Tool Time

What is it about house projects that’s so empowering?
And, when they don’t work out so well, so emasculating?
It’s just a dripping faucet, right?
Well, not exactly.
For me, fixing a dripping faucet (which I did, successfully, all by myself, for the first time, two weeks ago, not that I’m bragging but that is one tight fixture) is victory and independence and proving myself to – who? It’s not like anyone is watching, arms crossed, daring me to try, taunting me with the phone – “here, if you can’t manage this yourself, just call a handyman!”

It is notable, and perhaps relevant here, that I think of my dad every time I pick up a tool – partly because whatever tools I have are likely from his old workshop, where they were neatly lined up along a peg board, partly because if I’m proving anything to anyone it would be to him, and partly because I miss him and wish he were still around to teach me about tinkering around the house.

Or maybe not that last bit. Because there was always a lot of cursing and sweating involved in dad’s house projects. He was a perfectionist and, well, house projects and perfectionists make uncomfortable partners. It was hard to help him much, because everything had to be just so. But I did stand by and hand him tools, waiting for what seemed like hours until I could do something useful. Get me that Philips head, he’d say, and I’d pray I’d pick the right screwdriver to hand to him.

So I know the difference between a Phillips head and that other kind of screwdriver. I know that you have to press, hard, as you turn it so you don’t strip the screw. I know how to paint with a roller (make a “W” and then fill it in). I know “righty tighty, lefty loosey.” I own a drill (I love using the drill, RRRRRRRRNnnnnnnnnnnnRRrrrrrrr). But I’m still lacking a lot of the vocabulary of the do-it-yourself tribe.

That didn’t stop me from tackling a hole in basement ceiling this weekend. I’d been delaying this project, alternately telling myself it would be no big deal – it’s a small hole – and dreading the inevitable impasse I would encounter. Would it be not knowing how to cut drywall? Measuring inaccurately? Using the wrong adhesive to fix the stuff to the ceiling? If it’s not perfect the first time, there will be much gnashing of teeth and who needs that? But wait! I don’t have to gnash my teeth. I am not my father. In fact, my own handy-woman mantra is, go ahead, the worst that can happen is it won’t work, and then you’ll just try again, another way. Or get someone to help. And if that happens, I comfort myself by remembering all the things I can do. I may not be an expert at drywall, but I make a hell of an apple pie. For example.

So I started in on the drywall project, reading up on drywall patches (love the internet), gathering all the tools I’d need, removing the cabinet that partially blocked the hole, and evening up the gap so I could cut an tidy rectangle of drywall rather than a more difficult, dog-legged piece (good advice from an online instructional). Then I asked a more experienced friend to take a look to be sure I was on the right track, before figuring out how best to attach the drywall to the ceiling beams.

As it turns out, my friend wound up doing most of the work for me, wielding a tape measure like it was an extension of his hands. He’s a professional carpenter, and while I envy his innate ability to Fix Things, I am mostly just grateful that he stepped in and fit what would have been a day-long project into the space of an hour or less. All that remains is nailing up some trim and painting – both tasks I can easily handle.

I learned: spackle and joint compound are two different things. You need a special spreader thing for joint compound – not a putty knife. You can skip the whole joint compound thing if you use trim instead. And you can use the pruning saw to cut trim, in a pinch. Which I did. This morning.

At one point I brought my 16-year-old daughter down to see the project in progress. This is drywall, I told her. This is a utility knife. Do you know the difference between a Philips head and that other kind of screwdriver?

We'll have to work on this some more, but hopefully she’ll have a bigger vocabulary to use when she begins to tackle her own house projects. She already knows how to bake an apple pie.

Inspirational Pizza

There are people who sit around in bars and coffeeshops, brainstorming far-fetched ideas that seem incredibly brilliant at the time, coming up with inventions or one-of-a-kind enterprises no one else has considered – and then they go home and get ready for their 9 to 5 jobs the next day and forget about their schemes until the napkin they sketched them on resurfaces, crumpled and faded, in the pocket of an overcoat.

Jon Roberts is not one of those people.

He and a friend, Scott Smith, came up with an idea then followed through.

After baking pizza together in the homemade, wood-burning pizza oven in Jon’s back yard, the two decided to build another oven – this one on the back of a pickup truck. Now these two young guys bring brick-oven pizza to the people, firing up the 1,800-pound wood-burning oven at music festivals and farmer’s markets and vineyards, where they are regulars, and at private parties and other events as they come up. The pizzas are organic and use locally-grown ingredients. Last year, Jon sold 1,500 of them at a local music festival in Floyd, Virginia.

The business is called Dogtown Pizza, named for the mountain holler where Jon lives, in the Blue Ridge near Floyd.

If you had told me two years ago that you wanted to build a concrete oven and cart it around to bake pizza – with organic, local ingredients, no less -- I would have rolled my eyes and called you a dreamer. Recently I’ve learned that dreamers can also be do-ers.
Thanks, Jon, for the lesson.

If you’re not in or around Floyd County and Dogtown, dream your own dream and make your own pizza. In the time it takes to order and wait for delivery, I can put together a fabulous pizza with fresh garden chard and garlic – and they ain’t got that on the menu at Domino’s. Not that I’m bragging. I’m just sayin’.

Here’s my recipe, for a quick, barely-has-to-rise dough and toppings. The trick is to set your oven as high as it will go – unless you have a pizza oven your backyard, in which case you’re way ahead of me!

Way Better Than Carryout Pizza
1 tablespoon yeast
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon sugar or other sweetener
2 tablespoons olive oil
2-1/2 cups unbleached white flour (or mix with whole wheat)
Pizza sauce – homemade or jarred
Toppings – your choice, see below
Mozarella – almost a whole block (16 oz?) shredded (I usually use Sargento) or use fresh
Dissolve yeast in water. Add remaining ingredients. Stir 100 strokes (or knead, if you’re like me and love the meditative quality of working the dough in your hands).
Cover with a warm, damp cloth and let rise five minutes (really!)
Roll the dough out on whatever you’ve got for baking – a pizza stone, if you’re lucky, a cookie pan, if you’re like me. I sprinkle a little oil on the pan to keep the crust from sticking. And I like to begin to flatten the dough with my marble rolling pin, then pick it up and practice spinning it around like the pizza guys I remember from a good pizza place I remember from college. That only takes me so far, though, because I’m not very good at it and because my cookie pan is rectangular, not circular (and you get a circle when you spin the dough), so I use the rolling pin to finish getting the dough nice and flat on the pan.
Slather the dough with pizza sauce, supplemented with extra dried oregano if you like that (I do). Sprinkle grated mozzarella all over – fresh mozzarella is a real treat, just know that it won’t melt to look the way you expect a conventional pizza to look.
Top with your favorites. Mine vary, but include chard or spinach lightly sautéed in olive oil; thinly sliced, raw garlic, tossed with olive oil to soften; fresh basil leaves from the garden; and roasted red pepper slices.
Bake 10 to 13 minutes at 475 or as high as your oven will go.

Squashing Envy

My garden feels especially tiny this week.
Maybe that’s because I saw one impressive spread out in the country over the weekend. Garden envy? Could be – but I’ve adopted my daughter, Clara’s, approach to such things. Instead of being envious, I’ve decided to be inspired.

First inspiration: rows upon rows of harvested butternut squash. They stand on their bulbous ends, all sizes lined up together on a shelf like soldiers fighting against industrial agriculture and fast food and chemical fertilizer and all the commercial madness these particular gardeners are working hard to avoid. They are an entire winter’s worth of wholesome, organic food, along with crates of sweet potatoes and a root cellar full of beets, carrots, onions, potatoes and parsnips.

Second inspiration: the rows of flourishing chard and mustard greens and kale still growing in what remains of the season. Abundant mounds of cabbages covered with plastic to protect from cold; cold frames full of spinach and bristling with different kinds of lettuces.

Back home on the edge of the city, just knowing that these gardeners will rise with the sun to tend the gardens and work within the rhythms of the season, takes the frantic edge off urban living.

I reassess my own veggie patch, think about where I might fit a cold frame, consider how to enrich the soil so my chard grows past its current stunted height. And, of course, I plan for a couple of healthy hills of butternut squash in next year's garden.

Cats and Dogs

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat
'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!

Many people think it’s a cozy, sweet thing to work at a computer with a cat in your lap. And it is. I sit on the phone talking to Mr. Bigwig, typing away as he spools off quotes for the article I’m writing, and I’m happy to have finally caught him on the phone between appointments and important meetings and trips to the gym or whatever else he does. And all the while, I have this warm, living thing in my lap, purring away.

Until the dog comes in.

Nala the dog and Milky the cat are still working out how to be in the same room together. Things have gotten much better recently, which is why I kept the door to the office open on this particular day, risking an encounter while I am on the phone. Maybe not such a good idea.

It must be close to noon, when Nala usually goes out for a romp with her doggy friend down the street, so she is anxious for my attention, and begins to nose around my leg. Where the cat is curled up. I swivel in my chair, so the dog can’t reach the cat – but Nala just goes around to the other side. The phone is wedged between my ear and my shoulder and I’m trying not to let it slip, and trying to hear and type what Mr. Bigwig is saying, and trying to think of my next question, and trying to keep the dog from actually licking the cat and the cat from clawing the dog and possibly me.

After much furtive swiveling, the dog lets out a sharp yelp of frustration and I finally give up and ask Mr. Bigwig if he could please hold on one minute. He is a very approachable Bigwig, and says yes, of course. So I push what I think is the “hold” button on the phone, but it’s actually “flash,” meant for switching over to a second phone call, but there is no second phone call, just two animals ready to rumble. I have hung up on Mr. Bigwig. Somehow I manage to ease Milky off my lap and lead Nala back out of the room, close the door, discover my telephone mistake, and dial Mr. Bigwig to apologize for cutting him off.

I was having issues with my staff, I say.

Something's Good and Fishy

I have driven by this place more times than I could possibly count, but it’s off my radar screen. There are an amazing number of these sorts of places, spots that are part of my universe, in that they are right in front of me, but not, because I don’t really see them, my eyes slide right by. This one is a “Spanish” market. I don’t know how this happened, but “Spanish” somehow now means any culture that speaks Spanish – in the case of our Takoma-Langley area, that would mean Central American, mostly. And I’m pretty much Anglo-Saxon, even though I speak (barely) passable Spanish. And, I do buy Goya black beans from the Shopper’s Food Warehouse Latino aisle, and I know what queso blanco is. But I’m most accustomed to pretty conventional American groceries.

The Atlantic Market just isn’t in my regular route of Places To Go.

I thought it would be a colorfully crowded, jostling-and-full-of-people type of place brimming with papayas and mangos and dried fish and cans of fruit juices that looked vaguely familiar from trips to the Caribbean. That’s what the market at the corner of University and Piney Branch is. But this is a spacious, tidy grocery store with plenty of room to move about. I couldn’t even find mangos (though I did see papayas and those canned fruit juices, plus Clara’s favorite Salvadoran cookies).

And they have fresh fish. Lots of it. Cheap.

You can choose your fish already filleted, or choose the whole fish, and have the attendant clean it for you. I chose the latter, thinking how clever I was to choose my own fish – someone, somewhere taught me to look for clear eyes on a fish, to be sure it’s fresh, so armed with this fact I feel all seasoned and like the daughter of a fisherman (which I am). Some of the fish eyes, at this market, were clear, some not so much. I chose rockfish, partly because their eyes looked good and partly because I couldn’t believe it was only $3.99 a pound. Wow! I used the tongs lying on top of the ice in which the fish was packed, nice and neat along a tray that separated me from where the fish cleaning guys stood (are they called butchers if they’re dealing with fish, not meat?). I picked up a couple of rockfish and put them in one of the big white plastic bowls, then asked the fish man to please clean it. And he totally understood English, which was a relief because my brain couldn’t race fast enough to put “clean” and “fish” together in Spanish (though now that I’m sitting at my computer at home, of course, it comes to me, maybe not conjugated properly but I could have gotten the idea across)

So I watch as the fish is scaled and gutted, and remember doing this with my dad, the scraping of the knife against the scales, the squish of the innards as they leave that nice, neat belly cavity, and how macho I felt, at age 8, being able to handle all this without getting squeamish. I realize the fish man intends to leave the head on, but I’m not making fish stew (and have never used a fish head before) so I ask him to take the head off, and then I ask that he fillet it.

The filleting process is nothing like what I remember Dad doing – Dad was a finesse man, and painstakingly worked a very sharp knife along the bone to get a perfect fillet, losing very little meat along the way and rarely leaving a bone. I know he was rolling over in his grave as the fish man butchered this fillet, but I didn’t mind – there was still plenty of meat and I wouldn’t mind picking the bones out. Especially at 3.99 a pound. Except that he weighed it before he filleted it so I paid for the head and guts – maybe that’s why most people keep the head?

Anyway, I’ve found a cheap place to get good fish. They had enormous blue fish for $1.99 (same deal, pick the big fish, they clean it for you), and Spanish mackerel, and tilapia (pre-filleted or whole) and shrimp and crabs – and it all smelled clean, another sign of a good fish shop.

I pan-fried the fish and it was sweet and delicious, with just a bit of butter I’d combined with lemon and lemon rind. And there were fewer bones than I’d expected.

The Atlantic Market is in the shopping center at New Hampshire Avenue and University Boulevard, in what’s known as Takoma-Langley Crossroads – in the part where Toys R Us used to be. Bonus: their avocados were 69 cents a piece, and perfectly ripe.

How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds

First go the Sunday farmer’s market and, after you’ve tasted the little tiny pears and decided you must have a half dozen along with the Braeburn apples and the orange-est sweet potato you’ve ever seen, and after you’ve marveled at the size of the broccoli (which you can’t seem to grow properly yourself) and imagined it in a wok with cauliflower and maybe some of that baby bok choy, after you’ve run into one friend and traded Halloween stories and another who you catch up with over coffee – after all that, go home hungry.

In your kitchen, put “Drag the River” in and think of the friend who sent you this CD from your home town in Florida, and think of everyone back home and dance by yourself in the kitchen while the dog looks on. Then take out the cute little cooking pumpkin you bought last week at the market, but never got around to cooking. Cut around a couple bad spots. Hope it’ll still taste good.

Preheat the oven (and don’t forget to take it off the “preheat” setting, like you did last Wednesday for the baked potatoes). Cut up the pumpkin with the energy you now have from one too many cups of morning coffee (but really, how could you resist, as Heather’s coffee at Summer Delights, Sunday only, is the best in town), and follow the recipe you got from James Ricciuti, who does this great Sunday market thing of his own out in Olney (James runs Ricciuti’s Restaurant, and several times each season takes a bunch of fans from the restaurant to the farmer’s market down the street, and back to the restaurant to cook up the season’s best in his great little kitchen. Cooking lesson and lunch, all in one. Yum.)

Season the pumpkin with what you’d think are pumpkin pie spices but what turn out to be perfect for a salad. Toss ‘em with some olive oil and put ‘em in the oven and, while they cook, fish through the gooey pumpkin guts on the counter to separate out the seeds. They go on a smaller tray, all spread out by themselves. Into the oven.

Sit down with the Sunday paper. Then hear that funny popping sound

This has never happened before. Maybe these seeds were a little overripe? They did look plump. Take the seeds out and hope they’re not under-done. Note that a couple fell on the floor of the oven. Turn to clean up some of your pumpkin skin mess, then turn back and see

Flame.

In the oven. A pumpkin seed on fire.

You are alone in the house. You don’t have a fire extinguisher. You think quickly, open the door of the oven (no, no, no! My friend Captn Jarboe from the TPVFD says CLOSE the oven door if there’s a fire!! And why the hell do you not have a fire extinguisher?!?). Oven door open, feel foolish while blowing on the little tiny flame and thank God it actually goes out.

Still saying prayers, grab the tongs and try to get the seed that is still smoking at the bottom of the oven so it doesn’t catch flame again. Burn your hand as you slide out the bottom rack so you can actually reach the little smoker. Grab the other two seed escapees while you’re at it.

A few minutes later, the pumpkin is finished. It’s a tiny bit mealy – but the spices are fabulous, so it’s still an addictive little roasted treat. It’ll combine beautifully with roasted pecans and fresh apples, from today’s market, plus fresh greens and a vinaigrette.

The pumpkin seeds are a little too chewy. But things could be worse.

Put “fire extinguisher” on your Home Depot list.