Good, Better, Best

Jaime's pie

The holiday concert is upon us this weekend. I always ("always" as in Every. Single. Concert) bake an apple pie for our close friend and conductor, Jaime, a tradition I started years and years ago. And this being the holidays, I make sure that I bake double chocolate cookies to go home for his wife, Oriana, as well as biscotti.

So Saturday afternoon I set about baking Jaime's pie. I had cooked the apples earlier that morning, so in no time at all the pie was in the oven. It came out and was cooling on the coffee table in our study off the kitchen as I made ready to put the first tray of chocolate cookies in the oven.

In short, all was well.

The rim of the pie crust had a few spots where the sugar wash had darkened more than I liked. Piece of cake, I thought. I'll just carefully cut those little nibs off with a serrated knife Which is exactly what I was doing when the pie flipped off the cooling rack and upside down on the coffee table.

Holy smokes.

Never in almost a HALF CENTURY of baking pies have I ever flipped one off the rack, upside down, and out of its pan.

One smashed pie

The good news is that not one crumb or splatter went on the carpet.

The better news is that I had just enough peeled, sliced apples in the freezer to make a second pie. (I also had another pie tin, plenty of mayo, the works.) So while I defrosted the apples and cooked them down, I also kept baking the chocolate cookies.

The chocolate cookies

The BEST news is that Jaime gets his pie (plus the other goodies; the first batch of biscotti is cooling while I type this), Warren and I get smashed apple pie dessert (yum!), and, most important of all, not one single crumb or splatter landed on the bass drum that Warren has just finished rebuilding for the Mansfield Symphony. Whew!

Proximity of bass drum to flipped pie; it also did not splatter on the hoops below to the left

Good, better, best—you betcha! 

All That Time

 

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

14 years ago tomorrow, I started this blog with a post about the magic of opening doors.

This is my 842nd post. If I play with the math, that means I have averaged 60.14 posts annually. But the average is meaningless. If you look at the Blog Archive in the column to the right, it shows how many posts I wrote in any given year. Best year? 2009, the year I started, where I came in with a mighty 101 posts. Worst year? 2021: a year of still coping with the pandemic, five brutal months of hard school mediations, and my wrapping up my paid professional life. Small wonder I did not write; I am surprised I even managed 8 posts that year.

Through these years, there have been some common themes: the garden, the Symphony, pies, my children, my grandchildren, money, traveling, reading, books, writing, family, cancer, community. There have been births along the ways (those grandchildren!) as well as deaths, including my older brother, my mother, and my Aunt Ginger. 

Time has just kept flowing along.

For the next few weeks (months?), I may be putting up posts using quotes from my commonplace books as the jumping off point for the post. My first book dates back to the later 1980s; I had started one before that in the mid-1970s, but that one got tossed decades ago (before starting the current volumes. Why did I toss it? I have no idea. (For the record, I am now in volume 5.)

I skim through the various volumes (always close at hand in our downstairs study) every four to six weeks, often looking for a reference or a quote I just know is in one of them. I am usually successful. But what I wonder, considering that the books scan some 35+ years of collecting quotes, is whether I would now find some of the quotes of little interest or even invalid for the person I am now. So I will use the quotes as random prompts and see where they take me.

Like any blogger, I have made friends in the blog-o-sphere along the way: thank you for reading my words. There are also personal friends from my pre-blogging life who have been on this since the onset or have joined on: thank you for reading my words. And thank you,dear Warren, for being there all along the way.  

I am grateful. 

Two Views of the Same Night

Mr. Frumble of Busytown

Hemingway famously said that when you needed to start writing, "write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

At 9:30 p.m. last night, here was my one true sentence: I am worn to the nub.

We are on overload on several fronts.

For me, it is the newest diagnosis. One of the hallmarks of having bone marrow - my hemoglobin, specifically - functioning subpar is to be exhausted.

Not tired. Exhausted.

But trying to spin it differently, I instead told myself last night that I had had a busy day (Justice Bus), a busy week (Concert Week).

That line of thinking reminded me of the Richard Scarry books about Busytown. Who was the pig character that never got things straight? Mr. Bumbles?

I had to Google it: Mr. Frumble.

And then I stopped writing, too tired to move the pen across the paper. 

That was my second one true sentence: I am too tired to write.

But there was more to last night than the exhaustion. 

Earlier that evening, we had dinner guests: this weekend's guest artist and his partner, who also performs. 

Leading up to dinner, I realized I had to come to grips with "enough."

Did I clean the house to a white glove inspection standard? No. I cleaned it to a level where I was comfortable having guests in our home. 

And that was enough.

And the meal? I made apple pie, of course. And a salad and a main dish. But instead of rushing to the store to add this or that special ingredient, I made do with what we had here in our freezer and pantry (sauteed zucchini/onions with pasta). The Parmesan cheese was just out of the shaker - nothing fancy there. I thawed and warmed an uncut loaf of bread I had picked up elsewhere instead of trying to find the time and energy to make a loaf from scratch. And I didn't worry about anything else other than having a good meal.

And that was enough.

What counted last night was the laughter and the talk (and the pie). Our guests, who are on a long recital tour, were grateful for a home-cooked meal. 

And pie. Peter ate three slices while we sat and talked the evening away.

And that was enough.

I wrote the first view of my evening last night after our guests left and Warren and I finished cleaning up the kitchen. I wrote the second part, well, took notes for the second part, after going upstairs to our bedroom. I made those notes feeling tired but grateful. Grateful for a wonderful evening of good conversation and good food and good pie.

And that, truly, was enough.

On Pivoting

 So yesterday I hit a wall I wasn't expecting. 

Well, when does anyone ever expect to hit a wall? And maybe that's a little overly dramatic: hitting a wall. More accurately, I came up against a physical capacity limitation that I was unaware existed. 

My plan was simple enough. We had caught some of the Mega Winter Storm that rolled from Texas to New England this week, enough to shut our streets down, close the library (which almost never happens), close many county and city offices, and generally bring Delaware to a standstill both Thursday and Friday. So I thought as a snowy gesture of friendship, I would make fruit empanadas and share them with our neighbors Adam and Maura and girls next door, Kathy and Ryan across the street (Ryan brings his snowblower over and blows off our sidewalk when it snows), and my old law partner Scott two houses down (who recently gave my dad some legal advice). 

