Making Friedcakes

This time of year, our thoughts go back to making friedcakes on the opening day of pheasant season. Back when pheasants were plentiful, hunters in cameoflage jackets and canvas vests lined with pockets to store their bullets, traipsed in and out the back door to sign in on dad’s clipboard. After the hunt, they’d stop back to report in, show off their game, if they'd been lucky, and get a friedcake, warm from the fryer and glazed with frosting. 

Betty Crocker called them cake donuts but Mother called them friedcakes, so friedcakes they were. 

Last year was the first in many that we decided to bring Grandma's old Presto deep fryer up from the basement and continue the tradition. I found Mother's recipe with her penciled-in notes still legible. We were rusty and had a few laughs, but we'll try again this year because it's fun and they are delicious.

If you want the recipe, send me a message and I'd be happy to share it. 

Writing this, I can't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia. What beautiful birds those ringnecks were. Sometimes we hear their truncated chortle, the two-note song, but seldom see them anymore.

What's For Dinner?

I knew something was afoot when he went upstairs in his barn coat. He came back down with a knife that belonged to his father who grew up in Kentucky where shotguns and knives were all a boy knew. A boy who could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a slingshot became a man who went to war in the first wave. He was in a foxhole when the soldier beside him took a bullet to the head, but he aimed over the heads of the enemy and came home with a purple heart. 

The son of that man stepped back into his boots, worked his fingers into his gloves, and with the knife in one hand and a stainless-steel bowl in the other (my mother’s for whipping up cakes), went back outside in the near dark and bracing cold to skin the kill.

 

A big rabbit lived under our garden shed. I saw his tracks in the snow every morning when I let the chickens out. I knew where his entrance was and I knew his comings and goings. His circle of tracks was like a child’s game of fox and goose.

 

A big rabbit once lived under our shed.

For Poets and Storytellers my New Year's resolution is to try new recipes.

Concurrence

Snow fog encases each blade of grass,
each winter’s branch in wispy ice
as the hunter hidden in his blind
rests his weapon on the sill.

The rising sun lifts the fog—

a breath, a pause, a trigger pull.

A rush of wing, a whoosh of air

the ricocheting echo fades.

Steam releases from the kill

and quiet calms the forestland.

This hunting season inspired poem is linked to Earthweal (poetry for a changing world) and their open link weekend.

Patty's Spaghetti

I started this blog many many moons ago at this time of year, hunting season, frost in the air and homemade spaghetti sauce simmering in the pot. I carried it down the road to my parent's house (arms wrapped around the pot for warmth) with gunshots echoing in the woods, but light of foot and heart, to coin a tired phrase.

There is no house down the road anymore, at least not one for me. Hunting season has come and gone. Patty's Spaghetti recipe is tucked away in a book, along with others cut out of the newspaper with handwritten notes: Look Yvonne, sounds good, no?

Tis the losing season, I've often thought, as dark closes in, tighter and tighter, this year especially, though we string lights and put candles in windows. Hopefully we turn the corner soon to a brighter future and less toxic news. Doesn't everyone just want to return to normal?

I hadn't meant for this to turn political but the politics of the day have pitted friend against friend, brother against sister, neighbor against neighbor until it feels like there is no us anymore.

Patty would not approve of the new lapse in decorum, the lack of civility in our national discourse. Hatred is a contagion for which there is no vaccination, but we still have free and fair elections and a new year ahead.

On that uplifting note, we will soon reach winter solstice and celebrate the return of the sun. Oh, and that recipe? Trust me, it is a good one.



 

Anniversary and A Cure

It's my blog's anniverary month! We're four years old. I started this blog back in November, 2008, back when it was deemed essential for an emerging writer to have one, but I was afraid that nobody would want to read about my bulky manuscripts and fledgling attempts at publication, so I wrote my first post about beets.

Pretty funny, eh?  Let me explain. When I'm not writing, I'm gardening, and I know that everyone loves good food. (As George Bernard Shaw said,  "There is no love sincerer than the love of food.") So I thought I would begin by writing about something we can all agree on. My first post was about the tremendous beet harvest of 2008 with a recipe for Rosy Beet Risoto from my sister, Bett. And then I shared my mother's homemade spaghetti sauce recipe, memories of the season triggered by a November gale and gunshots on opening day as I carried a bowl of sauce down the road to her place.

Back when pheasants were plentiful, opening day of hunting season was a main event. We always made friedcakes, using my grandma's deep ol' fryer and an ancient recipe. It was an all-day process, at the end of which the counter would be full of warm friedcakes dripping glaze or coated in sugar and cinnamon. The hunters would report in at the back door, eat friedcakes, and discuss the hunt.

But back to blogging. I moved beyond food, and suddenly one day I had a follower and more than one comment. Who would've guessed? I didn't know there would be such a thing as followers and feedback. Did I say I knew anything about blogging? I knew nothing, but I got braver and posted an excerpt of my writing and a poem or two.  I met other writers and artists, editors and interns. I started to get more than a couple of comments on a post, I dared to offer advice, wrote about writer do's and don'ts, and posted a book review. I shared experience and fessed up to rejections. I received a few blog awards (remember when those things were all the rage?) and passed them on. I had fun. 

