Making lemonade

When my father had a heart attack many years ago, my brother rushed to be at his side. After the initial crisis had passed, my father started bemoaning the fact that he had left his tools lying in the field; they might rust in the spring rains. My brother responded, and trekked out to the remote acreage where my father had been putting in fenceposts when his heart sent up a red flag. It was a chilling sight, reports my brother, seeing the path of tools marking the ascent to the car he used to drive himself to the fire station.

My brother called me at the end of the busy week, and on the eve of our departure to California for a visit to Gramma; he had been taken to the hospital, and thought I should know. I thought of the times he has magically appeared when I was in need, and after a brief consultation with Darling Husband (now even more so), we threw things into the car and headed to Portland to see him. After we had heard the play-by-play and we reassured that his condition was not critical (though still puzzling the doctors), he mentioned that it would be great if we could go to his house: he’d just bought a flat of apricots, and was afraid they’d go off before they got eaten.

We found them on the top shelf of the refrigerator, ripe and juicy. Several went into Darling Husband within minutes, who pronounced them delicious. Then life got busy, and before we knew it, we had to head home to pack for our trip. I threw them in the back of the car, since the white coats weren’t going to let Big Brother out any time soon. There was a whirlwind of activity on our return: laundry, packing, emptying the fridge of leftovers. And there it was, a flat of apricots on my kitchen counter. My brother loves apricots, ever since we had an orchard in Saratoga. But he won’t be eating them or anything for some time to come. Out came the jam pots and sugar, and I put together two batches: one with honey, the other with Gewürztraminer and vanilla beans. I cooked it down this morning before we hit the road, and the jars sealed as we loaded the car.

One jar is in the back; I’ll leave it on my big brother’s kitchen counter, so he can still have his apricots when he is healed.

Harbingers

The mother robin outside (or rather, above) my office door has hatched her eggs. Every year, a family of robins returns to this successful nesting spot, in a ladder suspended under the overhang. It’s a sure sign of summer for our family.

Another harbinger of the change to the warm season is the strawberries; the ones we now have are the tiny alpine strawberries, sweet as candy. There are never more than a few at a time, little treasures to be savored in passing, or to garnish the morning oatmeal.

And every year, on the last day of school, we eat ice cream, topped with strawberries prepared by the kids. This year, we had an excess of berries, and not just a pint or two. Nope, we had more than ten pounds of hulled, cut berries (and only a spoonful of strawberry ice cream) left over after the kids headed home for summer break.

But I am a jammer, and the appearance of strawberries in the market and in the fields marks the beginning of the jam season. By putting up the excess now, we can enjoy a bit of sunshine on our toast in the dark days of February.

Because the school kids have done most of the work, many of the jars will be destined for our school auction in the fall. I know there is one woman in particular who will bid up her favorite all-fruit, so I measure out the ingredients for three batches.

But there are still more berries. I crack open some books for inspiration: my Larousse suggests a nice dessert of softly whipped cream and mint. I put a good portion of berries and sugar in a pot with a couple of sprigs of mint, and juice a lemon for pectin. A few cups slide into a freezer bag, awaiting some rhubarb that I know I will find at the market my next visit.

I stop to think a bit. At this point, Darling Husband nonchalantly drifts through the kitchen, and a large handful of berries disappear into a bowl of ice cream. Since he is a wine lover, I find my inspiration. The remaining berries are unceremoniously dumped into yet another pot with a large dose of a Napa Valley Pinot Noir and a bouquet garni of wintery-type spices (cinnamon, anise, cloves and nutmeg). A chopped apple will gel this batch.

While I cook up the all-fruit at the end of a long day, I am grateful for the preserving power of sugar. The other batches can macerate until I have an few moments during this busy weekend.

The season is officially open!

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.