Olive Nut Sandwich

This is a great change-of-pace sandwich that I recently discovered. I originally got the idea from www.worldwiderecipes.com, though I've made some changes. For example, the recipe there called for parsley, which I changed to lettuce because I like the texture that lettuce adds -- and because I don´t usually keep parsley on hand!

Olive Nut Sandwich

2 slices whole-wheat, rye, or pumpernickel bread
2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
6 pimento stuffed olives, sliced
2 tablespoons pecan or walnut halves, chopped
1/3 cup lettuce, very finely chopped


Lightly toast the bread. Spread on the cream cheese, then top with olive slices, chopped nuts, and lettuce chopped as finely as you can get it. Cut in two from corner to corner, and serve.


See a few more of my recipes.

Site-ings

Allow me to share a few miscellaneous web pages I have stumbled across recently. I don't know that there is a common thread running through them; if you find one, please leave a comment and let me know.

Sock Monkey Dress
The last few years have seen a resurgence of sock monkeys, I assume because of the nostalgia/vintage craze. I never had one of these growing up -- and I think I am grateful for that, as they seem quite sinister to me (kind of like clowns do). This link takes you to a dress made of sock monkeys faces. I sincerely admire the ingenious idea and wonderful craftsmanship used in this. Wearing such a dress, however, would surely cause me nightmares or worse. Now maybe if it were a Cookie Monster dress ...

Lost Ring Recovered
People nowadays are rude, insensitive, uncaring, self-centered ... But not everyone, and not always. Some still make a great effort to do a nice thing! I love to hear good news like this.

Oceangrams
Write a message, stick it into a virtual bottle, and set it afloat on the electronic sea. You can also pick up bottled messages that others have sent. Be sure to have your speakers on.

DeBrand Chocolates
Some family members of mine toured this chocolate factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, recently, then sent me the web site. The chocolates are beautiful and delicious-looking. It's a good thing just looking isn't fattening. Hey, and on the site they let you enter for a free monthly drawing, too.

Middle East Map
How many countries in the Middle East and northern Africa can you identify on a map? It seems like we ought to make an effort to know the basic stuff about this hot spot of (former and current) world history ...

Floraphilia
Much more amazing than your average pictures of flowers. The artist sells prints of his photographs, but fortunately looking at them online is free. Food for the soul.

Chicken Tomato

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Doesn’t this tomato look like a little hen? The leaves make the wings, and there are even black spots in the right places for eyes.

Grammy (my grandmother) sent me this photo a few days ago. The tomato came from one of the plants she has growing right outside her front door in east central Indiana. It was sown and nurtured by my Uncle Wayne (an awesome gardener with more than just a green thumb – his whole hand and arm are green!), who says it is a “golf ball tomato.” He starts all his plants from seeds, and this vine is now about seven feet high, held up by a wire cage. I think they ought to consider christening this variety the “chicken tomato.” :-P

Uncle Wayne’s son David (my cousin) took the picture, and when I saw it I was instantly enchanted. I like the light and shadow contrast in this photo, and isn’t the smooth bright red 'mater on the patterned aqua tablecloth striking? Now I see why the red and turquoise combination is hot right now! Thank you, Cousin David, for giving permission for me to post your very artistic photograph.

Easy Sweet Potato Dessert

Recently I've been seeing a lot of sweet potatoes in the grocery store I frequent, so I figure it's time to start making this once again. Street vendors here in Mexico City sell something similar to this, so although the recipe is mine, the idea certainly did not originate with me. I like this because it is nutritious, it's easy to make, and the sweetness can easily be adjusted to suit most any taste.


Easy Sweet Potato Dessert

You'll need:

-sweet potatoes (I prefer the ones that are off-white inside)

-jelly or marmalade (strawberry or blackberry are my favorites)

-heavy cream, whipped cream, or Kool Whip

-chopped nuts (I like pecans)

Boil, bake, or steam your sweet potatoes until soft. Let cool, peel, and refrigerate. When ready to make the dessert, cut sweet potato into 1/2-inch slices and let sit until room temperature (or at least long enough to get the "refrigerator cold" off them). For each serving, place 3 or 4 slices of sweet potato in a small bowl. Top with a tablespoon or so of jelly or marmalade, then a dollop of cream, and finally a generous sprinkling of chopped nuts. Eat with a spoon.

Variations:

--If you like it really really sweet, drizzle sweetened condensed milk on it instead of the cream.

--Use maple syrup instead of jelly or marmalade, and omit the cream.


See a few more of my recipes.

New Beginning

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This is another selection from my now-defunct e-card site. (Click the image to see it a little bit bigger.) It says, "The longest journey begins with a single step. Congratulations on your new beginning," and I thought that was appropriate to my situation right now, what with being in the middle of relocating and all.

