Tag Archives: Featured

The Baboon Congress

Waiting

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Advent is a time in the Christian church year of waiting and anticipating.  Hymns are somewhat mournful and quiet, and  readings deal not only with the wait for the Christ Child but the end time and the crucifixion.  We wait for packages and children to arrive, we wait in line, we wait for bread to rise and for cookie dough to chill. I always seem to need time off from work during Advent to recharge and regroup, and that is what I am doing this week.

Yesterday I made some cookies I have never made before-Nurnberger Lebkuchen and Spekulatius.   Both are German cookies. The Lebkuchen are honey cakes, and the Spekulatias are like the Dutch Speculaas windmill cookies. I have been contemplating my German roots lately, and I would call these contemplative cookies, as they turned out weird (the Lebkuchen), and ugly but full of flavor (the Spekulatius).  They make me contemplate what people were thinking when they came up with the recipes.

The Lebkuchen sound good in principle. They call for honey, flour, spices, citron, almonds, candied orange peel, and butter, as well as a cup of strong black coffee. The sweet honey and the bitter coffee compete for dominance in the taste. I believe the cakes have to sit for a week and mellow. We will see how they progress by New Years Day. The Spekulatius are made by pressing dough into wooden Speculaas molds, intricate woodcuts of old-fashioned figures and scenes. I don’t have any of the wooden molds, so I used a springerle rolling-pin, which has carvings of hearts and other shapes cut into it.

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The cookies look like tiles. The only problem is that the pretty shapes disappeared while baking, and I have these terribly ugly yet great tasting cookies. I know that the honey must preserve the cakes so they last a long time; the wooden molds are lovely and the cookies could be too as long as the decorative imprints don’t disappear. There is something about these recipes that is important to the people who grew up with them.  It is interesting how tastes differ from culture to culture.

Today I will make Spritz cookies and pepparkaker. Husband wants to make Krumkake on Sunday, as we are now waiting for a blizzard on Sunday and we expect to be snowbound. The NOAA keeps putting out warnings and advice to stock up and prepare for a terrible storm.  They have been warning us for days, and now tell us that we will get between 6-8 inches of snow with very strong winds, while others in the central and eastern parts of the state could get up to 15 inches. It is sunny today, with no wind, which is quite unusual here. It is as though the world is holding its breath.  We have been to the grocery store, and husband has filled the bird feeders.  Now we wait to see if the predictions come true.  I am thankful we are all home and safe, and no one has to go anywhere. The air pressure should drop with the storm, so bread should rise well. Husband has mixed up a rye sour dough starter, and I want to make Julekag and Bremen Klaben. We will need to carb up in order to shovel.  For now, though,  we wait for Christmas and snow and wind in the unnatural stillness and sunny skies outside.

What are you waiting for? 

 

Food, The Baboon Congress

Cookie Marathons

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Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

My mom doesn’t like to bake. Heck, she doesn’t even like to cook that much. So it was interesting that she decided on cookies as a great holiday gift for teachers, ministers, postmen, etc. We would make eight to ten kinds of cookies during the weeks before the holidays, all of them going into the freezer. Nothing fancy, just the basics: chocolate chip, oatmeal, snickerdoodles, peanut blossoms, sour cream with almonds, frosted sugar, brownies. Then one afternoon we would put all the cookies out on the dining room table, each take a box and walk around the table, loading up the box w/ an assortment of cookies until it was full and then we start again with a new box. We were still doing this each holiday when I was in high school.

marathon2Without even meaning to, she handed down a baking tradition that I cling to, to this day. I don’t do as many cookie gifts as when I was in school, but I still do plates for my vet, my hardware store guys, my library and my milkman. Most of the cookies, however, end up being taken to various parties throughout the season, or brought out for visitors. And eaten with hot chocolate while watching holiday movies.

marathon1Nonny doesn’t bake anymore, although she does help out when she visits around Thanksgiving. She won’t measure, pour, stir or any job that requires that she get her hands dirty. However, she LOVES to clean so we are a perfect pair. I mix and measure and every time I’m done with a cup or a spoon, she whisks it away and washes it. On the years that she isn’t visiting when I cook, I really miss that!

