Family Scandals

Today I started putting some quilt designs (that have been rattling around in my head) down onto graph paper. This is a view of my drafting table.Doesn't look like much does it. Oh, it will, eventually.

While I was pulling my hair out and spending the whole day getting this far, I also made dinner. I chopped, measured and cooked and Bill did the clean-up. We had one of our favorites - No Knife Pasta. (More on No Knife Pasta in a bit.....) While cleaning the kitchen and packaging up the left-overs, Bill found that we had more leftovers than we had clean Tupperware. (I say "Tupperware" for all seal-able plastic containers, like I say "Kleenex" for all facial tissues. You know what I mean.) Anyway, I could see his puzzlement about the left-over pasta problem. I left him and went back to my problems at the drafting table. A few minutes later I walked back into the kitchen to get a soda. Bill had solved his food storage problem by eating a portion of the left-overs. American Ingenuity. I guess it was less scandalous than throwing the left-overs away. Not as virtuous as just getting another Tupperware bowl. Hey, as long as it wasn't me cleaning the kitchen, I have bigger fish to fry.

No Knife Pasta you ask? It is a recipe I have been cooking since I saw it on Martha Stewart Living about 10 years ago. It looked delicious and it is. Martha was making it and telling the story about how it got it's name. It seems that it is a recipe from her daughter Alexis. Alexis must have some issues. Not to tell tales, but since Martha talked about it on t.v. - I guess I can tell you. Alexis doesn't use silverware. Not just the element silver - she doesn't use eating utensils. This particular recipe is something that Alexis cooks and eat with her hands. Martha looked a little sad as she told of a recent lunch with Alexis at the 4 Seasons restaurant in NYC and not a piece of silverware was soiled. Poor Martha. That is a story I will never forget. One can only imagine all the mother/daughter issues there. We choose to use utensils when we cook and eat it, despite it's origin, and say what you will about Martha - the woman can cook. Interesting that the link to the recipe and video is much more recent and the story of how it got it's name is now omitted. Some of us, fortunately have long memories.

Remember when I posted about the Memorial Day Parade? Well, there was a surprise waiting for me at that parade. The Dexter Michigan Rotary Club float. Every year the Rotary Club builds a play house to raffle for charity. They choose an "historic" building every year to model their play house after. Imagine my surprise when a familiar house went by.Yep, the house that Polly, myself, and our brothers grew up in. This is a stylized version of the house. Why it was chosen is a mystery. Since it was chosen, we must now find out how to purchase these raffle tickets. Polly and I have racked out brains to think of how this house could possibly be historic. My only guess is that fateful day in 1964, when an outraged 6 year-old took her older brothers prized 45 rpm record collection and sailed them out the upstairs window onto the yard, sidewalk and street. What she was outraged about is now long forgotten, but some people still tell the tale of how they dodged the flying discs as they flew across town. Patrick and I got a lot of mileage out of that story over the years. Yeah, that must be the reason.

Laurie