Last night our whole family went to a party, and we danced.  My oldest daughter danced with her dad.  My little son danced with me.  The girls danced with each other, and with their brother, and we all danced together.  What did you guys do right, asked a friend, and how did you do [...]]]>

Last night our whole family went to a party, and we danced.  My oldest daughter danced with her dad.  My little son danced with me.  The girls danced with each other, and with their brother, and we all danced together.  What did you guys do right, asked a friend, and how did you do it? Beats me.  I can tell you a lot about where I think I missed the mark, including several times yesterday afternoon.  I can sometimes tell when I have hit the mark, or gotten near it, but even saying that makes me wonder where and what the mark even is.  All I can tell you about the dancing is I don’t know how or why it’s possible, but I definitely felt the happiest I have felt in recent memory while it was going on.

This is not going to be a Mother’s Day post.  It is also not going to be a Why I Hate Mother’s Day post because there are plenty of good ones about that, and I don’t really hate it, exactly.  I don’t think you can take up an I Hate Mother’s Day position while you have little children under your roof whose school hours are occupied in early May with making you little boats and watercolor paintings.  It’s unreasonably and unnecessarily confusing, and since life (and one’s mother) are often enough sources of unreasonable levels of confusion that are not elective, I don’t see any reason to opt to confuse my children any more than I unintentionally confuse them already.  See?  Poor lambs.  And unlike you, they are stuck with me.

So this is a post about early May.

One thing that is nice about early May is that a landscape that was recently very grey and brown can suddenly, in the space of a few days, take your breath away like this:

Or you can turn a corner and see a crab-apple tree laden with such a profusion of frothy blossoms that it is almost embarrassing to look at.  The most gorgeous ones in our life are on the route to school, so I never have time to take a picture of them, but I do, to my daughter’s occasional exasperation, always take the time to thank them, as we whizz past in the hope of making it before the second bell.

The nettles are up.

After the long winter food doldrums, the yard suddenly is full of things to nibble on.

My son and I picked and picked the other day, for no good reason other than that we suddenly could.  We threw the violet blossoms and their slivered leaves into our salad, as pictured up top.

We plucked the petals off some dandelions and kneaded them into Laurie Colwin’s flatbread along with a little of that toasted and crushed coriander seed.

I picked nettles and put them in a frittata.

There are lessons to be learned in picking nettles, if you pay attention.  Actually there are more lessons to be learned if you don’t.  I don’t really like to wear gloves when I pick nettles, forcing myself to do it carefully and attentively–which works 98% of the time.  It is in the 2% where I get schooled.

In the space of about a week, we have gone from barely any nettles up and you can eat the whole thing to an abundance of robust plants whose tenderest tips only are still delicious.  They are almost savory on their own, without any salt, and are really friendly to garlic.  Blanch them in plenty of boiling water, then drain and chop and sauté in olive oil with some minced garlic and enough salt or tamari or anchovy to make you happy.  That became the basis of the frittata above, along with a cubed & fried potato and some feta, but the greens themselves are well worth eating on their own. (The blanching liquid makes a nutritious stock for soup).

Anything I know about why it is good to eat violets and their leaves, and dandelions, and nettles, I learned from Susun Weed, who was to my life as a wild food eater as Laurie Colwin was to my life as a cook. In her Wise Woman Herbal, she writes a kind of character reference for each plant, and try as you may for the rest of your life, dandelions will always speak to you in a kind of guttural French accent once you read it.

My sister once sent me an article about Susun Weed that she has posted on her website, which could lead us into some of the things we might be talking about if we were talking about motherhood here.  We might head from there over to Dash & Bella, who always paints a true to life picture, damn your greeting cards and torpedoes. Certainly we would pause by the Laundry Line.

But I really just came to talk about weeds.

Well, it has been quite some time since my last confession.  There is this little project, which now that spring has sprung is really heating up the family to-do list. It’s spring everywhere, of course, so there are the winter clothes to be dealt with, and the pruning of the blackberries so that, come [...]]]>

Well, it has been quite some time since my last confession.  There is this little project, which now that spring has sprung is really heating up the family to-do list. It’s spring everywhere, of course, so there are the winter clothes to be dealt with, and the pruning of the blackberries so that, come summer (and come it will!  I hear it gaining on us now!) a pint of blood need not be exchanged for each quart of berries.

There are the sheep to be shorn.

And then a good amount of wool to be handled.

