Toads Drink Coffee

The Perils of Pride

2012-02-09T14:53:00.000-06:00

This week (Feb 6) TheNew Yorker published a humorous essay – “Flight of the Concord” by Jeremy Denk, a classical pianist. It’s not about the French Concorde, nor the Flight of the Conchords, the crazy New Zealand music-comedy duo – it refers to a sonata by Charles Ives and Denk writes about the perils of the recording studio. Really worth reading, even for folks who have no idea what it means to "lay a track."

A critic heard Denk play Concord and insisted he needed to record it; “You’re having A Moment with it, and one never knows how long such things last.” Suddenly, Denk is prey to the idea that he can do this better than any other. And maybe he even did. He writes, “You might imagine that making a recording is a lovely occasion: you go to the studio with your entourage; there is banter; you lay down tracks, locate our groove; the producer gasps in admiration…”

It’s that gasp of admiration I recognize. Denis gave me one at supper last night, about a pretty little thing. I’d gone to the kitchen about an hour before, looked in the pantry, pulled out wild rice, dried apricots and cranberries, a few other ingredients, toasted some pecans and dished up a savory main-dish salad. It gave me a flash of pleasure for having hit it just right. But that he concurred? Even better.

Is this universal? That we have moments of thinking we can distill 50 lifetimes of thought and practice into X better than anyone else? I don’t think it’s wrong to find genuine pleasure in doing something well, or in receiving recognition for it, but I think my problem is hungering for that gasp because it cancels a sense of self-doubt. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s a sneaky form of pride.

Bruce Ray Smith’s insights during his battle for humility at least give me hope that I’m not alone in the struggle to ferret out the wounded pride that just crops up everywhere – in writing, raising children, or just living. I even want someone to tell me how well I pay the bills! In WinterLight, He writes,

“As for my pride, what is it I renounce? Myself: that grand self I imagined, an illusion, something which does not exist.

I said no, I am saying no, to nothingness.”

And so, as we head over to a L’Abri conference that begins tomorrow morning I will be aware of that Grand Self that accompanies me. We will listen to a roster of eloquent speakers, people who love God and love to love people. One of my heroes, Jerram Barrs, will be there. I will plunk myself down among folks who’ve seen every relevant movie, read all books published in the last decade, understand quantum physics and how it applies to postmodern art – and oh, they can also remember all the details – but I will admonish the Grand Self, “You’re listening to a demented voice. They haven’t. They don’t. We all have broken hearts and that’s what this Christian thing is about. We can’t fix ourselves, but we can get a few pointers on which way to go for help.

Honeysuckle and son drink together

2012-01-31T11:42:00.000-06:00

And so it goes. Unquenchable thirst. On and on and on and on. Two of Honeysuckle's sons are left. Jack-in-the-Pulpit awaits his new home. Jake and Joie Meador will be here for the L'Abri conference Feb. 17 and 18 and he will go home to Lincoln with them. Blackberry, the remaining son does not have a home yet. So if there is anyone out there who would like a clever little guy who can nibble your shoes and eat your apple cores and jump a barrier all at the same time ... you may apply for ownership.

Life is like this:

2012-01-20T14:10:00.000-06:00

Our six-year-old granddaughter, Paige-y, came home from school the other day and told her mom she had the worst day of her life. When asked why, she replied that on the school bus on the way to school she had eaten her snack. She said, “It looked so good, I ATE it.” So when snack time came around she had nothing. Thus: “The worst day EVER!”

At the end of the day, with no one to blame but ourselves, when we find our snacks are gone, we are often mysteriously blessed with mothers who replace them overnight.

Illuminating the unknown way

2012-01-16T10:22:00.000-06:00

We have friends, David & Naomi Wenger, friends I’ve never met, who direct TheHermitage – a place of rural beauty in southern Michigan. A place of retreat, prayer, silence. In their recent letter Living the Hermitage Way, David wrote these words which I would like to heed and apply. Perhaps you would, too. And though it sounds simple , – “we don’t need to hold on to our work, we simply do it” – I must often, a hundred times a year, try to reestablish the rhythm of work and rest that God prescribes for my life, which, of course, is going to look different from yours.

A recent volunteer likened The Hermitage to a dairy farm. He said the rhythm here is as steady as a farmer’s milking schedule and the work is never done. He asked the question we hear repeatedly, “How do you do it all?” Of course, the answer is, “We don’t do it all.” But still, we do plenty. So when pressed further we go on to say, “We begin each day in the chapel with Morning Prayer, we stop our work and eat at regular intervals, we take a walk, we sit still, we finish our work at 5:30 and leave what is undone for another day. We take a weekly Sabbath, we

sometimes leave our work for others to tend and go on retreat and vacation.”

It often feels like an unsatisfactory answer. How can any of these practices contribute to getting things done?

The Hermitage Affirmation prayer liturgy refers to this rhythm of being as a “framework to live our discipleship.” The framework provides an order in which to move through our days; it is the liturgy of ora et labora, prayer and work. Whether our morning liturgy (meaning “work of the people”) is in a barn with cows or a chapel with candles and scripture, there is a comfort to rhythm that quells the troubling thought, that illuminates the unknown way, that quiets the excess of demands. The familiar framework holds us so we don’t need to hold on to our work. We simply do it.

Thank you, David and Naomi.

Ten favorite moments of 2011

2012-01-09T18:53:00.001-06:00

1. When Anita walked in and announced, “Honeysuckle had ten babies last night!”

2. Learning that people who hate cilantro lack an enzyme which makes it taste like soap. Too bad.

3. On a day when Ransom’s coffers are dry; a large-ish check arrives to help out with bills.

4. Ava Lou, our two-year-old granddaughter, empties all the salt and pepper from the shakers, then eats most of it.

5. When Denis learned he’d brushed his teeth after I’d dropped the toothpaste container in the toilet.

6. The William Baffin Climbing Rose is climbing and blooming 4 weeks after being planted.

7. Harvesting, shucking, processing three wheel barrel-loads of our own sweet corn at Heartbeet Farm’s.

8. Pulling a volunteer marijuana plant nearly as tall as me from the sidewalk flowerbed and using it to garnish a mojito for Sandy O.

9. Watching the The Princess Bride with seven-year-old grandson, who thought it sounded like “a movie for girls!”

10. That Jesus loved me even as I envied someone with a perfect life and hair.

Honeysuckle's naked bunny babies

Ava tries on her mom's mascara

Denis shucks corn

Mint mojito

Toad Hall painted

New Year - with Leonard Cohen

2012-01-03T11:54:00.000-06:00

January 1. 2012. Am still alone. In the quiet of this evening spent with Leonard Cohen watching the concert video again – Live in London. Cohen is in his 70s, a gracious man, and this is obvious as he kindly and often turns to members of his band to praise and introduce them. It's uncanny. His smile is so like Jerram Barrs, another hero of mine. I’ve always loved his music from the first time I heard Suzanne Takes You Down years ago, sung by a young woman who lived in our commune. It was so different from the Christian choruses I grew up with, or any other music for that matter – it was mysterious, sexual, beautiful.

This concert is filled with common Grace and Truths that are powerfully strung in Cohen’s poetry and music. Though I’m quite sure he doesn’t share my faith, still through his art, he does me great goodness. I am linked to spiritual concepts that can sound weak and boring if I tell you them outright. Like: “Believe me, one day things will be different. Jesus is coming back to fix things.” Well, yes. He is. And I believe it, but how to express it?

When I listen to Cohen sing one particular song - Democracy everything together – the inexorable rhythm, the drum of time, the lyrics, the wind instruments that march on, the voice harmonies that rise – I sense in its richness this is a little like how the Holy Spirit might come to us. On the day when Jesus returns, when all injustice, and illness, and the poverty of people, and the dearth of shelter and love, and the corruption of nations; people everywhere will see that Someone coming through all the static. If “Democracy” is what this poet wants to call it, that’s okay. But, to me, “Democracy” speaks of Christ. About the longing to have things be right, of being human and made whole in our essential selves, our bodies, in our loves, “We'll be going down so deep / the river's going to weep, / and the mountain's going to shout Amen!”

Perhaps you’ll give his work a listen one day and join me in my obsession?

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.

It's coming from the feel

that this ain't exactly real,

or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.

From the wars against disorder,

from the sirens night and day,

from the fires of the homeless,

from the ashes of the gay:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;

on a visionary flood of alcohol;

from the staggering account

of the Sermon on the Mount

which I don't pretend to understand at all.

It's coming from the silence

on the dock of the bay,

from the brave, the bold, the battered

heart of Chevrolet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,

the holy places where the races meet;

from the homicidal bitchin'

that goes down in every kitchen

to determine who will serve and who will eat.

From the wells of disappointment

where the women kneel to pray

for the grace of God in the desert here

and the desert far away:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on

O mighty Ship of State!

To the Shores of Need

Past the Reefs of Greed

Through the Squalls of Hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,

the cradle of the best and of the worst.

It's here they got the range

and the machinery for change

and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

It's here the family's broken

and it's here the lonely say

that the heart has got to open

in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.

O baby, we'll be making love again.

We'll be going down so deep

the river's going to weep,

and the mountain's going to shout Amen!

It's coming like the tidal flood

beneath the lunar sway,

imperial, mysterious,

in amorous array:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean

I love the country but I can't stand the scene.

And I'm neither left or right

I'm just staying home tonight,

getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags

that Time cannot decay,

I'm junk but I'm still holding up

this little wild bouquet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Faithful in All he does

2012-01-01T21:23:00.000-06:00

One of Honeysuckle's boys falls asleep in the stable.

Today didn’t seem like Sunday, January 1, 2012. I’m without a car – holed up in Toad Hall. Feeding Honeysuckle and the last two boys left in her litter, drinking red wine and eating chocolate by myself. Denis is in St. Louis and Anita is visiting Marsena in Chicago. I stayed home from church. I could have called a friend to pick me up, but I was not feeling my best, so just as well. No! ONE glass of wine does nothing except be “good for the stomach.”

I suppose a lot of us have fleeting urges to review and reflect. I do. But I learned long ago that making New Year’s resolutions is plain stupid. It’s not that I don’t try. Anyway, since there was no one around to blame for my adult attention deficits, I settled down with coffee to reflect and write.

One of the important things to came out of this is a Psalm I’ve probably read dozens of times, but today it sounded all new and like I should read it everyday this year so I can remember what it says. Here is part of Psalm 33:

For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all [All!] he does.

The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full [Full!] of his unfailing love.

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth – he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.

No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength.
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.

We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.”

I think the death and famine David writes of could be both literal and not. That in life, things, dreams, hopes, not just bodies, die. Jobs vanish. Friends move away. Families disappear or never were. We are often famished for people and things we can’t reach, or don’t have. Death and famine can make me everything from desperate to numb to hungry to resigned. God knows this about us. That’s why he is so careful and caring to give us words like these that reorient our hearts and reflect realities we often forget. I’m hungry for words such as these – for help. It is God who keeps us alive, who is unfailing in his love for us.

This past year I reckon there were many ways in which God met us unexpectedly both in famine and in death. I was given things I don’t deserve. I was loved by people who I think, if only they knew me better… well, some do know and still. I’ve found things I thought were lost forever. I’ve heard music that made my stunted little Presbyterian heart rock ‘n’ roll. It seems a little ridiculous to keep on listing. But I’ve made my private account of the times. I’m keeping a record and I’m trying to be thankful for once. It’s scary to wait for God, to be patient, but it’s what I want to do.

A lot of friends read this blog, and I think of you, and of others I may not know. What I wish for you and pray is that you would find that this year – in ways you can’t imagine now – that God is with you in all your days and that he will save you not in the way you expect, perhaps, but in ways that will cause you to know that he is the one who loves you most and can make you live.

Gluten-Free Coconut Macaroons

2011-12-27T11:07:00.000-06:00

Today I’m cleaning out the crumbs of sweets left from the holidays. Tossing the dried out coffee cake from Christmas morning, the shortbread is in the freezer, and I’m undecided about the coconut macaroons. Maybe I’ll just let them be in the refrigerator a little longer. I may need a teeny little sugar high.

One of the candies I forced my children to tithe after Halloween was Mounds Bars. Mounds Bars always get me with their creamy milk chocolate covering that sinks under your teeth and mashes into the soft white inside. Bits of it stick in your teeth for hours waiting to be horsed out for further enjoyment. It’s never clicked that I could make coconut macaroons myself. Maybe because most homemade or purchased macaroons are like choking down cattail fuzz with dried broom grass. So it was only this year that I decided to research and try them, mostly because (she says) it’s a treat that can be given to friends who need to stay gluten-free.

I know we’re all probably sick to death of Christmas cookies and candies. I pretty much am. But if I don’t post this now, I’ll forget. And who knows? You may need something for a New Year’s Eve party.

I fell in love with this dangerous recipe from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, because it is very easy and tastes way better than any I’ve ever had. The coconut base is moist and tender, crispy on the outside and you can either drizzle or dip them in a perfect coat of chocolate. Her way of making chocolate glaze is genius: another no-fail idea to use for other recipes that require a chocolate glaze.

Chocolate-Covered Coconut Macaroons
Adapted from Bon Appétit (September 2002) and the Marigold Kitchen of Madison, Wisconsin

3 cups (lightly packed) sweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup egg whites (about 5 or 6 large)
1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
¼ tsp almond extract (I leave this out. Not a fan of almond extract.)
8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
3/4 cup heavy cream

Place the first three ingredients in a heavy saucepan, and stir to combine well. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring regularly, about 10-12 minutes, until the mixture is pasty but not dry. (It will look sort of granular at first, then creamy as it heats, and then it will slowly get drier and drier. Stop cooking when it no longer looks creamy but is still quite gluey and sticky, not dry.) Remove from heat. Mix in vanilla and almond extracts. Spread out the coconut mixture on a large baking sheet. Refrigerate until cold, about 30 minutes. (Don’t skip this step – it makes it so much easier to handle.)

Line another baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a ¼-cup measuring scoop, scoop and pack the coconut mixture into domes, and place them on the baking sheet. (I use my hands. You can also make them smaller.) You should wind up with about a dozen. Bake at 300 degrees until the macaroons until golden, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool. You can even bake them a little longer if you like them a little more crisp on the outside.

Set cookies on rack over a rimmed baking sheet. Place the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl. Heat the heavy cream in a small saucepan until it is very hot and steamy (not boiling), remove from the heat, and pour it over the chocolate. Whisk until the mixture is smooth and the chocolate is thoroughly melted. Spoon the glaze over the macaroons, covering them almost completely and allowing the chocolate to drip down the sides. [You will have leftover glaze, which can be refrigerated or frozen.] Refrigerate the macaroons until the glaze sets, at least 2 hours. Transfer the macaroons to an airtight container, and refrigerate or freeze.

