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Love is for the BirdsIt'd been a particularly grueling week and a pleasant long weekend awaited, void of hurry and social obligations.
. My teenage daughter got caught hooking school and it took several days to deal with the repercussions. My husband and I argued almost constantly, the disagreements mostly about our troublesome adolescent. It seemed that everyone in my life to whom I'd given my deepest love was bent on causing me heartache and pain. In this mid-June the gardens beckoned. The time had come for me take a vacation from emotions and relationships and concentrate on the pretty flowers and sweet-singing birds that brought great joy to my eco-system.
For a couple of mind-healing days I would weed and dig and observe the nesting birds of my gardens. Banished was all numbing emotion and disappointment from the very ones who claimed to love me. The denizens of the gardens wouldn't inflict their endless dramas and pain on me. There's plenty of happy love in the gardens, right?
Because love, as I saw it then, was nothing but a pain.
It began with the Mama Duck. Whose children, it would turn out, were very disobedient and this caused her great pain. She and her mate were walking up the sloped lot. My house was on a small cove and ducks were frequent visitors to the garden. This pair was followed by six cute ducklings and I leaned on my shovel to watch the happy family. Then the ducklings, every one of them, decided to head down to the pier for a spontaneous dip. Mama Duck called them with a stern quack but guess what? They paid her no mind and all jumped merrily into the waters. Hidden by the bulkhead, Mama Duck could no longer see them.
She quacked duck reprimands to young ones who wouldn't come when called then both parents waddled down to the pier to find their misbehaving young ones. At water's edge Mama Duck peered down into the water and evidently could not locate her offspring. From my vantage point I couldn't see whether the ducklings were there or not. But Mama knew they weren't there and she began to quack her dismay. Not that I was any expert on dismayed ducks but I knew her quack call got longer and more frantic with each passing second. For five full minutes she quacked and I could feel a mother's fear in the painful depth of her calls.
After a bit she began to walk the lot, her mate right behind. They walked around and peeked under the garden shed, she quacking her mother's call of distress. They walked through the vegetable garden, pulling up cucumber vines and calling, still calling. Finally they were at the top of the lot. For fifteen minutes they searched and called their children. Now they were faced with nothing but a chain link fence. The babies, it would seem, were gone.
Mama Duck's quacks were fewer and more forlorn. How could all six of her children disappear so suddenly, I wondered. Then six little ducklings jumped up from the water onto the bulkhead. Back, I assumed, from their adventure. Mama Duck's reaction to the return of her wayward children caused me to jump. For she took off down the lot as if a duck possessed. Her quacks were utterances of pure joy because if I didn't know one duck quack from another an hour before I surely did when those ducklings returned to their mother's complete joy.
Children, I mused after the incident, cause pain across the specie spectrum.
That night, well after midnight and when nesting birds should be safely ensconced in their nest, my husband quickly turned down the sound to the TV and bade me to listen.
"It's the starlings," he explained. The quiet night was filled with the sounds of frightened and startled birds.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"Probably an owl or snake getting to them," husband shrugged.
I didn't especially like the starlings that decided to build a nest in the eves of my house. These are considered "trash" birds. But the nest was too high on the house for us to get to safely and I don't think either my husband and I would have had the courage to destroy a bird's nest at any rate. Even so, I listened to the sounds of birds in the middle of the night and knew that something very terrible was happening to those baby starlings and their mother.
The next morning the father starling landed on the tree by the nest and as he did every morning, emitted a hoarse loud whistle that was the sound of his species. Just as soon as he sent the call the idea was that it was safe for the mother to come out of the nest. Nests, being small affairs, were occupied at night by only the mother and nestlings. The male roosted elsewhere and returned in the morning to summon his family, that all was safe.
I heard the male starling call his family and I knew that he would not be answered. Soon enough, I thought, gathering my garden tools and heading off to the flowers, he would realize that his family was gone.
