My parents didn't want us to have pets. We were grudgingly allowed a pair of litter mate chihuahuas which I suspect were fox terrier crosses, though they had slightly buggy eyes. their noses were very fox terrierish. Double and Trouble. they were funny little things, but my mother was too cheap to have them spayed, and they died at 13 chewed up with brest tumors, common among small bitches which were never spayed nor bred. I never forgave her that goddamned cruelty, because *I*, a college student, had to bundle my 9th grade brother to hold the little old shaking pups into my dead grandmother's studebaker and drive to the vet and I had to take them in and hold each one as the vet put them down. I mistakenly lovingly pitied my very sad (at the time) little brother for his cowardice. What waste of pity that was to have been, as played out later in life. Also, she didn't give me enough money for the procedure, and I managed to pay the balance out of my last semester's allowance, but she wouldn't pay me back.

do you know, looking back, since then I've always had rescue pets, even cats. all were unhappy throwaways that needed homes.

Oh one comical thing. Someone's great Dane smelled the girls in heat from miles away, jumped his fence, jumped OUR fence, gently and lovingly picked up Double in his slobbery jaws, jumped the fence with her, carried her up the back steps to the back porch, and tried his best to mate with her and she howled and yipped with fear. Mother, who was starting to brew tea for iced tea, threw a pot of hot, but not yet scalding, water on the dog's back and he hauled off, but not before he ejaculated all over the poor Double.. whom we brought in, dropped into the main bath tub and washed with my mother's Helene Curtis shampoo.. lots of it. Poor thing. In the summer heat,the ejaculate dried on the back porch and no amount of scrubbing ever got out the stain. The house was sold some decades later with that stain in the cement, which STILL there. I had a friend go there yesterday, pull into the driveway and look at the back porch. Sure enough. Stain's still there. ((laughing))

Oh, I loved VS.. but they were so full of cholesterol the last time I looked, no can have any more! ::sigh::

Chile colorado! As long as people leave cilantro out of all latino cooking, I can have it. My ex-brother's wife's grandmother (can't remember if it's the one who went crazy and tried to burn one of her children's houses down or the other one.. both were at one time superb cooks.. and from Mexico Mexican, who didn't like living in the USA with their children because they preferred the small adobe houses and tiny towns they were raised in to E. Central Texas, even San Antonio) taught me how to make pulled braised pork tamales, and by golly, I can still season the braise, mix the maza and make them.. and I don't wait for christmas to make them for gifts. I freeze em and eat them myself, mostly. I also make them without lard, using chicken broth and they still hold together well. She also taught me how to make really good beans.. REALLY good. and I used epazote long before stores around me had it, too. I mail order it from Penzey's now.

Can we have an order of cheese enchiladas, chile colorado y arroz con refritos, and a HUGE glass of iced tea, please?

I loved learning from others how to cook, because my mother wouldn't teach me spit. didn't want me in her kitchen. I could sit on a stool far from her prep area and watch, but *not help or learn..

It was her territory and helping in it threatened her reason for being at a couple of basic emotional levels. Also she discovered I could write at an early age, could also draw and paint at an early age and she wanted me to be one of "the geniuses" who deserved a college education, not one of the girls sent to college to snag a wealthy husband, so she didn't want me cooking or sewing.. it never occurred to her that i might need the skills she went to college to learn to take care of my self.

we ate by candlelight every evening, until the last month he was alive. He was diagnosed with inoperable and untreatable cancer 32 days before he died, the discovery being the gift on his fucking 61st birthday by a shitheel cosmic practical joker if one exists. He blew out the candles that night and blew them out the next night and refused any "fripperies" that last month

He was never formally diagnosed. the specialist at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance also refused to honor the HPPA information sharing legal documents we presented him and the SCCA offices, and refused to discuss his disease with me or show me the CD with his MRI and Xrays on it.

The reason is that under the newly active right to dignified death law in WA state that spring he had asked for the Rx to allow him to suicide. He didn't live long enough with use of his arms to take the Rx medication that would have allowed him to suicide with dignity, (more than a month, more like 45 days after diagnosis. The law had been in effect for exactly 30 days when he got word he was incurable and untreatable, only could have palliative care. The doctor refused to give him a written diagnosis telling him he was terminal or how long he had, but he told us verbally that it was less than 6 months and wasn't lung cancer. On his death certificate 32 days later, teh bastard dictated lung cancer. He had A TINY new tumor in one lung, but his brain was eaten up with over 50 huge fast grown tumors and his spinal cord was riddled with them from brainstem to mid back.

A lot of viet nam vets died with similar cancer. Agent Orange. Oh, to hell with anger making memories. They don't fix jack pietic shit.

**********

Okay, I'll post my meat and ham salad recipes next, if somewhere here you will post your original tomato aspic recipe, if you have one. I kind of came up with one mixing what I remembered of the flavor of the CANNED tomato aspic Mom used to buy in grocery stores in Dallas (don't rememer brand -- just know it disappeared in 1972 or 73 or thereabouts) and cobbled up my own. I liked the stuff, on chiffonades of iceberg lettuce and a dollop of small curd cottage cheese mixed with a dab of mayo, dried snipped chives, onion powder and a few drops of worcestershire sauce and a shake or two of ground black pepper. It was refreshing on a hot summer evening, alongside a scoop of meat salad, a cold asparagus and canned green pea salad and a tall glass of real brewed over a can of lemonade iced tea with a sprig of back yard faucet mint in it. filling, but not heavy.

I graze, too, some weeks. However, I keep a bowl of the chili sammich spread in the fridge for some days about once a month. Same with tuna salad, with line caught skipjack water packed tuna these days. Same with the cottage cheese thingmummie, which I stuff into a pair of roma tomato halves or slap on top of some slices of organic tomato or toss with organic cherry tomatoes or chopped celery and cukes, and fill up on that and maybe a home made buiscuit or slice of whole grain white. Love my bread machine that gets used about once a month. It works FOR me.

I also have a couple of fast recipes for chicken baking for chicken salad but which doesn't dry out teh chicken. You bake it, let it cool on a plate in the fridge while you put your feet up and read or knit or watch a video (hate most tV these days_), and then cut it up and toss it with the other incredients for salad or mush two of the recipes a bit and add mayo and make sammiches.. keeps for a few days.

no one cares if you have cereal for lunch or half a little steak with some fast punched oven fries for breakfast. I got a potato punch. Even old wuissy arms like me can punch one little irish potato and toss it with a bit of oil and throw it into a 450 degree oven on a tray at the top of the oven to cook it brown and fast. You can have fries with scrambled egg substitute if you want.

You can broil boneless skinless stuff, chill it and cut it into strips and snarf them with the same yogurt ranch dressing you use to snarf the fries. Want hot and sour soup for breakfast? Go for it! The Ginger in that soup is good for what ails us!

Mazel hopping Tov, by gummie!