More Soup

Since I wrote about boiling my turkey carcass for broth, I thought I would show off one result of that process. This is the vegetable soup I made on Monday. It's mighty good. Been slurping it for lunch for two days and it gets better with age.

One thing that makes my soup so good, I am sure, is the pot in which I make it. This was my mother's Club Aluminum Dutch oven. I use it for pot roast and beef sew (when I 'm not doing them in the CrockPot), chili, pork chops with sauerkraut, chicken with artichoke hearts and various one pot meals. The lid was long gone when I inherited (or stole) this vessel, but I have another which is almost as good, although the original was more dome like.

So ya have the soup, crusty bread and a glass of wine, which is ever so good for one's stummick and well being.

Readier

Saturday afternoon I moseyed over to Akron, to the majestic Civic Theater, one of those rococo pleasure palaces built in the 20s, with starry skies over what seems to be semi-Gothic, Moorish palace gardens. And I mix my architectural styles in the spirit of the romantic build es of that era. It's from the days when going to the picture show was an ADVENTURE. It is being lovingly restored and is used for a variety of live performances such as the one I attended that afternoon" the "Nutcracker" ballet.

It has been staged for 17 years by a local professional ballet company, consisting of dancers from the ages of 4 or 5 to adult. It's connected to a pre-professional school of ballet and most of the adult dancers are former students who come back to Akron for the production. They put on an absolutely beautiful production, with gorgeous costumes and scenery. I love to watch the teensy little dances, who are amazingly disciplined, playing mice and angels. They always receive a round of applause as the patter off the stage. The Waltz of the Flowers was just gorgeous, and so were the Snowflakes all in white, with snow drifting down.

The audience is fun to watch, too, consisting of large numbers of little girls, dressed in velvet and spangles. They sparkle, too. After the ballet, the dancers mingle in the vast lobby and meet their star struck fans. I wonder how many of these little people go home and dance around their houses.

I would love to have been able to go to something like this when I was a child. My sister and I took a few weeks of ballet when we were living in Montgomery with our relatives at the beginning of the depression. Our glamorous Aunt Amalia ran a dancing school and taught ballet. She could dance right up on her toes! We loved it, and when we moved to Atlanta, she arranged for us to study with Madame Solomanov, who had, it was said, come over from Russia with Anna Pavlvoa's troupe and stayed on to teach lazy little Southern girls. Unfortunately Madame scared the hell out of us, and we begged to quit. So we did - and I just know that, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "had I learnt I would have bee a great proficient."

Since there was no televison then, I didn't even see any ballet until I was in high school, when the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo came to Springfield, Ohio and I got to see the real thing. The Joffrey Ballet also came through the next year. Somewhere in the stuff that I have too much of, I think my program from one of those ballets lurks. Some of the great dancers of the era were in those companies.I remember that one of them did "Rodeo" and one did a pas de deux from "Swan Lake." It was lovely.

And seeing "Nutcracker" makes me readier for Christmas.

Ready or Not, Here It Comes

The other day, when I went to my eye doc, the first person I encountered asked, "Are you ready for Christmas?" The next person, the tech who props me for the doc, asked the same question, as did the next person, the tech who takes pictures of my eye balls. And then my darling retinologist Dr. Lamkin (isn't that a cosy name for a guy who is going to stick a needle in your eye?) asked it again.

What does that mean, "Are you ready for Christmas?" Have I been out to the mall buying useless gifts for people who have everything they already need or want? Have I baked cookies? Mailed packages off to faraway loved ones? Is my tree up? Have I strung lights all over my property? Do I have enough wrapping paper and Scotch tape? I just finished boiling the turkey carcass to make broth for future soups, fa cryin' out loud.

I hate to sound like Scrooge here, but everyone gets so pressured and frantic around this time of year. I get a sense of anxiety in the people who ask this question. I figure they're not ready themselves and are hoping I'll say,"Wow, is Christmas pretty soon? I guess I'd better order that electric orange peeler they're advertising on TV at 3 in the morning."

We have pretty much decided this year to shower each other with consumable stuff, since we have run out of space for anything other than ephemera. It's fun to receive gifts, of course. Who doesn't like to open a gift? The problem, however, is what to do with it, where to put it then.

