Author: Admin

It’s Finally Fall

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It’s finally fall! A tiny storm swept through last night and today, bringing dark clouds and sprinkling the vegetable and poppy seeds I just planted. But the cool blustery weather won’t last. I mean, this is Southern California, after all. We still have a ton of 80 degree days coming up in the next two months. I’ll enjoy the cool days as they come.

One of my goals in life is to spend a year back east where they have real weather, see if I can take it. I want to experience the contrast, scraping ice off windscreens (yes, I know it’s called windshields here), slush in the streets, my nose dripping from the cold, perhaps an icicle hanging thereon, wearing heavy duty boots, a real winter coat and miles and miles of scarves–oh! how I love scarves–being snowed in (whoa! I’m not sure about that–what about hiking, the dogs?).

But then there’s the renewal that will come when that first crocus pops up and the re-invigoration to one’s system that can’t be felt without the dormancy. Right? Don’t be bursting my bubble now, because I’m putting that goal on the list I’m compiling of things I want to do before I croak.

Crock-Pot Braised Oxtails

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I crave this dish. There is nothing like the rich, lip-smacking full taste of oxtail stew or soup any time of the year, but especially as Fall and Winter rolls in. And it couldn’t be easier in a Crock-Pot.

Ingredients:

  • 3 to 4 lbs. oxtails
  • 2 onions cut into 6 wedges
  • 2 carrots, sliced
  • 3 small red potatoes, quartered
  • 1-2 parsnips cubed or sliced (this gives the dish an added richness)
  • ½ tsp leaf thyme
  • ½ tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp basil
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp salt (oxtails are quite salty on their own)
  • ¼ tsp pepper (I use ½ tsp at least)
  • 1 cup beef broth
  • 3 tablespoons ketchup
  • 3 tablespoons flour
  • ¼ cup red wine
  • ¼ cup parsley

Place oxtails on broiler rack and broil for 15 to 20 minutes to brown and remove fat: drain. Place browned oxtails in the Crock-Pot. Add all remaining ingredients except flour, water and parsley. Stir well and push vegetables to be covered and moistened by broth. Cover and cook on Low setting for 8 to 12 hours.

One hour before serving, turn to High setting. Make a smooth past of flour and water, stir into Crock-Pot. Cover and cook until thickened. Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving–Serves 6

And for goodness sake, suck all the meat off the bones. That is truly the best part.

Ghoul Lady

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The Head is back in her guise as Halloween Ghoul Lady. I was going to paint her face an eerie ghostly white or yellow fluorescent and hang a spider from her nose, but couldn’t find either, well, without buying enough paint and spiders to decorate an army of heads.

So as you can see, I’ve draped her in a black tinsel shawl dotted with little shiny ghosts, along with a sign with the word “Boo!” she’ll be shrieking every time a little goblin, witch, Spiderman or Romney-masked teenager comes along. I wish! Wouldn’t that be funny?

In case you’re wondering why The Head is perched above my basketball hoop . . . my ex placed her there when she appeared in the vacant lot next to the house twenty years previously. Probably abandoned by someone tired of her mouthiness and that dead pan stare. Or maybe she was in the Pageant of the Masters or the Laguna Theatre and got too old? It’s a cruel world out there. But we took her in. Like we took in that woman with the two huge cats who showed up in the lot that time and stayed for three months. I’ll have to tell you that story sometime. It’s a good one. Actually it pisses me off when I think about it. But I digress.

So anyway, there above my basketball hoop The Head has stayed, rain, hail or shine. Sometimes I’ll come out and see a twenty-something guy standing in the driveway staring up at her with a nostalgic look on his face. And then he’ll say something like, “That thing used to scare the crap out of me when I was little, but then I got used to her and now she reminds me of the fun we had on the street.”

Ah yes, this is a fun street.

Old Post Resurrection Hop: Over the Hill and Faraway

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As part of Old Post Resurrection Hop, I’m re-posting this blog I wrote in November, 2011.

Yesterday afternoon, instead of taking Fergie and Jake on our usual three-mile hike up the dirt road that winds up to the Top of The World (yup, it’s called that), I decided on the “other” hill, the one paralleling Laguna Canyon Road.  Haven’t been there in a while.  With all the rain we’ve had this fall, the meadow on the left of the steep tarred road glows with a spring-like green.  Opposite, a single house halfway up the hill, perches above the canyon.

