Pedicures and Philosophy

I treated myself to a pedicure today, and I think my feet look awesome!  They certainly feel wonderful after all the pampering - massaging, hot stones, and exfoliation.  I look down at those perfectly polished toes and feel a little glow of happiness.

Here is where I find the world divides.  In my world, a pedicure is a treat, a self-indulgence.  Some people see them as basic grooming and would be horrified that my last pedicure was nine months ago.  That doesn't mean that I don't care for my feet myself - I do regularly and carefully - just not professionally.

I had a rather rotten day yesterday.  A friend passed away after a long illness, so there was the busy-ness of helping notify people.  And it seemed to be a day for hearing other people's pain.  It means a lot to me that friends feel they can unburden and talk to me, but yesterday was a pileup.  From frustration with a grown child, a mutual friend's cancer, to a friend' heartache of learning her brand-new grandchild is not the offspring of your son and so was now leaving their lives.....Hearing other people's pain has a residual effect on your own emotions.   By bedtime, I was emotionally exhausted.

Before I fell asleep, I decided I needed a treat - and a pedicure fits better into my budget than does a massage - and it was easier to book.  And here is where my emotional worlds collide.  My mother, God bless her, would have been horrified at the idea of spending money on a pedicure, money that could have been better spent on something else. But more modern (oh, last 20 years?) has reminded women that they are WORTH being indulged, that considering time and money spent on pampering is something to be valued.   Sometimes the tension between those two ideologies pulls tight.

And yet, I find myself noting that the "indulge yourself" train of thought is largely advocated by the world of fashion.  And here comes yet another tension (now, seriously, who would have thought there could be so much philosophy involved in some simple nail polish?).  The push for self-indulgence comes from the fashionable world, where a woman is often judged by the style of her clothes and the state of her grooming.  Would it be better to use that same amount of money for God's kingdom?  To invest in good deeds rather than pink toes?  Can't I have both (well, yes, of course, I can)?

I've gotten past the low self-esteem that would denounce me as unworthy of having a pedicure.  But I still have far too many deep thoughts about pedicures

On Friends and Depression

A very unsettling couple of days. One of my friends, who is also my mentor, is in the final stages of pancreatic cancer. It seemed that her kidneys were failing last night and that she might pass away, but she has rallied. Tomorrow, if all goes well, she will be moved from the hospital to hospice care.

It's so hard to see that as "if all goes well." How can end of life care be considered "well"? Yet, I understand that the doctor feels there is little more that can be done for her.

It seems that she is suffering more from the effects of her treatments than she is from the cancer. Her tumor, which is unresectable, appears to have stabilized and does not seem to be metasizing. All good as far as it goes. Her body has been having an incredibly hard time dealing with both the cancer and the effects of chemotherapy. She has had an embolism in her lungs, very low white blood cell counts, and now electrolyte imbalances.

Today was a chance to see her. I haven't seen her for close to 2 months. And how she has changed!. Much thinner, of course, and phasing in and out on morphine. But how very grateful I was to see her dear face again!

Today I also learned that another dear friend has Multiple Sclerosis. Several of us have suspected something was wrong for more than a year, but attributed it to the stress of caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer's.

She described a visual problem she was having, optic neuritis, and I looked it up. God bless the internet, by the way! There is was, listed as an early symptom of MS, along

with the cognitive difficulties she has been showing - depression, anxiety, and short term memory loss. As far as any of her friends can tell, she has not had any physical signs other than her vision. So, I suspected MS - and it turns out she was being tested for it.

Newly diagnosed, she still cannot bring herself to say the words...and so she is locking herself away from all of us.

Chocolate Biscotti

The first week of December has passed already and it is time to think seriously about Christmas cookies. To be honest, I need to do more than just THINK about the cookies! Yesterday was the first batch - a chocolate almond biscotti. Because I don't have an extra freezer in which to store cookies, I have to plan my attack based on how well the cookies age and how rapidly they stale.

I suppose aging is a strange concept for modern cookies, but at Christmas I make ethnic traditional ones. Many of the drier cookies meant for dunking are better as they age, as are gingerbreads. So the first cookies I make are biscotti, springele, lebkuchen, and gingerbread.

Because I got 2 chocolate biscotti recipes from my mother-in-law, I am always confused each Christmas as to which recipe I normally use. This card looked a bit more stained, so I made it, but I think I normally make the other recipe. That comment out of the way, there is nothing wrong with this cookie! I just do not recognize the stickiness of the dough when you turn it out to shape into 2 logs for the initial baking.

The easiest way to deal with the extreme stickiness was to spoon it into the log shape and "sort of" pat it together. My hands were a mass of chocolate stickiness in a few seconds!

For my version this year I chose bittersweet chocolate and added 1/2 T more of instant coffee. It makes a very deep, robust mocha taste. Can one use "robust" when describing a cookie?

Chocolate Biscotti

5 oz whole, unblanched almonds

1 ¾ c unsifted flour

1/3 c baking cocoa

1 t baking soda

¼ t salt

1 t vanilla

1 c sugar

2 T instant coffee (crush the instant coffee granules) (I use 2 1/2 T)

4 oz bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate (I use bittersweet)

3 large eggs

½ t almond extract* (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Toast almonds in shallow pan for approximately 1o min. Cool. (Watch closely – you don’t want them to brown or burn! This can often be done in a toaster oven)

Divide oven into thirds with racks, adjust temperature to 300 degrees F.

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and coffee. Shred/grate chocolate – to make it easier to chop in a processor, add ½ c of dried ingredients.

In large bowl of mixer, beat eggs, vanilla, & almond extract, just to mix. On low speed, add chocolate mixture, remaining sifted dry ingredients, and sugar. Beat to mix; will be stiff.

Remove from mixer. Stir in almonds by hand. Turn dough onto a floured surface. Form into mound. Cut in half. Flour each half; with hands, shape into a log 12” long. Place each diagonally on lined cookie sheet. (In theory, this is what happens. In reality, this is an INCREDIBLY STICKY dough! Spoon it into a log shape and try to pat it together. Then go wash your hands!)

Bake both sheets at a time for 50 min, reversing sheets top to bottom & front to back once during baking.

Remove from oven, let cool 10 min. Transfer to cutting board. With serrated bread knife, carefully cut strips on sharp diagonal angle @ ½” wide. (I make mine on the thin side). Cookies are very fragile at this point.

Carefully place on cut side (flat) on cookie sheets and bake again at 300 degreees F for about 40 min, turning them upside down after 15-20 min, until dry and crisp.

Turn off heat, open oven door & let them cool in oven.

Store in airtight containers.

Pumpkin Seeds

Halloween brings jack-o-lanterns, and jack-o-lanterns bring pumpkin seeds! I bought 2 large pumpkins this year because the grocery store had a wonderful deal - buy one get one free. Carving is never an art at our house, although we have made some decent looking pumpkins. I am amazed and somewhat envious at some of the incredible pumpkin designs I see; rest assured those will never be produced here. With my usual inability to decide, I dithered and debated over what my pumpkin would look like. My husband went at his immediately, knife in hand.

We never carved pumpkins when I was growing up, my mother carefully painted a face on our solitary pumpkin because it would last longer than one that was carved. It makes sense, total sense, but I must admit nothing can substitute for the glow of a real candle (none of those fake battery substitutes here!) inside a jack-o-lantern.

But the real treasure is the seeds! I had tried a number of pumpkin seed recipes early in our marriage. Most involved cleaning the seeds of all pulp, soaking in water (salted or not)for a day, all in all a very long, tedious process. Then I discovered The Victory Garden Cookbook! Marion Cunningham's recipe for pumpkin seeds was a revelation - extremely easy, not overly salty (unless you wanted them that way) and delicious! This is NOT the way the book writes the recipe; it is my own restating.

Pumpkin Seeds (from the Victory Garden Cookbook)

Remove seeds from pumpkin. Discard all major stringy pulp, but do not wash the seeds. Measure.

For every 2 cups of seeds, add 2 Tablespoons of mild vegetable oil and 1-2 teaspoons of salt. (I find 1 t salt is more than enough). Mix together, then spread on a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Bake in a preheated 250 degree F oven for 75 minutes. Watch towards the end so they don't burn (remove them earlier if burning seems a possibility).


Obviously, rescale the recipe to the amount of seeds you have - for 1 cup, cut the recipe in half, and so on.

Bringing in the Leaves!

As September draws to a close, the time of harvest is upon us. I always think of the hymn "Bringing in the Sheaves" - "we will come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves!" Since frost warnings are starting to appear, it is time to cut down my basil plants and harvest off all the leaves. I wait all summer, denying myself the pleasure of fresh basil until this time of the year. Since my basil crop isn't the largest, owing to a shady yard, I wait until I get as much growth as possible then harvest it all at once. I'll make pesto today and freeze it. I love homemade pesto, so today I will indeed "come rejoicing, bringing in the leaves!"

Thrifty Music Stand Bag

Since my last folding music stand case vanished somewhere, it was time to make a new carrying bag. I have found that the leg of a pair of old pants is ideally suited to the purpose. The last bag I made was from the unripped leg of an old pair of jeans. Not having any old jeans lying around this time, I went to the thrift stores. I wanted durable fabric - either a bottomweight (duck, canvas, denim, twill, poplin) or a wool. These olive green wool pants at only $1.00 matched my criteria.

I was able to open up the leg seam on the outside of the hem for the casing. I zigzagged across the seam at the ends of the opening to reinforce the seam and keep it from opening up more.

Because these pants are capri length, I had to use part of the actual body of the pants. With full length pants you can just use a leg.

First I cut apart the pants down the center body seam. I didn't bother cutting off anything else (like the waistband or zipper) because that can be done easily at the end.

Leaving the outer leg seam intact, I turned them inside out & straight-stitched a new seam just below the hem casing on the center body side of the bag. My seam was stitched down an imaginary line stretching from the hem to the waistband; I really didn't care if my seam was perfectly aligned - as long as it wasn't too narrow for the stand, it was fine.

Put the stand inside the bag, leaving adequate room at the hem for closure. Mark where the stand falls on the bag and add an inch or so. Sew a seam across the bag at that point, from side seam to side seam. This is the bottom of your bag.

Trim off all the extra pant fabric, leaving 1/2" around the seams. Turn the bag right side out.

Thread a cord or twill tape through the casing.

What to Do?

What to do?  I need a new reenacting handiwork project.  The problem is, I am not really in the pure state of "in between" projects.  No, that would imply I have either completely finished whatever I was working on or had utterly abandoned the last project.

Neither statement is true.  I have a pair of socks I am knitting stuffed away in my knitting bag, languishing at the "pick up stitches on the heel" stage - at least that's where I think I am.  My gut is afraid I have progressed past that and have dropped stitches somewhere.  These will be lovely socks - when I finish them  - I dyed the wool with shag bark hickory husks.

Then there's the Norwegian Morning cap I started with a Civil War Knit-along.  The cap itself is knit and I'm very happy with it.  I have to crochet the edging - and crochet is not my favorite handiwork.  I have to look up the stitches every time.  I've been avoiding starting - the perfectionist thing again, I think, but there is a realistic fear of botching up a nice piece of knitting. 

But our next Civil War reenactment is just around the corner, and it is one that not many civilian reenactors attend, which leaves me up to my own devices.  I need to have a new project to bring with me!  I like having busy hands while I am there, especially because it gives me something to talk about with spectators.

So, with great resignation, I practiced the crochet stitches I need for the cap trim, only to find out that I don't have the correct size hook.  Of course I practiced on a heavier weight yarn using a larger hook, since the project uses lace weight yarn.  Today I will purchase my hook.

I also looked up the KAL (knit along) instructions for the knit undersleeves.  Since I was planning on knitting those in white fingering weight wool, I have the materials I need.  Sadly, I am in the Knit After or Knit Behind stage - the blessed ladies of the KAL are 3 projects ahead of me.  Of course I know I could just jump right in  with the current project, which is double knit wrist warmers, but I already have a pair of wrist warmers.  Not double knit, but I would rather work on the undersleeves at this point, since I have no knit ones.