PattJackson.com

It irritates me no end to find interesting blogs where the last post was in 2009, and no word about where that person ended up. It’s like having a good friend move away during the night, and not tell you where she’s gone. (Not that that’s ever happened to me, of course. But I digress.)

All that snow shown in my last post? ’tis but a memory.

Meanwhile, I have been busy with stuff like work, auctions, volunteering, and “Modern Family.” So you can see where a lot of time gets eaten up. Time that a gal could use constructively, unless the gal is someone who occasionally makes bad choices.

So! All this to say: I’ll be back soon. I’ll be writing about auctions or hospice work or maybe both of those or none, and I hope to get it done this weekend. But I haven’t disappeared. Hope your lives are going swimmingly!

We copywriters eschew the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes when you’re feeling kinda lazy and there is something spectacular right outside your door, you just gotta bite the bullet.

Winter came late to the party in Minnesota, but it’s been having a blast. Take a look!

The front of the house. Thank goodness for strong teenage boys who enjoy shoveling. Or maybe it’s the money they enjoy. Whichever it is, I don’t care. I’m just happy I’m not the one doing it.

Here’s my former lovely winter flower pot. It’s taken a beating:

It’s easy to lose white cars in a snow storm, too.

And here’s the view from the back deck. (Not that I have a front deck, but you know what I mean…)

So we have our work cut out for us. We’ve needed the snow and most of us are glad it’s here, but geez… enough already.

And PS: Don’t forget to feed the birds!

“You may be a redneck if you are currently attending sixth grade on the GI Bill,” is a line that always pops into my head when I see someone doing something that doesn’t seem very bright.

Me, for instance.

After my car would not start the other night, I found myself standing out in the nearly-empty parking lot after work on a frigid (-26 degrees) evening, looking under the hood at a cheap and now dead battery stamped September 2009, wondering why I hadn’t noticed it earlier, as I have been driving this particular car since late summer.

Stunned by its newness all these weeks, blinded by it’s lovely red coat, I neglected something important, like checking the condition of a battery that might have to see me through a Minnesota winter. I waited for one of the coldest nights of the year to discover it wouldn’t even see me home.

Not too bright. I admit it.

I figure I’ve proven many times over that I am just about bright enough to be hazardous to my own well-being. Let’s just say foresightedness is not my strong suit.

Chivalry is not dead, as it happens, but by the time people showed up to help, I had already called a tow truck, who got it started right away and advised me to let it run for at least half an hour before shutting it off. Which I did. 47 minutes, to be precise.

And so imagine my surprise this morning when I was happily planning to pick up my sister in Gordon and drive to an auction in rural Wisconsin, when I turned the key and heard that dreadful click click click.

The second tow truck driver was equally friendly as the first, and cheerful, given the chill in the air and the fact that I hadn’t backed into the garage, which a brighter person may have done, considering the events of the night before. (See paragraph five.)

“College battery,” he said. “We call them ‘May Starts.’”

Not my battery, though it was probably on its way.

Another battery jump and a trip to a service station for a new battery, and I was on my way to meet my sister, who by now had driven herself to the auction and was already bidding on stuff. And so I arrived, a few hours later than I’d planned, a bit poorer, but by now better equipped for cold weather. Lesson learned. The hard way.

Giving credit where credit is due, because I so adore people who do what they say they’ll do: My thanks to Thompson’s Express on 27th Avenue West (unfailingly cheerful service every time I go there) and K/J Auto Service at the top of Woodland Avenue. Good fellas. (But not in that “I’m gonna smash your kneecaps” kind of way.)

But oh, the auction! I almost forgot.

My sister Kim and her hubby are avid auction attendees. They sometimes allow me to tag along. It’s hard for me to keep up with the action, since I’m always afraid I’ll bid against myself (see paragraph 5) and so it’s that rare instance when I get to tell people my sister Kim will do my bidding.