Spring is full up with cleaning and weeding and pruning and sorting.

And then there is grief.  Grief is its own season.

All in all, there has not been a whole lot of intentional cooking going on.  Survival cooking has more been the theme.  I have been wondering if maybe I forgot how to cook, or how to enjoy it anyway.  I have certainly been a bit dull in the tastebuds.

But then, suddenly, there was this chocolate bar, which a friend brought home from here, a place I wrote about way back here, and to which place I urged said friend on her recent trip to that calorie-dense city.  I like to share, generally, but I do not like to share this chocolate bar.  And other than a dark 7 months when a migraine turned me right off the stuff (it’s normally my drug of choice), I like to snarf up a good amount of chocolate, too–but this one I have been meting out in tiny bites to myself.  I have never made a bar of chocolate last this long.

The friend, who is the same friend who happens to have a pipeline of exceptional Greek olive oil running into her house, wanted to recreate the little mind-blowing combination of flavors in that chocolate bar for her husband’s birthday, so she googled her up a recipe.

Holy mackerel.

One nice thing about this dessert is that you don’t really have to make it.  You can take a little hunk of fine chocolate and some great bread dipped in superb olive oil and a flake of fine salt and achieve more or less the same heart-fluttering taste explosion.  But another nice thing about it is that it is not very difficult, and is quite special, and only a little bit of it needs to be eaten by anyone, and they will more than likely stand still and swoon with their eyes closed if you give it to them.  It is one of those things that demands that you buy the absolute best possible versions of each of the few things it contains, and it rewards you well for the expense.

It has a lot going for it.

The chocolate mixture you create here is kind of like a ganache, and kind of like a dense chocolate mousse that you don’t bother to whip and aerate.  Any old ganache would probably do the trick, if you can’t be bothered with egg-stirring.

As I heated the milk, I sort of accidentally went down to the basement and hunted around in the cabinet until I found my jar of dried guajillo chiles and then dropped one of those into the milk.  It is lily-gilding. Not even a little bit necessary.  But highly recommended.  If I could tolerate the combination of orange zest and chocolate, which I really don’t like but am willing to concede brings pleasure to others, I bet it would gild the lily nicely too.

chocolate, olive oil & salt: a little dance for the mouth

serves many; adapted from here

for the chocolate:

• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 6 T sugar, divided
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 c whole milk
• 1 dried guajillo chile pepper, optional, torn open
• 6oz fine dark chocolate, chopped

to assemble & serve:

• excellent olive oil
• sea salt flakes

Beat the egg, egg yolk and 3T of the sugar in a medium bowl until well-combined and smooth. Set this bowl, a Pyrex measuring cup and a small strainer near the stove.

Bring the milk, the cream, 3T of sugar and the chile pepper to a simmer in a heavy pot.  Simmer briefly, abusing the pepper with a spoon so it releases its heat into the milk.  Increase the heat slightly so that the mixture reaches a boil and turn off the heat.  Strain the mixture into the measuring cup, but hang on to the pot.

Slowly drizzle the hot milk into the egg mixture, stirring all the while.  When it has all been added, pour the combination back into the pot and dump the chocolate into the now-vacant bowl.  Return the pot to a low heat.  Heat, stirring, just until the mixture thickens slightly.  If you have a working thermometer, you are aiming for about 180 degrees; if you don’t, just watch for that slight thickening.  Either way, do not stop stirring even for a second and DO NOT let it boil.  This heating step takes about two minutes, for reference.

Pour the hot egg mixture over the chocolate, let it stand a moment, and then stir, baby, stir.  A grubby-looking milky mixture will transform before your eyes into a silky bit of loveliness.  Once that happens, cover it and chill it completely; at least a couple of hours and this is certainly something you could make a day or more in advance of when you plan to eat it.

At serving time, use a soup spoon to scoop up about a tablespoon of the mixture, and do a little cha-cha between this spoon and a second one until you have a nice oval (that’s a quenelle you have there).  Set one or two ovals into a tiny dish, and let them stand at room temperature to get the chill off (they will taste better); then carefully pour about a tablespoon of olive oil around (but not over) the little dumplings, and drop a very few grains of salt on top.

