Kneping the Zweiback

Things That Impress Me

2010-08-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

I.

The details aren't clear -- I know it was summer. I was outside by the garden. I was maybe four. And Dad came across the yard from one of the hog barns. I was mad as could be about something. And pouting. And carrying on. Probably loudly. But he told me I'd better stop. A bug could fly in my mouth, he said.

A bug!

"Do bugs fly in your mouth?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "I just swallowed three flies."

That's the first time I remember being in awe of my dad.

II.

Sometimes Mom got me up at what seemed like the middle of the night to put my hair in pigtails so that I could ride along with Dad to take a load of hogs into John Morrell. After that business was done, we'd get breakfast at the Stockyards Café. We'd both get pancakes and sometimes we'd both get chocolate milk.

On the way home he'd sing his version of Convoy, adapted for hauling hogs instead of logs and I'd usually fall asleep.

He still sings that song, and I still think it's funny.

III.

I got a dog for my birthday. I'm not sure what birthday -- but it was before I was eight because for my eighth birthday I got Sparkle, which was the best present ever even if Grandpa did spill the beans before the big day.

The dog was a Springer Spaniel named Benji who was promptly hit by a car.

It was sad, of course, but not worth holding onto.

At least that's how I remember Benji because within days -- maybe even the next day -- mom and dad woke me up from a nap on the couch with a little ball of a puppy mom named Cocoa and Pat renamed Ace.

When that eighth birthday rolled around and we went to get Sparkle home from the neighbor, I was elated and terrified. Mostly terrified.

But Dad didn't have time for that. First I sat on Sparkle while mom led me around the yard, then dad hired someone to give me riding lessons and we rode every day and every day and every day. He set up some railroad ties along the hitching rail so I could reach up high enough to saddle and mount Sparkle by myself. And when he decided I'd outgrown the railroad tie, he made me practice in the yard after supper.

IV.

Years later we were heading to a horse show -- I can't remember exactly where -- but we were heading east on Highway 42 when we ran into some road construction. We weren't running late, but we didn't have time to spare waiting for the pilot car to make its rounds. So dad executed a flawless three-point turn -- with the trailer -- and went around on some back roads.

V.

During my time at NWC, you couldn't loft the beds in Fern and storage space was at a premium so some enterprising soul at the lumberyard sold freestanding shelves that went over the bed. And he managed to get them pitched during orientation so that all future Fern residents could go home to tell their parents.

Dad didn't think much of the idea and instead threw his tools in the pickup on move-in day. He did some measuring while mom and I unpacked, went to the lumberyard for some boards, set up a couple saw horses in my dorm room and built his own shelves. It was hot that day. The dorm wasn't air conditioned, and the smell of hogs and turkeys and feedlots hung heavy in the air.

But Dad just rolled up the sleeves on his new red shirt and told me to find a vacuum.

When he was done with my shelves, he built some for my roommate. And then some for a few other girls.

VI.

My first semester there was hard, as those things tend to be. And I was sad and sometimes lonely and maybe a little lost.

So Dad took a lot of dictation from the family dog, who sent both snail mail and e-mail. Ernie's updates were generally the same: He wanted to pack a satchel so that he could come stay for the weekend to bite stray boys.

VII.

Moving to Omaha for graduate school shouldn't have been as simple as moving into Fern, but it was. Here's why:

Mom, Dad and I left Bridgewater for Omaha at 6:00 one morning in July. We got into town about 9:00. We looked at two apartments; by 10:00 we signed a lease at the second place. Then we went to the Nebraska Furniture Mart, found a couch, love seat and bed at Mrs. B's, arranged for them to be delivered to the new apartment on my move-in date in August, and met Stephanie for lunch at Chili's.

We were back on the road for home shortly after noon.

VIII.

As an adult looking back over the expanse of my childhood, I know my dad worried about me. But I didn't know it then. Had no clue that there was anything to worry about, that I was anything less than capable and confident and strong.

IX.

Dad has always wanted ride cutting horses, so a few years ago he sold some horses, bought a couple of others, signed himself up for lessons and drove down to Cody, Nebraska, to take them.

Last winter we went to the stock show in Rapid City for a cutting. We've spent a lot of time around horses together, so I can say, objectively, that had his life turned out differently, he would have been a horse trader. Or an engineer. Or maybe a psychologist.

He gets pretty worked up around horses. Ridiculous amounts of energy. Plus he was on steroids.

No, really. He was. So factor that in.

We ate steak at 10 o'clock Saturday night and while I was sleeping that off the next morning, he was up surveying the situation at the fairgrounds. He picked me up at the hotel for breakfast and then I watched him make his social rounds for the next eight hours until it was time for his class.

And then I watched him, a few weeks into chemotherapy at that point, cut three calves just as pretty as you please.

X.

Before Dad sold Edgar to the hot-dog-stand mogul in Minnesota, he tried to give him away several times.

He didn't stake him out by the road with a "Free" sign, but he was constantly coming across people who he thought were in need of a good horse. Like rolly poly 13-year-old boys who want a horse but don't know how to ride. That sort of thing.

Edgar came back from that escapade beat up by broodmares with his tail chewed off. And I'm guessing that boy still doesn't know how to ride.

But that's my dad: He sees someone in need or something that needs doing and he does what he can.

That he can see those things so clearly and always be moved to act? That's the thing that impresses me most.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Thankful

2009-11-25T07:28:00.000-08:00

1. One year after my dad nearly passed out in front of the Tollhouse Cookie kiosk in the Mall of America, he's healthy and strong and making plans for the National Final Rodeo in Vegas. And I’m thankful to know that my family, through the grace of God, can face uncertainty and cancer and chemo and take it all on, and that such things only have to be accomplished one day at a time.

2. The lovely little house on Ohio has a new owner, and we no longer have a mortgage. And that freed us to move out of the main street apartment and into one on the lake.

3. We had friends, on both ends, who helped us move. And as hard as moving is for me, it's nice to have friends across the country who love us.

4. I have a job that allows me to write for a living, even if it's about methane digesters and carbon emissions and futures contracts. It's interesting, and I learn something every day.

5. When I wash the dishes, Justin dries. He loads audio books onto my iPod and looks for music he thinks I'll like. He watches old screwball comedies with me and reads books I've loved so that we can talk about them. He walks the dog every morning and takes her out the last thing at night, too. He's a good man, that Justin, and I'm thankful he's mine.

Epic Fail

2009-09-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

That's pretty much the only way to describe the cherry pie I made this week.

As I was scraping it into the garbage Tuesday night, I asked Justin not to tell my mom. Because she brought me the cherries for the pie.

Cherries my dad picked from the much-lauded cherry tree in the backyard and carefully pitted under intense scrutiny from the resident alpha cook.

The cherry tree only recently started producing -- the first year there was enough for one or two pies. So each cherry was hoarded like a precious gem and bestowed with the utmost discretion upon the favored few. Last year, that did not include me.

When we were home for dad's birthday in August, though, Justin and I noticed that there was an entire freezer pretty much full of cherries. So when mom and dad made plans to visit last weekend, I asked mom if she'd bring some along because "Justin" had a hankering for cherry pie.

Despite what we'd seen in the freezer, I didn't expect her to deliver. But she did. Three pints.

After an afternoon at the art fair the next town over, she thought it would be a good idea to make that pie. It would have been, too, except that I wanted a nap more than I wanted pie. She brought it up more than once and when I shot the idea down the second time with a breezy "gosh mom, I know how to make a pie," it wasn't without a sense of foreboding.

And it's true; in the past, I have made three -- yes, that's right, three -- successful pies. Probably by fluke.

I can't tell you where I went wrong -- I did branch out from the tried and true Betty Crocker recipe, but I was the bad ingredient. And the crust was like leather. Chewy, yet soggy, leather.

And the cherries. Well. They were a little freezer burnt. It hurts to say that. It really does. But they were.

I've determined to master pie crust. Someday. In the meantime, I made cake.

PS -- If you know my mom and happen to see her, don't tell her what I just told you. I'm not going to keep it a secret or anything, but I have to brace myself first.

Justin Recommends

2009-06-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

I like sweet potatoes, but this hasn't always been the case -- even the marshmallow-encrusted goodness of my mom's Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole wasn't enough to tempt me for years and years and years. But now I keep them in constant supply for fries and soup and quesadillas and topping with chili. But I may have gotten a little overzealous as Justin placed a moratorium on sweet potato chowder and peanut butter vegetable soup.

I also like chickpeas, another late addition to my food repertoire and so I've tried to make up for lost time. Chickpeas in salad, in soup, in chili, in hummus, in veggie burgers. So many chickpeas in so many things that my man called a chickpea strike, which I've tried to respect. Mostly. (Because one has to draw a line in indulging her husband's persnickety inclinations. It's true.)

Then I came across this falafel recipe that included sweet potatoes and chickpeas, and I made it for supper without apprising Justin of the situation. He ate it and he liked it. Because it was very, very good. And if you like sweet potatoes/chickpeas/falafel, I suspect you'll like it, too.

Tonight

2009-05-21T20:02:00.001-07:00

Justin and I took Yeti out for her last walk of the evening.

At the same time, the young neighbor boy the next house over was seeing his girlfriend out; her ride was waiting in the street, car running, lights on.

He was going in for a goodnight embrace of some sort just as we passed, but Yeti interrupted -- shoving her needle nose between them looking for some love herself with her helicopter tail aloft and circling.

It was just a little bit awkward for us all.

And also hilarious.

In which I digress

2009-05-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

My kitchen is small, but not too small for baking. And my oven, uninsulated door and wildly varying temperatures aside, isn't impossible to work with -- but I haven't been baking, which means I haven't been writing, which means there are things I want to say that I haven't said.

Like about my dad, who finished chemo the week before Easter, and how we went to a cutting in Rapid City late this winter and how he stayed up way too late and made me promise not to tell mom, fed me steak and tried to sign me up for the stater class even though I'd only ridden a cutting horse once, out behind the barn last summer.

Or how I saw Salman Rushdie engrossed by his blackberry outside the Cosmos Club in Washington DC where, should you ever have the inclination, you can order pre-Prohibition-inspired cocktails at the restaurant owned by the North Dakota Farmers Union, and if you're braver than I am, or if you really love bacon, you'll try Bone. It's where I learned, over dinner, that one of the men involved with the Jerusalem artichoke debacle had ties to my alma matter in Orange City.

I've wanted to say how I've started running again and how it's hard, but good and slowly making me feel like myself again. How I'm researching a story about Roswell Garst who told Nikita Krushchev in a letter in the middle of the Cold War that only a man with small ideas eats a cherry in two bites and that unless Garst's recommendations on agriculture be taken seriously and in their entirety, he'd rather they not be taken at all. And isn't that just perfect? It takes a fearless man to say that -- or at least a confident man who knows his own business. I don't know a lot more than that about him yet, but already I like him -- and am reminded that people are just people and while we can admire them, it's ridiculous to be awed or cowed or however you want to say it.

And so, you see, I have things to say and I'll ask your pardon if, for now, they meander away from the kitchen, though I still have plenty to say about that, too.

Showdown

2009-03-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

I've always been a little indifferent when it comes to cookies, not so much in the eating of them -- heavens no -- as in the making. Now I understand that not every quirk and preference is the direct result of some childhood trauma or event, but if I had to pinpoint a cause for this particular one, I'd say it started with Anne.

My dad, if you'll recall, has five brothers and one sister. All his brothers are married and all of them farm in the same community, which means I had a lot of aunts, in a range of ages, in close proximity. Anne, who's married to my dad's youngest brother, was singularly fascinating to me because she seemed more glamorous babysitter, like my cousin Angie, than aunt. Plus she liked horses and grew up on a ranch, which made her way cooler than Angie. And one day she invited me over to bake chocolate chip cookies!

I don't remember how old I was or how experienced a cookie baker, only that it was a banner day, but cookie baking seemed an altogether too tedious process after that. You don't have to handle cake or quick bread batter -- you pour it in the pan and you're done. Bread dough is more involved, but you knead it in one big mass and your hands only get sticky once.

And cookies are sensitive, especially chocolate chip cookies: there's a very small window between underdone and overdone. And who wants an overdone chocolate chip cookie? Even when perfectly done, I'd much rather have a soft, chewy chocolate crinkle, which made an annual appearance at our house during Christmas, or one of grandma's molasses cookies, than the kind of crisp chocolate chip cookie my dad prefers.

But then Frieda Wollman's Perfect Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies made an appearance in the Zion Mennonite Cookbook. If you want a general idea of what these cookies are like, imagine how a Keebler Soft Batch chocolate chip cookie would melt in your mouth after being warmed slightly in the microwave. Frieda's cookies are like that without the microwave, and they became a staple in my college care packages. I hate to say it, but my roommate and I sacrificed a lot of those cookies in the name of manhunting (however unsuccessfully), especially freshman year.

