Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 16 (August 29, 1998)

To anyone who has any, you know that feeding kids is no picnic. To begin with, there are no two children ever born who like the same breakfast food. That gets your day going. The rest of it can be an adventure in patience, tolerance and, when all else fails, blind rage.

When my girls were still in elementary school, I decided to give them an extra treat for Christmas one year: an authentic Christmas Pudding. It took from October to December — lovingly tending it to bring it to perfection by Christmas Day, complete with a sprig of holly and hard sauce.

The girls were expecting pudding, you know p-u-d-d-i-n-g, like Bill Cosby sells on television. It's not what they got.

After Christmas dinner, I cut each girl a slice and took my chair, proud as punch and all a-quiver to see how every one liked it. Melissa, my oldest, was silently elected by her sisters to try the pudding first. Heather and Amy watched, their breath held, as she took the smallest bite her fork would hold without it falling through the tines. I looked her way just in time to see her turn towards her sisters and shake her head, "no." The other two girls pushed their plates away, not even willing to try the pudding. It's moments like that give the Irish temper it's legendary status.

And then there was 'Pinky', the calf.

A couple of years after the Christmas pudding incident (as it is still called among us), I bought a calf to raise for the freezer. We got it when it was about three months old. It was a little gray, bald-faced animal with pink rings around its eyes.

Knowing it's destiny, I warned the girls not to give it a name because that makes it a pet. Naturally, it took them less than five minutes to decide on the name Pinky (because of the fact she had no hair on her eye lids). Sigh.

They talked about Pinky like they talked about Dusty, our dog, or Buffy, our cat. It used to make them angry because I always called it Potroast. "Go out to the barn and feed Potroast," I'd say. They'd protest and tell me her name was Pinky!

Almost a year later, came the day of Pinky's reckoning. I didn't tell the girls as they left for school that day. When they came home Pinky wasn't in her pen, having been carried to the butcher earlier that morning. "Where's Pinky?" they asked. I said nothing, just stared at them.

"I'm not touching one bite of her," protested daughter number two. "Neither am I," echoed number one. Daughter number three remained silent.

When they returned home from school the following day, Pinky had been delivered in a series of white paper packages and now rested in the basement freezer. The girls treated it as the tomb of a lost loved one. I, however, had a method in my madness.

I waited for about two weeks before I served the first meal from Pinky. I had the butcher cut a rib roast and hang it to age. That day, I roasted it to a medium rare perfection and served it with roasted potatoes and Yorkshire pudding (this pudding they always liked).

When the roast was put on the table, one of them looked at me and asked in a trembling voice, "Pinky?" I nodded. They stared at it a long time after I sliced it an put a generous piece on each plate. I told them, "Don't think of Pinky as she is here before us. Think of her being in a better world, no more drafty and cold old barn. She's in a world where the sun shines all the time, chasing butterflies and playing with Bambi's mother."

They thought about this for a minute and then dug into the succulent roast. Fifteen minutes later they were fighting over the bones. Poor Pinky! My Aunt Fanny!

Note: Now before the vegetarians and animal right's people start warming their pens up, I raised my daughters in the country. We grew a portion of our own food — a large vegetable garden each year, chickens (both for meat and eggs), geese, ducks, pigs and the occasional calf. My animals were never confined to coops or pens but allowed to range and graze. The humane treatment of animals was as valuable a lesson, it seemed to me, as the lessons taught in self-sufficiency. J.C.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page