Last spring when we were down in Winona to sign a purchase agreement, a Winona friend of mine took me to a “woman’s party” where she knew I would meet new people that I might enjoy knowing. I was so pleased, because some of my best friends from Winona had moved away during our 30 years away, and I thought this would be a great way to meet some possible future friends. When I got back that night I wrote down as many women’s names as I could remember, and something about them that might jog my memory later.
Fast forward eight months… I have been joining (or saying yes to) “everything in sight” in order to find my niche in this sort-of-new place. I am happy to report that I now find people I recognize – several of whom I met at that spring party – at t’ai chi, Nia (at the Y), book club(s), the library, UU gatherings and choir, farmers’ market… You get the idea. I am starting to step up to the plate and take on small responsibilities, i.e. a women’s group that will meet this Sunday, for which I will take the minutes. (Unfortunately this means I will miss the babooners’ BBC again…)
I now need to put on the breaks a bit, and start saying no once in a while.
Today’s guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.
The four of us (my sister and her son, Husband and moi) were on our own for five days in Paris.
We learned a lot about food and eating the Parisian way – picked up baguettes from the boulangeries (bread bakeries), croissants and other delicacies for our petit dejuener (breakfast) from patisseries (dessert bakeries), meats from boucheries, crepes and quiches from crèperies.
On our first day, however, we were lucky enough to come upon the neighborhood marché (market), which had on display all the spring (and other) vegetables you can imagine, plus sausages, fish, cheese, and our dinner – kabobs. Why I didn’t take more photos at the marché I don’t remember, but here is one.
And here’s how some of the bounty looked back at “our” flat (air.bnb, but that’s another story).
It was delicious, especially because it represented the success I had in asking the price.
Combien, s’il vous plait? (How much, please?)
Of course, the answer was spoken so quickly I couldn’t catch it, so I did what I had seen other tourists do – laid out my palm full of coins (there are 1- and 2- euro coins) and let him take what he needed. Then said “Merci.”
I remember once reading an advice or manners column (which one is lost in the mists of time) stating that when hosting a Holiday Dinner, it is incorrect to ask the guests to bring food. I heard myself saying aloud to the newspaper, “What universe do you live in??”
So far in December we’ve been invited to 8 potluck Christmas or Holiday gatherings. This week alone there are Husband’s pool group (billiards, not swimming) party, our Harmonica Group and Wellspring Singers, my T’ai Chi group, the Wiscoy Community Farm carolers, and the Unitarians (Garrison would have a field day here) after caroling at nursing homes on Saturday. The folk dancers have their party on the 30th…
This is in addition to non-holiday pot lucks – November 12 we joined a spontaneous “sing-in” out at Zephyr Community Farm, sort of a coping tactic after the election. Last week was the Frac Sand Ban Victory bash put on by the Land Stewardship Project – the Winona County Commissioners voted in November to ban all further frac sand mining here.
Of course, this will all come to a screeching halt in January, and we will go through Party Withdrawal, along with Christmas Music Withdrawal, and Colored Light Withdrawal. At any rate, I hope there is one pot luck somewhere in January.
Our good friend Walken (Husband’s BFF from the hippie farm days) lives several blocks from us here in Winona. Since the three of us are having Thanksgiving together, Walken suggested the other day that we look through his chest freezer for the Thanksgiving fowl, as he has a wealth of meat and poultry stashed there: some lamb, couple of chickens, and… a DUCK! So as I write this, sitting on a platter in my fridge is 6 ½ pounds of water fowl, begging the question: what does one do with a duck?
First I go to the Joy of Cooking – on page 475 I read “About Wild Birds”, although there is no indication that this bird is wild-caught, being encased as it is in shrink wrap. At any rate I don’t need instructions for dry plucking or singeing it, but I did find these useful tidbits:
Duckling Rouennaise – “Unless you choke your duck, pluck the down on its breast immediately afterward and cook it within 24 hours, you cannot lay claim to having produced an authentic Rouen duck… If, as is likely, duck-strangling will bring you into local disrepute, you may waive the sturdy peasant preliminaries and serve a modified version, garnished with quotation marks.” (p. 474) I had no idea Irma Rombauer et al. could be so tongue-in-cheek!
