Beware! Friday the 13th - Country Cousin

Friday the 13th is coming up. If you’re superstitious, better get out that old rabbit’s foot, find the 4-leaf clover you dried years ago, tuck a horse shoe into your purse or pocket, and toss a bit of salt over your left shoulder. Then you’ll be fine. Maybe.

Meanwhile, enjoy the moderate winter weather that is expected to continue for at least another week. By then, January will be more than half over, so who knows what could happen?

The weatherman says daytime highs through the coming week should again be above freezing. The only slightly sunny days they see coming are Friday and Saturday, and ironically, those days may be sunny, but the daytime high temperatures will be slightly below freezing instead of above as they have been lately.

The dreary, cloudy drizzle isn’t fun, especially for snowmobilers, and we’re told lack of snow also is not good for shrubs and farm fields, but we’re saving on our heating bills, and that’s a good thing, considering the price of fuel this year.

Meanwhile, drive carefully, because this hovering between rain and ice can create some extremely dangerous driving conditions.

FUN TIMES
The lack of snow is causing disappointment for snowmobile enthusiasts, but there are other ways to have some winter fun. They say ice is thick enough for ice fishing, and Free fishing Weekend in Wisconsin is coming up next weekend, Saturday, Jan. 21 and Sunday, Jan. 22.

The wonderful waterfalls in Marinette County parks are absolutely amazing when frozen in their winter glory, and access roads to most of the parks are plowed open.

There is to be a candlelight hike at Goodman Park from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 14. If conditions are right, it could be a snowshoe hike. You decide. The trail, and even the bridge across Strong Falls, will be lighted with candles or lanterns. After the hike, everyone is invited to warm up by the fire in the main lodge while enjoying a cup of hot cocoa!

Cost is $5 per vehicle which includes entry to the park, or a season pass for all the parks. No pre-registration is needed.

FRIGGATRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA...
Learned two new words today. Well, actually, didn’t learn them, just met them for the first time. They are Paraskevidekatriaphobia and Friggatriskaidekaphobia, which the web tells me translates to Fear of Friday The 13th Phobia – Paraskevidekatriaphobia or Friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Now wait a minute. Do the words mean a phobia against fear of Friday the 13th, or a fear or phobia of Friday the 13th itself?

Guess it doesn’t matter. Always thought that fear was covered by the word “Triskaidekaphobia,” which they now tell me is the fear of the number 13 itself, not just Friday the 13th.

Guess there is that. My grandmother had it. She was normally a very sensible person, but was very superstitious about the number 13 in general, and Friday the 13th in particular.

If there were to be 13 people at the table, Friday or not, she would take her plate and eat in the kitchen. She changed the date for her surgery when she found out it was scheduled for Friday the 13th.

She said Jesus was betrayed at the Last Supper with 13 people at the table, and He was crucified on a Friday. There are those who believe Eve gave Adam that forbidden apple on a Friday, and that Cain slew Abel on a Friday.

Some years ago, Thomas Fernsler, an associate policy scientist in the Mathematics and Science Education Resource Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, said the number 13 suffers because of its position after 12, which numerologists consider a “complete” number.

There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. The number 13, coming right after it, is considered an “incomplete” number, and therefore uncomfortable.

The arrests of the Knights Templar, orchestrated by King Philip the Fair, took place Friday, October 13, 1307, and this is also believed to be the start of a series of legends and myths that persist about the date to this day.

PAPAL VISIT
The Roman Catholic Church has been mourning the death of  Pope Benedict XVI, since he  passed away on December 31 at age 95. His papacy ran from 2005 until 2013, when he retired, something no Pope had done in centuries. His funeral was held in the Vatican on Thursday, January 5, with Pope Francis officiating.

News stories of the funeral reminded me of a papal visit the United States many decades ago.  On Oct. 4, 1965, five years after President John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected to the office of  United States President, Pope Paul VI became the first Roman Catholic Pope to ever visit the United States.

He  arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on the morning of Oct. 4, 1965.

Then,  on Oct. 1, 1979, Pope John Paul II became the second Pope to visit the United States, He flew in to Logan Airport in Boston less than a year into his pontificate and at the height of his popularity, and  received a tumultuous welcome. He was met by a motorcade of officials in limousines. In his brief remarks at the airport, the pontiff greeted all Americans ‘’as one who wishes you to fulfill completely your noble destiny of service to the world.’’

From Logan Airport the motorcade of limousines went on  a 55-minute odyssey through Boston neighborhoods, each of which welcomed the Pope in its own fashion.  People hung from street signs, cheered, and tossed confetti from windows, fire escapes, and rooftops, hailing ‘’Il Papa.’’

