Focused at Fifty

I love wildlife more than your average person. I will not trim a bush if I know there is a rabbit's nest in it.  I refused to trim my holly tree because a robin was sitting in it on two eggs this season. I also conveniently forgot to tell John that one of the bottom steps of the deck was "wobbly" because I feared we would disturb the salamander family living underneath. That's the type of guy I am. I feel these animals have just as every right to live on G-d's earth as I do. (Not that I want them in my home, now that's a different story which I'll get to in a bit ... Don't judge me people!) I was working at my office one afternoon when I saw that John had called me not once but three or four times. OK, somethin's up, I thought. So I buzzed him back. He notified me that the tractor almost went belly up in a gopher hole. Not a little chipmunk hole, we are talking about a gopher that seemed to come up from China (actually just north from Charlotte...

Can a Jewish mother have a good recipe for Italian meatballs? Yes she can and I set out to make my mother proud. I have never made meatballs but I figured I'd give these a try.  I remember both my Nana and my mom making them but I don't remember how they came out. My sister Sheryl filled in my memory gaps for this blog. Sheryl stated with a chuckle that Mom's often came out dry. Perhaps she had a habit of over cooking them? Or the oven's temperature wasn't calibrated? Nana's, on the other hand, were always moist. Lumpy but MOIST! Well, I am happy to say that I followed in Nana's footsteps with regards to this recipe as my meatballs came out moist. The only discrepany would be that after cooking, they should have correctly been called meat lumps. As I browned them in the skillet pan, they tended to flatten out on each side. Before you know it, my balls became lumpy, almost squares. I really think the milk helped to keep them moist. I watc...

There was recently another bullying story in the news. No, actually there were two which made the national headlines. I was so angry and disgusted that extreme bullying still occurs. I know as children, we go through a certain amount of bullying as we grow up. It is, unfortunately an expected part of growing up ... especially if you are a geek, dork, nerd, gay, lesbian, or another minority. Hopefully it doesn't effect the individual in later life but in too many situations, we have seen that this is not the case. I was bullied. Let's face it, I was a meek, a smaller kid, bookworm, geek, effeminate, nonsports-oriented. Did that make it OK for me to be bullied, NO! But, I was a prime candidate for bullying. Luckily, I survived high school unscathed for the most part. You learn how to stay under the radar and not attract unwanted attention to yourself. I wasn't bullied too often and had enough bigger kids looking out for me. My high school girl-friends Marguerite an...

"Hi Charlotte!" I yelled across the yard. "Hi Marc, the hummingbirds are still around!" my pint-sized 70-something neighbor exclaimed. "I know, they are fattening up before they leave." "Yes, pretty soon they be leaving south on their long trip for the winter." "I read that they go to Mexico.  Do you wanna go with them?" I asked half-laughing. "I can't go to Mexico, I don't like Mexican food." she said matter- of-factly. "Um, OK, how about they go to Mexico and you and I go to the Bahamas?" I replied. "I'm there!" she yelled across the yard. ********************************************************* John and I had just pulled up to the house and began to unload groceries from the car when we heard a familiar voice across the yard. "John and Marc, get inside! There are major storms coming!!!" screamed Charlotte across the yard while frantically looking for Abby the cat. ...

Tomato sauce splatters included.  Sunday, August 24th, would have been my Mom's 72nd birthday.  The birthday of a loved one is always a tough day to get through. I went through her recipes and chose two to consider making in her honor:  homemade meatballs or chicken parmigiana. I left it up to John and he chose the chicken. It is a good recipe, easy to do for a "school night."  In addition, it's also one that I have not made before. Mom used to make this for us when we would visit her and my stepdad Barry at their home in Lake Wynonah. The breaded chicken, topped with a rich tomato sauce and tons of mozzarella cheese just filled you up. She paired it with a simple garden salad and garlic bread.  There was seldom room for dessert. I copied the recipe down below as she wrote it. I did make a couple changes. The first being that I wasn't sure if she used a "pound of chicken breasts" or she wanted me to POUND the chicken breasts. Since the meal was ...

I was going to write about something else tonight but thought about an encounter with my neighbor Charlotte a couple month's back and decided to write about that instead.  Since I haven't written about her in a while I decided it was time for a Charlotte story. I love my neighbor Charlotte, she is a free wheeling tough as nails pint sized 70 something divorcee. Picture Source That evening, John and I were going to grill some homemade Italian sausage from Russo's Market in Wyomissing, PA. If you haven't tried it, it is so good that let's just say it saves us Philly transplants when we need our Italian! It is just as good as anything from the Italian Market, but without the local smells and colorful street urchins. ;) Anyway, I was hollering into the house from the deck for John to bring out the veggies to grill them up. "John!!! Bring out the peppers and onions! I need to get them on the grill!" OK, I was kind of like screaming. It had been a lo...

First, some interesting history about meatloaf from the website Wikipedia: "American meatloaf has its origins in scrapple, a mixture of ground pork and cornmeal served by German-Americans in Pennsylvania since Colonial Times.  However, meatloaf in the contemporary American sense did not appear in cookbooks until the late 19th century."     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatloaf "In 2007, meatloaf was voted the seventh-favorite dish in the United States according to Good Housekeeping.   During the Great Depression cooking meatloaf was a way to stretch the food budget for families, using an inexpensive type of meat and other ingredients as leftovers; along with spices, it was popular to add cereal grains to the meatloaf to stretch the meat. The tradition lives on with the merits of producing a lower-fat dish with superior binding and consistency.The meatloaf is typically eaten with some kind of sauce or relish."   http://en.w...