Remontant Irises

I don't grow irises; that's my excuse for not knowing before about these "remontant" , or re-blooming ones, some of which, apparently bloom in November.

A little like having fresh raspberries in March. I can't decide whether or not I approve!

Megabus

I wanted to do a quick up-and-back to Newton to view a day of This Old House filming - my last chance, since they're wrapping up next week. A lot of driving for such a short trip, so it seemed like a great time to try the Megabus. Here's how it works: you go on line and tell it what day you want to go, and where. It tells you what's available and how much. At first, for any route, all seats are $1. As the bus begins to fill, the price begins to go up, but I think that it doesn't go past $20. From NY it comes and goes from Penn Station, which makes for a super convenient train connection for me. Clean, fast, and straightforward. Plenty of people were taking advantage of the free wi-fi, and there were electric outlets at every seat. Megabus, I know I haven't seen the last of you!

Jamie's Secret

Today's NYT gives us a sneak peek at an article on celebrity chef Jamie Oliver that will be in the weekend magazine section. The piece describes Jamie's visit to a West Virginia town that's statistically the unhealthiest in the US. He's there to try to get people to learn how to cook.

But there's an interesting subtext: Jamie was an abysmally poor student - dyslexic, and always in the "special needs" group. Almost magically - perhaps because he was able to help out in his father's pub - he discovered his interest in food, and (the article mentions somewhere) is now - as the result of TV shows, books, restaurants - worth over $65 million.

The simple lesson he provides? Know what you're good at and stay away from what you're bad at. That's it. Food for thought.

The prescient cook

Sometimes you start cooking with the idea of using up random stuff that you have on hand and you can just tell, before it's even halfway done, that it's going to be good.

Here's what I did: Sauteed a lot of sliced fresh mushrooms in a little butter and olive oil in big deep cast iron pan. Tossed in a couple of blobs of frozen caramelized sliced onions (I prepare batches of these - just cook onions slowly til they have a rich, brown color - and freeze in "blobs" on foil, then wrap the blobs individually in plastic and put in a ziploc bag). Stirred in what was left of my big bag of frozen chopped spinach (quite a lot) and a well-drained large can of wild salmon. Stirred it around a bit and seasoned (being careful with the salt as the salmon I used was quite salty).

Meanwhile I am cooking a big batch of brown basmati rice. When it's done I'll stir in as much of it as seems right, then I'll mix it all together and put it in a pan and grate some swiss cheese over the top. A few minutes in the oven or under the broiler should be enough to finish it off.

Almost sounds like something Betty Draper might cook, doesn't it? Except, come to think of it, she'd have used Minute Rice, and I think that frozen vegetables only came in those little rock-hard rectangular packages then. Oh, and I suppose canned cream of mushroom soup might have been involved. Well, progress!

Where were you in 62?

Like quite a few others I am mad about Mad Men, though (also like quite a few others) I came late to the scene. I saw seasons 1 and 2 on DVD from the library, and am going to have to catch up on Season 3 as time permits at the kids' house (they have one of those fancy TV's that let you save stuff).

I graduated from college in 62, and then worked in Manhattan that summer and fall in magazine publishing and advertising. Revisiting this time through the eyes of those who weren't even born (to them it might as well be a 1776 costume drama, I keep thinking!) is pretty heady. Yes, people DID drink and smoke like that! Yes, women WERE treated that way. Worse, we accepted it. assumed that it was OK!

Last night I watched American Graffiti for the first time. Don't ask me why (OK I'll tell you - I had recently seen Francis Coppola's wonderful film, The Conversation, and had been curious about his other early work. ) Coppola produced American Graffiti because George Lucas (himself still an unknown, before Star Wars) needed a "name" attached to the project. Coppola had just made The Godfather. Harrison Ford has such a small part in this film that he doesn't even get a mention in the star credits. Richard Dreyfus was unknown. Suzanne Somers is on screen for about ten seconds. Ron Howard had to audition for his part.

I loved this movie. Though it took place in 1962, it is really about the end of the fifties - just as Mad Men (so far) is. This is the high school perspective. But it's just as real to me. Almost as in the Peanuts cartoon, adults barely appear.

It's about cruising, which is what teenagers did in the fifties and very early sixties. Oh how I remember that! Driving with a carful of friends through the Steak-n-Shake lot just to see who was there! Then deciding to go check out the OTHER Steak'n'Shake. This involved driving back down Main Street, another chance to see who was there, and with whom. How important it all seemed!

Another world.

Looking for Josephine

Saw this charming musical revue at Montclair State College over the weekend. Loved it!

Hoppel Poppel

In the September Gourmet (page 20, if it's handy) there's a photo of something called "Hoppel Poppel", apparently a Wisconsin breakfast specialty. I figured it was another of those strange Wisconsin food things that the rest of us know little or nothing about - things like brats, Kopps, supper clubs, fish fries, cheese curds ....

