Cauliflower Quiche—Gluten-free

It looks like this blog is turning into a recipe blog. Maybe that’s because in this hectic time of mainly caretaking and basically surviving, cooking is one of the things I still manage to do successfully, and occasionally even have a little fun with. For decades now, I have been making a cauliflower quiche that’s to die for. But I hadn’t made it in a while, because the recipe uses a wheat flour crust, and you may remember that in this household we are spending the year gluten-free.

I got the original recipe out of this WONDERFUL 1981 cookbook edited by Janeth Jonathan Nix, who has since written many fine cookbooks. If you ever get a chance to obtain a copy of this one, go for it. Every recipe is a delicious treasure from the whole wheat zucchini pizza, through the Armenian vegetable casserole to the oatmeal pancakes with blueberry sauce! It is unfortunately now out of print.

What you do is make a quiche crust and partially bake it and then put in a quiche filling and bake it some more. In the original recipe, you made an oatmeal crust. However, what I did was to try the pie crust recipe on Bob’s Red Mill Wheat-Free Biscuit and Baking Mix for the first time. It IS a little bit tricky to make, because gluten-free flour does not hold together like wheat flour. I managed to douse my iPhone in pie crust mix when I flipped the crust over into the pie plate. Won’t make that mistake again. And I also had to patch up the crust quite a bit. I certainly don’t mind doing this, but I’d say most cooks would rather take a pre-made pie crust out of a package. There. I’ve been completely honest with you. HOWEVER, if you are on a gluten-free diet, and you PINE for pie with a pie crust, this may just be your best bet. Because the crust turns out to be crunchy and delicious, or at least as delicious as a gluten-free pie crust ever gets to a wheat flour hound.

And now, there’s the quiche filling. I’ll give you the recipe just the way it was in the original 1981 cookbook. The recipe was called “Golden Cauliflower Quiche” on p. 41, now stained with oil and batter in my copy.

1 small head (about 1 lb.) cauliflower
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2 eggs
1/2 cup each milk and mayonnaise
2 cups (8 oz.) shredded longhorn cheese (I use cheddar)
1/8 tsp. each pepper and ground nutmeg (I double these)

Prebake the crust. The flour version bakes in preheated 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, the gluten-free version in a preheated 425 degree oven for 16 minutes.

“Meanwhile, cut the cauliflower into 1/2 inch pieces. (You should have 4 cups.) Steam over boiling water until just crisp-tender (about 4 minutes.) Drain, plunge into cold water to cool, then drain again.

“Spread almonds in a shallow pan and toast in a 350 degree oven for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned (you should check). Place cauliflower in bottom of pastry shell and sprinkle with toasted almonds.

“In a blender or food processor, whirl eggs, milk, and mayonnaise until smooth. Add 1 1/4 cups of cheese, along with pepper and nutmeg, and whirl briefly to mix. Pour over cauliflower and nuts in pastry shell. Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese.

“Bake on bottom rack of a 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until an knife inserted in center comes out clean. Let stand on a wire rack for 10 minutes before serving. Makes six servings.”

I make several little modifications, but you will gradually develop this into a dependable recipe, because it is worth serving again. Tonight, I served it with a fancy spinach salad—lots of goodies like nuts, blueberries, goat cheese, black olives, pearl onions and the like with a vinaigrette dressing, Golden Monkey tea and a glass of Trinity Oaks Chardonnay.

Mmmmmmmm.

And sometimes, thy neighbor loves you, too

I had a nice surprise this morning. My neighbor, Dayle, lives two doors down the street in the same 1895 six-unit three-story yellow-brick row house building that we live in. She and her husband were one of the first tenants of this building when it was rehabbed in the early ’80s, so she knows all the block gossip. Stephen and I were out at the doctor’s this morning, and when I got home, there was a message from Dayle. She was providing the ingredients and recipe for the entrée to a fabulous supper, and all I had to do was put them together!

