Battle of the dressings

As Thanksgiving Day drew near our office talk turned to food.
“What’s your favorite Thanksgiving Day food?” was the question posed to staffers.
We soon had a winner — dressing.
Everybody loves dressing.
Then I posed an innocent question — “what kind of dressing, rice or cornbread?”
I’m still shocked by the response — “rice?”
It seems I was in the minority that serves rice dressing, or dirty rice as I call it.
Thanksgiving without both dressings, to me, is weird. I grew up with a hefty helping of dirty rice right alongside the cornbread dressing on my plate. My dad was Cajun and my mom was a Scotch-Irish-Dutch mix and living in Southeast Texas meant dirty rice was staple dish.
All of our family served dirty rice while I was growing up and I serve dirty rice. My kids (who are grown) still eat dirty rice. We even make dirty rice on non-holiday occasions.
Dirty rice has become an easy dish to make, thank God.
When I was growing up there wasn’t any Savoie’s Dirty Rice Mix in the grocery store. My dad began early by cooking a pork roast and a beef roast and other meats I wasn’t aware of at that time. These meats slow cooked, their savory scent wafting through the house and jabbing at my hunger.
My mom would loads of chop onions, bell peppers and celery and place the vegetables in a big pot with chicken or turkey broth and simmer.
My dad would break out the meat grinder and mince out the two roasts and other meats. With a dash here and there of seasonings and some kitchen magic passed down through generations, the ingredients were mixed and we had the best dirty rice I’ve ever tasted.
As a kid I didn’t like onions but I was able to bypass my prejudice against the pungent vegetable and woof down some dirty rice.
I’m glad I don’t have to put as much work in my dirty rice as my parents did but I sure miss the real thing.
So, which is your favorite — cornbread dressing or rice dressing?

Hanging out the laundry

I can remember my mom hanging clothes out on the line to dry.
We had a clothes dryer but she sometimes decided to place the nicer clothes out on the clothes line instead of tossing them in the dryer.
Our neighbor did the same. She even had two "T" shaped metal posts with the lines strung in between. Another neighbor had a post with a contraption on top where multiple lines circled one another.
Heck, I hang clothes out to dry sometimes too.
I just read a story about a Pennsylvania woman who has received warnings from her housing association asking her to stop drying her clothes outside. She also received two anonymous letters saying they didn't want to see her "underwear flapping about."

U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

For the record, she hangs her unmentionables inside, according to the Reuters story published Nov. 18.
"They said it made the place look like trailer trash," she said, in her yard across the street from a row of neat, suburban houses. "They said they didn't want to look at my 'unmentionables.'"
There's now a group called the Project Laundry List who argues "people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers."
The main opponents of the group are housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities.
The opponents say the no-hanging rules are an aesthetic issue since people in those type of communities don't want to see other people's laundry hanging on the line.
Good grief. With all the hoopla about "going green" and saving the planet what's up with the "thou shall not hang" people? Hybrid cars good, using the power of the sun and wind to dry clothes bad.
Let me know what you think. Let's grind.

Bad day times two

Sometimes when you hear about someone else's bad day, your own bad day seems more tolerable.
I have a great life that I wouldn't trade for anything and as a writer I can jot down those 'good grief' moments for my readers' amusement.
My story actually begins the week of Halloween. I had scheduled some time off with plans of organizing the attic. Not exactly thrilling but a task that needed to be done. As the days crept closer to my vacation, my dreams of a clean attic, sleeping late and not paying attention to the news (for once) were becoming more vivid — at least until I started feeling sick.
I ended up sick during the week of Halloween and after a few miserable days I raced to the doctor the following Monday.
That was the day of heavy rains and flash flooding in the area. Oh, I forgot to mention, I have a little radiator problem and have to add water before I leave to go anywhere.
Well I made it to the doctor and with prescription in hand I headed to my van. Of course my umbrella was inside the van so I ended up soaking wet. I decided to ignore the radiator problem and just drive to the nearby pharmacy to get my medicine.
Heavy rain was still coming down as I left the pharmacy and my fever was starting to spike so I just headed home without taking care of the radiator. I was just happy to have my five horse sized antibiotics that cost $68 (with insurance).
Of course my van was overheated by the time I got home and I was even more wet from the rain than before.
After a quick change of clothes I downed the medicine, ignoring the directions of ‘take with food.’
Soon I was back in the bathroom throwing up a pill that cost an arm and a leg and shivering from the fever.
Now fast forward a few days — I think I slept through a day or two — and I'm feeling much better.
Then my dog died.
Seriously. I'm not making this up. Our beloved family Chihuahua, Taka, that we'd raised from a tiny pup, had died at the age of 12.
Of course there was no way I was in any shape emotionally to clean the attic that day.
So on my last day of vacation I managed to take care of the attic, finally.
You might think my story of bad luck would end here but it doesn't. It actually skips a few days.
I went back to work, then the weekend rolled around again. I went to Houston on Sunday and saw AC/DC in concert and had a blast. I had so much fun I almost lost my voice but I was able to see the band I had wanted to see since I was in high school long ago.
Well, it seems the "crud" had hit the newsroom while I was out and we were missing a reporter. I had scheduled a few more days off but ended up cutting the mini-vacation short to help out at work on Tuesday.
I had a busy day scheduled, both personal and work wise. You see, dear readers, my husband lost his cell phone while hunting in East Texas over the weekend. It really was an accident because his cell phone was in a clip-on holder that snapped off from the bottom. This has never happened before and since this is, or was, his work phone as well, it had to be replaced immediately.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone filing a claim for the lost phone and was happy to hear the replacement phone would be delivered the next day.
All we had to do was have someone sign for the package when UPS came. I asked one of my (adult) sons to keep an eye out for the mail and headed out for more personal business before work.
With no petty cash on hand and knowing I would need gas for work, I grabbed a jar of pennies/spare change and headed to the bank. With money in hand I rushed to the closest gas station where I spent my last bit of money on gas, a pack of cigarettes and a coffee and headed to work.
I was only about a mile from work when the van started acting strange. I pulled over to add water to the radiator and was on the third gallon when I realized the water was shooting out someone underneath. Not a good sign, so I carefully drove home hoping I wouldn’t damage the motor.
As I pulled into the driveway I see a bright sticky note on the front door telling me I had missed the UPS truck.
By this time I am so mad I wanted to scream. There I was, broke with a broken down van, late for work and I had missed the delivery.
I borrowed a friend's car and went to work in a really bad mood. I had used the last of my cash for gas in a vehicle that, I learned later, had lost a freeze plug. This meant my husband will have to drop the transmission and fly wheel to make the repairs in between his busy life as the owner of a small home repair business.
I was finally able to get hold of the local UPS people who were great to work with. They told me I could pick-up the phone at 7:30 p.m. So I went through my normal day as a reporter and was able to meet TV's Glenda Hatchett.
With the clock ticking away the minutes until deadline and the closure of the UPS office and another vehicle that needed gas, I rushed home for some gas money from my husband and headed to the gas station once again.
I think the final straw that broke my mental state was when the gas cap fell apart in my hand.
There I was holding the top of the cap and looking at the rest of the contraption stuck in the hole where the gas goes. Time literally stopped as I took a deep breath to refrain from screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs.
After a brief freak-out moment I snapped back to reality and remembered my friend warning me about the broken gas cap.
I was able to get the phone, go back to work, write the story about the judge, and make it home.
Then I spent another 30 minutes on the phone activating my husband's new cell phone.
So that's the end of the story.
Feel any better?