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Sunday, May 15, 2011

.About El Paso . . .

I have experienced some wonderful things in my life:  finding myself in Westminster Abbey the day Prince Charles was going to be anointed with the Order of the Garter, riding the last train into a station in Scotland & being greeted by bagpipes, wandering into Notre Dame for the audition of a new organist, walking down from the Eiffel Tower because the multiple elevator ride up was just too much for me, meeting an incredible couple from Boston in Madrid who took us to hidden treasures in the city, wandering into Rome during a Holy Year, hearing a group of nuns sing "Ava Maria" acapella in St. Mary's Major, the moments my sons were born, one screaming as he exited, one quiet, subdued.
 
Responding to Nick, the screaming one, as he continually reaches out to keep us connected.
 
Hearing my son Sam, the quiet one, give a speech at the 35th Anniversary of PDAP (Palmer Drug Abuse Program) & ending it with, "I love you Mom." 
 
Wonder filled & beautiful moments.   
 
But always, there are the memories of leaving the house in El Paso, long before my parents awoke, & climbing the fence & crossing the desert & climbing the hill to watch the sun rise over the mountains. 
 
Or, in rare cases, climbing that fence, crossing the desert & climbing the hill to watch the sun set.  Nothing equals the sun setting over the mountains. 
 
The memory of those moments, climbing the rock fence, crossing the desert & climbing the hill, are wonder filled & beautiful. 

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Mushrooms & Memory

Tomorrow evening Jean & I will travel from the environs of Meadows Place to somewhere in Katy to attend my niece Felicia's celebration / her mother insists not a goodbye party as Felicia leaves for the Navy.

At some moment I either volunteered to make the stuffed mushrooms Felicia's mother adores or perhaps she asked me - I don't know.  But this afternoon, I went to the store for the ingredients.  

I knew exactly what to buy - Italian sausage, black olives, scallions, mushrooms.  Make a bechamel sauce, saute the sausage, add the ingredients with a bit of spice, stuff the mushrooms.

Because it had been a  bit since I last whipped this delicacy up, I pulled down the recipe book I believed held the recipe.

I found recipes for spinach stuffed mushrooms, for marinated mushrooms, for mushrooms stuffed with minced mushrooms, for mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat.

But no mushrooms my niece & her mother were expecting.

So I consulted Jean - how, I asked, could I buy what I know are the correct ingredients & still not know the recipe?
I called off all the recipes in the volume I believed held my recipe & then suddenly, I saw that the recipe for mushrooms with spinach required a bechamel sauce.

As the lightbulb went off in my head, I said to Jean, "Bechamel, bechamel."

She must have felt a bit like Watson listening to a seemingly inane declaration from Holmes.

But, like Holmes, I knew exactly where to go - I pulled out the "Silver Palate" cookbook given to me by Stephen Sachnick, & turned instantly to the recipe for sausage stuffed mushrooms.

Which begins with a bechamel sauce.

Jean laughed.