Cackle for the Day

Just when I think Sarah Palin couldn't do anything more absurd than whatever her most recent stunt was, she surprises me again, God love her!

Read on MSNBC that she and daughter Bristol are filing papers to have their names trademarked. I have unapologetically altered an image of her from the Internet (Atlantic Monthly source?) so that I could see what she might look like bearing the trademark symbol.

...

How do I explain to my grandson what the TM stands for: Tiny Mind? Tawdry Mouthpiece (my favorite so far, but I think Rush Limbaugh has that one sewn up)? Terminally Mendacious? Tea-party Mentor - too obvious?

...

Yes, I am pulling out of depression-mode. I am laughing again - great, room-shaking belly laughs. Thank you, Sarah, for today's cackle!

(C)2011 M. C. McLemore

It's to Laugh

Laughter is good medicine, especially when you're feeling blue, or after abdominal surgery, or when you've stubbed all your toes. Two things happened this week which seemed funny to me.

First, we had icy snow last week and I dreaded the old-style brick sidewalk I have to traverse to get to the office. There are two downspouts that flood the bricks in a couple of patches. Wouldn't be so bad if there was a fence or something to hold onto, but there isn't. One of our volunteers stopped by and we started chatting about how treacherous those patches are in hard winter temperatures.

"I use those cleats that you attach to the bottom of your shoes," she said, "and never have trouble with ice. They're for sale at Sell's Hardware, but I'm sure there are other places you can find them."

That afternoon, I bought a pair. I was determined to try them out on the ice-covered alley between my house and Mike's (the Butcher from Pittsburgh), which is worse than the bricks at work. I sat on the sofa, attached them to my sneakers and tested them on the wood floor. I sounded like a lineman leaving the locker room. Clack, clack, clack.

Then, I stepped onto the linoleum tiles in the kitchen...and promptly fell flat on my butt.

Secondly, this afternoon I had to visit the doctor (might be developing pneumonia again.) Lungs were tight, hurt to breathe..the usual for this time of year. I swear, I think I'm allergic to snow.

Doctor was concerned about some wheezing and rattling in my left lung, and ordered a nebulizer treatment with some medicines meant to reduce the inflammation and open up the passages. She was going to listen to the lungs again after the treatment.

I'm sitting there with the mouthpiece clenched between my teeth, breathing in and out. (In with the good air, out with the bad...what movie is that from?) After a couple of minutes, boredom was beginning to set in, so I started looking at the contents of the room. Someone put the calendar a month ahead; there was a saccharin-sweet picture of a puppy in a frame decorated by a child - I think a kid did it. My eyes followed the walls around to the one directly opposite my chair, which held a delicately lettered platitude. After I read it, I laughed so hard I started coughing, which brought the doctor in.

"What's wrong?"

I pulled on the mouthpiece, sucking in more of the mist that is supposed to help, and pointed to the platitude on the opposite wall. She read it aloud.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away."

Sometimes, the best thing to do is laugh.

Crow's Cornbread Recipe

Cornbread for a 10 ½ Inch Skillet, or 12 Muffins

Pre-heat oven to:
425°F (218°C; Gas Mark 7)

Dry ingredients
1 cup/225 grams cornmeal (I use stone-ground, prefer yellow, but white is good, too.)
1 cup/225 grams plain unbleached flour
1 scant tablespoon/ ½ ounce/14 grams baking powder
½ teaspoon/2 ml salt

Wet Ingredients
1 cup/8 fluid ounces/ ½ pint/237 ml milk
1 large egg
¼ cup/2 fluid ounces/60 ml olive oil or light vegetable oil,
(plus an additional same amount for the skillet)

Thoroughly blend the dry ingredients; set aside. Likewise, beat the egg, milk and ¼ cup of the oil together until well mixed, but not frothy.

Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet stuff. Mix just until well blended – no dry lumps visible. Put the skillet into the oven to heat, for about 60 seconds or so, until hot. Pour the other ¼ cup (et cetera) oil into the skillet, swirling it around until the bottom of the skillet is completely covered. Pour in the cornbread batter, place skillet into the hot oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes. Crust should be a lovely medium brown and a toothpick stuck in the center of the cornbread comes out clean. Cut bread into pie-shaped wedges, split open and slather with butter and the jam or jelly of your choice. Of course, if you’re going to smother your wedge with pan gravy, you might want to fore go the butter and jelly – well, the jelly, anyway. (If making muffins, spray the muffin cups with oil, or grease with shortening/lard/bacon-drippings. Reduce cooking time to 18-20 minutes.)

Once you’ve made cornbread a couple of times, you can just look at it and know if it’s done.

Seems a lot of Americans like sweet cornbread, so if you do, too, add a couple of tablespoons/1 ounce/28-30 grams of sugar in with the dry ingredients. I was taught to make cornbread without the sugar, probably because my mother used this recipe for making cornbread stuffing for the turkeys.

A larger diameter skillet will produce a thinner round of bread, with a lot more crispy crust to bread ratio.