Everyone has too much stuff already. I'll be "ready" for Christmas on Christmas Eve, I think.

And I wonder if, as Mary and Joseph walked into the inn, the innkeeper asked her, "Are you ready for Christ, Miss?"

You read it here first.

Super Soup

For Christmas last year, my son John gave me a big slow cooker, one big enough for roast beast. I had a small one which he had also given me years ago with his paper route earnings, which I have used mostly for beef stew. Now I have one big enough to make a delicious pot roast with nice brown potatoes and carrots. This also results in a lot of gravy and general meat juices with which to make great soups.

One favorite is mushroom barley beef soup which is ever so good for one , with all that barley. If I throw in a little sherry it's even better. And if you have a glass of red wine, then you have an even healthier meal, since we all know that red wine is good for the heart, or arteries.

The other day I made the best vegetable soup ever. I had enough leftover potatoes and carrots to dice and added onions, broccoli, tomatoes and shreds of leftover pot roast and a little barley. It was very rich and almost stew-ish. With a good salad and crusty bread it was a very filling dinner. And a glass of red wine, of course.

John's girl friends' mother (I love serial possessives) gave him her recipe for butternut squash soup. He has made two batches so far. It's quite labor intensive and requires baking the squash, and lots of processing the pulp in small batches. It has fresh ginger and other spices and is very delicious. Her mother adds apricots, but John hasn't tried that yet. I found recipes online that are similar., which is where I found the directions for the following experiment.

I am not a squash person, but I found some of those really picturesque acorn squashes at the last farmer's market and decided to make soup with them. I had no idea they would be so hard to cut in half and at first I had the feeling that my best knife would be stuck in the first one forever. I finally gave it a good whack and it fell apart, so I whacked the other two successfully and put them into the oven to bake. An hour later, I opened the oven door and recoiled in horror. It looked as if I had baked a bunch of giant beetles. They gleamed like scarabs in a truly yucky fashion. Since they didn't crawl toward me, I removed them and let them cool in thier own beetle-y way. Then I had to peel them and dispose of a bunch of dead beetle skins. Ewwww!The soup turned out quite well. The recipe called for half and half, which I had on hand for coffee use. If I ever make it again, I think I will add sour cream or buttermilk instead.

One of John's clients gave him a beautiful pie pumpkin from which he has made two pies and has enough left over to make another - or perhaps pumpkin soup. It's been a very squashy fall. Soupy, too.

Breaking Taboos

I remember when Madelyn Murray O'Hair was practically tarred and feathered for defending the Constitutional requirement for the separation of church and state. She claimed that prayer in school was in violation, and furthermore, that she was an atheist! Well, you would have thought that she had admitted to some heinous crime against humanity. An atheist! Good Christian men awake! She was condemned in churches nationwide. Called terrible names. Taking prayer out of the public schools was seen as downright un-American.

Since I had attended Catholic schools where we prayed four times a day (first thing in the morning, before lunch, after lunch and at dismissal) , I found this puzzling. They prayed in public schools? Whatever for? They were all doomed anyway on account of not being Catholics. That's the sort of thing we learned when we were not praying.

Well, atheism has come a long way since Ms. O'Hair disappeared. It has become quite trendy, what with books out by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and some other guy whose name I can't think of right now. Nobody has consigned any of these writers to hell or accused them of sexually abusing goats and chickens. Their books have been best sellers, they've been on TV without being scorned. It's possible that there are folks who are clucking about this on talk radio, along with the birthers and death panel fear mongers, but they're not on my radar.

But there are limits. Even though an African American can become president, and openly gay people can serve in Congress, I have a sense that an avowed atheist could not become president in this country. Ever since Reagan pretended he was a born again Christian, presidential candidates have fallen all over themselves to show that they are church-going, born bona fide Christians and true believers, even if they're not. I think atheism is the last taboo. We'll have a Jewish, black, gay female president before we'll ever have an atheist, or even an agnostic. It's the American way, init?

