High Adventure

I've had an extremely eventful few weeks. I crossed one of the top items off my list of things I want to do before I die by throwing my fragile body out of a perfectly good airplane (along with some cousins and close friends) at an altitude of 13000 feet. I helped to cater a post-wedding dinner for my older brother and met my new (and first) sister-in-law. For the last five days I've been camping and hiking and building sand castles next to a mountain lake with my extended family - a party of about 30 or 40 people. Today or tomorrow some of my cousins and my family are headed out to Starvation Reservoir to do some boating, tubing, and water skiing. If I ever have to point out a two week period of my life that's been filled with adventure, I don't doubt that this one will be high on my list of times to consider.

My conclusion after all of this excitement is that I have the most enjoyment and satisfaction when I'm doing things with my immediate and extended family. I get a bigger thrill out of being with them than I do from plummeting to the ground at a rate of 120 miles an hour. I gain more satisfaction from them than I do from breathtaking views and serene landscapes. They are the highlights of my life. Our traditions (of which we have many and yet are forming more) approach sacredness within my heart - particularly the ones that call us all together. I am the richest of men because I am often blessed with the company of many people who I love deeply and who return that love. I am even more blessed to know and understand that these relations are eternal, and that not even death can permanently erase them because of the power provided through the love and heroic sacrifices of our Lord, Jesus Christ. To Him and to His Father - and our Father - goes my deepest gratitude and love. They ever have been and ever shall be the willing way to joy and peace within this life and throughout the next. Because the Godhead has all power, and all knowledge, and fullest love I have no fear that in the end all will be well for all who follow their perfect Plan of Salvation. I marvel that this is true, but I know that it is.

-Schlange

Old People are Cool

[Post 26]

Ok, so by "Old People are Cool" I mean my Grandparents are cool and that I can't wait to be old and just like them (making the assumption that I get married and have kids and grandkids - hey, it could happen.) Today I got a good reminder of just how cool they are.

So, My 14 year old brother and I go down to our grandparents' house today for various reasons and while we're there Grandma offers us a slice of her special chocolate cake fresh out of the oven. Now, I'm not usually a fan of chocolate cake, but I am a fan of Grandma's, so I'm pretty excited. We take a plate to grandpa first, then my brother runs over with his plate and I amble over with mine. By the time I get my dish back to the table my brother's large piece is a little more than half gone (the boy is like a piranha sometimes). Grandma notices and bellows, "Dear Boy! You ATE IT TOO FAST! NOW COOL-IT! "

(My grandmother is one of the only people that I know that can make me run out of ways to increase the emphasis in sentence; makes me wish that I could add a crescendo symbol from f to ff.)

Grandpa looks over at Bro.'s plate and says slowly in his deep rumbling voice, "Well… maybe he'll need another one." The boy looks up happily and says cheerfully. "Yes. Maybe I'll need another one."

"NO!" Grandma pronounces as she stomps one foot. "I have to take this cake to my relatives in Bluebell," she finishes much more softly but with an air of annoyance. We all look at her quizzically. She answers, "It's for a Christmas party."

"A Christmas party?" I ask (note that I'm writing this in June).

"Yes, a Christmas Party. My brother is having a June Christmas party."

"??" say the eyes and slightly tilted heads of my brother and I.

"It's so they can get in two," chuckles Grandpa holding up the peace sign.

"Is this a yearly thing?" I ask.

"I don't know, but I think so," says Grandpa.

"Do they put up a tree?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," says Grandma, inflicting the consonant with the vigor of a first grade teacher (this isn't suprising because she was a first grade teacher.) "The oven was hot, and I just had to think of an excuse to go down and spy on their party, so I made this cake." We all chuckle as Grandma turns and leaves the room to finish getting ready for Christmas in June.

After a moment my brother gets up and steps slyly over to the cake, making small movements so as to emphasize his "sneakiness." "Better leave it alone," says I, "that's Grandma's ticket to the party."

