Dotty Parker

diggin' Easter

We went to my dad's sister's house for Easter dinner today. Yes, it's a day early. We're going to BrilliantEditor's parents' house tomorrow. I will bet you ten or more bucks that we won't have as much fun there as we did today.

That might be a good thing.

We always have fun with my dad's family. After our big meal we go for a walk in the woods. We take all of the dogs, seven today, and we walk around the woods, into a pasture, by a small brook...it's all so lovely.

Today was business as usual since Spring and Lily rolled around in the pasture. Lily got covered in cow poo, as she always does on Easter. Spring rolled next to the cow poo. She, therefore, was not as disgusting as Lily, but induced the same feeling of horror and panic.

We had an exciting event in the pasture. At the top were two dead cows. The dogs found them first. As far as we could tell, they didn't nibble on them. They only licked them. I'm glad of that self-restraint. It was a pretty gross dead cow.

Speaking of things that are pretty gross, there is a long running series of jokes regarding the ability of my family to eat bizarre foods and then fart with a most disgusting potency. The favorite culprits are a combination of these three: beer, leeks, and venison.

(Just to give an idea of how revolting they are, I have a little story. The male members of the family were coming back from a fishing trip or something during which time they consumed the three offending factors. The stopped at a rest area while travelling. Another traveller entered the men's bathroom and shouted, "Oh my God! What the hell do you people eat?! Garbage?!" Do I really need to say more about the danger of these items?)

We always have beer at our events and venison shows up in the fall and winter. Leeks haven't made an appearance in years.

We were all thanking God for that.

I guess with Easter being upon us, however, God did, indeed, forsake us.

On our walk we brought trowels and plastic bags. We went for a walk down by the crick (local name of a creek or brook) and dug up leeks. For the uninitiated, leeks are wild onions. They're incredibly oniony things that look a little like scallions. They begin to smell like dirty socks, in my opinion, after a short-ish time; they're really, really strong. They are, however, quite a treat in their own way. As they're only around for part of the year and they're best in early spring, we're woodsy epicurians.

Still, despite the promise of stink and the burden of having snooty tastes, it was pretty fun to dig around in the rocks and the flat stones and pull out the leeks. Then we'd squat down by the stream, which wasn't running too much this year, and clean them off, cut off the roots with a pocket knife, and put them in a plastic grocery bag to take back up the hill to the house.

I suppose I'm happy about all this leek stuff since it will provide more fuel to the fire of venison/leek/beer jokes and commentary. We'll also have good stories about Lily and Spring in the cow poop and the other dogs sniffing the dead cow.

I decided that if I have to live off the land, I'm going to my aunt and uncle's house. They make maple syrup, can find leeks, know that they can eat fiddlehead ferns, raise bees, know how to can food, can build things, can quilt by hand and machine--these are the people to know. If I add in the rest of my dad's family, we have small engine repair, fine carpentry, medical knowledge, more sewing, community planning, and people who will provide social commentary.

When the power goes out for months and months, I'm going to their house.

Posted by dotty at April 10, 2004 10:52 PM