It's THAT day in the honey's family, and they are getting excited...mama might make homemade menudo!
OH. BOY.
I have to explain that I will never thrive in Scotland, either. I am an Organ-o-tarian. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely a carnivore! I totally grossed out the favorite SIL last night because I ordered my steak medium (we went to a REAL restaurant for her birthday--I normally order med-rare) and it was gloriously pink. But today that same girl is dying to scarf down major organs stewed in a greasy red soup with some hominy, and I'm the gross one.
I don't do organs. Biggest organ on a body? The skin. And no, I don't want any deep fried pork rinds either. Yak. But this obsession wwith menudo and haggis and monkey brains (okay, no one I know eats monkey brains, but they are considered a delicacy, right?) is not something I can wrap my head around.
Why would you want to chew and swallow Nature's little filters. If it wasn't good for that cow or pig, why would it be good concentrated in that organ and then stewed?
I've eaten the broth to shut them up, and it's okay. They make a non-organ kind called Pasole (I've probably misspelled that) that uses meat instead of organs. They give you shredded cabbage, and onions and radishes, and lemon and oregano to sprinkle on it .
OOOH, can I get a big piece of intestine to go with my cabbage and radishes? MMMM, chewy!
Carolee Wallis was my mother-in-law.
She was a tiny woman with sparkly brown eyes, and she was soft and squishy and tender hearted. I could not have asked for a more perfect grandmother for my son. She was kind of fluttery and really should have been in a fifties sitcom. She was a very fifties kind of mom.
The ironic thing is that Carolee was a survivor.
She survived her childhood, with family issues that no one talked about at the time. She survived the death of her first husband, left with three small children to raise. She survived the abandonment of her second husband, in the midst of her second pregnancy with HIM, leaving her with five kids under ten. She even managed to survive the next two disastrous marriages.
She found true love when she least expected it, and by the time I met her had settled into domestic bliss, taking care of little independent seniors in her community. They were her "ladies" and she gave them companionship and transportation, and made sure that they weren't living out of cat food cans.
She was the very definition of a caregiver.
But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she wasn't cared for. The doctor treating her was undergoing treatments for a wasting disease himself, and weeks after her mastectomy, he passed away. Carolee had faith in the system and was sure that if something more needed to be done, someone would be calling her.
She fell through every crack like alice through the looking glass. By the time she insisted that she needed to be seen, she had a festering wound. The woman who took care of everyone else died with a gaping black hole in her chest . It's been six years and I am still incredulous and angry. The woman who had survived so much just couldn't survive this.
Carolee died surrounded by her family, at home, and we worepink ribbons at her funeral. I have my pink ribbon, still held together by the angel pin she gave to us at christmas, up on the wall at my job, to remind me how lucky I am to be here and how precious it all is.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Support it any way you see fit-but support it.
Carolee Wallis was my mother-in-law.