Merry Berry Bunny Christmas

2011-12-20T17:41:00.000-06:00

Honeysuckle’s babies are fully furred out and the black ones are getting a silver undercoat. We have a lot of trouble focusing on work these days. We must say how cute they are about a hundred times a day.

We had to move that wooden box farther away from the barrier because they quickly learned to hop up on the stool, to the box, over the barrier, onto the chair and down on the other side. They were spending about half their time on OUR side, and any time you stepped onto the porch those who weren't already there came over to greet you.

They love to mob your feet, be cuddled and petted, but we suspect they only associate us with anything salad-y. They're like a wolf pack - attacking food, gorging on carrots, apples, and any amount of kibble we care to offer.

I’ve posted four new videos and you can also watch them on youtube. No thanks necessary. My gift to you. They will make you or - if you have them - your children happy. Have a blessed Christmas. It's time to kick back.

Bunny darts. Constant, incessant activity.

We gave them high bush cranberries branches I found in the woods. They attack them like little sharks.

More berry eating. The berries pop when the eat them.

I love hearing the click, click, click of the bottle when they are drinking and watching the little pink tongue dart in and out.

We were obsessing about what kind of homes they’d go to and Anita was advertising on Craig’s List. Both of us were worried, and yes, we were praying about who would get them. She received a call from two women who are friends who live on nearby farms. Well, sort of farms. One of them has raises llamas and the other one has a sort of everything farm from kids to cashmere goats. So nine of Honeysuckle’s babies are going to these two places. (Check out Nellie’s blog – Farmovation.) One of them came over last night to meet the bunnies and we sat on the kitchen floor while the babies darted around, leaping one another, nibbling our shoes, and being so dang cute we almost cried.

There won’t be a need for background checks and no-fly list investigations. They’re going to fine. In fact, more than fine. Nelly was wondering if they should place their hutches so they have a view, as in, do they like to look at things or will they be okay in the barn.

I was thinking about the hymn … “all creatures of our God and King, lift up your voices now and sing…” We were doing a little of that. They leave the day after Christmas and the only thing we won’t miss is the the fact that their poops have risen from the size of Grape-nuts to golf balls. Multiplied by 11 and factor in a 50% miss-the-litter-box number and you might be able to visualize our back porch.

The Nutmeg of Consolation

2011-12-07T20:12:00.000-06:00

In my kitchen there is a whole nutmeg that’s been hanging around for a long time. I move it from the chopping board to the window sill to a little pottery dish. I am loathe to throw it away even though it may be too old to grate and get any spice out of it at all. I pick it up and roll it between my thumb and fingers. It it a beautiful, hard little nut about two thirds the size of a truffle. (I can compare anything to chocolate in some form.) Pebble smooth. Half butter-brown, half burnt sienna. It has a design, as if the author was beginning to spin a symbol or paint a scene upon it. Fascinating. It reminds me of … good things.

Today, in a piece I wrote for The Washington Institute of Faith, Culture,and Vocation, where good friend, Steven Garber writes and works and has his being, I reflected on something called “The Nutmeg of Consolation” and related it to Simeon in the book of Luke – of whom it is written that he was “waiting for The Consolation of Israel.” This has always intrigued me. It seems to me that in life we need consolation from or in so many things. Even if unspoken, we look around in the corners of our life, in the rooms where we live, in the people we know, hoping for comfort. Here was a man who lived in waiting for many, many years, looking for The One, peering into the faces and arms of those who crowded through the courts of the temple.

At the end of the piece, I quote from a book by Patrick O’Brian, who wrote a series of sea-faring novels set in the early 1800s. I love them and their characters. The Nutmeg of Consolation is both the name of a ship and a piece of music. In rare moments of peace, Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon, played duets on the violin and cello. On one such occasion Aubrey asks Maturin, “I dare say, what was that last piece?”

Maturin’s reply: “Nutmeg of Consolation.”

Aubrey thinks about this and says, “That’s it. Those were the very words hanging there in the back of my mind. What a glorious name for a tight, sweet, newly-coppered broad-buttock little ship – a solace to any man’s heart... Dear Nutmeg. What joy.”

Yes. What joy to know it is coming. The Consolation of Israel will hove into sight, his sails sheeted to the wind, and you cast-away on an island without hope of rescue. That, my friends, is Divine. To read the entire piece – go here.

Honeysuckle's babies eat kale

2011-11-30T13:05:00.000-06:00

Four weeks old, thriving and surviving the cold nights. Well, not that cold for November. One of the black ones is the biggest of the ten. We called him Lardo until Anita renamed him Clover. The tiniest one is Iris. She has struggled to thrive and has received special attention, often being carried about in Anita’s bunny bag. She is content to snuggle and sleep in a dark warm place and then comes out to explore. She prefers the Mac and is already good at word processing.

They love kale and carrots and eat their kibble like there is no tomorrow.

The video here is kinda long, but it’s free antidepressant. It's meditation. Zen. Try it. You’ll feel better if you don’t have a heart attack from too much cuteness. http://youtu.be/M-cjep1GU9Q

Eat your carrots

2011-11-23T17:00:00.000-06:00

Honeysuckles baby bubbies are thankful for carrots every day, not just on Thanksgiving. We are giving thanks for a lot of things. Good friends for the weekend. A daughter coming home. Orange cranberry relish and a brined turkey. But topping the list - God's little creatures that delight and make us think heaven will be filled with them.

Honeysuckle's Babies at Day 17

2011-11-16T18:54:00.000-06:00

All the babies have opened their bright little eyes now and are starting to venture out of the nest. TEN balls of fuzzy cuteness. Surely heaven will be filled with bunnies.

Restore my soul

2011-11-14T15:35:00.000-06:00

This morning I woke to the sound of nothing. I could see the sun had risen and our small bedroom window framed the barren, black branches of an oak. Denis was still asleep when I left the room to make coffee.

Two days ago we left behind most of our work and some of our worries for a retreat at a far place. Kaufman’s little cabin sits at the end of a grassy track on the tip of a small peninsula ringed with oak, white pine and balsam. The lake was still this morning with little ice panes growing out from shore.

For the first two days we haven’t said much. Just existing side by side, eating, sleeping, slipping away the hours with reading and walks. My soul is being jake braked like a semi truck. The mind and body protest a little when you stop that fast.

I’ve tried to prepare myself for this away time by remembering my own advice: You should do everything you can to include regular rhythms of rest in your life. A day, a week, or longer. Not only does this honor Jesus, it honors your body, your heart and whoever lives or walks beside you. You will be more whole. You will see that, amazing though it is, the world will survive without you. As Tim Keller points out, “At some point you will have to trust God and honor Jesus – who is Lord of the Sabbath – by practicing Sabbath and risk “falling behind” in your career.”

There’s never an ideal or best time to go away. One must intentionally leave things that cry out: “Deal with me NOW or else.” I need to see that leaving those things is a matter of obedience. In doing so we acknowledge that it is God who calls us away to a place where, surprise, surprise, we find freedom in Sabbath rest.

I know how difficult this is for many. I think of mothers with little ones, for anyone with a loved one in crisis, for employees or employers whose careers require everything. My prayers are for you.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll know I’m away and understand why I can’t give you Honeysuckle updates. I know how disappointing this is and how severely crippling this will be to my blog hits. Anita has promised to post to my blog mid-week with photos of the babies. We are missing their eyes opening, their ears lifting and the change from naked little bratwursts to furry creatures so cute you could eat them.

Bunny dreams

2011-11-05T14:23:00.000-05:00

One week old! They're getting fuzz and their ears are unfolding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1oAIAes_uc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Note one little monkey face, his teeth showing, dreaming of carrots and cartoons.

Father Heathcliff.

Get Off!

Honeysuckle - hungry mother eats a cracker

2011-11-04T13:33:00.001-05:00

Honeysuckle took awhile to accept motherhood, but now she is doing great. However, just like any mother of multiples, she needs frequent breaks in the chill of the back porch and indulgences like apple slices, carrot tops, AND occasionally one of my special crackers for which she is so greedy she becomes a galloping white nightmare, chasing you around the kitchen.

Watch her eat her snack here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnmHtOrb6-w

I thought you might also like to see her nest with the babies in it. It is all soft and fluffy and lined with her own wool. As all mother rabbits will do, she pretends they don't exist and rarely feeds them in front of us. Yet we can tell she's been nursing because the babies have transparent round bellies that roll to the side when we pick them up, like they've swallowed a little white bouncy-ball.

Watch them here: They squeak!

Honeysuckle has NINE!!!

2011-10-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

She did it!! This morning about 4:30 Anita was awakened by little squeaks. She has temporarily moved the hutch into her studio because nights are getting cold and sometimes does give birth on the hutch floor, which means the babies need to be quickly moved into the nest so they don’t die from exposure. They are born fur-less and blind. When she turned on the light, there was Honeysuckle, cleaning up baby bunnies. We are happy to report that she is calm, eating carrot tops and doesn't mind if we touch them.

Suddenly having NINE grand-bunnies is making Anita act (or at least feel) like she's eaten ten pounds of white sugar. Especially telling since she’s thinking of passing out cigars.

Of course worries aren’t over. Will Honeysuckle actually NURSE them? There have been calls MaryLou, the very expert breeder and owner of Honeysuckle’s Heathcliff and now a friend to Anita – Marylou is reassuring like a La Leche League coach talking to a new mom. She says that rabbits nurse very quickly. They instinctively do not spend much time hovering over the nest for fear of predators. So they hop on, the babies bounce up and grab a faucet, get a few sucks, and in a seconds mom is gone. However, if it doesn't look like the babies have fed by tonight then Honeysuckle may need a little encouragement about latching on and even get a dose of oxytocin to get things started. So we’ve calmed down a little.

We have a plan in place and if their little bellies are not round by bedtime, Anita and I will hold her and put the babies on the nipples two by two.

And furthermore, we WILL NOT think about what the back porch will look like in a month if all nine babies survive. We will try to get some videos up soon.

Cannibal Jack

2011-10-28T12:42:00.000-05:00

We have a challenge. Denis is supposed to carve a jack-o’-lantern with a theological theme. Anita is going to do a bunny-pumpkin. I did mine last night - a cannibalizing zombie eating one of our pie pumpkins. I think it will win. We have friends coming from NY who, I’ll bet will be impressed with our level of sophistication. They will judge.

This year I saved the seeds and roasted them. It’s easy to do. They are really addictive and good for fiber and lowering cholesterol. This will help balance out the left-over treats, I plan to eat this year. I always debate: should I buy crap candy so I won’t be tempted to eat what doesn’t get passed out. Or buy what I love so I can treat myself for days following. The basket with mini-Hershey bars, Peanut Butter Cups and Mounds Almond Bars are waiting by the front door.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Put the seeds in a colander and rinse them. Pick out the larger bits of pumpkin innards.

Place them in a baking pan. (I use my largest cast iron skillet for this.)

Drizzle 1 T. olive oil.

Sprinkle with salt to taste.

Place in 350 degree oven for 18 minutes. Stir. Check degree of crispness. If not crunchy, bake for another 10 minutes or until desired crunch is reached.

Just these two pumpkins made about 3 cups of roasted seeds.

Honeysuckle doesn't tell

2011-10-24T17:19:00.000-05:00

We’re there again. Not knowing. Feeling her belly. Are they babies or feces? Three weeks ago she spent a happy weekend with Heathcliff. But whether she’s actually pregnant or not, we don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know either, she’s so demure. But she’s ready. She refuses to use her littler box having turned it (all on her own) into a nest once again:

She worked so hard trying to pull the curtains down that Anita took pity and gave her some rags and wads of sheep’s wool. She seemed so grateful and spent a long time, as mothers will, arranging and rearranging the environment. For added affect she placed a piece of the wool rug in the corner.

Her wool has grown so long, she can barely clean herself. She’s overdue for a shearing, but we hesitate just in case. She will need some of it to line the nest on delivery day. Today we gave her a little trim and cut a basketful off her belly and ruff. There’s still plenty left for her to pull, but she is looking at it like “How dare you!”

If (big if) this is going to happen it will be sometime this weekend. If it doesn’t we may require emergency therapy for dashed hopes. Like large quantities of chocolate, mashed potatoes and many episodes of Project Runway.

P.S. She has two litter boxes. The 2nd one is on the floor of porch, she uses it in a randomly scattered rabbity fashion.

The rhythm of rest

2011-10-18T10:53:00.000-05:00

After market on Saturday, after sorting the vegetables, and fixing a late breakfast, I decided to stay away from the office. When work and office are at home it can be hard to leave it alone. Survival means doing things that need no justification. We should watch birds. Nap. We should make things. Something beautiful from stone or wool or flowers. Unnecessary. It should have no reason to exist other than to please the looker. It’s part of rest and restoration.

I remembered a neighbor lady whose entire yard is ringed with hydrangea shrubs. I wondered if she would part with some of those enormous round blossoms that turn minty green and rust in the fall. Kismet! She was in her yard when we drove past and generously let us have as many as we wanted. (We keep a pair of clippers in the car because you never know when you’ll find weeds that must be gathered, like teasel or cattails.)

For years an old butter churn sat in the laundry room, falling apart, gathering spider webs. I had no use for it, but couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t know why it took so long to understand it could hold a fall arrangement on the front porch. I glued parts together, tightened the screws and waited for it to dry. I put a brick in the bottom to hold it down when the wind blows and stole some of Honeysuckle’s sawdust bedding for ballast. I didn’t have much to work with. The fragile mounds of hydrangea blossoms needed contrast so the dark cattails tucked in among them lifted the design, but it still needed something. I couldn’t think what until I spied a small set of deer horns that had hung on a nail in the garage for years. Somehow it worked. The creamy hardness of the horns hanging down. Their pointy-ness. The jest of it. It’s part of rest and restoration.

Coffee. Obscurantum-itis.

2011-10-14T15:49:00.000-05:00

Explaining the odd name of this blog. We live at Toad Hall. We drink coffee, nay, love it. So in a way … I know, you get it. So….. coffee….

Yesterday, I awakened despondent and wordless. (mainly vacation-needy) I know some writers make best-selling novels out of the bleak and pathetic. I only manage to stare out the window. When I mentioned to Denis that all I wanted in LIFE was a cappuccino from Kopplin’s, he said, go, even though it’s in St. Paul – 90 minutes from where we live.

In the warm wool of a coat found at the thrift store, in the white feather-fern across the surface of my coffee, to the sound of leaves kicking along the avenue, and from the blue Mississippi lined with golden trees beneath the arches of the 35^th street bridge, I detect beams of Sabbath. Which I seem to need more of these days. Leisure is a necessity.

If Denis had not given me the gift of insisting I go, I wouldn’t be reminded of why I think Kopplin’s makes the best coffee anywhere. I love him. Denis.

