Canned soup and the city girl...

I am a city transplant living in the rural upper Midwest and trying to find my way. The way that I feel out the world is with food and while it isn’t necessarily practical it works for me. I figure that we might as well eat well. If nothing else is going right, I got a legit recipe for sharp cheddar pâte àu choux that will cure what ails you. If I need to pull out the big guns, you will see me in the kitchen merciless attacking lemons for homemade curd that I will eat right off the spoon. Because reasons. One of the salient characteristics of my personality is how I love food. I love everything about it. I love shopping for food, cooking food, serving food, eating food, writing about food, and I frequently annoy people with what might actually be an unhealthy commitment to food. That said, people who might suggest it is unhealthy also readily accept dinner party invitations so, there's that. My freaky little obsession works out well for them. I used to tell people it was because of my country childhood, which is why I could never bring myself to make or eat what I have unkindly called “cream of barf and potato pellet casserole”. Not a good side of me and I totally regret it. Let me tell you more about that.

My mother and father both had rural roots with farms and horses figuring prominently in their childhoods and since neither set of grandparents headed the siren song to move to the city, these were also a part of my childhood. The difference is that it wasn’t actually my childhood, just a part of it. I lived in the city. As a teen and young adult, I moved around the city in trains and buses and cabs and hung out in chic late night coffee shops listening to poetry recitation. That is how I met the man who is now my husband, a man who had a similar city childhood with farm country summers.  As grownups and married with a slew of children, we moved out of our lower downtown row house and out to the place where the city meets the suburbs. We were looking for the best of both worlds: bigger houses and actual yards but the city limits literally a half a mile away. We had a cute tri-level with a decent yard but my husband could still take the train to work and on the occasional Friday night I could meet him downtown for drinks, dinner, and the symphony.

As they say: that was then, this is now.

A few years ago there was a bit of a quandary with what to do with my husband’s family’s farm. No one really wanted to live out there and no one wanted to pay the bills and someone needed to do both. We made the seriously crazy decision for my husband to quit his white collar job in finance and sell that lovely tri-level with the newly and perfectly remodeled kitchen, the one designed to accommodate my freaky food obsession. That one. You’re welcome, new owners. Then we moved our children to a house half the size with no garage but with an aging grandfathered septic system and patchy electrical service. Clearly, I love my husband more than I love food, which is as it should be. We are now almost a mile from the closest neighbor, two miles from a paved road, seven from the highway, seventeen from the closest gas station, and twenty-one miles from the closest grocery. That one is a unique one. It is an IGA (Independent Grocers of America) slash gas station slash hardware store because when you are out getting Stihl chainsaw parts, you might want to pick up some milk and bread along with diesel. Because reasons, though different ones.

Here I am, in prime casserole country though sometimes they call it hot dish. That’s a word I had to learn, not one that you hear too often back in Colorado. The country world doesn’t feel like I thought it would. Read between the lines on this one: this means it doesn’t taste like I thought it would. There is this city idea that in the country everyone is getting all of their veggies at farm stands run by children in overalls for salads to eat alongside their pastured raised beef steak and farm fresh milk. In reality, it’s a lot of Walmart ingredients. I think there are a lot of reasons for this but in the end, I am no social scientist and if I start up on my soapbox, someone is going to come along and push me off. So let me say this: the food priorities are different and lean towards stability, economy, and ease of preparation before quality and nutrition which are in a dead heat for last place. I have some idea of what people are thinking, they need food stuffs that don’t need to be replenished often and can be easily transported to a place hundreds of miles from an interstate. They want it to be fast and easy because there aren’t the same resources like cafés, bistros, delis, and food delivery. They don’t have a dinner backup, particularly when in the outlying areas like I live. They also need cheap because financial stability is hard fought for in the small economic markets like this. Hello, casserole. Or hot dish. Call it what you want just don’t notice that I was able to sneak in sociological analysis.

This makes things hard for someone who is hyper-dedicated to food and who might be a lot irrational and perhaps even a little neurotic. I am talking about me. It is hard for me. We had someone over for dinner not too long after we moved. He asked what I was making and I told him where I got the beef and that it was pastured raised and had a nice life and that I had made the chèvre cheese and bread myself from a sourdough starter I had made and then I saw his face.

“It’s beef stew,” I said.

He smiled at me and replied, “Hey. Have you guys ever seen the show Portlandia?”

I am not even kidding. I am now a figure from Portlandia. This actually happened and maybe it is not a bad thing because it made me realize something. I realized that there is a difference between being someone who really appreciates good food and a jerk face food snob. I don’t want to be a mean person. Mean people don’t cook for others and if they do, who comes to sit at their table? Other mean people? That sounds like a lousy evening. I want to be someone who is gracious and that means not equating ingredients with moral superiority. It means remembering that people come first and it means that sometimes I will eat canned soup and tot casserole because the most important ingredient in that dish is the love that someone else put into it. I know what it means to feed people and how much of my heart goes into a meal and it isn’t different for others. It’s real.

