Happy Birthday, Viggo!

Happy 50th Birthday to Viggo Mortensen!

He rocks. Art. Poetry. Publishing. Writing. Photography. Acting. 'Nuff said.

Many (Silly) Faces

It's been too long since I took photos of the kids and not birds on the deck. Honestly, I think the kids are moving faster than the birds.

Super Bowl Snacks

Here are some of my favorite halftime snacks...these are the ones that people ask for over and over because they're fast and easy. Enjoy.


Superbowl Giants Wings

Wing portions, fried crispy
¾ cup Red Hot sauce
1 tsp soy sauce
¼ cup bottled bbq sauce
¼ cup honey
2 Tbsp. butter
Black pepper & Tabasco to taste
1/4 cup minced canned pineapple (optional)

Mix together in large bowl with lid and microwave one minute or until butter melts.

Toss fried wing sections with sauce in bowl with lid. Serve on platter with celery, carrots and blue cheese dressing.


Halftime Quesadillas

1 large onion, sliced thin
2 large sweet red peppers, sliced thin
8 oz. sliced mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, chopped
½ tsp oregano
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
3 pinches of cumin
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp garlic powder
2 Tbsp. olive oil
(2 cups shredded cooked well-seasoned chicken, optional)

8 large flour tortillas
2 cups shredded Monterey jack cheese
2 Tbsp. chopped jarred jalapenos (optional)

In large nonstick sauté pan, heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and peppers and sauté until tender, about 8 minutes. Remove to platter. Add 1 Tbsp.olive oil to same pan then add mushrooms. Saute until tender, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and sauté for one minute more. Add peppers/onions back to the pan and add remaining ingredients (except tortillas, cheese, jalapenos). Taste to check seasonings. Cook for 2 minutes more.

Assemble quesadillas: Place one tortilla on work surface, add ¼ cup cheese, top with nearly ½ cup peppers/onions mixture, sprinkle with jalapenos, then ¼ cup more cheese. Top with another tortilla. Repeat for remaining ingredients. (If using shredded chicken, add some to each.)

Quesadillas may be wrapped tightly and refrigerated overnight at this point.
To heat quesadillas: Heat nonstick pan with 1 tsp olive oil over medium heat. Carefully place assembled quesadilla to pan. Heat 3 minutes per side or until lightly brown. Flip and repeat until cheese melts. Cut into triangles and serve with salsa, sour cream and guacamole.


Chicken Satay

1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut in 1" x 1/4" x 3" long pieces

Marinade:
6 Tbsp soy sauce
Juice of 1 lemon
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 inch-piece ginger

Sauce:
4 Tbsp crunchy peanut butter
1 cup water

Cut pieces into cubes, mix marinade ingredients and refrigerate 2-6 hours.

After marinating chicken, put peanut butter with water in small saucepan. Strain and reserve chicken marinade. Add reserved marinade to the peanut butter mixture. Cook over medium until sauce is glossy, about 5-8 minutes.

Grill skewered or pan-fry chicken until brown and cooked through. Serve with sauce.

Scene from Central Park

The Gates, Central Park, February 2005

How Quickly They Grow

We visited the in-laws this weekend. It's great to catch up with everyone and see how the nephews are growing up and changing.

My nephew is a videographer on Long Island. He went to School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Now he has his own business doing wedding and party videos. He's got all this modern equipment, etc. I remember when he was just a little kid running around playing ball in the backyard...*sniffle* They grow so fast...

Anyway, here's his site..check it out if you ever need a videographer in the New York City, Long Island or tri-state region.

Jeffrey Thomas Video

Snow Day Tomorrow?

Lots of snow in the forecast for tomorrow. I'm ready. There's a sled with my name on it and I'm not afraid to use it!

Here's a shot from last year's snow fun. One of my favorite shots of my girlie-girl

Noxon Road Farm

Not nearly enough snowy shots this winter, so here's an old one. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a few new ones to share. If you look to the upper left of the wagon, you can see Mt. Beacon in the distance. That's like 15 miles as the crow flies. Nice view.

Let It Snow Already

I love winter but it's really the snow I like. This brown earth, grey sky stuff I could do without. Here's a few shots of last year's sledding fun in the snow.

Hudson Valley Leaf Cam

Here's a few minutes of leaf cam from Lagrangeville, New York. Turn up the volume and you can hear the crunchy leaves!

Leaf cam one

Leaf cam two

Apples, Apples Everywhere

Apple cider donuts, apples & cider from Barton Orchards farm stand

on Noxon Road, LaGrangeville.

Sweet Harvest

Honey, Meadowbrook Farms, Wappingers Falls

Last Harvest

The last tomato harvest from this year's garden with a few peppers and zucchini, too. Not bad for complete neglect!

Purple Coneflower Inn

Just a quick photo post...I love how this purple coneflower has spread throughout the garden. Definitely moving some this fall to the other beds.

Look at all the visitors it gets! Not only good for butterflies, but a variety of bees, too.

I'm allergic to bees, but I just stood really still and shot these. The butterflies were more disturbed by me than the bees. Happily.





Slideshow is here.

End of Summer Blues...and Reds

Just a few days left before school starts. It's the end of the summer. This is usually a tolerable week for me. I try to lay low, commitment-wise (although I have four story deadlines this week...managing it...kind of) and coast into that first week of school.

This week is usually great in the garden. All my late summer flowers are blooming, roses give another shot at being spectacular, and they are (even my white roses which have been dinner for deer all year), and the veggie garden is usually giving me more tomatoes than I know what to do with.

This year, my veggie garden is full of weeds. I weeded three times all summer. I normally put straw down to mulch - I didn't. I usually lay down soaker-hoses - nope. I usually tie my tomatoes up on the stakes every few days - try once a month. There's a canopy of overgrowth around the garden, too. The wild roses around the garden took steroids, apparently. As did the poision ivy, the weeds and some burr-bushes.

Amazingly, with all the neglect, I got a pretty good crop of tomatoes. I didn't think I'd have any...so some is good. I didn't water, didn't feed, the tomatoes fell over and wilted and I still have fruit.

It's a garden I used to have time for. Somehow (see also: four deadlines this week), my time was directed elsewhere. The two days I'm home from work, I spend doing other things..catching up in the house.

I did keep up with the front flower bed and the one by the pool. Everything needs work. With my son moving into middle school, I'll be up earlier. Hopefully I can use that extra half hour in the gardens - at the very least to look at them. I miss the soil in my hands. It's always a peaceful time in the garden.

Work less, garden more. Just found my new motto.

Summer Camp...Respite and Retreat

I'm typing this on the deck...it's 85 degrees at 9:30am but breezy. It's the last day of summer camp for the kiddies. Today they'll make candles and homemade bread. They're having a great time...and...so am I! I thought I'd be bored...lonely...miss them...NOT! lol.

I feel like that lady in the Staples commercial who is frolicking through the back-to-school aisles while her kids, sullen, drag slowly behind. I used to hate that commercial when my kids were little and quiet...and entertained. Now they're older, whinier, argumentative, combative with each other (oh! A hummingbird just buzzed by!) and bored. This week they came home so tired, they didn't have the energy for fighting or whining. This is the first time I've had the house to myself in....I don't remember when. With hubbie working from home a few days a week, I'm hardly ever alone.

I did stuff I never do this week. Read magazines. Floated in the pool. Did laps. Drank a beer and had a sub. (I eat fancy food at work for lunch...a sub is a treat for me!) I put a bikini on (with many towels on the deck railings shielding me from neighbors) and tanned. I got sunburned. I bought a new book. I read a page then remembered that I still had housework to do even though it seemed like I was on a tropical vacation somewhere.

I have to go back to work next week. This three weeks off makes me seriously consider becoming a teacher. Yes, yes, I love kids and like developing young minds, but c'mon...summers OFF! Snow days OFF! Holidays OFF! It's gotta be worth all the headaches and noise, noise, noise from kids and flack from their parents. Right??

Anyway...a few more hours of quiet. I'll have lunch with a friend today at a new place on the river. Maybe we'll have a cocktail. I don't think they give out crayons at the door. I'm happy about that.

I'll look forward to the kiddies coming home. They'll save me a bite of bread and in two weeks, their herbed vinegar will be ready. (My daughter asked me if bread lasted two weeks so she could dip her homemade bread in the homemade vinegar...I told her we'd make more bread. If a mom who works at the Culinary can't make bread...what good is that?!) We've done more stuff together this week at night than we usually do when they're home all the time. We played games in the pool. Watched TV. Hung out and talked. It's been good. For them and me.