It had been a long time, years to be honest, since I had made fruit empanadas, but heck, piece of cake. I mean, I bake all the time, right? So I prepared an apple filling and a cherry filling. (With fruit empanadas, it's better to cook the filling before filling and baking the empanadas, as the baking time goes more smoothly.)

The fillings

The kitchen smelled great. I was ready to roll, literally and figuratively. 

I made the pie dough I've now made for some 40 years, rolled out a bit of it, cut out the first six dough circles, and moved them onto the parchment paper to fill and crimp shut. I had put filling on three of the six when it hit me. I didn't have the strength to do the rolling, the cutting, the filling, the crimping, the baking. Not now, not later that morning, not ever. 

I was at a complete halt. I wasn't having a bad day physically; my cancer was not acting out. 

I. Just. Couldn't. Do. It.

Long silence in my heart. Long silence in my brain. Long silence in the kitchen as I looked down at what I had begun and acknowledged I could not finish it.

Deep breath.

Okay, no more fruit empanadas. That was clear. But I had filling for pies: apple pies, cherry pies. Not the same and not as much, but pies all the same. Pies! Soon I had two small apple and two medium cherry pies in the oven.

While they baked and I cleaned up the kitchen, I thought about what had happened. In my baking world, this was a first. I don't see it changing and my miraculously regaining the strength and energy to make the empanadas. No more empanadas. 

All the same, I gave myself props for pivoting without too much angst. Because, really, what was the alternative? Collapse in a tearful heap? Swear vociferously, slam my apron against the table, and stalk away? I felt I did more than just salvage the situation: the pies were great. (I'm not just bragging: this was confirmed when wonderful texts came in from those on the receiving end. Plus we kept and cut into one of the small apple pies. Yum.)

But I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a pang. Not heartbreak, but a pang. 

In writing my first draft of this post last night, I looked back to find my empanada post, as I was sure I had done one. Indeed, there it was in June 2012. What caught my eye was not the post itself (although those empanadas look pretty darn tasty), but this quote from my son Sam: "I've also been cooking huge meals for my housemates which is incredibly enjoyable; preparing and cooking and sharing food with people is one of the finer points in life for me as of late."

Preparing and cooking and sharing food. It really is that simple and essential.

So no more empanadas. But there's still food to to prepare and cook and share. The baking goes on. The friendships go on.

Life, sweet life, goes on. 

Observations About February Money

It is March 14 as I type, midafternoon, and looking out the window I see...snow.

I have been late in writing about February expenditures on groceries and eating out because, frankly, COVID-19 has shoved aside a lot of things, especially in the last two weeks. It shoved aside Pi Day (in that I did not even remember it was today!), although, ironically, when my sister-in-law wished me Happy Pi Day, I had just taken one out of the oven for supper with friends tonight.

Our Court is moving to a skeleton staff and most of us are working remotely from home for the indefinite future. Our schools are closed until at least the start of April and will likely be closed further after that. Our library closes Monday night, not to reopen until April 5 at the earliest. Warren is working on COVID-19 plans for our Symphony; the Mansfield Symphony, in which he plays also, cannot put on its concert next week as our governor, Mike DeWine made some sweeping closures (including the schools) when announcing the state of emergency in Ohio, winning admiration from many of us who never voted for him to begin with (me).

Our March Legal Clinic is canceled; our local Hunger Alliance met in this week in a lengthy session to ensure that those without food get it in these times.

The Methodist church two blocks from our house just canceled all services for March, hoping to reopen in time for Palm Sunday.

These are strange times. And to borrow from my judge, who is keeping Court staff and the bar on top of things, by the time he types an email with the latest updates and hits "send," it is already outdated.

And that doesn't even address my personal situation, except for me to note in quick passing that I see Tim, my oncologist, Tuesday for infusion and he is to weigh in on whether I should even be in our Court building, even on a limited basis. Given the infusion drug I am taking and have been taking for two and a half years, a powerful immunosuppressant that every myeloma specialist identified weeks early as putting one at high risk for serious COVID-19 reactions, I'm expecting the answer to be along the lines of "You even have to ask?"

In short, it is not business as usual and it will be months before it is business as usual, if ever.

So what does that have to do with what we spent in February? Quite a lot. Because when I look back at February spending, everything was pretty much on track to keep spending under $180.00 with ONLY SIX DAYS TO GO in the month until I did some stocking up for what was clearly going to be a long haul with the COVID-19 outbreak.

How much stocking up? Well, our grocery expenditures finished the month at $214.49, with almost $67.00 of that in the last two days of February. Add another $17.11 for household purchases (including, yes, toilet paper) and we finished the month at $231.60.

Yowsa.

The only ray of sunshine is that our eating out expenditures continued to be rock bottom low: $3.60 for a hot chocolate with espresso when I joined a dear friend for a long overdue talk.

So here's the thing: March is going to be worse. Because we did some more stocking up this month, based upon my concern that supply lines will be interrupted when the employees of distributors and freight haulers fall ill. It turns out I have a siege mentality in me after all. And, frankly, with my wacky health, I don't want to be stuck at home and out of food. We have already gone past the $180.00 monthly mark (although presumably except for perishables, we don't need to buy any more food). It's not pretty.

But I get it and I don't regret the dollars. I'm grateful we have them to spend. What I worry about is our community: all of us staying as healthy as possible, all of us getting our basic needs met.

I try not to worry about myself, even though I am so high risk. I video-chatted with Ramona last night; her school district (Vancouver, Washington) shut down yesterday until April 25. As a savvy 2nd grader, she knew why. So we talked about staying healthy and then she looked at me and said in a very quiet voice, "I don't want you to get sick, Grandma April."

Oh, sweetheart, I'm trying not to.

Let's get through this.

Small Moment: A Glittering Evening

In a few hours, my husband and the other musicians of the Central Ohio Symphony will take the stage for the March concert, which is always held on a Sunday afternoon. Two guest artists, violinist Simón Gollo and violist Randolph Kelly, will play the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra. Right now, Simón, who stayed with us for the weekend, is upstairs warming up before he and Warren head to the concert venue. I'll follow in a few hours.

