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Feminist, Pregnant, and In the Kitchen

Forty years of feminism, and it all comes down to this?

My daughter, eight-plus months pregnant. In her kitchen, cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Barefoot, yet. At least until her feet got tired and cold. In South Dakota in November, one can only carry a cliché so far.

Is this what all those women back in the 60's and 70's protested for? Insisted on being called Ms. for? Pushed their way into law schools and med schools and men-only organizations for?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Because feminism is about being respected and having choices. On this particular Thanksgiving Day, cooking the holiday meal was what my daughter wanted to do. Being a loving mother, I graciously allowed her to. Anything for her. Especially anything that would keep me out of the kitchen.

Cooking has always been something I do for love. Not love of the culinary process, though—love of the family needing to be fed. My aim is to put a reasonably healthy meal on the table as quickly as possible, get out of the kitchen, and move on to more interesting things. That attitude is most likely the reason for what I've always seen as one of my parenting failures: not teaching the kids to cook.

In my defense, I did give each of them some sort of basic cookbook when they were brand-new adults. Despite my bad example, most of them have actually used those cookbooks. (Betty Crocker's classic was open on my daughter's counter yesterday.) They also use the Internet, of course. They've even, in occasional scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel moments, called me for advice. None of them, or their kids, have starved to death yet.

Thanksgiving Dinner was scrumptious. Somewhere around the third bite of my daughter's delicious made-from-scratch key lime pie, I decided to stop feeling guilty about letting the kids figure out cooking on their own. They seem to have managed it perfectly well.

Even more important, they've all married spouses who share the household responsibilities. My daughter's husband, who does most of the everyday cooking at their house, pointed out quite truthfully, "Without me, she would eat like a bachelor."

If that isn't feminism at its finest, I'll eat another piece of key lime pie.

Halloween Treats: The Good, The Bad, and the Left Over

I was told this week that the origins of Halloween go back some 6000 years. I have no idea whether that's true, but it certainly explains why some of that candy is so stale.

The dilemma of buying Halloween candy is always whether to get some you like so you can eat what's left over, or whether to get some you don't like so you won't eat what's left over.

Or whether to get the cheapest junk you can find, which not even the kids like. Like those individually wrapped bits of sugar and corn starch with a vaguely toffee-like consistency that tend to show up months later as petrified little lumps in the dusty corners underneath the kids' beds.

Or candy corn. It is mildly decorative, I suppose, and will keep for weeks in a candy dish—mostly because even kids will only eat it when it's the only sweet stuff left in the house. As a child, the only reason I found to eat it all was for the entertainment value. The process was first to bite off the white tip, trying to sever it precisely without leaving any white behind; then to nibble off the broad yellow end, and then finally to gobble down the boring orange part in the middle.

We didn't go Trick or Treating when I was a kid, so we missed spending the first week of November glazed over in a sugar high. Most of my experience with Halloween candy came later, second-hand from my own kids. I would dutifully look through the candy like responsible parents were supposed to do, supposedly checking for hidden threats or active health hazards but mostly conducting an inventory of the dark chocolate.

I usually asked each kid for a "donation" of one piece of chocolate, which they gave graciously. A couple of them (you know who you are, and yes, your names are spelled right in the will) even were generous enough to offer more than one.

Where we live now, on a dead-end road in a house that's a long, dark driveway away from the street, we tend not to get Trick or Treaters. Since the neighborhood is changing, with several young families recently moving in, I did buy candy this year and leave the porch light on, just in case. No little vampires or princesses or super-heroes rang the doorbell, though.

Oh, well. Dealing with the leftover candy is a huge responsibility, but sometimes a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do. Especially when she was smart enough to buy M&M's instead of candy corn.

If Dr. Seuss Made Chokecherry Jelly

The sink is pink. The stove is, too.
The countertops are splashed with goo.
Little seeds are everywhere
And pulp is spattered in my hair.

Okay, Dr. Seuss would have said it much better. Still, had he seen my kitchen last night, I think he might have been inspired. Martha Stewart, probably not so much.

One of the things I like about making chokecherry jelly is the color. The berries themselves, when fully ripe, are a deep red that is almost black. Jelly-filled jars lined up on the counter glow in the sunlight like rubies. And the juice, while it's being cooked, is a lovely, rich magenta.

