Get the Pan

So my mom sends my family the traditional Christmas card.  All the right things are included; Christmas message, her love and her underlining special words, like we wouldn’t understand the way it is written.  This underlining is a special talent.  I don’t remember having a card sent by my mom without some portion of it being underlined.  I guess this is her thing.  So as usual we received the Christmas card, nothing out of the ordinary except the note handwritten on the card itself.  This is another Marie thing, her cards either lack the proper information when purchased or just not enough time in a day to find the right message.  So as I’m reading this note I’m thinking to myself, this is going to be visible to anyone who comes to the house.  Like most families we have all our cards displayed.  As you may already know, my mom does read this blog and likes it.  This must be her way of hinting about an entry.  Mom here is your entry, thanks for reminding me of this wonderful memory.  So here goes.  The message written on my Christmas card reads like this.  ”Remember the stainless steel pan?”  In my head I answer, yes how could I forget the mixing bowl?  I remember her calling it “the pan.”  This bowl was our only mixing bowl, probably not, but at least the largest of our family mixing bowls.  We used this bowl for everything; brownies, cookies, cakes, meatloaf, salad, scotch-a roos, popcorn I mean everything.  So I continue reading.  She states,” remember how we used this pan for everything?”  Yes, I remember.  She expounds; “remember when you kids would get sick and I would put this pan beside your bed for you to vomit in?”  Enough said mom, this is my family’s Christmas card.

A Christmas Recipe for Colored Television

The expectations during Christmas are virtually uncontrollable for children.  The buildup leading to the fat red-suited guy landing on your roof and coming down the chimney, more pressure than any kid should endure.  Believe it or not that fat guy sliding down your chimney, leaving presents with no trace of existence except for some cookie crumbs, is very hard to swallow.  I don’t remember when that light bulb moment happened but I’m pretty sure it was sometime around 7 or 8 yrs old.  The guy is a fake?  Santa isn’t real?  WTF!  All this time my parents were the ones!  I mean, what happens now?  Do I still get presents?  Wait, we don’t even have a chimney!  Oh, now this is all starting to make sense.  Reindeer can’t even fly, no sleigh marks on the roof?  By the way I did go up and check.  What now…Grandma, yeh, yeh grandma will come through for me.  The light bulb goes out on Santa, what a bunch of crap he was.  So now life without Santa begins.  There was one family tradition brought to us by my grandma Kate, my dad’s mom.  This was such bull shit that it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.  It’s not that I am ungrateful but, like I said before expectations.  I am an adolescent male with needs at this time of the year.  Gimme some f’n presents.  I need gifts.  Shower me with all the crap you can afford, just make sure that these gifts are not clothes.  I knew my one grandma would come through but Grandma Kate, she was as predictable as a trip to the bathroom 10 minutes after Chinese takeout.  My dad would tell us kids when she would be coming.  Would this year be different?  A basketball, she knows I love basketball.  Maybe a BB gun, I would love to do me some killing.  Insert”A Christmas Story” joke here!  The Saturday before Christmas we would wait for her to arrive.  Usually later in the day, so she wouldn’t have to stay very long.  She did not like being driven around after dark, especially if it were snowing.  With great anticipation my sisters and I would watch out the front window to see her get our packages out of the trunk.  What could it be?  Nervous excitement, would gather in my stomach almost making me pee my pants!  Awe Man I caught a glimpse of something, a sick feeling came over me.  Much to my chagrin, I saw the yellow cellophane, the wrapping on the monumental collapse of my dreams and wishes.  Strolling un-merrily along our front porch that lady was packing my now crushed dreams, like a peacock strutting.  She actually thought she was going me a favor.  Like her shit didn’t stink.  The nerve!  Anger began to grow inside me.  It was like the feeling right before you throw up:  Sweaty palms, lots of saliva, dizziness, the urge to go somewhere else.  I knew what was next; I had to put on the happy face and make believe she was welcome in my crumbled home of anguish, at least for the 10 minutes she would stay.  This was like getting a spanking and having to like it.  10 minutes of torturous hell and the following days of disappointment would make me secretly spew profanity toward my Grandma like Richard Pryor catching on fire.  Our present…A FRUIT BASKET!  Are you kidding me?  A F’N FRUIT BASKET!!  What kind of soulless, anti Santa, battle ax gives young children a fruit basket?  Where’s the sack of reindeer turds, and the lump of coal, the fruit cake, the Yule log?  She should have given me a pick and shovel to go out and just bury my dreams alone in my anger and grief.  Besides, maybe she didn’t know that fruit gives me gas.  Maybe I should eat the whole basket and deliver her a little hint of a present as I lock the door behind me when I leave her house.  Let’s see how she likes that.  You can’t give me a fruit basket for Christmas.  Boy, if I could have spoken my mind, she would have been lectured on the fundamental principles of gift giving.  But my mom always said, “If you can’t say anything nice”… yeh yeh there was a whole lot of cursing nothing coming out of my mouth.  There’s a lesson to be learned here.  If you are yearning to offend your children or grandchildren, sabotaging the holiday here’s the way:  Show up to their house and give them a nice present for Christmas…A Fruit Basket.  Keep the car running because you won’t be there long.  A fricking fruit basket, I still can’t believe it.  I guess there was one small consolation.  My dad would use the yellow cellophane.  He would hang it in front of the TV.  VOILA !  Colored Television! 

