I was in the laundry folding towels (the laundry is on the other side of my garden wall so that the steamy whooshings from the dryer vent moisten the air around my orchids) when I heard Cakes barking barking BARKING BARKING. Cakes barks at other dogs and bicycles when we're on a walk, but she's well-behaved at home and is silent when I leave her. So I couldn't imagine what all this noise was about--surely not my having left her alone in the garden for three minutes.
Finally, her barking was so LOUD AND URGENT--full-throated, insistent--that I left the laundry (I later discovered a bath towel half-folded in my hands) and went around to my garden gate.
"What on earth, Cakes?" I said to her as I opened the gate. She was looking up to the top of the garden wall--the wall facing the meadow with the walnut trees--barking barking BARKING! I followed the line of her nose and it landed on AN ENORMOUS DARK-FEATHERED BIRD... ENORMOUS! Small head, huge body, lonnng tail.
OHMYGOSHESANDGOLLIES it was a TURKEY! At least, I thought it was a turkey, having only seen a handful of wild turkeys along the road in New England.
The bird stood on the top of the wall almost motionless, without a care in the world (also without much of a brain, I'm told). Cakes kept barking so hard I was amazed--the bird was much bigger than she was. Then it struck me that I wasn't SURE it was a turkey, it could have been a bird of prey, so I picked up the frantic little dog and brought her indoors. Poor child was shaking like a leaf, coughing and trembling...
I gave Cakes great praise, a hug and a cookie, then ran for my bird book, and sure enough, there it was, a female wild turkey. When I went back outside, she was gone.
And at that moment, the Lakers won!
Such is life doing laundry in Ojai...
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Professor's 4-Ingredient Supper
My cherished brilliant gifted beguiling young friend, Christopher Baswell (Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University and Anne Whitney Olin Professor of English, Barnard College), is in process of restoring a venerable two-story house up the Hudson which he calls Big Brick. A dazzling cook, Chris just read my entry about dodging about in my kitchen and emailed the following (which I quote with his permission):
"My own version of cook-simple-for-me-alone was this weekend. I got to the house very late (I love driving up late at night when the traffic has thinned) and without going to the grocery. The one thing my immediate area lacks is a decent grocery. It's either something called Price Chopper or a 40-minute drive.
"Anyway, next afternoon I faced a fridge with (among other leftovers of the family visit) a pint container of crumbled Feta cheese and two large aging portobello mushrooms. Oh and a big sweet onion and some whole wheat tube pasta in the pantry. So chopped a quarter of the onion, softened in olive oil while I chopped the aging mushrooms; softened them in same little frying pan, covered mostly so their liquid would be there to finish the pasta. Branch of thyme from the pot garden outside and a grind of pepper. Pasta cooked barely al dente, with a dip of its liquid in the sauce, then drained and dumped back into its pot to finish with the sauce liquid. Off the heat and tossed with a generous handful of the feta. NO SALT since the feta so salty on its own. It came together beautifully & I will repeat for guests. Takes no time at all. Do you know that 3 ingredients cook book? I was trying to emulate that. I guess my dish had 4."
I'd add a salutary word or two but it's suppertime and the temperature has gone down from the high 80s to the 70s and Cakes and I are off to the market to fetch portobello mushrooms, feta, and some whole wheat pasta, yummmmm...
"My own version of cook-simple-for-me-alone was this weekend. I got to the house very late (I love driving up late at night when the traffic has thinned) and without going to the grocery. The one thing my immediate area lacks is a decent grocery. It's either something called Price Chopper or a 40-minute drive.
