Food, Glorious Food

Anyone who knows us also knows that I do a majority of the cooking in the family.  There is no real reason for it, it just worked out that way over the course of our relationship. 

I am a main course, grill master, kind of guy and Lisa is side dishes and salads.  My staples are easy but very good; homemade, slow cooked pasta sauce, jambalaya, smoked sausage with traffic light peppers - you know; red, yellow, green, and a curried chicken breast with balsamic rice.  For quick dinners I can make a really good chicken pesto pizza or quesadillias.

Aside from Lisa's sides - a great broiled green beans with almond and blue cheese among them, she makes an amazing cheddar beer soup and the only macaroni and cheese that I will ever eat.  

Lately, we have started to explore our cook books.  Last week I made my own barbeque sauce from the Dinosaur BBQ cookbook.  Last night we went through our slow-cooker cook book and came across a recipe for french onion soup and then a separate recipe for three cheese macaroni and cheese with bacon - total comfort food for the coldest day of the year so far.

I went out this morning at 8am for a paper and everything on the list Lisa provided.  I can attest that on Sunday mornings there are four people in the Harris Teeter, the manager, the stock boy, the cashier, and me.

The onion soup was the easiest thing I ever made; three onions (two vidalia and one red) sliced, four cans of beef broth, salt, pepper, and a little sugar.  I deviated from the recipe just a little to slightly brown the edges of the onions with butter in a skillet.  Everything was thrown into a crock pot and cooked on low for nine plus hours.  We topped it off with fresh sliced french bread with mozzarella baked in the oven for five minutes.

In the afternoon Lisa started making her bacon macaroni and cheese.  We used thick sliced bacon cut into small pieces that cooked into the size of nickels.  After six minutes we added some fresh crushed garlic for less than a minute and poured that into pasta, cheese, and spices before baking it. 

Everything was served at dinner.  The soup led, of course, followed by the mac and cheese.  Maybe it was the fresh ingredients, maybe it was the fact that we made it ourselves - but it was the best french onion soup I ever tasted. The bacon certainly flavored the entire pasta dish, but we don't eat bacon too often and when we do we (I) enjoy the taste. It was amazing.

One of our favorite shows currently on television is Modern Family.  This week's episode showed two of the characters working together in the kitchen in a choreographed flow of ingredients, utensils, and limbs.  It was a brilliant minute and a half of TV.  I realized that Lisa and I found a rhythm in the kitchen.  Its a little awkward at first, just like dance lessons, but once you get the feel of the other person around you, you learn to move as one.

We are not to the point of choreography yet, but we are getting closer.  It's a great way to bond with a little wine, a little food, and a little romance. 

A Letter to the Older Rich Brown

Dear Rich,

This is a letter from you at 44.  This is the letter to remind you that in the winter of 2011-2012 that you learned that your old age will be marked with arthritis and pain. 

You loved to run.  Running was a joy.  Nothing helped you unwind or give you more energy than lacing up your shoes, turning on the music and heading out the door.  You could run on pavement or trails, in the heat, or rain, or cold.  You could move, too!  You could easily post a seven minute pace - faster on the shorter distances like the 2 Mile Run for the Army Physical Fitness Test.  Nothing gave you greater pleasure than easily beating Cadets or young Soldiers and knocking down their swagger a notch or two. A couple of times you actually won medals and you used to finish in the top ten percent of your age group when you raced in 5k and 10k races. 

Up until December 2011, you could run for three, four, five miles at a time without aches or pains.  Then one day that pain in the right knee just didn't go away.  Remember how you used to always run through the pain - which seemed to go away after a mile?  Remember how, one day running on Ft. Bragg at lunch the pain just stayed with you the whole run?  Remember how, when you went to your brother's for Christmas that it radiated all the way up to your hip?  Remember how you were finally forced to that orthopedist had he showed you in black and white and shades of gray how you were losing the cartilage in your right knee? 

How many knee replacements have you had since then?  One?  Two?  If the pain is anything like the daily discomfort you feel in 2012, I do not envy you.  If it grows over time, I pity you.  Pain can color your whole day.  Hopefully the pain has gone away as you learned to compensate with other activities.

