Wild Rice Soup : Taste of Fall

You know it's fall when I get to eat Cream of Wild Rice Soup!

Here's the recipe :

1 large onion
1 large carrot, shredded
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
8 cups chicken broth
3 cups cooked wild rice
1 cup chicken breast, cooked and shredded
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup snipped chives

In a large saucepan, saute onion and carrot in butter until tender. Stir in flour until blended.
Gradually add broth. Stir in rice, chicken, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and sir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Stir in milk; cook 3-5 minutes longer.
Garnish with chives.

This is great with roasted acorn squash with brown sugar!

Note : There is no white rice in this soup! It's 100% real Wisconsin-Native-American wild rice.
I used parsnips in this batch, as we were uncharacteristically out of carrots. Parsnips look like white carrots.

In northern Wisconsin, we can purchase broken wild rice which is not as expensive as the pristine, perfect whole grains.

September in the Baraboo Hills

For me, the woods is wonderfully rejuvenating. Let me tell you about one fall day in 1994 with my friend Sandy. We went out to Durward's Glen in the Baraboo Hills near The Wisconsin Dells. It's absolutely beautiful there! I can't quite describe it with all the changing colors of fall. A stream has cut through the rock for the past 12,000 years and left a geological record behind, visible in the layers. You'd never think that such seemingly calm small springs could do so much erosion work, but they do!

I had a great day out there! In those days, Sandy was a budding naturalist, self-taught. She showed me the middons of worms. Did you know that earthworms like to eat oak leaves? These leaves are heartier than others (like maple) and take longer to decompose, so they need a little help from the worms who like to roll them up and drag them down into their holes, where they eat them and turn their fibers back into dirt. Sandy says we're all just temporarily NOT dirt. Anyway, if you look down at a dirt path that might be covered in leaves, and if you look closely enough, you might see these tufts of leaves in various states of decay, rolled up like a lily and sticking out of the ground. And you might wonder, "Well--how did that get there?" Earthworms! Isn't that remarkable?

At the edge of a wild prairie, we spent some time with the Aspens. Their leaves are yellow now and they shimmer in the wind because the stems of their leaves are flat and catch the air just so. Sandy had me put my ear up to one of their trunks and listen. Just listen. I heard a sort of gurgling sound--like plumbing--due to all the motion up on top. That was neat--my favorite part of the whole day.

We also found a fallen log that had turned RED and soft with age and decay. Sandy took a piece in her hand, crumbled it, and brought it to her nose. "Mmmmh! This is humus. This is new dirt." And so it was.

Before we left the Glen, we sat and ate our lunch over-looking the river valley from a field. It was a spectacular view! All those rolling hills and the river cutting through and the changing colors of the leaves. Makes you wish every day could be like that! We also sat underneath a huge 400-year-old oak tree that the priests who take care of the Glen wanted to cut down. There is nothing wrong with this old tree--it's till in very good health. I don't understand what these old coots are worried about. It's a tree that has been here longer than our own country, even. What that tree has lived through and seen is truly remarkable!

There's a whole cycle of life out there in the woods.

[This was from a day in 1994 with my friend Sandy. I miss you. I don't get out to woods nearly so much anymore. I hope you are well, my friend!]

Magic : Rise and Fall of National VB2

Watch this short video (only 13 seconds).

I am experimenting with adding video clips to my blog. I thought this subject would be perfect : short, sweet, simple, and really cool!

When I was a kid, playing with and exploring Great Gramma's old treadle sewing machine was really neat. Watching the machine head gracefully rise out of the case really was MAGIC for me, then. And it still is today. In fact, nostalgia for that old machine (now gone, unfortunately) made me go out and purchase an old treadle so I could relive that experience. I thought others might enjoy it too, so here it is.

Read more about this particular treadle.

Roast Boar Stew in The Ardenne, France

NPR did a story this am on The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII. It made me think of an incident on our last trip to France this past April ...

