Tea cup in watercolor by Leora Wenger, December 2012
I love the opportunity to paint. Finally, I had both a bit of time (I just put my work on hold for an hour) and some incentive (I wrote a post on guest post submissions, and I needed an illustration). I wanted an illustration that would resemble hospitality. At first I thought of a comfortable chair. Then a cozy teacup come to mind. It took less than an hour for me to produce my teacup watercolor.
Here is the story behind the tea cup. I’ve been cleaning out my father’s apartment. My daughter and I found a lovely tea cup; I assume it once belonged to my mother? I don’t remember it from childhood. It must have stayed in the china cabinet. We (my daughter and I) drink tea much more often than I did as a child (our favorite is green tea with mint – do you like tea? What kind?). So every so often my daughter says, can I please drink from a teacup? And sometimes I say yes.
Looks like one can say both tea cup or teacup. But there is no word ‘coffeecup.’ Besides, I drink coffee from a mug.
Below is the version I used on my guest post submissions rant – I do want to welcome people to my blog, either of my blogs, actually. But you will need to know how to spell teacup.
I’ve made this salad two weeks in a row. Inspired by the fresh organic bok choy at the Highland Park Farmers Market, one week I made it with an apple and the next week I used the juice of a clementine. I preferred the apple, but both versions of bok choy red cabbage salad got gobbled up.
Ingredients
1/3 – 1/2 red cabbage, chopped
5-6 bok choy leaves
1 medium onion (red or yellow) – optional
1 piece of ginger root
1 tsp. coconut oil or olive oil
sweetener: 1 apple or juice of an orange or a clementine (or use both the apple and the citrus juice)
Chop the onion. Chop the peel off the ginger root and chop into pieces. Put it aside. If using, peel and chop the apple. Heat a wok-like pan with the oil; when hot, saute the onion. After five minutes, add the chopped cabbage, chopped apple and chopped ginger. Chop the white parts of the bok choy off from the green parts. As the white part is thicker and takes longer to cook, add it first to the pan. If using citrus juice, add it now to the pan. After about ten minutes (or when the cabbage starts to soften), add the green parts of the bok choy leaves. Cook about three more minutes.
This makes a small portion – feel free to double or triple the amounts.
This recipe is inspired by the classic red cabbage salad, which I believe is a Russian dish. Of course, the Russians didn’t have bok choy to add the greenery.
A tufted titmouse enjoyed the bird feeder I refilled two days after Hurricane Sandy came and went. I am rather burnt out of talking about post-storm problems, but in quick summary, most of Highland Park now has its power restored. We had wonderful utility workers from Florida who did much of the fixing (PSE&G was maxed out – I understand nearby Edison had workers from Ontario, Canada). So thank you, Florida and Canada. A few homes reportedly did not yet have power, but they’ve been promised fixing by today. We shall see. Meanwhile, back to the birds.
I was pleased to photograph a bird new to me – thank you, Michelle, for identifying the tufted titmouse.
I’ve been seeing more blue jays recently than I have in the past. No signs of cardinals right now.
Help yourself, Mr. Blue Jay.
I will try my best to continue filling my bird feeder through the winter.
Hurricane Sandy continues her wrath, even after her winds are long gone. Many in our area suffer power outages: Highland Park, New Brunswick, Piscataway, East Brunswick. Power was restored to some after a week, only to be “taken away” after the latest noreaster (storm of a bit of snow and wind that otherwise would just be a bothersome pain) showed up.
A few photos from the past week:
A unmarked vehicle guards the house on Abbott Street with the tree wrapped with lives wires.
Previously, the trucks would be regular PSE&G vans. But it seems for guarding live wires, they need the vans elsewhere, so now we get these unmarked cars instead. Do you think they will change that motto about ‘Worry Free’? Worry full seems more like a proper description for our area. For the last two days we had a water boil advisory as well and a threat of losing water completely; that one got lifted earlier today.
Here’s another photo of the tree on the top of the house on Abbott which seems to causing many problems in our area. Our library and high school are closed, and too many house have no power.
Lots of yellow police tape when you look down Abbott. The live wires are supposedly quite dangerous, so you don’t want to walk near them.
Other parts of our borough still have no power, like North Tenth. If you think we don’t have first responders like police and fire showing up, you are wrong – they have been very on site and helpful. Problem is they can’t fix live wires. Nor can tree people.
A tree fell on this house on North Ninth Avenue. When I walked by later, the tree was gone, and the roof was patched. They are fortunate that the tree hit no wires.
I hope our neighborhood doesn’t continue to look like this much longer. Greetings recently: “Got power?” “Did you lose power (again)?” “Need an outlet, a warm cup of tea or some wifi?” “Got a plug on your porch?”
Ways to help the too many victims of storm (locally in Central New Jersey):
I was going to finish this post earlier, but we lost power (again) for an hour. Seems the fixit guys are better at breaking the power than fixing it. Hope I don’t post more about a noreaster and power outages. I did photograph some photos of birds earlier this week – possibly for next week’s Nature Notes.
Hurricane Sandy brought numerous, numerous, numerous problems. I’ll start with one in Highland Park. This gigantic tree fell on this home by N. 6th and Abbott. It has live wires entangled, so the tree guys can’t yet cut down the tree. The owners are frantic. They have contacted PSE&G and politicians. They are afraid they will lose their home because of a hole in the roof.
our 60′ maple tree that fell into our house during the storm, taking down your power lines. It bashed in our eaves, porch roof, and more. Today we went in the house and tried flushing the upstairs toilet and turned on the shower. The water came pouring into our kitchen through a lighting fixture in the ceiling. So obviously we have a sewer pipe broken from where the tree hit the upstairs & first floor bathrooms. PSE&G has not removed the tree yet–it is massive and has a dozen wires entangled in it. PSE&G needs to bring in a crane to remove the tree and the wires before the house can even be tarped. We are assuming that if we get the big storms being predicted for Tues. night into Thurs., the house will be wrecked with water and mold. Right now, because of the holes in the eaves, we have squirrels scurrying above the bedroom ceiling, building a nest up there. This is all so horrifying and preventable, I don’t even know how to cope. Because PSE&G does not consider/care that we may lose our house, we don’t know who to turn to next. It just doesn’t seem right that our house and lives have to be a casualty. We’re looking at possibly months of renovation. We’re looking at ripping out/fixing the bathrooms and kitchen, but if the house doesn’t get tarped, it will be a possibly insurmountable disaster. We’re pretty much in shock and don’t know where to turn. Call PSE&G! They will not listen to us, and have been generally unresponsive in every possible way. The weird thing is, we have power, water, and heat. We’d be happy not to have those things if we could have the tree and wires removed and could start the overhaul of our house, where we’ve lived for 30+ years. I run my business out of my house and don’t know how I’m going to do that, either.
• • •
Many homes in Highland Park are still without power. Elsewhere in New Jersey, especially by the Shore, whole communities are without power. In communities like Bradley Beach or Belmar, the water went straight through the town, not just along the boardwalk area.
A relative in New York lost her car. Many others lost homes, businesses, schools.
Because gas is difficult to come by, gas has been stolen directly from cars. Also, homes that are without power have been burglarized.
South Park got cleared of live wires yesterday – it no longer looks like this. Unclear why this got attention while other parts of Highland Park did not.
