The Legacy

On Christmas Eve, after the children had opened their gifts, it was time for the adults to throw dice and choose one of the fine, tasteful gifts piled in the center of the room--good stuff such as a capsule of emergency underwear, fake vomit, a pink plastic tiara, the ever-popular fake dog poop, and the worst Mexican movie ever made.  One of my elegant contributions to the pile was technology's most amazing creation: a self-inflating whoopee cushion.

When the gift was opened, and oddly enough I managed to get it, and tried out, every kid in the house suddenly appeared as if convoked by magic.  There is nothing like flatulence to cause grandkids to gather round.

They took the cushion off, and throughout the house the same event was lived over and over again: a total silence, then a magnificent emision by the whoopee cushion, and a huge explosion of delighted childhood laughter.  Apparently they tried out the cushion in every room and on every surface, vying for the best effects.

Karina and I, who were more or less incapacitated by laughter as well, became quite philosophical.

"Your legacy," said Karina, wiping tears of laughter from her face.

"Yeah," I said, "a couple of whoopee cushions and some fake shit!"

The thing is, it is quite true.  If a parents' job is to transmit to their children the ruling values of the culture, then ours as grandparents is to make sure the civilization process doesn't go too far.  Our main concern should be the preservation of silliness in all its life-saving glory.  My office has been populated by patients who may have had all kinds of fairly unique problems, but a lack of silliness has been a common trait shared by most.

Silliness can sometimes get you through very tough times, so here's to my legacy: children exploding with laughter, a pool of fake vomit on the kitchen floor, and the song of the whoopee cushion.

I couldn't have asked for more.  Life is complete.

Still launching..

As you can see by how little I've posted since last week, there has not been a spare moment around here, what with family in residence, parties, and cooking.  The big tamal supper has been eliminated and we are eating Italian, but that is not happening until tomorrow when I may have more time. 

My trainer and I are considering starting a group for fibromyalgia patients.  I really like the idea, although I am not overly confident that we will get any takers--people with fibro tend to have much more pain that I do, and in spite of that, they need to exercise.  But when it is that uphill, well, it is easier to go in for yoga.  That doesn't do much for your cardiopulmonary conditioning.

I am pleased to announce that Gitano's trot has improved and is no longer the unmitigated torture it was when he first came to me.  He has figured out we are not going to ask him to do that idiotic dancing he was taught to do by some nincompoop who thought he was doing something akin to the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, so now Gitano has lightened up and is beginning to get some verticle, springy movement.  He seems to be doing well adjusting to being with us, and as with most friendly horses, he is a goodie glutton.  That means carrots or apples. 

Out to run tomorrow; I suspect I have a foot injury, but with fibro you can never tell.  Tomorrow may clear up my doubt.  Man, aint old age a bitch??

Mission control

My kitchen this morning was like the launch of a space vehicle.  Since our U.S. family arrives on Wednesday, I decided to bake up a batch of cookies for neighbors, vets, consuegras, and other people I like to remember at Christmas with something homemade.

I had decided on chocolate chip cookes, loaded with--of course!--butter.  By the time I had mixed up my multiple batches, I could smell the motor of my industrial-strength mixer as it began to struggle.  I fired up my gas oven and my electric counter-top convection oven, got out every baking sheet and wire rack I own, and spent an hour leaping from counter to ovens to racks at a pace that left me no time even to go to the bathroom.  As the cookies began to come out of the ovens, I thought there wouldn't be enough and that I was going to have to bake biscotti to complete the gifts, but once I started filling the containers, there were just enough cookies to give everyone a really fine dose of butter.

This afternoon, it's Yucatan tamales with mole poblano filling, but those I'll freeze until time to serve them on Christmas Eve.  My mouth is watering as I write this!

Not to get behind, I am also trying to get out the last cooking class assignment for my course--thin-crust pizza with tomato sauce, baked on a baking stone so damned hot it may heat the whole house until tomorrow night and beyond.  This I will have to take a picture of, so I'll post it later.  I am going to serve it with a salad.  Right now I'm also making a carrot soup with one of Julia Child's tricks--cooked rice in the soup that makes it so creamy you only need to add a mere dribble of the real thing at the last minute.  (This is from her book, "The Way to Cook", her last.)

