Focused at Fifty

Me n' Bartender Mom (early 90s) For a period of time during the early 1990's, my Mom lived down in the Florida Keys with my stepdad Barry. She had divorced my Dad a couple of years prior. It was a difficult time for my family but thankfully, we all survived that period of emotional turmoil. Mom was attempting to find herself and it ultimately became an incredible time for her, a period of regrowth and discovery. As a family, we rebuilt our relationship stronger than ever. The same can be said with our relationship with my Dad as well. It was the first time I truly had an adult relationship with each of my parents, being able to receive advice from them and give it back (solicited or not, LOL). Mom and Barry lived at Barry's place in Tamarac Park, Key West, Florida. Specifically, they lived off of Mile Marker 10, down Boca Chica Road. If you know the Florida Keys, you know that places are often informally referred to as by what mile marker they are located at since ...

Santa was very generous to me this year. :)  (my own pic) With New Years Eve quickly approaching, I thought I would voice my opinion and subsequent endorsement for some of my favorite booze. Santa was very generous to me this year, bestowing upon me 8 plus bottles of various spirits. My friends and family know me so well. 😊 And with a good 20+ years of hotel, bar, and restaurant experience I've learned a thing or two about fine spirits. When I worked at the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia, I took a professional spirits course with my good friend and boss, John Waldbillig. John was the Director of Purchasing and I was the purchaser, his right hand man so-to-speak. The course was held at the Four Seasons Hotel, our competitor, but they were gracious hosts and so professional in their service (as they should be to try and compete with the Ritz-Carlton!) LOL Sterling Spirits held the day long course on the ins and outs of various typ...

Vintage pic found on Google I've made Mom's holiday recipe for a champagne sherbet punch just once before. Mom would make it each December for her annual holiday open house through the late 70s and 80s. She just loved decorating the house for the holidays. As my household was a dual religious home, she would decorate for Christmas for Dad and Hanukkah for herself and us kids. My family always celebrated both holidays. It was natural in my home! We'd have garland and white and blue lights, a small Christmas tree and our Menorah, stockings hung on the banister and dreidels spinning on the coffee table, candy canes and Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins), sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies and potato latkes. Mom would mix our home-made holiday ornaments with her collection of delicate Scandinavian wooden ornaments. It was a season of celebration and she just reveled in it. By the way, my friends would always ask if we got gifts on both Hanukkah and Christmas and YE...

Hikers Marc and John! (No, I'm not giving you the finger.) John and I spent Thanksgiving again up at World's End State Park as we have done so for the last several years since my Mom passed away. It has become a nice break before the craziness of the holidays ensures. One day I do plan on joining my sister out in San Diego at my brother's for Thanksgiving but for now, this has become a nice tradition. So the holiday was spent hiking, cabin camping, feasting on smoked turkey, toasting marshmallows, drinking some fine ass bourbon and smoking Cohibas cigars. I love getting back to nature and believe it or not, having no cell service. Well, at least for a while. LOL Sporks aplenty!  Kelty sleeping bag Awesome coffee pot It's pretty funny walking into one of the local bars up there with WiFi and having your phone start pinging madly a dozen times with notifications from any half a dozen social media websites I am a part of. My fav mug ID holder ...

With my last blog post, I have surpassed 100,000 individual "hits" on Frazzled at Forty. I am truly humbled by this. I still consider myself a very small fish, maybe even a minnow in a very very large sea. I am astonished and amazed that I have hit this milestone. I wanted to take a moment to thank my readers who have been with and supported me since the beginning of my blog back in April 2010. I am still going strong 315 published blog posts later with several dozen drafts waiting to be polished and put up. This blog is my love, my burden, my unpaid job, and sometimes my frustration. I do consider it like my child. I started this blog 6 1/2 years ago. My mother, during her last week of her life, stated she wanted me to do something with my writing. I had wrote since I was a young boy but had considered it nothing more than a past-time hobby which I would do every now and then. I vowed for Mom on her last week here to write regularly ...

The other day while driving to work, I was listening to a great interview on NPR and thought that parts of it were meaningful enough to pass on. A woman comedian was being interviewed and was talking about how to get through various awkward situations and I felt that others could completely relate to it. One of those was situations was when someone asks a single person "Why are you still single?"   Maybe people do not realize it but this is a pretty rude question. It's no one's business. It seems though that during family or holiday events, a glass of sangria, spiked holiday punch or eggnog will chuck all decorum out the window.  Do you stop to think how small that makes a person feel as if being single is bad and wrong? Don't you think they'd like to meet someone??? So for my single friends, when someone asks you that, there are some retorts you can toss their way. Question:   Why are you still single? Answers:   Why are you still m...

My friends, we are all still here. The world has not imploded. My candidate did not win. The other guy did. I am disappointed and angry. Not my first, second, or tenth choice. Our system worked and the candidate who won the electoral college is now our President-elect. (((shudder))) Life goes on for now. We will continue working, continue paying taxes, and maybe drink more in this time of uncertainty. If you feel the electoral college needs to be overhauled or abolished, then work towards that. There is nothing that can be done now about that at this particular time except starting or joining a movement to abolish it. For many this is a bitter pill to swallow. For others, your voices were heard. Let's hope he lives up to the hype that his supporters perpetuated. We need to come together and start to heal the wounds of this divisive election. Many of you say that is impossible. I hear you but disagree. I think we need to to remember that the US is a special country, a count...