Quotes from The Dirty Life

2011-10-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

This book by Kirstin Kimball made the Toad Hall Gift List this year, deciding which teaser quote to include was hard. Here are a couple that were too lengthy, so as not to waste them: here they are. Consider buying her book or giving it as a gift.

The following was a discussion I recognize - it was one Denis and I had any number of times, especially during our early years when people thought we were crazy to do what we were doing, too. And sometimes we were.

When we’d talk about our future in private, I would ask Mark if he really thought we had a chance. Of course we had a chance, he’d say, and anyway, it didn’t matter if this venture failed. In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don’t measure things like that with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction you thought was right. This sounded extremely fishy to me. (p. 77)

There is a certain insanity that takes us, for me, it happens when I walk into a yarn shop, or the florist warehouse in Minneapolis, and yes, when the seed catalogs arrive in the spring. I must force myself to turn away or leave if we are going to have money for groceries.

If it had been left up to me, we would have grown one of everything from the catalogs that year. In the winder squash section along, I underlined twelve intriguing varieties, including Candy Roaster, Turk’s Turban, Pink Banana, and something called Galeux d’Eysines, which the text told me meant “embroidered with pebbles.” The herb sections made me completely nuts. How could you NOT order one packet each of saltwort, sneezewort, motherwort, and Saint-John’s-wort, plus a sample of mad-dog skullcap, which the text said was once a folk remedy for rabies? At a buck a pop, how could you go wrong? The whole trick of seed catalogs is that they come into the house in winter, when everything still seems possible and the work of growing things is too far in front of you to be see clearly. Luckily, Mark knew this and had quietly retrieved my list and crumpled it up, so the box that arrived at our door contained the seeds of edible things that are general liked by humans, a reasonable number of varieties, and nothing that ended in wort. We sorted through the packets, separating those that would be direct-seeded in the field from those that needed to be started early, in a greenhouse, in a few short weeks. We did not have a greenhouse, but building one was on the list. (p. 119)

This is Frieda. She's not from Kimball's farm in NY but, still. She represents another Dirty Life, with our friends at Easy Yoke Farm here, in Minnesota. She's beautiful, isn't she?

Pasteurized Processed Cheese Spread

2011-10-05T13:52:00.000-05:00

I follow the “Amish Cook,” a syndicated column written by Lovina Eicher, an Old Order Amish woman and mother of eight children living in Michigan. There is nothing special about her writing, as it is nearly always a mere accounting of what the family is doing: what daughter is hanging laundry or sweeping the kitchen, the menu when they visited sister Emma and husband Jacob, what is being grown or canned from the garden, who is cleaning the barn. I think my fascination is with the life they lead, which we think of as simple, or plain, as they would say, but it is no romantic dream-deal.

I also mistakenly assumed the Amish are as strict with their eating as they are with their dress. But in this they’re like a lot of ordinary folk: big on sugar and white bread. I wait for mildly shocking recipes like this.

Church Cheese Spread

6 pounds Velveeta cheese

1 ½ cups butter

8 cups cream

Put everything in a roaster and bake at 200 degrees, stirring every 15 minutes until melted. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent from getting crusty top as it cools. Serve on a sandwich with or without meat.

This was made in large quantity for the lunch after a church service. Once or twice a year each family in the community must take a turn hosting the church service on their farm.

I don't know what they're saying

2011-09-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

This week, for one thing, Honeysuckle did not have babies. After all that fussing around. We’re disappointed. I know her followers will be, too. We don’t know what to think. Someone suggested fertility treatment. But couldn’t that result in multi-multiple birth and rather than the normal dozen or so, we’d end up with 25 babies?

For another thing, the ceiling in my office leaked onto my bookshelves. So why was it we got a NEW roof at huge expense this summer? It’s fixed now, we hope, but the ceiling remains discolored and cracked. Not that I look up much.

There were other things, like there not being enough money in Ransom’s account to pay our salary this month.

In spite of the everyday nuttiness of life and other more serious matters, we are leaving it behind for the weekend. The drive to Chicago will be a little space apart and seeing the golden colors of fields and forests rolling past will have a soothing effect. As we pass over the Mississippi River we’ll imagine what it would be like to live at the top of a bluff overlooking The River, watching seasons and barges float past without a care in the world. The time in Chicago spent with our dear, oldest daughter, and visiting The Aunt, and seeing the Avett Brothers in concert (tickets bought long ago when times were fatter) … all this should give us time to regain touch with the source of our strength:

Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior,

and my hope is in you all day long. (Psalms 25:4, 5)

Whatever the pigs are saying, it, of course, can’t compete with the baby bunnies we were hoping to post. Perhaps the piggy grab-all-you-can-eat attitude is also a reminder that God feeds his children all the time despite our manners and always when we need it.

Cast Iron as wedding gift

2011-09-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

Dear Hannah,

In case you get cast iron that needs to be reconditioned, this is basically how I do it, although I’m no expert. There are other methods that work for people more safety conscious and capable than me. Like electrolysis.

This pan was reconditioned yesterday when I put it in the oven at the same time I ran the oven through its cleaning cycle. Depending on how much residue has formed over its life, the pan will come out covered with light ash and will look very rusty. You will be appalled, but this is GOOD, it will be down to the original surface. At least for the cast iron I have, this method has worked well. Yours came out beautiful.

Next step is to re-season it. First, clean off all the residue with Crisco or canola oil and paper towels. You will be anxious because so much blackened and rusty stuff comes off and you’ll wonder if it will ever be safe for anything edible. (Remember. Cast iron can become a small source of iron in the diet. Better, even healthy for you, unlike the shedding of toxic perfluorooctanoic acid [PFOA] from nonstick pans.) Keep applying the shortening until the towels are fairly clean. Wipe it off, then place it in the oven and turn the temp to 450 degrees. When it reaches that temp, turn the oven off. As soon as you the pan is cool enough to handle, reapply a light coat of Crisco and replace it in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Turn oven off and leave it in the oven to cool on its own. Wipe it out again. It’s now ready to use.

For the first few months, before you cook in it, always lightly grease it, and heat it on medium/low for five minutes as you get ingredients ready or post your fb status. This will help the seasoning process along and the surface improve – it will eventually become silky smooth. Then adjust the heat to whatever your dish requires. The more you use it, the better it will get. I promise.

If food has not stuck to the surface, cleanup only requires a quick swipe with a damp cloth or paper-toweling that leaves a very light coat of oil. If you make something that sticks, (some things will) don’t worry about scrubbing it hard. It can take it. I know a lot of folks say NEVER scrub it or use soap, but I do all the time- if needed. Before you put it away, make sure it drys, re-oil it, and put it on low again for a few minutes, and it will be ready for the next use.

Hannah, your cast iron skillet is a WagnerWare #5. Less than 8 inches max. I found it at a garage sale and hate to tell how little I paid for it, since it’s your wedding gift, and after all, you and Thomas are worthy of much more. Don’t know how old, but probably pre-1960’s. It is just right for sautéing onions and peppers, making a 3 egg omelet, or baking 3-4 apples. It will make awesome fry-basted eggs – that’s where you put in a teaspoon of butter, heat the pan, crack in the eggs, quickly add 1 T water and slam on a pot lid. Done to perfection in a couple minutes! No flipping necessary.

The About Margie on Margie's Stuff

2011-09-15T11:13:00.000-05:00

It’s a Friday morning in early Fall and I am on the cusp of going live with a new sub-site linked to Ransom Fellowship. Before that can happen, I need to write an About Margie.

… much later in the day. No closer to being done. I don’t like writing this page and find many excuses to procrastinate. Hours have slipped past, and now it’s time to make chile rellenos with the poblanos I roasted earlier today.

The first distraction of the day was addressing the problem of wild grapes intended for jelly, not the syrup they’ve become. One jar for pancake syrup is okay, but ten? No. I dumped them all back into a large saucepan and re-heated it to a boil, stirring, watchful, thinking. I decided to add more pectin to see if it would thicken up. Carefully, I mixed it with a little water, gradually added spoonfuls of hot grape syrup until I could gently pour it into the simmering pot so as not to create one giant grape clot. There was a slight delay and then mayhem. I’ve stirred down many a rolling boil in life, but this was quickly out of control and I was trying to calm Mount St. Helens with a wooden spoon. The frothing bubbles grew into a heaping mound above the pot while I frantically tried to jerk the pot off the burner. Too late. The purple lava flowed over the sides, onto the burner where it smelted to pure carbon, adding a stink to the air, before sinking into the dark recesses of the range, where I never go. Thirty minutes later the mess was cleaned up and the jelly re-cooked. While ladling into the first jar, I managed to pour an inferno on my thumb. This was too much. I was about to cry or break all the jars, when my lifetime collaborator walked into the kitchen and offered to help.

And since that’s where I’m headed ... I may as well state it: now, looking back, thinking forward, life has been and will always be a collaboration with my husband of many years and with others who have joined us along the way. Not that it’s been perfect by any means. But I can’t write about myself without including Denis – his love of me, of hospitality, of theology, the challenges of media and culture … together we’ve tried to live artfully and faithfully, welcoming into our home those who don’t necessarily think or act like Sunday School veterans. We’ve asked ourselves what it means to fully live in this world with it’s many wonders and troubles and yet offer the full story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation.

When I was younger, I fantasized about doing something sensational and heroic, I can’t even think what right now. But I’ve learned that living a life pleasing to God and one that’s unexpectedly fulfilling is found in the ordinary days of waiting for the kitchen floor to dry in lemon-scented swaths on cleaning day, of scanning a cookbook for an apple cake recipe, reading a novel, reconciling the checking account, raising children, serving friends and strangers around a table where we share life stories. In the most foundational way learning to see Christ’s presence in the midst of the most common events not just for others, but for myself.

In this rich scape, which can also be rocky and danger-filled, I’ve been writing about what's funny, what's holy, what's suffering, probably since before you were born. It would be nice to claim that a great deal of wisdom has been seived through life’s boil-overs and rare moments of triumph over fruit-fly infestations, but that might sound arrogant.

This is the direction I stumble in, believing a greater glory will one day be revealed.

P.S. You should also know we have three adult children who helped shape our lives. I’m crazy about them, their spouses, and our eight grandchildren. I was at one time a pre-med student. (Thankfully, God spared me a life he knew I couldn’t live. I learned this observing the punishing schedules of physician friends.) In another life I would be a stone mason or a gardener. I love coffee and chocolate. Currently, a dash of chronic illness seeps into my priorities, which is often why I don’t answer the phone. Don’t take it personal.

A friend told me this pic made me look like a Grandma Vampire wannabe. That wasn't what I was had in mind. But my apologies for constantly wearing black and looking like I might bite.

Honeysuckle and Heathcliff

2011-09-14T18:12:00.000-05:00

Three and a half weeks ago Honeysuckle went to her house of origin for a little visit while we were all out of town. Mary Lou, who raises angoras, asked Anita if she wanted to try to have Honeysuckle bred again. Remember last time she fought off every suitor, punching them in the face and biting their ears. She was not in the mood. This time she met Heathcliff, a peachy-colored fluffy, gentle kind of guy and he won her heart. Now we’re not SURE (The breeder said she was a little pudgy. Probably from eating my sandals, her latest craze. Hey, don’t pregnant females crave dill pickles) – but she WAS doing this the other day.

In about four days, we will know if it was all humbug.

Wedding Prayer

2011-09-12T12:11:00.000-05:00

We’ve just completed a season of weddings with two of them being this past weekend. The weather was perfect, for both were outdoors – a dicey factor anywhere, and an additional stress for mothers-of-bride who can be especially or insanely? obsessed with the perfection of details. All of the weddings were unique and beautiful from the easy-going bride who said, “whatever” to the one who said, “No one is ‘giving me away’ I’m giving Myself away!” The last wedding reflected an unusually strong (having survived challenges that would capsize most of us) and glorious bride who wanted the traditional Anglican ceremony and chose a deep red color for her gown.

Denis included this wedding prayer for the couple with slightly altered words from the original.

This blessing is full of reminders I need often – not just on Wedding Days. That night as we lay in bed together, I asked him to pray it again – for us – for Denis and Margie.

Eternal God,

Creator and preserver of all life, author of salvation, and giver of all grace:

Look with favor upon the world you have made, and for which your Son gave his life, and especially upon this man and this woman whom you have made one flesh.

Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy. Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other's forgiveness and yours.

Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.

Grant that all of us here will know something of your grace, O Father, who with your Son, and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns in perfect unity, now and forever.

We ask you to bless this marriage, and these two who form a family in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Honeysuckle destroys her hutch

2011-09-05T18:41:00.001-05:00

After a week (her first trimester?) of lethargy and fatigue, this girl needs something more constructive to do. I do, too. I promise to get around to it tomorrow. This is a holiday, after all. Any more quotes from The Enigma of Anger would just be another easy way out.

Honeysuckle with child?

2011-08-29T10:08:00.001-05:00

Honeysuckle eats her prenatal vitamins

Last weekend Honeysuckle met a gentle young buck and this may change her life, catapulting her into motherhood. She had steadfastly refused the advances of any other male, but this handsome fellow was irresistible. So rather than being punished for her naughty escape and being sent to bunny camp while we were away for the weekend, she was rewarded with a honeymoon. He is a soft fawn color, so if it truly “took” she could cast a multi-colored litter of baby bunnies in about three weeks. We’ll see. Earlier this summer she tricked us into thinking she was pregnant, but this time consummation was witnessed. We think she’s a little tired, off her feed, not up to her usual hoppy self – first trimester fatigue? Anita is hopeful. Female rabbits can be very good mothers, but it’s not guaranteed, especially with a first litter. They can deliver them on the hutch floor instead of the nesting box, leaving them to chill and die. They can ignore them altogether. Or if startled by a stranger they may even eat a few. Yes. Not a Mother Dearest. If Honeysuckle is successful, they will be for sale to special persons whose credit history, spiritual maturity, and pet ownership standards must first be scrutinized and then accepted. We will keep you posted.

Grief that never comes to sobbing

2011-08-24T11:56:00.000-05:00

It’s weird to think you must apologize for not blogging, but that’s what crossed my mind today and it makes me wonder why I should add this to my pantry of things purposed and failed. I’ve thought of postings that could have happened, like a photo of the huge marijuana plant that volunteered in our front yard. I left it there as a joke until I began to think of what ifs – what if law enforcement came by to question me, what if a passerby noticed and drew conclusions, what if I was tempted to harvest it? So I plucked it and held it up while Denis took a pic – it reached my nose – then I threw it in the compost. There are a collection of sound videos from Heartbeet Farm. One features the pigs talking. I wish I could write swinish dialogue for it, but am not that clever. I’ll post it soon and you can imagine your own.

I’m still slowly reading a book called The Enigma of Anger by Garret Keizer. If you receive Notes From Toad Hall you may be tired of my mentioning, but get used to it or go away because I’m not done yet. (Oh. Is that hostility? I make myself laugh.) There is so much that can be said about the topic and Keizer approaches the subject from many angles. He has some interesting and helpful insights, (though not all are equally so) and I was reminded of one yesterday when a pastor friend, Steve F. from New York, sent me a few of his favorite quotes from the book.

