Jar of Goodness 2.16.25: Papaya and Lime

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for papaya and lime.

Because we’re getting more snow, and it’s gonna be impressively cold this week. Super cold. Frigid, freezing, frickin’ fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh COLD.

And tropical fruits are a lovely antidote. And yes, we recently had The Cold that’s been going around. We’re recovering nicely. And again, tropical fruits help.

If you’re not used to enjoying papaya, get you some, and try it. Wait until the rind is getting yellow and a little spotted. Cut it up like you would a cantaloupe. Discard the seeds.

And don’t forget to anoint it with fresh lime juice; it makes all the difference.

So delicious. Yum!

Jar of Goodness 2.9.25: OTC Cold Meds

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for over-the-counter cold remedies.

The reason for this should be obvious, so there’s not much to say. But also, thanks for functioning immune systems.

Naturally, we didn’t go anywhere to watch the big football game, and since we don’t pay for any TV services, we’re not watching it. It’s not like we’re big fans of sportsball, anyway. So, pffft.

I’m trying to keep my cooties to myself. Hopefully, Sue won’t get this.

Jar of Goodness 1.19.25: Sunshine Warmth, Real and Fake

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for sunshine, real and “fake.”

A long time ago, when we lived in Montana (where the winters were longer, colder, and snowier than here) we figured out how to rig plain, clip-on incandescent shop lights, with a 75-watt bulb, over our kitty beds.

Turns out that cats love, love, love the dry warmth. They just soak it in.

We’ve had about two whole weeks of remarkably cold weather. We still have snow and ice on the ground from the “snowpocalypse” of January 4 and 5. It was impossible to get the inch of ice off our sidewalks when it fell, and wherever it’s shaded, there is still ice and snow on the ground. The lower layer was sleet that got frozen together, then topped with white, reflective snow. We’ve had a few afternoons sporadically when it got above freezing, but not enough to really melt it. If anything I think it’s been sublimating. Cold, grim weather.

Here and there, we’ve also had some cold days when it was quite windy, and our house loses heat quickly on those days. Stucco, brick, and plaster. And the windows leak. The farther you are from the middle of the house or from a heat register, the colder you are.

We wear sweaters and wrap ourselves in blankets. My office, on the third floor, is cold storage for my carcass. I’m too cheap to heat it full-time, and there’s only one heat register up there, anyway. Heat goes up, so it’s bad enough that it gets as warm as it does. And when I go up there, it’s not so bad at first, but when the sun starts going down, I realize I’m shivering, rubbing my nose, wiggling my toes to keep them warm, and when I stand up, my knees ache as if they’ve been frozen.

And the cats try to stay warm, too. They curl into balls and just look . . . tight. Lois is lucky to have a long, fluffy tail that functions as a fuzzy muffler.

Brenda has a layer of blubber, and I guess that helps her. (Funny, my layers of blubber don’t seem to keep me warm.)

But . . . fake sunshine to the rescue!

It’s fun to watch the cats seek the fake-sunshine beds. And it’s gratifying to watch them uncurl after about half an hour, once the warmth has soaked into them. They lay on their sides and let their feet hang out. It’s like a little trip to Phoenix.

I have a shop light rigged up in my office, but although it keeps my head warm, it doesn’t help my toes much. I occasionally get up, walk over to the front dormer, and stand in the sunshine on afternoons when it’s bright.

This time of year, it can really make a difference.

I hope you’re staying warm!

For the record, in addition to Lois, Brenda, and the picture of Mackie's feet, I'm including some old photos of cats that have crossed the Rainbow Bridge. All loved their sunshine, real and fake. From top to bottom: Nikki, Genji, Lois, Brenda, Patches (the original Opulent Opossum kitty), Mackie (feet and tail), and Earl.

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25 B: New Mailbox, Just in Time

At the risk of possibly using up my next-week's thing to feel grateful for, I'm going to double-up and post two gratitudes in a single day. Hopefully there will be something else to be grateful for by next Sunday. Right?

Here's JOG 1.5.25 "B": I'm glad we got Dad and Mom's new mailbox installed (and without any hitches!!!) on Friday afternoon. Sue and I prepared hard for it: make sure we have all the tools we'll need, all the hardware, a board to raise the bracket above the railing where we'd be installing it (so the flap would open), and what-all. Because, you know, these kinds of "simple" things often turn into some kind of production, another trip to the hardware store, whatever. But our preparation was perfect! How about that!

I'd been trying to get my dad set up with the Post Office for door delivery for over a year, but apparently the stars have to align, and you need to be Sherlock Holmes in order to discover the correct procedure for applying for this service. Like, don't bother looking online; just start by asking the letter carrier who comes near your home each day. The stuff online is contradictory, and half of it is hidden in the USPS's puzzle-like website.