Except the starling sent out that hoarse whistle all day, every five seconds of every minute of every hour. I wanted to throttle him, I wanted to cry with him, I wanted to be his grief counselor. His calls got louder and longer. He sent the calls out from every branch on the tree. Then he flew to the roof and called his family from there. Every time he whistled I wondered, does he think that THIS time they will come out from the nest?
For seven straight hours the male starling called his family. He never left the tree, he didn't eat, he didn't drink. He and his offspring might be considered the trash of the bird world but to him his family was everything. They might well have been a cherished endangered species to him and why not? Though the skies might be filled with the black speckled feathers of the starling, for this father starling, the bottom had dropped out of his world.
What happened to the garden of my dreams, I wondered? Heartbreak, it would seem, was everywhere.
The last day of my weekend I approached the gardens with some new plants and a guarded hope. Let there not be any more drama in the garden, I wished, because a gardener with some new plants is a happy gardener.
Then the chipmunk got too close to the chickadee nest.
I was taking a porch break, a refreshing glass of iced tea and a beautiful day to entertain me. I didn't know it was a chipmunk causing the chickadee ruckus but I knew something had those little birds in an uproar.
Every year for the past ten these sweet little birds with the cute little black masks built their nest in a fence pole on my property. The pole held up the ubiquitous chain link fence. It was in one of the "diamonds" of the chain link that I saw the male chickadee "fighting" the chipmunk. He was flexing wings in the manner of a boxer before the coming fight. I couldn't help but smile.
His mate perched on a branch of a nearby tree. Females will sometimes join in a fight against a predator but this lady chickadee was content to let her hero mate duke it out with the chipmunk.
Which he did because after a barrage of pecking assaults from the male chickadee one chipmunk squealed and rant down the lot and away from the nasty bird. The chipmunk was likely only nosing around for acorns but he was a little too close to the chickadee nest for the birds' comfort.
As the chipmunk ran for cover, the female flew over to a branch by the chain link. The male flew by her side. She jumped and down in excitement, wiggling her wings just as she likely did during their courtship. He reached over and gently deposited a seed into her beak.
Only he didn't have a seed in his beak.
Well it certainly looked like a kiss to me.
It was a fine and upbeat ending to my vacation from life and love.
Make that a vacation from "human" life and love. For my eco-system was full of the same dramas, pains and joys as my human life. Same plots, same characters, same endings.
Only difference was the species of the actors.
More Gardens and Bird posts HERE
The Bird Fathers "Okay, Sport. You got your glove, right? Don't want to miss a fly ball."
My husband pushed our five-year old son's baseball cap down over his face in that affable way of fathers.
Scottie, for his part, had to pretend great irritation, for that was part of the game. With a display of mock annoyance, he pushed the hat back properly onto his head.
"Dad, I can't find my black socks. I thought you did laundry last week." My oldest son, Rick, called from his bedroom.
"I did the laundry Rick, but your mother hasn't put them away yet," Jerry yelled back, flipping both me and Scottie a conspiratorial wink.
With a loud sigh, I pulled myself up from my chair to head to the laundry room. It was true that Jerry had completed his part of the laundry chores over three days ago. And now Rick needed black socks and here they were, folded in the hamper and awaiting distribution.
"You got the tickets?" Jerry asked Rick, as the trio walked out the front door. It was Father's Day, and the boys had saved for over six months to buy the tickets to the Oriole's game now playing at the brand spanking new Oriole Park. I sprang for twenty bucks hot dog, coke and parking money. I would have paid twice that for the day of peace now offered me on this Father's Day that would be greatly enjoyed by the mother.
I listened with a keen ear for any further sounds of either young or old male voices. The guys around here rarely leave for any excursion that doesn't require a few return trips to obtain forgotten items.
All was quiet. Finally, I was able to relax.
The very first thing I did was run the bathtub to full with hot water laced generously with Avon bath oil. This activity would require almost an hour of time, what with the three magazines I had yet to read and that fresh pot of tea I intended to keep by the tub. That laundry was overdue by three days. It could wait another hour.
