A to Z Challenge Reflections

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/2016/05/2016-to-z-challenge-reflections.html

Reflections on the 2016 A to Z Challenge.  One major-time!  I do not have time to read everything I wanted to during the month.  I will be availing myself of the list during the rest of the year.  I did have fun reading many of the posts.  I think, not, I know the main reason I didn't have time to read as much as I liked was because I checked out blog posts as well as sites.  That can seriously cut into reading time.  Another thing was reading the other comments and checking out those who made some interesting points.

I also do Camp NaNoWriMo during the month.  Two major Challenges in one month?  Can be done, with some planning.  I wrote my entries in February and March using my Scrivener, Aeon and Scapple programs.  Not that I was paid to write that, it's just my life has gotten simpler using these and at the same time, more complicated because I happen to think that I can do so much more now that my tracking and writing has gotten simpler.  As I scheduled the posts, I edited.   Doing both well takes a bit of pre-planning.

One problem I had was finding follow links.  I thought back to when I first started blogging.  There were a couple that I didn’t even have an idea about doing until I had read a few of the blogs of the more experienced bloggers.  Of all the sites I checked out, the NaNoWriMo and A to Z challenge sites were the most helpful, especially the Captain’s Ninjas.  A few were helpful enough to send me an email.  I may not have let them know I appreciated the help.  Here is a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped me in some way.

However, I would like to point out that, I have and will continue to have my idea of who, what, where, when, and why I write and sometimes I fit in, sometimes, I edit, sometimes I revise.  That’s all anyone can do, really.  So, my take on the whole Challenge?  Have fun, learn one or two things and move on.

Zest

Zest.  Ahh, what a word for this last day of the A to Z Challenge.  Zest.  You know what?  I was in my thirties before I found out what zest as pertains to cooking was.  Yepper, typical rez indian.  Don’t

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really know enough about the world from either viewpoint.  There’s so much tugging at one’s brain when growing up.  Is that fair?  Nope.  Just one of those facts of life.

Even after I found out what zest was, I still don’t use it in my cooking.  The closest is when I peel an orange and eat the white part of the rind and toss the orange part.  Yep, that’s how I was taught to eat that part of the orange.  Don’t really eat lemons or grapefruits.   Well, now grapefruits, once every fourth blue moon.  But I don’t eat the rinds of those fruit either.  Sort of like what’s with that?  Though it does fall into the category of use everything you can.  Don’t think I’ll add that to my repertoire though.  Orange and lemon zest?  Hmm.

I have trouble enough just grating cheese for our once a month or so Indian tacos.  And no, I think you might have already guessed this about me.  I don’t particularly care if I’m politically correct or not, I’ve stated before, you don’t have to read my writing.  Sometimes, I think that one can find anything to be offended about and try to get others to feel guilty about it.  Well, consider some of the trends from the past few years.  Yes, yes, yes, I do know the difference between insult deliberately and insult without thought.

However, as my Mom was fond of saying, “I’m not a mind reader.”  It’s like a few of my Elders tried so hard to get me to learn-”If you can’t laugh at yourself, then don’t laugh at others mistakes.”  Or something to that effect.  Now here I am being polite.

Yep, Polite.  Not politically correct.  Why?  Because we were raised to let others think for themselves.  We were taught that everyone can have their say.  And to stand up for ourselves.  So, I think that zest as applied to life is also made up of oranges and lemons, some whole, some sliced, and some zested.  Probably with a few apples, pears and blueberries tossed in.

What happens when you go grocery shopping?  You pick and choose, you compare, you check out the price and then decide whether or not to buy those products there or do you go somewhere else and buy them?  Unless, of course, if one is in a hurry and just grabs any old thing, heads to the counter and pays for it.

When you get the groceries home and start putting them away, then you discover that one or two of the items are spoiled, imperfect in some way.  What do you do then?  Do you take the package back and try to get a refund?  Toss it?  Or make do?  Zest.

Yeast type bread

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Yeast. Well, for those of you who’ve followed me or read a few of my other posts here and elsewhere already know about me cooking with yeast.  Well, I’ll not bore you with repetition.  Instead, I’ll regale you with stories of my sister’s efforts at mastering the art of making breads with yeast.  I’ve watched her over the years and she’d become quite the master.

Methinks she’s in the same canoe as I am when it comes to the clamoring that certain members of our family makes whenever they get a hankering for cinnamon rolls, or even her mighty tasty biscuits.  Both of these dishes come out of the oven and are devoured before they even have a chance to cool off.  Mmmm.  We like the accolades.  We just don’t want to stand there doing all that hard work.  At least, I don’t have to stand there and pound on that bread, lift it up, flip over here and there, find another good spot to punch, lift up and repeat.  I only have to make sure my dough is just sticky enough to work the flour in when I form the bread into it’s distinctive shape and fry it.  Cept, I don’t use as much oil, just enough to get the pan hot enough for the bread to rise as it cooks.

Whereas she has to let it rise, then go through that lifting, punching, lift, sprinkle flour, and punch it down dance, not once but twice.  Sometimes, if she really feels like it’s worth it, she’ll let it rise a third time before forming those rolls, cutting it into that yummy shape and letting them rise one more time before setting them into that hot oven.

Methinks she’s just like me when it comes to the amount.  Neither one of us feels right when we make just enough for who ever’s at the house at the time we are finally making that bread.  We use roughly five to ten pounds of flour.  Yep, that’s right.  We go by the pound when making bread.  None of this dainty cup by cup stuff for us.  It has to be that way if we want enough to have with our dinner, or lunch or whatever.

Yes, she’s tried to get me into the groove of making yeast bread.  However, I think I’d be the dainty one using just a few cups in one of those smallish bowls.  Sort of like when we make baking powder biscuits, which by the way, my son makes about as often as me and sister make our bread.  Once in a blue moon.  Oh, man, now I’m getting hungry just thinking about that bread and biscuits.  Not hungry enough to go and make some though.

The Letter X

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X.  The letter X is a mighty difficult letter to find a word that starts with it.  Don’t think we even have that letter x or it’s sound in Anishinabe.  And no, I’m not going to take the time to research it.  And really when one thinks about it, most of the words that do start with that letter sound like other letter sounds, like xylophone or…or…hiac.  Stumped me thoroughly right there.

Asked my youngest son if he could think of a word that starts with that letter.  XBox.  I thought of x’d out.  Hmm.  Quite the quandary for us.  Didn’t ask the Eldest, who has access to plenty of the weirdling words in his jaunts through cyberspace.  He’d probably come up with something that’d be hard for me to even think about, much less write about.  I don’t follow the role playing games, the video games or even much of the science fiction type stuff anymore.  Much of it’s just too esoteric for me now.  Aack.  It’s just that I might be just a tad bit lazy.  Or is it that I might just find myself dragged into one of those black holes that one can get dragged into so very easily when flitting here and there about the above mentioned cyberspace.  I do have a tendency to get lost and take days, even weeks, to find my way back to this reality.

So.  Cooking, nah.  Nothing in that category either.  Is there even anything the particular category titled Cooking/Food that I could even contemplate?  Methinks, that siren call of the ‘Net is beginning to make itself heard above the music I’ve set up so that I can write to my heart’s content.  This blasted laptop and that dagnabbed mouse thingy right in the middle of the top, that’s sitting right where I sometimes rest my hand whilst trying to think of the next word to type.  It also controls the mouse tail that I sometimes have to send the mouse itself on a mad dash around the mouse pad so that that tail can be spotted somewhere on the screen and I can bring it back into line.

Sometimes, I can’t even find the spot where those few letters that I typed have ended up.  And upon occasion, I’ve even caused my computer to save, delete or otherwise do something that I specially didn’t want it doing at the particular time my hand, thumb or wrist decided that it needed a rest.  Sometimes, I think the laptop mouse pad itself leaps right up to my dangling thumb as I type.

Ahh, methinks that those gremlins have been patient long enough and have decided that my life needs to become a bit more interesting as my year of mourning comes to a close.  We’ll see what happens in the next few days.  I’m thinking that I’ve come up with a plan to fool those gremlins.  Think I’ll just contemplate the letter x for a few more days.

Watermelon

Watermelon.  Yes, I don’t care for watermelon.  Not sure why.  Everyone else likes it.  Least enough to eat it when it’s served.  I pass 99.8% of the time.  Once every third blue moon, I’ll eat it.  When my sons and I lived by ourselves, they didn’t get much in the way of such things as watermelon.  Might be that’s why we ended up living with Mom.  Least they got more of a variety of foods to eat.

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Don’t get me wrong, I did cook.  Just not things I didn’t much care for.  Course most of this time was when I was experimenting with cooking.  Even though I had to cook when I was young and foolish, I didn’t really learn how to cook much of anything.  Well, for one thing, since we bought food in bulk, we ended up cooking the same meals, day in, day out, week after week.  And it got boring.

Why?  Hmm, thinking it was mostly cause we rarely had all the ingredients necessary for most of the recipes.  Oh, there were spices that Mom used and I learned to put in the food.  But…yeah, yeah, yeah, here comes the but.  A word I am trying very hard to get out of my vocabulary, due in great part to one of my counselors telling us that “But” was just an excuse.  Along with “can’t,” there isn’t much that can be done, thought or said without some serious editing. Anyway, back to the spices and watermelon.

Watermelon was something we only bought like twice a year, in the summer, like in July or August.  Sort of like the pumpkins that were only purchased like once a year.  Same with the spices.  And it wasn’t very cost-effective to buy a whole can of spice just for one time of experimenting.  Cause then it would just go to waste.  Course that took many, many moons for that to sink into my head.

And watermelon comes in different sizes so I wouldn’t really need to buy the whole big watermelon.  Heck, it’s even sold by the slice nowadays.  And it’s on my list for the garden.  So, it shouldn’t really…Oh, oh.  Another word I was advised to watch out for as shouldn’t implies perfection.  And wouldn’t.  Man, oh man, I’ve not been so conscious of all the words I have been trying to remove from my vocabulary.  Ahh, well, there’s another goal, habit? Something I can use when revising.  Added to the list of things I’d much rather not be doing, eating or saying, well.  I lead a pretty active life, since I am busy trying to not do something.  And the other part, I’ve been off looking at the greener grass over to my next state over neighbor’s yard.  Yep, that’s what can happen in these days of the ‘Net.

Ahh, well, methinks I’ll just plant a watermelon seed or two and see if I can learn to like watermelon as much as my family does.

Venison

Woke up to pounding on the door.  Heard Mom and Auntie talking.  Then something being dragged down the stairs.  Someone was hollering for a knife.  Flew out of bed to check over the railing.  There were about four or five people at the bottom bent over something on the floor.  Huge flood of relief when I was finally able to see that it was only a deer.

“Hurry up and bring a knife.”

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I ran to get one and handed it to my cousin.  Then the boys went out and I had to go down and help dress out the deer.  I wasn’t too excited.  Good thing I hadn’t changed into pajamas, now that I think about it.  It was bout midnight or so when they’d come in.  Shining season on the rez.  It took us about an hour to get it all done, packaged and put away.  Now at least we had enough meat for a while.  One deer lasted for most of the winter, providing we got other meats.

The first thing we did after that was cook up a frying pan full with gravy and potatoes.  Then we ate and went back to bed.  Wasn’t often that we’d be woken up like that.  Most times, we’d know when someone was out hunting for us and we’d be ready.  So that night was a real happy surprise for Mom and Auntie.  Specially since it’d been a while since anyone had some.  It was rare when there wasn’t anything like venison, duck or fish in the freezer.

