Recipe to follow....

Like I said, my Aunt Mae was a very good cook, and a good story teller too. There is one story of hers I have always enjoyed retelling.

She and Uncle Bob were entertaining another couple for dinner. I don't know what Aunt Mae served exactly, but it involved roasted meat and potatoes and gravy. The man absolutely raved about the gravy all through the meal, and after dinner when the men were sitting around and the women were cleaning up the kitchen, the wife said to my aunt, "You have to tell me how you made that gravy. My husband hates my gravy.  He says it tastes like flour and water."

Aunt Mae didn't think there was anything special about it, but, willing to help, she asked the woman to describe how she went about making gravy.

"Well, I melt a little butter, and then stir in flour and water, and salt and pepper..."

"Wait a minute," Aunt Mae said to her.  "What about the drippings from the meat?"

"Oh," the woman replied dismissively, "I throw that away!"

Aunt Mae, bless her heart, just smiled sweetly at her and said, "Well, I think we might just have figured it out."

Who knew?

I spent a good part of my youth and childhood proclaiming to hate lasagna. Seriously? Pasta, ground meat, cheese, tomato sauce -- what's not to like?

But this stemmed from my first experience with the dish when I was about twelve years old. My Aunt Mae had served it -- well, she served something she called lasagna -- and it was dreadful.  I cannot now even imagine what she did to it, but because she was a good cook, I just assumed that's what lasagna was, and I avoided it steadfastly thereafter.

About twenty years later, I was served lasagna again as a guest at someone's house, and I believed it was incumbent upon me to take a deep breath and try to choke some of it down.  And, of course, it was delicious. I wish I knew where Aunt Mae had gone wrong.

You would think that taught me a lesson and I now try everything twice.  No.  I've only had beef brains once, and I won't be doing that again.  Actually, Aunt Mae made that too.  Hmm.

It's the truth

I recently heard someone say that I was the most honest person they knew. Well, that's nice, and it might be true, but it's not because of some overpowering sense of honor or principle. It's just that I have a hard time not saying exactly what I think, which can be torture for me sometimes. Like when somebody walks into a room wearing something perfectly hideous and says, "How do I look?"

But honesty can be fun too. Long ago I worked for a head hunter in what was called a one-girl office, just me and the boss. For some reason, it took two or three phone calls to make an appointment for one guy, and he flirted with me every time we talked on the phone. He kept asking me to go out with him after his appointment with my boss, which I wanted no part of.

At one point he asked me what I looked like. "You sound tall," he said. "Are you tall?" I replied, "No, as a matter of fact, I'm short and fat and wear real thick glasses."  He laughed hysterically and told me I was adorable.

When he walked into the office on the appointed day and saw that I was exactly as I had described myself, it was my turn to laugh at the look on his face, the pompous ass.

Roses are Green and White, Ohio State is Blue

Sometime in the late 1980's I saw a really cool shirt on the clearance rack at T. J. Maxx. It was heavy cotton, maroon in color, and had three-quarter raglan sleeves. There were also three letters, USC, in yellow on the front, but I didn't care. It was a really cool shirt, and it was only $3.

I loved that shirt and wore it a lot.  In fact, I was wearing it a week or so before Christmas in 1987 while doing my holiday shopping at a local mall here in Mid-Michigan. I had my coat open, of course, since it was warm in there, and even though I was doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to call attention to myself, I noticed that people I passed were giving me the hairy eyeball. Some looked downright hostile, and I was starting to get rather paranoid.

An idea struck me on the way home, and when I got there, I said to my partner, "Who is Michigan State playing in the Rose Bowl?"

"I think Southern Cal," replied she.

Oops.

Michigan State won that game 20 to 17. In a little over three weeks from now, they will go back to the Rose Bowl for the first time since, having soundly beaten Ohio State last night in the Big Ten Championship game. I am in the market for a Stanford shirt to wear to the mall. After all, as they say in the beer commercials, it's not weird unless it doesn't work.

Go State.

Good Food

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, never my favorite holiday, for a number of reasons. Because of that, I really do not have a lot of memories, happy or otherwise, associated with the holiday, but I do remember one particular Thanksgiving in the late 1960's. The big family Thanksgiving dinner for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was to be at our house that year.

My mother planned for two weeks, prepped for one, and cooked for three days. She produced a traditional Thanksgiving feast that was a monument to her skills as cook and hostess. There were many sincere exclamations:  "Oh, Betty! The [turkey/dressing/mashed potatoes/gravy/green bean casserole/dinner rolls/cranberry sauce] is [delicious/fabulous/spectacular]!" But it was Aunt Blanche who stopped the show when she was heard to say, almost as if to herself, "Man, these olives are good."

Aunt Blanche loves green olives, and it was clear that she was thankful my mother had gone to the trouble of opening a jar and putting some on the relish tray.

Date and Time

It's 11/12/13, but that's all I have to say about it.

It snowed yesterday, our first snow of the season, although it left barely a quarter inch of it on the ground.

Another first snow I remember occurred when I was in college in Wisconsin many years ago.  We woke up one November morning to find three inches on the ground, and it was still coming down hard.

When I left the dorm that morning for my first class, I saw a girl who lived across the hall from me out on the lawn in front of the building, no coat or hat or gloves or boots. She was laughing and dancing and twirling, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back to feel the flakes land on her face. She was from Hawaii, and it was the first time she had ever seen snow fall from the sky.

I feel obliged to report that after another three weeks of Wisconsin winter, her delight in seeing snow had pretty much disappeared.

On the face of it

We had lunch out at a local restaurant yesterday, and I became quite fascinated by a group of women at a nearby table. There were nine of them, and the youngest of them was at least 65, and some appeared much older. There was no apparent guest of honor, and I got the idea they go out to lunch together somewhat regularly. I would like to have known how they all knew each other.

Seeing them all together reminded me a story about my grandmother when she was of an age to fit in with that group. She had agreed to watch a neighbor's child after school until her mother came home from work. One afternoon the girl, who was about seven or eight, arrived to find my grandmother getting ready for a little get-together for three or four of her friends. She explained that "the girls" were coming for coffee.

After the last guest had gone, the little girl asked, "So when are the girls coming?"  My grandmother replied, "Those were the girls," to which the kid responded, "But they all had grandma faces."