Sunday, December 23, 2012

How I still Believe




 I Still Believe

 We are deeply ensconced in the annual Holiday marathon of activity.The turkeys were barely out of the oven and the decorations were already up all over the restaurant. Keep in mind Thanksgiving came early this year, so yes we do have an extra week of celebrating . When your establishment is in the heart of the city and the tree lighting falls traditionally the Friday after Thanksgiving, you have to be ready to go by nightfall. My decoration elves worked overtime to get our place fabulous just in time. The good news is now we are all set right up through the New Year.

 Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or any other form of worship that I am not familiar with, the key is to celebrate. Celebrate the season with the people who mean the most to you and spend quality time with them between the craziness. Looking back on my past love affair with Santa, I cannot say I remember the year I started wondering if he was real. Christmas in our house growing up was always magical. From the hand sewn button count down advent calender to the felt stockings and door knob decorations, my Mom's house was festooned with stations of Christmas Wonder. I must have spent hours rearranging and playing with the manger set in the living room. Our elves that sat on shelves cost 50 cents and came in red or green from Woolworth's Five and Dime. Remember the store with the lunch counter in the back? The" magic wire" appeared on our tree the year I climbed all the way to the back to get an unopened gift and CRASH, the tree came down. I still have the lamb that went to the shattered blue and silver ornament that was part of a set depicting each character from the scene of the manger. That set probably came from Woolworth's too. If you have kids and your tree does not have a magic wire, GET ONE!

Noooo Not the Choir Boy
   The felt doorknob decorations had pictures of Santa, Frosty, an Angel, an Elf and Mrs Frosty. In this handmade collection there was also a Choir Boy that none of us three girls ever wanted on our doors at night. We would switch the decorations around and put choir boy on someone else's door and then hide our favorite one ( mine was Santa of course) in our room until bedtime and replace our door decoration only to wake up sadly with choir boy back on our door. Maybe it was the elf on the shelf who moved them in the middle of the night. So I asked my mother this year for a photo of those doorknob decorations, and she sent me a package containing four of them. She sent my older sister two and gave me the remaining four to share with my other sister. Needless to say my poor little sister is getting The Choir Boy. Yep It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

 Gift giving was a Hollywood game show production at times with the largest and best gifts being saved until the end and sometimes even the end of the day. We went in order from youngest to oldest one at a time. I think this was my Dad's way of preserving every moment and making the day last. There was no mad dash for the ripping open of the gifts like the Running of The Bulls. I think by the time I was 10 my parents wised up and started hiding the stockings in our rooms, so they could sleep an extra hour or at least until the sun broke the plane of the horizon. My sisters and I would be so excited the night before we would sleep together in one room and then gather on the bed to open the stocking stuffers. Some of the best gifts came crammed in those handmade socks like Charlie perfume, Lip Smackers lip gloss in the flavors of Good and Plenty and Root Beer, Life Savers in fold over books with Christmas scenes, Tootsie Roll banks, and an all time favorite of the decade Toe Socks! Among all those treasures were at times spoof prizes like free drug rep pencils and Lilly prescription notepads, or Hardware store calenders and Guida's Dairy key chains. They were priceless and they were ours.

Our Christmas collection of music was a total of five vinyl records with Bing Crosby and Perry Como belting out the great classic Christmas carols. And speaking of carols, I grew up in a time when our neighborhood went house to house singing Christmas carols to  neighbors.My Mom made everyone's favorite cookie and stored them in the Big Blue Tin up high on the back refrigerator. You knew the big day was close when we gathered around the fire to make real popcorn balls.This production, like every other aspect of my childhood had a specific procedure ( go figure, my Dad was a surgeon). From the popping of the corn in the Westinghouse Bubble popper ( 3 batches I recall) to the sorting of the kernels in the top of the turkey roasting pan to the boiling of the golden syrup to the exact soft ball stage, this was an all night affair. It seemed like it took forever for that sugar mixture to heat up. When the components were assembled they were brought to the fireplace room and we slathered our hands with raw butter to prevent them from getting burned by the syrup. First of all yuck and second of all it really did not work. Then the syrup was poured over the sorted popcorn and the balls were rolled together and dropped onto cookie sheets lined with Cut Rite wax paper. When they cooled, they were twisted up into wax paper balls and safe guarded in the Charles Chip potato chip can. These chewy snowballs of popcorn and syrup were heavenly.

