Swamp Sounds

Tree frogs sing on the night wind,

the same wind that plays

the long, thin fingers

of palm fronds

like a bow

massaging

the carefully tuned strings

of a cello in the hands

of a master,

and whispers words of love

in the nooks, bends, and whiskers

of creaking southern pine.

The staccato flap of hungry bats

answer repeated queries

from restless great horned owls,

nocturnal guardians of the forest,

dining themselves

on the less fleet of foot

until dawn interrupts

the quiet rhythm of the night

with the rumbling yawn

of a massive reptilian bull

who slips silently

into his tannin stained world.

By David Roth

© 13^th April, 2011

Dave's No Mayo Potato Salad

I can eat almost anything.  Ok, I draw the line at stuff like raw fish, liver, sweetbreads, tripe, beets, or corned beef, which does an instant U-turn when it hits my stomach, but most things go down with minimal effort.  I can even male sprouts taste good; no small accomplishment, if you ask me.  Not so my wife and her mother, for whom I am chief Chef in residence.

Mother-in-law is allergic to shellfish, and, she claims, pork or ham of any kind, and both ladies have an egg allergy.  Do you have any idea how many things are eliminated from a person’s when they can’t tolerate eggs?  It’s not like they are going to go into anaphylactic shock or anything like that, but they do both experience certain, shall we say, gastric malfunctions, and in my wife’s case, a uniquely female difficult when eating eggs or something with raw egg byproducts, like, say, mayonnaise or miracle whip.

Which, of course, creates a unique creative opportunity for the chef in residence (yours truly, thank you very much) who can eat eggs the way most people breath air.  Fried, scrambled, boiled, in omelets, casseroles, quiches – it doesn’t matter.  In fact, about the only way I don’t eat (or drink) eggs is raw, or in nog.  You simply can’t put enough rum in eggnog to make it palatable for me.  There simply aren’t enough U’s in Ewwwww to describe my thoughts about the taste of eggnog.

So here is my challenge.  Create dishes for them which usually require mayonnaise or miracle whip without mayonnaise or miracle whip.

Today, that challenge lent itself to the creation of potato Salad the ladies can eat without gastric repercussions or the aforementioned but unnamed female problem.

You might want to save this, even if you are OK with mayo.

Dave’s No-Mayo Potato Salad

3 lbs Yukon gold or new red potatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes and steamed, skin on.

¼ cup shredded radish

½ cup diced celery

½ cup diced sweet onion

That’s the salad part, but I’m guessing you figured that out already.

No Mayo Dressing

½ cup softened cream cheese

½ cup sour cream

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup honey

3 TBS White Wine Vinegar

1TBS Ground Mustard Seed

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 tsp ground pepper

1 TBS dried dill weed

Place all the dressing ingredients in a medium sided bowl and hand whisk until smooth.  Oh, OK – you can use your electric mixer if you want, but you won’t be happy with it.  Mixers don’t get it as smooth as whisking it does.

Fold the combined ingredients into the steamed and cooled potatoes and other vegetables, mixing until everything is coated and equally distributed.  Refrigerate until chilled, and serve chilled.

I’m guessing this would work with cole saw too, but the ladies don’t like raw cabbage. [sigh]

At any rate, the ladies devoured it, so I guess it worked.  I use variations of this for chicken salad and tuna salad.

Oh, if you like, you can dust the finished salad with paprika.

Bon Appétit

Separation

A day or two ago (no, we’re not doing selected verses of Jingle Bells) I posted the notation on Facebook that in reality neither the popular vote nor the Electoral College elect the President of the United States.  “He serves by the good grace and divine appointment of God”, said I, citing the Prophet Daniel as my inspiration: “And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding.” Daniel 2:21, NKJV.

The Old Testament Hebrew rendered from the Chaldean of Babylon, and translated ‘times and seasons’ has with it the idea of history, and the word translated ‘kings’ is more accurately rendered leaders of nations.  A fair paraphrase of this thought might be “God is the author of history, and worldly leaders come and go according to His Divine appointment.”

This thought was sternly rebuked by the single line “Thank God for separation of church and state!”

I’m going to go out on as limb here and suggest that the individual refuting not me, but Almighty God and Daniel, His prophet (one of many) fairly well does NOT understand the First amendment.  As good students of Scripture will tell you, you must interpret Scripture with Scripture, and understand it in the context of history and culture, so too must history be understood within its context.

The text reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”.  There is more to it than this small segment, of course, but this is the part over which there is so much confusion, especially when you try to understand it absent the times and culture of those who penned the words.

