Macaroni Salad Days

I love macaroni salad.  My husband is fond of the pasta salad made with tri-colored noodles and assorted vegetables, but I like the old-fashioned salad with elbow macaroni.  I also like it made with tuna or shrimp.  Here are a couple of my favorite recipes, perfect as sides to grilled meat or on their own as light summer meals.

Shrimp Salad
My sister-in-law gave me this recipe way back in the early eighties when our children were still quite small.  I make it at least once every summer.

1 lb. cooked shrimp
1 lb. cooked shell macaroni
1 large scallion
1 red pepper
lots of black pepper

Sauce Louis:
1 cup mayonnaise
1/8 cup milk
1/4 cup cocktail sauce
1 tsp. Worcestershire
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Coarsely chop shrimp.  Dice the scallion and red pepper.  Toss shrimp, macaroni, scallion, and red pepper in a large bowl.  In a small bowl mix all the ingredients of the Sauce Louis.  Thoroughly mix the dressing and the salad.  Sprinkle liberally with pepper.

Confetti Macaroni Salad
I got the basic recipe for this from my best friend who owns a pizza restaurant and has the best salad bar anywhere.  I like to use Barilla™ elbows because those elbow have ridges.

1 lb. cooked elbow macaroni
1 ripe tomato, seeded and chopped
3 scallions, diced
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 bread and butter pickle, diced
1 red pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 bottle of Newman's Own™ olive oil and vinegar dressing
1/2 cup mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste

Marinate all the vegetables in the olive oil and vinegar dressing for five minutes.  Add the cooked macaroni, and mix in the mayonnaise, salt, and pepper.

Wild About Berries

I grew up in a time when people were not yet nostalgic about rural life; nonetheless, I was fortunate to live for a time in a rural area of the country.  Our house was on the edge of a small town, a few-minutes walk from farmland.  My brother, my best friend, and I often walked out there to the trestle.  Though I was too cowardly, my brother and friend often crossed the trestle and, if a train were coming, they'd have to stand on a small platform jutting out from the tracks and hanging precariously in thin air.  Their tiny perch rattled as the train thundered by.

Sometimes we ventured down below the trestle, where a creek ran through a cow-studded pasture.  We waded in the creek and caught snapping turtles and tadpoles.  What I remember most about that time and place are the delicious black raspberries we picked along the tracks.  We jumped from bush to bush, back and forth across the tracks, in pursuit of the plumpest, darkest ones.  The trestle and the train are gone now, but the berries still grow along the barren tracks.  The first pie I ever made, a lattice-topped black raspberry pie, was made from a bucket of these berries.

Black Raspberry Pie

2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup shortening
6 Tbsp. ice water
5 cups black raspberries*
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 425°.  Blend together 2 cups flour and salt.  Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until the mixture turns to coarse crumbs.  Add the water a tablespoon at a time, stirring with a fork after each addition.  Divide the dough into two balls, one slightly larger than the other.  On a floured surface with a floured rolling pin, roll the larger bowl into a 10" circle.  Line a 9" pie plate with the pastry.

In another bowl mix together the berries, 1/4 cup flour and sugar.  Spread evenly in the pie shell.  Roll out the remaining dough ball and cut into 1/2" strips.  Place seven strips across the pie about an inch apart.  Weave seven cross strips through the first seven.  Press the ends of all the strips firmly down to seal.

Bake the pie at 425° for 20 minutes.  Turn the heat down to 350° and bake another 20 minutes.  Serve with a scoop of chocolate ice cream on top.

*If using red raspberries, increase the sugar to 3/4 cup.

The Grandma Dowdel Trilogy

Richard Peck is one of my favorite authors of books for middle-school readers.  He sets most of his stories in rural Illinois and Indiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  His characters are of the sturdy midwestern stock variety.  One of the best--and indeed best in all fiction--is Grandma Dowdel.  She first appears in Richard Peck's Newbery honor A Long Way from Chicago and then his sequels, the Newbery winner A Year Down Yonder and A Season of Gifts.  A Long Way from Chicago is narrated by her grandson Joey, who with his younger sister Mary Alice spends every summer between 1929 and 1935 with Grandma Dowdel.  On first arriving in Grandma's town, Joey says "We could hardly see the town because of Grandma.  She was so big, and the town was so small."

