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"Azore, Barbara"
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Wanda and the frogs
Worried that she'll be forced to give up her tadpoles once they start turning into frogs, Wanda hides them in her bedroom.
Book
Don't be fooled by the Maid of Honour tart
Another recipe, which has changed its name in crossing the Atlantic, is the mixture of eggs, flour and milk known to North Americans as Popovers and in the United Kingdom as Yorkshire or Batter Pudding. It is the traditional accompaniment to roast beef. Which brings me to that deconstructed Toad-in-the-hole. Toad-in-the- hole is a dish of sausages over which Yorkshire Pudding batter has been poured and then baked. On a recent trip to England I spent a day in a small town in Yorkshire. In the evening I visited the restaurant attached to the motel. One of the items on the menu was bangers and mash -- bangers being sausages and mash being mashed potatoes. I don't know when sausages came to be called bangers but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that if the bread content in a sausage gets too high the sausages tend to explode while cooking. I am fond of English sausages so opted for them. The woman working on the counter asked if I would like Yorkshire Pudding with my sausages. Since it only added 50 pence to the cost and I was in Yorkshire I said \"Yes, why not?\" The woman laughed and said, \"It'll be a sort of deconstructed Toad-in-the-hole.\" Which described the dish placed before me perfectly: a mound of mashed potatoes with sausages leaning upright against it like soldiers on guard duty and an individual Yorkshire pudding plonked on top. A new dish to add to British gastronomy.
Newspaper Article
Wanda and the wild hair
Blue-eyed freckle-faced Wanda has a problem: she loves her wild hair dearly, but it drives all the adults in her life to distraction. She loves the way it feels when she touches it. She loves the way it looks when she pats it in front of the mirror. But her mother always nags her to wash it, her father wants to take her to the poodle parlor for a trim, and her teacher threatens to ask the principal to cut it off.
Book
Family's sleuths keep having to track down our memorial bench
When my mother died a few years after my father, my sisters, Hilda and Ruby, decided to arrange for a bench to be placed in [Hounslow] in memory of these longtime residents. In due course the bench with a memorial plaque was put at the east end of town where High Street became London Road. This was an appropriate spot because it was here my parents had rested when they did their daily shop. Ruby checked the bench from time to time, reporting to the town council when it required repair or revarnishing, and for a few years it provided a resting place for the elderly citizens of the town. A visit to the council house confirmed that, yes, the bench had been moved. The council members in their wisdom had decided that High Street, which had reverberated to the tramping feet of Roman legionnaires, the galloping hooves of Charles I's cavalry during the Civil War, and the clattering wheels of Victoria's coach as it carried that monarch to Windsor Castle, was to be torn up and turned into a pedestrian concourse. Trees would be planted along its length and around the base of each tree would be modern metal tubing seating. Our parents' wooden bench just would not fit the new decor. It had been moved along London Road to the bus depot. It was Hilda who found it. One day as the bus she was riding turned the corner from the depot she noticed people eating and drinking while sitting on a bench outside a cafe. She got off the bus at the next stop and ran back to the cafe. Upon asking the people to move over she found our parents' plaque on the seat back. Hilda stormed into the cafe to tackle the proprietor. He denied all knowledge of how the bench came to be sitting outside his door but he agreed to return it to its original site at the bus depot. The council agreed to cement the bench into the sidewalk.
Newspaper Article
A look at the future prompts thoughts of the past
The cookies produced in this factory travelled from dough to packing on a moving belt. The belt was about a metre and a half wide and the baked cookies emerged from the oven in rows like soldiers on parade. Two women who sat, one on either of the belt, removed any cookies that were not perfect. At the end of that portion of belt the cookies were taken between two belts and carried to an upper level where two more women sat on tall stools and picked out the cookies whose undersides were damaged. The remaining cookies moved back down to the lower level where they travelled between rows of women who packed them in large tin boxes. Packing the cookies was a job requiring skill and dexterity. In the days before prepackaging, cookies were sent to the grocers in tin boxes and sold by weight to the customers, in paper bags. A packer used both hands to collect the cookies between thumbs and middle fingers. These stacks were then deposited upright in the tin boxes between the packers' knees. A good packer could pick up eight or ten cookies in each hand and, since the women were paid by the number of tins they filled, the more cookies in each trip from belt to box the better. At the end of the belt two metal arms angled from the side to the centre of the belt channelled any cookies the packers missed into the hands of another worker.