Did you take to biking?  At least you can get outside and feel the sun, listen to some music, and watch the landscape roll by.  At least you can do that with Lisa and the two of you can keep close(r) together than when you run.  I can't imagine you being sedentary.  You will not make a jolly fat man.  Whatever it is I hope you found something to keep you active.

Did you ever bite the bullet and run a marathon just to do say that you did?  How many ibuprofen and bags of ice did you go through?  What made you think that you had to cross that off your list?  I bet you walked funny(ier) after that. 

Oh, no - You don't walk with a limp do you?  The little one that accompanies you now from the parking lot to work is noticeable to others because they ask about it.  Do they let you to the front of the lines at Disney World?!  Right now you keep thinking it will go away.  A thought you've had for a few months now.  I know you thought that you'd be the perfect specimen of health in your 50s and 60s, but by 45 there were some reasons to doubt it. 

You always believed that running and fitness was an investment for the future of health and viability.  I hope that if you never got to run again that you found a way to continue to pay into that account.  It sucks to get old.  It sucks even more when you are still young enough to see old age as a far away destination - but one you look less forward to arriving at.

Maybe it will work out where the MRI will show that there is something else going on, something more repairable than not having enough cushion in your kneecaps.  

Who knows.

Who knows, maybe you are bouncing a grandchild on that knee right now.  Speaking of grandchildren, it is noteworthy to mention that today would have been your mom's 70th birthday.  It's hard to believe that she never met TJ and never knew Grant would even exist.  I don't think she took as good of care of herself as she could have.  You owe it to your children and their children to be around and love them with all that you can offer. 



Take care of yourself. 

Happy Birthday, Neighbor!

I can't imagine what 80 feels like.  Last week Betty celebrated her 80th birthday with the boys, flowers, cupcakes, cards and small presents.  She's still spry and on top of things; she's politically motivated (far to the right), technologically aware (she belongs to a Mac users club), and has successfully managed her own finances into a comfortable retirement.  But still, 80 years is a long time.

In eighty years so much has changed in the world that when you list some of humanities accomplishments its a little mind boggling; space travel, atomic power (and weapons), walking on the moon, computers that fit in the palm of your hand, the internet. Imagine a time traveler from 1932 walking out their machine and imagine them not thinking they stepped onto another planet. 

When I was born music was played on vinyl records and only the uber-rich could watch movies at home on a movie projector.  In forty-four years plenty has changed just in how we are entertained.  My boys both play with my iPhone.  TJ is a pro and is able to open apps and play complicated games - okay, Angry Birds, might not be "complicated" per se but there are some levels I still can't get three stars on.  Grant understands how to "swipe" to make things happen on the screen.  What will technology look like for them in 80 years?

At 80, Betty is at another transition in her life, something we referred to the other day as "retiring from retirement."  The huge house that she lived in with her husband in their retirement in Florida is now too much for her to manage and keep up.  Ten years ago that house was full of parties and people.  And, as with some things, change comes slow.  Her husband, Bob, passed away.  Other people became too old and too infirm, social circles break down.  Life happens.  The realization came to her last year that it was time to move on to the "next thing"  So, over the past few months she has reduced and simplified the amount of "stuff" in her house and is ready to put it on the market.

Wanting to be closer to the grandkids she had a choice between North Carolina and Missouri from Florida.  It was no contest.  Pictures of the snow piles in Missouri was all it took to convince Betty that she would make it through the first winter there.   North Carolina is cold enough. For the last two weeks she looked in this area at retirement villages, condos, and homes and in the end bought a brand new ranch two streets away from us in our neighborhood.

We couldn't be happier.

Growing up I lived about half a mile from one of my grandmothers and four miles away from the other.  Until they passed away my grandparents were always in my life.  We saw them after church, shoveled their snow in the winter and mowed their lawns in the summer.  They were waiting for us when we got off the bus while mom and dad worked and spoiled us with cookies.  They passed on stories of growing up in different times and different hardships.  You didn't visit my grandparents because they were a part of the immediate family. 

By the spring Betty will be a short walk away from us.  Without fully knowing the full impact, the dynamic of this family will change as grandma becomes a steady fixture in our lives instead of someone we road trip to go spend time with.

Happy birthday, Betty, we look forward to many more years together.