Ernst Janssen designed this six-unit row house building

Night before last when we were driving her home from a social gathering we both attended, Dayle heard my story of the labors of providing a gluten-free diet for Stephen loud and clear. The conversation then turned to kinds of flours alternative to wheat flour. “Did you ever try chestnut flour?” she had asked, and I had replied, “No, I didn’t even know there was such a thing!” And then she promised to follow through with her fail-safe quick and easy recipe for trout prepared with only four ingredients: the fish, lemon oil, chestnut flour and ground pine nuts. “Just go to epicurious.com and search for the recipe,” she had said, and now here she was today providing it for us.

Sautéed trout, lima beans, and an eggplant blend

This blog is proud to report the results of this unplanned and impromptu dinner. Dayle showed up as promised about 4 p.m. with a plastic bag of trout on ice, a small vial of lemon oil and baggies of chestnut flour and pine nuts. “The recipe calls for half a cup each of pine nuts and chestnut flour, but I like to use almost a cup of pine nuts. Just throw the pine nuts into a blender and grind. Then coat both sides of the boned trout fillets (cut along the back into two fillets) with lemon oil and dredge in the nut mixture. Saute in butter 3 minutes to a side and that’s it.”

So now I had a problem to solve. What to serve with the trout? No question there, I had an eggplant that had to be used in the crisper and half a can of diced tomatoes and half an onion to be used in the fridge. So I invented (or more accurately, reconstructed) a recipe for these things. Had I added sweetened vinegar and celery, I would have had a version of caponata.

• Put some olive oil in a sautée pan, heat and add some diced onions.
• Meanwhile, peel and dice an eggplant and add that to the pan, sautée and stir occasionally
• Add the tomatoes and a handful of chopped black olives, sautée some more
• Chop up three cloves of garlic, and add along with little piles of salt, basil and oregano
• When it looks cooked (about 15-20 minutes), turn on low, cover and keep warm while you do the rest

Also, I had half a package of frozen lima beans. Cook ‘em in a little water for about 20 minutes, add salt and sprinkle cumin.

Trout coated in lemon oil, dredged in chestnut flour and ground pine nuts and sautéed in butter

The trout turned out really fabulous looking. I had thought maybe more like 4 minutes on a side, but sure enough, Dayle was right medium heat, 3 minutes a side, starting with the flesh down, and then turning the skin down, produces a perfectly browned fillet. The first thing Stephen said was, “This has a really subtle flavor.” A couple of minutes later, there was not much trout left on his plate. I guess he was trying to find the flavor.

Dear Dayle, thanks for remembering to follow that old maxim, “Love thy neighbor.”

Why is this happening to me?

About the middle of June I wrote my first reflection on caregiving for my partner, Stephen. Here we are four months later, and Stephen is about the same, maybe a little worse. No need to go into the details of the illness, his basic problems are pain management and staying mobile on a walker. Also, it’s very likely that the situation is chronic. I think that Stephen and I have been doing a pretty good job of dealing with this situation effectively. Of course, Stephen does get discouraged and frustrated from time to time, but most of the time he still manages to summon up the courage and determination that he is made of. For my part, I have discovered surprising emotional stability and physical capability.

One of the recurring themes of this recuperation/adjustment period has been that occasionally, when the pain or stiffness gets so very hard to manage, Stephen will say “Why is this happening to me?” I used to try to help him look over the possible answers to this question, but lately, I have concluded that we don’t know the answer to this question. I have instead pinned my hope on the new doctor that he has just started seeing who seems to be more familiar with this type of problem. And I say so to him, that I don’t really know, and I am sorry that it is so difficult and long-standing. However, last night as I was getting into bed, I heard that question echo in my own mind, as if I were asking it: Why is this happening to me?

It was only just a few seconds before the answer came to me: “Because 25 years ago you took a chance on love and made a lasting commitment to Stephen.” This gave me hope and it solidified my belief that in fact this is not a period of difficulty but rather a different, perhaps now normal stage of our lives, this is my life and his. What else would I be doing as part of my life than just what I am doing? And I suppose a more direct and uncomplicated answer would be “Because people get old and/or sick, and other people who care take care of them.”

