It's What is for Breakfast!

 

Although my mom always worked outside the home, I can’t remember one morning without a hot breakfast, and it usually varied from day-to-day. One morning I might have pancakes (I called them hotcakes) with blackstrap molasses, another morning it might be a fried egg, over easy, and toast, or maybe French toast, but it was always something yummy and many times included half of a grapefruit always cut into sections for easy eating. I took all this for granted and never considered it anything special until I was a mom and realized the work and commitment involved. Then, I gained a whole new appreciation of motherhood.

I had one other item for breakfast, occasionally, of which you may never have heard. Let me tell you all about it. It is regionally specific in the mid-Atlantic States and German in origin, actually Pennsylvania Dutch. It’s called scrapple, derived from the word “scraps” because that is what it is made from, the scraps of pork plus cornmeal and spices. Okay, now you’re saying that does not sound very appetizing but, believe me, it grows on you. You probably remember reading somewhere about how frugal the Pennsylvania Dutch were. Well, that frugalness trickled on down with them to Delaware where I grew up.

Scrapple comes in a raw one-pound loaf, and, jokingly, is said to be made from everything but the oink. My home state is one of the world’s largest scrapple producers. The most well-known is Rapa brand, made since 1926 in Bridgeville, which is a small town about thirty miles south of where I grew up. Now there are many brands and it is even sold in our local Publix here in Gainesville, Florida, although I haven’t looked for it lately. When I was a meat-eater, I bought and prepared it for breakfast many times.

The trick to tasty scrapple is to fry it brown and crispy on the outside but to leave the inside tasting creamy. It’s that crispy crust that makes it delicious, no extra oil or butter necessary as fat is one of those all but the oink ingredients in the raw product.

I read some time ago that a few New York City restaurants had tried to upscale the lowly scrapple by calling it pan-fried country paté. I’m not sure how well that went over. As much as I liked it, I can’t imagine that it would make much traction in the city. Best to leave it to the country-folk.

There is a Facebook page called the Scrapple Trail that has a map with all the places where you can order scrapple, many many of those places in Delaware. In fact, that place where I said I was working as a waitress during the summer I met JIm, well, the owners of the restaurant known as Kirby and Holloway’s owned a scrapple plant in Harrington, my hometown. When I googled it, guess what came up? Yep, it’s available at Walmart, Kirby & Holloway scrapple. Who knew?

And the moral is, don’t mess with a good thing. I guess scrapple is in my DNA.

The Color Blue

Unless you’re a hermit, you’ve heard of Fifty Shades of Grey, that titillating novel by E.L. James. In this instance Grey is not a color but a person’s name. I’d like to talk about a real color, not grey (or gray) but blue and the many shades of blue.

If someone were to ask what my personal favorite color is, I would say blue, all shades of blue and there are many. When I think blue, the first thing to pop into my head is water, the ocean, and that’s why I consider it my color. I’ve always loved the water, being in it, near it, watching its movement. I grew up in Delaware near the eastern shore of the Delaware Bay, which is riddled with beaches and wildlife preserves. From Memorial Day until Labor Day, weekends meant going to the beach, not the shore as they say in Jersey, although I did love to ride the ferry between Lewes and Cape May.

Blue is a primary color which means you cannot make it by mixing any other colors together. It’s the color of the sky and the sea, and probably the color you see the most of, although you may not realize it. It’s a symbol of trust and loyalty, think true blue, and it produces a calming effect even to the point of slowing metabolism. Lie on your back and look at the sky and feel the calmness wash over you. Or lie on the ocean, watch the clouds, roll and drift on the waves. It also represents the color of heaven mentioned many times in the Bible and in song, my blue heaven. Blue has positive effects on the mind and body.

Generally thought of as a cool color, blue is represented in many crystals and stones, lapis lazuli, sapphire, blue topaz, azurite, turquoise, and many others. In art it gives a feeling of distance to a painting and shows perspective. It allows you to look beyond. Wearing blue will help you communicate with others and help you  remember a speech or other information, and so it’s good test attire. Maybe that’s why all those lines on lined pages are blue.

