Munichburg Corner, Update

This has just been a really busy month, and I really wish I could be posting more. There's a lot to write about.

Today I'm simply updating you on the progress of the "Munichburg Corner," which I informed you about previously.

The stonework appears to be done! The ironwork, lamps, sign, pavers, and plantings are still to come. But so far, it looks pretty good!




For your reference, here are some pictures of the old Nilges Grocery Store that used to be at 801 Jefferson, which was torn down this past year (sadly).




I think the most recent business that had been in that building had been a "car audio installation" joint. Meaning that it was where those obnoxious, rattling "cars that go boom" came from. While it was there, neighbors constantly complained about the noise and riffraff the business attracted.

Anyway, the stones now being used for the Munichburg Corner were salvaged from this old building.




I like the idea that there was some recycling involved. It's nice to think that building wasn't a "total loss." There is so much that is perfectly good in those old buildings, if put into the right hands.

The Door

Like I said yesterday, April is the month of purple and of green. But I didn’t tell you that purple is my favorite color. And now you’ll understand why I’m especially proud of this particular creation.

I meant to write about it last summer when I did this little project, but I got sidetracked, and the newness wore off. Meanwhile, with the nicer weather, I’ve just put “The Door” back outside.




We call it “The Door” because we don’t know what else to call it. Actually, it functions as a small screen that mildly shields our backyard from busy Broadway Street.




Here’s how it got started. Remember the annual citywide “big trash” pickup? Yeah, we were laughing about how folks go trolling through the stale piles of junk looking for treasures, but we, too, ended up pulling a dubious treasure out of our neighbor’s trash—an old wooden door.

It’s really small for a door, and it was in lousy shape. I bet it was stored for a million years in the shed, or in the basement. Of course, because it was in the house next door, which was built by my great-grandpa, I kind of wonder if this door wasn’t original to the house, and therefore something he created. Maybe my grandma opened and closed this door all the time when she was growing up.

Or maybe not; lots of people have lived in the house since then, so it might be some worn-out “treasure” one of our neighbors had acquired elsewhere. Who knows.

So, we pulled “The Door” out of the trash and stuck it in our backyard, not quite sure what to do with it. We’d just been to Eureka Springs, Arkansas and were all inspired by the creative, brightly painted antiquey stuff they do down there.

What we ended up with was a beading project. After a whole lot of sanding, and the priming and the glorious painting (can life get any better when you’re painting something purple?), I strung the window opening with beads. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to put a piece of glass in it.

The beading was done concurrently with a creative project by young Ivy, who lived next door last summer.




Oh, my, I have to digress again. Remember me talking about the folks who lived next door then? The cool neighbors we appreciated so much? This was them. Ivy was the little girl going “WOW!” at the snowfall that morning.

But as it turned out, those people moved out before the end of summer, and a new couple with two little boys moved in. And actually, they too are already gone—they must’ve had a falling out with the landlord; they moved out just a few weeks ago. (Whatever. I think it’s pretty pathetic when the landlord can’t get people to stay in there even one whole year. Maybe he should try checking references, or make them sign a lease, or see if they have a job or income before renting to them. But anyway . . .)




It was last summer when I did this “Door” project, and it took several weeks. I’d do a strand or two of beads every once in a while, the door propped up on sawhorses in the basement. Waiting for the laundry to get done so I could move it into the dryer? I’d do a strand of beads. Going crazy with some endless bibliography? Break it up with some beading.

It was fun. I used to do beading in graduate school to pick up a little extra cash. The New Age types liked my creations; it was Arizona, and hey.




I invited Ivy over to do the beading with me, because I knew she was bored, and I knew she’d love the pretty beads. Who wouldn’t love them?

She started off making a necklace. Or, as she pronounced it, a neckalace. Since she’s only five or six, I helped get her started. When she told me she wanted to make a neckalace, I figured she was making one for herself. But it soon became clear that she was making it for her grandma. Isn’t that nice?

As with my work on “The Door,” it took more than a few afternoons for Ivy to finish her project, in part because we spent a lot of time visiting and getting sidetracked. Ivy had a lot of energy and a short attention span. But she kept plugging away, and I got to see her present it to her grandma. That was the same day her grandma told me they’d be moving away.

Oh, well. That’s how most renters go in this neighborhood.




I do enjoy my door and the fun I had decorating it, now that it’s back outside and standing amid spring’s new-grown grass, wild, shaggy, and unmowed, reflecting the clear purple petals of the violets and the creeping Charlie.