Consider this.  Henry VIII of the British House of Tudor wished to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and thus petitioned the Pope for his sanction.  He (the Pope) steadfastly refused to grant the King’s petition, threatening excommunication if Henry went through with it.  Henry, in turn, dissolved the connection of the Royal House of Tudor and created the Church of England, over which the Monarch (Henry and his descendants) would be both monarchical head and religious head, thus eliminating that pesky church middleman in Rome and granting his own annulment.  As both political head of state and religious head of the newly formed religion, Henry in fact mandated the rule of faith for all of the Britons to be the Church of England.  To be openly protestant or papist in Henry’s England was a death sentence.

It was in this context that the colonial insurrectionists at the stern insistence of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, penned the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”.  The intent of the founding fathers when viewed in the light of the historical, political, and religious context of its writing is patently clear.  The congress of these United States of America will not create any law which constitutionally mandates a state religion!  Furthermore, this Congress shall in no way make any law which prohibits the open, free exercise of personal faith in any setting public or private.

That is the context in which the first amendment originated and from which it must be interpreted, if it is to be rightly interpreted.  Freedom of religion, in other words, is freedom FOR religion, and not freedom FROM religion other than by individual personal preferential choice.  In the same sense in which Congress cannot mandate the religion practiced by the citizens of the Republic, neither can it create any law which prohibits the free and open exercise thereunto.  The current practice of religious prohibition is in fact, unconstitutional.  The words Separation of Church and State are found nowhere in the Constitution, and the closest inference to this is the clear understanding that the State will not dictate matters of personal faith to the people.

When viewed accurately in the context of history and culture, I, too  thank God that the State does not have the authority to mandate religion.

But isn’t that kind of what Daniel said some four thousand years ago?

Dave’s Slow Cooker Cuban Stew

Those of you who know me, know I’m a foodie whose passion is cooking.  I’m always trying to create new dishes out of the same old ingredients, and not unwilling to try new ingredients.  This is a new dish for me.  I’ll tell you what’s in it, and then how I made it, ok?

Image from Real Simple.com

Ingredients

• 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
• 2 four-knob red bell peppers, sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 1 four-knob green bell pepper, sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 1 large sweet onion, cut into 8 wedges
• ½ cup Mojo Criollo
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 TBS minced garlic
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 ½-2 pounds flank steak, cut crosswise into thirds
• 1 cup long-grain white rice (or minute rice)
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 1/4 cup  fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

1. Put the meat into a 1 gallon zip lock freezer bag, and add the Mojo, oregano, cumin, salt and pepper.  Squeeze the air out and seal the bag.  Massage the meat until well coated and refrigerate overnight.
2. In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker, combine the tomatoes, bell peppers, onion and Mojo from the marinade bag. Nestle the steak among the vegetables. Cook, covered, until the meat is tender and pulls apart easily, on high for 4 to 5 hours or on low for 7 to 8 hours.
3. Twenty-five minutes before serving, cook the rice according to the package directions.
4. Using two forks, shred the beef and mix it into the cooking liquid. Serve with the rice and garnish with the avocado and cilantro.

Honestly, this is so full of flavor, if all you did was spoon the juice over rice and eat it with a spoon like soup, you wouldn’t be disappointed!  But here is a key o getting this right.  Americans like to drown their roast beef.  Don’t do it!  I know you’ll look at that crock pot after everything is in it, and say “this needs more liquid!”

Certain vegetables, such as sweet onions, mushrooms, bell peppers and tomatoes are little more than crunchy water containers.  When you cook them, that water weeps out into the pot. Ditto most roasting beef, chicken and pork, and in the case of the meat, adding water actually dries the tissue of the meat out.  If you’re roasting meat and it is consistently dry, you’re doing one of two things wrong, and often both:  You’re adding water, and you’re not letting it rest before you cut into it.

I made this for dinner today.  I put the meat in the marinade yesterday, and assembled it in the crock pot just before leaving for church.  I cooked it six hours on high, and even knowing what I know I was amazed at the amount of liquid in the pot.  The key to this dish is cooking the meet long enough to easily shred – kind of like pulled pork.  Whether you use Flank Steak, Brisket or London broil for this dish, don’t pay attention to your meat thermometer.  If you go by that for this dish, your meat will be thoroughly cooked, but tough as old shoe leather.  The real beauty of the dish is you use a less expensive cut of meat that ends up as tender as prime rib when properly prepared.

Bon appetit!

Earth Box Gardens

The street on which we live (not to be confused with the far more lyrical “street where you live) is smack in the middle of a Senior’s Only Retirement Community.  At least that’s what the original sales brochure says.  My wife took it with her to the first Saturday Community Pancake Breakfast where there were actually a fair number of genuine seniors.  That’s the joke, you see.  Seniors in this community (the brochure said no children allowed – hey, don’t go wagging your politically correct head at me – for at least three reasons:

A.    It was 1962, after all – such things were not politically incorrect in those lofty days of yore

2.   The only time I’ve ever actually been politically correct was completely by mistake

Q.  I’m old and easily confused)

are outnumbered by a huge number by young couples with children.  Dogs.  Cats.  And at least one runaway parakeet called Owen.  It makes for interesting conversation around the maple syrup.

Another thing about this community is the preponderance of pea-stone yards.  No, seriously.  Back in the 60’s when this development was built the developers had this mad idea that it would be a great selling point to sink 8 inches of limestone into the ground, compact it, cover it with a relatively thin film of asphalt and cover the lot with pea-stones.  “There won’t be any grass to mow, you know.”  I’m sure that was the selling point.  They left out the part that it would bloody well double the heat index on the property by reflecting the sun and its produced heat back at the house in ways grass can only dream about, but hey – it made up for the whole ‘Seniors Only’ bit, right?

Ah, but that’s not the whole story, is it?  Not only have the eco-terrorists determined that all that lime is not good for the environment or the aquifer, thereby eliminating its continued practice in new developments, they won’t let you dig it out either for the same reasons, and even if you could, it is extremely cost prohibitive. 

See, typically when you build, you go through the process of surveying.  Once you work out all those annoying little technical bits, hire an architect, submit the plans to the planning commission, hire an contractor and so on, generally in our area you dig trenches for footers, pour them, pour a slab, and get on about building your house.  Once everything is finished, the landscapers come in, grade it all and lay sod.  No basements because we’re too close to the Gulf of Mexico and the aforementioned aquifer.

To sod a pea-stone yard, you have to undo all the pea-stone, asphalt and limestone – and risk screwing up the drinking water tables, the underground channels the gators use to sneak into your pond at night and eat small animals and children left out snogging in the moonlight, and creating massive sinkholes that swallow your neighbor’s patio barbeque.

Which leads me to the real reason for this.  We have one of those yards.  We want tomatoes and an herb garden.  You can’t exactly peel back the asphalt and toss in some Miracle Grow like you could with sod, so you use absurdly expensive things called Earth Boxes – a 36”X18”X18” trough with built in water measuring platform and mulch bonnets and plant your garden there.  And it works splendidly – until the dog digs out your tomatoes.  So you buy fencing to keep the dog out and it works splendidly – until the dog pulls the fencing out, digs up your tomatoes, and just because you put her through so much trouble, snaps the plants as well.  So you yell at the dog when you catch her in the act, and you even follow her out into the yard and stand by the box with your arms folded to demonstrate your displeasure with her.  And she promptly ignores you and starts in after the other plant.  A crisp, gentle yet firm reminder on her backside with the flat end of my bamboo back scratcher, coupled with what I’m certain she understood to mean, “Now doggy, that was so naughty-naughty-poo of you!” and she set several canine land speed records diving through both doggie doors to get back within the safe confines of her doggie bed, from which she did not move until after dinner and I had finished the dishes and departed the kitchen where her dinner was awaiting her.

We’ll see if putting the boxes on top of the stumps that were once diseased grapefruit trees in the back yard keeps the mutt out of the garden, or if we’ll have to install gated fencing to preserve the remaining tomatoes and my precious herbs.

I think the neighbors would frown on planting the dog in the pet cemetery.  She’s still alive, and all.  For now.

Happy Trails.

Quoth, the Poet

It’s Friday.  The second Friday of the month, to be precise.  For most months, that means Poet’s Night at the Progress Energy Art Gallery in New Port Richey, Florida.  We do this on the second and fourth Friday of most months.

It has special significance today, however, for two reasons.  Instead of bringing our own work to read, we’re to bring something that has influenced us or our individual writing style, or perhaps just got us to lake a second look at poetry more advanced than Mary Had a Little Lamb, or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  Please take a moment to note the strikingly familiar rhythmic mechanism of both of the aforementioned poems.  You can swap out alternating lines of the poem in every other line couplets, and it still fits.  Sadly, even some adult poets, writing for adult readers have never moved beyond this simple rhyming form.  Kindly hold that thought for a moment.  I promise I’ll come back to it, but I have a rabbit to chase.

