Barbara's Meanderings

It is: Penny Ehrenkranz!!!!

I want to thank Penny for commenting on almost every interview post and your free book will be sent to you as soon as I let Jennifer know about it. Enjoy!!!

The second thing I want to talk about is a comment my husband made to me and told me to put it on my blog. It's actually a political prediction and concerns the health care reform bill. Seriously, I wasn't even writing my blog post, but something came on the news about the health care reform situation and my daughter and he had a discussion about what would be the ultimate end. So then my husband said that he knew exactly how it was going to turn out and I should write about it here. Let me tell you that this is a definite first for him. He does read my blog, which surprised me, but I'm also thrilled that he does. But this is the first time he has ever given me anything to put on it.

I should give you a little background on my husband, because you might not understand why this is significant for me. He was a history major in college, though he wound up becoming an attorney instead.:) He should have been a history professor, because he spends his day finding information and then teaching it to us.:) His greatest happiness is when he can tell us something new that he just learned. If you ask him a question he has the answer most of the time and he is able to tell you the history of almost every major American and European event. He has always been my go-to guy for trivia too. He knows the most trivial facts about musicians and sports figures. But his major attention has always been politics and government. He can cut between the bullsh-t and get to the truth, and he reads magazines like Mother Jones and The Progressive for fun. He can do the Times crossword puzzle in an hour or so and does all of the puzzles on the page. (Hal, if you're reading this, I hope that you are at least blushing a little:))

So this is his prediction. He bases it on the time when the Knicks needed a boost to win the championship and Willis Reed, who had a serious leg injury, dragged himself onto the floor so he could be there as their center and scored the first four points. It boosted the spirits of the Knicks and they won the championship from his inspiration.

He thinks that the health care reform bill is going to come to a vote and it will need one more vote to pass. Then at the last minute Ted Kennedy like Willis Reed will take himself out of his sick bed, force himself to come to the Senate just to vote and the bill will pass.

Can you imagine that scene? If he walks by himself there will be the handshakes and the back pats of his colleagues. The attention will bring out all of the media for this event and they will crowd the Congressional corridor as he arrives. But if he has to be wheeled in that will cause even more sympathy and of course the media will jump on that too. Either way he wins and the bill passes. This can happen without a single Republican vote!

So, we'll see. If it happens remember where you read about it first. I don't think any of the other blogs have this at all. Remember, my husband could be a pundit on TV. In fact, he probably knows as much as any of them. We keep telling him to start his own show, because it would be so awesome. So store this away and when it happens think Hal predicted this. I read about it on Barbara's Meanderings. Cool!! Let's see if he's right.*(See Note)

Talking about history, last weekend we went to see "Julie and Julia", which was such a good film! I had seen the original Julia Child cooking shows, The French Chef, when we lived in Buffalo in the early '70s. Her exuberance made me want to cook and I wound up getting Mastering the Art of French Cooking for a gift. So I started cooking for my friends and gave these elaborate dinner parties. It took me hours to get a dinner prepared and I had my share of disasters. Most of the time, though, my dinner guests loved the food and I was encouraged to continue.

There was one time when I thought my dinner would be ruined when our Newfoundland puppy, Lady Balzac, who was very large, got up on her hind legs and almost reached my main dish which had taken me three hours to cook. I reached it just in time to push it away from her, but my guests had seen the dog's tongue about to lick it. Yuck! Still they ate it, because she had never actually gotten her tongue near it. I might have had to cut it off!!! No seriously, I loved that dog and unfortunately she is not with us anymore. She was so sweet you couldn't be mad at her too long.:) I'll try to put some pictures of her here soon. You might remember my post about my second puppy, Flash on the blog post: The Last Poem A Day for Day 30 - April is Over.

Anyway, back to the cooking. When I had my children I stopped making elaborate dinners and my Julia Child cook book was just another one on my shelf for years. Then she wrote The Way to Cook and at a Book Fair on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan I found her in a booth and though I didn't have the book for her to sign she signed a piece of paper for me. I kept it safe and when I got home I pasted it onto the page of my book. I was so excited to have finally met her and she was so gracious to me. My little brush with culinary greatness!!!

The movie brought back all my excitement about cooking and made me want to try out some new recipes from the books. Since we saw the movie I have cooked at least five dishes from her books. I was so excited when I baked her french bread and it came out perfectly. All the pictures matched.:)

Then my older daughter, who can't resist a book she wants, got the paperback of My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme and she read it in a few days. I picked it up and immediately I was back in that dingy apartment in Buffalo listening to Julia Child instruct me on the proper way to bone a chicken, etc. Her voice is there from the first page. It is a delightful book about her adventures and her foray into cooking. I haven't finished it yet, but I look forward to reading it like I usually do for a novel. :) I can't wait to read more about her life. I mean we walk with her through the markets and shops of Paris in 1949. She describes her experiences as she delves into cooking. But what I like about this is her relationships and her honesty. She wrote this with her nephew and he gives her the leeway to be herself in this book.

Anyway, it's a great book, so if you see it you should pick it up and read it. If you are interested in history this is also a good way to see what was happening in America at that time as well as see what the French were like then too.:)

It even has made my older daughter, who never, ever cooks, think about learning to cook!!! I hope she does want to learn, because I'd love to teach her with Julia's book of course. :)

Time to stop, but please come back for this week's guest author interview, RD Larson, who has written some very interesting books including Evil Angel, her latest.

*Note: Last Thursday when I posted that prediction by my husband I had no idea that Senator Kennedy would pass away. I am deeply saddened by his passing and hope that the Democrats will be able to come together and pass the health care reform bill finally!!!