Scott Hutcheson

Words Count

Originally published in fine newspapers on February 4, 2010

180,000. That’s about how many words I’ve written in this column since it debuted five years ago this week. I never would have dreamed that the Hungry Hoosier would get picked up by other newspapers and a writing “career” would come my way. Add to that newspaper word-count number what I’ve written for magazines, the book I co-authored in 2008, and the writing I have done for radio and continue to do for television; and the number is close to half a million.  Wow, that’s a lot of words!

Most of the world doesn’t live and die by word count so I will put that in perspective. Half a million words is about the same number of words you will find in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and twice as many words as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the longest of J.K. Rawlings’ novels about the adolescent wizard. As I said, lots of words.

I’ve covered a good deal of territory in 500,000 words. I’ve shared about 200 recipes, done over 100 restaurant reviews, and told the stories of countless farmers, restaurateurs, and others for whom food plays an important role in their lives. The overwhelming majority of these individuals have been very grateful to have their stories written and it’s a bit surreal to walk into their establishments and see my column or article framed and displayed for all to see.

A couple times, however, I’ve gotten some detail of their story wrong, and I’ve felt that agonizing pain nearly every writer experiences when they get errors pointed out in a phone call, letter, or email. All you can do is apologize and vow to yourself that you’ll take better notes next time.

I’ve been fortunate to get some recognition for my writing from peers and others. I would like to say that awards don’t matter, but they do, at least to me. Like many others, I suffer from insecurity and self-doubt and wonder, from time to time, if what I do is really any good at all. An award, every now and again, can be a nice, albeit temporary confidence booster.

A lot of the 500,000 words I’ve written over the last half decade have been about other people but I’ve also written, especially in this column, a good deal about my own life. I spent some time this week thumbing through my past columns and I was able to trace what was going on in the lives of the Hutchesons from week to week. Writing can be good therapy and as I read through old columns I can vividly remember what our family was dealing with at the time. Translating thoughts and feelings to the written word helped me process death, illness, and the other curveballs life pitched to us. You may not have known it at the time, but you were serving as my therapist.  

Over the years I’ve discovered that the more personal a piece of writing is, the more it seems to connect with readers. I’ve never once had a stranger come up to me to comment on a restaurant review I’ve written; but I often meet readers who tell me that they really enjoyed something I’ve penned about my children or some neurotic thought that’s been rolling around in my head.

Over the next five years my children will enter their teen and preteen years, my wife and I will celebrate a quarter century of marriage. With parents in their late 70s and late 80s, there will likely be changes that occur there as well. I’ll be 50 five years from now and that will certainly be accompanied by new experiences and perspectives.  I hope to still be writing, with a million words or more under my belt by then and I hope that you’ll still be reading. Thanks for five great years.

Dip Shtick (and recipe for Baba Ghanoush)

Originally published in quality newspapers on January 28, 2010

It was one of the classic moments from Seinfeld. At a wake, George Costanza gets caught grabbing a chip from a buffet table, dipping it, taking a bite, and dipping the same chip a second time. The fellow mourner who catches him tells him that double dipping is “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Of course, the comedy keeps on coming and George ends up making a scene at the wake.

Dips show up at not only wakes but nearly anytime people gather for a meal. We are a dip-loving people and I don’t mean “we” as in Americans but rather “we” as a human race. The practice of dipping one food into another can be found in nearly every culture and some, like Hawaiians and their poi, bypass the dipper all together and just use the fingers.

We dip fries in ketchup, tortillas in salsa, sandwiches in au jus, Buffalo wings in bleu cheese, and the list goes on and on. One of my favorite candies as a kid was “Fun Dip” which came with something that looked like sidewalk chalk that you dipped in colored sugar. This particular dip may have been a ploy by the American Dental Association to drum up business.

I recently asked some of my friends about their favorite dips and dippers. I got several votes for the tried-and-true queso made with Velveeta and Rotel tomatoes and a wide variety of others. Dips are so commonplace I can’t remember the last time I attended a party where there wasn’t some sort of dip served, at least a vegetable try with the obligatory ranch dip.

With the Super Bowl coming up you’ll likely be sampling a dip or two and perhaps even making one yourself. If you are in the mood to try something a little different, you might want to consider making some baba ghanoush. Like its more-familiar cousin, humus, baba ghanoush has middle-eastern roots. The ingredients are similar to those in humus but instead of chickpeas, baba ghanoush is made with roasted eggplant. The roasting process gives the eggplant a mild smoky taste. It is traditionally served with pita wedges but celery is tasty as well.

The one semi-unusual ingredient in baba ghanoush is tahini, a paste made from sesame seeds. You can find tahini at middle-eastern markets and at many grocery stores’ international  food sections, This dip can be made ahead of time and kept covered and refrigerated for up to five days.

Whether it’s baba ghanoush or any other dip you encounter, keep in mind this dip etiquette from Seinfeld, “When you take a chip, just take one dip and end it!”  

Baba Ghanoush

• 2 large eggplant
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 teaspoon kosher salt
• Cracked black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup tahini
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• Chopped parsley (to garnish)
• Extra virgin olive oil

Slice eggplants in half lengthwise and put upside down on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Place under a broiler until the outside skin is charred black and the pulp inside is soft. This will take 15 to 30 minutes. Let cool enough to handle and then use a spoon to scrape out the eggplant flesh and place in a bowl to cool further. Once the eggplant is cool, pour off any extra liquid before continuing.

Put the eggplant, garlic, salt, pepper, and tahini in a food processor and pulse the food processor to mix. Stir in lemon juice and adjust salt and pepper if needed. Serve in a shallow platter and garnish with chopped parsley and drizzled extra virgin olive oil.

I'm reading, "My Life in France" by Juila Child. As she describes one of her first dining experiences after moving there she notes, "The waiters carried themselves with a quiet joy, as if their entire mission in life was to make their customers feel comfortable and well tended." Makes me think about how infrequently I get that sort of vibe from a restaurant server, or any customer service worker. Also makes me think about those who are my "customers." I'm also certain I don't always exude a "quiet joy" and make them feel like my entire mission in life is to make them feel comfortable and well tended. What about you? Can you share a story about exemplory customer service you've received or provided?

The Deconstruction Zone (and recipe for Stuffed Pepper Soup)

Originally published in quality newspapers on January 14, 2010

Like a lot of other people who were in their late teens or early 20s in 1980s, I took on the affectation of a preppie. I wasn’t really one. Not a single wall at my college was covered with ivy and my pedigree was more middle-class mutt then blue-blood hound. I did, however, have the wardrobe: turned up colors, sweater vests, Sperry Top-Siders, and a different pair of starched khaki’s for each day of the week.

Hollywood capitalized on the preppie era with a whole slew of mediocre (I’m being generous) preppie-laced coming of age films. In one,1984’s Making the Grade, a line of dialogue became a mantra for my friends and me. One of the characters, explaining the finer points of preppie haberdashery, picks up three shirts. He points first to the one with a polo player on it, next to the one that looked like the J.C. Penny house-brand “Hunt Club, “ which were sold at the time, and finally to the one with an alligator, and utters the line, “preppie come lately, preppie never, preppie forever.” My friends I would have never been caught with the Hunt Club insignia on our shirts and although I had a few Polo garments in my wardrobe I was an Izod man, falling firmly into the preppie-forever category.

Over the next three decades, I flirted with New Wave (red parachute pants and one shirt with senseless zippers) and tested the tepid waters of Grunge (flannel shirts, a goatee, and bangs that hung in my face), but for the most part, I stayed true to my preppie roots. Even today, you’re likely to find me in khakis and a polo, although I’m not nearly as brand-loyal as I was in my youth.

I’m also usually not one to get caught up in fads in the kitchen either. I’m pretty traditional but will occasionally flirt with a trendy technique.  I did not succumb to fusion cuisine One trend, however, that did catch my attention was deconstruction, separating the elements of a food. Chef Chef Bowles of the Avenues restaurant at Chicago’s Peninsula Hotel deconstructs the classic Caesar salad with painstakingly preparation and artful presentation. The result is a cured Spanish anchovy perched on a ruffled quarter of baby romaine sitting on a crisp brioche “twinkie” filled with a luxurious parmesan cream – all the elements of the familiar salad but pulled apart and then put back together in a new and interesting way.   

My deconstructions are not nearly as high-brow as Chef Bowles’. I tend to deconstruct a favorite dish like a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich and put it back together in the form of another favorite dish - pizza. The latest deconstruction to occur in my kitchen focused on the stuffed pepper. This hearty entrée held a regular spot on the dinner menu of my youth, especially on cold winter evenings. I had run across several versions of a stuffed pepper soup and set out to come up with one of my own. It has all the flavors of the original dish my mom used to make but in the form of a soup.

After nearly 30 years of cooking, I’m a firm traditionalist – my salads look like salads. Occasionally, however, it is fun to venture into a foodie-come-lately territory like deconstruction, without going too far. So please don’t expect any molecular gastronomy in this column. My science grades weren’t that good. 

Stuffed Pepper Soup

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 large green bell peppers, chopped
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
• 2 stocks celery, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1 quart beef stock
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• Kosher salt and cracked black pepper to taste
• 2 cups cooked brown or white rice

In a Dutch oven or stockpot, heat the olive oil to medium high and add the peppers, onions, celery, and garlic. Sauté about ten minutes the remove the vegetables from the pot. Add the ground beef to the pot and brown. Drain fat if needed and then return vegetables to the pot. Add the other ingredients, except for rice. Increase heat to high, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for 30 minutes and season with salt and pepper to taste. To serve, place in a bowl along with about a quarter cup of rice. This makes about eight servings.

2010: The Culinary Crystal Ball

Originally published in quality newspapers on January 7, 2010

For the last few years, I’ve written some sort of column to recap the year in food. I didn’t do that for 2009. Instead I decided to take a look ahead at 2010 and make a few observations about what sort of food trends we might see. To compile this look into the future I called upon my network of chefs, restaurateurs, fellow food writers, and other food professionals. For what it’s worth, here’s what some of us see as we peer into the culinary crystal ball.

Local, Seasonal, and Artisanal
The overwhelming majority of my foodie friends predict a continued trend toward local, seasonal, and artisan ingredients showing up on both restaurant menus and family dinner tables. With more people than ever shopping at farmers’ markets and the renewed interest in growing our own food, an increasing number of people are becoming aware that locally-grown strawberries are in a completely different league than the ones found in the grocery store in the middle of winter. Several high-end restaurants in Indiana have been committed to serving meats and produce from Indiana farms, but some of my friends expect to see this trend make its way to mid-range restaurants.

Rise of the Celebrity Farmer
If locally produced food is going to be big, it makes sense that the producers are going to be big as well. Watch for some farmers to take on near rock star-like status in 2010. While they may not be household names, you will start seeing their products become more closely associated with their personalities. Burton’s Maplewood Farm is a good example. Tim Burton of Medora, Indiana is a technology guy by day and a maple syrup producer by night and weekends. His syrup is showing up on the menus of some of Chicago’s finest restaurants. His syrup is not just on the menu, but often identified as “Burton’s Maplewood Farm Syrup”. Tim makes many public appearances and does syrup tastings. Expect to see more celebrity farmers like Tim Burton.

Releasing Your Inner Julia
I travelled a lot for business last year and I rarely did any sightseeing but on one trip to Washington, D.C. I took time to visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to see Julia Child’s kitchen. It seems like she’s inspired a whole new generation of home cooks to explore French cooking. The 2009 film, Julie & Julia, is undoubtedly part of this renewed interest. So in 2010 we will be seeing more home cooks bourguignon-ing beef, fricassee-ing chicken, and mousse-ing chocolate.

Getting (Pot) Lucky
Throwing a formal dinner party can cost the host a lot. Purchasing groceries to feed several courses to six to eight guests several, then add wine or beer to accompany the meal, and you’ve got a price tag that can easily be a couple hundred dollars.  The current economy has caused many of us to rethink such expenses. Yet we also know that the need to break bread with friends and family is as strong as it ever was. Enter the pot luck. In 2010 we will see less entertaining and more gathering, with each party contributing something to the meal.

These are just a few of the trends we may see in 2010. They may or may not be of interest to you but here’s something to think about. We will each eat somewhere around 1,000 times during this year. We will put little thought into many of these meals – the sandwich eaten at our desk because we don’t have time to take a real lunch break or the bowl of cereal for dinner because we’re just too tired to cook. But hopefully some of these meals will be memorable, not just because of the food but because of with whom we share that food and all the many hands that contributed to getting it to your plate. I personally hope to enjoy more local, seasonal, artisan foods this year; get to know some more farmers; learn to cook a few more classic French dishes, and share more meals with friends, maybe even you!

Special thanks to Chef Lucien Gregor Williams James, Chef Thom England, Victoria Wesseler, Renee Wilmeth, Bethany Deaton, and Jolene Ketzenberger for their help with this column. 

New Year's Status Quos (with recipe for Black-Eyed Pea Salsa)

Originally published in fine Indiana newspapers on December 31, 2009

Are you making any resolutions this year? I haven’t decided. I’ve made them in the past but usually not stuck with them. In years when I’ve not made them, life has changed significantly for the better. For most of us, resolutions tend to be concentrated in the areas of health and wealth. We want to eat better, quite smoking, get more exercise, and do or don’t do other things that will result in healthier versions of ourselves.

When it comes to money we want to earn more, save more, or maybe give more away. The analysts tell us where in the 3rd or maybe even the 4th turn of this recession, to borrow a racing metaphor, but for many of us that finish line seems far away.

In both of these categories, health and wealth, I’m not inclined to make big goals, should I choose to make resolutions. I think I would be pretty happy to have maintained the status quo 12 months from now. I would like to still be employed and still be making the same amount of money I make now. I hope to still be living in my house, still have a wife who loves me and children who are still healthy. At my advancing age I have no illusions of regaining either the waistline or biceps of my youth but if on January 1, 2011 I’m no fatter than I am on January 1, 2010, that wouldn’t be all bad.

So I think I’ve talked myself into a few status quo resolutions. I hope to stay the course in 2010. Even to do that, however, will require some balance of resolve and luck. As for the luck part, I’m looking to an old tradition of the Southeastern part of our country – eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day.
The practice of eating black-eyed peas for luck is generally believed to date back to the Civil War. These legumes were first planted as food for livestock in the South and when Sherman and his troops showed up the fields of black-eyed peas were passed over as they burned other crops. In the wake of the destruction, the Confederates found that the black-eyed pea was a protein-rich food source that helped them survive the rest of the war.

Today, most of the time, black-eyed peas are fixed with a ham hock or perhaps served with rice in a dish called Hoppin’ John. However they are eaten, the idea is that these little guys will bring you luck and prosperity in the New Year. Some even suggest eating 365 of them to give you enough luck for every day on the calendar. I’m planning to go Tex-Mex for my luck-insurance policy with a salsa made with black-eyed peas.

Whether you are going big with you resolutions for next year, just trying to stay the course, or not setting any goals at all, maybe you could use a little luck in the 2011. I make no guarantees about the luck-bringing capacities of the humble black-eyed pea but, hey, who knows?  

New Years Day Salsa

• 1 can black-eyed peas, drained and washed
• 1 16 ounce bag of frozen corn, thawed
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
• 6 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Mix the first seven ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the lime juice, oil, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir this into the contents of the large bowl. Serve immediately. This is great to eat with chips but is also an excellent topping for grilled beef, fish, or chicken.

They Eat Reindeer, Don't They?

Originally published in quality newspapers on December 17, 2009

There’s always been something that really bugged me about Christmas. It’s not the blatant commercialism or that annoying Christmas Shoe’s song, although both those things do strike a nerve. It’s that Christmas, at least in the United States, does not have one ubiquitous culinary centerpiece.  Sure there are lots of traditional Christmas foods but no main course that shows up on nearly every family’s table. Thanksgiving, of course, has its turkey but no single beast or fowl is synonymous to the yuletide celebration.

