Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

Intuitive Cooking

Posted on June 23, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

A few years ago my extended family compiled a cookbook. It has some wonderful recipes in it. None of them are mine.

It isn’t that I didn’t want to participate. I did. I fully intended to include my recipe for whole wheat bread, which is my sole claim to any type of culinary fame.

I started writing it down. The list of ingredients wasn’t so bad. But then I felt the need to explain. If you choose, you can omit the salt. You can leave out the sugar, which surprisingly makes the bread rise more evenly. Then it’s even better for you than regular whole wheat bread, at least if you ignore the inconvenient fact that you’ll need to put twice as much jelly on it. If you have some leftover mashed potatoes handy, you can throw those in. You can make cinnamon rolls or cheese bread or French loaves or buns. You can set the oven temperature at 350 or 400 degrees, depending on how you prefer your bread crust.

By the time I had discussed half the possible alternatives, I was up to several pages and had written more than 600 words. I decided the world just wasn’t ready for cooking instructions from me.

This effort wasn’t a total failure. It helped me understand why I rarely use recipes. It isn’t that I don’t cook. I’ve put regular family meals on the table for years. Complaints have been minimal, and nobody has died yet. For most of those years, though, my recipe books have sat patiently in the cupboard, their pages crisp and unstained.

On the rare occasions when I do consult a recipe, I almost never follow it precisely. I would like to believe this shows my creativity and ingenuity. In truth, though, the more likely cause is simply that I hate being told what to do. There are those who consider recipes to be straightforward sets of instructions. I tend to regard them as mere suggestions.

To some, this approach might seem like laziness, sloppiness, or just being contrary. I prefer to think of it as Intuitive Cooking. This approach is filled with alternatives. To me, at least, these are always perfectly logical options. You don’t have any nutmeg for the zucchini bread? Cinnamon will do, or maybe cloves. Or dump in a little bit of leftover cranberry sauce. There’s no celery in the fridge for the chicken salad? Use green pepper instead, or snow peas, or cucumber slices. Green and crunchy is green and crunchy, after all.

Measuring is useful in many cases—and it’s always wise to distinguish your tsps from your Tbsps—but there’s no need to get compulsive about it. A little salt poured into your cupped palm or a glug of vanilla is close enough to a teaspoonful; a cup of sugar doesn’t have to be smoothed off on the top; and if the recipe calls for a cup of milk and you only have half a cup, fill it up with water and pretend it’s skim milk. In defense of such approximating, I simply point out that it’s impossible to precisely measure an egg.

Does this laid-back cooking style work? Certainly. Well, almost always. Okay, most of the time. After a few years of practice, it’s only occasionally necessary to fall back on the Intuitive Cook’s all-purpose explanation: "Maybe it looks a little funny, but it’ll taste good."

Categories: Just For Fun | 1 Comment

Happy Father’s Day

Posted on June 15, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

My parents visited me for a couple of days recently because my dad had appointments with the cardiologist. They are in their early 80s, with some health problems but still active, capable, and very much themselves. They still live on the farm where I grew up.

We had a good time while they were here, and for some reason I was reminded of a time years ago when I visited them. It was not long after I had moved to Rapid City, and my two kids were still young. This was in the early spring, probably at Easter.

The night before we were to leave for home, there was a heavy rain. The next morning I had to drive five miles of gravel road to get to the highway. This is in the south central part of the state, where mud is real mud—heavy, sticky gumbo. It builds up on your boots till you’re six inches taller and walking like John Wayne wearing Ginger Rogers’ high heels. When it dries, you have to chip it off with a chisel. Once my sister and brother-in-law got thoroughly stuck in my parents’ lane. A year or so later, they had some work done on the car and the mechanic had it up on the hoist. He asked them, "What’s that stuff stuck under here? Concrete?"

This was what I had to drive through. There was gravel on top of it, but I knew if I slipped off onto the shoulder of the road I would be in real trouble. I was a little worried about getting through with my little Datsun station wagon, but I loaded the kids into the car and started out. We slipped and slid a few times, but we made it.

After I got home, I called to let my parents know we had gotten home with no problems. My father happened to answer the phone. I said I hadn’t had any trouble getting through the mud. He chuckled and said, "You didn’t know you had a guardian angel following you, did you?"

