My sister Bec just spent a few weeks with us to get away from the Arizona heat. It’s true that you don’t really know someone until you live with them for a while – at least I’m sure that’s what she would say.

You see, the fact of the matter – and what I don’t think she suspected – is that I’m a slob.

She would never tell me that, but I’m pretty sure she headed straight to her doctor’s office when she got back to Arizona to get a tetanus shot. Just in case. And frankly that was probably a smart move.

I come from a long line of NOT slobs. So, you see, I have no excuse.

My mom kept an immaculately clean house. She washed and changed bed sheets every Wednesday. She did I don’t know how many loads of laundry each week, probably including Dad’s bakery whites. She dusted and mopped her floor weekly. Each night after dinner (with help from the kids), she washed the dishes, wiped down the counters, and swept the floor. This, on top of preparing dinner every night, owning a business that kept her incredibly occupied, and being the mother of four children.

I don’t own a business, we have no kids in the house, and yet I change bed sheets every couple of weeks, I wash my kitchen floor when footprints begin to bother me, I haphazardly wipe down my counter, always leaving streaks in the process. My bathrooms are cleaned just often enough to prevent state authorities from coming in to shut down my house. I do laundry when Bill starts pulling out his travel underwear. Sigh.

But I can cook! Does that count for anything?

I feel compelled to tell you that I am, of course, exaggerating. I tell you this in fear that I will never again have a house guest. It’s true; I really am exaggerating. But not by much.

I loathe housework. I always have. I always will. I can walk past clutter longer than any other human being I know. I have taken to putting things on the steps that need to go upstairs, but I can walk over them for days. There can be something sitting on a counter that only needs to be put into a drawer in the next room, and it will remain there for, oh, I don’t know, three months.

For most of my married life (and therefore, most of my life in this almost-3,000 square foot home – I had a cleaning lady. She did an admirable job, but I used to think she and the helpers she brought along with her must – MUST – have been saying in Spanish, “These people are pigs and should not be allowed to own a home.” Unlike my mother-in-law, I did not clean my house in preparation for the cleaning lady. I just left her check on the table and hid until she was gone.

I stopped having a cleaning lady because I simply cannot justify paying someone to do what I think I should do now that I am retired. That’s, of course, not necessarily true. There would be many very good reasons to pay someone to clean my house, not the least of which is that then my house would actually get cleaned. Still, I can always think of a better way to spend a hundred-some every month than on house cleaning. Expensive bottles of liqueurs for my Barefoot Contessa recipes, for example.

All this is to say that I want to announce to the world, and particularly my sister, that I spent the better part of yesterday morning cleaning my kitchen. I swept, I scrubbed, I buffed, I polished, I disinfected, I tossed away food with stuff growing on it, I wiped down all of my appliances. Whew.

See how shiny? It looks great and it makes me very happy. I informed Bill that we can’t cook or eat or even walk in the kitchen for at least a week. But even as I gaze lovingly at my clean counters, I see the dust settling.

It’s almost not worth it, is it? Sorry Mom.

Yesterday Jen and Bill and I took our stepmother Shirley out for her birthday. We were supposed to go last week when Bec was still here, but the heavy rain prevented us from being able to make it to Loveland. It rained so hard for a few days there that I caught Bill out back getting the supplies together to build the ark. He had the foxes all lined up. We were concerned that there are three, and he’s only supposed to bring two. Perhaps we could leave behind the one who has decided my perennial garden is a great bedroom and has smashed down my flowers.

Anyhoo, we had lunch at Shirley’s favorite place, Panera’s. We each ate a half of a sandwich and either a healthy salad or a nourishing bowl of soup. We were feeling satisfied and proud of ourselves for eating a wonderful light lunch that was good for us. That is, until I looked across the street and saw the Menchies sign. Oh-oh.

Just like in a television drama…..

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER…….

