Eulogy for Daddy

My father died this week. It was not unexpected. He lived with heart disease for most of his life and owed his relative longevity to the advances of modern medicine and the excellent care of his physicians. His own father died of heart disease at age 62.

Daddy's heart could not sustain him for as long as we wished. But in another sense of that word, he had the strongest heart of anyone I've ever known. His kindness and generosity endeared him to all he encountered. His friends are legion, especially for a man not inclined to gregariousness.

I can't recall Daddy ever uttering a harsh word about anyone, with the exception of my mother's cats; he admittedly only tolerated those creatures.

Daddy was the bedrock of our family, providing unconditional love and unwavering support every single day of our lives. I'm not exaggerating. Every single day. Never did Daddy not have our backs. When we made mistakes, he helped us clean them up. It was not his role as parent to judge or criticize, only to bolster and praise.

My dad was emotionally strong and resilient. I remember witnessing him cry just once, and this particular memory is instructive of his character, so I will share. When I was about 6 years old, I committed some heinous crime on a babysitter's watch. My parents had been out for a couple of hours, maybe for dinner or an office party, and the elderly Mrs. Grant was tasked with the care of myself and my sister. I don't recall my exact misbehavior, only that it was of a nature so abhorent that my mother – our usual disciplinarian – determined punishment must be meted out by my father for greater emphasis. [Before any readers get incensed at what I'm about to reveal, bear in mind that this took place in the South in the 60s. Culture, people.] Daddy took me to my room with a paddle, said this would hurt him worse than it would hurt me, and gave me a couple of light smacks on my behind. I was offended and let out the obligatory shriek, but he was right. I didn't cry; he did.

Now, I suspect Daddy shed tears when he lost his parents, although I didn't see. And if he had outlived his wife or any of his children, I'm certain I would have seen him cry. But the vast majority of life's troubles my dad faced with the awareness that he was to provide the shoulder for our tears.

Any positive quality I have came from him, and my mom. Any fault I have is due to my failure to live up to their example.

Miscellaneous lessons from my dad:

1. Be skeptical of advertising. I may save 40 percent if I buy that thing on sale today, but I'll save 100 percent if I don't buy it at all.
2. Most of the time, I will have less stress if I just do what my mother wants me to do.
3. The Agawa Canyon Scenic train ride has overpriced sandwiches. Although, to be fair, most food concessions shared this misfortune in my dad's view.
4. North Carolina is the best place in the world.
5. In purchasing a car, choose it solely for its function, not its status. Never buy anything to impress the neighbors.
6. People may not present themselves as the way they really are. My dad knew this long before social media posturing.
7. Wear comfortable clothes, except when Mama says to put on something nice. (see lesson #2)
8. There is no such thing as a free kitten. (I chose to ignore this lesson).
9. Be forgiving. Everyone makes mistakes.
10. Although not approved by Mama, a spoonful of sugar soaked with whiskey is an effective cough remedy.

Points on which I disagreed with my dad:

1. We did not share the same tastes in food, with a few exceptions, such as eastern North Carolina barbecue, seafood and chocolate pie. He could not persuade me of the delights of cafeteria food, fried catfish, mayonnaise eaten with a spoon directly from the jar, or drinking ranch dressing from a bottle.
2. Shopping at Walmart. He liked the evil empire.
3. Voting for Ross Perot. He actually did that.   

Some people are said to be born with a silver spoon. I think mine was golden; my privilege was priceless. I wouldn't trade my exceptional parents for any of the world's material riches. Thank you, Mama and Daddy.

I'm so proud to be this Daddy's girl.

Berry, berry good

This is the time of which we dreamed during the long winter in northern Michigan. The beginning of summer and its gloriously fine weather also brings with it our short and delicious strawberry season, followed by cherries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. I recommend gorging.

I purchased a flat of organic strawberries, which is roughly equivalent to 8 quarts. Most of them are now in the freezer in zip-lock bags and will comfort me in winter smoothies 6 months from now. Here's my method of freezing berries:

* Slice off the caps and any rotten parts.
* Dunk the berries in a bowl of cold water to rinse clean.
* Drain in a colander.
* Spread in a single layer on a tray and place in the freezer.
* When berries are frozen, transfer to zip-lock bags and return to freezer.

Strawberries freezing in a pie plate

Of course, you want to use as many fresh berries as your tummy can hold while you have the chance, and I have some quick and easy suggestions.

This summer cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen, adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe, and further modified by me, was so good I had to make it twice. For the first go-round, I made it exactly as written, with the barley flour (yes, I had that on hand due to a winter experiment with barley bread). The second time I was out of milk and white sugar, so I used a combination of yogurt and kefir for the milk and turbinado sugar for the sweetener. It was equally good. When raspberries come in, I think I'll add a little cinnamon to the topping, and maybe a sprinkle of cloves.

I weighed the berries the first time, but just crammed as many as I could fit the second time.

Strawberry cake before baking

 The strawberries shrink a little in the oven and the batter rises around them.

Finished cake. Yum!

Other great things to do with berries:

* pancake topping

* oatmeal topping

* ice cream topping

* blend with milk and drink

* add to salads

Oh, the list is endless. Feast on them while you can!

Extreme Cooking, part 2

Today's post should have been day four on the theme of "sure, cooking is easy, but it doesn't have to be." The problem with extreme cooking is that it doesn't leave much time for blogging. Plus, the weather just turned lovely here in northern Michigan, and I've been wanting to take my cooking breaks outside. Finally I remembered my laptop can also go outside.

Dinner for four turned into dinner on the deck for nine, mostly due to my realization that four people couldn't possibly eat all of this. And we had leftovers, so now I'm trying to wrangle friends into stopping by for lunch. I still have a quart of chilled beet soup.

The most labor-intensive component of the menu was the burnt bread sauce for the slow-roasted carrots. The most difficult component was thinly slicing the gravlax. Even with a sharp knife, my carving skills leave much to be desired. I managed, but it wasn't perfect. The biggest hit was the pistachio dip with flax seed crackers.

I'll explain the recipes, but I don't have the patience to type them all in, even my barely-streamlined versions. Each one from Bar Tartine is pages long. If you think you're up for this type of cooking, I highly recommend purchasing the cookbook.

