morning-glory-garden

Lemons are Lovely and so are Nasturtiums

2012-02-12T12:22:00.001-07:00

Lemons Are Lovely (and so are nasturtiums)

Last year we got two lemons off the little Meyer lemon tree that grows in a half wine barrel just outside the back door, and those were attacked by some little creature that makes a hole in the skin and burrows in. Yuck. This year we had 16 to 18, all nice and healthy though they varied in size from average supermarket lemon size to "that would be a big orange if it was an orange" size. I sprayed them periodically with insecticidal soap and it kept the beasties at bay. So, recently (especially now that this years blossoms are starting to pop out), I've been reminded that it's time to stop admiring them and start using them. Yesterday I made a batch of lemon curd, from the recipe in Clearly Delicious by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz. Here are the assembled ingredients:

Very simple, yes? The recipe called for 6 - 8 lemons but with these big guys 5 were enough. The recipe itself is also simple, but I guess I don't quite have a fix on what "coating the back of the spoon" looks like, so mine may have cooked a bit too long, as it set up stiffer than I expected (don't worry - it will get eaten). Anyway, here's the recipe:

Lemon Curd - makes about 3 cups
6-8 lemons
2 1/2 cups superfine sugar
5 eggs
2 sticks butter (1 cup)

Grate the zest of the lemons, using the finest side of the box grater. [If you're using Meyer lemons, be careful because the skin is quite thin and tender.] Squeeze the juice and strain it into a large measuring cup. You will need 1 1/4 cups lemon juice.

Cut the butter into small pieces and put into a glass bowl [I used the stainless steel bowl that makes a double boiler], along with the zest, lemon juice, and sugar. Set over a pan of gently simmering water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch the water, nor should the water boil rapidly. Stir the mixture until the butter has melted and the sugar has completely dissolved.

Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl but do not whisk them. [That didn't make any sense to me so I did whisk them till the whites and yolks were well-blended.] Strain the eggs into the lemon mixture. Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture thickens slightly. This will take 20-25 minutes. Do not allow the mixture to boil or it will curdle.

As soon as the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, remove the bowl from the pan of water. Pour into warmed sterilized jars. Place a waxed paper round, wax-side down, on top. Smooth over to remove any air pockets. Leave to cool. Cover, label, and store in the refrigerator for up to one month [if it lasts that long].

And on to the nasturtiums. I mentioned in my last post that I'd planted seeds I got at the Heirloom Seed Bank in Petaluma, California last month. But we've also got volunteers that reseeded themselves from last year, that are much farther along (as in 5 to 10-foot long vines trailing around the raised beds where they are beautiful but not especially convenient - I wouldn't have put them there, but they seem to have made their own decision). Here are a few in the pitcher from a tiny porcelain tea set that belonged to my grandmother.

And here are some more, embellishing the salad I had for lunch yesterday. Looks like spring, doesn't it?

Long Time Gone

2012-02-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

Oh my, it's been longer than I thought since I posted anything here. The winter break was a much-needed relief and Christmas was very nice. In early January we spent a week in northern California, first a couple of days in Sonoma and then on to visit kids and grandkids in Mendocino. Our friend who lives in Sonoma took us to Petaluma for an afternoon - I hadn't been there in decades, literally, so the beautiful old town was new to me, and I don't think Joe had ever been there before. My earlier visit had been part of a move-back-to-the-land-and-raise-poultry-organically fantasy that never materialized; Petaluma was (and maybe still is) noted for that. Visiting factory farms with huge buildings full of miserable, traumatized battery hens in tiny cages was a horror I still remember, though I loved finding this old sign on an even older wall.

There's also a delightful yarn store in the old downtown, filled with wonderful goods and a friendly, helpful staff. And just up the street a bit is Copperfield's Books, an equally wonderful place!

At what seems to be the main intersection in downtown (at least as we came in, from the east) is the Seed Bank, a required stop for any gardener. Note the word "heirloom" in the window. The building was originally a bank and now it's a treasure trove of seeds, things I usually have to mail-order since they're not likely to be found at Home Depot or Lowe's, or even smaller local nurseries. This time I got a couple of the heirloom European winter squashes we love, Marina di Chioggia and Muscat de Provence. And the nasturtiums I planted from seed I bought there are coming up nicely to fill in some bare spots around the cannas and in the part-herb, part-flower bed at the back of the west side of the back yard.

This is what it's like inside, a gardener's delight.

Finally, I just had to take this picture of what I think is a resale clothing shop. Oddly enough, I didn't go in, perhaps because we'd just had fish and chips with some pretty high-octane microbrew at Maguire's pub, a place I highly recommend, along with Pliny the Younger, a delicious double IPA from the Russian River Brewing Company with an astounding 10.50% alcohol level - I only had one, but it sneaks up on you.

The weather was gorgeous everywhere, blue skies and sunshine. We drove across from the 101 through Anderson Valley, through redwoods that made me homesick for Humboldt County, where we lived before moving to Tucson.

And then we came out of the woods, into the sunlight, and there was the ocean, along with a state park (that was open, fortunately, in spite of budget cuts, and it had restrooms).

We turned north and drove through Mendocino to Fort Bragg, just another 7 miles, where we checked in to the Colombi Motel. I'd found it on the internet and we just had to try it, because of its reasonable prices, convenient location, the independence it offered (all units have full kitchens), and the positive reviews on travel websites. Here's the kitchen:

and here's the outside, with our little red rented Ford Focus in the carport (we really liked that car).

Not a fancy place but very comfortable. It was built in 1951 by the Colombi family, who still own and operate it, as well as the little corner market across the street and the laundromat next door. It's off the "main drag" and very quiet (the carports in between the units help with that as well). More like a little apartment than a motel unit, and three nights cost what one night in the big fancy motels-with-a-view would have - and it was a three block walk to the beach - I can do that. http://www.colombimotel.com
Then we called the kids and went over to their place where we had dinner and a lovely evening. Next day we went to Glass Beach, at the north end of Fort Bragg, a great place to pick up beach glass, explore tide pools, and just generally climb around on the rocks and walk on the sandy beach and hang out with people we love and don't see often enough. Here's our grandson, son, Joe, and Bentley the dog,

and here's our only granddaughter, the intrepid naturalist.

Looking out to sea, it's obvious how the beach glass gets tumbled and polished.

But some of the most interesting views were close up, like this anemone waiting for the tide to come in and bring dinner (look at all the bits of rock and other natural debris caught on its surface)

and these colonies of mussels and some other shellfish, of which there were many on the rocks above the tide pools.

We collected somewhat less glass than on earlier visits but that was all right. The main point of going is to be there, not just to accumulate more stuff. And every time we go, it seems new; we notice things we hadn't paid attention to before. Starfish clinging to the rocks,

patterns left in the sand by the outgoing tide,

one piece of driftwood standing sentinel,

the color of rock and sand and ice plant as the sun begins to set.

Screen out the buildings in the distance and the noise of traffic a quarter mile away (the sound of the waves makes that easier), and it could be a hundred and fifty years ago.

Taking Flight

2011-11-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at 4 p.m. as I crossed campus to teach my graduate writing workshop, I looked up to see a large egret like this one (but not this one) flying rather low and slowly from the direction of the student union across the tall trees and old brick dorms of the loveliest part of campus. I stopped and stared, and couldn't help noticing that no one around me seemed to notice anything, that is, no one looked up. We're so busy we don't often look up, it seems. Time seemed to slow down, the egret's progress across the sky was so graceful and leisurely, and although I'd been walking quickly it suddenly didn't matter if I was late to class. One young man did stop and asked me, "Are you watching that bird?" I said yes, I used to see them all the time when I lived in northern California. "Me too," he said, and it turned out he had also come to Tucson from California, and we both agreed it was wonderful to see the egret. I told him about the great blue heron Joe and I saw in our neighborhood last week while we were on a morning walk. It flew over and landed on a house, stood there resting a moment, then spread its wings and went on.

When we were at Humboldt State we lived outside Arcata on Mad River Road, which meanders, like the river it follows, through lush green fields out to the sea. It's an area of dairy farms, where you can walk out among contented cows grazing in grass that grows thick and fast and buttercups up to your knees. And egrets, dozens of egrets out in the pastures with the cows, doing whatever it is that egrets do. I never took them, or the peace and beauty they seemed to embody, for granted. Their pure whiteness against all that rich green always made me pause and smile. That's what happened yesterday, when I saw the white bird against the bright blue sky, skimming over green trees and old red brick buildings. It was a gift, and I am grateful

Beautiful in all stages of life

2011-10-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite plants, Sophora secundiflora, also known as mescal bean and Texas mountain laurel. These big, lush, flower clusters appear in the spring, delighting not only the eyes but also the nose with their rich, intoxicating fragrance. There's one just outside my office and several others around the campus, so for the few weeks they're in bloom I can instantly brighten my mood and take a vacation of a few seconds by closing my eyes and holding a bunch of them up to my face to inhale their glorious perfume. They don't last well as cut flowers, a day at best, so I try to find reasons to get out of the office and run errands in areas where I know they grow. The plant is a slow grower, which is why I haven't put any in the garden, though I may change my mind about that. Instant gratification isn't everything.
The grandkids are intrigued, of course, because every part of the plant is poisonous, including the gorgeous seeds that come in shades of orange and red, from pale to rich and deep. They also found that by scraping them against a concrete floor and then touching it to your skin, you can get a mild electric shock. Leave it to boys to discover something like that.
What I've discovered is that the seeds make interesting jewelry.

Here's a bowl of them, with one of the unopened pods in the middle,

and here are some in my hand, after they've been drilled for stringing, so you can get an idea of the size.

After you get them out of the pod (I just put the pod on the sidewalk and stomp on it - don't worry about damaging the seeds; they're tough), you need to drill holes in them, and unless you want to also drill holes in your fingers, you'll need a small drill press. It's tedious work, getting them lined up right, and be sure to tighten the press as tight as possible so they don't shift around. I used my Dremel tool and a fairly small drill bit. The other seeds, in and beside the pink bowl, are from the tranquility tree (I drilled these but haven't done anything with them yet, and haven't been able to find any information on the tree except that apparently the name's used for an online game, so I won't say any more about them right now, except that they're very interesting and attractive).

After drilling, you can string the seeds like any other bead. I made these earrings, necklace, and bracelet using smaller brown glass beads in between the seeds, and I'm quite happy with them. Even if the temperatures are still in the low 90s (but hopefully cooling off as the week goes on), my jewelry can look like autumn!

It's Fall - Time to Knit

2011-10-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

Time to Knit!

(No, I didn't knit the flowers, but aren't they lovely? It's a morning glory tree, not the regular vines, with semi woody stems, about 6 feet tall with flowers about 3 1/2" wide when open)

Even if it did hit 98 degrees in downtown Tucson today, the calendar says it's fall and I am so ready for warm hats and scarves and sweaters and socks - it was much cooler earlier in the week and I actually did wear socks to work a couple of days, which made me very happy. It's also creeping up on Halloween, a friend's favorite holiday. He and his wife stopped by my office earlier today with Rory, who's almost 11 months old, so I could give her the pumpkin hat I knitted for her.

Doesn't look very impressed, does she? And she wasn't really into letting anyone adjust it to the proper rakish angle at that moment. Yeah, I know, today was hardly the weather for this kind of hat. But I had so much fun making it that I decided to use the last of some leftover yellow yarn to make a matching lemon hat. The pattern is at http://brooksfreepatterns.blogspot.com/2005/11/tuttie-cutie-fruity-hats.html

I'll probably make more in different flavors but right now I want to make a couple of skull beanies for the 2 grandsons we'll be seeing this weekend. That pattern is at http://polarknitpatterns.com/Skull-Beanie-Worsted1.pdf. Can't post a picture yet because I haven't made them. It would be nice to be able to give them to them on Saturday, but I also have some sewing to do for their mom tomorrow, so it may not happen. :-(
I also knitted some coffee cup cozies out of scrap yarn so I could be all eco-groovy and dispense with the little cardboard sleeves. The first were made from a small ball of orange acrylic, knitted on size 5 dpns, 42 stitches in K3 P3 rib. They're okay and the baristas think they're cool. Here they are on soda cans - they also absorb condensation. I think they're maybe a half-inch too tall.

I like this one better. It's 100% wool fingering weight yarn, leftover from a pair of socks I knitted a few years ago. It's 48 stitches on size 2 needles (I'm a rather loose knitter), 2x2 rib, about 3" tall. It's less heavy but does just as good a job of keeping the coffee warm and protecting my hand from the hot cup.

Then I also knitted a couple of dishcloths for my daughter, who loves them. It would be the perfect project for her to learn on, but so far I haven't been able to talk her into knitting for herself. They do get funky-looking after a while, so although I love the lighter colors, decided to try navy blue this time, for her and for my own kitchen. 44 stitches on #7 needles, beginning and ending with 2 rows of garter stitch and with 2 stitches in garter stitch up each side; otherwise it's all seed stitch, since the little bumps are good for scrubbing.

And that's how I've supplemented my video-viewing and passenger-in-the-car-and-on-the-bus time lately. It makes me happy and as my Grandpa would have said, it keeps me off the streets and out of the bars! (wink)

Brunch in the Garden

2011-10-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we had some friends over for Sunday brunch. It was a lovely, not too warm day, and since one of them is highly allergic to cats (something he discovered while having a nice snuggle with Sophie - apparently he'd managed to make it to his early 30s without much cat contact, but she was furry enough to make up for all those lost years), we ate out on the patio.

Our friends brought a cantaloupe and some nectarines, both yellow and white, and I mixed up a little chopped salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, kalamata olives, and fresh basil. The muffins are the cherry cornmeal muffins from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café, but I forgot to put in the butter (I discovered it sitting melted in the microwave after they were already in the oven!), but they didn't turn out too badly, actually, just a tiny bit chewy, though still tasty. They were even better with a little butter and homemade prickly pear jelly. The recipe for the muffins (butter included) is at http://www.molliekatzen.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipe=orange_cherry_muffins.
The main dish, of course, was that thing that looks like a quiche, made from a recipe I've had since the '70s, back in the days when real men didn't eat quiche, so perhaps that's why it was called Switzerland Cheese and Onion Pie (apparently whoever came up with it thought the "real men" wouldn't know what it was). I used to make it a lot, but it had been many years, and I'd forgotten how good and easy it is. So here's the recipe:

Switzerland Cheese and Onion Pie
1 9" unbaked piecrust (deep-dish if frozen)
1 large onion, chopped
2 T. melted butter
2 c. cheese, shredded (I used cheddar this time,
but Swiss, pepper jack, most anything is fine)
1 T. flour
3 eggs
1 c. half and half (or part milk)
1 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sauté onion in melted butter till tender. In a bowl, toss the cheese with the flour, then mix in onions, eggs, half and half, and salt. Pour into pie crust. Bake 10 minutes, reduce heat to 325 degrees, and bake 30 to 35 minutes longer, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool 10 minutes or so before cutting and serving.

There's nothing like a lovely autumn day, is there?

2011-09-28T11:57:00.005-07:00

On Sunday Joe and I went on the annual organic farm tour sponsored by Somos la Semilla (We Are the Seed). We went last year (you can see my posting about it at http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2010/09/gardens-and-more-gardens.html) and had a great day, so were excited to do it again. Last year all the farms were off the I-19 corridor (more or less), around Arivaca, Green Valley, and Tumacacori, but this year they added four new locations around Patagonia (Arizona, not South American), and since we love going to Patagonia, we decided to just do that part of the tour since Patagonia is quite a drive from the other concentration of farms, east on I-10 and then south on state highway 83. The first thing we did was have lunch at our favorite coffeehouse, not the best lunch we've ever had there, but not bad.

Across the street is the city park, which runs the entire length of the town proper, which means Patagonia really has two main streets, one on either side.

It's an old ranching town, though there used to be mining nearby as well, and a couple of large companies are trying to bring it back - most of the townsfolk are very much against that, given the environmental damage caused by large scale open pit mining, which of course is what they want to do. The town has a real funky charm, with a lot of old adobe buildings in varying states of repair, and of course some newer buildings too, with the two kinds often nestled next to each other, cheek by jowl.

The town is small and very walkable. . . with interesting ruins.

The first three places on the farm tour, however, were sort of a bust. The Patagonia community garden is near the middle of town, but there was no one there to explain anything so we just walked around looking at the plots - it's nice but we didn't learn much. Patagonia is higher and cooler than Tucson, so gardening is undoubtedly a little bit easier - some folks even had tomatoes, which are difficult to impossible to grow in Tucson. The blossoms won't set fruit once it gets into the high 90s.

This is the drive back to the highway from Deep Dirt Farm Project. You won't see pictures of the farm because after seeing several over-directive signs (Tours are at 9, 11, 1, and 5. If you are late, wait for the next one.) we turned around when we got to the first parking area and decided it wasn't worth waiting at least two hours for. That's just not the way these farm tours are conducted, with such military precision. Maybe we missed something wonderful, but I guess we'll survive.
We also visited the Native Seeds Search experimental farm. Native Seeds Search is a wonderful organization dedicated to preserving traditional crops of the southwest; check them out at http://www.nativeseeds.org. I get my tepary bean seeds from them; I wrote about that a while back and you can see it at http://www.morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/#!/2009/11/gardens-yesterday-and-today.html. I didn't take pictures because, well, it wasn't all that scenic. It's a rough time of year here, with the summer stuff dried up and dying and the fall things not really started yet. But a nice young man showed us around and I learned a few things, which is always good. Then we headed up the road toward Sonoita and then east to Mias Chivas Goat Farm, which was definitely the high point of the day.

Look at that sky lowering over the high plains grassland (parts of the movie Oklahoma! were filmed around here). You can see virga in the middle, rain that never quite makes it to the ground.

I am totally in love with goats. They're smart, friendly, funny, and beautiful And their milk makes amazing cheese and other things, like soap. Who could resist this face? The folks at Mias Chivas were welcoming and informative and let us taste fresh goat milk and several different cheeses that they sell at the farmers' market in Patagonia at the community garden, every Sunday from 9-12. I bought some chèvre and a couple of bars of patchouli-scented soap. And then we headed home.

When we first got out of the car at Mias Chivas, a man who was leaving had said that if this was our last stop, we'd saved the best for last. He was so right!

Cheesy Stuff

2011-09-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

You probably didn't realize you were longing for someone to provide a grilled cheese sandwich tutorial, did you? I love grilled cheese in all its infinite variations, as long as it contains real cheese and not some "processed cheese food" stuff. The real keys to making a fantastic grilled cheese are to:
1. Use good cheese
2. Use good bread
3. Grate the cheese so it will melt better
4. Grill it on a heavy pan, like cast iron, at a fairly low heat. It's amazing how quickly it can go from golden to black.

So without further ado, here's how I made my most recent sandwich:
First, spread something interesting on one side of a slice of good whole-grain bread. In this case, I used my homemade pesto. You can find the recipe at http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2009/10/pesto-and-salad-dressing.html . Then sprinkle on about 1/3 of the grated cheese you'll use for each sandwich. Layers of melted cheese help hold the other layers together. Here I used a nice extra-sharp cheddar.

Then add a layer of tomato slices (or crisp, thin apple slices, but not with pesto - that sounds weird).

Sprinkle on half of the remaining cheese.

Add some sliced onion (this would also be good with the apple variation). I like red or sweet onions, when the sweets are in season.

The last of the cheese.

Put the top slice of bread on and butter it.

Flip it over and put it on the griddle (I love my cast iron) or in the pan, and then butter the other side.

Grill on both sides on medium low as long as it takes, checking often. It's better to take a few minutes longer and enjoy perfection than rush and get unsatisfactory results. This one got a wee bit browner than I'd like but not enough to need to scrape any burnt stuff off (it looks darker in the picture than in real life).

Serve with a nice bowl of soup(this is my pumpkin-peanut butter soup; the recipe is at http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2009/10/soup-of-evening-beautiful-soup.html) and some fruit. All those lovely flavors held together by the cheese are a real sensuous treat.

Sunday Scones

2011-09-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

Today I thought it would be nice to try some savory scones for a change. Actually, I felt it was something I should do, not necessarily something I wanted to do. Can you sense a certain lack of enthusiasm? I do, after all, simply adore sweet or at least semi-sweet scones. But returning to the source of my inspiration, Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café, I decided to try my own adaptation of her savory variation, Chile-Cheese-Corn Scones. Everyone has things in their refrigerator that they consider staples. For us, those include feta cheese and Kalamata olives (much more affordable now that both come in nearly quart-sized containers at Costco, which must mean other people also include them in the things they can't live without). We also have a lot of rosemary growing in the back yard, and so, this morning, we had Greek Scones, a rather delightful cross-cultural collaboration, I think.

