Each Little World

August abundance

In Wisconsin we wait every year for August. We've spent weeks and weeks driving past farm fields watching and calculating. And now it's here: The moment when local corn and tomatoes arrive at the farmers' markets. And not just arrive; we are awash in the food we dream about all year.

We've had corn on the cob, off the cob, as the main dish or a savory side. The same with tomatoes: grape or cherry, beefsteak, heritage, organic. We enjoy them every way and every day that we can. They are the glory of life in the Upper Midwest.

Fresh tomato sauce for pasta is a long-time favorite. Seed and chop tomatoes, add minced shallots, diced Kalamata olives, a splash of balsamic vinegar and one of olive oil. Pile on assorted herbs, but especially lots of basil. 

You can heat this melange a bit or serve it at room temperature as soon as you've finished slicing and dicing. I've put it over long spaghetti, but my favorite way is with farfalle — bow tie pasta. Grate a little fresh Parmesan cheese over it and voila! Dinner is served.

IVOM: Quickies

Our book group met Sunday morning at our house. It was so lovely out that we sat on the deck, talking books and politics. Since we were having guests I made sure i had flowers in the bathroom. 

Clearly I did not spend a lot of time making an arrangement. But I was happy with it for being fast and easy. 

When it was finished I decided that the tortoise shell cover for the little cube box of tissues looked too wintry. So I swapped it for this fake shagreen box. I have a silvery metal one that I use at the winter holidays as it goes well with my grandmother's silver dresser set that I always put on the vanity. 

Our book group has a set menu: One couple brings smoked salmon and crackers. Another brings pastries. And we usually do cheese with a baguette or interesting crackers. Sometimes one of us adds fruit or a little something else. I decided to make this Asparagus, tarragon and goat cheese tart that was on the cover of Melissa Clark's latest book, "Dinner in French." Delicious and super easy. Mark wanted cherries, so we had a big bowl of them. 

We've entertained so little since Covid began that I decided to set a nice table. Nothing too fancy, just enough to feel special before we decamped to the deck. 

The plexiglass napkin rings are tiny vases. People are always surprised and amused to discover them. I've had them forever. All in all it was a lovely way to start the week. 

Mardi Gras to you . . .

. . . but today is Fastnacht to me. That's "Fast Night," the German celebration on the day before Lent begins. My maternal great-grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the 19th Century and this was one of the few rituals that our family maintained from that side of our heritage. Like Mardi Gras, it is a day for costumes, eating and partying.

On this day my mother always made Fastnacht keuchles, a raised and deep-fried "donut" that was square in shape and pressed together in the center, rather than having a hole in the middle. Then we dusted them in cinnamon and sugar or powdered sugar. Using up lard, butter and sugar before the long period of religious fasting began was the reason for making sweet treats.

The NYTimes has a story about a small community still celebrating this festival. One of the townspeople, pictured in the article, was wearing a mask that reminded me of one I have. I will bring it out today in memory of those long-gone childhood days spent in the kitchen with my mom. 

IVOM: The un-Christmas display

A number of pre-COVID months ago, one of my favorite local artists, Richard Jones of Studio Paran, closed up his glass studio to my great disappointment. Thus I was thrilled when he sent out an email saying that his website was still up and was featuring all of the treasures he'd found as he cleaned out his studio. I treated myself to this unmatched grouping of a pair of candlesticks and a vase. It graced the table for all of our meals — regardless of the changes in table settings — all last week. 

Richard's containers are beautiful with nothing in them. I thought that this one could easily be overwhelmed by its contents, so I opted for just two flowers; different species — Hydrangea and Chrysanthemum — but the same color.

Our Christmas Day dinner featured blue and white dishes and accoutrements. I added this pair of intensely colored Foo dogs to the mix to make it less traditional.

This turned out to be Mark's favorite combination; a total surprise to me. We continue to enjoy it on a clean table ready for a new week of holiday dinners.

Christmas pleasures

Bursts of sunshine

A new painting: "Arkansas Blacks" by Jonathan Wilde. I bought that apple variety at the farmers market this summer. 

I baked two kinds of cookies, candied orange peel with an 1801 recipe and dipped them, apricots and walnut-stuffed dates in chocolate. It was deliciously enjoyable with no deadlines for parties or shipping or anything but our enjoyment. 

