Unsolicited Testimonial

I grew up in the days before sunscreen was invented.  The little girl in the Coppertone logo was still toasty brown, lifeguards all wore white streaks of zinc oxide on their noses, and some young women smeared themselves with a vile concoction of iodine and baby oil to achieve skin like that on a rotisserie chicken as quickly as possible.  SPF was not yet even a gleam in someone's eye the summer I ruined my skin forever by taking a job detasseling corn.

To explain, I must digress for a moment and discuss the sex life of corn.  (You may wish to send small children from the room.)  Much of the corn grown in the Midwest is hybrid - that is, a cross between two different types of parent corn.  The farmer plants several rows of "mother" corn - the plants that will actually bear the ears of corn - then a couple of rows of "father" corn - the plants that will pollinate the mother corn - and so on throughout the field.  When the wind blows, the pollen from the father corn will waft across the mother plants and fertilize them, and the resulting ears of corn are hybrids.  BUT...corn plants are bisexual.  For all the ears of corn to be hybrid, the farmer must somehow ensure that the mother plants don't fertilize themselves.  Enter the detasselers.

The part of the corn plant that carries its pollen is the tassel at the top (it looks like this).  To perform the corn equivalent of a vasectomy, the tassel must be removed from the plant before it matures enough to release its pollen.  Unfortunately, this process cannot be (or at least has not been) mechanized.  Human beings must walk through the field, or ride through it on platforms pulled by tractors, and snap off the tassels by hand.  The tassels won't break off if they are too green, and even if they aren't the detasseler must use just the right combination of upward pull and wrist motion to make them part company with the parent plants.  Since the corn plants do not all mature at once, detasselers must comb through each field several times to remove all the problematic tassels.

Of course, the period during which the tassels are at peak removal condition is fairly short and the cornfields are large.  The farmer I worked for had two detasseling crews who walked the fields (tall guys) and two who rode the platforms looking for the tallest tassels (girls).  At the beginning and end of the season, one walking crew and one riding crew worked from 6AM to noon and went home; the second walking crew and riding crew worked from noon to 6PM.  The next day the crews switched shifts.  During the peak season, the morning crew came back at 6PM and worked for another couple of hours.  It was grueling physical labor.  At 6AM the plants were still covered with cold dew and the wet leaves slapped us as the tractor drove down the rows so we were drenched and shivering before we'd gone more than a few feet.  By noon the temperature was over 100 degrees and the dry leaves were slicing us instead (think large paper cuts).  We couldn't really get a good grip on the tassels wearing gloves, so we used our bare hands, which ended each day covered with nicks and cuts and stinging from sap.  At the end of the summer the farmer thanked me for being such a hard worker and told me I could come back the next year if I wanted to.  I declined.

Although I have skin that usually tans instead of burning, 6 straight hours a day in direct sunlight with only a hat for protection was too much for it.  I burned, I peeled, I ended the summer approximately the same color as an old leather saddle - and my skin has been paying for it ever since.  I've always had freckles, but that winter several of them joined hands under my left eye to form an ugly blotch that's been there ever since, and in recent years additional patches of sun damage have started to show up on my cheeks and hands.  A few years ago the spot under my eye had grown so large and dark that I consulted a dermatologist about it.  (Even under makeup it's so visible I've had strangers ask me how I got the black eye.)  He prescribed a tube of bleaching cream that cost over $100 and didn't do much to help.

Now for the unsolicited testimonial.  I've used Clinique makeup all my adult life, so when they recently introduced their Even Better Clinical Dark Spot Corrector lotion I thought, "What the hell," and gave it a try.  It's expensive, but considerably cheaper than the prescription cream, and it works much better.  It's supposed to be applied twice a day, but because I'm a stomach sleeper and don't want it smeared all over my pillowcase I've only been using it in the morning.  It comes with a "progress tracker" card on which you mark your darkest spot's darkest tone before starting to use the product; this enables you to see whether you are experiencing real improvements.  The literature says to expect a 1-2 shade visible improvement in your designated dark spot after 4 weeks.  After 4 weeks, using the product only half as often as I was supposed to, I realized that the very darkest part of my under-eye spot had lightened by 4 shades, and the other patches on my face have noticeably faded, too.  This stuff is fabulous.  I'm hoping if I keep using it that eventually under makeup the bad splotch will just look like a normal dark under-eye circle rather than a shiner.