This particular Friday is significant for another reason.  It marks the thirty-third anniversary of the birth of my first child, Jennifer.  It is difficult for me to accept that so many years have passed since that cool Virginia day when she quietly entered the world, effectively changing my world forever, but there it is.  One year and seventeen days later, she would join us in welcoming a sister to share her youthful exuberance.   Happily neither one killed the other.  Happy Birthday, Jenn.  I Love You and I am very proud of you.  And I pray for you daily.

Now, as promised, back to the topic at hand.

The meeting tonight will be drawn short because some of that number present will be leaving to attend a film festival at a nearby theatre.  I shan’t be joining them for a variety of reasons, none of which merit any real consideration to anyone other than myself.  Additionally, I will be getting copies of the submissions for the Gallery’s Annual Poetry Contest, for which I have been asked to be a judge.

This caveat, of course, presents a conundrum directly related to the nature of the twice-monthly meetings.  This group is a reading and applauding group rather than a critique group.  Some of the poetry read is indeed very good.  Some of it, not so much, and therein do it lie, the problem, and I include myself in this latter group of literary affectation.  I personally find my own work to be, shall we say, appreciably underwhelming.

But that is the point.  I don’t want to be booed or laughed out of the room, but neither to I want self-aggrandizement for literary bovine excrement.  I would rather someone say “Um, boy-o, that seems to be missing something”, or, “that made about as much sense as beach blankets at the south pole” than to subject someone to the painful endurance of  the bloody thing, and applauding politely at the end!

Of course, this requires that those in attendance grasp that the offering is more of the  house of Able than that of Cain, if you catch my use of the metaphorical.  And this group does get it!  But each week we read and each week we give and receive polite applause.

So, do you see my enigma?  Do I read and applaud politely, employ the use of a digital applause meter with built in memory, and simply see which one got the loudest or most prolific applause, and declare that the winner, or look at the submissions with a more critical eye.   Will this work be that of someone whose mother said it was good, and who therefore expects at the least a Pulitzer nomination, or will these be the attendant efforts of serious poets looking to hone their craft?  Or, will it be the work of both, therefore requiring the separation of wheat from chaff before the real selection can begin?  And what of the other judges?  How will they approach this project?

One can only hope that when I am handed my stack of hopeful entries, a set of criteria will be included.

Oh, what the heck.  I’m going for the throat, but will have medical aid on hand for the frail of heart.

Happy Trails.

PS – I’m bringing The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe as the piece that most influenced me to write poetry.  That and possibly something by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz I have hanging around he house.

EDITOR'S PIECE OF MIND

I’m publishing the work of a guest BLOGGER today, C. Hope Clark, the editor of Funds for Writers Newsletter.  Her contact info will appear at the bottom of the BLOG.  The article is reproduced with the author’s permission from her newest FREE newsletter Volume 11, Issue 13, April 1, 2011, and if you’re a writer, you need to read this piece, and you’ll want to subscribe to her FREE newsletter.  This is an article I’m saving! 

BE EXCITED

Time after time I receive emails from scared writers.  They are afraid to submit, some even afraid to write.  Most fear making mistakes in publishing their stories.  Half the time I want to hug them and say it'll be okay.  At other times I want to grip their shoulders and tell them to snap out of it.

That fear is the largest obstacle to their writing.

It's not the scams. It's not the naysayers.  Heck, it's not even the rejections.  It's them. They are their worst enemies.

I want you excited about writing, about being a writer.  That adrenaline drives you to write more. That adrenaline pushes you through the rejection while seeking acceptance.  Whether published or not, that internal power makes you want to do better and not settle for anything short of a product to be superbly proud of showing to anyone, anywhere.

So many times writers want me to tell them whether their work is any good, so they know whether or not to continue.  That's a weak cop-out. They are the only ones who can make that call.

There's power in calling your own shots.  Because with the power of growing also comes responsibility. When you are not published, you need to try harder, whether it's in your query efforts or the quality of your word-slinging.  If someone hurts your feelings, it's because you let them.  You decide what knocks you down and how hard.  Not anyone else.

Nobody tells me that I don't write well.  Nobody tells me to give up.  They may say a piece needs work, but hell, I know that.  I'll always know I can make any effort better. And it doesn't matter if they publish me or not, I'll continue to improve over the last piece I wrote.

We write and read and grow.  Then one day, fate matches our needs with those of an editor or publisher, and magic happens.

Choose to be ever excited.  You'll be a happier writer.

C. Hope Clark, Editor,  Funds for Writers,  www.fundsforwriters.com

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