Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Three Beautiful Things 11/18/14: Uptown Ghosts, I'm the New Cook, Monumental Turkey Decision

1.  Once again, no frigid hell winds of the polar vortex gripped Kellogg, so I walked in the still, cold air east on Cameron, scaled Hill Street, and strolled through downtown and made my way down Depot Hill, turned west on Cameron and returned home.  While uptown, I felt like I was in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the town I lived in had been evacuated and no one told me. The ghosts I saw uptown were friendly, though, drinking Olys and Heidelbergs with teenaged ghosts playing pinball at Dick and Floyd's, shopping at Pat's Grocery, filing in to worship at the United Church, and buying Matchbox cars in the basement of Gary's Drug.  

2.  I decided today was the day to offer to take over cooking duties for dinner.  It's always a tricky offer.  But, Mom gladly relinquished the kitchen to me, making me think my offer could have succeeded days earlier. I cooked up a (if I may say so) splendid pot of hamburger, turnip, carrot, celery, and onion soup, cooked in a tomato paste and water broth.  I'll be cooking dinner tomorrow night, too, and I'm thinking this might become a regular gig.

3.  Our family made a monumental decision today:  Mom and I will not be taking the turkey Mom won last year to Christy's house for Thanksgiving.  Christy will be able to earn a free turkey at Safeway in Colville by buying 44 thousand dollars worth of groceries, so that will be our Thanksgiving turkey. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the difficulty of landing a spaceship on a comet and 1 being turning up the volume of a television, this move by Christy moves the logistics of Thanksgiving Day from an 8 to about a 3.  We no longer have to figure out how to thaw Mom's turkey and transport it to Kettle Falls, a task which was taking on the magnitude of putting in the freeway through Kellogg.   For many of you, the transporting of a turkey from Kellogg to Kettle Falls, as well as thawing it,  might seem easy, but you don't know the half of what a topic of conversation this has been here at Mom's house and in our family.  When Christy and I talked about it at the Kibbie Dome during the Vandal football game, our conversation, including going on line to the USDA to read up on turkey thawing methods,  chewed up the whole second quarter.  It was a big deal.

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