Today, in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, I peeled and chopped tiny yellow apples, a crop the girls and I had piled into Bea's bike basket days before at our nearby communal orchard.  I added peaches that were so ripe the skin slipped easily under a hot stream of water, and I broke them into a pot with my fingers.  The girls scooped up a pile of windfalls from our own apple tree and I added them, too, still hard and green.  As the sauce simmered and filled the house with a familiar heady scent, I thought of long mornings in Pennsylvania, a bushel of apples between my feet, bent over the peeler as I chatted with Nancy Thompson and we sipped tea.  I thought of winding through roads swept with yellow leaves with my friend Tonya (or Sonya, as she appeared in my columns), on our way to the local apple and peach orchard. 

I think, too, of a brilliant day when the sky was the color of my daughter's eyes, swinging myself up into an apple tree not far from town as Sally (or Sal, as she appeared in my columns) snapped photos of our children.

Our little house smelled wonderful and as my sister and brother-in-law, my cousin, my nieces and nephews and my own family spilled in the door from the chilly outdoors, I relished sharing it with them.  This process--harvesting, cooking slowly, eating together--the smelling and the stirring, the sugaring and the spicing--all of it recorded my belonging in a new place.

Tonight, stepping out of a hot shower, I looked in the mirror and read much of my life on my body: a series of maps that trace my daughters' first growth as they stretched and pushed from inside my belly.  I suddenly realized that each day in my life never feels truly finished unless I've processed it somehow, and as a writer, I do that by recording, by mapping.  When life is busy, I write the stories in my mind in a quiet moment, but that feels incomplete.  Settling myself here, then, must mean that I have to return to this place to find these words and share them with you. 

Writers often advise their students to let a life-changing experience stew for a while.  Walk around it slowly, smell it, taste it, let the flavors mingle.  Then offer it up.  I've waited for a few months now.  We're well and truly moved, but so much of my soul lingers behind.  How will I center myself in this new place?  Write, write, write.  It's time.  Thanks for waiting.

"Wazoo Goes West" will wait as I find a way to leave "Notes From. . ." behind.  Bodily, I left it some time ago, but the recording must still be done.  I'll try for as long as I can stand it and then I'll move on.

16 oz jar: 13.25

Only three left in stock on Amazon.com.

But I bought mine at $2.50 a jar at Target a week and a half ago. Martin scoffed to see the kitchen counter covered in a small army of Smucker's creamy and chunky. But we'll see who's making fun of whom when February comes and peanut butter is costing us over ten bucks a jar.

Panic struck my peanut-loving heart when my mother arrived two weeks ago and informed me a peanut shortage was just around the corner. The farmers in Georgia did not have a good year.

I love a good PBJ with a glass of milk. I love peanut butter on pancakes, in cookies, smeared on apples. I left a token two jars on the store shelf, but I greedily scooped the rest into my cart. And now I'm glad I did, because the price on Amazon has doubled since I checked last week. Find your favorite peanut butter, people, and stock up. The day of reckoning is near. Read more by clicking: PEANUT BUTTER PRICES SKY ROCKET

Saucing

This morning I spent the hours with a couple of good women, saucing a mountain of garden tomatoes into deliciousness. There's nothing more soothing than a pot full of homegrown tomatoes, simmering slowly, or more glorious than a cutting board crowded with two-foot stalks of basil. I even love the smell of garlic that clings to my fingers and the sizzle of the red wine when I drown the onions and peppers.

Slow food. It makes fast friends. It makes the heart happy. It hinders the spinning of the crazy world just long enough for a good laugh.

Three heads of garlic, man. I mean, what's better than that? Makes me feel like a truly rich woman.

Mojito Breeze at Wazoo

"Hello, this is Equitable Gas!" the friendly, male automated voice interrupts my last cup of tea. "You're going to be up bleeping creek without a paddle if you don't remit payment soon, sucker. Like hot water? Well, it's GOOOOONE."

See, this is the problem, mateys. We have the money to pay our bills but I, the bill payer, have procrastinated her duties endlessly. We've gone all soft around here in the past day and a half. Martin's done grading poetry portfolios and last exams and we're feeling the mellow, mint-tinged summer breeze of change. Nobody wants to do anything they're supposed to anymore. I've got a column to write and I'm on my little spiffy Netbook, writing this instead. I'm still in my pjs. Martin is looking for bike tires on the internet. Bea is standing on a kitchen chair, shouting, "Could I just have ONE?" (One M&M, that is). I tell her, you can have one if you go to the potty. Too late. Apparently the post-school lazies are affecting us all in different ways. Thankfully, there is only one of us here at Wazoo who thinks a good time includes pooping her pants.

I did pay the gas bill this morning. I love hot water too much. And Mojitos. I love to say "moJIto," I love to fill my hands with tender spring mint, I love to sip languidly in the company of good people on our back porch, listening to the wind chimes and the jealous birds begging for just a sip. For a few days I've been awakening with a feeling of cloudy doom lingering over my head, a leftover of stressful, busy last work weeks. And then I tell myself, "All is well," and the clouds thin out to wispy cirrus high up in a hot blue sky.

