How To Ruin a Good Idea

Walmart ran the first recycling program in Lawrence. The Walmart on South Iowa included a separate building with drive-up parking. The long building had a series of large openings with roll-up windows, one window for each of the various types of materials – white paper, newspapers, mixed paper, cardboard, chipboard, aluminum, and separate boxes for different numbered plastics. 

Under each window was a large cardboard box to catch the deposits. Walmart employed cognitively challenged people who watched to make sure only the appropriate materials went into each category. The employees took pride in their jobs and policed the contributions vigorously. Consequently, all the recycled materials were clean and, consequently, totally recyclable. When a box was full, they emptied it into the appropriate bin and replaced it. During the hours the center was open there were always people unloading their recycling materials and placing them in the appropriate boxes.

Then the City of Lawrence instituted its own recycling program. The city provided each household with a rolling container for all recycling. Happy residents threw everything into the container. Consequently, the recycled materials were contaminated with everything from greasy pizza cartons to dirty diapers. These recycled materials were, of course, not recyclable.

Walmart, which had done a fine job of handling recycling responsibly, closed their recycling operation.

You can count on human beings to make a good idea unworkable through our love of convenience.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

The Pause that Refreshes

Do you drink Coke? I do. I’m not one of those folks who drink a Coke for breakfast. No, I’m horrified that these people understand so little about what their bodies need to function. However, there are times when I feel the need for a treat and times when my stomach is queasy and those are times when I want a Coke – a Coke made in Mexico.

I first heard of “Mexican Coke” when we went to Arizona for the winter. We looked up other people from Kansas who live there. Some we never sought out again, but others became dear to us. They are musicians, good musicians who play at a small—batch brewery on Sunday afternoons.

We became fans and attended regularly. The bar pays them and expects that increased patronage will offset the band’s fee. That makes sense, but I’m not a fan of beer drinking, but I noticed the bar’s menu board which listed, in addition to their several brews, Mexican Coke. 

I tried a Mexican Coke and found it tasted so good it became my drink of choice when we went to the Sunday sessions. Then the brewery’s hard benches became a deterrent, and our attendance became sporadic.

A few weeks later I found myself wanting a Coke, specifically a Mexican one. I thought I’d have to go to a Mexican tienda to buy it, but I soon learned that most grocery stores in Arizona carry it. Now that I’m back in Kansas I can buy it here, too.

Mexican Coke bottle

There’s actually a controversy nationally about the difference between Mexican-made and U.S. made Coke. Mexico uses cane sugar but the U.S. uses high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten their Coke. Moreover, there’s a trade war over it. The controversy spawned two appeals to the World Trade Organization. 

Afficianados of the two kinds argue over taste. “Mexican Coke doesn’t have that ‘chemical’ taste that U.S. Coke has.” “Nonsense,” the U.S. group respond, “sweetness is sweetness whether it comes from cane sugar or corn.”

Those who favor Coke heche en Mexico argue that the traditional curvy glass bottle is more aesthetically appealing than an aluminum can or plastic bottle. Some even claim that Coke’s taste is adversely affected by aluminum cans or plastic bottles.

Yet another argument is that the choice of Mexican over U.S. Coke is an ideological choice, a protest against globalization

This hubbub amuses me. I drink Mexican Coke for one reason only: it tastes better. After a couple of sips of U.S. Coke, I don’t want any more of its metallic aftertaste. Mexican Coke is sweet and smooth, like a good bar of chocolate, and distinctly preferable. In fact, I’m sipping one right now.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Going with the Grain

For many years I’ve avoided refined flour, bleached or unbleached. My attitude toward refined flour started when I noticed that grain moths never show up in refined flour. They know there are no nutrients in it and that it would not support life. I noticed also that whole wheat flour in the cabinet had to be protected from grain moths. If moths got in the flour, they would thrive and reproduce.

Why then, do humans go to a great deal of trouble to remove the nutritious parts off wheat so we can eat whitebread, muffins, biscuits, croissants, and scones? Why do we eat pasta made from refined flour?  This stuff is just starch. Its nutrition is the equivalent of library paste.

