Tag Archives: Home

Lightheartedness in Springtime

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Aside from things like my having been chewed upon ungraciously by a bunch of skeeters and having very indelicate and unladylike rivers of sweat inundate my poor little eyebulbs, the inside of my glasses lenses, and every single item of clothing upon my personage, an afternoon of gardening like today’s is a very welcome thing. I finally got after some of the weedier segments of the flowerbeds, planted some of my sprouted babies, moved a plant or two, and did some watering, and by golly, the place looks a tad more presentable.

In honor of that, herewith: a little Texiana and a Garden Fairy for your delectation and/or amusement. Tomorrow, perhaps, a batch of garden update photos. Just to prove I did something, don’t’cha know.

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Once Upon a Time in Texas: the Genesis of Big Hair & the Ten Gallon Hat . . .

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As the Evening Blooms

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There are moments when one simple thing–the appearance of its shadow under a boat in a clear lake, kids on the playground chanting a silly song, the smell of potatoes roasting in the oven as you walk in the door at the end of the day–stops you in your tracks with a pang of intense gratitude. You’re filled with wonder that something you may have seen or heard or felt a thousand times before can suddenly arrest you and fill you with such an unmitigated thrill. Your internal sky clears, and you remember how it felt to believe without question in today, in tomorrow.

digital imageOne of the situations that is most able to evoke such potent magic for me is that sweet transitional time when dusk is just about to fall. I’ll be going along the road on the way home, and the peculiar slant of the light makes every color twice as brilliant and saturated as it ought to be, and the clarity of the view seems to intensify so that I feel certain if I looked I could see individual grass-leaves at a hundred yards, maybe even the gossamer lacewing perched on a single blade. I open the window of the car and think that the robin warbling its evensong could be two miles distant and I would hear it just as sharply in its unimpeded clarity, maybe even a hundred miles. Have I fallen into a miracle myself? Become some sort of supernal being?digital painting

No, but at this hour and in this light, the new, dense tapestry of wild spring greens lining the side of the road becomes a moment closer to the perfection of heaven’s glow and I feel as though I myself might just take wing. As the evening starts to fall, this glow is rich with grace and filled with dreams of coming good and present hope. And along with every little else, I know that this beautiful glorious nothing of a thing will happen another time, and not when it will come or what it means, only that life is loaded up with marvelous moments of sweet and poignant joy.

Longing for Home

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photoMany years have passed since I first had reason to recognize that Home was not a built structure or even a location but a state of mind, a condition of the heart. It becomes associated with places by virtue of the happiness that embraces us there and also to the degree of intensity with which we are cared for and loved by the people of that place. The beauty of this characteristic is that Home can become portable when we are able to revisit those people or that contentment and security, belonging and joy, wherever they go, even in memory at times.photo

The complication therein is that the more places become Home, the more ways I can feel Homesick.

I will never complain of this any more than I would of any other pleasure or privilege, even when they fill me to the point of bursting–can anyone ever truly be surfeited with happiness? But there are times, perhaps those happy times most of all, when my reverie strays down all the pretty paths that lead to those many beloved locales and times where and when I’ve felt most accepted, at ease, at peace. My heart follows, soaring over all the lands and seas and resting where it will: in the arms of loving and hospitable friends and towns and favored hideaways and palaces I’m privileged to know as Home. It’s not that I can’t be contented where I am, it’s that the well of contentment runs so deep that every aquifer offshoot of it eventually leads my thought and memory back to other greatly loved locales. photo

It can happen at the edge of the crashing January ocean, beside a crackling fire, on an island-hopping ferry-boat, in the midst of sweeping farmland fields, or in the center of some sizzling, jazzy, noisy city. When I feel it, my breathing speeds up just a little and my heart’s singular syncopation becomes more pronounced and I might feel just the slightest sting of salt cutting at the corners of my eyes. Suddenly there is that tingling, that sub-sonic hum, that says I am at Home–and this is how I can invoke a rooted joy that echoes back to me with whispers of welcome in so many marvelous parts of the world.

I have been genuinely at home in the immensity of an ancient forest and on the flanks of a gleaming mountain; under the Gothic vaults of a cathedral, the low roof of a cozy suburban home, or under the spangled starry night-bold sky; among humble strangers whose language is worlds away from mine and in the arms of my dearest, closest and longest-known loved ones. Home, whatever and wherever it may be, is precious beyond words and missed in every atom of its forms at any moment when it is not near or I’m not in it.photo

What I could not imagine, all those years ago, was that I would find myself at home as well in a construct as much as in a constructed place. Yet here I am, posting letters daily to a family of people I may never even meet, and feeling as though I am in a kindly, hospitable place of heart and mind that tells me once again that I am Home. May you, too, who are reading this, always find–or make–yourself good homes in all the places that you can, whether in a graciously appointed house or in a soul-filling hermitage of your choosing; whether surrounded by the comforting presence of people who fill your days with delight or in the quiet retreat of your own contemplative corner–or right here, where you are always welcome to come and sit for a little while and chat and go by the name of Friend.photo

Foodie Tuesday: My Salad Days are Not Behind Me

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Is it salad or crudites when it's deconstructed? Do I care, or am I just *really* hungry? Is salad so hard to eat unabashedly that it must be disguised as something else to pass muster? Is Vilma secretly seeing Ernesto at his nightclub El Gallo Llorón while she thinks Juan Maria is away on vineyard business?

