Not a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

It's better!

Cookie Swap has come and gone

There was a little crying, a lot of food, and from my impromptu home makeover project last night I left sharp staples in the carpet that my baby nephew almost ate. But all in all it was good. Lots of good friends, family and homemade food and gifts - and plenty of butterscotch bitches.

We did a marketplace this year of what we make. Though I didn't make anything to sell, I did make my first trifle - with my famous coconut cake - chocolate pudding - whipped cream and raspberries.

I haven't been posting here much lately; but we've been working more on updating our blog for work. Check it out.

Deer Count 4

Don't ask. Let's just say there is a deer head in the freezer and a carcass hanging in the yard.

Not much new

I'm in a writing slump. It's FRICKING cold right now (0 degrees with -12 windchill), I'm in my flannel pajamas over my long underwear, winding down after the turkey-leftover-potpie-stick-to-your-ribs dinner.

I don't know what it is about this winter, maybe I'm getting old, but I feel colder than I have in years!

No news on the deer front, except for the fact that I've got multiple people who are lobbying ME to get Tom to try muzzleloading.

Isn't muzzleloading old guns with powder and special civil war costumes? Camo is about all I can take.

Hope you are warmer than I am so far this winter!

Move over deer, it's cookie season

The good news is that we made it through Thanksgiving, the bad news is that deer hunting season is NOT over yet, at least for the bowhunters out there. To be honest, I am more than ready to end the "did you see any deer when you drove in" madness around this place.

Making it through Thanksgiving means the cookie brigade begins, at least for me. And I'm putting my foot down, there will be no venison cookies this year.

I'm contemplating what new cookie will be added to the repertoire. Each year I try to add something new. I'm considering a ginger cookie, because I love the ginger cookies so. I've been researching how to make chewy gingery ones and am considering a little sandwich cookie with cream cheese/orange filling. Mmmm, ginger.

One year I added the Lime Rickey. It's the lime coconut ball thing that I love so. Mmmm, Lime Coconut Balls....

And of course, there will be the traditional butterscotch bitches, cornflake christmas wreaths and the Cobb County butterscotch puppy chow.

post your orders here.

remember when buck

meant a ride on the back of your banana seat bike? Now it means my beloved got his 2nd deer. His male deer.

Oh how life has changed.

too much information

Over the years, my relationship with the too-familiar pharmacist Steve has become comfortable.

Take tonight for instance. While Steve was spending time on the bench talking with someone he shouted out "I'll be with you in a minute Heidi!"

I smiled and turned around and studied the sale items, wanting to give the bench lady some privacy. I held up a bottle of Airborne, wondering if it actually works and if it actually was invented by a teacher.

A lady pharmacist came to help me while Steve was busy.

As she was ringing up my prescriptions she looked at my finger and said, "Is that your wedding ring?"

Magically, Steve was done with his customer and suddenly in our conversation too.

"Yes" I said. Hoping there would be no more questions.

"I like it!" she said.

"Me too!" said Steve, "Is it platinum or white gold?"

I sighed. I wished I could lie. I answered, "Neither."

They both stared at me.

"I lost my real wedding ring" I said. They kept staring at me. "And my engagement ring actually."

"What happened?" Steve asked.

"Well, I don't remember what happened exactly with the engagement ring. A supper club parking lot with my mother I think... but the wedding ring I lost while I was picking up trash by the Mississippi River on Earth Day."

They just kept staring.

"So this one my mother bought for me on the street in Las Vegas. It's weird because people comment on it all the time."

Steve wondered if I had insured my wedding ring. I hadn't. Then he made a funny pharmacist joke. "Some kid will find it someday with a metal detector and wonder whose ring it was!"

Good one Steve!

the too-familiar pharmacist

Sometimes I LOVE living in a small town. Like the milk I get delivered in glass bottles at work from Tom from the dairy in Babbitt. I like that. The milk is soooo good!!! Tom the milkman is also an artist and a emergency responder.