Benji's, the Milwaukee deli where it was photographed for the magazine, sounded as if it might be pretty close to Supermom's house, so I asked her about it She knew the deli, but not the dish.

Anyhow, it was on my mind, and it got to be dinnertime. Benji's provides a recipe, both for the regular and deluxe versions, so I didn't really have to improvise. Really, it's just a skillet of fried onions and potatoes and salami chunks with some eggs scrambled in at the end. But the salami wasn't going to happen. Would bacon work? I always have cooked bacon in the freezer (but that's another post).

Here's my adaptation:

Cut a red potato in big chunks and nuke, covered, in a little water for 5 minutes, or til cooked. Meanwhile, fry half a roughly chopped or sliced onion in a little olive oil. When soft, add half a yellow pepper, sliced, and 3 or 4 mushrooms, sliced. By now the potatoes should be done, so drain them and add to the pan, continuing to cook a few minute more til everything seems done and the potatoes have browned nicely. Now stir in a couple of cooked bacon slices cut in biggish pieces and a big handful of frozen chopped spinach (straight out of the big bag in the freezer). As the spinach cooks, season with salt and pepper to taste. Now whisk together 2 eggs with a little salt and add them to the pan to scramble among all the rest of the stuff. That's it! Have a slice of whole wheat toast on the side to provide a little texture contrast. Serves one hungry person or two regular ones.

I'm adding this to the "see again" list.

Woodchuck

I suppose I'll remember this summer (to distinguish it from others) as the summer of the woodchuck. I think I brought on the troubles myself, by thinking I could plant a few vegetables near the front door where they'd be safe. We've had woodchucks for as long as I can remember, but they have always, until now, stayed out back. That's where their holes are - far from the house, near the glen.

The broccoli shoots were growing nicely, along with the chard and tomatoes, interspersed prettily with the herbs and flowers. Until one day they weren't. They were gone. Eaten to a stubble. And that was when I spotted, from my bedroom window, a woodchuck peering out from the hole he'd made by removing a few loose bricks in my front steps.

It was hard to explain the problem to the masons I called for estimates. Was there a danger of sealing the animals IN, in the course of repairs? Should I try to get rid of the woodchuck FIRST? But then how do I know another won't appear? And how many are there anyhow? I had a few nightmares about woodchucks destroying the foundation, getting into the house....

Ultimately the woodchuck was dispatched, and the steps repaired. Plenty of his brethren remain. And they're getting bolder. I saw one just today outside this window, in the neighbors' driveway. I'm told it would be hopeless to think of getting rid of them permanently, living, as I do, adjacent to woodland.

But it's safe to say that my broccoli-growing days are over.

Notes from the kitchen: crepes redux

I didn't do much cooking this summer. (Summer? What summer?) Anyhow, maybe it's the Julia thing, but I've made a few things worth noting. I started to describe them in one long post, but it began to look a little daunting, so I've decided to break it up. Blog readers are said to have short attention spans.

This morning, crepes. I've written about those before, but A NYT article opened my eyes to an entirely new technique. Before: scrounge around for the recipe, then put the stuff in the blender. Then wait the requisite half hour for the flour to "rest". Now: no recipe, no blender, no resting. Just whisk an egg or two (one egg is fine for one person) in a small bowl, then whisk in flour to make a smooth paste - about 1/2 cup is about right per egg. Half can be whole wheat for a nice nutty version. But no need to measure. Now the flavorings: a pinch of salt, and, for a sweet versioin, a teaspoon or so of sugar and a little vanilla. Now thin it out with milk til it's a perfectly smooth thin batter. I didn't even have any milk so I used a little cream to get it started, then finished with water (!!!).

Now, to cook:. Get your crepe pan (I used my official French iron one) hot, and add a knob of butter. Swirl it around for a second, then dump the blob INTO THE BATTER, and stir it in. You have now buttered your pan AND added melted butter to the batter in one fell swoop. Make crepes as usual, using the additional hint (apparently from Jacques Pepin) of putting the blob of batter in the pan at 4 o'clock rather than in the middle. A commenter also brought up Julia's 2-pan technique: when you are ready to turn the first one, turn it over into a second DIFFERENT pan on an adjacent burner (I used my omelet pan), so that you can immediately start another one in the crepe pan. Fast fast fast!

I've been making crepes for nearly 50 years, but this is the best technique yet.

This Old House

There have been no visits to the kids in Newton for a while. The house is in an uproar, undergoing major renovations. But thanks to the miracle of the webcams, I can check up on things whenever I want.

Webcams? What's with that? It seems they and their house have been chosen as the subjects for the Fall 2009 series of the long-running PBS "This Old House" TV program.