Greek Scones (makes 9)
Non-stick spray
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal (fine-ground, not polenta)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter
2/3 c. buttermilk
1 large egg
1 cup (packed) crumbled feta
1/3 cup rough-chopped pitted Kalamata olives

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and spray it and a 1/3 cup measuring cup with non-stick spray.
Place flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and rosemary in a food processor fitted with the steel blade; process briefly to combine.
Cut butter into thin slices and distribute them over the top of the dry mixture. Pulse several times until butter is uniformly cut into dry mixture so it resembles a coarse meal.
Pour the buttermilk into a 2-cup liquid measure and beat the egg into it. With the food processor running, pour buttermilk mixture through feed tube into the dough, then the olives and feta. Turn off the processor as soon as it all comes together (just a couple or few seconds - you don't want the olives and feta to lose all their identity).
Remove the food processor blade and scrape any dough on it back into the bowl. Using the sprayed 1/3 cup measure, scoop out blobs of dough and drop onto prepared baking sheet, a few inches apart. I got 9; if you want bigger scones, you won't get so many and you'll need to bake them a little longer. I think these are the perfect size.
Bake in the center or lower 1/3 of the oven for 20 - 22 minutes, or until little golden brown spots appear all over. Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

I've found all these scones (including those I posted last week) keep quite well for a few days, so I'm looking forward to having one of these for lunch with a nice bowl of gazpacho when I go back to work. As you can guess, I've revised my opinion: savory scones can be absolutely delightful!

A few words about ingredients:

I don't always pay much attention to whether I use salted or unsalted butter, but in this case, because the feta and olives are so salty, I recommend making sure the butter isn't.
And 3 tablespoons may seem like a lot of sugar - I was concerned about that myself - but it's actually just right; it seems to somehow balance and heighten the other flavors.
Rosemary is one of my very favorite herbs, but it wasn't always. When I was growing up in Idaho, where it can get very cold, no one grows rosemary in the yard, so all we had available was dried rosemary, which in my opinion is worse than none at all. I suppose you could grind it in a coffee grinder, as we do some other spices and herbs, but if you just chop it or, worse, use the leaves whole, they never really soften up and are unpleasant in the mouth, no matter how much flavor they may add. They can even pose a choking hazard. I think 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of dried dill would be an acceptable substitute (or 1 T. fresh) because although it won't taste the same, it is used a lot in Greek cooking and should be delicious with the feta and olives.

I hope if you try this recipe, you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was. Now if only I knew how to say "Bon appétit!" in Greek!

Scones and More Scones

2011-08-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

I've been doing more baking than usual lately, and I'm especially happy with the scones I've made from recipes in Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café. She gives only two actual recipes, with suggestions for variations, but unfortunately, the recipes aren't included on her otherwise quite wonderful website, http://www.molliekatzen.com . So I'll have to provide them.

I made these first; they're the Corn Scones on page 93. I added 1/2 cup of currants. We had them for breakfast with a scoop of cottage cheese, some carrot juice, and some wonderful Brazilian coffee that one of Joe's grad students brought back from a trip home. It was a great start to the day. Joe has commented on the interesting "topography" of these scones, their little hills and valleys and canyons, which reflect the buttery flakiness of the scones themselves. But they're not too buttery or sweet, unlike many we buy in bakeries - just buttery and sweet enough, and very satisfying. One of the nicest things about both these recipes is the way they make use of more than just all-purpose flour - the first with cornmeal and the second with bran.

These are the Ginger-Oat variation of the Bran Scones on page 92, with the addition of 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots. I adore ginger in both sweet and savory dishes, and I can happily eat chunks of crystallized or candied ginger just like candy. I also absolutely love dried fruits and keep several different kinds in the kitchen. They add so much to all kinds of thins, from oatmeal to baked goods to something as simple as a bowl of dried fruit and nuts for snacking.

In addition to their deliciousness, Katzen's method for making scones is wonderfully easy, using the food processor and no other bowls! In making scones, it's important that the ingredients are cold, especially the butter, to ensure flakiness, and the quickness of mixing things up in the food processor means things don't warm up too much and that the gluten in the flour doesn't get developed, which would result in an entirely different texture, and scones are all about texture. So, without further ado, here are the recipes.

CORN SCONES - makes 6 large or 8 smaller ones

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup cornmeal

2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you like things

6 Tbsp. cold butter

2/3 cup cold buttermilk

1 large egg

1/2 cup currants (my addition)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly spray both a baking tray (I like to line mine with unbleached parchment paper and then spray it) and a 1/3 cup measure with nonstick spray.

Place flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a food processor and process briefly to combine them.

Cut butter into thin slices and distribute them over the dry mixture. Using several long pulses, process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

Pour the buttermilk into a 2-cup liquid measure; add the egg and beat with a small whisk or fork till blended; stir in currants. With the processor running, pour buttermilk mixture through the feed tube and as soon as the batter comes together - just 2 or 3 seconds, really! - turn off the machine.

Remove the blade and scrape the batter that's stuck to it into the processor bowl. Use the 1/3 cup measure to scoop out blobs of batter and place them on the baking tray, leaving them as far apart as you can. I make 8 from this recipe and they're plenty big enough.

Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown spots appear all over. Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

GINGER-OAT SCONES makes 6 - 9 (because of the added dried apricots, I got 9)

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup oat bran

1/3 cup rolled oats

2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup minced crystallized ginger

6 Tbsp. cold butter

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

1/2 cup quartered dried apricots

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly spray both a baking tray (I like to line mine with unbleached parchment paper and then spray it) and a 1/3 cup measure with nonstick spray.

Place flour, oat bran, rolled oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and crystallized ginger in a food processor and process briefly to combine them.

Cut butter into thin slices and distribute them over the dry mixture. Using several long pulses, process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

Pour the buttermilk into a 2-cup liquid measure; add the egg and beat with a small whisk or fork till blended; stir in apricots. With the processor running, pour buttermilk mixture through the feed tube and as soon as the batter comes together - just 2 or 3 seconds, really! - turn off the machine.

Remove the blade and scrape the batter that's stuck to it into the processor bowl. Use the 1/3 cup measure to scoop out blobs of batter and place them on the baking tray, leaving them as far apart as you can. I made 9 from this recipe and they were just the right size.

Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown spots appear all over. Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

If you've never made scones, these are wonderful recipes to start with. In fact, I can't say too much about Sunlight Café. It's a wonderful book and worth the price just for the muffin and scone recipes, but Katzen gives you so much more! Bon appétit!

Comfort Food and Love: A Bit of a Rant

2011-08-24T13:28:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday Joe had oral surgery preparatory to dental implants. It was out-patient surgery but he had general anesthesia, so he was pretty much out of it all of the first day and quite mellow with pain medication the second. His mouth is still sensitive, so he's not eating anything too chewy or crunchy just yet, though we're well past the protein shakes three meals a day stage.
Then a couple of nights ago he asked for tomato soup, so I made some based on the recipe in The New Laurel's Kitchen, with just a couple of minor variations:

I looked for a link to that recipe but couldn't find one (there are links to other recipes from that book on the web, however), so here it is, with a few minor tweaks.

Creamy Tomato Soup
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 good-sized carrot, chopped
1 T. oil
3/4 tsp. dried oregano or 1 1/2 tsp. fresh
1 1/2 tsp. dried basil or 1 T. fresh (the general rule is to use twice as much fresh herb as dried)
4 cups cut-up tomatoes or 2 14 oz. cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 - 3 cups hot vegetable (or chicken) stock
3/4 tsp. salt or to taste (some commercial stocks are pretty salty)
pepper to taste
1 cup whole milk (or 1/2 cup dried milk powder blended with enough water to make 1 cup liquid milk)

In a big pot, sauté the onion, celery, and carrot in the oil until soft. Add oregano, basil, and tomatoes and simmer gently about 5 minutes. Add the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer another 10 minutes or so.
Remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to lift out the solids and transfer to a blender or food processor. My standard-sized blender is just big enough for this. Now be careful when you purée hot things - the pressure can build up unpleasantly and lead to a real mess. I take the clear plastic thing out of the middle of the blender lid and put a clean folded dish towel over the opening, holding it on with my hand. That's what I've seen the pros do on the cooking shows and it seems to allow enough air in to avoid explosions while keeping the lid on (literally). Blend until smooth and then return to the pot along with the milk to reheat a moment before serving.

Yes, it would be much easier to open a can of Campbell's soup, and when I was a kid, that lovely red label did mean comfort - Joe still likes it but he says he likes mine better (I suppose he has to say that, but I do believe him). Certainly Campbell's is cheaper than homemade. But I just don't like canned soup. Maybe it's un-American, but that's the way it is. I don't hate it, at least not the tomato soup, but I really don't like it.
When we were kids my grandmother bought Campbell's tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup. My brother absolutely adored the cream of mushroom. Maybe he still does. I thought it was okay. But now I truly do dislike it. I just don't understand the appeal; I can always taste it, no matter what it's in. It's the reason we don't have green bean casserole at Thanksgiving, though I'm sure there are recipes that don't involve cans of soup, cans of beans, and cans of fried onions. Maybe I just like green beans too much to subject them to such cruel treatment.
Last night Joe asked for macaroni and cheese so I made a big pot of it, again from scratch. I don't know if I'd still like the Kraft version that I used to think of as comfort food years ago. Joe admits to a guilty fondness for it. Anyway, I was planning for leftovers and there were none.
Tastes change over time and with exposure to different foods. The cheese sandwiches I used to eat with Campbell's tomato soup were made with Velveeta and Miracle Whip on spongy white bread and I loved them. I don't think I even tasted real mayonnaise until I left home. I was a white bread kid until I moved in with a roommate who only ate whole wheat and I thought, "Yeah, why not, if it's important to her?" Of course that was also in San Francisco, one of the world's great food cities, a city which changed my life in many ways, but Lorraine Brown, with her insistence on whole wheat bread, deserves recognition, wherever she is today.
I find all this very interesting, and I am concerned about our country's continuing shift to more and more processed foods. Michael Pollan, in In Defense of Food, offers a very readable treatment of the topic, along with the sensible advice that we not eat anything our grandmothers would not have recognized as food. Maybe, given my grandmother's use of canned soups, that should be our great-grandmothers. In The End of Overeating, David A. Kessler, M.D. explains how the processed food folks get us hooked on their products by the sneaky and clever addition of way more sugar, salt, and fat than real food needs.
To come back to today's title, food is one of the ways humans have always offered comfort and shown love, and providing real food just seems more loving to me, though I understand that our lives are busy and our culture has conditioned us to believe that processed foods are quicker and taste better. And I'm not so pure myself - I have my bad food flings, but mostly we do eat healthy food that doesn't come in boxes with ingredients very few of us can either recognize or pronounce. So that's my rant for today. I think it's past time for lunch.

Dolce Italiano

2011-08-20T08:34:00.001-07:00

For my birthday, back in April, our friends Patrick and Rita gave me a wonderful cookbook, Dolce Italiano by Gina de Palma, the pastry chef at Mario Batali's Babbo restaurant. The first thing I made was the lemon sorbetto, which is better than the same thing at Macaroni Grill - although I liked what I had at Macaroni Grill enough to want to make my own ;-). But the latest thing I've made from this lovely cookbook is the fantastic Sweet Grape Focaccia (Schiacciata d'Uva).
You can find de Palma's recipe at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_878212_27/102-4922359-3547367?ie=UTF8&docId=1000135161&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=browse&pf_rd_r=1E4C5H5RXM87FQ77214M&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=310474901&pf_rd_i=1102650 . My play-by-play commentary follows:

Here's the Schiacciata on the cooling rack, looking rather less impressive than in real life (the browner-than-usual top is because for some reason it wasn't browning so I popped it under the broiler for a minute). It's very big, having been baked in the largest rimmed cookie sheet I have, 9" x 18", and amazingly rich and tender, since unlike the usual focaccia, it's sweet (but not too sweet) and made with 3 sticks of butter and 6 eggs. BUT, it is a very big pastry! De Palma says it will serve 10 to 12 but those would be quite large servings - this pan would give you 18 three-inch squares.
It's a yeast bread, but very delicate, and with no kneading. I started it around 8 in the morning and had it ready in time to pack up a quarter of it to take to my mom's for lunch.

I like the rustic look of cooking parchment tied with yarn, but I learned in doing this that regular Scotch tape doesn't stick to parchment. Maybe stickers would work . . . . there must be something one could use.

This is the first step, proofing the yeast in warm water and milk. I love the way the surface looks as the tiny bubbles appear and disappear, creating a sort of extraterrestrial or lunar map effect.

Then you beat in 1 1/2 cups flour to make a sponge:

and leave it for its first rise.

Then it goes into the mixer bowl (where I will start it next time - de Palma has you using two bowls but that's just silly, since it means more dishes to wash) for the rest of the ingredients and another rise in a buttered bowl.

After rising it goes into (onto?) the pan. You can see how puffy and delicate the dough is. I line my pan with parchment and then spray it with cooking spray, both because I'm not a big fan of cleaning up baked on stuff on cookie sheets and because, when it's done, you can just lift it out in one piece by carefully picking up the parchment extending out at the ends of the pan to transfer it to a cooling rack. Otherwise the large, delicate pastry may break - alternatively, you could just cool it in the pan.

De Palma says to poke little holes in the dough with your fingers and put the grapes in, or you can just pour the grapes over the dough and push them in where they fall (my method). Then sprinkle the dough with some raw or turbinado sugar and bake it. I use Zulka, a raw sugar from Mexico that's less expensive than the raw or turbinado sugar at the natural food stores; it's available it the Hispanic supermarkets here in Tucson: El Super and Food City. (El Super is a fairly new addition to the supermarket scene here and I love it for its wonderful produce, like green garbanzos and verdolagas, and its amazing deli and bakery, as well as its reasonable prices. Joe loves it too - when we first went he said it was like going to a food museum and getting to take the exhibits home with us!)

So here's the Schiacciata ready for the oven and in 18 - 20 minutes it's done.
It's so easy and so delicious, and I think it would be wonderful with other fruits as well: cherries, sliced peaches or plums . . . . Di Palma uses Concord grapes but those are hard to find here in the Southwest, so I used seedless red grapes and they worked very well. Sometimes we get wonderful black seedless grapes and when I have the chance I'll try those. She specifies 2 cups of grapes, but I used a few more, since they were large grapes. I'd say, start with 2 cups of fruit and then add more if you think you'd like it.
And I really do think you'll like it!

2011-08-19T15:13:00.001-07:00

Oh my, it's been a long time since my last posting! Here's one thing I've accomplished in the interim.

This is a gift for a little girl who was born August 8. I haven't actually seen her yet, not even a picture, but I'm sure she's lovely. Her mother was one of Joe's students several years ago and she and her parents became our dear friends.
Now their family has added a generation, and I am reminded that in a way this photo also links generations of my family. My mother made the afghan squares some years ago when she was still crocheting and recently gave a box of them to me; I assembled them and added the edging, so in a very real way it's a gift from both of us.
The oak rocker in the picture dates back to 1919. My maternal grandparents bought it - from the Sears catalogue, I think - when their first child, my aunt, was born, so that my great-grandmother could rock her in it when they came to visit. It wasn't an expensive piece and I don't suppose the experts on Antiques Roadshow would tell me it would make my fortune at auction, but I'm so happy it's still in the family. It gives me a warm feeling of belonging to something that started long before I was born and will continue through our children and grandchildren, generation after generation. I expect our friends in New Mexico are having similar feelings as they embrace the newest member of their family, and I hope that when she is wrapped in this blanket, she feels the love that went into it.

By the Beautiful Sea Part 2

2011-07-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's good to visit Laguna Beach on a weekday when everything, including the beach, is less crowded, and if you're willing to walk a couple of blocks you can find a free parking space. We found ours up the hill a bit, across from the high school and some charming cottages; there are five of these in a row.
Our first destination was the beach, after we got some coffee, that is. En route to Starbucks we found this welcoming sign to make us smile.

Happily caffeinated, we made our way to the beach. I took off my sandals and rolled up my jeans to wade in the surf; I got my jeans wet anyway, but didn't mind.

We couldn't tell if the tide was coming in or going out, but it washed up a lot of seaweed and then arranged it artistically in the foam. Nature's art is so much better than ours (but we keep creating anyway).

The beach is in the middle of town and draws all kinds of people (and seagulls, of course),

and there are good public restrooms with outdoor showers for hosing off the sand and salt. As we headed that way I heard someone playing the "Blue Danube Waltz" on an accordion, so I dug in my bag for a dollar and followed the music. The accordionist apologized for not accepting tips! We chatted a few minutes and I told him that earlier Joe had remarked that for some reason, every time he drives Sam's (my uncle's) car, he hears the "Blue Danube Waltz" in his head.
On the way back to the car we came to two lovely churches, side by side. The first was Episcopal and not open on a Wednesday afternoon, but we thought the second, the American Catholic Church, Saint Francis by-the-Sea, might be.

We didn't actually know what the American Catholic Church was, but we soon found out. As we approached the entrance, we met a woman who said she was about to open it up for a tour and we were welcome to join, then she let us in and talked with us while she lit the candles and turned on some music. It turns out that her grandfather, Percy Wise Clarkson, had built both this church and the Episcopal church next door, where he had first served but then left that pulpit to follow his own vision by establishing the American Catholic Church in the early 1930s. It was revolutionary and far ahead of its time in its insistence on racial and gender equality and Bishop Clarkson's ideals, now familiar to many of us since they've become part of New Age philosophy and spirituality, are beautifully recorded on the rafters of the sanctuary.

The sanctuary is tiny, seating about fifty people at most, but beautiful, and most certainly a sacred space.

While we waited for the tour group, which turned out to be another couple plus their tour guide, Bishop Clarkson's granddaughter, Jessica deStefano, told us more about her grandfather, his church, and its current bishop, who is ill, so there are no masses at this time, though the church itself is open on Sundays from 9 to 10 for meditation and prayer. We learned later that Jessica is an artist - Joe found her website, http://www.jessicadestefano.com/index.htm, where you can see her and some of her lovely work, some serious, some delightfully whimsical. We wound up joining the tour and enjoying it very much. The other couple were very nice, as was their guide, Lorraine Brown, who turned out to be a U of A graduate; we knew we looked familiar to each other! I tried to find her online but couldn't, nor any listings for tour guides in Laguna Beach, but I think she'd be a wonderful one, if only we knew how to get in touch with her.
When we got back to Sam and Vera's, Joe googled American Catholic Church; it does exist outside Laguna Beach but Saint Francis by-the-Sea seems to be independent of the national organization, which is very small. It is located at 430 Park Avenue, just up the hill from Laguna Beach's main street, and although there's no website for the church itself, it's mentioned on several others. The contact phone is (949) 497-4678. It's well worth a visit.

Our serendipitous tour of Saint Francis marked the end of a great day of exploring: hiking, picnicking, strolling along the Dana Point harbor, wading in the surf, and not going into a single shop or restaurant, except for that one necessary brief stop at Starbucks! How wonderful it was to top it off by spending time with friendly and interesting people who introduced us to a piece of history we hadn't known about and its beautiful setting. Mark Twain was right: "...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people."

By the Beautiful Sea 2011

2011-07-02T15:45:00.005-07:00

On Tuesday Joe and I flew over to visit my aunt and uncle in Corona del Mar, Orange County, CA. We left as the temperature was climbing to 115 in Tucson and arrived on a cool (mid-70s) and beautiful sunny day - we could smell the sea air as soon as we stepped out of the airport!

On Wednesday my aunt and uncle generously insisted we take their car to go do the tourist thing, and they didn't exactly have to twist our arms. We always enjoy going down to Laguna Beach but this time, in a spirit of exploration, we drove through LB and headed farther south, though not too far. At Dana Point the highway seemed to run out, literally, so rather than get on Interstate 5 we decided to explore what had become Las Ramblas Drive (or Road, or something) to its dead end, where we found a trailhead leading up a hill that promised interesting views. It was time for a hike!

These thistles are prickly and probably non-native, but they have their own beauty, I think (and they made me want an artichoke - one of their cousins - for dinner!). One of my favorite novels, Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, has a supernatural and not very nice character called "the man with the thistledown hair." Well, here's some thistledown. Lovely, isn't it? It's easy to imagine what a headful of such hair would look like.

At last we neared the top

and looked down the other side

to where too many people live in too many houses rushing all the way down to the sea. But it's not hard to see why so many people want to live there, especially on such a gorgeous day. We enjoyed the view for a while and then (temporarily) turned our backs on all that civilization and started back down.

On the way up, the trail reminded me of these lines from Christina Rossetti (though she wrote them in an entirely different metaphorical context):

Does the road wind uphill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

In the next picture you'll see the end of the road, where we parked; if you can pick it out, the tiny little dot on the far left of the wider road on the left is my uncle's car, so you can see it was a bit of a climb, especially as we circled the hill rather than going straight up, choosing the longer rather than the much steeper trail (though we did take the steeper trail going down, which in retrospect wasn't terribly smart).

We were hungry by the time we got back to the car (no surprise) so we stopped at a grocery store, bought a big deli Greek salad and some sushi, and ate our picnic on a park bench at the Dana Point harbor. Then we walked some more, around the shops and up and back the full length of the harbor and all its marinas, which are lovely but would be more interesting if 99.9% of the boats weren't painted white.

We tossed pennies into the water for luck, and I wondered what the story was behind the cell phone down there in the water. Maybe its owner's luck had run out somehow . . . .

