Sometimes it’s the simplest things that bring me home. On a Monday night it was peanut butter and chocolate that pulled me from Seoul across the world to the other home that all Minnesotans seems to have – a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. My family’s cabin is in Minong, a small town owned by the Link family whose endeavors range from operating all the major businesses in town to owning the national Jack Link’s beef jerky brand to the brother who bought his old high school and filled it with used furniture.
These weekend trips in the summer, usually for a big gathering with my whole step family, were full of rituals. The stop at Tobies, as much a landmark in Minnesota as anything, and the song to mark the the crossing of the St. Croix into Wisconsin were out of my control. My favorite tradition was the pre-drive shopping trip to Lund’s. The usual shopping cart rules were off. It was vacation and it was important it be treated as such. Yes, you can buy your favorite candy. Yes, you can have pop at night. It’s vacation. All sorts of rules bend at the cabin from alocohol to driving the car down the long, wooded driveway.
One of my favorite food discoveries was made while preparing supplies for s’mores at the cabin. I decided to throw in a jar of creamy peanut butter to add to the graham crackers. I wanted to mix the chocolate and peanut butter flavors together, but then I got past the normal food conventions and started thinking with cabin logic. Why not just combine them now? I broke off a rectangle of Hershey’s and dipped it straight into a fresh jar of peanut butter. It made a peanut butter spoon look conservative and was a big smack of beautiful calories, creamy with a chocolate crunch that gave in as soon as you wanted it to. From then on I’d steal away from the adult card games, being the oldest cousin got me early admission, to break off some bars and dip them in peanut butter on the green couch next to the fireplace.
So last week as I opened a fresh jar of seven-dollar Skippy for a pastry experiment Anna was making, I had an urge for plain chocolate to dip into it. Red ginsing extract, hot chocolate and canned cranberry sauce took up the top shelf, but there in the back was one bar of melted and re-formed Crunky. It gouged the smooth brown surface and came up delicious. I was back on the couch next to the fire in Minong.
My name is Yan Yanson, I come from Wisconsin, I work in the lumber mill there. All the people I meet when I walk down the street they say Hey there! Yan Yanson – from where do you come? …My name …(once it starts, it never stops, so I’ve heard….)
ooohhh, that was too sweet. I loved it. I was there, too, at the picnic table. it made me teary. love you two, R