If you plan to use buttermilk instead of sweet milk, be sure to add ½ teaspoon baking soda to the dry ingredients, or the bread will be a bit heavy. Leftover cornbread (if there is such a thing at your house) is delicious crumbled into a bowl and covered with cold milk...nothing finer for late night snacking or a quick breakfast in the morning.
(c)2011 M.C. McLemore

My Cornbread Skillet

I have four cast iron skillets, ranging in size from the smallest, six inches across, to the whopper, at 12½ inches. The two smaller ones are lighter weight than the larger ones. I use them for cooking eggs, making pain perdu (lost bread), buttermilk biscuits and grilled cheese sandwiches, or for pan-frying chops and small steaks.

The whopper is so heavy I have to use both hands to lift it. It’s reserved for larger roasts, such as the turkey for Thanksgiving or the ham at Christmas, or when I do an entire pork fish (whole loin). It holds enough for a crowd, of whatever I’m cooking at the time.

My favorite of the four, however, is the 10½ inch skillet. I use it for just about anything, from my (damned-good-if-I-do-say-so-myself) Southern fried chicken, to rice pilaf, to dry roasted vegetables, to French-fries and smothered cottage fries; from hamburgers and chili to pineapple-upside-down cake and apple tarte tatin. It is my work-horse, the one we all refer to as the cornbread skillet, for that is the only one of the four that makes decent cornbread.

The cornbread skillet is of the perfect depth and the exact weight, and has sides of the scientifically precise angle, for making cornbread as it should be made: slightly higher in the center, with crispy sides and bottom, and with small wells around the rim where the olive oil flowed up over the batter as it spread across the sizzling hot pan. It can’t be beat!

Good Morning

It is almost 9:30 am as I begin to write this. Seems it might be a good day today.

Outside, the sun's rays glance off the snow crystals blanketing the back yard, causing them to sparkle like diamond dust. As the sun continues to rise, the angle changes and the diamond shards disappear. For the moments they are here, I am lost in the tiny flashes of brilliant color. My conscience will never allow me to own a diamond, but the refracted light off the snow lets me appreciate their allure. After all, I am Crow, for whom all things sparkly are as magnets to iron filings - an irresistible attraction and desire to possess. And, yes, it is the iron that desires to possess the magnet, not the other way 'round.

The thermometer at the backdoor reads 21 Fahrenheit, which is too-effing-cold in Celsius, I understand. My father had a number of pithy aphorisms for describing cold of this level: colder than a well-digger's butt in Idaho, than a witch's tits, than iron balls on a brass monkey...and others, most of which I'd be too embarrassed to post here - which says a lot, doesn't it?

At the corner of the carport, where the drain leading into the downspout has sprung a leak, there is one gigantic icicle dagger waiting to stab some hapless creature when it cracks loose and falls. Jeeze, I hope it isn't me! There are no icicles along the gutter at the back door, as there have been every winter I've lived here, because this autumn the kids (daughter, grandson) and I put new gutter covers on. While I am grateful there are no patches of ice for me to slip on, as I walk under the roof line to the sidewalk, I did enjoy how the sunlight danced and shattered and sparkled through the curtain of ice daggers in years past. Crow.

I am waiting for my cat - actually, I don't have a cat, it has me - to show up for his morning feed. I'd love to have him be a house cat, but he's not having any of it. I've managed to get him into the house to eat, but if I even look like I'm going to shut the door behind him, he's gone in a flash. Perhaps when it's warmer out, and I can sit outside with him while he eats, we can become buddies and he'll become comfortable inside. Since he was/is a feral cat, scared of his own shadow, I am lucky he allows me as much familiarity as he does. Funny little guy - sometimes he runs up to me when I come home, as if he's going to rub against my legs, but at the last second his thinking brain yells, "DUDE!! Seriously??!" and he veers off in another direction. Yeah, I think we'll be lap buddies by the end of the coming summer.

There is just enough breeze outside that the windchime is almost melodic in its soundings. Is it my imagination, or are the sounds sharper, clearer on frigid days than warm ones? Doesn't matter, I guess, because the sparkling sound coupled with the sparkling snow and the shiny ice dagger dangling off the carport roof have all ensured a good morning - so far.

Why I Write

Because I have to, of course. Of all the things I miss with being seriously depressed is that I've lost (temporarily, I hope) the desire to write.

Because depression is, for some, an unpleasant subject to consider, and because I am one of those people, and because I don't want The Crow to become unbearable, I've begun a journal over on TypePad.

Because, you see, writing about battling depression is, for me, part of the recovery process. If any of you would care to read what I have to say, I'll give you the ID and password for visitors. But, it's okay, you know, if you don't.

Because.

(My email address is sofie dot onecrow at gmail dot com.)

Cosmic Poetry, Part Eight

This was waiting for me in my email box when I returned home from class. Thought some of you might enjoy watching it, if you haven't already.




PS: good quote found at Whiskey River -

"Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it's no wonder.
We're storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?"
- Brian Greene
The Fabric of the Cosmos