Forgiveness

I opened the frig in Takoma Park the other day and saw (again) an enormous plastic grocery bag full of grapes from Misty Mountain, the western Virginia hideaway where I picked them oh, say, three weeks ago. Oh, dear. They must be leaking all over the refrigerator shelf. They must be far past their prime. How will I get them to the compost pile without staining the floor with grape juice on my way?

I first discovered these grapes last year, when their overwhelmingly sweet smell led me to the spot where they hang from a tangled vine, entirely unkempt and temptingly plump. Thrilled to discover this bounty, I made grape juice from them—two quarts of it. I savored the pure, sweet grape-ness of it, in small portions (it was so intensely flavored), then let it sit in the back of the refrigerator in its quart jars and… go bad. Sadly, I had to throw it out.

Unforgiveable.

So this year, I decided to try again. Between other chores at Misty Mountain, I slipped away to fill another bag with these deep purple orbs, carefully stretching to grab as many as I could, knowing full well that I might not be able to do anything with them for some time. But I felt greedy. They smelled so good. And there were so many, tart little orbs ready to burst with juiciness, just hanging from this vine that seems to have sprouted out of nowhere to climb all over a (mostly) dead tree, tangled up and all willy-nilly. I picked and picked and longed to be able to reach the higher portions of the vine, but I ran out of time to rig a way to reach higher, and had to leave with just the one bulging plastic shopping bag stowed in the car, which then smelled sweet for the entire, four-and-a-half-hour drive home. No Staples bag has ever smelled so good.

But there it sat, the Staples bag full of fat and juicy grapes, in my refrigerator, untouched. I had such great intentions: to make grapejuice, and not let it go bad. Can it. Or freeze it. Something. But competing deadlines and business trips out of town and launching my daughter to New York City prevented me from processing any of them. They just sat.

You would think that the smell of fermenting fruit would start to overpower the rest of the contents of the frig, eventually flavoring the butter and wafting out when you reached for the cheese.

But these were, I have discovered, patient and forgiving grapes.

Despite last year’s moldy grape juice and this year’s three weeks of neglect, despite the abandonment of homesteading aspirations, and the prioritizing of working overtime instead of putting up pints of essence-of-grape in jars of juice to line my winter shelves for winter, these grapes came through for me.

When I reached into that Staples bag, instead of mush or shriveled up raisins, I found (mostly) firm grapes, ready to become whatever I deemed best. Or, more accurately, whatever I had time for.

So the other night I made grape juice, and I made a grape pie.

The juice is straining in the frig overnight. I promise it won’t go moldy this time.

The pie was inspired by Lucky’s, a new favorite restaurant in Roanoke; I ordered it for dessert a few weeks ago, and though I didn’t love it, I loved the idea of it. So I made my own version, which I believe is better –but credit must got to Lucky’s for inspiration (and everything else about this place is great).

I’d never have thought to make a pie from grapes. I’m not sure I’ll do it again – but maybe. On a special occasion. It is labor intensive – to say the least. But oh. So. Good.

This recipe is for a (6”) miniature pie, which will feed two hungry people or four people who want a tantalizing taste of grapes for a reasonable after-dinner treat. The flavor is so intense, a small bit really is enough. Or, you could double or triple this and fill a bigger pie tin. Depending on how much time you have.

Grape Pie

2 cups Misty Mountain grapes (or wild grapes. Or I guess you could grab some seedless ones at the store, but they won’t be as tart, tart, tart)
3/8 cup sugar (or so)
1 teaspoon or 2 of cornstarch

Wash the grapes, and pick off the stems and other funny detritus that winds up all over them. Squeeze them out of their skins, and put the skins aside. Take the pulp and put a bit of water on top of them in a pan, heat slowly until they start to soften and their seeds loosen.

Sit down. Call a friend on the phone, or settle down with someone you love. You will be picking out seeds for a long time and good company would be nice.

Once the seeds are picked, combine the now seedless pulp with the skins (which are a gorgeous royal purple/black color) and add the sugar and cornstarch. Let it sit for 15 minutes.

Pour it into a waiting pie crust and put into a 400-degree oven. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for about 20 minutes.

Yum.

Country mouse, city mouse

It’s a Thursday morning. I reach into my backpack, past the parsley and basil I picked in the garden this morning, find my metro card, and pull it out, redolent with fresh herbs. I’m ready to commute into the city, smelling still of the garden – and, by extension, the country.