Several years ago someone told me that she suffered from terrible anxiety at church potlucks because she was afraid I would eat her food and not like it. I was taken aback and told that her if I had ever said anything unkind, I deeply regretted it. Fortunately I hadn't but in the end, it didn't matter. Knowing I was a recipe developer and catered local events made her all kinds of nervous that I would hate her food. She is an incredible woman, someone who is giving and kind and raised kids who could shake hands and smile at adults. I don’t want to think that I am that kind of woman. You know, one who crushes another one because I am not into crushing people unless it is under the weight of pâte àu choux because that is the way to go, guys. Seriously. Bring on the pastry cream, I am ready.

I want to be nice but I am also the kind of person who is unreasonably attached food which is only becoming increasingly obvious to people who live here. The question is what to do about it? I am me and I am here and here is different than where I came from so what now? More food. Pretty much my solution to all the problems is to have more food. I decided that the absence of a food culture here just means that there is a void that I need to fill and I will fill it with food. The best thing I can do invite all the people to dinner and bring food to all the places. See? More food. If I want to find a home here, I can’t be said jerk face food snob. Of course part of my plan is to then lure them into my crazy with homemade sour cream donuts and chicken Provençal which, by the way, can win over the heart of even the most resistant lumberjack. Ask me how I know. Okay, I will tell you without you even asking: harvest party potluck slash game night at the rec building slash ice rink. This one is cooled by winter and not expensive machines so, thank you, Mother Nature.

In the end, I am just a girl who is actually a middle aged mother with a heap of kids and a husband who knows on which side his brioche is buttered. We have moved out to the country and we are building a life here with a dairy cow and her sweet calf, sheep, turkeys, and ducks and I am learning a lot along the way. I am learning to be a better version of me without sacrificing who I am. I am learning how to eat what I am offered and truly enjoy it. I am learning to gently introduce people to my crazy food obsessions like cheese making. I have also learned how to butcher a steer, like actually butcher it in the yard. I can do that, too. If I can do that, I can do pretty much anything. And really, if I can do that, anyone can do pretty much anything. So, let’s start by eating together. The answer to life’s troubles is more food, always more food.

One screen to rule them all...

Sometimes the burden is too much.

I have no idea what is wrong with us. We are crazy people. You know how people talk about the endless arguments over who has the remote control and who gets to decide what goes on the television? Never happens here. Like ever. We are the people who pass around the remote control like some kind of nuclear hot potato, ready to explode and take us all out with it. There is just something wrong with us. If we are the one who has to decide what we will watch, we quickly manage to slip the remote onto the lap of the person sitting next to us, or quietly drop it onto the coffee table and walk away.

We are old-fashioned people in a lot of ways and some of those ways might surprise you. We do have a hand crank coffee grinder on the wall in the kitchen. Who does that? I'll you. People who fight over who must hold the remote control. We have one television, one, and we watch it together in the living room. If you don't feel like watching with the family, you are free to read a book or sew or paint or play Risk with three of your brothers, but you don't get any WiFi. That stuff is in rare supply out here and the family is watching something. If that movie starts to buffer, your siblings will hunt you down like a dog and turn you and your tablet into us parents. You might think that with only one screen to watch that there might some intense battles over what will be on it. But no. Nobody wants that kind of responsibility.

We can't get broadcast television and we don't pay for satellite, we watch Amazon and Netflix and some YouTube (the BYU App is awesome). We tend to gravitate towards series of television shows or movies because it reduced the choices we have to make and we can just do the next one. When we come to the end, there is this terrible crisis of not knowing what to watch and not wanting to be the one who will figure it out. We have watched entire seasons of shows that no one liked simply because there was more to watch and thereby preventing more decision making. Again, who does this? People who hand grind their coffee beans and use a French press and a kettle. Sometimes we use the neat little stove top espresso maker but I digress.

The only ones who actually know what they want to watch are the ones who are not allowed to decide. The two youngest have some series cartoon addiction and there is only so much Masha and the Bear that one can, well, bear, but at least they know what they want and aren't afraid to express an opinion. Also, for the record, these two have lunch daily with a bestie who doesn't even know they exist. They love, love, love to watch Alice, the daughter of Studio C's Jason Gray on his family's YouTube channel, find it HERE. They would watch Alice sleep. It doesn't matter what she is doing, they care. Alice is walking in a store? Awesome. Let's watch. Alice is eating a sucker? Amazing.  Let's watch. Alice is coloring? Brilliant. Let's watch. Alice is in a car seat in a car and pretty much not doing anything yet but, dang it, do not stop this video. Because they don't get to do the same things the older kids do (like online school) they get to watch all the videos of Alice, though I like to leave it at one a day. Today was a three video day because I wanted a chance to use the bathroom, but I digress.