Also, you'll see now why I'm such a bad food blogger. After four days of cooking (not all day -- it wasn't that intense), I only have a few pictures. I get distracted in the kitchen and I forget to document every step. I have a few photos, but not of everything.

First, the popular flax seed crackers began with flax seeds soaked in a broth of kombu dashi, sundried tomatoes, onion, dill, parsley and garlic. (This meal was made possible by my Vitamix, definitely the workhorse of my kitchen).

After soaking for about an hour, I thinly spread the mixture onto four pieces of parchment paper and put them in the dehydrator for about a day.

Once they were crispy, I broke them into chunks. I didn't take a photo of the finished product, but I think I'll make more to take for book group later this week, along with this French Onion Dip from the chef-authors of Bar Tartine.

The pistachio dip, also made in the Vitamix, wasn't too fussy except for shelling a bag of pistachios, where were toasted with shelled pumpkin seeds:

.

Aside from those delicious green nuts, it had charred green onions, grapeseed oil, lots of garlic, charred green chile, lime juice and cilantro. Here it is in the blender:

I warned my guests to drink plenty of water (we had plenty of wine, too), primarily due to those crackers and the equally high-fiber bread on which I served the gravlax. The bread recipe is from Chad Robertson, the master baker who is a co-conspirator of Bar Tartine and the owner of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. I had made his Rene's Rye Bread during the holidays and loved it, so I was happy to have an occasion to try it again. It involves some planning as it features sprouted rye berries. I started those a couple of days before I made the dough and they were perfectly ready on mix day:

The wet ingredients were sourdough starter, buttermilk, barley malt syrup and beer. I used Bell's Smitten Golden Rye this time, just because I had a bottle in the fridge.

The dry ingredients included a blend of all-purpose and whole wheat flour (Chad's recipe calls for spelt, but I already had wheat ground so used that) and whole rye flour. But this is the reason I warned everyone to drink plenty of water:

Look at all these seeds! Flax, pumpkin, sesame, sunflower.

The dough mixes up to slurry, about the consistency of concrete (so the recipe says -- I have no personal experience with concrete mix).

It sits in a warm spot in the kitchen for a few hours, then goes in a pan to sit some more. I use a pullman pan, which has its own lid. It rests in the refrigerator overnight and is baked the next morning. And it is awesome!

Now for that burnt bread sauce. As noted in part 1, I started this four days ahead by charring some day old bread and putting it into the dehydrator. The next day, the charred and dried bread slices were pulverized into a powder by the Vitamix and transferred to a jar for storage. I also charred, dehydrated and powder two bunches of green onions. Still, I was not done. I had to make a kombu dashi, which was simple: simmer seaweed in water and strain. But there was still more bread to char:

I charred onions:

And I charred garlic, arbol chiles and almonds. By this time, I was done with photos, so the rest of the story will be from my memory. All of those ingredients, along with a hothouse tomato, parsley, lime juice, honey, salt and pepper went into the blender and then into a bowl.

Next up was an almond milk sauce which was kind of easy because I cheated and used store-bought almond milk. Into the blender with the almond milk, a small cooked potato, a little serrano chile, more lime juice and honey. Whir, strain into a jar, store in the fridge.

The carrots weren't so complicated because I already had made the specified chutney spice powder in a previous recipe. I'm building my Bar Tartine powder pantry little by little. I warmed this in butter, then tossed the carrots in and roasted them in the oven at 250 for about an hour. The serving presentation -- and I really wish I had taken a photo of this -- was a big glob of the burnt bread sauce with the almond milk poured over it, the carrots spread on top of it all, and little green pools of drizzled carrot oil. I forgot to grate toasted almonds as a finishing touch, but it was still quite lovely and delicious.

I used this Serious Eats recipe for gravlax and mine looked almost like the photo except for the slices of gravlax appearing as if they'd had a shredder accident.

Dessert was stupid simple and a clear indication of my exhaustion by that stage. After all the dishes had been cleared, I popped back in the kitchen, tossed a few ripe bananas, some Breyer's vanilla ice cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon and most of a jar of Smucker's caramel sauce in the blender, whizzed it smooth, then trotted out back to the porch with the blender pitcher and two bottles of rum. I set it all on the picnic table and let my guests pass it around to help themselves.

Was it worth it? Oh, yes. Perhaps my mother was onto something when she told me, "You get out of something what you put into it." But then, I've never been fortunate enough to experience that laziest and most sublime of treats -- the perfectly ripe peach picked from a branch of a neighbor's tree hanging over the fence.

Extreme Cooking

A few months ago, I wrote an essay for the Oryana newsletter defending home cooking as a simple, economical way to get dinner. While that's undoubtedly true, there is another side of cooking, one that may be more open to the "elitist" characterization.

Welcome to my next experiment in extreme cooking.

Over the next four days, I'll prepare a multi-course dinner using methods and techniques unlikely to be demonstrated on the Food Network. This will not be a cheap dinner, nor will it be easy. I'll be sprouting, fermenting, dehydrating, curing, baking, and maybe even cooking.

The menu has a Scandinavian influence with most recipes adapted from my new manual of extreme cooking, the cookbook of Bar Tartine in San Francisco. I will be preparing:

Pistachio Dip with Flax Crackers (Bar Tartine, p. 216)
Chilled Beet Soup with Coriander and Yogurt (Bar Tartine, p. 158)
Chicory Salad with Anchovy Dressing (Bar Tartine, p. 184)
Gravlax with Coriander, Caraway and Mustard-Dill Sauce
Rene's Danish Rye (Tartine Book No. 3, p. 140)
Slow-roasted Carrots with Burnt Bread and Almond Milk (Bar Tartine, p. 224)

Because I'll be exhausted by the end, the Food Network can handle dessert, which will be Bobby Flay's Bananas Foster Milkshake, having nothing to do with Scandinavia or extreme cooking. It's a quick blender concoction, although I will make my own caramel sauce ahead of time.


First step is shopping for the ingredients. They look lovely:

To make the burnt bread sauce, I will need bread. I'll be burning the last of my caraway-coriander sourdough, so that means it's time to make more bread. Grinding whole wheat for flour:

Adding bread flour:

Mixing the dry ingredients:

The wet ingredients (I add a little yeast as an insurance policy because my kitchen isn't very warm this time of year):

Mixing the dry ingredients with the wet:

Old bread sliced to burn:

After broiling it in the oven for several minutes it is ready to go in the dehydrator:

Another do-ahead project, carrot top oil. I've blanched the tops of two carrot bunches, then whizzed it in the blender with a cup of sunflower oil. It will drain in the refrigerator, I hope.

