Welcome!

I use my Cuisinart for everything, from chopping to slicing to mixing. Terry bought it for me the first year we moved into this house–in 1980–and I have never stopped using it. This is the third bowl replacement as I tend to wear out the mechanisms that hold the pieces together and I crack the bowls, but the motor and the blades keep going. I have a huge assortment of blades, too, as well as an attachment for beating egg whites.

It all comes apart and goes into the dishwasher. Sometimes, depending on what I am making, I will have to run the dishwasher before I can make the next item. Like when I use the bowl to make a cake, then wash everything so I can chop and dice ingredients to make a hash for dinner.

Back in the mid 80s I volunteered to cook on Saturdays for a women’s shelter which did not have a Cuisinart in their large kitchen, so I packed mine each weekend and took it to make food for about 30 women and children. I couldn’t imagine doing all that prep work without it. I am hopeful that by now they have purchased such a machine, but back then, food processors were not as ubiquitous as they are today.

I no longer have a blender or a crockpot like I did back in the 80s. Those, I found, were easy to live without. No popcorn maker, either, as the microwave variety is all we eat. Gave the ice crusher away when I downsized. The hand-held mixer still comes in handy for mashed potatoes, and I have a juicer I use for lemonade. I never had, nor have wanted, a bread maker. But, the one small appliance I cannot live without is the Cuisinart.

When I taught in the large inner city high school, there were lots of field trips. If you were with me back there when I had a teaching career, then you may remember the details of those trips.

We went everywhere, making sure our students dressed professionally, behaved well, asked intelligent questions (because we did lots of research before hand), and wrote thank-you notes when they got back. I was the crazed teacher who worried constantly about how well her students were behaving and keeping an eye on the clock to make sure we got back to the bus on time. Now, I am on the other end. I am the tour guide. It is so much more fun.

The bus arrives, the kids and teachers pile off, they split into groups, and I ask the  mansion tour group to line up on the steps of the large home. I have my script; I know how to line up the students; I have 45 minutes to get them through the house with all the information they will need and then line them up for the servant’s quarters/gift shop visit which is someone else’s responsibility. Then I make a dash through the house, open the door, and greet the next group of students. Two or three of these groups and I’m done and can go home.

It is so much more fun than getting the students back to school and teaching a couple more classes as well as preparing for the next day’s lessons. Less stress, too. I like being the tour guide.

This is my snack on a very gray, overcast, chilly San Francisco morning. I am staying in, having it in the flat rather than going out. I brought NO cold weather clothes with me as it had been sunny and delightful up here all last week. The weather shifted just as I drove into the city limits.

Thinking I would go out today for awhile, I dressed and carried the garbage bags down the back stairs. I froze in the brisk wind. Decided I would stay put until the sun comes out. May not happen today.

This week I am in San Francisco, Bernal Heights to be exact, housesitting for a friend. Actually, I am cat sitting as the house would be just fine with no one here. There is no yard or other things to tend to, just the cat. This is his morning activity:

Rough life, heh?

This is sort of roughing it for me as there is no wifi here, but there is a modem that will keep me tethered in one spot, and there is no dishwasher. Those are the two major conveniences I like to have in my life. If I was going to be here for more than a week, I might also be bummed that there is no clothes dryer, but I haven’t any clothes to wash, so no problem.

I have a list of projects to work on as well as the Bernal Heights neighborhood to explore.

Be assured, if there is flour in the recipe, I will make a mess. But I also make really good biscuits.

Roberta Whittaker is in the hair salon at San Joaquin Gardens, getting her hair done for the 50th anniversary luncheon to which she is headed afterwards. She and Anna, the hair stylist, have been chatting about the upcoming event and what all the Allied Arts Girls have done. We come in midway through the hair styling.

Anna had all the hair cut and was ready to blow dry. “Is this short enough for you,” she asked as she ruffled through the light brown hair.

“It looks good to me. Let’s see how it looks once it’s dry. Maybe a little more off the sides towards the back?”

Roberta liked the look of the short hair and the renewed color. She didn’t want gray hair yet, even though she was old enough to be gray. The Allied Arts girls were split with about half of them going natural and the other half still coloring their hair.

“I figure I’ll keep coloring my hair as long as it looks this good.”

“It looks real good on you since you also use makeup and have some color in your face. You don’t want to look all washed out,” Anna responded. “With you being a famous cook, you must have had some good food at those meetings.”

“I wasn’t in charge of the food for every meeting. We took turns. Whoever was the hostess would ask some of the other girls to help out with the food. We’d decide what to serve and then who would bring what. Sometimes we did real simple things like cookies and we all baked the same cookie, each one of us bringing a dozen. We had a big coffee pot we kept in Lois Jameson’s garage. For tea, we’d put the teapot on the stove and heat up the water and the girls could make their own tea if they wanted to. For the fancy teas, though, we had silver service sets that we used. A lot of the girls got them for wedding gifts so they would offer to let the club use them. I never had any silver because I hated to polish it. Even if you put it in those specially made bags, the stuff still tarnished.”