And when the neighbor leaves a bag of apples from his tree. Also cool, I made crockpot applesauce!

Another cool one: when the ER doctor listened to me on the Morning Show and knew that I was in because of a giant rash on half my face (otherwise known as the first symptom of The Lyme's).

A not so cool one?

The too-familiar pharmacist. I'll call him Steve. Steve the pharmacist.

It started when I moved to this town and I'd go to my unnamed discount store for my prescriptions. He was fine. Talkative. Tried to get me loosened up. But I didn't like how he would point to the little bench to have a "private consultation" about whether or not I had ever used the particular "unmentionable" before. And possible side effects, etc. All things I could read on the bottle or remember from the last time I was in.

He did this many times. But he was also friendly, in a long haired guy with one long fingernail kind of way. I didn't dislike him exactly, but I really yearned for anonymity or a faceless pneumatic tube at the pharmacy I think.

It went on....he started realizing he had heard me on the radio. Kept mentioning my unmentionables, etc. Friends recommended I find a new pharmacy but as a native Minnesotan, I didn't want to make the guy feel bad or anything.

One day I must have just had it. I felt bold. Ready to deal with Steve, the too-familiar pharmacist. It happened to be Valentine's Day. He did his normal small talk chit-chat mention the unmentionables to me schtick. Then he asked in a sarcastic tone if I had plans for that night.

"I do!"

"Really?" he said, looking at me over his glasses, pierced eyebrow raised. "What???"

"My fiance and I are going to a play."

"Reallllly...." He looked over his glasses at me again, like I was lying. "What play?"

Not too quietly I said "The Vagina Monologues".

"THE WHAT?"

"The Vagina Monologues." I said, even louder, a little smugly in fact. Apparently Steve the pharmacist wasn't a theater type.

"What's that about?" his voice was getting softer now, as mine increased. He looked behind me at the small line that was forming.

"Vaginas."

It felt good, to finally embarass Steve back.

"A play about vaginas?"

"Yup." I said taking my credit card back.

"Where is the play?"

"The Reif Center! "Thanks! Happy Valentine's Day Steve!"

Looking for blood

is not nearly as romantic as it sounds. I headed out the other day with my beloved, searching the leaves and areas that looked like deer beds, for some sign of "Lucky". It was a no go.

It struck me as odd that this husband of mine who was hunting for something as small as a speck of blood on a bed of leaves, is also the guy who can't find his glasses.

Orange is the new black but it isn't very slimming!

Normally I can understand the information in our twice a week newspaper in Grand Rapids.

Like the headline "India based Essar Global acquires Minnesota Steel". This is a big deal for the Iron Range - it's a 1.6 billion dollar project. In a rural community where good paying jobs are scarce, this is huge.

Or take the headline "Blue Jackets Down T'Hawks". Though I don't understand "the sports" all that well - I can see from the photo that it probably has something to do with the swim meet between Hibbing and Grand Rapids.

In the most recent edition there was a page I did not understand at all. I read things like:

Game Cleaning Glove
Big Buddy 2 Man Stand
"Estrus" Bleat Easy Call
Ultimate Scrape Dripper
Allen Gambrell & Hoist System
Lansky Diamond Benchstone
Tikka T3 Bolt Rifles

Sometimes I think I'm missing out on the culture of Northern Minnesota. Maybe I need to get involved with "the deer hunting" with my husband so we can spend more time together. After all, he is a bow hunter which doesn't seem nearly as violent, and I like walking in the woods and special clothes and makeup as much as the next guy.

Just now he called from work with a proposition.

"I'll be home about 2. If you want to take a walk with me in the woods you could..."

How sweet! What a softy! He wants to hold hands and talk about our feelings.

But he wasn't done yet.

"I figure we could look for a blood trail. We'll check the beds for traces of blood."

It's that time of year again

Fall has come to Northern Minnesota. The time of contemplation and renewal where I get a gentle reminder of my gender deficiencies. I'm not talking hormones or weak biceps... firearm deer hunting season is almost here...where groups of men will descend on our town.

Next Friday begins the giant calvade of guns and bad clothes in this sleepy community of 7,764 people. Each year approximately 500,000 hunters harvest 200,000 deer in our fine state...for us that means beer goes on sale, pop prices go up and deer hunter widow events begin to happen at the Judy Garland room or The Sawmill Inn.

I interview authors for a living, and a year ago or so I was on the phone getting the spiel from another book publicity person. Her book was a new and innovative take on traffic. She talked on and on about the average commute travel time and the alarming new trend of increased suburb-to-suburb commutes. When she finished she used her pr techniques to engage me in conversation.

"How is traffic where you are?!!?"

I really wasn't trying to be quaint or Minnesotan in my answer. I just said what came to my mind.

"Oh not too bad. I mean, at 3 o'clock you don't want to go over by the civic center or the fairgrounds because the kids are getting out of school - and 38 gets tough to cross, 'specially at the four-way stop if you are trying to get to Ogle's.

She said nothing.

I continued, "Oh, and opening hunting and fishing weekends are REALLY bad!"

There was so much silence on the end of the line that I can't really explain it. It wasn't so much that there wasn't noise, there was almost a sucking of noise out of her big city cubicle.

She laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed some more and asked if she could tell her coworkers. I told her sure, as long as I could tell mine.

Barber shops and shoe repair, why so many?

Maybe Grand Rapids is a place where hair grows fast and boots don't last.

Today I passed 2 boot/shoe repair places.





AND, one is for sale and could be a good business for someone. Be your own boss! For only $45,000! OBO!

Barber Shops in The Rapids

I don't know why, but we are a town full of barber shops. Every day on the way to work I pass this place...

If you take a closer look you'll see it's a pretty good deal -


8 bucks for a butch, and 16 bucks for a shave. And cripes, only $5 for a kid's butch. Not bad. And military discounts, cool.


The other strange thing about having so many barber shops in Grand Rapids (more pictures to come) is that THIS particular shop is hiring SIX barbers.




It seems like a pretty fair place to work too, without the usual petty work jealousies.

in my fridge, part deux

The deer camp was not successful on the island yesterday, in terms of deer that is. Any recipes for rabbit out there? Anyone WANT some rabbit?

Help?

not very wordy lately

Life has been whizzing by, and No, that's not Cheese Whiz brother. First I was at this jam-packed conference, then I was catching up from being gone at a conference, and now we're in the last 2 days of our fundraiser... oh yeah, Tom is hunting every moment he gets, and I am, as always, trying to catch up on my reading.

I'm getting ready for an interview with the South African writer Zakes Mda. His book is called Cion. Already I'm off kilter because I don't really know how to pronounce his first or last name or the title of the novel. And the book begins with the word "sciolist". My head is swimming. The good news is the guy is a beekeeper, so perhaps I can ask him lots about bees.

Anyone know the definition of sciolist? I mean without looking it up.... I've already done that.

And Happy Birthday Dad! Hope you enjoyed the nuts!

this is in my fridge

It's a bag of deer. Yes, that animal that wanders in front of my car 3-4 times a week is now in my fridge.

I'm not sure how I feel about it.

such a tease

So a week ago last Sunday my friend Brenda and I had quite the day of culture in Northern Minnesota. First up, Bigfork and the Edge Center for the Arts.

Did anyone else watch Lou Grant? Not Lou Grant that was Mary Tyler Moore's boss who used to stash a bottle in his desk and told Mary he hated spunk, but Lou Grant the hard hitting newspaperman. I seem to remember having a crush on Joe Rossi, that reporter who always got to the bottom of everything. And then there was Mrs. Pynchon, who later became Tony Soprano's mother. And there was someone else on that show. Linda Kelsey. That tiny fiery red headed reporter. Well a week ago Sunday, I saw her in Bigfork, Minnesota, putting on a one woman show about Emily Dickinson called "The Belle of Amherst".