The nicest part of our walk was the park that runs parallel to the breakwater,

where people were enjoying the water, where I learned that Dana Point is named for Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who wrote the classic Two Years Before the Mast (which I've never read, but now I think I will),

and where we made the acquaintance of several of the dramatically colored Dana Point population of California ground squirrels. Some of these friendly little guys are almost entirely white, while others are more like pinto ponies or appaloosas, and they're not afraid of people at all, no doubt because they're used to being fed. I felt guilty that we'd eaten all our lunch and had nothing to offer them.

Feeling relaxed and refreshed by the cool sea breeze, and having fallen in love with Dana Point for its charm, its relatively small size, and its relative lack of pretension, we headed back the way we had come, stopping for a while in Laguna Beach on the way, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait at least until tomorrow for the second half of that day's adventure.

The Good Herbs - Mint

2011-06-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Mint is such a lovely herb with so many uses. It lends its flavor to delicious foods and beverages both sweet and savory - would Girl Scout cookies have become such a tradition without Thin Mints? Could the Kentucky Derby go on without mint juleps? Tabouli without mint is just - well, it's not tabouli. For some people, leg of lamb requires mint jelly and after the first time I tried it, I became a convert (mint jelly's as easy to make as any other jelly - easier than many).

The zucchini are producing well in our garden (so I guess I'm doing a good job as a bee substitute - Joe's suggested I should wear a black and yellow striped rugby shirt and hum loudly as I go about my morning pollinating chores) and so it's time for one of my favorite simple soups, this one adapted from a 2007 recipe at Epicurious.com:

Zucchini - Mint Soup (serves 4)

2 tsp. olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and diced

2 - 3 cloves garlic, peeled and pushed through a garlic press or minced fine

3 medium zucchini, in 1" cubes

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup milk

2 handfuls fresh mint (leaves and tender stems; discard any tough-ish stems)

salt and pepper to taste

In a large pan sauté the onion in olive oil over medium heat till soft. Add garlic and zucchini and sauté another minute or 2 or 3, then add stock and milk and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the mint, then use a slotted spoon to transfer the solids (and some of the liquid) to the blender and purée. Hot liquids in the blender can be temperamental; I take out the clear plastic insert that goes in the middle of the cover and hold a clean dishtowel over the opening - that seems to let enough of the hot air escape to avoid the kind of dramatic whoosh and possible explosion that can occur if you cover it too tightly.

Return the puréed soup to the pan and stir it all together, season to taste with salt and pepper, then serve in bowls garnished with a few mint leaves, if you like.

Spearmint, pictured above, is used mostly for culinary purposes; peppermint is more often used for medicinal reasons. Peppermint tea can ease various tummy aches (and kids usually like it). According to Judith Fitzsimmons and Paula M. Bousquet, authors of Aromatherapy through the Seasons, a drop of peppermint oil massaged into your temples can help alleviate a headache, especially if you can sit quietly with your feet up and your eyes closed for a little while (but keep the peppermint oil away from your eyes!).

Fitzsimmons and Bousquet also give a couple of formulas for rubs to use when you've over-exerted or strained muscles. I like this one (partly because the recipe is so simple, but also because it's effective):

Mix 10 drops each Peppermint, Eucalyptus, and Rosemary essential oils into 2 Tbsp. of a carrier oil (plain old vegetable oil works fine, but you can use jojoba, olive, avocado or most other oils as well).

Ice the area first if you've got a sprain, then massage with the oil blend. (Fitzsimmons' website, http://www.aromatherapysolutions.com/, gives some other recipes in the articles section.)

Peppermint is invigorating and can help you feel alert and ready to start the day, especially in partnership with rosemary. In my post of December 30, 2010, I gave the recipe for Pantry Bath Salts. The version Joe likes uses 15 drops each of peppermint and rosemary essential oil.

The following "All-Purpose Spray" from Aromatherapy through the Seasons is meant to lift the spirits as well as clear the air, but the authors say it can also be used when ants invade the house (since that's happening right here, right now, I'm going to give it a try):

All-Purpose Spray

4 drops Lavender essential oil

2 drops Peppermint essential oil

2 drops Tea Tree essential oil

Mix into 2 cups of water and put in a spray bottle. Shake before using.

I first heard of mint as a pest repellent when I was a little girl and we started getting mice in the house. A neighbor suggested planting mint at the foundation at the back of the house, where we thought they were getting in. Whether it was the mint or a new cat, the mice vanished. Apparently ants don't like mint either; as I said, I'm about to test that theory, because I really hate the idea of chemical poisons.

Mint is easy to grow, though it's happier in the ground than in a pot, no doubt because it has dreams of empire, i.e., it's one of the more invasive herbs you can plant. Here in hot, dry Arizona, I have mine in a relatively shady back corner of the garden where it gets plenty of water and yes, I am resigned to the idea that it will spread. I've tried various ways of containing it. One of the best, in the yard of a previous house, was to cut out the bottom of a plastic wastebasket, sink the basket in the ground so it wouldn't show, and plant the mint in it. The sides of the basket kept it from spreading out but with the bottom cut out it had plenty of drainage. I didn't do that this time, and I suppose I may regret it, but a thriving patch of mint is a beautiful thing to see, and a useful addition to any garden.

Sex in the Garden

2011-05-29T11:38:00.001-07:00

Please calm down! I'm talking about plants here, specifically squashes and their near relatives: pumpkins, gourds, melons, etc. Up until a few years ago our garden produced bumper crops of all these crops, but as the bee population declines, so do the fruits of these plants. We should all be worried about the lack of bees; without these vital pollinators, our food supply is in serious danger.

As you probably already know, plants in the squash family produce two kinds of flowers - male and female - and the pollen has to get transferred from the male flower to the female flower in order to produce a fruit. We used to be able to rely on the bees for that, but no longer. Therefore, many gardeners have taken on the task of pollination to make sure of getting a crop at all.

It's easy to tell the flowers apart. Female flowers will have a little fruit at their base - a tiny zucchini or yellow summer squash or pumpkin, etc., and a more complex structure in the heart of the blossom - the pistil(s). Male flowers have a longer, slender stem, with a single pollen-covered stamen inside the flower and no sign of a baby squash at the base. Here's a bunch of male zucchini, yellow summer squash, and pumpkin blossoms - yes, they all look alike. The stamen in the middle of the blossom is easy to see.

The last couple of years I've been trying to hand-pollinate by following a method I saw on TV, picking the male flower, stripping off the golden petals, and using the pollen-covered stamen directly to apply the pollen to the female flower's pistil. It hasn't worked very well and I think I may have been overly enthusiastic and forceful. Some garden authorities recommend using a soft-bristled paintbrush to transfer the pollen from one to the other, and this year I'm trying that. Perhaps the female flowers will appreciate the gentler touch.

Before I could try the new approach, though, I found some female blossoms I'd missed, with their attached baby squashes, so I harvested them to make a little breakfast frittata. I took off the blossoms and sliced the squashes; you can see slices from the siamese twin squash on the left, above, at the front in the picture below:

Then I pulled the petals off the blossoms in the bouquet in the first photo, discarded the stems and stamens, stacked up what was left, sliced them crosswise into narrow strips, and separated them into a pile of loose "ribbons":

I lightly sautéed the squash slices in my little 8" cast iron skillet (I was only serving 2) over medium heat in a little olive oil, adding in 1 chopped tomato after a couple of minutes. While the vegetables were cooking, I beat 3 eggs and then stirred in 2 thinly sliced green onions and the squash blossom strips, along with a little salt and pepper, poured the mixture over the squash and tomato in the pan, and reduced the heat to medium low.

I sprinkled it all with an ounce or so of grated cheese, in this case one of those little individual BabyBel cheese balls wrapped in red wax, though whatever's handy is usually just fine (that's what was handy), and some chopped cilantro (parsley or basil would be fine, too), put the lid on, and left it alone for a few minutes till it was cooked through and puffed up a bit. I used that time to make toast and mix up a fruit cup of sliced banana, orange sections, and a few strawberries that had somehow gotten left behind from dessert the night before.

It was a perfect breakfast for two. Though the squash blossoms didn't add much flavor, they looked very pretty, and given the color they must have contributed some beta-carotene and perhaps some fiber. I've made stuffed squash blossoms in the past, which are delicious but also labor-intensive (they do impress guests), but this was simpler and just fine. I'll include the blossoms in omelets and frittatas when I have them, and I think they would also be a nice addition to a salad or tossed into a light, brothy soup at the last minute.

I was out in the garden earlier this morning, making sure all the female blossoms got the necessary attention, and it seems the kinder, gentler approach with the soft paintbrush is working. We'll be harvesting some zucchini tomorrow, and the one pumpkin I pollinated a couple of days ago is plump and healthy and has grown to the size of a tennis ball. So I'm feeling hopeful for a better harvest this year, and if it truly is abundant, I may post some more recipes for using up all those zucchini!

The Good Herbs

2011-05-28T13:16:00.013-07:00

I was surprised, when we began gardening here, to find that many herbs do very well in Tucson's challenging climate. Some last year-round, while others, like basil, dill, and cilantro, are annuals limited by the season. The basil's doing very well now; I just made a big pot of red sauce to use some that I cut this morning. Dill and cilantro, however, are only available fresh from the garden in late fall, winter, and early spring.

This photo of dill was taken one morning right after I'd watered it. I planted the seeds in a wine barrel around a 4-foot tall chaste tree sapling. By the time we harvested the last of it, the dill was nearly three feet tall, a dense thicket completely obscuring the chaste tree's trunk. So, what to do with all that dill? It was the wrong time of year for cucumbers in quantity and I didn't really feel like making pickles anyway. I love to make a cucumber, yogurt, onion, and dill raita (or mast va khiar, as it's called in Persian) to serve with curries or khoreshes (those wonderful Persian stews that are served over rice), but even if we ate that concoction three times a day we couldn't have kept up with the dill harvest. It was time to experiment.

For many years, my favorite dill product has been Larrupin' restaurant's mustard-dill sauce. Larrupin', located north of Arcata in Trinidad, California, with wonderful food and amazing ocean views, was a favorite place for celebrations when we lived up there, and the owners are considerate enough to bottle their delicious sauce, which can be bought in area markets. Friends and relatives who come to visit us are often kind enough to bring a bottle or two. But could I make it myself? As it turned out, yes, I could!

The recipe I used is adapted from one in The Cooking of Scandinavia in the old Time-Life Foods of the World series, and it couldn't be simpler! Because I had so much dill, I quadrupled the recipe 3 times (but I don't think twelvetupled is actually a word).

Mustard-Dill Sauce (or Gravlaxsas)

To make about 3/4 cup, in a small, deep bowl combine:

4 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. powdered mustard

3 Tbsp. sugar

2 Tbsp. white vinegar

Whisk everything together and then whisk in

1/3 cup vegetable oil,

a little at a time, until it thickens and forms a mayonnaise-like emulsion. Finally, stir in

3 Tbsp. chopped fresh dill

The sauce will keep in a tightly closed jar in the refrigerator for several days, even a couple of weeks or more, though you may need to shake or whisk it before using.

Alternatively, as you can see from the photo above, you can mix up everything but the dill in the food processor, then add the chopped dill in at the end and pulse a couple of times. I don't recommend putting the dill into the food processor at the beginning; it will taste fine (though not exactly the same), but instead of a lovely golden sauce with flecks of green it will just be a less interesting solid light green.

Now don't get all high-falutin' gourmet and imagine it would be better if you used olive oil and some fancy wine vinegar. Swedish cooks have been making this for centuries and they know what they're doing. White vinegar has the sharpness you need, and anything more than a simple vegetable oil (I use canola) would just interfere with the desired flavor.

As I said, I had a lot of dill. I didn't want to experiment with canning, since it's such a simple, uncooked sauce based on the fresh herb, but what about freezing it?

Yes, it was a success! I'd found these 1-cup Ball freezer containers earlier on a closeout sale at a ridiculously low price and bought all they had, and they were perfect. (I just had to put my Russian nesting doll measuring cups in the picture to show them off! Aren't they cute?) The sauce freezes perfectly and now that we have a year-round supply, it's pretty much replaced tartar sauce or cocktail sauce as our go-to condiment to serve with fish or seafood. So, plant dill and make this sauce. See if you like it as much as we do. If I hadn't moved to Arizona I'd probably never have tried to make it myself, but I'm so glad I did!

This last photo shows some of the rest of the dill hanging in the kitchen to dry (I said there was a lot) - I think you can pick it out from the regular hanging houseplants. Once it was dried and the leaves separated from the stems, I had a cupful to put in a jar in the cupboard. The dried dill actually works just as well as fresh in a raita, I think. Here's my recipe, the Persian version, which is how I learned to make it, but it's equally delicious with Indian food:

Mast va Khiar

1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (nonfat is fine, Greek is rich and delicious)

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped

1 Tbsp. dried dill or 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh dill

salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and refrigerate for 1/2 hour before serving.

Desert Oasis

2011-05-27T11:51:00.001-07:00

Moving to Tucson from the north coast of California entailed both culture shock and climate shock. On June 4, 1992, shortly after 5 p.m. we turned off the interstate onto Speedway Boulevard, which Life magazine some years earlier had called the ugliest street in America. It was rush hour and 104 degrees. I didn't know then about Life's assessment of Speedway, but what I saw was so alien to me, after years of cool weather, listening to the sound of surf from my bedroom window, and seeing green wherever I looked, that I felt like bursting into tears and begging Joe to turn around and head home. Now Tucson is home and I love it, but as we are once more dropped into the blazing mouth of summer, we look for places where we can comfortably be outdoors, rather than staying huddled inside with the air conditioner cranked up.

One such place, which has been there many years but which we recently visited for the first time, is the Sweetwater Wetlands http://cms3.tucsonaz.gov/water/sweetwater, on the northwest side of Tucson, just off I-10, past Aufmuth Motors, and nestled up against the Carpenters Union training facility. It's an amazing wildlife preserve designed in partnership with the wastewater treatment facility, much like the Arcata Marsh http://arcatamarshfriends.org/ outside our old hometown, Arcata, California, in northern Humboldt County, which served as inspiration for its development. Both the north coast of California and southern Arizona are on important flyways (and are major destinations for birders), and so both these preserves are well-populated with wildlife.

These ducks were the first wild creatures we saw, just a few feet from the parking lot. A little further up the path we met a woman who'd just seen a bobcat, but then a tree-trimming crew drove up and they must have scared it off. We see bobcats occasionally on our morning walks in the neighborhood, along with other wild creatures like javelina and coyotes, but it's a thrill I never tire of.

Scenes like this one are common in more temperate areas like the north coast or west-central Idaho, where I grew up. Back then I took tules and cattails for granted, though we didn't have pink-flowered tamarisks, a lovely but unwelcome and invasive non-native here. I also took for granted yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds, both of which can be found at Sweetwater. We didn't see any yellow-headed blackbirds - it must be too late to catch them in their spring migration - but red-wings abounded, even if they didn't want to sit still long enough for me to take their pictures. At least this fellow was temporarily cooperative!

Sweetwater seems smaller than the Arcata Marsh, but it hasn't been around as long, and perhaps it will expand, if developers don't snatch up all the surrounding land first. Some of the paths are paved but even those that aren't are smooth and flat enough to make them accessible to some people who might find many trails too challenging. Benches appear frequently, and as birders know, if you stop a while and sit quietly you're likely to see things you'd miss if you just kept pushing ahead. The viewing platform below, extending out into one of the ponds, lets you get up close and personal with the frogs and toads.

I only wish there was some way to photograph the sounds the creatures who live here make, so as to share them. The amphibian voices vary in depth but all share a rich, wet, fleshy resonance, in counterpoint to the higher, sharper songs and speech of the birds, so that all together they create a piercingly lovely natural cantata. Of course there are CDs of nature sounds - I like to put one on when I have trouble getting to sleep - but nothing can duplicate the magic of being there, wherever "there" is.

When I was a graduate student teaching composition, one of my advisors observed that the art of writing is the art of paying attention, and I agree. I've also noticed that many people can only see what they expect to see. For example, if the car keys are on the table but two feet away from where their owner expects them to be, sometimes they might as well be in another room! In nature, I think it's especially important to approach our surroundings without expectations, to be childlike and open to wonder, so that we can see what is there, like the duck in the picture above, scooting through the water with his bill slightly open, sucking up not just water, but bugs and algae and whatever other nutritious goodies float in this pond.

For my part, I've been paying particularly close attention to reflections the past few years, perhaps because, living in the desert, I like to be mindful of all facets of the experience when I'm near water. After all, water makes up most of what we are, so it's hardly surprising that our bodies and spirits are drawn to it. And reflection is such a lovely, multi-faceted word. The surface of the water reflects the plants and topography around it, the birds who fly over it, the animals who come to drink from it; the mirror reflects back to us who we are, at least on the surface; and what we say and write reflects who we are beneath the surface. Within the privacy of our own minds and spirits, we can reflect upon our experiences, our place in the world, our relation to and inter-relatedness with the rest of that world.

Since we spend so much time indoors, it's especially important to be outside when we can, appreciating and reflecting upon the things we did not create, that continue to exist without us (or in spite of us), that were here before we arrived and will be here long after we are gone. That frog in the pond with his rich baritone voice is, I imagine, just as important to the world as any one of us, and since his life is less cluttered with complications of his own making, he may enjoy it more. I find that perspective comforting and liberating, since it helps me take myself and my (mostly self-made) problems less seriously. Mary Hunter Austin expressed this idea well in The Land of Little Rain (1903):

Wheeling to their stations in the sky, [the stars]

make the poor world-fret of no account.

Of no account you who lie out there watching,

nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from you

and howls and howls.

Celebrating New Life

2011-05-23T12:37:00.001-07:00

I went to a baby shower on Saturday afternoon, expecting the usual, food, chat, presents, and that a good time would be had by all. I expected a lot of plastic things, Diaper Genies, etc. chosen from the registry at Target. I knew that she and her husband had chosen not to learn this baby's sex beforehand, so the quilt I made is mostly yellow. They think it will be a boy, but in spite of the blue, it should also be fine for a girl - I'm getting awfully tired of the sea of nothing but pink that little girls seem to swim in these days!

The invitation said there would be a "blessing way," though neither of the parents and none of the participants are Navajo, and I wondered what that was all about, hoping it wasn't going to be some half-baked New Age rip-off of indigenous tradition, but I didn't need to worry. What actually occurred was lovely, and although it contained echoes of various traditions from around the world, it did not feel exploitive or appropriative at all, but rather filled with respect for the traditions we borrowed from, for women, and for the wonder and mystery and beauty of birth. The hostess gave the mother-to-be a copy of the book that inspired the ritual and the overall mood of the celebration:

I love the cover image with the beautiful henna tattoos!

One thing I know was borrowed was the Navajo custom of introducing oneself to the group in terms of ancestry, in this case, each woman's matrilineage: "I'm Victoria, daughter of Patricia, granddaughter of Nettie and Iva, mother of Deirdre. . . ." It's a beautiful way of reminding ourselves to celebrate the people we come from. Each of us lit a candle as we introduced ourselves, and then we each shared a wish, a quotation, or a blessing for our friend, her baby, her family. I hadn't read the invitation carefully enough, because I wasn't prepared for that, but as the sharing moved around the circle I had time to think, and what came to me were these lines from The Prophet:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

So often, in this over-complicated, over-scheduled, over-controlling world, we forget that, but I don't think this mother will.

The midwife attended the shower and guided the ritual beautifully. The mother's other friends are, like her, graduate students in the same department at the university, smart, focused academics, but we are also all women, and it was marvelous to see the professional shell that we construct and wear in that academic context melt away so we could just be women, sharing, learning (the midwife taught us much) and enjoying our time together.

This birth will take place at home (it's their second child) and it should be peaceful and wonderful. The midwife said, "Your body knows how to give birth. Your baby knows how to be born." I believe that, but we've so complicated and compartmentalized all aspects of our life that it's hard for us to relax and "do what comes naturally." How could the human race have survived so long, if these weren't things our bodies instinctively know how to do? Certainly situations can arise that require more medical assistance, and it's good that it's available at those times. But the perpetuation of our species is not rocket science, though too many of us have been persuaded that it is, and babies don't need a whole lot of expensive gadgets and potions and lotions, though our consumerist society wants us to think they do.

I feel privileged to have been part of our friend's blessing way, to have shared the joy of welcoming this new little person into the world in the best possible manner, not just with a lot of "stuff" but with genuine love and support. It was an experience that enriched each of us who shared in it.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

2011-05-06T10:57:00.002-07:00

Okay, I admit it, I've never seen Scarface. Too much of a wimp. But I'm not afraid of snakes, except the ones any sensible person should be afraid of, and this common kingsnake is welcome in my garden. He's just a baby, no bigger around than my index finger and maybe two feet long, but he's definitely got attitude. I stumbled upon him, figuratively speaking, about half an hour ago while watering and called Joe to take a look. By the time we got back, the tip of his tail was just disappearing under an overturned flowerpot. I got the camera ready and Joe lifted the pot. The little snake shook his tail like a rattler and, as you can see, raised his head as if to strike. I got the picture and we got out of there to leave the little guy in peace.

