Category Archives: family

The greenest noodles.

family, food and cooking, nature, , ,

Following an afternoon of foraging, an evening of cooking, and a yummy pasta dinner, I went to bed with the feeling that a hot iron was lying on top of my fingers. I wondered if I would be able to go to sleep with my hands so swollen and angry. I finally did; in the morning the pain level was at a slow burn, and it soon dissipated.

It was all from the nettles — all the fun and adventure, the delicious dinner and the extended pain. And it was worth it!

Golden Currant Bush and the Shasta River

My Forest Family had made Nettle Pasta several times in the past, but I hadn’t been around to experience any of the project, and when I’d seen the pictures I’d been a little jealous. So this time, I was glad to participate. We had to go a distance to find out if the nettles were even at the best stage for using — up the highway for a while, then down a one-lane winding road for a while, then out of the car and on foot through a drizzle. Meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds were calling under the big and dripping sky as we continued along a gravel road that didn’t have enough gravel — till finally we came to the Shasta River. And there were the nettles in all their robust glory. And they weren’t past their prime at all; they looked perfect.

Golden Currant (photo from internet)

I had brought some gardening gloves along on my trip up, not knowing what task they might come in handy for, and I happily showed Pippin that she didn’t need to hunt for an extra pair for me. I set to work filling a couple of grocery bags with bunches of nettles cut with scissors or just pulled out of the top inch of soil. It wasn’t until we were back home that I felt the full effect of the stinging and burning; my gloves only protected me on my palms and not on the backs of my hands, where the glove was cloth. Note to self: pick nettles only with rubber or leather gloves.

Before our outing I had discussed the message of this 300-yr-old rhyme with the children:

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you, for your pains:
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.

Scout flatly declared it false, and I in any case hadn’t planned to test the truth of the ditty. On Quora someone writes,

It means to act firmly, with resolve. The reference to the nettle relates to the fact that if you make only superficial contact with a nettle plant it will sting you. However if you grasp it firmly with an upward motion you avoid the stinging effect. (The stinging hairs grow in a slightly upward-facing direction. Grasping with a firm upward stroke tends to flatten the hairs against the stem or leaf so their ends can’t penetrate the skin and deliver their sting.) I’ve seen this done with no apparent ill effects and heard of gardeners who can clear a nettle patch bare-handed.

Urtica dioica – European Nettle

The problem I see with the kind of nettles we were dealing with, is that while you are grasping some of the nettles boldly like a man or woman of mettle, other leaves are coming in from the side against your tender hands and stinging you. That’s essentially what they did through my gloves; I wasn’t grabbing with the tops of my hands, after all.

A nettle-eating contest is held in Dorset every year, where super-mettled people compete over such (raw) foods as this European nettle (Urtica dioica) at left, shown in its seed stage. In the article about the contest they explain:

Nettle leaves sting because they are covered in tiny hollow filaments, the silica tips of which break off at the lightest touch to expose sharp points that deliver an instant shot of formic acid into the skin surface, followed by histamine, acetylcholine and serotonin.

Ouch! We took our greens home and washed them (wearing rubber gloves).

After blanching to neutralize the sting, we removed the leaves and incorporated them into an eggy pasta dough.

The noodles were delicious.

We had a pint of blanched leaves left over, which Pippin may make into soup. There were bagfuls of unused raw nettles as well, which I brought home, blanched and froze, and would like to put into soup myself. Maybe this version from the Forager Chef site: Classic Nettle Soup. Have any of you, my readers, cooked with nettles? Have you participated in a nettle-eating contest? Do you have any nettle-stinging stories to tell? I’d love to know!

Soup I might make.

 

The cutest pine trees.

family, nature, wildflowers, work, , , ,

It’s a rainy afternoon at Pippin’s, where I am now, having journeyed up the state and into the mountains a couple of days ago.

The Professor has been waiting for wet weather in which to set fire to his burn pile, which has grown larger than ever with the addition of large tree limbs broken in the snow.

I was able to help Ivy and Jamie a tiny bit by forking clumps of wet leaves into carts, from a leaf pile across the yard, for them to haul to the fire.

Ivy had just pulled a batch of popovers out of the oven when their dad called all the children out to help.

Yesterday I took two walks, first with Jamie and later with Scout. The forest floor is covered with pine cones, and also with cute sprouts of Ponderosa pine, each topped with the seed or seed case, presumably from which it sprouted.

Ivy peeled a few of them for me to eat, and one looked and tasted something like a commercial pine nut.

The pink and white flowered manzanitas are in bloom all around, and the Squaw Carpet lovely in violet.

Pippin drove a few of us even farther north to do another fun thing in the rain, but I will come back later to tell you about that. Completing a post on my phone is a challenge, and I want to publish this one before something goes wrong!

Cooking and commemorating.

church, family, food and cooking, , , , , , ,

Because of the convenient timing of their visit, I was able to conscript my daughter-in-law (definitely Daughter-in-Love) Joy and my grandchildren into my cooking crew, to prepare an agape meal at church in memory of my late husband, “passed from death into life” ten years ago. Memory eternal †

One day two of the boys shopped with me for 45 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of carrots, eight cabbages, a big box of cocoa, and many other good ingredients. That day I also put 22 pounds of Great Northern beans to soak, and we squeezed the lemons (from my tree!) for the juice to put in the Greek Beans.

I boiled the wheat and started to assemble the koliva, which Laddie decorated on Sunday morning. On Saturday Clara helped me to dry the soaked beans, and we carried them to church along with all the other ingredients.

The children were incredibly cheerful and hardworking slaves. We all worked for more than six hours on Saturday, with ample breaks as needed for younger conscripts.

They did laugh at me afterward when I apologized for enslaving them, and said they didn’t feel like slaves at all, and that in spite of their sore feet it had been fun. That’s how we all felt.

Liam singlehandedly assembled the chocolate carrot cake brownies (picture at top). This whole menu is the same one I made twice before as a memorial meal. Every time the brownies have turned out a little different, and this time they were quite compact, but still tasty and popular. It’s always hard for people to believe that they contain no eggs or butter; they are completely vegan.

All of the beans, roasted potatoes and brownies were eaten at Sunday’s lunch or taken home by parishioners, and the leftover cabbage salad will be enjoyed after this week’s Presanctified Liturgy.

It really was a great meal, but at this point I can’t imagine making it again — I’m still thoroughly wiped out from being chef for a weekend. And happy, so very happy, to have been able to do it, with family helping this time. These children are too young to remember their grandfather, but they were able to contribute to a big project done in his honor, and that was very special.

Sunday afternoon I took three of the children to the beach! I know, it seems crazy that I would have the energy to do that, but the fatigue hadn’t yet hit me. It was supposed to be sunny out there, but just as we drove over the last hill the fog descended on us, and stayed with us the whole time. We flew kites and chased the waves and Brodie built a sand castle. One kite flew so high up into the fog that it disappeared from sight, and took 20 minutes to reel in. We came home with wet leggings and shorts and shoes, but glad hearts. After all that kitchen work, it was great to be out in the wide open weather.

Laddie’s birthday was this week, and we celebrated with his other grandparents and cousins in a nearby town. Spring has fully sprung, bringing 80 degrees worth of sunshine yesterday and today, then a 20-degree temperature drop and rainy week up ahead. I’m sure I’ll have more springy pictures to share soon. And April is coming on fast!

All my bones shall say it.

family, housework, prayer, shopping,

It’s always an ordeal going to the Department of Motor Vehicles in my county. If you don’t make an appointment, you might wait in line four hours to get your business done. I had an appointment but still had to wait quite a while before they started running me through the mill by means of one device and machine and screen after another.

At least there were (not too robotic) humans directing me when to put my thumb down on the black box and how to “relax your elbow” when doing it; and telling me where to sit and where to stand and where to look for the rows of letters for the vision test. I came away eventually with my newly renewed driver’s license, but feeling quite “too old for this,” and with more errands remaining.

So on the way to the next one, a stop at the Big Box store, I listened to a reading of the Psalter through the Bluetooth in my car. The verses gave words to my lament, and directed them in the right direction, so that by the time I was pumping gas into my Subaru, I was peaceful, having been especially struck by the line, “All my bones shall say, “Lord, O Lord, Who is like unto Thee?”  He is with us in our afflictions!

I don’t think I mentioned here yet that my dear daughter-in-law “Joy” is coming from Colorado with the four grandchildren this week, while my son is out of the country for a spell. At the store I found plenty of eggs to buy and have on hand for them, which was a blessing, as recently I’ve more than once found the shelves empty of eggs.

I went home with enough time to put all the groceries away, eat dinner, and then run my last errand, to the tax-preparer’s office, which was actually the least stressful part of the day. For a few years my taxes have been done by the same Nice Lady, and she and I have become friends; she really does like to see pictures of my garden, and we talk about our travel experiences and families. And now that pesky job is done.

The best thing that happened today, though, was the one unexpected event, of needing to clean out my big bedroom closet because of finding ants trailing through this morning. I haven’t put all the shoes and stuff back, but it was satisfying to do a thorough job of that, which, if it hadn’t been for a few ants, I would have continued putting off. Since I had to be driving all over for much of the day, it worked out well that I needed to do a homemaker-y thing right off the bat, because that is what all my bones love the most.