My Butterfly Collection - Part 1

I was just 12 years old when our family moved to Chiapas, Mexico. There are so many stories of how life in the Yerba Buena mission compound was for me. They someday will fill a book. But for now, I want to tell you about my first real hobby.

I found myself , as a preteen in a foreign country, where I did not speak or understand anything that was happening outside the confines of our family and the half dozen American families on the mission compound, without friends or peers. Over about 6 months, I really struggled to grasp the situation and how to maneuver in this new life I had been thrown into.

The mission compound was a teaching clinic. There was both a boys' and girls' dorm. Our family was first placed in a small apartment at one end of the boys' dorm. Consequently, I first made friends with many of these young men, most of whom were at least 5 years older than me. The one I developed the closest relationship to was a fellow from Honduras, named Dagoberto. If I remember correctly, he did speak a little English, and that was probably the reason we formed a quick relationship.

By the end of our first year at Yerba Buena, I had become fairly fluent in Spanish, and we had moved into a much bigger apartment at the girls' dorm. This building was called Casa Grande. It housed not only our family, but also was where the kitchen and dining room for the students was located. It truly was a Big House, or Casa Grande!

On warm afternoons, after the (ridiculously many, many, really too many) church services, when young people were allowed to take (very) supervised walks, Dagoberto taught me to catch butterflies. Not with a net, mind you,

but by sneaking up on them and grabbing them as the sat on a stem of grass or a flower, soaking up the sun. It turns out that, if you are stealthy enough, and you learn to grab a little butterfly while the wings are folded, by the thorax, they are instantly paralyzed. It is definitely a technique that has a very steep learning curve. But I did learn to do this. It took time, but that was certainly something I did have lots of!

Back then, all the girls who could afford to do so, wore stockings, at the very least to church. In Mexico, these stockings came in flat, lidded boxes, about 8" x 10". And they were padded with cotton. They were perfect for displaying my butterflies. Of course, I had to learn to mount them properly...

Somewhere, I acquired a piece of foam to use as a mounting board. Looking at this photo i found on the internet, I wish I had thought to put a thin layer of tissue down over them and then pin the tissue! But I did not. I remember struggling to get the pins to hold the wings down without ruining them. Another learning curve!

There were so many beautiful butterflies in Mexico that I had never seen or even imagined

seeing while growing up in the Northwest. As the months went by, I accumulated a couple of stacks of boxes lined with butterflies, that I kept up on the top of the bookshelf in the bedroom I shared with my sister, Toni.

We had this little paperback that helped me identify some of them, but most of the butterflies I caught were indigenous only to Latin America.

All these photos are stock photos off the internet. Stay tuned to my future Butterfly Blogs and I will tell you why....

Béchamel Sauce

(AKA: Simple White Sauce!)

White sauce is so much more simple than you would ever think. Yet we invariable dismiss it because it just seems to be too tricky. And, it is so very versatile! Mama would use it as a cream sauce for new potatoes and green beans or peas when the garden began to produce. Or she would add cheese to it, mix it with steamed cauliflower and get us to happily eat that rather unpleasant vegetable. Our most favorite meal was when she would make it, add canned tuna and some peas, and serve it on toast for supper...that was my most requested Friday night supper! Now that I am grown up, the thing I like most to use it for is Broccoli Cheese Soup. Yumm!

Béchamel Sauce

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup flour

1 cup chicken stock, water, or liquid from your vegetables or potatoes

1 cup milk

sprinkle of nutmeg (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup or more grated cheese, if you are making a cheese sauce

(You see that I have all the ingredients ready to go. The sauce thickens very quickly, so you need everything ready to go when you start.)

Melt the butter in a large pan, then add the flour and stir until it bubbles. Stirring constantly (this keeps it from lumping up) add the liquid in a stream. As the sauce heats up, the mixture will become thick. Adjust the sauce to the thickness desired for what you are making. (I add twice as much milk and chicken stock when I make broccoli cheese soup.) Then season to taste and add the cheese if you are making cheese sauce. Lastly, add to vegetables or tuna or any other thing you want to make delicious! --Oh! I forgot to mention that this can be added to cooked macaroni for macaroni and cheese, or potatoes for scalloped potatoes....hey...just make it your own! It is a wonderfully versatile thing!

My Yellow Jeep

In 1989, I was with my Significant Other, on the way to see the Oakridge Boys in concert, in South Lake Tahoe. The old Hwy. 45 between Lodi and Lake Tahoe is a beautiful drive that meanders through lots of small towns in the Gold Country of Northern California, and it was one of my favorite daytrips. This particular day, we stopped for breakfast in Amador City. While we waited for our meal to come, my ex was perusing the local paper and an ad for this yellow jeep caught his eye. It was the last year's model and was being sold by a small dealership, where they had used it for test drives and driven it in local parades, so it had less than 300 miles on it. We made the deal for it that very day and it came home to live with us.

I drove that little yellow jeep for ten years. It traveled from Lodi to Twin Falls to Hamilton and served me very well. After I married Larry, it began to act up...something about the carburetor an the emission system...and after various failed "tinkerings", it ended up parked outdoors, next to the garage and for years just sat there slowly wasting away. There was talk of fixing it and painting it black and selling it, but that never happened...(This drove me crazy!! I cannot abide waste of any kind, and it felt to me like this was a great waste of a good car.)

Then, much to my surprise, one day a few years ago, my husband told me that if I wanted to give it to my son-in-law, he would not object. I was so so happy!! Admittedly, my heart broke just a bit to watch it being hauled away, but I knew that Foti would appreciate it and do something worthwhile with it.

And I was right! I know it cost him a great deal of time and money. But Foti has not only gotten my dear yellow jeep up and running well, but he has dressed her up and made her pretty. He just got new decals, as the old ones were sun faded (along with the paint job). It makes my heart happy to see something I loved so much up and running and looking so good!