Spring Has Sprung...Let's Have Lemonade Poke Cake

It hardly seems we had a winter in northeastern Oklahoma this year. Not that I mind. Winter isn’t my favorite time of year. Who can forget Snowmageddon 2011? I love a good snow day just as much as the next person, but 20 inches of drifting snow bordered on the ridiculous.

In honor of this early spring, which seems to have been going on since January, I’m sharing a recipe my mother used to make that’s still a favorite in our family: Lemonade Poke Cake. When I see the daffodils in bloom, I’m reminded of this fresh and sweet yellow cake that’s so easy anyone can make it.

My father adores anything lemon. When I was little, Daddy would take everyone’s iced tea lemon wedge and eat it like a slice of orange. My pucker reflex would engage just watching him chew the tart lemon flesh away from the peel.

Momma, of course, knew that this cake was Daddy’s favorite and she made it often. I don’t remember if Momma got this recipe from somebody or just made it up herself, but knowing her, it was the latter. She was so very clever that way.

Last year I made a trip to the State Capital and I took pieces of this cake to our area legislators. They do such a good job that I thought they all needed a little slice of home. One of them called me later that evening to thank me and told me it was the best cake he’d ever eaten. He will be getting another cake this year.

To make Lemonade Poke Cake, you’ll need the following ingredients:

1 lemon cake mix (any brand will do, but I’m fond of Pillsbury and it’s usually on sale)

3 eggs

1 c. water

1/3 c. canola oil

½ can lemonade concentrate, thawed and undiluted

2 c. powdered sugar (eyeball it)

Make the cake according to the package directions. If you’re using the Pillsbury cake mix, you will use the three eggs, cup of water, and third cup of canola oil in the ingredients list. Bake in a 9x13-inch baking pan as directed on the package.

Once you’ve removed the finished cake from the oven, poke holes all over the cake down to the bottom of the pan. I use a metal skewer for this task. Don’t be skimpy in poking the holes, because you’re going to pour a scrumptious glaze over the top very soon.

After you’ve poked the cake all over, whisk together the ½ can of lemonade concentrate and approximately two cups of powdered sugar. If there are lumps of powdered sugar in the glaze, allow it to sit for a little bit and whisk again. Pour the glaze over the top of the cake.

When you pour the glaze over the cake, it will seep down into the holes and form a slight glaze on top of the cake. Allow to cool completely and serve. This cake is very rich, so you should be able to serve 15 people very comfortably. It also makes cute little petit-fours if cut up into smaller pieces.

Thank you, Momma, for yet another yummy-licious recipe. You were the best cook EVER!

Fried Cabbage and My Gram

Growing up, I was surrounded by amazingly strong women. They were proper ladies with good manners when the occasion called for it, but behind closed doors they let their hair down and became wild and crazy chicks who knew how to throw a party. They are also some of the best damn cooks on the face of the planet.

One of these women was my Gram, Ruth Darlene. Gram never went into town unless she got "cleaned up." She was a card shark, too. She'd play me at Jubal, wouldn't even let me win, and without repentance took all of my money. Her laugh was big, deep, and contagious and she could belch loud enough to be heard in about five surrounding counties. I tried to belch like her once and about tossed up my cookies.

This is Gram (seated in the black dress) with her five sisters: Melba, Patsy, Isabelle, Shirley, and Alma. Only Aunt Isabelle and Aunt Melba are still with us. (I forgot to mention Uncle Tommy - the youngest boy - in my original post. Sorry, Uncle Tommy! I think he's about the same age as my Momma, so he very well may not have been born yet when this picture was taken. With seven children, their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins, and so forth...well, you can imagine how loud it is at our family reunions! It's a good kind of loud, though.)

My Gram was one of the smartest women I knew. When my Mom and Dad would drop us kids off to spend the weekend at Gram and Pop's, Gram would stand at her picture window in the kitchen to make sure my parents were good and gone, then she'd make three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fill three small jelly jars half full of beer. We kids thought we were something else eating those sandwiches and drinking that beer! Then, we'd all take a nap. Yep, that Gram was one smart lady!

