Yesterday I was feeling domestic (ok, I was bored) and I had already done laundry, washed dishes, and dusted. Then I remembered that my in-laws had sent over a bag of fresh vegetables from their garden, and I hadn't dealt with some of them. My husband has this sickness where he likes to peel and eat cucumbers like they were an apple (he's so nasty!) so I knew to leave those to him. I had a handful of little green bell peppers, so I went ahead and chopped and froze them because a) I don't want them to waste and b) when I get ready to cook something that requires chopped peppers, my life is a lot easier when they are already chopped. Then I was left with the zucchini. And I knew I had to get them out of my life quickly, because there are probably more to come.
And I know this because last year I grew zucchini and it took over my life and I'm still haunted by bags of sliced frozen zucchini that I no longer have any ideas for or any desire to look at.
So I knew there was only one thing to do... make zucchini bread. It's just as wonderful as banana bread, and maybe stays fresh longer. Mmmmmmmm!
Here's the recipe I used:
(It's from Paula Deen's "The Lady and Sons" cookbook)
Ingredients
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg *(Ok, I didn't use the nutmeg, because I didn't have any. Nanny calls it "Nutmaneg." It is unclear why she cannot pronounce this word, but now I can't look at it without thinking "nutmaneg.")
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups sugar *(You don't have to use quite this much! I didn't and it's still good. Plus, you could always try making some of it brown sugar. Mmmm!)
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water
2 cups grated zucchini
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and fold in. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.
This is what it looked like yesterday when it came out of the oven. If you've never made zucchini bread, it smells WONDERFUL while it's baking!
This is what's left of it now. I took it to my parent's house last night, and a lot of it disappeared.
Now when you lose your mind and decide to plant zucchini and it takes over your life, you know what you can do with it. And for anyone who has never had it and is wondering, no you can't taste the zucchini at all. It just keeps the bread super moist and fresh for longer. When it cools somewhat, you need to wrap it well in plastic wrap. You can then put it in the freezer if you want, because it freezes beautifully. But you probably won't have any left for that!
Every week, for reasons I can't begin to understand, I punish myself by putting off the worst house cleaning jobs until Saturday. And EVERY week, I tell myself, "This is dumb. Next week, I'm going to do some of these things all along so I won't have to spend half of my Saturday doing this terrible stuff." And every week, I watch Law and Order: SVU instead of doing extra laundry. (Well, you can't blame me for that... don't you just love that Elliott Stabler??). Or I paint my toenails instead of cleaning the bathroom. Or I start reading a book that I just can't stop instead of vacuuming. And since there is no way I can let a week end without all the current laundry being done, the bathrooms being cleaned, and the floors being vacuumed, I end up doing it all on Saturday.
It's not that I don't want to do the cleaning. It's just that I don't want to do it RIGHT THEN!
The washing machine is getting ready to finish a load, so I'll close with some random thoughts that I waste time on rather than doing productive things like cleaning at logical times:
1. I just love Dolly Parton. She's not ashamed of where she came from. She's so flashy, and she knows it. She can laugh at herself, and I love that in a person. People underestimate her voice, and her songwriting is amazing. Listen to her sing, "Little Sparrow." It's haunting. Oh, and I adore the fact that she started the Imagination Library to give free books to young children. I think reading to kids from birth is vitally important.
2. I've been using the same jumbo container of Sun laundry detergent since approximately.... February. It has not run out. Every time I use it, I think, "This is it. It has to be it." .... but it's not it. It seems to be endless. What is going on?
3. It's supposed to be 100 degrees here today. That means you will find me one of two places: 1) inside in the air conditioning or 2) in the pool. Only 2 options.
4. Here's what I do to get through my Saturday morning cleaning frenzy that I sentence myself to: I put every tv on the channel where they are showing "Property Ladder," (where people buy run down shacks and try to flip them) and I watch people stress out and make stupid decisions and demolish the wrong wall and pull up tile and find out termites ate the whole foundation... and it makes me feel better about the fact that my biggest problem right now is that I need to vacuum up the cat hair.
5. Did you listen to "Little Sparrow?" It makes me imagine I'm in the mountains somewhere, and Dolly is sitting out on the front porch of an old cabin just playing her guitar and singing.
That's right, the title is "Dog in a Cooler." What in the world would a dog be doing in a cooler? I asked myself the same thing.... before I went on a family beach vacation. Now, I only WISH I didn't know of any reasons why a dog could be in a cooler.
My cousins have several Yorkies that they have had for many years and are incredibly attached to. I don't know if this is something that is common for the breed, or if it was just their dogs, but they have always been sickly little dogs. Apparently, it came to pass that after half of the family already arrived at the beach, one of the Yorkies took a turn for the worse and the vet informed my cousin that the dog was in kidney failure and wouldn't make it. Obviously, there was only one thing to do......
pack up the dying dog and bring it to the beach to die.