We need another family member, one who does not knit or crochet who has both hands free and is willing to make television watching decisions for us because clearly, we are incompetent.  Only one of my kids is old enough to get married but I am open to adoption. I am taking applications.

Looking to adopt a new family member to wield the remote control and make television watching decisions. Must not be afraid of wolves, snow measured in tens of feet, cow milking chores at five am, or eating organ meats. We have plenty of all of the above. Must be willing to bunk with upto a half dozen existing siblings. Ability to run a wood processor and/or splitter a plus. Apply within.

Starting small...

The little things really are the big things. We say it all the time but I think very few of us believe it because we certainly don’t act like it. We want every event to be like stills pulled from a movie where everyone is bathed in golden hour light and flower petals fall from the trees as we lay in the grass below. We start out any random Friday night and inside we are hoping just a little bit that it will the night of our lives, the one that we could never forget, and if it isn’t we are let down. I think this leads to a lot of disappointing moments in our lives where we are dissatisfied with ourselves, our family, our friends, and our lot in life.

I think there are a lot of things that contribute to this, things I admittedly indulge. Facebook and Instagram certainly don’t make it any easier. I can peek at the small luxuries of women who are both like me and totally not like me and feel like my life doesn’t measure up. I didn’t start this morning with a croissant on a charming antique plate with earl gray tea and imported French preserves all placed next to a novel with a beautiful cover and a bouquet of flowers. Truth be told, my morning started out with me in a rat’s nest bun and leggings as I slurped crappy coffee with almond milk from a chipped mug and a bowl of ramen in my lap and not even the really good kind. Like the desperate kind. More truth, not even that woman’s day actually started out like that because I am telling you right now that she totally composed that shot so we could see a carefully curated selection of her morning’s elements. What may or may not have been outside the frame of that iPhone shot, I will never know. All I can really be sure about is that nobody is sitting down to the breakfast and thinks, “Snap. This looks like an amazing shot. Lemme casually lay my novel down here and snap an IG.”

Life is real, like a lot of real. It is real hard. It is real messy. It is real loud. It is also real good. I think we need to not lose track of that. Life is legit good and probably because it is also hard and messy and loud. When we sit down to think about what our lives mean, too often we are looking for the big things that identify us and it’s unfortunate. If we take a few minutes to think about it, when we sit down and evaluate the lives of someone we loved who died, we don’t think about the big things. It all comes down to the tiny things, the smallest of things, the things that are really real.

Think about someone you lost but whom you loved deeply and profoundly. Do you list their job or college or the kind car they drove (unless it was something cool or quirky because that is something)? I am guessing that you are thinking about things like the way they smelled or the way they always mispronounced a word or maybe songs they sang. I know I do. My grandfather was a musician with long, beautiful fingers with deep nail beds and very, very round tips. My father and his siblings had these hands but I don’t and oddly, I really wish I did. It wouldn’t make my fingers work better or be more finger-like but I could look at them and think of him.

If you asked me at this moment, right now, to tell you something about my grandfather, I would tell you about making tortillas for him when I was a child. I used to make tortillas with grandmother and I would drop them onto her nasty, shedding green kitchen carpet and I would pick them up and keep rolling. After they were cooked, no one else would eat them but my grandfather. He would slather them with butter and ignore the dirt and lint and God only knows what else and eat them and he never failed to tell me that they were delicious. I will never forget that. I was probably five years old and making food that someone enjoyed and it literally changed my life, it set the course for me. It was a tiny little thing but it is also enormous and consuming. These moments are all we get, really. We just scoop up all these small moments and pile them together and they make up our lives and we can’t afford to let them roll away just because we are looking for the bigger thing somewhere else. These things are the big things because of their totality, where the whole is really far greater the sum of its parts.

As a mother I want my children to know this. I want them to look for the small things. The world will creep in with its antique plates and imported preserves and we need to push it back with rat nest buns and a little reality. We need to start with ourselves and looking at these little moments and seeing the beauty in them, even if it is hard to see at first. I don’t always feel like I am at my best. Honestly, I feel like I am just holding on for dear life, but that isn’t what my kids see. I am not sure what they do see but they are watching and they see something. When I die, God willing it is a long, long time from now, they will talk about the things that they remember. They will remember the little things and I can’t know from here what it will be, so I need to give them opportunities to find those little things.

One of the ways that we give them that time is to just be present and not fill every moment. Sometimes these things roll into the room when we move just past the point of boredom. It means not trying to constantly curate my life but let the kids see things that are me, like my rat nest bun. It means letting moments be small and beautiful and waiting to find out later what they were worth. When my grandfather ate those tortillas served on my play kitchen dishes, he had no idea what it would it mean. He was just there, in the moment, doing the little things. He could never have known it would be the most beautiful memory I have of him. There are a lot of ways that we can do this but the truth of the matter is that we won’t know what it all means for a long time.

Things of value are an investment, they take time and they need to develop, and they start small. The little things really are the big things. Just trust that.