But in art, there are warm and cool blues although today there is some dissension about which is what. Ultramarine tends to recede and is thought to be cool while cerulean brings objects forward and so is thought to be warm. Pthalo blue was always thought to be warm but most recently it has made a switch to cool. It all depends on the color next to it. If you have some paints or sample cards, try it and see what you think. On the color wheel, blue sits in between red and yellow, both warm colors which to me makes blue look very cool. Cobalt is thought to be the most pure blue.

There are so many things we associate with the color blue, Bluetooth, blue baby, blueberries, blue jeans, blue suits, bluebells, blue eyes, bluebirds, blue jays, robin’s egg blue, sky blue, blue moon, bluegrass, navy blue, even my test books in college were called blue books, and I’ll bet you can think of lots more.

But blue can mean other things, things not really colors. To get the blues or be in a blue mood is not a happy thing, just the opposite. It’s said to be in a blue mood is to be in a dark place. Some remain blue so long it becomes depression. Friends always attempt to lift you out of the blues but many times it can be constructive, giving you time to think or make decisions or even heal from a loss. To Emily Dickinson it meant a fixed melancholy, not something I’d want. Every working person has encountered blue Monday, that beginning of the work week after a weekend of fun and celebration. To most people the blues is a passing mood making happiness, in contrast, so much happier.

And then there’s the music, soulful blues we have no problem recognizing whenever we hear it and whoever we are. Although the blues gained a reputation for misery and oppression, it can also be humorous and at the least will turn the corners of our mouths up and put a twinkle in our eyes. The twelve bar blues is one of the first things taught by piano teachers, easy to play and rhythmic and repetitive in 4/4 time. We’ve all heard the big band blues, Count Basie and Glenn Miller. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings borrowed a lot of their country music from the blues. Blue is a big part of us like it or not.

And so I ask about your favorite color, there are so many to choose from. Is there one that you feel fits your personality or temperament? You can find lots of tests on the web to determine the answer for you. I didn’t need a test to know my color. I have always been true blue.

Her Name Was Hazel But She Was No Lady

Were you ever in a hurricane? That’s a silly question to ask a Floridian. The answer is most likely “which one?” But today I’m thinking of one long-ago hurricane, Hazel, and October of 1954, as it neared the State of Delaware.

I was in the fourth grade, Mrs. Quillen’s class at Harrington Elementary, not quite ten years old. Mommy and I listened to the news the night before as the weatherman told us Hazel was in the Bahamas and not expected to be a threat to the U.S. mainland, but by the time I was on the school bus on the morning of October 15^th, and unknown to us at the time, Hazel had made a unexpected left hand turn and was about to slam into North and South Carolina.

I remember looking out the huge plate glass windows on the east side of my classroom and wondering why it was getting so dark. All the lights were on in mid-morning. Then the announcement came, buses were coming to take us back home. I saw them lining up out front. I swallowed a few times and wondered if Mommy would be home from work or if I would be alone. I never thought to tell anyone.

As we gathered our book bags, Mrs. Quillen hurried us along and marched us outside in a line. It seemed like nighttime, still and quiet. The ride home was like any other day except for the headlights of oncoming cars. The bus driver didn’t drive any faster than usual and I chatted with my seatmate about everything including the hurricane. None of us had ever seen one before and if this was what all the hullabaloo was about, it didn’t look like anything to be scared of.

The bus stopped to let me off and I used my door key to get in, in to darkness. The wind was starting to blow and I felt a few whopper raindrop plops as I stepped inside. Mommy wasn’t there. I turned on all the lights and wondered what I should do. I looked out the living room window. The wind was picking up and flattening the tall dead grasses next door. The sugar maples planted along the highway out front must have shed hundreds of orange leaves as the wind swirled them past my lookout post. I wished for Mommy to come home. I stayed glued to the window even though I couldn’t see much. It wasn’t long until my wish was granted.

I saw the headlights bobbing through the rain as the vehicle neared our driveway. The driver kindly pulled in and deposited Mommy almost at our front door, and I held it open as she quickly came inside, turning to wave to her friend that all was well.

That night was one of the scariest of my life. Rain pummeled our house, the wind screeched and blew things against our walls that we could not see. The power went off and we were in total darkness until Mommy lit the kerosene lamp and then the shadows made me think I was in a horror movie. It rained and rained some more. We played gin rummy by lamp light and I ate melting ice cream until I felt sick, all the while listening to the background noise of Hazel. Finally, I fell into a stressed, nightmarish sleep.

