Makes 6 waffles

5 eggs                          1/2 cup of sugar

1 c. of flour, sifted          1 t. ground cardamom

1 c. sour cream               4 T. unsalted butter, melted

Beat theeggs and sugar together for 5 to 10 minutes in an electric mixer, until it falls back into the bowl in a lazy ribbon when the beater is lifted out.  With a spatula, gently fold in half the flour, the add the cardamom and sour cream, and finally the other half of the flour.  Gently stir in the melted butter and set the batter aside for ten minutes.

Dad cooks this in a regular American electric waffle iron, but in its origin it was cooked in a Norwegian waffle iron over direct heat.  The traditional accompaniment is a tart jam, and it’s so rich that it scarcely needs syrup or even butter.  It melts in your mouth.  Berry preserves work well.

Everyone asks how I did it.  Did I hit the gym?  Did I do the Southbeach?  Did I eliminate all carbs?  Did I eliminate fat?  Did I stick my finger down my throat? 

Long long ago I was watching Julia Child interact with some french chef, perhaps Jacques Pepin.  As long ago as this was it was at the point in her career where she mostly left the cooking to the spryer cooks and herself hovered and guided.  The chef in this case was preparing foie gras, about which I’ve spoken at length.  She admonished the audience that one has to be philosophical about the way one eats, and that even though foie gras is unbelievably delicious, it’s better to savor the experience of the three bites with a glass of Sauternes than to gorge oneself on half a lobe and ruin his evening.  Those words came back to me when I put on a bathing suit last spring and could not stand to look at myself in the mirror.

I cogitated and determined my philosophy would be to eat half of what is put in front of me.  Or to only cook half what I thought I wanted.  Also, little snacks.  A handful of nuts or grapes.  I didn’t quit eating carbs or bread, but I quit eating bread at breakfast except on Sunday omrning when my whole family tends to gather for my dad’s incredible waffles. 

The hard part about this philosophy is that I could have a Big Mac, but I could only eat half of it.  This is hard on a psychological level because you think to yourself, “I paid full price for this, so I should eat it all.”  The philosoph has to overtake te psychology and say, “No, you don’t have to eat it all.”  “But there are starving kids in Africa.”  “So send the other half of your burger to Africa.”  And so the dialogue went.

Even though it’s hard in the moment to toss out the leftover pizza or pasta or even salad, once you get used to doing it, it doesn’t bother you after a while and instead I would take a mean-spiritedly smug gander around the room at other diners intent on cleaning their plates and bitching that now they have to go to the gym.  But the next step is enduring the first five weeks.  In that period, as you train your body that resistance is NOT futile, you don’t see much in the way of results.  On the contrary, your bathroom experiences change (oh I neglected I started drinking the requisite 8 glasses of water a day, too).  I won’t go into the grisly details but when your diet changes, there are consequences. 

And then one day, I don’t remember the date, but about 6 weeks into this new approach, someone said, “you’re losing weight.”  I weighed myself and I had come down to 176.  I was heartened.  Also, this was the beginning of the summer and I started swimming, which meant I was raising my metabolism, but not dreading the exercise; rather, looking forward to it because I love the water.  Also, I was carefully cultivating a rich suntan, not the smelly burned up french fried kind you get in the booth, but the kind you get from careful exposure to the sun. 

Suddenly, my face is thinner, my body’s tighter, my color is golden and the whole philosophy has come to be an effortless endeavor.  One thing that’s odd is my hair, which tends to be wavy (or downright curly when it’s long) became srtaight.  I almost didn’t recognize myself and so I let Julie, who cuts my hair, take some dramatic license.  One day in October I was at my friend’s house listening to his band rehearse and one of the guitarist’s girlfriend (they being ages 21 and 20) got mad because her boyfriend seemed to like his guitar more than her (which I suppose in that moment would be an accurate assessment), so she started acively flirting with me.  She proved to be smart and articulate and effervescent and I enjoyed the conversation.  I asked if he would come out to Lincoln Street with me (a wine bar) so we could continue our conversation in a quiter location and sae told me she couldn’t go in there because she is only 20 years old.  Oh …. then coffee? 

Then the magic moment.  She asked how old I was and before I could say, “40″ she guessed, “28?  29?” 

Oh

MY

GOD

I told her I was 40 and she didn’t believe me.  I assured her it was true and she finally believed me.  Anyway, I’ve known her for a while and she’s fun to hang out with.  She and her boyfriend are exes now and he’s an interesting character, as well, and it’s very interesting to be so in touch with a completely other generation.  They could be my kids.

Then I ran into someone I used to work with and she didn’t recognize me.  She said, “Do you have a brother?  Maybe an older brother?”  I just laughed and told her who I was and she grew alarmed.  “Are you sick?  You don’t LOOK sick but you’re too thin.  You need to gain weight!”  A few days later, having a physical, my own doctor of ten years told me to gain 5 pounds.  Carefully, of course.  He didn’t mean for me to go out and eat nothing but ice cream for a week.  And the holidays were coming so I knew there would be lots of snacking and drinking and parties and blah blah blah, plus Hilda had covered her pool for the fall and winter.  I knew I would gain 5 pounds.  I gained 7. 

Eat half.

Either way, as delicious and filling and comforting as it is, it is the nastiest thing to look at.  On the plate it looks, no lie, like dog vomit.  So you just avert your gaze and scarf it down, with beer or a robust red wine.

 This guy in the weather channel just said, “Texans can’t drive very well in the snow.  I’m from Indiana so I can drive all right but up here in Ft. Worth there are fender benders and major accidents galore.”  I take exception to this … er … observation.  I’m a Texan and I know perfectly well how to drive in the snow and ice.  I know how to ski in it, too.  Never got around to snowboarding though.

 So I don’t think any place in the continental US escaped this storm, which isn’t even over yet.  I like cold weather, and don’t mind a brisk walk on a chilly day.  But lots of people get in really bad moods when their feet are cold and their power and gas bills arrive and it’s twice what it usually is.  Whine whine whine.

I’m also frustrated because Saturday the front right tire on my car blew out at 11:55 AM.  I called Stroeher Tire and Auto, who sold me the tires and who manage the warranty, and was informed they close at noon on Saturdays.  The guy was pleasant but he wasn’t going to do me any favors.  So I locked the car and walked to my parents’ house about four blocks away, which is closer from that place than my own and it was already freezing cold (but no precipitation yet).  I got to the house and let myself in and announced my guandary.  They were sympathetic but could only shrug their shoulders. 

I called a variety of other places, including Wal Mart (which was open for business and said come on in, but the three other reputable places in this small town all close at noon on Saturday.  By this time, it was sleeting in earnest.  My car has alloy wheels and the spare is just one of those donuts and I didn’t want to go out into the sleet to change it.  And of course it couldn’t be driven with a blowout.  The towing companies on a Saturday afternoon would charge me $100 to pull the car anywhere in town, and I’m not cheap but I have better things to do with $100.  So I hunkered down and waited for the sleet to stop.

It didn’t stop.  After a while it snowed, and then it stopped (and that could have been my window of opportunity but I was doing something in the kitchen and by the time I had my time back to myself it was snowing again and then it was frozen rain and then it was nightfall.

Thus Saturday.  It’s now Wednesday morning and the precipitation has only just ceased but not for long.  The doomsayers allow that it will start back up any second now and if you don’t have to go anywhere, then don’t.  No one has left the house because the roads are treacherous.  I suppose if we HAD to go to the hospital or something we might venture out, but mom pretty much said, “uhh h…. no you may not use my car.”  She’s not mean, just nervous.  And I don’t have the best history with cars.  Plus they have a nice comfortable house and a pantry the size of my bedroom, three freezers full of all sorts of food, and I keep numerous items of clothing over here.  Dad keeps a roaring fire going in the living room.  And I don’t have any obligations, so I just sort of moved in.  My friend Gabe called me ysterday and asked if that was my car parked up on Main Street and I assured him it was.  He said, “Buddy, that sumbitch has at least two inches of ice covering it.”  Nice.  I’ve read three books and watched lots of TV and played with the cat a lot.  She doesn’t like cold weather and won’t go out unless you go out with her, and then she’ll play around.  Inside, where it’s wawrm, all she does is sleep.   Outside she gets frisky.

 First, I just think it’s good to work.  Even if you don’t have to, you must.  Or you get fat and lazy and watch All My Children.  One of the joys I have found in working at this tortilla factory is that the other people there are kind of *surprised* at how hard I work.  For the longest time, specifically times when I didn’t really work there, they just thought I was “the white guy who goes shopping with Hilda.”  Or, well, I suppose that’s what they thought.  But I was treated with a sort of polite deference that bordered on disdain.  Fair enough, for I was indeed the white guy who went shopping with Hilda.  But after working there, and working not tirelessly but always trying to be of assistance to anyone who needed assistance, I gained respect, and camaraderie ensued.  Hilda’s husband, Pedro, who for a long while was skeptical about my relationship to the business (and maybe to his wife), has embraced me as a friend.  Last night he and I and Hilda’s brother (one of serveral) actually had a lengthy philosophical question about religion and marriage. 

So, it’s a joyful thing to know that people like me.   And to know that I work to the satisfaction of others.  And if possible, that my work is, if not an inspiration, at least an example.  I mean, I worked at the counter, took out trash, poured salsas, cooked (sometimes), cleaned, took phone calls, MADE phone calls, added up deposits.  Short of roasting the peppers for the chiles rellenos, I did a little bit of everything.  But most of all, and best of all, I worked the counter and with my honest, engaging smile and my incomprehensibly pretty eyes, I could sell sand to an Arab. 

 Also, I brought fresh fruit every day.  Grapes for sure.  Two or three bags of them, sometimes a mixture.  And pineapple, and strawberries.  And whatever else looked good.  Melons.  Watermelon.  Cantaloupe, honeydew…  At first this was regarded with its own brand of …. again, skepticism.  What?  We nosh on chips and salsa all day long.  We have burritos at will.  Tortillas abound!  OK, I said, but look…. next time you want to snag a chip, have a handful of grapes.  The grapes are a HUGE attraction now.  The melons, well someone has to cut all that up.  But once it’s cut up, people EAT it.  I’ve initiated a trend!  All the fat people at Hilda’s are about a month away from serious good health.  And I came in yesterday and they had taken the watermelon and not cut it up to eat but rather had made this sort of punch out of it!  Yum!  Strawberries are a huge attraction, too, but they go fast, so the grapes are the mainstay.  One day we ate a ton of pineapple and there again, no one wanted to cut it up but once it was done it just disappeared.  Maybe they think it’s a luxury to eat fruit.  I couldn’t say.  I don’t think so.  I think it’s the best thing you can do.

 Not that I don’t eat real food, but having lost a lot of weight, I intend to keep it at bay.  I just hope that Hilda will continue my tradition.  Or maybe I’ll get lonely and start coming to prepare fruit salads for the employees every day!

B

For starters, and I made reference to this, I was being of assistance at the tortilla factory.  Then we quite assuredly LOST the counter girl because she got drunk and beat up her husband and had to go to jail.  So suddenly I was the new counter girl.  Or … well … boy.  But anyway, from 6 AM ’til 2 PM I would sell tortillas and Mexican food.  I have a vested interest in this business so I had to do it.  And on some level I enjoyed it.  But I was delighted when I learned last Friday that I was being replaced.  Yay!!!

Second, Hilda took the cover off her pool and after long days of working in a tortilla factory I just loved to dive into it and then take a nap in the sun.  I have the most beautiful tan on the planet, ladies and gentlemen.  And I highly recommend a product called Banana Boat Aftersun (or something like that).  It comes in a cream or a gel.  I prefer the gel.  But as much sun as I have gotten lately, not once have I felt the heat of burn.  It’s basically Aloe Vera and Lanolin but I’m sure there’s some mysterious chemical in there, too.  Ancient Chinese Secret!

After sunning and napping, I would find myself languid and it was past the time when I would likely make a post, so I kept saying to myself, “tomorrow.”  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.  Tomorrow always came but the posts didn’t.

Moving right along, I have one cat of my own but my sister’s two cats were “visiting” and one of them was horsing around (not catting around) with my own, and they were chasing each other and knocked a glass of diet coke into the keyboard of my laptop, which is to say, into the hard drive.  It sparked and smelled funny and quit working, kinda like gramma in her golden years.  I’d been pondering buying a new computer anyway but I didn’t really relish having the decision tossed onto my plate, especially not when I was so busy and tired.  So THEN, me being prone to inertia, I just got all pissy and said, “Fuck it.”  And for three weeks I didn’t post, didn’t check email, etc.

The cats are gone.  I have a new computer, and new help at the counter.  I can resume my life.  Except I’m about to depart on a ten day trip to West Virginia so there will be another dry spell.   However, I have absolutely nothing to do today and I have a lot of things on my mind and I will begin to share them, albeit piecemeal.

Busy, too, with the tortilla factory. They were short-handed all week and I did a little bit of everything. Hilda had a meeting Friday for which I happened to be present, though I wasn’t part of it, and she was reading beads left and right. Good for her. People take her for granted and get away with all kinds of shit.

I went out Friday night and met Deborah. Beautiful beautiful woman and she knows it. Youngish, in her …. 40s I’d say, and very well put together. I didn’t MEET her as in an introduction. I ran into her, I should say. For our own peculiar reasons neither one of us drinks and so we sit around and flirt endlessly and uselessly. She’s way too beautiful for me to say we make a match, especially not for a camera, but everyone thinks we look good together and assumes we’re a couple and we play it. Anyway, that was fun.

And I went to my niece’s dance recital yesterday and was absolutely utterly completely wonderfully delighted. There were 19 routines (BEFORE imtermission) and I was never bored and frequently amused and constantly delighted. This dance academy is top notch. Some of the older girls did serious ballet routines. I wanted to stay for part 2 but it wasn’t feasible, on several fronts. I just loved it. And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Well, there wasn’t any food to speak of but there was a feast of entertainment. Beautiful costumes, carefully choreographed dance routines, running the gamut from ballet to modern to Broadway. And the staging was outstanding!! When I learned I had to go to my niece’s dance recital I thought, “OK” but I expected it to be a pedestrian experience. I was absolutely mesmerized.

See, the lesson here is, these girls don’t go to dance school just because their parents don’t want to deal with them on cloudy days. Rather, they have a passion for the art…. They WANT to TRAIN and they HOPE to LEARN and perhaps they even hope to go on someday to be professionals. And they outdid themselves.

It takes a LOT for me to say something is “top notch” but I readily assert it now, the Fusion Dance Company in Austin, Texas is top notch.

Congratulations to all the dancers! You did well.

The ID card thing confuses me. It isn’t just the “wetbacks” who have to complete the I-9 form when they apply for employment. Everyone does. Does that mean we all have to have these I-9 ID cards? One more piece of identification to mess with. Of course I have a US Passport which is perhaps not impossible to forge but would be very expensive to forge, if the spy novels are to be believed as accurate. So expensive that anyone who could afford to do it probably isn’t looking for a job. But who is to say that the ID card documentation isn’t forged in the first place. So why not just modify the existing “green card” to reflect that documentation has been satisfactorily examined? And what’s up with the fingerprint on an ID card? What does that accomplish?

Next, the business about making people learn to speak Enlgish ignores the fact that English is not the “official” language of America. There have long been advocates of making it so, and opponents as well. But until Congress votes to make it so and President Bush signs it into law, you can’t MAKE anyone learn English. Personally, I think it’s just bad manners to live abroad (and I don’t mean just go on vacation for two weeks, but actually LIVE there) and NOT strive to learn the language. And since I live in a heavily latin-populated part of the world I’ve taken it upon myself to learn Spanish. But I have a facility with languages in general and some people do NOT, so isn’t it really my duty as a good person who appreciates his environment to do some of that work? I mean, for instance, if my friend gets nervous driving on the highway and really isn’t very good at driving in traffic, and I don’t really like it either but I’m better at it than he is, don’t I have some duty to do the driving when we go somewhere? The alternative of course is just not to drive on the highway with my friend. But I digress. The point is that Enlgish is not the official language of the USA.

And finally, I KNEW it was coming because it always does, but MUST HE end his addresses with “God bless?” It panders to his base. I’m not offended, but annoyed because it’s presumptuous. Other people might in fact be offended and the President’s handlers should know that and just leave it out of his speeches. (On the plus side, we can take comfort in the dwindling of that base. We’ve organized a pool as to exactly how low the ratings will go. My own bet is that it will bottom out at 26%. Not that it matters really since he’s not going to need a base for too much longer, and I rather doubt Cheney will run for that office. Anyway … …)

Maybe that’s why so many people are on Prozac and shit.

I should credit my parents…. I know this is an afterthought and that’s tacky but I live in the moment. When I was a kid all my friends’ parents got divorced. Well no not all of them but it was the 70s and 80s and some part of me thought “it’s only a matter of time.” But they didn’t. And while they were far from perfect as parents, I’m sure I was far from perfect as a child, but we all turned out ok and I was lucky to have what I had.

Marriage is not for me. For specific reasons but philosophically because I have no faith in it. But someone else’s marriage isn’t about me, just as their love isn’t about me and their bond isn’t about me. If I get invited to the wedding them I’m delighted for the invitation, honored by the invitation, and pleased by the experience. And often the food is good. And sometimes they serve drinks.

Kidding.

But more and more I get wedding invitations and I step back and look at the couple and think, Brian, this is so wrong. Couples who get married out of frantic desire to stabilize their lives. I don’t think marriage should be about stability, or rectifying the past. It should be aout the future, if it should be about anything, if it has to even happen. And “the future” isn’t a metaphor for making babies. Little annoys me more than hearing about people who have babies to “save their marriage.” Hmm, come to think about it, little annoys me more than people having babies period. (OK I just said that for effect.)

This has turned into a mean post and that’s not where I wanted it to go. But you know what, I’ll let it stand as it is. Mom, Dad, congratulations on 43 years.