I'm not sure if other churches have "Wednesday Night Dinners" like Baptists do, or if many Baptists even still have them Since we don't drive at night it has been a long time since we have gone to the dinner at our church. Probably things are a little different than they were when we had them at our church in Oklahoma City back in the eighties. It could be a little more professional these days, with caterers or professional cooks, maybe.
At first, different people at our church back then took turns cooking the meal for about eighty people every Wednesday. This was no easy feat using the church kitchen. Except for a few extra-large pots and a couple of steamers, the kitchen was no bigger, and probably smaller, than a lot of our home kitchens were. And no dishwasher. It probably was because of the no dishwasher situation that I volunteered to cook on a regular basis. If you cooked nobody expected you to clean up. For much of the time I "volunteered" my friend, Fran, to help also.
It should have been simple. We reasoned that we would just take the recipes and menus that we used for Fran's family of five or my family of four and multiply them by, oh, twenty or so. Piece of cake. Or make that cakes. It was a little difficult to calculate sometimes. People still talk, I hear, about the miracle of the Loaves and the Soup we served one night. Somehow I miscalculated how much homemade bread (Okay, frozen homemade. You still had to let it rise and bake it!) people would take when going through a buffet line. There was bread enough left over for everyone to take home and share with the neighbors. And the postman. And the crossing guard. And the birds. It was a lesson in giving.
Really, everything we cooked during that time was memorable. I've even had requests to tell you about a particularly fine meal we made: Beef Stroganoff. It is yummy, Dennis's favorite, in fact, and I still cook it, though in smaller quantities of course.
To avoid our Smurf-sized church kitchen we often did a lot of the preparation at home and transported it in the back of our station wagons, but for this we opted to do most of it the cooking at church. We had chopped the beef into cubes, sliced the mushrooms, stirred in the sour cream (I'm getting hungry as we sit here) and had it simmering on the four-burner stove. There were pans of dump cake set out on the counters (What, you never heard of dump cake? You dump in a can of fruit, you dump in a box of yellow cake mix, you dump in melted butter? Easy as.....cake.) The Cool Whip was in the fridge, Fran's colicky newborn daughter was in her swing. The rest of our children ran in and out of the kitchen and the gym right outside the kitchen. We had to have more space. And then it came to us. We could pre-cook the noodles, put them into the big steamers to keep warm and plug them in somewhere out of our way till we had everything else finished
Soon we were ready with Fran and Pat's Gourmet Dinner for Eighty. We had the lettuce cut up in big bowls for the salads, eighty pieces of cake sliced and set out artfully at the end of the folding tables we used for our buffet line. We unplugged the steamers and set them on the tables with the Stroganoff mixture next to them. It would be simple, for once. People could put the noodles on their plates, balancing them carefully---those foam plates can be killers---top them with the Stroganoff, and enjoy the delights of our labor.
As the diners milled around, tantalized by the luscious aromas, the pastor said grace and they began to file down both sides of the tables. To make it easier for them to serve themselves, I took the lid off the first steamer of noodles. Or, perhaps I should say Noodle. It was one solid, 18" by 30"x 6" Noodle. The second steamer was the same. Who knew that if you let pasta sit in a steamy environment for an hour or so it would congeal into one big mass? So we cut the Noodle into squares and topped it with the Stroganoff and ate it anyway.
Baptists will always eat. And they have good memories. I rarely see someone from back then who doesn't remind me of The Noodle. They haven't seen anything like it since.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Small Craft Warnings
I've never really been a crafty person. I did cover toilet paper rolls with contact paper to match my kitchen once and stuffed the cords from the toaster and coffee maker into them, but that was more a décor thing than a craft thing and I never gave any of them away as Christmas presents. And I made those potholders with stretchy pieces of yarn when I was a kid, just like you did, but nobody ever bought any from me when I went door to door trying to sell them. It's a good thing Hobby Lobby isn't depending on me to keep their billion dollar business going.
Well, all right, long, long ago I did kind of get into making candles. Not like the candles you can buy for $30 a pop at a candle party these days but at the time they were kind of unique. You took an empty half gallon milk carton, tied some wick to a fishing weight, then you dangled the wick into the carton by tying it to a stick or something laid across the top and----here comes the unique part----you filled the carton with crushed ice. Then you melted paraffin in a five-pound coffee can and poured it on top of the ice. While the wax set up the ice melted leaving a lacy pattern.Tear off the cardboard carton and voila! A candle! I don't know how you could do that today because coffee doesn't even come in metal cans. Or even five-pound containers for that matter.
The end of that project came one night when I accidentally dropped the can full of melted paraffin onto the kitchen floor. The floor was kind of a black swirly linoleum. The wax was red. It did not make a pretty color. No problem, you say: wait for the wax to dry and peel it off the floor. That would have been the way to go except for one little detail. We had radiant heat in the floor and it was winter. Toasty on the toes in the morning, but the warmth wouldn't allow the wax to harden enough to peel, yet it would not stay liquid enough to just mop up. My last remembrance of my candle making hobby is of Dennis on the floor with a blow torch, holding it above the wax enough to melt it so we could wipe it up with a rag. Lots of rags. For a very long time. It may have been his idea for me to think about another craft.
After that I found a craft project that seemed right up my alley. No Sew Pants. I swear I am not making this up! You could make palazzo pants---and you know how I love palazzo pants---out of one multi-yard length of fabric. It was quite ingenious. You wrapped the ends around your waist, bent over double at the middle, flung the other end between your legs, quickly grabbed the top in the air, wrapped that part around your waist, tied, and presto! Palazzo pants! It required NO sewing!
