The Appetizer Book

Senior and I spent a recent chilly Saturday exploring a wonderful little shop called The Great Midwestern Antique Emporium. Tucked away in a back corner, beyond the life size plaster owl mold, the Luftwaffe dagger and the glass replica of a human head, we discovered a bookshelf full of vintage cookbooks. I thumbed through a few of them before coming across this little paperback gem:

Isn't this awesome? Look at that spread! Why haven’t I ever thought of disguising an ugly pillar candle with snacks on a stick? I'm going to have to channel my inner Sandra Lee (the sober one) and replicate that tablescape. But not entirely - that steaming hot pot of goodness with the handle sticking out would definitely be a mistake over here at my house on Clumsy Street. 

For more ideas, the photo on the back cover is even better:

The directions for this went something like this: "Fill a basket with nuts, then boobytrap it with sharp pokey things. Let everyone dig in with their hands. Don't worry about germs, because all your guests are going to get food poisoning anyway from the unrefrigerated shrimp. Wash it all down with a really big glass of cocktail sauce."

Good Housekeeping's Appetizer Book was first published in 1958, the same year Elvis was inducted into the army, the first US satellite was launched into space and cocktail parties were all the rage. And after looking at the recipes in this book, I believe that if you served enough alcohol, you could get away with serving all kinds of crap to your guests. Case in point, the recipes on the first page:

Speedy Tuna Dunk

1/2 cup soft butter or margarine

1/4 cup chopped stuffed olives

1 cup chunk-style tuna

Cream butter with olives and tuna until well blended. To serve, arrange in bowl along with dippers (salty-rye fingers, raw turnips, pickle sticks). Let guests dunk their own. 

I’m all about a creative dip, but butter and tuna? On a raw turnip? Isn't this going to look just like cat food? I’m not even mentioning the scourge of the olives, one of those foods I put in the same category as expired milk.

Peanut Butter-Catchup Dip

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup catchup

Corn chips

Mix peanut butter with catchup until smooth. Refrigerate until served. To serve, arrange dip in bowl, surrounded with corn chips. Let guests dip their own.

So not only is this dip weird, it's phonetic. Who thinks these things up? Curiosity got the best of me, so I whipped up a partial batch. It turns orange, similar to the color of cheese in a can. It tastes a little like a peanut and butter jelly sandwich. 
If it was left in the sun. 
For six days. 

Speaking of disgusting, how about this one:

Crostini di Fegato di Pollo

3 tablesp. butter or margarine

1/4 cup very finely minced onion

4 chicken livers, finely chopped

6 crushed fresh or dried juniper berries

1/3 cup white wine

Buttered Italian-bread slices. 

An hr. before serving: In skillet, heat butter until golden in color. Add onion, saute until light golden. Add chicken livers; saute over high heat, stirring, until mixture bubbles. Add juniper berries and wine; simmer, uncovered, a few moments, or until wine evaporates. Remove from heat; cool. To serve: cut bread into bite-sized pieces. Let guests do the spreading. 

The chicken livers aren't my problem, it's the juniper. I guess that “di Fegato” is Italian for “cat pee”, because I’m pretty sure that’s what juniper berries smell like. I'm not sure where you would find dried ones. Wouldn't those be juniper raisins? And isn't it hard to crush a raisin? 

I think some of the other recipes were named after the cocktail party guests had been imbibing for a while. Want to whip up a batch of Peppery Nuts? Nosegays? Hash Mounds? Meat Frosties or, during Lent, Fish Quickies? There is even a whole page devoted entirely to balls - Cabbage Balls, Clam Balls, Blue Balls (don't worry, they're made with bleu cheese). And if you are feeling particularly crafty, you can create one of their signature garnishes. My favorite is a lily made out of rolled bologna slices and strips of pickle.

The recurring theme in all these recipes - throw it in a bowl and let the guests take it from there - is a host's dream. But this handy book also includes some clever shortcuts if your prep time is really limited. For example, challenge yourself with this recipe: 

French Fry Appetizers

Prepare frozen French fries as label directs; serve hot as is

The best part is that the previous owner of this cookbook underlined that recipe somewhere along the line. Just in case he or she forgot one of the steps and needed a quick reference point.

And finally, my favorite recipe.  This one is pure genius:

Bacon Crisps

Thin lean bacon slices

Saltines

Cut each bacon slice in half, then wrap each half around 1 saltine cracker, Place on a rack in a shallow pan and bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until bacon is crisp. 

Serve piping hot.

I adore the authors of this cookbook. And now I have to go plan my next cocktail party.

Stereo-Tastic

Mammograms are never fun. You start out sitting in a waiting room full of uncomfortable women who are either checking their iPhones or reading an outdated magazine, flipping pages carefully to prevent their untethered parts from slipping out of the ill-fitting hospital gowns. Finally it's your turn to go to a small room where a pleasant stranger helps you hike your breasts, one at a time, into a giant George Foreman grill. If you're lucky, all is well and you're good until next year. But sometimes you get a phone call asking you to come in for "re-imaging" because there was something that didn't look quite right. So you go back and repeat the process, maybe with an ultrasound thrown in for good measure. And every once in a while, those results are still atypical. There's a lump, or calcium deposits, or a big thumbprint on the film. So they recommend you have a stereotactic biopsy, which is a fancy way of saying they want to stick a large needle in your boob. I recently had a stereotactic needle biopsy to sample some micro-calcifications. Long story short, they were benign and no further treatment is needed. Long story long, (and at the risk of "TMI") here is how it went.

Everyone at the breast imaging center is really nice to the patients. In fact, they bend over backwards to put you at ease. My nurse had me sit in a chair and checked my blood pressure. She commented that it was a little elevated (which could be because in a few minutes THEY WERE GOING TO PUT A NEEDLE IN MY BOOB!) Then she sat next to me and explained every single step of the process, even though I had told her that I had already been through it about a year ago, right here in this very room. Next a mammogram tech came into the room, sat next to me, and explained every single step of the process. Finally the radiologist came into the room, stood in front of me, and explained every single step of the process. The radiologist had a dazzling smile and was full of positive energy, like a used car salesman. That's because he knows that no one is ever going to stick a needle in his boob. 

Getting situated for a needle biopsy is quite a production. The exam table is padded with a hole in the middle. You lay face down and put your breast in the hole, letting gravity do all the work. Your position depends on where the abnormal cells are. I was able to lay fairly comfortably, despite the rim of the hole catching right across my bottom rib. The mammo tech elevates the exam table and adjusts some plates underneath that will hold you in place. You're definitely not going to get away, but it's not as uncomfortable as the George Foreman grills.

Once you are position, it's time for the biopsy. The entire process is computerized, and the computer won't let them proceed until the target area is perfectly aligned with the instruments. Once the computer gave them a green light, they told me not to move, which immediately made me start to itch all over. I resisted the urge to wiggle and the radiologist gave me a local anesthetic. It stung a little but wasn't as bad as the flu shot I got a couple months ago. Everything after that was related to sound. They told me to get ready for a loud pop, which was when the needle actually penetrated the skin, followed by a series of buzzing noises, which was the actual tissue sampling. One more twang and a nice little souvenir marker was inserted, and then we were done. I never felt anything, but as they began to put their instruments away I got a good look at the hollow core needle that they had used on me. It was bigger than I expected, resembling the probe that came with our first microwave oven, circa 1980. 

It's no fun going through the fear and discomfort of an abnormal diagnosis,
but it sure does make you appreciate the little things in life.

I had to stay in postion until the samples were checked under

a microscope to confirm that they got all the suspicious cells. I lay there for ten minutes making awkward small talk with the nurse as she crouched under the table holding an ice pack to my chest. Finally the radiologist came back and said the samples were good and they would call me with the results within 48 hours. My legs were wobbly as I climbed off the table, but I still felt very little discomfort and, after one last mammogram for good luck, I drove myself home. I used the ice pack on and off for the rest of the day and took ibuprofen when I needed it.  Recovery was fast and bruising was minimal, and best of all I got a happy ending.

Evolution

It's like looking in the mirror..

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been busy trying to literally put my head back where it belongs. I've always had a freakishly large head, but over the past few years I've developed something called "forward head posture", a common condition also known by the more colorful and totally unflattering term "Neanderthal head".

In my case, my melon sits about 2 inches forward of upright, most likely due to spending half my life hunched over a desk. Keep in mind, the average human head weighs 12 pounds (not including big hair) and is balanced on our spines like a bowling ball on a stick. If you keep tilting that stick forward the ball will eventually fall off. Thanks to my sloppy posture and the business world's general disregard for office ergonomics, this was starting to happen to me. I've had chronic pain in my neck and shoulder blade for several years, but ibuprofen and Senior's awesome back rubs have helped me cope. More recently I noticed that either gravity was pulling my clothes off my left shoulder, or it was now lower than my right one and eventually I'd be swinging from the bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral. I still didn't take any action until I went to the doctor to treat what I thought was tendonitis in my left arm. It turns out that the misaligned vertebrae in my neck were squeezing nerves that run down that side. It was time to do something about my affliction. I despise chiropractors, so I asked my doctor for a script and headed to physical therapy.

Physical therapy isn't a new thing for me. I was a patient four years ago when I blew out a disc in my lower back, and I loved it (the therapy, not the blown disc). It's like having a spa treatment without having to tip anyone. Now, don't confuse this with occupational therapy, which I've also endured after smashing my wrist and having it screwed back together. (I told you I was clumsy.) OT is like putting your hand in a blender. But PT... now that's good stuff. If you have any chronic pain and you have decent insurance, get yourself some PT.

Each visit starts by lying in a darkened room for about 20 minutes while being swathed with warm, moist, cushiony gel packs. I can feel all my knots unraveling and usually want to drift off to sleep. Next a tech wheels in a cart and performs a short painless ultrasound right on the trouble spot. They warm the gel first, which always makes me think back to my pregnancies and go into curmudgeon mode: "We didn't have any pre-warmed ultrasound gel in my day! These women today have it so easy!" When that is done it's time for the best part - the massage! {{sigh}} I hear angels sing during the massage. The therapist knows exactly what muscles to knead to give you total relief. He usually chit-chats during the massage, and I try to answer him without drooling. All too soon that ends and it's time to be super stretched. In my case, I lay face up on a padded table while the therapist stands behind me and cradles my head in his hands. He gently pulls backwards like he is trying to make me taller, pausing every once in a while to push down on my shoulders. If I had enough visits I would finally have that swan-like neck that I always wanted. Finally, after you are totally relaxed and in a puddle, they expect you to exercise. That part kind of sucks. But the exercises are simple and the goal is to gently stretch and strengthen, not to feel the burn. The easiest and most effective one is a chin tuck, which is basically me pulling my chin into my neck wattle. Not my best look, I might add. But I find myself doing this one a lot, especially when I'm in the car. If you are ever at a red light and notice the woman in the car next to you appears to be doing turtle impressions, that's probably me.

The treatments seem to be working. My neck is aching as my atrophied muscles are built back up, but the constant burning pain in my shoulder blade is gone and the nerve pain in my arm is getting better. It even looks like my shoulders are back at the same parallel. I have a couple more visits left before my script expires, and during the last one they will take measurements to see how far I've evolved back from caveman status. Hopefully I'm developing some good habits to continue to gain and hold ground. Otherwise I'll just start wearing a bone in my hair.

The Cookie Exchange, Part II: Redemption

So, remember when I said I was going to rock the annual cookie exchange? Last year I struggled with my cookies, but this year I planned ahead. I found a recipe for a drop cookie decorated to look like Frosty just defrosted - cute and just a little twisted. Perfect. I did a trial run and decided that while the original recipe, from the Better Homes and Gardens website, was good, I wanted to make a few changes. It was based on a peanut butter cookie, which is always the last kind left on the complimentary cookie trays at those chain hotels that cater to business travelers. The dough was easy to work with, but the cookie was really dry and hard. So I substituted a fudgy, soft, delicious dark chocolate cookie that my family has been making for years. And since my snowman top hat looked more like something a pilgrim would wear, I used a chocolate melting wafer to better define the brim of the hat. I also decided to enlarge the carrot nose by using some orange-tinted chocolate. Now, I'm by no means a baker, but the end result was pretty cute and they were a big hit at the cookie exchange, which was well run and a lot of fun. But in typical fashion, my cookies did not come together exactly as I planned.   

The cookie part went off without a hitch - I melted baking chocolate, butter and sugar together, mixed in eggs and vanilla until it was smooth and glossy, then stirred in the dry ingredients. It's a really sticky dough, so it has to be thoroughly chilled before scooping spoonfuls onto the baking sheets. The cookies came out perfectly and after a brief rest to cool, they were ready to decorate. While they were baking, Best Friend stopped by to lend a hand. I intended to put her to work making tiny snowman hats out of mini Reece's cups and chocolate melting discs. That's when we discovered that apparently The Boy had found the bag of candy I had stashed in the cupboard and polished it off. Senior came to our rescue and ran to the store to buy replacements. While he was gone, I started melting white chocolate and spooning it on the cookies. With impeccable timing, I ran out of chocolate right after Senior returned from the store. The Girl's boyfriend happened to call at this moment, and was the next one to come to our rescue, showing up not only with the candy but also with a great big pizza! It didn't take long to finish the snowman puddles and top off with the little hats and chocolate chip eyes. The last decorating step was the carrot noses. I didn't have any orange food coloring, so I mixed red and yellow drops into some melted white chocolate. It came out kind of an insipid peach color so I messed with the tints for a while until Best Friend got sick of waiting and just squeezed in a big blob of red. I was pretty mad until I realized that I now had the perfect shade of carrot orange. Unfortunately the liquid food color had now caused the chocolate to kind of seize up, and couldn't be piped out of the bag. By now it was getting late and we had already plowed through a bottle of wine, so the logical choice was to mold 60 tiny little carrots by hand. The Girl stepped in to help us with our masterpieces. We had a great time rolling them out and didn't even try to make them consistently. Some were tiny, some huge, and we dropped them on the cookies in random melted abandon. I must admit, a few landed on the cookies... let's say... inappropriately. By the time we were done we were laughing hysterically, but the cookies looked amazing. We put the cookies into cute little snowflake cellophane bags tied with curly ribbons. Our masterpieces:

I haven't really had much holiday spirit this season. But as I settled on the sofa after the kitchen was clean and the empty wine bottles were nestled in the recycling bin, I realized that I wouldn't trade a whole box of perfect, easy cookies for one lopsided snowman cookie that only came together thanks to the group effort of my family and friends. That was an amazing gift.

The Cookie Exchange, Part I: Lessons Learned

Last year I went to a cookie exchange.  The invitation had come in the mail, a beautiful glossy postcard asking me to bring 72 cookies, "creatively" packaged in half dozen portions with the recipe attached, plus another half dozen for the sampling plate. I only knew a couple of the women who were attending, but I was pretty sure they were all equally crafty and hostess-y, traits I used to have. But somewhere along the line, between the teenagers and the demanding job and my general loss of interest in impressing others, those traits disappeared.

Still, I didn't want to embarrass myself.  I wasn't going to bring the paper plate of cookies with dog hair on them, or repackage something from the Meijer bakery. So I looked in my recipe arsenal and found the perfect cookie recipe clipped from an old Taste of Home magazine - Christmas Shortbread Wreaths:

Click here for the recipe: Christmas Shortbread Wreaths from Taste of Home

I figured these would be perfect - they only have a few ingredients, and they're tasty and festive and travel well.  I'd made them before, although it had been several years, so I knew that in order to be successful I would need to keep the ingredients and the cookie sheets cold, so there would be minimal spreading.  I also knew that the decorations were best added just before you take the cookies out of the oven.  Too early and they melt, too late and they roll off.  For my cookie exchange, I decided to make smaller 6-piece wreaths and package them individually. To make them even better, I would dip the bottoms in dark chocolate first!  I bought cute little holiday patterned shrink-wrap bags so the cookie wreaths would hold their shape when swapped with the other lucky exchangers. This was going to be awesome.

I planned to make the cookies the afternoon before the cookie exchange, which took place on a Sunday. I would bake them all, then coat them in chocolate and let them set before packaging. Well, it takes a lot longer to make 12 little little wreaths than it does to make one big one. After the fourth one I was sick of the whole process. I had a few mishaps - some of the wreaths were a little dark, some had swelled in the oven until they resembled pregnant ankles, and a couple stuck to the cookie sheet and broke because I waited too long to remove them. I was using colored sugar for the decor which was getting everywhere and staining my fingers, resulting in a few random red and green fingerprints on the cookies.  Still, by early evening I managed to get a dozen fairly good wreaths baked, and figured the chocolate would cover a multitude of sins.

So, if anyone out there knows how to get chocolate on the bottom of a decorated cookie, please share your secret here. It was a disaster. I tried dipping but the cookies were too thin to get a good grip, and if you squeezed too hard the edges would crumble. I tried pouring the chocolate on a plate and snuggling the cookie down into the pool, but I couldn't pick them back up without getting the chocolate all over the top of the cookie. I tried turning them over and painting the chocolate on the back. I couldn't lay them on the cookie sheet or the colored sugar fell off, so I held the pieces in my hand. It sort of worked, but I couldn't get a nice clean edge. In the end, I had 12 plates of Charlie Brown cookies. There was no way I was going to take these to a gathering of Martha Stewarts. Time for Plan B.

One of my favorite cookies as a kid is a free-form meringue we called Fly-ups. My mom always told me that they were served during the bridging ceremony when a girl "flew up" the ranks from Brownie to Girl Scout.  I never actually made it past the Brownie stage so I can't verify this, but the cookies are pretty darn good and easy enough for a 9-year-old to make, which at this point was perfect.  Normally they have tiny chocolate chips in the batter, but I didn't have any on hand. What I did have was a delicious hunk of Sanders dark chocolate peppermint bark, which I chopped up and used in place of the chocolate chips. It was magnificent!  I can't find my recipe - all my cookbooks are packed up so my kitchen counter space looks maxed for any potential homebuyers. But this one is pretty close:

Click here for the recipe: Chocolate chip meringue cookie from Weight Watchers

I wasn't going to be able to shrink wrap such a delicate cookie, so the morning of the exchange I cut up the packaging. I stacked six cookies and wrapped them in a piece of un-shrunken shrink wrap, fastening them with ribbons to resemble a christmas popper (and by 'resemble' I mean they were in a vague tube shape with both ends tied off). I made copies of the recipe and fastened it like a tag on one end of each cookie stack, and headed off to the cookie exchange. When I arrived, I placed my cookies next to the hand-decorated gingerbread men, snowflake cookies dusted with edible sparkles, exquisite rolled cookies, and... the hostess's perfect chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies. I whispered a silent prayer of thanks for the decision to make a last minute change.

Last week an invitation came in the mail.  The cookie exchange is now an annual tradition, and I'm invited back. This time we need 11 dozen cookies!  I guess I could just hope to wow them with my packaging. But I decided to plan ahead. I found a cute recipe, bought the ingredients, and plan on doing a dry run before the big day.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Why I don't like Fall

Every year I hear more and more people saying that Autumn is their favorite time of the year, a time to slip into forgiving bulky sweaters, ride on hay wagons and go apple picking. After all, Autumn is beautiful here in Michigan. The humidity goes away, the air is crisp and clean, and the leaves turn into picture-book colors. But I don't like it.

Autumn gives me a vague sense of dread. I don't know why. The cooler temps offset those menopausal thermal events, I thoroughly enjoy clean air and apples, and I have some great bulky sweaters. So why is Gir singing the Doom Song inside my head? At first I thought it was the memory of being a kid who wasn't ready for the new school year. Then I thought maybe it was a metaphor for where I am in life, winding down from summer fun and headed towards dormancy. But a couple weekends ago I realized what I actually hate about it - it's the damn leaves! They fall. And fall. And FALL. And then we have to rake them all up before they kill the grass or turn into a slippery death trap. So Autumn is okay, but Fall sucks.

One of the things that made me fall in love with my house is that we are situated on an acre and a half of huge trees. They form a beautiful, thick, rustling canopy all summer, obscuring the neighbors houses and shielding our water-phobic dog from the rain. They burst into vibrant reds and yellows in Autumn, beautiful to look at until they drift down to form a thick carpet on the yard (and the driveway and the porch) until the pile is almost as tall as one of Michigan's treasured landfills.

Having our house up for sale this Fall added a new wrinkle to the annual leaf aggravation. Every time we have a showing we have to pick up all the leaves so potential buyers will think the woodland creatures keep our big lawn clean and tidy. Raking is impossible. It takes too long, and random tines point off at 45-degree angles so you always leave little leaf trails behind you.

We have an electric-powered leaf blower but there is definitely a knack to using it. If you don't wave it with the right momentum in just the right pattern, all the leaves just blow in a big arc over your head and settle down behind you. Just when you find your rhythm the cord vibrates loose and falls on the ground. Eventually you get creative enough to figure a way to tie the cord in a knot around the handle so it can't shake loose. This is effective for about six steps until you stretch the extension cord to its limit, straining to blow away the leaves that are juuuuust outside your reach. So frustrating! 

This year was different. We called in the big guns and borrowed a super-powerful (and super-heavy) backpack blower. I don't know the brand but I think it was powered with a hydroplane engine and looked like something the Ghostbusters would use to suck up ectoplasm. Senior strapped it on and cleaned up most of the lawn before his shoulders gave out. He made it look easy, so I decided to give it a whirl. He gave me a quick tutorial, idled the engine, and pointed me toward the steepest downhill part of the yard where it's easiest to move the leaves.

I felt pretty cool as I headed out with one hand on the throttle, ready to decimate leaves and the StayPuft marshmallow man. I got into position and gave it some juice. The blower roared into life and immediately sent a small tornado into the yard, literally knocking me on my butt as leaves, twigs and squirrels flew into the air.

I managed to get back upright, fix my stance and work my way down the hill, waving the blower wand in spastic arcs that moved the stagnant leaves off the ground. It was still slow going and the pack was crushingly heavy, but blowing wave after wave of damp leaves off the grass and into the woods was as satisfying as peeling the label off my beer bottles.

After coming under attack by our new arsenel, the trees threw in the white flag of defeat.  At last our lawn was bare. Yeah, we ain't afraid of no leafs.

Life after 50

Well what do you know - there is life after 50! And it's always nice to be at the low end of a decade, where the "You-don't-look-a-day-over-50" comments outweigh the "I-can't-believe-you're-almost-60" ones. Lots of people have asked me what I'm going to do now that my project is complete. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't want another deadline right away. So I'm going to putter around the blog world for a while and occasionally post things that are taking up valuable space in my brain.

For example - My blog site is sending me messages telling me that I'm now one of the lucky ones who is eligible for Google Affiliate Ads. This means if sign up and then hawk products on my blog, and you are so impressed that you click on my recommendation and buy the gadget, I get a commission. Oh the possibilities! I'll casually work them into my blogs so you don't realize you are being sucked in ("I don't start my day without heading to Denny's for a Fried Cheese Melt!") and then sleep on the piles of money that will roll in.

I have to admit, even though I'm not signing up, I was a little curious about how it works. I wondered how they chose the products I'd be promoting. Would it be like when I finally gave in and changed my Reader's Digest subscription to the large print version, and now all the ads in the magazine are for macular degeneration and Jitterbug phones instead of for snack crackers and rental cars? So I watched their promotional video and found out that I would get to search and choose to feature ads based on the topic in my blog. This does open a world of quirky possibilities. So excuse me, I need to go get started on that blog about The Girl's school project on nail fungus.

New thing #50: Everything old is new again

I've been going to our family cottage in Ontario every summer since I was four years old, but I've never seen it in any other season. It's an 8-hour drive if there is no traffic, and with our busy schedules we almost didn't go there this year. But we had committed to closing the place up for the winter (although most of the work is done by our caretaker) and we had some friends with whom we wanted to share the place, so we decided to brave the elements and head up there for a long weekend in the autumn.

The cottage was built by my grandfather and his friends back in 1920, a place for manly men to fish, play cards, drink, swear and not be bothered by any of their women. It has rough-hewn walls, exposed beams, a tin roof, and sits by itself on an island in the middle of Lake Memesagamesing. The only heat is provided by wood stoves, although it has been updated to include electricity and indoor plumbing. Somehow the women wormed their way in over the years, so now it's a family vacation spot. My grandfather passed on many years ago and left the cottage to two of his sons, Dick and Don. Their offspring, known as the Dicks and the Dons, share the cottage. I'm proud to be a Dick.

It's hard for me to put words to all the emotions I feel when I'm at this place. There are so many happy memories. I'm several years younger than my siblings, the dreaded tagalong, but here I had their attention and their companionship. We had swimming competitions, went hiking, played board games and made home movies. We hid from our cousins and smoked weed in the raspberry patch. We explored other islands on the lake, went fishing and frogging, canoed and paddle-boated, and climbed the 'Mountain'.

My father came alive in this place. His stories, his songs, his games and his belly flops have become legend. He would wake us up at the crack of 9:00 by ringing a cowbell and yelling "Rouse out, now, rouse out! Up all hammocks! Show a leg or a Purser's stocking." When I was a teenager, he promised me he would quit waking me up with the cowbell. Instead he would clank and rattle the lid on the woodstove, dropping logs and loudly exclaiming how clumsy he was. Then he would blame the dog, Chip, for making too much noise. He would stomp around outside my bedroom door bellowing "Tippy toe, Chip! Tippy toe!". He would sing along with gusto to the country songs on CKAT, the only station that came in on the radio, even though he didn't know the words. He taught us snippets of naughty songs and nonsense rhymes, and we had a nightly ritual of going out in the boat fishing until the sun went down. He or my mom would stash away some 'fishing chocolate' so even if we didn't catch anything we still came home with a treasure.

My mom, who was pretty easy going and usually up for adventure, would go swimming every day at the cottage. She had the most perfect diving form I'd ever seen, barely making a ripple in the lake. What I didn't appreciate until much later was how much work she did for these vacations, planning food and entertainment and linens for a dozen people every year, cooking the meals, tending to our scraped knees and slivers and chasing away the occasional bat that got into the cabin, unless it happened after she went to bed, where she would just duck under the covers.

I started bringing Senior up when we were dating as teenagers. He loved the place as much as I did. Since my father was getting older and my brothers were more likely to come up with their own friends and family, Senior became my dad's right hand, and soon knew more about the cottage than any of the rest of us.

My father passed away in 1986. I dreaded my first trip to the cottage without him. I thought the memories would haunt me there, but instead I found comfort. I always feel close to him when I'm there. By then, Senior and I had married and, along with my Uncle Don, had taken on most of the responsibility for the cottage. My siblings and cousins had moved away and were starting families of their own, so they didn't take much interest in the cottage. Our vacations took on a new spin. Now we were the ones doing all the shopping and packing, planning and doing the maintenance and keeping the books. But I had a new treasure, as I got to watch my children fall in love with a place that meant so much to me. We taught them the silly songs and stories, explored the lake, fished and ate fishing chocolate, played endless games and woke them up with a cowbell in the morning.

Over the years the vacations have morphed again. My mother can no longer manage the trip. My uncle has passed away. My sister, cousins, and nieces and nephews are again making annual visits and actively participating in maintaining the cottage. Now we have a lot of different personalities trying to make decisions, coordinate vacation time, and generally get along. My sister took over the bookwork, which was a big relief. Occasionally we are able to overlap our visits so we can spend time together at the cottage, but as our families grow and expand it gets more difficult.

So anyway, enough of the old things. This is about New Things, and we had plenty this trip. It was the first time we had brought up our friends from Michigan, the first time The Boy brought a girlfriend up, the first trip we made there without The Girl. It was the first time we'd seen the new wood stove, installed late last summer after the one that had been there the previous 90 years finally had to be replaced. It was the first time I'd been there in the fall, when the leaves were blazing with color and the lake was steaming in the cool morning air, and the first time I had to worry about flurries but not about bugs. It was the first time we drove the entire way there on the highway, which is under perpetual construction and inches along a little further north every year before petering out into a country 2-lane winding through small towns. It's the first time I've ever seen tiny freshwater jellyfish in the lake (thanks to Eagle-eye Kim). And it's the first time I've been conked on the head by a tree limb the size of my arm, requiring a 140-mile round trip to the emergency room to get stapled back together.

It means a lot to me that this trip, to this place, was the final chapter in my New Things project. I've traveled the world, but I think this is the most beautiful and tranquil place on earth. If you ever want to experience Lake Memesagamesing for yourself, contact our friends The Becks at Parolin's Cottages. You won't be disappointed.

This past year has been a great journey. I'm filled with optimism and looking forward to trying New Things until my final breath. And I pass on the challenge to you - go try a New Thing! It doesn't mean that you have to travel the world or conquer a fear or spend a lot of money. You don't need a deadline or a blog. Just reach out and experience something different that life is able to offer, good or bad, and reflect on what you get from it. At the very least, you might get a good story out of it. I hope you've enjoyed reading all of mine.

New thing #49: Celebration of the Horse, sort of

We don't celebrate horses much at our house. The main reason is that The Girl is highly allergic to them, a fact we discovered right after we plopped her on top of one as a child (followed by another new experience, breathing treatments). I also had a less than stellar experience with a tired old mare at Camp Wyomoco when I was twelve. I never could find the right horseback riding rhythm, so I spent the whole week as a human paddleball. But since the tiny town of Metamora, MI was hosting their annual Celebration of the Horse, and we've never done more than drive through Metamora before, it seemed like a good time for us (minus The Girl) to give horses another try. 

Why the long face?

I checked the schedule events for this one-day celebration,    which kicked off with a pancake breakfast at 7 am and wrapped up after a concert finished around 7 pm. We had a busy day at home, so we planned to head over in the late afternoon. We arrived shortly before 5 pm and were thrilled to find a prime parking spot right in front of festival ground zero, the park where most of the events were being held. They had the usual craft vendors, food booths and not-for-profits, but what made it special was the minature pony rides and half a dozen beautiful horses in temporary pens. We spent a great few minutes with each of the horses, going right up and petting them and mostly avoiding all sorts of horse slobber. As we bid the last one goodbye we noticed that they were starting to tear down the horse pens. In fact, all the booths were coming down. In a matter of minutes, the only thing left standing was the gazebo where the band had just started playing, and by the time they were half way through their first set you wouldn't even know there had been a festival in the park. The whole town and all the horses had rolled up the sidewalk and disappeared. Even the grass had fluffed back into place. Some celebration this turned out to be.

But the evening was not a total loss. Just across the parking lot sat the historical White Horse Inn, the self-proclaimed home of the best burger in Mid-Michigan. We decided to go grab some dinner and went inside. There we found the entire population of Metamora (approximately 30 people) already eating dinner, so we relaxed at the bar while waiting for a table to become available.

The White Horse Inn opened in 1850 as a stagecoach stop, and is the oldest continually-operating restaurant in Michigan. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad and later received a franchise to feed and house overnight passengers of the Michigan Central Railway. They survived and prospered during Prohibition by promoting "breakfast specials", and later added an upstairs tea room, winter sleigh ride/dinner packages, cooking classes and ghost hunts. Legend has it that the Inn is haunted by a ghost named Lorenzo, the original owner. 

The building is really neat. The ceilings are low and the hardwood floors undulate under your feet. It's tavern decor, with wood paneling, small tables, and plenty of kitsch hanging in the bar. We only had to wait about 30 minutes before our table was ready. Many of the current menu items are based on original recipes from the late 1800's. Ordering was a bit of a challenge because our waitress was hard of hearing, requiring everyone in our section to repeat their menu choices loudly. This would come in really handy if you are one of those people that scans the plates of your fellow diners to see what looks good. We tried the 'best' burger and the famous all-you-can-eat fish fry. The food is surprisingly upscale in taste without the usual matching upscale price, and everything we had was fantastic. The portions were generous but we still managed to share some dessert before sliding into a food coma.  (Updated to add that sadly, the White Horse Inn closed without notice about a month after we visited there.  I swear we had nothing to do with it).  ((Updated again - new owners!  Yay!))

Metamora is a quaint, pretty little town nestled in rolling hills. It's a nice place to stop by on your way to somewhere else. You can get a terrific meal there. But if you want to celebrate horses, you'd better get there early.

New thing #48: Thursday Night Live

Click here to listen to the Cold City Cowboys

Cold City Cowboys is a local country band that has only been playing together a short while but is already making a big noise in the local music scene. They were recently invited to perform live at the 99.5 WYCD studios in Ferndale. DJ Rob Stone hosts a program called "Thursday Night Live" that showcases local talent, and listeners are invited to come into the studio to watch the show, eat free food and win prizes. I've never been to a radio studio broadcast, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

We had a little trouble finding the studio, a non-descript building set apart from the other cracker box offices by the radio tower looming overhead. There were a handful of fans gathered in the parking lot, waiting for the doors to open. We chatted with a few, some of whom had never heard of the night's featured musicians. They're VIP club members, regulars to the show who stop by every Thursday for free entertainment and food, which seems like a pretty sweet deal to me. One of the regulars was a tiny old man who was decked out in a fancy purple cowboy shirt, black leather pants, cowboy hat and boots. He was awesome. Another was a friendly and slightly scary guy chugging a Coke, or at least something brown in a Coke bottle.

The doors opened promptly at 8PM. We filed in, signed a release form, and were pointed towards a conference room where hot food from Qdoba Mexican Grill was waiting. Unfortunately we were reading the release form when they pointed this out, and didn't see which way to go. We wandered aimlessly down a hall lined with movie posters from the 70s and 80s, which seemed really out of place until Senior figured out that the sister station sharing space at WYCD is an oldies station. There were only a few people working at the station that evening, most young and all very nice. We could see through a window into the booth where the Cold City Cowboys were going through a sound check with Rob Stone, who bears a strong resemblance to the blond kid in Saved by the Bell.  After a few minutes they opened the door to the studio and invited us in to the booth.

I've seen enough pictures and live feed of on-air radio programs to know to expect a small room with desks, computer screens and big microphones. But I was wondering how they would accommodate a studio audience of up to 40 people. In my mind I pictured myself on a bleacher straight from the set of Jimmy Kimmel. Actually it was more like being in Wayne and Garth's basement. It was an average-sized room with low drop ceilings and plain carpet taped to the floor. The center of the room was filled with a circle of tables and office chairs, and loaded with the computer monitors and microphones that I was expecting. A group of padded stacking chairs upholstered in a nice 80's dusty rose-colored pattern (from the oldies station maybe?) occupied a small area near the door, and the rest of the room was ringed with neon orange couches dotted with coordinating geometric throw pillows. Lots of posters and banners covered the walls and an autographed cardboard cutout of Taylor Swift in a tall silk hat stood nearby. Rob told us to grab a seat anywhere. We did so, lounging on an orange couch in the corner while others sat on chairs or sprawled on the floor or leaned up against the door. The broadcast wasn't starting for another half hour, so he pointed out where the hot food was set up (ohhhhh THAT conference room!) and went out to fix himself a plate. When he returned he briefly explained the format - he would introduce the Cowboys and chat with them for a minute or two, and then they would play two songs, and then there would be a break, and repeat the whole sequence until they'd played 8 songs. We audience members had a job too, to make noise whenever Rob held up a ratty handmade "Applause" sign. We practiced this several times, watching the sound wave display on the computer monitors pulse in response, then settled in as the show started.

It was the first time that the Cold City Cowboys had been interviewed by a major market radio station, and nerves were setting in. The usually-ebullient Levi Bootcut seemed subdued. Although he bantered deftly during the interview portion, he didn't really come to life until later in the set, visibly relaxing as he looked into his girlfriend's eyes. Frank Bash left his bass home for this acoustic set, instead plucking away on a banjo that he had picked up for the first time the previous week. Like Sampson, his energy kicked in when his hair was freed from the Rastacap he wore. Silent Joe Bash let his fingers speak volumes as he kept the beat on a snare box, a cool contraption that looked like a crate but was an ergonomic challenge to play. Trevor, however, looked like he was right where he belonged. He was relaxed, in his element, and sounded better than ever.

When the mics were on the show was a lot of fun. The breaks were kind of weird, with most of us sitting in that uncomfortable silence you encounter on an elevator full of strangers. I think we were all afraid to say much in a room full of recording devices. In no time at all the show was over. The crew has the whole TNL experience down to a science, and did a nice job herding people from the studio to the lobby for prize drawings and pictures after the show, then out the door without anyone feeling rushed. I still don't know how much the internet audience heard while listening to the show being streamed on the Web, but I enjoyed this glimpse inside the radio business.

We listened to the station as we were driving home, and heard the broadcast debut of the Cold City Cowboy's latest release, "Back Home". It's pretty cool that WYCD supports the local music scene like that. If you want to check out the band, visit their Facebook page here, and maybe give them a "Like". It's not just their talent that draws me in, it's their brotherhood. These guys genuinely love and respect their music and each other, and it shows. They support each other, insult each other, and take turns calling the shots. And in case you were wondering, there is one more reason this is my favorite band. The Boy is a Cold City Cowboy.