I'm No Baker's Man

My mom could bake.  Some of the best chocolate chip cookies, whoopie pies and scotch a roos, were made at my house.  These items were sometimes fought over, who would get the first /last one?  I on the other hand can’t bake a lick.  I don’t measure.  Baking takes precise amounts of ingredients.  For me, taking the time to measure is a waste.  Maybe I just haven’t taken into consideration the science behind baking powder, baking soda, salt, yeast, etc.  Oh well, we can’t be everything.  My mom on the other hand could bake up a storm, especially around this time of the year.  I remember her making fudge, divinity, buckeyes, sugar cookies and hard tack candy.  This candy making skill can only be found by someone who cares about the end result.  Christmas time was the best in our house.  Somewhere around 7 or 8 years of age I was finally old enough to join in and help produce these wonderful delicacies.  My specialty was cinnamon toothpicks.  I would share these carefully prepared splinters of wood with all my friends, keeping the candy to myself.  Today is your lucky day.  I am going to present you with the recipe for one of my all time favorites.  My mom would surprise us somehow.  We would arrive home to find the smell of melting peanut butter and chocolate.  My sisters and I would head straight for the kitchen.  There we would find a 9 1/2 x 13” glass baking dish filled with gooey, chewy, chocolaty treats.  We couldn’t cut or eat them fast enough!  For me the knife would just be getting in the way.  I still make these today, as a matter of fact just a couple days ago.  So here goes.  Follow this recipe exactly.  Do not make substitutions.  I would not want you to misrepresent my mother’s recipe.  You will need the following:  about 25 toothpicks, one bottle of cinnamon extract and one small glass container large enough to hold tooth picks and oil.  Combine and let soak overnight.  Remove from oil and allow toothpicks enough air time to dry.  Share and enjoy.  Ha ha just kidding!  Scotch-a-roos:  Combine 1 cup Karo syrup, 1 cup sugar, bring this mixture to a boil.  Allow this mixture to boil for 1 minute.  Remove from heat and add 1 cup peanut butter, mix until smooth.  In a large bowl add 6 cups of Rice Krispies and pour in peanut butter mixture mix to combine all Krispies.  Place this mixture in a 9 ½ x 13 glass baking dish and allow to cool at room temperature.  In a double boiler add 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips with ½ bag of butterscotch chips.  Heat until chips are smooth, pour and spread over cooled krispie mixture.  Allow chocolate to set before cutting and eating.  You can thank my mom for sharing this recipe with me as a young boy.  I don’t know where she got this, but I am grateful she made these treats once and a while.  Enjoy! 

Hi-C you!

Hi-C grape juice; my favorite juice in the entire world.  I could drink the better part of the entire can.  Remember having to use the pointed, chisel side of the can opener to seek access to the yummy goodness inside?  Ohhhh and there was nothing that gave me more satisfaction than opening that fresh can and drinking right from that frayed metal edge.  I swear my mom had x-ray vision.  Without her presence, she would yell down the hallway, “Stop drinking from the can!”  How did she know?  She couldn’t have seen me.  I’m behind the fridge door, there’s no possible way she even knew I was in the fridge.  Anyway I drank this juice every day of my childhood.  I made Hi-C frozen juice pops with my Popsicle making Tupperware.  My dad and I, believe it or not, made ice cream floats with this juice, no root beer.  I would drink this for breakfast, lunch and sometimes for a nightcap, Hi-C grape from the can.  Every now and then my mom would buy the orange.  This however was not the same; the grape always had top billing in my world.  I love my mom for buying this juice.  This simple act of keeping her son happy may have been her greatest triumph as a mother.  There is nothing more important in my world than having a can of cold Hi-C grape juice in the fridge and a spare in the cupboard.  Now I don’t recall if this juice was high or low on the nutritional scale but even if it were only 10% real juice, it was 100% keeping me content.  Keeping her only son 100% happy should have been my mother’s main concern.  She succeeded!  My Hi-C Grape in a can, in the fridge, childhood could not be any better.  Kudos to my mom, Marie!

