Category Archives: Uncategorized

MYOP

A Make Your Own Pizza Party

I’m sure you have my dough recipe. Each ball should make four rolled personal pizzas. For kids they should be able to roll their own dough once it has been prepared and risen two hours earlier by the host.

Toppings: caramelized onions, anchovies for pissaladiere; roasted butternut squash slices; sauteed spinach and arugula; boiled potato slices and rosemary; sauteed mushrooms, and peppers; tomatoes/sauce; feta, goat, fontina and fresh mozzarella; sausage, pepperoni. Parmigiano Reggiano. Olives, plus, plus, plus.

And a big salad that the host would make.

I’ll think of more toppings but want to make it do-able, for me at least. There’s a lot of prep work but I think this is a good party for kids or to meet new people as everyone has to get their hands dirty, so to speak, and nothing gets people to know each other like working in a kitchen.

As a chef-trained home cook I’m thinking 8-12 guests is the maximum considering only four pizzas will be in the oven at a time and kids go first.

Let me know your thoughts, then we can go to Costco together and buy yeast in bulk. Cheers, Dee

She Ain’t Your Momma

Yes, I tried a new grocery this morning, and a Black woman asked her daughter “who’s your momma” and she pointed at me, I happened to be squeezing by her cart at the time, thus the comment.

Luckily I only had to by paper products, macaroni and tomatoes. It’s always a trial going to a new city and finding out where to live. I find that shopping is a good key to the neighborhood and I was in the wrong grocery for me because they didn’t have the meats, veg and cheeses I was looking for.

All I know is that I’m in a city and want to go somewhere safe and where I can park and get a week’s worth of groceries without a hassle from shoppers, attendants or homeless people. I’m in my 50’s and give to everything, give me a break. Dee

Hip? Or Suburbs?

My dear husband had me look at a place today, a four-bedroom a block off the lake that is way too big and, well, “adult” for us. Right now we’re in a “hip” tower in the cool part of town, a block from the lake about a mile south of the 4br home. But we’re paying $110 per month each for two parking spaces in a garage designed by an idiot.

But there’s something in this 50-something brain that says “that’s our guest room,” where [Jim’s mom] will be at home. Here’s Jim’s office. Here’s my office, the sun room downstairs. There’s room to even store the boxes we haven’t seen in three years that we don’t even want to open. Yes, we’d have to get a guest bed/beds and fill in. But there are original wood floors. Window seats. Leaded glass and a butler’s pantry.

That’s so much more than we can get in a hipster tower with bad parking. Now if I looked further, I may find another single-family home (not a duplex like this with a shared basement).

While I’d like to have a true “Aha” moment, I tend to believe that fate steers my way and I fall into things for a reason. Yes, I’m actively looking and don’t “fall into” things but I believe most things happen for a reason, as I’d find out in a year when I meet so-and-so and it leads to a great collaboration in work or life or both.

I guess the message is not to mess with what works, even if my husband doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t need to, only to live there and pick up a few boxes. And walk the dog at night. Maybe take out the garbage from time to time? Oh, I’m asking too much to ask for toilet paper to actually be put up for use.

Yes, Genie, those were my three wishes, forget about the tp because it’s been over 10 years and this math genius cannot learn that new trick. Cheers, Dee

Welcome Back!

I’ve been dog sick the past week and had to pack and drive 1,500 miles to get to our final destination. Now Jim is sick. We really need a break.

Starting Sunday we drove out of Utah and across the great states of Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa en route to Wisconsin. Crossing the Mississippi we were in the home stretch but had changed to Central time so even though we left at 8 from Omaha, we were in the dark and Jim lost me.

I knew the further East I went the better, because I’d hit Lake Michigan and he’d find me (my phone was low and spotty) so I ended up in Milwaukee between the Discovery Center and Art Museum/Calatrava. He picked me up to go to our new temporary home, where the parking spots we pay for dearly were stolen. That was the last straw for me.

Now my husband knows how bad I felt packing and driving for three days and says we should have put his car on a transport and driven my car with the dog.

Anyhoo, I end up at the edge of Lake Michigan and a Sheriff pulls up opposite me. I can’t get out, even though I’ve been on the road three hours and need to stretch my legs. He doesn’t come over to see me. I wonder if I’m sitting in an abandoned area illegally. I wonder if he thinks I’m “soliciting.”

Here it is in a nutshell, I’m sick as a dog, driving a dirty “Mommy Car” from all the semi’s kicking up snowmelt and sand and dirt and rocks. There are boxes in the car and a dog in the back. I’m as much of a hooker as your favorite nun.

Once at the famed Grand Central Oyster Bar, I arrived earlier than my husband and said I was meeting him. They sat me immediately and said they’d show him to my table. On my left was a high-end escort with her john, on my right a tattered hooker with hers. That’s where they sat me. My husband says tonight that it had nothing to do with what I wore that day but what I said, that I was “meeting my husband” for lunch. Amazing things one learns on the road to enlightenment!

