My World of Wonders: August 26, 2026

 

What have I been up to in the kitchen this week?  Baked chicken with butter and white wine, roast salmon, potato salad, local fresh greens with home made vinaigrette, peach tart, sloppy Joes, a tomato salad, a ham and cheese omelet. A very hearty beef and veggie soup. 

Where have I been this week? The treadmill, the pool, the grocery store and Trader Joe's. The Farmers Market. 

How is my reading this week? Not everyday, but when I get started about 100 pages in an evening. 

What has been consuming my time? A couple of sets of continuing education materials that are due the end of the month, the policy resolution. A cluster of conference calls. Oh and an interview with a Pro-Bono attorney who saved a man's life. 

What disappointed me this week? Pastry Boy was not at the market on Saturday morning. 

What have I been watching? Amazon Prime Video, Great Canal Journeys with Timothy West and Prunnela Scales - she was Sybil on Faulty Towers and Mary Berry's cooking videos. If you pay for Amazon Prime, you have access to their streaming video service. These two have proven a wonderful way to nod off to sleep. There is a slight sadness, Prunnela had mild dementia when the series was filmed, she lived on for almost another decade, and out lived her husband by about a year. 

What is on the easel? The big chicken, he is red at the moment. 

Travel Tuesday: A Week At Sea

A week at sea, crossing the Atlantic is either heaven or hell.  I have done it three times, and I truly enjoy it. Quiet days, that develop a rhythm of their own. For others the idle time is boring and frustrating. Despite a million square feet to explore, they feel confined. 

I have done the three major routes, the southern route from Florida to the coast of Africa, the northern route - the route of the Titanic, and the middle shipping lanes. If your idea of a cruise is spending endless days in the hot sun, the closest to that will be the southern route to the Canary Islands and even that is not tropical. The northern route is the fastest, and also the most likely to be overcast and cool. Perfect weather for an afternoon of reading and napping.  

The days are quiet. Leisurely - with nothing demanding your time or attention. There are things to do, shows, movies, lectures, time by the pool, time to walk or go to the gym. And certainly plenty of food options. While you may have a fixed dining room time, you can always skip that and go to the buffet that is open for hours everyday. 

In the three crossings there have been a couple of lifetime memorable moments for me. 

We have passed through the straits of Gibraltar twice. The first time was in the dark, in high winds, and foul weather, I slept through it. The second time was in the late afternoon early evening, in good weather. I could see Spain on one side, and north Africa on the other side, and dolphins running along the side of the ship escorting us into the Mediterranean. The experience moved me in a way I didn't expect. 

The other was passing over the wreck site of the Titanic, on the anniversary of the sinking. The ship had planned to stop to lay a wreath, but the weather was foggy and rainy, and in the interest of safety we kept moving. This was on a Holland America Line ship. Something I didn't know before that trip, a son of one of the founders of the line, was a passenger on the Titanic and went down with the ship. 

A transAtlantic passage is not for you, if you fear time. Time alone. Time that is unscheduled. If you have a strong fear of missing out, the quiet schedule may not be for you. If you savor quiet days to do whatever you want to do, time to explore, time to think, time to not have to think, a transAtlantic passage may be the perfect trip. 

A dolphin escort through the straits of Gibraltar 

 

Passing over the wreck of the Titanic

Monday Moods: Onward

I stumbled across the reminder to focus on today and the future. Really today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. 

So what can/should I do today? 

• Find Joy! 
• Be nice to others.
• Learning something.
• Be creative.
• Solve a puzzle.
• Breathe. 
• Be tolerant. 
• Be thankful. 

A post this last week, got me to thinking. I am so lucky that I have never felt the need to flee the country that I live in, risk my life in a leaky boat to arrive in another country where I may not be welcome. 

Where I have been able to identify why my ancestors left the "old country" it was mostly economic. And they arrived in a place that they were welcomed. Most people in the world, never leave the country they are born in, many never travel more than 100 miles from home. Things must be pretty terrible for people to flee home. 

What we need to focus on, is helping places where people feel compelled to leave, to become places where people want to stay, places, where people want to live to, not places people want to flee.

Today, I can do something to make other people's lives just a little bit better. 

The Sunday Five: Travel Quest

1: What is your favorite part of flying? 

2: Where would you go if you owned the boat in this photo? 

3: What is your "go-to" hotel brand?

4: If you kept a travel journal, how many pages would you have filled in the past decade? 

5: What is the longest distance you have traveled alone? 

My Answers: 

1: What is your favorite part of flying? When the plane turns into the active runway and powers up to take off. 

2: Where would you go if you owned the boat in this photo? I would turn it around and slowly explore the shoreline of Lake Michigan, the journey would take weeks, maybe months. 

3: What is your "go-to" hotel brand? I have become a big Hilton fan. Hilton has several brands from economy to luxury, Hampton and Home2Suites are a couple of my favorites. 

4: If you kept a travel journal, how many pages would you have filled in the past decade? At least a couple hundred pages. 

5: What is the longest distance you have traveled alone? About 17-18 years ago we went to Greece.  I was flying on frequent flyer miles, Sweet Bear was flying on a ticket the University paid for, so we flew separately.  So I flew from Lexington Kentucky to Athens solo, with changes of planes in Cincinnati and New York. 

Please share your answers in the comments.