This is me sitting on Gram's couch back in the day with Pee-Podie. My mother presented me with this pillow, made by a cousin of mine and said "Pretty pillow." Somehow, I got "Pee-Podie" out of that. Pee-Podie is buried somewhere on the side of the road between Caney, Kansas and Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I got car sick and Pee-Podie took a direct hit. Momma said it had to go.

Gram had a copper canister of bacon drippings sitting on her stove at all times. Nearly every recipe of Gram's started with one spoonful of bacon drippings in one of her well-seasoned cast-iron skillets. It just made everything taste better.

Gram taught me how to make Fried Cabbage. Usually, that fried cabbage went with beans and cornbread and it was so good I can still remember how wonderful it tasted.

Gram would be appalled to know that I don't keep my bacon drippings in a canister on my stove. That's wasteful, she'd say. She would really hate the center-cut bacon I use, too. It doesn't render nearly enough drippings.

Every once in a while, I get a hankering for Fried Cabbage, so I make some. You can, too. It's as easy as pie...

Start out with four slices of bacon (center-cut) or 1 tablespoon of bacon drippings (if you're old-school like my Gram and you've got some hanging out on your stove). Cook the bacon until it's almost crisp. Then, remove the bacon from the pan. Pour off all but one tablespoon of drippings. Again, if you've got the can and you want to save the drippings, pour them into your collection.

Next, core a head of cabbage, slice it in half, and chop it into slivers. You can use a half to a full head of cabbage...whatever amount will feed your family. Next, dice an onion - one whole small onion or half of a medium or large onion.

Add the cabbage and onion to the pan with the bacon drippings. Cook the cabbage and onion until they are nicely wilted and a little brown. Be careful not to burn it! It should look something like this...

Now, salt and pepper it generously and add that crumbled cooked bacon back in. Gram's version didn't have bacon in it, but I like bacon quite a lot, and since it's a terrible waste to throw it away (and Gram never wasted anything if she could avoid it), I throw it in.

Enjoy Gram's Fried Cabbage. With or without a pot of beans and cornbread!

Where Has ClareMom Been?

I've been sick.

No. I mean, I've been really, really sick. Like, scary sick. Half of the people who read this blog see me at least weekly (if not daily) and can attest that I have not been myself.

It started in September with a sinus infection. I treated it with antibiotics. It never cleared up. It got worse. I became this lethargic, nauseous, sleepy, achy pile of bones. I've lost 20 pounds and even though I was one of those folks who could afford to lose a few, trust me when I say that this is no diet plan I'd recommend.

Now, before you go off trying to diagnose me and asking me if I have a tick-borne illness (no - they've checked) or if I am pregnant (definitely not! Dwayne would kill me), let me say that I have been seeing an internist and he is working on figuring out what is going on. The best we can tell, what I have is autoimmune, and I fear that it is Crohn's disease, which my mother battled most of her life. Knowing what it is will be half of the battle. The other half will be figuring out what causes it to flare...the most likely culprit being stress, which I've had boatloads of lately. But that's another discussion for another blog posting.

That should explain where ClareMom has been the past three months. Blogging about food? Forget it! The mere thought of food turned my stomach. I became a withering pile of humanity lying in my bed feeling sorry for myself and leaving all the parenting to my much better half. He rose to the occasion like a champ, even hovering over me with a concerned look on his face. I really did look as though I was a day or two away from pushing up daisies.

While I was lying there, cataloging all of the things I wasn't getting done at work and at home, and feeling upset that I couldn't run around like the marathon mother that I had formerly been, for the first time in a long time I had plenty of minutes to feel sorry for myself. When you've already buried one parent, mortality takes on a whole new meaning. I began calculating how much time I would have left if I were to die at the same age my mother was. Seventeen years. That's all I'd have left.

I realize how morbid, maudlin, and completely miserable this line of thinking must appear to you. But if I am to be completely honest, this is where my mind went when confronted with the fact that I wasn't just going to "bounce back." I had to face facts. I'm not a spry 25-year-old anymore. I'm getting old and my body isn't cooperating the way it used to.

