Our Friend the Beet

Recently, I have learned to love a root vegetable I never thought I would befriend: the beet. My first adult encounter with a beet (because childhood encounters don't count--kids don't like any vegetable) happened at Johnny Harris restaurant, where beets are a regular garnish on house salads. I ate one by mistake, and I discovered I liked it!

Since then, I've been purchasing pickled beets to put on my own salads, or to eat on crackers with a smudge of cream cheese. Yum!

But this week, I learned how to cook my own fresh beets. And I have Farmbox to thank for it. The Farmbox is a great local vegetable co-op administered by the owners of Savannah's Cha Bella restaurant. Each week, the Farmbox folks gather locally grown organic vegetables, and they deliver them right to my door! Each Thursday is like Easter, except with veggies instead of eggs! I never know what's going to appear in my delivery, and I've had to learn how to cook various new vegetables before, like acorn squash, patty pan squash, and beets.

As it turns out, beets are easy. Just wrap them in foil and bake them, just like potatoes. The foil is important, though. Upon receiving my first beets, I realized they really are that red; it's not just the pickle juice that colors them. And when the juice cooks, it can seep out. So the foil is more for oven protection than anything. Once the beets have baked, then I peel them, and they're ready to eat. I ate my first beet like a potato (sans butter and sour cream, of course), but today I looked up a beet recipe on the Weight Watchers site, and I found this tasty dish:

Orange and Beet Arugula Salad
(Although the recipe calls for arugula, I used mixed baby greens--just as yummy)
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup minced shallots
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
6 cups arugula (or mixed baby greens)
1 orange, pith and peel removed, sliced
1 beet, baked, peeled, cooled, and sliced

In a large bowl, whisk together the OJ, shallots, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Add arugula (or mixed greens) and toss in the dressing. Place dressed greens on a plate and top with sliced beets and orange. If some dressing remains in large bowl, dribble over salad.
What a nice, light dinner. And it's only 4 points (because of the olive oil)!

Stephen is not a big beet fan, but that's okay. More for me.
1 beet, baked, peeled and cooled

White...Well, Gray Boxing Day

The last time Savannah saw snow was December, 1989. It was a real white Christmas. And of course, because Stephen and I were not yet engaged, I was in Atlanta at the time with my family, where it did not snow, so I missed all the excitement.




But it did snow yesterday. It didn't stick, but it snowed.That's gotta count for something. Along with snow, though, comes cold, cold weather. And yesterday we also had wind. But we didn't let it get us down.

Boxing Day 2010 took place at JoJo and PopPop's newly renovated beach house on Tybee. The oyster roast took place in the garage, and we consumed two party packs of oysters. Later, we moved the party indoors, where PopPop's new bumper pool table was in constant use all day long. In fact, I think I've got to get myself one of those. In addition to pool, we also played several exciting rounds of Left, Right, Center. First we played with a pile of quarters I'd brought along in a Crown Royal bag. Later, though, Kelley said, "We should play again, but this time with dollar bills, and the winner gets to keep the pot!" Everyone agreed, so we all anted up, and MacKenzie won the first round. For the next round, Megan Tucker won the pot.

Megan's mother made an astute observation: "Why is it that the grown ups supplied all the money, but the kids won the pots?"

Megan replied, "Because you all have the bank accounts."

She's a smart kid.

We topped the evening off with a big blaze as Davis led the annual burning of the Remler Christmas tree. Because of the wind, Stephen stood by with a running hose (the neighbors were looking a little nervously at the bonfire). After all our noses were cold and we were ready to go inside, Stephen doused the fire, and we all returned indoors for more bumper pool.

Christmas Traditions

Recently, one of my Facebook friends asked me what my Christmas traditions are. I had to think about that for a bit. Of course, my family does the usual opening of the gifts and gathering with family. But did we have any traditions we could call our own? Turns out we do. This morning, I had the chance to identify some of them.

1. Making sure we don't starve to death. Laugh if you will, but the Remlers take this tradition seriously. That's because several years ago, Stephen and I neglected to go to the grocery store prior to the big day. We had been invited to Kelley's house for Christmas Eve dinner, then to Bob's house for Christmas dinner, then to JoJo's house for the day after Christmas. With all those invitations to eat out, who needed to grocery shop? Well, no one, as long they didn't plan to eat breakfast or lunch. That's where we dropped the ball. Christmas day started out as jolly as usual, but when noontime came around, two little boys started asking for food, and Stephen and I had let the cupboard go bare. I think we lunched on peanut butter crackers that day.

