Category Archives: food and cooking

What Am I About?

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When a man is in earnest and knows what he is about, his work is half done.   –Mirabeau

My trouble is, I don’t know what I am about. Or as we moderns would say, I lack focus. Some days the thousand details to be seen to, the hundred or so projects unfinished, don’t bother me. But today is another matter.

Maybe I am in transition from a heavy thinking period into a time when I need to attend more to housework and at least a couple of those tangible projects. The philosophical questions, and the writing projects–I assure you, just cranking out a few good paragraphs for this blog is a Project– can wait. It occurred to me that I should shut just down the computer for a spell, but then I remembered that if I write even a few words on the subject, it will help me come to grips with my “problem.” And in the process, I’ll share a few things from my week, somewhat haphazardly.

I recently started a new project, just to make things more difficult. A baby quilt for which there is a deadline, of course. Deadlines are just a facet of time, and time is not a bad thing. Christ sanctified time, if that were needed–and I don’t want to start thinking too much here!–when He entered it. So time, and deadlines, are all part of being human, and I mean that in a good way, as Christ was The Human. He had a deadline, the cross, but He never hurried or fretted.

This photo is one of two baby quilts I’ve made, both more than twenty years ago! I don’t want to show you the fabric for the current one yet, because I want it to be at least partly a surprise.

The photo of melon and blueberries is a beautiful image, yes? Those two just seemed to belong together. But it was an idea based solely on the visual sense, and failed completely when tested by the tongue. The honeydew was SO yummy by itself, and the blueberries were perfectly sweet and distinctive in that flavor that blueberries have. But together they clashed, or rather, the honeydew completely ruined the blueberries, and you wouldn’t know by that bowlful of color that blueberries were anything but flat and sour at the same time.

The fruit bowl surprise ties in to another somewhat philosophical point–about our western emphasis of the visual– that will have to wait. If I ever get back to that part of what I am about I’ll post the picture again. It’s pretty enough for a repeat.

There are two types of basil here. The green one is growing in my garden, and the purple-tinged bunch was given to me by K.

I washed it and spun it dry and did make pesto, though she wasn’t sure the flavor would be right. “Everyone” has a pesto recipe so I am not going to post mine. I got it about 30 years ago from a weekly very small-town newspaper, a recipe from a local woman who used sunflower seeds instead of nuts. Since then I have adapted and changed the recipe and switched to walnuts and then pine nuts and back again.

Pesto is infinitely variable. Depending on what you are going to do with it you might want to use more olive oil–or butter, as an Italian lady I knew used to do–to make it more runny. You might like to add some parsley or use toasted almonds as the last recipe I looked at did.

This time I was putting it on toast. We thought the flavor was outstanding. And just for good measure, I’ll show you the pan of zucchini I served that night.

I’ve lately noticed a phenomenon repeated from the past: one spends so much time cultivating the vegetables that it’s hard to get back in the house to cook them into the dinner. B. used to come out in the garden looking for me, asking if there was a plan for dinner that night?

Today I knew what I was about when I did my gardening in the morning! Tonight I will be ready.

I watered the vegetables and made a second picking of Blue Lake beans–wait! Do those look like Blue Lakes? You’re right, most of them certainly do not. A few, from last year’s seeds, are true to type, but my packet was mislabeled. The beans I am getting are mostly sticky, coarse and with a flat profile. They will probably have a bean-y taste, if they resemble Romanos across the board.

Hmm…another surprise in life. If you can’t get what you like, you have to like what you get. I’ll just slather them with pesto and everyone will love them.

Anyway, the green bean tower-tepee looks pretty, especially with that Celtic cross my friend H. gave me in the background.

This last picture is of my favorite flowers this summer, some nasturtiums and lobelia in a big pot that was a bargain at Food Maxx of all places. Year after year I try to get new varieties of nasturtiums to grown from seeds or plants in many places all over the garden, but they never take. Instead, the standard variety keeps growing in the cracks in the concrete around the pool pump where no one sees it.

nasturtiums+ 09

So this year I put two healthy starts in a pot, and with more TLC they are thriving. I’m wondering if I should place the pot over against the fence and encourage some seeds to self-sow in the ground…

Now for a closing thought, before I leave you to attend to the other kind of work–or toil:

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.  —Herman Melville


Recalling Pies and Martyrs

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This week’s pies probably aren’t anything you will want to imitate, but I couldn’t miss the chance to add a post to the Pie category.

First there was the Lenten Pie Challenge. For myself, I would not bother baking or eating a pie made without butter, or at least eggs, and would wait until after a church fast to eat the real thing. But today at church we were commemorating Saint Lawrence of Rome, patron saint of our rector, who loves pies. We are in the middle of a short period of fasting, so if we want to show our appreciation by baking pies for him, they need to be vegan.