It was amazing; it really looked like pants when you were done. Unfortunately, sometimes it was difficult to remember what you were supposed to wrap first, which direction to fling the fabric or which end was up. And then you had to untangle yourself and start all over after resting awhile to get the blood to flow from your head back down to your legs. Once you had it together you were good to go, though. A vision of loveliness, out for the evening. Until you had to use the bathroom.
So, you're standing in the stall with the whole ball of fabric in your hands. You try to remember which end to wrap around your waist first. You bend your head between your legs. You fling. The blood is rushing to your head. Nothing comes up for you to catch at the top. You look around to see where the errant fabric has gone, and.--Oh! There it is. Thank the Lord they did not have automatic flushing back then is all I have to say.
Today we have pretty much a craft-free zone around here. When the grandkids come over with paint or glue or glitter I say "Oh, sweetie. Your mama is such a good crafter. I know she would want to do this with you at your house." I don't think Hobby Lobby is going to go broke without me.
Well, all right, long, long ago I did kind of get into making candles. Not like the candles you can buy for $30 a pop at a candle party these days but at the time they were kind of unique. You took an empty half gallon milk carton, tied some wick to a fishing weight, then you dangled the wick into the carton by tying it to a stick or something laid across the top and----here comes the unique part----you filled the carton with crushed ice. Then you melted paraffin in a five-pound coffee can and poured it on top of the ice. While the wax set up the ice melted leaving a lacy pattern.Tear off the cardboard carton and voila! A candle! I don't know how you could do that today because coffee doesn't even come in metal cans. Or even five-pound containers for that matter.
The end of that project came one night when I accidentally dropped the can full of melted paraffin onto the kitchen floor. The floor was kind of a black swirly linoleum. The wax was red. It did not make a pretty color. No problem, you say: wait for the wax to dry and peel it off the floor. That would have been the way to go except for one little detail. We had radiant heat in the floor and it was winter. Toasty on the toes in the morning, but the warmth wouldn't allow the wax to harden enough to peel, yet it would not stay liquid enough to just mop up. My last remembrance of my candle making hobby is of Dennis on the floor with a blow torch, holding it above the wax enough to melt it so we could wipe it up with a rag. Lots of rags. For a very long time. It may have been his idea for me to think about another craft.
After that I found a craft project that seemed right up my alley. No Sew Pants. I swear I am not making this up! You could make palazzo pants---and you know how I love palazzo pants---out of one multi-yard length of fabric. It was quite ingenious. You wrapped the ends around your waist, bent over double at the middle, flung the other end between your legs, quickly grabbed the top in the air, wrapped that part around your waist, tied, and presto! Palazzo pants! It required NO sewing!
It was amazing; it really looked like pants when you were done. Unfortunately, sometimes it was difficult to remember what you were supposed to wrap first, which direction to fling the fabric or which end was up. And then you had to untangle yourself and start all over after resting awhile to get the blood to flow from your head back down to your legs. Once you had it together you were good to go, though. A vision of loveliness, out for the evening. Until you had to use the bathroom.
So, you're standing in the stall with the whole ball of fabric in your hands. You try to remember which end to wrap around your waist first. You bend your head between your legs. You fling. The blood is rushing to your head. Nothing comes up for you to catch at the top. You look around to see where the errant fabric has gone, and.--Oh! There it is. Thank the Lord they did not have automatic flushing back then is all I have to say.
Today we have pretty much a craft-free zone around here. When the grandkids come over with paint or glue or glitter I say "Oh, sweetie. Your mama is such a good crafter. I know she would want to do this with you at your house." I don't think Hobby Lobby is going to go broke without me.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Weighty Matters
I just got into a pair of my Fatter jeans! No, that's good a good thing. My clothes are divided into Fat, Fatter, and Fattest, so that means I am moving down. Actually, they are probably a pair of the bigger ones of my Fatter ones. It might have been one of the smaller ones of the Fattest ones but I couldn't wear it a few weeks ago and now I can. The really good thing is that the Fattest ones are getting a little baggy. Soon I hope to be in all the Fatter ones. Are you keeping up?
As long as my Fattest clothes were still fitting okay I just stayed the course. After all, the last two times in my life I was really skinny I got pregnant, so I decided to quit that. Then finally a couple of years ago, being in my sixties now, I decided that there was probably no danger of pregnancy, so I went on a diet and lost 30 pounds. Guess what. Breast cancer! Now, there may not be any actual statistics supporting this connection, but you've got to wonder. I mean, all the literature, all the medical staff, everybody at the Breast Clinic kept saying. "Don't diet now." Maybe they know something they aren't telling.
When faced with having to spend actual money to replace all the Fattest clothes, however, since the washer seemed to be shrinking every one, ("tight" in my case doesn't always refer to how my clothes fit) and thinking, "It's been over a year now, maybe it's safe," we started working on that weight thing again. By we I mean Dennis and me. You can only do this if everybody you cook for is on the same page, so you girls with young children, nobody blames you.
