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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Looking for a Home

My mother grew up in a small rural community called East Mt. Zion, and the people there developed a kind of slang that was called "Mt. Zion talk." It's really interesting, but that's not what I want to talk about today. I mention that slang because one of the phrases was that something was "looking for a home," which meant (as I understand it) that something was a few steps away from the garbage can. (My interpretation may not be entirely accurate.) Here's a good example of some bananas that are "looking for a home."

This happens in our household all the time. We buy a bunch of bananas, but before we get them all eaten, they've gone from perfect to overripe. Of course, no one wants to eat them then. Normally, I make banana bread, but my family is not too crazy about it and usually I end up being the one who has to eat the entire loaf. I've been on the lookout for other ways to use these bananas that are "looking for a home."

Last night, we had a meeting of a small group at church, and I had to bring some kind of dessert. I didn't have time (or inclination) to make something elaborate, so I got it in my head that I would make something with those bananas. Originally, I looked for a brownie recipe, but when all of the recipes seemed to be calling for a box of brownie mix (which I didn't have), I modified my search to look for blondies. And boy did I find a gem of a recipe!

The recipe was on a blog that had borrowed it from another blog, so I'm not going to worry about giving credit. The recipe actually seemed like an adaptation of the butterscotch brownie recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook. Here it is:

5 Tbsp butter (one commenter said she used only 4 Tbsp and it worked fine, so I'll try that next time - always looking for a way to trim calories!)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 fully ripe bananas, well-mashed (about 2/3 cup)
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour (the original called for half white and half wheat flour)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

To make the blondies, melt the butter in a saucepan, then remove from heat and stir in the brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and blend well. Stir in the mashed banana, again blending well. Add the dry ingredients and nuts and stir until everything is moistened. Pour into a greased 8x8 baking pan and cook for 25-28 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

These little bars were simply mouth-watering right out of the oven. I'm having one with my faux coffee this morning and it seems a little heavier, though - I guess it's all that brown sugar. Anyway, I've found one more good use for "homeless" bananas!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

It's been a rough summer. For the past two weeks, temperatures have been 105 degrees or hotter every day, and this is on top of a very dry season (no rain at all for the past month and little rain before that). For some reason, the weather makes me think of a couple of books I read when I was a kid and to make me want to read them again - The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Edge of Time by Loula Grace Erdman.

Even when I was a kid, The First Four Years was sort of painful to read, because Almanzo had such awful luck with his farm. The first crop was promising, but was destroyed by hail; the second crop was just mediocre because the growing season was dry; the third crop was promising, but was quickly destroyed by hot, dry wind. And through all that, he was building up debt to buy equipment that would make the work on the farm more efficient. Before they married, Laura objected to Almanzo working on the farm because farmers have such a hard time making a living.

That hasn't changed. My husband has planted a blueberry patch as his retirement project/income (he plans to quit teaching in another five years or so). The first couple of years, the patch was great - lots of big, juicy berries. The last two years have been terrible; in fact, this year, I think he estimated we sold only 40 gallons. There haven't been many berries to pick, in part because the weather has been hot and dry during the late summer when the plants set their blossoms for the next season's crop (anyway, that's what we were told by a friend who is a horticulturalist). And of course, the past two summers have been just unimaginably hot for long periods of time, meaning we are also losing some plants.

Of course, crops are dependent on weather, but raising animals has its challenges, too. There are always the normal problems like disease or accidents (last summer we had a lamb that just disappeared - we think a coyote got him), but this year there is a new challenge - feeding the animals. The lack of rain during the spring means pastures have almost no grass. Not just no green grass; there are places where the ground is literally bare. That means there also is no grass to cut for hay. Since there is no grass for the animals to eat now, we have to feed them something, so we are doing a mix of hay (not much, since we have to have it for winter) and grain ($9 per bag, but cheaper than a bale of hay...especially as hay becomes scarcer in the area). We're also trying to make use of whatever else is available. We are pulling up everything but the tomatoes in the garden and giving it to the sheep and cows. The cows love the dry cornstalks. The sheep seem partial to the grasshopper-riddled brussels sprout leaves. Yesterday, I started pulling up the lima bean plants, even though they still are green and have leaves; not only is the weather dry, but we've also had a recent infestation of blister beetles. The lima beans probably won't produce anything anyway, and I'd rather the cows have them than the blister beetles.  I feel especially sorry for the two horses. We don't give them any of the "special treats," since horses have such delicate stomachs and get colic so easily. But they stand at the fence and watch while we are giving the cows the extras, and I can almost see their depression, ha.

There is also another worry that made me think of The Edge of Time--fire danger. One of the plot events in that book is a wildfire on the Texas prairie, and I remember thinking what a scary thing it would be to be in the line of a fire driven by winds. We are under a burn ban, and fireworks were banned for Fourth of July celebrations, but there have still been several outbreaks of fire in the past couple of weeks. One fire threatened the home of some friends from church; the woman had to evacuate the house with just a little notice. Fortunately (providentially), the winds shifted as the fire reached their property line, so their home was untouched. However, I think there were a couple of other homes that were destroyed in that fire. The fire danger is not something I worry about to the point of obsessing, but it's one more nagging little worry in this whole cluster of worries brought on by this drought.

Still, I wouldn't want to live any other way. And I think that's why I'm wanting to re-read these two books at this point. Despite the hardships of living on a farm, both hardships brought on by weather and by lack of money, Laura and Bethany both come to appreciate the land and its promise. As Laura said at the end of The First Four Years,
It would be a fight to win out in this business of farming, but strangely she felt her spirit rising for the struggle. The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on"--only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west.
It rained last night for the first time in over a month. This morning when I was hanging out the jeans, I thought I saw a little green in the grass that wasn't there yesterday. Maybe I'm imagining it, or maybe it's really there. But between that and reading these stories, I think I'll mentally make it through this drought