Puzzled

Corn
If there are no nutrients being absorbed by our bodies...
why do we eat it?
I'm just sayin.

Totally Off the Subject

Sitting in a warm house in a basically paralyzed city brings back memories of snow days in Ohio.  Seattle has been shut down for 3 days with approximately 2-4” of snow and cold weather.  This is understandable considering the hills and amount of elevated roadway.  Come on people, if you really don’t need to go out, don’t.  All of you UW grads and your All Wheel Drive Subarus are just in the way.  Park that pile and go home and take your UW stickers and license plate bracket with you, because you don’t belong on the roads today!  Any good dawg should know how to stay!  As for the rest of you morons who think you need to be out, YOU’RE NOT THAT IMPORTANT!  This family however has Nutcracker rehearsals to go to.  PNB can cancel regular classes; but in no way, shape or form will they ever cancel a rehearsal or show.  Go figure?  See sentence in red!  I, on the other hand, can handle this weather but I have slipped a little.  Growing up in the Midwest I should not be so under prepared.  I have been to the grocery 3 times in 3 days.  Maybe it’s the over 45 male ADD kicking in, but I can’t remember shit anymore! 

Anyway, my sister (the driver) and I (the passenger) would drive to school in 4” of snow in a VW bug.  No heat, frozen windshield, bald tires on an unplowed road with me breathing in my coat just to stay warm and not fogging the windows any further.  Let me explain what paralyzing really means.  Winter in Ohio can be brutal.  There were winters when our family would be exiled from the big city (pop. 3,000) for days at a time.  Some drifts on our road would be impenetrable by normal plows.  The normal bad drifting area just west of our house would reach 12-15’ high.  We would watch out the window as the County Department would try desperately to get our road open.  The standard ODOT plow would hit the main drift, back up to get another running start and hit it again and again, multiple times trying to get through.  We would laugh and giggle while the frustrated workers fought the snow drift battle.  After hours of failure, they would finally bring out the big guns, the V-plow.  A few rams with this baby and POW our road was now clear.  Now it was my turn to do battle.  Our road being clear meant only one thing, THIS FAMILY NEEDED SPACE, WE HAD TO GET OUT, before all hell broke loose!  “Boy,” my dad would say, “get that driveway cleared.”  My days as a youth were spent shoveling our 60’ long driveway.  The need to shovel each time we needed to get out was exhausting.  This painstaking work was completed by the only shoveling apprentice in the house, just to go to the grocery for necessities, milk, bread and eggs.  In our case my mom extended our milk by mixing it with dried milk powder and water.  Now doesn’t that make you want to jump right up and do some shoveling?  Thank goodness we had some frozen ground beef in the freezer.  Watching it snow, playing outside, coming in for some Swiss Miss instant cocoa w/mini marshmallows was a pretty normal day for a snowed-in, apprentice one-handled lever operator.  I guess I didn’t have it too bad.

Happy Thanksgiving, deer anyone?

I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving.  My memories of the holiday meals are not bad, they are very special.  It is a time of forgetting troubles, bills, frustrations and especially the waist line.  This is the time to get out that pair of pants that give you the most room for expansion.  Every holiday, after eating the meal, my aunt and uncle would go “looking for deer.”  I may be pretty naïve, because I’m still unsure what that really meant.  I don’t think you can get in a car, drive around rural Allen County and actually see deer.  Upon their return, they always proclaimed “we saw a couple of does and a small buck.”  Whatever!  You didn’t see anything, especially my aunt, if you get my point.  Now I’m totally off the subject!  The one I remember most is the day our family went to the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan to watch the traditional Thanksgiving Day football game.  It was 1991, the Lions were playing da Bears.  The trip took the entire day.  This was the first time our family did not go to my grandmother’s house.  The day was still very special to me because it was un-clear what our plans were for dinner.  Our lunch was stadium food.  After the game we were driving home and I think my mom suggested we eat at the next Cracker Barrel we could find.  My family had turkey dinner in a restaurant somewhere between Pontiac, Michigan and Spencerville, Ohio.  The food I do not recall, but this, non-traditional, Thanksgiving is still etched in my memory.  So enjoy the holiday weekend, football, family, and everything about being together.  These times are numbered, make them all count.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING