Dia de los Muertos 2011

Ahh, beets.

Alex grew these beets in the planter box on the sunny side of the front yard. They're all prepped and ready for oven-frying.

We peel them and slice them a little less than half an inch thick, then toss the slices with extra virgin olive oil, then once again with garlic powder. Spread out on a cookie sheet, they're lightly sprinkled with sea salt. After 30 - 35 minutes in a 425 degree oven, they're ready to devour.

When Alex decided that she had to plant beets last spring, I didn't dissuade her. Thought she was nuts, but hey, whatever. The front garden boxes were her canvas for experimentation, not mine. When she told me that beet greens make a good salad, I scoffed -- until I pulled off a beet leaf and tasted it. Where had beets as salad greens been all my life? Good thing she planted them thickly: eating the greens in our salads was the perfect way to thin the crop.

I hadn't done much beeting around since we moved to California. They tend to be expensive here, and I'm not often impressed with the quality. Now that Alex has proven herself to be a worthy beet farmer, though, I'm looking forward to greater beetery.

What do beets have to do with Dia de los Muertos, a day for remembering your dead relatives and friends?

When I was in my twenties, I would often mooch jars of pickled beets from my mother. She was picky about her beets, which she bought in quantity. "Lutz is the variety to look for," she lectured me. "Lutz are nice and tender, hold their color, and taste the best of all." And then she would proceed to make the most delectable pickled beets in the entire world. Sweet, flavorful, crisp -- there was never any argument about eating enough beets. We truly could not get enough.

She learned the process of pickling beets from Dad's aunt, who was called "Sis." Mom pretty much learned all her cooking skills from Sis; she told me she pestered Sis to teach her how to cook because Sis was slowly dying, and Mom on her own had almost enough culinary skills to boil eggs. In my turn, I learned from Mom how to make lima bean pot pie, meat pie, pumpkin pie (did we never eat anything but pie?) and macaroni salad, and of course, lots of other things.

But the one thing I didn't learn how to make was pickled beets.

I don't know why I didn't; maybe she didn't have a recipe per se, or maybe Dad refused to eat some. Or maybe some part of me just assumed that Mom would always be there to make them for me. I don't recall her making them in the last 30 years of her life.

Seeing Alex's harvest of gorgeous beets made Bernie and I remember how good Mom's were, made me remember my mother in a time when Alzheimer's hadn't made her an ill-mannered stranger.

Miss that Mom so much.

Potatoes and Dog

For the last two days, we've been feasting on potatoes -- from our own garden.

As with many veggies, what comes out of our own ground is so far superior in taste than the stuff from the store that we have to wonder just what the heck producers do to their product to make their fruit so bland.

The ones in the picture are the last from the real seed potatoes planted in late spring. The trick seems to be catching the harvest at the exact right point: if the plants are in blossom, you can get tiny (but delicious) "new potatoes," but if you let the plants wither, the potatoes instantly start to re-sprout, and look a bit gnarly. We're still learning potatoes in California. Back East, we planted Kennebec potatoes in the spring, harvested them in late summer, and had enough to last us through most of the winter.

Learning is fun. I have a batch of bastard potatoes drying on the rack in the back yard -- I'm going to try for one more harvest this year, with store-bought potatoes that are shriveled and sprouting. Who knows?

And then there's the milestone of July 19th. Ten years ago on that date, I thought to myself in bemusement, "For my mother's birthday, I went out and bought myself a dog."

Howie was about four months old when I brought him home from Delta Humane Society. The night of July 19th, he slept beside me, tethered to my wrist on a leash. (I slept on the floor in the kitchen with him.)

Happy birthday, Mom, wherever you are. I miss the woman that you were in that all-too-short time when we were fishing buddies and mischief-makers. Thanks for teaching me how to pick and train a good dog. And you're welcome, for me teaching you how to grow Kennebecs.

Happy anniversary, Howie... best dog I've ever known.

A Mailing Label

After some months of having my desk out in the kitchen (trying to resolve issues with my new monitor), we moved my desk back to our bedroom again.

[The monitor that came (for free) with my desktop computer kept jiggling the display, and dimming from time to time (most annoying when I was trying to work). Moving to the kitchen and a more stable power outlet seemed to help ... for a while. Finally, I switched out my new monitor for my old monitor (a 2003 Sony) that Lillian had been using. My new monitor works perfectly with her computer, and my old monitor is just fine. Not as glitzy, but I don't need glitz.]

As I was moving the stuff from the desk, a mailing label fell out from under the Plexiglas protector. It was a Priority Mail label that I had printed out last spring, so that I could send stuff to my mother. I remember when I addressed it. I'd been sending Mom a dozen freshly baked oatmeal cookies, and when I got to the Post Office, I could not find the label. I filled out another, and sent the cookies. After I got home I found the original label on the floor by my desk where it had fallen. "I'll just use this the next time," I thought, and stuffed it under the Plexiglas.

There was no next time.

Finding the label, and watching it drop into the waste basket ... well, it hurts still, and I miss her. I miss the woman who was always game for a fishing expedition, who taught me how to make the foods she learned from Dad's family, who sewed me beautiful clothes for school.

I hope she has all kinds of fun things to get into in Heaven.