Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway

What's Cookin'?

Here is our dinner menu for this week.  My youngest dd made it up and it was such a relief not to think about it this week!  If it seems heavy on the beef with a lack of chicken , it just so happened that I got 2 pounds of grass-fed beef on the way through our old town last weekend (thinking it would go for several weeks) and, truthfully, I was getting a bit tired of chicken anyway.  I also had happened to get a bag of organic potatoes then so that worked out well (they are on the dirty dozen list).

Sunday: Lasagna (using only 1/2 pound of the meat)(this was our Easter Dinner) with fresh garden salad
Monday:  Tortilla Soup with rice "lumpias" on the side, or rice in egg rolls and fried in palm shortening (okay, this one had chicken and we had leftovers for lunch twice so I wasn't completely free of chicken :) ).
Tuesday:  Meat loaf with mashed potatoes and peas.
Wednesday:  Chili (heavy on the beans and 1/2 pound of meat) - oldest dd made cornbread muffins with molasses to go with it and we had some Amish butter.  Mmmm.
Thursday:  Pizza (homemade with soaked crust - that sounds funny if you don't know what I mean!)
Friday: Macaroni and Cheese (homemade) with orange slices

For breakfast she wrote French Toast (which we made for Easter brunch together); eggs; crepes; cereal; muffins; and eggs.  Honestly, I didn't really look at that part nor the snacks  - blame it on the puppy in the morning! - but we did have egg casserole a few days with fresh farm eggs and hard boiled Easter eggs another day.  I'll pull out some oatmeal muffins from the freezer for today and I actually got a box of organic shredded wheat-type cereal this week as a splurge but we used it for a snack yesterday instead of a breakfast.  I have some rice leftover for a rice pudding breakfast also.  No crepes though... too much fatigue lately to handle that.

For snacks she had written animal crackers; pumpkin cookies; bananas; fig newtons; cherry bars; and cinnamon-raisin biscuits.  All of these would be homemade (except the bananas!).  I love that she thinks of these as from-scratch instead of from-box... they just didn't work out this week with several of us sick and the others staying up with said (cute) puppy.  Not to mention that fatigue thing.  I'm reading Adrenal Fatigue by Dr. Wilson right now... but keep falling asleep when I settle to read, lol!  I almost lost my adrenals to Addison's Disease with Lyme and take some supporting supplements.  I guess that would be a separate post if anyone is interested :).

What's (Lyme) Green?

Dr. Phil will have a segment on Lyme during his Friday show tomorrow.  Here is a preview:
http://lymedisease.org/news/lyme_disease_views/dr-phil-lyme-preview.html

The first annual Give Lyme the Boot Luncheon will be held soon in Houston (May 10th):
http://www.givelymetheboot.org/

What's Schoolin'?

The Old Man and the Sea

Yes, I made it almost 1/2 a century without having read any Hemingway.  I only checked out this book because it matched up with our history time period and I was curious to see this hailed piece.

Wow.

It is fantastic.

I think part of why I liked it so much is that I have such fond memories of going out on the beach at sunrise and watching the cayucos, or canoes, come in from fishing.  All of the dogs would roam in a friendly pack up and down the beach before going to their respective homes for the day.  Children would run out to help haul out the daily catch.  The men would help each other haul the canoes out of the tide by using logs underneath.  They would roll it a bit, then pull out the back log and run it around to the front.  Roll it a bit, then repeat the process until it was up in the hemp hedges or other beach vegetation.  The sights, the smells (!), and the sounds of them all coming in was truly amazing.  Once a fisherman pulled out a hammerhead.  It was huge! (and a bit creepy from just a foot away)

Walking on the beach late at night we would occasionally come across a tortugero, or turtle man (for lack of a better translation).  They would sit still and quiet for hours on end waiting for turtles to come lay their eggs.  Then they would take out a portion and leave the rest (supposedly - let's assume that they did, eh?).  It is mentioned in the book and I had that anchor memory.  More times than not we got quite startled at the shadowy figure, lol, but then would say good evening and each would continue in our separate worlds.  Once I had the enormous pleasure of walking alongside a sea turtle all the way back to the water after it finished laying eggs early one morning.

My memories made the book come alive for me.  I could smell it, feel the coolness of the dirt floor house, and imagine the fishing village.  My own dc only know the neat and tidy beaches on our own coast where the houses are beach cabins and the sea is not used for survival to the same extent.  It will be more of a stretch, but I hope it will come alive for them too.

Before you just let your child read it, I feel compelled to alert you to one pretty big curse word (well, for this prude it is!).  Ugh.

[Update:  Here is a link to my google doc of what I actually plan to do:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzY-sfWD2RgpTkZUV1dQUENDY1k 
Let me know if there is any trouble with the link.  It worked fine when I tested it.]

Here are some resources I tapped into for The Old Man and the Sea:

Animated video with oil pastels:

Warner Bros full movie (about 1-1/2 hours):











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