It's a good thing I appreciate all that color, because the process of cooking chokecherries and squishing them to separate out the seeds certainly splashes a lot of it all over the kitchen. Besides magenta-saturated kettles, measuring cups, and spatulas, I had magenta drops on the counters. Magenta drips on the floor. Magenta spills in the sink. Magenta spatters on the window. Magenta streaks across my apron (at least I was smart enough to wear one). And, as I discovered when I cleaned up, magenta freckles on my cheeks and several blobs of magenta pulp in my hair.

Not to mention magenta-stained seeds strewn across a 15-foot radius of my work area. As I cranked the handle on the ricer to strain out the juice and pulp, seeds would periodically leap up like out-of-control popcorn kernels and make their escape. I found them at the far end of the kitchen, behind the fruit bowl on the counter I wasn't using, and under the dining room table in the next room.

If she ever makes chokecherry jelly, somehow I doubt that Martha Stewart has to pick up seeds from under her table or comb bits of pulp out of her bangs. But then, she probably wouldn't write rhymes about the process, either.

Maybe that's why I think Dr. Seuss is more fun than Mrs. Stewart.

S'more Than Enough

For a photograph to make it to the cover of a magazine about "gracious living"—which one would think ought to mean showing kindness and impeccable manners but which apparently means doing a lot of decorating—it has to be perfectly posed and lighted. The one I noticed this week on the cover of Martha Stewart Living was no exception.

The picture didn't show a retouched celebrity or a gorgeous model. It was a s'more. The chocolate was perfectly placed. The melted marshmallow oozed symmetrically over the sides of the graham cracker. The graham cracker itself, though, was what made this s'more so exceptional. It had a star cut through its exact center, so the delicately browned marshmallow goop was artistically exposed.

I noticed this creative bit of campfire cuisine while I was in the checkout line at Safeway. My 11-year-old granddaughters and I were buying food, s'mores ingredients and all, for a camping trip. Bright girls that they are, the twins had the same response to Martha's s'mores as I did. Our view was:

A. How in the world could you cut a star through a graham cracker without breaking the whole thing into inartistic crumbs?

B. Why in the world would you want to put a hole in the cracker in the first place? The whole point of the graham crackers in a s'more is to keep the gooiness of the melted chocolate and marshmallow contained so most of it goes into your mouth instead of dripping all over your shirt and oozing down your chin.

Perhaps the answers to these questions were provided in the article. Since I didn't buy the magazine, I may never know.

Creating an elegant display with food so it appeals to the eye as well as the taste buds is an art. Just because I have no talent in that direction doesn't mean I don't appreciate it.

But some classic foods are best left alone. S'mores aren't meant to be "gracious living." They belong in the sticky hands of enthusiastic, underage amateurs where the only decorating involved consists of random patterns of marshmallow goo and chocolate drips on their tee-shirts.

When it comes to campfire desserts, less is s'more.

Just Make Mine Scrambled

"How would you like your eggs?" The waitress waited, pen poised over her order pad, while the customer pondered for a moment.

"Basted," he finally said.

Basted? Scrambled, sure. Over easy, okay. Poached, perhaps. Sunny side up, sometimes. Even Eggs Benedict, if you're up for something fancy to feed your brain while you wonder who Benedict was.

But basted? How many people order their eggs "basted?"

Especially when they (the people, not the eggs) are only seven years old. Several of our friends meet at a restaurant for breakfast every Saturday, and on this particular morning one of the women had brought along her grandson.

Listening to him order his eggs with such aplomb, I was jolted back in time to the first time I ever ate breakfast in a restaurant. We were on a rare family vacation, right here in the beautiful Black Hills. I was ten. With a little encouragement, I asked for eggs and toast, and the waitress asked me, "How would you like your eggs?"

I didn’t have a clue what to tell her. Oh, I knew how I wanted my eggs, all right—fried, with the white cooked all the way through and the yolk still soft. Just the way my mother cooked them, in other words. What I didn't know was how to describe them.

Seeing my baffled expression, my father chuckled and told the waitress, "Over easy."

It was the first time I'd ever heard that term. Eating in a restaurant was a rarity in itself for us. Until that day, it hadn't occurred to me that people would actually get breakfast at one. I knew all about where eggs came from and had a painful first-hand familiarity with the term "hen-pecked," but I had no idea there were various ways to fry eggs and various words to describe them.

