Buffalo Gal

Thirty days hath September….April, June, and NOVEMBER.
Today November has used up its thirty days and we are still snow-free (for a few hours anyway). I love it when November does not bring snow or blizzards–it makes our already long winter much shorter.
On this thirtieth day of November in 2011…I have just taken 2 fragrant fruitcakes out of my oven. Yesterday the annual box of walnuts arrived—fresh from my cousin’s tree in northern California. Today I chopped some of them up and put them into the fruitcake recipe. Tomorrow I will pack the annual box that goes back to Reedley, California with 2 fruitcakes inside. It is not easy to find fruitcake lovers but my cousin and her husband are among that group of rare and precious people…fruitcake eaters and appreciaters! Long live my fruitcake recipe—- delicious light molasses, spicy, fruity concoction from the Betty Crocker cookbook of about 1958. It is the best I have eaten. I make it every year.
Naughty non-lovers of fruitcake make up lists like the following:

TOP TEN THINGS TO DO WITH FRUITCAKE (BESIDES EAT IT)

1. Use is as homebase during your family’s game of snowball baseball.
2. Use it as frisbee (and the receivers better be ready to duck)
3. Use it as a doorstop for a door that will never be closed again (doorstop cannot be moved)
4. Leave it out for Santa to eat and catch that fat man trying to get back up the chimney while weighted down with the three week old rum-soaked fruitcake, a can of pressurized whipped cream, and a quart of milk
5. Stick feathers in it and use as a festive duck decoy during duck season.
(test it in the bathtub to see if it floats)
6. Give it to your dog as a chew toy—-what? you mean even the dog won’t touch it?
7.Crumble it into small pieces…….just kidding… We know you cannot actually break up a fruitcake.
8. PULL! Use it as an inexpensive skeet.
9. Use as freeweights to bulk up your biceps.
10. Place in a trebuchet (medieval war weapon used to fire large stones at castle walls) Stage a pretend war and fire fruitcakes at a castle.

Enough of that sort of fruitcake levity.

STALKING HISTORY
This morning just before I began mixing upt he fruitcake I got a call from “The Mayor of Winnipeg Junction” who asked me to meet him in 5 minutes so he could show me where the first railroad tracks laid in our area ran toward town–and also divided at a junction that went north to Canada.
The Mayor was the subject of my recent “People” feature in the local newspaper. He is a conscientious public servant and presides over what is left of THE TOWN THAT DISAPPEARED about 1910. The townsite now has 3 residents. There are more living in the “suburbs”..the area outside of the original 3 block townsite that was a booming railorad town from about 1897 til 1910 when the Northern Pacific railroad powers-that-be decided to move the Winnipeg Junction to a spot north of the townsite.
I met Mayor Dave and we eyeballed what is surely the old railroad bed leading to town. We also drove to the site of the railroad junction near the Buffalo River where railroad buildings including a roundhouse and a tall water tank for the steam engines stood by the river. Local history is more than fascinating…it has grabbed me and is holding me. I have written three articles already about Winnipeg Junction the town that had many businesses including two hotels, several restaurants, 2 mercantile stores, many homes, a large saloon and the necessary jail near the saloon for the merrymakers who went too far. There were multiple livery stables and more than one blacksmith shop. And this boomtown was less than a mile from where I live now. Walking along the areas that used to be the railroad bed and junction point was a cold windy walk this morning…but well worth the time it took for us to see what we wanted to look at.
There is a hilltop graveyard above the old townsite where several “unknowns” are buried…people who died while passing through the old Junction who had no IDs or no known relatives…probably railroad hoboes. Or gypsies…..they used to ride the trains into town and go from door to door trying to sell trinkets. One report from a resident of the town at that time told of her mother telling one of the gypsy women “no” about buying anything and the gypsy woman threw a glass of water in the mother’s face.
The local history just a couple of blocks from my present home is so rich and full of interesting stories. The next one I plan to explore is the reported plan by Captain Ike—–a Civil War veteran who was going to lead a small army of Winnipeg Junction folks against the forces of the railroad if they came to move the junction.
I feel a trip to see Mark Peihl at the History and Cultural library for Clay County coming on.

It’s not easy being president. A lot of people in the US don’t like you anymore. People snipe at you via the polls and in news articles. It was not supposed to be this way, was it?

Gov. Chris Christie let loose with both barrels a day ago and asked Obama what the H— are we paying you for?

# 1: Google this: “Christie Rips Obama Over Deficit Talks”
(in the HILL, Nov. 29-11 by Justin Sink)

Then if that wasn’t bad enough the newest polls about job approval of the president showed up. President Obama’s job approval now has dropped below the lowest one so far…that of Jimmy Carter.
Google:
#2: “Job Approval Drops Below Jimmy Carter’s” (US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, 11-29-11 by Paul Beddard)

Liberals have always denied that their newspapers and magazines are NOT biased but Aaron Blake, a blogger for the WASHINGTON POST has gotten caught with his pants around his ankles. He has tweeted and asked for help in digging up dirt on Newt Gingrich. Can you imagine the liberal outrage if a blogger for a conservative source asked for dirt on any of the Dems?????
OMG! It would be world war 111!

Google:
#3: “Hey Tweeps:Looking for outlandish incorrect predictions from Newt Gingrich’s past. Any ideas for me?” (Aaron Blake)published in News Busters, 11-28-11)
and: “Washington Post blogger asks for dirt on Newt Gingrich”

This will make conservative news junkies feel satsified for today!!!!!

My neighbor is a wonderful woman. She is a groomer and also boards dogs for people who need a good home for their pet when they travel or spend a weekend away from home. Jane can do it all.
On Friday my friend Fran and I went to Jane’s house. We had our Thankgiving Day that day and I wanted to bring Jane a dinner so she could eat a hot meal when her long day ended….when we got there there was a handsome Schnauzer standing on the grooming table getting his hair cut.
There was a darling little black and white dog in a kennel…named Murray who had been groomed and was waiting for his people to pick him up after work. There was also a beautiful Border Collie..groomed and ready for his people. I am so partial to Border Collies having had our “Mac” for 15 + years. I still miss him after all these years.
“Lena” was eagerly leaning over the half- Dutch door in the grooming room. She was a large part poodle-part some other big dog, and she was so friendly she nearly ate us up trying to get us to pet her. So Jane is surrounded by 5 dogs, her friendly “greeter” a cat named “Hello Kitty” and then we got Sammie out from a room where he had been put so as not to get in Jane’s way while she groomed. Sammie is the cutest tiny Shi-Tzu ever! He has a vertical jump of at least 3 feet from a standing position. He is a lover boy and Fran was eager for him…she used ot have a Shi-Tzu and is very partial to Sammie because of his tininess and his Shi-Tzu-ness. Sammie has boundless energy. He was in motion the whole time we visited; between bouncing off our laps, he demonstrated his squeaky fish toy. Less brave souls than we would have gone bonkers listening to Sammie’s squeaky toy.
He was so darling he could have made any kind of noise and we would have loved it. Lena kept up her barking and the guy on the grooming table started joining in with his high yapping. Through all this Fran,Jane and I kept up a lively conversation talking over the barking dogs!
Visiting Jane is always like this. She has lots of dogs at all times plus her own three dogs and also about three cats who hide except for Hello Kitty.
It was great going to Jane’s house. She had her second Thanksgiving dinner that night….on the real holiday she had to rush home from a dinner so she could let some of the boarders out into the excercise yard.
Dairy farmers,firemen, medical personnel—-and folks like Jane do not get much time off from their busy lives.

Bad news again for Big Red Ed (Schultz) of the Ed Show on MSNBC.
“Gentleman’s Quarterly” has just come out with one of the first “annual lists” and GQ’s is titled “The 25 Least Influential People Alive”
Ed Schultz made the # 3 position.
One paragraph in the news piece said this:

“Do you watch ‘The Ed Show’ on MSNBC.? Of course you don’t. No one does. The only people who watch “Ed” are working out in a hotel gym and cannot get anyone to turn the TV to ESPN for them.”

OUCH! Poor Ed is getting like Rodney Dangerfield. He don’t get no respect.

I know why I do not want to be hospitalized. Hospitals are dangerous places…especially if you want to avoid hospital-induced infections which are often deadly.
I was shocked to read a news article from the New York Times of November 24, 2011.
It told of the low rate of handwashing done in places like Emergency Rooms by medical personnel.

Google this: “An Electronic Eye On Hospital Handwashing” (NYT, Nov 24, 2011)
It will knock your socks off too.
Decades ago when there were no antibiotics, medical personnel and hospitals paid a lot of attention to extreme handwashing procedures and extreme cleanliness of the hospital environs. Keeping things extremely clean and scrubbed with soap and other cleaning agents meant life or death for patients….it meant preventing hospital infections.
My mother in law was a nurse who did her education and training in the early 1930s. She often talked of the measures taken at that time to prevent infections by extremely careful handwashing and hospital cleansing.
My dad survived a broken appendix and resultant infection in about 1920 in a hospital in Fergus Falls which paid close attention to ultra-good hosptial hygiene and cleanliness for patients. My dad had no antiobiotics but a lot of excellent nursing care; the only treatment was constant drainage of the infection and constant cleansing of the wound.
How times have changed!
I noticed lapses of hospital hygiene and cleanliness and lack of attention to preventing infections on a surgical ward when my son was a patient in Rochester MN at St Mary’s Hospital (the Taj Mahal of medical centers). When a nurse came in to do things for my son and I saw immediately that she had a nasty fresh cold, I demanded her instant exit from his room and squawked loudly to the main nurses’ desk on that particular floor. There was, in my opinion,no place for such poor hospital cleanliness and avoidance of infections before they could even begin. It paid off; she was sent home and should never have been there among surgical patients in the first place.
A close friend of ours nearly died in one of the major Fargo hospitals due to a bad infection that was induced by his surgery. He was flown to another major medical center where it took 2 weeks for his infectoin to be brought under control.
Too much dependence on antibiotics in past decades has led to this condition….carelessbess in hand washing as the NYT articles points out and carelessness in keeping hosptials hygenically cleaned so infections cannot take hold.
Prevention trumps treatment…I wish the medical community would dedicate itself to that principle like it used to…before antibiotics.

For us today is “The Day After OUR Thanksgiving Day”..we chose Friday so all the kids that were coming home could be here together. And it was great. In addition to eating the traditional turkey meal with potatoes, gravy, vegetables, bread dressing, cranberries + yams,lefse-homemade bread- pumpkin, apple, cherry pie…..we went round the table and told what we were most thankful for. There were 12 of us and the personal thanksgiving responses were unique and thoughtful.
One grandchild expressed thanks for his sweetheart and her family; two others said thanks for the school they attend and the wonderful teachers and friends there (St Cloud Christian School)….we were all grateful for our good lives with enough to eat, homes, parents, wives and husbands…..it was all heartfelt and serious and it was so good to hear it. All of us were thankful for having wonderful friends in our lives also.
My one grandson even was thankful for a “grandma that could cook!”
The day proceeded as usual—–we played games—Quiddler, Catchphrase (our favorite and the loudest one) and Apples to Apples. Soem of the “boys” both the ones in their 40s and the younger ones went out for a game of “yard football”. I think they also played “autos” a game with bats and old tennis balls that they invented years ago.
We drank many bottles of sparkling grapejuice–another family favorite. We all buy the grapejuice on special and pool our bargains and drink them on holidays. They are very tasty and we all love them….all kinds of them.
Today the “red taillights” have gone down the driveway and it is once again very quiet here. I am thinking seriously of “vegging out” all day and reading, napping or watching something truly desirable on TV..probably a favorite DVD (a BBC drama or mystery)
Today is cold and windy with cold air being blown in from Alberta no doubt.
It is a good day to stay warm and cozy.

The word “black” conjures up many things….for me most of them are not pleasing…….
Black Death/ Black Mamba/ Black and Blue marks from getting hurt / Black Magic (sinister and eerie) Black Like Me, a book by a white man who dyed his skin black and lived as black man in the pre-civil rights South…not a pleasing tale at all..He suffered badly from discrimination and hatred.
And worst of all……the living hell of my worst nightmares when I am surrounded by confusion and panic and cannot find things I need badly and am trapped into taking care of babies and pets on a fast moving train and I keep losing them…….Awful Nightmares and that is what BLACK FRIDAY would be for me.
BLACK FRIDAY, that day when crass commericalism culminates for an entire year into the frenzied race at Midnight into a parking lot filled with hysterical shoppers by the thousands who want to get that ONE item in that ONE store that TV set that is on sale from 499.99 to 14.98 for just one hour in the BLACK of a November night. The rest of the thousands who wanted the 14.98 TV are lying in the aisles of BEST BUY …injured and bleeding..some near death from being trampled by the other 999,999 people in that cold November night’s waiting line outside the Big Box store. All of the trampled victims are groaning loudly, crying for water and their Mamas. Inside— the snarling employees are ready to do bodily harm to the shoppers because they have missed their Thanksgiving holiday so they could get to work at 12 midnight or 3 a.m. or whatever ungodly hour they were required to be there.
Meanwhile back at the Buffalo Bluff, Buffalo Gal is asleep in a comfortable bed; the rest of her family is also asleep in various beds scattered throughout the house.
The only priority for BG is making some Swedish pancakes for the grandkids who requested them last night.
BLACK FRIDAY is the BLACKEST OF DAYS for People Who Do Not Like To Shop Or Be In Crowds Of Wild Shoppers.
That would be me.
If you are a SHOPPER on BLACK FRIDAY: I wish you well. I hope you get the 14.98 item you waited for in that line of other frantic bargain hunters.
GOD REST YE MERRY SHOPPERS ON BLACK FRIDAY!!!!

The local paper published a bunch of the cutest photos of the cutest kids this week…along with their “advice:” for cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. These kids are either preschoolers or kindergarteners and it is amazing what they learn from adults about cooking things like turkey.
Here are their amazing turkey cooking methods:

Elsa: ” My mom cooks it for 13 hours and then puts some strawberries in it. All I eat are the strawberries; I don’t like turkey.”

Nick: “My mom cooks it in the oven for 13 minutes or something and she uses some kind of seasoning.”

Laura: My mom cooks the turkey in the oven for 20 minutes and she puts it in a pan.”

Mallory: “My dad cooks the turkey for 20 minutes in a pan with ketchup”
{I wonder how that gravy tastes}

Seth: My mom cooks the turkey with no head on it because my dad chops it off abd then we cook it for 6 minutes and we put better and frosting on the turkey”.
{does Seth have lefse mixed in with his turkey recipe?}

Braeden: I make the turkey at my house. First I have to catch it and then I put it in the oven for 20 minutes and I put cinnamon on it and eat it all by myself”
{I bet Braeden has the best imagination in his whole class!!}

Alex: My Mom cooks the turkey and she puts juice on it and puts it on the grill for about 20 minutes and we put cans in it on the grill to cook. Or maybe it’s chicken.” {Hmmmmm!}

Kinsey: My dad puts it in a pan and in the oven and puts nothing on it. He cooks it until it is done and the timer says zero” {Kinsey is an observant child}

Christina: My Mom puts it in the oven and puts syrup and cherries on it and cooks it for about 20 minutes. She pulls all the feathers our first.”

Sam: My dad shoots it first and then he cooks it in the oven for 20 minutes and puts ranch on it. My dad says any meat is good with ranch on it.”

Almost all of the children interveiwed said the turkeyg cooks for “about 20 minutes”. I hope there are not any cases of food poisoning at their homes if they take the kids’ advice about the time it takes to cook a turkey. 13 hours is a bit too much also unless you like really dry turkey or burned turkey.
Kids are marvelous with the combination of their perceptions and also their imaginations.
I remember our kindergarten teachers (before I retired) at our school having their little students record their thanksgiving recipes for turkey, gravy, pies, potatoes and other good food for the Thanksgiving feast. I wish I had saved them.
Kids always think it takes a few minutes to cook things!!!!

I wish everyone a very happy day on November 24 or whenever you celebrate the Thanksgiving feast…we are doing it on Friday so everyone can be here.
I have the lefse made (the right way this time) and today I made homemade rolls.
Now it is housecleaning time, bedmaking time and I shall get to the dinner on Thursday some time for the Friday feast day. We are having a traditional meal—roast turkey, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cooked cranberries, green bean casserole and buttered corn, sweet potatoes, lefse and rolls, a relish tray with carrots and broccoli and celery and pickles and beet pickles and olives. Then we will have apple, pumpkin, cherry pie or
cheescake. And a lot of sparkling grape juice which we all love at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It will be a very good weekend with family and I am so thankful for all the blessings we enjoy every day.

GOOGLE THIS: “Why boys need parents ” and then view the photos.
—————————————————————————
As the mother of 3 boys I have seen much of this before…..from them.
The only thing not pictured that my boys did : they blew up dead frogs and fish with firecrackers. (thank goodness they knew better than to use live ones) They collected dead frogs and dead fish along shorelines of lakes and ponds.

I am waiting for the first part of the lefse dough to cool. Then I will add the flour and roll out about 30 good sized pieces for Thanksgiving dinner.
My family from Fargo will come and help with the Christmas lefse…we need a lot because everyone in this family thinks it is THE FOOD OF THE GODS.
That and homemade buns. (I have to do them tomorrow).
We will have our TG feast on Friday so everyone can be at the farm–on Thursday one family will be with other parents in West Fargo. So I have an extra day to cook and bake, change bedding and clean up a little after all the floury messes from lefse and buns. Oh..and to roast the turkey, make the dressing and gravy, cook cranberry sauce and make a small bowl of sweet potatoes (for the 2 people that like them) (no canned stuff for us) The “girls” are bringing salads, vegetables, pies, sparkling grape juices, and raw relish trays. We will not go hungry this year either.
When I think of the blessings we are daily loaded with—-I am humbled and get pretty teary thinking about it all. The big question that never gets answered: why are we so blessed to be born in the U.S.A. in homes with loving parents and never being in real want. Oh, we were not wealthy…we just had enough…but it was more than enough by the world’s standards.
All I can do is express my thankgiving each day of the year—not just on that last Thursday in November. I do not take it for granted that is for sure!
MY SATURDAY LEFSE DISASTER: You would think that after I have made the same lefse recipe for at least 10 years that I would not goof it up…but think again. Here is what I did on Saturday.
I mixed up 3 batches of lefse dough. I put it in the garage on the cold floor to cool. When it was cool I took off the covers and looked at it. DISASTER! It looked like semi- thin wallpaper paste!!!! I checked the recipe about 6 times and had not done anything wrong. So why the gruel-ly looking dough?????
I sat down and felt terrible for an hour or more. How could I go wrong???? It finally dawned on me…..you are supposed to add the flour AFTER the first part of the dough is really COOLED OFF…COLD IN FACT. In some sort of fog, I had put the flour into the hot potato-liquid-shortening mix….no wonder I had 3 batches of hopeless goop.
Today I am making it the right way but I hated throwing the other stuff out… which I had to do. Well, I hope the small critters that eat garbage off our hillside will eat a lefse failure also.
Sometimes when I do such things I began to wonder about my brain…which is working well except for those small lapses like the one I had on Saturday.
On Saturday I was the STATUE but today I will be the BIRDS…and I will not be S —- upon today. It will be good lefse this time.

I would like to recommend a commentary by Mark Steyn which deals with the bigger issues of the lack of action at Penn State after an assistant coach was seen by a graduate student as the coach committed sodomy on a ten year old boy.

Mark Steyn discusses the culture that has led to a 29 year old graduate student calling his father as a first choice after seeing the horrible scene in the shower room.

It is worthy reading.

“Penn State’s Insitutional Wickedness” by Mark Steyn in today’s (Nov 19) “Orange County Register”.