tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72452251785801707532024-03-11T14:11:49.595-05:00The Opulent OpossumLife in Mid-Missouri offers the ordinary and the sublime. Here, we swing back and forth between frustration and glory, realizing that for better and for worse . . . it's home. Let's find the opulence among the opossums. Recipes included.Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.comBlogger762125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-59021871100100141882024-02-28T21:53:00.009-06:002024-03-03T13:18:54.651-06:00Marie's Apple Cake<p>There are so many ways to make apfelkuchen, or “apple cake”! I suspect every ethnic German mother and grandmother has her own recipe. This is just one version—but I know you’ll love it. It’s easy to make. It’s a bit rustic, but you can dress it up with toppings.</p>
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<p>Yeah, there’s a <i>whole world</i> of great German desserts out there, and “kuchens” come in all varieties and forms. (It’s not surprising, when you consider that <i>kuchen</i> means “cake,” and of course we have ten thousand types of cakes—sheet cakes, pancakes, crab cakes, coffee cakes, ice cream cakes, rice cakes, etc.)</p>
<p>This is a nice, easy, little apple cake recipe from my Grandma Schroeder’s best friend in the whole wide world, her crony from early girlhood through their entire lives, Marie (Weigand) Korsmeyer (1904–1999). She and her husband, Clay Korsmeyer, lived at 112 W. Atchison Street. The house is still there, across the street from my friend Laura’s house.</p>
<p>I got the recipe from my mom, who had apparently gotten it from Grandma—Edna Schroeder—who had apparently gotten it from Marie . . . even though Grandma clearly had her own recipe(s) for apple kuchen!</p>
<p>Oh, <i>Marie!</i></p>
<p>Edna and Marie’s friendship resembled a “Lucy and Ethel” relationship in some ways; it was beautiful, lively, fun-filled, and true. I think whenever their shenanigans ended with “trouble,” they generally wound up having a good laugh over it. There are stories about them, as little girls, bingeing on green apples they had snitched from someone’s apple tree, and soon after, regretting it! It would become a hilarious story that got better and better with time.</p>
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<p><i>Marie (left) and Edna (right), having "refreshments" in the backyard at 224 W. Elm, late 1970s or early 1980s. That was back when "poodle" haircuts were all the rage for ladies of a certain age.</i></p>
<p>Then there’s the story about them as mature adults, having a few too many martinis out in the backyard, and . . . well, that story will remain in the family. And the neighborhood bird population—they’re probably still telling that story, too. (Ha ha ha!)</p>
<p>Edna and Marie were practically sisters, growing up together in the early years of the 1900s on West Elm Street. To my dad and his brothers, Marie was another aunt. And to me, she was in the same category as my great aunts Minnie and Esther, and cousin Marguerite, in that same age group. No family get-together was complete without Marie’s cackling laughter.</p>
<p>I’ve altered the recipe slightly, mainly putting the wet ingredients and dry ingredients together, and adding a pinch of salt, but those are the only changes. Notice that the recipe calls for two cups of apples and one cup of flour—so get a sharp knife and chop the apples finely. (Marie, by the way, had superb knife skills.) Indeed, this cake can be rather crumbly because of all the yummy apple in it. It’s super moist, almost jammy.</p>
<p>It’s up to you if you want to peel the apples or leave skins on. I think it makes a prettier, more tender cake if you peel them. But if you want the fiber and nutrients, you needn’t peel the apples.</p>
<p>Nuts: I’d use black walnuts or pecans. Back in the day, black walnuts were free, if you were willing to hull them and bust them open and pick the nutmeats out. But you can use whatever nuts you want, or omit them altogether.</p>
<p>The batter is pretty stiff and sticky, but not to worry—the apples will provide moisture while this bakes. To spread the batter out in the pan, wet your hands with some water and use them to pat and smooth the surface. I use an 8 x 8 inch baking dish, prepared with some nonstick cooking spray.</p>
<p>It will get a little crisp on top; it’s done when the edges start pulling away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean. You know. It will be moist and rather crumbly.</p>
<p>This is an excellent coffee cake for breakfast as well as a tasty dessert. For the latter, consider serving it hot, à la mode. Maybe you want to drizzle some icing over it, or garnish it with a bit of cinnamon sugar or powdered sugar.</p>
<p><b>Marie’s Apple Cake</b></p>
<p>In a medium bowl, cream together:</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>1 cup sugar</li><li>1/4 cup shortening</li></ul><p></p>
<p>Then mix in:</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>1 egg</li><li>
1 tsp. vanilla
</li></ul><p></p><p>Set the bowl with the wet ingredients aside.</p>
<p>In a large bowl, combine:</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>1 cup flour</li><li>1 tsp. baking powder</li><li>pinch of salt</li><li>1 tsp. cinnamon</li><li>1/4 tsp. nutmeg</li></ul><p></p>
<p>Then mix in:</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>2 cups apples (about 2 large), cut finely (peel if desired) (Jonathan or Granny Smith recommended)</li><li>1/4 to 1/2 cup nuts, if desired</li></ul><p></p>
<p>Then stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients/apples/nuts.</p>
<p>Spread into a greased [8 x 8”] cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until done.</p>
<p>And . . . think of Marie as you enjoy your cake.</p>
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<p>ADDENDA: For the record, here are the two Southside/Munichburg homes that Marie lived in.</p>
<p>Marie's first Munichburg home was 208 W. Elm, on the same block where my grandma grew up (at 215 and 220 W. Elm) and where my grandma and grandpa lived once they were married (at 224 W. Elm). Here's what Marie's girlhood home, 208 W. Elm, looked like in August 2007.</p>
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<p>In the picture below (from Google Map's Street View, ca. 2021), Marie's girlhood home, 208 W. Elm, is the brick house at the right. Grandma's home (224 W. Elm) is the white-stucco house at far left. Today, only 224, 220, and 218 remain standing on that side of the block. I think 208 was razed sometime last year (2023). It was the last house on that end of the block to go. Being brick, it was the sturdiest. (I don't remember the demolition; Sue says I might have been in Columbia that day; the razing crew made quick work of it.)</p>
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<p>Marie and her husband, Clay, lived at 112 W. Atchison, within easy walking distance from Elm Street. Here's what it looks like today, again with Google Street View, as of July 2023.</p>
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<p>One more bit of information: Dad says that Marie's parents were from Cole Camp, Missouri. Her maiden name was Weigand. Dad says she also has Lumpe ancestors, too. Which is kind of interesting, since Dad and I will be at Cole Camp in April doing a talk at that community's Plattdeutsch club! Maybe one of Marie's relatives will be there.</p>Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-44990721773351053112023-11-16T21:58:00.003-06:002023-11-16T21:58:00.282-06:00Grandma Renner’s Apple and Raisin Stuffing<p>Only a week before Thanksgiving! Have you decided on all your recipes yet? I’d like to recommend my Grandma Renner’s Apple and Raisin Stuffing!</p>
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<p>This may be Germanic, or it may not. It is, however, THE BEST DRESSING for Thanksgiving turkey. Everyone in the Renner family agrees!</p>
<p>Seriously, it’s an old-fashioned favorite, and not just with my family, either. I’ve got nothing against Stove Top stuffing (though it often “tastes of box.”) But it can’t hold a candle to homemade. And the sweet-savory combination of apples, onions, raisins, and celery is just what poultry wants, in the fall.</p>
<p>I’m actually providing you with four slightly different renditions of it. Because it’s a stuffing, it’s not rocket science. Each family member who has made it has altered it slightly, and I find that intensely interesting. I doubt that even Grandma made it the same way all the time.</p>
<p>So here is what I present below:</p>
<ol>
<li>The recipe that I’ve transcribed from a handwritten copy by my grandma, Clara Renner.</li>
<li>The same recipe as Grandma’s, but with comments and suggestions by me, and presented in a more standard recipe format (I suggest you use this one, but of course I’m biased).</li>
<li>A version of the recipe apparently handwritten by Grandma, that had been tucked into one of her sister’s cookbooks.</p>
<li>My mom’s version of the recipe, from Mom’s recipe cards.</li>
<li>My Aunt Sally’s handwritten version of the recipe—which my cousin David uses.</li>
</ol>
<p>It’s interesting to note that Grandma Renner didn’t care very much for turkey, so she much preferred to have chicken at Thanksgiving instead. And yeah, we often had chicken at Thanksgiving. This stuffing is great with both!</p>
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<p><strong>“Dressing for Turkey”: Clara Renner’s Stuffing</strong></p>
<p>1 loaf bread cut into cubes and toasted in oven [...] then put in large mixing bowl or pan. Cut up about 4 stalks celery, 1 large onion, 3 apples sliced as for pies, 1 cup raisins, cover with enough water so as not to burn and cook this until almost tender, sprinkle with black pepper and a little poultry seasoning about the same amount as pepper and add about 1 tablespoon salt, pour this over the bread crumbs and add 2 unbeaten eggs and mix well, do not pack dressing in fowl too tight. Put some of the dressing [...] top of chicken. If you have any of the dressing left over, spoon or ladle some of the juice out of the bottom of the baking pan when the poultry is about done and stir this juice with the left over dressing and bake in one of your Pyrex baking dishes with lid on, take the lid off when about done to brown the top a bit.</p>
_____
<p>When baking any kind of fowl sprinkle the inside and outside with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning then put in baking pan and add a cup of water in bottom of pan to help to keep it moist. It is best to bake a hen at 325 for about 2½ hrs, then uncover and bake to brown on all sides until tender.</p>
<p><strong>Edited Version of the Above (Julie Schroeder, presumptuous editor)</strong></p>
<p>1 loaf bread [e.g., country white] cut into [½ to ¾ inch] cubes and toasted in oven [yes, until they turn golden brown]<br>
4 stalks celery, chopped [I’d use the tender inside parts, with leaves]<br>
1 large onion, chopped [white or yellow]<br>
3 apples [peeled and] sliced as for pies [Jonathan was Grandma Renner’s go-to apple for pies; I think Granny Smith or other firm, tart, flavorful baking apple would work well, too]<br>
1 cup raisins<br>
water [or chicken or turkey stock, or liquid from cooking giblets; or milk, per Sally Renner’s version]<br>
black pepper<br>
poultry seasoning [such as McCormick’s, which is a blend of thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg]<br>
1 tablespoon salt<br>
2 unbeaten eggs [lightly beaten, no doubt; apparently can be omitted, per Pat Schroeder’s version]</p>
<p>[You can make all of the stuffing/dressing in a baking dish, instead of stuffing it into the fowl. To my recollection, no one actually stuffed the turkey or chicken from the 1970s and on. People were concerned about it not getting cooked through and being a health hazard.]</p>
<p>Spread toasted bread cubes into large baking dish [such as a 9 x 13 inch baking pan] [and set aside].</p>
<p>In a saucepan or skillet, mix together celery, onion, apples, and raisins; cover with [or just “add”?] enough water [or stock] to keep from burning, and cook until almost tender. [OR: I suggest using a stick of margarine or butter, in a frying pan, to sauté the celery, onion, raisins, and apples; see other versions of this recipe.] Add black pepper, poultry seasoning, and salt. [Use plenty of seasonings, but take into account the saltiness of the water, stock, or other liquid you will use.]</p>
<p>Combine vegetable mixture and eggs [if using]; pour onto bread cubes in baking dish, and mix well. Adjust moisture with [stock or] poultry juices [or milk or whatever]. Bake at 350, covered, until about done, then remove lid to allow top to brown.</p>
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<p><strong>“Clara’s Apple and Raisin Dressing”</strong></p>
<p>This version was on a piece of note paper stuck in Great Aunt Lyd’s copy of <em>Cooking with Faith</em> (the ca. 1970 cookbook of Faith Lutheran Church, Jefferson City). I think it’s in Grandma Renner’s handwriting. Aunt Lyd was Grandma’s younger sister. Notice that this version doesn’t use eggs.</p>
<p>Cut up a large loaf of bread into squares and toast, put in big container. Peel and slice 4 jonathan apples, 4 big stems of celery, 1 large or 2 medium size onions, then add a heaping cup of raisins. Put into skillet 1 whole stick margarine then add these 4 things and cook a little until about tender, then pour into that 2 cans Campbell’s chicken broth, sprinkle a little salt and pepper over this and a little poultry seasoning and stir, then pour over the toasted bread crumbs, if it isn’t moist enough to dampen all the bread add a little water.</p>
<p><strong>“Mom’s Dressing”</strong></p>
<p>From Pat Schroeder, so “Mom” is Clara Renner. So this is another version of Clara Renner’s apple and raisin poultry stuffing. As Grandma grew older, Pat took on more of the Thanksgiving cooking duties, and she often prepped the dressing at home in Columbia, the day before Thanksgiving, or on Thanksgiving morning. Then she brought it to Grandma’s house to finish cooking. Pat’s quantity adjustments are in brackets.</p>
<p>Cube and toast 1 loaf of bread.<br>
Peel and cut up 5 [3] apples<br>
Peel and cut up 2 [1] large onions<br>
Cut up 4 to 6 sticks of celery<br>
1 cup raisins</p>
<p>In fry pan, 1 stick margarine. Sauté onion, apple, celery, and raisins until tender. Add 2 cans undiluted chicken broth. Add salt and pepper—let it cool a little. Then pour over and mix with bread crumbs.</p>
<p>[This would be put into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish (or spread around the turkey in the pan and the rest placed in a smaller baking dish), and cooked, covered, in a medium oven, until heated through; then the cover would be removed and the mixture allowed to brown and dry a bit. If using aluminum foil as a cover, I suggest spraying its bottom side lightly with PAM so it won’t stick to the top of the dressing.]</p>
<p>[Note that this version does not include eggs. In my opinion, the recipe is fine without eggs. Nor does it include poultry seasoning, though presumably poultry seasoning would be used on the fowl. —JS]</p>
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<p><strong>German Apple Dressing</strong></p>
<p>This version of Clara Renner’s poultry stuffing/dressing is from Sally Renner, her daughter-in-law who lived in Wyoming. As her note at the end of the recipe says, it was her husband, Elwood’s favorite. So this is the version that my cousin David uses, since his mom gave him this recipe. If anyone loves this stuffing more than me, it might be David. He makes it every year. He usually cooks it inside the turkey, too.</p>
<p>Note that Sally recommends using milk for moisture, or a combination of milk and giblet-cooking water.</p>
<p>She also does not specify sautéing or otherwise cooking the celery, onions, apples, and raisins before combining them with the bread. In fact, you add the vegetable components to the dry bread mixture the night before; they cook as they’re in the bird. Or the dish.</p>
<p>Also, the recipe makes a smaller quantity of stuffing than the previous two, using a <em>small</em> loaf of bread, <em>medium</em> (not large) onion, only 2 apples, only ½ cup raisins, etc.</p>
<p>My comments in the recipe are in square brackets —JS.</p>
<p>1 small loaf of bread, toasted on a baking sheet until dry and lightly browned [sliced, then toasted in the oven; David uses a toaster to toast the bread slices].</p>
<p>1 med. sized onion, chopped<br>
½ cup chopped celery and leaves<br>
2 med. sized Jonathan or Winesap apples, pared and cored to make 3 cups chopped<br>
½ cup raisins</p>
<p>Cut the toasted bread into cubes and salt and pepper to taste.</p>
<p>I then put this in the refrigerator to season overnight. [So: the seasoned, toasted bread cubes, chopped onion, celery, and apples, and raisins, all get mixed together and sit overnight.]</p>
<p>In the morning, take out and add:<br>
2 eggs, lightly beaten,<br>
2 cups milk [see below regarding combination of milk and giblet-cooking water]<br>
½ cup melted oleo or butter</p>
<p>If you have boiled the giblets to put in gravy, the liquid from them may also be used instead of 2 cups milk, [so, for example,] use 1 cup milk and 1 cup liquid from giblets. You want the bread mixture to be soft, as too dry [of a] mixture will make the stuffing hard and dry after being baked. Pack loosely into turkey or chicken.</p>
<p>This is the recipe from Mom Renner, and was Elwood’s favorite. If you like you can add:<br>
1/4 tsp. ground sage<br>
1/4 tsp. poultry seasoning</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-54261256126374872992023-03-20T12:50:00.008-05:002023-03-20T13:15:27.988-05:00Where Have I Been?<p>Well, certainly not on vacation. Any free time I’ve had recently has been spent on things like work (actual billable hours!) and the basics of taking care of our home (including, like, getting another new furnace in January). I don’t think I could have done this without Sue. And my brother came to help for two weeks in February.</p>
<p>If you don’t read anything after this, please get this at least: <i>GET THE SHINGLES VACCINATION IF YOU’RE ELIGIBLE FOR IT.</i> (((Okay?)))</p>
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<p><b>Round One</b></p>
<p>Here’s what’s up. My mom got shingles in the middle of January. None of us quite knew what was going on, since she didn’t have an obvious rash, nor did she have the excruciating pain shingles is infamous for. There were about three days of increasing overall weakness, redness on half her forehead, swelling in her right eye, and, as she weakened, loss of appetite. Had she just slept "wrong," and not been drinking enough? She didn’t want to go to urgent care. So we tried telehealth. The telehealth doc had us hold the camera up to Mom’s forehead, and he said “go to the emergency room, this looks like shingles.”</p>
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<p>So we went to the ER on 1/14, she was diagnosed with eye shingles and secondary bacterial infection. Hours later, she was returned home with a prescription for Valtrex and antibiotics. She’d had no liquids or food that whole day, pretty much. Not even an IV. And since it was now late on a Saturday, the drugstore the ER sent the prescription to was closed and would be closed until Monday. So Sunday, we had to get the ER to send the prescription to a different pharmacy. By the time we tried to get her to swallow the first medications she’d had since the afternoon before, she was too weak and dehydrated to sit up on the edge of the bed.</p>
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<p>So, for the second day in a row, she went to the ER. This time, she was admitted, thanks to her overall weakness and dehydration, also because the swelling was starting to extend to the other side of her face, with both eyes nearly swollen shut. Not meaning to be mean . . . but Sue and I both decided Mom looked like “a prizefighter who’d lost the round.” She was in the hospital from 1/15 to 1/20. With IV fluids and antibiotics, she started getting better quickly. We visited her every day.</p>
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<p>She didn't have much of an appetite, so we brought her food we were pretty sure she'd like.</p>
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<p>Then, she went to a rehab facility from 1/20 to 1/28. She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t remember much (if anything) about her trips to the ER, and she still doesn’t remember much about the days before, and the days in the hospital. All she knew was that she wanted to be home.</p>
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<p>I don’t think she really understands, yet, that a stay in a rehab place is not the same as being locked up in a nursing home. Indeed, the rehab place simply does the kinds of things that <i>hospitals used to do</i> “back in the day,” back when people stayed <i>in hospitals</i> doing rehab and getting stronger until they were able to go home. Anyway, Mom hated the rehab place.</p>
<p>. . . The food <i>was</i> pretty miserable.</p>
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<p>And she felt the chair was uncomfortable. And she had to press her button <i>well before</i> she needed assistance getting to the bathroom. And the TV didn’t work like her TV at home. Also, her eyesight was messed up. She had several days of just having a plain old bad attitude. ("Hmm," I thought; "maybe the inconveniences and less-than-optimal situation can act as an incentive for her to do PT, so she doesn't have to return to a rehab place anytime soon!")</p>
<p>Dad and Sue and I tried to make it nicer for her. We visited her every day. I did my best with the TV. I read to her from her mystery book. Worried that she wasn't eating enough, I brought her Wendy’s burgers (single cheeseburger, no mayo, just the way she likes ’em), Arris pizza, Taco Bell taco supremes. You know—her favorites. As it was in the hospital, my “shift” was in the afternoons and into suppertime; Dad was with her in the mornings, through lunchtime, so he got to see her do her PT and OT.</p>
<p><b>The Wednesday, January 25 Debacle</b></p>
<p>A day that will live in infamy. So, until 1/25 (the day the insurance made the decision to deny her a second week in rehab), she was experiencing no pain. But that day was a debacle. First and worst, Mom started getting the excruciating pain associated with shingles early that morning. For the following several weeks, she’d get an attack about once every 3 to 5 hours, and even though the attack would only last about a single minute, it was incredibly draining on her. Her whole body would tense up; she’d cry and whimper. It was so hard to see. So that began early in the morning on Wednesday, 1/25—the same day Mom had an 11 a.m. appointment at the University Hospital’s Mason Eye Clinic. The rehab place said they’d transport her there—we were to meet her at the front entrance to the hospital at 10:30. Dad and I were there at 10:15 (I’d spent the night in Columbia, since snow was predicted overnight, of course).</p>
<p>So, it got to be 10:45, and Mom hadn’t appeared. I called the rehab place (the name rhymes with “The Snuffs”), and the nurses said they were on their way. Around 11, she still hadn’t arrived, and when I called again, “the driver dropped her off; she should be there.” I said, “Well, she’s not here.” More time elapsed. In between these calls trying to find out where the heck my mother <i>was,</i> I was reporting to the receptionists at the eye clinic: “Well, they SAY she should be here!” Wouldn’t it just figure that they’d finally get Mom to her appointment, and the eye place say, “well, you weren’t on time, so we have to reschedule you.” <i>Ughhhhh!!!</i> . . . Next time I called the rehab place nurse, she said, “Okay, they had dropped her off at the eye clinic on Keene Street. She’s on her way now.” So finally Mom showed up, and the eye clinic saw her at noon, a full hour late.</p>
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<p>Mom had been dropped off at the wrong University Eye Clinic. The driver hadn’t paid attention to the words “UH - Lobby floor” instruction on her transportation papers. He’d wheeled my mom into the Keene Street eye clinic, asked her if she saw her daughter (me) anywhere, and poor Mom had used her one reasonably good eye and tried to oblige him: “Yes . . . I think that’s her over there.” And the guy just left her there! Without verifying if it was really the right person or not. Jeez!</p>
<p>I don’t know how they figured this out. Was it the rehab place nurse who contacted the driver and told him to go back? Or did eye clinic staff at the Keene Street location go over to my mom, look at her papers, and call the rehab place? The mind boggles.</p>
<p>Anyway, it was a rough damn day. The eye clinic doc had good news for us: her eye is improving. As to the pain that had just started to occur, she said that a regular MD is the one to talk to about starting on pain medication. So as soon as we returned to the rehab place, I got with the nurse and asked if their staff doctor could start her on something. “I’ll relay the message to the doctor.”</p>
<p><b>End of First Rehab and Back Home</b></p>
<p>For the rest of Mom’s time at the rehab place, she was never prescribed anything more than the over-the-counter Tylenol she has always taken for her chronic back pain (indeed, I think they effectively took her off that, since they deemed it “upon request,” and Mom wasn’t thinking to “request” it).</p>
<p>So her pain attacks continued, and each agonizing episode strained at muscles she hadn’t used in years. The pain attacks just wrung her out. As a result, even though her first few days in rehab showed steady improvement, she didn’t have much of a net gain in strength while she was at the rehab place. The rehab place's doctor didn't prescribe anything for her shingles pain, although we asked again and again.</p>
<p>Mom felt it was a betrayal for us to try to get a second week of rehab for her, but anyway, our appeal for another week was denied, so she came home on 1/28. On Monday, 1/30, we took her to see her regular doctor, and he started her on gabapentin, a pain medication that must be increased only gradually, to avoid side effects. On 2/1, I had my first entire day at my home. On 2/2, my brother flew to Missouri to be at Mom and Dad’s house. He helped with the transition to visiting PT and OT practitioners, and visiting nurses keeping tabs on Mom’s health. He also helped Dad with Mom’s various medications and with tracking her pain attacks.</p>
<p>Soon after Mom returned home, Sue noticed my parents’ house seemed dry, and we figured out that their humidifier wasn’t turned on. A phone to their HVAC company revealed that their service contract hadn’t been renewed, so we had to get that reestablished (yeah, now we’re in the twenty-first century, with the monthly payments automatically deducted from their checking account, and automatic renewal, instead of being paid by check once a year, and renewal activity having to happen each year). Fortunately, the HVAC company sent a guy out right away to do the maintenance and turn on the humidifier. Hopefully Mom’s eyes and skin wouldn’t seem so dry, right?</p>
<p>Did we all need extra things to take care of? No, but I was so glad my brother was able to help with another issue that my Dad hadn’t gotten to—linoleum removal, cleanup, disinfection, and de-molding of the basement laundry room, where the sewer had backed up a few times, including once while my brother was there (n.b.: “flushable” wipes are not truly flushable). I’m so grateful he was able to assist with dealing with the company doing the work, and with the insurance company, which (yayayay!) is paying for nearly all the work, including duct cleaning and rebuilding part of a closet that had gotten affected by the sewer backup. Indeed, that project isn’t quite finished—but it’s getting close to completion!</p>
<p>We had some good times while my brother was in the state. The family had a little Super Bowl party (and the Chiefs won!); and we served Mom and Dad one of their favorite meals: pork sausage patties, fried apples, and mashed potatoes. Another night, it was my homemade shepherd’s pie! My brother and I even went out for a bro-and-sis lunch at Ozark Mountain Biscuit Company, one of our new favorite restaurants.</p>
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<p>The day before he flew back home, we took Mom to another doctor appointment; since her pain attacks didn’t seem to be helped much, he increased her dosage of gabapentin. That night, we had a pre-Valentine’s dinner. The next day, we drove him back to the St. Louis airport. Things were looking hopeful!</p>
<p><b>More Bumps in the Road</b></p>
<p>Mom had another eye appointment on 2/16; the doc found uveitis (inflammation between the cornea and iris) and put Mom on prednisone/steroid eyedrops (one drop per waking hour), and started her back on Valtrex (antiviral medication), since the steroid can open the way for a reemergence of the shingles.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the gabapentin dosage was being ramped up—in hindsight, too much too fast. Mom was getting weaker and her vision was still bleary. By the weekend of 2/18 and 2/19, the pain was finally abating, but within a twenty-four-hour period between 2/19 and 2/20, Mom had ended up on the floor four times. Sooooo . . . another ambulance trip back to the hospital. And another week there.</p>
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<p>The pain medication seemed to be the culprit, so they took her off the gabapentin and put her on a different pain medication (pregabalin). They also started her on two blood pressure medications. They’d noticed orthostatic hypotension (BP drop when she stands up) apparently related to the gabapentin, plus old age and poor physical condition. But her BP was rather high when lying down. They put her on two BP medications (midodrine to raise it, lisinopril to lower it—go figure). The eye docs reduced her steroid eyedrops to just twice a day. </p>
<p>Mom was doing pretty poorly, but she really wanted to go home. All the time spent lying in bed hadn’t helped her fitness at all. There was no way she was strong enough to make it up the stairs to the living room. She needed more rehab.</p>
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<p>So after about a week in the hospital, Mom was transferred to a (different) rehab place on 2/24 and was there until 3/11—general weakness and a need to keep an eye on her BP. Another trip to the eye docs on 3/7 saw NO inflammation in her eye, and they started weaning her off of the steroid eyedrops. The eye doc took her off Valtrex and antibiotic eye ointment (she couldn’t figure out why they were still giving those to Mom, when she’d said for both to stop, like a week ago). I won’t go into how the rehab place had kept her on Valtrex all this time, and had somehow increased the eyedrops from 2x/day to 3x/day. What the hell?</p>
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<p>So after two weeks at the rehab place, Mom came home again on Saturday, 3/11. I had a heck of a time figuring out the medicines, based on the paperwork they sent home with her. Apparently, they hadn’t been tapering off the prednisone at all; apparently they had taken her off it cold-turkey. (Though the next Monday morning, a nurse from the rehab place called and asserted they <i>had, too</i> been reducing it according to instructions. Hmm.) Also apparently, they had not been giving her the Tylenol she’s accustomed to, even though we’d made it clear she gets the maximum dosage every day, to help with her chronic back pain. Finally, I couldn’t figure out why the BP meds were being given so often and at the times of day they said, especially the midodrine, whose third dose they were supposedly giving her in the “evening.” What-what-what? That’s <i>never</i> to be given near bedtime.</p>
<p>Naturally, it’s pretty impossible to talk to medical professionals on a weekend. Why do they release people on weekends? Anyway, we got it figured out. (I think.)</p>
<p><b>Back Home Again: <i>Time to Blossom</i></b></p>
<p>So at this point, Mom’s back at home, her doc’s taken her off of midodrine, she’s winding down on the prednisone drops, but she’s still on the pregablin (which seems to be taking care of the pain attacks, though the right side of her head is still really sensitive and zingy).</p>
<p>While Mom was at the rehab place, I installed a toilet-seat raiser with handrails onto her toilet, and Dad hired their carpenter/handyman to install additional handrails on the staircases, which made a big difference in Mom's ability to haul herself up from the basement garage to the floor they live on.</p>
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<p>Mom's vision is still wonky: ever since her right eye reopened during the initial hospitalization, she’s had double (non-binocular) vision. The right eye isn’t in great alignment with the left. The eye docs think this was caused by inflammation, daily antibiotic ointment treatments (which make vision blurry), and general physical weakness, and so far they have resisted giving her corrective lenses that would act as a crutch; they’ve been hoping that her eyes will return to alignment and binocular vision as she improves overall and uses both eyes together. So Mom’s still struggling to read and watch TV—her two favorite activities.</p>
<p>Also, throughout, Mom has acted as if PT and OT is a hardship, an annoyance, a punitive sentence, an outrage upon her constitutional rights as a senior—but hopefully she will finally see that her doing regular physical activity is a key for her and Dad getting to live safely at home for as long as possible. For years, her doctors have told her to simply get up and walk around the house a little, and Mom always nods and says "yes."</p>
<p>But back at home, she always has an excuse for not doing it: “my back hurts; I just got up; doesn’t walking to the bathroom count?; I’m tired; I’m old; but <i>I can do</i> that!; well, shouldn’t <i>Bud</i> be having to do exercises, too?” (Note that Dad has been doing PT and other exercises of various sorts for years; the issue with him is that he wants to do too much!) The day of her return from the rehab place, I suggested Mom do some little marchy-steps while seated, and she complained that she should get at least <i>one</i> day to relax at home!</p>
<p>Mom does PT when a physical therapist is there to have her do it; and the PT folks have told her again and again to do some exercises during commercial breaks, or get up and walk around between TV shows—but when Dad or I remind her to move, she doesn’t listen to us. She just sits there. Lord knows I’ve beaten this drum enough the last two months. Let’s hope she takes it to heart; I’m tired of nagging her about it.</p>
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<p>Yeah, it’s been rough emotionally, too. It’s been so frustrating, trying to convey to my mom the importance of her taking care of her body via three simple things: drinking, eating, and doing even just light exercises. But <i>my</i> frustration really doesn’t matter. We’ve <i>all</i> been frustrated! This has been incredibly difficult for my mom, who did everything she was supposed to do to treat her shingles; she did the PT at the first rehab place, and did it well; then she got discharged half a week after her pain attacks started. The doc and nurses at the rehab place let her down by not addressing the pain right away. Then, once she finally got a prescription for pain medications, nearly a week after the pain began, it took ages for the pain meds to build up to hope to do anything. Then, finally, the pain meds were <i>too much</i> and she started falling down. Then, another stay at a hospital, and then rehab and PT all over again.</p>
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<p>For someone who hadn’t spent a night in a hospital in like thirty years, never seen the inside of a “rehab place,” and who’s not used to taking much medicine at all, my mom’s had to swallow a ton of it. And the indignity of people making decisions for her. This has been a huge disruption in her life. And who the heck can figure out the weird TVs in the hospital and rehab places??</p>
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<p>She can't even see to read her mystery books. . . . Boy, I'd have my crabby moments, too.</p>
<p>Dan, Mom’s physical therapist at the most recent rehab place, told me he’d told my mom that when she goes home, it’s her “time to blossom.” He, too, encouraged her to get up several times throughout the day to walk around, to do some seated exercises during commercial breaks, and thus reclaim her strength and independence. “Time to blossom.”</p>
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<p>We’ve had some crabby conversations, but since she’s been home, Mom has been taking the bull by the horns, sort of. She’s been putting on nicer clothing, she’s more independent with toilet habits, she’s been eating more, drinking more, and not raising a big ruckus about medications. I’m not sure she’s doing much physical movement, but hopefully she’ll get some benefit from home PT visits soon . . . before there’s some other bump in the road.</p>
<p></p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-2962164440695059342023-01-04T11:20:00.022-06:002023-01-04T11:20:00.196-06:00Mark’s Good Old Stuff<p>It’s not an heirloom recipe, but to me it’s a classic. It helped me survive graduate school. You can file it under “goulash” or “one-dish meals,” but you can also label it “cheap, first-apartment food” or “culinary atrocity number 537.” The major sin here is a ham-handed blending of Italian and <strike>Mexican</strike> Tex-Mex flavors. The basic idea is to use canned chili, plus other ingredients, as your pasta sauce.</p>
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<p>Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.</p>
<p>I have two versions to share. Mark, referenced in the title of the recipe, was the owner of the pet shop I worked at all through college. One version of the recipe amounts to the original notes that I wrote down to the best of my memory, after watching Mark make it as a quick, tasty dinner one night. It will give you an insight into how to approach such a dish as this.</p>
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<p>I had never seen Mark cook before, and I don’t think I ever saw him fix any food after this. At work, if we ever had any big projects requiring after-hours labor (like the three times we moved the entire pet store within the mall!) he would reward us, and keep us from going home, by ordering three or four large Domino’s “ExtravagaZZa” pizzas. I remember coming to the pet store for work the morning after a late night, and he and I gnawed on some of the cold pizza still laying on the counter in the back room.</p>
<p>We weren’t very close friends; I mean, he <i>was</i> my <i>boss</i>. I only went to his home a few times, so I can’t speak to the rest of his culinary repertoire. Sure, I’d seen him move a rock the size of a refrigerator, and I knew he was a hockey player and part-time/reserve city police officer—when he wasn’t at the pet store. He was not exactly domestic.</p>
<p>Neither was I, at the time. But I was starting to pay attention to methods and procedures for making tasty foods, so in this case it was like a big brother showing me how easy it was to make “good tasty cheap stuff, and it makes a ton.” He kind of laughed as made it. He hadn’t been in college for a number of years, but had just gotten a divorce, was living in an apartment, and was paying alimony and child support.</p>
<p>So here are my original notes for “Mark’s Good Old Stuff”:</p>
<p>Get some links of Italian sausage, cut it up and fry it in a skillet. In a separate, large saucepan, heat up a can of chili beans. Dump the sausage and grease and all into the beans. Put in some cooked macaroni (elbow or whatever). Did he put in some oregano? A bay leaf? Some green pepper, black olives, onion? Some canned tomato?</p>
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<p>And here’s my version, as I eventually developed it into more of a formula. (Or maybe it’s more of a checklist for when you stop by the grocery store on your way home from work.)</p>
<p>8 oz. rotini pasta (or elbows, or shells, or whatever)<br>
Italian sausage (2 to 4 big links; remove casing)<br>
green bell pepper (chopped) (optional)<br>
onion (chopped) (optional)<br>
1 can corn (whole kernels) (drained)<br>
1 can chili with beans<br>
1 can chopped tomatoes (optional)<br>
1 can black olives (California olives) (drained and chopped)</p>
<p>Cook the pasta until al dente; don’t overcook it. While it’s cooking, prepare the rest of the stuff. Use a big, heavy skillet. Fry the sausage; chop it up while it’s cooking. Remove some of the grease (or not). Add the green bell pepper and onion, if using, and fry those, too. Add the corn to the sausage in the skillet, and keep heating. Then add the chili and tomatoes (if using), and heat through. Add the black olives last, because they’re kind of delicate. Then combine the drained pasta with the “stuff.” Heat through.</p>
<p>Optional: serve garnished with sour cream or shredded cheese, such as cheddar, mozzarella, or parmesan. If you really want to dress it up, top it with chopped cilantro or green onions.</p>
<p>Note: clearly, you can adjust it however you wish. I like it with hot Italian sausage and spicy chili.</p>
<p>Finally, this actually tastes better the next day or so after you make it. So this makes a ton, and you do want to have leftovers.</p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-28197475720911662242023-01-01T17:28:00.003-06:002023-01-02T17:40:45.095-06:00Jar of Goodness Recap<p>Usually, when you do “Jar of Goodness,” you write down something you’re grateful for each week, and then you stick that slip of paper into a jar. Then, as part of your New Year’s Eve ceremony, you pour out the slips of paper and read them. If an entire family has participated, then the discussion revolves around who wrote what, and why, and general reminiscing.</p>
<p>But in this case, it’s just me, and it’s a virtual Jar of Goodness. So all I can really do is offer a list of my various Jar of Goodnesses. (See below.) Make of it what you will. To read all the J.O.G. posts, click <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/search/label/Jar%20of%20Goodness" target="_blank">this link here.</a></p>
<p>And what will I do this year? Should I continue the J.O.G.?</p>
<p>Actually, as I continued this weekly J.O.G. series, I’ve learned that my blog has pretty much <em>always</em> been a “Jar of Goodness.” In my blog, I usually focus on things that I like and love. Things I appreciate. The thing that’s different about the J.O.G. is the must-do weekly format (also known as a “deadline”), and the “permission” to have quite short, straightforward posts.</p>
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<p>So for 2023, I think I’ll drop the J.O.G. concept, and just make a point of posting something weekly, or thereabouts. (In truth, many of my Sunday J.O.G. posts were written and uploaded on Wednesdays. Who knew that midweek was a better time for blogging?) Maybe I’ll still tag an occasional post as a “Jar of Goodness,” but I don’t see a need to make a weekly string of posts with that particular label. What do you think?</p>
<p>Also, I have a <i>new idea</i> for a regular series that could easily have twelve (monthly) parts, though it would probably be a stretch to make it weekly, with 52 installments. Maybe biweekly? We’ll just see how it goes. I’m still thinking about it. Stay tuned!</p>
<p>I can definitely recommend the Jar of Goodness for anyone. It will remind you to see the joy and beauty around you; it will exercise your “gratitude” muscles. You will feel more blessed, in mundane and in sublime ways. If you’re a blogger or journaler, it’s a good way to get back into a rhythm. It would be a great, and meaningful activity for a family, or a couple, to do together. I hope you’ll try it!</p>
<p><strong>The 2022 Jar of Goodness Project</strong></p>
<p>Jar of Goodness 12.25.22: The Holiday Season<br>
Jar of Goodness 12.18.22: Heirloom Christmas Cookies<br>
Jar of Goodness 12.11.22: New Car!<br>
Jar of Goodness 12.4.22: New Gutters, and Done!<br>
Jar of Goodness 11.27.22: Dormer Siding<br>
Jar of Goodness 11.20.22: Artemis I<br>
Jar of Goodness 11.13.22: Sunporch Storm Windows Done<br>
Jar of Goodness 11.6.22: Little House Books<br>
Jar of Goodness 10.30.22: Gans Creek<br>
Jar of Goodness 10.23.22: October Day at Painted Rock<br>
Jar of Goodness 10.16.22: Houseplant Dance<br>
Jar of Goodness 10.9.22: Fall Color<br>
Jar of Goodness 10.2.22: Deborah Cooper Park<br>
Jar of Goodness 9.25.22: Old Munichburg Oktoberfest<br>
Jar of Goodness 9.18.22: My Brother<br>
Jar of Goodness 9.11.22: New Roof!<br>
Jar of Goodness 9.4.22: Shakespeare’s Pizza South<br>
Jar of Goodness 8.28.22: Native Prairies<br>
Jar of Goodness 8.21.22: August 1993<br>
Jar of Goodness 8.14.22: New HVAC System<br>
Jar of Goodness 8.7.22: Dad’s Homemade Cookies<br>
Jar of Goodness 7.31.22: Wait. Jar of Goodness?<br>
Jar of Goodness 7.24.22: Menus for the Seasons<br>
Jar of Goodness 7.17.22: Picnics<br>
Jar of Goodness 7.10.22: First Aid Kits<br>
Jar of Goodness 7.3.22: My 2003 Honda Civic<br>
Jar of Goodness 6.26.22: This Couple<br>
Jar of Goodness 6.19.22: Dad<br>
Jar of Goodness 6.12.22: Air Conditioning<br>
Jar of Goodness 6.5.22: Butterflies of June<br>
Jar of Goodness 5.29.22: Missouri Wines<br>
Jar of Goodness 5.15.22: The Black Walnut Tree<br>
Jar of Goodness 5.8.22: Mom<br>
Jar of Goodness 5.1.22: Clovers Natural Market<br>
Jar of Goodness 4.24.22: Natural Foods Stores<br>
Jar of Goodness 4.17.22: Oasis United Church of Christ<br>
Jar of Goodness 4.10.22: Prairie Dogtooth Violets<br>
Jar of Goodness 4.3.22: The Violets of April<br>
Jar of Goodness 3.27.22: Lois<br>
Jar of Goodness 3.20.22: Three-Chord Songs<br>
Jar of Goodness 3.13.22: Sue<br>
Jar of Goodness 3.6.22: Are the Neighbors Actually Moving?<br>
Jar of Goodness 2.27.22: New Fridge<br>
Jar of Goodness 2.20.22: The Katy Trail<br>
Jar of Goodness 2.13.22: Adrian’s Island Jefferson City<br>
Jar of Goodness 2.6.22: Hope Springs Eternal<br>
Jar of Goodness 1.30.22: The Mosses at Painted Rock CA<br>
Jar of Goodness 1.23.22: KOPN<br>
Jar of Goodness 1.16.22: The Eggplant Leafrollers<br>
Jar of Goodness 1.9.22 (Introduction)</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-68973274074207512862022-12-30T23:07:00.001-06:002022-12-30T23:07:14.259-06:0024-Hour Salad (Overnight Fruit Salad)<p>This recipe is from Alvina Crawford. She and her husband, Fred, were my parents’ dear neighbors across the street on Isherwood. For many years, she would make overnight salads for friends and family at Christmastime. She’d make so many, over so many days, she’d freeze them so she could deliver them all on the same day.</p>
<p>So this is a holiday recipe for me.</p>
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<p>I can replay the scene in my memory: our doorbell would ring, we’d go down the stairs to the front door, open it, and there’d be Mrs. Crawford, holding a big container full of salad. It would be a reused plastic ice cream tub, or a disposable aluminum foil casserole container. Her warm, mild voice, with its notes of rural North Dakota and Scandinavian ancestry. Her Christmas greetings—you could hear the smile in her voice. . . . We’d give her and Mr. Crawford a big platter of our homemade Christmas cookies, covered with foil, decorated with a Christmas bow.</p>
<p>There are lots of versions of this dish online; it’s a classic 1950s salad that doubles as a dessert. In this way, it is a lot like a Jell-O dish: “Is it a salad, or a dessert?” How can you tell? If it’s a salad, you serve it on a lettuce leaf—that makes it a salad instead of a dessert. As a dessert, served in a pretty bowl, it’s great with cookies. After a hearty Christmas meal, you might not want a heavy piece of pie or pudding. A fluffy fruit dessert like this is just the ticket! It’s perfect with Christmas cookies!</p>
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<p>Grandma Renner made overnight salad, too. I’m not sure if anyone has her recipe. To the best of our memory, she used large, round, juicy red grapes instead of canned sweet cherries. In those days, you couldn’t get seedless red grapes, so each grape needed to be sliced in half, and the seeds picked out with the knife tip. Tedious; a labor of love. If you use seedless grapes (and why not?), slice them in half in memory of the labors of the past.</p>
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<p>Other recipes, by the way, use things like drained canned mandarin orange slices, or real orange or tangerine slices, chopped bananas, and nuts. (Though if you’re making it for me, please don’t add nuts.) This recipe is a lot like an ambrosia salad, which has shredded, sweetened coconut, citrus, and pineapple.</p>
<p>My tips and comments are at the end.</p>
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<p><b>24-Hour Salad (Overnight Salad)</b></p>
<p>Recipe adapted from Alvina Crawford</p>
<p><b>Dressing ingredients:</b></p>
<p>1 c. half and half<br>
4 egg yolks, well-beaten<br>
1 T. butter<br>
1/4 t. salt<br>
1/2 cup sugar<br>
2 cups (1 pint) heavy/whipping cream</p>
<p>Make the dressing first (see notes at end, however). Use a double boiler, or use a heavy saucepan and heat gently. Heat the half and half first. Then add the next ingredients (except for the whipping cream), adding the eggs slowly and carefully so they don’t curdle. Cook, stirring, until definitely thickened. Then, set it aside to cool. This is a good time to prepare the fruit ingredients.</p>
<p><b>Fruit ingredients:</b></p>
<p>2 cans (20 oz.) sliced pineapple, drained and sliced (see notes below)<br>
1 can (17 oz.) sweet cherries, drained and halved (or further chopped) [or whole]<br>
[optional: large red grapes, halved and seeded if necessary]<br>
1/2 lb. (24 count) regular-size marshmallows, quartered (or halved)<br>
juice of half a lemon (fold in with the rest)</p>
<p>When fruit ingredients are ready, and collected into a big bowl, and when dressing custard is cooled, whip the heavy/whipping cream until well-whipped. Add the custard/dressing to the fruits, then fold in the whipping cream. Let it stand in the refrigerator for 24 hours (this is an important step).</p>
<p>Serve on lettuce, as a salad, or in dessert dishes as a dessert.</p>
<p>Yield: about 2½ quarts.</p>
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<p><b>Julie’s notes:</b></p>
<p>Mrs. Crawford noted that, in order to divide the labor, she sometimes would cut up the fruit the day before, then make the custard and whipped cream the second day. “It doesn’t seem like such a long process when divided up.”</p>
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<p>Why do you need to buy canned sliced pineapple, and then cut it into smaller pieces? Why not just buy pineapple tidbits? . . . Well, do what you want, but you get prettier pieces, and fewer little blobs of pineapple fragments, if you cut them yourself with a nice sharp knife. (Your knives <em>are</em> sharp, right?)</p>
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<p>Also, as I mentioned above, you can freeze this and give it to people frozen; they can decide when to thaw it and enjoy it.</p>
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<p>This recipe dates back to the days before they made "mini marshmallows." So you have to buy "regular" marshmallows and cut them! Okay, use mini marshmallows if you want, but quartered or halved "regular" marshmallows are much more fun to eat.</p>
<p>How do you know when the custard is thickened? . . . You will know; it may take a while, but when it thickens, it will happen quickly, and you'll know.</p>
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<p>Finally, regarding the canned fruits: in the 1950s, all the canned fruits were in heavy syrup, so that’s the kind I suggest. But use what you want. Although not overly sweet, this isn’t a low-calorie dessert, so avoiding heavy-syrup in the pineapple probably won’t make a big difference.</p>
<p>And what can you do with the syrup you’ve drained off? Here’s an idea: put it in a saucepan, add sugar, maybe also a cinnamon stick, and simmer to reduce it to a bona fide syrup. With the syrup/juice from the canned sweet cherries, the syrup will be pretty purple. You can use this syrup for pancakes! Or, you can add brandy to the syrup and put other canned fruits in it: brandied fruits; great on ice cream!</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-17598819006707325472022-12-25T17:06:00.014-06:002023-01-02T17:24:13.401-06:00Jar of Goodness 12.25.22: The Holiday Season<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for the holiday season.</strong></p>
<p>Yes, including Christmas, duh. But also for all the other winter solstice–related holidays that humanity celebrates, not least of which is New Year’s. All these winter holidays are “resets” of some kind or other. An urge to remember our higher callings.</p>
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<p>This time of year, you cross a bridge. Behind you is the past—a territory to which you can never return. Ahead is the future—a vast, unexplored territory full of new adventures, new things to learn. New year’s, the solstice, even “Festivus” focus on this turning-of-the-page.</p>
<p>Christmas and a wide range of other December religious festivals native to or heavily influenced by North America focus on light and hope. Now, at the darkest, coldest time of the year, we have holidays that emphasize light (including The Light), warmth, peace, love, hope, and joy.</p>
<p>And it’s a time when North America typically experiences hardship: it’s not the growing season, so anything active (birds and mammals) historically struggles for food, which grows scarcer and more precious as the winter drags on. And yet here is also the time for hope and for gift-giving: Here is something precious, for you. I made this for you. Look, a sweet, juicy orange shipped here from tropical lands; a feast; a rich cake full of dried fruits, nuts, and exotic spices.</p>
<p>At the traditional time of scarcity in North America, instead of pinching up and wrapping our arms around our stockpiles of foodstuffs and other goods, and hoarding the money we feel we’ll never get enough of, we are asked to embrace our family and neighbors, even strangers, and to be truly, gladly generous.</p>
<p>And that’s what our religions and spiritual traditions seem always to call us to do: to rise above our animal survival instincts. To act not as competing creatures in nature, but as civilized, empathetic, gracious beings; members of a society. We’re asked to rise above our individual needs, above taking care of only our own family and clan (like some competing, warring tribes)—and instead to care about and help others. To help even the dreaded Samaritans. To care for even the Least of These. We’re called to see the holiness in every being, and in all of creation. We are called to behave, to cooperate, to care . . . and to become much more than competing animals in a jungle.</p>
<p>Bless the beasts and all of the children.</p>
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<p><i>Picture notes:</i> featured in this post are some of the ornaments my mom made in the 1970s. They’re made out of pieces of felt, carefully trimmed and glued together. Aren’t they sweet? I love the multiculturalism it implied, harkening back to a time when Americans were more unified and had a more optimistic view of the world, and all of its diversity. There are several more ornaments that she made, too—stars, birds, tiny Christmas stockings with my and my brother’s names spelled out in glitter, and more. And she made many other types ornaments, too. It seems like she made a series of ornaments each year, of different designs. And she gave them out to everyone in the family. What a wonderful gift!</p>
<p></p>Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-15461626398286944982022-12-18T21:18:00.016-06:002022-12-21T21:27:03.240-06:00Jar of Goodness 12.18.22: Heirloom Christmas Cookies<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for heirloom Christmas cookie recipes.</strong></p>
<p><i>“These are the cookies of my people.”</i></p>
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<p>I could go on and on about how strongly I feel about our precious family Christmas cookie recipes, but I’d rather just talk about the reasons why these connections are so strong.</p>
<p>But first, honestly, do I love these cookies the best? I sure didn’t when I was a child. I grew up accustomed to sweets that were, well, <em>sweet</em>, like candy, or cookies that are sugary or chocolaty. Each Christmas, when I was confronted with the old-fashioned and Germanic cookies of my forebears, I was rather let down. Dates, raisins, and candied fruits are a different kind of sweet than chocolate chips and Oreo “stuf.” Brown sugar, molasses, and sorghum are also different from white sugar. A lot of it’s the difference between sucrose and fructose. Nuts? They aren’t hardly sweet at all. Finally, when I was a child, I found assertive spices challenging. It’s not that I didn’t like spices—but when a cookie like a pfeffernüsse presented me with a punchy, bewildering blend of cinnamon, anise, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and/or nutmeg, it just seemed “weird.”</p>
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<p>So you can imagine my less-than-enthusiastic response to biting into a billy goat cookie, full of dates and black walnuts, when I thought I had picked up a chocolate chip cookie. They do look a lot alike. They taste very different. So I learned to hesitate, my hand hovering over the cookie tray. I learned to carefully inspect my choices before making a commitment to any.</p>
<p>And this is why cookie trays, during my childhood, always included kid-friendly choices. My brother and I learned to scope out the animal cookies (that is, sugar cookies cut into animal and Christmas-themed shapes such as pine trees, bells, stars, and angels, always with straight-ahead icing on them). We also snarfed up the good ol’ chocolate chippers, the snickerdoodles, and the like. Mild flavors; Rice Krispies treats; spritz cookies. Cookies a kid can count on!</p>
<p>But it’s not like I wouldn’t eat the old-fashioned, Germanic cookies. Springerles, I thought, were pretty good, albeit often tough to chew (I didn’t drink coffee, so I didn’t discover the joys of dunking until much later). Lebkuchen, especially with a glaze and decorated with sprinkles, or with half of a candied cherry pressed into the glaze, weren’t too bad, even though the candied fruit was sort of “meh.” Billy goats were tasty, as long as you didn’t have your heart set on it being a chocolate chip cookie.</p>
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<p>And so on. My brother and I ate the Germanic favorites, but like the sauerbraten and red cabbage we had only a few times a year (always at Grandma’s), they were “weird.” They were German things, things our school chums in Columbia, whose surnames were English like Wilson and Smith, didn’t have a clue about. The cookies their moms offered us were just “regular” cookies.</p>
<p>And soon enough, we realized our family’s Christmas cookies were <em>special</em>. Everyone who was older, our parents and uncles and aunts, and everyone older than they, oohed and aahed over them: “Ooh, yum, you made springerles! They’re so beautiful! I’ve got to have one of them!” They wouldn’t have gushed so much if it was, say, oatmeal-raisin cookies or peanut butter cookies, because those were everyday cookies; they won’t special.</p>
<p>By the time I was a teenager, I was hooked on these cookies. Like the Schroeder Weinachtspyramide, I knew they were special to my family and other ethnic Germans. I never cooked, but I knew these required some special skills to make. I was grateful my grandmas, my mom, my aunts, and the other ladies who made them. When I lived in Arizona and Montana, my grandmas’ abilities were waning. Grandma Renner had dementia; Grandma Schroeder had lost most of her vision. (Where did their springerle rollers or presses end up? I don’t know.)</p>
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<p>Uncle Richard had always doled out his lebkuchen for months after Christmas, keeping a coffee can full of them in his conservation-agent patrol car. Shivering, he’d nibble on leppies and sip from his coffee thermos on his late-night stakeouts for catching deer poachers.</p>
<p>He ultimately refrained from eating the last bite of his last lebkuchen made by his mother; he put a tiny eyescrew in it and dipped it in varnish or polyurethane. It’s preserved and it has his bite marks on it. He made a necklace out of it—a totem—which he wears during holiday get-togethers: <em>“The last bite of my mom’s last leppie.”</em></p>
<p>So yeah, I started looking for the recipes.</p>
<p>Since then I’ve gotten them pretty much figured out. There’s been a lot of trial-and-error, since it was too late for me to lean on my grandmas for advice. But food memories, it turns out, can be acute, so I’ve had a lot of help and encouragement.</p>
<p>The sense of smell and taste are strongly linked to memory and emotion. That’s why certain scents evoke such nostalgia—like the smell of freshly cut green grass in spring, or the first whiff of a wood fire on a crisp, early winter evening.</p>
<p>With the winter holidays so linked with family and spiritual celebrations, and with holiday foods repeated so many years, it only ingrains and strengthens the many associations of those flavors and smells. So when you smell those special cookies baking, each year the memories and layers of meaning accumulate.</p>
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<p>It’s about so much more than the cookies. They’re just a trigger, the portal, the crystal ball, the talisman. They link me to my family, my ancestors, to a continent I barely know. They link me to fifty years of memories, some sad, but nearly all sweet. They invoke a mini meditation, a reverie, a quick portal into another dimension. They have power.</p>
<p>Any other time of year, I’ll make other kinds of cookies (recently, I’ve been partial to hermits and “pride of Iowa” cookies, for instance). But it’s my pleasure and honor to make family Christmas cookies and then share nearly all of them.</p>
<p>I didn’t start this. Ancestors who traveled across the Atlantic Ocean brought their holiday recipes with them; they couldn’t bear to have Christmas without them. . . . And who am I to break the chain?</p>
<p></p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-77907921215788829172022-12-11T23:04:00.044-06:002022-12-15T17:39:00.395-06:00Jar of Goodness 12.11.22: New Car!<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for my new car! (Yeah, finally!)</strong></p>
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<p>I’ve talked about this already, but here it is in a nutshell: My 2003 Honda Civic gave up the ghost last June. At first, we considered getting a used car, at least to tide us over, but we discovered used cars are costing about as much as new ones, but with tens of thousands of miles, sketchy Carfax reports, and all kinds of signs of poor car care.</p>
<p>The problem with buying a new car is that they aren’t available. You have to order them, pay a deposit, and wait . . . for months.</p>
<p>The <em>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</em>’s Daniel Neman described <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/business/columns/you-can-t-buy-a-car-if-there-are-no-cars-to-buy/article_9719bd81-5f51-5b14-9e19-6bee972e97cb.html" target="_blank">his recent, 2022, pandemic-complicated car-buying experience</a>, that was very similar to ours, though he started off looking for a new car and ended up shopping for used. Also, he was able to find more humor in his experience, which makes his editorial worth reading.</p>
<p>I won’t go into too much detail about what it’s like not having a car to drive around. I know it’s a “first world problem” and I’m not complaining. But it was mighty inconvenient, and a huge eye-opener, to not be able to just, well, go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. Yes, we have another vehicle, but it’s Sue’s 1994 Ranger, and it has manual transmission (I mean, why should I learn now?), and we wanted to drive it only for short distances. So, Sue and I went everywhere together, and Sue drove. Usually, I’m the driver, because her truck is older, and I rather like driving, and the sedan is usually more pleasant that riding around in the big, bumpy pickup.</p>
<p>Anyway, I got the call from the dealer on December 1: the car had arrived! Yippee! And we drove to St. Louis (borrowing my mom and dad’s car) on Monday, December 5 to pick it up. Yay for <a href="https://www.stlouishonda.com/" target="_blank">Mungenast St. Louis Honda</a>!</p>
<p>Fun fact: Mungenast Honda isn’t very far south of Kirkwood, where we go to get our <a href="https://www.globalfoodstl.com/" target="_blank">international groceries</a> and where we’ve been finding <a href="https://www.grapevinewinesandspirits.com/" target="_blank">good wines</a> recently. It’s even on the same road (Kirkwood/Lingbergh). My, how convenient for us!</p>
<p>The saga isn’t entirely over; I still need to transfer the license from the old car and get rid of the old car, get the deposit back from dealer 2, who was unable to fulfill the order before Mungenast St. Louis Honda did, and then, of course, pay off the new car.</p>
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<p>But it’s really nice. I actually now have a car that is a <em>trendy</em> color—it’s not just the last/least desirable color that happens to be on the dealer’s lot. And after twenty years with my old car, it gradually became less attractive, especially after the semi-truck had rubbed against it, and after the hail damage; I did feel rather sheepish one time recently when I pulled into the lot of the local country club for a lunch meeting, parking beside shiny new Audis, Cadillacs, and Mercedeseses.</p>
<p>For now, though, I have a car I can feel pride in. I can drive around slowly, thinking, “Yeah, everyone, look at me!” For a change. I know this feeling will subside soon enough. But, you know; after years of driving around a car with 100,000 . . . 150,000 . . . 200,000 . . . 250,000 miles on it, the temporary thrill of owning a car with only 12 miles on it: <em>Squeeee!</em></p>
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<p>I mean, you know me. I’m not ostentatious. I don’t obsess about my looks, or the clothes I wear, or whatever. But every twenty years or so, when I do finally get a new car—which I hope to drive until the wheels practically fall off—I deeply enjoy the first few years of special newness. Sure, a Civic is hardly a “status” car, but it’s a smart, reliable, comfortable, practical car, and for me, that’s something I’m proud to own.</p>
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<p>So for the record, it’s a 2023 Honda Civic Sport Sedan in Sonic Gray Pearl (a very trendy color) with black interior. I really like how the paint color (which at first seemed like a rather boring gray) looks dramatically different in different kinds of light.</p>
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<p>This is my third Civic sedan, the others being a <strike>beige</strike> "almond cream" 1989 DX and a <strike>metallic-dirt-colored</strike> “shoreline mist metallic” 2003 LX. This is the first one for me that has an actually trendy, in-demand color.</p>
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<p>It’s really interesting, and I think a testament to the Honda company’s enduring vision and tradition of excellence, that this new vehicle still <em>feels</em> like a Civic, in a very fundamental way. The controls are basically all in the same locations; the road feel, the seats, the fit, the way it drives . . . are clearly on a continuum with the other two. Compared to the various similar-type sedans I’ve rented in recent years, I can tell those couldn’t be Civics—but this one is clearly, well, a Honda Civic. I can see why people are Civic “enthusiasts.”</p>
<p>So, that’s done: the car situation is resolved, and it was the last of the Big Things of 2022. The new second-floor refrigerator (ordering and waiting months for it); the second-floor air-conditioning conking out and us needing to get a new HVAC system for that floor (cha-chiiinng!); and (long delayed) finally getting the new roof, gutters, and new siding on the front and back dormers.</p>
<p>Sue and decided last summer, when it seemed everything was imploding but nothing was moving forward, that we should have come champagne on hand for whenever the last of these 2022 expensive, protracted inconveniences and frustrations were finally all over.</p>
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<p>So when we got home from St. Louis with the new car, we did indeed celebrate!</p>
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<p>Yep, sometimes gratitude has four wheels, a sporty ride, a 2.0-liter, 4-cylinder engine, a touchscreen infotainment system, a CVT transmission, a Sonic Gray Pearl paint job, and a 10/10 rating from <em>Car and Driver.</em></p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-23997902178200482452022-12-04T17:30:00.001-06:002022-12-04T17:30:00.169-06:00Jar of Goodness 12.4.22: New Gutters, and Done!<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for our new gutters, and for having this roofing-siding-gutter project be done!</strong></p>
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<p>Lawsey, it’s expensive. Fortunately, the roof and replacement gutters were covered by insurance. It was damaged by a hailstorm on March 27, 2020, with tennis-ball-sized hail. The city was still recovering from the 2019 tornado! We were sitting out on the sunporch when the hail started—there was no thunderstorm; it sounded like someone just started hitting the roof with a sledgehammer. It totaled my car; yeah, 2020 was a pretty messed-up year. Anyway . . .</p>
<p>We’d been wanting to put siding on our front and back dormers. With our steeply slanted roof, they’re difficult to get to, and the front dormer gets blasted by heat. The back one, facing northeast, wants to grow lichen and moss. Poor old wooden things. Here's a "before" picture, the dormer and the roof, covered with the old shingles from 2006.</p>
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<p>So we tacked that onto our work order.</p>
<p>The gutters in front now have gutter guards, which hopefully will prevent leaves and twigs from getting trapped. We’ve been pretty tired of water overflowing it and spilling onto our front doorstep. The gutter guys also noticed that the old gutter on the sunporch wasn’t draining properly. A bunch of water splashed out of it when they pulled it off. No wonder we’ve had a problem with mosquitoes in our backyard, eh?</p>
<p>We also had the “gutter guys” add a small section of gutter to the little roof over our driveway. In 2012 when we got our <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-sidewalks.html" target="_blank">new sidewalks</a> and driveway, the slope was changed such that much of the water in the driveway must drain via a drain near our basement doors. This includes any water that hits the three-story Broadway side of our house and runs down. That’s a lot for that little drain to handle, and we sometimes get water coming into our basement. The gutter, hopefully, will help. Below, views of "before" (with new roof) and "after" (with new roof, plus new gutter).</p>
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<p>Apart from writing a pretty breathtaking check for this (so hooray for the big deposit from the insurance company), we’re done, done-done-done with this project.</p>
<p>WHAT will we be thankful for <i>next</i> week?? Tune in and find out!</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-63799020616230617362022-12-02T16:19:00.003-06:002022-12-02T16:19:42.071-06:00Notes on Grandma Renner's Billie Goat Cookies<p>I’ve written about Billie Goats, also spelled Billy Goat Cookies, <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2009/12/billy-goats.html" target="_blank">before</a>. But it’s time for a more nuanced version of the instructions. Look, no matter how you make them, they’ll be delicious. But I’ve been taking notes every year, so I can get the shape and texture just right. Until now, it’s been hit-or-miss. But I think I’ve got the techniques figured out, now. (As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/foodwishes" target="_blank">Chef John</a> says, <em>“Never let the food win.”</em>) By golly.</p>
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<p>So yes, there's a recipe at the end of this post.</p>
<p>A true, enduring gift from my grandma Clara Renner, these cookies take the strong, separately distinctive flavors of brown sugar, cinnamon, black walnuts, and dates and combine them into a new flavor I can only call “Billie Goat.” It’s a genuine meld; the combination is much greater than the sum of its parts. If you don’t like one of the ingredients, don’t rule out these cookies, because each flavor is tempered and transformed by the others. This is one of the best cookies anyone can make, in my opinion.</p>
<p>And for us, it’s a must-have for the Christmas cookie tray.</p>
<p>I have used this combination of brown sugar, cinnamon, dates, and black walnuts in other recipes, and I’ve found they have the same profound, synergistic effect, where they meld into a new, milder, but very unique flavor. I think of it as “Billie Goat seasoning.” I use this combination in my bran muffins, for example. You could also apply it to a bowl of oatmeal, or use it in pancake batter or a quick bread.</p>
<p>Grandma Renner said these are called “Billie Goats” because they are lumpy and have little points that stuck out, like a goat. (This is why the shape and the texture of the dates is important; read on.) I don’t know why Grandma spelled it “Billie” instead of “Billy.” Grandma Renner, her sister, Lydia Meyer, and their friends apparently all started making Billie Goats about the same time.</p>
<p>Billie Goats/Billy Goats are in a family of similar drop cookies that were really popular among mothers in the 1930s and 40s. This was a generation of moms who were keenly conscious of their role as household managers. In school, their “domestic science” classes taught them to be faithful guardians of their family’s health and good stewards of the family food budget. Vitamins were a new discovery with their generation. These women wanted to pack maximum nutrition into the foods they made, including their children’s after-school snacks—while being very economical (first, because of the Great Depression; next, rationing during World War II).</p>
<p>So, instead of sugar cookies or candies, they made these proto-health-food snacks, using nuts, plus raisins, dates, and/or currants, and sweetening with surprisingly small amounts of brown sugar (some recipes call for a combination of brown and white). Other cookies in this group include “hermits” and “rocks”; oatmeal-raisin cookies are also close relatives. Look for all these recipes in old cookbooks and church ladies’ cookbooks. The names “billy goats” and “rocks” both apparently refer to the chunky, knobby look of these cookies. I don’t know how “hermits” got named.</p>
<p>Some notes about texture and form, since I’ve had some time to figure these out. They’ll taste great no matter what you do, but the goal is to have a chewy, cakelike inside, and a lumpy, chunky shape. So here’s a discussion of challenges, and my “pro tips.”</p>
<p>For generations, most American cooks could only get <a href="https://ahundredyearsago.com/2014/12/12/1914-dromedary-dates-advertisement/" target="_blank">Dromedary brand dates</a>, which were apparently Deglet Noor dates. They were packed tightly in cellophane (this was before plastic), stuffed into cardboard boxes, and, after languishing in a warehouse or on grocery shelves, they were as tough as shoe leather. Clipping them with kitchen shears, as Grandma’s recipe instructs, would literally <em>hurt</em> your scissors hand. (Grandma’s kitchen shears were stainless steel, dull old things; you know the type—the ones with the rounded “claws” for opening bottles at the base of the red-painted, hard metal handles. The base of my thumb still hurts, just thinking of them. This was way before “Fiskars” scissors were available!)</p>
<p>So billy goat cookies, being a midcentury recipe, were developed using the ingredients that, at that time, were available to most people: dried-up dates. The cooking softened them, but not to the point where they lost a distinctive, chewy, chunky presence.</p>
<p>Today, the Dromedary brand seems to have gone out of business, and you just cannot buy dry, hard dates like them; instead, they are all moist and tender, either packed in plastic or shipped absolutely fresh. This is actually a good thing, but it presents a problem for replicating this cookie’s texture, since moist dates tend to dissolve into gooey molasses during baking, producing a flat, uniformly chewy cookie, instead of distinct, chunky, jagged lumps of chewy dates and nuts in a cakey, rounded matrix of dough.</p>
<p>I’ve learned to replicate the type of dates Grandma had by purchasing them (Deglet Noors) a few weeks ahead of baking, clipping them in the prescribed herringbone pattern while they’re still soft (which is a much easier task, now), spreading these out on cookie sheets, and letting them sit (under wax paper) in a quiet place while they dry. The house isn’t at all humid in November. Or, you can put them in the oven warmed only by the pilot light. Or you can try a dehydrator. An alternative might be to try to find one of the so-called bread dates (varieties such as Thoories that are sold rather dry, dry enough you can carry them in your pocket)—but those might lack sweetness. Also, I think it’s cheaper and easier to use regular Dole (or whatever) brand Deglet Noors, cut them, and let them dry. That seems the best way to replicate the texture and flavor of old-fashioned Dromedary dates.</p>
<p>Another point about texture: These cookies have caused me more vexation than any others, except perhaps when I was first figuring out springerles. If you only make a cookie once a year, it’s hard to fine-tune the recipe! My Billie Goats recipe card is full of penciled-in notes: “try doing _____ next time.” You don’t want the cookies to be so soft they spread out, but you don’t want them crunchy or hard. How to get that cakey, chewy texture, and chunky look? Here are some key tips:</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Use a 50/50 combination of margarine and butter-flavored Crisco. Real butter does make them taste better, but it complicates the texture; the cookies turn out drier, less moist. Save your butter for some other recipe.</li><li>Pack the flour; forget the rule about spooning fluffed-up flour into your measuring cup and leveling it off with a knife. It turns out Grandma R used her measuring cups as scoops: swipe the cup through the flour, like you’re using a dip net to fish something out of water. You can level it off if you want, or just kind of shake off the excess, but you need to pretty much pack the flour into the cups.</li><li>Let the dough sit overnight in the refrigerator or on an unheated sunporch. The flour will absorb the liquids and be easier to work.</li><li>. . . But the dough will still be sticky and hard to handle. Put on some happy music. Use parchment-lined cookie sheets. Try dabbing the dough into little rounds with two spoons, or (if you haven’t much patience for the spoon method) use your fingertips to pinch off bits of dough (put some water on your hands so it doesn’t stick so bad; even then, you’ll have to clean your hands and start again several times).</li><li>I tend to make smallish cookies, because I figure twenty-first-century people would rather select six different morsels from the tray than settle on just two huge cookies. Big cookies are a joy, but variety is the spice of life. Also, with smaller cookies, a single batch of dough goes farther. A 1¼-inch blob of dough, slightly flattened before cooking, produces about a 1½-inch diameter cookie. Back in the day, Mom and Grandma’s cookies tended to end up about 2 to 2½ inches in diameter. Different sizes account for the difference in cooking time; smaller cookies cook faster.</li><li>Do a single tray of cookies first and see how they turn out. These shouldn’t flatten very much. If they spread out flat, you may have to add a bit more flour to the dough, or you might need to adjust the size of the cookies.</li><li>Finally, don’t overcook these, or they will be too hard. Mom says this was a principal criticism Grandma R had about her sister, Lydia’s billy goats: “she bakes them too long, and they get too hard.” (I’ve heard this criticism plenty, too.)</li><li><em>But</em> if they come out kind of hard, don’t panic. Seal them in a tin, with the layers of cookies divided by wax paper, and take half of a tart apple, wrap it loosely in wax paper, and nestle it in the tin with the cookies. After a week or so, you’ll discover the cookies have softened and developed a <em>je ne sais quoi</em> in terms of flavor.</li></ul><p></p>
<p>. . . Does all this sound too hard? Please don’t be put off by these tips; it’s all stuff I’ve learned the hard way, and I’m sharing it here, so you have a super-duper head start!</p>
<p>Finally, again, you can’t really ruin these. They’ll taste great regardless of the texture and shape.</p>
<p><strong>Billie Goats/Billy Goat Cookies</strong></p>
<p>1½ c. brown sugar<br />
1 c. butter [Pat S. uses margarine, sometimes butter-flavor Crisco; I use half margarine and half butter-flavor Crisco; real butter tastes good, but then the texture will be off]<br />
-----------Cream together butter and sugar.</p>
<p>3 eggs: beat whites [till light; use a hand mixer or whisk] and [then] add [whisk in] yolks</p>
<p>1 level tsp. baking soda dissolved in<br />
¼ c. lukewarm-to-hot water</p>
<p>1 Tbs. cinnamon<br />
1 tsp. vanilla<br />
1 c. black walnuts [chopped]<br />
1 lb. clipped dates [using a scissors, clip whole, pitted dates in an alternating herringbone pattern; the idea is to have them big enough to kind of “poke out” of the cookies; if you buy pre-chopped dates, it’s okay, but the pieces are too small to achieve the characteristic lumpy look.]<br />
2½ c. flour [basically pack it]</p>
<p>Make the cookie dough [let it sit overnight in the fridge] and drop it onto [parchment-lined] cookie sheets by small spoonfuls. Bake in a moderate (ca. 350-degree) oven like you would other cookies, about 8–11 minutes. [Don’t overcook; they should be rather chewy and cakey inside.]</p>
<p>Makes about 100 cookies.</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-66890605944010139102022-11-27T16:51:00.001-06:002022-12-02T16:55:46.699-06:00Jar of Goodness 11.27.22: Dormer Siding<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for our newly re-sided front and back dormer windows!</strong></p>
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<p>The front dormer doesn’t look much different, except much, much better. The workers covered up the old white asbestos siding with white vinyl siding. The new green fascia looks fantastic, too.</p>
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<p>The back dormer looks substantially better, too, plus a lot different. For as long as anyone can remember, it has been “sided” with asphalt shingles. In 2006, we had our previous (awful) roofers put shingles onto it. But real siding is a much better choice. It’s also appropriately lined, beneath the siding, now.</p>
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<p>The back dormer looks different, too, in that the new siding is kind of a sage green. We’ve been used to be being the same dark green as the shingles, but there aren’t that many choices in siding colors. Anyway, we love it.</p>
<p>So, YAY!</p>
<p>Another thing checked off our to-do list.</p>
<p>WHAT will we be thankful for next week?? Tune in and find out!</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-26798471511100024852022-11-24T19:22:00.011-06:002022-11-26T19:55:08.193-06:00Florence Biffle’s Sweet Potato Bake<p><em>Happy Thanksgiving!</em></p>
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<p>This fantastic yet simple recipe, titled “Sweet Potato Bake,” is from Mrs. Florence M. Biffle (1914–2006), who was a member of Faith Lutheran Church in Jefferson City. I recently found <a href="https://www.millardfamilychapels.com/obituaries/Florence-M-Biffle?obId=19493488" target="_blank">her obituary online</a>. I’ll bet my Great Aunt Lydia Meyer knew her well, since she was a longtime member of the same church and was also a quilter. Also, I’ll bet my Grandma Schroeder and Great Aunt Minnie Bartlett new Mrs. Biffle, too, since they were all longtime members of Jefferson City’s Hawthorn Garden Club.</p>
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<p>I never knew Mrs. Biffle, but I feel I could easily have known her. There’s a good chance I was in the same room with her at some point, and just never knew it. Anyway, I’m grateful to her for this recipe, and for these small connections between our worlds.</p>
<p>I noticed she was buried out at Hawthorn Memorial Gardens cemetery, so in a few weeks when I'm out decorating Grandma and Grandpa Renner's grave, I'll see if I can find Mr. and Mrs. Biffle.</p>
<p>This recipe was on p. 49 of <em>Cooking with Faith: Favorite Recipes of Faith Lutheran Church Women, Jefferson City, Missouri</em>, by the Faith Lutheran Ladies Guild, Jefferson City, Missouri [ca. 1975].</p>
<p>This is an interesting, fruity-glazed alternative to the standard (and I think tiresome) sweet potato casseroles made with brown sugar, pecans, and marshmallows, so common at the Thanksgiving table. I think you’ll really like this for a change of pace.</p>
<p>I’ll offer my tips and suggestions after the recipe.</p>
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<p><strong>Sweet Potato Bake</strong></p>
<p>Cook 4 to 6 sweet potatoes until almost tender. Skin and cut to desired size (chunks). Place in a casserole dish.</p>
<p>Combine and bring to a boil:</p>
<p>1 c. apricot nectar<br>
2 T. orange juice concentrate (not diluted)<br>
½ c. brown sugar<br>
1½ T. cornstarch<br>
1 t. salt<br>
½ t. cinnamon<br>
2 T. butter<br>
½ c. water</p>
<p>Pour over the potatoes and bake 30 to 40 minutes at 350°F.</p>
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<p><strong>Julie’s notes:</strong></p>
<p>You can peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into chunks, then cook them in gently boiling water if you don’t want to bake them. I have also steamed them, and that works, too. But don’t overcook the potatoes; remember they will be cooking for another half hour in the oven.</p>
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<p>I use a 9 x 9 Pyrex baking dish. You will cook it uncovered, so what begins as a liquid dressing reduces to a gooey glaze over the potatoes. Pull them out of the oven when the sauce is gooey enough for your taste.</p>
<p>The dressing mixes up most easily if you first combine all the dry ingredients together before adding them to the liquid.</p>
<p>Kern’s Apricot Nectar, which is no doubt what Mrs. Biffle had in mind, used to be available at all the grocery stores around here, but I haven’t seen it in years. I think the company’s out of business. There’s another brand called Jumex, but I’ve never seen it except online. I’ll bet it’s something to look for at an international store. Both seem to contain high fructose corn syrup and other less-than-desirable ingredients. But it’s no problem if you can’t find apricot nectar. Just take some canned apricots and some of their juice and puree it in a food processor or bullet blender, so it gets to the consistency of a thick “nectar” type juice. You only need a cup. A bonus of doing it this way is that you can decide how much corn syrup to include (since you are selecting your can of apricots—in heavy syrup, light syrup, or whatever). You can even puree the apricot pieces with just water, if you want.</p>
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<p>There's no reason you couldn't use dried apricots, simmered in water until they're perfectly soft, then process those in a bullet blender or run them through a food mill, to make them into a liquid puree. I suppose that would be healthier. But I think using canned apricots with their corn syrup is more authentic to the midcentury church ladies cooking style.</p>
<p>Do-ahead tip: You can put the peeled, precooked potato chunks and the uncooked sauce into the casserole dish, dotting the butter on top, covered with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. Or out on your unheated sunporch, if it’s cool enough. Finish it in the oven the next day.</p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-64717630284982010022022-11-20T14:54:00.045-06:002022-11-21T15:20:32.538-06:00Jar of Goodness 11.20.22: Artemis I<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for NASA’s Artemis I.</strong></p>
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<p>“We are going back to the moon.” Did you watch the launch of Artemis I Wednesday morning? It was worth getting up early to see! If you missed it, you can see the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMLD0Lp0JBg" target="_blank">official NASA broadcast on YouTube here</a>. And here’s a link to NASA’s <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1" target="_blank">Artemis I web page</a>.</p>
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<p>All the pictures of this post are screenshots from the YouTube video, or else they are photos of that video playing on my computer monitor. Because sometimes you want to remember what it was like, personally, to participate in this event.</p>
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<p>This Space Launch System (SLS) and spacecraft (<em>Orion</em>) are designed to get people to the Moon and back, and eventually allow people to travel from the Moon to Mars. The Artemis I mission is un-crewed, operated by programming and remote transmissions, as they’re testing the system before sending living people up in it. It’s also multitasking with several other experiments and stuff.</p>
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<p>The biggest deal on Wednesday was the SLS—the massive rocket system that launched the capsule out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space, heading toward the Moon and beyond.</p>
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<p>The launch system is simply fantastic. The liftoff was intensely dramatic—like watching a volcano erupt, but on cue and perfectly in control: “Three, two, one, boosters and ignition . . . And <em>liftoff</em> of Artemis I! <em>We rise together</em>—back to the Moon, and beyond!”</p>
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<p>After about 1 minute after liftoff, the rocket was going over 600 mph, with 8 million pounds of maximum thrust. About 20 seconds later, it was 1,420 mph. Just 2 minutes and 11 seconds after liftoff, the two solid rocket boosters had done their job and were jettisoned. Soon after that, the rocket was traveling at more than 3,400 mph.</p>
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<p>Three minutes into the launch, the speed was 4,060 mph; after another minute, it was up to 5,200 mph. At 5 minutes, the speed had increased to more than 6,800 mph, and a minute later to 8,800 mph. At T+06:20, the speed had exceeded 10,000 mph, and at T+07:00 it was up to 12,000.</p>
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<p>Then, after 8 minutes of flight, the main rocket engine cutoff occurred, and the core stage separated from the <em>Orion</em> capsule, which was then considered to be in Earth’s orbit. After that, in following days, it would continue on to the Moon. At the point of main engine cutoff, the speed was more than 16,000 mph.</p>
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<p>Do you know how orbiting works? Think about it this way. If you hold a ball in the air and then let it drop, it falls straight down to the earth, thanks to gravity. If you flip the rock sideways a little, it still falls to earth, but it follows a curved path. If you throw or pitch the rock a little harder and faster, the rock travels farther, and its curved path is wider. If you shot the rock out of a cannon, it would travel even farther, tracing an even wider curve, before falling to earth. But what if you shot the rock so fast and far that its curved, falling path actually matches the curvature of the planet? It would continually be falling . . . but it would never fall to earth.</p>
<p>By the way, the current land speed record is 760 mph. The air speed record (by ducted jet engine aircraft, within the atmosphere) is something like 2,193 mph, set by a Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” Mach 3+ jet.</p>
<p>The <em>Orion</em> spacecraft, with its 26-day mission, will eventually take a far-distance elliptical orbit around the moon, traveling a maximum of 280,000 miles away from Earth and 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon. That’s substantially farther than the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, during which the astronauts traveled a maximum of 248,655 miles away from Earth.</p>
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<p>This is a big deal, you all! Yes, we’ve sent amazing remote-controlled equipment into space, to Mars, to Jupiter, and beyond. . . . And as for <em>crewed</em> space flights, the various space shuttles and space stations have all remained in low Earth orbit. No humans have truly gone out into <em>space</em> since the Apollo 17 mission in <em>1972</em>.</p>
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<p>Exploring is what humans do. Learning, identifying, describing, making connections, questioning, making predictions, testing, understanding, recording, and communicating about it . . . that’s what humans <em>do</em>. That is our superpower. It’s our ministry. It’s in our DNA.</p>
<p>We are the portion of the Earth that is programmed and equipped to allow Earth to see and try to understand itself. We animals are its eyes, brains, and conscience.</p>
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<p>And are you excited that NASA is pointing out, strongly, that the Artemis missions will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon? You should be. It’s an indication that we’re not <em>stuck</em> in the 1950s, even though <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf" target="_blank">some people seem to think</a> that’s where we should return. So including all types of our nation’s people in the space program is a strong signal that everyone in our country is encouraged to contribute—because diversity is our nation’s strength. And we need to get back to that thinking!</p>
<p>. . . So that we can rise <em>together!</em></p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-27424594153976402462022-11-13T18:44:00.003-06:002022-11-14T17:17:39.091-06:00Jar of Goodness 11.13.22: Sunporch Storm Windows Done<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for having the storm windows be up.</strong></p>
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<p>I’ve <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/search/label/storm%20windows" target="_blank">blogged about our storm windows</a> before, and you know I have mixed feelings about them. Enough that we’ve come to rate each spring and fall transition to and from screens and storms on “the cussometer” scale. Some years, it’s been an 8 on the cussometer. This year, Sue gives it a 0.5, which is about the lowest it’s ever been. “It went just like clockwork.”</p>
<p>The fall operation involves moving furniture and blinds on the sunporch to clear space for the operation. Removing the screens (blissfully lightweight) and wiping down the sills and other framework. Hauling the storms out of the coal bin (which is a storage area in our basement), and cleaning them. Carrying them out the basement doors, up the steps into the backyard, across the backyard, up the porch steps to the porch. Fitting them into place. Putting everything back together.</p>
<p>A subcategory is putting the storm window in the porch door, which involves a screwdriver.</p>
<p>Another subcategory is using a screwdriver to stuff styrofoam insulation noodles and bits of fiberglass into the gaps. It really makes a difference on windy days. I’ll get to that this next week.</p>
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<p>Another subcategory is removing screens and putting in storms (plexiglass) into our <i>front storm doors</i>. I did that yesterday. That has its own kind of cussometer.</p>
<p>But regarding today’s project, I gave it more of a 3, since my left shoulder’s been painful, and it just seemed like more of a chore—something I really didn’t care to do.</p>
<p>BUT having it done is a lovely thing. Being able to have the sunporch windows all closed means it can be more like a little greenhouse out there on sunny days, even when it’s cold outside. We will get some more weeks, or at least days, of being able to enjoy the sunporch.</p>
<p>And Lois is going to be able to enjoy sleeping in the sun in the mornings.</p>
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<p>I said I have mixed feelings about these elderly storm windows. No one today still has heavy wooden storm windows that have to be hauled in and out of place each year. In all honesty, it’s a bitch. They’re unwieldy. We’re always having to futz around with them. (This year, one of the hooks came out of the wood, so we’ve got to fix that.) Why not get modern, expensive, do-everything windows that stay in place 100 percent of the time, and you just, like, open them temporarily, if they came with an openable, screen feature? (Wait, <em>do</em> people open their windows anymore?)</p>
<p>The answer for me has something to do with that sense of transition. It feels completely different out there, now, with the storm windows in place. It’s not breezy and open anymore; it’s cozy and protected. The outdoor sounds are muffled. And there’s a genuine feeling of warmth—like having that first bowl of <a href="https://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-moms-ham-and-bean-soup.html" target="_blank">ham and bean soup</a> on a crisp fall day. There’s a perfection, and a rightness, to it.</p>
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<p>Likewise, it’s a real pleasure to switch them to screens in spring. Suddenly, it’s like being in a treehouse! I feel a sense of glee—like if you have a convertible, and it’s the first day you can drive with the top down!</p>
<p>But also, why would we need to replace something that isn’t exactly broken?</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-56178762300035002422022-11-07T18:09:00.005-06:002022-11-07T23:51:29.443-06:00You Say Apothem, I Say Opossum<p>Today I am sharing with you a little blast from my past. Have I always had a thing about opossums? No, I tell you, NO! I’m a <em>cat</em> person!</p>
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<p>But then, thanks to the miracles of social media, I recently reconnected with my geometry teacher from ninth grade, and she graciously supplied me with images of a spoof geometry textbook a friend and I had concocted and gave her as a present.</p>
<p>Was it a <em>present?</em> In it, we poked fun at math, geometry, and her. The joke were all stupid. It is a testament to her good-naturedness and easy sense of humor that she was able to laugh with us. She could see that creativity impelled our spoof, not anything that resembled real dissatisfaction with the subject, the class, or our teacher. (Indeed, we all adored her.)</p>
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<p>And she <em>actually kept</em> our little gift after all these years. Seriously, it was spring of 1981 when we finished up ninth grade and geometry class.</p>
<p>So, it was two of us who made our little spoof geometry book. Here’s what we looked like in 1981.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8EwJXhvNJhsA1qklGtjNjHzrDj3TSPQKxvN0NssYoo51Q92x6BVx-hbTZwn-lpvXyXQbO5zJC4DQKKsowg9mqeSm8f78J18Z9N8EilkUhb7gQhNcKSPD8-VVliwSWchPKjJJZiF27z_VvB4Lmw88xYh4wZavypbSrVJbWBMxqB8anZxCGYVaDQQC/s1523/2_Co-conspirators.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="1523" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8EwJXhvNJhsA1qklGtjNjHzrDj3TSPQKxvN0NssYoo51Q92x6BVx-hbTZwn-lpvXyXQbO5zJC4DQKKsowg9mqeSm8f78J18Z9N8EilkUhb7gQhNcKSPD8-VVliwSWchPKjJJZiF27z_VvB4Lmw88xYh4wZavypbSrVJbWBMxqB8anZxCGYVaDQQC/s400/2_Co-conspirators.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>And here’s our spoof alongside a copy of the actual textbook we were using. Notice that I reversed the design of the original book. (How did I do that? Did I use a mirror?)</p>
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<p>I’m omitting the names of <em>everyone</em> here to protect both the innocent and the guilty, plus I’m long out of touch with my co-conspirator. He might be a lawyer or politician or something these days, or even have some kind of respectable career, and we don’t want his shady, geometry-ridiculing past to haunt him. What if he became a mathematician? Horrors; he might never live this down, you know?</p>
<p>But when you’re a ninth grader, how can you <em>not</em> make fun of stuff like sober, humorless definitions of the things like “lines” and “points”?</p>
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<p>And <em>then</em> they go and name something in geometry an “apothem.”</p>
<p>AN APOTHEM!</em>
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<p>Come on! They were just <em>asking</em> for it.</p>
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<p>There’s a HILARIOUS photo in our <a href="https://www.cpsk12.org/Domain/28" target="_blank">junior high</a> yearbook (yes, where I found the old pictures in this post), no doubt taken within five minutes of the picture of our geometry instructor above. It shows four of us while we’re sitting in geometry class. WHAT is going on with our expressions? We look despondent, horrified, bored, disbelieving! Yeah, that’s my head in the upper left, and it looks like I’m rolling my eyes. (Yeah, I have eye alignment problems in a lot of old photos, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the case by ninth grade.) It just cracks me up! Seriously, we didn’t usually look like this in class. At least, that’s not how I remember it. Maybe some other math classes, but not <em>geometry</em>. We all <em>liked</em> geometry.</p>
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<p>Okay, maybe we were reacting to a student photographer being in our class. Or maybe it was our usual look about an hour after lunch. We all ate hamburgers, hot dogs, or pizzas, with french fries and a sea of ketchup, every day at lunch. It’s a wonder we didn’t get scurvy. (Or indigestion.) But this was just months before <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica/article-abstract/21/1/17/116213/Ketchup-as-a-VegetableCondiments-and-the-Politics?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank">ketchup was deemed a bona fide vegetable</a>, so maybe we were ahead of our time.</p>
<p>I’ll have you know that I did okay in math, including geometry. It’s true, however, that one year of high school math was as far as I got. Boy-howdy, that was my limit. So I jumped for joy when I successfully tested out of math in my college entrance exams, so my undergraduate GPA didn’t have to suffer. Hallujah!</p>
<p>Anyway, remembering this spoof book (and others I did later on) makes me think that a career in book publishing maybe wasn’t such a stretch for me. The surprise might be that I went into editing instead of graphic design.</p>
<p>Because, yeah, there were more. In high school English class, when we had to go to the school’s Language Arts Resource Center and check out paperback copies of whatever novel we were supposed to be reading, I’d always select a copy that had a completely destroyed cover, or one that was missing.</p>
<p>I would use some card stock and some pens and watercolors to sort of reconstruct the book cover, but I’d do something different. Like when we read William Faulkner’s <em>As I Lay Dying</em>, I copied the cover design exactly, but I had my copy say “As I Die Laughing.” I’d use contact paper to laminate the new cover and affix it to the book. I was really careful. These were sound, decent book covers . . . except for the spoof. I can’t remember any others, but there were a lot of them.</p>
<p>I’d always nonchalantly return them to the LARC at the end of the unit, with a perfectly straight face. I’d make sure my copy wasn’t on the top of the stack, however. But what were they gonna do to me? They were actually in <em>better</em> shape than when I’d gotten them. When I checked them out, I’d note “Condition: no book cover.” When I checked them back in, well, now they had a cover!</p>
<p>Today I wonder how I had the time to do all this nonsense . . . but look at me blogging now, about this and that.</p>
<p>. . . Everyone needs a hobby, huh?</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-67270425053221056492022-11-06T16:12:00.019-06:002022-11-14T16:33:43.238-06:00Jar of Goodness 11.6.22: Little House Books<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.</strong></p>
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<p>Dad’s been clearing out their garage and giving me boxes of children’s books and other items of my childhood. He’d packed them away so well, it’s kind of difficult to get to them. Thus, here I am in my fifties, receiving boxes of my old stuff.</p>
<p>I told you about the old <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2022/07/nancy-drew.html" target="_blank">Nancy Drew books</a>. Well, I also got a box containing my old Little House books.</p>
<p>I read these in elementary school, too. I didn’t read all of them, however. I owned four of them and only read about 2.3. The two that were most engrossing were <em>Little House on the Prairie</em> and <em>On the Banks of Plum Creek</em>. I only got partway through <em>By the Shores of Silver Lake</em> before giving up on it. My old bookmark, in which park-ranger Snoopy encourages us to prevent wildfires, was still in place.</p>
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<p>Why didn’t I plow through the whole series? . . . I think it was because the books started to focus on social situations, frontier technology and town-building, and sewing. It might also have been that the Little House television show quickly went from amazing (in my kid view) to sickly sweet.</p>
<p>In the books, I liked the parts about spunky young Laura, who walked around in nature, barefoot—in the prairie, along the creek—and noticed things. Kind of how I did as a kid. I was always looking in creeks. Like Laura, I was always peering under creek rocks to see crayfish.</p>
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<p>. . . Or wondering at the beautiful glinting snow, or marveling at the array of wildflowers that grew, for free, in the woods.</p>
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<p>I distinctly remember reading part of <em>On the Banks of Plum Creek</em> one sultry summer afternoon at Columbia’s <a href="https://www.camptakimina.org/" target="_blank">Camp Takimina</a>, then the local Camp Fire camp. My parents were probably helping do some kind of maintenance with other adults. I sat on the camp’s one wooden bridge, my feet dangling over the little creek. Then I set the book down and walked around on the big, flat, smooth limestone rocks that formed the creek bed. I saw tiny black toad tadpoles moving around in the water. There were water striders, too.</p>
<p>You never know what things will influence you in certain times of your life. You can’t predict which influences will be profound, or in what ways. Somehow, I never outgrew my childhood curiosity about nature. Rereading Laura Ingalls Wilder recently has reminded me how important those books were for, well, empowering my sense of agency, my willingness to explore, to have outdoor adventures.</p>
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<p>Or, let’s put it this way: if I had read these books, and <em>not</em> been able to follow-up with my own outdoor adventures, I would have been frustrated indeed. Instead, I had our backyard, the big drainage ditch and creek behind our house, and Mrs. Ridgeway’s property nearby. And my parents were always taking us on hikes.</p>
<p>So it has been a blessing to reread these Little House books, aloud, with Sue. We discuss them as we read them. And we will continue reading them, including the ones I hadn’t finished reading way-back-when. We will buy the books I didn’t have, and we will plow through all of them.</p>
<p>And then, perhaps next spring, when we ((((finally)))) have a new, reliable car, we can visit Mansfield and see the house where Laura ended up. Who knows, maybe we can do a trip to South Dakota and Minnesota, to see the sights there. Why not?</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-41862279395875826682022-10-30T16:54:00.019-05:002022-11-10T18:56:25.304-06:00Jar of Goodness 10.30.22: Gans Creek<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for Gans Creek Wild Area.</strong></p>
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<p>I’ll never get tired of this view.</p>
<p><a href="https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/trail_maps/rockbridge_ganscreekwildareatrailsystem.pdf" target="_blank">Gans Creek</a> is part of <a href="https://mostateparks.com/park/rock-bridge-memorial-state-park" target="_blank">Rock Bridge Memorial State Park</a>. I’ve been going there for hikes since the place opened in about 1981. It’s always been a favorite hiking place of mine. Lots and lots of my early journal entries begin “At Gans, at my outlook.”</p>
<p>I had to call it “my outlook” and “my precipice” because that was before anyone declared that it should be named “Shooting Star Bluff.”</p>
<p>Indeed—this was so long ago, there was a sea of perennial wildflowers, yes, <em>called shooting stars</em>, that quite literally carpeted the triangle of ground between the main trail and the V of trail leading to and from the outlook. It was a magical scene each April, with them and bird’s-foot violets all over that outlook.</p>
<p>The shooting stars, violets, and all their topsoil are a memory now at that spot; it’s been trampled to death.</p>
<p>I don’t go to Gans nearly as often as I used to. The old field at the beginning of the trail has turned into second-growth woodland characterized by cedars and autumn olive.</p>
<p>But the older forested areas along the bluffs still feel like a home to me, and it was good to visit the place last Thursday.</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-35710478533334439882022-10-29T22:39:00.008-05:002022-11-01T16:00:08.766-05:00Halloween Party Food!<p>So! Have you decided yet what kind of food you’re going to have at your Halloween party? If you haven’t, you’d better hurry up!</p>
<p>Fortunately there’s a lot you can do almost at the last minute, taking not much more time than any other meal, with a bit of creativity. You know how to draw a face, right? Or at least a pair of eyes? I mean, I’m looking at you!</p>
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<p>I’ve gotten more serious about Halloween eats in the last ten years or so. It started in 2015, when Sue and I decided to take Halloween on the road! We don’t usually get many trick-or-treater children in our neighborhood, so we decided to show up at my parents’, unannounced, with a meal and goodies, and in costume. We rang the doorbell and when Dad opened it (expecting children), we yelled “trick or treat!” and then took over their living room.</p>
<p>We hung orange and black streamers, replaced all their normal light bulbs with orange or purple ones, strung up some purple string lights, stuck a battery-operated strobe light in a plastic pumpkin, and handed funny hats to them to wear. I think we all had stick-on fake mustaches that year, too.</p>
<p>We had all kinds of goodies to eat. That year (as I recall), we had a frozen cheese pizza to which I’d applied pieces of black olives, bell peppers, and pepperonis arranged to look like spiders, bugs, and spooky faces. I made a sweet, cream-cheese pumpkin dip (to have with sliced apples), and cookies in the shape of “witches’ fingers.” I carved a “barfing pumpkin,” set it on a big tray, and had a mild black-bean-and-corn salsa coming out of its mouth, and blue corn tortillas strewn around.</p>
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<p>It was such a fun time, we did it the next year. And the next. And indeed, each year since then. The costumes and makeup change, the decorations change, and the food changes, but the fun continues.</p>
<p>The past few years, I’ve taken the time to click some photos of the food. And I’ve got a nice little “Halloween” section of my recipe files. <em>What</em> will I make this year?!</p>
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<p>Here are some possibilities. Some are pretty basic; you just add decorations clipped out of vegetables, like I did atop the pizza. The recipes for lot of these can be found online.</p>
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<p><strong>Beverages</strong></p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Caramel-Apple Sangria (pinot grigio, apple cider, Smirnoff “Kissed Caramel” vodka, sliced apples).</li><li>Anything brightly colored served in test tubes. I don’t know where you get test tubes.</li><li>Apple Butter Old Fashioned (apple butter, bitters, apple cider, bourbon, club soda, serve on rocks in bar glass; sugar rim; garnish apple slices and cinnamon stick).</li><li>“Jason’s Juice” punch (Google it; make a sugar syrup with orange zest, cloves, cinnamon stick, plus cranberry (crangrape?) juice, sparkling cider; freeze water in a Halloween mask and float it in the punch as a creepy face).</li><li>Fun fact: tonic water glows under a black light!</li></ul><p></p>
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<p><strong>Main Dish Ideas</strong></p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Meatloaf shaped like a big hand, onion “bone” sticking out of wrist, beet leaf midvein/stem as “veins”; once cooked, carefully move onto a bed of green-colored mashed potatoes (see side dishes below).</li><li>Meatloaf shaped like a zombie head (chopped white onion teeth, olives for eyes, ketchup in the mouth, etc.).</li><li>Cheese pizza decorated with trimmed veggies, pepperonis, to make faces, spiders, etc. Sausage or hamburger meatballs plus sliced olives can be eyes.</li><li>Lasagna decorated as above.</li><li>Shepherd’s pie decorated as above (use pureed-spinach-green-colored mashed potatoes).</li><li>Any autumnal/hearty dish, such as baked squash, bean soup, beef stew, chili, haluski (kielbasa and butter-fried cabbage and onions).</li><li>Hot dogs wrapped with puff pastry to look like mummies.</li><li>Poke uncooked spaghetti noodles through uncooked hot dogs; plunge into simmering water until both are cooked. They will look like space aliens or squids.</li><li>Ruby Ann Boxcar’s Monster Casserole (from her <i>Down Home Trailer Park Holiday Cookbook</i>), “the color alone is enough to frighten small children”: cream of corn soup colored green; cooked egg noodles colored orange; cubed Spam, a can of corn, a small package of Velveeta, cubed . . . put in a casserole and bake. (I’ve never made this one . . . yet.)</li></ul><p></p>
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<p><strong>Side Dishes</strong></p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Mashed potatoes (buy them premade to save time), colored green with pureed fresh or thawed frozen spinach (use a bullet blender). Pro tip: heat the mashed potatoes well, first, and then add the spinach puree. If you heat the spinach too long, your green will turn olive green, and the flavor will suffer.</li><li>Cornbread colored green with food coloring. You can put faces on each piece, using cut up veggies.</li><li>Deviled eggs (roasted red bell pepper puree makes the middle nice and orange); shape like pumpkins; or can turn upside down, poke out holes using a straw to make a “Jason” face mask.</li><li>Spooky tomato slices (add eyeballs made of olives); serve on lettuce leaf.</li><li>Brain-shaped Jell-O molds are mighty useful for Halloween Jell-O salads!</li><li>Bell peppers carved like Jack-o-lanterns; can steam, carefully, and fill with mac and cheese, or sauteed veggies, or whatever.</li><li>Barfing pumpkin: carve to make it look like a puking face, including a gaping mouth low on the face. Chopped salads or dips can be arranged to look like they are spewing onto a tray. Guacamole is good; so is black bean and corn salsa; slaw, Waldorf salad, or chopped kale salad work well, too.</li><li>Colorful Halloween slaw: shredded red cabbage, shredded carrot, some matchstick/julienned tart apple; a light vinaigrette; garnish with raw pumpkin seeds.</li></ul><p></p>
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<p><strong>Desserts</strong></p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Brain mold cheesecake: use a Jell-O brain mold and instant cherry cheesecake mix. You night need two boxes. Add some Knox gelatin to ensure it will gel hard enough to unmold; spray mold lightly with Pam. Serve atop the blood-red cherry goo.</li><li>Pumpkin patch brownies (a pan of brownies decorated with candy-corn pumpkins, with vines added using green icing and appropriate pastry tips).</li><li>Pumpkin roll (you can <em>buy</em> these now!)</li><li>Sweet Pumpkin–Cream Cheese dip (cream cheese, pumpkin puree, powdered sugar, pie spice, vanilla extract; can fold in whipped topping and chopped snickers, Kit-Kats, mini M&Ms, whatever); dip apple slices, plain cookies, carrot and celery sticks, pretzels, whatever.</li><li>Ye Olde Kitty Litter Cake, with crushed sandwich cookies mixed with crumbled cake and vanilla pudding, and Tootsie-Roll cat turds. A beloved Halloween classic.</li></ul><p></p>
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<p><strong>More Sweet Treats</strong></p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Nutter Butter cookies dipped in melted chocolate (milk, dark, or white) on one side, with 2 eyes added (Wilton makes edible cookie-decorating eyes).</li><li>Witches’ fingers cookies; roll cookie dough like a snake and shape into gnarly fingers; use sliced or blanched almond (or a cashew nut) for fingernail. Extra points for red gel icing “blood” at base of finger.</li><li>“Impaled head” buckeye candies. You draw little faces on them with a toothpick and dark food coloring. I saw this online somewhere but it’s disappeared. Maybe it was too gross and they took it down.</li><li>Rice Krispies Treats, colored green or purple (food coloring); decorated with Wilton eye decorations.</li><li>Spider cookies: make chocolate chip cookies; while still hot, use a toothpick in the melted chocolate drops on top to delicately add “legs.”</li><li>Gingerbread haunted house.</li><li>Pretzel cigs. Dip small pretzel sticks 2/3 of the way in white chocolate. Dip the tips in bright orange chocolate and then dip in silver sugar sprinkles. When dry/hard, arrange on a big (clean) ashtray, with extra sugar sprinkles in the middle for “ashes.”</li><li>Popcorn balls: an old-school favorite. There are many recipes for these. This year, I’m trying the one made with Orange Jell-O.</li></ul><p></p>
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<p><strong>Old School Halloween Refreshments</strong></p>
<p>These are from old party books from the late 1930s and 1940s.</p>
<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Nut cookies</li><li>Candied apples on sticks</li><li>Cake</li><li>“Witches’ brew” (fruit punch).</li><li>“A Halloween Campfire”: bacon, wieners, buns, eggs, pickles, coffee; molasses candy; toasted marshmallows.</li><li>“A Hard Luck Hobo Party”: hot dogs; coffee or hot chocolate.</li><li>“A Hard Times Party”: sandwiches wrapped in newspaper; coffee.</li><li>“A Harvest Party”: corn muffins, coffee, popcorn balls, crackerjacks</li><li>“A Halloween Frolic”: coffee, sandwiches, pumpkin pie, apples (bobbing)</li></ul><p></p>
<p>Are you still out of ideas? Then do what I do every year, just for fun: do a Google image search on “Halloween food” and “Halloween beverages” and see what you get!</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-26418389472952412842022-10-28T21:54:00.002-05:002022-11-07T23:01:05.338-06:00Public School Lunches, Columbia, Missouri, 1974<p>I recently found some local newspaper archives online from when I was about nine years old. Wow! Did I look at the news headlines? Did I look at the sports section? Did I look at the ads for local businesses? No!</p>
<p>I went straight to the weekly lists of Columbia Public School lunches. —Yay!</p>
<p>Each week, Mom and Dad would clip out the school lunch menus and pin them on a bulletin board in the kitchen. That way, we could review the next day’s offerings and determine if we wanted to pack a lunch or buy the one provided by the school.</p>
<p>It’s a blast from the past. Here are some weekly menus. These are all from the <em>Columbia Missourian</em>. I’m only providing the sections from the Columbia elementary schools. The secondary schools, University Elementary, New Haven R-II, Hallsville R-IV, and Ashland/Southern Boone County R-I had separate menus, which I’m not copying out.</p>
<p>Looking at these, I feel kind of nostalgic, and maybe even a little hungry!</p>
<p><strong>School Menus</strong></p>
<p>January 26, 1974</p>
<p>MONDAY—Country fried steak with gravy, buttered sliced potatoes, tossed green salad, hot roll with butter, cookie.<br>
TUESDAY—Chili with crackers, peanut butter sandwich, carrots and celery sticks, sliced peaches.<br>
WEDNESDAY—Hot dog with bun, pork and beans, cole slaw, cup cake with icing, ice cream.<br>
THURSDAY—Turkey with gravy, whipped potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, hot roll with butter.<br>
FRIDAY—Hamburger on bun, french fries, applesauce, peanut butter cookie.</p>
<p>February 2, 1974</p>
<p>MONDAY—Pizza, buttered peas, orange juice, no bake cookie.<br>
TUESDAY—Taco and cheese, buttered corn, tossed salad, cinnamon twist.<br>
WEDNESDAY—Fried chicken, whipped potatoes and gravy, buttered carrots, hot roll and butter, fruit punch.<br>
THURSDAY—Macaroni and cheese, green beans, cole slaw, hot roll and butter, surprise dessert.<br>
FRIDAY—Fish sandwich and T.S. [tartar sauce], tater tots, buttered corn, strawberry Jello cubes.</p>
<p>February 9, 1974</p>
<p>MONDAY—Pig-in-blanket, escalloped potatoes, green beans, chocolate pudding–whipped topping.<br>
TUESDAY—Homemade noodle and chicken casserole, lettuce salad, cranberry sauce, hot roll–butter.<br>
WEDNESDAY—Chili–crackers, peanut butter sandwich, carrot and celery sticks, purple plums.<br>
THURSDAY—Italian spaghetti, tossed salad, hot French bread, orange juice.<br>
FRIDAY—Hamburger–bun, French fries, cole slaw, brownie.</p>
<p>February 17, 1974</p>
<p>MONDAY—[Washington’s Birthday, so no school.]<br>
TUESDAY—Country fried steak and gravy, buttered sliced potatoes, tossed salad, hot roll and butter, no bake cookie.<br>
WEDNESDAY—Beanie weenies, cole slaw, hot roll and butter, applesauce.<br>
THURSDAY—Turkey and gravy, whipped potatoes, tossed salad, hot roll and butter, cranberry sauce.<br>
FRIDAY—Fish and tartar sauce, tater tots, Jello cubes, hot roll and butter, fruit punch.</p>
<p>March 24, 1974</p>
<p>MONDAY—Macaroni and cheese, green beans, sunset salad, hot roll and butter, cake.<br>
TUESDAY—Cowboy meat loaf with catsup, escalloped potatoes, cole slaw, home-on-the-range biscuit, sweet-tart punch.<br>
WEDNESDAY—Chicken noodle soup with crackers, peanut butter sandwich, carrot coins, chilled fruit.<br>
THURSDAY—Pizza, tossed salad, buttered corn, white cake with chocolate sauce.<br>
FRIDAY—Star-Trek burger, <em>Scooby Doo</em> sticks, <em>Flintstone</em> Swingers, Mulligan’s favorite fruit, Josie’s cookies.</p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-50951795987473162652022-10-23T18:44:00.016-05:002022-10-24T19:14:11.478-05:00Jar of Goodness 10.23.22: October Day at Painted Rock<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for today’s trip to Painted Rock Conservation Area.</strong></p>
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<p>Yeah, mainly I’m talking about the <a href="https://mdc.mo.gov/trees-plants/fall-color" target="_blank">fall color</a> change. It’s simply amazing. Even though you know it’ll happen, you’ll still be speechless when you look out at a landscape that for months had been all the shades of green . . . and you suddenly realize it’s glowing <i>yellow</i> instead.</p>
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<p>The whole world is yellow and orange. It’s <i>glowing</i>.</p>
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<p>It doesn’t last long.</p>
<p>It’s that sweet transition time between “much too hot and humid; waaaay too many insects” and “freeze-your-ass-off, teeth-chattering cold; hardly anything living outside the window.” In October, you have some warm days and some cool days. Rainy and dry, windy and calm.</p>
<p>When you get a sunny, blue-sky day in the height of fall color, you grab it and get outside. Especially when it’s right near your birthday!</p>
<p>So we went hiking at <a href="https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/places/painted-rock-conservation-area" target="_blank">Painted Rock Conservation Area</a>, since it’ll be overcast and rainy tomorrow.</p>
<p>It’s one of our favorite hiking places nearby, and <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2009/11/painted-rock-conservation-area.html" target="_blank">I’ve blogged about it before</a>. It offers beautiful Ozark landscapes, both upland and lowland areas; a view of a serious river as well as several creeks and a few ponds.</p>
<p>We knew the popular, scenic Osage Bluff Scenic Trail would be busy, since it was such a gorgeous day, so we opted to hike the unnamed middle trail (that is, the other one, which is between it and the “Clubhouse Lake” trail).</p>
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<p>This trail has a couple of designated, completely undeveloped camping places near the parking area, at around 800 feet in elevation. Then the trail leads west along a ridge for a while before splitting into a Y: the left branch continues straight west to an upland wildlife food plot (a field of crops planted for wildlife) and apparently to nothing else. Meh. . . . But the fragrant sumac along this upland part of the trail was gorgeous.</p>
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<p><i>All</i> the understory shrubs and trees were being spectacular.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the right branch of the Y veers northwest, working steadily down along the north side of the east-west ridge. No switchbacks. It’s an antique road that must have been used by the original Painted Rock Country Club, pre–World War II.</p>
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<p>You can see hints of its former development—a culvert running below the road at one point; down lower, a concrete slab as a simple bridge over a creek; and more. It tickles me to picture Model A’s putt-putting down this little road, so the mayors and governors and fat ol’ senators could get close to the river.</p>
<p>Yes, the trail ends at the Osage River, around 530 feet in elevation . . . though if we’re being honest, the trail peters out <i>before</i> the river. The lowland brush and brambles, fallen branches, and what-not obscure where any official trail might be. And once you beat your way to the precipice, you’re on your own to figure out how to scramble down the steep riverbank. Sometimes you can use exposed tree roots like stairsteps.</p>
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<p>Once you’re down the bank, though, there’s a nice wide, rocky gravel bar to explore.</p>
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<p>With the river so low, we had a lot to explore! The gravel bar was covered with dried mud; the rocks were not clean-looking as they would have been if we’d had some decent rains this late summer, even as the river levels dropped. Oh well.</p>
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<p>Sue loves <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/nicolawhitemudlarkTidelineArt" target="_blank">Nicola White’s videos about mudlarking</a> in the River Thames, in London. So she pokes around looking for seventeenth-century clay pipes, Tudor money boxes, and George III ha’pennies. Naturally, she finds none of these, but she finds fun objects anyway. Old bottles, pieces of broken plates and dishes, old bones (deer bones?), rusty objects.</p>
<p>I find fun things, too. Where the bar was still muddy, hornets and some of the last butterflies of the season sought moisture. And did you know that Missouri is basically the global center of diversity for freshwater mussels, with about 70 species occurring within our borders? It’s thanks to our various, separated river systems. About 42 percent of our species are species of conservation concern, including several that are listed as threatened or endangered.</p>
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<p>I also found a single Osage orange fruit lying partially embedded in the river mud—of the Osage River.</p>
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<p>Who knows what curious things you’ll find when you look around.</p>
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<p>I’m always interested in seeing the remains of the country club’s concrete steps leading down to what must have been a dock.</p>
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<p>The old steps are gradually being erased by time and the river.</p>
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<p> I’ll bet they had a structure here, like a fishing cottage, but I think their bona fide lodge was farther south, where their lake still exists and where you can still drive down a road to park near the river.</p>
<p>Anyway, I enjoyed taking pictures; breathing the fresh air, letting the gusty breezes flip my hair around. I even took a picture of my feet to show I was <em>there.</em></p>
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<p>It was a good day. Now it can rain for a few days, because we really need it.</p>
<p>I hope you’re enjoying this October, too!</p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-37032604815348704022022-10-16T20:29:00.001-05:002022-10-16T20:32:08.144-05:00Jar of Goodness 10.16.22: Houseplant Dance<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for our houseplants.</strong></p>
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<p>I think.</p>
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<p>Every year, it seems like more work to move them in and out of the house. They love being outdoors in the growing season, and we enjoy having them decorate our yard, so we move them outside in the spring, when the frost danger is over. But to survive winter, they need to move back in before it freezes.</p>
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<p>And it’s probably going to freeze tomorrow night. So, the dance of the houseplants.</p>
<p>If I don’t celebrate it, if I don’t cultivate a sense of happiness about them, then I run the risk of them seeming like a complete chore.</p>
<p>So, hooray for houseplants. I need some more ibuprofen, by the way, I’m running out.</p>
<p>Here’s a list of some of the houseplants we’re dealing with today and tomorrow.</p>
<p>Sanseveria, “mother-in-law’s tongue” (<i>Dracaena trifasciata</i>, until 2017 <i>Sansevieria trifasciata</i>), which had been Grandma Schroeder’s as long as I can remember.</p>
<p>Splitleaf philodendron (<i>Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum</i>), which had been Grandma Renner’s for many years.</p>
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<p>Terrestrial orchids, or jewel orchids (<i>Anoectochilis</i> sp.).</p>
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<p>Pothos ivy (<i>Epipremnum aureum</i>).</p>
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<p>Several airplane/spider plants (<i>Chlorophytum comosum</i>), plain and variegated.</p>
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<p>Scheffleras, or umbrella trees, two types (<i>S. arboricola</i>, with smaller leaves, and <i>S. actinophylla</i>, with larger leaves) rescued from Hickman Hall at Stephens when someone there had disowned the poor things that had gotten full of scales.</p>
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<p><i>Tradescantia zebrina</i>, inch plant or “wandering Jew.”</p>
<p><i>T. pallida</i>, purple secretia or purple heart.</p>
<p><i>Plectranthus</i> “Mona Lavender” Swedish ivy.</p>
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<p><i>Dracaena marginata</i>, or what Dad calls a “Dr. Suess plant,” which just grows taller and taller and taller.</p>
<p>Hart’s tongue fern, <i>Asplenium scolipendrium</i>.</p>
<p>Arrowhead plant, <i>Syngonium podophyllum</i>.</p>
<p>. . . Plus the bonsai.</p>
<p>Plus the elephant ears (<i>Colocasia</i>).</p>
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<p>We’ll get to the elephant ears tomorrow, since we have to dig them up, lop off their blades, and tuck them away into the garage; there will be two big garbage cans full of their enormous, loglike corms and stalks.</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-6576444555147038922022-10-09T13:46:00.008-05:002022-10-14T16:57:20.345-05:00Jar of Goodness 10.9.22: Fall Color<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for fall color. For the beautiful leaves!</strong></p>
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<p>Leaf Day! Back in high school, one of my best friends and I would select a random day at the height of fall color season, and we would collect a bazillion lovely, bright-colored, fresh-fallen leaves, and then, in each of our various classes, arrive early and place a leaf onto each of our classmates’ desks. Plus the teacher’s. Everyone would be bewildered, but we’d simply reassure them: It’s Leaf Day! We’re celebrating! Aren’t they beautiful?</p>
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<p>And our classmates would twirl their leaves and ponder nature during the rest of the class. (The janitors that evening were probably like, “what the hell—?”) Some of our classmates apparently enjoyed it, some thought it was stupid, but most, I think, really understood our point.</p>
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<p>I think my friend and I had been inspired somehow to do this by listening to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Buscaglia" target="_blank">Leo Buscaglia</a> talks on PBS, if that gives you a sense of the time period!</p>
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<p>Wait, you haven’t heard of Leo Buscaglia? In the eighties, he was a big star on PBS. He gave lectures. He was a TED talk before there were such things. He was a great story teller, and all his stories made strong points. His favorite topic was love. <em>Love</em> was the title of his first bestselling novel.</p>
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<p>We all oughta be reading and listening to Leo Buscaglia again. It would set us to rights again, maybe, for at least a little while. Here’s a video (in two parts) of perhaps his most famous lecture, “What Is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye.” The lecture, this time, was given at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.</p>
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<iframe width="400" height="322" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hdKDRO3NQ4c" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>The lecture title was from <em>The Little Prince</em> (<em>Le Petit Prince</em>), by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and that was another book we devoured and got deep meaning from. Richard Bach’s <em>Illlusions</em>, another huge bestseller, and all this introspective, pop-psychological stuff set me going on a personal path that has given me a rich life. Not all of what followed was so great, but I’ve mostly managed to keep a balanced view. At any rate, it has helped.</p>
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<p>Buscaglia’s lectures were full of humor, poignancy, and basic human wisdom. And emotional intelligence. We internalized tons of it. (And there was tons of it.) “People first, things second.” . . . “Life is God's gift to you; the way you live your life is your gift to God. Make it a fastastic one.”</p>
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<p>My parents drove us to see Dr. Buscaglia speak at Kiel Opera House (now Stifel Theatre) in St. Louis. He was touring, and St. Louis’s KETC channel 9, the PBS station, was sponsoring him.</p>
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<p>I don’t remember any direct connection our annual Leaf Day celebration had to Leo Buscaglia (his book <em>The Fall of Freddy the Leaf</em> wouldn’t come out until later) . . . but there’s a connection somewhere. (“The trees outside of your home are doing wondrous things; watch them step by step, it’s like magic.”)</p>
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<p>But the connection is ultimately about love, and enjoying all the beauty all around us, perfect and imperfect. We don’t have forever; <em>look around and see!</em></p>
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<p>A reminder: to track the progress of fall color in Missouri, make sure you visit the Missouri Department of Conservation's <a href="https://mdc.mo.gov/trees-plants/fall-color" target="_blank">Fall Color Reports page</a>. It gets updated each week, on Thursday, by around 5 pm. Reports come from foresters in MDC's eight regions. And yeah, there's a little bit of me in there. But much better, when you read them, you can tell that the reporters, all professional foresters, really dig their subject.</p>Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-53004896547177104952022-10-02T18:46:00.003-05:002022-11-10T18:55:47.357-06:00Jar of Goodness 10.2.22: Deborah Cooper Park<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks (once again) for Adrian’s Island and <a href="https://www.jcparks.com/park/deborah-cooper-park/" target="_blank">Deborah Cooper Park</a>.</strong></p>
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<p>I’ve <a href="http://opulentopossum.blogspot.com/2022/02/jar-of-goodness-21322-adrians-island.html" target="_blank">blogged about it before</a>, even put it in the Jar of Goodness before, but that was almost a year ago, and now we’ve had more time to enjoy the place. Hey, for starters, it’s a park within walking distance of our home.</p>
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<p>There is nature there. And it’s a good place to get some exercise.</p>
<p>Also, it gives us all a chance to get near the river.</p>
<p>And it’s a great place for <a href="https://virtualrailfan.com/" target="_blank">railfanning</a>!</p>
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<p>I’m so glad they made this park.</p>
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Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7245225178580170753.post-53174390037045034482022-09-25T12:29:00.004-05:002022-10-15T12:50:16.864-05:00Jar of Goodness 9.25.22: Old Munichburg Oktoberfest<p>. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”</p>
<p><strong>This week, I’m expressing thanks for this year’s Old Munichburg Oktoberfest.</strong></p>
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<p>I was very involved with our neighborhood organization from its beginnings in 2001 until 2020, when I realized I was pretty exhausted with it, with the whole thing.</p>
<p>I’ve been on the organization’s executive board, and we’ve been very active with the festival, too. So many meetings. So much hauling of stuff. So many phone calls, emails. Mailings. Talking to the media. The maps and the spreadsheets. I’ve been the music chair, the vendors chair, and I’ve served beer and brats. I’ve greeted vendors at 7 a.m. with my clipboard, and stayed until I was picking up trash out of the street after the day was over. I’ve helped vendors unload, and reload, their wares. I’ve wiped rainwater off of audience bleachers and beer garden chairs . . . there’s no end to the things that need doing in a festival like this. I was really tired of the whole thing.</p>
<p>But I went to the annual Oktoberfest yesterday and genuinely had a good time. I guess I needed to take a few years off.</p>
<p>It was good to see several familiar faces among the vendors: Summit Lake and Hummingbird wineries, Jamaican Jerk Hut, Coldstone Creamery, for example. I did miss seeing a lot, a whole lot, of the people I used to see before the pandemic. A&J Kettle Korn wasn't there, neither was Papa Hart's Pickles, and there were several crafters, too. And the awesome face-painting lady, Jeanette Dixon, of Lil Masterpiece Creations. She and her team really did create little masterpieces. But time marches on, I guess.</p>
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<p>I’ve always loved the car show. If I walk to the festival on Broadway, the car show is always the first thing I see. This year a 1964 Dodge caught my eye. Except for being red instead of turquoise, and a different model, it was very similar to the 1964 Dodge I drove in college. Awww, so many happy memories.</p>
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<p>Anyway, it was a good day. And yes, I did help out some. The festival isn’t back up to pre-pandemic levels, but that’s okay. It was a good day.</p>
Julianna Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277727700915648607noreply@blogger.com0