But a story circulating at the time had it that Pope John Paul begged to be allowed to take the wheel of his limousine. When the Pope asks a favor you don’t say no. So the limo driver climbed into the back seat next to a tinted window and waved at the crowds while Il Papa took the wheel.

When people in the crowds noticed who was driving, they were overwhelmed, and breathlessly began asking each other, “Who do you suppose is important enough to be in the back seat if the Pope himself is driving?”

PENNY PINCHERS
With the incredible inflation we’re up against these days, wages simply do not keep up with expenses. There are ways to stretch the budget that we’ve forgotten about because most of us have had life so easy for so long.

First, as Mama used to say, “Waste not, want not.” She was raised on a poor dirt farm during the Great Depression and never threw anything away if there was any possible use for it.

Realistically, one of the most effective steps we can take today is to use everything. Studies have shown that the average American family tosses out 12 percent of the groceries they buy. If the celery is about to go bad, clean it, slice it and freeze it for future use. ditto for green peppers and the like. Prepare leftovers into made-overs. Or freeze them as is for another meal.

Cut out the waste and you could cut your grocery bill by 12 percent. That might at least save you enough to splurge on steak once in a while.

Shop the specials. If you get a few dollars ahead, buy more than you need at the time. Keep your investments in the freezer and the pantry. Banks aren’t paying much interest these days anyway.

When pork chops are at a good price, buy enough for perhaps four or six meals instead of one. Prepare one meal now, and freeze the rest for future use. Better yet, if you’re making a dish that can be frozen, cook up enough for two meals. Then serve one and save one. Saves time and money later, and prepared home cooked meals are wonderful to have on hand. Not needing to buy meals that someone else cooked saves even more money.

Shop coupons and sales, but be careful, and do the math. Do the ounce for ounce calculations. Sometimes, but not often, “sale” items and coupon bargains end up costing more than similar items from another manufacturer. And never buy something you won’t use just because it’s on sale.

Look high and low for bargains. Literally. The eye-level shelves are like prime real estate, and generally are allocated to higher profit items. On the less top and bottom shelves you often find good quality items from smaller companies who can’t afford to stock their products in the more visible eye-level spots.

Finally, never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. Have meal plans in mind, buy only what you will use, and then, before it spoils, use or freeze whatever you buy.

CUT THE POWER BILL
There are a few tricks to make drying clothes more cost effective.

First, keep the lint filter clean. Clean it at least after every use, and if the load includes lots of fluffy towels, or if there’s a big, furry dog in the family, you might want to even clean it half way through a load.

Dry heavy and light garments separately, and use the appropriate heat setting for each.

Don’t add wet clothes to a load that’s already partly dry.

Avoid over loading or under loading the appliance. (That goes for washers, too.)

Try to dry several loads in succession, to take advantage of heat that’s already in the dryer.

If you have an option, try to make the vent hose no more than 25 feet from the dryer to outside. Longer hoses greatly increase the drying time. Exterior vent hoods that open a full four inches are much more efficient than those with smaller openings.

It does cost to run household appliances, but they certainly make life easier for housewives than back when grandma was struggling to make ends meet.

Take for example the automatic washer and dryer. Many families did not have those wonderful appliances when I was a girl, and our family was one of them.

There was an electric wringer washer in the basement with hot and cold water hoses, a set of rinse tubs, and clothes lines, some in the basement and some in the back yard. We had it lots easier than Grandma, but “easier” is relative.

During the years when there were two babies in our household, complete with cloth diapers, there was a lot of laundry.

Wash day meant filling the washer with hot water and the two rinse tubs with cold. The wringer, electric, could be turned to wring clothes either from the washer or the rinse tubs, with the water running back into the container it came from.

The entire laundry was done in that one batch of wash and rinse water, starting with the white clothes, then light colors, dark colors, and finally blacks and jeans. If there were greasy work clothes, they were done last.

Some of the laundry was hung on lines in the basement in winter, especially the stuff we didn’t want the neighbors to see, but much of it, particularly bedding and diapers, was hung outdoors to freeze-dry.

Sometimes we brought in the frozen sheets and stood them in a corner to finish drying. But the job got done with no impact on the electric bill. We slept in clean beds with the sweet smell of outdoors, and never went without clean clothes.

Grandma’s setup was far more primitive. In my earlier childhood years she had no electricity and no running water. She had a wooden washing machine, in fact two of them. One had a gadget like a three-legged stool attached to the cover, and pulling a handle made it agitate. The more time you spent pulling that handle, the cleaner the clothes would be. The insides of that wooden tub were corrugated, like cardboard, to scrub the clothes. The other washer was more like a deep trough, also corrugated inside, and it also had a paddle thing worked with a handle, to swish the clothes back and forth and get them clean. The wringer was a crank model, operated by human power.