I took this photo in northeastern Indiana in about the year 2001. I'm not sure what it is, but there is something about it that I really really like -- maybe the angle of the road? the exhuberant Queen Anne's lace at the left? the visual roughness of the asphalt, maybe, or the way that the road disappears into the brightest part of the image? Something.

Cutting a Swath through the Heartland

Here's a little experience the Dear Hubby (DH) and I had while together in Chicago last month:

Most of DH's experience with the United States (he's Peruvian) has been out east, in New Jersey and the Washington, D.C. area, so as we ran around northern Indiana together he would often come out with a comment beginning, "When I lived in New Jersey …." Since we were on our way to Chicago, I kept reminding him that We Were in the Midwest Now -- otherwise known as the "Heartland" -- and the Midwest is way different from the whole Jersey-New York area; people are nicer in the Midwest, friendlier and much less weird. Being in Chicago was going to be nothing like being in bizarre, scary, cold, self-consciously sophisticated New York City.

This claim of mine kept getting harder and harder to substantiate as we actually experienced Chicagoland, though. So many of the people we saw were incredibly strange! There was this one guy we saw on the subway. I know you are going to think I made this all up, but it really happened -- ask the DH if you don't believe me. This guy stepped right out of an old B movie stereotype and into our mostly empty train car. Chainsaw Man was an older fellow, wiry, with grizzled hair and stubbled face, halfway toothless, wearing very wrinkled, caked-with-dirt overalls. He was grinning and talking to himself, and he wasn't too steady on his feet even before the train started moving. He was carrying a rather large, bright orange, dirty electric chainsaw in his left hand. It was not in a case or in any way covered, and the cord was not even wound up into a little compact bundle, but almost trailed along the floor.

My first impusle was to check the chain part of the saw for blood. I saw none, but was frightened anyway. DH had rented The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on dvd only a few months before, and while I had done my best not to see that movie (knowing it would give me nightmares), I had been unavoidably subjected to snippets of it when I walked through the living room that day doing chores. What if this guy revved up his machine and started hacking away at us? The rational part of me sneered, "Where would he plug it in?" but the right side of my brain was genuinely scared. Well, half my right brain was. The other half was wanting to laugh out loud, wondering if this were a show and where the hidden cameras were. And yearning to take a photograph of this guy, achingly wishing I could dare to do so. Here was folk art, pop culture, and surrealism converging before my very eyes!

Chainsaw Man got on and stumbled over to a seat near us. The train started up and he wasn't ready and he nearly fell over. The chainsaw swung semi-wildly. My heart started thumping uncomfortably inside me. The teenaged girl seated across the aisle moved her bare leg just in time and just enough to avoid being grazed by the business end of the saw. She had a little look of alarm in her eyes, too. Ah, so it wasn't just me! Chainsaw Man didn't notice he was being a bit reckless; he was mumbling under his breath. Must have been upbeat mumbling, though, since he looked cheerful enough, and even cackled to himself a time or two.

I was relieved when he finally sat down and I could convince myself that DH and I would be getting out of the subway alive enough to ride another day. Our stop was the next station, and we got off as quickly as we could. Only then did I allow myself to shake my head and laugh in amazement at the things that happen in real life -- even in the Midwest. I take it back about people being less weird there.

Taking a Load Off

Many things have happened since I last updated this blog about 2 months ago. Dear Hubby and I spent a nice two and a half weeks on vacation with my parents in Indiana, U.S.A., in July. I came back to Mexico City to finish up at work and take care of winding up the household stuff in order to move permanently back to the United States later this year; DH stayed, finding a job in Chicagoland to live on in the meantime. We are well embarked on this major relocation venture! Woo hoo!

Since I’ve been back I’ve spent a lot of time just going through and getting rid of stuff. Actually, I’ve been doing this sporadically for the last year or so, anticipating this move. However, since the move is now actually imminent, the garage-sale-esque activity has intensified greatly. And whereas before I was just getting rid of stuff I didn’t really want or use, now I am cutting down much closer to the bone and starting to divest myself of things which, were I able to keep them, I would not get rid of, at least not at this time. Everything must go! rings the going-out-of-business ad copy. It’s pretty much like that for me; all I will be able to take with me is what will fit in two large suitcases and a carry-on. It’s kind of exhilarating!

Clothes that I don’t wear get donated to those who can use them. Books and kitchen items and decorations and craft supplies and other good-condition miscellany I take to work and try to sell, tag sale style, to my colleagues in the Teachers’ Lounge. That which doesn’t sell, and large items like pieces of furniture, I hope to milk for whatever I can get at a “real” garage sale (sans garage) shortly before I leave town for good.

