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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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 27, 2020 | Country life, Family, Humor, Stories
The hill outside our house was a quarter-mile long, declining at a 45-degree angle. What would you do if you were 14 and had a bike? And a hill?
We lived beside a gravel road with the next neighbor a mile away. Our house was at the top of the hill. This hill could have been a major obstacle to youth with bikes.
Caution?
Caution was not such a buzz killer in those days. Before drifting cars was a thing, I was drifting on my bike.
Bikes for our family were always lean and mean. Dad picked them up at farm sales, and I, being the oldest, always got the latest find. My old bike then passed down to my brother, and so on down the line.
My favorite bike was a stripped-down black boys bike with no fenders, one speed, and coaster brakes.
Exactly what I needed.
My sister, Ann, was six at this time. The right age to join me. Not too big to mess with my balance and not so small that she’d get hurt too much if my plan didn’t work out.
I Had A Plan
Of course I had a plan. I would set Ann on the crossbar of my bike, and off we’d go. No helmets, no seat belts, no common sense.
Ann needed a little training before we took on the big hill. She had a way of panicking and twisting the handlebars. That interfered with good drifting.
I taught her many things in those days, so this was just part of the deal for an older sister. My job was to expand her horizons. Teach her to overcome.
She caught onto her bike responsibilities after a while: no panicking allowed. Trust me, I told her. When in life are you more confident in your skills than at 14?
We practiced
We practiced for several days before we tackled the hill. She was like a little monkey attached to the handlebars, her legs wrapped around the crossbar. She was a good learner. Obviously, I was a great teacher, too.
When she was ready, and not before, we scheduled our first outing. I wasn’t irresponsible.
We rolled my stripped-down black bike out onto the gravel road and she climbed onto the bar.
The Big Day
I powered the bike down the hill. Our speed increased until the fields on either side of the road were a blur of green. The summer air rushed past my face and bits of her hair blew into my teeth.
We got to the bottom of the hill, and then I stomped on the coaster brake and twisted the handlebars.
The rear wheel of the bike slid around the front and then, gravel spraying as the bike shifted direction, we were facing uphill. My sister the monkey had clung to the bike frame perfectly.
We cycled back up the hill and tried it again. It turned into a pretty exciting summer of bicycle drifting.
For the record, we both survived.
And, for the record, I’d never let our grandkids pull a stunt like that.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 20, 2020 | Country life, Family, Humor, Stories
There’s no accounting for personal tastebuds. What my son relishes on his dinner place, my daughter disdains.
That’s even true with our chickens. Nothing makes our little flock of chickens giddier than salad-making day because they get the ends of the celery, the heart of the lettuce, the skins of the celery.
I’ve seen a hen snatch a piece of green pepper in mid-air and scurry to the far corner of the coop to devour in private. They seem to be two-legged garbage disposals.
My family’s response to any food they don’t like is to gift it to the chickens. There’s no accounting for pleasing the palate sometimes.
When I was on one of my health food kicks, I often served couscous. I really liked couscous because it cooked up fast and it was supposed to be good for you. I didn’t evaluate taste much.
I served couscous several times before I noticed that the dish of couscous came off the table with one spoonful taken out: mine.
“You don’t like couscous?” I finally asked my husband.
“I call those grit-grits,” he said. “Give them to the chickens.” He’s not southern, as you can tell.
Chickens like couscous. They finished off the whole bowl faster than eight-year-olds eat ice cream. Couscous ranked right up there with leftover rice and carrot peelings. Top tier in chicken cuisine.
One day a basket of produce came our way, which included artichokes.
I was determined to learn how to serve artichokes to my family, so I did the logical thing and Googled artichokes.
You can grill artichokes. Boiling them doesn’t add any flavor, I learned. Butter must be added. Uh-huh.
Steaming artichokes was also acceptable, and so was roasting.
The options sounded so routine, like offering garden peas or green beans.
I made a special dipping sauce and put my find on our table.
Did you know that artichokes are the edible immature flower of a cultivated thistle? Being the daughter of a farmer, I should have asked why anyone would grow a thistle. Dad devoted his life to fighting the thistle wars. I’ll bet roasting and boiling the pests might have appealed to him.
But remember, I was the one who overlooked the couscous reject
But remember, I was the one who overlooked the couscous rejection for months.
My thinking was more along the lines of “Why not? It might be fun.” In other words, delirium.
A little coaching on how to eat an artichoke was in order, but I made it quick because the kids were glazing over from starvation, eyeing the hamburgers and not my artichokes.
They did try the artichoke leaves after I glared. Once.
“Feed those to the chickens,” my son said.
I’m less heartbroken over a failed dish when someone gets some good out of it. If that’s the chickens, so be it. We do get to eat their healthy eggs, so I think it works out ok.
The next night, I noticed that the chickens had eaten the bits of cauliflower and leftover iceberg lettuce. But the artichoke leaves remained on the ground.
So the chickens could stomach broccoli stems, dry biscuits, carrot tops, and cucumber peels.
Artichokes, those edible thistle flowers, were scorned by the chickens. They did have some discernment.
My husband called couscous “grit-grits” but it’s pretty obvious that to the chicken palate, artichokes are worse.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 13, 2020 | Family, Humor, Stories, Travel
The reason the boys were ready for me when I pulled up in the big van was what they held in their hands.
“We found these!” Saber unfolded his palm to show me a rubber ball on an elastic band.
I’ve seen plenty of rubber balls. I launched a jaded smile, and then he threw the ball down. It bounced high over the building roof with the elastic band unfurling into the blue sky before rebounding and then caroming again. This little contraption had more energy than a litter of hungry puppies when mama pokes her head into their view.
The boys had finished a week at church camp, and I was bringing home a gaggle of eleven-year-olds. Assuming a gaggle is seven. A well-entertained gaggle of giggly boys.
Each of the boys launched a ball above timberline, filling the air with giggles.
I could see the potential here.
“OK, guys. No bouncing the balls in the van.”
They all nodded, and their arms went into hyperdrive to exhaust the rebounds before they loaded. No tree top was safe in the flurry of rubber spheres.
Finally, we loaded up and pulled away from camp, making our way down the mountain. All was well until I pulled up at a stoplight in a little town partway home.
Traffic was heavy, and I had been watching cars surround us, pressing close in the rush hour. Then I noticed snickering from behind me. High-pitched joyful laughter. Monkey laughter. Or a gaggle of boys giggling.
Saber had worked his arm out of the side window, holding onto the elastic band. And he was bouncing the ball on the street.
The bouncing orb careened between stopped vehicles, skimming over the edge of side mirrors and radio antennas. It soared with abandon above SUVs and smart cars, ricocheting from curb to curb, defying gravity with its joyous leaps.
That ball was having as much fun as Saber. If it had a mouth, it would have been emitting monkey giggles.
Saber heard the growl coming from the driver of the van. Me. Growling.
It took him a minute to retrieve the ball after I threatened to dunk him in the lake if he didn’t get the contraption back inside. Reeling in the saggy strap took a little while as though it didn’t want to return to the dull confines of the van. Maybe a little like Saber.
Then he rolled up the gadget and stuffed it in his backpack, giving me a smile fit more for angels than gaggles of boys. His bounding ball had kissed the clouds that day. He had explored wild freedom with a blue sphere.
And he reminded me: “I didn’t bounce it in the van.”
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