Jerry and I had, as most couples in this day of working parents, a very modern and equal marriage. It seemed humorously ironic that I was the one who fell behind in domestic duties, that would now include distribution of the freshly laundered clothes. The boys too were involved in the domestic chores that kept this household from running to chaos. Not that I ever expected to have any daughters and not that I was one bit surprised when my first two attempts at reproduction should result in the sons of my womb. Ours was a family with a serious shortage of X chromosomes.
I was the only daughter in a family that consisted of the requisite mother and father, and five children. The other four children, by mathematical elimination, were boys.
And it wasn't like I occupied any sort of special position in this male dominated household. Like the youngest, that would make me the baby. Or the oldest, that would make me the wisest. No. Stanley and Stephen were born to my parents in rapid succession. Then me, a real surprise and a female one at that. Then Stuart and Sidney came along a full ten years after me, and I don't know what my parents were thinking about with this.
My mother, as can be ascertained, was most definitely a female, although, when it comes to stereotypes, she fit no feminine ones other than the ability to give birth.
My mother was a bookie.
This is absolutely true and, while it would seem to be good fodder for the tabloids, it is not something of which I am especially proud.
Her "clients" were mostly professional men, the sort that would not, by external appearances, appear to be street corner gamblers. But there you have it. There were many bookies in mother's family, although she was the only female.
In fact, mother was the only female in her family for over three generations before her. As far back as her Italian roots can be reliably traced, all children born into each new generation were all male.
To hear Mom tell it, at first it was a great source of Pellicotti pride to be able to produce so many male heirs. To also hear Mom tell it, it got old after a while.
My mother, and now myself, were understandably confused over this female thing. She had no role models, and I, and this is the sad part, only had mother. We could both ably bear children, but beyond that, neither of us had any concept of any differences between males and females, mothers and fathers.
I laid back into my bath and knew this for certain: if it is female to desire to luxuriate in a quiet bath un-punctuated by little boy demands, than I was a woman extraordinaire.
It was then that the blackbird tapped on the bathroom window.
At first I thought the tapping to be a branch. While the day was warm and sunny, there was a breeze stirring. I read my magazines and ignored the noises. Until a large crow-shaped shadow blocked that much sunlight from streaming in. Then I jumped out of the tub, grabbed a towel and watched the bathroom window in horror.
The thing just tap-tap-tapped. Nothing evil or terrifying in its steady tap. Just a gentle tap-tap-tap that sounded as if a code. For myself, now standing beside my bathtub and wrapped in a bath sheet, I could think of nothing but Edgar Allen Poe, ravens and blackbird pies.
It just kept tap-tap-tapping in that gentle and friendly matter. Tentatively, I walked over to the crow shadow in my bathroom window and tap-tap-tapped right back. With no hesitation, the crow tap-tap-tapped in response.
"The bird is calling me," I thought, with no basis for this assumption other than...well, what else could it have been doing?
As the crow continued to tap-tap-tap on the window, I hurriedly shrugged on my clothes. I then ran into the bedroom to find my shoes. My mind continued its race for bird facts even as I searched for suitable attire.
My father always enjoyed the birds. He enjoyed all animals, in fact. They fascinated him. He was always pointing out the different animals and would often launch into spontaneous lectures on animal behavior and biology. I remembered the one time I had found a robin's egg on the ground. In the curiosity of childhood, I picked it up and brought it into the house. My father immediately took me and the robin's egg back outside.
"You need to remember Shelly, that there is a reason that this egg is on the ground. And most likely it's because it accidentally fell out of the nest. So, all we have to do is find the nest and put it back."
While he recited this, my father and I had found the tree under which I had found the egg. My father continued to lecture as he stood on his tip toes looking within the tree branches for something.
"Don't believe that crap about birds not minding their eggs if held by humans. In fact," Dad said, then stopped for just a moment. "Here it is." Since I was so much smaller, I couldn't see just here what is, but noticed my Dad was placing my egg in something.