And then, to make things worse, I calculated how old Jared and Jade would be would be if I were to die at 59. Respectively, they'd be 30 and 24. And my heart hurt remembering how lost and unhinged I felt when, at the age of 37, I lost my mother. There was so much we didn't talk about. So much I didn't know.

It's funny now to think about the things I wanted to ask her about. Who was going to tell me about menopause and what it's like? Who was going to give me tips on being a good grandma? Who was going to hold my hand when I went through my first health crisis? These were the things I was thinking about as they lowered my mother's body into the grave. I've always been that way...having some time with a beloved family member has never been enough. I always want more. I run after them, even though they're gone.

Everything within me screams out that my children won't ever know that feeling. I want to leave them with good, solid, truthful information. Lessons gleaned from a life well-lived. Lessons gained from picking myself up out of the dust of failure. Advice and counsel on what to do when you don't know what to do.

So, this year (and perhaps into 2013), I will be dedicating myself to writing advice to my children on this blog in addition to favorite recipes (when I get my appetite back). Perhaps it will help you and your children, too. Maybe you'll read it and decide that I am certifiable. I resemble that remark. Maybe you'll read it and decide you have a few things you want to say to your own children. Maybe you'll even write those things down.

What harm can it do?

At least you know you won't have to read about my experiences with menopause, (a) because I have not yet experienced it; and (b) because I am clueless about it (although I am looking forward to not having my "monthly bill" anymore).

Happy New Year to my family, friends, and faithful followers. God bless you in 2012.

One Cool Kid

One day last school year, Jared arrived home and promptly announced to both his father and I that he is not one of the "cool" kids. Last night, as we were working together on his homework, he said it again.

Why is it that my heart breaks when I hear this? Is it that I worry about my son feeling "less than" because he doesn't fit in?

Once upon a time, I was a middle-schooler like Jared. People who were cool at my school were preppy, Izod-wearing conformists; scary mohawk-wearing skateboarders; mammoth football-playing jocks; and knife-wielding hoodlums who smoked cigarettes at the bus stop.

I was a good girl who enjoyed reading and learning. I was not cool, either. And, I remember feeling really bad about it, like I ought to shake things up and show up to school dressed like Sandy did in the final scenes of "Grease," or bring a flask to school, or go out for the volleyball team. Except that if I did those things, it would be play-acting, because none of those things were really me. I would feel like an inauthentic idiot and somebody would notice me and single me out for torture.

I suspect that the "cool rules" have changed very little in 30 years. I don't want my son to be a conformist. I don't want him to be a non-conformist. I just want him to be who God created him to be and to be unapologetic about it.

I realize what this is. It's the human struggle to find a "pecking order." To put people into their places. What I realize now, that I didn't realize back in the day, is that the children learn this stuff at home, from their parents, who are living vicariously through their children...desperate to eke out their own place in society and willing to hitch a ride on the backs of their progeny. It's the reason we have homecoming queens, valedictorians, and big men on campus.

I don't really care if Jared is considered "cool" by his peers. He's very cool in my book. Jared is: (a) kind, (b) compassionate, (c) smart, (d) talented, (e) funny, (f) beautiful. I could go on for days.

I've decided that I'm going to text him each day something I think is cool about him.

Today's installment: "You say you aren't one of the 'cool' kids. I say you're very cool. Wanna know why? You love the OSU Cowboys, even when they don't win. I love you, son!"

A New Recipe: Hot Chicken Salad

I hosted the neighborhood Bunco game at my house last month. Never mind that I was on the schedule to host in February. Here's the email I sent out to the girls to explain the situation:

"Grab a tissue for this tale of woe...It was January 31, 2011 when I received the Bunco Bag from CF. The next day, 20 inches of snow fell...and then another 15 inches of snow fell...and then I forgot...and then I slept (a lot)...and then in early May, I cleaned the guest room in preparation for international guests...and unearthed...THE BUNCO BAG!