Roast Domestic Duck – “Most duck on the American market is not descended from wild native variety, but from a type bred in China where, of course, this bird is held in high esteem.” (p. 473)
Besides duck, turkey, and goose; there are recipes for guinea or cornish hen, pigeon, grouse, ptarmigan, prairie chicken, dove or wood pigeon, pheasant, partridge, quail, and snipe or woodcock, just in case you come upon any of these. (Before cooking, you must read “About Small Game Birds”.)
There are recipes for Roast Duck Bigarade and Apricot Honey Glazed Duck (involving brandy and Cointreau, both of which we have!). Or there is, on p. 326, a nice Orange Sauce for Duck or Goose. I have also found a couple of things on line, including Julia Child’s Duck L’Orange, which looks like a lot of bother and will probably lose out to the Roast Duck L’Orange recipe at food.com.
Whatever I decide upon, it will be fun to try something out of the ordinary.
What, if anything, do you eat during the Holidays that veers away from the Traditional?
Until this week, the last time I watched the World Series was October of 2006, with my dad during his last month on the planet. Dad had lived his whole life in Iowa. Before the Twins started up in 1961, and since Iowa had no major league team, he’d adopted the St. Louis Cardinals. Lo and behold, they made it to the World Series!
The hospice nurses gave him a Cardinals cap and some strings of red, white, and gold beads; he and Mom would put on the beads, I’d wear the hat, and we spent several cozy evenings in front of the tube, cheering the Cardinals on. Although the Cardinals were not at all favored to win, they managed to pull it out game after game. (It really did seem like they won the Series for my dad.) I don’t recall a great theme song, and although there seem to be some recent songs composed about the Cardinals, the only music I’ve been able to find from the 2006 era is a Budweiser theme Here Comes the King.
Fast forward ten years. I don’t think I would have cared much who won the World Series this year if it weren’t for Steve Goodman’s love for the Cubs. Not only did he give us “The Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”
that we would hear on The Late Great Morning Show, at each spring’s baseball opener. Turns out he also wrote the song they now sing in the stands – “G0 CUBS GO!” Check out this tribute to Steve Goodman from NBC’s Mike Leonard in September, 2008:
The lyrics to the chorus are:
Go Cubs Go
Go Cubs Go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today
A 10/31/16 article about Goodman in the Jewish Journal, by Gabe Friedman explains: “Goodman’s two Cubs songs were closely linked to each other. Dallas Green, who became the team’s general manager in the early 1980s, was said to have hated “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” with a passion. It was rumored that Goodman made “Go Cubs Go,” which was commissioned by the local radio station WGN, as saccharine as possible as a light jab at Green. The song’s simple chorus caught on, and the tune is now played at Wrigley Field after every Cubs win there.”
There are other songs composed for the Cubs in the past few years. Here’s “All the Way” (Eddie Vedder Cubs song w Ernie Banks)-Live-Wrigley Field, Chicago,IL-7/19/13…
…and the Cubs Victory Song “By the Lakeside” by Katie Day:
Then there’s “(Bye Bye) Curse of 45” – Chicago Cubs 2016 Parody Song with Lyrics – Michele McGuire
Chorus:
Bye bye, curse of 45
Drive a goat on up to Wrigley and we’ll let it inside
These good old boys are gonna give it a try
Singin’ “This’ll be the year the curse dies…”
I may be biased, but I deem them perhaps not as catchy as Goodman’s.
What music do you remember that’s related to a competition or sport (even if it’s from high school)?
For several years after my dad died, I traveled almost monthly from Minneapolis to Marshalltown, IA, to visit my mom, before she moved up to Minnesota. It didn’t take me long to get tired of the straightforward I-35 à I-30 route; and besides, 35 veered east and took me slightly out of my way. I got out the maps and found a number of “back roads” which, although they didn’t necessarily save me time (since the speed limit is 55 instead or 70), took me more directly south and gave me some different scenery. I got in the habit of giving myself extra road time, because I liked to stop at whatever caught my eye – i.e., the photo at top is in tiny Austinville, IA, north of Marshalltown. There were parks in towns like Hampton that made nice rest stops, and I learned which towns had a decent coffee shop.
Minnesota has great back roads, too – for the numerous trips between Mpls and Winona that we’ve taken this year, we often use the alternate Hwy. 50 north of Red Wing to catch 52, instead of taking Hwy. 61 through Hastings, and this takes us right by a lovely old “garage” in New Trier. Heading south from Winona to catch 90, a short detour into Pickwick yields a view of the old Pickwick Mill.
On our recent trip to Marshalltown from Winona, we could have followed I-90 to I-35 to I-30, but we jumped off 90 at Austin, MN, and head south on 218. This was a little dicey because of the unusual amount of rain that the driftless area (NE Iowa, SE Minn, et al) has seen this month. Indeed, we drove into Charles City and made it over the roiling Cedar River, but were lucky to be leaving 218 and turning west – the road east was under water and barricaded. Here’s a video of this same spot back in 2008, when there was even worse flooding.
On the way back to Winona we decided to try another route, through Nashua IA where resides the Little Brown Church in the Vale – my folks got married there 70 years ago.
We crossed the Cedar River again, still roiling but not flooding our path. The little church was open for visitors, and as I signed the guest book I was astonished to see that the name above mine was a college friend – I looked up and there she was waiting for me to realize we’d crossed paths!
When have you had a memorable experience while traveling the back roads?
The good thing about your 50-year high school reunion coming around is that Father Age has visited not only you, but everyone else in attendance. You recognize your closest friends because you’ve seen them at other reunions, or maybe visited them during your travels. But it really takes a while before you recognize who most classmates are. Of course, once a person starts talking, they are “revealed”, sometimes with memories of how you knew each other.
The prettiest people are still fairly good looking, but they don’t stand out so much, and may have a paunch just like yours. Thanks to Facebook, you know a tidbit or two about a few folks – in my case, i.e., a friend from the church of my youth now, in his retirement, posts wonderful paintings he started doing ten years ago. He joins a number of us who were sort of funny looking at age 18, and who now just look INTERESTING, in a good way! As I looked around, most of the people I was curious about were people I hardly knew existed back in 1966.
This wasn’t the kind of weekend where you get into depth about your lives, at least not at the scheduled activities. For one thing, we convened both Friday and Saturday nights at the newly renovated (I am not kidding) Hotel Tallcorn , which was recently refurbished and quite elegant but with dreadful acoustics. We could scarcely hear each other above the din, and I believe the most asked question of the weekend was “Where do you live now?” because it was short and recognizable via lip reading.
Most of the highlights of my weekend were not on the agenda:
– hanging out with best friend and her husband, since we’d visited them two years ago. This was (my) Husband’s first time accompanying me to a reunion, so it was nice there was at least one person he knew.
– watching their dog play Frisbee : )
– climbing the Observation Tower at Grimes Farm, with a wonderful overview of an intersection of town and farmland, with the historic County Courthouse spire in the misty distance. Rolling farmlands were never prettier.
If I hadn’t gone to this reunion, I’d be forever wondering whom and what I had missed. I still missed a lot of folks I had hoped to see, so it is probably my last reunion – if they didn’t come to the Big One, they probably won’t be at the next.
On a perfect Saturday (one of the 10 perfect days this year) during Labor Day Weekend, Husband and I were introduced to Family Art Day here in Winona. Held from 10:00 – 2:00 on Saturday at a covered pavilion on the banks of Lake Winona, this annual event features a couple of dozen local artists, each with a table (or two) holding the supplies required to do/make their craft. There was everything from painting murals to… well, here is the list of options:
Fish Prints with Dirk Nelson
Sculpture with Michelle Cochran
Finger painting with John Durfey
Kosmic Knots with Tom Dukich
Book Arts with Jill Krase
Bow drill a shell for a necklace with Patty Albrecht
Murals with Julia Crozier
Acrylics with Barb Feiten
Puppets with Jill Marie Piggott
Mosaics with Monta May
Clay sculpture with Emerald Hulsing
Masks with Julie Johnston
Weaving with Kathie Peterson
Wood and Wire Sculpture with Jamie Schell
Tatoos with Heather Casper from Minnesota Marine Art Museum
Giant Bubbles with Ramona Redig and Robert Aldrich
Hats with Amy Peterson
Cartooning with Mary Singer
Sing-alongs with Amanda Grace
Watercolors with Kathy Delano
Thrown pottery with Anne Scott Plummer, Mary Denzer, Mickey Maslowski, John Bloomfield, and Sue Pariseau (There was also a side tent with two potting wheels)
Not Just For Kids
Giant Bubbles
Lots of Options
Mural Painting
Hat Making
Mosaics
Weaving
The idea was conceived 9 years ago by our late friend Bernadette Mahfood (about whom I will write more another time) and another local artist, Julie Crozier. The event is designed to get adults, as well as children, to try out new art forms. Says coordinator Vicki Englich “Sometimes, people are intimidated to pick up a brush… This gives you permission to explore things you didn’t have a chance to explore in school.”
We were among the many volunteers who helped set up, take down, and act as “gofers” during the 4-hour run. It takes an amazing amount of organizing, and some grant funding from the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council for supplies and stipends for the artist/teachers. I’ve met a watercolorist that I would like to team up with for next year – she was heading it up solo this year and would like help. I can hardly wait – it was a joy seeing the look on some of the faces of the artists as they finished their creations, and then scanned the pavilion to see what they wanted to try next.
What type of art, that you haven’t yet tried, would you like to try your hand at?
For not getting most our garden in till late June, we are having some luck. I’ve frozen some tomato sauce, and we’ve been keeping up with the zucchini by that old late summer standby, giving some away to our neighbors. I found a chilled cucumber smoothie recipe that has helped use up LOTS of those big honkin’ cukes, and which was delightful on some of those hot days.
But I’m feeling a little overwhelmed this week, as there are cukes AND tomatoes AND zucchini to process in some way. Also some windfall pears we found on a corner a couple of blocks from here, and our friend Walken’s kohlrabi… Knowing how Babooners mostly know these things, I thought I’d ask here for recipes.
Specifically, does anyone have an outstanding Zucchini Bread recipe? (The one I remember is nowhere to be found.)
Anyone have a good recipe for an offbeat tomato-based Salsa?
And how about a cucumber raita, or some other cooling cucumber salad recipe?
Oh, I know I can find these things online if I look, but it seems friendlier to get them from baboons – they taste better somehow – and we haven’t had a recipe day for a while.
What’s your favorite Harvest Recipe, whether you’ve actually made it or not?
When working at my first bookstore job at the (now defunct) Bookstore of Edina in 1987, one of our novelty items was a set of audio tapes: (something like) “Eight-minute Classics”. I have not yet found the exact title online, but they were very much like this.
I am reminded of them by an email received today from a reading friend in California, who sends this gem:
In short, James Clear states “This page shares a full list of book summaries I have compiled during my reading and research… ¶ I have tried to summarize each book on this page in just three sentences, which I think is a fun way to distill the main ideas of the book. If a particular book sounds interesting to you, click on the full book summary and you can browse all of my notes on it. Enjoy!”
I’ve looked through his book list and found one or two that I have actually read. One is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which James Clear summarizes thusly:
“To become a better writer, you have to write more. Writing reveals the story because you have to write to figure out what you’re writing about. Don’t judge your initial work too harshly because every writer has terrible first drafts.”
He also provides quite an extensive book list, which I have not yet had time to peruse, but what I’ve seen so far is impressive.
I have been inspired to summarize one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre (but the sentences will not be quite so thorough as his):
“A mistreated orphan becomes a governess. She falls in love with a married man, who is also her employer. She flees a difficult situation, but eventually returns and marries him.”
Give us a summary of a favorite book, or one you’ve recently read, in about three sentences.
Trail Baboon 