Hodgepodge: Hot Meals, Hokey Pokey, and Handing Down Holidays

The Hodgepodge came to my lodge again, thanks to Joyce and the worldwide web. Here's this week's Q&A. I hope your life is richer after reading my post, but please don't hold me hostage if it isn't. OH, and please join in today if all you've done thus far is read. It's a lot of fun to see who says what about random topics.


1. What's your favorite meal to serve on a chilly autumn evening?

Chicken noodle soup hot off the stove, and hot, crusty bread right out of the bread machine. Maybe a salad, too, but that's not essential. I was sure wishing tonight that I could come home to such a meal, but as we were at Johns Hopkins and on the I-95 corridor for a collective 8 hours, plus locally to piano lessons, I wasn't Susie Soupmaker today. We had leftover clam chowder (not homemade) but that's just not the same when you're feeling like slurping some hot, tasty broth and shreds of white chicken meat and slippery pasta. Mmm. Maybe tomorrow. If I remember to buy yeast. I have none. It takes a little leaven to leaven the whole lump, after all.


2. Are you a creature of habit? Explain.

Yes, ma'am , I am a creature of habit. As a habit I stay up late, but get up at the same time regardless. My first stop after the bathroom in the morning is the coffee pot, followed by a making of breakfast for the likes of the family, and packing lunches unless I have to teach. In that case, my loving honey packs lunches. As a habit, I take my glasses off when I eat, and hog the covers in the middle of the night. At church I have a favorite row on the right side of a three-section auditorium; if it's taken, I have a second favorite row on the left side. Never in the middle. I hate the middle. I've been in the middle my whole life, and I mean because of birth order. I also tend to habitually listen to the same music over and over in the car, even though I tell myself I really need to expand my repertoire. I don't put on my seatbelt until I'm out of the driveway, and when I return home, I usually just sit there and think, or appear to think. I don't just turn the engine off, get out, and go into the house like my hubby does. It's a ritual. I have too many rituals, probably. Most involve some form of sitting and thinking.



3. What food product (no longer readily available) do you remember and miss from days gone by?

Two things: tomatoes from my dad's garden (which was probably 800 square feet, give or take) on the old homestead which was sold about a dozen years ago, and I miss meals made by my mom (she doesn't tolerate being on her feet much anymore, and cooking for our family is a big effort for someone unaccustomed to cooking for six). It's been a hard reality to come to terms with the fact that the culinary baton and hosting responsibility have been passed on to me-- and have been for a few years. I don't mind, usually, but I long for the days of being pampered by "going to my mom's" instead of "inviting my mom and dad" over for big holiday meals. This was my pre-guests table last Thanksgiving. (The napkin at my place is missing from the photo; I think it needed ironing, which I'm pretty certain meant I tossed it damp into the dryer for a "good enough" dewrinkling. )

4. What's something you've lost that you've never been able to find? Any theories as to what happened?

My sister's keys. It's been 15 years. They were a spare set she put me in charge of when she went on a long vacation one year. I was to stop in and feed her cat daily, check the mail, and drive her car occasionally. I did all that while she was gone ,but when she asked for her keys back, I couldn't find them to return. She had another set on her, of course, because she is just an efficient overachiever type. The keys never did turn up. I doubt they will. If they do, I will know whose they are. There is a key chain attached that says, "I know I'm efficient. Tell me I'm beautiful." Seriously! I'm not poking fun at her. She really did have that key chain.

The only theory I have is that I'm not as efficient as my firstborn sister. She's a "keeper" and I'm a "loser"!

5. Zoo~circus~ carnival...your favorite?

Carnival, because they sell cotton candy. REAL cotton candy!!

6. What song makes you feel instantly happy?

The Hokey Pokey.

7. To what extent are you an argumentative person?

Given the right (or wrong, perhaps?) set of issues, circumstances, hormones, weather conditions, and people, I can argue the filament out of a lightbulb. I can argue spots off a leopard and the stripes off a zebra. I can be quintessentially articulate when I'm angry, but bumblingly inarticulate when I argue with someone who is hands-down more knowledgeable, more logical, and less emotional than I. That is the sort of person I married, so you'd think after a quarter-of-a-century of losing verbal debates, I wouldn't put up my dukes. But I almost always do anyway. I'm the last-word kind of girl, and I wish I weren't. I admire people who have the self-control and confidence and peaceable nature to just zip their lips.


8. Insert your own random thought here. How about a Toll Booth Scholarship?

Today we had to make two round-trips to our second son's college. (See yesterday's post.) Each way the toll is $2 unless you have an EZ Pass. (He has one; we don't.) So on the fourth cash-layout, it occurred to me what a wonderful fundraiser it would be if we could convince the state to sponsor a college student. You know, a Toll Booth Scholarship. Instead of keeping the toll money for that year, the state would endow a Maryland family of college students with the money for tuition. The criteria of the family: They have two students in college, one who pays a toll twice a day, five days a week; one is female who student teaches for nothing, and the other is male-- a computer science major who plays drums ; both have the initials SZ ; both are the younger sibs to a recent college grad and both have a brother in fourth grade who loves to embarrass them. I'm thinking we might be likely candidates for the Toll Booth Scholarship. What do you think?