Family Food and Recipe Traditions for New Years Eve

Our family tradition during the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is to pull out the old cookbooks - not the commercial ones, like the Betty Crocker Cook Book (which I love), but the old binders stuffed with handwritten recipes from our mothers and grandmothers. 

Over the next week, we'll make:

• My mom's Thumbprint cookie recipe 
• My French Onion soup recipe (link to the recipe, below) 
• My husband's great-grandmother's original ravioli recipe, which is an all day affair, including making the pasta dough from scratch
• One weird Italian dessert recipe from his grandma's hand written recipe. I say weird only because his grandmother was notorious for writing half in Italian, half in English, and leaving out critical steps, like adding the eggs or what to do with the egg yolk after separating an egg.  You were just supposed to know.  These recipes are always a challenge to our cooking skills as we try to decipher and remember our kitchen chemistry, filling in the missing ingredients, while my husband pulls from his memory all the high school Italian he learned so he can translate the instructions. 

Since closing up my Recipes from the Garden blog, I am moving all recipes here.  So enjoy a few recipes and cook along with my family as we ring in the New Year by mixing up memories of kitchens past by making lots of our traditional family favorites!




Enjoy!

Making Room for the New in Our Lives

They are keeping the old stained glass.

I awoke in the early dawn hours this morning with a hunch to look up my original church on Long Island. This is the church where I grew, the church where as a little girl I played on the carpet in front of the altar, albeit with a dusting rag in my hand as my mother and the other ladies cleaned.  This is the church where I founded the children's choir, sang with them for years, learned how to play the organ, joyfully welcomed my nieces and nephews in baptism and saw both my parents off at funerals with tearful farewells.  It was the church my grandparents and great grandparents all had a hand in creating; it was the church my parents were married in and I was married in.  I don't know why it was on my mind. Maybe a tap from my guardian angel.  My research led me quickly to the church's website and three shiny, spiffy PowerPoints from architects hired to redo the church.  My old church was to be gutted from the inside out, with only the exterior architecture and the old stained glass windows remaining.  Even new Stations of the Cross had been ordered.


I picked my head up from my work today and noticed that it's only a few days to New Year's Eve. New Year's Day was never a big holiday in my family, but my husband's family always held a family party and liked to stay up and celebrate, so I've grown accustomed to the small, private family rituals we share.  I'm not big on resolutions; to me, every day offers the opportunity for a fresh start. I learned long ago that the point of power is always in the present moment, and my choices today affect the outcomes of tomorrow.

As I looked at the architect's sketches online,  I felt upset that they would change the inside of the church that I loved so much.

Cracks & falling tile = time for change

But the more I studied the pictures, the more I began to notice that the church today no longer looked like the church of my childhood.  The cracks in the plastered walls were huge. Ceiling tiles falling off and water stained hung from the ceiling.  The carpet is gone from the main sanctuary (and that blue carpet was put in when I was a teenager...it was red when I was little...so there you go; things do change).  In the architect's plans, I saw notes about adding bathrooms and an elevator so people could get down to the chapel in the basement. An elevator! Well, in my day we walked down a steep flight of concrete steps that were dark and dangerous.  I can well remember old ladies stumbling and falling down those steps the times when I sat next to the organist in the lower church to sing. Not a good way to begin a church service. Charity alone, let alone the insurance companies, called for changes there years ago.




As the New Year ends, and the old begins, many people will try to make changes. They'll vow to diet, or save money, or pay off debts, or stop smoking.  Yet one thing I know to be true: in order to allow new and fresh life into our lives, we have to make room for it.  To make a positive change, we must release a negative one.

Sometimes, you keep a few good things while releasing the bad. They're keeping the exterior architecture and the old stained glass while getting rid of the outdated items.  That's ideal.  We must do the same in our lives. Retain what is good and true, and release what no longer serves us. 

Making changes quickly is like gutting the inside of a building. The question is, do you have something planned to replace what you have lost?

Many people "gut" their lives by adding exercise or drastically changing diet at the start of the new year. The problem is that they haven't thought through what will take their old habit's place.  If you pull down those falling ceiling tiles or rip up the metaphorical carpet - what is left?

But conversely, you must rip up the old carpet and remove the old to make room for the new.  In my old church, they tried repair after repair, and you get to the point in a building nearing the 100 year mark when you can only patch the plaster so much.  The patches just don't hold. The only option is to totally renovate it.

The old church in my memories meant a lot to me, but a church is just a building.  It is precious to me as all Catholic churches are; there is something, even in the most modern building, of the ancient vibrations of history and liturgy echoing through the stones.

 The changes made after Vatican II to the interior no longer work for their large congregation.  They need 200 more seats. And bathrooms.  When I was growing up, if you had to go to the bathroom....you had to hold it.  The only bathroom was in the sacristy.  You actually had to leave the church, walk around the whole outside, enter through a side door, and find your way into the sacristy, where there was a really old bathroom with loud plumbing hidden near the old-fashioned wardrobe containing the altar boy robes. 

That's one change I bet nobody is arguing with...

We want to hold onto the old.  We cling to bits and pieces of the past as talismans against an uncertain future. All the while, the world around us changes. Some changes we embrace: the birth of a child, the addition of a pet to the family, buying a new home.  Yet other changes, like selling a childhood home or watching an old church undergo renovations, feel painful.  It is as if a part of ourselves is undergoing the metamorphosis too, along with the plaster and the carpets and the falling apart ceiling tiles.

We must release the old to make room for the new.

What will you release from your old self as the year draws to a close?

What new and wonderful thing do you hope to draw to you?

Tracking the Elusive

My husband found these tracks in the woods.

Last night as I took Shadow out to the edge of the woods near the compost pile, we both stopped, startled.  It was pitch black, cold, and there's still enough snow on the ground to necessitate boots.  As I stood with her, I could hear clearly coming from the direction of the compost pile the crack and gnaw of sharp teeth on something. I'd put out the compost earlier in the day, and included in the batch of scraps were walnut shells and other assorted nuts. Now if you know anything about buying those yummy bags of nuts in the shell around the holidays, you know you can NEVER get all the meat out of the shell - not even with those sharp pick things they include in nutcracker sets. I'd had some walnuts with an apple as a snack in the afternoon, and the apple had a huge bad spot in it, so about half had also gone out in the compost, along with a bunch of shells that still had meat in them.  Shadow and I listened for a while.  The skitter of claws on the stone edge of my compost pile, the rustle of leaves (when there was no wind) let me know that our unseen visitor had fled back into the forest.  I began talking loudly too, in the hopes of scaring away whatever wild critter it was so I wouldn't have to deal with 70+ pounds of lunging, hunting-crazed German Shepherd on an icy hillside.

This morning Shadow and I were out before dawn. I led her up the snow-covered driveway and as we got to the curve near the edge of our property, I saw even more deer tracks in the snow.  Even immediately after the snowstorm this weekend, I saw plenty of deer tracks crisscrossing out of the woods.  They always use the same pathway through the woods, emerging and crossing the driveway.  There were other tracks too; the two parallel big feet tracks of a rabbit hopping towards the big pile of brush, which would make excellent cover; and more interesting, tracks I think are of a fox.  Near the rabbit, of course....

The snow helps us track the elusive.  We see prints of what has gone before us in the night time.  The snow has also brought forth many creatures, like our guest at the compost pile, seeking additional sustenance.  I know that the opossum love to eat fruit scraps from the compost pile, and sometimes after I put out pineapple cores and tops I'll find one dragged about 10 feet into the woods, gnawed on by sharp little teeth.

I love thinking about the mystery of these creatures, the lives of the forest dwellers who shyly rest in the shadows of the pines by day and emerge by night, seeking food, eluding predators.  We hear the owls hooting from tree to tree on some nights, and in the summer the whipporwill serenades us from the woods.  I see bats swooping and circling the fields. I have seen red foxes playing at dawn in the winter; one year they ran through the garden and had a merry game of chase on my compost pile while I watched in astonishment; by the time I got my camera, they were gone.  And one night, shortly after we moved in here and I couldn't sleep, I was standing by my kitchen window when a creature appeared from the woods, walking slowly and steadily past the house. I thought at first it was a large dog, and in the moonlight it had a distinctly canine appearance. It was only when it stopped near my kitchen window and looked at me did I recognize it for what it was; a coyote.  I had seen them in the wild out in Montana, loping along the railroad tracks, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect one to visit near my kitchen at 5 a.m. in Virginia!

The snow reveals the hidden lives of the forest dwellers.  We see the clues in the tracks of the visitors.  This week the temperatures will go back into the 40's and 50's, and while I am glad that I will be able to drive more easily, I will be sorry to see the snow leave.

Today's photos are actual pictures taken on our property, although from storms past  - they are not stock photos.  

Cattle on our neighbor's farm.

Snow Day

Snow day, sick day.  Although the radio announcer pronounced that our church is open (I'm wondering just how many people called the office!) there is four inches of snow on my long, curving, sloping, unpaved driveway, and several inches of snow and ice on our back country road.  My little engine that could, i.e. my 10 year old economy model car, slip slides on this for sure. And for two days I've wrestled with the "I'm coming down with something but it can't quite make up its mind to stay or go" feeling.  So I'm home right now, watching fat lazy snowflakes whirl by the windows and cranking the heater up as high as I can to ward off the chills.

Christmas was lovely, about as lovely as it can be.  I made a big family breakfast of pancakes and managed a few chocolate ones for my father in law, who in his eighties has the sweet tooth of a young child.  That was my Christmas present to him; getting up early, cranking up the griddle, and making him hot stacks.  I went to 10 a.m. church services and was shocked at several things. First, the church was only 2/3 full...did everyone got to Midnight Mass? Or do people no longer care about Christmas?  And second - why weren't any other churches in town open? What happened? Do they have services later to let families sleep in or what? Does everyone celebrate Christmas on the Eve now and I missed the memo? It was bizarre, to say the least.  But I sat with Andrea, and got hugs from Linda and Eni, and was able to say with heartfelt thanks to our pastor, "Merry Christmas!" 

By the time I got home, it was snowing.  I ate grapefruit for lunch ( hoping the vitamin C would kick out the "I'm coming down with something" feeling) and green salad and felt better for a few hours, then felt tired and cranky again later, like children do when they struggle with a bug.  We lit a fire and opened small presents. Pierre got the most, as befitting a cat of his greatness.  He didn't even wait for me to take his new rattle mouse, aka "Mini P" because it's colored like him, gray with a white tummy, off the store card. He grabbed it when we took it out of his Christmas stocking and went running off with it. I had to fight him for it so I could remove it from the card.  

We sat in front of the fire, read books, listened to Christmas music, drank copious amounts of tea, and watched the snow.  My brother called and I was so glad to hear from him - the family just got a new puppy, and amidst the clank and clatter of pots as my sister in law cooked Christmas dinner, I could hear the squeals and excited barks of the puppy in the background as his children played with her.  They're all grownups, my nieces and nephews, but a puppy at Christmastime brings out the child in everyone.

John made his usual gourmet fare for Christmas dinner, and afterwards we watched Ben Hur and King of Kings...which was a nice counterpoint to the movie A Christmas Story.  Am I the only one who starts crying during the prologue to Ben Hur, when the baby Jesus starts wailing in the stable in Bethlehem, and you just see the shepherds peeking around the stable door, and a frisky calf leaps over Mary and Joseph to nuzzles its mama? You don't even see the Christ child, just hear this newborn infant wailing, and suddenly it just hits me - I don't know how else to feel the incarnation as readily as I do when I hear that infant wailing.  It suddenly brings it home that the son of God became a man and was born into abject poverty, was hungry and thirsty and cranky and probably cold, and was born into a filthy stable to poor peasants.  It is a thought  that has been around with me since childhood, so common as to be taken for granted. I need these reminders like the little scene in Ben Hur or standing for a few minutes in front of the nativity at church and just feeling it - not thinking it - the entire moment of Christmas.

So now it is the day after Christmas. I am not going to any sales today. I can't even get my stupid cranky car out of my farm driveway until the snow stops and we can clear a bit.  Thankfully, the forecast calls for temperatures this week to go back into the 40's, which will melt enough on the hilly sections of the drive so that the cranky mobile will trundle and burble its way up the lane, with yours truly hunched in multiple layers of clothing.  In the meantime, I wish you all a lovely snow day if you are on the east coast of the United States.  My former stomping grounds, New York City, is under a blizzard warning and my brother, who lives on the North Shore of Long Island, said hopefully they were expecting 6-9" of snow there.  Knowing him, he'll grab the sleds and wake up the adult kids for sleigh riding and snowball fights before making everyone shovel the walks!

Enjoy your snow day or Sunday, whatever you are doing, and may God bless you this Christmas season. 

The Real Meaning of Christmas

I've been dutifully reading my Magnificat Advent book each day. Our pastor gave them out at the beginning of Advent, and at first I didn't like it, but I'm getting more into it with every passing day. Each day has a short Bible passage marked out and a brief, one or two paragraph commentary on it - mostly stories to get you to start thinking. I started joking with friends that I never noticed how busy the angel Gabriel was in the months leading up to the birth of Jesus.  First, he's got to go Zechariah and tell him about John....then he's got to strike Zachariah dumb because he won't believe...then he's off to Nazareth to visit Mary, and he's got a lot of explaining to do there....then oops, now he's needed over at Joseph's house, because the virtuous young carpenter has second thoughts after finding out his betrothed is pregnant, and he knows he's not the dad....and so on.  I never noticed this until each day's reading happened to focus on one of these stories. Suddenly I realized: Gabriel was quite the busy angel!

All joking aside, it got us thinking about the real meaning of Christmas. 

It all began, of course, with Adam and Eve and that nibble of the apple or pomegranate or whatever that got them both in a lot of hot water with the Almighty.  Then throughout the ages, we have a lot of back and forth, covenants made and broken with the chosen people, the Jewish race.  Until finally, God looks down at his people, miserable under the Roman yoke, and decides: Now's the time.

But he can't do it alone. He needs someone to say yes.  And that someone is a 14 year old virgin, engaged to be married, who - if she says yes and is, in fact, pregnant without knowing man as the bible tells us - could be stoned to death.  According to our pastor, the tradition in Jesus' time was that Mary would be led in shame before her parent's house by Joseph.  Joseph and her parents would have been forced by Jewish law to cast the first stones in the hail of rocks that would kill her.

We think of Mary as that haloed graceful lady in a blue robe portrayed in statues and paintings.  She's come down to us as this larger-than life figure.  She's the Queen of Heaven and our protector.  She bore the son of God, she stood by him, she stood at the foot of the cross and was among the first disciples. 

It's hard to remember that she was a terrified 14 year old talking to....an angel.

The true meaning of Christmas, to me, is that yes.  It's like the shot heard round the world at Lexington and Concord.  That yes was the yes heard round the world. It wasn't just "Let this be done according to your will."  It was...

Yes, I believe.

Yes, I accept this...and anything that may come my way, including shame, dishonor and death. (A real possibility for her)

Yes, the world is worth redeeming.


Today, instead of rushing to the mall to give gifts, how about giving a yes to God in honor of that first real Christmas present - the yes of Mary?  Say yes to showing patience instead of annoyance with someone. Say yes to spending time with a family member.  Say yes to whatever God puts into your heart that he wants done....you know he does it; he talks to each of us through the small, still voice known as intuition.  If you can't hear it, it's still there. Spend a bit more time in quiet prayer or just in quiet, by yourself, meditating if you can, and you'll start hearing it.

Christmas is about yes.  The greatest present ever given to you or to me wasn't a toy, or a gadget.  It was that whispered Yes in a little house in Nazareth when asked if she was willing. Mary said yes.  And thanks to that little present, we have been given riches unimaginable. 

Pierre still wants presents, however.

Teach Your Children Well

Grandma and me, Christmas, 1970's

Today a headline caught my attention on the internet news.  Apparently, a bride and groom decided to chronicle their marriage story for the New York Times. Ho-hum, right? Not so. Apparently, both were married when they met. They decided that breaking up two homes, complete with young children, and marrying one another was just okay-dokey.  The bride reportedly said she doesn't feel the slightest qualm about it.  She's happy she didn't sleep with the groom before marriage, and so feels that breaking up two homes for her and her now-husband's selfish pleasure was just fine.



To quote the Times, "The drama was as unlikely as it was unstoppable."

Wrong. It was quite stoppable.  Just say no to temptation. Isn't that the right thing to do? Say yes to vows and promises, say no to temptation. 

Wouldn't have made quite the juicy, newspaper-selling story, would it?

Both couples had young children at home. They're justifying their selfish actions by feeling self-righteous about not cheating on their original spouse; no, they came clean, told their spouses they wanted divorces, told their kids, and decided to share this tale through the New York Times. They didn't sleep around or sneak into motels, or so we are told. 

I wonder if they realize what they just taught their children.  I'm sure they would deny this, but all I could think of was the message this gives their children.

"Honey, it's perfectly fine to give in to temptation when it comes your way....just be honest about."

"You can break promises as long as you do it honestly."

"It doesn't matter how many people you hurt. If you're happy, then it's okay."

Do you think any parent in his right mind would say those things to a child? Yet by skipping down the aisle with spouse #2, each person in this tragedy just gave those messages loud and clear to the children involved.

And we wonder why divorce rates are sky-high, why kids get so messed up, why the rates of depression among teens are way up. We wonder why our kids aren't doing well in school, why they don't seem to have the moral compass of past generations. 

But I'm sure the happy newlyweds will find someone other than themselves to blame if, God forbid, their kids develop problems later on. After all, it's the school's problem, right? Or maybe society?  Or those horrible religions - so judgmental - that make the kids feel bad, right? 

I am grateful, so very grateful, for parents that taught me that keeping my promise meant more than nearly anything else in the world.

I am grateful for parents, teachers and grownups that were in my life who showed me by example that you don't leave people when the going gets tough.  You stand by them.


Here's the full story that I read this morning.  After the outrage, say a prayer for those kids, whose parents put their own selfish happiness ahead of the family. 

RawPeople | Planning the Garden

RawPeople.com is a wonderful site devoted to the raw food lifestyle. Even if this lifestyle doesn't appeal to you at all, my organic gardening column written for the site might be of interest. Below is a link to my latest entry, "Planning the Garden." As the seed catalogs start jamming the mailbox, now's the time to plan your 2011 garden!

Click the link below for my organic gardening column written for RawPeople -

RawPeople | Planning the Garden

Ballet Shoes and the Nutcracker

I sat down to work this morning and put a compilation on the Mp3 player of Christmas music that I'd created last year.  One of the first section on the play list is The Nutcracker suite by Tchaikovsky. I started feeling nostalgic as I remembered taking my little niece, who is now a beautiful 23 year old woman, to the ballet when she was around 5 or so.  My sister, her then-husband, my husband and I took her to the ballet.  We were in some auditorium somewhere and it was an amateur production. We got a fit of the giggles when the scene shifted into the dream sequence and the dancers moved Clara's bed around the stage, carrying what was supposed to be Christmas tree but what looked like big stalks of broccoli. My niece was bored and squirmed a lot, although she liked the beginning with the party sequence. I think she fell asleep halfway through.  It was my husband's first and only experience of the ballet, and it was not the best first experience.  I have a very close friend who was a dance teacher, and she and I used to go once a year into Lincoln Center in New York City and watch the New York State ballet.  Swan Lake is my favorite, but I also loved the Alvin Ailey troop, which I have seen many times.  Now that would have been a good first live dance performance experience!

I think back to my first time at the ballet. My sister and her husband were friends with a couple whose daughter was a professional ballerina.  Her name was Shari, and I was in awe of her.  We drove to New Jersey to see the production of the Nutcracker; Shari danced either the roles of the Dew Drop Fairy or the Sugar Plum Fairy, depending upon the evening.  I was about 8 years old, maybe 9.  I was so excited.  We went to Shari's house to visit with her parents, who I liked a lot.  Shari was already at the theater. I asked to use their bathroom and Mrs. N showed me the bathroom on the second floor of the house.  She left me alone upstairs, and on my way to rejoin everyone in the living room, I peeked into Shari's bedroom.  Ballet clothes were strewn all about the room, and laundry tumbled off the practice barre in the corner of her bedroom.

But it was her shoes I remember best.  There were pink pointe shoes with holes worn in them next to the bed.  It was at that moment, as I stood in the semi darkness staring into Shari's room, that I felt as if I had a secret. A magical secret. I looked at the holes in the shoes and I realized, with a sudden recognition, that she had actually danced right through them. 

All through the magnificent performance, as I waited for Shari to dance her part, I felt like I had a delicious secret.When she finally danced, all I could do was stare at her pointe shoes. The ones she wore during the production were brand new.  I thought of the ones with holes in them by the bed.  When I finally met Shari after the performance, I blurted out, "How did your shoes get holes in them?" which must have seemed like a really weird question to her!

We are all grown ups now; yet somehow, the magic of having a secret has stayed with me, the peeking behind the curtain to notice something no one else knows or notices.  It is part and parcel of being a writer, and part of why I tend to notice all sorts of peculiar details that escape others. To this day, whenever I hear the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, I don't think of the ballet itself, but a pair of pink pointe shoes with holes danced right through them strewn on a messy bedroom floor.

Whatever Happened to Childhood?

Whatever happened to childhood?

We live in an age of The Expert.  The Experts tell us all sorts of theories, and forgetting that a theory is just that - theoretical, perhaps neither true nor useful - we rush madly to institute each New Theory.

The results may be wonderful.  Most of the time, they're not so wonderful. And occasionally, they're awful.



Education is like that. When I was in first grade, my mother took me to the public library so I could take books out of the children's section.  There were some books set apart on a shelf for the public school children.  They were learning some new fangled method of reading. All the words in the books were misspelled; they were spelled phonetically. That was how they were teaching children to read;  learn the wrong way first, then hopefully you will learn the right way to spell later just by reading 'real' books.  My mother slammed the book shut and hurried me over to the Billy and Blaze horse books, the Curious George books and the fairy tales with their correct spelling, sometimes big words, and traditions.  To this day, I thank the nun who taught me in first grade to read and for my Catholic school education; I may be awful at mathematics, but I had the best foundation for education anyone could want. I learned to read well.

When I was a kid in the 1970's, we scampered around the neighborhoods on Long Island until the street lights came on at dusk. We came home when either of two things happened; we heard our mothers yelling for us from the back porch or the old air raid siren by the Long Island rail road tracks went off for its 6 pm test. Every noon and 6pm it went off.  My mother had dinner on the table at 6. You could set your watch by it. All five of us were expected to slide into our assigned places at the dinner table with clean hands and combed hair by the time that whistle stopped howling or else there'd be hell to pay (or no dessert).

We played like wild things in those days. We invented games at the playground.  I remember one afternoon camping out with my friends on the combined monkey bars and slides. We invented an intricate game, mashing together story lines from Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (the original one with Loren Greene). Garbage cans were Cylons; our finger and thumb were blasters; the monkey bars became our space ship.

I thought about childhood a lot this weekend. After Mass I ran out to the store to buy a few things, since the weekend is my last time in town before Christmas. As I walked the aisles of Rose's and Wal Mart I saw heaps of toys.  There were stacks of forlorn baby dolls and Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and classic toys.  The video games looked like a hurricane had gone through.  Every toy bleeped, blinked and moved, had an electronic display, and ate six batteries an hour.

Whatever happened to childhood? Do children still make up games in the playground and pretend garbage cans are aliens? Do they play flashlight tag when the stars come out, or are they being shuffled in the mini van from sports to scouts to lessons again?

I'm no expert. But I do know that my own fairly lonely, atypical childhood was the absolute best childhood I could have had to prepare me to be a writer.  We had no money when I was growing up, so my sister and I sewed Barbie clothes from scraps in my mother's sewing basket. We made couches for Barbie from toothpaste cartons covered in fabric and scraps of wood.  I made model horse tack from felt I bought at the dime store, beads and velour trim.

I had hours to myself and I filled them with books. I had friends and we played imaginary games with Barbies for hours, creating elaborate plots.

I don't know about other kids, but I hear more and more about The Experts at schools telling parents they must schedule and supervise, watch and instruct. Yet it is within the silent hours, the hours of solitude in childhood, that I believe imagination is formed....where we can hear the quiet direction of our hearts in solitude. Even among the screaming playground or the flashlight tag romps,  it was unstructured hours that instructed us best.

The Experts tend to forget that.

Whatever happened to childhood?

My sister Ann (left), Mr Snowman, and me (right) on a winter day long ago.

Pierre the Super Star

Move over, Morris. Look out, Dewey. 

Pierre is a super star.

For the second year in a row, the Charlotte Courthouse newspaper will run a picture of Mr. Pierre in the Christmas edition, due on new stands tomorrow.  You may wish to buy your copy early, for there's sure to be a run on the paper when folks realize that Pierre is back!

This year's picture is entitled: Stalking Through a Winter Wonderland.

Here is Mr. Pierre, out in the snow storm we had last week.

Pierre wishes to say,

"Thank you Aunt Crystal (Crystal Vandegrift, who works at the newspaper) for choosing my picture again for the paper.  I shall autograph a copy for you."

Tis the Season for Cookies

...and last night, I made my friend and fellow writer Marye Audet's recipe for Rollo (Rolo) Cookies.  I didn't have silpat mats (baking mats) and the cookies needed another 5-6 minutes of baking time to come out just right.  They are extremely sweet, but the layers of peanut butter cookie, chocolate and caramel can't be beat.  The full recipe is on Marye's blog, Restless Chipotle, and in her published cookbook too. 




Whenever I bake, Shadow sits next to the kitchen island and just begs and begs.  Because of her allergies, I make homemade peanut butter dog biscuits for her, so whenever she hears the baking sheets come out of the cabinet she thinks she's getting cookies!

I don't bake as often as I would like.  Because of our ongoing slow and steady move towards eating healthfully, I have really cut back on the home baking.  I love to bake, and thankfully the Christmas season gives me the opportunity to make all those homemade goodies I love to create but try not to eat anymore.  So my nieces and nephews were blessed with care packages this year.  I get to create in the kitchen, and they get to eat the results!

It felt so wonderful to just relax last night. It has been many weeks since I had an afternoon and evening off.  I shut down the office around 4pm instead of working until dinner, and working again after dinner. I am blessed beyond measure to have work that I love and many freelance projects on my desk right now, but I've definitely been burning the candle at both ends as well as in the center, and setting fire to the candle holder too in the process (to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h that metaphor).  I can do that only for so long.  I found myself getting short tempered and cranky.  So I took a wee bit of time to myself last night. I baked the Rolo cookies. I made garlic infused tomato sauce and pasta for dinner.  We lit a fire in the fireplace and sat on the couch and read in the warm pools of light.  I started a new P.D. James mystery I hadn't read yet. 

Pierre requests that his stocking be hung by the chimney with care...

Later, I escaped upstairs to fold laundry and practice piano. After warming up with some good old Hanon exercises and a few my piano teacher had taught to me that I still recall, I sat down to play the Speer piece again from The Joy of the Baroque, a favorite piano book.  Time flew by. I didn't realize it but I practiced for well over an hour.  John came upstairs at one point and he was lurking down the hallway, listening.  I fiddled around with the settings on the electronic keyboard AJ left to me, and found a harpsichord setting, and then I really had fun (Okay, so my idea of fun is to read books from the 17th century like those by Francis de Sales and play music from the 17th century.....party animal that I am).  My high school had a small, modern harpsichord, and I used to love playing the pieces in that book on it.  Shadow didn't like the harpsichord. She likes Grand Piano setting on the keyboard.  But when I switched to harpsichord, her ears pinned flat back and she left the room.  Seems like everybody's a critic these days....

Today it is snowing, with six inches expected. As long as it stays about that we will be fine.  I am cozy and warm in my office, listening to some Bach, and working today on writing projects. Life is good!

For those who haven't given feedback on the blog, please see yesterday's open thread. Thank you to Liz for the personal email; for Jessica and the Gardener on Sherlock Street for leaving comments. Won't you let me know what YOU would like to read on this blog in future?

Happy Snow Day!

An Open Thread for Readers

Today will be Wordless Wednesday...wordless on my part, that is. I'd like to open this thread for your comments.

When I began this blog, I intended it as a chronicle of my transition from Long Island/New York City executive to country dweller, to detail our lives here in rural Virginia after a lifetime of city-dwelling.  Then I found Blotanical, the community for gardening bloggers. I began blogging about my hobby, gardening, and found a readership. Then I went all over the place, posting recipes, memories of childhood, stories, some rants about stuff going on in my life, and just....well, stuff.

I've received some emails lately from people who miss my personal essays. They want stories. They want perspective and personality.

So my question to you today on this open thread is simple: what would YOU like to read here?

More gardening stories? More personal stories? What?

The nuns at my aunt's convent requested more Pierre stories.  Just so you know, that's a given.

But really...what would YOU like to read?

Leave a comment today, please.

Wintry Update

Yesterday we awoke to the first snow of the season. It rained on Sunday, and when I walked Shadow before going to bed, the rain was like a very heavy mist. Sometime over night, the rain changed into snow, and we had a lovely light dusting.  I like nothing better than to sit in my plant room at the back of the house and watch the sun rise and sparkle among the frosty dust on the pines.  It was only a light dusting, but it made everyone feel like Christmas was finally here.

Last year, Pierre and Shadow tentatively explored the snowy world, but this year they raced outside with glee. They both seemed to remember all about snow - and snow fun! Shadow made dog-shaped snow angels, taking snow baths and using her muzzle like a shovel. She'd plunge her snout into the snow, then raise it, grinning at me from behind a snowy mask.

Pierre enjoyed stalking around the lawn through the snow. He's discovered the bird feeder in the flower garden. He's also learned that the slate-gray Juncos love marigold seeds. I'd forgotten to gather the marigold seeds from the plants flanking the main pathway in the flower garden, and now the birds are enjoying them. Pierre is enjoying the birds.  They're too smart for him, and the crows end up dive-bombing him when they see him, which gives us a good laugh.  The other day the crows chased him back to the porch.  He came into the house and I made myself a cup of tea before heading back upstairs to my office to go back to work.  When I entered my office, he was sitting on top of the space heater staring out of the window and down into the garden, chortling, chattering and growling. I looked out the window and there were his nemesis, the crows, staring back at him from the garden.  I have a feeling this feud won't be over any time soon....

I am feeling a sense of gratitude and rightness in my world at this time of year.  It's been a year of loss, but I think of loss like pruning a tree or a shrub. Pruning encourages new growth. Sometimes life prunes us of things we love, and even people we love, so we can grow.  Pruning must hurt the plants, don't you think?  It hurts us too. 

Many things I loved that I left behind 15-20 years ago and thought I would never regain have found a place in my life again.  The garden, first and foremost....then my model horses, the miniature equine hobby that I have loved for as long as I can remember, but did not have the room or time to enjoy in my tiny apartment in New York. (Think of model horse collectors like people who like to make doll's houses or model rail road set ups, only everything is about horses).  And now, my music. 

Last night after choir practice, my friend Eni called me over to her car.  She had AJ's keyboard in the back.  She said that he wanted me to have it.  I gratefully accepted it.  He had shown it to me when he first got it, but I could not remember it.  When I set it up last night, I felt a warm sense of gratitude, and another feeling of rightness, of puzzle pieces clicking back into place to make the whole picture of my life.  You see, I had to sell my piano 14 years ago when I moved.  We had no room for it in the house I moved into and although my sister offered to put it in her basement I just knew that wasn't the right thing to do. I sold it to a Korean immigrant who bought it for his 10 year old daughter. I remember the look of joy on her face when she ran into the back room of my house, how she ran to it and hugged it.  That made me feel like I had done the right thing.  Several years after that, my sister's basement flooded, and I knew without a doubt that if I had stored my beloved piano in her basement it would have been totally ruined.  So it went to someone who would love it and use it as much as I did and I hope it is giving someone else happiness now.

But now, as I unpacked AJ's keyboard, that sense of rightness returned.  It has a full piano keyboard, and he had left it on Grand Piano setting.  I sat down and played through a really simple Baroque piece by Johann Schein. I've often joked that on a good day I sound lousy, and that is still very true.   But I felt such joy to sit and actually play again, no matter how bad it sounded, that I could only feel as if AJ were smiling at me from heaven. Eni joked that AJ would watch over me and make sure I practice; I joked back that I hoped he'd beg some talent from God for me.  It's an odd feeling, to have a love for something but no talent for it; and I speak honestly. 

But I can only describe the mingled joy, gratitude and pleasure I feel when I look at the keyboard as a sense of rightness; of puzzle pieces clicking back into place; of God bringing things back full circle into my life, working through friends to bring gifts back into my life. 

Of Deep Concern

...was the small article in this week's local newspaper, The Farmville Herald, regarding the renewed interest in uranium mining in southside Virginia.  That's what our local area is called.

The area in question is approximately 100 miles southwest of where we live.  There's an estimated $7 to $10 billion worth of uranium sitting underground.  According to the newspaper, in the 1980's mining in this area was banned.  Now, a company has funded a study about the feasibility of mining and milling the ore.  It will take them a year to complete the study, with results ready in December 2011.


My home is upwind and upstream of the proposed mining site. It is 100 miles away.  Supposedly our area remains unaffected no matter the outcome.  That doesn't matter to me. I am still concerned about the potential environmental impact.



I sat down and read a bit this morning about uranium mining and its environmental consequences. It's currently done in the western portions of the United States, in sparsely populated areas, desert areas.  I read reports and studies from Canada where it is also mined. The tailings or leftover rock from milling the uranium is apparently like fine flour and it easily becomes airborne, blown by winds into surrounding areas.  In the arid desert this is deemed an acceptable risk.  The concern for our part of the country is the risk of hurricanes and tornadoes; the strong winds could easily whip up the dust and deposit it in populated areas, in our creeks, in our rivers. Desert areas do not have watersheds that feed rainwater into major bodies of water; we do. 

This is not some unpopulated desert area.  There are major cities nearby and many farms that produce hay that feeds the beef cattle in the areas.  Young cattle are raised here; this is where many beef cattle are born and raised. What would happen if the radioactivity in the area were raised even slightly? How would this impact the food chain?

Many of the forested areas are left undeveloped now and serve as areas for water to filter into the Chesapeake Bay.  The area where I live, the piedmont area, consists of rolling hillsides and forests threaded with creeks and streams, all feeding into the major rivers - the James among many - which then feed into the ocean, into the bay areas.  What would happen if even a small amount of radioactivity got into them? Is that possible? I don't know.  What I don't know makes me worry.


I found articles online raving about the potential 350 jobs created in the area if the mines go forward.  I am a big proponent of economic development, but I am not willing to risk the unborn, for whom radioactivity is particularly harmful, the wildlife, the environment, and the health of the workers and local people, for the sake of 350 jobs.

I will be keeping a very close eye on this study as well as the debate in the Virginia legislature, if it moves to that phase. I urge concerned citizens to visit the uranium mining company's website to hear their side of the story, as well as several local environmental groups following the story closely.  In the meantime, I will be learning as much as I can about the issues and I hope you will, too.

Virginia Uranium Inc - the company behind the study who wants to mine the area - this is their website

Southern Environmental Law Center - uranium mining in Virginia

The Piedmont Environmental Council - has good maps so you can find the proposed mining areas, areas with former uranium mine leases and more

Home Grown Garlic

So do you remember my posts about growing garlic? My friend Patty gave me lovely cloves, and I planted them in the fall of 2009, harvesting huge gorgeous garlic bulbs in June.  I finally cooked with them this week.

They stored really well in my makeshift basement cold cellar.  It looks as if my drying technique worked well, which is good news.  I pressed a clove to add it to a pot of tomato sauce I had bubbling on the stove.  The first thing I noticed was that the home grown garlic was just filled with juice - so juicy that it was dripping into the pot, filling the air with the pungent aroma of garlic. When I press store bought cloves, I never get juice - never!

Next, the flavor. It was subtle yet pungent, and just different from store bought garlic.  It's hard to explain, but it had multiple layers of flavor instead of just a bite of garlic.

And lastly...odor.  Let's be honest. We've all dealt with garlic breath!  The interesting thing about the home grown organic garlic was that it did not produce garlic breath.  At least not that I noticed, although given that we all ate the sauce, who knows? Perhaps we all stunk and nobody cared!

Garlic is a winner in my book. I did not plant any this year because of the abundance from the first year, but I will definitely grow it again. 

Now I See It Too

Not a gardening post, but I promise I will get back to the garden in a minute.

John Lennon. Yesterday was the unfortunate 30th anniversary of his death. I am not a huge Beatles fan. Like them, not crazy about them. I certainly respect their contributions to music.  But we watched a special last night that included home movies of Lennon.  And now I see what others see in him - I see it too.  Took me a few years, but I caught on.

Someone filmed an encounter between Lennon and a fan who randomly showed up at his house.  It looks like it's the early 1970's by his hair and clothes and Yoko's hair and clothes. They're standing outside the house confronting a teenager with wild eyes who pleads, "You wrote 'I Am the Walrus' about me, didn't you?"

Lennon is so gentle with this kid. The kid is clearly disturbed. You hear in his pleading voice, make me feel special, please.  Care about me.

And Lennon does. He's honest. You can feel the honesty. He says, "No, I didn't," and launches into a really interesting talk about how he writes his songs.  You can feel the honesty and the passion in his words.

All the while, the home video camera is rolling.

The kid looks as if tears are in his eyes.  Lennon says to him gently, "Look mate, you hungry? C'mon in.  Have a bite." And he leads him into his house. It looks like it's in the countryside somewhere.

And he takes the kid into his own kitchen.  The next bit of film shows them at the table and the kid is sipping a mug of tea and eating a piece of toast. The kid still looks wild eyed. He's looking around the kitchen like he can't believe where he is and it might all disappear in a minute. 

I just sat back and said, "Whoa."  Think about it.  A random stranger shows up at your door.  He's a bit off kilter.  What do you do?  I would probably call the police.  John Lennon, one of the most famous people in the world, sits him down and fixes him tea and toast (maybe Yoko did that, who knows?)

Now I see what others see.  He was indeed a special man.

Tree Planting Work

It's in the thirties. There's a thin layer of snow and ice on much of the ground.  And yet we must plant our trees. Tree planting work was in the forecast for us today, cold or not!  On went layers of clothing and gloves and out we went to take care of our new trees.

We have 10 Colorado Blue Spruce to plant on our tree farm. They came in a bag from the Arbor Day Society, tiny little things about 10 inches tall but with good roots.  The Arbor Day Society sends them in a bag with a stork picture on it.  How cute is that?

Once the baby trees get here, we must plant them within a day or so.  The instructions that came from the Arbor Day Society instruct us that if we can't plant immediately, the trees must still be heeled in, or planted in a shallow trench and moved later. We tried that one year and lost all the trees, so this year - snow or no snow, cold or not - we're out there planting trees.

In the morning, we bring the trees in from the cold garage into the warm house.  We place them in a basin of warm water to rinse off the solution they're shipped in, a gel-like material that keeps them moist.  Here are the trees sitting on the drainboard in my kitchen (!).   


Time to plant the trees.  First thing's first - the dog must be on guard.  Shadow finds a spot of grass without snow and settles in to watch our backs while we work!

Luckily, the ground is soft.  John digs the hole with the pick axe.  We use an axe like this instead of a shovel because our land has a lot of rocks under the soil, some quite large. We've learned by experience that the pick axe has a good pointy end to wedge up any rocks lurking under the soil.

My job is to use the old metal pails to fetch compost.  I bring over two at a time.  As one of us holds the tree in place, the other person fills in the rich black compost.  You can see how the soils contrast; the red clay with loam mixed in, and then our black compost.

I pour water around the trees and we tamp down the compost.  The green metal stakes mark the tiny trees so we don't step on them or run them over with the lawn mower. 

We will know by this time next year if these babies make it or not.  The first year, they spend most of their energy putting down roots. The second year, as we can see from trees planted in 2008, they add lots of nice side branches and grow up a few inches. It is hard to imagine that these tender babies will one day be soaring, gorgeous Colorado Blue Spruce standing in the field!

Natural History of a Farm

I'm reading a fascinating book called The Old Place: A Natural History of a Country Garden, by Merritt Gibson.  It's a large paperback book filled with illustrations that I purchased at the Pamplin Library fall book sale, a used book among the gardening books that caught my eye.  It's available on sites such as PaperbackBookSwap for a trade but Amazon has it listed at the weird price of $84.50.  I say weird because it's neither rare nor hardcover - just an intriguing book.  If you can find a copy online used or at your library, it's worth a second look.

The author lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and has an 18 acre farm that dates back to the late 1800's.  The best part of her farm is the mixture of habitats.  She's got an old house, stable and pasture, but she also has riverfront and tidal marsh areas, woodlands and more.



Each chapter of the book takes you on a nature walk to examine the plants, insects, birds and natural habitat of The Old Place, the name of her farm.  I love taking the imaginary walk with the author.  What I love best is that her suggestions for nature watching are exactly what my own mother taught me many, many years ago.

As a child, I used to always note certain parts of our tiny urban/suburban garden and the gardens on my way to school.  I used to watch the privet hedge that separated our property from Mr. Hoffman's; sparrows would nest there.  I'd watch for the first blush of tender green shoots on the oaks and maples, the tinge of autumn gold. On my way to school was a wonderful house set on a corner that had a post and rail fence around the property. The owner had planted a different rose at every post and trained various climbers up and onto the fence.  I remember one luscious white rose. The blossoms had such a strong scent. In June, I'd stop and inhale the rose fragrance, delighting in the early morning light playing among the roses.

Gibson describes similar experiences on her farm, and she has wonderful suggestions for noting the natural world on your little corner of the world, whether you live on a farm, garden in an urban backyard or a suburban habitat.  The suggestions she gives that I want to incorporate in my life include:

• Planting a mixture of habitats to attract different wildlife - we did this here at Seven Oaks by clearing only 3 acres of the timber that grew here, and then planting that with a mixture of grass, orchard fruit trees, flower gardens and different evergreens.  Everything is still very small and growing, but the goal is the same as what Gibson has on her farm that's had over 100 years to grow; mixed habits attract wild birds and provide forage, food and shelter for many different insects, birds and animals.
• Visit one or two spots regularly, at different times of the day, to note the wildlife.  I do this by walking among my flower garden and sitting comfortably on my porch in the mornings and nights watching the garden.  I also do this when walking Shadow. There's a spot along the road that runs in front of my house that has junipers, cedars, persimmon trees, dogwoods and arbor vitae growing naturally along a fence line with an open cattle field beyond, and on the opposite side of the road, woodland bordered by junipers.  This is one of my favorite bird watching spots.  I've seen beautiful indigo buntings, bluebirds, vireos, wood thrushes and many, many more wild birds here.  The butterflies play along the wildflowers growing along the water runoff ditch next to the farm too, and while I do not know enough about them to identify them, the butterflies and wildflowers also provide a changing panoply of color each season.  So pick a spot in your yard or garden and make it a habit to visit it daily.  You'll be amazed at what you see!
• Visit the garden at night.  I haven't done this because I still have my city-girl fear of running into wild animals, but I suspect that during the summer I can safely take a flashlight and walk among my plants.  The author interested me in the many moths that feed at night. I want to see them! 
• Keep a journal.   I want to train myself to keep a wildlife journal. We often ask one another, "When did we see the bear?" "When was the last time you saw the hummingbirds?" If I log it into a journal, it will be both a guide and a resource for future years.

My sister gave me a CD that has various bird songs on it with their identification.  My next little winter garden project is to challenge myself to learn a few more so that in the springtime, I will know my neighbors better.

Each year I challenge myself to learn a new star constellation in the night sky; my challenges to myself this year will be to learn a new birdsong, and to find a good guidebook to Virginia wild flowers so I can be like Merritt Gibson, knowing the names of every little bit of beauty in her farm.  I want to know them all by name and treasure them too, just like she does.

What do you do for winter gardening fun?  Do you also like to learn all the wild things growing and living on your property?

Firestone Christmas Albums

 Did you have these growing up? Do you remember them?  I started thinking about them today, then realized that last year I copied the red album (below) onto my computer. I have a turntable gizmo that plugs into the computer and lets me make MP3 files from my old record albums. Thank goodness for that!  My old Firestone Christmas albums have seen better days.



We had three or four of them.  Each one had a cover like a present waiting to be opened. Inside was a shiny 33 rpm record filled with Julie Andrews, the Vienna Choir Boys, and famous opera singers rendering classic Christmas carols. You'd hear lovely selections like "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear", "We Three Kings," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and more.

 

Each Christmas season we'd put them on the old hi fi in the basement play room and crank it up so we could hear it upstairs, or we'd sit on the sagging sofa and listen to the old songs.  It became a tradition. They were treasured albums.

When my siblings moved out, I acquired the record collection by fiat, which is a good thing because my taste in music is similar to my dad's.  I treasure his complete - mind, you, complete - collection of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, the old 1950's high fidelity symphonic recordings, and lots of Wagner.  Well, the Wagner mysteriously disappeared....

Now flash forward to a few years ago.  I was on vacation in Ohio and we went to an antique mall. It was August. We parked the car very far away and wandered through a quaint Ohio town, ending up at the antique mall last.  There, peeking out from a scatter of record albums, was the familiar present-like cover. Could I resist? Of course not. I ended up carting the silly thing around for miles, clutching it gingerly, afraid I was going to drop it.  Then there was transporting it in the trunk of the car for the duration of the vacation - a hot August vacation - and keeping it from warping!

I don't exchange presents with my siblings since there are so many of us.  Between my siblings, my in laws, and the bunches of kids running amok, there are too many of us to give gifts too.  But this year was different. I wanted to do something special.  I had a hunch, and I went on eBay looking for the old Firestone albums. I thought I might fine one or two.

Imagine my astonishment. These things were apparently so popular there are plenty of them out there - and plenty of people like us who loved them!

For only a few bucks each, I scored a bunch of the old albums.  I wish I'd had a camera to capture the moment when my sisters unwrapped their albums. The joy, the memories flooding their faces.....

Yes, for only a few bucks each.

Do you remember the old Firestone Christmas albums?