Wednesday, June 17, 2009

A little poetry with my peaches, please

We just finished off the last of the peaches we froze in January. For a while we've been enjoying the occasional peach and orange fruit smoothie. The frozen peaches make it slushy without having to use ice and dilute the flavor.

After taking off several weeks because of busy schedules and being sick, Graciela and I had our regular Wednesday morning get-together today. I love hearing "how we met" stories so I asked about hers. I thought our engagement/marriage was fast but she has us beat. Although they met two years before they started dating, he lived out in the country while she lived in town and they never really saw each other. But then at a fiesta on the 4th of July (not a holiday here, by the way) he asked her to dance, a month later he proposed and a month after that they were married! That was 32 years ago. I guess there's something to be said for these fast paced romances :-)

This evening we had a Bible study with her and her hubby but before we settled down to studying, we started talking about food. Growing up on a farm, he has lots of stories! On days a farmer butchered, they'd have a fiesta and the neighbors would all pitch in and they'd end the day with an asado (Argentine barbque). That led to me ask if they have an equivalent to headcheese (if you have to ask, you don't want to know) and they do! It's called queso de chancho. Then we also talked about recipes. One day soon we're going to have them over for a real southern dinner with some pork barbque, beans, cornbread and greens. But no headcheese :-) My daddy from Tennessee used to make it but I never really developed a taste for it. I remember being extremely unhappy the one time he served us pizza with headcheese. That's just wrong on so many levels!

In Spanish class we talked about poetry by Mario Benedetti, a famous writer/poet of the 20th century who died last month. Anyway, I've never been good at deciphering what poetry means and trying to do it in a foreign language is muy difĂ­cil! But I did enjoy listening to some of his poetry on various youtube videos. Here's one in particular you might enjoy:


Overnight the ants ate a good portion of one of my geraniums in front and when I went to see how my garden was growing I found them actively carrying off a portion of that too. Aaarrrgh! We get rid of them one place and they pop up in another. Anyone have suggestions on dealing with really aggressive ant colonies?!?

Today was absolutely gorgeous! The sun was shining and we had a nice wind so my laundry dried in about an hour. The forecast is for sunny skies and temps in the 60s for the next week. Definitely liking the winters here. With this kind of weather I won't be so jealous when I hear how warm it is in the U.S. or how yummy the fresh tomatoes taste or what fun you had on summer vacation.

Maybe.

But don't push it.

9 comments:

Mari said...

Your peach and orange slushes sound really good! The winters there sound perfect!

sara said...

slushes and smoothies....love them!!

Ok, I do not want headcheese on anything!! yuck!!!

Robin Lambright said...

I use FZ fruit in my smoothies instead of ice all the time. It just make all the difference!

Blessings
Robin

Sharon said...

Is pork easily available? I don't remember ever having it there except for once when visiting a farm.

The Whites said...

I know how you feel- this time of year really makes me miss all the fresh summer veggies back home!!!

Those smoothies sound yummy too!!

Hope your week is going well.

Mari said...

I think you could do the crock pot french toast in the frig and transfer it. It might not be as pretty but it would still taste good~!

riTa Koch said...

I'd say you're advanced if you enjoy poetry in Spanish!
I think I'll get out my short stories by Mario B and listen to them again. I did follow the news articles at the time of his death.

Debbie said...

We use frozen fruit all the time for slushes. Yum! I think I need to go make one now.

Christy Duffy said...

We had a friend recently tell us ants hate copper. She placed a few pennies in her entryway, the main point of entrance the ants use to her kitchen. In the three weeks she's had the pennies out the number of ants in the house has decreased dramatically.

Don't know if it's true but it's working for her!