2008 March Archive at Beside the Stream

Archive for March, 2008

Elk teeth

Published on March 11, 2008 in elk herd. 2 Comments

I saw the DOT elk truck out this morning, and was reminded of a conversation I had with the crew when they were loading two elk in January. I mentioned that I was surprised to find the antlers cut off a roadkilled mule deer within two days of an accident; the DOT guy replied that they rarely pick up an elk carcass that still has its bugler teeth. He said that elk ivory is typically scavenged within hours of an accident.

Growing up in Vermont, the only ivory we heard about was from elephants, whales and walruses. In Colorado, everyone knows that each elk has two teeth that are ivory (and the rest aren’t)… at least that’s how the story goes.

The elk’s two canine teeth have been used for decoration forever. Many Indian tribes used them on dresses and shirts.

Sometimes Indians carved bone to look like elk teeth, since each elk only has two of these decorative bugler teeth (also called ivory teeth, eye teeth, tusks and whistlers).

The members of the BPOE were big fans of elk teeth; they liked them on watch fobs and cufflinks. You can buy old elk teeth in BPOE memorabilia on Ebay

and the boom in BPOE membership at the turn of the century is credited with having helped push the eastern elk to extinction. Today people still like to wear elk teeth. Here are earrings made from a pair of elk ivories, and in truth they’re kind of appealing: elk teeth are bulbous and hard, with a sort of a glow.

Hunters and jewelers claim that these elk canines are actually ivory. According to the Smithsonian Institute, they’re not. I’ll leave you with the words of Sally Sheldon, collections officer at the National Museum of Natural History.

Ivory is strictly defined as the acellular dentine structure characterizing proboscidean tusks. There is no other structure like it: the complex cone-within-cone structure is absolutely diagnostic of proboscideans, and no other mammal, let alone other vertebrate. (I looked it up for you: elephants are the only living proboscideans.)

…The term “ivory” gets used for a wide range of ivory-like or ivory-substitute
materials. It seems that any dense bone or bone-like structure that is
capable of being carved up for scrimshaw or figurines has at one time or
another been referred to as “ivory,” including hippo and suid “tusks,” any
antlers and horn cores, any compact bone sections (especially mammalian),
narwhal “horns,” ratite eggshells, hornbill casques, turtle carapace
fragments, large mollusk shells, and some very dense plant seed coat
structures. This is the context in which elk teeth get referred to as
“ivory.” Strictly speaking, they’re not.

Oh Kay.

Time: three months, one year

Published on March 10, 2008 in Appearances, teenagers and time. 3 Comments

Exactly three months ago Sunday, shortly after ski season started, I got a phone call at noon. “I broke my face,” Sam said. He had landed short when he jumped a road, and his knee hit his lip. He looked like he had a cleft palate.

Bob picked him up at the ski area, and I met them at the hospital. I realized that my child had become an autonomous individual when the doctor came in and my sixteen year old took charge. “I’m Sam,” he said, and shook the doctor’s hand. “Take your time with this, Doc, ’cause I have all day.”

He went home with seventeen stitches in three layers. I hit my face with a ski last spring and had twenty-eight stitches, so we knew the naturopathic drill of vitamins and later massage with castor oil . Three months later you can see that his scar will disappear in time.

My stitches came out exactly one year ago (Sam took my scar picture and I took his) and it’s amazing to me that you can’t tell which cheek the ski went through (left on the photo).

I don’t know if time heals all wounds, but certainly castor oil can take care of the scars.

Time: five weeks

Published on March 9, 2008 in time. 2 Comments

It’s such a mess around here that I’m wearing rubber boots. How fetching.

Five weeks ago the path from the house to the barn looked like this:

and now it looks like this:

Photography 1 - My first lesson

Published on March 8, 2008 in Photography. 3 Comments

I’m one of those people who never took photographs before I got a camera late November. I’ve been taking pictures nearly every day since then, figuring it out as I go, and a few weeks ago I was ready for a photography lesson. I know a few professional photographers, so I’m hiring each for a little tutoring. I had my first lesson, and have been mulling it over ever since.

1. Don’t leave extraneous information in the photo. In fact, don’t be afraid to get rid of extraneous information before you take that picture. Cut those weeds! move that driftwood! And don’t be afraid to crop the heck out of it. (It’s not journalism, it’s art.)

