The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 7

Bloomington-Normal, Oct. 23, 1977 Flower buffet es, nasturtiums, rose petals, violets all add ud to a aourmet reoast Panfagraph A-7 i i Conserve of roses comforteth the stomach and softeneth, and is good against cholera and melancholy. "I'm no Euell Gibbons, but it got me kind of excited about these recipes." Mrs. Blair has cooked up some of the more exotic recipes by the late horticulturist. Those recipes include candied rose petals and harem kisses, a candy made by blending rose petals, sugar and cream.

A timid bite of the candy reveals a phenomenon the fondant tastes like the aroma of roses. I believe there's a word for Further down the Blair menu, deep- By Greg Conroy I MACKINAW-Welcome to Lillian Blair's eatery. Pull up a toadstool, er, chair and have' lunch. Let's see, we have day lilies with pork and rice, chicken and fiddlehead casserole, tossed salad with nasturtiums, gladiola blossoms stuffed with chicken Wait a minute. What's next? Roasted bees? "No, I won't go that far," Mrs.

Blair said. But the 74-year-old, self-styled gourmet does quite nicely with a spread of flowerly cooking. She really doesn't own a restaurant, but as program chairman of the Mackinaw Garden Club she recently prepared a complete buffet for club members. "I worked four to six months since spring to prepare it. I'm all in.

not sure I could do it again," she said. Mrs. Blair's neighbor, Hilda Dilkey, assisted in the buffet preparations. "She had two long tables of this stuff," Mrs. Dilkey said.

"Why, Lillian, the members kept waiting for you to finish your talk so they could eat Mrs. Blair modestly explained the taste buds of the members were activated by the aroma of cooked pork. "It wasn't supposed to be a dinner just a tasting program," she said. "But it was a meal. We had everything from wine to dessert." In order to have a volume of flower petals for such a spread, blooms must be picked throughout the growing season, Mrs.

Blair explained. Rose, lily and locust blossoms are dried and used in all sorts of delicacies. "I'm just a plain cook," said the horticulturist-gourmet, who formerly prepared meals at Mackinaw High School and Tazewell County Nursing Home. She prudently held back her temptations to include rose-glazed carrots in those menus. Mrs.

Blair, a 40-year member of the garden club, said she discovered recipes using flowers in garden club magazines during the mid-1960s. "They (blossoms) have always been edible, but we didn't know it. Edible "The old-time people had to eat whatever they could find," she said. Reading from research she has collected, Mrs. Blair explained that the Dutch and English extensively used flowers in cooking.

fried day lilies or fritters titillate the imagination. Biting into a lily fritter uncovers a green innard of the bud. "I gave one to my granddaughter and told her it was a fritter," Mrs. Blair said. No insects "She saw the green sprout and said, 'Ugh, a and I said, 'No, No, I'm not cooking bugs.

While she explained the preparations, I continued taste-testing the products. Apparently, the petals don't have calories, but other ingredients which make the blossoms more palatable, such as in candy, take up the slack. "We've always thought of flowers as decorative, but we're cheating ourselves of many vitamins," Mrs. Blair said. She added nasturtiums are high in Vitamin contain a form of herbal penicillin and were used by Peruvian Indians to ward off infection.

"Everything in nasturtiums the petals, the leaves and the buds are edible, but not the roots," she said. Nasturtiums mixed with cream cheese and spread on orange-nut bread is unbelievably delicious. The taste of nasturtiums and violet leaves in a tossed salad is an experience the eyes, nose and taste buds must conquer. After all, spinach (akin to eating grass) is widely accepted, but there's something about eating leaves from the stalk of a flower that grates. After a few forkfuls of the nasturtium-violet salad, the grassy taste blends well Anonymous London, 1637 among Mrs.

Blair's favorites and, of course, a legend goes with the "Rose petals are a good heart tonic," she said. It seems Venus wept at the loss of Adonis, her tears reddening a white rose. To candy rose petals, Mrs. Blair cooks a sugar syrup, cools it and then lays rose petals in the fluid. After sprinkling them with sugar, she dries them.