So here it is, June 15, 2011 and I'm sure we'd all love just a smidgen of that snow we had mere months ago as we swelter in the 90-degree heat. And, before you cuss me and call me a bad Bunco host (which I am), allow me to make amends by inviting you to mi casa on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 7 p.m. for Bunco. Yes, I know that many are on vacation or getting ready to go on vacation, but take a break and come on down.

I will be serving dinner...Hot Chicken Salad and all the trimmings...and wine, beer, and dessert. You will not want to miss it. Dinner and BUNCO...what a deal! RSVP, please...don't make me call you."

Normally, the Bunco hostess makes the dessert, provides the beverages (lots of beer and wine), and puts out snacks at each table. But this was not nearly enough prostration to make up for my stunning failure as a Bunco hostess.

I had to pull out the big guns. I had to devise a spectacular menu that would get me out of the doghouse with women who know precisely where I live. Not to mention that one is my doctor. You don't mess with Bunco babes, man. They're serious about getting out of the house at least once a month and by my count, I had deprived them of five months of gambling. My goose was cooked!

So, with sweaty palms, I went to my recipe box and found my Grandma Remke's Hot Chicken Salad recipe. Then, dug until I found a recipe for Strawberry Pretzel Salad that I'd had at a club meeting, and then I made Dilled Green Beans, another Grandma Remke recipe.

The food was superb, if I do say so myself.

Grandma Remke was an excellent cook, but she didn't think so. She taught me lots of handy hints and tips in the kitchen and shared more than one winning recipe with me. This Hot Chicken Salad recipe was one she took with her to Bartlesville Garden Club meetings. The recipe originally called for potato chips crushed over the top of the casserole, but Grandma was always looking for ways to make things healthier and lower in fat, so she substituted crushed corn flakes cereal instead. I like the corn flakes just fine, so I've kept the recipe just the way it is.

I've made this for many ladies luncheons myself over the years and it is always a hit.

GRANDMA REMKE'S HOT CHICKEN SALAD

1/4 c. oleo or butter
1/2 c. chopped onion
1 4-ounce jar pimientos, drained
6 ounces sliced almonds (or slivered)
1/3 green bell pepper, diced
1 c. chopped celery
4 c. diced cooked chicken
1 c. mayonnaise
1 can (10 3/4 ounce) cream of celery soup
1 tsp. salt
1 c. crushed corn flake cereal

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, pimientos, almonds, bell pepper, and celery. Saute until vegetables are tender. Place in a bowl and add chicken, mayonnaise, soup, and salt; stir well. Spread mixture evenly into an ungreased 13x9" baking dish. Sprinkle with crushed corn flakes. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serves 8.

I am happy to report that my friends, neighbors, and Bunco friends enjoyed the food and are no longer staring icily at me as I roll down the street.

Thank the good Lord above I've got mad skills in the kitchen!

Acceptance

After years of talking about it, I have finally broken down and am starting a Parent Support Group for people raising children with high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome. I finally determined that if it was important enough to talk about, it was important enough to do.

The first meeting will be June 30th and I have to admit...I'm excited. I suspect that there are many parents, like Dwayne and I, who are down in the trenches, waking up in a new world every day with their special needs child, working hard, barely surviving, and frankly, doing the best they can under less-than-optimal conditions.

No one comes to parenthood wishing for a special needs child. But that's life. It's a lot like the old pre-school adage: "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit." Which brings me to the topic of this post: acceptance.

I'm sure you're just as familiar as I am with the current cultural buzzwords "diversity," "inclusion," and "tolerance."

I find these words to be completely inadequate to describe the kind of world I want my children to live in. Diversity is a throw-away word. If you get right down to it, we're all diverse. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, right down to our fingerprints, of which no two are the same. Every person, then is a masterpiece, a one-of-a-kind...never to be duplicated again.

With his amazing height, his sandy-blonde hair, and big brown peepers, my son appears to be the typical 12-year-old. His is largely an invisible disability, and people expect things out of him that he's not capable of doing at this time. Behaviors typically-developing children pick up on naturally come much harder to Jared. I'm sure that most of the time he feels like an alien who crash-landed to earth.

Inclusion implies that there are boundaries in our world - that some are inside the circle of influence and some are outside of it. I think those boundaries (which largely exist in people's minds) need to be completely demolished. No one is better than anyone else in this world. We are all children of God and we deserve to be treated that way by our fellow man.

Tolerance is a word I hate with a passion. Merely tolerating a person who is different from you isn't nearly enough. It implies that the feelings of hatred or misunderstanding still exist somewhere within the person, but that the person has chosen to simply deal with the individual and nothing more.

Acceptance is the better term, I think. When we accept a person just as they are, we're basically saying, "I see YOU, and what I see is wonderful." Our world would be a much better place if we'd quit criticizing each other and just give one another a pass.

Is it really your business that your friend is overweight? Does she need you to tell her that she's fat? Even if you are concerned about her health, what must it do to her psyche to hear you say, "You really need to lose some weight?" Accept her for who she is and let her know that you love her. She is your friend, after all.

What about the man in your Sunday School class who stutters and with whom conversations are much longer than necessary? Are his thoughts any less important because he can't communicate as well as you can? Take time to listen. You may learn something.

And what about the little boy at your daughter's school who uses a walker and appears to have something wrong with his legs? Is it really important to go up to his mother with pity in your voice and ask her about it? Will you be unable to function without knowing? Or can you look into his deep blue eyes and see his precious soul?

Or how about those ugly things you say about yourself when you look in the mirror. Do you see wrinkles, fat, moles, and sags? Or do you see God's creation - aging, yes, but still beautiful?

Is it really such a burden to approach the people on your daily path with kindness, understanding, and acceptance?

This is the kind of person I aspire to be. This is the world I want my children to grow up in, and I don't think I am alone.

It all begins with accepting ourselves - warts and all - and accepting that we aren't perfect. And it ends with understanding the same thing about others and letting them just be.

The educator Mary McLeod Bethune once said, "Love thy neighbor is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced." Amen, Sister Mary!

Snow My Goodness!

An innocent email I received in February from my good friend and "shoe dealer" Susan Dittrich came back to bite me in the hiney this weekend.

Customarily, I would refer to Susan as a drug dealer, since shoes are my drug of choice, but I don't want to sully her reputation any, she being sweet, nice, and kind. And, she has good taste in shoes and is single-handedly responsible for contributing to my delinquency.

The email asked, very innocently, if I would like to be a contestant in the 2011 Barrister's Bowl, a fundraiser for 12&12, a very worthy charitable organization that assists people with substance abuse issues in the Tulsa area. I said, "Sure!" without asking any questions about what I was signing on for.

Mistake! Big mistake...

The Barrister's Bowl is a competition amongst attorneys who select a subject from a bowl labeled "person," "place," or "thing," and then each victim (I mean, contestant), must speak for three to five minutes extemporaneously and humorously on said topic.

Now, never mind that I am not even an attorney for pity's sake. Never mind that half of the attorneys I know hate my guts and the other half are so stunned by my charm and good looks that they like me in spite of their better judgment.

I received my list of topics on Tuesday before the Saturday event, but I was too busy at work to even look at the list until Friday. I wracked my brain trying to come up with funny stories or jokes about each topic under the "Thing" category. Of course, there were topics I liked much better than the others, and I began praying fervently that I would select one of the primo topics and stay away from the less exciting ones like "pajama jeans" and "gas prices."

So Saturday night, after ample applications of antiperspirant and multiple trips to the bathroom to clear my body of all fluids, I sat nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame while one after another contestant went up to discover their fate. I had one glass of pinot noir to loosen up and a couple of bites of the complimentary heavy hors d'oeuvres and said one last prayer.

I was number four in the lineup. I went up to the stage, stirred the topics around in the bowl and came out with - holy mackerel! - "Snowmaggedon 2011," one of the topics I prayed I would get. Whoever said that there isn't a Jesus up in heaven hanging on our every word is just plain wrong.

