Posted by: Sam McLeod in Tradition, Downtown on
Mar 29, 2010
"They're not changing anything are they?"
"Don't know."
"I can't see what they're doing in there with all that brown paper in the windows. Why are they hiding what they're doing in there? Must be changing things. I'm not going in there if they change anything."
"Guess they don't want our advice."
"Shoot, I been in there every day for the past 20 years. You'd think they'd want to know what I think. I'd tell 'em if they asked. Yes, sir. I'd tell 'em not to change a thing. This place is an institution. Can't just go changing everything, you know."
"Nothing?"
"Well, they could update the bathrooms. Those need some work."
"That's all?"
"And some light upstairs. Can't see a thing up there. And the awning. It's seen better days. And I'd keep a good baker in there. I like the cinnamon rolls. You don't think they'll get rid of the cinnamon rolls, do you?"
"Don't know..."
"And they could do some repainting. And it'd be nice if they got rid of the yelling-that ‘Jack of Spades' stuff. Hurts my ears. And menus would be good. They better keep spaghetti night. I'm not going in there if they get rid of spaghetti night."
Posted by: Sam McLeod in Tradition, Food on
Jan 04, 2010
Ham is a tradition in our family-starting this year.
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. My family ate Tennessee country ham and biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning. The salt-cured ham was a special treat reserved for the holidays-generally a gift form one of my father's patients who couldn't pay his doctor's bill.
My mother scraped the green-blue mold off the ham, soaked it in water in a five-pound lard tin for a couple of days to remove some of the saltiness, then simmered the ham in the same tin on the stovetop starting late on Christmas Eve, letting it slow-cook all night long so we'd have a ham ready to slice on Christmas morning.
When I married Annie, we visited her family in Richmond, Virginia on Christmas every now and again. Virginia ham and rolls were part of their Christmas Eve dinner. The Virginia ham was incredibly salty and therefore sliced very thin. A little bit went a long way on a homemade yeasty roll.
And then we moved west and lost touch with the Christmas ham tradition, until this year when I happened to see a ham recipe in a magazine. The memories came streaming back. I decided to give it a try.
Posted by: Becky St. Clair in Tradition, Business on
Dec 14, 2009
It was cold, but I didn't care. That's the way it was supposed to be. I rubbed my gloved hands together and giggled quietly at the fog escaping my lips every time I breathed. I felt like I was five years old, going with Grandpa to pick out the very best Christmas tree.
I wasn't with Grandpa, and I certainly wasn't five years old. I'd been out of college a couple of years and was with my husband of only slightly longer. We were getting our very first real Christmas tree as a couple (before we'd only had the two-feet-tall potted ones from Wal-Mart), and had decided to go the route everyone was talking about: Klickers.
Before then, I'd only ever known about Klickers strawberries. People around the Walla Walla Valley love Klickers berries and buy them year-round. Turns out Klickers is so much more than berries.
