From the Newsroom: Pecan pie better than politics

Personally, I am sick and tired of tangential stories involving the 2016 presidential election, especially stories that come with a built-in slant like you see from political “news” sites. But I realize there’s a segment of local people who want to read all about it. We’ll update it if the story goes anywhere.

More local sports

While the local news was slow, our sports department was crazy busy. On top of the usual professional and collegiate sports, there’s the Winter Olympics. And, most importantly for us, February is a busy month for high school sports.

Unfortunately, that means space for all this sports news is at a premium in the print edition. Sports Editor Micah Rice told me this week that some game stories have had to be condensed for print, but are appearing in full online. So if you follow high school sports, I’d urge you to check our site to see if there is more coverage of your favorite teams you might be missing.

Word of the day

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publishers, offer a fun “Word of the Day” web page. Wednesday’s word was “slapdash.” I call this to your attention not because it’s a new word, but because Merriam-Webster quoted The Columbian when using it in a sentence: “I approach any recipe with a certain degree of slapdash irreverence. I make substitutions left and right, change amounts, add spices, omit steps that I deem too troublesome or leave out ingredients altogether.” — Monika Spykerman, The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington), 1 Dec. 2021

Merriam-Webster defines slapdash as “haphazard,” “slipshod,” or “sloppy.” If you are a regular reader of Monika’s Wednesday column, you know that she gets creative in the kitchen. In this case, she was making “Kayte’s Pecan Bourbon Pie,” a recipe developed by, and named for, her late mother. Ironically, this time her cooking was anything but slapdash.

“I wanted to do everything exactly as Mom wrote down in her wobbly all-caps penmanship. I wanted, I suppose, to make her proud,” Monika wrote.

“What I didn’t expect was how sharply I’d miss her as I was assembling the ingredients, fluffing the butter and sugar, and measuring out pecan pieces. I’m not really a crier — I rarely tear up during sad movies when my husband and daughter are reaching for the tissues — but making this pie filled me with helpless longing. I wanted to call her up and say, ‘Hey Mom! Guess what? I’m making your Pecan Bourbon Pie!’ And she’d say, ‘I can’t wait to taste it, sweetie!’”

Call me a softie, but I’d much rather read this story than something about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.