On the running front, I am going to slow to a swift march to see if that helps my fibromyalgic back pain--it's right between the shoulder blades and can even wake me up if I have to turn over! If the jolting of running isn't affecting it, it will be back to the faster pace after a week's pain trial.

Racing against the butter...

Maybe it's all the rest I get between runs, or the acupunture, but I have been feeling much better lately.  It could also be the melatonin capsules that I take at night, who knows?  But that means my exercise is still alive and I have a fighting chance of offsetting the amount of butter my recipes call for.

After yesterday's excess (it wasn't just good mac and cheese, it was epoch-making), today we are having something sensible (chicken tostadas), but since my daughter and her girls are coming to lunch, I broke down and made apricot pecan bars--redolent from the oven of--natch--loads of butter.  I even got vanilla ice cream for the girls to eat with the bars.  The only way for us to survive here when I make desserts is to have guests for lunch and send them home with any leftover goodies.  I'm with ya, Julia, on the food police!

Butter

As I stood at the stove grating nutmeg into the roux for my gourmet mac and cheese, it occurred to me that I had some leftover butternut squash ravioli filling thawed out in the fridge, and wouldn't that be good mixed in with the roux and the pasta?

After I mixed the pasta and the milk sauce with butternut squash, and after piling on three kinds of cheese, it thought maybe I'd better omit the breadcrumb topping this time.  But no, those buttery bread crumbs bake up to a toasty, savory crunch, so I put my French bread in the food processor and processed away.

Then as I was about to melt the butter to add to the crumbs, I remembered that I also had some brown butter hazelnut sage sauce left over from the ravioli, so why not use that to butter the crumbs?  After all, everything I had in the pasta melded with the nutmeg-parmesan-pasta-cheese theme.  So that's what I did.

I'll let you  know later how this turns out, but in the meantime, the calorie count is obscene.  Julia Child would be proud of me though--there is enough butter in this dish to satisfy even someone who said you just couldn't have too much butter.  I think maybe you can.  I think maybe I have.

Cold and RAINY!

It doesn't matter if it's cold--I can climb on the treadmill--but what really matters is the rain.  Our part of the country was declared a disaster area because of the drought, and though this may not last long, at least my back yard won't be a disaster area too. 

Time to break out the Sopranos and hop onto the machine.

Red Bull

This has been "Let's Destroy Our Knees" week on the running path.  Suddenly--perhaps because I go out later now--there has been an abundance of older, overweight people with knee braces on both knees, or those bands worn under the knee to keep the knee cap from moving down too much.  If there is anything a running book will tell you, it's never, never ignore the slightest amount of knee pain.  Today on the running trail, ailing knees could be seen all over the place, and the only overweight gentleman who was being cautious was a younger man who was doing that kind of not-really-a-trot movement.  Good for him, and more power to him.

Some products should not be sold to people over 30 years of age.  One of them is Red Bull, the so-called energy drink.  I've been told that young people at nightclubs drink it between rounds of booze in order to keep going all night.  My son Rodrigo suggested it might help my morning fatigue so that I could get back out in the park, so I tried it today.

First of all, you should not have it on an empty stomach, but if you are going out to run, the most you've got in your system is coffee and a banana.  I began sipping the stuff as I cleaned up the kitchen and made the beds, and I noticed I was really going at it with a vengeance, hopping from task to task like a frisky teenager.  Not that a teenager would clean anything up in a frisky manner, but you know what I mean.

By the time I got to the park it was almost ten o'clock, and my stomach had been empty since six-thirty except for my coffee, the aforementioned banana, and a big can of Red Bull.  The company may deny it, but I think the drink contains amphetamines.  After a one-K warm-up, I began trotting; I had the odd impression that my head had gently separated from my body and was floating a few inches above my  neck.  The kilometer I trotted seemed to last about two or three minutes, as if it were foreshortened.  The kilometer I then walked didn't seem to last more than 30 seconds.  At that point, however, I was hit by hunger pangs that made me feel faint.  Visions appeared of a large bowl of hot oatmeal with a big pat of butter melting in the center, sprinkled with brown sugar and studded with raspberries.  Or an egg with my homemade hot sauce and refried beans.  The last kilometer was torture.  By then my head seemed to be floating several yards ahead of my body, which tried desperately to catch up with it.  God knows how I made it home and managed to cook myself the oatmeal. 
 
Be warned: energy drinks are for the young.  If you are around my age, stick to water or Gatorade.