The end of the road flattens to the left into a spot that looks like a helicopter landing pad, but it’s actually the remains of a foundation of a house that burned down at least twenty years earlier. A white slat-backed bench and two Adirondack chairs arranged just so sit under a tree complete with rope swing.  There’s history here, evidenced by the date “1947″ followed by the name “Don” carved into a low cement wall. The property is owned by someone who, unable to  build on it because of access problems, gave it to his dad who maintains it as a kind of park for those who discover it, or so I hear.  I’m grateful for this generosity of spirit.

I usually let the dogs charge around while I admire the view, one of Catalina Island (on a clear day), along with a view of Laguna’s main beach. From this angle and elevation, the breaking waves look like white brushstrokes. The sunsets are magnificent. A short distance behind the property the path leading up to Bermuda Hills Drive on the right is visible, free of its thick summer growth (and lurking snakes), revealing a discarded bucket, a couple of beer bottles and part of a large ceramic pot, no doubt tossed from the decks of the million dollar homes above. The goats have been hard at work.

I’ve taken this path a  number of times before. Today, I’m going left. There is no path, save for a faint indentation in the scrub. Sure, there’s a length of PVC pipe and a dead houseplant ahead, it’s not like it hasn’t been traversed before. But for me it’s a different path. And today, what I’m after is that feeling I used to get as a kid in Africa, be it in the Zambian bush, the flatlands of Zimbabwe, or in the hills of Barberton, South Africa, that feeling of charting new territory, of discovery. Fergie and Jake trot ahead, stopping only to sniff delicately at coyote droppings, dessicated and bleached white by the sun.

We head up the side of the hill steep enough to threaten a tumble down to the bench and Adirondack chairs. I pass what looks like a mini acacia, Africa’s umbrella thorn tree. Trying not to slip as I angle across the incline, I find myself thinking about the time I was nine, when me and my dad used to go looking for gold in the hills around Barberton those two years he worked in the mines and made bricks part-time. The Barberton area contains some of the oldest sedimentary rock formations in the world, site of a gold rush in the 1880s. We never did find find any gold on our forays into the rolling hills. Instead, on my own, I discovered an abandoned mine shaft filled with vines and a couple of parrots swooping in and out. I wrote a story about the experience when I first came to America as a twenty-three-year old at a local junior College and was rewarded with a C+ for archaic language, too many flashbacks, and a lack of focus.

Today, I’m focused on thinking about the past and those days I find myself visiting more and more, wishing my parents were still around to fill in those blanks I never realized were missing. ‘t often visit in my mind. It’s just too hard. My parents are no longer around to fill in those blanks about ask those questions I never bothered to ask before, the family history barely noted by my mom, but fervently pursued by my dad. I didn’t find anything like that today, not even close, unless you count the acacia look-alike.  Still, I enjoyed an invigorating hike until I came to a gully, newly formed by the looks of it with Jake and Fergie perched on the edge looking back at me. There’s a way around but it’s getting dark. Another time. I turn back, satisfied.

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Is This The Year?

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I’m about to totally stress myself out and sign up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which happens every November. Just thinking about it makes my palms sweat. All those story ideas I’ve got lying all over the place on Post-it notes and on the back of ATM receipts, napkins, and in a computer file titled “Ideas” suddenly seem stupid and hackneyed and about as likely to turn into an entire book as a Honey Boo Boo episode (should). Actually, I don’t really have that many ideas.

But I must do it. I really must. I must at least try. I want to blow through my pattern of anal-writing, that is, waiting until I have a clear idea of exactly where I’m going, along with needing to “feel” the rhythm of the words and then once I do, to correct every misspelling, every missed or excess comma before I can move on.

When I was writing Mine Dances, my second YA paranormal novel, I got a feel for what it was like to wing it this one time, to just go at it by writing down what needed to happen next in two bulleted pages without stopping. It was exhilarating. Now, while that isn’t exactly free writing, it did give me a glimpse of what it would be like to forge ahead, right “feel,” right grammar be damned. I’d use the technique whenever I got stuck. Now I want to do it for an entire book.

I made a resolution to write a first “shitty” draft without stopping after I finished Mine Dances, back in 2004. And then came my memoir, Loveyoubye, with all its attendant emotional booby traps and doubts about my entire life and self, and I moved to another level of writing. I trust myself more now. So along with Scrivener a computer program, I’m eyeing (it purports to “help you get to the end of that awkward first draft”), I do believe I might just try to fulfill my resolution next month. Any advice from pros of the NaNoWriMo gratefully accepted.

The Decision

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It was a black hole of a night, sheets of rain engulfing the old Ford pick-up as Kate and her old chum Tully made their way up the mountainside to the cabin where Kate planned to do a lot of thinking about her life and her marriage.

The rain dripped through a rusted spot above the windshield and onto the sling cradling her broken arm.

She ignored it, her mind on how close she’d come to being caught by her husband, home a day early from his trip—no doubt filled with remorse and carrying roses—her clairvoyance useless when it came to him and his tumultuous nature; he wouldn’t understand her need to get away.

Suddenly she was swamped with guilt and a miasma of confusion, inhibiting her ability to “see” what she would so clearly have seen otherwise: the downed sign, the washed out bridge ahead and the hundred-foot plunge into the river below.

But then she felt a surge of power, an inner strength that must have been building with each mile she journeyed away from her husband, and she was filled with a certainty she hadn’t known since meeting him.

“Stop!” she cried, “the bridge is out ahead.”

Must See Movies #2

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Here’s my second list of 10 “must see” movies. I gave all ten of them 5 stars on Netflix. Let me know what you think.

1. Being There (1979)

The uncomplicated life of simple-minded Chance is changed after a run-in with wealthy Eve, and soon his “wisdom” — mostly garden related — has Washington’s political elite hailing him as brilliant. With Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Basehart, David Clennon. FcPQ9gww_qc

 2. Blade Runner (1986)

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is called out of retirement to snuff a quartet of “replicants” — androids consigned to slave labor on remote planets. They’ve escaped to Earth seeking their creator and a way to extend their short life spans. Director Ridley Scott’s reedited version comes with a different ending and the omission of Ford’s narration, giving the film a different tone. KPcZHjKJBnE

3. Best in Show (2000)

Master mockumentarian Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman) is at it again with this snarky send-up of canine culture that traverses the galloping neuroses surrounding one highly competitive dog show in Pennsylvania. Talented improvisers Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean and Catherine O’Hara elevate this satire to the stuff of genius. Fans of This Is Spinal Tap, television’s “SCTV” — and dogs, of course — will find much to love. yeifMjqpsg0

4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Though Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) is adept at juggling girlfriends (Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin), he has a tougher time following the dictates (or lack thereof) of his political conscience in this Oscar-nominated adaptation of Milan Kundera’s acclaimed novel about a womanizing Czech doctor. But when Soviet tanks rumble through Prague in 1968, the gravity of the situation changes all their lives forever in this drama from director Philip Kaufman. m1zYYWHFRNw

5. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning film follows Salvatore, a Sicilian boy who is mesmerized by the movies shown at the local theater. He befriends projectionist Alfredo, who mentors him and ultimately tells him to leave home to pursue his dreams. Now a famous film director, Salvatore returns home for the first time 30 years later for Alfredo’s funeral and is overcome with warm memories of his childhood even as the town has changed. C2-GX0Tltgw

6. Harold and Maude (1971)

Death-obsessed teen Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is being hassled by his domineering mother (Vivian Pickles) to play the dating game, but he’d much rather attend funerals, which is where he meets the feisty Maude (Ruth Gordon), a geriatric widow who’s high on life. The seemingly mismatched pair forms a bond that turns into a highly unconventional — but ultimately satisfying – romance in this comical cult favorite from director Hal Ashby. hR-OojNoVDg

7. Where’s Poppa (1970)

Dutiful Gordon (George Segal) promised to never put his mother (Ruth Gordon) in a home — but that was before she was ruining his love life. Now, out of options and with the girl of his dreams on his arm, Gordon plans to scare his difficult mother to death — literally. Gordon tries to off his scatterbrained mother before she manages to rid of his girlfriend in director Carl Reiner’s wacky black comedy. fTkOLLdulC0

8. Tsotsi (2005)

After shooting a woman (Nambitha Mpumlwana) and driving off in her car, a ruthless thug (Presley Chweneyagae) is surprised to discover he isn’t alone, kept company by a crying infant in the backseat. But through his efforts to care for the baby, he slowly rediscovers his capacity to love. Writer-director Gavin Hood helms this Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, based on the novel by Athol Fugard. DYnqbNl7VMM

9. My Life as a Dog (1985)

This Oscar-nominated gem offers an honest depiction of the often-confusing nature of childhood. Shipped off to live with his uncle for the summer, 12-year-old Ingmar finds unexpected adventures with the help of the town’s warmhearted eccentrics. These experiences give him the strength to accept his life and eventually enjoy childhood. VxzO8Qx96O4

10. This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Rob Reiner’s cult satire about a fictional heavy metal group named Spinal Tap spoofs nearly every facet of rock ‘n’ roll — from vacuous modern songwriting and half-baked album promos to pyrotechnic concerts. Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer portray the washed-up, aging British rockers whose tresses and egos outstrip their talent, with Reiner appearing as the filmmaker who’s chronicling the band’s calamitous comeback tour. YZbHagBNY98

Six Sentence Sunday

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Welcome to “Six Sentence Sunday”. I think I’m doing it right this time. Yes, I know, it’s not exactly rocket science (I hate cliches), but I’m easily confused.

