Category: Writer

Just Walk Away: a recollection of people, places and things

When I look back on my life it seems that I was always leaving something behind.

I was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 13. It was Friday the thirteenth, the day I was born, which is unlucky in the eyes of the superstitious. Later on, when I became aware of the superstition, I decided that Friday the thirteenth was lucky for me. I decided that everything that was unlucky for everybody else was going to be lucky for me. That’s my superstition.

This is 1738 N. Park St. in Chicago, Illinois. My mom and dad brought me here after I was born. .

Sweet Home Chicago

After I was born, we lived in the cheap, bohemian, artsy fartsy part of Chicago. My mom called the place where we lived “Bug House Square.” She said at night, with all the lights on in the kitchen, she would plug up the cracks below the doors and spray bug killer. Then she would turn out the lights and slam the door behind her. In minutes she would hear scuffling at the bottom of the door and in the morning, upon opening the door, would find a giant pile of dead cockroaches that had tried to flee the poison.

At first mom had her teaching job and dad went to art school. In his free time, he would golf. My dad would have loved to be a professional golfer. Maybe it was my arrival that made him give up this dream. But he didn’t give up golf. Oh no, he golfed all his life, chipping practice balls in our back yard and going off to the golf course every chance he got. In Chicago it made mom sad and angry that he would go off to golf because he sometimes would go off and golf with women he met somewhere. Mom had to stay home with me. This made her resent him at the time, and this resentment continued all the time they were married. I believe that my Dad did not think anything was wrong with this behavior, but I know my mom felt betrayed because she told me this when I got older. She wanted to be the center of his world, but he couldn’t because he was essentially a self-centered person even though generous at times, and this was too bad because mom was a pretty sweet catch which he should have appreciated more. On the contrary I think he thought that he himself was the catch and that she was the one who should appreciate. This dynamic eventually led to divorce thirty years later. He wanted to be the center of the world and she wanted to be the center of his world. When two people have that kind of dynamic a good marriage isn’t going to happen. After I married and my own husband started to behave this way it caused the same kind of resentment in me and eventually, we split, too. When two people meet to give, both get 100%. When two people meet to get, no one gets anything. This seems to be the state of affairs with human beings. Hardly anyone meets to give. Most meet to get, or there’s an uneven split. 60/40. 30/70. I wish I had understood this better when I was young. My own relationships with men would have been a lot better and certainly different.

But in the beginning in Chicago and maybe even for a few years in Marshalltown they got along well enough and more often than not things were harmonious. The full blown rancor came later.

Mom

My mom was born in Illinois to German farmers and educated people who were preachers. People who could come up with a unique sermon for the congregation every week. She told me that when she was young, she was a very energetic person, that she ran everywhere. She had a strong personality even then and I’m sure she got this from her mom, my grandmother Frieda who was a house ‘a’ fire and then some. For example when my mom’s younger sister LuVerne was treated unfairly by a teacher in the one room schoolhouse where they attended school my mom stood up for her and bawled out the teacher. Imagine the chutzpah in the mid 1920s.

From left: Gram’s sister, mom with the dark brown Buster Brown haircut, blonde Uncle Kenneth, grandpa Bernhard, grandma Frieda in the kerchief, red-headed Aunt LuVerne, great grandma Tina, great grandpa William.

I only knew mom when she was an adult. Who knows their parents any other way? This is a sad state of affairs to my way of thinking and part of the reason I am writing this. This is so all the people who might have only known me as an adult might know a bit about me in other ways. Like when I was young. It’s the only control I have over time which is really no control at all.

As an adult my mom was an art teacher and book illustrator. She was a very creative and frustrating person to me. Maybe she was frustrating because she was so creative. I don’t know. I do know that she was not like everybody else I knew. Other people might have been boring, but my mom was not boring in any way. She was a combination of fear and courage for one thing. She couldn’t or wouldn’t do some things and I guess it was because she wasn’t confident but on the other hand, she was vivacious and fun, full steam ahead. Yes, she was complicated. She was not easy. Looking back, I can see that her life must have been frustrating for her, too. She could have been so much more, and yet, I can say with certainty that she did the best she could with her lot in life. When she got older and I looked at pictures of her I thought, “That person looks like they have had all the life sucked out of them. That person looks deflated.” Is this what happens to us? Why do some people still have vitality as they age? Why don’t other people? My mother lost her vitality as she aged. It was so strange because when she was young, she was a hot potato, a bottle rocket with zing! Some days I think I know what happened to her. Some days it’s just a theory. But I can relate because I was full of vitality when I was young and, now, I’m just tired out.

When I was young, I sometimes needed to ask her advice like any daughter would. Much to my chagrin she would come up with an impossible and outlandish idea to what I thought was a reasonable question. Her answer, if executed, would have been truly amazing, but was going to be absolutely impossible for a teenage kid like me or for almost anybody else for that matter. Me: “Mom, I need an idea for how to decorate the cafeteria for the prom.” Mom: “How about an ocean cruise theme where the cafeteria is decorated with portholes and set on hydraulics, so it rocks back and forth like ocean waves.”  Was she not taking me seriously or just trying to drive me crazy? I’ll never know. More about my mom later. This is just an introduction.

Dad

I have been told that my dad was an art student when my mom met him in Chicago. He was on the GI bill going to the Chicago Art Institute and he had already studied at the Nottingham School of Art in England after World War II. Mom told me that she married him because she didn’t want anyone else to have him. What a funny reason to get married! And I hope and pray that she actually loved and respected him, too! But I’ll never know now. After he got his art degree, he became an art director at a big heating and air conditioning company in Marshalltown, Iowa. He had a disdain for the corporate world. In Chicago at a job where he worked he went in to ask for a raise. “We just had a baby girl so I need a raise.” The next day they let my dad go. This made him very angry and he never forgot it. This was in the day before you could do something about discrimination. In those days you just had to suck it up. 