I'm looking forward to checking out the "stairway" webcam on Thursday. That's the day they'll be filming the removal of the existing bookshelf wall on the landing, breaking through to what will be the new "library".

Click here for more information about the project, and daughter G's wonderful blog about the experience. The actual show will air in early October.

DeepLeap

Heard about this addictive time-waster? A word game that's a cross between scrabble and tetris - you make words out of disappearing tiles. I just played for the first time. Beat my score of 738!

Leaky DSL

James Thurber wrote of his elderly mother's fear and suspicion that electricity might leak into the house through unused wall sockets.

Strange as it seems, it appears that if you have DSL (internet service that arrives through your telephone line) something similar could be happening. The DSL things (waves? molecules? particles?) don't understand that their only job is to travel efficiently and directly through the wire from the phone jack to the DSL modem. Having DSL means having it ready and available through every phone jack in the house.

I had blamed my lousy phone reception and haphazard, unreliable internet service on a long-ago lightning bolt. Cursed the phone company for not being able to fix it. It was my nephew in Oklahoma who casually asked whether I had a DSL filter.

A what? How is it possible that a little plastic gizmo attached to the end of a phone cord at the OTHER END OF THE HOUSE has made such a dramatic difference? It can only be that the DSL is no longer "leaking" out of that other jack. I'm sure of it.

Julia and eggs

Surprise! I am back! Not that it's likely anyone's around to notice. I won't make excuses for the long absence except to say that part of the problem has had to do with iffy computer behavior which (too soon to say for sure) MAY now be a thing of the past.

Anyhow. Went to see the wonderful movie Julie and Julia the other day and it has sent me to revisit the old cookbooks, including the original 1961 Mastering the Art of French Cooking that I learned to cook from in those newlywed days of 1964 and 65 in Brooklyn (not so different from Julie in the movie, except that I certainly never attempted to make EVERYTHING!).

More importantly, I now see that many of the original French Chef TV programs are to be found on-line. Oh, the memories! Take a look at this one, the Egg Show, from 1964 and you who may NOT have seen any of these programs will understand what even today sets Julia apart from all her followers and imitators.

Still here

Yes, I'm still here.

Time has passed, holidays have come and gone. There was a snowstorm. Now, after three days of blue skies, green grass, and at least one day of sixty-something temperatures, it seems that more snow is on the way. Sporadic huge gusts of wind are causing miscellaneous stuff (stuff that I didn't quite get around to putting away yet, like the lightweight plastic chairs) to fly all over the yard. On the plus side, the winter solstice has passed and the days are getting longer now.

Various holidays have come and gone, as have various daughters and grandchildren. The daughter who lives nearby (that would be H) will be presenting me with grandchild number three - a baby boy - in the very near future. I can't wait! In the meantime she has been afflicted with a rotten cold, requiring much TLC, including vats of lemon ice.

Recent preoccupation: the ipod that Santa brought! I must have been muttering about all the educational content that's available now on-line, through MIT and any number of other places. I had been thinking it would be very cool to be able to listen to these things while "on the go". Still some fine tuning to be done, but yes, this is indeed possible. In the meantime I discover that there is something called "itunesU" - a source of free academic content from all over.

There, for example, I found a terrific series of talks by Umberto Eco - the "Ellman lecture" - given just this past October at Emory University. Any writers who happen to be reading this (you know who you are) would particularly enjoy the first one, called "How I Write". And for the impatient, there's quite a nice summary here.

Lots of reading, much of it worth commenting on, but that's a lot of work and organization, and that kind of writing doesn't come easily to me. December tends to be a time for more cookbook and general recipe browsing than the norm, and I found myself re-reading Laurie Colwin's wonderful two volumes: Home Cooking, and More Home Cooking. In one of them she lets drop: "basically all I do is read". Hey - me too. That made me feel a little less like a complete lump.

Right now I'm making a big vat of her easier-than-easy black bean soup. She invites you to set it on a flame tamer - long a favorite gizmo of my own - and - daringly - LEAVE THE HOUSE for five hours, which I am not doing only because of the aforementioned wind, etc.

My new year's resolution: to be a better and more frequent blogger. We'll see how that works out. A happy 2009 to all!

Carmina Burana

I'm a random concertgoer at best. It's usually a matter of a friend with an extra ticket. So it was for last Friday's remarkable performance of Carl Orff's cantata, Carmina Burana. I wouldn't have the musical vocabulary to describe such a work - but the rave review (at the link) does it well. You can see the setup in the photo: three vocal soloists in front, facing the audience; behind them, the conductor and the NJ Symphony Orchestra, and in the rear, the chorus, consisting of the combined voices of the Moscow Conservatory Chorus and the Montclair State University Chorale. 266 performers in total. What an undertaking it must have been to coordinate this!