I’ll say one thing about moping.  You can turn up some interesting stuff on the internet.  Let’s not explore how it is that I came to see the story about the fake poodles:

Let’s also not, for the moment, delve into how anyone could need a veterinarian to tell them that [...]]]>  

I’ll say one thing about moping.  You can turn up some interesting stuff on the internet.  Let’s not explore how it is that I came to see the story about the fake poodles:

Let’s also not, for the moment, delve into how anyone could need a veterinarian to tell them that their ‘poodle’ was a ferret.  Let’s furthermore leave aside what the woman who was in the market for a chihuahua (a notion which in and of itself raises more questions than it answers, frankly) actually went home with.  OK–it was also a rodent.  SHE COULDN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE.  I’m just saying.

Let’s instead focus our attentions on how the people (there must be some–it’s a big wide world) who are actually in the market for a ferret on steroids could be duped right here in my yard:

It’s striking, isn’t it? Anyone ready to buy?  We take Visa and MasterCard.

If, instead, you are ready to eat granola, which I am at most any time of day, get busy with this excellent version from Marisa McClellan’s highly motivating Food In Jars cookbook, and follow her blog, too, if you don’t already.  I was going to say that I made her granola as written, but then I realized (a) I almost never make anything as written because (b) it’s usually the case that I lack some item in the pantry and wing it regardless.  This was no exception.  I had no sunflower seeds, which she called for, so I increased the almonds.  But what I did do as written was measure the honey she called for (1/2 cup) and the oil, (1/4 cup)  and keep the dry ingredients in the same proportion to the wet.  It was a little sweet for me, but this did not stop me from eating almost the entire batch before trying the recipe again with a little less honey.  In the name of science.  The second batch was not as shiny and gorgeous as the first (that was movie-star granola, ready for a close-up), but it was otherwise in all ways stupendous.  There is something ridunkulous about the buckwheat in there.  Tastes of virtue, for one (how can a “groat” not be exceptionally healthy?) and tastes mysterious and addictive, too.

If you happen to be in possession of a jar of grape and fennel jam (thank you, Glutton) and some plain Greek yogurt, then Bob is your best uncle.  That is why I had to unsweeten the granola–to make room for the jam.

buckwheat granola

adapted from Food in Jars

• 2 1/2 c rolled oats
• 3/4 c chopped or slivered almonds
• 3/4 c toasted buckwheat groats*
• 1/2 c  coconut ribbons
• 1/4 t sea salt
• 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 1/3 c safflower, canola or other neutral oil
• 1/3 c honey
• Optional: 1/2 c dried cherries, apricots or raisins

Heat the oven to 325.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, almonds, buckwheat, coconut, salt & cinnamon.  Mix well.

Measure the oil and swirl it around the measuring cup; pour it over the oat mixture, then use the same cup to measure the honey.  Pour that in the bowl too, and mix everything very well.  Spread the mixture on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until it is toasty, about 30 minutes, stirring two or three times over that period to ensure even browning.  Bear in mind that granola hardens as it cools, so don’t bake until crisp–just watch for a nice even toasty color.

Remove it from the oven and stir in any fruit you may be using.  Marisa says the granola will clump (making it easier to snack it out of the jar and save washing a bowl and spoon) if you mound it up on the baking sheet to cool.  When it is completely cool, eat it all or pour it into an airtight container.

*If you have only have access to raw buckwheat groats, toasting them is a matter of one to two attentive minutes stirring them in a heavy dry skillet.

This was the bonfire that burned last night as our friends’ 21 year old son was remembered.  There are many sights to give you pause at a funeral for a young person; for me, the droves of stunned and tearful young men and women scrubbed into respectful attire hit me hard.

It’s common [...]]]>

This was the bonfire that burned last night as our friends’ 21 year old son was remembered.  There are many sights to give you pause at a funeral for a young person; for me, the droves of stunned and tearful young men and women scrubbed into respectful attire hit me hard.

It’s common to say that the ceremony of remembrance lays someone to rest.  In Rupert’s case, it hardly seems accurate.  The roaring flames were the culminating moment of a giant communal effort to launch his boundless spirit into the crackling, infinite universe.  Even the incongruity of the uniformed firemen assigned to monitor the blaze felt right to me.  The wind whipped, and the flames rose, and here were these earthbound humans with hoses, working to contain this grief and love as it consumed everything that was offered to it and transformed it into something both vanishing and permanent.

It’s hard to accept what is served, sometimes.  Hard not to hunger for a different reality.

I feel too rattled and scattered to write about eating today.  But I promised I would write about hunger, and that feels a little more possible.