Eventually they did help snag a boyfriend in a roundabout way. Justin came over to help me study one night shortly after we started spending time together, and I wanted to impress him -- only I made a mess of it because, you see, I decided to halve the recipe. I don't know why -- if I was running short on butter or eggs or some other essential ingredient -- but the problem was that I halved everything but the flour. The kindest thing to say is that they came out biscuit-like. However, he still ate them and a year or so later we got married, so it worked out okay in the end.

Frieda's recipe reigned uncontested over all other chocolate chip cookies until last year when the New York Times published this much-circulated article about one man's quest for perfection in cookie form. So I made them and they were good. Very good, thus planting the seed of doubt, which could only yield one thing: a showdown.

Before I reveal the results, I have to offer a few disclaimers. (1) Frieda's cookie dough aged 72 hours in the fridge; the NYT dough aged 48. Ideally both would have aged 36, but life happens. (2) I used all-purpose flour in both recipes, though the NYT calls for a mixture of flours. (3) I am currently without a food scale, so for the NYT recipe, I assumed about 4.4 ounces in a cup of flour. (4) Even with a thermometer, the temperature on my oven is extremely difficult to control, and I think that explains the difference between how the NYT cookies turned out when I made them in Omaha as opposed to the scary 1950s-cooks-100-degrees-too-hot oven in Waconia. (5) I added a bit of salt to Frieda's recipe.

So all I'm saying is I'd like to conduct this trial again with fewer variables and a few tweaks here and there. Even so, preliminary results do seem to indicate a favorite.

Frieda's cookies (below) maintain their perfect softness through this simple yet effective secret weapon: pudding mix.

The NYT cookies make excellent use of sea salt. Seriously.

The cookie scoop keeps hands clean and cookies spit free. Years in 4-H have taught me to bake as though God were watching every move, every finger lick.

Now on to the reckoning. Thanks to Justin for documenting and overseeing the voting process.

Jason's vote: Frieda. "This is the best chocolate chip cookie I've ever had; does Susie know when my birthday is? No. I'm serious."

Brett's vote: Frieda. "I like the flavor of the other one (NYT), but the soft pillowy texture of this one really makes it."

Maren's vote: NYT. "It's a tough call, but I think I like the flatter ones better." Note her perfect, glowing, post-run skin.

Mike had a tough time. After an initial vote for NYT, he reconsidered and went with Frieda. "It's a really tough call, but I think I like this one better."

Chris' vote: NYT. "This one's better."

Justin's vote (not pictured): NYT. "I like salt."

As for me, it should be obvious. I have a history with Frieda -- who is one heck of a lady -- and her cookie recipe. And yes I like the complexity, the salty chewiness, the sophistication of my second favorite chocolate chip cookie, but I can't turn my back on my first love. Yum.

But don't take my word for it -- have a little showdown yourself and let me know which one's left standing.

Frieda's Perfect Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
(from the Zion Mennonite Cookbook)

1 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
3.4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1package (3.4 ounces) instant vanilla pudding mix
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
(I also added about 1/2 teaspoon salt)
2 cups chocolate chips

1. Cream butter and sugars in a mixing bowl until light.
2. Add pudding mix, eggs and vanilla.
3. Combine flour and soda and add to the creamed mixture.
4. Mix well.
5. Fold in chocolate chips.
6. Drop by teaspoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet. (I kept the dough in the fridge for a couple days and made the cookies slightly bigger than teaspoon size.)
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned

Yield: Between 3 and 4 dozen.

Ten years ago,

2009-01-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

we celebrated my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in the fellowship hall at Zion Mennonite with stewed beef and sauerkraut. The beef was tender and the sauerkraut, fragrant, as sauerkraut is wont to be, so you might not believe me when I say the whole business had romantic underpinnings, but then consider it was a rerun of the dinner served all those years ago at their reception. Never mind that some of us entertained ourselves by seeing how much sauerkraut we could trick our younger cousins into eating.

And then there was the music -- a flute-saxophone duet of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" performed, to the accompaniment of strings on a CD, by yours truly and my dear cousin Steph. It sounds ill conceived, I know, but it was at least the third time we'd performed that little number -- the other two times being at church and the high school Christmas concert. Even so, it's safe to say grandpa and grandma were pretty unaffected by all the Titanic hype and, consequently, unmoved by our otherwise quite stirring (i.e. our moms liked it) rendition. There may also have been singing, but since maybe three out of the multitude of cousins aren't tone deaf, that's best forgotten.

We had punch, of course, and nuts and mints, which were plentiful thanks to the aunt who slapped down would-be snitchers when they came to set up tables and chairs earlier that afternoon. She later recounted the experience saying, quite succinctly, "I'm firm about my nuts." If that's not enough to scare one toward the straight and narrow, I don't know what is. I just don't.

But it's only now, being married for three years, that I can begin to grasp the enormity of what it means to be married for 50. A lot of life happens in 50 years -- heck, a lot of life has happened in 10: a dozen or so high school graduations, that many more from college, a handful of graduate school degrees, four businesses, four weddings, five great grandchildren and another on the way, Paul's passing, cancer, retirements, first jobs, first loves, promotions, transfers, houses bought and sold -- all along with the day-to-day tragedies and quiet miracles a family of 40-some accumulates on the way.

On January 16 my grandparents started on their 61st year of marriage. We celebrated much as we did 10 years ago. But instead of beef there was ham, and instead of singing (which grandpa and grandma lobbied for but were ultimately denied, for the greater good) or Celine, there were tributes and jokes and a power point that Mallory, bless her heart, put together with next to no notice, and instead of Al from Marion taking the family picture, it was Brenda. There were nuts and punch and (cream cheese) mints, per usual, because what celebration of note could be complete without those mints? And there was cake, but I'll tell you about later.

I can't imagine what it's like for grandpa and grandma to look back on the years since they first met at the barn dance -- or when grandpa called on grandma when she had the chickenpox, depending on what version of the how-we-met story one's gullible enough to believe. Love and all else aside, it's an uncommon gift to have someone by your side who's shared all that time, all those experiences that have shaped your perspective and, ultimately, who you've both become. So if you happen across my grandma at the store or at TOPS club, or if you see my grandpa hauling pop or doughnuts into town for the guys at Kevin's office, tell them congratulations. And marvel with them a little bit at the miracle of 60 years in love.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2008-11-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

Before the leaves turn or the grain ripens, fall settles in more subtly; the piercing clarity of the summer sun softens slowly to gold, painting everything it touches in such warm, glowing shades that your heart will burn and you'll lift your face to the sky to be painted gold, too.

All the while other things will be absorbing the light until you look around to see the whole world ablaze with possibility. At least that's how it is for me.

Some look to spring for rebirth, but I see it happening now -- partly because I'll always associate fall with fresh notebooks and new pencils with erasers yet unmarred. And there's the way farmers like my dad assess, reassess and plan for next harvest even while bringing in this year's crop. But mainly it just seems a little easier to breathe and dream, to shake off the lethargy -- and restlessness -- of summer and settle in for something new, whatever that may be.

My alma mater had some sort of off-the-books-rule that forbade freshmen from dating their first two weeks, or month, or semester (?) of school. The first several weeks of school were generally very camp-like with strangers thrown together away from home with an itinerary (orientation, then classes and mixer activities) and enthusiastic, if not occasionally overzealous, counselors (resident directors) to direct; the theory, I suppose, was that it was best to avoid the brief-yet-intense romances such a setting could inspire.

Oh but fall in Orange City, which happens to be on the Monarchs' migration path, could be magic, with many a young couple breaking the rule to fall in love over long walks, stargazing and coffee (the three primary dating activities the town had to offer those without reliable transportation). And while I, along with the rest of campus, followed the progress of these romances with skepticism, when I fell in love with Justin it was in the fall, over coffee, long walks and letters, and Linda Hasselstrom.

So there's that.

But I also remember falling asleep in the combine riding with my dad after school; the day may have been biting cold, but the cab was warm and the sound of corn raining into the hopper, soothing -- and my little belly was always filled to capacity with one of the meals my mom and aunt brought out to the field for their crew. How to describe that feeling -- Safety? Comfort? Contentment? In any case, for that little girl sleeping on her daddy's shoulder as he combined corn, everything was right in the world; there were only possibilities, not problems.

So there's that, too.

As I sit here writing now, I'm warm on the couch with J; not everything's right in the world and I'm mourning winter's eminent arrival, but there is an apple crisp cooling on the counter (thanks for the apples, mom) and the day was so beautiful and bright we could walk to the lake without coats even though last week it snowed. Nothing gold can stay, it's true, but there are possibilities, still.

And if you, like me, need reminding on occasion, try these (because even once winter's come, we'll still have Libby's and apples):

Pure Gold Pumpkin Bread

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg plus 1 egg white, at room temperature
1 cup pumpkin puree (I used Libby's)
1/2 cup golden raisins, if desired
Nuts, if desired
Candied ginger, if desired

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. (My new oven bakes 100 degrees too hot, which I discovered thanks to the 4-dollar oven thermometer from Target.)

Whisk together dry ingredients. In another bowl, beat butter until creamy, add sugar and beat until lightened in color and texture, then beat in the eggs. (I did this all by hand, having failed to pack the hand mixer for the move to Minnesota; it worked just fine.) Add pumpkin puree and vanilla and stir until just blended. Add pumpkin purée, and beat until just blended. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk, stirring until just combined. Fold in raisins and nuts, if desired.

I made this in mini loaf pans, but you could use a large loaf pan or muffin tins -- either way, make sure your pans are greased. I topped the loaves with candied ginger and if I'd had more on hand, I would have folded some in with the raisins. It's really good.

Bake until done -- about an hour for a large loaf, or 20-25 minutes for mini loafs and 15-20 for muffins.

Betty Crocker's Apple Pie

(with butter)

You can find the main recipe for Betty's apple pie here; however, I don't make a two-crust pie -- I go the crumb-topping route because that's what I prefer. Also, I use butter instead of shortening. I'm not enough of a pie crust expert to have decided opinions other than that. I do have a few basic tips, though.

1) Make sure the water is ice cold.

2) Do not overmix -- it's okay if there are butter smears in the dough, as pictured below; the less you handle the dough, the more tender it will be.

So that's all I've got on pie crust, but this article from the New York Times can tell you more; there are other opinions, of course, but this is definitely a good read.

If you want to use the crumb topping, all you have to do is cut a 1/2 cup butter into a 1/2 cup of brown sugar (packed) mixed with 1 cup of flour; that will take care of a 9-inch pie; you can adjust the amounts up or down slightly, depending on what you need.

It's true that today

2008-10-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

the stove caught me on fire. If you notice that my jacket looks a singed on the bottom, that's why.

Great Faces, Great Places:

2008-10-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Where kids run free,
the grandmas laugh
and teach their granddaughters to cheat.
Where wives suffer husbands
who are nothing but pests

and brothers who act like young toughs.
Where little girls are by turns sassy
and incredibly sweet
which they, of course, learn from their moms.

Where little boys wear hats
and ride way up high
while grandpas plot adventures and scheme.
Meanwhile the livestock is content with the occasional treat
as long as there's always grain and hay.

The End

First Things First

2008-09-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

My new kitchen is small, as kitchens in 600-square-foot apartments are wont to be, but I have to say that what it lacks in counter space, it makes up in cupboards. Here's the tour:

1. The stove is of undeterminable age, and at first I thought it was unusable -- but that's mainly because the door pulled apart when opened, spilling out insulation. But the landlord replaced some missing screws and I used a can and a half of Easy Off and so far everything has been functional, though I've yet to figure out it's eccentricities: I've undercooked one batch of banana bread and burned another. Even so, I think it has a certain amount of charm.

2. This is where I wash the dishes and microwave my oatmeal. The microwave does take up an inordinate amount of space, but it's a necessary appliance, like the Kitchen Aid, which is in the cupboard on the bottom lefthand side.

3. Here's the other little bit of counter space where I do most of the mixing and chopping and assembling.

4. And here's the whole set up. I'm a big fan of the curtain.

I'm also a big fan of bread and after coveting this cookbook for a year, I finally bought it (with one of those 40 percent coupons from Borders). I recommend buying the cookbook and signing up for the Borders coupons. It will change the way you and make bread and buy books, respectively.

All you have to do to make this bread is mix together a) 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour b) 1 1/2 tablespoons yeast c) 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt and d) 3 1/2 cups lukewarm water. The beauty of it is that you can store it in the fridge for up to two weeks and make a variety of things -- pita, pizza crust, calzones, rolls, etc. You can find the master recipe here and the accompanying New York Times article here.

