RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM COLUMNIST SCHOOL

 RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM COLUMNIST SCHOOL

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A SATURDAY MORNING

I heard somewhere, maybe in columnist school, that once in a while we need to just let go of the heaviness and scolding, and share those random thoughts we all occasionally have, and which will not fit in any other column. This last week in September seems to be a good time to do that. In other words, I don’t really have a topic to write about this week!

We drove over to the Country Store at Leadmine recently. I love that place. We go to replenish our stock of the best beet pickles in the world, done as only the Amish can do. Milan likes to peruse their inventory of suspenders and Aladdin lamp parts. But I also get to indulge in a jar or two of spiced peaches to bring home as a special treat. We called them pickled peaches back when my grandmother made them, but they are definitely not pickled in the sense of the word we would normally think about. Anyone who has never eaten one of these golden glistening globes of gustatory goodness definitely can’t claim to be a true gastronome.

So my niece came by the day we opened the jar and I asked her if she had ever tasted her Grandma Dame’s pickled peaches. She said she hadn’t and seemed a little hesitant to try. But being related to me, she is willing to eat anything that holds still, and once she had tasted that spicy sweetness, I knew I was going to have to hide the rest of the peaches whenever she came to visit. And it dawned on me that my daughter and granddaughters had never tasted them either, so I may have to go back to Leadmine and buy some more.

Here’s a warning, the cans on your local grocery shelf claiming to contain spiced peaches are lying. Don’t even think about it.

So Grandma Dame’s peaches reminded me of Grandma Dame’s homemade kraut.

Kirk Pearce recently advertised in the Daily Record that he had a sauerkraut cabbage shredder for sale, and I decided that was the one thing I still needed. Like the pickled peaches, it was part of my heritage. I could remember my grandmother and mother working together to slide those big heads of cabbage grown in our garden along the wooden shaft with the sharp blade to shred the cabbage and then brine it down in some way to make kraut. They only did it a couple of times that I remember and I think I know why.

I was able to withstand the temptation to buy the shredder once I realized I did not have room for such a large contraption, and that it would probably be the one thing that would send my daughter over the edge in considering my murder.

Milan and I have the most accidental collection of antiques you can imagine. It’s just what happens when you have been married almost 53 years and both of you collect different items for your hobbies (think Aladdin lamps and books here). I’m sure many of you can relate to this.

Our daughter, who is a minimalist when it comes to decorating a home, prefers to spell our hobby collections “junque” because the only value is sentimental.

When we tell her that upon our death she can call an auctioneering company to come in and gather up and evaluate our extensive collections and do all the hard work for her before the sale, she insists after all that, “SHE” would owe “THEM” money. Maybe so, but it’s been a delightful journey of buying and maintaining the things we enjoy.

Speaking of “things”, if you are of my generation, what did you call the furniture you sat on when you were growing up? I don’t remember ever hearing the words “sofa” or “couch” until probably after I was married. In my grandmother’s home we alternated between “divan” (the preferred word), and “davenport”.

Likewise with the term “pots and pans”. We never used that at home growing up. We had cooking items we called “stu-ers” with a long “u” and two syllables. The first time I tried to write about that, I realized I had never seen that word in print anywhere and kept repeating it to myself trying to determine the origin. I think it was probably a derivation of what you would call something you made stew in, a stewer, but even the dictionary has problems calling that a legitimate word.

And corn on the cob? That was unknown to me until I became an adult. But in the summer, we ate rosenears (pronounced with three syllables) by the dozens, hot and slathered with butter and salt.

My Grandpa Dame, whom we all called by his first name of Everett, had some strange appetite cravings. We didn’t buy pre-packaged chickens back then. He bought live chickens and killed them.

He liked fried chicken feet, so my grandmother would clean them and fry them up for him. It took a big skillet, I’ve got to tell you. And a big platter on the table. That was one food item even I was never tempted to try.

I never knew what a hamburger bun or a hot dog bun was until I was a teenager. Growing up we had all purpose bread for sandwiches. It was white and sliced and came out of a sack from the store and pretty much tasteless. My grandmother worked at Rice-Stix so she didn’t have time to bake bread, except cornbread which was then, and still is, my choice for hot bread with almost any meal. I learned to make it when I was eight years old and have never changed the recipe. I could make it in my sleep.

Well, I’m now up to date on my random thoughts. By the way, there was no columnist school, in case you were wondering.

©Joan Rowden Hart 2017