It makes me think of Clara, who spent a month in the mountains of southwestern Virginia over summer, quiet days near a pond, picking blackberries and catching salamanders in the pond with the two children she nannied. She ate eggs from hens clucking to one another on a farm just down the highway, and learned to two-step with the old timers dancing to bluegrass music at the country store.

Last week, I dropped her off in New York City, where we navigated the crowded sidewalks of Soho to discover the best health food café and art galleries and clothing boutiques and, well, the usual teeming and over-stimulating activity of the city. She’s working at the uber-hip American Apparel on the Lower East Side, making art with friends at the School of Visual Arts and interning at a ballet company, helping with administrative tasks in a loft above Broadway. (the photo was taken just outside the loft)

My own days have handed me a series of these country life/city life moments as well. One afternoon I’m standing on the dock of the pond, my clothes hanging in the branches of a white pine, with the dogs swimming among the reeds. The next I’m standing in line with a bunch of office workers to choose between lamb gyros and bahn mi from the food truck outside a 10-story highrise in D.C.

What do you get when you cross a country mouse with a city mouse? A chameleon.

Back to the future

When I was small, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House in the Big Woods. I would dream of having a home with only kerosene and candles for lighting, and a butter churn, and a little pinafore and a prairie hat to go with it.

Then, when I was in college, I spent some time in a house that had no running water; we hauled our water from the spring in the yard, carefully dipping the bucket so we didn’t disturb the resident frog, who would muddy the water if he was startled. There was an outhouse there and I loved going out in my flannel nightgown and hiking boots, then sitting with the door open on a starry winter night.

Now I live in a house with electricity and running water and internet service, the usual array of conveniences. But once in a while, when a storm comes along and knocks out the power, I think about Laura and wonder how I would fair in pioneer America. And, earthquakes and hurricanes and 10th anniversaries of terrorist attacks make the idea of going back to a simpler time more and more appealing.

Having said all that, isn’t it a lucky thing that I have partnered with a man who has been a homesteader? Who heats with wood? Who grows his own food? Who has not only used an outhouse, but dug one?

And now, he has bought a couple of vintage items that will steer the future back to the past.

First, a Maytag washtub. This is an electric washing machine, but without the spin cycle (see photo). Pour the water in from a hose, turn her on and she swishes your clothes around until you think they’ve churned enough. Then you turn a lever and the water empties out, preferably all over the garden. Next: rinse. Drain. Then, my favorite part: put the clothes through the wringer instead of a spin cycle, saving energy and delighting me with ingenuity. It’s like a pasta maker, but instead of dough it flattens clothes—which are then no longer drippy, and ready to hang on the clothesline.

Here’s the bonus: when you’re not washing clothes in it, this machine doubles as a beer cooler.

Perfect.

The other new/old item we recently acquired is a Home Comfort wood cookstove. Cast iron and white enamel, four big burners and two mini’s, a good-sized firebox, a little drawer for emptying the ashes, and a spot for a water tank to keep hot water available for dishes and cleaning and baths, I suppose. I am picturing myself baking bread and keeping the house warm at the same time. Cooking soup. Learning to stoke the oven so it’ll cook but not burn my favorite pies.

We may just re-enter that Little House in the Big Woods. Bring the past into the future.

Mad men and bachelors

I am happy to report what I hope is a shift in the paradigm of the bachelor party.

The concept still makes me cringe: the last sexual hurrah of the groom-to-be, aka strip clubs, booze, cigars, etc. Ew. Not that I’m a prude—but, well, stripping is problematic on so many levels I can’t even begin to address them, and, while I enjoy my own cocktails/beer/wine, hitting the booze at bachelor party-level quantities, makes people behave in ways that make you wonder why anyone would want to marry them, especially the day after. Cigars – well, as long as you don’t smoke them near me I suppose they’re not so very bad.

My judgments aside (yes, I’m judging!), I loved hearing about two recent bachelors celebrating with their buddies. One group ate burgers and shakes, then hit the board games: Risk, Star Wars version. The other party involved Mexican food and bowling.

I love this. I love it especially in the face of another, more disturbing trend: the popularity of “Mad Men,” the television hit.

I watched this once early in its inception and was repelled. Sexism at its zenith. A bachelor’s party would have been the least of it. On top of that, materialism on parade, infecting the entire cast and, it seem, the entire culture it represents. It is Madison Avenue (hence “mad” men), so I guess it’s understandable—but still unappealing.

Despite my distaste for this show, people keep referencing it—smart people. There's a clothing line. A Barbie and Ken, Mad Men-style. Maybe I’m missing something? So I tried again.

Cue the first episode. The show’s main character sleeps with an independent, artsy woman (is this a bad-girl depiction?) while his beautiful wife and children wait at home. Young upstart smarms it up in the office, commenting on the new “girl’s” skirt length (not enough leg showing). The culture is established, the sexy, stylish swagger has made its impact (yes, they are beautiful people to look at) and the token exceptions—senior colleague schools smarmer about insulting the secretarial pool, but only because they won’t do your work well if you cross them; said “new girl” propositions the first powerful man she can, a curious but troubling role reversal—does little to dilute the feeling of wanting to shower after viewing the entire show.

Then, in the New York Times, I see that many viewers can’t get enough of this stuff. The article lists alternative shows to tide them over while Mad Men is on hiatus.

What is this about? Nostalgia for a pre-PC universe? For a time when men could disrespect women unapologetically? For men, maybe—but why would women watch it?

Or is it about fashion? (Banana Republic has a Mad Men line—I liked the safari theme better.) Is it about the origin of feminism—a portrait of why women rose up? But it’s too hard to sit through repeated insults to get to the subtle progress and triumph women MIGHT make in this show, or the moral come-uppances some of the greedier suits might eventually be served.

Other people don’t seem to have such a strong reaction to this show. Why do I find it so repulsive, then? Maybe because I still feel threatened by this sort of disempowerment and disrespect, maybe it’ll happen again. Yes, when I was 21 I was cornered in a senator’s office by a much older, much more powerful man—with a family—who fortunately backed off when I stood up to him. I was ogled by a (male) editor for whom I worked—what to do, allow the smarmy looks and comments, and keep the article assignments, or cut them off and risk losing the client?

If the sort of social history displayed by Mad Men stays in the history books (and films), and out of our reality—and if new bachelors keep opting out of the strippers-n-booze parties, maybe my daughter won’t have to face these sorts of dilemmas.

Public Art

You never know what you’ll see on the way home – especially when you’re riding a bike. This week I noticed several new sculptures along the Metropolitan Branch Trail, each more intriguing than the next. The first one involved a pile of stones caught up in wire, topped with a brightly painted totem pole; the second I liked better, a pole with ceramic masks set in it at intervals. I slowed down and said to the young family standing among the sculptures that I’d not seen this art before, was it new? And the woman replied yes, he is the artist, and pointed to her husband standing beside her.

How often does that happen?
See art.
See the artist.
Right there on the side of the bike path.

The artist, Wilfredo Valladares, explained that his commission was to create eight abstract totem poles, representing the eight wards of the city. They are planted now like odd, mismatched flowers beside the trail, but I later discovered that they were originally installed, temporarily, at 3rd and H Streets. The D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities had something to do with it – and posted the pictures I have here on their facebook page.

My favorite is the woven funnel-shaped swirl of a cone, open to the sky, like an unfinished basket or the bell of a trumpet pointed up. Some of the woven strips of wood have words carved into them: “More kids parks.” “Racially undivided city.” “Peace, love and happiness.” Little prayers, shooting skyward.

Best watermelon salad

At book club the other night, my friend Lisa brought a beautiful bowl of watermelon tomato salad, arranged right in the stripey green watermelon. It had tomatoes in it.
Which sounds weird.
But it was so delicious, a ping pong match between two of my favorite summer flavors: sweet watermelon and tangy tomatoes, with some herbs to give it further bite. I had two helpings and asked her for the recipe.
Lisa’s salad came from a Mark Bittman creation, and anything I’ve tried by this big-name chef and local/good food advocate has been great. This was no exception.
So I recreated the salad last week for lunches to bring to work. In the office kitchen, the folks around questioned me: that looks good! It’s enough of an introduction for me to wax on about any dish, so I explained: it has watermelon and tomatoes, and it calls for gorgonzola but I used feta, because that’s what I had around. It calls for cilantro but I used basil, because it’s what I had around. It calls for sherry vinegar, but I only had balsamic.
In the end, I guess this is my own salad, but many thanks to Bittman and to Lisa for launch. These amounts are approximate, and make about two servings.

Watermelon salad
1 ½ cups watermelon, cut with a melon baller
1 cup cherry tomatoes – I used the multi-colored ones from the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market
½ cup feta, crumbled
4 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
Olive oil to taste
Balsamic vinegar to taste
Mix together, keep refrigerated. Yum!