Not OUR auction, but could have been. I kept my camera in my purse. Its battery was charged, I hasten to add.

Farm and rural auctions are not the hoity-toity places where scratching your nose will cost you $1,000. They are social events, casual and fun, great for people watching, and (for me) filled with high humor. If you bid on something by mistake, or you bid and then change your mind, you can just say say, and the sale moves on without you, no harm done.

There are a lot of men at auctions. A lot.

Also, they usually sell things like chocolate cake, hot dogs and Coke.

How can this not be a fun day?

My sister is a serious bidder, undaunted by my nattering about dead batteries, chipped fingernails and friendly men, and she ended up with lots of very cool stuff today. While she was hauling treasures out to her car, I bought two turn-of-the-century toasters and an old coffee pot for $2. Not by bidding, but because the auctioneer stared at me until I said “Sure!” which is how we bid for ourselves in Duluth. “Sure! I’ll take ‘em!”

They’re pretty. And I do love old kitchen appliances. But that’s another story for another day.

Here are people you would have recognized at the auction: Santa Claus (who has trimmed down since December) and Wild Bill Hickok. You might think they have similar attributes, but I tell you the are two separate men, and they were both there. I had my camera with me, but I didn’t think it would be polite to take photos of them. Wild Bill looked at me once, and I think he was saying “If you won’t go to Deadwood, Deadwood will come to you.”

Sadly, I did not see Calamity Jane, though I did see a calamity between a husband and wife, which sort of surprised me in its decibel level. But hey: been there.

Well, that is my story of car batteries and farm auctions. I spent $2 at the auction, and well over $200 just getting there.

Not too shabby.

And not too bright.

So I was in the grocery store the other night (one of my favorite things to do) when a bunch of food mysteries crossed my mind. A few nights before, I had prepared some citrusy chicken wings for dinner, and they were delicious, but they were enormous. It made me think about the rest of the chicken. It made me think of chickens in general. How do they get so big? What kind of miserable, fast lives do they have to live to produce enormous wings that someone will throw under the broiler a few days later and then forget about? Where do these chickens come from? Some kind of Giant Chicken ranch?

I promise I will not begin any sentence with “When I was a kid.” But years ago (when I was not an adult) chicken was smaller, and chicken was tastier. No matter where I shop these days, and no matter how I prepare it, chicken tastes plasticky to me. It is not the chicken I remember. It is twice the size of chickens I remember, but that’s probably because American dinner plates are now the size of what my mom used to call a “platter.”

This is not my mom, but it's probably how she'd look if she wore glasses and if she happened to see the size of dinner plates in 2012.

Speaking of chicken, did you know there are about 75 varieties of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup? I didn’t, either, because I don’t eat canned soup and I don’t buy cereal, so those aisles are largely foreign territory for me. But I had a coupon for 4 cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup which I was going to donate to the food shelf. Naturally I became dazed and confused trying to find them, and of course picked up four cans of the wrong stuff, and then had to hold up my grocery line while I ran back for the right ones. (I know. I hate when someone else does that, so I apologize to everyone in that line who had better things to do with their time than to wait for me. I saw you rolling your eyes, but I forgive you. Been there.)

There is Homestyle Chicken Noodle, Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle, Chicken Noodle with Vegetables, Healthy Choice Chicken Noodle, Low Sodium Chicken Noodle… God. I thought of simply running out of the store, but I figured security would be all over that. So I get back to the counter, breathlessly apologize to everyone, and leave with my (probably 15 cent) savings. Mission accomplished.

When the clerk told me I’d picked up the wrong cans, I thought about just buying them to be done, until she told me they were $1.55. Apiece. That would be about $6 for four cans of sodium-enriched plasticky soup. Who buys that stuff? For $6 you could buy an entire (again, plasticky and genetically enlarged) chicken, roast the thing for two dinners and still have parts left to make your own soup. Tasty chicken soup, too.

Meanwhile, down the meat and poultry displays, I am saddened to relate that you can no longer buy a pork or beef roast with a lot of marbling in it. You know what marbling is, of course… it’s fat. It’s the stuff that tastes good. It’s the stuff that makes roasts juicy and tender, taking you back to winter dinners at your aunt Kay’s house. (Okay, MY aunt Kay.) The reason we can no longer buy these is that the public demands less fat in their cuts of meat, and farmers have responded, and the resulting product is generally dry and stringy. I weep for a 1950 pork roast.

Yeah. I don't know, either.

In the produce department, I have to wonder what’s happened to lemons over the years. I remember those small pretty yellow lemons that had thin skins and you could squeeze juice out of them. Remember? Maybe it’s just where I shop, but I can’t seem to find them anymore. The lemons I find these days are huge, with pebbly skins that are about half an inch thick, and the lemon itself is dry once you finally get to it. Where are the good lemons?

Oh, pretty juicy lemons ... how I miss you!

Limes seem to have been spared this fate. You can still buy good limes.

Whew! That was close.

Can you even buy yellow grapefruit anymore? The pink ones are good; juicy and sweet, but where are the tart yellow ones? Did America give up on those, too?

(Where was I when this vote was taking place?)

I can remember when you could buy celery that came with a thick rubber band around it, and I remember when each piece of fruit did not have to have a sticker on it.

Yeah, that’s how old I am.

And really: do we need that many brands of cereal? Cereal at my store takes up both sides of an entire aisle, except for Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal, which is found in the health food section. What does that tell ya? (“Yeah, we know this is all sugary non-food crap, but the kids seem to like it….”)

Do I need to start shopping elsewhere?

Those are my grocery store gripes for this week. Do you have any? Dish, she said, keeping with the food theme.

That's the kind of crop circle I'd like to leave.

Last January 27, I wrote a list of words and phrases that drove me crazy. I should know how to make links, but I’m too lazy to figure it out tonight while my brain is on fire. Find it here, I think: http://www.pattjackson.com/2011/01/stop-saying-that

After careful review, I realize they still do make me crazy, though I hear them less and less. (Imagine the feeling of power!)

Anyhoo, I read Lake Superior State College’s list of words we should banish for 2012, and I agree with most of them, although I still think “occupy” is a viable word; I’ve never heard anyone say “trickeration,” and I don’t think “amazing” is quite as overused as the one that starts my list. Please stop saying these things immediately:

“Awesome.” This still tops my list of words that can make my brain hurt. Having soup for lunch is not awesome. Seeing snow or rain outside is not awesome. The second coming of Christ… That would be awesome. Save that word for then!

“Bucket List.” Probably cute for a movie title, but if there are things you want to do before you die, go do them. Don’t make movie titles a part of your daily speech. Use your brain and live longer.

“Push back (or push up) the date.” Maybe it’s just me, but I never understood that phrase. If you push back a meeting, doesn’t that mean you’ll meet in July instead of June? Or is it the other way around? It’s a confusing term. Let’s never use it again.

“No problem.” This is not an appropriate response to “Thank you,” though it’s a lot better than “whatever,” which is also dismissive and tends to stop you in your tracks. When someone says “Thank you,” the correct response is “You’re welcome.” We learned it as children. It still pertains!

“Nazi,” when applied to anything but an actual Nazi, is really a terrible word. Despite Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, it is not humorous to call anyone a Nazi, and if you can’t figure out why, look up the historical meaning. Being strict about something doesn’t make you a Nazi.

“Beautiful inside and out.” When I hear this expression used to describe anyone, I cringe. I can only imagine body parts like livers, lungs, stomach linings and intestines. I don’t know what you look like inside, and frankly, I don’t want to. You may have a wonderful personality (and face to match) but what you look like inside is something I don’t want to know.

“Preheat oven,” which I may have used in some of my recipes, though it is a confusing phrase. Pre-heat it? Heat it before what? Heat it before you heat it? If you heat your oven to 350 degrees before you bake something, isn’t that a heated oven? Why would you pre-heat it? How would you pre-heat it? If you want to bake on Friday, do you pre-heat on Thursday? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

“Suck it.” It pains me to even write this one. “Suck” alone was bad enough, but we had to add the “it,” which makes it 20 times worse. I don’t care how many times we hear this on TV (sorry to note that “Modern Family” took the low road) but it’s just all wrong. Eeeewwwwww.

“Put a fork in me, I’m done.” Thank you, Judge Milian, and everyone else who thinks this is cute. We put forks in things to find out if they ARE done, not to indicate that they are done. Stop saying that. You (Judge M) already look like a nitwit for losing your temper at odd moments. Don’t add to it with unacceptable phrases.

So those are mine. I’m sure there are many more. I probably have a list somewhere, but my desk is piled high with other important notes that I’ll never be able to find when the time comes.Surely you must have a few. Let’s hear them!

A parting thought that reminds me of a door sign I saw as a child, and have never been able to forget:

“If you call when we’re not home,

Leave a note and we’ll atone.”

So leave a note and I’ll atone. Which reminds me… if you haven’t seen “Atonement,” see it.

But I digress.

Happy New Year!

So today I was stuffing recipes back into my book, and turned over the dog treat recipe, and lo and behold… a recipe for cat treats.  I don’t recall ever seeing it before, in all the years I’ve owned that recipe.

This is where I’d like to borrow a fabulous expression from my witty sister Kim: “Huh.”

Since most of my friends are cat people, I thought I’d add this recipe for holiday treats for the furry ones, though I admit I have neither cooked nor tested these out. But some vet has, so go with that.

Holy Mackerel Treats for Cats

1/2 cup canned mackerel, drained and crumbled

(Like I’d buy a whole can of mackerel for… oops! Guess who’s sitting on the desk?)

1 cup whole grain bread crumbs

1 teaspoon vegetable oil or bacon grease

1 egg, beaten

1/2 teaspoon brewers years (Optional, but it adds fatty acids and B-complex vitamins and can deter fleas, says the vet. I’m not sure Mittens needs anything more to complete her fatty acids, if you get my drift.)

Heat oven to 350. (Just think… if you’re baking the dog treats, the oven’s all ready!) Combine all ingredients; mix well. Drop dough by 1/4 teaspoonfuls about 1″ apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Cool and store in the refrigerator for 3 weeks, or freeze for up to 1 year. (Or six, if you have a memory like mine. Be sure to mark the freezer bag so you don’t end up giving them to a neighbor for Christmas.)

So there ya go!

"She's never cooked for me, but sometimes I lick the butter off her toast when she's reading the newspaper."

"A fellow might like a treat every so often. One that didn't come out of a foil pouch. Know what I mean?"

Happy new year from our house to yours!

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and looking at pictures of incredible people who not only make their own lavish presents, but also make their own paper, ribbons, and probably their own version of Scotch tape. These homes are immaculate, decorated tastefully with fresh pine boughs, silver ribbons and tall goblets of fragile silver bulbs on linen tablecloths with gleaming china.

Seriously?

My house looks something like this. (Not pictured: two cats and three litter boxes):

Okay, it’s not MY house, as you probably guessed since the picture quality is too good, but it’s similar to mine.

Like most of you, I have spent the past few weeks baking, wrapping, entertaining, visiting, buying, shopping, cooking, decorating, writing cards, calling friends, going to work and trying to keep up with volunteer duties. There are no fresh mistletoe boughs, pine sprigs or pretty vegetable and brie trays adorning my dining room table. I can barely find my dining room table.

Several years ago I was a professional house cleaner. I enjoy house cleaning. Chaos makes me crazy. I like to think my house is always ready for company, including food in the freezer and clean sheets in the guest room, just in case.

But during the holiday season, it all goes to hell.

Fresh pine boughs? You have got to be kidding me. The best I could do was five clear Mason jars with citronella tea candles in the sun porch windows. Simple and kinda pretty. And completely mosquito-free!

Still, I love this season. I love writing out cards and catching up with friends and going to visit and having people drop in for coffee. Chaos be damned, it’s a great time of year.

So some time next week, the clutter will be lifted, the house will be cleaned, the cats will have fresh litter in their boxes, and all will be right(er) with the world.

Hope the same can be said for you. Thank you for being a reader this year, even if you’re just lurking. (I do it, too. But maybe leave a note next year? I will if you will.) Thanks for the presents, the cards and notes, the visits and the invites. Thanks for making the world a funner place.

Write if you get a chance.

And have yourself a merry little Christmas!

… Look at the ass on that tomato!

That little joke pops into my brain every time I see a picture of a donkey or a tomato. Years ago when I was a teenager (before electricity) my friend Sue’s dad carried around a little card in his wallet, which he once shared with us. There was a picture of a cow with holes punched in it, and next to that, a large tomato on which stood a donkey. “Holy cow,” Tony said, “look at the ass on that tomato.”

I thought it was high hilarity because I was kind of a dumb kid, and also because I didn’t realize “tomato” might also refer to a woman, which of course changed the entire joke, and made me wonder what was wrong with Tony. But that’s another story for another day.

Another thing that made me think of it was a photo, sent to me by my friend Rick, upon seeing my tomato teapot and salt and pepper shakers. He grew these during his years as a farmer in Maine, and aren’t they wonderful? He saw the correlation and so do I, and I hope you will, too. I mentioned that even though one of the tomatoes looked like a rubber ducky and the other only had one arm, I still loved them and hoped he would send them immediately, though I guess since the photo is dated 1984, they may no longer exist. (“1984: The Big Brother Tomatoes.”) Rick says that is obviously not an arm but a nose, but of course that is incorrect. Anyway, a timely photo, and I wonder what you see?

Speaking of tomatoes and cows, here’s a sort-of recipe for prize winning chili. I know this because I make it all the time, and a few weeks ago I won a prize for it, which I can prove by this photo, in which they made me wear this stupid hat:

I’m not going to list the measurements… part of the fun of chili (and the laziness of the writer) is that you can add and subtract to your own tastes, and the stuff will still be wonderful.

Start with a chuck roast, about 3 pounds. If you think hamburger belongs in chili, you’re on the wrong page, so to speak. Cut the roast up into small chunks, about a half inch by half inch. In a heavy stew pot or dutch oven, brown the beef in some olive oil. Add some onions and chopped garlic. When the beef is browned, add a can or two of tomatoes. (Holy cow! Look at… I’m sorry. I can’t help that automatic connection.)

Cook this concoction for a long long long long time, until the beef is sort of tender. Hours. Perhaps days.

Then, add the other ingredients, like finely chopped celery and carrots, diced green and red peppers, more onions, red and/or kidney beans, and spices that you like. I use cumin, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, garlic powder, and sometimes even an envelope of chili spices that you find in the grocery store, 3 for 99 cents. I add the spices near the end of the cooking so that they don’t cook out. I may be forgetting some ingredient, but it’s nothing “secret,” and you can put whatever you like in your chili.

I always make it at least one day ahead of time, because I think it tastes better when it’s been refrigerated overnight, and the ingredients have time to marinate, or infuse, or whatever that word is. Serve it with grated cheese, sour cream, a few green onions, and some really good bread or rolls on the side.

If you’re taking it somewhere, transfer it to a crock pot and heat it up when you get there. Don’t cook the whole thing in the crock pot, because crock pot food isn’t so good, and that would change the whole beautiful texture of this stuff.

Honestly, it’s great. Would I have this apron if it didn’t mean something?

No, sir.

I wouldn’t steer you wrong.

“Steer.” Get it?

Look what’s happening at my house!