March 2007 - Posts
My favorite Easter candy is hands-down the Cadbury Egg. It's the only Easter candy I eat. In fact, it's the only candy I ever eat. Oh sure I've been known to pop an ocassional Hershey Kiss or Reese's peanut butter cup. But, my weakness isn't usually for sweets. I'm more of a potato chip and french fry kind of girl.
So, that perhaps makes it even more odd that I am obsessed with Cadbury Eggs. I LOVE love LOVE them. There's something about the outside chocolate shell filled with that thick sugary goodness. I can't explain it. They're just wonderful, so wonderful that it's a good thing that they're only sold a few weeks out of the year. I'd be in trouble if I could buy one year-round. Or, maybe not. Maybe part of the appeal is the fact that they're only available for such a short period of time. Perhaps that last one of the season is extra tasty because I know I won't be able to have another for 12 more months.
I blame my father's mother for my obsession. At the risk of making my home state of Alaska sound even more backward than people already think it is, I have to admit that growing up we didn't have the widest selection of products. Twenty years ago you were hard pressed to find the same variety that's available today. So, my grandmother in Pennsylvania kept us well stocked with products that my parents missed from their own childhoods. Several times a year, usually around holidays, she'd send us big boxes of goodies. Around Easter the package always included boxes of Cadbury eggs, bags of mini cadbury eggs and trays of butter cream and coconut eggs. Limited to one a day, my brother and sisters and I would relish these treats, making them last through May. The last few would always be portioned out so everyone got their fair share.
The packages weren't always sweets either. Sometimes it would be pork roll and scrapple ("delicacies" anyone from Pennsylvania would know) or prosciutto, capicola ham and thinly sliced provalone cheese. There were always books and toys for us kids and items my nature-loving grandmother had collected like pressed flowers, pussywillows, leaves, seed pods and so on. Without fail she also always send newspaper and magazine clippings with little sticky notes attached explaining why she'd found it interesting enough to pass along.
Now, I'm the one living 4,000 miles away from my own mother. And, this week I got a package in the mail that made me smile. There weren't any Cadbury eggs inside. But there was a most random assortment of items: a kitchen knife and cheese grater, my favorite childhood board game - Candyland - and book - "Tiki Tiki Tembo" - for our son, a parenting book my mother had told me about and on top two newspaper clippings with Post-Its covered in my mother's handwriting telling me what she'd found striking about the passages. As I unpacked the box my husband sat watching incredulously at the grab bag of items. "What's the occassion?" he asked. "Nothing," I told him, laughing. "It's just my family."
Next week Molly will catch up with Eastern Iowa families as they enjoy what may well become a new tradition for them: geocaching for Easter Eggs at the Indian Creek Nature Center.
For me the surest sign of spring is my compulsion to open the windows wide despite the fact that temperatures are still hovering in the mid-40s. I know I'm freezing out my family, but I love love love the fresh scent and feel of a spring breeze wafting through the house.
I was so inspired by last weekend's high temps that I switched out my winter accents in the living room and dining room (red berries, red and white candles, etc...) for more springy hues like chartreuse and teal. I didn't spend a cent, but I gave our house a breath of spring air by moving candles and other accents from one room or space to another. Instead of a berry-filled hurricane on our dining room table there's now an easter-egg filled tin. And the hurricane, filled with a green candle and faux hydrangea blossoms, now rests in the corner on a chair. These simple switches makes both rooms feel new again.
There are other sure signs of spring around our house. For example, all winter we use the trusty George Foreman. But, the first time we fire up the grill, I know it's spring. We've already grilled out three times this week alone.
As some of the people I talked to Thursday also pointed out, you can tell it's spring when people are traipsing about without jackets or in flip-flops or tanks when it's only 45 degrees outside. In the fall 45 degrees is freezing and you'll see us all bundled up in sweaters. But, come spring, temperatures like that are balmy and inspire us to break out the summer clothes.
Whatever they're wearing, spring weather also inspires us to just get out more. We went for a walk on Sunday, and despite the cutting wind and very soggy trail, we had a blast. Even if it's just a turn around the block, it's nice to see more people out and about, stretching their legs after a winter's hibernation.
The more I think about it, spring really is my favorite time of year. It's such a period of rejuvination, a time when you feel anything is possible. I love that warmer temperatures are welcomed, not whined about as we do when things get soggy in July and August. Even the potholes don't seem so bad in comparison to the ice and snow of last month.
So, at the risk of being too chipper. I say, get out and enjoy it. Go for a walk, grill a burger, fly a kite ...
Erin Go Bragh!
It means “Ireland Forever,” but it’s also a salutation for anyone on St. Patrick’s Day, the day we all embrace our Irish heritage, real or imagined.
I’ve always loved being Irish, but if you were to ask me why, exactly, I’m not sure I’d know what to tell you. I loved family gatherings when my dad's cousin, Father John Rossiter from Topeka, would fill us all in on his latest parish trek to Ireland to meet with family, or when he’d bring family members to the reunions and we’d all get to meet them. I loved growing up in a house that celebrated St. Patrick’s Day like a true holiday – corned beef stewing on the stove, my mother waiting for just the right minute to put the cabbage in and my fathers atrocious green-and-white-plaid polyester slacks that he just had to wear (they eventually got “lost” in one of our moves).