After I left, he had gotten into the pickup and driven a half mile behind me all the way to the highway, just in case I slid off the road and needed some help.

My dad is not someone who says, "I love you." He doesn’t fuss or get emotional. Yet what he did that day said, "I love you," as clearly as if he had shouted it.

More clearly, in fact. He could have told us goodbye with big, warm hugs and said, "I love you"—and then stayed comfortably in the warm house with another cup of coffee. Instead, he put on his coveralls, went out to the pickup, and drove five miles through the mud to the highway and five miles back. He was there behind me just in case I needed him.

Last week, while my parents were here, I took them to the doctor’s office and the other places they wanted to go. They can get to my house with no trouble, but they aren’t comfortable driving in city traffic any more than they have to. The morning they were to leave, I drove my car to the clinic and they followed me. When my dad had seen the doctor, they started for home. It’s easy enough to find the way—straight up Fifth Street, all the way through town to the interstate. I knew they wouldn’t have any trouble.

Still, when they pulled out of the parking lot, I waited a minute or two and then pulled out behind them. Staying back far enough so they wouldn’t notice me, I followed them part way through town, until I knew they were well on their way to the highway.
It really wasn’t necessary, but it felt like the right thing to do. I was there behind them just in case they needed me.

That’s just a little something I learned from my dad.

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How Many Bikers Does It Take to Get to North Dakota?

Posted on June 8, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

Logic Problem: Thirteen people, on five motorcycles followed by two cars, are traveling from South Dakota to North Dakota. A sleeping bag on the fourth bike in line comes unfastened and falls off. The rider on the fifth bike hits it, and it pops loose the spring on his kickstand.

Question: How many members of the group does it take to fix this problem?

The Math: One to pick up the offending sleeping bag and stash it in a car. One to gouge open his hand on the kickstand spring. Two to pick up the bike after it tips over. One to hold the bike upright. One to walk along the shoulder of the highway looking for a piece of wire to tie up the kickstand. One to find some rope in the trunk of a car for the same purpose. One to get a water bottle and wash blood off both biker and bike. One to provide tissues for drying the wound. One to find the first-aid kit and apply bandages. Six to offer sympathy and moral support. Two to take pictures. One—at the end of the trip—to figure out that if you pull the kickstand all the way up it relieves the tension on the spring enough so you can easily replace the spring with one hand.

Answer: Nineteen. If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s probably because you weren’t there.

I’ve never made a road trip with bikers before. If you want to get really technical about it, I still haven’t, since I was among those in a car instead of on a motorcycle. I did, however, learn several things about traveling on a motorcycle.

For one thing, you don’t just hop on the bike and head down the road. You check such things as the tire pressure. You put on your protective chaps and jacket. You check to make sure all your gear is securely tied on or locked in its proper compartment. You put on your helmet. You lift the bike off its kickstand. You climb on. Then you head out. It’s a bit like traveling in a small airplane—you do all the safety checks first, every time, because they matter.

The other thing I learned is that, on a motorcycle, the journey matters more than the destination. Having someplace to go is just an excuse to get out on the road. Riding is the whole point. (That, and stopping at every place between Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and Belfield, North Dakota, where it’s possible to buy ice cream. There are more such places than you might think.)

We did, by the way, also enjoy the destination—Medora, in the North Dakota Badlands. Teddy Roosevelt ranched here for several years in the 1880’s. His neighbor the Marquis de Mores founded the town (named for his wife), built a packing plant and a hunting lodge, and lost a fortune trying to ship processed beef east and west. The museums are interesting, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is spectacular, the people are friendly, and the Medora Musical is terrific entertainment. It’s a great place to visit—even if you don’t have a chance to get there on a motorcycle.

Categories: Travel | 3 Comments

Don’t Look Back—It Might Be Gaining on You

Posted on June 1, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

One evening several years ago, I had to make a quick trip to the grocery store. I hurried out of the house, got into my station wagon that was parked in the dark driveway, and started the car. As I glanced over my shoulder to start backing up, two dark shapes leaped up from the darkness behind the back seat.

They shouted “Boo!” I screeched. When my heart had stopped racing and I was able to breathe again, I explained calmly and reasonably to my daughter and stepdaughter that if they ever did that to me again I would ground them and take away their allowances until they were 85.

They apologized. They really didn’t intend to frighten me into a heart attack. They didn’t know their prank had triggered a fear I had had since I was much younger than they were. When I was a little kid I was afraid of the dark. Not the dark itself, really, but all the nameless, formless Things that might be hidden in it.

I remember on summer evenings, especially when cousins were visiting, we kids would play outside after supper. The sun would go down, and the twilight would begin to deepen into dusk. The change happened so gradually that we scarcely noticed the darkness. Eventually, though, someone would turn on the yard light. Suddenly our arena for play narrowed to the spotlighted stage between the yard light and the house. Beyond the circle of light lay an ominous dark territory where we didn’t dare trespass.

Even that wasn’t so bad; as long as there were several of us, there was safety in numbers. The experience that was truly frightening was one I sometimes had to do all by myself—going out in the dusk to shut the door to the chicken coop.

Every spring my mother would buy a couple of hundred baby chicks. They were kept in a brooder coop out by the well, quite a long way from the house. At first, when they were cute yellow balls of fluff, they were kept shut up with heat lamps to keep them warm. As they got older, though, turning into homely adolescents with scraggly feathers and meager combs, they were turned outside during the day. As it started to get dark, they would head back into the coop to roost. Somebody had to go out and close the door, to protect them from marauding skunks, civet cats, and raccoons. Too often for comfort, that somebody was me.

This wasn’t so bad as long as it wasn’t quite dark yet. But on those nights when full darkness had fallen, this chore turned into a task straight out of a Boris Karloff movie.

Getting to the chicken coop meant making a long walk parallel to a strip of trees that served as a windbreak. In the daytime they were perfectly ordinary rows of Chinese elms. After dark, though, they turned into looming, menacing shapes capable of hiding anything from lions to tigers to bears.

I never knew whether taking a flashlight made things better or worse. True, using one meant I could see where I was going. But it also advertised my presence to whatever might be out there in the dark. It felt as if that bobbing circle of light was a beacon announcing, “Hey, guys—she’s right over here! Come and get it!”

The trip out to the chicken coop, one breathless step at a time away from the shelter of the house, was scary enough. I would finally get there, close the door on the murmuring birds, and latch it. Now came the worst part of the journey, the return. It meant turning my back on the menacing darkness and everything lurking in it.

I could see the lighted windows of the house, which seemed an impossibly long distance away. They represented safety. The challenge was to get there.

I’d start walking, carefully so I wouldn’t trip over anything in the dark, quietly so nothing would notice me. At this stage, I never ran. Running only made it worse, because it felt as if whatever was behind me was getting closer and closer, and if I tripped and fell it would get me for sure. But as I walked, I kept moving a little faster and a little faster. Past the looming dark shape that in the daytime was the combine. Past the old machine shed and the car bodies behind it where anything might be hiding. Past the first granary. Past the second one. Past the tool shed. By now I was almost to safety. Probably they weren’t going to get me this time.

And now I was onto the packed dirt closer to the house and I could start running—faster and faster, past the yard light, past the car and the pickup, through the gate, into the yard, up the steps, through the porch, and into the light and safety of the kitchen, panting and out of breath. But safe.

Until the next time.

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Chicken Fingers

Posted on May 25, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

I was at a fast food restaurant yesterday and encountered something almost too horrible to write about.

On the menu were three different salads. Signs on the counter listed their ingredients—in large print, right out there for everyone to read, even small children. Two of those salads featured "chopped chicken fingers!"

It’s not that I’m a chicken lover, by any means. I don’t even like chickens (as a species, I mean; they’re perfectly acceptable when broiled, roasted, fried, or fricasseed). In my opinion, they’re both mean and stupid, and I’ve neither forgotten nor forgiven all the times as a child that I was pecked on my scrawny little arms when I was trying to gather eggs.

But be that as it may, this kind of brutality is too much, even for chickens. Just imagine those poor birds, squawking in helpless terror while their little fingers are chopped right off. It isn’t just the immediate pain of that experience, either. What kinds of lives can they possibly have afterward? They can’t type, or play the piano, or use their cell phones, or even tie their own shoes. Most of them wouldn’t be able to work, of course. Think about the cost to society of supporting all those fingerless chickens.

Wendy’s was sued for millions by a couple of wannabe con artists merely pretending to have found a chopped human finger in their chili. Yet this other restaurant can get by, not only with using chopped chicken fingers on a regular basis, but with blatantly advertising the fact.

Where is the outrage? Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this horrific abuse? Where are the PETA protesters when you need them?

It’s a harsh world we live in, where innocent birds can be tortured in this way, and no one seems to care. The compassion for these poor victims seems to be as scarce as—well, as hen’s teeth.

"Scarce as hen’s teeth," by the way, is a really old expression that comes from the fact that hens don’t have any teeth. They swallow their food whole and grind it up in their gizzards. That’s because they’re birds, of course. With feathers. And two feet. And wings—instead of arms, and hands, and, um, fingers.
Oh.

Never mind.

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Here Lies Fido

Posted on May 19, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

My town’s daily newspaper is now inviting the publication of obituaries—for pets. We do not live in Boulder, Berkeley, San Francisco, or some other community where New Age is old hat and people who have pets are considered "guardians" rather than "owners." This is South Dakota, for Pete’s sake. Farming and ranching still hold a sizeable place in the economy, and most of us still eat meat with relish (with ketchup or steak sauce, actually) and a clear conscience.

I suppose I should be grateful that these "pet tributes" are being solicited as paid inserts in the classified section. The obituary page, thankfully, is still—so far—reserved for human beings.

Of course, there is a bright side here. The obituary page has traditionally been the training ground for entry-level journalists. Pet obits could add a new level for those novices—the sub-basement, as it were. If I wanted to break into the newspaper business, I might aim for that level by submitting some sample tributes such as the following.

Rex, Labrador retriever, age three. His greatest love in life was fast cars. Unfortunately, he finally caught one.

H.D., border collie, age six. He rode to his first Sturgis Rally on the back of a motorcycle when he was just a pup. At what would turn out to be his last Rally, he learned that it’s not a good idea to try to herd Hell’s Angels.

Corky, golden retriever, age eight. He loved walking in the rain. He learned too late that it was a mistake to leave his mark on a fire hydrant during a thunderstorm.

Ringo, blue heeler, age ten. He spent his whole working life as chief cow dog of the K Bar J ranch and was dedicated to the cattle business. He never would have sunk low enough to kill a sheep. The only wool he ever got in his teeth came from chasing one of them mangy little cocklebur collectors out of his pasture. He died a hero, and the sheep-shearing SOB who shot him had better be watching his back.

Fluffy, gerbil, age 18 months. She had the heart and soul of a great explorer. Her last expedition took her inside the wall of the family room. Our memories of Fluffy will last forever—or at least until the smell goes away.

Madame Pomp-Adore, toy poodle, age two. She was a little sweetheart who spent her short life bringing pleasure to others. This was true even in her last moments; witnesses saw a look of great satisfaction on the face of the mountain lion that ate her.

Long John, boa constrictor, age unknown. Poor John ended his life by means of a hangman’s noose made from his own tail. He was assumed to be despondent because his fellow stage performer for more than 40 years, Ms. Boom-Boom LaDouce, had announced her retirement from show business.

Okay, this may not be great journalism, but even Woodward and Bernstein had to start somewhere. At least one thing is clear—there’s nowhere to go but up. Today, pet obits. Tomorrow, a Pulitzer.

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The Magic Card In My Wallet

Posted on May 11, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

One of the many credit card commercials on television asks the question, “What’s in your wallet?”

Their card—whichever one it might be—isn’t what I carry in my wallet. What I do have there is a card that’s much more valuable to me than any MasterCard, Visa, or American Express. It is my library card.

One of the things I enjoy most in the world is learning. I love finding out useless but fascinating bits of information. A common phrase at my house is, “We’ll have to look it up.” And, despite the convenience of the Internet, the best place to look things up is still the library.

