My son suggested I have a “recipe of the week” post. Since I have already posted my now famous mom’s apple pie, I thought I would go for it and see how it works out.  (I tried a “quote of the week” for awhile and responses implied they were more idealistic and how I aspire to see the world, rather than how I actually view it.  Admitting I am probably more a New Yorker cartoon type than sappy idealist, I put them on hold for awhile.)

Anyway, those who know me well are probably laughing that I am posting recipes at all as though I am known for my cooking, which I am not. Granted, I am no Barefoot Contessa,  but when I am in the mood and put my mind to it, I can make a few things pretty well.

Mimi’s Artichoke Chicken is one of them.  I got this recipe years ago from my friend, and very good cook, Mimi.  I have made it for so long, I feel like it is my recipe but if she is reading, I thought I should give her credit.

This recipe is extremely light, simple and easy to make. It’s also healthy, tastes as good or better reheated and is low in fat and carbs. So what’s not to like?

What you need:

4-5 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (I use free-range organic.)

2 cans artichoke bottoms, drained and quartered

1 lemon, halved and seeded

1 cup dry white wine (Use a decent one.  I’ve heard good cooks never cook with wine they wouldn’t drink.)

1/4 c. flour

salt and pepper

olive oil

First, cut  (or have the butcher cut–they will do it at no charge) the chicken in large chunks about the size of beef stew meat.

Place the chicken chunks in a shallow platter or large plate. Cover the chicken liberally with the juice of one lemon, careful to remove seeds before squeezing, and toss until well covered.

Take a gallon size Ziplock (or generic equivalent) bag and add about 1/4 cup flour and salt and pepper to your liking. Dump the lemon-coated chicken in the bag, zip it shut and do the old “shake and bake” until all pieces are well coated.  If you are short on coating, add a little more flour and S and P.  Extra flour only makes the sauce a bit thicker, and you can thin it later with extra wine or chicken broth.

Use a large (12″) lidded sauce pan and cover the bottom and sides with olive oil, probably 4-5 tablespoons.  Heat oil over medium heat until sizzling but not smoking. Stir and brown the flour-coated chicken in the oil until pieces are golden brown.

Add one cup wine and 1-2 cans drained and quartered artichoke bottoms, depending on how much you like artichokes.

Cover and simmer on low for about fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through.  If the sauce seems a little thick, add a little more wine or broth.  Again, I use free range organic, salted or unsalted. (The broth not the wine.) S and P to taste.

Voila!  In spite of my detailed instructions, this whole process takes about half an hour, start to finish, once the chicken is cut.  I serve mine with white or red quinoa, my new go to pasta/rice alternative. It’s a high in protein/gluten free grain and I love the flavor and texture. I cook it with chicken broth instead of water. The red is also pretty if you serve this with a green veggie. It’s also great used cold in salads the next day.

This is my son’s favorite “welcome home” dinner. And he always requests steamed artichokes as the vegetable. Gotta love that boy.

As my husband always says, and way too often, “They might have choked Artie but they’re not gonna choke me!”

My mom has taught me, or simply genetically passed on, some rules I live by, love by and find good and true.

She taught me these things by living them–not preaching, nagging, prodding or demanding.  Not that she wasn’t a master at getting her point across on many things with any or all of the latter approaches, but these things are her basics to living with and for other people that work for her and live in me.

1. Don’t think about it, do it.  If you are thinking about someone, don’t just buy the card, send it.  And go to the post office at midnight to get it to them while your thoughts about the other person are timely and meaningful. Even if that means dropping it in the post box at midnight, wearing a rain coat over your nightgown and driving in your slippers. She did this often and slept soundly knowing tomorrow wouldn’t start with an “if only I had told/him her I was thinking of them.”  In today’s world this would also translate to an email, text or IM chat;  raincoat and nightgown are not as essential unless you have video chat.

2.  When in doubt, just go. Doing anything in a difficult situation is better than nothing. Mom is the best at this with death or illness.  If someone gets bad news, just go and “be.”  You don’t have to have the right words, a bouquet of perfect roses or arrive with clean hair and mascara. Sometimes the loneliness and isolation of life altering news just needs a hug, a shared tear or the knowledge that someone else is willing to go through the crisis with you, as far as they can go for as long as you allow them. In these moments, mom often baked and took her famous apple pie. (See post 10/26/11 for recipe.)

3.  Coming from a long line of pale-lashed women, mom is the queen of a hat and sunglasses and out the door. For those of us who are not blessed with thick black lashes and a long mane that can be tied back  in seconds to a ponytail, this idea is a lifesaver. Many days, if I waited until I felt put together enough to face the world, it would be dark before I exited the house. Like mom, my sunglasses are my best friend.  Especially if I go to the grocery store at 4:00 PM and it is dark when I lug the bags to the car, I can pretend I am a movie star rather than a lazy suburban house frau and envision paparazzi crouched behind the bushes, snapping wildly.

4.  Don’t take no for an answer until you are tied to the rail road tracks and can hear the whistle.  Mom is the master of unfettered, unabashed tenacity on any subject and in any situation.  She has physically stood in front of bulldozers to stop a high school from being built in her sleepy, private neighborhood. She has written and met congressmen, mayors, church leaders and civic do-gooders to get her point, the only point, heard and often abided.  It doesn’t hurt that for most of her life, and still at 88, she is beautiful (with or without the sunglasses), irresistibly charming and persuasive. But with whatever tactics, she gets it done– and often her way.

5.  Which brings me to the only time she lost a battle (but won the war) with her children which was her recent move to an “adult living situation” near my sister and brother.  After my father’s death eight years ago, the house she and dad had built and lived in for sixty some years was too much for her to keep up; what with all the talking on the phone, letter writing and pie baking, even she was a little overwhelmed. Since we all lived out of state, the logical move was to have her live near us.  Logical to us, but not mom. She had enjoyed the good fortune of living within a two mile radius of her birthplace and most of her six siblings for over 85 years.  Mom met my dad in the church choir of a building her father had built and attended Sunday services there for more years than I have lived.  She had watched the same maple tree in her front yard grow from a sappling to a 25 foot fortress; saw countless snowfalls, dogwood’s early blossoms, sunrises, sunsets–year after year–all from the same front porch for over six decades.

No this move, this battle, I believe was her worst. She cried, she pleaded, she denied, she ignored, she “took to her bed,” even tried falling onto the fainting couch.  She pulled out all the stops but we would not budge.  And finally, on the day she was to move in to her new “home,” she had no choice and seemed to be losing her signature strength.

It was my job to drive her there.  My sister had gone ahead to arrange her room to make it as welcoming and as much like her real home as possible.  Mom got into the car silently, teary behind her sunglasses and sat stoically staring out the passenger window as we drove. I understood her pain as I saw new hills rising beside us, a new river winding beside the road, a new bridge spanning the distance ahead.

When we turned into the parking lot and the car rolled to a stop, mom pulled down the visor on her side of the car. She took off her sunglasses, dabbed her eyes with a monogrammed linen hanky, applied some lipstick, replaced her glasses and flipped up the mirror. She reached in her purse and pulled out her white cotton gloves, slowly pulled them on and sat quietly as I rounded the car to open her door and help her up the ramp to the entrance.

As we stepped into the foyer where the director, social worker and a nurse stood waiting to greet her and bring her into the fold of her fellow housemates, my mother, now my hero, extended her gloved handed and in her best Elizabeth Taylor voice said, “Hello, I am Sarah Noble.  So pleased to know you. May I see my room now?”

I don’t think I have ever admired or loved my mother more than in that moment. As the gliding doors slid shut behind us, she had, in her usual style, risen to an occasion that even I would have thought unbearable. She accepted her fate with grace.  And, as always, on her terms.

Several of you have written to ask if that handsome man in the framed picture in the last post is my husband.  And yes it is. Not only is he handsome but he is 6’4″, charming, intelligent, articulate, impeccable in social situations, has more hair than anyone deserves at “50 something,” is patient, kind, a great father, a good husband and a good man.

It’s a terrible burden to be married to such a person.

Now you know why I cut off half his face and left only his tanned neck and half smile in my blog’s header.

Well, I  was going to make this a sad sap post about walking into my quiet, empty house after two weeks of being surrounded by family and my GRANDSON and understanding for the first time the true meaning of “the silence is deafening.”  But after I wrote the title, I looked up the original quote and it is really:

If everybody thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening.

So rather than go on, I will stop here and simply post a snapshot of what I found while straightening a framed photograph on the shelves near the toy chest I keep for my adorable, perfect, constant energy, smiles and giggles grandson. The correct quotation and title should have been:

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

I don’t know about you, but I never adjusted to 2011.  First of all, I didn’t like the looks of it.  The two numeral ones side by side always seemed jolting when I wrote it on a check, saw it on a post mark or noted the date each morning in the bottom right corner of my computer. Maybe I always connected it to 9/11.  Who knows.

For me, 2011 just had no style.

Granted the year hosted some meaningful events.  Bin Laden and Gadhafi went down.  Kate and Wils gave us the best royal shindig since Di and Charles.  We lost violet-eyed Liz, the genius of Apple and against all odds by sheer will and tenacity, Gabby Giffords is still with us.  Japan had a horrific earthquake, ensuing tsunami and near catastrophic nuclear disaster. Joplin, Missouri suffered a deadly giant twister. And after 45 years of Super Bowls, the Packers beat the Steelers.  My husband was telling me yesterday, 2011 was the safest year in aviation history–worldwide.  As a tentative flyer, that’s  good.

But all in all, I am glad 2011 is behind us and I am looking forward to 2012. The numbers just flow better to me.  It appears more balanced.

My resolution is to make the most of every second of it.  You have to admit, 2013 doesn’t look quite as pretty.

So my youngest child (who is fully an adult living in LA) and I were driving to do some Christmas returns today and she said to me, “So I was texting a friend about meeting for a movie tonight and I said, ” I am feeling nostalgic, maybe I’ll call.” I sat at the stop light.  Pondered for a moment and then I asked, ” Did you at one time talk on the phone a lot with her and now you have lost touch? Why were you feeling nostalgic about calling?”

“Oh, mom,” she said brushing off the question as though fending off the smell of a bad cigar.  “No one calls any more.  It’s all text.  Calling is so, (pause) so old fashioned.”

She went on to say the friend did not text back; didn’t laugh at her witty retort and that she had texted her again to say, “Why didn’t you respond to my joke?” And the friend had written back, as in wrote back in text language on her phone, “What should I have done? Said ha ha??”

There you have it.  Why the generation behind us old folk has lost the art of tone; the joy of innuendo in conversation. They don’t talk face to face or even room to room anymore.  They text.  Under the dinner table. From the toilet.  In the middle of the movie.  I see them everywhere, the little flash lights of their phone faces popping up like fireflies in the dark.

In the movie:

“BTW, did you like that line?”

“Yeah, it was sort of funny.”

“Do you want to hold hands?”

“LOL–I would drop my phone!”

Married couple texting in bed after a fight:

“I think I am done with you.”

“Just thinking the same thing.”

“Good so that’s it.  Light’s out?”

“Perfect, but I can’t reach it.  The lamp’s on your side.”

Fingers fly, heads stay bowed, rooms are silent with animated conversation. They give new meaning to the expression, “You’re all thumbs.” Now it is a compliment.

Lord help me.  I can see it now.  Death bed scene.  Paw Paw is on the respirator but his thumbs can still move; his cell in his hand.  Maw Maw is by his side.  Eyes damp with tears, fingers tapping.

“I will miss you.”

“Me, too.”

“Fuck you, bitch, I am outa here!”

“What?”

“I typed, I love you dearly and will treasure you through eternity.  Damn that auto correct.”

These kids are going to miss the days of faulty hearing and muffled words.  The written word is black and white. And sometimes that backspace just doesn’t work fast enough.

And to think I had a bigger crush on Sal Mineo after seeing Exodus.  But then again, I was only seven…

Fourteen years ago, at age 19, my son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A year after diagnosis, he had his first brain surgery.  Five years later, his second.  In the world of brain tumors, both were considered successful.  After hours each time of tedious “resection” as the neurosurgeons call it, we got our son back, fully in tact.

A miracle to me really.

In the midst of his surgeries, radiation, chemo and recoveries,  he has attended and graduated from college, completed grad school and is now coaching high school basketball, his first love.  He is positive, hopeful and daily provides the true north our family has needed to face and accept his battle.

We are told, but are reluctant to accept, that most brain tumors are not considered curable.  But so far, with careful monitoring, he is beating the odds.

Part of that “careful monitoring” is a brain MRI every three months to look for change in his brain, a recurrence of the tumor. Every ninety days we go, my son and me, to the cancer center. After fifty some times, we have our routine. He goes earlier for his MRI.  I follow an hour or so later and we meet with the doctor.

We sit in a sterile hospital office space, blinds often drawn, a computer reflecting the images of a brain scan. Two screens sit side by side, each holding nine different egg-shaped pictures stacked three to a row like a tic tac toe board. Last time’s scan on the left and the latest on the right.

He sits in a chair and I sit across from him, as we always do.  He yawns, cracks his knuckles.  I attempt small talk. Idle chatter. Anything to distract us from the screen.  I have done this so many times, I have begun to plan ahead of time. Often on the way in the the car, flipping through the radio stations, I am rarely listening.

I am thinking, what should we talk about as we wait?

Today it was the list of items I had noticed he needed in his apartment.  Silly things.  A mop. Kleenex, Windex, a shower curtain liner. This shopping list would be today’s neutral time filler.

I have told my friends these visits are a bit like anticipating the jury’s decision, this month’s verdict. I can never decide what is worse–the waiting or the knowing.

I have become accustomed to the sounds of waiting. The nurses chatter in the hallway. Doors opening and closing. Water running. His chart slipping into the metal holder by the doorway. Cars passing outside. The horns. An occasional siren. The flag slapping against the metal pole that stands at the entrance of the hospital.

It’s all so familiar but never a comfort.

He takes his baseball cap off and scratches his head, back to front and then ear to ear as he often does. The top is bald. They said it would grow back in four to six months after radiation. But it has been over a year now and it has not.  I don’t notice any more.  But I know he does.

I listen for footsteps.  Again, familiar but unwelcome.  We wait for them to stop.  The shadow under the door.  The sound as the doctor lifts the chart from the box.  So many pages.  So many visits.

Always the question of time.

I stare at the screen and wonder if the images are my son’s or the patient before him.  The door opens.  My heart beats faster.  A nurse pokes her head in and says the doctor will be right in.  I look at my son’s face, a mixture of expectancy and relief.

“What about a toilet brush?” I ask.  “Do you have a toilet brush?”

Before he can answer, there is a rustle outside the door.  The knob turns.

“It’s stable,” the doctor says as she enters.   “I just went over it twice with the radiologist.”

I jump up and hug her like a long lost friend, forgetting her white coat, HIPPA laws and hospital decorum.

I know she is happy for us and has come to love my boy.  We are all happy.

We will have a Merry Christmas this year and hope that the New Year brings more moments like this.

I didn’t look as good as I should’ve when I could’ve and now that I want to I can’t.

                                                                                                      –Me

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.