Here’s one that seemed significant and true to both of us, from our own and others’ lives we’ve observed:

“Many of our angry outbursts are the result of grief that never comes to sobbing.” p.113

As Steve says, “What will bring our griefs to sobbing? Perhaps when those who have wept already will weep with us, a flow of grace washes away the anger. And having wept our griefs, perhaps we may have the joy of that grace flowing into the lives of others. ‘Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.’ (Isaiah 53:4)”

Yes. I believe he has.

Naughty Bunny

2011-08-17T17:30:00.000-05:00

Honeysuckle escaped into the back yard and when Denis tried to catch her she ran under the porch where we can't reach. Back in the dense dirt where 20 generations of stray cats have deposited their litter, where we trapped three possum and where spiders and cenitpede freely reproduce. She was finally enticed out with a tortilla chip and was grabbed. She came out filthy and extremely annoyed. She's been sent to bunny camp for the weekend. There will be another report on her condition and punishment next Monday.

Make Pickles

2011-08-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

Saturday was our weekly trip to the Farmer’s Market. This week Daniel and Hannah of Easy Yoke Farm had set aside two boxes of pickling cucumbers. Anita is a pickle fanatic and needs lots. Jars and jars. I heard her barter a trade with them: this week she will weed their carrot patch in exchange for cucumbers, dill, garlic and onions. She did ask, how big is it? 40 acres? “Naw,” said Daniel, “that would be Joe’s patch.”

The recipe for garlic dill pickles calls for cucumbers to soak overnight in cold water, whereas the bread & butter pickles only need three hours in icy salt water. So we began. I love how cucumbers smell - clean and fresh - and how the sweet vinegary smell of the brine floods your nose and your hands get saturated with onions and garlic, so when you sleep at night with your hands under your cheek you dream of pickles. Denis joined the slicing and ladling of hot pickles into jars. About two thirds of the way through we realized we needed more jars and I was impatient with the dishwasher taking too long to sterilize another batch. So I grabbed them out saying, “I know. My mother did this.” All I needed was a shallow pan, so I put a cake pan on the electric burner turned on high, placed the jars upside down in two inches of water and waited for them to get really, really hot. Then I was like, wait. Who cares? This is PICKLING. The vinegar will kill anything that dares move. As they bubbled away, Denis picked the pints out one by one and filled them and Anita wiped the rims and put on the lids. Done! 24 jars!

Later, as we were cleaning up Anita was going to dump the water out of the cake pan, but found it oddly stuck to the burner. What the..? Denis tried prying it off and finally had to horse the burner up with the pan welded to the top. He managed to pop off the pan, but there was no saving either. So I no longer advise this method of “sterilizing” jars. Besides the risk, it isn’t very cost effective. And perhaps my mother DIDN’T do that. Perhaps I imagined it. Still, those pickles are really good and not that hard to make.

Go here to view album.

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Bread & Butter Pickles

4 quarts pickling cucumbers, sliced thin (cucumbers should be 5-6 inches long and not too fat)

3 c. onions, cut in half, thinly sliced

2-3 bell peppers (green or red)

3 cloves garlic thinly sliced

1/3 c. pickling salt

Mix together. Add salt. Cover with ice water. Soak for three hours.

Brine:

3 c. apple cider vinegar

5 c. sugar

2 T mustard seed

1 ½ t. celery seed

1 ½ t. turmeric

Heat together until it comes to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar.

Drain the cucumber mixture. Place in large stock pot (do not use aluminum).

Pour in the brine. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

While hot, ladle into jars and seal. Do not over-fill. Be sure brine covers the cucumbers.

Store after jars have cooled and sealed. Eat them as soon as you like, though pickle snobs wait for several weeks for them to thoroughly cure.

Honeysuckle throws the bus

2011-08-06T14:40:00.000-05:00

Honeysuckle does not like toys. At least not this one. Perhaps they remind her of children. Two little boys have kicked her. One little girl grabbed her by her ears and face wool and shook her face back and forth.

Take this tomato and eat it

2011-07-30T18:16:00.000-05:00

Today Denis and I made our usual Saturday morning trip to Farmer’s Market. It never gets old – the anticipation, the festive atmosphere, this season of knowing that for the rest of the week I’ll have a fresh supply of choice vegetables and herbs for our meals. Winter will be here soon enough when there’ll be no such thing as a fresh golden tomato. Or the blinding heat of the sun bouncing off the tops of awnings. Baskets, shelves, buckets groaning with mounds of vegetables, herbs, flowers. Vendors selling chicken, pork, beef, elk, buffalo most of it happy-meat. Hidden Stream Farm. Hillside Farm. Veerman’s Ranch. Many Hands Garden. Friendly Acres. The earthy, basil-ly scent in the air is killing, making me decide pesto pasta and fresh tomatoes will be on our menu this week. We pass a stand where they are grilling steak from grass-fed beef and handing out free samples. People of all ages and colors push past arms loaded with produce and bouquets of zinnias.

Denis and I head straight for Heartbeet Farm and Easy Yoke Farm stands. The owners are friends - two young couples – their land and lives connected by the same calling in life – to grow vegetables that are chemical-free and incomparable to anything I could buy at Hyvee. Recently we brought an evening meal out to the farm, and as the sun went down, sending dappled shadows across the yard, - those soft and tender rays that cool the last of the day - Daniel wanted to take us through the lanes to look at the fields and the land where he and Hannah hope to build their home. (Joe and Becca have been at it a little longer and are more established.) Over near that big tree in the pic below.

He showed us the onion field – 10,000 plants. Today I bought three.

I felt rich, rich as I unloaded all the vegetables to my kitchen counter. The tomatoes – purple heirlooms that Joe says have a slightly smoky flavor, and he’s right! The cherry golds so sweet it’d be easy to think of them as desert. We had eggs, scallions, Hungarian peppers, red pepper, green bell pepper, summer spinach (a broader leaf, tender and mild), celery (intense flavor), a bouquet of basil, two kinds of cucumber – small pickling cucumbers good for slicing with onion vinegar and oil in a simple salad and the long English cucumber for spear eating – and potatoes. Daniel was inspired to plant a few in the forest near the river bottom in the rich sandy soil, so of course: Forest Potatoes and he insists I tell the story of them. They taste real, honest, crisp. Quite amazing.

For lunch we ate a piece of wheat bread layered with Boursin cheese, thick-sliced tomato and basil leaves. I’m thinking of the same thing for supper.

John Stott: Gone

2011-07-28T16:17:00.000-05:00

John Stott died yesterday. He was 90 years old and had some years ago made the choice to retire completely from public life. (That is merely one evidence of his unusual wisdom and humility) His writing and life has influenced mine, like it has thousands of others. It wasn’t just the clarity of his exegetical Bible teaching, it was his example and pure delight in loving and caring for God’s creation. I’m sure there are already dozens, perhaps hundreds of memorials and obituaries going up for him and I don’t pretend to add anything profound. Only want to say I’m sad he is gone, but thankful for a life that served God and others so fully to the very end.

I remember when I was first introduced to his book Basic Christianity through Intervarsity when I was a student. I wasn’t interested in reading it because the title insulted me and so did the young man who suggested I read it. Who was John Stott, anyway? Basic Christianity?! As though having been raised in a Christian home and a pietistic church did not mean I had not committed more Scripture to memory than this young man had ever read?! Pish.

Then one day I picked it up and began to read and the claims of Christ became so radical and so living, it was like I’d never heard the Gospel. For one of the things John Stott insisted upon, was that unless we struggle to build bridges built between what the Bible says and the modern world, through having listened to and understanding the modern world, then all our religiosity, all our sermons and piety makes Christianity irrelevant to those who don’t believe. He claimed that our task is to demonstrate Christ’s relevance to the world through our lives.

Until then no one ever described Christ in a way that seduced me through love. He began a new way for me to think and live.

“There is in him no trace of the crank. He believes ardently in what he teaches, but he is no fanatic. His doctrine is unpopular, but he is not eccentric. There is as much evidence for his humanity as for his divinity. He gets tired. He needs to sleep and eat and drink like other men. He experiences the human emotions of love and anger, joy and sorrow. He is fully human, but He is no mere man.

“Above all, He was unselfish. Nothing is more striking than this. Believing himself to be divine, yet he did not put on airs or stand on his dignity. He was never pompous as men tend to be who think themselves greater than they are. There was no touch of self-importance about Jesus. He was humble. It is this paradox which is so baffling, the self-centeredness of his teaching and the unself-centeredness of his behavour. He combined in himself the greatest self-esteem and the greatest self-sacrifice. He knew himself to be the Lord of all, but he became the servant of all. … The essence of love is self-sacrifice. The worst of men is adorned by an occasional flash of such nobility, but the life of Jesus irradiated it with a never-fading incandescent glow. The conclusion of the matter is this: Jesus was sinless because he was selfless. Such selflessness is love. And God is love.”

Make me apologize

2011-07-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

Last night we had friends for dinner. Late afternoon, I made a strawberry soup for dessert. It’s mostly a glorified creamy smoothie with a sprig of mint and a sliced strawberry for garnish. Wonderful with field-picked strawberries. Most excellent served with a piece of dark chocolate. As I was washing out the blender I pressed a squirt of dish soap which normally sprays into the sink, but for some reason, it backfired across the counter and showered the individual servings with a bit of Dawn. I was very vexed and called Sandy in for a consult. I had already skimmed the surfaces and tasted one spoonful that had a drop of invisible soap, and if it wasn’t so hard to get down there, I would have writhed on the floor. (WHY do these things happen to me? Or do they to you, too, and you just don’t say?) Sandy is a nurse practitioner living in NZ, not to hold her moving away against her - she’s an awesome cook, too. She test-tasted, and said “Ahhhh, it’s good. It would be a shame to throw this. Serve it. No one will know.” I did, and later she was the only one to get a soap droplet in her serving.

Anita and I collaborated to make spring rolls – that delicious Thai appetizer, which to our unpracticed hands was like gluing double-stick tape on wet grass. With each one, they became more coherent until we had a tray of twenty. Ours held fresh mint, sprouts, avocado, shavings of beef, thin sticks of cucumber and CILANTRO in a paper thin rice wrapper, dipped in a peanut sauce - they are a perfect hot-day food. The combination of crunchy, soft, spicy, mild, chilled is… how did they think of this? In deference to Denis we made three without cilantro. He isn’t just phobic about this herb, which - I remind him - is used in all sorts of ethnic cuisine; he is aggressively hostile, claiming he can’t even stand the smell of it.

That came up during dinner, because we needed to mention that the ones pointed “that way” belonged to Denis who hates cilantro. I point this out, as if it’s a fault. Denis has so few I delight in obvious weakness. Among our guests was Larry, a physician. Each July he returns to Rochester from Mayo Clinic Scottsdale to do hospital service for a month. He’s a font of weird facts and arcane observations and declared that the hatred of cilantro is due to the lack of a certain inherited enzyme that leaves the inheritee thinking they’ve eaten soap or something disgustingly rotten. Now Denis demands I apologize for years of sneaking cilantro into things.

So here it is: Denis, I’m sorry for making fun of you for something you can’t help because you’re genetically deficient. I promise not to mention it again. I love you anyway. And if you tasted soap in your dessert last night, it wasn’t because I snuck in cilantro; it was just an accident. I hope one day a gene that causes accident prone-ness will be discovered.

Honeysuckle tricked us

2011-06-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

I know you people. You only check back here to see if I've posted something about Honeysuckle. Do you want to hear about good literature or gardening or how you should pray without ceasing? No. You want to hear about a bunny. So okay. You should know she isn't so great and we are currently deeply disappointed in her. We thought perhaps, maybe, after all, despite rejecting five handsome bucks, she was going to throw a litter. Perhaps, we thought, there was a secret love affair no one witnessed. Back home she was amazingly weird, possibly even matronly - refusing to use her litter box, dragging ribbons (one we'd accidentally left on the porch) into it, stuffing it with rags. When she was in the kitchen for her little visits she grabbed dish towels, cloths, a throw rug about three times her size and dragged them into the little half-bath, pushed them behind the toilet trying to make a nest. She seemed desperate. She was going to have babies and needed to be ready. We gently kneaded her belly, certain we could even feel them wiggling around. Her ten little breasties perked up. WE WERE SO CERTAIN, we changed our life and cancelled invitations just to be around at exactly 31 days and a few days beyond. (Rabbit gestation takes a month. Females rabbits are reflexive ovulators, which means ovulating only begins after mating. About ten to be exact. They can have anywhere from 4 to 12 babies. Now you understand the "they breed like rabbits" saying. Exactly.)

We waited days beyond any possibility. Hoping. But, no. What a disappointment.
[Oh, that urh, urh, urh sound is the sink drain gurgling, not someone chuckling.]

Honeysuckle gets a foot massage

2011-06-22T10:02:00.000-05:00

It's time for Honeysuckle to get another shearing. Her wool has grown out again and with the warmer weather she is panting and hot much of the time. She loves to be petted and sometimes we're too dang lazy to bend down and stroke her, so we just use a foot. There's a link between petting an animal and lowering your blood pressure and I don't think it matters what appendage you use. Another small pleasure in life. When we stop, she nuzzles under it telling you, you're such an idiot, don't stop now!

Toad Hall reflections

2011-06-16T16:33:00.000-05:00

The ladders are down. The painters have wrapped. I liked them – hard-working experts. It’s quiet around here this week, no more Talk Radio blasting outside. Our pockets are lighter but Toad Hall looks almost like a lady.

I was partial to Sherwin Williams but Denny, the Painter, prefered Hirschfields.

When we saw Bunny Cake (trim) and Spiced Carrot (accent) Honeysuckle voted with her teeth. For the main body (someone channeled Norwegian Settlers who couldn’t leave their fjords behind) Ocean Melody and Bowman Blue. I was a little crazy while choosing colors. And then I figured it out, partly. I want our home to reflect a bit of God’s beauty. Just a bit. But the stress of representing GOD was too much. I needed to get off and be okay for it to reveal my own interpretation of what’s beautiful. (Again, sorry, Denis doesn’t count as much here since he’s partially colorblind.) So this is what we got.

Our house was built in 1916 – it is an “American Gothic Four-square” ordered from Sears and Roebuck. This was what “prefab” was like back then. Huh! Sears also instituted another totally unprecedented option: you could buy a new home on the installment plan. Customers picked the floor plan and all its parts were shipped by rail car to your town in a sort of giant DIY kit. We like the five-panel doors, the oak floors, and wide oak trim everywhere. Our four bedroom house has a grounded feel you get to love, like it could withstand centuries of tornados, hail, trees falling and kids shooting pellet guns at the walls and windows.