Like my mother he wasn’t ordinary either. Never boring. Ordinary people had landscape reproductions and prints of Jesus on their walls, but my mom and dad had real paintings done by them or by people they admired. My dad could sing and dance and tell jokes like there was no tomorrow. No, neither my mom nor my dad were boring. Maybe that was part of the problem. Some days I wished they were a little more boring. They kept our home in a tumult. All I wanted was a little peace.

My dad was a practical person, too. My mom’s vivaciousness, which was probably exciting to him at first, got to be tiring as the years went on. He also caused her to feel insecure and jealous. He thought she was being hysterical and unreasonable when she wanted to know where he was going or what he had been doing and with whom. He gave her grounds for wanting these questions answered. She wasn’t hallucinating or fabricating stories. This was my dad’s narcissism. I’ll talk more about his background later on but for now suffice it to say she was smart in a way that probably intimidated him. He was blue-collar and he painted what he saw in a realistic way according to the norms of the day. He approached painting like a tradesman or a carpenter. He would say, “I’m going to build a painting.” But he was adept enough that he was never pedestrian. He inserted elements of impressionism and abstraction into his paintings. But in his heart he was a tradesman. He approached life the same way. And he wasn’t as educated as she was. He would say, “Marge, you have a college education and you can’t even cook a hamburger.” What does that say to you? I think it says he felt not as good as her. After all he didn’t have a college education. It seemed that what he really wanted was someone to cook good food, keep house and have kids. He was not ambitious. He did what he had to do and didn’t aspire to anything more.

Scenes from Early Life

Even though there was tumult in our house there was an element of average even though it was a very small element. My mom had a domesticity that was efficient and warm. There is a picture of me in my highchair cramming tiny fistfuls of my mom’s homemade noodles into my mouth. My face is covered with noodle debris. Dad called me The Noodle Kid. When you looked at our household from a 20,000 foot level you would say we were a pretty average Midwestern family making ordinary food and doing ordinary things. My dad golfed and gardened. My mom cleaned and cooked and planted flowers.

But we were not average. Mom and Dad chose dark brown to paint our house when everybody else had some pastel shade. Mom planted corn and castor beans around our house while everybody else planted petunias. Mom played the oompah piano and dad sang along. Dad played the “Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart on the stereo system he built. Mom played Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel. Nobody else enjoyed the kind of music they did. We had backyard picnics and ate hamburgers, yes, and boiled corn on the cob with potato salad and cole slaw like everyone else but that was a nod to the Midwestern way of life for them. They aspired to more. Dad hunted like other dads but instead of a rifle he used a bow and arrow. Nobody else I knew did these things, so I felt different and set apart from our neighbors. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out exactly how different we were. You have to get away and see how other people live to get perspective, and I did, and this feeling has stayed with me all my life. 

(This is an excerpt from my Memoir “Just Walk Away” which is a recollection of people, places and things.)

When I look back on my life it seems that I was always leaving something behind.

Chapter two: Insects

We had lots of picnics in the back yard and friends of the family came over for hamburgers and corn on the cob.  So did black corn beetles. They were first in line to crawl on your food as best they could so you had to pay attention when you were eating because you might chomp down on one. There were mosquitoes that bit you and chiggers that got into the crease of your skin at the waistband of your shorts and itched something fierce. If you were running barefoot in the yard you might step on a bee and then mom would scrape the stinger out and put a bread and milk poultice on your swollen and itchy foot to, according to her, suck the poison out. When it got better, she would soothe the inevitable itch with baking soda mixed into a paste with water that would get all over the place when it dried. We never learned. We went barefoot constantly.  Once I got a trip to the emergency room when, chasing lightning bugs, I tripped and fell and gashed my forearm on a broken glass bottle that was sticking out of the dirt. I was quite young, maybe five. I guess in the old days, before the subdivision was built, the Schulz’s had used the back part of our yard as a trash dump. I still have that scar on my right forearm. You could identify my dead body by it if you wanted.

Strife

My mom and dad yelled and screamed at each other in that house. You could hear them all over the neighborhood which was a source of embarrassment to me. I don’t know what they particularly argued about except I would eventually hear my mom say as my dad stomped out the back door, “Where are you going, Art?” My dad was an old-fashioned guy who thought women were there to do men’s bidding and it was none of her business where he was going. Once my dad hit our mom during an argument. I heard him slap her and I heard her crying. That was it. I’ve blocked the details out. What I do remember was that it frightened us kids very, very badly. We never knew what caused him to slap her. We knew that he had a bad temper and could get angry over the smallest things. He had zero patience. When I was quite a bit older my boss at the non-profit gave me a phrase that seemed to fit him perfectly: “Street Angel, Home Devil”. Lisa was from a Long Island, New York Italian American neighborhood, and they had many colorful phrases to describe people. Everybody outside our family loved my dad for his humor and quick wit. In our family we feared and obeyed him. Mom sometimes pushed back but was never able to prevail in getting him to be a kinder person. He was what he was, and he stayed that way. OK I admit that he could be kind. Extremely kind and thoughtful. Every year he gathered armfuls of lilacs for my mom on her May 15th birthday. Yes, he wasn’t all bad!

