Posted on December 6, 2023 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

Ready for Christmas!

 

“Rockin’ around the Christmas tree,

At the Christmas party hop.”

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree- Brenda Lee

 

It’s just up the road and around the bend. In less than three weeks, the jolly old man himself will make an appearance, filling hearts with joy while, at the same time, emptying our bank accounts.

“Oh, dear god, Len. Don’t go full curmudgeon on us.”

Take heart, dear readers. Au contraire. I might be suffering some early signs of the Christmas spirit.

Let me first dispense with two things that make me want to go “full Scrooge”.

Number 1. “Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?” I would put that right up there with, “Have you had Covid yet?” Why are we, as a society, forced to drag out these banal queries every year? Truthfully, nobody but your banker or credit card company is really interested in the answer to this question. “What’s in your wallet” is the tag line for a credit card company. If it’s January, the response is, “Nothing”.

Number 2. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need.” When this song by Maraih Carey was first released in 1994, it was new, fresh and catchy.  Twenty-nine years later, it is old, stale and aggravating. Why must we be bludgeoned on a daily basis with this song? We got the gist of this piece almost four decades ago. Why not try something relatively new (circa 2003) and daring like Ron Sexsmith’s “Maybe This Christmas”? https://youtu.be/uYyftowTqxk?si=KCPxB17GlOyUvMm8

“Ok, Scrooge. You can go back to bed.”

I am having an existential crisis.

When should I put up my tree?

I know a lot of people respectfully wait until after Remembrance Day to put up their tree. The smell of balsam fir is addictive. I don’t think I have it in me any more to sustain the Christmas spirit for two whole months.

My days of having a real Christmas tree have passed. I acquired a small, two foot high, porcelain tree several years ago and I typically wait until a few days before Christmas to take it out of the box and put it on my dining table. Last year, I was exceptionally late getting this done. My tree was trimmed and plugged in on Christmas Day evening. No, it wasn’t a lapse in memory, (which, too is lurking around the bend), but rather, major travel snags. It took me five days to get home from Northern Quebec. That was a Christmas I won’t soon forget.

Storm stayed in Montreal on Christmas Eve, I was taken in like a stray cur by friends’ parents and was forced to eat truffles and drink expensive red wine!

If all had gone well, I would have been home on the 21^st, hustling around to get my last-minute shopping done. NOT. The majority of my Christmas gift giving is done by e-transfer (!) and I like to donate money to charities. The few times in my life when I actually bought presents and wrapped them, the results were less than satisfying. Somebody who had undergone shoulder surgery and had their arm in a sling would have done a better job wrapping my gifts.

This is the first December since 2019 that I am home in December and there is absolutely no excuse for me not to get my tree up early. It’s only 15 feet away from where I’m standing, and it takes all of 5 minutes to assemble. A few days ago, while walking to the mall, I noticed that Edward Chisholm’s Christmas tree lot on the mall parking lot, was going gangbusters. An old synapse in my brain fired and I thought, momentarily, that maybe this year, I would buy a real Christmas tree. Common sense overtook me when I realized that other than the bathtub, there isn’t much room in my apartment for a full-sized tree. And now that I am carless, (I can be careless too) the thought of dragging home a tree down Church Street is embarrassing.

Not only did I put up my Christmas tree early but, in a radical departure from tradition, it now sits on an old wooden stool, which is an interesting story in its own right.

I caught a small snippet of the Christmas spirit last week when my daughter Betsy, and I, performed at the tree lighting ceremony at St.F.X. University. There were quite a few children present and we had them come up and sing a few carols with us.

At my age, receiving gifts is not all that important unless it’s the gift of good health.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. With apologies to Mariah and her fans. Brenda Lee released Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree 65 years ago!

Posted on November 15, 2023 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with 4 comments

A celery stalker

 

“I like to eat, eat, eat,

Apples and bananas,

I like to eat, eat, eat,

Apples and bananas.”

Apples and Bananas – Traditional

And kale.

Many times, during my life, I have thought about becoming a vegetarian.

Luckiliy these flights of fancy pass quickly.

Like so many others who were brought up in my part of the world, and who came from large families (in numbers, not girth!), meat and potatoes were the staples of our diet. Mom would arrange for the purchase of a side of beef and my siblings, and I would form a production line around our lengthy kitchen table, weighing, wrapping, tying and labelling ground beef, roasts, stewing beef, and the occasional steak. In a family of 10, steak was as rare as an appearance of Halley’s Comet, once or twice in a lifetime. Tube steaks and brown beans appeared on a more regular and consistent basis.

Now, I certainly have nothing against those who eschew meat, fish and poultry. Vegetarians are lovely people as are vegans. “Judge not and thou shall not be judged.” So says the bible.

While I love a good steak, pan seared scallops or a turkey dinner, I am also quite fond of vegetables. As part of my (somewhat) healthy eating lifestyle, I try to have two or three vegetables on my plate every dinner. I have a two-tier steamer which cooks carrots, broccoli and cauliflower to perfection.

Unfortunately, sweets are also an essential part of my diet. My most recent addiction to sugar is in the form of mini pies, lovingly and expertly prepared by my daughter Ellie, proprietress of the wildly popular La Vie Sucree.

Now that the cold, wet weather has arrived, many of us are turning to comfort food. Recently, I made beef stew in my slow cooker. This might seem like an odd choice for someone who lives alone but I am a crafty, thrifty Scot (more Irish than Scottish, actually). When the stew has finished cooking and has cooled down, I put individual servings in containers and pop them in the freezer. Thaw and microwave at a later date when I’m feeling lazy and uninspired about what to have for supper.

