The Best Grilled Chicken He's Ever Had (and I made it!)

We bought a new grill. Not just any grill – a Bayou Classic Cypress grill. Maybe it is my Michigan sensibilities, but the name of this makes me picture a man in denim overalls and a red trucker hat, grilling road kill as he takes in a view dank and heavy with Spanish moss. Recently it has been me in black dress and sweater, barefoot, grilling chicken as I gaze out over the rooftops of the office park next door. My high heels shoes are inside, resting haphazardly where I kicked them off under the dining room table on my way out the door with the 20 lb bag of charcoal (not just ANY charcoal – cowboy charcoal).

My friend Jennifer commented that if lightening struck our grill tomorrow, we'd still have gotten our money's worth.  In the one month we have had it, we have grilled two steaks, five chickens, one pizza, a bunch of asparagus, two racks of ribs and countless marshmallows. I even went so far as to make my own marshmallows. (I later saw in a magazine that homemade marshmallows are a rising food trend for 2012. Who knew I was trendy?). I’ve had to make the chicken five times because not only is it easy, delicious, and quick; but I’ve been determined take it from “the best chicken we’ve ever had” to “the best chicken anyone has ever had.” I obsess.

Follow the jump to read more!

A Valentine's Orange

Most evenings, Matt grabs two oranges from the fruit bowl and brings one to me.  I peel my orange, my peelings littering the coffee table like an elephant graveyard, and eat it.   But Matt is still carefully pulling away white pith from his orange.  His long, deft fingers patiently turn the orange over and over looking for the stray pieces of rind.  Using his thumb, he edges each imperfection off the surface until the glow of the fruit is visible through the skin   He breaks it in half and sets one half down besides his circumspect pile of peelings.  Slowly, he pulls off a wedge.  Then, he turns and hands the first wedge to me.

Happy Valentine's Day, dear friends.  May your day be as happy as mine!

The Small Things and An Apple Cake

In the early (earlier) years of our marriage, when I would bake, my tidy husband would watch with wide eyes.  He'd slowly shake his head and say, "You get flour everywhere."  I would survey my counters and see the same kind of flour dustings I'd seen on my mom's counter when she baked.  Nothing to warrent the disbelief and amazement in Matt's tone.   Recently, I asked my mother-in-law if she ever gets flour on her coutertops when baking.

"No," she explained.  "I cover the entire counter with plastic wrap and tape it to the edges."

I just blinked a few times in response.

So these days, I make more of an effort to not spill flour on the counters.  I measure and pour my ingredients over a plastic cutting board. And Matt, in turn, turns a blind eye to the messes I make when I express myself with flour and sugar.  It is a small compromise.  But I am learning that it is the small things, one hundred a day, that make a marriage, a relationship, a life. 

In our case it is literally small things: crumbs of cake or coffee or bread from a sandwich I make for Matt in the evening.  Or the bobby pins that I seem to shed everywhere and Matt collects from the couch cushions, his car and the kitchen drawers and patiently puts away.  I remember when I was ten (and knew everything), I planned on having a husband who would buy me flowers and chocolates.  Matt has been known to buy me flowers, but it is the way that he looks down and sees flour on the counter, says nothing, and smiles that makes me feel loved. 

Follow the jump to read more!

Love Believes All

One Saturday morning my mom came in and sat at the edge of Rebekah’s bed.  She had gotten a call from the mother of some students we knew from our high school biology class.

“They say you were using a bad word.”  The creases in her forehead reflected the doubt in her voice. 

I watched from my side of the room as Rebekah, dumbfounded, searched her memory for any ideas of what they could be referencing.  In most high school biology labs, swearing might not be out of place, but in our tight-knit, home school community peers were pressured into conservatism.  My mom asked me, but neither of us could come up with what could have troubled this unknown accuser.

This put my mom in the unfortunate situation of having to tell us the word.  It is difficult to say who was most embarrassed.  We stared at her blankly.

"What does it mean?"  Rebekah asked

We had never heard it before, but it did clear up the mystery. 

Follow the jump to read more!

The Pickle Opportunity

Mugs habitually appeared and disappeared in my house. They would come from friends, Sunday school teachers, gift exchanges; and they would disappear as those things mysteriously do. There was always a varied assortment crammed into the top cubby of the cupboard. One day Rebekah, looking for a mug for her coffee, pulled out one we’d never seen before. It was white and had a bright green pickle surrounded with wiggle lines indicating that the pickle was moving. Next to it was written, “Give ‘Em the Pickle!”


It made us giggle. Which is likely why the slogan has been so successful all these years. However, it meant nothing to us at the time. Rebekah carried it to my dad’s office and asked what it meant. He told us the story about the ice cream shop that served sandwiches with pickles on the side. One day a customer came in and asked for a second pickle. The waitress told him there would be a charge. Disappointed, the customer wrote the owner of the ice cream shop. The owner, Mr. Farrell, gave the company a new mantra: give ‘em the pickle! Because he knew that customer service was more important that the value of the pickle.

