Reflections on the new year

We made it through Dec. 21, 2012, and the new year is dawning.

Rumors of a Mayan-predicted collapse were not all bad: they prompted many of us to reflect on where we are headed as human beings on a changing planet. Storms, weather catastrophes, unusually warm temperatures, all point to possibilities we may not entirely understand. A corporate culture stained by the domination of profit over product, or service, or morals for that matter, and the related corruption and greed that can breed, suggest a devolution of who we are as a community and a country.

And so: Are we going to burn up natural resources and continue to clog our collective arteries with excess, bury ourselves in acquisition and materialistic “success,” blinded by the unquenchable desire for more?  Or are we going to open up our consciousness and slow down, recognize that success can be many things, reach out to neighbors literal and figurative, and begin to make the world a better place?

I like to think that the end of the Mayan calendar marks not an abrupt end to the world as we know it, but a slow shift. That “world as we know it,” the one that prompts us to tell our question-authority-and-the-status-quo children, “well, that’s just the way the world is, you have to learn to play the game,” well,  maybe it is time to end that world, and replace it with something that speaks to our better selves.

Hope moves me to believe that is possible.

What if Dec. 21 was about the tide shifting imperceptibly, a sort of tipping point so that yes, we have enough momentum to pull ourselves out of the destructive continuum that has propelled us in recent years, and begin to live our lives with more awareness of the big picture: the universe around us. What if it was about leaving behind the old world, and beginning a new one?

It’s hard for me to name the global signs that this may be beginning: perhaps if I did some research, I would discover them. But I do see them in my little bubble, here in Takoma Park and by extension, parts of the Washington, D.C. area. There is a strong interfaith community here, for example, to counter the devastating wars prompted by religious fervor. There is an embrace of all people, of all ethnicities and sexualities and abilities or lack thereof. There is strong community built around people who care for one another and know their neighbors. There is an ethic around growing (and purchasing) locally grown food, and promoting sustainable ways to grow it. Some of the things we take for granted are, actually, miracles: 20 years ago I would never have believed that the local grocery store chain would offer free range eggs, or that every piece of plastic I use could be recycled at my curb, or that my Community Center would be powered by solar panels and wind energy. It is progress.

It is true: these small steps do not begin to address the heartbreak around the world – the wars, and poverty, violence and disaster. But they may address our lives right here and now, on a scale we can begin to understand. And if we can live good lives at home, perhaps that will impact the rest of the world in some subterranean way. We can be the subconscious of the world. And, if we are strong at home, we can begin to reach out and help others become their best selves as well.

 And so, here’s to hope. It may start small. But I pray that it grows, this year and moving forward.

 Happy New Year.

Second Thanksgiving

This time two weeks ago I was elbow deep in pie dough, experimenting with gluten-free flour and getting ready for I didn’t know how many kids for our annual Second Thanksgiving celebration. After the traditional (and typically more formal) Turkey Day, Second Thanksgiving gives me an opportunity to celebrate my children and their friends with a low-key potluck: I roast a bird and bake a few pies, and our extended family of young friends fills in the blanks. Some bring freshly prepared harvest veggies or a new recipe’s worth of dressing; others bring leftovers, or chips and dip. It’s all good. 

In our kitchen, we baked three pies. The dough, though it tasted gritty before it was baked, miraculously turned out just right – flaky without falling apart. The chocolate pecan pie, my new favorite, looked burned but tasted like an exceptionally gooey, rich, warm candy bar in a pie crust. There’s a lesson in there about expectations and surprises and being open to success in the face of apparent failure, but I’m not sure what it is. Charge ahead?

Well, yes. The best part was how the chaos of preparation all came together: Momma and two kids in the kitchen, one turkey sizzling in the oven, three different pie fillings, two different crusts (one dairy AND gluten-free, one just gluten-free), and countless reasons to be grateful. Our little kitchen is so familiar to us we are able to slide past one another with bowls, knives, hot tea kettles, swinging cabinet doors and drawers, a choreographed dance worthy of all tight but functional spaces. Tyler was on apple pie filling, Clara did pumpkin and pecan, and I rolled out crusts.

By the end, we had a beautifully roasted turkey on the table (not overdone, as I’d feared), plus three gorgeous pies and assorted potluck dishes. Someone played a drum out by the firepit, someone else picked up the guitar in the living room, there was a dart game in the upstairs bedroom and, at one point, freestyle rap beside the table – featuring the word, “pies.”

The taste AND the sound of Thanksgiving. I am grateful.

A walk in the woods

Walking alone in the western Virginia woods recently, I had several things on my mind. As usual, life is full. You know how it is: Family. Work. Personal goals.  

But the best part about this walk in the woods was that I left most of those thoughts behind for a while. My thought process went something like this:

Aren’t you great, for getting outdoors?!? This is so good for your mental health. And, the aerobic exercise is important. (Here I begin counting the number of times I’ve exercised this week, virtually patting myself on the back as I tromp over dried leaves and through branches and brambles).

It’s good to have time alone.

It’s so refreshing to have no music, no computer, no technology at all. We need space like this in our lives to allow feelings to occur, ideas, connections, just to take it all in.

Remember to breathe in this great country air.

Where is the dog?

How close are those deer hunters I hear shooting?

Wow, look at how blue the sky is! Always remember to look up.

These leaves smell so good.

I love the crunch and shuffle of fall.