"Anyway, next afternoon I faced a fridge with (among other leftovers of the family visit) a pint container of crumbled Feta cheese and two large aging portobello mushrooms. Oh and a big sweet onion and some whole wheat tube pasta in the pantry. So chopped a quarter of the onion, softened in olive oil while I chopped the aging mushrooms; softened them in same little frying pan, covered mostly so their liquid would be there to finish the pasta. Branch of thyme from the pot garden outside and a grind of pepper. Pasta cooked barely al dente, with a dip of its liquid in the sauce, then drained and dumped back into its pot to finish with the sauce liquid. Off the heat and tossed with a generous handful of the feta. NO SALT since the feta so salty on its own. It came together beautifully & I will repeat for guests. Takes no time at all. Do you know that 3 ingredients cook book? I was trying to emulate that. I guess my dish had 4."
I'd add a salutary word or two but it's suppertime and the temperature has gone down from the high 80s to the 70s and Cakes and I are off to the market to fetch portobello mushrooms, feta, and some whole wheat pasta, yummmmm...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
What I Learned In My Apartment When I Moved Out of It
Gosh, it's June already. My friend Susan has already made batches of strawberry jam. And here I haven't had a thing to say since April.
Well, I've had stuff to say, but it's largely been mutterings to myself while I've been in process of sorting...packing...schlepping...unpacking... positioning...giving away...you know the moving drill.
I've finally completed the move from my wonderful New-York-style apartment in Los Angeles to an extraordinary casita up the coast. Me and Cakes.
Yesterday was our last day in the apartment. I'd been there four years, and my last few days I made some discoveries that charmed me. You might as well find things that charm you when you work for three days (the cleaning lady twice failed to show) in hopes of getting your hefty security deposit back.
First discovery was when cleaning the stove top, I couldn't figure out how to get under the top...then with a little tug, the whole damn thing lifted up and I could clean under the burners! Amazing.
Next I discovered that if you spray oven cleaner on 4-year-old muck and leave it for two days, the muck wipes right off. Also amazing.
Then I learned (from the manager) that you're supposed to keep dog fur and city grit off the tops of the baseboard molding. Never ever noticed, never ever cleaned there. Big shock. Also a shock to find baseboard molding in places I never saw (behind the day bed, behind the magazine rack).
Speaking of magazines, though, when I was recycling two years of "New Yorkers," as I heaped the last bunch into the bin, I heard a little clink. I looked down and there was the little gold Celtic ring my husband bought me in Edinburgh castle. I'd been missing it for months, hadn't a clue where it had got to. It was nestled in the "New Yorkers." So that was a happy beginning to one of the cleaning days.
Next I discovered something called Magic Eraser. My granddaughter who was helping that afternoon said she already knew about it. She picked up a ballpoint pen and drew a squiggle on a kitchen drawer--I gasped--then with a sweep of her arm she wiped it off with the spongy white pad. Where on earth has that invention been all my life? Maybe it's new.
Next I learned about 409. In the cleaning aisle at Ralph's, I couldn't decide which cleaner to buy--alas, I already knew that if it said, "Natural" in the title, it didn't work. Wowzer. 409 is as amazing as Magic Erasers.
Oh, and at the cleaning aisle I unearthed a tool that looks as though it should be sold on late night television: it's still in the car (haven't had the strength to unload the last boxes) and I forget its name, but its a battery-driven brush (it says "sonic" in the name but I doubt it's sonic--it's just strong) with various brush-heads you can twist in or out of the base, and it cleans like a son of a gun. Some gummy orange deposit at the bottom of the fridge--stuck stuck stuck hard hard hard--with a spritz of 409 and a concerted whirling of the cleaning brush--came off beautifully. One of the brush heads is tapered to a point so you can whiz out the icky years-old (in my case, surely not in yours) deposit around the base of faucets. Or in the crevices of the panel of the dishwasher (why do designers add so many nooks and crannies that have no function but you've got to get the gunk out of them? most annoying). As I say, the brush is typical of the gizmos demonstrated in the middle of the night on television, but this is the real deal.
Next I was amazed to find loose change all over the place...a penny here (some were heads up, good luck), a quarter or two there (probably fell out of my pocket on the way to the laundry room), a few errant dimes and nickles. Why was there so much money slopped around?