Mom In More Detail

As a mentioned before my mom was a very clever, smart person though insecure and frustrating. On her best days she came up with all sorts of fun things for us kids to do. On birthdays she might make it a pirate theme and have a treasure hunt complete with a map and some kind of treasure to discover. We’d dress up in pirate clothes and have a whale of a time. In the summer she dug big holes in the back yard, lined them with plastic, then filled them with water for us to splash in. On Halloween she would go all out sewing costumes. She drew us girls paper dolls with clothes to match. Then we’d cut them out of the paper and dress our paper dolls. Once an older girl named May Polley cornered me and demanded that mom make her a paper doll, too. She wanted a Cinderella doll like I had. I ran home terrified and in tears. Mom made the paper doll, which I then gave to May and she never bothered me again. Maybe it was a lesson in giving in to bullies or maybe it was a lesson in picking your battles. In the picture you can see the little tabs on the side of the “dress”. Those tabs are meant to be folded over. They aren’t some weird appendages. The tabs were integral to the dress because when they were folded over, they kept the dress on the doll. It was really good fun dressing the dolls.

My mom had time to do all this stuff because she never worked outside the house. It was a time of prosperity in America after World War II, and we could get along on my dad’s salary, but we weren’t flush with cash or rich by any means. We lived a frugal life without extreme penny pinching. Now and then I would ask mom how come we can’t have this or that, like some neighbor kids had, and mom would always say something like it’s because we spend our money on insurance and those people don’t have any. Yes, she said this and I never knew if it was true, but I accepted it as a reasonable answer. We didn’t live a life of luxury or privilege, but we had what we needed.

Food

This is a Big Section because food is important to people in the Midwest, and we were no different.

I say important because invariably upon finishing breakfast mom and dad would be discussing what they were going to have for lunch. After lunch they would then be discussing what they were going to have for dinner. It was like that.

The majority of our food was home cooked from scratch. Mom never bought sugary items at the grocery store, for example. I envied kids who had Sugar Pops or Frosted Flakes in their cupboards. If Mom did buy boxed cereal, which was rare, it would be Wheaties or Wheat Chex. Mostly we had the hated old-fashioned cardboard flavored oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. To make either of those tolerable we added a pat of butter, heaps of brown sugar and a little milk. We didn’t have desserts in our house except for the occasional grocery store brand Fastco ice cream that came in a square paper carton. It was always vanilla and it was terrible but at the time we didn’t know better and accepted it as tasty.  Once in a while she would come home with Neopolitan ice cream, in the Fastco box of course, which was strawberry, chocolate and vanilla in sections. It was good enough and we ate it.

Some lucky kids had fudgsicles in their freezers and, boy, did I envy those kids! Mom considered these specialty or exotic items, and we never had any. The most daring thing mom got were the almond windmill cookies from Archway which were also known as Dutch Speckulaas. They were ginger flavored mostly and there were little bits of almonds in them. They were in the shape of, you guessed it, windmills. While we’re on the subject of cookies, once I came home from school and my mom was not home. I must have been 8 or 9. When I looked in the cupboard for a snack, I saw some boxed coconut cookies covered with chocolate and caramel. What is this? Why are these here? This is very strange and completely out of the ordinary! I was terrified to eat one, this is how rare this was. I thought, “Maybe they were put there by bad guys and they’re poisoned, and they want me to eat one, so I’ll die.” I closed the cupboard and walked away even though they looked incredibly good. Then I obsessed and obsessed about them but kept my composure. I kept going to the cupboard to check if they were still there. Eventually mom came home, and they turned out to be legit. They were Keebler Coconut Dreams cookies and a friend had given them to her.

When I got older, I was glad that we never had many sweets. I think that having very little sugar helped me have good teeth and not get overweight. As a matter of fact, unlike everyone I knew I absolutely loved going to the dentist. Dr. Warrington would come in the exam room, take one look in my mouth and exclaim, “You have such beautiful teeth!” I was a vain young child easily overcome by flattery, but it was true. My teeth were straight, and I didn’t have any cavities. I never had to endure the agony of braces like many of my friends. I even had the added advantage of having a little gap in my front teeth that I could squirt water out of to annoy my friends at the swimming pool. Later on, the gap closed and this was perfect because it helped my teeth to stay straight. Room to move, you see. Sigh. Such a perfect child!

It’s not that we didn’t have our indulgences. Near 15^th Avenue there was a small grocery store with a bakery in the back. It was around the corner of Fifteenth Avenue and down the street on Nevada (Nuh-Vay-Duh not Nuh-Vah-Duh. Remember this is Iowa!) where we would buy frozen Snickers bars and Slo-Pokes in the summer. They also had the best white bread baked in their own ovens.  One of my favorite snacks was two huge slices of that bread with as much Miracle Whip as possible slathered on it so it skooshed out of the sides when you pressed down. Only Miracle Whip. Nothing else. Not mayonnaise. Nothing. I would lick off the skooshed out Miracle Whip that I loved so much. I’ve found that people who are not from Iowa or the Midwest don’t understand the attraction of Miracle Whip. Everybody in the Midwest uses Miracle Whip. It is an ingredient in just about every recipe you can think of. Deviled eggs don’t taste right without it. Turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving don’t taste right without it. Potato salad doesn’t taste right without it. Coleslaw doesn’t taste right without it. Waldorf salad doesn’t taste right without it. Macaroni salad doesn’t taste right without it. I like mayonnaise now but when I was young it had to be Miracle Whip.