All of which has happened since Toad Hall became our home in1981 – it’s a place where we’ve been rooted and loved. (Okay. Ya. We’ve fought a little, too.) It’s been where Ransom Fellowship was conceived and grown. We’ve kept out the possums and squirrels. We’ve patched the walls. We’ve launched our children and hosted tons of friends and strangers. Sometimes I wonder how long we’ll be here. Like maybe the time and money spent maintaining its bones and hair will be for someone else to enjoy. Denis says, “My next move? Assisted care.” I already get assisted care. Without Anita’s work in the yard, it’d be all nettles and crap-grass. But I know what he means. And that’s just the thing, we don’t know. And maybe I’m just feeling sentimental because we passed our 43^rd wedding anniversary.

…so the roof is next. In July a new one is coming. And that’s how it is to steward and keep what God has given.

And btw, who gets to tag paint colors? I could do that. Pasty Flesh. Golden Gangrene. Ashes to Ashes.

Honeysuckle listens

2011-06-13T16:41:00.000-05:00

...while Denis reads aloud excerpts from Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. (Where she probably wishes she was since it's close to shearing time again.)

"At another stream crossing we paused again so the boy could get out. By now I had been rather shaken by the road’s apparent dangerousness and I used the stop to pen a farewell note to my family, just in case. I was scribbling in my notebook by the front-seat overhead light (darkness had fallen), and I didn’t notice ethe boy get back in. After a few minutes, Sergei said, gently, ('Sandy, oni zhdut...') (They’re waiting…) I looked up and saw all the Eveny patiently gazing at me. In Russia, writing is so revered that no one had had the nerve to interrupt me in what might have been an act of literary creation."

Rules for Deep-watering

2011-06-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

It hasn’t rained for awhile. A hot wind has blown in temps up to 100. Early morning quiet. Painters gone for the weekend - done tramping through flower beds and packing the soil for the moment. Foot traffic past the house low so solitude can be had while giving a long watering to plants.

Almost everyday I walk around the house to see what’s blooming, who’s thriving, who’s dying. I think I’m onto what’s happening. But not really. It’s a shallow engagement. I only note the ones that yell the loudest, like the poppy. No wonder it’s called Pop-py. We have one oriental Pop-py. Last year she gave one brilliant orange blossom. They don’t last long, you know. This year she went nuts and put out nine. You can’t help noticing or loving them for this brief 24 hour effort.

When you deep water you can’t drag or swing the hose behind you like a wrecking ball. You need to remember that if you pull it around the corner in a big hurry, you choke and break the peonies and ferns. So slow down and draw it carefully.

Deep-watering can’t be hurried – it takes time. You need a gentle stream that slowly fills the dry empty spaces in the soil. You need to be the big fairy godmother waving the water wand back and forth. Slow magic.

When you deep-water you may as well quit thinking about the 2011 Quicken Bill-pay program you mistakenly ordered for Windows when what you need is the Mac version. Put out of your head the emails arriving to your inbox. Even insistent ones can wait. Rather when you deep water, you should hit a pause button. And look. Look. You’ll be surprised. What you find will somehow water you, too.

I wouldn’t have noticed the following if I hadn’t slowly deep-watered on Saturday:

1. A tiny bird’s nest, perhaps a song sparrow’s, on the ground underneath the arbor vitae. Finely woven with Honeysuckle wool, grass, and small strips of blue plastic. Some unfortunate violence had torn it from its branch. Too bad.

2. A very feminine iris. I guess all irises are pretty girly. This one had the softest, ruffleiest white petals with edges dipped in lavender. She was one of a bunch of perennial transplants Anita found for free on Craig’s list in late April. We didn’t think it would bloom this year.

3. A Milbert’s Tortiseshell butterfly drifted past. I’d never seen one up close before. We’re planting for butterflies and hoping more come.

4. I noticed that the scarlet runner beans had come up but were ragged and missing large chunks of leaf. Something has been eating the crap out of them. I’m guessing slugs. We need to help them. The beans, not the slugs.

5. And finally, there, hiding in a Lady’s Mantle I saw a little marijuana plant. I think I know the origin. At least, I know how it got to our yard. When a friend moved away she gave us Lady’s Mantle from her garden and that’s where we found the first one last year down at the other end of the house by Mole’s End. Now this one, this year has the same companion. I’m not thinking our friend had anything intentional to do with this since her medical career would give her plenty of opportunity for, well, anyway. We’ll just keep it until she visits us in July and we have a chance to spin it for our amusement.

6. When you’re done watering. Rewind the hose so your mates don’t cuss you out.

I left the yard refreshed and a little more in love.

Have your cake and show your rabbit, too.

2011-06-06T18:02:00.000-05:00

Not a usual Memorial Day celebration. But, hey. Anita made a Bunnycake last week and we were glad to eat it. We showed it to Honeysuckle who said she’d eat our sandals if we ate her likeness. But, hey, she's already done that. It was a carrot cake, after all. Honeysuckle? She was not impressed. Nor, apparently, was she impressed with the buck she cohabited with for five days. There could be more of her. We’ve been waiting like midwives and grandmothers, checking her every few hours for days now, even thinking we felt babies in her rounded tummy. Probably large intestine with little balls of digested apple branches. We don't think this is going to happen.

If you need Bunnycake, it turns out Better Crocker has one for you. Just go here.

Unspoken Truths

2011-06-03T10:24:00.001-05:00

Christopher Hitchens was on a recent 60 Minutes episode and it was fascinating to hear this man who is deeply flawed, but so eloquent and, could one call him arrogant? talk about his fight against vocal chord cancer which has metastasized. He’s a man who has loved his voice in both speaking and writing and he’s used it, or sometimes misused it very effectively. I heard, but can’t confirm that he called Mother Theresa that ugly little dwarf from Belgium. Really? He’s said plenty of nasty things about others and against Christianity, but he does it with such eloquence you have to admire him and laugh, even while you disagree.

I’ve wondered whether the experience of so much loss and suffering at this end of his life will soften or change him. What could be better than this crusty soul coming to Christ? I pray he does.

In a recent article that appeared in Vanity Fair he begins it with an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold

My coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

He concludes with a truth that seems as Christian as it is human – that we are meant to live and die in the company of friends – that our relationships to one another in some sort of community increases wisdom and eases the loneliness, especially when we are suffering a fatal illness.

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them: they are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at least I can do the listening for free.”

For crying out loud (4COL)

2011-05-20T20:13:00.000-05:00

Toad Hall is getting an exterior paint job and although it’s necessary for maintaining the value of the house, I’ve channeled a confused mix of uncertainty, boiled spleen and secret desire to shock the neighbors which doesn’t take much on a block where a lot of homes are still the color of mashed potatoes and gravy. The confusion is that I had an idea of what I wanted but when I looked at all the palette possibilities, there are so many choices it’s insane. Then when I realized it’d also be insane to do a San Francisco Painted Lady look just for the sake of shocking the public, to say nothing of what a financial folly (it’s costly enough as is) that’d be, and taking into account that Denis is of NO help at all because not only does he not have my stamina for the many hours required to discuss Scandinavian Sky versus Thunderbolt Blue, the colors I most like fall into his color-blind range: blue-green-gray. I AM STRESSED and Harold Camping predicts that Jesus is coming back tomorrow so ALL this is USELESS DRIVEL and A WASTE OF MY TIME.

We are now gone south for the week to visit family and so I’ve Left Behind my constant patrolling the yard to check for trampled plants and paint drift on the cars parked beside our house. Anita, our assistant, and Denny, the painter, are capably in charge. So far a lot of the trim has been covered with a lovely creamy white called Bunnycake, which is a prime choice because as you know, Honeysuckle, the angora rabbit, who lives on our back porch likes this color. I just hope I will love it when it’s all done. I thought you’d like to know.

Sustaing fantasy in the Ozarks

2011-05-17T11:11:00.000-05:00

Reflecting on my life-long fantasy of living somewhere in the country. Perhaps more extravagant than bees, what about alpacas or angora rabbits? Since Sue Hubbell wrote the following in 1983 there may be permanent changes ala Winter's Bone even in the Ozark landscape. Sad to say.

"I find the hopeful bee-agribusiness visitors touching and appealing; many of them are young and they bring out the mother in me. They are often working at dull jobs they do not like, and the idea of owning a bee farm in the country is a sustaining fantasy. I try not to discourage them, but sometimes I have to. Almost any kind of farming dooms newcomers to bankruptcy these days, particularly bee farming, because of the market conditions. About the only quicker way to go broke right now is to raise pigs, so when a man came to seek my advice a month ago and told me he was ready to spend ten years’ worth of savings from a factory job to buy a farm where he would raise bees and pigs, I had to admit it was the worst idea I had heard in a long time. He went away saddened; I don’t know whether he bought the farm or not.

The Ozarks, wild, undeveloped, inhospitable, keep being discovered. A lot of people who figured it was better to be poor in the country moved here during the 1930s; others, richer, thought FDR was the devil incarnate and wanted to put their wealth in land before he could take it away from them. Since then waves of people who find the cities too complicated have come here, meaning to lead lives of simplicity. What they have not yet discovered is that a life is as simple or as complicated as the person living it, and that people who have found life in the city over-whelming will find it even more so here, where it is much harder to make a living. When a person has money coming in regularly, his mistakes may make hi unhappy but they do not threaten his survival. Here, where there is little money, every decision counts and there is no room for mistakes."

- A Country Year: Living the Questions by Sue Hubbel

* Bees in pic belong to John Eddy who keeps bees in the very urbane, urban Cos Cob, CT

Honeysuckle drags a ribbon

2011-05-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

So. Honeysuckle's been up to some shady shenanigans around here. And it's time to go public with them.

About 16 days ago Anita took her back to the farm of her birth to meet a suitor. All this was carefully planned and officially approved. Mary Lou, the breeder and owner of a herd of angora rabbits, has four bucks and one of them was introduced to Honeysuckle, who promptly tried to beat him up. Same thing for the next in line. Her response: face him at all times, box his head with front paws if he tries any tricks (ha), and run as far away as my little cage allows.

What was going on in her little bunny brain? We speculated, how could a rabbit not be interested in romance and motherhood? She is a year old and could have been bred six months ago. Fyi, rabbits ovulate anytime they’re bred which explains their ability to make hundreds of babies while you make one. Gestation is 30 days. Litter size anywhere from four to twelve.

Mary Lou left her in a cage overnight with the gentlest of all her guys. A Dutch Agoudi, gray in color with little splashes of white and gray on his face. Nothing happened as far as anyone knew. When Anita brought her home she looked disheveled and crabby. It took a few days for her to forget her trauma and dash about like her normal spoiled self.

This morning when I looked on the back porch she was trying to pull a four foot hot pink ribbon off a wedding wreath. We had big doings around here this past weekend with Kosmo getting married and all. Intrigued, I watched as she laboriously wadded it into her mouth and carried it to her hutch where she deposited it in her litter box. Turns out rabbit mothers like to make multiple uses of their litter box. Then she tried to drag my heavy old wool “welcome” rug across to her hutch and when I pulled strings out of her mouth she was extremely annoyed and let me know I should get off it. I know she thinks of it as her property and has already chewed the crap out of it, making it nearly useless. A while back I trimmed off a portion and Anita put it in her hutch where it gives off a distinctly French brothel look. We’re thinking of hanging a gilded mirror, too, since she spends a good deal of her time preening.

I began to wonder, hmmm. I called Anita to watch. We brought her a couple of rags and sure enough, she dragged them into the hutch and rasseled them around some more. This looks like nesting behavior. Perhaps more happened out at the farm than we knew. Ah, the excitement. I choose not to think of what Anita will do with a litter of angoras. She says she will sell or give them away. (I don’t think we or our porch can withstand much more sustained cuteness.) She’s looking at plans for building a nest box. And two weeks from now, since the exact date is unknown, Honeysuckle should begin pulling her wool to line a nest and that will be a sure sign, baby bunnies are arriving.

Now that you’ve wasted perfectly good time reading this post, I will be sure to let you know the outcome. I'm quiet certain some of you need an angora rabbit to complete your life.

Stop that

2011-05-05T11:03:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we came through JFK on our way home from a few days with friends in Connecticut. Wonderful days of doing mostly nothing. After we landed in Mpls, we sped through the airport to luggage, until I asked, Excuse me, WHAT’s our bleeping HURRY? Well, we were merely extending the dash from Cos Cob to JFK, darting through traffic, dodging insane drivers gesturing, cursing (we don’t curse, being perfectly midwesternly polite, as always, we keep it in and get autoimmune diseases) narrowly missing death, arriving at the terminal with a panting dog and a pulse of 145. We had been advised to arrive very early and expect long delays through security because the terror color is red these days. Imagine the shock of NO ONE ahead of us! Through the rat maze! Straight to the cheese! Never any where, any time has this happened in life. (We suppressed the urge to run for cover.) But no matter. We still rushed to our gate, gulping coffee, snarfing a sandwich, finding a seat so we could absorb others’ hurry vibes. We kept one eye on the CNN reporter squeezing juice out of children playing outside bin Laden’s compound and the other eye on the sparrows building a nest above the agent’s desk. Sparrows. More spiritual, prophetic, don’t you think? It was lost on us since we needed to remain hyper-vigilant, tuning ears to roaring announcements and making strategic use of the restroom before our Zone was called. Whatever.

You feel pathetic – wanting to preserve the good of slowing down, being aware of inner speed. You say you’re going to be intentional about not getting back on the track to blood pressure hell, but you still jab the “Walk” button twenty times to make the signal reappear faster.

Today Wes H. wrote: “…thank you for "The Scent of Slow" post today. What a good and true reminder to be patient, to wait, to live without closure, to release the relentless need to control and rush and speed...”

I told self to not give up. I believe, as he wrote, “It's good to remember that, like a slow-cooked meat, God's redemption works itself out gradually, seemingly at a snail's pace... but the taste at the end makes it all worth it.”

Complete redemption will get here, but, dang, I wish it’d hurry up.

Not your average farm dinner

2011-05-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

Friends, John & Leslie, treated us to dinner at Blue Hill Café at the Stone Barns in New York where an earlier generation of Rockefellers grew up. Now whoever owns the barns and acres around, whether it’s a public trust or private ownership, I don’t know. All the land in sight of this hill raises livestock, gardens and orchards specifically for the menus. The barn is magnificent with stone and timbers and arches and copulas and heavy doors built to last for centuries. They make you think being a dairy maid might have made you very happy (brilliant Margie). It’s now an event center and restaurant co-owned by Dan Barber, one of the first garden-to-table chefs. You might say his calling is about being conscious of food choices and the effort required to eat healthy, nourishing food, and how our options should include natural, organic, local and all those important, over-done, oft exploited words.

John and Leslie choose a multi-course meal built around what was overwintered or harvested in April. You don’t get a menu – you get what the chef wants to give you, although we were all a little relieved when the staff asked whether we had reservations about eating organ meats, and we all got shifty-eyed and gently said, may we pass, s’il vous plait. It began with amuse bouche – foofy French word used in restaurants I can’t afford, (thankfully the staff interpreted for me: snacks), and herbal infused elixirs (I grinned at “elixir” which I freely associate with fairy stories or poison – can go either way). Each was a wonderfully complex flavor of this flower or that herb. I hadn’t thought of drinking beets. Most of the bites were small tastes, appropriately brilliant or just sweetly, softly themselves. Loved them. Some were so simple, I fancied I could DO them myself if I got away from the peasant mentality of more is better. However, the square inch of congealed vichyssoise wrapped in a leek leaf would challenge my patience.

Smoked kale and a sweet potato chip

Mini Beet Sliders.

L to R: Elixirs oatmeal/honey, yellow beet, berry

Leek-wrapped vichyssoise.

At the end this came out and we can’t remember what that little square was called. Chocolate, obviously, and something pistachio. The round things were chocolate covered hazelnuts. The white frothy drink - icy vanilla shake aka time to go home.

I kept wanting to stay in the moment, okay, the three hours. Trying to keep things real. Wanting to keep on talking about really important things like luh-ove and how to solve the world’s problems. I reminded myself this kind of celebration every day would not be possible nor wanted. But once, maybe in a lifetime? Mine, anyway? Eating at a 3 Star Michelin as a guest? You’d at least hope your conversation measured up. I doubt mine did. I know. Some things you can’t give back. This was a gift. A celebration. And like most graces you don’t get to deserve them, you should accept them gratefully, thankfully, and hope God will bless the giver(s), because you sure can’t.

Although we've been coddled and treated for a whole week, going home to rice and stir fry is way okay, too.

Done with this

2011-04-20T18:30:00.001-05:00

Still snowing off and on. Yesterday afternoon I stepped off the back steps, headed to the hospital to visit a friend and saw the snow had collected on the pansies, covering them with what looked like sugared icing. Tempting. It took some of the bitter edge off the fact that it is late April and still winter. Someone remarked that the photo of the flowers were “amazingly beautiful …. like life in a nutshell.” Yes, I think so. God knows I hate being trite and yet how I fluctuate from slobbering sentimentalist to mean cynic. But who can help exclaiming when our best efforts are capped with icy beauty beyond what we could imagine.

Then I rescued a couple and fed them to Honeysuckle. She’s another beauty and a sucker for anything that makes photosynthesis.

We were innocent back then

2011-04-11T20:37:00.000-05:00

Marsena snuck into the bedroom when we were visiting last summer. I was reading The Girl With theDragon Tattoo. Denis, well, you can’t tell, but he says he was reading Last Call a book about prohibition. He takes the jackets off hardbacks to keep them nice and doesn’t allow me to handle them. Last Call. Don’t you think the title is a little disturbing for someone his age? I was thankful when he was done so I didn’t have to check on him in the middle of the night. Forty-three years of marriage. You were probably curious, weren’t you? You thought we climbed into bed, reviewed Daily Light on the Daily Path, held hands and prayed for our grandchildren. Stop lookin at me like that. I have nightmares and must be very careful. Last night I taunted a lion and it came after me. Denis had to wake me up. I’m not kidding. It only gets better.

Chickens for Toad Hall

2011-04-06T14:17:00.000-05:00

I've always wanted more chickens ever since we had a few hens back in the dark ages in Albuquerque, and I was putting us through eating hell. One of my little phases of you- may-not-eat, in this case, sugar of any kind. So for the paradox and inconvenience of my philosophy we kept bee hives, fought the desert to raise broccoli, and included pinto beans and green chili in every dish.

Today I have a new flock. Anita knitted them. They require very little care and it looks like they’re already laying. Little Cadbury eggs. How nice. And so you know how far I’ve come, this afternoon I'm eating two of their eggs and am also baking a strawberry rhubarb pie – with sugar – to take out to Heartbeet Farm to share with Joe and Becca for the evening meal.

Beer Bread for the weary

2011-03-31T12:29:00.000-05:00

Lots of folks don’t have the option of getting into the kitchen and leisurely prepping an evening meal. I understand this. So let’s not use words like puree, truss, stuff, or – God forbid – French. I remember Little Miss Sunshine and feeling tender toward the mother, who came home from a whacked-out stressful day with a bucket of chicken and two liters of soda and tried to get dinner (a strained use of the word) on the table and the family together. The grandfather went off on her with a swearing tirade about chicken. #$%!! AGAIN?!! Made you want to put a little strychnine in his drink.

I’ve noticed that the scent of something baking in the oven can work like freebasing Zoloft. It’s that powerful. A kind of calm sweetness diffuses through the house; traffic tickets, tyrants, terrorists, and skinned knees are forgotten. For a moment you are forgiven and soothed. The anticipation that announces something good is coming, is a gift I love to give because I know it’s more than food, it’s spiritual. There’s something sacred in this simple act. Since I can’t do it for that many, being finite and all, I share this instead.

There aren’t many recipes for a yeasty-tasting homemade bread this easy. It’s great company for nearly any meal. A few left-over slices make good toast the next morning. Putting it together and throwing it in the oven last night took me six minutes. Seriously. I timed it. And all the ingredients were put away, too. However, you must give enough time to bake (50 minutes) and cool (about 5 minutes). So, yes, it does require a little forethought.

Beer Bread

1 c. whole wheat or ¾ c ww and ¼ c. cornmeal (optional, can use all white)

2 c. white flour

1 t. baking powder

½ t. baking soda

1 ½ t. salt

2 T honey

12 oz beer

3 T melted butter

Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Add honey and beer. Stir together just until mixed. It will be sticky and moist. Transfer to a buttered loaf pan or a shallow baking dish. Bake 25 minutes at 325 degrees. Melt 3 T. butter and spread on top. Return to oven for another 20-25 minutes. Makes one loaf.

Margie tips:

* Wet your hand with cold water and pat the batter to smooth it down. Then it won’t stick to your fingers.

* Don’t use a whisk. It gets completely gunked up. Use a wooden spoon.

* An ale or dark beer gives a more beery taste. I like a lighter beer. Okay. A girly beer like Honey Weiss.

Waiting

2011-03-24T06:56:00.000-05:00

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage – almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recounting of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance. - Thomas Cahill

In the aftermath of the earthquake, stories emerge from the rubble of Japan. Strange stories of grace that break our hearts but give strange hope. Each day we wake and we think to pray for the people of Japan. We know as they face another day, nothing will ever be the same for them. We pray that out of this catastrophe there will be arms to enfold them. That Jesus will give them rest. That he will call many to a glory that will be eternal. Our brothers and sisters.

Last night our small group studied Psalm 130. A short Psalm that begins in the depths, crying out to God. Then comes the waiting and waiting and waiting in the dark feeling both weariness and fright. We are assured of both God’s forgiveness, his steadfast love and his plan for “full redemption” of which we have a taste, but we haven’t eaten the whole thing yet.

I picture full redemption being like the rolling back of the tsunami. In one of the most painful videos we’ve seen, people are watching from an air terminal as it comes across the land, rolling the parking lots, pouring over the walls, sweeping over the walls, tumbling cars, trucks and people. And you hear the mounting cries of terror and lament. Full redemption will reverse the destruction of life. It will be pulled back and back to restore the earth to something better and more beautiful.

We are going to Chicago today on our own small mission of helping our daughter move. I’ll be away for a few days, but will be back soon.

Loser's Coffee Cake

2011-03-21T17:56:00.001-05:00

The weekend before last I used the sunny weather as an excuse to make a berry pie which was good, but not perfect. This past weekend I woke to darkness, the sky thickened by fog as snow slowly melted. It began raining gloom, exposing more dirt and dog doo along our sidewalk. It’s kind of disgusting to walk your dog, leash in one hand and loaded bag swinging in the other. Most owners responsibly pick up, and seriously, I don’t watch them, you know. But this one guy, owner of a big ruffy dog, without a bag, annoyed me a little when he paused right in front of the kitchen window as I was doing dishes. No way to pick that up and too loose to kick onto the street. He needed a giant leaf bag bag, but I grabbed what was handy and ran out to offer it. I’m glad I curtailed my spleen because he was very shame-faced and kind of sweet. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to be imperfect. Big aside.

Once again, I was using the weather as an excuse to bake something. Why should I do that? It really doesn’t matter what the weather is. It’s March. We’re all mentally ill from lack of sun. Just watch, next I’ll be complaining about how hot it is. But while it’s still chilly and with Easter coming, it’s time to make the one coffee cake I’ll make all season. The one that has a crunchy cinnamon-y wave through the middle of a moist sweet inside and crispy golden crust outside.

I found a recipe on the web called Loser’s Coffee Cake. Not because the recipe is a loser, they said, but if you are. It was acclaimed as super-easy and so good, a no-fail. I have an affinity for losers whether we’re talking about the kitchen or figuring out where the volume button is in iTunes. The concept attracts me. So I made it.

When I could handle it without getting third degree burns we ate a piece. And someone ate another, not me. I was thinking: this IS a loser recipe. It’s not that good. But why would that be? As I remembered, the old recipe, buried somewhere in my archives, had all the same ingredients. Excepting chocolate chips. I left them out because coffee cake should not have them. It’s wrong. It had to be something else, not the chocolate. So I dug out the old recipe from Nancy Fyke to compare. The difference was: twice as much sugar, a little more fat, and twice the amount of cinnamon filling and topping.

So. If you’re going to make a coffee cake, and it comes once a year, perhaps on Christmas or Easter morning, then don’t skimp on this, just go for it. I mean. It really DOES make a difference.

Here’s the winner’s recipe – No more difficult than the “Loser’s” and way, WAY better.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

1 c. butter softened

2 c. sugar

2 c. flour

2 eggs

1 c. (8 ounces) sour cream

1 t. baking powder

1 t. vanilla

½ t. salt

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Add half the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until blended. Add sour cream, blend with spoon. Add remaining dry ingredients. Do same thing. Don’t over stir.

Cinnamon mixture:

1/2 c. sugar

1/3 c. brown sugar

2 T (tablespoons) cinnamon

1/2 c. chopped almonds or other nuts

Combine all ingredients in small bowl.

Sprinkle 1/3 of the cinnamon mixture in bottom of a well-greased, floured Bundt pan (you can use a 9x13 cake pan, but then skip putting the cinnamon mixture on the bottom and add to middle and top only). Spoon in half the batter. Sprinkle with another third of the mixture. Add remaining batter. Top with final third of cinnamon mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 -75 minutes. Cool 1 hour before removing from pan. (Otherwise it comes out in chunks. I know from another of my loser experiences. Still tastes good but looks like a squirrel dug it up.) Also. This might look like any old boring coffee cake, but it is fantastic.

Blog for Pie

2011-03-12T11:45:00.000-06:00

The sun shone for about two hours last Saturday. The flow of rays onto the kitchen counter was strong enough to melt butter and keep the French press warm. I was rooted there and to justify standing in one spot absorbing vitamin D – justification being the saving oil for souls who think worth is measured by what they do, among other complex cravings and addictions – demanded pie. The answer to many moral questions. We still have several freezer bags full of blackberries that Anita picked in Washington last summer. Blackberry banana vanilla soy milk smoothies have had their place this winter, but it’s been a long time since we’ve had a lip-staining blackberry pie. I wasted thirty minutes looking for a recipe that didn’t call for tapioca. No sense making Denis feel sicker than he did with fisheyes. Couldn’t find anything, but with shameless audacity I thought adding 2 T. of cornstarch to a cup of sugar and 5 cups of blackberries would be just perfect.

The pie looked gorgeous when I took it out of the oven. But it wasn’t perfect. Why couldn’t it be? Why is nothing ever perfect? Why does my eye always settle on that little flaw – the dot of wall paint left on the white ceiling, the stain on the floor where I dropped India ink, the scratch I put in the car when the train gate dropped on the trunk, and na-nah, na-nah, na, na. It wasn’t just the decorative leaves and berries I’d made for the top crust that now looked like flying-bird dropping poop; it was the juice leaking along the edge and flowing onto the catch pan below. Turns out 2 T. of corn starch isn’t nearly enough. Nor was the sugar. I cut the first piece and poured ¾ cup of juice out of the pie remaining in the pan and dumped more sugar on each piece.. Denis loves soupy anything from lasagna to pie, so, happy, happy Denis. Sweet Denis. I admit my crust is a ten, a thing I can’t help or really claim. It’s like Kristi Yamaguchi doing a sit-spin, just nothing to it. But happy Margie, I did stand in the sun for thirty minutes and you can hardly go wrong with that even if you don’t get the thickening right.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T11:52:00.000-06:00

…"Creation testifies to God's beauty but in its own distinctive ways and God testifies to His own beauty through creation’s own beauty." [Jeremy Begbie] Two certainties flow from this: that we can enjoy the beauty of created things, like flowers because He values this physical world and is committed to renewing it. He showed us this when he first renewed Jesus' body at the resurrection. Jesus' resurrection is the promise of the physical renewal of the whole creation. It will go on into eternity and be more glorious than it is now, beyond our imagining.

From a lecture by Jane Winter: “Truth, Beauty and Flowers” (reproduced by The Washington Institute).

Today another snowstorm is moving through our area. The prospect of spring or anything remotely connected to Resurrection looks bleak. But as many in Western Christendom enter Lent, traditionally a time of fasting, praying, and repenting, we count the days to the celebration of Easter morning, of Christ’s return from hell. There are signs of it coming. This morning as I read through the book of Habakkuk, and the prophet attests to God’s inexorable movement through and into this world. He promises: “…though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” (2:3)

Not only Scripture assures the miracle of resurrection, just stepping out my door to take a closer look contains it’s own miracle. That the collection of snow falling on a metal fence should be so beautiful? That a home on frozen ground surrounded by ice displays a kind of beauty? I want to be more aware, more hopeful, more thankful. So I’ll begin Lent here, confessing I’m not.

Proximate Justice

2011-03-07T10:02:00.001-06:00

Steven Garber responded to my last post and placed his comment on my facebook page. I felt his response would make sense here, too. Steve often uses the word "proximate" in helping us reach a place where we acknowledge that justice or love or even the coffee I make is not going to be perfect even though we strive for it. So the question then is: how do we live in this precarious place desiring the Kingdom of God to be fully present and when it is not, how do we live faithfully? Answering that question has shaped much of his own life and ministry.

Steven wrote: "I don't know Steve Schaper, at all. But I wonder what on earth in Margie's post could possibly be seen as a universal statement about police brutality? It fails in even the most pedestrian logic. Most of the world lives by tit-for-tat, an eye for an eye. You gore my ox, and I will gore yours. It is a dead-end. I have many commitments, one being the Middle East, and especially the generational struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is a short-term fiction to think that one can be "for the Israelis" as over against the Palestinians-- and the reverse is just as much a problem. The harder work is being "for" both histories, and both futures. Sort of like being "for" public justice in Houston, huh? Or maybe even Madison? Unless we are content with justice being just "just us," that is. The real "killer" here-- excuse the term --is that Margie's much-loved brother is a county sheriff in Minnesota, and I know for my years of listening that he embodies a just mercy, a merciful justice. And that was what is missing from the arrest on the streets of Houston."

Mercy

2011-03-03T15:01:00.000-06:00

We’ve probably all winced through enough Cop shows to recall them screaming: “GET ON THE GROUND. GET ON THE GROUND NOW!!” When the camera focuses on the suspect, and if he has spread-eagled himself on the ground, (like the young man in the video below), the cops run up, knee his back, bring his arms around, snap on the cuffs, and bring him to his feet. They don’t kick him repeatedly in the head and groin and punch him over and over in the kidneys. At least not in Cops I’ve seen.

I’ve been avoiding this post, trying to find better words to express what I mean to say and can’t say I’ve succeed here, either. Recently I placed this link on my facebook and someone commented:

“Good. Now let's see you condemn the teacher's union brutality and hate speech in Wisconsin and elsewhere.”

Someone else responded merely with: “Teacher's union brutality?????? Mercy.”

I got it – the aggressive sarcasm of the first remark and wondered whether to respond. I decided yes because the practice of brutality (wherever it is) and hateful rhetoric does not reflect the gospel and life of Christ. I’ll stand by this: whatever that young man did, he had already surrendered and the behavior of the arresting officers was wrong. We have courts and laws that are supposed to protect a suspect from what the Houston police were doing. Whatever grievances we have about the Teacher’s Union over there does not excuse the violence here.

I thought of how we Americans often thank ourselves that we are not like other people in less civilized parts of the world. Places where human rights are violently abused and life is extinguished without mercy or justice. We think of Libya these days.

Happily, not all officers are like them. I’m proud to have a brother who is a county sheriff. He’s a savvy, powerful man, but he’s also wise and kind-hearted. I’ve often said that if you ever really needed help and saw him coming, you would cry with relief. On the other hand, if you were the suspect, you could trust him to respect the law and not to kick in your head or break your groin even if you’ve committed a heinous crime. We leave punishment to the courts and the law. In our country that is supposed to mean protection for everyone, regardless of race or social standing. Not that it does, obviously.

Honeysuckle gets sheared

2011-02-21T18:21:00.001-06:00

This morning Anita’s Honeysuckle got sheared. We’ve been waiting for the weather to warm up before we cut her fleece. Angora rabbits have such thick wool they have a much greater problem staying cool in the summer than keeping warm in the winter. Still, we worried that when it was 10 below if we did shear her, she’d get too cold. But last week when temperatures stayed above freezing for a few days, she was panting on the back porch and we decide more winter or no, today was the day.

Anita set up a table out in Mole’s End. I got the shears. Denis got the camera. With Anita holding her, I began cutting down the center of her back, sort of like plowing a path. No wonder the animal is hot. Her little body must have been wearing a pound of the warmest fibers known to man. Angora is silky, soft and 2 ½ times warmer than sheep wool. The best fibers for spinning into yarn are five inches long, but Honeysuckle’s must be six or seven inches.

I tried to be very careful of her loose skin which sometimes pulls up with the wool and is easy to snip. I did cut her at one point, a little vee into her haunch that bled. Dangit! Later Anita said it made her feel like throwing up. Good thing I’m so heartless. I just kept going. Back and forth cutting away swaths and laying it out and trying to keep it all together as a single piece.

We left most of the wool on her belly so she could stay warm tonight. I didn’t cut anything off her paws, maybe because my own need to stay warm at night or I can’t sleep. So at least her feet will be warm as the temp goes down. If you want to watch some of this here’s one, and there’s even more on youtube ("Honey Suckle Gets Sheared" 1-4) if you’re hungry for excitement. Also you can check out fb and see a bunch of stills there.

She was such a good girl we gave her six grapes, one organic tortilla chip, and a bowl of carrot peels.

Next year we’re getting on a better schedule.

Good for now

2011-02-20T12:09:00.000-06:00

Sitting at home watching snow gently falling straight down, amassing by the second, almost white-out. Coffee at hand. Oatmeal pancakes digesting. A bit of glory between battles.

L’Abri conference last weekend. Very good. Wonderful speakers. Especially Denis, of course. Despite the fact that I was relieved of teaching workshops I still talked my head off. No, not totally true, I listened a lot. Lots of people, as usual – all good. That is, in the way of connecting with people. So much suffering, though. You hear people’s stories. But there seemed to be a balm, an infusion of courage, a seeing with new eyes that comes from being together and being reminded that we are a great company of people living and sharing in the hope of Regeneration that is coming. Inexorably. It will arrive. On some days this language sounds insane, but not today when I read: “I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in the whole world…” (Prov. 8:30)

Anita got really sick with the flu starting last Sunday – lasted all week. Amazingly, so far, neither Denis nor I got it. From this week’s cooking we’ve ended up with a lot of left-overs. Like mid-eastern lamb patties, roasted tomato mint salad, saffron rice, hamburger gravy (a comfort food around here) a box full of clementines, and who knows what all. So, yea, no work on this Sabbath day.

Tomorrow Honeysuckle gets sheared. Her wool must be six-seven inches long. And with temps in the 30s she’s feeling hotter n Hades. Panting out there on the back porch.

Anita’s Bio

2011-02-10T14:17:00.000-06:00

This went up on Ransom Fellowship’s website today and I thought there might be a few folks out there who’d be interested. For the past two years, Anita has been a good part of our life as a housemate and friend. Now it’s official: She is Ransom’s Resident Assistant. A newly minted position:

Anita Gorder has been living in Mole’s End, the small flat at the back of Toad Hall for a while now. Long enough for all of us to get to know each other well. It’s been only gradually that Denis and I, and now our Board of Directors, have come to see how uniquely qualified Anita was for becoming our assistant. (We always knew we liked her, nay, loved her.) Having her at this stage of our ministry and life is truly providential and something only God could have planned. Her being here allows us to concentrate more fully on such things as writing.

Anita is a native of Seattle, WA, but spent a few years getting her college education in Alaska, and working summers at an island salmon factory where bear alerts were common and the smell of fish stuck to the hair twenty-four-seven was not enough to diminish her love of eating her favorite wild salmon: The King.

Along the way she visited Swiss L’Abri, eventually ending up at Rochester L’Abri as a helper. With her interest in gardening and landscape, we hired her to re-do our flower beds. That was the beginning. We learned she had a special interest and talent for creating beauty in many mediums from iron-works to jewelry making. But her favorite, by far, is fiber art – creating things that range from practical to whimsical. From sheep shearing to spinning and yarn dying, we’ve not only learned, we’ve been entertained by silk worms spinning, alpaca fleeces, and especially by her angora rabbit, Honeysuckle, who lives on our back porch and grows the finest white wool I’ve ever collected on my black coat. It loves to gather in my armpits, for some weird reason. Of my coat, you fool. She’s always doing something fascinating, this week it was baking silk worm cocoons to kill the pupa before she harvested the fibers. Bleh.

Holding Honeysuckle.

Visiting The Yarn Garage

Anita’s quiet, warm hospitality, her humor, hard work, her ability to cook the crap out of any recipe, work on our web site, do research, help outdoors, and put up with us, is so perfect I could cry. So what do we or Ransom do for her? Well, Ransom has given her a salaried position that is not quite full-time. And in exchange for rent from us she is responsible for the yard and does mostly whatever pleases her in the garden. Altogether it is full-time work. Thanks be to God for riches so graciously shared with us.

If you like peanut butter

2011-02-08T15:41:00.001-06:00

This morning when I woke the sun was rising although I couldn’t directly see dawn arriving beyond the rooftops. But even before it popped over the neighbor’s roof there was evidence. The sky was so clear that the steam stack on top of St. Mary’s billowed white as it climbed far up the stratosphere until the north wind bent it off to the southeast. As I watched the plumes caught the sun’s rays and turned it from soft pink to bright salmon. From my second story window I can usually tell how cold it is outside.

At 11 am it was still minus seven degrees, but the sun was pouring into the dining room, glinting off the orchid that is gloriously in bloom again. I don’t know how it does this since all I give it is the equivalent of two ice cubes every week.

I’ve been away from here lately (the blog). Partly being a slacker. Partly writing other things. Author Walker Percy, says about the act of writing: “It’s a question of being so pitiful that God takes pity on us, looks down and says, He’s done for. Lets’ give him a few good words.” I personally know that, I mean, how to feel pitiful. I’m done with the next issue of Notes and I think everyone around here is glad for it.

This afternoon the sun is still blasting away, though it “gat no heat” outside, and I wandered into the kitchen to make our own. I’ve been wanting to try this recipe for gluten-free peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Couldn’t believe they had no flour whatsoever. They come out crispy and melty in the centers. I ate four. But they were small. Seriously, they’re so easy it’s almost a crime.

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies (Gluten-Free)

1 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 t. vanilla

1 t. baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

(Make sure vanilla and chips are g-f if baking for someone with celiac.)

Cream all ingredients (except chips) together in a bowl. Fold in chocolate chips. Form into small balls and press lightly with a fork. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Longer if you like them crispy.

Sage-y potatoes and green peas

2011-01-26T10:09:00.000-06:00

The chances of getting coldcocked by a great recipe when I got to the kitchen at 5:30 yesterday were slim. I was craving gnocchi and had a little fresh sage on hand, but the thought of making it. Ugh. Skinning bullheads sounded like less trouble. For such times I have Margie Fallbacks consisting mainly of baked chicken, baked chicken and baked chicken. With a baked potato.

So three small pieces of chicken went into the oven with olive oil, a sprinkle of rosemary and a nice coating of smoked paprika to make it slightly more interesting. Then I took three potatoes, peeled, chunked and boiled until tender, added half a bag of frozen green peas at the last minute.

Meanwhile, a stroke of luck: (I’d read of it somewhere but never bothered to try) take fresh sage leaves and butter, sauté in a skillet until they turn black and crisp. Doesn’t take long. Set them aside. Drain peas and potato. Season with crunched up sage leaves, butter, coarse sea salt (if you have it) and pepper. Save a few whole sage leaves for garnish. We couldn’t believe how good this tasted. Every last bit was snarfed up and the dish was declared a Once-A-Weeker. And so simple!

I added a small fruit salad of tangerines, a bosc pear, and a mango that needed to be used up. A teaspoon of honey for the dressing was all it needed.

This is my ordinary – one of the places in life where God calls me to serve Him and others. The gift and surprise for me is that sometimes, even when I feel weary, the delight of an ordinary meal not only nourishes our bodies, but it comes out easy and beautiful.

Gambel’s Quail

2011-01-15T12:53:00.001-06:00

My favorite desert bird. Monogamous. Ground runners. Found in coveys. The male dude sports an absurd single feather that springs from his head. They are shy and cautious and quickly run away from you disappearing over the wall or through the underbrush. But when we visited the Phoenix Botanical Gardens, being used to people they came close, right under our chairs, at the outdoor eating area, waiting for the chance crumb (“Do Not Feed The Wildlife” but I’m a messy eater. Some things can’t be helped even if they’re illegal). I got one not-so-good shot, and a few seconds of their tiny peeping voices. I love them.

The next day as Peggy and I had a last breakfast together she had a little gift by my plate – a tiny Gambel’s Quail fashioned from a gourd. I’m delighted to bring him home. Reminder of God’s humor – the delight of certain creatures that spring from a barren desert to give us the gift of joy. I mean, not all do – consider the javelina or the rattle snake. But now this little gourd also reminds me of the long friendship we have fashioned through years of traveling together.

Henri Nouwen writes “Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow.” We’ve known this and it gladdens my heart.

Everyone does ten of something these days

2011-01-05T16:50:00.000-06:00

Ten Sounds I love mostly in winter

Snow whispering

The whomp of the furnace igniting

Radiators ticking

Coffee grinding

Pages softly turning

Denis’ footsteps on the stair

Bacon sizzling

English Sparrows chirping in the hedge (I've made my peace with them.)

An infant nursing

The east wind that howls in our bedroom window at night.

Sauteed Polenta for Breakfast

2010-12-31T12:12:00.000-06:00

New Year’s eve day. The skies are gray and heavy. The last day of the year does not inspire me much, but I did decide after morning prayers and readings to make a late breakfast – one to cheer and comfort us.

At Toad Hall, we are each scheduled to accomplish a bit before the evening celebration at Kosmo’s (a friend) begins. Anita, our assistant and housemate, is researching fibers for a L’Abri workshop she and Denis are doing in February. Denis is putting the finishing touches on a piece for ArtHouse America and I am reviewing the past year and preparing for our annual board meeting which will be in Phoenix next week. As I told Denis, I’m thinking of highly inflating the amount and importance of all we’ve done, spinning it to look brilliant and whopping great. It’s a little tempting to make myself look better than I am. I mean, what, after all, are clothes about? For eg. (Okay. Right. Rephrase that to apply to those about my age.) However, when people know you as well as our board knows us they won’t be fooled.

There’s a verse in the Psalms that says “My heart is not proud, O LORD … I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.” (Ps. 131:1)

That’s my cue, today I’m sticking with breakfast. I can do that. So could any of you, whether you’re a nobody or a big somebody who wouldn’t want to be seen with me.

If you cook up some polenta (and, hey, I know there are folks, especially south of here who know all about this) and put it in a small loaf pan and let it firm up while you go take a shower, when you come back it will be set up enough that you can thump it onto the counter, slice it in ½ inch pieces, dredge them in a bit of corn meal and saute in a cast iron skillet so that they get a little crisp and browned on each side. Then if you pop them on a plate, pour pure maple syrup on top, accompanied by a fried, free-range egg with a bright sunny yolk, a clementine and a cup of French press coffee - you are going to spread some serious good spirit. And really, that’s not a small matter, is it?

Happy New Year.

Pilgrim Food 2011

2010-12-29T21:40:00.001-06:00

Going slow the last two weeks. Not a convenient time to be sick or diminished. You know, at Christmas when you want to take care of everyone? Feed them, love them, give them brilliant gifts.

I have a lot of scraps stuck in my Bible; yesterday one I hadn’t read in a long time fell out.

Pensees from a NYC church bulletin:

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

- folk spiritual

Everyone is on one sort of journey or another: failure to recognize this is to fail to be human and to suffer great deprivation. Walker Percy, the late novelist and metaphysician, once said in conversation, “I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not.” The vision of a quest confers meaning on our lives. It enables us to see all that happens as moving us closer to or further from our goal, and to make distinctions between what helps and hinders us in our journey.

