Wednesday, September 5, 2012

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again


I was helping to put away the groceries yesterday. Mom handed me a new bag of apples to go in the crisper, but the crisper already had a half a bag of apples. They weren’t soft yet, but they had that “need to use these up quick” look about them and I decided on the spot I needed to make Apple Dumplings again.
Fuji apple

If you’ve never had apple dumplings before, you’ve missed out. It’s a bit like having your own personal apple pie, but in my humble opinion, better.
So I dug out mom’s antique apple corer, fastened it to the granite countertop and proceeded to peel the six left-over apples. I’m not sure what type they were, the bag gave no clue. It seemed to me that they were Fuji when I bought them, but I’m not sure a few weeks later. The recipe might be better served with some McIntosh or Spartans, but I had 6 apples to use up and the family was going to get what they were going to get.

Apple Peeler/Corer
I attached the first apple to the peeler. This contraption peels, cores and slices the apples as you turn the crank. Boom! Six apples peeled, cored and sliced.

I whipped up a batch of Grandma’s pie crust, rolled it out and got it ready for the apples. I placed the cored apple in my left hand, stuffed a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and ground allspice into the core of the apple until it was full, added a pat of butter on top and set it in the middle of the rolled-out dough. Then I formed the dough around the apple and with a little water on the fingers, sealed the top and set it in a 9x13 pan. Another chunk of pie dough, rinse and repeat until all six dumplings sit in the pan. (Please don’t anyone take that literally and rinse the dough!)

Cored and peeled apples
The last step was to make the syrup in a pan on the stovetop and pour it over the dumplings. My pie dough recipe makes more dough than I need for this recipe, so I make a couple pie shells and froze them for later and made up a couple more and poured some Cherry Cranberry Pie filling (which I can only find at Walmart for some reason, I like it more than regular Cherry Pie filling, it isn’t quite so sweet) and baked a pie along with the Apple Dumplings.

Dumpling Ingredients
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound shortening, chilled
1 – 355mL can of chilled Lemon-lime pop (Sprite, 7-up, Mountain Dew – I used Fresca this time, the fizz helps make it flaky)
Cooked Apple Dumplings
Apple Ingredients
6 large apples, peeled and cored
½ cup butter cut into 8 pieces
¾  cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ cup walnuts, crushed (optional)
Sauce Ingredients
1 cup water
2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


This is How We Roll
1. Preheat oven to 400˚ F (200˚C)
2. Whisk the flour and salt together in a large size bowl. With a pastry knife, cut in the cold shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. The shortening pieces should be no larger than pea sized. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture, and pour the can of pop into the well. Mix until the pop is absorbed into the flour mixture. The pop and shortening need to be chilled to keep the shortening form mixing completely. As the little balls of shortening melt in the cooking process, they will leave air pockets that are the flaky part of the crust.
3. Gather dough together into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes before rolling.
4. Cut dough into about 8 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll one of the dough pieces into a 6 inch circle.

Get Stuffed!
1. Mix the brown sugar, spices and walnuts (if desired) in a small bowl.
2. Place an apple on the pastry with the cored opening facing upward. Divide brown sugar mixture between apples, poking some inside each cored opening and the rest around the base of each apple
3. Place 1 piece of butter in the opening of each apple; reserve remaining butter for sauce.
4. With slightly wet fingertips, bring one corner of pastry square up to the top of the apple, then bring the opposite corner to the top and press together. Bring up the two remaining corners, and seal. Slightly pinch the dough at the sides to completely seal in the apple. Repeat with the remaining apples. Place in prepared baking dish.

Get Sauced!
Keep an eye out for man-eating apples!
1. In a saucepan, combine water, white sugar, vanilla extract and reserved butter. Place over medium heat, and bring to a boil in a large saucepan. Boil for 5 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved. Carefully pour over dumplings.
2. Bake in preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes. Place each apple dumpling in a dessert bowl, and spoon some sauce over the top. Top with ice cream if desired (I usually desire very much!) and serve.

As Mom, Barb and I sat around the table eating piping hot Apple Dumplings and ice cream, Mom and I decided that it needed some nuts, so I added the optional walnuts to the recipe!


Thursday, August 30, 2012

All Things Marshmallow


A long time ago, I used to love marshmallows. One day that changed. Actually one night it changed: We were having a bonfire one summer night outside of Raymond on Steve’s grandpa’s alfalfa field. We shot fireworks off mortar-style and played Chubby Bunnies. The idea of the game (other than retching marshmallows) is to have someone count, while everyone pops a marshmallow in their mouths at each count and say “Chubby Bunnies!” and the last person to still articulate “Chubby Bunnies” wins. I had to give up at 16 marshmallows and Ranae, my girlfriend at the time won, as she was still able to say “Shubbby Buh-knees” at 21. I teased her that she had a competitive disadvantage and she was mad at me for intimating that she had a big mouth. That night I was losers all around. My girlfriend was mad at me, I didn’t win the game, and worst of all I hated the taste of marshmallows forever after. Something about gagging on marshmallows for 20 minutes did it for me for the rest of my life.

I don’t like marshmallows, but there was a sale on them earlier this summer the store had these industrial sized, small rodent-killing, HUGE marshmallows on sale in an equally massive bag and for some strange reason I decided that they were too good to pass up. I arrived home to find that there were already 3 normal-sized bags of marshmallows that others had decided to buy thinking we needed them for S’mores or something. Long story short, we got too many mmmmarshmmmmallows in the house and need to use them up.

Therefore, while everyone was gone to Banff last week, I whipped up a batch of Rice Krispie Treats to use them up and have something for the nieces and nephew to munch on when they got home. I looked up the recipe at www.ricekrispies.com  and made some up. I added some leftover colored chocolate from last Christmas, added a cup of craisins on a whim and topped them with some sprinkles for good measure. Colorful and yummy!

Tonight I was talking with my sister Barb and we thunked up a great addition to the recipe. I suggested we should add chocolate like before but maybe add graham cracker crumbs or something. Barb countered that we should add Golden Grahams instead. So we did. Man, were they ever good.

Original Rice Krispies Treats

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons butter or margarine (I used margarine)
1 package (about 40) regular marshmallows
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1 cup craisins (optional)
½ cup chocolate wafers, chopped (optional)

Directions
In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.
Add Rice Krispies. Stir until well coated. Add craisins and chocolate if desired.
Using buttered spatula evenly press mixture into 9x13 pan coated with cooking spray. (I keep the foil rectangles from the margarine squares in the fridge, take one out and grease the pan with it)
Cool. Cut into 2-inch squares. Best if served the same day.