For seven-year-olds like my friend's grandson, eating out is simply one of the available options for any meal, including breakfast. Watching him chat with the adults at the table while he ate his basted eggs, I didn't know whether to be amused or amazed at the different set of skills little kids learn in today's world. Of course he knows how to order his eggs just the way he wants them, just as he knows how to text or take pictures with a cell phone.

Trying not to feel too out of touch, too unsophisticated—okay, let's face it—too old, I shut up and ate my own eggs (over medium, thank you).

Later, pondering eggs basted and otherwise, I did some research. I discovered that there is some dispute over which of several contenders gets the credit for Eggs Benedict. Benedict Arnold is not one of them. I also confirmed my guess about how to baste an egg, which essentially is a matter of scooping hot grease over it instead of turning it over.

Learning all of that was simple; I just looked it up on the Internet. It only took a minute, and then it was over. Easy.

Does a Bear Melt in the . . .

. . . microwave? For those of you who have been losing sleep wondering about this vital question, here's the latest scientific research. Like so many great scientific discoveries (think penicillin), it owes its most important conclusion to serendipitous accident.

Step One: Put muffin on plate. Decide to have it with honey. Get from cupboard one quart-sized plastic honey bear bottle containing about an inch of honey. Discover honey has hardened and can't be poured out of bottle.

Step Two: Place honey bear in microwave oven.

Step Three: Set timer to 30 seconds and power to 50%.

Note: Here's where the serendipitous accident comes in. The researcher had done this same procedure many times, with uniformly successful outcomes. This time, however, the researcher's thumb slipped too lightly over the button when inputting the power level. Instead of 30 seconds at 50% power, the microwave was inadvertently set for 3 minutes and 5 seconds at full power.

Step Four: Go into dining room and sit down at computer. Become absorbed in a project.

Step Five: When around two minutes have elapsed, the researcher's colleague, busy in the kitchen with a different project involving hot water and dishwashing liquid, says, "Your honey must be melted; I can smell it." (Note: the lack of precise timing here is troubling. In the interests of valid science, this experiment should be repeated under closer observation.)

Step Six: Rush into kitchen and open microwave. Observe results of serendipitous accident. The honey-melting part of the procedure has been very successful, given the pool of boiling liquid spread across the glass microwave plate. The bottom half of the plastic bear has also melted. It is collapsing onto the glass like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Step Seven: Carefully pick up glass plate. Carry it quickly to back door, keeping it as level as possible in order to avoid dripping boiling honey onto floors, furniture, or feet.

Step Eight: Carry entire mess—er, scientific project—outside. Rest glass plate on deck railing and tip it to allow liquid honey and semi-liquid plastic bear to slide off onto grass below. Plastic doesn't slide. Request colleague to bring spatula from kitchen. Scrape melted bear off of glass plate—very carefully, as plate is too hot to touch.

Step Nine: Lean over railing and observe free-form remains of honey-spattered plastic bear. Note its strong resemblance to something that died in the woods some time ago and was recently dragged home by the dog.

Step Ten: Go back into house. Place glass microwave plate on a cooling rack until it reaches a temperature at which it's safe enough to scrub off the remaining honey and melted plastic.

Step Eleven: Eat muffin with jelly instead of honey.

Step Twelve: Leave microwave open to dissipate slightly charred sweet aroma. Consider more research to investigate possible names and markets for desserts made with triple-melted honey. Just Bearly Honey? Honey Overcomb? OverBearing Honey?

They may be faint, but there are possibilities. After all, since its name just means "burned cream," this is probably how crème brule was invented.

I wonder how you say "burned honey" in French?

Just Follow the Cookie

Well, it's certainly a relief to have that figured out. My path is now clear. The choices are laid out before me in an orderly fashion. The rest of my life is going to be a piece of cake—chocolate, presumably.

More accurately, it's going to be a fortune cookie.

Ordinarily, I don't pay a lot of attention to fortune cookies. They're fodder for a moment's amusement, a moment's thought, or an entertaining after-dinner conversation. Once in a while, though, a fortune comes along that makes more of an impact.