Sunburn is very becoming, but only when it is even - one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill. ~ Noel Coward

Gearing Up For Christmas

Despite the fact that I've inhabited each of my homes an average of only 3 1/2 years, I go into every move swearing that it will be the last one, and I take at least a year or two to arrange and decorate everything exactly the way I want it.  In fact, we were still making changes to our last house after 6 six years of living in it.

This time, though, I'm working a lot faster because I'm on a deadline.  This year I am the host for Christmas dinner for our Phoenix-area family members, and I want everything done before the horde descends.  Unfortunately, that will entail more effort than I had originally expected.

One of the reasons I made the large bedroom in this house into the office and used the dining room table as my desk was so that when I host a dinner party I can shuffle the computer equipment into the closet, center the table in the room, bring out my Grandmother's oak chairs, and voila!  Instant formal dining room!  I can easily seat 10 in this space - 12 if I place the table on the diagonal - and hosting our family generally means feeding 9 or 10 of us.  Piece of cake.

The flaw in this plan: This year my cousin Stan's two children and their spouses will be joining us, making the total number of revelers 13.  I cannot squeeze 13 people into my faux dining room.  I suppose I could put four of us in the kitchen, but that defeats the goal of everyone eating together.  On to Plan B.

This house originally had a double carport rather than an enclosed garage.  The previous owners converted the carport to a garage about a year ago.  It has sheetrocked and textured walls painted a bright white and it has ample lighting.  With the addition of a small electric space heater and a decorated tree, it should be an acceptable temporary dining room on Christmas Day - a little like eating in  a church basement.

Of course, I've been using the garage as the staging space for my unpacking, so the half not occupied by my car is full of empty cardboard boxes, plastic tubs full of old records, and miscellaneous items I haven't found a home for.  In order to use the garage as the dining room for Christmas, I need to clear most of that stuff out of there and paint the ugly grease-stained light green floor some more attractive (and garage-appropriate) color.  I can actually throw a sheet of plywood and a long tablecloth over the plastic tubs and use them as a serving table, but everything else has to go.  Suddenly the two months until Christmas look pretty darn short.

Excuse me, please; I need to go to the U-Haul box exchange website and offer my leftover packing materials to the world.

Drama on the Dance Floor

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that Dancing with the Stars is one of my favorite TV shows, and I've already written that one apparent reason for its success is that it's a beacon of politeness in a world of surly reality shows.  That theory was definitely put to the test this week.

During this season, official show bad boy pro Maks Chmerkovskiy has been paired with Hope Solo, a professional soccer star.  Hope is tall and athletic, with an amazing body, but she's also a self-professed tomboy without much patience for learning the grace and sensuality that the show's judges expect from female contestants.  This Monday chief judge Len Goodman came down particularly hard on Hope's rhumba performance (which I thought myself deserved criticism for being too flat-footed), and Maks exploded, going so far as to suggest that it's time for Goodman to retire.  He publicly apologized on the Tuesday night results show, but the damage was done.  Maks and Hope were one of the two couples at risk for elimination this week.

That means one of two things: either ABC was so annoyed by the incident that they put the couple under the red spotlight as punishment, or the fans were so annoyed that they voted for others in droves.  Either way, Maks had better watch his mouth, or next season's show may have a large, Maks-shaped hole in it.

"It's becoming clearer and clearer that Maks is all about Maks and his star partners are nothing but window dressing.  Maybe this explains why he's never won on this show." ~Lenni G., guest blogger for NewsObserver.com

Vegetables Shaken and Stirred

This week our local Sprouts had good deals on eggplant and zucchini, so last night I made myself a giant batch of ratatouille.

