At 4:15 pm I am to put a frozen Reynold's pastie in the oven where it will bake for a hour, ready to eat when Dee gets home.
Out here in Waukesha where we get our pasties, they have not been available with........
RUTABAGAS.
Maybe the old shop near 35th and Buleigh in Milwaukee still carries them with RUTAGABAS. Our favorite pasties - with RUTABAGAS - came from a little bakery in Iron Mountain MI where they were originally baked for the miners to carry down into the mines.The dough specialities, wrapped in newspaper, would still be warm for the miners at lunch-time.
Rutabagas: A Love Poem
Rutabagas were new to me
when I first paired with Jean.
At Thanksgiving and Easter dinners
her grandpa Frank, her spinster cousin,
mom, dad, and a tribe of handsome
brothers dined in near silence
at a great green table
with fierce griffins underneath.
I would wonder if their quiet
was about secrets or something wrong
but now I think it was
just how they gathered.
Rutabagas were on the table.
I had to ask Jean what they were.
My first mouthful tasted
like something in a gunny sack;
nothing like a wine
from which an epicure, or would-be epicure,
might claim to read the soils
in which the grapes were grown.
She said she loved their dug-up texture,
the hint of dirt
that couldn't be baked away,
how they left the tongue
with a rumor of something
underground and dark.
Autumn vegetables suit her,
I think, and none more than rutabagas,
so reluctant to have left the ground.
An hour and a half before the parade was to start, people found their seats or put their place-keeping folding chairs at the ready for a long wait.
A woman and two children, determined to have good seats, huddled under a pile of blankets,waiting.
Thanksgiving was still five days off but in these trying times merchants want to garner the few cash register rings of some extra marketing days.
It wasn't always like that. Thanksgiving was allowed to happen, and THEN Xmas.
The closed Clarke Hotel restaurant (last incarnation - D-Mo's)awaits a brighter day,too.