Anyway, we got the doctor's letter, I found the official form, I filled it out a few different ways, Dad signed it and a letter I'd composed officially requesting the service, I printed out a satellite view of their house, driveway, street, and current mailbox location (marked with distance my Dad has to walk), and in early November I hand-delivered it all to the cryptic, non-public USPS distribution station (because, of course, you can't mail them the form), and just a month or two later, I discover they've been approved. (The only hitch was that a month ago, they'd called my parents and left them a message saying it was approved, so naturally I didn't get that information.) But I called them to follow up, learned it was approved, so it was time to install the new mailbox by my parents' door.

And just in the nick of time! This snow and ice storm is gnarly, especially since it'll be followed by at least a week of super-cold temperatures. Thank goodness my dad won't be staggering through ice and snow on his concrete sidewalk and steps, long gravel driveway, and the icy road. (Columbia is horrible about clearing any of its roads, much less ones in neighborhoods.) Because yes, elderly people still really do rely on postal mail to get their printed newspapers from their former hometowns, their printed magazines, their tons of printed direct-mail catalogs, their bills, their correspondence, their junk mail, their coupons, and all manner of non-television entertainments.

So anyway, whew, there we go. And their letter carrier saw it as we were installing it and approves of its location, and everything. He'd been notified of their door-delivery status and had already started delivering to their door. Hooray!

Jar of goodness . . . mailbox of happiness.

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25: Snow Plows and Such

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.” Yup, I’m doing that again. Mainly so I don’t go bananas and go on a rampage or something. Or, more likely, drive my car in a straight line away from wherever I am, and not turn back. (Wouldn’t that be nice? So many directions to travel.)

This week, I’m expressing thanks for snow plows and such.

Though the picture above is from Sunday afternoon, this was actually written on Saturday night, January 4, 2025, as our snow begins. A huge swath of the United States is getting a bunch of winter weather: several inches of snow, more than a foot of snow in some places; sleet, freezing rain in other places; in many places (like, apparently, us), it’ll be a mix of snow and sleet and snow and freezing rain, and more snow. Like a layer cake of mayhem. Farther south, they’ll get thunderstorms and maybe tornadoes.

Here's the temperatures as I write this, Saturday night, January 4, 8:15:

Then, on top of the crusty, hard-to-shovel, slip-and-fall-and-break-your-ankle stuff (or wreck-your-car-stuff), we’re supposed to get, like a week or more of super-freezing cold weather. The kind that can kill. Ugh. It’s one of those bad scenarios where the freezing rain, topped with snow weighs down branches, then it gets windy, and the trees break like crazy and strum down power lines. Then ya don’t have electricity, and you wish you’d sprung for the gas water heater last time you replaced it.

As of Saturday evening, 8:15:

I’ve blogged about this kind of nonsense before, because I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I truly don’t like having bad snow and ice, because I truly don’t like the power to go out when it’s freezing cold. You never know when it’ll come back on. It just sucks. And this year I’ve got my parents to worry about.

There will be a fine line between who gets freezing rain, sleet, snow, and total mayhem—and those who simply get a ton of snow. The weather people seem to think the “line” is basically right where we live. Or where my parents live. The weather people give their predictions in terms of highways being dividing lines. Most people basically live in highways, that is, cities. Anyway, it will turn out however it turns out.

Hopefully, my parents will get mostly snow, and their kind neighbor with a snow blower will clear their drive and sidewalk, but also hopefully my parents won’t have to go anywhere until everything is cleared out. Hopefully, they won’t experience power outages. (What a nightmare that would be: could I even make it to Columbia if I had to help them move somewhere?)

Then there’s our own status. It’s entirely possible our power could go out for twelve hours or more.

But here’s the Jar of Goodness: fortunately, we live near the center of town, just a few blocks from the state capitol building, and we’re quite likely to be high on the list for restoring power, as well as for street clearing.

Here's how the roads are looking, as this begins on Saturday night: Kansas City's getting socked! Central Missouri and the eastern Ozarks are next:

Which is to say, that for all the annoyances of living near the center of Jefferson City, or any town, one of the perks is that your utilities generally get fixed quickly. Sure, you have plenty of idiot, noisy neighbors, and you have all kinds of cars tearing up and down the street in front of your house, and every emergency vehicle screaming by with its sirens on, but you also get snowplows rumbling through as soon as the first snowflake falls.

