God, Mother and Country

After much internal dialogue, I decided to listen to Sarah's speech last night, but finally turned it off because it was a god, mother and country speech and the best one, by far the best was delivered in the Riverwoods Village Hall about a million years ago by Barb Carmen, and after that impassioned rhetoric, none of them passed muster. Sorry. Sarah.

I will watch McCain's speech tonight. Wonder if he will mention the so-called issues in a way that will tell us his plans. The Republicans seem to be learning hard on God, mother and country. I don't think those are the issues. Well, maybe they are.

Sometimes, one thinks of emigrating, not seriously, but nonetheless, the thought intrudes. How can it have come to this?

Since most of us have families of some sort, or did at one time, no matter how dysfunctional, I fail to see how having a family qualifies one for much of anything. If someone could please explain, I promise to listen.

Potato Salad Season

Ratatouille, Tomato Bread Salad, Insalata Capreses, and Potato Salad are all wonderful tastes of summer.

Cooking up a storm this week with the house guests. Catering to 3 people, one of whom is a super-picky vegetarian kid who doesn't like macaroni and cheese and spurns a lot of vegetables--a real challenge. I have basically given up pleasing everyone, but the adults were blown away by this potato salad:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/105282

I started making it years ago when we went to an annual house party in Easthampton. It never failed to please. Flavors are robust, so if Annie's macaroni and cheese is your idea of flavorful, go for something blander. Nothing against Annie, except that hers was most most tasteless, as in no taste, product I had ever eaten. Hold the cheese, hold the salt, hold the seasonings. Oh well, I guess that's why two year olds only eat plain plain plain. I say give them curry and salsa and Sichuan.

A new movie someone might consider is Toddlers on A Plane, sort of like Snakes on a Plane. They all scream and refuse to sit down and disrupt the safety instruction and pour their sippy cups down the flight attendants shirt fronts. I travelled with toddlers once, and they were taught how to behave.

The most amazing sight I ever saw was a woman alone boarding an overseas flight with four kids, a baby, a toddler and two older (9 - 13 year old) kids. Well, this will be fun, I thought, as they were sitting very close by. What happened was that the 13 year old took the baby, the nine (or thereabouts) took the toddler, and the mom read a magazine. It took a while to figure out that this was a military family, and the kids had always travelled, and the older ones took care of the younger ones. Not that Mom was uninvolved, but she had her leisure to read and there was not a single squawk, screech, or bawl all the way across the Atlantic. There was certainly no holding up of the aircraft's takeoff while the parents "tried to calm" the child. So not every toddler is a terror. I blame the parents for raising a little tyrant.

And it all started with potato salad. Now I am out into the garden to transplant some petunias who really don't like the shade and there is still a bare sunny spot in the garden.

Tonight we are eating potato pancakes (latkes)which everyone likes a lot. With bacon, sour cream and applesauce. Not exactly low cal. I'm making a cherry caflouti for dessert.

Last night we chowed down at Vinny T's in Dedham. Good food and lots of it at reasonable prices. We brought home about two meals worth. It's a good place to take kids, by the way. The salad with blue cheese, apples, walnuts and romaine got four stars in my book. Yum!

Onward with trowel and determination.

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