A food craving satisfied and memories of rodeo days

 

Eating fried chicken in the cottage

For some time, I’ve been craving fried chicken, so tonight we ordered dinner for four from Bonnell’s Curbside meals. During quarantine, when restaurants saw their business diminish and disappear, Fort Worth’s Jon Bonnell found a way to keep his Bonnell’s Fine Cuisine active. He packaged curbside meals for four, priced them reasonably, and sold them literally on the curb by his restaurant each afternoon, Tuesday through Saturday. They were so successful, he has continued the tradition to this day. We have had them a few times—mostly the Beef Stroganoff. Several of the entrees are pasta which isn’t popular here, usually one is shrimp which I can’t eat, and one is smoked chicken and pulled brisket which doesn’t appeal. The Stroganoff though is delicious, and I still want to try the meat loaf. Tonight’s chicken came with mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, salad, and brownies. And the amount is generous. So craving satisfied.

Jacob almost never ever eats Saturday night dinner with us. This afternoon when I asked if he was joining us, he said, “Probably not. It’s Saturday night, you know.” I replied, “Sometimes in life you have to make choices. We’re having fried chicken.” He said with a grin he’d have to think about that. Somewhat to my surprise, he showed up for supper.

So now I’m full and happy—and waiting until I’m hungry enough to eat the remaining brownie.

We never had fried chicken in my home when I was growing up, which may account for my fascination with it now. I honestly don’t know if my mom ever tried to fry a chicken. (She did teach me early on how to cut up a chicken, something the girls in my family refuse to do—Jordan in particular won’t touch raw poultry, and for some years my function at Thanksgiving and Christmas was to prepare the turkey for roasting. They’ve gotten better now about it.) Not only did Mom not want to fry in all that oil, Dad, the proper Englishman, did not tolerate picking up food in our hands. A sandwich at lunch at the kitchen table was okay but never at the dinner table (we ate with linen tablecloth and napkins every night and no passed food—Dad served the plates as the head of the household; no, we were not rich, just shaped by his Canadian/British background). I have never myself tried to fry chicken, and I find “oven fried” a poor substitute. But tonight I was thinking that what attracts me as much as anything is the slightly peppery seasoning of the coating. I think that’s a southern thing.

Tonight may have been fried chicken night at the cottage, but it is the last night of the Southwestern Exposition and Stock Show, lovingly known in Fort Worth as the stock show and in the past as the “Fat Stock Show.” The powers that be dropped the “Fat” some years ago. Tonight, the owner of the champion steer, a high school girl, is $340,000 richer—I’m no judge but her snow-white steer is one of the most beautiful steers I’ve ever seen. I think a conglomerate usually buys the winner, so it is spared from the slaughterhouse, and the owner is spared that dilemma between emotion and profit.

Rodeo always makes me nostalgic. When my children were little, going to the rodeo was a rite of passage. Each had to wait until they were judged old enough, and then it was one of the highlights of the year. We routinely went with another family for several years and dined on the ribs and sausage offered by Coburn’s Catering, a longtime culinary institution. That family moved away, but then we developed a tradition of all the Alters coming for rodeo—the performance on Friday night, prowling the grounds, especially the Midway Saturday afternoon, and dinner at Joe T.’s Saturday night. It was an annual reunion that I truly looked forward to. Gradually the tradition fell apart—with kids in school, it was hard for families ot get away and parents had other demands. Now, some years Megan comes with a friend, but she didn’t even do that this year. Jordan and Christian have gone several times, with friends, and Jacob has gone at least once. My rodeo days are long over, not just because the arena is not accessible for me but because I’ve joined the ranks of those who don’t want to see the brutality of rodeo, especially the bull riding. Having written a bit about rodeo, I know they take every precaution for man and beast, but it can still be brutal. I don’t want to see anyone or any animal hurt. But it sure does provide some great memories.

Grands at the rodeo, back in the day

 

Thoughts on a dull evening

 

Summer storm in downtown Fort Worth

Storms are predicted for tonight, and barring tornadoes, North Texas will welcome them. We need the rain desperately. And I for one enjoy a good storm. My dog, not so much. But something popped up somewhere online today asking whether or not you enjoy storms, and that question took my mind back a lot of years.

When I was growing up, my family had a cottage on a high dune overlooking Lake Michigan at the very foot on the lake, in the Indiana dunes. Storms would roll down that lake from the north, churning the water into wild whitecaps. We were of course forbidden to swim on those days, but I loved watching those storms come in, and I felt secure in our little cottage with the lake to the front and the woods behind us. My brother and I both credit our mother for teaching us to enjoy rather than fear storms.

I enjoy them to this day, much to Jacob’s bewilderment when he was little and scared. One night when he was with me, a storm took the roof off a business down the street form us, and I did think maybe he was right. I should have been more concerned.

Another night, we watched large hail pelting us from the sky—and then we went to bed. At the time, the house was being re-roofed, and I didn’t realize that only a temporary tarp had been put over the flat-roofed add-on at the back of the house that served as a family room. In the morning when I woke up, the house smelled of rain and water. I nudged Jacob, because I wanted company, even if it was only a seven-year-old, and holding hands we walked through the kitchen to the back room. It was two or three inches deep in water. All my cookbooks were ruined, plus all the y/a books I’d written that we had put out for a special sale for parents and teachers from the school across the street. In no time, we had neighbors, our contractor, and the roofing company owner on their hands and knees mopping and sponging up water. Jordan, whose birthday it was, spent the day sorting books to see which could be salvaged. I was by then having severe hip problems and could do little except wring my hands.

But the storm memory that most remains in my memory is the night Jacob insisted we go to the long, walk-in closet in my bedroom. He had outfitted it with a chair, a flashlight, my book, and a glass of wine for me. For him, a puzzle or something, blankets and a pillow, and a sippy cup full of I don’t know what. I can’t remember how long we sat there until I finally convinced him the danger was past. Such sweet memories to treasure. I hope now, at almost sixteen, he enjoys storm as much as I do, but it’s not a subject you ask a teen about.

It's been a stressful week, and the odd thing is that it’s not just me. I’ve heard it from others, some in far parts of the country. The leaked draft of Justice Alito’s papers on the Roe case have profoundly shaken most of us, sending the abortion question to the states where in too many instances laws will be written without exemptions for life-threatening conditions, rape, incest, or a non-viable fetus (such as an ectopic pregnancy where the fetus lodges in a Fallopian tube and not the uterus). And these laws will be made by mostly white men with absolutely no medical background but a fiercely self-righteous piousness.

The Ukraine invasion wages on, and though we admire the Ukrainian bravery and resolve, there is no way to avoid horror at the butchery and barbarism. And closer to home, the wildfires of the West blaze on. The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire has now burned something like 160,000 acres. That’s a lot of people displaced, and a lot of animals, both wild and domestic, either killed or traumatized.

The good news around here is that I, all by myself, fixed my hearing aids by re-pairing them to the phone. Directions are online. It just took me a bit yesterday to remember that. And Sophie seems some better. Sje refused to eat this morning but ate tonight and took her pills. Pill pockets seem to do the trick. She still has some ferocious coughing fits, but they seem less frequent. And she was chasing squirrels today—always a good sign. Maybe we’re slowly working our way out of the smaller traumas at our house.

Rain would help. So join me, please, in praying for a benevolent storm tonight. The last couple of nights I’ve seen lightening about three in the morning but have gone back to sleep too quickly to know if it rained or not. Both mornings, though, the streets were wet.

Sweet dreams of rain, everyone! And may it rain heavily in New Mexico.

Nostalgia all over the place

 

A small blowout

My youngest grandson, Kegan David, broke his leg in a “hard soccer collision” yesterday. It will, we’re told, require surgery, and his soccer season is over—just when it was ending anyway. Kegan is an athlete—lean and tall at fifteen (a birthday in a week), he’s too slight for football but is in demand because he’s a terrific kicker; even when he was tiny for his size, he was asked to play on teams of boys three and four years older than he was; a year or so ago, he decided to take up track as well and was no slouch at the pole vault. This is his second broken bone—if he is to keep up with his father’s early teen record, he has two more to go. At this point, however, he is tied with his Austin cousin, Sawyer, who broke his femur skiing and smashed an elbow doing some kind of trick bike riding. I have suggested that the boys should take up golf or swimming. Actually, Sawyer’s favorite sport is playing his guitar, so he’s less likely to break bones these days.

A much younger Kegan,
but look at that attitude!

But the broken leg made me nostalgic because I began to reflect on how my seven grands have grown—and, in truth, to miss the babies they were. I remember how the two older girls, Maddie and Edie, were always so anxious to nursemaid the little boys. When she was two or three, Edie talked incessantly about “Baby Sawyee.” And Maddie was always ready to play a game, change a diaper, do whatever the little boys wanted—well, almost. Somewhere on my computer are some adorable pictures. It’s true what they say—the time flies. My grands now include one college graduate, one college freshman, two high school rising seniors, a rising junior, and two rising sophomores. How did this happen?

Kegan this year

Then this morning in that banner MSN flashes across my Edge screen there was a feature about a beach-y national park just miles from Chicago. I knew instantly that meant the Indiana dunes. What I didn’t know is that there is now a national park adjacent to the Indiana Dunes State Park. I browsed with longing through pictures of beaches, carved into narrow strips by the encroaching water, and great blowouts—areas where no vegetations holds the sand and the wind has carved out saucer-shaped depressions or hollows, some quite large. Those are the scenes of my summer childhood.

My family had a cottage on a high dune, three long staircases above the beach. Mom used to tell us we were at the very foot of the lake as we watched storms roll in—I loved seeing the lake at its wildest, but for swimming I wanted calm ripples. The back of our cottage sat squarely in the woods, where the outhouse was—scary trip at night. We had no electricity, no running water (a cistern). Mom scalded dishes wit boiling water after she washed them, and our refrigerator was a three-shelf box that was lowered into a deep hole to sit on top of a huge ice block. You knew to always put milk in the bottom shelf where it stayed the coldest. When we finally got bottled gas, we thought we were really uptown.

The blowout pictures took me back to the time Mom made me and a friend hike all the way across a huge blowout, in the hot summer, so we could be dots in her picture—and that’s what we were: little black dots dwarfed by this huge, sandy landscape. And the beach pictures—when I was a kid, there were houses at the first level, kind of the top of the beach, where we got drinking water from a pump (and carried it up all those stairs!). Those houses, including one belonging to a family friend, have all long since washed into the lake. And speaking of drinking water, I will always remember the night we heard a plop—a mouse had fallen into the drinking water. We cried over a whole pail gone to waste, and Mom had to sterilize the pail.

When I was young, the beach was
three times this wide.

Today I was carried back to the past looking at the pictures. They say when you are troubled, you should go, in your mind, to a safe spot. My safe spot is a little knoll on the second level of the dune. Sitting there, with my arm around a wild collie mix female inappropriately named Timmy, I could look to the northeast at evening and see the round orange ball of the sun slowly sinking behind the skyscrapers of Chicago, which look like toothpicks from that distance. It is, for me, a serene spot. Somewhere there is a picture of that. Wish I could find it.

What about you? Is there your version of a comforting dune in your mind?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Believe It Or Not, This Beachy National Park Sits Just Outside Chicago (msn.com)

 

Twelfth Night, more isolation, and a killer dinner

 

Jacob, about six,
on Twelfth Night

Jacob making a wish

Thanks to Covid and unusually cold weather, I missed our annual Twelfth Night observance. I’ve said this before and you may be tired of hearing it, but when I was a child, we had a neighbor who held a Twelfth Night celebration that, as far as I can tell, was of her own making. She had each person throw a small evergreen twig into the fireplace and make a silent wish. My family adopted it, and my children have done it since they were very young. Of course, there was the year my ex tried to burn an entire garland, and my Megan came running to me, “Mom, Dad’s burning the house down!” He almost did.

Of my childhood custom, I should add that this neighbor couple, childless, became my adopted aunt and uncle, and spoiled me rotten. She loved to pick out clothes for me, with the result I had a more bountiful wardrobe than I had any right to expect. I frequently went back and forth between the two houses, and Uncle Jack, ever the gentleman, escorted me if there was the least hint of darkness. They used to take me to dinner, especially at the South Shore Country Club, then in its heyday of elegance. When I ordered fish because I really liked it, Auntie E., a devout Catholic, would say, “Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that. It’s not Friday.” I can see her yet—grey hair swept into a kind of chignon, wearing an elegant dressing gown, and delicately throwing a branch in the fireplace. Good childhood memories.

Back to Twelfth Night this year. Because we’re still quarantining, we were not going to have a fire in the indoor fireplace as usual, but Jordan offered to light small fire for me in the fire pit on my patio. That lonely fire for one, combined with the prospect of being so cold, sounded pretty bleak, and I declined with thanks.

They ended up doing a fire in their firebox on the front porch. Jordan sent me the above picture of Jacob making his wish, and I thought it was fun to pair it with a picture of him when he was about five or six. Two neighbors joined them, and Jordan asked for everyone to make a wish for me since I was hiding in the cottage. She told me hers, though I wanted to shush her—wishes are supposed to be secret!

If I had one wish tonight, I think it would be to have my garden magically reappear. I’m finding it dispiriting to look out at frozen plants—I think the one on the deck is a hibiscus, but the basil in my vegetable garden droops as though dead (which it undoubtedly is), so do the two lovely coleus plants in big pots by my door and the fountain grass in a big pot by the garden gate. Even the wonderful vine on the fence has given up and looks wilted. Were I mobile and the temperature not so frigid, I’d go yank those dead plants out. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

My grits dinner

Tonight, I fixed myself a semi-complicated dinner—most meals get more complicated when you have to do everything on one hot plate. When the directions say, “Meantime, while the grits are cooking, fry the bacon,” I have to do that in stages. But my dinner was a base of cheese grits with chopped bacon, sauteed cherry tomatoes, sliced avocado, and a fried egg. So good but, omigosh! was it too much food! An hour later, I still have that full feeling. Reminds me of Jack, my sons’ Boy Scout leader, who used to chant, “I’m full enough!” after dinner.

Tomorrow, we have decided Jordan can safely come into the cottage wearing a mask. And I’ll mask. So that’s something to look forward to, plus I want to do a Zoom class on plotting and Jordan brought me the ingredients for a cranberry cake, so I’ll make that tomorrow. These isolation days go faster if I have chores. And writing doesn’t always do it.  

Sweet dreams. Stay warm and safe during this cold spell.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Do you remember chop suey?

 

Christian's so good chop suey--er, stir fry

I have no idea what made me think of chop suey lately, but that dish—the only Chinese fare we knew when I was a child in the Fifties—lodged itself in the memory section of my brain. As I’ve said probably too often, I grew up in a household of British food, the tone set by my dad and willingly followed by my mom. She cooked roast beef and leg of lamb, with potatoes and green salad. We ate on white linen, with linen napkins and napkin rings to save them from one use to another. Clearly, we did not eat chop suey out of those little white cartons that it came in, and I know we never went to the restaurants with chrome tables and Formica tops. And yet I remember it clearly. Perhaps my mom served it when Dad was out of town or some such—that sounds just like her. She liked to experiment; Dad did not much like experiments, though he was usually gracious about it.

So I did a little research. Wikipedia describes it as American Chinese cuisine—which says to me it’s not authentic Asian. Meat—beef, chicken, shrimp, what have you—with assorted vegetables, all cooked quickly and served over rice. Tales of its origins abound, from Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century to a Chinese restaurant, ready to close for the evening, where it was concocted out of leftovers. One story if that a Chinese cook was forced to serve drunken miners and threw it together to avoid a beating. Whatever its origins, it’s probably not from China and not a high-class meal.

Today you can still buy canned chop suey, principally under the La Choy label. But even on the picture on the can, the vegetables look soggy and tired. Then I began to look at recipes online, and the conclusion I finally reached is that the chop suey of my childhood is today’s stir-fry.

So tonight we had chop suey/stir fry. Christian is in his element cooking Asian foods, and he was looking forward to this, even though it required a grocery trip to find oyster sauce—Central Market didn’t have it, and he went all the way to Whole Foods in Waterside. Christian said the hardest thing about it was chopping—carrots, onion, celery, bok choy, water chestnuts, bamboo, a few mushrooms, some snow peas. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, because it was vegetable heavy. And delicious.

It was the chop suey I remember from childhood—looked, smelled, and tasted like it. I’m sure, however, what I remembered did not have all the fresh vegetables this one did. The only thing we forgot—the chow mein noodles I had stashed in my pantry drawer. Oh well, we can use them another time—they are even good on a tossed salad in place of croutons.

I am so grateful to Christian for indulging my memory. And glad it turned out to be a delicious—what if we had all thought it mediocre?

So after dinner I tried to send an email message to someone, only to find out Outlook required my password. Out of the blue! It wasn’t time to change it or anything, but suddenly no messages would go out. Of course, when I entered my password, the system rejected it. Has it ever worked any other way?

My email is through TCU, so I went through the automatic password change procedure, which is designed, I am sure, to drive you to screaming, hair-pulling lunacy. It rejected every combination I tried, telling me that was a word in the dictionary. Well, I hadn’t read carefully—it doesn’t say it must be a dictionary word, it says it cannot be. What the you know what? I have always used grandchildren’s names or words that meant something to me, so that I could remember them, even in combination with the required capitalization, numbers, and symbols. Now I was reduced to random letters—clearly frustrating. I’m sure I tried ten or twelve times before I finally got the blessed message: password updated.

And then, when I sent the picture of dinner from my phone to my computer, auto-correct changed it to chop duet!

So now, fed, happy, and password updated, I am ready to take on the new week. How about you?

Waste not, want not and some matters of perspective.

 

A little politics, a little literature, some good happy hour talk
with Carol Roark and Lon Burnam

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. Thursday night I fixed a really good, ersatz Mexican casserole—a layer of refried beans, the next layer a mixture of chicken, Rotel, Velveeta (shhh! Sometimes nothing else will do—or melt—as well), corn, onion, and cilantro. Top that with generous grated cheddar and bake. (See “Gourmet on a Hot Plate” blog for February 25, http://gourmetonahotplate.blogspot.com/2021/02/another-week-of-bare-grocery-shelvesand.html ) Christian was at a work event, Jacob asleep, so Jordan and I ate huge helpings and talked about how good leftovers would be the next night, when we again expected it to be just the two of us. I really had my mouth all set for it.

Friday late afternoon Jordan came to the cottage and said she had good news, bad news and which did I want first. I chose bad, figuring I would get whatever out of the way. The casserole had been left on the kitchen counter all night. We didn’t want to risk it, so it went in the trash, and we ordered Tex-Mex which—sorry!—wasn’t nearly as good as what I’d made at home.

That wasted food made me think of my Depression-survivor mom who abhorred waste. How many remember being told to clear your plate because children in China were starving? After a while, those children were in Hungary, but there were always children somewhere who would welcome the food I didn’t want to eat. I never could see that my eating liver and onions did them any good, but ….  Mom saved the tiniest bits of food. When we cleaned her fridge for the last time, my brother was horrified at all the jars with tiny bits of something, each growing mold. Depression perspective stayed with her all her long life. Waste not, want not.

And speaking of food, did you read about the police who poured bleach on food intended for the homeless? It’s an old story now—2018—but somehow made its way into the news again today. In Kansas City, I believe. What is wrong with people? How inhumane can they be? Reminds me of the meme going around that says it should never, ever be illegal to give a fellow human being a drink of water. In Georgia now, to give someone in a voting line a gun is legal; to give that same potential voter a drink of water is a felony.

I think Georgia has bought itself a whole world of grief. I‘ve lost count of people who’ve posted such things as, “I guess I’m going to jail for the first time ever, because I sure am going to be passing out water to those in voting lines in Georgia.” One woman, whose page title indicates she cooks professionally, said she guessed she’d be catering the voting lines in Georgia come 2022. Love it!

And, finally, speaking of perspective, there’s the former friend who wrote today that in the matter of the shooting spree in Boulder, we must keep things in perspective. I told him my oldest granddaughter goes to school in Boulder and shops at the store where the shooting occurred. There is no such thing as perspective for me. He did not acknowledge that but replied about the horrors of gun violence in Chicago which he blames on leaders—and yet he would hamper those leaders and not give them the authority they need to deal with guns: better background checks and a ban on assault weapons. He and I once worked together and respected each other, but from my perspective today, he is a former friend. I can only stomach so much.

On a lighter note, I’m expecting friends for happy hour. Hope the rain holds off, but the sky is looking gray, and the air is eerily still.

Memories and elevators

Strange how a little thing can trigger an old memory. There was one of those rather silly questions on Facebook: “Who remembers when elevators had operators?” And boom! I was ten years old again and riding in an elevator to my dad’s office. A woman wearing a uniform and white gloves operated the elevator—I so remember those white gloves.

During the morning, my dad was the president/hospital administrator at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, but in the afternoon he was  in private practice as a manipulative osteopathic physician, with an office on the seventeenth floor of the Marshall Field Annex in downtown Chicago.

A trip to Field’s, as we called it, was a special treat for me. I can’t remember if Mom and I drove or took the Illinois Central—probably a bit of both. But I know I lived in anticipation for days beforehand. I knew, of course, about the “other” store, Carson Pirie Scott & Company, but Field’s was “our” store.

We started on the first floor, with its wide aisles and glass-and-dark wood cases showing everything from nylon hose and stationery to jewelry. At Christmas, it was a fairyland, with Santa driving his reindeer high above our heads, greenery and red bows everywhere, and Christmas music playing.

On an ordinary day we worked our way up, floor by floor. My memory is not clear, but I think housewares were on two or three, and girls clothing, which of course interested me, on four or five. The top floor—was it six or seven?—held restaurants. I particularly remember the Verandah, decorated to look like a southern front porch (or someone’s idea of that) and the more staid Walnut Room. Years later, on a return to Chicago, a friend and I ate in the Walnut Room and found it disappointingly shabby.

I think Mom had a map of Field’s imprinted in her brain, but she knew all the nooks and crannies. My favorite was in the basement were the sale items were—bargain basement had real meaning in those days! Tucked into one corner was a small counter that served hot dogs and chocolate frosted malts. I thought that was the best treat in the world.

Then if you knew where you were going you wound through dry goods to an obscure doorway, went up a flight of stairs, and into a hallway—you had gone under the street and were in the Annex building. Into the elevator and up to the 17^th floor, then around a corner, down a long hall with marble wainscoting (I suppose it was real), and there was the office Dad shared with three colleagues. Spoiled child that I was, I loved going there because the two women who ran the office always fussed over me. Mrs. O’Donnell always wore a starched white uniform and her stiff RN cap. She was a happy, outgoing, but very efficient woman who assisted the doctors who had a more general practice involving office procedures.

Dad’s office was simply two treatment rooms adjacent to the desk where Rose the receptionist sat. Rose was a gentle soul, a spinster I believe, quiet and retiring but most concerned about those around her. She once asked Dad so often if he felt well because, she said, he didn’t look well that he went home a sick man and asked Mom how he looked. But I remember treats from Rose and fine conversations with her.

Then it would be time for all of us to go home for the day. Dad, a proper gentleman in the British style, would put on his Brooks Brothers overcoat and don his fedora, and we headed for the elevators. No matter which operator we got, he or she always said, “Evening, Doc.” It made me think my dad was a really important man. And, of course, he was.

Birthday Brother

Happy Birthday to my big brother, who downplays his birthdays and said he wasn’t going to celebrate, but my sister-in-law might cook something special. He was, he said, amazed, surprised and very grateful to find himself 85 years old. His voice cracked this morning but he said that was because he hadn’t talked much yet and he was, as a matter of fact, feeling exceptionally healthy. It should happen to all of us at that age. And good gravy—if he’s that old, I can’t be too far behind. (Six-and-a-half years)

John was the big brother I adored as a child, the one who fought my battles for me. Once a neighbor boy teased me—John pantsed him (took his pants off and left him to go home without them—if I remember the story correctly). He was always my hero growing up. In elementary school, he was sent to private school, leaving me adrift in public school. In high school, he was sent to military school. I remember from those years that the few times he came home were thrilling experiences for me. And I connect dogs with his visits—one was my English cocker who apparently hated uniforms and lunged at him; another, earlier dog was one John got I know not where. I’ll ask, and he’ll say, “Gee, sis, I don’t remember.”

One incident became a family classic. He was trying to teach me to dance, but he yowled and complained loudly to Mom that I stepped on his foot. “He put his foot where I was going to step,” I said indignantly.

When I was in college in Iowa, he was in the Navy in California, I think, and would drive through my college town on his way home to Chicago. He took me to the local café, and I was so excited I had the shakes. He kept asking if I was cold—how do you explain that excitement to your brother when you’re trying to feel cool? Later on that trip, he needed to renew his drivers’ license so I went with him to the license office where they asked if a license drive brought him, and he said, “No, my sister brought me.” For some detail, he was denied the license and complained bitterly that the government trusted him to fly a plane but not to drive a car.

Even in those years, he looked out for me. I transferred from Iowa to the university at home and after I graduated I showed no signs of leaving the nest. John, by then married and with two stepchildren, announced that I was had to move on, so I followed his family to Kirksville, Missouri and enrolled in Kirksville State Teachers College (now Truman University) to work on a M.Ed. in English. That move determined much of the course of my life to come. John and my future husband were students at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine.

As adults, both divorced, John and I led different lives, our styles and concerns divergent, though we always remained close for holidays. In my recent years, he happily married and me happily single, we have been closer than ever, a bond strengthened by the closeness of our six children and, between us, thirteen grandchildren.

We have traveled a long and twisting road together, and we are both now nostalgic about our past, our families. We compare memories, and we share a love of many things learned as children. It’s a rich heritage, and I am so glad to share him to share it with. I do not like to hear his talk about aging and being fragile—I want my Bubba to be here as long as I am.

Happy Birthday, John, and thanks for being all that you are for me, including titular head of the family.

The Cranberry Wars

Cranberry relish is a memory of my childhood. My mom had an old, hand-cranked grinder that she attached with a clamp to an even older wooden small ladder or stool. Then my dad would sit in front of it on the appointed night and patiently crank the raw cranberries and chunks of orange and apple (unpeeled, of course) that she handed him. It was an endless, time-consuming process. Mom would add sugar—a cup at the most I think. We all loved the relish, served only at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

My children will not touch it, and my grandchildren, having never been introduced to it, probably would not either. So I don’t make it, but many holidays I long for that good old relish. This year, I am going to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving, and I will make cranberry relish. He likes it, and his brother-in-law is dippy about it. So Kevin will take home the leftovers. Of course, these days, it’s much easier to make in a food processor—you just have to catch it at the right point, when it’s chunky but not mush. No more hand-grinding, nor does it take but a few minutes.

Both my daughters-in-law prefer that jellied stuff that comes out of a can—an abomination to me. They chill it, slice it, serve it, and most of it is still on the plate at the end of the meal. I think it had to do with what you grew up eating.

Here’s my version:

1 apple, fairly tart, cored and seeded, cut in small chunks

1 small orange, seedless if possible (I blew that one), cut in small chunks

12 oz. raw cranberries, rinsed and picked over for bad ones

Mix all ingredients in food processor. Watch carefully so as not to blend into mush.

Add 1 cup sugar or more to taste, but you don’t want it too sweet.

Refrigerate up to five days in an airtight container. Serve at room temperature.

Enjoy. I’ve always thought of this as something you just put a spoonful on your plate and ate along with the turkey, especially leftovers the next day. But I read recently of someone who made it as a sauce to go on pound cake. Now there’s an idea!

Contemplating cattle and country life

Here it is mid-July, and Texas pastures are still lush and green—unheard of for many years. I’ve spent the last two evenings sitting on a comfortable, breeze-blessed porch, wine in hand, and contemplating a herd of cattle—beautiful, fat Red Angus with heifers and steers still among them and one happy bull. Periodically they wander up to the water tank by the fence and fix us with long stares. Their occasional bellows are contented sounds. (I probably have made several errors in that description which belie me as the city girl I am.) But there is something so relaxing about the late afternoon experience. Birds nest at the top of the porch posts, with most babies trying their wings but a few stuck in the nest, not yet brave enough to venture out and complaining to the world about it.

I’ve been visiting my brother John and sister-in-law Cindy at their ranch outside Tolar, Texas. A lazy wonderful escape from my daily routine. I’ve slept late and napped long—it’s the country air my brother insists. I’ve eaten marvelously and too much—steak and twice-baked potatoes, homemade spaghetti. Not only does the spaghetti taste wonderful, but I am so impressed by someone whips up a batch in the afternoon for supper. Like much of their cooking, making spaghetti is a two-person affair in this household. I've also enjoyed long visits with both of them. Cindy and I talked about cooking and food, and John and I recalled our very different childhood experiences, explored a newly found scrapbook that had many people we knew as youngsters--yes, we did a bit of living in the past, one of us recalling what the other couldn't.

Two German shepherds wander in and out at will, as do two or three cats (they hide and I’m never sure how many there are). There’s a noisy parrot, presumed to be male for years but who recently laid two eggs. Outside, chickens and guinea hens wander the property. The guineas are a hoot, scolding one cat in clear terms when it dared into the yard. It’s a city girl’s country delight, with computer and reading time.

It is also, for two relatively quiet people, the noisiest household I can imagine. The washing machine runs much of the time; the dishwasher probably twice a day. The “magic oven,” a commercial one that cooks a succulent chicken in 25 minutes and a turkey in an hour and a half, makes a screeching noise every time it needs adjustment and otherwise contents itself with a loud exhaust. Today John vacuumed his office with an automatic vacuum that is not quiet. So many gadgets, so much noise. And yet when I wanted to nap, I closed my door and didn’t hear a thing.

I’m reluctantly glad to be home, with Sophie, back in my routine—hitting the door running but maybe these two days will carry me through in serenity for a while. We stopped for lunch at Café 1187—wonderful atmosphere and food.

Tonight, Betty and I went a day late for our weekly Wednesday dinner. As we frequently do, we chose the Tavern—split the deviled eggs appetizer and the vegetable plate with carrots, red cabbage, wild rice salad, and spinach. Even splitting it was too generous and she boxed some to take home. We got in the car—and the battery was dead. Calls to the insurance emergency service and her husband resulted—while waiting, we went back inside and had another glass of wine. Eventually the car started but it was shaky—no a/c, and the windows would not roll down or up. Always an adventure.
I’ll sleep well tonight.

Balm BenGay and Other memories

When my brother and I were little, if we caught chest colds--which it seems we often did--Mom would rub our chests with Bengay. She had strong, capable hands, and she rubbed until it burned and we squirmed in protest. Then she'd pin an old sock around the neck to hold in the heat.
I wished for Mom last night about three when I woke with a tight feeling in my chest, a scratchy sore throat, and a cough. I'd noticed I coughed a lot yesterday but I thought I could will my way out of a cold with positive thinking. It didn't work. Today I can't tell if I really feel draggy or I just think I feel draggy because I have a cold.
Our father was, like much of our family, an osteopathic physician. If you were sick, in the evening when he came home, you'd hear him coming upstairs and know he was about to treat you. Brother John says he used to hide under the covers and pretend to be asleep. I remember that I squirmed and wiggled until Dad said, "Be still. People pay me five dollars to do this." Bless his heart, in the 1970s, retired in North Carolina and spending his days in his beloved garden, he still treated a few people. He'd shower and put on a fresh white shirt for each patient. John asked one day what he was charging, and he said five dollars. I guess prices hadn't gone up since the 1940s. Today I'd love to have an osteopathic treatment--wish John and his magic hands weren't so far away.
When my children were young and in school, I was pretty strict about "Get up and go about your business. You'll feel better." Once, when Jamie suffered an unexplained but terrifying series of dizzy spells, he told me, "I can't go to school. I'm dizzy." "Nonsense," I said briskly, pulling him to his feet. When I let go he sank into a puddle in front of me. He stayed home that day. I had a friend who used to say my children had to have a 106 degree fever before I let them stay home. Maybe it was because I had so many colds as a child and spent so many days in bed--I didn't want that for them.
I'm still wary of malingering myself, a sort of constant questioning of how I feel. I've decided to give this cold one day and that's all. Not a day in bed, but one with a good nap. I've cancelled lunch plans mostly because I don't want to infect the friend I was to lunch with; not sure yet about dinner. But tomorrow it's back to normal. My spring break is flitting away and all my plans are going awry.