Of late, many have questioned bogging and wonder if the pheonomon has run it's course. But I think that as long as people hunger to share ideas, receive advice and get feedback, there will be a reason to blog and interesting people who will do it. Blogging opens lines of communication between people who would never have otherwise met. I love getting a comment from Australia or Europe or Asia, or from someone in the next county. Some months I may only get up 2-3 posts but that's OK.

I began by singing beet praises, so let me end this post with a story about beets. When my grandmother was a young woman (my father just a boy), she because very ill with what was then called Quincy. We now know it as acute tonsillitis. She became so sick, she could barely breathe. Grandfather sent for her sisters to come and help. The distance was great with nothing but a team of horses to ease their journey, but they made the trip and arrived on a blustery winter night and started chopping up beets. They made a beet poultice and wrapped it around her neck in a cheesecloth. They didn't cook the beets; they simply chopped them in a food grinder and wrapped them in cheesecloth. They changed the poultice several times during the night. In the morning she was better.

In closing, I'd like to thank all of you for reading what I write and thank you especially for all your encouraging words. Even if you only drop in ocassionally, that's all any writer could ask. I remember each and every one of you. I thank you for making blogging fun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Keeping Things Pretty - Recommendations and Chaos

I have an award to accept and one to pass on, a couple of reading recommendations, and an observation from farm country on football Sunday.

Jon Paul at Where Sky Meets Ground recently gave me this blog award.

Thanks Jon Paul!

He is participating in NaNo and tearing it up. In fact his progress has been so remarkable he's inspired me to participate in this novel-writing month next year. Check him out and follow if you aren't already. I'm supposed to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers. At this time, I'm passing it on to five, because it takes a lot of thought and time to do awards. I do reserve the right to name my other ten at a later time. Some of these bloggers are new to me while I've been following others for a while, but they all have one thing in common: they've created blogs I return to again and again, which is my definition of a lovely blog.

Zev from Swords Into Plows is a man after my own heart. Check him out and you'll see why.

Jessica Bell at The Alliterative Allomorph is an amazing talent. Plus she sent me her CD all the way from Greece, which is better than a postcard. Thanks Jessica!

Anthony Duce draws and writes and does both exceptionally well. He strives to say a little, but not too much, and somehow he always says it just right. He gives life to the still life and still life to the living.

Ed Pilolla whose recent post "Clothesline" was absolutely brilliant, and I'm not given to gushing.

Pet at Pencil and Box who blogs about things like an amazing yet obscure animated movie based on a story by the late Ted Hughes and because he's well written and pops in on me from time to time. He's from Spain and I like to keep abreast of what's going on over there.

If you aren't already following these five, you're missing out on some worthwhile reading.

Now, for those recommendations: I just finished reading ORYX AND CRAKE" by Margaret Atwood. That novel will make you hate us. Would I recommend it? Well... I read it in just two days. Atwood knows how to grab you by the scruff of your neck, and she doesn’t let go until she’s finished with you. Is it farfetched in its look at the future? I sure hope so. Are there elements of truth already lurking on the horizon? Sure. Enough of them to make you shiver.

On my bed stand now is CUTTING FOR STONE, by Abraham Verghese. I was told by one of my most thorough readers that she thought it the best novel of 2010. She has her own lending library and has never steered me wrong so now I'm steering you. I knew from the first paragraph I would like it. Don't you just love it when that happens?

And, finally, an observation from where I live: It's dark now and the gunshots have receded. It's hunting season, and from dawn to dusk, shots echo through the woods and across the fields. This might strike you as harsh, but it's actually a good thing. The deer are a nuisance, causing numerous car accidents and destroying crops. So far, five have been taken out of the farm, and we're hoping for many more to be harvested. When they start cutting into your income and wrecking your vehicles, it's time for a cull. They have no natural predators as the coyote and cougar are rare and the wolf are gone. Man is their only predator, but fewer and fewer hunting licenses are issued as the younger generation has taken to video games rather than hunting and fishing and outdoor activities. Their interest is gaming indoors, not hunting game in the cold of November.

One more think before I say adieu, one more thing. It's another football Sunday and the NFL is playing patriotic. It seems to be a new theme in sports, hyping the flag and the soldier and the occupation (but not the one in NY). The God Bless Americas, the trumpets, flags, and fly-over formations, Man shed his waste on thee... but something strikes me as false because I can't forget the scene from Thursday playing across America for those who were paying attention. A woman dressed in an overcoat with long hair and a backpack was dragged down the street by police in riot gear. They lost their grip on the backpack and went for the hair. She was dragged away,kicking and screaming and nobody helped. Maybe they were all afraid, unlike the boy who stopped a tank in Tiananmen Square. Dragged through the roadblock, dragged through the cameramen, dragged out of sight. Syria? China? Greece? Some barbaric Third World country? Did you see it? Was it just my imagination?

It's dark and the shots have receded but not the memory.