So for however uncertain this bad weather feels, at least I know we’re not isolated. If we lived out in nowhere (where I so often wish we were—it would be so nice and quiet! . . . and beautiful, and relaxing, and private), we could be snowed in for days, maybe a week. We’d have to find someone to plow us out, because we’d have a long private drive from the paved road to our house. If our power went out, too-bad-so-sad. We’d have to have our own emergency generator. Self-reliance is for the strong, the handy, and/or the rich, and face it, we’re none of these.

So, hooray for the public works snowplows! The emergency crews at the power utility. The EMT people. The cops. All the emergency workers who’ll be out there working their butts off in the freezing cold, damn dangerous road conditions.

Glad I don’t have to go out there.

As of Sunday morning, 8:45:

As of Sunday afternoon, 2:00:

Jar of Goodness 12.25.22: The Holiday Season

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for the holiday season.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bless the beasts and all of the children.

Picture notes: 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!

Jar of Goodness 2.20.22: The Katy Trail

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for Missouri’s Katy Trail.

Because even though it was really slushy, it was also really sunny . . . and great to be outside, walking.

Forcing Violets

Are you ready for spring yet? I am.

Back in November and December, this winter was really slow to start, but now that we’ve finally started getting frozen precipitation, we can’t seem to shake it off. We finally got a big snow dump in the middle of January. Then it mostly melted, and then we got more on the first of February. Then that was mostly gone, and now we had snow again on the seventeenth. It wasn’t a lot of snow, but around here it is underlain by about three-fourths of an inch of grainy, icy sleet, which has formed a stubborn, un-shovelable layer on the sidewalks. Geez.

Each time we have gotten snow, people have dutifully cleared roads and parking lots, and we’ve shoveled our sidewalks and driveway and steps (yeah, we have lots of sidewalks, since we live on a corner). In the process, we’ve all created little hills of snow, which last forever, especially where it’s shady.

So, since the first big snow in January, we’ve never really completely gotten rid of the snow before the next dump. This has become kind of unusual for us, especially this late in the year. In fact, in recent years, the middle of February is when I start removing dead plant material from our flower beds, so the daffodils and such can come up in the clear. Because by mid-February, our daffodils are coming; indeed, the ones in front by the house are already at least four inches tall. The front of our house faces due southwest, so it’s sunbaked and amazingly warm, especially as the light and heat are reflected of the front of the house, so those daffodils are practically in a greenhouse, essentially “forced” to develop and bloom ahead of their compatriots elsewhere.

And that’s what I’m getting to: forcing flowers in springtime. It’s really popular to “force” into bloom various bulbs such as narcissus (those extremely fragrant “paperwhites,” for example), other daffodils, and hyacinths. Professionals force them in greenhouses for the trade. Go to your local grocery store floral department and you’ll see examples.

But it’s possible to force plants you find in nature, or in your backyard.

NOTE THAT I AM NOT SUGGESTING YOU DIG WILD PLANTS FROM PUBLIC LANDS OR FROM PROPERTY THAT ISN’T YOURS. . . . Please behave!

But you know . . . our backyard is the opposite of a golf course. And it’s not natural, either. Yards like ours have been called “freedom lawns,” since they’re free of pesticides, herbicides, and unnatural monocultures of high-maintenance turfgrasses. Admittedly, along with our smattering of various lawn grasses, we also have invasive star-of-Bethlehem and a variety of nuisance nonnatives and natives, such as Indian strawberry, creeping Charlie/ground ivy, field pansy, plantains, and common violets of various colors.

It’s the last one that I’m “forcing” this winter. The common violets that grow all over in our backyard develop rather coarse rhizomes at least about an inch long. As a kid digging in the soil of my parents’ backyard, I fancied these were like tiny iris bulbs, and I treasured them.

And I still treasure them; I have a hard time treating them like weeds, so when I’m working in a flower bed, such as my herb garden, I tend to pull out the violet rhizomes and transplant them elsewhere. Can’t bear to toss them into the composter. I really love violets.

So last week, before the latest snow event occurred, I knew where to go in the backyard with my trowel to find a nice big violet rhizome to dig up. I planted it in some fancy potting soil at the bottom of a small fishbowl-shaped, bubble-ball glass vase.

I’m giving it plenty of water, and it gets oodles of sunshine in our front windows. On gray days, I stick it under an intense desk lamp.

And here’s what we’ve got so far. It’s making me happy!

And for the record, here’s where the idea came from: Leonard Hall’s A Journal of the Seasons on an Ozark Farm (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980), 207.

World's Best Fruitcake!

Maybe you’re thinking, “Ew, I hate fruitcake.” Too bad for you! Because with an attitude like that, you’ll miss out on something spectacular.

Today I’m celebrating a genuinely superlative fruitcake. The kind to swoon over. The kind to completely hide from people who “don’t like” fruitcake (pearls before swine) . . . and the kind to hide from people who like fruitcakes, too (’cuz no, it’s mine, all mine!). The kind you hide from everybody, because you want every crumb for yourself.

