The miracle of financial aid.....

(I never saw the real ring so this one is a fantasy)

A friend of mine was the Director of Admissions at a small college, in the day, and she related this story quite sheepishly.

A mother and daughter came to visit with her, and the daughter was fully acceptable to the school, however, they wanted to talk about finances. The mother was a small, chubby woman who wore older style, drab clothing, and spoke with a heavily accented voice. She wanted what was best for her daughter, of course, but it’s always a matter of funds.

The Financial Aid Forms had been filled out, and there was obvious need. The school would pitch in some scholarship funds as well, so it would be possible for the daughter to attend.

For those of you who are not from the US, or do not have kids going to colleges, I do need to explain. The FAF (Financial Aid Form) gives a score related to your ability to pay. It’s based upon income and holdings, as well; you need, as I remember, to provide tax forms etc. to back up all your answers to many financial questions. Your scores are than matched with available funds from federal, state and local sources, as well as school work, federal work study and scholarship dollars. Usually, students must make their own contributions as well as parental contributions based on your financial records. These days it’s quite challenging to come close enough to meet need.

In those days it was easier, although the information needed etc. was pretty much the same as now.

After the work was over, and the class was in, and the young woman was secure in her place in the freshman class, the Admissions Director was quietly sitting at home on a Saturday morning, looking out her front window. A Cadillac limousine pulled up to the house. The driver got out and opened the door for a well dressed gentleman who walked up to her house. He knocked on the door and she answered.

He introduced himself to her, and in a heavily accented English he thanked her for the very nice way she had helped his wife and daughter in his daughter’s college experience, and he handed her a small package as a token of his appreciation.

She thanked him, and he went back to his car and drove away. After he was gone, she opened the box and inside was a diamond ring! She took it to a jewelry store on Monday and had it appraised, just to make sure it was real (of course it was!).

She went back and checked the financial aid information. It seems he showed an annual income of $12,000!

My fathers last car...

While I am in an automobile mood, I thought I’d talk about my father’s last car. This is not directly related to my recent car buying, I hope, but it was brought to mind by that experience.

My father, late in his life and a few years’ from retirement, went out to find a car.

We had a 1960 Pontiac Bonneville, a very wide vehicle capable of sitting four across if needed. It was just a few years old but while in the dealership, I guess, getting his car fixed, he must have seen the future.

The 1963 Buick Riviera had just come out and it was fantastic! I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life! It moved him and must have killed my mother, but he bought it.

He waited for delivery, as they did not have what he wanted in stock. It was a cream colored one with leather seats of the same color. It had four seats and was the size of a battleship! It had a special plate made that said "Made Expressly for Harry Greenblatt" and it sat above the shift lever.

It was summer time and I was home with the Pontiac. I usually took my parents to work in the summer and kept the car, but picked them up after work. The dealership called and told me the new car was in. I told the salesman that my father was at work and he asked me to deliver the trade-in and take the new car. I was floored! They would trust me to do this?” The dealer was nuts! I know I was 18, but still, I couldn’t believe it!

I didn’t tell my father what we were doing, and went to the dealership after checking the trade- in for money and papers. They gave me the new car. I jumped for joy and drove away in seventh heaven.

I drove down to my father’s office and waited for him on the parking lot. Eventually he came out looking for me and couldn’t find me. I waved at him. He was dumbstruck! Just like me, he was astonished that the dealer would trust me with the transaction and letting me sign for everything.

My mother was equally surprised by the events and was flabergasted that they would trust me as well. (I think there may be a theme here.) My father (who did trust me) let me drive the rest of the way home myself, and didn’t take over driving at the office, I guess I remember this as a great day for all of us, and a true father son bonding experience.

In the end, the car sat for a year while my father was hospitalized and later as he was in a nursing home. It slowly corroded a bit, and after his death in 1970, my mother gave the car to me. It needed too much work for me to deal with, and I donated the car to a school vocational program. They spent $1,100 on parts for it, in order to get it running well again. Even then, they continued to have some problems, but were able to sell it to recoup their expenses.

All those later problems aside, my father’s last car was a symbol of wealth and happiness. We had no wealth, but when we drove it we felt happy!

Simulated Xylonite and other disasters...

I can’t remember if I’ve told this one before, but I looked through all of them (up to 380) and can’t find it easily, so, here we go.