For the last two days, Simón  and Randolph sat in our percussion room, emptied of its timpani, and played together, working out the rhythms and pairings that two virtuoso performers need to share to put on a stellar performance. So all weekend I have had the supreme pleasure of listening to world-class musicians work together, collaborate together, compare techniques and approaches on this measure or that passage, laugh together, and fill the rooms of this house with exquisite sounds.

Last night Warren and I hosted Simón , Randolph, and Randolph's wife Barbara in our home for a small, informal dinner. (Dinner followed a two-hour rehearsal in the percussion room.) The meal was simple and delicious, there was homemade apple pie for dessert, and the five of us sat and laughed and talked and shared our lives for two hours. Randolph especially had many, many orchestra stories to tell, as he is ending four decades of a stellar orchestral career. Conductor and musician names were sprinkled liberally throughout, most of whom I had only the vaguest idea of the person. Some of his stories centered around his relationship with "André," and he was well into several emotional stories about his last conversations with "André" before I realized "André" was André Previn.

Even I know who André Previn was. Those are the kind of stories shared last night.

 Our talk ranged far and wide, from instruments to music to childhood memories to tomatoes to, yes, end of life.

It was a glittering evening of good talk and good laughter and good fellowship.

And good pie. There is always good pie at the heart of it all in this house.

Observations About January Money

So here I am, on the last day of January, a month that for many of us felt like it would never end. But here we are and I can finally flip the calendar over come the morning.

As I type these words, two (yes, two!—count 'em!—two!) plumbers are deconstructing tearing out part of a bathroom wall to reach otherwise inaccessible water lines to the shower. The shower has been dripping since sometime in December. We have been frugally capturing the drip water and watering the household plants with it; they have never looked so lush. But the time had come to take on the drip professionally and about twenty minutes into the first plumber's foray, the problem suddenly became much larger and much more labor intensive. Plumber #2 showed up with #1 after the first went for more supplies and lunch.

Their work and some other events of this month have caused me long periods of thinking about sustainable household income. A sustainable household income is one in which you have enough to pay certain items deemed necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare, utilities, among others) and, then, in the acid test, could put your hands on $400.00 for an unexpected bill without having to borrow it, put it on a credit card, or skip paying a necessity to pay it.

We are a sustainable household here. Or, rather, we are two sustainable households as we keep separate accounts and there are some expenses that one or the other of us is solely responsible for (major household repairs: Warren because it is his house; my medical bills: me because it is my health). Warren is on more solid financial footing than I am, but, again, we are both sustainable. Still, listening to the plumbers work away, I wince. I just paid my first large medical bill of 2020 (and I have truly excellent insurance, so I am grateful it was only what it was) and I am feeling the need to watch my pennies closely while I rebuild my savings account.

That being said, I am particularly pleased that we are finishing January with decent expenditures on the food/household fronts. In previous posts, I had not yet set a monthly goal for that kind of spending. For the last few years, we had been shooting for $175.00 a month for food and common household items (dish soap, laundry detergent, and the like). The Department of Agriculture has predicted that food-at-home costs will rise only slightly in 2020 (an average of 1%), so tweaking my goal number would be not due to inflation in the outside world but internal inflation (as in "why exactly did you buy that?").

That being said, I'm moving the dial slightly upward for 2020 to $180.00. which is almost halfway between last year's goal of $175/month and our 2019 average of $186/month.

So what did we spend this month? $156.88 in food and $21.44 in household items, for a total of $178.02. And yes, I took that amount into consideration in setting the new monthly goal.

There are a couple items in that $156.88 to which I want to call particular attention. One is that

So many apples in the freezer that I just shoveled them anywhere they would go

we spent $28.99 on apples, all of which I peeled and either froze sliced to make pies with or made into applesauce (much of which went into the freezer). Why so many apples? Because they were there. Because I had the chance to buy several huge loads at bargain prices (lots of culls). Because the Symphony may participate in Pi Day (Warren and I thought about National Pie Day this month, but we just could not pull it off). Because...well, just because.

The other purchase I made note of in my monthly sheets was two bottles (48 fluid ounces) of canola oil marked down to—wait for —75 cents each. Unopened, not leaking, but put on the Kroger bargain shelf for some inexplicable reason. I was not going to leave those bottles behind.

Our eating out costs in January are solely related to necessary travel: the trip to Mayo in early January and Warren traveling to NYC for the Midwinter Managers Meeting by the League of American Orchestras. When I analyzed our eating out costs for 2019 and noted how much was due to conferences and training, Kim at Out My Window commented that I was being too hard on myself. Thank you, Kim! For 2020, I am not going to track food costs related to Mayo or conferences (for the record, I did note the January Mayo costs: $112.28 for 6 days). Those trips are unavoidable and we both work to keep our food costs as low as possible (we always start to Mayo with a packed lunch; Warren boarded the train to NYC with the same). So going forward, I am not tracking those. I will track our local eating out, from coffee dates to "too tired to cook" to "let's treat ourselves."

Those costs in January? Zero. And since I already have supper thawing out, I know we won't be adding to that princely sum.

Heck, at that rate, my anemic account will be flush in no time.

November Money Review

I started my October Money Review with the observation that if (if) we spent $175.00 in both the month of November and the month of December, we would finish the year with an average monthly outlay for groceries and household items of a little over $180.00 a month. We would have to spend $140.00 or less those last two months to bring the monthly average to $175.00, my target. I then sagely noted, "I'm not sure we will hit that mark."

We did not hit that lower mark ($140.00) or even the higher mark ($175.00) for November. We came in at $236.13, all but $2.14 (two boxes of tissues) in food. Our monthly average year-to-date? $186.98.

I made some quirky marginal notes about our November shopping patterns  that I will share here. On the first day of November, we spent $9.75 on "candy." The candy in question was delicious gourmet dark chocolate peanut (or almond) bark from The Milk Shake Factory, a stunning fixture in Pittsburgh for over a century. There were two turkeys, one thawed for our unexpected Thanksgiving, the other still deep in our freezer. Those came to a little over $10.00 because Meijer was selling their brand frozen turkeys for 33⍧ a pound. There was almost $36.00 worth of butter purchased at $1.99 a pound because butter has been sky high and we have room in our freezer. There was a little over $10.00 worth of food costs related to two events I hosted or co-hosted. There was also $9.00 worth of Krusteaz boxed cookie mix because Krusteaz mixes are delicious and when baking for something that comes up quickly, they do the trick.

And then there was the Thanksgiving Eve dash to the store to replace a can of canned pumpkin. For the first time ever in my life, when I went to open an ordinary can, the contents first hissed and then oozed up through the first opening I had made with the can opener. (I thought the lid had looked a little flexed, but I wasn't sure.) I'm casual about food safety but not stupid. What was stupid was opening the can of coconut milk (I use a pumpkin pie recipe that calls for coconut milk) with the same can opener and realizing too late that there was pumpkin ooze now contaminating the coconut milk. Both went down the sink and the resulting run to the store cost $3.59.

Note: The pie was delicious. 

Further Note: The Thanksgiving turkey carcass was made into delicious dark stock that Very. Same. Day.

So if you add up those little marginalia notes and then subtract them, our food costs would have come in below $160.00.

There was a grocery triumph or two, nonetheless, the greatest being the almost $40.00 worth of groceries purchased for $4.92, thanks to a combination of coupons and a quarterly rebate I get by using my Kroger Mastercard (a card I pay off in full every two weeks: no balance carried forward here).

Our eating out costs were all related to conferences: no coffee dates, no "let's just grab a bite to eat." Eating out costs came to an eye-watering $155.29, with $79.48 of that being assigned to Indianapolis (our annual trip to Percussion Universe) and the rest to our two days at my conference in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, November was expensive.

I'm not sure what December will bring. One of our November purchases was raw peanuts for Warren's holiday peanut brittle (about $17.00 worth), so that is out of the way. On the other hand, I will be making biscotti as always; while I certainly have enough butter for the cookies, I have yet to purchase the almonds. I'm not sure what the holiday meals will bring (who is going where for what); Dad is still in skilled nursing. So our costs may come in (she writes optimistically) around $170.00.

Or $150.00.

Or $250.00.

Stay tuned.

The Unexpected Thanksgiving

There was not going to be a Thanksgiving this year, at least not in the traditional sense of family members gathering to eat.

This November has been a hard month. My silence on this blog reflects that: I have been pulled and stretched too thin to find the quiet inner space in which to be still and write. November held two conferences out of town: one to Pittsburgh (mine), one to Indianapolis (Warren's). November also has been a bucket, filled to the brim and slopping over, of family and friends struggling: financial issues, health issues, hospitalizations, deaths.

Certain friends and I at particularly difficult stretches of life will say in passing, "So, other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

It's been a Mrs. Lincoln kind of month.

Two of those hospitalizations involved my dad, who just earlier this week was released from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility to regain his strength and independence. Throughout it, my siblings, our spouses, and I were all dealing with long hours at the hospital, irregular schedules, broken days, and lots of stress. We're not at our best as a result.

Originally, my and Warren's Thanksgiving was going to be at dad's house, where my youngest brother Mark and his wife now live too. After dad's well-being took a tumble, and after we wore ourselves out (Mark has a chronic, progressive illness which wears him out and I am into a decade and a half of my progressive, incurable cancer), my brother and I talked and agreed to cancel Thanksgiving. They were tired, we were tired. That worked for the four of us, and our other brother Mike had his own family to host, so his plans were already set.

Well, that was his plan until his wife Kate called me earlier this week. Could they join us for Thanksgiving? Please? There would be five of them. Warren and I talked. Okay. But wait! If we were eating at noon (our plan), that would eliminate two of them (son Mike Jr. and daughter-in-law Hannah who would not be coming this way until later that day). Okay. Then a granddaughter who didn't want to go to her stepdad's family was added. Okay. Six of us total. More plans were made: you bring this and that, we'll make that and that.

On Thanksgiving morning, their youngest son, Timon, driving down from Cleveland, showed up early. Per his mother's instructions, I put him to work helping pull chairs out, washing china, setting the table. Then I get a phone call from Mike Jr.: they were coming earlier after all. After I got over my shock (I ordered him to hang up and call his mother immediately), I recalculated. Okay, now we're up to eight. That meant reconfiguring the table settings, adding another table, washing more china. That's okay, though: I had help. So we all worked some more, although Timon said, as we rearranged things, "I bet you they don't make it in time. They'll be late."

My brother, sister-in-law, and their granddaughter arrived. The turkey was close to done; we may have had it out of the oven already. One of their phones rang: the travelers are turning back to switch cars because the check engine light came on. Sorry, they are still coming, but they will be late.

Timon pumped his fist in the air. "I told you I'd win that bet!"

We pulled down the folding table that had been added to the end of our kitchen table to fit eight. We hastily took up the extra place settings. Warren started cutting turkey and piling it on a platter. Food went into bowls, water glasses got filled, and we all sat down.

I anchored one end of the table, my brother Mike the other. He looked around the table, beamed, and said "It's good to be here at this table and to all be together."

Those were more than just casual words tossed out to make everyone feel good. Mike was the brother I was least close to, both when growing up and as an adult. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the one who kept Mike at arm's length over the years; Mike did nothing to create that breach. When I was diagnosed with the myeloma in 2004, I apologized to Mike for how I had treated him by, frankly, not treating him at all. Mike just smiled and said, very gently, "It's okay, April."

Mike meant it. It was okay. And now here we were at the most improbable of Thanksgivings, a Thanksgiving that wasn't supposed to happen and surely in a million years would not have been spent with Mike and crew.

The meal was wonderful. We shared good food, good conversation, and laughter. Mike and I shared stories from our childhood of Thanksgivings (and Christmases). We passed the turkey, we passed the rolls, we passed the love.

The pies were delicious.

As Kate, Warren, and I started clearing plates and making containers of leftovers, the door opened and Hannah and Mike Jr. walked in. We made a clear spot at one end of the table, rescued the settings we had swept off the table earlier (I had just set them on a small couch in the study) and loaded them up with food. Warren started the dishes. Several of us grabbed dishtowels. Talk flowed through the kitchen; talked flowed in the living room.

And then it was over. Mike, Kate, their granddaughter, Timon, Mike Jr., and Hannah headed out to go see dad before going their own way. Hugs, thanks, "wait, Grandpa forgot his phone," goodbye waves.

And, like that, our unexpected Thanksgiving was over.

2019 marks my 64th Thanksgiving. There have been some great ones.

This was one of them.

The Pie Of Summer

Kim, the blogger at Out My Window, asked me whether I would share the recipe for the corn/bacon/onion pie I references in my blog about August spending.