The multicolored, candied blossoms have the essence of rose. Although not a wine dririker as a rule, Mrs. Blair did experiment with elderberry blossom wine (elder-blo) and found it delicious. She set up a mini-winery in her basement and is quite pleased with the product. As for the family's attitude toward her exotic taste, Mrs.

Blair seeks ego inflation from Mrs. Dilkey. "My daughter and son-in-law make all manner of fun of me," she said, laughing. "My daughter gets kind of disgusted with me. She said shen she gets to eating flowers, that'll be the day," Mrs.

Blair said. "But I tell her, everything (grown) that we eat lias flowers at, one time or another." Yes, waiter, I'll have the scrambled eggs with marigolds. with the lettuce and other ingredients. "The name 'nasturtiums' comes from Latin words meaning nose twister." Mrs. Blair told a Peruvian legend about an Indian attacked by a band of thieves who were after his sack of gold.

After the Indian invoked the gods of the mountains, the gold fell from the sack, flowers sprouting from the nuggets. The Indians gave a name to the flower that means 'nose twister' because its pungent aroma makes the nose quiver. Mrs. Dilkey whipped up some salad dressing for the salad from an old French recipe named "Four Thieves." Legend has it that French highwaymen covered their bodies with the liquid to protect them from the plague while they plundered and pillaged. No plague Sprinkled on the tossed nasturtiums, the dressing is delicious, although the aroma would knock the plague out of anyone.

The concoction includes mint leaves, rosemary leaves, sage, cloves, tarragon, allspice, mustard spice, rue, garlic and bay leaves. Rose petal cookies and candy are Lillian Blair Twin Cities slate Halloween activities The downtown treats began five years ago when a "little girl bit into an apple and found a razor blade," said Charles Petersen, organizer. "This way, parents don't have to worry about their children in traffic, or getting something strange in their goodies, or having some big kid take their treats away from them. "And the nice thing is seeing all these guys (the merchants) getting excited about it, too." Petersen said 1,100 ghosts and goblins picked up treats last year. The Normal parks department's Spook Spectacular will begin at 6:30 p.m.

at Ash Park Recreation Center. Events will be by age groups, with activities including bobbing for apples in Ash Park swimming pool, pumpkin-carving contests, pumpkin rolling and movies. The party will include prizes and treats. It will be sponsored by the Optimist Club and the Rotary clubs of Normal with the parks department. Starting at 10:30 p.m.

will be the annual, all-night lock-in for fourth, fifth By Kathy McKinney Ghosts and goblins will have all sorts of activities to keep them busy this Halloween season: parades, parties, ap-pie bobbing, pumpkin carving and, of course, trick or treat. Activities will begin Thursday with Bloomington Parks and Recreation De- partment events around the courthouse square in downtown Bloomington. At 4:30 p.m. will be an orientation session for those who have signed up to paint store windows. Registration for the Halloween window painting, includ- ing a drawing of the picture planned, are Z- due before Thursday in the parks depart-" ment at City Hall Annex, next to City Hall.

1 The painting will be from 5 to 7 p.m., with judging at 7:15 p.m. There are five age categories: grades five and six; grades seven and eight; freshmen and 1 sophomores; juniors and ors; and col- lege, which is open to all ages. I A pumpkin-carving contest for first through fourth graders and their parents will begin at 7:30 p.m. on the east side of the courthouse. The contestants furnish their own pumpkins and knives, plus decorations thev want to DUt on their pumpkins.

The parent-child team will have an hour to work on a pumpkin. sa I SCQfV SGQSOn If -t' and sixth graders at the recreation center and pool. Activities which include a midnight swim, games, a movie and refreshments, including pizza, popcorn, peanuts and other snacks will end at 7:30 a.m. Saturday. Registration is required, plus a $2 fee.

The first 60 who sign up will be admitted. Bloomington's Halloween Parade Jamboree will begin at 2 p.m. next Sunday, with signup beginning at 1 p.m. at Center and Market streets. The parade will go south on Center to Front, east to Main, north to Mulberry and west to Center, where it will disband.