Come by and celebrate with us. Bring a lime. We've got the rum.

the Ancient Grumpilo

The heater's rattling away, and if I didn't know that Martin had been out until an hour past dark starting on a new pea bed, I'd half expect snow in the morning, just out of habit.

Overrated things: thriftiness when you feel like celebrating, square-foot gardening and all other super-organized gardening methods, words like "fave" and "most-faved," bloggers who mark each of their photos with massive copyrights, pensive authors on bookjackets, inner pressure to rip out the wild violets in the front flowerbed (they can't help it that they are weeds and the leaves are so shiny and pretty), deadlines of all kinds, feeling cold in springtime, soccer practice three nights a week, rejections containing the phrase "just wasn't right" and that end, "Best of luck," people who complain endlessly on their blogs, . . .ME!

So that's enough from the ancient Grumpilo, who is residing right now in my bladder, grumbling bad talk even though the kids are in bed and my dear one sits beside me looking at photos of an unbelievable garden in Tennessee. I will expel the Grumpilo, fetch myself a cup of chamomile tea, and edit some poems. I wish I could write intricate, transcendent Indian poetry; perhaps that would send the Grumpilo packing forever. But I am not Indian, I'm just plain old pale me, paler still from the Pennsylvania winter. And I am not Greek, either, though I'd like to be, given the chance.

Martin and I sat in the car after work and as I turned the key, he said, "Maybe we should go for gyros," and I had been thinking the EXACT SAME THING (hurrah), so we drove up to the next city with the girls and a bearded man named Costas fixed us up gyros in a tiny restaurant papered with photos of the Greek Isles. Family members and friends dropped in to chat with his wife, a woman with some weight dressed in a low-cut, red dress, with painted eyelashes and such a warm manner that I wanted to be Greek, too, and slice meat on a spit onto pita bread and compare days with my nieces who dropped by on the way home from work. We are not even a tiny percentage Greek, but Elspeth found out she loves stuffed grape leaves.

This blog has no narrative cohesion, I'm afraid. The Grumpilo may be partly to blame. I just glanced despondently over at Martin's laptop and read "Composting Opportunities!" I may eat a banana tonight, and then I, too, could have a composting opportunity. I can hardly wait.

Hope the ancient and cantankerous Grumpilo stays far away from you all tonight.

Luck 'O the Irish

We may not have a drop of Irish blood (we're Finnish/Scottish/English/French mongrels), but we love St. Patty's Day. . .and here's the sun, making a special appearance, inspiring us to put away our gloom and follow our Irish step-dancing hearts to the nearest market to buy a corned beef brisket. We found a good recipe and though our local grocery store did not even NOD at St. Patrick by showcasing cabbage or tatties, Mom and I are going to poke around until we find a plump leafy head and a mouthwatering corned beef. And then we're going to roast the lot in beer.
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Of course St. Patrick was not the Saint of brew pubs and cabbage boil, even though I'm tempted to slap garish green shamrocks all over my body; nor is he the saint of pinched elementary students or the cause of the snakes' flight out of Ireland. I did a little research to find out what sort of reflections I should engage in on my corned beef hunt--actually, a better time to think on St. Patrick would be while the brisket is slowing roasting in the oven--and though Patrick's story is compelling in itself, I was happy to find at this site the Breastplate of St. Patrick. . .Below, I pasted my favorite parts; the first reads like a poem and the last is, of course, a much-loved ancient prayer.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, and may we show brave love to each person we encounter today.

Christmas Mash-Up

Merry's question should have been adequate warning for the reaction of an entire room of people, faces flushed with Christmas: "What is the play ABOUT?"

As my friend Elesha (aka, Singer One in the play)said, "It's highly conceptual."

These were my goals as I wrote the script and directed a crew of wild children: to avoid a dry retelling of the classic Christmas story; to evoke a child-like spirit of wonder and questions; to keep the play, and thus the practices, mercifully short.

Basically, as I explained to my friend Sal this morning, the play was a God-spell like Christmas mash-up, with children asking questions, playing drums, singing snippets of Christmas carols, and reading short lines from scripts. They were dressed in a variety of colors and outfits from around the world and scarves were draped over a series of wooden stairs and tiny folding chairs. Granted, the last carol, "Joy to the World," in which the audience was supposed to participate, started in, say, at least three different keys, and may have never totally recovered, but the kids played their drums and Martin banged out a good beat on a metal chair, and even Bea, in her tiny Chinese pantsuit, joined in on the djembe. Afterwards there was a stunned silence into which I yelled, "That's our Christmas celebration for this year! And now we can all EAT!"

Which we did--I flew back to the church kitchen to cut up my Texas sheet cake. And nobody said anything about the Christmas play--not any of the women who came back to retrieve pots of soup or casseroles for the pot-luck table, not any of the men who cleared up afterward. I'm used to Baptists or free-wheeling nondenominationalists or dry but funny Episcopalians who, in their various ways, gush a little more: "Oh, honey, that was so cuuute," a Baptist Texan at Martin's parent's church might have said (I imagined), "Those kids looked so dahlin' up there, and they beat their drums so well."

