Shawn L. Bird

A couple of weeks ago, in response to the prompt “What gets better with age?” I answered a very flippant, “me.”  I had meant to elaborate on that post, but it started generating comments on its own, so it has taken me awhile to get back to it.

I had just read this news article : http://ca.news.yahoo.com/midlife-crisis-total-myth-20110225-162202-124.html.  The headline that Midlife Crisis is a Total Myth is typically nonsensical, as the article suggests that people do re-assess their life priorities and make changes if warranted, which seems to be the definition of mid-life crisis to my mind.

They provide the number when most people are at their happiest.  Guess what?  It’s my age.  So here I am at my perfect place in life, apparently.  Does this mean it’s all downhill from here?

I choose to believe that the best is yet to come. 

What do you think?

About six hundred years ago folks started singing a little folk song about the Pont St. Benezet which crosses the Rhône river at Avignon.  It was one of the first pieces I learned to play on the organ when I was a kid.  Do you know it?

♪ Sur le pont d’Avignon ♪
♪ L’on y danse, l’on y danse ♪
♪ Sur le pont d’Avignon ♪
♪ L’on y danse tout en rond ♪

From what I’ve been learning, people didn’t actually dance on the bridge (Sur le pont) but rather, on an islet beneath it (sous le pont).  Since to most people ‘dancing under a bridge conjured rather moist visions, the words changed to the version we know today.

And here I am on the famous bridge!  I was in Avignon this day, staying at an apartment across the street from the former Ste. Claire convent chapel, researching for a future series.

I love the convenience of meatballs.  I make up a huge batch and then freeze them in baggies.  Whenever I need a quick meal, I can dump in a few meatballs.  Macaroni and cheese, soup, frozen mixed veggies, tomato sauce- all are improved with a quick shake of tasty balls.  Here is my recipe, for your convenience.

Oh- I have a meatball scoop- a small round 2 tsp scoop that has a sliding mechanism like an old fashioned ice cream scoop.  This makes it a very fast proposition to make several dozen meatballs.

Ingredients: 1 kg/2 lbs of ground meat, one medium onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, bread crumbs, 2 eggs, milk and assorted spices

Finely chop  the onion and brown it in a frying pan. This is the secret ingredient of my friend Julia’s amazing meatloaf.  Cooking the onion makes them sweet and gentle.  It packs in the flavour.

Into a bowl combine lean ground meat, the cooked onions, crushed garlic cloves, 2 eggs, and 1/2 – 2/3 cup of milk.  Add spices- generally lots of seasoning salt, pepper, occasionally marjoram, parsley, cinnamon, cardamon, curry, chives, basil, oregano- it depends on the meat you choose, and what else you like to eat with meatballs.  If you are thinking Italian- go with ground beef, oregano and basil, extra garlic and pepper. If you’re thinking Middle Eastern, go with lamb, cardamon and cinnamon.  You get the picture.

Add bread crumbs (about a cup or so) and mix.  The consistency should be quite moist, but not goopy.

Pre-heat your oven to 400 F.  Get out your largest cookie sheet. Using you handy dandy mini scoop, fill the cookie sheet.  No need to grease it. Each meatball can be up against the next- they shrink when they cook.  I end up with something like a hundred balls on a 12X18 pan.

Put the balls into the hot oven, and bake (convection if you have it) for 20 mins or so.  They come out evenly browned!   Put into large freezer bags, but set them in fridge to cool before you put them in the freezer.  After they’ve been in the freezer an hour or so, give the baggies a shake so they don’t stick together.

PS. I once talked with a beef farmer who thought that any ‘filler’ ingredients declared that the cook was too cheap to buy enough meat for the meal!  Not so– the milk, eggs and bread crumbs bind flavour and moisture into the meatballs.  These are much tastier than meat pellets that results from ‘meat only balls.’

Prompt 69: If you could work from anywhere, where would you want to live?Why?

I would love to be writing in a cozy cabin with a huge window in front of my desk and to gaze through that window at a panoramic view of a mountain lake.  I would love to watch deer wander across my lawn and birds crowding on my feeder while a fire crackles in my wood stove. 

I would like to hear the rhythmic crunch as the axe chops the firewood.  The ax would be wielded by my brawny husband, of course.  He would bring crisp mountain air in with him on his flannel jacket as he brought in the logs to stoke the fire.

The basement would be lined with full canning jars, a year’s worth of provisions twinkling their bounty.  Since this is my perfect world, the canning was a simple day or two event, accomplished with laughing friends alongside.  The garden grew and was harvested without my help after the initial enthusiastic spring planting.  The deer were not interested in any part of my garden, of course.

I would love to hear CBC in the background, offering the news and ideas of the day, while I am warm and rested in my idyllic world.  When my work day is over, warm companionship fills the evening and night.

PS.  Yes, I know there are no students in this idyllic world.  It’s Spring Break at the moment.  We are all relishing a little time apart from one another! lol

One of the purposes of youth exchange is to bond people around the world so that when you hear of a war or a disaster in a place, you immediately are concerned about ‘your family’ who lives abroad.  Your foreign exchange student children may live far from you, but the heart strings stretch.

Our first exchange student daughter came to live with us when our kids were 6 and 4.  Sayaka from Tokyo lived with us for a year.  She wanted to be a chef and loved to bake.  What a treat!  She would create amazing towers of dishes which we still call “Sayaka Stacks” at our house.  It doesn’t matter that it’s been almost 20 years.  We’re still in touch with her and we were thrilled when she came to visit several years ago.

When the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor issues began in Japan this week, we immediately waited to hear from our daughter in Japan.  Waited.  Waited.

Today we heard.  She and her new husband are fine, as is her family, but like many people crowding the airports, they want to evacuate.  We would want to as well!

So it looks like we’ll have our daughter home with us for awhile.  How great is that?  Our world is wound round and around with the bonds of youth exchange.

 Last year on St. Patrick’s Day I was walking upon Palantine Hill in Rome.  We met these anonymous Americans as we were trekking toward a church past the 12 stations of the cross.

Of course, we took their photo so they had a remembrance of the day as well.  I couldn’t help thinking that they obvious had much larger suitcases than we did if they were willing to put so much precious real estate into a hat that was only going to be worn one day!  We follow the Rick Steves principle that each item must provide be used at least 3 times or it doesn’t come.  (You will be relieved to know that we also have a Rick Steves laundry line and carry soap wafers to do laundry two or three times as well!)

I was surprised in Rome at the Tivoli Fountain to be surrounded by a dozen or more enthusiastic and slightly inebriated youth wearing green t-shirts that announced they were participating in a St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl.  Occasionally the group would stagger by us as we were wandering the streets and more than once we came across a confused looking singleton and pointed him off in the direction of the last migration.  None of the participants appeared to be Roman, but there were a lot of Brits and Irish in the crowd.

I’m afraid for me  St. Patrick’s is more about wearing some green and whispering some blarney,  not about beer.  Let’s just work together to keep those snakes out of Ireland, shall we?

Around 5:15 p.m. PSTMonday March 14, the ten thousandth visitor visited my blog.

This blows me away.

Since I began this writing adventure the middle of last May, I have been privileged to share the experience with visitors from around the world.  Thank you for coming!  Thank you for allowing me to be a part of a your day! 

May today be a beautiful day for you!