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Pancakes or Waffles?

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

Pancakes or waffles, you ask?  Well.  I’m actually a French toast kind of chick if I’m going to be that carb indulgent.  Normally, my breakfast of choice is potatoes, sausage, two eggs over easy, wheat toast well done and well buttered.  That’s my mainstay. 

But there are mornings—or evenings more likely—when a warm breakfast bread calls to me. 

Photo by nabil boukala on Unsplash

I once had a vintage waffle iron I bought at the Goodwill for $2.  I was excited to have it.  I brought it home, plugged it in to see if it worked and told my five-year-old son not to touch it.  What did he do?  He touched it.  Nearly 2nd degree burns on his little hand.  I learned real fast why it was at the Goodwill.  It was not safe.  The whole thing got hot.  Scorching hot.  2nd degree burns hot.  I did the world a favor and threw that sucker away.

I did eventually get a new waffle iron.  Hated it too.  By the time you got the waffles from the iron to the table, the butter wouldn’t melt, they were so cold.  And that is mostly my experience with waffles.  You can’t keep them hot.  And there is no point in a waffle or a pancake or even French Toast if it’s not hot and swimming in melted butter.  Lots of butter.  Real butter.  Good real butter.  Like a nice Danish butter from the Gucci Kroger cheese case. 

So, we went back to pancakes.  I like pancakes.  Tons of butter and sometimes, certainly not always, a bit of maple syrup.  Real maple syrup.  Not that fake stuff.  Ooooo ick.  No.  Never that.  Never.  But I seldom order them and even less often make them at home.  Just not big on the pancakes.

But the French toast, you might ask?  Well.  There’s a problem with French toast.  I like it one of two ways.  Made with that dirt cheap white bread you can buy at any Dollar General or French toast, Pan Perdue, made with my homemade bread.  The problem is I seldom have either when a French toast urge comes upon me.  So, it’s a once or twice a year thing unless I’m out somewhere, but they rather bug me the French toast purveyors do.  By the time they’re done with it, it’s a dessert.  Powdered sugar, fruit compote, whipped cream.  Now that can be good, as a dessert, but it’s not French toast. 

Here’s the recipe for French Toast:

Connie’s day old homemade white bread sliced about an inch and half thick.

6 eggs, beaten

Heavy cream

A dash of nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Good butter

Mix all the ingredients except the butter until you have a creamy thick liquid.  Soak the bread in it and pop the slices into a hot pan with melted butter.  Fry on both sides until puffed and golden brown.

Serve with copious amounts of butter and maple syrup if you must.  Savory sausage patties for contrast on the side. Perfection. 

But waffles or pancakes, you ask?  I hang out at the Waffle House.  In fact, I have a book started:  Meet Me at the Waffle House.  I have a couple of chapters written.  One morning, I wanted something different and noticed they offered waffles with pecans.  I have never turned down a pecan in my life.  Waffle House waffles with extra pecans and a load of whipped butter are the bomb. Love ‘em. I think it’s the pecans, but they hold the heat.  I can actually get a hot waffle.  Oooo doggies.  Good eating.

Yesterday, I took my Consort to the Waffle House.  He decided on a waffle along with eggs etc.  I told him to get it with extra pecans.  He’ll tell you.  Perfection.

So, the answer?  Waffles or pancakes?  Waffle House waffles (hot) with extra pecans at 5 a.m. with your hot lover and hot coffee.  Oooo doggies.

What’s Your TV ‘Comfort Food’?

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

Writing Prompt: 
What’s Your TV ‘Comfort Food’? “Gilmore Girls”? “Friends”? “NCIS”?
What show do you turn to when you are stressed, tired or just need a lift? Why?

I don’t watch television or stream shows or movies.  I’m not visual and that sort of media doesn’t engage me for long.  I might be tempted if there was a Silly Symphony or Looney Tunes channel I could get.

I did go through a spell where I watched Law & Order, usually SVU, for hours at a time.  And I have no idea why.  But it certainly wasn’t to give me a lift.  It was an avoidance tactic.  And it left me with disturbing images and cynical thoughts.

I’ve written elsewhere about giving up Law & Order as a New Year’s resolution one year so I won’t bore you with that story again, but I will confess that now and again – many months apart nows and agains mind you – I might turn on Law & Order while housecleaning.  I don’t know why I do that either.

I do, however, have comfort music and comfort books.

