pie crust

for me late summer and fall is memory time. so last night when i was baking banana bread for the students who were coming over for a bonfire supper, i thought about my grandmother when i fluffed flour all over the mixer and counter because i added the flour too quickly. i can still see her sitting on her rolling stool in the cozy farm kitchen baking wonderful bread--with flour all around. she always complained that she could never bake without flour somehow getting onto everything. the bread was great - especially served warm with slabs of butter and tomato perserves- and always baked with out receipe. then this morning my home companion came in the mail with an article about pie crusts. --which reminded me of my daughter. i was not a good cooking instructor to my daughter, but i did help her make her first pie crust (receipe from joy of cooking slightly altered). she is famous for her pies, impressing first her dad and then her husband's family. i think knowing how to make one tricky thing well gives confidence to try all sorts of things. now she makes all kinds of dishes. so maybe i did okay by her.

wanting, getting, dusting, disposing stuff

i guess i could never be a minimalist though now after a move i wish i was. there is something about my past and my character that abhors an empty room. i've tried to do the martha stewart look and the metropolitan home look, but almost immediately it morphs into the 'fill every nook and cranny' look. i spent a great deal of my life looking at things and desiring things, but since i have never had the funds to get the original, i tried to copy the look. well, now i have all this 'decor' and furniture and i am trying to give it away so my next move won't be so terrible. also, when you live in a windy place in the middle of corn field with a house where the windows aren't really that tight, there is dust on everything all the time. if i had the means, i would make sure all my cupboards, bookshelves, cabinets, drawers, etc. had airtight closures. they could have glass fronts, but they would be airtight. so i keep trying to give stuff away...and some of it is gone... lots of books to the school library, but when i thought to give my table away, no one really wanted it. (truly -- most of the stuff people have - unless they have antiques or have spent big money on a item, like furniture--doesn't really mean much to anyone else. they are the owners memories and experience) then i have two boxes packed with sheet music from my grandmother. and then there are the little paper houses of a castle village that i cut out a put together. my sister has the same problem. we have taken an oath not to buy any more 'decor' and especially anything that can be called 'cute." i already broken it--i bought little tiny clothes pins. --there were so cute. the only consolation is they don't take up much room. sigh.

the new ketchup

i remember the first time i saw someone put ketchup on eggs. culture shock--i had never seen anything put on eggs but salt and pepper. ketchup on eggs still doesn't sound too good, but...i really like salsa and onions and cheese with and on my eggs. but now i am in a culture where ranch dressing is used as the all around condiment. pizza of any kind dipped in ranch, chips dipped in ranch, french fries in ranch, and ranch mixed with ketchup or with ketchup and mayo as a dip. my taste buds are offended. but then i really probably shouldn't really wince. i love hotdogs dipped in a sauce of equal parts of heated ketchup and grape jelly.