I have been in groups before and young things who look like they could still buy their clothes at Children's Place will sigh dramatically and say, "Oh, if I could just lose these five pounds." After the initial urge to slap them silly (if I put all my weight into it they might be gone till next Tuesday) I stop and realize they are right. There was a time when all I wanted to lose was five pounds. If I had done it then, it wouldn't be such a long haul now. Think about it. You slip out of your skinny wedding dress, you gain even just two pounds a year, then all of a sudden you've been married forty-five years--you do the math-- and Children's Place for clothes shopping has turned into Big Mama's.
Can you believe there was actually a store in Oklahoma City for plus-sized ladies called Big Mama's? Like I wanted to walk around with a shopping bag with my own mean-spirited slur on it! It didn't last long, no surprise. And what does "Plus Size" mean, anyway? Are all the other sizes "Minus Sizes"?
I don't really want to get down to my pre-pregnancy weight. After more than 35 years I don't remember much of anything pre-pregnancy anyway. Besides, if I lost that much weight there would be so much extra skin left over we'd be able to tan it and make a set of luggage. And "fluffy" is more grandma-ish anyway. More for hugging.
When Josh and Jake were little a family joined our church whose mother, the likes of whom they had obviously never seen before, was elegant, glamorous and model slim, wearing a dress size less than the number of wheels on a trike. Josh and Jake seemed to look at her for a long time, then I heard the discussion. Jake: "Is that their mom?" Josh: "Naw, she's too skinny to be a mom." Man, I love those boys!
I'm not in too big a hurry. I'm going slowly, leaving room for chocolate once a day so we don't get desperate and give up. So, here's a Household Hint: If you are newly pregnant or just moving in between sizes, take a rubber band, slide it through the buttonhole on your pants, then loop both ends over the button and give yourself more breathing room.
If I'm into my Fat clothes by Christmas it will be like I have a whole new wardrobe.
As long as my Fattest clothes were still fitting okay I just stayed the course. After all, the last two times in my life I was really skinny I got pregnant, so I decided to quit that. Then finally a couple of years ago, being in my sixties now, I decided that there was probably no danger of pregnancy, so I went on a diet and lost 30 pounds. Guess what. Breast cancer! Now, there may not be any actual statistics supporting this connection, but you've got to wonder. I mean, all the literature, all the medical staff, everybody at the Breast Clinic kept saying. "Don't diet now." Maybe they know something they aren't telling.
When faced with having to spend actual money to replace all the Fattest clothes, however, since the washer seemed to be shrinking every one, ("tight" in my case doesn't always refer to how my clothes fit) and thinking, "It's been over a year now, maybe it's safe," we started working on that weight thing again. By we I mean Dennis and me. You can only do this if everybody you cook for is on the same page, so you girls with young children, nobody blames you.
I have been in groups before and young things who look like they could still buy their clothes at Children's Place will sigh dramatically and say, "Oh, if I could just lose these five pounds." After the initial urge to slap them silly (if I put all my weight into it they might be gone till next Tuesday) I stop and realize they are right. There was a time when all I wanted to lose was five pounds. If I had done it then, it wouldn't be such a long haul now. Think about it. You slip out of your skinny wedding dress, you gain even just two pounds a year, then all of a sudden you've been married forty-five years--you do the math-- and Children's Place for clothes shopping has turned into Big Mama's.
Can you believe there was actually a store in Oklahoma City for plus-sized ladies called Big Mama's? Like I wanted to walk around with a shopping bag with my own mean-spirited slur on it! It didn't last long, no surprise. And what does "Plus Size" mean, anyway? Are all the other sizes "Minus Sizes"?
I don't really want to get down to my pre-pregnancy weight. After more than 35 years I don't remember much of anything pre-pregnancy anyway. Besides, if I lost that much weight there would be so much extra skin left over we'd be able to tan it and make a set of luggage. And "fluffy" is more grandma-ish anyway. More for hugging.
When Josh and Jake were little a family joined our church whose mother, the likes of whom they had obviously never seen before, was elegant, glamorous and model slim, wearing a dress size less than the number of wheels on a trike. Josh and Jake seemed to look at her for a long time, then I heard the discussion. Jake: "Is that their mom?" Josh: "Naw, she's too skinny to be a mom." Man, I love those boys!
I'm not in too big a hurry. I'm going slowly, leaving room for chocolate once a day so we don't get desperate and give up. So, here's a Household Hint: If you are newly pregnant or just moving in between sizes, take a rubber band, slide it through the buttonhole on your pants, then loop both ends over the button and give yourself more breathing room.
If I'm into my Fat clothes by Christmas it will be like I have a whole new wardrobe.
Monday, August 15, 2011
The Gift of Hospitality
Long ago in the olden days, before cell phones and internet and fast food restaurants, churches used to hold revival meetings at least two times a year. There was none of this Wednesday to Sunday nonsense, either. Real revival meetings lasted two weeks, with preaching every evening till 9 p.m., if not later. and sometimes there were meetings around lunch time too. During the afternoon the pastor and the evangelist "visited", going to peoples homes to invite them to the revival and to share the Gospel. And the evangelist didn't stay in some cushy motel as happens these days, with time to rest, and a bathroom all to himself. No Siree!
The evangelist would stay in someone's home, in their guest room or in little Albert's room and Albert bunked in with his brother and whined about it the whole time. This was probably for one week, then he packed up and stayed in another house for the second week. Evening meals were in still other church members' homes each day and the ladies all vied to see who had the best fried chicken so the preacher had chicken at least five times each week. At every dining room table he told jokes and exclaimed "This is the best fried chicken I've had in I don't remember how long!" You thought preacher's never wear watches so they don't have to quit preaching on time but it is really so they can make statements like that without actually lying.
