Author: Foodiness

Too old to figure out how to start a blog; too young to give up entirely.

Monday, May 18, 2026 The Sloppy Joe Incident

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It should have taken me about 5 seconds, tops. Somehow I managed to turn it into five plus minutes of increasingly absurd decisions. Here’s what happened. We were on the road, pulling our camper behind us, when I realized that I’d forgotten to take our supper out of the freezer to thaw it. Next time we stopped, I went in the camper, retrieved the quart bag of sloppy joes out of the freezer and threw it in the sink, putting the cover over the sink. Done and done…except for the fact that I had a thought.

“By the time it thaws, it will be hard to get out of the bag. I should cut the bag off and put the sloppy joes in a bowl to thaw.” This was the first illogical decision out of many to follow.

I cut the bag open, stuck the frozen chunk of sloppy joes into a largish plastic bowl (without a cover) and put it in the sink. Done! But then I realized something:

“As we drive and it thaws, the bowl will be tipping over and the sloppy joes will thaw right into the sink and be all over it – what a mess!”

You’d think I could have worked that out in my head before cutting the bag open, but it was too late now. I was stuck with a frozen chunk of sloppy joes that needed a place to thaw.

“I know! I’ll put it on a plate and put it in the fridge!” You’d think I’d have learned the lesson of not thinking things through, but I did not. No sooner did I have the thought when I made it happen. By now, of course, little bits of frozen sloppy joe were getting on the counter, the sink and anything else that it touched. But too late, I realized…

“Oh, as the sloppy joes thaw, they’ll slide right off the plate which will be careening back and forth on the refrigerator shelf while we drive. It will be plastered all over the inside of our refrigerator.”

Hmmm, what to do?

“I know! I’ll put it in a leftover container that has a tight fitting cover and then put that in the sink. Perfect!”

I rummaged through our leftover containers and found one with a cover. Giving absolutely no thought to the appropriateness of the size, I threw the frozen chunk of SJ’s into it. Sadly, and predictably, the container was a little too small and I couldn’t get the lid on. The little bits of SJ continued to multiply over everything as I kept moving it around. The absurdity of the whole situation began to strike me at that point. It was like watching an episode of “I Love Lucy.” In fact, the more I thought about it, the funnier it was.

I started laughing as I was trying to figure out what to do next. At around this juncture, hubby showed up at the camper door, wondering what was taking so long. He poked his head in and I laughed even harder, to the point where I couldn’t talk. How do you explain something so completely illogical?

Convulsed with helpless laughter, I grabbed an even larger plastic bowl and put the sloppy joes into it. I put that in the sink. I took the first bowl and turned it over onto it. Then I took the leftover container and squeezed it in, hoping that if I had enough items in the sink, nothing would tip over. There were no more viable options.

I was still laughing when I got in the car, laughter that brought tears to my eyes. It took me a while to sober up enough to explain the whole thing.

You’ll be glad to know that the sloppy joes stayed in the bowl in the sink, although more than once I imagined them escaping and being splattered over everything in the camper by the time we arrived at our destination.

I’ll probably delete this sloppy post in the morning.

Thursday, May 14, 2026 Dear Diary…

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Dear Diary,

I am sometimes tempted to disable autocorrect on my devices. Today I sent a text to someone: “Thanks for letting us know.” The AI operative on my phone intercepted it and changed it to “Thanks for keeping us know.” I mean, really. If the thing is going to make sweeping changes, couldn’t they at least make sense? A couple years ago, I texted (or so I thought) “I will meet you downtown.” In the delicate hands of autocorrect, it became “I will ferromagnetic.” So close, right? To be fair, I do a lot of swiping to make words, so I’ve no doubt my swiping was subpar that day. But still…ferromagnetic seems a far cry from any letter combinations I was swiping on the keyboard. It evidently couldn’t figure out what I was going for, threw its digital hands in the air, and grabbed for a word in its databanks that might fit. The soulless program cares nothing for meaning.

