FundyNutter

Today Norah (4) said: “How do you like my Money Back Guarantee?” And gestured lavishly to her miniature table laden with food toys and a computer keyboard.

I asked what she meant by Money Back Guarantee and she said: “You know, it’s when you give money back to people who really need it!”

Then Norah invited us all to her tea party and her sister Lucy (2.5) said “Dat would be fabwouwess! And weewy kewah!” (that would be fabulous! and really cool!)

Time for a lighthearted distraction, no?

Some of these idea’s I am using this year and some are just ideas that I think other people should use.

Let’s start with the product placement:

Target’s dollar department had one pot bags of flavored coffee for a dollar. Perfect for some folks stockings. And if you are like me, the $1 price tag makes it the “big” stocking gift.

So much at the dollar tree is junk–especially if you hit the wrong location.  However I found very cute tiny gumball machines for a dollar. Likely they are only 89 cents at Winco.  Cute, novel, just right for my pre-school crowd.

Trident gum–have you heard yet of the miracles it works? It’s got xylatol, a natural sweetener that taste as good as sugar but strengthens the enamel on your teeth while you chew.  My dentist highly recommends it. We don’t have dental insurance any more so I consider trident my dental insurance that fits in my purse. Lots of flavours, you can buy a three pack for pretty cheap.  Stick a pack in every stocking you can find, it is healthy and yummy. Adults appreciate it (I hope!) and kids just think its gum. for the kids, it even comes in regular bubble gum flavored.

Handmade ideas:

Do you bake?  Miniature breads are a fun stocking idea.  Bake them at your convenience and then freeze them. Wrap them in foil, stick a bow on it. I say yeast breads are more impressive as a gift but if that intimidates you no one says no to homebaked banana bread!

I have a pile of clothes my kids have outgrown that is liable to crash down on us at any minute. I’ve been hauling loads of them to goodwill and passing on handmedowns, but there were plenty left still to make my two year old a purse. I used a pair of pants and a nightgown. The pant leg was the body, the nightgown was the lining and the waistband was the handle.

Hand-me-downs are also good for dressing dolls from goodwill (baby clothes at least), making pillows, patchwork blankies (dollsize blankies would fit nicely in a stocking), making bookmarks.  You could use the findings to make button strings or activity pads with pockets, button flaps and zippers to practive on.  Not that I have done all of that, but they are all lying there in the sewing room, perfectly possibly. Do you have towels that are on their last legs?  Cut them down and trim them with some of the adorable fabric from your children’s cast offs for new washrags.  In fact, this might be a nice, sentimental treat from grandma as well as chidlren. Along the same line, make matching hot pad for that dishrag.

The internet, oh boy. If you have a computer and a printer most of your children’s favorite shows have coloring and activity pages free for the downloading.  Print and staple with a nice construction paper cover for a personalized coloring book.  If you were thinking way ahead, you could throw in the crayola’s you bought at wallmart for 15 cents a box in August.

For preschoolers who are just learning the computer and don’t realize everything so much is just free for the taking you can make up a special card with a web address for video games she has never played. Disney.com, pbskidsgo.com, sesameworkshop.com, quobo.com should give you some good ones to pick from. Decorate the card fancy and tell the kids it is a secret code to get brand new exiting video games.  In fact, I think I am going to do this one.

Do you have a brother or uncle or in-law that doesn’t drink coffee or chew gum? Use your internet again and burn him some freeware.  I suggest open office just because.  It works.  It’s free.  He can stick it to the microsoft man and all that rot, what.  And firefox if said person hasn’t gone the way of the light yet.

I hope that helps your last minute planning. It give me a project or two to do now before my big trip east.

Enjoy.  And if you try any of these ideas, let me know how you like them!

This is looking more and more like a hard Christmas.  Two dear friends have lost a beloved parent in the last week–each grief hitting me harder than the last.  More loved ones have no work, and are loosing hope.  Winter storms are raging across the nation and I can’t stop thinking about how cold and lonely people are right now who are alone or otherwise vulnerable.

My one useful tool in the face of a hard world is praying to a loving God.  My mind keeps returning to the praise song and Psalm it came from: Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, His love endures forever.

