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.
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.
So I was watching Downton Abbey Sunday night and heard Lady Grantham mention the town of Thirsk. I wanted to hear the rest of the dialog, so didn’t exclaim to Dean, “Thirsk! That’s where the All Creatures Great and Small author lived.” After the episode ended, I didn’t think it important enough to tell Dean — and he would not have cared anyway. I guess I knew that Downton Abbey was located (but not filmed) in Yorkshire — and mention of York later in the episode made me even more certain, but I wondered where exactly it was supposed to be.
I read on Downton Abbey Wiki that in some episodes a sign in the fictional town of Downton points to Ripon (9 miles one way) and Thirsk (6 miles another way). So I located Ripon and Thirsk on a Google map, printed it out and drew a 12 mile wide circle around Thirsk, with Thirsk being the center and did the same with Ripon, only making that circle 18 miles. The circles crossed in two locations, so I’m thinking that the fictional town of Downton is either located in the tiny hamlet of Gatenby or Pilmoor, North Yorkshire. Because Easingwold, according to the wiki I mentioned earlier, is also mentioned in Downton Abbey, I think Pilmoor is more likely the location.
This is not the first time I have scoured a map to find a location from a fictional source. In fact the first time I did it was after reading the All Creatures Great and Small series. Because I’d spent some wonderful weeks in Yorkshire and the All Creatures Great and Small series took place in Yorkshire, I wondered if I may have been in the town where it took place or even crossed paths with the author. I asked Jack Burgoyne, my boyfriend’s father and a librarian, if he knew where the books took place but he didn’t know — however he did know that James Herriot was a pseudonym and Darrowby, England was not a real place. When I returned to the United States after visiting Jeremy and his family, I pulled out a map of England and noted the real places mentioned in the books (which, when I search the book now, not many other than Leeds and York are mentioned) and tried to figure out where “Darrowby” was. I was never successful, but the search was fun. The last time I visited the Burgyones as Jeremy’s girlfriend, Jack alerted me to an article in the newspaper about James Harriot, aka James Alfred Wight. It seemed that he’d been awarded the OBE and the London Gazette gave away his real name and the Evening Post (Leeds?) gave more away stating — the town was Thirsk, in North Yorkshire. I now knew that I’d never been to the town where the books took place nor was it likely I’d crossed paths with the author.
One other time I scoured a map for a real location from a fictional source was when I was reading Steven King’s Christine. Dean and I were living in Pittsburgh at the time and Creepshow had just been filmed in and around Pittsburgh. Placenames in Christine reminded me of places in around Pittsburgh, so I pulled out a map of the area and pinpointed where I thought the town where Arnie Cunningham lived — Murrysville, Pennsylvania. I figured that since King wrote this book, in part, while working on Creepshow, he may have very well set in the area. Something I read later, I think, made me think that my hunch was pretty close. (And Wikipedia confirms it: “Stephen King’s 1983 novel Christine takes place in the fictional suburb of Libertyville, Pennsylvania, which is adjacent to Monroeville. The Monroeville Mall is mentioned repeatedly.”)
So while I don’t always hit the nail on the head when sleuthing for real locations of fictional places, I come pretty close. The internet is a big help these days, since people often do the work for me, but I get a strange pleasure out of doing it myself.
I’ve just finished a deep clean of my office. I was getting a stuffy nose sitting at my desk so decided to take everything off the desk and wipe it down well, dust all monitors and other desk items and return them to the desk. Then I thought I should take everything out of my closet and vacuum the rug in there and sweep under all other furniture in the office. I vowed to not put anything back in my closet that I didn’t need. That was about 15 days ago and I just finished about an hour ago. I have two garbage bags full of trash, two bags of stuff that belongs in other parts of the house that found its way to my attic and an overflowing moving box of items to donate. One of the items in that box is a tiara.
You see, I don’t need a tiara. and I’ve been meaning to blog about this tiara so I could dispose of it because it is really hard to store a tiara and even harder to display a tiara.
Here’s the story of the tiara.
Twelve years ago around this time I was still trying to emotionally and intellectually process the attacks of September 11. Then the anthrax attacks started happening. We were told to be wary of our mail — not knowing who was going to be targeted next.
One day at work I was given a package. It was a small, light cube-shaped brown package and had been mailed through the US Postal system. It had no return address. I was afraid to open it. Normally I tear into packages, but not this one. I let it sit on my desk in my cubical. Finally our administrative assistant asked what was in the package and I told her I had not opened it yet. She said I should and that I had no reason to think it was anthrax or anything else dangerous. So I brought it to her desk and slowly opened it.
What I found inside was nothing I would ever have guessed — t was a silver and (fake) gemstone tiara on which the word DIVA was spelled out in metal and gems.
The note inside explained it all. Joanne, my one-time friend, and I had met for lunch one day in late summer. We discussed my work and she said I was a 508 Guru. I said, not a Guru, a Diva. So when she saw the Diva tiara at a store she wanted to buy it for me to wear when I did my Section 508 work. She also wanted me to know she was thinking of me, living close to some of the 9-11 attacks.
It was a thoughtful gift and it was a turning point in how I felt about the September 11 events. For some reason I felt that having such a sparkly tiara, I was somehow safe. Nothing bad would happen to me. I kept it at work and occasionally wore it when I did 508 work — mostly when someone else was looking.
Damn, now I want to take it out of the give-away box…
Clutch Cargo Lips 