Let me interject a story about today’s saint, who lived in the third century, and an icon that is painted on a door in our church. It shows St. Lawrence and also the first martyr Stephen. Click on it to see more detail, and their names.

The Jewels of St Lawrence

After the death of Sixtus, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence turn over the riches of the Church. Ambrose is the earliest source for the tale that Lawrence asked for three days to gather together the wealth. Lawrence worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the poor as possible, so as to prevent its being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering, and said that these were the true treasures of the Church. One account records him declaring to the prefect, “The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor.” This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom.

Last year for this celebration I made some apricot pies with lots of walnuts. They would have looked much like the picture below but for the walnut meal on top of the pies that didn’t get photographed. This year I decided to try something with coconut and pineapple. I used canned pineapple, shredded dried coconut, coconut milk, and some other things. The challenge was mostly knowing how much thickening to include. I made two, and they were well-received at the brunch following church, but I’d like to improve the recipe before I pass it on. It’s unlikely, at any rate, that many of my readers are holding their breath waiting for vegan pie recipes.

It didn’t feel right, making pies to take to church when my dear laboring husband was not there to partake–even though he did assure me that my weird pie did not appeal. So I made him a cherry pie today that he and his father could share.

On rare occasions I have been given fresh pie cherries and without a doubt they make the best pies. But the menfolk around here are perfectly pleased with the results that come from using canned pie filling, so I often settle for that. There’s no recipe to share, except to say that for one 9″ or 10″ pie you must buy two cans of filling at a price that is likely outrageous these days. I recommend finding a generous friend with a cherry tree.

Still, the pie is homey-looking and you can almost smell the butter. In my past pie-posts I forgot to tell you that when I bake a pie that needs to be in the oven for the better part of an hour I put some foil collars around the fluted edge of the crust, to keep it from getting too brown. Many people don’t eat this part, but for the sake of us who do, I want to keep it edible and beautiful. A pie doesn’t seem too appetizing to me if its crust is approaching the color of the bottom of my oven. This task takes a few extra minutes, because one has to be careful not to smash the dough with the foil. You might decide that it’s not worth the trouble.

You have to watch the pie in the oven and decide whether to take the collar off a few minutes before the pie will be coming out. It can happen that if your pie dough recipe doesn’t have sugar or milk in it, the crust will not brown as much as you want if you leave the protective collar on until the end of baking. This pastry recipe uses sugar, which is probably why the crust browned nicely even with the foil reflecting some of the heat. I didn’t remove the guard until the pie came out of the oven.

This cherry pie might have kept a sharper fluted edge if I’d stuck it in the fridge for a while, but I was too impatient. And I don’t mind the relaxed look.

July in the Mountains

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This month during Mr. Glad’s time off work, he and I took one trip to two mountain destinations. First we camped in Yosemite National Park, but not in the valley as we used to do. There aren’t many sites available there anymore.

We stayed at White Wolf for the first time. Here is my husband hammering in the tent stakes. You can see the dark brown bear box in the background behind him. It was large enough for an ice chest and three other largish camp boxes. All food and smelly things have to go in there, NOT in your car, and certainly not in your tent, and then you lock it with a special kind of latch that bears can’t work.

Our set of pots and two dishpans, inherited from our parents. We come from a long line of campers! And generations of these people have favored Yosemite for their camping.

As I was starting dinner, thundershowers broke. We quickly put everything away and waited in the car for a while.

Our first night we had Tuna and Bulgur with Green Beans, an old favorite–well, I don’t love it myself, but it was a good one to make for the crowd through the years. Camp food should not require too much cooking time, or you run out of fuel. And it should not be too weird or fancy, because you want the children to eat. It also should not have too many ingredients that need to be in the ice chest, because the ice chest is never big enough.

This time we accidentally left the green beans at home, so I chopped up the remainder of the raw vegetables I’d been snacking on in the car for a substitute.

Here is a view of Tenaya Lake and the eastern mountains of Yosemite, from Olmstead Point, on the Tioga Pass Road, Hwy 120. This highway is the only road that goes all the way through the park to the eastern side of the Sierras.

Olmstead Point is one of my favorite places in the world, because there are so many fun and strange formations of granite, and very accessible for scrambling around on. Of course, the views are great, too! Here you can see Half Dome in the distance, center. To the left, rising out of the picture so that you can’t see the top, is a hunk of granite called Clouds Rest, which my ambitious Other Half climbed while I sat in camp all day and read books. It was seven miles up, seven miles down. Then he swam in Tenaya Lake.

The pale flower that I am holding steady against the breeze with my hand, I believe to be a collinsia. The hot pink one I haven’t identified yet. Any ideas? [update: It is Scarlet Gilia]

The second night I made some buttermilk biscuits to go with canned soup. I brought the dry ingredients and butter already mixed and in a bag in the ice chest, along with a jar of the right amount of buttermilk. The biscuits were definitely the best part of that meal. We’re not used to canned soup; my man kept saying he thought it needed more salt, and I said I was sure they had already put as much salt as possible in it to try to bring out what little flavor was there.