Renaissance Artistry Rediscovered

My latest "Young Entrepreneur" story in the Poughkeepsie Journal is up today. I enjoyed interviewing venetian plaster artist Martin Ahlf and his wife about his work, which I'd never heard of before. Now I think I could work in the plaster supplier showroom as a salesperson!

Anyway, here it is. His wife took the story photo of his very cool Venetian plaster work in the New Orleans Ritz Carlton.

* * * * *

Unrelated, but I love this feature on the BBC site...A Day in Pictures. I found it last year when I was searching their site for something. I read a story there and emailed a comment and they emailed me asking to be on their radio show which is broadcast online. I think it was about politics, I can't remember. Anyway, I talked to the BBC program manager and he told me when they'd be calling. I waited around for them to call me for the entire show, then near the end, they called to say that the other guy, a very interesting non-profit director, took up all the time. Oh well. There went my 15 minutes.

Still a very cool site...with or without me yammerin on it.

Cool Cover Photo

Got the cover photo on Cuisine of the Hudson Valley magazine for the Poughkeepsie Journal this month. (Thanks, Barbara!)

This photo accompanies my story on cool summer foods. I collected a few recipes from chefs, a local restauranteur, Luis Pinto, and submitted a few of my own.

The photo was a challenge. I took a few at the restaurant but the light wasn't optimal (and my good camera's battery died, so I was left with the backup..long story short, I need a backup battery) and the dish needed to be arranged better for the closeup.

He gave me the dish to take home and I cleaned everything off and re-plated it, made a new sauce for the shrimp and shot photos like a mad-woman before the sun set outside. The photo at right is one of many, many, many shots.

I like being able to shoot my own photos for stories. It's not always an option, or convenient, but I enjoy it.

Food writing is great fun for me. I get to incorporate two of my favorite things...food and writing. I've also been doing the monthly food features at work for the Culinary. This month's is on brownies...not quite food porn like the tempura piece, but it's a good recipe.

Also had my story about adult kickball in the sports section. I think I've written for every section now except for local news. Any breaking news to share? Let me know...I'll ask someone else to write it...I'm too busy!!!
= )

Are you reading this....

If not, why not?

Home Fires

An excerpt from today's column by Jeffrey D. Barnett.

...If you listen to some people in the media you might believe we’re mostly uneducated felons. That certainly wasn’t true during my experience. I worked with numerous enlisted marines that had both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The most prominent example was a sergeant (E-5) in my battalion that had a master’s degree. He was over 30 years old, and had obviously signed up to serve in the face of numerous opportunities, not due to the lack of them...

I love he how just slaps you in the face with his writing...all of them do. Like a big wet fish, slap! It's about time...there's much more fine writing in that column by five Iraq War Vets.

Write on, Home Fires columnists.

Quality Time

I was interviewing some co-ed softball players for a possible summer story and I saw this mom and daughter walking along sharing some quality, quiet time.

I miss taking those small steps with my kids. Small feet, small legs taking small steps. A tiny hand in mine. Some days you wish they would hurry up and grow. Now, of course, you wish you could squish them in a little box to keep them small.

Happily, I had a lot of these types of moments as a stay-at-home mom. Lots of picnics in parks, day-trips to the quiet lake. Nothing to do but enjoy the day and play. The best kind of quality time.

Home Fires: Veterans Write on their Lives Post-War

Some good writing and tough stories in the Times latest guest Op-Ed columns on the war. Five Iraq War Vets write on their return to life back home. Not sure I agree with the TimesSelect wall being up on these. These stories need to be heard, not just by folks who'll shell out the dough to read them...even though, yes, I know, there's a free trial. But it's the principle of the thing.

The latest entry is a column by Lee Kelley, who mil-blogged for the Times last year from Iraq. A fine writer who, as he reported in his column, now has a literary agent! Go Lee! His blog also highlights some of his writing. I recommend May 2006, "Just Drop Me Off When This Thing Is Over."

He is also featured in Time's Person of the Year Dec. 2006 Issue, Citizens of the New Digital Democracy piece. (Time's Person of the Year was YOU, in case you missed it. You and you and you. All of us, apparently. I knew I'd have my 15 minutes eventually!)

Best of luck, Lee and enjoy the fishing with the kids.

Memorial Day

From a chain email I received...for Memorial Day...

In September of 2005, a social studies schoolteacher from Arkansas did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.

The kids came into first period, they walked in; there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Where's our desks?" The teacher said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them." They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

"No," she said. "Maybe it's our behavior."

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in the class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.

The last period of the day, the instructor gathered her class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell you."

She went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. By the time they had finished placing the desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

Their teacher said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it.

New story

New story on the business page today...the first of a continuing monthly series on young entrepreneurs...read it here. Many thanks to Rick Palermo for taking my calls on the job, often in the middle of the job, and being patient with my numerous questions. And thanks to his mom for telling the story from her side. And for being a mom.

Memorial Day...Remembering the Fallen

I had the pleasure of meeting a group of Marines recently who were taking classes where I work. They were sent here from all over the globe to learn how to become better chefs. One from a Marine base in Japan, one from Hawaii, the Pentagon, Texas and other bases.

My grandfather was a cook in the Army in WWII. Because of his cooking experience prior to the war, he was assigned to be a cook at Fort Dix Army Training Center in New Jersey. He was frustrated to be "only a cook" and not a fighting soldier, but as the war went on, he realized that his meals might be the last bit of home-cooking that soldiers ate before going off to battle, or ever.

He took his responsibilities seriously and made the best meals he could with what he had. If he needed better ingredients, he'd find a way to get them. Soldiers would ask for his "special" bread pudding or roast potatoes. I cooked with him at religious retreats for West Point cadets and his food was prepared with the same love and attention and received with equal parts of love and thankfulness.

I remember one retreat, we, the cooking volunteers, were hungry in the kitchen after preparing and serving the meals but we wouldn't eat until the cadets had had enough. If they wanted seconds, he encouraged us to give them our portions - with love. It was a lesson he drilled into me - cooking a meal for someone is sharing part of you with them...it's a labor of love.

These Marines had similar attitudes about preparing meals for their fellow soldiers. They spent five weeks with us and learned, we hope, a great deal. We did, too but not about cooking.

I learned these Marines know how to follow a recipe. It was harder to teach them to break the rules of the recipe and make it their own, but they did eventually. I learned they are serious about studying and learning but they like to have fun, too. They want to live while they're alive - a simple concept perhaps, but something that takes on different meaning when you're a soldier.

They are brothers and fathers and husbands and sons. One was a daughter and she had a beautiful smile, although she said that Marines don't smile for photos. I caught her smiling for a moment and got one anyway, but that smile was just too wonderful...Marine or not.

I learned about where they came from and, perhaps more important, where they've been. These were Marines ages 19-40. Some had been to Iraq already. Some had been a few times. They shared video and photos from Iraq. Some lighter moments, but most were not.

Today, I saw similar photos in the NY Times. A very moving article (by Damien Cave with a photographic series by Michael Kamber) of a group of soldiers who had just been injured by a hidden off-road bomb. They were searching for the three soldiers who were kidnapped last week and were themselves injured during the search. One fatality, three others injured. The photographer and reporter were with the troop at the time of the explosion and were able to describe and document the scene in great detail.

The one fatality, the one dead soldier in this troop, on this day had a name. His name was Sgt. Justin D. Wisniewski. He was 22 years old.

If you Google his name, it comes up about 360 times. If you asked ten people on the street who he is, chances are no one will know who he is.

If you ask ten people on the street who the newest American Idol is, chances are many will know. Google an American Idol finalist and you'll find over 2 million listings.

This bothers me. It bothers me more now, I suppose, because for the past five weeks, I have put names to faces of soldiers. Of Marines. Marines who have fought and lived through this war. Marines who have yet to go over to Iraq. Marines who will likely return there again for their second or third tours. Marines who I hope will all make it back. I didn't know any soldiers personally before these five weeks. None of my friends are soldiers. No one from work is. No one in my family is. Now I know a few and I will remember their names and their faces and their smiles.

In Sgt. Wisniewski's hometown in Standish, Michigan, people will likely know his name. They would likely want you to know and remember his name. He is their American Idol. A photo of him in uniform was posted at his high school on Monday. He was remembered there with a moment of silence.

There are 3,452 names from this Iraq War that need remembering. A list of their names and photos is here.

I'll remember one here today.

Sgt. Justin D. Wisniewski.





Related stories:

"I Will Always Be Your Soldier" by Ryan J. Stanton, Bay City Times

In the Times on Sunday entitled "Coming Home" about Iraq War Veterans' lives after the war.

"An Invisible War" by NY Times Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert, May 3, 2007

Celiac Disease article

My story on Celiac Disease is up on the Poughkeepsie Journal's site....read it here.