Eating Your Heart Out with Relish

My mother will tell you that my favorite fairytale princess was always Snow White.  One of the biggest reasons my mother knows this is because she was one of those women who threw all of her talents into motherhood and in the morning her question (when it just happened to be a pancake morning) was, “What do you want for your pancake?”

Now, this question might mean something like, “Do you want syrup or jam?” in another household, but in ours, Mom was an artist.  So my answer was always, “Snow White.” 

Out came my Disney story book.  Mom would find a suitable picture of Snow White, and using a little spoon would dole out a small line of batter and recreate the picture on the pancake griddle.  Then she’d let this outline darken a bit and fill it in the rest of the way with batter.  The result was a Snow White shaped image, complete with shadow and detailing that flipped right onto my plate and filled my morning with a lovely montage of singing birds and mining dwarfs.  

When I got older and actually made it all the way into the third grade, our teacher decided that we were ready to put on our first school play!  The play was “Snow Prince and the Seven Dwarfettes.”  I was little and scrawny but I rocked the auditions so thoroughly that my teacher had to track my Grandma down in the super market one day to tell her that I should be in more community theater.  (I know, I am awesome.)  So, scrawny or not, I was given the role of the evil king who wishes only to be the strongest strong man in the land.  This was my motivation for wanting to kill Snow Prince with a poisoned apple.  While preparing for this role, I read the actual Brothers Grimm version of the tale and was shocked that Disney left out scandalous details like the Wicked Queen being forced to dance in red-hot shoes made of lead in the end.  But one striking detail captured my imagination when I read the line regarding the pig heart the huntsman gave to the Queen, “She ate the heart, I am sorry to say, with relish.” 

“Gram,” I said one day while she was preparing one of our own chickens to eat for supper.  “Do people eat hearts?” 

“Why yes, they do,” Gram said.  “Do you want me to cook you this chicken heart and you can try it with dinner tonight?”

“Yes!”  Oh, I was excited.  Not only was this a secret detail of my most favorite fairytale, this was also a chance for me to really enhance my eight-year-old acting skills with a little method acting.  So that night a small lump of browned flesh was on my plate and without any hesitation whatsoever, I ate the heart with relish (which I read as “gusto,” but only now am thinking the Queen might have eaten it with some sweet relish).  And do you know what?  I loved it. 

Eating the heart became a little secret between me and my Gram.  She always cooked it for me and I always ate it with relish (gusto).  Every now and again, I will retain the heart from my turkey or my chicken (store bought, not farm raised, unfortunately)and cook it.  Sometimes I use a sprig of rosemary to pin it to the breast of the bird I’m cooking and I’ll eat the heart and think of Gram and the farm, and all those days I spent honing my performance as an evil king. 

So last night, Joseph decided he would cook.  He must have been feeling particularly Southern (as it comes on more strongly from time to time), because he bought gizzards and hearts of chickens at the grocery store.  He bought the hearts for me.  He made a breading from scratch.  He got our kettle of oil hot.  And he deep fried all the hearts and gizzards for our dinner.  The breading smelled good.  The sizzle sounded wonderful.  And then he pulled out the pieces for us and I popped one heart into my mouth and bit down.

Squeak. 

I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t.  For whatever reason, the chewiness of that heart just wouldn’t allow me to swallow it.  So for dinner, I had a bit of bread and some red wine we made from blueberries, and I allowed Joseph to eat his chicken pieces with relish (gusto) on his own.  He laughed at me for a good long chuckle, but I felt sad as I pondered the question you must all be asking, “Have I lost my evil kingliness?” 

Ferry Tale

I was born and raised in a family with a modestly sized farm we all pitched in on.  Later I moved to a moderately sized city where I met my partner, Joseph.  And still later, we moved to a very modestly sized island in Puget Sound.  So I went from the rural life to the city life and now I live in limbo.  My island is nestled in between two ferry rides (three if you count the two directions from the north end, but we never use that way).  One takes you back to the modestly sized city we moved from and the other takes you to the city where I work.  And in between is our little rural island. 

