Stewed Tomatoes and Corn...Phyllis

Sue is one of those people who are right-brained and left-brained. There is a word for that, but if I go look it up, I will spend the next forty-five minutes surfing the internet, looking at shoes on zappos.com, looking at hats on hats.com, looking at suspenders on suspenders.com and checking my bank balance. I say she is right-brain/left-brain because she earns her living at a left-brain occupation, however all her interests involve art, music, writing, and other right-brain activities.

Sue is very good at all these things, but there’s one area…cooking…that she is, how should I say it?...a fountain of untapped potential. The kitchen is one place where she seems to think she doesn’t have to follow any rules. In the kitchen, she just makes stuff up. And…well, here’s an example:

Take some meat out of the refrigerator. Whatever is in there is fair game. Hahaha….get it? Game. Put that in a saucepan. Throw in a can of corn. Then plop in a can of stewed tomatoes. Serve it up in an empty cottage cheese container. Are your taste buds doing the Macarena?

“Do you want some of this?” she offers.

“No! Don’t even show it to me!” I decline.

Sue buys stewed tomatoes and corn by the case at Sam’s Club. When we start to run low, say when there are only about ten cans left on the shelf, she buys more. What does this have to do with right or left brain? Well, I’m just not sure which half Sue is using when she cooks. And I’m using immense latitude in using the term, ‘cook.’ One thing I will say about Sue, though. She is very generous with her cans of stuff. If I’m cooking something like macaroni and cheese, she will say, “You can put one of these cans of stewed tomatoes in there if you want.”

“Ok, thanks…no.”

Then one day out of nowhere, Sue announced, “I’m a raw foodist! I’m eating only raw foods from now on.” So, there were raw carrots, raw celery, raw broccoli, leaves, and grass. That lasted about a day and a half. Then she wasn’t a raw foodist anymore. Sue is a Midwest farm girl, a real meat, potatoes, corn and stewed tomatoes kind of girl. A real plop-it-all-into-a-saucepan-and-heat-it-all-up-together kind of girl.

I have to be fair, though. One time, before we lived together, she came to visit me in California. She made shrimp baked in butter and lemon over rice. That was delicious.

Angel Falls

I want to be an intrepid explorer.

The day after Phyllis melted a pound of butter on the stove, I was looking at photos of Canyonlands National Park, Utah, on flickr. If you're going to review places to visit, you have to do your research. There is one photo of a group of bicyclists standing on a cliff, and they are all smiling. They are set against a backdrop of Pawnee Buttes times a thousand.

This morning, I'm having four large, raw carrots and I'm dipping them in dill veggie-dip. The dip smacks of a zesty tang, and gives the carrots that all important zip that you just can't get from crunching carrots alone. Phyllis said orange vegetables have lots of Vitamin A. Or was it D. Whatever. Sometimes I feel like cooking, but only when I'm not busy researching places to visit. Yesterday, Phyllis and I made omelets. I did the chopping, and Phyllis did the frying. I chopped fresh, whole mushrooms, onions, pepperchini, and peppers from the garden. I had been more than willing to also cut up tomatoes, but Phyllis doesn't like soft, cooked tomatoes. I had bought the fresh, whole mushrooms, along with a four dollar box of fancy breaded crumbs to fry breaded mushrooms, but then Phyllis melted the pound of butter on the stove. It's just as well because I lost the four dollar box of fancy breaded crumbs.

We also put cheese and ham in the omelets. The cheese was from a jar of Tostitos corn dip cheese, and the ham was from what Phyllis had baked the day before, when the butter melted. I had taken the butter out of the freezer intending to use it for the fried, breaded mushrooms, and set it on the stove to defrost. Then Phyllis baked a ham. It was a good-sized, hefty hog's butt, so it took a few hours to bake. Phyllis spiced up the omelets and I'm telling you, I knew I was eating something. I've never had an omelet that came even within a mile of the quality of that omelet. I also had some cottage cheese on the side, but Phyllis skipped the cottage cheese for herself. She also said she couldn't finish her whole omelet, but I made short work of mine, despite the fact that it covered three-quarters of my plate.

There is another national park in Utah called "Arches," so named due to the numerous arch-like rock formations. There is one photo on flickr called, "Waiting for sunset at Delicate Arch." As the shot is taken looking left, I counted 64 photographers in a double row in what looks to be about a fifty foot stretch, packed in like dancers in a chorus line. I can't see how many there are if looking to the right, or how far that line extends.

If I'm going to write travel essays, I need to go somewhere that is hard to reach. Otherwise, heck, go there yourself and see it. One of my goals is to reach Angel Falls in Venezuela. If I make it to Angel Falls, I'm telling you, I'll know I am an intrepid explorer.