Life is But a Dream

As sometimes happens, I write posts and they languish in the "drafts" file. I ran across this tonight. Although it's dated, I kinda like it. Especially now that summer is but a dream.

Noah, 2, works on his water-front construction project at our Labor Day camp.

I was lounging in my REI camp chair at Juniper Lake in Lassen National Volcanic Park on Labor Day weekend, book in hand, grandson Noah engaged in construction not far away. The pristine lake was calm, blue and clear. Lassen's peak jutted on the horizon. Along the shore, a smattering of happy campers shared our experience of near solitude. We were off the grid for Internet and cell phone service and outside airline flight patterns. Quiet, quiet, quiet.

On Labor Day weekend. Near solitude. Peace. Only 18 tent-camping sites and a couple of group camps. No potable water. Pit toilets. A rough gravel road not recommended for trailers or RVs. Perfect.

Sun-seeking friend, Laurie, soaking in early-morning warmth. For her, perpetual life in the sun is but a dream.
She's almost got it nailed, though, now that she's become a rainbird, not the sprinkler, but the person who escapes Oregon's winter rain for southwestern sunshine.

A canoe or two sliced the still waters. Far from shore, a raft of exuberant kids sang "Row, row, row your boat, gently ......." Their singing and laughter skittered across the lake like a skipping stone imprinted with Be Here Now. One day they'll remember how it was on this gilded day in the American West. How lucky we are to have wilderness and these moments. For millions of people across the globe, a day like this is an unattainable dream. So many can't imagine the luxury of an entire lake of clean clear water and several days of leisure time with family and friends with ample fresh food and the added bonus of nobody trying to kill or rape them or steal their children.

The family here and now: PK, MK, Heather, Noah, and Quinn. Photo credit : Laurie Gerloff.
Son Chris is off in the Arctic doing backflips off of glaciers. 

Back to Juniper Lake and the raft of children singing/shouting Row, row, row......from perhaps a half mile across the lake. The kids on the lake helped. But the real deal was the grandson's chirruping in the morning and his parents—our eldest son and his wife—lovingly tending to him and to one another. Their little family reminds me of our little family years ago, when PK and I were the harried parents and our sons were the heavy construction toy guys. The long weekend was a series of full-circle moments. I'm still smiling. Row row your boat......Life is but a dream—if you're really lucky. I am grateful for good fortune, good family, good friends, good (yet entirely detached ) universe.

How do you act when your life is good? I'm not taking my extraordinary fortune for granted. I've lived long enough to know that a split second can alter lives and create a vortex of misery. I am recognizing that I, and my family, have been spared a lot of grief so far and blessed with so much. I will grab the bliss for as long as I can. And enjoy "life is but a dream" until, and if, a slide into another reality becomes inevitable.

Which it will. Shit happens. People get sick, fall upon misfortune, die. Things change.

Thinking again about blue beautiful Juniper Lake. It hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It was the same when my father, now dead and buried, and my 96-year-old mom, now losing her memory, eyesight, hearing and dignity, were born. And it was the same when their parents were on the earth and their parents before them. Long after I'm gone, it will be there sparkling in the sun, and I hope the park service doesn't put in dump stations and pave the road for RVs. It will be the same when grandson, Noah, is an old man and  his grandchildren pipe across the clear waters, "row row row.....life is but a dream."

And it is. And a fleeting one at that. Enjoy it now.

Watermelon enthusiasm. Talk about enjoying the moment! 

Taking a break from taking a break at Juniper Lake.

Mt. Lassen as seen from Juniper Lake. 

Hair Dye. the Fall Garden, and the Cruel March of Time

Note to readers: Many of you contacted me earlier today to say several photos on this post were blacked out. Maybe Blogger thinks it obscene to publish photos of a young person alongside her older self? Whatever. I hope the photos are there this time around. Thanks for letting me know. Mary K.

The corn is dead, rattling in the breeze. That sunflower on the left doesn't look too chipper either.
The birds have about finished it off.

Fall is a tough. I spend so much time in the garden that I identify with its cycles—not so different from human cycles, except the garden is on fast forward. You plant the seeds and get all excited when they emerge from the warming soil. You water and coax and soon they burst forth with flowers, roots, fruits, vegetables. They're good for a few months, but then senescence—natural aging and decline—takes over and it's quickly downhill. You can prop em up, water, fertilize and admire. But nothing stops the process. Before long, they'll form an involuntary vegetative-state support group and that'll be the end of it. 

Here's an Italia zucchini plant, ravaged by squash bugs but STILL producing fruit.
It'll cling to life until the first frost. But its huge-leafed youthful magnificence? Gone.

The perennials, such as the glorious rose bush, the faithful asparagus, the young berries and the aginig but reliable apple trees, will rest for the winter and surge forth in spring. They're amazing. I don't identify with them, however. I only feel kinship with those poor annual bastards facing imminent demise and they don't even know it. Maybe that's a good thing. Without knowing, there's no threat of being in denial or, heaven forbid, trying to hide the fact that you're approaching the inevitable. And that you aren't quite as fabulous looking as you once were. 