Today’s six sentences are the opening to my first novel, a YA paranormal, Monkey’s Wedding, which was almost published, but the editor left the agency and MW fell between the cracks. And then I started to self-publish and tried to get this fabulous artist, Travis Pennington, to do the cover, but he got all excited about the book and urged me to do the rounds again, even offered his agent. Said it was too good a story not to. I tried a few agents but then finished my memoir and that’s what I’ve been busy shopping around.

I have a Facebook page for the book, but it’s not showing up in all it’s glory. Investigating. It would fabulous if any of you would “like” it for me. If you can.

The jackal tugged on the body it had uncovered behind the beer hall, jaws locked around a bloody dirt-encrusted forearm. A short distance away, a hyena lowered its head and edged forward. The jackal stopped, eyed the hyena and howled a warning.

Two miles away on the Bradley sisal plantation, thirteen-year-old Elizabeth McKenzie, on her knees in front of a muddy flower bed, glanced up at the sound and frowned. Some poor creature dead on the veld. Sighing, she gripped the business end of a wooden spoon and dragged it down the middle of the bed in front of her.

It’s Biltong Weather Again

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For me here in the States, that is: it’s getting cooler and the beef won’t get funky in the heat and kill me. Of course it might still, because as Wikipedia notes, biltong is a kind of cured meat from South Africa: the “curing” being salt and a brushing of cider vinegar. The word biltong comes from the Dutch words “bil” (rump) and “tong” (strip or tongue) from the days of yore when pioneering South Africans sun dried their meat during The Great Trek of the 1830s, eastward and north-eastward away from British control in the Cape Colony.

www.biltongmakers.com (Johannesburg)

I dry my “rumpstrip” in a wooden box with a 60-watt bulb in the bottom. My ex built it for me. I hang the beef for about three days using eight inch cable ties. The hooks I used to employ rusted out, this is better. I like my biltong “wet,” that is to say, on the raw side, more taste, if you know what I mean. Of course, you’re probably making a face, unless you’re South African and then you’ll understand. The biltong back there is much tastier, not sure why—the beef isn’t as hormoned-out?—and the strips much bigger than my dinky little Supermarket specials. The Americans who’ve tried my biltong love it. Of course, I have them sign a waiver—just kidding, but I probably should.

Recipe

  • Beef (Preferably Round steak)—1-inch thick
  • Rock Salt
  • Coarse Ground Black Pepper
  • Coarse Ground Coriander
  • Vinegar (preferably Apple Cider vinegar)

Sterilize all your hooks, knives, and working surfaces by washing well in hot water and soap.

Cover both sides of the meat with rock salt and let stand for an hour.  The longer you let it stand the saltier it will become.  Scrape off all the excess salt with a knife (don’t soak it in water!).  Cut into two-inch strips then brush (do not dip) with the vinegar, just so the meat is covered. Let the excess vinegar drip off then sprinkle with pepper and coriander and hang.

Pumpkin Fritters

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When I first came to the States, I brought all my old South African recipes with me. All two of them (in the now rusted little recipe tin pictured below). Okay, I wasn’t big on cooking, too busy learning to change a nappy (diaper). But Pumpkin Fritters (pampoenkoeky in Afrikaans) is one of the recipes I did bring with me. Not because it was a favourite, although it’s delicious, but because it was easy. I definitely prefer it to Pumpkin Pie.

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium cooked pumpkin to make 2 cups
  • or 15 ozs canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 tsp baking powder (not soda)
  • ½ tsp cinnamon
  • 2-3 tsp granulated sugar depending on your taste
  • 2 large free-range eggs, lightly beaten
  • Canola oil for frying (your call, you don’t need that much)
  • Cinnamon sugar (1 tsp cinnamon and 1-2 tablespoons granulated sugar) for later

Method:

To cook pumpkin cut into cubes, and steam until tender then mash in a mixing bowl (I add a little butter), or use the canned pumpkin. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar, add to the pumpkin and mix together. Stir in the lightly beaten eggs until thoroughly combined. You should now have a batter that drops easily off a spoon, if not add a little flour, or if too stiff, a tiny amount of milk. Drop tablespoonfuls into hot oil, and brown until firm on the underside, then flip over and brown on the other side. Don’t crowd.

Combine the sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle over the cooked fritters and serve immediately, preferably with some kind of meat dish. They’re actually good cold as well.