Yesterday was the last day of the semester, a good semester that seemed to pass more quickly than most. Many students are leaving for faraway places--home to China or Portugal or Kazakhstan, off to do fieldwork in Chile, etc.--while others will brave the desert summer (we've already settled in to temperatures in the 90s and yesterday it hit 100 in Yuma) and stay here, either because Arizona is home or to attend summer school. Joe and I have about a month off before we go back to teach in a 3-week intensive writing program for grad students, then a couple of weeks off again, then back for a 3-week program for high school students that I half-jokingly describe as writing day camp. It's one of the best parts of the year--the students are so diverse, from all over the Tucson area and all kinds of schools, public, charter, private, with widely varying backgrounds and levels of writing skill. I love watching them develop their skills and friendships with people they might otherwise never get to know, and because some of them have kept in touch with me and told me so, I know they keep those friendships going. Anyone who has a negative opinion of today's youth should spend just one morning at our Summer Institute for Writing and Thinking; they'd quickly change their tune.

Right now I'm happy to have more time in the garden, though the time I spend there will be fairly early in the morning, before it gets too hot. (I have plenty of indoor projects for later in the day.) This is an outdoor project, on the west wall of the garden. The handprints belong to family and friends and we'll continue to add more as people come over and are willing to cover their hands with paint. My next step, though, is to paint the leaves on the tree, and some birds and butterflies, etc. Bahá'u lláh, whose words are painted at the top of this Tree of Life, was the founder of the Baha'i faith. I agree completely with what he says here. It is a sentiment that in our fractured and fractious world is all too easy to forget, and I like being reminded of it whenever I go out to my backyard.

Happy Easter & another poem

2011-04-24T10:27:00.003-07:00

It's a beautiful Easter morning, a perfect spring day on which the world does indeed seem reborn. I'm feeling nostalgic for Easters past, for the annual fluffy pastel dresses and new patent leather shoes, baskets full of candy and eggs we colored the day before.

We didn't buy an Easter lily--they're beautiful but when I've tried to transplant them into the garden, they couldn't take the heat that will soon arrive--but we do have cactus flowers. The red ones bloomed last year but this is the first time for the one with the purple blossom below, and there's another bud on it yet to come.

I didn't think this coreopsis would ever amount to anything. I'd moved it into the herb bed from another bed where I wanted to put something else and it sat for a year as a tiny clump of green leaves, healthy enough but it didn't look like it would ever grow, let alone bloom. However, it wasn't taking up much space so I left it alone, and a couple of weeks ago it suddenly began to take off. This is its first blossom with several more buds about to pop out. Once again I'm reminded of the virtue of patience (and perhaps of benign neglect).

And here's another nasturtium, this on one of the few plants that survived the February frosts. We've been enjoying them in the garden and in our salads; I love the sweet, peppery zing they add.

Last night I took this shot of the jasmine by the front door; it climbs on wires painted to match the wall so they're fairly invisible, and especially at night, the fragrance is positively intoxicating. I love to bury my face in the blossoms and inhale deeply. If only I could truly breathe it in and carry it away with me to draw on for the rest of the day! But alas! such pleasures are truly only of the moment.

And this is Cosmo (again), the furry muse who keeps us company for our morning writing. He is a

lovely golden blossom who blooms all year long.

And now for the poem I promised in the title. As I said at the beginning, it's a morning for nostalgia, so I was thinking way back to when I was a kid and my mom bought Barbra Streisand's first album, and yes, it really is her birthday today:

Today is Barbra Streisand’s birthday

and I sincerely wish her well.

She sang a little song, “Sweet Zoo,”
on her first album, recorded
a long long time ago, about dreaming
of being a series of animals--

fairly evenly divided between

carnivores and herbivores—

I would have said omnivores,

but the polar bear is most definitely

a carnivore. The song ends,
"I enjoy being an oyster."
I love that song and still sing it

with my grandsons. and every time

a child in our family turns five,

we all sing the “I’m Five” song,

which belongs to that child for that year.

And so, dear Barbra,

you have enriched my life

And the lives of those I love,

not so much with your love songs,

although they're very nice,

but with small inspired bits of gentle silliness.

I’m so glad you recorded them.

I’m so glad you were born.

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring (Tra-La!)

2011-04-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is true. I love Gilbert and Sullivan, especially The Mikado, which my mom bought on a couple of 78 rpm vinyl records when I was preschool age. I learned all the songs, even if I didn't know what all the words meant, and they still make me smile, just like the beautiful flowers this time of year. Japan and Washington DC have gorgeous cherry blossoms, but the palo verde trees of the Sonoran desert, currently in spectacular, passionate bloom here, can hold their own quite nicely. I took this picture looking up into the gigantic, that is, much bigger than average, palo verde on the east side of our back yard.

Springtime makes the whole world young again, and tipping my head back to look up into those millions of blossoms I remembered another much-loved part of my childhood, my grandmother's beautifully bound 1906 copy of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I still have that book, with its wonderful illustrations (overlaid with thin sheets of tissue paper) and, unfortunately, a few crayon scribbles put there by my brother, or maybe it was me (to my shame, since I was taught early and well to respect and take care of books), with a beat-up cover and pages that have come loose from their binding. But it is still indescribably precious.

The best part, for me, was the way Hiawatha's grandmother, Nokomis, taught him about the world, about the origins and meanings of things in nature. This is how she explained the rainbow:

'Tis the heaven of flowers you see there; all the wildflowers of the forest,

All the lilies of the prairie, when on earth they fade and perish,

Blossom in that heaven above us. . . .

That's what I think of when I look up into that glorious golden canopy, and I don't even mind the carpet of fallen blossoms on the patio and in the vegetable and flower beds.

The roses are doing well, too, both the miniature ones in the flower bed by the front door and the bigger ones in the back yard, the climber whose blossoms change color as they age and the JFK rose my friend Charlene gave me when she had to move away. The blossoms on the JFK are the best they've been in the three springs I've had it.

I harvested the last of the winter's kale last weekend. The frosts improved the flavor and I wish it could last longer, but better to pick it now before the aphids get to it, as they always do sometime in April. The lacy leaves are as lovely as many flowers, I think.

In its place I planted eggplant, one of the crops that does well here in the summer (I also planted okra, pumpkins, and summer squash; the tepary beans can wait a couple of months yet). And so we plan ahead for the hot time, while taking time to enjoy what we have today.

I haven't posted all my "poem a day for April" efforts, but here's what I wrote this morning in response to a prompt on Poetic Asides, http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/ , to write a poem in ten lines, each of ten syllables, which was a bit more challenging than I expected, especially as I got near the end.

I thought it would be easy, just to write

ten syllables, ten times, to capture a

moment perfectly in such a nice round

number, but getting caught in abstraction,

I found no image, only the yellow

cat curled up beside me, only the quail

calling outside my window to its mate,

only a potted plant needing water

and repotting, and the unforgiving

clock, saying that special moment was past.

Reproductive fitness

2011-04-16T21:54:00.000-07:00

We live out on the far west side of town. The ride home almost gives the illusion of living in the country; we pass through a sort of buffer zone of open space, part of which belongs to the local community college and is crisscrossed with trails on which we and our neighbors walk and run (as does the school's crosscountry team). Then there's Greasewood Park, belonging to the city or county, I forget which, also with numerous trails and a fine place to get some exercise. Behind the houses across the street from us the land drops down into a wide wash, one of many that interconnect and provide wildlife corridors, for coyotes like the one whose picture I posted a while back, bobcats, javelinas, and the quail, rabbits, and other small prey the predators thrive on. The desert is not empty or barren, it is a rich and diverse environment, and the reproductive fitness of those smaller creatures is essential to its health. Even the reproductive fitness of the ants in the picture below--hundreds of them busily harvesting thousands of leaves which are somehow essential to their community's survival--matters to the larger natural world of which we are a part. All of which is my roundabout way of getting to today's April poem, based on a concept I learned about in a physical anthropology course a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Reproductive fitness, the professor called it,

meaning not that the parents were necessarily healthy,

but only that they produced large numbers of offspring,

many of whom would survive and do the same.

We see it in rabbits and mice, starlings and doves.

Joe bought a new stepladder, shiny metal,

yellow plastic on the steps and a shelf

of yellow plastic, left it set up in the garage

where last year the doves tried to build a nest

on the motor of the garage door opener.

One built a nest on the stepladder shelf,

a very tidy nest for a dove, of straw

stolen from the mulch around my snow peas,

and laid one perfect white egg in it.

I’m sure she would have laid more, given the chance.

Four nights ago, while I was in my study,

we heard a commotion I thought was outside

but Joe saw, through the bathroom window,

the neighbors’ white cat with the dove in its mouth,

strolling lazily toward the open gate.

Next morning the garage floor around the ladder

was littered with silver feathers, some

with black and white tips. Everything looked

astonishingly clean. There was no blood.

The ladder was unshaken, though we’d heard it shake.

I climbed up, looked in the nest, found the egg

undisturbed in its Rumpelstiltskin cradle.

I climbed back down and left it there.

We will have to move the ladder soon, I suppose,

fold up the legs and shelf and throw away

nest and egg. It hadn’t been there long,

would have been just a yolk sac and small dot of chick,

and now it will be nothing.

Besides, there are lots more doves.

They define reproductive fitness, in spite

of cats and hawks and kids with BB guns.

We hear them every morning,

gently waking the world with their sweet round voices,

soft music to lure us into the violent day.

another poem for April

2011-04-11T19:27:00.003-07:00

I'm a day behind on my poem a day for April but here's what I just wrote, illustrated with one of last winter's lemons - you'll see why.

You left the sorbetto on the counter too long. It melted.

You put it back in the freezer. It almost tasted
better, refrozen and settled into ice.

I dumped it onto the cutting board and sliced it in half.

The alcohol in it, limoncello, our favorite,

kept it from freezing too hard. Easy to slice.

Slivers of lemon zest had settled to the bottom.

A few caught in my throat. I choked, coughed,

coughed some more. You brought me water.

This is the way the world should be, I think.

We make mistakes. We make the best of them.

One of us chokes. Another brings her water.

Today's poem

2011-04-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning, taking out the garbage

A small whisper of rain

spots the concrete.

Tiny wet broken tiles

evaporate into memory.

Water is so precious everywhere, but here in the desert it assumes a sacredness I would never have thought of when I lived on the north coast of California and kept umbrellas stashed everywhere, in the house, the car, the office.

There, the morning fog rolled in from the ocean over the fields and my ancient rented farmhouse, across the highway and uphill to the redwood forests, and some days the sun never came out. Here, I stop to marvel at a dark cloud topping the first red stripe of sunrise, shaped like something out of a children's book or a child's imagination, a huge, soft creature with a great gaping mouth and a funny bump on its head. Look away to dump the recycling into the barrel, look back, and it's gone.

Maybe, the weatherman said yesterday, maybe we'll get some rain. And we did, for a couple of minutes. Now the patio is dry again, the lovely mosaic of raindrops, like the cloud that announced their possible brief arrival, gone. I listen to water pouring through the hose to the driplines that supply the garden. All the roses are in bud now.

Another Poem for April

2011-04-05T21:06:00.004-07:00

The Bus Driver

Everybody wanted to ride Charlie’s bus.

Little and yellow, it was first in line,

first to leave the junior high

and climb the hill to the high school.

We called it the crackerbox.

The boys cracked jokes with Charlie,

who always one-upped them

in his exotic Oklahoma accent

while winking at the girls.
The same lock of curly black hair
always escaped from under his cowboy hat
to tickle one eyebrow.

I knew his daughter fairly well,

went out once or twice with his son,

but never knew—none of us knew—

that he had a wife who never left the house

and that he drove the bus

(to supplement his army pension)

because it left him free most of the day

for her.

He loved that woman and she

loved only him and her dogs.

When he died she retreated into one room
with the dogs.

Some hippies bought the crackerbox,

painted it purple and drove it to the coast.

His wife moved back to Oklahoma.

She has beautiful long silver hair now,
cascading down her back,

and she never speaks to anyone

but the dogs.

This prompt was one from Poetic Asides (see previous post), to "pick a type of person and write a poem about him or her. To help set the scene, you may want to title your poem as who the type of person is. For instance, you could write a poem titled "Firefighter," "Cynic," "Optimist," "Teacher," "2-year-old," etc. The list is endless." I chose "bus driver."

A Poem a Day for April

2011-04-05T01:02:00.003-07:00

April is National Poetry Month and my friend Vince Gotera (see his very cool blog at http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/ ) turned me on to Robert Lee Brewer's blog "Poetic Asides," http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/, where Brewer is posting a prompt each day so that those of us who choose to (and I think it's a great idea) can get some help warming up and flexing our literary muscles. This is my poem for yesterday, April 3; the prompt was to imagine a world without you.

A World without Me

In a world where I was never born,

for starters, my parents would not have needed a babysitter,

my father, who would not be my father after all,

untempted by her sweet pink Barbiedoll flesh,
might have stayed married to

my mother, who was not my mother but might have been,

The world would be missing a few more people too,

not just the babysitter’s child, my unacknowledged sister.

If I hadn’t been I would never have been sixteen,

or had a boyfriend, so the I who did not exist

would not have seen him drive past the picnic area at the lake

with another girl, on their way to a wedding where he was an usher

and she a bridesmaid, and that non-existent girl who didn’t see them

would not have thrown his class ring into the lake

--or had it to throw--

or flipped him off and thrown the ring in his face when he came back

(her best friend’s little brother having dived in and recovered it),

he would not have sought comfort in the arms of the minister’s

daughter, and she would not have gotten pregnant,
not just then, anyway, and

they would not have gotten married and had four children altogether.

He would not have left her after the second one to try going back

to the me who never was and, failing that,

returned to her and had two more.

Later they who were not they

but strangers who perhaps would never meet

would not have bought the market where he worked

or introduced natural foods and better wine

to that corner of Idaho, and so it would have remained

a far less civilized place without me,

as would some other places, perhaps,

though by then I, even if I had existed,

would have been long gone.

There are undoubtedly many other sites that offer writing prompts. Here are just a couple more:

http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

from Poets and Writers Magazine will send you an email every week with a new poetry prompt and a new fiction prompt;

Toasted Cheese online literary journal and writing community, http://www.toasted-cheese.com, offers exercises, daily writing prompts, quarterly writing contests, and more.

As the KIngston Trio (I think) sang long ago,

You've got to prime the pump,

You must have faith and believe,

You've got to give of yourself

'fore you're worthy to receive.

Drink all the water you can hold,

wash your face to your feet.

Leave the bottle full for others.

Thank you kindly, Desert Pete

Maybe some of the prompts offered by the generous folks at these sites will offer what you need in order to prime your pump. Happy April!

I Made This!

2011-03-17T20:59:00.003-07:00

Saint Patrick's Day is nearly over - I hope you had a good one! I spent much of the day outdoors in the garden, not just wearin' o' the green, but surrounded by it, planting lots of alyssum, petunias, marigolds, and some herbs. We did our celebrating, such as it was, having dinner with at my mom's: corned beef and cabbage, the classic dinner. My contributions were Irish soda bread and Guinness ice cream; the soda bread I've made before, but the ice cream was a new venture. The recipes for both are at:

http://www.karott.com/guinness_recipes.htm.

Here's the soda bread ready to go into the oven (the cross is not only traditional for religious reasons but lets it rise properly):

and here it is just out of the oven:

I made just half the recipe and baked it as one large loaf (the full recipe says to divide the dough into 4 round loaves) and added 1/3 cup currants, just because I happened to have them. I make soda bread occasionally when I want a quick, fresh, hot bread to have with soup or stew and haven't the time or inclination to make a yeast bread. I took this loaf out of the oven, wrapped it in a clean dish towel and headed down to Mom's, and it was still warm when we had dinner.

We ended dinner with the Guinness ice cream (recipe also from the above website):

Looks like coffee ice cream, doesn't it? It's extremely decadent - a 12 ounce bottle of Guinness boiled down to 3 ounces (presumably the alcohol cooks out), 2 cups of heavy cream, 2 cups of whole milk, and 6 egg yolks! plus sugar and vanilla. The Guinness reduction adds an interesting bitter note that's good with such a rich and otherwise potentially cloying custard base. Now that we've got the ice cream maker back out of deep storage, it will probably get used mostly for lighter sorbets and frozen yogurts. But as the Irish say, "A little bit of what you like never hurt you!" Just so long as it's a little and not too often.

But the main thing I'm excited about today, and the reason why I gave this post its title (stolen from the closing credits of an old TV show - the X-Files, maybe?) is my new IKEA dresser that I put together 99% by myself (Joe did help me turn it upside down to fasten the top on).

I am so incredibly proud of myself! It had been sitting in its box for a few weeks; I hadn't tackled it because, quite frankly, I'm married to a man who does all the handy craftsman-around-the-house stuff so well that it kind of intimidates me. But he's been busy with major garage reorganization, involving replacing a piece of the ceiling that came down when it was so cold and a pipe burst, so I though, why not give it a try. I've served as carpenter's helper often enough I thought I could handle it - and I could! And I did! And now I have room for all my socks in one drawer with space to spare! (My sock fetish started when I learned to knit on double-pointed needles - Joe's as impressed with my ability to turn a heel as I am with his carpentry, landscaping, and other know-how. One evening when we were watching TV and I was knitting a sock, he said in a tone of absolute innocent amazement, "It's just magic the way you do that!" Well, it isn't really, but I suppose the directions do look pretty arcane to a non-knitter.)

Notice the Hindu god Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, to the left of the oil lamp - I'm sure having him there in the room helped a lot, as I only got confused a couple of times and not for long. IKEA instructions are all pictures, no words worth mentioning, and I didn't use any bad words at all while completing this project! The hardest part was getting the drawers into position to slide properly, and that was my fault, not IKEA's.

Just a little feng shui note: our bedroom is in the love-and-marriage area of our house (nice planning on someone's part, huh?) so red is the appropriate color, in addition to being a main color in my favorite quilt. The dresser is in the helpful people area of the room, and the pictures above it are right for that spot. Clockwise from top left they are: a print that my grandfather won for my grandmother at the fair when they were courting (and a protective angel is always a good thing to have); a cross-stitch sampler I made years ago, a copy of a Shaker design and sentiment that I find both calming and instructive ("Hear and learn to be silent, be silent and learn to understand, understand and learn to remember"); my father's church Cradle Roll certificate from Gem, Kansas, 1921; and my mother's church Cradle Roll certificate from Emmett, Idaho, 1923. So in addition to Ganesh and another angel on the dresser, both on a beautiful doily Joe's Nonni crocheted, I think we have lots of loving, positive energy there, don't you?

Spring Break!

2011-03-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

It was a hard winter for the desert southwest, with many more freezing nights than usual, and much colder ones. I've just come in from slashing and burning some of the damage--well, slashing it, anyway, and pretty much filling up the big dumpster with plant parts dead or severely damaged by the cold. I thought we'd completely lost all three of our firesticks, those splendidly dramatic euphorbias, and their cousin who doesn't look a thing like them, the dense 3-foot tall crown of thorns.

But as I snipped and clipped and tried not to stab myself too often on the crown of thorns (I don't know if you can see all the wicked spikes that give it its name, but believe me, they're there and hard to avoid), I realized there was quite a bit of it left, and just enough of one of the firesticks to warrant keeping. That's what's left of the firestick below. Not a lot, but if it hung onto life through those long dark freezing nights, how could I in good conscience consign it to the trash?

It was a great way to spend a couple of hours. I found that some things we'd feared were dead aren't, like the asparagus ferns by the fence at the top of the hill, though we still don't know if the hearts and flowers on the hillside itself, that provide such good erosion control (even though they're not my favorite plant, I acknowledge their practical uses) will come back. The swath of ground they cover appears to be pretty much a dead zone. The buddleia that's been kind of a disappointment actually looks pretty good, much to my surprise, and the other "butterfly bush" (asclepias tuberosa) is coming back nicely from the roots. It will look like this in a while:

And I cut the first asparagus stalk from the bed we planted two years ago - it was so hard to just let it grow for those first two springs and go to the market to buy asparagus for dinner instead! When I lived in Idaho I stalked the wild asparagus along the ditchbanks and loved the foraging as much as the eating. Most of the lemon grass - planted at the same time as the asparagus - didn't make it, but enough did to regenerate, I think. Given the damage done to yards and gardens here this winter, I'd say we've been pretty lucky.

When I came in from the garden to wash up, Cosmo was waiting for me in the bathroom, taking a little siesta in the sunlight and in my sink. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the big yawn he greeted me with! I've talked mostly about Sophie here, but we have two other handsome fellows living at our house. Cosmo is twelve, which puts him well past middle age for a cat, but he acts like a 12-year-old human. Angelo (pics of him later, I promise) is seven or eight. They're all rescue cats in one way or another, and all complete individuals.