Someone may think that I am missing the point. Surely part of what Stephen means when he asks this question is “What is causing this to happen?” and given the cause, “What treatment can we use to improve things?” or “Is there any hope of improvement?” Well, I know that. Surely these are important questions to ask. But just in case the answer to these important questions is “There is no hope.” or “You may get worse,” then I think I have come up with the more basic, underlying truth here. Commitment can also be a cause that affects the outcome of situations, only for sure, commitment is something that we can do to and for ourselves, regardless of what the doctors tell us. You knew that, didn’t you?

But it does get back to something that I have thought of many times as I have seen my dear friends who are in a committed relationship break up and go their separate ways. Way back 25 years ago, I had just spent the ten previous years looking for and not finding that lasting love of a lifetime. Stephen and I have had our moments of being tested in our own relationship, to be sure. But for the last couple of decades, no matter the occasional murky matrimonial water, I have come back to the same conclusion: “The only way to have a lasting, committed relationship is to have one.” It’s all in what you want. Of course, your partner has to want you, too, and that is the gift that Stephen has given me.

Sensing and understanding consciousness

I recently finished reading the book Out of our Heads by Alva Noë. In my lifetime I have read many books on the nature of consciousness. Noë’s book is very thought-provoking, and his critique of much of current cognitive science is cogent. One thing he tells us is that neuroscientists who hope to find consciousness inside the brain are actually looking in the wrong place. There is a joke about the guy who was looking for his car keys on the pavement under the street light even though he had lost them in the grass, because there was more light under the street light. With all the brain imaging equipment that has been recently developed, scientists are looking at brain scans for traces of consciousness. What Noë tells us is that we will more likely find consciousness by looking at the relationship between us and our environment. That is because consciousness only develops through our interaction with the environment. He says that consciousness is something that we do, rather than a thing in someone’s brain. That is why I have made the title of this little essay, “Sensing and understanding consciousness”—sensing and understanding are things that we do, and in fact, they are good candidates for being forms of consciousness.

Noe also frequently says that we are in the world and that the world shows up for us. This is one way he states the antithesis of the Cartesian dilemma that Western Thought has been saddled with since the time of René Descartes. Descartes parlayed his certaintly that he doubted into giving mental phenomena, such as doubting, primary ontological status. For Descartes, the problem was how to explain our less certain knowledge of an “external” world. Many contemporary researchers have somewhat unwittingly substituted the brain for Descartes’ homunculus, Noë argues. The brain is where we look for the explanation of what it is that’s inside of us that accounts for our mental life. Noe thinks, by contrast, that we don’t even need this kind of explanation. No, we are born into a culture and a linguistic system that is mapped out on the world, and as we are educated, we are initiated into this complex, external mapping. As it were, our predecessors, following their predecessors, built a world of practices, and now as we are initiated into these practices, the mapped world shows up, in my words, we sense it and understand it.

When first I began to read Noë’s book, I was quite hopeful that what I was going to find in the final chapters was a positive theory of the nature of this externalized consciousness. With the passing of each succeeding chapter, however, I was—somewhat disappointingly—disabused of this assumption. But I got over my disappointment quickly by realizing that what Noë’s primary goal in writing this book must have been is to put the last nail in the coffin of the brain as little problem-solving agent in the cranium. Like he says, why do we assume that the mind stops at the cranium, as he then proceeds to expose the faulty reasoning that lead us there. He says basically that after all this recent neurophysiology, we still know zip about the relationship between the mind and the body. Maybe if we look at how we develop the relationship between the body and the world that we call mind, we will know a bit more.

Being the closet ontologist that I am—the only A+ I ever got on a philosophy paper was for a paper spelling out my “ontological Weltanschauung” back in 1966 at OSU—I still am asking the question “What is the nature, the being, of consciousness?” Noë has led me to formulate some new directions (for me) in which to go to find an answer to my question. I’m clearer than ever that the mental world cannot be entirely reduced to the physicist’s time-space causal manifold, at least not in the broadly known current state of physics as a discipline. I wonder, for example, if whenever we do understand consciousness better, it will be in terms of more than 4 dimensions. Physicists are now arguing over whether there are 10 or 11 dimensions. Maybe some of those extra ones, welded to the (x,y,z,t) coordinates of space time but tiny, form a mental manifold which we currently cannot sense, but can access indirectly through the understanding emerging from our initiation into language and culture.

Noë gave no hint of this answer, and I wondered if he does think that perception of objects is direct. I couldn’t buy that hypothesis; there are just too many problems with direct realism. It seems to me, as I reflect on my experience of the world, that I always infer to the objects of my perception, in that I predict that they will behave in such and such ways, and continually verify or falsify these predictions with each moment of passing experience. However, these objects do appear to exist in space-time relationships to each other. Now that DOES fascinate me. If this space-time manifold (which Kant and many others thought the knower imposed on experience) does not correlate with some structure in the brain, but rather with some structure in the world, what account can we give for it? I wish I had a hunch about that, but I don’t.

Gluten-free Apple Crisp

Today I needed a good dessert to take to share with my play-reading group, which has two gluten-intolerant members. In addition, my definition of gluten-free rules out wheat, rye, barley, soy and oats. We’ll have our quibbles about this view in another blog entry. I did finally find an apple crisp recipe on the web. This one comes from Scott Adams’ celiac.com website, identified simply as Apple Crisp #2 (Gluten Free). His recipe was for a 9″ x 9″ pan, I modified it for a 9″ x 13″ pan. Other than that modification, this recipe worked well just as written, but I have several food preparation points that I want to make in this blog.

10 large granny smith apples
1 ½ cup gluten-free flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/8 cup white sugar
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg (I use whole nutmeg and grind it)
1 ½ stick butter, melted

Mix together dry ingredients and add melted butter; mix well.

Peel and slice apples and put in a 9 x 13 buttered pan. Spread flour mixture evenly over apples and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Increase heat to 375 and bake about 10 more minutes.

Peeling the apples

By far the most difficult task of making this dessert is peeling, coring and slicing the 10 Granny Smith apples. It is a major undertaking. Here is the technique I have developed for this task. First I peel all 10 apples, using a sharpened standard paring knife (not serrated), leaving the peel on the dimple above and below the core. If you focus your attention, a rhythm begins to develop, and you can do an apple a minute or less.

Quartering and coring the apples

Next, using a large chef’s knife (not serrated), I take each apple and cut it into quarters. Next, I take each quarter and cut out just the core and cut off the 2 little tabs of peel. It sounds time consuming, but there are two reasons why I do it. First, it doesn’t waste nearly as much of the apple as using a apple corer. Second, after a short time, you get into a pattern of cutting one tab of peel, the center core, and the other tab of peel in an “M” shaped stroke. The work goes quickly. I pitch each cored quarter into a large bowl.

Chopping the peeled apple quarers with a chef's knife.

And finally, I cut each quarter into thin slices of equal width. Using the large chef’s knife in my right hand (I’m of course right handed), and using my left hand to secure the apple quarter, I quickly and deftly slice it in 5 or 6 quick chops. I toss these slices periodically into the buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.

Permité moi a tiny rant about serrated knives. I HATE them. You cannot cut a straight slice with a serrated knife, and usually you cut yourself, because these implements of food and hand destruction are short, dangerous, and the WRONG tool for my kitchen. One of my great fears in cooking in someone else’s kitchen (e.g. family, etc.) is that I will encounter ONLY serrated knives. I have been known to bring my own knives on vacation. (Hint, hint.) Early in my career as a homeowner, actually, 35 years ago, I bought a good set of UNserrated knives, and I have used them ever since. They do have to be sharpened, however, almost every time. It takes 10 seconds to do so. Oh, and I’m adding this to my rant. Chop the pecans in this recipe with the 10″ chef’s knife. It will take you forever with a paring knife, and if you use a food processor or a nut grinder, you will end up with nut dust, which does not add the proper texture to your crisp. You’ve seen it on all the food channels a hundred times, just use a rocking motion on those nuts with your chef’s knife, and you will end up with chopped nuts of any size you want, depending on how long you chop. It’s quick, effective, and you don’t have to clean the blender. Just wipe off the knife.

Now the apples are chopped, but you can see from the first picture above that I actually made the streusel mix for the crisp part before I engaged in apple prep. Scott’s recipe calls for gluten-free flour. There are MANY such preparations; some are good for one purpose, some for another. I have taken to mixing my own gluten-free flour from a recipe given to me by my friend, Marsha. It gives good results in many situations and you can make as much or as little as you need. However, you do have to buy three different kinds of alternative flours. Use this combination: 6 parts rice flour, 1 part potato flour, and 1/2 part tapioca flour. Mix thorougly.

Apple crisp ready to go into the oven

Most everyone has made crisp topping, and making this crisp topping goes along pretty much in a standard way. Mix all the dry ingredients well, either stirring a while, or using a wire whisk blender. Melt the butter, and blend. I actually break up the lumps in the brown sugar with my fingers and then mix the dry ingredients and the butter first with a spoon or fork and finally with my fingers. Spread the streusel evenly over the apple slices. The dish will be quite full.

Ready to serve

I would say that timing is fairly crucial for this recipe. This particular mix of gluten-free flour burns easily, so timing and oven settings are critical. Better to err on slightly under 350 rather than over 350. But 45 minutes seems about right. Then turning up the oven for 10 minutes at 375 browns and bubbles the dish nicely. Remove immediately and turn off the oven, but the apples continue to cook after the dish is removed, and the crisp only fills up the dish to half level when cool. Serve and enjoy.

Cooking like Lorene, only gluten and cow’s milk free

Sausage and kraut with Lorene's spinach on the side.

This has been a rough year. Well, just for starters, mom died this January. Lorene was the one person that I knew I could always talk to, from the time I was very young, for about 70 years. One of the things I most valued about mom was that she was a really good cook, and we talked about cooking a lot. So was my dad, my grandmother, and her mother a good cook, but it was my mother’s cooking that made my day. Once I set up housekeeping on my own, never very many days went by without my cooking something “Like mom used to make,” a practice which continues to this day.

Cooking like mom becomes a special challenge when your partner has food sensitivities. Readers of this blog will remember that we are currently living in a gluten-free household. We are also avoiding OD’ing on certain other foods, cow’s milk being one of these. Now milk and flour were staples of my mom’s cooking, so to continue in this cooking tradition, I have to be really inventive and experimental. And once in a while, I do whip up a meal or two that I can brag is “just like mom used to make.” Tonight was such a night, and I am proud to report it one day after what would have been her 96th birthday.

The meal we had tonight was an entree of bratwurst, potatoes and sauerkraut, which honors the German strain in my mom’s cusine. The vegetable, I am calling Lorene’s spinach, simply because I have never seen or tasted anything close to it, except at Lorene’s dining room table. First I will tell you about the spinach recipe, and how I modified it to be gluten-free. Mom took two 1 lb. cans of spinach and dumped them into a skillet covered with bubbling hot butter. In another cast-iron skillet covered with bubbling hot butter, mom tossed several cubed slices of white bread and made toasty croutons. She had boiled a couple of eggs earlier in the day. She cooked the spinach until the liquid was mostly boiled off, and then right before serving, she lightly stirred in the croutons and the chopped eggs, and added salt and pepper.

Kinnikinnick Tapioca Rice Bread

For starters, there are many delicious fat substitutes for butter. This time, I used clarified butter (you can buy it or make it) because almost all of the milk has been skimmed or burned off of it, leaving only a delicious butter flavor. A bigger challenge was what to do about the croutons. I have been using for some time now a delicious brand of gluten-free bread by Kinnikinnick. I have tried both the tapioca sandwich bread and the tapioca Italian bread. I toasted two slices of the bread in peanut oil until it was crispy brown and then diced it. Finally, I didn’t boil the egg earlier today, in fact, I didn’t even get home until time for supper. However, I have found a quick substitute for a hard-boiled egg. Take an egg, break it into a lightly oiled cup, beat it up with a fork, and microwave it on 50% power for about a minute. The egg should be completely set. Do this first before you do the other cooking, then chop it and use it like a boiled egg. Finally, I added one improvement. Along with the salt and pepper, I added a dash of nutmeg, which also goes great with asparagus, too. Oh, yeah, and use frozen spinach rather than canned spinach.

Real close to Lorene’s Spinach. Happy 96 birthday, mom, one day late.

Love, Jim

Gluten-free Tomato Soup

Gluten-free tomato soup

Permit me a bit of a rant to start this blog. After reading the Progresso and Campbell soup labels for ingredients for 10 minutes this morning, and finding wheat or soy in every one of them, I decided that I would make my own gluten-free tomato soup,  better and cheaper than Progresso. And I did! Unfortunately, it took more time that just opening a can and heating. It took about 15 minutes. But the result was worth it, and so I am sharing this easily-modifiable reciple with the world.

1 cup water
1 boullion cube
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch (or other gluten free thickening agent)
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar (or other sweetening agent)
1/4 c. tomato ketchup
1 16 oz. can of diced tomatoes
several fresh basil leaves, minced (or 1 tsp. basil)
heavy cream

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan, stirring until cornstarch and spices are mixed and dissolved. Heat over medium high heat, stirring to prevent “clotting”, until the mixture thickens. Put all into a blender or food processor and run for about a minute on medium speed. There should still be some small pieces for interesting texture. Return to saucepan, heat to almost boiling. Remove from heat and stir in a good dollop of cream for that bisquey look and taste. Serve with gluten-free crackers.

We also had almond butter and tart cherry jam on lightly toasted tapioca bread (Kinnikinnick) and peeled granny smith apple wedges. A good lunch.

And on a lighter note

My last post was an attempt to be upbeat about a very grim subject. That was Sept. 6, and on Sept. 13, Gil died. I did go right down to the water and help push the boat off. I said to him, “I’m sorry to see you go, but many people love you, and God is with you.” Gil’s right eyelid twitched and I saw just a little eye. Minutes later, Gil’s boat had pushed off to the next dimension. Later that day, I remembered how, when Gil would do something just a little more outrageous than usual, he would catch you looking at him. Then his eyes would literally twinkle—how I loved that twinkle in his eye—and he would say, “Well, I’m a Gemini, and you’re just seeing a little bit of that hidden side of me!” I think I still saw a little of that twinkle in his eye the last time we communicated on this earth.

Death is a non sequitur, why should this blog be any different? So now I am going to talk about geriatric rehab, continuing my imitation of Tim Allen in his golden years from my blog, Of Course It’s Boring, Idiot, under the category Home Improvement. We’ve been getting ready for a major bathroom upgrade here. The contractor starts ripping everything that leaks (the bathtub, the shower, the sink, the toilet) on Sept. 28. Not a lot of time is left to rearrange things so that we can still function (heh) while banned from the only full bath on the premises for well over a month.

One of the many things I have been occupying myself with lately is how to convert the 2nd floor laundry room into a temporary (and totally inadequate) substitute for the bathroom. One idea I had was to move the old vanity into the laundry room and connect up the sink: voila, temporary water on the second floor. So now, wandering off into the non sequiturus topic for this entry, this old (1895) house was rehabbed by people with some very peculiar taste. One of their very favorite colors was rotting salmon puke. It was in almost every room of the house, and was what led me, earlier this year, to completely repaint, recarpet, and redrape the 2nd floor rec room. Angels sang in heaven when those curtains came down and the new paint went up.

Another favorite decorating device of our former owners was to glue fabric to the walls. Usually they chose very, very large flowers. Pink and blue was a commonly recurring color scheme. Here, look at the picture, you can see that the thickly scattered mums in the picture are of that nature. I’ll give you a moment to regain your composure. . . . Now bear in mind that the entire walls of this small laundry room have been covered with these showy, overbearing, what other words, let’s see, garish, hideous, flowers. You may be wondering why we have lived here for the last 10 plus years without redecorating the laundry room.

