Posted on December 14, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

Is there anything better than two day old stew?  Or how about spaghetti sauce after twelve hours in the slow cooker and three or four days in the fridge.  One of life’s small pleasures consists of enjoying really good food for a second time.  Yes, food that has been “aged” seems to taste better but, from my perch, it has as much to do with the fact that you get a day off of cooking.  We all know how wonderful a meal tastes when you’re not the one preparing it.

While eating leftovers is hardly new, you don’t hear much about it anymore.  This may have something to do with the preponderance of prepared, ready to eat food and a culture of eating fast foods.  We are a generation on the move and restaurant meals and “take out” have become more the norm.  A doggy bag with an unfinished meal is sometimes as close as we get to eating leftovers.

It wasn’t always this way.

These days you hear a lot about “food security.”  A household is considered “food secure” when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear starvation.  Growing up in a family of ten, food security had a very different meaning.

When we were younger, we lived very close to the schools.  In those days you went home for lunch and the noontime meal was actually the main meal for many families.

When we got up on a weekday morning, our mother would have been on the go since the crack of dawn, with several loads of laundry underway, the ringer washer sitting in the middle of the living room.  Besides getting eight of us ready for school, she would have the bread dough rising on the counter and preparations for the day’s dessert well under way.  Grand Central station was never quite this busy.

And then at precisely noon, the vultures would arrive home and decimate the food that she had spent much of the morning preparing.  Leftovers.  Are you kidding me?  Food security meant taking your place at the trough and never taking your eye off your plate lest someone else make off with a scrap.

Dessert was generally an all-out war.   We hadn’t heard the warnings about consuming massive doses of sugar. We weren’t gluten intolerant and, because we spent most of our waking hours running, climbing trees and playing street hockey, we didn’t worry about childhood obesity.

It’s not easy to cut two pies into 10 uniform pieces, and many a squabble erupted when someone felt that their piece might have been a quarter of an inch smaller than the others … our first experience with the notion of justice.  Everyone ate dessert.  No exceptions.  The only time that there was a leftover piece of dessert was when someone was out of town or sick in bed.  There would be no other rational explanation.

On those rare occasions when there was one extra serving, the lottery system was invoked.  And you think getting chosen for a moose license is tough.  One of my brothers always seemed to be the arbiter of the debates over who would get the last piece, a precursor to his future calling in life.  When one of us was absent and the last piece of dessert was to be meted out, he would ask us all to pick a number from one to ten.  Shockingly, none of us ever guessed right.  He always chose the last number and, wonder of wonders, his was consistently the winner.

As incomprehensible as it seems, once in a blue moon there would be a couple of left over cookies or cake.  The first one out of bed in the morning would make short work of those.  Pretty well explains why, to this day, all of my siblings are such early risers.

These days, our kids have flown and it is not uncommon for my wife and me to eat the same thing for three or four days in a row.  Waste not; want not, as it were.

And we don’t fight over dessert.  She can’t tolerate gluten and I don’t eat sweets any more.  There’s probably still a bit of sugar left in my system anyway.

 

Posted on December 12, 2013 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

THANK YOU!

My new website is up an running and I want to start by thanking my readers for the overwhelming show of support. It would appear that you approve of the new look and functionality of the site. And, lo and behold, within hours of the site being up and running, I received my first on-line book sale from a couple in Edmonton, Alberta. I am hoping that you will get the word out to your friends in distant parts of the world that they can easily access the book.

I also want to thank Crispin Cornect of Simply Ducky Web Development who masterminded this project. He was ( is ) very professional and had ( has )  infinitesimal amounts of patience dealing with a non savvy technical person like myself. I would highly recommend his work to anybody needing a website upgrade.

Coming up on Saturday, I will be posting my story titled “Leftovers.” The other evening I did some readings at a senior’s apartment building and I read this story to them. As you can well imagine, many of them came from large families and there was no such thing as leftovers. They really enjoyed it and I could tell by the nods that they experienced a lot of the same things.

I am putting the finishing touches on the story about the great Boxing Day street hockey game. I thought I had the final version ready for editing when my partner at work reminded me about the hard plastic orange balls we used to use for street hockey… before we came to our senses and started using tennis balls. This all ties into a theme about balls. We’ll leave it at that for now.

And boy, have I stumbled on a beauty. Just when you think you might run out of ideas, I got a brainwave today. I am going to go where no man should go … again. I mean, I have tackled bras and menopause so why shouldn’t I be given the right to discuss women’s purses. I carry a “man bag” most days so I am somewhat of an authority on the subject.

Heading across the Causeway later today to do my Cape Breton launch of the book. So far, I am sure that there will be three people there – Betty, Len and the custodian. I’m hoping there will be a few others.

And I will be back at the 5 to $1.00 again this Saturday for another book signing.

It’s all good.

Mentally strong people don’t expect immediate results.

Have a great day.

 

Posted on December 10, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

Is the magazine rack the next thing on the endangered species list?  With all of the different ways to access news, information and entertainment, can the traditional glossy magazine possibly survive the digital revolution?  Does anyone take time in this fast paced world to actually read an entire hard copy of a newspaper?

I offer the answer.   A resounding no and a resounding yes.  Good to get that cleared up.

Let me explain.

One of the staff at our office went to a nearby convenience store not long ago to purchase coffee cream.   There are only two things that can interrupt the flow of business in an office these days: a computer network crash, or the absence of coffee cream.  Don’t even think of the possibility of running out of coffee.  Most offices would simply have to close their doors.

In addition to carrying the usual staples of a convenience store like cigarettes, lottery tickets and soft drinks, this store also carries gourmet sandwiches and salads stocked by a local restaurant.  And because of its modest size, there is only one cash register, so small lineups are the norm.

On this particular day, there were only two other people ahead of her.  The good news.  The bad news was that the first customer was taking an inordinately long time purchasing his goods.  And the person behind the till was new on the job.  The first customer was a smoker and he was a “do it yourselfer” so he was looking for tobacco, paper rollers and filters.  Once he and the clerk came to a complete understanding, he then had to buy lottery tickets.  There are several to choose from.

The next person in line had spent an unusually long time at the magazine rack prior to tendering his purchase.  He took a few furtive glances and placed the most recent edition of Hustler magazine on the counter.

Back in the day, publications like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler occupied a lot of shelf space and many a young man got insight into topics that weren’t easily discussed at home.  Let’s just leave it at that.

The clerk seemed a bit embarrassed and, after ringing in the purchase, she announced to the customer that the store had run out of bags.  He would have to carry his purchase, exposed to the elements and the public, all the way down Main Street.  He didn’t wait to pick up his receipt, which was left on the counter.

The precious cargo of coffee cream was delivered to the office, helping to maintain the rhythm of work that day.

At the end of the month, the office bookkeeper was paying the bills and reconciling the petty cash after everyone else had gone home.  She was somewhat fatigued after a particularly busy month and repeatedly rubbed her eyes to stay alert.  She laid out all the receipts for sundry items.  One caught her attention.

She rubbed her eyes twice and tried to imagine how she would explain to the accountant at year end the purchase of Hustler magazine.  As she crumpled the receipt, she strolled into the lunchroom to check the reading basket … just in case.