushroom gravy to top the meat, but it’s not necessary. I did sautéed fresh mushrooms, which I spooned over each pattie.

I served my mock tenderloin (tee-hee) alongside baked potatoes, and a fresh garden salad. Whoa, I mean lettuce and spinach right out of my garden! Okay, I didn’t grow the purple cabbage–it’s still out there growing.

I encourage everybody to raise your own lettuce, spinach, herbs–plant them in a row right beside the pretty little flowers–lettuce makes quite a hedge. Jut don’t try growing greens in the summer–they won’t take the heat. Gardening–that’s another story.