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.

Ten years ago,

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

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

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:

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

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.

Because I do make good on my promises, eventually.

Home, to Minnesota

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

I.

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.