Like the one that stated enigmatically, "You will receive all the wealth that you deserve." That's been several years ago, and the millions have yet to start rolling in. Apparently the fortune isn't coming true. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it is.

My most memorable fortune came years ago, when my boss had ordered lunch for all of us from the Chinese restaurant down the street. The slip of paper in my cookie informed me, "You will soon receive a promotion."

The next week, after a disagreement with that same boss over how to handle an employee problem, I got fired. Somewhere in my old files, I probably still have my copy of the "resignation" letter she asked me to write—with the fortune cookie taped to it.

Actually, losing that job did turn out to be a promotion, just in a different way. I've been self-employed ever since. And if my current boss ever tries to fire me, I'll show her. I'll just quit.

The fortune that is going to change my life, though, came with my cashew chicken the other day. It read, "When the moment comes, take the last one from the left."

Wow. Imagine the time and effort this could save. Just look how much it simplifies every decision. Which sweater to choose off the clearance rack. Which book to take off the library shelf. Which guy to accept out of the hordes of eager two-steppers lined up to ask me to dance. Which brownie to take off the plate. (If you take the last one from the left, then the next one in line becomes the new last one on the left, so you take that one, too, and then the next one in line—you see where this could go?)

There is still a bit of room for creativity, as well. For example, take the salad bar at one restaurant we go to. If you approach it from one direction, the last item on the left is the ham and bean soup. From the other side, it's the bread pudding. If you sidle up to it at an angle, though, and stand in just the right spot with your back half turned, the last item on the left—at least the last one you can see—is the chocolate mousse.

Perspective is so important.

It feels as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. From now on, no more worrying about making decisions. No more time-consuming consideration of pros and cons. No more thinking. Just follow the fortune cookie. The last one from the left, and bingo. It's the right—er, correct—choice.

Now, all I have to worry about is knowing "when the moment comes."

The Great New Zucchini Weight-Loss Plan

It's fine to joke about people in small towns who never lock their doors except in August, when their neighbors have excess zucchini to get rid of. It's not so funny when your partner, your sweetheart—the person you thought you could trust most in all the world—is too polite to say, "No, thanks," to a colleague and comes home with the world's largest zucchini.

No kidding. "Zucchini" in Italian apparently means "little squash." Not the case here. This particular overgrown vegetable was the size of a chorus girl's thigh. Or maybe a sumo wrestler's forearm—if the sumo wrestler were on the petite side. It was easily 18 inches long. And its circumference? Any would-be fashion model with thighs that big would immediately sign up for Weight Watchers. One slice would have filled a dinner plate. Heck, one slice could have been used for a dinner plate.

This was clearly not a vegetable to sauté in butter and have on the side.

I briefly considered keeping it beside the front door as protection against burglars, fundraising neighborhood kids, and aluminum siding salesmen. It would have made a great defensive weapon. Of course, it would have been a one-shot wonder. If you actually hit an attacker with it, it would have exploded on impact and turned into a weapon of massive self-destruction.

This could still be an effective defense. The resulting mess all by itself would probably have been enough to discourage any invader except the most determined Cub Scout in quest of a popcorn-selling merit badge. But then somebody would have had to clean up that mess. Never mind. So much for the zucchini defense initiative.

My next strategy was to leave the massive marrow out on the counter until it spoiled, at which point I could dump it out on the compost pile with a clear conscience, incidentally feeding every deer in the neighborhood for several days. It sat on the counter for ten or twelve days. It refused to rot. Apparently the damned thing was too big to fail.

Finally, I surrendered to the inevitable. Clearly, this zucchini was destined for a winter's supply of zucchini bread, brownies, or cake. I got out my biggest knife, hacked the monster into manageable chunks, and peeled them. I dumped the seeds into the compost bucket. I cut the flesh into bite-sized pieces and cooked them in the microwave until they were mushy. I drained off some of the liquid and pulverized the remains with the potato masher.

Then I spooned the stuff into—one quart-sized freezer bag. By the time I got rid of the seeds and cooked down the rest, that giant vegetable was reduced to a mere three and a half cups of zucchini goop. That's enough for one measly batch of bread.

If only reducing one's thighs could be so easy.