Grandpa's eyes sparkle as he leans over and says in a conspiring tone, "Perhaps if we cut a long thin slice off the end it won't be noticed." As he finishes speaking he's already standing up and shuffling over to the cake pan. In the time it would take to say "slick" he's already trimmed off the most exact cake sliver you've ever seen, and divided it into two long pieces and one short one. "I'm going to need somewhere to put these," he mutters with a shifty wide-eyed look that says – "hurry, or I'm going to be in trouble."

Plop, plop, plop. Two long pieces on the grandkids' plates, and one short one on Grandpa's plate. Grandpa shuffles back to the table and everybody sits down and takes a bite. Enter Grandma, bright as the sunshine. "Well, I s'pose I'd better be off."

"We'd better be off too," I say. "We've got stuff to do at the house." I reach over and give my smiling angel Grandma a hug. "Thanks for the cake." In the same motion I look over her shoulder squarely at my grandpa (who happens to be grinning from ear to ear and silently laughing so that his belly is bouncing up and down). "Yes," I say, "thank you for the cake."

Mother's Day

Today, I take off my hat for mothers around the globe and particularly for my own sweet mother. We've got some kind of a connection, she and I. She knows the state of my inner self without asking from a tested distance of 144 miles - I'm not sure what her actual range is, and I'm not sure that I'm willing to move to the other side of the world to find out. She can therefore support me emotionally in a way that no one else can. I'm grateful for that - it's been a huge blessing to me on top of the many other needs she has met for me at the expense of her own personal goals.

Of course there are also several other fine ladies, my grandmothers and aunts, that have always been there for me. I have a close knit family, so I've really been raised by most of my relations. Good things to have, relations. They give life extra zest! My heritage is one of the most important things I've got. I know where and who I come from. That's important to me.

I've got a series of books that my Grandfather and some Aunts put together - the Merrell Books. It's got the biographies and autobiographies of a big chunck of my extended family for a few generations back. I'm even in short paragraph of it.

Today I was reading an account written by my Great-Great Uncle Porter. He was born on Jan. 15, 1900 and died on Dec. 25, 1999. Needless to say, he had a lot of good stories. Besides that, he had a glass eye and he liked to play games that ended with me holding fistful of coins. The man was my hero. Following is something that he wrote about his mother. He wrote a good deal more regarding her communities and church duties, but because we're talking about motherhood, I edited them out for brevity (Keep int mind that Porter was one of 12 children):

"Another interesting side light on Mother..she always breast-fed her babies. This of course, took time and she was not about to just sit there, that would be wasting time. She always had a book or magazine where she could pick it up. In this way she was always well read. She could discuss most issues intelligently. She had a very good understanding of the scriptures. Another trait i admired in Mother was her clean mind.[...] I have never heard her suggest covering up or being deceitful in the smallest degree. Everything had to be honest, even if it hurt.

"My mother worked more than anyone I have known. With this large family, just the food preparation was staggering. It took eight large loaves of bread each and every day; more than fifty pounds of flour per week and everything else in proportion. She kept any rag or piece of clothing, cut them into strips one inch wide, sewed them together and wound them into balls. When she had enough she would set up the loom and weave it into a carpet. Our home, except the kitchen, was covered with Mother's carpet. Straw was put on the floor, then covered with carpet. Each spring the carpet would be taken up and cleaned, the old straw taken out and new straw put in, and the cleaned carpet replaced on the floor. mother made dresses for all her girls. She washed, carded and spun sheep wool into yarn then knit socks, mittens, caps and sweaters for most of the family.

"Many times snow was melted to wash clothes each week. Washing was done with a tub, washboard and soap Mother had made. Washing machines came much later.[...] She did a lot of crocheting, tatting or making flowers. She patched our clothing and darned our stockings. She was up early and retired late.[...] She was and is a wonderful mother."

I'm going to close this post with two toasts found in the book "Toasts - the complete book of the best toasts, sentiments, blessings, curses, and graces" compiled by Paul Dickson:

"Here's to the happiest hours of my life-
Spent in the arms of another man's wife:
My mother!"

"We have toasted our sweethearts,
Our friends and our wives,
We have toasted each other
Wishing all merry lives;
Don't frown when I tell you
This toast beats all others
But drink one more toast, boys-
A toast to - Our Mothers."

God bless mother's - past, present and future (and especially mine!)