So for now  my heart will continue to meditate on that and my mind will keep wrestling to view the world’s tribulations through the lense of God’s enduring Love.

I am eating up two things right now.  One is Lee Stroeble’s A Case for Faith.  It’s a brilliant writer’s beautiful examination of what kind of God would have a world as full of pain as ours and then ask us to take him on Faith. The other thing I’m reading is Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. The sweet pictures of worlds and worlds struggling to grasp the love of a great creator-lion are also give valuable perspective on our human life.

The ladies of Pinkwick’s Society of the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics disdained the glossy new “old library.” It had been remodeled over the summer into some quaint, Disney Old Fashioned Land version of a respectable library. In the societies early days as an organization they had held a number of meetings in the venerable Humanities Reading Room (despite the general popularity of the Humanities.) It had musk and dark leather bindings and mahogany library tables. It used to have floors made of stik –em tile carpet squares. This is not necessarily an ancient and revered flooring method but it did add nicely to the feel of decay and moulderingness in the old room. As it stood now it was the Melinda Gates Charitable Fund reading room with Laminate floors—a louder substance for a library had not been found yet—and granite counters. And for whatever reason, no library tables. It had a series of bistro tables set between what could be considered facsimile cigar chairs. As though an evening of coffee and cigars should be held in the library. It had ceased to be an historic pile.  It was just a functioning government institution.

The ladies had made a solemn vow not to visit the remodeled library. It wasn’t that they wanted the old structure to fall on their heads. Not at all. But back those ten years ago, when the remodel had been proposed, there had been a member of the Society with an interest in historic buildings. She had the plans on hand and reported to the society the number of disappointing changes intended.

That member had long ago left the society. Marriage and family does eventually call some members away.

Currently one Rosemary Swish, a member at large with a degree in General Studies, though the “general” actually covered a hodge podge of unappreciated fields such as the history of cloth, Canadian folklore and the study of the Welsh Language, had taken to visit the new facility incognito.

Florence Pinkwick hadn’t approved at the beginning, when the trip was proposed. However Swish made a good case for herself. In the first part, she had not been a member of the society when the solemn vow was taken. And as the solemn vow of Metropolitan Library Abandonment had been not ever been put into the constitution she had actually never taken the vow. In the second point, the library held some important works in their reference section that could not be had through inter-library loan. Not only was there a first draft of Harrington’s complete Tales of the Peoples North of Hudson’s Great Bay and Other Facts of Their Ways of Life, circa 1876 (the first to include actual interviews and to be written entirely on field) but the library had recently acquired a number of other Pinkwick’s Selected Texts.

This was the point that made the Society relax in their rules. There had been rumors in the local library union mailings that a large number of new acquisitions had been made. Flo. Pinkwick herself had made over one hundred requests in the days that the society used the Metropolitan facilities. It could be that the assorted Pinkwick Society requests came to over one thousand texts and documents. If those, or even a percentage of those, could be had, seen, or copied, needed to be determined.

Rosemary Swish took the task upon herself. The results of her, shall we say, undercover persuits were the catalyst for a great change in the society. That is to say these results and the ardent perusal of membership by one Gertrude Standish made a great change in the Pinkwick Society for the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics.

But before any changes could be outlined a general description of the Society, it’s persuits and its founding should be made.

Florence Pinkwick herself was a woman of great intelligence. Entering upon her fifth decade she held more degrees than any other female alumni of her University. Before entering University she had already published a book of verse, as editor and translator. The book was Rhymes of Bolivian Street Children and Discussion of the Third Language Translation Process. This was the book she published in her teenage years to be followed by dozens of others, many more than one hundred times the length of her first work. In her first work she failed to grasp the current jargon used in the linguistics feild but handled the theory so perfectly that some technical terms and jargon were permanently changed.

Florence Pinkwick was raised primarily in three parts of the world, in Monte Video, the capital city of Uruguay, in Stockholm, Sweden and in Portland, Oregon. Her parents had a great love for Monte Video which is what kept them returning to that bustling and fantastic metropolis, though it was their business interests that made keeping homes in Stockholm and Portland of the utmost necessity. It was in Portland the Florence Pinkwick eventually made her home and her society, but her travels were not restricted in life to either Oregon or Uruguay or Sweden.