There are a lot of different kinds of hunger I can write about from a personal or eyewitness perspective: the specific and ravenous appetite of pregnancy; the greedy, snuffling, humming, sighing, leg-pumping bliss of a baby at the breast; the locust-emulating, counter-ravaging hunt for calories of a clutch of male humans after sports; the nibbly, mainly mental urge for a bag of crunchy things (or a chew toy) on a long drive; the nostalgia-fueled imaginings in the lead-up to a holiday meal.  But I haven’t ever been desperately hungry, or watched as my children felt the pangs of empty bellies with no relief up my sleeve.

It’s not that I don’t think about food politics at all.  In fact I spend a lot of time thinking about my own and my neighbors’ access to calories that are unsprayed, uncorporate, untrucked and unpackaged.  But I gawk a little when, after wrestling my tantrum-prone conscience through the aisles of the grocery store, I see a cart at the checkout line with five cases of soda, ten frozen dinners and some Pop-Tarts. I wonder about wanting to eat that way, but I don’t stop to think much about feeling like I have to.

The Giving Table has organized a way to bring awareness to this issue today, by asking food bloggers to direct our attention to the stark reality that the government food stamp program, a reality for 50 million people in this country, posits that less than $1.50 per meal ought to cover things.  You aren’t going to get a lot of broccoli on the table at that rate. Assuming you knew enough to want the broccoli, and had reasonable access to a market that might supply it.  As a bare-bones measure to try to keep hungry people (especially children) fed, the SNAP or food stamps program deserves our energy to defend it, and it’s now in jeopardy.  With about 30 seconds of your time, send a letter to your congressperson urging them to fight for it.

Want to know more?  Watch the trailer below, and see the movie in a theater near you, or on demand at home.  It’s a good start, and you don’t have to look much farther for some stunning facts which establish a pretty diabolical set of schemes at work, limiting people’s access to what grows in the ground and subsidizing their access to what spews out of a factory and will make them sick.  Read more here, here, and here. Get mad about it.  Pump your fist in the air and roar, Rupert-style.  I feel silly giving you $4 recipes (though I love a pot of beans as much as the next girl), because pretending you’re hungry when you in fact have the luxury of spending your food dollar with a conscience undermines both endeavors, to my mind.  But preaching you a little closer to a community garden project in your city or town, or a program like this one–well, that I am OK with.

It turns out that it is not especially difficult, as a person (admittedly self-diagnosed) of approximately reasonable levels of functional sanity, to become deeply paranoid and want to stay under the bed.  “The Universe is trying to teach me a lesson” is the kind of thing I might be tempted to think.  “Don’t Tell [...]]]>

It turns out that it is not especially difficult, as a person (admittedly self-diagnosed) of approximately reasonable levels of functional sanity, to become deeply paranoid and want to stay under the bed.  “The Universe is trying to teach me a lesson” is the kind of thing I might be tempted to think.  “Don’t Tell The Universe I Am Under Here” might be scrawled on a sign propped up by the bed.  Not that I have given the matter much thought.

Our community is reeling from the loss of a friend’s 21 year old son over the weekend.  As we are all learning and re-learning and learning some more, you really do see the best of a community at the worst of times. You really do wish you did not need to be reminded in this manner.  You vow to remember it very well, so the Universe will stop feeling the compulsion to teach you again.

Here on the farm, reeling continues with the passing of one of the Founding Ewes of our little flock, one of the last of the inaugural class of sheep here on the hill.  Rosie came to us in the family way and was the first ewe to birth under our bumbling care.  We checked her constantly, and then came home one day to find her standing, quietly yet obviously pleased with herself,  beside two beautiful, healthy white lambs.  “Thank God we weren’t home when she went into labor,” I remember thinking. What a mess we might have made trying to help.  To give you a sense of Rosie’s presence of mind, here is a story about the time a friend brought his herding dog over to help round up our sheep, who had never been herded by a dog before.  Sheep, as prey animals, are not prone to a lot of independent thinking in the presence of danger.  One shared brain cell governs the main response, which is flight.  The flock flew.  After a spell, Rosie peeled off and came up to where my husband was standing.  “Are you aware,” she seemed to be asking, “that there is a dog chasing us all around here?”  He reassured her.  I swear she shrugged; it’s possible that she sighed.  She resumed her place among the flock.  She was the first ewe I witnessed heading in front of me to the barn when her lambs were picked up in the field.  “Meet you in there!” one could almost hear her say.  “Just going to get off my feet for a sec while you have the babies!”  We had a very fine teacher in Rosie, and we will miss her.

