Blog Archives

Let’s do lunch — on a stick

7/26/2018

Charles City Press, 7-26-18

Last week, they announced the finalists for best new food items available at the Iowa State Fair.

I believe the trend toward creative food innovation has come to a standstill in our great nation, and the new Iowa State Fair food is evidence. It seems to me many of these foods were initially created by college students who had the munchies and were too stoned to drive to the nearest restaurant.

The Iowa State Fair is most famous for giving us foods on a stick. That makes sense. You’re at the fair, you’re hungry, it’s hot and crowded and there’s no place to sit down and eat. It’s high time for mobile dining. Put your lunch on a stick, brother.

There have been hundreds of food-on-a-stick creations throughout the fair’s culinary history, and some of the most notable have included chocolate-covered deep-fried cheesecake on a stick, a deep-fried Twinkie on a stick, fried fruit kabobs on a stick and a golden-fried peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich on a stick.

My favorite has always been deep-fried butter on a stick. It’s just a stick of butter, on a stick, battered and deep fried. It is, all at once, equally infantile and ingenious.

This year, the top three best new food finalists for 2018 are the Brown Sugar Pork Belly on a Stick ($7), the All-Iowa Belly-Up Burger ($10) and the Apple Eggrolls ($5).

The Brown Sugar Pork Belly is described as a quarter-pound strip of honey-cured pork belly “rubbed with brown sugar and cooked to crispy perfection.”
Folks, it’s a slice of bacon, rolled in sugar and burned on a griddle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The All-Iowa Belly-Up Burger is described as a “half-pound patty of fresh ground pork belly seasoned with a signature rub and grilled, topped with pulled pork and a signature sauce, followed by thick-cut candied bacon and ‘Rib Shack Slaw’ and served on a brioche bun.”

So it’s pork, topped with pork, on top of more pork, then a bunch of cole slaw, squeezed into a bun. It's a massive heart attack on bread. Better buy two.

The Apple Eggroll? “A crispy egg roll wrapped around apple filling and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and served with caramel sauce for dipping.”
My guess is this insane dessert was added to the list in the interest of cultural diversity. I’m in favor of that.

I’m actually in favor of any new food creation. My first instinct is to take a photo and put it on Facebook, and tell all my Facebook friends that they should like and share this picture, because if they don't, it means they hate America, the flag and our troops.

As a society, we take a lot more pictures than we used to, and a lot of them end up on Facebook, because it's so easy. There was a time, in my younger years, when it seemed like a lot of work to take a photo, so you only took photos of very important occasions — such as weddings, graduations, family reunions — or if someone caught a really big fish.

These days, people take pictures of lunch. And dinner. And dessert. And they put them up on Facebook. And Instagram. And Twitter.

I was born the same year as the Big Mac. At the time, there were no photos of either me or the Big Mac shared on Facebook. McDonald's, obviously, has been the most successful innovator of fast food in my lifetime. These days, the menu has a variety of salads and ice cream desserts, gourmet burgers, a full breakfast menu and several chicken options, among other things. When I was a kid, it was just burgers, fries, Big Macs, a Filet-O-Fish and shakes. Chicken McNuggets didn't arrive until the early 1980s.

I do recall a few other products they had then that they do not have now. For a while, they had a thing called Onion Nuggets, basically the same as the chicken nuggets, only it was an onion on the inside instead of chicken. Also, back in those days, McDonald's fried their hot apple and cherry pies. I feel sorry for the current generation, which has never experienced a fried apple pie from McDonald's. The filling felt like molten lava as it burned the living hell out of your mouth, but the taste buds that survived the scorching were in for an amazing treat.

I can also rattle off a list of fast food items that did not exist when I was a child.

There was no such thing as popcorn chicken at KFC — which, by the way, we either called "Kentucky Fried Chicken" or "Colonel Sanders." I had never heard of a stuffed-crust pizza at Pizza Hut, or sweet potato fries anywhere. I was 18 before I tasted my first Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

I was the same age the first time I crunched into a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Speaking of cool ranch, what is the deal with ranch dressing? When I was a kid, it was the salad dressing that no one asked for, because it was awful. Now it's the most popular condiment in the supermarket, people put it on anything. Don't people know it tastes like sour milk?

These days, I’m also perpetually confused about gluten. I don’t know what gluten is, so if you tell me something is gluten-free, I do not know whether to be pleased or disappointed.

Mexican restaurants? These days there are a half-dozen in every town, but there were no such things as Mexican restaurants when I was growing up, at least not in my immediate area. A couple of my good friends were of Mexican lineage, and so I experienced Mexican food as prepared by their mothers — and that was still better than any meal I've ever had in a Mexican restaurant.

I was 40-something before I ever heard of a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Actually, I was probably in my 40s before I ever heard of any kind of latte, or frappe, or any other kind of fancy coffee drink. I’ll probably be in my 90s before I ever try one.

Gatorade was about the only sports drink you could get when I was a kid, and there was no such thing as an “energy drink.” Gatorade came in just one flavor — I think it was actually gator flavored, but I could be wrong. Anyway, we rarely could afford it, so our sports/energy drink of choice was water. It didn't come in a bottle, it came out of the sink, or maybe the hose in the backyard. Backyard hose water on a hot day is still the best drink of anything I have ever drank.

There was no such thing as diet soda, although Tab had just one calorie. And Pepsi-Free had a twist of lemon.

And while we're on the subject of beverages, did you know that the only country in the world that doesn't have any Coke or Pepsi products is North Korea?

I'm guessing that's one of the reasons that the crazy little guy over there wants to blow everyone up.

Better not tell him about the Brown Sugar Pork Belly on a Stick. Global thermo-nuclear war would be inevitable.

1 Comment

Old friends and new battles

7/18/2018

0 Comments

Charles City Press, 7-19-18

“Gangster pass right,” the coach said.

It was the fall of 1985, at Husky Stadium in Oelwein, where my home team was playing varsity football against your tough and pesky visiting Charles City Comets.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the winner of the game was going to end up with a share of the Northeast Iowa Conference championship, while the loser was going to miss out, just barely.

The coach sent the play in with a senior wide receiver, who had worked his behind off in the offseason to earn a starting position. I know this, because I had worked with him all summer, for the same reason. We even quit drinking beer for a while, for football season, we were that dedicated.

“Gangster pass right,” the receiver repeated in the huddle. “On two.”

He knew he was calling his own number. The play was a quick slant pass to him.

The ball was snapped and the receiver found himself wide open. It was the right play at the right time. Our quarterback stepped and delivered the pass — a little high, a little hard. The wide receiver reached, and although he was able to get both hands on the ball, it was a tough one to hang on to. It dropped incomplete.

Incidentally, the wide receiver was my best friend and the coach was my dad. Neither of those things are of vital importance to the story, but I believe in full disclosure.

He hung his head and walked back to the sideline, mentally kicking himself for failing to execute what would have been a big play.

One play later, my friend the wide receiver sidled up to Coach again, a little sheepishly, because he knew he’d screwed up the play before.

“Gangster pass right,” Coach said. “And catch the (expletive) ball.”

Yes, there was a curse word in there. I won’t print it in a family newspaper, but you can imagine what it was. Back in the day, it was not unusual for a coach to occasionally use a curse word. That’s the way we talked in Oelwein then, and that’s the way we listened. Somehow, the world did not implode.

I’m not advocating using that kind of language, anywhere, I’m just acknowledging that it wasn’t uncommon then, everywhere, even on a high school football field. And honestly, if you think that language is uncommon now, I’ve got some property in Michigan to sell you.

In this case, the language was used to accentuate the message. What was the message?

Catch the ball.

Coach didn’t browbeat my friend, or try to humiliate him for screwing up the play before. He knew my friend was already disappointed in himself.

Instead, he gave him another chance.

A lot of good coaches might have said nothing. A few lousy coaches might have said, “don’t drop the ball,” which is always the wrong thing to say. It puts additional negative pressure on a kid who is already feeling negative about himself.

When you tell a football player not to fumble, you can be sure that sooner or later, he’s going to fumble. And you’re the one who reminded him that fumbling was one possible option.

So the message wasn’t “don’t drop the ball again.” The message was “catch the ball.” The curse word ensured that the message would be heard.

It worked. My friend did catch the (expletive) ball, cleanly, and rambled down the field for a first down and a huge gain. My friend had some speed.

Ultimately, it didn’t much matter. We still lost the game to those tough and pesky Charles City Comets. That play didn’t make a difference in the outcome.
But it did make a difference to my friend.

Ten, 20, 30 years later — my friend still told that story, of what Coach said to him, how it impacted him, and how he responded, in that one little moment.

He is now very successful in business, and he and his wife have raised a wonderful family, and he’s used that story during motivational-type speeches to his business peers as an example of the power of positive thinking.

It doesn’t matter if you screwed up before. Forget it. What matters is how you respond to it now. Here’s another chance to succeed.

Catch the ball. Just catch the (gosh-darn) ball.

He took that message to heart, and used it as an analogy as he forged through life.

My old friend lives many miles away now, and he’s having a tough time. He just found out yesterday that he has cancer.

I don’t know any details yet, don’t know what stage, don’t know what treatments he’s going to have to endure. I’ve gone through some of what he’s going through, and I’ve gone through some of what he’s about to go through. I’ve seen way too many of my friends go through it, too. We all have.

God, I hate cancer. Words cannot express how much I hate cancer — not even curse words.

I just had lunch with my old friend last week, where I met one of his amazingly lovely daughters. He was worried about the upcoming procedure, worried that there might be cancer. I assured him that I knew it wasn’t, it couldn’t be — because that’s what old friends say to old friends.

When I learned I was wrong this morning, I thought of this old football story. I thought of a lot of other stories, too, but this memory stuck in my mind. This memory put tears in my eyes.

There’s adversity. Then there’s how we handle that adversity.

I know my friend is going to handle it well. I’m going to pray and cheer for him, the way he prayed and cheered for me.

There’s going to be pain and triumph in the days ahead, good news and bad news. Tears and laughter, love and anger, and lots of love again.

Life will change in ways none of us can imagine, but change can also mean a another chance.

You’ll know it when you see it, and when you see it, take it.

And catch the ball, old friend. Catch that doggone ball.

0 Comments

The Charles City Can Bandits strike again

7/12/2018

0 Comments

Charles City Press, 7-13-18

There are three things you need to know.

First, the notorious Charles City Can Bandits are back, and more brazen than ever.

Second, I like cold Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.

Third — the first two things you just read are more directly related than they appear to be at first glance.

Let me explain.

Last week there was a bad smell in the kitchen. I don’t like it when there’s a bad smell in the kitchen, I strongly believe that kitchens should consist of good, appetizing, comforting smells, perpetually.

So I cleaned the kitchen. I took out the garbage, I cleaned the cupboards, the counters — even the refrigerator — getting rid of any and all foodstuff and biodegradable products that could be considered “less than fresh.” I wiped things down with lemon-scented cleansers, and even destroyed all stains and growths that seemed mold-like. The kitchen was clean.

And yet, the smell still lingered. I soon discovered why.

As I mentioned earlier, I like cold Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.

I used to drink a lot of soda-pop. All my doctors told me not to. My body needs water -- a lot of water — and drinking a lot of pop tricks my body into thinking it has enough water, when it doesn’t. Besides that, all that sugar and caffeine and carbonation just isn’t good for you, they told me, and I was ingesting a metric ton of it every day.

So, for reasons I won’t go into here, I finally respected my doctor’s wishes. I didn’t quit drinking pop, I just cut way down. I decided to make pop an occasional treat once or twice a week, rather than a regular staple of my everyday diet.

My favorite pop was always ice-cold Coke in a glass bottle, so that’s what I started buying. Very small glass bottles of Coke, to occasionally treat myself.
And so, those little empty bottles sit in a corner of the kitchen. And eventually, when there are enough of them, my wife or I will take them to be redeemed for a deposit, along with all the other redeemable cans we have in the house.
What had happened is, a little mouse had crawled into one of those little bottles some time ago to get a little leftover sweet soda for himself — and he couldn’t get out.

The mouse died in there. RIP. Then he started to smell bad.

Of course, since I’m no longer drinking large quantities of pop, it takes a long time before there’s enough redeemable containers built up to make it worthwhile to bring in for a deposit. So dead little Coca-Cola Mouse just sat there, decayed, and stunk up the joint. My wife finally discovered him. Well, she discovered his remains.

i won’t go into detail, but she cleaned up the situation, and then collected all the redeemable cans and bottles we had together, bagged them, and put them outside, on our deck.

Now, a few weeks ago, I told you in a column here about the Charles City Can Bandits. When my wife and I returned from Memorial Day weekend, two garbage bags of cans had been stolen. They were mostly recycled aluminum pop and beer cans. We had collected about three months’ worth of cans, my wife had neatly and efficiently bagged them up and placed them near our house. We usually give our can money to charity. The plan was to grab the two bags of cans one morning that week, toss them into the trunk of the car, and take them over to a fund-raising friend’s house on the way to work.

That plan came to a screeching halt, when we realized the cans were gone. We thought it would be reactionary to call the police over something that trivial, but the Great Can Theft, as I call it, did disturb me a little, and I wrote about it here. Then I forgot about it.

Tuesday, the Charles City Can Bandits struck again. They stole our redeemable stinky dead mouse containers. Just like last time, it wasn’t like the bags were obvious from the road. Whoever it was had to walk up, through our yard, to our house — and up on our deck — to look through things until he (or she) found something worth taking and easy to heist.

Once again, I don’t want the cans back, I don’t want the money that was redeemed, and I don’t want whoever did it to get into any legal trouble.

I just want people to not come up on my deck, uninvited, and look through my things.

Stop it, whoever you are. If you want my cans, just politely ask me, and they’re yours.

I’ll even remove the dead mice for you.

0 Comments

My American Friends, On Independence Day

7/5/2018

1 Comment

Charles City Press, July 5, 2018

Let me tell you about my American friends.

I wrote about them last year, and with Independence Day here, I thought it might be appropriate to write about them again. I’m guessing some of my American friends are a lot like some of your American friends.

I grew up with them, in a little town in Iowa, and they grew up with me.

Each of us is now at or above the age of 50, and some of us have been friends since before we were two. We've lost a few along the way, and they're never far from our minds.

I just saw them all a year ago, these American friends of mine. I hadn't seen some of them in more than 20 years. We met at a little cabin nestled among the picturesque hills and valleys in northeast Iowa, not far from the mighty Mississippi River — a river right smack in the middle of the continent, a river so huge it divides America in half.

That is, it divides the continent in half, but it couldn't divide the people in half. It couldn't divide Americans, because when it comes down to brass tacks, Americans are indivisible, and a river — even a river as imposing and powerful as the majestic Mississippi — can only slow us down, it can't stop us from doing the essential things we want to do.

Americans see the biggest barriers not as the end of the trail, but as the start. A mighty river is a mere problem to be solved.

Americans build things. Boats. Bridges and barges. Canals and tunnels. Railroads that span from one coast to the other, with spurs to reach every little town, every village, every fort and factory.

Automobiles. Vehicles that can negotiate any terrain. Farm machinery. Airplanes. Devices that can put the entire world on your desk, or even in the palm of your hand.

Vast interstate highways, skyscrapers as tall as those mountain ranges, a mind-boggling communications web, entire industries devoted to surviving and thriving— and while we're surviving, while we're thriving, we'll create entire new industries, just to keep us entertained. Television, movies, music, sports, information. We want it all, and when we want it all, we get it all.

Because we're Americans, and Americans can make magic.

Don't believe me? How does a grandmother in northern Minnesota get bananas and coconuts from the tropics for her dessert recipe? American magic.

A grandpa in Arizona can sit in his study and watch his 16-year-old granddaughter in Virginia shoot what would have been the game-winning basket — had it not bounced off the back of the rim. He can watch it live, as it happens. And his heart can break a little as he hears her cry, and sees her kneel down by the free-throw line, covering her face.

And grandpa wipes his own tear away before he smiles at her, into his face-phone a minute later, and says, "You played well, sweetheart. I'm proud of you. You'll get 'em next time."

In America, we know we'll always get 'em next time.

But back to my old American friends, at that cabin last year.

We got together because of me. I had just finished a year of cancer, major surgery, recovery and chemotherapy — and at the time, I was at a point where none of us knew for sure if I had another year left — or even another month. I think some of my friends showed up because they feared it could be the last time they might see me.

Though we all came from the same little Iowa town, we're all very different people, and we ended up in all corners of America. A CEO of a tech company in Atlanta. A vice-president of a parts supply company in Houston, Texas. An electrician in Cedar Falls. An artist in Cedar Rapids. A federal immigration officer on the Canadian border. A communication infrastructure specialist in Des Moines. A writer in Charles City.

A couple of us returned to our home town, and made lives there. One is a physical therapist, the other is an advertising specialist and part-time politician.

We each have our own individual worlds, but we are also one entity. No, we are not a melting pot, nor are we an alliance or a confederacy.

We are a collective soul.

Two of us grew up on farms. The rest of us worked on farms at one time or another. We are German and Irish and Norwegian and Dutch and Welsh and Mexican and Austrian and probably a hundred other things, and all of us had ancestors who, at some time in the past, decided to take a shot and head to America.

Some of my American friends are Catholics, some are Lutherans, some are Methodists. Some of us are other things, or maybe nothing, because in America, we can worship God any way we want — or not at all.

Four of us served in the armed forces and defended our nation. All of us snap to attention when the color guard goes by, all of us put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance — and when we hear the national anthem, we all stand and sing.

Some of us hunt. Some of us ride Harleys. Some of us play in rock and roll bands. Some of us sing in choirs, or train dogs, or play rugby, or paint pictures, or perform in community theatre plays. We all love football and beer.
Some of us are Democrats, some of us are Republicans, some of us are none of the above. And yes, we've all fought among ourselves from time to time. But we're still one collective soul.

So when one of us catches a big smallmouth, or gets promoted, or runs in a 5K for charity, we all cheer.

When one of our sons gets married, or one of our daughters graduates from college, we're all happy, as if it were our own kid.

When one of us has a parent die, we all cry a little.

When cancer picks a fight with one of us, it picks a fight with all of us.

These are my American friends.

If you fall behind, they'll pull you back ahead. And if they can't do that, they'll wait for you to catch up.

And when you do, they'll give you a slap on the back.

Or maybe a big, American hug.

That's where the magic starts.

1 Comment

Let’s do lunch — on a stick

Old friends and new battles

The Charles City Can Bandits strike again

My American Friends, On Independence Day

IowaScribe

Archives