This one's for you, Tonya.

2008-09-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

Because I do make good on my promises, eventually.

Home, to Minnesota

2008-08-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

I am a homebody; always have been. I hated going to summer camp – possibly because the only time I went the other girls were mean to me and I came home with lice (the indignity of it still rankles); hotel sheets creeped me out (still kind of do, just ask Justin) and I hated using strange bathrooms (I’ve mostly gotten over this). My idea of a good time was staying home to read my library books and I only reluctantly attended sleepovers, unless said event was with my cousin Steph, because her house felt as much like home as my own.

I grew up, less shy and more adventurous, but still so rooted to that southeast corner of South Dakota where my big messy family lives and works with varying degrees of harmony and general goodwill that I spent the summer after I graduated college and before I started graduate school at home, making slightly more than minimum wage at the small-town grocery store in the next town over. And I loved every second of it. But I also cried myself to sleep a lot, categorizing everything that would never be the same – watching the moon rise through my bedroom window, walking to grandma’s house for a visit, getting up at dawn to have a cup of coffee with dad. All these precious things, if not slipping through my fingers, would be changed as soon as I left for Creighton in the fall, because then I would be a grown up and my home, though perhaps not my heart, would be in Omaha.

The thing is, you see, that I had always imagined my life turning out differently than that. Before I went to college, my grandpa told me to bring back a nice Iowa farm boy with a half section of land. I laughed it off, of course, but I kept my eyes open, half expecting to find one. Because that’s what people did at Northwestern – they found their farm boy or football star or science nerd or whoever freshman year, got engaged their sophomore year and finished out the next two years in the married student housing. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

Thankfully, this is not how it went for me, friends. Though I can’t say exactly – my memory’s starting to fail with my advancing years -- I don’t think I had even one real date with a NW boy, though there was a close call or two. However, I did find a farm boy back home who pursued me rather relentlessly and for the few weeks I convinced myself I liked him as much as he liked me, I could see my life unfolding as I’d always expected: Planning meals to take out to the field, getting together with mom a couple times during the summer to can produce from the garden I’d planted, perhaps working a part-time job somewhere, but mostly tending my babies and my other responsibilities on the farm -- like the horses, of course.

And honestly, there are things that sound so lovely about that life even now, except the farmer. He was nice enough and all, but he was also all wrong. Completely wrong.

And so, like many humanities majors before me, I went to graduate school, because that’s what humanities majors do when their other prospects are limited.

(An aside: As much as I poke fun at my English major, I can’t say that I’d change it; I’d maybe do something in addition, but not instead, but how do you know that at 17 or 18 when you’re just figuring out who you are, let alone the direction of your life’s work?)

This meant Creighton because of the scholarship and stipend (I do have some business sense). My parents took me down to look at apartments one day in July. We left home at 6, pulled into town around 9:00 and before noon, we had the apartment secured and a sofa, loveseat, bed and mattress purchased at Mrs. B’s. We ate some lunch at Applebee’s and were back home well before 5 because that’s how my dad rolls. A few weeks later they moved me down for good and after they’d left, having helped me unpack the U-haul and assemble the Walmart furniture, I sat in the empty apartment, listened to Counting Crow’s August and Everything After and cried.

But then I took a nap and got on with it, because that’s how I roll.

And slowly, slowly the apartment started to feel like mine and Omaha, if not like home, exactly, something close. I met Justin in October and suddenly there were all these places that took on new significance. The Barnes and Noble in Crossroads where we first met up for coffee; Romeo’s, where we went on our first non-date date; The 13th Street Coffee Shop where we got hot cider once and walked around the Old Market not holding hands but wanting to; Delice, where we share a pot of tea on the occasional Saturday morning; Taco John’s; Friendly’s Used Books; Borders; the 90th Street Bag and Save where I once drove J to drink with a list-free shopping trip, and then, finally, a little brick house on Ohio Street with a retro black and white bathroom and peony bushes.

I knew in fairly short order after I met Justin that we would end up married and we did, a year and a half or so after we first met sharing a theory textbook in class. And my life, let me tell you, my life has turned out different and better and more than I ever could have imagined it to be.
That’s not to say I don’t still get homesick for South Dakota; I do. I miss the endless wind and the sky and my family so much so that sometimes it’s easier to stay away than it is to visit. I’ve even looked at possibilities for moving back, but there’s not as many Lutherans there as there are in Minnesota. And since J insists on being a Lutheran and since he’s called to church work, we’re moving north to a tiny apartment on main street with a balcony that overlooks the park and the bar. It’s pretty much perfect, especially since we got the cat pee smell out.

J’s been up there a month already, and I’m going this weekend and while there have been some nice perks to having the house to myself these past weeks (including, but not limited to, fixing cereal for supper pretty much every night, watching the occasional Lifetime movie and listening to country music without being shamed or mocked, buying almond butter – yes I know it’s expensive, honey -- without censure, and having no undershirts in the laundry to fold), I'm thrilled beyond words. Truly.

There are details to work out yet, a house to sell and such, but I’m not worried. I’m going home.

It's likely to be awhile before I get the kitchen in the new place up and running, but when I do, I promise you all sorts of good things like pizza and, at long last, turtle cookies. But in the meantime, make these. I've tried them, twice, and I plan to make them again in a side-by-side comparison with mom's Perfect Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies, which I've always loved and once used to impress J early in our courtship; only I put in twice the flour and they turned out very biscuit-like. God bless him, he ate them anyway.

But here I am getting carried away. Back to the NY Times recipe: Don't worry about the fancy chocolate disks; use whatever chocolate you like -- for me that's Ghirardelli 60 percent cocoa chocolate chips. Also, I used all-purpose flour, though I did weigh it.

Qualifications

2008-07-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

A while back, I made some disparaging remarks about cake mix. It wasn't very well done of me, really, and it was a little disingenuous considering that there are two cake mix recipes that I use all the time, and the one for coffeecake is so darn good that I've been accused of buying it from a bakery. My Midwestern work ethic says that a store-bought cake and a cake mix are pretty much the same thing (and that both are somehow morally -- yes, morally -- inferior to their counterparts that call for fresh hand-churned butter; I'm only kind of kidding), so it was a shock that someone would consider a cake too good to be homemade.

But don't despair, this isn't about my -- or anyone's -- twisted psyche, it's about cake. This cake, to be exact.
It’s from the Willing Workers' Extension Cookbook -- I think my aunt Janet submitted it -- and is called Hospital Coffee Cake. An odd name, I know, but I have a couple of theories about that. 1) The cake is so blissful it has, if not healing properties exactly, definitely restorative and fortifying ones, like a swig of whiskey, for medicinal purposes, before bed-- or is it breakfast? Not that I do that. But I have heard that some people's grandmas do; not mine, though, as far as I know. 2) The cake is so rich with fat and sugar that it becomes a health risk, but only because it's also extremely addictive.

You'll have to make it and decide for yourself, but be warned, I hold this coffeecake responsible for some of the more-than-a-few extra pounds I carried around in junior high and high school. Later, however, it also helped me snare J., so in my case, the risk was definitely worth the reward.

Hospital Coffee Cake
(from the Willing Workers cookbook*)

1 package cake mix (You can use any flavor, but I've only used yellow; when something works that good, you don't go screwing it up.)

3/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil (I use canola oil)
3 eggs

Beat the above ingredients together and set aside. While the oven is preheating to 350 degrees, assemble the streusel filling:

1 1/2 cups crushed graham crackers (I use cinnamon grahams.)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup nuts (I use walnuts or pecans, whatever I have on hand.)
3/4 cup butter, melted

(This makes a generous amount of filling -- more than you really need -- so I often cut it back slightly, or put the leftovers in fridge -- it'll keep a day or two -- to use as a muffin topping.)

Pour about a third of the batter into a greased and floured cake pan, then sprinkle a third of graham cracker filling on top. Continue layering the batter and filling; when you're done, you can cut through the batter with a knife to swirl the layers, but I don't think its particularly necessary. Bake according to the directions on the cake mix package (I've made this in 8-inch rounds and a 9x13; both work well).

While the cake is still warm, drizzle it with a powdered sugar glaze (powdered sugar, a little milk, a little vanilla or lemon juice, depending on the flavor you're going for). After that, it's best to take out just a little corner to taste.**

*The Willing Workers was an extension club (similar to this) in McCook County. As I understand it, extension clubs were like 4-H clubs for adults -- they focused on education and had snacks after the meetings. Plus there were field trips. I'm not going to go into it here, but don't you just love the can-do attitude of a group of women who decided to name their club the Willing Workers? My guess is that it was some brown-noser's idea and though the rest of the women hated it, they didn't say anything lest word get out that they didn't work willingly, worked only under duress or somehow otherwise objected to work. That'd ruin a reputation for sure.

**Bear in mind a willing worker would never take a cake with a little corner cut out anywhere; so If you're planning on going to the church potluck, you'd better patch that corner with some leftover streusel and powdered sugar glaze. However, if you're not worried about gossip mongering, don't bother. Besides, any good Christian, like my mom, knows that pride cometh before a fall (i.e. forgetting to put sugar in the pumpkin pie).

II.

At some point in college, I decided I was going to lose some of those more-than-a-few extra pounds via Weight Watchers, which I'd followed on and off starting when I was 8 or so when mom and I went to meetings behind the Kmart in Sioux Falls after which she bribed me to exercise with the promise of a new Saddle Club book. (To be fair, I suspect it was a lot like herding cats.)

I have mixed feelings about WW. I'm definitely healthier because following the program taught me about proper nutrition and portion sizes, but it also inspired an obsession with numbers and how to "trick the scale" before each weigh in because that number was important. Really important. In the same way, a lot of the recipes are designed to trick the body into thinking the food is something other than it is. Fat-free cheese and the plethora of artificial sweeteners aside, there's the pumpkin-based taco dip, the bean brownies, the Guaranteed to Keep you Running (on All Four) Chocolate Bran Muffins.

So remember how the coffeecake should come with a warning label? This recipe should, too. It's a real workhorse: The main ingredient, besides the reduced-fat brownie mix, is All Bran. Three cups of it.

So what we've learned here is that three cups of All Bran have 78 grams of fiber. Don't freak out, though, the recipe makes 18-24 muffins, and that comes out to 3-4 grams of fiber apiece.

Fiber, as we know, is healthy, and, using Weight Watcher math, fiber gets you more for your buck (i.e. point). That's why the common factor in the dip, brownies and muffins is fiber; insane amounts of it. WW even puts fiber in its ice cream. Yum.

But ethical qualms aside, oh man are these muffins good. Like crack. And that can be very, very bad when your friend from college comes to visit and her toddler consumes three of them (at 4 grams of fiber each, that's practically 50 percent of an adult's daily fiber needs in one go). I never did hear how that one turned out, so I'm assuming (hoping) it wasn't as bad as I imagined it would be.

Chocolate Fiber Crack Muffins
(from my memory of a WW recipe)

1 package reduced-fat brownie mix (Betty Crocker or Krusteaze)
3 cups All Bran cereal
2 1/2 -3 cups water
1 small container (8 ounces) of fat-free yogurt (vanilla works, as does pretty much any flavor)
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
chocolate chips, optional

Let the All Bran soak in the water for about 15 minutes; once the cereal has absorbed the water, stir in the yogurt and vanilla. Then add the brownie mix and baking powder. This recipe will make 18-24 muffins. I like to top each one with three Ghirardelli chocolate chips (60 percent cocoa), but that will up the points, if you care about such things.

Bake at 350 degrees for 22-25 minutes.

I like to eat mine with peanut butter for an after work/pre run snack.

And sometimes I eat them for dessert, with ice cream. Other times for breakfast, also with ice cream. Ice cream only adds to their healthfulness, especially if you get the fiber-enriched kind.

What the Bear Found in the Buckwheat

2008-04-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

But first, a digression:

My dad (pictured above) has a few signature turns of phrase. There's "dreck," a nod to the Hutterish he heard grandma use on the phone with her mom for private conversations amid the chaos of seven children. Dad claims it means "dirt," and it does, along with things much dirtier, like smut and excrement. Only I didn't know that until Justin, who speaks some German, explained why it wasn't necessarily appropriate to trot that word out in polite company. When I confronted dad with this information, he was very noncommittal, which we all know is the next best thing to a straightforward confirmation.

