Thanksgiving Cactus

This is my Christmas (Thanksgiving?) Cactus which seems slightly confused about the time of year. It probably will be finished blooming by Christmas as it was last year. It was supposed to be a gift as a small plant to our daughter-in-law four or five years ago but she forgot to take it home so we kept it alive and it has grown to two feet in diameter. The buds shoot out of the ends of the leaves into quite a spectacular a shower of red. It has weathered my infrequent watering and the cats' frequent snatching of a few leaves so they can play cat and mouse. It might have to be moved soon to the kitchen window to make way for the Christmas tree.

Burrowing Cats

Our son, wife, and 16 month-old granddaughter came for Thanksgiving weekend.  We are back to just the two of us now again with our two cats, Si and Sam.  Si got spooked due to us having company (probably scared of our little granddaughter??) and we couldn't find him one morning.  My husband called and searched for some time, then finally located him trapped INSIDE the box spring of our bed! He had burrowed his way into a corner of the material on the underside of it and couldn't get out.  I now vaguely recall that we had heard some clawing noises during the night and called out "NO!" a couple of times.  It was probably him trying to hide so he may have been there all night.  My husband and son had to take the mattress off the bed and turned over the box spring to free him.

A few years ago we had another cat, "BJ," who liked to burrow under blankets on the bed and make a lump in the bed.  One time we had a bedspread over our couch which hung down over the back of it.  True to his nature, he tried to burrow up under it but instead of ending up under the bedspread, he got caught between the outer fabric and the lining so we had to cut through the lining to get him out.  By then he was none to happy.  It didn't stop his instinctual burrowing habit, though.  I wonder if there is a burrowing gene?  I suppose prairie dogs must have that gene if there is one. 

Lefse--Norwegian Soul Food-- Mmmmmm!

Today I have been baking Norwegian potato lefse [lef'-suh], a popular ethnic food in North Dakota, to sell at a bake sale the Right to Life is having at a bazaar next Saturday.   It's a super fast seller.  I suppose not many want to make it as it is rather tedious and messy to do.  Three lefse sell for $3-4 and I made about 75 of them (in three sessions).   But there is nothing like the taste with a little butter on it or butter and cinnamon and sugar.  When it's hot off the grill and melts the butter it's even better! 

My recipe calls for mixing 3 cups of mashed potatoes, 1/3 c. oil, and 1 t. of salt.   Then mix in 

1 c. white flour with the potato mixture.  Use a heaping 1/3 c. of dough for each piece of lefse.  Work in enough extra flour so that it can be rolled out on a floured board as thin as possible to about 12-15 inches in diameter.   Sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.  With a long tapered, flat stick, transfer to a large round grill and bake at 400-450 degrees.  Turn when small brown spots appear.  Transfer to large plate and cover with a towel.  One batch makes about ten lefse.  Sounds easy enough, right?   Well, a lot can go wrong! 

Potatoes should not be cooked too long or they get sticky.  They also need to have no lumps or else  holes form while rolling the dough.  Some people rice the potatoes by pressing through a fruit press.  I find this is too difficult so I just mash them well.  Only one batch should be made at a time as if the dough sits too long, the gluten in the flour makes it too sticky.  Then it takes more flour to roll them out and the lefse get tough or crisp.  (They should be pliable.)   Sometimes the dough falls apart which means not enough flour has been worked in.   Small tears can be patched by using a piece sliced from the edge.  The potatoes should be room temperature.  I have tried using  mashed potatoes that have been frozen and thawed in the microwave.  For some reason, the dough then becomes too sticky for good lefse.  I use regular mashed potatoes but some people use potato flakes.  The problem of lumps would be solved using the flakes but the taste might not be quite the same.  I put the grill on one side of the sink so I can whisk extra flour off into the sink so that it doesn't burn on the grill.

Then comes the clean-up--flour on clothes, shoes, floor, counters, window sill, etc.!!  It's good to put away anything on the counter or sitting around that would get flour on it and perhaps wear an apron. 

Robert Pastor (CFR) says JBS has slowed North American merger!

This was some great news!

 

In a letter from the John Birch Society concerning a renewal of a successful program from quite a few years ago (Support Your Local Police--and Keep Them Independent), there was a very interesting postscript, as follows:

 

"Due to our involvement in the campaign to stop the North American Union, the CFR [Council of Foreign Relations] point man Robert Pastor, in his latest book, The North American Idea, mentioned the "rejuvenated John Birch Society" as an important part of slowing down the effort four times. "  They cannot merge North America until they have a national police force to merge with Canada's and Mexico's national police forces.

Incident At The RR Crossing

On the way to church today we had to stop on the highway for a long coal train.  Luckily, most of it had already crossed.  Most of them are over 100 cars long and when they are full they go only about 30 or 40 mph. It seems that coal trains from western ND travel through several times a day to supply coal to cities in the eastern population centers. 

Then as we neared the tracks on the way home, a small white car whipped past us at breakneck speed just as the train was nearing the crossing.  The lights were flashing and the cross-arms were about to come down and we thought the driver was going to try to out-run the train or possibly snake around through the cross-arms.  But at the last second, he swerved off on a small road to the left.  At any rate, we were relieved, that he didn't try to cross!  We did slow down to stay back away from him in case there should be a crash.  Perhaps he chickened out or maybe he decided to speed down the small road and cross somewhere else before the train got there. 

11-11-11

There was a lot of talk today on the news about various people who had an 11-11-11 birthday or got married in large numbers at 11:11 AM on 11-11-11 since this date won't appear for another century.  I thought it would be fun to take a picture of our digital alarm clock showing 11:11 AM and also our clock with weights so I did.  I see by the clock just now that it is 10:38 soon to be 11:11 again.  I don't know that there is any special significance to the date except it's once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.  Next year there will be a 12-12-12 and that will be the last of those kind of dates until 2112. 

We had the flag out today for Veterans Day and just now I went out to take it in as it just occurred to me that we had forgotten to take it down after dark.  I remember once when we lived in Chadron, NE, that we had a renter who was a veteran who called up from the bar downtown quite drunk and told us in a slurred voice that he noticed that we had not taken our flag down yet and that it was dark already.  It was a bit humbling to be told by an old drunk that we weren't following flag etiquette!   We had a lot of strange incidents with our renters at Motel 666 (AKA Family Court).  Sometime we should write a book on eleven years of strange incidents.  

Duane had the day off from bus driving today due to Veteran's Day.  This afternoon we framed and hung a large picture about 34 in. wide and 20 in. high hung horizontally above the computer desk.   There needed to be two metal hangers on the back as it was quite heavy.   It is a limited edition of a watercolor print commissioned by the Northern Lights Council of the Boy Scouts for a gift to those who contributed $300 or more to the Scouts during their annual fundraising campaign.  There are two pheasants in the foreground with what looks like snow and a farmstead in the distance and it is named, "Looking for Refuge."  After what seemed like an hour of measuring and leveling and fooling around we finally succeeded in hanging it after having it sit around for a year or two.  Looks great!

Finally, it is 11:11 PM.  Good night!

 

Three Sheets to the Wind?

                     Mom by her wringer washing machine by cottage with a basket of laundry

                     Mom posing sawing birch wood at the lake  with clothesline in background
Recently I was thinking about the demise of clotheslines and some pleasant memories connected with them. It has been quite a few years since I have had an outdoor clothesline and asked my husband if he could put a single line out behind the garage. I do have a couple of clotheslines in the basement to use when some heavy towels or jeans don't quite get dry in the dryer. So far he hasn't installed one outside, not that it is so terribly important to me, but I suppose I had nostalgically imagined how nice it would be to occasionally hang out a quilt or some sheets. After all, I would have to haul the wet laundry up from the basement to hang them outside—probably more trouble than it would be worth.

When I was growing up, we spent the summers at Lake Beltrami near Bemidji, MN. Mom had a wringer washer outside. Water had to be heated on a stove so washing wasn't so easy. Sometimes we rinsed the clothes in the lake and we used a hand-cranked wringer mounted on the dock. We kids would wade out a ways and do the rinsing. Clothes couldn't be rinsed on a windy day because debris from the bottom would be churned up in the water near the shore but on calmer days the water was clear enough. Mom would look forward to “a good wash day,” sunny and not too windy. Clothes were hung from a long rope that was strung between the cabin and a tree near the lake. If there was a lot of wash, the clothesline would sag too close to the ground, so Mom used a long pole with a Y at the top to prop it up in the center. One time I recall that she and my grandmother hung out clothes on a very windy day and center pole and the line fell down three times. It was surely a struggle but they got quite a laugh out of it.

When I was a small child the clothesline with a blanket over it made such a cozy play tent.  Also I recall a time as a ten or twelve year-old when I ran full speed ahead and ran into the clothesline which made a stinging wound across my nose. Ouch!

My husband Duane recalls that his mother hung out clothes in the winter on the farm and they would freeze. Pairs of jeans and long underwear would be stiff as if rigor mortis had set in.  She would take them in and let the water sublime (evaporate from solid to gas) to dry in the house. The thought of this his makes one truly thankful for a modern clothes dryer!

I understand that in cities where people live in communities that have those homeowner's agreements, contracts usually prohibit painting one's home other than certain agreed-upon colors, hanging clothes out on a clothesline, etc. I suppose clotheslines could be could be an eyesore or cause a decrease in property values but Mom told me that in the old days there was a sort of etiquette to hanging out clothes. One would hang “unmentionables” (underwear—oops, sorry I mentioned them!) on the inner clothes lines and the sheets on the outside ones. Also the wash was supposed to be hung with all towels, shirts, etc. hung together in an orderly manner.

In Chadron, Nebraska, at one house in which we lived we had a fine clothesline with four or five lines held up by sturdy metal posts. I remember hanging sheets out in 90-100 degree heat in a stiff breeze and they would whip and snap violently in the wind. Summers were HOT there. The first sheets I had hung out would usually be DRY by the time the last ones were hung. Oh, what a clean ozone smell they had!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The term “three sheets to the wind” comes to mind, but it has nothing to do with hanging the wash, I'm sure.

Phrase Finder says:
To understand this phrase we need to enter the arcane world of nautical terminology. Sailors' language is, unsurprisingly, all at sea and many supposed derivations have to go by the board. Don't be taken aback to hear that sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor.
The phrase is these days more often given as 'three sheets to the wind', rather than the original 'three sheets in the wind'. The earliest printed citation that I can find is in Pierce Egan's Real Life in London, 1821:

"Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind."

Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness; three sheets was the falling over stage; tipsy was just 'one sheet in the wind', or 'a sheet in the wind's eye'.