April Update

Hello, and apologies for the hiatus! Although I’ve been writing this blog for over a year, I still haven’t quite figured out how to keep chuggin’ away on the posting even when I go out of town on a vacation.

I was out of town during the last week of March, but see, I didn’t want to let the whole “interverse” know that our house would be empty, so I wrote material in advance. Then I cleverly posted it here and there from the hotels. Pretty smart, huh?

But although I thought ahead that far, I didn’t anticipate the usual mountain of stuff to do once we got home—and I’d run out of my backlog of writings—so there it is: a whole week since my last post. I do usually try to post every few days, or at a bare minimum, once a week.

Plus, I try to keep my blog fairly upbeat, and this past week I haven't felt upbeat at all. A lot of reasons that I won't go into here.

So . . . sorry. I hope I haven’t lost too many of my readers.

By the way, we did have a fun vacation, and we really needed to “get away” for a while. Check it out:




This past week has been heavy with work and correspondence, appointments, laundry, taking care of yard stuff (cutting grass, for example!), and dealing with our three needy cats, who apparently almost died of loneliness without us. You would think. And more.

Meanwhile, April is arguably the sweetest month of the year, here in Central Missouri—birds sing strongly every morning, the tree leaves are coming out, the grass is green and juicy, and the tender spring wildflowers are blooming. We have bloodroot, three or four kinds of violets, Dutchman’s breeches, toothwort, wild strawberries, trillium, star of Bethlehem, and spring beauties blooming here in our yard and flowerbeds.




We also have plenty of the weedy mints henbit, dead nettle, and creeping Charlie, which vex us somewhat but whose lush greenery and tiny, voluptuous purple flowers are still a pleasure to see, considering the dry dead twigs of winter.




I always associate April with the colors green and purple—green for all the new spring foliage, and purple for the preponderance of purple- and pink-flowering plants.




The daffodils have come and gone by now, with jonquils and tulips in full force at present. The “rock peach” tree is in bloom and is slightly post-peak, dropping pink petals into the bird bath.

And the redbud trees are all in full bloom—they light up these Missouri landscapes like neon, contrasting sharply with the chartreuse new growth on the deciduous trees, and with the deep velvety olive of the red cedars. I love that look on the highway.

The only “down” side to this month is that the trees are starting to bloom, and that always activates my allergies. My pollen problems are associated with trees and the grasses that follow, so I start taking Claritin before the trees begin. It works for me about 85 percent during these few months—but there are still times when my eyes say, “no way: we’ve had enough pollen.” On a late afternoon of a long, windy day, for instance. But then eye drops help.

It is sad that this gorgeous month—when it’s truly fine weather and we want to throw all the windows open—is the first big pollen month, which makes me want to hermetically seal the house, as if it were winter again. If you don’t suffer from pollen allergies, you won’t understand, but that’s how it really is, as perverse as it seems.




We went to Vintage Hill nursery today and picked up our first batch of herb plants. I always plant an herb garden—I can’t see paying money for parsley, mint, and such at the supermarket when it’s so easy and incredibly inexpensive to grow your own, and you can just nip off what you need.

I have a lovely spot for herbs, just at the bottom of our back porch steps, a place that my Grandma always seemed to devote to herbs as well. The soil is excellent, the light moderate, and the location is handy to the kitchen.




This afternoon, then, I got my fingers back into the soil and planted my new little charges: Curly and flatleaf parsley, dill (am I crazy to plant that? will it take over?), some thyme plants, variegated sage, cilantro, red-veined sorrel, and some pretty purple kale plants, which function as an ornamental but can also be used for garnishes or in a stir-fry.




At this point it doesn't look like much; I haven't even mulched it yet. But it will look much better next month.




The new plants joined existing stuff that overwinters or reseeds—the garlic and regular chives, a sage plant that survived winter, my beloved clump of grapefruit mint that’s followed me through three moves, and some peppermint, which I relocated to one end of the garden. The shiso comes up from billions of seeds and can be weedy, almost aggressive, but it’s easy enough to pull up in our loose soil.

Still to come are the basil plants, because you can’t have yer basic pesto without basil, and rosemary. Both of these seem to be more sensitive to the cool evenings we are still likely to have for another few weeks.

All in all, it’s a good month to be alive, here in Central Missouri.

—Right?

Best Easter Dessert

Of course it's the best, because it's from my mother!

I posted the instructions for "Easter Egg Cake" last year (click on the link), but I want to make sure you remember about it again this year. I suspect I have more readers now than I did when I first posted it, so I want to make sure you know about this fun recipe.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Southwestern Corn Pudding

This recipe is based on one that appeared in Gourmet magazine in July 2007, “Corn Pudding with Basil.” The original recipe is simply a glorious midsummer celebration of garden-fresh sweet corn and basil straight from the herb garden.

Unfortunately, this time of year it’s impossible (or impossibly expensive) to get these two key ingredients, but I have to admit that my version turned out pretty well.

That’s one thing I love about Gourmet’s recipes: they always turn out well, even if you make all kinds of substitutions. I used frozen corn instead of fresh, which didn’t taste as good and wasn’t nearly as tender as fresh—but it was okay. And with no fresh basil around, I substituted a can of green chilis and some diced red bell pepper—which transformed it into a Southwestern kind of dish instead of a Mediterranean one.

Here’s a link to the original recipe at epicurious.com, including a photograph. I highly recommend the original recipe, using all fresh ingredients. (Remember, it was published in the July issue, which was traditionally all about fresh summertime produce!)

It’s a nice creamy side dish, rather mild, almost like a corn quiche, depending on how much corn you leave whole. It’s not very sweet, though the corn you use makes a big difference in that category. And you can always alter the amount of sugar, too.

This would go well with fish tacos, I think. Or grilled shrimp. Or grilled anything. It’s also something you can prep well ahead of time, then stick in the oven without much ado. You can serve it hot or cool.




Southwestern Corn Pudding

(Adapted from “Corn Pudding with Basil,” Gourmet, July 2007, p. 8.)

4 c. corn (can be frozen, but fresh-cut from ca. 6 ears is better)
1 can (4.5 oz.) of diced green chilis (Ortega, OE Paso, Hatch, etc.)
1/4 c. diced red bell pepper
red chili powder to taste
3 T. flour
1 T. sugar
1 c. milk
1 c. heavy cream
4 large eggs, lightly beaten


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease/spray/butter a large shallow baking dish, 2.5 or 3 quarts.

Rumble 2 c. of the corn (or more, if you want) in a food processor until coarsely chopped. In a large bowl, combine it the with rest of the corn, entire can of chilis (including the liquid), and red bell pepper. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl and then add to the vegetables; stir well to combine.

Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake in center of oven until center is just set, from 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let it stand for about 15 minutes before serving.

Serves 8–10 as a side dish.

Pissing in the Snow

Don’t read this post if you’re easily offended.

I recently borrowed a copy of Vance Randolph’s Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales from a local public library. Vance Randolph, you should know right away, is considered the number-one collector of Ozark folktales for all time. He lived from 1892 to 1980, and spent his last sixty years in the Ozarks among the people he respected and loved.

I have to admit, it’s quite amazing that this book was published even as early as the 1970s, because it’s really pretty rude. It’s even more surprising that it became a national bestseller (although you could argue that the 1970s were less prudish than today). It’s a collection of bawdy humor—101 rude, puerile, silly, shocking stories told to Randolph by Ozarkians in the first half of the 1900s. Many of the stories, their tellers explained, had originally been heard in the late 1800s. This is a book to totally keep away from the censor-happy people: The tales are not only obscene, but also provide strong evidence for the fact that rude jokes are a perennial part, and a hilarious part, of every culture.

Here is a representative story from the collection, copied outright. It is actually one of the cleaner stories, as it doesn’t involve adultery, drunkenness, VD, hillbilly incest, or critters.

-------------------------------


5. Why God Made Stickers

Told by Mrs. Ethel Barnes, Hot Springs, Ark., March, 1938. She had it from relatives who lived near Hot Springs in the early 1890’s

One time there was a drummer wanted some gravels for his goose, but he couldn’t find nothing only a girl named Lizzie that worked in the tavern. The folks told him Lizzie wasn’t much good, because she ain’t got no spring in her tail, and nobody likes a woman that just lays there like a turd in a dead eddy. But poor nooky is better than none, and travelers has to make the best of it. Soon as the supper dishes was done, him and her walked out to the pasture back of the corncrib.

When they laid down on the ground Lizzie acted kind of sleepy, but soon as the drummer climbed aboard she just went plumb crazy. You never seen such wiggling and kicking and flouncing around in your life. She give several loud yells too, but the fellow stayed right in there till his gun went off, and then he let her up. “My God, Lizzie, you’re wonderful!” says he. The girl didn’t pay him no mind, but just stood there with both hands behind her. Come to find out, Lizzie had stuck her ass down in a bunch of cockleburs. That’s what made her so brisk and lively.

Lizzie spent most of the night a-grumbling, and putting witch-hazel on her bottom. But the drummer was feeling fine, and he says, “I never could understand why God made weeds with stickers on ’em, but I see it now.” There was a story went round how he always carried prickles in his buggy after that, and the folks claimed you could trail him clear across the country. Whenever they come to a town where the girls have all got scratches on their ass, the boys knowed that drummer has been there with his goddam cockleburs.

Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales (1976; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 11–12.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Now I’ve got your attention, right? Here’s more information. The introduction to the volume, contributed by folklorist Rayna Green, describes the decades-long struggle to find a publisher for these “unprintable” stories. Folklorists, of course, understood the cultural importance of raunchy, bawdy humor, but publishing companies remained timid. These stories were collected alongside the rest of the folktales that Randolph recorded over forty years of fieldwork in the Ozarks. Even among scholarly publishers of folklore studies, sexually explicit material was eschewed; such bawdy material, for example was rejected, apparently, by the scholarly publisher of Randolph’s monumental four-volume Ozark Folksongs.

The manuscript for Pissing in the Snow was ready for publication in 1954, but no publishers were found. Randolph pretty much gave up and deposited the material at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University as well as in the Library of Congress’s Archive of Folksong. Thus it was available mainly to researchers, and folklorists recognized Randolph’s materials as the best collection of bawdy stories from American folklore.

Randolph himself had one hesitation about printing the unprintable stories as a separate volume: Doing so might make it seem that Ozarkers had an inordinate fondness for puerile and obscene humor. He was careful to point out, however, “I do not believe that the bawdy ballads are more common in the Ozarks than elsewhere, or that the hillfolk as a class are especially fond of them.”

In his folksong collections, Randolph commented (I bet he added this note after his publisher had made him excise the “dirty” material): “Obscene elements occupy a prominent place in American folklore, and should be accorded proportional representation in the literature. Everybody knows that bawdy songs persist in popular tradition. If a collection of folksongs contains no obscenity, it cannot fully reflect the taste and preference of the people.” (Information from Rayna Green, introduction to Pissing in the Snow and other Ozark Folktales, ix–xxix.)

I think it is funny that of all Randolph’s folklore publications, this book, which so many publishers had rejected, turned out to be his most popular book. In fact, apparently it was a national best-seller (which goes to show you that bawdy humor still has a strong appeal).

Rayna Green, who tells the story of the book’s publication, is today the Curator and Director of the American Indian Program at the National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, of the Smithsonian Institution. She has led a distinguished career focusing mainly on American Indian culture and has numerous publications to her credit. As a young academic in the early 1970s, she worked at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where she met Randolph and became committed to getting this volume of Randolph’s works finally into print.

No, I wouldn’t share these stories in Pissing in the Snow with children, for they are certainly R- or X-rated. But I’m glad that Randolph collected the tales, with the names of their tellers, the date of the story, where they got it from, and even notes on folkloric antecedents, which often go back to Medieval Europe. (Remember the Miller’s and Reeve’s tales?) For one thing, it is helpful to remember that people our grandparents’ age and older “tee-heed” at the kind of rude humor we persistently wish to pretend is a vice only of newer, younger generations.

Irresistible Red Cabbage Slaw

I compleeeeetly stole this idea from the Happy Fisherman—last month they had a slaw like this among the various fascinating concoctions in their “salad boat,” and it wasn’t too hard to figure out how they made it. They are flippin’ geniuses!

The first reason we like it: Red cabbage is always special, always pretty. I don’t know why it’s so rare at restaurants.




This “recipe” is amazingly simple, and though it might not be the first food combination that comes to mind, I suggest you try this before you start snickering at it.

Adjust amounts accordingly.


Red Cabbage Slaw à la Happy Fisherman

1/2 head of red cabbage, shredded (approx. amount)
2 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces then cooked until done, but not crispy (try partially steaming it)
coleslaw salad dressing to your own tastes

Really—just combine it all. Easy-peasy. You’d think “bacony coleslaw” would be kind of nasty, but no. The bacon makes a huge difference, and it’s a very good one. Smoky. Sinfully delicious.

I’m bringin’ this to my next potluck.