When people I loved started dropping dead around me like raindrops in the April Appalachian Mountains, I developed what I call the Grief Quartet of CDs.  It was actually 5 CDS as one was a double album.  These were Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, The Essential Leonard Cohen, AJ Roach’s Dogwood Winter, and The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions. These 5 CDs have been in my CD changer of the Big Stereo since several days after Doug died in June of 2013.  I managed through trial and error and stupid luck to attach an Echo Dot to the Big Stereo and then network it so that when I fire up the Big Stereo every Echo in the house (and I have one in every room) plays the music.

Photo by Julia Peretiatko on Unsplash

I crank it up.  I pour coffee or wine or champagne.  And I wallow on my Beloved Sofa, and I sink intently into listening. 

My grief at losing 4 dogs, a father, a best friend, a partner and two co-workers within eight years of one another has morphed into sweet memories of days gone by.  I have beatified the dead – forgotten their flaws and celebrate what made me love them. 

My time with this music is now enjoyable.  Music, for the most part, and this music in particular is never just background music.  I listen with intent.  One CD after the other.  Sometimes I will use the remote to repeat a cut.  Sometimes two and three times until I have wrung every drop of comfort out of the lyrics and notes that I can.

I will listen to all five of the albums.  Dependent on how I am feeling as I finish the last one, I may fire up Mozart’s Jupiter symphony.  I love that piece. I’ve had the CD since CDs first came out.  I first listened to it with a Walkman and cheap headphones. 

I also have comfort books.  There are a few particular books – The Secret Garden.  Skinny Legs and All.  Time in its Endless Flight.  The Princess Bride — That I will flip through.  Or my collection of children’s pop-up books.

But every book in my house is a comfort book.  I enjoy my walls of books.  I like looking at them.  Knowing they are there.  I inherited many of them from two of the folks who died and they are mostly as of yet still unread.  I don’t read like I used to.  I hope to get back to it, but writing takes up a lot of my reading time.

My books are legion.  I say, and people think I’m joking, that I think the only thing holding up the barn are the bookcases.  It’s not a joke.  The bookcases reinforced walls and the roof.  I have far too many and I can’t part with any of them and I don’t need to.  I live alone.  There is no one to fuss about the piles of books everywhere.

But mostly I have comfort coffee. 

I love sitting in this room on a quiet snowy day listening to the furnace hum as the steam from a hot cup of coffee bathes my face.  I hold the cup like it is the Holy Grail.  Unlike music and books, I can do other things while I drink coffee.  I can think.  I can write.  I can make a to-do list.  I can read.  I can listen to music. 

But I particularly like silence with the first few cups of the day.  My brain is a noisy place and I sometimes can lower the talk radio in my head to a low murmur if I sit with the coffee lot enough.  Multiple cups of coffee.

I always come out the other side refreshed and ready to get on with things.

You can have the noise and chaos of a television show.  I’ll just be over here, sipping this coffee, letting my mind quiet and my spirit nestle like a dove who has returned home to her nest.

I have good taste in men.

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

I was madly in love with Robert as was half of my fourth-grade class.  He was tall, had a nice smile, and a hint of a dimple.  Plus, he didn’t look like a rock’em sock’em robot when dancing. 

None of us particularly liked the square dancing, but the boys especially seemed to hate it.  Their movements clunky and stilted and out of time.  Not so Robert.  He glided, he turned,  he dosidoed and bowed with a flourish. 

All the little girl hearts went pitter-pat when it was our turn to dance with him.  My hands were always sweaty.  I was near sick for love of him.  He wasn’t in my class.  The only time I saw him was recess, lunch, and music class which had now morphed into dancing.   I actually got to touch him – his hands and back warm and sweaty from exertion, I supposed.  I fair swooned with giddiness.

But the girls could get possessive of their Robert.  I was once elbowed out of the way so that Kelly Ann could dance with Robert.  I glared at her and tried to figure out what to do, but the teacher came over and sorted us out.  Kelly still got to dance with Robert though.  I was incensed.  It seemed to me there was a bit of sadness in his eyes at the loss of his turn dancing with me.  Dare I hope?

At Christmas time, we morphed into a musical dance act of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Hawaiian Style.  I can’t remember if it was the five golden or the eight lords a leaping, but it was redone as fill-in -the-blank cans of Primo in which Robert would pretend to take a swig and then stagger around a bit while wearing a straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, barefoot and holding a can of Primo beer – Hawaii’s own. We thought he was hysterical. 

More swooning.  He was a born actor. 

We were all military kids, referred to as brats in the military jargon, and apt to get transferred at any moment.  I don’t remember if Robert left first or I did.  But time dancing with Robert came to an end.  I thought of him often.  Wondered where he went. 

And then.  Three schools, three states, and a Pacific Ocean crossing later, he showed up in my 7th-grade homeroom.  I shyly waved hello to him.  He seemed relieved to know someone. 