From the Mennonites, nothing. I couldn't figure out whether it was because one is not supposed to congratulate anyone on their accomplishments, since all the glory is due God, or whether they just all were so confused they had no idea what in the world to say. Finally I dropped a word to young-church-lady Rachel, who was collecting cutlery and setting up the tea bags in little baskets, and she confirmed that the children had really enjoyed themselves. Not a single word from the rest of church-goers, and was I being paranoid when I caught a funny light in the choir director's eyes when she spoke to me later over plates of sloppy joe and unidentifiable food?

Not to worry; I ate a lot of dessert with good people, sang some carols, and the kids beat their drums and waved scarves all evening, through the eating and the sacred singing, creating such a racket on stage that most of us were afraid to watch lest we must chide for irresponsible behavior. But I think all that joyful racket was an indication that THEY GOT IT, they got the Christmas fever, or the Christmas FEVA, man. As I ate my tenth slice of cake, Martin grinned and said, "Just see if they ask YOU to do the Christmas play again!" and we high-fived.

Merry Christmas, people. Rock the season. There's much to celebrate, much play to be had, little cause for overwrought solemnity, more cause for drum-beating and flashes of light and crying babies--and children, like wayward, dirty shepherds, yelling and spreading their raucous joy all over our stages and our lives.

PIE

I just had a happy thought: Pie! Pumpkin and pecan, rummy whipped cream, in glittering foil south of the milk jug.

We carried home this treasure from our Thanksgiving home up on a ridge. This friendly fellow, J, roasted a turkey covered in fat-back. Oh, my. Can the spits of heaven hold anything more succulent?

I just chatted with my brother-in-law and their turkey, when they cut into it, spurted blood and was still partially frozen. Though I missed family this holiday, I am rumly satisfied to think that I ate the far superior bird. (Thank you, J, T, and kids, for a lovely feast!)

Martin and I have spent this guest-less holiday writing in the evenings. "An hour and a half!" he said tonight, and we sat down with our laptops and fell to. I feel as though I should be working on another short story or my article for the paper, but I've been swimming through the warm waters of poetry instead. Perhaps it's the changing weather--instead of knitting I'm turning to the tight link of words, though they haven't been particularly warm nor cuddly--mostly just strange.

But there's nothing strange about pie and I'm just waiting for Martin to give up so we can shake off the silence and eat.

Poetry in the Church Kitchen

Tonight, I read Babar's Family, The Gardener, and Yesterday I Had the Blues to Elspeth. I made my way through that beautiful, gentle book, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen, and it might have been as Elspeth and I studied the cows snuggled into the hay that sleep began knocking on my head. And then I was gone for two hours. My Martin just awakened me to drink tea. Falling asleep early is a Sunday night tradition for me, especially after a weekend like this one, where we partied. And partied. And then partied some more. Our Mennonite Church had a big anniversary bash all weekend. We attended the coffeehouse Friday night, skipped the hymn sing Saturday, and came back for a full day today. In the afternoon Martin and I strapped Bea into the car for a short nap before he and I led a workshop on poetry as prayer.

The workshop was small but good, in a tiny, airless room with bright frogs on the wall. We looked over a diverse group of poems Martin had compiled, from Rilke to John Berryman, sacred East Indian verse to Denise Levertov, and some great ones by Maurice Manning, where he addresses God as Boss. We'd just started into our own writing exercise--I had begun:

You are the great huge boulder I saw
as we drove past broken-down houses
and bars with cold neon signs
Fast food wrappers clogged the gutters
and a woman staggered across a bridge past sealed cars

I had the boulder fixed in my mind: immovable, striped black, in the middle of a wide creek banked by bare trees--the water lapped and beat and foamed and streamed over the rock. . .I was looking forward to getting that boulder on my page. It had so delighted me as we drove a depressed, ugly part of town. That was during our drive where Bea slept--and just as I wrote To my, a little girl in a purple dress popped her head in to say Bea was crying.

And was she ever. Her little chest heaved against me when I lifted her up, her face was streaked with tears and snot, and she wanted to go home. I couldn't blame her--it had been a long day. She smeared chocolate on her face as I arranged a platter of cookies for the post-workshop reception, and soon other women from the Poetry workshop appeared in the kitchen, arranging things on platters, filling white coffee pitchers. I helped find a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the shards of a broken mug in the hall. I never got to finish my poem, and when I stopped back in with a clinging Bea, Martin was finishing up. I was disappointed at the timing of Bea's breakdown.

Now, looking back, I realize that there was a really good sort of poetry happening in the kitchen--the story of community, the movement of people in a kitchen, a smeared and broken child sitting on the counter comforted at last, food being placed carefully on plates and a stream of hot coffee filling pitchers. It's such a old, familiar poetry, and one I know well from growing up in churches--love becoming tactile, feeding and being received by hungry people. Poetry, incarnation, food--these together are good.

