We’re generally light on mothers around here come the second Sunday in May. Herself isn’t one, and neither is Miss Mia Sopaipilla.
But for this Mother’s Day we have a robin sitting on a clutch of eggs in a fine, strong nest built in the Chinese pistache outside the dining room.
Two feeders, no waiting.
We’ve had doves cobble together some half-assed homes under the front overhang that mostly turn into fly-thru eateries for the neighborhood raptors. Hummingbirds tuck their teensy little bide-a-wees into the pines out front. And a variety of little cheepers have grown up in a dead limb of the backyard maple, holed at top and bottom by a ladder-backed woodpecker. A tree dude accidentally sawed it off while pruning the maple a while back, but he reinstalled it and it’s been home to at least one more family since then, so, winning, etc.
None of these little mothers ever pays any rent, but we don’t care. We even provide free feeds at our BB&B (Bird Bed & Breakfast). From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, as the fella says.
Yesterday being Cinco de Mayo I made the usual magic in the kitchen — guacamole and Lazy Gringo Posole.
This is not exactly a forced march through The New York Times Cooking section. You th’ow the ingredients for the first into a bowl and mash ’em up, and you th’ow the ingredients for the second into a pot and simmer ’em up.
One more day on the counter and this avocado would’ve been a goner.
Soups and stews were among the first dishes I learned how to cook, and when the sloth has got me with a downhill pull I will fall back on them at the drop of a chef’s toque and drop the fucker myself.
The posole takes two hours to cook and about no time at all to prep. I toss three cloves of garlic into a small food processor for a quick, coarse chop. Next I add four or five dried red chile pods, seeded, and a large yellow onion, chopped into chunks the processor can swallow. Zoom, another round of push-button chopping. Toss the results into a 6-quart pot.
Drain and rinse a 25-ounce can of white hominy and add that to the pot. You can do the whole dried-hominy thing if you like, but I told you I was lazy. Add a pound and a half of pork or boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch bits, two teaspoons of Mexican oregano and one of ground cumin, salt to taste, and 6-7 cups of water. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and go watch the hummingbirds for a couple of hours, returning to the pot now and then to give ’er a stir.
Caution: Posole in progress.
The guac’ is even easier. To a bowl add one large avocado, a light drizzle of fresh lime juice, a couple-three teaspoons of finely chopped tomato (optional), a smidge of minced white onion if you like it (Herself does not), and salt to taste. Mash with fork, leaving it a little chunky just ’cause. Serve with corn chips.
You want some nice warm flour tortillas for the posole, along with some class of crunchy garnishes — minced jalapeños, chopped radishes, green onions — and a scattering of cilantro. Watch the BBC’s “Lord of the Flies” on Netflix as you dine and be glad you’re not a castaway kid trying to get that pig in the pot you don’t have.
You probably can’t see the scattering of raindrops on my sunglasses, proof that I chose wisely when I decided to go for a run at 7:30 this morning instead of waiting to see whether the skies cleared.
The forecasts from the National Weather Service and Weather Underground were for … well, frankly, they were for shit. No common ground. One declared that it was already raining (it was not) and might be doing so again later. The other? “A chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after noon.”
Well, there’s always a chance of something happening somewhere. It’s what makes life worth living. There’s a chance that Jeebus might come back, give Orange Julius Caesar a sandal right in the ballroom, and deliver a new gospel over his squealing carcass: “This is not what I had in mind at all, y’all.”
But I’m not betting the rancho on it.
I did catch a few sprinkles on my run, mostly on the return trip. But they added up to bupkis on the rain gauge.
So naturally I’m sitting here wondering whether I should’ve gone for a ride instead.
But, chance being the fickle bitch that she is, Jeebus is probably waiting out there to give me the other sandal in the chamois and proclaim, “Nope, not him either. Sheesh, you people and your false prophets. Do I have to hire a babysitter every time I step out for a couple thousand years?”
There was a May Day gathering at Civic Plaza yesterday but we gave it a miss. Instead I formed a rolling rally of one, equipped and clad to suit the occasion (in red) and the weather (brisk).
A quarter inch of rain is a whole lot better than none at all.
A quarter inch of rain fell overnight, and at high speed, too. The wind and water blew us out of a sound sleep shortly after 2 a.m., and while the rain stopped the wind was still with us at 11:30 when I took the red Steelman off its hook and rolled out to spend 90 minutes trying to find shelter from it.
We did honor the general strike. We bought nothing and did no paid work; I’ve gotten pretty good at that since retiring in 2022. To feed the starving masses I made three meals out of fridge and pantry: toast, tea, oatmeal, and fruit for breakfast; grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch; and pasta with a sauce of tomatoes, onions, jalapeño, garlic, black olives, red pepper flakes (there’s that red again) and chicken sausage for dinner.
This morning as I arose at 5 a.m. the furnace ticked on, which really lets you know it’s May. Forty-two, said the weather widget. We get summer in March and winter in May and if we’re lucky a little rain sneaks in there somewhere.
Today I will have to re-engage with capitalism in a fairly significant fashion. The pantry is bare, and the People’s Army, like any other, marches on its stomach.
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