2. If you take a photo at eye height like everyone else, then it’ll look like everyone else’s photo. Use a ladder or get on the ground. (When I explain that my angles are restricted because of the snowpack, he’s not interested. He works for his photos.)

3. Slightly off-kilter doesn’t work. Get your angles right.

before

after

I thought it was a good lesson.

Garden Club

Published on March 7, 2008 in Colorado women, Old-timers and Small town life. 4 Comments

A few years ago, my then 92-year-old neighbor asked if I would join her garden club. Since it met once a month and she was getting to an age where she needed help with transportation, I said I would. Two years later, I’m the club secretary and Miss Roberta, who has been attending Garden Club meetings for over 50 years, is still going strong.

Most of the meetings take place in the Grange, and there are three or four women in the garden club who have been Grange members their whole life.

The Grange is a place of rural pride, home to the 4-H Club and the Saint Patrick’s Day corned beef boiled dinner.

It is part of the National Grange system of 3,600 Granges in 37 states, with an American flag out front.

Roberta and her late husband Robert are both Past Masters of the Grange, with their picture on the wall.

This is the Garden Club. Many of the members have been attending meetings for decades. Ruth was the hostess today, and she brought cherry pie made with her own cherries from the deep freeze.

It was an exceptional pie. And Roberta looked like a flower

but was pretty annoyed because she couldn’t hear at the meeting. She was the principal of two schools in her prime. Just last year she ran a bear off her property by yelling at him. She is a small woman with a tiny jaw, but it was very firmly set at that garden club meeting.

Thankful on my third visit

Published on March 6, 2008 in horses. 8 Comments

I made a couple of preparations for my third trip to see the little filly stranded in the snow. I bought a pair of cross country ski boots and borrowed skis because the snowshoeing was ridiculously hard last time. And I brought along 2 carrots, one for each of us to feed to Thankful. It was dead easy to ski out there: the snow has a serious crust on top, so with skis you don’t even need a trail; you could just skittle along the surface. But little Thankful wouldn’t play.

All she does is run away. Where the spring flows, the snow is gone and she can run away gracefully. Where there’s snow, it’s still too deep for her to move, and she has to run away like a fish leaping through the waves. But still she runs.

Thankful isn’t afraid of the dog, but people scare the pants off her.

I’m using a camera with a telephoto lens, so you can’t tell how far away I am from this scene. But in truth, the deer and wild turkeys let me get a lot closer to them than this little horse.

Six weeks ago, Thankful looked like a bag of bones. She’s still stuck in the snow and she’s dirty from lying down in the mud, but she looks great. We left the carrots on her pile of hay

and skied off, leaving the little wild child all alone. If she could follow Suzy home, she would.

From croutons to chicken Caesar salad

Published on March 5, 2008 in recipe. 4 Comments

I recently started making croutons. It’s a great way to use a half loaf of day-old bread, they’re much tastier than supermarket croutons, and you get to skip those unfortunate half-boxes of stale bread products. Saving money, simplifying the pantry, using up stale bread… it’s all good. But not so fast: it takes a looong time for croutons to toast, about as long as it takes to clean up the kitchen. By the time the croutons are evenly toasted you feel like you’ve cooked and you have a clean kitchen, but there isn’t actually much for dinner. Which is why I’ve been making chicken Caesar salad regularly/ pasta is optional.

This is a half loaf of day-old bread begging to be made into croutons.

Take a big pan and put in a dollop of olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic, pressed. Go low on the heat.

When the garlic is almost done, pour the olive oil in the pan into a cup. Instead of ”Leave the gun; Take the canolli”, we get ”Leave the garlic; Pour off the oil”. This is the critical step that is missing from cookbooks. If you don’t pour off the olive oil you end up with greasy croutons, which are not tasty. If you pour off all of the oil, it turns out that oil retained in the garlic is enough for the batch of croutons.

Cut a short half a loaf of bread into cubes, toss it thoroughly with the garlic bits and some herbs, and leave it on low. There should be a single layer of bread cubes in the pan.

