RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 53
This is the Rubbery Shrubbery blog, where you’ll learn how Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, acquires a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats (“Where nature happens every day!”) and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)— please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
The concession stand cuisine at Rubbery Shrubbery Stadium, home of the Yachats Smelt, will not be the usual junk food served at athletic events. You will learn why in the news article below, sent to us by freelance correspondent Satch Wagglesworth from Cannibal Mountain, Oregon.
Anne Uumellmahaye Named New Smelt Chief Chef
by Satch Wagglesworth
CANNIBAL MOUNTAIN, OREGON — Dzunukwa, General Manager of the Yachats Smelt, has finally ended months of speculation and named Anne Uumellmahaye to be the culinary honcho at Rubbery Shrubbery. In making the announcement, Ms. Dzunukwa stressed the huge responsibility heaped on Ms. Uumellmahaye’s shoulders. “Shouldering a load like that—Wow! I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes,” she said.
Ms. Uumellmahaye’s credentials are impeccable, though, so she appears ready for the task. She grew up here in this thin-aired company town and was destined to be a chef from the get-go, feeding her little brother, Rocky, various flavors of mud soup. She was so talented, Rocky didn’t realize it until he was sixteen, and then they both had a big laugh about it, you bet!
From those early successes, Ms. Uumellmahaye decided soup was her forte, and she designed her education with that in mind. Not surprisingly, she received her B.S. in cosmology from Cannibal State University. Then came graduate studies in stew and snert at Le Cordon Brun. And soon she was recognized as the world’s foremost mulligatawnyer.
She came to work for the Cannibal Soup Company as a gustatory engineer about ten years ago and quickly rose through the ranks to become the big cheese chowder. Ms. Dzunukwa hired her away from a very prestigious job.
With such a background, Ms. Uumellmahaye can be expected to concentrate on soup for Rubbery Shrubbery fare. We spoke to her about that.
Wagglesworth: Obviously, you advocate trickle-down gastronomics. Will we see any non-soups on the ballpark menu? Any traditional ballpark items?
Ms. Uumellmahaye: Sure. We can’t ignore tradition. We’ll tweak it some, though. We’ll have a popcorn pepper pot, a hot dog goulash, and a smelt and Cracker Jacks bouillabaisse. But also we’ll have a delightful roster of innovative items such as our stinging nettle gazpacho (see Fig. 1) and a bladderwort bisque (see Fig. 2).
Figure 1. Stinging nettle.*
Wagglesworth: Have the Smelt (meaning Ms. Dzunukwa) imposed any constraints on your legendary imagination?
Ms. Uumellmahaye: Not at all. I’ve told her we are currently experimenting with an escargot gumbo and a fragrant hogweed borscht, and Ms. Dzunukwa didn’t blink an eye. We’re getting along like a house afire.
Figure 2. Bladderwort.**
Well, there you have it. Ms. Uumellmahaye is brilliantly creative and will alter the baseball experience forever, for sure. We have always honored innovation, but what is the limit to our tolerance for rapid change in vittles?
O brave new galaxies of diatoms and zooplankton whirling in a beetlebaum broth.
* From Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz by Otto Wilhelm Thomé, 1885.
** From Deutschlands Flora in Abbildungen by Johann Georg Sturm, 1796. Painting by Jakob Sturm.
NOTE: Do NOT try any of the dishes mentioned above at home!
Next time: The Smelt staff is still busy preparing for entry into the big leagues. Therefore, each Monday the Rubbery Shrubbery blog will have brief news reports on the progress of the Smelt organization. Also, we will have a guest blogger from time to time. Thanks for reading this stuff.
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