This year we did 13 kinds of cookies in three days. Peanut Blossoms, Chocolate Chip, Vanilla Crescents, Peanut Butter Bon Bons, Oatmeal Scotchies, Chocolate Crinkles, White Chocolate Ting-a-Lings, Frosted Shortbread Sticks, Red Velvet Shortbread, Ginger w/ Caramel Filling, Spritz and 2 kinds of fudge.

Do you have a favorite holiday cookie?

The Baboon Congress

PLAY TIME!

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Today’s post comes from Jacque

               Recently I sold my psychotherapy practice. From the time in 2014 when I made the decision to do so, it took 2 ½ years to bring the process to completion. The last year of this period of time was so busy, I could not even participate in this blog anymore because there were so many demands on my time and energy. But now I am moving on to a life with fewer demands. I am not retiring, but I will work much less. After orienting the new owners of the practice to ownership, during October and November, I am now out of the office for two months, working via a telehealth website. The goal is to detach.

               I am writing this post from Arizona in front of the TV, with HGTV “Property Brothers” airing on Cable TV. It is hard for me to believe that for the first time in years, I have a little time to watch whatever I want. For hours. I can sit here and watch an over-privileged couple somewhere in Canada, be meticulously picky, arguing with designers about the windows and granite countertops. On the air.  It is doing a great job of distracting me away from results of the recent election, which I could obsess about until I live in an inner world of pessimism and despair. No Thanks. Watching obsessive people with silly décor standards is preferable to that.

It is Play Time for me.

img_0221When we arrived in Arizona in early December, both Lou and I were sick with a virus we picked up at the family wedding for which I made all the pie (see the past pie post). It took forever to recover. When I did recover I ventured out to the park in the center of town. There I discovered an area of the children’s playground I had not seen before. There is a little play area filled with gongs and xylophones and mallets. It is crawling with children banging on the stuff and having a ball. A Sonic Playground.

When I was a kid, I never could have even have dreamed of a playground like this. But I know I would have loved it.   So after I get bored with the Property Brothers, I plan to venture down there during school hours, so I can have the instruments to myself, and make some music, as loudly as I want, for as long as I want.   I will watch the fountain spout for a while, then mosey on home to take my girls, the dogs, to the dog park. That is not optional. The dogs are used to a big yard to run in, so the confines of our little condo require the dog park daily.

Then I will start sculpting with clay and playing games with grandchildren. I doubt that I will be stuck on HGTV for long. By the second week of February I will be back in Minnesota. The condo renters will be here for 2 months and I will be working 3 days per week at the practice I sold, and at another practice in Savage. I anticipate that. I love what I do.

But in the meantime, it is the Sonic Playground and Play Time for me.

What do you do when it is time to play?

 

 

 

 

Family, Science, The Baboon Congress

The Sly Fox

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Header image by NormaliltyRelief via Flickr.  CC 2.0

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

In the Summer of 1978, I accompanied my mother to Los Angeles so that she could receive treatment for Multiple Sclerosis. I was home on break from college, and my parents let me know in no uncertain terms that it was my duty to go with mom for the treatment. I was miserable, since I knew that the treatment was a sham and a fraud, but they wouldn’t listen, so off we went.

Mom had an initial manifestation of MS when she was 30 years old.  It was pretty typical, with visual anomalies and numbness in the lower extremities. It was quite difficult to diagnose MS in the days before neuroimaging, and she was never officially diagnosed with the disease at the time.  Her symptoms disappeared,  and she had no more signs of the disease until 24 years later. The diagnosis was confirmed at the Mayo Clinic in 1977.  Mom was devastated. She had to quit teaching, but remained able to walk unassisted and drive.  She set out to find a cure for herself, and the treatment in Los Angeles held out great hope for her.

MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys  the lining of the motor nerves so that electic impulses can’t travel down the nerves efficiently. People lose the ability to move their limbs.  There is no cure.

Mom heard from other local people with MS about a surgeon in Los Angeles who claimed to have great success in increasing blood flow to the brain and reducing or eliminating MS symptoms.  It was interesting how the information  about the treatment travelled in the days before the internet and social media. Mom talked to people who either had the treatment or knew of someone who had, and all swore by it. Mom contacted the doctor, who was more than happy to take her as a patient.