A few days after Rosie went, a weasel found its way into the chicken coop, and in the manner of such things, killed the best and most favorite hen (and two other victims, whose losses should not be overlooked).  Mrs. F, though petite and profoundly ridiculous-looking, was by far the best mother hen we have hosted here in 11 years of chicken-keeping.  We’ve known some monumental dingbat failures and we’ve known some good ones.  Mrs. F was peerless.

We wish them peaceful rest.

I wish for fewer opportunities to feel this way.  I know that I can’t stay under the bed, and in my saner moments, I also know that the Universe is not trying to teach me a lesson.  No special attention is granted from the Universe.  It is just, in its grinding, relentless, gloriously dependable way, teaching all of us.  Fleeting, babe.  Even the dreariest & most endless-feeling Tuesday full of meetings and root canal is a blip.  Reach, taste, savor, cherish.  Repeat.

None of this has anything to do with muffins.  But I have been stumbling a little through the kitchen motions lately, and then I needed to make muffins for a meeting, and one of the people attending that meeting had recently smoked me a carrot.  Not a lot of people will smoke a carrot in order to make a relish that they will tuck into a basket of comforting treats they are bringing to you. Not because the world wants for generous souls–just because not a lot of people will ever smoke carrots.  Go ahead and make stoned Easter Bunny jokes.  I forgive you.

So when you are making muffins for a carrot-smoker, you aim high.  When you are tired and sad, “aiming high” means toasting some coriander seeds, but the bang you get out of that little gesture is tremendous.  I made these muffins once with cinnamon, and they were well-received.  But for Julie, I toasted some coriander seeds (a few more than I needed, as it happened).  You go ahead and steer your muffin ship as you please (replacing the coriander seeds with a teaspoon of cinnamon if you like), but the 90 seconds I invested in the seed-toasting and crushing elevated not only the baking enterprise, but a few other endeavors as well.  Once you have a little dish of toasted & crushed coriander seeds on the counter, you begin to dance a little looser in the hips around the kitchen. Bonus ricotta mixture below the muffins.  Still a teaspoon or so left of the seeds. Who knows what the weekend may bring.  I’ll be under the bed if you need me.

oat bran muffins with coconut & coriander

Heat the oven to 350, and prepare a 12-cup muffin pan by lightly greasing or lining the cups with muffin papers.

In a small skillet over medium heat, toast a teaspoon of coriander seeds for a few seconds, until they smell wonderful.  Dump them in a mortar or small dish, and lightly crush them.

In a medium bowl, combine:

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 t lemon juice

and let stand a minute or two.

Add, and mix well:

• 1 c unsweetened applesauce
• 1 egg
• 3T mild oil
• 1/2 c sugar
• 2T molasses
• 1 t finely grated fresh ginger

In a separate bowl, combine:

• 1 c all-purpose flour
• 1/2 c whole wheat flour
• 3/4 c oat bran
• 1/4 c golden flax meal
• 1/3 c finely shredded unsweetened dried coconut
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds (generous)
• 1/2 t salt

Combine these two mixtures, then stir in:

• 1/2 c dried cherrries

Divide among the prepared cups (they will be full) and bake for about 25 minutes, until the tops are set and springy.

ricotta with coriander & lemon

• 3/4 c ricotta (home-made!  c’mon!  so easy!)
• 1 slice preserved lemon (about 1/4 of a lemon)
• 2-3T finely chopped parsley
• 1 -2 t harissa paste

Combine it all in a bowl and mash the seasonings into the cheese.  Heaven on an egg sandwich, or anywhere else you might be tempted to spread it.

on west 65th street on Saturday night

I’ve made references, here and there in the last year and a half, to traveling near and far to help care for someone I love who was ill.  I’ve written a little about the push and pull of never quite being where you are, [...]]]>

on west 65th street on Saturday night

I’ve made references, here and there in the last year and a half, to traveling near and far to help care for someone I love who was ill.  I’ve written a little about the push and pull of never quite being where you are, your mind and heart half at home and half with the loved one, whichever place you happen, physically, to be.  I didn’t share a lot of identifying details.  I still won’t.  But I will tell you that the person who was ill was one of my two sisters. She died on February 28th.

She was ill privately, and she died privately, and we spoke in celebration of her life privately, and I am not about to steer the family ship onto another course.  But I did want to tell you where I have been.

