FoxCraft

Vegetarian Obesity

It was the green pepper I got at the grocery store this week that started me thinking great thoughts about giant vegetables. It was the size of an acorn squash, at least six inches long and four or five inches in diameter. When peppers are priced "each" rather than "per lb." you naturally go for the bigger ones, and at 99 cents this one was a real bargain.

Then there were the embarrassingly proportioned cucumbers we got from a friend's garden. They weren't yellow and overripe, they were just big. I've been told that, in Turkey, for one man to call another a "cucumber" is an insult he'd better be prepared to back up with his fists. I would think that being compared to these cucumbers would be a compliment.

The same person who reported the insulting capabilities of the cucumber also talked about Black Sea cabbages so huge that no one bought a whole one; you'd just tell the grocer how many kilos you wanted, and he'd whack off a section. And, of course, it isn't necessary to even mention how out of control zucchini can get if they're left in the garden a little too long.

But when it comes to oversized vegetables, the champion of champions has to be the giant pumpkin. A pumpkin festival was held downtown last weekend, along with a kids' costume parade, music, and food booths presumably specializing in pumpkin pie and muffins. The featured attraction was the giant pumpkin contest.

Six or seven contestants squatted along the street, looking like aging sumo wrestlers who had succumbed to gravity. Their bulging, sagging mounds of excess flesh were certainly big, if not exactly beautiful. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's wife would have had ample room to live in one, but decorating might have presented a challenge.

I suppose the fun of growing giant pumpkins lies in the challenge of producing one just a little bigger than last year's—or than the other guy's. Otherwise, it seems like a lot of trouble just to end up with something that is seriously ugly and doesn't even get made into pies.

Another featured event at the festival was the pumpkin catapult toss. Not surprisingly, the contestants were engineering students from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The purpose was to see which team could build a device capable of hurling a pumpkin the longest distance. It wasn't clear who was responsible for cleaning up the mess afterward.

They didn't use giant pumpkins, of course. Too bad; the idea offers some exciting possibilities. Just imagine the explosive impact of a thousand-pound pumpkin hitting the ground. Onlookers would need to wear raincoats to protect themselves from the spatter. Small children and pets would need to be kept at a safe distance, say a couple of blocks away. The Great Pumpkin Splat. I'm sure it would be a smashing success.

In Hot Water and Holding the Bag

Over a restaurant's breakfast menu the other morning, a friend raised an important question: Why do we use the word "poached" for both a deer taken out of season and an egg cooked in hot water?

Inquiring minds wanted to know. When I got home, I consulted the curious editor's best friend—the unabridged dictionary. I found two possible explanations.

According to our Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged), the word "poach" comes from Middle French "pocher" by way of Middle English "potch." It means "bag."

This word is the reason a bag is sometimes called a "poke," and it's where we get the expression "a pig in a poke." If you were foolish enough to buy a bagged pig without looking inside the sack to make sure you were actually getting pork on the hoof, you might be tricked into buying a less edible critter. You wouldn't know you'd been scammed until you "let the cat out of the bag."

But I digress. Back to poaching. The connection with hunting is clear enough. We still use "bag" to mean getting the game you're after. Besides, it makes sense that if you were hunting illegally, you might want to put whatever you got into a bag. But how do you get from bagging game to cooking eggs?

The RHDEL(U) says that an egg cooked in hot water is "poached" because the white holds the yoke the way a bag would. I'm not going to argue with a dictionary that weighs as much as a small child, but that seems like a stretch to me. Although I would concede that a quivering, runny poached egg looks like it ought to be in a bag, preferably a garbage bag.

There's another possibility, however. Another meaning of "poached," which the RHDEL(U) says comes from the Middle French "pocher" meaning "gouge," is "to mix with water and reduce to a uniform consistency, as clay." (There was no explanation of why Middle French apparently used the same word for "bag" and "gouge," as in, "Just stick that there pig in a poke, and if it squeals, poke it with a stick.")

