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!
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!
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.
The day after Christmas I went to the beach with both of my sons and Soldier’s whole family. It was not picnic weather, but neither was it windy or raining, so we spread a cloth on the sand and ate the picnic we’d brought. That was after football games, and shell collecting, and losing a wiffle ball in the extreme piles of driftwood (I found it!)
Soon after we ate, the temperature did begin to drop, so we headed home.
Later in the week I gathered from all over the house and garage my entire shell and rock (not including garden stones) and sea glass collection and laid it out on a big bed, for the Colorado grandchildren to glean from and take back for their own boxes of treasures. I didn’t realize how many of these smaller groupings in plates and bowls there were until I got the idea of passing on some of my Special Things.
We talked about the distinctive features of this or that tiny stone or bit of sea glass, and Brodie tried hard to hear the ocean in a mini version of a conch shell; a little sand dollar was wrapped in tissue so that it wouldn’t get damaged by rocks. Each of the children filled a ziplock snack bag with their chosen favorites, and when they were done I was able to pack all of my remaining things into a small box.
This kind of downsizing is extremely satisfying, and great fun for everyone!
Gladsome Lights 