99 Centember

If I had my way I would shop at Trader Joe's for just about everything. If they don't carry it, I've come to believe it isn't really necessary for life. 

I also shop for groceries in the regular grocery store, at a little Mom and Pop produce place down the way and (when I feel like walking into the giant chiller that leaves me shivering), I pick up veggies and fruit at Costco. I should get up on Saturday mornings and hit the farmers market in the neighborhood, but I don't. My favorite way to acquire produce is when someone says "Hey Jessica, do you want a boat load of _________ from our tree/yard/garden?" Sure, I say, bring it on.

My husband is a bit more adventurous than I am when it comes to shopping for food. He loves popping in the 99 Cent Store to see what he can grab for a buck. I must say I'm pretty impressed with some of the items he picks up. It's not all Cheese Doodles and Nuclear Pink Punch at these dollar stores, you can find healthy choices if you look. Some of the brands are out of the mainstream, but for a dollar they're worth trying.

There is a 99 Cent Store about a mile to the east of us, in one of Sacramento's food deserts. You know, those parts of town that are abundant in liquor stores and gas station mini marts, but sorely lacking in real grocery stores. This got us thinking - could a person who lives in a food desert that contains a dollar store be able to shop and prepare healthy food for themselves? Not farm-to-fork, but more like store-to-spork?

In our case the question gets even dicier - can two plant-based adults live for a month solely on vegan food purchased from a 99 Cent Store? We don't eat meat or fish or eggs or milk and we don't eat any extracted oils. We eat abundant amounts of fruits and vegetables, rice and beans, whole-grain breads and cereals. legumes and once in a while we eat from the all-important food group of chocolate.

We figured it wouldn't hurt to try, so we picked a month. 99 Cents + September = 99Centember! The month was chosen, and the hashtag #99Centember was mine for the posting. 

A jury summons, some work days, lots of quilting, an assembly and that was it!
An easy and carefree month for our great food experiment. 

August became a game of trying to use up as much food on hand as possible. I made salads and casseroles, soups and stews, some better tasting than others. We used up bits and pieces of this, dabs of that, bottles and jars were getting dumped in left and right, leaving the refrigerator and cupboards looking quite pathetic.

Poor pathetic empty produce bins.

Mother Hubbard would be shocked. 

Because a contest of any kind needs rules, here they were:

• Everything we ate in September, within reason, was to be from the 99 Cent Store
• Spices and the random sprinkle of flour or splash of condiments doesn't count
• Homemade jam or cider is OK
• If someone gives us a boat load of produce from their yard, we say of course!
• Produce from our garden is welcome, although we're only left with pumpkins
• We'll track all expenses to see how much (or hopefully how little) we spend

The end of August came down to some interesting meals around here, but we managed. I set August 31st for my big shopping day at the 99 Cent Store. I was going to fill the veggie bins, load up on lentils and we would have canned goods and frozen foods once again.

That last day of August we got an early morning call from my family back east, I needed to get on a plane fast to go out and see my Mom in the hospital. I threw some clothes in a suitcase and made it to the airport for a last minute flight. After some scary days, my Mom is better and settled into a routine to get her strength back. The last thing on my mind was our silly little food plan for September, but I did feel really bad that I left Ernst with his own little food desert right in the middle of his work week. I assumed 99Centember was a bust.

Never letting a challenge pass him by, Ernst went ahead with the challenge without me. I came home to a surprisingly clean house and a refrigerator that had food in it. So here we are, a third of the way into the experiment, and I'm the one that needs to get on board with it.  I spent the morning getting caught up on what was on hand and making a few things to munch on for the next few days. I have yet to forage for vittles in the 99 Cent Store myself, but there's plenty of month left for that.

The vegetables are not exactly prizewinners, but they will do.

Pea pods!
Some were a bit sketchy, but they were peas in a pod.

Not worthy of Pinterest, but this salad had a bit of interest.

I made a huge pot of spicy soup for $4.75.
Our food budget is liking this September just fine.

Heart Lessons

By now, I really ought to know more about heart anatomy. I've sat there too many times now as the cardiologist explained what just happened during my husband's latest procedure. My typical response is a slight tilt of the head, some "Yes" and "Of course" answers, accompanied by much head nodding. The goal is that I nod my head at all the right moments, and that I remember what in the world the doctor is talking about so I can repeat it later to my husband who knows exactly what the doctor is talking about.