There's also a word "poachy" that means "slushy or swampy." This seems to me to have a more reasonable association with the watery texture of a not-quite-boiled egg. Maybe poached eggs came into modern English through a swamp rather than in a bag.

Who knows? And, except for those of us who are nitpicking word freaks, probably no one really cares.

What I do know is that, if you steal an egg out from under your neighbor's hen and break it into boiling water, you're going to have a twice-poached egg. And if you shoot a deer or a pheasant out of season, you're likely to end up in hot water with egg on your face.

"And This One Is From the Time I . . . "

One of the side effects of growing older is that you have more and more scars, but fewer and fewer people who know about all of them.

Balanced against other weighty concerns, this may not be very important. It does matter, though. Our scars are evidence, not just of physical wounds, but of events we have lived through and maybe even learned from. The answer to the question, "How did you get that scar?" is a piece of our personal history.

In the following stories, the scars don't all belong to the same person, but all of them are real. The identities of their owners are being withheld in order to protect the unlucky, the careless, and the clumsy.

There's the white line on your chin that's a memento of the time you were helping a friend move and you fell out of the back of the Suburban and landed face-first on the concrete driveway. You remember grazing your cheek on the corner of the trailer as you fell, and you realize how lucky you were not to break your cheekbone, shatter your jaw, or lose a bunch of teeth.

The shallow divot on your wrist comes from the family bike ride when your daughter had a wreck in front of you and you fell over her. You landed on your face—getting an impressive shiner in spite of your helmet—scraped your wrist, and tore a ligament in your elbow. Until then, you thought seeing stars happened only in the comics.

The triangle on your knee is a souvenir of the time a steering cable broke on the boat and it veered abruptly to starboard—or was it port? Everything and everyone in it slid sideways. The cut on your leg was minor; what you remember most is that one of the kids almost went over the side.

The gouge in your knuckle came from nearly cutting off your finger during your college summer job. It was a good incentive to finish your education and learn how to find oil instead of drilling for it.

The mark across your thigh is a reminder that it's a good idea to stop the chain saw after it goes through the log and before it reaches your leg.

The line on your ankle marks the place where the orthopedic surgeon put in a screw—probably the most expensive hardware item you'll ever buy. That was the time you learned that it isn't a good idea to jump on the trampoline with your sandals on.

Scars are more than just marks on our bodies. They can be mementos of poor decisions, bad luck, or narrow escapes. They can serve as receipts, showing the tuition we've paid for educational experiences. They are part of our personal history and sometimes our family history as well. They may even remind us we were lucky to survive to talk about them.

We're lucky, too, if we have plenty of people around who know and care about our stories, including our scars. After all, some of our most interesting scars are in places we can't show to just anybody.

Keeping the Wolf From the Door

It was late for dinner—which was beside the point, since it hadn't been invited in the first place.

We spent a beautiful late-summer evening sitting out on the deck with several guests, enjoying good food and better conversation. It was well after dark before anyone got up to leave.

As we were standing in the doorway under the porch light, saying goodbye to the last two guests, I happened to glance down at the doorsill. There, just coming in past the open screen door, was the largest spider I have ever seen. Well, actually, I have seen a couple of larger ones in the tarantula exhibit at Reptile Gardens, but they were safely behind thick glass. This one was a good three inches long and at least two inches wide, counting all eight of its long, thick legs—and it was crawling into my house.

I'm not particularly afraid of spiders. I don't consider myself a screamer. There are times, however, when extraordinary measures are called for. I screeched and pointed.

Alarmed but determined, the spider scuttled past our feet and into the entryway. The departing couple came back in to see what the commotion was about. Despite, or maybe because of, our efforts to stop it, the spider slipped under the door into the coat closet.

My partner slid open the closet door and started tossing out winter boots, backpacks, and stray coat hangars. Our guests joined the pursuit. The spider took a defensive position on the back wall of the closet.