We ended up in Wisconsin, a block from Lake Michigan but no view from our tiny corporate apartment. Being sick, I’ve not finished unpacking stuff from our cars, and want to bring as little in as possible until we find out where we want to live. Neither of us has ever been here before so we want to get the lay of the land first.

One of the first things I did was buy a block of Wisconsin cheese, featured at Whole Foods. Hope to get into that tomorrow.  Did you know that Wisconsin provides 25% of America’s cheese and 50% of its’ specialty cheeses? I didn’t know until I read up on it today.

TripAdvisor can look to new reviews as can you. After we unload/unpack/move and decide where we want to live, I’ve a couple of project and one includes cheese.

Here’s to you from the 17th floor looking west from whence we came. Cheers, Dee

 

If you could take any class for free, what would you choose?

Italian language classes.  Grazie. Prego.

What’s the most impulsive thing you’ve ever done?

Whitewater rafting, Class 5 rapids, with my little brother, about 18 at the time.  Guide, wetsuits (ick, getting into someone else’s wetsuit while wet at 5:00 in the morning was gross).  He was 18, I was hosting him at my apartment 60 miles away and I was 26.

We suited up in separate rooms and everyone got together, 8 plus guide/tiller to the raft for a seminar on how to do this.  Everyone got a paddle and the guide would tell us where to go.

These were heavy rapids.  On one, I just popped out and was cool as a cucumber and sent my feet downstream with my paddle across my chest.  I was rescued, we went into an eddy and almost died, then were rescued.  It wasn’t until I got to land that I realized I’d almost died and taken nearly 10 people down with me.

I started shaking while drinking the best chicken broth to warm me up for the rest of my life.  My brother was safe the entire time, I learned to appreciate life with a whole new meaning and that night, our steak and potato dinner was probably the best dinner I ever ate.

Do you notice how my answers skew to food?  Hot broth was the kicker here.  They saved me and almost sunk themselves, what can I say?

Thank you to the brave guides and to the fellow travelers on that day.  Cheers, Dee

Care to Ski?

Snowbird, UT had 63′ of snow this year. Fifteen feet is left for Memorial Day Weekend and then the lifts will be closed. They hope to go through July 4. Considering that we had snow last week and they’re still getting it with our rain, it may be an event to conquer.

Expert only, check out http://www.snowbird.com. As for us, we’re looking for Spring. Cheers, Dee

The Chairman

Yes, my latest male admirer has the deepest of blue eyes, and is a Lynx point Siamese. Cat, that is. I help out a local shelter once a week and Sinatra is my newest charge. He’ll be gone to a good home by next week but we got to meet and he was lovely, a gentleman and a flirt. I’m married, but we went nose to nose before I would have with any man… other than Sinatra.

While others were into rock and roll I loved Frank Sinatra. He never wrote his tunes but learned to get the best to write and arrange them. And Tommy Dorsey taught him how to breathe. Most of my music icons write their own music and play at least one musical instrument but Frank was a classic.

What can I say that on my parents’ mono record player I heard a lot of classical music, Mantovani, Sing Along With Mitch, and Frank. Frank caught my ear, and stayed with me for a lifetime. Shortly before he died, my parents took me to Carnegie Hall to see him in concert, a gift that will be appreciated always. Cheers, Dee

Happy Mom’s Day

Well, Jim’s mother and grandmother celebrated on Saturday and my mother is gone so Sunday was a free pass for lunch and a movie. Even our dog loved that because she got her treat before we walked out the door. Margie and Nanny each got rose bushes from two of her favorite grandsons and their families. We did our part, paid for some, and Jim’s brother had to dig the holes and plant Nanny’s because we were 1,500 miles away, watching a movie.

I remember always trying to plan breakfast in bed for Mom and she hated breakfast in bed. We got the refrigerater rolls of orange and cinnamon, and cooked them in the oven (I was 8, my sister was six) and we tried to make eggs but our parents would come out into the kitchen and we were busted. We tried, anyway.

There are too many moms I know so we only do roses for Margie and Nanny. And I’m glad Jim doesn’t do any scary stuff making me our dog’s mother. I’ll reciprocate for Fathers’ Day. Cheers, Dee

Dear Mom,

I know you’re gone but thought of you today. I was very stressed earlier, and put on my headphones and have been selecting iTunes downloads one by one for the past hour. My heart rate has gone down. Jim and Zoe are upstairs sleeping. You’d laugh at what I’m listening to, now a dirge, Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton.

When I was in junior and high school I sang, played and listened to Dylan, Mason, and groups like Peter, Paul and Mary. I now have a vintage songbook from PP&M I got on e-Bay and it means so much to me. You always said I liked dirges. I’m now listening to Over the Rainbow, new version by Iz. I think of you somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. And I still say they’re ballads.

Joan Baez is now singing Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Miss you, Mom.