You heard me. BRING THE DOG TO THE BEACH TO DIE!!
ANYWAY..... so the dog comes to the beach, and they put it on some towels in the closet and it just lays there. It can't move, it can't eat, it is just a pitiful sight. I truly felt sorry for the dog, but I just wasn't sure what the appropriate response is when your relatives have a dog dying in the closet on your family beach trip. It was just weird. What was weirder was that everyone wanted to act like it was NORMAL. Nobody knew what to do. Every night the dog owners would huddle up in the room with the dying dog and cry. I felt sympathy, but again... what do you do in that situation?? My husband and I usually tried to stay out somewhere, or at least out on the porch. It was just easier to avoid the situation rather than show how uncomfortable we were.
It goes without saying that a dog dying of kidney failure will eventually... die. And she did. With two days left of the beach trip. So again, they did the ONLY logical thing to do....
they bought some bags of ice and put the dead dog in a cooler.
Let me repeat that: They bought some bags of ice and put the dead dog in a cooler.
I spent the rest of the trip trying to pretend that there was NOT a dead dog in a cooler under the house.
I don't want to sound unsympathetic. I know they really loved that dog, and I hate it that she died. In fact, I love my cat, and my parents love their cat, and I know I would be sad it my cat died. But I can pretty much guarantee you that it would have never occurred to me to take my pet to the beach to die and be put in a cooler. But hey.... to each his own, I guess, right?
RIGHT??
If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'll be in therapy. Thanks for understanding.
I've been on a family vacation. A long family vacation that seemed longer due to the fact that there were just WAY too many people crammed into one little beach house. With two bathrooms. But hey, it was the beach, and my husband and I tried to escape and go off on our own as often as possible.
We stayed at Surfside Beach, which is just a few miles down from Myrtle Beach, SC. If you're not familiar with Myrtle Beach, it's fun but very tourist-y with lots of restaurants, attractions, and outlet malls. Also, it's full of adorable little retro motels that have been in operation on the strip (aka Ocean Blvd.) since the 50's or 60's. But Surfside is different. It's just houses, mostly. Beach houses of all sizes, with a few little restaurants and beach stores thrown in between.
This is the view of Surfside Pier from the bridge that takes you from the street to the beach.
Here's the view across the street of some of the beach houses. I just love the ones done in bright colors! We were on the second row from the beach, but we had a clear view of the ocean between some of the houses.
This is what we saw when we looked off our front porch.
And here was our little house! It's called Misty Suft, and it was cute. We spent a lot of time on the rocking chairs on the front porch, and a lot of time drying out bathing suits on the back porch :-)
Like almost all the houses, it was a stilt house, which means it's built up off the ground on stilts to protect it from flooding in the case of a storm surge in a hurricane. (Pretty self explanatory!) The hanging blue thing is called an AirChair, and it was extremely comfortable and fun. I'm dying to have one!
We went out on the pier one day. Lots of people fish off of it, and they were catching a lot of little sharks. In case you were wondering, that is precisely the reason why I do NOT swim in the ocean! Or any body of water. Because I have a deep rooted phobia of living creatures in the water of any kind, and nobody can convince me that they aren't there.
Here's hubby looking in the high powered telescope on the pier. He didn't know I took this picture :-)
Here's the view of the beach from the pier. You can barely see the rows of oceanfront beach houses, and the tiny little specks of people!
and this is Nibil's Oceanfront Dining, where you can get a delicious breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We ate breakfast there one morning. It was in walking distance from our beach house. The servers are friendly and although it's always a full house, we've never had a really long wait when we've gone there. There are huge windows all around so you can look out over the ocean while you eat, and the inside it kind of like an Irish pub atmosphere.
Here are some of the bigger, nicer, (read: more expensive!) beach houses you'll find at Surfside. Basically, you can spend anywhere from $1000 per week to $9000 per week at Surfside. It's all up to you, and while you probably do get what you pay for to some extent, there really aren't too many "run-down" looking places that would be bad to stay in. Personally, $9000 per week for a vacation rental sounds a little crazy to me, but to each his own! You can find plenty of nice rentals from $1800 to $4000 or so, and if you are insane like we are and decide that it sounds like a GREAT idea to pile up in a beach house with lots of relatives.... then it's really a very reasonable way to travel.
If you can handle that kind of togetherness.
And it probably helps if you can bring some tranquilizers, just in case.
