Oysters and Pearls

A grain of sand, upon entering an oyster, becomes so agitating to the creature that it will surround the sand with some sort of oyster saliva to ease the itch. This eventually hardens and in turn continues to aggravate the oyster, which angrily reacts the same way it does at the very first – that is to say that it spits upon its problem and makes it bigger. In this way, a pearl is formed.

Ideas can be placed in just the right circumstances to grow into something awe invoking. Today’s pearl began as most do – in a very small way a few hundred hours ago at a work Christmas party. The event was typical of such a gathering: it was a small group of employees, some with wives or dates, cracking jokes and receiving superficial awards. The food was excellent, consisting mainly of stake; chicken; salad; a variety of beverages; and something long, flat, and breaded that was offered to me as “[something inaudible] fries.” I asked for the name to be repeated and heard “bulf rinds.” Too proud to ask a second time, I made my wildest of guesses and decided on fried bullfrog. I’d heard that frogs are tasty when prepared correctly and so decided to try one, thinking that if I’d missed my guess whatever it was couldn’t be any more outlandish than what I’d already anticipated and that at the very worst I’d accumulate another experience for my cultural repertoire. (I mention here, that this unknown foodstuff became my proverbial grain of sand – a preparation for a gem of an experience.)

I sampled this new fare after dipping it in cocktail sauce and decided that it tasted almost like shrimp though a little beefy. The flavor, the chewy texture, and the appearance of this unknown delicacy all layered themselves rosily about its pestering animosity; as did the next layer of truth which was willingly placed at my feet by an obliging universe in the form of an overheard conversation:

“You’re not really going to eat that?” said a female coworker to the male one at my right.
“Why not?” said he.
“Don’t you know what that is?”
“Certainly.”

At this point I rudely interjected and asked, “What exactly are those?” I also quickly consumed my last morsel of the meat in question, fearing that I might not want to do so upon hearing an answer. This proved to be a very wise move. The man chuckled, turned to me with a knowing look and a twinkle in his eye, and leaned closer to me. Looking intently at me, like a vulture about to gobble up its prey (or more accurately, like a person about to immensely enjoy a beautiful moment at my expense), he replied in conspiring tones, “Well… you’ve heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters?”

I had.

For those of you who have not so heard, I will expound. You may be mystified to know that every bull owns two oysters which he carries with him always. When these are stolen from him he is considered a steer. I had just eaten a breaded and fried oyster, removed by force from a rightfully indignant bovine – tactfully dubbed “Bull Fry.” The puzzle solved, my pearl came into full view, and I gazed speechlessly upon it.

Our story, however, does not end here, for the next day at work (I work at a private school) the cafeteria was serving leftovers from the past few days, including from the party. One boy heard “fry” and loaded his plate despite the lunch lady asking repeatedly: “Are you sure? Do you know what that is?” (His reply each time was “Yeah. Bull Fries. You told me already.”) A little while later he gained view of his own pearl, and I will confide in you that while I’ve never actually seen an oyster spit at its pearl, I am nearly certain that one could never match the vigor with which this young man spat at his.

It is a rule at my school that students are to eat every mouthful of food that they take. My resulting pity for the boy got the best of me and so I offered moral support in the form of taking a second contemptible abomination. As I chewed my fare I thought heavily upon that age old adage “ignorance is bliss.”

-Schlange

In honor of this particular occasion I follow this experience with a favorite poem:

The Oyster by Baxter Black

The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents.
"How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence,
"I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain.
"Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane."

"I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?"
"No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink
But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true
And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!"

She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone.
I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a stone!"
The cowboy winced, imagining a calf with her beneath,
"Me, I use a pocket knife and yank ‘em with my teeth."

"Oh my," she said, "You're an animal! How crude and unrefined!
Your masculine assertiveness sends a shiver down my spine!
But I prefer a butcher knife too dull to really cut.
I wedge it in on either side and crack it like a nut!

I pry them out. If they resist, sometimes I use the pliers
Or even Grandpa's pruning shears if that's what it requires!"
The hair stood on the cowboy's neck. His stomach did a whirl.
He'd never heard such grisly talk, especially from a girl!

"I like them fresh," the sweetheart said and laid her menu down
Then ordered oysters for them both when the waiter came around.
The cowboy smiled gamely, though her words stuck in his craw
But he finally fainted dead away when she said, "I'll have mine raw!"

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."

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