Flaming Turkey Wings...Fa La La La La

Thanksgiving Day has come and gone, but I thought I might regale you with the tales of the past two weeks, starting the day before Thanksgiving. I took a vacation day to prepare and I’m very glad I did! I got up early in the morning, wrote out a few checks to stick in the mail and headed for the post office, followed by a quest for a fresh 20-pound turkey. Unfortunately, a large fresh turkey was not to be found at a reasonable price, so I settled for two 10-pounders. Once all the purchases were stashed at home, the marathon cooking started.

I began by making a huge pan of lasagna for Friday. My son and his crew were to arrive on Thursday and stay for a few days. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to serve turkey two or three days running. Never one to make anything small, I did a four-layer lasagna with tomato-basil-garlic designer noodles that I picked up at a Rossi Pasta outlet on a trek through Marietta a few months back.

Three and a half pounds of Ricotta, two pounds each of fresh-shredded Mozzarella and Parmesan and about ¾ of a gallon of Tuscan sauce that had been completely doctored to my taste, and I almost threw out my back lifting the huge pan from of the oven! An hour after assembly and cooking, the pan was cooling on the racks. It soon found its way into the freezer.

Next, I made “The Stuffing.” We’re not talking Stove-Top here, or even Pepperidge Farms bread cubes. I make “The Stuffing” from scratch, which includes drying my own bread. I set my daughter, Meredith, to the task of cutting up six cups of onions while I chopped the celery, then sautéed the results of that labor in butter. I added all the appropriate seasonings and spices and then put it in the fridge to await the annual cooking ritual.

My family would disown me if I made any other stuffing than what has become the traditional one for our family. My son practically inhales the stuff. One niece who lives out of state asked for the recipe. When I finally met her fiancé (now husband), his first words to me were “So you’re Aunt Betsy of the stuffing!”

Third in line was preparation of the homemade dressing for the spinach salad. Nothing in the store quite compares to what I put together in the food processor for this dish. I whizzed it all down, poured it into a quart container and stuck it in the fridge.

After that clean up, I started the pies…two pumpkin and one apple, all with crusts from scratch. The pumpkins I made with plain canned pumpkin that I add my own spices to, so I can control the flavors. They went into the oven first. Then I rolled the dough for the apple pie while Mom peeled and sliced the apples. It was huge and loaded. I set it aside until the pumpkin pies were done.

While I was waiting, I decided to experiment. I created a variation on my mother’s sour cream coffee cake. This version was pumpkin-pecan-sour cream cake. It required the same temperature as the apple pie. So I put the apple in at 450 for 15 minutes, then cranked it down as required and put the cake in to keep it company.

This is where the fun began. As the apple pie neared completion time, I realized I was hearing noise. When I opened the oven, I discovered that the overloaded pie was leaking juice all over the bottom of the oven and it was starting to smoke. I yanked the pie out, spilling more juice, began opening doors and windows, and clicked on the exhaust fan.

The downside of this action is that the oven cooled too quickly and the cake still required another 40 minutes. I didn’t dare turn it off and clean out the oven, so I attempted to finish the cooking even with smoke pouring out of the stove.

In the end, the cake had to come out before burning on the sides, but there was at least a layer that wasn’t quite done. The flavors and the texture ended up being reminiscent of a pumpkin torte or pudding. In my opinion, I need to try it again, but the holiday tasters loved it anyway, and my son took half of it back to NJ with him when he left.

By the time I dragged the experimental cake from the jaws of death, I had been on my feet in the kitchen for almost 10 hours. Quite frankly, I thought I would never be able to stand on my feet again without pain, but fortunately I was wrong! And it’s a good thing, because I had more cooking to do the next day! To be continued….

November Woes as it Comes to a Close!

Many apologies to my readers for being woefully uncommunicative in my blog. November is almost over, and that heralds the end of my busiest and most over-committed month of the year! The quest to pen 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month is a huge undertaking, but even more so when you spend your 40-hour work week writing and editing! I’m talking writing burn-out, and I admit I have no one to blame but myself for taking on such a task.

It has been obvious to me over the last few years that the originators of National Novel Writing Month were young males with no obvious need for concern over which month to have the event. Maybe we should move it to March, when everyone is bored, tired of winter and in need of something creative to get them through to actual spring weather.

Penning 50K words in the midst of pre-Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations (as in planning, cooking, cleaning and readying for the onslaught of houseguests), work, additional activities and events associated with the holidays that have to be attended, shopping for gifts, and on and on ad nauseum, tends to put my stress meter above the red line!

But enough of the whining! I will buck up and get it done. I’m expecting my son and his crew to arrive from New Jersey and stay a few days. My daughter, her BF and possibly his crew, will be coming for dinner as well. So a 20-22# turkey and all the trimmings are on the horizon. Once again, I have no one to blame but myself that they all expect a traditional Thanksgiving meal from scratch with few, if any, shortcuts.