We arrived in LA and spent the first night in a residential hotel that the doctor had arranged for us. Mom had an initial examination at the doctor’s office. He declared her a perfect candidate for the procedure, and she was admitted to a private hospital in the Century City area of LA.  The doctor was a vascular surgeon. He claimed that the medical establishment and insurance  companies wouldn’t accept his treatment as legitimate for MS, (although he and his patients knew the truth of the matter), so it was billed as vascular treatment for clogged arteries. He reamed out his patients’ carotid arteries, thereby increasing blood flow to the brain. That was it. No repairing of the nerve linings, an impossible task that is the only thing that would have made a difference. He  just removed what little accumulation of fat that lined the carotid arteries.  His patients stayed in bed in the hospital for a couple of days after the surgery. By the time they were ready for discharge they were quite well rested and of course told the doctor they felt better.  They were discharged home and never saw the doctor again.

I spent my time hanging around the hospital talking with other patients and their family members. They came from all over the US, from Florida to Illinois, to Nevada. All were so hopeful, and talked of the doctor as a misunderstood saint. I slept on a cot in my mom’s hospital room.  Somehow I found that a nearby theatre, the Century City Shubert Theatre, was putting on a production of The Sly Fox,  a modern adaptation of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, with George  C. Scott in the title role. He had initially done the play on Broadway. I managed to get a ticket to a matinée. I had never seen a professional production like this before. It was wonderful. It was so ironic to see that play about a con artist when I knew my mom and the other patients were in the hands of such a sympathetic and sincere con artist. I knew he was a fraud, but how can you dash people’s hopes.  He had set up a perfect scam, founded on the hopes of desperate and trusting people.

We returned home after a week.  We heard several years later that the doctor had lost his medical licence due to insurance fraud. Mom had very little to say about her LA experiences, but eventually agreed with me that the doctor was a con artist. She lived to be 91, still living at home, able to walk using a walker, still a fighter.

What are your experiences with sly  foxes? 

Food, The Baboon Congress

Pot Luck Heaven

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Header photo by Luke Jones via Flickr – CC 2.0

Today’s post comes from Barbara in River Town

According to Wiki, a pot luck dinner is:  “a gathering where each guest contributes a dish of food, often homemade, to be shared. Synonyms include: potluck dinner, spread, Jacob’s join,[1][2] Jacob’s supper, faith supper, covered dish supper, dish party, bring and share, shared lunch, pitch-in, bring-a-plate, dish-to-pass, fuddle, and carry-in.” I always enjoy learning where words like this come from, and Wiki says:  “The word pot-luck appears in the 16th century English work of Thomas Nashe, and used to mean ‘food provided for an unexpected or uninvited guest, the luck of the pot.’[this quote needs a citation] The sense ‘communal meal, where guests bring their own food,’ appears to have originated in the late 19th century or early 20th century, particularly in Western North America, either by influence from potlatch or possibly by extension of traditional sense of ‘luck of the pot’.” The only rule, unless you’ve been asked to bring a particular type of dish, is to bring enough to share with several other (not necessarily all) attendees.

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.

What’s your “go to” dish to bring to a pot luck?

The Baboon Congress

Irrational Grocery Shopping

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

We have had really bad weather the past two weeks. It started out with 14 inches of snow with tempestuous winds, and now we are dealing with really cold temperatures and wind chills as low as -35. I don’t have such a hard time getting around, although I find I am more fatigued than usual at the end of the day. Husband has a harder time of it, since he has to drive 100 miles north every Tuesday to work on the Fort Berthold Reservation.  The road there is curvy and remote, and fills in easily with snow the minute the wind gets above 20 mph.  The water pipes have all frozen up in the small trailer the tribe provides for him to stay in when he is there.  He has been quite stressed, even when he gets back home, and he is driving me crazy with unnecessary grocery purchases and compulsive baking of rye bread.

I would describe his mood as panicky, and he is even more fussy and particular than usual. He acknowledges how silly he is being.  This is also the time of year when our freezers are all full of this year’s garden produce, and our goal must be to eat out of the freezers so that there is room for more produce next fall. You can see from the photos that we have very little room in the freezers  for more food. I admit that two people do not need to have three freezers (four if you include the freezer that is part of the fridge in the basement. I admit it, we have two fridges, too).  I should add that we gave away pounds and pounds of produce this summer, and we still had too much to put up. The minute we take something out of the freezers, it seems we put more in because we bought bulk ground round, or we baked, or we made too much soup. I refuse to disclose how much butter I bought for Christmas baking. We needn’t discuss that here, but I admit it is substantial. After all, Family Fare had Land O’ Lakes butter on sale for $3.00 a pound!

Husband stored the beets from our garden in coolers packed in sawdust. He decided yesterday that we needed to use the beets, and he wanted to roast them. I love roasted beets, and would be content to eat them, all by themselves, with sour cream and butter. Husband insisted that we had to have them with salmon fillets and russet potatoes. That meant buying salmon. I reminded him we had good sea bass in the freezer, so why buy more fish. He insisted, since that was just how it had to be to fulfill his notion of how to serve the beets. Then he double checked  everything I told him we needed to buy at the store.

When we got to the grocery store, he said that since we had too much cheddar cheese in the fridge, he was going to get some apples so he could have cheese and apples. He insisted they had to be Haralson apples.  There were no Haralson apples to be had, and he wouldn’t consider any other apple. He noticed that the pears looked good, so he decided to get pears, which meant we had to buy Brie, because that is what you are supposed to eat with pears. Now we have too much cheddar as well as Brie. We arrived home with Brie and salmon, and announced he was too tired to cook.  He had microwave popcorn for supper. Then he mixed up a rye sponge, and went to bed.  We’re glad we have a strong marriage.

The high temperatures this week are predicted to range from 4 to -9.  I don’t want to think about what the wind chills will be.  We certainly have enough food to eat. We won’t starve. I just hope the freezers don’t break down.

What’s in your freezer?  

 

Food, The Baboon Congress

Wedding Pie

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Today’s post comes from Jacque

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my niece got married.   She wanted homemade wedding pie, rather than the traditional wedding cake. Years ago, when this niece and her cousin and her sister were tiny, my mother started the pie thing. Then the first niece requested of mom that she have graduation pie, so Mom asked us for help. Ten years later, this has come home to roost on the shoulders of my sister and I because my mother no longer does pie. It was all we could do to get her to the wedding itself.

My sister and I and our nieces had done the mass pie bake three times before for high school graduations. All three of them wanted this for their tradition Iowa High School Graduation Open Houses, which is no small party. Our only expectation of each of them is that they help for their sister/cousin’s celebration. They all did.

For the wedding pie my niece Annie was part of the baking in my sister’s church kitchen. Jo and I made and froze all the pie crust in the weekends preceeding the wedding. She ordered pie tins and pie boxes from Amazon which made things stackable and efficient. Assembling and baking the pies took two days, with Thanksgiving Day planted in the middle of the bakefest. The 3 of us made 46 pies, 3 of which we served for the Thanksgiving meal dessert (pumpkin, minced meat and cherry).

Here is the breakdown of pie types:

Cherry (2 crust) 9

Apple (2 crust) 5

Apple crumb (1 crust) 5

Blueberry crumb (1 crust) 5

Strawberry Rhubarb (2 crust) 6

Bumbleberry (2 crust) 3

Pumpkin (1 crust, my least favorite, why even bother. Hrmph) 2

Lemon Meringue (1 crust) 4

Rhubarb Custard Meriginge (1 crust) 3

1 apple which fell on the floor and we scooped up the part that did not touch the  floor and                  ATE IT!

3 Thanksgiving pies

3 types of whipped creamed were served with it: vanilla, cinnamon, and rum.

The whole thing was a hit. Many guests had been at the girls’ High School Graduation parties and came ready for pie. My sister and I got to eat right after the wedding party. We were still eating when our sister-in-law ran over and said,   “People are already serving themselves at the pie station. I hate to hurry you, but look.” We ran over and started serving. It was like bugs to light—wedding guests attracted to pie.

One young man who had two or three slices of various kinds, came over asking, “Can I just have the cinnamon whipped cream. I have had enough pie.” There was plenty. I gave him a plateful.

Our feet were sore and we were exhausted. This was our gift to the bride and groom. Nobody else made them pie! Mom said her pie was good—she had apple crumb with cinnamon whipped cream.

What’s your odd family tradition?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food, The Baboon Congress

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.

103 Comments

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

We have five grocery stores in our town.  We gained one large Cashwise during the oil boom, along with a brand new, bigger  Family Fare that joined the two smaller Family Fares we already had. Walmart  was already here. It really is too many stores for a town our size, but none have closed since the oil bust.

20161205_124833Daughter chose recipes for Thanksgiving this year that called for lots of fresh sage, rosemary , and thyme, as well as parsley. I waited until the Tuesday before Thanksgiving buy the last  of the ingredients, certainly not the last minute I thought, especially with so many grocery stores in town. Well, daughter and I searched all the stores for the herbs, and came up empty except for some limp parsley. We were told at each store “we might have a truck in tomorrow night, but we’re not sure  if they ordered more herbs. People just snapped them up last week as soon as we put them  out”.

20161205_124722This called for some creative  thinking.  I knew we had a large Lemon Thyme plant on the south side of the house that was a little ragged but still greenish, and a smallish rosemary plant in the front that might not have quite froze, but what about the sage?

We were in the Walmart produce section after one of the produce workers made an unproductive search of the back cooler for errant herbs, when I saw them–four medium sized pots filled with fresh sage and thyme plants, each at a price identical to one of those  plastic boxes fresh herbs come in. This was true serendipity if not Divine intervention.  We bought two, and only used  the sage in one of the pots.  The extra pot is now in my office, along with the much pruned rosemary plant from the front yard.

What did it take to find your missing ingredient?

 

Songs, The Baboon Congress, Words

christmastime oh christmastime

47 Comments

Today’s post comes from tim

in the words of the old charlie brown tune.

christmastime oh christmastime

how i wish that you were mine

every year you come around

and i always feel the same

christmastime oh christmastime

im so glad that you are mine

every year all over town

we all do sing your name

the feeling it inspires is hopeful

everyone agrees

the warmth and love that it invokes

is what impresses me

no need wondering why it is

lets just say our thanks

in a world where too much stinks

christmas love does rank

if we all enjoy this time

all december through

maybe we can brace ourselves

the end will be too soon

 

how can you remain in the moment

 

 

History, The Baboon Congress

Whose Barn Was This?

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Today’s post comes from Cynthia in Mahtowa

The Carlton County Historical Society in Cloquet recently embarked on a project to photograph all the old barns in the county before they are gone. A good number of them have been kept up or restored, but more have not.

When the project was brought to my attention, I asked if they would like to include my little barn, thinking it might not be worthy as it is very small and hardly a barn at all though that’s what I use it for. The volunteer who came to check it out loved it then took photos from several angles plus measurements (14x14x14).

Then I learned that they also wanted to know when the land was homesteaded, when the barn was built, what the barn was used for…and so began another research project — in addition to my previous project: “Why Blackhoof?”.

goat-barn-clouds

 

I retrieved the abstract from my safety deposit box and sorted through the many entries and pages of the land changing hands often, early on for logging purposes, a railroad easement, mineral rights. Then a man named August Wilson bought it in 1915 and likely he and/or his son built the barn. August’s son Herbert and his family owned it until 1948. (The original house is long gone, I live in one built by a widow, her neighbors and relatives in the late 1960s. )

In addition to the abstract I found a neighbor who has lived in Mahtowa most of his 80+ years who was happy to share what he knew and remembered. His Swedish immigrant father told him the Mahtowa area (my land is a mile north of Mahtowa as the crow flies) was once a magnificent, prime White Pine forest. So prime that logging companies fought over and for the right to harvest the trees here…then clear-cutting and leaving huge stumps. My land doubtless was included in the greatly logged so the trees now are relatively young with only a few White Pines here and there.

There still are connections to the Wilson family in the area, so I get a smattering of stories (though so far no one knows when the barn was built). One more connection links me to the history of my land: the eldest Wilson daughter — the Mahtowa postmistress for 48 years — was sister-in-law to a cousin of the woman at MPR who hired me in 1991.

The volunteer committee continues to locate, contact owners and get written permission to photograph and document whatever history they can about the barns. And now I have joined the committee to help continue photographing and collecting histories on other barns in and around Mahtowa and the nearby townships.

What do you know about the history of the land or house you have owned and/or lived in?