Category: Something wonderful

Let’s read and eat this holiday!
Beauty · Books · Cooking · holiday · hostess with the mostess · just plain fun · Something wonderful · Thanksgiving

Let’s read and eat this holiday!

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This year’s Thanksgiving, I’m keeping it minimal. No two main dishes of both Turkey and Ham, no 12 side dishes, no pie and cakes (plural) for dessert.

It’s a bare-bones Thanksgiving dinner: ham, one side dish of green bean casserole, and one recipe inspired by something I read: Bourbon-Berries. The recipe I got years ago from Gabriel Mallor’s recipe exchange on the Ace of Spades website. Sorry, no picture of that – but it looks delicious! I’ve already made it in advance of the holiday and it is chilling in the fridge.

I smile and shake my head thinking about the Thanksgiving extravaganzas I’ve put together in the past. Last year I brined the turkey for the first time ever, taking the recipe from the Pioneer Woman’s wonderful book: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays.

That lovely book, a gift from my sister-in-law (who knows me well) helped me create my aforementioned Thanksgiving extravaganza. There were so many dishes on the table that as we were finishing, I exclaimed: “I forgot the carrots!” Or some such extraneous side – I can’t remember now. Everyone looked around and laughed. And Dad, ever the wit, said, “Well, Thanksgiving is ruined!”

Cookbooks – books that please twice

Anyone who knows me knows I love to read and I love to eat. It’s just too bad for my waistline I also love combining the two. Reading cookbooks is one of my favorite pastimes too – if you truly want to learn the history of American food, how it developed from the colonial days, suffered through the “better living through chemistry” boxes and cans of the middle 20th century and has enjoyed the renaissance since the early 70s of Alice Waters and other chefs, NEEDS to read’s James Beard’s classic: American Cookery.

I bought this book from a kiosk in the old Dutch Square Mall in spring 1985 – the year James Beard died. In a fit of religious zeal I had just decided to do a Lenten fast from Diet Coke and sweets – I was so ambitious those days! Therefore, I was hungry. So naturally I had to buy a cookbook. But this cookbook – it was an inspired choice. If I had to save one cookbook from my house in a fire, it would be this one. All the beautiful illustrated cookbooks by Susan Branch, the Moosewood Cookbook, the Pioneer Woman, *even* The Joy of Cooking – I’d leave all those to burn up if it meant I could save this book.

Beauty in the word and image

I adore the writers of cookbooks who not only write delicious recipes, but also illustrate them with beautiful artwork they’ve created. I love both cooking from and just admiring the ones I own by Susan Branch, an artist/writer/cook who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. I started with her first book, Heart of the Home: Notes from a Vineyard Kitchen, and now with the change of the seasons, I’m cooking from her aptly named Autumn. Just look at these beautiful covers and pages – all hand-drawn:

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and may you cook something special this year!

Still shining brightly
Accentuate the Positive! · Beauty · Christmas · Family · Gratitude · holiday · Something wonderful

Still shining brightly

AuntGemLeave a comment

This Christmas tree always brings joy

This is a re-run of a post I put up several years ago – which is a reprint of an article I wrote in 1993 for a small weekly paper. When my parents downsized they gave me the tree. Enjoy!

Tonight I put up the tree I “inherited” from Dad when they downsized to a patio home. Here’s the story I wrote about that tree 17 years ago for The Georgia Guardian newspaper. Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll post pictures of the decorated 2010 tree. Tonight you’ll have to make do with a picture of Pickles sitting underneath the tree:

Pickles poses by a copy of the original story of our family tree. Dad loved the story so much he matted and framed it. Once you read it, you’ll see why.

Pickles underneath the Christmas tree.
Pickles poses by a copy of the original story of our family tree.

A Tree for All Seasons

First published in the Georgia Guardian, Dec. 24, 1993
Copyright Jennifer Rust

Every family has its Yuletide traditions, and ours is no exception. We’ll be going to parties, attending the Christmas Eve candlelight service at church and decorating the tree. Yet we do something lots of people would never dream of: We pull our tree out of the attic each year.

Yes, we have an artificial tree. During my impossible-to live-with teenage years, I continually referred to it as the fake tree. I would groan and roll my eyes each time my dad pulled it out of its box, telling the story of how he bought it in 1968 for only $15. (What a bargain, I can hear him say.)

When I was in high school I would beg my parents to buy a real tree. We could decorate it with strings of popcorn and other “natural” ornaments. But each year we’d re-assemble that same old tree, sticking branches into the holes on the trunk pole and bending them into place so they’d look right.

As time passed, my brother and I graduated, left the house, got jobs. Now, I have only a few days at home to celebrate the holiday. And I’ve noticed a change in the way I feel about that tree. It happened the year before last, when my dad said, “I think we might replace this one with a new tree.”

You would have thought he suggested we replace Mom. I gasped, “No! You can’t get rid of this tree!” Even as I said it I realized why.

Because of all the laughs we have putting it up each year … because all the made-in-kindergarten ornaments look just right on it … because we’ve had it for 25 years, and how many things last that long? Heck, that tree is the same age as my brother Bill and we’re keeping him.

That artificial, fake but eternal tree has become so much more than a decorative centerpiece upon which to hang the ornaments. It is a symbol of all those Christmases past and all the memories we share. That glorious fake fir has become a holiday tradition of its won. I wouldn’t trade it for the most majestic blue spruce around.

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Moving toward the Spirit, Part 4
Beauty · Gratitude · Introspection · me · Something wonderful · Sunday lesson

Moving toward the Spirit, Part 4

AuntGem1 Comment

This is the fourth in a multi-part series on how I grew in my Christian faith. See part 1, part 2, and part 3 to catch up.

Ah, the recycling. That and the fact I was pulled in so many directions, like most American teens, had a lot to do with my falling away from the faith for quite some time. I may have attended church during the college years, but it was a faith grown “lukewarm.” Yuck.

After graduation I moved to Savannah in early 1990 for my first job. Sad to say, part of my motivation for finding a church was 1) because the president of the place I interviewed at told me about important church was to him and 2) I was looking for one of those beautiful old churches in the historic district. Not too much on the actual faith part – more of a “looking good” type churchgoer. In a happy accident I wandered across one of the most spirit-filled churches of all, which just happened to be historic, beautiful, and blessed with a magnificent 60-rank Noack organ: Wesley Monumental Church. I was determined to go to a church with glorious music just once in my life!

Wesley Monumental at Christmas – I was lucky enough to sing in that choir
Continue reading “Moving toward the Spirit, Part 4” →
Moving toward the Spirit, part 2
Gratitude · Introspection · me · Something wonderful

Moving toward the Spirit, part 2

AuntGem3 Comments

this is the second part of a series. The image above: Noah’s Ark by Edward Hicks

Believing was so simple, so pure when I was a child. God said through the Psalmist he who had clean hands and a pure heart would ascend the hill of the Lord. And I wanted that.

“…Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:3

I think the first scattering doubts crept in when I read a child’s version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It had to be around fifth grade, maybe fourth. This volume was published by Disney! It had to be okay. Disney was practically patriotic in our house. Some of the only television we kids were allowed was Sunday night’s Wonderful World of Walt Disney.

There was a character in the epic named Ut-napishtim. In these stories from Mesopotamian mythology, he survived a great flood by building a ship to transport his family and some animals. Hmm….

Continue reading “Moving toward the Spirit, part 2” →
Moving toward the Spirit, part 1
Beauty · Gratitude · Introspection · me · Something wonderful

Moving toward the Spirit, part 1

AuntGem3 Comments

This is the first of several parts.

I was a conscientious kid who loved going to church at Virginia Wingard Memorial United Methodist Church. My favorite parts were singing in the children’s choir and looking at the beautiful stained-glass windows when the sermons got boring. The windows depicted the life of Christ. As I remember there were seven or eight on each side. His birth in a stable was shown in the first one on the right, leading to his baptism by John in the next window, and so on down the right side and around to the left, culminating in his first resurrection appearance (or was it his ascension? I think that was it. I’m having trouble remembering) on the left closest to the front. Those stained-glass windows were an education in themselves, helping little kids who couldn’t pay attention to the sermon the basics of the faith in beautiful colored pictures that shone gloriously when the sun hit them just right.

I just looked all over the web for pictures of those beautiful windows and the best I can do is an image of someone’s wedding, when they aren’t even the focus. Besides, in 1990 the church redid the interior, changing the pew alignment, the choir arrangement and the color of the walls. Those windows will have to live on in my imagination. Because I can’t find a picture of that beautiful stained glass of my childhood, the header image is something just as glorious: the stained glass at Sainte-Chappelle in Paris. Be sure to click over to the site for the tour.

Learning to sing

Back in the early 70s kids’ choirs everywhere were singing “Do You Hear What I Hear” at Christmas. We did it for a big extravaganza presentation with the combined children’s and adult choirs. Our adult choir director and director of music, for many years, was Dr. Richard Conant, RIP, a wonderful singer, professor of voice at the University of South Carolina, and founding director of Carolina Alive.

Continue reading “Moving toward the Spirit, part 1” →
Family · Gratitude · Something wonderful

Happy Birthday to a lovely lady

AuntGem1 Comment

Today, March 5, is my Mom’s birthday.

When I think of Mom, I think of the time the two of us went to Savannah together for the weekend. I was worried about what we’d say to each other for 72 hours of togetherness. It was the first time in some years we’d spent that much time just by ourselves. What would I say to her all weekend? Would it be awkward?

I needn’t have worried. The minute I picked her up she started chatting about anything and everything. She chatted happily all weekend, the extrovert. All I had to do was listen.

Another memory I have of Mom is of her making cocoa for me and my brother after school on cold, rainy days. And of her being the Girl Scout cookie captain for five years running – as well as the Cub Scout den mother for my brother’s pack. (Never forgot one of the Cubs eating so many cupcakes he made himself sick.)

Mom was the modern day Centaur, as Erma Bombeck said – half woman, half station wagon. Or in her case, a light blue 1970 Ford LTD. She chauffeured me and my friends to kindergarten, ballet class, piano rehearsals and later high school band practice.

She was a dedicated worker. She was never late to her job as a nurse – in fact, she’d get uptight about her schedule and be ready 30 minutes before she had to leave for her afternoon shift, just to give herself time to relax. In my memory she didn’t get sick and hardly took time off. At her retirement party the organizers limited the 10 speakers on the program to two minutes each. That was after the presentation of the plaques from the mayor and the governor.

For all her talents, Mom was not Julia Child – and she didn’t pretend or try to be. She was firmly out of the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) mode of cooking – boil it to death because water is a spice. I couldn’t eat green beans after I left home until I discovered steaming.

But Dad liked his green beans that way – and he was the one she was cooking for, not us kids. She always catered to him, making him a priority. Cookies Dad liked – he got them. Dishes he liked – he got them. Even today she cooks a hot lunch for him most days. Funny tale about that: right after they moved into their current patio home community, Dad got a part-time job at the model home across the street. Mom would cook his lunch and carry it over to him each day at noon. One day the neighbors reported that a few minutes after they saw Mom return home, she was back out the door to go to Dad – with a ketchup bottle in her hand.

Mom understands loyalty, fidelity, service and love. A 54-year marriage (and counting), as well as a 25-year career, is proof.

Happy 75th Birthday, Mom. May you have many, many more.

Mom laughing
Mom (far right) with my Aunts: Anne, Marlys, Audrey and Elaine; at the Rust Family Reunion in Downtown Sioux Falls, Sept. 2012

Cooking · Gratitude · just plain fun · Something wonderful · Travel

Dinner at the “wurst” restaurant in town

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Ever since I read about this place in the New York issue of Gourmet Magazine (in 2004!) I’ve wanted to go to Hallo Berlin. The restaurant is located on 10th Avenue, between 44th and 45th, so it’s just far enough from the Times Square area to feel like you’re in a residential part of the city.

NYC brownstones
45th street between 9th and 10th Avenues. I kept expecting the Cosby family to spill out of one of the brownstones.

The restaurant’s exterior awning proudly proclaims “Germany.”

Hallo Berlin front awning
It’s always time for sausage and beer at Hallo Berlin.

I had the two wurst plate, which came with sauerkraut, red cabbage and spaetzle. Plus cabbage and potato soup to start. I choose bratwurst and knockwurst.

Wurst at Hallo Berlin
You can only see one of the two mustards which accompany the gorgeous sausages and sides at Hallo Berlin.

It was delicious!

blogging · Cat · just plain fun · Something wonderful · Travel

Matilda writes back

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Look at how well the Algonquin Hotel handles publicity… they have an email address for their cat! This is excellent PR. These are my email exchanges with Matilda… Start at the bottom and work your way up.

From: MAlgonquin Cat <MAlgonquinCat@algonquinhotel.com>
Date: March 21, 2013, 10:16:42 AM EDT
To: J

Subject: RE: My blog post about YOU

FURbulous! Thank you.

From: J
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:22 AM
To: MAlgonquin Cat
Subject: Re: My blog post about YOU

Thank you for the info… I’ve just updated my blog.
On Mar 20, 2013, at 10:12 AM, MAlgonquin Cat <MAlgonquinCat@algonquinhotel.com> wrote:

Very CATabulous – thank you but please note I am the 10th cat and the third Matilda – the first seven cats were all males named Hamlet.

Please come by anytime. I like making new FURiends

Have a PURRfect day

^..^

><

Matilda

From: j
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 8:57 AM
To: MAlgonquin Cat
Subject: My blog post about YOU

Hi Matilda,

I’m visiting NYC for a few days and dropped by to catch a glimpse of you. The concierge was so kind; he let me come in and get a picture. Thought you might like a link to my blog post:

https://auntjim.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/the-algonquins-most-famous-guest/

I had to stay somewhere else due to my conference in the city; hope to stay at your place next time I come to town.

J