We had manomin, wild rice, to go with.  Or potatoes.  Some kind of vegetable.  Onions, another necessity.  That night’s meal was delicious, even if I was a bit crabby bout being woken up.   Sometimes it was hard to get my sons back to sleep when they were woken up.  That night they went right back to sleep.  Sometimes, I wonder what some of my friends would think if they came to the house whilst we were busy doing something like this.  I know most of them get their food at the grocery store.

I think the main reason I was crabby is pulling the hide off the deer.  It takes such a long time cause 1. My hands aren’t up to par for grabbing hold of things and 2. I don’t have much strength which means I have to find another means of pulling and I end up in the way.  Sometimes people forget that my hands and arms are scarred, which is how I want it.  And I don’t like reminding them cause then it sounds like I’m whining.  I’m not.  I have to settle for doing what I can and it’s not easy to skin a deer when one is in a hurry to get back to sleep.

*No, I am not going to defend my way of life from those who think animals must be “saved.”  We respect the animal’s gift which is the reason a meal is cooked right away, showing thanks.

Unleavened Bread#

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Unleavened bread.  Yep, I searched high and low for a food that began with today’s letter.  I searched my memory for how we used to make bread in the old, old days.  Don’t have an idea.  I do remember Auntie Vera making a flatbread of some sort.  Ahh, now I remember.  Mom tried to show me how to make it.  However, at the time, I was struggling to perfect my fry bread making skills, amongst other things.

When I was first learning how to cook, I didn’t even know there was such as thing as unleavened bread.  Even when I was taking that Home Ec class, I’m sorry to say that the light bulb stayed dark.  Fact, I must have been in a whole completely different room the day that unleavened bread was covered.  Didn’t find my way back until I struggled to make bread one day and found that there wasn’t even a dust mote of baking powder in the house.  Not even frantic forays to several houses in the vicinity turned up any baking powder, or even bread already cooked.  Now what?  We ate our soup without any bread that day.

So, I always make sure I have at least ten pounds of flour, one can of baking powder and some kind of lard, oil or grease with which to make fry bread when we forget to stock up on bread.  Even that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll make fry bread every day though.  Not sure why I don’t like making it every day.  Could be the fact that I have to stand for an hour cooking it.  Cause I try to make enough to last for the day.

Mom always tried to put it in a plastic bag so keep it soft.  I wondered why, then figured out it was cause I didn’t always make it big and fluffy.  I like crunchy bread.  Found out that not everyone shares my passion for the crunch.  Ahh well, guess I’ll have to rethink my position on it.  Will have to see if I can find any recipes Mom might have written down.  Still haven’t gone through every single bit of the papers she stashed in various places around the house.

When I find that recipe, or figure it out, I’ll try to make it a couple times.  Not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to cook it though.  Have much other things I’d rather be doing, most of which don’t have a bit in common with, wait, think it does have a lot in common with learning how to cook.  Must have direction of some sort, must practice, must come up with a final dish that one is satisfied with.  Traveling down some paths that are dead ends means one has to turn around and figure something else out.  Hmmm.  Unleavened bread doesn’t have as many ingredients as leavened bread.  Basics first, then one can fancy it up how ever one wants.  Must ponder this some more.

Tuna

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Tuna.  Tuna, canned, is another staple which I don’t much care for.  I  think that fish is bout the only thing I’ll eat.  Ahh, one day we were sitting around eating walleye.  Not sure why I eat the fish the way I do.  May have gotten that from my dad.  I first pick off all the breading the fish is cooked in, then proceed to cut it apart and take out all the bones.  Which is what I proceeded to do.  I was so involved in eating that fish that I zoned out.

I felt someone watching me, so I looked up, glanced around and people were watching me eat.  Jenny motioned me to pick up the fish, put it in my mouth and eat.  I made a face and left the rest of my fish.  I was finished eating the portion I wanted anyway.  I just smiled and shook my head.  Well, one can’t eat tuna that way.  It’s cooked right into our meals.

My sister and my mom could eat it right out of the can.  Same thing with salmon, cept for sister, who doesn’t really care for salmon out of a can.  She does make a mean salmon loaf though.  And sardines.  I’d buy Mom a couple cans of sardines and crackers every time I went to town.  Not sure why I don’t care for sardines, either.  Thinking I might be a closet vegan?  Nah.  Think it’s just that I prefer the plant type food and I’ll eat protein when my body tells me to eat meat.

Now, tuna is cooked with noodles mostly, when we want a hot meal, with macaroni when we want the salad.  My son makes the best tuna salad and he makes lots of it.  We make a bit pot of something in the morning and munch on it the rest of the day.  Less, of course, if family members show up.  “When was this cooked?” if John comes home and sees food on the stove or the counter.  “Today” and he’ll eat.  Else he continues to the cupboards to see what is there to make a sandwich.

Ahhh, I shouldn’t have written that, cause now the whole world knows I don’t always do dishes right away.  I leave food out on the counter and I’m not perfect.  Well, what can one do when one is in the throes of the next scene complication that needs to be worked out?  They don’t even ask about food any more during the months of April, July and November.  Made progress in the past dozen or so years.  I’m not expected to cook or do much of anything during these months.  So, guess it’s back to canned tuna, macaroni and salad dressing.  And mustn’t forget the onions.

Reminds me.  I’ll have to stock up on the essentials cause April is just around the corner.  I’ve worked on the outlines for the books I want finished by June.  As soon as this challenge is drafted, along with a few more posts for my other blogs, I’ll get back to working on them.

Squash

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Squash.  Now, this is something I hadn’t really thought about.  Can’t remember eating it in any great quantity til sister moved back home and cooked it for us.  The whole family showed up when she was done.  And we ate it with gusto.  Mighty tasty, that squash was.  We ask her to cook it again and she’d just given me the recipe.

Me.  The one who has to burn food for years before getting the proper touch for it.  Well, I grew a couple varieties of squash…. By the way, I discovered that pumpkin is a squash.  Course we only ate pumpkin in pies at Thanksgiving.  I remember carving them as a kid.

We’d each get a pumpkin and have to cut it, pull the insides out and then make a face.  I struggled with the carving cause in those days, I didn’t want to stick my hand inside the big, orange head.  You can’t convince me that it isn’t.  Well, think about it.  We spend years teaching kids that a jack-o-lantern is only for Halloween and it’s scary.

Course, on the ‘Net researching for topics back when I was first happily exploring this business of writing, I found out a bit more about “Jack-o-lanterns.”  And I still think that it’s an actual head we’re carving on.  Funny, how thoughts can get started in one’s mind as a child.  I now see the reason for “Watch what you say when around kids.”  Course then one runs into the problem of those kids finding their information from elsewhere and that info might not always be the thing you want them to learn.

I relegated the pumpkin business to the back of my mind and only bought pumpkin pie mix in a can for a number of years.  My sons, sad to say, had to learn bout carving them in school.  However, last spring, well, actually, it was in February, that I started researching gardens.  I put pumpkins on the list of plants I wanted to grow.  Some might have grown if I hadn’t got distracted with my mother walking on right in the middle of growing season.  When I finally checked on the garden, there were a few giant size zucchinis, three giant sunflowers and tall corn stalks.  Very little else.  What?  No pumpkins?  Hahahohoheehee!

Right in the middle of setting up my garden, which was a little late anyway, I’d had to go to my Writing Conference for a week.  Since I’d planted the seeds, thought if I put plastic down, it’s keep the birds away.  Got back and found out that I had lost the markers for where my plants were.  And grass had gotten in the garden.  So I let it grow and said we’d see what’s what when ever whatever grew.  So, yep, no pumpkins.  Well, least not where I’d planted them.  I found one tiny little pumpkin down under the apple tree.  And no other squash grew.  Aw, well, there's always this summer. Yes!

R is for Rice.

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Rice is the word of the day.  This happens to be another staple in an Indian household.  Or Native, as it’s becoming politically popular to say.  White rice cooked mostly with tomatoes of some sort.  In soups.  Guess most of our food is cooked as soups.  Thinking that’s maybe cause it’s the only meal that can be cooked in the least amount of time, in large enough quantities to serve a large number of people.

Think it’s only been in the past few decades that our families have decreased in size.  I know our family consisting of 5 kids and 2 adults is considered large by today’s standards.  My sister has seven children, two sisters and a brother have four, I have two and another brother has one. When we were growing up, our family was a small one compared to those with a dozen children.  So, you can see why soups were a pretty popular meal.  Breakfast called for too many eggs, so scrambled was popular.  Hmm.

Now, I make rice once a week in the form of “Spanish rice.”  This is pretty much the only time I use bacon cause it’s mostly to add flavor, along with Onions.  And tomatoes.  Thinking our shopping list has changed very little since I was a child.  And I still buy it in bulk whenever I can.  Which explains why we usually have food all the time.

And my sister is the one who experiments with food.  When we were growing up, she  never wanted to cook.  She hated it with a passion.  In our house, the rule finally became the one who cooks doesn’t have to clean.  Which, of course, makes me a bit perturbed.  I find that nowadays, people are mosquitoes.  They show up to eat and then leave.  Used to be, they’d help clean.  Not now though.  Hmmm, quarrels about “slaves” come to mind.  And that might be a subject for another day when I feel like ranting and raving, venting, I think it’s called nowadays.

Any rate, my family suffered through many a burned pot of rice while I was learning how to cook this mighty popular dish. I haven’t mastered the art of cooking white rice yet.  My sister broke down and bought one of those ricers?  The machine that cooks perfect white rice, nice and fluffy, just right.  She cooked the first meal for me, one that called for thirds.  I scarfed the first one down cause it was flavored just right, mmm, butter and a bit of salt.  The second helping was also flavored in much the same way, cept it was a bit tastier.  Stood to reason, I had to check it out again.  Yep, perfect rice, every time.

Now, I think I might have to clutter up my kitchen with one of those just so I can make plain ol white rice.  Wonder if I could add raisins while it cooks?

Quick Oats

Quick cooking oats.  I could only think of quick when I checked out foods that start with “Q” and yes, I know, quinoa.  Well, I just barely heard about quinoa and it’s not a part of my life.  I also wanted to post about oatmeal as it been a big part of my life.  Light bulb!  Quick cooking oats.  Yes.  

If I had to estimate how many times I’ve eaten oatmeal, well, it just boggles my mind.  However, I will give it a try.  59 years x 365 days/3 meals x 4 days x 52 weeks x 59 years.  Hmm, looks a bit complicated as I don’t want to figure out the formula that I’m pretty sure an accomplished mathematician would.  Mayhaps, even an accountant?  Let’s see, that probably works out to about 88,092,506.66666667 times I’ve eaten oatmeal in my relatively long life.  You must remember, I am a member of a race that only has a lifespan of about 72 years which is a long ways from the one I grew up hearing bout- 42 years for our life expectancy. According to the latest, I have about 13-14 years left in which to eat oatmeal 3-4 times per week, adding a few more thousand of those. Hmm, Does that mean I’ll have eaten oatmeal bout 1,000,000 times in my life?  Cause I haven’t accounted for the times I’ve eaten oatmeal twice in one day.  