She was a cosmopolitan woman. She did not want to be pegged a linguist at such an early age so began to attend the university of Stockholm with the goal of a degree in the History and Culture of Laplanders. To thoroughly follow the whole of Pinkwick’s career would be a novel in its own right. But we can know with no uncertainly that every degree she set to finish she did in record time. And to her parent’s dismay none of them would equip her to run their sea-life product distribution company. It was a great discouragement to them, for their empire was growing vast and the number of products that could be derived from sea-life seemed to be ever growing. They were the first people in Florence’s life to truly be unappreciative of her pursuits in academia. And for that I think they should be thanked. Without external pressures Florence Pinkwick may never have felt the need in her soul to gather together a Society of like minded women.

The Society existed in her heart for a number of years before it existed either on paper or in meeting form. She was lonely. She had her knowledge of Lapland culture, her ever growing stack of published works. She had income in the form of interest from her shares in Pinkwick’s Sea-life Products. (How it burned her soul to have her name associated with fish oil extraction!) She was what the feminist movement raging around her would have considered perfectly situated. She had intelligence, independence, and pursuits. In fact the local branch of Democratic Women for Change sought after her for her money, opinion, and reputation. They gave up their quest after a number of lunch meetings where, to their disappointment, it was discovered that Pinkwick had no problem with capitalism, just fish oil, that she had no problem with married women in particular but had never met a man who could keep up with her mind, and that she was so very terribly conservative in the fiscal sense. In fact, it was that more than anything that disappointed the Women of the DWC.

Pinkwick’s independent means had given rise to the rumors of great wealth. While she was very wealthy in the sense that she had no need to work, she stubbornly continued to write and publish books no one bought and to live under her means. And those means (as result again, of her shares in the Sea-life company) were about the average salary of those days and nothing particularly impressive from the donations and foundations point of view.

Eventually the democratic women stopped calling and Pinkwick found herself missing their company. She was haunting the Humanities Reading Room deep in the middle of her newest work, tentatively called “The Rise and Fall of Grain Industry in Romania and how Current Diet trends Affect the European Peasant” when she met Theodora Baxter.

“Pardon me.” Theodora said politely, as she set a stack of books on the same library table that Pinkwick was using.

Florence raised her eyes and smiled politely. Florence wasn’t bothered by the interruption but as yet saw no point in engaging.

“I see that you have stacked all of Marthe Bibesco’s work with you, but are not at the moment reading all of them.” Theodora hesitated, smiled and the indicated her stack of books. “The one book that I have been looking for most eagerly today is on top of your stack. Would you mind terribly if I used it with you, as you are not currently reading it?” Theodora was being especially careful. She had been looking for Bibesco “Isvor” for almost two months now. She spoke in a quiet voice and gestured with small movements as though the sought for book might notice her and fly quickly away.

Pinkwick looked at the stack of books the library patron had set down. They were quite the collection of Romanian Histories and encyclopedias “RA-RUM.”

Pinkwick set her book down and picked up “Isvor, Pays des saules.” She hadn’t gotten to it yet, in fact it was next on her agenda. Hence its being on the top of the stack. She looked from the book to the one requesting the book. The requestor was apparently nearsighted. She was wearing camel colored trousers and a mud colored blouse tied at the neck. Her hair was neither long and flowing nor tied up in a bun. It was shoulder length, mouse brown and thin but clean and shiny. She seemed like she would be careful with the book.

Pinkwick passed the book to Theodora. “Please take your time. I am Florence Pinkwick.”

Theodora expressed her relief in a heavy sigh. “Oh thank you.” You don’t know what this means to my thesis.” She sat down gracefully and opened the book gingerly. She gazed at in admiringly for a moment then looked back up. “Pardon my inexcusable rudeness. I am Theodora Baxter. I just couldn’t have finished my thesis on the ‘Ancient Worship of Trees and Shrubs in Eastern Europe and the Impact on Modern European Peasant Life’ without this book. It just couldn’t have been done.” Theodora brushed the cover of Isvor tenderly.

“Indeed! I should say it would be far from complete without reading Bibsco. And I hope you don’t find this too forward of me, but you might consider my own work “Trees, Diety, and the Ancient thought process of the Europen Peasant as useful to your work.” Pinkwick smiled broadly as she suggested her book. It was a true pleasure to her to share resources of the mind.