 Old Fashioned Popcorn Balls

1Cup Sugar, 1/2Cup Molasses,1/2 Cup White Karo Corn Syrup, 1/4 Cup water, 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Bring this mixture to a boil stirring until it boils and cook until 260 degrees on a candy thermometer. Test a drop in cold water to be sure it hardens. Remove from heat and add.

3Tablespoons of Butter , 1 Teaspoon of Vanilla

Pour this mix over 4 Quarts of popped corn unsalted mixing with a wooden spoon. Rub butter on hands and form balls quickly.

There you go, my gift to you!

We put our tree up just a few days before Christmas and it never saw the New Year, because that was considered bad luck in Scottish households. Our tree cam from the back yard. We cut a Blue Spruce each year and planted four more in the spring. On a recent trip by my old house, sadly, the Christmas tree lot was stripped barren. Specific ornaments were allowed to be placed by children and precious special ones were left for the grownups. My mom was a tinsel gal, but you had to place each strand one by one gently on the tree. you were not allowed to just
 toss it on. Tinsel back then was hardcore aluminum not synthetic. We saved each piece every year ( of course we did, we saved everything) I have never put tinsel on my trees, and my boys try to sneak it on every year. I probably did it wrong as a kid and have never gotten over that. Our tree, however has never seen the new year and I consider myself extremely lucky. Fortunate enough to have a beautiful healthy family that will gather on this Christmas around our tinseless tree to celebrate our traditions.


  I do not specifically recall a go to Christmas meal, but I am sure it was delicious. I do , however remember my grandparents starting each supper with a cup of decafe instant coffee and a half a saccharine. It was a treat to set up the coffee because you got to use the tiny salt spoon to scoop up the saccharine from the crystal dish. It has always been the little things in life that give me the greatest pleasure.



Elves and Fairies do not mix well
I still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa because I believe in myself. Never giving up on Santa means I can stay forever young on the inside and be that little blonde girl in pajamas opening Ants in The Pants , Easy Bake, Creepy Crawlers or my Red Record player or the  Big Girl Real Typewriter. This year during the Christmas Elf hiding, treasure hunt gathering, mad dash,my middle schooler lost a tooth and placed it under his pillow. Well the Tooth Fairy went to bed earlier than the child as often happens when they reach this age. My go to "Did you look under the covers?" was not going to work again because he had tossed the entire bed and searched this time. So I tried to outwit him and stage the Elf with the cash and a note from The sleepy Tooth Fairy. Friends, let me tell you this is a bad idea! I still do not know if it was the fact that I forgot him or he just suddenly realized there is no Tooth Fairy and innocence was slipping away. I had to go to work and he had to get to school, so there was little time for  patching this up. He was so angry he called his Father a naughty word and stomped out to the car. I was finally able to get from him that I could have said I was sorry. The thing is I did say it, he just did not hear me. So he went off to school in a snit. I dropped him at the front door and came home to clean his room and place the I Am Sorry photo on his pillow. It was then I got the recording from school telling me He was not in school. That space of 10 minutes was frightening. ( I know where all your thoughts just went, because mine have not left that place since it all happened) Well of course he was there, I just thought maybe he skipped school to teach me a lesson. Well, I did learn many lessons that day, and my children continue to teach me quite often what I need to know to be a better Mother. Sometimes people say i am sorry and we just don't hear it

Impossible Sadness


Forever in my thoughts
 This is the second time my lighthearted blog was interrupted by a tragedy. Only this time, the words are lost. Sadness, over whelming sadness from the senseless loss. 20 beautiful young souls went to school today dreaming of Santa Claus and they met the Devil. I love my children. I want PEACE for Christmas and every day after that as well. There is no explanation for this ugliness Count your blessings and pay it forward every day, not just because of Christmas or a horrendous tragedy. Please be kinder and nicer to everyone you meet. Make a difference in your family, community, nation and world. So often these tragedies change our community and our nation for a period of time, but the passage of time slips away and some people tend to lose perspective.

I still believe, I am just going to need a little more time.
Bee El
Tears from Heaven at The Vigil in Milford


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Talking Turkey



Thanksgiving Thoughts With and Update



Fall in New England is by far my most favorite time of year. I will endure the piles of dirty snow all long winter long, the endless cold spring  rains and the hazy, hot humid long summer daze just to be able to enjoy the glorious, golden days of fall. I live for the memory invoking smells of hot chocolate, homemade bread, pumpkin spice and crackling  warm fires.  This time of year calls you to the kitchen to create comforting dishes to share around the hearth with loved ones after a Sunday afternoon of leaf raking, apple picking or pumpkin carving.