There are others, too, but my favorite involves bears and buckwheat. Here's how it works: Say, for example, you beat out your arch rival at the Davidson County 4-H warm-up horse show one year. That victory might be celebrated for days with exclamations of "You sure showed her where the bear went in the buckwheat!" In this case what you've done is given your friend a good-natured schooling. Here's another example: An ex-boyfriend, after breaking your heart, suddenly decides he wants to undo what he calls this “terrible mistake.” Only you've moved on, and so you walk away, leaving him standing in the street, crying. This incident might upset you, but your dad will ponder it with relish, saying, as if he can't believe his good fortune, "You sure showed him where the bear went in the buckwheat." Only this time what you've done is flipped some poor sap the bird.

Make sense?

The beauty of this whole process is that the hows and whys and wheres can be planned and schemed for weeks, even months, in advance, in which case it becomes a rousing call to arms. Like the scenario below.

That’s me, circa 1990 something, with Sparkle (no I didn't name her), the 18-year-old horse that I got as a present for my eighth birthday. Sparkle is what we call an old-style Appaloosa, distinguishable by the massive build and barely there broom-like tail. These are what Appaloosas were like before being inundated with Quarter Horse bloodlines. Another distinct Appaloosa trait is an all-out, down-and-dirty pigheadedness.

In Sparkle's case this meant that every year she earned her previous owner a purple ribbon in trail (a class where horse and rider have to navigate obstacles that might be encountered along the trail, and some that never would) at the county 4-H horse show, which qualified her to move on to the state show in Huron. Only Sparkle then refused to go through the gate (that the rider had to open, ride through and close in less than 30 seconds, ideally without taking her hand off the handle). Failure to complete the task within the allotted timeframe meant automatic disqualification (and one of those shameful white ribbons).

Sure enough, my first year in 4-H, Sparkle and I purpled in trail at the county show. Unbeknownst to me, my dad, grandpa and uncle Kenny, who were all familiar with Sparkle’s state show track record, debated about what might be done to prevent a repeat performance. They concluded that Sparkle didn’t do well at the fair grounds in Huron because she didn’t care for the acoustics and feel of the indoor show rings in the Hippodrome or Beef Complex buildings, and though they, with the possible exception of my dad, agreed success was unlikely, they devised a month-long training regimen in a simulated state-show-like environment. (i.e. They set up a wooden gate in the quonset, which I had to practice over and over again, with a radio blaring in the background.)

In the end, Sparkle went through that gate like a trooper (that's a blue ribbon I'm holding), but then I didn’t expect her to do anything less than that because, to their credit, my trainer triumvirate didn’t reveal how poorly they thought things would turn out until after the fact. But for all their planning and scheming, I don’t know who showed whom where the bear went, but I suspect it was Sparkle that taught the lesson: A good horse like that will never push a rider beyond what she’s able to handle.

Unfortunately, my next horse wasn’t so generous. Pepper (again, not my choice of name) taught me the difference between dying and only having the wind knocked out.

I can’t tell you much more about the bear in the buckwheat than that. As for the phrase itself, preliminary research (per Google) indicates it may have originated in a Russian fairytale about a beekeeper and a honey-stealing, marauding bear. There’s treachery and drunkenness and vengeance involved, but I don’t know what happens because that darn Google cuts off the end! So now I’m going to have to resort to inter-library loan. (Also, I found there's a variant of the phrase in which one indicates where the bear made dreck, if you know what I mean, in the buckwheat, but that just doesn't have the same ring.)

In the meantime, you can get your buckwheat fix elsewhere. You won’t be sorry; I promise.

First, Bear in the Buckwheat Pancakes:

I got the recipe from the New York Times.

J. was skeptical at first, but has since deemed them "company" pancakes, meaning they're good enough for guests.

And then there's these:

Buckwheat Bear Butter Cookies, or Bear in the Buckwheat with Butter Cookes, or Bear in the Butter Cookies, or Butter, and Buckwheat, Too, Cookies.

I could go on, but I won't. Suffice it to say these cookies are way more wonderful than you could possibly imagine just looking at the ingredients on the page. Though some initial reaction to the first batch indicated they'd be even better with a good sprinkling of sugar on top.

You can find the recipe here, though its been featured on several other blogs as well.

ps--

My aunt took these pictures the winter of 1991 when Sparkle wintered with her horse, for company. When it comes right down to it, she wasn't exactly an attractive horse with her mangy tail and cataracts, but she made a very awkward little girl feel graceful. And in these, you can see why.

The thing about my grandma,

2008-04-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

or one of the things, anyway, that I truly admire is that one is never in any doubt of what it is she really thinks about things. In my case, for example, I know that she thinks (a) I troddle (i.e. a combination of trotting and waddling, very difficult to achieve), (b) that I'd be surprised how many people got fat by eating too many grapes (this particular revelation happened to come while I was sitting at her kitchen table, eating grapes), and (c) my hair, if not ugly, is in sorry shape at best.

She broke this latest bit to me on Saturday. I was home for a visit and spent the morning over with her and grandpa. I gave her a hug as I was leaving, and she asked, earnest as ever, if I was going to go home to do my hair.

My hair, keep in mind, was washed and dried and even, I thought, looking pretty good. But grandma didn't and apparently she doesn't like poor Nancy Pelosi's hair either because she said mine looked like hers. That's my grandma -- just keeping it real.

Fortunately I have enough ego to handle it, and then there's this:

Not just anyone will hold child dripping wet from the pool, but my grandma is unafraid. That's another of my favorite things.

Scripts, Recipes and Banana Bread

2008-03-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

I love, love this photograph of my parents. Dad's tie and baby face aside, it's mom's sassy scarf and swingy coat that make it for me. And she's doing this thing that she still does in photos where she tries not to smile. Because her smiles wreath her whole face so that her eyes crinkle and it looks like she's squinting. She really hates that. Dad looks somber because, as a general rule, that's how all the men in his family smile in photos. It's true.

Exhibit A and B: That my brother. He's stoic. And my nephew; he's stoic, too.

I came across the airport photo, taken shortly after my parents were married, a couple years ago when I was looking for some things to put together for my own wedding. And I tried to imagine what it was like for mom to get engaged, plan a wedding, move from a small town in one state to set up house on a farm in another without her mother to assuage any fears and offer guidance. There are moments when I'm overcome by the enormity of what it meant for her to lose her mother so young, because we inherit things, you see. Brown eyes. Wavy hair. Long fingers and toes. And scripts, generations in the writing, explaining who should be loved, how and how much.

I don't know too much about my mom's dad, other than that he owned a filling station, drove a school bus, took his coffee scalding hot and was generally disliked by grandma's family. He always kept a picture of grandma on his bookshelf, though, and when he'd see me looking at it, he'd say "She was a beautiful woman." I remember that, and how he'd pat me on the back and say "That's my girl" when I'd give him a hug and a kiss at the end of a visit. Other than that, grandpa never had much to say, and I’m certain he must have been at a loss when he was left a widower with two barely teenage daughters.

The same way mom was often at a loss with me. I don’t think I was a particularly difficult teenager, just a typical one with the usual sorts of angst, but mom never had the opportunity to be a typical teenager – she was too busy keeping house, going to school and working at this café that I hear tell had the best waffles, which were served with ice cream (!) – to have time for usual angst. So she had to improvise her way through the gaps in an unedited draft of motherhood, and it took us some time to figure things out.

In the meantime, we had some epic battles, many of which took place in the kitchen and several of those over 4-H. Mom, as I’ve said before, is an exacting cook, but I imagine that a young girl suddenly in charge of maintaining a house and feeding her family would have to be. Having a recipe and following it to the letter must have been a lifeline – and offered a small moment of connection to her mom.

That being said, I’ve made a few adaptations to this banana bread recipe, which is one of the first things I remember making entirely on my own.

Banana Nut Bread (courtesy of my mom)

1. Sift:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

*I also sifted in two teaspoons of cinnamon; one would probably do just fine, but I’m hooked on the Vietnamese cinnamon from Penzey’s.

2. In a separate bowl, cream:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar

Then, add 2 eggs, one at a time.

*I used a 1/3 cup of unsalted butter instead of shortening (in general, you need about 1/2 cup butter for every cup of sugar when creaming, so this came together with a little more mess -- i.e. sugar flying out of the bowl -- than usual). I’ve seen a recipe that calls for a 1/4 cup of melted butter to be stirred in at the very end, but I'm not sure how it would affect the texture and structure of the bread, though I recently made a banana bread that didn’t have any butter or shortening and it was wonderful -- so I might try that melted butter thing next time.

3. In a separate bowl, beat:
1 cup bananas (about three)
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon vinegar

*I’ve always wondered about the vinegar; I honestly thought it did something particular to the bananas, so I asked mom about it. She said it was supposed to be stirred in with the milk first, to make it more like buttermilk...I just went with straight-up buttermilk; I had it on hand. And I added a generous teaspoon of vanilla, though you could also put in the same amount of dark rum, if you were so inclined.

4. Mix the banana mixture in with the creamed mixture alternately with the flour mixture. Stir until just combined and add in 1/2 cup nuts of your choice. Bake at 325 degrees for 60 minutes.

*I decided to forego the nuts in favor of a 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips. And I’m not sorry; you won’t be either. In fact, if you’re really feeling crazy, you could add both. I also sprinkled the top of the loaves with some cinnamon sugar before baking.

5. Makes two loaves in smaller pans, but baking time will have to be adjusted accordingly.

P.S. Maybe Yeti would like this version! Nuts are optional.

*I have no doubt Yeti would like this version; she downed an entire loaf the last time I made banana bread, and apparently mom is still amused. While I understand this is part of the danger of having a creature that’s eyelevel with the counters living in your house, I was pretty incensed. I (gently) whapped her on the head with a sock and called her a name that wasn’t very nice, but didn’t involve swear words or taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Once, when my brother and I had pushed mom to the uttermost limits of her patience, she called us a bunch of dorks and deadheads. But I’ll save that treasure for another day, and leave you instead with this lovely, lovely glimpse of spring I found peeking out of my flowerbed last week.

On Cake!

2008-03-03T18:12:00.000-08:00

When it came to birthday cake, my brother, at least in my opinion, was at a disadvantage. He was born on St. Patrick's Day, you see, and mom, after assessing the situation overnight, changed his name from Dustin to Patrick and every year thereafter baked him an angle food cake, dyed green, with powdered sugar frosting, also green. This, of course, came after the green sugar cookies and green buns accompanying that day's celebratory lunch at school. He suffered all this with good grace, and claims to still like cake of any color, though now he can have it with green beer. But we don't talk about that around mom.

Green or not, at least he had a birthday cake. Mom, a New Year's baby, rarely had one, unless you count (and I don't) the birthday brownie at Perkins. By the time January 1 rolled around, all members of the family (and probably even the dog) were so sugar sick, having breathed it in and nibbled it in various forms nonstop since Thanksgiving, that even the thought of birthday cake was unappealing. So instead we bundled up and drove to Mitchell for a movie and dinner at Perkins or Godfathers, whichever the birthday girl preferred.

Dad, on the other hand, invariably got a German chocolate cake, sometimes straight up in a 9"x13" pan, sometimes stacked three 8"-round layers high, which, in my opinion, offered the better ratio of tender buttermilk cake to coconut-rich frosting. But since his birthday generally fell right in the thick of achievement days, the kind of cake he got depended on how much time we had, how much mom and I had tried each others' patience and if she had agreed to help with the horticulture judging.

For me, birthday cake, as with most sweets, is really about the ice cream. So other than the My Pretty Pony cake when I was four or five and the horse-shoe-shaped cake presented in the middle of the county horse show (where the first unrequited love of my life Bruce S. was also competing) as a decidedly mortifying surprise to celebrate my 14th birthday, no cakes really stand out.

Except for fudge crème de menthe cake, which, incidentally, happens to have green frosting, too. (And my birthday -- it's on my parents' anniversary. We believe in multitasking our holidays.)

Whatever the cake, though, it was homemade. That, along with the perfect card, was how mom did birthdays. And while I will allow that there are occasions when cake mix can achieve perfection -- hospital coffee cake, for example, or the first cake your husband bakes ever and its for you, on your birthday -- as a general rule, it belongs in the same category as ramen, Doritos and Coke. This is the kind of birthday cake my husband grew up on. White cake, to be exact, with rainbow chip frosting. And he loves it. Raves over it.

I can't make it for him, though. I just can't. It's too easy and without the little bit of extra effort, how can he be assured of my undying affection? Yes. Yes it's true. I am my mother's daughter. So this year I made the cake from scratch, the frosting, too, and added the confetti sprinkles as a nod to J's long-time affair with Betty Crocker.

I'm not condemning cake mix users; I understand that baking isn't everyone's thing, but I love everything about it except the dirty dishes, so you can imagine how immensely gratified I was when my co-worker asked me to make a cake for her father-in-law's birthday.

My mom's go-to cake recipe for everything from brownies to cupcakes is called Good and Moist Chocolate Cake because, obviously, it's good. And moist. I can attest to it.