We also fried bologna to put in a sandwich and ate hot dogs raw and uncooked. My brother lived on Franco American spaghetti out of a can or Campbell’s tomato soup with half a package of saltines crushed in it. On Sunday mornings we had pancake eating contests while my dad flipped pancakes as fast as we could eat them. “Who wants another pancake?” he would yell out. “Me!” we would yell back. These were silver dollar sized pancakes mind you. Not the ginormous restaurant size. You could eat a lot of silver dollar sized pancakes.

On Sunday night mom made Swiss Steak cooked in the pressure cooker and served with mashed potatoes. She’d get a cheap cut of steak and pound the heck out of it with a meat mallet, so a lot of flour was mashed into it. Then she would chop carrots and onions and pour a can of chopped tomatoes in on top of the meat in the pressure cooker. Then we watch in fascination and fear as the little bobble thing on top of the pressure cooker would let off steam. Would it explode, or wouldn’t it? We never knew but it never did.

When it was all done, we would pile a mountain of mashed potatoes on our plates and then put a big piece of tenderized meat on top with the gravy over. You could eat the meat with a fork it was so tender. My lifelong enjoyment of liver and onions also began here. I don’t know how my mom made it, but it was never dry and chalky. Of course, we drowned it in ketchup. And, oh, the onions! You had to have a mound of pan-fried onions, slightly caramelized on the whole she-bang. Sometimes she made what she called Neopolitan spaghetti which other people call American Goulash. This was cooked macaroni noodles in a sauce of hamburger and canned tomatoes all mixed up. This, too, was high eatin’!

When we went out to eat, which was not often, we had some choices and one of the choices was a café near the Third Avenue bridge that had a bar in the front and a restaurant in the back. It was kind of seedy but we didn’t care. Their signature dish was a dinner plate size pork fritter with French fries. The bun was this ridiculous looking tiny thing in the middle of the giant pork fritter which had a couple of dill pickle slices and a dollop of yellow mustard.  The fritter itself was pounded wafer thin, breaded and deep fried. You would eat your way to the bun and, boy, did we love it!

The other treat was the Maid Rite sandwich. When I was older Hilary Clinton came to Marshalltown on a campaign tour and the first thing out of her mouth was the announcement that she had been to Taylor’s Maid Rite, and she could tell us with certainty that “They are Made Right!” Of course. Tell us something we don’t know. The Maid Rite was a white hamburger bun piled high with ground sirloin cooked until it fell apart. My sister Toni once made a very good imitation of Taylor’s secret recipe. Roseanne Barr, the comedian, called it “loose meats” and had a café in her TV series that sold them. Loose meat is a terrible name for this delicious sandwich. That makes it sound perfectly revolting. It was perfection on a bun with pickle and chopped onion and yellow mustard. NO ketchup. Ketchup had been pulled from the menu in the Great Depression because bums would come in, sit themselves down at the counter, order a cup of hot water then proceed to add a bunch of ketchup for a strange kind of soup.

To go with your Maid Rite, you had to have one of their amazing, malted milk shakes. A spoon would stand straight up if you stuck one in. It was kind of a magic taste, the Maid Rite along with a slurp of malted milk. They did not serve French fries. It was perfect just those two things. In this picture there’s ketchup so this was not a picture taken in Marshallburg unless they gave in for the Clinton. I also see French fries. We did not have these when we were kids. Verboten.

Sometimes on a hot and humid night in summer dad would say let’s go get ice cream and then we’d pile in the car to drive to a creamery in Tama (Tay-ma). We’d be driving in the dusk along highway 30 and I’d look out the window at the miles of corn fields with billions of lightning bugs flashing and wonder how there could be so much corn. I didn’t eat that much corn. Why was there so much corn? Sometimes we’d go to the Tastee Freeze south of town on highway 14 and get soft serve that was dipped upside down into chocolate and the chocolate would then harden. You’d eat a hole in the chocolate and then suck the soft serve out while your tongue was trying to keep up with all the ice cream drips down the side of the cone. John Cougar Mellancamp immortalized the Tastee Freeze in one of this songs.

On the north side of town on highway 14 was the A&W root beer stand. The car hops would come out to your car and take your order and then come back with your food and drink on a tray that attached to the side of the car. That root beer came straight from heaven. The mug had been in the freezer and the sides of the mug were frosted over. Maybe there would be a hot dog along with it, but you didn’t really need it. The root beer was outstanding all by itself. Now any other kind of root beer is pale by comparison. I even tried to make root beer once, but it didn’t taste anything like A&W. I’m spoiled for the taste of true old fashioned root beer now because Mr. Allen and Mr. Wright got the right ingredients and threw away the key in 1919.

Another summer excursion would be a trip to the outdoor drive-in to watch some cowboy movie and have terrible salty popcorn from the concession stand which, of course, I loved. We’d park next to the speaker attached by a long wire cord to a pole. Mom would take it off the holder and hook it over the door. The sound was awful but that didn’t matter. It was all part of the drive-in experience. We’d watch until we fell asleep in the back of the car and then somehow get home arrive home and wake up in our own beds the next morning.

There was only one pizza place in town at the time. Luckily it was and still is the best pizza on the planet. It rivals any pizza you can think of. Chicago pizza, New York pizza, wood fired pizza. None of them hold a candle to Zeno’s pizza. I think they used provolone instead of mozzarella and it was the cheesiest greasiest saltiest pizza on a thin crust pizza you ever had. The atmosphere was great. Everybody had their little booth, and the decor was kitchy Italian with fake grapes and flowers garlanded on the walls.

