The sour cream and apples that saved Thanksgiving

I never would have made it in the Scouts.
Last Wednesday evening, I was scheduled to cover a Town of Delaware board meeting – leaving me little time to prep for my part of Thanksgiving dinner.
The turkey and the fixings in the able hands of my parents, I had volunteered to contribute my usual batch of muffins.
But I wanted to mix things up this year, step outside the same old apple cinnamon spice routine.
I’ll make the pumpkin muffins I found in one of my cookbooks, I promised, and throw a few raisins in for an extra boost of iron.
It sounded simple enough, and I knew there was a hearty stock of raisins in the pantry on hand for a fast snack for Jillian.
The only problem was time.
So as I zipped up my camera bag and threw on my coat to leave for the meeting, I asked Jonathan to pull out a few sticks of butter to soften.
His question was innocent enough.
“How many?” he asked.
I didn’t know. So I sent him to pull out that cookbook while I finished winterizing my attire for the trip to Hortonville.
He had it open to the page when I took a glance at the page.
Uh oh.
These muffins promised to remain moist for days – thanks to a dollop of plain yogurt.
Our refrigerator, unfortunately, held only the last few bottles of drinkable strawberry – with Dora the Explorer on the label promising they’re “delicioso.”
Pumpkin and strawberry? I don’t think so.
So driving back from the meeting later that night, I zipped into the Trading Post in North Branch. Fingers crossed, I went straight for the dairy section.
I’ll give them credit. For a small store in the middle of nowhere, they were well-stocked.
But when I asked the guy standing next to me where in the heck I could find vanilla yogurt on the night before Thanksgiving, he told me what the cooler couldn’t: “Not here.”
I stepped back and assessed, and my eyes lit on a pint-sized container of Daisy sour cream.
I whipped open the glass door, and grabbed for it.
“Gonna fake it?” the guy next to me asked.
“I’m gonna try,” I said.
I paid the cashier and walked out a woman on a mission, good luck wishes from my fellow convenience store shopper ringing in my ear.
I paraded into the house like the cat that had caught the canary – I’d done one better, I’d saved Thanksgiving.
Or so I thought.
I quickly got to work whipping up the softened butter, grabbing eggs from the fridge and measuring out flour. Then I hit the cupboard for my pumpkin.
Expired, April 2007. Oops.
Oh well, I figured, there’s no mold. It’ll have to do.
I cut through the top and threw a few spoonfuls into the mix.
I was halfway through the list of ingredients when it jumped out at me . . . oatmeal.
I needed oatmeal. For muffins? Tonight?
That’s it, I said. That’s it.
No yogurt. Expired pumpkin. And now no oatmeal?
Thank goodness, I had apples.
And let me tell you, that sour cream made the best apple cinnamon spice muffins I’ve ever baked.

Baby, it’s hard being green

Sometimes, you just close your eyes.
Raised on “100 percent recycled” yellow slabs of paper, the kind specked with chunks of pulp that invariably caught my pencil tip, it’s hard to watch a roll of toilet paper sucked down the drain in one giant “whoosh.”
A Quilted Northern Double Roll, mind you, not that one-ply sandpaper on the “reduced because no one’s buying it” rack.
Worse is the hand-washing portion of the ordeal, the five or six good minutes spent with water spurting full blast out of the spigot.
With each of the taps turned until they won’t go anymore, we debate the merits of blue raspberry-scented soap from a container with a flashing hippo’s head on top or the good old-fashioned Bath and Body Works anti-bacterial I picked up on sale.
By breakfast, we move on to the internal struggles of an ’80s child raised to believe there are children starving in Ethiopia who has been forced to admit the perfectly good yogurt drink will be left on the table for the rest of the day when I’ll be forced to feed it to the bacteria gods at the bottom of my sink.
Comfort is there, at least, when she abandons the last bits of apple, the hand full of pretzels – they’ll go in the compost pile and live another day.
If I’m being overdramatic, forgive me.
I was one of those kids watching Tina Turner, Billy Joel, the Boss and Stevie Wonder tell me, we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day . . .
OK, yes, it was hokie.
But it stuck.
Judging by the big bags of paper products at the edge of my dining room, just waiting to be carted off on recycling day, so did a lot of those demands on a generation to straighten up and fly right.
I turn the water off to brush my teeth. I open the curtains by day, turn just a light or two on by night.
I’m guilty, by all means, of using disposable diapers, but I have strict rules for “reusing” those extra bits of this and that.
I’m trying at least, but I’m realistic.
I’m a parent.
So the innocent request to “leave the hall light on . . . and the door open, just a little bit” when putting Jillian to bed is met with a sigh.
But remembering the years I spent with a clip-on light on my bunk, the black plastic ring brittle from too many nights when I fell asleep, a book still in my hand, I do it.
I leave the door ajar and flick the switch, comforted by the compact fluorescent bulb in the single hallway fixture.

