Wacky Wednesday

I spent a delightful Thanksgiving with friends. Talk turned to foods, familiar and exotic (several of us were from the Midwest, some from the south, and some from the Philippines). Succotash, which I had always assumed to be a Native American dish served throughout the Midwest, turned out to be unfamiliar to friends from Minnesota. In a quick search of the web I found references to New Hampshire Native American food and to Southern cooking and no references to the Midwest, so color me confused! Does anybody else from the Midwest recall this dish as an autumn staple? My daughter and I had a discussion about recipes for succotash and we both like it quite simple, with just salt, pepper, and maybe a little butter, but recipes abound calling for milk, cream, cheese, onions. . . . Maybe next time I make succotash I will experiment a little (a southwestern version piqued my interest).

Wacky Wednesday – Mixed Up Words

My daughter has been complaining to me about people confusing the words ancestor and descendant. (Like her mother, she is a little in love with words.) Unlike the chicken and egg question, we can be absolutely sure that ancestors come before descendants in any timeline on our planet, just as ancestor would precede descendant in the dictionary. Think about the family tree they show in the front of an intergenerational novel: The first Devonhams (ancestors) are listed at the top and the most recent arrivals (descendants) are at the bottom of the page. The descendants are the result of DNA coming DOWN the line or DESCENDING from way back in history to the modern descendants.