A Swedish meatball

Here it is Sunday evening and Babs is Away.  What to do, what to do . . . I know.  Let’s have leftovers!  Oh stop moaning.  I’m good with leftovers.  You won’t starve.  Casseroles were always my best thing.

Here is the first mystery ingredient, procured on the road in front of the Writing Studio and Bait Shop on Tuesday and kept cold and fresh in case I found a use for it.  I have no idea why leaves that looked as if they’d been dipped in chalky white paint drifted down last week.  Not the whole leaf, mind you, just the back.  Painted.  The whole leaf feel down in every instance.  There were quite a few of them, too, but they got swept up in the first-of-the-season snowplowing on Thursday.  I meant to look into it and report back, but I guess it’s too late now.

Here’s the main ingredient.  Food for thought anyway.  On January 15, 1903, the Central Lake Torch printed an important scientific report from a Swedish Professor.  I myself am of Swedish descent (in much the same way that Miss Sadie is a terrier mix and the Cowboy is a spaniel mix).  I am always drawn to items about Swedish culture.  This one was most impressive.  Mind you, I am never sure when the editor of the Central Lake Torch is making a little joke and when he is just being pompous.  In this instance, I suspect he found a chilly reception at home that evening.

My grandmother, who was even more Swedish than I (and possibly more terrier than Miss Sadie, too, but that’s another post entirely), was always self-conscious about it.  (The Norwegians in her neighborhood made fun of the dumb Swedes.)  She referred to herself as “Scandinavian”  until the 1960s when she discovered that it had become fashionable to be Swedish.  I was always flummoxed by Norwegians and Swedes calling each other names, but Dr. Lundborg has made me see the whole issue with fresh eyes.  Twenty-four years after a Norwegian playwright created Nora and her Doll’s House, we have Dr. Lundborg.  It’s enough to make me become a Scandinavian.