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My friend K., who lives in Waddell (halfway to Yuma from here), came into town to visit and to shop at the city’s premier nursery, Baker’s, which at 40th Street and Osborn is halfway to Tucson from her place. It was a very pleasant day: magnificent weather, good company. She bought roses, herbs, and flowers; I bought Lillian Austin, an English rose by David Austin; we perused the show put on by an iris fanciers’ club. We spent several hours socializing and enjoying the garden-like nursery.

After she headed back to the far side of the galaxy, I harvested the first beets of spring out of the garden, fired up the barbecue, defrosted a steak. Braised the beautiful little beets with butter and nutmeg; braised the incredible beet greens in olive oil, garlic, and fennel seed; threw the steak on the grill. Awesome dinner, accompanied by dos fine cervezas (Corona!) with juicy ripe lime from the backyard tree, all of it consumed in the shade of the back patio.

The hour still being late afternoon, Cassie and I circumnavigated the nearby park, also very pleasant on a springtime Saturday.

You know… Soon, every day will be like this!Think of it.

Not having made three, four, five thirty-six-mile round trips to campus in the preceding week, I will think nothing of driving out to Waddell to hang out with my friends. We will not need the excuse of a shopping trip to get together. Driving out to Sun City to visit SDXB surely will feel less onerous, too.

Every day I will be able to garden at my convenience, to download House on Hulu in the middle of the morning, to cook a fine meal, to raise a glass to God’s creation at midafternoon, to stroll around the park whenever the dog and I choose.

Ohhh please, Mr. University President: don’t throw me in that briar patch!
😀

Over at MSN Smart Spending, Karen Datko has kindly featured my recent rumination about whether to hang onto the stocks, bonds, gold, and cash in my IRA or cash it in and pay off the mortgage in the house my son and I are copurchasing. Nice exposure… Thanks, Karen! 🙂

Here’s an old family recipe: it came from my mother’s best friend, an amazing Pennsylvania Dutch cook. What makes these unusual is the addition of egg to the batter.

You need:
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons double-acting baking powder (such as Calumet)
4 generous tablespoons butter, margarine, or Crisco
1 egg
Milk to fill one cup

Time: About 20 minutes
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients—Anna used to sift them together, but I don’t bother with that.

Place the egg in a measuring cup and beat it with a fork or wire whip until it is well mixed. Then fill to the one-cup line with milk. Mix egg well with milk.

With a pastry mixer or two knives, cut the shortening into the flour until well mixed—that is, until it’s about the texture of coarse corn meal. Make a well in the center and add the liquid. Work together gently with a spoon. Do not knead! The secret to this recipe is to handle the dough as little as possible.

Drop the dough by large spoonsful onto a nonstick or greased baking pan. If you prefer, you can turn the dough out onto a floured board, gently roll it about 1/2 inch thick, and cut biscuits with a small floured glass or orange-juice can.

Bake 10 to 15 minutes at about 400 degrees.

At the ripe old age of 8, my son was selected as a “Chef of the West ” by Sunset Magazine, which published his variant of these biscuits. His version:

Drop a small spoonful of the dough onto a greased baking sheet. Flatten it out a bit. Place a small dab of jam or jelly in the center of this. Drop another spoonful of dough on top of it. Gently push the dough around the outside edge to seal the filling inside the biscuit. Bake as usual.

…So the oak will grow, eh?

Speaking of the Make It from Scratch Carnival, as we were in the last post, this week’s edition is hosted by Feels Like Home, whose “Grace’s Kitchen” feature addresses issues of children’s nutrition. This week she begins a discussion of how to fit a toddler’s diet into the present USDA guidelines for the recommended 1,000 calories a day.

Thinking through your little one’s diet this carefully is the best favor you can do for your child. My mother, following the advice that was current in her time, kept few sweets in the house and did not serve desserts, but her refrigerator was always full of washed and prepared fruits and veggies, and her snack cupboard was stocked with things like nuts and other nutritious foods. She wasn’t wildly restrictive—I still ate the occasional piece of candy or bag of pretzels. But she quietly emphasized nutritious stuff to eat.

When I reached high school, my best friend’s mother would give her money to buy a sandwich, a drink, and a dessert. That’s what the kid bought, every day: an ice-cream sandwich, a can of pop, and a candy bar. One day she watched me eat the lunch my mother sent to school with me and asked, “Don’t you want some dessert?” When I said I had dessert—an apple—she visibly shuddered (!) and exclaimed, “You think an APPLE is sweet???”

She was already overweight. If she’s still living, she probably still struggles with the weight and health problems fostered by her childhood eating habits.

I think, however, that you can go overboard with insisting that not one bite of unhealthful food may ever pass your child’s lips. My best friend of young adulthood was one of those. The sole taste of sugary stuff her kids had during any given year was on their birthdays, when, in deference to the surrounding culture’s tradition, she would make them a birthday cake. This would be a heavy, soggy carrot cake. As soon as the party was over, the leftover cake went straight into the garbage (where, IMHO, it belonged…).

She was a wonderful cook and she did fix delicious meals at home. But she was such a lunatic about what her kids would absolutely positively not eat that they both went into full rebellion and, at every opportunity when they were away from home, scarfed down as much junk food as they could get their hands on. Interestingly, as toddlers both kids were prone to bouts of diarrhea. My son, who ate as healthful a diet as I could construct but was not forbiddensuch delicacies as pizza and the occasional Whopper, never once had an intestinal upset.

If there’s a point here, I think it’s that the middle road is best. Create a nutritional environment in your home that fosters healthy, whole foods with lots of fruits and vegetables. But don’t be afraid to let the kids have an occasional taste of what other people eat. Over the course of their lifetimes, they’ll come to prefer whatever you feed them routinely as their day-to-day sustenance.

Don’t forget that Funny will host the wonderful Make It from Scratch Carnival on Tuesday. Be sure to submit your contributions through this convenient form at the carnival.

Hello? There’s an alarm shrieking. Is no one paying attention? The House has approved a NINETY PERCENT TAX for the sole purpose of punishing a corporation whose executives annoy us.

Folks. The federal income tax is not intended to be used as a bludgeon.It may be against the law to use it that way.

This is a disaster for America, far worse than any economic recession could be.

Make no mistake about it. The powers that put George W. Bush in office will be back. This precedent will give them a handy-dandy tool to use against people they don’t like. And who knows? One of those people could be you or me.

That’s the whole issue about the rule of law. It’s supposed to protect everyone, not just people we don’t like.

The Times reports that “Democrats and some Republicans said the tax on bonuses for traders, executives, and bankers earning more than $250,000 was the quickest way to show angry Americans that Congress intended to recoup the extra dollars.”

“Quickest way?” We call that expedience. Another term could be stone stupidity. It’s every bit as stupid and arrogant as the Bushite theory that if a president says something, that makes it legal.

I don’t like AIG’s actions any more than the rest of us do. But that doesn’t justify trashing the Constitution in a fit of pique. There’s gotta be a better way.

This one is going to come back to bite. In a big way.