Cooking and Other Calamities

 

In a fit of insanity, I offered to have Thanksgiving at my house this year.  It makes sense in a way; after all I have the biggest house in the family.  We can spread out here, because there is still Covid to think of, and I have this enormous dining table and enough chairs to go around.  My second bathroom should be finished and usable by then.  And I think I can distract some of the people from the messiness with the renovations to the house, at least for a little while.

The problem is, my cooking skills are a little on the erratic side.  And I have never in my life baked a whole turkey.  I announced my intentions to my lunch crew one day, drawing some incredulous looks.  I got all kinds of advice about pop out timers, cooking bags, stuffing fruit and onions into the turkey and to be sure to remove the little bag of unrecognizable turkey parts before cooking the bird itself.  Finally one person said, “You need to have a backup plan.”  I didn’t have the courage to tell them I’m thinking about tackling my mom’s famous yeast rolls if I can borrow or steal a large mixer with a dough hook.  I have a feeling they might call the men with the white coats and have me hauled away.

My friend Alice was inspired to tell the story, for the hundredth time, of the period of time when my oven was not working and I stored my Christmas decorations in it for a couple of years.  To be accurate, it was more Christmas dishes and kitchen items than actual decorations, but I guess there’s not much difference.  The need to make Christmas cookies is actually what finally led to repair of the oven.

I have never exactly liked to cook.  Every now and then I would read some book or magazine article or watch some Hallmark movie and think I should hone my culinary skills.  These thoughts led to some disasters, usually resulting in throwing something in the trash can.  Like the waffle iron, covered in dried waffle batter, or a rolling pin draped with sticky cookie dough.  Some things I know better than to even tackle, like any recipe that is more than one page, or that has words I can’t pronounce, or that says to knead the dough or drop something in a glass of water to see if it makes a ball.  Has anyone ever dropped anything in a glass of water that made a ball?  My grandmother could, but the gene for that ability skipped me.  One of the great disappointments of my life was when I decided to make baked beans from scratch.  It took several days.  I had to buy the dried beans, soak the dried beans and cook them for what seemed like forever.  I added the seasonings and baked them for the final step.  When I tasted the finished product, I realized that I had Bush’s baked beans, and inferior to boot.

As Alice also pointed out, my move into my ancestral home seems to have been a catalyst for me to tackle more cooking than I have ever done in my life.  The only explanation I can come up with is that some ghosts who live here thought it would be a good joke to try to turn me into Paula Deen or the Pioneer Woman.  Or maybe it’s because I have this great kitchen window, just made for gazing out of while stirring up something good to eat.

 Some things went pretty well – I finally got fairly proficient at fried green tomatoes, I can cook a pretty good roast and make my own spaghetti creation and some great taco soup.  (The taco soup probably doesn’t count because it mainly consists of opening a bunch of cans of stuff and dumping it all in the crock pot together.)  I can also make a mean pan of apple dumplings, a recipe that calls for enough butter and sugar to cover up most any mishap.  But I can have some spectacular missteps too.  I under-cooked some peas a couple of weeks ago that the dog wouldn’t even touch and burned up a mess of green beans that I was really looking forward to.  I used the wrong kind of flour in a batch of cookies, and I made some soup that turned into something more like a casserole with mushy rice.  Last year, during the holidays, I had the urge to make Amish friendship bread for all my friends.  The bread turned out great, but my kitchen was soon running over with bowls of starter, and I was making daily trips to the store for more flour and sugar. I figured out I could have bought everyone a diamond bracelet from what I spent on groceries.  I also gained about 20 pounds from the excess bread.  This year I’m going to make cookies.  At least when you finish baking them you are finished with them.

Now I have to figure out what size turkey I need to buy.  I wonder if one of my ancestral ghosts would help me out with that?

Even Dinosaurs Love a Parade

 

It’s not every night you can watch a Halloween parade while standing next to a dinosaur.  Possibly only in my hometown can it happen. 

I believe it was about thirteen years ago that the Halloween parade tradition started in my little town.  We may not have everything here, but we have some dedicated Halloween enthusiasts.  For many years before the parade, West End Avenue was known as the “official” Halloween street.  Hundreds of costumed folks, young and old, patrolled the street near the town square every October 31^st, partly to collect candy but mostly to view the decorations and visit one house in particular.  At the foot of a steep hill just off the square, the McFarlin family created a haunted yard, a spooky wonderland.  Other homeowners made vain attempts to match their extravaganza, but it was impossible to measure up.  The huge crowds led to more events on the square – pumpkin carving, a costume contest, popcorn, candy giveaways by stores around the square and a good old time for all.  Even the local funeral home got into the act, creating a haunted encounter sure to scare those brave enough to enter.

As things happen, the Halloween family sold their house and moved across town.  But there were all those decorations.  So why not start a Halloween parade? It made perfect sense to the folks in Centerville.  Everybody loves a parade.

The Halloween parade takes place on the Saturday night before Halloween night.  As it happens every few years, sometimes that means back-to-back nights of festivities.  This year is such a year.  Last night, throngs of excited children (and adults) lined the streets along the route and watched friends and neighbors drive trucks, cars, jeeps, fire trucks, and gators along the streets, throwing enough candy to send everyone in town into a diabetic coma.  Spooky jails, pirate ships, cemeteries, and decorated hearses passed by us. 