After disentangling himself from the branches, he resumed his lecture. "In fact, the birds appreciate it when the humans help them along...just so long as we don't hurt anything. They couldn't pick up that egg, so, we're doing them a favor. There were two other eggs in that nest, bumpkin, so I bet we made some robin parents real happy tonight."
Dad was a Biology teacher, so there was some reason for him to know so much about animals. Mostly though, he was intrigued by the animals of the world. Perhaps it was the teacher in him that made him prone to the lectures, but my brothers and myself often found them mesmerizing.
"Listen," my father would call out to just anyone in the surround. "Geese. Hear them?"
One or all of us would strain to listen only to hear nothing. If Mom were around she would respond to the listen command by running to the all important telephone.
"They're migrating. They honk so that each member of the flock knows where every other member is. Listen," he commanded again.
Sure enough, the faint honk of Canadian Geese could be heard. As I or several of my brothers listened, the sound grew louder. All present would then look up to see the geese flying in perfect V-formation, each bird honking its presence and location to all members of the flock.
As the geese flew by, we all remained silent. Dad never gave lectures while the geese flew over.
Now I don't know if many of the animal tales Dad told us were even close to the truth. I wondered that much of what he stated as fact was mostly conjecture and a small part folklore. He seemed to combine just the right amount of fact to make his explanations plausible.
"When the robin is cocking his head towards the ground, he is 'listening' for the sounds of the worms. Worms make sounds as they travel through the soil and the robins can hear them."
"Owls aren't really smart. People just think they look smart, because their eyes are so big. Actually owls are the stupidest of birds."
"Cats can cause a baby to suffocate. They like the milky smell of an infant and sometimes will sleep to close to the baby to share its warmth. The baby is smothered while the cat sleeps on totally unaware."
It was only item one of the three examples above that I had ever been able to thoroughly disprove. I was reading one of Rick's library books when I came across an article on backyard birds. Robins, explained the text, cannot 'hear' the worms. They cock their head because their eyes, as most avian eyes, are on either side of their head. By tilting their head towards the ground, they can 'see' the worm wriggling beneath the soil.
After I had read this tidbit, I had mentally dismissed much of my father lecture's re the animals' behavior, although, for all I knew, only the robin and worm story was myth.
"Crows are the smartest birds of them all. The crows are the leaders of the bird world. Watch sometime. Whenever the crows are around, the birds will always follow their lead. The crows warn when the hawks are buzzing about. They send out caws warning of bad weather. All the birds listen to the crows."
I had just put my remaining shoe on my remaining foot when I remembered this lecture by my father regarding the crows.
And now I had a what appeared to be a crow tap-tap-tapping on my bathroom window and calling me outside. If I was to dismiss my father's lecture on crow behavior, the crow outside my window was probably a stupid bird ignored by all the other birds.
Mentally prepared to greet a stupid bird that would tap on bathroom windows, I rushed out into the yard and around to the side of the house with that bathroom window.
It wasn't a crow.
It was a grackle.
Not that, even with all the bird lectures of my father, I had paid birds too much mind in my busy adulthood that included two rambunctious sons and undistributed laundry. But I remembered enough of my father's bird stories to recall the black bird with the weird yellow eyes.
Which was a grackle.
Then there one was, tap-tap-tapping on my bathroom window for some time and confronted by me. He didn't fly away in fright. Not at all.
Instead, he merely regarded me with weird yellow eyes and ceased his tappings.
"Okay, you tapped for me? So here I am. Mind telling me just what you want?"
The grackle flew off. I didn't see him again that day.
I was then quite annoyed, because I had interrupted my bath because of some imagined summons by a yellow-eyed bird. And when I granted the bird my full attention, it flew off.
If I wasn't beyond annoyed with this, I was downright angry with my discovery that I had locked myself out of my house. All because of a black bird that tap-tap-tapped on my window and lured me without and with no keys.
I didn't know whether to cry, laugh or both. A whole day. A whole wonderful day with the house all to myself, with no kids and no husband and no guilty glances to sock-less drawers. And I was locked out.
I sat down on my porch rocker. With a little thought and ingenuity, I pondered, I could certainly figure out a way to get back in.