In 1958 we would drive around aimlessly on a Friday night looking for girls, parties, friends etc. and just hang out. We didn’t really ever accomplish much, but we had a good time.

Often, if it was late, we’d listen to WCKY from Cincinnati, Ohio, a 50,000 watt station pushing out old time country music to the world.

From Wikipedia :

WCKY is an AM radio station in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, broadcasting at 1530 kHz with 50,000 watts, and its transmitter is located in nearby Villa Hills, Kentucky

WCKY dates back to the late 1920s, and achieved a 50,000 watt signal in the early 1940s. It was founded by L.B. Wilson, a longtime broadcaster in the region. Originally, WCKY was licensed to Covington, Kentucky, and was treated as a Kentucky-based station. This status helped WCKY's case before the FCC to increase power to 50,000 watts by the late 1930s - even though it was literally across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio and fellow 50,000 watt station WLW. WCKY's city of license moved to Cincinnati by the early 1960s. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, WCKY was used to broadcast news and information to the area, due to its southerly directional signal pattern.

The advertising was particularly hilarious to us, as it was a country music station delivering to a country audience and selling products that made no sense to sophisticated urban teen aged boys.

Featured were such products as an autographed picture of Jesus, reading glasses (“Do you have trouble reading the small print in your bible?”) which came, by the way, in a genuine simulated xylonite* case and chickens by mail, the root of my troubles in this story.

Four of us were driving around looking for something to do when the free chickens commercial came on the radio. It was almost free, as there were some shipping costs, but it was $2.00 for 100 chickens! Guaranteed live delivery! How could we resisit?

We figured if we split it four ways, we would each put up fifty cents (we did this immediately) and send for the chickens. I agreed to be the sender. Now, we needed someone to send them to.

Our friend Ted’s name came up and we thought that since he was not with us, he had no vote so we’d send them to him. Besides, why tell him, he’d find out soon enough!

I dutifully took the money, wrote down the information and made my plans. We thought that rather than send them to Ted, as he had too Jewish a name and they’d know we were fooling around (were we nuts?), we’d give him a country name so it would be OK.

Now there were not a lot of farms in Baltimore, Maryland, which was where we were sending them, but we were worried about names. So we invented a country name, Ezekiel Miller (who knows where that came from or why I could remember this after all these years.) We sent for 100 chickens to be sent to Mr. Miller at Ted’s Baltimore home, without his knowledge. We quickly forgot about the whole thing and life continued.

If nothing happened after that, I’d have no story, but, it did happen. Some weeks later Ted called and asked me if I knew anything about chickens. I cracked up!

His mother was at home one day when the postman rang the bell and told her he had a package for her. It was very large, and she asked about it and he told her he wasn’t sure what it was but that it was alive! She also had to pay postage due, which I had to reimburse her for.

She was afraid to open the package and waited for Ted to come home and explain this to her, which he of course couldn't do.

100 baby chicks were delivered, and they were cute. Four had not survived the trip (and I’m sure they would have replaced them for free but we didn’t ask for more). The family had, at least, a sense of humor.

Ted’s father had a friend who owned a farm and the chicks were delivered out to him (I hope) and we were made to promise we’d never do this again to anyone, and we never have…

*Xylonite. Fibrous vegetable matter (e.g. cotton and flax waste and old rags), dissolved in acid and neutralized, which produced a substance called Parkesine, named after its inventor, Edmund Alexander Parkes (1813–90), of Birmingham. In its liquid state it was used as a waterproofing agent, in its plastic form for insulation, and, with the addition of oils, glues, and colour, for making objects, e.g. tubes and architectural enrichment. Capable of being coloured, and susceptible to a high polish, it was first exhibited at the International Exhibition, South Kensington, London (1862). In the 1890s it was developed as a substitute for plaster cornices, friezes, mouldings, and other decorations in rooms, and was supplied in accurately moulded prefabricated 3-metre (118.11 inches or 9.843 feet) lengths which were then fixed to timber grounds by means of screws. Its extreme light weight made it easy to handle and fix.

Somewhere my father is smiling...

When I was a kid, cars defined you. Your status was visible in your automobile. While some of that is prevalent today, most of it has gone away.