I am not sure I could tell you where it is that I presently find myself.  When someone is gravely ill, humans (unlike the wild things in Wendell Berry’s poem, one I have always viewed, gratefully, as a guiding star for the fretful) “tax their lives with forethought of grief.”  We tax ourselves, and we mix the grief up with all kinds of other indigestible things like guilt and worry and fervent wishes to change the truth.

It feels like this time period ought to be about the falling away of all the things mixed up in the grief, and finding the pure sadness.  I am ready for that, any old time now.

It is also, mercifully, about the goodness of friends. We have been so thoroughly fed by the steel network of community that surrounds us that I have lost count of my blessings.  The thing is, a person has to eat.  I have often been grateful for this basic truth, because it means there is usually something to occupy us when we are wringing our hands on the periphery of someone’s calamity, or dancing around with someone’s joy.   I am grateful for it now, because friendship has arrived at our own doorstep as bags of bagels, as spicy noodles and Indian take-out, as a giant box of lemons, as a fruit basket, as soups that taste of an old friend’s familiar hand in the kitchen and a new one’s thunderclap of empathic feeling, as a full gorgeous meal and (also perfectly-timed) as a jar of jam and a bar of Mexican hot chocolate.

Someone who loves us got off a plane from a week-long business trip and made my family a koliva, a Greek food of mourning with deep pagan roots, traditionally eaten on the ninth day of grieving.  Seeds and sweetness and spices were all beautifully arranged in the bowl she presented to us.  The notion, she said, is to take in the seeds in the name of the departed.  Once consumed, you carry on in the spirit of that person, whom you offer eternal life through your continued existence, I reckon, until someone eats a koliva for you, and on, and on, until you see how a person might develop a pretty holy (even if agnostic) association between planting and eating and life and eternity.

Wishing everyone peace and mettle and something delicious in the bowl.  How basic it is, to taste and digest and go on through another day.  We are blessed.

I will not bore or horrify you with further scenes from the front.  No blow-by-blow on the ewe with the prolapse and the vet’s MacGyver-esque repair thereof ( let’s just say he put the “butt” back in buttons), no cataloging of the rest of the week’s adventures with intramural swapping of head cold and [...]]]>

I will not bore or horrify you with further scenes from the front.  No blow-by-blow on the ewe with the prolapse and the vet’s MacGyver-esque repair thereof ( let’s just say he put the “butt” back in buttons), no cataloging of the rest of the week’s adventures with intramural swapping of head cold and stomach flu germs, no tally on the number of dirty towels generated by cold lambs taking a spa break by the woodstove indoors.

None of that.  Just a little gooey lamb photography, and a travelogue of cooking fantasies.  You will note my armchair travel was mainly routed through pudding territory.  What I want, when I feel taxed, is something from a spoon.

• Not pudding, but visually appealing: this blog (I can tell that both her kitchen and her sketchbooks would be very tidy, which is inspirational), and these cake servers, for the casually elegant, hip and funky, mismatched vintage groovy stylish life I lead in my mind.

• This king of all rice puddings, which I devoured, despite making it absolutely wrong (though I only ever buy or cook short grain brown rice, all I had–mysterious!–in the cupboard was long grain, and I added the flaked coconut too early, forgot to soak the fruit, and am a full-fat dairy girl all the way). Rice pudding is almost always all wrong, but this one is all right.

• This breakfast healthfest, which I like to think will be devoured by the whole family, but likely will be all mine.

• I can bet this baked lemon pudding will not sit around waiting for customers, however.  And I imagine I can move several units of coconut panna cotta with pomegranates, too.

• These little apple-pie inspired cups look ready for the lunchbox, and once I get my hands on a handheld mixer, I am going to be all over this possible way to feed whipped cream to the dairy-averse.  The PPK has never steered me wrong.

• In the meantime, a little good news in the form of hope for the future makes an excellent topping.

If, at the end of a long drive home from seeing and tending to your ailing loved one, you embrace the reality that the snot virus you have been dodging all week is your One True Destiny and it is time to go to bed, it follows that a ewe of your immediate acquaintance [...]]]>

If, at the end of a long drive home from seeing and tending to your ailing loved one, you embrace the reality that the snot virus you have been dodging all week is your One True Destiny and it is time to go to bed, it follows that a ewe of your immediate acquaintance will get a lamb stuck in her birth canal right as you select the pj’s that best suit your level of self-pity.