Here's the recipe (courtesy of my mom):

2 cups sugar
2 ½ cups flour
5 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup hot water
2 eggs, unbeaten
1 cup salad oil (i.e. canola oil)
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Sift together sugar, flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt. Dissolve soda in hot water and add remaining ingredients. Beat two minutes. The batter will be thin. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

This cake is pretty much perfect. Light and delicate. The kind of cake you could eat at until you put down your fork in surprise to see that half the pan (or a dozen or so surprise cupcakes) was gone.

I wanted something richer, so I used Orangette's Far From Disaster Cake, which also calls for buttermilk. Only I called it the flattery-will-get-you-everywhere cake because a) I know that my co-worker has a friend who makes wedding cakes and b) it didn't dampen my excitement about the project.

1. I made it in three layers, though it's just as good in a 9"x13". I've heard contradictory things about greasing the sides of cake pans. My mom does, but I don't because I heard or read or somehow acquired the opinion that the cake won't rise as high if the sides of the pan are greased. I should probably figure this out for sure.

2. Before baking.

3. After baking.

4. After layering with ganache.

5. And now, for frosting. My friend requested a light frosting. Cream cheese frosting was too rich; I was afraid to try a meringue frosting for the first time on some dear stranger's birthday lest I give someone food poisoning. I could have done a whipped cream frosting, but instead I asked my cake expert friend Sarah for advice. She recommended a chocolate buttercream with a secret ingredient:

6. Marshmallow creme. She's brilliant, that Sarah.

7. And here, friends, is the charmingly lopsided, imperfectly frosted result. It got a favorable review. And then, when we were planning an engagement part for my kolache-loving coworker, the cake was requested again.

8. Only I decided to dress it up. In fondant. This required more advice from Sarah:

Once your cake is completely cool and each layer is assembled, do a crumb coat (a thin coat of buttercream icing to seal in the crumbs on the cake). This will also allow the fondant to adhere to the cake.
Then, once the crumb coat is set up, I like to do another layer of buttercream that is as smooth as possible as the fondant shows all bumps. Make sure your rolling surface is totally clean and clear, the fondant will pick up
any little grains, etc.
Prepare your surface with shortening and a dusting of corn starch. Roll the fondant to the appropriate thickness (about 1/4 inch). To get the desired circumference, take a ribbon or string and cut it to the height of your cake (go up one side down the other) when you stretch the ribbon out your fondant should be slightly larger than the length of the string. You'll only use one side of the fondant (you won't turn it over like you would with pie crust or pizza dough), but it is a good idea to pick it up throughout the rolling process using your spatula to make sure it is not sticking -- use corn starch as needed.
Once you've got your fondant circle and prepared cake, hold your rolling pin in the center of the fondant circle and drape half over the pin toward yourself. Once you've done this, reverse the process on top of the cake. Gently lay the fondant in the center draping it over the sides. Use your hands or a fondant smoother to smooth the fondant over the top and sides of the cake, massaging down and around. Cut off the excess.

I used this recipe for the fondant. It was a lot easier to make and work with than I expected. Seriously. (Still, the cake took all weekend to assemble. The price of pride, I guess.)

9. I also decided to use a cake leveler. Because let's face it: Lopsided isn't always charming.

10. There it is. Safely out of reach of the roving thief that stalks all things edible in the house. (Can you tell what it is?)

11. The roving thief.

12. It's a cow cake. A cow cake. How about that?

ps -- Here's proof that some things never change, and that my brother and I are definitely from the same gene pool.

1. Circa 1986. Betcha can't tell which one I am.

2. Circa 2002:3. Circa 2005:

I have a confession:

2008-02-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

I don't really like meat. Never have. In other families such disinclination might be unremarkable, or even encouraged, but my people are salt of the earth meat-and-potato sorts who butcher their own beasts, make their own sausage and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and other occasions of note with chislic (see Blackie, pictured above) feeds and prime rib. I could go on, but suffice it to say that my family really likes a good steak or pork loin or duck or even a crawdad feed. So I've worked hard to hide the fact that I don't -- disguising a paltry portion of Thanksgiving turkey behind heaps of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, or, God willing, a nice big serving of pretzel salad and nibbling around the well-done edge of my piece of prime rib.

Even so, I'm sure I never fooled anyone, and my mother is the only one who still harangues me about this particular failing, though it's more focused on whether I cook enough meat for J. (My grandma is just concerned that I cook enough for him, period). He's thin, you see, and there's nothing that triggers their save-the-world-one-good-meal-at-a-time instincts like a skinny man. I'd like to point out, though, that I'm not the only one in the family with meat "issues:" One of my cousins won't eat seafood because the ocean creeps her out. And there's the uncle who refuses to eat chicken or anything else that was once feathered.

For the record, I do eat meat, albeit irregularly, and sometimes I really do crave a steak, but mostly it's pork chops or white meat chicken, though I was in high school before I'd even attempt that much.

I had an intimate familiarity with the lifecycle of that fair bird, you see, and once the mystery is gone, well, it's just gone, though you have to understand that I was a particularly sensitive and squeamish child. Squeamish children don't do well with blood and guts no matter how much they want to be like Laura Ingalls and her enterprising ma making head cheese over an open fire. (Check out these brave little Laura scholars).

The whole thing got started in spring when grandma ordered her chicks.

They arrived in the mail a few weeks later, all whisper soft and warm and peeping to settle in under the heat lamps in the brooder house, where they passed an awkward half-chick half-chicken adolescence with feathers gradually taking the place of down until they were mature and clucking and ready to butcher, about six to nine weeks later.

At this point, friends, grandma called together the girls, usually my mom and assorted aunts and cousins, for a butchering. I always tried to find something to play that would keep me out of sight and mind, but my mom was not so easily foiled and she was big on having me help ( I think she wanted to work that squeamishness right out of me). Part of the crew set up a propane burner in the quonset to start some water boiling. Grandma, meanwhile, slit throats out behind the brooder house and then released the chickens to flap, headless, through the weeds. One of my jobs, as I recall, was to watch where they finally flopped still and then dart through the now blood-smeared weeds to collect the carcasses.

From there they were taken to the quonset for processing. First step, plucking: We gathered around the propane burner on upturned 5-gallon buckets, newspapers spread out on the floor to catch the feathers, but first the carcass had to be swirled through the boiling water to soften the feathers. I was supposed to help pluck, but I didn't like touching the wet, warm feathers -- or the smell -- and so I did a pretty poor job of it. While I still suffer some residual guilt from that, truth be told -- I wouldn't change a thing. After the chickens were laid bare, grandma inspected them, lighter in hand, for stray barbs or any other undesirables that might need to be scorched off. That smelled awesome, too.

Then they were gutted. Again, I was supposed to help with this, but I could not stand even the thought of sticking my hands into the mysterious slippery innards of a chicken carcass, so mostly I watched. If there had been gloves, I might have done it, but requests for said gloves were dismissed as ridiculous. Besides, my cousin Heidi had no problem with the task, and that's why she's now a traveling nurse who's seen the world and I'm just a lowly humanities major turned journalist stuck at a desk all day. True, true. But the thing I remember most about this step was that grandma slit open the gizzard to empty out the chicken's last meal. It was fascinating, but sad, really; they didn't even have time to digest. She didn't save them, though; grandpa wasn't big on gizzards.

The carcasses got rinsed out, I think, and then frozen, with a few left out for eating fresh.

Blech.

To be clear, I'm not claiming this was some sort of traumatizing or even disillusioning experience. I had -- and have -- no moral or ethical objects to meat in theory. I grew up on a farm, and I knew what happened to Midnight the prize-winning sow when she didn't come home from achievement days.

In fact, I rode along with dad to take her to the locker in Freeman. And I knew why she had to go -- you didn't bring home pigs that could have been exposed to Lord knows what at the county fair, even in the name of 4-H State Fair. I'm just saying that I didn't like meat and being intimately familiar with how it went from coop to plate gave me yet another reason to be persnickety about the whole business.

But then I took philosophy in pursuit of a liberal arts education and the professor made us watch some video about factory farming.

It's the only thing I remember about the class, other than that I was always late, sat toward the front and usually fell asleep.

Still, it made me start thinking about what it means to be called to stewardship in all things, including the kitchen.

Sustainability is definitely en vogue these days, and the discussion becomes treacherous at this point, with talk of food miles, carbon footprints, organic food, local food, local as opposed to organic food, Whole Foods versus Wal-Mart versus Jane's Health Market versus the farmers' market, and, of course, Michael Pollan.

I try not to get too tangled up in all of this. I want my eggs to come from chickens with beaks, and if f I'm going to eat chicken, I'd rather she be a clucking, scratching, pecking chicken, than an oversized breast on legs that would fall over, given the space to move. I'd like my beef to be grass fed; if they have to spend time in a feedlot, it shouldn't make up the majority of their existence. Pigs need space, too, to root and roll (and perchance even fly), but if they're sick, they should be treated with all the proper antibiotics. And when it comes time for a dairy cow to be culled, it should be with the respect one living thing owes to another. (See Linda Hasselstrom's lovely work for more perspective on this topic.)

I understand that working in a packing plant could make one numb to the chores of slaughtering after a while; that's why there are supposed to be rules and regulations for the industry and inspectors to enforce them. I also understand that, ultimately, it comes down to money: The more cattle processesed, the more meat sold. And, for the consumer, too: Not everyone can afford graded beef, let alone free-range organic beef.

But for the people who can: Jamie Oliver recently butchered a chicken in front of a studio audience, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken, according to this article in the New York Times. "A chicken is a living thing," he told the paper, "an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn’t expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub.”

His technique follows the general idea of grandma's. And that brings me around, finally, to the point I wanted to make all along -- I had stewardship modeled for me long before I started wondering about it in philosophy class: Grandma loved those chicks destined for the chopping block; Midnight had a good life with lots of brushing and even a few baths. My brother and I had our share of bottle calves and lambs to tend, and if their names didn't end up on the package in the freezer, I have friends whose animals were honored that way. There's a rightness to that, a quiet common sense that makes its point, and all without the fanfare and theatrics involved with killing a chicken on TV.

And while I still wouldn't volunteer to pluck or gut a chicken, I do have a ring of smoked sausage from my dad waiting in the freezer for a lazy Saturday morning breakfast, should J. ever get hungry for it.

Because to be honest, I probably won't.

P.S. If you want to fix yourself some head cheese, here's a recipe. But first, watch this for pointers; she's wonderful.

For Remembering

2008-01-20T19:42:00.001-08:00

My grandpa drove a little diesel pickup for the better part of the 1980s. It was banana yellow, well before that color was in vogue, but even so, the most distinguishing characteristic was its brand -- Toyota.

I'm certain that in and of itself, a diesel-engine Toyota pickup, even a yellow one, wasn't all that unusual at the time, but pickup drivers in the heartland typically have two socially acceptable choices: Ford or Chevy, though Dodges are allowed in certain circles.

But gas prices were high in the 1970s and grandpa, God bless him, was even cheaper then than he is now (so I'm told), and that little pickup became his trademark as he roamed the countryside tracking the activities of his six sons.

The Toyota was tiny, especially compared to its Cummins-turbo-diesel, extended-cab, long-box counterparts, so you can understand why it might have held particular appeal to a kid, like my cousin Paul, fascinated by the idea of driving.

Growing up, Paul and I spent a lot of time together; we were the only cousins (of 18) the same age living north of town -- and later, we were the only ones horse mad. But in the early days, we spent a lot of time at grandpa and grandma's place and I remember sitting in the passenger seat of that Toyota while Paul manned the steering wheel and shifter. I can't say, however, if this particular memory is mine, or if I remember it because Paul told me about it later; he was a good storyteller, that Paul, so it's hard to say. In any case, it goes like this: We must have been about five and four, respectively, still too little to reach the pedals and this ultimately proved problematic when Paul knocked the pickup out of gear. It rolled down the slight hill in front of the house where grandpa still likes to park and was eventually stopped by the baler.

I remember the stomach-churning anxiety of those few moments of motion and I remember grandma swooping out of the house to rescue and reprimand. I remember sitting at the kitchen table eating molasses cookies after everything calmed down, but I don't remember grandpa's reaction.

We must have been banned from the Toyota because, really, what other outcome could there have been? This forced us to turn our attention to nosing around in the attic, breaking into the summer kitchen and camping out in the broke down milk truck.