Egg Yolks

Is there anything more satisfying than the moment a taut cherry tomato POPS in your mouth?

Confession: I also love popping egg yolks in my mouth. I wait until nobody is watching and then I shovel in the entire yolk and. . .ah, bliss. This disgusts Martin. It may also disgust you. My friend Lindsay (see her blog, Light on the Ridge, in Calling Cards) just wrote a delightful piece about her family harvesting local eggs from a friend and her "girls." She's right about the difference between eggs straight from under a "girl" or an egg from a crate at market--the shells are beautiful, the yolks bright as suns. We get our eggs from our good friend Mike, who also sells pork from his "boys--" the main reason, for certain, that I am not a vegetarian. Ohhhhh, man, are his pigs deeeelicious. Even our vegetarian family breaks down and shovels in mouthful of Mike's pork or goes for a bite of his thick-cut, peppered bacon. Here's a chicken pic in return for yours, Linds.
I LOVE food. It is one of the most dear things of this life.

What is more glorious: the first golden cherry tomato of summer (or red, if you prefer), or the initial crunch of autumn's first apple, say a really good, hard Gala or the almost bitter Arkansas Black? It's almost time for a trip to one of our local orchards. This year, the kids and I are going picking for a change.

Oh, man, I am tired out tonight. I feel as though I can't quite keep the momentum going. You guessed it. Girl's Night. A walk through an uncommonly warm afternoon, spaghetti, broccoli delivered into our mouths by our fingers. Merry was shirtless and Elspeth was in her underwear. Try to figure that one out.

The girls did well, dressing themselves and each other for bed, tidying up, and obeying without too much fuss. And I am still exhausted. The powers that be forecast temperatures in the high 80s for the rest of the week. In Lindsay's blog, she's all get-upped in this darling woolen hat. I may just have to break out the girls' shorts again. It's been scorching these past months. Will somebody please remind me to water the yellowing plants on my front porch? I've given up on the hanging geranium. I'm not attentive enough. The romance is over.

Vegetables Make You Feel Lovely

Whether it was the perfect autumn day, a measure of my surrender to weariness, or the simple meal of vegetables I ate for dinner, I feel so content. Green beans and local purple potatoes and peppers that a farmer and retired professor showered into my lap (with a gruff, 'don't want to take these home') and I carried around in my capacious purse all afternoon. . .onions, a little tomato, and a long simmer.

I never feel this happy when I eat meat, except perhaps turkey, and that's the sleepy drug kicking in, I suppose, and the fact that I always eat it with family on holidays. I feel vegetarianism at my heels again. I've become picky and paranoid about meat lately, even local, all-natural, no-hormone meat. And then, the other day, this happened: We were driving along, almost off the interstate, almost into the bosom of our little town, when a big semi passed by. It was one of those with slits in the walls, and through the slits we could see great big soft, dirty black cows.

"Where are they going?" the girls wanted to know, delighted that, Richard Scarry fashion, they'd seen a truck full of cows.

"I'm not sure exactly," I said, not untruthfully, since I didn't know WHICH slaughterhouse they were bound for.

"I think they're going to the fair," one daughter suggested, and then another said they might be going to a great big cow park, and then Elspeth concluded they were headed for a field of flowers.

That would be nice. Ug. It was like a knife had plunged itself into my liver. All I could see was the death-agony eyeroll that accompanies a cow being slaughtered.

The sticker on the back of the semi said I [heart] LOVE BEEF. I did not read it aloud.

I think I'm a vegetarian, I said to Martin. That clinches it.

In other happier news, for the first time I saw a semi with its bed full of apples--not crates of apples or bags of apples. Just the naked spheres tossed in. There must have been thousands and thousands, piled to the top. It brought to mind another Richard Scarry fantasy: the overturned truck with apples strewn everywhere and the truck driver, in happy resignation, setting up a stand with "Apple Cider" advertised on a jolly sign.

Here's a cup of tea and some dahlias for you, be they a bit out of focus:

Enjoy!

Baking Days, and Apple Days too

Here I show off some images from my first baking day. Merry convinced me not to buy bread from the store anymore and so I acquiesced. And then we figured out that bread done completely by hand tastes so much better than bread from the bread maker. And besides, did not my own mama bake (and mostly burn) buttery rolls for dinner? I remember her famous dough dance, when, in order to knead, she would haul off the dough to us across the room, jumping up and down on the furniture and whipping the dog into a frenzy. I remember one time in particular when she jumped onto the rocking chair and threw--was it dough or a head of cauliflower? Indeed I think it was cauliflower.

And am I not prepared to replicate the happy ethos of my own blissful childhood?

Merry at least is aiming to replicate Laura Ingall Wilder's childhood, but I may just be falling a little short.

