You can’t escape the taste of the food you had as a child. In times of stress, what do you dream about?
Your mother’s clam chowder. It’s security, comfort. It brings you home. – Jacques Pepin
It’s Tuesday and you know what that means! Carole wants to know:
10 Favorite Foods Your Mom Used To Make
Now this poses a bit of a problem for me… Why you ask? Well, truly my mom was good at many things, but cooking was not one of them. At all. And, while I loved her dearly – it was not for her culinary skills!
Rather, I will make this about the foods of my Nana and my dear Mother-in-Law (though I did not know her when I was a child, she made things that the child in me loved!) My list starts with 2 things from her and the rest of the items on the list are devoted to my much beloved Nana (my maternal grandmother) she was a fantastic cook and I spent hours in the kitchen with her. Add to that, the number of times I called her while cooking a meal to see what she thought – and it was LOTS of time! It is because of her that I am the cook I am today.
My Mother-in-Law’s Sloppy Joes. So good, and my kids most commonly requested birthday meal. Very deserving of the #1 spot!
In slot #2 would be her Æbleskiver’s – to die for!
Nana’s mashed potatoes.
Denver Omelets – a treat for breakfast if you spent the night there. These also could be a supper treat to eat while watching Charlie Chan movies!
Baked German Pancake, especially delicious when topped with raspberries from my Nana’s garden!
Smelt – key factors here, they must have been dipped by my Uncle Denny and fried outside on the Coleman stove.
Coleslaw – she made the best!
Knödel – German Dumplings. She made them by hand, grinding the ham and the potatoes to an exact consistency. Absolutely amazing!
Potato Salad, while she was a good German – she did not make a typical German potato salad. How she made it is how I make it still today. Potatoes, celery, radishes, and Hellman’s. The best!
Mexican Wedding Cake cookies – these were the ultimate treat! Getting a “care package” in college that contained them and made you extremely popular.
The foods of my youth that bring warm memories to my heart whenever I think of them.
What food takes you to another time? Please share!
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. – Bob Marley
Carole has perhaps picked the best topic ever for this 10 on Tuesday, she wants to know:
10 Albums You Love. As in, you love the entire album, not just a few select songs
Wow, how do you even start with this topic – better yet, WHERE do you start?! Who gets the number one spot? How do you pick just ten? So, in no particular order (okay, alphabetical because there has to be some logic, right?) here you go, the 10 albums I love – in their entirety!
Beethoven – 6th Symphony (but really, how do you pick)
Van Morrison – Moondance
Dave Brubeck – The Essential Dave Brubeck
Etta James – At Last!
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
Diana Krall – When I Look In Your Eyes (I have every single Diana Krall album and they are all spectacular, but this is my favorite)
The Manhattan Transfer Anthology – Down In Birdland (a cheat but I have all their albums and they are all in the entire category)
John Mayer – Continuum
Frank Sinatra – Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years (I am going to sound like a broken record – but this was a hard choice, I love every single thing he had ever done, but this one is so good)
The Wailin’ Jennys – 40 Days
So, when I first did this list there were 19 albums on it and, sadly, this is not 19 on Tuesday! So, in thinning this out a bit I tried to pick albums that might not be on everyone’s list. Maybe I will be surprised and find that there are many duplicates! However, I thought it important note that it goes without saying that there is so much good music available today. But, more importantly is that even though a musician might be gone from this world – their music lives on (and in a way they do too) every time we listen.
If you do not see an artist on my list, it does not necessarily mean I do not love them and they are not ENTIRE ALBUM WORTHY – they are. (Hello Adele, James Taylor, Brandi Carlile, Aaron Neville, Tony Bennett, the band, Fleetwood Mac, fun., Mussorgsky, Gillian Welch, Joan Baez, Le Vent du Nord, The Lumineers, Mat Kearney, Michael Bublé, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers, Pearl Django, Patsy Cline, Sam Cooke, Sarah Vaughn, and Warren Zevon – I am looking at all of you!) Picking 10 was just such a difficult decision, truly!
I hope you see something new on my list, something or someone you maybe did not know, and they become something you love! Because, really, I hope the music never ends!
10 Books That Made YOU Want to Drop Everything and Read
Oh, man. How to choose! I am going to do a bit of a different take on this and go with my top 10 authors, which will still be almost impossible to narrow down, but I will try!
E. B. White – Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Three fantastic books that I just devoured. More. Than. Once.
Laura Ingalls Wilder – The Little House Series. I have read these books dozens of times. Really. Dozens.
C. S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity – books that transformed my life as a child and an adult.
Mario Puzo – The Godfather, Fools Die, The Sicilian, The Last Don. Gritty novels that grab you from the very first sentence and don’t let you go even after you are done reading them!
Hugh Howey – The Wool Omnibus. Science Fiction at its best.
Tom Rob Smith – The Child 44 Trilogy, The Farm – a new to me writer who writes a fantastic novel!
Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games Trilogy. LOVED! Such great writing. I devoured these books and could not wait to start the next one!
J.K. Rowling – The Harry Potter Series. These I loved with my children. We read them together, or sometimes out loud, or sometimes impatiently waited for each other to finish them!
Jussi Adler-Olsen – The Department Q Series. I simply adore Carl Morck and his imperfect but lovely manner.
Dan Jones – The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England is the only book of his I have read, but it was absolutely fantastic. I read this with a boss as we drove to a conference. We did not want to stop!
Diana Gabaldon – The Outlander Series. The first “romance” novels that I actually liked! I am adding this one as a bonus because season 2 of Outlander just started! If you have not read these – you should! They are so good!!
There are so many others I could add here – stories by that expert story-teller, Garrison Keillor; yarny tales shared by the Yarn Harlot; those lovely letters that EZ wrote from Schoolhouse Press; anything that Ernest Hemingway put to paper; the vivid poetry of Pablo Neruda – things that make you lose track of your day and get lost in the words of their world.
There you have my list – some timeless, some classic, some new literature – all incredible. Today is all about reading, so tell me what makes you D.E.A.R.???
or some curtains or something to wear – it’s lovely.
– Twiggy
It’s 10 on Tuesday and this week Carole wants to know:
10 Things You Do To Calm Down
Hmmmm, calm down you say? Yes, we all need a bit of that sometimes, don’t we? Some of us (me!!) more than others.
So, what things help me regain sanity when everything around me is chaos…
Knitting – absolutely every single time. Even when the knitting is not good, the pattern is not easy, or it is just a simple swatch. Knitting is number one on my list.
Shut my mouth – stress and talking are a bad combination.
Meditation. A simple activity that centers me and helps me clear away the chaos from the inside – and if I am calm, what is going on around me is not so earth shattering. Even easier if you turn on Breathe, put in your ear buds, close your eyes, and listen.
Make bread. There is something so cathartic about the process of flour, water, yeast, and salt creating something so incredibly delicious. Stress reduction on so many levels!
Take a walk. A change of scenery just does a body good.
Work in the garden. Bonus – taking out your frustration on the weeds.
Read. Nothing quite like entering the world of the novel to clear your mind of what is stressing you.