This woman’s junk

There’s just something so good about a Website where someone posts “Offered – Composted Horse Manure,” and they’re serious!
I’ve developed a new Web obsession, folks, at least relatively new to me.
On a tip several years back from a local librarian (they’re fountains of information, you know), I signed up for Sullivan County’s own Freecycle.
The premise is simple – keep stuff out of the landfill (a la “recycle), and no money can change hands (thus “free…”).
I’ve made a few transactions in the past year, mostly on behalf of Jillian who has benefited from two postings for little girl clothing and a Disney Princess keyboard that, she was delighted to report, plays her favorite song.
Indeed it does.
Over and over and over.
But, hey, it was free. And she loves that that little pink piano with the tinny rendition of “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Just last week I had my first successful posting, passing on a grocery bag full of Pampers to a grandmother-to-be.
It’s jumpstarted me into the holiday season like nothing could this year with the election funk of early November.
We’re still keeping my Santa Claus alias a secret from my daughter - although the requisite November cold has left my nose a curious shade of red not seen in nature.
But in my own small way, as I rid my attic of long-forgotten had-to-have goodies, I’m becoming part of a network that bills itself as “changing the world one gift at a time.”
That’s the beauty of freecycle.org.
These are gifts folks – whether, like me, you wanted to clear up your junk room before holiday gift giving fills it back up or you’ve answered the numerous “wanted” posts by a mom desperate for some infant-focused entertainment or a church looking for a coffee pot to keep the drip going at its pancake breakfasts.
I can’t help it, I’m a bit of a pack rat.
Bits of ribbon could one day adorn the perfect present.
Plastic medicine bottles are the optimum size for wayward buttons.
And about those buttons . . .
On Freecycle, I’ve found kindred spirits.
They’re the folks who post cane chairs in need of recaning or a box full of ladies purses.
A handy fix-it type can do that chair up in a jiffy, right?
And somewhere out there is a little girl itching for purses to add to her trunk full of big-girl dress up clothes.
Some things are just too good to be thrown away.
Like “plenty of composted horse manure available in Monticello.”
Interested? They’ll even load the truck for you “if you give us some warning!”
That’s some Sullivan County spirit for you.
I’d say I’m ready for the holidays.

Whew! It’s almost over!

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
This election season has done me in.
The sniping.
The back-biting.
The rumors.
The lying.
The back-room back-slapping.
The late-in-the-game games.
Until this year, I’ve been blessed in my position at the paper to avoid much of the political beat.
My column notwithstanding, where you all know I’ve opined as a knee-jerk liberal with a few surprisingly conservative tendencies, I’ve been able to remain apolitical.
That’s, of course, the way a reporter should be.
And it’s the way I’ve carried myself throughout this nasty campaign season.
Even when speaking with my favorites, I’ve been careful not to tip my hand.
And like most of my colleagues, I’ve written my path right down the middle.
But that back-biting. Those rumors.
Tomorrow we return to the days when a picture in the paper is just a picture, when a story is just a story.
I can frame my shot at a fund-raiser without worrying that a politician in the running is going to pop up at the far left, ruining my chances for a top-of-the-fold front-page lead-off picture.
I can interview the people who matter to the story – without whispers that I’m doing damage to a campaign.
The tricky thing about the news business in the weeks leading up to an election is balancing the real stories with the mumbo jumbo.
Government doesn’t stop running. Incumbents don’t stop working – we hope!
They’re still making the sort of news that would be fit to print any other month of the year. And we’re still covering it.
We’re still out at the meetings – where too few resident seats are filled.
We’re doing our investigations, and we’re writing up the truth.
We’re providing you all with a chance to make good choices today, election day.
I’ve pondered a law that would require people to attend one governmental function a year – just to make their choice that much more informed.
Not practical, but boy, it would make my job easier!
Instead, I offer my apolitical advice.
Vote on what you know today, not what you’ve heard. Vote on what you’ve read that’s been backed by facts.
Vote on the jobs done by the incumbents – good or bad.
Don’t be fooled by the tax dollar bait and switch or the silver-lined clouds of campaign promises.
Vote on the here and now, factor in the past, but don’t forget the future.
Tomorrow, no matter the results, at least you’ll know you made the right choice.