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Goulash, Grandparents, and Regret

Last night I attempted cooking, which in and of itself is a feat. I can honestly say, of the things I have been complimented, cooking is not one of them. There are people who are renowned simply for being a good cook. If their name comes up in conversation, people’s eyes roll back in their heads as they utter the words, “oh, she’s a good cook, Have you ever tried her carrot cake, she can make the best homemade rolls I’ve ever tasted.” Etcetera, etcetera. Blah, blah.

Not me. Okay. It’s not something I’ve ever learned to do or really enjoyed doing.

Last night, my little drummer boy husband grabbed his drumsticks and headed out to play a gig, so it was just me and my niece Ashlynn at home.

I wanted goulash. J-Dub doesn’t like goulash, but I love it. Mind you, I’ve only ever had one person’s goulash in my entire life, and that was my grandmother’s. If she ever used recipes for cooking, I haven’t the foggiest as to where to locate those. So when I searched the internet for recipes similar to her goulash, I was met with an assortment of crap. Crap, I tell you.

Obviously, goulash is a Hungarian dish, not a southern poor man’s dish as I always thought. The recipes called for ingredients that I’m sure my Grannie never had in her pantry at any time, like Rotel for instance.

So I text my sister, and she immediately texts back with a bunch of rigmarole ingredients for so-called “Grannie’s Goulash”.

I had an idea that she was crazy. Mustard really? So I called my Aunt Bert (my Grannie’s daughter). She thought it was a little this, and a little that, and maybe some of this.

Well that seemed closer, but it just wasn’t good enough for me. I need a recipe!!! I need to know how much of this and that. I operate in teaspoons and tablespoons, people.

I returned to the internet, and googled Southern goulash. Recipes popped up with okra in them. Who in the world puts okra in their goulash???? Huh? Huh? Just answer me that. Next I googled Old-fashioned goulash. Marjoram and tomato soup? Puh-lease!!!

Then when my frustrations were at an all time high, and my stomach was growling, I got the crazy notion to google my grandmother’s name and goulash. Just hoping maybe, just maybe, someone had published a long-lost recipe of her goulash.

And to my surprise, that brought up absolutely nothing.

Except it led me to an ancestry site.

So my search for goulash took an unexpected turn to ancestry on my mother’s side. And I’m fascinated. I’ve never given much thought to my ancestors, but now that I’m getting older, my brain is changing, along with my priorities, and I’m understanding the impact of my lineage.

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of “old” family. There are people my same age, who grew up with a great-grandmother, a great-great grandmother even, but not me. I’ve only ever had grandmothers. My great grandparents died before I came into this world, and I never even knew a grandfather. Sad huh? I guess my people died young, or procreated old, and too many years are in-between.

I’ve heard my Grannie talk about her parents, but I’d forgotten their names until last night when they started showing up on my computer screen. Suddenly they became real people, with dreams, and love for one another, and hopes, and journeys, and trials.

Just like me.

Now I wish when I sat in the TV room with my Grannie, while she rattled on with stories I’d heard before, about people who were cold in the ground, with events that were unimportant to my teenage ears, that instead of slumping over in my chair and wishing she’d stop droning on, that I’d had a cell phone with voice recorder, a video recorder, a tape recorder, shoot even a pencil and pad and would have written down her stories. But of course, I never thought they’d matter to me.

How foolish we are in our youth.

Since I’ve begun blogging, I’ve been forced to dip into my memory banks. Often I find them empty or half erased, and I must fill them in with how I believe it must have been. Was I wearing tennis shoes in that blizzard, or were they high heeled show girl boots like my dad remembers?

I have stories to tell, people to remember, events to unfold. Other people may not care about them, but I do.

“You and your husband might have looked out the same kitchen window for twenty years, your eyes might be as green as your uncle Harry’s, but twenty bucks says you don’t see the world as they do. Start writing to save your life. Stories only happen to those who can tell them.”—-Lou Willett Stanek

START WRITING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. STORIES ONLY HAPPEN TO THOSE WHO CAN TELL THEM.

And then others must remember them, and in turn, tell them.

My great -grandfather Eugene “Gene” Ira married my great-grandmother Emma Olive (oh my gosh I love that name) and had 2 daughters, Mary and Imogene, my grandmother.

I want to talk to those people. I want to talk to them real bad. I imagine their black and white faces, their frumpy clothes, their aprons, their weathered hands. They were tough. They had to be. I want to hear their stories, and share their stories. It’s like instantly, I realize I am on this earth, in part because of these people.