I knew a woman once who said she didn't like cats because they were all alike, all sneaky and unfriendly. She did like dogs, and maybe she thought she had to choose between the two - I don't see why, but I know lots of people feel that way. Every animal I've had or known has been absolutely unique, just as people are. A verse of the Tao Te Ching says, "When once you see the face of God, you see that face in everyone you meet." I think we should extend that to animals too, and celebrate the fact all of us, humans and animals and plants, are so wondrously different from one another!

The Many Uses of Tea and the Beauty of Bells

2011-03-09T06:59:00.002-07:00

I'm having a hard time waking up this morning. Maybe it's because spring break begins at 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, and I am soooo ready! Maybe it's because I haven't had my tea yet. Tea is a wonderful thing, great to drink, but not only to drink. Afterwards you can lie down with cooled tea bags over your eyes to reduce puffiness. And used tea leaves are wonderful for plants.

On the left is a dish of tea leaves, on the right the tea bags that used to contain them. The tea leaves go on top of the soil in potted plants or in the garden, the tea bag papers into the compost (you could throw the tea bags into the compost unemptied and straight from the pot, of course). Because the tea leavings look so much like soil, no one even notices, though you could take a fork and mix them in, or spread them evenly and artistically.

I learned about plants' affinity for tea and coffee years ago, when I was visiting the Methodist minister in Payette, Idaho to see if my Brownie troop could use a room at the church for our meetings. In his office he had the most glorious Boston fern I had ever seen, and I asked him what he did to make it so lush. It was simple, he said. He tended to forget about his (black) coffee sometimes, and his secretary would scold him for letting it get cold, so before she could catch him he'd dump the cold coffee into the fern's pot. I drink my coffee and tea with sweetener and milk or cream, so I don't empty my cups into my plants, but the dregs from the pot are a different story, and the plants thank me.

This is the covered entryway to our front door. You can see I like ferns. From top to bottom, Boston fern, maidenhair fern, and the little one in the blue pot at the very bottom is called a mother fern. I think the label said they originally come from Australia. All of them like tea!
When I lived on the north coast of California one of my favorite places was Fern Canyon, a gorgeous, magical spot opening onto the beach and a nice hike from Elk Prairie campground. Ferns are a little trickier in the desert, but they do nicely in this protected space (though I took everything inside during our recent hard freezes, except the ivy on the trellis, which survived quite nicely).

Here's a close-up of that ivy, with a couple of the Talavera pottery animals that climb our entry walls, and one of Ben's Bells (www.bensbells.org):

"Ben's Bells are not for sale... Several times a year, hundreds and hundreds of Ben's Bells are hung randomly in public places around Tucson and beyond. The only way to get a Ben's Bell is to find one or to be 'Belled'."

We found our bell hanging from the railing of an abandoned office building. The idea is, after you find one, to take it home and hang it where you'll pass by it and let it be a reminder to be kind to those you meet. The organization also "Bells" people to honor them for their charity or community service. Ben was a little boy who died suddenly in his mother's arms some years ago, and out of that tragedy has come a way to celebrate kindness and sharing and love. Hundreds were hung around Tucson after the January 8 shooting here, and blessed all those who found them or heard of them.

I hope your day is blessed with kindness and love and maybe a nice cup of tea.

Another Breakfast

2011-03-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Last time I posted a wonderful pancake recipe, and I have another one today, but it's very different, savory, not sweet, and full of healthy stuff with plenty of room for improvisation.
Joe and I have the good fortune of having Korean friends who've introduced us to some amazing food! I love good food from all parts of the world, and whether cooking at home or dining out, Asian food is among my favorites. But I really wasn't very familiar with Korean food, and of course I'm no expert now, though I'm looking forward to further exploration! Joe's loved kimchee for years (along with salsa and ketchup, it's one of the three "red sauces" we always keep on hand--not counting Joe's version of his Italian Nonni's amazing "gravy" for pasta!), and we tried making our own once with a recipe from the Frugal Gourmet (it was not a success). But that and bul-gogi (barbecued beef) was pretty much the extent of our Korean food knowledge.
Enter Seoul Kitchen, a tiny mom-and-pop restaurant here in Tucson, on Grant Road just east of Swan. A few weeks ago we were treated to a sample of Pa Jun, a pancake usually served as an appetizer or side dish, though we love it for breakfast or to take to work for lunch if we have leftovers.

On this plate you can see Pa Jun large and small (roughly 6" and 2-3"). I think the small ones would be especially nice as appetizers. The condiments, from left to right, are chopped kimchee (the vegetable pieces are much larger in the jar when you buy it), soy sauce, and a soy-vinegar sauce (recipe below) that's also great on other dishes. So here's my adapted recipe for Pa Jun, followed by the sauce. Disclaimer: although the more authentic and absolutely delicious Pa Jun at Seoul Kitchen was thicker and more breadlike, mine didn't turn out so well when I made them like that the first time, so this recipe yields slightly thinner pancakes. To get the thicker pancake, one recipe I read suggested using a sauté pan rather than a griddle, so the sides contain the batter and since it doesn't spread, it stays thicker. I may try that next time.

Korean Scallion Pancakes (Pa Jun) serves 2-3 for breakfast, more as an appetizer or side dish.

You can tweak the added ingredients to your own taste or whatever vegetables, meat, or seafood you have handy. I've sometimes added finely chopped chiles, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, or kimchee, among other things.

1 c. flour (I use whole wheat, which is probably not traditional)

1 egg, beaten

3/4 to 1 cup water, enough to make a batter somewhat thinner than American pancake batter

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 bunch scallions or more, thinly sliced (more traditionally, halved lengthwise and cut in 2"-3" lengths)

other fairly finely chopped vegetables - today I added 1 medium grated carrot, about 1/4 c. chopped kimchee, and about half of a leftover cooked chicken breast, also fairly finely chopped

Oil for cooking, and/or cooking spray

Mix all ingredients together and let sit about 10 minutes. Remember, batter should not be too thick or the Pa Jun will not cook quickly and evenly.

Heat a pan (I like a cast-iron griddle) over medium heat and coat with a thin layer of oil or pan spray.

Pour enough batter on the pan to spread out in a thin layer and make a pancake the size you want. Six or 7 inches is a nice size and you can turn it without it falling apart. Cook for 3-4 minutes until set and golden brown on the bottom. As with American pancakes, you'll see bubbles form and burst at the edges, and the edges will firm up and look cooked.

Turn with a spatula and cook 1-2 more minutes, until both sides are cooked. You may want to add more oil to the pan between pancakes or even spray the uncooked side with pan spray before turning.

Serve with soy or spicy dipping sauce.

Spicy Dipping Sauce

1/3 cup soy sauce (low salt is fine)

1/3 cup seasoned rice vinegar

1 T. sesame flavoring oil (not the plain kind used for cooking - you want the intense sesame flavor)

1 T. crushed red chili flakes

1 T. thinly sliced scallions

Mix all ingredients together. This will make more than you need, so store the leftover sauce in a small jar in the refrigerator - it's good on all kinds of things, like potstickers, dumplings, egg rolls, etc.

Here's a picture of Pa Jun cooking on the griddle. You can see the scallions, grated carrot, and little chunks of chicken. And here it is on the plate, drizzled with dipping sauce and with a spoonful of kimchee on the side.

It's a great way to start the day - hey, it's great any time of day!

Of Cats and Rats and Cornmeal

2011-02-06T12:01:00.003-07:00

Sorry that I haven't been posting muffins and pastas lately. I've been cooking other things instead (well, we still have pasta often, but haven't tried anything new in that area in a few weeks - the pasta will be back when I do, I promise).
Winter break was lovely and, as always, too short. Sophie, the only other girl in our household, got quite spoiled spending the mornings with me - I discovered the decadent pleasure of bringing my laptop to the bedroom and writing in here instead of in my office sitting up in a chair like a proper worker bee! Here she is with a couple of new friends we found for her at IKEA on our way home from Phoenix yesterday.

I was born in the Year of the Rat (rats are clever and adaptable and much admired for those qualities, and I'm proud to be one!) so I pick up rats (and mice that I can pass off as rats) when I find some that I like. In addition to these little cuties (they're not filled with catnip, which may account for Sophie's indifferent expression), I have 3 bigger ones from IKEA in black, gray, and brown, and a couple of hand puppets made by Folkmanis, the wonderful puppet people. The biggest is a very big packrat who comes with his own usable backpack! Oh, and the more golden one on the left is a kangaroo rat; here's the whole tribe (so far):

Sophie's 12 years old, and the first four years or so of her life (the vet's best guess) she was semi-feral, since the man she "belonged" to refused to let her in the house because she wanted to bring in the things she hunted. Of course, that's what cats do, but he didn't want to be bothered looking before he opened the door, so in spite of his wife's and children's entreaties, she had to stay outside. Then they moved away and she hid from them, and eventually came to live with us, where she's a very happy indoor cat now. We named her Sophia (wisdom) because where we live she had to be pretty wise to escape becoming a meal for a coyote or bobcat.

Anyway, she's probably older in experience than in actual years; she's lost several teeth so she eats more slowly (though she still prefers dry food) and her cat brothers, Cosmo and Angelo, will steal her food when they finish theirs, so that's why her dish is on the bed, so she can have breakfast in peace - and the rats don't eat much.

   Speaking of breakfast, here's a picture of ours today. Joe grew up in New England, where Johnnycakes are a traditional food. I had some at a diner there once and didn't much care for them, and somehow got the idea that he didn't either, but I guess it was just those particular Johnnycakes, because he assured me this morning that he'd always loved them - and now this variation on that familiar theme.
   These aren't quite traditional Johnnycakes, which are, among other things, made with white cornmeal - I much prefer yellow. I started with a recipe from Mark Bittman, the New York Times' "Minimalist," a column I will miss, since he's moving on to other endeavors, though he will stay on to write the recipe column for the Sunday NYT magazine. His recipe calls for pine nuts in the batter but they sort of get lost in the overall taste experience, and so I probably won't use them again, though I think thawed frozen corn kernels would be delicious in their place. Here's my variation on Bittman's Cornmeal Pancakes with Vanilla and Pine Nuts (you can find his at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/dining/19minirex2.html?ref=dining). I've halved it to serve 2 generously, with five 2 1/2- to 3-inch pancakes apiece. Add some butter and honey or maple syrup and a couple of pieces of bacon and you'll have a happy start to the day.

Johnnycakes My Way
3/4 cup regular yellow cornmeal (fairly fine grind, not polenta)
3/4 cup boiling water
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. pine nuts (optional; try substituting 1/4 c. thawed frozen corn kernels)
oil or bacon fat for frying

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Pour boiling water over cornmeal, whisk to get out the lumps, and let stand 5 to 10 minutes. Add 1/4 cup milk, salt, vanilla extract, oil, and pine nuts. Mix well. Add more milk if the batter is too thick. You don't want it any thicker than regular pancake batter.
   Heat a griddle or heavy pan (I use a cast iron griddle) over medium heat until water drops skitter on the surface. Add a little oil for frying (I wiped the griddle with a paper towel dipped in bacon grease from frying the bacon) and ladle out batter onto the hot griddle. I don't make these very big because they don't have the structural integrity of regular flour pancakes and I don't want them to fall apart when I turn them. I also lightly spray the tops with Pam while the first side is cooking. Watch to see the edges begin to dry and bubble, like regular pancakes, then when the first side looks browned and a bit crispy, turn and cook the other side; it comes out to 3-5 minutes per side. Put them on a plate in the oven (along with the cooked bacon, if you're having that) to keep warm while you cook the rest of the Johnnycakes. You may need to adjust the heat of the burner; I usually wind up turning mine down a tiny bit after the first batch.
   Serve with butter and honey or maple syrup and pretend you're one of the early New England settlers! (They didn't have wheat in the early days and had to make do with the cornmeal the native people taught them to use, along with rye flour, so that a popular and common early bread was known as "rye and Indian.")
   Since Joe is not only a New England native but also Italian (on his father's side, Irish on his mother's) this breakfast inevitably led to a discussion of polenta, which is made with coarser cornmeal, and the "fried mush" my grandmother taught me to make from leftover ordinary cornmeal mush, which she served with butter and syrup just like pancakes. But more about that another day.

A Handsome Visitor

2011-01-03T13:03:00.003-07:00

Our neighbor snapped this picture of one of the more elegant inhabitants of our neighborhood stopping in our front yard this morning. This may be the same coyote Joe and I saw a few days ago standing by the street sign at our corner. Where I grew up in Idaho the more vocal ranchers weren't fond of coyotes and many shot and trapped them, which always made me sad. I tend to agree with Ed Abbey, who said in Desert Solitaire that he worried about the coyotes too - he worried if they were getting enough to eat. They are so beautiful, but sometimes they get pretty thin and scruffy-looking. Right now, for instance, we're not seeing many rabbits around, which means slim pickings for this fellow.
   Other people get upset because the coyotes will take cats or small dogs. I'll never forget driving home one night and seeing a coyote saunter across the road in front of me with a kitten hanging from its jaws. That upset me, of course. I have three cats and love them all dearly. That's why they are indoor cats. I think I posted some time ago about seeing a bobcat carrying a big black house cat into the brush, though that cat got away, and I was happy to see it, but I don't begrudge the coyote or the bobcat their meals. They have to eat and they are doing what nature has programmed them to do. We have moved into their habitat, and if we value our pets, we'll protect them by keeping them indoors or letting them out only under supervision. It's that simple. Wild animals are not evil, they're just hungry. And I have tremendous admiration for animals like the coyote and bobcat who manage to adapt, survive, and sometimes even thrive in spite of what we have done to their world. They show more intelligence than some people.
   A woman wrote to our local newspaper several years ago, deeply irate because she had just seen a coyote vanish over her fence with her toy poodle. She seemed to think someone should do something about it, though I'm not sure who or what that would be. Another woman tried to sue a local golf resort because she had been frightened by a rattlesnake on the course; that case was thrown out, in a triumph of common sense, but what kind of attorney would even take her on as a client? More media attention was given to the case of a young woman bringing suit because she'd been attacked by a bear up on Mt. Lemmon while camping; that case was also ultimately thrown out. It's very sad that she was injured, and yes, she was an unfortunate victim, but what do these people expect? Do they think all wild animals should be in zoos, or somehow trained not to do things that upset humans? Are we really so important that the rest of the world needs to be managed solely for our comfort? I'm afraid some people would say "yes" without batting an eye.
   Our son brought his two children for a visit between Christmas and New Year's and one afternoon he and I took Dante, who's five, for a walk along the trails at nearby Feliz Paseos, a lovely and fairly new park off Camino de Oeste just north of Speedway, for those of you in Tucson. We often hear coyotes singing at night, but that afternoon there was a group performing nearby with great enthusiasm. Dante's big brown eyes got even bigger than usual; it was a treat for all of us. As we drove out of the park a big coyote, very much like the one in the above picture, preceded us through the gate and then turned to look back at us before we turned one way and he went the other. It was, as such moments always are, a little bit of magic.

Soaking in Bliss

2010-12-30T17:35:00.001-07:00

Today is my dear friend Caren's birthday and I finally got it right. For years I kept telling myself it was on New Year's Eve, then I convinced myself it was December 29, and actually went to bed last night thinking, "Oh, no! I talked to her on the phone this afternoon and forgot to say 'Happy Birthday'!" But I didn't mess up this year.
A few years ago someone gave Caren a really big bag of Dead Sea salts and she passed a generous supply on to me. They were great for soaking sore muscles, like after a long day working in the garden. But being the kind of person I am, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I love aromatherapy and skin-softening ingredients, and hence my bath salts have evolved.

I scented the above batch with my own favorite relaxing fragrance blend, based on three essential oils: the dominant note is patchouli, tempered with sweet orange and an undercurrent of lavender, not enough to really identify as such, but it adds to the relaxing effect. A nice beginning to a mellow and possibly romantic evening.

Joe also enjoys a relaxing bath, and for him I add rosemary and peppermint essential oils to the basic unscented blend, since he likes a morning bath and those fragrances are energizing (and he really likes them, especially the rosemary).

I have read that actual salts, even sea salts, are really not good for the skin (read the labels on your bath salts - if sodium chloride is the first or one of the main ingredients, beware; the manufacturer is taking the cheap way out). So now I use epsom salts, which do everything we want a bath salt to do - relax us, relieve sore muscles, even soothe some skin rashes or eczema. The recipe below also contains powdered milk, oatmeal, oil, and honey, all of which soothe the skin. In addition, the honey acts as a humectant, attracting moisture to the skin, softening it while also relieving rashes, skin irritations, or sunburn.

Pantry Bath Salts

2 cups epsom salts

1/2 cup dried milk powder

1/2 cup oatmeal (any kind_

2 Tbsp. honey

2 Tbsp. oil (olive, jojoba, canola, any vegetable oil)

25-30 drops of essential oil(s) of your choice

In a bowl, combine salts with dried milk powder. In a coffee grinder, blender, or food processor, grind oats to a fine powder; add to salt/milk mixture and thoroughly combine. Add the oil and honey (measure the oil first, then use the same spoon to measure the honey and it will slide right out without sticking). Mixing in the oil and honey is messy and you'll probably want to get in there and use your hands to break up as many lumps as possible - don't worry if there are a few small lumps left in. Add your fragrance oils a little at a time, checking the aroma effect as you go. I like my bath salts well-scented, but it is possible to get carried away. Incidentally, when I washed my hands after I finished mixing these salts, they felt and smelled incredible!

I start with 10 drops of rosemary and 5 of peppermint for Joe's blend, and then add more of each, a few drops at a time, till I like the effect (which may vary depending on the brand or age of your oils - patchouli gets richer and more mellow over time but that's not the case with other scents).

For mine, I start with 10 drops of patchouli, 10 of sweet orange, and 5 of lavender.

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm not big on formal resolutions, but this time of year I like to remind myself to treat others well (like maybe with a birthday gift of bath salts) and also to treat myself occasionally. A nice, long, hot, fragrant, soothing bath, with a bath pillow, a book, and maybe a cup of tea, is one very nice way to do that.

No Pasta of the Week

2010-12-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

When Joe was growing up, Sunday was pasta night at his house, and we try to continue that tradition. But last Sunday the power went out at 4:41, just as I was about to start dinner, and stayed out for nearly two hours, forcing a change of plans.

It was also cooling off - yes, we do get cold in the desert - and I'd just lit a fire in the fireplace. We also lit the oil lamps on the mantel and several candles, and as it got darker outside, Joe went out to the garage and brought in a couple more oil lamps. Then he went in the kitchen and washed dishes by lamplight, while I took that opportunity to organize our candle stores - over time we've collected a lot of candles! There are many more than I'd remembered and now they're organized into two boxes - one for tapers and one for votives - freeing up some much-needed space in the bottom of the china closet.
As time passed it became clear there would be no Sunday night pasta. Instead, we had smoked oysters, cheese, crackers, and sliced persimmons by candlelight. Delightful. When my daughter was a little girl we did that sometimes as a special treat; she still loves smoked oysters and so do her two boys. She also learned to love Limburger cheese at the age of three, like her grandmother and great-grandfather (when I was a kid I thought it was totally gross but learned to like it as an adult).

We did have pasta Monday night, but just with red sauce from a jar (Newman's Own Pesto Tomato, which Joe spotted on sale and which is actually pretty good), sausages, and salad. Tasty but hardly worth posting. Then yesterday I knew I wouldn't feel like cooking dinner after work (tomorrow's my last day this semester and I'm pretty tired), so I put some cabbage and potato soup into the slow cooker before leaving in the morning and made a quick Irish soda bread when we got home, for a truly simple peasant dinner. The soup wasn't terribly exciting - potatoes, cabbage, onion, a carrot, some celery, chicken broth, bay leaves, salt and pepper - but it was warm and comforting and good enough (I should have browned some bacon or added more herbs, but you know how mornings can be). The bread is incredibly simple, and a warm, dense slab with butter makes me imagine the probably damp and cramped but picturesque cottages of my Irish ancestors, with kettles and cauldrons bubbling over turf fires while the day's loaf baked on the coals. Hopefully my peasant ancestors could afford to keep a cow, so there'd be butter for the soda bread!

Irish Soda Bread

4 cups white or whole wheat flour (or a mixture of the two - I used

the white whole wheat flour from Trader Joe's; King Arthur's

Flour sells that too. All regular whole wheat might be too heavy)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in the middle, and stir in the buttermilk, beginning with the smaller amount and adding more only if you need it to make a soft dough. Don't knead or handle this any more than is absolutely necessary to get it to hold together in a ball, which you'll place in a greased pie pan or 8" cake tin. Cut a fairly deep (1/4" or so) cross across the top and bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 400 and bake another 25 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap the bottom. Cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing, if you're not too hungry to wait that long.

If you don't let it cool some before slicing, those first slices may seem a bit gummy because of the way the knife squishes the delicate crumb together. It will still taste good, though, and if you slather it with butter and jam you won't see the damage you've done.