So why don’t I disable it? Occasionally something strangely beautiful emerges from the tangled web of its programming. A couple days ago I texted “Thanks for letting us know.” This predictable and prosaic phrase became “Thanks dither toaster.” I caught it and corrected the autocorrect before I sent it, but spent some time marveling at that combination of words. It’s very nearly poetic, on par with something from The Jabberwocky. And it made me laugh.

Sigh. I guess I’ll keep using autocorrect. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to cobble together a whimsical poem from its convoluted phrases.

Writing from the Sticky Chair,

Me

I’ll probably ferromagnetic and dither this toaster in the morning.

Wednesday, May 13, 2026 The Workshop: Guest Artist

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I’m going to feature a special guest artist this week. She’s six years old and loves to draw. Let’s call her “Lovey.” Lovey has been making drawings for me as soon as she could scribble on paper. As she got older, her work often featured hearts (lots of hearts!). When she was learning letters, she’d spell out the word “Grandma” as “Gramu.” I love those kinds of early spellings, don’t you?

On our recent visit, Lovey created a masterpiece, a drawing of the two of us. She apologized for using black for my hair, saying she didn’t have a gray pen, which made me laugh. I like the way we are wearing matching outfits and how slim I look standing next to her. It’s all in the artist’s interpretation, right?

She also created a bookmark for me which you can be sure I will treasure. She caught a good likeness of our cat, Luna!

Do I sound like a proud Grandma? Of course! But I think she shows early promise. Keep an eye out for her in the art world in years to come! In an effort to protect her privacy, I asked my AI servant to make a facsimile of her instead. So here it is, the AI version of Lovey, the Artist!

I’ll probably ask my AI servant to delete this in the morning.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026 Commonplace Quotes: You Are His Arrow

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God brought forth the wind out of His treasuries here today. There’s something quite stirring (literally I guess) about sitting out on a spring day when the trees are swaying and the sound of the wind ruffling the leaves is constant, when the skies are filled with puffy little clouds that float merrily along in the breeze. It can make you think deep thoughts and revitalize your brain. Try it sometime and you’ll see that I am right.

A few quotes from my book (and it is only a few – I have neglected it while traveling).

There is no better test of a man’s ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong.
G.K. Chesterton

I can be rather inwardly pouty when I am wrong. Sometimes outwardly. I resolve to do better.

The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus
means that one day
everything sad will come untrue.
JRR Tolkien

Glorious, glorious truth!

A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says, “I cannot stand anymore.” God does not heed. He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly.
Oswald Chambers

Are you being stretched? Do you feel the string taut on your bow? How encouraging to know that God is aiming you at something for His good and godly purposes and He will not hold that arrow forever – He will let it fly at the right time.

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing your praises, O God:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Book of Common Prayer

It is sunset as I write this, so I had to include that beautiful prayer with the lilting phrase “the vesper light.”

I’ll probably delete this when the vesper light has completely left the sky…

Monday, May 11, 2026 The Age of Innocence

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(We are back from our wanderings. As is customary, I thought I’d keep up with posts while we were gallivanting about, and as is also customary, I did not.)

As I said in a recent post, I have a vast repository of letters written by various members of my mother’s family going all the way back to the early 1900’s. My mom (bless her amazing heart) typed them all up so that they are easy to read. She assembled them in books and titled them accordingly. The one I’m looking at now is titled “Another World. 1900 – 1919. The Age of Innocence.” I thought you, my loyal readers, might enjoy a few snippets of letters from my great-grandmother Nettie to her daughter, my Grandma Lois when she was away at her first year of college. She tended to write in long run-on sentences which adds to the charm. I mean, if the apostle Paul can do it, why can’t we?

George and Nettie on their wedding day in May 1888

September 26, 1910.

My Dear Lois,

Well I have just returned from Aunt Alices she is still sick in bed and has suffered terribly this last week. Annie [one of Lois’s sisters] was down and staid with her one day and I went one day and then Rosie brought Myrtie to stay with her and she has been there since Thursday after noon she went home for one night and came back to-day. I think Aunt Alice looked better to-day and she told me to thank you for the card you sent her and tell you that she would write to you as soon as she is able.

