Monthly Archives: August 2007

No, You Can’t Use My New Crayons

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Kathleen Fox

I almost got to go buy school supplies this year. A recent family visit was originally going to coincide with a school-supply shopping trip for the grandkids. But then the family schedule changed, so they went and bought everything the day before I arrived. Bummer.

It’s not that I like shopping. I hate shopping. It’s just that I love school supplies. Nothing says, “fresh start” quite like a pile of crisp new notebooks, a pack of pens with the caps still on, a set of unopened markers, and a brand new three-ring binder—the fancy one that comes complete with dividers and a pencil case and that closes with a zipper. Best of all, though, is the delightful promise of a whole box of new crayons or colored pencils, all those untouched points lined up neatly in their precise, color-sorted rows.

When my kids were young, school shopping was often frustrating. Some years it was a struggle to squeeze the extra money out of the budget for the basics and maybe a few extras like a new backpack or a nicer binder. The kids would want the more expensive folders with pictures on them, the brand-name markers, and the fancy gel pens, while both my budget and my inherent thrift would argue for the plain, the generic, and the least expensive.

By the time the budget had grown, so had the kids. I remember my disappointment the year the youngest had, at least for school purposes, grown too old for crayons.

I was shocked to learn this year that, in the cities where two of my kids live, the grade school kids don’t get to have their own school supplies. Oh, the families still buy them individually, following the school’s lists down to the exact colors of the folders and the prescribed brand of tissues. But on the first day of school, everything is dumped into one giant pool, turned over to the teachers to be doled out as needed.

On a strictly practical level, I can see the logic of this. It has to be easier for the teachers to control a central supply closet rather than cope with, “I forgot my pencils,” and, “my mom didn’t buy the right notebooks,” and maybe even, “Ashley has the good kind of markers and she won’t let me use them.”

Perhaps this communal approach is also seen as more “fair” to the kids whose families can’t afford the good markers or who neglect to buy what the kids need. Although, in my town, that need is met quite nicely by a local credit union’s annual school supply drive. It’s a perfect blend of charity and nostalgia for those of us whose kids are grown but who still get a kick out of buying notebook paper.

There’s something missing when your school supplies come out of the central supply closet. I sympathize with all those kindergarteners and first-graders. They’re missing out on the proprietary satisfaction of knowing that the first scarlet stroke on paper from that pristine red crayon or marker is going to be their own.

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From August to Zucchini

Posted on August 24, 2007 by Kathleen Fox

Last week my nephew accused his mother of felonious behavior: “She broke into Donna’s house to leave zucchini!”

Her response was immediate and indignant. “I didn’t break in! The door was unlocked.”

She didn’t even bother to deny that she had left the zucchini. After all, she had been merely following the zucchini-grower’s unwritten rule for getting rid of surplus: in August, any unlocked door is fair game. She knew no jury of her peers—namely, vegetable gardeners in the throes of zucchini harvest—would ever convict her. Instead, they’d probably ask her for Donna’s address. They would be eager to make the acquaintance of anyone too naïve to lock her door as protection against random acts of zucchini-dropping.

I, on the other hand, as a tomatoes-only gardener, was not only willing but eager to take some extra produce off my sister’s hands. I came home from a family visit with a box of cucumbers, two heads of cabbage, a bag of fresh green beans, and six zucchini. I appreciated it all, even the zucchini, though I was a bit daunted by the four that were bigger than baseball bats.

The problem with zucchini is figuring out how to use it. Zucchini is a vegetable, more specifically a squash. Therefore, by definition, it must be good for you. The dilemma is not whether one should eat it, but how.

Since zucchini has virtually no flavor, and since its texture evokes an art gum eraser more than a vegetable, it doesn’t add a lot of pizzazz to salads. Frying it works reasonably well, as long as you understand that the zucchini itself is not the point, but merely an excuse to add plenty of butter and seasoning. Sneaking it into casseroles is a possibility, as long as you don’t try to serve it to eagle-eyed small children who will spend their dinner hour poking through the entree to separate out small bits of anything suspiciously vegetable.

My purpose in bringing home the huge zucchini, though, was to grate and freeze it to use in zucchini bread and muffins. It’s a great way to eat something deliciously full of fat and sugar, while pretending that it’s good for you. This year I’ve discovered something even better—my son-in-law’s recipe for zucchini chocolate cake. Moist, rich chocolate cake with vegetables in it? Sounds like health food to me.

For years (at least until I learned about the chocolate cake) I’ve wondered why anyone grows zucchini. One reason might be that it’s so prolific and easy to produce. It’s like my father’s memory of the food when he was in Navy boot camp: it wasn’t very good, but there always was plenty of it.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to suspect a different reason. Maybe people don’t grow zucchini for its nutritional value, but for its entertainment value. Even those who eat zucchini laugh about it. Even its name is funny. It’s the squash that gets no respect. You just have to appreciate a vegetable that provides such good material for so many bad jokes.