“But surely, you are not the F. Pinkwick! If you are well—but of course you are, how could it have been otherwise? It was reading your work in my course on European Animism that inspired me to pursue the same line in regards to how this ancient mythology affect the rural people of Eastern Europe in today’s world.

“Indeed? I am glad to hear it has already been useful to you.” And with that, both ladies buried themselves in their work, both especially pleased to have made the acquaintance of the other

I made it to 23,000 words and then phhhffst. It’s not that I ran out of ideas, or time really. But my story was fun for me and of personal interest. I had no real hope that it would be anything anyone else would want to read.  I couldn’t keep the old steam engine running my fingers with the thought that not even Daniel would be entertained by the story.  That, and I’ve had a lot of Sunday School Stuff to get going this month.

I did create one scene that I found kinda charming. And I thought I’d share it.  Just to show that I did write something for the 2008 Nano-season.  I gave it a go anyway.

Penelope Darling’s Adventures

with

Pinkwick’s Society for the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics

Penelope and Florence Pinkwick sat in quiet with their tea for a little while. The tea was warm and comforting. The room was cozy with ruffled curtains and damask table clothes. Large photos of the town in its pioneer days, framed in rich walnut, hung on the walls, covering much of the deep green floral wallpaper.

Florence had known something was on Penelope’s mind for quite some time now and this afternoon’s lull had offered her an opportunity to visit, just the two of them.

Florence still remembered how difficult it was to be brilliant and young in a world of established scholars. And it was obvious that Penelope was not driven to Scholarship in exactly the same way as the founding women of the society. To Penelope school was a lark, something to do and do well but not apparently the only thing she would be doing with her life. Florence saw nothing wrong with that and she had never intended her society to exclude part time scholars or women with family. And yet it appeared that the other members of their traveling party would like things to be going in that direction.

Florence offered Penelope a scone. “Have you been finding enough time to concentrate on your thesis work?” She asked kindly.

“I have…I have, perhaps, had too much time for my thesis and not enough for the work we are ding as a Society.”

“How so?” Florence poured cream into her tea and waited for the revelation. While Penelope’s choice of The History of Bachelorhood in America had been a promising thesis topic—both for its scope of possibly and its unusual focus for a society lady, Florence had foreseen possible trouble with the primary source material—that is, bachelors.

“Well, you see, I did a great deal of reading before hand and was using some of my time on this trip to pursue the story of the lives of modern rural bachelors. And it seems this interview process has been very…consuming,”

“I have seen you on your blackberry a good deal. Is it part of the trouble?” Florence sipped her tea in innocence.

“Well, yes. It has been. While some of the bachelors, especially those on ranches, are taciturn and loathe to give up their independence even for the space of an interview, some others are rather…well, that is…the bachelors seem to have plenty of time to talk. And most of them are…enthusiastic.”

“Are you having trouble narrowing down your material to useable information?

“In a way, yes. I am inundated with opportunities to sit with my sources and talk about life—over coffee, dinner, at the movies, on picnics. The offers come in with remarkable rapidity.”

“Is there one source you would like to be seeing more of?” There was a twinkle in Florence’s eye. It wasn’t an accusation by any means, merely an invitation for Penelope to be honest with herself.

“I suppose yes, there is.”

There was a particular bachelor who had overwhelmed Penelope’s research. She had follwed through on a lead from her mother’s cousin the Chancellor. Chancellor Dillworth had it in mind to help her relation by introducing her both to a number of career bachelors who would make for interesting case studies, but also to introduce her to some nice young men who weren’t married yet. It had come to Ms. Dillworth’s attention through her cousin (Penelope’s mother) that said mother would so like Penelope to settle down and spend less time with the old ladies of that strange Pinkwick Society.

However, the bachelor that pressed most strongly on Penelope’s mind was not, as it turned out, one of the fine eligible young men that Ms. Dillworth was so happy to introduce to Penelope’s attention.