And it keeps getting easier, and it keeps feeling better and better. It seems like it was harder to get rid of the unwanted junk way-back-when than it is to part with the stuff I like now. It’s a lot of work, yes, but it hardly hurts at all anymore. How much good it has done me to climb out from under this pile of possessions! I’d heard and read many times about how having stuff weighs you down, and yeah, I understood that, intellectually, and could repeat the platitudes … but I didn’t really know it. I’m starting to know it now. Thank you, God! What a delicious blessing!

So far I’ve just barely made a dent in the mountain of stuff, and already I am enjoying multiple benefits. What will it be like when I’m down to just the basics, to having only the things I really need (plus a few items of sentimental value)? I like to imagine that I will finally be able to live up to my name, Robin – finally be light enough to fly.

Leftover Christmas Card Exchange

Well, so Christmas is fast approaching ...

LOL! Not really. God forbid that we should extend the Christmas season all the way back to July -- though we would do well to have more Christmas spirit year-round. However, since the holidays *do* have a way of creeping up on me, I'm starting early this year. I've started an exchange of leftover unused Christmas cards over on Swap-bot. Come participate!

http://www.swap-bot.com/swap/show/362

Deadline to sign up: July 15, 2006
Deadline to send: July 30th, 2006

Synopsis:
Each participant will have two partners. Send each partner 4 - 6 unused, mint-condition Christmas cards with matching envelopes. Send four if your cards are the large, fancy, foil-embellished ones, six if they are smaller and less showy, five if they are somewhere in between. If in doubt, send more than necessary, never fewer. The cards can be all the same or assorted. Religious and secular cards, store-bought and handmade are welcome -- as are cards with text in any language -- but in order to keep a sharp focus here, let's limit this swap to Christmas cards (rather than other winter holidays).

An Unwilling Gilligan

Dh Eddie and I watched the movie Cast Away on dvd last night. Despite Tom Hanks' starring role (I've never seen a movie of his that I've completely disliked), I wasn't expecting to really get into this one; the man-on-a-desert-island theme just never was my thing. I mean, even as a young, voracious reader and lover of classics I never got all the way through Stevenson's book Robinson Crusoe.

Well, I did like it, and very much. What's more, there were parts of it that I didn't like, which in my book is positive, since it means I was using at least semi-critical thinking skills. I didn't like the crash scene or the part where Hanks' character Chuck Noland was adrift in the rubber raft -- those parts were genuinely scary. I assume that was the filmmakers' intention, so it was very effective.

My real disappointment, though, was the great religious hole in this movie. Never once was there a reference to God. Polls show that a majority of people in the United States (where the Noland character was from) believe in a supreme being ... and even if you didn't, wouldn't you be likely to at least have yearnings towards one if you were cast away alone on a desert island after going through an ultra-traumatic plane crash? If the character had had a bad experience with religion in his former life, would he not be much more likely to at least be angry with God than to never once make reference to a deity? The saying "there are no athiests in foxholes" is somewhat trite, but it's pretty much true. This film's story is good, but it would have been much richer if this very real aspect of humanity -- religion -- had been included.

Having said that, and while religion and God had no place in it, the movie did have a great spiritual theme of hope. Though the Noland character suffers devastating loss, he comes through it with an enduring sense of hope in the future. This was a twist that, at least for me, was unexpected and very uplifting. How easy it would have been to have left the end of the story fatalistically tragic, or even neutral ... but it is definitely hopeful. We need a lot more stuff like this in popular culture nowadays, stuff encouraging people to live rather than to choose death and destruction.

Noland is alone on an island for several years, which means Hanks is the only actor on the screen for much of the the film. I never felt bored with this, though, or that another person was needed. Tom Hanks acted superbly once again. The images of the island, the ocean, and Noland's island life were very well done as well. The old writing adage "show, don't tell" was evident here; we see how hopeless it seems that Noland will ever be rescued and how tedious and uncomfortable life on the island is, even without any dialogue to say so. The "Wilson" character, too, is wonderful; Noland's creation of this imaginary friend speaks beautifully about our need for human relationships and leaves a tantalizing thought in one's mind about the origin of idol worship among our "primitive" ancestors ...

So thank you, Eddie, for bringing this movie home from the rental place and watching it with me. You choose really good movies sometimes. :-)

Advice from My Mom that I Actually Follow

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

Here in Mexico, Mother's Day is always on May 10th, regardless of which day of the week that falls on. This year it was Wednesday.

A few years back I got to thinkin' about all the things my mom has taught me that has actually turned out to be very useful. I wrote a little about it here. Have a look and see if your mom gave you similar advice. :-)