When I was a kid, there were no foreign cars. OK, of course they were somewhere, but in reality they had little impact. The war had ended and no one, at least no one I knew, would ever think of a German or Japanese car. I did have a Morris Minor in 1962, but that’s English and some of them existed, just without much impact. When I bought my first VW in 1963, there were parents of some of my friends who would refuse to drive in a German vehicle and that was just the way it was.

The hierarchy of automobiles in my house was the General Motors line. There were no Chryslers, and especially no Fords in our family.. So it went from Chevrolet to Pontiac to Oldsmobile to Buick to Cadillac.

Rich people drove Cadillac’s. There were no arguments there. My uncle, who was the rich guy in our family, always drove a Cadillac. He even had a special numbered license plates which my father assured me were given to special people who had the political pull to get these. This was in the days before vanity plates where you pay for your own craziness.

I remember a friend whose father had an Imperial and it was impressive, and even my father acknowledged the beauty of it, and knew it was expensive, but of course a Chrysler product so we didn’t discuss it. We simply were a brand loyal General Motors family.

My father liked my first car, a 1950 Ford, but it was a kid’s car so it didn’t matter to him. He thought the Morris Minor was a bit of a wreck, which it was, and he liked the VW. The VW bus I bought in 1969 was a real treat to be in and he came along when I picked it up. He was surprised by the whole experience.

He passed away in 1970, leaving his Buick Riviera to me.

I hadn’t thought about all this. Having had so many different cars, vans and trucks over the rest of my life, this story hadn’t struck me until recently, when I bought a Cadillac. It’s not new, but looks it, sort of. It wasn’t expensive, at about the cost of my wife’s used Ford Escape. It’s a SUV, or a crossover model, the SRX, and is black, powerful, smooth and heavy and all the things my father would say about Cadillac’s.

I once took a friend for a ride in my father-in-laws 1972 Cadillac Sedan Deville because he asked me to, as he had never been in one and simply wanted the experience.

I owned a 1956 Coupe Deville for a year or so but it was a hand me down and older (about 11 years when I got it) and therefore did not impress my father.

It’s just a funny thing, the thought that somewhere my father is smiling, or maybe even laughing, because I finally made the right decision!

An old scare...I almost stopped dancing

The story I remember was that in the early 80’s, my Uncle was hospitalized.

After he arrived at the hospital, he got out of bed (they never checked his blood pressure which, it turns out was sky high) and fell. He hit his leg on the bed when he hit the floor. The leg bruised badly, worsened (he had diabetes) and eventually was taken off.

I remember seeing him in the hospital, and I saw his leg. It was a bad color.

On May 6, 2001, I slipped in the shower, my left leg was in, the shower floor was wet and my right leg (on a rug at the time) slid across the floor and my leg slammed into the side of the bathtub.

The pain was bad, but I never fell. After a while the pain subsided and I went about my day. Gradually it began to feel better. The leg was hard and warm (this could be a good thing, but not for your leg).

One day I was putting on my socks, and I looked at my foot. It looked black (and blue) just like my uncle’s leg. I freaked!

I came back from the Doctor, and my leg was OK. It was bleeding internally a bit, but the blood was going down toward my foot, turning it a bad color. I did get on the mend. I was truly scared for a while.

I had bad visions about spending the rest of my day in a hospital.

Make fish, not love...

Today I decided to go with a new recipe. Every now and then I’ve written about food, and it usually involves some earlier story about a food article we’ve done, but today I’ve decided to go with a new one. This was last night’s dinner, made up from a novel reference.

In a recent James Patterson novel (I have no idea what the name is) that I'm listening to on my MP3 player in the car, one of the characters makes a dinner for his girlfriend, a Crabmeat Stuffed Tilapia. He tells her that he can prepare it, put it in the oven, and they can have forty five minutes to make love, and the dinner will be ready.

Now any cook would know that any tilapia dish made in an oven for forty five minutes would be like a fish brick. I loved the sound of the dish, but knew the writer didn't research the recipe a bit. It had little to do with the story and he probably didn’t care. For me, I can’t remember the name of the book, but can remember the food item. It says much about the writer, and me.

I read through a number of crab meat stuffed tilapia recipes on the internet and realized that any boy from Baltimore knows more about crab than the food writers ever will. So I went with the combination of recipes and my gut instinct. This is not rocket science.