Awards will be for best costumes by age group, and for best floats, and judging will be on the basis of originality, color design and craftsmanship. The Bloomington parks department will sponsor its annual "King and Queen Pumpkin Contest." Nominees must be between 2 and 5 years old and be residents of McLean County. If 1 another large, fenced-in site elsewhere in Northern California. If that satellite flock succeeds in building up its population, another starting family will be pulled out and set down on still another site. The purpose of the bighorn re-establishment program, as this continuing effort is formally known, is repopulatibn for its own sake and not ultimately for licensed hunting.

"There will never be enough to allow hunting," Blaisdell said, "even if they could be hunted. They're protected by law and I would imagine they always will be." There was a time when the bighorn roamed widely, if never as populously as deer or antelope, over the Western United States, Canada and the northern stretches of Mexico and Baja California. Indians hunted the animal and they also apparently admired it. But toward the end of the last century, the sheep suffered a number of setbacks. Illegal hunting took a toll, but perhaps the most damaging assault was inflicted in the late 1800s by a tiny mite.

Carried on the backs of domestic sheep, which then were being introduced into the area in large numbers, the mite caused scabies a skin infection that leads to a loss of fleece and eventually pneumonia. Because the foraging patterns of the domestic and wild sheep often overlapped, 'the bighorns soon picked up the mites and began dying off. The last of the indigenous wild sheep disappeared 11:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The children's section also is open from 2 to 4 p.m.

Saturdays and Sundays. The Normal Public Library's children's department will have a Spook Hour from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday. Debbie May Samuelson, Corn Belt Library System storyteller, will tell scary stories, sing songs and present other surprises for children 8 to 12. Sunnyside Neighborhood Center, 1612 W.

Olive, will have a Halloween party from 2 to 5 p.m. Friday. A costume parade will begin about 2:15 p.m., a costume contest at 3:15 p.m., two Halloween movies at 3:30 p.m., and, at 4:15 p.m., bobbing for apples, a spook house and pumpkin carving. A Bloomington policeman will talk to the youngsters about Halloween safety at the beginning of the party. Festival Across town in Normal, activities will begin with a trick-or-treat festival downtown, with about 50 merchants providing the "treats" for those in costume from 5 to 6 p.m.

Normal Parks and Recreation activities will follow. Halloween safety tips suggested Bloomington and Normal police will have additional men on duty during the three-day Halloween trick-or-treat season. In addition, volunteers with citizens band radios will help patrol neighborhoods Oct. 29-31. Chiefs Harold Bosshart, Bloomington, and Richard McGuire, Normal, have asked that trick-or-treaters limit their activity to late afternoon and early evening hours, ending by 8 p.m.

It would be better, the chiefs said, if children went out only on Monday, Oct. 31, Halloween night. The chiefs also recommend that: Very young children be accompanied by an older brother or sister or their parents. Children wear light-colored clothing, and at least one person in a group carry a working flashlight. Children stay in their own neighborhoods, and only go to homes where they know the people.

Children cross streets at crosswalks, and wear masks that allow easy sight. Children wait until they get home to eat their treats, and that parents inspect the treats closely. Adults who are welcoming Hallow-eeners put on their porch lights to let children know they are welcome, and to make their property safer for youngsters. The Bloomington Police Department is trying something new this year. Blue identification cards were landed out in District 87 and parochial grade schools this month.

The cards are to be carried by or pinned to little trick-or-treaters, Chief Bosshart said. "Most little children had no identification of any kind on them. This way, if anything should happen, say they got lost, there would be some identification." Both police chiefs also cautioned motorists to be alert for Halloweeners. The chiefs will speak at a special meeting of the Corn Belt Citizen Banders Inc. at 3 p.m.

today at Ash Park Recreation Center in Normal. They will discuss what the members should do while on patrol during the Halloween trick-or-treat season. Winners are picked on the basis of entries of 25 words or fewer from, parents explaining why their child should be king or queen. Those are due by Wednesday at the parks department1 at Bloomington City Hall. On Oct.

31, Halloween night, the Bloomington Teen Club will sponsor a skating party for Bloomington-Normal teen-agers from 6:30 to 10 p.m. at Skate-N' Place. 1701 S. Morris. Events will' include a costume contest, apple bob-' bing, and a play.

Western Avenue Community Center, 1300 W. Locust, will have a Halloween party for youngsters through the sixth1 grade from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Oct. 31. Arts and crafts activities, a costume contests, refreshments and other events are1 planned.

The Sunnyside party for preschool children also will be Oct. 31, during morning and afternoon class times. Events will include a costume parade. from Northern California around In the early 1960s, the Department of, the Interior formed a special committee of wildlife scientists and asked them to'-; consider the problem of bringing animal species to lands where they once had been native. Known as the Leopold its chairman, Dr.

A. Starker Leopold, a University of California Berkeley professor, the group recom- mended among other things that the', bighorn be re-established in the Lava; Beds National Monument. In 1971', a 6-foot-tall fence was erected i around 700 acres of Park Service and 400 acres of adjoining Forest Service land. The terrain within this enclosure is al series of tabletops which rise gently from the floor of a small valley on the west and which end abruptly at the edge of a 400-foot-high scarp on the east, jj With the fence up, the next step was to introduce some bighorns into the pen. Two rams and eight ewes were trapped from a herd of several hundred in British Columbia, trucked to the Lava Beds and turned loose inside the enclosure.

Those Canadian bighorns belonged to the race known to biologists as Ovisj canadensis californiana, one of six dis-, tinct sub-species of Rocky Mountain wild sheep. It was this particular kind of." bighorn, according to Blaisdell, thats originally occupied this territory. "We try not to do anything for the sheep," said Blaisdell, "except leave, them alone and give them a chance to build up their numbers." Haunted Theta Chi Fraternity at Illinois Wesleyan University will put on its ninth annual haunted house from 7:30 to 10 p.m. Monday at the fraternity house, 814 N. Main.

There is no admission to the house, but donations will go to Mennonite Hospital. The project made about $120 last year for the hospital. At 8:15 p.m. there will be apple bobbing on Jefferson Street Plaza. Sale, too The parks events are in conjunction with a Monster Madness sale from 7 to 10 p.m.

put on by the Downtown Council. Store employes will be encouraged to dress in Halloween costumes, and stores and individuals will be judged for the best dressed. Monsters from the WJBC-Jaycees Haunted House will roam the streets, and a Halloween witch will distribute candy. The Haunted House, 109 S. Madison, opened Friday and will continue through Halloween night: 6:30 to 10:30 p.m.

Sunday through Thursday, and 6:30 to Sic 4 The witching time draws near, when little ghosts, goblins and other scary creatures haunt porches, looking for creatures haunt porches, looking for goodies. Activities' are planned In Bloomington-Normal, and the police of- fer words of advice. (Pantagraph photo) An enclosure at Lava Beds Flock was started with two rams and Af fl Om 6 National Monument, is home for eight ewes brought from British Colum-an expanding flock of bighorn sheep, bia. (Los Angeles Times photo.) Bighorn staging comeback in West--with a bit of help I t-r -Tr" By George Alexander The Los Angeles Times LAVA BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. Like many other men, James A.

Blaisdell is obsessed with the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, that sharp-eyed, sure-footed inhabitant of steep mountainsides. Unlike many others, however, Blaisdell has no desire to hunt the bighorn. He does not seek a ram's head, with its magnificently curled horns, as a wall trophy, and he is not kindly disposed to those who do. All he wants is for the animal to be left in peace, so that it once again may occupy the hills and mountains of this Northern California region. Blaisdell is a National Park Service research biologist who, along with colleagues from three other federal agencies and one state of California department, is trying to re-establish the bighorn in these parts.

At the moment, this cooperative, interagency group has a flock of between 26 and 31 bighorn sheep a precise census hasn't been taken for two months and Blaisdell is not quite sure how many of last spring's crop of nine lambs still survive inside a fenced pen here, just below the California-Oregon border. When the flock gets big enough and numbers at least five breeding rams and 25 breeding ewes, Blaisdell explained, the pan is to remove a family "starter" unit of perhaps two rams, nine ewes and some lambs and transplant them to.