A Turnip by Any Other Name ...

A turnip by any other name ain't a goddam rutabega. Which I just found out today.

I'm an old Yankee, and when it comes to Thanksgiving, turnips are a must. Most people don't have a clue how to prepare turnips in an edible fashion. But my mother, who was an earnest Yankee, but only a middling cook, knew her tubers.

"It's the sherry. Don't skimp on the sherry," she would say while ardently pouring. And she wasn't referring to that crapalacious cooking sherry, either.

"And plenty of butter." None of that fake non-dairy good-for-your-heart drek, either.

"And don't forget the salt." A heart attack in the making, by current standards.

So when I went to Safeway to get the Thanksgiving goodies, I headed for the turnips. But they looked so small. And ridiculously priced, to my total disgust. We're not talking filet mignon, here, though you'd never know it from the price.

Anyway, since the turnips looked so small and anemic, I decided to buy rutabegas instead. They're the same family, blah blah, how different can they be?

I'm here to tell you, when I boiled those rutabegas, and mashed them, and added the sherry and butter and salt ... well, it tasted like shit, to be honest. So bitter, so awful, so stomach-twistingly bad.

So after giving the rutabegas an indecent burial, I trundled back to Safeway and got some turnips. And boiled them, and mashed them, and drenched them in butter, sherry and salt. Omigod. Bliss. I will never, never, ever make that rutabega mistake again.

Now if someone could just tell me where I could buy some bottles of boiled onions so I could make some proper creamed onions, this old Yankee would probably pass out from joy.

Click here to see Elleda's photography at the Astoria Photografpix web site

Walk the Planks

My dog isn't old, but he isn't young, either, and we love to go for walks - especially out on beaches (particularly Benson Beach). I have an SUV so it's a bit high off the ground, which wasn't an issue until a little while ago.

Suddenly, when we'd go places, I couldn't get him to jump back into the car to go home. Sometimes it would take 1/2 hour or more to coax him in. Eventually, taking him anywhere just became un-doable. I don't know who missed our outings more.

Then Clancy started whining and acting like he was in pain. But he was still eating well, and everything else was normal. Dr. Larry Goza (Omigod, is there a better vet ANYWHERE?) figured out the problem:

Clancy had herniated disks in the neck and back. No, we didn't do a truckload of X-rays. A cortisone shot, followed by a regimen of pain pills, followed by the equivalent of a non-steroid anti-inflammatory pill once a day seems to have the problem under control.

Clancy was back to his normal self, walking and wagging, and putting on his smile-on-four-legs prance. But he still couldn't get in and out of the SUV.

I scoured the Internet for ramps, etc. Found a great one, but it cost $169. Then I read the reviews, and it won't safely hold a dog that weighs more than 60 pounds. Clancy is a svelte 135 pounds. OK, some don't think he's so svelte.

I kept thinking this is just asinine, there must be an easier (and a hell of a lot cheaper) way to handle this problem. And of course, there was.

It finally occurred to me to go to City Lumber, find a nice pine plank that was 1/2 inch thick, 12 inches wide and 8-feet long. The guy who waited on me kindly cut the plank in half for me. So for $8, I have a 24" wide ramp that is 4 feet long, once the two planks placed side by side.

The next hurdle was convincing Clancy that he really, really wanted to walk the planks to get in the car. It took a bit of doing, but not much.

We went for a ride, and Clancy was so delighted to be going somewhere (anywhere), he joyfully barked at the trees. And parked cars. And clouds. And telephone poles. And damn near everything.

Thank you, Dr. Goza and City Lumber. Clancy thanks you, too.

Click here to see Elleda's photography at the Astoria Photografpix web site