Recipe

One of my not so secret passions is cooking.  For a while there, I even wanted to open a restaurant but never got ahold of enough of the proper ingredients (money, location, equipment etc) to make it happen.  Still, I love to cook and will be happy to do so at the drop of an apron, doesn't matter the cuisine or ingredients.  Iron Chef and Iron Chef America are two of my favorite t.v. programs.

Some favorites are:
Soufflet  (I can cook it, but apparently neither the computer nor I can spell it)
Stuffed Red Cabbage with Tomato and Carrot Sauce
Blueberry Cornbread
Paper Bag Roasted Stuffed (or unstuffed) Turkey and Thanksgiving Trimmings
and of course, my version of comfort food-Mom's Irish Chili

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Home Made Blueberry Corn Bread

Home Made Stuffed Red Cabbage

One thing I'm trying
to do is film while cooking some of these recipes and maybe getting the resulting video up online...kind of my own cooking show!
That could be a lot of fun.
See, not every dream is about recording music.  Okay, okay this one still incorporates making videos....but I am diversifying, subject-matter wise.

For today, Fifty Five is the New Recipe...cooking up dreams and working with them 'til they come into fruition.

Freak Flag

Midnight Mountains  by rcw

August 1969 was an interesting time...Woodstock and Manson, the two most opposite ends of the spectrum, danced across our stage that summer.

Some view Woodstock as a hedonistic, bacchanalian celebration of spoiled brats on an extended spring break.  Personally I think they missed the point.

Anti-war, civil rights, feminist rights, art, music, religion, consciousness expansion....these were among the things being celebrated; the things being represented.

Not everybody there was in it just to get high and humped.

Manson represented the true evil that exists in the world....he didn't represent the hippie culture in the actual sense; his was a game that could have played in any generation-and did.

Anyway, the forty-ish anniversary of Woodstock happened recently (8/16), which is how I want to remember Summer 1969. I personally didn't get to go to Woodstock, but felt its' effect on my life and my generation and feel it was and remains an extremely important part of history.

As for Manson and his "family"?  Hey! Anybody can be crazy.
Woodstock will remain a strong memory long after he and his are dust and bones.

So for today, Fifty Five Is The New Freak Flag, just like in the old days I'm letting mine fly!

Attitude

We live in interesting times, times of great issues and controversies. Our nation is in a peculiar state; caught between politics, policy and people-not only within our own borders, but throughout the world as well.  What I feel we are left with is a form of stagnation brought on by the timidity of fear. 

Fear of what? Where to begin? We all know our country's internal problems; fiscally, politically, inter-personally and some say morally...we are bankrupt. There are enough boogie-men running around in those arenas to guarantee a sell-out crowd every night-if we were talking World Wide Wrestling!
But we're not.

We're talking a very simple thing here-beneath all the rhetoric and platitudes...we're talking our survival. Not just the survival of us as a nation, but us as a world...a people-and a planet.

It is possible to be American and be proud of it. We've done some pretty incredible things in our very short history; some of these things aren't given the brevity and respect they deserve presently but this temporary amnesia only requires a few moments' research to find that the United States had an incredibly rich history.


As with all countries, the United States has blood on its' hands.  To deny the violence, genocide, racial, gender and ethnic persecution, religious and sexual prejudices is impossible. Anyone wishing to do so has either been living on some far off planet or asleep for a very long time!

But is that any reason to shit-can the whole she-bang?

I don't think so! For we are also a country of ingenuity and discovery....we know how to think our way out of a paper bag. In the case of our present day problems, that bag is pretty big-but it's just a bag none the less!

We have to recognize that there is a point where political correctness turns into stagnation. I'm not saying we should go around acting like a bunch of boorish brutes, acting out our frustrations on each others' throats!

......Then again, it kind of feels like that right now!

Political correctness does NOT mean lack of controversy!  To the contrary, political correctness should be part of the process-as in being mannerly, not using the "n" word or any of the other "letter " words
that would be offensive.

It does NOT mean censoring discourse.  It does NOT mean agree with so-and-so's ideas or shut up.
Contrary to what some members of the many political parties out there would have perspective members believe, you don't need to be in a political party to vote.

Some have even gone so far as to ask the following question:
                    What if they gave an election and nobody came?

Present day politics is no longer a machine, it is a monster that we ourselves have breathed into life.  Only we can change things.  But that requires a great deal of re-evaluation both personally and nationally. We have to figure out what exactly it is we want as our future, and we have to be thinking in real-time....because the clock is ticking.

Which is more important-a political party retaining power or true leadership where our nation's representatives and citizenry work together to improve the quality of life in our own country and be a positive force in the world at large?