But seriously, Surfside Beach is beautiful and it's my favorite place to stay in the Grand Strand (which, for those of you how don't know, is the strand of beaches running down the coast of SC). I highly recommend it... although you'll have to make your own decision about the family part!! (More to come on that.... when I get enough sedatives in my system to be able to discuss it. Just kidding. ..... I think.) :-)
I went to see Mac, my great-grandma, at the nursing home tonight. She was sitting on the porch with my uncle and aunt, which are her son and daughter. Mac has Alzheimer's, but when I went she was having a pretty good day. She seemed to sort of know who we were, and she kept saying that it was getting cloudy and she thought it might rain. She was calm, and she took her medicine without a fuss.
Suddenly, without warning, she had one of her little wild episodes. She got an angry look in her eyes, and she started yanking on her belt that helps keep her from trying to get up out of her wheelchair. (Her balance is not good, and she can only walk when she has someone to stabalize her.) She got very agitated, and was getting louder and louder in demanding that somebody cut that belt off of her. When she does that, we've found that, at this stage, the best thing to do is to try to change the situation quickly! It tends to distract her long enough for her episode of agitation to pass. We usually either move her to another spot, or a different room, or take her to her room and let her get in her recliner or bed. If it's really bad, we have to call a nurse and slip out, because sometimes the presence of family can prolong it. This time, my uncle Bud just got her wheelchair and said, "Let's go inside, so you can take off your belt and get in the bed." That satisfied her, so we headed in.
When we got inside, he slipped out and my aunt and I helped her get out of her clothes and into her gown. She was still a little agitated, so she fought us a little bit and fussed that she wanted her shirt back on. But once she got her gown on, and we helped her get into her bed, a calm came over her and she returned to a state that more closely resembles the "real" Mac. She smiled at me, and I got her water, and she asked for a Kleenex to wipe her face, and we talked about my upcoming trip to the beach. Her eyes were getting heavy, and we turned out the lights. She said, "But I need to get home before it starts raining." I told her she was already in her own bed, and that it probably won't rain anyway. She seemed okay with that answer. I told her I needed to head home to get ready for the beach. She said, "Well, you go ahead and do what you need to do." I kissed her head, and she smelled like the powder she has always put on for as long as I can remember.
"Don't stay out in the sun too long and have a heat stroke," she said.
"I won't," I told her.
"Don't let any snakes get you," she said.
"I won't!" I said again. "I'll see you when I get back. I love you, Mac."
"I love you, too," she said, and I think she means it, even though she probably doesn't remember my name.
And I tucked her blankets under her chin, like she likes them, and I went out.
And I realized, once again, how life is a circle. How one day you take care of people who took care of you. How we cycle from dependence, to independence, and often back to dependence again. How much better it is for people who have loved ones to take care of them, and how sad for those who don't. How one day she probably won't know us at all, not even on a good day, if she even has good days at all. How blessed I've been to have had her in my life all these years.
Everybody knows that people in the South say, "Bless your heart!" A lot of people make fun of it and think it's just a silly thing Southerners say when they want to talk trash about somebody without sounding mean. (I mean, we ARE known for being polite!) And that's partially true! In fact, it's true what you've heard; that you can pretty much say anything you want about somebody if you tag "bless her/his heart" on the end.
Examples:
"She's ugly as dirt, bless her heart."
"He's dumber than a rock, bless his heart."
"She's fat as mud, bless her heart."
(Notice the poetic use of simile!) :-)
Now granted, it's still not especially nice to say those things about people out loud, or even to think them in our heads. But when you tag "bless his/her heart" on the end, what you're essentially saying is, "Sure, they have flaws, but I still love them. I empathize with them. I accept them!"
(Ok, maybe that's not what EVERYONE means, but it's what most people mean when they use the phrase that way. I think. I hope!)
The other way to use the phrase is when expressing true, genuine sympathy or empathy for the person. In this case, you can state the observation directly TO the person.
Examples:
(To an 8 1/2 months pregnant woman): Honey, your feet must be killing you, bless your heart!
(To a person who expresses that they have a headache/various other ailment): Well, I hope you get to feeling better, bless your heart!
If you REALLY, REALLY mean it, you can even add the word "little" in for emphasis. An appropriate time to use this special form would be if someone gave you a delightful and unexpected gift.
"Well, bless your little heart! You didn't have to do that!"
So there you have it. Yes, it can be used to try to sugarcoat an insult, but it also has several other usages, and its usefulness shouldn't be underestimated. Such a simple phrase, but so many complex meanings.
Go ahead, throw it into a conversation! You won't be able to stop.
