Guilt express

For no particular reason, I am bone tired. Tired as in I keep thinking about closing my eyes and sleeping. As in, I forget what ingredient I’m supposed to get out of the fridge in the two steps to get there. And I just can’t muster the energy to write up a shopping list so I can fill the larder and freezer.

When I’m this tired, I tend to do stupid things. Like forgetting I need celery when I’m picking up shrimp and peppers for shrimp étouffée. And I foolishly cave to the boys’ please for a smoothie from Boba Express. How bad could it be? Plenty bad. They start with a brightly-colored, gloopy “fruit” syrup, add a mysterious white powder and ice. They blend it up and put it in the magic machine that melts a lid onto it. Out of curiosity, I had a sip of Number One Son’s kiwi smoothie. It tastes likes a kiwi about as much as a cough drop tastes like a cherry. Two hours later, my tongue still feels burned, and I highly suspect that at least one of the ingredients in the mysterious white powder is MSG.

The upside to the smoothie debacle is that it makes me feel better about my pseudo grocery shopping this morning, yielding the overpackaged vegetables that Trader Joe's specializes in. The bell peppers may have come from Mexico and be sealed against nuclear holocaust, but at least they’re organic. Even if I don’t have any celery.

Tender lettuces

The incredible summer weather last week really got the garden going. Between the increased foliage and the rains, the slugs are out in force. No matter, they are no match for me, patiently handpicking them and gleefully grinding them under my yellow rain boot. Last week also saw the first harvest of tender baby lettuce, which means that Number One Son takes himself out to the garden every morning for some fresh lettuce for his sandwich (salami this morning, no mustard).

However, we will not be able to live from our garden alone: our suburban backyard is too small and shady. No complaint, we adore every one of our towering cedar trees. But it makes it impossible to grow heat-loving plants like corn and basil. I have planted only what works well: lettuce, potatoes, peas and beans. I do have a few token cherry tomatoes on a sunny corner of the back deck together with a pot of alpine strawberries, for occasional munchies for passing children.

So where do I go for the rest of the bounty of summer fruits and vegetables? Well, some things are a given: Helge will call soon and ask us to come glean his raspberries (he begs, we comply and offer a token jar of jam), the plum tree is already well-laden with thumb-sized green fruit, the Mercer Slough has u-pick organic blueberries, and blackberries grow along the roadside on the way to summer camps. Any other windfall fruits will join these in the jam pot and grace our tables in cobblers and pies.

That leaves the everyday vegetables, and I have been looking seriously at CSAs. I am sorely tempted.

Jubilee Farm is near and dear to my heart, as Farmer Erick has been regaling me all winter with his measured musings on organic and biodynamic farming and what it really means. The thought that this passion goes into the very food he grows is very compelling to me. His is a traditional CSA, where you sign up for the year and share the bounty and risk. Everything in the summer box comes from his farm; which is the problem. The typical list includes things like kohlrabi and turnips, and substitutions can’t be had. Now, I’m game for a few new things, but past experience with a CSA taught me that I can’t keep up with too many new things, and my compost heap often receives a large share of the box. There is also the added expense of the produce that I continue to have to buy to fill out the way we eat (I know that we eat a huge amount of lettuce and potatoes, and no CSA can keep up with us).

Fishing Sensei handed Darling Husband a flyer from Full Circle Farm, and I recognize the name as one producer featured at our co-op. The box list very much parallels our eating style, and the depot is right around the corner from us. They have a very slick web presence, where you can change your box contents or even take a week off—with no charge for that week. But when I look closer, I realize that only a tiny portion of the produce actually comes from the farm, and much of it is not even grown in the Northwest.

I’ll spend some time on the web and look at some of the other CSA offerings (localharvest.org offers up 24 farms near my zip code, so it may take a while!) to see if I can find the right balance. In the meantime I’ll continue the status quo: as local and as organic as I can find at the co-op, where every bit of fresh produce is prominently labeled with its provenance.

Lento

The envelope with all our season tickets is empty. It’s not only the school year that is winding down; like all arts organizations, the assortment of orchestras that Number One Son and I play in are either preparing or have presented their final performance of the season. In practical terms, that means a lot of logistical planning, trying to make sure performers get to their call and audiences make it to curtain time.

Last weekend was a schedule-bursting combination of all-day Waldorf Sixth Grade Medieval Games (archery, jousting and the like) and the final concert of the Seattle Youth Symphony. We also had tickets for Seattle Shakespeare Company’s School for Scandal, Little One had an invitation to see Everyone Knows what a Dragon Looks Like, and a Number One Son had a cello lesson, which served to fill any breathing room.

I had spent a few days last week reading up on feeding oneself well on a budget, a reaction to hearing that the Governor of Oregon was going to try to feed himself on the amount allowed by food stamps in his state. The irony of this was not lost as I produced my credit card to pay for the first of four restaurant meals Friday afternoon. Piatti provided the setting for a leisurely al fresco lunch with the other field-tripping Momma, Wilde Rover in Kirkland was the scene for our pre-theatre supper (I had salmon salad at both: the Irish pub’s meager, vinegary offering paled next to the well-executed Italian version). Saturday was a combination of Trader Joe’s munchies eaten at a picnic table in Ravenna Park and a garlicky plate (or two) at Nikos Gyros down the road from the cello teacher’s.

By Sunday, I simply wasn’t hungry anymore and Number One Son was looking tired. We grabbed a quick bite before his final concert and headed to Seattle once more (we’d take the bus but for the cello…). Concert behind us, hot sun above, we drove up the ramp of the parking garage, headed for home. But the boys were hungry and not looking forward to sweltering on the ride home (did I mention that our old car has no air conditioning?). Straight instead of left, up the Ave to the Burger and Kabob Hut for milkshakes.

We slurp our way happily home, and as we approach our off ramp, we note a semi pulled over on the freeway shoulder. It is stacked high with huge cardboard containers of watermelons from points south. I think of how the heat made us swelter the day before when we were stuck in traffic, and I think of the route they must have taken, nearly the full length of Interstate 5, through my old home town of Redding, where cars routinely overheat from the blast furnace temperatures of the North Valley. The truck driver has clearly missed the exit for the Safeway distribution center, and the watermelons will have to drive a few more miles to reach their penultimate destination. I resolve to wait a few more weeks before indulging.

Our sixth grade string ensemble (of which I am a member, being an honorary sixth grader) is going to be performing the Jig from Holst’s St. Paul Suite on Friday. It’s a lively piece, packed with intricate harmonies. One of the ways we rehearse is to slow it down to about one-half tempo and play very softly. This allows us to really listen to each other, to really hear the music. When we speed up again, all the pieces fit together better. If we neglect this exercise or aren’t conscious throughout, the result is not nearly as satisfying.

Yesterday afternoon, with the sky painted Northwest grey once again, I put on some music, and put together a pot of soup. Bacon and lentils and barley and kale, simmering slowly for a few hours. A pan of fresh cornbread and some sweet butter, and a bowlful of fresh sugar peas from the school garden. We slow down to really live, so that when we speed up, the pieces fit together better. If we neglect this exercise or aren’t conscious throughout, the result is not nearly as satisfying.

Start at the top

The wedding invitation arrived yesterday, it’s clearly time to begin testing for the cake. So, with friends invited for spaghetti supper (one of the benefits of the couscous party is that people recall it’s fun to break bread together, which leads to multiple social engagements in the months following), I got to work.

I joined Number One Son and Nose in a Book (a quasi-adopted child who cheerfully spends much of her time at houses other than her own) in doing math homework. Bless her heart, Rose, the high priestess of cakes, provides me with tables for figuring things like scaling recipes and numerical factors for baking powder (which counter intuitively decreases as the cake grows). I fill a page in my notebook, resizing my original recipe to yield three separate tiers of wedding cake: 6”, 9”, and 12” (Rose tells me you can’t make a génoise larger than 12”, since it lacks the structure to stay together).