What else did I learn? Well, for the past year the paper guest towels in the bathroom had the cartoonish drawing of a woman in a 40's outfit--high heels, fluffy white apron, bright red lipstick--leaning over a tub with a rag and the logo said, "A clean house is the sign of a wasted life."
My apartment is clean now. But I'm no longer in it. As I say, I was gratified discovering magic erasers and powerful solutions and ingenious tools and how my apartment should have looked the past four years.
But I'm glad I didn't waste more than a few days of my life in the process...
Well, I've had stuff to say, but it's largely been mutterings to myself while I've been in process of sorting...packing...schlepping...unpacking... positioning...giving away...you know the moving drill.
I've finally completed the move from my wonderful New-York-style apartment in Los Angeles to an extraordinary casita up the coast. Me and Cakes.
Yesterday was our last day in the apartment. I'd been there four years, and my last few days I made some discoveries that charmed me. You might as well find things that charm you when you work for three days (the cleaning lady twice failed to show) in hopes of getting your hefty security deposit back.
First discovery was when cleaning the stove top, I couldn't figure out how to get under the top...then with a little tug, the whole damn thing lifted up and I could clean under the burners! Amazing.
Next I discovered that if you spray oven cleaner on 4-year-old muck and leave it for two days, the muck wipes right off. Also amazing.
Then I learned (from the manager) that you're supposed to keep dog fur and city grit off the tops of the baseboard molding. Never ever noticed, never ever cleaned there. Big shock. Also a shock to find baseboard molding in places I never saw (behind the day bed, behind the magazine rack).
Speaking of magazines, though, when I was recycling two years of "New Yorkers," as I heaped the last bunch into the bin, I heard a little clink. I looked down and there was the little gold Celtic ring my husband bought me in Edinburgh castle. I'd been missing it for months, hadn't a clue where it had got to. It was nestled in the "New Yorkers." So that was a happy beginning to one of the cleaning days.
Next I discovered something called Magic Eraser. My granddaughter who was helping that afternoon said she already knew about it. She picked up a ballpoint pen and drew a squiggle on a kitchen drawer--I gasped--then with a sweep of her arm she wiped it off with the spongy white pad. Where on earth has that invention been all my life? Maybe it's new.
Next I learned about 409. In the cleaning aisle at Ralph's, I couldn't decide which cleaner to buy--alas, I already knew that if it said, "Natural" in the title, it didn't work. Wowzer. 409 is as amazing as Magic Erasers.
Oh, and at the cleaning aisle I unearthed a tool that looks as though it should be sold on late night television: it's still in the car (haven't had the strength to unload the last boxes) and I forget its name, but its a battery-driven brush (it says "sonic" in the name but I doubt it's sonic--it's just strong) with various brush-heads you can twist in or out of the base, and it cleans like a son of a gun. Some gummy orange deposit at the bottom of the fridge--stuck stuck stuck hard hard hard--with a spritz of 409 and a concerted whirling of the cleaning brush--came off beautifully. One of the brush heads is tapered to a point so you can whiz out the icky years-old (in my case, surely not in yours) deposit around the base of faucets. Or in the crevices of the panel of the dishwasher (why do designers add so many nooks and crannies that have no function but you've got to get the gunk out of them? most annoying). As I say, the brush is typical of the gizmos demonstrated in the middle of the night on television, but this is the real deal.
Next I was amazed to find loose change all over the place...a penny here (some were heads up, good luck), a quarter or two there (probably fell out of my pocket on the way to the laundry room), a few errant dimes and nickles. Why was there so much money slopped around?
What else did I learn? Well, for the past year the paper guest towels in the bathroom had the cartoonish drawing of a woman in a 40's outfit--high heels, fluffy white apron, bright red lipstick--leaning over a tub with a rag and the logo said, "A clean house is the sign of a wasted life."
My apartment is clean now. But I'm no longer in it. As I say, I was gratified discovering magic erasers and powerful solutions and ingenious tools and how my apartment should have looked the past four years.
But I'm glad I didn't waste more than a few days of my life in the process...
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