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Sunday, August 14, 2016

Jaki Jean on Culinary Nostalgia . . .





The past few days, I have found myself in culinary nostalgia.  I still have not determined why this nostalgia has dominated my thoughts as I compose a meal.

The other day, I had a meal planned with chicken accompanied by steamed yellow squash & a side of fruit for my mother Jean.  Then I remembered a dish with yellow squash that my ex-mother-in-law Willa used to make.

Willa was not a particularly inventive or creative cook.  But what she made well was spectacular.  Almost every weekend my ex & I made the journey to spend time with his parents, Willa prepared a corned beef.

As a young woman who several times refused to eat meat – once when my father cut up a deer in the back yard & another time when he sliced the ham so thick that all I saw was the resemblance to human flesh.

Never before encountering Willa had I ever eaten corned beef.  I had no desire to do so every time she cooked it.  I ate the vegetables & avoided the beef.

One Saturday visit, as Willa’s kitchen was filled with the odor of corned beef, my then father-in-law asked her why she always cooked corned beef, knowing that I did not care for it.

I no longer recall her reply.  But I am convinced that her youngest son liked it & she secretly delighted in taunting me.

Dating back to the first meal I shared in her home.  Served in the kitchen from the stove.  It was not my family scene – everything placed in dishes on the table.  I helped my plate & took my seat.

She was furious.

Aren’t  you going to prepare your fiancé’s plate?

The question was so outside my experience that I replied the only way my not quite twenty year old self knew how to reply.

He is a grown man.  He can prepare his own plate.

Willa made other dishes that still stand out.  Nothing from Thanksgivings except for the fact that she favored cakes over pies & there was always an Italian Cream Cake.

But she knew how to fry shrimp.  I still have the index card with her recipe.

And she made a really easy dish out of yellow squash, involving sautéed onions & garlic & cheddar cheese.

I made Willa’s yellow squash recipe from memory & my mother Jean loved it.

Eventually I learned to appreciate corned beef – not from Willa.  But from my friend Susan Chambless who used Joanne Anderson’s recipe.  Corned beef cooked with garlic, potatoes, onions & carrots – spiced with black, green & white peppercorns.  The cabbage place on top to steam at the last.  And horseradish served on the side.

I have repeated that recipe so many times – something I never would have tried but for the fact that I trusted the culinary talents of Susan Chambless.

Just as I trusted those talents when Susan served me fried dove breasts, held together over a jalapeño strip with a tooth pick.  Served with gravy.

Today I went through the note cards I kept in a recipe box during another incarnation & life.  I found them in a drawer, held together by a rubber band.

I threw out the ones that caused me to think what were you thinking?  

And I ran across Barb Vogt’s recipe for “Cheese Stuffed Zucchini,” written in her own print.  While I remember this recipe fondly, given to me by the wife of my then husband’s best friend, I also remembered the trips to Boerne & Comfort & Sister. 

I remembered standing up as one of Barb & Doug’s honorary god parents for their first child, Brian Douglas.

And then it struck me.

Culinary nostalgia is not only about remembering the experience of flavors.  It is about the memory & reliving sharing with friends & loved ones.  It is about stepping outside the box to try something new.  It is about bringing closure to times that still haunt you.

Tonight, Jean & I will have grilled Swai fillets & Barb Vogt’s “Cheese Stuffed Zucchini” (a recipe I altered a bit & made my own – in my hubris, I always do that) & a salad for me, fruit for Jean. 

I learned something today about culinary nostalgia.  Today I remembered the challenges my husband’s mother presented me, even as she supported me on more than one occasion to continue my education
  

Today I remembered how I learned to cook – from women & men like Susan Chambless.  From hanging around kitchens of friends & absorbing.  And always tasting.







Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Jaki Jean & the Yertle the Turtle that is Donald Trump



To those who know me well, it is no secret that I find this the most baffling election of the past fifty-five years.  Or that I no longer recognize the Republican Party as the party of my father, Jack.  Or that I hold the media & the GOP & millions of American voters responsible for the rise of a blatantly unqualified candidate for the Presidency.

It baffles me how more people voted for Trump in the GOP primaries than any GOP candidate in the primaries from Taft in 1952 to Romney in 2008.   Of course, more people voted against the Trumpster than in every Democrat primary during the same time frame. [i]  That does not baffle me. 

During his candidacy, the Trumpster has tweeted, pontificated & repeated insults to people, places, & things, including “presidential candidates, journalists, news organizations, nations, a Neil Young song & even a lectern in the Oval Office.[ii]

Of course, his inappropriate & most often unfounded insults began years ago, most notably in the 2008 election, when he persisted in questioning Barack Obama’s place of birth & citizenship.  Each time he utters or tweets a new insult, I wonder why his minions of fanatic followers do not question their candidate.

Or why the GOP does not stand up for the Democracy & Republic they claim to serve, & cry out, “This is it.  We will no longer support a candidate who is clearly unfit to lead this country or the free world.”

Trump’s most recent attack on the Gold Star family of fallen American solder, Army Captain Humayun Khan, goes beyond insulting & outrageous – it is obscene & unthinkable in America.  The line should have been drawn months ago, long before The Donald’s latest rants, trying to turn the Khan’s grief & sacrifice into a discussion of “radical Islamic terrorism.”

It has also launched a barrage of conspiracy “theories” in social media.  Khizr Khan has been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, of using his immigration lawyer status to help people applying for E-2 & E-5 visas to buy their way into the U.S., & claims that he is trying to reach a goal of a worldwide caliphate.

The Trumpster, like Yertle the Turtle in Dr. Seuss’s classic was king of his own Universe & pond. 

A nice little pond.  It was clean.  It was neat.
The water was warm.  There was plenty to eat.[iii]

The Trumpster’s turtles had everything turtles might need.  And they were all happy.  Quite happy indeed.



One would suppose that The Donald would be content with continuing to build more golf courses, more buildings emblazoned with TRUMP in gold letters, more resorts.  Content with attaching his name to products produced outside the USA.  But like Yertle the Turtle, the Trumpster was not content with being the king of a kingdom he deemed too small.

I am ruler of all that I see.
But I don’t see enough.

Trumpster decided, just as Yertle decided, to build a higher throne on the backs of his turtles. 

Yertle was content with a larger throne until one of his turtles, plain little turtle Mack, protests as the throne building expansion continued, complaining, as the bottom of the throne, of pain in his back & shoulders & knees.  Yertle’s response is classic Trump.  Just not tweeted.

SILENCE!  the King of the Turtles barked back.
I’m king, and you’re only a turtle named Mack.
You stay in your place while I sit here and rule.



When Yertle wanted to build his throne even higher, the turtles in the pond were afraid, but they came, swimming by dozens.  And

One after another, they climbed up the stack.

The Yertle the Turtle, perched up to his throne in the sky, proclaims:

Ah, me !  What a throne!  What a wonderful chair!
I’m Yertle the Turtle!  Oh, marvelous me!
For I am the ruler of all that I see!

Just as Trump assured his following that he is the cure for everything that ails the United States.

“I am your voice, said Trump. I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order. He did not appeal to prayer, or to God. He did not ask Americans to measure him against their values, or to hold him responsible for living up to them. He did not ask for their help. He asked them to place their faith in him.[iv]

Because the Trumpster loves, believes & promotes his marvelous me.



One lone turtle in Yertle the King’s pond, the same plain little complaining Mack, decided he had taken enough of his King’s abuse & bellowing.  He did a plain little thing:

He burped!
And his burp shook the throne of the king.

Somewhere, within the Republican Party, there must be a plain little voice like Mack the turtle’s, whose protest burp will bring down the web of myth & the throne created by the Trumpster & his turtle followers.  If not in the GOP, then in the media that continuously broadcasts the marvelous me’s antics.  Or in the Democratic opposition, by going out in record numbers during the upcoming election.

As an optimist, I am hoping for a Mack or a voice even stronger to finally say, “NO MORE.”  Or the combined voices of the old guard Republican Party & the newer GOP voices to come to the conclusion that Trumpster the Turtle should return to his own pond for the future & survival of our nation.

That one day very soon we can say:

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud.  That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course . . . all the turtles are free.
As turtles, and, maybe, all creatures should be.

It would be a comfortable & familiar place for the Trumpster.  He has spent the last year in the mud.





[1]   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/08/donald-trump-got-the-most-votes-in-gop-primary-history-a-historic-number-of-people-voted-against-him-too/
[1]  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html
[1] Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories.  Dr. Seuss, 1950.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/trump-rnc-speech-alone-fix-it/492557/[1]  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html