Which brings us to hair dye. I colored my hair for decades. (To younger readers: You reach a point when decades is the appropriate word when quantifying your past. You will not believe how quickly this happens.) I started in high school, took a few years off for being a hippie, and went back on the bottle in my 30s. In recent years, I've struggled with whether to continue my relationship with Clairol. I'll go without for a few months and then can't stand the grey and do another treatment. PK says, No, no no! Get over it! But I'm not quite there yet.

The juicy July garden bursting with life.

More July juiciness. It is difficult to go out there without being overcome. It isn't just the colors and the vitality, it's the birds and insects and the wonderful promise of so much botanical exuberance. And it smells so great.

Me in the summer of my life, high school grad on the left, college grad on the right. Bottle blonde and proud of it.
Juicy! Let it be known that my hair for the college photo is the best it ever looked in my entire life.

Here we come to fall with the crone look, uncombed(but colored!) hair.
Almost 50 years since high school graduation. 

I'm wise enough to acknowledge the inevitability of my personal "garden cycle." But I'm not strong enough  to at least try to postpone the drooping, the sagging, the furrowing, and the greying. Hence yoga, bicycling, careful eating, mirror avoidance—and hair dye.  I won't be botoxing and I am repelled by the idea of draining thousands into "having work done." But I'm still vain enough to deny grey.

So I'm back on the bottle. Not that most people would even notice.  My hair is naturally grey/white.  With coloring, it is white/blond. It's weak and silly, I know. But next time you see me, how about keep quiet if you think I look brassy, OK?  If you'd like to talk about the cruel march of time, however, I'm here for you. More garden photos and musings follow, if you like. 

Eggplant Parmesan + Low-carb notes

Revised August 23, 2015
Email subscribers, please click on the blog title to get to the website where photos look better and text is easier to read. 

Most everything you need for eggplant Parmesan is right here. Jalapenos optional.

This time of year all our dinners look the same—red and green—mostly red. That's because of tomato bounty, tomato beauty, and so many greens and eggplants and onions and garlic and basil and on and on. Truly an embarrassment of dishes/riches from kitchen bitches. Of which I am apparently one. I'm a little bossy about diet and cooking. An eggplant Parmesan recipe follows, pictures first. This year I have had to beg or buy eggplants as we had a mysterious eggplant crop failure.

I published an earlier eggplant Parmesan recipe that included this step: slice and salt the eggplant. Let drain then rinse and dry before proceeding. The next time I opined about how to make it, I said this:

Eggplant Parmesan is so much easier when you skip the salting-the-sliced-eggplant-then-rinsing-and-drying steps and also the dredging-in- flour-or-crumbs part. I omitted the flour/crumbs step because of my carb-avoidance behavior, but discovered that dipping the slices in a beaten egg and frying in olive oil is just as good, if not better, than the carb-dredging routine. Oh joy! I left out the salting part when I was in a big rush and discovered THAT doesn't matter either. So right there you lop off another 15 or 20 minutes.

I am sticking with the no-salting method. Anything that saves prep time is good, especially when you can't tell the difference with the finished product. 

Most eggplant Parmesan recipes direct you to dredge  the eggplant in a seasoned flour mixture before frying or baking. No, no, no. Not at all necessary. Some suggest you bake the eggplant after dredging in flour mix, ostensibly to save you from fat. No, no, no. No need to be saved from olive oil! The need to be saved from flour is, however, compelling.

Layered egg-batter fried eggplant. Full recipe below.

This is the deluxe eggplant Parmesan, which means I needed to use sweet onions and peppers, which are undulating toward the kitchen from our crazy pumped- up garden. A very aggressive garden indeed. Onions and peppers are optional.

More layering. Did we talk about the homemade marinara sauce?  Only if you have time and tomatoes to spare.

Eggplant Parmesan

Let's make some assumptions. You have fresh tomatoes and nice firm glossy eggplants. You have time. (The biggest assumption of all.) But listen. If you don't have time to make your own marinara from fresh tomatoes, but still want to make a fabulous eggplant Parmesan, buy a good marinara sauce and pump it up with garlic, a little pesto, some pepper flakes, and your desire to make yourself and others glow at the dinner table.

Do what you can do. Good cheese helps no matter what.

This makes enough for 6-8 servings in a 9X13 inch pan. It freezes well, and keeps for several days refrigerated.

Ingredients
2-3 medium to large fresh eggplants
1.5 to 2 quarts marinara sauce, more or less, homemade preferable
8 - 10 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
12-16 ounces shredded mozzarella, jack, cheddar cheeses, mixed
salt and pepper to taste
salt for treating eggplant slices
2-3 medium eggs
2-4 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup thinly sliced sweet red pepper or jalapeno pepper or combination—deluxe version  
1 cup thinly sliced sweet onion—deluxe version.
   
Directions
1. Slice the eggplants into 1/2 - 3/4  inch rounds.

2. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. In the meantime, heat half the olive oil  over medium heat in a non-stick pan. When the oil is hot, but not smoking, coat the eggplant slices in beaten eggs and fry in olive oil until lightly browned on both sides. Add more oil as necessary. (May be more than 4 tablespoons.) Set aside fried eggplant slices on a grate to cool. Blot with paper towels, if you're weird about oil. If you have leftover egg, fry quickly, chop, and add to casserole. It's a sin to waste food.