At Shady Oaks restaurant east of town on Old Highway 30 (also known as The Lincoln Highway by the way), I would always have a giant wedge of iceberg lettuce with Roquefort cheese dressing poured all over. I thought it was quite special and unique that they brought to the table those triple dispensers of salad dressing with a choice of thousand island, blue cheese and Italian dressing so you could ladle out the dressing out to your heart’s content.  It wasn’t sanitary but we didn’t think anything of it. At home we didn’t have salads. We had vegetables.

Then there was Milt’s on S. 12^th Avenue. This was a hamburger joint, but the attraction was Milt himself. We kids watched in amazement as he poured our milk into our glass going higher and higher until he was pouring it from 3 feet above the glass. When Milt retired it became a Chinese restaurant and dad would say, “Let’s go get flied lice.” He thought this was funny and didn’t realize how derogatory it was to say it that way. The food was actually pretty good. Your standard Americanized Chinese food. They had Egg Fu Yung which was smothered in some kind of beefy gravy and pork fried rice as well as Chow Mein. Not your gourmet fare but we had never had anything gourmet so we had nothing to compare it to.

Myth: Old people are stick-in-the-muds and don’t go anywhere because they are crotchety homebodies.

Truth: Old people would love to go everywhere all the time, but old people are probably living on a fixed income and don’t go anywhere because they can’t afford to.

Myth: Old people are hypochondriacs and go to the doctor for every little thing because they love the attention.

Truth: Old people go to the doctor a lot because there’s always something going wrong. Everything hurts on an old person and is giving out. Old people were the picture of health when they were young, and they never saw this coming.

Myth: Old people are lazy and don’t like to exercise.

Truth: Old people would love to exercise if exercise didn’t hurt for days afterwards. Aches and pains that might have taken a couple days to dissipate when they were young now take days and days to get back to “normal”.  Whatever “normal” is. Normal is different now.

Myth: Old people are more cautious than young people because they’ve lost their joie de vivre and are now conservative party poopers.

Truth: Old people may have lost their joie de vivre but it isn’t because of what you might think. Old people are more cautious than young people because they’ve realized that it isn’t worth the risk whatever “it” may be. Remember the song by Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is”? Old people have realized this was a true song. It’s going to be a disappointment.

Myth: The Golden Years are a wonderful time of life

Truth: The Golden Years is an idea made up by a young person. There’s nothing golden about it. If anything, it’s the Gray Years. “No matter how bad things get, remember these sage words: You’re old, you sag, get over it.” — Sophia from The Golden Girls TV show

Myth: Sex is better when you’re old.

Truth: This is also something made up by a young person, probably a young doctor or a young journalist. The truth is in old age something is always not working so unless you’re into drugs and surgical procedures you need to come up with other ways of intimate pleasure.

Myth: There’s no or very little age discrimination in hiring practices concerning old people.

Truth: Age discrimination is alive and well in hiring practices of old people. Old people can apply all they want to American jobs but the certainty of getting them is all but certain even if the old person is eminently qualified. Usually they say, “We found a more qualified person.” This is code for “You’re too old.”

Myth: People have respect for the wisdom that is acquired by age.

Truth: Nobody cares what old people know or what their wisdom can provide. Young people think they know it all and the last thing they want is for some old person to tell them anything. Old people know this is true because when they were young, they didn’t want some old person telling them anything even if it made sense. Especially if it made sense.

Miscellaneous Truths: Getting up to pee many times in the night is common. Leg pains from taking medicine is common. No amount of Botox can get rid of all the wrinkles. Eating anything and everything in any amount is a thing of the past because now there’s acid reflux. Fallen arches are common but there’s the Good Feet Store if you can afford it. Forgetfulness is common and they’d like you to think this means you’re on the verge of getting Alzheimer’s.

Youth was a time of gaining things. Old age is a time of letting things go.

(more…)

The boys had been hang gliding that day. This was years ago but it seems like only yesterday. I was their chase driver and I liked it. I liked being behind the wheel of the SUV alone with my thoughts and looking out at the landscape as it went by. There was that feeling of freedom somewhat anchored by a purpose. This is my ideal life. I like freedom coupled with a sense of purpose. When purpose becomes uncoupled, I’m like a boat on the water with nothing but freedom, no anchor and drifting.

Everyone had a good day. The boys had flown far and landed unscathed. I had been able to pick up the two I was assigned to without difficulty or getting lost. We were back at the camp site that was called Tuttle Creek which I said was famous for all the tuttles. You know, box tuttles, painted tuttles, desert tuttles. Tuttle Creek was right there adjacent to the famous Alabama Hills. In the old westerns the Alabama Hills were the on-location scene with Whitney Portal as the backdrop and I can see why. They were a very interesting rock formation.

It was the fourth of July and we wanted to see some fireworks. So, after dinner we piled in the SUV to see if Independence was doing anything. They were. We joined the citizens of Independence on the shoulder of Highway 395 and waited. Highway 395 follows the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada and you can get a good look at Whitney Portal as you drive 395 through Lone Pine. Independence is a little farther south on 395 and usually has a fair amount of traffic but tonight there was none or very little and we waited in the gathering dusk for the show to begin.

And soon it did. A flat bed wagon pulled in and was set up with chairs for the dignitaries of Independence and the master of ceremonies. The flat bed was off to one side of a large empty sagebrush field north of town. Some one over there was in charge of the fireworks but we couldn’t see who. Eventually we heard the PA system crackle to life. It was dark now, around 9 pm.

“Welcome to the 30^th annual Independence California Fourth of July Celebration!”, he said. “Let’s begin by singing our National Anthem.” We all rose to our feet as the PA played a rousing band version and we sang. When we finished singing…

The announcer announced: “For our first display we have something from Ace Hardware on Main street.”

A minute goes by…

Ka-boom!

We all ooo-ed and ahh-ed.

Each fireworks was announced in succession. Apparently, the city had no budget of their own. Every fireworks was paid for by a local business.

“This display comes to you from the law offices of Harvey Smith.”

A minute goes by…

Ka-boom!

“Our next display is courtesy of Eastern Sierra Ice Cream Company.”

A minute goes by…

Ka-boom!

But now we have a sage brush fire that is started by embers falling into the field! Ah-rooooooooo! Here comes the Independence Fire and Water truck roaring down the highway. It two wheels it into the field, slams on the brakes, the driver jumps out, grabs the hose and begins to pour water on the fire.

We get a bird’s eye view of this from our SUV, and it is all quite entertaining.

Fire out. We go back to the MC.

“Our next display comes to you courtesy of Inyo County Water Department.”

A minute goes by…

Kaboom!

We only had 3 more fires (what a successful night!) and three more fire truck sorties to the rescue. Such is life in a small town on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

Make Pico de Gallo!

Pico De Gallo is a Mexican salsa that’s loaded with all the things that are growing well in my garden. Pico de Gallo, by the way, (translates to “beak of the rooster”. Don’t ask me why they call it that. They also call a food item wrapped with a tortilla “burritos” (little burros), and deep-fried pastries “churros” (sheep). It’s a colorful language and culture.

The things that don’t grow well in my garden aren’t ingredients in Pico de Gallo. (eggplant, green beans, okra, potatoes). Last year I grew a lot of native crops, but I wound up not using them so I’m not growing them this year even though they grew very well. (black eyed beans, buckwheat, sorghum, amaranth). Now I’m branching out to things that I like to eat. And I’m having trouble with the birds. They eat everything that isn’t a Pico de Gallo ingredient. And guess what? The birds are winning! Things that the birds don’t seem to like are the things that go into Pico de Gallo. (tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, cilantro). They are growing well and I’m sure it’s a southwestern thing. If I had a lime tree, I would have all the ingredients. Pico De Gallo is excellent over tacos, burritos, nachos, or served with chips. You can make up a batch in about 5 minutes.

Pico de Gallo salsa

Ingredients

    1 lb Roma tomatoes, (3-4 medium), diced

    1/2 medium onion, (1 cup chopped)

    1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely minced

    1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

    2 Tbsp lime juice, from 1 lime

    1/2 tsp salt, or to taste

    1/8 tsp black pepper  

Instructions

In a medium bowl, add diced tomatoes, onion, jalapeno pepper and chopped cilantro. Stir in 2 Tbsp lime juice and lightly season with salt and pepper, or season to taste. Enjoy right away or cover and refrigerate overnight.

I grew my own fava beans this past winter because I’d never eaten a fava bean and I was mighty curious. I planted the fava beans in the fall expecting them to bloom and get seed pods before winter fully set in. In the beginning they grew well, and they flowered. They have quite a pretty flower resembling a sweet pea. Then winter set it and it set in with a vengeance. Well, a vengeance by Arizona standards. Here’s how winter sets in with a vengeance in Arizona: it went below 32 degrees for days on end. So, I put up a makeshift greenhouse to protect my favas from the cold and it worked. But then it didn’t work. It got too cold for too long. Eventually the tops of the plants went black and withered so I chopped off the black parts and waited to see what would happen. There were still some of the green plants left low to the ground. I did not have much hope.

And then…

It started to warm up and the plants started coming back! They re-bloomed and seeds pods started to grow and last week I harvested. A miracle! My tough little favas. I love them so.

So, I looked around for a recipe that intrigued me, and I found one on Jamie Oliver that is the bomb! I modified it some because I didn’t have all his ingredients. I didn’t have the feta cheese he suggested so I used parmesan. I also didn’t have sourdough, so I used a baguette. I didn’t have fresh rosemary, so I used dried. I was too lazy to make his dressing, so I just added tomatoes to a balsamic vinaigrette I already had.

Here’s my version.

Try it. You’ll like it. You can leave off the chianti and liver.

Fava Bean and Peas on Toast

About ½ cup good homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing

2 spring onions

4 ripe cherry tomatoes

EVOO

Bunch of fresh mint

1-2 cups broad beans (frozen or fresh) (if you haven’t grown your own most Mexican markets have fresh)

¼ to ½ cup peas (frozen or fresh)

2-4 slices of bread (sourdough or baguette sliced in half lengthwise as to be toastable)

Clove of garlic

Rosemary (1 sprig of fresh or a ½ teaspoon of dried)

Parmesan or Feta cheese

Chop the cherry tomatoes into your balsamic dressing. Let set at room temp to marinate. You can add a bit of fresh lemon juice for piquancy.

Pick the mint leaves off the mint stalks, set aside, and tie the stalks with a string. If you’re lazy like me just add the mint stalks to a pan of boiling water and blanch the prepared fava beans for a minute.

Fava Bean preparation

OK, I admit it. Fava beans aren’t the easiest in the world to prepare but they’re not the hardest either and they’re so worth it, I think. If using fresh pick some plump pods, trim them and remove the green outer husk to get to the big seeds inside. I discovered how to get the outer husk off the big seeds by accident. I was going to just blanche the big seeds and freeze them for later and then I looked and saw that the big seeds were wrinkling. Whoops! The outer husk almost slides right off and there inside are the most delectable little green interiors. Once you have about a couple cups, put your bean interiors in a pan of water and boil for a minute to blanch.

Fava beans blanched and unpeeled on left. Fava beans blanched and peeled on right.

After the minute, using a slotted spoon, scoop out the blanched beans and put ¼ to ½ cup of frozen peas in the mint water and blanch them, too. Add the blanched beans to the dressing and then drain the peas and add them to the dressing, as well. Finely slice the mint leaves and add to the dressing/bean/pea/tomato mixture. Toss well to combine. Toast the bread and take a garlic clove, cut it in half and rub it all over the toasted bread. Sprinkle with a little sea salt and a little good olive oil. Pile the beans on and shave parmesan or sprinkle feta over.

For a little extra oomph, you can sprinkle extra chopped mint, a drizzle of lemon juice and chopped green part of green onion.

(I’m making a departure from Joy of Cooking because Marlene requested this recipe. Have fun, Marlene, and everybody else!)

I love 2 kinds of donuts: buttermilk bars and old fashioned. None other really. And even these two I don’t like with a ton of extra sugar all over them. I definitely don’t like them with any doo-dads like sprinkles. Marty is the opposite. The more sprinkles and doo-dads the better. To each his own I say. He’s also okay with store bought donuts. I used to be but somewhere along the line they started using a mix that makes all donuts taste the same. Store bought donuts also have a weird mouth feel, an icky waxy coating at the roof of my mouth.

So, when I saw this recipe, I thought OMG I’m going to make them, and I hope they turn out really well. They did! I learned a thing or two and I’m passing my learning on to you. Maybe you will make them and enjoy them as much as I did.

Tips

Use whatever sugar you have on hand. I used equal parts granulated and brown sugar, but you can also use all of either one and they’ll be good too. But no guarantees. I can guarantee my recipe LOL.

Be generous with flour. This dough will be very sticky, almost like a very thick batter. More on that later. Don’t be afraid to flour your hands and equipment generously to prevent sticking.

If you have a fish spatula or a spider to transfer the dough to the oil. I used a slotted spoon.

Don’t worry about how they look. They’re meant to be tasty. Not perfectly shaped.

Buttermilk Bar Donuts

If you make the whole batch, you will get somewhere around 30 bars.

Donut Ingredients

4 T (1/4 C) unsalted butter

3-1/2 C cake flour (use cake flour. It has less gluten in it for a lighter finished product) + more for dusting.

2-3/4 t baking powder

¼ t baking soda

1-1/2 t kosher salt (kosher is just salt. No anti-caking ingredients or even dextrose/sugar)

¾ t ground nutmeg

½ C packed light brown sugar

½ C granulated sugar

1 large egg

3 large egg yolks

¾ C buttermilk

About 2 quarts vegetable oil (I used canola) for deep frying

Vanilla Glaze Ingredients

2 C powdered sugar, sifted if lumpy.

1 T vanilla extract

¼ C boiling water

Bars

Place unsalted butter in a small microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high until melted. Set aside.

Place the cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in medium bowl and whisk to combine.

Place the melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. I didn’t have a paddle, so I used the wire whip attachment. I had to scrape the sides of the bowl frequently. Or you can use a hand mixer or electric mixer. Beat on medium until fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Reduce speed to low and add whole egg and the yolks one at a time. Scrape bowl as needed. Add buttermilk and mix until combined.

Add dry ingredients all at once and mix by hand until combined. The dough will be quite sticky. Mine was the consistency of very thick batter. If yours is this way I would suggest adding a bit more flour to make it a sticky dough instead of a very thick batter. I found later on that the very thick batter made it hard to scoop into the oil. Use your common sense. It should not be dry whatsoever. Refrigerate at least one hour or overnight. It will still be sticky but will firm up considerably.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Heavily flour a work surface and your hands with cake flour. Transfer half the dough to your work surface. Sprinkle with more flour. Pat into a 3 x 24-inch rectangle about ½ inch thick. Add more flour if you need to. You will brush off the extra flour later.

Using a floured bench scraper or big knife, cut the rectangle into 1-1/2-inch-wide bars. I wound up cutting mine in half again and I’m glad I did because my dough turned out to be hard to scoop up. The smaller size made it easier. Again, common sense. Press down in middle of each bar with knife or scraper. Not cut. Just press. This gives it the distinctive buttermilk bar look. This didn’t really work well for me. Maybe it will work better for you. I didn’t care. They still tasted great.

Using a brush lightly brush off excess flour. Using the scraper transfer each bar to the baking sheet, flipping it over so indentation is down. Brush off excess flour on that side. Refrigerate again.

Fill large Dutch oven or heavy bottom pot with oil. At least 2 inches of oil. Heat to medium high heat until 350 degrees or a bit above because the temp will drop when you fry the bars.  I have a digital thermometer. I don’t have a fry daddy or anything like that. Getting the oil the right temperature is essential.

Fry in batches of 4-5. Don’t crowd the pot. Use slotted spoon, fish ladle or spider to carefully transfer the bars in. Fry about 1 minute per side until they are golden brown. Transfer to wire rack. Let cool to room temperature before glazing. If the oil is the right temperature you will be surprised how little oil is used.

Glaze

Put powdered sugar in bowl with the vanilla and boiling water. Whisk until shiny smooth and lump free. Dip a donut into the glaze halfway. Return to rack.

Done!

I feel an affinity for New Orleans even though I have never been there. It’s the French in me, I guess. My dad and his wife Terri used to go there and get shrimp right off the shrimp boats. Maybe they met the original Bubba Gump. Maybe not. It remains that I like New Orleans and that’s good enough for me.

I’ve always wanted to try a Muffuletta sandwich. I’ve had Po’ Boys before. The Po Boy I had was an oyster Po Boy and it came from the venerable Spenger’s fish market and restaurant in Berkeley, California one fine summer/fall/winter/spring day. I say it this way because the weather in Berkeley is roughly the same all the time so it’s hard to differentiate between the seasons. Also, Spenger’s is no longer there, having closed years ago. Anyway, that Po Boy made me sick to my stomach. Maybe it was too greasy. The oysters, after all, are deep fried. This made me sad because I really wanted to love it and the first couple bites I did love. Much to my chagrin, I could not finish it.

I was hoping that my first muffuletta wouldn’t affect me in the same way and it didn’t, but I can’t really say that I loved it very much. It was too salty. The ingredients are all salty to begin with.

BUT…. If you love olives, this is the sando for you! It starts with a very easy to make olive salad.

Olive Salad Ingredients

¾ c pimento stuffed olives

3-4 small, pickled onions

¼ c pitted kalamata olives

4/4 c Italian giardiniera

2 large pepperoncini

2 T capers

1 medium clove garlic, chopped

1 t dried oregano

Ground pepper to taste (5-6 grinds of the pepper grinder should do it)

2 t lemon juice

2 T olive oil

Drain your ingredients and put everything in a food processor. Pulse until coarsely chopped. Won’t take but a minute.

Build your sando.

Halve a sesame seed Italian roll and scoop out the insides. Pile on mozzarella, provolone, salami and /or mortadella and capicola and the olive salad. Top with the other half of the roll and smoosh it all down. You can eat it immediately or wrap it tightly, refrigerate and eat later. Alternatively you can squash it under a brick. Ain’t that a kick? The olive salad keeps in the fridge in a jar.

First Sandwich: Ham with Swiss cheese and Chow-Chow on Red Fife sourdough bread

Chow-chow (also known as Mustard Pickle)

This Joy of Cooking original first appeared in the 1931 edition and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t make this recipe as instructed because I would have wound up with way too much! The Joy recipe makes 10 pints! I also didn’t want to can it. I just want to try it so I only made enough that would keep in the fridge until I used it up. I made other modifications, too, out of necessity. I used salad cucumbers because I couldn’t find pickling cucumbers in the store, and I used a small amount of regular yellow onion because I couldn’t find fresh pearl onions.  I had to use the greenest tomatoes I could find because I could not find flat out green tomatoes. Later on in this season I’ll have plenty but right now my tomato plants are still in their infancy. To reduce the volume, I used my “vast cooking experience” to figure out the proportions (ha ha) and it actually worked out pretty well. Chow chow tastes like Bread and Butter pickles (which I love).

This seems like a complicated recipe but it’s not. You prepare vegetables, a sauce and then you mix it all together. That’s really all there is to it. My version makes about 2 pints.

Cucumber Prep

Wash 2 thin unpeeled salad cucumbers well and remove a thin slice from each end then slice crosswise ¼ inch thick. (I scored them with a fork and then sliced them with a mandolin. I was hoping that the scoring would make the skin less tough, and it does)

Stir together 2 cups cold water and 2 T pickling salt until the salt is dissolved.

Pour the salty water over the cucumbers in a large bowl. Place something on the cucumbers to keep them submerged and refrigerate for a few hours.

Sauce

For the sauce, combine and stir until the sugar is dissolved:

1 cup cider vinegar

1 cup sugar

Whisk together in a medium bowl until smooth:

1 T all-purpose flour

1 T dry mustard

1 heaping t turmeric

1 heaping t celery seed

Slowly whisk about a 1/2 C vinegar/sugar mixture into the flour mixture. Whisk until smooth.

Bring the remaining vinegar/sugar mixture to a simmer in a large saucepan over low heat. Slowly whisk in the flour mixture. Do this a little at a time. I dipped my whisk into the flour/vinegar/sugar mixture. Cook, whisking constantly, until smooth and simmering. Don’t let it get too thick. Hold off before it thickens into a paste. Remove from heat, cover and reserve.

Remaining Vegetable Prep

Core or trim and dice:

1 firm green tomato (I couldn’t find green so I used the greenest tomato in the store.)

1 green bell pepper

You should have about a cup or so. Combine the tomatoes and bell pepper in a large saucepan with:

½ cup cauliflower cut into bite size pieces.

Blanch all of this for 1 minute in boiling water, peel, and then add to the vegetables:

¼ c pearl onions (If you can’t find pearl onions used about a T of regular yellow onion.

Drain the vegetables and then the cucumber thoroughly. Add the cucumbers to the vegetables and stir together well.

Mix

Stir the mustard sauce into the hot vegetables. Season with pickling salt to taste if it needs it.

Cool the mixture, pack into a jar, and refrigerate.

Second Sandwich: Ham with Cream Cheese and Apple Chutney on Red Fife sourdough bread

This apple chutney is so good I’ve been adding it to my curried cauliflower dinner or my sauteed kale dinner.

Apple Chutney

Wash the fruit (and peppers, if using).

Combine in a large saucepan:

1 peeled lemon, seeded and chopped.

1 garlic clove, chopped.

5 cups chopped peeled firm apples.

2-1/4 c packed brown sugar.

1-1/2 c raisins

¼ c chopped peeled fresh ginger

1-1/2 t canning salt

¼ t ground red pepper

2 c cider vinegar

(2 red bell peppers, chopped)

Simmer, stirring frequently for at least 2 hours or until sauce has thickened. Pack the hot chutney into hot pint jars leaving 1/ inch headspace. Process for 15 minutes. (or refrigerate and eat it up within a week of two. It goes well on just about anything!)

Next week: I’m making sourdough bread with Khorasan wheat flour.