For Thanksgiving it has been a 20 year tradition to spend the night at the restaurant camped out and preparing the Thanksgiving dinner for forty some other families who are tucked in and dreaming of buttery mashed potatoes smothered in rich turkey gravy with no dirty pots and pans to scrub. The boys hook up the video games and pump up the air mattresses while the grown ups rotate turkeys through the ovens through out the night. At the break of dawn the stuffing is basted and bronzed in the oven while the chef potatoes are boiled and ready for the mashing. Every family has their own traditional method of preparing turkey, stuffing and side dishes. For some it is not complete without the cranberry relish. My mom makes this crazy frozen cranberry ice and would never open a can of jellied cranberry.  I can still see my Dad tenderly shredding or pulling apart the Pepperidge Farm white bread without the crusts in front of the tv watching football. The pulling of the bread makes for a fluffy light dressing seasoned with sage cooked inside a capon, never a turkey. Which brings up the question to stuff or not to stuff?

 Stuffing your turkey is likely to cause stomach cramping. The internal temperature of your bird must reach 165* Packing the cavity of the turkey leads to the increase of bacteria that will make you ill. This culinarian recommends you cook your bird stuffing free with aromatics such as celery, onion and oranges lightly layered in the bird to promote flavor and moisture. Cook your stuffing in a casserole dish and baste it with the drippings from the cooked turkey. This method will also hasten the cooking process and prevent the need for cooks across America from having to rise before dawn to get that feast in the oven in time for the post football game chow down.

With Thanksgiving on the horizon and my staff Talking Turkey, I pause to offer up my thanks for enough leaves in my own back yard for the kids to jump in. I am grateful for children who are healthy enough for me to drag myself from bed at predawn five days a week to get them off to school with a hot breakfast and a bagged lunch. I am blessed with a loving husband of 20 years who is willing to complete my honey do list no matter how many times I revise and edit. I am lucky enough to own my own business complete with its own endless list of things to do. That in itself was a monumental undertaking these past two years.




 As you gather your loved ones around the table remember it is Thanks Giving. Take stock in all you have to be thankful for and pay it forward. Up your gratitude and perform a random act of kindness for someone or some organization in your community. At Rainbow Gardens we have spent the last 20 years preparing a Thanksgiving feast for the staff at the emergency room and the firefighters at Central Headquarters. The gratitude from these hard working people spending a day reserved for families away from their own is  boundless. The true gift in this spirit of giving is the lesson my children have learned over the years. They are not aware, but we are shaping their character... shhh do not tell them as they tend to resist any parental imposed self improvement projects.

Update Hurricane Sandy Damage



During day time high tide
 After see link

u tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvhJw8o0eFg&feature=relmfu

I started this blog back in the beginning of October to Talk Turkey.

I had no idea what was in store for our small seaside community. When I wrote about paying it forward and being Thankful at Thanksgiving I had no idea I would be sitting here today in a snowstorm reflecting on this past week. Most fortunately my family home and business suffered no loss or damage. As most of you know, this was not the case for many people across the Tri- State region. In a minute my husband and staff and I decided to open our restaurant to the victims of Sandy to give back to our community. We served a free dinner buffet and collected storm supplies while most of my staff had no power. The City of Milford gave instantly. We decided to chronicle the events on our Facebook page and serve a breakfast on the following Saturday. I underestimated the power of social media; not the first or even second time in my life and a local tv station posted the details of what we were doing. This set off a flurry of giving that I was not prepared to receive. Complete strangers from hours away began to reach out to us and mail checks to cover costs and help complete strangers. I am happy to report that we kept none of that money and are continuing to make a difference right here in Milford Ct. with gift cards and suppliesdelivered directly to families in need.

This woman is from another town a good distance away and she just wanted to help.

People logged onto our new website and bought gift cards and mailed them to us. Others came in for dinner with gift cards of their own and gave them back to us. Friends passed out coffee and soup and helped others clean up.

Power companies came from other states to lend a hand. Slowly the power came back on and people who were frustrated being without power felt guilty as they started to watch footage of New Jersey, Rockaway Beach NY, and Staten Island. 
The boardwalk
A week later people continue to drop off supplies and give us checks. I am blessed. I have posted my Thankfulness one day at a time on my Facebook page. People have lost tremendously. Just because the power is back on for most of us, this is not over for a long time.



Like Doll Houses

 So what does it all mean? I am still trying to figure it out. Life is full of surprises. It is what you choose to do with challenges and set backs that define your legacy. Before this blog was posted I hinted about shaping the character of my children without them knowing. What I did not know was that I had accomplished just that. One thing that caught me off guard this week was when my oldest son texted me several times to say how proud he was of what we were doing. I didn't think he would even take notice, but he must have  been paying attention all these years in spite of all my nagging. 

I love my family, I am proud of my staff, I am grateful for all the wonderful friends in my life I will always love fall in New England. I am Thankful for this week of HOPE and I will still continue to pay it forward throughout the month of Thanksgiving and beyond. I ask you all to do the same.

Bee El

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

No Bacon For You

No Bacon For You

Say What?
This just in.. There will be a bacon shortage next year! What? Stop the presses. We cannot deny the American public to their  first amendment rights to bear bacon with their eggs. A collective groan was heard from sea to shining sea as the latest news hit the smokehouses and diners across our great Motherland. Apparently drought and lack of feed has led to the decrease in hogs available for slaughter. I asked my esteemed colleagues why only bacon? How about sausage and pork loin?

 On a busy week our restaurant cooks up to three cases of bacon. Each case contains 15 pounds or 300 slices of this crispy, salty , porky and don't forget fatty condiment. You will find it is featured at Rainbow Gardens on over six standard menu items and countless additional specials. If you want to sell it add bacon. Chop bacon on a salad, slip it on a club with three slices of perfectly toasted bread spread with blue cheese mayonnaise and you have a hit. Angels on Horseback is the name of a British appetizer that consists of bacon wrapped around oysters. This odd delicacy combination was made famous and given it's official name in our country in the 1960s when a DC socialite served it at many parties during the Kennedy regime. Although we have not ventured there with that food combination, our chefs have endeavored to wrap, Filet of Beef, Chicken Breast, Scallops, Shrimp, and tantalizingly hot Jalapeno Peppers stuffed with cheddar cheese. If you wrap it, they will come.

 Hoarders Are Us


 So now we are all counting our chest freezers wondering how many cases of bacon we can stock pile for this predicted shortage just a mere 365 days away. My Ziploc bags full of crock pot dinners may have to move over and make room. It may even be more cost effective to purchase a new walk in freezer dedicated just to bacon. Years back when the news was all aflutter over the avian flu, they were instructing us to make a stock pile of food and water in our basements for the doomsday when we would not be able to leave our homes for fear of contracting the deadly bird disease. I found this to be absurd reasoning that we would simply move into the restaurant and live off the stores of food in our basement and walk ins. That brilliant idea was put aside when a regular customer  pointed out to me that the entire town would be smashing the front picture windows to confiscate our hoarded supplies.

You Never Know

  As I rewound my memory clock regarding threatened food supplies I recalled that as a teenager I had a poster on my bedroom wall with a guy reading the headlines " Beef Shortage Critical" His dog had his muzzle resting on the kitchen table, while the man spooned a can of Alpo over his spaghetti. I just spent an hour trying to find a picture of this poster to no avail which is a check mark on my hoarding is a good thing side of the page. You never know when you are going to need that awkwardly sick poster that hung in your teenage bedroom next to the hand written lyrics to Meatloaf's  Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad. A funny side note here is that our Meatloaf dish on the menu is topped with bacon. And stockpiling food is just an extension of hoarding.

I was Just Thinking

  Here are some menu ideas inspired by a flurry of slightly sarcastic texts between a few of us kitchen folk. You have to bear in mind that to enter into the culinary world as a professional chef requires a undaunting sense of humor to keep your sanity while toiling away endless hours of stressful time deadlines. A quirky personality is a prerequisite for a career in food service. When your sense of humor is gone it is time to pack your knives and leave the kitchen.
  • Panko Crusted Bread Sticks and Toast
  • Smoked Panko crumbs to make our own Facon
  • Panko crusted Ham Balls wrapped with Bacon
  • Bacon Wrapped Prosciutto Ham Balls with Bacon Bit Dip. We are going to call this one The Heart Attack
  • Apparently you can make your own bacon wrapped Christmas ornaments as well.
  • I am planning on wrapping myself in bacon for Halloween
  • If we could just figure out how to make a Panko costume 
 Panko is a light crisp Japanese bread crumb used for  coating foods for deep frying. The word is a combination of the Portuguese word pao for bread and the Japanese ko meaning flour or crumb. The loaves are cooked with electric current, so no dark crust forms and the result is a dry crumbly white crumb. This breading absorbs less fry oil so the final product is crispier and less greasy.