I leaned back in the rocking chair and considered my options.
Most likely it was the grackle that started my study in bird fathers. Then again, it was Father's Day. Yet again, my father had told me about the grackle his own self, only I didn't know it at the time.
My father had died two years prior. On Father's Day as a matter of fact. His death was preceded by a lengthily illness, that caused my brothers and I to alternately wish him final peace or a full recovery. The lingering illness left us drained and broken-hearted. He died on a bright sunny June day, much like this day of the grackle. My mother died six months after my father. I grieved, as did my brothers, for them both. Had I been asked which parent I missed most, I could not have answered.
For their roles in my male-dominated childhood world, were indistinguishable. Which is not to mean they were undistinguished parents. Not at all. Both of them loved, and nurtured and supported their large and unruly brood. It's more that I loved neither my bookmaker mother or tale-telling father more than the other. As a lone daughter in a long line of sons, one would expect me to be closer to my mother. In fact, I considered both my parents as equals in the child-rearing project. Which is why the Mothers and Fathers days confused me. For one such as I, "Parents' Day" would be more appropriate.
Until I met the bird fathers.
It was the cardinal who first introduced both himself and his brood. He brought his family along while I sat in that rocking chair and considered my choices for house re-entry. The only notification I received of his family's presence was a loud "click".
When I first heard this bird noise, I was in no mood for anything with wings. And if this noise came from anything with yellow eyes, I would stone the thing to death. I opened one eye from the bowels of the porch rocker and saw the flash of red streaking through the bushes.
"One of the Catholic Church's most important personages is the cardinal. And it isn't because of the red color like they would have you believe. It's because the cardinal travels in perfect Catholic family units. Anytime you see a cardinal, just look around. Soon you will see his mate and all the little cardinals. Cardinals rarely form flocks, even in the Winter."
This remembered lecture of my father went through my mind lucidly as I peeked over my porch rail to see the red guy, his beige-orange wife, and three of the ugliest bird adolescents I've ever seen. True to my father's speech, these cardinals traveled as a family unit.
I watched the birds with some fascination. Not that I could get into my house or anything. It was so appropriate this Father's Day that I should spend it in memory of my father and his folklore nature lectures.
Those cardinals were amazing. The female scrounged around for some seed, and took off, leaving Dad with the three ugly teenagers. Goodness, they were some combination of orange, beige and red...sort of paisley. Only the daughter bird resembled anything close to an adult cardinal. The two sons were going through a serious puberty.
Now here in front of me was a Dad not getting one bit of a break no mind the human holiday. For those cardinal children ran him ragged. He would snatch a seed from my neighbor's feeder, peel and hull it, then fly to one begging youngster and hastily stuff it into his lazy teenaged beak. Then the red Dad had to repeat this sequence all over again. I estimated he peeled and stuffed one seed every ten seconds. Get a load. Wait until I tell Jerry the next time he tells me the boys run him ragged.
I hadn't even begun to conclude my enjoyment of this busy sight, when a little yellow goldfinch landed on the telephone wire. He sat for a short time, then flew to my neighbor's tube feeder. I had noticed this feeder always had a bunch of finches on it. Now this pretty yellow guy was about to enjoy lunch.
The yellow bird had eaten no more than three seeds when I heard the eeriest noise. It sounded as if five fingernails were simultaneously being run down a chalkboard. As goose bumps popped out on my arm, the yellow bird hastened from the feeder and flew to a nearby branch. There was something on that branch but I was a little too far away to see. Whatever it was, it made an awful noise, jumped around a lot, and caused that yellow bird to make multiple round trips to the tube feeder. I was betting that the jumping thing was a young goldfinch. And this handsome yellow bird was its father, who too was not getting respite in spite of the human holiday. Get real again, just wait until the complaining Jerry hears about this.
"They call goldfinches wild canaries. Only the males are bright yellow. These birds love to eat upside down."
The impromptu goldfinch lecture of my father leapt into my mind. These goldfinches appeared to be eating like all the other birds in my sight.