…Aunt Amelia’s folks are looking for a horse again as Willie thinks of being Married in about two weeks and Alma and Will want Ada [Lois’s little sister] for their flower girl. I have not told Ada yet for I thought it would only set her to asking questions but I think that means that I shall have to make Adas white dress that I got the Embroidery for I got quite a pretty Pattern for it yesterday. Ada has just run in and says tell Lois I haven’t time to write to her to-day but I will write some other time.

…Papa says tell Lois I will write to her during the week. He is getting along fine with the Lloyd job – guess he will nearly finish this week.

Good night. With love from Mama

How do you like that casual mention of Will and Alma thinking of being married in two weeks, and Nettie not panicking about having to make a dress for it (and embroider it!) in that amount of time? How lovely for Lois to get these letters with updates from home and promises of letters to come.

The photo below was taken in 1910, the same year as the correspondence. I’ve done some labeling and hope you can read it. It’s the only photo I have with Lois and Nettie in it.

In another letter, Nettie tells Lois how bad she feels that she was unable to contribute a baked good for a box of food that went to Lois from family and friends. She tells Lois,

…that is all I know about your box. but could not send anything I had to bake for I have not had wood to bake anything with for when we were out of wood we could not get any at the yard so I had to nearly scratch the earth for what I have had to get my meals with. So I thought I would let you know Who to thank as it was not your Mother much as she would like to have been one of them, My Dear girl. But she sends a whole lot of love as you may be sure she always will for I have missed my Lois so to-day.

Imagine having to scrabble for wood in order to do your cooking. I am not nearly thankful enough for the appliances that make my life easier.

Sadly, Nettie died just four years later at the age of 46, a couple years before Lois got married. Her obituary states “She bore all her suffering without a word of complaint and expressed herself ready to go and meet her Savior when the death angel called.” That is what we call a good death.

I am looking forward to meeting Nettie in glory.

I’ll probably scrabble for wood to burn this post in the morning.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 Imitating the Masters: Renoir

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I tackled a Renoir painting in my latest attempt to imitate the masters. “Tackled” feels about right. More on that later.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir lived from 1841 to 1919, a French artist who was a leader in the development of the Impressionist style of painting. His father was a tailor who moved his family to Paris in 1844 in hopes of finding a better living. Young Renoir was naturally talented at drawing, but (to my surprise) had an even greater talent for singing. Renoir took music lessons but had to quit at age 13 due to financial constraints. He became an apprentice in a clay factory at that time.

At age 21 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris, but still struggled to afford paint over the next years. By 1874 (age 33), he collaborated with artists like Monet and Pissarro to put on the First Impressionist Exhibition. By 1879 he had achieved success and some renown as an artist.

Later in life he developed rheumatoid arthritis, which eventually affected his ability to paint. He died at the age of 78 in 1919.

A Girl with a Watering Can was painted in 1876, an oil painting on canvas. It was apparently painted in Claude Monet’s garden, the little girl possibly a neighbor of Renoir’s. It is on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Getting the proportions right continues to elude me, but since this painting was in the impressionist style, it left me some wiggle room for interpretation. As always, it is well nigh impossible to achieve the same effect with watercolor as an oil painting (at least for me). I labored the longest on mixing just the right color blue for the girl’s dress. Couldn’t get the facial colors or her expression right, though. I ended up being fairly pleased with how the lacy part of her dress turned out (but don’t look too closely at it).

This is my sixth painting in this series…and it might be my last. At the very least, I will be taking a break before going on with the next group of six.

If you’ve been following this series, which one was your favorite so far? Here they are again, to refresh your memory:

I think my favorite was Durer’s hare.

Au revoir!

I’ll probably be imitating deleting this in the morning.

