Author Archives: backyardsisters

The Weekend Dish – Snickerdoodles

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The summer I was nine years old our family embarked on a cross country driving trip. We were mixing touring the United States with meeting our mother and father’s extended families. Piling into the the large, brown Pontiac station wagon along with the ensuing daily “discussion” over who would get to sit in the rear-facing back seats became the routine. The anticipation of getting to St Louis, where our mother’s cousin and her family lived, was growing by the day. Following the introductions, a bit of awkwardness developed as we attempted to become acquainted. A snack of snickerdoodles and a drink was offered. We were unfamiliar with snickerdoodles but soon learned they are delicious cinnamon sugar cookies. There is nothing quite like cookies to put a slightly awkward crowd at ease. That afternoon, we shared stories and jokes getting to know each other better while nibbling snickerdoodles.  Our delight with the cookies during our visit  prompted our mother to request the recipe. The snickerdoodle has now made it’s place in my recipe box and it has become a regular on the annual Christmas cookie platter. The sweetness of the cinnamon and sugar along with a slight tartness from the cream of tartar mix together to create a perfectly delectable blend of flavors.  

Snickerdoodles

1 cup shortening   (I use butter)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cinnamon sugar:  to make cinnamon sugar, mix 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (or to taste) with a quarter cup of granulated sugar.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream together the shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Add to the shortening mixture, beating well. Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes.

Tear off walnut-size pieces of dough and roll each into a ball. Roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place on an ungreased baking sheet, spacing the cookies about 2 inches apart. Cookies can be pressed with a fork in a criss-cross pattern if you want. Bake until the cookies are light brown and firm on top, 10 to 15 minutes.

Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish. Store in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

~Sue

Give the people a love story

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What are you writing?
Everyone wants to know.
Wretchedly miserable love poems, I say.
The poems or the love?
You, of all people, must know.
(from beach bag journal, 2005)

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Kauai is a study in couples.

Yesterday’s bride perches poolside, feet dangling in the water.  A fraternity-size of group of men surrounds her, holding out icy cups of beer.

“Drink!”
“Drink!”
“Drink!”

“No more!” she insists and jumps to her feet.

Newlywed

As she sashays away the rhinestone word scripted across her bikini bottom sparkles in the afternoon sun. The man wearing the white Groom hat downs his beer and doesn’t follow.

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Fewer people will look you in the eye and say, I could be your lover than the number who will say they’re thinking about becoming a writer too.

Which one of these is the harder thing to do?
(from beach bag journal 2006)

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The friends who join us on this trip point out The Feral Pig, a restaurant that used to be a breakfast place.  “We ate there on our honeymoon. ”

These are the kind of friends we’ve had since before we both married that hot summer of 1980, D and I trading bridesmaid duties.

Today they giggle, then tell us a honeymoon story.

One morning, we saw a couple eating breakfast there.

They just sat at a table, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper.  They never even talked to each other.

We think of that couple all the time.  We don’t to be like them.

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Repeat after me: Give the people a love story.

Los viejitos sólo deben salir para ser amables.  Old people should only go out in public to be sweet.

This quote is attributed to Leopoldo, the uncle of Aura Estrada, Aura, the muse and amor of author Franciso Goldman, Aura, the woman who died in a freak body surfing accident and then Francisco wrote about her in the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.  In Say Her Name, Francisco says,

“Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that’s my advice to the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breather her in deeply. Say her name…”

He can write about love like that because he doesn’t have it anymore and no one can accuse him of being sentimental.

I read Say Her Name on the beach and remember a question I once asked an entire class at the end of a semester when I was a literature grad student.

“Where, where is the happy love story, the great literature happy love story?”

Titles peppered me like small darts. Love in the Time of Cholera.  Anna Karenina. Lolita.

So I start with Lolita. I find love in a million masks: obsessiveness, possessiveness, irrationality, kindness, tenderness, anger, illness, forgiveness, relief and release, madness. Is this the only kind of love that makes great books? I really need to know the answer to this. I really need to find a happy love literary feat.

My friend who’s never been to grad school but loves to read suggests Rebecca.   I look it up, it’s a romance novel. I don’t read it.

Maybe love and literature are like the raindrops in a storm.  Who can write well about one small droplet of water without evoking thunder and floods and the loss of sun behind clouds?  One small drop of fresh water. Where’s the miracle in that?

