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.
