People here bowl, hunt, fish, and drink Old-Fashioneds because it’s fun, not because they are trying to be retro cool

My friend Sharon and I went to a research event that the Wisconsin Historical Society ran as part of the initiative to build a new Wisconsin History Museum.

One of the tasks was to define a sense of place for Milwaukee.

For me, that’s easy – it’s the place where my father was born (in a house 34 blocks east and five blocks north of where I live now) and where my grandmother, who spoke German until she went to kindergarten, which is where she learned English, was born and raised (47 blocks east and two blocks north of my house) and where they use the word “bubbler” for drinking fountain.

It’s the place for beer and sausage and for a statue of Fonzie and for cats named Laverne and Shirley. (That is, our cats.)

[It’s also the most segregated place I have ever lived in my life. They talk a good game up here about it’s The South that’s all racist, but at least in Memphis, black people and white people eat in the same restaurants.

I am going to leave that issue aside because I don’t even know what else to say about it except get off your moral high horse, Milwaukee.]

The good part about Milwaukee is that it’s not hip.

Nobody here is trying to be cool. Nobody here cares if mullets are out of style. Nobody cares if she looks kinda frumpy. People here care about being comfortable and wearing what they like and doing what they like.

Marido and I went to an event at City Hall where groups of people were earnestly engaged in trying to make Milwaukee a better place to work and live – about how to create jobs here so people don’t leave after school.

The young man at our table wanted tech jobs to come here. He said we need to be more like Austin.

Marido and I both said, NO! We do not want to be like Austin! Austin used to be a great place to live and now nobody can afford to live there and the traffic is awful!

I lived in Austin for six years. And – I say this with love, Austin, but – your attitude is sooooo annoying. That whole Hipper Than Thou?

It makes people want to punch you.

Milwaukee is not hip. It’s not cool. It’s not high-tech. It’s a blue-collar town and people are not ashamed of who they are or where they came from. They like church festivals and Friday night fish fry and Summerfest and paczki and Up Nort.

I love Memphis and I love Texas, but in Milwaukee? I never feel guilty for going to the store in my gym clothes.

Don’t get me wrong. I went to the store in my gym clothes (I do not wear fancy gym clothes – I have had some gym shorts for ten years because I am of Milwaukee People And We Do Not Waste) in Memphis and in Texas. But I felt guilty about it because it’s Not Done there.

Here? Nobody cares.

And that’s what I like about this place.

Is it some bizarre protest against FIBs? Because they have great pizza in Chicago – let’s embrace it, not fight it

You guys know this is BS, right? Square pizza and/or pizza cut into squares? Well, I finally found out who’s responsible.

When you think of Milwaukee pizza – that flaky almost cracker-thin crust, on a rectangular pan, cut into squares – you’re thinking of Caradaro pizza, the legacy of which is served to Milwaukee pizza fans at a number of places around the city today.

I guess there are people who like square pizza, but, as with the People Who Like Snow and the People Who Do Not Take Food and the People Who Do Not Write Condolence Notes, they are wrong.

I guess I should back up. I just re-read the previous paragraphs – a draft I wrote a few weeks ago – and realized it might not make sense to those of you outside Wisconsin.

Up here, they cut pizza into squares. This makes sense for pizza baked in a rectangle, as my grandmother did and my mom does (bless their hearts but it is easier than pulling dough into a circle), but for pizza baked in a circle? To still be cut into squares?

WHO DOES THAT?

Who goes through the trouble of pulling the dough into a circle – which is not easy, I can tell you – I have never achieved Perfect Roundness and I have tried – and then doesn’t even cut the slices properly?

That is, with an even, fair ratio of crust to non-crust AS PLEASETH THE LORD?

I have argued about this issue with the engineers (that is, every other single person except me, the three admins, and the art director) at work.

I maintain that triangular slices are the most fair way to distribute pizza.

They say, But what about the people who don’t like crust?

To which I say, WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO HAVE ALL CRUST JUST BECAUSE THE NON-CRUST PIECES HAVE BEEN TAKEN?

You would think engineers would be more logical but you would be wrong.

(They have figured out that for a potluck, you pull the table from the wall and run a line down both sides to double throughput, but they still put the silverware and napkins at the beginning of the buffet line, not at the end. I have given up.)

Also – the crust here is a horrible cracker crust. If I wanted crackers, I would sit it on a Ritz. Otherwise, I want a chewy, thick pizza crust.

They are not doing it right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because there is no point and trying to dress nicely in this climate just throws me into existential crisis

I hate winter.

Have I mentioned that?

I hate winter.

I hate snow.

It’s not pretty. It’s not nice. It’s not anything but evil.

It’s hard to drive in.

It’s hard to walk in.

It gets your clothes wet. It gets your shoes wet.

It’s dangerous. If untreated, the sidewalk is icy, which means you could slip and break your wrist, as my friend Karen did two days ago.

This injury, BTW, is common enough that it has its own acronym: FOOSH = Fell On OutStretched Hand.

If the sidewalk is treated, that means it has salt on it. Salt is not good for Italian leather shoes.

When I met Marido, I was living in Memphis, which is in The South, where Women Dress Up For Everything Including The Grocery Store.

I didn’t dress up for the grocery store but I felt guilty about it. I did, however, dress up to go out to eat or to the theater.

I persisted in my ways even when I was visiting Marido. I raised my eyebrows at the other women I would see Out – other women wearing jeans and bulky sweaters and clunky boots.

I moved here and persisted. We got a subscription to the theater and I would Dress Up and again, raise my eyebrows at Women In The Theater Wearing Jeans And Sweaters.

Then I noticed something.

I never took my coat off.

Even indoors.

I never took it off at the theater because it was too cold.

(That’s because Milwaukee is German and we don’t waste money on frivolities like heat. In Chicago, AKA Gomorrah, public spaces are heated to such a high temperature that I start taking my clothes off the second I walk into a building so I don’t get soaking wet from sweat.)

Wait. I took off my coat once. The woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Excuse me, but did you know your dress is not zipped all the way?”

I felt behind me and realized that the top half of my back was exposed because indeed my dress was not zipped all the way.

I turned to Marido and asked, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I thought you wanted it that way!” he answered. “It’s that low in the front!”

I looked at the woman and shook my head. She rolled her eyes in sympathy.

Back to always wearing a coat.

And always taking a really long time to walk from the car to the theater because I had to worry about ice and about salt and about protecting my gorgeous Italian shoes.

I. Was. Always. Cold.

Because I never had enough clothes on.

That’s when I understood.

And that’s when I, too, started wearing jeans and boots to the theater.

 

 

Apple fritter bread is ephemeral and that makes us sad

1. The place Marido and I love most of all in the world (or maybe the second most in the world – Spain is in the running now for The Best Place In The World) is Madeline Island in the Apostle Islands in (on?) Lake Superior.
2. I am on A Mission to use inventory. That is, I want us to eat the food we have in the freezer and in the pantry before we buy more food. (!Hay comida en la casa!)
3. We buy a dozen (absolutely delicious) cinnamon rolls from Coco Bakery in Washburn every year and keep them in the downstairs freezer, rationing them out carefully.
4. If Marido dies before I do or if he is hospitalized, I am going to eat them all myself and not feel guilty.
5. Two summers ago, we found apple fritter bread at the IGA in Washburn and brought the leftovers home.
6. Because we were full of pie and turnovers from Judy’s Gourmet Garage and of all the extra goodies they had at Coco, like the chocolate babushka thingy.
7. Last summer, we tried to find more of the IGA apple fritter bread but to no avail. They have stopped making it.

Me: Are you going to start eating those cinnamon rolls we brought back from Coco last summer?

Marido: I don’t know.

Me: And there’s an apple fritter in the upstairs freezer! Bottom drawer!

Marido: Also, your Fritos.

