In Frances Mayes’ most recent book, A Place in the World, Finding the Meaning of Home, she devotes a chapter to The Taste of Memory. She poses these questions to her friends, “What’s your most memorable food from home? What comforts, revives and provokes memories?”

So in this week when food is uppermost in our minds, I asked my family members which foods evoked their memories of home. My question opened a floodgate of reminiscences including one for a “hot dish” of dubious origins. The first words are from my great niece, followed by my three nephews and my niece. My daughter and husband get the last words.

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“This seems like a good blog for the orange and celery jello ring to shine.”

“Orange Jello with chopped celery – we would have this dish every Thanksgiving. Mom would make it the night before in a ring mold (jello on the bottom, celery on the top), and then flip it over on top of lettuce at dinner.  Looks beautiful.  Everyone took a little serving, and then it would slowly melt during dinner.  Dad continued the tradition after Mom died.  Finally one of us asked if anyone liked it, and Dad said he didn’t but he made it because we liked it.  That was the last year Dad made it for Thanksgiving.  😬 I bought a mold and make it for Thanksgiving every few years to keep the tradition going.” 

“Mom served the canned cranberry jelly. As a kid I really thought the ridges that reflected the can’s shape were a fancy part of Thanksgiving dinner preparation. Also, it was literally plopped on a little glass dish that I now have at my home. Served Triscuit crackers and cheese on it last night😊. My teeth ache just thinking about that canned magic….”

“Cranberry jelly from the can in the shape of the can wiggling on the table brings back the jitters for me.”

“Grandma Tooley’s hot dish – macaroni, ground beef and Mexican corn. Probably a quick improvisation of the three handiest things available. My memory is of the corn and a little black pepper flavor. Most of all I can still visualize the large, yellow, patterned pan that it was made in. My memory is being eye-level with the pan. I could smell it, but could not see it until it was served. Later as an adult I found mom’s recipe box. About one in three recipes started with “brown 1 or 2 pounds of ground beef” 😂 Feeding us all required budgeting and cooking for 12… and a referee was needed to control portions on the first serving round. I still recall mom telling one of us to put some mashed potatoes back in the serving bowl😂.”

“And in regards to Grandma Tooley’s hot dish, I still make it except I use ground turkey, a can of chopped tomatoes, and a box of macaroni & cheese. I remember one time telling Grandma about this dish (the original version) and she responded that she never had made it and had no idea where it came from. I liked it a lot when growing up. It was one of my mom and dad’s go-to dishes. I can even remember the pan she used to make it. It was always a challenge to eat as the corn and ground beef would fall off the fork. And you could only get one macaroni noodle at a time on the fork. So maybe it was some conspiracy by our parents to make us eat slower.”

“I grew up thinking fish grew up to be square patties. And then one summer we learned to fish. We caught a bunch of little bluegills. My Mom wanted us to throw them back, but we insisted on keeping them and getting to eat them. So our Dad spent one evening cleaning and filleting all these little bluegills that my mom then proceeded to bread and pan fry. Craig, Jim, John and I ate all of them while our parents ate something else.”

“Let’s see…my grandmother on my dad’s side moved to America from Italy. Her food was divine! Our family favorite was her meatballs (secret ingredient, believe it or not, was raisins ?!?) My mom’s folks had a regular rotation of “ham steak”. This included a topping of canned peach or canned pineapple rings. I thought it tasted like candy. Liver and onions was on the regular rotation as well as pork and sauerkraut. I might actually enjoy these things today (if I chose meat), but at that time it was such a bummer! The clean plate goals were real and those were very long dinner events for my brother and I.”

“I have a few memories, too – not Thanksgiving. Powder Sugar mini donuts on Halloween, homemade ice cream from that crazy hand crank maker on birthdays in the summer. And, corn on the cob with a side of cottage cheese. I loved it when the butter and salt and pepper on the plate mixed in the cottage cheese. Delicious. No one I know eats that combo and people tell me it’s weird. They are missing out!”

“Food Memories – My Mom regularly made Scalloped Potatoes in a large clear glass Pyrex dish – delicious! Unfortunately another regular was liver and onions because the liver was supposed to be good for us – ugh! And every New Years’ Eve we had oyster stew, the butter and milk soup was delicious! The challenge was those oysters. The best option for oysters was a quick swallow w/o any chewing.”

Raising Frances Mayes’ question to family and friends around the Thanksgiving table might induce delectable conversation. Bon Appetite!

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I recently saw this large sign outside a Madison business:

NOW HIRING.
MUST HAVE A CLUE.

Those succinct words say volumes about one part of our worker shortage in America.

I’m aware that the lack of workers, like so many problems, is complex. However, I also believe a great epidemic of cluelessness is sweeping America. Talk to anyone who does hiring in retail establishments and you will hear tales of woe about many of their new hires.

The old fashioned notion of a work ethic appears to be a foreign concept to many current job applicants. Perhaps a refresher course is needed. I would propose the following list.

1. You must show up for work.
2. Your job’s starting time is not a suggestion.
3. “My cousin’s in town” is not an excuse for skipping work.
4. Your vacation does not start two weeks after you are hired.
5. You were hired to do a job. You and your phone were not hired.
6. Your boss isn’t a descendant of Cruella de Vil.
7. Your fellow employees aren’t all idiots.
8. Some customers will be idiots, but they must be tolerated.
9. Pajama bottoms and flip-flops are not casual business attire.
10. Do not lean in if you are not financially independent.

Because of the severe worker shortage, those who do show up every day and put in an honest day’s labor have to pick up the slack. They are overworked, overwhelmed and tired out.