He was young, relatively speaking. To Penelope’s 22 years he was only 30…and in addition quite shy and academic, working towards a second, or was it third PHD in some obscure mathematical vein. He lived a bachelor’s life in a man cave over some shops in a small college town. The college gave him a very small salary to teach math and he worked on his PHD traveling to his own University as the need arose. He had shown such little interest in girls throughout his younger years that it had always been assumed he was gay. He didn’t mind the thought since he was a modern man, and never put any effort into changing the opinion. It saved him time not being set up with girls. He was, however, very interested in someday meeting a girl who could possibly keep up with him intellectually. In fact, since Ms. Dillworth assumed he was gay and knew he was a great egoist and supremely shy she had thought he would make a great anecdote about a young man who would be a lifelong bachelor.

And then Penelope met him for coffee. And at this point it is not a bad time to say that Penelope was a little on the tall side, she had a curvy figure that made some of the ladies doubt she could be serious about her studies. She wore her hair long and pulled up, stuck through with a pencil. Her hair was very dark, and glossy of course. If her face wasn’t traditionally pretty it was at least animated and intelligent. She even had a deep crease between her eyes from overwork at the computer. Her fingernails were short and plain because it was easier to dig through books and type quickly that way and she always wore sensible shoes. She was not every man’s cup of tea though she was attractive in her own way and a far more flirtatious girl than those illustrious Society ladies liked to see.

And she walked into the coffee shop where Walter Schpultz was waiting for her. He never wated time and so sat with his laptop open and his coffee on the table waiting for her. When she walked in, as she was the only stranger in the small town Starbucks, he knew who she was. She had seen his picture on the College faculty web site and knew him as well.

He looked at her, she looked at him. Something sparked. She knew he wasn’t gay and he quickly closed his lap top and found himself smiling at her. Something he hadn’t particularly intended to do.

He stood up, he pushed a chair out for her, he offered to order her coffee. He all but gushed. The barista blushed for him and thought, “Maybe Walter does like girls!”

His heart beat so quickly and so hard that he wondered about his beats per minute and what the likely increase had been. And he wondered what percentage redder his face must be as he bumbled about in front of this girl. Penelope Darling. The name, oh the name. Penelope Darling. She looked up at him, met his eye and smiled brightly. He flushed all over again realizing he had said her name aloud. She held out her hand and he took it.

“Walter Schpultz.” She said warmly and squeezed his hand in hers, rather than shaking it. She sat down and reached into her handbag. She pulled out a card and handed it to him. It was the fateful card with her contact information. That card that connected the blackberry of hers to the greater world. Her email.

“Please let me get you a coffee,” He said, still standing.

“Yes, of course, black coffee please, just…americano.”

He ordered the coffee and stood with his back to her waiting for the barista to hand him the cup. His mind was going, he figured, ten thousand words minute as he contemplated what was before him. A serious girl. A pretty girl. A girl that was meeting him for a purpose that had nothing to do with his mother wanting him to find a nice girl and settle down. She just wanted a coffee and some information, he told himself. Calm down deceitful heart, he cautioned himself. She is here for her work, not for you. His fingers clenched and unclenched convulsively at his side. And then, before he was ready the coffee was in his hand and he was passing it to her.

Her feelings were equally mixed, on the one hand she had compassion for all of her bachelors, men who for many reasons were not interested in the company of women but had somehow found themselves in her company for unknown hours. She had an easy business like manner that made them feel like they were ordering fuel for the farm rather than talking about feelings. She wanted to use those skills now to set Walter at ease, but then, totally unexpected to her, her heart didn’t want him to be at ease. The idea that he might be at ease and feel no different than if he was talking to his oil man made her heart skip and jump. Feel differently! Feel differently! She willed him.

And he did feel differently, she needn’t have worried. As he looked at her (though gazed was a more accurate word) his mind wandered to their honeymoon in France where they visited the great universities together and then to the day care on campus where they had lunch between classes with their kids. And mysteriously at the end of it a charming scene with a Christmas tree surrounded by many adoring grandkids. Thus far did his mind travel in those moments before she began speaking again.

‘Thank you for meeting me here. I find that the American Bachelor is a misunderstood character in our mythology and I intend to record in my work what his significance and role in making our country is. I’m very grateful you had time to meet with me.”

“The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure.” He said. Did he purr? He wondered to himself, please say I didn’t’ purr.