Flat Green Tomatoes

Despite the belief of my sister's neighbor, who is "kind of different," the United States government does not control the weather. All those jet trails that crisscross South Dakota's expansive skies really are not part of an elaborate weather-manipulating grid that is managed from a secret bunker hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

I find it reassuring that we haven't yet managed to control the weather. It's a reminder that, no matter how high-tech and sophisticated we humans may be, we and the planet we inhabit are still subject to powers greater than ourselves.

Somehow, though, this philosophical point of view wasn't much comfort on Wednesday afternoon as we stood in the doorway watching a hailstorm pulverize our garden. It poured rain (I'm sure I saw a couple of Chihuahuas and a Siamese in there somewhere) for almost half an hour, and it hailed steadily for ten to fifteen minutes.

We could have gone kayaking down our driveway or in the fast-moving miniature river that flowed around the corner of our neighbor's house and filled the gully that separates the two properties. By the time the storm was over, our yard was covered with an inch of hail. Much of the grass was still white the next morning, and on Friday morning one shady spot still held a drift of hail several inches deep.

Of course, half a dozen destroyed tomato plants and a few stripped chokecherry bushes doesn't exactly count as a major life event. We weren't watching the destruction of crops we depended on for our livelihood or even a garden we were counting on to feed a family. The minor pang of a lost garden isn't anywhere close to the heartsick discouragement of a farmer who sees hail or wind pound a year's potential income into oblivion.

Still, the storm made me wish, for just a moment, that my sister's neighbor was right. Then I had a truly terrifying thought.

Maybe he is.

Maybe the government really is controlling the weather. You have to admit it's a bit odd that just around the curve, not 100 yards north of our house, there was hardly any hail at all. A paranoid person might find the apparent targeting of our property more than a little suspicious.

Do you suppose somebody in that secret weather-control bunker knows I voted Libertarian in the last election?

The Luck of the Pot

It was a near-crisis. The situation was unprecedented as well as acutely embarrassing. The president had to open a public event by making a humiliating announcement.

She had the courage to be blunt. "I hate to say this, but we just barely have enough food to go around, so please don't help yourselves too liberally."

The public event was last month's regular potluck dinner of an organization we belong to. For the first time in institutional memory, the members had failed to bring an abundance of food. The president showed her leadership skills, though, both in her public announcement and in her resource management. As she explained after the meal, "The only dessert was one pie, so I just moved a couple of Jell-O salads to that end of the table."

Fortunately, such an occurrence is rare. Whether it's a church supper, a club's regular meeting, or a get-together with friends, potlucks are an easy way to feed a group. Everybody shares the work, everybody shares the cost, those on special diets can bring something they know they can eat, and most of the leftovers—and the dirty dishes they came in—go home with the ones who brought them.

Of course, inviting people to a potluck without giving them any suggestions about what to bring does have certain risks. Sometimes meals are heavy on breads. Sometimes casseroles rule the table. I remember one occasion when everyone brought desserts and we had to order pizza just to have a little protein. And, of course, a discerning shopper can often tell what foods are currently on special at Safeway.

Sometimes a meal can inadvertently develop a theme. There was the corn-fed dinner where we had corn chowder, cornbread, corn salad, and homegrown sweet corn. We could have either filmed an episode of "Hee Haw" or opened our own ethanol plant.

Potlucks may not be elegant dinner parties a la Emily Post or Martha Stewart, but they do have their own etiquette. It's considered good manners to take a little of most things but not too much of anything. Eating your own food is optional. You are, however, expected to take home your own leftovers. Exceptions do sometimes occur, as when the person who brought that oh-so-rich dessert ruthlessly sneaks out the door and leaves it in the refrigerator of the dieting hostess.

Good manners and etiquette do have their common-sense limits, of course. To illustrate, here is a potluck logic problem. Suppose a hypothetical person whose resemblance to the writer of this column is strictly coincidental hosts a potluck dinner at her house. Guests have brought three desserts: cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, and carrot cake (which of course doesn't count because everyone knows carrots are vegetables.)

The hostess eats one of each. She tells herself she is just going out of her way not to hurt the feelings of any of the cooks. Is she really being:
A. Polite and gracious?
B. Co-dependent?
C. Self-sacrificing?
D. Self-indulgent?
E. Just plain greedy?

All answers will be kept strictly confidential—especially by the hostess.