Shhhhhhh

In short, all those more Serious Thoughts fell away and I was left with silence and joy. And a resolve to walk in the woods more often.

Feeding the masses

Who knew a freshman could be asked to feed a crowd of 80?

It’s not the expected college assignment. Unless you attend the Culinary Institute of America. Which is not the case.

We are talking about VCU Art, where my girl Clara is enrolled in the cinema program. She was part of a film crew over a long weekend. Her job: “craft.” I checked last time I was in the movie theater, and sure enough, this is a category listed in the long, long credits at the end of the film. Wow, there are a lot of folks involved in movie making.

“Craft” means food. And Clara was all over it.

She and one partner – also a college student – planned, cooked and served dinners for a crew of 80. Not just any dinners, either: they had to be cheap, vegetarian, and crock pot-friendly, so they could be kept warm. And they had to be cooked in a small apartment kitchen.

I am so happy Clara texted me for ideas – suggesting that my house is the center of all things cheap and vegetarian (that is a good thing, right?). But credit where credit is due: she came up with ideas of her own that won raves from the cinema pros.

The outcome: the best “craft” ever (well, yes, I am prejudiced). Fact: Happy film crew who came back for seconds – which, because of good planning, were available.

How does a 19-year-old kid pull this off? Well, there was the refusing to sleep factor, of course. But also a lot of planning and chutzpah. I am so proud.

Here are two great standbys for mega-serving meals, easy to multiply by however many you have crowding around your table – or your crockpots. These will stay warm, or are good at room temperature, and you can freeze the extra if you have it. They are healthy, cheap and easy to make – especially the chili. Serve it with cornbread; the ratatouille is great with polenta, which you can either buy in a tube, or make as a super-cheap alternative to pasta.

402 Chili
This is our go-to chili when we’re raiding the pantry for whatever ingredients we have on hand. For my foodie friends, it is Not. Fancy. It’s super simple, plenty satisfying, and when you’re feeding a crowd it makes life easy. This recipe serves about four; if you’ve got 80, you do the math.

1 big onion, chopped
1 green or red pepper, chopped
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons chili powder
Olive oil
Two cans black beans
Rather than use canned beans, I like to cook a bunch of dried beans at a time, since they are cheaper than canned beans and that makes me feel virtuous and resourceful. Then I measure out can-sized portions of the cooked beans – I have a washed out bean can for this – and freeze them in Ziploc bags. For those of you who remember Heloise, this is very Hints-from-Heloise of me.
1 to 2 cups of frozen corn (or equivalent canned corn)
1 to 2 cans tomatoes
Whole canned tomatoes seem to retain their flavor better than diced, so I like to use these
and cut them up after I’ve dumped them into the pot. Pre-diced tomatoes are, of course,
more convenient.
Salt and pepper to taste
Shredded cheddar, sour cream or yogurt, fresh cilantro for garnish
These really make the dish, by elevating it beyond just a bowl of beans, corn and
tomatoes. Especially if you can boast that the cilantro is from your garden! Other great
garnishes: onions chopped small, tomatoes chopped small, and hot sauce for those who
like a little more kick.

Heat olive oil in a skillet or in the bottom of a big pot – I love my cast iron Dutch oven for this. Saute onions, peppers, garlic and salt, cook until veggies are soft. Add chili powder and pepper about half way through.
Add beans, corn and tomatoes. Heat through. While it’s heating, place each garnish in its own little bowl and line them up – everyone gets to garnish their own bowl, a fun pick-and-choose event.

Roasted Ratatouille
Serves 4-ish (the veggies will shrink when roasted)

1 medium-sized onion, sliced
2-3 zucchini, sliced into rounds
1-2 medium-sized eggplant, cut into chunks
2 red or green bell peppers, cut into chunks
1 pint cherry tomatoes, stemmed
6 or so whole cloves garlic, skins on
Olive oil
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and/or basil, chopped roughly
Salt and pepper to taste

Place all but the cherry tomatoes in a bowl with plenty of olive oil to coat. Add herbs, salt and pepper. Toss.
Spread all the veggies into one layer on a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet – use two if you need to. Place in 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. Check for tenderness, add cherry tomatoes, toss together so the veggies don’t stick to the bottom of the pan, and cook another 10 minutes or so. An alternative is to grill the veggies – if you do this, skewer them, and turn them so they cook evenly. It takes about the same amount of time, maybe a little longer.
For the polenta:
Add one cup polenta (which is basically corn grits or corn meal, depending on how smooth you like your polenta – or you can buy the package that says “polenta” on it and follow the directions) to one cup cold water. Meanwhile, boil 3 cups water. Add the polenta/water mixture to the boiling water and get ready to stir constantly for 15 minutes (well, I do walk away sometimes for long enough to set the table, or feed the dog. You do want to keep stirring enough to keep this from sticking to the bottom of the pot, though). The polenta will be thick and gloppy in about 15- 20 minutes. Add about ½ cup shredded parmesan cheese or, really, any cheese you have on hand and think would be tasty. Done.
Serve ratatouille on top of the polenta. Yum.

Road trip

Speeding along the highway
Time slows down so
Everything is possible.

Between looking for the turnoff to I-77 and absorbing the spectacular view along I-40
Between the temptation of gas station Moon Pies (the idea much better than the taste), and balancing how much water I drink with how many pitstops I make  
My ambitions float around the car
Like prayers.

I will bake cookies every week
Organize my favorite music (including this song on the radio)
Mend my blue jeans
Make potholders from fabric scraps
Do Yoga every morning
Take long walks through the woods.

I will
Build a cold frame for a winter garden
Preserve the harvest in neatly sealed Ball jars
Look into starting a bee hive
 
I will write a book of recipes with stories and photographs to accompany each one
I’ll write a memoir about my year on a boat
Or a book about my father

Maybe if I get off at this rest stop with the autumn leaves and picnic tables and water bowls for dogs
I will begin to write, or draw plans for the cold frame, or knit
And there, next to the trucks and cars racing for home

My prayers will be answered.

Quintessential, food and family

Woody's Beach BBQ, Chincoteague, Va.

Sitting at the office desk thinking about the leftovers I brought for lunch, all I want is a juicy sandwich, delivered to me over a counter somewhere, maybe with some of those string fries that are so crunchy they were probably fried twice. Warmed up falafel just ain’t cutting it.

I am thinking instead of Woody’s juicy softshell crab sandwich, from a crazy little compound involving two food trucks and a lot of yard games, at the beach in Chincoteague, Virginia.

There are a few exemplary foods that I go to again and again in my mind (and sometimes in my car), each a sort of pinnacle of its category, against which every other is judged. It might be that perfect combination of crunch and chew, sugar and salt and chocolate (Whole Foods jumble cookies) or the smooth and tangy mixture of cream and fresh berries against just the right bite of liquor (Simeone’s homemade trifle). You never know where you will find these gems—a paper cup filled with crunchy, rich fried chicken livers at a meat counter in Baltimore’s Lexington Market, or my sister Jean’s perfect peanut butter cookies warm from her Montana oven are just as iconic as the Palak Chat fried  spinach salad at the tony Rasika in D.C.

Woody’s Beach BBQ softshell crab sandwich has joined this family of deliciousness and perfection.

I know, this may be sacrilege, since Woody’s isn’t even a fish joint. Its owner – who is a really friendly, fun guy who is supremely good at running a great little roadside eatery -- is not even  named Woody. And, he’s not the guy who’s out on the boat pulling crab traps, either. He’s not even the brother or son of that person, and is not really a local islander (he’s a “come-here,” which means he moved here from elsewhere and adopted the community as his own). Maybe the person behind the food-truck counter, the one doing the actual cooking, is a local?

But really, in the face of such a sandwich, who cares? The food here is more important than the bona fides, plus Woody’s, with its surfer-vibe (there are board shorts hanging on clotheslines, games like corn hole and tetherball to entertain you while you wait for your food, and tables made out of old surfboards and boats) charms me every time.

The sandwich is perfect: flavor-packed crab fried golden but not greasy, with the crunchy little crab legs sprawling out the sides and the soft center meat sweet and yielding, all enhanced by a tomato slice that tastes as if it’s just been picked from the garden down the street, the poster-Big-Boy of ripeness. And, there’s exactly the right amount of sauce, with exactly the right balance of tangy and smooth – some sort of mayo, garlic, lemon combo, done just right.

What could possibly compete with that? Not leftover falafel.

Another recently discovered gem, this time back in the city – well, Silver Spring, Maryland, which is sort of a wanna-be city in the suburbs – was part of a celebratory meal at 8407 Kitchen Bar (celebratory because even though I’d love to eat here weekly, it’s just too darn expensive). I’d thrown caution (i.e. credit card) to the wind and ordered without holding back – an act, when I can pull it off, that always make the food taste sweeter.

My reward, among other delicious treats: a fig and raspberry tart like no other I’ve tasted. In fact, I’ve never tasted that combination at all.

The crust: buttery perfection, just the right crumb. The filling: soothingly soft, sweet fresh figs offset with zingy raspberry accents. The result: Best. Tart. Ever. I’m afraid to make another pie as it can’t possibly measure up to this pastry delight. Props to pastry chef, Rita Garruba.

Actually, I will still make pies – just not this particular one.

In fact, I recently made a more rustic and perhaps more special-by-association pie—two, actually, for Tyler’s birthday. Which is a different story, but a short one:

Why two pies? It’s a legacy. Each Thanksgiving, when my mother would ask whether my dad – Tyler’s Grandad Myers – would like apple, pumpkin or mincemeat pie for dessert, he would always answer, “yes.”

So, Tyler didn’t have to choose: he got both a chocolate pecan pie and an apple pie, plus a merry and very loud round of the happy birthday song. Even if the pies were not epic, I have to admit they did turn out to be new markers for especially good. And the love around the table was, well, perfect.

Tuesday Night Dinner

When my children are living at home, the door swings open and it could mean just one kid home for 5 minutes, or it could mean my own child (or two) and six friends coming in for dinner. I love this. If I have to put some extra pasta in the pot, some extra beans in the chili, or an extra leaf in the table to accommodate a crowd, I’m a happy mama.

It always feels a bit breathless, though, as it’s generally last minute. But I even miss that part, that make-it-up-as-you-go element that happens when you’re parenting. I mean, cooking.

When the kids all went off to college, I thought it would be nice to preserve a little of that spur-of-the-moment, extended family and friends time. And my friends had been talking about all the empty nesters in the neighborhood, and how it was not uncommon that a single person would be sitting alone at her dinner table, just down the street from another person sitting alone. Why not get together?

So we created Tuesday Night.

The original idea was to open my door every Tuesday to whoever was around for dinner. My lovely friends turned it into a taking-turns sort of endeavor, so now we trade off hosting. 

Sometimes, it’s true, with all our busy schedules, work demands and aspirations to finish that garden project, fit in another client, attend yoga, or dance, or zumba, Tuesday night can feel like one more thing to fit in. And when it sneaks up on you, it reminds me of the last-minute requests from when the kids were small: birthday cupcakes for the classroom, remembered the night before, or a pink leotard required for ballet class next day, when the only dance supply store that’s still open is in some obscure neighborhood half an hour away.

But like so many worthwhile endeavors, Tuesday night pays off.

Last week, we had all three couples involved, plus Joseph’s daughter, home from two years of living abroad, and her boyfriend. Once, Joseph’s brother dropped in unexpectedly, and brought a good bottle of wine and a fresh perspective to the table (thanks, Dave, for goosing our liberal ideals!). Assorted children appear as they pass through our households, or sometimes it’s just two of us at the table. It is a safe place to discuss anything and everything, and we do. Conversations range from aging parents to presidential debates, unions and education to travel adventures. The food is always great, and the company is even better.

We don’t put on the faces we wear to parties; we wear the faces that have just finished the work day, the faces of a Tuesday night. Like a family. Which is why we no longer call this weekly gathering Tuesday Night. We call it Family Dinner.

Found food

Each time we go to the mountains, I find something new.

Once, it was grapes. Then, I discovered edible violets and dandelion greens. Recently, the dogs were crunching tiny berries all over the ground – they turned out to be wild cherries, little buttons of chewy, raisin-like sweetness wrapped around a big pit. Not good for much more than a novelty chew, but pretty tasty for the moment they last (and the dogs actually chewed the pits!)

This trip, I found chestnuts.

Most of what I know about chestnuts comes from the song – roasting on an open fire and all that. So I looked them up and discovered I was right to gather up bags of them, foraging beneath the shady tree. Roasted, they are delicious, with a creamy, lightly nutty flavor.

Another of nature’s armored fruits, chestnuts come in a prickly package: wrapped in big green balls that look like sea urchins, or tiny porcupines, covered in needle-sharp, short spines. Wear gloves.

Or, look for the seeds – the actual chestnuts we might recognize roasting on stands in New York City, or in the produce section at the specialty food store – littering the ground. They are a deep brown color, a little bigger than an almond shell and impossibly smooth, the sort of thing you put in your pocket for later, so you can reach in and stroke its surface like a good luck token. I gathered an enormous bag of them, compelled by their simple beauty, one discovery leading to another and another, clutches of perfect little nuts hiding in the grass like misshaped Easter eggs.

Back home in the kitchen, I processed the nuts in a fall ritual that I’m sure has been repeated countless times – and here, again, for the first time. I arranged the nuts on a cookie sheet, smooth, flat side down, scored an “X” on top of each one to let steam escape, and put them in the oven at about 350.

Turns out the X’s weren’t big enough, and a couple of the nuts exploded. Kapow. Nut meats all over the oven. So I turned off the oven, let the nuts cool just enough to re-score, then cooked them some more. Trial and error. In all, the nuts should cook about 30 minutes.

Then, they cool again, but not too much: they have to be warm for peeling. When they were ready, I sat down at the table with a bowl for the peeled nuts and another for the shells and set to work. An hour later, I had probably three pounds of chestnuts.

I’d found an old recipe for chestnut soup online (its origins were actually Gourmet magazine, circa 1978) and another recipe for chestnut cookies, which I made a couple of days later. The soup was fantastic, rich and creamy autumn in a bowl. The cookies were savory and, well, okay. They are reminiscent of Italian wedding cookies, and I think would have been fabulous with a little more salt and maybe some lemon in there somewhere.

Next year, I’ll try another recipe – because now this ritual is my own.

Here’s the soup recipe – and a couple notes on the cookies, which can be found at the link above: Don’t roll them in sugar until AFTER they are out of the oven (scraping powdered sugar off this dough is tedious, as I discovered. Oops). Also, enjoy the meditative quality of rolling buttery dough between your palms – and then smelling like butter for the rest of the afternoon.

Chestnut Soup Thanks to epicurious.com and Gourmet

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs (I used the remnants of curly-leaf parsley from the garden)
• 2 whole cloves
• 1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf (what? There’s a difference? I used what I had)
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth (used my homemade broth from Weathertop Farm chickens)
• 1 (14- to 15-ounce) jar peeled cooked whole chestnuts, crumbled (3 cups)  (Ha! Used fresh ones!)
• 1/4 cup Sercial Madeira (thanks, Norah, for the loan)
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Melt butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over low heat, then stir in celery, carrot, and onion. Cover surface of vegetables with a buttered round of wax paper or parchment (buttered side down) and cover pan with lid, then sweat vegetables 15 minutes (to soften). I didn’t do this, as I had no waxed paper! Just let the veggies cook a bit on their own.

Wrap parsley, cloves, and bay leaf in cheesecloth and tie into a bundle with string to make a bouquet garni. My first bouquet garni! Felt very retro.

Discard buttered paper from vegetables, then add broth and bouquet garni and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20 minutes. Add chestnuts and Madeira and simmer, covered, 3 minutes. At this point it doesn’t look much like soup, but wait for the next step…

Purée soup in small batches (4 or 5) in a blender until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids), transferring to a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan. Stir in cream, pepper, and salt to taste and reheat soup over moderate heat, stirring occasionally.

