September happenings

September started off with a "thud". The A Hand Up email account got severely hacked. They not only stole all my addresses, they deleted them all and deleted all my sent mail. They also had redirected all my incoming mail to an account they had set up and stopped all my outgoing mail. Fortunately for me I had recently sent out an Evite to all the people on the A HandUP email list so I was able to recreate a list of email addresses. The bad news is that the att network doesn't bring over the names as well as the email addresses. It's been a laborious process to get all the names and emails re-established. I spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with a very nice tech person at AT&T who helped me get the email all cleaned up before I started setting up the email list again. We're back in business now which is a great thing as we have lots of new university volunteers signing up to help with the deliveries, pick-ups and warehouse clean-up. The September food distribution was moved to the second Tuesday of the month - the elementary school's "minimum day". The Principal wanted it moved as there would be no conflict with the children and unrelated adults mixing. The change in the date only affected us slightly. The word still got out and we had 172 instead of the usual over 180 families show up for bags of food. We have been buying more and more of the individual grocery carts as the 2 bags of food (more like 4) weigh about 50 lbs and the clients just can't carry all that to their cars. The little carts are a big help. Only problem is the clients all want to use them and we don't have enough and then the line gets long with people waiting for a cart. Always interesting and always something to learn with each distribution. Any chance we get when the weather cooperates ( not too windy and bright and sunny, perfect beach weather) we try to take advantage and go to the beach. The middle of September was another one of those perfect days. On the way back from Avila Beach we stopped at the Avila Barn where they have a petting zoo and also produce, prepared baked items and preserves. The sheep and all the other animals were happily munching on their dinner of hay that had just been set out for them. September 30 was the last Monday of the month so guess what it was: Senior Luncheon day at the church. The menu was for spaghetti and meatballs with a salad and cookies. We had a great meal - the veggie alternative was raviolis with sauce and the cookies were ranger cookies - always a hit. Interestingly we had about 60 people signed up but only 45 showed up. Not to worry, the extra all got packaged up and sent home as leftovers for another meal during the week. For my birthday cousin P&S cooked a wonderful dinner for me - barbecued spare ribs, very long Chinese noodles, kale salad, garlic bread, sauteed mushrooms and I baked my own version of the Rosemary dingdong cake. I think I've got the filling just about perfect. It's a chocolate cake with marzipan cream filling and a ganache frosting. It was all very delicious. I was especially impressed as P&S had had a housefull of company all weekend and still had the energy to prepare a wonderful meal. T and I went out to dinner the next night to the Sea Venture with a generous gift card from brother M&O. We treated ourselves to a superb meal - that was two nights in a row. Time to work off some of those extra calories. The Cypress Ridge Women's Golf group has a tournament every year to raise funds for cancer at our local hospital. Each year they raise more money. They always have a light finger food "breakfast" for the golfers (all ladies) but this year many of the usual baking contributors were out of town and didn't think to bake ahead and freeze things. I ended up making 4 items. Two of the items are requested every year - so it's a no brainer - French toast muffins and what I call Golfer's Gorp - basically my reindeer food. Then I made some brownie brittle, hashbrown, sausage, egg and cheese tarts. I always love it when folks tell me what they want as it takes away half the decision making process and then I just have to make whatever. We received a $2500 grant from PG&E to buy reusable grocery bags for the food distribution. Each month we give away 360 bags and about half of them come back the next month. We were always worried about running out of bags. One of the team leaders talked to a friend at PG&E and she wrote a grant request to get us bags. They really came through. We could get them for .50 a piece at Walmart. We bit the bullet and bought all of them and now they are neatly stored in one of the leader's 3rd garages in 200 bag boxes. What a sight! It is so nice not to have to worry about whether we will have enough bags. The October distribution was sort of a pre-Thanksgiving distributio with 12 lb turkeys for everyone, yams, potatoes, cranberry sauce, tomato juice and a whole bunch of other things. The word got out and we ran out of food at about 5:45 about 15 minutes early. That same night we had tickets for Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Band along with Edie Brickell. It was a great concert but boy were we cold. When the sun set in Paso Robles it went down to the low 50s right away. Fortunately we had our woolies (hats, coats, gloves, scarves) a little like going to a football game.

