good housekeeping

Let Us Now Be Good Company

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

The French Café tells us we can frequent Parisian coffee shops of our choice, perhaps because of “the landlord’s personality, the clientele, the ambience, or the décor.”  In a rural setting we are told the décor of old country cafes is frugal, but that, “they often create their own atmosphere of romance and poetry with a remarkable economy of means.”

There is something particularly satisfying about creating our “own atmosphere of romance and poetry with a remarkable economy of means.”  You don’t need a new French Press to make coffee.  Indeed you can brew a satisfactory cup boiling it on the stovetop!

One of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever tasted was cheapo store brand coffee steaming hot out of a thermos.  I was in the back seat of my husband John’s truck, it was very cold outside, we were crossing a high mountain pass.  John was driving, my brother in the front seat with him, and my beloved, beloved sister-in-law sat beside me.  My sister-in-law is steady, to be depended upon to keep up her end of the positivity bargain at all times. I’ve been sharing meals with Liz since the seventh grade, and she hasn’t failed yet to be good and pleasant company, the kind of company that makes a meal a feast, in fact.

The flavor is enhanced by the setting and the company, so let’s all be sure we’re good company!

I was with good company last week driving with my daughter Rebekah and friend Pam when we got on that subject: politics–the fraudulent elections, disappointments being handed out by the Supreme Court (only Justice Thomas does not disappoint), traitors in Congress, small business woes, etc. Pam reached over and touched my arm. “I’m sorry,” she said, “for ranting about all that.”

But because she was ending all of it with her trust in God, with quoting and reminding us all of Psalm 37, with seeing all the good that is coming out of the bad (and there’s lots of it, especially in that Christians are humbly remembering who their Savior is), it wasn’t a rant. It was an air clearing and mutual exhortation among good company.

Keeping our eyes lifted doesn’t mean we don’t know what’s happening, or that we aren’t doing something about it. It just means we’re looking to our only hope. We’re keeping good company with good company.

Let’s enjoy life a little, and let me say it you and to myself again–let’s be good company.

Rx: Open the Windows and Breeze Through January!

~ Bev Parker ~ 1 Comment

Rx #1:  It may be January in the Rockies, and a bit nippish outside, but what is that to stuffiness and last night’s garlic odors permeating the inside?  Why not build a fire, put on a sweater and big socks, and open the windows?

Then get moving and start Spring Cleaning.  Morning till about 2:00, when it’s time for just a few more details under the belt, and a bit of a walk out of doors, before a nice cuppa.  Have I lost my mind?  Why, you may be asking, would I want to do Spring Cleaning in January?  Is it because it will be way too nice outside to be cleaning when Spring gets here?  Or because the house is getting a bit crusty, what with doing only surface cleaning over the holidays?  Maybe it’s just that I can’t stand to open my closet, or the pantry, or look very closely at anything.

It could be a bit of all the above, but for me, it’s mostly that January can be a bit long.  But still, you may be wondering, how could cleaning make it better?  Cleaning is, everyone knows, menial.,  Wrong.  Menial, the dictionary tells us, means “not requiring much skill and lacking prestige.”  The dictionary can be misleading, I say.  Done well, homemaking requires a great deal of skill, as evidenced by how few people can do it.  As to lacking prestige, there’s very little that makes me feel better about myself and life in general, more prestigious, than a clean and orderly home.

To clean and orderly, add happily and beautifully decorated (not “fashionable and politically correct” decorating), comfortable and comforting, relaxing and restoring, aromatic with both home-concocted essential oil sprays (see below) and no-bake cookies (those are coming later this evening because we don’t want to get carried away with all this weight-loss and fitness stuff), and all five CD trays filled and playing Mozart, and I feel more than prestigious.  I feel blessed.

So, give it a try.  Rather than more of the same (leftover holiday habits) – eating and drinking mindlessly, watching stupid stuff on the Net, and feeling like a big lump, try my prescription.  First, open the windows . . .

As for that essential oil spray:  I had an almost-empty bottle of “Balance” from “The Good Home” and I just added water and more oils.  I didn’t have all the oils in the original and might I add marvelous formula, so I added several citrus oils, some Cedarwood, and Cassia, and went through the house spraying anything and everything.  I just  realized I forgot the Clove! Clove is on the way as soon as I finish this post.

Speaking of Clove, add it to your evening drink, or whatever else you can think of, along with other very warm and marvelous oils and spices, such as caraway, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and cinnamon, and you will be both physically and emotionally fed.

Rx#2:  This is for getting through long January evenings when you’re sure it must be bedtime and it’s not yet 7:00 p.m.  This is when I do my evening ablutions (such a lovely word), put on my pajamas, and settle in with a very good book (ideas coming right up).  If I get sleepy again before I want to turn in, I take a break and make a lovely evening drink, and here’s the recipe:

Warm milk, honey, vanilla extract, with cinnamon and nutmeg on top.  This must, of course, be imbibed from your very favorite mug.  You could try this, or your variation thereof, and call it your January bedtime story drink (we did this with goat milk when the kids were little and read aloud together – very fun and a way to get rid of the free goat milk our neighbors gave us).  This is a perfect time to concoct your own version of an Internet Chai recipe – I just look for what looks really spicy, then double the spice amounts.  Yay! for warmth in January.

Maybe in February (Valentine’s Day and Chocolates) add cocoa and almond flavoring to your drink and plenty of ORGANIC* heavy whipping cream.  Don’t think of this as fattening.  Rather, have only one reasonably sized mug of it and think of yourself as blessed.

And now for those books:  I started one the other night and had to tear some of the pages out lest anyone in my house see me reading such trash (OK, so you don’t do that, but do you hide the Jo Jo’s?).  Finally, this entire book went into the trash.  I went to the library the next day and came home with TREASURES:  Comstock Lode by Louis L’Amour and Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington.  I’m about 2/3 through Up From Slavery  and halfway through Comstock Lode.  Both are riveting.

It’s about time I had a cuppa (something) and did a bit of reading – Booker T. and me, and Louis as well, so swell (I know you’ll forgive my corny-ness).  Thanks for being with me, and I wish you a Happy, Blah-Free January.  Amen.

*I said ORGANIC because otherwise you may be drinking carageenan, which for me causes joint pain.  Not good, not what I want to be worrying with in my fun January.