Day 8: Habit

If I have a habit that's lasted almost my whole life, it's making popcorn!  Popcorn is the bread of my life.  It's saved my bacon so many times--from major digestive upsets to hunger to the dark night of the soul.  I was hospitalized one time after becoming dehydrated from intestinal flu.  After 3 days with an IV stuck in my arm, I got sent home as cured.  Half an hour later, the unfortunate side-effect started up again, and on top of that I was starving. "To hell with this," I says, and I made a huge batch of popcorn.  Ate the whole thing, and whatever had ailed my gut vanished. 

When we raised it in our Victory Garden during WWII, we stored it on the cob in a big open wooden box at the end of the garage.  It was my job to rub the cobs together to release the kernels so that my mom could pop them in a big aluminum kettle.  She didn't use any oil or anything...just poured the corn into the kettle and turned on the heat.  We grew three kinds that I remember:  yellow, white, and dark blue.  I loved the dark blue best. It was a native variety and the tenderest and most delicious of all.  My mom always bought Jolly Time popcorn when we ran out of the home grown.  Jolly Time comes from Iowa, and her farmer relatives in Iowa probably sold their popcorn crops to Jolly Time.  She was very fond of it all. 

And so were we, meaning my brother Gene and I, who were the only two left at home in those days.  Mom poured on butter mixed half and half with Crisco, added salt, and we ate it right down to the bottom of the bowl.  Ha. We always ate the unpopped kernels, too, and licked the salt and butter off the bowl.

To be properly cured, it has to be dried after picking.  I grew popcorn one year in Bismarck. I hung the corn cobs with the husks peeled back from some hooks on the back porch.  Brilliant.  When I went out two days later, the wind had arisen during the night, rattled the cobs together, and the whole porch floor was covered with popcorn.  Yes, I did sweep it up and save it.  I didn't wash it exactly...I just picked out the leaves and blew the dust off. 

I get it now from Glut Coop in Mt. Rainier, a 20-minute bus ride away.  It costs something like 99c a pound, up from 79c a pound not too too long ago--gawd!  the inflation is gonna murther us all.  It's available every Sunday here in Takoma at the Farmers Market, but a jar of this size full would cost about $7 or $8!  I don't think so....not yet.  The jar in the picture, when full, holds about $1.40 worth.  

Day 7: Fruit

Nothing like a big bowl of fruit....I bought the apples last Saturday--seven of them--to make a pie.  My mother's pie recipe always called for seven apples.  I ate one, and one died on me through no fault of my own.  It must have had a worm or something.  So far, there's no pie.  But the kitchen faucet is finally fixed today, and I also have my own pie pan now.  So I think I'll make a Norwegian apple pie.  No crust on those babies!  EZ!!

Day 6--low angle photograph

OK, same boots, different day, different (low-angle) view.  Now let me tell you about these boots.  I bought them in the West Village maybe 10 years ago, and I'll never forget what happened when I walked out of the store and down the street wearing them.  A woman did a double-take when she saw me.  THAT had never happened before no matter what I was wearing--except, perhaps, for the habit when I was in the convent.

What happens now when I wear them is that my ankles don't wobble so much, and I'm about an inch and a half taller.  This means I can look a LOT of people in the eye now, and I have to tell you, it's a gas.  I feel bigger and stronger and, yes, younger.  It's FUN walking in these things.  There is enough variety in the garb one sees every day here, so nobody does any double-takes now.  Still, I feel like a badass, and I love it.

day five of the 30 day photography challenge

I started posting these 30-day-photography-challenge photos on XE, but on second thought, I decided this blog was the proper venue.  So day five (yesterday) was "high-angle" photograph.  It was almost dark when I remembered this, so I took a photo of my boots from above.  And of course I used my Blackberry.  Hm.

Then I noticed the shadow the trash can and the bus flag was making.  That's sort of high-angle, too, innit?  Not really really high, but higher than if I was taking a photo looking straight at it on the same level.  Hmph.  I never said it was high art.  It's high practice!

Day 4: Something Green

The green grass sparkles in this photo of my two grandsons, Sam, left, and Joe, right.  It's one of my very favorite photos, although I didn't take it today.  Sam is now a freshman in college on a lacrosse scholarship, and Joe is deciding between medicine and research in his senior (junior??) year of college.  But once they were happy-go-lucky children in their backyard in NJ, and Grandma was there with her camera at just the right time.  Waay in the back is their sister, Annie, who can't be bothered with all that silliness.....

Today's photo is of my beloved green cashmere sweater, which I wear day and night in wintertime.  The crickets have munched through it in several spots, and I've patched it with cotton embroidery floss, which keeps the wind out.  I roll it up and stow it in my backpack against the cool breeze of what passes for winter in these parts.  Hah...50 degrees F?  It's to laugh.....

My friend Loraine made this lovely green tile in her studio at Greenbelt.  She started making tiles about 5 or 6 years ago, and they're getting more complex and beautiful by the batch.  Can't find the photos of Loraine.  Dang!

Day 3: Clouds

There were almost no clouds today, but the final moments of daylight revealed some clouds:  the charcoal smudges in the sky.  I took this with my BlackBerry Lite cell phone (don't ask)....the lights under the sky are from the Metro cars heading toward Silver Spring.  This is the view from our parking lot.  It looks like the wall around a prison yard, but there are nice cars parked down just out of the view.

30 Day Photography Challenge

Nailing Jello to the Wall came up with this neat challenge t'other day. Taking a new picture every day for 30 days.  I started it last night, but I can't get yesterday's photo to stick to the blog here. Well, day two photo is supposed to be a picture of what you wore today, so I'm combining days one and two into one challenge: a self-portrait of me in my wonderful Ravello Italia hoodie, which I actually did wear today. Tomorrow is supposed to be a picture of clouds. Stay tuned.......