I don’t remember when I got my first library card, but I have been a bookworm since kindergarten. I remember childhood trips to the Tripp County Library in Winner, which was on the third floor of the county courthouse. As I remember it, going to the library meant going past another courthouse institution—the county jail.

By the time I was in high school, I had access to other libraries. Almost every Wednesday after school I headed for the Gregory public library. Mrs. McMeen always gave me a warm welcome. She even let me take books from the adult shelves that she wouldn’t have checked out to other high school kids.

I also remember the high school library, the domain of Mrs. Gerard. You often hear writers talk about teachers who influenced them. You may be expecting a heartwarming story here about Mrs. Gerard recommending books or encouraging me to write. I hate to disappoint you, but that’s not why I remember Mrs. Gerard.

She seemed to think her mission in life was to protect the library books from anyone who might want to actually use them. She would go through lockers in search of overdue books and take them back to the library. Sometimes, the story went, she would take books that weren’t even due yet. She evicted students from the library for whispering, laughing, coughing, or sometimes merely breathing. I was scared to death of her. She was the reason I, the book addict and library lover, never once during four years of high school ever checked a book out of the school library.

Thank goodness Mrs. Gerard, as a librarian, was the exception rather than the rule. In all my years of hanging out in libraries, she is the only librarian I can remember who was less than helpful. The rest of them were far more like Mrs. McMeen.

In fact, librarians as a group are so well regarded that they even have their own action figure. It’s modeled after a real librarian from Seattle named Nancy Pearl. The figure is a middle-aged woman in a conservative suit, and when you push a button she puts her finger to her lips to say, “Shhhh.”

Some librarians don’t appreciate what they see as a stereotype. Others take the doll less seriously and think she pokes fun at the stereotype. I don’t mind the shushing, because one of the things I value about libraries is their air of quiet busyness. Still, I would have designed the librarian action figure a little differently. When you pushed the button, she would hold out a library card and give you a big, welcoming smile.

Libraries have changed a great deal since the first time I checked out a book. Card catalogs have been replaced by computers, there are shelves full of videos and CDs as well as books, and there is access to the Internet. One thing hasn’t changed, though. A library is still a doorway to information—and the key to that doorway is the library card.

That card is an admission to entertainment and information, recreation and research. It’s all I need to access a priceless pool of knowledge from all over the world. That’s why the most important piece of plastic in my wallet is my library card.

Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Is It Hiking, or Is It Geology?

Posted on May 5, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

Spring. The time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of—rocks, if he’s a geologist.

Actually, that isn’t quite true. Geologists think about rocks all year around. The difference is that spring is the time they can start to go out into the field again to examine the rocks that have been covered with snow all winter.

Living with a geologist, one would think, means lots of opportunities to go hiking. It does. That’s the good news. Those opportunities involve geologic hiking rather than ordinary hiking. That (to a non-geologist) is the bad news.

Because, you see, when geologists are out in the field they aren’t just walking around looking at rocks. They’re stopping to examine rocks. They’re pondering. Some of the time, they’re doing geologic mapping. This is to regular hiking what geologic time is to regular time. The pace might be described as glacially slow.

Here is what geologic mapping looks like to a liberal-arts-person observer who has come along on a student field expedition in the naïve belief that exercise will be involved:

You walk a little ways, and you stop and break rocks open with your rock hammer to look at them, and sometimes you check them with your magnet or your hand lens. You discuss them with your working partner (in the case of the students) or with a group of students (in the case of the instructors) or even sometimes (in case no one else is available) with your liberal-arts-person assistant who can’t tell the difference between marble and granite anyway but is too polite to say so. From time to time you take a GPS reading so you know your exact coordinates. You stop frequently to make notes in your field book or to mark things on your map with your colored pencils. Sometimes you sit down to do this—on a rock, naturally.

The map is taped onto a piece of cardboard so the wind won’t blow it away, and quite often the liberal-arts-person assistant gets to carry it.  Sometimes she even gets to carry the rock hammer—though she has an unfortunate tendency to hit herself in the knee with it if she isn’t careful. She has been told that a geology student isn’t allowed to graduate until he (or she, though this practice seems to be more prevalent among male students) has mastered the art of throwing his rock hammer into the air so it spins, then catching it by the handle as it comes down. She admires this skill. She isn’t ever going to try it.

After tagging along on enough expeditions such as these, I’ve learned the difference between geologists and the rest of us. Most of us tend to think of the earth as static. There’s a hill, here’s a stream, there’s a canyon, here’s a piece of prairie; and that’s just the way things are. Geologists, on the other hand, understand that the earth is constantly changing. They know that this high meadow once was the bed of an ancient stream, or those hills once were deep beneath the earth, or that this prairie was once the bottom of an ocean. They understand that the planet is still being shaped and reshaped, so gradually that most of us can’t comprehend it. They have the ability to think in terms of millions and even billions of years.

That, to me, is even more impressive than the ability to catch a spinning rock hammer.

Categories: Wild Things | Leave a comment

The Shady Side of the Family Tree

Posted on April 27, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

Back in the 1930’s, my
partner’s Great-Aunt Margaret made a journey from West Texas back to Arkansas
to search out the family history. Travel was difficult at that time, and she
spent several weeks on the trip, so it was a big project and a considerable
investment of time and money for her. When she got back, everyone was naturally
eager to know what she found out.

Her response? “I’m not going to talk about it—it was just
too awful!” And she never did. Did she discover someone who ran a house of ill
repute? Was there a murderer in the family? A bigamist? Or maybe even a
Presbyterian? The family’s speculations were probably more lurid than the
reality, but nobody knows. Whatever secrets Great-Aunt Margaret uncovered were so
shocking to her that they are still secrets to this day.

Of course, not everyone is shocked to find ancestors who
were less than law-abiding. Some of us would prefer to find a few colorful
characters. They make the family much more interesting—at least as long as they
are several generations back.

Among my ancestors, for example, is a several-times
great-grandfather we always thought of as a mountain man and explorer. An old
picture of him in a buffalo coat and fur cap supported this story. Then my aunt
started researching the family tree.

It turned out that Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather did
start out to participate in the California gold rush in 1850. He got as far as
Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he settled down and started a business that was terribly
mundane—buying excess property from overloaded immigrants. Later he was one of
the founders of a new town, where he started the first school, was the first
postmaster, served as a prosecuting attorney, and was in general
disappointingly respectable. My father said one day, “You know, I liked him
better when I thought he was about half a horse thief.”

Tracking down ancestors is challenging. It involves tedious
digging through archives, census records, church records, court records, and
newspaper files. It requires laborious deciphering of faded old records—when
you are able to find them. The frustrating reality is that sometimes it’s just
not possible to find what you’re searching for.

Since finding ancestors can be so difficult, it’s only
reasonable that once we do track them down, we’d want them to be the right
kind. Famous ones, preferably. Infamous ones, as the next best thing.
Unconventional ones, at the very least. A pirate is more exciting than an
admiral. A circuit-riding pioneer preacher is far more gratifying than a
city-bound bishop. A rich great-great uncle who made his fortune in the Yukon
is much more interesting than one who did the same on Wall Street. And even if
our immediate ancestors are ordinary Norwegian farmers, we can laugh at
Norwegian jokes with equanimity, secure in the shadow of the fierce Viking
raiders a few dozen generations further back.

Most of us have our share of ancestors who would embarrass
us horribly if they came to life and showed up at our front doors. As long as
they stay safely removed by three or four generations, though, they’re merely
colorful. Unlike Great-Aunt Margaret, most of us are more than willing to claim
them. Their presence adds a little drama and excitement, even if they are on
the shady side of the family tree.

Categories: Just For Fun | 1 Comment

A Gaggle, a Pride, or a Brag?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Kathleen Fox

If a group of lions is a pride, and a group of geese is a gaggle, what are the names of some other gatherings of unique species? Here are a few:

A group of six-year-old girls is a giggle.

A group of four-year-old boys is a vroom.

A group of 12-year-old girls is a shriek.

A group of grandparents with pictures of grandchildren is a brag.

A group of high-school jocks is a swagger.

A group of uncommunicative teenagers is a shrug.

A group of new members at the gym is a groan.

A group of menopausal women is a flush.

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