Okay you big city folks, stop your laughing. This was no Waiting for Guffman. She was GOOD. I mean realgood!

In this little town, in a beautiful little theater, this tiny woman lit up the stage as Emily Dickinson. Really, she did. Did you know Emily wore only white? And that she dated married men? It was also exciting for me that the final poem she recited was the only poem I have ever memorized (partially at that) "Because I could not stop for death".

After the show, we were hungry, and since nothing was open in Bigfork, we decided to make our way north, to the booming town of Effie, Minnesota. Our friends own and operate the Neighborhood Tavern there, and it just happened to be the Jugband Boogie weekend.

More later...

Lou Grant and Jug Bands

I had a great Sunday in Northern Minnesota. The weather was great, I saw a former TV actress, and I saw a couple of jug bands. What could be better?

More to come...

In Other News

Some have inquired into the nature of the subheading beneath Cobb County.

US NEWS AND CURLING REPORT.

The good news is that it is less dangerous than me with a curling iron. What it really involves is my ongoing education into the world of curling.

Okay fine, there was one email. It went something like this:

> Are you really curling? Damn, that makes me jealous:
Now would be the time to tell you about watching my mom curl being,
easily, one of my earliest memories. The rink in Grafton, ND had a
bar/restaurant/diner thing where your no-frills observation "balcony" would
be normally. I'd eat grilled cheese and then spin the seats of the diner's
counter stools until someone made me stop. Then I'd watch mom practice
through the glass. They used brooms with long, straw bristles back then.

Grand Rapids is big on curling. Who am I kidding? It's Bob the Gardener who is big on curling. And the Canadian TV station we get proudly claims "It's Curling Night in Canada!" Or maybe that was just during the hockey strike.

Bob is a member of the seniors league and I'm bound and determined to go see him play this year.

So far my education is very limited. There's a stone (round granite playing piece. Also known as the rock), a broom and people shouting HURRY HURRY HURRY.

We'll see what the winter has in store. I hear there is a women's league.

Where We've Been

the county government has decreed it "time to put up wood" 'round these parts, so that's what we've been doing. The whole crew has been out.

We may be out in the woods, but that doesn't mean the criminal element is sleeping, no sir-ee-bob.

Even though the mayor isn't all that involved in the law enforcement arm of the county, he respectfully submitted the following report.

THEFT:
A homeowner on 8 Mile Road in rural Grand Rapids came home to find an unknown woman exiting her house. The woman told her she had used the bathroom and grabbed a can of beer from the owner's fridge. The woman was arrested and transported to detox. No value given.

BURGLARY:
A cabin burglary was reported at 8:48 pm on Feaster Road in Spring Lake. The burglar broke into the cabin, made a pizza and stole a .22 caliber pistol. Total value is approximately $500.

BURGLARY:
A cabin burglary was reported at 12:54am on Feaster Road in Spring Lake. Missing was a gas can, shotgun shells and other miscellaneous items. No value was given.

THEFT:
An indeterminate amount of electrical wire was reported stolen from Keewatin Taconite at 2:28pm. No value was given.

Crime Blotter

This Just In!

Burglary: A home on Ninth Avenue NE in Grand Rapids was burglarized. Taken from a refrigerator located on the porch was one 10-pound ham, one 12 pack of black cherry soda, one loaf of wheat bread, one bottle of blueberry pomegranate juice and six Banquet-brand T.V. dinners. No value was given.

NO VALUE GIVEN? That sounds like at least 50 bucks to me. That blueberry pomegranate juice is not cheap.

Some things are sacred

like chicken judging at the Itasca County Fair. Last week was the County Fair here, and Tom and I had the great fortune, for the second year in a row, to see the kids with their chickens.

If nothing else, the sight of farm kids, in white shirts, with good manners, proud to show off their livestock, can melt your heart.

I mean, how great is that?

There are still farm kids out there - kids who do chores before school, kids who decorate their horse stalls for the fair, kids who are proud of their chickens...

lest you think we live in an idyllic small town where all the kids act as if it is 1950...let me remind you of The Midway.

Hallelujah for The Midway of a County Fair. Just like they pump in oxygen at the casinos, they pump in phermones to the Midway. It is primal... the circling of boys and girls, looking but not looking, laughing with their friends, hoping to meet someone who doesn't go to their school that they can talk about when school starts in three weeks... except for the text messaging and the ass cleavage, the Midway too, is as it has always been.

And that's not even mentioning the carnies and the rides and games. Oh man, this too is as it always has been: creepy and rigged.

Speaking of casinos, Tom likes to stand behind the poker players and soak in the game. At the Midway, Tom stood behind a genial fella who was playing Clown Town.

Clown Town is not as bad as it sounds, well, okay, it's bad. At least it's not humans in clown makeup. It is an old shoddy game, with wooden, glass-encased boxes that hold seated clowns with chipped ceramic faces. The clowns are constantly stretching their legs in their little protected houses. The movement of legs moves the shit that surrounds them. Tokens and plastic American flag keychains and ceramic dogs dressed up as sexy waitresses or nurses. I mean really, that's worth a couple of bucks, isn't it? The deal is you drop your token, aim it, and if the clown's feet push just right, you win a prize, or more tokens. Addictive and not as easy as it seems.

I'm proud to say, no crappy knicknacks or keychains left Clown Town with us. Only bellies full of Itasca County corn and the memory of a smile from a llama came home with us that night.

what's cooking

While we were on the North Shore walking on rocks over the weekend, Tom and I came to a decision. 27 by Thanksgiving! Am I right ladies? Okay, so the number and the catch phrase only have meaning to us (and we're going to keep it that way!) But we're going to get healthy by Thanksgiving. And then we'll eat a lot. Better food, more excercise, you know the drill.

Tom's working at the nursing home tonight and I'm making salad and soup for when he gets home. The salad turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

GINGER CHICKEN CABBAGE SLAW
1 Tbsp Hay River Pumpkin Seed Oil
4 skinless boneless chicken breasts
2 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
1 Tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp Asian dark sesame oil
1 Tbsp grated peeled fresh ginger
bag of broccoli slaw
4 scallions

So here's what I did: grilled the chicken, cut it up and then whisked together all the other ingredients until blended. Then I added the chicken and had my own taste test. I added a little more Pumpkin Seed oil. Chill for 30 minutes.

We'll see what the mayor has to say on this one.

The soup is out of a Cooking Light book I got after interviewing Chef Billy. It's called Thai Shrimp and Chicken Soup. I bought clam juice for the first time for this recipe. We'll see how it goes...

In Minnesota, we call it pop!

My lovely hubby, the mayor of Cobb County, bought me this empty pop shoppe bottle in an antique store in Two Harbors years ago. He could see the nostalgia in my eyes and hear the adoration in my "THE POP SHOPPE" shriek and couldn't help himself from buying me this memento.

The Pop Shoppe was in the back of a gas station across from Hardees in Brainerd when I was growing up. Not a convenience store gas station like we have today, but the kind with a few mismatched candy bars under glass and car parts. In the back of the station were hundreds of bottles of Pop Shoppe Pop. A man would fill up the gas tank and my brother and I would run in and pick from the delightful array of flavors. Sarsparilla, Cream Soda, Black Cherry, Grape, Orange, Pineapple, Strawberry, Cola, Root Beer, Lime Ricky....it's not hard to see why, with all these flavors, the Pop Shoppe was more exciting than our usual Tab or Fresca. The ability to mix and match, the bottles in the cool red plastic carrying case and the smells of oil and gas, oh man, I'm light headed thinking of it now. (P.S., I'm a fainter, so punch in a 9 and a 1 and hold your finger above the last 1, just in case.)