August has come and now it's leaving

Since I last wrote I have prepared two senior luncheons. The July senior luncheon was a breeze since I didn't have to cook. My offering was to purchase the food, make the hamburgers and get it to the church on time. We had hamburgers and hotdogs, potato salad, baked beans and icecream drumsticks for dessert. I season my hamburgers with a little SuzyQ seasoning and soy sauce. They burgers and dogs were grill by these two guys over an oak fire and boy were they delicious. Many people wanted to know "what I had done to the burgers - LOL" I told them the secret was an old Chinese secret called soy sauce. Everyone loved the drumsticks. There were four "flavors" meaning there was a little dollop of chocolate, butterscotch etc. in the middle and just like little kids they were all "fighting" over the choices.

The Nipomo Kiwanis Club sponsors a Key Club at the Nipomo High School. The Key Club has volunteered to help us with the food distribution in the past. The Kiwanis Club wanted to know more about Womenade and the Food distribution so they asked me to be their guest speaker in August. They had many visitors from other chapters who also wanted to hear about us. I learned a lot about Kiwanis that day as well. They have a hierarchical structure like you wouldn't believe but they do a lot of good works all over the county. On August 10 we attended a Tony Bennett concert in Paso Robles, about an hour away. Tony Bennett is 87 years old. The Vina Robles Amphitheater is brand new in a vineyard. We thought this may be the one and only time we will be able to see him live. His daughter Antonia Bennett was his warm up act. She was okay but can't hold a candle to her Dad. He put on a full 1 hour and 15 minutes show with very little talk and lots and lots of singing. His voice is still amazing and the crowd was swinging.

On August 14 I organized the South County Womenade Potluck dinner with over 40 women in attendance. We raised over $2000 that evening. slowomenade.com. I have over 200 women on the south county roster. We now have a place in South county to drop things off at. The evening was mild and there were people eating at 4 different areas in the hostess's home and it felt like no one wanted to leave. Awesome company, great food. On August 17, I attended an in-home concert - I think they're called Parlor Concerts in the home of one of our neighbors. There was a woman celebrating her 80th birthday and she is very involved in the local classical music scene. She had wanted to get an LA pianist and violinist to play on the central coast for many years but they couldn't work out the timing. Since it was her significant birthday Rina Dokshitsky (piano) and Henry Gronnier (Violin)agreed to play. They performed Brahms's Sonata in G Major, op.78 and Beethoven's Sonata in A Major Op. 47 ("Kreutzer"). plus a couple of encores including Williams' Schindler's List. August 26 was this month's senior luncheon. The menu was all comfort food - oven fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw and apple pecan cake with caramel glaze and whipped cream. There were so many wonderful comments - what kind of chicken do you get that only grows thighs? Can I lick the cake plate since the crumbs have no calories? Can I have extra mashed potatoes and gravy - I don't make it at home anymore and I love it? This was another clean plate club meal and I cooked for 60 and between the meal and the take home boxes there was nothing left!

The next day was another food distribution with a twist. The Food Bank had prepacked the dry goods - good thing because they sent 3 tons of fresh produce for us to pack. You can tell it's harvest season. The bags were so heavy that everyone needed help taking the food to their vehicles. That was a real log jam because the clients would borrow a cart then take it to the parking lot and wait for someone to drive their vehicle up. I had to keep going out and asking them to unload the card and give it back to me while they waited for their vehicle. We worked an hour later than usual. The school has asked us to change our day to the second Tuesday of each month instead of the fourth Tuesday. The second Tuesday is their "minimum" day and the children are dismissed earlier and the teachers have a working afternoon. This way there is less risk for the school with strangers on the campus and children on campus at the same time. This means that the next distribution is just 2 weeks away. I hope I can get enough volunteers to return in just 2 weeks. Stay tuned.