Thursday, April 16, 2026 Dear Diary…

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Dear Diary,

It’s been a week of canceled events. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever become a recluse, since I feel bad about canceled events but also feel good about not having to go out. I’m not sure I could go all the way to Emily Dickinson levels of social avoidance. She did correspond with people, even if she didn’t get out much. Can you imagine getting a letter from Emily Dickinson with one of her charming little poems and maybe a dried flower in it?

I have all of my Grandpa Harry’s and Grandma Lois’s letters to each other from their early days. I have letters that my Dad wrote to my Mom when they were engaged. Her letters to him mysteriously disappeared. My husband and I have all the letters that we’ve written to each other over the years. Isn’t all this correspondence a treasure of some kind? I often thought how wonderful it would be to move into a house where family letters had been left in the attic for the next occupant (me) to find and read. Of course, I always assumed that those letters would be novel worthy, but chances are they’d be more like the letters that my great-grandmother Nettie wrote to my grandmother Lois after Lois got married, detailing everybody’s illnesses back at home. Yes, I have those letters, too.

I wrote oodles of letters to my mom. She gave them all back to me a few years before she died, so I have both sides of our correspondence now.

What to do with all these letters? I just can’t throw them away.

I suppose that will be for the next generation to do.

Reporting from the Sticky Chair, as usual.

I couldn’t possibly throw all these blog posts away. That will be for the next generation of bloggers.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026 Imitating the Masters: Matisse

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Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was born in northern France in 1869, the son of a wealthy grain merchant. He didn’t start painting until he was 20 years old when his mother bought him some art supplies to keep him occupied while recovering from appendicitis. His decision to pursue art as a career disappointed his father deeply.

In 1896 he was introduced to Impressionism and the work of Vincent Van Gogh, which influenced him to change his color palette completely – from earth tones to bright colors. He began collecting expensive paintings that he couldn’t afford and went into debt.

The intense colors of his works between 1900 to 1905 made him one of the “Fauvists,” (wild beasts) of the art world, a style that was only popular for about 10 years. These paintings expressed emotion with wild, sometimes dissonant colors, often ignoring the natural colors of the subject.

When many fled France during WWII, he decided to stay, saying, “If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?” His daughter, active in the resistance, was caught and tortured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck, but she escaped from the train on the way there and survived.

Matisse died of a heart attack at age 84 in 1954, having spent the last decade of his life concentrating on paper cut-outs as an art medium.

“Pot of Geraniums” was painted in 1912, oil on linen. It is on display at the National Gallery of Art.

When I saw this one, I thought with only few colors and a simple design, it might not be too hard to copy. I was wrong, as usual!

It’s an adventure, that’s for sure. I almost gave up on this one, but decided to persevere.

Next up:

Renoir! Am I crazy? Watercolor will be pretty difficult with that dress of hers…

I’ll delete this wild beasts of a blog post in the morning.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026 Commonplace Quotes: the

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I can hear birds through our open window in the living room. The significance of that statement is not the birds, but the open window. Yes! The weather is fine enough today to throw wide open the window and revel in the fresh air. Wherever you are, I hope you having an open window day, too.

It’s time to do some catch-up in the Commonplace Book, to run back through the pages and choose some quotes that got overlooked the first time around. Let them languish in obscurity no longer.

It is a greater mercy to descend from
praying parents than from nobles.
John Flavel

Don’t take for granted those praying parents of yours. And if you didn’t have them, thank God for His grace: He brought you thus far anyway.

People sometimes ask me, “How did you get rid of your feelings?” I tell them: “I didn’t get rid of them. I offer them to God, and I have to offer them again, and again, and again.
Elisabeth Elliot

Easier said than done, but better that than storing them up and becoming bitter.

If you ask, “Why is this happening?” no light may come, but if you ask “How am I to glorify God now?” there will always be an answer.
J.I. Packer

Two very different questions; only one brings light.

Christian contentment is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be entirely at His disposal.
Alistair Begg

I’d like to remember this when discontent rises up in my soul.

I played the notes as they were written,
but it was God who made the music.
Don’t cry for me –
I am going to where the music was born.
J.S. Bach

I love that!

