Dust in the Wind

Many of you may have noticed that I haven't been blogging lately and that is because I've been traveling over the past ten days or so. I don't feel too bad, though, because I was able to see many of my most gentle and devoted readers during my travels. The journey began almost two weeks ago when McKenna and I drove down to Maryland where I dropped her off at her Aunt Leah's house to stay while I got up before the crack of dawn the next morning for a flight from BWI to Kansas City.

Father of Ken greeted me at KCI and we drove to the apartment of Brother of Ken in the giant metropolis of Baldwin City, Kansas to gather the remains of his latest move and take them home to Parsons. In the process of gathering these things, we had to go to his storage building, which is apparently a secret Soviet killer spider breeding ground. We finally arrived home in Parsons and I officially began my visit with my family.

Friday evening, I had dinner with with Mother, Father, Brother, Uncle, and Grandmother of Ken and Saturday I spent with Best Friend of Ken, who graciously came from Lawrence to see me. I made her go with me to see Mamma Mia (my second time, her first) and she made me see the new Batman movie--both were awesome.

Sunday I got to see St. Timothy's in person for the first time and was very impressed, of course. Then, Mother of Ken and I made a beeline for the Tulsa area to go shopping. It's funny that even though I live in New York, I get my best shopping done in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. I didn't take as many pictures of our shopping as I had planned to, but there are a few. Mother of Ken and I have a shopping strategy that has been well honed over the past 27 years--we can sniff out a 75% off rack like you would not believe. We even keep records of who has gotten the best deal--currently, I hold first place with 97% off. So, if you see us shopping, you should stay out of our way ;-)

Here are a few of the places that we went, starting with Kohl's:



Part of our strategy to shop efficiently is to gather everything that we think we might want to try on before we hit the fitting room--here's our cart as Mother of Ken attempts to pull it toward the fitting room.



The fitting rooms:

We frequently make fun of ugly clothes we find--these are a particularly awful pair of satin formal cargo shorts:

About halfway through the shopping trip, here's what the trunk looked like:

Then we moved on to other places, such as TJ Maxx and Dillard's:

As we headed home, here's what the trunk looked like:

I spent the next day at Mother and Father of Ken's house relaxing and playing with the dogs. These are Mother and Father of Ken's two Boxers, Boomer (the fawn Boxer) and Piper (the brindle Boxer)--they are McKenna's uncle and aunt.

Boomer impersonating a frog:

Boomer on the couch--they are allowed to be up on the couch as long as at least one paw is still on the floor.

Piper, waking up from her post-dinner nap long enough for me to take a picture:

Pipey again:

The next day, I went to visit Grambi and Papaw (you'll remember them from this entry). We had a lovely, if too short, visit before I had to get back to Parsons, meet Father of Ken, pack my things in the truck, and head north to have dinner with Mother and Brother of Ken. On the way, I took some photos of the towns between where Grambi and Papaw live (Baxter Springs) and the town that I am from (Parsons). Don't worry--I took these when I was going very slowly or stopped.

Gentle readers, I give you Melrose, Kansas:

This is pretty much all there is to see of Melrose.

The next town is Chetopa, Kansas--here's the river outside of town:

The town of Chetopa itself--you have to be very careful while driving through Chetopa because the cops have little to do but look for unsuspecting "foreigners" who might dare to drive one or two miles per hour over the speed limit. Once I was driving through on my way home after my first visit to Dallas before I lived there and I got pulled over for going 50 mph in a 45 mph zone right before you get to the 65 mph sign. I was driving Mother of Ken's car and Mother of Ken did not have the most current insurance card in the glove compartment, but the cop let me go because one of Mother of Ken's priest books fell out with the insurance card.

I also had to drive through Oswego, but forgot to take pictures there. Anyway, on my way back into Parsons, I was stopped because of road construction and took this picture of tonight's dinner:

"Mmmmmm....cow," as McKenna's Aunt Leah would say.

Next up: highlights of my weekend in Maryland.

Change of Heart, Part III

For part three of the story of the transformation of this house, I present the kitchen and the laundry room.

First, the kitchen. This photo is a view into the kitchen from the living room before I moved in. It not only shows you the dining area in the kitchen (on the left), but it also gives you a taste of just how craptastic the decor really was--you'll see this photo again soon.

Here's what it looks like when you walk into my kitchen now:

And the dining area:

A view of the south side of the kitchen before--note the baskets hanging from the ceiling. Last summer, I took my hammer and crowbar to the nails that were in the beams. I removed 35-50 nails and didn't even get them all.

Here's what things look like now:

The north wall of the kitchen before I moved in (those shadows come from all of the hanging baskets):

Today:

And now onto the laundry room.

The south wall of the laundry room:

A detail of my new organizational tools--one bag holder for small bags and one for large ones as well as a special rack for mops and brooms. I love this kind of thing.

On the other side of the south wall, I have my utility area with my toolboxes and my extension cord hung on the new hook that I got just so that Father of Ken would stop complaining every time he comes here about how tangled it gets.

Pretty curtain hung on the new window:

The shelves on the north wall, newly organized:

My pretty new washing machine that I had to buy when the transmission died in my old one from c. 1980. I just couldn't have this lovely machine in a dingy, disgusting laundry room, so I knew I had to paint it.

I found some old hooks that I think I took out of a closet in one of my Hood College dorm rooms and screwed them to the wall to hang my aprons and my wood gathering coat.

And there you have it--another taste of the amazing transformation that has happened here over the past three years. There's more to come, though, so keep coming back!

Maria

After all of my hard work this week, I decided to treat myself to paella. This is adapted from the recipe that came from the lady I lived with in Seville, Spain several years ago, Gloria. Gloria was a great cook and since I love food, we made a deal the day I moved into her house that I would try everything once and be honest with her if I didn't like it. If I didn't like something, she wouldn't make it again. That only happened with calamari (which I happened to walk in on her cleaning--ew) and some weird North African pumpkin dish. I still tried both, though. One of my favorites was her paella and she gave me the recipe the night before I left.

I started with a heavy skillet and coated the bottom in olive oil.


While that was heating on medium-medium high heat, I prepared the vegetables and meats.

Here, I have a red pepper, a lemon, two cloves of minced garlic, about 1 cup of chopped yellow onion, and a chopped tomato.

The meat component includes 1/4 lb. of cubed chorizo, one cubed chicken breast, and one cubed pork chop.

First, I added the chorizo to the pan to start rendering some of its fat.

Then the chicken and pork go in, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper and cooked until they are slightly browned.

I removed the meats from the oil with a slotted spoon and set them aside in a bowl.

Next, I added the onion and garlic to the remaining oil.

Once the onion and garlic were softened, I added the tomato and cooked for another minute or two before removing that mixture to a bowl.

I added 1 1/2 c. medium grain rice to the remaining oil and toasted it for about 30 seconds before adding 3 c. water.

The saffron goes in next--I usually use about 1/2 tsp. saffron, but all I could get today was American saffron, so I added about a tablespoon. I'll have to stock up on saffron when I'm in Spain next month.

I put the meats back in:

Then the tomato mixture:

Then I added frozen peas--1/2-1 cup:

I stirred everything together, added the juice of half of a lemon and a little more salt, then decorated the top with sliced red pepper and thinly sliced lemon.

The lid goes on, I leave the rice alone, and let it cook--here's what it looks like while it is cooking:

The paella is done when the rice is cooked. Then I turn the heat off and let the paella sit for 10 to 15 minutes before serving. Don't forget to get the browned rice at the bottom of the pan--they look more black than brown in the photo, but they are delicious. I used to fight with Gloria's son (my Spanish "brother") Paco Pepe for the rice at the bottom of the pan.

I serve this with Catalan bread, which I drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper and then toast:

When it comes out of the oven, I rub the warm bread with a clove of garlic.

And then I rub each piece with tomato, which gives it an orange tint that you can't really see here. It is delicious:

Here's my final Spanish dinner--paella with Catalan bread and peaches for dessert. We always ate fruit for dessert, but I wasn't allowed to eat certain fruits after 5:00 p.m. Gloria said that fruits like oranges would upset my digestive system and keep me up at night, so she gave me peaches, pears, and apples in the evening.

Yum. There were many days that we would have paella for lunch and then I would spend the afternoon sitting by the Guadalquivir River near our apartment reading a book or studying. There was a cafe on the river bank that used to play Blondie's "Maria" over and over again. Every time I hear that song, I think of Spain.