Kaiya and Mylee spent the day with me Saturday. While Kaiya happily watched a Disney movie about fairies, Mylee – who would prefer to watch a movie about monster trucks – said, “Nana, I want to do something fun.”

How about if I read a book to you? Nope.

Want to color a picture for me? Nosireebob.

What if we go outside and dead head my flowers? Not on your life. (It was worth a try.)

“I want to go get frozen yogurt,” she said firmly. Because Mylee says everything with great conviction.

The movie was just getting over and Kaiya was happy to join us, so off we went to their favorite frozen yogurt place (with which I was wholly unfamiliar) – Menchies.

Those two were a sight to behold as they a) used the little tasting cups to sample VERY MANY flavors, and b) piled on the toppings after carefully making their yogurt selection. They were old pros in young bodies.

FAST FORWARD TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

Bill, Jen, Shirley, and I were not nearly as adorable as we too selected our flavors and piled on our toppings. We did, however, enjoy our frozen yogurt immensely.

But it got us talking about desserts in general. In particular, our childhood experiences with desserts.

Bill’s mother provided dessert for her family EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK.  Generally homemade. How could I possibly wonder how Bill got such a sweet tooth?

Conversely, my mother almost never offered us dessert after dinner. She might make an angel food cake from a box for our birthdays. If we were very lucky and the moon and Venus were aligned in the seventh house, she might make us a banana cream pie.

But there is one dessert she offered once in a while that remains in my memory. Canned date nut roll. She would open the can on both ends, push out the roll, slice it in six pieces, and serve it with homemade whipped cream. It was delicious.

Canned Date Nut Roll, circa 1960.

I have looked for cans of date nut roll at numerous grocery stores to no avail. I have checked online, and can only find canned date nut bread made by the Vermont Country Store for a mere $17.00. Are you kidding me? Still, now that I’m thinking about it again, I may get desperate enough.

I could bake date nut bread, but the only recipe I have been able to find is from the Barefoot Contessa and contains about 187 ingredients – one of which is Cointreau, an orange-flavored liqueur, because she is incapable of offering a recipe for a dessert that doesn’t include an expensive liqueur. I’m not opposed to liqueur, mind you, but I have 10 or 15 bottles of stuff with names I can’t pronounce that have one tablespoon out of them that I’ve used in a Barefoot Contessa recipe.

And somehow I just don’t think it will be the same. Maybe that canned date nut roll was just so good because we really didn’t get dessert very often and it was such a treat. And maybe I loved it because the circles were so perfectly round.

Still, I bet date nut bread would travel well, and Bill will begin working on that ark very soon…..

I had a lot to smile about last week during my trip to Nebraska. However, my sister and I came across this sign in a suburb of Omaha that literally made us turn around and go back so we could take a picture.

We would call this a traffic circle in Colorado. But then, thanks to our marijuana laws, our traffic is much calmer.

Have a good weekend.

The “castle” in Cedar Rapids, Nebraska, in which my mother’s family lived for a period of time.

My BFF since 2^nd grade is Irish, and has that characteristic Irish ability to tell a good yarn. The amount of truth in any one story is debatable, but she’ll make you laugh.

But this past week, while visiting with my relatives in Nebraska, I discovered that the ability to spin a delightful story isn’t limited to the Irish. The Polish apparently have the knack as well.

To wit….

From my cousin Bill: My dad’s birthday fell on the same day as my Aunt Cork and Uncle Jeep’s anniversary. Furthermore, the next day was Cork’s birthday. They often celebrated all events together. One year, when Bill was a small boy, the birthday/anniversary fell on a Saturday. At the end of that evening, which involved some memorable celebrating (likely including a fair number of beers and martinis), my dad got the notion to bake Cork a birthday cake for the next day. But not just any birthday cake. He gathered up all of the remnants of their celebration – bottle caps, dirty napkins, cigarette butts, leftover food, you get the picture — took them to the bakery where he added them to the cake batter he prepared. He baked the cake (which he later confessed smelled – not shockingly – absolutely nasty as it baked). He then iced the cake and decorated it prettily.

The next day he delivered the cake to Cork. Bill said he remembers being so excited to cut into that beautiful and delicious-looking cake, and still recalls his disappointment at the birthday surprise.

From my cousin John: My parents had a cabin at a lake in Columbus. One Sunday, they were entertaining some of our family at the cabin. The men were sitting in chairs by the lake, watching the beautiful boats go by and drinking beer. (You will notice that beer is a recurring theme in these stories) Suddenly my dad said, “Would you like to go out in my boat?” Very eagerly, the men said, YES!” John said Dad led them to the smallest fishing boat imaginable. They all got in, held their breath as the boat sank into the water, and my dad start the engine. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” John said the engine sounded its high-pitch squeal as they set out, getting bounced around by the beautiful big boats that roared past. My dad couldn’t have been prouder.

From my cousin Marilyn: One year at the annual family picnic, Marilyn, newly engaged, walked her fiancé up to our Uncle Tommy, who was probably 60-something at the time. Proudly, Marilyn said, “Tommy, I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Roger.” A few seconds passed as Tommy looked at Marilyn, then looked at Roger, then looked back again at Marilyn. “Well, who the hell are you?” he asked, not bothering to be politically correct.

Then there’s the story that is part of our family lore. The brick-carrying contests at the annual Micek family picnic.

Let me just tell you that the Micek picnics were legendary. When we would tell our friends that we were attending this annual family function, they were likely to express their condolences that we had to spend our Sunday that way. What? On the contrary, it was something we all looked forward to every year. They food was unbelieveable. So many funny people and so many funny stories. And then, of course, there was the annual brick carrying contest.

The contest began as soon as the beer drinking commenced. The goal was to see who could carry around a brick the longest. This was not always a simple task, particularly after the beer had been flowing for a while. I’m not sure who holds the title of Brick Carrying King, but I’m sure my dad was in the running.

All of this is to say that it is stories like this that tie a family together. For all of our collective faults, our family could laugh at ourselves, and continues to do so. It was fun to hear about my mom and dad when they were the same age as our kids are now, and some of their antics. There is a lot of love being shared in these stories.

I hope our kids have the same kinds of stories when they look back.

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
― Frederick Buechner

My mom was the youngest of 12 kids – well, 14, actually, if you count the ones who died as infants. Her eldest sibling was 21 years old when Mom was born. In fact, she was already married by time Mom arrived.

And yet, throughout her life Mom was close to all of her siblings, and made sure that her children knew them and loved them as well. That says a lot about the importance of family to my parents and all of my kinfolk.

What that means for my siblings and me is that we have a lot of cousins. Thirty-two first cousins on my mother’s side if I’m counting correctly. And countless children of cousins.

We grew up and were friends with many of those cousins. However, we haven’t seen most of them for a very long time.

But Mom and Dad were our models. Though we haven’t seen most of our cousins for eons, when we connected up with them on the trip this past week, we might have just seen them last week.

Oh, there was a lot of catching up to do. What is Kent doing now? How many kids does Chris have? When did Adam get married? My gosh! You haven’t changed a bit! You look more like your dad every time I see you! How long have you been retired? How many grandchildren?

Kathleen, Aunt Leona, Kris, Bec, John, Mary Lou.

You know. Catching up.

But let me tell you one thing for sure. I come from good stock. These are some darn fine people.

And I’m lucky enough to have come from good stock on both sides of my family. My dad’s siblings, and our resulting cousins from his side, are equally fine people. We just didn’t get a chance to see them this time.

As we visited with our cousins, we realized that each of them have a different part of the family story. That is probably not unusual for a family the size of my mom’s. My mother’s eldest sister likely lived quite a different life from that of my mother. Literally two generations different.

I think my mom had a somewhat difficult life growing up. Her mother was not even 60 when she died, and sick for some time before that. Boo-hoo, she would say. Keep looking ahead. That’s what she did, that’s what her siblings did, and that’s what their children do. My cousins have experienced their measure of sadness. Loss of children and grandchildren, caring for frail parents. Still, you simply don’t hear any of them complain. Tough midwestern folks with a sense of humor to get them through many difficult times. It’s true of my family, I know.

No matter the age, the guidelines for a good life are the same. If you work hard, you will be rewarded. Be honest. Worship God. Everything is better if there is food and beer involved. Laugh a lot. Be loyal to your family. And love, love, love music.

Bec, Kris, Chris, Bill, Roger, Marilyn

Grandma and Grandpa Micek were farmers. Except when they weren’t. If you had asked me two weeks ago the occupation of my mother’s parents, I would have, with great conviction, said they farmed in Boone County, Nebraska. But I learned this past week that at some point in their life, when they had at least some of their kids, they lived in Missouri. And I read an obit that said Grandpa Micek had been a shopkeeper – an honest one, according to the notice. Who knew? As I always say, Kids, ask your parents and grandparents questions now.

One thing is for certain. At one point the large, exuberant, very Catholic Micek family lived in what the local newspaper called “the castle” just outside of Cedar Rapids, Nebraska, in Boone County. The third floor of that “castle” was made into a music room by Grandpa Micek. According to lore, he purchased a number of musical instruments with which he hoped to keep his boys busy and out of trouble.

It worked.

I learned this past week that there have been at least three different dance bands, each led by a different Micek son – the Eddie Mills Band, the El Mills Band, and the Bobby Mills Band. (They are alleged to have called themselves “Mills” as opposed to “Micek” so as to not restrict themselves to only playing polkas.)

But here’s the highlight of the story – at least as far as my siblings and I are concerned. My dad met my mom because he played on one of her brother’s bands and she collected tickets. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, and the rest is history.

Bec and I enjoyed a lot of things about our trip, but I can say with great confidence that spending time with our family was top on our list.

Nana’s Note: Time out for an ancestry lesson. First cousins share a grandparent; second cousins share a great grandparent; a first cousin once removed is the child of a first cousin. So, for example, in my family: Erik(Bec’s son) and Court (my son) are first cousins; Carter (Bec’s grandson) and Kaiya (my granddaughter) are second cousins; Carter is Court’s first cousin once removed. It’s very confusing. I had to look it up.

Every year during my childhood, Mom and Dad would pack up the car, pack up the kids, pack up the cooler with sandwiches, and head off on a road trip. Most often we went to Estes Park, Colorado, but I remember trips to Minnesota and Lake Okaboji, Iowa, as well. Six of us packed into a car. (“Mom, she’s looking at me!”)

Those vacations are some of the best memories of my life.

It’s why I’m amused when I hear young parents today say that they could never EVER take their kids on a car trip longer than a couple of hours. And nowadays they have full theater systems in the back seat! We had the alphabet game, guessing which side of the road the next feedlot would be on, and the license plate game to keep us amused. I’m sure our parents heard their share of “are we almost there’s?” And remember the old 55 mph speed limit? Yikes!

Grain elevators like this are located in nearly every town in eastern Nebraska.

I recalled our past road trips this past week as Bec and I embarked on our own road trip – back to our old stomping grounds of Nebraska. Our travels took us a total of over 1,000 miles. The ride was much more comfortable than back in the day – we had air conditioning, for example. We had CDs to play on the radio, unlike our youthful trips where sometimes the best you could hope for was farm reports or an Indian station.

We talked a lot, but sometimes we just watched the corn fields sail past us as we flew down the road at the legal speed limit of 75 mph. We slowed down every 40 or 50 miles because of the evidently-mandatory construction cones (though we saw almost NO sign of any actual road construction). We took turns driving. Because they have had a lot of rain in the Midwest, the cornfields were bountiful and beautiful. I love to see the lush trees and other foliage that grow along the Platte River as it winds its way to where we were going, our hometown of Columbus, Nebraska. You can almost see the humidity in the air. And it smacks you in the face when you get out of the car to stretch.