Well, the answer is simple. Two old guys in a 2800 square feet house over a hundred years old. There are quite a few projects that can occupy one’s time. However—and HERE is one of the two topics, even morals, of this blog entry—these tidbits of tastelessness were left untouched because I STUPIDLY ASSUMED THEY WOULD BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO REMOVE. And, actually, perhaps it wasn’t so stupid to assume that, because when I did take the hideous polynesian wallpaper off of the rec room walls a few months ago, I worked like the devil for days. I had to scrub every square inch of that wall hard to remove the paste.

However, yesterday, when I was inspecting the cabinet in the laundry room, I happened to notice that an edge of the fabric had started to come up at one of the seams, and when I pulled on it, more came up fairly easily. I thought to myself, perhaps this is not going to be as hard to remove as the stuff in the rec room. Today, I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. Not only was the fabric easier to pull up, it just pulled right off with very little effort. It didn’t even tear, or tear off the surface of the wallboard. I got out the ladder, and stripped a whole wall off in less than 20 minutes. Of course, I had to take the electric plates off, and that slowed me down a bit. Well, here, take a look. The wall you are looking at in the top picture—here is what it looked like less than two minutes later.

And here is what the wall looked like after another minute. What I thought was going to be a painful, backbreaking job taking days of work was accomplished in half an hour. I didn’t even break a sweat. (But I did treat Stephen and me to a Ted Drewes in the middle of the afternoon.) So we have been reminded once again of a good lesson. Some rehab jobs are hard, some are not so easy, and some, well, like water off a duck’s back. It’s also worth remembering this. I had considered adding this job to my contractor’s list. I didn’t, but one time a contractor charged me $300 for spreading some rocks under my deck. As I later found out, HE subcontracted to an old guy for $75 and pocketed the other $225. Whaaa!! Never again. I hope.

And what of Gil? Gil sure kept things on a lighter note, other than the fact that notes were almost his whole life. No one loved opera more than Gil, and he gave over 40 years of his life to a career in music teaching. But in his life, Gil was light. He liked having fun, and when things turned sour, he wasted no time in moving on. All during his sickness this year, whenever he got a phone call in the hospital, and people asked him how he was doing, he ALWAYS said, “I’m fine.” Even said it in a matter of fact tone of voice. He really trusted the med folks to give him the very best treatment, and by and large, they did. And when he finally knew that life was ending for him, he got busy and moved on.

I love you, Gil, hopefully, forever. And now, I’m moving on.

Flying in the face of death

My good buddy, Gil, may be dying. He is getting worse each day, fighting a rare, mysterious neurological disorder. I’ve been with him every other day for the last several weeks except the week I went on vacation. It has been at the same time a great and an impossibly difficult experience. Unless he starts to get better, we are down at the end of the road, feeling the cold breath from the Other Side. Gil was being brave and hiding the seriousness of his illness from us all, but since he was admitted to the hospital weeks ago, his good friend Bill, myself, and many others have done our best to stand by his side. Today his rector and people from his church went and prayed with him. What God wills will happen; so be it.

Just now I adapted that old expression, “flying in the face of reason,” to express how I feel. Most of the time, flying in the face of reason is not something we want to do. But Reason can’t deal with Death, although it takes various highly pretentious crystallized forms and tries to. With my mom, this January, and now with Gil, I have been flying in the face of Death, acting as if we didn’t have to answer, each and every one of us, to the Grim Reaper. Meanwhile, Gil has been hand wrestling the Old Guy, who seems incredibly persistent.

I have discovered that when someone you love dies, you just have to show up and do your best. The Egyptians built pyramids for the Chosen Few, the Vikings sent their dead off on a boat to Valhalla, and Gil, being a committed Christian, gets to have Christian promises for a new home with God. I made the promises to him, along with my rector and friends. But more than that, I want to go right down to the edge of the water with him and push the boat off and watch it disappear into the distant horizon. That’s a promise I can keep, at least I hope so.

And so it was last Wednesday, that Bill and I went to Gil’s apartment and dug out some things that we thought might make his stay in the nursing home (before he was taken again to the hospital)—selected these tokens of his independent life and took them over to his room. Gil has had a long life in theatre, dance and music, knows many talented friends, and many thousands of former students and their parents. From the many precious mementos we found, we selected these things: some colorful needlework that Gil did many years ago, a picture of the original cast of the Wizard of Oz, another picture of Gil and his beloved, now deceased dog, Mac, a celtic cross image from Bill, a crucifix with an image of Jesus holding a lamb, and a little statue of a black scotty terrier. When we entered the room with these things, Gil became very engaged and interested. He wanted to touch and see them all. He nodded acceptance as we identified the place to hang each of the pictures. He read the braille on a card sent to him from a fellow teacher at the Missouri School for the Blind. We saw that old sparkle in Gil’s eyes for a little bit. He squeezed my hand hard and said “Thank you” when I left.

Gil is a devoted follower of opera, and can tell you most times which production is playing and which divas are singing. He seems to know these operas by heart. Bill had brought a “boom-box” from his place, and began to play the first disc from Menotti’s The Saint of Bleeker Street. Gil became enraptured. He moved his mouth as the soprano sang. He kept a little time, and directed a tiny bit. And though we had had trouble hearing him that day, we understood him to say, “There’s so much more when you’re there!” All and all, we spent almost an hour with Gil, surrounded by the music and a few of the things he loved. Then he tired and went back to bed. Two days later he was back in the hospital, fighting for his life.

I don’t know what’s going to happen for sure. I plan to continue flying in the face of both Reason and Death. But I do hope that last Wednesday, Bill and I helped Gil to get on the boat that is taking him to the rest of Eternity. I hope we can take him right down to the shore and help to push him off.

Sitting into the Sunset

Readers of this blog may recall that this has not been the easiest year so far. Stephen is very slowly recovering from a hip replacement and bad drug reaction. He is still limping on a cane, and can walk maybe a quarter of a mile, slowly. I thought our vacationing this year would consist of our trips to Tower Grove Park. But a couple of weeks ago, Stephen—in his typical bold and courageous fashion—asked to go to Michigan for a couple of weeks of vacation. I had my doubts about being able to pull this off. But I figured out a way to do it. We would visit our friends in La Crosse for the weekend, and then explore Door County for the following week. At any point, should we need to return home early, it would be relatively easy to terminate the trip.

Stephen at Starved Rock Park

Lighthouse at Algoma, Wisconsin

Twenty years ago we had a series of wonderful August trips to Michigan and Wisconsin, and they still shimmer vividly in our memories. At that time, I needed to get away from late summer ragweed pollen in the worst way, and read that upper Michigan was relatively pollen free. Little did I imagine that these two northern midwest states held some of the most engaging landscape and scenery in the world, and lots of it. I can remember us climbing up the steep, razor-straight slopes of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes under deep blue skies. The angles of dune, horizon and lake painted abstract landscape art. I can still hear in my mind the slapping of the waves upon the beach, the clops of horses hooves in front of carriages and the distinctive stable smells of Mackinaw Island. I can still feel and smell the dribble of  juice down my chin from the just bitten-into freshly picked apple. We took a ferry to Beaver Island and rode rented bikes around it, taking shelter in an abandoned red river shed when an unexpected thunderstorm blew up.

I think I was most worried about our abilities to top these memories, given our age and medical condition. But what I discovered was that my worry was wasted. Sure, our progress is slow compared to yester-decade. Sure, now climbing a few stairs is as big a deal as climbing a small hill was then. Sure, dinner marks the beginning of the end of an evening, instead of just the beginning of an evening. Sure, now we photograph the lighthouse instead of climbing up to the top of it. Sure, we look for beaches and nature trails with benches here and there.

So what. There is something very peaceful and satisfying about sitting into the sunset.

Bench overlooking Lake Michigan at sunset in Peninsula State Park.