Tag Archives: food

Who I am here (in this small town diner)

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When my husband and I take road trips together we have an unspoken rule that has developed over the years that we continue to abide by: when it’s time to eat, and if we have the time, we search for a local diner. Or the local diner, depending on what size of town we’re passing through.

It’s my informed opinion as a road warrior that nearly every small town, if they’re lucky, has one they’ve held on to through the ebbs and flows of economic booms and busts. Not necessarily the tiny towns, but the small ones. If you’ve spent any time on the highways and county roads in America, you’ll know the difference. And then you’ll also know that sometimes they’re attached to truck stops on the edge of town or along the interstate or major highways, but a lot of times you’ll find that diner serving country fried steak and BLTs downtown tucked among two bars and renovated buildings standing shoulder to shoulder that used to be theaters and Five and Dime stores back when they were new.

Throughout my twenty-plus years on the road as a musician, I have made small towns my preferred stop. Because I like the way the storefronts line up. I like those old diners. I like the flower shops and drive-throughs that have been painted and repainted and still have the best burgers. I like the quiet little rivers that run through them or the surprise fishing pond I might find. I liked the almost antique playground equipment and the walking paths and the old men who meet for coffee at the Cenex Station.

Each small town manages to be uniquely its own flavor while simultaneously reminding me of the last one I visited, or the one I grew up in—houses repainted standing behind tall and neatly placed trees, fresh pavement outside the old Tastee-Freeze or, if they’re fancy and the economy’s good, kids riding their bikes to the new Dairy Queen, or swimming pool or school.

If I have time when I’m on my own, I like to drive through the residential streets and admire the freshly cut lawns and imagine what my life would be like if I lived there by a small lake in Minnesota, or the one in the middle of a field in Nebraska or in the heat at the edge of Texas. There’s a weird sort of wistfulness that happens when you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar but familiar town so far from home. You catch yourself thinking for a moment that you could stay there and become a whole new person in a place that will wonder where you came from. I think that feeling is where songs come from sometimes, the wondering what it could be, or who these people are inside those houses with the paint sort of peeling.

But when I’m with my husband we contemplate this together while I navigate him to the Mable’s Café or the truck stop diner that someone recommended on our way through Montana. If it’s breakfast time I will order a caramel roll as big as the plate and the server will bring it out with my coffee. “It’s her appetizer,” my husband will explain as he orders chicken fried steak and I get my eggs over easy with hash browns. I like my coffee out of their heavy brown ceramic cups. I like their paper placemats. I like the caddy of jelly packets and the sugar dispenser and the plastic water cups and the pie menu sketched in a waitress’s handwriting even though I never get the pie. I like how all of this is generally the same as the old Chuck Wagon Café that used to be on the corner of Main Street in my hometown when I was growing up. I like how it’s the same at the Little Missouri Grill today, the busiest restaurant in Boomtown. I went there three times last week because it’s always the right place to go with the girls when we have time to kill between school and soccer practice and they feel like a pancake at 4:30 pm. And it’s also the perfect place to go when your in-laws are in town to watch their granddaughter play soccer on Saturday morning and they feel like a hot cup of coffee and I feel like a burger and fries and the girls get the nuggets because is it lunch yet? And then, it’s the perfect place to go with your husband after a late night dancing and the kids are with those grandparents and we have a moment to just be the two of us in a diner. Well, the two of us and the relatives and neighbors that I inevitably run into because it’s there favorite place too.

“Wait until I tell your girls that you had your caramel roll before your meal,” she stops to poke fun.

“It’s her appetizer!” my husband laughs.

And I may never know who I would be behind those manicured lawns in a small town surrounded by Nebraska corn fields, but I know who I am here, opening tiny cream packets into black coffee sitting across from my husband and his chicken fried steak at the diner. And I like it. I like it here.

When my husband and I take road trips together we have an unspoken rule that has developed over the years that we continue to abide by: when it’s time to eat, and if we have the time, we search for a local diner. Or the local diner, depending on what size of town we’re passing through.

It’s my informed opinion as a road warrior that nearly every small town, if they’re lucky, has one they’ve held on to through the ebbs and flows of economic booms and busts. Not necessarily the tiny towns, but the small ones. If you’ve spent any time on the highways and county roads in America, you’ll know the difference. And then you’ll also know that sometimes they’re attached to truck stops on the edge of town or along the interstate or major highways, but a lot of times you’ll find that diner serving country fried steak and BLTs downtown tucked among two bars and renovated buildings standing shoulder to shoulder that used to be theaters and Five and Dime stores back when they were new.

Throughout my twenty-plus years on the road as a musician, I have made small towns my preferred stop. Because I like the way the storefronts line up. I like those old diners. I like the flower shops and drive-throughs that have been painted and repainted and still have the best burgers. I like the quiet little rivers that run through them or the surprise fishing pond I might find. I liked the almost antique playground equipment and the walking paths and the old men who meet for coffee at the Cenex Station.

