Terry's 3M's: Meditations, Mutterings, Madness

Terry's 3M's

March 17, 1998

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm going to get this page up early today because I have cooking to do.

Yes, it's corned beef and cabbage day. A rare treat for me because this is the only time of year that we have corned beef. (The kids are going to squawk about dinner tonight: "I don't want any. Is there anything else?")

That's okay. They'll eat the other vegetables. There will be potatoes, onions, and carrots in the pot as well. Then I'll take the leftovers and this week I can indulge in red flannel hash and Reubens.

I make a wonderful sauce to go over everything as well. First I make a roux (melt butter and add an equal amount of flour to make a paste), then I add some milk and mix until smooth and thick. I thin the mixture with some of the pot liquor and add dillweed.



If you're a regular reader, you know that a while back I was moaning and groaning about toothaches as my wisdom teeth were trying to come in.

Well, the sutzenfutzenfrickenfrakenfrickafrak right wisdom tooth came in.

Don't go looking for your dictionaries yet. That long thing that looks like a word is a roughly phonetic rendering of an expression that I used when the kids were very small and I wanted to swear. I didn't want to use bad language in front of a 2 year old and have him/her use any cuss words, so I substituted.

In fact, when a friend of mine and I were discussing The Stepford Wives one time, she remarked that she would always be able to tell the real me. She would just ask me to swear. If the person came out with an actual cuss word instead of something like the above, she'd know that person was a phony.

Why would I want to cuss about the tooth? It has a sharp, pointed tip which makes it rather annoying when I swallow and my tongue sometimes brushes against it. It also makes my mouth feel odd as it is larger than the molars in front of it and it almost feels like there's a fang back there.


Well, enough about that. I have to remember to make sure that all the kids wear green today. I don't know about this school, but, where I come from, if you didn't wear green on St. Patrick's Day, you were giving the other kids a green light to pinch you.

America has been called a melting pot. That's why Faye and I--and our kids--are true Americans. Boy, are we melted together. Our background heritage is: Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Irish and Scots.

One of my aunts did a genealogy check. While the Irish/Scots ancestors were here in the pre-Revolutionary War days, my grandfather came here from Naples, Italy when he was about 6 years old. That's my paternal heritage.

My Polish/Lithuanian relatives arrived around the turn of the century. My great-grandmother never did learn to speak English very well. Although I think that she understood the language better than she spoke it.

When I was little, my mother and her relatives never worried about talking about adult matters in front of children. As soon as a child got close to the room that they were in, someone would say, "Kids coming." Then everyone would start to speak Polish and we didn't have a clue about what they were talking about.

One thing we did learn in Polish--our prayers. My great-grandmother came to our house quite often and spent a week or more with us every other month or so.

Every night, just before bed, she would gather all of us kids at the kitchen table. We would have to be in our pajamas and barefooted. She would go around the table with a basin of soapy water, a wash cloth and towel. And she would wash our feet.

After we were cleaned up and ready for bed, she would lead us in prayers--starting with the Sign of the Cross. I can still say the Sign of the Cross in Polish as well as some of The Apostle's Creed. (When I was a kid, I used to say my prayers in Polish because it was much faster than saying them in English.

Tomorrow, the kids will be thrilled to have pierogis for dinner. Pierogis are the Polish equivalent of ravioli. They love pierogi! I have to get an extra package because Carrie's class is going to have a party where each student is supposed to bring a dish which represents their cultural heritage. She wants to take pierogi.

There is a company out here called Schwann. Although their main business is selling ice cream, they do have a large selection of frozen foods. It's a door-to-door business. The Schwann truck and driver are on our street on alternate Wednesdays. It is from that company that I buy the pierogi.

Yes, I can make pierogi by hand and have done so. I love and appreciate my mother and great-grandmother for making them as often as they did while I was growing up. Because making them by hand is a pain. The filling is easy. Making the dough is messy and rolling out dough is not easy for me. (There is a reason why I insist on store-bought pie shells when I'm making holiday desserts.) Besides, it costs almost as much to make them as it does to buy them ready-made. In upstate New York, I could go to the store and buy a container of farmer's cheese. I haven't seen any farmer's cheese here. (Farmer's cheese is very similiar to cottage cheese. However, it's curds are very small and it is very dry.) It's possible to substitute cottage cheese. You just have to put the cottage cheese in a strainer and let it drain for several hours. You mix the cheese with mashed potatos and onion to make the filling.

I will have to make them from scratch some day. The boys and Stephanie have begun to take an interest in cooking. Right now they are learning how to make certain things the way I learned in the beginning--by watching the adult cook.

Well, I gotta go. Ciao!


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