The washer was set up outside in summer, and in a special back yard pump house in winter. In the pump house, in addition to the pump, there was a small wood stove with a flat top big enough to accommodate an oblong copper boiler tub, and floor space for a few baskets of laundry.

Washday started the night before, because the washer, whichever one was being used, had to sit overnight filled with water so the wood would swell and it wouldn’t leak. Next day the cold water was drained into the copper boiler to be heated before being returned to the washer with detergent, hot and sudsy, to get those clothes clean. Then too the laundry was sorted into whites, lights, darks and blacks. Sometimes the white clothes were boiled before being dumped into the washer along with the water. That must have taken a lot of muscle.

Then someone had to pull the handles to work the gears that kept the dirty clothes swishing around, and someone had to turn the crank for the wringer. Grandma needed all the help she could get, and appreciated even assistance from an energetic four year old. Clean clothes were hung on lines in the back yard to dry. Grandma had no basement, only a cellar.

Here memory fails a bit. Do not recall how her laundry was handled in winter. Seem to recall that sometimes the washer was moved into the kitchen. Keeping the stove in the pump house burning all night would have been nearly impossible, and taking a chance on water freezing in the washing machines and ruining them would have been unthinkable.

Suspect grandma and grandpa didn’t change their beds or their garments too often in winter.

CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR
Fast forward to modern times, but more than a few years ago. This is a true story.

Winter had been brutal. Got the latest power bill. Put it in the “to pay” stack, and prayed, “Please, God, help me find a way to bring these bills down to a size I can handle!”

Next day the dishwasher broke. Sink still worked. So did the dish towel.

Next day the dryer went. It was like old times, hanging laundry on lines in the back yard to freeze-dry.

“Well,” I thought stoically. “At least I’m saving money.”

Then it hit me. “Lord,” I cried, “This is not at all what I had in mind!”

COOKIN’ TIME
There’s nothing much better on a cold winter’s day than coming home to a hot soup and sandwich meal, and nothing much easier to put on the table in short order either. Canned soups have become somewhat expensive for those who are feeding a hungry family, but we can make our own soups with surprisingly little effort. With most of our budgets in a bind, we appreciate finding new ways to feed our families at less cost. Today’s recipes fill the bill on all counts.

ULTIMATE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH
Mix up the filling in advance and keep in fridge until needed, for meals or after school snacks. Makes six to eight substantial sandwiches, depending on size of the bread. Goes perfectly with Cream of Tomato Soup, preferably homemade.
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
12 slices Texas toast thick bread
1/2 cup butter, or more, softened
Stir all ingredients except bread and butter together in a medium bowl, one with a good cover if you’re making it in advance. Lay one slice of bread on work surface for each sandwich, and on it put about half a cup of filling. Put another slice of bread on top of the filling and butter the top side. Put the sandwich, buttered side down, in frying pan or on griddle, and then butter what now has become the top side. Toast over medium/low heat until the first side turns a deep golden brown, then flip over and repeat for the other side, except turn the heat up a little. You want it to start out slowly, so the filling gets a chance to melt before the outside gets too brown.

MOM’S CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
This easy, nutritious and very inexpensive soup is almost exactly like the Tomato Soup my mother used to make, only hers used homemade tomato juice from the well stocked shelves in the basement. That, along with grilled cheese sandwiches, was pretty standard Friday fare for us. It can also be made almost exactly the same way, but without the onion, and it’s still good.
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 quart tomato juice
salt to taste
3 cups cold milk
In a Dutch oven, over medium heat, sauté onions in butter until translucent. Do not let them brown. Remove from heat. Stir in the flour so that no lumps remain, then stir in the cold milk until no lumps remain. Return to the heat and add salt to taste. (Pepper too, if you want.) Stirring constantly, bring to a good rolling boil and boil for a few minutes to get rid of the raw flour taste. Let cool 10 minutes then whisk or stir in the tomato juice a little at a time. Reheat until simmering, but do not let it come back to a boil.    

Thought for the Week: Lord, it seems like I’m always asking You for favors. When I pray, I ask You for advice, but then don’t really listen for Your answers. Help me to pray with an open mind. Help me to not only hear Your answers, but to understand and accept them, whether I like them or not. Amen.

(This column is written by Shirley Prudhomme of Crivitz. Views expressed are her own and are in no way intended to be an official statement of the opinions of Peshtigo Times editors and publishers. She may be contacted by phone at 715-927-5034 or by e-mail at shirleyprudhommechickadee@yahoo.com.)
The Country Cousin