Each small town manages to be uniquely its own flavor while simultaneously reminding me of the last one I visited, or the one I grew up in—houses repainted standing behind tall and neatly placed trees, fresh pavement outside the old Tastee-Freeze or, if they’re fancy and the economy’s good, kids riding their bikes to the new Dairy Queen, or swimming pool or school.

If I have time when I’m on my own, I like to drive through the residential streets and admire the freshly cut lawns and imagine what my life would be like if I lived there by a small lake in Minnesota, or the one in the middle of a field in Nebraska or in the heat at the edge of Texas. There’s a weird sort of wistfulness that happens when you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar but familiar town so far from home. You catch yourself thinking for a moment that you could stay there and become a whole new person in a place that will wonder where you came from. I think that feeling is where songs come from sometimes, the wondering what it could be, or who these people are inside those houses with the paint sort of peeling.

“Wait until I tell your girls that you had your caramel roll before your meal,” she stops to poke fun.

But when I’m with my husband we contemplate this together while I navigate him to the Mable’s Café or the truck stop diner that someone recommended on our way through Montana. If it’s breakfast time I will order a caramel roll as big as the plate and the server will bring it out with my coffee. “It’s her appetizer,” my husband will explain as he orders chicken fried steak and I get my eggs over easy with hash browns. I like my coffee out of their heavy brown ceramic cups. I like their paper placemats. I like the caddy of jelly packets and the sugar dispenser and the plastic water cups and the pie menu sketched in a waitress’s handwriting even though I never get the pie. I like how all of this is generally the same as the old Chuck Wagon Café that used to be on the corner of Main Street in my hometown when I was growing up. I like how it’s the same at the Little Missouri Grill today, the busiest restaurant in Boomtown. I went there three times last week because it’s always the right place to go with the girls when we have time to kill between school and soccer practice and they feel like a pancake at 4:30 pm. And it’s also the perfect place to go when your in-laws are in town to watch their granddaughter play soccer on Saturday morning and they feel like a hot cup of coffee and I feel like a burger and fries and the girls get the nuggets because is it lunch yet? And then, it’s the perfect place to go with your husband after a late night dancing and the kids are with those grandparents and we have a moment to just be the two of us in a diner. Well, the two of us and the relatives and neighbors that I inevitably run into because it’s there favorite place too.

“It’s her appetizer!” my husband laughs.

And I may never know who I would be behind those manicured lawns in a small town surrounded by Nebraska corn fields, but I know who I am here, opening tiny cream packets into black coffee sitting across from my husband and his chicken fried steak at the diner. And I like it. I like it here.

Five ways to love January

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Yesterday the girls Facetimed my in-laws to show them their new rooms. Their grandparents are spending the first three months or so of 2025 in the desert, away from the frigid temperature that is North Dakota. As their granddaughters pointed the phone toward their new purple walls, their grandparents talked to them about the pool and the nice weather and the hikes they are going on.  This weekend they will meet up with other North Dakotans who have fled to the south to survive the winter.

Meanwhile, back at home, we’re in the middle of the hardest three months. Between the dark and the cold, the taxes, the constant little illnesses and my husband working outside in the volatile weather, these are the days convincing the kids to get out of their warm beds and out the door is a bit more challenging.  One day on our drive to town we watched the temperature fall as the sun rose, a whole ten degrees in a matter of minutes. From 2 to -8.  No outside recess this morning, Rosie declared.

Anyway, the goal here isn’t a public complaint about North Dakota in January. If you’re reading this, you likely know what we’re in for and have long accepted it like the rest of us. But lately I’ve been thinking about the little ways I can make our already pretty good lives better and more bearable during these cold months when escaping to Arizona isn’t an option for us.

And maybe it’s more of a resolution thing, like how can we love one another better? Who doesn’t need a little extra dose of it these days, no matter the weather. If I were a magazine writer I would come up with a tidy little “How to love January” list for you, but honestly, I don’t think there’s anything tidy about my life, so I’ll just start with

Number 1: The Cooking. Lately I have had cravings for fresh vegetables and new seasonings, which is the opposite of the usual noodles and cream I want to hunker down with in the cold months. But these cravings have sent me to the kitchen with a little more enthusiasm to try a new recipe and to the grocery store to purchase ingredients I don’t keep in my cupboard. In the past few weeks of this month, between my oldest daughter’s interest in her new cookbook and my online searches, we’ve tried out five or six new recipes. Some were wins. Some were too spicy for my Midwestern pallet, and, well, our new brownie recipe was a downright flop. But it has been fun. The reward is always to see what my husband thinks. And to give him a hot meal after a long day in the cold makes me feel valuable and helpful and makes him feel cared for. Bonus is that he does the dishes and that he always gives everything a thumbs-up. Except the brownies, no one could stand behind those things. 

Chopped Thai-Inspired Chicken Salad was a hit. Here’s the link to the recipe on Pinterest
https://pin.it/5Yx57mDil

Which brings me to Number 2: The games. Over the Christmas break the girls got a few new board and card games and so we’ve tried them out only to be reminded that the only thing our daughters want in the entire world is to play games with us. Honestly. It’s as simple as that. So we’ve taught them how to play Spoons and they taught us how to play “Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza.” And if we have time for nothing else, we whip out the trivia at supper time and they’re plum happy and so are we. Games are love.