I am tired of all the ads and phone calls about donating to help keep the Democratic Edge or Republicans taking back the House.  I'm equally tired of other political parties who scramble around, presenting ineffectual or baggage-encumbered candidates as healthy competition for the Good Old Boys and their OG back-room ways.

The most important thing should be what is right for the country; and quite frankly my vote is still out on the current batch of folks in power.  In the Actions-Speak-Louder-Than-Words department, I am caught somewhere between mystified and appalling. 

And my patriotism should not be questioned because I say these things.

Anyway, for today Fifty Five means the New Attitude-one of TRUE liberation based on freedom of thought and responsibility in action...and with a prayer that we find a way through this trying time.
I believe that we will.....if we work together.

Oh! P.S.

If the Mosque at Ground Zero is such a problem for families of the victims, why is it being supported by our President? True Muslims understand that it is an offense against the Koran to cause pain or offense to anyone of any nationality or creed.


 

Woodstock Revisited

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff39/nessa_sauris/WoodStock.jpg

There's something you don't see every day....this link is to one of the alternative posters for Woodstock, the original Woodstock that is.

So many people have claimed through the years to have been there; I went through a phase of it too, back in the day...but never claimed to be there physically, just spiritually.  So I wasn't exactly lying.

These days more people are apt to condemn the festival; citing the sex, mud and drugs as the primary reasons for this gathering....but they are wrong. So very wrong.

At that time, we were revolutionaries in the truest sense.  Many of us were standing on the front lines getting ourselves fire hosed or billy clubbed or attacked by dogs.  Mind you, I can only imagine the fear that must have permeated those hallowed city halls and college regents meetings as the nation's youth converged, full of righteous indignation.

The part I played in all of that was small by comparison...mainly helping with the going away parties for the freshly haircutted recruits at the coffeehouse, participating in peace marches and civil rights marches, silence strikes and fasts and making sandwiches for the folks who were heading out on the road to Canada....I stopped short of the SDS stuff.  I just couldn't wrap my head around using violence to protest war.

On a whole, the sixties seem to be looked on these days as nothing more than a bunch of spoiled, drug crazed, lazy kids making a lot of noise.  But if anyone cares to look a little deeper, they'll see just how much these hippie bums helped bring about some very important, very good changes to our nation and to our world.

I won't deny that there were, and remain, influences in the movement with desires to bring about a New World Order....some of their ideas are okay, but not all of them.  Humans need to maintain a sense of autonomy as well as community or they become resentful.  Socialism, as it has been practiced thus far, doesn't work.   There's always somebody in the mix who takes advantage of opportunity, becomes dictator and turns everything upside down.  We don't need that kind of crap.

So for today, 8/17/2010, Fifty Five Is The New Woodstock Revisited....because there was more than pot smoke in the air back then, there was purpose, too.

Chin Up and Onward!

Our Behringer Europower 3000 Mixer.  On the blink!

It's been a few days. Not for lack of trying, but it's been hard to take the time of late to sit down and form a sentence, let alone write some.  But that's no excuse. 
Isn't it funny how you can be full of inspiration, ideas springing forth all over the place but there's no pen, or it runs out of ink....or there's nothing to write on.
Some of you are laughing, no doubt. It's simple! You say, just do blah, blah, blah and your cell phone becomes a personal recorder.  Yes...in theory, that's true.  But yours truly has a habit of erasing her phone numbers when she tries anything too fancy!  I love technology, but we don't always get along.

We had to take our Behringer 3000 mixer board (a gizmo that helps with our recording) into the shop because of something stupid I probably did....well, one good thing to come out of all that-I'll not make that same mistake twice.  - once I find out what it is I did!

Computers, mixers, cameras, stereos and what-not don't confuse me half so much as math.  Numbers and I REALLY don't get along.  It's like we went through a rocky divorce way back when and never got over it.  Technology....well, we share a devil-may-care, fly by the seat of our pants relationship that has a few rough patches now and then, but on the whole we're still on the honeymoon some blankity-blank years later. 

It's funny how dependent we've become upon these machines!  I depend on mine for everything from email (although I don't write letters as often as I should) to story, song, prose and poetry writing, recording, making videos, artwork, research and of course this blog.  If there wasn't some sort of computer around for me to use it would be tough because of how the arthritis has effected my hands.
So I am eternally grateful for the computers' invention!

Lately, aside from repairing our mixer-a financial OUCH! if ever there was one!-we've been refining our sound, writing and learning new songs and working with the cameras. Pretty much keeping up on our projects rather than letting anything stop us.  And that's the only way to succeed.

So for today, Fifty Five means something that seems to be reflected upon a lot in this blog; Chin up and Onward....don't let anything stop the dream!