The latest procedure in July was going to be different. First, it wasn't an emergency. I could actually do my hair, wear nice clothes and not look like a weepy hot mess while I sat there nodding. Second, I could upload some pictures onto my iPad and whip them out when the doctor started getting all technical. Then I could nod and interject phrases such as "Ah, yes, the good ol' Anterior inter-ventricular artery" and "My oh my, if it isn't that cocky Superior vena cava, such an attitude with that one!" 

I didn't need to nod, I barely needed to have a good hair day. Ernst was so alert after his angioplasty, he went over the videos of his surgery with the doctor mere minutes after coming into the recovery room. They threw around the fancy medical terms and they rehashed what happened, as my iPad photos sat useless. 

So what happened? The team at Kaiser Roseville put another stent in an area that started giving Ernst trouble in June. What kind of trouble? Well, after my husband attempted gargle singing at a gathering, choked on the water he inhaled and practically coughed up a lung, he started feeling poorly the next day. And according to the good doctor, yes indeed, it's possible to dislodge an old plaque in your heart by a coughing fit brought on by gargle singing. Good to know.

What the doctor didn't do is try to fix the part of the heart they thought was giving him the latest symptoms of angina. That section is completely clogged up with scar tissue from his past surgeries. But his heart has built collateral arteries to keep things sufficiently oxygenated. All his other stents are clean and clear. They said to keep up the plant-based diet. Good to know.

The mascot for Team Collateral Arteries.
Go Collaterals, go!

Our Silver Linings Blanket

Back in July of 1992, when we celebrated our first anniversary, money was a bit tight. So we went camping and made a pact to not buy each other gifts. We took a picture of me holding up one finger to represent one year of marriage.

Davis, where it all started.

The custom held, and we continued to make anniversaries a no gift affair. But that picture thing stuck. We took pictures every year, each year adding another finger for another year. When I ran out of fingers, we started finding numbers in random places. On year twelve, our friend in Italy made us a cake with a big number 12 on it. The places varied - the early years were usually camping, the middle years often in Europe, lately just sticking around home.

This July, for our 25th, we decided to shake it up a bit. We decided to go back to where it all started, to Davis California. The day included a visit to the Davis Arboretum with a stop at Whole Foods for picnic supplies, a very expensive picnic we could not have afforded our first year. We took some pictures in the same spots we took our wedding photos, we think. A garden changes a lot in twenty-five years.

Then came the fun part. We combined the German tradition of throwing your own silver anniversary party and the Moldovan tradition of inviting people to your wedding by driving around and personally offering shots of liquor to all your friends. We grabbed some bottles of our homemade Hungover Hound cider - plum and orange and lemon, plus several shot glasses and we hit the road. I was the designated tiny little sips of cider driver.

We started at Mykl and Rita's place on our way to Davis, then saw Linda and her new dog Sarah, then Madelene, followed by John and Candace. Then it was off to see Mike and Brigitte who shared with us some South African liquor. A visit to Judy was next, then time with Martin and Anna before ending up with Dan and Anne in South Davis. Our plan was to stay at each house for just 15 minutes. Oh, what fools we are even after all these years. Four or so hours later, we headed home, happy with the knowledge that it's the people you meet who make your life the richest.

A few days later I finally started cutting out the fabric for the Ernst and Jessica Quilt. I wanted to have it started before Ernst went in for his fourth heart surgery (more on that in a future post). The thought was, in my incredibly stressed out mind, that if I started a quilt that celebrated our life together, surely that life together would continue long enough for me to finish the project. Of course, now that the results are in and are positive, I know that good health and long marriages are not based on whether a hobby is completed. But at the time, cutting out those squares was the only thing I felt I had control over. We eagerly await the finished project.

While I've always just hauled our old clothes off to Goodwill, when we were getting our life organized last summer I started putting away a few well-used and treasured clothes for a quilt. It made it easier to retire some ratty old favorites, knowing they would end up in our quilt. Here are some of the highlights.

When Ernst bought these pjs for a trip, they were packaged to look normal.
Instead, they were an amazing hodgepodge of plaid.

No worries, the crazier the better.

That's the trim color and the wall color of our house.
The house that needed every single surface painted.
Painting starts with pain for a reason.

Nothing says refined elegance like moose pajamas.

Or dogs, we must have dogs.

Lots of trips in twenty-five years, but just one to Hawaii.

Make that soy milk and plant-based treats, please.

Flannel, there must be flannel. 

Some dress shirts too. We're not hillbillies after all.

Davis, There's no place like Davis.

