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Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

April 28, 2019

Today is sunny and beautiful. It is only 50˚ but having sun makes me a bit forgiving. Rain is predicted for later. I have trouble believing that. The sun is just too pretty, and there are only wispy, white clouds.

I don’t know why I expect really warm days as Cape Cod is seldom warm in the spring. Actually, calling this time of year spring is misleading. When north of us is 60˚, we are in mid 50’s. Some time in May it will start to get warm. In mid June we’ll jump to summer.

I shared a banana with Henry this morning. He likes fruit. So far he has eaten banana, first time today, apples, oranges, watermelon, blueberries, pineapple and mango. I don’t know if he has a favorite. I’m partial to oranges, pineapples and bananas.

Having a banana this morning reminded me of Ghana. Every day I had fruit for lunch, a fruit bowl of oranges, pineapple, mangoes, pawpaw and bananas. When I traveled, I always bought oranges or bananas because of their peel. They didn’t need to be washed. Mangoes were messy, juice down my arm messy. Pawpaws were big.

When I was a kid, we had grapes, oranges, apples and watermelon around all summer. We also had Bing cherries. I love spitting their pits. We had contests to see who could spit the pits the furthest. I never won.

Okay, the sun is gone and the sky is cloudy. I think I saw a few drops of rain on the deck. Sadly, the weatherman is correct.

Today is dump day, and tonight is game night. I’m in charge of tonight’s appetizers. I’ll go to the market and hope to find ready to eat or easy to make appetizers. In case I don’t, I have a couple in mind and a list of the ingredients I’ll need, but I am not really up for cooking. I did plenty on Friday.

Time to finish up and load the car with trash bags. Please, rain, hold off until I’m done.

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“I dress and eat like a fifth-grader, basically. I like sandwiches and cereal and hooded sweatshirts.”

September 18, 2018

Logy is the first word of the day. A heavy wind blows, but the humidity is still oppressive. I’m sweating and Henry is panting. Neither one of us wants to move. Inert is the second word of the day. The air is so thick and muggy my granite countertop is damp to the touch. Rain is coming.

Yesterday I finished my errands then came home, got comfy and read all afternoon. I had one book left and finished it, an Obama-Biden mystery. I bought it out of curiosity. Biden is the narrator. It is his friend who has died under mysterious circumstances. The two of them, Obama and Biden, are sort of a Holmes-Watson duo. Biden is Watson.

I know every sound my house makes. The ice dropping into the bin, the creak of the floors, the rattle of the doors and the tapping of Henry’s claws on the wood floors are easy to identify. Usually I am in bed when I hear a sound I don’t recognize. I pause and listen. Most times I don’t hear the sound again so I go back to sleep. Gracie used to sleep through noises. Henry doesn’t. He barks and howls but stays on the bed so I don’t investigate. Last night I heard a crash then nothing. Henry didn’t move so I went back to sleep. This morning I found a picture had fallen. The sound was it hitting the floor. Why it fell is a mystery.

I’ve been into cereal lately. I just finished a box of Raisin Brand Crunch. Most times I added Maine’s wild blueberries. They are surprisingly good with cereal. I usually add bananas, but I think blueberries are now my favorite. When I went hunting those sweet blueberries, there were none at the store yesterday. I was bummed, but I bought cereal anyway and a couple of bananas. I think I might try blackberries next.

I can hear the leaves blowing in the wind. My room is really dark. The only light comes from the computer keyboard. I like dark days with lots of wind and rain. That’s just what I need to pull me from this funk. Come on rain!!

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“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

October 13, 2017

The house was cold when I woke up. I stayed under the afghan not wanting to leave the warmth. Gracie was sleeping at the end of the couch, and she didn’t want to get up either.   Finally the need for coffee got me up, and I got Gracie up. We went outside and got the papers and Gracie went into the backyard. I waited while she finished then followed her back into the house. She got treats, and I got my coffee.

One of the cartoons in the paper mentioned today is Friday the 13th. I had no idea. Unless I have an appointment I lose track of the date, and it is only when I tear off yesterday that I see where I have to go today.

The day is lovely, a sunny day with a blue sky and a bit of a breeze. It is in the 60’s, average for this time of year, but it feels colder after the warm days.

The buses are here. I saw one at Chatham light. The passengers, all older people, were wandering on the beach and near the light. I saw another bus pulling into a seafood restaurant, the sort which has buoys, nets and plastic lobsters on the outside walls. I don’t need to see the menu to know it is mostly seafood but, it always includes hamburgers and for a bit more money, cheeseburgers. Both come with fries.

I’m not a big fan of cakes with one exception, Boston cream pie which doesn’t sound like a cake but don’t be deceived. I do like cupcakes as they are just the right amount of cake. I used to love Hostess chocolate cupcakes, and my local bakery has cupcakes like them including the white loopy line across the top of the chocolate icing. I buy one every now and then. Ice cream never belongs on or beside a cake.

My favorite fruit is a banana. It is easy to eat, can be eaten alone, or in cereal or with ice cream in a banana split. In Africa the peel made them safe to eat without washing them first. They were perfect food to buy when traveling as they were sold along the road and at every stop. I order them every time I do Peapod grocery shopping.

Eggs are great for any meal. Many times I make bacon and eggs for dinner. I like the yoke soft so I can slop it up with the toast. My egg salad must have celery and lettuce as it is a bit bland without them. Besides, I like the crunch.

I am not a picky eater. I eat with discretion.

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“To find perfectly ripe fruit, catch it.”

September 2, 2017

Last night I needed an afghan, and this morning is chilly again, but hot weather is coming back next week. Rain is due late tonight into tomorrow, but Sunday will be lovely. Monday will be traveling home day for the tourists. I’ll be happy to wave goodbye and have the roads back, especially on rainy days.

I have a thoroughly empty dance card this weekend. I toyed with inviting friends for dinner and a movie but decided just to hang around and do whatever. I have to go to the dump sometime this weekend because of the full trash bag sitting on the kitchen floor. I dare not put it outside on the deck. Critters attacked a bag the last time I put one out, and it was gross cleaning up all that garbage and trash, especially the coffee grounds.

When I was a kid, I used to spit out the apple skin. My mother would sometimes peel it for me, but not all the time so I’d spit. Oranges needed to be cold. Bananas couldn’t have black spots or be green. Peaches had fur so I never ate peaches. I liked pears even with the skin. I ate strawberries but only in strawberry shortcake. I liked the biscuits my mother made for the shortcake, and I loved the whipped cream. Lemons were only good for lemonade, but my mother preferred a short cut, frozen lemonade. At Thanksgiving we had date-nut bread and tangerines. My mother kept boxes of raisins as a snack for us, but I preferred cookies for snacks. Coconuts and pineapples seemed exotic for me though I probably didn’t know that word back then, but I do remember thinking they belonged on a tropical island, someplace like Hawaii. There were other fruits available but we didn’t eat them.

Every day in Ghana, I had a fruit salad of sorts for lunch. It had cut up pineapple, oranges, bananas and sometimes mangoes. That was the perfect lunch for the heat of the day. The fruits came from Southern Ghana. They didn’t grow where I lived, in the savannah grass land, only the pawpaw did. I could buy whole coconuts but I never did. From small girls who carried a display box of sorts on their heads I bought toasted coconuts balls, brown and sweet. I could buy oranges from aunties selling them along side the road. They would cut off the top and peel a bit around the cut with a single edge razor blade so I could get at the juice. Oranges didn’t have to be cold any more.

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“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”

May 1, 2017

My patience is exhausted so I’m putting Mother Nature on notice. Make up your mind. Is it spring or isn’t it? My heat went on for a bit this morning, and I had to add another afghan as I was cold. The gray sky has returned, and it rained earlier this morning. My dance card has a bunch of house stuff to do like the laundry. It overfloweth. I have some trash and recyclables which I need to move to the trunk. Tomorrow will be dump day, but I have to get a new sticker first. Be still my heart!

When I was a kid, I could eat hot dogs every day. The best were barbecued, but that was on the weekends when my father was home. During the week, my mother fried or boiled them. When she fried them, she’d make cuts across the dogs so both inside and outside got browned. I used yellow mustard and piccalilli. Toasted buns were the best.

 

During the week, my mother served some sort of meat with potatoes and vegetables. The vegetables were frequent flyers, the list of what we liked was limited. We had mashed potatoes, corn, peas, carrots or some sort of squash. Butternut was our favorite.

My mother made great brownies. They were always frosted with chocolate and sprinkled with jimmies (the Boston/New England word for chocolate sprinkles). I liked the harder, outside edges.

Bananas were my favorite fruit. They were the easiest to eat. Just peel. I also liked them on my cereal though they always sank to the bottom. My mother used to peel the apples for us because we didn’t like the peel. I didn’t mind it when I got older. She’d cut the oranges into eighths and take out the seeds. We loved watermelon but ate it only in the summer. I don’t think it was available winters. I didn’t like the seeds in grapes. We used to pick pears off the tree in the next yard. I think they were never as I remember them being hard to bits. Blueberries came in a pie and strawberries in a shortcake. Pineapples and coconut came later. I think coconut is my favorite now.

I think my laziness dictates my meals. I don’t often make dinner. Lunch is a sandwich or hummus, or something equally easy. Cereal is sometimes dinner. I’m into Frosted Flakes, and I still add bananas.

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“Adding kidney beans to his cottage cheese and pineapple was an act of bravery Dave had not intended.”

August 28, 2015

We are blessed with another lovely day, sunny but cool.

In the Cape Times was an article about the cranberry. The article explained how the cranberry is one of only three native fruits, the others being the blueberry and the Concord grape. It is close to cranberry harvesting time which usually starts in late September. I have sometimes been lucky enough to happen upon a harvest, always a wet harvest. I love seeing those beautiful red fruits floating in the water. The color is extraordinary.