Baking day was not the sort of day I imagine uber-organized Ma Ingalls spending, with everything organized, the bread happily and calmly rising under a checked cloth. No, with my three children, my broody baking day was far from calm, though it was fun. Skating in flour is always a good time! I decided to double the whole wheat recipe so I could get a lot done at once to freeze and the pile of dough was absolutely massive. I mixed with one hand (Beatrix on my hip) for a while as Merry sprinkled in flour, and then Merry did the lion's share of kneading. We had Sally and her boys for dinner and basically we all ate bread. . .and more bread. . .and more bread. IMMMM.


LOST (We finally ducked under some caution tape).

Well, the garden has frozen three times now; the lovely, tall pink and white cosmos and the marigolds and what was left of the tomato plants are black and dry.

Good luck to them. It is a little sad to see the garden dead, but mostly I am glad not to feel guilty anymore about not keeping up with the raspberries and cherry tomatoes.

In the meanwhile, Martin has completed the fence (!!)--pictures later. And we have been doing apple days things: the girls and I and friends found ourselves hopelessly lost in a corn maze; we and friends stuck our jaws tightly shut with caramel apples; I have stashed away loads of applesauce, and we have had to turn on our heat three times already. Baby's got a cold and Merry has healed well after her face was stepped on by a soccer cleat.
CHARMING WITCH

I chopped loads and loads and LOADS of celery from market and I can't for the life of me get motivated to take care of our endless hot peppers (thinking of drying but dread sewing them up).
BEATRIX ON THE HAY RIDE, AND MY HAIR

HARVEST IS IN!

So I've started my Christmas shopping and begun planning for company. I do so want my dining room wall to go away! I received an estimate and gasped, but I am conniving how to trim costs. . .and no, you worriers, this does not entail me with a sledgehammer, though in my parallel life I am a sledgehammer wielding menace.

Birthday Festivities

Petit cupcakes. . .I, as adopted aunt, indulge in ze frufru of pink icing and the yum-yum of seven-minute frosting and raspberries from our garden.



Thought I'd post a quick log on my adopted niece Cat's birthday. My friend Nancy Greenthumb did me the honor of letting me throw a turning-seven festival. The day was so hot that the backpack (and baby inside) became very sticky. . .but I got my baking done early. I covered the tables in white butcher paper so we could write notes to the birthday girl.

After cake, when we were opening presents, Hurricane Ike's winds finally got to us and blew mightily. Martin's newspapers and hay he had laid earlier on the garden beds scattered wildly all over our yard (and they are still there on this day).

Happy eighth year, my dear! Live it well!

Cat's kind, classy Aunt M.J.--always with a dry sense of humor and kind observation.
More adopted family. . .

Birthday Mama (this shot, from Martin's shindig, is too perfect not to include here, though it's out of place).
The Birthday Papa, (and brother),

And oldest brother, with dear Grandma in the background.

And Baby's awake! Again!

Stew

Our celebrating, almost "too-too" Spirea, hung over by rain

Our little corner of Pennsylvania dawned rather cold and gloomy this morning. The birds are still busy and giddy over the one strawberry patch I forgot to net last night; they are not affected by the deep internal sighs that accompany turning on the heat in mid May.

Still, in honor of my in-laws and the silly weather, I unwrapped some beef. Mind you, cooking a bloody slab of beef is not a celebration in most American homes, but a way of life. (Cue out-of-context Aaron Copland music: BEEF! IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER!)

But for us, who try to be responsible eaters and who are almost-solely-vegetarian (for ethical and health reasons) and buy only local/organic/non-tampered-with meat, a slab of beef is a rare occasion indeed. This particular beef came from a gorgeous, long-haired, happy highland cow from a local farm. The proprietors of the Strath an De Farm generously drove us around their farm so our girls could see the source of their food and we could enjoy their vintage farm implements. From our seat in the back of a wagon, we soaked in the deep greens of their land and the grace of their Scottish highland cattle.

Today I cubed the beef and browned it in olive oil and cornmeal; I crumbled in dried thyme and parsley from last summer's harvests, and I left it and an assortment of delightful vegetables to simmer slowly, filling the house with warmth. Beatrix slept soundly through all; Merry and Elspeth were quiet and content. Lovely.

Defeated Again by a Simple Machine

A week or so later, and three bushels of apples still remain on my back porch. Between Martin's classes, my class, the children, doctor's appointments, etc., there just hasn't been the time.

Today, however, still wearing my robe and sans shower, I decided to tackle the apple peeler contraption my good friend Tonya lent me. Tonya's history rivals Laura Pioneer's. She raised and slaughtered her own chickens, cracked the black walnuts her parents had already pulverized with the car wheels, worked long hours in huge gardens, and today still manages a garden, a neat-as-a-pin house, and her job, children, and preserves. She had the compassion to lend me her super-duper simple apple/potato peeler, and today, after a doing silent battle with my shadow-self that doubts my ability to work simple machines, I unpacked what should have been a great time-saver.

I fiddled with the thing for a while. I even read the directions and studied the diagram. I unscrewed bolts and rescrewed them. I stuck a poor MacIntosh onto the three-tipped coring blade. I futilely turned the handle to no avail. The peeler merely massaged the skin of my apple. Finally, in exasperation, I set it aside. Yes, I admit: I have been defeated by yet another simple machine.