Maybe it has something to do with my father’s family and their love of being Irish – it was always something that was in the forefront of any reunion or gathering. The trips to Ireland, the genealogy of the family. Growing up I learned the words to many Clancy Brothers songs in the same way my own children learned the words to the music I now listen to: “Shellicky, shellicky boo-key, put out all of your horns, all of the ladies are comin’ to see-ee ya.”
It’s sung in a real low bass and is really kind of mournful. I always loved that children’s “song” (it’s the same verse repeated) – until I learned later in life that a “shellicky bookey” is a snail. Huh?
So sometimes we’re a quirky bunch.
Which is why, I think, I love being Irish, and why, just one day each year, everyone wants to be Irish. It could be for the drinking, possibly for the corned beef, but more than likely it's because it's just plain fun.
Look for Carly here next week when she asks, "What are signs of spring fever?"
I was 12 years old when we moved to Missouri and my family was befriended by an older farm couple. I babysat for their grandchildren and my brother helped walk beans, and the whole family was often treated to good old-fashioned homestyle meals. It was almost my favorite part of going out to the farm.
Almost.
The couple, Ralph and Patricia Grier, owned several horses, and being on their farm was the first time I'd seen a horse "up close and personal." I fell in love with their look, their smell, the way they would walk with you along the fenceline when they knew you had a pocket full of oats, or ignore you when they were pretty sure you didn't. Ralph knew I was enamored with his animals, and took it upon himself to teach me to ride. We went into countless pastures and fields, usually with each of us on our own horse but with Ralph holding the lead to mine, just in case. We spent innumerable Saturdays that first summer out in the fields, getting me ready to ride in the Labor Day Parade without a lead.
As Angela Moubry told me at the horse show, once you get that in your blood, it doesn't go away. A horse person is always a horse person, even if they no longer ride.
That first summer spawned a lifelong love and respect for horses, and led eventually to the best job a horse-loving teen could ever have. When I was 15, my friend Beth and I were wranglers at a YMCA camp near St. Joseph, Mo. What that basically meant was that we not only cared for the 16 horses and four ponies at the camp, but we led campers on trail rids Monday through Friday. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. we were horseback, with short breaks between groups. It was awesome.
It was also where I learned to respect a horse's temperament, size and strength. On one particularly hot trail ride, I was at the end of the group, watching for strays, when a stick I was swinging struck a branch of a tree -- and angered a group of bees swarming nearby. I tried my best to shoo them off, but one managed to sting my horse on the rear haunches. Up she went and down I fell -- right onto my own back haunch. The riders ahead of me all stopped and, not wanting to put fear into any of the kids on the other horses, I climbed right back up. It was a tender ride for the rest of the afternoon.
There are countless other stories -- when one horse almost broke my arm; late-night trail rides with camp leaders; or the time Beth and I got to deliver a colt because the mare went into labor when Beth's parents were out of town -- but there's only so much space and time.
Join me next week when I ask St. Patrick's Day parade watchers what they think "Erin Go Bragh!" really means.
I don't like syrup. I like my pancakes, waffles and french toast uncomplicated by sweetness, unless it's in the form of a ripe red strawberry.
Even thought I'm not personally fond of it, I do have a soft spot in my heart for syrup, particularly the maple variety.
For me, syrup is synonymous with Laura Ingalls Wilder and the first of the Little House series that chronicle Wilder's life from childhood through marriage and motherhood. As a little girl myself, I remember listening to my mother read me "Little House in the Big Woods" and being envious of young Laura's adventures in Wisconsin. Her descriptive narrative let me into a pioneer's world, including, of course, the winter ritual of maple syrup season.
After reading the book I remember examining the trees around our house and wondering how the sticky substance dripping out of the bark could possibly be transformed into something people would want to eat. Of course, growing up in Alaska, the trees I was looking at were mostly pine. Their sap isn't the syrup variety. We lived much too far north for maples.
In fact, volunteers at the Indian Creek Nature Center's annual maple syrup festival told me that Iowa is really about as far west and south as you can go and still find maples. Maples are more common in the northeast United States. Maple syrup season is a tradition there and the result, thick sweet syrup, is a delicacy. I discovered Saturday why pure maple syrup is so much more expensive than Aunt Jemina or any other typical pancake syrup. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make just ONE gallon of syrup. There's also only a short window of time each year when the sap runs. Here in Iowa it's roughly four weeks. They start when days are above freezing and nights are below and they stop when the nights start staying above freezing.
Last year, the nature center harvested 2,000 gallons of sap, which they made into syrup for this year's festival. From the looks of it, they did a good job. Hundreds of pancakes were gobbled up Saturday morning at the festival.
Next week catch up with Molly at the Kirkwood Equestrian Center where she'll be talking to people about their scary or funny run-ins with horses.