Sometimes I think that Salad has a little bit of a stigma in the popular mind, even though ‘some of my best friends eat salads’. There’s just a hint that if one is too obviously fond of salads one must be (a) stuck in the 1970s–don’t get me started on alfalfa sprouts–(2) trying to lose weight and hopelessly clueless about all of the better miracle diets out there, or (lastly) some sort of chlorophyll-blooded alien. Despite the widespread knowledge that there are endless kinds and combinations of foods that can be classified as salads and that the vast majority of them are both rather tasty and potentially nutritious, there’s always some naysayer out there who thinks that there’s something just a tiny bit off about people who embrace frequent salad-eating.

I would find it seriously boring to eat salad often, too, if all salads were born alike, but that is far from the case. There are all sorts of recipes and inspirations available from every quarter, and definitions galore of what constitutes a salad. The origin of the salad construct is arguably that of a simple collation of a dish or meal, in antique times, consisting simply of raw, fresh vegetal matter seasoned with salt (the ‘sal‘ of salad), and occasionally, with vinegar and oil. The idea has expanded over the centuries gradually to include cheeses, meats, fish, eggs and nuts, and at some point probably around the latter nineteenth to regularly include mixtures of warm ingredients and often grains, legumes, and their offspring of breads and pastas as well. If you can’t figure out how to keep a salad interesting then you are as sadly unimaginative as the average politician and probably deserve to go hungry for a while to contemplate your sins.

All the same, I have no objection to a rather staid and standard sort of salad, a plain bit of greens or greens with a few ‘classic’ add-ins–juicy sweet tomato; a bit of diced avocado, perhaps–and maybe a splash of good dressing, either as a light meal or a side dish. The much-maligned ordinariness of even a wedge of supposedly flavorless iceberg lettuce can sometimes add an exceedingly welcome and refreshing bit of mild crunch and hydration to offset an otherwise heavy or over-the-top sort of meal. There’s a perfectly good reason the ‘Wedge Salad’ has remained wedged onto the menu of virtually every standard American steakhouse for so very long, in between the slabs of highly seasoned beef and the creamed This and butter-slathered That and deep-fried Other, all quite delicious indeed but occasionally in want of one coy kiss of contrast or brightness in some fashion.

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In our hearts, we're all kind of plain, but is being ordinary a *bad* thing? Or is it mostly just comforting? Is a salad comprising only common uncooked vegetables and dressed abstemiously with a squeeze of lemon juice and a slurp of olive oil anathema, or can it be loved for its pure, taste-able simplicity? Honey, do deer eat salad in the woods? (Or just salal?)

I suppose I could be said to be more fond of or partial to salads that take the trouble to stand out from the crowd just a little bit, or at least less likely to become jaded by them since they vary the input on the palate. Why not jazz up the greens with a bit of roasted vegetable or bright fruit, with some shredded or crumbled cheese, some toasted nuts? Give the dressing a little boost of unexpected flavor. Make it a meal by putting some handsome protein in that invitingly verdant nest. But let’s not get crazy here! At some point, a concoction too complicated ceases to be a salad and becomes either a circus sideshow not very enticing as actual sustenance or more about ideas than about taste, and I find that tiresome in any part of a meal. If food is entertaining, great, but if entertainment is inedible, don’t try to tell me it’s dinner.

For that’s what it all means to me, finally: does what I’m serving genuinely satisfy hunger? Does it actually taste good? Does it express hospitality by being sensitive to the tastes and health of guests at the table? If it doesn’t meet those criteria, all of the artful towers of constructivist salad art and all of the impressive molecular gastronomist foams and gels and powders, the foodie-swooning truffles and caviar and smoked duck ravioli and balsamic-martini dressings in the world won’t save it from death-by-silliness. Let’s hear it instead for a thoughtful, pleasurable combination of flavor, texture, color, scent and sensibility that balances the needs of the diners and plays nicely with whatever else is brought to the feast.

Lately, my salads have been fairly basic again, combining the wonderfully homely base of romaine lettuce leaves or shredded cabbage with whatever array of old-fashioned but still tasty partners I happen to have on hand and be hungry to devour and topped with a lick of some complementary dressing for the big, if unsurprising, finish. I’ll be hungry soon enough for a hit of pizzazz in some part of the salad equation, whether it’s a whole new salad or just a garnish I’ve not enjoyed in a while. Because I’d hate for the old-familiar to become dull and unappealing. That is the very definition of being too far gone to recapture one’s salad days.

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A salad certainly needn't be fussy, only friendly, to enhance the dining experience; it's more important to balance the other characteristics of the meal than to show off what wild and weird tricks a salad can be made to perform. Unless you happen to know how to, say, make yellow tomatoes turn into red tomatoes when you put the dressing on the salad or how to make origami swans out of butter lettuce leaves.

Being beautiful, after all, is more about attitude than pedigree, so I’m more concerned that my salads be composed of flavorful fresh ingredients, play a proper supporting role to the stars of the meal (the people, first, and then the entrée), and in true Coco Chanel style, always be appropriately dressed. Even Coco, I feel certain, would admit that certain occasions require tasteful nudity, but she would know better than anyone that most events are best served by a well-designed and appropriate ensemble and careful accessorizing. With that, I scratch out here a couple of my thoughts about salad dressings, which like salads themselves seldom require an actual recipe–if they need one, they may have gotten too complicated for their own good.

I think of salad dressing as a marvelous way to distinguish the beauties of a particular salad. Something astringent works better with salad than with nearly any other course of the typical meal, so if the meal needs a little flash, that’s a great place to create it. For milder needs, despite my love affair with heavy cream, I know that creaminess in salad dressings is rarely best accomplished by incorporating actual dairy cream. A better partner with salads is an emulsion, generally two liquids that want to hate each other being brought into détente by mechanical means. Typical examples would be an acid ingredient like vinegar or citrus juice and a fat-centric goodie like oil or egg yolk, the two ingredients being beaten into submission by gradually incorporating the fat into the acid with a vigorous, airy, steady whisking. Sort of like a cranky teacher putting the harsh reality of thoughts into my fat head by forceful means. Not that any of my own teachers was ever like that. (Cough! Mrs. Finley!) Once I have (or a persnickety teacher-like person has) made the dressing’s basic parts behave properly together, there are endless sorts of herbal, spicy or other flavors that can be invited to play along with them for individuation and to better suit all of the dinner’s other ingredients.

Here’s a little combination to try: 1 part ginger juice (freshly grated ginger root will do, if you don’t have bottled juice), 1 part soy sauce, 2 parts maple syrup or raw honey, 2-3 parts lime juice, 2-4 parts macadamia or coconut oil (or any mild flavored oil you like). Put them all together in a tightly lidded jar or bottle and shake vigorously. Adjust to taste. Dress the salad just before serving or let guests dress their own salads. Fitting add-ins or add-ons for this sort of dressing are toasted or black sesame seeds, ground black pepper, toasted sliced almonds or pine nuts. Well suited to mixed green salads with sweet orange segments, diced dried apricot, ripe avocado, grated myzithra cheese, kale, thinly sliced jicama or daikon or sweet radish, or . . .

What? You can’t hear me over the crunching? Well, then, grab your salad fork and join me. I won’t tell anyone you’re one of those, you know, salad eaters.

Anything Worth Doing is Worth Overdoing

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There was a boy . . .photoHe was remarkable, special and fabulous in every way . . . by his own admission. That sounds like a pretty smart-alecky remark from his bratty second daughter, doesn’t it, but you know, he’d be the first to tell you that it simply never occurred to him to doubt himself. Teflon ego? Naive puppy? No, he’s just a pretty cool guy and didn’t see any need to worry about it along the way.

People liked him; he liked them back. One thing leading to another, as they always do, he grew up and became, in various turns, a college graduate, a husband, a father, a seminary graduate, university board chairman, bishop, hospital board chairman, and oh yeah, all those other things. You know: the keynote speaker and community activist constantly playing both conscience and jester to the complacent. The nutty uncle who accidentally fades his snappy burgundy deck shoes to a flashy candy-colored light purple that becomes his infamously funny family trademark and then makes them the coveted trophy passed down from one to the next of all his nieces and nephews as they graduate from high school. The pastor who tells wacky tales from the pulpit that actually explicate complex biblical concepts and help to untangle earthly Issues for everyday humans. The bishop who travels with a phalanx of fellow bishops to act as bodyguard for their danger-exiled brother Bishop of El Salvador in Guatemala and escort him safely for a visit to his people at home. The respected administrator who sees a busy hospital through the building of a whole new hospital campus. The husband who woos his ever-tolerant wife with anniversary gifts of snow tires and garden manure but always remembers a card with an actual romantic note to accompany it. The dad who sends excuse notes involving kidnap by Green Gremlins to the principal’s office after his daughter’s flu absence from school.