Now you get to empty the sink, do the pots, and wipe the counter with an occasional toss of the croutons. Don’t you feel blessed? Plus you still have to make something for dinner, since croutons barely count. At a minimum for the salad you need romaine and either Parmesan, Asiago or Romano. Since I’m feeding teenaged boys, I’m adding chicken breasts; if it was just Bob and me I’d use hard-boiled eggs instead.

Pull out a salad bowl, and tear up romaine. By the time the kitchen is clean and the salad bowl is ready, the croutons are done too. Take the whole frying pan of croutons and garlic bits, and dump them over the lettuce.

Dice the chicken breasts and cook them in the frypan you cooked the croutons in. The heat can be turned up to medium, and it’s time to make the dressing.

Take the cup with the oil you poured off the pan, and add the following:

Start with half a lemon, one clove of garlic pressed, a dash of worcestershire instead of anchovies (unless you happen to have some anchovy paste), a smear of dijon mustard, and add some more olive oil–classic caesar salad dressing so far, and then instead of raw egg yolk do a cheat with a little Hellman’s mayo as a binder. Taste it–a little salt?

Grate the cheese, and the chicken will be done. Toss the chicken on top of the croutons, toss the cheese on top of that and mix in the dressing. Grind lots of pepper on top. It’s a pretty salad, don’t you think?

Suzy Maynard’s willow chairs

Published on March 4, 2008 in Colorado women and Do it yourself. 3 Comments

Suzy learned how to make willow chairs from Don King, a master chairmaker in Challis, Idaho. The chairs look fragile and bony, but they are very comfortable and are built to last generations. This is one of them.

Suzy’s chairs are made from local willow, mountain maple, and red twig dogwood. Suzy says that she’s partners with the beavers upstream, who keep the willow trimmed and increase the density of the new shoots; her renter Steve helps too. Here’s Steve harvesting willow,

and here’s a pile of pieces that might become chairs.

Sometimes working out of the house means turning the house into a workspace. This winter, Suzy took over the loft for chairmaking.

First she makes the chair’s frame, usually from willow. Then she covers the frame with willow twigs.

When the chair is new, the twigs are beet red and moss green. Over time, they fade to a uniform russet.

This chair has a peeled mountain maple frame, and oak rockers. It is specially made for a knitter, so it has a yarn pocket on the side. To me, the chair looks like it just walked out of the forest.

The chairs are surprising comfortable. (They even have lumbar support.)

If you want to order one of Suzy’s chairs let me know and I’ll put you in touch with her; she makes these beautiful things for $500.

Ginger Juice

Published on March 3, 2008 in recipe. 1 Comment

Last year I had Bob’s Christmas present stashed in my office by early December, and was so pleased that I told a few friends. Everyone said the same thing. “Ginger juice? Four bottles of ginger juice? I think you better get him something else.” The response was unanimous. Just in case everyone was right and I was wrong, I got him a nice scarf as back-up, and lucky thing because he wasn’t very excited about the ginger juice.

Two months later, and I’m still thrilled by it. This stuff has big flavor with almost no calories, and it works on sweet or savory. Yogurt, ginger juice and agave nectar is a sensational combination. A splash of ginger juice makes lemonade or limeade into a grown-up treat. Hot lemon, honey and ginger juice tea will cure you of things you didn’t know were ailing you. Ginger juice brings together the flavors of oil and vinegar in salad dressings, and ginger marinade is a bona fide tenderizer. Finally, the heat from ginger juice makes your belly feel full, a useful sensation as spring rolls around. It’s made by The Ginger People.

In retrospect, I must have been out of my mind to think that my husband might be secretly yearning for a cooking ingredient. I’m sure there’s a lesson here about selfishness, and choosing presents for other people based on what you want yourself. I’ll take the gentler interpretation: when friends tell you a present isn’t sufficient, believe them even if they’re wrong. Because honestly, this ginger juice is a revelation.

Streamside Redux

Published on March 2, 2008 in water. 0 Comments

Meltdown has begun! The streamflow is starting to increase, and the water is brown with silt.

Two weeks ago the creek was still bridged with ice, but now it is running free and starting to rise.

Doesn’t the word redux make you wonder?

re·dux /rɪˈdʌks/ –adjective

brought back; resurgent: the Victorian era redux.

[Origin: 1650–60; < L: returning (as from war or exile), n. deriv. (with pass. sense) of redūcere to bring back; see reduce]

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