Past Blogs

“Beware of health foods”, is an imperative I believe in.

A few decades ago a segment of the populace decided that food and medicine were synonymous. Ascribing medicinal powers to food turns eating into a trial instead of a sensual pleasure. Don’t most sane people know that medicine does and should taste terrible and food delectable?

I recently choose to eat at a “fresh, organic food” cafe when I needed breakfast in an airport. Trouble loomed when I looked at the menu. Hemp toast and egg white creations repeatedly turned up among the morning entrees.

Bear in mind that I paid attention in my 3rd grade geography classes when Sister Redemptora (her real name) told us that hemp is a product of tropical countries and that hemp is used to make rope. Therefore, I refuse to eat bread made out of rope.

“Healthy” bakeries also deserve some commentary. You need two pieces of equipment after bringing home a loaf from one of the “good for you” bakeries… a hacksaw and an Ace bandage. The hacksaw is to saw through the crust that has the texture of concrete. The Ace bandage gets wrapped around your wrist. Health breads are so dense you could break a wrist lifting a slice to your mouth. Since when should eating be punishment?

Here is my suggestion. Use health breads as weights and sling them up and down like barbells. You’ll burn up a few calories. Then head out to an aromatic, French bakery and consume a perfect baguette with butter. Bliss!

…dedicated to Chris and Cathy

The other night around midnight, I was about to go out the door to put a letter in our rural mailbox. I quickly changed my plan, however, when I saw a gigantic “Pepe” munching seeds under our bird feeder. We refer to all the skunks who grace our yard as “Pepes” in honor of the hilarious cartoon character, Pepe Le Pew, who was created by Brenda White.

Despite my interrupted mail run, we’re delighted to have skunk visitors again. They had been absent for a while, and we missed them.

Living in the country has taught us how to coexist with the wildlife. In thirteen years we have had only one skunk incident; statistically, that’s not bad.

It was that proverbial dark and stormy night, and we were on our front porch watching a huge storm roll in from the west. Unbeknown to us, the wind blew the back porch door open. Our indoor cat, Blaise, marched outdoors, apparently right into a skunk.

When we walked back into our house, the smell was overwhelming, and our poor, skunked cat was hiding under the couch. (At least the skunk hadn’t followed.) Blaise had taken a hit directly in his face.

A call to the vet got us the magic formula. Forget the tomato juice myth. The following recipe now hangs prominently on a kitchen cupboard door.

1 quart three percent hydrogen peroxide
¼ cup baking soda
1 teaspoon liquid detergent

• Mix ingredients
• Lather animal (human or otherwise) and let sit 10 minutes
• Rinse
• Repeat

(Note: do not premix or store this formula… explosions may occur!)

The results were miraculous. Our cat was de-skunked and even slept with us that night. However, he did look weird. All his lovely black tabby stripes had bleached to a reddish-brown. So don’t be surprised if your black Lab turns chocolate.

Perhaps the time has come to reinstate Home Economics classes in our schools. While we are at it, we should resurrect manual training classes, too.

When I was in middle school, referred to as Junior High at that time, girls and boys alike took both shop classes and cooking. How enlightened.

With the current economic mess in America, knowing how to cook a delicious dinner for pennies or how to fix things instead of tossing them might morph from being extremely quaint to extremely helpful.

I am frankly puzzled at how these domestic skills got so marginalized in the last fifty years.

Abundance must breed a cavalier attitude toward all things home economic. Why bother to cook soup from scratch when you have the cash for endless trips to McDonald’s? Why fix the toaster when Walmart sells new ones for $12.99. And why sew on popped buttons when “the one button missing garment” can be tossed in the Goodwill donation bag?

Our great-great grandparents knew how to build homes in the wilderness and raise almost all of their own food. I can’t even get a tent to stay upright in a mild wind or get a tomato plant to flourish.

I’m definitely not yearning for a return to pioneer times. Making my own soap from fat and lye and butchering chickens are not tasks I want to undertake. But a basic familiarity with cooking, nutrition, home repairs and family finance are good survival skills.

If our skill set gets reduced to sitting stationary and interacting with a computer screen, we may have to wonder whose intelligence is artificial.

Our yard hosts a dinosaur, a gigantic bird holding barbells in his wings, a parade of metal cats climbing a driftwood pole, a four foot tall racing rabbit and a turquoise beastie.

Last summer I added a blue bottle tree, providing an excellent reason for drinking lots of Riesling.

Needless to say, I do not live in a gated community or a suburb with restrictive covenants.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating yard decor of old, rusting vehicles, piles of tires and collections of left over building materials. But I do enjoy living in a place where people are free to have creative yards.

My immediate neighbor, for instance, has a huge flock of flamingos charging across his front lawn. At Christmas they pull Santa’s sleigh. Since I know that the pink flamingo lawn ornament is an endangered species, I consider myself lucky to live beside so many fine specimens.

Thanks to another house in the neighborhood, I will not have to take a trip to Disneyland. A life size Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is just a short drive away.

A former bowling alley owner lives down the road. So it’s perfectly obvious why he has a towering pyramid of bowling balls in his yard.

One of my favorite yards has been totally landscaped with large and small stuffed toys. Dozens of bears, bunnies and Elmos are strategically placed almost everywhere. The weather takes its toll and soggy plush abounds, but so does a wacky charm.

When vernacular artists are driven to transform their entire personal environments, it is called art. Our nearby John Michael Kohler Art Center has made it their mission to preserve the best of these unique properties. Their recent book, Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds, documents the life work of over twenty of these incredible artists.

I recently had the pleasure of watching a movie about another amazing outsider artist, Pearl Fryar. He salvaged  bushes from the trash pile at his local nursery and transformed his three acres into a topiary wonderland. After watching this delightful film, A Man Named Pearl, you will never view a hedge clipper the same way again. Click here to watch a trailer for the film.

My father and his big sister, my Aunt Vi, could never agree on candy. Since I adored both of them, I was caught in the middle of their candy wars.

Fannie Farmer was my dad’s beloved brand of chocolates. Going to the Fannie Farmer store with him was always a treat. The shops were sparkling clean and smelled sublime. Perfect pyramids of candies were displayed in trays in the showcases. My father studiously picked every chocolate for his hand packed box.

When offered a piece of Fannie Farmer, Aunt Vi accepted. But after indulging, she always informed my father that, “Quality is better.”

The Quality Candy Shops were a local chain with their candy kitchen on the south side of town. Aunt Vi would walk miles to the shop nearest her. She, too, would hand pick every one of her pieces. She did, however, consume them faster than we did. No more than three pieces at a time was the rule at our house.

Aunt Vi came into candy glory at Eastertime. Quality Candy made huge chocolate Easter eggs about the size of a tennis ball. These monster eggs came in both whipped and solid creams. Unable to decide which was better, she simply bought dozens of each in a sensational array of flavors.

After I was grown and married, I could always count on Aunt Vi supplying our family with an enormous box of these eggs. Many years an entire shelf in the refrigerator was filled.

I now live in what the New York Times refers to as “The Delta of Chocolate”. Eight unique, family owned chocolate shops dot the towns near our home.

True to my family’s serious attitudes toward candy, I have sworn total allegiance to one of these shops, Beerntsen’s Confectionary in Manitowoc. It is almost time to go and pick up the chocolate eggs. Vi would be proud of me, even though I won’t get three dozen.