Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

There is always something to be gained by trying new foods. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a meat and potatoes kind of fellow, and I’ll never pass up a corn dog, or a good chicken fried steak or even a piece of coconut cream pie, but it doesn’t hurt now and then to expand one’s horizons a bit.

Anyone who knows me well can certainly understand the complete hatred I have for green beans, or my affliction to eggs, but every once in a while I find myself pushed to try something new.

I once had calamari at a Chinese restaurant in Toronto. I can say without question that I’m not really into eating anything that has the consistency of a deep fried rubber band, and really should we be eating things with more legs than body anyway? And yet, there are times when I enjoy sushi a great deal. Maybe it’s the company, or maybe it’s the taste that makes it enjoyable, but I’ve learned to like it and every once in a while crave it.

Egg plant…Whew…Boy I’ll tell you right from the get go we start with the egg word which makes me kind of jumpy as it is. I’m not really sure what I don’t like about it, but the fact that I feel it has the same kind of texture, as that strange zucchini squash mixed vegetable mystery melody that you sometimes get at the local Country Kitchen may be a big part of it. Sorry eggplant...you are going to end up in the green bean group.

The nice part about being able to travel a bit for work around the central part of the state is getting the opportunity to find new and fun places tucked out of the way. There is the little main street café in Murray where the special is always worth the order, especially if there is chocolate cake for dessert. Rudy’s in Winterset where the Rudy burger is actually a piece of chicken fried steak on a bun! And I’ve yet to find a bigger tenderloin than the one called the Giant at Delancy’s over on the east side of Des Moines. However, there is only so much traveling and eating one guy can do, and no where can you have the opportunity to try more food than at a good old family reunion pot luck.

The Annual James Family Reunion was last weekend, and I made the trip with the kids and Grandma to visit with the family, catch up on the latest news and to make sure I was at the meeting to keep from getting an office…oh who am I kidding…I went for the food. As with every reunion, there is always an assortment of ham balls, baked beans, and even a few Jell-O salads of sometimes questionable make up and color, and I’ve never been one to shy away from potatoes of any kind or any casserole where corn is the main ingredient.

Most importantly though there are desserts: lots and lots of desserts for one to try. There’s cake, and cookies and bars and crisps, and always ice cream if you wait long enough after the meal for it to find it’s way out to the table, but in this family no dessert can really compare to pie. There’s just something about pie that says, “Hey, welcome to reunion, please eat until your sick, and then eat some more!” I don’t think in all of my 40 years of attending a reunion do I ever remember a time without pie. And this year was no exception, although the choice of pies was severely limited in what I can only see as a great oversight of all the wonderful pie bakers in the family. As I “helped” Max with his plate I scanned over the pie selections.

I will give a tip to anyone attending a family reunion or a neighborhood potluck dinner, as I’m always willing to help out when it comes to making the most out of your time in the food line. The key is to have children…and if you’re opposed to that idea or just plain not lucky enough to find someone to make them with, grab hold of one…anyone’s child will do. In fact, most parents won’t even notice that you have taken them and will delight and thank you for the help you provide getting the little ones plates filled. Because, as we all know, the rule at every one of these events is that children eat first. YES! Quite true folks, but I have found the gray area in the rule book here and have noticed that no one will scoff if you just happen to take along a plate with you to fill as you are helping them. Please don’t tell anyone I just told you that.

As we neared the end of the line, things were not looking good in the pie department. It was down to two slim choices…some sort of pie that no one had cut into yet, which really puts you in a bad position. You can’t be the first to cut into the pie, that’s just not right. What would happen if you were there, and you cut into the pie and scooped out a piece, because you really can’t cut one open and then go “Ugh…gooseberry…no thanks.” No, you have to eat what you cut…so I skipped being the guinea pig there and stepped down the line to the next pie which WAS indeed gooseberry, plummeting my hopes and dreams of James Reunion pie into the muddy mess the lawn had turned into by that point in the day. Yes, I would suffer through lunch without pie.

But then, as though Uncle Paul, Grandma B and all those who have long since departed looked down from the heavens upon me, and shone the light of their long struggle to bring some kind of respectability to the family and reached out and smacked poor cousin Steve in the back of the head in order that he utter the words, “Hey Bryon, you better get a piece of this sour cream raisin before it’s all gone.”

Did he say sour cream raisin? A pie that in the James family was so loved and cherished that fistfights had broken out to lick the empty pan clean. A pie that has come between members of the same family and even a time or two created such hard feelings over not getting a piece that members of the same family refused to ride home together in the same car. Yes, as though it was manna from heaven, here, on my plate for the first time in my 40 years sat the glorious delicious piece of raisin cream pie. The Reunion had been saved, and yes, I ate every mouth-watering bite even though I was afraid that I would have to undo the buttons on my pants and fall asleep in my lawn chair soon after it. One can only imagine that it was indeed the love of the family that brought that pie there, and that made Steve will that pie onto my plate…Or perhaps he just wanted to see his name in the paper. Either way, my very first piece of sour cream raisin pie will take it’s place in the memories of those reunions, and serve as another reminder that I’ve moved beyond the kiddie table there, and into adulthood, and I’ll look forward to next year, and finding a small child to help with their plate, and being at the head of the line, when it’s time to fight over a piece of pie.

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.