Friday of the Week Before Easter

Locked solidly in the rhythm of growing up in the 50s and 60s all Easter vacations began on the week following Easter Sunday. Not so today.

The Starbucks that I frequent had an interesting mix of kids and teachers and parents that had a day off themselves even if the kids did not. Easter break or Spring break is celebrated here the week before Easter this year. The high school students have a minimum day today meaning that they will get out at 12:30. Elementary school students will get out for their vacation a little later in the the day. The college and all of its offices are off today in honor of Ceaser Chavaez day. One of my friends works at the university and so does his wife. They had dropped off their kids at school and were headed for Starbucks for a drop of coffee. There were not many open seats when they arrived as parents were treating their junior high kids to coffee at Starbucks and some of the little kids were their because there school was not in session. Starbucks was hitting the jackpot with their little cake pops, the preferred sweet of the younger generation.

Across the street I saw a water ski boat all set to go find a lake. One problem... a flat tire. It was probably caused by the construction zone that is scheduled to be there until September. They are adding two lanes at the intersection and widening to four lanes passing in in front of the intersection of G and Yosemite. In the meantime it looks like my walk intersections on all sides are undergoing a root canal. Can you imagine having one that took 6 months... mercy!

I got some good iphone photos to sketch from...so.. lets see if they turn out okay.  You can check the people in sketch blog referenced on the right to see if they came out okay.

Have a great weekend!  : ) Pat

March Out like a Lamb?

We have had a couple of weeks of stormy weather this March. Usually March represents the tail end of the February storms. Not this year. February and the first weeks of March were storm free. Weather was saving itself for the end of March. The snow pack was less than 30 percent prior to the storms in the last part of March. We are still significantly lower than average for water in the hills. I think that we may get as much as 76 percent of our average. Last year we were at 150 percent of our average.

As for the front yard flower garden, the violas are doing just fine. The snapdragons are toast.. and have been removed. In their place I planted a half a flat of petunias that were not yet ready to bloom yet. It is rare to find flats that are not totally in bloom. I think that Color Spot of Salinas and used to be Albany/Richmond have trained us to go for the plants that are already in bloom for our flower displays. The inherent problem with this is that the plants do not have a chance to acclimate to the surroundings before having to produce big beautiful blooms. The consumer will know exactly which blossoms will come from that plant in exchange. When planting those specimens it may be noted that the roots are often bound and have to be spread out to have any success.  

I met with the retired HS teachers today. A couple of them were living dangerously and ordered biscuits and gravy along with their eggs and hash browns. I am sure that if their wives were there the order would have been changed.... aw  male independence.

I have been sketching along in Merced and Modesto recently. You may enjoy some of these "people" sketches in my new blog People in Sketch. Its fun to have something creative to do as you wait for things to happen ie Dr. appointments or someone to get out of the dollar store. My Starbucks has an interesting group of people that come by too.  Some of them will be highlighted in future renditions.
Have a great day!
: ) Pat

Personal Organization A Personal Battle

I think that I spent most of 2nd grade and most of 3rd grade not having a pencil to do the work in the classroom. Why? For some reason I could not leave the house with a pencil in my pocket. So what did the little kid do.. he faked it and tried to get through the day without asking for one. Why?  So much fury would occur from impatient people who thought that they could "organize" me through aversive discipline. Do you think anyone ever learns from punishment? Common educational thought at the time and to a certain extent today.. says that if the kid doesn't have the tools to do the job, then humiliation and punishment will make it so that they surely will remember tomorrow to jolly well bring a pencil.  It didn't work then and it doesn't work now. Somehow my "phonics" workbook got "lost" on the way home from school. That method of reading never has worked for me... a concept person rather than a detail person at birth, the details were never easy for me. You really must pay attention to details and planning if you are going to read through the phonics method.. it just didn't work for me. Back in the day, those kids that didn't thrive in school were warehoused in beginner teacher classrooms with kids that were destined to not graduate from high school. This destiny was forecast upon me in 3rd grade and in 4rth grade in ended up in an overall masculine class. 28 boys and 3 girls were attending class at Southwood Elementary School.In that group was a couple of students that decided to play a stunt on the kindergarteners. They found a box of Exlax chocolate laxatives at home. When the kindergarteners were out playing they passed out these little gems as candy. It wasn't long before there was a long line of little kids headed home. Sadly these boys didn't make it though high school.