My friend and I were both fighting the sniffles. She went for a cup of chamomile tea at intermission; I sucked maniacally on Cold-Eeze. I was OK until I got home, but spent the next forty-eight hours flat on my back.

Back among the living now, still savoring the memories of that exhilarating experience.

Dewey Defeats Truman

Yes, I was only eight, but we were Trib readers and I remember the headline, and my midwestern father's horror when the error was revealed (even though he had briefly, in his youth, been an FDR democrat). Nobody thought Truman could win. I think that's why nobody has dared to call this race in advance, even when it seemed impossible to be wrong.

I couldn't vote in the 1960 election (you had to be twenty-one then, and I had just turned twenty) but I remember watching the famous JFK-RMN debate on a rented dorm TV set (TV wasn't at all a part of college life then), and going to see Dick and Pat in a motorcade in downtown Boston. I remember staying up for most of the night to watch the returns (a different rented TV) and feeling disheartened and a little frightened when that young, untested senator had prevailed. What about Qemoy and Matsu? Even in that hotbed of liberalism I was still my father's daughter.

I've voted since 1964 (12 times for President -why does it seem like more?) and I'd have a hard time remembering which candidate I actually voted for in many of those elections. More than once it was for the third-party candidate, or even a "wasted" vote on the Libertarian. I always felt as if I were voting "against" someone, rather than "for" someone.

Yesterday was the first time I can actually remember casting a vote with strong conviction and the fervent hope that my candidate would win. It was a great feeling. And now that he has won, I can participate in the national euphoria - so like the one that followed the 1960 election.

As my ten-year-old granddaughter told her father, while being tucked in (way past her bedtime), "now I understand why you wanted us to stay up".

Where has the time gone?

When you haven't blogged for a while, it's hard to know where to start. It has been, and continues to be, a beautiful fall.

Just back from a good weekend with the kids in Boston. The usual gamut from the sublime (fabulous dinner with the whole gang at Blue Ginger, Ming Tsai's restaurant in Wellesley) to the ridiculous (spending an entire day sorting through 935,778 teensy and totally mixed up Legos -first separating by color and then transforming them into a fleet of helicopters, ambulances, fire trucks, various vehicles, houses....)

Dinner with H&D at Halcyon, the new "seafood brasserie" in Montclair. I don't envy anyone trying to open a new restaurant in this economy, but I predict that this one will endure. Can't wait to go back.

Several worthy NYC adventures. The Morandi show at the Met. The prefab housing at the MOMA. Bryant Park! Former druggie heaven, now one of the most civilized and urbane places in the city. The lunch scene is amazing, fueled by great HEALTHY take-out places that have sprouted up along Sixth Ave and beyond: Wichcraft, Pret a Manger, Pax...

A peaceful day of bridge with friends in Mantoloking - "down the shore".

A lot of good reading. Notably:

Telex from Cuba, by Rachel Kushner. National Book Award finalist, about Americans in Cuba in the fifties. Written from multiple points of view, including children. Outstanding.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande. Thought-provoking essays by MacArthur Fellow.

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin. Zimbabwe memoir. Author, who grew up there and lives now in NYC, wrote previous memoir about childhood. In this one he returns to visit aging parents (physician and mining engineer), describes current horrors under Mugabe regime and discover's father's surprising past as a Polish Jew during WWII.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer. Epistolary novel about Channel Island residents who lived under Nazi occupation from 1941 to end of war. Light and charming, despite the grim subject (maybe inappropriately so?).

The Size of the World, by Joan Silber. Glowing review in Boston Globe led me to this one. Six stories that take place across time and space, but with characters who are all linked. I want to read more of this writer's work.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski. An Oprah pick now, I see. "Hamlet with hounds", as described by Janet Maslin. I look at dogs differently now. But it's not really about dogs. How will they make it into a movie?

All highly recommended. And there are some others I'll save for another post.

News addiction

I thought it was just me.

Link to NYT article.

The letters

Still in need of peace and solace after a rocky week in the news. So here are a few more Adirondack pictures from last week.

A view of the field, from the road.

Same field, but looking toward the lake.

Another glimpse of the water, from down the road.

Here are the original main gates to the house. The driveway is kept mowed, but isn't really used any more.
Approaching from that direction, you'd see the house from this oblique angle. I can spend all day just walking around the house, and up and down the road. I think that by now I've taken hundreds of photographs. Always different, and yet always the same.

But remember those letters? Here we are in the attic. See that big box on the right, behind the wicker chair?

Here's a closer view.
This is the stash of letters I came across last summer. I knew I was going to have to revisit them sooner or later. I believe that they are mostly from the thirties and forties, covering the period when my mother and her sisters were in college (during the depression) and later, starting their families during the war. I assume that the letters are mostly from the three sisters to their mother, my grandmother, and to each other, and possible to Tante, their aunt. But I won't really know til I've managed to sort through them all. Where to begin?