-S. A. Taube

I Am What I Eat

Post 20

(The following is lengthy. Here's a summary so that you can skip or read at your leisure. I started by talking about about my love of candy making and how I gained it. I was going to talk about being excited to make some caramel truffles with Schmetterling but I never got there. My comments morphed into something a little more meaningful to me. Part of my rich cultural heritage revolves around food. I've listed off tons of foods. These are meaningful to me not just because they are good foods but because of the good feelings they give me in relation to other people. My family ties are laced with foods and I don't think I ever really noticed that. Making unique foods (or common foods, or even buying certain foods at certain times) is a part of personality and family bonding, because of tradition. I eat and enjoy food as much because of who I eat it with and when as I eat and enjoy it because of it's flavor. My last line is really what sums it up: "I'm a social eater. The best foods in life are no good if they aren't eaten with people you love.")

I love to make candy. I really do. I can see myself in the future as the grandpa who everybody loves to visit because he makes candy. I'll BUY my grandkids' love and nobody can stop me!

I can take this back to some few people that have been a great part of my life: To start with, my Grandpa Jim and Grandmother Beth, and my Aunt Allison who assists them - along with anybody who happens to go over to their house at the right time - make candy. Fondant is a favorite and is sucked off the spoon like a Popsicle or hand coated with chocolate. Dates and candied cherries are also hand dipped in chocolate. Whatever is chocolate coated stays out on 5 or 10 cookie sheets until they've been emptied. That never takes long when there are 20 grandkids in town. Another favorite is Divinity. I'm not sure how to describe that except for that it's named well.

My recently departed Great Aunt Pauline Winkler was a candy maker. Dear dear APW. She was a hard core candy maker. She was amazing! At her funeral last week every speaker talked about her honey candy. She taught school for 30 years and the kids sent cards and letters that were put on display at the funeral. There were several binders full of them. Almost every one of them talked about honey candy. They wondered who was going to teach the new kids how to make it. I didn't realize it until funeral, but this woman would make over 100 pounds of this stuff every Christmas, getting up early before going to school to make 2 or 3 batches at a time. Those of you who have never made honey candy may not appreciate this properly so I'll help you:

The ingredients are simple: 2 cups sugar, 1 cup honey, 1 cup cream (half and half). You combine these in a pot and boil them, using a wet pastry brush to wipe the edges above the liquid to keep it from crystallizing. Somewhere around 260 degrees you poor the molten candy onto a slab or tray that's been greased with butter (a marble slab works best). You let it cool until you can handle it, but you don't want it to cool long or it won't be workable. I don't do well with this part... I usually try to work it when it's too hot and end up with blisters... think touching something that looks cool but that's actually lava hot and sticks to you. Not very pleasant. Up to this point you've spent an hour or so in preperation and cooking... we'll say that because Pauline had this down to an art she did it in 30 min. After that you pull the candy (butter up your hands first). When you start it's pretty pliable but as you go it gets much firmer. It's tough work to pull honey candy - Pauline had shoulder problems for the last several years of her life, so this wasn't easy for her. When the candy has a white and creamy look to it and is difficult to pull you string it out on your slab and cut it up into pieces about the width of a finger with scissors and then toss those into a bowl of powdered sugar. You use a strainer to toss the candy to get excess powder off, and then wrap the pieces individually in wax paper. I've never spent less than 3 hours making a batch of honey candy unless I skipped powdering and wrapping it, but I'm not a pro like she was. I did this with her a few times and I loved it. It was amazing to me that I could do it. It was inpsiering to me that it was a part of my heritage. This is something that was done in my great grandparents frontier home in Bluebell, Utah (where Pauline lived till last week) from about 1940 till now. My Great Grandfather Ulrich Bernard Winkler built that house after the one he'd just built burned down. I've done a lot of things there, and making honey candy is one of the things that stands out the most. It's difficult for me that she's gone now. She was a bossy lady, but I liked her that way. Time spent at her house -either alone with her or at some annual family party (she hosted several)- was always time well spent. I learned a great deal from her.

Pauline also made some amazing butter mints. These were way better than the ones caterer's pull out of the shelves. I never learned to make them, but I think my grandmother knows how. I need to have her teach me.

