Where I grew up [in Louisville, where the women are fast and the horses are beautiful...] the first Saturday in May means the running of the Kentucky Derby. I haven’t posted a 3-Song Playlist in a while. Here’s one for Derby Day, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
May 072011
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
The cookie recipe included here was posted in December 2005.
I provided a potato soup recipe for Jakk’s Magic Beans Life recently. Click over there and have a taste. [If you hurry, you can also get in on Julie's 12 Days of Christmas, Magic Beans-Style giveaway.]
If you have hungry eyes my e-chap of food-related flash fiction, Flash in the Pan, is still available for free.
I think it’s always a good idea to get the family together in the kitchen. Food is a primal need and sharing its preparation may be more important than sharing its consumption. Kids learn to respect the power of hot surfaces, the importance of followng instructions, concepts of measurement and time, and cooperation. And cooking has the built-in incentive of something to eat when you finish.
In my family we have always made spritz cookies around this time of year. We aren’t sure where we first got the recipe; we all have hand-written copies of it now. I’ve seen recipes that use almond extract in addition to or instead of the vanilla. And sometimes they add 1/4 teaspoon baking powder to the flour. The mixing is the most difficult part; the butter has to be slightly softened but if it gets too soft you’ll have a sticky mess. You need a cookies press and kids find that a lot of fun. (Okay. I think it’s fun too.)
Spritz Cookies
Ingredients:
(Makes 6 dozen cookies)
- 1 cup butter
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2-1/2 cups flour
- food coloring (optional)
Instructions:
- Set oven at 400°
- Mix butter, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla
- Mix in flour gradually
- Add food coloring a few drops at a time
- Press onto ungreased baking sheets
- Bake for 7-10 minutes
Keep an eye on the cookies and remove them as soon as the edges start to brown. You may need to lower the oven temp to 375°. I like the cookies to stay soft so I tend to undercook them a little. Actually, one of my favorite things is to skip the baking altogether. Keep the raw dough in the refrigerator and eat a spoonful of that with a cup of hot tea or coffee. Mmmmmhhh. Yes. I know the danger of eating uncooked egg yolks. Some things are worth the risk.
Jun 302010
Leap and a net will appear.
Today I leaped [leapt? -- nah...].
I have been in Florida long enough. I moved here for the job. The job has been getting increasingly frustrating and decreasingly fulfilling. It’s no longer enough to keep me here. And my family has wanted me to return to Kentucky ever since I left. So today I turned in my resignation.
Given the current economy you might well think I must be crazy to become voluntarily unemployed. [As if you needed another reason to think I'm crazy.] That’s right, not only have I quit, I don’t yet have another job lined up. And I’ll have to sell my house down here. And… and… and… there is just so much more that I am overwhelmed.
Still, scary as it is, it feels right.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. ~Robert Frost
P.S. For you sticklers [like YOU, you know] I know the quote I used at the top is usually stated, “Leap and the net will appear.” But that totally would have screwed the pun I wanted to use in the title. And my puns are often more important than total accuracy in quotations.
Aug 052008
I made one of my semiannual treks to Louisville a couple weeks ago. The whirring of the cicadas filled the air. There are lots more cicadas where I grew up than where I live now. Their song is part of the soundtrack of my youth. [There are more lightning bugs there too, but that's another story....]
Elizabethtown is about an hour south of Louisville. [We always call it E-town, not that it matters....] The Cameron Crowe movie [supposedly] based there was pretty mediocre in my opinion. I found the errors in geography especially distracting.
[rant]Yeah, I know… movies require suspension of disbelief. I suppose exit 60-B was intended to be a comic device. (And it’s really exit 94 anyway; you can even see that in the film.) But Drew (Orlando Bloom) didn’t miss an exit so much as he drove in the wrong direction! I guess taking a wrong turn out of the airport is not as funny as missing an exit later…. And cute young flight attendants that give out their phone numbers to help with directions? Now that’s southern hospitality! I would say that I clearly fly the wrong airlines but you could as easily point out that I am clearly nowhere near as good looking as Orlando Bloom….[end rant]
Anyway, when Drew stepped out of his car after [finally] making his way into E-town the cicadas were there in force. It sounded just like home. “Wow. He nailed that,” I remember thinking at the time. And then… well you’ve probably seen it already. At least it had a good soundtrack.
Aug 042008
When spring yields to summer, insects renew their annual concerts. Warm evenings bring cricket chirps — their frequency an unofficial, but accurate, thermometer. June bugs and bumble bees buzz around sunny days and katydids chime in with their urgent tirades. “Katy did… Katy didn’t….”
Come the dog days cicadas are in full “voice”, their whirring almost constant. Their cacophony is truly deafening. Ounce for ounce, I suppose they must be the loudest creatures on earth. Anatomy is all that keeps the bullfrogs from hanging their heads in shame…. [A few species of cicadas are notorious for a 17-year life cycle. After all those years underground they emerge to mate and die in a few short weeks. But there are many more species with life cycles of only one year or a few years.]
At dusk, the light show starts. Lightning bugs blink in the failing light. Deepening shadows fill in and before you know it the show has moved higher — stars peer down and chase away the last outrageous rays of the sun. And still the cicadas insist, “Here here here here here here here here here here….” Pick me.
Apr 042006
In the last two days I’ve gotten threee emails with some version of this:
At two minutes and 3 seconds after 1:00 this Wednesday the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
Then they add, “This will never happen again.” That part is particularly foolish to me. If you use a 12-hour clock (as opposed to a 24-hour clock) it will happen twice tomorrow. It will happen again in a hundred years — a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence perhaps, but hardly unique in the grand scheme of things.
But what I pointed out in my replies to each of these friends is that there are other cultures that write the date as day/month/year. That means that 04/05/06 is the fourth of May, not the fifth of April. Just that fast a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence will happen four times in a little over a month. I’m SUCH a kill-joy.
But this episode reminded me that I happen to know where I was at 12:34 on 6 May 1978 (when the time and date was [were?] 12:34 5/6/78). It was a Saturday and the first Saturday in May where I grew up means the Kentucky Derby. That is the only time I ever went and packed myself into the crowded infield. THAT is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! Derby parties at home are much more enjoyable and you can see more of the races on TV than you can if you happen to squeeze in a spot anywhere within sight if the rail.
Reminds me of another time when I dreamed all night of the number five. The next morning I realized that it was May 5th. In the paper I saw that a horse named Five Star was running in the 5th race at the track. Well, I don’t need five bricks to fall on my head so I went and put $5 on it to win. And sure enough… the horse came in fifth.
Ba-DUM-bum!
Technorati tags: 01:02:03 04/05/06~blog~personal~otoh
Jan 172006
I guess it’s because I don’t really like marshmallows; I never heard this story before. There is a candy that originated in the Louisville area called the Modjeska, a marshmallow covered in caramel. I was born and raised in Louisville, but I never knew it was a local thing. And the story is kind of cool.
There was a Polish actress named Helena Modjeska that starred in the U.S. debut of the Ibsen play “A Doll’s House” at the McCauley Theater in Louisville in 1883. (I have no idea how Louisville rated the honor.) A local candy maker met her and (stars in his eyes) asked permission to name a candy after her. He had recently created a treat he called the Caramel Biscuit. He renamed it and the Modjeska was born.
Production of the candy was taken over by Bauer’s Candies in 1889. Four generations later, the family-owned confectionery now based in Lawrenceville, Kentucky still makes Modjeskas and ships them all over the world.
I like that story a lot, but I’d still rather have a slice of Derby Pie any day….
May 072005
I grew up in Kentucky and there are some things I really miss about it now that I live in Florida: the hills of Eastern Kentucky, the changes of the seasons, (incredibly green springtimes, lightning bugs on summer evenings, fire-colored leaves in the fall), southern living, most of my family is still there, and the Kentucky Derby. I should note that, while Florida is geographically further south than Kentucky, most of Florida is not very southern. And sometimes it’s better for me to be several hundred miles away from my family. But that’s another story….
Today is Derby Day. My family is not “horse people.” I never really learned to ride, although I have been trail riding a few times. We never owned horses and certainly never sit on millionaire Row. But, most people in Kentucky don’t own horses (or get to millionaire Row). That doesn’t make us any less proud of the Derby. Besides, any old excuse will do for a party. In and around Louisville there are race-related activities for a week leading up to Derby Day.
Born in the valley
And raised in the trees
Of Western Kentucky
On wobbly knees
With mama beside you
To help you along
You’ll soon be a growing up strong.All the long, lazy mornings
In pastures of green
The sun on your withers
The wind in your mane
Could never prepare you
For what lies ahead
The run for the roses so red –And it’s run for the roses
As fast as you can
Your fate is delivered
Your moment’s at hand
It’s the chance of a lifetime
In a lifetime of chance
And it’s high time you joined
In the dance
It’s high time you joined
In the dance –
One of my coworkers opined that horse racing is a boring sport. (He started with, “No offense intended…” of course.) Personally, I find baseball a lot more boring, but I understand why he might feel like that. A day at the races (or at home watching them on TV, which is a lot more comfortable and usually provides a better view of the actual races) means about two minutes of racing every hour or so. It’s more like a picnic with periodic injections of adrenalin.
At the track, they want to make sure everyone has time to place bets, they recondition the track after every race, they often have to reposition the starting gate as the races are not all the same length, and there’s the pomp and circumstance of parading the entries out for every race. Hey, people stand in line for two hours to take a three-minute ride on Space Mountain down here at Disney World. I’d rather be sitting in the shade sipping a cool beverage.
From sire to sire
It’s born in the blood
The fire of a mare
And the strength of a stud
It’s breeding and it’s training
And it’s something unknown
That drives you and carries
You home.And it’s run for the roses
As fast as you can
Your fate is delivered
Your moment’s at hand
It’s the chance of a lifetime
In a lifetime of chance
And it’s high time you joined
In the dance
It’s high time you joined
In the dance –
I won’t be able to watch the race live this year. I’m leaving in a few minutes to watch a play. (I’ll write about that in the next day or so.) But I’ll look for the replay on the news tonight. And I’ll spend a little time day-dreaming about my old Kentucky home.
Run for the Roses by Dan Fogelberg
Nov 302004
I watch Gilmore Girls. There. The dirty little secret is out. In fact it is on right now. What would motivate me to divulge this bit of D.O.M.-dom?
In the show tonight they mention a tradition of rubbing the toe on a statue of Dwight Woolsey. I checked on line and found that this is a very recent tradition. According to http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/98_03/talltales.html:
One of the most striking testaments to the mythmaking powers of tour guides is Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s toe. Some time in the last ten years, someone invented a “tradition” of rubbing the toe of the Woolsey statue on the Old Campus for luck, explaining that students employ this practice before exams. Similar traditions exist at many other institutions, but it’s difficult to find an alumnus over the age of 30 who has ever heard about President Woolsey’s toe. Nevertheless, tour guides spread the story diligently, inviting visitors to give it a try themselves. As a result, the statue, the rest of which is a dull gray-green, has a left toe that has been rubbed shiny, and the story seems for all practical purposes as old as the statue itself.
This struck me as odd because my Alma Mater, Eastern Kentucky University, Has a much longer tradition of rubbing the toe on a statue of Daniel Boone. According to http://www.library.eku.edu/collections/sca/boone.htm that statue was placed there in 1967. I first went to Eastern in 1977 and it was already an old tradition then. I have to assume it started soon after the old boy was placed there. (I didn’t research those “similar traditions at other institutions.” Some of them probably date back even further.) Those Yale posers! They even rub Woolsey’s LEFT toe, the same one is forward on Daniel and bears the polish of all those wishes for luck on exams. Or just to get lucky….
Nov 162004
Sculpture in Louisville’s Riverfront Park that looks rather alien.
Let's do Something Cheap and Superficial 
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