Food for thought is the recipe I share

I ruminated for six days on the contents of this column and came up empty-handed. I went to bed on it, woke up on it and still nothing.

I installed the ritual chocolate and black tea (the best combination since Saturday and Sunday) that are my known catalysts for inspiration, and then proceeded to eat more than my allotted share of the “Dairy Milk” fruit and nut version with hopes that the extra sugar rush would flood the keyboard with ideas. Still nothing, save a strong urge to make myself throw up.

I was sitting at my desk and “Millie” the cat was nestled on my bed as a chocolate burp erupted from me. She gave me a slit-eyed flat stare that smacked of “don’t even think about it lady. Barfing is my department.”

I’d also just spent the entire weekend alone and while I embraced the change in plans, it was something I hadn’t done in a very, very long time. I half-expected the quiet solitude to raise my writer’s imagination to new levels. Alas, still nothing.

Even though I was on solo, conversations abounded. I’ve always talked to myself. Even in the local grocery store I’ve been known to do this, much to the raised eyebrow of the passerby who catches me talking to the selection of peanut butter.

I never will be bored if stranded alone on a desert island. I know this for sure.

I’ve been known to carry on rather interesting chat sessions on a wide variety of topics with “Yours Truly.” However, the conversations I engaged in this weekend were mostly with inanimate objects like the hammer that slammed into my thumb during a repair job on the plastic covering my screen porch, and the electrical outlet in the garage that I couldn’t find in the dark when I tried to plug in my Christmas lights. Some of that frank discussion was censored material that shall not be repeated here.

Sometimes if I leave the writing table and mess around with a mundane task the ignition on my imagination will light up, so this time I pulled out my recipe drawer and started sorting.

Evidently I am a pack rat. One hour later and none the word wiser, I had a bigger pile of useless, undeniably unappealing recipes on the floor for garbage than what remained in the drawer.

I rolled my eyes and shoved my hand into a baggie that contained assorted and yellowing newspaper cut outs of recipes. I’d had that little collection for at least eight years. It had been given to me. I’d thrown the baggie in the drawer and never looked inside—until now.

I pulled one out.

“Writer’s Block Cookies,” I said, reading what was printed at the top of the 4” x 2” snippet. I laughed out loud and then stared blankly at the unquestionable moment that had just aligned itself with me.

Food for thought is the recipe I share. (True story by the way.)

Writer’s Block Cookies

1 cup butter, softened, 1 ½ cups dark brown sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 tsp water, 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, 2 tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp ground cloves, ½ tsp allspice, 2 cups rolled oats, 1-2 cups raisins.

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs, vanilla and water and beat until smooth. Sift dry ingredients together. Add to the butter mixture and mix well. Fold in oats and raisins. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet, leaving enough space for the cookies to spread out. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until golden. Makes 2 dozen large cookies.

Litte Miss Pioneer goes to hunt camp

I’ve always considered myself a “Northerner.” I’m a hardy soul at home in the elemental outdoors. I grew up loving the open air of the wilderness and I still do.

I also think I would have made a great pioneer woman in the Midwest tending to a small little cabin in the quiet wilderness and living a simple life with my hunter, gatherer, farmer man.

If given the choice today between a primitive cabin in the middle of nowhere or a swanky hotel across from the best shopping plaza, the cabin would win hands down. 

Yet, all of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. I read somewhere that “taking small children into a house with a white carpet” is one of those moments.

I admit that walking down a bush path to the “loo” in the dark of night is one of them too.

And when your hide hangs out in the elements while perched on a makeshift toilet for all the night creatures to see—a toilet that is devoid of four walls and a door—in the freezing cold of a November night, and your flashlight goes out and you drop the toilet paper and it goes rolling down the little hill away from you—into the dark, well, this too tests one’s courage.

Said pioneer woman also should not have picked up her flashlight and shone it into the dark forest that surrounded her. The “Blair Witch Project” was the only thing that came to mind.

I’m sure the look on my face, if captured on canvas, would have sold for a higher bid than Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” did in auction at Sotheby’s.

The famous image of a man holding his head screaming under a streaked, blood-red sky may be the modern symbol of human anxiety but that night I held the world record for the fastest pee.

This was part of my initiation and introduction to hunt camp a couple of weekends ago and despite the “loo business,” it was one of the best weekends I’ve had all year. Hands down.

I was invited to the secret hideaway by a certain outdoorsman who come the fall season, trades his Sperry deck shoes for hunting boots and the helm of his sailboat for a deer stand. 

I was so thrilled to be a part of the wilderness project that I drove the trip with a dose of brave counsel after sunset watching as civilization rose before me and then behind me sank again. I ventured into the middle of nowhere to a destination I had only seen once in the daylight from the passenger’s seat.

I managed this feat of bravery wearing my “big girl” pants while eating chocolate bars and listening to Stan Rogers chant songs about cracking the ramparts of the unknown.

All I knew for sure was that the huntsman would meet me at “the junction” and I was to watch for his headlights on a side road 20 miles into desolation.

I’d be living in a canvas tent with a woodstove for two cold nights in November with a man I hoped would not abandon ship when he saw my camping pajamas.

I arrived safe and sound and when I saw the tent, its chimney stack billowing puffs of smoke, and the glow of the warm light emanating from inside, I was sure I’d just stepped back in time. It looked like the old photographs I’d seen of my grandfather in logging camp in 1932.

I couldn’t find the words to tell the huntsman how much fun I was already having and I hadn’t even rolled out my sleeping bag on the little cot over in that corner. The fact that the cot spoke to me of Ibuprofen before and after sleeping on it fazed me not—and the little fire crackling in the woodstove was more divine than a whole package of “Dove” chocolates.

Supper the first night (and second night) was the huntsman’s homemade recipe—and this man can cook.The meat was tender, the vegetables crisp—and then I asked what it was that I was eating. 

“Texas Antelope Stew,” he replied between spoonfuls.

I gulped down the chunk in my mouth without chewing as I quietly reviewed my knowledge of antelope. There are 91 species most of which live in Africa and I was pretty sure none were loping around in this neck of the woods, so . . . .

A well-known smile and chuckle erupted from the cook when I asked for a qualified answer on just what I was eating. Thankfully he’d substituted venison. 

Morning of the deer hunt came early. 4 a.m. to be exact. I peeled open an eyelid and cracked a smile as the hunter began his morning ritual of stoking the fire, consuming bold brewed camp coffee and breakfast before his long walk to the deer stand before sunrise.

Had he any idea how much fun I was having just being there? I was enjoying the moment. I’d gone back in time and the world had once again dropped away, freeing me from the stressors of a fast-paced whirlwind of responsibilities.

I had a really great time in good company in a little canvas tent in the middle of nowhere on a cold weekend in November.

“This is definitely an element I enjoy,” I wrote in my diary later than morning, except when I had to make mad dashes to the “loo.” Sitting out there in the open wild in shivering constitution even in the daylight—well, that’s another story. 

The cat never forgets who rules the roost

Cat barf. It’s the one globule in this world that I wish I didn’t have to clean up. In fact, I would trade cat barf detail for sifting the solids out of the litter box any day.

In my the neck of the woods, cat barf rates right up there on my nemesis scale with the eight-legged arachnid, mostly because I usually find cat barf with my slipper or spilled over the edge of a cat bed and onto the nice new throw pillow I just purchased.

And said cat of barf just looks at me from her chair of monarchy with a slit-eyed sneer that smacks of, “thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. Please clean that up.”

Pam Brown once penned, “Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience.”

I know this statement is true because never in the heaving stage before a barf does “Millie” jump off her cat bed and scamper into the bathroom to the “Ralphing” throne and barf. Nope.

Murphy’s Law says cats work out their innards right where they happen to be sitting.

The only time I know the cat has been at the bathroom throne is when I find kitty paw marks on the toilet seat after she’s drunk the toilet water.

And inevitably I discover this after she’s been in my arms, making amends for the cat barf on the pillow and rubbing her wet whiskers against my cheek.

And then I have a momentary lapse of memory before snapping back to reality to find myself standing over the cat (that is now curled up and sleeping on my reading chair) with my mouth in a tight and evil grin, my eyes wide and bulging and my arms held up in front of me with the fingers on both hands curl over like eagle talons.

I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror and, yes, I looked like a demented cartoon character having a nervous breakdown.

Just as I disengaged my fangs and retracted my claws “Millie” woke up, sprawled onto her back in a “don’t you just love me” gesture, stretched out and poked the sharp nails of her back feet through the microfiber material on the chair three or four times, did a double twist and vaulted into the kitchen to the front door.

The still, small voice of doubt about the pros and cons of feline ownership was getting louder when I opened the door to let her outside but the mice strewn around the yard like a rodent civil war battle of 1812 paid the rent on my dissatisfaction.

Sure I complain. Yet, when push comes to shove, my cat always wins because even though it has a rather independent soul, it carries the same unconditional love message of all pets and I never get tired of being reminded of that.

Now if I could just teach “Millie” to deter skunks and ground hogs like old “Dot” did, I’d have it made. But something tells me a cat that drinks from the toilet is about as talented a feline as I’m going to get.