The box is much too heavy to lift. You can see that the letters have been at least roughly sorted into groups, tied with string and ribbon. I finally decided to stuff a bunch of them at random into a black plastic bag and bring them home with me. I can barely lift the bag, and yet the box is still nearly full.

Never having done a project like this, I am not even sure how to begin. Will I want to arrange them chronologically? Or by writer? Or recipient? Subject? Stay tuned.

Stability and continuity

The Adirondack house provided welcome relief from last week's financial turmoil. Abraham Beecher, my many-times-great-grandfather, walked here from Connecticut and settled here nearly two-hundred years ago. Here are the fields he first cleared, and the stone walls he built. A survivor of wars, depressions, recessions, and more, the place never changes. It is an oasis of calm.

And something good to eat is always in the works. Here's daughter G turning out a batch of doughnuts for Saturday breakfast.

The main project for the weekend: the chicken house. The always hard-working grandkids, C and L, want to turn it into a "bunkhouse" - a place where they and their cousins and friends can hang out. It's been years since there were any chickens in residence, so there are decades of debris to be removed. That's my father's old boat in there. We'll have to find another place for it, I guess.

Bar Pie

Is this a common term? A New Jersey thing? Another place I could easily walk to (but don't) is the Star Tavern - an institution beloved by many, and believed by some to be the source of New Jersey's best pizza. I can't very well eat a whole one, and they don't sell it by the slice, so I never think of going there. But I had a craving today. And I found out that you can sit at the counter and order a smallish (and cheap!) "bar pie" - perfect! Who knew?

On the way I stopped at the high school recycling bins to load up on more big sheets of flattened corrugated cartons. The next phase of the lawn reduction program will be a large round strawberry bed in the middle of the upper back yard - at the base of the deck. To be planted in the spring. Is this getting out of hand or what?

Degrees of separation

1. David Foster Wallace's wikipedia entry states:

In The Top Ten (2006), a compilation of "top ten novels" lists by different writers, Wallace named C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters as his favorite novel.

2. I've forgotten the source (somewhere on youtube), but when Sarah Palin was asked about books, she claimed her favorite writer was C.S. Lewis.

What are we to make of this?

Steven Johnson

I've written before about the book club. We don't all read the same book - we read whatever strikes our fancy, then meet to briefly describe what we've read to the others. As one member remarked, it's a little like fourth grade book reports. Part of the deal is that the books are often made available for borrowing by the member/reporters.

So it was that I snagged the three in the photo above.

The one on the far right, "Everything Bad is Good for You", by Steven Johnson, is the only one of the three I've read so far. His premise is that - contrary to expection -there are certain aspects of popular culture that are actually causing a marked and measurable increase in intelligence among the general population. He calls it the Sleeper Curve. To make his point he focuses primarily on video games - the elaborate kind, such as Sim City, and Grand Auto Theft - and television shows - the "multi-threaded" plot kind, such as The Sopranos and 24. He argues that the brainpower needed to understand their complexities is far greater, and of a different sort, than what was needed to play PacMan, or watch the formulaic I Love Lucy, or Leave it to Beaver. It's an easy and convincing read.

I was surprised I hadn't heard of Johnson before, but then I realized that I HAD in fact known about him. I had read rave reviews of his 2006 book about the terrifying 1854 London cholera epidemic, The Ghost Map, and had meant to read it. Now it's on my library reserve list. And there's a new book coming out in December - about JB Priestley and the discovery of oxygen.

Johnson, a champion of urbanism, wrote a provocative series of essays on this topic called Urban Planet in the NYT, also in 2006. Well worth a click.

The eight of us at this meet-up mentioned over forty books. Most of these I won't ever read (mysteries, for example, are not for me). But I'm pleased that Steven Johnson is on my radar now.

A good cookie recipe

The read-what-you-want book club convenes here tomorrow, and I'll be setting these out. Not sure if you can tell from the hasty photograph, but these cookies are extremely thin and crisp and delicate. The kind that start out as tiny little blobs and spread out like mad while getting all bubbly and caramel-y. Very, very easy. And sort of healthy, because of the oatmeal. Here's the recipe:

Oatmeal Lace Cookies

1 c Rolled oats; quick-cooking
1/4 c All-purpose flour
1/2 ts Salt
1 1/2 ts Baking powder
1 c Granulated sugar
1/2 c Unsalted Butter; softened
1 Egg
1 ts Vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325 degrees; cover baking sheets with foil (or use Silpat or equivalent sheets), then coat with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flour, salt and baking powder; mix well with a wire whisk and set aside.

In a large electric mixer bowl, combine the sugar and butter and beat on medium speed to form a grainy paste. Add the egg and vanilla extract; beat until smooth. Add the flour mixture and blend just until combined.

Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls 2 1/2 inches apart onto the cookie sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. Let cool (this is IMPORTANT - they will be very soft at first), then peel the cookies from the foil with your fingers. Be sure to respray the cookie sheets between batches. (Note: I used Silpat, didn't respray, and nothing untoward happened. Also, I was able to easily remove the cooled cookies with a thin metal spatula - no "peeling" needed.)

I baked the sheets one at a time on the top rack. Watch carefully so they don't get too dark. Makes about 40

Guest photos

Daughter Z , back in LA, has just iphoned some of the photos she took of the gang.

So it wasn't all synchronized sliding. There was mini-golf, with G sinking impossible putts without ever putting down her purse. L thinks he's in Hawaii. C, newly interested in cooking and modeling her trendy new Hipchic outfit, prepared several wonderful meals for us. Here she's serving a sausage popover to H. Another night G and D took turns at the grill. Later there were Cranium matches - H and L were a formidable team. And checkers. Pigging out at Ginas - twice voted best bakery in NJ, and we could walk there, as well as to the market (middle bottom, taken by L) from H's house. Not shown: brunch at Raymonds, and, best of all, the amazing "helpers" - C and L - attacking my weedy brick path with vinegar, sharp knives, stone dust and a push broom for a truly professional result. Come back any time!

Synchronized sliding

Can two posts in rapid succession make up for a long silence? Probably not, but I will never be more than an occasional blogger. So - whatever.

Earlier today I had drafted a cranky post that rambled on about how discouraged I was about the garden. The combination of the Adirondack trip, and a long visit from the daughters and grandkids made for too much garden neglect, and neglect is not good for gardens. But then I came across this reassuring post, in which another gardener confesses to having neglected HER garden. Not only that, but a stream of commenters chimed in to confess that they TOO had neglected their gardens. So now I feel better. Isn't that a very good thing about blogs?

Anyhow, I didn't think I had taken ANY photos when the children were here, but when I downloaded the egg pictures I found just this one, which reminded me of one of the favorite activities. Both of them appear here, about to embark on one of many "synchronized slides", with Aunt H "judging" from the sidelines: EIGHT POINT THREE! she would call out. "Eight point three!" C would exclaim to L, and they would swim to their respective ladders, climb to the top, and try again. And again, and again.

I can always catch up with the weeds and the mulch, but who would want to miss a minute of synchronized sliding?

Exotic eggs and locovores

Does every Whole Foods Store have an exotic egg section? A LOCAL exotic egg section? Well, I already know that the answer is NO, because the smallish one in Montclair doesn't. But here we are in the West Orange megastore, which is much more fun when one is in a wandering, browsing mode, which is me, most of the time.

So - these are cute! Little quail eggs. I can imagine some fancy ways one might use these.

The duck eggs are recommended for baking, and for custards. "Eggier", and a little larger than chicken eggs, apparently. Now these I might actually try.

But check out the ostrich eggs! One egg feeds ten to twelve, they claim - scrambled or in a giant omelet. Hmmm. Would that justify the $40 price tag? I wonder who buys these.

No such goings on at the more pedestrian A&P. Still, it seems everyone wants to buy stuff that's LOCAL. I read not long ago that Walmart (oddly, one store that simply isn't to be found anywhere around here) is now a buyer of local produce on a very large scale. This seems to me to be a very good trend.

A wedding and a discovery

Did I mention that there had been a wedding at the Adirondack house? Only the second in the history of the house, the first being daughter G's, in 1993. The bride this time is not a family member, but the daughter of the man who has helped maintain the property (plumbing, lawn, general repairs and upkeep) for years. Jim knows more about the house than all the rest of us put together. He knew, of course, that we still had the wooden arbor from G's wedding in the garage. (It's been borrowed for at least one local high school prom, as well. )

Some of us mingled with the invited guests; others (e.g. grandson L and I) decided to stay inside and view the proceedings from this unusual perspective:

A slightly different view from the library window. If we step back a few feet we would be able to see those old magazines, and the newspaper. But what 's that on the windowsill? In the tray. A little set of leatherbound nature and wildlife guides. They've been there pretty much forever, I imagine, but I've never noticed them before.

I pick one up:

And look inside. This was my mother's book! The inscription, in my grandmother's familiar handwriting, reads: "Catharine Justine Sinclaire. Oct 2, 1920. Gloversville, with her own money (received for taking castor oil.)" Notice that the book cost $1.00. I guess that was the going rate for castor-oil-taking in 1920. Seems like a lot!

Mom would have been almost seven then. And the family would be occupying the house for the very first season. Just two days later, baby Clothilde, the youngest daughter, would be born. In the house, of course. The only birth to ever take place on the premises, even now.

I did bring the little book home with me, after double-checking with a few sixty-something cousins. Kind of an unwritten rule, but we don't just TAKE stuff - even now. Maybe especially now. But I'm having second thoughts. Maybe I ought to take it back. What if somebody needs to look up a wildflower?

Back with a digression about sweaters

As you might have guessed, I've been back for a while. Hiding. But you must know by now how long it takes me to shift gears, and get back into "home" mode. This seems to be particularly true when I visit the Adirondack house, which is not only a physical sort of trip (even though not that far) but - more importantly - a form of TIME travel.


And so much for idle promises. I took almost no photos, and the pastels stayed in their boxes. Worse yet, I didn't revisit the old letters except to ascertain that they were still there, and notice that there were quite a few more similar-looking boxes. One, that I just peeked into, appeared to contain all of my great-grandfather's bank statements and cancelled checks from 1938 and probably before. Things like $2.50 for auto repair.




Sorry, but I just couldn't get into it. I was really more interested, this time, in being around the children, living in the present. And it's not easy to do both. So I just brought down a couple of magazines (randomly chosen from stacks and stacks). A 1927 Vogue. A 1948 House and Garden. I put them casually on the desk in the library, thinking they'd make a nice complement to the 1952 NY Herald Tribune that's been there for years now, though not since 1952. Leafing through them there, I imagined that my grandmother (and others) must have read them when they were new in that very setting.


Except for the cast of characters, which is always shifting, from one set of third cousins to another, the activities and backgrounds stay the same. Children digging in the sand at the beach. Roasting corn off the kitchen porch. Picking blackberries. Playing games in the library (OK, this time it was watching the Olympics). I could post photos that were several years old and nobody would be the wiser. So, in fact, that's what I'll do:

Not all of these photos are related to the Adirondack House. The common theme is my sister, whose last visit was just three years ago, and who died suddenly and unexpectedly barely three months later. The photo in the top right shows the house as it must have appeared in the 1960's, and was taken by her. Until the advent of digital cameras (which never interested her), she was the family photographer, well-known for documenting pretty much everything. There she is with Supermom and the gang in the top middle photo, and in the middle right (in the Adirondack house kitchen. The bottom row photos are all from 2005 (I think), and the middle row (center and left) show her as a teenager and as a brand new college graduate.

Can you see why I might think that she really never aged or changed?

The reason I'm dwellling on all this is that while I was in the Adirondacks, there was an estate sale being held at her home in Wisconsin. Supermom and Quantum Void had taken what they wanted of the "good" things, but there was still a heck of a lot left over. Like EIGHTY shetland and Norwegian-type sweaters. Eighty!? Who knew that my sister was the Imelda Marcos of sweaters?

But then I started to think: most likely some, if not most of those sweaters dated from her high school and college years - maybe even earlier. Not one to follow fashion trends, she had, early on, found a look that suited her and stuck with it. And, since her size never really changed, what reason would she have had to get rid of any of those sweaters? And could you blame her for wanting to add a new one once in a while?

Letters from 1943? Bank statements from 1938? Eighty sweaters doesn't seem so unreasonable. It must be a family thing.

Hiatus

Taking a blogging break for a while. It's unlikely I'll be able to post from the Adirondack house, though there's always the local library, should there be something urgently blogworthy. I'll be
connecting with family there - daugher, grandchildren, cousins - including two of the very youngest of the new generation, one of whom I haven't yet met. We are so lucky to have this beautiful and unchanging family refuge.

I'm anxious, of course, to get back to that stash of letters in the attic. There won't be any gardening chores, which will seem a little weird in a cold-turkeyish sort of way, especially since I'll be fretting nonstop about what's happening at home. Gardeners really can't just LEAVE! But I'm taking the pastels. And the camera, of course. Oh, and a little spade. You never know what you might want to dig up a little of. Last year it was the variegated bishop's weed. We'll see how it goes.

Jam

This is the yummy jam I made out of the free peaches, along with a handful of supermarket raspberries. I'll have to keep it in the fridge and use it up fairly quickly, since I didn't have any official canning jars on hand. Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem, though there is quite a lot of it. One thing to note: I didn't bother to peel the peaches, and it didn't seem to be an issue. Nothing at all unpleasant about the texture or the taste. The skins just sort of dissolved, I guess, in the cooking. Another thing: most of the peaches were a bit underripe, but apparently that is a GOOD thing when it comes to jam-making qualities.

Blogging: doing it backwards

What do I know of blogging, really? I kind of stumbled on it. Some of the first blogs I noticed were food blogs. After a while I began to see a pattern: blog often, blog well, and, with luck you'll end up with a book deal.