Shortly after Dennis and I bought our first house, four rooms with no garage, no attic, and no basement, our church was having a revival meeting and Dr. Jimmy Draper, then the pastor of a large church in the Kansas City area, was going to preach. I don't know what we were thinking since along with no garage, no attic and no basement we also had almost no furniture, but we asked to have the preacher stay at our house and we won! He would stay one night, Saturday. I guess the family where he had been staying had other plans for that night
We set about getting our tiny house ready. The cardboard boxes that we were using for night stands were draped with pillowcases that almost matched our bedding. I cut orange and yellow flowers out of contact paper and applied them, with much sticking to my arms and peeling and re-sticking, to the fronts of the metal kitchen cabinets and we rearranged the avocado green and harvest gold couch, ( Danish modern with the end tables built in, such a deal,) and matching chair and the TV on it's metal rolling stand around and around the living room till they were just right. I cleaned the only bathroom, a very efficient place in which you could take care of all of your needs without moving more than a foot from the same spot. Dennis handled the linoleum floors. He may have missed the part about sweeping when he agreed to sweep, mop and wax them because I found a penny waxed down to the floor in the kitchen, but, hey, he was doing his share.
The only thing missing was a bed for Dr. Draper to sleep on. Not to worry. We had the classified ads and a friend with a truck. Dennis and our friend got the small sleeper sofa that we found---$15 dollars!---into our second bedroom, which was the size of a walk-in closet, although we didn't even know what a walk-in closet was back then, just in time. It barely fit but it looked like there would just be room to open it up. The doorbell rang. Time to impress the visiting preacher!
This was going to be a rare day of rest for him, so Dennis got him as comfortable as possible on the couch, comfortable being a relative term since there were no arms, only end tables. We got him a Pepsi and set out our gourmet snacks, a chip bowl with dip bowl attached by a metal rack that matched the faux brass TV stand, filled with potato chips and dip that I made from sour cream and onion soup mix. Dennis, man of the house, turned on the 13" black and white TV and they watched football. I made an apple pie while the men were watching the game. I wore a dainty apron. Pre-food processor days, just slicing the apples occupied me through more than the third quarter. The house smelled of cinnamon and apples. It was very homey.
Now, you think this is going to be another culinary catastrophe, for which I've become somewhat famous, but it's not. The pastor picked Dr. Draper up when the game was over so he could eat a chicken dinner at a church member's home, we all went to the revival meeting and we saved the pie for after church. It was delicious, thank you very much.
No, the excitement came as we were preparing for bed. Dr. Draper, always the gentleman, insisted on helping me get the sofa bed ready. I brought in some wedding gift sheets and a wedding gift blanket. I brought in the fluffy pillow, not quite down, but the best $3.99 pillow TG&Y had in stock. We took the cushions off the sleeper sofa. Dr. Draper pulled open the mattress---And out ran a roach! I don't know where it ran to. I don't know how Dr. Draper managed to keep the horror from showing on his face and I don't know how he was able to sleep all night with the thought of that roach crawling across him in the dark, but it seemed as though he did.
As I understand it, Jimmy Draper stopped preaching at revivals after that and was president of Lifeway Christian Ministries till his retirement. I think they always put him up in motels when he traveled.
The evangelist would stay in someone's home, in their guest room or in little Albert's room and Albert bunked in with his brother and whined about it the whole time. This was probably for one week, then he packed up and stayed in another house for the second week. Evening meals were in still other church members' homes each day and the ladies all vied to see who had the best fried chicken so the preacher had chicken at least five times each week. At every dining room table he told jokes and exclaimed "This is the best fried chicken I've had in I don't remember how long!" You thought preacher's never wear watches so they don't have to quit preaching on time but it is really so they can make statements like that without actually lying.
Shortly after Dennis and I bought our first house, four rooms with no garage, no attic, and no basement, our church was having a revival meeting and Dr. Jimmy Draper, then the pastor of a large church in the Kansas City area, was going to preach. I don't know what we were thinking since along with no garage, no attic and no basement we also had almost no furniture, but we asked to have the preacher stay at our house and we won! He would stay one night, Saturday. I guess the family where he had been staying had other plans for that night
We set about getting our tiny house ready. The cardboard boxes that we were using for night stands were draped with pillowcases that almost matched our bedding. I cut orange and yellow flowers out of contact paper and applied them, with much sticking to my arms and peeling and re-sticking, to the fronts of the metal kitchen cabinets and we rearranged the avocado green and harvest gold couch, ( Danish modern with the end tables built in, such a deal,) and matching chair and the TV on it's metal rolling stand around and around the living room till they were just right. I cleaned the only bathroom, a very efficient place in which you could take care of all of your needs without moving more than a foot from the same spot. Dennis handled the linoleum floors. He may have missed the part about sweeping when he agreed to sweep, mop and wax them because I found a penny waxed down to the floor in the kitchen, but, hey, he was doing his share.
The only thing missing was a bed for Dr. Draper to sleep on. Not to worry. We had the classified ads and a friend with a truck. Dennis and our friend got the small sleeper sofa that we found---$15 dollars!---into our second bedroom, which was the size of a walk-in closet, although we didn't even know what a walk-in closet was back then, just in time. It barely fit but it looked like there would just be room to open it up. The doorbell rang. Time to impress the visiting preacher!
This was going to be a rare day of rest for him, so Dennis got him as comfortable as possible on the couch, comfortable being a relative term since there were no arms, only end tables. We got him a Pepsi and set out our gourmet snacks, a chip bowl with dip bowl attached by a metal rack that matched the faux brass TV stand, filled with potato chips and dip that I made from sour cream and onion soup mix. Dennis, man of the house, turned on the 13" black and white TV and they watched football. I made an apple pie while the men were watching the game. I wore a dainty apron. Pre-food processor days, just slicing the apples occupied me through more than the third quarter. The house smelled of cinnamon and apples. It was very homey.
Now, you think this is going to be another culinary catastrophe, for which I've become somewhat famous, but it's not. The pastor picked Dr. Draper up when the game was over so he could eat a chicken dinner at a church member's home, we all went to the revival meeting and we saved the pie for after church. It was delicious, thank you very much.
No, the excitement came as we were preparing for bed. Dr. Draper, always the gentleman, insisted on helping me get the sofa bed ready. I brought in some wedding gift sheets and a wedding gift blanket. I brought in the fluffy pillow, not quite down, but the best $3.99 pillow TG&Y had in stock. We took the cushions off the sleeper sofa. Dr. Draper pulled open the mattress---And out ran a roach! I don't know where it ran to. I don't know how Dr. Draper managed to keep the horror from showing on his face and I don't know how he was able to sleep all night with the thought of that roach crawling across him in the dark, but it seemed as though he did.
As I understand it, Jimmy Draper stopped preaching at revivals after that and was president of Lifeway Christian Ministries till his retirement. I think they always put him up in motels when he traveled.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Down Home In Oklahoma
This will probably come as a surprise to those of you who have heard my accent but I was not born and raised in Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma and have lived here more years than I have lived anywhere else and even though we moved away for three years awhile ago, when we moved back and crossed the state line I wanted to get out and kiss the red dirt, I had missed it so much. That being said, it has come to my attention that there are a few things that are still lacking in my Okie-ness.
First, and this is entirely my mother's fault---I just saw a study that said what mom's eat while pregnant influences what their kids will like and my mom's idea of exotic food was any vegetable other than green beans or corn---I do not like Mexican food.
I know, I'm probably the only person you have ever met, or cyber-met, who doesn't like Mexican food, but there it is. I mean, look at it logically. Take refried beans. You can't tell me you have never looked at them and thought they looked like maybe the dog had eaten them first. And chili rellenos? This is one of Dennis's favorites (he wasn't born here either but he pretends). I never see this culinary delight on a plate without thinking it looks like they have baked a rat, covered it with sauce and cheese, and served it to him, tail and all. I believe all you people who choose a Mexican restaurant every Sunday after church and especially on your birthday, and take your picante sauce the spicier the better, have in reality just had your taste buds burned to numbness and are not really tasting what you are eating. Or looking at it. I'm pretty sure this is every Oklahoman I have ever met.
Come to think of it, that is probably why you drink so much iced tea. But you'll never believe this. I do not like iced tea. Give me Diet Coke or plain old water, but not tea. Not iced. Do you know there are parts of the country where they don't even have iced tea on the menu except in the summer? And they certainly don't come to your table with full pitchers of it to refill you glass all during a meal. Don't be afraid here: Some places don't have iced tea available at all. If you go there, take your own.
Then there is the issue of Country and Western Music. I'm sorry, I guess I was born this way but if you wanted to torture me into giving up military secrets, betraying my country and all that is dear to me, forget water boarding or sleep deprivation. You could probably accomplish it by locking me in a room with somebody twanging about their lost loves or trucks or dogs or you name it, for---I don't know---24 hours or so and I would give up every secret I ever knew like a blithering idiot just to get it to stop. Didn't they break down Noriega that way?
There are people who have attempted to take advantage of this failing and almost succeeded, like when Jake and Robyn were not yet married and I wound up riding in a car with them all the way from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. They found a Country Music station on the radio and played it for 500 miles. I believe it was a test to see what kind of mother-in-law I was going to be. I had to plug my ears, cover my eyes and go to my Happy Place but I think I fooled Robyn enough that she did not call off the wedding. We had pizza for lunch though, since I was buying.
And it was Josh, when he was a teen-ager, who got in my car while I wasn't looking, and set every one of the radio buttons on a different Country Music station and turned the volume up full blast, knowing full well that when I turned the car on it would blare loud enough for all the neighbors to hear and that I didn't know how to re-set the buttons. I'll get him back someday.
I don't think Dennis cares much either way, but since our house is a Country Music-free zone, he just hasn't been exposed to it much, so he is not that familiar with the genre. We figured this out a few years ago when he was selling real estate and sold some property in Yukon, OK, to a guy named Troyal Brooks. Mr. Brooks was purchasing a ranch there for his mom and dad, and seemed like a really nice young man. After he and Dennis had spent several hours together looking at the land and then signing paperwork, Dennis met with the other broker and said. "Boy, that buyer sure seemed familiar but I can't quite place him." To which, the other realtor replied. "Oh, that's Garth Brooks. Troyal is his real first name but he goes by his middle name." Hey, if Dennis gets to stay in Oklahoma, I get to stay, too!
And, oh, gosh! I almost forgot that I don't like football, red or orange. I think I may be in trouble.
I confess my failings. Please don't ask me to leave. How can you not love a state that has towns with names like Bug Tussle and Bushyhead
My boys weren't born here but they have lived here most of their lives and I think a little of the red dirt runs in their veins. Josh says I need to be nice to him since he's the one who will pick my nursing home some day. I'll likely be deaf by then and eating a soft diet so I guess as long as it is in Oklahoma, it will be okay.
First, and this is entirely my mother's fault---I just saw a study that said what mom's eat while pregnant influences what their kids will like and my mom's idea of exotic food was any vegetable other than green beans or corn---I do not like Mexican food.
I know, I'm probably the only person you have ever met, or cyber-met, who doesn't like Mexican food, but there it is. I mean, look at it logically. Take refried beans. You can't tell me you have never looked at them and thought they looked like maybe the dog had eaten them first. And chili rellenos? This is one of Dennis's favorites (he wasn't born here either but he pretends). I never see this culinary delight on a plate without thinking it looks like they have baked a rat, covered it with sauce and cheese, and served it to him, tail and all. I believe all you people who choose a Mexican restaurant every Sunday after church and especially on your birthday, and take your picante sauce the spicier the better, have in reality just had your taste buds burned to numbness and are not really tasting what you are eating. Or looking at it. I'm pretty sure this is every Oklahoman I have ever met.
Come to think of it, that is probably why you drink so much iced tea. But you'll never believe this. I do not like iced tea. Give me Diet Coke or plain old water, but not tea. Not iced. Do you know there are parts of the country where they don't even have iced tea on the menu except in the summer? And they certainly don't come to your table with full pitchers of it to refill you glass all during a meal. Don't be afraid here: Some places don't have iced tea available at all. If you go there, take your own.
Then there is the issue of Country and Western Music. I'm sorry, I guess I was born this way but if you wanted to torture me into giving up military secrets, betraying my country and all that is dear to me, forget water boarding or sleep deprivation. You could probably accomplish it by locking me in a room with somebody twanging about their lost loves or trucks or dogs or you name it, for---I don't know---24 hours or so and I would give up every secret I ever knew like a blithering idiot just to get it to stop. Didn't they break down Noriega that way?
There are people who have attempted to take advantage of this failing and almost succeeded, like when Jake and Robyn were not yet married and I wound up riding in a car with them all the way from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. They found a Country Music station on the radio and played it for 500 miles. I believe it was a test to see what kind of mother-in-law I was going to be. I had to plug my ears, cover my eyes and go to my Happy Place but I think I fooled Robyn enough that she did not call off the wedding. We had pizza for lunch though, since I was buying.
And it was Josh, when he was a teen-ager, who got in my car while I wasn't looking, and set every one of the radio buttons on a different Country Music station and turned the volume up full blast, knowing full well that when I turned the car on it would blare loud enough for all the neighbors to hear and that I didn't know how to re-set the buttons. I'll get him back someday.
I don't think Dennis cares much either way, but since our house is a Country Music-free zone, he just hasn't been exposed to it much, so he is not that familiar with the genre. We figured this out a few years ago when he was selling real estate and sold some property in Yukon, OK, to a guy named Troyal Brooks. Mr. Brooks was purchasing a ranch there for his mom and dad, and seemed like a really nice young man. After he and Dennis had spent several hours together looking at the land and then signing paperwork, Dennis met with the other broker and said. "Boy, that buyer sure seemed familiar but I can't quite place him." To which, the other realtor replied. "Oh, that's Garth Brooks. Troyal is his real first name but he goes by his middle name." Hey, if Dennis gets to stay in Oklahoma, I get to stay, too!
And, oh, gosh! I almost forgot that I don't like football, red or orange. I think I may be in trouble.
I confess my failings. Please don't ask me to leave. How can you not love a state that has towns with names like Bug Tussle and Bushyhead
My boys weren't born here but they have lived here most of their lives and I think a little of the red dirt runs in their veins. Josh says I need to be nice to him since he's the one who will pick my nursing home some day. I'll likely be deaf by then and eating a soft diet so I guess as long as it is in Oklahoma, it will be okay.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Hang Ups
Back in the olden days, when cell phones had just come out, a man came into the furniture store where I worked, pulled out this thing that looked like a brick with a stick on it, and called his wife to describe a curio cabinet he was looking at. I couldn't believe it. How ostentatious! Then Dennis insisted I get one. It stayed in my purse most of the time, although it made my purse weigh about the same as a small child when I carried it, because I was embarrassed by it, except Dennis would call me every once in awhile to say "Can you hear me? How about now?" and then I had to bring it out in public.
Flash forward to now and if I don't have my cell phone in my pocket I get kind of panicky, especially if I'm away from home. What if I get lost? What if someone gets sick? What if there's a sale going on and I don't hear about it?
Because of that I'm very careful not to lose it. I keep it in my pocket at all times except when it is on the charger right on my bed table. OK, sometimes I do have to search for it: Down the inside of my chair. On the floor of the car. In the window-well of the car. On the dog food bin. But it always turns up. And if it doesn't, you just dial the number and follow the ringing.
Well, there was that one time when I had come back in from the car to look for it on the charger by my bed,---not there---so I simply called it. I could hear it ringing, tantalizingly near, somewhere close. Not in the pillow case, not under the blankets, not anywhere! I kept calling it from the house phone and could hear it ringing, taunting me, but could not find it. I was just about to lay down on the floor to look under the bed, which would have necessitated a call from SOME kind of phone for help to get me back up, when I happened to feel in the back pocket of my jeans. Who puts their phone in the BACK pocket of their jeans???
It turned up in a flower pot once, down among the geraniums that I had just watered. I don't know! I think I had it in my shirt pocket for some reason and it slipped out. And why did I go back out there to look? Who knows. I pray a lot about my phone, that's all I think it could be. I'm glad God cares about the little things in our lives and not just emergencies. Well, sometimes it seems like an emergency to me when I'm looking for it.
Here is one of my famous household hints: If you are working out in the yard and you come in through the laundry room and the washer is going, don't just take your muddy jeans off right there and throw them in the washer. First take your cell phone out of your pocket. Even a bag of rice won't rescue a cell phone once it has been agitated, rinsed and spun.
I know about the rice (if your cell phone gets wet, take it completely apart, battery, Sim card and all and seal everything up inside a Ziploc bag of dry rice and leave it for 24 hours or so. Thank you, Google) because I may have dropped my phone in the toilet once. Or twice. What?? I'm not the first person to have done it or how would Google have known what to tell me to do? I saw a TV commercial for a toilet that is so powerful it can flush down golf balls and tools and things. I'm glad I didn't spring for that one when we put in a new toilet last year. But, anyway, the rice only works sometimes.
The guy at the AT&T store doesn't want you to know about the rice. He just wants to sell you another phone. So if you have an extra phone because the rice actually finally worked the second time you tried but you didn't trust it and went and bought a new phone, you'll be ready for anything. It would be wise, however, to take the phone out of your pocket when you go into the bathroom and leave it on the counter till you are finished in there. But don't drop it in the water while washing your hands. I have my rice still in the bag, just in case.
All around me I see people using their smart phones. My kids have every App known to man. They even have every translation of the Bible ever written on their smart phones; they are ready for a Sword Drill at any moment. There are games, fish swimming, lips that make you look like you are a goober when you hold them up to your mouth, and much more, and they even talk to each other face to face from 100 miles apart.
I don't think I want a phone that is smarter than me though. Not until they make one smart enough to stay out of trouble and find it's way home when it gets lost.
Flash forward to now and if I don't have my cell phone in my pocket I get kind of panicky, especially if I'm away from home. What if I get lost? What if someone gets sick? What if there's a sale going on and I don't hear about it?
Because of that I'm very careful not to lose it. I keep it in my pocket at all times except when it is on the charger right on my bed table. OK, sometimes I do have to search for it: Down the inside of my chair. On the floor of the car. In the window-well of the car. On the dog food bin. But it always turns up. And if it doesn't, you just dial the number and follow the ringing.
Well, there was that one time when I had come back in from the car to look for it on the charger by my bed,---not there---so I simply called it. I could hear it ringing, tantalizingly near, somewhere close. Not in the pillow case, not under the blankets, not anywhere! I kept calling it from the house phone and could hear it ringing, taunting me, but could not find it. I was just about to lay down on the floor to look under the bed, which would have necessitated a call from SOME kind of phone for help to get me back up, when I happened to feel in the back pocket of my jeans. Who puts their phone in the BACK pocket of their jeans???
It turned up in a flower pot once, down among the geraniums that I had just watered. I don't know! I think I had it in my shirt pocket for some reason and it slipped out. And why did I go back out there to look? Who knows. I pray a lot about my phone, that's all I think it could be. I'm glad God cares about the little things in our lives and not just emergencies. Well, sometimes it seems like an emergency to me when I'm looking for it.
Here is one of my famous household hints: If you are working out in the yard and you come in through the laundry room and the washer is going, don't just take your muddy jeans off right there and throw them in the washer. First take your cell phone out of your pocket. Even a bag of rice won't rescue a cell phone once it has been agitated, rinsed and spun.
I know about the rice (if your cell phone gets wet, take it completely apart, battery, Sim card and all and seal everything up inside a Ziploc bag of dry rice and leave it for 24 hours or so. Thank you, Google) because I may have dropped my phone in the toilet once. Or twice. What?? I'm not the first person to have done it or how would Google have known what to tell me to do? I saw a TV commercial for a toilet that is so powerful it can flush down golf balls and tools and things. I'm glad I didn't spring for that one when we put in a new toilet last year. But, anyway, the rice only works sometimes.
The guy at the AT&T store doesn't want you to know about the rice. He just wants to sell you another phone. So if you have an extra phone because the rice actually finally worked the second time you tried but you didn't trust it and went and bought a new phone, you'll be ready for anything. It would be wise, however, to take the phone out of your pocket when you go into the bathroom and leave it on the counter till you are finished in there. But don't drop it in the water while washing your hands. I have my rice still in the bag, just in case.
All around me I see people using their smart phones. My kids have every App known to man. They even have every translation of the Bible ever written on their smart phones; they are ready for a Sword Drill at any moment. There are games, fish swimming, lips that make you look like you are a goober when you hold them up to your mouth, and much more, and they even talk to each other face to face from 100 miles apart.
I don't think I want a phone that is smarter than me though. Not until they make one smart enough to stay out of trouble and find it's way home when it gets lost.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Piece of Cake
My friend, Pam, reminded me of a story I told her years ago about one of my early culinary efforts and she wants me to relate it to you. I honestly had forgotten all about it but some people obviously have memories like elephants and I probably need to learn to blab a little less if I want things to stay in the past. If I was crafty I think I would needlepoint a sign: "What Happens in Pat's Kitchen Stays in Pat's Kitchen" but I suppose if I don't tell you someone else will.
Bear in mind that these things happened long ago when I was first learning to cook. I have been cooking a very lo-o-ong time since then so you are safe to eat here now. Usually. (Some daughters-in-law are the exceptions to the rule)
It was actually a few years after the first meal I cooked for Dennis when I used all the milk in the mashed potatoes and there wasn't enough left to thin the gravy and he put the potatoes on top of the gravy instead of the other way around. And it was a few years before the time I tried a new recipe and when we finally gave up on it and decided to go out for pizza and I put it on the floor for the dog and she only ate the broccoli next to it. Now that I think of it, once we could afford it we did eat out a lot but I thought it was just because Dennis likes to socialize.
I don't remember who was coming to dinner that night but it was someone I wanted to impress so I decided an angel food cake would be good and low calorie too. The recipe called for lots of eggs whites without the yolks, whatever that was about, and after a few futile attempts at that trick I finally figured out that you can break the egg into a little funnel and the white goes through but the yellow stays in the top. Then you had to beat all those egg whites and "fold" them into the rest of the batter. Remember that Rachel Ray had not been born yet, so I had never heard of folding in regard to anything but laundry---and maybe money. I decided that it probably meant "gently". So I gently layered the egg whites and all the other ingredients together, poured them into my wedding gift tube pan and put it into the oven.
I was a little disappointed when I took it out of the oven and it seemed to be about the same height as when it went in but I kept on following the directions. They said you should invert the tube pan onto a large funnel to let the cake cool, but since the only funnel we had was the tiny one I had used to separate the eggs I set it over a Coke bottle, same concept it seemed to me, and went on fixing whatever else we had planned for the meal. The exact menu has mercifully escaped me.
When Dennis came into the kitchen I looked for sympathy. "Look at the cake. It hardly rose at all!" I said. And he said "You mean this cake wrapped around the Coke bottle?" The 2 inch high cake had fallen from the tube pan and impaled itself on the Coke bottle and there was no sliding it off, no how, no way. I didn't want to cut slices of it before our guest came, presentation being everything in entertaining, you know, but eventually that is what we had to do. And right there were all the ingredients: egg whites here, baking powder there, flour next to that, all in their individual tunnels. For some reason I think we had ice cream for dessert.
I have made lots of cakes since then, I can even separate eggs with only my hands, but rarely do I fold in ingredients of any kind. And here's a household tip: if you want to leave water outside for the dog but he knocks the bowl over as soon as you are out of sight, you can put the water in a tube pan, drive a stick down into the ground through the hole in the middle and the pan will stay in one place. You don't really want it for angel food cake. That comes from the bakery, if it all. I found out Dennis doesn't like it anyway.
And if I remember anything else about the food that particular evening, I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially Pam.
Bear in mind that these things happened long ago when I was first learning to cook. I have been cooking a very lo-o-ong time since then so you are safe to eat here now. Usually. (Some daughters-in-law are the exceptions to the rule)
It was actually a few years after the first meal I cooked for Dennis when I used all the milk in the mashed potatoes and there wasn't enough left to thin the gravy and he put the potatoes on top of the gravy instead of the other way around. And it was a few years before the time I tried a new recipe and when we finally gave up on it and decided to go out for pizza and I put it on the floor for the dog and she only ate the broccoli next to it. Now that I think of it, once we could afford it we did eat out a lot but I thought it was just because Dennis likes to socialize.
I don't remember who was coming to dinner that night but it was someone I wanted to impress so I decided an angel food cake would be good and low calorie too. The recipe called for lots of eggs whites without the yolks, whatever that was about, and after a few futile attempts at that trick I finally figured out that you can break the egg into a little funnel and the white goes through but the yellow stays in the top. Then you had to beat all those egg whites and "fold" them into the rest of the batter. Remember that Rachel Ray had not been born yet, so I had never heard of folding in regard to anything but laundry---and maybe money. I decided that it probably meant "gently". So I gently layered the egg whites and all the other ingredients together, poured them into my wedding gift tube pan and put it into the oven.
I was a little disappointed when I took it out of the oven and it seemed to be about the same height as when it went in but I kept on following the directions. They said you should invert the tube pan onto a large funnel to let the cake cool, but since the only funnel we had was the tiny one I had used to separate the eggs I set it over a Coke bottle, same concept it seemed to me, and went on fixing whatever else we had planned for the meal. The exact menu has mercifully escaped me.
When Dennis came into the kitchen I looked for sympathy. "Look at the cake. It hardly rose at all!" I said. And he said "You mean this cake wrapped around the Coke bottle?" The 2 inch high cake had fallen from the tube pan and impaled itself on the Coke bottle and there was no sliding it off, no how, no way. I didn't want to cut slices of it before our guest came, presentation being everything in entertaining, you know, but eventually that is what we had to do. And right there were all the ingredients: egg whites here, baking powder there, flour next to that, all in their individual tunnels. For some reason I think we had ice cream for dessert.
I have made lots of cakes since then, I can even separate eggs with only my hands, but rarely do I fold in ingredients of any kind. And here's a household tip: if you want to leave water outside for the dog but he knocks the bowl over as soon as you are out of sight, you can put the water in a tube pan, drive a stick down into the ground through the hole in the middle and the pan will stay in one place. You don't really want it for angel food cake. That comes from the bakery, if it all. I found out Dennis doesn't like it anyway.
And if I remember anything else about the food that particular evening, I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially Pam.
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