Insight: If I could turn back time

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

No, this isn’t about Cher’s 1989 music video filmed aboard the USS Missouri. Not that there’s anything wrong with Cher, I’ve always liked her music, but I’d like to use this space to detail things that have disappeared over time that need to be restored in my opinion.

If I could travel through time and bring something back from the past that’s missing right now, I’d start by choosing to restore theme songs to the opening credits of television shows.

When I was a child, hearing the opening stanza of “The Rifleman” would draw me to the TV set so I could catch Chuck Connors wielding his modified Winchester rifle demonstrating how potent it could be. Yes, “The Rifleman” certainly had a lot of violence but there’s no escaping that anyone who heard that music and soundtrack every week can ever forget it.

Then there’s the theme to “Bonanza” as the three Cartwright brothers and their father ride across the Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada as a map of their property burns. Or revving up the Ferrari with Tom Selleck to take it out for a spin in Hawaii in “Magnum P.I.?”

Sometime in the late 1990s, television producers decided to focus less on theme songs and use that extra minute or so on developing their story or episode’s plot.

I sure miss being able to know all the words and sing along to the theme songs to “The Beverly Hillbillies” or “Three’s Company” or “Rawhide” or “Gilligan’s Island” instead of the screeching discordant sound of shards of metal scraping that are heard in the opening title sequence of “Lost” every week.

My thought is that composing memorable music for a television series theme song appears to be a lost art, and if I could turn back time, I’d love to see it revived.

Another aspect of American life when I was a kid that always fascinated me was going through the Sears catalogue in the months leading up to Christmas. There was page after page of toys, bicycles and hours of fun contained in those old catalogues, and not something that can easily be replicated scrolling through Amazon on an iPhone.

The catalogue was an alternative for a retailer who chose not to market their products on television and was sheer merchandising genius. I could always find a generous selection of items I would want for Christmas and would write them down in order in case we stopped to see Santa on our next department store visit.

It was always a happy day in our household each October when the catalogue arrived in the mail, and I’d have to fight off my brother to see which one of us got to look through the pages while making our annual Christmas gift request list. I would even spend time looking at the clothes and shoes because inevitably if I asked for a toy from the catalogue, my mother would think it was far more practical for me to have a new set of thermal underwear rather than “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots.”

Turning back time, I’d advocate for a return of the Sears catalogue as a place for kids to dream and get ideas for the holidays.

And that leads me to the topic of technology. Posing a serious question way back when sometimes meant that you’d have to explore solutions by going to the library and finding a book explaining that topic. It didn’t result in instant answers found by a Google search, you had to research and made you really think about things, not using AI to solve problems.

Recipes were found in cookbooks, not on your smart phone, and it created an atmosphere so much more personal.

With the introduction of video gaming consoles, it seems that kids stopped playing outside after school, or riding their bicycles through their neighborhood, like I used to. We spent more time as kids telling stories, reading comic books and using our imaginations instead of sitting indoors playing “Fortnight.”

Simple little things produced smiles from us such as drinking from the garden hose, a 1-cent piece of Bazooka bubble gum, catching and releasing fireflies in a Mason jar or running through a sprinkler in the backyard on a hot summer afternoon. Working on the newspaper crossword puzzle occupied my Sunday afternoons after looking over the Sunday comics section.

Before the days of endless cable television channels, your options were limited to just three TV networks, and you made do with what was available.

The internet, cell phones, personalized surveillance cameras and the rise of social media have taken a lot of spontaneity and joy out of everyday life. It affects everything. Movie plots of upcoming films are revealed months before the move debuts, a baseball player hits a home run in a game in California and it’s instantly transmitted to millions globally by smartphone.

More than anything, I would love to return to a day and age when simple conversations with friends, family, and neighbors mattered, and we weren’t interrupted by 24-7 breaking news, social media posts about celebrities, conjecturing pundits or conspiracy theories.

If I could turn back time, it would be for a simpler life.

Rookie Mama: Going bananas for the sweet world of food dehydration

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

In this era of trendy pink Stanley cups and hydration focus, here’s a term with which you may not be overly familiar – the wonder of dehydrating.

Drying food, that is.

A friend recently asked me what gadget I use to make dried fruit, and it occurred to me this process is a frugal, fun, tasty favorite activity I haven’t really touched upon in this column, and dehydrating delicious snacks is truly worthy of its own space in print.

My family and I love to batch together trail mixes when packing for travel, and our blends of nuts and chocolate have always included some sort of commercially prepared delectable dried fruit – bananas, mangos, apples, you name it.

Dried fruit is widely available in packaged form at most grocery stores.

One could make a date of shopping for pitted dates.

A few years ago, my husband and I reevaluated whether there might be a better way to obtain large quantities of dried fruit without such added cost, especially as our family was growing like fruit by the foot.

Life itself was bananas and nutty, which I suppose made us a trail mix variety of its own.

As it turned out, dehydrating our own fruit strips was not only an economical choice, but a healthy one, and an easy enough task to accomplish.

Like a well-loved slow cooker, one must do a bit of prep, then it’s set and forget, as the home fills with delicious aroma.

So, we purchased a fairly inexpensive dehydrator appliance with multiple trays and began our test strips, so to speak.

The science to dehydrating food is that controlled heat and airflow sucks out water, reducing moisture to a level that prevents bacterial growth and spoilage, thus extending shelf life and reducing weight and volume.

Although moisture is removed, nutrients are preserved – a win for the whole gang.

And not only is this process a fantastic frugal choice because it’s less expensive than buying prepared dried fruits, it can reduce food waste.

Think of all those fresh fruits for which you had high hopes that were rendered to the ol’ compost bin because rot and bruising got the better of them before they could be gobbled up.

Think of all the naturally sweetened strawberries and oranges galore you could dehydrate.

And did I mention the bananas?

Once you’ve dehydrated your own fruits, you’ve got yourself a healthy snack, whether for hitting the road or for scrumptious, colorful, nutrition-dense school snacks.

Another favorite – arguably tastier – road snack is homemade beef jerky.

Pick up a lean cut such as top round, bottom round, or flank steak, as fatty cuts can become rancid during the drying process.

Slice into very thin strips – or ask your butcher to do this if preferred.

From here, the Google is aplenty with beefed up easy marinades, and you likely already have many of the ingredients that are just the ticket to create these savory strips, such as Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and so on.

Homemade jerky is seriously cost-effective just as fruit is, but also high in protein, iron, and vitamins A and C. Unlike the storebought variety, homemade jerky has no added preservatives. Ingredients are higher quality, and the resulting treat may be more flavorful.

Look, my family loves some Jack Links from a fuel-up stop as much as the next traveling circus, but the homemade variety – if you can carve the time to carve the beef – really makes for the cool jerk.

There are many other foods to experiment with in a food dehydrator, from fruit leather to herbs, from vegetables to even watermelon jerky.

So as with other new kitchen tools, have fun and experiment. Follow directions carefully. Dehydrators range in price and can be quite costly, but our inexpensive Nesco has been operating tremendously for years, its soft hum a familiar mainstay.

Dried foods are also best when shared with those you love, so don’t forget to gift some of your snack experiments to family and friends – they make a super Christmas gift.

Because that, my friends, would be enough to make anyone go bananas.

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!

Andy Young: Making a case for trophies

By Andy Young

I got the first of what I assumed would be many athletic trophies when I was a member of the championship baseball team in my hometown’s Little League.

Never mind that I rarely played; back then 9-year-olds were only there to chase foul balls, coach first base, and go through the stands passing the hat so the coaches could give each kid 15 cents after the game to go get something from the snack bar.

Recently I learned that the word “trophy” originated from the Greek “tropaion,” which referred to captives, weapons, property, or enemy body parts that were collected in war.

That information surprised me, since like most people I had previously assumed the word had derived from some Latin term meaning “dust collector.” Fortunately, none of my subsequent trophy-worthy honors ever involved the forcible removal of anyone else’s body parts.

I knew in my soul that someday I’d need a huge trophy room to properly display all the individual awards I’d win for my many astounding baseball and basketball exploits. After all, those multiple Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player awards I’d earn during my dual-sport career would need proper displaying.

And besides that, I’d likely need more space in the future, since my trophy wife (and later our trophy kids) would undoubtedly be awash in athletic accolades as well.

There are more different kinds of trophies than there are ice cream flavors. They can look like a knight standing atop a reel of film (the Oscar), an old record player (the Grammy), or a football player (the Heisman Trophy).

There are trophies that look like cars, dogs, pianos, horses, typewriters, microphones, elephants, donkeys, fish, ballet slippers, Rubik’s Cubes, and pinking shears.

Still others are shaped like singers, mechanics, doctors, accountants, police officers, dancers, fishermen, chefs, librarians and hunters. Trophies are regularly handed out to top performers and coaches in baseball, softball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, swimming, tennis, wrestling, pickleball, rowing, gymnastics, running, jumping, throwing, pole vaulting, and skiing.

There are also trophies for non-athletes like bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers.

Unfortunately, it’s now officially spring-cleaning season, and who wants to waste time relocating clutter, vacuuming up dirt, washing windows, de-cobwebbing the basement, mopping the kitchen floor until it returns to whatever its original color was….or dusting off old trophies?

After a long winter, the last thing(s) I want to waste time on involve cleaning the garage, freshening up the cellar, or disinfecting bathrooms.

That’s why I always start my seasonal home-cleansing ritual small, by sanitizing my dream-come-true, appropriately sized trophy room.

The most recent addition to my trophy collection came in 1984, when a softball team I was on took home the league championship.

Actually, I had to leave at mid-season, since I had taken a job 4,000 miles away.

I felt guilty about that, since at the time it was obvious to all concerned it was my batting, fielding, and leadership skills which had led us to victory in seven of our first 10 contests. Thankfully though, the team somehow won 23 of their 24 games after my departure.

The upside to having a modest number of trophies: my long-anticipated display case isn’t just a dual-purpose one; it’s portable! And the only times I have to temporarily move my two treasured statuettes are when I need to reheat soup, melt butter rapidly, or make a quick bag of popcorn.

Finally, I keep an old pie plate atop my portable miniature trophy room. It’s a convenient place to stash all the hate mail I get from bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers. <