Muffin of the Week, Luminaria Nights, and Other Things of Beauty

2010-12-04T14:27:00.003-07:00

First things first: this was breakfast, and it was very good. Well, actually it was brunch, since we didn't sit down to it until 11:30, which justifies it being fairly hearty since I hope it will hold us over till an early dinner. The muffins are Mollie Katzen's Carrot and Currant Muffins; the recipe is available on her website at:

http://www.molliekatzen.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipe=carrot_muffins

In the book she says it makes 8-10 muffins though on the site it says 12. Guess it depends on how full you fill the cups; I got 9. They're quite good, but I like them somewhat less than some of the others I've posted; they don't quite have the intensity of flavor that I crave. But they're better than most you could buy, and certainly a nice way to chip away at the over-abundance of carrots resulting from buying a 5# bag a while back (because it was such a good deal).
Maybe my lack of enthusiasm stems from too much carrot cake. At the University of Arizona every catered event features carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It's a very rich, dense cake, and I liked it very much the first couple of years - maybe even the first five years. Then I started just eating some of the frosting - I guess I'm a frosting person in that ongoing debate over which is best, cake or frosting. Now, after 18 years at U of A, I shudder at the sight of what used to seem like a treat (of course that doesn't mean I might not still have a taste, just to see if it's improved, of course).
Joe'd been craving bacon and while I was at the dentist yesterday morning (for a broken tooth which, oddly, didn't hurt at all, and that was good because I had to wait two days since the dentist was out of town) he went hunting for it in the freezer and couldn't find it (I'd been shifting things around and it was behind the vodka).
A few words about bacon: I know it's not the healthiest food but we only have it once every week or two, and then only "good" bacon. I grew up on the stuff that comes in plastic packages, Oscar Mayer and his ilk, but I haven't bought it in years. Now we buy only the nice thick bacon from the butcher's case, which goes on sale frequently and freezes beautifully. It's soooo much better and leaner and tastier, especially (I think) the kind with pepper on it. Most markets carry it; we shop at, Sunflower and (less often) Albertson's, good thick bacon at a reasonable price, often less than the stuff in plastic. To freeze it, I separate it into 2-slice units (enough for us each to have 1 slice with an ordinary breakfast) and lay out a fairly long sheet of waxed paper, then I fold up the waxed paper like an accordion, with 2 slices of bacon in each fold, separated from the next 2 slices by a layer of waxed paper (I hope I'm making that clear) so that it's easy to take out just 2 (or 4 or 6 or however many you want) at a time. Then I wrap it all up again in the butcher's paper and put a rubber band or two around it. Usually I cut the slices in half crosswise to cook them so I can use a smaller pan; they thaw very fast at low heat and are easy to separate in just a few minutes.
As I said, the bacon I buy seems leaner than what I grew up on, so it doesn't render out as much fat, but if there is melted bacon grease I save it in a jar for other cooking. I read once that if dinner isn't ready when a man comes home he can be pacified by the smell of onions frying, if you think to put them on the stove in time. With Joe, at least, that would work even better if they were frying in bacon grease. However, many of us aren't in that kind of traditional situation, even if we have partners - Joe and I take the bus home from work together and he's as likely to cook dinner as I am. But it's a nice idea.

This is the big Christmas tree at the entrance to the Tucson Botanical Garden, where last night was the first of the annual Luminaria Nights (continuing tonight and Sunday night, 5-8 p.m.). The pathways are lit by traditional luminarias, with various musical groups performing in different areas. At one point there were bell ringers in the indoor hall, an accordionist near the conservatory, a bluegrass group farther on, Irish dancers in the xeriscape gardens, and a choir in the large pavilion. The performers changed at 6:30 and on our way out we sat for a while in the indoor hall listening to a wonderful string quartet - one of the nicest parts of that was how happy all the players looked! - especially the violist, a young Austrian woman.
There's something magical about the gardens at night in candlelight.

In spite of the crowds and the music (and the food vendors, so it's good to come hungry!), there's a kind of peaceful hush that seems so appropriate to the season, and such a nice corrective to all the commercial craziness that otherwise accompanies it. When you come to the gardens at any season, time seems to slow down, so that it's okay to just sit and enjoy listening to the birds and otherwise being surrounded by things of nature. Even what's mechanical and manmade contributes to relaxation, like the lovely little model railroad in its "Old West" setting (which was hard to photograph last night, but I'm posting these pictures anyway):

And now, after yesterday's busyness, today I'm at home, relaxing, cooking, blogging, puttering...with my beautiful friend and familiar Sophie. You probably can't read it, but the title of the book lying next to her is Mirror, Mirror on the Wall - I'm quite sure Sophie's mirror tells her every day that she is indeed the fairest of them all.

Muffin of the Week - Experimental

2010-11-28T14:20:00.002-07:00

I hadn't realized how much I enjoy creating these weekly postings until I got off schedule, but this morning the muffins are back, this time as an experiment based on "Name That Muffin" from Morning Food by Margaret S. Fox and John Bear. Margaret is the former owner of the renowned Café Beaujolais in Mendocino, California, and I bought the book when we were vacationing there a couple of years ago.

The recipe she gives is a sort of basic muffin recipe (though not too basic, since it includes poppy seeds and chopped nuts) with suggestions for several variations using diverse fruits and vegetables. I had one orange and one lemon in the fridge, but they didn't quite give me enough prepared fruit, so I added some of the leftover mashed sweet potatoes from Thanksgiving. No one in my family likes that concoction of sweet potatoes, sugar and marshmallows so many people eat at the holidays - these were pretty basic and, in my opinion, all the tastier for it. Like the equally popular green bean casserole (that I tasted once, just one bite, and swore I'd never touch again), candied yams seems to me to be a vegetable dish for people who don't like vegetables. However, we all have our biases and I'm sure I like things that other people find just as appalling. But I don't think anyone will be put off or appalled by these lovely muffins!

Citrus-Poppyseed-Sweet Potato Muffins - makes 14, more if you don't fill the muffin cups quite so full

2 cups unbleached flour
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger
1 1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
2 large eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large orange, chopped in 1" chunks and seeded
1 lemon, chopped in 1" chunks and seeded
1/3 cup mashed sweet potato (you want 1 1/3 cups smooshed up fruit/vegetables total)
1/3 cup poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray muffin tins with cooking spray or use paper liners (I use the spray).
Put the orange and lemon in the food processor and pulse till the rind is finely chopped and the rest is a mushy mess. Add the sweet potato, eggs, brown sugar, canola oil, vanilla extract, and pulse again till everything is well mixed.
In a mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, salt, soda, baking powder, ginger, cardamom, and poppy seeds. Stir in the liquid mixture very gently. To quote Margaret Fox, "Urgent message: Do not overmix or Margaret [and Vicki] will have a nervous breakdown." Of course, if you like tough muffins with pointy heads (hmmm, kinda makes me think of some kids I went to school with), just beat away. I like to use my rubber scraper for this mixing; it's gentler somehow, makes it easier to slow down and be mindful of how I'm treating the batter, which I think requires a folding rather than a beating motion.
Spoon batter into muffin cups, almost to the top (not quite so full if you want smaller muffins) and bake 25-30 minutes. If you're not using all the muffin cups, fill the empty ones half full of water, and then be careful not to get the baked muffins wet when you take them out. My oven temperature's pretty accurate and 25 minutes was just right. Have a delicious day!

When the Year Grows Old

2010-11-22T05:56:00.001-07:00

I cannot but remember

When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

Those lines by Edna St. Vincent Millay remind me of growing up in Idaho and of my grandmother, who in her later years seemed to get much colder than the rest of us (today my mother says the same thing, and that it's just part of aging). Yesterday a friend posted pictures of her house in Ontario, Oregon, just a few miles on the other side of the Snake River from where we grew up. The snow on the roof and blanketing the yard was so clean and fresh and beautiful.

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

Were beautiful to her!

Both of those stanzas express my own feelings - it's not either/or, inside or outside. I love it all, and I miss winter, real winter, though even here in Tucson we don't have to go too far to find snow to play in, just up Mt. Lemmon on the northeast edge of town, or for a weekend, Flagstaff is only 4 hours away.

Things change as the year grows old, and I love watching those changes. There is a beauty in decrepitude, in fading, in the graceful death we see in nature. The fallen pomegranates in the picture at the top shrivel and dry but first they nourish the ants and the other little things that live in the soil, and the soil itself. This picture shows three stages in the life of a morning glory: the shrunken, dried blossom, its earlier bright blue beauty unimaginable unless you've watched the plant and know its processes; a plump green seedpod that will soon mature into a crisp fawn-colored case for the precious product the plant has lived and died for - the hard black seeds that will grow into next year's flowers.

Our milder desert winters aren't all about death or, as in the story of Persephone and her pomegranate, about putting the world to sleep for half the year. The cooler temperatures revitalize some things and fall is the best time for planting others, like native plants - cacti, mesquite and palo verde trees. It's also the best time to start a vegetable garden, and I love being able to grow my own salad and cooking greens, snow peas, turnips, and other things. We're much more limited in summer, which can feel more like a survival marathon, especially when the monsoons don't come, as they didn't this last summer, when the only crop that really did well was okra.

Roses thrive here - that came as a surprise to me - and this bud was just beginning to open yesterday. It's on the climber my friend Charlene gave me when she moved from Tucson, and it's been very happy up against the old gray fence that separates the area where we hang out the laundry and store unused plant pots from the rest of the yard. Unfortunately, the red climber she gave me at the same time didn't do so well and I finally gave up and took it out a few weeks ago when I gave the roses their September pruning, though the white JFK is doing very well. This climber produced flowers all summer but they faded quickly, going from bud to falling blossoms in two or three days. But now they last over a week and some are pushing two weeks, and as this next picture shows, there is still great beauty in their decrepitude.

Isn't it wonderful how they change colors? I wouldn't have imagined this would happen, and yet right now there are half a dozen like this. It's like having three or four different rose bushes all in one! The only constant is change, they say, and we must embrace change or die. The only way to keep this rose from changing would be to deadhead it before it comes into full bloom, and that would certainly be a shame.

When I lived in Idaho we were very conscious of the seasons and the harvests, much more than most people are now, I believe. And when I took my mother on vacation up there I was sad to see that almost all the orchards that filled the Emmett valley are gone, as are the fruit packing sheds where my grandmother worked during the Great Depression, and off and on for years afterwards. Here's what's left of one of the only two of those sheds still standing, that was once filled with the sound of conveyor belts and women's talk and laughter as they sorted and packed the fruit for which the valley was famous.

At first it made me sad to see it like this, but when I stopped and got out of the car, walked around and went inside, it was also peaceful. I remember going there with my grandmother, and one of her friends picking out a red Delicious apple and polishing it on his sleeve for me. I remember the simple pleasure of honest labor, and of hands moving quickly and gently over the fruits of the earth, and it makes me smile.

Apples and some other trees aren't the best choice for our particular micro-climate (though there are wonderful orchards over in Wilcox, less than two hours away) but citrus trees love it. I noticed last night (after the opera - a delightful student production of Britten's Albert Herring that had the audience laughing out loud in appreciation of its broad humor) that the kumquats are nearly ripe around one of the parking lots, and I'm having fantasies of "liberating" some.

Our little Meyer lemon tree has two big, beautiful fruits nearly ripe. We expected more given the explosion of blossoms it produced, but we're grateful for these and will, when the time comes, put them to good use. That's what I hope for all of us as autumn turns to winter, that we will put our time and ourselves to good use. Stay warm. Appreciate the season. Be well.

Muffin of the Week - Bananas!

2010-11-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy but fulfilling weekend. Joe and I drove up to Phoenix to see Deirdre and the boys Friday evening and stayed over for Eli's football game on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. I can't believe how much more focused those kids are than they were a month ago when we watched his first scrimmage. I have mixed feelings about 5-year-olds being involved in high pressure sports leagues, but I sure was proud to watch my grandson run for 2 touchdowns and a number of other great plays, even if only one of the touchdowns counted (the other one should have).
We took some bananas with us and they didn't all get eaten, so this morning was banana muffin time.

This recipe is much more decadent than any I've posted so far, with no redeeming whole grains for extra fiber, or other social value, but oh wow, do they taste great! I thought I was going to have to improvise with applesauce or something because I just had two bananas, but then I found a third one in the freezer, so I microwaved it at 60 percent power to thaw it and it was fine. Here's the recipe:

Banana Muffins – makes 10

Muffins:

1 ½ cups unbleached flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

3 bananas, mashed

¾ cup sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup butter, melted or canola oil

Streusel Topping:

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 Tbsp. unbleached flour

1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp. butter

First, preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 10 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.

Second, make the streusel topping. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.

Then, in a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.

Sprinkle topping over muffins. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Now the caveats: I made 10 muffins, but you could probably make 11 and they would still be quite generous, even without the dramatic muffin tops that would have made Elaine happy on Seinfeld, if you remember that episode. On some of the muffins the streusel topping sank a tiny bit in the middle, like a little navel, but that doesn't really bother me, which is a good thing, since I don't really know how to prevent it.

And another couple of things that you may already know about muffins. 1) It's important not to overmix muffins; if you do, they wind up with pointy heads and the texture isn't as good as it should be. Just mix them gently to incorporate the wet with the dry ingredients and then stop. I like the rubber spatulas with a bit of a spoon-like shape; they're also just right for scooping the batter into the muffin cups. 2) Most muffin pans have 12 cups, but if you don't use them all, fill the empty ones about half full with water so they don't warp in the heat of the oven. If you've properly greased or sprayed the cups, you'll be able to lift the muffins out with a skewer or something similar and the water won't be a problem.

So, Joe and I had our muffins for breakfast, but then the best part was taking some to the hospital when we went to visit friends who just had their first baby yesterday morning, and what a beautiful, beautiful little girl she is! It was rather an ordeal, and the new mom was still pretty exhausted, and lunch was late, so that first muffin disappeared very quickly. It's so wonderful to see a new little person arrive to enrich the lives of two people who you just know are going to be wonderful parents.

The years pass so quickly and children grow up so fast. In five years who knows what this beautiful little girl will be doing? When we look at our grandchildren, it seems like only yesterday that they were infants and then toddlers, snuggled up in our arms. But they do grow up, and that's wonderful too. Just look at that little quarterback!

These are a few of my favorite things....

2010-11-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

It was so nice to wake up this morning and not have to go to work because of Veterans' Day, and since Joe and I don't work on Fridays, that means a 4-day weekend. On mornings like these we often stay in bed for a while, drinking tea, writing in our journals, reading, spending some quality time with the cats. But when I got up to get more tea I was surprised and saddened to find this crack going almost all the way around my favorite teapot. I'd made tea in it yesterday (no, I hadn't done all the dishes yet, though in my defense I had loaded the dishwasher with most of them) and it had seeped all the way through - though I didn't see it yesterday so it must have been a slow process. I don't know how it happened. Maybe it got bumped just right - or wrong - in the overcrowded china cabinet. We've been talking about taking everything out and getting it more organized. Anyway, I'm sorry that I won't be able to use it any more, not even as a vase since it won't hold liquid. I don't want to break it up for mosaics or anything like that, though I've seen people do clever things along those lines. But it's too pretty to throw away. Guess I'll think about that tomorrow.

This little fellow is another of my favorite things. His name is Tsai Shen Yeh and he is a Chinese god of wealth and good luck; he lives on the kitchen window sill where, since he's activated by a tiny solar cell, he nods and smiles all day long. One of Joe's Chinese students brought him back from home as a gift and I like him very much, maybe more than Joe does since the regular ticking sound the little god makes used to annoy him so much he'd put things over him to keep the sun off and inactivate him. But the sound's not loud, more like a clock ticking, and I think Joe's gotten used to it. Either that or he realized it was hopeless. I always uncovered him - why would you want to block good fortune? And covering up a god with an inverted can, even if you wash it first, doesn't seem very respectful. He hasn't brought us great wealth, but I agree with the Spanish proverb: "Enough is as good as a feast." So I'd have to say that Tsai Shen Yeh is doing his job. Besides, every time I look at him, he makes me smile.

Pasta of the Week 11/8

2010-11-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

When I served this pasta last night to Joe and our friend Caren, I jokingly referred to it as spaghetti with Idaho clam sauce, because fresh clams in the shell were not available when I was growing up in a little farm town on the Snake River. But I did grow up loving clam chowder the way my mother and grandmother made it, from canned clams, along with the oysters in a jar that we looked forward to during the holidays, smelt in season, and all kinds of frozen fish. (And of course, the trout and channel catfish we caught ourselves in nearby creeks and rivers.)

When I moved to San Francisco all sorts of culinary horizons opened up to me, but when I returned to Idaho for a few years, some of them closed back down. (Some didn’t, however. In the interim, for example, squid/calamari had become available in local markets—but still no fresh clams.) I'd developed a taste for clam sauce so I learned to make it with the same canned clams we’d always used for chowder, and that’s how I still make it today.

Last night I cooked 12 ounces of whole wheat spaghetti (for 6 moderate but satisfactory servings). While that was going on, I heated about ¼ cup olive oil in my trusty nonstick wok with the glass lid and then added 4 or 5 large cloves of garlic, crushed, let them sizzle a bit, then added a good handful of chopped parsley and 2 (6 1/2 ounce) cans of chopped clams with their juice, plus part of a ladleful of the pasta cooking water, and let it boil away to reduce a bit while the pasta finished cooking. When the pasta was almost al dente, I drained it and poured it into the wok with the sauce and tossed it well, then let it sit for a minute or two to finish cooking and absorb the sauce. Traditionally one doesn’t put cheese on clam sauce (though Joe and Caren both did).

As you can see, it was a plateful of rather pale food, since I served the pasta with yellow summer squash sautéed in olive oil with minced garlic and some chopped sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil – a very nice combination of flavors though not too visually exciting, since neither the bread nor the white wine expanded the range of hues. I’ll try for something more colorful next week, but this is definitely a quick, tasty, and economical meal.

Muffin of the Week 11/7

2010-11-07T12:11:00.004-07:00

I almost didn't make these muffins this morning. They sounded, quite frankly, a little weird and a little too healthy for today's self-indulgent foodie mood, but then I thought, "Well, I have all the ingredients on hand, and I do love a good bran muffin, and Mollie hasn't let me down yet, so why not?" Like the last two muffins I've posted, these are from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café, a lovely cookbook devoted to breakfast - and I do love breakfast.

Buttermilk Bran Muffins from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café (p. 69)

This recipe makes 12-14 muffins, according to the book, but since I added some of the options (3 cups of bran flakes cereal, 1 cup of minced almonds, and 1 cup of dried apricots, cut into raisin-sized bits--actually about 2/3 cup dried apricots with raisins added to make 1 cup) I got 17 muffins. If you go to the book you'll notice it calls for unprocessed wheat bran rather than the oat bran so many recipes use. There is a difference and since Joe and I are both delighted with the texture of these, it's worth seeking out the wheat bran (usually available in the bulk bins at natural food stores). I used Trader Joe's Bran Flakes (not raisin bran as the recipe specifies), which are particularly good bran flakes without the icky stuff that so many cereals, even the allegedly healthy ones, contain. I also want to put in a plug for the organic brown sugar from Trader Joe's; it's moister and has a richer molasses flavor than what you'll get from C&H or other bigger or store brands.

Mollie writes, "After years of searching for a bran muffin I could truly adore and not just eat dutifully, I'm pleased to report that my quest has come to a happy conclusion in this recipe." I totally agree, and so does my live-in taste tester. Actually, Joe said "These may be as good as atomics, maybe even better."

Atomic Bran Muffins have been my go-to bran muffin recipe for years, since I first tasted them at the Northcoast Co-op in Arcata, California. The Co-op published the recipe, but I had encountered it before, and I really don't know where it originated. My friend Linda back in Idaho contributed it to a church cookbook under the name "6-week Bran Muffins" (not sure about 6 weeks!) and I've seen it elsewhere under other names, so I guess I'm not violating any copyright regulations by publishing it here.

ATOMIC BRAN MUFFINS - makes 24

1 c. boiling water

1/2 c. vegetable oil

2 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 c. buttermilk

1 c. firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs (at room temperature)

3/4 c. whole wheat flour

3/4 c. unbleached white flour

1 c. oat bran (or use part oat and part wheat bran)

1 c. All-Bran cereal

1 c. wheat germ

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. raisins

1 c. chopped walnuts

In a large bowl, combine the boiling water, oil, and baking soda and let the mixture stand until it becomes lukewarm. Beat in the buttermilk, brown sugar, and eggs. In a separate, smaller bowl, mix the flours, oat bran, All-Bran, wheat germ, and salt. Add them to the liquid ingredients, stirring only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Gently add the raisins and walnuts. Before baking, let the batter stand in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. You may also keep this batter, well covered, in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Spoon the batter into well-buttered [or sprayed] or paper-lined muffin cups and bake at 375 F. for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

When I make these, if I want them for breakfast, I mix up the batter the night before. Unfortunately, Mollie Katzen doesn't post the recipe for her Buttermilk Bran Muffins on her website (www.molliekatzen.com) and copyright considerations prevent me from posting it here, but the book should be easy to find, and the recipe is well worth trying. Her website is very nice, and she has posted many of her other recipes there.