Crabmeat Suffed Tilapia

Ingredients: (This is for two people, not the usual four)

2 tilapia filets about 6 ounces each (170 grams)

1/3 lb. fresh crab meat (fresh if possible)

1 stalk celery

1 small onion

1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (or dried if needed)

2 tbs. butter

½ cup bread crumbs (I used whole wheat I made myself)

1 tbs. lemon juice

1 teas. Old Bay Seafood Seasoning (I guess you could use 1/4 teas. cayenne if you have no access to Old Bay, but a boy from Baltimore always has his Old Bay)

Sprinkle of paprika

Instructions:

Chop the onion and the celery into fine pieces
Sauté in a small skillet, with some butter, until softened

Chop the parsley and add to the onions and celery

Remove from the heat and add crab meat, bread crumbs, lemon juice and the Old Bay (or cayenne) and mix together very well

Form the mixture into two large crab oval crab cakes and place on a greased baking dish

Place a tilapia filet on top of each

Dot fish with butter and sprinkle on the paprika

Put in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes (mine was done in 15 minutes in a convection oven)

Serve on plate with lemon wedges (and anything else you'd like to add)

Serve with a smile, but make love before or after, there is not enough time while baking.

Cowboy Lobsterfest

It’s hard to describe that evening; you’d have to be there. Yet, it is worth telling.

In late summer, 1999, we were invited by some friends who are Lama Ranchers, to meet them down in Black Diamond, AB, for a lobster dinner. This is an annual special at the Black Diamond Hotel. So, we said sure.

It took us an hour and twenty minutes to get there.

Our friends were waiting, and had a table reserved for this sold out feast. It was an all cowboy and cowgirl place, we were overdressed, even though I had on khakis and a sweat shirt.

We sat at long tables covered with paper, and awaited the dinner. Every other person in the room was smoking as well as hooting and hollering. We had beers (champagne was out of the question) and awaited the call. When the food came, we lined up as quickly as possible, but we were toward the back.

It was a long, inefficient line but we got there, got our lobster and salad bar, and sat. It was a two lobster dinner but you had to go back for another try for lobster #2. It was really great, and we loved the food. For $18 each, it was sort of a deal if you lived somewhere near the place.

They had a band, a Newfy band (Newfoundland) because of the lobsters, who were dead and couldn’t hear the music.

So here we were, in a cowboy bar, eating lobster and listening to a basically Irish band while the cowboys danced to such favorites as “Whiskey In The Jar” (one of my all time favorites) “I went a riding over Kilgarry Mountain…” and “He’s only a Newfy In a Calgary Hat”.

It was a surreal experience.

It took us an hour and twenty-minute to get home.

What a wecome!

It was a welcoming party for our friend from Japan. He was to meet many of our faculty and staff at a party at the President’s house. There was food, a bar, a jazz band populated by at least two of our faculty, and a splendid party atmosphere. It was fun!

We knew that our guest of honor was to receive an important phone call sometimes during the party, and so we were prepared in case the phone rang.

There were so many people! More than 50 in attendance, and the good times did roll.

Our Vice President for Development and his wife were there, and because she needed to, she walked into the bathroom in the front hall and no one was around to see her.

The phone rang suddenly, and it was a call from Japan! A quick number of loud shouts and we found our guest and brought him to the phone which was in the traditional phone place from the old days, in the front hall.

He picked up the phone but was unable to hear. He was making wild hand gestures trying to get the noise to stop but to no avail. Our President looked around and realized that if he could put our guest in the hall washroom, he could hear.

The die was cast!

They had no idea the bathroom was occupied. It only really had a small hook and eye to hold it. They assumed the door was stuck! They pulled, they yanked, they tugged and finally, with one great pull they opened the door!

There, with her hands tightly wrapped around the inside door knob, was the wife of the Vice President, with her pants, her pantyhose and her underwear all sitting around her ankles!

It got very quiet all of a sudden!

Our guest was flabbergasted! He was rushed into the bathroom to speak into the phone as soon as the wife of the Vice President got herself together, quietly in the confines of a closed bathroom.

I don’t believe she stayed very long after that!

When I finally stopped smoking....

When I did finally quit smoking in 1968, I motivated myself with money! My wife and I quit and saved about 50 cents a day, $15 a month.

