Teacup Watercolor

Here is the story behind the tea cup. I’ve been cleaning out my father’s apartment. My daughter and I found a lovely tea cup; I assume it once belonged to my mother? I don’t remember it from childhood. It must have stayed in the china cabinet. We (my daughter and I) drink tea much more often than I did as a child (our favorite is green tea with mint – do you like tea? What kind?). So every so often my daughter says, can I please drink from a teacup? And sometimes I say yes.

Looks like one can say both tea cup or teacup. But there is no word ‘coffeecup.’ Besides, I drink coffee from a mug.

Below is the version I used on my guest post submissions rant – I do want to welcome people to my blog, either of my blogs, actually. But you will need to know how to spell teacup.

Bok Choy Red Cabbage Salad

I’ve made this salad two weeks in a row. Inspired by the fresh organic bok choy at the Highland Park Farmers Market, one week I made it with an apple and the next week I used the juice of a clementine. I preferred the apple, but both versions of bok choy red cabbage salad got gobbled up.

Ingredients

• 1/3 – 1/2 red cabbage, chopped
• 5-6 bok choy leaves
• 1 medium onion (red or yellow) – optional
• 1 piece of ginger root
• 1 tsp. coconut oil or olive oil
• sweetener: 1 apple or juice of an orange or a clementine (or use both the apple and the citrus juice)

Chop the onion. Chop the peel off the ginger root and chop into pieces. Put it aside. If using, peel and chop the apple. Heat a wok-like pan with the oil; when hot, saute the onion. After five minutes, add the chopped cabbage, chopped apple and chopped ginger. Chop the white parts of the bok choy off from the green parts. As the white part is thicker and takes longer to cook, add it first to the pan. If using citrus juice, add it now to the pan. After about ten minutes (or when the cabbage starts to soften), add the green parts of the bok choy leaves. Cook about three more minutes.

This makes a small portion – feel free to double or triple the amounts.

This recipe is inspired by the classic red cabbage salad, which I believe is a Russian dish. Of course, the Russians didn’t have bok choy to add the greenery.

Hurricane Sandy Highland Park in Review

Hurricane Sandy and power outages have come and gone. I have photos to share, so you are stuck with yet another Sandy post. And I’m sure across the states of New York and New Jersey plenty of people have individual stories to tell. One of the people who was out of power for a lot longer than we were was Laura – you can read her reaction to the storm and power outage on her post. Maybe I should do a future post about how people helped people during the storm period.

If you find municipal politics interesting, watch last night’s borough council meeting:

The borough council meeting video is long, but Mayor Gary Minkoff provides a good review of the storm and the aftermath of the storm. It’s a good way to learn about Hurricane Sandy Highland Park version. Some of my favorite people appear in the video (Allan Williams of the Environmental Commission and Ruth Bickhardt).

In general, you can watch Highland Park meetings online and get Nixle updates on Highland Park.

Here is the downed tree on North Seventh covered in snow from the nor’easter. Parts of the tree still remain in the street right now – there were some Highland Park Department of Works worker cutting it up further today. You can see the original tree on this pre-Sandy storm post as well as the after the storm view. As it didn’t damage a house or wires (thankfully), it has taken a bit longer for it to be removed.

The house on Abbott finally got attention last week, but unfortunately, it was after the nor’easter, so more damage than the tree falling was done to the house. We were very happy to see these workers who came all the way from Florida. They told us they had never seen snow fall from the sky before.

See all those trucks on North Sixth?

There were at least six big trucks.

Here they are finally lifting that big old tree off the house.

I feel for the owners – it is a pretty damaged house. There’s more damage on the inside that you can’t see in this photo (because of the live wires on the fallen tree, they couldn’t apply tarps to protect the house from the nor’easter). But they do have insurance, and FEMA people were in our neighborhood assessing the damage.

•   •   •

In summary, is this a catastrophe? Not to us in Highland Park – it was a hardship to those who went without power the longest, and it will continue to be hard for those with damaged homes. As Ruth Bickhardt says in the video, she never remembers anything like this (and she’s been around for a long time). But for those elsewhere who completely lost their homes, the nightmare will continue. And then there are those who lost their lives. Meanwhile, my friends and relatives in Israel are posting about missiles falling down in the southern part of Israel. A cartoon by Shay Charka that sums up the relationship between the hurricane and missiles (you can learn a lot more by reading the blog Daled Amos):

Tufted Titmouse and Blue Jay

A tufted titmouse enjoyed the bird feeder I refilled two days after Hurricane Sandy came and went. I am rather burnt out of talking about post-storm problems, but in quick summary, most of Highland Park now has its power restored. We had wonderful utility workers from Florida who did much of the fixing (PSE&G was maxed out – I understand nearby Edison had workers from Ontario, Canada). So thank you, Florida and Canada. A few homes reportedly did not yet have power, but they’ve been promised fixing by today. We shall see. Meanwhile, back to the birds.

I was pleased to photograph a bird new to me – thank you, Michelle, for identifying the tufted titmouse.

I’ve been seeing more blue jays recently than I have in the past. No signs of cardinals right now.

Help yourself, Mr. Blue Jay.

I will try my best to continue filling my bird feeder through the winter.

For more Nature Notes:

Noreaster and Power Outages

Hurricane Sandy continues her wrath, even after her winds are long gone. Many in our area suffer power outages: Highland Park, New Brunswick, Piscataway, East Brunswick. Power was restored to some after a week, only to be “taken away” after the latest noreaster (storm of a bit of snow and wind that otherwise would just be a bothersome pain) showed up.

A few photos from the past week:

A unmarked vehicle guards the house on Abbott Street with the tree wrapped with lives wires.

Previously, the trucks would be regular PSE&G vans. But it seems for guarding live wires, they need the vans elsewhere, so now we get these unmarked cars instead. Do you think they will change that motto about ‘Worry Free’? Worry full seems more like a proper description for our area. For the last two days we had a water boil advisory as well and a threat of losing water completely; that one got lifted earlier today.

Here’s another photo of the tree on the top of the house on Abbott which seems to causing many problems in our area. Our library and high school are closed, and too many house have no power.

Lots of yellow police tape when you look down Abbott. The live wires are supposedly quite dangerous, so you don’t want to walk near them.

Other parts of our borough still have no power, like North Tenth. If you think we don’t have first responders like police and fire showing up, you are wrong – they have been very on site and helpful. Problem is they can’t fix live wires. Nor can tree people.

A tree fell on this house on North Ninth Avenue. When I walked by later, the tree was gone, and the roof was patched. They are fortunate that the tree hit no wires.

I hope our neighborhood doesn’t continue to look like this much longer. Greetings recently: “Got power?” “Did you lose power (again)?” “Need an outlet, a warm cup of tea or some wifi?” “Got a plug on your porch?”

Ways to help the too many victims of storm (locally in Central New Jersey):

• Highland Park Reformed Church is doing a drive for Jersey Shore (Keyport area)
• RPRY is doing a hurricane relief drive.
• You can donate to Elijah’s Kitchen or to the Highland Park Food Pantry.
• NJ.com: Hurricane Sandy resources: How you can volunteer and donate

I was going to finish this post earlier, but we lost power (again) for an hour. Seems the fixit guys are better at breaking the power than fixing it. Hope I don’t post more about a noreaster and power outages. I did photograph some photos of birds earlier this week – possibly for next week’s Nature Notes.