“I have a series of questions that I have been asking—they give me an equal foundation to base my examination of each individual on. They aren’t particularly personal, would you mind if we talked about them now?”

“Not at all.” How he wished he could respond cleverly and not sound like such a schmuck!

“First, How old are you?”

“30.”

“Second, what is your occupation?”

“Mathematician.”

“Third, are you doing what you want to be doing with your life?” this was a bit of a diversion from her actual third question, but his deep brown eyes were pulling her in and she wanted to know, really wanted to know if he was content with things as they are.

‘Not anymore.” He said. He was shocked that it had come out. He had thought it of course, but this Penelope, this was the second time his thoughts spilled out in front of her in less than ten minutes.

“No?” She said with a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp, if she would have admitted it.

“No.”

“What is missing?”

“Penelope Darling.” He turned red this time, deep red from the tips of his fingers to his scalp. He had only thought to say Penelope Darling and not intended to say it. But there it was, said.

“Oh!”

“I-I’m in the middle of another PHD and…I guess I wish I hadn’t really begun it. Too much in the books right now.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She said. Maybe he hadn’t meant that she was missing maybe he was just trying to remember her name.

“What are you working on right now?”

“Oh, who knows. Some math thing.”

“Do you live alone?” She moved on to another question, or at least she thought it was a question she had asked before.

“Yes.”

“Are you ever lonely?”

“I really wasn’t. No, I’d say I didn’t use to be lonely.” He was leaning forward, locking eyes with her and talking quietly, to her alone now. It was intense, he didn’t know where the courage was coming from or what was driving him to it, but suddenly he didn’t want to stop. He wanted her to know him.

She was blushing now, he noticed, her eyes were sparkling still and she was leaning in intimately, a lap top and two café americano’s all that separated them.

“Should we leave?” she asked

“Very much so.” And he stood up and gathered his things with rather more grace than usual. She left her coffee on the table and they went outside. They wandered the streets of the town, him telling her about the town and about the college and about mathematics and her asking him about it all and telling him about travel and how so very much she found herself liking his particular town.

And following their breathless introduction were future visits, visits to his university and his apartment and the cemetery (merely because it was the thing she hadn’t seen and it was rather old.) And lengthy phone conversations and constant text messaging. Text messaging that interfered with his lectures and her interviews and their sleep. But nothing had been said much to a point, being the modern era. They barely knew each other and eventually she left town with her society to further their research. The calls emails and texts didn’t diminish and she began to think of nothing but getting back to that town to see Walter and of course, he thought of nothing but the same.

So tea with Florence was at once a nice diversion—a time when she didn’t have to try to force herself to think of something else, to concentrate on work for example, and at the same time a relief to admit her feelings and mull over what her future could be with her mentor and advisor.

I’ve inherited my Grandma’s recipe box.  It’s a great colection, some more thatn 40 years old, some still written on napkins, and some in a shorthand language even grandma would be hard pressed to decifer. Some are just a list of ingredients with curious titles like “Husbands Delight” attached to them.

I thought I’d scour the batch for the best of the bunch–the best being the most culturally incomprehesible, of course.  I wonder if my grandma ever made these choice bits, but…could be.

What we have here is my suggestion for your next holiday dinner party. Lay the table, put out all five hundred forks and light up your scentless 12 inch tapers in the middle. This is a feast with actual courses. In fact, you might see if Jeeves would come out of retirement and serve for you. That extra touch of class would be worth it.

First course: The Soup

Jellied Borscht.  (Yumm-o!)

1 cup shoe string beets (reserve liquid)

3 pk unlflavored gelatin

1 cube beef boulian

2 c red cabbage

Chives, lime juice, salt, 1/2 cup sour cream, parsley

Add water to beet liquid, 2 cups, heat. add gelatin, boullion-cook add remaining ingredients. Pour into 9 x 13 dish, mix sour cream and parsley, fold in. set firm. serve on lettuce.

Second Course: Main Dish

Chinese Beef Tonge Pot Roast

3 lb beef tongue

1/4 cup soy sacue

1 T sherry

1 clove garlic, minced

2 t sugar

1 t salt

1/4 t dried tarragon, crushed

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

6 medium potatoes, pared and halved

2 T cornstarch

2 t minced gren onion.