According to Merriam-Webster, the name "ratatouille" come from two French words, one meaning "to shake" and the other "to stir."  Ratatouille does take a considerable amount of shaking and stirring, not to mention chopping, but it tastes delicious and can be eaten alone or combined with eggs (think omelet or quiche filling) or pasta.  Ratatouille also freezes well if you have any left over, but I can generally mow through an entire "10 side dish servings" batch in about three days all by myself.

Note: I use less olive oil than is traditional in this recipe, but you need some to contribute to the final flavor.  If you just can't stand the taste of olive oil you can try peanut oil instead, but...your loss.  By all means use fresh tomatoes instead of canned if you can find really good ones, but remember - if they don't smell like tomatoes, they won't taste much like them, either.

Ratatouille

1/4 cup olive oil
1 large eggplant
4 medium zucchini
1 1/2 large yellow onions
1 green bell pepper
1 can (14.5 oz.) fire-roasted tomatoes
2 Tbl chopped fresh basil
2 Tbl chopped fresh cilantro
Pepper and salt to taste

Roughly chop all the vegetables, starting with the eggplant.  Put the eggplant in a large colander; salt and leave to drain.  After the other ingredients have been prepped, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a 3 quart saute pan or large skillet and saute the zucchini for 5 minutes.  Add the onions and green pepper and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Heat 2 more tablespoons of olive oil in another pan and saute the eggplant in it for the same 15 minutes.  Add the sauteed eggplant and the remaining ingredients to the pan containing the zucchini mixture; if your skillet is not big enough to hold everything, use a large saucepan instead.  Cook over medium low heat, stirring frequently, until the flavors have blended but the vegetables still retain some color and texture - about 30 minutes or a little longer.  (If overcooked, the ratatouille will still taste OK but it will be brown and mushy - Not A Good Thing.) 

Refrigerate at least an hour to give the flavors more time to meld.  Reheat before serving.

Linguini: Hey... Why do they call it that?
Skinner: What?
Linguini: Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat-patootie, which does not sound delicious. 
~From Ratatouille, the movie

Planting Time

In the Phoenix area, planting a garden in the spring is a fruitless enterprise - literally.  Tomatoes and peppers, for instance, won't set fruit when the temperature is too high, which generally means any time between May and September here.  Many local gardeners, therefore, consider fall the high season for planting.  Today I had to drive to Scottsdale for my semi-annual dental appointment, so I stopped on the way back at my favorite nursery to buy a couple of flats of herbs and vegetables.

As I've mentioned before, my mother always had a large garden when I was a child, and I've continued the tradition whenever I've lived in a house with a yard.  Even in New York City I had a small herb and flower garden outside my first (garden-level) apartment, and a pot of chives in later, higher living spaces.  My irrigated pots at our previous house here were finally putting out clusters of assorted chile peppers and overflowing with oregano and thyme just when I had to leave them behind.  Of course I moved into this house at the end of July, when planting anything would have been insane, even if I hadn't been fully occupied with work on the interior of the house.  So, I was happy when the hot weather finally broke this month and I could start to think about gardening again.

Fortunately, this house has irrigated planting beds that are just begging for new foliage.  The one by the front stoop is empty except for a single forlorn cactus and the one to the left of the back porch has been overrun by useless and not very attractive myaporum that I intend to uproot tomorrow.  This gives me plenty of room for roses in front and herb and vegetable plantings in back of the house.

Today I bought a couple of tomato plants (a mainstream Better Boy and a multicolored heirloom), a mini red bell pepper, a hot red pepper plant, salad greens, Swiss chard, oregano, parsley, chives, basil, thyme, cilantro, a small bay tree, and lavender.  I intend to start them in pots in the screened back porch and transplant them to the planting beds when they are a little larger and can better withstand the onslaught of the hungry local rabbits.  (The jackrabbits here are large enough to leap rabbit wire with a single bound.)  I also got geraniums and petunias for pots on the front stoop; let's hope the bunnies here aren't hungry enough to eat them despite the strong smell.

As soon as I've planted all this stuff I'll go back for the roses - but that may be a couple of days from now because one of the local Greek Orthodox churches is having its annual Greekfest this weekend, and I may be too busy chowing down souvlaki and baklava to worry about gardening.


"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden."  ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666