Ernst possibly caused his burst plaque issue by inhaling water into his lungs after "gargle singing" at a gathering.
If the shirt fits, quilt it.

Plum tuckered out

Our yard has a total of nine or so fruit trees, not counting the pecan that desperately needs a girl pecan tree to be fruitful. Even after knowing about the issue with the fruitless pecan tree that towers over our backyard making worthless, empty nut shells, we just might have planted some dud cherry trees too. Who knew that trees were so picky in the fruit making department - aren't the bees supposed to be taking care of all that pollen stuff?

Two trees we never have to worry about are the plum trees. One sour and one sweet, they certainly know how to make fruit. This year all the fruit came a bit early and furiously, so we were busy plum processors. Ernst was the resident picker, fruit washer, pitter and juice processor. I just gave moral support and occasionally was chief bottle washer.

The majority of the plums went into making our now infamous Hungover Hound Plum Cider. To make plum cider, you need to make plum juice, and do we ever make the plum juice. While some might make plum juice by squishing up a bunch of plums and then straining the liquid, we have the juice-making contraption that puts the fear of plum-colored kitchen walls in me. I come home to scary scenes of a giant pot bubbling on the stove, with plastic tubes and crimping devices holding back the burning purple liquid. So I usually just go outside in the shade of the infertile pecan tree and hope for the best.

After the plum cider is taken care of, we have quite a bit of gorgeous plum juice left. It really could not be easier to make jelly than when someone hands you a large amount of clear and beautiful fruit juice that you didn't have to juice yourself. Making jelly is quite simple. It's all in the attitude. If you tell yourself it's easy, it's easy. But that might be the plum cider talking.

This juice, besides threatening to stain the walls plum, is slated to become cider.

Now this is plum juice for plum jelly.
About six cups is all you need.
I won't say how much sugar is needed because it's a disgusting amount.

I must have this brand pectin.
Sure.
Jell.
Must have the SureJell.

I usually let the dishwasher do the jar sterilizing.

But I don't trust anything except a pan of boiling water for the lids and seals.

Learn. From. Me.
Put. Down. Big. Towel.
Bigger.
And get one of those things that looks like a fat funnel. 

OK, I admit, there are lots more steps I'm leaving out, but they are all included in the easy directions that come with the SureJell. All you need is fruit, sugar and SureJell. And plum cider. And that weird funnel thing. You'll be making jam or jelly in no time. Or lots of ice cream topping if for some reason it doesn't work, but that's really tasty too. If you try to forget how much sugar you added. 

Plum Jelly!

Plum Jelly off to the California State Fair!
The little guys won first place.
Which is given to more than one person or jelly.
The Orange Marmalade won too.
So did the Orange and Lemon Jelly.
First place.
I think the judge got a hold of some plum cider, but I'll accept.

This Friday is the Orange Marmalade Competition.
And that will be it for canning, until next year.

Orange you glad it's Summer?

I was born and raised in California, the land of citrus, and I had no idea there are orange trees that produce a crop in early summer. Summer oranges? That's about as strange as a homegrown tomato in February. Simply preposterous!  

Our neighbor Steve has such an orange tree. He says he hates them, they're a pain, full of seeds and did we want them? Never being ones to turn down free food, Ernst went over and picked a bushel or two. I'm not really sure exactly what a bushel is, but if a bushel means a giant amount of produce that you can't believe just entered your life, we did indeed get a bushel or two. 

What's a person to do with so many oranges? First, and this is the easy part, we tasted them. Yes, they had more seeds than maybe the average person would prefer. But we are far from average and we kept eating. And eating and eating because these were the sweetest and juiciest oranges I've ever had in the middle of the beginning of summer. I dare say they are better than our oranges, but it may just be the excessive amount of Vitamin C in my body talking.

The enormous load of oranges made their way to the back patio where we could start dealing with them, Then Ernst picked another bushel or so, because by then he too was a bit loopy on Vitamin C. This was serious, it was hot, our patio was covered in citrus, oranges don't last forever and we had to start preserving these things. Here's what we did.

A very small portion of the very last of the bushels upon bushels.

I

I sliced them thin and dried them in the dehydrator.
They came out tasting like candy.
Yummy, orangey, chewy candy.
I have to limit myself to a small mountain of them each day.

We ate lots of this amazing Orange Olive Salad.
Looks weird, tastes great.

I whipped up some Orange Smoothies.
This had bananas, oranges, and a cucumber, with water.
It took me to the moon and back, all before 8 am.