 Don't be sad cause two out of three ain't bad

Standard Breading Station
If you are not going to wrap it in bacon then bread it. No one can resist the delightfully crisp standard breading procedure. Flour, egg, bread crumb and fry! The idea of setting up a standard breading station for any menu item makes this obsessive compulsive neat freak run for the exit. Dipping raw food into pans of each item and coating your fingers in thick raw egg, flour and bread crumb makes this culinary sanitation grad raised by a surgeon father cringe times three. The microbial cross contamination factor must be what makes breaded fried food taste soooo good. You can bread just about anything. If you form it in a cutlet or a ball then you have a breaded home run.

  As we enter into October the garden gives off unripened green tomatoes which beg to be breaded and fried. On a whim we paired them with what else? BACON and created a Fried Green Tomato, Smoke House Turkey Club that is an absolute home run on our specials menu whenever we feature it. After  you have mastered the Bacon ornament, you can move onto the bacon basket weave. This handy dandy little creation tops a club sandwich like a crown and showcases this vanishing commodity like a queen. The bacon potholder will most definitely be featured in some alternate applications. The possibilities are endless... A bacon lattice crust begs for a filling of something Panko crusted. By October 2013 if the price of bacon surpasses that of tenderloin and scallops then chefs will be forced to find more creative ways to display bacon in order to command higher prices to cover those costs. If this said chef begins fashioning stellated octohedrons from pork belly than it may be time to pack it in.
Stellated Octoherdon
"Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad"
Meat Loaf's Lyrics
Baby we can talk all night But that ain't getting us nowhere I told you everything I possibly can There's nothing left inside of here
And maybe you can cry all night But that'll never change the way I feel
The snow is really piling up outside I wish you wouldn't make me leave here I poured it on and I poured it out  I tried to show you just how much I care I'm tired of words and I'm too hoarse to shout  But you've been cold to me so long I'm crying icicles instead of tears  And all I can do is keep on telling you  I want you I need you But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you Now don't be sad 'Cause two out of three ain't bad Now don't be sad 'Cause two out of three ain't bad You'll never find your gold on a sandy beach You'll never drill for oil on a city street I know you're looking for a ruby In a mountain of rocks But there ain't no  Coupe de Ville hiding At the bottom of a Cracker Jack box I can't lie I can't tell you that I'm  something I'm not No matter how I try I'll never be able to give you something Something that I just haven't got  There's only one girl that I will ever love And that was so many years ago And though I know I'll never get her out of my heart She never loved me back, ooh I know I remember how she left me on a stormy night  She kissed me and got out of our bed And though I  pleaded and I begged her  Not to walk out that door She packed her bags and turned right away And she kept on telling me She kept on telling me She kep on telling me I want you  I need you But there ain't no way  I'm ever gonna love you  Now don't be sad 'Cause two out of three ain't bad
  Don't be sad 'Cause two out of three ain't bad
 Baby we can talk all night But that ain't getting us nowhere.

I know you all sang those corny lyrics just now and back in the day. And I can go on all night about bacon, but without the corn, there ain't gonna be no bacon in the bottom of our Cracker Jack box. We will have pork loin and sausage, so two outta three ain't bad.

Bacon Rules Bee El





Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Heyyyy Chowda' Here!

 Do I have 365 days of crock pot cooking in me?

  I am a Culinary Institute of America graduate from many years back and I must confess I never cooked anything in a crock pot. Not ever.  Unless you have been living off line, you know that crock pot dinners are all the rage online and especially on Pinterest. My boys love to tease me for gawking on Pinterest... "yellow shades of egg yolk" or "Outdoor Storage lockers Painted in Shades of Grey" Or " Hey Mom Pin This!"


