Turkey, turkey, turkey for days.

Three evites and two phone calls and several emails this week reveal the plans of friends and family.  Ed and Barbara made reservations at the Indian casino near them in the wine country of Northern California.  They’ll share a restaurant meal with a son, daughter-in-law and grandson. 

Sue and John are headed (with lab, Lucy) to Santa Cruz for a long weekend. They’ll take walks on the beach, eat too much, toss the ball for Lucy, play board games with family and friends,  and then do it all over again.

Peyce in Los Angeles, an actor/singer/great Southern cook, has his gang of vagabond performers over every year.  Since I never make it on the day itself, I always hope to find Peyce at home a couple of days later – along with some of his leftovers.

This season never disappoints – no matter where my family has been and no matter how few or how many of us gather.  And there was that one year – a fluke – when plans changed and I found myself alone on turkey day.  Still, celebratory feelings prevailed.  I called Max’s Cafe , ordered one of their special turkey dinners to go, picked it up and kicked off my Christmas movie DVD-watching extravaganza. 

My daughter and I have often traveled to join the rest of the family at someone else’s house.  We’ve also gone the restaurant route with friends, and maybe we’ll do both those things again, but when we’re someplace else on turkey day, we start getting really excited on the way home because we know that we’ll end up cooking the whole meal ourselves within the next couple of days.  We crave the leftovers. 

Thanksgiving is a good time to express gratitude.  It’s a good time for hugs and memories and watching the Macy’s parade first thing in the morning, and it’s also great having all that food around over the weekend. 

Who are those people who claim they’re sick of turkey two days later? Most people I know have plans for the food they don’t consume at the one big meal.  You won’t hear us complain about all that turkey.  We’re not the ones asking the TV cooking show hosts for new ways to treat the food the next day and the next.  

I’ve watched my brother gleefully attach our grandmother’s (God rest her soul) old fashioned food grinder to a counter top as soon as the dishes are cleared so that he can claim some choice chunks of turkey for his famous turkey salad the next day.

I regularly bake too many pumpkin pies so we can have pie for breakfast for days.  

I don’t understand the need to disguise leftovers with clever recipes. If you’re concerned about the leftovers from your own feast, not to worry, send ’em on over here. 

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Curtains? Miles of windows to cover before I sleep. Help!

I just moved into an old cottage with oddly-shaped rooms and miles of windows of various sizes. Love the windows, but my $$$ total for curtains and rods purchased so far – for only two of these rooms – is scary. Winter’s here and soon family will visit and I’ve got bare windows.  I don’t sew. Any ideas for cheap solutions?  I’ve just posted this in the “wanted” section of Craigslist in my area:

Curtains? Does anybody have any neutral ones for sale? 

Tiers? Tab tops? Panels? Cafes? Just moved into an old cottage with walls of windows – all different sizes. The good part is windows are lovely. The iffy part is buying curtains to cover all. So I decided to just cover the whole dang wall of windows in something inexpensive-to- free. Anybody have any neutral colored tiers or cafes or even panels?

First is the kitchen with a wall of windows that measures 85″ wide x 34″ long. I’m flexible about fabric – just not too sheer. As for color -something that  doesn’t scream. White? Beige? Brown? Tan? Ivory? Cream? Neutral of any kind. I have tons of curtains in storage myself, but none fit this configuration. Ain’t it always the way? Thanks for your creative thinking.

 

Ó Anita Garner

 

No-Calorie Snacking Tips From Me & Stephen King

By Anita Garner

Here’s how I keep calorie intake low while enjoying all the foods I love.  If you eat it at a different time of day, it’s calorie-free.  Pizza for breakfast.  Leftover steak with Bearnaise sauce as  a mid-morning pick me up.   Pie whenever the pie mood strikes, except don’t call it dessert.  Only dessert pie has calories.

Stephen King covered a related topic beautifully in more detail and much better than I ever could in an article he once wrote for Entertainment Weekly years ago.  I’m going to go ahead and validate every one of his suggestions below.