We filled the fridge with orange juice for making Orange Cider for the California State Fair.
We sadly missed the deadline for the entrance fee.
Very sadly.
Tragically is not too strong a word.
We may have to drink Orange Cider to drown out our sorrows.

Having missed the deadline to submit our Orange Cider and Lemon Cider for judging at the California State Fair, I knew I had a mission ahead of me. Make Orange Jelly, and do it right. My goal is to better my performance of my Plum Jelly from last year's fair, no pressure of course. The jelly I had made from our oranges this January turned out too stiff and solid and the marmalade was just not that great. Here with these summer oranges, I was given another chance. I really took my time and measured the ingredients perfectly (well, is anything really ever perfectly perfect?).

The first batch turned out great, so I decided to do a second version with oranges and lemons. That one's even better. But we still had oranges left, and by then I was on a roll with this whole canning process, so I made some orange marmalade too. I cut off the rind, leaving the white pithy stuff out. I sliced the rind up into really uniform slivers, like I was on a cooking show. Then I came up with my secret weapon, my most amazing technique, like I was some sort of marmalade expert and this wasn't only the second batch of my whole life. It worked. It turned out yummy. I hope the judges agree. Maybe we can get them all liquored up first with Orange Cider. We've got bushels of it.

Lemon Orange Jelly

Secret Weapon Orange Marmalade!

The Weight of a 4 X 6 Glossy

Back in the day, the cost of travel was never quite complete until you got home, took your vacation photos to the drugstore and waited to see if they turned out as well as your memory of the actual events. When it came time for pickup, the disappointments piled up. Eyes closed, blurry, too light, too dark, finger on the lens, pigeon flew across at the worse possible time - the photo disasters were ready to be revealed, in living color and in duplicate. Or sometimes even panorama.

I'd say we took the average amount of photos, and some turned out really well. Definitely photo album worthy if not frame worthy. For the first few years of our marriage, I tried to keep up with the albums. I'd sometimes have a couple of years of photos piling up, but then one hot summer day I'd crank up the AC and get the pictures in albums, all in perfect chronological order. No labels or dates, because just getting them in albums was reason to celebrate. It always felt so good, I'm amazed I never took a picture of those backed-hunched-over, legs-cramping, forgot-to-eat-all-day photo album filling sessions.

Then I stopped and the photos really started piling up. I would always put an album together after an International Convention in Europe, but the everyday photos stayed in their packages. I would separate the negatives and store them at my Mom's house, in case we ever had a fire and all our photos burned up and we decided to spend the money to reprint every last blurry one to once again not put in albums.

Then I discovered photo boxes! You know, those cute lightweight boxes that are great for stuffing in huge amounts of duplicate blurry pictures of pigeons with their eyes closed. It was a procrastinator's dream! I bought lots of them. I labeled the little tab in front PHOTOS or MEMORIES and stacked them up on shelves. And moved them from house to house. They were great boxes, truly adorable and did I mention stackable?

After getting our house in order in so many other areas, I was feeling the need to attack the photos. I'd have to be in the right mood. Not too sentimental, but not too brutal that I would throw out all the fat pictures lest I forget. Here was my process. 

Find a nice open space to see what I was up against.
Futon to the rescue!

Open the scary end of my closet.
Open it wide.

Take out every album, every box and every container with photos in them.
Scream.

Give my shoes a place to look cute.
Smile.

Start by emptying each photo album.
Toss all the "Why did we ever save this one?" photos.
Don't let those blurry, squinting pigeons load on the guilt.
Toss them and don't look back.

Realize that keeping the negatives was really dumb.
Throw them out.

Take the empty albums to Goodwill.
17 pounds of photos lighter, not including the albums.
Sigh.

Pile is smaller.
More work to do, but it's a huge dent.

Stop sorting when I come across a very special photo.
You know, one of the precious ones.
Sigh.

This one photo, this brief encounter in Germany in 1998 was a life changer. We had stayed behind at the International Convention in Nuremberg to sing with the Hungarians. We were some of the last to leave the stadium. Who do we pass by but this adorable Polish family. We took their photo and exchanged addresses.

We wrote them and sent them our duplicates. They wrote back and did the same. Then a few more letters. Then a few nights spent with them on our next trip to Germany. They came to visit us in California for two weeks. More trips here with just the girls. More trips to see them in Germany, a trip together to their home country of Poland. Our friends in Tahoe met them, fell in love with them just as we did. A trip out to New York when their daughter married an American. We met more of their friends, who then met our friends from Tahoe. They introduced their brother to our Tahoe friend. Another wedding! That is one powerful little photo. 

