Big Sky Country

I drove downstate among thunderstorms and rain generated by enormous thunderhead clouds, storm cells, the most dramatic I've seen, yowza, and realized they were so impressive because I was on a plateau and could see horizon to horizon -- as I don't at my home in the hills. Pelted by rain that covered my car like a tarp I stopped in Phillipsburg, Mo., home of the World's Biggest Gift Shop and waited for someone to bring me my gift. With God all things are possible, right? No, really, next door was a huge candy store where I bought cheddar popcorn and coffee, in line with my standard on-the-road menu of junque. And greedily ate it, and watched the clouds.

Despicable Me

My solution to craving junk food is to order a Happy Meal for only $3, containing much less food than a standard order of burger and fries. Select chocolate milk with it and you can't lose...and inside every Happy Meal is some kind of a toy or game. Today I scored a set of Despicable Me playing cards. What is this "Despicable Me" I keep hearing about? Some kind of children's movie? Animated? Why would I want to watch a movie titled Despicable Me when I'd much rather see Despicable You starring certain real-life characters who shall remain nameless unless you take me to lunch at a much nicer place than McDonald's?

In any case--helpless people being the most superstitious--I decided that fate had handed me an oracle and I would unwrap and open the box and choose a card at random from the deck, and this card would predict my future. I said, "I will believe this card no matter what it says. I commit to believing this card will tell me the truth. I won't second-guess it. I will accept it." And I grab a random card and it is the Queen of Diamonds. Surprisingly she does not look despicable at all, but rather nice. And since when is the somewhat advanced vocabulary word "despicable" used for children's anything? This totally confusing me no end except that I do believe I will soon be the Queen of Diamonds.

My Peeps

Easter weekend had a theme. My sister Rose, brother-in-law, niece, and her boyfriend (they're 17) visited on Easter weekend and the niece had to see the baby chicks available for purchase at Dickey Bub's, so we went, and to our surprise some of the chicks had been dyed for Easter. A young employee held a chick so I could get a closeup. And my relatives love fossil-hunting and while out digging around my sister found a piece of Peep-shaped sandstone.

Not only this but today at Wal-Mart, chief among the leftover, 50-percent-off candy was rows and rows of multicolored marshmallow Peeps. One year I microwaved a Peep to see what would happen. It swells and grows bigger and bigger, about quadrupling in size, and then begins to burn.

Velveeta, My Love

I like an aged and sharp cheddar cheese as well as anyone, maybe more so because I'm from Wisconsin, but I would rather live in Missouri and eat Velveeta than live in Wisconsin and eat cheddar. Velveeta Cheese Product attracts me because:

1. It's good enough to eat but not good enough to snack on.
2. I can eat 55 percent more of it because it's got only 45 percent of cheddar's fat.
3. It melts wonderfully into my baked sweet potato.
4. It's cheaper, although not that cheap: one pound, about $5; two pounds for $7.
5. Dry out and whiten around the edges it will, but even when forgotten in the fridge for months it won't turn blue or totally gooey brown, and it will never smell.
6. Kids will eat it, as will many Midwestern adults.
7. Velveeta actually used this slogan: "It'll Get Eaten."And it does get eaten when there's nothing else to eat.
8. The ingredients aren't that bad: milk, whey, skim milk, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, modified food starch; and 2 percent or less of salt, calcium phosphate, corn syrup, canola oil, maltodextrin, lactic acid, sorbic acid, sodium alginate, sodium citrate, cheese culture, enzymes, apocarotenal, and annatto (for color).

Get the original. Don't bother with "reduced-fat" Velveeta; it doesn't melt well and lacks that nice synthetic flat-paint American-cheese flavor.

The Variety Pack

I first saw single-serving cereal boxes at age 9 at scout camp, and you could lay the box on its side, clip the cardboard, slit the wax paper, pour milk in, and your box was the bowl. Was that true, or did I dream it? I vowed that when I grew up I'd buy cereal only in those cool little boxes. Yesterday, 45 years later, the Kellogg's Variety Pack at the store caught my eye. Three dollars. Bought it. It is fascinating. Ten cereal boxes are packaged back to back. Facing out on one side are all the good-for-you cereals, including "Crispix," a contemporary cereal as strange to me as contemporary art; the other side marshals the candied cereals we grew up on: Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Sugar Coated Sugar Cubes. And also the Raisin Bran, sweeter than one might think. This two-faced packaging sends a cultural message I can't quite decode. Is it giving me a choice between being a kid and a grownup, or a sinner and a saint? Omnivorous vs. orthodox? Duty or decadence? Or--is it all random and meaningless? Good Lord, the Kellogg's Variety Pack is a moral problem and a spiritual exercise! And then--oh wow, man, blow my mind--both sides have Frosted Mini-Wheats!

So which to eat first? I chose Raisin Bran. It filled a teacup, not enough for breakfast, so I also ate the Corn Pops. Eating the Froot Loops I think will require extensive psychological and spiritual preparation.

My First Layer Cake Sucks

 

Read about Nikola Tesla's Radiant Energy Capture device, U.S. Patent. No. 685968, and on YouTube saw small ones that work. Just about to go out to Radio Shack for capacitors to build my own Tesla device to generate free electrical power, I decided it was high time I baked a layer cake with my new cake pans, and picked a yella cake recipe out of Betty Crocker's old-old cookbook. You know the one: The ring-binder with all the salt, fat, and sugar that makes everything taste like Mom's.