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The Guy in the Pickup

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Kathleen Fox

I’m heading out tomorrow on a road trip that will essentially be a circumnavigation of Nebraska. Okay, maybe “circumnavigate” isn’t precisely the right word for traveling down, across, and back up a state that’s made up of mostly flat prairie smack dab in the middle of the continent. But you get the general idea.

One of my friends wondered whether I wasn’t worried about traveling by myself. What if I had car trouble? “Not a problem,” I told her. “A guy in a pickup always comes along.”

At least that’s been my experience.

There were the two men near Moab, Utah, who weren’t able to fix my broken serpentine belt but who told me I could coast down the steep mountain road for about a mile till I came to a roadside attraction where there was a phone. I did, there was, and I spent a pleasant hour along a shady stream with my book while I waited for the tow truck.

There was the man near Craig, Colorado, who had a phone book in his trunk, found the number for a mechanic he recommended, and waited until he knew the tow truck was on its way.

There were the two women and three little kids, on a bitter January day along the interstate in western South Dakota, who were heading west but cut across the median on the emergency-vehicle access in order to give me a ride two miles east.

There were the two guys on a drizzly day in Minnesota. I was towing a flatbed trailer loaded with three empty wire reels. The strap holding one of the reels broke, and it slid partway off the side of the trailer. The reel, six feet in diameter and made of steel, was so heavy I couldn’t push it back into place by myself. The men had it shoved over and tied down in no time. A good thing, too. They were on their way home after playing a round of golf that included stopping at the 19th hole for a beer, so they didn’t linger when the polite young highway patrolman pulled up and asked whether we needed any help.

By now I know what you’re thinking. “This woman needs to get a more reliable vehicle!”

Actually, I do have a reliable vehicle, and I have no doubt that it will get me safely to the far side of Nebraska and back. I have my AAA card and my cell phone. I also have no doubt that help will be there if I need it.

Maybe, in truth, I’ve just been lucky. Maybe I live and travel in a part of the country where it’s still safe to assume someone who stops along the road is there as a rescuer rather than a predator. Maybe I’m naïve. But over the years I’ve been blessed repeatedly by the kindness of strangers—usually, guys in pickups—who took the time to stop.

Categories: Living Consciously | 1 Comment

Just Another Family Jam Session

Posted on August 3, 2007 by Kathleen Fox

On my kitchen counter right now is a quadruple row of glass jars, each one filled with either chokecherry jelly or chokecherry syrup that gleams a deep magenta in the morning sunlight. The sight of them is pleasing because of the rich color, and even more pleasing because of the satisfaction of having helped produce them.

My daughter and I spent a hot afternoon this week making jelly—the first time either of us had ever tried it. Even though neither of us will ever be confused with domestic goddesses, our enterprise was a success. Well, okay, there was that the one batch that boiled over and filled the kitchen with the smell of burning syrup. And there was that little flurry of frantic activity as we tried to figure out how to get the jars out of the big canning kettle of boiling water without scalding ourselves—not to mention the embarrassment of realizing that the rack holding the jars had handles so all we had to do was lift out the whole thing. Then, of course, there were all those splashes of magenta that added such delightful color accents to the countertops, the stove, the floor, the refrigerator, and half a dozen dish towels.

Still, we produced 30 jars of jelly and 10 jars of pancake syrup, all of which turned out just fine, thank you, as far as we can tell. We had so much fun we didn’t even notice that the temperature in the kitchen was 91 degrees. We enjoyed spending that time together, especially because we weren’t alone. This wasn’t a two-generation project; it was a four-generation one.

We had help from Uncle Ernie’s recipe in the family cookbook, complete with the story of the first time he made chokecherry jelly. He died several years ago, but his recipe not only provides helpful details about filling jars and turning them upside down, but it brings back his voice.

We had help from my mother, our consultant-by-phone, who verified that yes, Uncle Ernie’s recipe was the same one she uses. She added useful advice about how long to boil the syrup and that it was done when the bubbles were the size of fifty-cent pieces—advice she was passing along from her mother. When we called the second time, worried because only two of our first dozen jars had sealed, she reassured us that they would seal as they cooled. Sure enough, a few minutes later we began to hear satisfying little metallic hiccups from one jar after another, and before long every one was sealed just the way it should be.

We had the legacy of help and advice from my grandmother, too. After all, my mother and Uncle Ernie had to get their jelly-making skills from somewhere. As we washed jars and cooked syrup and dirtied every large kettle we had, I thought about both my grandmothers. When they made jelly and canned produce from their gardens, they weren’t doing it for fun. They were doing it to help feed their families over the winter. In the early years, they worked with stoves fueled by coal or corn cobs, water hauled from wells several miles away, and no electricity even to run a fan to cool the sweltering kitchen.

Our process was certainly easier. Still, I imagine they shared some of the same satisfaction we felt when everything was done and the neat rows of full jars filled the counter. It was almost as if the previous generations were there in the kitchen with us.

Almost. Thankfully, they weren’t really there. They would have laughed at our inefficient, amateurish efforts. But I bet they would have enjoyed the jelly, all the same.