The husband said, "That looks like a wolf spider. Get the Raid! Get the Raid!" (This man, a paleontologist, once told us a memorable story of waking up in the Brazilian rain forest to find that he couldn't open one eye. He had to peel off a tarantula that had planted itself on his face. Perhaps he had arachnid issues.)

Issues or not, I thought his suggestion about the Raid was a great idea. But as I headed downstairs to get it, his wife, a biologist, asked me for a container with a lid. By the time I came back, armed and ready to do battle, she was maneuvering the spider into a plastic bowl that had once held macaroni salad.

She popped the lid onto the container and headed outside. Okay, if she wanted to take this lethal-looking critter off to show to her students, that was fine by me. Instead, she carried the spider halfway across our yard and let it loose. Ordinarily I find compassion to be a virtue. In this case, I would have been willing to make an exception.

A couple of weeks later, we again had guests for dinner. Again, we were saying goodbye at the door under the porch light. Again, I glanced down—and there was the spider, or its identical twin, reaching its first long gray leg over the doorsill.

I didn't scream this time, just pointed and made inarticulate noises. My partner was fast enough on his feet to deflect the critter before it got inside. He herded it away from the door, down the steps, and off into the grass.

That's it. Two instances of misplaced compassion are enough. Any time now that we have evening guests, we're saying our goodbyes in the living room and hustling them out without turning on the porch light. In case that doesn't work, the Raid is close at hand beside the front door. If that critter sets so much as one arachnid toe across the sill again, it's toast.

You Might Be an Optimist If . . .

Optimistake: (noun) A serious error in judgment based on an unrealistic belief that the world has a higher regard for you than is actually the case. Contributing factors often are alcohol or other optimism-fueling substances.

Example: (This is a true story, as reported in our newspaper on September 10.) A burglar in Ohio, along with two companions, broke into a house while its occupants were at home. They stole some stuff and left. The optimistake occurred when one of the thieves went back to the house two hours later to ask one of the women who lived there for a date.

Not apparently being the forgiving type, she not only declined, but had someone call 911. The cops arrested the romantic robber in front of the house. Given his optimistic view of life, no doubt he will expect to be released on parole when he explains to the judge that he did it all for love.

There's got to be a plot for a romance novel in here somewhere, or at least a song.

"All I stole was her plasma TV, but she got away with my heart."

"Say you love me, baby, and I'll bring back the cash I stole."

"It was only a simple felony until I fell for you."

It's hard to be a romantic in this cold, cruel world.

Be a Kid Again? You've Got to be Kidding.

One of the many humorous/inspiring/possibly fake/probably plagiarized emails that periodically circulates around the Internet is about "resigning from adulthood." It talks about turning in your driver's license and becoming a kid again.

Are you kidding? Who would ever want to be a kid again? True, adults have more responsibility in the gainful employment and buying your own groceries departments. I'll accept that responsibility any day in return for all the benefits of being an adult, like no algebra homework, no school lunches, and choosing your own bedtime.

Here is my Top Ten list of the reasons it's better to be an adult than a kid:

10. You get to plan your own menus.

9. In the car, you almost always get to sit in the front by a window.

8. You can paint your room whatever color you wish.

7. You can eat watermelon just before bedtime if you want to.

6. You can decide for yourself whether you're cold and should put on a sweater.

5. Nobody says you can only read one more chapter before you go to bed.

4. You can do anything your older siblings get to do.

3. If you want a puppy or a kitten, you don't have to settle for a goldfish.

2. Two words: driver's license.

And the top reason it's better to be an adult than a kid?

1. Grandchildren.

We Are What We Eat--Or Not

As members of my family would probably be quick to tell you, the phrase "indifferent cook" pretty well sums up my relationship with food. I'm not indifferent to food, mind you, just to cooking it. Cooking, to me, isn't an art or a passion, it's merely something that has to be done.

So I skim the food section of the newspaper in the same way I do the sports section—with respect for the feats some people achieve, mixed with amazement that it occurs to them to try those things in the first place.

