Simmer Till Done

It’s been a month since Josie’s bat mitzvah, and looking at photos now with a better-rested and less tearful eye, it’s hard to believe we did all that. But we did, and at least one part of it merits a closer how-to look.

Centerpieces. We planned 16 tables of adults at our party (some 60 kids ran loose in the Dogg Pound, see here) and all of them would need centerpieces. We did not want flowers for our dog-themed bash, nor floating candles or exploding fountains. We wanted something funky and handmade that reflected Josie (since we could not stand her atop each table) and was not, in my vague notion, a “regular centerpiece.” I sketched stuff for weeks.

On receipts and memos and envelopes, I sketched centerpiece ideas: dog houses from boxes, with dog photos on sticks, and paw prints, and boingy silver things and metallic shreds. All the ideas seemed to require mass materials - styrofroam blocks, cardboard boxes, spray paints, photographs, disco balls. About two weeks before the party, we thought we had a winner. Me, Greg, and our friend Korrin - an OCD crafter and all-around good sport - huddled at the third floor craft table, each trying to make a prototype work. But they would not work; the boxes were too big, the paper too thin, sticks toppled off. Korrin got a headache, and left. Greg saw something in my eye he’d seen before, and left. Alone at midnight and surrounded by crumpled silver shreds, I had a short but weepy pity party, followed by a hearty round of why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this. Still, I’d made tea and the house was quiet, so I sat down fresh at the table, switched on the HBO show “In Treatment,” and started doodling again. By now I hated the failed ideas - so tacky, overblown, “regular.” Why did we need so much stuff? Could we create something but not take anything home? Forty-five soothing, Gabriel Byrne-filled minutes later, an answer:

We would build a small tower of items from the Lawrence Humane Society’s wish list - pedestrian stuff like paper towels and dog food, but exactly right for Josie, who volunteers there, and reusable to its core. Applying wedding cake logic, I sprayed cardboard cake rounds silver, and used them to separate and stabilize layers. The paper towels were bound, cake-style, with paper and ribbon. We could donate the towel rolls and dog food, recycle the paper and cake boards, and reuse all the ribbons. Only the balloon toppers were a one-night stand - but they were lovely.

Whether you’re throwing a big event or a cozy party, I urge you to try reuse/recycle decorations. Our guests appreciated both their funky “found-art” looks and the care behind them. Plus, you don’t need to be an artist or a serious crafter to pull it off. Can we apply this idea to different events? Here’s a few to start:

Child’s birthday party: even for a small party at home, decorate with short stacks of give-able items, like toy trucks for a truck theme, stuffed animals, etc. Donate to a local homeless shelter, hospital, or social service group.

Garden party: make the stacks from terra cotta pots, seed packets and small plants. All can be given to guests for planting, or donated to a local community garden.

Pizza party: (Josie’s idea!) Use disposable pizza pans to separate “layers,” and stack with flour bags, cans of tomatoes or sauce, onions or canned olives. Top with fresh tomatoes. Donate all to a local shelter that cooks and serves hot meals.

Your ideas? Share them below and craft away.

“The Center of Everything?” The post title references a well-known Lawrence writer who, rather than mess with centerpieces, just produces great books.

Tags: bat mitzvah, centerpieces, crafty

Moments after finishing my first pot of caramel sauce – first melted sugar, first caramel anything – I pulled up an apron corner, wrapped the burning handle and carried it down twenty-seven steps, past an audience of snickering older students, past my teachers, not breathing until the pot finally reached the hands of a famous West coast chef standing onstage, waiting with a microphone and tapping a plate.

At twenty-three I cooked more than most and baked swell pound cake, but the fact remained that I’d been in culinary school just 32 days. Famous Chef was visiting to perform a cooking demo, his advance food prep so demanding that a scroll-length memo was issued to teachers, lists and diagrams attached.

Shari was my bench partner, and we were deep in earnest chopping, piles of 1/4-inch carrot dice, when our teacher, Chef Karmin, pulled my jacket from behind. “You two,” he said, handing us a stapled sheaf, “I have a job for you. Make sure your knives are sharp.”

He turned to leave, and I glanced at the list.  Searing tuna, burning sugar, chopping exotics. “Um. Chef,” I said, “it’s just…Chef, we haven’t done any of this. This stuff.”

He talked out the door as he left. “It’s not too bad,” he said, “and you’ve got oh, two hours. You can do it.”

We gaped. Shari looked sick. I regretted those gobbled croissants off the sheet rack, now rising as we grabbed steels and began frantically honing knives. I finished quick but Shari kept sawing, blade flying like a mad violinist. Back and forth, back and forth, five minutes gone and the list untouched.

My assigned partner was ambitious but nervous, moved slow in the kitchen as she thought before moving. Shari asked permission to peel potatoes, carried tiny handwritten points on scaling fish. She measured the carrots. Now she ground knives while I studied the list, bobbing her tiny head and huge dark brows. It would be a long two hours.

The list gave her fits. We were to prepare complete versions of Famous Chef’s dishes, all requiring various first-try skills: searing tuna with lavender and peppercorns, shaving priceless deep woods fungi, braising eggplant he’d carried in-flight.  I flinched at the clock, flabbergasted. Why would the powers entrust rookies, one more neurotic and green than the next, with their crucially high-priced plans? The last task was dessert, a bread pudding. Soak currants in rum, okay, bake brioche, I don’t think so, and make caramel sauce.  Caramel sauce from scratch. Melting sugar. I looked up and saw Shari across the room, hunting for books about tuna.
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Tags: caramel, culinary hell days, ice cream, recipes, sauce

We’re on the road this weekend, toward Western Kansas, to Abilene, to stare at some pretty country, to fret about tornadoes, to visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum. We toured Ike’s boyhood home, gawked at parlor chairs and portraits and sifters, trying to find out what makes great men great.

