For most of my life, I have had jeans-envy. Being vertically challenged, I have always been jealous of my male counterparts who could walk into a store, find a pair of jeans that fit them both waist-wise and length-wise and walk out with pants ready to wear. No trip to the tailors’ necessary. No hemming once they got home. Just jeans that Goldilocks would love: not too short, not too long, but just right.
Women’s jeans come in three lengths: “Tall,” (which I am definitely not), “Average,” (which I consider myself pretty close to being), or “Short,” (which designers apparently think I am).
The problem with“Average” jeans is that I am not 5’7” unless I am in 4-inch heels, and even then, when I’m not twisting my ankle, I’m stepping on the hem of the”Average”jeans. “Short” jeans are fine until they are washed, and then they are just too short. They come to the tops of my feet and just sit there, no way close to looking cool and fashionable.
Last week, while waiting for my daughters’ dance classes to end, I wandered into Steinmart. Near the entrance were several racks of jeans, Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, Nine West…I walked over, remembering when all I wanted in life was a pair of Calvins. I took the jeans in hand and noticed something odd. Not only was there the usual size 8, there was an additional number, “32.”
I stopped. Could it be? I checked another pair. They said, “Size 10, 30.” I flipped through all the jeans on the rack, and sure enough, it was true! I could buy a pair of jeans not only by waist size, but also by length! There were “4, 29s” and “6, 33s” and “12, 30s.” Jeans to fit any and every woman who ever wished that she, like every single man who ever bought jeans, could buy hers by length as well as width.
I tried on several pair before I found the right size for me (I guess the designers were right about me!), but I walked out with a pair of Nine West jeans that were just right. I call them my Goldilocks jeans!
You can probably find these at any local department store that carries Calvin Klein and Nine West , but I got mine at Steinmart, ready to wear, for $29.99. (I still didn’t get a pair of Calvins, but I got cool and fashionable, and that’s what it’s all about!)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Snapping Beans
When I was a kid, my mom put up a lot of food each summer. It started in June when we'd go pick strawberries. Within the week, we'd have half a dozen batches strawberry jam in the freezer and bags of strawberries frozen to eat over ice cream later in the winter. As summer moved on, she would do the same for blackberries and peaches, making jam and bags of frozen fruit out of both. I didn't mind helping with those. I would pop pieces of ripe fruit in my mouth while we worked so that by the time we were finished, my chin was dribbled red or purple and I was sticky all over.
When tomatoes started coming in, Mom would make spaghetti sauce to freeze for us to eat later too. I loved helping with those tomatoes. She would bring a big pot of water to a boil and then drop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds or so. Then she would scoop them out real fast and put them in an ice water bath. Right away, the skins would split and start to peel off. I thought it was so cool to just pop the skin of the tomato off and put the flesh into the big Pyrex bowl where it waited for chopping. Then we'd cut the tomatoes in half and dig our fingers down the sides to scoop out as many seeds as we could. Soon the house would be filled with the aroma of garlic and onions and oregano and if someone didn't know any better, they'd think they were in Italy when they walked into the kitchen.
We had an apple tree in the back yard for a time. The neighbors behind us did too. Neither tree bore great fruit because neither my dad nor the neighbor sprayed for pests, but the trees did have apples every year and those trees are where my love for food preparation and storage ends. The apples from these particular trees were tiny, about the size of a lemon. They were irregular and spotted and wormy. Mom didn't care. She'd send us out to pick any apples we could reach and even pick up the ones that had fallen on the ground. We couldn't pick apples from the neighbor's tree, but since many limbs hung over our yard, Mom figured that any apples that fell into our yard were fair game, so we had to pick them up too. Didn't matter if the apples were bruised on one side or half eaten by bugs. Mom would cut the bad parts out and slice the rest for apple sauce, freezer bags, and pies. I hated it. The apples were so small that they were difficult to peel. I hated cutting into one to find that I had also cut a worm in half. I worried about how many worms made it into the winter stash without my knowledge. It was just a chore. But we sure loved the apples come January when Mom would take a bag out of the freezer and heat them on the stove with cinnamon and sugar and serve them with dinner.
Corn and green beans put me over the edge too. My dad had a friend who would send a bushel or two of corn home just out of the blue. We never knew when it would come. Dad would pull into the drive with a grin on his face and haul out two big burlap bags of corn. Mom's face would fall because she knew the work that had unexpectedly come her way for she had to put the corn up immediately or it would get tough. That was another job I hated. The corn always had worms and it was sticky and the silks made me itch. I dreaded pulling back the husks to find a big, fat, white corn worm gnawing away at the kernels. Once we got the husks pulled off, we had to cut the kernels off the cobs and into a big bowl. Then Mom would take the back of her knife and scrape the cobs to get all the juice out of the corn that she could. Corn juice would fly all over the kitchen. It was mess! We'd be sticking to the floor for days after, but again, there was nothing like a bag of sweet corn from the freezer, fried up with butter and salt in the middle of winter.
My least favorite job, however, was snapping beans. We would get a big bushel basket every so often and we'd have to sit out on the patio and snap the beans into bite sized pieces so Mom could can them the next day. I thought there must not have been a bottom to that old basket because it felt like it took forever to break up those beans. Mom would can them the next day and the house would be hot and we would be banned from the kitchen in case the canner blew up. I was terrified that that would happen. I had visions of the lid to the canner flying through the air and slicing through the wall. The jars would explode and Mom would die in a hail of green beans and glass. Of course it never happened, but I thought each year that it might be the year that it did. I remember the "sssssss" sound of the canner and the pops the jars made as they sealed. Mom would be so proud when all of her jars would be lined up on the shelves in the basement waiting for us to eat in the months to come. For all I hated the work that went into canning beans, I loved, loved, loved to eat them.
