Antique Oatmeal Cookies

I have a recipe book that I found years ago when I tore out a cabinet to install a dishwasher in the house I bought decades ago with my son's father. I can imagine Rose, one of only two other woman to cook in that kitchen, and her dismay at the misplaced cookbook. She didn't realize the time-traveling journey the cookbook would make from her post-WWII kitchen to a digital world of Internet and computers, microwaves and satellite-distributed HDTV.

The cookbook is titled, "Good Things to Eat". My son agrees. It has several entirely blank pages on which I have written additional recipes, like the Hardee's Biscuit and Gravy recipe that I carry around strictly in my head from my years in that company's employ. My son regards this cookbook as his birthright. He has intimated that when he marries, it should be passed along to his, at this point, unknown and naive blushing bride. She should be warned. She will be expected to cook from scratch using this antique cookbook.

In this day of seasonal, locally-empowered eating, where we are becoming more and more suspicious of the additives to our food, the directions and ingredients seem charming and quaint. I prefer to take full advantage of all cooking advancements while still retaining the cook-from-scratch approach. Poor Rose with her steel cooking sheets and mixing fork. I use high tech aluminum air layer cookie sheets and my Kitchen Aid mixer complete with fun mixing attachments.

When I first made this recipe, tasting these cookies after they had cooled, I ranked them an indifferent B+. Just 24 hours later the grade went up to an easy A+!

I encourage you to try these easy Mace Oatmeal Cookies.

Mace Oatmeal Cookies (credited to Mrs. Reuben Lundstrom and Adena Peterson)

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon mace
2 eggs (not beaten)
2 cups bread flour
2 cups oatmeal (uncooked)
2 teaspoons soda in 1 teaspoon hot water
Pinch salt
1 cup raisins (ground)measure before grinding

Make into small patties and bake about fifteen minutes in a 350 degree oven. Test one in the oven first.

So that's it.

Like most cooks, I have made this recipe my own. I use my pastry knife attachment to mix the stick of butter into the the sugar and unbeaten egg. When they refer to soda, they are talking baking soda. I just add this, I don't mix it in water first. I mix all the dry ingredients first.

I use my mezzaluna two-handled knife to chop up the raisins which I soak in hot water while I am combining the other ingredients. These I drain and add last. I sometimes add any nuts I might have on hand; a 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts, slivered almonds, sliced almonds, or pecans are all good choices.

I actually measure out the salt, using 1/4 teaspoon. In place of the mace, I use 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamon, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. I don't stock mace in my spice cabinet.

I portion them out using two tablespoons into 2" by 2" lumps which I place in rows 3 cookies by 4 cookies on air bake cookie sheets and then flatten slightly. The ingredients listed net me about 24 cookies.

One other admonishment I would make. As many cooks know, the center of items cooked in microwaves continue to heat after items are removed from a microwave. Cookies cooked in conventional ovens are similar. They are done when you think they need another 2-3 minutes. Remove them then, not later. Let them sit for 5 minutes and then use a metal spatula to remove them and place them on a plate or waxed paper to cool.

Enjoy!

Do You Have a Plan?

Garden design for my yard which I prepared as part of a landscape design class ten years ago.

Planning seems to be a key component of my mindset of late.

My son is a high school senior and starting out his last season of varsity basketball as well. Last spring his team graduated an incredible trio of basketball players, so although the five of the seven seniors on this year's varsity squad have played together since they were eight for like what amounts to ten months a year; they need to come up with a plan of how they will replace the average 37 points the 2011 seniors brought to the net each and every game.

"So what's your plan?"

My son's bedroom is painted black, his choice. He's not emo or a goth, but he is a gamer. With his flat screen TV, the black walls and drapes give his room a theatre-surround feel. To relieve the blackness, we've taken to "writing on his wall", literally. A number of lines from video game plots and movies, along with inspirational sayings from Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ford (and maybe even Harrison Ford) are jotted on his walls.