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“We’re on our honeymoon.”

I tell this to my husband, (isn’t that a glorious word?), I tell my husband this as we stand at Gate 45 in LAX preparing to board our flight to Kauai.

“Our honeymoon. Yes. I like the sound of that.”

In truth, we’ve been married almost 32 years.

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Writers block only happens when you stop telling the truth.
(Scribbled in my Theory of Fiction Class Notes)

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The Gray Divorcés

The divorce rate for people 50 and over has doubled in the past two decades. Why baby boomers are breaking up late in life like no generation before.
Wall Street Journal headline, March 2012.

One small drop of fresh water. Where’s the miracle in that?
Repeat after me:
Give the people a love story.

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You don’t brick over the hearth if the fire burns out.  You gather kindling and tinder. You haul in logs from the woods.  Hell, you cut down the whole damn forest  if you must.

You hold a long-stemmed match to crumpled paper of your past and breathe and blow to fan the flame. You swear to tend this fire as if your life depends upon it.

You don’t want to be that couple that doesn’t hold hands on the beach, nor the one who doesn’t talk at dinner.  You want to be that one over there, the one laughing in the surf, holding hands.  I wonder if they’re on their honeymoon?

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“Write love stories. I benefit when you write love stories. I’ll be your research.”
J says this to me one day when I say I’m only writing sad stories.
(From my journal, March, 2007)

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Just don’t lie to me says the writer to the heart. It makes the work turn out badly.

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I tell J I’m sorry. I can’t write a happy love story. I wonder though: can I write you a life instead?

~With love, C

night moves

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As I prepare for a visit to Chicago, I recall a previous trip and the street performer with the most unique act. While strolling down Michigan Ave. one night, we encountered this fellow and his one man show. I was glad that I had my camera with the 85mm – F/1.8 lens attached.

He attributed his flexibility to the practicing of yoga. He does seem to be in a zone.  I think if I practiced yoga every day for three hours I would never be able to fit in that box. I would, however, be stronger and more flexible with just one hour. Here’s to the power of yoga!

~ Sue

Food, marvelous, wonderful, glorious food

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The orphans in Oliver! sing its praises, “food, glorious food,”  we need it to survive and I don’t know about you but I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about it. . . food! I devote countless hours to pondering what to make for meals then peering at produce and labels to pick the necessary ingredients, poring over menus when ordering at a restaurant and perusing cookbooks and magazines looking for inspiration. Recently I have found yet another way of expending even more energy on food by taking photos of it.

If you also like talking about and taking pictures of food there is a photography contest under way that may suit your fancy.  My Nikon Life Magazine is the sponsor, but you don’t need to use a NIKON camera to enter. They “want a mouth-watering story about a great food experience – told in both words and pictures.”   The contest has been divided into three phases and currently is in the third and final phase. The deadline for submissions is  31 August, 2012.  Just like the song in Oliver! the title is Food Glorious Food and you can click there to find out all about it.

Also, if you are in the Los Angeles area June 9th and are in the market for new, original artwork you may want to check out the pop-up gallery the Tappan Collective is sponsoring. The Tappan Collective is an online gallery selling artwork by emerging artists from around the country. The pop-up gallery is 7-10PM at the Jeffries Building, 117 Winston St, LA. To learn more and get all the details visit the Tappan Collective website.

~Ciao, Sue

Things I find on the beach

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A found a cat’s eye marble once.  A salt-pitted wedding band.  A mirror.

And you, of course, in my beach journal from Kalapaki Beach, Kauai one June.

Overheard in the water, father to his daughter on Saturday

The knee-high girl with butter blonde hair is bright as a bobbin in pink rash guard and orange ruffle bathing suit.  As she jumps small waves, she practices a new word.

Here comes undertow!
Can you see undertow?
There it is—
There’s undertow!
Here it comes again!
It’s undertow!
Jump undertow!
Here it is!
Here’s undertow!
We can’t ride undertow!
He can’t hurt you!
Here it is—
He’s undertow—

A wave washes up to her chest and she screeches in the way little girls at the beach sometimes do.

“Daddy!”

The man standing with her pulls her high into the air.

I’ve got you— I’ve got you—
I’ve got you—
Don’t worry
That’s just the current
It won’t hurt you
It can’t carry you away.
Don’t worry. I’ll never let go.
I’ve got you.
I’ve got you honey, I’m here.