Do you really want to knw what you do with all of that? Well…if you insist.

In pressure saucepan, combine tongue and water. Cook at 15 pounds pressure for 30 minutes.  Drain and peel tongue.  Combine the stuff that tastes good and pour it on the peeled tongue.  Marinate 1/2 hour, turning once.  In large saucepan combine tongue, marinade and 2 & 3/4 cups water.  Cover and simmer 1 hour and 40 minutes.  Add potatoes. Simmer 15 minutes more.  Remove tongue and potatoes, add the rest of the stuff.  Cook and stir till bubbly.  Serve gravy and half of the tongue sliced and the potatoes.  (I assume you freeze the rest of the tongue so you can use it for disciplining your children.  “One more saucy word out of you and I’ll serve tongue for lunch!!”)

on the side serve: Pickled Green Beans

1 lb green beans, rinsed in water

1 c distilled white vinegar

1 T salt

2 bay leaves

1/2 t crushed dried red hot chilles

2 t each of fenneel seed and mustard seed

pull strings and all that rot from the beans.  In a ten inch frying pan bring two quarts of water to a boil.  Cook beans till bright green but still crisp (about three minutes.) Drain and immerse at once in cold water to arrest cooking.  Drain again.  Lay two pint jars on their sides. Lay half the beans, parallel in each jar. trim ends to fit jars. Set jars upright.

Add the other stuff together and get it real hot.  Pour it into the jars, you know how , with a funnel or what have you.  Put the lids on them and listen for the happy popping sound that says they are good to go. Chill overnight or up to a month.

So you have your tongue, potatoes and greens, but you still need something to drink. And by that I mean, to get down jellied borscht, pickled greens and tongue, you probably need liquid fortification of the very fortifying sort.  Which would explain all of the drinks recipes in the old box of grandma’s.  Here’s two I recommend for this festive event:

GALIANO

4 cups sugar

4 cups water

heat and mix, let cool

1/5 100 proof vodka

2 t vanilla

5 t anise (liquid)

4 drops yellow food coloring

ready in about a week, when the liquid clings to the glass.

and something for the ladies…

Open House Punch

One fifth Southern Comfort

3 quarts 7 up

6 oz fresh lemon juice

one 6 oz can frozen orange juice

one 6 oz can frozen lemonade

chill everything. Mix in punchbowl. Drink until you don’t realize you have to peel a tongue

Finally we’ve come to desesrt. You’ve been waiting I know. And you’ve earned it.

Oregon Whear Growers Leauge: Oregon hazelnut Prune Cake

It’s got a bunch of stuff in it, such as sugar, buttermilk, prunes and all that rot, what.  So then you mix it up like a cake and frost it with chocolate. Or you forget everything I’ve posted so far (except the drinks and the frosting) order a couple dozen pizzas and call it good.

But, you know, Pizza isn’t very festive, so I offer you as a final option, this fine recipe called “Christmas Beef”

20 # beef.  (upper round of beef with bone removed, tied)

Rub thoroughly with 4 oz of salt petre. (anyone else want to burst into song when they hear Salt Petre?) Be generous with the salt petre (Salt Petre!!–oh come on, its Abbigail Adams, circa 1776, you know you want to join in the song) and do not use less than 20# of beef.

Let Lie for 24 hours.

Rub thoroughly with the following mixture: 2 cups salt, 2 T cloves, 1 c brown sugar, 1 t mace, 2 T black Pepper

Place in deep pan (crock or enamel) in cool place, cover lightly.  Turn everyday for three weeks.  To cook: rinse beef well with water. Place beef in roaster with 1 c bacon drippings on top and 1 cup cold water in the pan.  Cover and bake four hours at 350 degrees. To be eaten cold, thinly sliced, while singing educational and patriotic show tunes.

They offer a fine dessert of Ritz torte to accompany this (because who needs vegatbles when you have salt petre?)

Beat three egg whites until foamy. Gradually add 1/2 t baking powder and 1 cup sugar. Beat until stiff. Fold in 14 ritz crakers, crumbled pea size and 3/4 cup chopped nuts.  Bake in a 9 x 12″ pan and 350 degrees for 30 minutes. coll top with whipped cream and marischino cherries. Cut into squares and serve.