[What? You don’t buy yourself a bag of Fritos for your birthday, eat a few, and put the rest in the freezer?]

Marido: Oh! It’s the last bit of apple fritter bread!

Me: You need to eat that. It’s old and it’s taking up room in the freezer.

Marido: But – when I eat it, it will be gone. And it will never come again. I am afraid to finish it because when I do, we will never have any more again ever.

Marido: Two summers ago, I wasn’t working and I wasn’t running for office [long stories] and I was happy.

Marido: But now, I’ve lost my freedom.

Me: And then you’re going to die and in the meantime, there’s not more apple fritter bread.

 

You guys in the South or wherever who talk about how pretty it must be to see snow? Look at a photo. Trust me you do not want to see it live.

Do you know what I will spend the next two hours doing on this fine Saturday morning when Marido is out of town for work?

I will be shoveling.

I will be shoveling the already six inches of snow that has piled up in our long driveway and on our sidewalk. (It’s still snowing.)

It’s not fun.

It’s not pretty.

It’s hard work and it’s only 13 degrees outside.

Maybe it will be fluffy snow that I can push to the side.

But probably not. It will probably be wet, heavy snow that is too heavy to push, which means I have to pick up half a shovel at a time and then walk it to the place where I can dump it.

There is nowhere to put the snow for half the driveway. There is a narrow strip of garden on the neighbor’s house side. Our house borders the driveway directly.

When you run out of space on the neighbor’s side, you have to carry the snow either to the front yard or the back yard.

At the end of the driveway by the street, we cannot put snow in the yard on the south side because there is a fire hydrant there. If the snow gets too high on the north side – and it does, you have to carry the snow somewhere else.

Maybe if you are really strong with amazing core strength, you can lift the shovel high enough to drop the snow on a snow mass that is five feet high.

I am not strong enough.

I hate snow. And you people who like it?

You are wrong.

Another droplet of wisdom from The South

I have been watching “A Chef’s Life,” which I highly recommend. It’s a show about a woman who was sure she would leave where she grew up – eastern North Carolina, where her father had a pig farm, and never return. She went to New York and became a chef. When she and her husband, also in the restaurant business, wanted to open their own restaurant, her parents said they would help her, but only if she moved back home.

It’s a show about food and family and being a fish out of water only you know the water and maybe the water wasn’t that bad, now that you think about it.

Yesterday, I watched an episode about casseroles. Sheri Castle was the guest. She has written a cookbook called, The Southern Living community cookbook : celebrating food & fellowship in the American south, and she described casseroles thusly:

The purpose of a casserole is to feed the hungry and comfort the heartbroken.

Which means it would be the perfect companion piece to the cookbook my friend Kim sent me: The Southern Sympathy Cookbook, which has recipes for funerals. They are also appropriate for new babies.

About funeral foods. And new baby foods. You guys do that, right? If a friend is sick or suffers a loss or, happier, has a baby, you cook food for her. You do that, right?

(It goes without saying that you write a condolence note when someone dies. You write it by hand on a notecard and address an envelope and put it in the mail.

You do not, as one funeral home suggested when I called to ask if they would forward a note to a friend whose 42 year old husband had died of a heart attack overnight while he was sleeping next to her and I didn’t have her mailing address and didn’t want to bother her with such a request at such a time, just write something on the online obituary page. Right? You don’t do that?

Because – and I can say this because I know I am among friends, THAT WOULD BE TACKY.)

Anyhow. Back to baby food. My co-worker – let’s call her Clara – had a baby two weeks ago. The day after the baby was born, our boss asked me if I had organized any kind of meal train because he wanted to know when he could take something to her.

(Our boss is a lovely human being.)

I asked Clara’s best work friend, Suze, if Suze was organizing anything, and Suze told me that when she had a baby, her job sent her flowers.

Which I thought was nice but – not as useful as food.

So I ignored Suze’s advice and spent the week cooking and yesterday, I took food to Clara and her husband.