Absolutely!

Warren is the one who called my attention to the recipe, which appeared in The New York Times under the caption "Is This the Pie of the Summer?" The subheading referred to bacon and corn in a "rich, quiche-like tart."

How was I not going to make that, especially with it being sweet corn season?

The recipe as originally published called for a traditional butter crust with some cornmeal thrown in. I made my own standard water/mayonnaise/flour crust, threw in some cornmeal (by feel) and rolled out a (deliberately) thicker than usual crust, which I baked first and let cool. What I did to make the thicker crust was make the recipe for a double-crust pie, then roll out a single crust.  You can find my crust recipe discussed here; if you are pre-baking a shell using my crust recipe, you heat the oven to 475 degrees and bake it about 12-15 minutes.

The ingredients for the filling for one pie are:
1 small red onion
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (note: i used bottled lime juice and it worked fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch granulated sugar (I omitted this one time; it did not make a noticeable difference)
4 ounces bacon (4 slices), diced
1 1/2 cups fresh/frozen corn kernels (2 small ears if fresh)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt [I used Greek yogurt one time I made it; sour cream the other. No difference.]
3 large eggs
3/4 cup coarsely shredded sharp Cheddar (3 ounces)
3 tablespoons chopped parsley. I omitted this ingredient because I am not big on parsley and just threw in some dried herbs one time, some chopped fresh basil the other.

I left out one ingredient entirely: 2+ tablespoons chopped jalapeños because I do not eat jalapeños. I will note in the instructions where they come in. Looking at step 2 below, you can also pickle a little of the chopped jalapeños and add them later (step 5).

You make the filling as follows (this assumes the crust is made and cooling or cooled):

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

The corn/onion mixture

2. Cut red onion in half at equator (not root to stem), then from the center cut out two very thin round slices. Separate the onion into rings and put in a bowl with lime juice, salt, and pinch of sugar. [This would also be where a little of the chopped jalapeños would go.] Set aside. Coarsely chop the remaining onion and set it aside.

3. Scatter diced bacon in a cold skillet. Turn heat to medium, and cook until bacon is brown and fat has rendered: 10-14 minutes. Transfer bacon to plate (paper towel on it) and leave fat in the skillet.

4. Stir chopped onion into skiller with bacon fat and place on medium heat. Sauté until golden-edged and translucent: about 6 minutes. Stir in corn, 1/2 teaspoon salt. [If you are adding the chopped jalapeños, add them here.] Cook until corn is tender, about 2-5 minutes.

Ready to go into the oven

5. Remove from heat and scoop 1/2 corn mixture into blender. Add cream, sour cream, and eggs; blend until you get a thick purée. [Note: I used a hand mixer one time because I did not have a blender handy. Same result and cleanup was about 1000% easier.] Scrape the purée in the pan with the other kernels, add the bacon and 1/2 cup Cheddar. Stir, then scrape into the pie shell.

6. Top mixture with pickled red onion (jalapeños if you did that) and sprinkle the remaining Cheddar cheese on top.

7. Bake until puffed, golden, and just set: 35-45 minutes. Transfer to wire rack, cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Out of the oven

And there you have it.

Kim, if you make it, I'll be interested to hear how it turned out and what you thought!

Did someone say bacon? And corn?

August Money Review

As predicted when I last wrote about our grocery spending, the food purchases (groceries, not eating out) made while out west pushed our August numbers way past the $175.00 mark.

Way past.

Just before we left for vacation, our combined food/household spending for the month was $197.13, $174.15 of which was food and $22.98 of which represented household items such as toilet paper and cleaning agents. So we were already past our $175.00 goal, but even so, our year-to-date average still came in at $165.80.

While on vacation, we spent another $111.20 at the grocery on food, nudging our year-to-date average to $179.70.

This is what that corn/cheese/bacon pie looks like. 

Why so much?

Because we bought all the food for two meals for nine adults. (I'm not counting the children, one of whom is an infant.) One meal was a variation on a Cuban pork dish my sons' grandmother used to make; the other featured three bacon/onion/corn pies and two roast chickens. Leftovers went to various homes or made reappearances in the days that followed. Another $20.00 or so went to a sundae bar (Ramona's favorite) when seven adults (and the children) gathered on the last evening. My sons (and their partners) provided the main meal and did all the cooking, but we supplied the dessert. (There were also some smaller purchases along the way, some of which we shipped home.)

Our August food expenditures were worth every penny.

I suppose I could take the position that our August food bill should be the lower amount and not count the vacation. But had all these wonderful people been in my home, I would have bought greater quantities of food and counted those amounts. So I'm counting them here. It will be nip-and-tuck to see if I finish 2019 with a monthly average of $175.00, but, ehhhh, I'm okay with that.

Surprisingly, our vacation eating out (just our portion, not the amounts we spent treating others) came in at a cool $93.29. Before we left, we had spent only $43.64 on eating out, which included our share of a lunch for my dad's 86th birthday and a desperately needed bag of food after a very, very late legal clinic. So the month came out at $136.93, with the bulk of that being the vacation, and I'm fine with that.

 When we got home on September 1 (new month, new totals), we did a major shopping to get perishables and restock some basics that had run low during July and August. I'm predicting September comes in around $175.00, especially if I make a point of turning to the freezer and cupboards. Between purchases at a local family-owned farm market and my dad bringing over zucchini from his garden, our freezer is packed heading into the fall and winter.

I'm eager to see what the last four months of this year bring, and where we end up on our food spending.

Catching My Breath

June has been a bear on the travel front. We were in Nashville early in the month. Then mid-month, Warren and I flew to Denver for a three-day conference I needed to attend. Traveling alone is difficult for me (nigh well impossible); Warren was indispensable. While I immersed myself in the conference, Warren worked on Symphony matters (the 4th of July, the Symphony's annual free concert for several thousand people, is almost upon us) and spent time with his son David, who moved out to southeastern Colorado back in February.

From Denver, we flew to Minneapolis, spent an afternoon with friends and family, then headed south to Rochester and Mayo. Two days later, we were back in Minneapolis to go, finally, home.

That was last Wednesday. Saturday I took off to Kentucky with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law for a long overdue trip. It was just a day trip, but it was one more trip in a month full of them.

I feel as if I am still catching my breath.

But I'm home. At least for now. And that is enough.

I will be writing more  in the days to come. The Kentucky trip especially demands a post. But in the midst of all the travel, in the midst of 4th of July preparations, and in the midst of catching my breath, I ran into a wall. A small wall. A little wall. An insignificant wall, in the big scheme of things. But a wall all the same.

Someone was coming to our house at 9:00 this morning whom I had to meet with. I had a cream pie I needed to get made and in the refrigerator before then. At 8:05, I went to pour the heavy cream into a bowl to beat to soft peaks to fold into the pie base. I opened the cream container (which I had frozen two weeks earlier as we prepared to leave town but had thawed yesterday), went to pour it out, and...nothing.

Nothing. The cream had the texture of butter. I didn't have time to try it, analyze it, and decide whether I could made it work. The clock was ticking: on the pie, on the upcoming appointment, on the day. So I taped this note to the door and left:

"Baking emergency." Seriously? I have to laugh. But I made it. And it served to remind me that life rolls on, on and off the road.

It's good to be back.

A Decade Out And What's Next?

The blogger at Plough Monday, to which I subscribe, recently announced he was closing the blog. His notice was short and went right to the point:

Hello all. I am closing my blog, Plough Monday. I am doing so because I want to redirect my writing efforts towards publishing in literary journals and magazines.  And I have found that my writing here works to undercut this redirection.

My blog will be visible for a short while, and then it will close.

Thanks for reading.

I told Warren that the news gave me pause. The evening before the Plough Monday announcement, I was looking back at my older posts and I realized I have been blogging for over a decade. My first post was in March, 2009.

A decade.

That's a lot of words. That's a lot of posts, this being the 723rd.

And what about my writing? My other writing?

What does that even mean: my other writing?

There is the middle school novel, now about three-quarters done. I recently returned to it for the first time since—wait for it—September 2017.

Yeah, September 2017. But who's counting?

There is the poetry, with my averaging about three submissions a year for the last three years. I am garnering exactly one acceptance a year, the latest being in the Licking River Review.  (I don't know when publication will be.) If I were in the major leagues, that would give me a batting average of .333, which is nothing to sneeze at, but I'm not so sure those same stats hold true in the publication world.

If I spent more time writing poetry and sending it out, would I get more acceptances?

There is my almost monthly column for The Myeloma Beacon. I began writing that in early 2013, over six years ago.

The truth is I wasn't expecting that I would live long enough to see five years of columns, let along be well into my seventh year.

Do I hit reset? Do I redirect my efforts?

I'd like to finish that novel. (I have drafts of other novels, aimed for the adult reader, but this one is near and dear to my heart.)

I'd like to write more poetry. (I came home from Nashville with a poem roughed out, which I tore out of the notebook and stuck in the pile of other poems I have roughed out but not returned to in too many weeks and months.)

I'd like to figure out how to write more. But I also know myself well enough to know I hold other values dear into which I put my time and energy. My marriage. Family. Friends. This community. Reading. Our Symphony. My work at Court. Pies. My garden.

So for now, I am just thinking about the Plough Monday announcement, just thinking about my writing, and just thinking about...what's next.

Numbers

My friend Mark is at 5 years post cancer diagnosis this week.

My new grandson Orlando now weighs 8 (8!) pounds and has finally awake enough to regularly reveal his deep, dark eyes.

And speaking of grandchildren, Orlando just passed the 4 week mark, Lyrick is now 2½ years old, and Ramona hit a whopping 6½ years old on March 1. Wowsers! 

If my grandmother Skatzes were still alive, this would be her 126th St. Patrick's Day. Grandma had a lot of Irish blood in her and always, always wore a shamrock pin, often pinned to the top of her apron, on March 17. I received her last one, a gaudy green rhinestone shamrock pin, decades ago.

I can't tell you how many books I have read so far this year because I'm NOT counting them, but it has already been a lot. Thanks to my library's wonderful practice of putting year-to-date savings on my receipt when I check out, I know I have saved $785.73 this year by using the library.  I also know that more than a dozen (12!) books, some from the library, some from friends, are waiting for me on the coffee table. 

Pie Day is January 21 (or thereabouts) and Pi Day is March 14. (Get it?) I did not observe Pie Day, but did unintentionally observe Pi Day when we had a friend to supper that night and served (what else?) homemade apple pie for dessert.

I'm particularly proud of that whole meal, in fact, because every single item consumed came out of the pantry or freezer, and I did not go to the grocery store for one item. Not one! Given that the (minimal) cost of the food that went into that meal had already been accounted for in earlier monthly food reports or was free, I tallied the cost of that meal at...wait for it...zero.

0! 

And this blog? 10 years old today, when I first opened the door.  For the record, this is my 710th post, all of which, with two exceptions, have been written by me. 

So happy anniversary to me! (And thank you, friend and fellow blogger, Ellen Rosentreter, for reminding me I was reaching this milestone.)

First Steps

My foot is back.

For the last four weeks, I have had one operable leg and foot (my left) and one inoperable leg and foot (my right). As I wrote about some weeks ago, I had surgery in early February to repair a torn peroneal tendon. I spent the first week with my foot and leg up to my knee swathed in bandages. I spent that week at home, reading voraciously (well, I always read voraciously, so I guess I read more voraciously). 

A week out of surgery, I exchanged the bandages for a nifty fiberglass cast. Given my choice of colors, I picked Symphony Blue:

Symphony Blue, you say? Why, of course:

My blue cast was still non-weight bearing, so I got around with the aid of this trusty scooter:

The scooter went like the wind on the smooth, polished halls of the county building in which our Court is located. And it was the envy of the walker/wheelchair set at the assisted living facility where Aunt Ginger lives. One wheelchair-bound tiny lady beckoned me over and said, with great longing in her voice, "I bet that goes fast." (A coworker, when I told him the story, laughed and pointed out that compared to the wheelchairs and walkers, I was in a sports car.)

With the scooter, I went back to work 12 days after the surgery. I couldn't (didn't) go to schools to conduct attendance mediations but there was other work to be done. All the same, I was counting down the days to March 9, when the cast would come off and I would get a walking boot. I was dreaming of being able to go to bed without a log (albeit a snazzy blue, lightweight one) wrapped around my leg, of being able to use our bathrooms without having to strong-arm myself on and off the toilet, of being able to stand on my own two feet again.

Yesterday morning very bright and early Warren and I were at my surgeon's complex. The technician cut the cast off and unwrapped my leg from the mummy-like cotton swaddling under the cast. X-rays, a chance to wipe off some of the dead skin that accumulates under a cast, a thumbs up from the PA, and the snipping and removal of the stitches followed. Then technician fitted me for the boot and I stood upright on both feet for the first time in weeks. All was great until she said, "Okay, take a step."

Take a step? I looked at her wild-eyed. I looked back at Warren. Take a step? Take a step? I had forgotten how to take a step! Warren stood up immediately and offered me his arm. Leaning heavily on him, I took one tentative, lumbering half-step. 

"I don't know how to walk." I was frozen and afraid to move. 

Talk about embarrassing.

In the end, I climbed back on my scooter (which I had hoped to return to rental that day rather than rent for an additional week) and scooted out of the examining area, out of the reception area, out of the building to our car. Warren was very sympathetic; nodding but not saying "I told you so" when I said I didn't trust my foot.

All the way home, all 30 minutes of that drive, I thought about walking. I have been walking for over 61 years. I thought through the act of walking: weight on foot, one foot in front of the other, left, right. Come on!  

We pulled in and I scootered to the first small step up to our slab porch. Warren made ready to help me get up and in, but I held up my hand. 

"No, I have to do this and I am going to walk."

And I did. Up the small stair, across the porch to the larger step into the house, into the house, and into the hall. My steps were halting and clumsy, but, by god, I was walking.

And I have been walking ever since. By midday yesterday, I had relearned the rhythm of walking. I'm not elegant by any means, and I get clumsy by day's end, but I am walking. The scooter is sitting in the living room where Warren parked it. I am delighting in being able to carry items in my hands, not having to back up the scooter to make a turn, in being mobile. 

Sleeping last night was heaven.

So this is my boot, my assistant foot, for four more weeks: 

I still won't be able to drive, but I head back into the schools for attendance mediations starting midweek this week. I am baking a pie tonight for our conductor, Jaime, for tomorrow's concert. 

The longest journey begins with a single step, according to the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi. For me, yesterday, the longest journey started with me taking that first step down the hallway.

I haven't looked back.  

Just Days Before Christmas

We are hosting family members for Christmas this year. The elders, of course: my dad (84), my mom (82), and Aunt Ginger (88). Aunt Ginger has been having health problems and there is every likelihood that this will be her last Christmas. My brother Mark, his wife Jackie, and their adult son Matt will be joining us as well, driving over from their home about 30 miles away. David, my stepson, may be briefly at the table before going to join his elderly grandmother's meal. It will be traditional holiday fare, and, yes, there will be apple pie for all. With about 50 hours to go before the meal, there is a lot remaining yet to do, but these thoughts come first.

I always have mixed feelings about Christmas and this year is no exception. This is not because of my Jewish faith and the disconnect between it and the dominant Christian one in this county. I was raised with Christmas. My children celebrated (and continue to celebrate) Christmas. Warren celebrates Christmas. No, my feelings are tangled up in old memories, dismay over the crass consumerism the holiday brings out in so many of us, sorrow over the state of our country, and the insistence that we all be merry. Not thoughtful, not contemplative, not kinder, but merry.

By definition, "merry" means "cheerful and lively." Synonyms include "joyful," "carefree," "high-spirited,""jolly," and "lighthearted," to name but a few. Nothing wrong with any of those responses, but one size does not fit all, even at Christmas.

I like better this quote by L. R. Kost that I came across in another blog:

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.

Now that's something I can get behind this time of year. It very much reflects the Jewish obligation of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. And it honors the notion of doing good in a dark, broken world, regardless of the number of presents under the tree.

See you on the other side.

Loose Threads

Yesterday Warren had an afternoon rehearsal (followed that evening by a concert) in Mansfield, which meant I had a lengthy block of time in which to read and write.

Reading I did. I finished off Bootstrapper, a painful, thoughtful, hilarious memoir by Mardi Jo Link. It is appropriately subtitled From Broke to Badass on Northern Michigan Farm and is about divorce, poverty, and scraping by. 

But the writing? Sometimes I just can't make the sentences flow coherently no matter what. This was one of those times. Three starts, 400+ words in each time, and...nothing. The topic would bog down and I couldn't salvage it. Or the next one. Or the next one.

Sometimes all I have are bits and pieces of thoughts. It is not unlike opening my well worn sewing box and seeing a sketchy layer of snippets of threads from prior repairs, some still threaded through a needle, but all too short to use.

So here are my loose threads, in no order chronological or otherwise, from my afternoon and my blog attempts:

• Doug's wonderful memorial service and the many layers rippling out still from it
• Effigy Mounds
• Dinner in Rochester with my longtime friend Tani and her partner Tom (Tani and I go back some 30+ years)
• Decorah, Iowa, and wondering where that little gem has been hidden all my life
• Mayo
• Mayo
• Mayo
• A vivid prairie sunset
• Realizing there were still plenty of tomatoes in my garden 
• Being on campus at the University of Chicago and realizing we were in the middle of the freshman arriving on campus
• Remembrance Rock (Carl Sandburg's ashes are under it) 
• Crossing the Mississippi River three times in one day
• Making a sour cherry pie with my dear sister-in-law and savoring every bite (our husbands, brothers, do not eat cherries in any form, which baffles Margaret and me, but leaves more pie for us)
• Super Dawg
• The iconic red barn set against the autumn trees 
• Nomadland (Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century) by Jessica Bruder (If you are reading only one book on the continuing economic wreckage of modern America, this should be it) 
• Taylor, my "other" son, getting married yesterday midday
• Making it home Wednesday evening before sunset and Rosh Hashanah began
• Gifting a piece of art—one that I love so much that Warren said, with surprise in his voice, "you're giving them that?"—to someone I love and knowing it was the absolutely right present

And that is enough for now. 

Inch One Hundred Eighty: Changes

This is the 180th Inch I have posted. Not counting a couple of soapbox posts from the time I resolved to post a weekly inch, I have been posting an "inch" of my writing weekly for over three years.

There has been a change in the lineup.

