Detroit’s Fabulous Eastern Market
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CAMPING UNDER THE STARS!
I don’t know why kids today don’t sleep out in the backyard like we used to in the late 50’s and early 60’s. That was the highlight of the week, but considering that our weeks didn’t contain any organized sports, video games, cable or even our own choice of programs on the TV, I guess it’s easy to see why building a tent out of blankets in the backyard was the best thing in the world. So after getting fed up with Patrick living in front of his TV, I decided it was high time I force my son to sleep outside. He was already 10 and other than putting up a tent to play in during the day, he’d never spent the whole night in our backyard. I rounded up two neighborhood friends of his, received parental permission and started setting up. The three boys were so excited. Each one had their own flashlight, sleeping bag and pillow, plus this was an actual tent, not a bunch of blankets close-pinned to the clothesline, that you get all tangled up in during the night when the boogieman is chasing you. But I digress. After much shuffling around, the boys finally claimed their own territory in the tent, and when the sky was dark and the stars came into sight, they scrambled into their sleeping bags all ready for spooky stories by flashlight. I popped some corn in the kitchen and we settled down in our cozy little world. We went around the group, each one telling a story, real, imagined, scary or silly. We laughed and ate and scared ourselves, thought we heard noises outside, laughed some more and ate some more. I was finally showing my son what a good time could be had for no money, no technology and just some imagination. Eventually, the air outside the tent became cool and damp, which meant it was time for my husband and I to change places. Once I was finally tucked in my own warm bed, my chocolate Lab next to me keeping me warm, I felt the satisfaction of a job well done, a lesson learned and a rite of passage unfolding in the backyard. I was almost asleep when all of a sudden there were three screaming boys scrambling up the staircase, piling into my son’s bedroom, who slammed the door shut behind them. I jumped out of bed and ran in there, only to find them hiding under the covers and not at all ready to sleep. I heard a loud pounding downstairs and left to investigate. My husband was outside the door wall, having been locked out in the boys’ haste to get inside. Unlocking the door, I asked him what had happened. “I don’t know. One minute I was telling them a scary story, and the next thing I knew, they were running into the house. I can’t believe they locked me out!” We both could hear the boys upstairs jumping around and yelling, the dog was barking and I knew sleep wasn’t going to come for a while. I turned back to look at my husband, who said, “It’s really nice out there. I’m going to go back out and sleep”. My look convinced him otherwise.
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We’re Makin’ PIZZA! and Mac ‘n Cheese! and Memories!!!
I managed to coerce my 27 y/o son away from his enthralling video game to head into the kitchen to make his favorite food from scratch. He was not enthused at all, but I was sure we could turn that around. I had a recipe, a bread maker, all the ingredients, and enough gumption for the two of us. We assembled all the ingredients on the counter and started measuring them out. The recipe itself didn’t call for a bread maker, but I was going to shortcut that with my machine. The first thing that didn’t seem right was when we had to add the yeast to the water. Normally, in a bread machine, you just poke a small hole in the flour and drop in the yeast, and then put the liquid on the other side, but OK if that’s what the recipe wanted, I better follow the rules! In no time at all, we again had the machine on the dough setting and a feeling of accomplishment rising. “Did you add the olive oil?” my son asked. His eyes rolled to the ceiling when he saw my shocked expression. Quickly, I shut the machine off, and we dumped the two tablespoons in. I don’t recall ever adding olive oil to the bread machine in years past, but I WILL conform to the recipe. Once the machine was back on, we each went back to our respective corners for the hour and forty-five minutes it would take for the dough to form. When it was getting close to the time, I took a peek and was shocked to see that it looked nothing like previously created forms of dough I’ve seen. It appeared very runny, and I didn’t think another three minutes was going to change anything, but I waited the full time. I floured the counter and poured it out like a large pancake. I dusted my hands with flour and tried to scoop it together while the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme suddenly played in my head. I need a TON more flour and I couldn’t use my hands to get any as they were packed with wet sticky dough, so I called out for help. Patrick came into the kitchen, saw what I was doing, and dumped a good portion of flour over my hands and the pile they were stuck in. He quickly abandoned ship and left me alone in the kitchen again. That flour seemed to help as I was able to rub my hands together to get all the stuff off them, and then I started working on forming a dough ball. It took quite a bit more flour, but then hard sections forming on the counter were getting in the way of rolling the dough. I grabbed one of those small plastic scrapers that Pamper Chef gives with their stoneware and scraped all the hard bits of dough off to the side. I again floured the countertop and my hands and resumed working the dough. I added to the ball all the bits and pieces that were laying around and kept mushing it together. Success was achieved so I put a small bit of flour in the bottom of a bowl, dropped the dough in, covered it with a clean kitchen towel and set it on the floor by the heating vent. I went into Patrick’s game room and informed him that the dough was proofing, and in 30 minutes I would know whether there was still any life left in the yeast or if it was all going in the trash. He gave me a sideways look and went out to the garage ‘frig to get a frozen macaroni and cheese meal to microwave. He had told me earlier that day that he was all out of his Better Health frozen meals, which is why I suggested making the pizza. “I was saving one for an emergency, and this is an emergency.” After he was done eating, he asked me if I wanted to learn how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch. I was kind of invested in the pizza by now, but since I have been encouraging him to learn to cook, I had to go along. (According to him, I’m ‘almost the world’s worse cook’ which might explain his reluctance to join me in the kitchen.) He quickly got out the pans for boiling the elbows and making the roux and got to work. I have never made a roux in my life but at least I knew what it was! He explained everything rather scientifically as he proceeded through the process and refused to let me help. Eventually I was allowed to stir the noodles as they boiled, and later even gave the roux a stir when he had to step away from the stove. When the 30 minutes on the dough proofing was up, I was ecstatic to see that the dough had actually increased in size! I started mushing it out on the newly floured counter, and spreading it to get it to the approximate size of my pizza stone. Patrick had previously sliced the mozzarella and we had the sauce at the ready, so he instructed me that he would assemble the pizza when I had the dough ready. The dough was a little weird, though, as some areas felt like normal dough and other areas felt very dense and unyielding. In fact, I couldn’t get this one section to do much at all, so I told Patrick we were just going to ignore that little part and work with the rest of it. He came over to add the sauce and cheese and remarked that it looked like a Pac-man. I left the pizza area to go to the stove to babysit the roux and cheese mixture, while Patrick finished the pizza. While we were talking, Patrick mentioned that the flour to water ratio was all wrong in the dough and it probably didn’t
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A Eulogy for My Old Man
May 6, 2015 My ‘old man’, as he insisted I call him, had been dying for almost ten years now. You would have thought this eulogy would have been written and rewritten and rewritten, but I never started it until last night. He outlived the doctor who told him he wouldn’t see the end of 2014. He outlived one of the largest recorded abdominal aneurysms. And unfortunately, in his own mind, he outlived his usefulness. Once he realized that he would be confined to bed, he said, ‘Fuck it. That’s it. I’m done.’ And in less than two weeks, he was gone. And that’s how he wanted it. I think it was about five or six years ago that I really pushed to get him to move in with my family and me downriver. I wanted to spend more time on a daily basis with him while he was still able to get out and do things. He teetered back and forth for a spell, but then decided that he couldn’t give up and move out. He lived in a run town trailer park in Mt. Clemens, drove an old Chrysler, hit certain spots for breakfast, but mostly stayed at home with his cat. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to move. What I didn’t realize then was what he couldn’t give up on. He couldn’t give up on his long and valuable friendships with his two neighbors, Ray and Bill, who have been to me, over the years, a great source of comfort whenever I couldn’t reach my dad and feared the worse. Thank you for that. He couldn’t give up on his church family and all the friendships and desserts that resulted from that relationship. I’m especially looking forward to those peanut butter cookies after the service! He couldn’t give up his independence, no matter that the doctor “suggested” he stop driving five years ago. He said, “It’s okay. I stay in the right lane and go real slow.” Then we all cringed as we watched him turn left out of Ravis (Travis?) one morning after breakfast and the entire road just about had to come to a stop for him. Yes, he was rough around the edges, gruff and feisty, missing some teeth, and not concerned about wearing spot-free clothes, but once you made your way past that barrier, you were rewarded with the real gold that was inside. He would do just about anything for you, but only if he liked you. I remember one specific event in my life many years ago that changed my outlook of him. He had been divorced for a number of years, and the 30th anniversary dinner at St. John Hospital was coming up. He didn’t want to go alone. I was a young hippie then, partying and thinking parents were a drag. But I felt bad that he didn’t have a date so I agreed to go. I can’t even remember if it was the standard rubber chicken dinner routine or something more fancy, but what I do remember is this: when they finally announced my dad’s name to come up for his years of service award, he rose and headed to the stage in his tuxedo to a standing ovation. I was amazed. It was a very long ovation, and it turned out to be the only one that night. When my dad came back to the table and saw the look of amazement on my face, he said, “You didn’t know your old man was so popular, did you?” It was that moment that made me wake up and take the time to get to know the guy beneath the gruff. I haven’t regretted it since.
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How NOT to Train your Dog
Why expose yourself to the elements when you can easily train your dog to run out the front door to retrieve your morning newspaper? I was halfway home from not having to run out in the rain or snow in my PJs anymore as I already had a 100-pound chocolate Labrador Retriever. All I had to do was train him to fetch the paper. This would be a snap! The first morning of training, I held onto his collar, told him “fetch,” and walked him calmly right outside to the paper, about 30 feet from the front door. (We repeatedly asked the paper carrier that it be delivered right to the porch but in seven years, it hasn’t made it there once.) I picked up the paper, stuffed it in Buddy’s mouth, said, “good dog!” and took him back into the house, where he was given a biscuit as a treat. He was starting to get a clue. The next morning, I repeated the process and did the same again, on the third day. By now he was showing keen interest, especially in the biscuit part, and seemed to be putting two and two together. Even though a veterinarian had told me chocolate Labs were the “blonds of the dog world,” I was optimistic that this could work. Come Day Four, I opened the door and said “fetch.” He bolted out the front door, all on his own, and headed in the opposite direction of the paper, where he proceeded to poop on my front lawn. I fetched the paper myself and cleaned up the poop. This was not part of the plan. On Day Five, I let him out the door on the side of the house into the dog run for his early morning constitution before I had him fetch the paper. While still in my PJs, I confidently took him to the front door, said the magic word and let him loose. He ran directly to the paper, picked it up and ran around to the right, back between the houses into our unfenced backyard. I ran back through the house, to the side door by the dog run and into the backyard yelling “biscuit! biscuit!” He dropped the paper in the middle of the backyard and came running for his treat. There was no reward for this kind of behavior. I retrieved the paper myself from the middle of my back yard. I should have eaten the biscuit. The next day, I decided to tie a 30′ rope to his collar so that he could not escape again. He had previously chewed the rope in two, so a knot was in place to keep it the full length. I again let him go in the dog run first to avoid the pooping problem. When we arrived at the front door, I tied the rope to his collar and thought everything was now in place for a successful retrieve. As it was early morning, I had on my favorite old chenille robe, my hair was doing the Phyllis Diller-Einstein thing, and I called my seven-year-old son to come downstairs to watch what was surely going to be a proud moment. I opened the door, yelled ‘fetch’ and off he ran, causing the rope to burn through my hands so fast and painfully that I dropped the rope, which landed on my right ankle and immediately burned the skin around my ankle bone. Before I could jump aside, that darn knot caught under back of the wooden front door which then slammed shut, smacked my backside in the process and propelled me in all my morning beauty out on the front porch in the middle of the cul-de-sac. The dog was about four inches from the newspaper, lunging and stretching to reach it so he could trade it for a biscuit. He could not go any further because of the knot under the closed front door and I couldn’t push the front door open to get back in the house with all this leaping and jumping toward the paper going on. I finally grabbed the rope and pulled him in, without the paper, pushed on the door and stumbled back into my foyer, where my wide-eyed son was still sitting on the steps. We looked at each other and he said, “Wow! That had to hurt!” It certainly did. Another day dawned and with great trepidation and no witnesses, I got fully dressed and tried it again with nothing but hope and a biscuit. Somehow that crazy dog grabbed the paper and ran right back to me. I was stunned. I exchanged the paper for a biscuit and we were both happy. It was a resounding hard-fought success after too many failures. Buddy actually fetched the paper flawlessly from then on, and sometimes I didn’t even have to give him a biscuit! Getting the paper was treat enough for him. However, getting the paper from him became difficult. He discovered that if he shook his head, the inside parts of the paper would fly out and he could get a better grip on the roll. Unfortunately, I wanted the entire paper, not just the adverts. Occasionally, I had to wrestle the newspaper out of his mouth because he didn’t want to give it up, biscuit or no biscuit, which resulted in the front page or two being ripped to pieces and slobbered on. But I felt that was a small price to pay for such glorious success!
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