• Beef short ribs
• Mac and cheese (y’all, this recipe is amazing and so, so easy)
• Black bottom oatmeal pie 
• Dill pickle soup
• Beans with saurkraut and bacon
• Cream cheese pound cake

Clara has Very Strong Boundaries, which is fine, and is not a hugger, which is also fine. But when I was leaving, she said, “Give me a hug!”

And I said, “Whoa! MOTHERHOOD HAS CHANGED YOU!”

And she smiled and she hugged me so I think food instead of flowers was The Right Thing To Do.

(That is not a casserole above – that is a chocolate cake I made. I couldn’t find a casserole photo. (And they tend not to photograph so well, right?))

 

 

And then you argue with the librarian about the proper role of Tater Tots in a hotdish – or in a casserole – and what is the proper name for it, anyway?

OK. Here’s the truth.

My people do not call it “hotdish.”

We call it “casserole.”

But – I know what hotdish is (I liked Prairie Home Companion before he went off the rails and also, My People are from Up Nort) and when I saw the hotdish cook-off fundraiser at the Hazel Mackin Community Library in Roberts, WI, I wanted to be part of it.

Because I know what hotdish is.

It is hot and comforting and it has crushed potato chips on top.

I suggested to the librarian at my library that we have such an event.

Librarian: But we don’t call it “hotdish” down here. That’s a Minnesota thing.

Me: Fine, but we can still have the contest. And then, we can watch Midwestern passive-aggressiveness where if people don’t like the dish someone else made, they can just say, “Well. That’s different.”

Librarian: Right! “That’s not how I would have done it.”

Me: That’s a throw-down right there. Even so, is it wrong in the dead of bleak winter to have a bunch of people bringing in hot dishes covered with potato chips?

Librarian: POTATO CHIPS? WHAT? NO!

Me: What?

Librarian: WHO PUTS POTATO CHIPS ON TOP OF A CASSEROLE?

Me: The people who are doing it right!

Librarian: No! Tater Tots are what go on top!

Me: Are you nuts? Tater Tots form the base!

Librarian: No, no, no. A hotdish consists of – you got your meat, you got your vegetables, you got your creamy cream of soup stuff, and den you got Tater Tots on top of all of dat. And when dey are crisp, den you put some cheese on da top.

Me: I am pretty sure that the Tater Tots are the base, but the only Tater Tot casserole I ever had was made by a roommate from Oklahoma.

Librarian (rolling eyes): Oklahoma? The Tater Tots. Go. On. The. Top. And – let me see – according to google, a casserole is “is a large, deep pan used both in the oven and as a serving vessel.”

Me and my friend D: That’s just wrong.

Librarian (shrugs): That’s what it says.

Me and D: The casserole is what’s INSIDE the dish. They don’t know what they’re talking about.

Librarian: Written by people from Somewhere Else.

Me: Speaking of Somewhere, when did you guys learn that it is Not Done to put macaroni in your chile?

Librarian: Ummmmm.

Friend D: Ummmmm.

Me: Because when I moved to Texas when I was a kid, I thought, “They are not doing it right! They don’t have any macaroni in their chile!” And then I realized nope,  it was my mom doing it wrong.

Librarian: Hamburger Helper.

Me: Not my mom! Hamburger Helper was for Fancy People.

Friend D: Yeah. Macaroni is what you use when you have to feed a big family.

Me: Or when you’re my mom. Who probably learned it from her mom. Who had to feed a large family.

PS I am not sure where King Ranch Casserole, my favorite, falls on this spectrum.

PPS And I am definitely not sure where the atrocity of pizza cut into squares started. It’s the custom in Milwaukee – why, why, why? – and every time we have pizza at work, I have to re-live the nightmare of not being sure of getting the proper balance of crust to non-crust pizza parts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now, as befits a blog about cultural differences and being the Other, we explore the strange world of Engineers, where they speak their own language and have their own odd little ways

Marido and I went to Spain recently, which was amazing and wonderful and we are trying to figure out how to move there permanently or to get a pied-à-terre there.

(Marido’s words – he likes to be fancy plus he took French in college but will only speak it with me because he is worried about not being perfect, whereas I, who had only a year of French in high school from a teacher from South Carolina who introduced herself saying, “J’ay may apayelle Madayam Hayzeldon,” which means my French accent, which is already corrupt from my Spanish, is even worse than it would be otherwise, am perfectly willing to mime and sound stupid by asking for, “lo chose que boi de la – moooooooo! moooooo!” And guess what? The shopkeeper gave me milk so yeah I get what I want even if I have to look like an idiot.)

Where was I?

Oh. Marido likes to sound fancy, but only to me. And that French doesn’t do him any good in Spain but he is lucky because he travels with me and I speak Spanish fluently. (I don’t have to mime anything, not even milking a cow.)

We love Spain. We love the food. Marido loves the late night life. I don’t but I’m on vacation so what do I care? I can stay up late if I don’t have to get up at 5:54 a.m. to go to work, something both Marido and I have had to start doing again because Christmas vacation is over and The Man is calling.

As Marido noted the other day, “This having to work thing is keeping us from living our Best Life.”

When your husband channels Oprah.

Who knew?

Anyhow.

We are back from Spain and we were also there two years ago so I decided it was time to make the photo book of Spain photos already so I spent a few days putting it together and I asked Marido to look to make sure I wasn’t leaving out any photos he wanted to include.

And you know what his comment was?

“Those cat photos should be on the same page. They’re of the same cat. They should be together.”

 

Seriously, Europe, we love you and all – you are the mother continent for many of us, but what is your problem with showers? Is it Not Invented Here syndrome? Because really, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face

Alas, I do not have an answer for the Great European Shower Problem. Marido and I have encountered it in Germany, France, and Spain. I can’t remember if I have found it in Italy, Greece, or Turkey – I think I was just happy to be able to afford to stay in places with running water when I was traveling there.

But now, I am older and I don’t do the shared bathroom thing anymore or the taking my own towels and toilet (see how I did that?) paper anymore. I am done with that.

I expect a hot shower with the hot and the water both staying in the shower and not leaving for outside the shower, but we have not been able to find hotels that offer such luxury. Maybe we are not paying enough. Maybe they save the Good Showers for the people who are willing to spend some money.

Which is not frugal Marido and me. I mean, we will pay to have a roof over our head, but I guess we don’t pay enough for the Good Showers.

Anyhow, the story I actually wanted to tell was an extension of the potty parity post. Remember how I wrote that we will not have true equality until we all wait the same amount of time to pee?

I don’t care how it happens. Ideally, there would be more women’s stalls so women would not have to wait, but if by some dark magic, 67% of all the men’s facilities were wiped out and men had to wait in long lines, I am petty enough that I would rejoice.

Unfortunately, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction.

That is, women are being forced to wait even longer so men don’t have to wait even as long as they do wait, which we all know is not long at all. Like about two seconds. Have you ever seen a line for a men’s room? I have not.

At work, there was a leak in the 2nd floor men’s room. They had to close both the first and the second floor men’s rooms.

Which – whatever. I don’t care. We have a gym in our building and the men had a bathroom they could use in the gym. Three stalls.

There are about 250 people in my office. Seventeen of us are women.

When my intern started two summers ago, on her second day, she came to my desk, looked around, leaned over, and whispered, “There are never any other women in the ladies’ room!”

“I KNOW!” I said. “It’s one of the best things about working with all men!”

Anyhow. All the men had to use the men’s locker room restroom.

The women carried on, carefree and happy, as we should be.

Until someone decided that this having to wait for the bathroom was simply too much to bear.

And decided that the solution was to close the women’s locker room to women and open it as a men’s restroom.

Which meant that the women who wanted to exercise in the gym could not.

Because there was nowhere for them to change from their work clothes into their exercise clothes.

Or to take a shower.

Or to just wash up at the sink.

Because heaven forbid that men have to wait. Because – men should never have to wait to pee. Ever.