Roberta found herself shouting to be heard over the blow dryer so decided to quit talking while Anna worked her magic. After the blow dry, she took her curling iron and made big curls all over so to give the hair more body. Roberta always liked the look when Anna brushed it out and it was fluffed around her face.

“Tell me,” Anna quizzes, “how has cooking changed since you started Allied Arts?”

“Everything is easier! That’s the main change. You can get food at a restaurant or delicatessen or a grocery store that is as good as we could make in our own kitchens. There are microwave ovens which cook everything so fast. Dishwashers are in every home now. Back then, after our meeting, someone had to stay and wash the dishes. If we even use dishes now. Lots of paper products are used. We didn’t have that back in the forties. Nothing was disposable. Maybe that’s not such a good thing, though. We were fancier about how we did things. Serving food was such a big deal. We passed everything on trays. The girls would sit and the hostesses would do the work. Now, we do a buffet and you can get your own food. We would occasionally have lunch at a hotel restaurant, and that was a big deal. The girls all dressed up and we wore hats. Many of the girls worked and they couldn’t come during the day. In the sixties we started having dinner meetings at restaurants and no one seemed too shocked to see a group of women out at night by themselves. We couldn’t have done that in the forties and fifties. It was unlady-like,” Roberta said in a teasing voice and fluttering her eyelashes.

“What did you ladies serve at the meetings. Did you have a meal every time.”

“Oh, no,” Roberta waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “We would have fixed dinner for our family and cleaned up by the time we headed to our meeting at 8. We had dessert, usually, occasionally a salad. We did cake a lot, or in the spring it was strawberry shortcake. November meetings always had pumpkin pie. Then, for awhile in the fifties, we had gelatin desserts. You know, jello and whipped cream. There were all these cookbooks coming out from Jello that showed how to do layered salads and desserts. One of them had pieces of cake and fruit in it. I made that on the cooking show one time. The jello had to be whipped into a creamy mixture. It was very pretty with red and green jellos at Christmas time.”

The hairstyle done, Anna removes the red drape from Roberta and brushes off any excess hair clippings.

“So, have you decided what you’re wearing today?”

“Yes,” enthuses Roberta. This is the best part of the whole anniversary celeberation, a new outfit and Roberta is very pleased with her selection.

“I went to Macys and tried on a dozen outfits, but the one I liked best was a brown suit that reminded me of one I had in the fifties. The skirt is straight, with a kick-pleat, and the jacket has a pinched waist and lapels. I bought a cream colored silk blouse to go with it and new brown patent leather pumps. It’s very stylish.”

“Thought you might be wearing red since it’s February and Valentine’s Day and all.”

That comment sort of stops Roberta in her tracks as she’s already out of the chair and headed to the door after dropping two twenty dollar bills on the counter.

“I hadn’t even thought about that! You’re right. We did wear red in February, especially for the sweetheart banquets. Even later we would wear a red blouse or jacket to commemorate the holiday. I just got so caught up in the fact that it was the fiftieth anniversary and I wanted a special outfit. Wonder if any of the other girls are wearing red?”

“Well, I know Mrs. Vincent isn’t. She was in here yesterday,” Anna starts to tell the story as she sweeps up the beige blond hair scraps around the chair, “and she was telling me almost the same thing you just did. She went to Mona Lisa and bought a knit suit in blue.”

“Oh, she would! I didn’t even think about Mona Lisa. I felt like Macy’s was a big enough splurge. Most of us buy our clothes at Gottschalks but I wanted to bump it up a notch. I don’t know what we would do if Gottschalks ever closes its doors. We’ll go naked, I guess! They’ve been around almost as long as First Baptist Church, though, so I don’t expect they’ll be going out of business any time soon. Long time ago, we had members in the church who owned a real nice dress shop here in town, Cashions. Before that it was Cashion & Carey, little play on their names. When everyone started moving out north, in the sixties, they split up and Jack and Becky Cashion had their store on one corner at Cedar and Shields, and Mrs. Carey had hers on the other corner. Cashions was always pretty high-end, though, so for work clothes I’d shop at Careys. Mona Lisa is another old name in high-end fashion. They used to be downtown, too. What is nice about that store, there is usually only one item in each size so you know you’ll not run into someone else with your outfit on.”

“I remember shopping at Lerner’s when I was a girl,” Anna responded to all those store names. “We didn’t have much money but I could find cute things there that didn’t cost too much. Now, I’m like your friends, I go to Gottschalks. They have so many stores around town that it’s just easy to get to.”

“Yes, they are. Speaking of getting somewhere, I gotta get going if I’m going to be early to the tea house. It’s time.”