After she died, there were still a two jars left downstairs from the last time she canned beans. The beans were from Dad's garden. Mom had been gone a year, and my sisters and I just couldn't bear the thought of opening those beans and eating them. They were a tangible gift from her. A reminder that she had been here, been alive, cared enough for her family to go to all the work to store up food for winter. We finally decided to eat them on Thanksgiving. We opened them up and cooked them and ate them. There was not one bean left. How could we waste any?
I thought about all these things today as I sat on my own patio breaking beans. Mom and I had canned together in the summer of 2004 when she was well. I didn't feel comfortable enough to do it by myself without supervision, so she was going to help me the next year too. It didn't work out that way. She died in September of the following year after being sick the entire summer of 2005. Funny that the one thing I hated most as a kid is the one thing I wanted to learn to do more than anything. Mom's cousin, Betty Jean, is coming out to my house tomorrow to teach me to can. I am excited to learn, but I wish Mom was here to teach me.
So as I sat there today, thinking about how hard I had tried as a kid to get out of helping Mom with this chore, I just wished I could sit on the patio with her and break beans one more time.
When tomatoes started coming in, Mom would make spaghetti sauce to freeze for us to eat later too. I loved helping with those tomatoes. She would bring a big pot of water to a boil and then drop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds or so. Then she would scoop them out real fast and put them in an ice water bath. Right away, the skins would split and start to peel off. I thought it was so cool to just pop the skin of the tomato off and put the flesh into the big Pyrex bowl where it waited for chopping. Then we'd cut the tomatoes in half and dig our fingers down the sides to scoop out as many seeds as we could. Soon the house would be filled with the aroma of garlic and onions and oregano and if someone didn't know any better, they'd think they were in Italy when they walked into the kitchen.
We had an apple tree in the back yard for a time. The neighbors behind us did too. Neither tree bore great fruit because neither my dad nor the neighbor sprayed for pests, but the trees did have apples every year and those trees are where my love for food preparation and storage ends. The apples from these particular trees were tiny, about the size of a lemon. They were irregular and spotted and wormy. Mom didn't care. She'd send us out to pick any apples we could reach and even pick up the ones that had fallen on the ground. We couldn't pick apples from the neighbor's tree, but since many limbs hung over our yard, Mom figured that any apples that fell into our yard were fair game, so we had to pick them up too. Didn't matter if the apples were bruised on one side or half eaten by bugs. Mom would cut the bad parts out and slice the rest for apple sauce, freezer bags, and pies. I hated it. The apples were so small that they were difficult to peel. I hated cutting into one to find that I had also cut a worm in half. I worried about how many worms made it into the winter stash without my knowledge. It was just a chore. But we sure loved the apples come January when Mom would take a bag out of the freezer and heat them on the stove with cinnamon and sugar and serve them with dinner.
Corn and green beans put me over the edge too. My dad had a friend who would send a bushel or two of corn home just out of the blue. We never knew when it would come. Dad would pull into the drive with a grin on his face and haul out two big burlap bags of corn. Mom's face would fall because she knew the work that had unexpectedly come her way for she had to put the corn up immediately or it would get tough. That was another job I hated. The corn always had worms and it was sticky and the silks made me itch. I dreaded pulling back the husks to find a big, fat, white corn worm gnawing away at the kernels. Once we got the husks pulled off, we had to cut the kernels off the cobs and into a big bowl. Then Mom would take the back of her knife and scrape the cobs to get all the juice out of the corn that she could. Corn juice would fly all over the kitchen. It was mess! We'd be sticking to the floor for days after, but again, there was nothing like a bag of sweet corn from the freezer, fried up with butter and salt in the middle of winter.
My least favorite job, however, was snapping beans. We would get a big bushel basket every so often and we'd have to sit out on the patio and snap the beans into bite sized pieces so Mom could can them the next day. I thought there must not have been a bottom to that old basket because it felt like it took forever to break up those beans. Mom would can them the next day and the house would be hot and we would be banned from the kitchen in case the canner blew up. I was terrified that that would happen. I had visions of the lid to the canner flying through the air and slicing through the wall. The jars would explode and Mom would die in a hail of green beans and glass. Of course it never happened, but I thought each year that it might be the year that it did. I remember the "sssssss" sound of the canner and the pops the jars made as they sealed. Mom would be so proud when all of her jars would be lined up on the shelves in the basement waiting for us to eat in the months to come. For all I hated the work that went into canning beans, I loved, loved, loved to eat them.
After she died, there were still a two jars left downstairs from the last time she canned beans. The beans were from Dad's garden. Mom had been gone a year, and my sisters and I just couldn't bear the thought of opening those beans and eating them. They were a tangible gift from her. A reminder that she had been here, been alive, cared enough for her family to go to all the work to store up food for winter. We finally decided to eat them on Thanksgiving. We opened them up and cooked them and ate them. There was not one bean left. How could we waste any?
I thought about all these things today as I sat on my own patio breaking beans. Mom and I had canned together in the summer of 2004 when she was well. I didn't feel comfortable enough to do it by myself without supervision, so she was going to help me the next year too. It didn't work out that way. She died in September of the following year after being sick the entire summer of 2005. Funny that the one thing I hated most as a kid is the one thing I wanted to learn to do more than anything. Mom's cousin, Betty Jean, is coming out to my house tomorrow to teach me to can. I am excited to learn, but I wish Mom was here to teach me.
So as I sat there today, thinking about how hard I had tried as a kid to get out of helping Mom with this chore, I just wished I could sit on the patio with her and break beans one more time.
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