S'mores Treats

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons butter or margarine (I used margarine)
1 package (about 40) regular marshmallows
3 cups Rice Krispies cereal
3 cups Golden Grahams cereal
1 package Chipits chocolate chips

Directions
In a large saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.
Add Rice Krispies and Golden Grahams. Stir until well coated. Add craisins and chocolate if desired.
Using buttered spatula evenly press mixture into 9x13 pan coated with cooking spray. (I keep the foil rectangles from the margarine squares in the fridge, take one out and grease the pan with it)
In a double-boiler, melt the chocolate chips until pourable and drizzle all over the marshmallow mixture.
Cool. Cut into 2-inch squares. Best if served the same day.


Rice Krispies Treats are not my favorite, not by a long shot. I got to thinking about what my favorite marshmallow treat was and I remembered these butterscotch marshmallow squares that they use to make when I was working in the oilfield. I used to spend most of a lot of winters buried in the bush. We would be hours from the nearest town or hotel. There have these camps that are brought in to house the workers. They can be as small as a couple of Atco trailers stuck together with a common kitchen (the worst type), to a typical rig camp which is basically 6 or 7 Atco trailers configured with the kitchen and dining room facilities, rec room and washroom/showers are in the middle with single or double rooms all around the outside. Rig camps will house anywhere from 15 to 24 men, with some companies bringing in additional Atco sleeping trailers to add a few more sleeping berths.

Most often we would book into a huge camp, like a mobile hotel (mobile meaning that over the course of a week, the entire thing could be packed up, torn apart and moved with giant “bed trucks” – which at the end of winter, they often are), catering from anywhere from 50 to 250 men (or rarely women).

As the beds… No, I won’t refer to them as such, they are camp cots, nothing more. They are thin, 3” thick single-sized mattresses that lay in wooden 2x4 frames bolted to the wall. Thin, see-through cotton sheets are all that keep you from touching a mattress that has who-know-who sleeping on it for how-many-years; I’m surprised there is not more reported incidences of bed-bugs or worse. They are rarely over 6 feet long, so a fellow like me who is 6 feet tall and over 300 pounds, my feet hang over, my side not in direct contact with the 2x4 slats that the mattress lays on, but very near it, and usually either the heat is cranked up and you don’t have a thermostat and the window is frozen shut, or you are freezing your tail off and thin, itchy woolen camp blankets become more coveted trading commodities than pork bellies at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Most camps are pretty good these days, but I have slept in a couple that have been in the same place since the 60's. The floors are rotten and you have to be careful where you put your feet. One camp up in the Cameron Hills, NWT only had one room left when we got to camp and they wouldn't let us sleep in it. We tried sleeping in our trucks, but it had dropped below -40 degrees and even with the engines revved up, it wasn't warm enough to sleep in them. We begged them to give us the last room and finally they camp boss relented. There were two bunk beds, but the floor where the heat register was supposed to be had rotted off years ago and the heat vent dropped down somewhere out of sight in the black crawl space as was now presumably a condo for a nest of field mice. Basically, there was no heat for the room. By leaving our door open, we could keep the frost off of us, and between the insulated coveralls and an extra couple of wool blankets we stole, we were able to sleep a little.

On this occasion we were working for a fellow named John Wright. We called him All-Nite Wright. We would work all day on the rig, and then as we were eating supper in camp, he would walk by our table and throw a notepad with a dozen well names on it and tell us to have them done by morning. We had to pull the electronic recorders from about 2500m downhole, download them, rig out and move to the next well. We could knock off a well every three hours, so by 7 AM we had perhaps 6 or 7 done and we were back at camp, grabbing a plate of breakfast to go. Back at the rig, we'd work all day, and then John would stop at our table, asked us how we did the previous night and toss another list at us.

After the fifth day, I thought I would die. I was about to tell John where he could stick his list, when a cold snap hit, we hit -50 below zero and the rig froze up. Now we would work all night, come in for breakfast, report to the rig to find cold water dribbling out of the end of the steam lines and head to our freezing bunks. We would sleep all day, getting paid standby to sleep while the rig was froze up, and then get tossed another list at supper, work all night pulling recorders and running plugs before they suspended the wells. We ended up with something like 225 hours on our paysheet for that two week period.

As all camp beds are basically created more-or-less equal by Atco or one of their competitors, what makes one camp stand out from the other is the food. If you come to breakfast and they have great sandwiches made  up in the cooler for your lunch (please, no ½” thick inedible sausage sammies and never egg-salad, no refrigeration, no dice), bacon that isn’t either boiled and gelatin-like or burned to a crisp, scrambled eggs that aren’t still runny and hash-brown that aren’t convinced that they are still last night’s baked potato (they should at least be fried on the grill long enough to be warm), then chances are, you have a good cook and are staying at a good camp. There isn’t space enough to document all the food poisoning stories I’ve heard or attended and I’ve been at several camps where the rig workers banded together and told the consultant that either there was a new camp cook that night, or we were shutting down the rig and driving home that night, it was his choice. Lo and behold, there was inevitably a new cook slinging grub that next night. A couple of cooks have nearly been lynched. Like something out of a Clint Eastwood movie.

A really good camp would have a baker. He would get up at 3 AM every day and start making bread. Once the dough was rising, he was off making cakes, pies, squares, cookies and there was usually a dozen different offering to add to one’s lunch every day. Other than pie (Mmmmm, pie), my favorites were the ginger snaps at the cookie end of things and butterscotch marshmallow squares. About half the camps would offer some version of the marshmallow squares. Almost all would have Rice Krispie squares or Puffed Wheat Squares or both, but a good one would have those oowey, gooey multi-colored marshmallows covered in butterscotch and peanut buttery goodness. I’m salivating as I’m writing this.

Without further ado, here is my favorite marshmallow treat:
Butterscotch Marshmallow Squares

Ingredients
½ cup butter
1 (11 oz) package butterscotch chips
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup flaked coconut
1 package miniature marshmallows

Directions
In the lower pot of a double boiler, add water halfway to top and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. In the top of a double boiler, heat butter, butterscotch chips, and peanut butter until melted. Remove from heat.
Once the mixture is cool enough that it won’t melt the marshmallows, stir in coconut and marshmallows.
Pour mixture in buttered pan. Refrigerate and cut into squares. Store in the refrigerator.


I whipped up a batch of these and they were hits. Except with mom. She can't stand peanut butter in any cooking.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Night Terror


Holy crap.

I think I need to up my medication. I just woke up and remembered what I was thinking about. Not dreaming, that would have been a nightmare. I’m positive I was awake... only 3 hours has gone by since I crashed for the evening. Odd.

I got up and wrote down what I was thinking about...


You look down at the desk and notice a nick in the desk that you’ve never noticed before. You feel an overwhelming urge to touch the nick, to feel it with the tip of your finger, to see if it’s real. “Touch it!” something whispers, “Touch it”. The quiet whisper is now a demand.

