Identity Theft

You know what’s scary?
Living in a world where everyone knows more than you do! And you believe them!

The other day my four year-old grandson said,
“Grandma you can’t fast forward when there’s that circle with the line through it.”
O.K., he was right but he’s a digital native!
It happens all the time. I thought this would stop in adulthood, but it hasn’t.
The other day, a friend said to me,
“Sunny, you need to use your basil! It’s going to flower and then it will be too mature to use.”
Looking at the tall “pizza and salsa” greenery planted in three large terracotta patio pots I agreed.

I remembered Jean’s admonishment the next day as I rummaged for a quick supper. Yes, I had olive oil, pine nuts garlic, Parmesan cheese and….fresh basil! I harvested my basil. And “Presto”, it was "Pesto" for dinner. My husband thought it was great and about an hour later I agreed, “The pesto was yummy!”

Another friend Kelly, a Master Gardener dropped by the next day. Pridefully pointing out my patio pots I mentioned the delicious pesto I made from the embarrassed bare-naked basil plants the night before.
“Sunny,” she said stifling a snicker. “What you made was Pepper Pesto—those are pepper plants!”

I did what anybody would do………..I googled!
The consensus: pepper plant leaves are indeed, edible.

I have to run. The Master Gardener is coming back for dinner, tonight! I have to find an unripe papaya for the "Filipino Tinola" I'm making.

My cupboards are full but my pepper plants are now all bare!
I will let you know how it goes!

Chicken Tinola with Chili Pepper Leaves and Green Papaya
Ingredients
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped ginger
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 (3-pound) chicken, cut into serving-size pieces
2 Tablespoons fish sauce
1 green papaya, peeled and cubed
1 Tablespoon salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste
11/2 Cups chili peeper leaves

Using a wok or Dutch oven, sauté the garlic, onion, and ginger in the oil 1 to 2 minutes, or until the onion is translucent. Add the chicken and sauté for 8-10 minutes, or until browned. Add the fish sauce and 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes, or until the chicken is tender.

Add the papaya and simmer for 5 minutes, or until tender. Add the salt, pepper, and the chili pepper leaves. Cover and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the leaves are wilted. Serve hot.

From Fine Filipino Food by Karen Hulene Bartell

P.S. Substitute spinach leaves if you don’t have any chili pepper leaves.

Please tell me what you're thinking---everyone else does and you're probably right!

I want to grow a tomato—lots of them, but year after year I failed to get a vine to produce. “Think like a tomato.” I told myself. I did and determined the best place to be was not in my garden, at all but in the narrow strip of my neighbor’s south facing front yard adjacent to my sidewalk and garage wall. “Patty, let’s partner and plant tomatoes!” I suggested. Everyone was amazed as we began to harvest bushel after bushel of red, juicy globes. Patty had been my neighbor for twenty years yet no one saw the ripe field that lay between our two houses.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

“Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.” John 4:35

Baker's Dozen-Storytelling Quotes

Add your favorite storytelling quote as a "comment".

1. Whoever wants to tell a variety of stories
Ought to have a variety of beginnings.
---Marie de France

2. What I have is a story---laugh if you want to but as I tell the story it will begin to happen.
----Leslie Marmon

3. The universe is made of stories not of atoms.
----Muriel Rukeser

4. All the stories have been told long ago. Your job is retelling. relighting.
---Pam Gem

5. I believe stories have this power—they enter us, they transport us, they change things inside us so invisibly so minutely that sometimes we are not even aware that we come out of a great book as a different person from the person we were when we began reading it.
---Julie Alvarez

6. We all hunger for stories. Stories give form to our desires, feelings and goals, molding how we view just about everything---from our own bodies to what is sacred or profane, good or bad, possible or impossible. Stories give us figures to emulate, imitate, admire or abhor. And it is from the stories we are told that we turn unconsciously fashion our own live scripts.
---Sally Gearhart

7. Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
---C. S. Lewis

8. The first law of storytelling. … Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.
---Mrs. Humphrey Ward

9. That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.
---Alice Munro

10. “The tale is often wiser than the teller.”
---Susan Fletcher
(as Marjan, in Shadow Spinner)

11. “Stories tell us of what we already knew and forgot, and remind us of what we haven’t yet imagined.”
---Anne Watson

12. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
---G. K. Chesterton

13. One shoe can change your life.
---Cinderella

14.  "If you want your children to be brilliant, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be geniuses, read them more fairy tales."---Albert Einstein

15.

I wish for a story that speaks to me.

I wish for that connection of eye to eye, sound to ear, heart to heart.

I wish for the continuing passing down of the oral tradition of culture, history, teaching, and entertainment.

I wish to be heard and not be a text.

by Sandy Rothman

16.  "Never let truth stand in the way of a good story." ---Mark Twain