Here in Mrs. Eisenhower’s kitchen, you can see her dough-rising box. Every other day she made nine loaves of bread to feed six boys and their father. All of their sons, central Kansas farm boys, would succeed.

But one of them would grow up to command the Army, to win the war, to live in the White House.

I think it was the bread.

Later that day we feasted at the legendary Brookville Hotel, serving fried chicken heaven since 1915.

It was an early Father’s Day dinner, and we saluted my husband and father-in-law, both great Dads. But the piping, crunchy chicken - seemingly endless legs, thighs, breasts, wings - reminded me who was missing at the table. A holiday for fathers, and for the first time without my own, eating a not-so-often treat he adored. I pushed back the hard gulp and saw what he would see - platters worth diving into, a laughing night of gluttony, a family taking pictures, rolling eyes and passing biscuits.

Back in Dep-haired teen years, my family’s favorite takeout was Brown’s Chicken - no Brookville feast, but plenty good paired with cole slaw, hush puppies, and honey. Dad would pick up his car keys, clink, and say “want to go for a ride?” Picking up stuff with Dad meant 8-track tunes and quick, friendly questions about boys, friends, classes, boys. Eyes would roll, but I didn’t mind. Something about the car rides was pleasant, okay even in teen view, an argument-free zone with a bag of warm chicken on my lap. Dad tapped out songs on the wheel and drove with his elbows, a knee, a thumb.

My father loved corn - on the cob, in a fresh juicy heap, or creamed, as we had it here, passed around the table more than once. His stomach forbade him to eat the corn, but not to say he wanted to eat the corn. “I love corn,” he’d say, “but I can’t eat it.” A predictable three minutes later, “well…maybe this once.”

Happy Father’s Day to you and yours. Great men aren’t here just once.  They go where we go, and I will snicker and cry and pass around more biscuits. All the best parts are still with us at the table.

* my father passed away December 5, 2008. Here’s the place to read more about him, and the eulogy I delivered that day.

Tags: brookville hotel, chicken, Dad, father's day

Somewhere between the food world and today’s would-be plans, I sold a lot of greeting cards.  Yes.  Greeting cards. When a writer friend suggested I’d “enjoy short form” - code for attention span? - I quickly studied the racks, and eventually sold to major companies.  I wrote funny cards, pun cards, happy cards, sad cards, cards for graduations and dogs and new houses and babies.  Here is what I know about that business: you won’t get rich, but you will learn, as never before, the sound of human desires, and what people wish, or need, to hear. They call it “me to you” - as in, when you receive a card, it should make you feel like the sender spoke directly to your heart. You can add humor to the magic, but most often it comes in two flavors: sickly or sweet.  Alliteration may wag tongues, but sickly sweet sells. So I worked on long-form poetry cards - not something I’d ever send, but it was a challenge, like acting in a play; I am Grandma writing to Susie, brother writing to sister, Uncle Joe writing to his ex-niece’s cat.

It came easy to me, but editors warned of a common fault: for rhyming cards, they said, not so much “moon June spoon.” Meaning avoid the common rhymes, and don’t go for easy sound. Standard goods like “you, do, blue, and new” also made the list; what was a sappy writer to do? Only so many words convey feeling and rhyme like sugar, and let’s face it, there’s no me-to-you without you. So I’d use them anyway, re-arranged and refreshed enough to slip an editor’s eye, and they sold, sold like candy, proving that as long as it sounds pretty, people will hear whatever they want.  A moon that loves you in June pleases; blue without you, nothing I can do?  Like honey.  And my friends, a man who buys cards on the sweet side will not do better than honey.

So. Why are we talking spoons in June and sending the very best?  Because it’s summer, and even if you couldn’t see the wide bright sky or smell sun off the pavement, you’d hear it.  We all have those sounds that ring summer, the slap of wet towels and flip-flops and no thoughts at all.  What are yours?  Mull it over, and while you do, try a few warm-weather sweets, pulled exclusively from the archives for your breezy dessert pleasure:

Key Lime Tarts say crashing waves to me.

Bowls inside or on the porch? Peach-Pecan Cobbler swings like a screen door.

Sizzling Banana Sundaes with Salted Chocolate Pecans. Now with built-in sizzle.

For pure June-moon bliss I’d also point you to Bumbleberry Pie and Good Kansas Limeade. Now - cicadas, campfires, bike bells. What’s your summer sound?

Tags: desserts, rhyme time, summer, writing

Remember Ten-Word Thursday? It’s been months, but that particular invention sure comes in handy when you’re full of thoughts, but short on words.  Apparently, it took us a full week to recover from our joyous Bat Mitzvah ordeal.  There’s still plenty of that I’d like to share with you, but - well, full of thoughts, and more than ten.  So while those stories cure, we’ll return to the quick shot of a Ten-Word Thursday; in this one I visit the coffee shop with my friend Melanie, and we sit and talk, and say way more than ten words, and nothing happens.  After a solid two-month buildup of planning, running, solving and doing, this sort of nothing turned out to be something: necessary.

——————-

Knitter

Baker

Productivity breakers.

Talk and talk…

…rain, coffee, normal.

————

As we like to say around here, coffee is no longer optional; as in, I don’t think we’re getting special benefits, like perkiness or open eyes - it’s just plain required.  Do you have ten words on coffee?  Spill.

Tags: coffee, normal, ten-word thursday