Robert had changed.  He had those puberty boy legs that were too long for his body and made him look ridiculous when he tried to walk fast.  He was sporting a bad case of acne. Really bad.  And his voice was changing.  He was a mess.  And no one, not even me, was in love with him.  But he became my friend in homeroom.  Protected me from the pranks of the other boys.  And was the first to tell me I had bled through my dress and that he was going to walk right behind me to the girls’ bathroom.  Seems Robert had sisters.  Nothing fazed him. 

Robert, I’m certain, grew from a caring boy to a gentleman. I’m sure he outgrew the acne. I’m sure he is tall. And I’m sure that he cares for and protects the person that is his partner. Robert was a class act in 4th grade and again in 7th grade. I have no doubt that he’s a class act now. I had good taste in men even in the way-back, but I’ve outdone myself with The Consort. He’s a peach.

The day the statues came to life.

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I realized there was something inherently strange about the way my mom’s brain works when she was about 35.  Maybe 40.  Someone told her a joke.  The joke goes like this…. 

Photo by Alano Oliveira on Unsplash

There was a statue of Adam and Eve in a public garden.  They had stood there for a hundred years.  Unable to speak.  Unable to touch.  Unable to keep one another warm in the snow.  Year after year, they stood there.  The snow came and went.  The rain.  The hot sun.  Pigeons and squirrels.  Mold and mildew. 

By the time we get to the magical day, they were worn and pitted, spotted with pigeon shit, and generally in poor condition. A woodland fairy appears and tells them she is going to bring them to life for one day and for one day only.  They can do anything they like.  She gives them 24 hours to think about how they will spend their day. 

At dawn, the following morning the fairy appears, says an incantation, waves her wand and the two statues come to life.  Adam and Eve jump around in excitement, oblivious of their nakedness, and babble incoherently.  Finally, they settle down and Adam says to Eve, “What shall we do?  What have you most wanted all these years?  Adam has a sly tone of voice and winks at Eve. 

Eve says, “OK.  Here’s the plan.  You hold the pigeons and I’ll shit on them.” 

Now I happened to be there when this joke was being told.  I rolled my eyes.  My mother laughed.  And laughed.  She spurts her coffee all over the diner table and nearly choked to death she laughed so hard.  Tears coursed down her face, and she had to fan herself. 

My mother’s reaction to the joke was far funnier than the joke itself. 

Later that evening, we are sitting at the dinner table.  My Dad asks how our day was.  We all report on this and that.  Eventually, Mom says, “Dean told a joke at lunch today.  Wanna hear it?”  My dad girded his loins. My mother’s inability to tell a joke without screwing up the punch line is legendary.  In fact, I get my joke telling ability from her.  I too tend to screw them up.  Just typing the above joke was difficult. 

Anyway. 

My mother launches into the joke, looking at me now and again to check details.  I am astonished, but she is doing a pretty good job.  My dad is sort of puzzled.  The joke does not seem to be the kind of joke my mom would normally enjoy.  My mother is a Prude with a capital P in red glitter.  She finally gets to the part where Adam is getting ready to say, “What shall we do?” 

She starts to giggle.  And then shake.  Peas fall off her fork.  She starts laughing in earnest.  She is laughing so hard, she cannot finish.  I start laughing at her trying to tell this joke.  My father, a superb joke teller, is now all ears.  He wants the punch line.  He needs the punch line.  He’s already making plans on who and when to tell the joke to. 

By now, neither my mom nor I can breathe we are laughing so hard.  I try to take a drink of water to sort myself out.  I spew it all over the pork chops.   

Mom can’t finish.  Dad is amused, but impatient.  “So, what’s the punch line?”  My mom waves her arms and looks at me to deliver the last line.  I still can’t breathe.   

Finally, I manage to choke out, “You hold the pigeons and I’ll shit on them.”  Only I said poop because at that age I would not have said shit in front of my parents. 

My mother absolutely collapses in hysterics.  For her, it’s even funnier the second time.  My brother, who is just a kid, laughs.   

My dad just looks at us.  I try to explain that I didn’t think it funny either that I’m laughing at my mother, but by then, he’s laughing at the both of us. 

I reminded my mother of this joke a while back.  It took a while for her to dredge up the memory.  And she almost had it, but couldn’t remember the joke or the punchline  — she just remembered the two statues coming to life and how it was the funniest damn thing she’d ever heard.   

So.  I told her the joke.  Without messing up the punchline. 

She chortled.  She howled.  She had tears in her eyes and couldn’t breathe.   

Again.   

I laughed at her.  I laughed with her. We both just laughed.