Finally, as Richard Brautigan wrote, "the earth [is] beginning to cool off in the correct manner of eternity"; still in the 80s today and tomorrow but by Tuesday we'll be in the low 70s and, I hope, staying there or even getting cooler. So I've been pulling out sweaters and sweatshirts to wear on our morning walks. I got this sweatshirt more than 20 years ago at the Hallmark store in Arcata (it's a morning for Humboldt County nostalgia, I guess) and I've almost given it away several times but I just can't. Opposed as I am in general to bumper-sticker style rhetoric, this one does seem to say it all. Such a simple message. How come so many of us still don't get it? How have we let so many things get so out of hand? So here's my advice for today, directed as much toward myself as to anyone else.

Stay home sometimes. Make muffins and then enjoy one with a nice cup of tea. Look out the window and watch the seasons change. Read some poetry, or any book, for that matter. Be like Candide and just cultivate your garden, literal or metaphorical. Slow down. Use less. Save the world. We may need it later.

Pasta of the Week

2010-10-31T20:10:00.002-07:00

Though I know that I can be an intermittent blogger at best, I'm setting myself the task of posting at fairly regular intervals some of the new recipes that I try; I just posted the second "Muffin of the Week." Joe likes to have pasta on Sundays, and tonight I tried "Maccarun ch'i Hiuce," Cavatelli with Cauliflower, from page 278 of Lidia Mattichio Bastianich's Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy, her wonderful recent cookbook that divides its content by region. I've been watching her on the Create TV channel and getting so hungry I just had to order the book!
I meant to make Cavatelli with Cauliflower, Almonds, and Toasted Breadcrumbs on page 279 (I'd watched her make that one on TV) but forgot to buy the right kind of bread for the crumbs.

This "substitute" recipe is so delicious and easy! A generous amount of chopped garlic simmers in a generous amount of olive oil, then you add some red pepper flakes and parsley and a ladleful of the pasta cooking water and let it all simmer and reduce while the pasta and cauliflower boil together. Toss the pasta and cauliflower with the sauce ingredients in the pan (I use a mid-sized nonstick wok) and then toss them again with a good amount of grated pecorino or Parmiggiano-Reggiano. I made the full recipe, with 1 pound of pasta and a whole cauliflower, so we have leftovers for later in the week. Yes, I know pasta dishes are best when freshly made, but it will still be much better than almost anything available from the fast food places in the student union food court.
And I still intend to try the recipe on page 279.

Muffin of the Week

2010-10-31T19:51:00.002-07:00

It's Halloween and there've been almost no trick-or-treaters, perhaps because it Sunday night, but there are fewer every year, it seems. Joe didn't think we had enough candy so he bought more - I didn't know that, so I also bought another bag. Seems we'll have quite a bit to take into work - college kids love free food, so it should vanish fairly quickly.

Last week I posted a picture of Cherry Cornmeal Muffins from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café cookbook. This morning, in keeping with the season, I made her Pumpkin Muffins from the same book. In fact, I may just have to work my way through all the muffin recipes in Sunlight Café. These were also yummy, even though I misread the recipe and put in 1 cup of milk instead of the 1/2 cup it calls for. You can find the recipe at: http://www.molliekatzen.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipe=pumpkin_muffins .

We had them for breakfast with a simple potato and sausage hash, made from leftover steamed potatoes and (to serve 2) just one of those big chicken sausages from Costco, also leftover since Joe cooked a few and then we forgot to eat them. Nothing to it. I just chopped some onion and sautéed it briefly in a little olive oil in a nonstick skillet, then added the chopped potatoes and sausage and cooked them over medium heat, mostly covered, for 10 minutes or so, stirring/turning at least once, until everything was slightly browned and crisped and heated through.
You'll notice the potatoes are of different varieties; they're from Trader Joe's and come in a small bag with a few each of red, blue, and Yukon Gold. I hadn't tried the blue ones before and in my opinion, there's nothing special about their flavor, but they do add a little visual interest. The breakfast fueled a very nice day out in the garden, and I'm happy to say that the frequency of costumed visitors at the door has picked up since I began writing!

The Season of the Witch

2010-10-29T19:24:00.001-07:00

That was my favorite song by Donovan, way way back in the day, and this is, again, my favorite time of year. What I love most is the way it marks the changing seasons, the turning of the wheel of the year. Van Morrison's on the stereo right now, singing "I want to see you at the Celtic New Year, " which as you may know is exactly what I'm talking about. The Celtic New Year, or Samhain, the last of the harvest festivals, the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and dead is at its thinnest, is the origin of what we call Halloween.

I feel my own Irishness strongly in autumn and winter, and this little watercolor pencil sketch pays tribute to my ancestors as well as the season, with the celtic knots along the side. The crone in various guises - called Hecate, the Morrigan, the Caillech Bheur, Baba Yaga, and many other names - is the deity most associated with Halloween/Samhain and here she stands in front of a bonfire that lights up the night sky reaching out to bless the fruits of the season, represented by (of course) a pumpkin.

Unfortunately, our pumpkins didn't do well this year so, like the rest of the winter squashes we use, they'll come from the farmers' market. Next spring I'll be sure to plant them on Good Friday, which will be later than usual, on April 22. (Easter comes on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox). Planting pumpkins on Good Friday is supposed to guarantee that later, as jack-o-lanterns, they'll be successful at keeping away evil things. (I also recently read that planting white icicle radishes with pumpkins - and presumably other squashes - helps to keep away the dreaded squash vine borer, which got some of our zucchini this year.)

Though most people acknowledge Halloween's celtic beginnings, in other parts of the world this time of year has also traditionally been reserved for important festivals, in the northern hemisphere, as I mentioned above, it's the last harvest festival. In Mexico and here in the southwestern U.S., the Day of the Dead, El Dia de los Muertos, marks a celebration of the lives of those we love(d) who have gone before us. I wrote about that last October and posted pictures of my own ofrenda or altar to the ancestors. At this time the dead can return to visit us - many people make them welcome by setting a place for them at the table or otherwise remembering them in a party atmosphere. One lovely custom I recently read about involves strewing the path to the door with marigold petals to show them the way and invite them in, since marigolds are sacred to the dead.

I made this little pendant from a picture on a lotería board (lotería is a game often described as Mexican bingo, though it's more colorful and, I think, more fun, as well as a good way to practice or learn Spanish - kids love it). I drilled a hole through the top of a domino from side to side, then painted the plain side of the domino with Mod Podge, affixed the picture, coated the picture and the front and sides of the domino generously with Mod Podge again and glued on tiny beads around the edge of the picture and on the eyes of the calavera or skull. The Mod Podge acts as both glue and sealer. Then I just strung it on a black leather cord and knotted it to hang at the desired length. There's no need to bother doing anything at all with the spotted side of the domino.

When I was a child my friends and I roamed our small town without supervision (after a certain age, about 8 or so, I think) feeling totally safe, at least from other humans. Some grownups passed out homemade cookies or popcorn balls or apples, and no one gave a thought to the idea anyone might use those treats to harm us. In fact, those were the most popular houses, since the women were all good cooks! Mrs. Ford, for example, a retired teacher who lived on our block, invited everyone in for cocoa and cookies and parents reminded us to be sure to stop at her house (and to say thank you). It makes me sad to think about how things have changed, how so many of us don't know our neighbors, how we have to worry about someone giving children "treats" that might harm them. Tomorrow night we'll give out factory-sealed candies to the kids who come to our door and hope they enjoy them as much as we did the candied apples and cookies of the past. My enjoyment at seeing the kids come to the door in their costumes hasn't changed - even the ones some people think are too big to still be trick-or-treating. I think if a high schooler can access her or his inner little kid for that one night, it's wonderful. We have to be adult for a long time!

The dangers to animals on Halloween are unfortunately real, so I hope everyone remembers to keep their pets indoors on Halloween night for their own safety, especially cats, and especially black cats like Angelo, above. But I just learned a while ago that in the British Isles, black cats are thought to bring good luck! It's when a white cat crosses your path that you want to worry!

Here are a few bits of Halloween lore, just for fun:
* Eat an apple before going to bed on Halloween night to ensure good health during the coming year, and eat a slice from each of 3 apples for good luck.
* 9 hazelnuts strung together into an amulet and hung in the house on Halloween will attract good luck and protect against evil and negativity.
* Always burn new candles at Halloween, but don't burn Halloween candles at any other time of the year, or you risk bad luck. Guess that means throwing away the Halloween candles after blowing them out - sounds like time for tea lights.
* This one's really important: if you hear footsteps behind you on Halloween night, don't turn around to see who it is. It may be the Grim Reaper himself, and if you look him in the eye, you hasten your own demise!

Above all, have fun on this most ancient of holidays, and try to capture a little of its magic.

The Charm of Making

2010-10-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

The origin of my title today has little or nothing to do with my topic (it's from the movie "Excalibur," and is critical to the relationship between Merlin and Morgana). Actually, I could have titled this post "The Joy of Creating" or maybe "The Joy of Cooking," but that last one's already taken and would also be incomplete.

One of the characters in Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" complains about being tired of people who "don't do anything or don't make anything, except babies," and I have to agree - I know some of those people, and lest I sound like a right-wing wing nut, the ones who "don't do anything or make anything" come in all income brackets.

I do know that most people are busier than they should have to be, just trying to hold down a job or two or three, take care of their families, and otherwise keep body and soul together, so "making things" can seem daunting - just another task in days that are already over-full. It seems easier just to plop down on the couch and watch TV. I was fortunate to grow up with a grandmother who loved watching TV, but while she watched, she turned out yards and miles of knitted and crocheted lace and other projects. Her hands were always busy. Maybe, like me, she saw needlework and crafts as a way to justify those hours in front of the tube. In any case, she made beautiful things that were always appreciated by their lucky recipients.

This afghan and sweater went to a friend who's expecting a little girl on November 10. The afghan is just a whole lot of granny squares (I finally learned how to crochet the squares together as I go along, after more years than I'm going to admit), and the knitted sweater is from a pattern readily available online. Just google one-skein baby sweater. It's knit top-down, from the seam of the hood, and is really, really easy. And yes, that's my Cabbage Patch doll, a gift from my daughter, several years after I gave hers to her.
I love giving gifts like this (it's the second baby afghan in less than two months) when I know they'll be appreciated. And even though they take time, I have the pleasure of creating them before giving them away - a much greater pleasure than just going to the store or shopping online. And shopping also takes time and is not always a pleasure, especially if I'm feeling pressured. Confession time: sometimes when I'm shopping I just feel aimless and spacey, nothing seems very attractive, and it's not much fun. Of course, at other times I find wonderful things and have a great time. So it's not that I feel superior for sometimes making things instead of buying them; I just like having and creating options.

On to the joy of cooking. I'm trying to have a slow, relaxing weekend, and for me that often involves cooking. Joe's observed that it makes me happy (unless it's 6:00 on a weeknight and we default to frozen pizza and a salad). These may be the best muffins I've ever made. They're the Orange-Cherry Corn Muffins from Mollie Katzen's "Sunlight Café" cookbook. Well, okay, they're a tie with the Atomic Bran Muffins from the Northcoast Co-op in Arcata, CA, a recipe that I've seen elsewhere as 6-Week Bran Muffins.
Yesterday I also made soup, no recipe there, just a basic vegetable soup with half a bottle of a low-salt mixed vegetable juice that we didn't like real well in a glass but that mixed well with chicken broth as the liquid in this tomato-ey vegetable-rice soup with white beans.

Then today I used the last of the current batch of dough from one of the recipes in "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" to make a loaf of olive bread by mixing in chopped olives, a little chopped onion, coarsely grated Parmesan, and a little finely chopped fresh rosemary (could have used more rosemary). What a nice lunch it made!

The bread looked better after it was sliced, though, since I forgot to slash the top. Oh, well, I like the crusty, rustic look. And it won't last long, anyway.

Autumn at last, celebrating the desert

2010-10-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

Seasons aren't quite the same in the desert as in other places - some of you will snicker at that understatement. But it does finally feel like our version of autumn; in fact, I actually wore a sweater to work yesterday! It was a cardigan, and I took it off fairly soon after arriving, but still - a sweater! And since today's predicted high is only 70 degrees, I'm going to do it again!

The last couple of months have been very hard on the garden and yard and now we're playing catch-up, trying to get things looking respectable again. A few crops thrive in the heat, so we took most everything out except those - okra, chiles, and eggplant. This year I planted a packet of mixed eggplant seeds from the Cook's Garden; certainly those on the dish earn the name of eggplant. These white ones, and some of the long pale lavender Asian-type, were the best of the lot, lovely to look at, not too seedy, very tasty. But I won't do that again. The most prolific were a bush of round mottled green ones just bigger than a ping pong ball, lovely to look at but very seedy, though the flavor was okay. I've had the best luck in the past with good old Black Beauty and Ichiban, and I think I'll stick with those and maybe one new variety next year. And I'm going back to burgundy okra, which have always produced well and are gorgeous to look at. Joe turned his nose up at okra when I first planted it years ago but was seduced by the beauty of the plant and has learned to like its fruit, though he likes it best breaded and fried, which is my least favorite way to fix it.

As I spread bags of manure on the gardens and turned them over I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the soil; it's come a long way from the dead, packed clay of ten years ago. Our house was built in 1984, in a development that was scraped and denuded of all life to make it easy for the builders, and most of our neighbors yards are still pretty barren. I don't blame them. It takes a lot of effort to coax life out of soil that's been so brutalized. There's only one small front lawn in the neighborhood and the front yards are generally landscaped in desert or desert-adapted plants, including ours.

When we first drove into Tucson, during rush hour on June 4, 1992, at 104 degrees (we'd come from Humboldt County in northern California, where it might reach the 70s on an especially warm day) I felt like crying. We had all our worldly possessions in a 22-foot Ryder rental truck, towing our car behind it, and had given up our apartment and our lives back in California so I could go to grad school at the University of Arizona - I had a teaching assistantship and we had enough money for the summer - and all I wanted to do was turn around and go home, back to where it was green and wet and cloudy most days and the wild blackberries threatened to engulf everything else, including roads and buildings. But we stayed and soon learned to appreciate the beauty and variety of the desert.

Many people think the desert is brown and lifeless, but that's not true. There are so many shades and shapes of green, you would quickly get tired trying to list them all, not to mention the flowers, like those buds ready to burst into bloom on the barrel cactus above. The blue agave with its sharp, serrated, sword-like blades thrives in the thin soil and blazing heat. We now have a mini-tequila plantation on one side of our driveway, at least half a dozen blue agaves, all offspring of one plant given to us by a friend about six years ago (and we've given away many more).

Here's an up close and personal look at a saguaro. Those spines are 1 1/2 to 2 inches long, and this particular plant, in a neighbor's front yard, is about 15 feet tall, truly majestic, but not at all unusual. According to the mythology of the Tohono O'odham people of the area the saguaros are or were people, and it's easy to see how that belief developed, especially the way they often grow together in pairs or groups, sometimes with their arms intertwined like friends or lovers.

And we have many different trees, like this palo verde with its green bark - there must be over a dozen varieties of palo verde alone - fast growing with tiny leaves so as not to lose too much moisture to evaporation.

Just look at that intense blue sky behind the ocotillo. In spring those ten-foot ocotillo branches will be tipped with blazing scarlet flowers.

I had a friend whose grandmother married a miner and moved to the Nevada desert. She told Sally that if you lived in the desert long enough to wear out a pair of shoes, you'd never want to live anywhere else. I've worn out a few pairs of shoes in the last eighteen years, and especially at this time of year, having once again survived the summer, as plants and animals (including us) are rejuvenated by the turning of the seasons, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.

Gardens and more gardens

2010-09-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, September 12, Joe and I took a lovely drive to the south, where a group called Somos la Semilla (We Are the Seed, www.somoslasemilla.com) had organized a free tour of organic farms. Of the seven farms on the tour, we only visited three, but that was just right - we didn't rush, we spent the day in pleasant and often outright beautiful surroundings, and we discovered new things about areas we hadn't been to in a while but always liked.

The first place we went was Forever Yong (yes, that's the correct spelling) Farm east of Arivaca. It's cooler down there than in Tucson, mostly grasslands, at a higher elevation. This farm, like the others we visited, is in a drainage and the soil is so rich it makes a Tucson gardener want to cry. Our soil, as in most subdivision yards here, was bladed and graded with no thought on the part of the developers except to make it flat enough for building, so any gardening first depends on building soil that plants can actually grow in - it can be done, and we've done it in our gardens, but it's hard work. When we arrived at Forever Yong Farm the husband of the couple who own it was giving an informal tour of the greenhouses, the first of which was filled with tomatoes. Readers in more temperate climates may not realize how tricky it is to grow tomatoes in southern Arizona - we got very excited about these. The wife was running the farm stand, where we bought the most beautiful cucumbers I've seen in years, some garlic, and a quart of local mesquite honey which has a rich, almost smoky taste you won't get from the commercial factory stuff - heavenly! Unfortunately, I was so taken by everything around me I forgot to take any pictures there! But you can find the owners and their produce every Thursday afternoon at the Santa Cruz River Farmer's Market on West Speedway.

We drive on to the tiny town of Arivaca, after a stop at the Gadsden Coffee Company, a pleasantly relaxed coffeehouse a mile or so before the town proper, where we relaxed for a bit on the shady patio with some very good java and a big cinnamon roll (which we split, trying not to be toooo indulgent). The ruin above is right in the middle of town, beside La Gitana, the local bar. Neither Joe nor I had checked to see how much cash we had, so we didn't stop to get any, and at the coffeehouse they said there was an ATM at the general store. There was, but it was out of money, and the store doesn't do "cash back." But while I was talking to the very nice and apologetic young woman who worked there, a young man who overheard my dilemma invited me over to La Gitana, where he works, and gave me cash on my debit card without even asking me to buy anything! So that little episode was an instance of both the occasional inconvenience and the friendliness of very small towns - I could live in a place like that!

A few miles out the other side of town is the Arivaca Community Garden, with greenhouses (where they hold yoga classes) and guinea fowl in addition to vegetables planted in more of that wonderful soil; just look at these huge heirloom tomatoes!

We bought two flavors of goat cheese from one woman and a gourd and some green tomatoes from another, whose card I thought I'd kept but now I can't find it - darn! Anyway, her name is Pat and she grows lavender and makes wonderful things from it that she sells at the Saturday Farmers' Market in St. Philip's Plaza. Here she is talking with some other farm tourists. You can get some idea of what a lovely

spot this is, down in a little valley, with grass and plenty of trees for shade as well as the open areas where crops grow in wide rows separated by lawn.

When we left there we thought we'd take the Ruby Road that loops south and over to I-19; we'd never been there and it's supposed to be quite scenic. Well, we've still never been on most of it, because after a few slow and bone-jarring miles we turned around and went back the way we'd come. When we got back on I-19 we headed down to Tubac for a bite to eat and then south to Tumacacori and our last stop, Avalon Organic Farms.

By this time clouds had rolled in and we were hoping for rain, but not until we'd finished this last visit. Avalon is an intentional community of about 100 people, with a religious focus, begun in Sedona by Gabriel of Urantia - I don't really know much about them but the people we spoke with there were friendly and seemed happy, and they certainly live in a beautiful place.

Like King Arthur, we had to cross water to get to Avalon; the Santa Cruz was running just a few inches deep, not a problem to drive through, but that was another reason we hoped the rain held off until we left. The river runs north from Mexico, and by the time it gets to Tucson the water has all been sucked off by development, but in decades past it still ran up here - and it still does, when we get a good rainstorm.

This Avalon is certainly an idyllic spot. It must have been an old ranch; there's a big house, what looks like a caretaker's cottage, and a horse barn from those days, plus a lot of new buildings. These people are committed to sustainability, and their architecture reflects that. There are beautiful yurts and some other little houses that utilize a technology developed in the war-torn Middle East by people whose homes were destroyed by the fighting. They took sandbags and piled them up in coils and then plastered them with a mud mixture; the result is similar to the straw-bale and rammed-earth technologies that have become popular here, but the final result has a charming, almost fairytale quality (at least I think so).

This is a shot of one of the interiors. While I like these little houses very much, I couldn't live at Avalon. It's not anything to do with their theology, since I don't even know what that is, though it seems vaguely Christian, with emphasis on the "Cosmic Christ." No, it's that I need my own kitchen and bathroom. A communal meal once or twice a week might be nice, but I really like my own cooking, and Joe's. Sharing a bathhouse if we're camping or a bathroom when we're on vacation is enough.

That said, the communal bathhouses are quite beautiful, and they make wonderful use of reclaimed and recycled building materials.

Heading back down the long drive out of Avalon was like passing through a bit of pastoral heaven. And the rain began just as we crossed through the river and headed back to the real world.

Labor Day Weekend Part II

2010-09-07T11:24:00.001-07:00

After our adventure on Friday we set early Saturday morning to try again for a cool hike at the top of Mt. Lemmon. Joe was driving - he likes winding mountain roads and I like to read or knit while he's driving them, often a little faster than I'm comfortable with, but after nearly 20 years I'm pretty used to it. There are lots of bicyclists struggling up the mountain and they don't always ride single file on that relatively narrow road. I admire their fitness and fortitude, but it can be frustrating to get stuck behind them. It frustrates Joe, too. He was enjoying driving the new car and several times he crossed the solid yellow line to pass cyclists on or near turns with limited visibility, though it's true there was almost no downhill traffic at that time of day. A sheriff's deputy stopped us just past the Palisades ranger station. Fortunately, he let Joe off with a warning, and as I told him (without elaborating or gloating), I'm glad he got stopped. But it took away some of the fun of the Outback for him.

We parked across from the new community center that was built a few years ago as part of the recovery effort after the Aspen Fire. Then we walked up Turkey Run Road, the first street on the right after you get into Summerhaven; this charming cabin is the first one on that road and it may be my favorite cabin on the mountain. It dates from before the fire and has some interesting architectural details not visible in this photo, and more importantly, it nestles comfortably into its site rather than aggressively dominating it, like so many of the newer, bigger, more pretentious and vastly more expensive places built in the last few years. Many of those places remind me of what my grandmother (and I'm sure many other grandmothers) said: Money can't buy class or taste - though clearly not everyone would agree.

Turkey Run Road turns into a dirt road and then a trail along upper Sabino Creek, a beautiful riparian area. The abundant rains have led to an abundance of mushrooms and other fungi in various shapes, sizes, and colors.

This fallen log was covered with thousands of these tiny mushrooms; the biggest were the size of a pea.

There are signs of past human activity in the area along the creek - the concrete foundation of a building, another concrete structure that may have been connected to a bridge or meant to deter the creek from altering its channel, rusty water pipes sticking up from the ground like the remnants of ancient plants, and this odd sight that made me think of the Teletubbies' world on PBS - while Isaiah was little, I grew quite fond of the Teletubbies:

After about a mile we came to the Aspen Draw Trail proper, which leads up to the summit, also the top of the ski lift, which stays busy in the summer giving tourists what must be a spectacular view. There were lots of birds in the trees, including several of what had to be goldfinches, but much smaller than the ones we feed in our yard down in the "lowlands," as well as juncos and bluejays and titmice and others. We've noticed on past hikes that we'll often see a junco who seems to be hopping ahead of us on the trail, like a guide, or maybe a sentry watching to see we don't go wandering off where we shouldn't. Joe picked up a blue jay feather to add to those we keep in a Navajo pot at home.

We saw a number of downed trees, some cut, some fallen naturally, showing signs of rot and, in a couple of cases, that bears had been at them digging out insects and grubs. All that organic matter provides homes for opportunistic plants, like this solitary mushroom in the middle of an upright, rotted out tree trunk.

On the trail the view was always limited to what was nearby, just behind us, just up ahead.

But once you reach the top you can see for miles and miles. These burned skeletons remind me of a prose poem by James Galvin, "Fathers and Indians," which appeared first in Imaginary Timber and later in Resurrection Update. He writes of "the old trees, pitch-hardened, fire-hardened spars . . . . Had they not been destroyed, they would not be remembered. The ones left standing remind us of the fallen, remind us there are forests of empty sleeves, tunneling into the sky."

That image, of the "forests of empty sleeves," has stayed with me for many years. For obvious reasons, it makes me think of the aftermath of war - not only war between peoples but the war so many of us continue to wage against the natural world. But sometimes in that aftermath, to quote another poet, "a terrible beauty is born."

Going back to Summerhaven, we forsook the trail for the road, which was recently repaved and has wide enough shoulders for safety, for the most part. We kept to it until we'd passed by the Ski Valley lodge and lift area and then got onto another trail that soon led us back to Turkey Run Road, and the village, and then back down the mountain to home. It was a glorious day.

life is what happens while you're making other plans

2010-09-06T12:16:00.001-07:00

Whoever said that was certainly right. Early Friday morning Joe and I set out for a hike on Mt. Lemmon, hoping to avoid the holiday weekend crowds that would be sure to fill the trails (and trailhead parking spots) on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We weren't too far up when Joe looked in the rearview mirror and saw smoke pouring from the rear of the car. He pulled over as soon as he could, across from the entrance to the Gordon Hirabayashi campground/recreation site, a place we like very much during the cooler parts of the year when we can follow the trail that starts there and goes down to the Sycamore Reservoir. But right now it's still too hot for lower-elevation trails like that one.

It was immediately apparent that we were leaking automatic transmission fluid. It was red, like blood on the asphalt (well, not exactly, but there was a resemblance, and our beloved Forester was too wounded to go on just then). You don't have to go too far up Mt. Lemmon before losing cell phone reception; Joe set off to see if he could climb a hill and get a signal so he could call AAA for a tow truck, while I stayed with the car and hoped for help.

The entrance to the Gordon Hirabayashi campground/recreation area

A few people did stop, including a couple of very nice Forest Service employees. I gave them our AAA info and they called it in for us. The other folks who stopped were also wonderful - when I said I was okay they all asked if I had water, which of course is essential in such circumstances! What I didn't have was a timepiece, since I don't like to wear a watch, Joe had the cellphone, and I wasn't sure I should turn on the car. I learned that I don't really have much sense of how much time is passing, though the stress of the situation may have exacerbated that failing. If I'd thought about it, I could have estimated by looking at the sun, but I didn't think about it, and so after a while I got worried about whether Joe would return before the tow truck arrived. I amused myself by pacing back and forth, doing a few yoga stretches, reading a magazine (fortunately I seldom, if ever, go anywhere without something to read), and taking some photos, because even though I was in distress, I was also in a beautiful area.

It seems like most of the time we are in too great a hurry to notice, much less appreciate, the beauty that is literally at our feet - we'll stop and concentrate on a painting in a gallery, and maybe pay a great deal of money to hang it on our wall, when nature's compositions are more perfect. Rupert Brooke's "Fragment on Painters" begins:

There is an evil which that Race attaints

Who represent God's World with oily paints,

Who mock the Universe, so rare and sweet,

With spots of colour on a canvas sheet....

As part of that "evil...Race," I have to agree - there's nothing like the real thing.

Look at this lovely grass with its feathery seedheads - if I found it in my yard I'd pull it out as a weed, yet nothing I plant is really any prettier. When I ran the seedheads between my fingers they felt like silk and the ready seeds came off and floated away on their tiny wings. If I changed the angle and spot from which I looked uphill, even though the rocks and trees and brush remained in place, my changed perspective provided a new inspiration. I was wishing for art supplies but I only had my camera and so I shot dozens of pictures.

Joe got back just a few minutes before the tow truck arrived. We rode with our car down to the Subaru dealership, where we learned that they needed to order the hose that had failed, so for a few days we're driving a loaner car, a 2011 Outback, which is very nice, though bigger and heavier than anything we've ever owned. I like the way it feels and looks, though, and it's a beautiful shade of green.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. The next day, Saturday, we did make it up the mountain, but this post is long enough already, so I'll give the computer and my fingers a rest and post about that later.

over-the-hill cooking

2010-08-31T11:58:00.002-07:00

No, I don't mean the cook is over-the-hill, though sometimes we may feel that way! What I'm talking about here are those ingredients that get forgotten in the refrigerator or garden till they're a bit past their prime. Not rotting or slimy or anything, just not as fresh as they used to be. The question, then, is whether to throw them out or find some way to incorporate them into something tasty. There's a saying I like (I saw it on an old embroidered sampler):

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

My grandmother, who was very important in my upbringing and who raised her children during the Great Depression, would have liked that. She taught me a lot about cooking, sewing, gardening, etc., and I also absorbed many of my beliefs and values from her. One of those is that it just makes me crazy to see people throw away perfectly good food that could be put to use and provide eating pleasure.

All of this is just the lead-in to what we had for lunch yesterday, a zucchini frittata enhanced by a few over-the-hill mushrooms.

You can't see the mushrooms in the picture. There were four of them, nice Creminis, stored properly in a brown paper bag with the edges turned down and partly open to let the mushrooms breathe, and they'd been breathing at the back of the refrigerator for a couple of weeks or so, and now they were showing their age. Not crispy crumbly dried like the ones in the little packets that we buy as delicacies at the market, but slightly shriveled and leathery though otherwise okay. I didn't want to "reconstitute" them by soaking and thus lose their flavor and "structural integrity," so I sliced off the bottoms of the stems and chopped what remained into fairly small bits, then sautéed them in olive oil with quite a bit of minced garlic and a couple of sliced zucchini for 10 minutes or so over pretty low heat. I salted the zucchini at this stage rather than salting the dish later because if you salt the vegetables as you sauté them, it not only enhances the flavor but it also draws out more of their moisture, and zucchini have considerable moisture that, before it cooked down, helped to rehydrate my mushroom bits and enhance the flavor addition they made to the frittata.

I should add here that the zucchini had also been forgotten a few days longer than I would have liked, so their lovely dark green skin was starting to show the first signs of cellulite, but they were still quite wholesome and acceptable, though they'd lost some of their youthful perfection. Anyway, after the zucchini were tender it was time to pour the eggs over (I use 6 eggs to serve 4), sprinkle a good handful or two of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top, pop on the lid, turn the heat down even lower, and go do something else for 10 or 15 minutes. I know that's not the traditional way of cooking a frittata, but it produces a lovely, puffy dish with minimal effort, and with a nice salad (the dressing recipe is in an earlier post), some good bread, and a glass of wine (this is a decent but not too pricey white Zin) it was a lovely lunch.

The bread is the "bran-enriched white bread" from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, my current new favorite cookbook. If you follow the instructions to the letter you get exactly the results they promise - excellent bread with minimal effort. Don't let hubris derail you. As a long-time bread-baker who even used to teach classes on it, I thought I could improve on their method, so the first time I tried one of their recipes I didn't really pay attention, and what I got wasn't all that great. In fact, I almost took the book to Bookman's (Tucson's wonderful used book/music/and many other things exchange) but then I tried it again and followed the directions and was very happy with the results. With a bit more experience under my belt, I now feel able to improvise and adapt, but baking, more than other forms of cooking, does require a bit more attention to certain details.

Frittatas are such a lovely way to use up bits of this and that and turn them into something special. I'd meant to add some slivers of sun-dried tomato to this one, but I forgot. Fresh mushrooms are great, of course, and I often use just mushrooms and onions or scallions. Fresh herbs - parsley, basil, thyme, marjoram, etc. - brighten things up, but don't confuse the issue by using too much or too many different ones all together. Rosemary, for example, is wonderful with garlic and anything else, but in something as delicate as a frittata, it's probably all the herb you need, and it should be minced quite finely (dried rosemary is to be avoided - those little sharp sticks could really hurt a person! - unless you really have no possible way to get the fresh stuff, in which case the dried herb should be very finely minced and simmered in whatever you're making for a long time, or ground to a powder so it can't choke you). Leftover crumbled bacon and/or various cheeses - that last ounce of gorgonzola with some caramelized onion and a slice of crumbled bacon from yesterday's breakfast (or the day before - it's cooked so it will keep for a few days) can really elevate what might otherwise just seem like scrambled eggs for two.

And now it's time for me to go see what I can come up with for lunch today!

mountain getaway

2010-08-26T20:02:00.002-07:00

I've been away from this blog for quite a while. The summer has been busier and hotter than I'd like; the monsoons have been few and mostly stingy, so we gave up on some of the summer garden - seemed like a waste of expensive water - and are looking forward to cooler weather and planting for the winter. But in the meantime, Tucson has a wonderful sky island getaway available close by, Mt. Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains just northeast of the city, rising through several bio-zones from the saguaros of the desert floor to the pines of the 9000+ foot summit, and Joe and I escaped there for the day last Saturday.

About halfway up we stopped at a pullout and I picked this Hooker's primrose. The blossom is as big and as yellow as the columbine we see on the shadier, moister trails higher up, but there was no shade or moisture where these were growing. There was, however, a spcctacular view of the road we'd just driven up. I hadn't realized the switchbacks were quite that dramatic. Good thing I outgrew most of the car-sickness that plagued me as a kid!

We decided to try one of our favorite trails from a few years ago, before the Aspen Fire that devastated so much of the mountain and virtually destroyed the village of Summerhaven, though the people of the village have since rebuilt much of what burned. The memory of the fire is still fresh, both in human minds and in the landscape. These burned trees stand as silent reminders to those who stop to look down into the San Pedro River valley on the far side of the mountains.

The Butterfly trail used to be
thickly wooded, but much of
it burned, and some of those
burned trees have since fallen
or been cut down, so it looks
very different these days. All
over the mountains there is
new growth, especially ferns
and aspen and locust trees,
and some trees seize any
opportunity to put down
roots, like this one that
seems to be growing right
out of the rock, probably
since before the fire.

When we hiked there before the fire we didn't see as many raspberries we did on Saturday, and last September we found lots of elderberries, enough to pick some to take home to make syrup. We were hoping for elderberries on this trip, but they're not ripe yet. However, we found lots of wildflowers, like these columbines and Indian paintbrush.

I love the bearded penstemons that line the trail, and so do the hummingbirds.

This dead log surrounded by a froth of lovely, delicate cranesbill is fulfilling one of the higher purposes available to a downed tree, that is, to provide a home for colorful fungi.

Unfortunately, we cut our hike a bit shorter than we'd planned because my left knee, which I injured a few weeks ago (just before the elevator went out in the building I was teaching in for three weeks, which didn't help matters), started acting up, so we turned back. But the nice thing about hiking out and back is that things look very different on the return trip, so it was just fine. It was also uphill on the return, which was easier on my knee. And I'm happy to say that I've been walking every day and the knee continues to improve, just not as rapidly as I'd like - but patience really isn't my strongest virtue.

We'd packed a lunch, since the four eating establishments Summerhaven boasted before the fire had been reduced to one. Of the three that burned, only one has rebuilt so far, and it was always our least favorite (the one restaurant that survived the fire closed some months ago for other reasons). But hope springs eternal, so we drove into the village to see if there was anything new, and there was! At the upper end of the main street a big banner announced "Planet of the Crepes" so we pressed on eagerly and at the intersection with Carter Canyon Road, in a shady clearing, we found a white trailer and a few tables and the answer to our prayers.

The menu was a delightful surprise, ranging from breakfast bacon-and-egg crepes to sweet treats (Nutella and banana, for example) and some fairly sophisticated savory offerings, all folded up in delicious, generous, crispy crepes. Joe had the veggie option, tomatoes, cheese, pesto and some other fresh and delicious ingredients, while I tried the smoked duck breast with havarti and arugula. Our taste buds were very happy and so was our budget; the prices are quite reasonable (my very fancy lunch was $6.75). There's a Facebook page under Planet of the Crepes Tucson, but I couldn't find the menu posted anywhere online. Guess you'll just have to drive up the mountain and check it out for yourselves - I promise you won't be sorry!

2010-06-08T07:02:00.002-07:00

Mendocino, Mendocino
Where life's such a groove,
You blow your mind in the morning

The Sir Douglas Quintet sang that many, many years ago and in many ways it’s still true. The spectacular ocean views, the flower-covered headlands, the dark forests just on the other side of the coast highway, they're all still there. This is the view from our son and daughter-in-law’s front yard; the construction tape marks a massive landscaping project currently underway, which fortunately is mostly on the other side of the house, I say "fortunately" because it would be a shame to disrupt that view.

We were lucky to have two full days of sunny weather while we were there. The first day we took the grandchildren to Glass Beach, which isn’t a sandy beach but rather a rocky area known for the quantities of sea glass that wash up there. Every time we go we collect at least half a sandwich bagful, and Martha Stewart gives instructions on how to drill holes in it so you can use it for beads. Of course you could also wrap it with wire, and of course I haven’t done either of those things yet, but I have the glass and I have the tools, and one day I will. I’ve promised myself. But mostly it’s just such a joy to go there with Geneva and Dante, to turn them loose with their own zip-lock bags and to climb over the rocks with them and poke among the tidepools, to gently touch the fleshy, flabby sea anemones, to just watch children doing what children should be doing instead of spending so much time in front of computer and TV screens. And I love taking photos of them when they're busy and not conscious of the camera. Little girls, especially, get taught to "pose" in ways that make them seem calculated, affected, and fake, when real beauty lies in spontaneity, for instance, in the joy of running over rocks in rubber boots or, like Dante, climbing into a crevice in the rocks to see what might be there.

These seals were basking on rocks just far enough away that we could watch them (and they could watch us) without fear of actually disturbing them.

The second day was more typical Mendocino weather, cool and gray, so I went into town to Compass Leather, where I bought my favorite purse a couple of years ago. It’s gotten a lot of use and was showing it, and I’d been unhappy with the results I got when I tried to clean it. The owner, whose name I should have gotten and who does beautiful leatherwork himself in addition to selling that of others (and other items) cleaned and waxed it for me at no charge and explained the qualities of leather as it ages, so that now I can appreciate the patina my bag is developing.
      Towns like Mendocino rely on recreational shoppers and diners for their survival, and after the first time I visit a place and cruise the galleries and shops, I’m not really into that, but I do like Mendo’s local yarn store (where I got 3 skeins of gorgeous wine-colored yarn on sale for $2 each!) and bookstore, as well as Rubaiyat Beads, across from the Mendocino Bakery, where I found the perfect gift for a friend whose birthday is coming up in early August.
      Mostly, though, I just like being there, and my only disappointment, as it is in most places we visit, lies in not having time to just wander and sketch and breathe. No doubt I’ll use some photos as the basis for paintings, but I’d love to have the time to just go out alone with my art supplies and real feel my surroundings and try to express them on paper. I suppose that is one of the true poverties so many people face, a poverty of time.
       But our four days there were enriching and inspiring, especially the time we spent with the grandchildren. On the second sunny day, while Dante was in preschool, we took Geneva to the local cemetery, a place she’d been wanting to visit for some time. The Mendocino cemetery is beautiful in a rather gone-to-seed way that’s much more welcoming than carefully manicured acres of lawns, and it has graves dating back to the 1860s, many of Italian, Portuguese, and Irish settlers: “So and so, born in Ireland, native of County Mayo….” She said it was her first time in a cemetery, but as previous posts have shown, I like visiting them. They're peaceful, usually scenic, and you can learn a lot about a place from its graveyards. (We also went to one at Fort Bragg, just a few miles north--it was very well-kept but much less interesting.)

On our last evening we took the family to dinner at a lovely restaurant a few miles south of town, with a spectacular ocean view and excellent service that almost (but not quite) made up for the rather ordinary food; most of it was okay, the desserts were very good, the beet-and-goat-cheese appetizer even better than that, but our daughter-in-law’s fish stew (which I almost ordered) was all but inedible, and nothing else was very impressive. Even so, it was a nice evening.
It seems funny to me how much I enjoy travel, and visiting family and friends, but when it’s time to leave, I’m always ready to go. I miss my house, my garden, and especially my kitchen. We returned to scorching heat and I don’t mind it – yet. Guess Dorothy was right: “It’s so good to be home.”

California Dreamin'

2010-06-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Some places just seem to recharge my creativity, especially in northern California (San Francisco and northward), especially Sonoma. We try to go there every year, first to visit our dear friend Diane in Sonoma for a few days and then on up the coast to Mendocino to see the California grandkids, and their parents, of course. My home and heart are in the desert, but we all need a change sometimes. Sonoma is so filled with the sweet green breathing of plants that it immediately refreshes my soul. I’m not just talking about vineyards, but of course the vineyards are beautiful. This is the view from the end of Diane’s street.

For years Diane has collected salt and pepper shakers, but selectively, only couples, and it’s been fun to search antique and thrift shops, estate and yard sales, for new members to add to the little community. They all seem to have individual expressions and personalities; I’m quite taken by the little Dutch couple in the middle, while the one on the far left seems like she’d be a bit of a gossip and busybody. I’ve been thinking of some kind of creative project that would involve all these little people.

The first full day we were in Sonoma we went to Quarryhill, a remarkable botanical garden with a focus on Asian plant species, many of which are rare or even endangered in their homelands. Paths lead visitors up and down gentle slopes, around ponds filled with waterlilies and ducks, and into hidden nooks where it seems quite possible fairies might come out to dance after the humans have gone for the day.

We also went to an art show on the plaza in the middle of town, put on by a group of plein-air painters who’d produced their paintings just the week before. The artists were all very accomplished and the paintings quite lovely (and expensive), but similar in many ways, from size to subject matter to the palette of colors almost all of them seemed to use. Perhaps that’s why I was so taken by this artist’s work, with its sharp lines and clear, bright colors.

Back at Diane’s subdivision, we went for a walk and visited Temelec Hall, built in 1858 by one of the members of California’s Bear Flag party. This grand building is within the boundaries of the subdivision and residents can use it for gatherings.

And this is one of four identical little cottages at the corners of the garden at Temelec Hall. I suppose they’re toolsheds or pumphouses or something similarly practical, but doesn’t this one look like it belongs in a fairy tale? Perhaps if it was smaller, some of the salt-and-pepper people could live in it.
The weather was unseasonably cool while we were there, but our visits to our friend and to Sonoma always warm my heart. With temperatures here in Tucson predicted to reach 106 by Sunday, I wish I could have brought back some of that cool weather!