It is a solid business technique and the whimsy of the pickle makes it memorable. It has stuck with me. It was not the only lesson in good work ethics my dad ever gave me. But it is a concise summary, a catch-phrase or slogan to help me remember the selflessness and thoughtfulness my parents tried to instill in me. The same attributes my dad exhibited in sitting down to explain that funny little mug to us.

Now my office is offering a customer service training seminar. We are showing a video of Mr. Farrell telling his pickle story and outlining his principles. I’ve been asked to organize it and lead the discussion afterwards. I am qualified for this because I am not shy about expressing my opinions in front of others. But as I was cutting out “pickle bucks” (yes, those are real) this morning, I had to smile to myself. Because while Mr. Farrell’s video is both entertaining and informative, nothing gives those principles more emphasis than being backed by a person you’ve seen exhibiting them all their lives.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Large families are difficult to miss. One vacation my mother lined us all up to take a picture, and other tourists stopped and took pictures as well. Inquiring minds would want to know, “Are all these kids yours?” Those who were not as strong in mathematics would ask, “How many of you are there?” When we would tell them, they’d say, “You could be your own baseball team!” We’d smile and nod even though we didn’t know how many people were needed for a baseball team. What we did know was that we had enough people to sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Like many of our traditions, it began with Shakespeare Club. More specifically, it began with our Shakespeare Club’s Dickens Christmas Party. Junior high and high school students wearing an assortment of crushed velvet ball gowns, bonnets, top hats, and false side whiskers sat around our living room caroling. Dawn, the only adult I’ve ever known willing to organize a Dickens Christmas party for twenty-five teenagers, divided us into twelve groups to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas. One brave soul sang “A partridge in a pear tree” solo. “Two calling birds” was sung as a duet by an aspiring soprano who stood up and enthusiastically belted it out and a reserved young man who looked down and mumbled it uncomfortably under her warbling.

This performance became epic in our house. It didn’t take us long to begin to perform it ourselves during car rides. Starting with the oldest we’d each take a line and all sing “five golden rings” as loudly as we could. Every verse ended with Mom singing “two turtle doves” and Dad bringing it home with “a partridge in a pear tree.” Once in a while Mom would surprise us and pay tribute to that Dickens party by belting her line out in a shaky vibrato.

The Beautiful Land of Life

"Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!" ~Albert Einstein



 

People often comment on my memory. I’ve been told that I have a mind like a steel trap. I usually smile, shrug and say “I never remember the important things.” But the truth is that I don’t have a mind like a steel trap. Just ask my boss Roy who has had to explain the codes on business property tax bills to me at least five times. If anything is a steel trap, it is my heart (my spirit, my psyche, if you will). Emotions stick with me for a long time.



For instance, when I pick up my shell-pink plastic mixing bowls, I remember driving to the post office, the new diamond on my left hand catching the sun, and picking up a package from my Aunt Mary Beth. I am so grateful for that feeling of receiving my first engagement gift – that representation of the new life that I am now living. And I wish Aunt Mary Beth knew how happy it made me and how happy I am now. But those are the kinds of things that are impossible to truly communicate.



 

So this is my attempt to express my gratitude to and for my family - those eleven strong, distinct personalities that have made me irreversibly who I am. This is my attempt to give homage to a journey that has traversed across states in a “Candy Apple Judge Bus” and a journey that has traversed on the Back of the North Wind to edges of the world.

I’ve always known I would write about my family. When something particularly unusual or funny would happen, my mom would say, “Put that in your book one day!” We even had a title for the book: A Waffle for Mama. It was inspired by the stacks and stacks of waffles my mom would cook every Saturday before finally sitting down to eat one. More recently, I’ve thought my sister Leah should write that book. She is smarter and much funnier than I am, but right now she is busy dissecting cats and observing zebras. In the meantime, I will begin the task with a blog.

There are twelve people in my family – ten kids, two parents. However, there were only two weeks that we all officially lived under the same roof. Those were the two weeks between my youngest sister being born and my leaving for college in Greenville, South Carolina. Now we ten kids live in six different cities. Not too bad for ten people, right? Three of us are employed full-time. Seven are full-time students. Judges love school. It was something pounded into us by news articles on uneducated people who had to work in chicken factories.

One good thing about scholars is that they are usually convenient to be with around the holidays. Only one of us couldn’t manage to get a week off for Christmas. And since Rebekah couldn’t be brought to the mountain, we are moving the mountain (aka Judges) to Rebekah. I can not wait to be all together. In the twinkle of Christmas lights and the folds of bows on evergreen wreaths I am reminded of the twenty-eight Christmases with which I’ve been blessed, and I am filled with anticipation for my next Christmas this weekend. I wish these kinds of happy memories for everyone.