Things That Impress Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.