Carla, who I’ve known since high school choir – was she an alto? – decided she needed to know stuff:
Ok… when you sing alone… do you mostly sing the melody, or do you sing your “part?”
Almost always, in four-part music that I’m familiar with, it’s the bass line. In pop music, it’s usually the Pips response, not the Gladys Knight lead. On Lola (Kinks) or The Boxer (S&G), it’d be the high harmony, not the melody. I just hear them better.
To that end, I can sing a higher pitch in harmony than in melody. This makes no physical sense, so it must be mental. We had a church play in March, Once On This Island. I hated singing the high parts in my solo; it made me anxious. But the harmony, I absolutely LOVED doing. Harmony almost always I find relaxing.
No lemon merengue pie?
She also wants to know – those people from Binghamton, NY always inquisitive, especially when the extended family runs the Little Venice restaurant:
OK here is another question…. why are you unfamiliar with cream of tartar? You never make lemon merengue pie? Or soufflés?
I think I’ve made lemon merengue pie exactly once in my life. To the best of my recollection, I’ve NEVER made a soufflé. Or snickerdoodle cookies, which also can use cream of tartar.
But that’s about it. WHY have cream of tartar when it has such limited use? It’s not like cinnamon or nutmeg or any number of other spices I’ve used regularly. AND there are reasonable substitutes.
Now, there was a period in the 1980s, I was into making pumpkin pies, and even baking cookies. And it wasn’t always in the autumn. But it wasn’t for my own consumption. It was either for a food pantry or some benefit auction. I don’t even like eating pumpkin pie as much as I like apple. Or lemon merengue. But they were easier to make; no top crust.
Since I got married, I almost never make pies or cookies. My wife is WAY better at it. I’m not all that interested in doing things only so-so. And frankly, if I were to make them, I’d want to eat them, and I don’t need to do that.
I always needed cm of tartar when building Christmas houses to make the “glue” of sugar hold the building together and harden the snow. I usually don’t use gingerbread prefab, or worse cooking that shit from scratch-a real arm ache. I use large pretzels for house (open windows, some type cookie for door) and tiny pretzel sticks for porch w railings…candy for path thru “snow”. use nuts to build a chimney AND those sugared gell halved slices you see at holidays. all colors. overlap the for shingles. yea heavy & expensive. not just for one year’s holidays. spray the shit out of it w plastic covering. NO EATING THHE HOUSE (leave loose candy around for kids). wrap in thick plastic bag & bin or mice & squirrels will eat it on you.
also cm if tartar is completely necessary when making sand castles around ugly lamp bases. you must sift the sand s little; just in a small hole colander.
use 2 parts (cups) sand to
1 part (cup)cornstarch
to 1 tbl cm tartar
mix with 2parts (cups) water
– heat till thick. let cool until you can handle- mold it around a roughly sanded lamp base. use thin as possible w a slightly thicker spiral around lamp to cut in stairs with tiny tall shells around outside of stairs. maybe build a castle like top. press in decorative shells sea glass where you like.
if she’ll fall out after its dry (48 he in dry area). the let the area it fell from dry more. before using hot glue or any glue to resecure shells.
paint your lampshade sand color on bottom, sea blues, blue skies w clouds a few seagull elongated “Vs” and
WALLA
cream of tartar rocks.
I hope the sand cast recipe is exact. I wrot in on cover of my mother’s falling apart Betty Crocker’s but the moving co. lost at least 2 boxes of my precious whittled down books, a big
basket with carrying g arm of huge beautiful shells a 29 yr colkection (as well as a safe with about 30k gold diamond etc jewelry, family heirlooms and 3980 in cash) they never paid a cent in their ins. would have to go to NY in person to file a civil court claim in Suffolk where they are.
my renters ins. paid a whopping 2400. don’t want to think about it. they move old peoples stuff to FL weekly. 4 peoples contents/ truck. and brazenly take what they want knowing nobody’s gonna come back to file. I did to Duke police report with details of the jewelry. it made me sick-all my deceased mom’s stuff .
(I had been burglarized in 2011 or it would’ve been more. (never saw that stuff again either).
stuff is just stuff. my heart weighs a feather….. love to all