Three Beautiful Things 07/13/07: Hot Soup, Hot Cookies, Hot Fires

1. When I was growing up, Mom warmed cold Kellogg winter Sundays by cooking navy beans and ham soup with homemade bread. Today the temperature went over 100 degrees and Mom cooked navy bean and ham soup. Was I complaining? No way. It hit the spot and I ate three bowls. Odd how sometimes what sounds like it would be exactly the wrong thing on a hot day turns out to be exactly the right thing!







2. Speaking of heating up the kitchen on a record breaking hot day in Kellogg, Idaho: today Silver Valley Girl baked chocolate chip cookies, and two or three other varieties of cookies. Heavenly. Heavenly. The chocolate chip cookies, especially, are heavenly. And once again, you'd think, who wants a cookie straight out of the oven on a 100+ degree day? Me!

3. The politics of fire. Stephen J. Pyne's book "Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910" details the political bouts that raged at the turn of the century regarding fires and forest management, especially in the early days of the Forest Service. These arguments sound familiar: local management v. federal management. Business interests v. conservationists' interests. The 1910 fires roared through the Silver Valley and regions nearby, so the politics, the history, and the geography all interest me deeply.