One of my new favorite bloggers has turned the tables. Margaret Roach, of A Way to Garden, had, after a long career in garden journalism, including the writing of numerous books, reached the pinnacle of success as the director of all editorial content for Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Nowhere further to go. So, what does she decide to do, but chuck it all - ditch the corporate life, and retire to her gorgeous upstate New York garden and BLOG! What she really really likes to do is garden and write about gardening. So that's what she's doing. Lucky for the rest of us, she is really, really good at it.

Free mulch and peaches

I should have taken a picture. I'm driving home through Bloomfield, on one of those little side streets off Broad St and suddenly, on the curb, I see an enormous pile of black plastic trash bags and a hand-written sign: Free Mulch.

So of course I pull over to investigate. (I had scored a super-huge bag of fresh grass clippings just the other day, so my yard waste radar is working full-time.) The bags are all neatly closed with little knots. I open one. Inside, there's one of those brown paper yard waste bags, tighly sealed with plastic packing tape. I peel off the tape. Inside I see what appears to be dark, finely ground up wood. Perfect for the lawn reduction project!

So I cram what I can inside the car (trunk and back seat). Roughly half. I'll have to make a return trip. I zoom home, unload the bounty, and head back for more. While I'm loading up for the second time, a lady emerges from the house and greets me enthusiastically. I tell her how thrilled I am to be getting exactly what I need. A tree was taken down, she explains. She, having gone to all the work of bagging it all up, is equally thrilled that it is going to be put to good use.

She wants to help me load up the car. Then she wants to show me where the tree had been. (I am basically getting an entire ground up maple tree, neatly bagged.) It's one of those great old-fashioned back yards that makes you think it's 1952. Right in the middle is a peach tree, heavy with ripe peaches.

Wow! I say. Look at all those peaches! Want some? she asks. Of course! Aren't you going to use them? No - there might be bugs..... She has lived there for 45 years. Peaches aren't a novelty. Just a nuisance.

Sometimes I think I just live right. Don't ask about the swing, however.

Beets, Eggplant, and Apricots

My tendency, at the market, is to buy what looks good, then figure out what to do with it later on. So it was that I found myself with a counterful of fresh apricots, eggplant (4 different colors), and beets.
The apricot tart recipe came from Orangette, and it's based on a Zuni Cafe recipe.

I made it exactly as described. Easy and wonderful. If only fresh apricots were more often available. The eggplant went into this poorly photographed but delicious concoction from Simon Hopkinson's "Roast Chicken and Other Stories", blogged about (and much more temptingly photographed) here by Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet. It's one of those sweet/spicy things: currants, tomatoes, onions, cumin, coriander, mint.... I wouldn't call it a quick summer dish to be thrown together in a flash. Au contraire - I was standing over a hot cast-iron skillet for quite some time. But the end result is very much worth the effort.

And here are the beets. Can you believe I have never in my life made a salad of raw grated beets? It is about to be my new favorite thing. A simple recipe from the Everyday Food cookbook, it's just raw beets and carrots shredded in the Cuisinart in a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, honey, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, salt, cayenne, parsley.

Thankfully I am well fed, as the progress on the swing assembly is stalled for the moment. H and D came over and put together the A-frame end pieces. But they got stuck trying to attach the big top crosspiece to the ends. Perhaps those 6 inch bolts will grow an inch or so in the night, and I'll be able to properly attach the washer and nut on the other end in the morning.

Swing

Another assembly job in the works. I got the seat part together with relative ease, but am having a little trouble with the A-frame. It will replace the plastic chair in the far northeast corner of the garden. Years and years ago the children had a swing there, hanging from a tree. Both the swing and the tree are long gone. Now it's my turn to swing.

Nature

No complaints, really, as I have easy access to such a diverse range of activities. But one thing that's in short supply around here is open, untouched countryside. So I was surprised to hear from an acquaintance about this little nature preserve that is actually within walking distance (not that I'd be apt to walk there) and that I'd never known existed. I went over there this morning to check it out.Here we go!A more rustic trail leads off to the left:Water!And this pathway, back at the main entrance, leads to the pond:
And here's the pond. There's a concrete dam of some kind - apparently people fish there.
And so, that's pretty much it. A pond, and bit of woods squashed between a school playing field and the Garden State Parkway. Access is from a nondescript dead-end residential street. Nature in New Jersey. We take what we can get.

Lawn reduction update

Big progress today on the lawn reduction. H&D were having some trees and shrubs trimmed and kindly thought to ask if I wanted the trimmings. Of course I did! Well, technically what I got were other peoples' trimmings - stuff on the truck that was already shredded and ready to go. So much the better. Now the "coverage" is complete - i.e. no cardboard or newspapers showing. Now just a matter of gradually building up the layers, aiming for October planting readiness.