Randy’s self-absorbed post 2015 Holidays newsletter

Yes, this is my self-absorbed post 2015 Holidays newsletter, from an end of year perspective. If I follow the example of others that I have received, there are several options.

First is the “My life is much better than yours” version.  You’ve received this one, of course.  It comes from someone trying to convince themselves that their spouse, their children, their house, their wealth, their job and everything they own is better than you and yours.   “And when we returned from three weeks in Bali, it was time to pack up our eldest for Harvard.  Those perfect SAT scores really paid off, but our house will just not be the same without her.  Conrad and I will really miss her on the slopes when we head to our place in Vail.”

Not only do these letters make you want to puke, they engender evil thinking.  You can’t help but root against these people, regardless of how well you once knew them.  I tell myself I won’t descend to such thoughts, but I end up cheering for the trees on the ski-slope in Vail anyway.

Go, Trees!!!!

I know myself well enough to know that you’re not going to get one of these from me...at least not until that Powerball ticket I bought for Mary comes in.  Breath is not being held.  A parody of such a letter could happen, but I’ve run that through my head 1000 times, and it just comes out too thin to justify the effort.  Such a thing is really one joke stretched to the limit.

More possible is the reverse parody.  You know... “We’re all so happy that Billy is going to be out before Easter.  The time he’s done is more than enough for that little bit of cash, and the pistol wasn’t even loaded.  Millie is particularly happy that he’ll be back to help with the baby so that she can finish her sophomore year of High School.”  I thought long and hard about this, but casting my family in such a light just didn’t sit well with me.  Probably even less so for my family.

"Gosh, Mary, don't the repairs look great?

Depending on your political persuasion, there is the Fox News/CNN letter.  These are blow by blow accounts of every little thing everyone in the family has done over the past year.  They go on for pages, violating the cardinal rule of holiday letters that states that a single page is the limit.  Please, people, we probably have some interest, or you wouldn’t be sending this to us, but we really don’t need to know about Rover’s recovery from ear mites.

Just leaf me alone.

And there are some good ones.  These convey pertinent information without an air of superiority, and do so with at least a bit of humor.  If you can’t relay information about the human condition without a modicum of irony, your sense of humor is seriously damaged and needs immediate professional attention.  The good ones convey at least a bit of the foibles of the human experience which we all share.  

So here is my attempt at providing a good one.  I’m sure I’ll get some details wrong, but that has never stopped me before, so here goes.  Yes, I am also clearly breaking the “one page” rule, but I didn’t want to make the type so small it would hurt your eyes.

First, the disclaimer.  The following are ramblings from my perspective, so take all with a grain of salt, knowing that the rest of the family will not necessarily subscribe to the same perceptions.  Perhaps they will be amused at the misconceptions resulting from passing reality through the Randy filter.

We have the incredibly good fortune to have a place in the Adirondacks.  So how did we display our appreciation?   We knocked it flat and had the debris carted away.  A bit traumatic and more than a little tug at the guilt strings.  Who knocks down a serviceable building to create a better on?  We do.  The rationalization?  We have the resources and we want to enjoy the place only with invited friends.  The rodents have expressed deep disappointment.  

Needs a little work.

One can definitely see why the original ramshackle trailer with poorly designed additions was sited where it was...a fine knoll with a great view.

The new construction has yet to begin.  Due to the regulations of the Adirondack Park Agency, we will be putting up a new building that is the same size as the original.  It’s a long story, but we think the time and effort will be well justified, particularly with the addition of a guest cottage behind.  Perhaps you will enjoy sleeping there someday.  But all that has to wait until the spring of 2016 when the ground is dry and the heavy equipment is singing.

Where the old camp was, the new camp will be,
and the view beyond remains.

Our son David has successfully moved from the most expensive city in the country to the second most expensive, or vice versa, depending on the ranking you happen to read.  San Francisco is a fond memory, and Brooklyn is the new adventure.  Hard to believe that he lives in these places with a country bumpkin for a father.

No not Brooklyn.  It's the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is positively "laid back" in comparison.

He continues to work as an Architect, but there are inklings that he designs to create other designs of non structural persuasion.  Time will tell.