Years later, properly horsed, we'd stop by the house to say hello when we were out riding. Grandma would bring out cinnamon rolls or molasses cookies, depending on what she had on hand. And if grandpa was around, he'd bring us out a pop, usually orange or grape Shasta. And then we'd be off again to carouse and scheme (i.e. daydreaming about the Jesse James gang and making up country songs, which Paul swore me to secrecy about. I'm not sure why because he wasn't shy about his other masterpieces, such as the chili dog song, which goes like this: Chili dog. Chili dog. Dog dog chili. First came the dog. Then came the chili. Chili willy willy willy willy. Repeat ad nauseam.)

After Paul got his license, grandpa gave him the Toyota. It was an unusual gift for a grandpa to give to only one of his grandchildren, but I don't remember it causing a fuss (though it could be that Paul was the only one who wanted it!). Grandpa and Paul shared a birthday, a name, and a calling -- both were born farmers -- so it makes sense that Paul would inherit his trademark pickup. Only Paul dubbed it the Yota, covered it with CB whips and crowned it, for a short time, with an intercom system. Yes. It's true and as I recall, he liked to drive by the Emery swimming pool issuing pool break edicts.

We lost Paul in October so suddenly to a disease so rare that it still doesn't seem quite real. Part of that, I know, is my vantage point: I wasn't around when he settled down with his wife a mile down the road from grandpa and grandma's farm. I never stopped in at his shop in Emery for a tour or to see how business was going. I didn't see him in his role as daddy those six brief months.

Instead, what I remember is how jealous I was of the horse he had for his cabbage patch doll. I remember convincing him to help me break out all the windows on my parents' old chicken coop. I remember bathing horses for the county show with "My Maria" playing on the radio in the barn. I remember driving around in his old green Pinto, which he had to abandon after it started on fire for the second or third time, listening to Sublime. I remember how he smeared Vicks vapor rub under his nose, even in public, to treat a stuffy nose. I remember a boy who was a little bit audacious yet so completely charming with a gift for living each moment so fully that you couldn't help but catch hold of his joy, even if only in remembering.

When I was home the day after Christmas, I stopped in to see grandpa and grandma. Paul's wife and daughter were there visiting, too, and grandpa, in deference to the baby, had the heat cranked up to 80 and grandma had pulled out the basket of toys she keeps around for the great-grandkids. Sydney was chewing on an old Real Lemon bottle -- the one in the shape of the lemon -- completely content. Megan looked soul weary and grandma looked like she'd been crying, and despite all you can say about God and his grace, sometimes your heart swells so full that words just can't suffice and you can only hope that the sheer force of your love is enough to offer some small comfort.

This is why two of the Hutterite colonies in the area fought over which one would supply the buns for the lunch after the funeral, why my uncle, who knew he couldn't bear to attend, arranged for Paul to be taken to the cemetery on the back of a pickup instead of a hearse, and why the superintendent of the school canceled classes that day.

And even though the sadness hung thick in grandma's kitchen, we sat at the table exclaiming over the baby, the calendar of family photos Megan had put together for grandma, and Donny's engagement to Sarah, the Oklahoma girl who had won grandma over with her pleasing Southern manners. And the covered cake plate on the corner of the counter had a few molasses cookies.

So because they're grandpa's favorites, according to grandma, because they color the background of so many of my childhood adventures, and because it's good to remember, I'm sharing the recipe with you.

Soft Molasses Cookies

(Grandma notes that "this recipe is at least 60 years old. These are Dad's absolute favorites and all the boys like them too.")

The rundown:
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening (yes, shortening)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup sour buttermilk (grandma notes that this should be the "bought kind;" I don't know what store-bought sour buttermilk is, or if I'd want it hanging out in my fridge even if I did.)
1 cup light mild molasses
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves (grandma notes that one should "go easy" on the cloves; she uses a 1/2 teaspoon, but I disregarded this little tip.)
1 teaspoon ginger
3 teaspoons baking soda
8 cups flour, sifted (I didn't sift.)

The best I can tell, a full recipe will make at least 10 or 11 dozen cookies. That's a lot, my friends. Enough to feed seven kids, one husband and assorted hired hands, perhaps, but way more than will even fit in my freezer.

I made a quarter recipe, which yielded 2 1/2 dozen. I could have gotten more, but I was tired of rolling out the dough.
Since it's difficult to halve an egg, I used one. This one, from a chicken who roams the range, beak intact, and works toward the democratization of organic and natural foods by selling her wares to Wal-Mart. I like that about her.
Grandma says to mix the ingredients in the order given. But here's what I did:

1. Cream the sugar and Crisco.

2. Beat in the egg.

3. Add the buttermilk, molasses and sour cream.
4. Add in the dry ingredients.
5. Grandma doesn't say to do this, but I recommend it: Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and stash it in the freezer while you wash up the dishes. This step is vital to an authentic molasses-cookie-making experience; grandma spent years suffering dry skin and dishpan hands without a dishwasher, too. Only she was making a hundred plus cookies at a go.

6. Once the dishes are washed, counters cleaned up and dough properly chilled, roll it out between two sheets of wax paper (but "not too thin," grandma warns).

7. Don't worry if you don't have a round cookie cutter. A cocktail tumbler dipped in powdered sugar works just as well.

8. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. (I lined the cookie sheets with parchment paper because I was out of Pam.)
9. After the cookies have cooled slightly, frost them with a powdered sugar glaze -- powdered sugar, a little lemon juice, a little milk and a little white (corn) syrup. (I know it gets a bad rap, but I don't blame it for any extra pounds I may have carried around, and while there are a lot of areas in the Great Plains where common sense suggests wheat or pasture, I know a lot of farmers who grow their No. 2 yellow corn along with the requisite refuge acres without irrigation, in a proper rotation, using no-till or minimum-till practices. And I support them and any corn syrup they produce. So does grandma.)
10. Then, once the frosting has hardened, you can stack them.
11. Or tie them with a bow.
12. And stack them again.
13. But don't forget to eat one. Or two. Or three. Or, well, you get the point. And if you have enough, you can share, but only if you want to.

When I got my Valentine's Day care package from the church ladies at Zion Mennonite during my days at NWC, I would fish these out and hoard them for myself. I shared the rest or threw them out, depending on who made them and believe me you could tell. But these. These are everything a cookie should be.

All the college kids from church got these care packages. One year Paul's was stolen -- only it turned up later in the mail room of his apartment complex, or some such place, where it had been all along. But in the interim, there were a lot of incensed church ladies as well as talk of mail fraud and revenge.

Since I've Been Gone

2008-01-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

1. I went to Marne.
2. And to San Francisco.
3. Where I ran and ate a lot of good food.
4. And sat on the beach
5. To watch this:
6. Back home, I watched J. clean out the gutters. A less majestic view, perhaps, but pleasing nonetheless.
7. And I pestered the puppy (who knew her ears could be a fin!?)
8. I roasted some hazelnuts for nutella (more work than it's worth).
9. And I tried out mom's old Singer
10. My friend Bryan had to come over to help me thread it.
11. I rode herd on some ponies (their butts smell like fruit roll-ups, it's true)
12. With the help of my pardner
13. And I pestered the puppy and Justin some more.
14. Even so, I got this for Christmas:
It's pretty, no?

My Struggle

2007-09-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

My family, except for the odd cousin or two, is not known for its athletic prowess. You know how every once in a while you pass someone like this on the street who is so big, blond, rosy-cheeked and otherwise hearty and hale that you swear she just came off a dairy farm in Sweden? Well that’s us, except dark-haired and German (Russian): We look like we were built to withstand a life of hard physical labor.

Strong and sturdy, as you know, rarely translate exactly into quick and coordinated. And I admit without reservation, now that I’m beyond the age of enforced physical activity (i.e. PE), that I can’t properly throw any sort of ball, let alone dribble or hit it with a stick, and I never learned to dive. Part of it’s genetic and part of it’s a lack of opportunity to really learn.

In any case, about a year or so ago I decided I was going to start running. I can’t say what compelled me to make this decision, though part of it was the desire to combat the effects, both physical and mental, of sitting at a desk for the majority of the day. I eventually got to the point where I could run 3 miles with relative ease. I’m not fast and I'm sure I don't have the best form, but it makes me feel strong. So I decided that if running 3 miles is good, running 6 would be better. And then I decided I was going to run a half marathon. I've never run in any organized event, with the exception of the 100-yard dash at field day and even then, I don't know that what I did counts as running, yet somehow I thought this was a good idea. I made it through the Lincoln Half in May without dying or breaking down. And then I signed up for the Nike Women’s Hal f in October.

Check out the hills in the virtual tour. I have nightmares about them: That’s why I run, on average, six days a week. And that’s why it’s hard for me to do anything other than make supper and clean up on weeknights. Still, I get the mania, as Justin calls it, from time to time, and decide, at 10:00, to clean the entire house or start a 3-hour baking project. And that’s why I sometimes get myself into trouble.

A Cupcake Kampf in Four Parts

1. The blister and the broken bowl (8:30 p.m.)

It started out innocently enough. We picked up Taco John’s on the way home from the Keystone, so I had plenty of time (or so I thought) to make something to take over to the friends we planned to visit Friday night. They have a new baby, so I wanted to make something fun and pastel, but Justin convinced me to do a trial run on the chocolate malt cake I planned to make for his birthday. He was in the kitchen snooping around for a snack, so I put him to work.

His job was to melt the baking chocolate in the microwave. After 15 seconds, he pulled the bowl out to stir things up. Apparently the bowl heated to such a scorching degree in that time that it blistered his finger on contact. He then dropped the bowl on the floor, where it shattered. Justin has absolutely no tolerance for heat, so I was skeptical -- but his finger does appear to be slightly injured.

I’m going to be honest here. I was annoyed – not so much about the bowl, though it was a pretty cool bowl, but mostly at the dramatic (over)reaction. But he felt so bad about the whole thing that it ruined his appetite. Plus he’s pretty cute, so I couldn’t stay mad for long, especially since he helped with the dishes.

2. Muffin tops (9:17 p.m.)

Muffin tops only look good on muffins, and even then, only when they’re nice and peaked. These are a bad flat kind of muffin top and the only thing I can think of as a cause is overfilled tins, though maybe these were just doomed from the start.

Not only did these cupcakes muffin top on me, they stuck to the top of the pan because who thinks to grease the top of the muffin tin! Seriously. And honestly, I didn’t think they were that good (which is why I'm not posting the recipe). They’re a little chewier than a cupcake should be, I think. Possibly the result of the malt powder.

3. Mess (11:00 p.m.)

In my original brilliant plan, I was going to make chocolate malt cupcakes with vanilla malt frosting and vanilla malt cupcakes with chocolate malt frosting. I don’t even want to talk about what happened here. As you can see, it wasn’t good.

They all ended up in the garbage and I went to bed, still without any cupcakes for Friday.

4. 4 ounces does not a 1/4 cup make (the next day, 6:00 p.m.)

I was brooding about the cupcakes gone wrong at work the next day when it came to me: I should make Surprise Cupcakes, the long-standing favorite of the Lucky Cloverleaves 4-H Club. Cupcakes so good one would lie and steal for them.

Or at least I would. Granted I was probably about four years old, but even so, I remember parts of it quite clearly: Mom had made a batch of these sincakes for some occasion – for a harvest lunch out in the field or for a 4-H meeting snack, I don’t know, though I do know they were off limits to me. But I ate them anyway – that’s right, “them.” I don’t know exactly how many were in that 9x13 tupperware, but it was a lot more than one. Enough that my mom didn’t suspect me at first; the immediate blame went to my brother, who was five years older and supposedly hungrier and more prone to snacking, and I was smart enough to let her think that was the case.

This is the first time I remember lying.

My brother ratted me out, and I ended up getting my due. I don’t remember what that was, which means it was probably worth it.

But even these fool-proof cupcakes posed a problem. I could blame Justin, but it’s just as much my fault for asking for his help as it is his for “helping” while trying to tell me an involved story about Bioshock.

I made the cupcakes from this recipe, which requires a 1/4 cup hot water at the end to thin the batter. I asked Justin to get the water ready while I finished mixing; by the time we realized it was too much, it was too late.

I could have tried making a cake with the extra-thinned batter, or thickening it up by adding more flour, etc., but I’ve made these cupcakes (with the berry ganache and cinnamon buttercream) before and I didn’t want to ruin their perfect texture. So I started over.

Once you have that ready, make the “surprise” part.

Filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
pinch of salt
1 cup chocolate chips.

Cream the first four ingredients together. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full of batter, then drop in a generous teaspoon or so of the filling.

This should make about 15 or 16 cupcakes.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes. Once they're cooled, you can drizzle a glaze over. I made mine with some melted dark chocolate, powdered sugar, a little milk, and a little vanilla.