Makes about 8 cups.

Mixing it up/cookies and work

This morning I woke up 20 minutes early. Instead of frittering it away amongst the week’s worth of newspapers piled up on my dining room table, or the pile of clean laundry that needs folding, I switched it up entirely.

 

I made cookies.

 

I can thank my kids for this, in two ways. One, they are the ones who taught me that any time is a good time to make cookies. My first lesson in this had more to do with 11 o’clock at night than 7:30 in the morning (By the time the cookies waft buttery chocolate through the house it’s the perfect time for a midnight snack).

 

Two, both kids are away in college, and one way I can connect with them is by sending care packages with a taste of home.

 

It really doesn’t take long to pull together a batch of cookies – 10 or 20 minutes, max, then the batter goes into the frig for baking later (I could have baked them, too, but there’s a limit to workplace flexibility and I did have to get out the door). Tomorrow, I’ll pack them up and send them off.

 

It’s one way to thank the kids for the many lessons they’ve offered, and hold onto them for whatever lessons they may offer next.

 

Speaking of which: I just read a great article about the new approach some members of Generation Y take to work, suggesting that, perhaps, we middle aged folks have more to learn. These young adults expect flexibility, autonomy and respect in the workplace – and despite their tenuous status as newbies, sometimes demand that they have it all. For their ambition, they get labeled "spoiled."

 

But wait! Flexibility? Respect? In the work place? Shouldn’t we all have those things? Like, the flexibility to make a batch of cookies before work?

 

Next time I’ll make a double batch and save some for myself.

 

Bike or metro: good, bad and ugly

The last time I commuted by bike, I was still enthralled with the virtue of it: It’s healthy! It’s time-efficient! It’s free!

It’s the mantra of many bike commuters.

But this time, not so much.

I usually embrace even the gritty bits, admiring the symmetry of a neatly laid brick sidewalk, or the exaggerated color on a wall of graffiti. But this time I got stuck behind a noisy, exhaust-spewing construction vehicle on Ft. Totten Drive, passed several smelly trash trucks near the “transfer station,” aka the dump, and wound my way through streets dotted with orange cones and construction crews. There was one bright spot: when I stopped to check my tires, which were click-click-clicking after I rode through some broken glass (and yes, I pulled out a shard of glass I was lucky didn’t pierce the tube), a friendly biker stopped to see if I was okay, and we wound up riding together for a while, talking about puncture-proofing tires (he lines his with deflated extra tubes that fit between the inflated tube and the tire itself) and generally chit-chatting the ride away.

Biking is like that: some days it is all trash trucks and broken glass. Other days it is pleasant, park scenery and friendly encounters with unexpected companions. Sometimes it’s a mix. Either way, you wind up at your destination – and it’s still healthy! Time-efficient! And free!

Today, I took the bike to the metro station, then hopped on the train. I avoided the yarmulke-wearing guy who reads from what I am guessing is the Torah under his breath – that feels like such a private act and I thought I might be distracting to him – and instead sat next to the woman who was practicing Japanese letter-characters in what looked to be a child’s workbook. I am hoping I’ll get a seat on the crowded ride home. Because, like biking, metro can be many things: a slog through a jostling, surly crowd, an curious sojourn with a car full of interestingly diverse fellow travelers, or a mix of both.

Other people's gardens

Pat on planting day this spring

 

My garden is a sad, sad thing this year. After I ambitiously planted squash, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beets, chard and basil, life outside the garden took over and everything went to seed.

Literally.

What I have now is a plot of weeds, with a distant memory of five zucchini, a couple of batches of pesto, a handful of chard and two tomatoes. Oh, and I also have: friends with gardens.

Which is one of the best things to have, ever.

First, I must thank several neighbor friends for sharing their harvest – in exchange for picking up mail while they were on vacation, or just because there was so much in the garden they needed help consuming it all.  There were many nights when I was out at dusk, rustling through the garden across the street, picking salad for dinner, sure someone would walk by and raise an eyebrow. No, I am not a garden thief -- they really did encourage me to share their bounty.

There are also friends who bring their garden produce to the potlucks and family dinners I enjoy: There are few things that sound better to me at a potluck than, “it’s from the garden.”

That was the recurrent theme at a recent lunch with my Copper Hill friends and gardeners extraordinaire.  We share a fantasy that we will one day host dinner al fresco, with a long table set out in a picturesque field and guests bearing homemade pies and baked casseroles made from herbs and vegetables they’ve grown themselves. Everyone will dress in white and there will be a string quartet playing under the oak, very “Shakespeare in Love.”

In fact, I have attended potlucks in Copper Hill where people brought goat cheese they’d made themselves, and where the vegetable lasagna was full of the zucchini and tomatoes grown in the back yard (more tye-dye and denim than white dresses and violins, though).

The other day, lunch was no extravagant affair, but it was hyper-local: from the garden just outside the door. The salad, of simple leaf lettuce, was spiked with nasturtium leaves and tender, young mustard greens. I didn’t know “tender” and “mustard greens” could go together, but these young leaves were like butter lettuce, with crinkly edges and a very spicy bite. And I didn’t know you could eat the peppery leaves as well as the flowers of nasturtiums, whose brilliant sunburst blossoms I’ve always envied in other people’s gardens. There was a luscious yellow tomato, too, sliced thick and juicy on a bright red plate.