I’ve made whole wheat bread for many years, buying whole wheat flour in 25-pound bags. But recently I accidentally ordered a 25-pound bag of whole wheat berries instead of flour. My first thought when the bag arrived was that we could feed the berries to our chickens. But I asked Laurie’s opinion and she said that cooked wheat berries have culinary uses. This triggered a memory from my childhood. Every year when Dad harvested wheat on his farm, his sister Janet, would beg him for some wheat berries to cook. Dad indulged her, but we thought her eating habits strange.

Now, I wondered whether I might be missing something. Being rather cowardly, I gave some berries to friends to try. Everyone loved them, so I cooked a cupful and made the cooked berries into a salad, adding diced cucumber, tomato, green onions, and red pepper, with lemon juice and vinegar as a dressing. The result was much like a tabouli salad, but chewier. It was delicious!

Now I’m sold on cooked wheat berry salad and have some berries cooking right now. I haven’t whether to make a salad with an oriental slant or an Indian-inspired salad with curry. Whichever I decide, I expect it to be good.  I'm having fun going with the grain.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

The Mayo Caper

After studying the condiment aisle filled with plastic containers, I decided to rebel by making my own condiments. The mayonnaise jar in our fridge was almost empty and I decided to start there. I scoured the internet for recipes. 

I’d heard how difficult mayo can be. There’s the situation where the mixture just won’t emulsify. I’ve read about a way to rework the ingredients to give emulsification a second chance. I’ve also read that one is advised to throw the failure away and start over. This information deterred me. As a Depression baby, I am ingrained with frugality and can’t bear thinking about throwing food away.

I was also intimidated by the descriptions of using a wire whisk to beat the oil one drop at a time into the other ingredients. How long would a person have to wield a whisk to incorporate the oil? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Even longer?

So I came to the internet search expecting confirmation of these concerns. To my amazement, however, I learned about mayonnaise made in one or two minutes using an immersion blender. My immersion blender has become a major kitchen appliance, right up there with the stand mixer, and I know how easy it is to use. No whisking is required. One merely has to hold the blender and watch the miracle emulsification occur.

Whisking was no longer an issue, so I just needed a recipe and, if possible, advice from someone who makes their own mayonnaise. Mayonnaise recipes abound, so I just had to try them until I found one I loved.

My first attempt made a thin mayo and tasted overwhelmingly like olive oil.  I learned that lesson, and ditched the olive oil in favor of safflower oil for my second batch.  Linda’s son Ben shared his recipe and I used those ingredient. This batch was a little thicker in consistency, but it didn’t seem zippy enough in light of my lifetime consumption of Miracle Whip, 

The third time’s the charm, and this third recipe seemed almost perfect to me. There's more acid, both vinegar and lemon juice, so the taste is zippier, not Miracle Whip zippy, but coming close. The consistency needs tweaking just a bit. I had difficulty mixing it into my coleslaw dressing, but it spreads nicely for Dennis’s sandwiches. Before beginning to tweak the consistency, I need to know more about the chemistry of emulsion and that calls for research.

How can one resist the plastic tide? One plastic jar at a time, that’s how. I won’t be sending any more Miracle Whip jars through the so-called “recycling” which will end up in the dump. This will hardly make a difference, but it’s all I can do. There’s a bonus for me, though, because I’m having fun learning to make mayonnaise and look forward to learn about making mustard when the plastic mustard container in our fridge is empty.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Off To the Dump We Go, Part Two

Walmart ran the first recycling program in Lawrence. The store on South Iowa included a separate building with drive-up parking. The long building had a series of large openings with roll-up windows, so the facility could be closed up at night. Inside the building a line of large cardboard boxes sat beneath the windows, one for each of the various types of materials – white paper, newspapers, mixed paper, magazines, cardboard, chipboard, aluminum, tin cans, and separate boxes for each of the different numbered plastics. 

Through Cottonwood, Inc., Walmart employed people with developmental disabilities who watched to make sure only the appropriate materials went into each category. When a box was full, an employee emptied and replaced it. 

Sitting beside the recycling building were three dumpsters for glass containers, one each for clear, brown, and green glass. The green and brown dumpsters smelled strongly of beer.

This system had two great advantages. One, disabled people found useful employment. Two, the recycling was sorted by citizens as they deposited their materials, under the watchful eyes of sharp-eyed employees.

Then, when the city of Lawrence decided to begin weekly curbside recycling pickup, Walmart closed the recycling center. And that’s when the whole concept of recycling fell apart. Now, those who chose to recycle didn’t need to sort anything. Citizens simply put all recycled materials in one big bin. I suppose the sorting fell to city employees or other hapless person. If someone chose to toss a dirty diaper into recycling, who was to know? If newspapers and other paper materials got wet, who cared? If the peanut butter jar wasn't clean, so what?

No one should blame the Chinese for refusing to sort through our garbage in order to reprocess the salvageable materials. They quit taking our stuff.

Once again, Americans’ love of ease and convenience was our downfall.

The Sierra Club, in its July/August issue, assesses the recycling nightmare in an article titled “Trash Talk,” and concludes that the recycling system is broken. The article’s advises us to put everything in landfills until we can figure out a better way. I recommend that we look to Walmart for a workable solution.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Off The the Dump We Go, Tra-la

Plastics don’t rot the way organic things such as vegetables, cotton clothing, or dead humans do. Plastics just break into smaller and smaller bits. That’s why sea creatures aren’t the only life forms consuming plastic; bits of plastic are in our drinking water, our table salt, and even mothers’ milk.¹

But wait, we recycle most of our waste materials, don’t we? No, actually, only about 14 percent of solid waste is recycled. (Estimates vary from 10 percent to 17 percent.) The remainder ends up in landfills, rivers, the ocean, and beaches.

And what happens to the materials we do recycle? As an article in the New York Times explained:

“In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import ‘foreign garbage.’ ”²

China let us down and other Asian countries have followed its lead. They are shipping tonsof trash back to the countries where it originated, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. ³

What will we do with this trash? To get an idea of the problem, I watched an NBC story on line.⁴ The story left me even more distressed and I wish everyone would watch it. Then maybe we could take on the real problem, which an unfortunate blend of our lifestyle and the politically powerful plastic manufacturers.

1. “Plastic in Your Drinking Water, Table  Salt & Mother’s Milk,” earthdecks.com

2. “Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not” , May 20, 2018, New York Times.

3.“Malaysia has started returning tons of trash to the west: 'we will not be the dumping ground of the world'”, Newsweek, June 20, 2019.

4.“Recycling Breaks Down: US Struggles to Keep Plastic From the Dump”, NBC, Aug 13, 2018, Broadcast by Chanel 4, Washington.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domethem strongerr

Plastic Kills, but Who Cares?

Dead whales wash up on beaches. Why did they die? Could it be the 48, 67, or 88 pounds of plastic in their stomachs?*

Photo found on the internet.

Whales aren’t the only ones dying. Plastic kills millions of sea turtles, sea lions, seals, fish, and sea birds each year. Either they mistake it for food and eat it or they become helplessly entangled in large pieces of plastic such as nets, bags and fishing line.

Well, heck, who cares about dead whales, anyway? We need our conveniences. Manufacturers must enjoy the profit from low shipping costs of plastic containers.  Humans are the most important species and we can’t be expected to look out for other species. They will have to look out for themselves and deal with our plastic waste.

* Whales are also dying because their food cannot thrive in warmer ocean temperatures, so the whales starve. But that issue is for another day.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Casing out the Condiments

In the second installment of the Grocery Plastics Tour I move on to the condiments aisle, looking particularly for mustard sold in glass jars.

Here is the mustard section. I scan the shelves.

I see twenty-nine different kinds of mustard, including each of the different flavors offered by the same company. Of these, only one kind is in a glass jar, Grey Poupon, an import from France, is, of course, the most expensive. Otherwise the shelves are filled with plastic, plastic, plastic, and more plastic.  

Next to the mustard is the array of plastic bottles of ketchup. There's no use looking here.The old glass bottle of ketchup has been extinct for years.

