With four boys running through our house, we go through five gallons of milk in a week. That's a little over a gallon per boy bringing the total on milk alone to around eighty dollars a month. This is the standing joke with my family and the punch line is always that we should buy a dairy cow and put her in the backyard. Of course I know my wife would love to milk her twice a day which I'm told will render two gallons putting you around fourteen gallons a week. Instead of a lemonade stand, perhaps we could sell milk to all the neighbors.
My grandfather was a farmer and they had two milk cows which produced twenty eight gallons of milk per week. They actually used it not only for themselves but to make butter and feed the hogs.
A favorite stand by for my grandfather was cold milk and corn bread and not separately but mixed together in a tall glass and eaten with a spoon. I've done this on many occasions which has raised some interesting looks from my family but it really is good. Especially with left over corn bread.
I'm not going to give you a recipe for putting corn bread into a glass. Hopefully you're smart enough to figure that out on your own but I will give you a great cornbread recipe.
The trick to making good corn bread is to heat the skillet first. And if you don't have a well seasoned cast iron skillet then you should purchase one and season it yourself. Take some time and do your homework on the proper care of cast iron. It lasts forever and really bakes better than any other material I've used in the kitchen. Or on the ground.
Down Home Cornbread
First, make sure your cast iron skillet (# 8) is well seasoned. Use non-stick spray or Crisco coating the inside of the skillet. Place the cold skillet in an oven and then start the pre-heating process to 450 degrees.
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups yellow cornmeal
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3-4 Tablespoons melted butter
Single drop of Mexican Vanilla
Combine the buttermilk, eggs and baking soda and beat it well. In another bowl, sift together the cornmeal, sugar and salt. Add the buttermilk mixture, butter and vanilla mixing well.
When the oven buzzes reaching 450 degrees, take out the skillet and pour in the mixture. Bake until golden brown.
Serves 8 to 10.
In March of 2012, I will be faced with a young man eighteen years of age. For years, I've always heard they grow up fast but I had no idea. I kept telling myself that I've got three more under him and I could bury my feelings within the comfort of having the remaining three still at home.
What is so painful I think is to see myself in him on so many different levels. It is absolutely shocking to watch him shake hands and mingle with his friends, all the while reaching for manhood. A man that in my eyes is still a small boy that used to collect dinosaurs. I have to excuse myself and catch my breath as it feels like someone pulling my guts out a great deal of the time.
Lately I've had a lot of fear dealing with him growing up. And within this fear is an uncertainty of direction as he travels with the talents God has given him. Over drinks with a friend in Dallas, I spoke of this fear as it deals with the road traveled by musical people. He is seriously hitting this road with the maturity level of a 25 year old kid and not a seventeen year old boy working tirelessly on his voice as well as piano in his down time. Yes...he considers that down time.
My fear is always the same. How will he make a living doing this? What kind of job will he land? A world so foreign to me regardless of the musicians that I've had the pleasure of hanging around with for so many years. I took the road most traveled which is a career, the corporate life. Well...sort of.
When explaining all of this to my friend, he softly said, "I've heard him sing and he's great. Do you really think Stevie Ray Vaughan ever worried about where his next meal was going to come from?"
Which led me to a verse from Matthew which reads, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"
A verse we all struggle with as it's just plain hard to swallow. It's why we have savings accounts but I guess that's down right laughable as most folks have lost a great deal or all of their retirement due to the recession. These days, the market is like going to Vegas.
Aside from all of that, I'm still trying to get my head around leaving him at a college dorm room. What the hell will that be like? He sleeps, wakes up, feeds himself and then goes to class? Are you kidding me? I couldn't even find my Spanish class and still have nightmares about it. "Señor Holt, how nice of you to finally join us." It's the definition of an anxiety attack except I'm not naked with socks on like most classroom dreams I have.
Standing over six feet tall now, he towers over us all and I still have no idea if he's a boy or a man. I can only hope that the man he is becoming will never lose the little boy that I used to throw in the air. The little boy that used to sing in the back seat of my car. The little boy that threw a baseball through my den window...twice. The little boy who will soon leave me to create a life for himself and become a man.
It is with this thought I leave you a message from the heart. I have met many a man who lost the little boy that lived within them. Life is not easy as I've seen a great deal of hardships the older I've become but I've tried to keep that little boy alive as best I can. He shows up around Halloween to toilet paper a house or a hot summer night to play harmonica with a bunch of brothers in the hood. He is what makes me who I am and I can only hope and pray that my son will know this little boy for himself. The little boy that makes life worth living.
The great man is he that does not lose his child's heart.
~Menicus
Here's to the anxious and worried parent. God be with us all.
When I graduated from college, it took me forever to find a job. The savings and loans had all gone bust and the oil market had fallen on hard times. Much like the environment of today, work was scarce but I finally found a job working for a smaller firm in North Dallas. The second in command of this firm was a Jewish man by the name of Ross Mandel. Coming from New London and a predominately southern environment, I had never really had that much experience with a Jew. I had always heard the stories and stereotypical descriptions on how they were all very shrewd with business and for the most part, Ross was just that. He immediately took me under his wing and began teaching me the art of negotiations which was always kind of funny as I'm a designer and not much of a business man. But Ross would hear non of that as when it came to pricing out the goods, he was like a coach whispering numbers and percentages in my ear as I haggled with a printer or media company on the phone. I will always hold him in high regard as he was and is like a big brother. My Jewish big brother that made me understand business.
Ross said something one day while going to lunch that has stuck with me for the last twenty years. While driving in the car entering the tollway, Ross made the statement that in our lifetime we would experience a paperless world. Well we all jabbed at him and told him he was crazy. "You've lost your mind," we all told him as we lived and designed within a world of paper. I have been studying print now for my entire career and love everything about the printing process but these days I'm beginning to wonder if Ross Mandel had it right all along.
Over the last ten years, newspaper has declined like nothing I have ever seen before. It is enough to break my heart as I love the paper and good journalism. I love to write myself but I'm not all that great so I have a tremendous amount of respect for a person that can jam out story after story each and every day. To me, that would take a hell of a lot of creativity and I've only got a few bullets in my gun.
And it isn't just the paper that's falling down. I have all but stopped watching television and will only turn on the news when a storm is blowing in. My wife will order a series from Netflix and watch it on her laptop at night when everyone finally leaves her alone which is just plain weird when you think about it. I grew up with four or five channels as a kid and you could only see cable if you went to the big city. Now it's reached a point of insanity as you can watch anything and everything whenever you want. Networks struggle to peak our attention long enough to sell some ad space around ratings as more and more people turn to the computer to spend their time.
In the beginning of this year, I met a guy named Reid Slaughter. Reid started Park Cities People newspaper when he was just a kid. He's a few years older than I am so we would still like to consider ourselves kids even though we now have to pretend we're responsible adults. Reid sold the paper, produced TV for seven years, built and sold a magazine publishing company, then sold it all and went on a mission trip to make the world better. While on the trip, Reid met Jeff Hinson who had just sold his radio stations. Sitting in the Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, Cuba they began a conversation on the future of media, journalism and how we, the market, are receiving information. And more importantly, how we are not receiving information. After a year of research, they developed an innovative new approach that combines local journalism, business, entertainment, and philanthropy — all presented through video. And not just regular video, but stunning, cinematic short stories. Reid's vision was to break the mold of tired, one-dimensional promotional video (a staple of local television) and create beautiful short films that connect with audiences and move them to action. He interviewed almost a hundred videographers before choosing the handful of filmmaker/editors who form his amazing team. Jeff & Reid then built a multi-million dollar online platform (no banner ads, pop-ups or other annoying stuff!) and back-end system to house the content. You+Media is the very first on-line video magazine focused on local markets.
I don't think either one of them knew where this thing would go as it seemed to be more of an experiment rather than a business plan. One of those, hey I've got an idea, let's put vodka in this thing and see what happens. No one could have predicted that they would become one of the most networked and talked about web sites in Dallas with plans now to launch in five other major cities next year.
At some point, television is going to combine with the internet. In some homes, it already has but I believe that network television will have to reinvent itself as we'll soon live in a world where demand is king. You want it, you click it. And that can be anything from a show to a recipe to the family home movies. And within this world, there will be no paper so perhaps Ross Mandel was right all along.
But there are still some things we'll need paper for. Halloween is just around the corner and I've got four boys who love to decorate the trees.