But just like when my dad brought home the egg fluff donuts, the Pop Shoppe Pop lasted only a few days in our house.
Now that I am rummaging around in the archives, pop has always been part of my life. One of my first jobs at Holtan's Resort was running our pop machine. It was an old Pepsi bottle machine that we filled up with RC Cola products. The money part of the machine didn't work anymore, so people in need of pop had to knock on our metal screen door and ask for me.

I would then emerge with my cigar box of money and THE CRANK.

That is, if I could find the crank. (It really was a crank by the way.) I'd put the crank in the hole, crank and crank some more and hand the customer their beverage of choice. Then I'd collect the money, put it in my cigar box, and thank them for their patronage.

You may not know this about me, but I'm not really cut out for the world of business. A) I frequently lost the crank and B) I drank all the profits. These things didn't stop me from leaving my brother Keith threatening notes on his pillow that looked something like this:

To: Keith
From: Heidi

You owe me $3.50 for pop. Please pay by Friday. Or ELSE!!!

When I reflect on these formative years in the business world (I was 9), I really believe that being a pop entrepreneur and being my own bill collecter made me the woman I am today.

oh summer, I hardly knew thee

I've always loved berries, and since I've moved to this part of the world I've started marking my summer by the berry picking.

June...I remember it like it was yesterday...driving out to Luneyberries, my gas tank on E, a whistle on my lips, a zip in my step and pants that weren't appropriate for dirt and broken berries. I spent a hot, steamy morning lying down in rows and picking strawberries, interrupted only briefly by an older man who surprised me a bit and turned out to be lying in a row right next to me. Inches from my face really.

"Good berries this year!" he said.

Then there were the raspberries up in the garden, mid-summer. Every year Tom and Bob the Gardener have been adding more raspberries. It's a little fishy where these raspberry bushes actually come from as neither of them will give me a straight answer about it.

"Bob knows a guy over across the causeway, blah, blah, mumble, mumble mumble"

It's probably better I don't know the source of their raspberry harvesting.

Just this week Tom and Bob and I went over to Lavalier's for their final blueberry day. We got there at 7:30 in the morning, and already people were packed into the rows. Bob and I sat together on our big white buckets, me grabbing the berries he couldn't see because of the macular degeneration, and him chatting up the ladies near us. It went something like this:

"I usually wash 'em, clean em, and freeze them on cookie sheets."

"That's what I do!" one answered, the other said, "Oh I just throw them in old milk jugs and wash 'em when I take them out of the freezer!"

For some reason Bob then went on to discuss the state of our hospital in town. "They brought that staff infection from the old place with them! Even the employees don't go there!"

It was a great morning and the blueberries were huge and ripe. We froze a lot of them and last night I tried my hand at making blueberry syrup.

And finally, there's my favorite. The second cousin once removed of the berry world. The blackberries. Our woods are lousy with these berries, and I mean that in the best possible way. Everywhere you go, thorny, scratchy blackberry bushes... bushes filled with berries that taste wonderful, if you catch them just right, even though they leave a seed in your dental work. Berries so strong, so hearty, and so painful if you reach for the really good ones, they could take over the world, or at the very least, Cohasset.

With blackberries, it's not even about the berries for me. It's that there are so many that I wind up socializing more. Last weekend Cristin and Jon were here and we picked. The other day Raina stopped by and we picked some for her company that's coming to town for the Farm & Antique Tractor Threshing Show in Blackberry, and this weekend, Lee and Kim and the kids are coming to pick some more. I'm thinking of inviting some work friends next week to pick even more.

So I'll pick blackberries while they are there, and try not to think about that they also signify the ending of summer.

How's your summer going?