Can she bake a cherry pie?

I can bake a cherry pie.
In fact, I am good at pies, in general.

This is especially important when I am faced with a task that I am decidedly not good at. Like repointing a brick wall. Which I attempted yesterday. What a mess.

After a couple of sweaty hours of smearing hydraulic cement into the cracks between bricks (and despairing because it inevitably dripped in unattractive chunks down the wall) I took a break, headed for the kitchen and reclaimed my dignity.

Yesterday’s pie was peach-and-blackberry: summer tucked into a crust and sprinkled with a crumb topping. Yum.

But the more legendary pie has got to be cherry – and not only because of can-she-bake-a-cherry-pie-Billy-Boy, Billy-Boy. I baked a cherry pie a couple of weeks ago and was especially happy with it because:

* I made it in a houseful of kids over a weekend when I completely set aside work and didn’t even sweat the to-do list. I pitted the cherries while watching a Miyazaki anime movie, with a bunch of kids sprawled around the living room.
* I used the “pie cherries” I bought from my favorite Farmer’s Market stand, Twin Springs.
* Making cherry pie makes me think of my mom.

Mom made the best apple pie, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it is because of her that I can roll out dough without crying in frustration over buttery holes in the crust—well, her and the pastry cloth my sister Jean introduced me to.

Mom also made cherry pie, with canned pie filling.

But when she was a young bride, she was more ambitious. She and my dad set up house in a tiny cottage down the lane from Dad’s parents, who lived on a farm in Gordonsville, Virginia. The farm was called Spring Fields. So my parent’s tiny place was called Trickle Lots.

My mother adored my dad. She adored him so much that, when she was 21 or so, she left her goody-two-shoes behind and married him despite his big bad motorcycle and despite the fact that her parents weren’t too wild about his rough edges and defiant independent streak. But the fact was, Dad was supremely responsible and, more importantly, he adored my mother right back.

Out in the country, they made a home together. Dad commuted—in a car so old the rain came up through the rusted-out floorboards—about an hour to law school at UVA, while Mom, who grew up in a Long Island rowhouse, held her breath as she passed the enormous cows out in the pasture near the cottage, hoping they didn’t attack. She was determined to be a good housewife, wherever she was planted. She pinched pennies by removing Dad’s worn-out dress shirt collars, turning them inside out and sewing them so the frayed bits were hidden. She cut their worn out bed sheets down the center, where they’d worn thinnest, and sewed them back together with the less worn-out side pieces in the middle.

She read her own mother’s feathery handwriting on small index cards, recreating family recipes for her new husband: Lamb stew. Meatloaf. Scalloped potatoes.

And she baked a cherry pie.

Cutting the shortening into the flour with two knives, criss-cross, criss-cross, until it was the size of peas. Adding cold water a little at a time, until the dough was soft but not yet sticky. Rolling out the crust on the table in the tiny kitchen. Did she have a rolling pin? Or did she use a milk bottle? Laying the crust into a pie tin. Mixing cherries with sugar and corn starch, to take up the juice. Laying the cherries into the crust, dotting them with butter, covering with a second crust, crimping the edges and cutting vents into the top to let steam escape.

The house would smell buttery and sweet when my dad returned from Charlottesville, clattering down the two-lane country road. And after dinner Mom would set the pie on the table to cut it, so he’d see the perfectly browned crust, and he’d raise his bushy, blond eyebrows and say how beautiful it looked. He loved pie.

And they’d take their first bite and discover:

She’d forgotten to pit the cherries.

Here's my cherry pie recipe, with a variation on Mom's crust (no more Crisco, and with a bit of whole grain flour):

The Crust

1 cup unbleached white flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening

5 tablespoons, maybe more, ice water

Mix the flour and salt together, then cut the shortening in with two knives until it is the size of peas (you can do this in the food processor, just don't overmix). Add ice water a little at a time, maybe 5 tablespoons, until it is all coming together in a ball, but not yet sticky. Roll out and lay in your pie pan. Add:

The filling

1 quart basket of sour cherries, PITTED

maybe 2 tablespoons honey, or more to taste

3 or so tablespoons flour

a good sprinkle of cinnamon

Mix together in a bowl. Top with:

The topping

1/2-3/4 cup oats

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon or less, salt

3 tablespoons butter

1/8 cup flour

mix together with your hands so the butter is distributed evenly

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or so. Serve to someone you adore.