Even still, I am determined to take the stress out of the holiday meal and get as much of the accessory cooking done on Wednesday as I can manage. I’m also NOT breaking out the good china. We will be doing a traditional meal on disposable decorator plates. We will be using real flatware, but much of the after meal mess will be chucked into the trash (rather than two or three runnings of the dishwasher to get it all cleaned up.

Today is food shopping for Thanksgiving, and I will be doing some additional cooking when I get home from a 2-hour rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah (performance next Sunday). Since my son and crew are staying a few days, I’m making a large pan of lasagna and sticking it in the freezer to have the day after.

This is the plan so far, and I’m sticking to it. I just haven’t figured out how to fit in the last 19 or 20K words on that NaNoWriMo novel!

There is no soul in Sowell

Anthony Sowell…that name is already synonymous with infamous serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Gary Heidnik, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. It is frightening that such a rampant stream of killings went completely unnoticed for two years. It is even more frightening that there is a good possibility the same said Anthony Sowell might be responsible for an earlier rash of murders in East Cleveland back in the 80s called the Strawberry Murders. That murder spree ended, coincidentally, about the same time Anthony Sowell was sentenced to 15 years in prison for kidnap and rape.

I can’t begin to fathom what type of demons possess the Anthony Sowells of the world. Obviously, no one in their right mind would live in a house full of decaying corpses. What makes me cringe is the report of him being friendly to everyone and inviting the neighbors for barbeque…in shades of Dahmer, I have to wonder exactly what a man with no visible means of support was serving up to the neighborhood folk.

Unfortunately, most psychopaths have what seem to most of us to be normal charming behaviors and personalities. You can’t tell a book by its cover fits this scenario perfectly. Ted Bundy was a perfect example of this, handsome and charming.

Exactly when are we going to stop letting people fall through the cracks? We have national databases of donors, and medical record, insurance, credit cards…surely every single person reported missing with all the pertinent particulars should be entered into a national database. Programs should run regularly on that data looking for similarities in location, genders, body types, ages, races, whatever we can do to link cases together so the Anthony Sowells of this world can be stopped at a couple, rather than dozens.

Local law enforcement needs to check more closely on missing persons reports. It should not matter what the neighborhood is or if the person missing has a record of prostitution or drug complaints. These are human beings, not numbers. We are all created equal, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, eat, drink, cry and bleed. We all have parents, siblings, children. Every missing person case should be treated as what it is, a tragedy that needs to be addressed.

It's that NaNo time of year!

Yes folks, it's that time of year when the wanna-be novelists put their fingies to the keyboards and click-clack away! And once again, I am acting as municipal liaison for Lake County Ohio...an emissary for the deviants who created National Novel Writing Month back in 1999. What started as your basic lunatic idea, attempting to write a 50,000-word novel in one month, has become an annual international phenomenon.

When I wrote my first novel, it was an exercise. I wanted to see if I could actually write a complete book. It took an entire year of voicing my thoughts into a hand-held recorder while driving or waiting for kids, then typing it up during my lunch breaks at work until it was all in one cohesive document. I was determined to prove to myself that I could do it. And I did.

Most people out there who just "know" they have a book in them don't have the drive to get it down on paper or computer. The task seems overwhelming.

They begin to create, and by the time they've massaged the same chapter a hundred times, they give up. The point of NaNoWriMo is to get it on paper. Just write with abandon: no editing, no rewriting. As NaNo's are fond of telling people "Editing is for the OTHER 11 months of the year." (You have to do something while you're waiting for the next year's event, right?)

I will be the first to admit, this is probably not the most "normal" way to write a book, but is there really an acceptable way to create? I know someone who was so desperate to get her book written that she would write on a notepad in the bathroom while sitting atop the throne. It was the only place in the house that she could get away from the kids and the husband and have a few minutes to herself. She wrote that entire book in her bathroom.

A novel written in a month can't be very good, you say? Amazing as it may seem, there have been several NaNo's who have cleaned up their NaNo manuscripts (taking advantage of the OTHER 11 months of the year) and managed to get book deals and publication.

So if writing that elusive novel has always been your dream, but you lack the motivation to attack the daunting task, join your fellow lunatic writers at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and get that book written this month!

Lance Corporal David Baker, Semper Fi

It was a sad day at work today. We came into the office to discover that Lance Corporal David Baker, the 22-year old son of our co-worker Mark Baker, had been killed in an IED incident in Afghanistan. We were all stunned and saddened, and a thinly veiled darkening of mood seemed to settle about the place.

I couldn’t help but think about how easy it is to distance ourselves from the bravery and sacrifice our bright, bold young people are giving to this country every single day. They sacrifice their time, any semblance of comfort, amenities we take for granted, and indeed their very lives to do what our country asks of them. They don’t question, they perform. They give their all even in horrific conditions in third world countries far from their loved ones.