. . . To savor.

We are so happy to have an annual cross-continent gift exchange with our dear friends Steve and Sherri, who live in Seattle. We send them an assortment of my homemade cookies, and they send us one of Sherri’s homemade, made-from-scratch fruitcakes.

It’s totally not a fair exchange. What Sherri sends us is far, far beyond my feeble cookie gifts. (Sherri? Me dilettante, you master.)

I remember the few winters we spent together as neighbors in Montana. Steve and Sherri lived next door to us in an elderly duplex in Helena, midway between downtown and the capitol complex, the last house on South Raleigh as it ascended Sugarloaf Hill. I’ve never had such fun neighbors. One winter, after endless bitter cold, it finally, albeit prematurely, got up above freezing. At almost the same moment, Steve and I both emerged from our respective front doors, glanced at each other, and laughed at each others’ shorts. Look, it’s a heat wave! Steve grinned and purred, “Ahh, another balmy day in beautiful Helena, Montana!”

They are epicures, and they don’t take life too heavily. Steve mountain-biked all over town as well as in the nearby mountains. Sherri created lovely, elaborate dishes, apparently with complete ease, and the four of us had many meals together—often in our shared backyard, or on the front porch, with its gorgeous view of the sunsets behind Mount Helena.

Well, one winter, Sherri decided to put her formal culinary training (yes!) to use in making fruitcake from scratch.

Do you have any idea what that means? It was days in the making, because she candied her own fruit! Orange and lemon peel, apricots, pineapple, pears, cherries, you name it. Their apartment smelled like magic after Sherri spent whole days simmering fruits in sugar syrup. And Sherri used perfect, fresh, whole nuts—hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, you name it. And luscious prunes, figs, and dates. All this was in preparation for the actual construction and baking of the cakes.

These are works of art. There’s just enough cake batter to hold the gorgeous, colorful, translucent fruits and nuts together. If you slice it thinly enough, it looks like a stained glass window.

It really does.

And the flavor. Mercy!

I’ve been meaning to write again about fruits at Christmas, and how our parents and grandparents, and everyone before them, considered fruits at Christmas a real treat. It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t get all kinds of fresh produce in midwinter. Winter was for cabbage, meat, and potatoes, over and over again. So dried fruits at Christmas were a treasure. They were expensive. Apricots, pears, apples, plums, cherries, grapes, strawberries. And fruitcakes celebrate that.

And so I celebrate fruitcake, specifically Sherri’s fruitcake, which we’ve been enjoying annually for several years now. Sherri, you’ve perfected it. In our humble opinion, you could serve this to the queen. You could sell this for about a million dollars. Nobody does it better. You rock.

So on December 25, once again, breakfast will be a slice of Sherri’s beautiful, precious fruitcake and coffee. Maybe the coffee will be elevated by a little Bailey’s Irish Cream, or Kahlua, Grand Marnier, or some such. It’ll have to be good to pair with the fruitcake.

Merry Christmas!

P.S. This year Sherri also sent us some homemade plum chutney! Her modest little comment on the card noted that the chutney was from their plum tree and that it is “pretty good with some blue cheese on a cracker.” . . . “Pretty good,” she says. When Julia Child or Jacques Pépin says something is “pretty good,” it’s time to sit up and take notice, because to us mere mortals, it means, “Try this, it’ll knock your socks off!” I can’t wait!

Schroeder Weihnachtspyramide 2021

This is a Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramid) built by Albert Thomas ca. 1890. Albert and his wife, Wilhelmine, were German immigrants who arrived in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1888. The pyramide was already about twenty years old when their youngest daughter, Edna, was about five, in 1910, per our family's earliest photo of it. Edna married Walter Schroeder in 1930, and the couple lived in the same house as Albert and Wilhelmine Thomas and continued to display it each year after the Thomases passed away in the 1940s.

With few exceptions, this Weihnachtspyramide has no doubt been used as a Christmas decoration every year since it was built around 1890. That's about 130 years!

Albert Thomas constructed the Weihnachtspyramide from a variety of materials. The paddles at the top were made from scrap wood from fruit crates. The central axle is a broomstick; on it rests the three circular platforms (made of cardboard). One of the hooplike, horizontal supports around the outer structure is from a discarded band saw. In its earliest form, when rising candle heat made the angled top paddles spin, friction was minimized at the pivot point at the bottom of the rotating broomstick by having a downward-pointing nail attached at the base of the broomstick, and the nail tip rested on a piece of glass. It had to be adjusted to balance perfectly in order for it to spin properly.

The family refers to this as a Christmas "tree," but it is more closely related to the wooden pyramiden that are hand-carved in the Erzgebirge region of Germany. Those often have little candles at the four bottom corners to provide the heat necessary to turn the platforms into little processionals at the center. Our family's pyramide has been altered so much over the years it's truly unique; a form of living folk art that changes slightly every year.

We have several photos of the "tree" taken over the decades. Many of the ornaments and figurines go back to the early 1900s and are visible in the old photos. The Thomases used to attach sprigs of real cedar or other greenery to the frame, in addition to the ornaments.

An early change was when the original candles were replaced with small coal-oil (kerosene) lanterns (three of these are still used as ornaments). Then, in the 1940s, those were replaced with strands of multicolored electric lights. A small electric fan, mounted on a nearby window frame, was directed on the paddles, turning the central platforms. (We even still have the fan, though it doesn't work, and the holes in the window frame are still there!)

In the 1950s, Edna's son Walter ("Buddy") procured a music box designed for rotating a small Christmas tree, and the tree was transformed again. This allowed Edna to greatly increase the amount of ornaments, greenery, and other decorations on the frame, the inner platforms, and even hanging from the paddles. Today, in the interest of being kind to the now-antique music box, we have opted to reduce the amount of objects hanging from the paddles.

Edna (my grandma) passed away in 2000, and we purchased her house in 2001. The Weihnachtspyramide (with its special attic closet) came with the house. I'm doing my best to care for it. We've made some changes--for example, replacing some ca. 1950s light strings that no longer worked and whose plastic sockets were literally crumbling away--but that's what Grandma would have done. She kept it "young." So it's my job to fiddle with it, too.

Apologies for the defects of my video. I'll keep working on my skills with the camera. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into our family's unusual "tree," and I hope you have a merry, and a blessed Christmas.

For more information about our Weihnachtspyramide, see my blog posts about it. Here's a good place to start.

And if you're wondering how this comes apart for storage, here's where you look.

Long Overdue Update: Good Riddance to 2020

Hi, folks, you’d think I’d dropped off the face of the earth, huh? It takes a message from Blogger or Google or whatever telling me I need to show some activity on my blog, or it’ll, like, disappear or something. So, here is a post.

Really, honestly, I should have been posting every damn day this year, considering that my original intent with this blog was to cheer myself up. I certainly needed it this year—me and everyone else, except perhaps Jeff Bezos. Back in November 2019, I told my doc that I wanted to try lowering my dosage of antidepressant—a dosage I’d been on for years, with no problems. I certainly picked a hell of a year to halve it!

The most recent grief has been the death of Lorie Smith, owner of Vines on Broadway, about which I've blogged. After a nearly year of pandemic-hampered business, she had to temporarily close, since the weather got cold and her customers could no longer sit outside in the fresh air. We hesitated to go very much as the year wore on, as so many people there were maskless. And the virus numbers were going up around here. And she was having heart trouble. So Vines was closed for over a month. She died soon after undergoing a procedure intended to fix her arrhythmia; apparently, the procedure led to blood clots in her brain, at least one of which was inoperable. She was only sixty. I’m devastated by the news; I’m still in shock.

I believe that at least 75 percent of the people who stepped foot in her business wished they could be the proprietor of such a cool place. I know I was envious. One of my friends walked in there for the first time and within two minutes of meeting Lorie said to me, “I have a big girl crush on her!” I’m hoping against hope that at least one of her many, many friends or family will find a way to continue the business, and keep her dream alive. It was very successful . . .

 

I could go on and on and on about how much Lorie and her business made our street, our neighborhood, our town much better. She influenced and improved everything and everyone she came in contact with. So much of Vines on Broadway was her. 

I have come to associate her, and Vines, with many of the fun things in life. Things like kicking back on a nice patio with a glass of wine; fixing up a nice, inviting patio to begin with; enjoying cordial, convivial conversations; noshing on attractive, tasty snacky-snacks; warmth and coziness and candlelight in the winter; chillin’ in the misters on the patio in summer . . . even friendship itself. Her disappearance from the world makes me afraid to face these otherwise very pleasant things; I feel as if those things will all come with a pang of emptiness and grief—if we ever even have them again. (When will we ever feel comfortable sitting close again?) If Lorie had been a grouch, or snotty or snarky, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. But she was faultlessly kind and good-natured, with an easy, ringing laugh that still echoes inside my head and heart. Even though I only knew her for a few years, I can’t imagine how there can be a world without her.

 

And that’s only the most recent loss. The past year has felt jinxed. Sue’s mom passed away in December of last year, and we can’t help but feel she was lucky, in a way, to have left the world before the pandemic changed everything. Living as she did in a studio apartment in an assisted-living community, she wouldn’t have had company for months; the loneliness would have been excruciating for her (and nerve-wracking for us). And the nurse assistants and other staff would have had to wear masks around her, and with her hearing loss, she wouldn’t have been able to understand much of what people were saying. And then, also, she tended to suffer badly from respiratory ailments, when she got them, so . . . it’s almost like she knew, somehow, when to go.

She always was very intuitive, with a strong faith in her ability to sense things that are not physical; maybe her departure from this plane was an example. Who knows.

And we had a rough summer, traveling three times to Ohio (despite the worry of COVID) to go through things at Sue’s mom’s house. The lifetime accumulations of two people. Furniture. The antique railroad lantern collection. The kitchen treasures. And on and on. As if all that that wasn’t going to be difficult enough, we experienced some shocking interpersonal strife with one of the family members, and because of that, our final trip there—for just a few days, solely to be there when the movers came—really felt like it could be our final trip there.

In September, we lost Patches, the original Opulent Opossum. She had lived with us for seventeen years and was probably eighteen. In recent years, we had made every accommodation for her sweet, elderly self. She had become deaf; and she put the “cat” in cataracts; she also had that old-cat kidney disease, so each morning we puréed special canned food with extra water, just for her. I burrowed my face into her neck and hummed little tunes, like the cadences of my speech, so she could feel the vibrations of my voice. She would purr in response, and burrow her head against mine. She was a good friend, for a long time, and I still miss her.

As I review this stupid year—a year when every trade group’s cheesy annual convention theme was gonna be “2020 Vision,” dontcha know, and a year about which we’ll all be seeing reviews cleverly headlined as “Hindsight 2020” in the coming weeks—I’ve actually been okay, for the most part. I recently saw a thing about how Gen X people like me are perfectly prepared for lockdowns and solitude; how we effectively trained for this from a young age, how we know how to wait and wait and wait, and how we know many ways to entertain ourselves and survive on whatever’s in the cupboards.

But I’m basically lucky in other ways. I’m lucky I don’t work in at a job that requires me to interact with people all day, or even work in an office place among other people (don’t get me wrong: I’d still love to have benefits, like group health insurance). I’m also lucky that this freelancer lifestyle is something I’d already gotten used to way before everyone else had to adjust. Lucky that my major client still wants my services. Also, lucky I’m a pretty okay cook. Apparently, the food I fix is healthier than what we get when we eat out; I’ve actually lost weight this year, without even trying. It certainly isn’t any increase in exercise.

So, this is the end of the calendar year, but it’s certainly not the end of this merry-go-round of pandemic and the political mayhem that will no doubt persist for the foreseeable future even though we will be getting a psychologically stable new president.

Tomorrow night—December 31, 2020—we’ll be eating as many good-luck foods we can find. Pickled herring, mutzens, hoppin’ John, grapes, you name it. We’ll make an outrageous amount of noise at midnight, to frighten away the evil spirits that have pursued this year. I feel like building a huge, round-eyed Jagannath icon and carting it down High Street, with fireworks going off on all sides. Take that, 2020! Good riddance!

 

In reality, the plan is to make our mutzens first thing in the morning; let them cool a bit for transportation, then drive them to my uncle and aunt’s house and to my parents, along with a bunch of goodies for a New Year’s Eve party: some decorations for them to hang up, some Prosecco to sip at midnight, stuff for a veggie plate, including some dips, some black and green olives, samples of nice cheeses and sausages, pickled herring, shrimp and cocktail sauce, crackers and sliced baguette, and so on. A party to-go!

Then, Sue and I will come back home and let the weather do whatever it wants to do. For a long time, it was looking like it might snow on New Year’s Eve, but that seems unlikely now. Anyway, as we did at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’ll have our own festivities, just the two of us, and we’ll make phone calls to the people we wish we were partying with.

Should you wish to do the same, on New Year’s Eve, the appropriate way of greeting someone you’ve just called is “Hey! This is the neighbors! Keep it down over there!”

This post has already gotten too long and has said too much that I ought to keep to myself. But whatever—as long as the whole blog doesn’t disappear into nothingness.

Because that would really bum me out, too.

Potato Soup

If ever there was an opulently opossumish dish, this is it: It is humble, it is sublime. I have based my recipe on a few versions of it that Sue’s mom has provided. I feel justified in offering my own rendition because Sue’s mom has tinkered with the recipe plenty herself.

This is a perfect supper for a cold wintry night! So comforting and warm!

I encourage you to improvise your own version, too. After my version of the recipe, I’ll provide two of the potato soup recipes just as I’ve received them from Mrs. Ferber, so you can get ideas for alterations, substitutions, and shortcuts.



Julie’s Potato Soup

2 pieces of bacon
1 onion (white or yellow), chopped
1 carrot, coarsely grated
2 or 3 potatoes, peeled and diced into bite-size pieces (Yukon golds are good)
3/4 tsp. salt (or to taste, remembering that bacon adds saltiness)
1/2 tsp. pepper
water or chicken or vegetable stock
1–2 tbsp. cornstarch, mixed into a pourable slurry with about 1/2 cup water
milk
1–2 tbsp. butter
parsley (or other herbs—summer savory? basil? oregano?) for garnish

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan or soup pot, fry the bacon until crisp. Put it on a paper towel to drain and set aside. Pour off the grease into your grease jar. (You do save it, right? I mean, you’ll need it later when you want to cook kale!) Don’t clean the pan; leave the cooked bits of bacon and some grease at the bottom.

Put the onion and carrot into the pot and sauté them in what’s left of the bacon grease. As moisture comes out of the onions, scrape the bottom of the pan to liberate the bacon goodies. You might add a little water to help the process. When that’s accomplished, add the potatoes, salt, and pepper, and cover with water or stock. Cook on medium, covered, until the potatoes are done.

While the potatoes are cooking, crumble up the bacon—it will be a garnish. This is the time to make the cornstarch-and-water slurry if you haven’t already. Also, get out the saltines (or Chicken in a Biskit crackers; both are traditional), pieces of cheese or summer sausage, pickles, and whatever else you’ll be having. Set the table. Get the drinks ready.

Once the potatoes are cooked, stir in the cornstarch slurry and cook to get it really pretty thick; then stir in some butter, and thin it out with milk to get the consistency to your liking. Make sure it’s heated through, stir in any parsley or other herbs you want, and then serve. Garnish with the crumbled bacon.




Betty Ferber’s Potato Soup (Version 1, her preferred way)

2 nice-size Idaho potatoes (or less)
1 onion
coarse-grated carrot
salt, pepper
chicken stock (or water)
cornstarch
milk
margarine (Parkay)
crumbled bacon (optional garnish)

Peel and dice about 2 potatoes. Chop the onion. Add carrot, salt, pepper—cook until done in water or chicken stock. Thicken with cornstarch—get it really thick—then add milk to get consistency right. Add a hunk of margarine. Garnish with crumbled bacon; serve with saltine crackers.

Betty Ferber’s Potato Soup (Version 2, as of Dec. 2006)

1 onion (white)
water
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
about 5 lbs. (4 large) potatoes (Irish) (or more)
parsley
milk
1 stick butter or equivalent of “I Can’t Believe”
cornstarch (note, as of 2015: Mrs. F says you can use some instant potato flakes instead of cornstarch)
milk
crumbled bacon (optional, for garnish)

Chop onion and add to soup pot. Cover onion with water; add salt and pepper. Peel and dice potatoes, cover with water. Add parsley to make it pretty. Add thickener (cornstarch)—get it pretty thick, then add milk to make it the right consistency, and add the butter/margarine. Garnish with bacon crumbles. (Sue likes to ladle the soup over some crushed saltines in the bowl.)

________________________________


. . . And now, a bonus related recipe from notes I made during an Ohio visit during Christmas 2013: it’s very, very easy to make, though the sodium is probably frightful. Still, when you’re both disabled, can’t drive anymore, it’s cold out, and you’re eating out of the cupboard, this hits the spot! It’s probably from the back of a scalloped potatoes box.

Corn Potato Chowder

3 tsp. margarine
1 small onion, chopped
1 box scalloped potatoes (yes, including the seasoning packet)
2 cups hot water
2 cups milk
1 can of corn (drained)

In a saucepan big enough to hold everything, sauté the onion in the margarine. Then add the rest of the stuff and simmer, covered, for 20–25 minutes.


Thanks Mrs. Ferber, for letting me share your recipes, and thanks much more for sharing them with me! (Susan says thanks, too!)

Merry Christmas

Video from a few years ago: our singing Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Not sure what you're seeing? For more information on our family's Weihnachtspyramide, click here.

New Year’s Eve on Elm Street

Hello, friends—happy new year! It’s a little belated, but I wanted to write a bit about the process of starting a new year, and bidding adieu to the old. I realize if I don’t post this belatedly, then I’ll never post it at all, because each year, I’m far too busy before Dec. 31 to spend time writing about it.

In our diverse American culture, the phrase “happy holidays” has become the most useful and inclusive way of articulating the joy of our mutual year-end celebrations. Yet whether we observe the winter solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa, nearly all of us do something on December 31 to recognize the night—the instant—that we cross over the bridge spanning the past and the future.



I’ve found an intriguing diversity in the ways people celebrate New Year’s Eve. Some people don’t do more than get out a new wall calendar. Others watch the “ball drop” on TV, or go to parties (private or public). Often, people eat special foods, supposed to bring luck or money, such as black-eyed peas or bean soup, hoppin’ John . . . or black bun, oatcakes, and whiskey (as they do in Scotland).

I’m partial to pickled herring, because everyone knows you need to eat that on New Year’s Eve in order to have some money in your pocket!



My family has a tradition of having a New Year’s Eve party each year. In many ways, it’s a fairly normal party, in that we have an array of snack foods and beverages, and amicable and animated conversations develop and overlap as people move about, mixing, sharing one another’s news and ideas.



By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, the bulk of the holidays—the decorating, the gift-giving, the churchgoing, the entertaining—is over, and everyone is relaxed and ready to have a good time. But what really distinguishes my family’s New Year’s Eve party from all others is the mützens.



The Thomas/Schroeder family of Elm Street in Jefferson City has been celebrating New Year’s with mützens for at least four generations. My great-grandparents Albert and Wilhelmina Thomas came to Jefferson City from Germany around 1895 and raised their family (a son and four daughters) on West Elm Street, in the little “Germantown” of Muenchberg, or Old Munichburg. In 1930, the youngest of their children, my paternal grandmother, Edna Thomas, married my grandfather Walter A. F. Schroeder, and the couple moved, with Albert and Wilhelmina, into a duplex created for them by Albert. This home—formerly the German Methodist Episcopal church the Thomases had been members of—still stands at the northeast corner of Broadway and West Elm. It’s where I live today.

This house has been the setting for the family’s New Year’s Eve mützen celebrations for about seventy-five years. The tradition apparently started in the 1930s as a gathering for Walter and Edna’s bridge club, which had formed in the 1920s.



As the couple’s children grew and married, and as grandchildren came along, the New Year’s party evolved into a family-and-friends gathering. Serving mützens at midnight has been a part of the celebration all along.



What are mützens? As far as I’ve been able to tell, mützen are a festival food, a kind of fritter or donut, eaten in Germany the same way we in America enjoy funnelcakes. I understand that German mützen are enjoyed particularly at Fastnacht (Mardi Gras) celebrations. I’ve seen similar goodies called Fastnachts, which are sometimes rolled out, then sliced into diamond shapes before frying.

Indeed, there are some basic similarities between mützens and funnelcakes: Both are made with a sweet dough that is fried and served topped with powdered sugar, and both are especially good when they’re hot and fresh. Mützens, however, are made with a much thicker and stickier yeast dough than funnelcakes, and in my family they are flavored with mace and currants.

Some recipes I’ve seen for mützen incorporate raisins, apple chunks, cinnamon, and/or nuts. The mace and currants, however, combine for a unique flavor, which for me powerfully recalls New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Anyway—nudged off a spoon into hot oil, the dough bobs, rises, and puffs out into a ball, but often taking bizarre shapes with odd “appendages.”



Across the German border, in Holland, a similar treat is made called Olie Bollen (“oil balls”; sometimes called Dutch donuts). Edna—again, my Grandma Schroeder—lived under the same roof as her German immigrant parents and therefore learned to prepare their favorite foods. It makes geographical sense that she learned to make this pastry from her mother, who was raised in northwestern Germany, where German and Dutch cultures form a gradient. To our knowledge, Edna never used a written recipe for mützens.

Edna’s reputation for her mützens grew. Albert and Wilhelmina passed away in the 1940s; Walter, my Grandpa Schroeder, passed away in 1966, but Edna’s sisters and their families, her sons and their families, and a number of dear friends continued the New Year’s Eve tradition of getting together and having mützens at midnight.

At some point, the job of applying powdered sugar to the outsides of the freshly made mützens (that is, shaking them in a paper sack with the sugar) became the general responsibility of any grandchildren who were old enough to perform the task. It felt like a great honor to be enlisted to help in the kitchen—especially since kids can get kind of bored with hours of grown-up conversations as the clock ticks toward midnight.



Grandma was an enthusiastic entertainer. In between punching down the dough and, as the evening progressed, frying batches, she would dance through the living room, singing “Here comes a duke a-riding, a-riding, a-riding . . . !” She also circulated among her guests, making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink.



There was always plenty to drink!

At midnight, Grandma would bring out a huge platter full of mützens. By this time, the deliciously sweet mützen smell was all over the house, so getting to finally eat them has always brought a climax to the evening, which is a climax to the year. In a sense, mützens are like a dessert to the year passed, and breakfast for the year to come.



Yes, we continue this tradition—and yes, in my next post I’m gonna tell you how to make mützens yourself!