Well, that means then that I’ll have eaten toast at least that many times.  Maybe even more, since we eat toast with hamburger gravy, sometimes, just by itself.  Well.  Need to ponder on that.  Well, I did get so tired of eating oatmeal when I was a teen that I said I wouldn’t eat it as much.  And now what do I do?  Cook it at least 4 times a week.  MMMmmm.  With butter and brown sugar and toast or crackers.  Yep.  A delicious meal.  With the occasional sausage link, mostly cause the only place I eat the sausage patty is when I go to the “Bear” and eat their breakfast buffet.  Or if a restaurant happens to offer the patty, in which case I promptly order at least two.  No, I rarely cook bacon as I don’t particularly care to cook it.  It’s extremely hard for me to get the bacon to be exactly the way I like it every single time I cook it.  If it was more on the order of hamburger, I might eat it cause then I could cook it just right.  (Does this sound a bit like Goldilocks?)  

Anyway, Quick cooking oats.  When I learned how to cook it, I found out that one really needs to follow a recipe or it’ll take years.  I finally learned the secret of making it creamy.  I was in a hurry one day and threw the oatmeal in the pan before the water boiled.  And it turned out that that was the best.  Happy Day!
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*But Dr. Ted Marrs wrote the memo on April 26, 1976, and its subject was the original Indian Health Care Improvement Act. He wrote: “In 1974 the average age at death of Indians and Alaskan natives was 48.3. For white U.S. citizens the average age of death was 72.3. For others, the average age was 62.7.”http://www.dailyyonder.com/progress-native-american-health/2010/05/10/2732/

P-P-Potatoes

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Potatoes.  Now, I have a love/hate relationship with potatoes.  Oh, not for the reason that’s probably lurking in your thoughts bout now.  Nah, it’s cause I have to cook them.  There’s this skillet dish I cook that’s made of potatoes, eggs, onion, green peppers, upon occasion some kind of meat.  I usually make this dish on Saturday or Sunday mornings.

Upon occasion, I’m asked to make it on other mornings.  And there’s the hate part.  It’s not that I have a hard time to cook it.  It’s actually pretty easy and only takes about an hour from start to finish.  Think it’s more that it upsets my routine.  Even though I don’t work at a regular 9-5, I do have these projects that I’m sure some of you are aware of.  If not, feel free to check out some of my other blogs.  Or take out a subscription to the Bois Forte News or check it on line.

So, here’s my schedule: 0400 or thereabouts, I get up, make coffee, sit for a few minutes, contemplating the day.  When the sun rises, I start writing, for bout 2 hours.  Take a break, Write some more, an hour or so.  Well, it’s not a constant, peck, peck, peck.  But you get the idea.  Long bout 0900 or thereabouts, I’m usually done writing.  Then I do whatever needs to be done round the house.  Anything not done by Noon must wait til the next day.  Afternoons and evenings are for whatever my little heart desires.  Or if someone has asked me to do something.  Now, I checked out all these time management tips and such to help me get into the habit of writing and get things done.  Cause we aren’t all blessed with having “servants.”  No one thinks about the fact that I have things to do cause they think that my absence at a 9-5, or in the case here, 8-4:30, I must have all this time and that I’m bored.

As everyone who has, or intends to, make a living by selling their writing, whatever that may be, writing involves a lot of brain work.  And these particular people are aware of the folly of having those thoughts interrupted, particularly when an idea to solve a specially annoying plot problem has just occurred and one hasn’t yet written it down.  Then, interruption occurs right at the crucial  moment.

Now, I understand the necessity of food, drink or medical appointments.  I don’t want to give the idea that I don’t respond to a crisis.  It’s just that cooking fried potatoes doesn’t always jibe with what’s going on in my head at the moment.  It’s not an emergency as there’s other food that can be eaten at the time.

The other reason that I hate potatoes is when the guilt sets in and I get up and cook those potatoes at an unscheduled time.  Hummh.  A quandary sets in, cause then I’ve ruined the good mood of the person asking me, cause in the end I do love to cook potatoes as they’re easy, fast and smells good.

O, O, Onions

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Onions.  The staple of spices in our house.  Onions are put into everything I make.  I never thought about them as I grew up one way or the other.  Onions in our food was just another fact of life.  I didn’t mind them in the food.  It was the getting them in the food that was not my “cup of tea.”  I didn’t even know that there were different kinds of onions.

Course, I didn’t do any of the grocery shopping until I was on my own.  I went with the parents when they shopped.  The only thing I was interested in was making sure I got my favorite cereal. Oh and the candy.  Mom and Dad bought the stuff.  I wasn’t in the produce aisle til Sis and I had our own apartment when we were eighteen, nineteen.  And we found the stuff that we’d learned to cook.  And onions was part of it.

Now, when I cook onions, I don’t measure by the cup, spoon or stuff like that.  We go by the size of the onion.  So, I guess I learned to just do whatever my mom had done which was probably what her mom and grandmom had done.  Hmmm.  On second thought, I guess I did measure, it just wasn’t the store bought measuring stuff.

Cause I just thought of the spoon that I’d use.  It was one of those big spoons that are used for stirring the food in the pot.  And there was this drinking cup that had broken.  I remember thinking “Now, what am I gonna do?”  I’d learned to use these things as I wasn’t able to “look, see, measure” like my mom did.  She did everything by eye.

Heck, when she was trying to teach me to drive, I just could not visualize the car, the road underneath and where the tire was.  Least not til a couple years ago when it finally fell into place.  What is that?  Spatial?  Something clicked at any rate.  Mom and I were able to work together on projects then.  Well, there was the last project, a crazy quilt she had planned.  Ahh, I digress. What’s that comment from the peanut gallery?  Ahh….

Fact, I’m completely off the subject…ya think?

Well, not really.  Cause measuring and onions go hand in hand when cooking food for my family.  There are a few who plain, just Do Not Like onions in any way, shape or form.  And we even have one who is allergic.  And then there are those who Love, Love, Love onions, the stronger, the better.  So, what does one do in a case like this?

If it’s for a family dinner where everyone is present, one must slice the onion in great big chunks, so that the onions can be picked out and handed over to the onion lovers.  And a small portion of the food must be set aside in a smaller dish before one even adds the onions.

So, I grow them in my garden and they can pick them themselves.  Or not.  Cause nowadays, unlike my parents and grandparents, we can’t make kids eat something they don’t like.

Nuts

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Nuts.  Nuts is the word for the day.  Now, Mom had a taste for nuts.  She’d bring home walnuts used mainly for banana bread.  Around the holidays, there’d be peanuts brought home mainly from the social events we went to at school and at church.  And pecans and a funny colored nut that was hard to crack, the name of which I haven’t learned.  And  then there’d be an assortment, again, the names of which I haven’t discovered.  In the time I’ve been on the ‘Net, I haven’t researched these.  Might be project for the next time I’m bored.  The only kind of nut she hated with a passion was Sunflower Seeds.  Naturally, being children, we automatically liked these and ate them whenever we could.  She didn’t mind if we bought the seedless kind.

It wasn’t til I had my own house that I discovered the reason why she hated them.  Cause it wasn’t actually the seeds themselves.  It was the shells.  Most kids rarely pick up after themselves.  Nuff said cause the point of this post is the equipment used to crack all those nuts that were brought home.  And the reason why peanuts were the most popular in our house.  They were the easiest, aside from the sunflower seeds, to get opened and eaten in record time.

Mom had gone to town one day and so begins my lifelong fascination with the fancy little tools and bowl she’d brought home.  It was sitting on the table when I came home from school one day.  There were nuts in the bowl and three silver tools sitting on the bowl.  I examined the things, then set them back and grabbed one of the walnuts and proceeded to get out the hammer.

This was the tried and true method of getting the nuts open.  And the favored method amongst us kids.  And the reason Mom bought those little tools.  I set the pecan on the table and proceeded to open the nut with my usual enthusiasm.  This method involved a lot of pounding, noise and occasional cussing, which being a properly brought up girl child in the Holmes household, I wasn’t supposed to do.  I was happily opening those nuts and eating them as fast as I could, unaware that Mom was sitting on the couch watching my every move.

She’d come home sick from work.

I shortly became aware of that fact.

I could feel someone watching me.  The sensation of eyes upon one is not the creepy, hair stands up sort of one.  It’s more, the slow penetration of watching that comes over one when someone is staring at one for more than a glance or two.  Some people are trained in this and therefore, they pay attention when the sensation touches them.

First, one tries to casually move one’s eyes to see who doing doing such a thing.  Then, if at all possible, one moves one’s head in a manner designed to catch the starer off guard.  That wasn’t the point at which I became aware that Mom was watching me.  Nooo.  Not me.  I was too absorbed in my demolishing of the nuts in that bowl sitting so obviously in the middle of the table.

It was at the point where the untrained learn the folly of not paying attention to the sensation in the first place.  Something happens to make them wish they’d paid that careful attention. The hammer was grabbed out of my hand, the nut I was holding flew across the table and I stifled a scream when I saw who was standing there.  She was shaking her head, lips thinned down like she was biting them.  She took the hammer with her, went back to the couch, laid down and went to sleep.

Long story short, later that evening, she woke up, called me into the kitchen and promptly gave me a lesson in how to use the nutcracker and the little tool that got the nut out of the shell.  It was then I discovered that I wasn’t the expert with those little pliers that she’d hoped I’d become.  And I learned to check if she was home before using the hammer to open the nuts.

Macaroni, etc.

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Mustn’t let a challenge regarding food and cooking go by without mentioning macaroni.  It’s become a staple in most Indian homes.  We buy macaroni by the five pound box at least twice a month.  Even though we buy it in bulk, there’s really only a few dishes we actually cook.  Most of them are what’s called “Hangover soup.”  This name comes from the days when 90% of the village adults drank to excess.  Now, though, the name is just a hold over.

Oh and my favorite-Malted milk balls. We’d go to town and buy a couple of the big boxes.  Two because we were lucky if one would be left when we got home.  Ya ever eat something so much that your mouth hurts?  And you keep eating til it’s gone?  Well, that’s what happened to me, so much that now I look for the small packages and buy only one.  Thinking I might go up to the store and buy one in a bit.

Minestrone soup?  Wasn’t til I left home for a stint in college that I learned we ate minestrone soup at home, only called “Hangover Soup.”

Muffins, Meatballs, and mashed potatoes were combined in one meal once.  Meat ball gravy and corn meal muffins along with green beans.  Never did that again.  Not too sure why my meat balls didn’t look at all like the picture.  Now, I just make meatballs like I’m making meat loaf and just make the mix into little balls and fry them.  Guess one could bake them, only I never really like baking.   Cept a few times when I made this dish consisting of peas on the bottom layer, meat mixture in the center and mashed potatoes on the top.  If I was feeling ambitious, I made a sauce to go on the top.  Ya guessed it.  That didn’t happen very often.  Course now, I think it’s called shepherd’s pie.  We call it “Commode dish.”

Muffins. I rarely try to make them from scratch any more.  Best to get a mix cause then I didn’t have to struggle with remembering if I’d added one cup or two cups of flour.  Why is this such a problem?  Cause we had to make big batches, like doubling the recipe.

Mallards are another item we ate.  Sometimes, Mom would make duck soup, with macaroni, if she didn’t have any other stuff to put in it, like barley, or potatoes, or parsnips, turnips.  Hmm.  It’s getting close to supper time as I write this.

L-Lasagne

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Lasagna isn’t a traditional food.  It is a favorite which isn’t served very often at our house.  I don’t cook it.  My sons do.  And it’s very good.  Good enough that if I had to make it, I know it wouldn’t be as good.  We have it maybe once every month or so.  It’s one of those kind of dishes that takes too long to make.  Whenever we have it, we have to call Grampa down to have some.  Sometimes, we make this and other foods just call him here cause we like to hear his stories.  On occasion though, no matter what we say, he’ll just be a mosquito.  *Eat and run.

One day, he’d come in for Lasagna and garlic bread.  Happened to be one of those days that the pan wasn’t a very big one and he wanted a second piece.

“Make some more then.”

Nolan, who doesn’t communicate like most people, by which I mean one has to know the body language he uses, told him he didn’t have the ingredients.

“Mil?”  Father’s eyes implored me.

“Sorry, Dad.  Nolan made it.”

“Well, why can’t you make some?”

“He just told you that we didn’t have the ingredients.”

“He didn’t say anything,” while trying the beady eye look to no effect on either me or Nolan.

“John!”  Father knows that upon occasion, we’ll do what John says.

“What?”  John walked into the kitchen bringing in his plate that had a portion of lasagna on it.

“Tell them to make some more.”

“Make some more, woman.”  John likes to occasionally tell me that he thinks I should be the subservient Mrs. Cunningham type person from his days of trying to learn what we saw in those ‘Happy Days.’  At my raised eyebrow and Nolan’s crossed arms, “Can’t Grampa,” and starts to make a hasty exit stage back where he came from.

It finally sinks into my poor Father’s head that he just isn’t going to get any more lasagna.  His face falls and he starts to get ready to head out whereupon he spots John’s plate which John was trying to hide behind his back.  He hadn’t moved fast enough in backing out.

“Give me that.”

John reluctantly gives him one of the four squares he’d heaped upon his plate.  “Geez, Grampa.  Here, have one of mine.”  Whereupon Grampa happily settles back to enjoy another slice of lasagna.  “A grandson who loves his Grampa very much.”

Nolan and I look at Mom who’s been sitting there trying hard not to laugh.  Too late, we all bust out in laughter.

“What?”  Father is licking his fingers by now, satisfied and ready to tell us a story.

“Nothing.”  John nods his head and goes back into the living room, glad to have pulled a fast one on me and Nolan who are in the doghouse for not making some more lasagna.  I shake my head, knowing very well that John had planned on putting us in that cramped little building.

K-Kiwi and Kidney Beans

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Kiwi and kidney beans.  These have only two things in common-the letter K and my son.  Not that he really loves either of them.  They’re two things he’s experimented with.  He musta heard bout kiwi and when we saw one at the store, we bought it.

My number one son likes to try new things.  He brings home new stuff from town and hands them to me, expecting me to help him figure out how to work them.  And most times, we get it figured out.  Like the kiwi which he bought for a while, then quit, just a phase.

The kidney beans were something we’d always used when making chili.  That’s mostly what we use it for….  Weell, the only thing we used it for-chili.  When my son discovered that there were beans other than kidney beans, he brought them home.  Even reading the directions on the package didn’t always make it clear what we were supposed to do with such things as lima beans, black eyed peas and lentils.  What the heck was a lentil?

Then, whilst shopping at the store 120 miles away, we discovered canned chili with some other kind of bean.  And refried beans.  Yep, they made the trip home with my son whereupon he handed the cans over to me.  I failed to keep my expression from revealing itself to him.

“You heat it up!”

Son just stood there with his hand out, can jiggling in it, like he was anxious to get rid of it.

“No, you brought it home.”

Can shook a bit in a slo-mo kind of way.

“There’s a can opener in the kitchen.”

Can moves a bit faster. His eyes settle on mine.  I stare right back at him.  He waggles the can again.  I am determined not to give in.  His lower lip starts to move.  I look away.  He knows I’m about to give in.  I heave a sigh, making sure it is the long suffering sigh of the much put upon mother.  He smiles when I finally grab the can and head to the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I broke down and heated up the new fangled chili he brought home.  Course, we couldn’t let Gramma see it.  She had her own idea what chili was supposed to be and it most certainly didn’t match ours.  She liked it like soup, watery soup.  Now that I think about it, I think mayhap it was so she could put a lot of crackers in the soup.  And my sons and I didn’t use that many crackers, so we preferred the thicker chili.  And we had to hurry up and eat the chili because this particular chili didn’t have kidney beans.

I managed to get the stuff cleaned up before Mom woke up.

“Oh?  What did you eat?”

“Nothing.”

Gives me the beady eye, whereupon Son quietly shuts his door.

J is for Johnny Cake

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Johnny cake.  Was a long time before I knew the johnny cake my dad made was actually corn bread.  Breakfast time on the mornings Father made Johnny Cake brought us all to the table in no time flat.  He didn’t make it very often.  It was best, hot, just out of the oven.  The cake itself was so delicious, smothered in butter melting down the top and syrup poured right over that.
Now, in our family, the reason everyone rushed to the table was cause of the corners.  There are only four square corners and two of them were already gone by the time we got there, regardless of whether or not Mom was at the table.  That left two corners for us to fight over since Father got the other.  Unless Gramma and Grampa were over, or Uncle Ralph.

The main reason why those corners are so special is cause they were the only pieces that were cut bigger.  The middles were smaller.  My dad used a 10x13 inch pan and those were just right for us, being as there were five kids and two adults.  So, the corners being bigger meant the middle was cut to accommodate any more people who arrived for breakfast.

Man, my parents were sneaky.  They used a lot of these kinds of tricks to get us to the table and eat.  And in our house, one didn’t throw away good food.  Think I was in high school before I threw out food directly into the garbage whenever I wanted.  Naturally, not being able to toss food meant there might be some stashed somewhere, to be found when cleaning up.