They are MY people.

My great-grandparents:

Eugene “Gene” Ira: Aug 22, 1883-Jan 15, 1966 Age. 81

Emma Olive: Dec 7, 1879- Aug 7, 1911 Age 32

My grandmother Imogene, whose name came from her dad Gene and her mom Emma loved me, cherished me, delighted in me and made the best goulash of which I can not recreate.

And me?

I’ve forgotten her stories.

Stories only happen to those who can tell them.

Footprints in the Snow

A couple days ago, my husband shoveled us out of the snow. It was just in the nick of time too. I believe with my all of my being that he was on the verge of having a full on attack of deliriousness as a side effect of the cabin fever he’d developed after being cooped in the house.

It’s like we were living in The Shining. We were trapped, confined, imprisoned for….for……months.

It was at least days.

Okay, okay, it was only about 6 hours. But that’s not what it felt like.

Unlike the movie, The Shining, with a little determination, and a lot of J-Dub’s muscle behind a snow shovel, we could get out and weren’t being chased through a maze by a madman with a hatchet. And I must admit I never witnessed twins murdered in our hallway, or blood pouring from the walls, or a small boy wiggling his finger growling REDRUM, REDRUM.

Alright, so I guess it wasn’t anything like The Shining. Our biggest problem was J-Dub was bored.

He said he was going out to the place. “The place” refers to our new little piece of land with a lovely trailer house {snicker, snicker} we bought that has given us fits and convulsions since closing day way back in October. I decided I should let the stink blow off me, and go see all the crazies driving around town in the snow, so I pulled on twenty extra layers and hopped in the passenger seat.

The snow was deep when we pulled up to the gate, so we decided it’d be easier to park in the county road than to drive through the deep snow.

J-Dub led the way. My boots were heavy and the snow was bottomless. Lifting my knees up to my chest to take my next labored step was difficult. I hollered out from behind him, “You’re going too fast!.” He turned his head and hollered back, “You’re going too slow!”

Knowing he wasn’t going to slow down and wait for me, I got the brilliant idea to walk in his footsteps, and save myself a lot of hard work.

I’m sure you’ve seen footprints in the snow before, I’m sure you’ve even walked in snow deeper than this, but if I told the truth that it was only a few inches deep instead of having you believe it was 3 1/2 feet, and that it was a very short walk to the front door, it doesn’t make me sound as tough, eh?

Walking in someone else’s footprints in the snow makes me all nostalgic and I think of the time when there was a “for real” blizzard and I walked with my dad to a little convenience store several, and I do mean several, blocks away ill-dressed in a measly pair of tennis shoes. We needed food. I was about 10, he was about 40, and I realize now how terribly I must have slowed him down. And if my memory serves me correctly, I begged to go, and he insisted I shouldn’t, until of course he gave in like dad’s sometimes do when their obnoxious daughters won’t stop whining. He probably at that point was thinking, “Fine, go with me, learn your lesson, you little ninny headed brat.”

And I did learn my lesson. It was cold, and I was miserable, and very glad to get home to my momma. That day I remember walking in his footsteps, which was not easy to manage since his stride was so much longer than mine. But all the same, I was thankful they were there.

The picture of these footprints in the snow also remind me of my Savior Jesus, and that beautiful poem Footprints in the Sand.

“LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you’d walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me.”

The LORD replied:
“My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,

it was then that I carried you.”

Be blessed.

My Time Spent on Top of the “Freshly Pressed” Mountain

One of my posts was freshly pressed on Tuesday, and I was happier than a puppy with two tails. There wasn’t anything that could steal the lollipops and sunshine from my day. I was sliding down rainbows and hugging strangers. I didn’t really understand what it meant to be freshly pressed, and what I did know was due to my blogging friend Brad over at www.blockader.wordpress.com who was freshly pressed a couple of weeks ago and got a bazillion hits on his blog.

For others who may not know, each day wordpress chooses about 11 blogs to feature and puts them on their homepage. So for about 24 hours, it’s like your blog is on the billboard of the world-wide web. Which makes for pretty good advertising.

My blog was also the featured post on the postaday challenge page.

The number of page views on my site for the day skyrocketed. Granted, I didn’t get nearly as many as other freshly pressed bloggers, but I’m not complaining. I got many subscribers, many wonderful comments, and lots of look-sees, and found lots of great blogs to read for myself.

The whole day I just kept repeating how happy I was. So very happy. Happy, happy, happy.

