Worth the Trip

A few years ago when I was surprised by a bumper crop of peachy mama peppers, beautiful apricots-and-cream-colored peppers with all the flavor and none of the heat of habaneros, I found that dehydrating and grinding them produced the most fragrant chili powder imaginable, so wonderful that I find myself sneaking a pinch into almost everything I cook.

I first acquired them from my local CSA, but otherwise the peppers are rare, so much so that the only way I can grow them at all is to save the seeds from the year before. Imagine my disappointment, then, when my pepper seeds were slow to start this spring and still just tiny sprouts by mid-July. I know these tropical fruits are late producing, and I nurtured them through a cool, dry summer, but by the end of September, there was only a handful of peppers, nowhere near enough to produce enough powder to make it through to next fall.

Fortunately, although I am no longer a summer subscriber, I know my CSA farmer vends his crops at a farmers market on the north side of the city, and so Heidi and I took a little Saturday morning road trip up to that little village. Oh my! We found parking right away across from a picturesque elementary school on a street lined with neat cottages and cute bungalows. There was a little grocer on the ground floor of a Victorian house on the corner selling organic meats and other local products. The market itself had about 7 stalls, one selling hand dyed wool and felt with 2 sheep in a pen, a couple bakers, a pan-African cooked-to-order stall, and a few farmers, including my guy. The peachy mamas were there too, and we scored a half bushel for a bargain price.

Munching on halves of a ginormous almond croissant, we drove home through the city, past embassies, parks, and monuments, a felted pumpkin kit and peppers in the back. "Why don't we live there?" I asked Heidi.

Paradigm Shift

Heidi is going to a 3 day conference at the beach next week, and she asked me if I wanted to take some personal days and come along..

"I can't!" I said. "It's the corn maze field trip AND the day of peace!"

She was disappointed,

And so over the next few days I gave it some serious thought. Finally it hit me. My gosh! It's the corn maze field trip and the day of peace!

Why wouldn't I want to be playing with my dog at the beach instead?

AKA

Sixth week of school, and I’m making my way through the roster, having a quick conference with every student. “When is it going to be my turn?” asked Andrew.

“Not for a little bit,” I answered. “I’m going alphabetically backwards by first name. That puts you at the bottom of the list today.” I smiled apologetically.

“Wait! How come Alex just went?” he asked.

“Who’s Alex?” I replied with furrowed brow.

Andrew looked over his shoulder.

“That’s Nelson,” I told him.

He shrugged, and I made eye contact with his buddy.

“It is my nickname,” the second guy admitted. “It even says so in the information system.

I did not doubt him. “What does your math teacher call you?” I asked.

“Nelson,” he answered.

“What about social studies?”

“Nelson,” he admitted

“Science?”

“Nelson.”

“Well, Alex," I said, "I will make sure they call you by the right name from now on, BUT...”

I paused, and his smile drooped a tiny bit.

“I am going to miss Nelson! He is a great guy!”

Goosebumps

When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of ghost stories or any other creepy supernatural tale. There's just something about cooler weather, golden afternoons, and dark nights that makes me want to settle in with something scary, and I know from my teaching that many kids are the same way.

It's been ages since I've had that pleasure, though. I trace the decline of my enjoyment to 1980, the year I saw Friday the 13th. Back then there was no such thing as a slasher movie, and I can still remember the sick feeling I had as I trudged out of the theater along with the other shocked and silent patrons. We were unsure what we had just seen. A couple years later I had a conversation I can't forget. "I cried when I saw Friday the 13th," a colleague told me, "because I had never seen someone killed before."

Imagine that! A world where we had never seen simulated death and dismemberment! It seems like a very long time ago. And over the decades, it also seems that such graphic violence has completely taken the place of a good, old-fashioned boo! of a scare.

I suppose there have been some exceptions. The Sixth Sense (1999) comes to mind, and although there was plenty of blood and gore in that movie, too, somehow it had a gentler sensibility. I also liked Disney's Hocus Pocus (1993); it was spooky and entertaining.  And the TV show The Ghost Whisperer was a little hokie, but satisfying, but that went off the air in 2010.

To be honest, I think I had given up on the whole idea of October goosebumps, that is until I happened upon the podcast Spooked, by the producers of Snap Judgment. Well-produced, compellingly-told true stories of ghosts and other dark and scary things, I was hooked from episode 1.

I sometimes listen to podcasts to help me go to sleep at night, but when I tuned into this one? Man! I was wide awake and itching for another episode. Check it out-- it's really that good.

An Allegory

At this point in the season the tomatoes are still sweet and tangy, but they are fewer and their skins are a little tough since the waning hours of sunlight means a longer ripening time. Even so, there were plenty of cherry tomatoes when I went to the garden yesterday afternoon.

Several years ago I found an excellent recipe for those times when we are blessed with such profusion. It involves lots of olive oil, shallots, garlic, basil, rosemary, and a long slow cooking time that takes maximum advantage of all that pectin in all those tiny tomato skins resulting in a silky and flavorful sauce.

It's kind of cool to watch the tomatoes burst as they cook, each individual losing itself for the good of the whole. Tonight, though, the pot was full of recalcitrant, tough-skinned little tomatoes, seemingly unwilling to yield.

Oh, I could have taken a masher to the batch of them and crushed them into submission, but I didn't. I hoped that with a little extra time and patience they would come along, and? They did.

(Except for that one little yellow pear tomato. That one I totally squished. After all, we had to eat.)

Home Alone

"Whoa!" Heidi said as I made the right turn to go home. "I thought we were going straight to the movies!"

"But we have some groceries that should be refrigerated," I told her.

She shook her head. "Lucy is not going to like that!" she replied.

"We have enough time to take her out for a quick little walk," I said, but she was unconvinced. Still, we had our tickets and we had our groceries, so we followed my plan.

As we shut the door behind us to go to the movie, a muffled howl rose up. "Is that our dog?" Heidi asked wide-eyed. Another soulful bay confirmed that it was. "That hurts my heart," she said as we dashed to the car.

On the way to the theater Heidi was pensive. "I hope she doesn't do anything destructive," she said more to herself than me.

After the movie we opened the door, unsure of what would await us. A small mangled heap of cardboard and plastic was on the living room floor, but everything else seemed intact. "What is it?" I asked.

"The toothbrush I just bought," Heidi answered.

Hm. I guess Lucy showed us!

Not Always Right

It was a long wait for some popcorn. The line snaked beyond the post-and-ropes they had set up and into the food court, but this was, after all, the premiere Chicago popcorn place. On the Sunday of a three day weekend, we were willing to wait for our own little bag of the cheese and caramel mix,along with a small canister for the hostess of the open house we were attending later in the afternoon.

Plus? Did I mention the free samples? Maybe that's why the line was so long. At any rate, we chatted amiably as we moved forward at an efficient pace. At last the young woman behind the counter spoke her magic words to the customer directly in front of us, a well-dressed woman who looked perhaps to be in her sixties. "What can I get you?" she said, stepping from the kitchen door where she had interrupted her service a few moments before to have an animated conversation with whoever was in there.

The order was slightly complicated, involving a substitution of one caramel corn for another, but it was handled with alacrity, until as the second scoop of popcorn cascaded into the jumbo bag, the customer pointed haughtily at a couple of stray pieces on top of the glass counter and said, "That does not look good at all."

The employee stopped, and tilted her head. "Excuse me?" she replied.

"That looks dirty," the woman elaborated.

"Well," the other woman shrugged with a smile, "we are really busy!" She pointed her chin at the line behind us.

"Not too busy for you to socialize in the kitchen," the other woman said archly.

Behind the counter, the young woman's eyes narrowed, her smile frozen. She flicked the popcorn into the trash. "We can call my manager if you'd like," she said steadily, and when there was no reply, she returned to filling the bag.

"Have you ever been to the stores in Chicago?" her customer asked in a conversational tone.

The employee's shoulders relaxed, and her smile warmed again. "No, I haven't had the pleasure," she answered, holding the full bag out.

"Well," the other woman spat, "they don't play there. The service is," she paused, "impeccable." She took the bag of popcorn, and moved self-righteously to the cashier.

From behind us, a concerned voice piped up. "Are you almost out of cheese corn?" he asked with a little desperation, because the bin was pretty darn low.

"Don't worry," said the employee, "that's what I was talking to the kitchen about. It will be out here shortly."