Take the article this week about a chef described as a "French food legend." He was quoted as saying, "In cooking I often identify with the ingredient. I try to understand it, become one with it in order to recreate it."

Okay, maybe that's my problem. Back in the days of trying to put meals on the table that were economical, nutritious, and that at least four of the five kids would eat with minimal complaining, it never occurred to me to try to become one with the meatloaf or the tuna casserole. Which may be just as well. Who, after all, wants to be known as fast, cheap, and easy?

I could identify a little more with another article, which featured the opposite gastronomic extreme—fair food. It went so far as to list the calories and fat content for some of the traditional fair treats like funnel cakes, cotton candy, and several variations of fat-and-sugar-on-a-stick. This was a classic case of giving readers more information than they really want to know. Anyone who read it and could still eat a whole serving of fried Oreos had to have a poor memory for numbers.

There was some good news, however. Alligator on a stick is low in fat and a good source of protein.

We went to the fair that evening, and I wasn't even tempted to try a funnel cake or a cream puff. Maybe it was my unfortunately clear memory of the calorie counts in the article. Maybe it was the fact that I've tried both and didn't really care for them. Or maybe it was the fair aroma—that unique midway blend of hot grease, sugar, engine exhaust, and livestock.

Or possibly it was the quote from the French chef about becoming one with the food. That concept doesn't concern me. What worries me is the food becoming one with me. The alligator can just stay on its stick and away from my skin, thank you very much—and I certainly don't need any funnel cakes or cream puffs becoming one with my hips.

Courgette, Anyone?

We were browsing through a Mediterranean cookbook one day, looking for a dish of mixed vegetables featuring eggplant. Eggplant isn't your typical South Dakota vegetable, but one of us had just spent six weeks in Turkey. He was trying to duplicate a dish served by the cook who had fed delicious traditional Turkish meals to two dozen American students and professors.

One recipe seemed close. It started out—as, I am informed, all good Turkish recipes do—with "fry onions in butter." The other ingredients included aubergine (that's the eggplant), potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, parsley, beans, and courgette.

What in the heck was a "courgette?" The word obviously was French, not Turkish. From the matter-of-fact way it was given in the recipe, it was clearly assumed to be a familiar ingredient. Maybe in England, where the cookbook was published. But here in the middle of the United States, we don't just amble over to the produce section and grab a couple of courgettes.

Because of the other ingredients in the recipe, we knew some of the things a courgette wasn't: a potato, tomato, pepper, eggplant, or bean.

A mushroom, maybe? Nope. My co-chef, who is our resident expert in all things French, thanks to two college semesters of the language way back when, thought for a few minutes and came up with the French word for mushroom: champignon.

After he said the word, I remembered that I also had learned "champignon" way back when. I didn't take college French, but I did read (several times) the comic book version of the animated movie "Gay Purr-ee" about runaway cats in early twentieth-century Paris.

Our extensive mutual knowledge of French vegetables thus exhausted, we resorted to the Internet and looked up "courgette."

Courgette—brace yourself—is nothing more or less than zucchini. It's the term used, not only in France, of course, but also in much of Great Britain. I don't see why English-speaking countries need to resort to French for such an ordinary vegetable. What's wrong with using the good, old-fashioned English term zucchini?

Oh, wait—"zucchini" is Italian. Specifically, it's the masculine diminutive plural of "zucca," the Italian word for squash. I guess, given the typical shape of a zucchini, it makes sense that it would be masculine.

But never mind that. For zucchini-blessed gardeners everywhere, being bilingual in squash could offer great opportunities. Forget begging your friends, "Wouldn't you like to take home some zucchini?" Instead, you can graciously offer, "Have some courgette. It did so well this year." No more zucchini in cheese sauce. You could serve "courgette fromageé." Plain old zucchini bread could become "pan de courgette."