Overheard the same day
This from the man in the navy blue baseball cap and black sunglasses to the boy calling, “Dad!  Dad!” who is trying to cling to his neck in the waves.

Touch me one more time and I will walk straight up to the babysitter and make a reservation for you.

The boy swims to the shore and walks away alone up the beach without looking back.

Later that day:  Seen but not heard at sunset

The man and woman recline side by side on lounge chairs.  Both silent. Both reading. She sets down her book, glances at him.  He doesn’t look up.

She peels her pink tank top over her head, sheds her khaki shorts.  She tiptoes across the hot sand to water’s edge and sits, facing the sea.

He looks up from his book to the horizon.  He sets down the book, stands and picks up a camera from the small glass side table.  His gait across the sand is silent, bobbly. Quite slow.  He peers through his viewfinder as he walks.

Without a word, he places his hand hand on the woman’s shoulder.  She swivels her head, upturns her cheek, mouths a silent “Oh?”

This is the moment he presses the shutter.  Then he lowers the camera from his face and returns the smile she shines upon him.

What else do I find by the sea? A thought.

Hours ago, a huge dock was found on Agate Beach in Oregon, debris finally at rest after its untethering from Japan during last year’s tsunami.  You can read about it here.  Official reactions are mixed.  Some marvel at its long journey. Others worry about the environmental contamination it might bring.

On this day by the beach, I too can’t help but wonder:  Will I leave behind delight or detritus today?  And you, what about you?

With all due respect to oceans and tides,
~C

Man vs Wild. . . the desert

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Harsh, arid, desolate, barren are all adjectives which can be used to describe a desert. On a trip to the Mojave desert I explored an abandoned army post outside Kingman, AZ and wondered why this group of dilapidated buildings is now left to deteriorate and be used for what looks like target practice. In the spring, the buildings are shaded by some trees and the vegetation is mostly green. It’s a picturesque scene. I learned the old highway used to run next to the outpost.The desert is full of items left behind to rust, decay and crumble. Remnants of a past once useful now discarded.

Hardy, tough, prickly, sturdy can all be used to describe the plants of the desert. They must posses some or all of those qualities to survive the harsh climate. In the spring, many of them are flowering and I find a certain satisfaction that something can not only survive but thrive beautifully in the desert. Thus I turned my lens to the desert and the natural beauty mixed with the remains of man’s existence in one spot.

Man,

vs.  Wild,

Man,

vs. Wild,

Man,

vs.  Wild,

Man,

vs. Wild,

I think both are intriguing. How about you?

~ Sue

bees

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Happy chance, serendipity, luck call it what you might it never ceases to amaze me. In the past month I experienced a convergence of events that was truly serendipitous. A couple of weeks ago while out in my yard removing shoots from under the apricot tree, I noticed the presence of an unusually large number of bees. First, one or two, that’s normal; then  seven or eight, that’s quite a few; then, I became aware of a steady buzzing sound which originated over my head! A bee colony had taken up residence in our apricot tree!

The seeming randomness and chaos of their movements is mesmerizing. I kept thinking of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and this advice regarding “…’bee yard etiquette’. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”

I love the little pollinators when they are at work doing what they do to the flowers and fruit trees in the yard. It is a good year for our apricot tree. We have a bumper crop and I know it is due, in a large part to those bees; however, I am not sure I want to have to deal with such a large number of bees at once.

Now to the serendipity, about three weeks prior to the appearance of the hive my husband   ran into a friend from years ago who we hadn’t seen in a very long time. She shared that her family was keeping bees and gave him a jar of honey.  After marveling at the hive and taking many pictures our thoughts turned to, what do we do with this hive?  So, what pops into our minds (well, my always connecting dots and joining occurrences thinking husband’s mind) calling the beekeeper family and see if they would like it. Sure enough they did want it and came that evening to collect the bees.

We ran into the family once again and they reported the bees have settled in to their new home and are doing “bee”autifully. They also shared another jar (the biggest jar I have ever seen) of honey.

One of my favorite ways to use honey is to drizzle it over Greek yogurt  and add some berries. I am now on the lookout for more recipes utilizing honey and coincidentally, a blogger who liked one of our posts, romancing the bee,  is a beekeeper herself and has many delicious sounding and looking recipes.