 

A pirate ship sailed down the street!

The Ghostbusters were out and about, as well as the Jurassic Park vehicles.  The Flintstones even made an appearance in their stone age car, with shouts of “Yabba, Dabba, Do” along the parade route.  As I looked around, I thought about a Norman Rockwell painting, and of a time of innocence and wonder, when monsters only seemed to appear once a year and children knew deep inside that they were only ordinary people dressed up in costume.

 

 

Hayrides are still a thing in this rural area.  I haven’t been on one is decades, but I remember the thrill well.  My daddy would hitch the hay wagon to the tractor, throw some bales of straw on the back, and away we would go.  It was a favorite pastime of courting couples, always looking for an excuse to cuddle in the cold air and sneak a few kisses in the moonlight.  I expect that many a girl got her first kiss sitting on a bale of straw wrapped with her boyfriend in an old quilt.  We would return home after an hour or so to a bonfire with hot dogs and marshmallows to roast.  In later years, my daddy drove many a hayride for our local church group.  Some of them still talk about those times.  I always meant to dress up as the headless horseman and ride my horse across the field during these excursions, but somehow never got the courage to do it.  It’s probably a good thing.  My horse didn’t always share my enthusiasm for things I thought would be fun, and I would probably have ended up being the headless horseman walking home without his horse.

One year we built a haunted house.  A bunch of friends got together and decorated an old, empty house and charged people a couple of dollars to brave the mummies, ghosts, and witches we created.  We were so successful the first night, our customers kept turning around and running back out the door.  We solved that problem by sending one of our mummies to follow along behind the crowds and scare them back on the correct route.  It was a roaring success.

Another generation of citizens has come along to continue the Halloween tradition.  Another street has taken over the designation of Halloween street in Centerville and neighbors compete to see who can come up with the biggest, most outlandish display to entice youngsters to their door.  Tonight was a perfect night.  Cold enough to encourage shivers, partly from the weather and partly from nerves.  Tiny cowboys, dinosaurs, baby sharks, princesses, clowns, puppies, cows, and every other character imaginable trooped up and down the streets and around the square, shouting the same entreaty children have shouted for over one hundred years in this town.  “Trick or treat!”

 

Danger in the Morning

 

Sophie thinks she saved me from a frightful injury the other morning.  She had already spent quite a bit of time staring out the bedroom window and barking before I finally got up to let her outside.  It was just daylight, with a thick fog that hid everything more than 100 feet away.  Whatever she saw, or sensed, was hidden to me.  She rushed to the edge of the porch and continued barking hysterically, the bark she reserves for “There’s something out there and it’s dangerous.”  I figured it was a dawdling nocturnal visitor in the garden, searching for leftover goodies, or an early rising rabbit or squirrel.  I went back to bed to read for a few minutes before beginning my Monday.

After ten or fifteen minutes of non-stop barking, I decided to investigate the imminent threat myself.  Sophie was not going to let whatever this was go.  So, on with my robe and shoes, and I braved the early morning danger.  I couldn’t see any creatures, but I did see an unfamiliar colorful object lying next to the fence near my bedroom window.  I took it to be a plastic bag.  Now, Sophie enjoys playing with plastic bags if she can steal one, so the sight of one lying on the ground was not all that unusual, but that was the area where she was laser focused.  I thought there must be some creature hidden in the bushes by the fence and walked to the edge of the porch to look closer.  Sophie placed herself in front of me and sat down.  That is her response to anything she feels might be a danger to her human mom.  Obviously, there was a serious threat to my safety out there and she was going to place herself between me and it, whatever it was.  She continued to bark.  Bear, who was not participating in the frenzy, came over to see what was going on.  He gave Sophie a look like “What?”  She gave him a contemptuous glare right back, obviously feeling that he was not doing his part in protecting mom from certain death.

I finally got past my guardian and walked over for a closer look at the intruder.  It was a deflated mylar balloon, an escapee from a birthday party, which obviously had evil designs on everyone in the area.  Who knows what it might have done to us had Sophie not been on the job?  If it had made its way into the house, it could have wrapped itself around my face and smothered me in my sleep.  Taking my life in my hands, I picked it up.  Sophie sniffed it thoroughly and that seemed to be the end of that. 

It’s a day or two later and now the story gets a little stranger.  This morning I noticed some disturbance in the ground near where the balloon landed.  On closer inspection, I find that Bear, Sophie’s cohort, has dug a hole big enough to hide a body in.  We are talking about a HOLE.  He must have worked half the night on it.  And he’s busy digging another one just a few feet away.  What does he know that I don’t know?  Is it a storm shelter?  Or does he plan on killing someone and needs a place to hide the body?  Or does he think I need a root cellar in which to store our valuables? Maybe the balloon was part of space alien reconnaissance before the invasion.  Sophie has thoroughly inspected his work and seems pleased.  What do they know that I don’t know?  It’s making me a little uneasy.