Newspaper Article
Different worlds: While Canadian grandchildren ski and skate, their New Zealand counterparts snorkel and pick exotic fruit off the vine
I spent the first two months of the year visiting my daughter and her family in New Zealand. As I relaxed and watched my 10-year-old granddaughter, Adrianne, and seven-year-old grandson, Lee, playing in the hot sunshine of the New Zealand summer, I often thought about my Canadian grandchildren plodding to school in the Edmonton winter. My two Canadian granddaughters, Kara and Jenna, are very close in age to their New Zealand cousins but far apart in miles and lifestyle. Adrianne and Lee live in Nelson, a small fishing port (population around 40,000) on the north coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is bordered on three sides by the foothills of the Southern Alps and on the fourth by the warm waters of Tasman Bay. It is a sub- tropical paradise -- Victoria, British Columbia, plopped down in the South Pacific. It is home to New Zealand's largest fishing fleet and the world's longest natural boulder bank, but has nothing to compete with the world's largest shopping mall! The town has one multi- screen movie house for which one must book in advance to see a popular movie, a small museum, a cathedral, a Saturday street market, some beautiful parks and miles of golden beaches. The sea off Tahunanui, Nelson's main beach, is so shallow that one can die of starvation before reaching a depth of water sufficient to drown in. The climate is moderate, pleasantly hot in summer and not too cold in winter, although a little too damp for my liking. I do love Alberta's blue winter skies.
Newspaper Article
A fateful Christmas gift from Chucky the Chicken
\"I'll bring you a bag of meal. You can add boiled potato peelings to it.\" Grandfather stood up. \"That's settled then,\" he said. \"Thanks for the tea. I'll bring the chicken round tomorrow.\" After a few days I grew used to the smell of boiling potato peelings and enjoyed helping to feed the hen. She became quite friendly and ate out of my hand. Grandfather told me she was a Rhode Island Red. Her feathers glowed with red and green lights in the wintry sunshine. When I talked to her she cocked her head as though she was listening. Mother had gone to give [Chucky] her last meal. I imagined the hen waiting eagerly at the greenhouse door for her food. Salty tears ran down my cheeks.
Newspaper Article
Becoming a grandmother gives new lease on life
In 1998, my then-12-year-old grandson Alex asked if he could go with me to London, England. I was delighted to oblige and we spent three weeks meeting relatives and doing the usual touristy things. My grandson seemed to be particularly interested in ghosts. We visited castles with haunted towers, toured backstage at Drury Lane Theatre, where two theatrical ghosts make their homes, and spent a day at Hampton Court, the home of Henry VIII, better known as the husband of six wives, two of whom he beheaded, thus creating a natural basis for ghost stories. On a happier note, we saw 221B Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes studied his cases, fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and saw the stage production of Dr. Doolittle. My grandson tried to win a prize by shooting arrows from a longbow at a medieval fair and then watched a professional archer skimming arrows across a moat to burst balloons on the other side. He watched a jousting tournament, in which mounted knights in full armour charged towards one another, lances poised to topple one another from their horses. Together, we were carried back through the centuries of our shared heritage. Are you inspired to write about your experiences? Voices offers a forum for writers to tell a personal story in submissions of up to 750 words. All submissions must include a photo and a brief description of the writer to be considered for publication. Date of publication cannot be confirmed. If we publish your piece, we'll send you a $50 honorarium. Write to Voices, Edmonton Journal Newsroom, Box 2421, Edmonton, T5J 2S6.
Newspaper Article
India produces vivid memories
India is people. Cheerful, helpful people. Schoolchildren going to school, immaculately outfitted in school uniforms. White or blue shirts. Blue or grey pants. Blue, grey or red tunics or skirts. Satchels on their backs, they look as though they got out of bed in the wrong country. A Hindu bride in a dress so heavy with jewels she stumbles to meet her groom who, resplendent in white from head to toe, arrives on horseback. Sari-clad women moving gracefully along dusty roads and city streets like bouquets of exotic flowers, turning every scene into a kaleidoscope of colour. And men. A quick survey would lead one to believe that there are at least 20 men to every woman in India. Men riding bicycles and scooters, pulling rickshaws, driving vehicles, carrying bags, opening doors, serving food, sweeping floors. There are other men who stand on corners, lounge in tea shops, sit in stores and lean against walls in offices doing, apparently, nothing. And there is the man who materializes on the sidewalk whenever one steps into the street. He knows a place where there is just the thing you want. He then leads you down sidestreets and across busy intersections to a shop which sells exactly the same items as the last one you visited. Here you sit and drink tea while the salesman hurls bolts of silk at your feet and covers the floor with shawls, tablecloths, jackets and anything else he thinks might tempt you to open your purse. When the shop is a shambles and you sneak out the door emptyhanded, the shopkeeper calls after you,\"Come back tomorrow,\" and he means it! Outside is another man begging you to come into his shop. \"Not to buy. Just to look and take refreshment.\" While aggravating, this was perhaps one of the most endearing characteristics of the shopkeepers.
Newspaper Article
Wanda and the Wild Hair
[Wanda] obviously adores her hair, and it becomes her identity. However, even though she is happy with her hair, it has become a source of contention for others, including her mother, her father, and her teacher. One morning, Wanda is forced to go to school with her mother's earring lodged in her hair. After a troubling day worrying about the earring and being scolded by her teacher, she heads home and runs into more \"hair\" related problems, including a magpie, a cat and an English Sheep dog. The incident leads to Wanda's finally agreeing to a hair cut.
Magazine Article