Front garden

It's been a very mild summer so far. Very little of the typical June gloom this year. July brought the monsoonal flows as they are called meaning it was muggier than usual but still very comfortable. The flowers have really benefited from the milder weather and the front yard's summer flowers are all blooming. The camellias are setting flowers for the winter. Around back all the grasses are flowering. The bunnies are helping themselves to the alstroemeria and the grass. The families of bunnies have been keeping us entertained all summer. Not too many sightings of quail families this year so far. The giant blue heron are back - they must be nesting somewhere. It's lots of fun living in an Audobon Signature Habitat!

The last month and a half

When I left off last posting, it was our 41st wedding anniversary. Interestingly, we still know where most of these people are! Later that day I tried a new recipe for chocolate ganache mini macaroons - yummy - I've made them again a couple of times!

Brother M and sister-in-law O came for a visit. They had been vacationing at the Grand Canyon and when they got back to Las Vegas, they rented a car and drove here for a few days arriving on M's birthday. Made chocolate peanut butter cake that served as dessert for 2 dinners and all the lunches! I guess they liked it.

We took a trip to Solvang, visited the emu farm, had dinner with the cousins. It was a great visit. They came with me for a couple of days to the new free lunch program for the children in Nipomo. In conjunction with the Food Bank, we gave lunches to about 110 kids for seven weeks. M and O arrived during the first week and I was getting all the teams set up so they came along. O and I worked out at our little gym every day before we headed out for the day's activities. Their last evening the cousins came for dinner and we had a great time catching up.

After not making bread pudding for nearly 6 years, I made two pans of it for one of the church's fellowship hours. They church has started asking each of the committees and groups to host a Sunday's fellowship hour. This is when being involved in a number of committees is not a good thing. Anyway, the bread pudding was just as popular as it was when I made it at St. James's for Loaves and Fishes. I think they are still making it once a month for the feeding program there. On June 22, we had a blackout with almost the entire county and parts of Santa Barbara county losing power for a couple of hours. We were lucky as it came back early on. There was no real reason given for the outages unlike on the east coast when outages are often caused by some kind of storm. Fortunately it's mild here and we didn't have to cope with heat problems. I was cooking for the senior luncheon the next day and was a little concerned it wouldn't come back on in time to cook. We had a comfort food meal planned - macaroni and cheese, baked ham, salad and home made brownies.

In the middle of July the Golf Course erected this enormous tent which looks semi permanent. They often need space to host events associated with golf tournaments and sometimes the Pavilion is already booked for another event. This gives them an alternative site.

July 16 there was a fire in Oceano on the dunes. This is only about 2 miles from our place. We heard helicopters flying back and forth all afternoon and wondered where they were getting water. Turns out they were getting it from our little lake. I hope they know that the water is recycled water from the homes and golf course used to water the golf course. Our development agreed to recycle all waste water from the development. It goes through a water treatment plant on the grounds and then runs through 4 different lakes along the way.

That's about it for this posting.