The South has no scarcity of characters who do things just a little differently. Maybe they march to the beat of their own drum. Maybe they see things that other people don't quite see. Some people call it "crazy," and they mean it in a negative, cutting way. In the South, "crazy" doesn't mean they need to be locked up, or thrown away, or removed from polite society. It just means they are a little different, and everybody knows it, and life just goes on. Julia Sugarbaker explains it rather clearly:
"Designing Women" is one of my all-time favorite shows, because it shows Southern women who are smart, sassy, independent, and full of snappy come-backs. My favorite character is Julie Sugarbaker, the older sister of Suzanne and the owner of the interior design company. My daddy has always said that my sister and I are just like Julia and Suzanne... I'm the independent older one with the snappy one-liners, and Alaina is the ditsy former beauty queen who is always doing something so crazy that you just have to laugh. I guess he's pretty much right.
I love this scene where Julia explains crazy people in the South, because she speaks the truth. Every small town in the Southern United States has at least one major town character, and some have quite a few. These are individuals who just do their own thing, in their own way, and everybody knows it and is fine with it. Allow me to give you a few examples:
Tater Owens: When my mama was growing up, there was an alcoholic painter that wandered around the community. If he came to your house, you had to hide your vanilla extract and shoe polish because he was known to drink ANYTHING. Once, while painting the bathroom, he drank my grandpa's Hai Karate Aftershave. Everybody knew that's just how he was though, and everybody hired him to paint anyway. One time my grandma asked him to stay for dinner, and when they passed him the plate of dinner rolls, he just stabbed one with his fork. My uncle gave him a ride to the softball field one day to watch the church league game. On the way, Tater imparted these words of wisdom:
"You better get you an education son, because that's one thing nobody can take away from you....... unless they shoot you in the head."
Well.
I think there's nothing more to be said about that!
Roscoe: Roscoe was an elderly African-American man who lived in my hometown and wandered around town wearing about 10 layers of shirts and coats even in the summer, pushing a lawn mower everywhere. He cut grass for a living, and pretty much everybody let him cut their grass. My great-grandpa and grandpa had both sort of looked out for him over the years, and he came over a lot. Sometimes, his lawn mower would break down and he would just go into my grandpa's garage when he wasn't home, get Papa's lawn mover and push it down the street, cut some grass with it, and then push it back. He saw nothing wrong with doing this, and my Papa just let him keep doing it.
One time, when I was young, my daddy got Roscoe to come cut our grass. Daddy picked him up in the truck and brought him over, and he spent about 30 minutes sitting down and drinking lemonade. Then he started cutting, and he cut so slowly that if he had gone one bit slower, he would have been standing still. He stopped for several more long lemonade breaks. While he was sitting there, he admired our hanging ferns.
"I sure do like that fern," he kept saying, so Mama finally said, "Well, Roscoe, would you like to take it home?"
"I believe I would," he said.
Then Roscoe discovered that we had a plastic garden frog that had a sensor in it, so that when something passed in front of it, it would croak. This delighted Roscoe to no end. He walked back and forth in front of it until the battery went dead.
About this time, Mama had lunch ready. Roscoe came in and we ate hotdogs. Daddy came home for lunch, and saw that Roscoe had cut about 10% of the yard and he was never going to get done at this rate. Daddy went out and cut the rest of the yard in less time than it had taken Roscoe to cut the 10%.
Then Roscoe finished his hot dogs. And got his fern. And Daddy paid him as if he had cut the whole yard and took him back home in the truck.
I'm thinking about taking up grass cutting for a living myself.
Ms. Tumblin: My aunt used to know an old lady named Ms. Tumblin. She used to see numbers running across the floor and call everybody telling them about it. She said they were coming out of the heater, and she kept calling the electric company and telling them about it.
It was a gas heater.
The Monkey Lady: At a small country church just up the road, there was a lady who never could have any children. Somehow, she came to own a chimpanzee. She dressed it up in children's clothes, and brought it to church every Sunday. It sat there with her on the pew, dressed up in clothes and wearing a diaper. Nobody ever said anything about it, except one old man who was a little visually impaired.
He said, "I hate to say it, but that kid she keeps bringing to church is about the UGLIEST kid I've ever seen."
God bless the South! God bless the people that accept these individuals who just do their own thing, and live their own way, and never really cause any harm to anybody. Julia's right. We don't hide our crazy people in the attic. We bring them right out on the porch, or give them rides to the store, or serve them lemonade, or pretend we don't notice that they just brought a monkey to church.
We tell their stories. And we thank God that we live in such a fascinating, eccentric, weird, and wonderful place!
I'm a young, married Southern Belle living in a small town that once claimed the title of "Peach Capital of the World." I live in a converted barn (yes, really) with my firefighter husband and our chronically misbehaving cat. We have dreams of one day restoring a beautiful farmhouse in the country and filling the yard with children, tractors, chickens, and goats, but for now we'll just be happy when we get our new house started!