After forty five minutes of watching the bird fathers, I began to again curse my fate. I spent the next half hour searching all the cubbyholes, rocks and crevices around my house, seeking a spare key. I knew I would find none. Jerry was stringent about locking the house. He often told the boys that it is their responsibility to carry their keys, and should they not have one when required, they will just have to wait until someone returns. Jerry had flipped that front door lock the minute he left the house. He may have assumed I would do some silly thing like take a long bath without checking and locking the doors. Only I did a sillier thing like getting out of my long bath to find a crow-come-grackle and failed to bring along a key that would unlock what I thought was an already unlocked door.
I was really in the pits with these musings, when my neighbor Helen called across to me. Of course, I immediately begged to come over, that I was locked out.
"She always kind of mopes around on Father's Day. Not that it's such a big deal, half the kids in her class don't live with their real father, but most of them do get to see their father. Lisa's father ain't been around since she was six months old."
It was after 6:00 pm when I finally got myself ensconced in neighbor Helen's kitchen chair and outfitted with a tall glass of iced tea. I nonchalantly munched some pretzels. I was seriously hungry by now, and if pretzels were dinner, then so be it.
"She seems happy to me. But then, I guess almost everyone else is doing some sort of celebrating and she can't. Although, she seems to thrive without her father."
Helen and I had been discussing Father's Day. I told her about my guys who probably would not be home until after dark and I had to tell her about the bird fathers. Then Helen informed me that Father's Day wasn't such a happy day for everyone. Like her young Lisa .
"Oh she gets along just fine. It's just me that gets burnt out. I have to be both parents. It's not easy."
"It takes two bird parents to raise a baby bird. One parent can't do it. There's been cases where a mother robin died and the father tried to raise the nestlings on his own. He managed to keep them fed all day, but at night he didn't know how to let the babies snuggle to his breast. The nestlings died of exposure. Same thing if the father dies. The female can't gather food fast enough for the baby robins and is unable to fight off predators. Within hours, all the nestlings were killed by a territorial blue jay."
I sat in Helen's kitchen, mute with the shock that even here in a human house, my father lecture's insinuated into my mind. This was odd. Just an odd Father's Day indeed.
Helen was waving her hand in front of my face when I realized I had drifted off somewhere with my father's words . I apologized and remarked that I must be heading home. Husband and children should be home soon.
Helen grabbed my elbow and led me to her back deck. There was something she wanted me to see.
"I thought of this when you were telling me about the cardinal and goldfinches. I was kind of hoping you would stick around to twilight so I could share it with you."
She led me out the back door to her deck. Her yard, like mine, butted against a forest. The sun was now a parenthesis arcing across the sky. I looked around and saw nothing.
Helen placed her finger to her lip to mime silence. She took the same finger and then pointed somewhere across her yard.
She leaned in closer to my ear and whispered. "This is the time of day when the bird fathers put their fledglings to sleep. See over there. That flash of white? That's a mockingbird. Watch how he goes to several different places, sings a song, then leaves."
I did see a flash of white across Helen's small yard. While I temporarily lost sight of the white flash that was supposed to be a mockingbird, I was able to sight him again easily when he began his song.
Helen and I listened for almost a minute, in silence and appreciation of the fine avian singer.
The flash of white stopped his song and flew across the yard. Helen leaned into my ear again.
"I love this time of day. Lisa usually has finished her dinner...bath...homework...and watching her daily allotment of television. I slip out here and watch the mockingbird. In case you don't know it, he has youngsters down below where he sings, that just fledged oh...about two days ago. The young ones roost right where they fledged, and their father sings them to sleep. I watch this every night."
Helen was silent just as the mockingbird began his song, in another more remote section of the yard. I was simply amazed.
"Only the male birds sing. They sing to attract a mate, and they sing to the youngsters. First they sing to lull them to a peaceful sleep. Then they sing to teach their sons the songs of their species. A male bird is everything by his song. The best singers live and reproduce."