May and early June 2013

We started off the month with a volunteer appreciation dinner for the Arroyo Grande volunteers. Tom volunteers for the AG police department and he got an award for the many hours he donated last year. He has developed a database to use for billing of alarms that they didn't have before and he has helped recover a few thousand in fees. The next day we attended a concert in Santa Barbara at the Granada Theater for a Bernadette Peters concert. She was amazing. She sang so many of her broadway hits and many of them Sondheim ones. There were a number of famous people but the one closest to us was Carol Burnett. Bernadette called her out and thanked her for coming and for all her help during her formative years. Our church had an infestation of termites. We had to wait for the dry season to start. Although it was pretty dry through our wet season, they recommended we wait until the beginning of May. The recommended method to get rid of termites is to "tent" the facility. It was an amazing site The tour of California took place place the middle of May and went right by the end of one of the streets near us. It was great not to have to fight the crowds at the segment finish line in Avila The May senior luncheon menu was quiche (lorraine) salad, rolls and chocolate cake. It was held on memorial day and we had a smaller crowd than usual but it was a clean plate club just the same and all the food went. The May Food Distribution took place the next day and it was an absolute mad house. The team of about 30 people were amazing. The amount of food was over 4 tones of food and may have been our largest yet. It certainly was the one with the most curve balls - when we arrived, the cafeteria was being used by an art project and they left all the artwork on the stage to dry so we couldn't use that space. - Shortly after we arrived about 1:30 a Food Bank truck arrived with a wonderful "extra" delivery of fresh produce and just donated bread from Trader Joes all coming from the Oceano Food Bank. That was off loaded before the main unloading volunteers even arrived but before the volunteers arrived! - We finally got the cafeteria available to us at about 1:45 and hurried to tape down the tarps and get all our things into the cafeteria and set up to start receiving volunteers. - at 2:10 PM the "regular" truck from Paso Robles arrived with tons of food including 1,800 lbs of frozen pork patties - that's 10 lbs per family and it all had to be bagged and apportioned. - We received 50 lb bags of loose potatoes which needed to be carefully counted and bagged evenly as it was part of the USDA food - We received a couple of the items that were omitted last month. When I say a couple that means there were nearly 200 of each extra item! - With the end of school fast approaching all our materials had to be removed from the school yesterday - Our school contact had an enormous clothing giveaway from a combination of lost and found items and other donations, all of which had to sorted and laid out in the picnic area - Starting at 6:15 there was a huge free Zumba class starting in the cafeteria and we had to vacate the cafeteria and move all our stuff into the parking lot. Fortunately a few people stayed to help sort and load into vehicles to take to one of our volunteer's place for storage for the summer! Enough about the curve balls! The distribution was exciting, gratifying and completed pretty much on time and without a hitch. We have the most amazing team of volunteers and our hats are off to you all. This summer we figured out a way to do distributions and will be doing them in June and July. I also started a summer lunch program for children in that neighborhood. During the summer many children don't eat because they usually get their breakfast and lunch at school. Working with the FoodBank, I was able to put together a 7 week program to have lunches at the school. I gathered a team of 20 people dividing up the days of the week among them. Here's keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work smoothly. I started taking Zumba and cardio Kick boxing at our gym. The new owner encouraged me to try them out and I said that if she would let me do the classes on the mini trampoline I would give it a try. Turns out it works great and I'm loving it and so are my knees and ankles. There's a new venue for concerts in Paso Robles called Vena Robles and we have tickets to see Steve Martin (and Edie Brickell) and the Steep Canyon Rangers in the fall. Today is our 41st wedding anniversary and for a trip down vintage lane here is a picture from way back then.

