Silver Bells

This is the part where I stop being so down on Lansing.

Every year Lansing hosts Silver Bells on the Friday before Thanksgiving. It’s a downtown parade that attracts about 90,000 people. That’s almost a third of the “urbanized area” surrounding and including the city. The parade features everything from a fire truck decked out in lights with Santa in the bucket to high school marching bands to a float of a fish made entirely of recycled laundry detergent bottles, individually lighted, with different colors making up different sections of the fish to remind us that everything we pour down the drain ends up swimming with the fishes.

I’ve been volunteering at Silver Bells since I started working in Lansing 9 1/2 years ago. Various buildings in the downtown area serve as warming stations, passing out cookies and cider and hosting children’s craft activities. The Library has served as one of these warming stations.

This year Hubby and I kicked it up a notch working with the Lions Club. Before he joined the Lions all of those community clubs and organizations were one big blur in my mind. Mysterious.  Boring. I’ve really learned a lot since he joined.

One thing I learned is that service organizations do volunteer activities in their communities. It’s pretty much that simple. And they do some cool stuff. One of the Lions in Hubby’s club was instrumental in getting Silver Bells started and has been instrumental in continuing it, and the club volunteers in various aspects of getting-the-parade-started like lining up the floats. My job this year was at the warming station for the floatees. It’s not actually warm, it’s just a tent, but we have coffee, hot chocolate and cookies. We also organized several boy scout troops to carry maybe 25 banners at intervals.

After the parade – this is where it gets weird for me – we were invited to the afterglow at the Lansing Center. The mayor came up to our table and thanked us for our work while we ate cute ors d’oeuvres. I don’t consider myself a meeting-the-mayor kind of woman.

In college I worked against the flow – imagining myself on the outside looking in, considering  myself a radical in the easy, lazy days of Clinton’s presidency, my ideas slightly to the left of Marx (that’s a song lyric, actually), working for my community in a non-establishment kind of way. And that was all good, I’m proud of what I did. But I’m starting to be proud of what I do now, too. I have a better appreciation for how my community works and the people here who work within it. And to feel some pride in my town.

I listen to country music, I get my news from The Daily Show, I write my own knitting patterns, and I live in Lansing. It’s nice to meet you.

Who Needs the Rockettes?

Weight Watchers has been going well for me but after an extended plateau this fall I re-evaluated what I was doing and decided to add more exercise to the mix.

I joined a gym and started going 2-3 times a week. I saw immediate results. Everything “they” told you about exercise is true. You lose weight more easily. The more you do the better you feel, it relieves stress and it promotes a positive body image. I even found a workout buddy from my time at PT. I feel so on my game!

I’ve been working up to an hour on the elliptical trainer. It ain’t real pretty, I’m just not physically graceful, but damnit I can burn 600 calories with the best of them.

The best of them is the aerobics class I watch on Sunday mornings during one of my regular work-out periods. My time straddles their two hour step aerobics workout. Technically it’s two classes but I don’t see many people falling out at the one hour mark and she doesn’t do any stretching or loosening up exercises at the start of the second hour.

These women move like swans with the synchronicity of the Rockettes. I am not exaggerating. The class is choreographed like a recital with the women flying over their step-ups, arms outstretched or gracefully arched. They must all be regulars because except for a couple of people in the back everyone knows the entire two-hour routine and they spend only about half the time facing a mirror. They all keep up facing every direction. A few of them add little ankle twists or hops to increase the difficulty level as they go.

I had 2 1/2 years of aerobics in high school and 2 years of water aerobics in my 20s but never in my life would I have been able to keep up with this class. Hell, I don’t think I could even learn the routine much less do it on pace. I studied Tai-chi, too, and at the end of 10 weeks I barely had it memorized.

I could say this is a college town and most of the participants are college students and that would be true. But there are women in their 30s and 40s in the class and the instructor is in her early 40s. I could tell you there’s a regular in the class whose form isn’t terrific and that would be true, too. But really? I watch the damned Rockettes performing in a little Lansing gym every Sunday morning.

But calories burned are calories burned and I’ll take my 600 and run with it.

The Day I Stripped… Paint

Remember how last winter we were going to refinish the kitchen cupboards but watched Six Feet Under and ate desserts instead?

OK, we’re having a second go.

Today we decided to sand down the pantry doors, which are painted. They’ve been off the pantry for almost a year now. After several minutes of sanding that went nowhere we decided to buy paint stripper. This sounded to my uninitiated ears like it would be a simple and easy solution to the hassle of hours of sanding. I had this image of rubbing on a magical solution that would dissolve the paint and then we could put the new stuff on. I hopped off to the hardware store and ended up calling Hubby in the paint aisle.

“How much of this stuff should I buy?” I asked.

“That depends on the tragedy of it all,” he replied.

“Tragedy?”

“Yeah, whether we kill each other over the pantry doors or actually move on to the kitchen.”

While it may sound harsh to outside ears, this is actually a very generous comment. It has nothing to do with “us.” He means whether I throw a tantrum and refuse to do any more of it.

Hey, I was the one going “Condo, condo, condo” when we were home-hunting.

I bring home the paint stripper, apply it, realize its not mixed well enough, shake it, pour it, realize its not mixed well enough, shake it, pour it, let it sit for 20 minutes and then go to scrape off the “sludge,” realize I didn’t put near enough on, wait another 20 minutes. Hubby informs me we may have to do this 4 or 5 times. For each side. Of each of the two doors. And that’s only to get the paint off, not put the new stuff on. I remain silent.

Holiday Cookies 2008

Well, I have achieved almost-complete cookie delivery this fine December 24th with reserved tins for some people we’ll see after Christmas day. This here is one baking mama who is going to run out of cookies this year (unlike last year). Then, last night, one of my neighbors delivered cookies to us. IT ROCKED being on the other end of cookie delivery.

I had only one unappreciative person this year and I’ll be honest, it ruined my whole day. We went home that night and I was all morose and I got out a small plate of a wide variety of cookies and hubby announced: I liked that cookie and I liked that cookie and I liked that  cookie and I liked that cookie and I liked that cookie. Hubby is the best.

The next day we went to a party for the Association of State Employees with Disabilities and the cookies were oohed and ahhhhed over and I was asked for a tour of the platter and my ego was sufficiently soothed. We decided some people suck and some people are cool and some people are never getting cookies again. Like, they can bite me they’re never biting into one of my cookies again.

This is what I made this year:

• Brownies (double batch) – these were my specialty before the macaroons. I bake a mean brownie, a variation from a recipe I got out of  Mary Emma Showalter’s Mennonite Community Cookbook - the cookbook of the town I grew up in, the book being a Master’s thesis from the local Eastern Mennonite University.
• Lemon bars (double batch. I’ve finally  nailed how much lemon juice and extract to put in these. Every year I put in more and every year it is not enough but this year they were downright tart and very good.)
• Lace cookies (double batch) – these are my brother’s favorites and they are a PAIN IN THE ASS but very, very tasty.
• Chocolate oatmeal no bakes (double batch) – I made truly terrible no-bakes until very recently. They were so bad hubby announced I could stop making them for him, he wouldn’t be eating them any longer. But I have prevailed! With an awesome no-bake recipe I developed myself (bowing now). (OK, maybe they still have a little too  much sugar in them. Hubby still won’t eat them.)
• Swedish wedding cookies (quadruple batch). I’ve also heard these called Mexican wedding cookies and Russian tea cakes and a few other things. Doesn’t take much cultural savoir faire to figure out that flour, butter and sugar taste good together.
• Magic bars (double batch). Who doesn’t like a magic bar?
• Toll house bars (1 jelly roll pan). Eh, I prefer the cookies myself but I was trying to cut down on how many actual cookies I baked and go more with bar cookies when possible.
• Buckeyes (quadruple batch).
• World-famous chocolate dipped macaroons (double batch). This is my signature cookie. I recommend that if you ever have one of my macaroons and don’t like it that you smile politely and compliment me. I’m not kidding. I am not even kidding.
• Tingalings (peanuts and chow mein n0oodles held together by melted chocolate). Y’know how there are “bar foods” like mozarella sticks with ranch sauce and potato skins? I consider tingalings saloon cookies. They are just such a guy thing. Last year hubby asked for them and I prioritized them so far down the list I ran out of chocolate before I could make them. I did not make that rude error again. He is really enjoying these as well [I hid a few for once the holidays are all and completely finished so he can have a little surprise].
• Chocolate-dipped biscotti (home-made almond orange biscotti. I used to think that biscotti was only made in exotic fancy industrial kitchens and then a few years ago Seafarer made biscotti and casually handed me a piece in line at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and I was all, “You made these?” and she was all, “Sure” so I now I, too make biscotti).
• Chocolate covered cherries (the easy kind of a recipe I made up myself after reading “real” recipes that looked like a true pain in the ass. they pretty much suck.)
• Chocolate covered pineapple. I’m only making enough of these for me this year. I made them last year and they were great but I was the only person I knew of who thought so.
• 4 packages of chocolate-dipped Oreos in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate and purple chocolate all drizzled with a different color chocolate. I take great pride and joy in my Oreos.

And once again, I did all my own dishes and we didn’t eat out on any of the nights I baked. This is a point of almost silly personal pride. Cookies are my gifts to my friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, the businesses we work with all year long, strangers who need a pick-me-up and I do it myself. All of it myself.

Here’s last year’s cookies.

Did you hear the one about the wife and the casserole?

We’ve been snowed in for 2 days. Today (day 3), I got out for a while – wind chill was well below 0, wind was whipping snow drifts around at 30 miles an hour and I passed a highway closed off due to a multi-car accident. Nevertheless, I got to the gym and got to Biggby’s Coffee to get Hubby a frozen coffee. The drifting was so bad the Biggby’s door wouldn’t close properly because every time it opened more snow drifted in.

Other Mitteneers have been out in this weather over the past few days, and East Lansing is in much better shape than Lansing, but after watching multiple people in big cars and SUVs having to dig themselves out in the middle of the neighborhood street we live on I decided not to risk it myself. My back + shovel = no. In case you were wondering about graft in Lansing, we live next door to the president of the City Council and it was over 56 hours from the snowfall to when our street got plowed, so I’m feeling pretty confident that there isn’t a lot of graft.

While we were snowed, in I decided to clean out my cupboards and fridge. Tonight we are having Snowed In Casserole.

Ingredients:

• 7 ounces baked chicken. Chicken purchased at L&L the last time there was a meat sale, defrosted and baked.
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pasta. House staple.
• 1 can artichoke hearts. Bought this during some expansive-feeling grocery shopping trip without any particular plan for it. It has not ended up on a homemade pizza since that trip so it made the Snowed In Casserole.
• 1 can Healthy Request Cream of Celery soup. I kid you not. This was actually in my cupboard. What was I thinking?!
• 1/2 cup sour cream. Seemed prudent.
• 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese. If I weren’t on Weight Watchers I would have slathered this entire mess in cheese.
• 1/2 cup milk
• ABORTED – 1 jar of pearl onions. I have no recollection of buying this and it had no expiration date. I tried one and didn’t care for it. I don’t think there was anything wrong with them, my tolerance for dumping old crap into a casserole dish was just at an end. I threw them away
• Lots of ground pepper.
• After sampling, I decided it “needed something.” I went to my spice rack and, thinking “artichokes,” I smelled spices until I came up with a spice mix that I thought would compliment artichokes then added it until I thought it might do more harm than good.

Put in a casserole dish and bake at 350 until bubbly.

I duly warned Hubby that we were having Snowed In Casserole. Being a waste-not, want-not sort of guy he was completely fine with this. I made him garlic cheese bread on the side so he could cover up the potential unappetizing-ness of the casserole with something spicy cheesy. I did my best not to make more than 2 servings – I had no illusions of yummy left-overs.

Unfortunately, I have a lunch-sized portion sitting in the fridge now for myself for tomorrow. The casserole was a standard casserole-like consistency (nailed that one). It was not activley offensive (score!). It tasted rather more like Cream of Celery soup than I would have hoped for. It was improved by even more black pepper at the table. Yes, I too have become a full wife, able to make middling casseroles in a single bound.