Mom's Beef Stew I remember Mom making this recipe only a couple of times. My sister Sheryl remarked that Mom only cooked the beef stew when she could afford to buy the beef cubes. Unfortunately, we did not have a lot of money back then so this was a special treat when she did make it. It reminds me that I'm very lucky for what I now have. Mom served it over rice or with a side of buttered egg noodles. I looked online for hints and suggestions on a simple beef stew recipe and there are so many variations it will make your head spin. There are variations on cooking time, specific steps, seasonings, vegetables etc. It is a bit overwhelming. I added a little more direction here and there but this is 95% Mom's own recipe. You can add thyme or a couple bay leaves for more flavor. If you add the bay leaves, make sure you take them out before serving. Some people also add chopped up celery when adding the onions, potatoes, and carrots. Others sauté garlic when browning th...

With Halloween a week away, this is an easy recipe you can make for that Halloween party you've been "dying" to have. GET IT??? LOL Sorry, couldn't resist a bad joke. Or you could make it for a holiday party or hostess gift. Anyway, I wanted to make this over the summer but obviously the heat and humidity would've melted that idea. HAHAHA! (Forgive my other bad joke.) Mom made this during the holidays and my sister also makes this recipe with great success for her annual Halloween party. The nice thing about it is that it's easy enough to add marshmallows or nuts without messing up the recipe. Almost fool proof. So this fool ...  ***ME*** ... decided to whip up a batch of fudge and see how it turned out. Mixed fudge ready to chill! It came out great. It was pretty sweet. I did have some difficulty getting it out of the pan. I had to bang on the bottom of the pan with a meat tenderizer until the fudge popped out. Scratch one dented 8 inch pan....

 DANGER! RATTLESNAKES! ***This blog post is dedicated to that close childhood friend going through her own tough times, I hope this helps. "Don’t let them rattle you. Don't let them see you sweat."   These are two sayings that we have all come to know but how to go about putting them into action? It's easier said than done. But with some hints and prior preparation, one can don that Teflon vest in face of adversity and get through those difficult situations and meetings.   A close friend of mine is going through a divorce. It hasn't gone smoothly for her. Imagine that. :(  I feel for her and sense her stress and anxiety each time a conference comes up with her ex. It's a shame but these conferences have to happen. I wanted to help her so I thought about the tense stressful conferences that I manage on a daily basis with my job. What advice could I impart to her?   My advice was to tell her don't let him rattle you. I gu...

Last night I ended up at the hosey for a couple beers. For those of you who don't know, the "hosey" is a regionally colloquial term for the fire house social club. I don't know how it originated, possibly from the word 'fire hose'. I hear it across the Mid-Atlantic states. I usually have to explain it to anyone outside of Jersey or PA. Chicken of the Sea Sardines My hosey is the Summit Station Fire Company where I actually bartended for a couple years. When I go there, I see friends, play the games of chance, chill out with the awesome bartenders Snoopy and Janet, and knock back a couple of cheap brews. One of the gambling games you can play  are the punch boards where you get 10 punches for $1.00. You can win prizes such as a large bag of chips, a box of Tasty Cakes, a mini-hunting knife, a jar of tomato sauce, a bottle of laundry detergent and other pretty crazy odd stuff which you may or may not use everyday.   ...

This past month marked the 15th anniversary of 9/11, that day of horror where America was forever changed by terrorism with the multiple attacks on our country. I have close friends who were there that crisp September morning. I have friends of friends who lost someone when the Twin Towers fell. Most of us remember where we were that fateful day. 9/11 has become another day in which you ask your friends, "Where were you?" It is reminiscent of the day the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded, the day President Reagan was shot, or for our folks, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. These are days of infamy forever etched in our mind, meant to separate and weaken but they have only succeeded in making us stronger and closer. Twin Towers  at night, July 2001 (source: Wikipedia ) I have a couple of books on 9/11 and spent the day going through them and watching the historical coverage on TV. The story I want to recount was a special memory I have of the ...

Mom's Tomato Cucumber Salad Are you ever at a loss for what to make with that grilled steak or chicken? Here are a couple of go-to recipes that I love making in a pinch. Easy, a lot of flavor, and minimal effort. How great is that?   Weekly dinners should always be like this! The first is a basic recipe my Mom has been making as long as I know. It is the traditional summer tomato cucumber salad. Fresh, cold, zesty, and filling. This recipes combines two of my favorite summer veggies. I usually make a large batch for two or three nights. You can add onion if you want a bit more zestiness to it. But be warned, with the Italian dressing and onions, you may want to make it on the nights you don't have a date planned. :-)   The second recipe, crisp rosemary potatoes, is my go-to recipe if I am making rosemary chicken or just grilling chicken breast. It is a great side dish!  I prefer to leave the potatoes in to bake for more time as I like them pretty crispy. Mar...

Mom at 6 yrs (1948) On August 24th, it was my dear Mother's birthday. She would've been 74. Hope she had a great birthday up there doing shots of her favorite Hot Damn liquor. Maybe she sat on the edge of a cloud in Heaven. spying on her kids while sipping Baileys, she loved that too. I can picture her enjoying herself, listening to some salsa, watching people walk by (if they have such a thing up in heaven). She was a people watcher.  More recently before she passed in 2009, Mom just loved to sit on my sister Sheryl's front porch in Philly and watch the world walk by. Mom said it reminded her of growing up in Newark, sitting in the front of her building as a child.  By now, my readers know that I often tell of memories of her as a sort of a record for my brother and sister and my niece and nephew, Angelica and Johnny as well. One day, I hope it will help them get to know their Nana better.  Mom grew up in Newark, NJ, in an apartment building on Goldsmith Ave...