Salud!

You know what’s more fun than writing my nanonovel?

Collecting facebook flair. I have well over my 34 required peices. And they are all so cool.  Seriously cool.  Which means I must be seriously cool to have thought of hunting for them, right? And then, having hunted for them gazing adoringly at them isn’t a sign of weakening mental status, and it’s not a sign of serious procrastination right?

Like an ardent art fan at a great museum, one would only be expected to gaze adoringly at the works of art. To ponder what they mean, to be grateful that someone created them and to remember fondly all of the things they bring to mind.

So there you have it. If you can’t stand it now and must see my flair, add me as a friend on facebook and admire away.  You deserve it.  If you are opposed to facebook for any reason or wouldn’t want it generally known that you are my friend I’ll offer you a little taste of my flair here.  Just one caveat, it makes me look like a much bigger sci-fi fan than I really am. Or maybe it just makes me look a little television obsessed.

A sample of the flair I have that is mostly text:

Drive Shaft

I hate Bryce Larkin

What’s your problem with hard to believe?

Go Away, I’m Reading

You’re invited to my Riverside Supper with Riparian Entertainment

Burn the Land Boil the Sea you Can’t take the Sky fromMe

Babette Ate Oatmeal

Mohinder…First he Got Hot then He went Crazy

Fredder

Now for some word pictures:

Tardis

Baker Street

Cubbie Bear

00000

Dharma

Lukes

Jospeh

Richard Parker and Piscine Patel

Firefly

And yes, this post was just another way to use facebook to avoid that ever widening gap between my and nanowinner status.  And now, to continue the avoidance I am off to see if a flair search for Cleggy brings up anything good. Surely it will.

Now drink your coffee.

I have to say that the lap top was very graciously shared.  He even packed it up carefully for me.  I, however, left without the address to our nano-meet up and spent the afternoon eating Taco Bell and doing some Christmas shopping at Target.

Lu and I had a great time at Target actually. We even made a new friend. A nice mommy with three cute kids.  We chatted and chatted and enjoyed ourselves when suddenly she said, “You know, you look really cute, I like your style.” I was wearing my new outlet clothesso I stood a little taller, happy with the compliment.  Then she said, “You know, I’m involved in this business…”

And being the lonely mommy that I am I chatted with her for another good 15 minutes and exchanged phone numbers and everything. Did you know the financial company with the red umbrella can change your life? That there is no end to your ability to profit from it?

Feeling more than a little like a dupe, or a mark, I explained this company already has my insurance business. That I already have a representative (three if I am honest.)

And the part that makes me feel a little guilty…I invited her to church with us.  Not because I had a healthy dose of sympahty for a mommy with three kids who need Jesus.  No, no, that would be the Holy Spirit at work in me.  I invited her to church because I was thinking, “If she can turn a lovely conversation into a sales pitch, so can I!”

Not that inviting people to church should be a sales pitch.  For me, a conversation may naturally turn into an invitation to church, but it isn’t in the first thirty minutes.  I had an instructor once who firmly believed that if God gave you fifteen minutes with a person it meant you were supposed to share the gospel.  I wish I believed like that.  But really it is too awkward and unnatural for me to turn a conversation to things of the spirit and eternity in a short 15 minutes. I see people as friends to get to know and have relationship with, not targets, or marks.

But I sales pitched this nice girl, and honestly, I hope she drops by.  She didn’t have a church or any kind of church back ground and it would be lovely for her whole family to get saved.  And maybe God will use my wrong intentioned invitation to his purpose.

One wonders about this time…can a five thousand word deficit be made up with two kids, a vacation, a husband who works a whole lot and won’t share the laptop, a lot of handwashing to do on the dishes, and many other various and sundry things of great importance to get done each week–like the litany of Sunday School tasks and keeping up on Chuck?

Today my fun begins.  I can now let myself write for a few hours uninterrupted without guilt and without expectations of greatness or usefulness.

Copies of my progess are available upon request with the following condition:  the requestor promises to give me one piece of useful criticism (i. e. how to make a a particularly rotten part better) and one piece of shameless flattery.  If you are yearning for the story but find those conditions harsh you can always prepare your flattery in advance to save yourself half the work.