My father’s stated policy, from a rather early time in his life, was that Anything Worth Doing is Worth Overdoing, and if it was spoken with a jovial wink, it was and yes, still is pretty much his modus operandi, whatever the endeavor. Underachieving was never an option and half-hearted efforts the same as not trying at all. This insight of his came long before the appearance of the modern day’s sloganeering cheerleaders insistence that one Go Big or Go Home.

photoDad brought along with him from his earliest years that sense of ease with himself and his place in the world and built it into an expansive view of what he could and should do and what the world could be with a little effort. As much as he indulged his playful and witty side (surely one of his most endearing qualities in his every field of action in life) he has always harbored a tender heart as well. Any practical tendencies of his that might be seen as hardheaded or stoic, serving him excellently in his many leadership roles as they did, were at their root driven by a deeper need to look out for others’ best interests and work to keep his own in check. All of this shapes a man who manages to maintain the unusual duality of a highly accomplished Type A leader and the Class Clown, a rare and gem-like formation indeed.

And today is that remarkable, special and fabulous man’s birthday.

photoAs it happens, he’s right, you know: anything worth doing really is worth doing to the nth degree and then just a little bit more. He didn’t get to be this advanced in age and yet still a ridiculously charming kid just barely beneath the gloss of grown-up-ness without having practiced that art well and truly. Happy birthday, Dad!

Nuclear Winter Descends on the Kitchen

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I am so not that blogger. You know, the one who makes stupendous, dazzling, dream-fulfilling, frenzied dance inducing deliciousness every time I enter the temple of cookery and take skillet in hand. The artiste-de-cuisine whose documentation of each morsel of impending salivary serenity is preened and primped into further gleaming gloriousness and photographed more glossily than a phalanx of supermodels in swimsuit season. The doyenne of dining, the poet of pumpernickel, the queen of quenelles, writing elated paeans to the plate that stimulate the appetite and soothe the spirit simultaneously, every word a twinkling, perfectly faceted gem of gustatory wisdom and love.photoSee, what my heart is cooking and what my hands and brains are genuinely capable of producing are not necessarily identical in nature, not wholly synchronous. I start out with a perfectly innocent yellow capiscum, intending nothing more sinister than to slice it into tidy segments and give it a friendly saute in a spot of sweet butter, and I think to myself, Why, that’s a mighty pretty bit of golden sunshine! I really ought to take its portrait. And sometimes it cooperates moderately well, and at other times it becomes something of an extended exercise in abstract thinking to even discern that the resulting portraiture is indeed of a sweet pepper, and a rather tasty one. It refuses to be anything other than a poor defenseless bell pepper mauled malevolently by bad knifework and lying listless, awaiting its ultimate destruction in a frying pan. I mean well, really I do.photoThere was, for example, an incident the other day involving an attempt to make (for the first time in a verrrrrry long time, mind you) crepes for supper. I wanted to make them without flour, since I’m making a sincere effort to battle an addiction to wheat and offset the unkindness it seems to do to my stomach. So to the eggs I added only a splash of cream to thin them a bit, a pinch of salt and a touch of vanilla for depth of flavor. So far, so good. But of course, not having made crepes in eons, I made the first one so far too thick that it morphed quickly into a leather-thick omelette of unwieldy proportions and promptly subdivided into continental shapes and semi-detached crevasses when I attempted to force it to wrap around the roast-chicken chunks anyway. The second was more successful, but given that the crepes were already going to be fairly huge and there were only two of us coming to the table, I’d only made enough batter for two crepes, so one remained a geographical disaster area when plated.

It’s hardly the worst sin I’ve committed in the cooking realm, but even the vegetable-mushroom medley in herbed tomato cream sauce being lapped over the top and sprinkled with shredded mozzarella to melt couldn’t exactly disguise the rocky profile of the crude assemblage underneath. Ah, well! It tasted fine enough that (given the huge portions) chopping up the remainder in a little casserole with some added tomatoes and more sprinkled mozz and cheddar to melt in made a perfectly serviceable (and actually, prettier) pseudo-lasagna for brunch the next day. I keep reminding myself that aroma and flavor, not good looks, must always remain the chief arbiters for the biters of the dish.

photoBut I can’t help but judge a dish on its beauty, still, and neither do any others unless they’re genuinely starving. Christmas Day’s standing rib roast of beef (above) was as tender and juicy and flavorful as any I’ve made, and in fact the gravy was a delicious simple reduction of beef juices and Cabernet finished with a bit of butter, but they didn’t impress with their devilishly handsome appearance as much as they might have done if I’d more intelligently plated the meat on top of the sauce, especially in the company of such homely looking side dishes as sweet coleslaw and brown-butter mashed potatoes. Presentation remains elusive, and capturing it on camera even more so. I must continue to learn!

Meanwhile, back at the oven, there are more serious disasters, ones that if compounded one with another and another as they were last week for some infernal reason beyond my ken, verge on apocalyptic. The centerpiece of one such Perfect Storm of kitchen failures was the day in which I managed to mis-set two crucial cooking elements at once. The end result of the first was that the wrongly timed egg boiling created not the expected hard-boiled eggs (a simple enough thing!), not even soft-boiled eggs mind you, but implosive mutant mush that was unsalvageable and decidedly unpalatable and went straight from kettle to compost in a trice. I was relieved that the Dutch oven finishing its long time in the sauna at least held a nice batch of broth that had been simmering overnight–that would cheer me up–relieved, that is, until I discovered that I had apparently jostled the lid out of place the night before and left just enough gap that not only did the liquid all vanish in a beautiful cloud, it left behind such a blackened, smoking pile of bones and charred vegetables and meat bits that I not only had to chisel out what I could and soak the pot for two days, continuing the excavations until I could scrub it back to a recognizable enamel surface, but I could also literally not photograph it at all. It was the perfectly even black of deep outer space, offering not a single change in surface that could reflect the light required by a camera lens for recognition. The smoke released when I opened the pot took days to clear from the house, and the only upside I can think of is that the pot was too tough to die despite its trial by fire.photoSo any time you are feeling a little blue, a little inadequate as a chef or depressed as a foodie, take heart. I have not only managed in spite of myself to keep self and fellow diners alive and un-poisoned for all of these years, even without resorting to the antique cure-all elixir waiting on the apothecary shelf, but have even occasionally risen above my faults and produced some memorably tasty, yes, even prettily presented, treats that people who didn’t even owe me money complimented. I’d show you the best of them and preen a little, but documentation still remains my weakest suit, and of course there’s that perpetual problem where the really good stuff gets eaten before you can say Photo Op! and dash for the camera. Later, perhaps. Dig in!

Foodie Tuesday: Some Assembly Required

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The way to maintain my vegetative state of bliss is to keep dissimilar food parts from dangerous intermingling . . .

My dinner table usually resembles an early automobile factory, or at least the aftermath of an IKEA shopping spree. I’ve gotten in the habit, over years of feeding guests with allergies and dietary needs that are unpredictable and widely varied across the board, as well as supertasters like my husband, of presenting the various parts of a meal as separately as possible. In many cases, the segregation extends to dividing the ingredients of a single dish into many serving containers so that salad becomes a salad bar and entrees become DIY designer projects to be customized on every plate. I don’t mind helping people put their food together or serving it to them to order, but I have long since learned that one dish does not suit all eaters and it’s silly and wasteful to force the issue. It may seem like a foolish extreme, but it’s become comfortable for me. Two year olds should, in fact, also like dining chez moi. And since I’m often prone to thinking rather like a two year old, I suspect any such event could be quite the adventure all ’round.

Thus, whether we all work our way through a buffet line and create our culinary variations on our own plates as we go, or we sit at table with an assemblage of small containers sprinkled around like so many car or furniture parts in every available spot, everybody had better be hungry enough to fend for themselves, or get a helping hand from someone else who’s able to build them their ideal dishes from the bits provided there. It makes for a whole lot more dishing-and-passing of a whole lot more little bowls, plates, platters and jars, but then–well, being at table with me is bound to be something of a project, anyway.

Last night’s dinner was somewhat typical in that way. Small parts of the meal like side dishes and condiments are so easily omitted when one is serving oneself that I never fear to go ahead and serve them as-is. So we have haricots vert already slathered in beurre noisette, a relish of ground cranberries and mandarins in maple syrup, bakery croissants and butter all ready for the taking. Or yes, for the ignoring. I made up last evening’s main dish as a whole before putting it out to serve, because it has so few ingredients the removal of any of them would amount quite nearly to asking the diners to make the whole meal themselves. Which I am not in the least averse to doing, in principle, but didn’t feel was necessary in this case.

So the pasta–wide egg noodles–emerged from the kitchen fully dressed in their cream, lemon juice and zest, pepper and smoked salmon. Mom and Dad S having shipped us a succulent Washington Christmas present early, we thought it prudent to dive right into those tender, moist pieces of Sockeye and pink salmon before they tortured and tantalized us for too long. Since our guests brought us a bottle of superb champagne, this was clearly the destined dish to accompany it! Also, as it goes almost without saying, it’s one of the world’s simplest entrees to make, and therefore a favorite in the arsenal of the Kath of Least Resistance at any time when such great smoked salmon is available. I did go so far as to serve the garnish of fried sage leaves separately, knowing my spouse’s disdain for “Green Stuff”; he’d be quite happy if all herbs just disappeared from the face of the earth, or would be at least until he realized that some of his favorite foods actually do rely on them for their distinctive flavors.

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. . . no offense to you Green vegetables and ((shudder!)) Herbs!

It was the salad’s turn, as is often the case, to be divided and conquered by the individual diners last night. In keeping with my fetish for combinations sweet and savory, I chose to accompany a bowl of freshly torn romaine lettuce with the following, from which everyone could pick and choose their proprietary blends: a bowl of cubed red Bartlett pear and super-sweet mandarin oranges–the seediest, by the way, that I’ve chopped up in years, but as fresh and bright and juicy and candy-like as any I’ve ever had, to make up for the inconvenience; toasted pine nuts; diced and candied orange peel; crumbled feta cheese. The dressing, also to be added or bypassed at will, was an easy blend of two parts of blood orange infused olive oil (fabulous stuff from Stonehouse) with one part each of mixed mandarin/lemon juice (leftovers from the salad fruit and pasta sauce), soy sauce and maple syrup, plus a healthy shot of fresh ginger juice. Easy peasy.

Now, lest you imagine that I am some sort of cruel beast that would make all of my guests take care of themselves completely . . . oh, wait, I am. My idea of being in a hospitable environment is someone else’s idea of being left alone.

I am quite happy to spend time with friends and family, as long as they are tolerant of my not being an attentive hostess in the any sort of normal waiting-on-you-hand-and-foot mode and know that I crave large quantities of time to spend not honing my admittedly limited set of social skills. I keep strict private ‘office hours’ between bedtime and late morning so that most people needn’t be exposed to my internal dragon lady, she who rules whenever I should be recharging my emotional batteries in silence. At bedtime, I’ll gladly show y’all where to find any breakfast groceries, pots and pans, clean linens and spare toiletries in the house, have my husband train you how to use the TV remote, hand you the house key and the garage door opener, load up your bookshelf, keep the newspaper out for you on the kitchen table and the coffeemaker stocked on the counter, hunt you up a crossword puzzle collection or a pack of playing cards for solitaire, and give you my spare coat, hat and gloves to borrow for a cool-weather walk, but please wait until I emerge from my cave before attempting any interaction.

And know that I’m just not very good at reading minds when it comes to culinary preferences. Even if I know you’re a vegan or keep Kosher or are deathly allergic to whole grain toast, I don’t necessarily know what you really love or hate to eat or how you like it served. If you can choose your own food and manage assembling your own meal out of the provided parts, we’ll get along swimmingly. Even the Generalissimo, the Duchess and the Dalai Lama would have to fend for themselves at my table. I bet you’ll do well enough too.

We All Love Woobibe

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photoChildren pretty much love food and love to eat. Grownups are great at over-thinking them out of it: ‘Ooh, that’s too peppery, you won’t like it, Jimmy!’ ‘Oh, no, Suzie can’t have oysters; they’re too strange for a four-year-old’s taste!’ ‘I’m pretty sure Elmo is allergic to that stuff, ’cause he made a face when he tasted it the first time, so we’ll be sure to keep him safely away from it!’ Not to mention, ‘Are you kidding, let that six year old have truffles shaved onto her pasta???’ And then we wonder why “kids are such picky eaters”. Duhhh.SilverpointThe natural curiosity and openness of children should be encouraged (okay, up to a point, Lord Copper), and the people I’ve known with Good Eaters in the family simply tended to let nature take its course and give their kids whatever opportunity and exposure they could. Setting an example goes so much further than any amount of teaching and preaching. That goes not just for eating but for learning about all aspects of food, from its historic and cultural origins to how it’s raised and prepared, and how the young’uns themselves can participate in the process. The more the exposure is filled with fun and delight, the better the odds for success.

That’s how one of our nephews discovered when he was quite little that he loved the taste of that marvelous vegetable with the poisonous leaves whose super-acidic stalks have been used raw in traditional Chinese pharmacology as a laxative: rhubarb. Fortunately our nephew was, as were most of us, introduced to rhubarb, or “woobibe,” as he called it, not in its medicinal form but in its delectable sweetened-and-cooked form that tames its acid, and so fell immediately in love with the changeling vege-fruit. He admired it so much that he got his grandmother to get him started cultivating the stuff, which he still does, happily. [Yes, that’s some of his beautiful rhubarb below.]photoIt just so happens that I’m a big ol’ fan of rhubarb too. I adore it in sauce, pie, jam, tapioca pudding, chutney, and roasted and candied and simmered, and-and-and. But then, I grew up surrounded by not only good cooks but very much in the midst of people who respected and enjoyed and gave thought to and were grateful for their food. All of which made me the fan-girl I generally am in my medium-old age. Happy places to be, both the medium-old age and the fandom.SilverpointYou up-and-comers, middle-agers and glorious geezers all–and of course I consider myself to be each and every one of those as well, depending upon the moment–I bid you to take such comestible comeliness as the magnificent rhubarb, the sizzling hot pepper or the tantalizing truffle with all of the seriousness and happy enthusiasm they deserve. Especially when the kids are watching.