Slowly you lower the index finger of your right hand towards the desk. You think to yourself that perhaps you should just tap it, touch it quickly and pull back, just in case. Just at the moment when you are about to touch the nick, a black hole opens up just larger than the width of your clenched fist. With the momentum of the tap, your whole hand, finger extended, passes down into the queer black space. Terrified, you try to pull your hand back. You can feel the impulses race from your brain down your arm to the muscles, relaying the message to turn back the course. A split second turns into an echoing eternity. You have the feeling that you only have so long before... Ever so slowly, the momentum halts, the return trip back out of the black space started...

The hole snaps closed with a sickening “Snick!” and cuts off your hand at the wrist. The pressurized blood in your now-open veins is about to begin spraying all over the desktop. A horrified scream erupts from your lips and seems to go on forever.

You realize your eyes are closed. “Look”, something tugs at your mind. “Look and see what you’ve done. Your eyes snap open and you see...

Your hand, finger extended, about to poke a nick in your desktop...



Sergeant McClusky was lying shivering in a ditch in an all-night exercise. “Exercise, my ass!” she whispered. “Bloody torture!” (I originally typed Exorcist instead of Exercise. Freudian slip, perhaps?)

Bloody torture was right. She could feel the light trickle of blood running down her leg, probably caused by her slide into position. It was difficult to feel the fairy touch of the trickle as the massive, throbbing pain radiated upwards from the partially sprained ankle she had endured earlier. They say that sometimes a scrape is worse than a cut. She wondered if that little ditty held true with ligaments. Was the pain from a partial sprain worse than full one?

All night the stupid joke about the two Mexicans lost in the desert kept running through her mind. The previous afternoon, after they were given their orders, one of the men had been telling it to his buddies. It was one of those mindless, racist jokes that the enlisted tell repeatedly as if it was the first ever telling. The two amigos had been lost in the desert for weeks. At death's door, they see a tree in the distance. As they get nearer, they see that rasher upon rasher of bacon drapes the tree: smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life-giving nearly raw juicy bacon, all sorts of bacon.
"Hey, Pepe" says the first Mexican, "Ees a bacon tree! We're saved!"
Pepe sprints up to the tree. As he gets to within five feet, a hail of bullets guns him down.
His friend drops down on the sand and calls across to the dying Pepe. "Pepe! Pepe! Que pasa hombre?"
With his last breath Pepe calls out,"Ugh, run, amigo, run. Run! Ees not bacon tree... Ees a ham bush!"

Suddenly the rest of her unit shot to their feet, moving as one down the road. She opened her mouth to order them back. The exercise wasn’t over and they had orders to remain here in ambush of another unit. She painfully stumbled to her feet, wincing at the shot of agony arcing up her leg.

The soldiers moved together, quietly, silent. Suddenly the soldiers around her began shooting in the air, trying to shoot what they couldn’t see... but they could all feel... As a unit, without an officer barking orders, weapons firing at unseen targets, they moved towards a green light on the horizon.

She feels something reach into her head and begin speaking with her. “Try” the voice says. She struggles to reach out, her consciousness stretching towards something, stretching like the taffy she used to make with her grandma those Christmas’ so long ago, stretching, pulling... “Stretch”, her Grandma’s voice coaxes. “Streeetch.

She connects with something, with a gentle brush, not a hard plug in, more a gentle touch like silk sliding on the fingertips. It was a... computer maybe? No, too inorganic. It was definitely living. It was something so different, so... so alien in design that she couldn’t quite make out the shape... No, shape wasn’t the right word. Texture? Something similar to texture. It was as if as if her brain was crispy and brittle, like bacon cooked too long. (Was that morning’s breakfast mess or that stupid ham bush joke that kept popping into her brain?) The other thing out there was creamy and impossibly light, like the Crème brûlée that she had ordered at that fancy French Bistro on her last R&R with Roger... Silky smooth, it had dissolved on her tongue, each creamy piece sliding down her throat...

She awoke with her arms restrained at her sides. Her eyes whipped around the room in panic as she struggled against the tightly-fastened straps. She was in a field hospital tent, nurses rushing about with medical supplies, the painful cries of wounded men ripping through her foggy brain. Several orderlies and a doctor were holding down the man in the bed next to her, trying to administer something to him, a sedative, perhaps?



There’s a bunch just after the Crème brûlée that’s fading with time. She could communicate with whatever it was out there. I just couldn't write it down fast enough. It was important to the story but I just can’t remember it. It’s like on the tip of my tongue, it’s just there out of sight.

It's 3 AM and like my nephew Jerom who's terrified of a thunderstorms, I’m afraid to go back to bed.

I might sleep.

Maybe I'll watch another episode of Fallen Skies. Yeah, like that and the previous stuff won't give me more nightmares...

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Stupid, other swear words and J. Golden Kimball

Anyone who knows me very well knows I cuss too much. I used to tell myself that I cussed because my dad did, and I just picked it up. More and more I think that I used it as an emphasis point, to get some one's attention and keep it. Throw a cuss word in and they were less likely to blow you off. I try never to take the Lord's name in vain. On the few occasions (I can count of one hand when it has happened) that it occurred, I was immediately shocked that it had come out of my mouth and repented of what I had said.

Some words are not swear words, in my opinion. They are scare words, or attention-getters, like the old joke about an old prospector telling some tenderfoot how to talk to a mule. He said all you have to do is whisper quietly in the mule's ear. The Easterner nods his head in approval. The Prospector then goes up to the mule, and whacks him over the head with a 2x4. The Easterner screams, "What did you do that for? You said you'd whisper to it!"
The old prospector winks and says, "True, but first you gotta get its attention."

It has bothered me when people arbitrarily decide that some words are not allowed to be used. I was working on some stuff in the garage when I missed what I was aiming at, and smacked myself with the hammer. One of my kids was nearby and so I squelched what I was going to say with "Mmmmmmmmmmmaaan! That was stupid!"
My son's mouth opened in a big horror-filled O, and said, "Dad! You swore!"
I quickly replayed the last few seconds in my mind and informed him that I did not swear, that actually I had left out quite a few swear words that I had intended to say.
"When did I swear?"
"You said stupid, and mom says stupid is a swear word."

