Taco Friday

Based on my (pitifully few) blog entries, you might conclude that I'm obsessed with Mexican food.  I've mentioned tacos four times as often as I have the legendary actor/director/producer Clint Eastwood, after all, and anything that gets more column space than Dirty Harry must rank pretty high up there.  I also have to confess that I do love me some plastic spoon tamarind candies:

However, I would like to state for the record that it is this town--and not me--with the fixation on Mexican food.  In fact, if you were to distill Grand Forks cuisine into one base recipe, I believe it would read something like this:

1. Take a carbohydrate, preferably one fried.
2. Top it with taco meat, preferably of the Taco Bell variety.
3. Optional: Add Cheddar cheese, jalapeño peppers, or mild salsa.

Taco in a bag obviously falls into this category.  So does the food at Taco John's, where I recently ordered a taco with a side of Potato Olés (I think the accent mark over olé adds an air of authenticity to what is a dish of tater tots topped with nacho cheese).

But the grand poobah of the North Dakotan take on the taco is the Grinder, a deli sandwich found at Red Pepper.

There, they take a turkey or ham sandwich, use what looks like a frosting spatula to smear taco meat and some kind of sweetened mayonnaise on top, sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese over all of that, and arrange it all on a paper plate.

The result, I have to say, is not my favorite of the taco creations on offer here, but the restaurant is charmingly quaint.  I can also understand the Grinder's appeal to people who were weaned on them or to college students who just had a few beers at one of the frat houses a block down the road.  Actually, I think I could see the appeal even more if the chefs put a Cheez-Whiz–like nacho sauce on top, like Taco John does with the tater tot. In fact, since I just signed up as a Potato Olés Maniac on the Taco Johns website, I just might have to go redeem my free bowl of Mexicanized tater tots now.

From the Home Office in Grand Forks

Deciding to eat lunch in the teachers' lounge for the first time at a school is like choosing to enter a police interrogation room.  Between bites of my peanut butter sandwich, I field endless questions from teachers about my decision to live in Grand Forks.  This lunch-time grilling is almost always the same, beginning with the question, You're married to someone on the Air Force Base, right? and ending with So what do you do living on your own? (And, yes, that sentence has a weak pun.  And, no, I'm not ashamed to admit it.)

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I will answer the question of what a single girl in a new town does to pass the time.  From the Home Office in Grand Forks, North Dakota, I present to you the Top Ten Things to Do When You Live on Your Own in a New Place.

10. Take up unnecessary crafts, like magnet-making.  

Avoid potentially useful hobbies, like photography.

9. Drink coffee.  Read.  Fill in the crossword.  Repeat.

8. Check in daily with the wise basket owl who lives on your kitchen wall.  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, Mr. Owl?

7. Procrastinate updating your blog.  Watch 1980s David Letterman on YouTube instead.

6. Swap recipes and coupons with the Manitoban housewives at the Hugo's Grocery.

5. Start a 2-hour skirt pattern.  Stretch it out to take several weeks.

4. Cook while listening to "Jolene".

3. Sample the cookie dough Blizzard at each of the four Dairy Queen locations.  Go back to each to compare their chocolate-dipped cones.

2. Clean while listening to "Coat of Many Colors".

And the Number One Thing to Do When You Live on Your Own in a New Place--drum roll, please, Paul--

1. Throw spontaneous dance parties for yourself.  Model your dance moves after this:

An Open Letter to Our President

Dear Former United States President George Washington,

            This week we, the first graders of Grand Forks, North Dakota, studied the contributions you made to our illustrious country.  We celebrated your life and career through song (“Young George and the Cherry Tree” to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy”), the study of the dollar bill, and myriad read-alouds.  Despite our in-depth research into your life, we are still left with a few questions and comments that we feel only you, Our Founding Father, can address.

            First, we are curious about why you and your associates wore wigs.  Why did you consider this fashionable and not silly?  Did it itch, hurt, or feel tight on your head?  Did you wear it all the time or just for special occasions?

            In a similar vein, we remain unconvinced that you are not in fact the man on the oatmeal box we have sitting in our cupboard at home.  Are you at least brothers?  Despite what our teacher told us, we do not fully believe that two white-haired rosy-cheeked men could not possibly be related. 

As a matter of fact, now we are curious as to whether you are not also Santa Claus.  If so, we would like new hockey sticks for Christmas.

            Lastly, we now know that George Washington refers to you, a person, and Washington, D.C. is a city.  What, then, is George Washington, D.C., and why does our teacher keep telling us to stop saying those three words in succession?

            Thanks for your time,

            The First Graders of Grand Forks, North Dakota

P.S. The boys would like you to know that they think it is AWESOME that you chopped down a cherry tree using a hatchet!  If you are in fact Santa, could you include one of those with the hockey sticks, along with a note to our parents explaining that every little American boy should have the opportunity to carry a hatchet around in his pocket.

P.P.S. Yes, we do have an amazing vocabulary for seven-year-olds.  Thanks for noticing!

Miss Robertson with a Tan and a Bow in Her Hair, and Other Tales from the North

We had a brief heatwave, but it is now back to being fabulously, unbelievably cold.  I've put my stylish, decidedly not-warm Jackie O jacket back in its rightful place in my closet's "autumn collection" and have rediscovered the wonder that is long underwear.  After a disastrous evening walk from my garage to my front door in which I thought my fingers might actually break off at the joints, scattering on the frozen ground below me, I have also retrieved my gloves from the bottom of my purse.

Meanwhile, I'm learning more and more about the North Dakota Child's interests--namely that all boys obsess over hockey (PeeWee, UND Sioux, and NHL, in that order), all girls favor heavily sequined shirts and pompom-ed or animal ear-ed hats, and that both genders enjoy a good laugh at Miss Robertson's accent.  People here have that tendency toward the vowel sounds unique to Wisconsin and Minnesota.  As a result, the local specialty, Taco in a Bag (alias The Walking Taco, or taco meat and toppings served over a bed of crushed Doritos) is pronounced Taco in a Bayg.  Additionally, my pronunciation of the e in Caleb and the a in Maggie is apparently so egregious that students with those names don't even respond when I call on them in class.

The website I took this tasty-looking picture from posed the question,
Where else besides Ohio can you get taco in a bag?  The answer:
Anywhere in Grand Forks, including--but not limited to--
the mall, school cafeterias, and at informal dinner parties.

Despite my faulty pronunciation, students still mostly seem to like me, as evidenced by the fact that my hug-to-handshake ratio as students leave at the of the day is approximately 3:1 (I require one or the other).  As further evidence of these students' esteem, I present Exhibit B: a caricature that some third-graders and I made in class one afternoon.  I've entitled it "Miss Robertson with a Tan and a Bow in Her Hair."  If you look closely, you can see that it is signed by the artists.  Enjoy:

Southern California, Here I Come!

I'm taking a brief break from my life in the frigid north to enjoy sunny (God willing) Southern California.  Before I go, I thought I'd take a moment to channel everyone's favorite, Ms. Margaret Wise Brown, and say a temporary goodbye to my North Dakota treasures:

In the great white room

There was a plant

And a colorful basket

And nesting dolls of—

 The fantastic Swedish pop band ABBA

And there was one stylish girl lounging on her yellow chair

And one owl

And a kitchen towel

And a rolling pin

And a sugar bin

And a can of kraut juice

Next to a menu from Blue Moose

And a beautiful sunset and snow on the ground

And classes of children who make lots of sound

Goodbye plant

Goodbye ABBA

Goodbye yellow chair

Goodbye owl

Goodbye kitchen towel

Goodbye rolling pin

Goodbye sugar bin

Goodbye kraut juice

Goodbye Blue Moose

Goodbye beautiful sunset and snow on the ground

Goodbye North Dakota children

See you next year!

Shrimp, Sauerkraut, and Me

In the intervening month between this post and my last (I set myself a simple goal--one post a week--and blow it only two months in), I've fallen in love with the North Dakota third-grader.  With streetwise smarts at the level of a Chicago kindergartener, these students are reminding me how kids can take a person to the highs and lows of self-esteem.

Last Friday, a third-grade girl asked me to stand "just for a second" in front of her.  After I stared back at her quizzically, she explained, "You're just so beautiful, Miss Robertson."  Monday's third-graders, on the other hand, picked up on a different attribute: "Miss Robertson, you smell like shrimp."  I like to think this comment was based on my super awesome Miss Frizzle-style crustacean earrings (thanks, Dani!).  I also like to remind myself that North Dakotans have most likely not even been exposed to shrimp, so it's possible this girl thought that the shrimp's scent is a sweet-smelling cross between roses, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and California oranges.

Despite the crustacean comparisons, it is good to be back in North Dakota's schools after a week in my old Chicago haunts.  There's nothing like being greeted, too, with snow on the ground, Christmas tunes weakly sung by a gaggle of blond fourth graders in a school gym, and a fridge of canned plums, canned peas, and canned sauerkraut juice.

(Photo courtesy of Wegmans,
the best grocery store in the lower 48.)

As to that "Kraut juice"?  Not as delicious as one might think, but anything in the fight against scurvy.  Skol!

High School Confidential

I'm slowly starting into a new pattern of life that involves waking daily at 5:30 a.m. to the cheery ring of my cell phone and the computerized voice of the automated subbing system.  I now can "press one to accept this job" with my eyes still closed and my head unmoved from the center of my pillow.  In general, a couple of hours from that time and a few snooze buttons later, I'll be sitting in front of a class of high school kids.

At this juncture, I suggest that we pause for a moment to consider how some typical high schoolers look versus how I look:

I may have stacked the deck a little in favor of my sisters by choosing a picture of me post-tilt-a-whirl at Six Flags, but still, those kiddos on the left are nine and seven years younger than I am.  (Also of some relevance: ten minutes after that picture of the roomies and me was taken a high school boy manning the line at the bumper cars tried to get my number.)

Anyway, I was understandably a little dubious about how I'd fare in a high school, but it turns out that North Dakota high schoolers are tamer than a class full of Chicago kindergarteners (I miss you, Chicago five-year-olds!).  It also turns out that high school subbing means knowing how to pass out worksheets and press play on the VCR.  Or, in the case of the "special foods" class I subbed, knowing how to taste and rate six delicious homemade apple pies.

Subbing in a high school does not seem to mean all of the things I learned to consider during my last two years in Chicago Public Schools.  I don't, for instance, have to plan in bathroom breaks, herd children through cramped hallways, or lead Dr. Jean songs.  In a striking exception, though, the special foods experience did teach me that high school kids serving crumbly pies creates as much of a mess as second-graders building gingerbread houses out of M&Ms, frosting, and Graham crackers.

Speaking of which, let's just take another moment to celebrate those second graders' success with that project, as well as the successful use of plastic tablecloths by Ms. Walsh and me:

The need to get a class full of fifteen year-olds to clean up pie tins also left me realizing that I do not have any ideas for how to refer to a group of almost-adults.  The old elementary standards--"boys and girls", "friends", and "children", all said in the ubiquitous sing-song teacher voice--don't really apply.  I guess I'm left with a booming "ladies and gentleman", which seems a little silly and is causing me to flashback to the sir-ing and ma'am-ing of my Louisiana high school experience.  For lack of anything better, though, I guess for the time being I'll be rather formally addressing the teenagers of North Dakota.