I decided that we’d start with the smallest layer, the six-incher. Pretty straightforward, still small enough to make by hand in a bowl. Yup, I make this delicate cake by hand (I do use a hand mixer to whip the egg whites); the food processor isn’t gentle enough for my purposes. I use up the last of my cake flour, and have to cut little parchment circles to fit the bottom of the pans. I make a note to see if I can find alternate sources for these: alas, restaurant suppliers don’t have this size circle (and I don’t want a 100-pack of any size), and I can find no source for organic cake flour. The batter fills the pans to 2/3—a perfect fit! Tucked into the oven, they are not done as soon as Rose says they should be, so I give them a wee bit more time to reach their golden state, and they reward me by cresting perfectly level with the top of the pan.

I note that Rick’s heavier pans create a firmer crust than my light springform. I’ll have to watch this as I move to the larger circumferences, since this crust helps the cake layer hold its shape for the day that passes between baking and assembly, but the crustless bottom of the cake shrinks a bit, leaving me with a slightly inverted trapezoidal sectional view. I end up trimming the very crispy edges and using the frosting to even things out the rest of the way. Still, topheavy is not stable.

It is good that I am doing a test run, as Rose’s icing guidelines prove completely off. She tells me that I need two cups of icing for a two-layer 6” tier. That means one cup of cream, half of it heated with cornstarch and saffron then cooled. The cream does double when whipped, but two cups is nowhere near enough – I run out of icing halfway around the cake, and end up scraping it thinly to eke out a crumb coat. The cake looks rather naked and guests are coming in an hour – not enough time to infuse and cool more cream. I take the remaining cream from the pint carton (minus the tablespoon or so that already went into some salad dressing), and whip it with some uncooked cornstarch, rose water and powdered sugar. Its texture is chalky when I taste it, but by the time we eat the cake, the starch has softened and not noticeable.

We take two slices over to the neighbors afterwards, leaving Darling Husband with one large slice for midnight perambulations (we’ll call it two servings for the purpose of this test). Which means that Rosie underestimated what happens to good cake: she tells me that this layer should serve 20 people, but we got only 15 servings out of it. My neighbor, licking cream from the corner of her mouth, suggests we might want to make an extra layer for the kitchen, since there’s no way a cake this tasty will serve 100 people.

True confessions

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against you.

I saw the white tablecloths and sensed the pretense in the air as we walked in; and yet we ignored our shared knowing glances, and did not turn on our Birkenstocked heels and go elsewhere.

As our Teutonic waiter rattled off the choice appetizers, I pushed back my virtuous guidelines for my health and yours, and ordered the foie gras, pan-seared with capers and wild huckleberries instead. I delighted in every bite, each little toast yielding to my knife, and perfectly complementing the Alsatian wine. Likewise, my intention of eating just an appetizer failed me when I saw the veal cutlet in morel sauce at the next table.

I admit to delight in cruelly toying with the waiter, asking him to split the entrée between us, and purposely confusing him by asking for my salad after the main course. I fear too much pride in my voice when I note that I did not retaliate against the raw onions in said salad.

Yea, I should have settled the exorbitant tab and walked away before dessert, but I succumbed to the chocolate decadence. Technically, my Darling Husband did, but I am equally guilty, as I shared the silken slice and three out-of-season raspberries.

My penance shall be the bathroom scale, pulsing sinus cavities and a guilty conscience. I shall recite “local and organic” 20 times as I turn the compost heap.

I scream

When we were house hunting for our first home, the realtor took me to scores of houses, countless open house buffets and far too many McMansion showcases. But one hot day, discouraged, she showed us the way to Theno’s Dairy. Theno’s is an old, independent dairy, a holdover from Redmond’s rural days, complete with the fiberglass cow out front (she used to be on the roof, but now is wheeled indoors at night, the victim of one too many senior pranks). Their milk still comes in glass bottles, and their ice cream, Vivian’s Pride, is the best ice cream I have ever had. Hands down. Over the years, we became such familiar faces that the owners, Sandy and the gruff bearded Leroy, knew to look for Darling Husband’s favorite flavor when he walked in the door. Sandy would often have a half gallon of banana nut set aside in the corner of the deep freeze just for him. (There was a terrible dry spell when she couldn’t get bananas for a month and he had to make due with Marion berry cheesecake swirl.) They have seen us progress from newlyweds to parents; from yuppies to forty-somethings. We have watched them age as well, mourned Leroy’s premature passing, and seen their kids grow to take over the business.