 

The Saturday Morning Post: Look for inspiration

 

Last month at the zoo in Ft Wayne we stopped in the petting zoo, my great-nephew's favorite part of the zoo. I snapped this photo of a large roster. And I thought about some of my recent works with major outlines and deep colors. This was not the right image to work from. The cock needs to be more in profile, to have more distinctive feather patterns. A quick search in Google Photos brought up every photo with a chicken in it that I have taken in the past 15 or 20 years. Yes, Google looks at your stored photos, categorizes them. If you use blogger, odds are many of your photos are in a google photo file. If you are an IPhone user odds are your photos are in IPhoto, and searchable the same way.  

I selected an image, and used it to sketch on canvass and now I am working on colors and patterns.  Where did the inspiration come from? A cock in a petting zoo. And yes, I know the way I have written this will inspire creative comments from a few of you. I hope you have as much fun writing comments, as I am painting this big chicken. 

Foodie Friday: Plums and Quiche

I was in the mood for quiche, a simple egg and cheese pie. I was not in the mood to make pastry, so I bought the rolled and ready pastry. The package had two 12 inch pieces of pastry, and if I leave one in the refrigerator I am likely to forget it. There was a bowl of plums on the table, so a plum tart was in order. 

For the quiche, five eggs, about a 1/2 cup of heavy cream, plenty of freshly shredded cheddar cheese,  four sliced mushrooms, and three slices of precooked bacon - chopped. Mix that up, pour into the pastry and bake for about 45 minutes at about 375F. I served it with arugula in a honey mustard vinaigrette. 

For the plum tart, I used a smaller tart pan, probably an 8 inch, and crimped the extra pastry into a nice thick outer rim. I pitted and sliced 3 or 4 plums, ripe but still firm and tossed those in a couple of heaping tablespoons of cornstarch and 3 or 4 heaping tablespoons of Splenda artificial sweetener. The cornstarch will thicken the liquids. I used the Splenda because it was on the counter - the white powder is the Splenda. It requires liquid to melt. If I had used sugar, the coating on the fruit that didn't get as much liquid would have melted in the oven. Oh well, it looked powdery but tasted wonderful. I added a little glaze of peach jam to the top of the fruit to add just a little moisture. I baked the tart along with the quiche for about 45 minutes. If I had sprinkled the top with powdered sugar before serving, you wouldn't have noticed the Splenda had not melted.  

There was no recipe for either of these.  Once you master the basic techniques, go with the flow. Work with what is fresh and hopefully local. The eggs and cheese came from one of my favorite vendors at the farmers market.  I like bacon, but find it a pain to cook.  What I have started doing is laying it out on a lined baking sheet and baking a whole pound of it, 375 for 20-30 minutes, and storing it in the refrigerator. I can reheat it in the microwave or used it as an ingredient like I did here. 

The Thursday Ramble: Digging Deep

My first semester at Rollins College I took a required introduction to the liberal arts class. Through various readings, films, music, and art we spent the semester exploring the topic of "freedom." It was the first time I had taken a really deep dive into what on the surface looks like a simple topic. The first evening the professor said, "if you really think you are free, try walking down Park Avenue in the nude." Not for the first time, I have to say the most important thing I learned at Rollins was how to learn, to cultivate curiosity and take a deep dive into issues or topics.  My time there changed me as a person. 

Over the years I have read thousands of books.  For several months one year I took a deep dive into the differences between being alone and loneliness. So much so that the clerks at Park Avenue Books started suggesting new books, based on what I had bought before.  (Sadly they lost their lease and faded out of existence in the late 1990s.) I read cookbooks, like others read romance novels. I own a couple hundred of them. When I see an ingredient, I most often know what it is, and how to cook with it. 

Lately I am taking a deep dive into biomarkers and Alzheimer's disease. 25 years ago, I asked a medical school professor how to determine if someone had Alzheimer's. His answer was "we don't while they are still alive,  a definitive diagnosis requires a brain biopsy and the risk of doing on a live patient is not worth the risk, especially when we have no effective treatment." Today the answer is, we start by screening for elevated proteins in the blood, if we find them, we do a PET scan to look for plaques and tangles in the brain. That along with a clinical evaluation showing a marked decline in memory and cognitive function and we can get a reliable diagnosis. The blood tests for abnormal proteins are the latest addition. And a clear diagnosis is becoming more and more important. Clinical trials are showing effectiveness for therapies to slow or stop the growth of those proteins that either cause the formation of plaques and tangles or are produced by the plaques and tangles.  And there are trials showing that new therapies are effective and reducing plaques and tangles in brain tissue (though it is not clear if this stops the progression or reverses the damage that has been done.)  Blood tests for biomarkers of these proteins are essential for this research. There is more than a glimmer of hope for treatment, and possibly prevention in the future. Two of my four grandparents died living with dementia. This is personal, and professional. 

I have been asked to draft policy encouraging extending medical privacy laws to prevent discrimination based on the biomarker test results. Diagnosis relies on multiple factors,  a clinical evaluation showing a marked decline in cognitive ability, plus evidence of plaques and tangles in brain tissue, and elevated protein levels. If is possible to have elevated proteins, and even the presence of plaques and tangles in brain tissue, and not show a significant decline in cognitive ability.  These tests are not like x rays of a bone to see if it is broken. The risk of discrimination based on the results leads to a reluctance to consent to the tests. Even more important into the future, the blood test could be an early warning sign, leading to therapies that could stop Alzheimer's in its tracks before it damages cognitive ability. 

And here I go. That intellectual curiosity that was ignited in college classroom all those decades ago, is leading me to a deep dive into yet another topic.