by Kathy Brasby | Sep 17, 2020 | Country life, Family, Humor
In the spring, when the world ran out of toilet paper and gallons of milk were rationed, I naturally decided this was the year to plant a garden.
I’ve planted gardens before but I avoid them because of a character defect: I hate to pull the weeds in the garden.
But this year, I vowed, would be different. That is my usual garden spring vow but let’s not go there. It had been years since I planted a garden and I figured I had matured a bit.
My dear husband had a better idea. Why didn’t I use raised garden plots so I didn’t have to get down on my knees to weed? And he happened to have some plastic 55-gallon barrels that we could cut in half, drill holes in the bottom for drainage, and have the garden we’d always dreamt of.
You know, low maintenance and high produce.
We put in compost and fertilizer and top soil and then planted. Tomatoes. Peppers. Acorn squash. Pumpkin.Onions. Zucchini.
The plants started to grow with great gusto. I watered, I weeded, they grew. Reasonable partnership, I thought.
And then I noticed the tomato plant leaves were starting to curl. What in the world? I checked. The ground was moist. There were NO WEEDS in the pot.
Soon the other tomato plants began to wither. The green pepper plants lost their leaves and the pumpkin greenery sprawled on the ground like a sloth.
The zucchini vine threw out a single squash and then breathed its last. One tomato plant produced three tomatoes but had no leaves left. Once the tomatoes were plucked from its twiggy trunk, it went into hibernation. That’s commitment to your offspring, I’d say.
The jalapeño plant looked great, however, and there hung several fiery-red peppers about an inch long. I could almost hear them snarl when I removed them from the plant. If bugs were the issue, as I was starting to suspect, they apparently had no taste for feisty jalapeños.
So, from my grand garden plans, I harvested 3 pink tomatoes, one zucchini squash, and 12 microscopic but muscular jalapeño peppers.
At this point, my garden resembles a bomb site with green sticks standing askew in the barrels.
There’s good news and bad news to this story. The good news is that I don’t have to can or freeze or dry any produce. The bad news….
Well, as my daughter said, “Mother, you managed to kill a zucchini?”
But there were no weeds in its pot, so I guess it’s all good news.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 16, 2020 | Cats, Country life, Humor, Stories
A friend recently asked me for advice about bringing a cat into her home. This alone put me on alert since my knowledge of cats is limited to our barn cats plus the kitten we rescued a few months ago.
Since our rescued kitten turned into a friendly but ferocious tiger (read that adventure here), my friend thought she ought to get input on the perfect kitten.
I offered to do the online search for her.
Typing in “How to find the perfect breed of cat” seemed like an appropriate search.
Sure enough, there are scads of cat breed selectors online. Okie-Dokie, I jumped right in.
The first question asked, “How energetic would your ideal cat be?” After our rescued kitten adventure, I opted for a relaxed vibe.
Next up was how vocal would this ideal cat be? I could visualize a cat howling on the backyard fence, so I choose rarely makes a peep.
So far, so good. On to personality traits. Hmmm, I thought my friend would enjoy calm and affectionate.
I also thought her ideal cat would like a mix of social time and alone time, so I checked that box.
My friend didn’t want a long-haired cat with all the loose hairs and she wasn’t interested in grooming much. I chose rarely or never on the grooming thing.
With anticipation, I clicked the button to reveal the perfect breed.
Sorry, no match was found.
So there’s no short-haired cat who is quiet, calm, affectionate, and can hang out alone or with somebody. I should have known.
I had to tell my friend that there is no perfect breed for her.
She didn’t fall for it. She’s not taking our little tiger anyway.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 9, 2020 | Humor, Stories, Travel
“What do you think this says?” my husband studied a small box he’d lifted from the shelf at the grocery store. “Do you know any of these words?”
We were in a grocery store in Nogales, Mexico many years before Google Translate was available on our phones.
