So Where's the Snow?

Every time I hit town, it's magically disappeared! Got in late last week and DANG IT - snow all melted! Took a taxi from the airport so Mr. Chirphomie wouldn't have to drive on dark icy roads - and all had melted all the way up to our house - foiled aGAIN!

Sure enough, dial-up is death to blogging so I have a bit of filling-in to do. Things are better on the parental home front. Did a bunch of cooking, shopping and laundry catch-up for my Mother - who had bronchitis - so she wouldn't feel overwhelmed when she got back to normal. Found out she's still ironing all my Dad's shirts. ACK! Did I mention she's in her mid-eighties? Talked her into a few changes - like sending things OUT! I knew she was feeling better when I found her bending over the stove top with me giving advice on how to cook Orange Roughy - one of our favorite fishies. Fortunately she'd given me that advice on that same type of fish years ago and I happily informed her I'd done it exactly as she would, and she could go sit down and I'd serve her with it pronto. Sadly, their kitty of 15 years "Ximena" (think Shi-mean-a) died a couple weeks before I arrived. I was so looking forward to patting up on her! They are not ready for a new cat of course, but I'm already thinking up cat names that could start with "X" since I came up with the last name (Ximena was the wife of El Cid).

One of the things I like to make other people for breakfast is baked apples. I was sifting through the apple choices at their nearby grocer's and came across a new one (to me) called Pacific Rose and thought I'd give it a try. Apparently it's available December through March from Washington State and the rest of the year from New Zealand. Geeze - when I was a kid it was just unheard of to be eating fresh fruit and produce from other countries. Yes, I'm old - I admit it. So anyway - this apple turned out to be a fabulous choice. I cored them, put them in a pie plate in the microwave and cook them for 4 minutes at a time and keep checking. At some point you can put a dab of butter and cinnamon down the hole. I don't let them get too mushy - still slightly firm is good. They dribble juice during the cooking and make their own steaming/ poaching liquid at the bottom of the pie plate (easiest thing I can find to cook them in) so you don't have to put any water in at first when you are nukeing them. When done to satisfaction - I take them out and fill the middles with cold Pina Colada yogurt by Yo Plait before serving. These Pacific Rose apples were amazing - they were about the firmness of a good apple pie apple and tasted just like you'd made them in a pie and sweetened them yourself. Easy healthy breakfast and great on a cold day with or without the yogurt. I just found them locally at QFC here in Seattle yesterday and stocked up. Geeze - QFC has 10 different types of apples. Is it because we live in Washington State? Is it because we live in the land of plenty?


I also made Mom a huge batch of chicken soup from scratch (actually - I presume the free-range chicken did all the scratching) and lots of other vegee healthy things. When we got tired of chicken soup I found a fabulous "mom and pop" Mexican restaurant down the street that does a from-scratch Albondigas soup. (I know, Albondigas has beef or pork meatballs and piggies don't scratch, they rout - but who's gonna say "from rout?") In our soup they cooked chayote squash which is a nice mild vegetable - great in soup. One of the joys of living in Southern California is fabulous Mexican food with restaurants practically on every block. Even the fast food can be fab. El Pollo Loco is an example - they grill all their chicken with a wonderful signature sauce and all their items are consistently wonderful. They have drive-through windows too! Ditto about the land of plenty. Another wonderful thing about So. Cal. from a middle-aged aches and pains point of view is that the majority of the houses are one storey. This is true for my parents' house as well, except they tried to be cute and decorative and made one step down to the livingroom and in another area the family room, and one step up to the kitchen and dining area - then a step back down to get to the bedrooms. Really a total waste since the house is a flat one-storey just like the rest of the houses. I suppose this was done to "create interest" in the house but it just makes one more thing to stumble over when your bones are getting old and tired.

Since Mom was not well, I stayed home with her while my Step Dad went to my Step Sister Leslie's memorial service. It was attended by 250 people and was beautifully done. Step Sister Susan came back to stay with us and I got to know her a lot better - which was great. We ganged up on the parental units and were obnoxious with advice on how they should change their life to be more secure and comfortable now that they are getting up there in age. I'm sure they were sad but relieved when we finally got the heck out of there, dribbling last-minute advice as we went.

There's only one knitting store in town - it's called the Knit and Stitch. If you are ever in Riverside, California it's in the Brockton Arcade on Brockton Street off of the main drag - Magnolia Street. Typical for California there is almost no wool. Lots of Plymouth "Encore" and other synthetics, but now starting to carry bamboo, 'paca and other sorta natural lightweight yarns. They did have a totally wonderful cabled preemie hat as a sample. I pleaded with them to have the author write it up and send it to me and they did! Just got to get it knit and show you and then it will be available for purchase from them. BTW - I'm on Ravelry now - under "dims." I just spent most of a day getting familiar with it (not near as complicated as I feared) and drooling through yarn and patterns. I seem to have waaaay too many books now that I've logged a bunch of my library. I should have been sitting at the computer with my current project because it's certainly a way to spend endless time drooling over knitting without getting a blessed thing done! ACK!



