Pita Chips

I admit to being exceedingly fond of Trader Joe's hummus and have been experimenting with recipes for homemade pita chips to eat with the hummus. I've finally hit upon the right combination of pita, oven temperature and time and have developed a delicious and dependable recipe for low fat, crispy pita chips. It's important to use very thin pita. Thicker pita, which is great for sandwiches, does not get very crisp.

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
• Spray a small amount of oil onto a jelly roll pan and spread it with a paper towel or pastry brush so the pan is very lightly coated.
• Cut up 2-3 large pitas (about 12 inches in diameter) from a package of very thin, not puffy pita bread, such as pita from Alkhyam Bakery in Chicago. I like to cut the pita into long strips about an inch or so wide and then cut the strips to form squares. I don't split the pockets apart.
• Lay the pieces of pita out in a single layer on the sheet.
• Sprinkle lightly with table salt.
• Bake at 375 for 7-9 minutes, until the chips turn light brown. (In my oven I find 8-9 minutes gets them good and crispy.)
• Cool and then store in an airtight container.

These are really tasty, albeit a little delicate, and they have very little fat. And they are oh, so easy and inexpensive to make.

Unusual October

October is generally one of my favorite months, but this year it has been gloomy and we've had record breaking amounts of rain. The wet days have been punctuated, here and there, by a dry sunny day, only to revert to rain in a day or two. The rain has beaten many of the leaves off the trees early, so we've lost some of the fall color we would normally have. It also makes it hard to deal with the dogs, neither of whom particularly likes to go out in the rain. When I can coax them outside either due to a break in the rain, or out of their own desperation, I then have to wipe their paws are they come back inside, and there has been a little too much paw wiping for their comfort as well as mine. Tomorrow is supposed to provide some respite, so I hope to get out with my camera and seek a little color before all the leaves have dropped.

Sam and Maya

Birding from Bed

As I lie awake in bed on spring mornings, I listen to, and can identify many of the birds by their songs and calls:  The insistent chew chew chew chew of the cardinal, the warbling trill of the house wren, "match, match, match, pleaaase turn on the tea kettle" from the song sparrow, and the "weep" of the great crested flycatcher.

This morning I awoke much earlier than I would have liked and normally I would have turned over and tried for more sleep had I not glanced out my window.  Just outside my bedroom is a large sweet gum, its branches occupying much of my view. But it was movement in a very distant oak that caught my eye.  There seemed to be a lot of activity in the large tree whose leaves are barely open.  By chance, my binoculars were within reach so I picked them up despite feeling fairly certain that the birds were too far off to identify by sight.  As I scanned the branches I saw a bird flitting about amongst the limbs. I focused in as best I could through window and screen and caught a flash of bright magenta. It was a fleeting glimpse so I didn't know for sure whether I was imagining the color.  Although holding my binoculars above me while on my back was becoming more uncomfortable, I scanned the tree again and soon saw a bird of similar size fly from a branch and noted its large white rump patch. A deep pink breast and a large white rump; I was viewing handsome rose-breasted grosbeaks feeding among the tiny leaves and dangling flowers of the oak.  What a lovely start to the morning and the month of May!  

Come fly with me…

I love to have a window seat when I fly so I can look out and take photographs of the world from that perspective. I have pictures of farmland looking like a tidy patchwork quilt in greens and browns and yellows. I have photographed the peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains cloaked in snow. I have a catalogue of cloud formations. On my most recent trip I was able to photograph the distant Statue of Liberty and the skylines of both lower and midtown Manhattan. I had clear views of the Brooklyn and Queensborough Bridges. Once I changed planes at LaGuardia, I took off on another flight and was able to capture images of the bridges of my childhood connecting Long Island to Westchester County and serving as the gateway to New England, a favorite family vacation destination.

I wish I had taken to pulling out my camera much earlier in my flying days. I would love to be able to look back at the tops of the Alps, the outline of Greece, the North Central coast of Africa, where blue water meets the vast shoreline that curves just as it appears on a map. Then onto the Sahara for hundreds and hundreds of miles, finally catching up with the Nile and the swath of green on either side of the river: a stripe amidst the khaki color of the surrounding desert. Oh, how I wish I had taken pictures of the vast frozen north as I returned from Amsterdam by way of Minneapolis, or the view of Hawaii from miles above the Earth while traveling to Australia. All of these represent spectacular scenery on a grand scale.

Once, when I was flying at night, I sat next to a man who worked for Phillips Electric Company. As we crossed the country and saw pockets of light scattered throughout the darkness, he made the comment that seeing all those lights down below made him feel so good about his work. Sometimes one has to take a big step back, or in this case, up to appreciate one’s role in the world.

Escape to Alcatraz

The heat has been so intense in the Midwest these past few weeks that I was delighted to have a good reason to leave it. I had a meeting in San Francisco and left town on Sunday, just before the daytime temperatures rocketed even higher into triple digits. Apparently it reached 105 degrees on Wednesday before a minor cool front came through the area. I returned in the early evening on Thursday to a slightly more bearable 90 degrees.

San Francisco was both uncharacteristically warm at 65 degrees for a high, and amazingly clear with beautiful blue skies. The fog banks that sit offshore just west of the city held back just enough to allow San Francisco to be lovely and not too cold. There is some debate as to whether Mark Twain really said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco", but when the fog does roll in it is nice to have extra layers to wear. In any event it was a most welcome break from the oppressive heat at home, and whatever the weather in the Midwest, it's always delightful to have an excuse to visit the city by the bay.

The Dog Days of Summer

It is early August and the heat is on here in the Midwest. Last night we left the air conditioner on all night. I usually turn it off after the 10 o'clock news, open all the windows, and then switch on the ceiling fan when I head to my room for the night. However, last night the air outdoors was thick and hot and still, even at 10:30 at night. Clearly the ceiling fan would not have been enough to keep the room from becoming a humid, hot chamber in which sleep would have been filled with much tossing and turning and frustration. Unfortunately it looks as though the air conditioner will get a workout this week, as we expect temperatures in the 98-100 range, with high humidity for at least the next five days. May it please hold up as it is rather old! St. Louis in the summertime!

My mother told me stories of her youth in Baltimore, another steamy city, long before the days of air conditioning. On the hottest days she and her sister would spend much time in the bath to keep cool. How did other people manage to bear such intolerable heat? Last night I saw pictures of men in Baghdad, where it is over 120 degrees, sitting on the floor of a shop, fanning themselves. They did not have power, and for that matter, don't on a very regular basis. How do they bear it?

Last summer we had a strong storm that knocked out power in much of the region, and we lost electricity at my house for 4 days. The first day was tolerable because a cool front (cool being a relative term here) had passed through with the storm. The basement, always the center of operations in the summertime, remained comfortable for the first day and a half. As the heat outdoors rose quickly towards 100 over the next couple of days by the final day without power, even the basement was barely a comfortable refuge. That memory alone is enough to make me call first thing on Monday morning to have the air conditioning checked. Note for the future: make sure to call in the experts during the spring to ensure reliable cooling during the dog days of summer.

News in Brief

News in brief as of July 19th:

• A red-shouldered hawk has taken up residence and our rabbit population, which was out of this world, seems to have declined dramatically.
• There are moles in the front yard and now in the back garden. They are leaving large mounds of soil in the lawn. They are unstoppable.
• It is hot and the mosquitoes are bad.
• A cold front is to move through tonight, perhaps violently, and we should experience cooler (low 80's!) and drier conditions.
• I love the summer for its wonderful variety of fruit -- just had a great cantaloupe for breakfast. Plums are plentiful in the markets and are to be found in great variety. Unfortunately our local peach crop was decimated after a very warm spell in the late winter followed by an unusually cold freeze of several days in early spring when the peach trees were in bloom. This is a great loss to both orchards and eaters, as the local peaches are generally a highlight of late July and August.
• I recently finished the fascinating book FLU by Gina Kolata on the 1918 flu pandemic that killed more people around the world than were killed in the whole of World War 1. It is a fascinating look at a horrible plague that raced around the globe and the scientific detective work done over the years to determine its source and why it was so deadly, particularly for those usually able to overcome the flu: people in their 20's, 30's and 40's. I'm anxious to read more on the same topic.

All for now. More soon.