If you suit up in lamb-catching gear and follow your husband outside, it follows that the patient will be one of the skittish ewes that are hard to convince of your being motivated by her own best interests, and so you will be standing about in the cold, dark night for quite a while, trying to keep very still and feeling your toes freeze.

If you finally succeed, despite your mutual lack of interest in doing so, in sticking your gloved hand up her cootchie and easing out the lamb, it follows that she will immediately dash off into the night without a backward glance, in order to prevent your doing anything like that to her ever again, leaving you with the wet and understandably dismayed newborn lamb.

If you accept your husband’s plan to back off a ways and see if she circles back to the lamb in short enough order that it doesn’t freeze as hard as your toes, it follows that taking the rubber gloves off will remind you that your nice warm real gloves are right next to the lamb, in the area you have just vacated and agreed to foreswear for about twenty minutes.  Now that your hands are free of sheep-cootchie stuff for the first time in about half an hour and you can finally reach into your pocket, this is also a good time to note that you have truly exhausted the one tissue that was in there.

If she does in fact circle back and bond nicely with the lamb, allaying any concerns that it will be abandoned there in the field, it follows that this is when the coyotes will begin to howl.  This has to be one of the most galvanizing sounds perceptible to the human ear.  There will ensue a Keystone Cops episode of great hilarity to someone other than the four mammals directly engaged in it; the plot starts something like, “how about we put the lamb in the barn and you come along with it?”  Some ewes follow right along when you do that.  Some even get the idea and go AHEAD of you to the barn, to grab a few minutes of me-time while you’re watching the baby.  This is not, as it happens, one of those ewes. BLAAAA?  BLAAAA!! Go through the gate?  Why?! WHAT barn?  Is there a lamb?  Is it mine?  Where is it?  Where are those gloves from before? WheresMyLambOhMyGodI’dBetterGoBackToTheField. BLAAAAAA. Round the barn, to the north!  Round the barn, to the south!  Back to the gate! Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you succeed after a mere 98 attempts to put mother and baby in a little pen with some shelter, it follows that your little dance of victory will be heckled by a coyote who from the sound of things must be sitting about ten feet beyond the narrow wedge of illumination cast by your trusty solar-powered flashlight, and you will spend the rest of the night not particularly sleeping, between the fear of coyotes, the fact that QuikKrete cement has invaded your cranial passages, and the unfortunate choice when the batteries ran out on your personal electronic device while you were driving to listen to The Best Hits Of The 70’s and 80’s on your FM dial.  Even on my favorite table, he can beat my best!

If the day dawns bright and shiny with all present and accounted for, it follows that when your son comes home from school, he will think he is coming down with your cold.  Oh, drat, you will think, forecasting a double run on tissues and tea, and hauling your sorry rear back to bed.

If in the pre-dawn hours, meditation finally overcomes the sleep-stymying effects of your plywood tongue, resonantly aching joints and continued earworm woes (He’s got crazy flipper fingers!  Never seen him fall!), it follows that how wrong your son was will be conveyed by his sister’s 6am announcement that it was in fact the stomach flu that was gunning for him, and it has fired, all over everything.

If (and I promise this is the last sad and implausible thing I will tell you), after swabbing the decks, you drag your self-pitying behind down to the kitchen to make the 411^th cup of tea of the last 24 hours, your eyeballs and brain clattering around in your head like billiard balls, it follows (really!) that you will look out the window (this really happened!) and see a BALD FRICKING EAGLE IN YOUR YARD, heading for Lamb Town.

Someone will ask you if you took a picture of the eagle.  You did not.

Small wonder my tastes are running to fast food at the moment.  There is a soup you can get at any Thai restaurant—you know the one I mean? Sour and salty and spicy. Restorative. Not hard to achieve a passable version at home, it turns out, as long as you have access to a supermarket with even a passable Asian aisle and can operate a can opener.  You can enhance it with little broccoli florets or some other vegetal thing if you like (baby corn makes me feel (in a good way) like I am sitting under a large painting or embroidered wall hanging of an elephant; sliced white mushrooms are a common addition, too), if there are no land-based or airborne predators circling the premises.

I do not have a picture of the soup for you, because it has not been that kind of week, but as a consolation prize, I do have that nice picture up there of one of the dogs sleeping in the sock basket while we battled the germs. She was on the unsorted-sock side.  Later on in the day, she moved to the sorted socks.

And then, to cap off the day, she moved back.

Tom kha gai  Serves 2-4

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 quart of chicken broth
• 1-2 teaspoons of Thai red curry paste
• 1 T fish sauce
• 1 stalk lemongrass, outermost husk removed, halved lengthwise, bulb end slit or smashed
• 3 or 4 slices of fresh ginger root

• 1 boneless chicken breast, thinly sliced
• or ½ # tofu, cubed
• large handful of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
• handful of fresh Thai or regular basil, coarsely chopped
• juice of 1-2 limes (about 2T, or to taste)

Optionally, some cooked and drained cellophane (bean thread) or rice noodles, divided among the bowls of the recipients.

Bring the coconut milk, broth and seasonings to a boil and let them simmer about ten minutes.  Fish out the ginger and lemongrass if you don’t want anyone encountering them accidentally.

Mix in the remaining items and let the chicken cook through.  Taste and correct the seasoning as you like.  Divide among the bowls.  Keep an eye on the yard for tigers.

A little housekeeping first: the subscription link over there in the sidebar finally works. Apologies for the long time when it didn’t.  Ice packs for the lump on my head from banging it on the desk trying to fix it gratefully accepted.  I have almost every confidence that if you sign up using the [...]]]>

A little housekeeping first: the subscription link over there in the sidebar finally works. Apologies for the long time when it didn’t.  Ice packs for the lump on my head from banging it on the desk trying to fix it gratefully accepted.  I have almost every confidence that if you sign up using the new gizmo, you will actually receive an alert when I post.

And believe me, you won’t want to miss even one of the intimidatingly challenging and exotic recipes you have come to expect here. To wit, today’s offering: a cup of tea.

“You may have noticed,” said my son this morning, “that I have begun to really like toast.”

He comes by it honestly. There is a long double genetic line of inheritance behind this fondness of his, with both parents coming from toast-centric households.

It’s only a mild understatement to say that in my opinion, buttered toast and hot tea are two of the cornerstones of a nice life, as well as two of the most direct routes to re-establishing the notion, if you have lost touch with it due to weather or circumstance, that you may already have one.  If I am out of sorts, one or the other or (even better) the two at once go a long way towards restoring me.

I am focusing on the tea, today (toast was covered a while back).  The head cold that has been hunting me all week made landfall yesterday, and it seems to have gathered a good head of steam up en route. I am cornering the market on tea.

When I was little, my babysitter made me a concoction when I was unwell that I called, fondly, ‘sicky tea.’  She brewed a cup of Lipton Tea (The Brisk One!) and souped it up with the juice of half a lemon and a whopping dollop of Golden Blossom honey.  It was piercing and bracing and soothing all at once and its balance of tart and sweet (you need about twice as much of both lemon and honey as you are instinctively comfortable with) kind of became my gold standard of tea for the infirm. Just looking at those labels there makes me feel better, and about 10 years old,  already.

Then there is ‘thunder potion,’ something I encountered on a wilderness retreat in the woods of New York State with my mother, where I also encountered the flu.  Some nice smelly fellow in moccasins offered me a cup of very hot water with cayenne, honey and lemon that was sicky tea with knobs on, and since then I have always added some kick to the mixture.

Peppermint tea, which if you are called upon to outfit the St. Bernard who will be going up the mountain to rescue me is what you should put in the little barrel flask around his neck, makes a stupendous base for sicky tea.  The menthol-y fumes definitely increase the relief from congestion and woe.

Steeping fresh grated ginger in hot water creates another useful base liquid to build this potion on, and for maximum head-clearing effect, try ginger and peppermint together.  I never miss a chance to mouth off about sourcing good honey; right now I’m a big customer here.

Cups 94-97 of tea today have engaged the power of a mighty substance brewed in my neck of the woods called Fire Cider, which I have been observed to drink neat on draggy mornings for the “thanks!  I needed that!” reaction it stimulates.  My trusty blue mug is presently steaming with a jigger of the stuff in hot water (as hot as you can stand to drink it without burning your tongue, which is the last thing you need when your head is stuffed full of dryer lint and everything tastes like paste), enhanced with my usual truckloads of lemon and honey.

Crawling back to bed now, to ruminate on how I could possibly top a recipe for tea, and also to moan and feel sorry for myself. If there is anything amiss with you and tea won’t fix it, my sympathies; this very friendly compendium may have the solution you seek.