There are two kinds of harvests: the wet and the dry. In the water harvest, the bogs are flooded the night before. The next day a paddle boat of sorts churns the water. The berries are dislodged and float to the surface because they are hollow inside then they are gathered together and finally loaded onto trucks. The other sort is a dry harvest. A mechanical picker acts a bit like a lawnmower and combs the berries off the vine and deposits them in burlap bags hanging off the harvester. The best berries come from the dry harvest.

Once my brother, urged on by me, ate a red berry. It was poisonous and he had to have his stomach pumped. Now it makes me wonder who was the first to try cranberries or anything growing wild. I can imagine it now: the circle stands around the tribesman who volunteered. He takes a few berries, chews then swallows. The circle waits to see if he’ll survive. If he doesn’t, that’s one more berry crossed off the list. I’d watch the birds. I read it is safe to eat what they eat.

In Ghana I saw pineapples and bananas growing. I thought it was kind of neat to see them, not many chances around here. The pineapples surprised me. I figured their weight kept them close to the ground, but I was amazed to see them standing tall in the middle of a plant, one fruit to each plant. Bananas grow just like I imagined.

I like fresh cranberries and cranberry sauce from the can. I have made my own sauce but I have a warm spot for the canned sauce with the decorative rings. I love pineapples and bananas.

I would never volunteer to taste a berry.

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“A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, ”At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas.””

September 13, 2014

Today I am taking it easy, as if I don’t do that anyway. The cleaning of the cabinets on my to-do list is being shifted to tomorrow. Yesterday I moved the wrong way off the couch and twisted my back such that I couldn’t stand up. It took a while until I finally moaned and yelped my way vertical though it was tenuous as I had to hold on to anything I could so I could move forward. This morning I am much better, but I will not tempt the fates by doing any chores; however, I do need to get birdseed so an errand will be my sole accomplishment for the day.

At around four this morning I woke up because I was so cold. The window was open, and I only had the spread and the sheet to cover me. I did have two animals leaning against me, but they didn’t help a whole lot. I got up, easily I’m happy to say, grabbed the afghan and threw it on the bed. Gracie and Fern immediately chose their spots which didn’t include room for me, but I was determined. They got moved, I went back to bed under the afghan and was comfy and warm in no time. I fell back to sleep. The three of us slept until 9:45.

This morning I had a banana. Ever since I was young I have loved bananas. They went on my Rice Krispies, and I used to hunt for the slices with my spoon as they had a tendency to fall to the bottom of the bowl. They are a perfect fruit. In Ghana I could buy some right off the street and peel and eat and not worry about catching something. They are a boon to health and loaded with vitamin B. Bananas make a great bread. I am generally too impatient to wait until the bread cools so I slather a slice with butter while it is still warm. No fruit salad is complete without bananas. I don’t like pancakes, but if I did, I’d want banana pancakes. Banana cream pie is smooth and silky. A banana split has everything. It is served in a boat which gives it an epic proportion. It has three kinds of ice cream, a couple of toppings, whipped cream, nuts and cherries with stems. I was always partial to hot fudge sauce and usually caramel as my second choice. A finished banana split is a work of art. As crazy as the movie is, I like Woody Allen’s Bananas. I can sing the Chiquita Banana song, but I doubt my hips can gyrate in the same way. I do think the banana headpiece would look great on me. I have seen bananas growing. Big bunches of them hang from a palm type tree which isn’t a palm though some call it a banana palm. It gets confusing.

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“Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.”

June 19, 2014

The day was just beginning when I woke up this morning. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t so I came downstairs. The papers weren’t even here yet so I checked the TV news then went on the deck. The sky is cloudy and the morning has a damp chill. People have yet to stir. Across the street my neighbors still have their shades drawn. I can hear four different bird songs. It has been a long time since I last woke so early.

My mother never bought peaches. I didn’t like them and I don’t think my sisters did either. I always thought peach skins looked hairy, and I could never get beyond that. When I was little, my mother used to peel my apples for me. She’d also cut the oranges into pieces, sometimes four, sometimes eight. I was on my own with bananas. My mother only bought tangerines at Thanksgiving. They were easy to peel and eat in segments. I just didn’t like the seeds. There were always so many. Pears were best when they were yellow. I learned that when I used to take green pears from the neighbor’s tree. They were hard to bite and tasteless. Another neighbor had grapes and never minded when we picked them. They were big and purple. Watermelon was summer and I remember juice rolling down my hand and on my cheeks. Cherries were best because you got to spit the seeds. We always had a contest. I didn’t usually win.

Exotic fruits were of the future. I could never imagine a kiwi, a pomegranate or a carambola. I ate my first mangos and paw paws, papayas, in Ghana. I thought the mango tasted like furniture polish, but I loved the paw paw and eventually even came to love the mango. Cut fresh pineapple and sweet green oranges sold by the aunties on the sides of the road were my favorites. For lunch every day I had a bowl of cut fruit.

I buy bananas, and I love strawberries. Only if I have a recipe in mind do I buy blueberries. They are not for eating out of hand unless you’re picking them. I love watermelon. Cold watermelon on a hot day is like manna from heaven. It still drips down my hand.

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