Best wishes for a pleasant and safe holiday for all of you and your families.

My COVID-19 journal

Back in early October, Sam Sifton, the food editor of the New York Times newspaper, said that when the lockdown began he wished he'd recorded the meals he was cooking in a notebook: 

"It'd be great to look back on the months of experimentation and freestyle cooking, on the dishes that became standbys, on the once-in-a-blue-moon extravagances, the triumphs, the failures. I think that could have been the sort of thing to preserve, a piece of personal history, something to help remind me of the joys and frustrations of this extraordinary and difficult time.

Instead, I've only got memories, fragmenting already."

. . .

Guess what, Sam? I did start keeping track of what I was cooking. Not right at the start, but after the first couple of weeks, I decided to keep track of what we had for dinner as a kind of domestic journal. This was not that big of a stretch as I have been keeping journals (above) filled with photos and notes about our dinners and parties going back to 1984. I hoped that this pandemic note-taking would spark me into trying some new recipes and to being a bit more inventive.  

I made a great pasta dish based on a Pinterest photo. I trolled the NYTimes food section and Food 52. I pulled new and old cookbooks off the shelf. I ended these COVID-19 dinner notations on June 30th; three months after I began keeping track. It was obvious by then that home cooking was not something we were going to be able to abandon anytime soon.

Looking at what we ate in those early months, we tried a few new things but mostly we ate the usual: Pasta with white clam sauce, stew, home made chicken noodle soup, something from the grill. There were salads of every kind: mixed market greens, Thai chicken, chicken curry, mixed beans, lentil combos and wild rice with fruit and veg. And yes, there were hot dogs, tuna fish sandwiches and mac and cheese.

By autumn, I was bored with our menus and made a real effort to try some new dishes. Most of them were flavorful hits that we'll be eating again and again:

Salmon with fennel, bell pepper and black olives (Martha / my version above)

Avocado, black bean and pineapple salad with lime cilantro dressing (Smitten Kitchen Every Day)

Smokey tomato and red pepper soup with white beans (Food 52) 

Beet and tomato salad (NYTimes)

Ropa Vega (a fabulous Cuban dish from the NYTimes)

Thai green curry shrimp linguine (another Martha)

I was on a roll until I rolled off. I haven't tried anything new in a month or more. The change in the weather and the coming holidays home alone have thrown me a curve. Once I re-adjust to the new reality yet again, I'm sure I'll be ready for more kitchen experiments. Truth be told, if it was not for the pandemic, I would not be spending so much time at home. Nor would the idea of spending that time in the kitchen be as enticing as it has proved. 

Blue Monday

Freezing rain on Friday evening with a bit of snow on Saturday has done little to provide protection for the garden from the single digit temperatures forecast this week. Nor did it glam the garden up the way a heavier snowfall would do. That means my focus for the foreseeable future will be the gardens I visited last summer.

It is rare to see a bottle tree up north, but this one looks completely natural as it repeats the intense color on the trellis in the image directly above.

Betsy True and Danny Aerts garden on one acre with mushrooms, fruit and flowers, a pond and a prairie, bees and chickens, a pizza oven and more. This is a shot of their fenced veggie garden which also contains pears, quince and espaliered apples. 

It's inspirational — and educational — no matter where you look. That's Betsy between me and another WHPS member. 

How I ended my year: 2019

Last Friday Mark and I went downtown for lunch and to take in the Wisconsin Triennial at MMoCA. We also made a quick stop at Half Price Books to look for a used copy of Susan Orleans' "The Library," the next book our group is reading. The library hold list was so long we decided buying a copy made more sense. While at Half Price I found a treasure from my youth: "A Little Maid of Boston" by Alice Turner Curtis.

I splurged and spent $5.00 for a 1954 hardcover copy. I wanted to see if these little books were as good — and as history filled — as I remembered. I devoured every title in this series as a kid and was impressed as an adult with all the factual info it contained, with few explanations of words a child would be unlikely to know. I am convinced that my love (and knowledge) of American history came from these books. I've always claimed that was the case but finding one of the books and reading it now, convinced me I am right.