At the time, moving away from the city life was a breeze; a breath of fresh air.  I found myself suddenly able to see the stars after living amongst apartment buildings under a dome of phosphorescent light.  I had forgotten the stars, and how much the meant to me.  My dad and I used to just look at them.  Back in Idaho, where I am from, the January nights become frozen spectacles of light.  The stars seem so bright and so vivid, you can almost reach out and touch them.  I always imagined they were so cold that they would burn your fingers, but that may have been the frost bite nipping while Dad and I were out under that vast dome of sky. 

The stars were one of the many signs that Joseph and I had made the right move, renting a farm house, and moving onto a five acre plot of land with a crumbling old farm house and a couple of out buildings on it.  Living here has been a blessing in many ways.  But living here was made easier by the fact that I found a job for myself on the island and no longer had to ride the ferry.  Now that it has become a part of my daily commute again, I find myself desperately wishing for the time I spend on the commute back. 

Take for instance, last night: a good friend of mine from work was having a birthday party and Joseph and I had to leave just when the party was warming up into a karaoke extravaganza.  But that is ferry life.  Where ever you need to go, you have to add an hour and a half (two if you’re smart and don’t want to miss the ferry) to each end of your trip.  The ferry schedule becomes a sort of oracle that tells you how long you have to spend in each place you go.  If you run off on a wonderful vacation, get away for a week or two, and come back home, I guarantee you that a ferry is waiting for you and it’s going to be a bear of a ferry to get onto. 

When we first took a trip out to look at our island, Joseph (who might have some obsessive tendencies, and who loves me dearly) started feeling that we might sink on our little trip.  He insisted that I wear a life preserver.  I refused.  I was not going to walk around a boat full of strangers wearing a life preserver.  But I could see that this was distressing to my man and I care about his feelings so I came up with a compromise.  I would put the life preserver in a back pack and I would wear the back pack at all times.  He agreed to this.  And looking back at it, both of us laugh about it.  The ferry is full of life preservers.  Most bench seats have them stored underneath them.  There are whole bins full of them on every deck.  But that’s what phobias do.  They are by definition irrational little fears.  (Don’t get me started on my phobias.  Sasquatch can wait for another blog.) 

We pay to live where we live three times.  We pay the taxes that support the ferries.  (Thank you, fellow tax payers.)  We pay the ferry tolls.  (Which are not reduced in any way shape or form for residents.  And in tourist seasons we pay inflated rates like everyone else.) And we pay with our time.  So often (especially around the holidays and the tourist seasons) the ferry workers become grumpy.  I understand.  Their job is a lot of customer service coupled with dealing with drivers commuting 100% of the time.  Could you imagine if your 9-5 job was nothing but putting up with idiots on your commute?  And because they are state employees, what the ferry workers say and do may as well come directly from the mouths of gods who control your destiny.  You will and you must park where they say, drive where they say, get on when they say, leave when they say.  But what ferry workers don’t seem to understand is that they are holding our homes ransom.  We must put up with them, we can’t get home otherwise.  It’s all give and no take.  I wonder how many of them (once they get off of the ferry) actually have to take a ferry after they punch out to get home.  I’m sure if they did, they might be a little more patient with elderly ladies who can’t seem to make a sharp turn to fit into their allotted spot.  They might smile more.  They might make more friends among us. 

But for now, the ferry system is nibbling the ends of my life away.  Joseph and I have discussed it several times over, and when our lease is up, we will be moving off of the island.  I’m not sure how I can adjust to life away from our little dream of a farm house.  I’m not sure if I will be able to see the stars when I get to where we are going.  But they say variety is the spice of life, and not knowing where I am going is part of our adventure! 

Sharks and Mermaids

Long before I met my Joseph, I was a wild, foot-loose guy in Idaho.  I had my best friend, who also happened to be my cousin, Nicole.  We had wonderful adventures when I rented my first place all by myself in Coeur d’Alene.  We were both in community college going for artsy things and life just seemed infinitely beautiful and wonderful.  Because this was the 1990’s, one of the songs that came on the radio that we adopted as one of our anthems was Billie Myer’s “Kiss the Rain.”  This song lead us to an even better song:  The Shark and the Mermaid song. 

Mermaids were always my thing, as evidenced by the mermaid tattoo I have on my right arm. 

Only a couple of years later (even though it felt like a life time later) I found myself married in Seattle with a dog (soon to be two of the mongrels).  I told my hubby about the song, and even tried to sing it to him in spite of my lack of a Siren’s voice.  He did his own research and read the lyrics, and it was Joseph who decided that this was our song.

The song details the affair of a beautiful mermaid who falls in love with a gruff shark and in spite of the world thinking that they were an unlikely match, they “grew together, they were strong.”  And as mermaids were always one of my favorite things, I fell for the sappiness of this song as our song hook, line, and sinker. 

In 2009, for our upcoming ninth anniversary, Joseph hired a local jeweler to create “upgraded” rings for us.  On the inside of mine the inscription reads, “Shark loves his Mermaid.”  On the inside of Joseph’s the inscription reads, “Mermaid loves his Shark.”  And the mermaid/shark theme has sort of permeated our life together. 

Now, my love of mermaids is well known among my friends, and this year my friends Nate and Jackie gave me a mermaid cookie cutter.  This sent me into my pantry to assess my cookie cutter situation.  I threw out a lot of those old metal cookie cutters, as they have a nasty habit of rusting when they sit around my damp house.  So that left me down to only my plastic cookie cutters and my new mermaid cutter. 

Now, I had a great many of these plastic cookie cutters because I had happened one day upon a set of 50 animal cookie cutters so my pantry is full of dinosaurs, dogs, cats, rabbits, lions, sheep, and on and on.  So this year when I went to make my Christmas cookies I found that I was completely out of Christmas shapes.  So that is when I got creative. 



We had a Shark and Mermaid themed Christmas!!! 

I added some ocean friends for them, too.  I imagine there was a wise-cracking octopus and a prissy angel fish.

And maybe there was a seahorse with a heart of gold. 

Whatever they looked like, the cookies went down great with a cup of coffee! 

Granny Squares Everywhere

Not to be out-done by Joseph and his new found crocheting skills, I found a resource in my friend Michelle and began making Granny Squares in mass!

My first were a little loose, but they soon tightened up nicely. 

Frankly, I Do Give A Damn ... About my name.

While looking over the latest trends in baby names (Vampires, Werewolves, and the gals who love them seem to be the emerging themes) I stumbled across this little tidbit from Parentingweekly.com:

"Like Hank, [the name] Frank has a dated feel to it. He is either an honest, upstanding hero of a musty old novel, or a guy in a tank top cooking hot dogs at the backyard barbecue."

            Somehow this statement seemed racist, but I have to accept that people named Frank do not make up a race, so I had to drop that thread.  I have never barbecued a hot dog.  (They made me sick as a kid, so I have never liked them.  Sorry, America.)  And the only time I ever wore a tank top was back in the ‘90’s when the whole bowling shirt and cargo pant craze was happening.  It occurred to me that this statement was made by somebody who didn’t know a Frank so had only the Hardy Boys and The Sopranos to supplement his understanding of people named Frank.  So, I may help the Frank cause by giving a little information on a few famous Franks. 

            Now, there are a great many athletes named Frank, but the stereotype surrounding the sports world might lead us right back to Barbeque Frank, so I will omit these Franks, though I am proud that some of us don’t throw like sissies. 

           We had a couple of Franks win the Nobel Peace Prize.  In 1929, Frank Billings Kellogg won it for peace for his work on a treaty that proposed countries take up "the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy."  In 1960, Frank MacFarlane Burnet won it for his work in Medicine.  And in 2004, Frank Wilczek won it for his work as a physicist in the field of Asymptotic Freedom. (I don’t even know what this means, but it sounded super impressive, so I included him.) 

We had a couple of Franks for President: Franklin Pierce and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Pierce was famous for being one of the worst presidents in history.  (Of course he predated other administrations …) But it was okay, because the other Franklin, Mr. FDR gave this country a New Deal. 

I’ve always been drawn to the arts and literature as a whole, and it thrills me to say that some of the best Franks come to us from creative fields:



Frank Sinatra was crooning to mothers, grandmothers, and probably great grandmothers in ways that had them all sighing for “Old Blue Eyes.”  And if it weren’t for Frank Zappa’s music, we might all have eaten the yellow snow. 