Cleaning up was usually done after school cause there wasn’t time for it in the morning.  Mom and Dad both worked and we went to school.  And that’s another story for sometime down the road.  We lived near the school and so had no real reason to miss it unless we were verifiably sick.  Cept for high school which was 20 miles away.  Still had the chores after school though.  Being in high school meant we had to get our own breakfast cause we had to be out of the house earlier than Dad and Mom.

That was when I found out about Johnny cake.  I came across it when they’d make chili.  Can’t really remember, yeah, the cooks did call it corn bread in grade school.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’m not quite with it sometimes.  Imagine, being a teenager before making the connection that the Johnny cake at home was the corn bread at school.

And by then, the times Dad made it was few and far between.  I make it now and it’s not quite the same.  Must be that secret ingredient that each really good cook adds to their dish.  It’s not the same for everyone.  Like with the spaghetti the boys cook.  We all use the same ingredients, yet it tastes different.  Wonder why that is?  Dad’s Johnny cake is great!

I is for ???

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And now for the letter I.  I, I, I.  What food starts with the letter I?  Sides Ice cream.  What in cooking starts with the letter I?  Did a search on the ‘Net.  Incan berries?  Don’t think that’s an option.  I coouldd write about ice cream.  However, it’s not something I really like to think bout.  The modern ice cream is just not tasty.  I  used to like the French vanilla ice cream.  Then, well.  And now, maple nut ice cream, I may eat once in a while.  Aside from that, that’s all I can write about ice cream.  The texture is just not like it used to be.

I once tried to make home made ice cream.  Assembled everything and then gave up.  Nuff said bout that.  The memory makes me shudder.  Gladly pay for some one else’s ice cream, cept it’s made with oil.  Yick.  Like raw egg.

What’s that comment from the peanut gallery?  Have I ever eaten raw egg?  Oh yeah.  Back in the day.  I was, naturally, young and foolish. Of course, it was more on the lines of a triple dare as the challenger knew I was a bookworm and not very likely to accept the challenge.  And, naturally, my sister wasn’t around to get me out of this scrape.  Who knows?  She might have even encouraged it.  Weelll.  I stood there eyeing that egg carton, trying not to shudder at the thought of that egg sliding down my throat.  My eyes kept wanting to squinch up and I was fervently hoping no one would notice.  Course they all said they’d already done so.  I eyed the cup I was supposed to drink it from.  I almost walked away.

Thinking back, my cousin probably knew I’d walk away, so she cracked open the egg and put it in the cup and held it out.  I studied the thing for several eternities, finally grabbed it and drank it as fast as I dared.  Oh.  Man, that feeling is still there in my memory.  Yuck.  I couldn’t eat an egg for days after.  Still, to this day, I only eat eggs that are over easy.  The yolk itself isn’t bad.  It’s the whites that are not good at all to me.  

Cooking?  Something starting with the letter I.  Food?  I?  A very great dilemma.  All I can think of is Instant.  Instant everything, potatoes, chocolate, chocolate milk.  Ahh.  Thinking I’ll give up on the letter I.  Sorry, guys, I guess food, cooking and the letter I just doesn’t go together in my experience.
Some other time, maybe, hopefully.  Think I’ll go and check out that Incan berry thing.  Might just be the thing.

Hamburger

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Hamburger is supposed to be the next best thing to Deer meat for us.  Those are the two staples in our house with pork being served whenever we wanted a treat.  Well, til it turned out my sons weren’t hunters.  Neither are they fisher type people.  Oh, they were all enthusiastic til they found out they had to do the cleaning, and dressing themselves.  Not something I ever want to do if I can help it.  I know how, just couldn’t do it anymore.  Not even to teach my sons.  It’s a problem that cropped up when I got old enough to think about it.

I see the reason for the offering of asemaa, tobacco.  I think it actually began when I was in the NAM program geared more for doctors than nurses.  Sailing along, doing good with the program til it hit me one day.  I could never be sure that I wasn’t causing pain, even if I was trying to heal, help the person.  So, unless I am in mortal danger, I can’t bring myself to…almost became a vegetarian.  Not quite though.  Long as the deed is done and packaged up, I can eat meat.  So, that’s probably why my sons aren’t hunters and fisher people.  By the by, Can’t remember what one calls fisher people.

To get back to the business of hamburger-I became famous in my family for making the best, delicious tasting hamburgers.  Not sure how that came about.  Used to be, I’d sometimes dread seeing Mom pick up a three pound package of hamburger, lettuce, tomato and fresh onions.  It was a request for hamburgers when we got home.  I didn’t really feel like cooking it, especially on a hot summer day.  Most times, I’d make them anyway.  And sometimes, my sons will ask me to make them.  And sister.  Other times, I’ll just make them.

Well, that’s not the point of this post.  The point is that I was watching one of those cooking shows, Bobby Flay?  He was challenging someone to see who made the best hamburger.  “I don’t use spices directly in the meat.  It reminds me of meat loaf.”  Well, I thought about it as I stood washing dishes.  Cause that’s what I do.  I don’t add anything other than spices to the meat, shape them and cook them.  I’d always have to cook Mom’s after mine and the boys were half finished so that we could all eat at the same time.  She was one of those rare meat people, and I finally got it to a little more done than she really liked.  Sometimes, I’d make potatoes, fries or tater tots to go with.  Usually, we just ate the salad stuff right on it, California burgers.  And one was usually enough to fill us up.  Guess I finally got the measurement by hand down.  Least with the burgers.  And, of course, we made various hot dishes, particularly with wild rice, with hamburger being the main meat ingredient.

So, I added spices directly into the meat and cooked it.  Never once thought about it being meatloaf.  I always thought of meat loaf as being hamburger mixed with something to stretch the meat and make it enough for more people, sort of like a flavoring. That’s what meat loaf is to me.