I must say that I had some parents that went to bat for me. They stormed into the office and demanded that I be moved into a more appropriate classroom. They cited my standardized scores as clearly demonstrating that I didn't belong in the lowest quartile of the 5th grade classrooms. At that time there was a distinct separation of whole classrooms by their performance. They were content to place me in the lowest quartile (the lowest fourth class) based on the recommendation of my third grade teacher. Education in the classroom was basically dead for me there. I made it into a more challenging class and I rose to the challenge and never looked back. The first grading period yeilded me straight C grades. My parents felt that report card would not encourage me to do better. When they analyzed the situation they figured that the grades were really their purview and not mine. The offered me a dollar if I would turn in my report card to them without looking at it.  I received the dollar and I still have no idea what grades I received in Mrs Peterson's 5th grade class.

 In 6th grade I had my first male teacher. He was a retired pilot from the Berlin airlift. He kind of understood my personal organization difficulties.  I was in the district's honor band playing trumpet. Once a week we would get out of class a little early to attend the district wide rehersal. I would head to the bus and about half way there I would remember that I needed to have my trumpet in its case. Mr. Sullivan would alert the class that I had forgotten my instrument once again. They would wait with baited breath as I made my way back to the classroom to get my instrument. You would think that such adverse response would help be remember to get it first... but no..

 My main chore at home was to get the trash out on Sunday night. It needed to be put out on the curb so that the sanitation workers could jump off their trucks and hoist our can into the back as the truck slowly moved on. There were a number of very early awakings that Dad hauled me out of bed in the dark to get that chore done since I had forgotten to do it the night before.  Do you think that this helped with my overall issue... nope.

 So how did I conquer this as an adult. I was always looking for my keys to go to work. I had to make sure that all of my keys were on the same ring.. and that ring was needed to start the car. When they were not needed anymore.. they had to go directly in my pocket. When I was carrying a brief case at work I positioned the brief case so that I had to trip on it as I left. It would awaken me to the need to pick it up on the way out of the door.. otherwise I would leave it. I also developed lessons that I could use at a any given situations that didn't require the materials contained in the brief case.

 I know that there are many people out there with my same issue. They go through life prosecuted and demeaned for this. I made up my mind early in life that I would be a supporter rather than a detractor for this students as they passed through my experience. I always had a supply of pencils and pens that I freely gave out to my students so that they would not be punished for not having the tools that they needed to do school. I helped them work out concept solutions to organization issues that they faced through their lives. 

Away We Go, and The Big Year, Reign Over Me, and My Week with Marilyn

Sorting through the Netflix selections outside of the big hits there comes a couple of movies that I highly recommend.

At first the subject matter of these movies may not send you headlong into their selection. But these movies have some good writing and some effective cinematography.

Away we Go is a movie about a couple about to have a baby. They think that they will have this baby near a set of grandparents that will be a part of the new child's life. As it turns out the grandparents move to Brussels to start a new phase of their lives. Being of current generation where location and work are not mutually inclusive, the couple sets out to look for a location to raise their new child yet to be born. They travel to places where there are relatives and friends from pieces of their lives. They discover that each has a different and not so wonderful take on raising a child. The extra film that is included in the movie says that the entire movie was shot with a few exceptions in Connecticut. Florida is pretty hard to fake in Connecticut so they had to move there for the Florida scenes.  Its a good solid movie. The soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch is appropriate for the film. He is a Scottish folksinger, songwriter. I tracked down the soundtrack in emusic and also picked up another album from my emusic allotment.

The Big Year has many well known stars. The direction is wonderful as it keeps Bob Black and Steve Martin on script. When they are on script and mostly do not improvise into their zany comedy sketches they do the best. I am sure it took a serious lid to keep them under control. The movie is about competitive bird watching. Its a very entertaining movie with a couple of love interests and the complete gamut of North American scenery. The bird enthusiasts take off on a year long quest to obtain "sightings" of as many species of birds as they can. The movie demonstrates the camaraderie among birders and also their competitive nature. Its got some good writing and some interesting prospective on the lives that affected by the people around them that are not birders. 

For an off the wall performance by a well know actor.. try Reign Over Me. Don Cheadle, star of Showtimes house of Lies, plays an upper class dentist that meets his old dentist roommate who lost his family in 9-11 played by Adam Sadler. The Adam Sadler character has given up his practice over PTSD and is moving through New York Streets on a gas powered skateboard. So if you can picture Adam Sadler has a rain man type character caused not by Autism but from PTSD over losing his family in the airplane over 9-11 you start to get the premise of this movie. It is very well written and the other characters in this movie are big names as well but are basically in cameo form. It is a movie that is compelling in the acting of Don Cheadle and Adam Sadler.

