by Nina Camic
Hey, new readers! If you want a quick summary of how it is that I came to blog, read this:
It is the year 2004. My two daughters are away at college (younger one) and law school (older one). Wow. Suddenly I have time to write! Not big stuff. Little stuff. Bloggy stuff. And so on January 2, I start to post on Ocean. I test styles, I add photos. Things evolve.
Over the years, I tell you just a little about my past life. You’ll have found out that I was born in Poland, but due to my dad’s diplomatic career, I spent some childhood years in New York. Eventually, as a young adult, I moved back to the United States. I married, had kids, went to law school. And after a short stint at a law firm, I came back to the University of Wisconsin Law School, this time as a faculty member.
I taught law for twenty-five years and then took early retirement so that I could hatch new ideas and immerse myself in other projects. In the meantime, my marriage ends, my daughters graduate from law schools (both of them!), life moves forward.
I meet Ed. On line, then in person. Ed is his own guy. Ed is Ed. One date and we are together.
I’m done with suburbs: I live downtown. First in an apartment loft, then a condo. Ed is indifferent to the apartment and hostile to the condo. Ed likes life in his sheep shed. He travels to see me daily, but never tires of calling my brilliantly clever living arrangement ...a dump. (Ed: if I wanted to live in buildings like this, I would have stayed in New York.)
Five years after meeting Ed, I pack up my dwindling belongings and move to a farmhouse on his land (just south of Madison). We renovate it. Ohhhh, the farmhouse needs it! A hundred years of issues. But, Ed has skills and he has time. With the help of a small construction team, the place is patched, mended, finished and (in April of 2011) I move in.
Alright. That’s the chronology. Here’s what else you might want to know: I love our farmette (it's not really a farm anymore), but I am very often on the road. Away. Ed used to tag along. I have been known to call him my occasional travel companion. These days, he prefers to stay home and look after the chickens.
Anything else? My younger daughter lives with her husband and their little ones (Primrose and Juniper) in Chicago, my older one teaches right here at UW in Madison. She and her husband have a little girl (Snowdrop) and two little boys (Sparrow and Sandpiper). This makes me a grandma!
That’s it. Anything else you’ll have to pick up by reading along. Curious about my childhood in postwar Poland? Pick up my book, Like A Swallow!
We spent the first day of the new year with best friends watching the televised outdoor hockey game between Chicago's Blackhawks and Detroit's Red Wings. Fun game. Wings won. It was great to see pros playing hockey the way we played it when we were young: outdoors, with cold hands, feet and red faces. Then we got down to work to prepare a delicious meal, eat, laugh, and finally we solved all the world's problems over very old cognac poured from a Lalique crystal decanter. Yum.
ReplyDeleteAs for your breakfast -- when I was a child in the 50s, while my mother was in the hospital, my father and I watched a 1936 Shirley Temple movie on TV called Captain January where Guy Kibbie placed a slice of bread with a hole in the center into a buttered frying pan, cracks an egg into the hole, then calls his creation a "one eyed gypsy sandwich" as he serves it to young Shirley. The next morning to my delight, I watched my father prepare a one eyed gypsy sandwich for me.
In addition to appearing in the 1987 movie Moonstruck ,your "egg in a basket" was also featured in the 1941 Betty Grable movie called Moon Over Miami but called "Gas House Eggs". Then in the 2006 V for Vendetta it was called "Eggy in the Basket". The dish was mentioned on the BBC automobile series Top Gear by co-host Richard Hammond and on the recent sitcom Friends, Joey made "Egg in the Hole" quite often. No matter what the dish is called it is one of my favorites.
Wishing you all the best in the coming year.