But not this year. We loaded up our grocery cart on December 23rd, and we planned big meals for morning, noon and night. Our Christmas Eve dinner was ribeye steaks. This morning, in addition to our usual pigs in blankets (another Christmas tradition), Stephen prepared waffles for Davis, pancakes for Lawson and eggs for me. For lunch, we ate light, opting for a nicely seared Ahi tuna and pineapple. Then for dinner, we ate standing rib roast, green bean casserole, baked potatoes, seven layer salad and rolls. To top it off, Lawson got an ice cream churn for Christmas, so we also enjoyed some homemade double chocolate chip! Yum!

2. Texting: A tradition of the new millennium, this form of communication works well with our extended family. Sabra, Harley, Skippy and Hugh live far away, and we're all busy gifting, cooking, and traveling to see other relatives. Sure, we call each other, but often at inconvenient times, so frequently texting is a concise, quick means of wishing each other a joyous Noel.

3. Removing decorations: Call us Scrooges, but at least go lenient in that we wait until dark-thirty before participating in this tradition. And we have good reason. What with the annual tree burning that takes place on Boxing Day (which you'll read about tomorrow), we must remove the tree ornaments Christmas night. Still, inspired by Stephen Remler's "Christmas is over" December 26th attitude, we're all willing to take down the red bows and garland the night of the 25th.

4. Burning stuff. It wouldn't be Christmas without a big fire (weather permitting, of course--two years ago, we were in the back yard in shorts playing ladder golf, so we opted to do without a blaze). Devoted Remlerville readers already know we're a bunch of pyromaniacs. We keep a fire going in our fire place, but something must be done about all the cardboard and torn up wrapping paper. That's where the backyard fire pit comes in. We realize we're just one errant spark away from a Chevy Chase movie, though, so we watch it closely.

So those are our Christmas traditions, absurd as they are. They work for us. Merry Christmas to all!

Third Degree Burns

Last week I mentioned to my friend Donna Shea that Stephen and I were taking the boys to Hawkinsville for the annual Lawson Christmas reunion. Having read my previous Thanksgiving blog a couple of weeks ago and learned what pyromaniacs were are, she was a little puzzled.

"Didn't you just have your family reunion?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I explained. "That group of 30 folks was just the immediate family. This weekend is a gathering of the extended family."

Next, she asked, "And what will you burn this time?"

Well, to answer Donna's question, we burned these logs, which enabled us to collect coals for our tasty oyster roast, which comprised Phase I of the reunion. I also burned my fingers (not bad, though) as I attempted to roast an individual oyster right in the coals.


Next, we burned some rubber as we traveled down the Unadilla Highway for Phase II. At the farm, we burned logs in Johnny McCune's new fire pit constructed out of a tractor tire rim. The kids burned up some calories as they played football, played hide and seek and jumped in the inflatable moon-walk provided by Auntie Rena.

I also burned up some batteries taking lots of photos of the fun day.

After a delicious fried chicken meal (because six five-gallon buckets of oysters just isn't enough), we burned some fossil fuels with a fun hay ride around the farm. Stephen, Davis and I burned up a bit more petroleum as we rode Johnny's Polaris Ranger on a tour of the farm.



After a beautiful, fun day of catching up with relatives, the Remlers returned to town with Hugh and BB, where we burned the midnight oil inspecting Hugh's knife box. As Davis organized the collection for his grandfather, he learned that Hugh owns, among other things, 27 Swiss Army knives.

And now, I am burning up the Internet sending photos to my many aunts, uncles, and cousins. As these photos can see, we didn't burn the candle at both ends, but we surely got all the goodie out of that day!

What I Have Learned About Basketball

I spent a year learning about football. Now that my sixth grader is playing basketball, I must learn that game too. During the SPAL Holiday Tournament, I picked up a few pointers from Stephen and my friends the Kings, Lowenthals and Tisons:

1. A jump ball is when both teams have possession of the ball, so they have to jump to decide who has possession. As it turns out, this is obsolete information. See number 2.
   
2. There's no such thing as a jump ball anymore (Now they tell me).
   
3. No matter how many times the St. James Chargers try it, it is against the rules to hold the ball and wave your elbows around like a turkey on speed.
4. Traveling (or walking) occurs when a player walks while holding the ball instead of dribbling it. However, walking can also occur even when a player isn't walking, i.e. if he's holding the ball and rolling around with it, or if he jumps up with the ball and lands with it instead of throwing it. Players walk all the time, but somehow, referees never see the opposing team doing it. People in the stands, however, can see every offense, and despite their best attempts to assist the officials, those servants in black and white are persistently hard of hearing.
   
5. Typical things to yell at a basketball game: "Get your hands up!" "Set it up!" "Rebound!" and my favorite: "He's packed his bags and taking a trip!"

Below are some fabulous shots of our Rams playing some exciting ball:

Happy Birthday to Jack!

December 8th is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. That's a pretty important day. But it's also important for another reason. It's the day Jack Simmons turned 45.

Jack has not had a very good year. He lost his beautiful Sabrina in August, and he lost his dad a few weeks after that. I wanted December 8 to be a genuine feast day for Jack. So I made him a birthday cake.

With the help of Stephen, Davis, and Lawson, I took great care in selecting the cake. Eventually, I chose the Milky Way cake. It's a recipe in one of my most consulted cook books, Cooking from the Jail House to the White House by Louise Dodd. I thought a Louise Dodd recipe would be especially appropriate for this occasion.

For one thing, Louise Dodd passed away on November 22nd of this year. I was so sorry to hear that news, as were cooking enthusiasts across the Southeast. Louise was the mother of Carol Porter (who should have been elected Lieutenant Governor) and the mother in-law of DuBose Porter (who should have gotten the Democratic nomination for governor). Jack and Sabrina were big Porter fans during the 2010 elections, so I thought if Sabrina were here, she would have liked a Milky Way cake made famous by the Porters' mama. I hope Jack likes it too. I am glad to be able to honor and Louise, Sabrina, and Jack with one tasty cake.

Here's how I made it:

The Cake:
1 package devil's food cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 pkg. instant chocolate pudding mix
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a Bundt cake pan. Combine cake mix, eggs, sour cream, pudding mix, water, and oil. Mix well (scraping batter off sides of bowl from time to time). Fold in chocolate chips until they're evenly distributed in the batter. Put batter in pan and bake for about 50 minutes or until the cake springs back when touched. Cool before removing from pan.

Icing
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp cocoa
3 Milky Way bars, cut into pieces

Combine sugar, butter, milk and cocoa in a large sauce pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Then reduce heat to low and cook about five minutes. Add Milky Way bars and beat (actually, I used a whisk, and that worked just fine). The Milky Way bars will be just a little bit chunky. Let the icing cool slightly before spreading on the cake.

That is some of the best icing I have ever tasted. In fact, I didn't tell Jack this (I guess he'll find out now), but I left some of that icing in the pot so that my boys and I could eat it. It's good stuff. I hope Jack agrees.

Happy birthday!

What I Read This Year

Most people do their "year in the review" the week between Christmas and New Year's, but I'm going to do it now. That's because right now, I have time to do it. If I have time the week after Christmas, I'll review what I've read in the past decade.

But first, about my book journal.

On June 14, 1990, my friend Lori Parnell (now Lori Mallard) gave me a writer's notebook. You've seen one before. It's one of those hardbound books of blank pages so aspiring writers like I was in 1990 could fill it up with the great American novel. One thing I like about this notebook is that each page includes an inspiring quotation from a famous author (for instance, William Faulkner wrote, "Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the mast. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window." I like that one. And I think he's right.)

I stewed about the plot for five years. During that time, I got married, gave birth to my first child, got my master's degree, and started my PhD. Then in 1996 (August 23, 1996, to be exact), I began to wonder how many books I had read in my life. Unable to count them (or remember them) at that point, I set out to write down every book I read from that point on. And I've been doing so ever since. I still had the writer's notebook Lori gave me, and I turned it into my reader's journal (hence, following Faulkner's advice). The first book in my journal is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

In my book journal, I note the title of the book, the author, the date I finished reading it, a one-two sentence review of it, and a rating of one to five stars.

So here I am at the end of 2010, and this morning I wrote the latest addition to my journal: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I chose this book because I was looking for a good book to read, and on the radio one morning I heard Oprah Winfrey announce the title of this book as her next book club selection. She made it sound like a masterpiece, calling it's title out as if she were Mel Gibson at the end of "Braveheart": "Freeeedooooooooom!"

"Wow, it must be good," I thought. So I bought it. And now I've read it. Next.

Here's what I wrote about the novel: "The saga of the love triangle among Patty, Walter, and Richard. Interesting take on the freedom motif, but like most other door stop novels, this one didn't have to be so long." I gave it a generous 3 stars. One of the items on my blog "to write" list is a posting about authors' tendency to write door-stop novels (in other words, novels that are gratuitously long) and why they should not do so.

Other, shorter, novels earned more stars from me. For instance, Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, told from a dog's point of view, is a clever story about death, wrongful accusations, persistence, and NASCAR racing. When my friend Joni Filiault gave me this book, I thought it would be kind of silly. But Enzo, the narrator, sucked me in immediately. I loved it. Thank you, Joni, for sending me this one (and all those others you sent me).

Another one, Sapphire's Push (now known to most people as Precious, but I like to use the original title), was so compelling that I have adopted it as a reading selection in my upcoming Literature and Humanities course. I love how the voice changes as the narrator's literacy develops. It's both heart breaking and heart warming, and I hope my students appreciate it as much as I did. I gave that one five stars.

As the weather warmed, my book choices changed. I transitioned to light (very light) reading that would make me laugh. Unfortunately, This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper and The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell did not do it. Bushnell's novel was just more of the same with this Sex and the City prequel. Tropper's book was more captivating, but not much. And it made me wonder if Jewish people really do use the name Jesus Christ as an expletive. Two stars for both of those.

But my favorite humor writer, Laurie Notaro, didn't let me down. I bought her Spooky Little Girl to read on the plane from Newark to Rome. My journal entry reads, "Must have been strongly influenced by the movie "Ghost," but I liked the idea of training seminars for the unexpectedly dead. Cute Notaro humor."

A couple of books earned a one-star rating this year. One of them was The Truth about Lord Stoneville. My entry reads, "A bodice ripper. Nuff said." I read this one because I'm trying to figure out how to write romantic tension in my own fiction. I thought a romance novel would do that. I suppose some do. This novel, though, taught me how to write about sex. Well, okay.

And then there were Steig Larsson's "The Girl" books. Who didn't read those this year? At first, I started reading them out of curiosity. Then I kept reading because I had to find out how the story ended. By the time I was finished, I didn't care anymore.

Here's my book list from 2010:

• The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein, January 2, 2010: Told from a dog's point of view, a clever story about death, wrongful accusations, persistence, and racing. ****
• Push, Sapphire, January 28, 2010: So heartbreaking I couldn't stand it. Neither could I put it down. *****
• Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Neffenegger, February 20, 2010: Ghost meets The Thirteenth Tale. This book has a captivating plot, with some gaps and discrepancies. ***
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!, Jonathan Goldstein, March 16, 2010: A humorous, contemporary reiteration of Old Testament stories. I read this book in 24 hours. ****
• World Without End, Ken Follett, April 11, 2010: Sequel to Pillars of the Earth, should have been titled Book Without End. A thousand pages of a long, drawn-out story. **
• Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress, Debra Ginsberg, May 1, 2010: A captivating memoir. Gives new meaning to the line, "The waiting is the hardest part." ***
• Home Safe: Elizabeth Berg, May 8, 2010: A quiet novel about mothers and daughters and about widowhood. Not to thick and a pretty quick read. Good for summer. ***
• The Carrie Diaries, Candace Bushnell, May 10, 2010: Sex and the City in high school No substance to this book. None. Zilch. Perfect for the beach. Read it in two days. **
• This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper, May 17, 2010: Fast read but a little hard to latch onto because of so much dysfunction in this fictional family. Also, I was a little perplexed at the tendency of these Jewish characters to utter "Jesus Christ" so much. **
• Spooky Little Girl, Laurie Notaro, May 22, 2010: Must have been strongly influenced by the movie "Ghost," but I liked the idea of training seminars for the unexpectedly dead. Cute Notaro humor. ***
• The Truth about Lord Stoneville, Sabrina Jeffries, May 29, 2010: A bodice ripper. Nuff said. *
• Favorite Wife, Susan Ray Schmidt, June 6, 2010: An autobiography about being raised in a polygamous community and being married into the infamous LaBaron family. **
• Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, Chelsea Handler, June 9, 2010: Laugh out loud funny. Now I know what to read during Laurie Notaro's writing process. ***
• Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli, June 11, 2010: This young adult novel is so captivating even this grown up liked it. ****
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson, June 26, 2010: People kept saying, "Stick with it." I'm glad I did. It takes about 150 pages before the story starts rolling, but once it does, it's a page turner. ****
• Prairie Tale, Melissa Gilbert, July 3, 2010: Interesting enough for a Hollywood autobiography. She got too bogged down at the end in Screen Actors' Guild politics, but otherwise it was okay. ***
• Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Alison Arngrim, July 5, 2010: Funny and a better story than Gilbert's. Arngrim knows how much to tell and how much to leave out. Loved the sidebars. ****
• The Way I See It, Melissa Sue Anderson, July 7, 2010: Really bad. * (That was a generous rating. The book was that bad)
  
• Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, July 9, 2010: The story of the Lacks family is heartbreaking. The story of the HeLa cell is fascinating, but also a little maddening. ****
• The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson, July 19, 2010: More of a page turner than its predecessor. ****
• S--t My Dad Says, Justin Halpern, July 20, 2010: Laugh out loud funny with a sweet ending. I've been reading his blog all year. The book is just as good. Read this book in one afternoon at White Water. *****
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson, August 8, 2010: If this had been a first book, it wouldn't have been published. Sluggish in places with unnecessary side plots. **1/2
  
• Little Bee, Chris Cleve, October 6, 2010: A Nigerian refugee crosses life-changing paths with a British woman. Starts out good, but loses steam after 100 or so pages. ***
• King Lear, William Shakespeare, November 7, 2010: Not my favorite Shakespearean tragedy, but it'll do. ***
• So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell, November 14, 2010: A short, quiet pice about a man reflecting on a murder that took place during his childhood. ***
• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen, December 4, 2010: The saga of the love triangle among Patty, Walter, and Richard. Interesting take on the freedom motif, but like most other doorstop novels, this one didn't have to be so long.
  

And now I will pick up The Woman in White, which I put down to start King Lear again.

Thank-a-palooza

I know it's dated, but I just love the suffix palooza. So this year, I was thankful that I got to use it a lot.

The Remlers spent their holiday in Hawkinsville, where all the siblings and all the grand-siblings gathered on McCormick Avenue for the annual family gathering. Typically, the weekend consists of lots of competition, demonstrated by the annual fishapalooza, followed by a shootapalooza. The fishapalooza even includes awards, one for the biggest catch (which is measured by the weight of each contestant's five biggest fish) and the minnow award, (obviously measured by the smallest fish). I am proud to say that Lawson made the Remlers proud by bringing in the minnow award, in spite of having caught a net full of the biggest crappie I've ever seen. Look at that tiny little trophy next to his foot. I couldn't be prouder! Dave and Doug won the fishapalooza with their fine catch of several sizable bass.

Next, the shootapalooza was a non-competitive event this year, but it was just as fun, as the Remlers showed up with a couple of boxes full of dishes acquired from the Goodwill. China makes an excellent target. It's so satisfying to see those platters shatter. Davis got to use his new shotgun, and Dawn demonstrated her fine marksmanship with her favorite 9 Mmmmm.

Other activities generated additional paloozas. For instance, BB had scheduled a picture taking event Thanksgiving morning, which resulted in a photopalooza. The following morning, Jeff and Davis headed down to the creek to test their hunting skills, and they brought back several ducks. That successful venture inspired Davis further, so he took a solo trip that evening and came back with one bird, which he roasted over the bonfire. He had a real duckapalooza. Of course, the family can't be at the farm without burning something. This year, the guys had a field day, first burning a chair and then a tire (which we wouldn't recommend doing every year for ecological reasons), initiating the family flame-a-palooza.

What fun! Unfortunately, Saturday morning, Laken had a brief sickness in the car on the way to see Gretchen's ballet performance. Not only that, but Sydney awoke with a sore throat and headache. For good measure, Nichole took her and Asher to the doctor Monday morning, only to receive a diagnosis of strep throat for both kids. So inadvertently, Thanksgiving weekend also turned into a real germapalooza.

Fortunately, the Remlers were non-participants in that palooza. However, after my P90X rant on Thanksgiving Eve, I went to Hawkinsville only to be told on two or three occasions that I looked really fit. In fact, Angela said my shoulders looked good. Bolstered by some encouragement, I decided to finish out the last week of P90X, which makes the Remler house a continued musclepalooza. I'll submit a final report on that next week.