Dinner In An Instant... Not Really
So I endeavored to cook something every day in the crock pot. Well, I have a full time job as most of you know, and then after I get my kids off to school I go to my part time job which has a schedule of seven days a week 360 days a year. My father refers to the restaurant as 365 days of slave labor, but actually we take New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and Christmas off. That being said I cannot begin to fathom blogging or detailing every recipe. My solution to the time crunch will be to chronicle the best of the week. That will give me 52 outstanding crock pot recipes with honorable mentions and white ribbons stamped "certificate  of participation" to the failures and near misses.  I do realize this makes me somewhat of a crack pot, but it simply gives my husband and my children more material for future sarcastic jabs against me. So I began carting my sexy, sleek black and silver, $40.00 crock pot back and forth from home to work and even out to the beach house for a two day break.

Only 3 clams= 1 Cup Chowda'
Plugged in and ready to cook, the first notable experiment was an all day project. I woke at dawn to forage in Cape Cod Bay for about three dozen chowder clams. The tide waits for no man or crock pot, so dig while the digging is good. Campbell and I raked the dead low eel grass tide line fighting off the mammoth  sized crabs and spider crabs. Each scrape of the rake produced a clam and sometimes two. We stuffed the giants into backpacks used for this task since 1974. I kid you not vintage ,sea worn, hand me down, multipurpose ,repurposed backpacks are making a come back on the fashion runways of Europe, and I know where you can find two. On the way back to the beach through the throngs of vacationing tourists we carried only three clams in our hands and when asked by the family from Ohio " how many didya get?"  we replied " Not so many left out there these days." in hopes that they would not make the trek to our sweet spot.

The chowder begins by boiling the white and purple bivalves open in a pan from the 1950s used just for this task. The heat steams the clams open and then you can scrape out the muscle. Being a retired surgeon, Campbell has to go one better and remove the abductor muscle from each clam. For this chowder we diced the cooled clams, but when the boys were little we had to grind them with a meat grinder from the  1940s because there is a collection of them on the kitchen counter and inquiring little minds need to know what you do with those silver dragons. Thus creating my all time favorite photo that I would post on Pinterest and they would never know because they won't look there and everyone else on there would go awww he's so cute.



 My Chowder Recipe For The Crock Pot

18-24 Quahogs Steamed open and prepared A La Campbell
Reserve the liquid
4 Slices Bacon rendered crispy  saved for later
1 Medium Onion diced
3 Stalks Celery diced
2 Medium Chef Potatoes peeled and diced
1 1/2 Cups Half and Half
1 1/2 Cups Heavy Cream
1Cup Reserved Clam Juice
1Tbl. Black Pepper Ground
2Teas. Sea Salt
1 Bay Leaf
Chopped Fresh Thyme and Fresh Parsley

 I used my Bed Bath and Beyond 6 quart Crock Pot that ironically had wedding wrapping paper on and was restocked after being returned by a former bride. Did she get two? Did she not want one or know how to cook? Did she call off the wedding?

Mmmm, Mmmm Fresh
In a sautee pan brown the bacon and remove it to a paper towel for garnish later. Sautee your onion and celery in the bacon fat to impart the flavor. Add everything else except for the clams and fresh herbs and bacon to the crock pot. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours.... or not* (see below) About 30 minutes before service add the clams and let them come to temperature. Serve the chowda' in cups with crumbled bacon and chopped fresh herbs for garnish.

We left the house for some Cape Cod adventures while our chowder Crocked? Potted? What is the verb for food cooking in a crock pot? Wandering around Welfleet Harbor and poking through a used bookstore looking for summer reading book club books, time wandered off. The natural light on Cape Cod is intoxicating and whether people watching or inspecting the rise and fall of the endless tides, time sails by.



 HACKED

Special Bulletin: Warning: Warning: The blog was left on the computer screen and the Husband has stepped to the keyboard. Ok so lets be honest here...I supported the Crock Pot thing but in the 
back of my head I am thinking 365 days, I don't think so. But as the norm with guys, I was wrong, again. I can honestly say there has been nothing out of that Crock Pot that I haven't enjoyed. Predictably for me, the sugar addict, it was the blueberry coffee cake out on Cape Cod (She did tell you the Crock travels with us like our 4th kid). Feel free to fire that one up again before the 365 days ends. If that is allowed of course. Love you!! Small children can now safely return to the room.

