Country send-off
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
We've been in Kansas now for over two years and sometimes I forget what life was like somewhere else. "Will I adjust to this country living so soundly that I won't have anything to write about?" I wonder. And then my daughter arrived from California bringing west coast news (the daffodils are blooming) sprinkled liberally with her own brand of humor. Just what we needed!
Like all good mothers, I sat and listened to her expound on her life — classes she was taking at Sonoma State, new health tips, and good restaurants they'd found. "The latest rage is steak houses," she said, "Do you have them here?"
Do we have them? I thought you invented steak houses in Kansas, didn't you? When we first moved to the country, we sincerely feared this was the only kind of restaurant around. Meanwhile, we were grieving over our loss of fresh choice fare — which meant fresh vegetables and not fresh meat.
"Oh," continued my daughter as she brought her mother up to speed, "Have you heard of wheat grass as a nutritional supplement? I get it all the time at the juice bar. Some people put it in apple juice; but I just drink it straight — tastes like peapods."
"Wheat grass? Isn't that what I see growing in the fields?" I countered.
"Oh, no, it can't be the same," said my completely California-ized daughter. "This grass is light green, grown in a flat, and whizzed in a blender."
I wasn't convinced! Grass is grass, in my opinion, and wheat is wheat, whether it's grown in a field or a flat. I didn't say that much more on the subject, but I was out to prove that Ramona is ahead of the game when it comes to wheat grass — we've got it, we just haven't been drinking it!
Which reminds me of the year we discovered the wonders of green soybeans. In Japanese restaurants, they serve edamaema (steamed soy beans in the pod) as a salad and I was hooked. When I came back to Ramona and found out that my neighbor Erich was growing soybeans I said, "Can I pick some?"
"Help yourself," he said and I headed out to the farm. After I'd cooked my treasures, I asked Erich, "Don't you want to taste them? They are delicious!"
"Nah," he said making a terrible face, "Soybeans are cow food." Cow food, cows as food or cow's food as people food — whatever the fad, there's really nothing new under the sun, except perhaps our current application.
We talked Jana into staying a couple of extra days in the country. On our way back from Marion one day, we came past a particularly green field of wheat that was beginning to recover from winter's chill. "Now there's your wheat grass," I said to Jana, "Shall we try some?"
We marched out into that farmer's field, found an area more protected than the others, and proceeded to glean a handful of grass. My daughter was shaking her head at me all the way home; but to her credit, she stuck that grass in a blender and began extracting the juice. "This is supposed to make its own liquid," she said as the blades whirred around.
"Look," I said with Kansas candor, "It is winter here, we haven't had rain, this wheat is still dormant — so add a little water."
Perhaps we've hit on the fountain of youth. Amazing, the things you discover when you spend another day in the country.
