Julia London's Blog, page 26

Fall Favorites

It’s almost officially fall. In my area (Connecticut), there’s a definite chill in the air. Mornings and evenings are so cool that I need a sweater, and I’ve put an extra blanket on the bed. Love that chill!

But days are still warm, pleasantly so, not humidly so. 80 degrees of beautiful clear air sure feels good, compared to 80 degrees of humidity-laden yuck. I’ve enjoyed my daily walks more. It’s really the best time of year. Summer used to be my favorite month, and I still love it because my family is all together. But there’s something about fall.

My favorite fall things (besides the weather, until it gets cold):

colorful foliage

apples (and apple baked goods, cider doughnuts!)

football!

my birthday

local fairs and carnivals

pumpkin spice everything– coffee, bagels (I just tried Thomas’s limited edition pumpkin spice bagels, which are not really “bagels” if you’re a purist but still, yum), pie, pancakes.

And of course, then there’s Halloween. I have a love hate relationship with Halloween. Love, there’s candy. Hate… huh. Now that my kids are grown up and I don’t have to think up costumes, I totally love it again.

What are your favorite things about fall? Do you love the pumpkin spice flavor? What’s your favorite season?

As seen in comments, Cock-on-a-stick, courtesy of Ti.

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Grave Expectations

Heaven knows, we need never be ashamed of our wolfish cravings. . . .

Bristly, sensitive, and meat-hungry Pip is a robust young whelp, an orphan born under a full moon. Between hunting escaped convicts alongside zombified soldiers, trying not to become one of the hunted himself, and hiding his hairy hands from the supernaturally beautiful and haughty Estella, whose devilish moods keep him chomping at the bit, Pip is sure he will die penniless or a convict like the rest of his commonly uncommon kind.

But then a mysterious benefactor sends him to London for the finest werewolf education money can buy. In the company of other furry young gentlemen, Pip tempers his violent transformations and devours the secrets of his dark world. When he discovers that his beloved Estella is a slayer of supernatural creatures, trained by the corpse-like vampire Miss Havisham, Pip’s desire for her grows stronger than his midnight hunger for rare fresh beef. But can he risk his hide for a truth that will make Estella his forever—or will she drive one last silver stake through his heart?

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Question of the Day

So we’re thinking about moving out of the city (one of us is rather more keen on it than the other).  And as we ponder the pros and cons, I find that people tend to fall into categories when it comes to this kind of thing.  Sort of a Green Acres, Oliver vs. Lisa.   So how about you?   Cityscape or countryscape?  And if you’re a low density kind of person are you suburban or village?  And if you love that urban vibe are we talking small city or big one like Manhattan?  Apartment, townhome or house?  One story or two?  New or old?  Hate a basement–couldn’t live without it?  Ideal number of bathrooms?  Ideal kitchen?   Man o’ man the questions are endless!  So now how about some answers?  Opinions definitely welcome!

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THAT’S AMORE!

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore! I’m back to blogging about our Italy vacation this summer–the 12-day trip we took for our son’s college graduation. So far I’ve blogged about our adventures in Venice and Florence. Today is all about Naples, or Napoli as it’s called in Italia. Or as Dean Martin sang: “‘Scusi me, but you see, back in old Napoli, that’s amore!”

We spent three nights in Naples, which is situated on the west coast of southern Italy. The weather was perfect, the food fabulous (I seriously think it’s impossible to get a bad meal anywhere in Italy) and the tours we took were fabulous. First up–a full day in Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast.  I fell in love with Sorrento. We saw a demonstration of how they make their exquisite inlaid wood products–fascinating. And then we sampled limoncello, which is a potent lemon liqueur. It’s made primarily in southern Italy because of the abundance of lemons there. Have you ever seen such huge lemons?? They’re are big as our son’s head!

 

Now THAT'S a lemon!

 

After Sorrento, it was off to the Amalfi Coast. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The scenery was breathtaking, and the drive up the narrow, curving mountain road completely exhilarating. We gathered shells on the beach at Positano then ate lunch overlooking the water.

View of the Amalfi Coast from the curving mountain road

After lunch we continued our drive along the coast, stopping to sightsee and shop. It was a perfect day. We absolutely plan to someday return and spend more time there. Next time I’ll blog about our next stop–Capri. Until then, arrivederci!

View of Positano from the restaurant where we ate lunch

On the beach at Positano

What’s going on with you? How’s your week going so far? Any Amalfi coast stories? Have you ever tried limoncello? If the answer is no, you really need to get some. Keep it in the freezer. Sip a shot glass serving of it after dinner. You’ll be glad you did

 

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Wednesday Reading: Odd Thomas

Dean Koontz is one of my favorite authors. I know we’re mostly romance readers here, and I do love a good romance– which is why I fell in love with Dean Koontz’s ODD THOMAS series. The best in the bunch is the first book, the introduction to Odd and his unusual name and skills. And his love for Stormy Llewellyn. The Stormy-Odd love story is so well-drawn that Koontz had me in tears over and over again. But, I’m really sensitive and I cry at almost everything.

The thing with Koontz’s writing, for me, is that he always draws me right in with his first few sentences. He makes me need to know more. It’s a great talent. His characters, especially, always resonate with me, none more than Odd Thomas.

If you’ve read Koontz and you haven’t read Odd Thomas, then you haven’t really read Koontz. No matter what you think of Koontz, or if you never have, give this book a chance. If not the book, the movie version comes in 2013 with Anton Yelchin, Willem Defoe, and Patton Oswald.

Odd Thomas excerpt:

MY NAME IS ODD THOMAS, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.

I am not a celebrity. I am not the child of a celebrity. I have never been married to, never been abused by, and never provided a kidney for transplantation into any celebrity. Furthermore, I have no desire to be a celebrity.

In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.

I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I’m old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.

Consequently, a demographics expert might conclude that my sole audience is other young men and women currently adrift between their twentieth and twenty-first birthdays.

In truth, I have nothing to say to that narrow audience. In my experience, I don’t care about most of the things that other twenty-year-old Americans care about. Except survival, of course.

I lead an unusual life.

By this I do not mean that my life is better than yours. I’m sure that your life is filled with as much happiness, charm, wonder, and abiding fear as anyone could wish. Like me, you are human, after all, and we know what a joy and terror that is.

I mean only that my life is not typical. Peculiar things happen to me that don’t happen to other people with regularity, if ever.

For example, I would never have written this memoir if I had not been commanded to do so by a four-hundred-pound man with six fingers on his left hand.

His name is P. Oswald Boone. Everyone calls him Little Ozzie because his father, Big Ozzie, is still alive.

Little Ozzie has a cat named Terrible Chester. He loves that cat. In fact, if Terrible Chester were to use up his ninth life under the wheels of a Peterbilt, I am afraid that Little Ozzie’s big heart would not survive the loss.

Personally, I do not have great affection for Terrible Chester because, for one thing, he has on several occasions peed on my shoes.

His reason for doing so, as explained by Ozzie, seems credible, but I am not convinced of his truthfulness. I mean to say that I am suspicious of Terrible Chester’s veracity, not Ozzie’s.

Besides, I simply cannot fully trust a cat who claims to be fifty-eight years old. Although photographic evidence exists to support this claim, I persist in believing that it’s bogus.

For reasons that will become obvious, this manuscript cannot be published during my lifetime, and my effort will not be repaid with royalties while I’m alive. Little Ozzie suggests that I should leave my literary estate to the loving maintenance of Terrible Chester, who, according to him, will outlive all of us.

I will choose another charity. One that has not peed on me.

Anyway, I’m not writing this for money. I am writing it to save my sanity and to discover if I can convince myself that my life has purpose and meaning enough to justify continued existence.

Don’t worry: These ramblings will not be insufferably gloomy. P. Oswald Boone has sternly instructed me to keep the tone light.

“If you don’t keep it light,” Ozzie said, “I’ll sit my four-hundred-pound ass on you, and that’s not the way you want to die.”

Ozzie is bragging. His ass, while grand enough, probably weighs no more than a hundred and fifty pounds. The other two hundred fifty are distributed across the rest of his suffering skeleton.

When at first I proved unable to keep the tone light, Ozzie suggested that I be an unreliable narrator. “It worked for Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” he said.

In that first-person mystery novel, the nice-guy narrator turns out to be the murderer of Roger Ackroyd, a fact he conceals from the reader until the end.

Understand, I am not a murderer. I have done nothing evil that I am concealing from you. My unreliability as a narrator has to do largely with the tense of certain verbs.

Don’t worry about it. You’ll know the truth soon enough.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of my story. Little Ozzie and Terrible Chester do not enter the picture until after the cow explodes.

This story began on a Tuesday.

For you, that is the day after Monday. For me, it is a day that, like the other six, brims with the potential for mystery, adventure, and terror.

You should not take this to mean that my life is romantic and magical. Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.

Without the help of an alarm clock, I woke that Tuesday morning at five, from a dream about dead bowling-alley employees.

I never set the alarm because my internal clock is so reliable. If I wish to wake promptly at five, then before going to bed I tell myself three times that I must be awake sharply at 4:45.

While reliable, my internal alarm clock for some reason runs fifteen minutes slow. I learned this years ago and have adjusted to the problem.

The dream about the dead bowling-alley employees has troubled my sleep once or twice a month for three years. The details are not yet specific enough to act upon. I will have to wait and hope that clarification doesn’t come to me too late.

So I woke at five, sat up in bed, and said, “Spare me that I may serve,” which is the morning prayer that my Granny Sugars taught me to say when I was little.

Pearl Sugars was my mother’s mother. If she had been my father’s mother, my name would be Odd Sugars, further complicating my life.

Granny Sugars believed in bargaining with God. She called Him “that old rug merchant.”

Before every poker game, she promised God to spread His holy word or to share her good fortune with orphans in return for a few unbeatable hands. Throughout her life, winnings from card games remained a significant source of income.

Being a hard-drinking woman with numerous interests in addition to poker, Granny Sugars didn’t always spend as much time spreading God’s word as she promised Him that she would. She believed that God expected to be conned more often than not and that He would be a good sport about it.

You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you’ll do next.

He’ll also cut you some slack if you’re astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion. Granny claimed that this explains why uncountable millions of breathtakingly stupid people get along just fine in life.

Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you’ll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for the promises you didn’t keep.

In spite of drinking lumberjacks under the table, regularly winning at poker with stone-hearted psychopaths who didn’t like to lose, driving fast cars with utter contempt for the laws of physics (but never while intoxicated), and eating a diet rich in pork fat, Granny Sugars died peacefully in her sleep at the age of seventy-two. They found her with a nearly empty snifter of brandy on the nightstand, a book by her favorite novelist turned to the last page, and a smile on her face.

Judging by all available evidence, Granny and God understood each other pretty well.

Pleased to be alive that Tuesday morning, on the dark side of the dawn, I switched on my nightstand lamp and surveyed the chamber that served as my bedroom, living room, kitchen, and dining room. I never get out of bed until I know who, if anyone, is waiting for me.

If visitors either benign or malevolent had spent part of the night watching me sleep, they had not lingered for a breakfast chat. Sometimes simply getting from bed to bathroom can take the charm out of a new day.

Only Elvis was there, wearing the lei of orchids, smiling, and pointing one finger at me as if it were a cocked gun.

Although I enjoy living above this particular two-car garage, and though I find my quarters cozy, Architectural Digest will not be seeking an exclusive photo layout. If one of their glamour scouts saw my place, he’d probably note, with disdain, that the second word in the magazine’s name is not, after all, Indigestion.

The life-size cardboard figure of Elvis, part of a theater-lobby display promoting Blue Hawaii, was where I’d left it. Occasionally, it moves–or is moved–during the night.

I showered with peach-scented soap and peach shampoo, which were given to me by Stormy Llewellyn. Her real first name is Bronwen, but she thinks that makes her sound like an elf.

My real name actually is Odd.

According to my mother, this is an uncorrected birth-certificate error. Sometimes she says they intended to name me Todd. Other times she says it was Dobb, after a Czechoslovakian uncle.

My father insists that they always intended to name me Odd, although he won’t tell me why. He notes that I don’t have a Czechoslovakian uncle.

My mother vigorously asserts the existence of the uncle, though she refuses to explain why I’ve never met either him or her sister, Cymry, to whom he is supposedly married.

Although my father acknowledges the existence of Cymry, he is adamant that she has never married. He says that she is a freak, but what he means by this I don’t know, for he will say no more.

My mother becomes infuriated at the suggestion that her sister is any kind of freak. She calls Cymry a gift from God but otherwise remains uncommunicative on the subject.

I find it easier to live with the name Odd than to contest it. By the time I was old enough to realize that it was an unusual name, I had grown comfortable with it.

Stormy Llewellyn and I are more than friends. We believe that we are soul mates.

For one thing, we have a card from a carnival fortune-telling machine that says we’re destined to be together forever.

We also have matching birthmarks.

Cards and birthmarks aside, I love her intensely. I would throw myself off a high cliff for her if she asked me to jump. I would, of course, need to understand the reasoning behind her request.

Fortunately for me, Stormy is not the kind of person to ask such a thing lightly. She expects nothing of others that she herself would not do. In treacherous currents, she is kept steady by a moral anchor the size of a ship.

She once brooded for an entire day about whether to keep fifty cents that she found in the change-return slot of a pay phone. At last she mailed it to the telephone company.

Returning to the cliff for a moment, I don’t mean to imply that I’m afraid of Death. I’m just not ready to go out on a date with him.

Smelling like a peach, as Stormy likes me, not afraid of Death, having eaten a blueberry muffin, saying good-bye to Elvis with the words “Taking care of business” in a lousy imitation of his voice, I set off for work at the Pico Mundo Grille.

Although the dawn had just broken, it had already flash-fried into a hard yellow yolk on the eastern horizon.

The town of Pico Mundo is in that part of southern California where you can never forget that in spite of all the water imported by the state aqueduct system, the true condition of the territory is desert. In March we bake. In August, which this was, we broil.

The ocean lay so far to the west that it was no more real to us than the Sea of Tranquility, that vast dark plain on the face of the moon.

Occasionally, when excavating for a new subdivision of tract homes on the outskirts of town, developers had struck rich veins of seashells in their deeper diggings. Once upon an ancient age, waves lapped these shores.

If you put one of those shells to your ear, you will not hear the surf breaking but only a dry mournful wind, as if the shell has forgotten its origins.

At the foot of the exterior steps that led down from my small apartment, in the early sun, Penny Kallisto waited like a shell on a shore. She wore red sneakers, white shorts, and a sleeveless white blouse.

Ordinarily, Penny had none of that preadolescent despair to which some kids prove so susceptible these days. She was an ebullient twelve-year-old, outgoing and quick to laugh.

This morning, however, she looked solemn. Her blue eyes darkened as does the sea under the passage of a cloud.

I glanced toward the house, fifty feet away, where my landlady, Rosalia Sanchez, would be expecting me at any minute to confirm that she had not disappeared during the night. The sight of herself in a mirror was never sufficient to put her fear to rest.

Without a word, Penny turned away from the stairs. She walked toward the front of the property.

Like a pair of looms, using sunshine and their own silhouettes, two enormous California live oaks wove veils of gold and purple, which they flung across the driveway.

Penny appeared to shimmer and to darkle as she passed through this intricate lace of light and shade. A black mantilla of shadow dimmed the luster of her blond hair, its elaborate pattern changing as she moved.

Afraid of losing her, I hurried down the last of the steps and followed the girl. Mrs. Sanchez would have to wait, and worry.

Penny led me past the house, off the driveway, to a birdbath on the front lawn. Around the base of the pedestal that supported the basin, Rosalia Sanchez had arranged a collection of dozens of the seashells, all shapes and sizes, that had been scooped from the hills of Pico Mundo.

Penny stooped, selected a specimen about the size of an orange, stood once more, and held it out to me.

The architecture resembled that of a conch. The rough exterior was brown and white, the polished interior shone pearly pink.

Cupping her right hand as though she still held the shell, Penny brought it to her ear. She cocked her head to listen, thus indicating what she wanted me to do.

When I put the shell to my ear, I did not hear the sea. Neither did I hear the melancholy desert wind that I mentioned previously.

—From Odd Thomas, copyright © 2003 by Dean Koontz. All Rights Reserved

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Beautiful!

This was my view coming home from my walk last night:

Gorgeous, right? That’s the street I live on, headed toward my house. 5 p.m. Sometimes, it’s the little things that make you forget your big worries and concerns and suddenly feel like a lucky person for all that you have. It’s beautiful here at this time of year. It’s warm (70-80) during the day, cool at night (50-40). The leaves are just starting to change. The sun sets at around 7 p.m. so the days still feel long enough.

Pretty soon, we have to worry about snowstorms and the sun sets at 4 so it feels so dark and bleak. But for now, bliss. Autumn in New England is truly spectacular and I feel blessed. It’s my moment of zen, as Jon Stewart might say. Right now. Ask me again next week.

What gives you your moment of zen? 

p.s. My moment of zen ended abruptly five minutes ago when my dad’s cigar smoke drifted through my open kitchen window and made me feel like I was smoking, too. Hack, wheeze. Blech.

Also: Here is a very cool time-lapse of the One World Trade Center construction. I love NY. My heart is always with you.

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All things English…

Was terribly disappointed recently to find out that there was a tour of Downton Abbey available for those traveling to England.  But that it was not only sold out through NEXT YEAR, but also closed for the season.  I am such a total Downton Abbey fan that I was depressed for two days.

Then recently I read something online somewhere –you know how that goes—about how popular the new Dallas is in England.  And I got to thinking about the fact that we love their shows and they seem to love our shows.  (The Office, Ab Fab, Dr. Who, coming from the motherland and Mad Men, True Blood, Glee and others heading over from the colonies.)

Which then got me to thinking about what an Anglophile I truly am.  I love tea (although in true American fashion I guzzle a lot of that iced).  I love BritishComedies.  As Time Goes By.  Vicar of Dibley.  Keeping up Appearances.  I think Judy Dench is the bomb, along with Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren.   I adored Marigold Hotel.  And could watch Jane Austen flicks non-stop for years on end.

I love Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen, Stevenson, Lewis, Tolkien, Rowling, Pilcher, and Stewart.   I love castles, knights, the peerage, the lake country, the Cotswolds, Cornwall, and Devon.  I like Harrods, Marks and Spencer’s, Kensington, Mayfair, Trafalgar and Notting Hill.   I love wellies, Agas, chips, jumpers, torches, and nappies (at least when they’re clean).   I’m a fan of trifle, scotch eggs, bangers and mash, pasties, bitter, scones and clotted cream.  I love English Breakfast and their especially tall toasting bread.  I’m also a fan of toast racks, teapots, tea cozies and Macs. (the raincoat—although I’m very fond of the computers as well.)

I love the Beatles, the Stones, Adele (in moderation), K. D. Tunstall, Annie Lenox, Herman’s Hermits (okay when I was 8), Cold Play, Led Zeppelin, and the Clash.   I like Hadrian’s wall, the Hebrides, St. Michaels Mount, Wales, Exeter, Glastonbury Tor, and Stonehenge.   I love the regency, Queen Anne furniture, Victorian sensibilities and anything Tudor.  Oh and don’t get me started on English Gardens—heaven.

Basically I love the place.  So what about you?   What are your favorite English things?  Do you watch British telly?   What TV shows do you think we should export permanently from here to there?

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Endgame

They  both know the games killers play…

FBI criminal profiler Madison Harper understands dangerous minds. Tough, tenacious, with nerves of steel, she’s the best of the best. So is her new partner, Gabriel Roarke, a crack CIA operative who likes to do things his way. When the two are forced to jointly head up a task force investigating murder in high places – it’s no surprise that sparks begin to fly.

As they race through a shadow world of power, politics and deadly secrets, the passion that simmers between Madison and Gabriel soon ignites. But a clever killer at the top of his game has challenged Madison to play to the very end.  Now all she can trust is her instincts—and Gabriel, the one man reckless enough to keep her alive…

Rio Award winner, Endgame is the first novel in Dee Davis’s newly re-released Last Chance Series.  Amazon B&N

Don’t miss the other books in the series: Enigma and Exposure.   And for more information check out www.deedavis.com

Amazon  B&N   Amazon  B&N

 

 

 

 

 

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Question of the Week

I never had a real vacation this year. It was a stay at home summer, and that’s not bad. But I miss the beach! 

Julia London had some time in the mountains, though, which made me wonder.

Given the choice, do you pick beach or mountains?

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Life with Father

With the exception of a few weeks at my sister’s cabin in the woods, my father has been living with me since June. In April, he lost his residence to fire. He spent some time drifting between my sister’s house, my house, and staying with friends and then decided he needed some permanence for his dog, Diego, an aging German short-haired pointer.

Derrr... Do I smell skunk?

What Kylie thinks of Diego? “My house, my rules. I’ll get you, my pretty!”

Because I’m a good daughter, and my husband is a great man, we took him in. I don’t mean to blow my own horn, but if you knew my dad… well… I think I earned some major karma points. Dad is what we politely call a strong personality. And the idea of living with my father after well over twenty years of only seeing him in small doses caused some concern. 

Dad with granddaughter Elissa on her H.S. graduation.

But honestly, it’s not all bad. Except for Diego’s run-ins with skunks in the yard. And Dad not being able to take a hint when we need a little privacy. He has his own apartment attached to the house (that used to be my office, but hey- do I need a second kitchen, yet another sitting room with cable TV, and a sunken whirlpool bath? Heck no), with a separate entrance, but he likes company. He’s an over-sharer. That’s my dad. And we’ve actually started to get used to him (Except when he tells us what he watched on cable. That, I do not, will never, need to know).

Last week, Dad and I cooked together at his request. He wanted to make pasties (Cornish meat pies), a recipe he used to make with his mom and dad. And when he started to correct my chopping technique, or suggest a better way to roll the dough, I had a breakthrough. Dad always has a suggestion, a bit of advice, a better way to do things. And I always bristle and get annoyed and inform him that I know perfectly well what I am doing. But this time, I said, “Wow, Dad, you’re right. Thanks.”

Pasties, out of the oven and on the plate (pies filled with sirloin, potato, parsnips, onion, and spices).

And it was so much easier! He smiled with satisfaction and moved on. It only took me 44 years to learn to just tell my dad what he wanted to hear instead of prolonging a discussion to my frustration. Aha! Progress. Or selling out? I will stick with progress. Unless it comes to politics. Then I’ve got to set the old man straight.

Pasties Recipe:

Pie crust (use your favorite recipe, or pillsbury pre-made– or try this dough, doubled if you want more than two pasties but they are big, each serves one or two people, depending).

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

13 tablespoons cold butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

8 tablespoons cold lard

4 to 6 tablespoons ice water

Directions

1. Mix flour, salt and sugar in food processor fitted with metal blade (or use  a pastry cutter if you’re old school).

2. Cut in butter cubes with five 1-second pulses. Add cold lard and continue cutting in until flour is pale yellow and resembles coarse cornmeal with butter bits no bigger than small peas, about 4 additional 1-second pulses. Turn mixture out into a medium-sized bowl.

3. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of ice water over mixture. With a fork, fluff to mix thoroughly. Squeeze a handful of dough — if it doesn’t stick together, add remaining water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

4. Divide dough into two balls, one slightly larger than the other then flatten into 6-inch discs. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling.

Filling:

5-6 potatoes, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 medium onion, diced

6 parsnips, diced

1 pound sirloin (or stew beef) diced

Mix together, season as desired, but at least 1 teaspoon black pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and a sprinkling of worcestershire sauce.

Stuff a rolled out crust with about a cup/cup and a half of filling, fold over and crimp. Place on greased or wax papered cookie sheet. Bake for an hour at 350.

Serve with ketchup or gravy (ketchup is the more traditional). Good hot or cold- Dad likes to eat half hot and save half in the refrigerator for the next day.

Traditionally, they are a miner’s meal. They were often filled with half meat, half sweet (fruit or cream pie) so the miner could have a meal and dessert in one. The sweet half was usually marked or initialed so the miner would know not to start with dessert. 

Have you taken on the housing or care of a parent or relative? Do you have any strong personalities in your life? What’s your favorite family recipe?


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