“You should take a picture of the front of my house so I can enter it in this house redo contest.” My mother said when I was over for Thanksgiving preparations. I did. But then I never sent her the pictures. But here they are here.
Tag: family
Thanksgiving Rolls
So I need to confess my “thing” about Thanksgiving Rolls. I love dinner rolls. A nice hot, flaky dinner roll made with white flour and topped with melting butter is one of my favorite food things in the world. I rarely have dinner rolls. The yeast, the rising, the this, the that. They take forever to make and I’m a busy person. But at Thanksgiving, there HAS to be dinner rolls. Not Rhodes Bake-N-Serv rolls. Actual scratch-made dinner rolls. Usually I volunteer to do this. And I make some good rolls. Except that one year I forgot to plan out my baking schedule and it turned out I didn’t have time to make rolls. That year we had cornbread biscuits. Those were okay, but not the transcendent dinner roll experience I was looking forward to.
So this year I’m informed that my Mom’s friend Linda was coming to Thanksgiving. Yay! We like Linda. Then my mother tells me that Linda will bring the rolls.
“Wait.” I said, instantly suspicious, “does she know about the importance of Thanksgiving rolls?”
“Oh, yes.” My mother replies.
“But,” I continued, not believing her, “does she understand that they have to be from scratch?”
“She said she was bringing rolls. She has the perfect recipe.”
“But there are a lot of kinds of rolls. Does she know how to make them from scratch? They aren’t going to be Rhodes Rolls, are they?”
“Oh no,” my mother assures me, “Linda can cook. She’s a good cook. “
I am not convinced.
I arrive at my mothers house Thanksgiving morning to find Linda working on her rolls. At the time, she was heating butter and coloring it pink. When I asked why, she showed me the mold. She was making pink doves out of butter. I tried to integrate pink doves into my flaky, fresh baked from scratch dinner roll concept. It sort of works. A little. I guess.
“So tell me more about the rolls,” I say in a casual, no big deal manner.
“Well, it actually was kind of a pain,” Linda begins her story. My mother chimes in intermittently. It seems that the store (store!) was out of the kind of rolls (rolls!) the recipe calls for. They had to go to three different stores before they gave up.
“What exactly were you looking for?” I asked. My vision of Thanksgiving rolls–even ones with pink doves of butter melting on them–began to fade. Memory doesn’t serve as to the exact answer, but it seems that Pillsbury or some other manufacturer does not make the exact kind of refrigerated (!) rolls specified by the recipe. They eventually gave up and bought another kind of refrigerated rolls.
While half watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then the incredibly boring Dog Show, I keep an eye on roll preparation going on in the kitchen. The sheets of refrigerated rolls are being cut into strips. Linda is arranging them on a baking sheet. There are green sprinkles appearing?
“What are those for?” I ask, unable to let the green sprinkles go by without comment.
“The rolls.” Linda answers. As if green sprinkles are often paired with rolls. Although they do seem to go with pink doves of butter. At this point I’d resigned myself to the Thanksgiving rolls I’m getting, not the ones I want and I amble over to see what Linda has created.
“So what exactly are you making?”
Linda explains. “See, the rolls get shaped into a tree, and then I put the sprinkles on and a little star at the top and then, after I bake them, I put the doves in the tree.”
And lo, she did.
“What are these?” Chris asked as they were coming around the table. He’d been over at Aunt Pat’s all day, and missed the initial roll preparation. Linda explained all about the rolls.
“Would you like one?” she asked.
“Well, they are interesting…” Chris trailed off, but took one. I think he might have a thing about Thanksgiving rolls too.
I took one. And ate it. And ate another. Not bad.
Birthday BINGO
For my birthday, the MAunts and I saw BINGO! the musical at the Broadway Rose Theater Company. It was splashy and zippy as promised. And, we got to play BINGO during the production. I particularly enjoyed the turns of phrase in the song “Gentleman Caller.”
I thought winning the BINGO game would be a nice birthday present, but it was not to be.
Heading home: Oregon Trail Interpretive Park.
On our way home, we stopped at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Park. This was a great park with two short loops that walked you through the pioneer experience.
A succinct summation of your supplies.
It was interested to see the different “roads.” In my mind a road is a paved surface that climbs and descends slowly and steadily. This park drove home (hah!) the idea that a road was where the wagons went. At one point in the park you can see where five “roads” converge.
This was a point in the journey when the pioneers were very tired and they still had to get over the mountains before the snow came.
A view of the trail.
This tree bears the scars of the wagons rolling over its roots. How cool is that? This actual tree witnessed pioneers rolling right over its roots.
More of the actual trail.
A wagon, for your picture taking pleasure.
The first time I saw a covered wagon, I was pretty disappointed. They seemed so small. They were also much taller than I expected.
Commemorative picture.
I can’t look at the back of a wagon without thinking of Jack, Laura Ingall’s dog.
Friday Night in Enterprise
In order to visit 6 Ranch, the MAunts and I had to stay in Enterprise over the weekend. After a long drive across the state, we arrived on a Friday night.
I was excited to see a Benson Bubbler here! As the sign explains, this is one of the few that is located outside of Portland.
Enterprise is the county seat of Wallowa County.
Four lovely ladies in front of the Wallowa County Pioneers Memorial.
It was the weekend of the county fair! We went. It was a very, very small county fair that seemed to have 4-H and not much else. Not even food carts!
I did snap a photo of this sheep’s snazzy coat.
More sheep.
After dinner, we retired to our motel and played a few card games, then turned in for the evening.
Happy 90th Birthday Aunt Dorothy!
Dead Relative Tour 2009
I love cemeteries. They have so many interesting things to see. Here is a smattering of them:
I plan to be cremated, but if I were buried, the last thing I would want is this heavy slab on top of me.
No, not that Jimi Hendrix
“Is that a…?” “I think it might be….It is a coyote in an urban cemetery!”
The whole road through the cemetery is lined with these highly pruned holly trees. I kind of like their super structure.
Christ!
I took this picture just to hear Matt say their name with a German accent.
Which he did without prompting.
I know him well.
Either Mrs. or Miss Fenstermacher was a member of the Wahkeena Chapter of the DAR.
Oftentimes it is fun to say the names on the gravestone. Say it with me: “Slack.” I also like Mrs. Slack’s name: Nettie Elnora.
I was surprised by the very Disney looking Bambi carving on this stone, but this must have been before Disney started cracking down on its copyright. Or maybe they had a whole line of Disney themed gravestones? That wouldn’t surprise me.
Poor Leo. It looks like Mrs. Schlesinger found another place to rest her head. Also, I like the simple flower carvings and the font.
The section of the cemetery we visit has more than a few abandoned husbands. Mr. Van Winkle is not going to wake up from this nap.
These are fake flowers, but I did check to see who had this grave. Most of the graves in the section we go to aren’t very decorated.
It turned out to be a baby’s grave. Those are always sad, but someone hasn’t forgotten this child.
I can never resist taking pictures of the mausoleum where my Great Uncle Tom is. Swinging early 70s meets quasi religious touches meets a TON of artificial flowers.
Marble AND a brass chainmail curtain? I love it!
“We’re not religious, but we will throw some stained glass up for those of you who are.”
Different cemetery: The MAunts (looking more and more like my grandparents every day) decorating Grandma and Grandpa’s grave.
My Grandparents’ view.
The only problem with cremation is you don’t get a gravestone. They always look so nice to me.
Their neighbor
I initially stopped because I liked their last name because it reminded me of the nursery rhyme.
But I liked what they had carved on their gravestone. For Jean: wife, mother, teacher.
For George: Father, Musician, Horseman. (I’m trying not to be annoyed that he hasn’t listed “husband” to go with his partners “wife,” because overall, I like the concept.)
Thanksgiving Feast!
After the Turkey Trot, I spent the morning at Mom’s, reading about cats on the Oregon Humane Society’s web site while Chris and Mom cooked. My job was to bring rolls and I had finished them on Wednesday. After that cooking was finished, we traveled to Aunt Pat’s for the famous Thanksgiving dinner.
Chris carves.
It was a lovely Thanksgiving.
The Fair!
Note: Blogger seems to have switched the order in which they post pictures when you put up five at a time. Rather than reorder 40 photos, you instead will have to read an out-of-order post.
My mother and my Aunts picked me up early for work today to go to the FAIR! I’ve not been to the Oregon State Fair yet. The fact that it is in Salem (about an hour away) is a hindrance as is the time of year. I left work early during the crucial week before school starts. Eeeee. But it was still fun. We went to see Garrison Keillor’s Rhubarb Tour which turned out to be not a full Prairie Home Companion show but some music and a “Quiet Week in Lake Wobegon” story and (my favorite!) several sound effects segments. It was incredibly fun and of course we sampled the delights of the fair beforehand.
A colorful “fair food” booth.
Astoria Trip
I traveled with my mother and Aunts to Astoria for a fun day trip. We wandered around downtown and visited the Clatsop County Heritage Museum and also the Captain George Flavel House. Both were well put together museums. I particularly enjoyed the Flavel house because it let you wander unaccompanied through a large, Victorian house. I don’t get to do that very often. It turned out that if we had gone to the Flavel House first, we would have received a coupon reducing the price of admission to the Heritage Museum. For some reason, visiting them in the opposite order doesn’t get you any discounts.
After lunch we drove up to the Astoria Column. I was looking forward to climbing to the top, and was sad to discover that it was closed for repairs.
A very far away picture of us in front of the column we didn’t climb.
