Feelin' the love

Why, the honors just keep a-rollin' in around here.  I am pleased and proud as gay spiked punch to say that I have been selected for The Circle of Friends Award:

This comes courtesy of the wonderful Kyle at Out Left, who has quickly become another wonderful member of my virtual blogging family (It's so much more fun to choose family sometimes, isn't it?)

Thank you, Kyle - I consider you to be a blogging superstar in your own right and a great, intelligent read for anyone who hasn't yet found your blog. I hope you don't mind, but I was so delighted by this award that I took the liberty of Blingee-ing you up a bit for the holiday season.  I am so weird like that.

Anyway, by the rules of the award, I am honor-bound (like I have any honor left - fortunately, none of you know the boy)  to mention five things I enjoy or like to do and then pass this award along.

Entertaining:
I strive to be the hostess with the mostess. But despite having a prodigious collection of etiquette books spanning the last century (my absolute swear-to-God favorite book of all times is a book called "The Rituals of Dinner" by Margaret Visser - you'll love it, I promise!!!), I hate those Martha Stewart wannabes out their in Gayville. I prefer my guests to be comfortable and to feel at home.  I normally serve dinners family style, at the table.  There's nothing I love more than sitting at the table with friends, candles flickering, tummies singing, lingering over an exceptional glass of wine or port, and just having a great time.

Newcomers to our social roundtable (except mine is rectangular - hoot!) frequently remark that they haven't laughed so much in - well, forever.  That's the highest compliment I can ever receive.  Whether it's a game night or checking out a great movie in the living room afterward - or just cocktails and nibbles on the porch during the summer, if we're not laughing and having a great time - well, why bother?

It's always shoes off, full glasses and have a fabulous time when you're here.  I will settle for nothing less.

Food and cooking:
This goes along with entertaining but deserves its own category.  From a very young age, I was surrounded by food.  My mother was a chef in the Stouffer's test kitchens when I was a toddler - and then held a variety of positions where she managed executive dining rooms and food service operations at a variety of businesses including Hewlett Packard, Ford and a  bunch of others.  So I was always surrounded by fabulous people - cooking.

For a time in the 1970s, my mother managed the executive dining rooms at US Steel, Bethlehem Steel and South Chicago Steel.  I was a teenager and I used to work summers doing dishes and cleaning.  Located in mostly African American cities and neighborhoods of the Chicago-metro area, my mom's staff was largely elderly, local women who had worked there forever.  In fact, she and I were usually the only caucasians in the place.  My mom loved these women and, oh man - so did I.  You haven't lived until you've sat and talked to someone who can remember dressing up to step out with her boyfriend and go see Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway or Dinah Washington back in the day. Or been cleaning the dining room with gospel being sung at full tilt in the kitchen.  It was a magical experience.

But mostly, I learned to cook Southern.  And I am not talking that lily-white, frilly-ass 'Southern Living'  bull-puckey - I am talking about ribs covered in so much spice you couldn't see the meat and cornbread, oh cornbread that was perfection - and chicken and fresh biscuits that would make the Baby Jesus weep in envy...and that was just for breakfast.   I routinely gained 15 pounds every summer.

Now - my mom was great cook, but until I worked at the mills, I only knew pretty traditional Midwestern and Pennsylvania Dutch fare - because those were our people.  But Beulah awoke in me something marvelous and unknown - at the time, slightly taboo, even.  And when, a few years later, we moved to Phoenix, I discovered Mexican and South American food.  It only snowballed from there - Moroccan, Italian, Irish, Mediterranean, Indian, Chinese, Japanese...the list goes on.

Since then, I have been in love with trying new types of regional cuisines.  I can remember the hubby coming home from a meal out with co-workers where they had exclaimed over how infrequently they had enjoyed a good risotto and Brian was like, "oh my god, I get that like three times a week at home."  (it was a phase)  And two Christmases ago, he bought me a Tajine.  And I love it. I mean, we once got snowed in for a week and even though we ran out of staples like eggs, bread and  milk, I still had the ingredients to make Tom Ka Gai. That was my fall-back, if you can believe it.

I have even turned my mother on to many regional delights.  She, unlike my steak and potatoes father, has embraced this addiction as well. He has no idea what he's missing.

Spending time with family and friends:
Again - somewhat related to my first entry about entertaining. I love nothing more than hanging out with friends and family, thanks to Brian and his extended, zany Irish Catholic cast of thousands.

It's great to have been so warmly embraced by Brian's family - I give most of my family a wide berth.  My brother and most of my relatives are some of nature's best arguments for population control.

Coffee:
You might have gotten me off cigarettes.  You may one day pry the vodka bottle from my grasp, sustaining only minor injuries.  But rest assured you will never...never take my coffee away.

Story-telling:
As you can see by my other entries in this blog, I like to tell stories.  I've now reached an age where I am starting to forget which stories I have told to whom (who?).

And I can foresee that I will be on of those old men sitting around on a bench saying," Did I ever tell you about the time my co-worker hid out at our first house just after we moved in when her unmedicated sister kidnapped and killed their mother in Mexico and threatened to do the same to her?"

See - I have the stories - that's why I love to tell them, because a) my life is weirder than television and b) I'm lucky enough to realize it and appreciate the humor in it.

In conclusion - I am now happily encouraged to pass along this recognition to blogs that mean something to me - whether they make me think, dream, laugh or scream.

So, it is my honor to recognize:

• edder - my lovely and three month older twin sister at I don't care for your tone
• The fabulous Miss Ginger Grant  
• Ayem8y over at Mean Dirty Pirate 
• Tabloid Prodigy, which is a totally hysterical read most days. 
• Lori at Family Trees May Contain Nuts
  

 
and, of course...

• Lou and Bob and Larry - but Kyle already recognized you (but you are well worth another mention!!)