California Coneflower at Crane Flat

We went up the road to Tuolumne Meadows in the evening. That’s Lembert Dome sort of lying against the hill. We climbed it several times over the years with the children. Pippin did some of her earliest hiking there, at the age of 2 1/2 I think it was, running from rock to small boulder to hoist herself up on to, and saying, “Won wock,” and then again, “Won wock….,” learning to count to one as well.

Another thing that makes Tuolumne Meadows special to us is that when we were here with my in-laws almost 38 years ago, before they were my in-laws, we got engaged to be married! My in-laws to-be took this picture of us when we told them. It’s the only “engagement picture” we have. 😉

Next to the Tuolumne Meadows Bridge, I took many pictures of these does and their two buck friends who were close by. The lighting was poor, and I was too far away, but I had to try. You know I love deer.

I waded in the Tuolumne River, where two streams came together over a slab of granite that wasn’t too slippery, if I were careful. I was.

Large bushes of lupines were everywhere! Everywhere, that is, where we were driving by and couldn’t stop to take a picture. Or everywhere that the wind was blowing them wildly. I became obsessed with finding the right bush in a convenient photographic place. Finally, as we were leaving Yosemite, at Crane Flat there were hundreds of them among the trees by the store. From looking at six wildflower books I’d say these are Flat Leafed Lupines, but don’t ask me the botanical name. They don’t have hairy leaves, and they are tall!

We left Yosemite and drove south through the foothills to my family’s cabin high up above Fresno. Thirteen of us gathered to hold a memorial service for my father.

The cabin overlooks this lake. I love this picture, taken from a dome behind our cabin, because it shows quite a bit of the dome itself. The lake is surrounded by domes. Several of them have been climbed by various of us.

The house can only be used about four months out of the year, because it lies at 8200′ and sometimes gets buried in snow. It is the cabin with the brown roof. The owner of another cabin went in on snowshoes and took this picture.

It is a man-made lake, for the purpose of generating hydroelectric power. Sometimes they pump water out of it and the water level goes way down, exposing a lot of smaller boulders as in this picture taken of Kate about 15 years ago. Then we call it a Mud Puddle.

This is another long-ago picture of some young sprouts above the lake.

My dad bought a canoe soon after he acquired the cabin almost 20 years ago; it’s a great tool for enjoying the water and the surrounding domes. I was out this time with B. and H., paddling for an hour, almost to the creek inlet. It was glorious to use my muscles after so much time out of commission lately. Songs fairly burst out of me when I am in a canoe, I get so excited by the pure romanticism of it all, the Canadian/Indian canoeing songs that we somehow learned when the children were small. As we were skimming across the lake I told about Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling and how that book has been made into a movie that I am eager to see. But this pic above is from the past, with a different daughter.

On one work day we built a fire ring just below the cabin. Weak-armed women stood on the deck and took pictures of their shadows.

My dad was invited once to take a plane ride over the Sierra Nevadas to see all the places he had hiked so many times. They flew over Our Lake and he got a picture.

After many of the extended family went home, there were five of us who stayed the night. The guys had a challenging game of Risk, or World Domination (?) We girls were not into it.

Pippin baked a tart on our last morning. It was good she didn’t need a pie plate, as we discovered there was not such a thing to be found up there. One never knows what to expect. From now on we will be adding some of those items that we women want. But the nearest store is 3,000 ft. down the mountain and an hour away. We avoid making that trip for all but the most extreme needs.


My father, in a characteristic cabin pose, ten or so years ago. There doesn’t seem to be a way to fix this picture so that you don’t see the hand towel he always used to protect the arm of the chair! He thought it was perfectly appropriate for cabin living, even if he would never do such a thing at home.

It doesn’t feel the same up there, knowing that he won’t ever join us again. Thank you, Daddy, for giving us this family-nurturing place in a soul-nurturing mountain haven.

Lebanese Spice

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This week I’m not able to spend much time here at the computer, but I don’t want you to think I disappeared, so I’ll just share with you a favorite staple recipe I like to keep on hand.

I have been using this combination of spices and salt for decades. It did come from an authentic Lebanese cook, perhaps via Sunset Magazine. My adaptation is lower in salt and cayenne pepper than the original. You can tweak the proportions to suit your own taste.

Typically it is used to flavor ground beef or lamb; the suggestion was to add 2 teaspoons to one pound of meat. I’ve used it in stews as well. I love that little bit of cinnamon surprise.

Combine the following, mix well, and store at room temperature in your spice cupboard:
3 tsp each cinnamon and paprika
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper