Holy Mole!

It's pronounced MO-lay, with the accent on the first syllable, and it's a staple of Mexican culinary sauces.  I learned about it in the early 1970's when I was in California as a young missionary, trying to speak Spanish and interact with the Hispanic folks in the San Joaquin Valley.
When I asked what was in it, the nice Mexican woman that was feeding us laughed and said that basically, it was made by walking around the kitchen and throwing in a little bit of anything you could find.
So, for a long time, whenever I had a mole craving, I'd buy some Dona Maria in a bottle and spice up some chicken or whatever.

Toward the end of our three-year assignment in the highlands of Peru, I assigned a cheerful Mexican Elder to work in the office.  By luck, he turned out to be a chef  (that's Spanish for "chef"), and when Paula's birthday was approaching, he volunteered to prepare a batch of real mole.  It took him several Preparation Days to hunt down all the ingredients in the local markets.  It then took about four hours to brew up the stuff.

It was perfect, the best I'd ever had.  He had mixed up a large batch, and we froze the extra and would pull it out occasionally when no one else was around.

Of course, Paula had to have the recipe. 

A couple of days ago, with some unexpected free time, we decided to go for it.  I took the list of ingredients to our local International Food Store - Su Tienda Hispana! and found everything.

You know, in retrospect, the check-out lady did look a little bemused when she saw that I was buying most of their stock of a couple of the three kinds of dried chiles specified in the recipe. 

So, the mole factory cranked up.  First, you gently fry the chiles to start softening them up, then soak them a bit, and then try to get most of the seeds out; they are what makes a chile hot.  Then you blend them up with, and I am not making this up, chocolate, peanuts, almonds, chicken stock, sesame seeds, anise, toast, a couple of corn tortillas, salt, sugar, raisins, the three kinds of chiles, a tomato, black pepper, cinnamon sticks, pork lard (!), garlic cloves, a couple of onions, cloves, and a partridge in a pear tree.  And what the heck, throw in the pear tree.  Like I said, a couple of laps around a Mexican kitchen, and Voila! you got mole.  

 Pretty soon, the place was becoming a bit of a mess as we liquified batch after batch.

Holy mole!  We ended up with about a gallon and a half of the stuff!

It was then that I re-read Elder Islas' instructions, and realized that I had missed one teeny-weenie detail in the Spanish instructions.  The quantities specified were supposed to feed treinta personas, which translates to thirty persons!  And even then, I don't think treinta personas could have made it through HALF that much mole.

So we now have enough excellent frozen mole poblano for the next, I dunno, ten years, assuming we use it once per week.  We thought about sending it as Christmas presents, but what with peanut allergies, the fact that it would melt along the way, etc., we put that one on hold for a bit.  However, if a jar of brown goo smelling like chilies and chocolate shows up on your doorstep, you'll know that we love you.  

In the end, we hope that you're smart enough to read your recipes carefully before diving in to a new one.  And that you like mole poblano...

Dave & Paula

It's beginning to look a lot (more) like Christmas!

When we were first married, Christmas stuff started popping up around the apartment, I dunno, about the 4th of July.  I had to put a strict mandate in place that prohibited such displays until after Thanksgiving.  Same with music.

I mean, seriously, Andy Williams at the beach?!  We reached an uneasy truce.
However, it was always fun to finally pull the (fake) Christmas tree out and see the kids get so excited about decorating it, hanging stockings and putting up the lights in the windows.

Never mind the excitement of the BIG DAY actually arriving.

Speaking of other accommodations that had to be reached in the Yuletide season, we have to mention  the Torpedo Ornaments.  You know, those elegant, spindle-shaped confections of sparkling glass?

MY family always had a number of them on the tree.  When I hung a beautiful one on an early tree, Paula said, "Huh?  That looks like a TORPEDO or something!"  Over the next several years, I noticed that the mortality rate of these reminders of my happy childhood on the hardwood floors was way above average.  "Ooops!" she'd say with a big grin, "There goes another torpedo!  Sorry!"

Some years later, I mentioned this conflict in a church talk around Christmas time.  Mysteriously, boxes of these graceful awe-striking reminders of the season started appearing on our front porch.

She would try unsuccessfully to deep-six them, but I always knew to check the trash carefully around Christmas time.  It was only years later that we discovered the source - some great friends in the church who had heard the talk, and who would look for examples to drop off.

Then, there was that five-year detour to South America.  We had a couple of Christmases in Colombia,

and several in Peru.

And, before we knew it, our kids were no longer kids, and they had kids of their own, and Christmas became a time to visit them and enjoy the holiday with the next generation.

However, the torpedoes still get hung, even though it's just the two of us now.  She has quit 'accidentally' breaking them, at least in my presence.

And the garlands go up, and the house begins to feel like Christmas once more.

We hope the season is reverently joyful for you, and that your torpedoes survive another season.

Dave & Paula

Thanksgiving!

For many of you, it's probably a vision like this: 

However, for our family, it's been more like this,

or this,

 

or that,

or maybe this:

or even this:

For about as long as we can remember, we've traveled north to my brother Mark's place in Leonardtown, Maryland for Thanksgiving, assuming it wasn't my year to take call.  That meant packing up the car and leaving ASAP on Wednesday afternoon, and a bunch of fun.
One year, Mark and Amy were going to be gone to Taiwan to pick up their second son from his 2-year mission there.

When we explained to our kids why we wouldn't be able to spend Thanksgiving in Leonardtown, they said, "What's the problem?!"  We ended up doing the holiday in Mark and Amy's house without them.  

That was the famous year when the four oldest teenagers, including our two sons, came in laughing in camo's around 11:30PM.  Turns out they'd been playing laser tag in the moonlight on dirt bikes in the soybean fields.  "Yeah, after hitting a couple of ground hog holes at full gas, we figured we'd better lay off."  Good call.

The kids have always played with cousins

gone windsurfing themselves,

and played with Aunt Kathleen's doggies.

There's always some cool project with some contraption that Uncle Mark has put together.

Or something to weld.

Or somewhere to sail to.

And of course, Aunt Amy and Paula always make an incredible meal on Thanksgiving itself.

Lots of good memories from lots of Thanksgivings in Leonardtown at Uncle Mark's and Aunt Amy's.

We hope you've had a great Thanksgiving also.

Dave & Paula

Thanks for the (tons of) memories!

The digital age of photography really got going between 2000 and 2010.  It is estimated that 1.2 trillion digital images were taken in 2017, with 85% of those being captured on cell phones.  The ease and quality with which pictures are now taken and shared makes the transition a no-brainer.
However, the past is trapped on prints and negatives, and in my case, slides.  Lots and lots of slides.

Paula's Rule #1 of Hoarding Avoidance is that if something hasn't been used in two years, it's outta here.  Personally, I make sure I move occasionally so that I'm not left on the curb.  For photography, that meant that the beloved slide projector and carousels, all 43 of them, had to go.

The treasured images were carefully stored where she couldn't find them, and bit by bit during the occasional stolen hour, I'm digitizing the slides with a scanner.

Doing so, occasional family classics surface.  I mean, does this guy have great hair or what?  And how about the lapels?  Cute girl, however.

Milestones in our family history are documented, and shouldn't be lost.

OK, mostly shouldn't be lost.  (Who's that kid's mother?!)

And who let her ride the trike down the stairs?

I hung this one in an exam room, and told women that their kid would look like this if they didn't take their prenatal vitamins.  Oh, stop it; she's pushing on a screen, people!

Fond memories surface, along with an occasional sniffle.

Yes, they filled the bathtub on Christmas morning to test out Malibu Barbie.  She sank.

I've also been nominated and sustained as the caretaker of my Dad's slides, Kodachromes some of which date from the 1940's.  So, I'm the good-looking guy on the left with the glasses.  GQ tried to buy this picture for a cover, but you know, some things are just too personal.  

Most of the memories are happy ones, and I'm glad she didn't throw them out.

We hope you've got some good memories saved too, and that you don't still have about 4,500 left to run through the scanner.

Dave & Paula.