Frank Lloyd Write was an architect who used his amazing vision to shape the world around us. 

And this might not have even happened …

 … had L. Frank Baum never took us down his Yellow Brick Road with a Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, a little black dog, and a brave little girl.  Of course,  L. Frank Baum wasn’t the only writer who took us to far off and exotic worlds.  Frank Herbert gave us “Dune” and has set the bar for the Science Fiction genre ever since. 

Frank Herbert's works even inspired George Lucas when he created his Star Wars Trilogy.  You didn’t think it was a coincidence that Luke was from a Desert Planet, did you?  And one of my favorite Star Wars Characters might never have made it to the Big Screen had it not been for another famous Frank: Frank Oz. 

And I owe one of the greatest loves of my life to Frank Oz as well:



So you see, the world has been and will forever be greatly enhanced by the Franks who populate it.  I struggle to do my part and keep up with all these guys.  But who knows, maybe someday some little unheard of blogger will record my name down with these other guys as the Frank who took a stand against blatant Name Discrimination. 

Owls, Owls Everywhere!

My Aunt Marsha used to wear over-large glasses that were popular in the late seventies and early eighties.  She had shoulder length brown hair, and a mouth that was sometimes drawn into a terse line.  In short, she looked a little like an owl.  And it made sense to everyone in my family that Aunt Marsha loved owls.  People gave her owl sculptures and owl mugs.  On her window sill she had owls made from shells and owls made from ceramics.  On her walls she had owls woven into hook rugs and owls made of wood.  Whenever we saw an owl we could afford (and there were lots of them coming out of the seventies) we would get it for Aunt Marsha. 

One day, my Aunt Marsha, who was moving into a new house and starting a new chapter in her life, made an announcement.  She looked at us all solemnly in her smaller, updated glasses and proclaimed, “I hate owls.” 

You could have heard a mouse scuttle across the forest floor in that room on that day.  Everything we had believed of this woman, Aunt Marsha, had been an illusion.  Her first owl, she said, had come from her first husband’s family as a sort of gift to her, which she had to display or offend the givers of the gift.  And when my family saw the owl in her house, it suddenly had become Aunt Marsha’s totem to us.  We perpetuated our own myth about Aunt Marsha the Patron Saint of Owls.  She had had to put up with our owl enthusiasm for so many years before she finally put the tokens of owl-esteem into boxes and got rid of them.  She started a new, bird-free life.  She liberated herself from our expectations and moved forward. 

So I have always harbored this fear that I would be painted with other people’s expectations of what I might like and I kept my affinity for owls a secret for many years of my life.  It seems as though the last five years or so saw a rise in owl popularity.  Everyone had something with an owl in it, on it, or around it.  This trend kept me even more tightly lipped about my love of Strigiformes. 

There is some debate about where and when the apparently sudden love of owls come from.  You can find owl merchandise in all the trendiest shops.  Many cutting-edge people are standing up in life or on the internet to say they ushered in this age of the owl.  But I know better.  Athena, the goddess of Ancient Athens brought in the owl craze and it has been going strong since before 500 BCE.  I loved owls, why was I hiding this love to avoid having people think differently of me for it?  My love for owls is a part of who I am.  

So this Christmas, I proclaimed my owl love loudly and proudly. 

And people listened. 

My super cool Secret Pal at work (Jody!) gave to me a small stuffed owl, an owl hat, and an owl Christmas tree ornament among other wonderful things.  Another couple of work friends gave me a furry owl with a rainbow pin attached to his plumes.  And my Joseph even got in on the act.  He gave to me a stuffed owl with jazzy pink and purple patterns and an apron with an owl print and dangly balls on the bottom so I can entertain in my own owl attire now. 

I feel my owl collection is off to a good start.  And I don’t think it will go south the way it did with my Aunt Marsha.  For one thing, I truly do love owls.  And for another thing, I have many more loves I am more than happy to share.  For instance, did you know, I also love peacocks and garden gnomes? 

I had a wonderful haul this year for Christmas.  Thank you, everybody.