Category Archives: Musings

Recipe Blog Pet Peeve

Musings,

I have an issue with recipe blogs that make you read the entire blog post before giving you the recipe. I am not talking about blogs like The Pioneer Woman who usually has photos of how to make something, then a printable recipe at the end. I am talking about blogs that promise a recipe in the title and briefly mention it in the first paragraph but then post photo after photo of unrelated things before actually posting anything substantial about the recipe. Kind of like this:

Grandma’s Split Pea Soup Recipe

Grandma made a really wonderful split pea soup that we all loved. I asked her how to make it and she gave me the recipe!

The little girl and little boy and DH and I went to a store yesterday. We really had fun. Little Girl was so cute. She said something really cute. So did Little Boy. Then he sat on a chair with his cousin.

After that it was Christmas and here’s Little Girl in front of the tree. She is so cute with the bow in her hair.

Oh, then it snowed! What a snow it was. Little Girl and Little Boy had fun!

After the snow Little Boy played with his two sooty pets. Puff and Jacques.

Grandma’s Pea Soup*
2 1/4 cups dried split peas
2 quarts cold water
1 1/2 pounds ham bone
2 onions, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pinch dried marjoram
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 potato, diced

In a large stock pot, cover peas with 2 quarts cold water and soak overnight. If you need a faster method, simmer the peas gently for 2 minutes, and then soak for l hour.
Once peas are soaked, add ham bone, onion, salt, pepper and marjoram. Cover, bring to boil and then simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Remove bone; cut off meat, dice and return meat to soup. Add celery, carrots and potatoes. Cook slowly, uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

*not really Grandma’s Pea soup. I just stole this from the Internet

New Year Resolutions v.2017

Musings, , ,

I always make resolutions — usually privately — and never actually accomplish anything. One year I was going to learn Danish. Nope, didn’t happen. (nope, skete ikke). One year I was going to stop procrastinating. Again, nope, didn’t happen). Exercise? Nope.

This year I’m doing something different. I simply want to learn a new thing each month. New things like how to parallel park, how to make gnocchi, and more about our personal finances. I also want to take this year to finally organize the house — declutter, I suppose — by tackling a different part of the house each month. This month it is the basement since we are halfway there anyway with the remodel.

That’s it. I am not making any other resolutions.

We’ll see how it goes.

A Man Called Ove and one similarly-aged woman’s opinion

Musings, Reading, , , ,

Ove is fifty-nine. So, currently, is Dona.

That’s probably the only similarity between the two. Ove would hate book groups, Ove doesn’t read much, except maybe manuals. Dona loves books and enjoys her book group. Dona also loves electronics. Ove doesn’t trust them. Ove likes cars. And order. And following rules.

A Man Called Ove coverDona really wanted to read A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman so she chose it for book group when it was her time to host. She thought it would be similar to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It wasn’t really. It was readable — very readable. Dona enjoyed reading A Man Called Ove. She liked most of the characters and the situations and the writing style was easy to read. But The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was so much fuller than A Man Called Ove.

But here is what Dona didn’t like about A Man Called Ove. The author (currently thirty-four if you believe Google) seems to have little idea what fifty-nine year old people are like or capable of doing. He’s made Ove seem much older than fifty-nine — maybe somewhere in his seventies. His similarly-aged neighbor Rune is portrayed as being skinny and bent over when he’d been fit enough to scare drug dealers a decade or so before. Granted Rune has dementia, but it doesn’t seem quite right that he’s gone from being strong and large in his forties to being skinny and bent over in his late fifties. Ove doesn’t always act like he is in his seventies — he uses his strength on more than one occasion, but generally, as a fifty-nine year old Dona thinks that the author has written off the older generation as basically useless. The occasions where Ove uses his strength are accompanied with an explanation why he is strong. The only people in the book that are past their forties are either dead, sick, unable to cope or depressed and all but one is retired. Sure, Backman makes some under-forty-year-old folks incompetent (as seen through Ove’s eyes), but he doesn’t make the entire under-forty crowd one-dimensional.

Dona is glad she read the A Man Called Ove (and even saw the film, thanks to connections) but she is annoyed at Mr. Backman for portraying her generation as being far less able than his generation.