Well, that just infuriated me. Stupid is not a swear word. It's not even close. It is a state of being for some folks I know, but it is not a swear word. I know where this is coming from, however. In the Bible, it says that a man is not to call his brother racca (or fool). (What if his brother is a fool and the poor guy is just trying to make his brother aware of his situation?) So one of my kids must have called the other stupid, and to simplify things (which only complicates things later) she informed my kids that calling their sibling stupid was swearing. I have no problem explaining to them that they can't call their brother or sister names. However, you can't ban the word from the English language. I often do stupid things. I even feel stupid on some days. Stupid is not a swear word and never will be. I think it was Forrest Gump who said, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Fast-forward ahead a couple of years and I catch my wife telling my kids that the word bastard is a swear word. I listen to the conversation for a couple of minutes and then, when I can no longer stay silent, (It is perhaps my greatest weakness. If I had stayed silent more times, I think I would be wealthier, have more friends and perhaps I would still be married.) I broke in and said that the word bastard was not a swear word.

She turned purple. I have never seen her so mad. She insisted that it was a swear word. I said it wasn't. I agreed that Tyler could not call his sister a bastard (even though she may have deserved it that day). Mostly because it wasn't true. She was not born out of wedlock and consequently wasn't a bastard. I said that I understood why to call someone a bastard is wrong, and not to be done, but you can't take the word out of the dictionary. You can't arbitrarily pick a word and rip the page out. I explained that the word has use in everyday English. I had a flat bastard file in my toolbox. It was labeled as a "flat bastard file" when I bought it. Bastard, in this case, means halfway. Thus, a bastard file is a file that is not a coarse file, nor a fine file, but one halfway between. Some files are called bastard files because they have a course file on one side and a fine side on the other.

In dealing with swords, you have a two-handed sword like a Scottish claymore that is too heavy for anyone other than Arnold Schwarzenegger to wield one-handed. Then you have a long sword, which is wielded with one hand, the other hand usually wielding a shield. Finally, you have a bastard sword, which is sometimes called a hand-and-a-half sword. It is longer than a long sword, but shorter than a claymore. It has a large enough grip that it can be wielded in a two-handed style, but also can be wielded one-handed if the swordsman is strong enough.

I concluded that yes, Tyler could not call his sister using that word, but to remove the word from all use was wrong. That to do so and to remove each word that caused offense was to ensure that eventually, there would be no communication. The English language would cease to exist.

At this point, the extremely purple woman across from me exploded. "You have cut me down in front of my kids, in my home!" she screamed and stomped out of the room and slammed the door. I sat stunned at the dinner table. First, I was almost positive they were my kids as well. Secondly, my point was not to embarrass her, but to make a point that I should have made at least ten years earlier.

Anyway, as you can probably imagine, my favorite General Authority was always J. Golden Kimball. His father was the Apostle Heber C. Kimball, who died when he was 15, leaving him and his family destitute. He left school at that tender age and became a muleskinner to support the family. I'm sure that he picked up his colorful language there. After serving a mission to the southern states, he was called back to the southern states a decade later to be the Mission President and a year later was called as one of the First Council of the Seventy.

As a muleskinner, and later as a cowboy on his ranch in Bear Lake country, he developed a fondness for coffee and struggled with abstaining from coffee the rest of his life.

Here are some of my favorite J. Golden stories. Some might be apocryphal, but most have been documented. If any of you are as squeamish as my wife, you may want to quit reading now. One last thing you should know, he had a high-pitched voice when he spoke, similar to Dudley Do-Right, the cartoon Mountie in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.

J. Golden Kimball and some of the Brethren were up in Lymon, Wyoming, where they came to a stream and President Grant suggested they’d better try to find a way around it.
Golden remarked, “Why that’s nothing, I can piss that much.”
President Heber J. Grant said to him, “Brother Kimball, you're out of order!”
J. Golden replied, “Yes, and if I wasn't out of order I could piss more than that!”

J. Golden Kimball
On a tour of the Church's woolen mill, J. Golden Kimball had his long coat snagged in the whirling machinery, which spun him around several times, then threw him to the floor. The young tour guide was aghast as the Church leader lay there silently.
“Brother Kimball,” he said, “Speak to me! Speak to me!”
J. Golden obviously wasn't hurt. “I don't know why I should,” he said. “I passed you twelve times just now, and not once did you speak to me!”

Boyd K. Packer told the story about how someone stopped Elder J. Golden Kimball on the street on one occasion. There had been a little difficulty in Elder Kimball's family that had become publicly known, and whoever it was who stopped him, no doubt with a mind to injure, said, “Brother Kimball, I understand you're having some problems with one of your children.” His answer was, “Yes, and the Lord is having some problems with some of his, too.”

Someone asked J. Golden Kimball his opinion of women wearing cosmetics, which some General Authorities in the early part of the 1900s frowned upon. Golden said, “Well, a little paint never hurt any old barn.”

Hugh B. Brown told of when J. Golden Kimball had come down to the stake where he was presiding. President Brown introduced him as the “Will Rogers” of the Church, and told the congregation that Golden was a great humorist. When he got up he said, “You know, I think the Lord himself likes a joke. If he didn't, he wouldn't have made some of you folks!” 

Once, when attempting to exhort a congregation to keep the commandments better, J. Golden Kimball waved a sheaf of papers at them. “You may have noticed, brothers and sisters, that I keep waving these papers. Well, this is the Lord's shit list, and all your names are on it.”

Another time, when addressing concerns about the behavior of the youth, J. Golden Kimball told the congregation not to worry about the young people: “They'll be all right. It's all these old bald-headed bastards on the front row that you need to look out for.”

Heber J. Grant and J. Golden Kimball were speaking in a stake conference in St. George that was going broadcast live over the air. President Grant was worried the FCC would take away the Church’s license if there were any profanity. In an effort to bring the “swearing elder” into line, LDS Church President Heber J. Grant wrote Golden’s speech and ordered him to read it on the air. After several minutes of stammering while trying to decipher Grant's writing, Golden gave up, announcing into the microphone, “Hell, Heber, I can't read this damn thing.”
He proceeded to abandon the speech and shoot from the hip for the rest of his talk.

Thomas Cheney told the story of an acquaintance who met J. Golden Kimball on the street one day during the conversation asked, “Do you believe that Jonah was swallowed by the whale?”
“When I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah,” Golden answered.
“But,” said the man, “What if Jonah is not there?”
“Then you will have to ask him,” Golden quickly replied

A Baptist preacher once harassed J. Golden Kimball as a missionary. As he passed the missionaries on the street, the minister yelled out, “Hello, you sons of the devil!” J. Golden shot back, “Hello, father!”

As the story goes, J. Golden Kimball was giving a tour of Salt Lake City to some visiting officials from Britain, which was currently enjoying its position as the world’s biggest superpower. As they passed historic buildings, J. Golden would describe the struggles the early pioneers had to raise them in the desert. 
Salt Lake Temple
“Over there we have our Theater, the largest at the time west of the Mississippi when it was built. It took only four years to build.” 
The officials nodded, admired, and said, “Yes, yes, and I believe it looks much like a theater recently built in London, but ours only took two years.” 
Slightly perturbed, J. Golden pointed out another tall building. “We just completed this building after working on it for a year.” 
The officials nodded politely, and one said to the other, “It reminds me of the recent building raised for the Queen, but we were able to build that one in only six months.”
Finally, very annoyed, J. Golden drove their carriage by the magnificent Salt Lake Temple (which took 40 years to build). The visitors took off their hats and stood up in the carriage. “Wonderful!” they cried. “Magnificent! Mr. Kimball, what building is this?” 
J. Golden, with a hidden smile, looked up at the Temple, a look of shock on his face. He looked back at the men. “Well, hell if I know,” he said, “the damn thing wasn't there yesterday!”

Regarding the Klu Klux Klan, J. Golden Kimball said, “Waste of a good sheet.”

J. Golden Kimball once told a classic story about marriage. He always said that people had to get to know each other as people before they were married. One time a man fell in love with a girl's beautiful singing voice and decided to marry her, without knowing much about her at all. So, they were married, and the very first morning after their marriage the man woke up and looked at his new wife with curlers in her hair, no make-up, looking nothing short of horrible. He looked once, and could not believe he had married that, and then he looked again. On the third look he said, “Sing, for hell's sake, sing!

He was presiding at a Stake Conference, the day was very warm, and noticed that many of the people were dozing off. When it was his time to speak, he quietly rose to the pulpit, announced that he had some "official business", and proceeded to ask for a show of hands of all those who were in favor of moving Mt. Nebo across the valley. As the people began to raise their hands, he pounced on the moment, slammed his fist into the pulpit and proceeded to berate them both for falling asleep, and for not paying attention to what was going on. It was said that the next 45-minute sermon was one of his best, when he called the members to repentance for their complacency.

Thomas Cheney told another story of when J. Golden was on a trip with Apostle Francis Lyman. They came to Panaca, Nevada. Meetings had begun in the morning and they kept them there all day, and they were fasting. Golden was starved and anxious to go at four o'clock. After four, Elder Lyman said, “Now, Brother Kimball, get up and tell them about the Era.” Elder Lyman had already done a good deal of talking about the Era (a magazine in the early Church).
Golden got up and said, “All you men that will take the Era if we will let you go home, raise your right hand.” There was not a single man who did not raise his hand, subscribed and paid $2 cash for the Era. That afternoon, they added over 400 subscribers. Golden said later, “I do not claim that was inspiration; it was good psychology. Really, they paid $2 to get out."

James Kimball tells how President Grant sent a note to Golden. The note read that there was a member of the stake presidency from Coalville, who had passed away. His wife had requested that Golden speak at the funeral.
Golden didn’t get the note until he returned from a Church assignment in Southern California. The funeral started in an hour, and Coalville was almost two hours away. He hopped in his Model T and drove as fast as he could. When he arrived, the funeral was almost over. The bishop saw Golden walk in. "Brother Kimball, come forward. We’d like to hear from you."
He went up and said, “I’m very happy to be here. I’m sorry I’m late. I want to tell you what a wonderful person this man was. I knew him; I’ve stayed in his home. He was an inspiration to me. He was a good father and he was a good husband. He goes to a great reward.”
As he started to hit his stride, he looked out in the audience. About the eighth row back, there sat the man he thought was dead!
He looked down in the casket and did not recognize the man lying there. Confused, he turned and said, “Say Bishop, who the hell’s dead around here anyway?”

When a nephew asked Brother Kimball if he wanted to hear the latest story about him, he responded, “Hell, no! It seems that all the stories told these days are either about me or Mae West!”

According to his traveling companion to a stake conference in Southern Utah, perhaps Cedar City, J. Golden struggled with living the Word of Wisdom, which was being pushed harder at that time than at any other time during his life.
Whilst in southern Utah to speak at a stake conference, he'd ditched his traveling companion and headed off to a local restaurant for lunch. He was eating -- a cup of coffee at the ready-- when his companion caught up with him.
His horrified and self-righteous companion said, “Why Brother Kimball, I'd rather commit adultery than drink a cup of coffee.”
To which, J. Golden replied, “Who the hell wouldn't?”

Allan Kent Powell documented in J. Golden Kimball’s biography of his feeling that he was called to be an LDS Church general authority (as a member of the First Council of Seventy in 1892) because of his father.
“Some people say a person receives a position in this church through revelation, and others say they get it through inspiration, but I say they get it through relation. If I hadn't been related to Heber C. Kimball, I wouldn't have been a damn thing in this church.”

In another story, J. Golden Kimball was speaking to a gathering of Relief Society sisters, who apparently had raised some questions ad nauseum about eternal marriage and whether they'd be forced to remain married to the bums they'd chosen in the  this life.
Squeaked Kimball, “I don't know about this here eternal marriage business. But it seems to me that if you can't live with the sons-of-bitches on earth, the Lord won't force you to remain with them in heaven.”

The Salt Lake Tribune once wrote how J. Golden Kimball accidentally wandered into a turn-of-the-century republican convention at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. A staunch Democrat, J. Golden was mortified.
LDS Apostle and Republican Senator Reed Smoot beckoned him forward, saying, “We are glad that Brother Kimball has come to his senses, and we'd like him to say the opening prayer.”
“Oh, I don't think so, Reed,” J. Golden replied. “I'd just as soon the Lord didn't know I was here.”

When he heard that President Grant was changing the emphasis in the Church and making the Word of Wisdom a matter of enforcement, his diary states that J. Golden Kimball went to the president, saying, “Hell, Heber, what are you doin’? You know my problem with this.” President Grant reportedly said, “Well, Golden, just do the best you can.”
Later on in life, Uncle Golden said, “Well, I've almost got the problem licked. I'm eighty now, and in a few more years, I think I'll have it completely under control.”

J. Golden Kimball sometimes said, “If it weren't for my nephew, Ranch Kimball, it would be a lot easier for me to overcome this habit of drinking coffee… every now and then, and on a nice day, we drive all the way up City Creek Canyon, way up to the top. Nobody's there; we're just by ourselves, and on a beautiful day we'll park and Ranch will put a pot of coffee on. When it perks, he'll pour out two tin cups full, and we'll sit there, drink coffee, and reminisce…
I remember one day Ranch turned to me and said, ‘Uncle Golden, does this bother you sitting up here and drinking coffee with me and being a General Authority?’ and I said to him, ‘Hell no.’
And he said, ‘Why not?’ and I said, ‘It’s simple, Ranch. The eighty-ninth section doesn't apply at this altitude.’”

An incident took place in Keely’s Restaurant, and old diner in downtown Salt Lake frequented by Uncle Golden. Golden walked in and ordered a cup of coffee. They brought it to him and he went to a back booth to sip it. While he was sitting enjoying his drink, a woman came by on her way to the ladies room. She stopped, came back and peered closely at Golden.
“Aren’t you J. Golden Kimball of the First Council of the Seventy?” She probed, “And isn’t that coffee you’re drinking?”
He looked at her for a moment and said, “Sister, you’re the third woman today to mistake me for that old son-of-a-bitch!”

“What can God do for a liar who refuses to repent? Can the Lord save him? He can’t claim salvation. Baptizing him in water will not settle the trouble, unless you keep him under.” 

I think this is my favorite J. Golden Kimball quote: “I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure in hell try to cross it as often as I can.”

J. Golden Kimball was travelling to a conference with new DSSU superintendent David O. McKay (who would in 1951 become the prophet) one winter day. Finally, about 8:00 in the morning, they got to Brigham City. It was cold, and Uncle Golden was frozen right to the bone… He turned to Brother McKay and said, “Why don't we go over and have a little breakfast; we've got an hour, and it's not fast Sunday.” Brother McKay thought it was a marvelous idea.
When they went into the restaurant, no one else was there. The waitress came up to their table and said, “What could I get for you two gentlemen?” According to Uncle Golden, Brother McKay blurted out, “Well, we'll have some ham and eggs and two cups of hot chocolate, please.” Uncle Golden almost died; this wasn't what he had in mind at all.
However, after a few minutes, an idea came to him. He excused himself, saying he needed to go to the men's room. Golden then walked back into the kitchen, grabbed the waitress and said, “Say, would you mind putting a little coffee in my hot chocolate, please?” She said no, she wouldn't mind at all; they did that kind of thing all the time up in Brigham City.
Golden washed his hands, went back to the table and sat down. In a few minutes, the waitress came with the ham and eggs and the hot chocolate. When she got up to the table, she looked at both men and said, “Now, which one of you wanted coffee in his hot chocolate?” Flustered, Uncle Golden looked at her and said, “Ah, hell, put it in both of them.”
Brother McKay laughed uncontrollably.

To Golden’s chagrin, young Brother McKay told everybody the story at the conference. And kept telling the story ever time he spoke.
“I wish he’d keep his damn mouth shut,” he reportedly groused, “Maybe Heber will release him and we won’t hear any more about him!”

One winter J. Golden Kimball was walking on the street in a snowstorm and a woman slipped, knocked him down and ended up on top of him, and they rode down the street with this large woman on his back. When they skidded to a stop at the curb, Golden said to the woman, “Sorry ma'am, this is as far as I go.”

J. Golden Kimball
One day J. Golden Kimball went into ZCMI to buy a suit. It is important to remember how very tall (6’4”) and thin (145 lbs) he was. He walked into the men’s clothing department and rifled through the racks, looking at suits.
A sales clerk came up and said, “May I help you, sir?”
Golden said, “Yes I would like to see a suit that would fit me.”
The sales clerk made a quick appraisal of Golden’s scrawny frame and responded, “Hell, so would I.”
They both laughed uproariously.

J. Golden Kimball went in to buy a new Stetson hat at ZCMI. An old cowboy, he loved Stetson hats. He walked up to the counter and said, “I’d like to look at that Stetson hat right over there. I’ve had my eye on it for several weeks.”
The sales clerk brought it over, dusted it off and said, “This is our very best Stetson.”
Uncle Golden said, “Well, how much is it?”
“Sixty-five dollars.”
Sixty-five dollars!” Golden exclaimed. He looked the hat over critically and said, “Where are the holes?”
“Holes?” the man asked, puzzled, “There are no holes in Stetson hats. Why would they have holes?”
“For the ears of the jackass that would pay $65 for a hat!”

A stake president took Uncle Golden aside down in Salina, and said, “Brother Kimball, you’ve got to talk to the youth. I can’t send them on missions, they’re swearing too much!”
Golden wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “You want me to talk to them?” The stake president explained that they might listen to someone who spoke their language, so to speak.
So Golden gathered them all together and said, “I understand you brethren are not going to be called on missions unless you can give up your swearing. You can do it. Hell, I did.”

President Grant sent J. Golden Kimball to a stake conference in Wyoming and while there, Golden said that the women there were the homeliest women in the Church. Heber J. Grant sent him back to apologize, and he went back the next week and said, “I’m sorry you have the ugliest women in the church.”

On one occasion, J. Golden Kimball was attending a stake conference in St. George and it was a long meeting and very hot, about 118 degrees Fahrenheit. He was the last to speak and looking out on the perspiring congregation he remarked, “I don't know how the people of St. George can stand the heat, the Indians, the snakes and the flooding Virgin River. I believe if I had a house in Hell and a house in St. George, I'd rent out the one in St. George and move straight to Hell. I really would.”
When directed by President Grant to go back and apologize for his remarks, he returned said, “My brothers and sisters, the president of the Church has asked that I take back my intemperate remarks about the heat you experience here, but it’s so damn hot today, I ain’t gonna do it!”

In Brigham City, he admonished the church members, “This city looks like hell. You need to clean things up. Mow the grass. Paint your houses and barns. And you sisters, you could stand a little paint yourselves.”

In his last years J. Golden Kimball met a friend in the street who said to him, “How are you, Golden? How are you getting along?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I'm not doing so good. Getting old and tired. You know, Seth, I've been preaching this gospel nigh onto sixty years now, and I think it's about time for me to get over on the other side to find out how much of what I've been saying is true.”

“A sermon should be like a woman’s dress. Long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to keep your attention.”

One of the Brethren said to J. Golden Kimball, “When you die, there will never be another like you in the church.” Uncle Golden replied, “Yes and I am sure this is a great comfort to you.”

Once, J. Golden Kimball accompanied a train full of General Authorities to create the first stake in Denver, Colorado. On the return journey, he was very ill with the flu. When he boarded the train, he said he just wanted to go to bed. However, President Grant insisted, “Oh, Golden, come down and join us for dinner.”
The waiter came to Uncle Golden and asked what he would like to order. “Nothing for me. I think I’m coming down with the flu.”
The waiter said, “Sir, I know how to lick the flu. I get a big, tall glass and I fill it halfway with whiskey and the rest with coffee. You drink that down, go back to your berth and sleep through the night. When we get to Salt Lake tomorrow morning, you’ll feel just fine.”
There was a deathly silence in the diner. President Grant and all the brethren waited anxiously for Golden’s response. He looked around at everyone and loudly said, “I’ll have to pass on that, brother, that’s very kind of you, but I’ll have to pass.”
The waiter moved on. He was just about to go through the swinging door to the kitchen when Golden stood up and yelled, “Oh, waiter, waiter! About that drink, you suggested… You couldn’t make that half Postum, could you?”

I think that this is the truth behind J. Golden Kimball. Unlike his addiction to coffee, his use of profanity had a purpose:
One of the Brethren once said, “Brother Kimball, why do you use so many ‘damns’ and ‘hells’ in your sermons?”
“Well, if I didn’t use a good hard ‘damn’ once in a while, they wouldn’t pay any more attention to what I say, than they do to what you say.”

James Arrington, while researching J. Golden Kimball's life, was visiting a friend who was private secretary to President N. Eldon Tanner. He mentioned the project to his friend, who insisted they go in and tell President Tanner about it. 
Tanner listened as Arrington explained how the project was going and then as he was about to leave, asked him, “What do you get when you cross J. Golden Kimball with Spencer W. Kimball?” 
“Do it, damn it!”

I have to close with my favorite J. Golden joke. 
In 1938, at the age of 85, J. Golden Kimball died in a car accident out in the desert in Nevada when the car he was travelling in hit the ditch and he was thrown from the car.
As he arrived at the pearly gates, Saint Peter said, “Well, Brother Golden, at last we got you here!”
“Yeah, but by hell, you had to kill me to do it!”

Friday, August 24, 2012

My Watch

I had an epiphany last night. I was taking a shower when the first couple lines of a poem came to me. Or, rather, the things that I have been thinking about for months coalesced into poem form. This never happens to me. My Grandma Hippard wrote books of poetry, but other than a couple of failed assignments in English class and a couple of collaborations with my best friend Steve that started something like "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue...", I have never written any poetry. I didn't even attempt rhyming or making sure they all have the same rythmic meter (See, I had to look that up on Wikipedia. I couldn't remember what it was called.) I really don't do poetry, I'm much more of the "See Grog take woman back to cave' type. However, the words came to me and flowed for two hours last night and it accurately represents the many feelings (yeah, there's a manly word...) I have been having lately. - Logan

I have a watch.

It’s not a Tiffany
Covered in diamonds and bling.
It’s not a masterpiece
Of Swiss engineering
That has gears everywhere
And never needs rewinding.
Not even one of those Japanese models
That is accurate to 27 decimal places.
Often, I have wished it was
One of those cool diver’s watches
That has 16 features listed
And two that aren’t.
The kind that is waterproof
To 20,000 leagues.

It’s just my watch.
Nothing special.
Kind of clunky,
It just tells time.
I got it from my parents.
They bought it for me
The day I was born.
I wore it more and more
As I got older.
One day my mother
Gave it to me.
Said it was mine, now.

But it never ran quite right.
It did the job most of the time,
But some days it was off,
Some days it didn’t run.
Some days one hand didn’t turn.
But mostly it just told time.
I wondered why other watches
Worked better, looked cooler.
But, it really never occurred to me
That it needed to be fixed.

Besides, who would fix it?
Who could take it apart
And make sure that all the parts
Were put back when they were done?
Suppose there were several
Disciplines of watch repair.
If you’re not sure exactly what is wrong,
Then who do you take it to be fixed?

One day, I gave my watch to a friend,
It was all I had to give.
Like the widow and her might, Giving
Your best possession is the penultimate sacrifice.
She kept it in a drawer,
Hidden away.

I thought it was put away
For safekeeping.
Later I found out
That it was hidden away
In embarrassment,
That she valued it as nothing.

A present given in love,
And years later
Tossed back in disdain.

My watch exploded on impact,
A myriad of shiny pieces
Arcing through the air

I sat in the dust, surrounded
By little parts, some
Almost too little to be seen.
I gathered them as a shepherd
Gathers his flocks.
Each piece a small treasure.

It was obvious
From the parts in my hands,
That it had been broken
In the final casual fling of her wrist.

Upon closer examination,
It was evident that there was
Damage inflicted long ago.
And the Damage Done,
As destructive as that toss had been
It had broken along a weak spot
Caused so long ago.

I went to an expert
On watches and their repair.
She explained many things
About watch-making and repair.
Told me that all watches are broken.
Can you believe that?
Why would anyone buy a watch,
If they are all broken to begin with?
Do we have a choice?
Or was that choice made long ago?

I have often thought
That a broken watch
And a contrite spirit
Were silly words
Better off in a country song.
To pass through life
Blisslessly ignorant
Seems a terrible waste.
Of a good watch
And all the time spent winding it.
Now, finally, I have
An inkling of what it takes
In the upkeep of my watch.
And perhaps a little of the upkeep of hers.

I have learned a hard truth.
Only the Watchmaker
Can effect a lasting repair.
Many a shingle has been hung,
Promising ‘Repairs in an Instant
Or “Repairs that Will Last’,
But I think that haywire
And duct tape are no substitute
For the Master’s hand.
I think, perhaps, we are required
To call upon the Watchmaker in his shop
At least once in this life.
To stroll down the glass-cased aisles
And wonder at it all.

And so my question I would ask,
Do you trust the Maker
Of a broken watch?
Will He fix it this time?
Or will He absently smile
As He sits tinkering at His bench
When He hears that next,
Faraway explosion in the distance?
Can I trust that He has
My best interest at heart
When His creation,
So flawed and imperfect,
Without so much as an
Instruction booklet
Or an owner’s manual,
Was intended to break
So that I would have to return
To the Master’s shop?
Planned obsolescence is not
Something I like in the car that I buy,
Let alone for something
As important as my watch.

Whom can I trust?
And do I have a choice?
If the only One who can build it
Is the only One who can fix it,
Then, perhaps, Freedom
Is simply the choice of whether
To have it fixed, or to slip it in the bottom
Of the junk drawer.

One last thing occurs to me.
Was the watch ever mine to begin with?
Just because one buys something,
Doesn't mean that he owns it.
Perhaps there is no owner's manual
Available, as I was never the owner
In the first place.

-Logan Hippard
alone
August 24, 2012
Edmonton, Alberta

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Kuwait Diaries - Part Three Iraqi Kebobs & Hummus


The next day Dan picked up my field pass from KOC. KOC also explained that it would take too long to get Basel his security pass, so Napesco put Basel on a plane flight back to Jordan. Politics. Sigh! It’s too bad, he was a great guy, I liked him. I was really looking forward to working with Basel. I’d love to work with him someday.