You just sound so much more sophisticated when you can say it in French. And you could easily get rid of most of your surplus zucchini. At least it would work for the first year. After that, all your friends would know what a courgette was, and they'd have learned to say, "Non, non!"

Only at the Sturgis Rally . . .

Have you heard the one about the midgets, the professional wrestler, and the kangaroo?

No, it isn't an off-color and politically incorrect joke. It's a love story. Well, a wedding story, at least, from this year's Sturgis Rally. The description of the ceremony made the August 9 Rapid City Journal—in the "nation and world" section rather than "life and style."

The wrestler, here for the Rally in a professional capacity, was the bride. The midgets, both guys who are part of her team of performers, were wedding attendants. (I know, I know, the preferred term is "little people," but the bride called them midgets.) Jack, the kangaroo, escorted the bride down the improvised aisle at the Buffalo Chip campground.

Oh, there was a groom, too. Being neither midget nor marsupial, he rated only a brief mention toward the end of the article.

The bride wore a white leather bikini top trimmed tastefully with fringe. The matching bikini bottom and sheer white overskirt fit just low enough to accent the tattoo across her abdomen. Jack, despite having no visible tattoos, was dapper in his own fur coat and a black leather vest. The rest of the wedding party presumably wore Harley black.

Jack lives at the Roo Ranch near Deadwood, though, as you might expect, he isn't a South Dakota native. He's from Texas. I'm not sure why the Black Hills has a tourist attraction featuring kangaroos and other critters from Down Under instead of native species like the buffalo or the jackalope. Maybe the local tourism market has more of those than it knows what to do with. Or maybe eventually we'll see a new hybrid—the jackaroo, perhaps, or the roo-alope or the buffaroo.

At any rate, Jack, an experienced advertising model, performed his role as the bride's escort with all the dignity appropriate to such a solemn occasion. A good thing, too. Given the bride's profession, she probably would have been able to ensure his cooperation if necessary with a choke hold or a full body slam. She chose a softer method of persuasion, however, coaxing him up to the altar with a handful of his favorite treats. It's amazing the things a guy will do just to get a couple of breath mints.

Each of the bride's previous wedding ceremonies had been, she said, "very traditional. I thought, 'That's not working for me.'"

Apparently not. This was her sixth wedding.

Maybe, this time, everyone involved will live hoppily ever after.

Drop the Corn and Back Away Slowly

Raccoons have invaded Safeway. It's the only logical explanation.

If you're raising sweet corn, raccoons are not your friends. It wouldn't be so bad if they just helped themselves to a few ears for dinner now and then, but they destroy far more than they eat. A couple of them can ruin whole rows of almost ripe corn in just a few nights.

Like people, raccoons want their corn on the cob to be just right. They'll go along a row, pulling down ear after ear of corn with their clever little hands and stripping the husks from the top to see whether the corn is ripe. It if isn't perfect, they go on to the next one, leaving the rejected ear to dry out and die.

Apparently, also like people, raccoons have discovered that it can be more convenient to buy sweet corn at the store than to pick it yourself. The bin of corn at Safeway has their handprints all over it. Sometimes half the ears have a wide strip of husk peeled down from the top. Rejected as not quite perfect, the ears have been tossed back into the bin. They lie there, drying out and becoming increasing unappealing to subsequent shoppers, until eventually the produce manager decides it's time to throw them out.

Surely people wouldn't do this. Not responsible, local-produce-buying, reusable-bag-carrying grocery shoppers. They surely would know that a solid, even ear without obvious signs of bugs will probably be perfectly good. Or they would have figured out that you can check an ear of corn for ripeness without ruining it; you just make a small slit with your fingernail in one side of the husk to peek at the kernels. Above all, people would certainly realize that wasting so much corn means the store has to charge more for it.

Nope, all those annoying corn vandals have to be raccoons. Admittedly, I've never actually seen a raccoon pushing a shopping cart through the produce section at Safeway. But then, I wouldn't necessarily recognize one if I did see it. After all, it would have been wearing a mask.