One of the latest is:

"So what's your plan?"

Today, I stopped and picked up a book at the library and checked in with the Snow Witch (23 snowfalls predicted, 21 left to fall for those of you who are counting). Basketball is a big topic this time of year in our tiny village. I remarked how it didn't seem possible my son was a senior already, to which the librarian countered, "So does he have a plan?"

There it was again. Alas. "It is his mother who doesn't have a plan," I replied.

Empty nest. Empty home. He's my only chick and he's been gone more and more these days. Working, practice, helping out friends, helping out family. HE HAS A PLAN. A winning season in basketball, getting college credit for six of his seven Advanced Placement classes, already accepted at UW-Green Bay, majoring in chemistry, and maybe a post season run for a gold ball at State; he has a plan.

It is his mother without a plan.

Oh, I have a garden plan, as you can see here. Did I implement this garden plan? Yes, and no. I put up the fence and built the deck. I had the electrical buried and the left border is as drawn. The maple has not yet grown into these dimensions and its trunk is still outside the border's bedline. The planting area on the right lower side has retained that shape, but has been beefed up to a shrub and tree border. The dwarf plum died and I thought it might be a better idea to plant the 'Beauty of Moscow' lilac a bit farther from the deck. The small unlabeled shrub was replaced by a dappled willow, the chokeberry was moved next to it.

None of the paved areas have been paved, much to my chagrin during mud season. I haven't built a garage. Separating the southern part of my yard from the rest is a very low dry stack brick wall and pergola. I do have the utility shed that was a supposed temporary storage solution.

I reconsidered planting any type of shrub literally on top of my well head and dry laid 16" square pavers on sand there instead.

My deck lacks the overhead structure and railings I hoped to build. Maybe next summer, after I replace the one board that has dry rotted in the decking (no matter that I have kept it regularly painted!).

And the roofline of my house has changed. I bumped out the attic space for a master bedroom loft. And smack dab in the middle of what would be the central green space I have a square-ish potager, because of my new mantra, "Grow what you eat."

Instead of a rose garden I have hydrangeas and a carpet rose hedge. The peach has been planted and died, but not before giving me a couple dozen of incredibly sweet peaches to remember it by. I have planted other small fruiting trees, an apple, a sweet cherry, grapes, a pear, and an apricot, and laid out a strawberry bed and blueberry bushes; mostly as part of the right hand shrub and hedge border.

There will be changes between a written plan and its implementation. It is easier to color inside the lines. The first step is to have a plan.

So what's the plan?

Another Edition of Ornamentation in the Garden: Surprised by Statuary

Statuary placement is definitely the use of the idea that less is more. Turning a corner in a garden and being surprised by a piece of statuary placed in just the right spot is wonderful. I wish I could say these pictures are from my own garden, alas, no; but these gardeners did get it absolutely right.

I think it is important the statuary have significant heft and be somewhat classical in its presentation. It should rise about or framed by the foliage. Blooms, of course, can accent the piece.

Enjoy!

De-Clutter: The Bones of the Garden

This bouquet has made me decide to change the borders of my garden to emphasize a more dreamy romantic feel.

Is there anything more romantic than pink roses hanging over old brick?

Clematis 'Josephine' does not like the heat and likes its water. You would never think we could grow such an exotic -looking clematis here in central Wisconsin, still July's heat this year almost did it in.

This unidentified mislabeled rose may be 'Pierre du Ronsard'. It is not supposed to grow here. let alone like it.

These delphiniums and sweet Williams obscure what is a nice stone cairn and "good bones' hedging.

Okay, we've had some very nice temperatures here, but a the numbers of hours of daylight are dwindling the trees are rapidly dropping their leaves. Cloudy days can obscure what seems to be any hint of sunlight, but all that leave-dropping does point up what the structure of the garden really looks like with regards to the plant material.

I spent yesterday painting trim on my house, it was that warm. The day before I took a good look at my hedges and shrubs and did some trimming. I stumbled across a tray of errant tulip bulbs getting out my step ladder from my minuscule shed, planted those. I planted just a bit more garlic in my potager, all hardneck varieties; I never did get any softneck sourced.

Today, of course it is raining buckets. I suppose it is better than the other possibility. I see the weatherman is predicting more snow than normal and colder temps than normal. I haven't heard from our local snow witch though and I trust her more than the weatherman.

Getting to the bones of the garden, though, I have to say I like what I see. The hedges look nice. The pear tree has beautiful structure. I need to top the apple tree just a bit to keep it within scale and keep it easy to pick. I have a couple other trimming jobs to keep me busy in the garden over the winter when the weather affords me opportunities and inclination to go out.

The sweet cherry, which could get 30' tall and wide and which is suffering espalier in order to be in my yard needs quite a bit of work. I topped my apricot last year, and it has put on that much growth and then some this year.

Along the side of my house I have been attempting to start an Annabelle hydrangea hedge. This I cut back to about 12" tall. I may go back through it and trim off any shoots not as thick as a pencil to encourage a more uniform, upright form.

At heart, I am a plant collector. So it is easy for me to get quite caught up in a beautiful bloom, without showcasing that plant as well as I should. I have a lot tucked into a very small space.

I think though, like decluttering a small house, less might be more. With increasing the emphasis on my potager and growing what I eat, parking three vehicles (not that I like that!), the border increasingly is where I "stick" things. I have a tiny magnolia and Japanese maple stuck in the border that need to be moved so as they grow they can be stars. What do I cut and where do I go with stuff that needs its own space? My lot is a scant 44' by 144'.

My son says to just... start.

Breaking a Few Eggs

We all have things that date us. My list includes my small pox vaccination scar, listening for a dial tone when I pick up the phone, my gray roots when I don't have time for a touch up.

I think there is a new item that will join the list for some that don't heed warnings regarding our food safety:

How we crack an egg.

I was listening to NPR one day and they had a guest on the Food Fridays show. She was talking about how a cook cracks their eggs is very regional. It gave me food for thought. My paternal grandparents had kept about 150 laying hens when I was a child and from them I learned the art of candling eggs to check for spoilage, blood; and once in a great while, because they maintained their own flock, a baby chick forming.

My paternal grandmother, when baking, always broke her eggs into a bowl before adding them to any cooking batter. This was probably to catch anything the candling process missed. My own mother, who was a bit more removed from the egg laying process, usually just cracked the egg into the batter.

I've seen people crack eggs with one hand, crack them on the edge of their batter bowl, and lots of other variations.

Recently, though I have taken to cracking them on the counter single-handed, adding them to the bowl, and washing both the counter and my hands well before continuing with my baking. You see, having been certified at various time for food safety, I am well aware of the likelihood that salmonella is lurking on that apparently pristine white shell. Listening to the cook talking about regional techniques of egg-cracking I had a "uh duh!" moment.

For any of you that haven't yet had their moment, I hope the McDonald's breakfast egg story is a morning eye-opener!

Decorating Your Garden with Garden Art

This blog post contains pictures of decorative items I feel are well-placed and add rather than detract from enjoyment of a garden. Over the next few posts, I'll post more examples I enjoy.


One well-placed, good-sized concrete stature mimics the bare branching of the ancient burning bush The baskets in each hand are actually used as bird feeders.


A distressed iron green man mask hangs on a garden gate.


The concrete of these sphere is not only architecturally interesting with the back drop of the bare bones of the shrubs, but also prevents vehicles in areas beyond the driveway.


A rock cairn artfully laid using local stone to create a mythical symbol.


I don't like gazing balls in general, but this one floating in a sea of verbena bonarensis is truly special and well placed.


Rusty fish in native grasses are nice, without becoming trashy.


Repeating a color unifies a bunch of metal chairs and plays off the blues and grays in this garden.


The glossy pink of these metal chairs echoes the color of the house. The bright fucshia color of the flowers punctuates the country charm of this porch.


The hand-painting of this clay pot echoes the colors of the plants it holds.

Decorating the garden with items beyond the structure of plants, their colors and pattern, and repetive shapes is generally a reflection of the gardener's personal taste. I've seen this done poorly. I've seen this done well. My personal taste runs to relying on great plants grown well and a minimalist view of decorative items.

Late Fall to Early Winter Garden Chores

I was hoping for a few more days of open ground here in central Wisconsin. It appears I am not going to get it. The days are just too short. Given I have just a few more tasks I need to do in the garden, I suppose I will trod along in the cold, damp, or outright wet and get them done.

I didn't get my galic planted. If I don't get it planted yet this fall I will suffer a bit smaller yield, but I will plant it as soon as I have open ground in the spring.

I don't cut back my grapes until I prune them in the spring. I did remove about half the foliage to encourage the sugar content in the grapes in late August. As I have wine grapes and I am in a marginal zone for them, I wanted to leave as much of the plant as I could to help it get through the winter.

Sometime during the winter I will top my dwarf apple tree which now has shoots at 12'. I want to encourage it to set fruit where I can reach it.

I will also use some sort of wrap on my fruit trees to discourage mice, voles, and rabbits from girdling and killing my fruit trees.

Now that I can see the structure of my shrub and hedges I will prune off the "wild hair".

I will net or enclose in some fashion the blueberries. Rabbit and deer love to nibble blueberry shrubs in winter. The growing tips where next years harvest will grow are particularly at risk from this type of foraging over winter. I already collected pine straw from under my pine tree and mulched them with about 6" of the stuff.

I pulled out tomato plants and sent them off-site to compost, but I left a couple of the kale to provide early winter greens. I will be attempting baby salad greens under lights in my grow room this winter, so I need to set some soil aside for this purpose. I have salad greens that I am still haresting next to my deck. Even a topping of snow did not deter these greens.

My brother just cut the last of the broccoli in the family garden. I harvested a couple cabbage and still have broccoli here in the potager. I have a honeydew melon I picked before the frost that just ripened which I sliced up the other day.

The period where the temperatures play along the frost line every couple nights without getting down to a really cold temperature of 23 degrees or so has this year been nearly 60 days this year. Although the days have gotten progressively shorter and Daylight Savings Time has ended, with a cold frame this could have been a very viable season for cold frame grown greens and short season crops. I have several radishes and carrots still in the ground that would make very good eating.

My sister-in-law harvested late summer planted carrots and pureed and froze them for the coming baby. She then used her steam juicer and made carrot juice from the mangled bits left over from her puree. It looked filled with vitamins, and as some of the carrots were purple the resulting juice was also a deep purple.

She also blanched a froze our comparably small parsnip harvest.

I will also harvest the greens from the celery that did not set stalks and dry them for the tasty dried greens with a great color they will provide for soup stocks over the winter.

We have a small bag of sugar beets. After Thanksgiving we are going to give it a go and see if we can extract the sugar.

I also noticed the onions I planted for early spring harvest have sprouted and are over an inch tall. I hope this method will prove itself as a way to get early spring onions and economical sets for the family garden .

We would have liked to have gotten the main rows of the family garden plowed yet this fall, but it looks like that will not happen. On the cultivator notes, my son has taken a small engine class this fall in high school and has torn apart the Mantis tiller and is cleaning it as part of his class. I'd like him to tackle my sister-in-law's tiller next.

Caught in the Cold

I see from the local news 2,000 people in this area are still without power (The county has only about 21,000 inhabitants year round.). This is the third or fourth time we have lost power in this area, depending on your grid, since Labor Day (beginning of September).

It was one thing being without power in September with balmy nights. It is a whole other thing to be without power when the nights get to 23 degrees Fahrenheit.

I would guess about 1/3 to 2/3 of the area, particularly outside the village use wood to heat their homes. The catch,though, is they use electricity to power the blowers for their central heating systems. One of my sisters has a gas hot water heater, another a gas stove; but both have electric ignition to light the burners rather than standing pilots.

My son says the power company just jury-rigged everything together to get the power back on in September, that the hung up trees and their limbs are out there ready to fall at any given wind or weight of snow.

As I type I have a white pine branch hanging across my telephone's land line. My son and I debate the most efficient and cost effective way of removal, but fear a snapped line is inevitable regardless of its method of removal.

I don't have central heat. Sometimes this is wonderful, but mostly it is a pain. I have a natural gas fireplace in my loft, and it heats that space beautifully without the blower, which I bought separately and have used exactly once.

My main living space has a wall furnace. It has a blower. It cycles on and off and is very directional in it heating. My kitchen has a gas stove with a standing pilot, so there is also always a bit of heat there. The back of the house has the gas hot water heater and dryer, and bathroom. By their very functions, and carefully timed washing, showering, etc. the rear of the house says livable.

So even without electricity, I would not freeze. It is a reassuring thought. Life would get rough, but if I stayed on my toes, I would survive. I have to say though, these power outages affecting a couple million people on the east coast and the small ones here in my own back yard are reminders of how tied into the grid we all are.

After the September outages, I thought it would be wonderful if I had an emergency back up method to generate power for even 30 minutes a day. Enough to run my pump for a shower, a load of wash, to cycle down the temperature in my refrigerator.

I think of electric appliances that would improve quality of life, but are always stopped in my tracks by their price tags and on-going energy use. I have considered how useful a freezer would be to store my garden harvest, but fall back on drying and canning as better preservation methods.

I have spent a considerable amount of time sewing the last few weeks. (My son is amazed at my considerable skill, citing it a worthy skill in the event of what he believes is the inevitable 'Zombie Apocalypse'.) As I have sewn, I have have pondered how my paternal grandmother, an excellent seamstress, did all her sewing on a treadle machine and who taught my cousins to sew entire garmnets without out a sewing machine, right down to a blind running stitch for seams and installing zippers.

I'm not sure the direction we are going, but I am afraid some may be left in the cold.

A Great Homemade Chicken Pizza

A couple of the things that happen when the weather turns cold are basketball season starts (this is my son's last year in high school, sob!) and I start to do more cooking. I guess it is either that or go dormant, like our gardens.

Since the economic downturn, I have started to cook more and more from scratch. Spending time with my sister-in-law because of all the gluten issues that face her, I have also spent a lot more time thinking about what is in our food.

Also at the beginning of the Great Recession, my son's and my favorite pizza place closed. So faced with Pizza Hut or just places that "also serve" pizza (something frozen), I started to explore making my own crust.

The first pizza crust I came up with was simply a modification of my biscuit recipe, and not a true yeast crust. I took my biscuit recipe and cut it by 2/3 and switched shortening for butter. Acceptable, quick and tasty, but not "pizza".

One of my caveat for a good crust is being able to turn around from menu idea to eating in one hour. For that, this is what I came up with:

Mix in a medium-sized bowl:

5/8 cup of warm milk (microwaved in a 1100 watt microwave oven for 35 seconds)
1/2 package of dry yeast
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Grease another medium bowl. (I wipe it with canola oil.)

To the yeast and milk, etc mixture, add 1 1/2 cup flour. This is approximate. Dust your counter and hands with flour and knead the flour mixture into a ball. Place it in the greased bowl. Cover with a dish towel and place in a warm spot.

About a half an hour later I generally begin assembling my toppings. I slice a chicken breast into 1/4" slices and cut them into approximately 1" squares. I also used sun-dried Opalka tomatoes in olive oil, 1/2 a sauteed onion, two chopped sausage patties and about 1/3 of a pound of shredded white cheddar cheese. I was looking for some sliced mushrooms to saute, but I didn't have any. Black olives might be fun with this pizza, too.

You could also do bacon, pineapple, Canadian bacon; just like any pizza the toppings can be almost endless, however when I make a chicken pizza I tend to fore go tomato sauce.

It takes me about a half hour to assemble my toppings. At that point the crust has had an hour to rise. I pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. The pizza dough is kneaded. At this point I have been using my rolling pin to get it evenly flat. You can stretch it out in the traditional manner, if you prefer. The consistency and taste of the crust is very similar to California Kitchen Pizza.

After I have placed the toppings on the pizza with the exception of the cheese, I always add the cheese last; I add spices. I generally salt it, pepper it, take my garlic salt and crushed red pepper shakers to it. Then I sprinkle on about 1/2 teaspoon of basil, 1/4 teaspoon of bruchetta seasoning. As the basil I have added is dried, I also like to add some sort of green leafy topping that is still very green. Sometimes this is fresh basil, other times parsley which enhanced the other spices. Sometimes fresh, chopped spinach is one of my additions. I have noticed that celery tops dry very green and are a nice addition, as well. A great use for the tasty celery foliage that was not accompanied by great stalks of celery this year.

It cooks about 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

The pictured pizza has chicken, sausage, dried celery tops, sundried tomatoes, sauteed onions, and the aforementioned spices. My son drizzles ranch dressing on this pizza. I go with a homemade BBQ sauce. Your choice!

First Snow Day: Winter 2011-2012

View out my front door this morning

Astrolabe in my front garden. What you can't see are the two large limbs from my white pine lying in my yard or the one pushing against my telephone line.

Yesterday, we got walloped with a huge snow storm of wet, heavy, drifting even, snow. Mixed in with rain. It rained heavily for a good hour or so before in a space of a mere ten minutes or so switched over to snow. I expect the short window of time between rain and snow was to our benefit, little ice was laid down on roadways, which could have been worse than they were. As it was, there were a couple bad crashes around the state including the one near Shawano where a van carrying six souls became a fiery inferno. Local school let out here at 1 PM.

I was spending the day with my nephews out at the Pipe House. We often looked out the windows and uttered the word, "snow". Not in wonder or in awe, but more in a sigh of inevitability, that even the twins seemed to grasp. We read about snow, but we played with trains, and read some more, and ate broccoli harvested just this Sunday from the family garden, which nearly filled a 3-gallon pail.

My mother called me apologizing to me that I was out at the Pipe with the boys rather than herself in such weather. I told her not to worry, I'd rather be there than have my 76-year old mother (with not the best eyesight) navigating Hwy.10 where fools all drive like they are in a parking lot traveling at 70+ mph.

It rained pretty much the entire day before, too.

After an incredibly short growing season of a bare 103 frost-free days, the sweet potatoes were covered and we eked out a bare 120 days before I dug them fearing the ground would get wetter or colder, leading to rot; it now seems we are in winter mode. People around here are already dreading winter and its possible length. I have not yet spoken with the local Snow Witch to ask her opinion on the number of snow falls (which she always seems to have an incredibly knowledgeably accurate grasp. I do know fall was merely a too short respite for our winter-weary souls here.

I have not planted my garlic for next year yet. Garlic is a staple in much of the canning I do, and definitely a key component in pizzas and Italian sauces around here. This weekend, the weatherman promises us temps in the upper 40s to mid-50s and a bit of sun. I hope he is right. I had thought this storm over, but winter is still sending down some big fluffy, happy flakes. Hopefully, it will count as a second snowfall on the Snow Witch's winter tally.

My brother showed me the last of the harvest he had gleaned from his wife and my gardening experiment. We did deem it a success. We intend to continue our efforts next year, tweaking our plans a bit. His wife will be giving birth to their third child at the beginning of next spring. Her efforts in the garden will be minimal, and transient. My brother has expressed a desire for a "more weed-free look," although he does confess the volume of our harvest given weeds impressed him.

He confessed that from July through October he ate at least one meal every day solely from the garden in addition to what I harvested and took home, and veggies I took my mother, the meals the twins and I foraged (they loved the raspberries, strawberries, and ground cherries). Seeing the potatoes pop out of the ground, was very exciting for them.

More sweet corn, less cabbage. Fall plantings only of broccoli and peas, were some of his suggestions. Pears. Plant pears, he said. The boys and he all love pears. I did plant four sweet Lapin cherry trees this fall. And although we planted 19 blueberry bushes, he thinks we need more. And endive, if I can sort that out of the mesclun mixes he would appreciate it.

As I was busy bringing the sound of music to the Austrian Alps and garbing the von Trapp children in play clothes sewn from curtains the seasons have inexorably ground down into winter. I hope for just a handful of snow-free days, before all my gardening turns inward.

The Sets Are Struck....Ahh!

The Wild Rose Community Orchestra on the set of "The Sound of Music". I'm second from the left. We broke with traditional black and white musician dress and opted to be part of the action, dressing in Austrian polka band garb.


Well, the sets are struck. The von Trapps escaped across the Alps yet again from the Nazi storm troopers. Quiet has returned to Nonnberg Abbey. Baron von Elberfeldt has returned to his Rumplestilskin-like castle. Franz has no doubt returned to the navy, but instead of the Imperial Navy of Austria, maybe an uberbot for the Third Reich.

The staging of this year's musical was a success. There were no weak voices or poorly performed music. Some of the audience so bought what was happening on stage they were brought to tears. The nuns choir actually sent shivers down my spine. Their voices filled the blacked-out auditorium, soaring in response to the Latin monochat of their Reverend Mother, who stood alone in a single spot of light in her gleaming white robes. They sang a capella, allowing me a moment to enjoy a musical portion of the performance.

Once again, I was given the opportunity to play in the pit orchestra, which I always find enchanting. My parents, who both saw the performance separately, believe they saw something akin to a performance of the next American Idol listening to the incredible singing voice of the young woman who played Maria.

The Captain, Maria, and the von Trapp children singing "Edleweiss" encouraged the audience to sing along with this well-known classic. Someone told me about two-thirds of the audience did so.

The music director and his wife (Tom and Mary Stepanek) who have, in tandem, taught choir and band at our high school for the past 35 years, and who directed the performance and played in our pit, are to be congratulated on another fine performance. For them, these musicals are a culmination of years of voice training with each of the young singers lucky enough to land a coveted lead role. Among the von Trapp children, evidence of future musical stars is already forth-coming.

The teachers (Paula Ausloos, Liz Dohr, and Sara Wilcox) did a fine job of directing the on-stage and behind the scenes action. (Just a political point of fact inserted here, this is what your community's teachers are up to in their "free time", take note, Governor Scott Walker. Nearly a quarter of the high school student body was involved in the staging of this musical, which is much more inclusive than any other extracurricular activity with the possible exception in our school, of the football team.)

I managed the "ghost-sewing" of curtains into play clothes for the von Trapp children (which in the play Maria does when new curtains for the alcove were ordered), and what seemed like a thousand other alterations, all without losing my mind.

So, my sojourn in the Austrian Alps is done. Last year, I visited "Oklahoma!" and before that the mythical village of "Brigadoon," (which I always feel could be interchangeable for Wild Rose). I am already anxious to learn where the community orchestra will be transported to next season! Be sure to get your tickets early. This year Friday and Saturday night's shows were nearly sold out.

Fresh Bay Leaves

Today, I picked two leaves from my potted bay plant and used them in the sausage gravy my son and his friends so enjoy. Without being overpowering, the flavor was so much cleaner, intense, and fresh. When cooking, consistency is a mantra for me; so all other things being equal, the flavor was incredibly better.

Bay is not hardy here in zone 4/, central Wisconsin. I'm sure going to do my best to keep this indoor plant alive.