I do have something to show for my morning. I peeled three apples by hand, and I finally shucked the sweating bag of corn that has been slumping in a bag on my back porch, soaking up the day's sun. I braved the cheesy smell that the molding corn leaves omitted, removed the fat worms and rot, and parboiled the rest, ready for freezing. I read Elspeth a few books and Merry and I finally changed the sheets on the bed. And two days ago, instead of preparing for my night class, I finally hacked down sheaves of basil, mountained it on my table, and hung it with twine. Our sun room is beginning to near Monk Cadfael's work room in appearance, and the smell is lovely.

Oh, and Sally, another friend and friendly arborist, pointed to our Locust tree and said, "That's a black walnut."

"No!" I reassured her. "That's a locust."

"Are you SURE?" she asked. "Look at the green pods."

"Those are conkers," I reassured her again. I know this from watching Kipper the Dog.

A period followed where we waded through the high grass to study the green pods, while Sally mildly mocked my use of the word "conker" and generally insisted on the black walnut idea.

Well, I'll be jiggered, as they say.

Martin looked up the black walnut that night, and a perfect pictorial description popped up on our screen. The tree at the bottom of the hill, and my inspiration tree that grows outside my office window--they are indeed black walnut trees. I'll be a hen's niece. I feel like a cad, as if I have been calling a good friend by the wrong name for a good year without knowing it.

Which, by the way, I seem to do at regular intervals at my night class, to the blank, somewhat injured responses of my students. I think I lost most of their confidence when I called emphatically called a chap "Joe," when there has never, and will never be, anyone named Joe in my classroom.

Defeated by machines and names. Well, it could be worse, after all.

And now I need a shower and then on to apple peeling, the old fashioned way.

Pots of Applesauce

For girl's night tonight (Martin's night class evening), Merry chose to watch part of Little Women. I sat next to her, tired out from my apple-baking marathon. Today at the Farmer's Market, I purchased four bushels of MacIntosh apples. My regular apple lady, who usually has truck loads of multiple varieties all autumn, had to dig to find a couple bags of Gala, a variety I prefer for eating. First my favorite local apple growers were hit with an untimely freeze, then with a frost and finally with hail. While I worried briefly about my own apple-baking/saucing supply for winter, they must worry about how they will pay bills. A life of a farmer, as a friend pointed out, is not any easy one. But the friendly woman across the table smiled as usual. Her face is beautiful and I can only surmise its textures reflect the orchard she loves and tends, etched as it is with laugh lines, warmed and tanned by the sun.

Elspeth begged loudly for an apple. I loaded heaving bags of blushing red and green apples into her stroller and she and Merry bit happily into Galas, with the crisp crunch! that only marks fresh autumn apples.

This afternoon, encouraged along by NPR (until I got sick of NPR voices) and a long conversation with my sister, I peeled, cored, and chopped the first bushel, and then I baked a quadruple recipe of my favorite Dutch apple bread, which tastes far more like cake than any boring old bread. I use a recipe from More With Less, but I doctor it with half oil, half whole wheat pastry flour, extra cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, exta apples, and a healthy coating of cinnamon sugar. It makes a creamy, buttery batter that you feel like eating even before it lands in the oven.

Martin took the girls to the park, dropped them hastily in the door, and took off. By this time apple bread covered the stove top, and Elspeth managed to crumble a piece all over the downstairs rooms. Just in time to save Elspeth from bedtime (she was overjoyed and proceeded to wreak mischief, turning on my coffee maker, dumping water out of a pail and over her feet, and demanding a lollipop), a good friend arrived at the door. Her little girl clambered up our front stairs with a gallon of homemade apple cider. Evidently her grandfather had recently found a few old apple trees on their property; they had chopped the apples and cranked out frothy, dark cider.

My pot of browning apple pieces sat ready on the stove. Just before Little Women, I added some cider and cinnamon and left the apples to simmer. Soon the house filled with a deep, earthy scent. Due to my comatose state in front of the TV, I actually let the apples overboil just a tad, but the only harm that did was to create a smoother applesauce than I usually turn out. I mixed in some brown sugar and a little more cinnamon, and Merry and I shared a warm bowl of apple sauce--tangy and perfect as pie filling--just before bedtime.

Only three more bushels to go. Before I hit the other orchard, that is. I heard Little Green Apples actually mixes different varieties in the same bushel. Hoorah for autumn, for Pennsylvania and its apple orchards! Hoorah for Johnny Appleseed! Hoorah for big freezers!

The Real Thing

Mmmm. CRAVING Pad Thai. What would I give for a big hot bowl of steaming Pad Thai? My first born? The deed to my house? Our blue Subaru? Don't tempt me, man.

Our dear friends dropped off a bag of purple grapes at our front door this morning, freshly plucked from a friend's arbor. They are beautiful, variegated blue and lavender, green as spring grass and blue as a deep summer patch of sea. The slick innards of the grape explode in my mouth, followed by an eruption of intense flavor, and suddenly all the imitation grape flavor I have ever experienced is a distant shadow.

(This morning I plucked a red tomato and breathed in an almost-perfect white rose.)

* * * *

In a pathetic attempt to fill my intense Pad Thai-shaped-hole, I succumbed to weakness and actually bought a Real Thai box at discount. I never do rash things like this, so I was careful to scan the ingredients before I paid my 1.50. The box sat on my counter, tempting me, until finally today I gave in. Have you labored over Pad Thai, browning egg, carefully setting it aside, working then through a long list of ingredients, ending by feverishly stirring curling noodles as the sweat pours from your brow?

I had my own Real Pad Thai, in its rectangular plastic container (fork included), in three minutes. I panicked briefly over the missing vacuum-packed peanut packet (had I thrown it out with the sealed dehydrated vegetable packet???) for a moment, but all was saved and I sprinkled the pale nut bits over my reddish noodles. It smelled delicious, and I was hungry enough to gobble it quickly as I read the somewhat myopic, self-indulgent account of Alice Steinbach's jaunt to find lemon curd in the Cotswalds.

After lunch, I lingered with my pile of non recyclable trash, an odd aftertaste, and a greasy container. The verdict? Not good. I popped a few grapes and drank two glasses of milk to free myself from the Real Thai taste, though I could not completely rid myself of regret as I filled the garbage can with the proof of my instant lunch. Just goes to show, there's nothing like the real thing, baby. No matter how much you want Pad Thai, you can't have it in three minutes.

* * * *

Yesterday Merry attended school at the home of said grape-friends above. She enjoyed it immensely and I enjoyed a trip to Big Lots and then to the grocery. Beyond the pleasure of the flat of organic canned tomatoes and promising Real Thai meal I bought at steep discount in the brightly lit aisles of Big Lots (accompanied by the half-pleasure, half-pain screams of Elspeth, who insisted on chucking her shoe into the aisle), I lingered in parking spaces with the air conditioning on while Elspeth and I drank in the voice of Luciano Pavarotti, booming out arias and taking us up, up, up, away from the parking lot of Giant Eagle in Greene County, away on the pure strains of Ave Maria.

To bear such a voice within your ribs! The sheer responsibility of it! (Though my father tried to convince us that it was him singing on the tape, not Placido Domingo, no astounding operatic voices have occurred in our family history).

My earliest experience of Pavarotti began with my uncle Ken's trip out to Kenya. I must have been 13 or so, living in a whitewashed maisonette in the middle of the dirty, bustling city of Nairobi with its bumpy back roads and stunning flowers that grew everywhere--bougainvillea on garbage piles, morning glories on our thorny hedges! Uncle Ken, clad in safari hat and equipped with camera, came bearing an unbelievable Christmas gift for us: a CD player (rare in that year!) and a whole collection of CDs. Among the gleaming discs were Bette Middler, which I listened to repeatedly, and Pavarotti and Friends. I gloried in this opera for the plebeian, in the unbelievable soaring strains of three male voices, vocal cords opened to the heights of mountain winds and speeding trains and endless blue ocean!

And in my older, slightly more weary day yesterday, shut up safely in the walls of our blue Suburu, among the litter of children and a flat of canned tomatoes and bags of boxed macaroni and cheese, as people backed out cars onto the dirty tarmac, Elspeth and I gloried in the otherworldly experience of a truly great voice. We thrilled with joy and longing, entered into the boundless world of beauty.

There's nothing, nothing like the real thing.

Gorge Yourself on Trollope and Thin Mints

+




= PURE BLISS


At first I was outraged when Martin told me he had bought girl scout cookies--BUT NO THIN MINTS. For me, the girl scouts and thin mints are synonymous. What did he mean, samoas? How could you buy a box from the girl scouts and not buy thin mints? I seethed impatiently as Martin explained. Coconut? Chocolate? I felt increasingly optimistic. They'd be crunchy, of course--I pictured Swedish biscuits. My wrath subsided to a warm bed of cocoa-coated embers.

"Bring home the samoas!" I commanded haughtily.

Later that same day, uniformed girl scouts smiled responsibly at me from the box as I ripped it open and pulled out the plastic tray. Right-ho. I'd not eaten much that day, maybe a pbj and an apple, and I was hungry. It was "secret-nibbly" time: I give the girls a healthy snack like apple slices while I slink around in the shadows, clandestinely shoving dark chocolate into my mouth.

So. Samoas, here we go. The cookies were chewy rings of coconut-stuff with ribbons of chocolate on top.

At first I was disappointed. Having expected an exquisite crunch, my palate encountered a rather waxy, plastic texture instead. But by the second, and the third, I was willing to overlook mere trifles. By dinner I had devoured many, many samoas.

After the girls were tucked in bed, I settled down with a the last half of BBC Trollope-based He Knew He Was Right and a cup of tea. And did I mention--the last half of the samoas. I was, in a reckless, collegiate-like way, determined to consume the rest of the box. I chomped along strongly for a while. The cookies sustained me most of the way through the melodramatic shlock of this Trollope gem.

My tea cup was cold. It was late. But then, there were more cookies, and there were bonus features. The biography on Anthony Trollope proved highly entertaining-- far more interesting, in fact, than the movie itself. What a gem of an old Victorian Trollope was!

I love the way Anthony Trollope wrote, (pocket watch before him), precisely 3000 words per 3 hours, before work, every day. He was beaten constantly as a student and endured a miserable family, but he overcame this Dickinsonian beginning by hard work. He married a good, well-scheduled Victorian woman who tirelessly produced tasty dinners for him every evening and transcribed all his scribbles. Old Trollope also entertained a secret passion for a bold American woman, and so was a bit of a bastardi for all his straight-laced, Victorian ways. But let's not forget that he left many, many, many, many books behind, and even better, instituted the red postal box that is now a standard feature in every proper English town.

What better combination than a cup of tea, a box of scout cookies, and Trollope? But I couldn't finish all the samoas. Too much of a good thing was making me queasy. Like prolific Trollope, like too many girl scout cookies, some things are just better in moderation.

Opa! For a hilarious take on samoas and culture, check out (click on npr) Marc Acito's commentary on npr.

Sources: Photo of Trollope: www.wikipedia.com______G.S. Cookies: http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_cookies/cookie_history/

Slowing Down Your Frantic Inner Chicken

**See photo source below

The old proverb, 'Laugh and grow fat,' is a saying with sound sense behind it. Good temper and merriment certainly aid digestion. Mealtimes should be among the pleasantest occasions of the day. There is no reason why we should not enjoy partaking of the food, as well as take pleasure in the companionship of those who share our table. --from my old 1913 copy of Elementary Physiology and Hygiene by H.W. Conn, PhD, published first in 1906
When I was a child growing up in rural Bangladesh, chicken slaughters were high entertainment. I was six, blond, in a light cotton dress. My sister was eight, brown with the sun and barefoot. At the cook's summons, we left our books and blocks and tore to the back door, where we sat down for the day's best event. THWACK went the axe, off came the head, and we burbled happily as the headless bleeding carcass staggered dizzily about our yard.

Fast forward twenty plus years, and you'll find my family groaning in exstacy as we devour Martin's delectable Thai chicken and basil and sip his spinach-tofu soup. I wish I could say that I had nipped the Thai basil from my own garden, but as my indoor basil growing has proved sad, I bought it at the wonderful Asian Market in the next state over. So while we didn't know from which quarter our Thai basil originated, we did know where the chicken spent its few giddy years. Not in our backyard, but in our own county. The woman who sold us our organically grown, happy chicken lives in the green hills of our countryside, and she is serious about her chickens. Not only do they toddle around eating natural worms in a natural yard, they have a dignified death. Our chicken woman stretches out their necks with her own hands, and then she slices them and lets their blood pour into the soil of her farm. (Queue: Circle of Life). This is glorious, unless you are the chicken, but at least you haven't bitten off your neighbor's beak in desperation, which you might have if you had been "farmed" the industrial way.

But this is not a treatise for organic chickens, nor do I intend to go into industrial farming.

No, this is a happy reflection on SLOW FOOD.

For our chicken was plucked, frozen and much later stuffed with apples and onions and devoured in our dining room. Then we extended its memory by stewing it in a pot with fresh rosemary and oregano (grown indoors), basil (frozen from the summer garden), onions, carrots and celery. O, the smell as it flooded our house was delectable.

I grew up with "slow food." This is because, growing up in Bangladesh and Kenya, food was never fast. First of all, we didn't have one-stop shopping--no, my mother went to the greengrocers, the dryfoods store, the butcher (yes, pigs hanging and all), and bought roses and mangoes and whatever else from hawkers in the parking lot. Once home we had to soak all fresh food in a bleach solution; we 'made' our own drinking water in a chlorine machine, and there were no cans to crack open. We lived out of More with Less.


Believe me, now that I live in wintry Pennsylvania I take full advantage of cans and frozen food and already-soaked beans. But once and a while it does me good to slow down, to smell bread baking or the slow stewing of a chicken. Kids will slow you down, too--I deboned chicken with one hand and held Elspeth on my hip with the other. She was fascinated at the process, just as I once loved to watch chickens meet their doom. This slowing down is therapuetic, as is kneading bread, brewing wine (so I hear), and toasting your own granola. I absolutely despise fiddly tasks (Pastry chef? No!@#$!), but I love the rhythm of hearty, slow food.

Slow food is like a meditation of sorts. As its scent fills the crevices of my house, I am grateful for journey, the slow origins of the food itself and then for the process of preparing it. Of course one of the best things about slow food is the culmination of all that sensory anticipation, when you sit down with good people and eat that good food. And then the groans! The embarassing cacophony of utter joy!

So slow down. Take some time to thank your food for coming into your mouth. Feed some good people and drink some good wine. The most delicious things take the most time.
So now it's YOUR TURN: How do you slow down in a busy world? Post your comment below and edify us all!

Egg Photo Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Egg_in_straw_nest.jpg