5. And finally, success (7:00 p.m.)

Remember what we started with:

Justin liked them; our friends, who have the cutest baby ever, liked them and I think the neighbor I gave the rest of them to liked them. But to tell you the truth, by the time these suckers were done, I had pretty much lost my appetite for cupcakes. I'm thinking apple pie.

Postscript: When I was training for the Lincoln Half, I did my first 10-mile run in South Dakota when I was home for a visit. It was a gorgeous morning – about 50 degrees – and I felt strong, awed at my own strength and in love with the world in general. I planned my route to go past grandma’s house during mile 7 and as I was running past, I stopped in to give her a hug and say good morning. Later that day I came back for a proper visit. And she said, “Can’t you run any faster than that? You just sort of troddle along.”

To top that off, the way grandpa told the story of one of the best runs to date (or this is the way the story got back to me, anyway), I was out running in my bikini while my mom followed behind on the 4-wheeler. I was, of course, properly attired in t-shirt, shorts and running shoes, and mom was at home making waffles.

This reminds me of the time grandpa told my cousin, who was cleaning out a bin for him in the middle of summer, to put a shirt on before he covered him in a tarp. And of all the times grandpa tried to give me a ride home when he saw me out walking.

It's not much as far as a vote of confidence goes, but at least grandpa thought I looked strong enough to make it home on my own two feet -- and he didn't try to cover me in a tarp.

A Peace Offering, of Sorts...

2007-08-27T20:24:00.001-07:00

A co-worker of mine has a thing for kolalches. He also has a thing for telling long, involved stories. That's why I know about his neighbor who made the best kolaches ever, until she died, without passing on the recipe (though I suspect that she did pass on the recipe and that the heirs just refuse to pander to my friend's voracious appetite). The bakery in the neighboring town, moreover, charges an arm and a leg for their kolache and they taste like hog slop.

Shortly after I started working in the newsroom, my mom happened to make kolache while I was home for a visit. So, having inherited my mom's passion for feeding people, whoever and wherever and however full they may already be, I took back a plate of four or five for him.

For the last two years, then, I've heard about how Susanne's mom's kolaches rate in the top three best kolaches ever, after the dead neighbor and leaving room for a possible hiccup in memory. I've also been asked, repeatedly, when I'm going to have my mom make me some kolaches again.

Here's the thing. At first it was cute, but then I realized he was serious. And then I noticed this: My friend is a total food mooch. He once plucked an expired carton of milk out of someone's garbage and drank it. Granted it was only expired by one day, but it was in the garbage. If there is food anywhere in the office, he is on it, in his own words, like a monkey on a cupcake. He had the audacity once to get angry when someone brought in treats of some sort for the office and they were all gone before he had any. And the only food I remember him ever bringing into the office has been his mom's cookies.

While I understand that he might never have had occasion to develop cooking skills, I have little patience for learned helplessness. How hard is it, after all, to add water to a muffin mix? Or to break apart refrigerated cookie dough?

It's not hard, friends.

So the next time the topic of Susanne's mom's kolaches came up, I told my friend that should the occasion ever arise that I had a hankering for some fresh kolache, I would bake them myself. And then I offered to get him the recipe.

And then, the more I thought about it, the more worked up I got: For 30 some odd years people have catered to this man and, in the process, really done him a disservice. What if, for example, he ended up married to someone who'd rather not bake her own birthday cake. What then? Would he ask his mom to do it?

The answer, I realize now, is yes. And that's fine. Truly. But at the time, I decided to show him some tough love and in the process I made a bargain. I told him that if he brought in a pan of bars -- though rice krispie bars did not count -- I would bake him a batch of kolaches.

He wanted nothing to do with it. That should have been the end of it.

But I'm stubborn, another inherited trait, and we'd reached an impasse of sorts -- and I was starting to actually get mad (all the refrigerated cookie dough thing requires is a pan, some Pam and an oven, God bless him), though I have absolutely no real investment in his future inside the kitchen.

I had to let it go because I really do like him -- so I made the kolaches. And if he threw them down his maw with nary a word of thanks, what does it matter? I'm just glad that I don't have to make my own birthday cake. And, admittedly, I have enough ego to get the affirmation I need from just seeing someone enjoy my baking.

I'm not qualified to say if they were the best kolaches ever, but they were good -- and I made them myself.

***

(My Dad's Aunt) Kathryn's Kolaches

My very favorite part about this recipe is its succinctness.

2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
3/4 cup instant potato buds
1/2 cup oil
4 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 packages (2 1/4 teaspoons, each) yeast
5-6 cups flour

1. Mix as usual.
I'm not exactly sure what she means by "as usual," but this is what I did and it worked fine: Proof the yeast -- mix it with the warm water and a tablespoon of the sugar in a drinking glass or large measuring cup and set aside until it's frothy. Heat the milk, potato buds, oil salt, and eggs with the rest of the sugar in a saucepan. Once it's cool enough -- should feel comfortable on the inside of your wrist -- that it won't kill the yeast, mix in the yeast mixture with 3 cups of flour until smooth.
Keep adding flour until you have a soft, but not sticky dough. At some point you'll have to turn it out onto a floured surface to knead. It was fairly humid, so I ended up using 6 cups of flour, if not a little more.

2. Let rise.
About an hour or so, until double. You'll know it's risen enough when you can press your fingers into the dough and the indentations remain. (The dough doesn't look like it's risen very much in the picture below, but that's because it's in the biggest Tupperware bowl -- a 32-cupper -- I've ever seen, a gift from my mom.)

3. Make into balls -- put on pan. Let rise again.
This recipe will make between 3 and 4 dozen, depending on how big you make the kolache. Make sure to grease the pan. And then let them raise until double, about a half hour.

4. Make a well with your fingers and fill with 1 rounding teaspoon any flavor fruit filling.
The dough is very light and easy work with. I make the well by poking one finger in dead center and then using two fingers on both hands to stretch the dough.

I used canned cherry pie filling and a fresh peach filling.

5. Let rise again.
About 15 minutes.

6. Another recipe calls for a crumbly mixture to sprinkle on top before baking. Optional.
I opted for the crumbly mixture:
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
(Mix and crumble, per Kathryn's directions.)

6. Bake 375 degrees.
For about 15 minutes or until they look like this:

And then you can drizzle a powdered sugar glaze over them while they're still warm.

They are perfect fresh from the oven -- tender and soft and sweet without being too sweet. Best with a big glass of cold milk and possibly a slice of sharp cheddar cheese.

Incidentally, I don't know if kolache plural is kolaches, or just kolache. So forgive my ignorance and fill me in if you know.

Mennonites Bake Bible, Cabbage in Bread

2007-07-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

The church I grew up in was Mennonite in name, but at some point while I was too young to give such things much attention, it left whatever conference it was involved in (I think it was the general conference), becoming, in practice, much like other conservative, evangelical churches: We didn't baptize babies. We didn't raise our hands or clap or sing praise songs. And we certainly didn't sit around talking about our feelings. But we prayed long and hard and often -- and though communion was maybe a quarterly occurrence, we found a lot of excuses to break bread together and I still know where to find everything in that church kitchen, though I haven't been in it for almost eight years.

When I was looking for colleges, my mom wanted me to visit the Mennonite-affiliated Tabor and Bethel, even Grace. But I ended up at Northwestern College, nestled right in the middle of northwest Iowa's Dutch country. And at Northwestern I met Tonya (because we both liked the same boy. Said boy proved unsuitable for both of us, though we ended up being quite compatible). And Tonya, who was from Kansas and related to Naomi Kauffman (of all people), taught me a lot about Mennonites.

This education delved into some of the finer points of pacifism and included an introduction to Northwestern's Anabaptist fellowship group (this mainly involved hymn singing and eating, as I recall) and a briefing on some of the more important moments in our history, including the details of how Mennonites brought wheat to the Southern Plains by sewing the seed into dolls, clothing, blankets and sheets to smuggle it out of Russia.

Apparently Mennonites were good at hiding things. According to my grandma, they also baked Bibles into bread to keep them from being discovered -- and to avoid death for possessing them.

Think about that for a second. And then think about Matthew 4:4, John 1:1-2 and John 6:24-35. I have to confess that I don't know if the story is fact or fiction; it's almost too perfect an illustration; however, a) my grandma told me it's true (and doesn't that just almost always settle the question?) and b) you do have to consider that there are a lot of Mennonite breads, rolls and dumplings that have fillings: Verenicke (cottage cheese, primarily), kolaches (various fruits, cream cheese or poppy seed), bohne beroggis (pinto beans!) and beirocks (cabbage and ground beef), and those are only the ones I can name right off hand.

Until a month or so ago, I had never made beirock myself.
And I hadn't shared a kitchen with someone other than my mom (and Justin) since college and Plex 20. I didn't even realize that it was something I'd missed until I spent a Saturday afternoon visiting Tonya and Kelcee in Des Moines.

Tonya procured a beirock recipe from back home and she even typed it out, after quizzing her mom about the specifics, so that I could write about it later. Her mom is one of those sorts who makes bread by putting stuff together until the dough feels right. So you can understand the work Tonya did on my behalf.

Dough:
2 tablespoons yeast
2 3/4 cups warm water, divided
1/3 cup powdered milk
3 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons salt
2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup mashed potatoes (you can use instant)
1 egg
5 to 7 cups flour, or enough to make a firm dough (we used more than this because it was extremely humid)

Start by proofing the yeast. We mixed the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar with about 3/4 cup of warm water.

Then heat the remaining water, sugar and shortening in a saucepan until the shortening is melted.

Beat the egg and add it along with the powdered milk, salt and mashed potatoes to the butter mixture. (We used a leftover baked potato. In theory, this will work. But make sure you mash it first. We missed that step and kept picking potato chunks out of the dough...)

Stir in about three or four cups of flour with the butter mixture. Keep stirring until it's smooth. (This process goes a lot faster if you have a Kitchen Aid, like Tonya.) Keep adding flour until you get the texture you want. Even if you do have a Kitchen Aid, you'll want to do some kneading by hand so that you can gauge the consistency and texture of the dough.

Once you have it kneaded smooth, set it aside in a greased bowl to rise until double.

In the meantime, make the filling.

Filling:
2 pounds hamburger
Large head of cabbage, shredded
Onion, chopped, to taste
Salt, pepper and other seasonings, depending on your preference.

Brown the hamburger, rinse. Add the cabbage, onion and seasonings. Simmer until the cabbage is tender.

Once the dough is ready, punch it down and divide into two or three sections, depending on how much you want to work with at a time. Roll it out and cut it into 4-inch squares.

Place 1/3 to 1/2 cup filling in the middle, fold in the corners -- or fold into a triangle -- and pinch the dough together to seal it.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. It should make about three dozen.

I wish I had pictures, but I forgot my camera the day we made them -- I do still have some in the freezer, so when I get them out and thawed, I'll make sure to post a few photos.

These are good, but my husband has a thing about cabbage -- and onions -- and Tonya's husband calls them cabbage cakes. I suspect that means he doesn't appreciate them as he should. Kelcee's husband, God bless him, was the only one who seemed appropriately excited about our afternoon's work.

Because I can't -- or rather, shouldn't -- eat an entire batch of beirocks by myself, I plan to experiment with some different fillings the next time I make them. Tonya and Kelcee mentioned ham and cheese -- and I wonder if a vegetable or potato filling of some sort would work too.

I've also come across a variation on the dough -- more sugar, different process for putting it together -- that I want to try. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Called to the Kitchen

2007-07-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've long understood that place shapes identity and, even more than that, spirituality -- something Kathleen Norris refers to as spiritual geography in her book Dakota and that Linda Hasselstrom also addresses in her work, albeit from a different vantage point.

In any case, as far as place goes, my identity is rooted in the southeast corner of South Dakota along the James River, the place, as the story goes, the scouts sent ahead from Russia picked as the best location for the new settlement. In making this decision, they bypassed the more fertile farm ground of the Red River Valley and northwest Iowa because it was "too good" and they feared the people would become "proud" working rich land like that.

If there's one thing that can be said about farming, it's this: Depending on the land and the whims of the weather for your livelihood fosters, if not a relationship with God, at least the knowledge that there are forces greater than yourself at work in the world.

But I'm only beginning to understand how food can go beyond preserving cultural identity and family history to become theology in practice. I've said before that I come from a long line of women who take great joy in feeding people. I've never thought much about it until I put it in the larger context of the Mennonite emphasis on service and, more specifically, the relief sales, the meat canning, the disaster relief.

Within this context, cooking goes beyond a means of showing love to family and community or even a spiritual gift in service of the church. It becomes necessary for showing Christ to the world. It becomes a calling.

So there it is. As much as I have worked out.

