A Day At the Beach

 Last weekend, I had the good fortune to go to the beach, invited by some friends. We had an extra wonderful day at a not so crowded strip of sand just south of Marineland (Florida), although it had become quite crowded when we left around 3 P.M. I surmised the thinner crowd due to the sand being peppered with coquina rock. If you've never heard of this sedimentary formation, read all about it here. This stretch of beach, though, had lots of sandy spots for our umbrella, chairs, and blanket since we arrived early.

It had been several years since my last beach visit so I was eager to get my feet wet in the not so cool as expected Atlantic Ocean. Shells were plentiful for the picking and as the sea drew back its salty mix, my feet sank into saturated silica prompting memories of long ago Saturday visits to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, my home State. What I didn't remember was the slight dizziness I felt as the surf reclaimed its watery mass...old age creeping up on me, again. But I stood still, looked up and the feeling passed so that I could walk a bit southward along the shoreline. A natural jetty of rocks prohibited much of a northward stroll. The sand was hard packed and felt good to the soles of my feet.

Children of all ages and a couple of tiny dogs were enjoying the sea even though the waves were crashing close to shore and farther out, much rougher than I ever remember Rehoboth being, although Rehoboth is part of the southernmost Delaware Bay and somewhat sheltered by the tip of New Jersey. Parents hovered and were especially watchful accompanying young sons into the breakers.

Carefully walking around the coquina formations, I returned to our spot in the sand and settled into an umbrella-shaded chair to people-watch. A couple of men were surf-fishing, but I never observed any catching. Pelicans were looking for lunch and several V formations flew directly overhead (no accidents, thankfully). Once in a while straggler birds would seem to float just above the waves searching for that elusive fish to scoop up, but the white caps seemed too much for fish and fowl. Like the would-be fishermen, the pelicans were striking out, too. But photo opportunities were abundant and my friends were busy with their iPhones, capturing the moment.

Between the boardwalk (reached by two sets of steps on each side) and the line of coquina rocks was a slightly angled incline of white sand, good for a leisurely stroll and improving your leg muscles. So one of my friends and I took off for a short walk on that dry stretch of beach. Many pelicans flew over and we saw some kite-flyers,not the bird kind but the people kind. Later, we saw one of the bird kind, too. It was quite windy, and birds and kites had some difficulty with their airborne maneuvers. Back to the umbrella and chairs and a long drink of water.

After a few hours of repeat performances and chair napping, simultaneously, our brains recalled that it might be lunchtime so the iPhone search for a nearby restaurant ensued, and soon it was decided. Enticed by the promise of crab cakes and grilled mahi-mahi, we grabbed our belongings and trekked back to our vehicle to begin our southward search for the Turtle Shack Cafe. It didn't take long until we pulled into a parking spot that seemed to have been waiting just for us. The odd time of day, a little after 3, meant no waiting and we were soon seated outside at a picnic table. After looking at the mouth-watering menu, my original choice of a crab cake sandwich turned into a portabella mushroom sandwich. And after tasting it, I loudly proclaimed more than once that it could easily have passed for a Philly cheese steak! No kidding! A creme brulee was ordered for dessert, shared by all, and the perfect ending to a perfect late lunch.

Anyone who has been to the beach has no trouble remembering how tired a beach day makes you so the ride home was a welcome rest up. Remarkable scenery flying by and an iPhone trivia game kept me awake most of the time but I may have taken some one or two-minute naps unintentionally. A wonderful day with kind and generous friends.

A Transition

 I am a vegetarian and have been since around 2012. Back then it was not quite as popular as it is today which made food get-togethers sometimes a bit uncomfortable. Holiday invitations were awkward at times. When you don’t eat someone’s special recipe, they tend to take it personally. But I persevered, tried to explain that it was not the food but only my preference, and hopefully remained friends with perplexed relatives and others.

Since I have eaten meat almost all my life, my recipe box was filled with little cards demanding meat as an ingredient so when I suddenly became a non-meat eater, I had some weeding-out to do. Not even all the vegetable recipes one would assume appropriate were acceptable since many called for things like chicken bouillon or bacon or other meat-based ingredients. I was left with meager pickings!

At first I loaded up with frozen vegetarian dinners especially those made by an outfit known only as Amy. Did I mention I continue to eat cheese, eggs and seafood? Amy has the best macaroni, broccoli and cheese, salty and creamed to perfection. And her Pad Thai remains my special treat when I go grocery shopping. I continue to eat Amy’s comfort food but not as heavily as at the beginning of my vegetarian path. Shortages at the grocery store have narrowed my selections and rising costs have made me think twice about the relatively cheap ingredients in vegetarian pre-made food.

Over time I have found my own “special” recipes by searching the Web and specifically YouTube. There are entire YouTube channels devoted to vegetarian and vegan fare. My favorite is the Whole Food Plant Based Cooking Show. I almost want to sing that as their theme song trickles through my brain! Jill Dalton is the host and also calls herself  the Chief Flavor Officer. She hooked me and often I follow along as she makes some very mouth-watering recipes. Some I make, some I keep, and some I discard. It is a trial and error process for me.

As a youngster, I was never big on vegetables so the transition has been difficult and a little astounding as I think about it. If your mom was anything like mine, potatoes, peas, green beans and carrots were standard vegetable fare. I could even throw applesauce in there and get away with it. Fancy cooking and “unusual” vegetables were strangers to our table. Tomatoes should be included but everyone now says they are fruits, right?

If someone had told me back then that when I was in my seventies, I would be eating avocado toast or spicy Thai eggplant, I would have said, “No way!”

https://feelgoodfoodie.net/recipe/avocado-toast-with-egg-3-ways/

And hummus? I am positive I would have turned up my nose at that! It has been amazing to me to find the many many things that now taste good, things that the taste of meat, in my opinion, obliterated. When your taste buds are “addicted” to bacon and ham and grilled steak, the lowly lentil does not seem very appealing. Meat to me is like sugar and salt, the more you eat, the more of it you crave.

I have to admit that my shunning of meat slowly came about after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. If it has never been on your book list, Mr. Sinclair gives a very vivid account of the meat processing industry in the early 1900s. The author uses the life of a poor immigrant family to highlight the social and economic inequalities of work in the food system. The descriptions are graphic and intense. The scenes in slaughterhouses and animal pens and the conditions in packing houses of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat truly shocked me.Those images began to pop into my brain every time I picked up my meat-laden fork, and eventually I could not make myself eat meat anymore. And these big businesses treated their workers as harshly as the animals. Meat was no longer for me.

I now have hundreds of new recipes and of course I kept some of my old ones that did not require meat as an ingredient. I am contemplating giving up the cheese, eggs, and seafood and I do not anticipate it being that difficult. I enjoy the taste of so many things now and hardly ever hesitate to try something new, which I never did before. Avocado mousse, zucchini zoodles alfredo, Thai spicy eggplant, and African peanut curry are standard go-to recipes. You may find all of them on YouTube by putting the recipe name into the search bracket. There are even some variations so be adventurous and try them all. You may be surprised at how good they taste with no meat whatsoever.

Blueberries

I don’t know about you, but I love blueberries. I eat them every morning on cereal no matter the kind or brand. Blueberries make it better. I eat them in pancakes with a quick blueberry syrup made in the microwave. I eat them in smoothies with blueberry yogurt and almond milk. I eat them in quick breads with pecans or walnuts. I toss them on salads no matter what else is in it, and pie? Well, yummy, but not so much anymore. Too many calories.

When we first moved to Florida in 1978, I was introduced to blueberry bushes at Hainesworth Farms by Jim’s brother and sister-in-law. They had been picking a few times before and raved about how delicious they were. Sometime in May blueberries ripened, and we got a phone call to join them on a Saturday morning. As we drove the back roads northeast of Gainesville, we caught up on family news and looked forward to picking several pounds of the luscious fruit. The farm handed out family recipe cards for all kinds of blueberry concoctions and even sold young blueberry plants. We stored bags of them in our freezer. Then, Jim’s and our relatives’ interest waned. After all, it is a hot sweaty job. But my love of blueberries never diminished. So I found a new partner.

Picking blueberries with Aunt Fanny was a real adventure I never wanted to miss. Toward the end of May or the first of June I could expect to get a phone call letting me know local blueberries at a certain farm were ripe and abundant, and would I want to be picked up around 8 tomorrow morning? Absolutely! We traveled to Monteocha Farms, to Lake Santa Fe, to Earlton, and many others that I have forgotten the names of.

Aunt Fanny usually had a couple of other ladies with her, but she always kept the front passenger seat reserved for me. Containers were stowed in her car trunk as well as ropes or belts to loop through the handles of the farm’s supplied buckets and then tied or buckled around our waists, leaving our hands free for picking. Once we arrived at our destination, the owner directed us to the next in line picking spot, always in the hot sun and getting hotter by the minute.

Fanny with her straw hat and long sleeves was a fast picker, outpacing me two to one, but I didn’t pay much attention, just enjoying the company and munching a few berries as I picked, making sure they were good and sweet, which they always were. Like the others I started picking at chest level, but if I didn’t want to be admonished, I eventually had to bend and reach for the berries, picking the bush clean of ripe berries before advancing on to the next bush up the row. Sometimes the bushes might be next to a pine forest and depending on the sun, some shade might come my way, but this was unusual, and within a short period of time, I and the others were hot and sweaty. We dare not take a break because the sun was advancing in the sky, and soon, remaining in the field would be unbearable. At some point, upon agreement, we would have to be satisfied with what we had picked, grab up our filled buckets, and return to weigh and pay.

I never picked blueberries with a group that Aunt Fanny was not part of. When she passed away, I bought bags of berries already picked from a farm near Newberry named Maid Marian’s. Of course, they had been cooled, and I never got that warm juicy flavor of the ones fresh from the bush. Not picking with others was just a sentimental thing. Aunt Fanny was a good friend, and I always think of her when the blueberries are ripe.

I am thinking about blueberries today because this year’s stash is dwindling. The berries I am eating this morning were shipped from New Jersey. I buy most of my blueberries at Publix now, and bags stored in my freezer barely last until year’s end. Then I must go to the frozen bags of fruit at the end of the ice cream isle. But blueberries are blueberries and I love them any old way! Here are a few of those old recipes.

I have to title this Hillary!

I have been cocooning again. Jim's 4 year anniversary came and passed on the 19th. I write in all kinds of things to do on my calendar for those days before and after but that's as far as I get. I have been doing my usual yard work so that's something.

I don't usually write about touchy subjects like politics and religion but.... Why does Trump get so much press time? Everyday it seems he does something newsworthy. Hillary just chose her vp and I had to search to find it. Trump has mastered the con, the art of evasion, and how to get airtime without paying for it. I'm not in love with Hillary but I'm not a sheep either...although I did belong to the Woolgatherers once. I think that's what it was called...my memory, yikes.

I have relatives and friends who love Trump and I can't figure it out. No matter what stupid, racist, blah blah thing he says, it's okay. Have they been brainwashed? Maybe that's what it is. Remember the 70s and all the cults? If you repeat something long enough, people start to believe it. "Make America great again." All I can do is shake my head and wonder why. And I'm doing it, too. Almost all my post about Trump. Damn!

Ellen and Edgar and Me

I arrived at the University of Delaware in the fall of 1962 fresh off the farm, although I didn't really live on a farm then. I think unsophisticated is the word I'm searching for. Due to efforts of my guidance counselor in securing scholarships, my road to further education continued to be surprising and dreamlike to me.

Aware that my roommate was from Wilmington and an upperclassman caused me some concern. People below the Delaware/ Chesapeake Canal where I lived were looked down upon by people living above it. They were city folks and we were country folks.

Ellen was already there when I arrived, and had claimed her side of the room. Sophisticated described her perfectly. She had blonde hair, colored and styled, and wore a plaid skirt, white blouse, and the ever popular knee socks with penny loafers. Her face was photo-session ready, and her nails were manicured and polished a bright red to match her lips. I noticed the top of her bureau was filled with all kinds of make-up, perfume, nail polish, and hair rollers. I found out later she never missed a night without those hair rollers.

Then she surprised me by extending her hand and saying, “Hi, I’m Ellen. I hope you don’t mind I took the bed on the right.”

That was the beginning of one of the most satisfying friendships of my life. Ellen was the perfect roommate, always considerate and helpful, and even though she was a Sophomore, she always treated me as an equal.

Her being an upperclassman had many perks and smoothed my transition to university life. She was my campus guide, mapping out my class destinations, warning me about frat parties, and accompanying me to Friday night dances. It didn’t hurt that she had a cute brother, either, especially for the Sadie Hawkins’ Day Dance.

Orientation week, that week when Sophomores do everything they can to humiliate Freshman, was bearable because of Ellen. She stuck close by as I wore my beanie cap and poster board. Everyone knew her, and she was the reason my board filled up with the required signatures so quickly.

Ellen was Catholic, had graduated from Tatnall in Wilmington, and faithfully went to mass on Sunday mornings. I am sorry to say I didn't follow her lead, and only attended church services about four times the entire year. Her dad worked for the DuPont Company and, of course, they were all members of a country club. She had plenty of things to boast about, but never did.

When my birthday came up in November, she surprised me with a chocolate cake and a copy of the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe. She knew I liked the twisted tales and she liked the poetry. We both shared the wonder of “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”. That well-worn book has maintained its honorary place on my bookcase for 53 years now with its "Happy Birthday. Ellen" written inside. Some friends down the hall crowded into our tiny room to munch on chocolate cake, and we all talked late into the night to make it a memorable birthday even though I was far away from home.

When the weather got cold, Ellen taught me how to knit. I was not a fast learner, but she didn’t give up, and I ended up knitting a cabled Christmas sweater for a boy I knew who had recently joined the Army. She gave her time and talents freely and thought nothing of it. Now, whenever I knit, I think of Ellen.

Later that winter when I was sick with the sore throat of the century, she brought me chicken soup from the dining hall, kept the drapes pulled so I could rest, and managed to keep the dorm noise to a minimum. My mom would have been proud of her. I was such a complainer, it makes me wince to think of it.

Ellen was a thoughtful, caring, and humble person. She put others ahead of herself, and I'll always remember her as the kind friend she was to me.

After I married, we lost touch. A few years later I saw a wedding picture of her in our local paper. I cut it out and have kept it all these years. Even though it's worn and yellowed, Ellen’s happiness shines through to me.

Another Thanksgiving

The following true story is really about thanks giving, about receiving and knowing how to accept a gift.

Seeing all the decorations in stores for Thanksgiving brings back the memory of a particular one. It was early November of 1993. My husband and my employer ganged up on me to make an appointment with a dermatologist about a mole on my temple that looked suspicious to them. They wouldn't give up, and I finally decided to go.

The doctor barely glanced at the mole before telling me I needed to see a surgeon right away. She made the appointment for that same afternoon, something I thought impossible. The plastic surgeon echoed her words. The very next day he removed the mole and the surrounding tissue and did a skin graft. Just before Thanksgiving I received the lab report. The mole was indeed an invasive malignant melanoma, but thankfully the surrounding tissue was clear.

I had a huge bandage (it seemed huge, anyway) and some stitches. I was very thankful for loved ones and dear friends who would not take no for an answer.

The morning I went for the surgery everything was so poignant. I remember the chill in the air as we raised the garage door. In fact, I can almost feel it right now, the feeling was so intense. As I looked outside, moving soundlessly through the sky, and huge because it was so close, I saw the Goodyear Blimp, in town for the football game the next day. The quietness of it and the chill in the air steadied me somehow.

My daughter had come from a little over eighty miles away to go to the doctor with us. She only had one child at the time, my grandson, Jimmy, who was 2 years old. Of course, she left him at home with his dad. When we got back home from the surgeon’s, she wanted to stay and cook Thanksgiving dinner for us the next day, but all I could think about was the pain I was feeling and how my son-in-law must be climbing the walls by now with Jimmy. So I emphatically said "no", and Jim and I spent a lonely Thanksgiving eating chicken noodle soup.

My point is...why couldn't I have accepted the gift my daughter wanted to give? What a wonderful Thanksgiving it could have been, but I was stubborn and thought I would be putting everyone to a lot of unnecessary trouble. The important thing I overlooked was the happiness it would have given my daughter to be doing something for her mom. She was trying to show her love and support for me, and I actually refused it

I was always taught to give is better than to receive, but now I wonder at the truthfulness of that. Perhaps, to receive a gift can be giving a gift as well. And sometimes it is better to receive than to give. Many times, I think, it’s one and the same thing.