I've been waiting three months for my name to get to the top of the hold list for a copy of this book (above). Definitely worth the wait. I picked it up Saturday morning after meeting friends for coffee and finished it late Sunday evening. Here's my take:

Goldsmith's book reminded me of "Say Nothing," another book about a kidnapping and disappearance that is at the center of each story. Yet, in both instances, it is all the other stories, facts, fictions, hidden history and politics that make these books worth reading. The author's stepfather, Chuckie OBrien, was Jimmy Hoffa's driver, go-fer, delivery guy and a young man who Hoffa treated more fondly than he did his own son. This was a page-turner since one obviously wants to find out what happened to Hoffa. By the time I reached the end of the book, those answers had paled compared to what I discovered about the mob, illegal government surveillance, family love and loyalty. Alas, it's the kind of story that made me very unhappy and even more disillusioned in my government. Still, a great read. 

I spent Monday baking cookies (Meini, Italian corneal "coins," above) for our annual New Year's Day brunch and today I'll work on the main dishes. It snowed a couple of inches overnight so it looks and feels like December. 

Have a safe and happy holiday. See you in 2020!

Perfect end of September weekend

The weather has been less than perfect, but I had a busy and satisfying weekend. It began Friday afternoon when a friend and I went to the Back to School Alumni and Friends Event sponsored by the UW's School of Human Ecology (where I received my grad degree in textile design).

We saw two widely differing fiber exhibits in the galleries of Nancy Nicholas Hall, followed by a fascinating look at the history of reusing textiles by Prof. Marina Mosokwitz — just for starters. I managed to get to two mini lectures before Mark picked me up at 5 pm for an opening at our favorite local art gallery. 

My first stop Saturday morning was the Westside Farmers Market where this trio was performing. After watching all 8 episodes of Country Music on Wisconsin Public Television, they reminded me of all the country music stars who began at this age.

Then I spent two hours at a WHPS free workshop "An Accidental Arboretum," where one of the members talked about all the trees and shrubs in her garden. As we walked through her garden she point out various specimens as well as sharing information about pruning practices, tools, and sources for plants. She topped it all off with cookies, lemonade and a handout with every one of her trees and shrubs listed by their botanical name.

I came home all excited about possibilities in our garden but went to work in the kitchen instead. First I roasted a couple of pounds of Roma tomatoes and froze them for winter soups and bruchetta. Then I made a batch of ginger broth, one of our personal pantry mainstays. Next up is Daikon and red raddish pickles. 

I took the photo above during the morning garden workshop. This is a Korean fir that died unexpectedly and the gardener left it for a snag. I love the pattern the critters who are using it are making.

We spent a rainy Sunday reading, listening to music and dealing with paperwork. Then Mark went off to a new photography book club while I settled in with the last season of Poldark. 

Mark blew our roof and gutters clear of leaves on Thursday just in case the rain was one of those gushers that doesn't move. Luckily it was gentle for the most part. But what a wet month. According to our rain gauge we got 1.48" (3.75 cm.) from Friday through early this morning, bringing our total for the month of September to 8.95" (22.73 cm.). Don't know if this is the new normal or just an unusually wet September.

In a vase on Monday: Soggy September

We had another two inches of rain yesterday morning, so I was not able to go out and cut a bouquet for Mark's bookclub who were meeting at our house. I did, however, manage to make Anna Thomas' "Cheese and Onion Pie" from an old favorite cookbook, "The Vegetarian Epicure."

This morning it was still too wet to do more than cut a few things hanging over the path or fallen onto the ground. This little bouquet has been in my bathroom for a week. This morning I just refreshed the stems of Italian parsley and Toad lilies (Tricyrtis). 

Toad lilies bloom so late that some years we have a killing frost when they are still in the bud stage. This year we are having perfect temperatures for me to be able to enjoy them. 

This is T. formosana which grows with a nice vertical stem that is quite narrow. Though the flowers look like delicate little orchids, this is a workhorse plant and well-worth growing if you are able.  

This arrangement includes a big fuzzy leaf from Bergenia ciliata, a maple-shaped leaf from Kirengeshoma, fallen oak leaves from the driveway and a stem of Cimicifuga whose flowers are going over to seeds. 

Be sure to visit Rambling in the Garden to see what other gardeners have put in a vase today.