Step 1. Made the layers all right and even used cake flour. It's true that the eggbeater wouldn't work in the batter and I didn't have a mixer so I used an electric hand blender, very unusual, but after baking, the layers seemed okay.

Step 2: Whipped the icing out of powdered sugar and lemon. Easy, and it looked divine! Daydreamed about the people I'd call to come have some cake and coffee.

Step 3: In fact I should have made a heck of a lot more Frosting, with butter and cream, and not one cup of the much thinner Icing. Until now I did not know the difference. A thick coat of frosting would have hid what I politely call the cake's "irregularities."

Step 4: Tried to tart up the poor cake by putting pineapple rings on it like my Aunt Elsie did. I laughed and laughed.The layering does not look so bad. But the cake was not tender (did I overbeat?) and the icing too sweet and the whole thing not worth eating, even by a sweet fiend. Final Score: Cake 1, Divine 0. Ah, home cooking. I should have built the Tesla device.

Snacking on Snowballs

The other day having coffee with a friend I denied myself a pastry from the shop's lovely pastry case and later wondered what kind of person would deny her desire for a pastry when she really wanted one. I decided that was unhealthy. And it awoke in me a desire to live that moment over and choose differently, which gave me the bug for something gooey and sweet. . . So I drove seven miles into town and in the gas-mart's most forbidden aisles where I never go, I in my purple parka shopped among packaged creations spun up from high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, partially hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors -- treats that no Pharaoh or Chinese warlord, no matter how wealthy, ever saw or tasted or imagined. Because I am sensible I allowed only one item. It came down to brown-sugar pop-tarts or Hostess Snowballs, their coconut tops dyed pink for, I think, Valentine's Day. How very festive. I contained myself until I brought them home, and at 4:30 p.m., very civilized, I set them on a plate and had on the side a cup of rice milk in my Kansas State University mug. I think that on one of my birthdays, back in my salad days ("when I was green in judgement") I bought Snowballs and stuck a birthday candle in one. Or maybe I dreamt that. Or it was someone else's birthday. Anyway, please be seated and share this rare and beautiful moment with me.

Smiles on a Summer Night

The July just past was the fourth-hottest July on record in this area, and the hottest since 1936, and August is the same, and this is God's way of telling the people of Missouri to enjoy the hot darkness and slurp up icy things before bedtime. There's something wonderful about neon lights in August advertising icy stuff. The SnoBiz stand, a tiny six feet wide and 12 feet long, is shuttered all winter behind the grocery store and so nondescript I don't even see it, but it comes alive with fun lights and people on summer nights, and finally -- because life is too short to be such a hardass as to lecture myself, "I don't need sweet icy stuff on an August night" -- stopped in about 10 p.m. when it was still 85 degrees, and bought a lemon-meringue ice (a staff recommendation) just so I could take a photo.

It was incredibly tasty for a cup of shaved ice and placated my inner seven-year old who vowed that after she got her own purse and money and could stay up past 8:30 she wouldn't ever pass up an ice cream store, ice-cream truck, ice-cream sandwich, slurpee, or sno-cone. (Wasn't any frozen yogurt in those days. In Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Mass., is a plaque honoring the place that the first frozen yogurt was made and sold in 1971.)

Hard Times & Noble People

This sign is in front of a small-business auto-exhaust shop in town, and it speaks of the times. Many more people shop now at the no-frills grocery: all three checkout lanes are busy. People carry their groceries home -- walking.

There are more new employees at Wal-Mart, working very strictly, as if they have master's degrees from Wal-Mart University. Rummage sales, church suppers, food drives, fundraisers, foreclosures. Fewer doctor visits, less travel and dining out. Higher bills for everything. With gasoline $3.68/gallon (today -- who knows about tomorrow?) every soul feels pinched. (Thanks to a certain P------t of the United States whose name we don't mention.)

All the same, there's an atmosphere: everyone making an effort to hold their heads up, hide their worries, keep their dignity and put on a smile, and think to themselves, "There's some that's got it a lot harder than I do."

An Apple a Year

The Caramel Apple is a tradition with me. On a beautiful October afternoon I seat myself outdoors under the warm blue sky, and relish every bite of this annual seasonal treat. Nuggety crushed peanuts and pecans, thick sticky caramel, tart hard juicy red apple all in one bite -- on a stick -- the concept alone is sheer genius. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you can get a hold of, and make time to enjoy, a caramel apple (also known in the U.S. as "taffy apple"; in the U.K. as a "toffee apple"). With all their wealth and fame Cleopatra and Genghis Khan never tasted anything like it. And the gods of summer can only look on, envious and hungry, at this gift from the gods of autumn -- to their mortals.

What Yer Litter Says About Yew

I have about 3/4 of a mile of road shoulder to clean. This is what I find, in order of volume:

Beer cans; soda cans; beer bottles; empty cigarette packs; pint bottles of Seagram's 7 (once I found an empty gallon bottle of vodka); scores of those plastic "Big Drink" "car cups," plus their tops and straws; paper and styrofoam trash from Mickey D's, Hardee's, BK, DQ, KFC, Jack's, White Castle; styrofoam coffee cups; tins from chewin'-tobacco (I thought everybody was too smart nowadays to take up that habit!); chip bags; candy wrappers.

And that's the stuff they aren't too ashamed to throw out of their cars. That's America, seen from the angle of those who clean your road shoulders. I hope you'll all have just as much fun at the CAT-scan center!