If you need to pick up the shards of this year's oscars its hard not to check out My Week with Marilyn. What a portrayal of Marilyn Monre in the era that speaks volumes of British acting tradition and a star that didn't need acting to command the dominance of the camera. This is one that people will be talking about for years.  

Reality Shows

Reality shows.. what a name for a somewhat scripted peek into the lives of a group of people. Somewhat? How can that be? The producers are king in these shows rather  than the writers. A Producer or a team of producers set up scenarios that pit the characters to plot against other contestants or the situation that they find themselves in and all of it is captured, albeit with clever editing to the drama on the screen.

This form of television crawled itself out of  the gutter and on to the screen in 1999  with Big Brother and Survivor.  The Wiki claims its been around since the beginning of TV. The Japanese form presents itself as a frenic game show. The American versions have mutated into cooking shows such as Cupcake Wars, and  unbelievable dramas as  cultures thrown together, as  the red neck millionaires  from the  south vacation  in the Hamptons and the eighteen wheelers move mining supplies over frozen lakes in the Arctic tundra in Ice Truckers.

My favorite in genre: Gold Rush, the story this year of three groups of people trying to make some money from surface mining in the wilds of Alaska. The 18 year old kid who takes over the mining operation from his 90 year old grandfather is contrasted to the small time Dakota team that took over the mine from a the Oregon crew from last year and is trying to top their total, The Oregon crew which was followed exclusively last year is now recast into a new site up on the Klondike, over a thousand miles away.  They all face broken down equipment, personality conflicts and disappointment in the ongoing process. The stunning Alaskan wilderness is a constant background for all of this activity. Some of it is near Haines, Alaska, one of our favorite Alaskan ports we have visited in our summer Alaskan voyages.  Its appeal lies in the scenery, the middle aged to older cast members and various forms of big equipment used to extract a tiny amount of gold from a huge mountain of dirt.  

My current interesting pick since the season of Gold Rush is over,  is the show that highlights the drama involved  airplane repossession. In the last week I was mesmerized by the show that highlighted the repossession of two Airbus jets from France and Istanbul. A European airlines was on the verge of going bankrupt so the banks that held the loans on the jets needed to repossess them before they got mired in the bankrupt procedures and lost their value to the lein holders. What is interesting about this show is that they have to make sure the plane is airworthy before they spirit them off  the ground to the their final destination, the corporate holding hangers in Gary Indiana. In other shows they were after private jets in Florida. There is always a tense moment as these properties need to be spotted and tagged and flown away in front of people that are sworn and paid to protect people’s valuable assets. Its amazing to me that there are people that can spot the difference in small jets models as some people can determine the make and model of Hondas and Nissans.

Sue and I were watching an interesting somewhat of a reality show in the middle of the night last night. It’s a repo game show. They host shows up with a tow truck and gets the owners to answer 3 out of 5 general information questions to save the car from being repossessed. One question that neither of us could answer..name the actors in the Jerry Seinfeld show.  We were stumped just as the contestant was stumped. We were able to name the five states that bordered the Gulf of Mexico… Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The contestant could not come up with the correct answer, although the contestant knew how many stars were on the Texas state flag. 

Urban Logging

All around my walk this morning there was the sound of change in the urban landscape of Merced.

The tree companies were out in force. Several homes were going through pine tree eradication. People plant pine trees in this valley. This time of the year they begin to pollenate and drop tons of ginger colored pollen in the air.

I talked to one of the people that were cutting down the pines. He said that people plant a pine and then baby it to death. The pine is used to seeking its own water source, but people keep watering them as part of their lawn landscape and they out grow rather quickly their space.  I was marveling at the rings that the fallen tree had produced from its cross cut logs. They were well spaced out and looked way too healthy. This tree person said that he preferred that people plant redwoods if they needed a big tree. They do not have branch structures that require training as they grow older.

I asked him if he took out palm trees. He immediately gave me the crossed finger sign... denoting stay away from me.  He said the main issue is that people have to climb them to get them cut down. He said that he had done that for 22 years and that he felt that he had put in his time. I told him that I had a 20 foot Mexican fan palm that needed obliteration. He gave me his card and said that he thought that he could do that. He went on to tell me that there are places in the tropics that they are planting these just for the heart of palm vegetable and that if I were around when he took out mine, he would harvest my "heart" of palm for me. 

