Grandma's Cookies

My Grandma Fannie Mae Capel

Some friends of ours, both very good cooks, have been surprising each other with dishes made from their mothers' recipes. I recently went through my card file and found a recipe  from my grandmother, interesting to me because of the strange way the ingredients are listed. When she made them, these cookies always tasted the same, regardless of the imprecision. Probably, the trick was to use the same cup every time.

I love them. I hope you will, too.

                                 Chocolate Macaroons

Piece of butter the size of 2 eggs

2 T cocoa

2 coffee cups full of sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

3 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

Melt butter. Stir in the cocoa. Remove from the stove and stir in the remaining ingredients. Roll small balls in powdered sugar. Place them on buttered cookie sheets and bake 12 minutes at 325 degrees.

While the cookies are still warm, place them in an air-tight container; otherwise, they will get hard.

Do you have some of these recipes from your parents and grandparents? Please e-mail them to me at carolelrod1@gmail.com, and I'll print them in my blog.

Paradise East

My husband and I have been living the tropical lifestyle for more than 20 years now. It is strange how life has its twists and turns, and you end up where you never dreamed you would. In our case, forsaking the snow and sleet of the Midwest came about because my husband, Ed, was asked by a friend to go to Montserrat, a Caribbean island, and help rebuild houses after Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Invited to return for a proper vacation the next year by the woman who had provided him housing during the hurricane trip, he - and I - spent a week with her. We did the same the following year - and began looking for a small house to buy for month-long getaways in the winter. I was still working as a newspaper reporter, but he could conduct his insurance business by phone and fax while we were "on island."

It wasn't only the weather that made up our minds to buy. The laid-back lifestyle appealed to us, and the people were so warm and friendly. In fact, a couple of people he met on his first trip, on seeing us the following year, said, "Welcome Home!" That was powerful.

Paradise East

The plan was to spend several months a year on Montserrat when we retired. That came about sooner than I thought possible when I discovered I was old enough and had been employed long enough to remain on my employer's health insurance as a retiree, and my husband could remain as my dependent. Neither of us was quite old enough for Social Security, but he would continue working.

And thus began our four winters on Montserrat.

The concrete block house had two bedrooms, one bath and a living/dining/kitchen combination. Plus, a big plus, it had a swimming pool. Because the house was located on the east side of the island, we named it "Paradise East."

Snakes Alive

An update on the great python hunt in the Everglades: As of this week, only 50 Burmese pythons have been killed by the 1,547 people who signed up to take part in the month-long hunt, which is sponsored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation department. It ends Sunday, February 10.

How many pythons are out there in the swamps is anybody's guess. Estimates are from several hundred to several hundred thousand. What is known for sure is that the snakes are well camouflaged and growing bigger every day on a diet of just about everything that moves. The big ones - ranging to 15 feet and even larger - have no natural predators, so man is about the only way for the pythons, an invasive and non-native species, to be kept under control.

Several hundred people who signed up to participate in the state-sponsored hunt are professionals, but most have come out for a lark - from as far away as Canada. There's some prize money involved, including $1,000 for the biggest snake caught in both the amateur and professional categories.   

Some female pythons have been found with 50 eggs inside. So what are the chances, really, of decreasing the overall number of these creepy crawlies?

Rapt About Raptors

I've written once before on this blog about bald eagles, but today I'm focusing on another raptor that is more common in my neighborhood: the osprey, otherwise known as the fish hawk. Brown, with white crowns and chests, these big birds are incubating eggs now, having returned to nests they left last spring.

Nests are commonly built in the notches and crooks of dead trees or on platforms built especially for the ospreys atop tall poles. It's not unusual to see the adults flying down to the ground to pick up dead grass or vines and carrying them up to the nest. These will make a soft lining for the eggs. The outside structure of the nest is made of large sticks, which the ospreys carry in their talons. (They drop quite a few as they try to fly.)

Ospreys, which can have a six-foot wingspan, seem to use the same nest from year to year and just "redecorate" when it's time to start a new family.

I've heard the big birds can live to be 15 years old. Osprey mate for life - with maybe a little hanky-panky on the side - but generally they are loyal companions.

Mostly, ospreys eat fish. On the island where I live, meals are close by and easy to catch, so there are many ospreys. One of the adults of a pair, primarily the male, is the fisherman, providing dinner for his wife while she sits on the eggs. All the while he is out fishing, she hectors him with a loud, repetitive "cheereek."

Although a pelican plunges head-first into the water to catch his dinner, the osprey enters the water feet first, catching prey in his talons. He may be flying high in the air when he spots the fish he and his wife will eat for dinner. As he flies back to the nest, he orients the fish so it's carried headfirst for better aerodynamics. One of our friends observed that the male will then fly past the nest carrying the fish to see if his mate approves. After this display, he flies to another tree or pole where he filets his catch. There usually is a lot of squawking back and forth while this is going on.

Osprey parents are busy tending the eggs for five weeks and then the young chicks for 10 weeks after that. Partly, their care is supposed to assure that a bald eagle will not feast on their treasured babies.

Fledglings may not start their own families for several years. There is much to learn, including how to build one of the huge nests - which can be as big as an old-fashioned wicker laundry basket. One year, we watched some young osprey trying without success to construct a nest; despite many attempts, the sticks wouldn't stay put in the tree-top they had chosen. The next year, they or another pair about the same age, succeeded, but in a tree 100 feet away.

Rescued

Sienna

Rescue

An article in the local newspaper a day or so ago told about a dog rescued from an abusive home. She'd been tied up so tightly that her leather harness and chain cut all the way to the bone. Now she is the friend and helper of a man who has acute Parkinson's disease. The man says she is the child he never had.

Although the road can be bumpy, I have nothing but good things to say about rescuing a dog or cat that otherwise would be thrown on the trash heap. About 17 months ago, we also took in a rescue dog, a 50-pound Labrador Retriever/Shar-Pei mix named Sienna, who was found wandering somewhere in Pinellas County, Florida. She had four puppies in tow. The animal shelter to which she was taken weaned the puppies and fully intended to euthanize Sienna, who was big and could be wild when she was excited. But then, as now, she loved people, other dogs and even cats. An animal rescue group stepped in and said, "No way."

At first, our relationship was rocky. Sienna had been bounced around so much to this home and that and to more than one shelter that she had developed extreme separation anxiety. We tried to teach her to go into a dog crate so that we could go to church or a movie and not worry. She was having none of it and salivated so much when locked up that there were literally pools on the kitchen floor when we arrived home. Our previous dog, also a rescue, had readily gone into the crate, so what was wrong with this one?

Our vet said tranquilizers might help and gave us a prescription. They were to be used "as needed," which, for a while, was every time we left the house. We had a routine. We put soothing music on the radio. We tossed one of Ed's dirty t-shirts into the crate, along with a stuffed lamb we called "baby" and a bone to chew on. We also purchased one of those stretchy shirts, which, when strapped tightly in place with Velcro, is said to reduce anxiety. We bought a rubber toy, called a Kong, and put peanut butter inside.

All this made only a marginal difference in the puddles of saliva.

A friend who trained dogs for urban search and rescue teams suggested putting the crate in a bathroom, leaving the cage door open. He said to feed Sienna every meal in the crate, also with the door open, so she'd associate it with pleasure. When we got ready to go away, he suggested we lure Sienna into the bathroom and shut the door, saying, "We'll be back."

The first time we tried that she chewed off about two feet of the door frame in an effort to escape. Who knows what she would have done to the sofa had she been loose in the rest of the house. When we were at home, she never attempted to chew anything that wasn't one of her toys.

One night when we went to a movie, Sienna ripped the door through to its hollow core. Ed nailed up a metal sheet to cover the hole. We dreaded coming home, wondering how many wood chips and how much saliva we'd find in the hall outside the bathroom.

Our dog-trainer friend said to be persistent. We were, and we were generous too with praise when she deserved it and plenty of love. Gradually, over about eight months, the saliva became less, and the chewing stopped. We let the tranquilizer prescription run out and, finally, put away the stretchy shirt. We moved the crate back into the kitchen and began shutting the door with her in it when we left. Sienna was usually asleep when we returned home. There was no whining or barking, no chewing and no salivating.

We won, and we think she did, too.

Unintended Consequences

How they got there, nobody seems to know, but the fact is that Burmese Pythons have overtaken the Everglades. Some experts think there may be as many as 100,000, and they have no natural enemies. Instead, they are eating alligators, wading and songbirds, deer, raccoons, rats and mice - and changing the balance of nature.

The most popular theory is that several years ago a couple of people decided they could no longer cope with the snakes they were keeping as pets and turned them loose in the Everglades. When the two pythons found each other, the rest is history. I suspect that more than two people were involved and more than two snakes.

If south Florida had below freezing temperatures of some duration in winter, the pythons, which can grow to be more than 15 feet long, might die off. But temperatures less than 32 degrees typically occur only on a few winter nights and last only a few hours - not long enough to kill off large numbers of these huge snakes.

Attempts have been made in the past by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to conduct python hunts in the Everglades, but serious control won't happen if just a few uniformed guys hunt down and kill a few big snakes. The area where they can be hiding is vast, 1 1/2 million acres in Everglades National Park alone, and the snakes apparently are smart at eluding humans.

This weekend, a hunt for amateurs has been organized, with a prize of $1,500 going to whoever kills the most pythons. So far, 500 have signed up to take part. I hope they are alert enough to dodge the alligators. 

A New Taste

While living on Montserrat, we became acquainted with an unusual vegetable grown there, the "christophene." Pear-shaped with a bumpy, pale green or ivory-colored skin, the christophene is a member of the gourd family, like squash or melon. It is bland tasting and can be somewhat bitter unless cooked.

Christophene or Chayote

The christophene is a vegetable with many names: In the United States, when you can find them, christophenes are called "chayotes." Names in other parts of the world are "mirliton" or "cho-cho." Originally native to Mexico and Central America, christophenes are now grown in South America, Australia and New Zealand as well as Florida. A part-time neighbor of ours in southwest Florida grows them abundantly in the Orlando area and shares them with us when he and his wife drive down for a weekend of fishing.

These vegetables can grow sprawling on the ground like pumpkins or cantaloupe, or vertically on a fence or trellis.

Eating christophenes raw is rare, but here is a recipe I like. It is from the Montserrat Cookbook, published in 1973 to benefit the Montserrat Old People's Welfare Association.

Christophene Salad

2 raw christophenes, peeled, cored and grated

1/2 tsp. salt

1 medium carrot, grated

2 green onions, finely chopped

1 package lime gelatin

1 cup hot water

1 Tbsp. lime juice

1/2 cup cold water

Add salt to christophenes and let stand 1/2 hour. Drain. Dissolve gelatin in hot water. Add lime juice and cold water. When the gelatin is cool and just beginning to set, stir in the vegetables. Pour into a mold or pan and chill.