- Diogenes Allen Spiritual Theology

Christ has planted his Table like an oasis along our pathway, in order that when we become weary with travel, weak and hungry in our souls, discouraged and wounded because of our false steps, stumbling and failing, we may then enter there and be refreshed with the living Bread of Life.

- Carl Olof Rosenius (1816-1868). A Lutheran lay preacher on the Eucharist as the viaticum, the pilgrim’s food

In joy, in adversity, in this new year may you be nourished and blessed by God's good hand. Thinking of many of you I know who stop here for a minute or two.

Love, after all

2010-12-16T14:29:00.001-06:00

I received a few responses for a recent post “The ritual of small things.” Thank you. I know there are lots of us who find after the fact, after the grandparents have died, that we are indelibly linked.

Here they are:

“I still remember the first time my Mother decided I didn't need an Easter basket at College. I was so disappointed. It is the small rituals that do show love and caring and remembering from year to year.” - Sandy O.

“Just wanted to say that my grandmother gave me a Christmas ornament every year for the 23 years that I was blessed to have her. I appreciated the tradition then -- to varying degrees, more so as I got older -- but I treasure the results of it now. Even if your grandkids are less sentimental than I am, it's a good tradition!” - Nikki J

“I love the grace of small things, Margie. Please keep giving your grandchildren ornaments...they are stories and links to you as well as memories of you and Denis many years from now. Do you date them and sign them? It will help them remember someday. My mom bought ornaments for us and then for her grandchildren up to her passing…” – Alice

“Our advent ritual is to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. We have a Dutch background and we celebrate by putting shoes out the night of the 5th or 6th of December. The date varies for St. Nicholas depending on whether I have my act together or not and buy gifts on time. The gifts usually involved chocolate and some small things. Our daughter is 17 and about to leave home. We don't live in America right now. But this ritual is important for us to keep as part of our Advent.” - “Walkingtochina”

I agree now that I’ve moved thoroughly into being a grandparent – I’ve observed quite a number of young people who have fond memories of grandparents playing important roles in their lives. Enough to commemorate them with a tattoo. Yes.

Yesterday I was talking to my brother, the sheriff. He told me about one of his step-grandsons, a teenager who has not had anyone to love him spontaneously, unconditionally. He’s an abandoned quiet boy, not used to hard work or the kind of play they have up where my family lives in northern Minnesota. Last summer my brother had him working in the garden, caring for the horses, grading the driveway, right beside him and when work was done on a hot day in the evening they’d ride the 4-wheeler up to the beach for a swim in Lake of the Woods, light off firecrackers, sit around a fire as it grew dark. My brother, who’s a big man, but tender, said this quiet boy one day sat on his lap and said, “I love you, Grandpa.” Now from far away in Florida, he’s coming back for Christmas. He’d like to… “please, can I move up there so I can live with you, you wouldn’t even know I was here, I’d be so good, so quiet…”

So…the traditions. The small loves we give in the ordinariness of everyday life may be that sacred thing that will one day say, you are not lost in the cosmos. There is a bigger, better someone who loves you.

My favorite ornament given to me, ever: Baby Jesus in a nest. (Thanks, Judi Fong.)

The Christmas Story

2010-12-14T10:40:00.000-06:00

This will make your day, if not your entire Advent Season. I promise. A friend of ours, Hannah Kirkbride helped put this together.

The Christmas Story - SPANK Dec 2010 from St Paul's on Vimeo.

The ritual of small things

2010-12-09T16:38:00.000-06:00

In a phone conversation with one of my seven-year-old twin grandson’s last night, I learned that yesterday they got to open the Christmas gift from their mom and dad – “we got it early because we needed them! [I could tell he was excited about this rule infraction, and little hands and ears do get cold even in Chattanooga.] A warm hat and a pair of gloves! Mine is blue and Elisha’s is gray, and I don’t remember Mason’s or Isobel’s, but Manessah got a black coat! …and, White-Haired-Grandma? Will you be sending us a Christmas ornament like you do every year?” Oops, I’d forgotten. Sort of. Last year I failed to pick them up on sale after the holidays. Even when I do remember, getting past the stained Santas and the broken snowmen to find just one worthy next Christmas, well, it’s a crapshoot. But I was delighted when he reminded me. I’m a trial to myself and this was another reminder of how easily I talk myself out of responsibilities. Some time back November I had wondered if the grandchildren even cared about the tradition of giving them an ornament each year and decided, eh, they probably don’t notice, and I choose to forget it.

That conversation prompted a trip to Herberger’s today where I got these, even though it was miserable outside with icy sleet falling on top of snow and the wind blowing straight off the Arctic. They weren’t too bad of a deal even with the faked and ubiquitous 60% off.

Denis and I reminded each other of how children love rituals, especially ones that have to do with celebrations, and of how good and human it is to keep ordinary small ones. Although it’s hard to be far from the children we love so much, I’m happy, after all, to be mindful of the grace of not-so-big things.

If there’s a small ritual your heart loves observing during Advent, let me know and I’ll post them as a separate blog.

On Work

2010-12-05T16:33:00.000-06:00

I just learned of On Work, a site begun by Nancy Nordenstrom, who writes:
"You’re invited to submit text or a photo, quote, link, or video on the topic of work to be posted on this site... My goal is to explore work, particularly the intersection of spirituality and work."

The topic touches my heart for a lot of reasons. Among them: watching, praying with and for people I know and love (not only them, but the many we see via the media, or whatever) and the difficulties of finding a meaningful calling - a way to support themselves and their families that uses their gifts and abilities. And if this doesn't happen? Or what if it does - wildly and beyond our dreams? Either way, how to still faithfully love and serve God? How can we do this without the help and encouragement of one another? I think this site will give some inspiration.

Vitamin D

2010-12-01T14:41:00.000-06:00

The past year I’ve been nagging friends and family to take lots of Vitamin D. Whatever is good for me is good for all of you. I was feeling affirmed because the medical establishment has finally discovered, oh, hey, beriberi and scurvy aren’t the only inconveniences linked to vitamin deficiencies and body-breakdown. It made me happy to not hide (well, lie) to my doctor about the daily snarfing of 10,000 supplements to fend off terminal napping and limping like Captain Ahab.

I have some chronic health issues (very boring) that my doctor monitors. She’s knowledgeable and kind. Bonus. Last year she tested Vitamin D levels and found them low enough to prescribe 40,000 IUs a week until I could level off to 2,000-3,000 a day. It can be subjective, for sure, but it seems to help me feel better. And, of course, since no drug company owns Vitamin D it’s a cheap fix.

On Monday of this week I could name four or five people in just the last few days, people, whose lives, I told them, would be smarter better richer for taking Vitamin D. From bone health to depression Vitamin D helps bodies maintain better working order. Find out for yourself. Just google a reliable source and read the literature.

However. Warning. Not that you believe all sources. We need to be very, very careful. Because on this very past Monday (see above) Denis sent me an article from the NYT. Now, I have an emotionally volatile relationship with the NYT just like everything else in my life. If it agrees with me and makes me happy, well and good, I love it. But if not. Then I am flying to New York to find the idiot editor who signed off on this or that ridiculous opinion or who possibly wrote the piece himself/herself and force feed him/her lutefisk until he/she pukes. At the least.

In the case of “Report Questions Need for 2 Diet Supplements” I was upset. I felt chagrined and confused after so much indiscriminate honking about the benefits because it attacked my cherished vitamin D. Really? And calcium. You mean I don’t need to be taking all those calcium horse pills? Who are these “experts?”

I contacted my own favorite expert, who used to be the chairman of a department of internal medicine at Rochester Mayo Clinic and is now at Mayo in Scottsdale where he practices what’s called Consultative Medicine, to ask if I was crazy or what. He’s also a killer (wordchoice) diagnostician – according to others more worthy than myself. I sent him this email:

Hi Larry,

I’ve been telling people they need to take a lot more vitamin D.
Why do I do this? (Rhetorical. Please don’t answer.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30vitamin.html?emc=eta1
Who to trust? I tend to be cynical about some of the experts wondering if it’s partly because Vit D is easily available and not expensive.
You can comment if you have chance or time. If not, I’ll make up a quote from you. jk.
m

Luckily, he replied:

Hi Margie,
My cynicism is for expert panels that find supplements not helpful but prescription medications are. My favorite is a study several years ago published in Journal of the American Medical Association saying St Johns Wort is not helpful for depression. It was a big deal at the time and made headlines in newspapers. However if one read more than the title of the article they would find out it did not work for people with major depression but the part of the study which got no press was that the control group received sertraline (Zoloft) and it did not work either for major depression. Also, no good herbalist would ever consider using St Johns Wort for major depression anyway.

The pharmaceutical industry would like nothing better than to have all supplements banned since they are direct competition for them and articles like these only help them. The pharmaceutical industry heavily sponsors studies and advertises in the major medical journals. Both journals and researchers need research funding so what do you think they would rather publish?

Take your vitamin D, 1000 units daily because you live in Minnesota and when was the last time you went out to lay in the sun? In fact, when was the last time you even saw the sun? (I know what it is like in Rochester!) If your have a big dairy intake with 4 glasses of milk or equivalent you don’t need calcium supplements but how many use this much dairy? Despite the increase in calcium supplementation these past few years, there has not been an increase in kidney stones.

A recent study said high calcium supplementation may cause a tiny increased risk of heart attacks but did not make a comparison to how many people will fall down and break a hip and die from osteoporosis if calcium supplementation stops.

Exercise, Nutrition, Stress reduction, the key to health. Supplements are supplements to diet so if one has a good diet, few supplements are ever needed.

How is life otherwise? I hope articles about Vit D and Calcium are the biggest stressor in your life during this joyous season!

Larry

Thanks much. (I know he gets about a billion emails a day.) Okay. Am feeling mollified. Perhaps even a little joyful, after all it’s Advent Season and I live in Minnesota where it’s NOT 120 degrees 300 days of the year, Larry.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

2010-11-20T18:28:00.000-06:00

The husband was in a celebratory mood. Maybe cuz it was sunny and cold outside and we’d had cheese omelets made with happy eggs and scallions. That combination always makes him happy. I was fairly un-moody myself and had a huge batch of granola going which always makes the house smell crisp and cinamonny when it’s baking. I had also decided it was time for biscotti, when Denis wandered into the kitchen to suggest we needed a special dinner tonight and me, being me did not say make it yourself, but that could have been what I wanted to say. I try to be careful and pure in heart. When I said an elongated whiny wellllll. Anita, being the sensitive discerning person she is suggested takeout, explaining I’m sure you weren’t really planning on being in the kitchen all day. I wasn’t. I timidly offered that rather than takeout today might be a good time for Denis to expand his cooking repertoire from waffles to waffles plus one other thing. He’s a very smart person and could do this if he put his mind to it. Imagine my delight when he grabbed the Mediterranean Cook book and found Ground Meat and Rice Balls in Lemon Sauce! The blessing of it! He even had to go to the store to get fresh mint and parsley. The smell of garlic and lemons wafting out of the kitchen is pretty enticing, but I’ll need to wait to find out for sure. He’s a pretty great guy even though right now he is also searching for a pasta recipe he once made years ago and I don’t know why he wants that. He thinks I threw it away because it is made entirely of butter, butter, butter and a few breadcrumbs and ground pecans. Maybe I did throw it out. I don’t remember.

I did make the following biscotti recipe which is a change from the usual almond chocolate whatever. They are a really wonderful treat, especially if you like concrete dipped in coffee. Pistachios cost the earth but they’re a little cheaper when you shell them yourself. Otoh, you have to factor in that whoever shells them may also eat a cup while doing the job.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

¼ cup light olive oil

¾ cup sugar

2 t. vanilla

2 eggs

1 ¾ cup flour

¼ t. salt

1 t. baking powder

½ cup dried cranberries

1 cup pistachios

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Mix oil and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and gradually add to egg mixture. Work in cranberries and pistachios. Roll into two logs 2x12 inches. Dough will be sticky. Wet hands with cool water to handle more easily. Place on cookie sheet on parchment paper if you have it. Or lightly oil the pan. Bake for 35 minutes or until logs are light brown. Cool for 10 minutes. Cut diagonally into ¾ inch thick slices. Place back on the cookie sheet and back again for 10 minutes. I like them pretty rock-hard, so I turn them all over put them back in the oven for about another 10 – 15 minutes.

A Beaver’s miscalculation

2010-11-19T11:36:00.000-06:00

My grandfather, Pete Frolander, was a carpenter, who built wooden boats, log cabins, and the kind of furniture you might find today in faux-rustic condos. With a dusting of sawdust on his cap and a pencil behind his ear, he smelled good to me – like pine trees and lake water. While he worked and I was a little girl underfoot and not interested in dolls, he allowed me to hammer nails into scrap lumber. When I was done he proudly displayed them in a corner of his shop the same way I now tape my grandchildren’s colored works of art on my refrigerator. My hours of pounding, bending nails, dinging up the board, no rhythm or pattern – just spikey works of juvenile miscalculation and effort.

I’m not sure why finding a large poplar tree felled toward the shore of Pike Fish Lake in Superior National Forest reminded me of him. Until I walked over to it, I assumed the wind had taken it down. As I examined it, I had a smack-the-forehead moment. There were incisor marks on the stump and piles of chips all around it. This was the work of a beaver. After looking at it I realized this rodent woodcutter had neglected to stand back and see that a picnic table was going to be very much in the way of his project. Still, I was impressed; it was almost a work of art.

I guess that’s when I thought of Grandpa who often said “Measure twice cut once.” There’ve been countless times when I thought I had everything measured and under control and pressed send or pulled the trigger only to learn, no, it wasn’t quite right. It all landed on the picnic table not in the water. But he also said to be a good carpenter you can’t be a perfectionist. You always need to be fudging, repurposing, working the angles, and saving this or that up as extra for another day. No longer being a child did not necessarily reduced the number of mistakes I made, which could be a downer until, and even to this day, I go ahead and remind myself that most of them are not cause for panic and they might even have an upside such as an increase in patience with both myself and my environment. More on this later. (I’ve been on vacation.)

Breathing

2010-11-03T12:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was first full day of vacation at cabin on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Last night’s supper menu: Half a smoked whitefish. Rice crackers. Carrot sticks. I think I can top that tonight without too much strain.

All day I did nothing, unless absolutely necessary, like going to the bathroom. Didn’t make the bed or cook or wash a single dish all day. Denis did – not the cooking; the other stuff. I did manage to fling the head with its sunken eyes, skins and fins attached down to the rocks at the water’s edge. We timed it to see how long before the gulls found it. They love carrion, you know. There wasn’t a single one in sight. 12 minutes. Five of them showed. today. Trying not to hurry much. Or at all. This morning saw a big buck lying in the woods just outside. His antlers were framed by bracken and tall grass. A bald eagle flew past the window. Nice.