Make me apologize

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.  

Gambel’s Quail

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.

Aplomb

When it’s hot and humid I don’t willingly turn on the oven. Our kitchen is hotter these days what with the boulevard trees gone. Makes my sweat glands spurt just to walk in there. Still, friends and visitors gather – we need one another in the midst of celebrations, collapses or just in the ordinary waves of heat. So we planned a simple, cool menu. Anita helped execute – not the same as killed. This freed me up to go to my office to lick ice cubes and google the latest pandemic. Sorry no photos.

The chicken rice salad we made looks gorgeous when mounded on a platter and garnished liberally with alternating slices of tomato, avocado and lemon wedges around the edge. People love it. Nothing more needed than a nice bread. Rounded out with Margie’s pretty low-class sangria: red wine, frozen cranberry juice concentrate, sliced limes and Ginger Ale. (Amounts are dump as you go and taste liberally to adjust flavor.) Dessert: fresh blueberries and limoncello (gift from Peggy who made it) spooned over vanilla ice cream.

Dinner was ready when everyone arrived. It’s been awhile since we saw Ann, who is fond of surprise visits, dropping in from wherever the State Dept. posts her and her husband, Rusty. Latest is Amman, Jordan. She used to be on our board of directors, but we had to kick her off because she was always off to Turkey or Cuba. This time I knew she was coming.

She walked in, arms loaded, not wasting a moment, began with, “And I brought some fresh peaches picked just yesterday in Michigan. I’ll just slice some into wine glasses here and then we’ll pour this great white wine over them. And here’s some mango peach chutney I made, we can eat that now with this brie (she pulls a large round of it out of the bag, rummages in my drawers for plate and knife) and some crackers!” She quickly loads one dripping with cheese and chutney and thrusts it in my mouth. I’m laughing because WHO does that unless you’re just SO comfortable with yourself and so assured people will love what you love as much as you do? And we hadn’t seen her for two years? Her aplomb is delicious.

Chicken Rice Salad

1 c. diced or pulled chicken (if really lazy or hot buy a rotisserie chicken at market)
3 c. cooked rice
¼ c. sliced celery
¼ c. sliced stuffed olives
¼ c. chopped green pepper
¼ c. chopped pimento or red pepper
¼ minced onion
¼ t. salt, pepper.
½ c. mayonnaise
Mix. Chill. To serve mound on a platter and surround with garnish of sliced avacado, lemon wedges and tomato. Serves 3. (Easy to ramp up amounts for more servings. This is great leftover the next day, too.)

Making Coffee

After I made a mess of my blog header the other day and was waiting for help (it was coming, but life can get out of hand like maybe Mathew’s kids or backed up sewers, I don’t know… - he’s our managing editor, and a good one), anyway Jeremy Huggins took pity. I didn’t even ask. Not that he doesn’t owe me a case of bottled cokes and chocolate milk. I probably have to let that go now because he tweaked until I really like it. I hope you do too, but that sort of feels like I’m asking if I look fat in this. Before he signed off tonight he asked me about fonts and I had to tell him fonts make me really nervous. I don’t know what to choose; they make me feel like I’m in Walmart wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and a tank top pulled tight over my belly, because I DON’T know it looks bad. It’s not as though I’m the new editor of W magazinewho has pulled in a new font for their cover. (New editors seem to need to do this like Tomcats mark territory, but again, I shouldn’t be saying.) He says, “…and then it is a new logo,…in a new typeface [called] Benton. It’s kind of skinny, it’s very vertical. It’s very elegant and it is italic, with a sense of movement, evolution.” Yes, well, it would be wouldn’t it? But that does leave me, oh, feeling inadequate and confused like I did about two weeks ago when I was trying to decide on a new font for Notes From Toad Hall. I finally ended up choosing a Garamond, not because Bonnie badgered me to death she didn’t, she just said, and this was after trying dozens of them: “I still stand by Garamond for you. It looks good.” I did read somewhere that it has smooth curves and simple serifs and could be said to portray an easy-going beauty. I hope for that and more. Tomorrow Jeremy will advise.

He should, I mean he could, because he’s just launched a new website. For all your editing and writing needs or just for fun check out REWORDSMITH. It’s elegant and quirky and although he is very opinionated about commas, he is kind about your abuse of them. I totally, prayerfully wish him the best.

Days of heaven, maybe

A couple nights ago we took another supper out to the farm. Anita and I got inspired by a peppery sort of Mexican menu and before the food was planned she had pulled a red Mexican blanket from the trunk of her car for a tablecloth and I’d chosen a cd - Flaco Jimenez – All Said and Done. Joe and Becca’s interns Nathan & Sarah joined us, Hannah was there, and Daniel, Joe’s good friend, arrived on his motorcycle with his new puppy, Franky, riding in a box on the back.



While Anita and Denis set up, I finished the poblanos, frying them up in Becca’s cast iron skillet.





Sitting down together in the yard with friends and a loaded table had the distinct feel of eternity – the scent we sometimes get being hundreds of miles or years



downstream from the source. What with the long rays of evening crossing the fields diffusing through the trees, the blend of flavors and textures, sharing stories – it roused hope, the reminder that one day these won't be such a rare moments especially when life is…
Cheez. I’ve been reading too much nineteenth century nature writing. Sounds like I’m channeling James Audubon essays. What I’m saying, okay, is that sometimes God gives grace-filled days and I really, really need to bank them against bad times. Not that I’ve lived with a pessimist or anything, these many years.

This was our menu:

Cucumber-Yogurt Soup with Pepperoncini
(now my favorite cold soup with perfect amount of creamy tanginess)
Flat enchiladas (an easy dish from Hispanic neighbors)
Stuffed Poblano Peppers
Tomato mint salad with pomegranate molasses dressing (unusual foody items like this can make me crabby, but this specialty molasses was worth it)
Challah bread & butter
Fresh lemonade
Café Flan with whipped cream and Kahlua. (a flawless melting of flavors when a spoonful is slowly pressed to the roof of your mouth)

You know, if there was interest, I might post some of these recipes. But only...

Zucchini

First good thing. Am much happier now than I was a few minutes ago having just eaten a slice of fresh zucchini bread. Anita’s been baking and the scent rises to my second floor office. As far as I’m concerned it’s still too early in the season to resent the giant, naughty zucchini gardeners pawn off when you're not looking.

Second good thing, I see it is nearly dinner time and I’m not cooking! We’re grilling at Kosmo’s tonight and I hope she remembers that a bunch of us are coming over and she’s providing the car-nay. So. More joy. It’s not that all of my life is about food. Really, it’s not. But at the end of a long day to find that someone else is redeeming zucchini and lighting the fire is, well, a grace. And for good measure: a poem:

Zucchini

O dread species!

overachiever, overpopulator,

you bore me to death.

At night while the stars hone their points

you multiply and inflate into obscene gestures.

You are the season’s homeless.

We pass you among us like orphaned children

until our sense of charity dissolves

under the sheer weight of your numbers.

Then do we stack you like firewood

and pray for lightening to strike.

- Robert Samarotto

It's like this...

Remember last winter when we whined and cried for fresh like this? Wes made us Victory Garden Chicken Soup. The flavors subtle and green, softly satisfying accompanied by the crunch of fresh bread. Saying good-bye to him for a season - easier when time slows for wine conversation and mannerly dogs laying their heads on your knee saying, Friend, I only just met you, but as you can see, I love you.

Gone to the dog

Breaking new ground with the team.

We were sad to hear about Joe and Becca’s chickens the other day. The previous week when they returned from their other gardens late in the day and Joe went out to shut in the chickens, (They divide their work between their farm and Joe’s dad’s acreage where the soil is organic and has been farmed in vegetables for years. Most of their own land needs to rest and be organically rebuilt from years of corn and soybean crops that require boatloads of chemicals.) he noticed a neighbor’s dog running away from the yard with a chicken in its mouth. He chased it down and returned it to the owner before knowing the extent of the damage. Back at the chicken house he found carnage. Blood and dead chickens everywhere. A count of the survivors showed the dog must have been on rampage for hours as he killed 95 of the little pre-teen hens. Their babies!! For days they were finding carcasses hidden or buried in the yard. The neighbor’s insurance will cover the cost of the chicks, but not the loss of income that would have come from three years of laying eggs. Here is, “Crooked Beak” one of the survivors. She has learned to eat despite a handicap.


They’ve been using Carla and Kayla to prepare some of the ground to plant potatoes and corn. Joe was very excited about finding a horse-pulled potato planter. (He’s pretty enraptured about all that horse-drawn equipment that’s been rusting for a century in remote pastures around the county.) No surprise that it takes some repair and practice to get it working properly. Recently, Anita, our housemate, was out to the farm for a day to help them plant. While Joe drove up front, she rode on the back of the machine, which with one pass dug a furrow, turned a hopper that dropped a potato, and then covered it with dirt every 18 inches or so. A very pleasing machine. Almost a work of art? She was to make sure the potatoes loaded and dropped at the right intervals. She was to tell Joe when things got jammed up, so at first it was comic and frantic as she kept yelling WHOA, WHOA and the well-trained team kept stopping at her command and getting more confused by the cacophony of voices rising behind them. Joe finally decided Becca and Anita must not talk and laugh so much and Anita must say “Stop” not “Whoa.” Apparently the Amish, from whom the horses were purchased, are pretty much all business as they quietly follow their teams in the field. Who can blame them? This is not a hobby. For Joe and Becca either.

Joe's single bottom horse-drawn plow.

One of Joe’s genius and endearing qualities is how he grasps and warehouses numbers. He knows how much, how long, how far, how many of anything. Thus: 14,000 onion and leeks have been set out in rows. 45 bunches of radish sold by 10 a.m. When I asked him how much potatoes did you plant? he replied, “Well, let’s see, 35 rows at 300 feet each….that’s 1.988 miles of potatoes. Or this: 95 chickens killed out of 172. Down from the original 185, although a few kicked the bucket for other reasons – like eating bits of plastic used to bind hay bales. It was mixed in the straw that originally covered the floor of the barn. They wouldn’t have known except for an autopsy on several that looked healthy one day and keeled over the next. Strings were found wrapped around and warping their little guts. Oww.

Their days are growing longer. Becca might be out in the greenhouse by 6 am with a four gallon spray pack on her back letting the leaf hoppers have it with some kind of “organic” solution. Joe might be out in the field with the girls plowing up more ground for late plantings of corn or cultivating rows of potatoes which are poking through. Often their work lasts until 9 p.m. when the light fades. Just typing that exhausts me. It sure punches a hole in a romantic view of what it takes to run a farm.

You might think, wow, all that great green food right in front of you. Man, think of the salads! How they must eat! Truth is, they’re often too busy to prepare much and might only grab some bread and butter with cheese. That’s where we can occasionally help a little. Last week we took supper out to them.

Becca left some fresh greens, shitake and morel mushrooms, asparagus, and a gallon of jersey milk in her refrigerator for us to add to what we brought. When they arrived home about 7:15, I had made Greek chicken and potatoes; it comes out of the oven browned and crisp when you coat it with olive oil, salt, and oregano. Mmmm. Anita had concocted a wine shitake sauce for the steamed asparagus, and sautéed the morels with mild spices to go atop goat cheese and crackers. I tossed a large green salad with about a million different lettuces and spinach, making a simple balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and honey dressing, and crumbling feta cheese over the top. We had a warm rhubarb crisp with cream skimmed off the top of the milk for dessert. Don’t often get to cook for people who have worked so hard they can afford maybe a hundred times the calories of my body. We all sat around beaming. It made me really happy.

Kayla heads for the barn.

Shooter, sixguns, and such

Last Sunday we were to Joe & Becca’s farm with some indigenous locals and a few foreigners from Iowa and Australia where intended to get our bellies full and then fire off a lot of ammo, takin’ care not to disturb the neighbors or alarm the Amish mares, Kayla and Carla, who were new to the farm – we were bein’ partickler about safety, anyway. The mares back in their stable never flinched and we didn’t hear nuthin from nobody else. It was cold and drizzly all afternoon, but it didn’t discourage anyone as Joe led us across muddy ditches to the other side of his fields.

At first we had intended it to be a small hunter/gatherer party, but as word leaked out more and more would-be gunners came out of the closet until we finally said, no more. One friend who’d never shot a gun before said the previous evening he’d been with friends who cried out that the only difference between the southern Bible Belt conservatives they knew and their current Mpls church group was their Minnesota accent – mainly, they all owned GUNS! This discouraged him from revealing where he was going the next day. However, we fancy this could be a new model for “outreach” (Fired-up Evangelism. Or… no, don’t get started.) for our church as there were a goodly number of folk with us who don’t generally consider themselves people of faith. The were warmly received and really into it.

We arrived with enough firepower to arm a militia. And I thought I’d try to post a several videos. Even though I’m totally handicapped and the lens of my camera had moisture on it making every scene, you know not what…fog? Gunsmoke? And my breathing and laughing. Ugh. On a more peaceful note – the last video, if you’ve ever wondered if adolescent chicks cluck or do they still peep (not tweet)? Joe and Becca’s chickens were fun to watch.

Rare Night

Last Saturday night was a oner. Treat night in St. Paul. There is a life there even if people on the coasts aren’t aware of it and so what if we can’t figure out who will be our next senator. The evening was more than we would have allowed ourselves, timid and beggarly as we are… But it was a gift. I’ve been saying “thank you” all week.

Dinner at The Meritage – a Frenchy sort of open, warm upscale café with a great menu. I probably embarrassed our hosts by taking a pic of everything (it looked and tasted great) we ordered. But I’d like to think that’s why the chef came out and talked to us. Maybe he thought I was a critic (I am, but not of that).

Favorite dish: an “Amusement. Tiny Tuna Tartar Taco. Just one leetle, leetle taco with marinated raw tuna. About two bites. Was uncomfortable with name - reminded me of the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. And later I thought, no, that’s not what our evening was about. It was about being alive. It was about pushing back loneliness. Enjoying friendship, creativity, appreciating the art of, having a taste of what’s to come.




My entree, the Scottish Organic Salmon en Sous Vide looked as if it leapt from a pond of green algae (pureed spinach, yogurt, and baby artichoke). Yes, possible to eat without teeth. Mmmm.


Dessert: A molten chocolate cake with salty caramel ice cream. Nice contrasts.






Then we walked to the Ordway for a production of Grey Gardens. It’s best not to think too much about Musicals before hand; I just don’t
lalalala when I’m opening a can of soup….but once you get settled and let the story take you, which can happen when the right ingredients coalesce … it did take us. It’s based on the lives of two women related to Jackie Kennedy - was alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. And tonight at 8 pm (April 18) HBO airs the film with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lang Btw, there’s also an older documentary based on their lives available through netflix.

After the play Ron suggested the Artists Quarter where a good jazz trio was playing. It was up to me. Who often goes to bed early. I’m not sayin’ how early. But I still had chocolate in my veins when we entered a dark club where people were quietly enjoying the music. I’m po’ly educated in jazz, but I liked it, especially the bass player who was the same size and shape of his instrument, and who you could tell loved it very much.

I’d do it again, but not for awhile. Stay up that late. Share it with friends.
Cram it all in.
Lent is over.