Grandma Dowdel is a large woman, but she also possesses a large, charitable heart, something she does not brag about.  Nor is she your average woman with a heart of gold:  She is industrious, thrifty, self-reliant and foxy, and not above deception, thievery and arm twisting to accomplish her good deeds, as when she wrings every cent out of the good citizens on Armistice Day selling burgoo to raise money for a seriously disabled veteran.  In the words of Mrs. Sheets, leader of the Legion Auxiliary ladies, "Mrs. Dowdel, you're twice as bald-faced and brazen and yes, I have to say shameless as the rest of us girls put together....you outdo the most two-faced, two-fisted shortchanger, flimflam artist, and full-time extortionist anybody ever saw working this part of the country....God bless you for your good work."

Grandma Dowdel doesn't have much use for "respectable" people, for instance the disreputable sheriff who forces the out-of-work drifters to move to the outskirts of town.  Grandma steals the sheriff's boat, traps a mess of catfish (both illegal activities), and feeds the drifters catfish, fried potatoes, and her home brewed beer (also illegal in those days of Prohibition).  Did I mention she was an excellent cook and baker?  Although she probably didn't enjoy working day and night rolling out pie dough for pumpkin and pecan pies for the Halloween social, her granddaughter Mary Alice, the narrator of A Year Down Yonder, learned a lot from Grandma Dowdel.  "Sometimes I thought I was turning into her.  I had to watch out not to talk like her.  And I was to cook like her for all the years to come."

My Very First Blogger Award

         

Hi everyone!

I want to thank Jennifer at http://jennyleeyoung.blogspot.com/ for presenting me with the Stylish Blogger Award.  Thank you so much:  I am honored.

The Rules:

1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award.

2. Share 7 Things About Yourself.

3. Award 10-15 Blogs Who You Think Deserve This Award.

4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

7 Things About Me:

1. I am a mother of two:  a 29-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son.

2. I love reading and would do it to the exclusion of all else if I could.

3. My favorite foods are pizza and steak.

4. I like going to the movies almost as much as I like reading.  (I did say almost.)

5. I like watching my son play baseball.  Until he came along, I never watched any sports, but have now gone to many baseball, basketball, and even football games.

6. I am a very funny person.  In another life I was probably a stand-up comic or a court jester.

7. At one time I was fluent in German and French.  But that was many moons ago; I'd need to do some serious studying to brush off those skills.

My 11 Stylish Blogs I pass on this Award to are:

  1. http://kdkbooklove.blogspot.com/

  2. http://www.chefdruck.com/

  3. http://jillsbooks.wordpress.com

  4. http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com/

  5. http://medinger.wordpress.com/

  6. http://orangette.blogspot.com/

  7. http://plantingdandelions.com/

  8. http://www.readalouddad.com/

  9. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/

10. http://www.chicagopizzaclub.com/

11. http://www.rockingranola.com/

I feel like I've been pictured on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

Summer Movies

In the summer when living is easy I don't always liked to be challenged intellectually.  Most people pick out "beach reads" for their speed and ease of reading.  I prefer the movie equivalents.  All of these movies are set in summer and except for one or two are purely for pleasure.  If you've got any great summer movies of your own to add to the list, please leave a comment.

