A Sip of the Past...

When my family moved to Blaine I was 11 months old, so needless to say Washington is the only home I've ever known.  We moved in next door to an elderly lady named Freda Lindall.  Freda was a widow who never had any children, and we adopted her as a grandmother.

We spent many afternoons at Freda's house and she was always giving us treats and feeding us stuff that made my mother cringe.  Freda didn't place a lot of importance on refrigeration, and so we ate a lot of stuff that had just been sitting on her stove overnight, and we survived!

There were two things that I loved having at Freda's house and they were both drinks.  Freda made this amazing rhubarb juice, and I know that rhubarb juice must sound kind of disgusting, but it was so yummy! The other drink that I loved so much was called "Sukkola."  Sukkola is an Icelandic hot cocoa that Freda always made us. 

Freda passed away when I was 9 years old, and we were given the first chance to go through most of her stuff and choose what we would like.  I chose a blanket of hers that I still have, and some books.  My mom looked for her recipes.  We all wanted the recipes for sukkola, rhubarb juice, and Mom wanted the recipe for Dandelion Wine.  I think she found the wine recipe, but the other two were nowhere to be found. 

About 10 years ago, my friend Heidi and I were faced with a large quantity of rhubarb in her garden and not sure what to do with it all.  We went down to her Grandma Audrey's house to go through her recipes.  As we sat and talked with Audrey about rhubarb recipes I mentioned Freda's rhubarb juice and how much I wished I had that recipe.   Audrey said, "I've got a recipe for rhubarb juice here somewhere, I've had it for years."  Heidi and I figured that her recipe had to be a good one, so we started looking for it.  As we searched, Audrey continued her story and said, "I got that recipe from the lady down the lane."  Heidi and I were puzzled and wondering, "What lady? What lane?"  As Audrey continued, she told us about taking Heidi's older sister Darcy on walks when she was little and how she met up with the lady down the street from Darcy and Heidi's house, and they talked about gardening and recipes and she got the rhubarb juice recipe from her.  The lady down the lane was my Freda, and 15+ years after her death, I finally had that rhubarb juice recipe I'd wanted for so long.

A year ago I started thinking, as I so often had, about sukkola and wishing I could find the recipe.  I searched the internet and found several recipes but none were right.  They all involved cooking the sukkola before serving it, and I distinctly remembered the jar that Freda kept her sukkola mix in.  So I sadly abandoned my search and decided that I would probably never find it.

Last Thursday, the 22nd, had been a really hard day.  It was a day that I wish I could erase.  But then I got a phone message that not only changed my night, but it also made a 26 year old dream come true.  I got a frantic message from my friend Lisa telling me that I needed to call her right away because she had found Freda's Sukkola recipe.  It's kind of hard to describe my reaction as I listened to this message, but I do remember clapping my hand over my mouth because I started to cry, and I was sort of doing this combination of running in place and jumping up and down.

On Tuesday evening my plan was to sit on the couch and knit because I was trying to finish a birthday present for my mother-in-law.  Well you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men...  I texted my husband asking what he wanted for dinner because I was out of ideas, and got no response.  So I used the Find my Friends ap on our phones to stalk him and see where he was.  I figured he was out on a call, so I didn't try calling him.  A few minutes later I checked again, and he was still there.  I turned on the scanner ap on my phone (aren't all these aps great?) and after a moment I heard him call out to dispatch something about "trying to call in there."  A minute later I heard dispatch calling out Emergency Traffic only, and I thought that he was the one needing the air, and got a little stressed about what was going on.  I succumbed to one of my few and far between Nervous Nellie Cop-wife moments.  I started wondering what was going on, and I hesitated a few times before grabbing my phone (again) and Facebook messaging a friend at Dispatch asking what was going on and if Matt was ok.  This is the first time I have EVER done that! (I came close once before when I asked another friend at dispatch to message him and ask him to call me when he was back in the area, but she wasn't working that night, so I don't count that moment of weakness.)  Anyway, this does tie into the whole Freda recipe story, I promise. 

When I have these Nervous Nellie Cop-wife moments, I have to do something.  Usually I bake, or clean.  That night I decided that it was time to make my sukkola, so I grabbed the keys and my wallet and headed off to the grocery store.  I picked up my necessary supplies and headed for the register.  When I reached the register, I became the customer who  needs to tell the checker exactly what they are doing. I couldn't believe that I had done it because I get so tired of being the checker who has to listen and pretend to care.  After I finished bothering the poor lady, I took my bag and drove home where I set to work mixing up my sukkola.

I put my kettle on to boil, and made myself a cup of sukkola and sat down to knit, watch tv, and listen to the scanner.  I took my first sip, and tears came to my eyes... my lifelong journey to find sukkola had finally come to an end.

How to Make Steph Cranky: A Step by Step Guide...

Let me begin by saying that I really do love my job.  I love working with my family, and for the most part I really like our customers.  That being said, let me vent my spleen a little...

On Thanksgiving, I spent the early part of the day baking pies and just hanging out at home relaxing.  About an hour before I needed to leave for my parents' house I showered, and didn't immediately dry my hair, so it started drying curly.  I decided to play with it a little and see where it would go.  The end result was surprising to me, it was quite curly, but I thought it was kind of fun.

On Friday I got up and decided to revive the curls and wear my hair curly to work.  I'd been at work for a few hours, and had been having a pretty good day.  I was greeted by my 9 year old nephew (who was wearing sunglasses, which is an important part of this story) with, "Bad hair day?"  I was upset and said that I thought it looked ok.  My sister said "It's just a joke, take it down a notch."  But I had been unable to see his eyes, or gauge an expression, and so I didn't know he was joking.  It made me feel a little self-conscious, but I got over it and we all joked about my bad hair day.  In fact it was a running joke all weekend.  When I was on my way to Seattle on Saturday and we passed the "Winery/Deli" down around Arlington, I texted my sister (I wasn't driving) and asked why she never takes me anywhere nice like that, and she replied, "Maybe if you'd comb your hair once in awhile."

Now we fast forward to today.  I forgot to set my alarm last night, so I started off running late today.  Since it actually takes longer right now to dry my hair straight than curly (given the humidity) I decided on curly again.  I got to work and started trying to get caught up on some paperwork I needed to do before our weekly True Value order arrived.  I was sipping some coffee and doing my receiving paperwork when a customer came to the counter and I started ringing him up.  He asked me, "Have you had your coffee yet?"  I replied that, yes I was working on my second cup.  He said, "Good.  Then you won't be cranky."  (Spoiler Alert - If you want to make a girl cranky, just ask her if she's cranky, or make a comment like, "Wow, you must be cranky today.") I looked up at him and laughed and said, "It's just coffee.  It's not a magic elixir."

At this point I have to explain that my natural expression is not a smile.  So if I am not smiling at someone or something, apparently I look cranky all the time.  And nothing brightens my day like being told how tired I look, or how cranky I look.  And it is usually the slightly older, and most often drunk, men who tell me these things.  This frightens me a little because I thought beer goggles are supposed to make women look better.  How bad must I look to a perfectly sober person???

I went about my morning and shrugged off the cranky remark.  About an hour later, I was ringing up another customer, and I brushed my bangs out of my eyes, miraculously without jabbing a thumb into my eyeball this time, and the guy says, "Are you having a bad hair day?"  I replied, as civilly as I could manage, "No, but apparently I shouldn't wear my hair curly anymore, because everytime I do people tell me how bad it looks."  He says, "I don't think it looks bad."  Yeah, sure... good save.  You want some ketchup to dip that foot in, Buddy?

So there you have it, if you want to make me cranky in just a few easy steps, come in and make a comment about how tired I look, or how I must be having a bad hair day, or (my personal favorite) "Wow! You're cranky today aren't you?"  That one MUST be used as a greeting however, it can't be used in mid-conversation.

I think all I need now to complete the set is for someone to say, "Put on a few pounds, huh?"