We all have our favourite stew recipe, often handed down to us from previous generations or the latest version downloaded from Allrecipes.com. Invariably, one of the key ingredients, a flavour enhancer to be sure, is celery. Celery is one of those vegetables that a single person should never purchase. It’s virtually impossible for one person to consume every stalk of celery in a bunch unless you happen to have a pet rabbit or chinchilla. After using a few stalks in the stew, the remainder go back into the crisper where they die a slow, miserable death. When you finally discover their remains months later during a cursory cleaning of the fridge, you are relieved that the Department of Health hasn’t come by for an inspection. Such is their pathetic state that you can actually pour them into your composter.

I decided to be smart for a change and share my celery with a friend. I was happy. My friend was happy. The celery was overjoyed.

“How does the rest of your family feel about celery?” to which she replied, “They think celery tastes like despair.”

Celery is a food enhancer, nor a standalone item, apparently. As a supporting cast member, celery shines. To wit, in a stir fry. As a solo act, not so much. You can dress up a stalk of celery with peanut butter and raisins and make ants on a log, but it still tastes like despair… with a hint of beurre d’arachide.

That got me to thinking about vegetables and how they can be described by taste and texture.

I am not a foodie or a food snob and will eat just about anything that’s put in front of me including every imaginable vegetable but really, why is kale allowed to exist? Some people say that cilantro tastes like soap, onions make people cry and the perfect human repellent is garlic. Turnips make you fart. I was going to use “flatulence”, but fart is much more descriptive. Parsnips are as dull as day old dish water and how about cabbage? Zucchini tastes like fog.

And then there’s rutabaga. In a previous life, I met someone that I quite liked until she made me rutabaga cookies. I think chewing on a frozen hockey puck holds more appeal than a rutabaga cookie.

I could go on, but I can already sense the wrath of the vegetarians who might show up at my doorstep and throw four month old celery at my windows.

Al Michaels, the venerable and much-admired sportscaster who turned 79 last week, says that he has never knowingly eaten a vegetable in his life with the exception of potato which he consumes with his steak.

A former neighbor and friend subscribes to the Al Michaels diet. He supplements his meat and potato diet with jellybeans, surely nature’s most perfect food. Milk is taboo in his diet as well.

“Food, glorious food,

We’re anxious to try it,

Three banquets a day,

Our favourite diet,

Just picture a great big steak,

Fried, roasted or stewed,

Oh, food! Wonderful food!

Marvellous food, glorious food.

Food, Glorious Food – Oliver

Kale, kale, the gang’s all here!

Have a great weekend.

Posted on November 8, 2023 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

 

Many days, I feel like I’m going round in circles.

 

“All my life’s a circle,

But I can’t tell you why,

 Season’s spinning round again,

The years keep rollin’ by.

All My Life’s a Circle – Harry Chapin

Daylight saving time slipped out the back door last Sunday in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes, it is very difficult to get rid of an unwanted guest, but daylight savings is not one of them. We treasure the lengthening days of spring and summer. When daylight savings ends, someone slams the door and turns off the lights for the better part of six months.

Harry had it spot on. The seasons are spinning around again… and again. We have scarcely finished the last miniature Coffee Crisp left over from Halloween, when in the headlights, the “C” word is already pulsating. I saw a load of Christmas trees heading down Hawthorne Street last week (late October) and already I am dreading the first rendition of The Little Drummer Boy.

Spring. Summer. Fall. Darkness.

Fear not. I am not about to trash either Christmas or lament the shortening of the days. I admit that the joy of “Christmas past” is in the rear-view mirror. I don’t think that I have ever been accused of being curmudgeonly, but Christmas has lost a lot of its mojo for this septuagenarian. I will once again put up my tiny tabletop ceramic tree with its multi-colored lights, a few days before Christmas.

I am very fortunate in many ways. I don’t suffer from SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. I do sympathize with folks who suffer forms of depression during the dark days of winter. There is no clear cause of SAD. Less sunlight and shorter days are thought to be linked to a chemical change in the brain. In my case, this is certainly not the case for if it was, I would never have travelled to the Arctic to spend parts of three school years.

This piece is really about Chapin’s line about the seasons “spinning round again”. I know that I have gone down this rabbit hole more than once. I must be getting old and cranky (old for sure!) but I’m getting tired of hackneyed expressions like “rabbit hole”. It seems like the entire population of the earth is now burrowing underground.

At last count, there were still 60 seconds in a minute; 60 minutes in an hour; 24 hours a day and 365 days a year except 2024, which is a leap year. Yes. There will be a February 29^th in 2024. I’m sure you’re delighted with this intel so that you can now start to plan your Leap Year party. Why is it that we can never seem content with the present? We’re constantly looking ahead to the next event on the calendar. I have a theory that living in the present may slow down the pace of life. However, I don’t believe in my own theory for a nanosecond. I live each day as it comes but those days just seem to be coming faster and faster.

As the darkness settles in, let’s not forget that the sun will continue to shine (literally and metaphorically as these are dark times).

And let us not forget those who made the supreme sacrifice during wars and conflicts with Remembrance Day just around the corner.

“Time, flowing like a river,

Time, beckoning me,

Who knows when we shall meet again, if ever,

But time, keeps flowing like a river,

To the sea.”

Time – The Alan Parsons Project

Have a great weekend