When back in Riverside, I always have to drive down the landmark historic avenue near my parents' house called "Victoria." It runs for miles through what used to be solid orange groves. Riverside was pretty much surrounded by orange groves in the 50's.
On cold night back then (Riverside is basically reclaimed desert) they'd turn on the smudge pots to keep the frost from settling on the trees. The smell and the black smoke were terrible and it would hang over the city like a pall for days. That's before they were outlawed and Riverside earned the reputation of one of the worst cities for smog in the nation. The way you had a view (we used to joke) was by looking through the groves down the rows of irrigation troughs.


Victoria has many species of trees and flowers that are not native tucked among the peppers, palms and eucalyptus. The peppers are not really pepper trees - they are actually related to the cashew family, but the red berries fall to the ground and smell just like a very fragrant black pepper. They are very pretty trees and their feathery branches resemble weeping willows. .
The trunks are really gnarly.

No, I mean REALLY REALLY gnarly.

The Eucalyptus trees are very old and twisted - the trunks are fascinating because the bark is a pale grey with mottled pinks and mauves and peels off in strips. Forgive the quality of my pictures this time - wasn't up to my usual snuff of editing and I was shooting against the sun. They're easier to see if you click to embigafy.


This is the base of one of the Eucalyptus.

Palm trees and I have never developed a friendly relationship. I find them singularly lacking in tree beauty - but they are everywhere in Southern Cal.


This is about as good as they ever look - most of them get to be super tall and skinny.


At least there are a few prettier kinds, but the basic type is just worthless for shade or any other good tree things since they don't plant the coconut palms here. The type below is more feathery and looks good compared to the basic style.

The trees drop tons of these shard-like frond things that look and feel like a cross between leather and wood. The streets are littered with these all year and it's hard for the city to keep up with them. Some times they just trim the trunk down as it grows.


And some times they shave it as it grows. They also do another unattractive variant of lower half shaved and upper half trimmed because they get too tall to manage easily, even with a cherry picker.



You know you've sucked one up with your car's undercarriage when you suddenly hear "KA-thwap, ka-thwap, kathwap," until they finally make their way into the car's wheel well where the tire acts as a burr grinder and they start to break up into bits. You can see around town where people have swept them up into piles to get them out of the road.

They seem like they should be good for burning or found-art sculpture because the texture is so interesting but haven't heard of either being done.

I thought my tree pix were sort of interesting when I was taking them but compared to Ryan's Cuzzin Tom's tree extravaganza pictures on his current trip to Australia - they're pretty tame!

I was so happy to catch up with all the homie blogs when I got back. If you are a dog and cat lover (and if you're not, you're on the wrong blog) there's a video over on Rachel's blog of one of her dogs playing with one of her cats that is just hysterical. Go look! It's the second one down.


I'm going to have to have Mom bring up her laptop when she comes up this summer so Mr. Chirptechie can rehabilitate it - she's missing too much blog fun. Speaking of Mr. Chirp - he seemed happy to have me back. You know how you are full of family-isms after a visit? I was telling him about a cartoon Mom and I thought was great when we were reading the Sunday funnies. You know...short for funny papers? This amused him no end and he gave me one of those patronizing pats on the head for being.....old and quaint I guess. Doesn't anyone call them the funnies? Is it an East Coast thing (where the parents grew up)?


As a last laughable welcome home present - I'd received an order from a major on-line retailer we deal with all the time. I'd ordered four 4-packs of Splenda Mini's (Splenda in pill form in a little dispenser - be advised that one pill is only one half of the normal Splenda packet). That would be 16 small dispensers in all since Mr. Chirpsweetie needs them for his travels where they don't have Splenda. Instead, I received eight boxes of 12 dispensers each - yep....96 dispensers. At least they didn't charge me for this plentitude - just for what I ordered. Lest you think I'm a bad person for not shipping them all back at my expense, this vendor is notorious for not fixing things. They don't want the mistake back - they just like you to keep it and want to resend - and then are just as likely to re-send you the mistaken amount a second time if you complain. You can't get a live body on the phone no matter how hard you try either. So.....I'm passing out Splenda dispensers every time I see a friend. The new flavored Splenda is out in the stores now and I'm here to tell you it has a wonderful taste - nothing chemical or lingering about it. That link is not where I bought the Splenda, but no matter - you can find it everywhere in the stores now - just not the mini's for some reason.


I MUST develop a less overchatty run-on sentence style here. You're probably all snoring in your cocoa about now. Non-flaming suggestions are welcome. Ericka? Embe?