Date I made this recipe:
July 29, 2012 (for the Olympics)
1980 Olympic Games in
Moscow – Cookbook and Schedule of Events –
Favorite Recipes of Prospective U.S.
Published by: Wm. C.
Brown Company Publishers
© 1979
Recipe: (Cheeseman’s) Stir-Fried Chicken – p. 62
*Note: This is one of
my longer blog posts but just like the Olympics, it will (likely) only come
around every four years so hang in there!
Right then. So the
2012 Olympics got underway in London
on Friday, July 27, with a right smashing Opening Ceremony that included a
hilarious James Bond spoof featuring none other than HM, The Queen of
England. That’s right, the Queen of
England. Like most viewers, I must have
played that scene back 3 times utterly stunned that it was the Queen, the real
Queen and nothing but the Queen. Who
knew that HM had such a sense of humor?
Oh, and Daniel Craig (as James Bond) wasn’t too bad, either. (By the
way, in an uncanny coincidence, my community band played music from the James
Bond movies as well as John William’s Olympic
Spirit this summer.)
So OBVIOUSLY with the Olympics at hand, I needed to find
myself an Olympic cookbook, right?
Quite. Well find it I did in of
all places, the charming café/bookstore in my hometown in Michigan – Falling
Rock Café – last April and yes, I’ve been holding on to it ever since. I am nothing if not prepared for the global
events!
For those of you who were around in 1980, you might recall
that this cookbook is a bit of a head-fake as the Olympic team did not
participate in the 1980 Olympics that year.
U.S. tension against
the former Soviet Union was already on red-alert when Russia invaded Afghanistan and in response,
President Carter decided to cancel our appearance at the games. (Naturally, the Soviet Union followed suit
and canceled its appearance at the 1984 games in Los Angeles and so tit for tat
and phooey on all that!) Let me just say
that to this day, I believe this was the wrong decision. Aspiring Olympic
athletes devote their whole lives and their bank accounts to make the team and
punishing them on behalf of a nation is just wrong – on both sides.
Harrumph. Any who…so
here we are at the 2012 Olympics already and some of the 1980 athletes are now providing
commentary on various events, like former swimmer Rowdy Gaines and gymnast Bart
Conner. And since I was a high school
swimmer I was all set to make one of Rowdy’s recipes but changed it up at the
last minute. And here’s why: about the same time that I pulled this
cookbook off my shelf as a “must use,” the U.S. observed the 40th
anniversary of Title IX, allowing for equality for women in sports. And again,
I can only shake my head and marvel how time flies. And so I decided that this blog would be
better served by a recipe from a female athlete and with that, let’s go
“off-road” for a bit to talk about Title IX.
Title IX, enacted in 1972 (I was in 8th grade) is
a portion of the Education Amendment that established, in part, No
person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination
under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
This applied to about every level of education including, thank
goodness, sports.
And to my
absolute amazement, my tiny junior high/high school, jumped on the bandwagon
and started women’s sports. I mean, we
are talking about class sizes of just over 100 people per class; by contrast,
my husband’s high school class was over 600. We probably barely qualified for
Class C sports designation but there we were, in it to win it. So bravo, William G. Mather High School
Well, this
prompted me to go back to my yearbooks to track our women’s sports progress. In 1972, there weren’t any women’s teams but
in 1973 (freshman year), a Girls’ Tennis Team started. A friend of mine joined the team that year
and I joined a year later. By 1974, we
added the Girls’ Swim Team although unfortunately, I was sick the day the photo
was taken and so you’d never know I was on it.
So a mere year
after Title IX, we had ourselves two bona-fide girls’ teams. By 1975, we added basketball and by 1976, we
had a track team. Not too shabby! (For the record though, there is no word that
sends me flying faster than someone calling me a “girl.” But that’s another
story for another day.).
Now, before you
pull out your pom-poms, let me just stress to you that equal opportunity to
participate in sports did not equal an equal opportunity to get funding or
support. Oh no – in fact, quite the
opposite.
The first year I
was on the tennis team, we carpooled to our meets. Yes, carpooled. We didn’t have uniforms, we didn’t have
managers, we barely had a locker room and you should have seen our city tennis
courts – two of them, both with blacktop surfaces and set down by Lake Superior so flyaway tennis balls soon became
swim-away tennis balls. Our second team
coach (the first coach was a woman), was also the boys’ wrestling coach and
never, ever ceased to compare us weakling “girlz” to his he-man boys team. He let us borrow his team’s warm-up jackets
for meets but otherwise we were on our own.
The coach who followed him was a nice guy but I don’t know: is it a good
thing to advise high school athletes that if you’re going to drink, drink
Scotch?!! Mind you, I was all for that
but it did crack me up.
As to the swim
team, hahahahaha….well, we tried. The
good news was that our school had one of the very first school pools in the Upper Peninsula .
The bad news was that our school’s pool was not regulation and there
were always weird drain problems that caused the pool water to turn various
shades of green. And I am not
exaggerating at all. In fact, when I
think about swimming in that pool back then for gym class and swim team and
lifesaving classes, I about turn green myself.
So anyway, for
every one lap we did at a meet in a regulation pool, we had to do double or
triple the laps in our pool. We could
not do a flip turn in our pool because the shallow end was truly shallow but we
were allowed at meets to do kind of a half turn above water. (So dorky and embarrassing but there it is!). Although we got team swimsuits, for some
inexplicable reason, we chose green and gold suits (Go Pack Go) even though our
school colors were orange and black. We
did not get to use the wrestler’s warm-up jackets and so had a collection of
various and sundry sweat shirts at our disposal.
We did not lift
weights or do anything that modern athletes do to build strength and endurance
and didn’t care. In fact, and I say this
with fondness, our attitude was pretty much cavalier then entire time we were
swimming because we always knew we were outnumbered: all the other schools had bigger pools,
bigger staffs, and bigger athletes. So
we swam for fun and in some ways that made the experience all the more
enjoyable.
As to funding,
well, my first response is “What
funding?” All the boys’ sports (football, basketball, etc.) got $10 a day for
food; we got $5. All the boys were
properly attired, we were not. All the
boys went to meets by bus – the big kid’s kind – while we were eventually
allowed to use a smaller half-bus to go to meets. There was no booster club, no parental support
(seeing as how our meets were during the day so parents could not attend) and
very little interest. I will however,
give props to most of the male athletes in our school as they ended up
embracing us in their own way and found many of our antics and experiences
hilarious. In fact, and it’s a long
story, but my swim team nicknamed me “French Fries” and when the guys found out
about that, they called me that as well.
I was never as popular in high school as I was that year.
And so, back we
go to the budget-busting Olympics and my, my how times have changed. While today’s athletes have their own
financial struggles, I think they are nothing compared to what we went
through. Olympic teams nowadays have
sponsors and endorsements and even, in many cases, professional athletes. Can you imagine telling any female swimmer
today that she gets $5 bucks for food?
No.
And so I must
confess that the times that I’ve heard women whining about being treated as
second-class citizens compared to the men’s team, my blood boils. In fact, I still recall the whining done by
several high school girls’ hockey teams a few years back when they weren’t
allowed to use the Xcel
Energy Center Lake Superior in blizzard conditions. The famous “lake effect” was such that
everything was just a sea of white including the white semi that was jackknifed
across the highway. Our bus driver swerved
to avoid hitting it at the last second and we ended up in the ditch and had to
wait for a bus tow-truck. So much for
that swim meet. You want to talk about
hardship, I’ll talk about hardship!)
So all this brings me back to why I decided to make a recipe
from this book for this blog submitted by a female athlete instead of a male
athlete, not only to kill two stones (the Olympics and Title IX) at the same
time but also to talk about a subject that is near and dear to me. And so today’s recipe is all about Gwen W.
Cheeseman, a 1980 Olympic field hockey player, and her recipe for (Cheeseman’s)
Stir-Fried Chicken. And to really tie it
to this year’s London events, the former Kate
Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge was a field hockey player back in the
day AND the last Olympics were held in Beijing ,
China
Despite my rants about the early years, I was quite
“chuffed,” as the Brits would say to be a part of those high school teams and
am glued to the set this year as I am every Olympics (save for the 1980
Olympics), reliving my almost-glory days!
I swam the backstroke for my team (first one in the water at every meet)
both in the individual event and the 400 Individual Medley Relay (back, breast,
butterfly, freestyle) and also swam the 400 Freestyle Relay, my absolute
favorite event and sometimes anchored it.
They were fun times and the thrill of that competition never goes away
even though the younger generation is now having all the fun in the pool. And seeing all these young ladies on the
podium? Well…pass the Kleenex.
(Cheeseman’s)
Stir-Fried Chicken – serves 4
2 large, whole broiler-fryer chicken breasts, skinned,
halved, boned and sliced diagnolly into ¼-inch thick strips
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 cup thinly sliced celery
1 medium green pepper, cut into think strips
¼ teaspoon ginger
1 pound fresh bean sprouts
1 5-ounce can water chestnuts, drained and sliced
½ pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup raw cashews, halved
1 chicken bouillon cube, or 1 teaspoon instant chicken
bouillon
½ cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
¼ cup soy sauce
3 cups hot cooked rice
In a wok over high heat, heat peanut oil. Stir-fry celery, pepper, onion and ginger in
oil until tender-crisp, about three minutes.
With slotted spoon, slide vegetables up onto side of wok to keep
warm. To remaining oil, add chicken and
stir-fry until meat turns white, about three to five minutes. Slide vegetables back down and add bean
sprouts, water, chestnuts, mushrooms, cashews, bouillon and water. Blend cornstarch with soy sauce; gradually
stir into wok and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is heated through
and thickened. Serve over hot rice. Serves 4.
Ann’s Note: for some
inexplicable reason, my grocery store was out of bean sprouts and so I used
canned. Do not do this at home! I might as well have opened a can of La Choy
Chop Suey, the taste was that bland.
Live and learn, people, live and learn.
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