Translation was apparently my responsibility on this shopping excursion, so I browsed the ingredient list.
Browsed in the sense that I tried to put letters together to make words. I knew the letters, but I didn’t know the words.
“Well, this picture could have something to do with an antibiotic,” I said.
His frowned. “That picture could be a pumpkin for all I can tell.”
He was right. The printing was not clear.
We should have brought a translator, but the available ones weren’t available. They were tending to our son’s wounded knee.
Our family had come to Nogales for a week to repair a church building. Somehow, in the construction, our son’s knee had connected with something rough and hard. We had been sent in search of antibiotic cream while they cleaned the gash.
We went, confident that we were reasonably intelligent adults. A bit too optimistic since we were in a Spanish-speaking country where we didn’t know the word for antibiotic. We didn’t even know the word for first aid or bandage.
Finally, we settled on a slender box that appeared to have an image of a wound along with the brand name printed on the front plate. It could have been a logo of a whirlwind, too. We weren’t sure, but there was a tube in the box. Close enough for the clueless.
We took our find back to the church and handed the box over to the nurse. She pulled out the tube.
Sometimes you wish you had a translator and you don’t. Sometimes you have a translator and wished you didn’t.
She translated for us then. In between giggles.
Instead of buying antibiotic cream for our son’s knee, we’d picked up a tube of Preparation H.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 17, 2020 | Family, Humor, Stories
Have you ever wondered why so many famous chefs are male? Me, too. I should have some insights because I have sons.
Let me explain.
Back in the day, pushing the beaters into my mixer was guaranteed to bring at least one family member into the kitchen. A lot like the cat when I pop the top of the can of food: focused. She can bring blood on her way to the food dish. The cat, I mean.
So I popped in the mixer beaters, and my four-year-old son appeared at my elbow. No blood. Yet.
“Let’s make shape cookies,” he said, pushing a chair to the counter.
The process of making shape cookies cutters was more complex. But this was a teaching moment for my young chef. I was proud he wanted me to teach him. Well, I was going to teach him whether he liked it or not.
We mixed our cookie dough.
“Now, we start with a ball, like this.” I scooped a handful of dough from the bowl and rolled it in my palms.
He watched intently, his nose drawing closer and closer to my hands. He was a good student, obviously impressed with my culinary skills.
“Then I put the ball on the counter,” I said.
I set the pale ball of dough lightly on the flour I had sprinkled out. The sweet scent of cookie dough filled the air. “We use a rolling pin to flatten the dough.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the ball of dough. I flattened the lump into a thin flat pancake and let him press the cookie cutters into it.
He selected a star. “That one looks like an explosion.” An explosion?
He was so creative. Did chefs frequently work explosions into their creations? Maybe that was how creme brûlée came into existence? To have an excuse to use a torch? A precursor to an explosion?
“I’ll do it this time,” he told me after the first batch was transferred to cookie sheets.
I took that to indicate the success of my teaching skills. He was ready for his first baby step as a chef. I was so proud.
He clutched a handful of dough from the bowl and squeezed it hard. Like a muscle man grasping a handgrip.
“Well, you might not…“ I started to coach him, but I was too late.
He slapped the crushed dough onto the counter and began pounding it with the side of his fist. Thud! Thud! A punching ball endured fewer strikes than that ball of dough. The mixture finally surrendered into an uneven flat lump of defeated cookie dough.
For me, baking cookies is about the aroma and flavor.
For my would-be chef, it was more about hand-to-hand combat.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 10, 2020 | Family, Humor, Stories
If I know you and you drop by at mealtime, you’ll get an invitation to sit and eat with us. I really do mean it, but you might want to give it some thought before you jump in.
Or ask my nephew because he got to see my work first hand.
I had the best of intentions. And you know how those can go.
My nephew was a tall, strapping young man with a healthy appetite. I had prepared the meal for our family plus my nephew but decided we might be a tad bit short of food. I’d hate for him to pass out from lack of food before the next meal.
