A Gala Event

Last weekend was the Custer County Foundation's yearly Christmas Gala. This is Broken Bow at its finest. The event is the Foundation's biggest fundraiser of the year. All the hoity toities of the town get gussied up in their best duds and come enjoy a lovely supper. There is an auction with a real live auctioneer. It is loud, exciting and almost musical. You want to tap your foot to the ninety-ninety-ninetity nine...And you want to buy things. Art, vacation packages, truck loads of gravel, tractor time. There is something for everyone at the Custer County Gala.

At the periphery of the dining hall there are other items to bid on in a silent auction. This allows the well to dos to rub elbows and visit with one another as they peruse the lovelies. And there is meat. Oh is there meat! Every year we have had the pleasure of going to the Gala we have been graced with a large cut of prime rib. This year they did us one better. They brought an appetizer of, you guessed it, meat! Big ol' chunks of steak marinated and skewered and grilled to well doneness. For a moment I wondered: "will they serve something other than prime rib this year? Surely they won't follow meat chunks with a gigantic meat chunk?" I thought. But then I thought again. Of course there would be double meat. This is Nebraska! This is cattle country. And so it was: after the little meat chunks, out came huge, succulent, bloody slabs of meat!

Oh, but how could I mention the Gala without mentioning the football? Gala night is also Husker night. The Big Red on the big screen. Eating and auctioning and elbow rubbing all takes a back seat the the football. Even the decor is Husker red and black. Ladies in sparkly black dresses and red faux leather jackets wave their red napkins above their heads and woot woot for the home team. The movie theater sized screen flashes red and white. A good play is made, and the crowd goes wild. A bad play and heart felt mourns resonate through the hall. Auctioneers hush for playtime, and the cadence commences again only during commercial breaks. Popcorn is served. All of Broken Bow sits back and watches, cheering on the Huskers with all their might. A community at its best.

Potager Post

More pictures of the potager! It is still not finished, but around here when something is 90% done, it's basically done. I must have inherited a gene that keeps you from completing projects. Anyway, it's still the best looking potager on our block. The fruits of our labor include strawberries, tons of herbs, Japanese eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, pickling cucumbers and this mystery melon. I don't remember planting it, so if anyone can identify it I will give them 50 cents -- next time they visit me.





Also, I know nothing about pickling, so I have been searching for recipes to use up all these cucumbers!! I find the whole topic very confusing... salt versus vinegar, boiling brine versus cooled brine, hot water bath versus no bath. There are so many pickling permutations that I get confused. I finally emailed my good friend Lynne Rosetto Casper for her input, but I have yet to hear back from her. I'm sure she'll be in touch soon.



Finally, even though it is well into August I have had merely 3 ripe tomatoes so far. The rest seem to be in some sort of green tomato suspended reality. As we are still working on the canned green tomato chutney from last year, I sure hope whatever bizarre Nebraska Summer conditions are keeping them from ripening will settle the hell down.

Happy, healthy gardening, people.

P is for Potager

I was going to wait until this project was finished to show it off, but as it may never actually get finished I have decided to post some pictures. So behold the potager! (that's french for prissy kitchen garden). Stuff's not really growing yet since it's been really cloudy and wet here this spring, but soon those little boxes will be full of delightful veggies, herbs and flowers. I even went so far as to plant a couple of rose bushes. This turns out to have been a mistake -- they are already dying, but I have no regrets.




Other random photos

Morels

One of the radio podcasts I listen to has a segment on the Santa Monica farmer's market. I have to admit that over the past couple of weeks I have been just a tad jealous to hear about all of the wonderful new spring produce that is available at the market. Our own farmers market will not open for at least another month or so. Oh to experience fresh fava bean sauteed with spring leeks! As usual for NE though, if you just look around a bit you can find your own kind of spring wonderfulness here.

Today I guilted Keith into accompanying me on a search for some morel mushrooms. Neither of us really knew for certain if they existed around here, but I was determined to find out, and as it turned out Keith was willing to accompany me. We set off in our little Jetta with the dogs in the back and made our way to our nearest "river". We walked around for quite awhile, at first thinking maybe there would be no Morels after all. Then Keith spotted them: a bunch of beautiful brainy, chorally looking things. They were sort of out of place in the middle of a field of green grass, but they were sitting there plain as day! We excitedly picked them and threw them into our bag. After about an hour or so of further hunting this is what we hauled in.


It was a fun way to spend a beautiful, warm spring evening here in Nebraska. The dogs frolicked in the the river beside us while we carefully hunted mushrooms. There wasn't a soul around for miles which was nice and peaceful and of course meant more mushrooms for us! Tonight we enjoyed a delicious morel sautee. It may have even been worth all the ticks we brought home with us.

Recycle Me

As of this week I am the official chair of the Broken Bow Green Coalition's newly formed recycling sub-committee. I am very excited to have such a role! While others may look around Broken Bow and see a hopeless community of uninterested resource squanderers, I see immense potential!

This is a community where men think of F350 pickups as a symbol of their masculinity: drivers of girly Ford Rangers and the like are ridiculed as driving something other than "a real truck". This is an industrial farming community dependent on gas powered tractors and chemical fertilizers and pesticides to raise immense fields of corn. The life's blood of Broken Bow is a large cattle feed operation that produces tons of cattle waste and ozone depleting methane on a daily basis. (Unlike other industries, there are no governmental regulations requiring "farm" waste to be disposed of in environmentally sound ways).

This is community in which lives a young man who, upon seeing my husband peddling to work one day, commented on the anomaly: "that guy must need to save money". This in turn sparked a conversation between this teenager and his mother about how people without kids have time to do things like ride their bikes to work, and yes saving money is an important thing to start thinking about with college around the corner... No mention of how much impact gas spewing motorized vehicles have on our environment or our current problems related to dependence on foreign oil. The green thing just isn't in peoples' consciousness here. I think part of the problem is simply lack of education, and the other problem is the unfortunate political connotation in so many people's minds when the words "environmentalism" or "green" are spoken.

But do I find these facts about Broken Bow daunting? I think not! I am truly excited about the potential of our town (including my household) to improve our carbon footprint. Although many rural people are behind the curve on environmental issues, there are also a bunch of smart, informed and interested people here (hence the coalition). In addition, for every F350 driving litterbug out there, there is a little grey haired lady who has been saving yogurt containers to use as tupperwares and reusing the waxed paper liners from her cereal boxes since the great depression. There is hope for this small town!

Check out Keith's awesome website he made for our cause at www.greenbrokenbow.org

So Long Anonymity

By my calculations Keith and I have been BB inhabitants for precisely 18 months. That has been sufficient time to get settled into the community and to make a few dear friends. It has also been enough time for a good proportion of Broken Bow-ites to have needed our services in the clinic or ER, and thus recognize us in the streets.

As the "homemaker" of our domicile I am generally the one out doing errands and jaunting about town. It is not uncommon on these escapades for me to be stopped by a patient, or a patient's family member when they have a question or comment about their medical condition. I always thought when I went into medicine that this would not bother me. I felt that I liked helping people, and if I had to sacrifice a few personal minutes out of my day to do that, so be it-- it would be enjoyable. What I didn't fully conceptualize was the types of things people would stop me about and the completely inconvenient times they would stop me.

For example, yesterday I had a 30 minute slot between patients when I planned to pop down to the hospital's annual rummage sale and hunt for treasures. I scarcely passed through the doors when a patient cut me off to ask me about her husband's recent blood work. "What were the numbers?" she demanded. I was torn between repeating a conversation with her which I had had on MANY occasions versus finding cool, cheap stuff. Of course I did my best to answer her questions.

When I finally elbowed my way past all the elderly thrifters and their shopping carts to the back of the rummage sale (where the books and LPs are) a woman identifying herself as a neighbor (I am learning that anyone in a 1/2mile radius is a neighbor) stopped me to talk about her husband whom I had pronounced dead in the hospital. I nodded sympathetically then awkwardly went back to sifting through the LPs.

The next day, equally as hurried, I planned a quick stop at the grocery store. As I was loading up on sale peppers a patient's mother veered out of her way to come talk to me about her son. I had seen him in the ER the night before, and he was still hurting. This was a 28 year old man who had twisted his ankle when he hopped out of his pick-up truck. He was just certain he had broken it even though all of his x-rays were normal. She wanted to let me know that the 800mg of ibuprofen wasn't touching the pain, and he wanted to be re-evaluated for a fracture (I'll have to make a separate post someday about the incredible wimpiness of 20-something year old males). When I started to offer suggestions the mother told me that she didn't necessarily want me to do anything, she just wanted to share. I simply looked at her, silently wondering why she felt this was an appropriate vegetable department conversation.

My anonymity is a thing of the past. My medical school ideals of being available to those who needed me at any given time still exist, but the problem is that a rummage sale or a grocery store are simply not practical places to diagnose and treat, and unfortunately too many people somehow feel it is okay to infringe on my personal time for relatively trivial problems.

If I could send a message to all Broken-Bowans it would be this: I cannot diagnose your daughter's knee injury when she is not even present. You are lucky if I can remember your name much less you husbands blood work. And I find it terribly awkward to discuss your continued rectal pain and bleeding in the supermarket. Please take note.

Another Birthday

I guess all my complaining last year about not being spoiled on my birthday did the trick (thank goodness Keith cares not about the effects of positive reinforcement on whiny behaviors). This year not only did I get a delicious homemade meal, but I also got homemade cupcakes! Look at the care and love he is putting into those little gems. They were superb!

Look What My Worms Made!/Vacation

I'm glad someone has been working hard around here, because lately it has not been me and Keith. While we were on our mountain getaway, the worms have been working hard for us. Beautiful compost to make Terry green with envy! My garden is going to be awesome this year.

Keith and I were in Crested Butte Colorado last week. We had a fantastic (and much needed) vacation. Although the 9 hour car ride with methane producing beasts was not enviable, the skiing, snowshoeing, scenery, food and friends were superb!
See Bryan, skiers and snowboarders can get along (Not sure what's wrong w/my face here)


Bryan and Christa


Where did this doggie come from? His tag said "Wiggle Butt" which I though was rather demeaning.


Marie, Thad and Espera




It was a dog heavy week. There are actually 4 dogs back there, but I think Lucy and Thena are crushing the others.

Home Design Update

Once, a long, long time ago, someone requested that I post more pictures of our house after we had a chance to decorate it. As it turns out, Keith and I enjoy watching the Daily Show and reading books far more than we like home decorating, so many a moon has passed w/o such a post. Recently I have decided to work in ernest on getting things done around here though (my goal is to get things just the way I want them just in time to have to move). Today I am happy to announce that things are sailing along. Exactly one and a half years after we took up residence here, our living room is finally starting to look finished, and our bedroom is looking good.

Here are a few of the lessons I have learned along the way:

1) I suck at home decorating. There is nary an item in this house that is actually residing in the place I planned for it. Invariably it does not look good were I envisioned it, and it has to be shuffled. Luckily our house is big, and I can usually find another suitable place for things. The only flaw in this strategy is that it cannot last forever once the last possible space is occupied.

2) Things you see online are never what they appear -- always get a swatch first, stupid. Along those same lines, just because you know what color "flax" is does not mean Restoration Hardware does.

3) Keith does not like anything I pick, so if I really want it, I shouldn't ask his opinion.

4) Home design consultants may actually be worth their exorbitant fees if they can keep you from blowing a thousand bucks on a wool rug at overstock that doesn't really go with anything in your house, and you can't figure out how to get said rug back in the packaging to return it.

Anyway, enjoy these pics. I must say, I do not really think the bedroom photo really does the space justice. In real life it's pretty awesome -- and finished!





By the way, anybody have a good idea as to what to put above the fireplace? I'm leaning toward a western theme: either a picture of bison in the snow I have seen at a local shop or maybe even a stuffed deer head mount (Keith is against the latter). Thoughts?

Look at my awesome new pants!

The sole purpose of the post is to show all who are interested (and who wouldn't be) how great Keith looks in his new pants/sweater combo. I am proud to say that for the first time in weeks he was actually too hot at work, and this allowed him to shed his sad, worn-out, and full of little lint balls hoodie. Yay, long skinny pants!

The worst thing about eczema

This winter has been incredibly cold (-30 w/wind chill the other day). What is perhaps worse though is how dry it has been. Over the years I have been annoyed on and off by a tiny patch of eczema on the lateral aspect of my middle finger. With this extra dry weather coupled with having to wash my hands umpteen times a day to rid them of germs and doggie stink, my eczema is spreading. Now the whole middle digit is red and cracked and stinging like crazy. I'm also getting textbook antecubital fossa involvement. So, to treat it I have taken to wearing a glove on my right hand at night in order to get the steroid cream and emollient to absorb better. This is the worst part of having eczema -- operating my laptop mouse with a glove doesn't work, so I am forced to navigate left handed. Difficult. Yes I realize that if this is my biggest concern, then I have a nice life indeed.

With the cold weather hitting this weekend and Keith being on call, I spent most of the weekend baking cookies. This crazy cookie lady motivated this madness, which will likely never be repeated in this house. Co-workers are getting a variety of delectable cookies though, and I too made biscotti, and it is awesome. It was so hard to wrap it up and not eat half of it in the process.

Tomorrow I will try to post pictures of Keith in his awesome new, long enough and not too baggy and super good deal cords and nice wool sweater which will hopefully keep him from complaining so much about the cold weather. These were his early Christmas gift. And kudos to Kat for helping me find the handful of places that actually sell Gautreaux sized slacks.

Born To Hand Jive

If you had a special talent would you show it off every day, seeking attention and praise? Well if you were smart you would save that special talent for a very special day in which you could shock your peers, stun your wife and win a $50 prize. What I am speaking of friends is Keith's dance, hand jive and gymnastics talents. Who knew he could cartwheel?

As you can see Keith and I dressed as Greasers for Halloween this year. As it turned out another couple tried to steal our idea and they too showed up as Sandra D and Danny. Big mistake for them. Their costumes were obviously unmotivated, cheap internet versions while ours were creative, homemade duds. For some reason though, the judges seemed torn between the two duos for the "best couple costume", and they decided to have a dance off to determine who would get the prize. Poor other vinyl T-bird jacket greasers. They simply did not stand a chance. You see, not  only did Keith and I just have our first country swing dance class (easy enough to embellish into a fifties style swing), but 6 foot 4 inch Keith has also got some mad cartwheelin' skills. Needless to say, we departed victorious with some fancy T-shirts (mine has a topless hula dancer on the front) and a $50 gift certificate. 

Hand Jive!

Here's a picture of some other best costume winners: our neighbors kids won "scariest" and "most original" for their zombie and Oscar the Grouch costumes. So cute!

Kirby's Kluckers

The more you know about food and where it comes from, the more paralyzing shopping is. My ideal shopping cart would include food that is grown locally, without antibiotics, and is nutritious. It should be from animals that are raised with all their original parts, natural habitats should be minimally impacted to grow and harvest the food, it should be packaged in environmentally friendly packaging, no workers should be exploited in the growing and harvesting process, and minimal oil should burned to transport it. Oh, and I would like it to be delicious please. Is that too much to ask?

There is a guy at our local farmer's market that sells chickens. From his sign I can only infer that his name is Kirby, and I have been buying his Kluckers for the past several weeks now. I was so excited when he showed up at the farmers market because the chickens in the local supermarket are barely passable as meat. They are generally droopy and fatty, and I shudder to think what the conditions they are raised under might be. I am always looking to shop locally, but ironically our nation's heartland doesn't produce much beyond corn and soybeans (which you can't find in the supermarket btw). So, when I saw the local Kluckers, I excitedly bought as many as would fit into my freezer. Kirby's sign also has messages scrawled on it about "natural" and "no antibiotics, no hormones". Wow, that's all great I thought.

Well more recently I have thought to ask Kirby the details of his chicken operation. He tells me that he raises about 70,000 "birds" a year, and he raises them in 9x12 roofless buildings each containing about 80 birds.
9x12: that's how big our new patio is. When I imagine 80 birds living on our patio, it is not a paradise that I am envisioning. The birds are obviously cramped. And unlike "free-range" chickens these chickens do not have access to the fields around them (although I understand most free-range birds aren't smart enough to venture outside anyway).

"Well, do they all have thier beaks?" I ask
"Yeah, they have their beaks" says Kirby.
I explained to Kirby that I had read somewhere that people who raise chickens will frequently pull off thier beaks so that they don't peck eachother all up while they're mashed together in thier ridiculously undersized cages.
"I feed 'em lots of protein, and when they have enough protein they don't peck"
"I had understood that they pecked because they were stressed from the tight living quarters, but you're saying that their trying to eat eachother?" I asked.
Kirby turned to me in a nice, but pitying, special ed teacher kind of voice and said:
"Well did you know that meat has protein?"
"Yes, I did know that" I say.
"Well if they get protein then they don't peck.
Apparently the tightly packed birds are actually trying to gobble each other up.

Whatever. All I know is that I have basically 3 options for poultry at this time.
#1: buy floppy, fatty Tyson birds from the supermarket and feel terribly guilty while eating moderately edible chicken.
#2: buy Kirby's Kluckers and know the pea-brained birds aren't exactly living the dream, but at least they have their beaks, and also know a ton of fossil fuel wasn't used to get them to my dinner plate
#3: Don't eat chicken -- no way!

While I am disappointed that buying food in an environmentally and socially responsible, and animal-friendly way is all but impossible in America's heartland, I am comforted to at least know that my fried chicken never knew the displeasure of going beakless.

Patio-Ho!

Look at our awesome new patio! I know this has been much anticipated by the general public what with all the hype and all. It has been much anticipated by us as well, since we actually started the project about 3 months ago. The funny thing is, the actual project only took two days, but we managed to spread it out over an entire season. That does not deter me from planning further projects though. I think the patio is awesome, and I am already drawing up plans for more landscaping and general backyard beautification. Of course I will wait until next year for that since it may snow any day, and that way our blisters will have healed, and hopefully by then Keith will have forgotten how much work this patio was.

Action Shot

Finished result

I think we may even have a few nice evenings left this year for enjoying margaritas outdoors.

Cheers!

This Week In Merle

Sunday Keith and I drove down to Kearney in order to drop Merle and Braedon off at the airport there, thus concluding their week long Nebraska adventure with us. I think a decent time was had by all. We tried to show the duo some of the finer things Nebraska has to offer including ankle deep rivers, copious dog walks, kite festivals in scorching heat despite concomitant wind storms, and of course a visit from Keith's mom and grandpa.







Merle claims the reading time and "gentle breezes" were relaxing, she seemed to get along well with our children, and she didn't seem too freaked out by ginormous bugs that exist in our back yard.

Keith and I were glad for our first (and in all likelihood last) visit from someone in my family, and we are happy that travel went well for them.

Since most of you have likely already seen the above pics on Keith's blog, let me close with some lovely shots of a perfect golf swing. Go get 'em Tiger.

GQ Golfer

I never could have predicted this: I never thought I would ever pick up golfing. I guess I just don't see myself in that stereotype. Golfers are pretty much made of time and money aren't they? Golfing happens to be a great distraction from a hectic lifestyle though, and it's a lot easier on your aging body than a lot of other sports I can think of. The game is oddly easy to pick up, but very difficult to master. I say that with only a total of 36 holes under my belt, but I feel confident in my assessment.

I also never could have predicted Keith's interest in the sport. As most of you know Keith is not much for spouting off information about himself, so it wasn't until just recently that I even knew what a die hard golfer he had been in his youth. He's still pretty good, and he looks awfully good sporting a bag of clubs.
He's working on replacing his hazardous, head-flying-off clubs with new ones. We used the new irons today, and here is Keith transferring them to his new, less torn up and duct taped bag.


I'm off to watch some olympic volleyball: Go May/Walsh!

This Just In

I now have my cell phone back (or at least a very close facsimile with the same number). Feel free to resume sending me pointless and distracting but much appreciated text messages. Or if you are my family, feel free to continue to not ever call me unless you have a medical question.

The Bounty

It is official. My garden has borne food, therefore I am a gardener. Look at all the different tomatoes I made! I also grew some huge zucchini, but that was sort of an accident. Although the tomatoes have boosted my gardening confidence some, I also had a small blow when I recently tried to harvest some carrots. This is the stuff no one tells you. How in the world can you tell when a root is mature? I figured since carrots were showing up at our farmer's market, then mine must be ready too, right? Wrong.

While I only planted 2 zucchini seeds, the zucchini has, of course overtaken our small garden plot. At first I was overwhelmed by the rate of their growth, but I have since learned that if you pick them small, they are much more manageable and they taste better too. I really like the recipe idea published here for pasta with zucchini ribbons (scroll to bottom for the recipe). I have actually made all three of the recipes there. The pancakes were also delish, the squash goat cheese bean thing, not so much. While I'm on a roll with zucchini, let me share another simple, but great little recipe, courtesy of Mollie Katzen.

Heat some olive oil and pressed garlic over medium heat until the garlic is soft.
Use small zucchini, about 5-6inches long. Cut them in half length wise then place them cut side down in the pan. Cook about 5 minutes.
Turn them over. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Cook 1-2min more, then place the pan under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is bubbly and brown.
Delicious!

Seattle Trip

Keith and I recently got back from an awesome vacation in the Seattle area. Summer is such a lovely time to visit. We went to not one, but two fantastic weddings. We enjoyed countless gourmet meals, time with friends, a reunion with my step-dad and amazing scenery. Here are some pics.

I'm pretty much a hermit

Today I made a spectacular dinner, or supper for you mid-westerners. It consisted of almost all garden fresh ingredients and farmer's market finds: potato, rosemary, leek, and smoked gouda frittata; cherry tomato, mozerella and fresh basil salad; and fresh from the oven organic wheat bread. Since Keith was on call, I proceeded to cook the meal starting around 6:30pm thinking he would either be home soon, or I could cart a plate down to the hospital to him. Little did I know that Keith had already had a fantastic supper all his own! He had eaten at the annual JMMMMC (way too many Ms) picnic! Why did I not eat there too you ask? Because I forgot! And no one could alert me to the event because I am a hermit! I have been without cellular communication for 3 full weeks now. Being the cheapskates that we are, we also have no land line, so here I sat, alone, happily cooking leeks until they and I were both sweating.

I finally found out about the picnic when I bounded across the street to Dan and Amy's house and asked them to use the phone so that I could check on my husband.

Sigh.

Still, I bet my supper was better than his. And I had a lovely glass of Pinot Noir to boot.

I wonder if this is how farmer's wives used to live. Always a step behind. How did they ever get along without the dear cellular?

I am hoping that the 3 weeks less of cellular waves beaning my brain will be just enough to keep me below the tumor threshold.