Kitchenaid Kaper

On Wednesday this week I received a call at work from a man claiming he was calling from Scotland and wanting to purchase some Kitchenaid mixers for family living locally.  He knew exactly what he wanted; he quoted colour and price correctly.  I told him that we'd have to order these items as they were not in stock and that I'd call our supplier to see both if they themselves had them in house and how many days it may take to have the mixers be delivered.

nine hundred ninety-eight pounds

What I actually did was to call my boss and confer with her whether she thought this transaction were on the level.  I thought that the whole thing smelled of fraud and really didn't want to have anything to do with 'Jay' and his mixer mission.  I also envisioned somehow being tagged as an accomplice and having my visa revoked.  If I were going to be kicked out of the UK, then I'd certainly want it to be for something a bit more racy than wonky Kitchenaid mixer purchases.

My boss, too, felt like something wasn't right, but bade me to continue on with the transaction.  That meant taking payment for the items via telephone.  Apparently, performing credit card transactions over the phone here aren't that uncommon and we accept payment at work this way on a regular basis.  I find it strange not to see the person, and, more importantly, not to be able to verify that the person using the charge card is the actual card holder.  I know that this a 'chip and pin' society, and that, really, if you don't have the pin associated with the card, then you may as well be holding a cheap piece of plastic.  However, if you're paying via phone, then you, magically and confusingly, don't need your pin at all.  CC# and expiry date=sale.  Nuckin' futz.

On Thursday I sent my boss a text asking her if she wouldn't want to phone the credit card company asking if they couldn't please contact the card holder in order to verify that the transaction was valid.  I didn't hear back from her.  In the afternoon I went by work to talk to her directly.  She said that she'd call the cc company later that afternoon to ask if there were anything she'd need to 'look out for' with such a large purchase amount.  With imaginary question marks over my head, I smiled at her, nodded and let the matter drop.

Charge it!

The transaction went through without a hitch.  I packed up the order on Friday and someone--not the guy with whom I spoke because he was allegedly in Scotland--came shortly before closing time yesterday to collect it.  It felt weird.  I wondered where these mixers were headed.  Their fate seemed as enigmatic as the sale.

Autumn Pudding

After watching an episode of the those fat dudes who call themselves bikers, I was inspired to make a pudding.  They, of course, made things look deceptively easy, so I (sort of) knew that I'd not really be able to create such a wondrous pud', but I was certainly willing to give it a go!

The dudes used fruit of the season: bramley apples, plums, blackberries, and pears.  I, on the other hand, used the fruit found at my local supermarket: bramley apples, plums, raspberries, and blueberries.

Cooperative supermarket bounty.

Instead of following a recipe, I watched their show, absorbed (somewhat) what they'd said to do, and just frickin' went for it!  This slap-dash method is probably why the fruit didn't yield as much juice as it should have thus leaving me with a pud' not quite coated in red goodness.  Note the bits of too-much-white in the below image.  Boo.

-unwrapping the pudding after 15 hours in the 'fridge.

Not only was I not able to coat all pieces of bread evenly with berry-fruit juice, but I, being an American, did not have a pudding basin in which to put this mess.  Instead, I used a small, pyrex casserole dish.

Why does this pud' remind me of Stonehenge?

What this Autumn pudding lacked in charm it made up for in flavour.  This was especially true when doused in double cream.

Come to mama!

Even the hubs who hates stuffing and claimed that he would most assuredly hate this pudding seemed to enjoy his slice.

I, of course, really enjoyed mine.

[Insert sounds of weasel slurping here.]

Here's the link to the actual recipe for those of you interested in doing things correctly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/autumn_pudding_30736

The Magic of Maupin

A few months ago, I finished reading Armistead Maupin's final installment in the 'Tales of The City' series entitled 'Mary Ann in Autumn'.  It was amazing to catch up on the lives of the characters (plus a few new ones) from Barbary Lane.  As the title suggests, Maupin's latest book is contemporary.  -hard to believe that Mary Ann is now well into middle-age, Mrs. Madrigal is just plain aged, and that the repercussions of actions from 40 years ago come back in such an unsettling way to haunt us.

I devotedly watched the series when 'Tales' was broadcast on public television some 20-odd years ago.  The show resonated and stayed with me for a long time thereafter.  While reading AM's latest work, I couldn't help but visualize Laura Linney (Mary Ann), Mrs. Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis), and that kick-ass actress who played Janis Joplin as Mrs. Mad's daughter as I turned page after page.

As I read, I thought about how some of my own family members in 1970s San Francisco had lived their version of 'Tales'.  Gay, attractive and coupled, my Uncle Gerry ('Scotty' to his friends) and 'Uncle' Ric lived, for some number of years, in an apartment on Fulton Street in SF.  They owned a small business together maintaining plants in the office buildings of downtown San Francisco.  Some years after Gerry died, I found out how much both he and Ric liked to 'party'.  I can almost see them socialising together with 'Mouse' from 'Tales' at that gay bar on 18th (whose name escapes me) that has since been turned into a Starbuck's coffee shop.

Today is both Uncle Gerry's and my father's birthday.  They would have been 69 and 72 years old, respectively.  Both Dad and Gerry were complete characters.  They spoke to each other in well-honed, silly voices with an eye-brow pitched and teeth purposely bucked for dramtic effect.  They'd make each other laugh until their eyes watered.  As a young teen, I couldn't pinpoint what it was, exactly, that made them laugh so.  It was all a bit beyond me.  Sexual innuendo and goofiness rolled into one was their trade.

Unlike with the well-rounded characters of 'Tales' who, over the years, have become an almost extended family of sorts, I can't just pop open a book and find out how Dad and Gerry are getting on now in their later years.  I have memories and photos to stimulate me, and, only sometimes, that's enough.

Americans, the simpletons of British prose.

"How are we going to keep this up for 10 years?" I hissed.

"Ten years?" He looked stricken.

"Her cousin still believes in Santa Claus and he's 13!"

Her cousin is American.

The above snippet and many more like it remind of why I sometimes bristle when reading British publications.  It's a cheap joke to fall back on 'the Americans are dim-wits' schtick in one's writing.

Apparently, not only do we not carry passports, and, therefore, are likely to confuse Austria with Australia, but we are also terribly gullible to the point that a pubescent boy living somewhere in America still believes in Santa.  I was thirteen once, and, let me tell you, I knew things well beyond whether or not Father Christmas existed.  If at the age of 13 this kid still believes in Santa, then his problem isn't the fact that he's American. Maybe this thirteen-year-old-going-on-three might be suffering from some form of  '-ism'.  (At this point I would concede that we are an 'over diagnosed' society.)  Or, more to the point, he might be suffering from parents who infantilise him.  That, of course, could happen anywhere.

Lost earring

An English woman of post-retirement age wearing a slightly shabby, full-length suede coat with fuzzy collar came in to the shop tonight looking for silver polish.  As I approached I could see that pinned to her lapel was a rather large, gold brooch of some indeterminate design.  Her middle and ring fingers bore brightly-colored gem stone rings of blue sapphire and aquamarine.  In her left earlobe she wore a dangle-y earring that appeared to be made up of a cluster of small pearls.  In her right ear hung nothing.

We got to talking about silver polish versus silver cloth and about how no one seemed to possess silverware anymore (and wasn't that a shame).  Her make-up, probably finely applied earlier in the day, now appeared unfocused and smudged around her eyes.  She smelled vaguely of wine.  As we spoke, I put my right hand to my right ear and said, "you're missing an earring."  She stopped talking, immediately brought her fingers to her ear and said very loudly, "oh, shit!"

"These are Sandra's earrings!  They were given to me by her husband...ex-husband.  I wore them today as it's her birthday.  We were just down at the pub.  Oh, no.  Well, let me buy this silver cloth and then I'll go back to the pub.  The earring must have come out as I was putting on my coat.  It started to rain as I left, so I put my coat on."

As she she paid, she told me that Sandra, her best friend, had died only 18 months ago, and she had decided to wear the earrings today as a tribute to Sandra.  Before leaving the shop, I had asked her to take the coat off just to make sure that the earring wasn't caught somewhere in the collar, or had fallen down the back and gotten stuck in the lining.  The earring wasn't in the coat.  I took a quick glance around the store's floor and directly out front along the pavement in the off-chance that she'd managed to lose the earring only as she made her way into the shop.  It wasn't there.  Before retracing her steps back to the pub, I'd asked her if she wouldn't want to take off the remaining earring and pop it into her handbag for safe keeping.  She did as I asked and left.

Not ten minutes later as I was tidying up the back stock area, I heard a voice coming from the front of the store.  "It's only me," she said.  I came out from the kitchen to see the woman with the suede coat.  She was smiling.  "I found it.  I just wanted to tell you that I found the earring."  She smiled and came up to the counter.  Her eyes were wet, yet she looked happy.

"Sandra was my best friend, you know.  -diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She was gone in six weeks."  The woman started to cry.  I stood at the counter and watched her.  She dabbed her eyes with her fingers.  "Thank you," she said.  I took her outstretched hand in mine and held it a minute.  She cried a bit more and I fetched her a tissue from the bathroom.  She continued, "Sandra was so elegant.  She was always so put together, you know."  I asked how old Sandra would have been today.  "Oh, seventy-something.  A lady never tells her age" she said with a slight smile.  "We traveled together.  Oh, it was lovely!  We traveled down the Nile!"  She cried a fresh burst of tears.  I offered her a cup of tea, but she refused.  The presence of another customer entering the store seemed to cause her to leave.  She bade me farewell and moved on.

The woman who'd come in, holding a Christmas tree wrapped in mesh and standing by the entrance asked, "is she crying about her dog?"  It turned out that this was the neighborhood dog walker and the woman who had left lost her dog about a week ago.