Aforementioned coffee cake from hacker husband
By the time we returned from the afternoon of leisure which is also known by my staff as my vacation; all 36 hours of it, the crock pot had gone overtime* and the creamy white chowder base was a separated, ugly mess of curds and whey gone way overboard. I frantically surfed the web for interesting help factoids on how to repair my failed cream soup only to find one helpful suggestion to throw it out and start all over. That wisecracking helpful webbie does not know, or has not read that I come from an extremely frugal and penny conscious childhood only to be recreating the same thrifty home environment on overdrive, so throw it out is not in this hoarder's vocabulary. I settled on the tip that suggested I warm some heavy cream in a sautee pan and whisk the offending broken mass into the warm cream a little bit at a time until it comes back together. I was able to achieve success with this hint. 

My experience with clam chowder in a crock pot has led me to the one conclusion that it is simpler to just make it in a soup pot  on top of the stove and turn it off before you leave the house. A point my mother made to me the minute I announced I was about to make chowder in a crock pot. I have never been one to live by the old adage that mother knows best, because in my home it is my way is the only way simply because I am the Queen Bee.

 Hey Mom, Pin this!

Bee El



Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Everything Old Is New Again

Add caption

That's two years of my life I will never get back...





 Like a slow cooker, the days and months in the last two years have come to a final full boil and I am slowly regaining the components of my former life. If you find yourself trying to survive a stressful patch of time, go back to the basics. Replant the roots that kept you grounded and you may be surprised by your harvest.

   I discovered that everything old is new again through planting a simple back yard garden. The obsession started with an abundance of compost in tubs mounded full of fruit and vegetable detriment generated in the pursuit of peeling and trimming to uncover the perfect form of the plant to present to our guests. I simply could not heave the scraps into the dumpster knowing the power contained in all those decomposing cells. I felt like my husband and I were being peeled and trimmed, yet our perfect selves were buried in the  legal compost of our lives.
We are going to need a bigger, better garden next year.


Note the boots
  Nothing says I love you at Christmas like a stacking compost bin called The Organic Choice Biostack from your boys.( Second only to the thigh high chicken boots from my Mother In Law Honey). Funny thing is that it is a summer gift that you can actually use starting in December unlike the trampoline: although that did not stop us from setting them both up on Christmas Day. It snowed continuously starting the next day and both toys were abandoned until the great thaw of April. Maintaining our delightful sense of humor and waiting out Mother Nature were priceless  lessons in patience. You know how you get patience? You wait for it. Not funny when you are in the waiting room of life. But I suggest you find a joke or 100 jokes to laugh at and something to do with all that time.
If you build it...

  As we prepared the boxes and filled them with beautiful black restaurant and chicken coop blended compost, the days grew warmer and it was almost time to get the early peas and beans under their cool blankets of spring dew. I contemplated my situation as I emptied potting soil into the re-purposed plastic mixed lettuce bins and inserted each cherry, plum and golden tomato seed. Slowly the days marched on and the beautiful little shoots from the Jalapenos and Habeneros emerged out on the sun porch. Is it killing me or is it making me stronger ?; I kept wondering as I kept watch over these delicate early plants. I lost myself in seed catalogs and kept looking to the future of what this garden would produce.The only time we were not discussing the details of how to save our family business from our family was when we were planning rows of vegetables or working out how to build support structures for the peas and tomatoes.
 
Thankfully I had the strong support of my friends and employees to remind me to keep fighting the slugs and garden pests. Somehow we were all working our gardens and following our paths through various challenges. Whether we were running away from, or running towards our final destinations depended on the day and the crisis. I think it was Angelo's triathlon that got the TEAM RAIN spirit train rolling. Before you know it we were in three hour spin challenges and spartan races. Who could forget the New Year's Day Polar Bear Plunge? I think Color Me Rad was one of our highlights. I found me again and I knew I was here to stay.Wild Ones Color Me Rad Video Diary.
Thanks Kate for the tutus.



 Whether you are fighting for that last mile, or the extra reserve tank, your last chance, or the day's last hope.. Dig in, fuel up, cover yourself in the compost of friends and people who believe in you, take stock in your family and focus on what really matters. Grow your garden with the people and the things that make you happy. Do not be afraid to take a chance and laugh at yourself whenever possible. We are not perfect beings, but rather powerful cells waiting for our chance to blossom forth for the ultimate harvest. I want my legacy to be that I went hard and now I am going home.
 


Well two years gone is two years older, but never felt newer than this.



I chose My Path, and I will keep on it!