Bees are remarkable creatures when around and in their hives especially. Their ceaseless activity inspired awe in me as they crawled chaotically over each other each one doing their own thing . As one who has been stung too many times, I was doing my best to “send the bees love” and in the process developed a new appreciation for them.

~Sue

“Stop this day and night with me…”

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This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

Angel’s Apple Blossom

I saw Angel today.

He sat slumped in the driver’s seat of his sagging brown truck in the General Store parking lot at ten in the morning guzzling beer from a 24 oz. can.  His head waggled and seemed disjointed from his neck. His red eyes blazed. When I jumped out of my car and tried, after all these years, to finally thank him he waved me away with a wobbly hand.

“No, no, no.”

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

I had hired Angel one winter to mow my grass and pull weeds, to prune my roses and feed the orange trees. He did those things sporadically and not very well.  His strength was drinking beer and surprising me with gifts.  His specialty was to plant what appeared to be utterly dead fruit trees in my yard.

“The other house, no want,” he told me the first day I came home to find a bony trunk with naked branches staked on the fringe of my grass.

“What is it?” I asked.

Angel spread his muddy palms to the sky and shrugged.

“Fruit.”

“What kind of fruit?”

He spread his muddy palms to the sky and shrugged.

Slowly a patchwork orchard emerged in my backyard. Angel murmured to the branches as he hand watered the circles of dirt around each tree.  When he caught me watching him, he smiled broadly.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

“Is it alive?”

Angel nodded, always yes.

“What kind of tree?” He spread his muddy palms to the sky and shrugged.

Each tree ignored my need for it to prove its place by greening, then blooming on any proper schedule.  I researched the rhythm of bare root fruit, but spring didn’t bring an end to the mystery.  The trees remained unfazed as earth turned toward blooming season.  I stopped inspecting the branches after a while and began instead to consider how hard it might be to pull up dead trees.

Then one damp night I was restless and wandering, wanting stars.

Solitary at midnight in my backyard…

Angel’s first tree shimmered in the moonlight.  I walked up to it and swear I heard trumpets. What I had missed all those days, looking from afar at the branches barren of leaves was the riot of ruffled pink popcorn pearls pinned on slick branches. Tight blossoms were poised this night to begin a wild unfurling.

Peaches?
Apricots?
Nectarines?

What could I imagine eating sun-warm some months from now?  What might I capture in jam jars to tie with red gingham?

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

The next time I saw Angel and showed off our blossoms he smiled, more bemused at my excitement than joyful for the harvest. He never doubted fruit would come.
A peach tree.
An apple.
An orange.
Another apple.
A plum.
An apricot.

For seven years Angel tended our slowly growing orchard.  His faith in the indiscernible life hiding within brown leafless branches scavenged from other yards was impeccable.  Then one day Angel stopped coming. Yet every now and then a new barren tree would appear in my backyard and I would look over my shoulder, half expecting him to be squatting at the base of the apple tree, his favorite spot, humming absently.

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

I began to wonder if I’d imagined the man.  When he called himself Angel was that a name or his being?  I took over the care and feeding of the trees and silently thanked him with each basket of ripe fruit I brought into my kitchen. I shared the bounty with neighbors and told them about how Angel showed me that you could save a thing by moving it to the right home and tending it with water and words.  Was I creating a myth?

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean…

Today as I walk back to my car, rebuffed, I turn my palms to the sky and shrug.  Driving away, I wonder: If I could plant Angel in my backyard would he bloom again?

Angel’s Apple Tree

I exist as I am, that is enough…
Imagining you in health and sun,
~C

Note:  The words in italics come from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself (1881).  Today would be Whitman’s 193rd birthday.  If you’re lucky enough to live in or be visiting New York this Sunday, June 3, you can participate in the Ninth Annual Walt Whitman Marathon Reading of “Song of Myself.”  For more information about the man, the poet, or events at Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site and Interpretive Center in West Hills, NY, visit http://www.waltwhitman.org/ 

Flashback, the Summer of Color

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Occasionally, I will take a trip through the years via my photo archives. This is often spurred on by the need of a certain photo for a child’s assignment or a yearbook ad, etc. But this time I just wanted to look back on the last few years photographically and I came across these. Since summer will soon be upon us I decided to share these. A couple of years ago a group, Portraits of Hope, created the largest public art project in the US. They transformed the Lifeguard towers of the LA County beaches, from Zuma to San Pedro, into brightly colored works of art painted with flowers, geometric shapes and fish designs. The colorful towers  reminded me of the art of my youth.

For me, these towers brought fun and a touch of whimsy to the beach.

According to their website, “The Portraits of Hope program is aimed at enriching the lives of children and adults – many who may be coping with adversity or serious illness – through their participation in creative, educational, high-profile, one-of-a-kind projects.” They have completed many projects throughout the US and one in Japan.

I like to say, ” a little pop of color never hurt any one!”  Can’t we all use a little more art in our lives?

~Sue

The Weekend Dish – Big Puffy Baby Cake

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Big Puffy Baby Cake

It begins with the scent of butter, slightly burning.

Early one Thursday evening in July, 1986, my husband Jim and I, along with Erin our 20-month-old daughter asleep in a stroller, arrived at a café au lait brown home in a suburb of Vancouver.  We’d found this place, a home-stay arrangement during Expo 86, the last World’s Fair to be held in North America, through an acquaintance which came by way of something like a business associate’s friend’s nephew’s mother-in-law.  We were here as part of a parenting plan that I can only look back at with fond compassion for my earnest intentions; I wanted to launch my daughter into a life of international travel. Yes, I’ll pause while you laugh and no, she remembers nothing of the experience.

Backyard Sister and daughter, circa 1986

Anyway, a small man with thick spectacles responded to our knock on the door.  He pointed down a dark staircase which lead to a basement and advised us that breakfast would be served at 7 a.m. the next morning. We didn’t want to wake Erin; ours was one of several rooms, separated by temporarily curtained walls, so we settled her in the middle of the queen-size bed between us, dined on apples and Cheez-Its, and looked forward to a meal I imagined to be delicious based on the rich buttery scent which had greeted us at the front door.

I’ll never know what was cooking upstairs because our downstairs breakfast consisted of Fruit Loops, canned peaches, and white bread that was impossible to toast without setting off the fire alarm.  We probably would have given this place more of a chance if it hadn’t been for the giant Rottweiler which freely roamed the house and scared me to death as his gleaming teeth were eye level with my child.

“I don’t expect silver and a tablecloth and fresh scones,” I told Jim when he listened to my plea to relocate.  “But I wouldn’t mind a fresh-cooked breakfast, a room with a window, and preferably no pets.”  I really don’t remember what made us decide to hop on the ferry to Victoria and walk into a Visitor’s Bureau asking for an accommodation recommendation, but by some stroke of luck we were directed to a beautiful cornflower blue Victorian home, painted with bright red and yellow fretwork, surrounded by a garden in full rose bloom.

“Breakfast will be served any time between 8 and 10. What will work best for you and your baby?”

In the morning, we awoke to the scent of butter, slightly burning.  Following our noses, we tiptoed down a wood floor hallway and discovered a large lace-covered dining table set with silver and fresh roses.  Karen, the soft-spoken woman of the house, served up a pie-pan of the most decadently satisfying combination of butter, eggs, flour, and powdered sugar.  When I had my first bite of what Karen called a Dutch Baby I had no idea that this recipe, which Karen later hand scrawled on a real estate agent’s note pad for me, would become ingrained in my memory from frequent use.

And while Erin remembers nothing of her World’s Fair visit, she loves the story of how her favorite breakfast joined family lore.  This is our go-to breakfast for occasions like birthdays, homecomings, and a welcome to our own out-of-town guests.

I first met this as a Dutch Baby, but some people call this Big Puffy Pancake.  Here’s Karen’s original recipe, tweaked throughout the years and renamed to encompass all its history in our family.

Big Puffy Baby Cake

4 T butter (and no, a butter substitute really doesn’t work)
4 eggs
1 C milk
2 T vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1 C flour

Set oven to 425.

Slice butter into a 10 inch pie pan and place in oven as it is heating. Let butter melt, until almost brown and bubbly.

Meanwhile beat together eggs, milk, and vanilla.  Sift flour with salt, and then add to egg mixture.  Stir well.  Pour batter into pan over melted butter.

Bake 20-25 minutes until pancake has puffed up over the sides of the pan. Serve immediately. It will deflate slightly. We like it sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Serves 8 moderate eaters, or 4 ravenous ones.