Separately, we had a sauteed mixture of all-garden, all-organic anaheim and pasilla peppers, onions and pesto (from garden basil), which served as a rich bed of flavor for chunks of spiced, breaded chicken – the only item that had not been grown on the premises.

Wandering through the garden before we left, I admired the clever structures built of hog wire, where tomatoes climb neatly, instead of sprawling all over those unattractive cone-shaped tomato cages I’ve been dragging about for years. I picked some tender green beans that hung from similar wire teepees, and noted the feathery stalks of asparagus, promising a spring harvest next year. New fall lettuces were sprouting and there were butternut squash everywhere.

I came away with a basket full of goodies – peppers, squash and basil. Thanks, Pat and John! Maybe I’ll put something together for the next potluck and boast: “It’s from the garden.”

 

 

Surf's up

There is just nothing like it.

The standing with your toes in the water. The watching. Reading the break. Salt air and sand and horizon. And then the glide of the board and the smooth placement of belly on its surface, one motion, the first few strokes to paddle out, the baptism of saltwater, the calm just past the break, the swing up onto the board, the settling in to watch for the next wave.

The rhythm of surfing returns so easily, so familiar it’s as if I’ve done it every day since I was a girl, instead of for a small string of days, just once a year.

Not that I get right up and blaze sparkling trails through the water – I’m lucky if I catch these small waves (on Assateague Island in Virginia), luckier still if I stand up for any length of time. But as yoga instructors like to say, it’s not about striking the pose on the cover of Yoga magazine – it’s about the movement and the stretch and how it makes you feel.

And surfing makes me feel great.

This time was especially sweet. One early morning I paddled out with my girl, Clara, thinking I saw some dolphins. And there they were, a big pod of them swimming parallel to shore. They were so close, we could hear their blow holes erupt with characteristically hollow sighs. They swam close to one another, in threes and fours, some in mama-and-baby pairs, and they came so close, maybe 10 feet from us. Twice, one veered off course to point its nose directly toward us, diving smoothly. We covered our mouths and held our breath and waited to see where it would surface next. And then it was back in the line-up. Had it swum beneath our dangling feet?

I told Clara that we could end the day right there, without catching Wave One, and I’d be supremely satisfied.

There’s nothing like it. 

Telling our stories

There are many ways to tell a story. Art is one of the best.

All kinds of art.

This afternoon, I sat in the 12^th Street Gallery in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, D.C.—along a strip with two barbers, a nail salon, a shoe repair shop and a hardware store—and watched and listened as stories unspooled: in paintings on the walls, in a film about love and religion, in soulful music from strings and percussion, in dance, and in writing.

Ronya Lee Anderson, who told her story at Temporium July 8

This is Temporium, a summer art festival presented by Dance Place, one of my favorite spots in D.C. In addition to presenting high-quality performances every weekend, Dance Place supports after-school programming for children and offers myriad classes for adults. Now, it’s also promoting arts beyond its own genre, and beyond its own studios, though still in its own neighborhood—a community that happens to be far from the heady halls of the “high art.”

I am lucky enough to have dipped a toe in both worlds this weekend: first, I went to the Kennedy Center, D.C.’s high-end performance art venue, as a special birthday treat for my girl, Clara. We saw the Paris Opera Ballet dance Giselle, a romantic portrayal of a heartbroken maiden. The lead dancer absolutely transcended gravity and the “Wilis” who accompanied her – ghosts of women who died of heartbreak before they could marry – drifted in an unimaginably otherworldly wave across the stage.

The Paris Opera Ballet Wilis, telling an old story of heartbreak

Then today, I was immersed in the more reality-grounded world of contemporary art: art that told the stories of real people, the sorts of folks I run into right here, in the city. There was a dance about the comfort of finding a voice in movement; another about the challenge of asserting identity. There was a luscious vocal talent following a film on Muslim love; a quartet of musicians telling their own musical stories; and bright paintings I barely had time to acknowledge, because there was such activity all around. I’ll have to return to give them the consideration I’m sure they deserve.

Nadia Janjua's story, on exhibit at the 12th Street Gallery

I was lucky enough to offer a creative writing workshop in the midst of it all. “Everyone Has a Story,” I called it—because you don’t have to be A Writer, or A Novelist, to tell your story, just as you don’t have to be a ballerina at the Kennedy Center to have something meaningful and profound to say through movement. Like so much about art, the workshop became a fluid experience – we expected to be in one place but, because of excessive heat (and lack of air conditioning) wound up in another. Because of scheduling challenges, we considered moving a second time but instead opted to stay at the 12^th Street Gallery. The result was an easy movement from film to music to writing to dance, everyone telling a story in a different way. This was Temporium.

Thanks to Dance Place, my friend Carla Perlo for pulling me into its community, and to all the artists involved in Temporium for making art come alive, and for giving us so many ways to hear and tell our stories.

Brookland's Temporium continues throughout the summer : check it out here.

Good Traffic

I got to work late this morning. Bad traffic.

It’s such a handy excuse – and in many cases it’s actually true. It’s just that because I ride my bike in, my traffic is different from beltway backups.

Last week, it was a neighbor updating me on her job, and the politicking that goes on in her office. Chatting delay. Before that, a four-year-old was calling out, “hello!” Who can resist that? When I stopped to visit, her mother offered me zucchini from their garden.

This morning, my new neighbor – a beagle – interrupted the long downhill ride along Elm Avenue. She was just adopted by an elderly friend, whose older dog recently died. Of course I had to meet her and pat those velvety ears.

The visit delayed me about as much as a malfunctioning traffic light. Or construction in the right lane. But it was much, much more enjoyable.

Sorry I was late. But not really.

Refreshing commute

I have a new game I play, when I am slogging up the steep hills out of my neighborhood, bicycling to the train that takes me into the city for work. I pretend I am just out for a bike ride.

Well, I am, out for a bike ride -- to work.

Take away “work,” and “bike ride” opens up to blue spring skies and that robin chasing a moth; the bank of tiger lilies on Westmoreland Avenue; the smiling face at the hardware store, where the manager is setting up plants for sale on the sidewalk. On the steep inclines, I think about the spinning class I took once, and how people pay to have an instructor help them muscle their way through the higher resistance settings on a stationary bike, when I have that resistance built right into the hill on Elm Avenue. On the downhill, I revel in that giddy feeling I get when the first sleeveless tops of the season come out of the closet and the warmth of late spring hits my bare arms.

This works anywhere.

On metro, climbing the escalator, I notice the patterns the escalator makes, and think what a beautiful photograph that would make. I see the shoes on the woman in front me, sensible but stylish flats, perfect with the skirt, and I think how fresh it all would seem if I were on, say, the Paris metro. Those shoes would be Parisian, that face so very French. And I remember that even standing in line at a drugstore is exciting, when you’re in a foreign country.

Why not here?

So I pretend I am on vacation and feel the rhythm of the train on the tracks, notice the spray of dreadlocks sprouting from a ponytail on a young man’s head, the years etched on a Latina woman’s face, how some riders are absorbed in their iPhones and others are drifting in and out of sleep.

I look forward to running the gauntlet of homeless men who sit like a brotherhood of ruffians just outside Union Station, the one in the wheelchair beaming, “hello,” shiny bald pate gleaming in the sun.

That purple shirt, those orange curls, the symmetry of the brick sidewalk, that perfectly framed view of the Capitol building.

And then, I’m at work, and the tour is over – unless the weather holds, and then I’ll be back out on the sidewalk on my way to the park for lunch.

Feather to plate

Last weekend, researching an article about Charlottesville, Virginia, I got to visit Polyface Farm. Like so many other true believers in the locavore movement –those who believe that eating food that is grown and raised locally is better for the environment, better for the local economy, and better for your body (including taste buds!) -- I had read about Polyface in one of the seminal tomes of the concept, Michael Polan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma.” The book describes the sustainable methods of pig, cattle and chicken farming practiced at Polyface, which is about 50 miles from Charlottesville, detailing how farmer Joel Salatin rotates his animals on pasture land, re-uses manure to nurture the soil, and follows the animals’ natural habits in order to keep them healthy, to maintain some semblance of natural balance, and for eventual harvest. This, the premise goes, makes for a better planet as well as a better drumstick (or pork chop) on your plate.

The book also portrays Salatin as a sort of radical folk hero, a forget-about-the-rules-and-do-what-you-know-is-right kind of guy.

So going to Polyface was a bit like a pilgrimage.

To get there, I followed windy, country roads past other farms (I wonder what Salatin’s neighbors think of all the hoopla) and on to a picturesque site dotted with plastic hoop-house greenhouses, barns and sheds, plus a market building where Polyface sells its wares (besides the meat, also produce and eggs). There was one other car in the small parking area. This is a working farm, not a showcase. And, when I went in to see if there might be a map in the market building (there was) the woman behind the counter told me they were slaughtering out back if I wanted to watch.

Um, yes. If you can get a first-hand look at where your food comes from, I think you should. Even when it involves slaughter.

Out back, a sort of mechanical humming was the only sound – it was the spinner that de-feathers the birds, sort of like a clothes-washing machine set on “spin,” but without the water. Just birds.

Besides the water spraying from the spinner (and the water on the floor and everywhere else in this open-air shed, keeping thing clean throughout the process), slaughtering at Polyface is a surprisingly neat operation, everything moving efficiently down an assembly line of family members, starting with 6-year-old Andrew, who minds the crates of fluffy white, live birds and then stacks the crates once they’re empty.

His dad, Daniel, grabs the birds one by one, and tucks them head first into metal cones arranged in a circle on a contraption hanging from the ceiling.

Then he slits their throats, an action so quick you hardly know it’s happened. There is no squawking, no protest, the chickens simply wait their turn in their crates (from which they could fly, if they had a notion, but they don’t), then succumb.

It doesn’t feel like death, in a bad way. It feels like dressing them, somehow – adding some necessary accoutrement, a necklace of thick blood, and they never blink, they just take it in stride and then they are no longer the kind of bird you interact with, maybe talk to, or shoo away from the lettuce, they are the kind of bird you find in your frig, the kind of bird you will eat.

Yes, there are slicks of dark blood under the cones with chickens hanging upside down. There are spatters of blood on Daniel’s cheeks, and on the yellow slicker aprons and overalls some of the other processors wear. But it is all part and parcel of the process. Part of the circle of life – as corny as that sounds, it is actually what I am witnessing. We nurture the animal. The animal nurtures us. Life goes on. And then there’s death. We get a much longer stay on earth, it is true – these birds got a total of eight weeks. They are small, Daniel explained, because they are spring chickens, not yet enjoying the more bountiful feast of insects and grasses available to later flocks.

The birds go from the slaughtering machine into a bin that flips them into boiling water, to loosen their feathers. Then, into the washing machine contraption, which spits out bits of water, as if the birds are being wrung out. Everything smells faintly of boiled chicken, and I wonder if my jeans, which I’m sure have been spattered by this spinning machine (I’m that close!), will stink by the end of the day. They don’t.

From there, the chicken gets passed down the line, with unwanted bits cut away or gathered into buckets – feet, gizzards, livers, hearts, I’m not sure what all the farmers are doing but by the end these birds are ready for the oven.

I take all this in from inches away, being careful to stay out of the way. Daniel answers my questions, and talks about the buying clubs that make up 45 percent of the business. He listens as his son carefully spells out his name for me, A-N-D-R-E-W. The boy tells me that’s his brother over there, helping cut up the chickens – Travis. He’s eight.

Then his dad helps spell out the last name,: S-A-L-A-T-I-N and I realize this is family. Daniel tells me Joel, Andrew’s grandfather, is standing in the assembly line, along with Andrew’s grandmother and great-grandmother. There are four generations here today, the first day of chicken harvesting. They are all friendly, listening politely and grinning slightly as I blather about how really pleased I am to meet them, I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s a wonderful place, etc.

My pilgrimage is complete.

And later, when I order a curried chicken salad at Revolutionary Soup in Charlottesville, I appreciate chicken in a whole new way.
Though I must say, the eggs I brought home from Polyface and ate hard-boiled today for lunch were even better. Brilliant orange yolks, rich but not heavy flavor. And, no slaughter required.

Sailing on staples

I ran out of milk today, so I went to the cupboard for my back-up box of powdered, instant milk. I keep this on hand for when I really want to make macaroni and cheese, or quiche, or muffins, and I have all the ingredients but milk. Who wants to run out to the store? Mix up some dried milk and throw it in, you can't really taste the difference.

Today, I put it in my iced coffee (actually this morning’s leftover coffee with a few ice cubes thrown in, but it really can be dolled up to taste like a coffeehouse treat). This was an entirely different proposition than substituting it in baked dishes, where it is masked by a variety of other ingredients. This time with just the milk, and the coffee, that clinging flavor of dried milk came right through.

It immediately made me think of The Boat. When I was eight years old, my family took off from Long Island, New York on a 40-foot sailboat, which we lived aboard for a year: me, my three older sisters and my parents. Yes, it was tight quarters. And there are many things I remember about it – but food, memory trigger that it is, calls forth the culinary details.

There wasn’t a lot of storage room on the boat, and the icebox, as I recall it, was an on-again-off-again hole in the galley counter with a hatch-type lid that lifted up. You had to reach into its depths and re-arrange everything in order to find whatever it was you were looking for. It was also dependent on The Generator which seemed to be a subject of conversation pretty frequently -- I think it must have been broken a lot. At eight years old that sort of thing was not my concern. I only knew that our “frig” was pretty limited. And we often bought ice, in blocks, at the marinas where we stayed. Maybe it wasn’t an electric refrigerator at all, maybe it really was just an ice box? At any rate, we didn’t get fresh milk, but we drank a lot of the dried variety, along with Tang (remember that orange-flavored powder touted to be the drink of astronauts?), and occasionally those tin cans of orange juice with Donald Duck smiling on the front, trying to conceal the fact that the juice tastes like metal. On special occasions, like birthdays, we would have cans of Coke, which we cooled by placing in a net and hanging in the water.

We had a few staples that we made over and over: the ones I remember were molasses sugar cookies, which were my specialty (except the one time I added a cup instead of a teaspoon of salt, and we had to throw the entire batch overboard); and “bathroom cookies,” which were a variation on the recipe from the Bran Flakes box. I’m sure there were other stand-bys my mother used to feed us all, but I only remember that she stowed cans of – what? – tuna? meats? – under the floorboards in the bilge, and we all had to clear out when she was retrieving them to make dinner. I also remember her trying to cook rice in seawater, to conserve our limited water supply – that, too, went overboard.

Along with the staples – which we tried to replenish when we were in port, a good trick when half the dry goods stores in the Caribbean circa 1970 featured bloated, dusty cans and nothing remotely like an expiration dates – we sometimes tried out the produce from the docks. I remember sampling knobby-looking breadfruit, and little tiny bananas called finger bananas, super sweet and delicious. We must have had pineapple and citrus as well, as they’d have been more familiar to my pretty conventional-cook mother.

And we ate the fish we caught, trolling a couple of lines at the stern whenver we were underway. The favorite was dolphin, a rainbow-colored beauty when it’s swimming in its iridescent school, but which fades the minute you pull up your line and expose it to the air. We also caught a lot of Spanish mackerel, a severe, torpedoe-shaped fish that looks like an angry character from a Roald Dahl book, all sharp fins and pointy tail; and albacore tuna, a sweetly round-shaped fish with metallically shiny skin that we once pulled up after it had been attacked by a shark. We got the head of the fish, the rest had already been devoured.

If I lived on a boat again, I think I’d rely most on the fresh fish and the fruits and veggies available in the markets, sampling the tropical fare that any native would make their own staples. Except, of course, for the dried milk I’d have on hand for my afternoon coffee. The photo is of the sort of boat we lived on, a 40-foot Newporter ketch. Ours was called "Glad Tidings." I wonder where she is now.