So I scoured the pantry for a can of something to add to the meal at the last minute.
I spied the can of grass jelly.
I had acquired this can from an oriental specialty market in Denver as part of a class project the year before. We had been assigned to purchase new cultural items and peruse unique foods.
We got to see live squid squirming in a glass aquarium at the back of the store. A large aquarium held goldfish (well, they looked like goldfish) that could be netted and bagged for the next meal.
We saw cans of exotic peppers and bags of noodles with unpronounceable names.
And cans of grass jelly.
My can ended up in the pantry. I mean, could you throw away a can of grass jelly when you never knew when you’d need it? Or what it was, for that matter.
Yeah, well, I hung onto it anyway.
Not knowing what I’d find inside, I pried off the lid. If it squirmed, I was dumping it. But inside was dark gelatinous material which reminded me of cranberry sauce in the can.
So I tipped the can and let the cylinder of jelly slide onto the plate. I sliced it like cranberry sauce and served it with the rest of the meal. This was not how to serve grass jelly but what did I know?
The plate with slices of grass jelly went around the table a couple of times, like I was trying to serve grass clippings rather than grass jelly.
“Be daring! Try it,” I said. This was before I tried it, but I always encourage bold action. Especially if I was safe.
My nephew twisted his mouth to one side.
“What is grass jelly?” he said.
“I don’t know. But it is food,” I assured him. Some kind of jelly seemed safe.
He nibbled the chunk on his fork. “Food?” He stopped eating. Teenage boys can label a styrofoam cup as food, so his question seemed odd. “This tastes like it was made out of motor oil.”
Everyone dumped their helping of grass jelly back on the serving plate. And that was the end of the grass jelly experiment.
Except my nephew won’t come to a meal at my house without checking my pantry.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 3, 2020 | House rehab, Humor, Stories
Sometimes the worst of duties can trigger the funniest of stories. You know how it is. You had to scoop six inches of snow from your driveway and met your future husband in the process.
That didn’t happen to you? Well, another story, another day.
This story involves evictions. Yeah, those worst of duties. Bear with me, though, because this one is funny.
My sister, Ann, and I have a small property management company. One of our duties for our landlords is being sure the rent is paid on time.
A tool we sometimes have to use is called “Demand for Compliance,” which basically means, “You have three days to pay your rent or move out.”
We call those three-day notices, and they have to be hand-delivered to the rental unit. We used to be brave and knock on the front door to present the paper to the tenant. If nobody answered, we’d then tape the notice to the front door.
So, on this particular day, we had a three-day in hand. Ann drove, so I got to go to the front door. I knocked and, when I didn’t get an answer, taped the notice to the door.
Then the front door flew open, and the tenant, a fire-plug sort of person, stormed out, ripped the paper down, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it on the ground. “I don’t accept notices on my door.”
It was a much longer sentence, but I washed out the four-letter words for you.
Then the tenant bolted into the street after a little dog that had escaped from the house. The tenant was still turning the air blue with ugly words. The clean ones were, “Hey, get back here, Foofie!”
The tenant wasn’t supposed to have a dog in the house, either.
I was still standing at the front door, coughing from the blue air, and watching the tenant darting around the street like a defensive safety trying to tackle a quick-footed halfback. Foofie was the running back, with a good head of steam toward the end zone.
This was a pretty entertaining romp in the street, but then I remembered that my vulnerable position on the front step.
I smoothed out the page, re-taped it to the door, and sprinted to the car. I was ready for a fast get-away, but Ann said, “I’m not moving until that dog is gone. Just what we need is to run over the dog, too.”
We did finally escape in the blue cloud.
We still have to post 3-days occasionally. But now, if this worst of duties comes up, we flip a coin to see who goes to the door this time. We’ve learned a lot. No knocking now. We do a tape-and-run.
And we’re as fast as little Foofie.
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