Jake's Fourth Family Food Feature

 

Jake just returned from East Lansing, Michigan, where he attended a week long Club Manager training. He brought us all Michigan State gear, perfect for me, since I was a Richfield Spartan (although not a very enthusiastic one) and my favorite color is green. Upon his return, Jake accompanied us on another trip to the MN Zoo. Maya would go every day if she could. Then, last night, he and Dave went to the Rush concert. He reported that, as usual, it was a predominantly male, white and nerdy, 40-year old-crowd, Geddy attempted to dance, and the music was good. I think Rush concerts are about the only place where men have to wait in line for the bathroom and women don't.

 

The kids are doing well. Maya started gymnastics. First grade is good. Every day, she makes lists of birds and animals, reads about them, looks them up on the computer and draws them. Dylan's playing fall ball. He has games Sept. 29, Oct. 6th, 13th and 14th, if you want to attend. Anna helped a lot while Jake was gone, getting kids off to school and taking our psychotic dogs to the dog park. Her classes are interesting. And she asked me to go to Bob Dylan with her in November. How could I refuse? Kayla's added working out to her 6 day work week plus school regime. She was just sleeping on the couch behind me, but she must have slumped downstairs.  

 

 

 

September article by Jake:

 

Welcome to fall y’all!  I want to thank my staff as well as staff in other departments for a great summer.  We all know that Lafayette Club is a destination spot for all things, especially during the summer months.  The summer of 2012 was one of the busiest in my memory.  Thank you so much for the hard work, diligence, patience, inspiration, creativity and “digging in” to get it all accomplished.  Also, many thanks to the membership for the opportunity to be part of a special place to so many.

I have an admission to make.  I have left something out.  In my past articles I recounted my memories of food, eating and gathering with my family.  There’s a big chunk missing.  My mom.  I only have one page to try and get down 18 years of praise, gratitude and humility.  From about the age of four to the age of 13, my mom raised five kids on her own.  She worked three part-time jobs, year round, to make ends meet.  She was a substitute teacher, she did administrative work for a business person, and she taught piano lessons.  At the time, we kids always felt like we were getting the raw end of the deal.  No sugary breakfast cereal, we never went out to eat (except for birthdays) and we had to eat homemade bread.

Homemade bread in our house was not from a bread maker.  The process usually began on Saturday mornings around 5:00 a.m. (at least that’s what it felt like).  Mom ground her own wheat to make the flour to make the bread.  The grinder was in the basement in the laundry room, next to the room that I shared with my two brothers.  Have you ever ground wheat?  If you haven’t, understand that a helicopter could land in your yard and you wouldn’t hear it.  Sometimes I think she ground the wheat out of parental spite toward a child.  If so, touché, Mom.  The dough was usually proofing on the counter by early afternoon, punched down, re-proofed, formed, baked and cooling by late afternoon.  That was bread for the week.  Looking back, the bread was fantastic.

The wheat that we had in the house (two 30 gallon drums) was also used for breakfast cereal a couple of times a week during the winter.  The night before, the whole wheat would go in the crock pot with water to be slow-cooked.  No kid wakes up and says, “Ooh, yay, whole wheat cereal!”  But once you got some half and half and some brown sugar in the mix, it was pretty dang good.  I still do this from time to time with my kids and get the same reaction out of them.  Hot, whole wheat cereal must be timeless.

My cousin Maureen and her family live a couple miles away and had a huge garden from which we would get bushels and bushels of sweet corn.  We’d spend an afternoon, shucking, boiling, cutting, bagging and freezing.  The best part of freezing corn is eating the “planks” of corn cut from the cob when it’s still hot.  Bags and bags and bags were laid up for the year.  We always had good corn.  We would also pick apples and can applesauce, cooked apples and make apple pies.  One afternoon, Aunt Dorothy came over and we made 30 apple pies.  The dough was made from scratch (using lard instead of butter or Crisco).  We kids had the task of peeling, coring and cutting the apples.  Our hands we purple with “apple rust” when we finished.  Once the pies were done, 15 of them were distributed about the neighborhood to families, friends and even people we didn’t know too well. 

About once a month, Mom would garner the energy on a Sunday night to fix up a treat.  In the summer, it tended to be what we called “scones”.  I think it was a recipe from my grandma who’s Scottish.  Basically it’s dough that you cut into smallish pieces and fry in oil.  Once out of the oil, dab dry with paper towels and roll in sugar.  The only issue with this process was that when we’d find out that Ma was making scones, we’d go tell the neighbor kids.  Pretty soon, there were 10-15 bikes laying down in the yard and a bunch of kids waiting for scones.  We’d sit on the steps with our napkin and blazing hot scones and chow.  It wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening in the summer.

 

Thanks, Mom.