Stephen King’s healthy entertainment diet

From the unbelievable-but-true department: Since my world-famous ”movie snacks” column appeared, a number of people have asked your Uncle Stevie for dieting advice. Me, a guy who never met a fat calorie (preferably deep-fried) he didn’t like. At first I thought giving such advice didn’t fit my job description as a commentator on the pop cult scene, but after further consideration, I decided it does. Because staying current with the pop culture is mostly a thing you do sitting down, right? And if you’re watching TV, listening to music, or going to the movies, you want to eat, right? So the question then becomes, ”Uncle Stevie, how do I maintain my keen pop culture edge without turning into a sumo wrestler who knows every single word to the Brady Bunch theme song?”

Luckily for you, I have some tips — stuff that would put Weight Watchers out of business. I’m taking a chance here; the Diet Police will certainly try to smear and discredit me in the press, but for you guys (he said modestly) I’m willing to take the risk.

First, know your enemy: the insidious calorie. You have to limit your intake of those little beasts. But does that mean you have to limit your snacks? No. Just remember to tap your food. When you sit down in front of FlashForward or Lost with a few doughnuts (”a few,” by definition, is six), remember to tap each one on a hard surface before starting to munch. Doing this causes the calories to sink (it’s simple gravity). Then, when you eat your doughnut, just remember not to eat the bottom part. Throw it away (or feed it to the dog), because that’s where the calories are. The rest of your doughnut is calorie-free.

You can food-tap a whole host of tasty snacks: popcorn, brownies (if they’re hard enough to tap without crumbling to bits), even ice cream bars (harder smacks on these are necessary to dislodge the calories). Tapping won’t work with cakes and pies, but fortunately for the devoted snacker, cakes and pies are what nutritional experts call baked goods, and when stuff is baked, the calories shrink from the heat and draw in to the center. So, when you serve yourself a nice fat wedge of chocolate pie, just remember to cut off the pointy end, because that’s where the calories are. When enjoying angel-food or Bundt cake, cut around the center ring and throw it away. The rest of the cake is calorie-free (except for the frosting, but you can’t have everything).

Oh, and never buy loose candy at the movies. Loose candy is a calorie trap. Buy your candy in boxes, then shake it — hard! — before opening. Shaking candy either knocks those pesky calories right out, where they stick to the cardboard, or kills them. And it doesn’t take a genius to understand that a dead calorie can’t make you fat.

Exercise, you say? I get most of mine in the car, using the technique known as seat-bopping. You’ve got to find something really fast and loud (I recommend the Ramones, early Elvis, or James McMurtry’s ”Choctaw Bingo”), then let the beat move you. Seat-bopping is dangerous in heavy traffic, but you can still clench your butt cheeks — like in the old Jane Fonda workouts — and if you’re on the turnpike, put your party wagon in cruise control and shake your shoulders as well. At stoplights, especially those annoying long ones where the arrows point in every direction except the one you want to go in, you can really let loose. I learned to do the Mashed Potato and the Watusi while waiting for various lights to change, and — not to blow my own horn or anything — I’m a killer dancer. Do you get looked at funny? Of course, but ask yourself which you care about more, staying slim or some stranger’s opinion that you’re having a medical emergency at the corner of Main and Broad.

When watching TV, strap five-pound weights to your ankles and do leg lifts during the commercials. Not only is this a good cardio workout, but each 60-second set of lifts burns a thousand calories or more.

One other thing: If you actually believe any of this stuff, I have a bridge I want to sell you. And I will take checks. Because remember: Every time you write a check, you burn 200 calories. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

******

It swivels. It comforts. It rocks!

I just bought a recliner.  For myself.  Oh yes I did.  Me – the woman who once threatened a man with dire consequences if he so much as browsed in the recliner department. I believed then (and maybe it’s true) that the combination of a recliner and a TV remote spelled the death of a relationship. Only now I don’t care because I have a big crush on this chair.

It’s butter-color leather, and it’s one of the smaller ones.  It’s looks a bit like a side chair, but make no mistake, it reclines.  One touch of that side-lever and whoosh, legs are lifted, back and neck are supported, and it becomes a cocoon. A cocoon that swivels and rocks and does everything except read my book to me.