The first month or two we used the money by spending it on frivolous stuff, just so we would stay motivated to stay the course. I have no idea what we did, but probably went out to dinner, and in those days, $15 would do it!

In order to generate more significant funds, I involved about 10 to15 or so of my "best friends", and started a stock club. I thought that it seemed like a good idea, and because I knew a diverse group of people, maybe I could get them together and we’d make some money and have some fun.

We met monthly and everyone put in $15 a month. We found a broker that one of the guys knew, and we were off and running.

I had some teachers who had worked with me in Howard County, MD, a few activists from an inter-racial group I belonged to (and founded) plus a few others, not quite in my memory. I don’t think we had any women involved with the club, but we did some dinners and parties with all the spouses somewhere along the way.
There is no great lesson to be learned here except we kept going for about three years and had the most diverse membership I could ever imagine.

In the end, we split the funds and came out a bit ahead, and I remember I bought a nice camera and some other great stuff.

Now I realize we should have kept it going!

This story is not really about the recipe, it's about a pound of lamb!

In 1995, we appeared in one of many “Six O’clock Survival” features in the Calgary Herald. We cooked our way to “instant success” with a number of great meals with photos.

This favorite started as:

We’re back! Here’s a great dinner that we make together. It’s a little exotic, but Arthur chose this for his birthday dinner earlier this week.

We suppose that living in Detroit for 12 years, with its large Greek and Lebanese population, had its effect on us, and Mid-eastern food became an important part of our diet. Here’s a recipe that we love to make and it can be done in 30 minutes or less.

My recipe is based on many year’s of eating this at Joe Zania’s, Gnome Restaurant in Detroit, and this was my take on it. I’m sure Joe never used soy sauce in his life!

Ground Lamb and Pine Nuts Over Hummus

Basic Hummus Recipe

1 can chick peas (19 oz.)
5 tablespoons tahini
1 teaspoon minced garlic (2 to 3 cloves)
juice of 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons water

Put all ingredients in a food processor and blend until almost smooth.

3/4 lb. ground lamb
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste

Brown lamb in a frying pan in oil with all listed ingredients.

1/2 package pine nuts (50g)

Brown pine nuts in oven or toaster oven at 400 degrees F, for about 10-15 minutes, checking every 5 min.

Assemble on serving plate. Spread hommus on plate, cover with lamb mixture, top with browned pine nuts. Serve with warmed pitas and a Greek or tossed salad.

Serves 4.

This recipe later appeared in a cook book as Arthur's Birthday Dinner. But this story is not really about the recipe, it’s about a pound of lamb!

Last Saturday, my wife and I went to the grocery store in the afternoon. While wandering through the meat department, I spied ground lamb on sale, usually $8.49 per 500mg (a bit over a pound) on sale for $6.00. This was still much higher than it should have been (my thoughts), but it was $1.50 in savings.

I remembered the Ground Lamb, Pine Nuts and Hummus recipe and thought how we haven’t made that for dinner in a year. Since both girls are home for the summer, we should make it! My wife agreed and we put it in the cart. The pine nuts were $45 a pound but we only needed a little!

At the checkout I checked the receipt and it rang in at $8.49.

I couldn’t argue with the cashier because he can only do what the machine says, so off I went to customer service, who were busy with elderly lottery players. I decided to wait while they painstakingly chose numbers. Why should I rush their fading dream?

I got to the counter and explained my plight. I was questioned a bit, and an official store person called a meat department person to go and check out my story, as if I’d make this up for my $1.50!

A new person of authority appeared and was consulted. She asked the official store person questions, and after determining I was correct, she said, “You get it for free!” and she then handed me $8.49!

I will enjoy my Ground Lamb and Pine Nuts Over Hummus more than ever!

in 1999, I had a little dream.....

On October 14, 1999, I had this dream and I wrote about it, I guess, to my sons. I saved it and found it this morning. It still makes little sense but it’s fun:

My late mother, (she had passed away in 1997), was in her housecoat and I was in my robe (I can’t figure that one out) and we were in her apartment. She had an article for me to read, and it was three xeroxed pages, which she thought were important. She would not give them to me for she thought I’d not read it, so she demanded that she put them in an envelope and mail them to me.

She put the envelope into her 1960’s Nova, which was in her living room. She pushed it out onto her balcony and held it in place with two large ropes. I was to look down and make sure no cars were in the way, so she could drop it down the eight stories and go down and drive it to the mailbox.