I was obsessed. I woke up in the night and snuck my phone under the covers to check my blog stats. I was like the boy who’s supposed to be sleeping, but instead is looking at a dirty magazine with a flash light under the covers. The whole time the thought of my husband waking up and catching me made it even more riskier. Yes, I live on the edge. I’m a wild one.

I relished the entire day, and never thought once about the ‘morrow.

And then the sun rose and a new day dawned.

And WordPress chose 10 different blogs to be freshly pressed.

And just like that, in the blinking of an eye, I was replaced.

Thrown out with yesterday’s slop.

As exhilirating as it was to watch my little bloggie towers soar, it wasn’t enjoyable to watch them shrink back to their measly beginnings.

I became blue.

My moment of basking was over.

My fifteen minutes of fame.

My mountain top experience.

It was wonderful while it lasted.

But last, it did not.

I’m thankful for the experience. I don’t know why my post on an antiquated green canister was chosen, or how it was chosen. But the feeling I experienced for the recognition of a piece of my heart-felt writing is indescribable.

And I’m convinced, now even more than ever, that I want to write.

I want to keep going, keep writing, even on hard days, long days, empty days.

I want to write words that touch people, that stir their emotion, that floods their memories.

I want to write for you.

And you,

and you,

and you.

Thanks for reading.

Soap #2–The Old and Curmudgeonly: Sleeping Through the Storm

My little town got 8.5 inches of snow Tuesday night, and they cancelled school. And as an added bonus, we don’t have to start school until 10:00 this morning. Yippee Skippee!!

Snow days don’t come around often, and I try to enjoy them. I spend my day in lazy gear, reading, writing, facebooking, napping. My husband on the other hand, is like a fish out of water. He turns the TV on, then turns the TV off. He sits in the recliner, then sits on the couch. He lets the dogs out and lets the dogs in.

Finally, he got still long enough to sleep a little. I decided a picture of these three old dogs was in order.

He didn’t work because he took care of everything the day before.

He double-fed the cattle and put out hay, but I’m sure those cattle will be glad to see him and the cake wagon (aka the feed truck) today.

[feed+wagon.jpg]

He was prepared for the approaching storm.

It reminds me of a story I once read by an anonymous author:

Years ago a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast. He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic. They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops.

As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals. Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer. “Are you a good farmhand?” the farmer asked him. “Well, I can sleep when the wind blows,” answered the little man. Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired him. The little man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man’s work.

Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore. Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand’s sleeping quarters. He shook the little man and yelled, “Get up! A storm is coming! Tie things down before they blow away!” The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, “No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows.”

Enraged by the old man’s response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm. To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarpaulins. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred. The shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. Nothing could blow away. The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, and he returned to bed to also sleep while the wind blew.

So it is with life. Can we sleep while the wind blows? Are we prepared when the storms of life arise?

There’s marital troubles, financial troubles, job troubles, relationship troubles, health troubles.

There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich.

Sorry. Bubba came to mind. It happens.

Here’s my SOAP for the week. It’s my new way of Bible Study. S stands for scripture, O for observation, A for application, P for prayer.

Scripture: In Luke Chapter 4, Jesus was sleeping during the windstorm.

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are youso afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Observation: Even the disciples who had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle were afraid during the storm. Their faith was tested, they didn’t feel prepared. They didn’t think Jesus cared about them.

Application: During storms in my own life I have cried out that same lament, “Do you not even care?” But he does. I know he cares for me. He had told the disciples to get in the boat, we’re going to the other side. He’s with us every step of our journey. Side by side, through all kinds of weather. Through the sunshine and the rain. When we give our lives to Him, ask Him to direct our steps, strive to follow Him, read His word, and pray, then we can be prepared for the storms of life. Knowing he’s in the boat with us, taking us to the other side, through the storm and all will help us feel peace.

Prayer: Dear Lord, I love you and I thank you. I thank you for my good times, and I thank you for the storms that you have seen me through. I thank you because I know that you will be with me in the storms that are inevitable. I pray that through You, I will always be prepared when the winds toss my little boat. Hide your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Guide me on my journey. Keep me safe.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Making Snow Ice Cream

Put on your snowboots

with your sexiest bathrobe. Make a fashion statement.

Take an empty bowl and a scooper of some sort, high step through the snow drifts and brave the bitter winds to gather up clean snow.

I find it necessary to scrape off the first layer, as you might find some specks from a tree, or blowing dirt, or your husband’s truck tires. Or whatever.

