Blog – Page 31 – Plain and Fancy

Wedding on the Cheap

June 8, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman13 Comments

The year 1967 was historic: It was the year of the world’s first heart transplant. There were race riots in Detroit. Polaroid cameras were all the rage as was Twiggy. The average annual income was $ 7300.00 while a house cost about twice that much. Gas was a mere 33 cents a gallon.

It was also the year of our wedding. On the cheap. In August, not June. After moving from Lancaster, PA to Charlotte, NC, my teaching salary increased by only one hundred dollars to about $ 3500.00 stretched to pay for most of the wedding expenses. I was on a pay-as-you-go, no-credit-card system! Today’s Bridezillas would freak out at my teeny tiny budget for a church wedding. Ever the list-maker (call me OCD), I began my planning with a double-columned list: item + amount spent. The cake, flowers, napkins, photographer, and honoraria are missing here. Probably on another list! I was not very good at justifying my bank balance. I remember standing in front of a teller at Wachovia Bank unable to choke back tears at my overdrawn account just weeks before the wedding.

January through May was consumed by pattern-buying, fabric-cutting and sewing a gown heavily influenced by Jackie Kennedy’s style. How is it that the fabric for the bridesmaids and the bride, including a train with appliques cost only $ 83.05 then?

My hair was still in a bun but without the prayer veiling. One day in June, about six weeks before the wedding, I got the courage to dramatically change my hair-do. Off I went to a beauty salon, recommended by my roommates, to experiment with a bob. The stylist began, oddly, by braiding my hair into one long braid, almost waist length. And then she CUT IT OFF! I will never forget the sensation of hair still attached to my head swinging free. Was it in shock? Dancing? I’ll never know, but I do know the agony of trying to get my hands and fingers to contort themselves in odd ways to comb, brush, tease my shorter locks into the new style.

Heaven only knows why I still have this hank of hair!

Half the guest list were Mennonite friends and family from Pennsylvania, and they came to North Caroline in droves. Frugal Daddy gladly footed the hefty bill for the full course rehearsal dinner. Families from Charlotte Christian School put up my immediate family. Grandma and Aunt Ruthie were thrilled to stay in the home of Billy Graham’s mother, who had also hosted a bridal shower for me. Except for the bridal party, the wedding itself was a curious blend of plain and fancy: plain-coated, bow-tied Daddy with fancy bride.

You may ask, “Why didn’t the groom help more with the wedding expenses?” A teacher/preacher at the time, he spent the summer as a rigger at the Jacksonville Shipyards carrying heavy chains on his shoulders up and down ladders trying to pay for the honeymoon and all that followed. No metaphor intended here!

The summer months are traditionally wedding months, particularly June. Do you have a wedding memory to share? Your own? Someone else’s?

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Hats, Fire and Ice

June 5, 2013January 17, 2015 marianbeaman7 Comments

The dusty, brown Pennsylvania Railroad train clatters along the tracks behind the woods as we approach Grandma’s house. Mame Goss, Grandma’s cousin, sits close to the bay window with a bag of hats. I notice her merry eyes and smile lines, but Mother comments on her wrinkled skin, skin made so by too much makeup. Mame’ll let my sisters and me see inside the bag, but not before she chats with Grandma over a cup of garden mint tea. Mame Goss clerks in Laverty’s Millinery Shop, a store I’ve never seen but which shimmers with forbidden delights in my mind, nonetheless.

Janice, Jean, and I think our older girl neighbors are allowed to express themselves properly. When I go down to see “Howdy Doody” on the Rentzels’ TV (Mennonites didn’t have TVs back then), I notice that Sissy Rentzel has a parade of nail polish bottles lined up on the windowsill of her bedroom: bright red, baby pink, orangey red with Tangee lipstick to match, darker red, hot pink, and a bottle of clear polish like Karo syrup. I’d love to experiment with what’s inside, but I don’t now. I feel uncomfortable asking Sissy Rentzel to try some.

Anna Martha Groff, Sis Groff to us, is another story. And she is so grown-up, we think. I see her palette of lipsticks on her vanity table, one of them Revlon’s Fire and Ice. She’ll probably let me try some on. I could become a siren in red or an ice princess. So I experiment and cavort around in her bedroom with the painted lips of a hussy. Soon I’ll have to rub off the evidence with tissue before I go home and hope nobody, especially Mom, notices. My sisters and I are crazy for color. Out by the rose bushes in summer, we paste bright, velvety petals to our lips. Banned from the world of bright lipstick and matching nail polish, we improvise with natural blooms. We act silly.

We’re back in Grandma’s kitchen again. Mame is one step closer to revealing the treasures in her bag now. Soon we lay eyes on the partly smashed trousseau of hats, left over from the spring season. We fight over who gets what, of course.

“Here’s a straw hat with a polka dot bow, “ I say but cast it aside. Janice and Jean don’t pick it up either. They are eying the red satin bows and lavender netting attached to other headgear.

“Hey, I want this one,” Janice and Jean tussle over a swoopy hat with pink flowers. Jean finally picks up a white thing that looks like an upside-down, flat-bottomed boat with a wad of blue tulle tied in a fluffy bow in the back. Janice’s is flat and round and dark, not my taste, with black-eyed Susan circling the straw hat. I get the best hat, I believe. It is flat and round too, but navy, and studded with azalea pink silk flowers around the edges. Best of all, I can pull a dark blue net over my face. Instantly, I become a woman of mystery and allure.

We take our new-found treasures up to Grandma’s bedroom and indulge in more fantasy. The space between her marble-topped vanity and tall headboard becomes our runway. We take turns prancing in front of her vanity mirror with wavy glass, cocking our heads just so and smiling at our reflections.

Later back at our house, Mom takes a picture of us in front of the garden of peonies and zinnias in the back yard. She holds the black square Kodak camera firmly with fingers plump as the butter she loves. I stare at her blue and white checked feed-bag apron over a matching home-made dress, so I don’t blink. In an instant, the shutter freezes our fashionable images at ages 3, 5, and 8. There’s plenty of time later to coax our long braids into the Mennonite style, pinned tightly to our heads with black wire hairpins.

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Tomato Girl, Part II

June 1, 2013 marianbeaman9 Comments

Our family has fertile, Lancaster County land in lots and parcels, scattered hither and yon: behind our house there is a small garden of beans, sugar peas, and cucumbers, embroidered with roses and peonies. Then there is a field of four acres in Rheems which Daddy plants in corn and sweet potatoes, besides the 9 acres of tomatoes over the river and through the woods near Bainbridge. That’s where I learn to really work–planting, hoeing, and picking the tomato crop.

On the way home from the tomato field in July, I notice a few stars emerging from the twilight sky. The road from the field back to home seems more bumpy now because I’m tired, and I crave a soapy bath to scrub the green tomato plant “glue” from my legs and soak the dirt from under my fingernails. But there’s a happy spot in my mind with the picture of a beautiful bike in it.

Days in the tomato patch come and go, and finally it’s time for my birthday. Mom tells me to go hide in the dining room and wait for the surprise. From my post in front of the long, lace-covered mahogany table, I hear the screen door open to the wash-house, then the kitchen door, and finally the sound of rubber bike wheels turning on the linoleum. I can hardly wait! The anticipation of the sleek bike I pictured weeks ago in the tomato patch is soon to become real. My daddy proudly holds the handlebars of this very special bike, a look of pleasure on his face.

Well, there is a bike. There before me sits a beat-up, second-hand relic with dents that have not quite been hammered out under ugly, flat paint from the shelves of Longenecker Farm Supply. The shiny blue and white bicycle I’ve anticipated all these weeks has morphed into a wreck of muddy blue and dull white the color of pale dirt. The picture in my mind deflates with my dream, a balloon punctured with a rusty nail.

For a few seconds, I act happy because I should, but I can’t possibly stifle the flood of tears burning my eyes. I turn and run through the dining room and up the stairs to find solace in my bedroom.

I’d rather have a bag of dimes.

I wonder why my Dad was so proud of his present to me, one I had a totally different perception of. Is it frugality, cluelessness? Something else?

Tomato Girl, Part I

May 29, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman10 Comments

Tomato Girl, Part I

Lancaster County, early June 1953 – and I’m in the tomato patch with Mother and Daddy. Actually, it’s not a tomato patch, it’s over 9 acres of farm land not far from Elizabethtown in Bainbridge where we are about to plant a new tomato crop. Years earlier, my parents planted tobacco, but a Mennonite revivalist came through the county, preached powerfully against making a profit from plants that could be turned into deadly cigars and cigarettes, and so like others they switched to tomatoes or corn.

Today Mom and I sit side by side on the metal “tractor” seats at one end of the planter, each with a burlap bag laden with tomato plants in our laps. A trowel-like attachment of the machine attached to the Massey-Harris tractor carves a row and we take turns inserting a plant with dangly roots into the furrow. As soon as a valve opens with a gush of water, two metal “hands” close over the plant, sealing it into the rich, humus soil. Usually Mom and I are synchronized, but if we can’t keep up with the click-clack of the mechanism, we yell at Daddy at the helm who hits the tractor brake so we can catch up.

Move ahead to hot July now, and Monday starts another tomato-picking week. My time-conscious Mom keeps us all on schedule: “Marrrr-i-an, it’s soon time to go!’ So I schuss around and put the thermos on the porch so Ruthie sees we’re ready.” She will be at our house any minute now with the Longenecker Farm Supply pickup to take herself, my mom and me to our field near the village of Bainbridge. I can see it now: rows of warm, red globes in clusters on the bushes. Timmy Barnhart, ”Barney”—a squat, jolly farmer in bib-overalls will probably meet us there and help with the harvest. I like when he comes; he knows that twelve-year-old tomato pickers like the Reed’s butterscotch candy and red licorice packets he stuffs into his pockets to sweeten the labor.

I’m paid ten cents a basket for my pains, but it’s hard to keep track of the number I fill, so I decide to put one green tomato on top of every 5/8 bushel basket, so I can add them all up and compute the dimes I’ll earn. Frugal Mom puts an end to this idea: “Don’t do that; you’re wasting perfectly good tomatoes. Why don’t you put your baskets in the middle of the row separate from the rest.” I know she’s telling me to do it this way, not asking if I really want to.

And so I plod—up and down the endless rows as the sun beats down on us. For awhile the grown-up chatter between my Mother, Aunt Ruthie, and Barney keeps me entertained, but then I stick my hand into a stinky, rotten tomato for the tenth time this morning, and I burst into tears. Dear Barney, now just a blue blur near the end of the row, hears the outburst and suggests a trip with the two of us going to Stauffer’s General Store down the alley and around the corner along a side street in Bainbridge. The store has oiled, wooden floors just like school and smiley Anna Mae Hess behind the counter. Barney, a widower, likes Anna Mae, and they chat for a while, giving me sweet reprieve from the blazing sun. Before we go, he orders two pints of Breyer’s neopolitan ice cream in a square box each cut in half with a butcher knife. Anna Mae puts four flat wooden spoons in a paper bag with the cold treat and we’re back in the field to share a late morning snack with Mom and Aunt Ruthie.

Late afternoon brings Daddy in his flat-bed Reo truck to load the baskets in three or four staggered layers. If there is any room left over, Oscar Forrey, a farmer who patronizes my daddy’s shop, can add his picking to our harvest. “There’s no sense in two people driving half-filled trucks to the same place now is there?” Dad says. He’ll drive to the Mt. Joy depot for tomato farmers where the Heinz Company will truck the harvest way over to Hanover. My Dad has brought along a cold watermelon (wasser-ma-loon, he calls it) to save us from dehydration. Bless his heart! Mom must have told Daddy about my melt-down because he promises me a bike for my July 24 birthday. I picture a shiny blue and white Schwinn with a cute, white woven basket in front of the handlebars, maybe with fancy, pink dingle-dangles!

I don’t remember if my teachers ever assigned an essay “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” But planting and picking tomatoes would have been my topic until I turned 15 and could work for real pay at Baum’s Bologna. There I wrapped sweet bologna in clear cellophane and pasted on the label, festooned with a smiley Amish face with a beard and wide straw hat. Then I graduated to working in the dementia unit at Masonic Homes. But that’s another story.

Tell us something memorable about your summers as a child or a young teen. If you remember it after all these years, we’d certainly be interested in reading about it.

How to: Create Keepsakes

May 25, 2013May 27, 2013 marianbeaman2 Comments

For years I have kept a ratty ole pin cushion from Grandma Longenecker in my sewing cabinet. It looks pitiful, but I’ll never throw it away because it came from my Grandma. Pierced through its dusty middle with some of her pins and holding one of my mother’s hairpins, I’d say it’s more of a keepsake than an heirloom.

Remember Art Linkletter’s show “Kids Say the Darndest Things”? Of course they do! I have kept quotes from each of our four grandchildren since their early years, as keepsakes. It’s easy to do the same for your children–both grand and great–nieces and nephews too:

1. Be alert to their part of any conversation. You never know when a wacky, wise, or witty saying will burst forth from their lips.

2. Write it down ASAP. Memory is tricky. If you don’t get it just right, what they have actually said may lose its zing in your faulty translation.

3. Use a notebook or reserve a folder on your computer desktop for the quotations. For example: SayingsPatrickCurtisJennaIan.doc

4. Always include a date. If you’re like me, you’ll never connect their age with the saying. What seems precocious at age 4 would sound ordinary at age 7 or 8.

Here are some examples from my files. (You can guess which one I would pull out at a rehearsal dinner celebration!)

Patrick & Jenna snacking after planting grass plugs

2.15.07 Patrick to Mommy Crista: “Mom, we can’t move to Florida.”“Why?”“Because we can’t get Daddy’s bean bag on the plane.” (age 4)

10.24.09 Patrick: “My favorite thing in school is writing in my purple journal. Every story I write has the word ‘the’ in it!” (age 6)

12.23.09 After Jenna breaks her snow globe Christmas ornament Cliff gave her from Washington State, Patrick says, “Grandpa, the next time you go on a trip, don’t give the little girl a glass present.” (age 6)

Jenna’s turn:

* 6.25.09 You and Patrick were with NaNa as Mommy was having some time to run errands. You were busy upstairs helping me pack for PA: on jewelry– “That’s too fancy . . . or too casual.” On outfits – “This matches . . . this doesn’t.” (age 4) Fashion design in her future? Who knows.

* 8.5.12 Mommy Crista: “So we are at the beach and Jenna and I are sifting through sand looking for neat sea shells. She says to me, ‘Mommy, you know, you are doing pretty good for your age. Flattered (and in my bikini), I said, ‘Well, thank you. Do you think I should cover up a little bit more?’ Jenna says, ‘No, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that you have good eyes for looking for nice shells.’” (age 7)

Curtis and Snow Globe Gift

1.1.08: NaNa observes that Curtis is wearing his “Dash” suit to bed, and so she says, “Why are you wearing your Incredibles suit to bed?” Curtis: “Well, I need to be strong in bed!” (age 5)

11.7.10 When I came to dinner on Sunday evening, you had balled-up paper in a small laundry basket and mentioned you wanted to have a “dry” snowball fight. (age 7)

5.10.13 I describe how Great Grandma’s Chicago snow globe was taken on the sly and how sad she is as a result: After a bit, Curtis goes to his room, and gets his own larger version of the snow globe, a keepsake from his early days in Chicago, to give to her as a surprise. (age 9)

Ian and Teddy

With Grandpa at the mall, as Ian finished drinking his chocolate milk from a straw, he exclaimed, “Look, I’m a sucker!” (age 4)

After being given an assignment at pre-school, (All Saints’s Episcopal), Ian completes this prompt: If I were President, “I Would protect the children!” (age 5)

3.18.13 When Great Aunt Janice gives us kumquats, you say, “I’m glad I’m not a kumquat!” Now what brought that on, I wonder? (age 5 1/2)

Another Keepsake: Kid-size Gratitude Journal

Tables Turned: Kids do their own drawing, writing: “I’m thankful for . . . . ”

Add your clever keepsake idea to the mix. Tell us an activity or tradition that helps keep memory alive for the sake of the next generation in your family.

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Ruthie the Cheater, Part II

May 22, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman6 Comments

I’ve told my students if they ever see me in a bank behind the teller’s window—RUN! Math has never been my strong suit, but I can spell well.

In fourth grade, I always win the spelling bees on Friday. In fact, my winning is so predictable that my friend Wayne tells me he’s going to find a word in the dictionary that I can’t spell. “Somebody else deserves to win sometimes,” he whines.

Ruthie the Cheater Cheater-in-Training, 4th Grade

And so he searches for just the right word, finds it, and whispers it into Miss Longenecker’s right ear. I see him form the word with his lips, but I can’t decipher what he is saying. That evening, Grandma invites the five of us—Mom, Daddy, Janice, Jean and me—down over the hill to Grandma’s house for chicken pot pie.

As always, before Dad parks our blue Studebaker, three-legged Skippy rushes out on the porch to greet us. Soon I’m standing on a chair beside the stove watching Grandma cut out little pieces of dough for me to place one by one carefully in the boiling liquid to cook. I love to find a little space of bubbling broth in the kettle and seal it over with a dough-y square. Chicken pot pie with fresh cabbage slaw . . . wunderbar.

Aunt Ruthie comes in the back door from school with a yellow pencil over her ear. After she puts down her papers and books, she quizzes me, “How do you spell reconciliation?” Without hesitating, I enunciate: r-e-c-k-o-n-s-i-l-l-y-a-t-i-o-n!

“That’s close, but not quite right,” she encourages, as she pulls down the dictionary from the left bottom door of the red cherry cupboard over by the kitchen table.

“Here, take a look at this.” And I see how the dictionary says to spell it. Now I put the right letters in my memory bank for tomorrow’s spelling bee. When Teacher asks the class, “Does anyone have a word to stump Marian?” this might be the word, I surmise.

It’s Friday, and once again I’m the surviving speller. Wayne jumps to the mound to strike me out, but I deliver fourteen correct letters in rapid succession: reconciliation!” Wayne is dumbstruck for a few seconds and then mutters, “Holy Cow, Holy Cow,” as he reconciles himself to the fact that it’s useless to try to stump Marian.

Once again, Aunt Ruthie is a cheater, but so am I. We’re in cahoots!

Can you admit to a time when you got some unsolicited help? Some help that came with wobbly ethics? Tell us your story!

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Ruthie the Cheater, Part I

May 18, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman5 Comments

Yes, my Aunt Ruthie is a cheater. I’ll admit that she also has an honorable resume that includes a principalship of Rheems Elementary School, Tax Collector of West Donegal Township, mother to refugees and immigrants. But, you heard right, she also has a rap sheet. Let me explain.

Aunt Ruthie – Miss Longenecker

The scent of ply-board takes me back to the patterns that we cut out in her classroom on a jig-saw machine . . . a scent that has an oaky-piney fragrance that compares to the fragrance of a wine with some nutty notes: But what does a Mennonite know about wine, anyway!

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

–Vladimir Nabokov

Whatever the aroma, the scent bypasses the brain and takes me straight back to third grade at Rheems Elementary School. While Miss Longenecker reads us stories after lunch, we color pictures of fairy tales or fables outlined in purple (always purple) ink cranked out by the hectograph machine that imprints images from a jelly surface onto paper.

Hectograph machine – gelatin duplicator with hand crank, 1940s

Our teacher loves art and she has a very “hands on” teaching style. Sometimes we finger paint with thick, gooey pigments, or paste pieces of colored construction paper into loops with white paste from a gallon jar. Some kids even eat the paste when the teacher’s not looking.

Today Miss Longenecker has brought in a jigsaw and some fresh plywood. We inhale its pungent fragrance, just as we have smelled the paste or the paints or the glue. We’ll take turns each cutting out an animal as the tooth of the electric saw bites into plywood, following a pattern, guided by our teacher’s hands, hers on top of ours.

When it’s my turn, I trace the outline of a dog and a cat with the sawblade. Back then, we hadn’t heard about OSHA laws of course! Later I paint the dog blue and the cat pink with black dots for eyes, a few whiskers, and wobbly lines for ears and front paws. To me, they look wonderful, if I don’t say so myself. My Teacher/Aunt is taking me home after school today, so I can play outside until she’s ready to go home.

I come inside for a drink from the fountain after a while and find Aunt Ruthie, paintbrush in hand, adding some eyebrow lines here, a few more whiskers there, a touch of red for the mouth, and more defined forepaws to my jigsaw creations. “I think these are good enough to enter into the art contest in Elizabethtown this year. Maybe you’ll win first prize,” she remarks, wiping black paint from her brush. “But you’re helping me too much,” I think.

Actually, I don’t care much about winning a prize for my art. I just want to add hooks to the back and hang my new plywood pets on my bedroom wall. Nevertheless, Blue Dog and Pink Cat enter the contest in the third-grade category, and my aunt and I are awarded a Blue Ribbon for our pains.

Guided by her hand, though, I learn to sew and knit, play the piano, take trips to the zoo, the symphony, make fasnacht dough. . . .

A cheater? Let’s just say I’ve destroyed her rap sheet long ago.

Hair: Historical to Hysterical

May 15, 2013October 17, 2015 marianbeaman33 Comments

Baskin-Robbins offers nearly 60 flavors of ice cream at their shoppes. The varieties of dress among Mennonites and Amish, who split from the Mennonites, is nearly as long and equally fascinating. In recent research, I counted dozens of sub-sects.

By far the most conservative group that maintains plain dress is the Old Order Amish church. The Amish have unfortunately reached pop culture status with hideous reality shows that exploit their way of life including their dress distinctives:

Herr Frau

Beards Headcovering with tie strings

Hair cut off straight in back, banged in front Uncut hair parted in center in bun

Coats, vets fastening with hooks & eyes Long dress with cape in solid color

Suspenders and broadfall pants Pleated or gathered skirt

Wide brimmed hats Black shoes and stockings

As though frozen in time, attire of the Old Order Amish church has not noticeably evolved, reminiscent of their European origins.

Then there is the Brethren Church with its various branches. “The Old Order River Brethren continue to wear traditional garb.” The men look much like Amish but the women “wear opaque white headcoverings, capes, aprons, and a peplum on the dress bodice,” which tapers to a V-shape. An excellent source for detail of other sub-sects: http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/D74ME.html

Typically, my visit to PA includes an appointment with a perky River Brethren woman who gives massages. You gasp “Massages!” but it’s true! Esther has my vote for the Most Modest Masseuse on Earth; she gives head-to-toe therapeutic massages in her home for a shockingly modest fee. Were she fancy, and not plain, she would fit perfectly in a chiroparactor’s office. Note peplum, short ruffle attached at waistline in photo below:

Finally, there is not simply a Mennonite Church, but a cluster of branches, including a very conservative branch called Black-Bumpers, who drive cars but paint their shiny chrome bumpers black (less flashy)! Once in Lancaster I spotted a sleek Mercedes-Benz sedan with black bumpers and very plain girls spilling out—an image of paradox if there ever was one.

My own brand of Mennonites is the Lancaster Conference Mennonites, who have driven cars rather than horse and buggies but have long adhered to a strict code of dress since their emigration from Europe in the early 1700s. However, plain dress among these Mennonites has been falling by the wayside since the 1960s and 70s when these photos below were snapped.

Smith, Elmer L. and Melvin Horst. “Meet the Mennonites in Pennsylvania Dutchland,”
Lebanon, PA: Applied Arts Publishers, 1997.

Braids, also known as pig tails Braids circling head with hairpins, middle school

Engagement: transition to fancy

Marge Simpson wannabe

Little known fact: The family of Milton Snavely Hershey, the Chocolate King, were Reformed Mennonites; his mother was a member and his grandfather, Abram Snavely, was a bishop for 37 years. Milton married a non-Mennonite. (“Meet the Mennonites”)

There is a connection, I think, between chocolate and access to memory both plain or fancy, expressed so distinctly by Barbara Crooker:

“. . . for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

I Samuel 16:7

10 Reasons My Husband Does Not Hear Me

May 11, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeamanLeave a comment

10 Reasons Why My Husband Does Not Hear Me:

1. He is listening to an audio book CD

2. He is listening to music

3. He doesn’t have his hearing aids in

4. He does have his hearing aids in but they’re tuned to TV/BlueTooth

5. He is upstairs

6. He is downstairs

7. He is mowing the lawn

8. He’s at the computer

9. He is indisposed

10. He is not here

12 Do Overs: In honor of women (and men) everywhere who keep house

o Toilet paper in all bathrooms

o Liquid soap in all dispensers

o Milk in the frig

o Juice in the pitcher

o Paper towels on holder

o Light bulbs in the pantry

o Water the plants

o Staples in the stapler

o Paper for the copier

o Kitchen clock wound

o Garbage out

o Gas in the tank

Thank the Lord!

Tell us your addition to either list. Click on Reply/Comment.

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ã Marian Beaman

Dutch Goose 101

May 8, 2013May 11, 2013 marianbeaman7 Comments

As I shove the casserole dish into the oven, I notice the olive oil spray can, the top of the paper towel holder, knives, and a scissors all besmirched with sausage. When did stuffing a Dutch goose (euphemism for pig stomach) take so much time and effort? It seems my mother just sits on her stool in front of the sink, peels and dices potatoes, mixes them with sausage, fills the stomach cavity, and slips it into the oven. A few hours later she asks me to take it out, all done. Easy as that!

On my last visit to Pennsylvania, I bought chipped beef, a pig stomach (yes, the organ from a hog) from Groff’s Meats, and 7 1/2 pounds of ham loaf from Wenger’s Meats in Elizabethtown. Now at home I’ve thawed the pig stomach and am preparing it as a mystery dish for our daughter’s family. For future reference, I must assemble all the tools required: knives for dicing potatoes, darning needle, white thread, scissors before I begin. And start sooner, for goodness sake!

Has anyone ever written out a recipe for pig stomach? I don’t know, but I’ve never seen Mother use one, so I call her mid-way in the process to ask for direction.

“How many potatoes should I use?”

“Oh, just however many you think.”

“Eight . . . ten . . . twelve?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. You can always put the left-overs in a casserole dish on the side,” so I see now it’s a guessing game.

No other dish I know off blends the culinary and sartorial arts so handily as filling a pig stomach, hence the needle and thread. To begin: the organ does have several orifices: intake, outgo, and a pyloric valve in there somewhere. This particular one has a tear, so I’ll have to stitch up 4 openings. Heaven forbid any of the sausage-potato stuffing leaks out. Mid-way through my first sew-up, I realize I’m stitching the large opening best suited for stuffing, so I have to undo it all, retracting thread through a gooey mess of fleshy tissue. Drat!

Finally the dish is ready for the oven . . . almost! As I pre-heat the oven, I recall the end of my phone conversation with Mom:

“How long do you bake it?” I ask.

“Oh, whatever you think.” she says.

“Well, I don’t know what to think . . . 2 hours? 3 hours?”

“Just take a look at it, and when it’s golden brown on top and a little bit around the side, it’s done.”

Using the convection feature on my oven part of the time, the baking time turns out to be about 2 1/2 hours and after “resting,” ready to serve.

After gobbling up his first serving, Patrick speaks up, “NaNa, this is as good as ham loaf! May I have some more?” Jenna joins in with yummy sounds. There are requests for more all around the table now, and I’m happy it’s a hit.

Sustenance for the body, that it is. But more than that, it has occurred to me, we are experiencing what always happens when family gets together: stuffing memories into the space of our hearts as well.

So, I’ll do it all again with our son’s family after my next trip north when I visit Groff’s. Incidentally, Groff’s Meats has begun selling pig stomachs already filled for the princely sum of $ 15.00.

I have to say, I’d charge $ 25.00, more if I have to re-stitch!

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ã Marian Beaman

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