Category Archives: food and cooking

Cooking and commemorating.

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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!

Homey doings in early spring.

books, food and cooking, Lent, my garden, , , , ,

This month I had two occasions when friends visited me for one or two nights, two different friends each time. It was fun to have people to cook for. About an hour before the first pair of guests were to arrive I found out that one of them couldn’t eat the bread I had planned to serve with soup, because of gluten intolerance. I have just enough time to make muffins, I thought, using Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flour again. I mixed up the wet ingredients, and then — could not find that flour anywhere.

Though I rarely bake anymore, I have a dozen sorts of flours in a refrigerator in the garage. I rummaged through those and decided to use one cup of cassava flour and one cup of buckwheat flour. The latter was the sort one would use for buckwheat pancakes, that is, from roasted groats. Some people don’t like that flavor, so I was taking a chance that my guests would.

The muffins turned out very nice, we all thought. But the cassava flour is a little heavy, and I think if I try this again, I’ll use more buckwheat and less cassava. That very evening I discovered the missing flour, in the wrong refrigerator.

The last time I made pancakes I did not use buckwheat flour, but I did use this beautiful batter bowl that I received as a Christmas gift. It holds an amount of batter that is just right for one person, and its presence on my kitchen counter has encouraged me to make pancakes for just myself, for the first time ever.

Another type of bread I helped to bake recently was the little prosphora that our parish uses as one type of altar bread at Divine Liturgy. That day we only made these small ones, and two people prepared dough. One of the dough makers used more flour than usual, and we ended up with a record number of prosphora — so while they were cooling I took their picture:

Lent is coming right up — for us Orthodox it begins on Monday. Many people I know like to choose some “spiritual reading” for Lent, and I have done that many times. Our women’s book group has often chosen a book to read together and discuss after Pascha. But this year we didn’t; we still haven’t discussed the last book we chose, to read during Advent.

At one point I thought I would read The Seer: The Life of the Prophet Samuel and its Relevance Today during this season. And then I looked around my house and noticed so many other worthy titles. Maybe I would cast lots among these below, and let God decide for me:

But the finality of that action frightened me. It’s not likely that I will finish any of these big books during Lent anyway, because I always seem to use any extra time to attend the lovely Lenten services at church. So in the end I decided to read (from) all of them, and I’ve stacked them up next to my reading chairs as my Lenten Library; my plan is to read at least a little from one or two of them every day. Being goal-oriented does not come naturally!

hairy bittercress

The last couple of days have been sunny at times, and the weeds in the garden are getting my attention, as they grow like weeds in springtime. So I got out there and pulled a bunch. I try to keep a thick layer of mulch on my garden to prevent weeds, but I guess I got behind in adding to that layer. I’m hoping to do that this week.

The anemones and crocuses that I planted at the end of November are starting to bloom, and the muscari and daffodils are showing leaves; obviously so late in the fall was not optimal for getting them in the ground. One reason I got busy weeding was to make sure they won’t be hindered from lifting their pretty faces to the sun. Of course, it’s good for me to do that with my own face when I get the chance, and I trust that will be the case more and more as springtime unfolds, in the earth and the air, and in these anemones.

Blessings with gingerbread and Flour.

food and cooking, the language, Theophany, , , , , , , , ,
Grandson who is now married.

By the time the book was ready to pick up at the library, I’d forgotten that I’d ever put it on hold; there must have been a good reason for me to look beyond the hugely generic title of Flour. Probably it was back before Christmas when I was still looking ahead, to Christmas baking, whereas now I’ve moved on.

Normally I am more drawn to provocative titles like Samarkand or Bravetart, two other cookbooks on my shelf at present, though I also have had plainer in my possession, such as The Onion Book, and Salt and Pepper — or was it Pepper and Salt? I gave that one away. The Moosewood Cookbook from my youth comes to mind, named after a restaurant, and Mollie Katzen followed it up with The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I guess she had a knack for evocative names!

Before I leave the subject of Katzen, I have to tell you that one of her own three favorite cookbooks has an ambitious title: Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Apulia, by Patience Gray. I definitely need to check my library to see if I can borrow that one; it has several words that arouse my imagination. Katzen’s latest published work has the lovely title, The Heart of the Plate ❤️

I did bring  Flour home, and leafed through its pages a bit. It turns out that the word is in this case a reference to a very specific thing, and place, the Flour Bakery that the author Joanne Chang owns in Boston. Chang graduated from Harvard with honors, and degrees in math and economics, and also studied astrophysics. But even while she was in college she was selling cookies to her classmates.

today’s flour

All these facts make me start wondering about different personalities and how they use language; I’m fairly certain no one whose mind works like mine would ever come up with such a name for a bakery or anything. Her more recent book is titled Flour, Too, which is even more puzzling. In spite of all this distracting analysis, a recipe for Deep Dark Spicy Gingerbread caught my eye, and I decided to make it to serve after my house blessing that was today.

It’s not as though I needed another gingerbread recipe. If you are fond this kind of cake you might explore the other versions I’ve written about here over the years, like the vegan Gingerbread Pear Bundt Cake and Wheatless Gingerbread; I’ve made chocolate chip gingerbread many times but evidently never shared it here.

For the house blessing, we began our prayer downstairs, not far from where I had displayed the air clay owl that my granddaughter Ivy made for me last year. This year someone made a clay sloth for me. Not long ago I was also given a sloth tree ornament. Is there something about me that makes the family think of sloths? Now the sloth has joined the owl, and what they mean together, I am still pondering.

Knowing while sleeping last night that I would bake a cake in the morning, attend my friend Gwen’s house blessing, and drive back here for my own — all that made me wake up earlier than ever, and I had the cake in the oven before 8 o’clock! I was not channeling my sloth friend today.

The cake was not that special. I think it had too much butter — a full cup for a 9×13 cake — which bogged it down; the gluten-free flour probably contributed to its heaviness, and it included a whole 12 oz jar of molasses. It was not as spicy as I expected considering the fresh ginger and lots of black pepper that went into it. If I make it again I will use half the butter, and more egg. And maybe try another sort of flour.

But it was easy to eat
with a dollop of whipped cream on top,
and I sent a big chunk home with my priest,
because it was his birthday.

I begin the year with Christmas Day.

Christmas, food and cooking, grandchildren, , , ,

Before January is half over, I will share the last of my Christmasy activities and images. I don’t want to wait until next year to tell of the occasion shown above, when my grandsons Raj and Rigo were quick to lend a hand moving decorations into the church, the Sunday before Christmas.

I went back to having a freshly cut tree this year; it only required getting help from a friend and a son. But I had no time to trim it before family started arriving, so Raj and Rigo helped me with that, too, almost as soon as they walked in the door.

One toy I bought in advance of figuring out whom I would give it to, was these Magnet Men. They turned out to be the perfect toy to give to the whole bunch of (nine) kids to play with together, and in my house they provided hours of fun. For most people, I think, the refrigerator might be the only object they could interface with, though I heard of children using a set of dumbells for a Magnet Men playground.

They are very acrobatic, and hold on to each other, as you can see, but my entry and stair railings made the perfect equipment to show off their gymnastics. I sent all the cute toys home with the grandchildren, but maybe I should have kept some here, where they are the most fun.

I had a friend over for tea one day and used some of my Christmas gnome placemats for the last time, serving up the last of the Christmas cookies I’d baked, and four little pieces of rose-flavored Turkish Delight that I’d bought especially for Christmas. That rose candy was so beautifully flavored, to me it seemed the exotic star of every plate of sweets. If only it weren’t so, so sweet…. but then, it wouldn’t be Turkish Delight.

We Glads have a few Christmas traditions that we return to, not always every year, but when the combination of people and days aligns properly. I’m thinking of oyster stew, which came through Mr. Glad’s German and English families. Or was it just the German side? I have made it many times using the recipe in the Joy of Cooking that my mother gave me at my marriage. This year son Soldier volunteered to make the stew, which is really a bisque or soup, and he began to read the recipe in that book.

Soon everyone in the kitchen was laughing uproariously as he read aloud the amounts of some ingredients. For example, 1/4 teaspoon chopped onion, and “a sliver of garlic.” I didn’t see how much onion Soldier put in, but I heard that several cloves of garlic were minced and added. From my garden I brought in chives and parsley, which were used in generous quantities. After all 18 of us were seated at two tables, the oysters were dropped into the broth, and soon the glorious stew was served into bowls and set before those who were willing or eager to try it. I found it to be the best I’ve ever eaten.

I have another “Overthrow the Tyranny of Months” calendar from Beauty First Films, which leads me in joyful anticipation of upcoming weeks, often several more than four at a time. Here is the page I’m looking at now:


How sweet is it, to have my 2025 calendar start with Christmas Day?? I’m waiting until February 2 to take my tree down, and will wait until next December to write any more about Christmas. More feasts and seasons are upon us, the days full of good things.

One of those that happened in our family recently was the birth of my son “Pathfinder’s” first grandchild, my second great-grandchild. I may need to meet him before I will think of a nickname, and he lives a good distance from me, so you will have to wait for details. The Whole Glad Family welcomes Little Guy ❤

Rejoice Evermore!