January 10, 2002

Over the holidays, I made the cut cooking for sons and grandsons accompanied by guests famished from 20-degree mornings perched in deer blinds.

I made the cut by cooking for a group quick to drop the subject of points and antlers and fast to grade backstrap and chili meat for five seasons past. Carnivores ... big eaters. Hombres full of life and vigor. Ready to cast off the office tedium and the classroom routine for boned hindquarter chops sizzling in a skillet and toasted sourdough biscuits buttered to peak cholesterol in the purest state.

The biscuits gave me a big advantage – a big lead. Takes three sizes of cutters starting at a petite two-inch one, graduating to a three-inch, and hitting the big time in a fruit juice can with the bottom removed. The largest biscuits are called "rodeo biscuits", as they resemble the rugged disregard for personal health of the bucking chutes and the big arenas. Split and buttered, a rodeo biscuit generates enough calories converted to btu's to fuel a marathon runner's torch to the final lap.

Under such intense table conditions, I used a point system to score the teenagers. Rodeo biscuits counted three points or three times more than the regular size biscuits. A full bowl of Mexican pork stew (Psole rojo) was 15 points. Cookies dunked in whole milk scored the same as the stew. The overall limit of 60 points per meal had to raised to 75 points to cover leftover turkey sandwiches. One-inch slices of white meat stuffed between two whole rodeo biscuits moistened with sweet cream butter shot the score on up fast.

We kept running out of milk. The closest store is at Barnhart, 18 miles away. On one run my son Ben made the mistake of allowing the boys to open the milk jug as they crossed the railroad tracks leaving town. By the time he turned off the highway on the county road, he said half the bottle was emptied, or 60 points scored. He considered going back to the store for Kool Aid or soda water to use as a chaser to save milk, but figured by then they'd need another gallon of milk at over five bucks a pop, so he dropped the idea.

On Christmas Day, my sister brought two guests and one of her employees (a nurse) to dinner. I didn't recognize the visitors at first. After starting cooking the 18th of December, my vision only reached the width of a double sink and the depth of the oven of a 36-inch gas stove. Outdoor recreation had been putting out the trash. A side trip meant going down to the barn to feed the horses.

She rolled out the door of her van, scolding me for not bringing the 800-pound steel ramp we use to load wool from the barn to roll her wheelchair through the front door. She was having a hard time fussing as my boys were wishing her a Merry Christmas, giving her big kisses and hugs as nephews do to appease grouchy aunts. Nobody was paying attention to me. I'd been in the kitchen so long slow roasting a 10-pound chuck of beef that the bright sunlight glistened like walking into a snow field from a darkroom.

Blinded by the glare, I kept shaking my head and blinking my eyes. "Old Auntie" re-addressed the ramp problem by saying, "I hope in the New Year my brother will have time to move the ramp down from the barn." Since it was obvious we couldn't speak direct, I said, "I hope my sister can afford to pay five dollars a trip on my ramp in the New Year, because that's going to be the charge." The nurse gasped, then caught our smiles.

The old saying is that cold weather improves people's appetites. Had a cold spell hit, it would have wiped out my pantry and put Barnhart on short inventory. The morning the boys left, I put a gallon jug of holiday crackers in the front seat of the pickup. The last I heard was, "Granddad, how many points are crackers?"