And so is snuggling, which is my number three. Intentional lingering in a hug and more of them. Movies picked out together instead of watched on separate screens in separate rooms. Sitting closer in the house. Sometimes, for someone like me who is just fine with having a wide swath of space around me, I need to be more intentional with the affection, for my family and for myself.

And then sometimes, when it’s not twenty below, we need to get our butts outside together, not just for work, but for play too. Over break I helped the girls build a couple snowmen in the yard. I had plenty of shoveling to do, but I skipped that to roll giant snowballs with them instead and it was great, of course, because building a snowman is always great. And then I took off for a walk in the hills to fill my lungs with cold air and get the blood pumping. Which is my number four. Getting my butt moving. Seasonal depression is a real thing for me and that’s why I have a treadmill and the hills. My husband and I have a loose goal of running a little race this spring (and when I say run, I mean more of a slow jog. And when I say loose, I mean we’re not aiming for any marathons here.) The two of us haven’t had a shared couple goal outside of family and business in our almost twenty years of marriage, so overcoming our shared hatred of running feels like a little thing that can connect us. How romantic.

Which brings me to the sweetness. Which is number five and maybe the most important. I have enough hustle in my life, deadlines and goals and the day to day we’ve built that keep me up at night. Stress. We all have it. And it sucks more when you can’t have a backyard barbeque or get vitamin D from the sun. So I am going to try to dig a little more gentleness out of myself to see what comes back to me in the next few months. In my tone of voice and the way I brush their hair, making his coffee and fixing their meals. Our meals. It’s for me too. The tenderness.

Except maybe when we’re playing Spoons. All bets are off then. Who needs the desert when you have a kitchen table card game and better brownies in the oven? 30 below zero, you don’t stand a chance.

A little suffering makes the dessert taste better

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And now for a story I shared a few years back before we put nice gate latches on all the new gates thus releasing me from the gate-closing-rage I experienced as a young woman on this ranch…now if we could just do something about the wood ticks.

Recently I went on a walk to close some gates in our home pasture and check a couple juneberry patches.

Juneberries are a special treat around here. Like wild mini-blueberries, if they show up, they show up around this time to much fanfare for those of us who know people who make pies.

Juneberries make the best pies in the world. Probably because getting to them before the frost kills them or the birds eat them up is so rare, and the entire task of picking enough of the little purple berries sends you to the most mosquito and tick infested, hot, thorny, itchiest places in the free world, so finally making and tasting a Juneberry pie is like completing some prairie, culinary, ironman marathon.

Only better and more gratifying, because, well, pie.

Anyway, my little stroll before sunset was only mildly successful. The gates on this place were made to be shut only by Thor himself. Or the Hulk. Or some hybrid of a bear-man. By the time I grunted and groaned, used my entire body weight trying to push the two posts together to maybe, possibly, for the love of Dolly Parton, stretch the three wires tight enough to get the little wire loop over the top of the scrawny post, I was sweating, cussing, bleeding and wondering how I missed the yeti that we apparently hired to fix the gates on this place.

I called Husband on my cell phone (who was inside the house with the baby, like twenty yards away) and told him there’s no way in hell I’m ever getting that gate shut and that shutting the gates was his job from now on who do you think I am what is this all about who in their right mind makes gates that tight good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart.

And, if you’re wondering, the gate on the other side of that pasture went about the same way…

Anyway, on my way I did in fact locate a big ‘ol juneberry patch. But the best berries, of course, were hanging out about fifteen feet above my head at the very tops of the bushes. And to get to them I had to wade through thorny bushes up to my armpits. But some of those thorny bushes had raspberries growing on them, so that was a win.

I proceeded to eat every ripe red berry I could find, even the one with the worm on it, which I discovered after I put it in my mouth and crunched.

So that was a loss.

Yes, the raspberries, worms and all, were within my reach. The juneberries, not so much. But tonight I’m going to see if my husband might want to come with me to back our old pickup up to that bush, stand in the box, brave the mosquitos and pick us some berries.

Because, well…pie.

Anyway, when I got home I discovered that apparently wading up to my armpits in thorny brush to pick raspberries was not only a good way to accidentally eat a worm, but, even better, it’s a great way to acquire 500 wood ticks.

I came home and picked off a good fifteen or so. Stripped down to my undies, checked myself out in the mirror, sat down on the chair and proceeded to pick off at least five more.

After a shower, when I crawled into bed I wondered out loud to Husband what time of night I would wake up to a tick crawling across my face. He made a guess. I made a guess.

But we were both wrong.

At about 12:30 am, just as I had drifted into a nice slumber, I was indeed awoken by a tick, but it wasn’t crawling across my face. No.

It was crawling toward my butt crack.

Thank good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart, I cut him off at the pass!

I guess, if we need a moral of the story, dessert tastes better when you truly suffer for it…

The work and all the things to love

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Well, my giant branding-day roaster made it through another year, but how is it that I haven’t figured out the right proportion of roast-beef-to-person ratio after all these years of hosting branding day lunch?