Katie and her husband Scott are in Terre Haute, Indiana, where you can hear train whistles any time of day.  She is teaching at Indiana State University.  I don’t think she has met Larry Bird yet.  Scott is finishing his doctorate, and the two of them are on the job market.  It’s not easy for College Professors to find good jobs, and all the more difficult for two to find jobs in the same area.  We cross fingers.

Old man with dog sighting in Terre Haute.

We don’t see our kids enough, but perhaps that makes the times we share all the more poignant.  It is good to have the full complement residing east of the Mississippi.  

Mary is always active.  Rowing is her passion, and though she is no longer on the racing team at Genesee Rowing Club, she is an active participant both on the water and on the board of directors.  Her new Fluid Design single is a thing of beauty.  Beauty rowing beauty.

We travel.  Here is a sampling of the past year.

Can you name all 5 places?

Haven’t been to Bali yet, but that’s on the list, along with just about everywhere else where dodging bullets is not likely. Certain portions of Rochester, NY are not on the list.  I am keenly aware that our time for such things is limited, and I use this to rationalize (justify?) the cost.  Who knows what tomorrow brings?  That point was brought home with emphasis 3 years ago when my father and father-in-law died within a week of each other.  Now Mom is living in a euphemistically termed “skilled nursing facility" at Edna Tina Wilson Senior Living Center.  How is it living when your world has collapsed to the point where help with bathroom needs is often the primary concern?

Hands always tell a story.

We visit her almost daily.  The standard procedure is to pick up Mom’s best friend, Grananne, at her house and descend upon Edna Tina.  We often arrive near dinner time, and I help her to eat.  Her appetite indicates she is not ready to bid adieu.  Though Mom is in and out of what I perceive to be reality, it is wonderful to see how she brightens when we call her grandchildren so that she can exchange a few words.  Maybe there is some value in cellular telephony.

My foray into the world of image processing software is an expensive hobby that refuses to become a business.  We continue to “automagically” transform ugly underwater images into the glorious views the photographers remember.  I cringe at the sound of that marketing term, but I suppose it is communicative.  We are also getting into correcting scans of old family pictures.  Also automagically.  I think maybe there are a few more people who might want such a product than divers.  Can I sell you a copy?

Grammie is on the left.

Mary often accuses me of being unfaithful.  She calls my computer “my girlfriend.”  There is too much truth in this assertion.  I don’t pay her enough attention, and too much to the needs of the business and all the other alluring sirens available via the glowing computer screen and its connection to the cosmos.   I have yet to become addicted to an oversize cellphone, primarily because the painful learning process I invested in to become a marginal typist will be moot on that platform.  Friend Ed has provided the disclaimer, “This note comes from my iPad, so forgive the fact it looks as if it was typed by a gorilla.”  Well said.

I stay active.  I run, but I think that is on the wane due to pains that appear to be chronic.  I wear a fitbit.  It is good to know when you are being a slug.  I still ski cross-country, curl, hike, occasionally downhill ski and also camp.  And kick the soccer ball.  Interesting how the the long pass I might have made years ago falls 10 yards short, and the quick guy I might have frustrated as a defender now passes by me without much trouble.  I attribute my performance to the physical decline of age, but it could well be the decline of memory obfuscating the way I once performed that is closer to the truth. The older I get, the better I was.

I'm going to do this stuff as long as I can.

Encroaching age demands attention.  There is too much truth in the assertion of my friend Russ that “You never lose any hair...it just pops out somewhere else.”  However, there is something disconcerting in the need to shave one’s ears.  But there is also good news regarding the auditory mechanism.  The audiology Doctor has let me know that total deafness is not likely to be my lot, due to the mechanism of decline.  Something to cheer about? Feel free to cheer loudly so that I can hear.

Eyes, on the other hand, are a completely different matter.  A full blog worth of experience, resulting in the fact I no longer need glasses.  Even more amazing than the surgery is the fact people actually pay to have powerful lasers directed into their eyes after the cornea is temporarily sliced off.  And I have joined them, successfully.

And I did this willingly!

“I got no right to sing the blues,” is my musical tribute to my own situation.  If you are tone deaf, I’ll sing it for you sometime.  

It is well into 2016 as I write this, and the saga has continued.  But I’ll leave that for another epistle, should the mood strike.

YUM !!

"I hear noise in the kitchen.  What you guys doin'?"

"We're making Pasties, Ginger!"  That's "Past-Tees."  Slap yourself in the forehead if you thought anything else.  Repeatedly.

Pasties are my "family dish."  Yoopers of Swedish descent, the family adopted a variant of the Cornish pasty as their own.  Why?  Like the hardworking expatriates of Cornwall, they were miners.  And not terribly surprisingly, in Iron River, Upper Michigan, they were iron miners.

The women would arise very early to begin the process.  After their labors and an hour in the wood-fueled oven, the meat pies would be wrapped in newspaper and handed off to the men to carry in their shirts as they headed for the mines.  The thermal mass of the pasty in the layered insulating package would not only stay warm for hours, the heat that did escape would warm the the miner as he descended into the depths until his labors sent the heat in the opposite direction.

Even after the mines were exhausted, and prosperity left, pasties remained the preferred dish.

Gotta roll out the dough.
We've used varying dough recipes over the years.
Next time, we're using lard, like my father's mother always did.
I think the butter and margarine lobby purposely ruined the reputation of lard.

In a pinch, if you find yourself without a rolling pin, a beverage bottle will do nicely.  It's a good idea to take the label off and wash it first.  Yes, experience speaks.

Lots of meat and veggies to be cut, also.
The wax paper is to make transferring the dough to the aluminum foil
or directly to the baking pan a little easier.
Now that I look at it, since we are using foil,
maybe we could have rolled the dough out on it.

Mary looked at the draft and let me know that rolling dough on foil is a flight of fancy.  It does not have the tensile strength of wax paper.  I must give that material more respect.

The ingredients, ready to go.
That's cubed flank steak, which was used back in the old days because it was cheap.
Not anymore.

Here's what you do to make a Fredlund Pasty or twelve.  It's a significant amount of work, so no point in making one or two.  They freeze well after cooking, and on the basis of the principles of flavor diffusion, they taste even better reheated.

- Cut up the meat and veggies.  I do the onions.
- Make the pie crusts.  Thank you, Mary.
- Roll them out.  That's my job.  (If you want to cheat and cut down on the labor, just buy pre-fab crusts.)
- Position the pie crusts all around the kitchen so assembly can commence.  If you don't have enough counter space, use the kitchen chairs.  Making sure the crusts have foil under them is my preference.  Easier to move, later.
- Start with the meat.  About a handful.  If it's a lean year, less.  If those "Too big to fail" have taken all your money, or you are a vegetarian, skip the meat.  They'll still be great.
- Pile on a layer of potatoes.
- Top that with a layer of rutabaga.  This is essential.  It's not a pasty without rutabaga.  The unique flavor comes from these "Swedish turnips."
- Now carrots and onions and butter and salt and pepper.
- Fold the dough over into a half-pie and crimp the edges.  Cut away the extra dough.  Maybe you'll have enough to make an extra pasty.  If not, be creative.
- Pop them in the oven preheated to 350 degrees F and wait an hour.  If you're not going to eat them right away, maybe 40 minutes, so that when you reheat them, there will be a little bit of cooking going on.

If you are at all like me, you're going to mess this assembly up on at least one of the pasties.  That's part of the adventure!  Every one can be unique.  If you know which one you messed up on (teardown and reassembly is a pain), mark it and tell everyone you are "experimenting" with the recipe.

Mary doing assembly.

She works fast!

In the oven, not quite done.

A word on the foil.  You don't need it.  You can cook them on the cookie sheet and deal with it, but the foil makes it really easy to wrap them right up and put them in the fridge or freezer, depending on your needs.

Oh, Yeah!

Another satisfied customer!!!

Well before the turn of the millennium, my Grandfather, Ernie, saw me put ketchup on a pasty.  

"What are you doing that for?" he asked.

"Well, it's a little bit dry.  I'm just making it a little better."

"No you're not.  You're ruining a perfectly good pasty."  

I suppose that when you're carrying a pasty, you really don't want a probable ketchup mess inside your shirt all day, so you develop a taste for the pasty "as is."  However, for both of us, given the choice of with or without condiments vs. no pasty, the choice has always been obvious.

One more thing.  Don't ever worry about cutting up too much stuff for the pasties.  Anything left over goes into the fridge for the next morning.  After a cup of coffee, heat up a little oil or butter (or lard, of course), and throw everything into the frying pan.   Cook 'til browned and softened.

Puts regular home fries to shame.

Oh, Yeah, Again !!!