Other Thursday night projects were soaking rye berries for the Danish rye bread and making another batch of yogurt. More to come!

Adult Education

I was schooled by my Southern mama to refrain from discussing politics and religion in polite company, which I understood to be any gathering in which my views may not be uniformly shared. But surely the internet is not such a place, so I need not set aside my training in good manners to bring up both topics simultaneously.

Some years ago, I had the great fortune to be acquainted with an elder of uncommon knowledge and wisdom. At the time, I was a church-going agnostic mother of two young children and Bob was a retired ordained minister and professor of theology, which perhaps is not typical ground for friendship, but my periodic coffee meetings with Bob and two other older gentlemen are among the intellectual highlights of my life.

At one of our meetings, Bob made a provocative statement which was quite radical for someone with his background: church, he said, is no place for children. To recount the entirety of this conversation would require a lengthy post best left for another day, but I will explain his key point as relates to the forthcoming history/politics tie-in. The underpinning theology and philosophy of religion, he said, is too complex to be understood by children, and so by necessity, the major concepts are simplified in youth religious training into stories that can be taught in Sunday School, usually with the aid of crayons. Unfortunately, many, if not most, church-goers limit their religious education to their childhood years. Even when they do embark on adult religious education, the mythologies established in childhood can be hard to shake.

I've thought of this conversation often in the intervening years, most recently after becoming aware that my views on American history may be subject to similar childish simplicities. My grounding in American history happened in the 5th grade, where I was required to memorize "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." (This was in 1970s North Carolina, where paddling was still an accepted punishment in schools.) I can no longer recite the famous poem, but it was a central component in an early education that established in my mind the War of Independence as a straight-forward struggle to overthrow a foreign invader and occupier. Subsequent exposure to historical information was not sufficient for me to question this view for the past 40 years, although I should note I chose to satisfy the history credit requirements at my college with art history courses.

A work of fiction inspired me to reassess my notions of the American Revolution. I've been reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series this summer (my knitting/reading/film blog is where I've been lately), and her main characters get into the thick of the Revolutionary War in the seventh volume, An Echo in the Bone. With the battle lines separating friends, neighbors and even family members, I felt as if I were reading about a civil war. Was it?

Living in the 21st century, I have many historical research tools at hand (yes, I'm referring to Google). With a few minutes of reading, I discovered numerous historians have taken the view of the American Revolution as a civil war, at least at its outset, and this understanding is reflected in high school lesson plans, supplementary materials and even a college course taught on the other side of the Atlantic. Had I continued my education in American history past elementary school, I likely would've been exposed to greater complexities. Was I poorly served by an education system that allowed me to discontinue significant academic inquiry into the formative period of my nation's history, or is my shallow knowledge my own fault?

Certainly we can't learn everything about everything. But ignorance is not bliss, and what you don't know could hurt you. Perhaps most of us can slide through our adult lives with our childhood religious and historical mythologies intact with no harm done. The fate of the republic is probably not dependent on a middle-aged midwestern resident's understanding of historical nuances. Still, I would like to broaden and deepen my knowledge, particularly in subjects where better education will enhance my life and help me contribute to my community.

In some areas, lifelong learning is a necessity, not a luxury, particularly for those in positions of influence. With his usual blend of humor and outrage, Jon Stewart illustrated the shocking scientific illiteracy of certain members of Congress who are charged with crafting legislation on climate change. This is one area in which we can't afford to assume everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten. We court ignorance at our own peril.

Muses and musings

[Part 1 and part 2]

Fortunately, my daughter did not have to depend solely on her workaholic-inclined parents to provide inspiration and role models for the slower-paced life she craves. This contemplative sphere is densely populated with writers, and although the journalist subspecies to which her parents belong have a natural habitat in the busy portion of that world, we share some of the same feeding grounds with the creative writers who get to spend more time thinking, so we are fortunate to introduce our Matilda to empathetic role models.

We also are blessed in northern Michigan to be immersed in a local culture that celebrates and supports writing. Our small downtown has several (yes, several -- that is not a typo) thriving independent bookstores, two of which are a short walk from our house and regularly bring in authors for signings and lectures. The occupational hazards and joys of writing are well-known to our children.

Matilda's most treasured muse is Stephanie, an ecologist and writer of exceptional skill who is my valued friend and comrade in community activism. Stephanie has shown kindnesses to my daughter that I could never repay in a lifetime. She has written Matilda letters, loaned books from her vast library and offered her house as a country retreat. (Among the highlights of Matilda's 17 years was a week the two of us spent housesitting for Stephanie, who at the time had a cat with a talent for bringing in live prey through the cat door. The week's visitors included a bird, a mouse and a baby bunny, all of which Matilda deftly captured and restored to the wild.)

I suspect one big factor in Matilda's affection for Stephanie is that Stephanie has always conversed with her as a peer, soliciting and respecting Matilda's opinions, never disregarding the input of a child. The two also have an easy rapport, which may be attributed to their shared introversion, keen intelligence and love of the natural world, as well as their proclivity for a contemplative pace. If Matilda spends significant chunks of time staring into space in Stephanie's presence, she will be praised, not censured.

Occasionally, Matilda has received such affirmations from a sage on a stage. One of the amenities of our book-loving town is the National Writers Series, which draws well-known authors to discuss their work before an audience of several hundred (also not a typo). My daughter has attended several of these events with me, and the writer who most inspired her was Maggie Stiefvater, author of several best-selling young adult novels.

In her appearance at the City Opera House last spring, Ms. Stiefvater was asked where and how she works. She rose from her chair and stretched on the floor of the Opera House stage in yoga corpse pose, staring at the ceiling and telling the audience that is how she spends the bulk of her working time. Matilda was sold! This was all the evidence she needed that writing was the correct path for her. (I can't avoid pointing out to Matilda that eventually even the novelist must put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.)