Turns out five total beef roasts is too many to feed 23 adults and ten children. And one whole watermelon, two packs of strawberries and two packs of grapes is about five watermelons and five hundred strawberries and grapes short.

Also, I forgot four pounds of slush burger in the fridge, so apparently “Would hate to run out you know,” is the old Lutheran Church Lady proverb that I truly live by.

Yes, we spent Memorial weekend branding our calves and working our cattle with the help of our friends and family. And while a few key people couldn’t make it this year, it’s always so moving to me to be able to look around and realize that if I put my arms out, I might be able to touch everything in this world that’s important to me.

And some of those things are growing up too fast, running down the road to the pens in big girl jeans asking to wrestle a calf, asking for a job, asking to get on a horse, wanting to help however they can in between pop breaks. In a few short years we will be asking our daughters to call their friends to help with the physical work of wrestling and doctoring calves. But for now, my husband and I, we call our friends who, along with us, are getting grayer around the temples, the repercussions of this type of physical work not as quiet as it used to be in our bodies at the end of the day.

This year I realized that one of those friends has been helping us brand on this ranch for well over twenty years. And then it really hit me, like my aching muscles the next morning, how far we are from being the kids of this operation. As if it wasn’t evident earlier that morning when we were gathering the cattle and I happened to notice a handful of cow/calf pairs had found their way to the thickest brush in the corner of the pasture and there was no one within shouting distance to come to my rescue. Maybe that’s the definition of true adulthood…

Anyway, we got the cattle in, and we assigned everyone a different job to form the well-oiled machine of willing hands that always makes the work go smoothly. I hollered at everyone to “Please eat some cookies!” during our breaks and kept enough worry in my gut and eyes on potential safety hazards to delude myself into thinking I have much control over those sorts of things. And then I breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude when we wrapped up our work and everyone made it inside the garage to watch the sky open up and the rain fall, crack a drink and settle into the stories.



“In the nick of time” I said. And then, “There’s plenty to eat! Everyone don’t be shy, dish up!” the same way I’ve said it year after year, making the full and complete transformation into typical ranch wife at the end of the day, mumbling to myself as I assessed the leftover situation with no bachelor in site to force a to-go bag on.

Anyway, happy branding season everyone. May the grass stay stirrup high, may you always have plenty of roast beef and may the work bring together all the most important things to love…

Forever’s in the Saw Dust

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Us, in the olden days…

When my husband and I were freshman in college at the University of North Dakota, I used to
visit him in his small, stinky dorm room in Walsh Hall and he would make me tuna salad
sandwiches.

This seems like a silly way to start things off, but every single one of us is living in the ordinary,
everyday moments here, and February has drug on and left us with March and more routine
and I think there’s something to say here…

Recently, our little routine has been intercepted by a home remodeling project. Our plans,
homework and furniture are covered in a layer of sawdust as the girls and I help my husband
where we can between work and school, laying flooring, handing him tools, holding boards and
picking playlists heavy on the Taylor Swift. He’s been working hard to finish a project that, for
so many reasons, some in and some out of our control, has drug on through years. It’s finally
the time to wrap it up and so here we are working supper around hammers on the kitchen
table, and evening snuggles next to the table saw.

Take note of the fireplace ‘decor’

This house of ours seems to be a structure changing and growing along with our lives together.
Maybe only a poet could draw the comparison eloquently, but when it was just the two of us,
new in our marriage, it stood as a brand-new cozy cottage in this valley full of hand-me-down
furniture and the dreams we had for our lives here. I remember the first night we spent
together in this house. The waterline hadn’t been dug yet and our upstairs bedroom still had
walls to put up, so we lived downstairs in what was going to be the guest room and we just laid
there, side by side, looking up at the stars out the new window with no blinds.

Fast forward through the years and those two extra bedrooms are now home to dozens of
stuffed animals, puzzles, games, art supplies, night lights, baby dolls, twenty to twenty-five
Barbies, a couple Kens, one Christoph and their dream wardrobe/house/barn/car/camper.
When we were in the planning phases of this house, we didn’t have children and I wondered if
we would regret the staircase or the hardwood flooring if they arrived. Then my friend
reminded me that they would only be babies for a blink of an eye, and that you make your
space what it needs to be along the way. And so here we are taking that phrase quite literally,
adding an entryway to catch the mud, cow poop and the occasional bottle calf at the pass. And
we’ve added a pantry too, because out here so far from the grocery store you need to have
more on hand.


Which led us to where we are now, expanding our living and dining room so we
have more space to host gatherings and holidays, putting our bedroom back on the main floor
and turning that old bedroom loft into an office space for all the paperwork that piles up when
you find yourself smack dab in the middle of middle age.


It seems ridiculous and over the top when I lay it out here, our little cottage in its first form
would have worked perfectly fine for us through any stage. But looking back, I doubt we could
have helped ourselves given my propensity to dream and his to make things. And that’s how
we’re in what is turning out to be, after all these years, a quite beautiful sawdust covered
predicament.

Which brings me to the tuna-salad-sandwich my husband made last weekend during a break
between laying the floor and me taking the girls to 4-H. I sat at the kitchen counter and talked
with him about grocery lists and schedules and mundane things you only say out loud to
someone you’re married to because they listen in a way that’s sort of not listening and that’s
just what you need sometimes. While I chattered, he made his way around the kitchen
gathering ingredients and carefully chopping and mixing—the tuna, the celery and then the
onions, followed by the mayo, the mustard the salt and pepper and some other things I’m sure I
didn’t catch. I looked up and joked, “you sure make a big fuss over a sandwich,” to which he
replied, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.” And it was that ordinary moment
in the middle of February in the middle of marriage in the middle of our lives that flipped the
mundane to affection and then to deep gratitude.

He handed me a plate with two slice of toast, and offered, as he always does, for me to serve
myself first before he stirs in the jalapeños and I guess what I’m trying to say right now is that
sometimes we look for love and forever in heart shaped boxes when maybe the best of all of it
is hidden among the years of tuna fish sandwiches and saw dust.

That’s all. That’s all I wanted to say. If you need me I’ll be sweeping and then vacuuming and
then sweeping again…

Us, these days…

Gather around the community table

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cafe

Gather around the community table
Forum Communication

Greetings from a cafe in Valley City, N.D., where I’m waiting on my meal and drinking a glass of wine in a booth by myself at the end of a day — literally — singing for this supper.

Dining alone. That’s been the deal in my life since I started traveling and performing up and down the Midwest 17 years ago.

In a career like mine, performing and presenting in different towns often hundreds of miles away from my home in the middle of nowhere, besides the performing, the dining has become one of my favorite parts of the gig. Partly because I’ve created for myself the ultimate reason I don’t have to cook.

But mostly these days, when it’s so easy to take it on the go or order in, sometimes a girl just wants to sit down in front of a steak and learn a little bit about the town she’s in. Because you get to know a lot about a place from the food they’re serving. And how and where they’re serving it. And what they’re talking about over their hot hamburger or roast beef or #2 Sunny Side Up with a side of bacon and pancakes.

Yeah, you guessed it, I prefer cafes. Everywhere I go, big city or small town, I try to find one.

And I would say I don’t know why except I do know why. Because I pop into the right cafe in any town and I’m a little kid again, sitting next to my grandma Edie in the Chuckwagon Cafe on Main Street among my Great-Uncle Paul in a feedstore cap and his friends taking a break, ordering lunch, then ordering pie and then another cup of coffee because there’s another story to tell…

ARCHIVE: Read more of Jessie Veeder’s Coming Home columns

Spending their time. Spending the time. To gather around food, it’s an instinct of ours. It’s the watering hole where we go to feel connected over the shared necessity of nutrients.

Because “Everybody’s gotta eat!” If you’re from the Midwest, you’ve likely heard this phrase from your aunt or your mother-in-law or your grill-master cousin when you stop by to drop something off and they insist you stay for supper. Or at least a slice of cake. Or a Ziploc of cookies to go.

If I’ve learned anything from my upbringing, it’s that you could build the biggest house in the world, but the world will always want to gather in your kitchen. It’s the reason my grandma Edie was known to forget her Jell-O salad in the fridge until the end of the Christmas meal. Because we were distracting her, we were all in the way, she was sweating, but we were loving it.

And that’s why these restaurants and cafes, the coffee shops and bakeries, are the heartbeat of our communities, because they hold within them an energy we only get when we have a place to be together to talk about cattle prices and politics and new babies and inside jokes and how we would do it if we were in charge.

And even when I’m sitting solo in a four-person booth between the walls and among the wait staff that has heard it all, 300 miles away from home, keeping to myself, I feel more present and more myself in places like these with my #2 Sunny Side Up with a side of bacon and a real big slice of life.

A Cafe Somewhere in Montana...

Banquet in a Field: Telling our food story

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Table

Dad and I had the opportunity to entertain for a unique event in Belfield, ND a few weeks ago for the Banquet in a Field event. Hosted by the Dickinson Area Chamber of Commerce Agricultural Committee, this event was focused on connecting consumers and North Dakota growers and producers. As cattle ranchers we were happy to have the opportunity to help support the idea that we need to find new and interesting ways to tell the story of our food, helping to bridge the gap and break down barriers in our industry.

The event was a great success, hosting 140 guests at Kessel’s Arrow K Farms, literally placing consumers where it all begins–right in our beautiful North Dakota backyard. The evening was not only a showcase of production agriculture, it was a first-hand look at scenic Western North Dakota.

As guests socialized and enjoyed appetizers made from local ingredients, dad and I played our old standards under the shade of tall cottonwoods that have likely stood as windbreaks for generations. The wheat field in front of us rolled in the much appreciated breeze and I felt fortunate to have my two world’s colliding in this special way.

It was even better that we were invited to the multi-course meal served by a local FFA chapter. My favorite part? The kids came around offering little shot glasses of milk–your choice of chocolate or white.

Below is this week’s column with a little more on the experience, but more about the importance of supporting and energizing efforts to tell our agriculture story. It’s why I do what I do, in a small way “opening the doors” to this place so that you might be able to see how important this land and these animals are to our family and the plates we help fill. Because we all know how food connects us, now let’s connect to our food.

Wheat

 

If we don’t tell our food story, who will?

We sit at kitchen tables, on blankets in the park, around picnic tables at street fairs and on tailgates after a long morning in the field. We crack eggs in our pancake mix while we tell our kids about the time their grandmother baked coffee filters in an early morning batch, her attempt at a legendary April Fool’s joke.

We flip our burgers on shady decks while our friends talk about the time they got lost in Mexico City. We scoop up spoonfuls of peas and choreograph a song and dance routine, complete with a jazz-hand landing to convince our toddler to open her mouth.

We grab a handful of dad’s caramel corn and remember the time spent with him in the kitchen. We’re grateful we paid attention to the recipe so he can live on in the sweet, sticky reminiscence.

No matter where you eat it, food connects us, it reminds us and it’s part of our story. But when was the last time you’ve thought about the story of your food?

Banquet 9

It was a muggy summer evening in western North Dakota and I stood next to my dad under the shade of a grove of tall cottonwood trees along the edge of a beautiful wheat field. We were strumming our guitars and singing about eating watermelon after a summer ballgame as a slow and steady line of community trickled into this farmyard from a makeshift parking lot behind the family shop.

They shook hands, made introductions and wondered what to expect as they walked past beautifully set tables next to grain bins and farm machinery, ready and waiting to celebrate food in a unique way — right where it all starts.

Banquet 3

We hear the phrase “farm-to-table” thrown around these days as a way to make us feel more connected to the food on our plate. On that evening, the Dickinson Area Chamber of Commerce took it a step further by inviting the community to meet directly with a local family who dedicates their life’s work to growing and caring for the land and the food we eat at their first annual Banquet in a Field event.

Over bites of mini cornbread muffins, lentil dip, sunflower toastettes, oven-roasted potatoes, beef picanha and honey apple cake served by kids from the local FFA chapter, a conversation, centered on North Dakota’s agriculture producers, began.

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And so did the celebration. Because our agriculture story is sometimes harder for us to tell than the story behind our grandmother’s recipe for award-winning chili. The fact that North Dakota is the lead producer of the navy and pinto beans it contains? Well, that’s something I know the Kessel family hosting us that evening was proud of.

And we should be, too. Because if we don’t spread the message and help the world understand that a tomato makes ketchup and that big, beautiful wheat field rolling in the breeze that evening is just a step on a long journey to appearing in the pasta you’ll be serving for your best friends as they reminisce about the time you all ran into the ocean naked, who will?

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The Banquet In a Field Events were the idea of CommonGround, a group of women in agriculture who volunteer to engage and outreach with non-ag consumers. It was started by and continues to be supported through the soybean and corn checkoffs. One of the reasons CommonGround created this event was to build stronger connections between North Dakota consumers and the state’s farmers and ranchers.
Because Banquet In A Field was such a success, the Dickinson Area Chamber Of Commerce Ag Committee is already making plans for next year. The event will be a key community resource, going forward, for those who want to learn more about how agriculture impacts their daily lives. Find out more at dickinsonchamber.org/banquet-in-a-field/

Slow Cookin’

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Did I ever tell you about the time I started my crock pot on fire?

No? Well, it wasn’t really as dramatic as that, but once upon a Sunday afternoon there was a big ‘ol spark followed by quick fizzling flame and that was the day the beef roast died in this house.

The slow cooker is one of those things you can live without, but it’s pretty handy to have for the wintertime staples like beef roast and chili, basically the only things I ever used it for in this house (and also things you can make with the good ‘ol oven and stove combo that comes with the house) So anyway, blowing up the crockpot didn’t seem like a really big deal until I realized I was mourning it.

For some reason it seemed like as soon as I dug its grave all of these awesome crock pot meals kept popping up on my news feed and in conversations with my friends about how they keep the bills paid, children dressed, driveways shoveled, hair washed, abs tight,  men happy and food on the table. Turns out it’s all because of the crock pot.

So it took me a few months of denial, but I finally replaced the old thing with a fancier version: one with a cover latch and a thermometer and more temperature control, perfect for the traveling casserole thing us Lutherans like to do.

And just like that the crock pot is back in our lives, shiny and new and with a big job to do, which is make my life easier.

Anyway, we all know this isn’t a cooking blog or a domestic how-to website in any way shape or form, unless you’re looking for examples on what not to do so you can stay out of the ditch/mudhole/bad nest of wood ticks, but lately after some well intentioned and totally flopped attempts at trying to spice it up in the kitchen and get supper on the table before 11 pm, I came across some really good and really easy crock pot recipes that even someone like me can handle.

These were not Pinterest fails. And if anyone’s going to fail at something on Pinterest, it’s me.

So thank you to the women out there who encourage us to keep on trucking in the kitchen by making it look so easy and pretty on your websites. You inspired me to slow cook some BBQ pork and put it in a taco shell for last Friday’s meal, thankful for a few moments to sit down and catch up with my husband before the evening turned into the third middle-of-the-night baby puking incident in a row.

Try it out here. Not the puking thing, the taco thing…(sorry, that right there is one of the many reasons I don’t have a cooking blog).

Barbecue Pork Tacos with Honey Mustard Slaw Recipe

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And tonight the online kitchen divas got me to put a whole chicken in the magic pot only to come back six hours later to find it juicy and damn delicious. I threw some Uncle Ben’s wild rice on the stove and damn if I didn’t turn into Betty Crocker herself.

So here’s the recipe for that. Thank you Julie from thelittlekitchen.net for reminding this  woman living in the middle of beef country that the  crock pot is for chicken too (and making sure I couldn’t screw it up.)

Whole Chicken in a Slow Cooker Recipe

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So that’s that friends, maybe the only helpful thing you’ll ever find on this blog and it’s not because I’m particularly helpful, it’s just that I basically know how to Google stuff and use a crock pot.

Love you all and have a great weekend. We’re going to hang out with some of my favorite people and I can’t wait!

Peace, love and slow cooking,’

Jessie

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That’s me and my grampa, teaching me ’bout the most important things in life…

Making Memories. Making Pies.

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It’s a beautiful morning at the ranch, the wind is calm and the golden trees are sparkling in the sun, the baby is napping, the windows are open and I’m so happy to be home after six days on the music road.

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I’ve designated this day to unpacking and putting away all that was drug out in the name of traveling across the state with a ten-month old and my mother…which means we most definitely brought home way more than we left home with…

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Like maybe a few more outfits. And at least one new pair of shoes for each of us.

And maybe a giraffe suit for Little Sister?

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We sure have a fun and exhausting time when we’re out traipsing around the countryside. But we don’t get much napping in. And we don’t stick to a bedtime. And we try to cram as much fun as we can in between the gigs.

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Mini Merch Slinger

So we’re tired.

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I predict Edie will take the rest of the week to catch up on all of the extra time she spent kicking and clapping and singing along with her eyes wide open until the bitter end of the day when we plopped down together on the hotel bed, or the bed in my grandparent’s house, or the bed of our gracious hosts, and finally gave into the night.

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Sound check…

I’m contemplating crawling into her crib with her right now and the two of us could stay there all day. If only we both fit.

But not until I share this week’s column with you, a little story about the best part of this season change, which is most certainly more time in the kitchen with family reminiscing and making new, sweet flavored memories.

And I may be no Martha Stewart, as you all know, but this was my biggest attempt yet, getting as close as this non-pastry-making-family can get to pie perfection, thanks to the notes left behind from our grandma Edie…and maybe a little encouraging from above.

Happy season change. May the cooler weather inspire you to cuddle up and settle down a bit. I know that’s my goal this upcoming October anyway.

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Coming Home: Connecting with gramma’s memory over a slice of apple pie
by Jessie Veeder
9-25-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

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My mom keeps a small wooden box in her kitchen, tucked up in the cupboard next to her collection of cookbooks. On the front it reads “RECIPES” in the shaky, wood-burning technique of a young boy trying his hand at carpentry.

And the from-scratch buns she served with supper.

And the familiar casseroles that you could smell cooking as you walked up toward the tiny brown house from the barnyard after a ride on a cool fall evening.

Every once in awhile my mom will open that box on a search for a memory tied to our taste buds. She’ll sort through the small file of faded handwriting and index cards until she finds it, setting it on the counter while she gathers ingredients, measures stirs and puts the dish together the best way she remembers.

I’m thinking about it now because it’s sitting on my kitchen table, the one that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen all those years ago acting as a surface to roll out dough and pie crusts or a place to serve countless birthday cakes or her famous April Fool’s day coffee filter pancakes.

And so they’ve met again, that table and that box, which is currently sitting next to a pie pan covered in tinfoil.

Because last week we pulled the box out on a mission for guidance on what to do with the 50,000 pounds of apples my little sister inherited from the tree in the backyard of the house she bought a few years back.

“Maybe we should make applesauce or apple crisp,” we said as Little Sister plopped the fourth bag full of fruit on my kitchen counter, my mom sipping coffee and my big sister entertaining my nephew beside her.

I reached up in the cupboards to dust off a couple recipe books because we all agreed then that apples this nice deserve to be in a pie, and Googling “pie making” seemed too impersonal for such an heirloom-type task.

Then Mom remembered the recipe box.

And that Gramma Edie used to make the best apple pies.

It was a memory that was intimately hers and vaguely her daughters’. We were too young to remember the cinnamon spice or the sweetness of the apples or the way she would make extra crust to bake into pieces and sprinkle with sugar when the pies were done, but our mother did.

And most certainly so did our dad.

So we dove into the recipe with the unreasonable confidence of amateurs and spent the afternoon in my kitchen, peeling apples, bouncing the baby and rolling and re-rolling out gramma’s paradoxically named “No Fail Pie Crust,” laughing and cheering a victory cheer as we finally successfully transferred it to the top of the pie using four hands and three spatulas, certain this wasn’t our grandmother’s technique.

Wondering how she might have done it.

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Little Sister carved a heart in the top to make it look more presentable. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

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We fed the baby and gave her a bath. We watched my nephew demonstrate his ninja moves. We talked and poured a drink. We cleared the counter for supper. We put the baby to bed.

And then we pulled the pie from the oven. We marveled at our work. We decided it looked beautiful, that we might declare it a huge success, but first we should see what Dad thinks.

So we dished him up a piece. It crumbled into a pile on his plate, not pie shaped at all. But he closed his eyes and took a bite and declared it just the right amount of cinnamon, the apples not too hard, the crust like he remembered, not pretty but good.

We served ourselves and ate up around that old table. We thought of our grandma, wondered if she might have given us a little help and put the recipe back in the box right next to her memory and the new one we made.

And we closed the lid.

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How to make wild raspberry dessert

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How to make wild raspberry dessert

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Step 1:
Wake up in the morning to a happy husband, a well-rested niece and a smiling baby. Snuggle the baby. Play and roll around with her on the floor. Put her in her high chair so she can feed herself blueberry puffs. Hear your husband say, “Man, it would be nice to have a blueberry muffin right now.” Remember you have blueberries in the fridge.

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Step 2:
Locate a blueberry muffin recipe with the help of your niece. Preheat the oven and read the directions while your niece mixes up the ingredients. Think that maybe bacon and eggs would go good with fresh blueberry muffins. Because you always have bacon in the house.

Step 3:
Proceed with the bacon cooking while blueberry muffins bake.

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Step 4:
Crack and fry some perfectly over easy eggs. Find a double yolker. Declare it good luck.

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Step 5:
Pour some orange juice, put the baby in her high chair, make a plate and gather around the table. Declare that Martha Stewart has nothing on you.

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Step 7:
Hear Pops say something about all the raspberries out in the pasture. Decide that they can’t all go to the birds.

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Step 6:
Put the dishes in the sink pull on your jeans and boots. Strap the baby to your chest, douse skin in bug spray and sunscreen and head out the door with your niece and the dogs. Declare it a beautiful morning. Declare that it’s sort of hot though.

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Step 7:
Peel your eyes for raspberries. Locate raspberries in the thorny brush below where the juneberries, bullberries and chokecherries grow. Watch the dogs disappear in and out of the brush patches chasing phantom rabbits and birds and taking a break from the heat. Find it funny.

(Chicken dinner for you if you can spot Dolly down there…)

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Step 8:
Send the niece in to the deep brush to get the fat berries.

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Check your back pocket for the baggie you brought along. Realize you dropped it somewhere. Take off your hat. Decide that will do.

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Step 9:
Pick a berry. Eat a berry. Put a berry in the hat. Swat a fly. Pull a thorn. Pick a berry. Eat a Berry. Put a berry in the hat.

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Step 10:
Repeat Step 9 like a hundred or so times.

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Step 11:
Check to make sure the baby strapped to your chest isn’t eating the berries too. Pick up the toy she dropped in the thick brush for the third time.

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Step 12:
Wipe the sweat. Pick a thorn out of the niece’s hand. Eat a berry. Check your stash. Wonder if that’s enough to make anything. Declare it officially hot out now. Eat a berry. Climb the hill to the teepee rings to catch some breeze.

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Step 13:
Realize the baby dropped the toy again and now it’s out in the wild pasture to be found 100 years from now, along with all Pops’ missing gloves and tools.

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Step 14:
Head back to the house, noticing the beautiful wildflowers along the way.

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Step 15:
Strip off your clothes and check for ticks. Strip off the baby’s clothes and check for ticks. Put her on the floor to play.

Step 16:
Rinse the berries.

Step 17:
Eat a few more

Step 18:
Look up some recipes online for raspberry dessert, trying for the perfect concoction that doesn’t interfere with the integrity of the raspberry.

Step 19:
Eat a couple more raspberries.

Step 20:
Deny every suggested recipe found…

Step 20:
Decide that there is no dessert you can make that tastes as good as a wild raspberry itself.

Step 21:
Eat more raspberries

Step 22:
Have lunch. Put the baby down for a nap. Putz around the house. Wait for Husband to get home..

Step 23:
Give the baby a bath. Put her in her robe. Decide she looks like an adorable old man. Feed her something yummy. Rock her to sleep.

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Step 24:
Grill brats. Eat on the deck.

Step 25:
Leave the dishes for the husband.

Step 26:
Go Riding

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Step 27:
Declare it a beautiful night.

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Step 28:
Listen to your niece tell you stories and wonder where the time went and when she grew up so quickly.

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Step 29:
Head back to the barn. Let the horses out. Walk to the house. Strip down. Check for ticks.

Step 26:
Eat some raspberries.

Step 27:
Declare it a good day.

Step 28:
Sleep tight. Good night.

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