3. When all eggplant slices are fried, spoon a layer of marinara on the bottom of your casserole dish. Add a layer of eggplant, sprinkle with cheeses.

4. If you're using sliced sweet onions and/or peppers, spread some atop the cheeses
.
5. Add another layer of eggplant topped by more "deluxe" items, if using, then cover with marinara.

If you have leftover eggplant slices, place a piece of waxed paper between slices and freeze for later use. 

Pop uncovered into preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 35 - 45
minutes, or whenever sauce is bubbling around the edges. Remove from oven and apply the final layer of mixed cheeses plus a few fresh pepper/onions, if you like.  Return to oven and turn off the heat. Allow the cheese to melt for five to seven minutes. Remove from oven and let it rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

Low-carb notes
Eggplant is low-carb to the max. One medium unpeeled eggplant has about 13 grams of carbs plus 19 grams of fiber. Which, with fiber grams subtracted, is a minus-carb count.

Peppers are also very low in carbs, but onions are not, and fresh tomatoes, depending upon sugar content, may be high in carbs. However, they also have a lot of fiber, especially if you follow my directions for using the entire tomato, skins included, to make homemade marinara.

Do you know about subtracting the fiber content from carb content to figure out how many carbs you're consuming? Example: a half cup of chopped raw tomato has 4.2 grams of carbs and 1 gram of fiber. Subtract the fiber gram and you get carb 3.2 grams. (The Complete Book of Food Counts by Corinne T. Netzer)

People who are serious about losing weight with low-carb diets count every carb and most try to keep their carb consumption at 30 per day or fewer. That's roughly the equivalent of two thin slices of bread, One large baked potato with skin has about 50 carbs and just 4.8 grams fiber. You could run on that thing for two days! Except that after eating that many unbuffered-by-fiber carbs, you're likely to feel hungry a couple hours after eating.

BLT into BBT - Sandwiches without bread

I gotta admit, I seriously miss bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. No bread? No wheat? No BLTs!
Damn. I'm sacrificing here. Whoever said giving up bread/grains would be easy?

But WAIT! Here's a tasty solution—the bacon, basil, cheese and tomato salad, a variation of the popular  Caprese salad which can be tweaked in so many ways. Adding bacon? Well, you decide.

You can't pick it up, but you can relish that bacon/basil/tomato delectability. I guess you could use lettuce instead of basil, but at the expense of flavor. I'll be planting winter crops soon, and have literally hundreds of lettuce volunteers sprouting right now. I'm debating whether to save any. I much prefer spinach, chard, and kale—for BLTs as well as winter salads. For now, though, I prefer tangy basil, while it lasts, on my BBTs.

Note: I've spent a half hour trying to download a photo of the Caprese salad with crispy bacon strips atop. The computer won't do it. Perhaps my Mac is sensitive to the cringing and crying some may experience regarding BACON debauching the iconic Caprese. Whatever. Just imagine how delicious! Delicious. A word is worth a thousand pictures.

In the absence of a bacon-enhanced Caprese, here's a no-bread sandwich made with a huge chard leaf wrapped around sliced cheese, sweet onions, tomatoes, chicken and a bit of deli ham.
Caveat: Best to eat this outside to accommodate the drip factor. 

Writer's Block de-Construction Project

Writer's block. I have it, thank you very much.

Thanks to those who have inquired about the lack of recent posts. (Few, but much-appreciated, inquiries, by the way.)

Things that contribute to writer's block:
1. Starting a post and thinking it's crap. And I don't know how to fix it.
2. Worrying about kayaking son, at this moment likely pitching camp beside a wild-ride Greenland river, hundreds of miles from civilization but close, probably, to polar bears and with hypothermia hovering.
3. Obligations looming with various nonprofits.
4. Mountains of tomatoes to process. Also peppers, eggplants, onions etc. Then come apples.
5. Looking back on fifty-some blog starts that are mostly outdated.(See below)
6. Thinking my blogged words sink into a sea of too much communication. Anybody out there need more words?
7. Inability, so far, to write meaningfully about my now-ancient (almost 97--year-old) mother. She is always on my mind and in my heart. I guess I'm still processing how I feel about her and the inevitability she represents.
8. Weak character that sometimes leads me to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rather than toil over uncompleted blog posts.
9. Inability to treat blog writing like real work. I wrote for a living and stood (yes, stood) before my computer for several hours a day writing for money. I rarely stand when I write anymore, and blog only in my "spare" time, which is usually after 8 p.m.
10. Adherence to ridiculous expectations that hinder creativity. Any self-respecting list needs 10 points.

Blog posts in draft include:

• life is but a dream, parts 1 and 2
• aging and death
• garden variety volunteers
• a box of baby teeth
• low carb on the road
• smiling for real
• might as well dance
• taking on hard stuff....why?
• old people doing splits
• pepper Paul picked a peck
• the 90s - decade of loss
• no matter your age, you might be old

Wow! So many uplifting topics! Let me know if you see anything of interest.