Hookah pipe
Basel and I spent the afternoon before he left shopping for trinkets to take home. I bought some gold necklaces and bracelets for my mom, sister, daughter and little nieces. When we were done, we went to this little cafe in the al Kout shopping center.  We had coffee/hot chocolate and they served shisha as well. Shisha is a syrupy tobacco mix smoked in a hookah pipe. They have all different flavors of shisha: orange, apple, grape, guava, lemon, mint as well as some strange ones like white gummy bear (that’s a little racist, no black gummy bear flavor?). Basel smoked the grape flavor. They bring you a couple of plastic tip covers so you can share, Basel asked me if I wanted to give it a go, but I explained I couldn’t. It would be like him eating pork.  However, if I’d known then that there was gummy bear flavor I would have had to try it. Ignorance apparently is a good thing. 


al Kout at sunset
The café proprietor brought the hookah over, covered the pipe bowl, which is loaded with the grape shisha, with a small piece of aluminum foil with five perforations. He returned a few minutes later carrying a basket with hot coals.  Carefully with tongs, he picked up lit coals, which he then placed on the foil above the five holes, which allows the tobacco to heat to the proper temperature without burning. The smoke travels through the cool water in the base, where it filtered out the impurities before it reached Basel.
Al Kout at night

The al Kout shopping center is two wings separated by a huge series of pools that have fountains that play along with music. The restaurants and cafés along the pools have outdoor seating to sit and enjoy the beauty of the music and fountains as they drink their coffee and smoke their shisha.




As it was Basel’s last night in Kuwait, we decided to go out for Basel’s favorite food. We thought to try a promising restaurant we found from a post card that fell out of the newspaper. We flagged down a taxi outside the hotel, but the taxi driver said he knew of a better place and dropped us off at a little hole-in-the-wall place in Fahaheel that had white crenellations like a castle on top. We went in and they put us in a booth where we reclined on the carpet propped up with a couple of big pillows. We ordered a couple of Pepsis (pop in Kuwait comes in these cute little Red Bull-sized cans) and hummus to start, with some kind of a family platter for the main dish. The waiter brought a plastic drop sheet to lie down between us and then brought the hummus and some flatbread. I asked Basel what they called their flatbread over there. Basel just looked at me funny and said, “Flat bread”. I know that sounds like a stupid question, but the Greeks have their pita, the Indians have roti and naan bread, so what the Arabic equivalent? Apparently, khoubz is the Arabic word for bread.


From al Kout looking west
The hummus had olive oil drizzled all over it. We took the flatbread, ripped off a chunk, dipped it into the hummus and olive oil and ate it. Now, I’ve had hummus many times before and wasn’t impressed. It was grainy, dull, rather tasteless and usually a little bitter. I had never liked it before. However, this stuff was amazing. It was delicious, light and airy and not a hint of bitterness. It was so smooth it was like butter. I couldn’t stop eating it.

Next, they brought the platter out. It had Iraqi kebabs, chicken and lamb tikka, grilled chicken, racks of lamb, tomatoes and onions and even some French fries thrown in for some reason. Maybe they thought I needed something that looked like regular food to me. The meal was accompanied by a funny yogurt dip I didn’t like very much and some odd pickles that I think were made with beets and squash, maybe zucchini.


the musical fountains
I asked about the kebab thing, isn’t kebab chunks of meat on a skewer? The Iraqi waiter was quite indignant. “NO! Kebab is kebab; meat on a skewer is tikka! They don’t know what they are talking about. Kebab is our word.” I looked it up, kebab comes from an old Sumerian word that means to burn or cook. They make up this delectable ground beef and lamb mixture that you form around wide skewers that almost look like swords. The fat in the ground lamb becomes liquid in the grilling process, drips off and leaves air pockets that make the kebabs light and fluffy. We broke off pieces of the flatbread, break off a chunk of kebab and then dredge the two in the hummus. It was so delicious. The lamb and chicken tikka was quite good as well. I ate until I was so stuffed I couldn’t move. They packaged the rest up for us and I ate for a couple of days on the remaining food.
Kebab family platter
  
I was so impressed with the kebabs in Kuwait that as soon as I got home, I was searching for recipes. I found one in particular I wanted to try, but finding ground lamb in Edmonton was nearly impossible. I finally found some at Hajar’s Halal Meats on the corner of 113A Street and 134 Avenue. He ground me up some lamb while I waited and then sold me some of his own kebab meat as well. He said next time to give him a call first and he would whip up his special recipe for me that was better than what he had on hand. 


Iraqi Kebabs

Ingredients
2 pounds ground beef
1 pound ground lamb
1 large onion, grated fine
2 small Roma-type tomatoes, chopped fine
½ cup flour
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
3 garlic cloves, minced or 1 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sumac

Directions
1. Combine ingredients together. Mix well, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
2. Divide the mixture into 12 portions, and slide each portion onto an inch-wide metal skewer. With moistened hands, press the meat until it is about 8 inches long; make small dents in the meat by pressing between the thumb and index finger.
3. Place skewered meat about 3 inches above the coals. Grill for about 10 minutes, turning to brown on both sides, and fanning most of the time to prevent the fire from flaring and burning the meat. 
4. Once meat is done, remove from grill and sprinkle kebab with sumac. Serve!


*Don't worry about the fat in the meat. The fat particles melt and drip during grilling, leaving behind small cavities, which give kebab its characteristic light texture.

*Alternatively, if you don’t have flat metal skewers, you can also shape the meat into flattened torpedoes and cook right over the grill grid for about 5 minutes per side. If you use an instant-read thermometer to check doneness, the temperature should read 140°F. Remove from the grill and serve immediately.

*If using metal skewers, make sure they are dry and cold before pressing meat onto them. I like using metal skewers with wooden handles because the metal gets very hot. Do not oil the metal skewers, as this will prevent the meat from attaching.

*Keep your hands wet when handling the kebab mixture beef and it will not stick to your hands

*Sumac is a very interesting and exotic spice originating from Turkey. If you are having trouble finding it, you can find it at the Bulk Barn (5 locations in Edmonton). When mixed with water it can be used for the same purposes as lime juice, but will tint everything, including your teeth, purple! I wish I'd know about this in school. It would have made for some great pranks! Triple 0 gelatin capsules, check... sumac, check... inserting the filled capsules inside my sister's showerhead, check...

Hummus

Ingredients
1 16 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
¼ to ½ cup plain yogurt
3 Tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup tahini (sesame seed puree)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ teaspoons sea salt
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 Tablespoons tamari (soy sauce)
pinch of paprika
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley

Directions
1. Drain chickpeas and rinse.
2. Combine chickpeas and remaining ingredients in blender or food processor. Blend for 3-5 minutes on low until thoroughly mixed and smooth.
3. Place in serving bowl, and create a shallow well in the center of the hummus.
4. Add a small amount (1-2 tablespoons) of olive oil in the well. Garnish with paprika and minced fresh parsley.
5. Serve immediately with fresh, warm or toasted flat bread, or cover and refrigerate.

*For a spicier hummus, add a sliced red chile or a dash of cayenne pepper.