And then suddenly the tragedy strikes close to home, when the soldier or marine or sailor that doesn’t make it back happens to be the son, or daughter, or brother, or sister of someone we know…

So if you will, when you head to bed tonight, say a prayer for Lance Corporal David Baker and his family. Then add a prayer for all his fallen comrades-in-arms, and say a third prayer that all those who have not fallen will come home safely.

The H1N1 Vaccine is here…What is an Acceptable Risk?

I’m going to define my era a little here by saying that this is not the first “swine flu” alarm we’ve had in my lifetime. Back in 1976, the first “swine flu” scare held the country in its grip. There was panic over the lack of a vaccine, and much like today, companies scrambled to jury-rig together something that was supposed to protect the public against this inveterate killing machine.

Hundreds of thousands received the shots. It was particularly recommended for pregnant women and those with chronic illnesses and the elderly. Emergency shot administration locations were set up all over the country. I actually volunteered to help at one of those sites. Obviously pregnant with my first child, one of the other volunteers asked me if I had received my shot.

“No I haven’t,” I replied.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because I’m pregnant, not stupid. Not even an aspirin crosses these lips while I’m in this condition, and from everything I’ve read, this vaccine has not been around long enough to test for long-term effects.”

Even in my early 20’s, I was cognizant enough of what was going on to realize that not enough testing had been done.

That version of swine flu did kill some people, but it was never the pandemic they all warned us about. There was a huge backlash from doling out vaccine that wasn’t sufficiently tested, a hoopla about vaccinating low-income areas first (to test it for the rest of society), and there were some unexpected effects as well, but there are always unexpected effects from most new medications.

Flash forward 33 years. Here it is again. I am speaking to you not as a doctor or nurse or public health official. I am giving my personal opinion as someone with a long medical industry background and many years in pharmaceutical research. I will not be getting the H1N1 shot. I will get the normal flu shot offered at my place of employment.

I will also be requesting the pneumonia shot from my primary physician. Generally speaking, it is the pneumonia complication of the flu that kills.

Anyone in my general age range, from 40 up, has already been exposed to a similar strain of this flu and should have some residual antibodies to fight it. Would I give this new vaccine to my teens and kids? In spite of the lack of testing, I probably would. The younger age groups have not had the exposure of the older generations. And testing has come quite a long way in the last 33 years.

I’m not saying that it’s safe. I’m saying that there is a component of risk, and you have to consider that risk before you take the vaccine. As with all new medications, there are unexpected side effects, including allergies to the medication itself or to the vehicle the medication is mixed with so that it can be administered.

I’m sure that the parent of any child or teen who has died from swine flu would consider the risk of taking the relatively under-tested vaccine to be an acceptable one.

So, the question is, what will you consider to be an acceptable risk?

Letterman, Halderman, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Mardian…I’m so Confused!

Don’t you just love a good scandal? We don’t seem to be able to get our fill of those in the news. It’s interesting that when faced with exposure, media personalities just come out and admit it and move on while politicians deny it until they can’t anymore, then get on TV and cry about how sorry they are (meaning sorry they got caught with their pants down, not sorry they actually did it).

I got to thinking about Letterman and Halderman and it triggered something deep in my gray matter from the distant past…Watergate. We had Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Mardian, and Hunt and Liddy of course. It begs the question, “What did CBS management know and when did they know it?” Will David Letterman be impeached?

The reaction to Letterman’s folly is varied. Those who are mortified at any sexual impropriety, are still mortified. Those who couldn’t care less still don’t. The swing votes are those who are disgusted with politicians but will let errant Letterman slide. Why you ask? Because our tax money is paying those politicians who are out wining, dining, and getting their sexual jollies in expensive hotels and vacation spots on OUR dime. At least Letterman is forking over his own bucks to have a good time.

Every time I travel, no matter where I go, I run into people that I know, either casually, personally, or through acquaintances. I ask myself, how in the world do people manage to carry on discreet affairs in their own neighborhoods or places of work, when I can’t travel from Cleveland OH to Savannah GA without running into people I know? The world had gotten incredibly small. Six degrees of separation has shrunken to 4 or 5 degrees. I can’t imagine having an affair with anyone living less than several hundred miles from home! Even then I’d be looking over my shoulder constantly!

My personal opinion is that Letterman is a sick individual. It’s not that he had an affair…anyone can be forgiven a weakness or an indiscretion. It’s that he’s admitted to having multiple sexual liaisons with women in his work arena. That is a clear abuse of his position of power. Any responsible corporation would fire an employee for that behavior.

So I ask again, “What did CBS management know, and when did they know it?” It’s time for someone to come out and drop the hammer. The workplace should not be a sexual hunting ground for men in positions of power.