After I left I pulled up the card and noticed that it was the father of one of my daughters friends in Jr. High, Vanessa.

In other parts of the walk some of the big trees around the apartment complex looked like they were headed for transition.  A big storm is headed our way this afternoon and tonight.  I do not think that the cedars and the redwoods that they were cutting down were going to be a factor in this storm, nonetheless the logging was taking place on trees that have had too much water over the years and were vulnerable. The city arborist was in close consultation with the tree service owner over that project. After all, we are a national tree city.   : ) Pat

A Minister's Monday

At the coffee shop today I ran into the minister who makes the local Starbucks his office.

I told him that I remembered that Monday was a day that many ministers take as their day off.

He laughed and said that he was not likely to take Monday off since he had preached and interacted with his congregation on Sunday and he used Monday as a day to put into action the information and connections that he had acquired on Sunday. He said that he was more likely to use Friday as his day off in the week.

He showed me that he was working on a sermon in May for Psalm 23. He is using some pretty cool computer software to integrate his references and quotes from literature that would support his theme. I told him that he should have a couple of hard drives for back up since the one sure thing in this world is that storage is always temporary and everyone will lose a hard drive.

He backs up to a cloud as well as his local backups. A lot of sermons need components that go with them as well. The software that fires those other components are setting on his Dell too. 

He has an Ipad 2. I mentioned to him that he should consider downloading the lesson software/ textbook generator that just came out from Apple. He said that he looks forward to the day that he could design and use his Ipad to do all of his work instead of his lap top. He should have to wait that long.

: ) Pat

New Blog!

I have just started a new blog. You may be interested in it.

I have recently become interested in a whole group of new artists that are sketching their way through life as they know it and publishing some of it in blogs.

I had the idea of doing the same with a recipe or two that I was making for dinner.

The first blog entry is something that we had for dinner last night.
Its Kraut Burgers.
Not really using sauerkraut.. but rather cabbage.. and Worcester sauce.

The blog's name is  Illustrated Dinner.

I am doing the illustration of a huge moleskin that I plan to scan into the blog periodically.

The idea came from a recipe that I made from the pistachio biscotti recipe illustration that I did in my regular sized moleskin. 

The first one is always one of those things that you have to kind of zero in to make sure that it will work so... I am sure they will get better with more experience and practice.

I can see that will the illustration of the objects do nicely in brown or red, the lettering has to be in black in order for there to be enough contrast.

It should be fun. When it is not.. I am out of here! LOL!

: ) Pat

Electric Pressure Cooker Update

It looks like I am not the only one to "misplace" the instruction booklet that goes with the electric pressure cooker. In the comments section of the device, there are numerous referrences to the same plight. Someone got one for a gift, and alas no instruction booklet was included. Someone moved and it was gone. Several people bought them on QVC and HSN and when they  got their appliance it was gone. 

After reading many of the same tales of woe with no solutions that followed it, I noticed that 35 entries down someone made reference to "manuals online." With that in mind a quick link to that source had all of the Wolfgang Puck manuals categorized by appliances. I found mine and discovered that it had a pdf (acobat file) reference. In seconds I was back in business. 

As mentioned in the previous pressure cooker blog entry, I cooked both the beef chuck and the chicken at 35 minutes.  The proper chart shows whole chicken at 20 minutes and beef chuckroast at 75minutes.

With this new information, the chicken soup was cooked at 25 minutes and included a whole foster farms chicken, and a little less (about a 1/2 cup less of chicken stock.)  I filled the pot up to the capacity line for liquid. Again it made a chick soup that was memorable.

While the chuck roast was certainly good at 35 minutes, the extra time would break it down more and make more of a traditional fall off the bone roast.  I am anxious to try this out soon. it suggests 2-3 cups of liquid to go along with the roast.

The roast that I made ended up in to three meals for us as it was. First it was roast beef and mashed potatoes. Then it was the the meat in a chef salad with lettuce and cheese and fresh tomatoes. The third meal had thinly sliced roast beef with some sauteed mushrooms and some cheddar cheese in a dinner omelet.  There was still a small handful of meat left over.

The second run with the chicken soup was great. I made it with boxed chicken stock. A couple of chopped celery stalks and a diced up onion and some black pepper was all that was needed for this soup.  I was really careful about not including the small bones from the chicken parts in this chicken soup but still ended up with a coupl in the process. Picking the meat of the bone in "pulled" fashion was pretty easy with this method.