March and April 2013

Well, I haven't been very dedicated about this blog. Facebook feels easier but it doesn't let me share in the same way. So I'll try to go back through my calendar and facebook posts to see what my life has been like. At first look, it seems like a pretty ordinary couple of months. First up are the food distributions in Nipomo. We did one at the end of February, and one on March 26 and the most recent one on April 23. We've stayed with our count at 180 although we have run out of food we are only short about 6 families. In the fall we'll reassess whether we go up to 192. We have to go up by counts of 12 because it is determined by the number of items in a case (usually divisible by 12). Meanwhile our leadership group has a debrief meeting after each distribution to iron out any glitches (there are fewer and fewer each time) and generally pat ourselves on the back and sit back and appreciate what we have accomplished. Each month we have received, unloaded, sorted, bagged and distributed between 3 1/2 tons to 4 tons of food. It is interesting how many of the recipients decline help with the bags and later realize that 35 to 40 lbs of food is a lot to carry from the school cafeteria back to their cars which have to be parked a block or two away! We wonder if they think it's a mistake and don't want to lose out on all the food if we change our minds - LOL! That was someone's thought. I think it's a pride thing and folks have a hard enough time coming to ask for food let alone then having to ask for assistance. I made a presentation to the Nipomo Rotary Club about the food distribution to see if we could get any interest in starting a second site in Nipomo at the middle of the month. I think the Rotarians and the Lions Club may end up taking on the second location. Next up is the senior lunches at the church. For a while our numbers were declining not because of a lack of interest so much as a loss of members to death. We have put out a concerted effort to recruit more of our seniors to come for a free lunch on the last Monday of the month. The counts for February, March and April have increased steadily to the low 50s. I always make enough for 60 people so we can give away take home boxes. February we had chicken enchiladas (cheese only for vegetarians), rice and refried beans, Mexican salad and chocolate chip cookies. March we had bowtie pasta primavera with turkey bacon (or without) with a fettucini type of sauce, green salad, garlic bread and chocolate tunnel cakes. And for April there was chicken salad on a mixed green salad, fruit salad, rolls and carrot cake. The seniors have been so appreciative. It's been hard to get them to accept a "free lunch" but they are getting the idea. I am working on getting lunches for the children during the summer and getting the food distribution to continue through the summer. We're narrowing in on how to get this done and will be recruiting helpers soon. Ladies Who Lunch is entering its fourth year. Back in March of 2010 D and I wanted to support the Grill and get it some new business. We started meeting there for lunch and started spreading the word. Soon it became a weekly meeting thing that we would have lunch at the Grill once a week and whoever wanted to join in was welcome. Over the last 3 years we have had people come and go. Many came for a few times or just once. Some have become regulars coming anywhere from once to two or three times a month. We have made new friends and many folks have found a source of getting much needed information eg. what plumber we've used, what do we think of certain trades people, referrals for doctors etc. Womenade is a non-profit I'm involved in out here. We are due for our next potluck dinner on May 8. There are nearly 30 rsvp'd already which is a good sign. P&S and we have decided to try to meet at a local Chinese restaurant called Mei's once a month so that we see each other at least that often. There are months that we get so busy we lose touch. Not so this past month. Last night T and I went to a concert by Bernadette Peters in Santa Barbara. We met friends E and B in Santa Barbara. They have a boat that they vacation on and it's docked in the marina there. It was cinco de maio weekend so we ended up in Montecito for dinner. E gave us a great tour of Montecito and at dinner we had a number of celebrity sitings. At the theater Bernadette Peters gave a shout out to Carol Burnett who was in the audience.

February 2013

We had another very successful food distribution project in January. Every month the leaders of the project get together and debrief. We've become much more efficient and are unloading, packing and distributing over 3 tons of food each month. For the last three years I have served on the church's vestry. This past year has really been the most productive. The first year we were in a building mode. The church Sunday school had dwindled to nothing and I remember saying that if we didn't do something to attract new families the church we'd be dead by 2025! Something clicked, and we have steadily been attracting those new families and are up to a steady 25 children in Sunday school with enrollment of about 40. This past year I was focused on getting the church more visible on line. One of the younger parishioners stepped up and volunteered to work with me to create the new website. I did the design and content and she got it programmed and up and running. We also started a facebook page for the church and the thrift shop. Still only about 40 friends on facebook but there are a number of non-members who have friended us so it's working. We also downloaded a QR - quick response code to post around the church entrances and on all publications so people can quickly get directed to our website. My three year term expired at the annual meeting. We held what's become our annual Chinese New Year party on February 10, 2013 the first day of the Chinese New Year. We were a party of 15 and the menu included pot stickers, scallion pancakes, peking duck, sweet and sour black bean spare ribs, mooshu chicken, stickly rice, pan fried noodles, green beans with ham and a peanut butter silk cake for dessert. After a Christmas and New Year hiatus the "Ladies Who Lunch" group reconvened at the Grill in the Pro Shop. The food has been deteriorating of late so I did a survey using an on line tool called MonkeySurvey. Feedback was that we would prefer to stay here if we could get the food to improve. Serendipity stepped in and while we were discussing the results of the survey one of the golf course managers was serving our food. We told her what the problem was and she said to send our suggestions to her and she would get it to the right people. Since then we have been treated very well and she has had a special for the ladies every week. On February 12 we had our quarterly Womenade potluck dinner. 33 women attended raising over $1,000 and making many new connections and doing so much good in the county. All the money raised (over $250,000 since 2004) stays in the county serving the needs of those who slip between the cracks. http://www.jimcurrymusic.com/ On February 16 we went to see a performance at the Clark Center of Jim Curry with a tribute to John Denver. The guy sounds like Denver and has even styled himself to look like him. Our realtor and his wife are big fans and it gave us an opportunity to visit with them and have a fun evening with dinner at our place before the show.