Now the decision comes - what to do with all these loose photos? Now that we know how many we have, the sheer size of these loose photos, it's easier to be a little more ruthless each time through. I have an idea to make a few very select albums with the best of the best of the best. By category, not by chronology. I'm tossing some of the possible categories around.

• International Conventions
• The People We Love 
• Dog Photos, Volumes I and II
• Camping With Candace
• When We Were Young
• When We Were Fat
• When We Thought We Had Lost Weight But Were Still Fat
• Blurry Pictures With Our Eyes Closed Because We Were Still Young But Not Yet Fat
• Dog Photos, Volume III

That ought to do it!

Tomatoes, by George

Somewhere in my Mom's big suitcase of photos, there's a picture of me sitting in this wheelbarrow, being pushed by my Dad. Or maybe the image is just in my head, but it's so clear it might as well be a photo. When my Mom moved back East, we got the wheelbarrow of my childhood, and we still use it in the yard. I'm sure it's been through a few tires in its day, but structurally, it's as good as new. Counting back to when my parents bought their first house, if my Dad bought the wheelbarrow soon after, that piece of equipment is about 60 years old. That's a lot of dirt hauling. 

My Dad wasn't a gardener when he moved into their house in Arden Park, but he soon became one. My memories of that backyard are fuzzy, because we moved away when I was six. The way back of the yard is where my Dad's garden was. The neighborhood men all chipped in and bought a rototiller and would share it between them. I just vaguely remember being afraid of the rototiller and that the crows would steal all the cherries from the tree before we got to them. 

The house we moved to was in Carmichael. The neighbors on each side opted for no fences, so we had a wide open view of the garden of all gardens, Mr. Gull's garden. He grew everything you can think of, the crows didn't steal his cherries, everything as neat as a pin, he even had a huge boysenberry patch along his back fence. It was a marvel. It was perfect. 

My Dad's garden was not too shabby either, with raised beds and all the usual Sacramento vegetable crops, minus the berry bushes. But every gardener knows that when it comes down to it, all that really matters are the tomatoes. If your tomatoes aren't the best on the block, you might as well just go inside and let those crows steal all the cherries, and while they're at it the boysenberries too.

My Dad's tomatoes were better than Mr. Gull's. That's right, Mr. City Boy had Mr. Gentleman Farmer beat in the tomato department. How do we know this? Did we sneak into the unfenced yard and do a blind taste test? No, we had something better - the word of the Avon Lady. Yes, the Avon Lady let it be known to all her customers that my Dad's tomatoes were the best on the block, in fact they were the best on her whole route. That was worth a bucket of cherries right there, and really who needs dumb old perfect rows of everything when you've got the best tomatoes in probably all of Sacramento?

Sadly, I had no interest in my Dad's garden. I just didn't get the fascination, why he would want to be out there on hot summer nights, going back to the old neighborhood to borrow the rototiller, hauling in cow manure from his friend Mr. Butts (I kid you not) and trying to choose between which tomato varieties to plant that year. The names of those tomatoes did stick with me, and they are the old standbys. Early Girl. Big Boy. Better Boy. Ace. There were no striped or yellow or purple heirlooms in our garden. No, my Dad stuck with the basics, why confuse the Avon Lady. By now those varieties he planted are heirlooms, they've been around so long.

My Dad's been gone for 25 years now, and each year that has passed has seen my love of gardening grow. I wish he had kept a garden journal, I would love to know what he fed his tomatoes, when he planted them, how often he watered. Did he have a drip system? Did they even have drip systems then? What was his secret? 

I wish he could see how his love of gardening did develop in me after all. I don't grow the best tomatoes on the block, far from it. But I do find myself drawn to those same varieties of tomatoes he planted. He spent so much time out there, after work, on the weekends, and it seems the only ones in the family that really understood the joy of gardening were the dogs. They were his faithful companions out back, with Holly the pack leader and Ralph herding the chickens as they ate the slugs. I get it now, and if I could just have one more day with him, it would be in his garden. 

The new addition to our garden plot.
We hauled these old deck pilings from the back of the yard with the old wheelbarrow.
Still rolling along after all these years.

Ready for planting.

Got to have the essentials.
Shovel, trowel and caffeine.
And after, a beer in honor of my Dad.

The canine could look a bit more interested, but she is loyal and keeps me company.

T is for tomatoes!

Mr. Gull might not be too impressed, but I bet my Dad would be proud.