Some people I know who’ve owned and loved recliners were disposed to do so because of health issues and these chairs are certainly the ticket for people who need to nap in a propped-up position.  My father, toward the end of his life, was more comfortable in his recliner than anyplace else in the house, and from his seat of honor, we all gathered around him to visit.  

But I didn’t buy this lovely hunk of leather for any sensible reasons.  I simply fell in lust.  I’ve always been partial to rockers, and especially swiveling rockers.  Yellow is my favorite color, so this one called to me from the corner of the hospice thrift store, where it was almost hidden away.   

I sat down and in a policy reversal worthy of a seasoned politician,  decided this chair needs to be delivered to my house tomorrow.  

Ó Anita Garner 2009

 

Extreme re-purposing – turning a funeral home into a preschool

A notice appeared in the newspaper saying the old funeral home had been sold and would become a preschool.  That building’s been there for decades.  It’s handsome, the way those places always used to be.  It was vacant for a long time but the grounds around it were always manicured.

 

Our town has experienced a population boom-let in the under-5-year-old category and every preschool has a long waiting list, so though it seemed odd at first, making use of this well-situated property does make sense.  Still it’s quite a stretch to imagine this place changing so far from one point in the circle of life to the extreme other.

 

The construction permit was taped to the heavy door, then the orange cones and heavy equipment arrived. The parking lot concrete left in trucks but the building remained intact.  Those leaded windows could stand replacing and how they’d reconfigure remained a mystery.  It still looked more funeral home than preschool.

 

I returned from an overnight trip and all of a sudden bright blue playground equipment had appeared, rising up from the very spot where people used to enter in a hearse at the end of life.

 

A giant blue jungle gym, blue slides and swings changed everything.  With these in place, the real promise of the project is already realized. For the next however-long this incarnation lasts, it’s gone from a place for sadness to a smile-inducing destination.  From stately to noisy is the perfect re-purposing.

 

Ó Anita Garner 2009

 

 

An artist’s date

Keeping a date with an artist is an important part of my life.  Not the fantasy kind of date of extreme youth, but a date to appreciate the art that surrounds us, made by  geniuses living or dead.  With a little planning, I can be at a museum or a play, a movie or a concert or a festival, soaking in the output of creative souls.

I’m  looking forward to visiting the new Walt Disney Museum which opened this month at the Presidio in San Francisco. I’ve made a date to go and no matter the size of the crowd when I get there,  a date with an artist is really time alone.   Just me and the art.

Going on an art adventure alone encourages a focus on what we’re there for. The idea is to take ourselves to see or hear something that we’re not exposed to every day.  Appreciating while in the company of a friend is fun of another kind, involving the inevitable “what did you think of that?” discussion, but alone we soak it in on our own schedule, every bit of it, even the parts we disagree with, and then we’re free to form our own opinions about it.

We don’t need an excuse to keep dates like this, nor do we have to wait ’til we’re desperate for an escape.  I want this to be a regular part of my life, going out of my way to  see and hear the artistic output of other individuals.   There is another advantage – the  freedom to appreciate something that nobody else we know cares about.

Ó Anita Garner 2009

 

Seeing ourselves as others see us is not for the weak.

We’ve heard that aging is not for sissies.  Here’s another truth.  Accepting the reality in the mirror first thing in the morning is not for the faint of heart.  And the photo taken for my driver’s license is not necessarily the real me.  I choose not to see myself the way the Department of Motor Vehicles sees me.  You’d think with that photo in my wallet I’d believe it’s true.  Nope.  I’m able to convince myself that picture is a fluke, a trick of lighting. 

I need my illusions.  People who care anything about me know that and leave them alone.  Some days I’m my worst critic.  Other days I look in the mirror and decide I like it. Sometimes what I’m liking is not the way I really look, but the way I think I look.

If I could see myself as others see me, would I want to? 

1)  No. 

2)  Depends on what day it is.

3)  Please, no.

It’s hard work staying inside my bubble. The real world is filled with so many bubble-bursters, they don’t need any help from me.  So rather than seeing it as delusion, I prefer to think of it as an elaborate alternate-reality scheme, one that helps me to keep on keeping on.

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Bath time rituals – a soapy story.

Bath time is sacred. I enjoy it an unreasonable amount, but a private bath isn’t always easy to achieve.

When my daughter was very young, I announced I needed a few minutes after work to decompress in the tub and then she could tell me everything, ask me anything.  At first that was okay with her – until it wasn’t.  She sat outside the bathroom door, asking me is it time yet? 

Then we got a puppy and she “helped” him get into the bathroom, so she could shout from outside,  “Buster!  Naughty! Come back here.  Mommy is having her bath time.”  Then it was “Can I come in and get Buster?”  Then the two of them sat on the bath mat and they were so cute, I surrendered. The new rule was you can sit here if you learn a song.  Starting from whenever she could carry a tune, we sang in the bathroom together while sharing my “private, sacred, must-have” bath time.

Now her little girl, Caedan, is already bending the definition of the word, “privacy” to suit her needs.  She’s supposed to ask, “Do you need privacy?” before opening a door.   From the other side of the door, I heard,  “Do you want me to scrub your back with that big brush?”  and “May I open the door now?  With no puppy to use as an excuse, she employs other means.  

She visited me in a hotel room and while poking around the amenities laid out for guests, she asked, “What’s this?”  Until that day, she’d never seen a bar of soap. She knows from hand sanitizer and liquid bath wash, but a world of miniature soaps beckoned.    

Back home, I related this to our friend, Pam, who promptly sent an assortment of guest-size bars of soap in all colors and fragrances to Caedan.  My daughter put them into a pretty dish where she can reach them. 

During a recent visit, I was soaking away in a “private” bath when she knocked on the door and asked,  “Would you like to use my soap?” I sensed some hesitation.  This was the ultimate sacrifice.  I said yes just to see what would happen. She told me she would choose which soap.  (Generous – but not to a fault.)  She brought it in and handed it to me, but a couple of seconds later said, “I  need my soap back now” and quickly exited.

From now on when I really need privacy while visiting my daughter’s house, all I have to do to be left alone is mess with those little soaps.  Note for Christmas list:  A stocking filled with bars of Ivory soap – “So pure it floats.” 

Ó Anita Garner

New TV Season

For several years, the TV pickin’s have been slender around here, since I’m not a fan of legal shows, police or procedurals, or medical, supernatural, vampire-specific or futuristic shows, nor most reality shows.  What’s been missing are the comedy blocks from years past, the real escape stuff.  Plus every year I hope for something completely fresh and unexpected.  I’m still not over missing “Frasier.”  This week Kelsey Grammer’s new show, “Hank,” debuts and I hope it sticks, because the last one he tried didn’t – and the man’s a singular talent.  

With longer nights around the corner and the rainy season approaching, it’s nice to see a bunch of promising new shows in the mix.  I’ve already programmed  several of them for series taping.  There’s Drop Dead Diva, the new Community, Modern Family and Glee.  Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother are back, and both Mad Men and Entourage recently returned.  Add Dancing With The Stars and my DVR’s getting more use these days than it has in ages.   

Ó Anita Garner

Glee!

“Glee” is being hailed by critics as new and fresh and like nothing we’ve seen before (except for those other critics who’re saying it’s a show you’ll either love or you’ll hate)  but what I’m enjoying  – in addition to the singing and dancing and good performances all around – is that everything about it is kind of old-fashioned.  Retro.   

Take sad high school stereotypes we all recognize and give them some fine memories in spite of themselves.  Of course so far it’s the viewing audience who realize the characters are having the times of their lives. In real life, the kids would be too loaded down with  angst to notice right away that their differences are their strengths.

What a colorful assemblage of characters the producers and writers offer – one of every kind of not-popular kid and a few of the ones who run things in every high school.  

I admire the storytelling – based on solid narrative, and oh those quirky twists! 

The misfits try to make a place for themselves using their unusual talents and interests, with the popular kids swatting them back, using age-old high school hierarchy as their main tool, along with some nefarious schemes hatched up by the wonderfully evil cheer-leading coach.  All this is mixed with enough new music and fresh dialogue and situations to add the right elements to hold the interest of a whole family. 

Forget about the family for a minute.  Matthew Morrison?  Girl, please.

Ó Anita Garner 2009