Don’t cry for this post – it goes to where blog posts are born…in the morning.

Monday, April 13, 2026 The Stories We Tell Ourselves

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I love to tell stories. As soon as something happens to me or if I witness something, I am inwardly figuring out how to narrate it as a story. Doesn’t everyone do this?

But of late, I’ve realized that most of the stories I tell myself about the unknown are terrible. The Holy Spirit has been nudging me to recognize this. It’s been a lifelong habit, so thoroughly ingrained that it feels a part of my skin.

Travel plans coming up? It’ll probably be the last trip we take. Some disaster on the road will take our lives.

Medical appointment? There’s always a chance that it’s cancer. Or some other awful disease.

Concern about a loved one? Worst case scenarios (WCS) multiply almost without effort.

Could it go wrong? It will go wrong.

Someone didn’t reply to my text? I might have offended them. Or perhaps something horrible happened to them.

I’ve gotten better about catching WCS’s before I’m planning funerals in my head. Yet it wasn’t until I began to see these as bad stories that I started identifying them right away for what they are. As soon as one of these obnoxious thoughts worms its way into my brain, I call it out: “That’s a bad story and I will not tell it. I repent of it.”

It requires repentance because my bad stories also tell something about the way I view God and the stories He tells. Unlike me, God is a perfect story teller. If the “worst” happens, it’s part of some good story that He’s telling, even if I can’t see it. (One need look no further than Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection for proof.) Until and unless it happens, I’m just making stuff up and letting it scare me, and making the Lord out to be a constant purveyor of doom in the process. I’ve been at this a long time and I can assure you that I’ve been a very poor “prophet.” None of the things I’ve predicted have come to pass. And the hard providences that the Lord has sent my way weren’t things I predicted anyway.

So, I’m putting the new message on repeat: “That’s a bad story and I will not tell it. I repent of it.”

Worst Case Blog Scenario: I’ll have to delete this in the morning.

Friday, April 10, 2026 Boundaries

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Here’s another short writing assignment from a different class that I started. The assignment was to write a scene that takes place at an edge or boundary—the edge of town, the edge of a forest, the boundary between two neighborhoods or two countries. Here’s my take on it:

Lena wished she could see all the way to the lake from her house. It was four blocks down, two blocks over, and then over the hill and down the curvy road. She wondered what it would be like to live there, to see the sparkling blue from her window, to hear the waves lapping on the shore, to run outside and jump in the wet coolness on a hot day. She knew which house she’d want to live in – she’d seen it many times when biking around the lake. It was like a mansion perched on the edge of that circle of water. Her mother had told her that you had to be really rich to have a house on the lake. Lena didn’t know any rich people, but she figured they were stuck up and snobby. She sometimes got off her bike and stood near that house and then she’d close her eyes and imagine that the house was hers. She’d breathe in the lake air and think “That’s MY lake air, now.” She’d look at the graceful sailboats and say, “That little red one is mine and I can go sailing any time I want.”

Ellen had seen the girl before, the one with the red bike. What an odd duck she appeared to be, standing on the outside of their fence with her eyes closed. As Ellen watched from her window, she heard the cleaning lady vacuuming downstairs and wished she weren’t alone. Her parents were both physicians and between their two busy schedules, the time they spent with her wasn’t often. She wasn’t allowed to go wandering on her own, so she spent a lot of time reading. Today, though, she kept her eyes on the girl and wondered what it would be like to be able to get on a bike and go riding anytime she wanted to. Ellen thought if she wasn’t so shy, she’d say something, maybe call out a friendly greeting. Suddenly, the girl opened her eyes, looked up, and saw Ellen staring at her. Their eyes met. Ellen was just beginning to give a tentative smile when the girl frowned, mounted her bike and rode off. And Ellen, who had for a moment felt the nearness of someone, was alone again.

I haven’t written any more about these two girls, but I think they ought to meet, don’t you?

The Lord bless you and keep you, friends.

I’ll probably delete this on the edge of the town in the morning.