This brings me to the "well-rutted path" Ms. Stiefvater described in a TED Talk. [Really, I should link this video on the headline of this and the two previous blog posts to save you all the trouble of reading as Ms. Stiefvater captures this theme with eloquence and humor.] The achievement-focused path of Advanced Placement classes and extracurricular activities, so favored by striving families, is a reliable course for "success" defined as landing a respectable job that will afford consumer amenities. However, many of our artists, innovators, and creative agents of change did not find their way along this well-rutted path. I'm grateful for reminders that a C in high school physics does not foreshadow a future of crime or welfare dependency. It doesn't even preclude a career as a physicist! The results of any Google search combining bad high school grades and later success will provide solace to a parent with report card angst.

My crystal ball is fuzzy. I can't predict where the road less traveled will lead Matilda. In all likelihood, she will settle into an unremarkable adult existence, as most of us do, picking her way through the ordinary joys and disappointments of adulthood and defining happiness and success for herself. I know she will be guided by her own star; she insists on it.

But I won't be surprised if she does something extraordinary. Perhaps 30 years from now, I'll look back at this photo and wonder if she was sizing up the lawn of her future home.

A different beat

Among the many mixed messages our culture gives kids, the advice on conformity must be among the most confusing. Officially, we value individuality. We urge them to "think outside the box," "march to your own beat," "dare to be different," or in the words of Apple, "think different." When we seek to inspire, we praise non-conformity. But woe to the teen who takes this to heart!

In reality, the last thing many achievement-oriented parents want to encourage in their children is non-conformity, unless they define it as "getting a 4.0 when the rest of the class is below 3.8." Otherwise, parents are more likely to encourage their children to fit in by steering them to popular activities, clothing styles, entertainment choices and like-minded peer groups. 

she made her own Halloween costume

Even in my social circle, in which disdain of the "dominant culture" was a recurring theme back in the playgroup days, the acceptable box is only slightly more accommodating. Enlightened parents may celebrate some examples of coloring outside the lines, such as little boys in pink or a family's refusal to own a television set, but questions on academic attainment are usually confined to "how" or "where," rarely "if" or "why." Much debate may occur on whether little Zooby will fare better at Montessori, public, charter or home school, but the unquestioned assumption is that Zooby will go to college.

Let me be clear: I include myself among those parents. For most of the past two decades, I've approached my parenting role with the assumption that my two children would share similar views on how one should navigate life. While my favorite metaphor to describe my ideals was that I was a gardener nurturing seeds, not a potter shaping clay, in truth I behaved as if I were growing bonsai or topiary rather than wildflowers.

To escape my box, I needed a good teacher, and fortunately I had one in my daughter, the proverbial square peg who will not be pounded into a round hole. [I'll refer to her as "Matilda," in honor of her favorite childhood literary character.] Through strong non-violent resistance to most efforts to "school" her or train her to productivity, my Matilda has taught me to reassess my own notions of success and purpose in a more radical manner than I had previously experienced, even through my studies of voluntary simplicity.

I have learned that time spent staring at the ceiling may be the most valuable of all. This has been a difficult lesson to absorb after decades focused on perfecting my multitasking skills to the point that I almost can't read a book unless I'm simultaneously engaged in another activity. If I had been a student of the Harry Potter generation, I may have been nicknamed Hermione after J.K. Rowling's smarty-pants heroine who shifted time to take more classes. Watching my daughter sit for hours, doing nothing that I could detect, was puzzling, and for many years, a problem to fix. (I think I've read almost every advice site returned by a Google search on "gifted and unmotivated.")

The first clues that Matilda might be on to something emerged when I began to notice that some of my adult friends welcomed her company. Matilda has always, even as a toddler, generally preferred the society of adults and has accompanied me to activities and social engagements whenever permitted. My adult friends tolerated her society with equanimity, and as she grew into her teen years, their interactions evolved. No longer just a tagalong, she increasingly participated in the conversations, and I observed that adults seemed to enjoy and even elicit her contributions.

It finally dawned on me that Matilda's agile mind was far from idle during those countless hours spent staring at the ceiling. She was engaged in one of the activities most endangered in our crazy-busy culture: thinking. More specifically, sustained and critical thinking. Like Charles Darwin, my young naturalist needed time to sort and catalog her observations. I thought she was "doing nothing," but her mind was a hot oven, baking something new from the ingredients she had kneaded and left to rise. The result would much later be issued as a report, typically with a "did you notice" or "I figured something out" prologue, often to the astonishment of an adult unaware that teens thought about such things.

But most importantly, that "doing nothing" time was key to her well-being. When I let go of my beliefs of what should be happening and observed what was happening, I acknowledged that every single incident of discontent, meltdown or outright misery came on the heels of parental pressure to do something. If I just let her be, her inner butterfly emerged -- curious and ready to explore the world, vitally engaged with every interesting thing she encountered, and comfortable in her own beautifully unique skin.

Tomorrow: my muse's muses

Downtime

A busy friend shared a link recently to an essay by Tim Kreider about the tendency of many members of the U.S. middle class -- or, let's say more accurately, the "striver" class -- to exist in a state of frenetic activity, largely self-imposed. Being "crazy busy" at all times is a badge of honor and seems to represent the ideal for our culture, but the author makes a compelling case for the benefits of idleness.

the meditation cushion

I've been pondering his viewpoint and how I've been transitioning from a fill-every-waking-moment-productively mania to a slower rhythm where I can almost begin to imagine using the meditation cushion I purchased about 15 years ago but could never sit still quietly long enough to use.

Mr. Kreider's role as instigator of goof-off time has been filled in my life by my daughter. I suggested she also read his essay as I knew she would welcome an endorsement of the habits she has cultivated so diligently for herself. At 17, she is a paragon of the idle life and has quite forcefully resisted attempts from her parents or others to set her on anything resembling a striver path. No sports, no clubs, no summer classes or camps. She has exceptional academic ability, but high school classes leave her uninspired and she struggles just to complete each course, with little concern about her final grades. Consequently, the bus to Harvard will not be stopping here.

Incidentally, her favorite academic course of all time came from Harvard and may serve as an example of the benefits of idle time. A couple of summers ago, Harvard professor and author Michael Sandel appeared locally to promote his latest book. Disappointed at being unable to attend his seminar, I took to the internet to find out what I had missed and discovered his popular undergraduate course, Justice, was available for free online. I started watching his lectures, and my daughter, 15 at the time, peered over my shoulder. Soon, she was coming downstairs each morning asking, "Mom, can we watch another Harvard class?" Multiple choice tests may have left her cold, but she couldn't get enough of the ideas of Aristotle, Kant, Locke and Descartes.

See, when her active, agile, creative mind isn't burdened with the demands of school, my daughter is an intellectual sponge. She is drawn to ideas like a fruit fly to a glass of wine. I've become accustomed to her peering over my shoulder when I'm reading something novel or controversial, even if it's only anonymous internet users debating a local policy in the comments section of a media website. And, as she's a visual learner, if the information happens to be on something like YouTube, her antenna is keen enough that it will draw her out of her room and down the stairs to inquire, "what's that?"

[A brief note on the visual learning: her best year of "school" was 7th grade, when, as regular readers of this blog who are probably limited to my relatives will recall, we home schooled using a self-invented film-based curriculum.]

favorite activity for 17 years

When children are small, we cut them some slack on the productivity meters. That my three-year-old was content to spend hours arranging and rearranging her toy dinosaurs by size, type, color or texture instead of doing some Baby Einstein activity was of little concern. But once the high-stake high school years arrived and her peers were busy with theater productions, sports teams, debate club, violin lessons and volunteerism, I worried. What was to become of a child who spent so much time literally staring at the ceiling? What hope could she have of going to college without pages of extracurricular activities to include on her Common Application?

second favorite activity

I pushed. "You must participate in at least one activity at all times," I ordered as she began full-time high school. I enlisted my neighbors, and even the coach, to lobby her (unsuccessfully) to join the girls cross-country team. If I noticed her playing a game on her laptop in the evenings, I asked, "Don't you have homework?" I regularly checked her grades on the parent portal of the school website. "What's this? An A MINUS in Honors Biology? You can do better than that!"

Eventually, she pushed back, in a way that shifted my concern from her grades to her health. I had to acknowledge the parenting approach that worked so effectively with her older brother was not so good for her. I utilized my research skills, as well as some outside help, to learn what might best guide her to a motivated and productive adult life. But my greatest teacher turned out to be my daughter.


Tomorrow: Am I smarter than a slacker high school student? Short answer: no.

DIY

I should be 20 years younger and live in Brooklyn. Such is my devotion to DIY, or do-it-yourself. And, I should note, I was DIY before DIY was cool and before I knew there was a name for it.

Here is the latest addition to my ever-increasing collection of "hobbies":

beginner sewing machine

The motivation for this acquisition was, primarily, jeans. My petite daughter can never find jeans pants that don't need shortening. I've attempted alterations with a needle and thread, but my work is sloppy and often comes undone, and there she is again, walking on the unraveled hems of her jeans.

Yes, I know I could pay someone to take care of this, and if jeans were the only issue, I probably would find a seamstress. But there were also napkins.

I have a sad assortment of cloth napkins, most of which were given to me as wedding gifts. The wedding was almost 25 years ago, and nearly all of the napkins are white, so I'm sure you can imagine their current condition without photographic evidence. I would like to get new napkins, but I haven't seen any I love, and most new napkins seem extraordinarily overpriced for what is essentially just a square piece of cloth. I could make those if I had a sewing machine.

But ultimately it came down to the sweaters. A project in my long-standing textile hobby of knitting is nearly completion. This sweater will require finishing with a machine stitch before cutting the front piece. I could pay someone to stitch the seam, as I've done in the past, but I already wanted to make the napkins and hem the jeans, so I bought the sewing machine.

Since Friday, I've hemmed one pair of jeans and stitched a neat seam around a square piece of linen. I feel like I can manage the most basic elements of machine sewing on my own. But I think about how much better I could be, and the truly exciting things I could make, if perhaps I took a class. And then I start thinking about the cloth, and how I may not be able to find affordable fabrics I love, but of course, I could make my own fabric if I had a loom.

And that's where I metaphorically slap myself and come to my senses. I don't need a loom. I already have a spinning wheel gathering dust, and my knitting needles haven't been getting much of a workout lately. I'm baking bread, making yogurt, and now roasting my own coffee. I have plans to make wine and brew beer.

All of these things are fun to do, but a line must be drawn somewhere. Human societies have organized around divisions of labor for good reason. Specialization leads to mastery and efficiency, and few persons (with notable exceptions, such as Leonardo da Vinci) are able to achieve competence, let alone mastery, in more than one skilled craft.

Long ago I accepted the consequences of my decision to forego mastery on a professional level. I graduated from college and began my work in journalism with dreams of Pulitzers and other glories, but after a few years of 80-hour work weeks, I realized I wanted to experience other aspects of life more fully. So I jumped off the fast track. Well, to be more truthful, I ran so far from the tracks that I can't see one anymore.

Shortly before that jump, I had an opportunity to pursue a more specialized path. Due to some fairly strange circumstances considering I had no training or education in the area, I was offered a computer programming job, which would've paid more and, on the surface, seemed to have more potential in the booming tech environment. But my boss urged me to stay put, to be a generalist, an amalgamator. He predicted that if I did so, within a few years the guy who offered me the programming job would be reporting to me. Based on the eventual departmental reorganizations, I suspect if I hadn't jumped the track, his prophecy would have come true.

Generalists are the glue and the grease in a highly-specialized world. We need STEM majors, but we also need humanities graduates to craft the quilt that holds the pieces together.

Back to the sewing machine. I don't anticipate ever getting beyond the rank of beginner at sewing; however, I'm eager to acquire a basic skill to support my other interests. Some competence with sewn fabrics could improve my ability to create better knitted fabrics. I may find a thread to unite all of my hobbies and interests in a unique way. Regardless of outcome, learning to sew a little will be fun.

But I have to draw the DIY line somewhere, and I draw it with a loom on the other side. At least for now.

Winged things and Thanksgiving planning

My yard is white with the season's first light blanket of snow. Skies are gray and days are short, lulling me into hibernation-mode while relishing in the comforts of fleece and wool.

The town is a bit quieter as the fall color season dwindles to an end and snowbirds begin to make their escapes to warmer climes. Many winged creatures also have departed. [Any readers of this blog who are nature enthusiasts may enjoy a couple of short wildlife stories I recently wrote for Our Mississippi magazine, a good news piece on the recovery of trumpeter swans and a sadder brief on the struggles of the monarch butterfly, both on page 7.] 

Another winged creature takes its annual star turn on our tables later this month. Yes, turkey day is two weeks away. This is about the time I usually start planning my menu, and yesterday morning I decided to throw out most of my tried-and-true Thanksgiving recipes and just follow the menu in The New York Times. 

So, to any local people who read my Thanksgiving essay in the Oryana newsletter [last page], I'm probably not doing that this year, except for the corn maque choux and the madeira gravy. 

I like the NYT's suggestion to dry brine the turkey with a salt and herb rub. Thomas Keller's simple roast chicken recipe uses a similar preparation and it's always delicious. Bacon and mushrooms in the stuffing also sounds like an exciting addition. But the item on the menu that hooked me is David Tanis' spicy red pepper cranberry relish. I have to try that. And, I think I'll make all three pies.

Fall back to the hearth

Here in northern Michigan, those infamous gales of November are already howling. We enjoyed an extended summer, with sunny days and temperatures in the 70s just a couple of weeks ago, but now the skies are gray, the days are short and the frost is on the pumpkin every morning.

I have a cousin who lived in Hawaii for three years. When she returned to North Carolina, I asked if she was despondent to leave paradise. She said she was thrilled to be home, and not only because of family. Hawaii was beautiful, but perfect weather every day grew tiresome, and she missed the seasons.

I understand that now. So much in life is cyclical, circular, or spiral. Little is linear, save our progression from the womb to the grave, and even that is part of a larger cycle. Our bodies have their own circadian and seasonal rhythms, and the nature inside of us is drawn to the nature around us.

At this time of year, my nature is preparing for the long winter. Like a bear, I want to hibernate, or at least sleep more. I'm also more of a hermit than usual, preferring to be at home whenever possible, especially in the evenings.

In the kitchen, seasonal cooking becomes heartier, warmer, and starchier. Leafy greens decline as grains, legumes and root vegetables dominate the menu. Baking is a comfort again, and the aroma of fresh bread fills the house several times a week.

Continuing my obsession with all things Scandinavian, I explore the Danish concept of hygge, which can't be translated into English but is most often approximated as "cozy." This is the season of hygge at the 45th Parallel. Sunday night stew and bread, fireplaces burning in stores and restaurants, fleece pajamas, wool blankets, and (a modern twist) queuing up Netflix more often (I'm catching up on "Scandal" right now.)

Winter here is long and harsh and every year I dream of escaping it. I hate having to put on boots, coat, mittens, scarf and ice grippers just to go out for a walk. The short gray days bring on Seasonal Affective Disorder and I whine more. But when spring returns, all is forgotten, except the sense of fortitude at having survived another Michigan winter and the joy of once again celebrating long sunny days, green things, and a wider social circle (see "festivals").

As my fall gift to you, to help you create your own hygge, I leave you with my recipe for easy overnight bread. The quantities are all approximate. Don't worry too much about measuring; this bread is so forgiving, you can't really go wrong.

1.5 cups bread or all-purpose flour
1.5 cups whole grain flour of your choice (wheat, rye, spelt, or a combination)
.5 cup steel-cut oats
1/4 to 1/2 tsp dry yeast
2 tsps salt
2 Tbsps maple syrup or honey (optional)
2 Tbsps yogurt or buttermilk (optional)
about 2 cups water

Begin the night before you want to bake. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. I use a large Pyrex measuring bowl with a lid. You could mix the wet ingredients in another bowl if using the honey/yogurt before adding to the dry, or not. It really doesn't matter! Stir until you get a wet, thick batter. It should roughly resemble a cornbread or muffin batter -- you could pour or scoop it out but not knead it. I use a Danish wire whisk, which is one of the greatest baking tools ever.

Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature overnight. The next morning, the dough will have doubled and look very gassy and alive, with various bubbles across the surface. Scoop the contents into your greased loaf pan and set it in the warmest part of your kitchen to rise again for about an hour. Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to 375F. When the dough has risen to about the top of the pan, put the pan in the oven and bake for 50 minutes or so, until it sounds slightly hollow when tapped.

It's that easy. If morning baking doesn't fit your schedule, you could mix the dough before work and bake in the evening. The timing may also depend on the temperature of your house. The warmer the environment, the less time needed for the microorganisms to do their thing.

Enjoy experimenting with this basic loaf, adding seeds and changing the flours, sweeteners or dairy. All it really requires is flour, water, a little bit of yeast, and some alone time. Hygge.

Roasted

Sometime this summer, I got the idea that the next step in improving my coffee-making skills would be to roast the beans myself. I don't remember what came first, the idea or the website describing how to do this. Inspiration aside, I became aware of a method of home roasting coffee beans using an air popcorn popper, as described here.

Finally, two days ago, I tried it out. I picked up about a pound of green coffee beans at Higher Grounds (the splendid fair trade coffee roasting company in my town) -- enough for a few tries but not so much that I would regret the purchase if it didn't work out.

I loaded a scoop of green beans into the popcorn popper, flipped the switch, put a bowl under the chute for the chaff, and waited. I decided to go for the dark roast, and after 7 minutes I decided it was done. I poured the beans into a colander, tossed them around and inhaled the aroma.

Lovely! I think I got more of a medium roast than a dark.

The internet instructions recommended waiting 4 to 24 hours before brewing for the freshly-roasted beans to reach their best state; of course, I couldn't wait. I ground some beans immediately and brewed them in my French press. The resulting coffee was distinctive and had a flavor I can't describe. It was definitely coffee, but with a vibrant quality.

I stored the rest of the freshly-roasted beans in a tin for the next morning, expecting coffee nirvana. The morning coffee was excellent, but not noticeably different than the usual brew roasted by Higher Grounds.

Anyway, home roasting is easy, saves a couple of dollars a pound on coffee, and produces great results. I plan to continue, and I will always brew a pot immediately after roasting because regardless of what the experts say, that really-fresh-roasted taste is too good to forsake.

No place like home

As a kid, whenever I watched The Wizard of Oz, I was always frustrated with Dorothy because I couldn't understand her crisis. She wanted to be somewhere over the rainbow, then her wish is granted and she wakes up in this magical, beautiful, exciting, exotic place. And immediately she wants to go back to drab Kansas. Why couldn't she just stay with the Munchkins? That's what I would've done.

In my younger years, I longed to travel to exotic places that would be more interesting than my native North Carolina, which could've been the twin sister to Dorothy's Kansas in my mind (far less evolved than James Taylor's). The older I get, the more I relate to the post-twister Dorothy, although home for me is now Michigan.

Traveling back from Montreal a couple of weeks ago, I wondered why we felt the need to go there at all. Sure, I knew the motivation: give our daughter the opportunity to practice French while having fun in a vibrant city we enjoyed visiting previously. But once there, I kept feeling as if practicing French was the only thing we were doing in Montreal that we couldn't be doing at home.

botanical bike culture

I'm not knocking Montreal by any means. It's a lovely city with a cycling infrastructure among the best in North America, and it has numerous pedestrian-only zones. Montreal's botanical gardens, or Jardin Botanique, are the finest I've ever seen and well worth a visit; we were fortunate to see the spectacular Mosaicultures Internationales exhibit.

But aside from bike and botanical culture, Montreal did not make me want to expatriate. Traverse City has more than enough charms to lure me back: music festivals, a film festival, beautiful lakes and rivers, farms, orchards, forests, dune climbs, craft breweries, wineries, cheese makers, sandy beaches, and the friendliest people this side of Minnesota.

And we have better food. Really. Admittedly, I didn't dine at the most famous Montreal restaurants as that was beyond our budget, but in the moderate and cheap price ranges, Traverse City has Montreal beat. Montreal's $14 burgers are no better than TC's $8 burgers. Montreal's poutine is tasty, but I prefer the dirty fries at the food truck in my neighborhood. Admittedly, Traverse City still lacks great Asian food, but I didn't find much better in Montreal. (I enjoy excellent Asian fare at bargain prices in the Twin Cities.)

We procured a dozen Montreal bagels on our way out of town, and those were interesting enough that I've looked up recipes to try making my own. But other baked goods in Montreal disappointed, especially the morning croissants, which were nowhere near the perfection of 9 Bean Rows'.

Once I read an essay, probably on voluntary simplicity, listing vacation as an unnecessary expense. If the place you live is so unpleasant that it must be vacated regularly, the author reasoned, perhaps you should consider living elsewhere. I recognize that travel offers many benefits beyond respite and recreation, but I appreciate living in a place so pleasant that I rarely wish to leave. Except in February.

I haven't decided to store my ruby slippers and stay home for good, but the older I get, the more I agree with Madeleine L'Engle, who wrote: "Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation -- coming home again."

Cantaloupe seeds

For all of my life, until today, I've been scooping the seeds and pulp from the center of the cantaloupe and discarding them before slicing the melon. I've never seen anyone do otherwise, even when I lived in North Carolina and had a grandmother in the neighborhood of the famous Ridgeway cantaloupes. I knew of no other use for the seeds than to feed the compost bin.

Silly me. If only I had had a Mexican auntie.

Last night, pondering what I might do with my farmer's market cantaloupe other than chunk it up and eat it, I started browsing my vast cookbook collection. In Gourmet Today I found a recipe for a cantaloupe cooler, or agua de melon, which uses only that middle stuff I had been scooping out.

As I'm on a quest to reduce and hopefully eliminate all food waste, the option of keeping the seedy stuff out of the compost bin was compelling.

So I scooped it into the blender container and added two cups of icy water:

After whizzing on high speed for about 30 seconds, I strained the results, although with a Vitamix there really wasn't anything to strain out.

The Gourmet recipe specified adding a half a cup of sugar to the blending process, but I'm trying to avoid sugar, so I sweetened it with several drops of stevia and added another cup of water to thin.

The final result:

I enjoyed a glass with my gazpacho, and I have three more servings of each in the fridge for future meals or snacks. Isn't summer fabulous?

Japanese Pickles

I've been pickling all summer. More accurately: I've been fermenting things. So far, nothing has been ruined and it has all been tasty.

But in the past couple of days, I've tried a pickling technique that may become my next obsession because it is just that good.

Let me tell you about Japanese miso pickles.

I heard about this when I was catching up on Splendid Table podcasts during a long car ride from Montreal to Traverse City. Karen Solomon described the method enough to pique my interest, and after the CSA box arrived on Tuesday with another large patch of pickling cucumbers, I mixed up the miso paste and tried it out.

Because I'm always eager to minimize waste, I immediately decided to go with the pickling bed technique. It sounded strange: how would the cucumber slices pickle if they not only were not submerged in brine but were separated from this miso paste by a layer of cloth? I couldn't imagine, but I followed her instructions to see what would happen.

First, I cut two rectangles of cloth from an old (clean) thin dishcloth:

I mixed the miso with mirin and sake. I tossed the cucumber slices with a little kosher salt and set them in a strainer for about an hour:

I spread half of the miso mixture on the bottom of a small pyrex dish, covered it with one layer of cloth, arranged the cucumber slices in a single layer on top of the cloth, covered those with the other cloth, spread the rest of the miso on top of that, and waited.

I didn't wait very long because I was eager to find out what would happen. After the minimum recommended time (an hour), I peeled back the top cloth and pulled out one of the pickles.

Oh, yum! These may be my favorite pickles ever.

As I discovered, a brine seeps from the miso paste so the cucumbers are basically submerged in it. And removing them is as easy as rolling up the top cloth and lifting them out with a fork. Add more sliced cucumbers, roll the cloth back down and re-spread the top paste, and make another batch. This is awesome!

If you try this, you'll have to keep making more because each batch will disappear almost immediately.

After one batch, I sliced a baby eggplant and tried it in the pickling bed, but I didn't like it as much as the cucumbers. I plan to try carrots next.

I was so excited about this method that I downloaded the e-book so I can try other Japanese pickles. I'll report back on future experiments.

Announcing TC Fitness Pals!

Hey y'all, hope everyone's been having a pleasant summer.

My news today will be of interest primarily to those in Traverse City, but I'm hoping a few friends in other places will pop in from cyberspace occasionally.

I'm starting a small support group for friends interested in losing weight and eating well. The blog for the group is TC Fitness Pals and I've created a discussion group at MyFitnessPal. For local friends, I'm hoping we will meet weekly for delicious food and check-ins. I'll be cooking! Check the new blog for more info.

And for this blog, I'll be back shortly with some cookbook reviews. Stay tuned!

Waste not

For the past few weeks, I've been taking a course on food system sustainability from Coursera. Even though I fancy myself a knowledgeable eco-foodie person, I've learned I have more to learn about the environmental impact of feeding 6 billion humans.

This past week's topic was food waste. I've been mindful of this problem to some extent ever since my childhood when my mother harangued me about cleaning my plate out of respect for all the starving children in India. Now as a mother worrying about the college tuition bills, I'd rather not be scraping leftovers into the compost bin, so I've been trying to avoid cooking anything new until the previous thing is gone.

The lessons on food waste gave me a deeper understanding of the problem and the negative impacts beyond hunger and household economy. We read a Swedish study and this recent working paper published by the World Resources Institute. Some highlights:

* By weight, an estimated one-third of all food intended for human consumption never makes it into human stomachs. When converted into calories, this is about 24 percent of all food produced.

* In poor countries, food loss is the major problem. This is food that spoils, spills or undergoes an unintended reduction in quality before it reaches the consumer. Loss occurs closer to the farm due to limitations in infrastructure, storage, packaging or distribution.

* In richer countries, food waste is the bigger concern. Waste refers to food that is of good quality but does not get consumed because it is discarded, either before or after it has spoiled. This includes groceries purchased and thrown away, partially-eaten restaurant meals and expired foods removed from store shelves.

* Food waste at the consumption stage costs an annual average of $1,600 for a family of four in the United States.

* The food waste tally does not include overconsumption of calories, which would no doubt make the statistics even worse.

From a climate and environmental perspective, food lost or wasted represents a needless use of land, water, fertilizers, transportation and other impacts of food production. And food rotting in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas.

The working paper has many recommendations for reducing loss and waste at every point in the chain, and it highlights some schemes that have been successful. One innovative solution to tackle cafeteria waste came from Grand Valley State University in Michigan. From the report:

By eliminating trays, GVSU officials hoped to reduce the amount of food waste at its cafeterias, as well as reduce energy and water use associated with washing trays. Under this system, students could return to the cafeteria to take more food as desired, but were limited on each trip to the amount of food they could carry on a plate in their hands. ... After a successful pilot, GVSU permanently adopted the trayless system in the fall of 2007. The university found that after going trayless, the university was throwing away almost 13 metric tons of food less than in previous years―about 25 kg per person annually―and was conserving 117,000 liters of water per year. The system was also economically beneficial, saving the university about US$79,000 per year compared to a system using trays.

I encourage those who are interested in learning about food loss and waste to read or scan the working paper for more information. Among the resources recommended by the authors of the study, the one likely most helpful to the consumer is the initiative at Think.Eat.Save. From there I found a link to an extremely informative Australian website with many tips of reducing waste.

Restaurants can be challenging because so many serve large portions. How do we square our efforts to not overeat (Weight Watchers urges its members to quit the clean plate club) with a goal of not wasting food? Some things I've tried:

* If I know I won't eat something, I can ask the server to leave it off the plate. I don't always remember this. The other day I ordered a wrap, which came with tortilla chips, and I didn't want the chips. I offered them to my daughter, who didn't want them either, so in the end, I wrapped them in a paper napkin and brought them home, where my husband ate them later because he's like a vacuum for those things.

* When I plan to go out for dinner, I bring a lidded container from home for leftovers. This helps me avoid the restaurant's disposable take-out container. Often I'll pack away half of the meal before I even touch it. This will be lunch the next day, or when my son is home from college, a late-night snack for him.

* Unplanned meals away still often result in a disposable container. I'm thinking of investing in a collapsible container that I can keep in my bag.

As for my kitchen, I have a personal initiative this summer to minimize the edible materials that go into our compost pile. We're in the season of abundance with overflowing produce boxes from Meadowlark Farm, and I don't want to waste any of this goodness. I've always been pretty good about using the prime part of every item, but I've never managed to make use of every edible part. For example, when the beets come attached to their greens, sometimes I've let the greens wilt in the fridge. And usually, the carrot tops go directly into the compost pile.

But this summer I'm reaching new levels of culinary efficiency! I can best illustrate this with last week's fennel.

This is the fennel as it came out of the box:

In previous summers, I trimmed away the stalks and fronds and used only the bulb. Sometimes I might toss the fronds on the grill as a flavoring agent, but usually all but the white bulb went into the compost.

Last week, with the help of Deborah Madison's most excellent cooking guide Vegetable Literacy (if you don't have this yet, I urge you to get it), I managed to extract the nutrients from all parts of the plant before any trimmings went to compost. I made a fennel tea from some of the fronds (steep a handful of fronds in a cup or two of boiling water), a grilled fennel frond pesto from the rest, and a stock from the stalks (chop stalks and an onion and simmer in water). I used the stock in a soup I've been making every time I get fennel, the exceptionally delicious Chickpea, Tomato and Bread Soup from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty (another cookbook I highly recommend).

Fennel separated into parts

Fennel stock simmering (the purple things are kohlrabi stalks)

Strained fennel stock

Chickpea, tomato and bread soup

The adapted recipe:

1 large onion, sliced
1 medium fennel bulb, sliced
about 1/4 cup olive oil
1 large carrot, peeled, cut lengthways in half and sliced
3 celery stalks, sliced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup white wine
one 14-oz can diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen roasted)
1 tbsp chopped oregano
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 bay leaves
2 tsp sugar
4.5 cups fennel stock
salt and pepper to taste
2 large slices stale sourdough bread
2.5 cups cooked chickpeas
4 tbsp pesto (basil, fennel fronds, or carrot top)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sauté the onion and fennel in a little oil on medium heat for about 4 minutes. Add the carrot and celery and continue cooking for another 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Add the wine and let it bubble away for another minute.

Ready to serve

Add the canned tomatoes with their juices, the herbs, sugar, fennel stock and some salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, break the bread into rough chunks, toss with 2 tablespoons of oil and some salt and scatter in a sheet pan. Bake for about 10 minutes, until thoroughly dry.

About 10 minutes before serving, place the chickpeas in a bowl and crush them a little with a potato masher. Add them to the soup and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the toasted bread, stir well and cook for another 5 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Spoon some pesto in the center, drizzle with olive oil and finish with freshly shredded basil if you have some.