Moving on to mayonnaise and its kin I find no glass whatsoever.

How about the vinegar section?

Nope.  Nada.

Okay, but maybe the salad dressings will have a glass bottle or two.

Ah, at last, amongst the forest of plastic, I find four flavors of Brianna’s salad dressing in glass bottles on the top shelf, far left.

When the squeeze bottles are almost empty, I throw them away, because the last can’t be squeezed out. I used to enjoy adding a bit of water and getting the last dregs of catsup to pour out. That just doesn’t work with plastic squeeze bottles, so what can I do? I can toss the bottles in the trash or recycling, which creates more problems. Either the enormous landfill gets another plastic bottles that won’t decompose for hundreds of years, or I send the bottle to some third-world country to be made into something else. That, too, is problematic. But I’ll save the facts and my thoughts on that on another day.

For today, it’s enough to have observed the plethora of plastic in the grocery store condiments aisle.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Jugged

Every trip to the grocery store dismays me. Single-use plastic is everywhere, in every aisle. We carry all that plastic home and try to recycle it or just throw it in the trash. 

Do we really need this wasteful junk? Landfills are full of it, creating great hills that alter the landscape. Much of it isn’t even put into a trash receptacle so it litters beaches in every remote part of the oceans. Bits and pieces of it mar the landscape. It collects on fences and litters even the gravel road that leads me home. Sea creatures ingest it or become entangled in it and die.  Whales that wash up dead on beaches are always found with stomachs full of plastic – 15 pounds of it, 80 pounds of it, 22 kilograms of it, on and on.

No wonder a grocery aisle appalls me! That’s why I’m going to war on single-use plastic. 

The first plastic I’m attacking is laundry detergent, both liquid and pod, packaged in big plastic jugs.

Is it really easier to lift that heavy jug and pour some liquid into the lid before emptying the lid’s contents into the washing machine? Or is it easier to scoop granular detergent and dump it into the machine? Does the liquid really distribute more easily in water, thus avoiding clumps of un-dissolved powder when the washer finishes its cycle? In my sixty-some years of doing laundry I’ve never had that happen, and I’ve managed to use powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes the whole time. 

Although I thought the plastic measuring cup in every box of it was a terrible waste, for several years I used Arm and Hammer, which I could find at only the Kroger stores in my town. Then, shockingly, even Arm & Hammer quit making powdered detergent. Now there is none.

The amount of plastic contained in these jugs is staggering. These jugs aren’t sold in just one store in my town. Every one of a dozen grocery stores has an aisle just like this one. Everybody in town is buying these jugs, not just once, but again and again. Multiply that by every city in the United States and you will have enough detergent jugs to build a jug Pike’s Peak.

There’s no good reason for consumers to accept detergent in plastic jugs.  We should demand powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes.  We should hold the manufacturers responsible their role in plastic devastation. Let’s see if the consumer is always right.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Convenience

Convenience – how we love it! We pursue it and snatch it up at the earliest opportunity. Many of us make our lives so convenient (and sedentary) that in order to get any exercise we have to join fitness centers where we can use machines that produce nothing.

“Working out,” is what it’s called. It seems like “acting out,” in the old sense of pretending to be or do something on a stage. If that comparison is valid, “working out” must mean that one is pretending to work. Is an underlying implication that physical effort is beneath the person who “works out?” No, this has nothing to do with snobbery. It’s just that modern life places most of us in positions that are totally convenient and require no physical effort from us. Yet we know that our bodies were designed to be used, and that exercise is essential to keeping our them in good order. That’s probably why apartment complexes and businesses offer free gyms and why there are many for-profit health clubs.

This scheme of “working out” seems to produce a great deal of wasted energy. What if all the exercise machines were built or retrofitted to harness this wasted energy as electricity? Just imagine that every exercise bike and treadmill was hooked to a generator. The wattage harvested would not be insignificant.

If every machine were designed to harvest energy, “working out” would become just plain old “working.” Perhaps even the vocabulary would change. Instead of bragging that one ran twenty miles on the elliptical machine or squatted three hundred pounds, one could say, “I generated 60 watts of electricity this morning.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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The Customer Is Always Right, Right?

“The customer is always right,” is a traditional motto for businesses in the United States. What the customer wants is what he gets, at least that’s how it used to be.

But today things have changed. It’s the stockholder who is always right, not the customer. Businesses don’t care about the customer now; they care only about the bottom lines on their financial statements. 

Here is a recent example: Baker’s Chocolate used to offer an eight-ounce package of baking chocolate containing eight individually wrapped one ounce squares. Each square had a groove down the middle, making it easier for the cook to use half an ounce, if needed.

In 2013, everything changed. The package contents went from eight ounces to four ounces. Moreover, the individually wrapped one-ounce packages disappeared and were replaced by a single four- ounce bar of baking chocolate. The product has shrunk and was now less convenient, but its price did not change.

I’ve noticed the shrinkage trend for several years. Who else remembers that coffee once was sold in one-pound tin cans that opened with a key so the lid could be replaced? Who else remembers the lovely aroma that came when one turned the key, releasing the pressurized seal? Somewhere along the line coffee was sold in plastic bags, which happened to weigh just 12 ounces, a 25-percent reduction.

Any grocery shopper who is paying attention has seen these sneaky weight reductions occurring in almost every kind of food products. Usually we accept these changes without much protest, but the changes to Baker’s Chocolate produced a firestorm of home baker complaints. We were so incensed that the venerable New York Times ran an article* reporting that a Kraft spokesperson claimed that “Our consumers have told us that they prefer this size over the larger size because the majority of our Baker’s recipes call for four ounces or less. The easy-break bar makes it faster to melt and easier to break apart.”

Kraft‘s spokesperson must think we are fools. If so many of “our customers” are pleased, where are their voices. The only ones speaking up are the unhappy ones. The customer, sad to say, is no longer always right. The Baker’s Chocolate package is still four ounces.

*Halving the Portion, but Not the Price, June 22, 2013, The New York Times.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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Waiting to Die

When I turned eighty almost four years ago, it seemed to me that I had reached the appropriate time to die.  My life has not been one of restraint and caution. I have drunk bourbon daily for more than twenty years. I drink several cups of coffee every day. What’s more, I have smoked tobacco for most of my life, and still enjoy five or six cigarettes every day. 

I do not deserve a long life, nor did I expect one. I braced myself, thought about what happens in death, and sat back, waiting for it to come to pass. I waited, and waited, and waited some more.

On the car drive returning to Kansas from Tucson I experienced a moment of truth. I suddenly realized that waiting to die is pretty damn boring. I’m done with that, I thought. I decided to give up the role of distant observer and become a participant again.

When we got back to Kansas, I looked at our home with new eyes – eyes that saw how I’ve let things slide, how stuff has accumulated. I don’t even know what this house contains. So this is where my return to life begins. I have resolved to clean out every drawer, cabinet, and closet, one each day. This alone could take the rest of my life, but it’s interesting, which is more than I can say for waiting to die.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Hello, Old Friend

Moving to Tucson for the winter, we didn’t expect to know anyone except our grandson and his wife, but Tucson has surprised us with some old acquaintances and a surprising number of other Kansans.

I didn’t expect to encounter any familiar flora, either, and that proved to be the case. The landscape here seemed totally alien to me. Different trees, different shrubs, different smaller plants. Ocatillos fascinated me, as did the many kinds of cacti, especially the saguaro, whose dead bones are made into useful fences and shades.

Until last week, I hadn’t seen a single native that I recognized, but that changed when the plants were sitting in pots in the yard.

An ecologist planned the landscape for our front yard around native plants whose blooms would attract bees and butterflies, but some of the plants were downright ugly, such as this one.

A few days later I discovered a pod hanging from one of its branches, a pod I recognized.

That has to be a milkweed pod, I thought. I know milkweed pods well because eleven varieties of milkweed grow in our Kansas posture. Their pods are variations on a consistent theme: their pods burst open and release hundreds of tiny seeds with gossamer wings, seeds that float away like a troop of sky divers.

Butterfly Milkweed, Blooming

The green sticks I had hated were my old friend, asclepias, commonly called milkweed, adapted to a desert climate. It has only insignificant leaves that soon die. Photosynthesis occurs in the plant’s stems, which explains their green color. I’m not sure of the genus but it is either albicansor subulata. Both are native to this part of Arizona.

The Sonoran milkweeds are part of a chain of 156 varieties of asclepias that stretches across the United States. This chain is vital to survival of the monarch butterfly. Monarchs can feed only on the flowers’ nectar and can lay their eggs only on asclepiasbecause newly-hatched larvae can eat only milkweed leaves and live only on the plants until they become fat caterpillars and move away to form chrysalises. 

It’s very nice to see my old friend living in the Sonoran desert. He has changed, of course, as old friends tend to do, but I’d recognize him anywhere.Crop Circles

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket

When I was a little girl, hearing one of Grandpa’s hens cackle after laying an egg, I heard it as, “Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket.” Eighty years later, I still hear a hen’s bragging that way.

When I’m in Kansas, the hen’s ruckus is part of my life’s soundtrack. Here in Tucson the soundtrack switches to the hum of distant traffic and the roar of Air Force planes passing overhead. Not a single Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket can be heard. I miss that as well as the contented clucks the hens utter while picking at the grain Dennis scatters in their yard.

That’s why I’m thrilled about Grant’s latest big project – building a chicken house. A Tucson architect had designed a chicken house for the Tucson climate and built one for his son’s school. Grant bought the plans and materials, and he and Dennis laid a concrete footing to anchor the house.

Then Grant spent part of his days away from lawyering building the outer structure. 

Photo by Dennis

Since then, he and Dennis have worked together to put on the finishing touches. They’ve built nest boxes that we can access from outside. And Dennis has stained the building’s outside. 

With an improvised a brooder that will keep baby chicks warm and provide them with food and water, we were ready to get some birds. That was easy. An Ace Hardware about ten minutes away gets shipments of baby chicks several times a week. We bought five of assorted breeds, but only four of them chose to pose for this photo. As you can see, two appliance cardboard boxes make a sturdy, protection for the babies.

Photo by Dennis

The only sounds these little fluff balls make now is  “Cheep, Cheep, Cheep,” but when we come back to the desert next fall, I expect to be welcomed by the old, familiar, “Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Peggy, I Get It

Years ago Dennis went around Douglas County looking at old buildings and interviewing their owners. The most interesting person he met was an invalid old woman, who was widely known in Kansas as Peggy of the Flint Hills. That was her pen name for the column she wrote for the Topeka Capitol Journal for 55 years.

In spite of being locally famous, she somehow ended up living alone in a stone cottage in rural Douglas County with numerous cats. Peggy was mostly bedfast but the cats weren’t. There was no litter box so the floors were a mess. 

Peggy didn’t seem to care that her life circumstances were less than ideal because she had her books, probably collected throughout her career as a journalist. She was reading them over again, one by one, and when she finished one she gave it away to a visitor. Handing Dennis a book, Peggy remarked, “When they are all gone, I will die.”

At the time I didn’t greatly understand Peggy. I was rather disapproving of her situation, but now I have become an old woman, I identify closely with her. I can’t travel anymore, and if truth be known, I wouldn’t care to even if I could. 

Why put myself through the hassles of travel when I can sit in my comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and open a book. Through a book I visit any place in the world, meet people of every culture, and even travel through time backward or forward.

I never met Peggy and don’t even know her real name. I can only guess that she died, happy with her books. I hope that only a few of them remained in her library. I do sort of wonder what became of her cats.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Past the Cusp

Past the cusp of transition into being elderly, I’m now acutely aware of things one needs in order to be active when one reaches this stage. 

Bill gave me a cane years ago, when I was traveling by air and needed some support walking long corridors, Except for that use, I left it propped against a corner in the dining room. Now that has changed. The cane, awkward as it is to handle, has become my frequent companion when I go out. I drop it, it’s hard to fit into the car beside me, and finding a way to keep it accessible when I sit is not easy. It's made to collapse in length, which would be handy, but my hands aren't strong enough to fold it. Those inconveniences, though, aren’t enough to discourage me from using it. 

Holding the handle of a grocery cart is also good at giving me stability while cruising the aisles. Thanks to grocery carts, grocery shopping ha my main form of exercise.

Grab bars in the shower now are indispensible, whereas they used to be a convenience.

I bought a button hook (useless) and nail clippers for designed for handicapped people (also useless ). 

These things are just the tip of an ever-growing iceberg. Recently I bought a rolling walker that has a seat where I can rest when the back pain becomes overwhelming. I’ve had my eye on those for over a year, after seeing an elderly man resting on one during an evening walk. and recently meeting a woman at the grocery store who graciously let me try hers for a moment. Walking with it is as easy as walking a grocery cart. The down side is that I can’t lift it in and out of the car, but when Dennis and I go together, he will do that for me. I’m very lucky to be married to that good man.

Yesterday, UPS delivered another enabler. This time it’s a lumbar brace. I’ve hesitated to open and try it on because the packaging pictures a man with body-builder muscles modeling one. If the model were a frail old woman, I wouldn’t hesitate to try it on. But I know when back pain interferes with my meal preparation, on it will go, if my crippled  hands can use the Velcro fasteners.

That’s the trouble with the design of many “enablers;” often they don’t work. The designers didn’t consider all the forms of disability. Sometimes I wonder if they were even tested. 

If only I had a 3-D printer, I could custom design my own enablers as well as some for my friends.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer 

El Nino, the Spoiler

When Halloween is over, many older Americans head south, seeking sunshine and warmth for the cold northern winter months. They call us “Snowbirds,” because, like many birds, we fly south.

Normally this is a good solution for bones that creak and muscles that ache in cold weather. We bask in southern sunshine and count ourselves lucky to be here.

This year, though, we aren’t so lucky, for El Nino has intervened. El Nino is the weather pattern that brings one cold front after another roaring in from the Pacific Ocean, clouding the skies and dropping rain on the Sonoran Desert. 

Our neighbor Val Bay shared his photo that tells the tale of Tucson skies this winter.

This cloudy weather is a reminder of how lucky we are to be here most years. We can be thankful that El Nino won’t last forever and that this year the desert will gloriously bloom, although we won’t be here to see it. 

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer 

A Spicy Romance

When I was a girl, a special treat was going to the drug store to drink malts at the soda fountain. After the soda jerk took our order, we saw him assemble the ingredients in a stainless steel jar, and whirl them in the electric malt maker. Then we saw him pour most of the contents into a glass and present it to us, along with the can, which still contained some malt, and a can of ground nutmeg to sprinkle on.

Nutmeg was not to be found in our kitchen at home, but it was the traditional addition to malts at Baumgartner’s Drug Store. For me, nutmeg was love at first taste and when I married, at twenty, I included a can of nutmeg in my rather limited spice collection.

Nutmeg, I now know, is best when freshly grated, so I have replaced cans of ground nutmeg with whole nutmegs and a nutmeg grater or microplane. 

The spice has numerous, but not extensive, uses. First of all, nutmeg is essential to grate over egg custard before baking. Making a tender egg custard is easy and it tastes marvelous served with berries such as fresh red raspberries .

Egg Custard

In a 1½  quart baking dish beat (in this order):

2 eggs

1/3 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups milk

Set the baking dish in a pan of hot water and bake at 350º for 50 minutes. Only the edges need be set when you remove it from the oven. The custard will continue to set as it cools.

Second, this spice complements certain dishes made with members of the brassica family, cauliflower, spinach, and broccoli. Nutmeg is delicious in creamed spinach. It’s also delicious in my favorite broccoli soup* and can similarly be added to cauliflower dishes.

Oddly, I don’t like nutmeg in apple pie, although most apple pies I’ve encountered use it. Romance, as we all learn, can be a bit fickle.

*Published on this blog on April, 23, 2013, titled “Back to Soup.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer