Guess Who's Comming to Dinner

My grandfather shoveled coal into the firebox of a fire breathing dragon on the Reading Rail Road. My grandmother had his route schedule down pat and on nights he was due to pass by town, she would take my Dad out onto the back porch to watch him go by. My grand mom would flick the back porch light off and on and my grandfather, in return, would open and close the door to the furnace, signaling a warm greeting back. This must have been passed down to my sister and I. I manifested in the form of the both of us standing at the front window, looking out for company that wasn't due for an hour or two. I'm still like that to this day.

It all played out this past week as we had company every single day. Our company was a stranger I had met only briefly two years ago. He showed up one week ago unexpectedly and had such a wonderful time , he came by every day since. Sometimes he would show up at noon and sometimes late at night when I was so tired I just wanted to go to bed, but that would be rude.If he didn't stop by during the day, I knew he would be by that evening. You can tell when company pulls up in the driveway, because the outside lights come on. If I was watching TV and the lights would pop on, I would spring up an make sure I met him at the door. I got excited as a kid looking for Santa! You're probably thinking it's a stray dog or cat, but it's not, it's a moose. I saw him two years with his mom and twin. They spent the better part of two weeks in the spring, nibbling the buds off the fruit trees.

A Big Ram and a Monster Deer

I was out, bright and early last Saturday, checking on some cows. I ran into a snow drift that somehow broke a 48 year streak. For the first time ever, I was stuck in the snow and needed a tow. I was about 15 miles from my house and was lucky to be able to call my pal to come and get me. In true Dash fashion, it turned out to be an event.  I was happy to see the big Ram Diesel chugging up the creek and equally excited to bust out my, "like new" tow strap. For once, Id know what it was like to be on the other end. A few pictures getting sent out over the phone, two or three jokes, at my expense, a quick plan and I'd be out in no time.  WRONG! As the big diesel chugged and billowed black smoke, my Toyota stayed put and the tires on the truck just spun. There was solid ice under the snow drift, and the more the Dodge tried to pull me up and out, the closer it slid right toward my front fender. It was an "Eskimo" standoff of sorts. Call it Heavy Metal, Big Iron or Deer John, call it what you will, but it was time to get some help. After a snowy walk back to the house, we plugged in the tractor (it was 4 degrees F), we grabbed some lunch and after 40 minutes, we fired up the tractor and headed up for the trucks.



The big green and yellow machine made short work of it all.


When it was all said and done, I got a nice picture of a deer, and a ram. I had a piece of pumpkin pie and some humble pie. I have a pal that will come get me in the snow and cold. Most of all I reaffirmed my belief that if you live long enough, you will experience everything; you just need to live long enough.

As much fun to say as it is to eat; "STROMBOLI"

Thursday evening found me in my very own kitchen, celebrating some good friends getting together for the first time in a long time. While respecting the privacy of my pals, and at the same time teasing everyone else, I will say it was cool. I had 2 professional coaches, one trainer and a rock star over for dinner and I won't even say what professional sport they are affiliated with. (Nor the team either).
What I will talk about is what we cooked. For prized occasions such as this one, I busted out my signature specialty, STROMBOLI!
Actually we made 2 Strombolis and 1 pizza.
The pizza actually was made on a gluten free dough. (Yes, the Dash caters to special needs)
     If you have never had a Stromboli, it breaks down like this.
First roll out some pizza dough. Make it if you can or have time to, buy it if you don't or can't. Once you have rolled it out like a pizza, you pull it half way onto a cookie sheet. Fill it with as much shaved steak as you want, add peperoni, olives, mushrooms, sauerkraut (dried of course) [don't wrinkle your nose up at me], place on a thick accompaniment of mozzarella cheese (you gotta use the stuff with whole milk or you will miss completely), spoon on some pizza sauce (or gravy if you got no neck), fold the rest of the dough over to cover it all up, hit it with some egg wash and bake until it's golden brown.

     I like my sauce on the sweet side so I caramelize LOTS of onions and yes, I do put some additional sugar in there as well. The key is to make it the way you like. Put anything in it that you would put on your pizza.
     The best thing about this dish is that everybody gets to help. Heck, that's half the fun. You sure can catch up on old times when you're chopping, shredding, kneading, stirring, rolling and working the cork screw. Like a journey, it's not so much about the destination, it's often how you got there. Life's too long to eat bad food and to surround yourself with anything except great people. When great people become good friends that's just icing on the cake. When they feel like family in your home, well that's like a cool mint on your way out. If you do it right, you'll never need dessert.  When it comes to food and friends, Yoda says,"Choose wisely you must."

What's all that Noise?

     Have you ever sat in a big city, major league traffic jam? All the noise and nonsense of horns honking seem to drowned out any sane thought you could muster. Hours of endless honking! That is one major reason I moved away from the big city. Up until now the only pollution that makes the paper is "Light" pollution. How can we ever hope to see the northern lights if we install more street lites? The lights at the local grocery store are a real buzz kill when I'm trying to focus on the aurora borealis! But tonight wasn't about street lighting polluting the night sky, the was a traffic jam of sorts that went on for hours. Oh the honking!
    The last times I remember listening to such a racket was first in 1980. I was 12 city blocks away from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was game 6 of the world series, around 11:30 at night. I was watching Tug McGraw strike out Willie Wilson to win the world series. No sooner had the umpire called strike 3, I heard the roar coming all the way from the stadium. Wow! The noise of that crowd gave me shivers as if I were there. So far and yet so close.
     The next noise extravaganza happened in 1997. I was living 18 miles from Joe Louis arena in Detroit. I was watching the Stanley Cup on TV, and as the Red Wings beat the Flyers in game 4 to win the cup, here came that wave of cheering again! It seemed to last all night. Yelling and horn honking roared well into the early morning. 
     Now I find myself in a land far far away from the hustle and bustle. Peace and quiet abound. I stepped out into my yard to let my pooch relieve herself and all I could hear was honking; major league horn honking. What a racket! I couldn't even tell where exactly it was coming from. It seemed like miles and miles of traffic jam, and it didn't stop. It went on for almost 2 hours. It seemed to go from one end of town to the other. I called a pal that lives on the other side of town and asked him if he heard it. He did! I bundled up in warm cloths and stood outside in disbelief. I pulled my beautiful bride outside in her robe and slippers and said, "listen to that." I know what your thinking, who in their right mind would stand outside in the cold and snow listening to a traffic jam? Not me.

     Truth be told, I spent, over an hour standing outside marveling at an endless sea of snow geese migrating overhead in the midnight sky. The honking was music to my ears. With the snow keeping the visibility ceiling to near nothing, I was left to only wonder what was going on. There had to be thousands! It sounded as sweet as Billie Holiday singing what is this thing called love.  Sometimes you need to go back to the basics.................................
    

Dealing with Change

     This past saturday was adventureous to say the least. My adventures seemed to change like the weather.
 I knew something was comming, I just wasn't sure what. Beginning friday, late afternoon the wind was howling non stop. As I awoke, bright and early saturday morning, the wind part had not changed. I would have been shocked had any apples still been atached to our apple tree!

    Sunrise found my pal and I up on a ridge in the Absorkee Beartooth mountains. The wind was strong, it was almost impossible to peer over the top, but we did. The reason? We heard wolves on the other side yipping as they moved along. As we looked for a path along the snow covered rocks, we discovered wolf tracks and followed them up through an opening in the high rock wall. That was them alright. As we scanned the trees and brushy landscape for them, we never caught a glimpse. What we did see across the valley was a young bull moose making his way up the other side. So majestic and so beautiful he was an how magically he disappeared as the snow began to fall hard as it headed our way. In a split second, the wind vanished and was replaced by a wall of snow. With our visibility being cut down to nothing, we made our way down the mountain. We stopped halfway down for a rest, as the snow slowed to a trickle. Enjoying the peace and quiet often has it's rewards; we had an unexpected visitor. With the ground looking like as sea of white, he surfaced like a sea duck.
 It was an ermine (the white winter phase of the weasel) making his way up the hill. Perhaps he heard about the moose and wanted a look for himself. Did you hear about the moose and the weasel that got married? They had to.
     Down at the base of the mountain, we came upon a handful of whitetail deer. I can't say how many, as they seemed to be playing a trick on us. The bucks were challenging each other for the affection of the ladies, all the while playing a virtual shell game with us. One buck would go into the creek bottom and another would pop out several yards away. We watched them for about an hour and when we had finished we tried to figure out how many different bucks there were. I'm still baffled! Anyhow, we had to call it quits, we had someplace to be.
     We were expected to help out with 44 suspecting mothers. While my first job at Henry Ford Hospital, in Detroit was in the delivery room, these mothers were a little different, you guessed it, they were cows. We were preg-testing the cows. Dr.Dash, please report to the labor and delivery corral!

44 tested in all and only 6 got the sad news. Better luck next time ladies. well all's well that ends well. Sometimes your daily chores really can change like the weather. One minute your on top of the world, knee deep in snow and the next minute your standing in mud, up to your elbow in ......................................

You get the picture!