Return to the Midwest

Here's all the things I forgot that I LOVE about the Midwest....
1. Can go barefoot even in the most unruly Charlie horse infested lawns. Even the worst lawns in the Midwest beat the Montana stubble by a long shot.

2. As many tomato sandwiches as you can eat....
Recipe for tomato sandwich
2 pieces of bread toasted (I like a good white bread best)
butter
mayo
Garden fresh tomato

butter bread, slap on mayo, put tomato slice to 1/4" thickness in between

3. The woods smells so good and the trees are sooo beautiful.

4. Seeking reprieve from the sun in teh hardwood shade and FINDING it!!

5. Blackberry picking

What I like about Train Trips

Here's my quick thoughts on what I like about the train trips.....

1. Most of the crowd is still not "virtually" connected or at least if they are they don't talk incesstantly on their phone. Or even more annoying is the text messaging absolute nonsense. They still know how to get to know their neighbor. I guess you are also trapped on a moving train and forced to get to know your neighbor. It's too easy for me to get to know someone via email/phone but the train provides a good ol' fashioned venue for just talking.

2. The train is similar to being snowed in in a snowstorm. Of course with global warming and plows, getting snowed in seldom happens anymore either. One of my best Christmas eve memories is getting snowed in. While the snowstorm raged outside, my mom, sista, bro, and I played cards into the wee hours with the neighbor visiting at our house. It was a partner card game and my sista and I kept making outrageous bets, bringing us further into the hole and preventing anyone else from bidding. At some point I decided to use my brother's buck grunter as our call to victory. I kept commenting on the awful smell but both my sister and I were too intoxicated on our silliness and spiked egg nog to realize the smell was doe pee that was sprayed on the buck grunter (too hide the human scent while bow hunting). By the time the game was finally over, even though our neighbor lived less than 1 mile down the road, she had to spend the night. So being on the train is similar to being in a snowstorm; you can play cards, read a book or just watch views of heartland and all without feeling guilty because what else is there you can do. It's forced time to be selfish. If you were trapped on a tropical island, you'd have to hunt and gather and try to figure out how to get off. So yeah sitting on a train can get old but for the most part it's just forced relaxation.

3. How nice is it to have to anticipate your destination? Almost anything we want these days can be instant, where as train travel is slow and you have time to think about who you are visiting or contemplate the time spent with them.

4. Easy to eaves drop and hear the political views of multiple people without becoming involved in conversation. It can also get annoying so ear plugs are a good thing to have with.

TIP: The train if cold. I thought I would reduce the crap I brought with me and just wear warm clothes. Well I had on a 2 long sleep shirts, a polar fleece jacket, wool socks and I was still eyeing the train curtains enviously, trying to figure out how I could take them down and wrap them around me. I also considered asking the conductors for a bag of pillows so I could create a cocoon of warmth for myself with them. On the way I snagged a fleece blanket from my parents and wished that I had brought a down sleeping bag with to escape the fridge.

Havre Good Trip

Well I'm in Havre anticipating a great trip on the train across country, to Minneapolis. Being a romantic, I have visions of making life long friends in the diner car on the train and playing cards all night, knitting socks (no I didn't bring the knitting needles with), reading books, and looking at the scenery. Even though I'm not on the train yet, so far I'm not disappointed--you are allowed to check THREE bags for free and take two on board. I thought this was quite a deal considering the crummy airlines are charging for one back...of course they let you take as much crap as you want on board.

Next big news is that I had extra time so I took the advice of my good friend Jessi and went to the Verizon store.... I've been looking for a phone online and am very concerned about the color. At the verizon store, I found the elusive pink phone. So even though I've always said I wanted my tombstone to read "Never had a cell phone", I've sold out. I feel disappointed in myself because I hate to think of the dam cell towers that are killing birds for my cell phone but on the other hand it's not exactly as if me not having a cell phone is going to keep towers from going up. Soo I'm now the sheepish owner of a cell pink cell phone. The cell phone was quite the character, rolly polly smoker who kept suppressing coughs but by the time I left i felt sick from the smoke smell on her. Interestingly enough the woman that sold me my phone, told me back in the 70's she took the train West and the train broke down and they were rerouted....meaning she spent 36 hours on the train!! eee gats. That is my worst fear that the train breaks down and I don't make the wedding anniversary. Then she also told me that a guy offered here a line of coke on the train but she was too young and naive to figure out what he was offering her till years later. He literally said, "would you like to do a line with me?" ha ha, I also had visions of the train being better characters than the greyhound bus crowd, but from the sounds of it they are just slightly more refined in their drug taste. Yikes. She took the romantacism right out of the train ride. The good news is my new phone comes with one month free of V cast....don't know what this means except that I can get internet on the train I think. Her words exactly (in between coughing), "It should make the train ride more pallatable."

New number is 406-641-0960 but I blocked text messaging so don't bother trying.

More to come on the train ride, think I gotta fly and go catch the train.

Chocolate Crisis, Call Grandma!

Last night after yoga, I found myself in the midst of chocolate panic. I needed to make a chocolate dish for the 3rd Annual Chocolate Festival in Gardiner that my friend Jessi and I started so yes I did bring this panic on myself. Less than a week ago, we decided that the summer was almost over and we still had not had the Chocolate Festival. We even ran an add in the Gardiner newsletter inviting others to come join us. After two years of pure chocolate dessert gluttony at the previous Chocolate Festivals and feeling like I was on the verge of sugar diabetes for weeks, I decided that I needed to bring a main course that has subtle chocolate flavoring. The idea wasn't all that tempting in the midst of a chocolate craving but I knew it would taste better tomorrow. After frantic searching and calling reliable friends for recipes, I finally found one for chicken mole soup on the trusty world wide web.

At yoga my neighbor, Joanne asked me if I was making my chocolate mousse from last year.... tempting as it was to revert to my old standby I decided I would make both rather than give up my beloved chocolate mousse. Sooo I said no because I didn't have the ingredients ....she said, "Wha da ya need?" Well she had heavy whipping cream. I got home only to discover that I had forgotten to pick up an ingredient at Food Farm for both recipes. I was missing cans of tomatoes for the first recipe and chocolate chips for the mousse. At 10 O'Clock in Gardiner, I decided a side from calling every friend I had to ask if they had the critical ingredients, there was not much I could do except go to bed and hope Food Farm opened a 7.

So bright and early instead of going off to work, I took some vacation time to prepare my recipes. I woke up and felt like I had been hit by a car. Yoga did not feel that tough the night before but I sure felt tough this morning. My back hurt so much that I had to pound on it just to make sure I didn't have a kidney infection and not just a sore back (have watched too much House). My hip was throbbing and my biceps ached incessantly. Well decided I was just getting old and drove off to the store for my ingredients....thank you lord, the grocery store did open at 7AM. Of course, I never make just one trip to Food Farm, I always forget something so I knew I'd be back. At lunch I was back for paper plates and napkins.

I don't like cutting/cooking chicken so the night before I planned to have a little to drink to make this easier but with work on the immediate horizon, getting snockered to cook chicken was not really an option. So I took a deep breath, tried not to think of factory chicken farms where there feet grow into the cages (also had visions of them running around beheaded with blood squirting out their neck), pried open the plastic packaging on my 4 packages of chicken thighs (the recipe called for 8 thighs but it did not tell how many were in a package). I sliced up onions super thin with my new knives that I love (thank you Becky). I'm not sure where my fear of chicken comes from, I'll blame it on my mom because doesn't everyone blame their mom? All of my mom's warnings about salmonella started haunting me. There are two things I live in fear of thanks to my mother: botulism and salmonella....she seems to have unreasonable fears too of these things. I started to have visions of all of G town getting food poisoning that was on the scale of the great mayo scare on House. While the chicken cooked, I kept putting the onions further and further from the chicken (and no I did not chop up the onions on the same cutting board as the bird).

I decided that perhaps this crisis called for my mom to talk me through what to do with the onions...well I could not find her number at work and thank god I didn't have it because somehow I don't think the secretary would think this warranted interrupting kindergarten class. Of course the secretary finally could have gotten me through the crisis. That's when I decided to call my Grandma.... Thank goodness they are 1 hour ahead of Montana so it's not so early in the Midwest. My grandpa answered the phone and I explained to him that I was in the midst of a chocolate festival cooking crisis...he promptly put Grandma on the line.... My question I posed to my Grandma, was can you add raw onions to the same pan that the chicken is cooking in?? This of course sounds completely ludicrous now and not at all in need of crisis management but It was nice to hear my Grandma's voice and advice. It's not like her actually being there but it's the next best thing. Somehow I start thinking of all the time she has spent in the kitchen preparing wonderful delicious meals. I can almost smell her kitchen and taste the stuffing....It's a very comforting thought. She sounded vaguely confused and told me I just needed to make sure I cooked everything well and washed the dishes well. She also started to mention something about knives and bones but I didn't have the gumption to tell her that I had prepackaged chicken that was de-boned. She said good luck and feeling a new sense of Julia Child inspiration, I finished up the Chicken Mole Soup.

The Chocolate Festival was outside at Arch Park and of course throughout the day, the weather got progressively worse but not bad enough to keep us hardy Gardinernites inside. My great neighbors, Doug and Joanne even brought down their wash tub and started a fire inside to keep us warm under the pavilion. We all stuck around til 9. The Chocolate Festival treats included:
1) Hot Cocoa with almond extract and WHIP cream....very appropriate given the fallish weather
2) Cocoa Tea (perfect since less sweet than everything else and hot)
3) Chocolate pie with a chocolate graham cracker crust
4) Chili
5) Yummy swizzle sticks
6) Ice Cream!! yes and we did eat it
7) Strawberries dipped in chocolate
8) Chocolate Bark
What a great excuse to catch up with your neighbors!

The chicken mole soup
8 boneless chicken thighs
2 cans 14 oz chunky tomatoes or the kind for chili
1 cup chicken broth
1 onion finely sliced
cumin
2 T minced chipotle peppers
1 T Adobe paste
1 oz chocolate chopped

Cut up chicken, coat with cumin and fry in oil for about 5 minutes. Add onions. Bring broth, tomotoes, chipotles, chocolate, and paste to simmer. Add chicken and onions, simmer for 20 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked and paste thickens slightly. Serve over rice.


Chocolate Mousse
12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 T Butter
1 oz dark Rum
3 oz espresso or dark chocoalte

melt this in double boiler

1 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp gelatin powder.

take 1/4 cup cream and add gelatin to it. Let it bloom for 5 minutes and then warm over flame but don't let it boil. Add to chocolate mixture after it's melted. Beat rest of whipping cream til stiff peaks form. Fold chocolate in in 2 batches. Let it chill.

4th of July in our Nation's Park

Since moving to Gardiner, the 4th of July has quickly become my favorite holiday. It seems appropriate to me that, living outside the nation's first park, is the best place to celebrate our nation's birthday. I believe the Fourth of July is Gardiner's holiday--I have always said, "This wanna be dusty ol' cowboy town looks better under a full moon with a couple of stiff drinks than it does in the blazing hot squinty sun." Gardiner is in a hole, that under a full moon is surrounded by silhouettes of a mountain sky line. In Gardiner, watching the fireworks, as you can see fireworks from all angles bursting into the air, the town really is a perfect amphitheater for the event.

From the legality perspective it also seems to be a great location for fireworks as there does not seem to be any rules governing the use of fireworks, even in extreme drought years such as this one. Montana's theme should be "Freedom Rings." Gardiner is not incorporated, mostly because the residents do not want to have any rules and so there are none. That seems to be very Montanan, no rules. This year, there were a few moments that could have been touch and go as a few sparks did start the straw around Gardiner that passes for grasses off. However, maybe because they knew how crazy it was to allow fireworks and they didn't want to have their freedom taken away, it seemed that everyone was extra diligent about watching for sparks and putting them out.

This year I got to witness the firework stand being rolled off the trailer and settled into it's temporary home near the Exxon gas station in town. Watching the event, I was all smiles anticipating the wonderful fire work show that would be given by the natives. I wish I had written down the date the firework stand arrived in town, but I did not. However, I do know it was at least 3 weeks prior to the Fourth. I also remember that one week and two days before the actual holiday, I heard my first firework of the season go off at 5:30 PM when I was walking home from work. They continued going off sporadically that night until it got dark.

I remember my first 4th of July in Gardiner. In those years, Gardiner still had a firework show put on by the Chamber of Commerce in addition to all of the other citizen firework displays that go on. In years previous, ironically enough, the Patriot Act has prohibited the North entrance to Yellowstone National Park from having a firework display. I remember walking around town with my friend Jacqueline doing the normal things you do on the 4th--sweating like mad until the blazing hot sun sets and gives you some reprieve, eating hot dogs, chatting with friends, but what made the biggest impression on me was walking home through the streets of Gardiner after dark and feeling like I was in a war zone. Most of the streets in Gardiner are dirt and everyone had their own mini amateur firework display going on in the street. Additionally there were the people who light off the huge fireworks that light up the sky and those were being lit on the periphery of the town and up in Jardine, the neighboring town 1,000 feet higher in elevation. I remember being so happy to get home without being burnt by fireworks. To describe them as an amateur firework show really does not do justice to the beautiful firework shows put on by the locals. That year I could not believe how long the fireworks went on and actually drove even though I was 3 blocks from the stand (yes, drove not walked so I didn't have to worry about burns) by the firework stand at 2AM to discover it was still open. I deduced it must be the source of all the fireworks that were still going off. I remember going home to bed and realizing what a special town I lived in. No firework displays I had seen in my life had ever come close to what I had seen in this little town. Although I have seen firework displays in the U.P. in South Range that were equally celebratory.

A few years ago, I moved to my current abode. It not only has a good view on normal days--my view out my window is Electric Peak, the bison walk thru my yard in the fall and spring, I can spy on the festivals that take place at Arch park, but on the Fourth of July, my yard offers prime viewing opportunities. It overlooks the school parking lot. The school parking lot is the unofficial designated firework launching site. Since moving to my current location, I have always decided to invite my friends over to enjoy the light shows with me. This year, we all agreed that the fireworks were not as spectacular as usual. Those people at my party that had never experienced Gardiner fireworks, commented that, "it was the best firework display they had seen in Montana." Another guest had just arrived from Italy and was experiencing their first 4th of July celebration in the USA. He had never been to the USA before and he certainly did not seem disappointed at all in the light show. I realized that there was not the usual banter of firework rivalry from different groups across town trying to out do each other. The fireworks were also completely finished by midnight, except for a few sporadic fireworks every once in a long while. I just kept thinking, what does this mean? I reasoned maybe because it was on a school night and with the high fire danger the show was less than usual.

Each year, my excitement for the holiday has increased. I usually try to do something to celebrate what a great country I live in. One year my friend and I hiked up to a beautiful cirque than enjoyed the fireworks that night and over the weekend hiked to in Yellowstone, ending the weekend, by watching Old Faithful go off and eating french fries with lots of ketchup.

Another year, I had raved so much about the celebration in Yellowstone, that my sister was in town for the celebration. That year we hiked through Hayden Valley, the Serengeti of North America, saw beautiful sites, and got poured on while cooling off in Violet springs. The high light of the hike was when my sister thought I was hiking behind her and mooned me, but actually my friend that she had never met before was hiking behind her and got mooned. The bison were in rut and very frisky making loud noises; my sister compared the hike to a hike through a Wisconsin pasture. I guess with all the animals, I could see the similarities and a lot of tourist think they are domesticated! We came back for a birthday party in Jardine where my sister and I jumped on some one's trampoline and then it started to hail. I thought that if we went to a lower elevation, the hail would turn to rain, but it didn't--it got worse. In fact it hailed so much that as luck would have it after I raved about the celebration to my sister, the fireworks were cancelled, my garden was pulverized and mudflows flowed over the road going up to Mammoth trapping people in Mammoth or Gardiner for hours.

Another successful party is over, the friends have gone home and I've feeling thankful for all the good food and nice people I'm surrounded by. This year I'm just contemplating what it means to be an American or a US citizen. Does it mean the same thing? What's the difference between Americans and Canadians?

Gardiner Parade

The Gardiner parade is pretty similar to any small town parade that I have been to in Wisconsin. Basically there are more people on the floats than there are watching the parade. The floats are usually nice but not ostentatious and you almost always know 90% of the people in the parade.

Even though I can see all the floats from my house without even stepping out the door and since the sun did have some claw to it today staying inside my house may have been preferable but I always enjoy going outside and actually watching the parade. Jessi came over and our plan had been to make mojitos (mint muddled with ice and sugar; spiced rum and seltzer over the top) and watch the parade from my lawn. However, we did not have quite enough time to make the drinks so when Jessi spotted out my window the first float heading up the hill towards the Arch, we sprinted outside as if we needed to catch the last ride home from work instead of just catching the the first float (the sheriff's SUV and he was drinking coffee!). Well it took at least another five minutes for the sheriff to actually get to the arch as he was going at a snails pace (duh this is a parade). In the interim, the park Law Enforcement ranger sat in the DARE car (looks like night rider car but doesn't sound as good; has some muffler problems maybe) and motioned tourist to move thru the arch without stopping to take pictures. Surprisingly they complied.

Jessi and I caught 3/4 of the parade in 8 minutes, including the Shriner's being pulled behind an old car that kept dieing on them, Hell's a roaring outfitters on horses with mules behind, the credit union bank ladies dressed in 1900 clothing like women gamblers. We felt like the belles of the ball, as we were the first stop so everyone threw candy at us even though we were obviously past the prime candy receiveing age of 10. Then the K bar float came along, there was a long stall while the circus acts got going and they asked us if we wanted to hop on. Yes we poached a float! Having nothing else to do, we hopped on, were given spiked lemonade, squirt guns and candy to throw. I thought, "what a town!" when you can just hop on a float and are treated to some good southern hospitality. I decided being on a float gives you a license be loud and obnoxious and obviously the center of attention. Half way thru the parade, I started getting hit with candy. I tried not to look to silly and figure out what was going on. This is not usually the way it works, typically, the parade watchers do not pelt you with candy. Eventually, I realized that the NPS Bear Management Float behind us was hitting me with candy. Stacey, the woman throwing candy at me told me that I had a, "I'm going to kick some ass" look on my face until I figured out it was her.

The parade route was as follows: starting at the arch, went three blocks past the historic Robert Reamer buildings, hung a left at the Sinclair, went another 2 blocks, crossed the bridge over the Yellowstone, then proceeded out of town another 3 blocks ending across from the rodeo grounds. Soooo despite the short route, it surprisingly did take about an hour to get from one end of town to the other.

At the end of the route, a man and his wife ran along the floats, handing out bottles of water (we were out of candy but it was a bit opposite for them to give us stuff), even going so far as to run to get more water for our float and bring us more bottles. I felt like a celebrity. I knew who they were and so I expected there must be a message on the bottles, but the rest of the girls did not know what was going on. The people handing out water were the babtist minister and his wife for the local babtist church. We used the water not to quench our thirst but to refill our squirt bottles and spray each other down. At the end of the route, they all noticed the stickers on the water bottles that said "God Bless you." It was rather surreal. Six of us and a dog needed a ride back to the beginning so we all piled in an old tan buick celebrity car and we were given a ride back across town and deposited at the beginning.