1. The Seven Year Itch(1955).  A married man (Tom Ewell) whose family is away on vacation, is alone in the hot city fantasizing about the girl upstairs (Marilyn Monroe), who comes down to share his air conditioning.
2. The Long, Hot Summer(1958).  Run out of one Mississippi town, con artist Ben Quick moves to another where he meets schoolmarm Clara Varner, daughter of the wealthiest man in town.  This is Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's first movie together.
3. Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation(1958).  Mr. Hobbs (Jimmy Stewart) wants a quiet vacation, but his getaway to the shore proves to be anything but.
4. To Kill a Mockingbird(1962).  Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch, southern lawyer, who defends a black man against charges of rape.  I actually saw the movie before I ever read the book; they're both great.
5. The Flim Flam Man  (1967).  Mordecai Jones (George C. Scott) takes a young army deserter (Michael Sarrazin) under his wing.
6. In the Heat of the Night(1967).  Sidney Poitier plays a black Philadephia detective sent down to a racist southern town to assist in a murder investigation.
7. Summer of 42 (1971).  A teenage boy falls in love with a 22-year-old woman (Jennifer O'Neill) whose husband is a soldier in the war.  Though today the woman would have to register as a sex offender, back when I saw it in 1971 the movie was really quite poignant.
8. Jaws(1975).  The first blockbuster, this one will make you rethink spending the summer at the beach.
9. National Lampoon's Vacation(1983).  The first of Chevy Chase's vacation movies, Vacation follows the Griswold family cross country to the Walley World theme park.
10. Field of Dreams  (1989).  This is my favorite baseball movie, and I watch it every summer.
11. My Girl(1991).  An eleven-year-old girl (Anna Chlumsky) obsessed with death shares a poignant summer with her best friend (Macaulay Culkin).
12. Jurassic Park (1993).  Who wasn't scared witless when they saw this for the first time?
13. Dazed & Confused(1993).  It's the first day of summer vacation for the soon-to-be seniors in the summer of 1976.  I, too, was a senior-in-waiting during the bicentennial summer, and this movie was a fun, nostalgic trip for me.  Look for a young Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey.
14. Twister(1996).  I saw this tornado thriller when I was pregnant with my son.  It was so loud, he twisted and kicked throughout the movie.
15. Independence Day(1996).  Truly the creepiest but most fun of all alien pictures.  Still pregnant, I had to endure my unborn son's kicks throughout this movie, too.
16. Almost Famous(2000).  Cameron Crowe directs this semi-autobiographical movie about a high school boy cum rock journalist in the seventies covering a rock band's concert tour.

The Circle Game

Today is my son's last day of middle school (sigh).  While he's more than ready for high school, I'm certainly not ready for him to be a high-school student.  Truth be told, I never really got over him starting nursery school.  Anyway, this summer (like all summers) he has a list of books to read, which he will have to write about when he gets into ninth-grade English:

Chasing Lincoln's Killer
Stuck on Earth
The Rock and the River
Swim the Fly
Watership Down: A Novel

Stuck on Earth, and The Rock and the River, both of which I've reviewed for my blog, and Chasing Lincoln's Killer are all good transitional books, but Swim the Fly and Watership Down are definitely high-school level.  Watership Down, which I'm currently reading, is a classic that has been taught in high school English classes since its publication in 1972.  (I don't know how it is that I have never read it until now, but better late.)  Although I will continue to review books for middle school readers, now that my son is entering high school and will be reading young adult books, I will occasionally make forays into young adult literature and review some of those books as well.

He's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business
by Dick Van Dyke
Crown Archetype
2011
304 pages
ISBN:  0307592235


I have had a crush on Dick Van Dyke practically my whole life.  At the age of five I saw my first movie at the theater, Mary Poppins,starring Dick Van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep.  About this time, I also started watching The Dick Van Dyke Show,which to this day is one of my favorite sitcoms.  Last fall I heard him guest star on an episode of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!  Still funny as ever.  So naturally when I heard he'd written his memoir, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business,I had to read it.

My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business spans his life from his early days in Danville, Illinois to his current volunteer work with the homeless at the Midnight Mission on L.A.'s skid row.  Dick takes us behind the scenes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the most innovative television sitcoms ever, his Broadway debut Bye Bye Birdie, and many of his movies, including his first, Bye Bye Birdie, and my first, Mary Poppins.

Dick writes of his many friends in the business, of his political involvement in the sixties, of his two great loves, Margie and Michelle, and of his addiction to cigarettes and alcohol.  One of the most amusing yet poignant antidotes in this memoir is that of Dick's friendship with Dinky the Chimp, who costarred with him in 1966 in Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.  Though he's 85 now, Dick has never retired from entertaining:  He has a one-man show, performs with high school kids at a local fundraiser, sings with a musical quartet, The Vantastix, and occasionally still appears in movies.  I'll say this, 85 or not, Dick Van Dyke in a movie is as much of a draw for me today as it was back in 1964.