And with that, Roberta, was out the door of the little salon.

Kay’s recent story of found money in her front yard reminded me of a story.

Many years ago, while I was still working at the large inner city high school, our secretary, wanting a way to rescue us from the tyranny of students, decided we should start buying lottery tickets each week. We each contributed $5 to the effort with dreams of hitting a large amount and leaving the school behind. After about five weeks of this, and winning very little, which we plowed back into more tickets, I realized I had lost enough money to have gone out to dinner. It also occurred to me that if God wanted me to have money he would dump it in my front yard. I expressed my feelings to the group and withdrew from any more gambling. As you can probably figure, there was never any big winnings.

However, the next week, when I went to the curb of my front yard, to bring in the garbage can, there in the gutter lay a one dollar bill. That is the kind of money God wants to give me. Very small amounts, very infrequently.

As I was out looking over the blogs of others, I found one that is written by a woman who will also turn 60 this year.  She isn’t there right now as she is off to Italy with her daughter. I, on the other hand, am hanging out here in Fresno for a few more days.

Tomorrow I give my school tour at Kearney Mansion. Friday I will get my hair cut and redyed. There was a brief conversation on Facebook about letting my hair grow out if it was a pretty gray. It isn’t so I’m still getting it colored. Every week someone stops me, compliments the color and asks what it is. It’s a couple of numbers, mixed up by my hairdresser. I’m grateful for my hairdresser and her ability to make me look good.

I’m headed to San Francisco for a week of housesitting (or in this case, apartment sitting) for a friend. After I stop off in San Mateo and celebrate my

granddaughter’s third birthday. Terry will stay in Fresno as he is doing video work for our hometown baseball team.

So, back to this 60 thing.  I am getting closer to that birthday. Just a few more months. But at this point, I’m thinking about ignoring it.

For those of you who live in the United States, that title is sort of a “duh,” but to those readers who live in other countries, and I’ve been getting quite a few showing up on the analytics WordPress so conveniently shows me, this is an American tradition, every four years, that can drive some of us, including yours truly, CRAZY.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE our democracy and I really believe in voting. I have voted in every election since I was 18 and was first granted the privilege. I was one of the first to be allowed to vote at 18 as the voting age had previously been 21, but when the Viet Nam War was raging, and the citizens were raging about the  war, and we all asked why the nation could draft young men who could not vote for the people who were doing the drafting. well the age was changed. That’s history. I vote, no matter how small or how large the election, I VOTE.

To be precise, I vote by absentee ballot and I just put my envelope in the mail today. My vote has been cast. There is no going back. That said, let me tell you about a visitor to my front door a few moments ago. By the way, it is local election time in Fresno as well as the national primary. California, for some strange reason, is one of the last to vote in the presidential primary, so it’s a done deal before we ever see the ballot, much less mark it. We are the biggest state, but we get the last say. Makes no sense to me, but I digress. Back to the candidate volunteer who showed up today.

She was decked out in red, white, and blue. Stars and stripes vest, straw hat with flag scarf tied around it. Sensible shoes, though. I think she should have some jazzy little red, white, and blue number. I graciously answered the door, and she started to hand her candidate for city council flyer to me as she’s rapidly telling me about him. She opens the flyer (of which I have an over-abundance of these left on my doorstep and also receive in the mail from all sorts of candidates) and starts to tell me he is against high speed rail. Have I told you, dear Reader, that I do not have a poker face? She must have seen my expression change from gracious and smiling to vicious with teeth bared. Ok, it’s not really that drastic, but close. I am very much FOR high speed rail and will only vote for those candidates who support it.

“Oh,” she said, closing her flyer and stepping back from the door, “you’re for high speed rail.”

“Yes I am.”

She then begins a litany of reasons for opposing it, all which I have heard, all which make it sound like we are living in the 19th century.

I can dispute all of the reasons, and I tell her, the bay area and the Los Angeles basin citizens are also opposed to the high speed train coming through the San Joaquin Valley as they see no good reason to spend money on this geographic area. There is nothing of interest to them here and they want all the money spent in their areas.

Those of us who favor the high speed rail in the San Joaquin Valley see it providing jobs and, here’s my main reason, a fast way to get to the bay area and/or Los Angeles basin. The people who live in those areas can take a plane trip for less money and get to the opposite end faster than by high speed rail. It’s almost impossible to fly out of Fresno to those locales unless you pay $300 and plan to leave very early or very late in the day. The citizens in those locales never fly to Fresno. Well, almost never, unless their company pays them to fly here for some business-associated visit. So, you see, they have no desire to see tax money spent on the line to go through the San Joaquin Valley. I have people in the bay area tell me, “There is nothing there. Why should we have a fast train that goes where no one wants to go?”

My votes are cast. The ballot is in the mail. After election day, June 5, we will see how it all shakes out. Probably not to my liking.