I was telling Dad about the adventure. He had a comment.... you need a pressure cooker when you lose your teeth. I reminded him how much he liked my sister Kelly's corned beef. That got him off the idea that the only reason you need a pressure cooker was that it made food easier to chew.  He went on to say that Kelly could have been a chef for one of those boutique restaurants her cooking is so good.  I reminds him of his mother.  She made a living cooking for many people. She would always put it together. 

: ) Pat

Post Leap Year

Yep, this year is a leap year.

This February 29th seemed to be celebrated more than usual.

Disneyland had an all day all night opening. There were specials for the leap year with local merchants that did not seem to happen in any previous leap year.

The local paper, published the photo of a leap year baby that was born in the local hopital, along with 6 others. Sue mentioned to me that she read an article in the Huff about a lady that has four leap year babies living in... Utah.

There was a teacher of the deaf that was born on a leap year. She would put little gifts in every district mail box on the days of the years that it was not her bithday and would expect that on her real birthday (every four years) that everyone would remember her birthday and shower her with gifts. Her side of it worked beautifully and we all felt sorry that she didn't have a birthday most years, but sadly when it came to celebrating her birthday the plan didn't work out so much.

This is also post Chinese New Year. Its zodiac sign is a Dragon.

Electric Pressure Cooker

What is the most important part of a new appliance?

The directions, of course. So when I bought the new electric pressure cooker.. I got a wonderful price of 35 dollars through EBay.. you would think that I would have held on to the directions. Well no..

So I didn't want to buy another just yet. And I did not want a 35 dollar door stop... yet. So I figured that I could make something simple.  I just had to make sure that I had enough liquid in it that it wouldn't dry up and explode in the kitchen.

I have used pressure cookers in the past that sit over the stove and chirp chirp away for a hour or so and the result was pretty nice corn beef in less than the four hours it takes to make corned beef in a pot over a slow simmer. But.. its been a long time.  With this set up you take the whole pot and you run cold water over it until the steam subsides inside of the pot. Its easy then to separate the handles and out it comes. The key to this set up is to make sure that the seal is functional and that the little weight is appropriate for the the function of the food inside. You do your own timing when the weight moves up and down as it maintains its pressure.

Some of these concepts work with the new pressure cooker and some do not. The seal is still important. The area around the release needs to be clean. The pot does not go under the cold water before the steam is released. In the electric pressure cooker the pressure is allowed to release naturally if there are soupy kind of material in the cooker. If it is just meat that is cooked, a manual release button is provided at the top of the cooker that allows the pressure to release quickly. Caution is the operative word around  hot stuff so being careful is important as steam will burn.

I figured that I would make up some super rich chicken noodle soup. I took the dark meat pieces off a chicken (drums, thighs wings and backbone) and put them in the inner pot. I added a chopped up onion and a couple of smashed garlic cloves and a chopped up stalk of celery.  I added a quart of chicken stock and set the timer for 35 minutes.  When the process was through, I let it set with the cord pulled for about 20 minutes. I pulled the chicken parts out and pulled the meat off the bones. The stock was dropped into a pot of the stove where I added the 8oz of egg yolk free noodles. When they were finished I added the chicken off the bone to the bottom of the dish, put the noodle and stock over it.. and it ended up being a very nice chicken noodle soup. Its a soup that you still have to watch for little bones. A slice of french bread was used to soak up the stock. Sue needed seconds on this.

The next venture was with a 2.6 pound chuck roast. I browned it first with a skillet with a coating of pepper. It went into the pot with an added a chopped onion and 2 cups of beef bullion. It turned out great too at 35 minutes. I think that the next time I do the beef it will need to go to 45 or and hour and Sue really likes it broken down. It was perfectly acceptable as far as a roast beef could be. I sliced it cross gain like a corned beef. 

Even though it looks like someone kicked my red and stainless table top appliance in the side. All functionality seems to be there. Wolfgang Puck and HSN was selling these models for over a 100 dollars. Mine came from Ebay through a scratch and dent re conditioner.

I know that with limited counter space this appliance does not seem a viable option. It is if you don't want to use a crockpot or have to time to wait for a nice weekday dinner to be done from an economy cut of meat.

In the mean time I will continue to look for the instructions and recipe guide.

: ) Pat