Saturday, March 20, 2010

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 30


#30 – "Always eat the parsley they put your plate at a restaurant, it is packed with vitamins, and freshens your breath."

This one of one hundred things my mother taught me a million times reminded me that I never saw my mother take a vitamin. Of course this was a woman that would only take one-half of an aspirin if she had 105-degree fever. I recall her giving me one baby aspirin when I was in high school. Seriously! 

She wasn’t the stereotypical naturalist though, she just believed in doing things, as she put it, “the natural way," such as eating parsley instead of taking vitamins.

I remember as a kid feeling very special and somehow superior when, on those very rare occasions that we went out to eat in San Angelo or Odessa, and my plate arrived with a “sprig” of parsley, placed just so. Perhaps it was the small-town hick in me or the child, but that beautiful, frilly-leafed bouquet of deep green just somehow made me feel that there were many more things “out there” to be experienced.  Mom  spent a good bit of my childhood trying to instill in me a wonder of the world, but not just any world, the world that offered privilege, prosperity, parsley. Click on Read More for More About Parsley.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I read Little Bee at the recommendation of Very Smart Gal, Kelly Loudenslager, Realtor, and loved many things about it, and disliked a few. Interestingly, that seemed to be the response of many readers/reviewers. Of the reviews I saw, there were almost as many who loved it as didn’t, and even the ones who loved it disliked some things about it, and those who didn’t particularly love it nevertheless loved some things.

I listened to the book on my iPod, as it seems the only time I have to “read” anymore is listening to them in my car driving to and fro, and listening to Little Bee was one of the things I loved. Reader, Anne Flosnik, did such a lovely job of portraying the various dialects, Nigerian, Jamaican and the “Kings English,” that I occasionally found myself enraptured by her voice and loosing track of the story. Click on Read More For the Full Review...

My Bountiful Organic Garden

Youth FAQ, Dec. 2006
Behold our dinner last night, which we plucked from our beautiful, organic garden just moments before this photo was taken - arugula, baby spinach, lettuce, carrots (tomatoes from the store – little early for tomatoes!)   

Holy greenery was it good! Nothing quite as satisfying as harvesting from the sweat of your own brow! Just kidding, I don’t garden but I do pay for my gardener Youth FAQ, Dec. 2006 extraordinaire, Jason Minshew, JayBird LandscapingWant a fresh salad tonight? Please feel free to come by and trim off a plateful! EGO perussi proinde EGO sum
First person that correctly translates this gets to go see the Texas Roller Girls with me this Sunday night (I have VIP season tickets)!