Zweiback, At Last

2007-07-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

The morning after we made the jam, my mom and I made the zweiback. It was something I'd wanted to do since April when I found Marilyn Moore's Baking Memoir in Friendly Used Books. It was a good find, and, thrilled to have all these old familiar recipes at hand, I regaled my husband with recipes for peppernuts, kuchen and zweiback (and Moore's account of how her dad got kicked out of Tabor College, which, being Lutheran and unfamiliar with Tabor as well as unversed in my uncles' exploits at Grace Bible Institute, now Grace University he couldn't quite appreciate as much as I did) over supper at the Pizza Shoppe (in my defense, we'd walked to Benson for some shopping and supper -- so the book was sitting right there beside me in the booth).

I brought the book home with me to share with mom. At first, she was aghast that I spent $9.00 on a used book, but after she spent an afternoon looking at it, she wanted me to find her a copy on Amazon. She also decided that we should try Bertha Toevs' recipe (Moore refers to her as a zweiback expert: this means that her zweiback never come unstacked in the oven) rather than the one she had from Naomi Kauffman.

Both Naomi and Bertha are from Kansas, so the recipe my mom remembers from Henderson is probably slightly different than either of these. You'll notice that Bertha's recipe uses quite a bit more yeast. In Naomi's recipe, the dough needs to rise twice. In any case, though, the thing that really makes them zweiback (at least as I understand it), is the two-bun stack. In fact, my grandma told me her mom never made buns without stacking them.

Naomi's Recipe
(makes 4 to 5 dozen)

3 cups milk
2 tablespoons salt
6 tablespoons sugar, plus 1 teaspoon
1 cup Wesson oil
1/2 cup warm water
2 packages active dry yeast (1 package yeast is 2 1/4 teaspoons)
8-10 cups flour

Scald 2 cups milk and mix with the sugar and salt. Mix yeast in 1/2 cup water with sugar and let set until bubbly. Add last cup of cold milk and oil to first mixture. This cools it enough that the yeast can then be added. Now add flour until dough becomes fairly easy to handle, not sticky but not too stiff either. Grease and form ball in your bowl and cover to raise. Let rise 1 hour and knead. Then let rise another hour and form the zwieback. Put them on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes.

Pastor George and Naomi were at Zion Mennonite in Bridgewater for most of my growing up years. When I was in college, they left for another call at a church in Henderson. It's a small Mennonite world.

Bertha's Recipe (as told by Marilyn Moore)
(makes about 3 dozen)

2 cups whole milk, scalded
1 cup unsalted butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup warm water
2 to 3 tablespoons active dry yeast
8 to 9 cups all-purpose flour (unbleached flour can be used, but don't use bread flour)

Bertha includes the specifics for how to mix everything together, but every bread maker has a method that works best so I'll just tell you what we did.

My mom didn't have whole milk on hand, so we used skim milk, which we combined with the butter and sugar in a saucepan. We put it over low heat until the butter melted and the sugar dissolved. (Note that scalding milk in the old-fashioned sense generally isn't necessary. Our milk is pasteurized, so we don't need to worry about getting it hot enough to kill bacteria, unless you need to be at one with the natural food chain.) Once that happened, we set it aside to cool. If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast. A good general rule of thumb: If the temperature is comfortable to your wrist, it won't hurt the yeast.

While the milk mixture was heating, we combined the yeast, warm water and a couple teaspoons of honey in a tall water glass. This is something my mom taught me to do when I first started baking. The honey -- or sugar -- gives the yeast something to feed on and you can make sure the yeast is good before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.

When the milk was lukewarm, we added the yeast and three cups of flour and beat it with a wooden spoon until smooth. Then, we gradually added enough flour to make a soft (but not sticky), smooth dough, eventually turning it out to knead -- a little less than 10 minutes.

In all, we probably used about 8 1/2 cups of flour. And the dough was very soft -- when I picked it up, it seeped through my finger.

At this point, we put the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise until doubled (then punched it down).

And then it was time to start shaping the zweiback. We divided the dough in half and then kneped it. The dough is so soft, that it's a little tricky to get it smooth. The best way to do this is to pat it (think burping a baby or giving your significant other some "love taps" on the rump; I really can't think of any other way to describe it) and pull the sides down to get a smooth ball-like top.

Then hold the dough with one hand and with your thumb and index finger on the other, squeeze off a ball about 1.5 inches in diameter. Don't twist the dough -- overworking it will make it tough.

This process is kneping. It's something I've done for a long time, but I didn't know it had a name until Marilyn filled me in.

In any case, since mom and I divided the dough, we each made 18 1.5-inch balls (for the base) and 18 slightly smaller ones (for the top). But then our processes differed.

In the Bertha Toevs method of making zweiback, you let the dough rise until doubled, about 30 minutes, before stacking them. My mom wanted to stack them before they rose, as several other recipes suggest, including both Naomi's and Marilyn's. This is how her mother made them as well.

So, my mom stacked the smaller balls on top of the larger base and pressed her finger all the way through to the pan (which should be well greased!) and then let them rise about 30 minutes or so. And I let the dough rise first.

In this method, you dip your finger in a glass of cold water and then poke a hole almost all the way through to the baking sheet. (I wiggled my finger a little to create a slight well for the small ball.) Then, you moisten the bottom of the small ball and press it in the center of well (use slight pressure -- the dough will be very light as it has already risen).

When all the balls have been stacked, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is ready, turn it down to 350 degrees and bake the zweiback for 15 to 20 minutes until they're well browned.

Marilyn says to eat them without butter, only fresh jam. But my husband doesn't like rhubarb (pity that), so when I make them again (and when I get a Kitchen Aid), I'm going to try this recipe for homemade butter.

In case you were wondering, the Bertha Toevs-stacked zweiback had a better survival rate than the other method. Casualties and survivors alike, however, were consumed with great rejoicing at our impromptu faspa.

Rain on the Rhubarb

2007-07-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

My dad grew up with five brothers and one sister. All things considered, this is a relatively average-sized family. But still, imagine feeding all of those growing farm boys.

From what grandma has said, dinner alone took two fried chickens (plus a hamburger or a couple of franks for the oldest boy, who's still not a fan of poultry), several pounds of potatoes and two pies to end. Besides dinner, though, there was also breakfast, two lunches (morning and afternoon), and supper, so it's little wonder that the kitchen, and more specifically, the Formica-topped table (with a couple generation's worth of chewing gum now cemented underneath) is still the place they all return to when they need tending.

Growing up, I sat at that table occupied with old puzzles and homemade play dough. I ate countless meals sitting in my dad's old place on the long end against the wall, and drank my share of pop, which grandpa doled out a half can at a time. During the summers I was home from college, I'd walk the two miles to the house, sit down for a glass of water and a visit, and unless grandpa insisted on driving me, walk the two miles back home. From that vantage point, I had a lot of opportunities to watch my grandma manage the various personalities in her family to circumvent conflict.

But when reasoning failed, she'd simply resort to this: Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

In other words, change the subject now or get out.

No one knows where she came up with it, but that hasn't stopped us from adopting it (along with grandpa's rather infamous portmanteau mental "flustration," which he used repeatedly during an interview with a local news station in the late 80s/early 90s). And I can't have rhubarb without thinking of my grandma.

Rhubarb Jam

5 cups rhubarb, chopped
4 cups sugar
4 cups sliced strawberries, blueberries or chopped cherries (or you can use a pie mix)
1 small box (6 oz) Jello in the same flavor

Combine the rhubarb and the sugar in a large saucepan and set aside until the rhubarb juices. Cook the rhubarb mixture over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Boil 15 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender. Add the fruit/pie mix and boil for 10 minutes more. Turn off the heat and stir in the Jello. Once the jam is cool, it's ready to be packaged. You can put it in jars and then refrigerate, but since it freezes well, I just put mine in freezer-safe Gladware and store it that way.

My mom and I made all three variations of this jam when I was home for a visit a few weeks ago. My personal favorite is the blueberry-rhubarb -- it's good on everything from ice cream to oatmeal, and especially fresh-baked bread.

For the record, I can't imagine that rain would ever hurt the rhubarb. It's hardy, being part of the buckwheat family and all -- and maybe that's the point.

Some Context

2007-07-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

When I was in college I had so many words, so many ideas constantly demanding my attention that I filled journal upon journal besides writing all the papers and projects required of an English major. And then I went to graduate school and after that I got a job as an editor for an online publication and though the ideas still come, I lose them because at the end of the day, my words are all used up. The difference, I'm sure, involves all the other commitments on my time that come with being an adult -- and I know I’m not alone: a good friend of mine who completed a master's program in poetry two years ago hasn't written a single line since completing her thesis. We both agree that all we need is a little discipline to help us follow through on our good intentions.

And while I'd describe my life as fairly orderly, and even disciplined in some regards, that may be the biggest difference between my mom and me, at least when it comes to the kitchen. She's neat and orderly, washing dishes and utensils as she goes to prevent a big messy backlog at the end. I just stack them in the sink -- or by the sink. She follows a recipe to the letter, reading back through at the end to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything. (The one time, at least to my knowledge, that she didn't do this, she forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pies she made for her ladies' Bible study and at the last minute had to remake all eight of them using, horrors, frozen pie crust -- but that's another story for another day). I improvise and substitute and it drives her nuts, especially as she is an alpha cook. (I have a lot to say about this, but it will have to wait for another day, too.)

When I was in high school, we would get into epic fights in the kitchen, usually while I was baking for the county 4-H Achievement Days. She'd hover with a ruler (I'm not even exaggerating for the sake of a good story, as other members of my family are wont to do), measuring how much batter was in each muffin tin, how big I was shaping the buns, if the loaves met the size specified in the recipe, and I would just lose it.

You must understand, though, that my mom is one of the best cooks I know and that my success at achievement was a direct reflection on her reputation. Achievement days are a three-day event: All the entries -- from livestock to visual arts to the various categories of baked goods -- are judged on the first two days. On the third day, the exhibit halls are opened to the public (mostly moms and grandmas come) and the whole thing culminates with a barbeque, usually pork or beef, though there was the unfortunate sheep incident (where everyone complained) that my dad still talks about (because he was on the fair board and let some of the mothers who wanted a healthier alternative line up the sheep and the man who barbequed/ruined it).

My brother, who is five years older than I am, made waffle cookies -- similar to these; I'll post the real recipe when I can find it -- his first year in 4-H (when he was 8) and he earned a white ribbon (which means disqualification!), a disgrace he has yet to live down. It was a technicality -- something about a frosted cookie being entered in a category for unfrosted cookies -- but all these years later, my mom has not forgotten. All that to say, my mom really had more at stake than I did in this thing and it was shameful of me to provoke her by refusing to level that tablespoon of cinnamon with a knife. (If you're reading mom, know that I'm sorry.)

Now that I'm older and, I'd like to think wiser, sharing a kitchen with my mom is much easier, as long as I remember my place. And, for her part, she trusts me more. But mostly I think it's because we no longer have to deal with achievement-day baking and the approval of the old home economics teachers the county extension agent would round up to judge it.

What Is Zweiback and Why Would I Knep It?: An Introduction

2007-04-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

My mom grew up in Henderson, Nebraska, a hotbed of Mennonite culture and tradition, by all accounts, and one of the few things I know about her childhood in that sacred place -- besides the summer her and her friends found religion and burned their comic books -- is that my grandma made zweiback, or two-bakes, as they're also known, on Saturday night. In the Mennonite tradition, zweiback, as the alternate name implies, are two rolls baked stacked one on top of the other. The trick, I'm told, is keeping them stacked during baking.

In any case, my mom and her twin sister loved these rolls so much that they would sneak five or six apiece and eat them under the sheets after they'd gone to bed. A pretty impressive night's work for a couple of little girls. And, according my dad, an art that hasn't yet been lost. My mom bought a dozen of the rolls at this year's Schmeckfest in Freeman, South Dakota, and, by her own admission, could only bear to part with two. I'd like to think she ate them under the sheets for old time's sake.

Despite this hearty appetite for zweiback, I can only remember my mom making them once while I was growing up. Perhaps they bring to mind too many painful memories (my grandma died when my mom was but 13), or maybe they never tasted quite like she remembered, or maybe, more practically, they're just a pain to make.

Lately zweiback has become something of an obsession for me, the key to knowing my mom and the grandma I know very little about. You see, I come from a long line of German-Russian women who show love by feeding people the best food they can offer. Food shapes and defines a community even as it nourishes it, and because my mom and dad share a similar heritage and grew up in Mennonite communities, albeit in different states, knowing the food is akin to knowing who I am, or at least where I am and how I came to be there.

I don't know very much about Mennonite history or theology or if it's something I want to claim (at least some of) for myself. I don't know and so zweiback it is -- my first line of inquiry and kneping, I'll tell you now, is simply the way to shape the dough.