Rum Balls! Rum Balls!

Yes, rum balls: It’s Christmas cookie time!

I had some vanilla wafers left over from making orange balls (which I personally can’t have Christmas without), so I made half a batch of rum balls. Rum balls!




No, I don’t drink anymore, but eating a cookie doesn’t really count as “drinking.” Right? . . . Okay, okay, I know—too close for comfort. But other people will enjoy them!

I used my Grandma Schroeder’s recipe, which I’ll simply present to you via a photograph of the recipe itself, which is in her handwriting.




Note that her recipe calls for “hootch.” —HOOTCH!




I measured out the rum very carefully. (Bwah-ha-ha!) And if you can’t quite read the recipe, I recommend sampling a bit of the rum and trying again!




There are more cookies still to come—the lebkuchen and the springerles!

So . . . more soon.

Mayor’s Christmas Tree 2011

Hey, folks! Last night was the annual lighting of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree, and I have pictures to show you!

Indeed, this is the first year we could walk on the new pedestrian walkway on the Missouri River Bridge to get a look at the Mayor's Christmas Tree as part of the Jefferson City skyline. See?




This event is always very pleasant—exactly how this kind of gathering should be: Unpretentious, sincere, fun, Christmassy, uncomplicated, welcoming. It’s usually pretty cold for this event, but this year we got a break in that regard—it was only pretty chilly!

The theme this year was “Christmas in Paradise” (which matches the theme of the holiday parade that will be held tomorrow)—so the tree is decorated with the shapes of toucans, flamingos, coconuts, hibiscus flowers, and so on. They were handing out leis last night, in addition to the cookies, fresh hot popcorn, hot cocoa, and hot cider.

A new element was added to last night’s festivities: Fireworks! When the tree was lit, fireworks were shot off of a barge on the Missouri. Very nice effect! It sure added to the excitement! (An “Op Op Hooray!” to the organizers!)




Another thing that made this year’s ceremony special was the presence of nineteen-year-old Derrik Sweeney, the American college student from Jefferson City who was recently arrested—and released—by authorities in Cairo. You might have seen him mentioned on the national news! It’s great to have him home and safe, just in time for the holidays!




This was the first year for our new mayor, Eric Struemph, to host the event. I’m glad he decided to continue this relatively new tradition, which takes place at Rotary Park, a pleasant little public space at the north end of Bolivar Street, where the Old Missouri River Bridge used to be. It’s a great place to stand and view the river, the bridge, the railroad, and the capitol.

And this time of year, with the Christmas tree there, it’s especially fun.




These kind of events go really far, I think, to nurture a sense of community in the city. A youth choir sings, Rotarians and other volunteers are thanked, and cookies, popcorn, and hot sweet beverages are enjoyed.






And Santa and Mrs. Claus mingle with the crowd and take time to crouch down and chat privately with the youngest Jefferson Citians.






Yeah, I’m glad Mayor Struemph lit up his tree this year. Thanks, Mayor, for a great evening!

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Special thanks to Susan Ferber for supplying most of the photos in this post. She did an awesome job of catching special moments in dark, photographically challenging circumstances. Thanks, Sue!

Jefferson City’s Big Holiday Party Weekend

This coming weekend is Jefferson City’s big holiday party; here’s the schedule. And everything I’m listing is family-friendly and free: Free, free, free!

Thursday, Dec. 1 (6 pm)—the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, at Rotary Park at the far north end of Bolivar Street. An annual event with entertainment, refreshments, and a visit from Santa Claus. This is a truly fun event; there’s no postmodern-anything to it, no cynicism, no advertisements, nothing but an old-fashioned, friendly, community holiday gathering. With cookies, popcorn, and hot cocoa!




Friday, Dec. 2 (6-9 pm)—Living Windows in downtown Jefferson City. They’ve been doing this wholesome event for nearly 20 years (nyah, nyah, Columbia): there are hayrides, dancers, carolers, refreshments, and much more. More than 50 groups will be participating; Santa will be at the Hawthorn Bank.




Friday, Dec. 2 (6:30-9:00 pm) and Saturday, Dec. 3 (2-4 pm)—Candlelight Tours of the Missouri Governor’s Mansion. If you have never been inside the lovely, historic public building, this is a great time to see it—at night, and all decked out for Christmas. The Governor and First Lady personally greet everyone who comes in, and high school choirs sing near the grand staircase.




Saturday, Dec. 3 (4:30 pm)—Jefferson City Christmas Parade (downtown). Holiday-themed floats, bands playing Christmas songs, and all that stuff. Ten bucks says you’ll get a free candy cane if you put your hand out! (After the parade, you might patronize one of Jeff City’s coffee shops or restaurants.)

Monday, Dec. 5 (6:30-8:00 pm) A Home for the Holidays: Jefferson City Sings for Safe Housing (at the Miller Performing Arts Center, 501 Madison St.). Local choirs sing carols as a benefit for Habitat for Humanity (which does good work here in Jefferson City). Free—but, um, since it’s a benefit, they’d love it if you donated some cash; so don’t think of it as “paying”—this is the season for giving.

Slow Saturday, Sliding toward Christmas

We’ve had a reluctant autumn, haven’t we! Here where we live, there hasn’t even been a killing frost yet, so petunias and such are still blooming. But interspersed with our many mild autumn days, we have had some cold, rainy ones, too.

Like today: bllgh. It was gray all day, with rain and drizzle off and on. It seemed like I was wearing sunglasses indoors. Tonight, the streets are shiny and wet, and it’s just simply cold. Brrr, shudder-shudder.




And you know how it is this time of year, with the day length; it’s harder and harder to get up in the mornings. And it feels like “suppertime” when it gets dark around four!

Indeed, tonight’s supper was some nice hot chili and cornbread. Yum!

But somehow I’m totally not ready for “the holidays”—how can Thanksgiving be over, when petunias are still blooming? Weren’t we just cutting grass, like, yesterday? Usually we get our first snow around mid-November!

We’re sliding into December, though, and fortunately we have all the Christmas sales and decorations to make it perfectly clear! Here in the Munichburg neighborhood, one of our favorite “signs of the season” is when the local Optimist club sets up its Christmas tree lot at the Carpenters Building, on the corner of Broadway and Dunklin.




It always makes me happy to see them up there, the friendly men and the pretty trees and the strings of bare lightbulbs shining over there at the corner—even though we never buy a tree from them. (But if you buy real Christmas trees, you should consider patronizing them or another nonprofit service organization.)

As you might recall, we never buy a Christmas tree because we have Grandma’s tree to put up. A lot of people around here know about the tree, and they look up in our window to see it as they go by on Broadway. So it kind of feels like a duty to put it up each year.

But it’s a duty that’s a pleasure to perform—even if I don’t feel ready for “Christmas” yet. I think we’ll be putting it up this coming weekend, either the third or the fourth.

By the way, if you’ve read this far, and you or your group are interested in visiting the tree in person, I hope you’ll contact me. Grandma used to love sharing her tree with others, and I see no reason to end that tradition!

Maa Pies and More, Ashland, Missouri

To all my readers in Central Missouri: Here is a small restaurant that I sincerely hope you’ll try. It’s a new place, and you might not have heard of it yet. In fact, it’s the kind of place that my Columbia friends might never hear of, because this is the kind of place that locals flock to and love, and keep “mum” about, in hopes that “outsiders” don’t discover it: Maa Pies and More, in Ashland, Missouri.

Since it’s in Ashland, it’s convenient for everyone traveling between Columbia and Jefferson City. Seriously—if I were still commuting, I would consider getting up early at least one day a week, so I could pull off the highway at Ashland and sit down for a bit over coffee and B&G, before heading to the office.

(Wait, you don’t know what B&G is? Repeat after me, in a reverent tone: bis-cuits–an’–gra-vy. If you’ve never had it, then you need to try some this winter! As my own mom would say, “This is food that sticks to your ribs!”)




Let me tell you what Maa Pies and More isn’t: It’s not a place that is going to serve you “prosciutto-wrapped-sun-dried-tomato-cornichon-with-crème-fraîche-ciabatta,” or “seared-ahi-tuna-and-celery-root-pureé-with-a-balsamic-reduction-and-brown-butter-caper-sauce.” No, no, no!

It is also not a place for you to go if you dislike people, or if you are feeling blue and wish to stay that way.

Here is what it is: A small local “mom-and-pop” café, proudly serving you breakfast, lunch, and desserts (pies!) with care and attention to how you want it. What kind of bread do you want for your sandwich? Do you prefer it grilled? Would you like ice cream on your slice of pie? It’s how mom would treat you if she was making you a lunch—am I right?

“Mom-and-pop” is a perfect adjective for this café, which is owner-operated and owner-staffed: William Linzie, a bighearted man who loves meeting people, will greet you when you come in the door, help you find a seat, and take your order. There’s a good chance he’ll introduce you to some of the other customers. His wife, Joycelynn, who loves cooking and is too modest about her talents, is the one making most of the food (yes, and the pies!). You will probably meet both of them when you’re there. Why, it’s almost like having lunch at a friend’s house.

And by the time you leave, you will most likely be calling them your friends.




I hear that the “locals” are warming up to the place—and here we’re talking about people of all stripes. The Linzies are proud to have such a diverse clientele. As we ate there recently, he was telling me how great it feels to see so many different people enjoying his restaurant.

That Maa Pies has won the approval of many of the local “oldtimers” seems particularly enlightening for those of us who enjoy good local cafés: Some of the older fellows, I imagine, can be tough customers; these men are capable of saying, quite bluntly, “Well, this doesn’t taste very good. Not enough black pepper.” I mean, they’ll say it to their own wives! So if a café doesn’t cut it for these tough customers, they won’t come back.

But they keep coming back to Maa Pies! It’s an excellent sign.

What’s on the Menu?

There’s an online menu here, but I’ll summarize briefly. First, they’ve got breakfast—they open at 8 a.m., Tuesday through Saturday—with the above-mentioned biscuits and gravy, breakfast plates (combinations of eggs, sausage, biscuits, bacon), and breakfast sandwiches. Also (and this is no surprise, since pies are a specialty), they have quiche, yummy, yummy quiche!




The cinnamon rolls (which I haven’t yet tried) look like a breakfast unto themselves; they’re huge and covered, not just “sprinkled,” with a whole bunch of chopped pecans. (Generous is the word: just like mom, right?)

Lunches are sandwiches, hot dogs, wraps, and sides, and Tuesday through Friday, there’s a daily special. The sandwiches are not fancy, high-falutin’ concoctions of trendy ingredients. So just relax and enjoy a gool ol’ turkey sandwich, or bologna, roast beef, BLT, or polish sausage. If you’re feeling opulent, you might choose the triple decker!




The daily special is a surprise—there’s no pattern to it—it’s whatever they felt like making that day. It could be lasagna or any other kind of “blue-platey” special.

If you’re having lunch there for the first time, I encourage you to try the pulled-pork sandwich, which is one of their specialties.




Honestly, their pulled-pork sandwiches count as a Public Service. I expect soon, all the other restaurants in Ashland will be sick and tired of telling people, “Oh, the pulled-pork sandwich place? That’s Maa Pies—just go west on Broadway and look for it on the right. The place with all the cars parked around it.”

Finally, the Pies

As soon as you get there, look in the front case to see what they’ve got, because they tend to sell out! If you are wanting to get a particular pie to-go, put your dibs on it before you dine!

The fruit pies are wonderful; when we were there, we had blackberry, and it was just sweet enough to be perfect! I admire cooks who get the sugar right in a fruit pie.

They heated it up for us and served it à la mode. Oh, boy! I love me some good, homemade pie!




Here’s something else: Joycelynn will make pies for you by request—cream pies, for instance, or whatever kind of pies you want. She just needs your order 48 hours in advance. I understand they do catering of pies for events. As in, lots and lots of pies.

The pie they’re most famous for is called “apple caramel crisp with pecans.” When we were there last, it was (understandably) sold out. As with the cinnamon rolls, they’re generous with the pecans, which give the caramel-drizzled crust a wonderful texture.

If there’s something wrong with you and you’re not interested in pies, there are Bundt cakes available, plus other pastries, such as Danishes, and the cinnamon rolls.




You might be wondering about the prices—some bakeries charge big bucks for their creations—all the pies here are twelve dollars. And everything else on the menu is under ten; most is under five.

One More Thing

Remember what I said: “This is not a place for you to go if you dislike people, or if you are feeling blue and wish to stay that way.” Why do I say this? Because William and Joycelynn really want you to have a nice time at their restaurant, and they want you to feel at home. They will chat with you. William, in particular, likes getting to know his customers, and he’s a friendly and personable guy.

Again, it’s the “mom-and-pop” thing—at Maa Pies, you will be treated not just as a guest, but as a friend and neighbor—indeed, like family. So put Maa Pies on your list for breakfast and lunch, and be sure to check out the pies and pastries, too!

The Frost Is a Coup de Grâce

As usual, we’ve been keeping tabs on our argiopes—our black-and-yellow garden spiders—as the season’s progressed. We’ve had them all summer—two on the corner, among the blades of a yucca, and one in the flowerbed near our front door.

Look, spider-watching really is fun! The orb-weavers stick around all season. You walk past an argiope web every day, and you can’t help but note things like, “oh, look, she’s got a grasshopper!” And you know when one of them has made an egg case, because she disappeared from her web for a whole day and has now returned to it, half as rotund as she was before. Then you find yourself peeking around the nearby vegetation, looking for that hidden egg sac. When you clean out that bed later on, you don’t want to inadvertently pitch that spent vegetation into the composter if it’s got her babies in it!

This past week, the argiope near our front door seems to have given up on her web-making. The winds and rain were simply too much; apparently, she threw in the towel and crept away.

She’s moving slowly; she’s getting skinny.

Over the weekend, she clung precariously to the bricks above our front door, which freaked out my nephew when he was visiting (we all had to walk right under her each time we went in and out of the house).

Do you suppose the argiope just said to herself, “Oh, what the heck! My web-spinning and egg-laying is done! Let’s go out and see some of this great big world that the grasshoppers are always telling me about (right before dinner).”

Nah—I know better. She hasn’t given up; quitting isn’t in a spider’s vocabulary. It’s survival; we’ve seen it plenty of times with argiopes. If one web location isn’t good—if it’s too windy, or gets smacked into too much, or doesn’t catch enough bugs—the argiope relocates. I’ll bet that’s what she was trying to do, bless her heart. And anyway, orb-weavers tend to have poor vision; she wasn’t “sight-seeing.”




The next day, we found her just standing, rather still, on the concrete steps leading up to our front door. (I hope she hadn’t fallen . . . I’m glad no one had squished her . . . some people just squish spiders as a matter of course . . .) So we picked her up and put her into the plants in one of our front planters. It’s pretty warm there. And so far, that’s where she’s stayed.

The embers of life go out so slowly with spiders. It’s her time.

I used to get rather sad when the freeze would come and, in a single, late October night, put an end to all the spiders, all the tender plants, all the bugs, all that vibrant summertime life. But now I see: The frost is a coup de grâce.

When it doesn’t come, cold-blooded life gradually grows too cold to continue, anyway. Spiders don’t have enough food, because the insects are dwindling; they can’t spin effective webs, because it’s cold and windy, they cannot move quickly anymore, and they’re beginning to starve. Without a decisive freeze, it can be a long, drawn-out death.




Think about it: All summer long, these insects and spiders have fought hard and survived. Our argiopes have netted and trussed prey, and feasted on it; they’ve scrambled away and hidden from garter snakes and praying mantises; they’ve mated; they’ve laid eggs. They’ve endured this summer’s drought, and they’ve put up with the indignity of being sprinkled with the garden hose.




The great majority of arthropods never make it to autumn; there are a million ways for a bug to expire. The ones that are left at this time of year are the survivors, the winners, the elders—as old as any of their kind ever get. In human terms, they are going to die of “natural causes”—of old age, of senescence, of systems breaking down.




The overnight freeze, when it comes, is a gift from nature that lets them die in their sleep.

I used to think it was rather cruel, how the freeze sneaks in during an autumn night and extinguishes all those amazing little sparks of life, but now I see it’s nature’s kindest way of saying—to the humblest of its creatures: Well done; come home.

Autumn Transitions

I’ve been thinking a lot about the progression of fall this year; I mean, I usually do, anyway, because it’s a dynamic season, intense and dramatic, manic-depressive. But with Teale’s Autumn across America fresh in my mind, I’m more thoughtful about it than usual.

Unlike in springtime, where there’s no clear-cut time when the growing season officially begins, in fall, the first hard frost and freeze slices a distinct boundary between animation and dormancy, juiciness and dryness—the vibrancy of “red autumn” and the dullness of “gray autumn.”

Here in Central Missouri, our average frost date is about the middle of October, which also happens to be our usual fall color peak. A hard freeze can zap the fall color pretty abruptly. Then, the abcission wind comes in late October or early November, often with rain and dreary skies, to knock the leaves off the trees and thus prepare the trees for snow and ice. (Remember the abcission wind? We talked about that last year!)

So much of autumn seems to be about preparation for the winter.

But although we had wind and rain this past week, we still haven’t had a freeze yet, or even a hard frost.

There are many pleasant things about this situation—for example, Sue and I were able to bring in our tropical plants at our leisure. We dug up the elephant ears and hibiscus a few weeks ago, and Sue brought in her bonsai that can’t survive the cold. The Fukien teas and what-all. Some years, we get caught by surprise; we put off bringing in the plants until the last minute, then suddenly they’re predicting a freeze, and we’re out there with our spades, sometimes in the dark or the rain. Which is not quite optimal!

And then there are the brugmansias, which have multiplied over the years like bunnies. Like hibiscus, they must be brought indoors during winter. We’ve found, however, they only really begin to bloom about the beginning of October, so they’re usually in full bloom when we tell them, like moms tell kids on summer evenings: Time to come in!

So we always have to trim back the bruggies so they are, say, not taller than ourselves, which usually means hacking off all the glorious, footlong flowers. And we cart them and their big pots indoors. Into the basement. It’s kind of sad.




This year, Sue couldn’t bear to chop all those blooming heads off, so she set them, pots and all, at an angle. We have sideways trees in our basement! They’re blooming right now, even as I type this on the third floor of our house, and I can smell them all the way up here.




And we swapped the screens for storm windows again. By the way, there were big numbers on the “cussometer” this year—but it’s long story I won’t go into. Here’s a picture from my parents’ collection of my Grandpa and Grandma dealing with the storm windows. It was the early sixties, and judging from their smiles, the storm windows fit better forty years ago!




I also, quite at my leisure, picked all my basil and made pesto the same day I picked it.

Another day, I picked all my cayenne peppers and dealt with them: The smallish green ones went into freezer zip bags—they will heat up my Indian curries this winter! The mature, red ones, I dried: Trimmed off the green calyx on top, sliced them once lengthwise, spread them on a huge cookie sheet, and let them enjoy the dry warmth of Grandma’s incredible oven, all night long. Next morning, I turned them into “dynamite dust.” Lookie!




I didn’t deseed them or remove the “membranes.” (Hey, want a more precise name for that pithy stuff? It’s the placenta, that middle part that the seeds grow on; and the part that connects it to the fruit wall is the septum).

Dynamite dust! It’s just whole, ground cayenne. None of that sissy stuff for me! Good for what ails ya!

With all these preparations, though, there was no rush; we just found time here and there to get it all accomplished.

And yes, it’s rather pleasant to still have flowers around—chrysanthemums, and all that autumn-purple ageratum that grows around this yard for free. My herb garden’s still going at it; just today, I picked a handful of red-veined sorrel and some mint to go in a little salad at lunch.

. . . So when will it freeze?