Unchurched

I have been reading a lot in the area newspapers about the consolidation of Catholic parishes and the closing of churches. There have been sad interviews with mostly older parishioners. These are people who were baptized, made their first communion, confirmed, married and their parents and grandparents buried from these churches. In large cities like Akron and Cleveland, most of these parishes were established in the late 19th and early 2oth centuries by immigrants from Europe: Italy, Poland, Germany, Slovenia and Hungary. They built magnificent churches, which became the centers of their communities, along with the schools they built to educate and "Americanize" their children and inculcate Catholicism, of course.

In some of these churches the mass was said in the language of the parishioners. (I attender a church in Berea where Polish was used for the mass and for the sermon.I never knew what was going on. My favorite story about that is that one day after mass I asked a woman I had seen every Sunday what the closing Polish hymn , which sounded very martial, was about. She said, "In don't know. I'm a convert.")

We never happened to live in an ethnic parish, mostly WASPY kinds of churches. We always attended parochial schools from first grade through high school. Aside from high school, our parish schools were pretty much neighborhood schools. It was like being in a large extended family, with a few crazy aunts thrown in (some of the nuns). Our parents were involved in church activities unrelated to the school - altar society, choir, that sort of thing. It was a strong part of one's identity. I have good memories and some not so good mostly related to the crazy aunts. They were great for English grammar, literature and history - except when it came to the Reformation. In my high school there were no art courses, drama or music classes, aside from the chorus, run by Sr. Margaret Angela, who had a voice like a steam whistle, causing dogs in downtown Springfield, Ohio, to howl in misery.

I am no longer a church goer, but I remember the sense of community engendered by belonging to a parish, and empathize with those people who are now forced to leave the places that fostered them and nurtured them throughout significant moments in their lives: birth, marriage, and death. The children and grandchildren of the founders are now in the suburbs, attending churches that look like shopping malls. The bricks and mortar buildings of their forefathers will stand empty, be razed or converted into some other use. It must be like losing a limb. You still have the rest of your body, but you will always be aware that something is missing.

A Great Ride

The other day, I took a ride down to Tuscaroras County, which is about 70 miles south of here. There's a place I like to go every few years, mainly in the spring or fall. It's called the Moravian Trail. Back in the late 18th century, a group of religious Moravians established settlements in that area: Goshen, Gnadenhuttan and Schoenbrun. They converted the Indians and set up peaceful agrarian villages. The Moravians and their Indian converts were massacred by the British and the villages they founded have been restored and are part of the state's historical sites.

None of these settlements is on the Moravian Trail, so I have no idea why it bears that name, except that it may have been a path they used for some purpose. The whole area around the trail is now part of the Muskingham Conservancy District, a series of lakes formed as a result of flood control dams built in the '30s. The trail itself runs along a wooded ridge and encompasses 55 miles of absolutely gorgeous territory., The views are breathtaking, especially now, when the trees are a glory of color.

The section I drove is about 25 miles long and runs from a little town called Dennison, up hill and down and around many curves and ends up at Tappan Lake down at the bottom of the ridge. Abut halfway to the lake is a little town called Deersville, in which is a general store which has just about anything you might need in the hills or on the lake. There's a touch of "Deliverance" about it, at least in the folks who hang out there, big bellied men. I like to stop there for an ice cream cone or a package of chips. One of the men was talking about a big buck he had seen in a field that morning. He didn't want to say where the field was because he was going hunting and had his eye on it.

There are some beautiful old houses in the village, some of which have been fixed up by outsiders who come down to enjoy the peace and quiet. I know a couple of folks who have cabins down there which they escape to occasionally; in one case a literal log cabin, of which there are a number scattered about. I don't' know those people well enough to have been invited, but I'd love to see it. So far as I know they've never been tied to a tree with their pants around their ankles, but it seems to be the sort of place that could happen.

It's a lovely place this time of year, especially without dueling banjos and I'm glad I got to see it before the trees turned bare. In the spring it's also lovely, since thee are a lot of flowering trees and wild flowers. When I stopped to take this picture of the lake, the water was absolutely still, like a mirror, which was why I wanted to take a picture of the tree reflected in the lake. Suddenly there was some sort of disturbance under the water by the far shore and these ripples starting fanning out toward the shore where I was. I didn't see anything, but whatever it was made quite a strong current across the lake. It was a tad creepy.

But then it's almost Halloween.