My father's lecture sprung to my mind both at Helen's prompt and during the mockingbird's lullaby. If I could ever figure out what all this meant and why, just why, today? Why am I here, in Helen's house on Father's day, occupied by a child who has no father and a tired mother who envies the mockingbird children sung to sleep by their father? Why was I watching cardinals and goldfinches and vowing revenge on my human husband? Why is my mind filled with my father's words, however untrue they may be?
I bade Helen good night and thanked her for her hospitality.
I shivered in the cool June night air as I walked the distance from Helen's to my home. I saw the Jeep pull into the driveway right before I came upon our mailbox. I didn't see any of the occupants, but I heard the sounds of little boy laughter and an adult male remonstrating immediate bedtime.
A first lady of my recent past said it took a village. Now I had just spent my day with some bird fathers, not to mention my own father, deceased but very much alive in my mind. Just before I reached the Jeep being disembarked by some very rambunctious boys, I decided I would write Mrs. Clinton a letter and tell her it might take a village sometime, but when the young ones are growing and learning the rites of their species, it very much takes two dedicated parents. Without them, the village is useless.
I was about to announce my presence to unsuspecting husband and children when I also considered this strange Father's Day. I pondered the grackle that started it all.
My father's words filled my head again.
"The grackle is a handsome bird. If you look at him at just the right angle, you will see that his feathers are really purple. And not only that, the grackle is the only bird that can accept a human soul. It's their yellow eyes...something about the yellow eyes. Grackles often bring the spirit of a human being back to life, usually to deliver some sort of message to a living relative."
More Smashing Fiction HERE 
Some Summertime Food TipsThanks to Busyrecipes at Yahoogroups.com for the following:
VEGGIE STORAGE TIPS:
* Do not store onions and potatoes together as onions give off a gas that makes potatoes spoil faster.
* When storing beets and carrots, cut off the leafy tops to prevent spoilage.
* A dampened paper towel or terry cloth brushed downward on a cob of corn will remove every strand of corn silk.
* Do not store potatoes in the refrigerator. The starch in the potatoes will change to sugar.
* Do not wash vegies before storing, they spoil faster
* I've seen cut celery and carrots sold lately in plastic deli containers with water and I have found them to be more crisp. This is something you might want to try out next time you pack the cooler to go.
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General Grill Safety Reminders: One can never be too safe.
What may be common sense to some is news to others, especially when you're breaking open your first grill.
* Position the grill on level ground. An unstable grill could fall or tip; make sure the legs and frame are not rusted or bent.
* The grills should not be under a balcony or deck; smoke or heat build-up is hazardous. If the balcony or deck is wood, a spark or grill flare-up of fumes can ignite.
* When cooking on a grill or hearth, keep fire extinguishers handy. Water from a bucket or garden hose will stamp charcoal, commercial fire extinguishers or a bucket of sand will extinguish most gas grills fires, and baking soda controls grease fires.
* An extinguished grill remains hot for several hours. Keep children away from the grill and don't attempt to move it until the grill is no longer warm.
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A Tried and True RecipeThe great pie-lover husband, I must state honestly, did NOT like this pie.
I, however, liked it.
Make at your own peril.
Lemon Truffle Pie
1 9 inch pie crust, baked and cooled
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup water
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softenedCombine sugar, cornstarch and flour. Stir in water until smooth. Cook
over medium heat until boiling, stirring constantly. Cook 2 minutes.
Stir about 1/4 cup of cooked mixture into egg yolks and blend. Return
egg yolk mixture to saucepan and cook 2 more minutes, stirring
constantly. Remove from heat and stir in butter and lemon juice.
Transfer 1/2 cup of the cooked lemon filling to small bowl with the
vanilla milk chips. Set rest of lemon filling aside. Microwave the
chip mixture on low 1-2 minutes or until chips are melted. Beat cream
cheese and add vanilla chip-lemon filling mixture and beat well.
Spread over cooled crust. Spoon lemon mixture over the cream cheese
layer. Refrigerate 4 hours to set.
Serves 8.
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