Come to think of it, certain foods are a part of who I am. They have deep roots with my family traditions and with my heritage. The best tomato soup I ever had was consumed in Pauline's kitchen. Her sister, Grandma Beth makes an amazing fruit concoction we all call "Grandma Juice." If it ever shows up at a party, and you see it before it's noticed by the mob, protocol demands that you poor yourself a full glass so that you can drink it most of the way, fill it back up, and then alert everybody else. If you're lucky you get another glass. One Thanksgiving while I was on my mission I was living close to my cousin, Maren Kijek. She got grandma's recipe and made a jug for me. She dropped it off in the mission office for me. That was the best part of Thanksgiving that year.

Before I opened it I thought that the Grandma Juice was wassail. That's another big tradition. The Kijeks live close to us and Christmas/Thanksgiving at their house means wassail. Wassail is a tangy spicy holiday beverage.

In cold seasons Aunt Mareen Kijek makes Spanish Chocolate that she learned to make in Spain. It's hot chocolate but different. I'm not sure how to describe it except for that if you've never had it you need to get some.

My dad makes homemade jerky. You've never had anything better. If I was a betting man I'd stake my life's savings on it. My mom makes a raspberry pudding that's reserved for those with a refined sense of flavor. If you don't savor it and make contented noises while you eat it slowly you don't get any more - we don't waste the good stuff on people that like the generic stuff just as well. My parents grill lemon pepper chicken and BBQ'd chicken.

We used to make a tasty salsa as a family activity - it was when my dad was having sinus issues and thus tasting issues; as a result of his lack of satisfaction we would make each batch a little hotter and ended up with 4 labels of salsa - wimpy, mild, HOT, and 2HOT. 2HOT was way too hot for anybody but dad. A few years later dad found some 2HOT and got really excited. He'd resolved his ultra-congestion and after a sampling he decided that it was too hot too.

Grandpa makes a special cheese dip, and a pepper jelly. Everybody loves the cheese dip. Only a few of us like the jelly, but we revel in the comradery of loving something everybody else hates. Oh, and can you say chili? Grandpa's Chili is as famous as Grandma's Juice. Allison makes eggnog and pies... coconut cream is my favorite.

The more I think about it the more foods and peoples I get. There are certain food items that just belong to certain people. Chili. Whiskey Sauce! Root Beer. Chocolate Cake (I'm not a fan of most chocolate cake, but this one is amazing). Ginger Snaps. Spaghetti and Meatballs. Peppernuts. Minted Lemon. Spinach and Beans (only once a year... this was a tradition involving money and luck... we hated it but loved it simultaniously). The list goes on and on. Thus far limited myself to my mothers side, but My Grandma Merris makes/has food that's equally important to me in flavor and tradition: Pies, Cookies, Grilling on the Back Porch, The Candy Jar, Halloween Popcorn Balls, etc. If it wasn't 1:30 AM, I could make a list for my dad's side that is as long as the one i made for my mom's side.

Even my roommates are becoming associated with foods. Shmetterling = popcorn. Danny = chocolate malts. Chad next door = cookies EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT! I'm trying to make a name with smoothies and honey candy.

It's time for me to cut off. My list of unwritten foods and people is growing exponentially. I haven't even talked about Christmas, the 24th of July, Weddings (A catered reception in my family is rare. We do way better on our own), or Thanksgiving... actually I've hit on thanksgiving a little... mmmm... Whiskey Sauce! In short, I'm a social eater. The best foods in life are no good if they aren't eaten with people you love, but the worst foods become good foods when you have somebody fun to exchange looks and or gaging noises with. Memories around the dinner table, the hand grinder, the candy slab, the apple bobbing barrel, the blender, or the dutch oven are some of the best I've got. I think it's because I get to recall them and add to them every time something goes in my mouth.

I have all sorts of other memories I'd like to share... the kinds of foods I eat with my mother - the kinds of foods I eat with my father - these include not only that which we made but that which we purchased. Sorbet's, Rafello, Fresh Tomato Sandwiches.... stop stop stop. sleep Schlange. sleep.

G'night.

-Shlange