I woke to an eerie dawn almost like twilight, no wind, no rain, but the air seemed full of something. I heard frogs croaking and saw that water covered our lawn. Sticks and limbs and crushed maple leaves were everywhere. Out front a couple telephone poles leaned, stretching the wires tight. Big power trucks were already parked a ways down the road. Mommy was fixing us cereal with warm milk.

Later that day Uncle Parvin brought concrete blocks and boards, and he made a bridge-like path for us to walk above the water. He warned me not to get brave and walk in the water because you wouldn’t know what might be in there. I wasn’t that brave anyway. It took the water forever to go down. The muck and yuck that remained had a not so nice smell.

After the power came back on, we heard that the winds had been over 100 miles per hour, that the storm had roared through at 50 miles per hour, and that a lady in Wilmington was killed when she was picked up and slammed into a trolley car. A few days later we rode by the Dover Armory and saw its roof lying on the ground, deposited there by Hazel. Newspapers reported a total of four Delawareans perished as a result of the storm. Hazel left its footprint on Rehoboth Beach, my favorite place, with damage to hotels, the boardwalk, and excessive beach erosion.

Hazel traveled on up into Canada, merged with a cold front but continued to do lots of damage. It was unusual that a hurricane, a category 4 when it pelted the Carolinas, got that far north and stayed that strong. I thanked my lucky stars that Mommy came home when she did. And better yet, no school for a few days, which usually only happened for snow. Even hurricanes had a tiny silver lining.

Summer Saturdays

Growing up I lived just outside a very small town in Delaware not too far from the Delaware Bay. My very happiest memories are of Saturday trips to Rehoboth Beach where the bay meets the ocean. Sometimes I was allowed to take a schoolmate or maybe my cousins, but even alone as an only child, they were my happiest days. I could always count on finding a friend at the edge of the waves.

The ride through small towns seemed to take forever, thirty miles of anticipation. Depending on the wind direction, about five miles away I could smell the saltiness of the bay in the air and see circling seagulls. Air conditioning consisted of rolled-down windows, and the wet breeze blowing across cooler seawater couldn’t compare anyway.

Saturdays were popular for beach visits and I was the lookout for a parking spot, as close as possible because of all the important things we had to carry. There was the drink cooler, beach chairs, blankets, towels, my transistor radio, a beach ball, and beach bags with important personal stuff. This was where parents became important. UV protection was unknown. I just fried with Coppertone when I thought to use it. Usually I got the job of running to the umbrella guy with money for portable shade, and he would follow me back and plunge the stake into the sand at the spot my mom had chosen to spread our blanket.

Then, at last, to the water, there were waves to ride. Wet, squishy sand between my toes, icy water at first, breakers trying to beat me back out, all memories I wouldn’t trade for a zillion dollars. Not too far out, the ocean floor dropped off, a little trough of broken shells where the breakers washed out the sand. I had to get past this or the breaking waves battered me, but once beyond the drop-off, all the fun began. Waves twice my height or more depending on the calmness of the day rushed toward me. When the wave was exactly the right distance, I had to jump with the buoyancy of the water and ride over it. What a feeling, as though I was tiny and someone was picking me up and slowly letting me down. These days were long before Jaws. No one gave sharks a second thought.

Sometimes, if I forgot to look, a wave would sneak up on me, and I would have to dive into it. Then my knees got skinned up and I might swallow some salt water. I didn’t mind at all. I loved it so much, someone would have to come drag me out even if a thunderstorm came up. I can remember begging to stay in while lightning streaked across the sky. And when I finally did come in, my fingers looked like prunes.

Of course, when it stormed there were always other things to do, the penny arcade, bumper cars, Dolles saltwater taffy, souvenirs to look at, hot dogs, ice cream, colored ices. Rain cooled off the searing heat of the boardwalk and made barefoot walking possible, but sometime splinters were a problem. Who cared about a little rain when a person was soaked already.

The ride home was a whole lot quieter. In fact, I usually slept, only waking when the car stopped in our driveway. The memories of the day returned as I looked at my wrinkled fingers, squirmed in my sand-filled swimsuit, and accidentally touched my sunburned nose. But they were good memories and I could hardly wait until the next Saturday to do it all over again.