Monthly Archives: April 2014

Squeeze Coin Purse

Memories, People,

Not much reminds me of my dad more than a squeeze coin purse. He carried one in his pocket at all times, packed full of change. The points where you squeezed the purse were usually darker than the rest of the purse from the motor oil that stained his fingers for most of his life. I remember him pulling the purse out of his front pant pocket, squeezing it between his thumb and middle finger and giving it a shake while holding it out for me to choose a coin. I remember the smell of the purse, a combination of copper from the pennies warmed from the heat of his pant pocket, plastic and oil. I remember the sound of the coins hitting each other.

Among the things I found in my Mom’s attic was an old, barely used squeeze coin purse. It was not one of dads, or maybe it was a spare. It is stiff and slightly cracked — probably because it was exposed to heat and cold in the kneewall, but also because it has to be at close to 40 years old. I know this because on the back is an advertisement for the B&B Tavern in Chetek, Wisconsin and my folks stopped going to Chetek for vacations in the mid-1970s when they bought their own property on the other side of the state.

This will be another of the growing pile of useless items the kids will need to deal with when I’m gone because tossing this would be like tossing out a warm memory of my dad, and we can’t have that!

 

Where’s Your Mecca?

Musings, , , ,

This morning as I gazed sleepily at my Moosewood Restaurant coffee cup I remembered fondly the time I dragged my husband, young children and mother to the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York. We were on our way to or back from Toronto and, since I’d been a loyal fan of their cookbooks for several years, I wanted to eat at the restaurant — something that had been on my wishlist for years — so the detour was made. The food was great and just being at the restaurant was special, so I think the detour was worth it.

The only other Meccas for me were C. S. Lewis’ home and Watership Down — both of which I visited in the late 1970s when Jeremy’s father drove Jeremy and me down the backbone of England to visit relatives near Dover. He asked if there were any [literary — he was a librarian] sites I wanted to see and of course I said Oxford and then added Watership Down since that was nearby. I believe we also visited Stonehenge on that trip. So, I suppose we hit three of my Meccas that year.

This post makes me want to revisit (in this blog) every place Jack Burgoyne took me. He was a huge influence on the adult I became. While I don’t regret my decisions about his son, I do regret that meant I lost Jack.

Do you have a Mecca? Where is it? Have you visited it? Did it live up to your expectations?

Chopped Salad

Musings

Only recently did I hear about this newfangled kind of salad called a “chopped salad”. My sister-in-law (well, ex-sister-in-law, but she lives with my mom so who’s keeping track and I love cooking with her and respect many of her culinary opinions) brought me some from her second job and I loved it and I usually don’t much like salads. I thought at first that it was just the name of the salad, but Jill expained to me that it was more the method — everything was chopped up and you ended up eating more vegetables than you would with a big fluffy girly salad. It made sense.

More recently I looked up “chopped salad recipe” and found many recipes, but Wikipedia redirects it to “Cobb Salad”.

So the other day I took a head of romaine, some radishes, part of a cucumber, part of an onion, part of an avocado, a few grape tomatoes and chopped the hell out of them. I added some ready-made dressing and served it to Dean for dinner (with something else of course — he’s a guy after all). We both loved it.

Thinking about it, though, this is not new. My mom made chopped salad when I was a kid except she used iceberg lettuce. Years later, I remember scolding her for cutting the vegetables too small when she was making a salad in my kitchen.

Strange how things come back around. We even have a restaurant in the area called Chop’t that specializes in chopped salad. It’s good. I’ve been there but didn’t put it together until I searched for chopped salad on good old Google and Chop’t was the first link.

So now, instead of serving fancy baby lettuce / spinach greens with walnuts, cranberries and goat cheese with a vinaigrette dressing I just chop up a bunch of vegetables and actually enjoy what I am eating.