Feel your fingers grow numb and nostrils sticking together as your snot freezes.

Get your butt in the house, shivering, rubbing your hands together, repeatedly saying “it’s cold, it’s cold, it’s cold.”

Stick your bowl of snow in the freezer until you’re ready for it.

In a separate bowl, pour a cup of milk.

A half cup of sugar,

and a teaspoon of vanilla.

Whoa. Holy Canolli. Are my hands really that wrinkled?

Mix that together until the sugar is dissolved.

Then begin adding the snow. Mix the snow and milk/sugar mixture until it is a desired consistency. If you see little specks of black, just pick them out. It’s probably just a little dirt. You’ve eaten worse at the Chinese buffet, unbeknownst. Trust me.

Now taste your ice cream.

At first ours was waaayyyyyy too sweet, so we added some more snow, then it was waaaaayyyyy too dry, so we added some more milk.

You’ll have to play around a little bit to receive a nice consistency and flavor.

Once you have it to your liking, add some syrup and cherries.

That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh I like it.

Then drink it up, ’cause it’s practically melted by now.

Enjoy your sugar high until you crash.

Then repeat.

Gangsta’ Cowboy

My husband J-Dub has a side not many people know.

To the outside observer he appears to be a polite, hardworking, rugged, no-nonsense cowboy.

But underneath his dirty, black hat lies a light-hearted wit.

I had a good day today and decided to text my darling to share my good news.

Here’s my text to him.

And I received a prompt reply:

Yo, yo, yo, did Snoop Dogg steal my husband’s flip phone or what?

I guess he and Snoop Dogg are tight, G.

Snoop D-O-double Gizzle is off the hizzle for shizzle, and anybody that disagrees is a lil’ bizzle.

Or something.

Forgive me, I know not what I speak.

Fo’ shizzle nizzle.

Snoop Dogg's Black Cowboy Hat

And yee-haw.

11 Facts About Goats

Two phrases I never want uttered in my home again are:

We’re out of eggs.

That’s the last of the milk.

I am remedying the egg situation soon, very soon. And I am strongly considering a goat for the milk cure.

Now before you curl up your nose at the mention of goat milk, I must go on the defense.

But first I must start with a confession. I’ve never tasted goat’s milk. I have however tasted goat cheese and promptly barfed afterward. I blogged about that. I think I had the Goat Flu. You can read about it here. But who’s to say it was the goat cheese that made me retch? It could’ve been a virus or something.

This is my mediocre attempts to convince myself that I need a goat.

Yes, I know you are probably thinking goats have a notorious reputation of being tin can eaters, car hood jumpers, and head butters. I’m here to redeem the reputation of the goat.

Much like placenta eating, we the people of the United States of America are likely missing out on something profound and wonderful.

Last night, I propped myself up on pillows in my bed and read a book about the dairy goats.

Facts I’ve learned, that I must pass on to you, my darling readers:

The goat is related to the deer.
Yes, goats might eat everything, but build a pen. Don’t blame the goat!
Does are not smelly, but those bucks are the stinkiest, foulest, nastiest creatures (learned from experience)
Bucks are smelly due to scent glands, but also because they piss all over the front of their legs, beards, and faces.
Does are not smelly, rather they are dainty, fastidious, intelligent, friendly, and fun (sounds like a great personal ad)
In the world today, more people use goat milk than cow milk
There is no difference in the taste of raw, whole cow milk and raw, whole goat milk.
Many doctors prescribe goat milk for cases of dyspepsia, peptic ulcer, liver dysfunction, jaundice.
Goat milk can be used for infants during weaning, infants with eczema, and pregnant women who are puking their guts up.
Goat milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk due to smaller fat globules.
In goat genetics, white is dominant and black is recessive.

Goat’s milk should not taste funny. If it does, it is due to unsanitary milking parlors, unclean utensils, feed or weeds that the goat has recently eaten, the smelly buck being in the vicinity, or other reasons. So now, I need to find some goat people. I’d like a tall glass of goat milk to sample.

If you’re still thinking raw goat milk is grody, you won’t believe how gross raw denim is.

This boy wore the same jeans for 15 months without washing them.

A Canadian student tested the limits of personal hygiene by wearing the same unwashed jeans for over 15 months.

While this may not be ideal for most people, it surprisingly was discovered to cause no health risks for healthy people.

Josh Le, a student at the University of Alberta, was so excited when he bought a pair of Nudie Jeans in September 2009 that he wore them every day. He even went so far as to sleep in them for a month, according to the National Post.

Nudie Jeans are raw jeans that are specifically designed to shape itself to the contours of the individual’s body. Raw denim isn’t chemically treated or washed prior during manufacturing. It is sold to the consumer stiff like cardboard. The idea is that wearing the jeans without washing them will result in the indigo color wearing away at pressure points in the fabric, showing the individual’s body contours. When the jeans are eventually washed, the individual’s shape will be revealed in the pattern that develops, according to The Star .

After wearing his raw denim for 15 months and one week, Le went to a professor of textile science at the University of Alberta, Rachel McQueen. She assisted him with an informal experiment. They took bacterial swabs from different areas of the jeans, including the front, back and crotch area.

“I expected to find some bacteria associated with the lower intestine such as E. coli, but was surprised to find there weren’t any, just lots of normal skin bacteria,” McQueen told the University student newspaper site . McQueen carries out research in the development of odour and its relationship to bacteria in textiles.

She had been expecting to find harmful bacteria, such as E. coli, in the crotch area, but there were only non-harmful, skin bacteria colonies. She did warn, however, that it was just one unpublished study on a single pair of jeans, and it may not be true for all cases.

Raw denim is growing in popularity, with other teenagers wearing the jeans for six-month stretches to get an individual look.

(news source http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/student-wears-unwashed-jeans-for-15-straight-months-2011-01-26-1.347162)

Maybe we’re all just a bunch of germaphobes.

Wabi Sabi

Yesterday I wrote about an avocado green canister that is banged up, rusted, and just plain ugly, but beautiful despite it’s imperfections. Rather than the reactions I was expecting to receive, several folks said they loved that canister.

I’m wondering if this green canister falls under the term Wabi Sabi. That word in itself is just fabulous to say. Wabi Sabi. Try it. It rolls off the tongue like Obi Wan Kenobi, not that I have any idea who that is. I’m much too young.

Or Ping Pong. Ying Yang.

Cheech and Chong.

Wabi Sabi is a Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive, and incomplete. I understand it as a “less is more” mind-set. A place where non-essentials are weeded out and only essential items are left regardless of their imprefections.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.~~architect Tadao Ando

Robyn Giggs Lawrence has written a book called Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi Sabi House. I read an article she wrote recently that helped me realize this is what I’m aiming for. This is the direction I’m heading. I want Wabi Sabi!!

The two words wabi and sabi have different meanings and have not always been used together.

Wabi means humble and simple. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe.” A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Can’t you just see that little monk’s weathered, aged, grinning face?

Sabi means rusty and weathered. It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting. Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace.

In home decor, wabi-sabi inspires a minimalism that celebrates the human rather than the machine. Possessions are pared down, and pared down again, until only those that are necessary for their utility or beauty (and ideally both) are left. What makes the cut? Items that you both admire and love to use, like those hand-crank eggbeaters that still work just fine. Things that resonate with the spirit of their makers’ hands and hearts: the chair your grandfather made, your six-year-old’s lumpy pottery, an afghan you knitted yourself (out of handspun sheep’s wool, perhaps). Pieces of your own history: sepia-toned ancestral photos, baby shoes, the Nancy Drew mysteries you read over and over again as a kid.

So yes, I’d say this green tin is very wabi sabi.

And I’m keeping it.

Words to describe a wabi sabi philosophy.

Simple
Uncluttered
Beautiful
Authentic
Slow
Clean
Quiet
Imperfect

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

Anatole France (1844 – 1924)

The Memory of a Sound

I recently purchased this magazine.
I say recently, but it was way back in 2010.

I have no idea why I would purchase a magazine called Do it yourself, since I don’t do anything myself. There must have been something that caught my eye on the cover, but now…..who knows? This is one of those mags that if you have nothing to do all day except create adorableness from egg shells and paper, this is your heaven.

It does have some extremely cute crafts in it.

See, I even dog-eared this page on crafting with felt. Felt makes me happy. Not that there’s even a remote chance I’ll be frolicking with felt in the future.

This is an old railroad tie used as a mantle. I love it. We have a similar piece of rustic roughness found in an old building that we are going to use as a mantle in our little trailer house on the prairie. Maybe in 23 more years or so.

But the point of this whole post is this:

These canisters.

My old grannie had an ugly-as-sin, avocado green tin canister just exactly like the one in the back of this picture.

It sat on her countertop next to the stove, and she sometimes stored goodies such as homemade peanut butter cookies in it.

I remember stealthily trying to lift the lid off to sneak a cookie or treat. The “swoosh” of the lid coming off the canister echos in my head. I would try not to make a sound, and inevitably always would pling, plang, and gong one against the other, giving myself away. Like sneezing during a game of hide-and-seek.

Sometime during my childhood, we got a new step cousin in the family. He wasn’t one of us, and I remember treating him as an outsider. When memories like these flood back, I always try to blame my sister. But truthfully, I don’t know who was the instigator of being harsh with him. It could’ve been my idea, or my cousin’s (his step-brother) or my sister’s, regardless I remember the four of us being outside huddled under a tree, being ugly to our new family member and telling him that “WE (the privileged real grandchildren) knew our grannie’s secret hiding place for goodies and that he had better be nice or we wouldn’t let him know.”

I wish I could go back under that tree and change that conversation. I hope he doesn’t remember. I’m ashamed.

Seeing these burnt orange canisters in a magazine stirred something inside me. I asked my mom, who now lives in my grannie’s old house, if she knew where that avocado green canister was. She said it was around there someplace. Then about one week later, I received a call, and lo and behold, the little criminal she has living with her (another story for another time) was cleaning out the garage and it turned up.

Here it is. On my kitchen countertop by my stove.

It’s not in as good of condition as the orange ones in the magazines.

Why I have this in my house, in my blue and yellow kitchen, is something that I must explore deep within my soul. And maybe discuss with my therapist, which happens to be Marie, my school librarian.

Why, when I am desperately trying to simplify and minimalize, did I bring this old junky, unfashionable, semi-unpractical item out from the dust and mire of a dirty garage to sit purposeless on my already cluttered kitchen counter?

Why do I sometimes go to my kitchen for no other reason but to lift the lid just so I can hear the pling from my childhood?

I know why.

It’s so I can see my grannie sitting in her chair with a poodle on her lap.

Or standing at the kitchen counter pressing out the peanut butter cookies. She would let me mash on the cookie dough with a meat tenderizer to create the little indented designs and then sprinkle sugar on top when they came out of the oven, soft and warm.

I’m suddenly having a peanut butter cookie hankering.

And I need a tissue.

Would you ever do this?

I’ve acquired new learning.

And anytime I have new learning, I must share it. It’s just something about me. Maybe that’s why I teach. I want everyone to have the same knowledge I have, regardless how inane, unimportant, or disturbing it might be. And I repeat disturbing.

Today’s new tidbit may fall in one or more of the previous categories. I repeat disturbing.

I was perusing some blogs about simple living etc. and I came upon a post that caught my eye. And made my mouth gape open. It was truly unbelievable to me at first. Then I read more, and more, and the more I read, the more fascinated I became, the more I wanted to know, so I googled it and found it to be a semi-common practice.

I guess I just need to come out and say it.

{Deep Breath}

Okay.

I’m ready.

{Exhale}

It’s the practice of placenta eating.

No need to reread that. I said placenta eating. As in afterbirth. As in eating afterbirth.

I KNOW!! I KNOW!! That was my reaction completely.

Can you believe this?????

The first time I heard about it, was on a blog of a lady who lives out in the boonies. She was having a complete natural childbirth in a water bath with midwives in her home. She said after watching her goat give birth, and afterward eating the afterbirth, she realized what a natural thing it was, and that she planned on eating her placenta. All mammals (except humans) do this. It’s just a natural instinct in the animal world. So her husband saved her afterbirth, cooked it down, and ground it into capsules for her to take after her childbirth.

After reading her blog, I was all like, *blink blink* these are a bunch of backwards hillbillies. Just look at what happens when people marry their cousins.

I was horrified. But then I began to question, what if? I’ve mentioned before that I believe there are healing elements all around us, in plants and in nature. Maybe just maybe, the civilized part of us Westerners hinder us from attaining it, because certain things seem so barbaric. Like say, eating our placentas.

After my initial horrification(not sure if that’s a real word) wore off, I began to see this as completely natural, and dare I say, even beautiful.

It’s actually called placentophagia and is practiced around the world, although discouraged in the western world. Why would women do this, you may be thinking? The potential benefits of eating the placenta include: staving off post pardum depression, replenishing nutrients, increasing breast milk production, and helping the uterus heal and tone itself back up.

In my google search, I found there are actually women who eat their placentas raw, and then others cook it up and make capsules.

Here’s a You tube video I found of a professional placenta chef.

The strange thing is, this isn’t the first time afterbirth has appeared on my blog.

And it’s not likely to be the last.