We were invited to a family reunion in the village of ??? in the Ardenne, Northern France. We were the last to arrive at about noon; Dinner was at 2 pm and again at 6 pm ; We left at 10 pm, and the party was still going strong. They served a delicious wild boar stew that some of the family members had hunted and killed in the surrounding Ardenne Forrest. These wild pigs forage on chestnuts, so they have a rich flavor! Food IS the national pastime in France.

There were only a few English speakers there, and they managed to seek me out to practice their English. Although my husband grew up speaking both English and French, I still understand and speak only English (though I've studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Yoruba, and Zulu).

In the opening remarks for the family gathering, the speaker said in English, "We want to offer a special welcome to our American friends here today. We are especially grateful to America because they rebuilt THIS village after World War II."

I was really moved and choked up by this--
1) because I wasn't expecting to hear English where most people in attendance were NOT English Speakers (She said it for MY benefit out of the nearly 200 people in attendance).
2) The family and people of this village are still grateful after 50 years!
3) In the US, we were such jerks after 911 renaming French Fries, Freedom Fries. (Those really were dark days that I would sooner forget!)

It reminds me that the US has done some good around the world, along with the bad.
It also reminds me that we've really created a mess in Iraq, and as much as I would like to bring the troops home and leave it, the lessons learned from history (Vietnam, WWI, WWII) say that we have to set up some provisions for rebuilding it, or they really will hate us forever. I just don't think we can afford it ...

People forget (or never knew) it was with the support of France that the American Colonies won the American Revolution so many years ago.

Sorry--I'm trying not to be or get too political with Hidden Passages. I'm stepping off my soap box, now.

What's in a Name? - Matucheski, Pt.2

I didn't change my name on my wedding day, June 19, 1999. That last week, it became an identity crisis for me : Would I change it , or not? Would I give up the name I'd had for nearly 29 years to become Michele Long?

My mother was telling me, "It will make it much easier to tell if you're a family. What about the children?" She works in public health, and sees all manner of blended families where it is difficult to tell who belongs to whom.

Well, in my mind, in the family CL and I would create, the kids would KNOW they belonged. That was never an issue for me. Growing up, my best friend Janna lived in a house with 3 last names (Campbell, Kerska, and Bettis), and none of them seemed to have any kind of an identity crisis.

The morning of the wedding, my mother-in-law told me, "You should really change your name. You'll save a lot of time just writing your signature for the rest of your life."

The efficiency argument didn't move me either.

What did move me was losing my identity. I'd spent 29 years building up that name with good academics, good character, good credit, and a career as MM. It had been good to me.

Who was Michele Long? No one with no past ...

If I had gotten married at 18, it might have been a different story. My identity would not have been so precious at 18 years of age.

After I finally decided to keep my given name (at the very last moment of signing the marriage license), it was a tremendous relief to me. It's been almost 10 years since I made this momentous decision, and I know it was the right decision for me.

I did unofficially change my middle name from Leigh to Long, but the government doesn't know that.

There are benefits to having a long Polish-Americanized name :
* It's unusual.
* People HAVE to look at it, so they usually spell it right.
* They don't know how to pronounce it, so they usually ask.

What about the kids?
CL and I decided that boy children would take the Long surname; girl children would take Matucheski. We had a boy who we named Oliver Long, with eyes as green as mine. There is no doubt he is my child (and he knows it, too!).

What's in a Name? - Matucheski, Pt.1

Thomas Matucheski, my Polish Grandfather, had a small dairy farm in Deerbrook, Northern Wisconsin. He did the work, but his brother kept getting his milk check. He solved this perplexing problem by changing the spelling of his name.

Matucheski is the American phonetic (sound-it-out-and-say-it-just-the-way-it-looks) spelling of Matuszewski.

To this day, half the family still spells it the old way, and half of us spell it the new way. But we're all still related.

From the little bit of research I've done, the old spelling is a very common name in Poland. I think it may be translated as Matthews. If anyone reading this knows different, please tell me.