Like some sort of gastronomic rerun, lots of families do turkey and all the trimmings again. Others do a preview of Easter with a ham or leg of lamb. I polled a few of my friends this week and I got virtual grocery list of traditions – roast pork, prime rib, chowder, fondue, lasagna, duck blood soup (okay, that almost makes me hurl, George Piper!), and pizza burgers. Others told me that the main course meant nothing compared to the desserts and side dishes that are must-haves: red velvet cake, cherry pinwheels, and shrimp cocktail. Two of my nephews don’t think its Christmas without their mom’s Pretzel Salad.

At one time, the Christmas Goose rivaled the Thanksgiving Turkey in the holiday fowl wars. The tradition of the Christmas Goose, popular in Dickensian England, made its way to the new world and remained a favorite in the U.S. through most of the 19th Century.

In other parts of the world, folks are not as fickle as we are. They commit to something and stick with it. Here are a few Christmas dinner traditions from around the globe.

Australia
In the land down under, Christmas falls in the heat of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer so it makes perfect sense to throw another shrimp on the barbie instead of heating up the house.

Czech Republic
Our friends in Prague and elsewhere in the Czech Republic gather on Christmas Eve to enjoy fried carp and potato salad.

Slovakia
Oplátky is the traditional Christmas food in Slovakia. This flat wafer-thin waffle is coated with a bit of honey and eaten with a small piece of garlic. The honey and garlic symbolize the sweetness and bitterness of life.

Iceland
If you ever get invited to Iceland for the holidays there’s a good chance that reindeer will be in the menu. I’m not sure if this will get you on the Big Guy’s Naughty List or not so eat at your own risk.

I’ve only spent one Christmas out of the U.S. and that was 1998 when my wife and I traveled the U.K. the entire month of December to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day in Glasgow, Scotland. We had traditional meals that looked and tasted a lot like what we would have had back home except for a few quintessential British favorites like Figgy Pudding.

Our own family has not yet settled on a Christmas dinner tradition. Some years we have our big celebration on Christmas Eve and other years we’ve made it the noon meal on Christmas day. The menu varies.  We’ve had a standing rib roast, turkey, and crab legs in recent years and I’ve not yet settled on a menu for next week.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be barbecuing and the prospect of a house that smells like fried carp doesn’t sound like a good idea. The idea of a waffle doesn’t sound half-bad but the honey and garlic combo doesn’t exactly get my mouth watering. Even if I could find it, I’m not willing to inflict the emotional duress that would surely result from me uttering the phrase, “Come on boys, finish up your reindeer.”

Savour the Flavor of Gingerbread (with recipe for Gingerbread Steamer)

Originally published in warm and frothy newspapers on December 10, 2009

Imagine being a dignitary from a far-away land visiting Queen Elizabeth I in 16th Century England. Protocol demands that you exchange gifts. Perhaps you bring her some rare jewels mined in your home country or a beautiful tapestry woven by your servant. There is a good chance that one of the gifts you would receive from the good Queen would have been a cookie made with exotic spices and shaped and decorated in your very own image. This practice is history’s very first mention of what we now call the gingerbread man.

The Brits may have invented the gingerbread man but the Germans made it an art form. Maybe it was a German who visited the Queen and returned to his homeland to spread the word about these unusual treats. The Germans must have really, really, liked the gingerbread man because they were the ones who started to build him houses, animals, and, of course, the gingerbread lady. They were also the first to associate gingerbread so closely with Christmas, using the cookies as tree ornaments. Nuremberg, Germany, emerged as the as the gingerbread capital of the world, thanks to the elaborate gingerbread scenes that the bakers of that city would create.

The Gingerbread Boy took his place in the cannon of children’s literature in an 1875 issue of the St. Nicholas magazine.  Most of us are familiar with the tale in which a childless woman bakes a gingerbread boy who comes to life and runs out of the house. The story evolved over the years and most modern versions emit the rather macabre scene in which the gingerbread boy is eaten by a fox as the boy screams, "I'm quarter gone...I'm half gone...I'm three-quarters gone...I'm all gone!"

The creative forces behind the film “Shrek” paid homage to this detail of the original story. In the film, Lord Farquaad breaks off both of the gingerbread boy’s legs to torture him and prevent him from running away. In the process, one of the legs is crumbled to pieces. By the end of the movie, the intact leg is reattached with frosting stitches and the boy hobbles, one-legged, on a candy-cane crutch. Now my boys can’t eat gingerbread without evoking this scenario. Nothing says Christmas like a good dismemberment.

There may be another reason why these cookies have become a Christmastime mainstay. The spices used in gingerbread – ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg – are all believed by some to have medicinal properties that flight of colds and other wintertime ailments, although I’ve never heard that a “gingerbread cookie a day will keep the doctor away.”

With the holiday season upon us, many of our homes will be filled with warm aroma of gingerbread baking in our ovens and both young and old will enjoy decorating cookies, building houses, and enjoying the time together.

One way to savor the flavors of gingerbread, even when you don’t have time to bake, is in a festive Gingerbread Steamer – warmed milk flavored with the familiar spices. A batch of Gingerbread Steamer Mix is good thing to keep on hand to take the chill of a winter day and it can also make a great Christmas gift. This recipe makes about nine servings.
  
Featured in legends, fairytales, and Hollywood movies, gingerbread has enjoyed a rich history and by all accounts will be with us for generations to come.

Gingerbread Steamer

Mix

• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ginger
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 tablespoon cloves
• 1/2 tablespoon nutmeg

Steamer

• 8 ounces of milk
• 2 tablespoons of the mix
• Whipped cream (optional)
• Grated crystallized ginger (optional)

To make the mix, combine all ingredients and store in an airtight container. When ready to prepare, pour 8 ounces of milk into a mug and add two tablespoons of the spice mixture. Stir and then heat in the microwave until steaming. Stir again and top with whipped cream and grated crystallized ginger, if desired.

To Those Who Wait

Published in quality newspapers on December 3, 2009

Waiting. We spend a good part of our lives doing it. Efficiency experts have quantified our waiting and found that on average we spend five years of our lives waiting in lines and six months sitting at red lights. Add up all the other waiting we do and it takes up an annoyingly significant chunk of our time here on earth. Surely whoever said “good things come to those who wait,” could never have predicted the amount of waiting required in the 21st Century.

There’s another sort of waiting that is more than an annoyance. It takes a toll on us physically. It knots our stomachs, furrows our brows, and keeps us awake at night. Sometimes this waiting lasts only a few minutes, like waiting for that state trooper to get out of his car after we’ve been pulled over – ticket or just a warning? We wait anxiously for a few hours before a phone call lets us know that our traveling loved ones have safely navigated rain-slick roads and made it home okay. Fortunately this sort of waiting is temporary. When the waiting is over, the worry dissipates like steam from a tea kettle.

Waiting can also be an ever-present, yet unwelcome companion, with us every second of every day for days on end and fate hangs in the balance. We wait for the test results from the lab. We wait for a son or daughter to safely return from war. We wait for that email letting us know we got the job.

We’re now in the season of waiting, the holidays. We do lots of waiting this time of year. Even children seem to up their waiting quota. They wait for out-of-town cousins to arrive. They wait for Santa’s visit. They wait for presents to be opened. They wait for dad to run to the drug store to get AAA batteries.

During the holidays a good deal of waiting occurs in and around the kitchen. Thanksgiving, with a houseful of people awaiting the meal, strikes the tone for the holiday season. The turkey is the culinary pace car of holiday cooking, cooking for hours not minutes and setting the standard for much of the slowed-down food preparation that will occur in the coming month.

Even those for whom slice-and-bakes will do during the rest of the year, will break out the Betty Crocker Cookbook for the tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe and spend the better part of an evening mixing, rolling, cutting, baking, smelling, decorating, and finally eating cookies that were worth the wait.

It is tempting to think of waiting differently than other aspects of life, as the empty space separating one thing from another. Is waiting just the gap between what was and what will be; or does the waiting have value in and of itself? 

Waiting, if we let it, can help us focus. It can push aside all the clutter in our lives so that we zero in on the object of our waiting. Some of us attend churches that observe Advent. Advent is all about the waiting, four full weeks of anticipation and preparation. The themes of Advent - hope, love, joy, peace, and celebration – encourage us to let waiting become more than a mere holding pattern.

I don’t know about you but I’m not good at waiting. I work 65 hours a week. I’ve got family and civic commitments. I don’t have time to wait. Yet waiting doesn’t seem to know or care how important I think I am. Normally when I’m forced to wait, my blood pressure goes up and my mind fills with all that I could be doing.

During this holiday season I’m going to try and change all that and if waiting is difficult for you maybe you should join with me. As I find myself waiting over the next few weeks, whether in a check-out line, in busy kitchen, or in a quite sanctuary, I’m going to try and let the waiting teach me something, perhaps about hope and love and joy and peace and celebration. Maybe good things will come to those who wait.

Have a Warm and Fuzzy Thanksgiving

Originally published in quality newspapers on November 19, 2009

When I picked up my 3rd-grade son from school earlier this week I asked the question I’ve asked nearly every afternoon since he could talk in complete sentences, “How was your day?” Although he CAN speak in complete sentences, that doesn’t mean that he always DOES so. Most of the time, his answer to this question is a monosyllabic, “fine.” On this day he was unusually chatty providing me rich details of his day at school. He was also peppering me with seemingly random questions. “Daddy, how many friends do you think you had in middle school?” “Do you think adults use less than ten percent of their imagination?”

After that random Q and A our conversation turned to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. His nonstop banter paused for just a second and then he said, “Why do I feel all warm inside when I think about Thanksgiving.” I probed a little about the “warm feeling” he described and he told me that he also feels it when it’s cold and snowy outside and we’re all inside our house, all four of us, watching a movie or playing a game.

Now I don’t know the science behind that warm and fuzzy feeling; but I know exactly what my son was describing to me and it sure seems like we get those waves of emotions, or surges of chemicals to the brain, or whatever they are, more in the holiday season than any other time of year. Thanksgiving is primetime for the warm fuzzies. Many of us get to enjoy four-whole days away from work and school. Some will host extended family and others travel near or far to be with those they love the most.

Thanksgiving is primarily a holiday celebrated on the home front. We Americans love our restaurants but the significant majority of us eat our Thanksgiving meal at home. According to the National Restaurant Association, only one in ten Americans eat their Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant.

All of the warm-fuzzy experiences my son described to me were home-based. There was no mention of trips to Disney World or Chuck E. Cheese; and spending time with his friends wasn’t on the list either. The warm fuzzies seem to be quarantined within the walls of our home or the home of a couple members of our extended family.

There’s further evidence that the warm fuzzies are not location-based but rather people-based. My parents’ current residence is a house in which I have never lived. My childhood home, in fact, was torn down years ago to make room for a strip mall. When we spend the holidays with my parents, I wake up in a strange bed in a strange house but get an immediate case of the warm fuzzies when I realize where I am – with my wife and children and my parents.

Next week we’ll be traveling to Dayton, Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with my wife’s sister and her family. They built a house this year so this will be the first Thanksgiving in their new home. I can almost guarantee that they brought the warm fuzzies with them from the old place.  

I realize that not everyone gets to experience the love of hearth and home around the holidays. Strained family relationships can be heightened during the holidays. Nothing throws cold water on the warm fuzzies like Uncle Sal getting drunk and punching Uncle Mike. For some, the forecast calls for the cold pricklies.

I’m glad my son feels loved and secure and that family time brings about the warm fuzzies. I hope that will always be the case. If the warm fuzziess have become more difficult for you to find, try looking extra hard for them this Thanksgiving. They’re probably there somewhere, maybe playing cards with the dust bunnies under the bed.