Of Cats and Rats and Cornmeal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.