She let go a little to fast and it fell onto the driveway, and on the bounce, it caught the left front fender of a 1956 Ford Fairlane two door, full of older women, and it did some damage.

The women were angry, and she yelled down that she was sorry. We were waiting for them to come up when my wife woke me up and told me to fix the girls breakfast….

I will note that most of it has some meaning of course, and I do remember that she had a written list for me of who was to get what when she died and she wouldn’t let me have it, for she was sure I’d lose it. Now this was not a million years ago, it was in fact a year before she died. But, she put it into an envelope for me and filed it away.

However, ones last wishes are pretty hard to forget, and they were etched in stone in my head. I followed them to the letter! It was about funeral arrangements and property dispersal. Now I’m not talking about the Trump fortune, but more like my youngest son and his wife got the silver, and why!

I never did find the envelope…….

My E Cigerette Review

My Business Manager, clearly not a personal manager but my Institutional Manager came into my office today and shoved some crap into my mouth! She does that from time to time, like a chip with some crap on it that I may be fatally allergic to because she assumes if she likes it everyone must have it! Type A personalities kill me!

Today’s insanity was an e cigarette. When she decides (for the fourth time I think) to stop smoking, I guess I need to try out her remedy.

I don’t smoke! I haven’t smoked since I was 28. I started at 8, when my friend Mike and I smoked in the woods. We smoked his fathers or mothers cigarettes that he took from their room, John Alden’s! These were a short lived product I guess, because when I started up for real, at 14, they didn’t exist. I worked my way up to about two packs a day when I was in college, where we could smoke in class. When I quit, I was at a pack a day.
Since then the only smoking I’d done was a cigar or two over the past few decades, when someone had a baby or lately, Cuban masterpiece we can get in Canada. But, really, not more than 6 or 8 cigars in the past 40 years!

All this background aside, Linda, the Business Manager, stuck her e cigarette in my face!

Wikipedia says:

An electronic cigarette, also known as an e-cigarette or personal vaporizer, is a battery-powered device that provides inhaled doses of nicotine by way of a vaporized solution. It is an alternative to smoked tobacco products, such as cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. In addition to purported nicotine delivery, this vapor also provides a flavor and physical sensation similar to that of inhaled tobacco smoke, while no smoke or combustion is actually involved in its operation.
An electronic cigarette takes the form of some manner of elongated tube, though many are designed to resemble the outward appearance of real smoking products, like cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Another common design is the "pen-style", so named for its visual resemblance to a ballpoint pen. Most electronic cigarettes are reusable devices with replaceable and refillable parts. A number of disposable electronic cigarettes have also been developed.

So, what happened?

I inhaled through a very hard tube, with great difficulty, and filled my lungs with, water vapor? I am not sure. Smoke or what looked like smoke came out of my nose!

At the same time the nicotine hit, and I was stunned! I actually got a bit dizzy and it lasted for a few minutes. I yelled at her, of course, "What if I was fatally allergic to nicotine?" If I died she would have felt bad. I, on the other hand, would have felt nothing!

My review, a good thing if you need it. At $150 for what sounds like the cigarette (which glows at the end when you suck in) and a six month supply of stuff to fill it with, it’s a good deal. If cigarettes are about $5 a pack and you smoke one a pack day, the $150 is a month’s supply.

Try it, you’ll like it!

The Old Explorer

In 1998, my wife was using my car (1994 Ford Explorer) and while she was closing the back end, a strut (that holds up the back end) broke off of the car. We repaired it at a body shop for $130.00

In July 1999 while camping with my son and his family, the other strut broke, and I had it repaired some time later for $130. Ford said it wasn’t their fault, but the body shop said I was the 5th one that month with the same repair.

Ford contacted me later on and said it is their fault (recall) and that I should go to the dealer to have it fixed. I went and they kept the car, declared it a manufacturers defect (they wanted the Ford body work money I guess) and wrote down the color. I was given a ride to work, and they would have picked me up and taken me home after work but I got a ride. I made an appointment for Monday to have it fixed.

On Saturday the body shop called and said they needed to see the car as the Ford paint number was the same for 4 different colors. I went down, and we looked at the colors, and found the right one.

When I went to pick up the car, they said it wasn’t ready and they gave me a fully loaded, new Dodge Durango. Sweet!

They kept the car to put on new pin stripes, but in the end they didn’t have them so they decided, rather then keep me in a rental forever, they would return the car, cleaned both inside and out, and that the body shop would call me when the pinstripes came in and they put them on while I waited. What a business!

This 6 year old car with 73,000 miles had just cost Ford about $4,000 (my guess) to put on a whole new back door, and then they reimbursed me for the money spent to fix it both times.

BTW, the same car was covered by the tire recall later on and I received 5 new tires to replace the old ones.

We took it off the road (picked up by the kidney foundation) in 2009!

Pimentos for dinner

From My mother’s cooking blog ( http://www.renascookbook.blogspot.com/)

My mother was not known for her cooking, and often made fun of her own dishes. We used to joke about her cooking. For many years, we all lived together in the same house on Walcott Avenue; my Mother, my Father and my Grandparents. “Bubbe" did most of the cooking, especially at holiday time. But with her passing in 1967, and my Father's in 1970, my mother became the cook for herself and her father until his passing in 1976. After that, living alone, we often spoke of cooking, new ideas, and new ways to prepare old dishes. Most of the recipes she used reflect another time, where canned foods were the basis of food preparation, not today's lighter, fresher ingredients.

One of her favorite dishes was creamed tuna; a dish she felt could be a very fancy lunch or a hearty dinner. She loved to add ingredients such as hard cooked eggs, pimentos, mushrooms (canned) etc. She would consider toast points, patty shells or rice as suitable containers for her creamed tuna.

The first thing you have to realize was she used Campbell’s Cram of Mushroom Soup as a base. She used Minute Rice as a bottom and canned mushrooms, “stems and pieces” to save the money, and as an addition.

My mother was my second cooking teacher, as thankfully, my grandmother was my first. However, I spent years making tuna casseroles for my older kids, and added everything you could imagine. I even strayed from the Cream of Mushroom soup and used fresh ingredients like celery, onions and fresh mushrooms. I have grown dramatically as a cook since those days.

The story I remember most was my mother telling me she was making me a special lunch, creamed tuna over rice with pimentos. This pimento was to be a large, red pepper in oil (I think) and was jarred or canned. I only know, when it was presented to me as an idea, I had no idea what it would be, but it sounded pretty good and I had no basis to judge. She prepared the lunch and called me to the table.

I had never had a pimento and had no idea how much one would be included in a dish, and clearly, either had my mother. She figured, she had bought a jar full and had no other earthly use for the things, so my portion of lunch, with a Minute Rice bottom, included an entire jar of pimentos, covering the entire dish, in a beautiful pattern coming out from the top like sparkly red leaves.

I tried to like them, and would have enjoyed one cut up in small pieces and spread throughout the dish, but the whole thing covering the top was just too much!

My mother was disappointed that I didn’t like them, whereas I tried to explain that there were perhaps too many of them for me, but the creamed tuna was good, even with the added frozen peas and corn mixed throughout the dish, the way the pimentos should have been.

It was a beautiful, colorful, difficult to swallow meal, but it lives on in infamy!

The Big Bargain- not another razor story!

I have written about razors before. I wrote about Ockham’s razor (April 23, 2009) as well as Gillette razors; one a theoretical concept and one a shaving product.

I have written twice about Ockham’s razor, and it hurts my head to even think about it. However, I love shaving products so today’s story is about razors, the shaving kind.

It’s also a story about bargains, the kind I hate to turn down.

I took my younger daughter to a large chain drugstore on the way home from work on Saturday afternoon, so she could do some make up and perfume shopping, something I am not prone to do. However, I buy all my own drug supplies, and this gave me a chance to look around a bit. I looked for bargains, and found myself at the razor display, and contemplated my next move.

I had at home a box of 52 (or at least what was left of the fairly new box of Gillette Custom Plus razors.) As well, I bought a box of Bic Flex 4, as they were on sale earlier in the week, for $7 a package. I thought I’d try them in comparison to my 2 blade model. In earlier versions I’d used the Gillette 5 blade one and it was remarkable, just way too expensive.

But, I was killing time while my daughter shopped, and I found a pack of Gillette Mach 3 razors for $6.99.

I hadn’t finished with my experimental package of Bic’s, but they were not impressive. I wanted to try the Mach 3, an older model with 3 blades that has achieved much success.

They just keep making all the styles and making the money

My daughter had finished, and I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t help myself, the bargain was there.

I thought it was a 3 razor pack. To be honest, it was a deal. When I approached the register she rang it up at $19.99 plus tax. I became unruly and she phoned for backup.

The backup came in the form of a price checker who went to where I pointed and brought back the sticker which showed I had the right price but they had put it on the wrong blades. I would have forgotten it, but the deal was better already, so I stayed in the fight and won.

I received the 6 pack, a $19.99 price, for $6.99! Score one for the home team!

Faking it!

I receive a number of donations each year which consist of art or collectable property. In some cases, these items are donated for a tax receipt based upon the current retail value.

In most cases I use an appraiser, and I have a number of people who will help us as a favor. For many items, I have enough education and experience to appraise them myself, however, by law, items worth more than $1,000 must be appraised by an outside appraiser.

I don’t do this for artists donating their own work because that’s a slippery slope I don’t wish to travel. But, where possible, we get an appraisal.

Included in a group of items I received the other day, along with a 2002 appraisal done by someone I would never have thought would act as an appraiser for the jewelry and antiquities I had, was the following description:

Icon on wood panel, “St. Demetzyus Slaying the Antichrist” by Tivko Kostodinov, 19th century. An example of wood carved and painted with layering of gold mounted on wood plaque. $300.

A label on the back of the piece said all of that except the value, and was written in some European language that I didn’t recognize. When I saw the piece (this piece was among a group that were in storage for 10 years) I immediately felt my “fake alarm” go on.

This was a tourist thing, I was sure, but it had been appraised before and I was not an expert in the area. I took it forward to someone in the know and asked his opinion.

Several times in the past I felt the “fake alarm” go off and my feelings were corroborated by my friend, who was the appraiser who would look at this one. He corroborated a fake Krieghoff painting I looked at recently, and saw for sale on eBay six months later.

His look, better than mine, had me in stitches. “Arthur”, he said, “its plastic!”

Now that was one for the books! The thing is a great plastic forgery sold to an unsuspecting public at some other time, and fooling an educated guesser in 2002 because, I believe, of the label. They didn’t have plastic in the 19th century!

This morning I told the donor and thankfully he took that well. Most of the gift was pretty good!

Mystery Painting 2010

This is not as dramatic a painting, nor as obscure a story as the last two mystery pieces, as well we could probably find the artist, but where’s the fun.

I found this one in my office last week, with no information attached. I was told by those in control of this place that it was brought in by Allyson Wenzowski. Allyson is a friend of the arts, and an a publicist around town.

I checked with Allyson and determined it was found by her, in her apartment building trash. She was with her mother who refused to allow Allyson to pick up items from the garbage.

It was later removed from the trash by an unknown person and brought back to the lobby, and later, someone put it back out in the trash. It was rained on and smashed a bit in handling, but has sort of survived.

It may be a Canadian Group of Seven "Paint by Numbers" painting, but closer inspection does not yield the little blue lines and numbers usually bleeding through.

It's painted in the style (or lack of one) of a paint by numbers work, and ends up to be an absolutely charming painting, that could bring us a few dollars at auction.

It is fluffy all over, from fluffy clouds to fluffy snow and has flowing water and flowing shadows.

It's not a Lauren Harris, or even a copy of one. It may be a copy of some other famous painter, or a copy of a place mat. Who knows? But it was a wonderful "find" for DVSA.

My thanks to you Allyson!

Don't forget to flush!

This was not something that happened to me. I deny anything to do with it. It was a friend of mine and his girlfriend, a friend as well.

This was the 50’s, and a conservative time. The young lady in question was babysitting for her sister and brother-in-law on New Years Eve. It was a nice, clear winter night and everything went well. The kids were asleep and the sister/ babysitter had time to spend with her high school sweetheart.

All was well until the older sister and her husband came home and when he went to use the bathroom, found out the young man in question had forgotten to flush the toilet and had left a floating condom as a welcome home present!

The sister and brother-in-law adopted an in loco parentis attitude and threw the young man out of the house and made him go away and stay away.

Alas, they parted company (for a while) I think.

Today we’d give the kid a medal for using protection!