Kudos to everyone who shows up. Our country can’t run without you.

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This intriguing picture recently popped up on my computer screen.

Leave it to the French to dream up a cheese stretching contest. Being a devoted cheese fan, I immediately had to learn more about the contest and cheese stretchiness.

For starters, I discovered the contest was held in Laguiole, France which is home to a cheese named Tomme d’Auvergne. And here’s the peculiar part; the cheese being stretched isn’t all cheese. It’s Aligot, a favorite rural dish of mashed potatoes, cheese, cream and garlic. The contest was held in July, and the cheesy Aligot reached an amazing 16 feet.

The French aren’t the only ones playing with their cheese. Here is an American checking out the stretchiness of her grilled cheese sandwich. She is not alone in her quest for the longest cheese pull. I easily found numerous posts with advice and information on cheese stretch and melt.

Cheesemakers consider good stretch to be an indication of quality cheese. The Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research gives this explanation of the process:

“Stretch requires an intact, interconnected casein (protein) network and is lost as the interactions between the casein molecules decrease. Stretch is the result of casein-casein interactions that are broken easily but readily reform at different locations in the casein network. Think of holding a piece of warm Mozzarella, take one end in each hand and gently pull it apart. The casein molecules are grabbing and releasing each other while sliding past as you pull the cheese.”

Not wanting to be a total Wisconsin chauvinist, I must add this information from the Dairy Farmers of Washington State:

“To obtain the best stretch and melt, the cheese should be aged over one year and have the right amount of protein (casein), fat, moisture and acidity.”

So which cheeses are the champion stretchers? The Washington Dairy Farmers rank these as the top five.

• Mozzarella
• Cheddar
• Fontina
• Gouda
• Gruyere

Now we all have an excuse to play with our grilled cheese sandwiches…we’re doing scientific research on their stretching qualities.

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Nonsense. We all encounter some of it every day. And the most nonsensical thing of all is that some apparent nonsense turns out to be logical after all.

Here are some random thoughts on nonsense, and the perfect place to start is with the month of November.

• November, the eleventh month, comes from the Roman word for “ninth”. It was the ninth month on the Roman calendar. But we use the Gregorian calendar resulting in our eleventh month being named nine.

• Cold-blooded animals don’t always have cold blood, in fact, their blood and bodies are often much warmer than ours, the warm-blooded creatures. Cold-blooded animals have body temperatures that are the same as the air and surfaces around them. The term cold-blooded has confused countless children when I do science programs, and I do give them the correct term which is “ectothermic”. I agree with the scientists who want “cold-blooded” to be tossed in the garbage bin of words.

• Upper Egypt is at the bottom or southern part of Egypt, and Lower Egypt is at the top of Egypt. These names appear to make no sense at all, however, a logical explanation exists. The correct term for the place where a river empties into a larger body of water is the lower part of the river. Since the Nile River flows north, the lower part is at the top of the map and the upper part is at the bottom. Again, it’s a true challenge to explain this to a group of children.

• To raze a house, you tear it down. But you can also raise the roof, raise children, raise a garden or raise your spirits, none of which have anything to do with tearing something down.

• Ever since my childhood, I have never understood how “robin red breast” got that name. The breast is clearly orange. Look at a cardinal or red-headed woodpecker if you want to see red.

• I frequently find myself driving down a highway behind a truck from the Yellow Trucking Company. The word “Yellow” is painted in bright orange paint as is the entire truck. I finally looked up this nonsense and found out why Yellow is orange. In 1924, A. J. Harrell founded a bus and taxi company called Yellow Cab Transit. In 1929, he branched into trucking and became the Yellow Transit Company. Concerned with road safety for his fleet of trucks, he commissioned the chemists at DuPont to determine the color that would be most visible from the greatest distance on the nation’s highways. They came up with the color “Swamp Holly Orange”. It is still used on all their trucks.

• And, finally, as you drive down the highway, buckle up your seat belt. But don’t drive on a bridge that is about to buckle.

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This Halloween marks a first for my husband and me. After 57 years of buying pumpkins for our jack-o- lanterns, we have finally harvested a crop from our own land.

Note that I did not say we grew them. All our attempts to grow vegetables and fruits have ended dismally. My pumpkin growing attempt two years ago produced nothing but a heap of dead vines despite my daily watering and tending.

Our harvest of nine small but perfectly shaped pumpkins was a gift from the goddess of pumpkins. Here is how the miracle happened.

Every year, after our jack-o-lanterns have crumpled and our porch pumpkins have gotten squishy, we have our annual pumpkin toss. Standing at the edge of our cliff, we pitch them over…a crude, fun form of composting.

This past spring we decided to make a temporary set of ropes and ladders to regain access to our beach. Our stairs were destroyed by high lake levels, but a big beach has now returned. The planning and construction of this scheme of secured ladders and rope took us to midsummer.

On our first venture down the cliff, a wonderful surprise awaited us. Big, healthy pumpkin vines and leaves with lovely yellow flowers were growing out of the lower part of the cliff. Two long vines were even thriving on the sandy beach itself.

We could not water or care for the vines because of their precarious locations. So nature had to continue doing all the work. In a few weeks, small green balls appeared where the flowers had withered. During the remaining days of summer, we watched them grow and turn bright orange.

Last week was the big harvest. Armed with shopping bags and a small saw, we carefully navigated down the cliff to claim our treasure. I can report the pumpkins and we made it back to the top with no bumps and bruises.

We are fairly certain this harvest is a once in a lifetime gift. One more thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

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