When the Time Is Right - A Short Short Story

All about finally letting go...

A foot note to this story is that a few months after giving Janie the tin of buttons, she returned the empty tin to me. I don't have many buttons any more but those I do will go into that tin. It's not only a reminder of my mother's sewing skills, it's a reminder of the tin of candy we had one Christmas. A candy that enchanted me with the rolled and swirled sugar treats. The filled raspberry candies were my favorites.

Do Plantation Dainties still exist???

This is..my favorite kitchen tool

Yikes...the kitchen per se is my great joy in life. Last night we had dinner with friends - she's an architect and he's a builder and they LOVE our kitchen, which makes me glow!

I have a couple of Wusthoff knives that I couldn't do without and have become quite attached to the Sankoto. But it is my Cuisinart that really has no substitute in my mind. I bought my first back in the 60s and have never been without one since. I tried another brand - once - and immediately went back to Cuisinart. Just the regular home edition, tho I have a mini that I also use a lot esp for vinagrette since I can mince that garlic small enough to disappear along with the herbs du jour.


Good reminder..iIn fact I think I need to make some hummus today. To see what others use a lot, check the This Is button over on the right. Lots of blogs on Three Buttons list, lots of players.

Footnote: Yes, almost always available somewhere for < $100. US.

This is ...the pair of shoes I'd sleep in...sortof

All in all, I am happier barefoot and if we didn't have an old cat who is prone to regurgitation, I'd be barefoot a lot. But this is as close as it comes....my old slippers that are wonderfully warm in the winter with socks and are soon to be replaced by Crocs. But sleep in Crocs??? not hardly.

So thank you HipHop and Banana Bread for this different one.



Wanna see more? Check over at Three Buttons for a long list of players.

This is...my favorite book

Dees came up with an intriguing subject for the weekly meme, This is...my favorite book.

I usually don't have the kind of favorite that I read again and again but two stand out in my mind. This one was a present for my 10th birthday - The Secret Garden by Frances Hogdson Burnett. I still have my copy, a 1949 Lippincott edition.



I certainly identified with little Mary and her "I Won't!" attitude. and later lived in Yorkshire and read it again there having a full appreciation of the 'invigorating' Yorkshire air. Later, living in SE Asia I could imagine Mary's early days of being cared for by servants. I know I've seen more than one of the film/tv adaptations and recently had a fine time seeing it on cable. I felt like Mary was a lot snittier in the book!

While living in England, I was happily near a library which was full of authors unknown to me, and I made some of my initial selections by scanning which one of them had a lot of books. I figured that if I liked the author I had a treasure trove; if not, I had one section already crossed off. I think that is how I first selected Laurie Lee. His Cider with Rosie became one of my favorites, read more than once while in England, and one which went around the world with me for a long time. While that copy is now gone, I now have this version which I found in a US used book store. I plan to read it again next winter...somehow it seems like a cozy, winter read to me...perhaps bringing back memories of England so long ago.



Want to see more faves?? check out the list of players over at Three Buttons who is good enough to maintain the list.

This is...My Collection!

This week's meme comes from Hyena In Petticoats . This is...my collection.

I used to have so many. Is that an attribute of youth or just personality? I wonder since downsizing, and having less interest in accumulations does seem to come with age. When I was a fairly young wife and mother, living in England when the US dollar was strong, I started collecting teapots. Good teapots. Bone china teapots. I was up to about 30+ and had them arranged on one kitchen wall, on shelves rawplugged into the rock hard plaster walls by my then dh. One day I came home to my lovely Nanny-ish babysitter who was all atwitter at my front door. My elder son was in nursery school so I immediately assumed something had happend to #2 son. (Do you remember the days before cell phones???) No, he was all right but...he had climbed on to the kitchen table, reached for something on one of the shelves and down the teapots tumbled.

All of them.

He was unhurt, and it was one of my first lessons in letting go of stuff. I also learned that second children are not exactly like first children. Let this be a caveat to parents contemplating child #2...

So now what do I collect? Well, I still have this collection. Cookbooks. Nearly every book on these shelves is a cookbook.


And there is the odd annex or two about the house. Well, really I don't know how many annexes there are as I just came across a hidden one this a.m.!



And then there are the cooking magazines that seem to be breeding since I no longer have any subscriptions, and then there are the folders on the 'puter. 1350 items in the folder. Do you think I can live long enough to even make a dent????

And what do YOU collect?