Cooking for Midwesterners

I’ve discussed Midwestern dating. Now I address Midwestern dining, specifically home cooking for company. I’m a cook so I know.

• Fry it, they’ll like it.
• Grilled Sea-Bass Tacos with Fresh Peach Salsa and no one will ever marry you.
• Serve Four-Cheese Macaroni and 3 of your cheeses are wasted.
• “Seafood steaks” is an oxymoron. I made tuna steaks & cream sauce for my mom and stepdad in 1994, and the only meal they hated more was my cousin’s new wife’s Duck L’Orange in 1971 -- and I still haven’t heard the end of it.
• Midwestern adults aren’t afraid of squash.
• These are the best people to invite to a potluck, but they call their own such parties “pot blessings.”
• A Midwestern all-day picnic is the greatest experience life has to offer.
  
• God gave you elbows so you can put them on the table and eat more.
  
• I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter should be served in its tub so as to prove its authenticity.
• Midwestern men are the best grillers in the world.
  

Phases of the Coneflower

If you can plant one perennial, plant coneflowers (Echinacea). Missouri coneflowers do beautiful things every day in June. Like fireworks in very very slow motion. Plant them once and they will do the rest. These are the most popular flowers around, visited by bees, sipped by hummers, and finally – when the seedheads are dry– swung on by goldfinches. All photos were taken June 1: the best, most promising day of the entire year.

The True Meaning of Summer

Fishin rods waitin' on my porch, bought last summer by David. Pink for me, blue for him. He's that kind of guy. They're waiting for a good fishing day and for David. I re-did the terminal tackle on all of em using a knot he taught me. Yes, I bait my own hooks, with minnows too.

Jelly-Bellied Friends Part 2

To kill slugs in your garden, put out a pan of beer. Slugs are not churchgoers, so even on Sundays they will belly up to the rim, drink, and die. Told that to a friend who remembered a steamy Sunday in 1954 when his beer-drunk uncle fell into the thorn bushes, had a heart attack, and died. I said, “Gross.” He said, No, it was the way everybody should go, doin’ what they liked.

Odd-Looking Balls

Odd looking pods about the size of golf balls found here and there on the ground. Never seen them before. Looked them up in tree books. No luck. Opened (pictured at right), these light hollow spheres contained marvelous white dry fluff, but no seeds. Turns out this was a home of the parasitic Oak Apple Gall Wasp, Biorhiza pallida. And a fine comfily upholstered home it is. The wasp who dwelt in its center was long gone, to lay her eggs at the base of the oak tree and further parasitize it. These "pods," or more precisely "galls," may grow on either oak twigs or leaves. So if you see these they aren't spring fruits. Photos taken 11 May.

Midwestern First-Date Advice

A third drink before dinner shows a lack of respect for oneself AND one's date. At such piggish behavior, put $10 on the table and leave.

Men, don’t wear sandals. Midwestern men have notoriously scary feet.

Men, dive for the check and refuse to let the woman pay. Since you’ve just met, the woman has no other way of telling whether you valued her time and company. (No Midwesternista is a feminist on the first date.)

Women, carry enough cash to pay the check in case he “forgot his wallet.”

Don't wrap up the catfish bones to take home to your cats.

There’s no turnoff like a dinner date who explains that he can’t walk very well right now because a thousand-pound hay bale fell on him.

Women, cleavage shouldn’t look like tonnage.

Something bigger than a breadbox in a car’s back seat – a cooler, pet carrier, cardboard file-boxes, child seat, tools, fishing gear -- shows that there's something in your date’s life that’s far more important than you’ll ever be.

I'm Comin' Out: Animals

Sighted this past week in the yard for the first time this season:

• 5-foot blacksnake (familiar; spends winter under the kitchen floor)
• Bunnies. I met one this morning that ran TOWARD me. I stopped and asked if it had a message for me. It didn't. I then asked for a bunny blessing, because, as you know, rabbits are divine.
  
• Miss Turkey, about to come into the yard for some fallen birdseed. I accidentally made a noise and scared her away.
  
• Turtles. Crossin' the road as usual. The young turtles are looking to set up their own territories.
• Fireflies. I would love to be able to make a video that would show you how my whole yard looks at night: like a universe of stars.