Rhubarb-Beetroot Chutney [Not bad at all as a relish for nice fat stuff like a scrumptious grilled cheese sandwich or a hunk of juicy grilled salmon or buttery seared lamb chops.]

Combine approximately equal amounts of peeled and cubed fresh beets,  1″-cut fresh rhubarb pieces, and sugar with just enough water to start the sugar melting a little, plus a couple of whole cloves and a cinnamon stick and a tiny pinch of salt. Bring it all up gradually to a simmer and then let it cook gently over low to moderate heat for a nice long time until it melts and thickens together. Pull out the cloves and cinnamon stick, and puree all the goodness into a nice mash. Keep cooking if it isn’t jammy enough. Adjust to your own exquisitely fine-tuned personal taste and enjoy.

Now, please don’t fuss with this “recipe” any more than absolutely necessary; only if it’s really rather easy and fun to make does it taste appropriately yummy. Extra bonus points if you bring a nice small person or two along for the preparation and savoring, because you will have a happy fellow diner for life. You’re welcome.

Homecomings of All Sorts

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photo + poemOver the years I’ve learned that there is a huge range of meaning in that puny little word Home.

That broad spectrum has been on my mind a lot during the last couple of weeks.

colored pencil on paperEarly this month my parents visited an apartment complex near where a couple of my sisters live, and shortly after the visit we got a phone call from Mom and Dad to let us know they’d put a deposit on an apartment and would be moving from the house they’ve lived in for a couple of solid decades plus. This wasn’t truly a stunner: it’s something we had all discussed in various ways and at various levels of intensity over the last couple of years. After all, moving was kind of on our minds. My husband and I have changed addresses four times in the last seven or eight years, thrice by short distances for more practical-seeming digs and once across the country for a change of work life. Amid those moves of ours, my mother and father-in-law got on the moving-truck bandwagon and shifted from their own many-years’ home to an apartment as well.

For us the moves were partly logic-driven (so we hope at all times!) and always emotion-driven. No regrets on any of them; they were all the right thing at the time in their own ways. I think Mom and Dad S are satisfied with their life-shift too, and I sincerely hope Mom and Dad W will find as much good in the balance as well. I know surely enough that every gain tends to be accompanied by some tradeoffs, large or small. That’s life. I just spent a few days on a dash-through with my parents to assist with part of the sorting and packing and organization and shopping and networking that their move requires. It’s little enough that I can do, but it always unearths a whole slew of things–objects and thoughts–that center on the Homely concept and how it may differ for each of us and can also change over time.

mixed media collageWhat I think of most distinctly and frequently in this whole house-related context is of course that thing I mentioned about the meanings of Home.

I’m sitting in the centerpiece of what makes Home for me right now: a very comfortable house in a nice town, and most importantly, cozily perched next to my life partner, love, best friend–my husbandly-type person. Only the tiniest bit of elementary observation necessary to see that this combination provides a goodly batch of Home definitions straight off: physical shelter; a place to centralize my daily existence; comfort and safety and a sense (however delusional) of control over my life and environment. It’s a concrete expression of my sense of how I fit in the world and the pleasures I take in it. It’s a container for my current life story and my history, both personal and in the far broader ways of culture and roots and outright humanity. That’s where I begin to veer off into that lifelong learning curve of what Home means to me.

I think of arriving on Norwegian soil for the first time when I was twenty and being overwhelmed by the sensation of being rooted, blood-connected, of holding hands with my ancestors, in a way that caught me utterly by surprise. I think of listening to my grandparents and aunts and uncles unfurling their memories over me in my childhood and youth and how those people were my Home as much as anything in those days and in turn, the way that learning those bits of family and personal history further shaped my understanding of this whole construct. I think not only of all my grandparents and great-grandparents braving new worlds to create Home in America after uprooting from Norway, to build a new self or job or family or place or all of those things.

I think of my grandfather moving his family back to his hometown in Norway when my mother and her next sister were still very small, seeking a re-creation of Home as he had known it, but ultimately finding that place didn’t fulfill the need as much as his wife and children and his suddenly faraway life did, so with his homesick young spouse in the lead, headed back to the States with their little pinafore-clad girls to restart their own Home on their own coast. And I think of my youngest sister searching out the family history’s effects on her own notion of Home and landing, of all places, in a beautiful Norwegian city where some of Grandpa’s relatives still live and where she’s now been rooted back among them for over twenty-five years.

graphite and colored pencil on paperAll of this, jumbled and tumbled together, is what makes Home for me, but the center–the linchpin and the heart of it all–is unquestionably love. Wherever it’s located, however it’s designed, whatever it might constitute in the physical world, Home is clearly all about that connection shared with what and whomever we love most. And that will probably never change for me.

soft pastel on paper

Foodie Tuesday: Beauty is in the Tastebuds of the Beholder

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Zest for life, zest for food, zest for art: all "customized" by our own tastes . . .

I give myself credit for being a tolerably decent cook. Once in a blue moon I even fuss with fancy-schmancy cookery or baking, but less often with every passing year. As it is, I’m mostly far too impatient to get to the actual eating to consider fooling around with any processes that delay that significantly. For a visual artist, I’m shockingly laissez-faire about plating and presentation, and depend on the goodwill and patience of those at table with me to get me past that part of the meal to the part where I get to play human forklift.

Now, I have great admiration for those who are serious and artful chefs, and I certainly prefer to feast upon delicious, rather than fit-only-for-subsistence, foods. And if those foods are a feast for the other senses as well, why that’s nigh unto nirvana. But mostly that happens at other people’s hands, others’ tables. I’m too busy concentrating on not eating the entire meal while preparing it to devote much attention to subtleties of composition. When I’m a guest in another’s dining room, it’s everything a piggy like me can do to feign manners enough to keep from leaning over my dessert with a maniacal tooth-baring slaver that belies the need for utensils while I wait for the host to take that first bite. A picture comes to my mind of our former neighbor Everett, so in love with both carpentry and helping out, that when he knew a project was afoot at our place across the street he would place his lawn chair at the front of his open garage and perch on the edge of it in runner’s-starting-block position, gripping his favorite Sawzall® at the ready, for the moment when he might be summoned to join in the party.

Likewise, I never have much in the way of photo documentation of any culinary successes I have, because those are usually dived into and massacred unceremoniously even as the last sprig of fresh herbs or the final flourish of confectioners’ sugar is drifting down to alight upon them. Yes, I have made heaps of glistening handmade pork jiao-zi, a mountainous mocha Intercontinental torte, delicate Norwegian-style fishcakes with dainty potetkaker (fat mini-lefse potato cakes) dripping with butter on the side, steamed zucchini blossoms stuffed with scented couscous, homemade rosemary pasta with wild mushroom cream sauce, and many more such dishes and meals over the years. I have fussed and fiddled with sauces and garnishes meant to make a sultan sigh with admiration. But dang it, when the perfume gets too heady and the urgency to get this stuff on the board gets too intense, well, how can anyone blame a poor ordinary cook and unbridled scarfer-of-foods if the comestibles get hustled to table and everybody just puts his head down, knife up, and plunges in?

There is the additional problem of what some foods look like in the first place. I’m not talking about the delightfully horror-movie appearance of a freshly caught monkfish or that sort of thing, but about the kinds of delicious dishes that resist being prettied up. Food stylists and top-flight chefs find ways around this all the time, but in truth, there’s not much point in gussying up a mousse. It is what it is.

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Two words. Peaches. Cream. That is all.

In the case of this mousse from last week, I didn’t even bother to fool much with the fineness of the puree, since I like the slightly chunky chew of the peaches that emerges in each spoonful of otherwise creamy texture. Okay, I went so far as to put the dessert in tall stemmed glasses and even powder the top of the servings with a bit of good ground cinnamon, so that the scent of them would be that much closer to the diners’ noses in case the odd brownish-orange color and irregular texture were a teeny bit suspect. But I wouldn’t necessarily trade in for a prettier appearance the simple richness of peaches caramelized deeply in vanilla and cinnamon and  butter and then pulverized to blend with lightly sweetened heavy cream. That’s just my set of priorities, you see.

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I'm told it's all about the quality of the ingredients, anyway . . .

I have eaten and heard described plenty of dishes that start out with individual ingredients that simply oughtn’t to have been invited to the same party, so there’s a certain incompleteness to the general rule of ingredient-quality = finished-dish-quality, but the converse is so definitively true that it’s best to rely on this side of the equation. The most elaborate and skillful preparation of kæstur hákarl (the classic rotten shark preparation) is still going to taste like rotten shark, so either get with the Icelandic program and learn to enjoy it on its own merits or don’t be serving it in puff pastry with sugarcrafted butterflies on it. (Sheesh, at least you could put sugarcrafted arctic foxes on it.) Even I with my limited-experience palate and low tolerance for foods not appreciated outside of their native cultural circles will know something’s just not right.

I’ll take a slightly sloppy looking plateful of hearty and unpretentious homemade goodness any day. Especially if the singular parts of it are fabulous ingredients and haven’t been ridiculously tortured in the process. Then the only danger is if you get in the way of my ninja-like attack on the dish with my gleaming cutlery. I can only keep up the guise of manners for so long, my dears.