So, here is my story of Snowmaggedon 2011. I'm not sure it accurately reflects all that I said Saturday evening, because in my sweat-induced panic while on stage, I can barely remember ANYTHING I said.

I know I started out by telling the crowd that they'd been ripped off, because the invitation said 12 attorneys would be competing for the coveted Barrister's Bowl. And, I admitted that I am not, nor will I ever be, an attorney. I said that if it weren't for 12&12's reputation as a most worthwhile charity, I would insist that the sponsorship of the Alexander Family Foundation (the organization that ended up with me as their contestant) must be returned immediately.

Then I launched into my story of Snowmaggedon 2011, which is completely true because (a) I am NOT an attorney and I always tell the truth and (b) I went back and checked Facebook for all facts in evidence beginning January 31, 2011, the day before Snowmaggedon began.

See? I could be an attorney. I simply choose not to be.

Here is my status update from precisely 9:18 p.m. on Monday, January 31st before the snowstorm hit: "Grant completed and delivered to Pryor...check. Grocery store...check. Gas station...check. Candles and flashlights working...check. Work boxed up and brought home...check. Library books for the kids...check. Liquor store...CHECK. Hey, the last one is absolutely necessary if I'm going to be cooped up with the kids for three days. You gotta give me that one!"

I made fun of the blue hairs that were clogging the aisles of the grocery stores and one of the judges, who had a beautiful salt-and-pepper hairdo, gonged me and told me to watch it talking about blue hairs.

On February 1, at exactly 11:54 a.m., my Facebook status stated, "Cleaning house and watching the snow drift. I am caught up on laundry and dishes. If you wanted to get into our house, you wouldn't be able to. There are thigh-high drifts on both porches."

Later that evening at precisely 10:57 p.m., I stated, "The news just said that Claremore received 20 inches of snow. I believe it! It's encroaching on the house!" We had three foot drifts in places because Dwayne, our house engineer, measured.

This is the part of the story where I began picking on my poor husband, Dwayne, who is an engineer and cannot stand to be stranded anywhere for any length of time. I think we were, at that point, on Fistfight #38 between our two hooligans. He claimed that he needed to get to work in Tulsa, where he had some sort of a proposal due later in the week. I wasn't quite sure I believed him.

On Wednesday, February 2, at 8:53 a.m., I changed my status to: "Watching my silly husband trying to get out of our driveway. He must go to work! Now, he's enlisted the help of our sweet neighbor, Gene, to try to help him get unstuck. So much for 4WD. Fancy 4WD pickup truck, allow me to introduce you to 20 inches of drifting snow!"

After the truck was unstuck, Dwayne came inside, muttering obscenities under his breath. I wondered to myself how long it would take him to remember that he has a four-wheeler that could knock enough snow down to help him get out of the driveway.

An hour later, he was in the garage starting it up, and I was commending myself for having the ability to Vulcan-mind-meld my husband after 16 years of marriage.

Then, this status update at 11:15 a.m.: "Troubles abound...now the 4-wheeler needs a jump!" The battery had died in the sub-freezing temperatures. While utilizing his blue truck to jump the four-wheeler, his eye spied our old green 2001 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.

Then, this: "2:45 p.m. driveway update: He is in the cul-de-sac! He is using his old green truck to back up and pull forward numerous times until he can get a path established. Sometimes, you have to get out the not-so-fancy tools to get the job done. Snow: 1, Dwayne: 1. Now, to get to the end of Oakridge and out onto Blue Starr Drive!"

At 4:50 p.m., my status revealed: "I've not seen Dwayne since 2:45. Either he's down the street using the green truck to plow other people's driveways, or he's long gone and left me hanging with these two kids! Help!"

Then at 8:06 p.m., I wrote: "He came back. Hallelujah! I am baking him apple cinnamon bread with a streusel topping to show my appreciation. Love you, honey! And, thank you for filling my life with laughter. I've had great fun watching you today."

And that, my friends, is how the Henderson's survived Snowmaggedon 2011.