I-80, which takes us the whole of the way through Nebraska, is rich with places to stop and spend your money. We roared past innumerable roadside attractions. Here are some of the things we could have seen, but opted not to stop…..

Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles, Lexington

Boot Hill, Ogallala

Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, Kearney

Strategic Air and Space Museum, Ashland

Holy Family Shrine, Gretna

Sod House Museum, Gothenburg

Pony Express Museum, Gothenburg

Kool Aid Museum, Hastings

Pioneer Village, Minden

Largest Ball of Stamps, Boys Town

20^th Century Veterans Memorial, North Platte

…..just to name a few.

We opted, instead, to keep on driving so as to spend our time visiting with our family who still remain in Nebraska.

Over the next few days, I’m going to tell you a bit about our week in the heartland. We gleaned a lot of information. We learned why we have some of the beliefs we have. We learned why we all have such a strong work ethic and an equally strong sense of musical rhythm. We learned why we focus on the weather more than most people. We learned why we like to eat what we like to eat.  We learned some funny stories about our mom and dad.

But most of all we learned that growing up in the Midwest isn’t a bad thing at all. There’s no question about it. Nebraska is a great place from which to launch.

Next week, Nana’s Whimsies will be closed for business. I will be spending a week on a road trip. Nana’s Whimsies will be back in business on July 28. Stay tuned for vacation stories in your future.

Have a great week.

When I grow up, I want to be Ruth Reichl.

She has written cookbooks. She has owned restaurants. She was editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Gourmet Magazine. And most enviably, she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times. Can you imagine a better gig?

Reichl has also authored a trilogy of memoirs, including one about growing up loving food but being the daughter of a mother who absolutely couldn’t cook. Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table is the story of Reichl’s food journey.

Delicious! Is her first novel, and I absolutely loved it. If she continues to write fiction, Delicious! probably won’t end up being her best. Nevertheless, it had everything I enjoy in a book – a good storyline, a mystery, an interesting main character and quirky side characters, some romance, and, best of all, lots of talk about food.

The novel’s main character, Billie Breslin, has the ability to not only identify – through one taste – every ingredient in a recipe, but to also be able to figure out what ingredient(s) are necessary to improve the dish. An impeccable palate.

Billie goes to work as an executive assistant at a magazine – Delicious! – where part of her job is to answer the telephone calls from those folks taking advantage of the magazine’s guarantee that all recipes will work or the cook gets his/her money back. Through this aspect of her job, she meets interesting characters.

The magazine goes belly-up, but Billie is kept on to continue to honor the magazine’s guarantee, at least for a while. She has lots of time on her hands, and in the process of exploring the magazine’s library, she comes across some letters from a young girl written to real-life cookbook author James Beard. Billie is caught up in the mystery the letters present. The result is a lovely story.

I say this won’t be her best novel because much of the story is very predictable. For example, the “mystery” of Billie’s sister is really no mystery at all. But I felt as though Reichl did a good job of creating appealing characters and an interesting story to drive the novel.

Because almost all of the characters are involved in the food industry, there is a lot of conversation about food and cooking, which I loved. One of Billie’s friends owns a wonderful food market, and the descriptions of the things he sells made my mouth water. I want to visit that market.

The food industry is enormous, but pure in New York City. Lots of farmers’ markets, real butcher shops, many locally-owned restaurants, cheese-makers, and so forth abound. It is the perfect setting for the novel, and a natural locale since Reichl is a New York City native.

Delicious! is a wonderful book for anyone who enjoys reading about food and likes a uncomplicated storyline. I hope Reichl undertakes another novel.

Buy Delicious! from Amazon here.

Buy Delicious! from Barnes and Noble here.

Buy Delicious! from Tattered Cover here.