July, even though it is not yet over, has demanded a lot of me. I moved Aunt Ginger into an assisted living facility. With the help of several others, I emptied out and cleaned her apartment. Unneeded furniture headed to an auction, household/decorative items headed to my sister-in-law's yard sale, and all the rest headed to...our downstairs study, where it has taken over all available space. Mostly it is family-related: old photos to send off to cousins, old papers to shred. It has been an Augean task and I am not yet done with it, although with the move long behind me and the apartment empty and ready to be relinquished, two huge weights are off my shoulder.

July held, of course, a long-anticipated visit with my family traveling to Ohio. I still have not sorted through the photos I took, let alone the emotions. Biggest hit for the travelers? Fireflies. They don't exist out west and three of the five had never seen them before. Every evening, Ramona would announce loudly, "It's almost time for the Firefly Show! Come on, everybody!" Her very last evening in Ohio found her, Grandpa Warren, and me out on the deck, watching one last Firefly Show while the grownups packed.

One of my biggest regrets for the trip? That Ramona and I did not bake a pie together. She asked if we could. I simply did not have the energy to make one. I am hoping there will be another opportunity, here or out there, to bake a pie with my granddaughter.

This month also marks my return to treatment after about eight weeks of "holiday," which in Cancerland means simply "we're taking you off your drugs right now to let your body recuperate." (My body has been wearing down from the ongoing treatment and from the slow action of myeloma.) Last week I resumed treatment, starting a new drug regimen.

It has not been pretty.

I knew going in and had been counseled by nurses and oncologists that the initial treatment might produce a bevy of side reactions. That's why it is given very slowly in the first session. What none of us (least of all me) expected was for my body to react very strongly to the new treatment. Nausea? I threw up so hard and so much that I broke a blood vessel in my cheek and looked (well, still do) like someone cold cocked me. Rash? The skin around my eyes swelled and turned bright red. Respiratory? My nasal passage totally shut down and my throat started to close too. My reactions were such that my oncologist came up to Infusion from his office downstairs to consult with the nurses, talk with me and Warren, and shut down treatment until they could get me stable. I had to come back the next day to finish the initial treatment; Day 2 went off without a hitch.

No, I don't feel well. No, I am not myself right now. I go back this Tuesday, and will continue to do so for some time. We are all hoping I got all the reactions over the first time, but we don't yet know that.

The fun never stops in Cancerland.

And because the fun never stops, I am stepping back from my commitment to post an inch a week. I'm not going silent. I'm not walking away. I love writing. I just am out of inches right now.

Inch One Hundred Seventy-Seven: What July Will Bring

It is early morning on the first day of July. We had heavy rains last night; the air is cool and damp. The skies have not yet cleared, but in looking at the radar, that should follow soon.

Brian and Margaret have come and gone. The pie was delicious. The company was even better. We did eat the pesto (it, too, was delicious), Brian took several lengthy bike rides, and Margaret joined me at Poetry Night. (Heck, even Brian and Warren sat in on some of it.)

Much is afoot here. Tuesday is 4th of July, which in this household means the day starts early and runs late. Long after the last firework has faded from the sky, Warren and I and a host of volunteers will still be striking the stage from the annual concert. Looking back at past 4th of July posts, in which I sound similar themes, I would also note that my garden is right on pace (perhaps even a little ahead) and the coneflowers, earthbound mimics of fireworks that they are, are already thrusting their bright colors straight up into the heavens.

Even without the 4th of July thrown into the mix, the first week of July this year starts out with a bang. Later next week I will helping my beloved Aunt Ginger move into assisted living.

Aunt Ginger will be 88 this October. I wrote about her on her 80th birthday, which we all (30 or so of us) celebrated happily and noisily. At 88, my aunt is frail physically and mentally. She is not happy at all about the move (this will only be the 3rd address she has had in almost 88 years), but after shedding a few tears every time we talk about it, she squares her shoulders and tells me she will just have to make the best of it. And knowing Aunt Ginger as well as I do, she will. With bells on.

And right after the Big Move? The contingent from the Pacific Northwest arrives with Ramona, Alise, Mackenzie, and my sons, Ben and Sam, flying into Ohio and into our house for a week of family and cooking and family and laughter and family and love and family.  Oh, and fireflies (lightning bugs) which Alise and, of course, Ramona, have never seen. We have a bumper crop this year and I cannot wait to see their reactions to our nightly light show.

And of course there will be pie. Likely more than one this time.

I started this morning (after typing the first paragraph) with breakfast with Warren followed by my going into the admittedly soggy garden and weeding. The basil is finally showing signs of coming up. There are lots of tomatoes on the bushes, but I doubt any will be ripe enough for Ramona to pick. That's life.

Any day (and month) that starts with breakfast with my beloved husband followed by quiet time in the garden is bound to be a great one. Welcome, July, welcome.

Inch One Hundred Seventy-Six: Life's Essentials 70% Off

We have weekend company arriving later today. This will be a shorter post than usual because I have been putting my time and energy into cleaning the house, getting their room ready, and getting groceries. A little gardening early this morning and going to the office later today are tucked in there too.

Oh, and a pie is in the oven as I type these words.

The guests are family: Warren's brother, Brian, and Brian's wife, Margaret. I have known Brian even longer than I have known Warren, and that's saying a lot. Margaret and I are very close. I have commented more than once to Warren that I am so glad his brother had the great sense to marry that woman.

I recently deleted a piece of spam titled "Life's Essentials 70% 0ff." I never opened the email, so I don't know what those essentials were and why they were 70% off. I strongly suspect my list would be radically different and I would have found few of what I consider essential in that email.

This weekend is an example of life's essentials. Family arrives later today. There is a small ensemble outdoor concert tomorrow. Brian brought his bike, and my friend Corroto, who bikes all the time, marked out some area routes for him. Margaret and I will talk and talk and fit in some long walks. We will make cinnamon rolls together for Sunday breakfast. There is pesto from last year's garden in the freezer and one of our meals will be pasta and pesto. They are staying until Tuesday so that Margaret can join me at Poetry Night.

And there will be pie.

Life's essentials? My weekend will be full of them. I will have family and music. There will be good talk and quiet togetherness. There will be walks and laughter and Poetry Night. These sorts of things tend not to come 70% off anything, as they are one of a kind ephemera.

After all, how can you put a price tag on homemade cinnamon rolls, made side by side with a friend you love? Or a slice of that pie, which I made for those I love?

Life's Essentials, Priceless.