A few years ago, Number One Son’s then first grade class went strawberry picking down the road at the South 47 Farm. Chatting with the teacher at the farm stand, we decided that there were more than enough berries to share with the whole school, and that ice cream would be the perfect accompaniment. The lucky souls in my carpool were subjected to a visit to the fiberglass bovine, where the kids slurped on mint chocolate chip and Mackinac Island cones while Leroy took our order for a three-gallon container of vanilla. “Since it’s for your school” he said, “I’ll give you the wholesale price.”

I received the seasonal phone call from school yesterday: would I be able to procure ice cream for the now traditional end-of-school ice cream social? When I told the boys and they had finished their rather loud happy dance, Number One Son asked timidly if we could go to the trendy new place in the mall. You know, the latest national chain that hires uniformed teens to recite scripted dialogue and smash candy into ice cream? No way, said I, we’re going to Theno’s.

You see, we started going there because the ice cream was incredibly good. We keep coming back because the ice cream was incredibly good and the people are friendly. We like it there: we love the rural setting, the fiberglass cow and the plethora of cow kitsch. We kept coming back long before we were principled to patronize our local businesses over national big box retailers, before we looked to the seasons to dictate our diet. And yet their cheesy reader board counts down the days until their refreshing cantaloupe ice cream arrives every year (around July first, depending on the weather). The pumpkin ice cream (think pie in a cone) comes from organic pumpkins you can see growing across the street.

We headed there yesterday after school, before the highschoolers descended. The cow has a fresh coat of paint (her udder sports a fetching color of pink this year). It is a sure sign of spring, catching up with Sandy and all the news, slurping up midnite chocolate, and ordering two three-gallon tubs for the end of school. The reader board reminds us that “ice cream is brain food: the more you eat, the smarter we think you are,” but it will change soon to the annual “congrats, RHS grads!” followed by the cantaloupe countdown, as it has every year. Now why would anyone want to go anywhere else?

Memorial day

I was prepared to make clam chowder yesterday. I had assembled ingredients and read up on dealing with fresh clams. I had picked up some lovely local red potatoes and made a fresh batch of soy milk. I was unprepared, however, for my emotional response to killing sentient beings, even though I knew from the onset that they were destined for my table.

Michael Pollan deals with this issue briefly in The Omnivore's Dilemma as he spends a week on a chicken ranch, but never resolves it entirely, instead becoming inured by the repetitive nature of the task at hand. But the act of taking a life to sustain our own (rather than leaving it to someone else) embodies the sentiment expressed by chef Greg Atkinson, who admonishes us to be be present to be able to be genuinely connected to life.

Standing at the outside sink, I take mucky native littlenecks from their bucket of seawater and scrub the sand and seaweed off. And at the moment I put that clean clam into the pot with some onion and celery ends, it goes from being a fine example of Puget Sound fauna to being our supper.


Joy of Cooking (the new 75th Anniversary edition, which restores much of the charm lost in the last update) did give me the option of hulling the clams raw; I chose the cowardly method, putting them in a covered pot on the stove and letting steam do the dirty work. In truth, I wanted to use this method because I knew it would provide me with excellent stock for the chowder, but I was not entirely oblivious to the psychological benefit.

Since I had orchestra rehearsal last night, I left cleaning the geoducks to Darling Husband. As I was leaving, he was placing a call to his fishing Sensei to come help him. He tells me that Sensei dropped by, giving him and both our sons a lesson in not only cleaning the beast, but in thanking it for contributing to our meal and respecting its life by not wasting anything. Indeed, before he plunged the knife into each geoduck's mantle, he said a solemn "thank you." We thanked him with a bowl of the chowder (which he pronounced excellent), for the opportunity to learn this lesson.