Braciole for the New Year: Fancy Peasant Food

 My favorite Christmas gift this year was the book Frankies Spuntino: Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual, a cookbook that is more a "how to make your own fine Italian restaurant" by Peter Meehan and the two Frankies (Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo) behind Frankies Spuntino restaurants in New York. It was a gift from Steve's daughter Catherine and her boyfriend Homer, who enjoy my cooking and garden. Homer's mother, a native New Yorker now living in Brooklyn, is famous for her Saturday market routine, which involves rising very early to get to the farmers' market by 6 a.m. and then traveling all over the city for various goods. I'm not an early riser, but I'd like to think that the next time I'm in New York, if things align, I could accompany her.

My own two years in Brooklyn (1989-91) were very important to me in terms of my food experience. I was in my mid-twenties, in graduate school, living in Park Slope above a video store on 7th Avenue. I'd walk to 4th Avenue to the first real fish market I ever encountered (as a Midwesterner, not surprising). It had a screen door that slammed shut behind customers with a slap like a summer cabin in the Catskil
ls.

I tried to recreate dishes I had at the local restaurants, including the pasta primavera with seafood at an Italian restaurant down the street. My friends Frances Storey and Jim Mindnich introduced me to more good food and some tucked away places that were cheap, ethnic and delicious. They lived in Carroll Gardens, and I could ride my bike to their loft, where we often had Sunday dinner and a movie. I particularly loved riding my bike home afterward through the quiet but still active neighborhood streets.

Shortly after I began reading the book, I became fixated on one particular dish: the braciole (pronounced bra-JOEL, with joel pronounced like a French name with a soft 'j'). It's peasant food, a cheap cut of pork tenderly prepared and cooked in simmering tomato sauce for three hours. It's the Italian brisket, that other great peasant food, that makes a masterpiece out of a fatty piece of gristly meat. I couldn't wait to try it, and set my sights on New Year's Eve.

I loved everything about making this meal, including gathering the ingredients. I went to our local fine grocery, Byerly's, for the white pepper and the Italian tomatoes. I used two cans of LaValle tomatoes, which at $2.59 a can were a luxury-- and were the most luxurious, sensuous canned tomatoes I've ever had the pleasure of crushing between my fingers. I added two jars of my own canned tomatoes, draining off a bit of the water. The tomato sauce consists of olive oil, 18 cloves of garlic (13 but I used 5 more), salt and the tomatoes. I started it cooking at 2:30, thinking I needed four hours, but really I should have started even earlier. As soon as I finished the chocolate tart at noon I should have started it simmering, but I'll know better next time.

I bought the pork roast, a boneless butt, a while ago from Newmans farm, a couple who sell their meat at our farmer's market. Not sure it was the same as "boneless pork shoulder," I stopped by the meat market and asked for just that. They said, "Oh, you'd want a boneless butt roast," looking kind of dubious about it. I told them that I had one of those, bought some local Gruyere (the recipe called for aged provolone, but I just love this Gruyere, and it is locally made), and left. I realized the butcher's puzzled look when I cut into the roast. It's a cheap cut of meat, quite fatty. The Newmans sold it to me along with a finer cut of pork, suggesting I roast them together. The fat from one would help keep them both moist. I'm glad I found a better method of cooking it than throwing it in a pot with some liquid and hoping for the best.

You cut the roast in 6 filets, butterfly them and stuff them with cheese, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic, then roll and tie them with kitchen twine. After the tomato sauce has simmered an hour or two (in my case, 45 minutes) you "tuck them into the sauce" and simmer for three more hours. You skim the grease off the top (a combination of pork fat and the olive oil) and let the meat sit a half hour before putting it over pasta, slathering it with sauce, and serving it.

The only question-- the big question-- is, will it be worth it? For me, it was a lovely afternoon. I proofed the galleys of the book while making trips to stir the sauce, breaks to prepare the shaved raw Brussels sprouts  and dressing, have a little wine, stir the sauce again, have a glass of Pellegrino, etc.

Tim and Annie came for dinner, and I have to say, yes, it was worth it. I will make this again, definitely. As peasant food goes, it's the fanciest, and it was tender, flavorful, and really not difficult at all. Fun, even. With some dinner rolls, the Brussels sprouts and chocolate tart, it was a wonderful meal, and we all left the table stuffed and satisfied. My brother had provided the wine from Portugal, a 2008 Quinta de Infantado, full-bodied and smooth.

For me, this meal was the perfect end to 2011. It captured so much of what I've tried to incorporate into my life this year: my garden tomatoes, organic Brussels sprouts from the Minnesota Market Co-op in St. Joseph, local meat and cheese from the meat market and farmers' market. It was slow-cooked with love and delight and served to family in my warm and festive kitchen, preceded by some homemade cheese and crackers.

My goal for 2012 is to visit the actual Frankies Spuntino in Carroll Gardens and check out the braciole in person. They say the biggest compliment they get from Italian Americans is "it tastes like mine," which means it is as good as mama made it back in the day. Perfection would be to have Frances and Jim come with me, but that is mostly a New Year's wish, with thoughts of old friends and good times in places far away. 

Happy New Year, everyone. May it be a good one for us all.

Christmas Tree Video

I've written about our Christmas tree before, but each year it does fill me with total pride and unearned nostalgia. The tree came from Steve's grandfather's hardware store in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, brand spankin' new in 1965. That is also the year that A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired, vilifying exactly this kind of Christmas tree. And, of course, introducing that iconic jazzy Christmas music by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

In my house in Park Forest, where my parents moved with me from Pennsylvania in 1965 when I was a year old, we were listening to The Sound of Christmas, the Ramsey Lewis Christmas album that came out in 1960 and was re-released in 1962 with added tracks. My parents, who married in 1963, may have bought it for their first Christmas together, along with the Kingston Trio and Bing Crosby Christmas albums.

These would become mainstays of our Christmas listening, with few additions-- the Muppets' Christmas album and the Carpenters' Christmas album are the only two I remember as vividly in the mix. On a Saturday between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day (our official Christmas season), My mother would prop up the 4-6 albums in the morning, and one by one they'd drop and play. When they had finished, she would turn the whole stack over and play the B-sides. While they played, we'd make Christmas cookies and crafts for presents for teachers (my favorite, the Christmas diorama in a baby-food jar with cotton snow, white glitter, and tiny wooden figures).

Each album had a distinct character, and listening to them in halves like this, instead of individual songs on a mix tape or ipod shuffle, had a strong effect on me. I never tired of them. By the time one was over, I was so ready for the next. The rolicking fun of "Children, Go Where I Send Thee" by the Kingston Trio was always welcome, and the groove of Ramsey Lewis was a welcome counterpoint. Bing Crosby's "Mele Kalikamaka" could certainly try one's patience, but it was worth listening to for the delight of those background singers on his version of "Jingle Bells."

This year when we put up the Christmas tree, I got out my camera and made a little video. I was initially motivated by showing the individual steel branches in their original paper sleeves. However, it is also quite a production to put up the thing, so I just kept picking up the camera. In a way, this tree is the embodiment of Steve's aesthetic-- midcentury modern and somewhat minimalist. No lights go on the tree, or ornaments (so I've been instructed). Just these small colored balls, glass, of which a surprising number remain intact (I broke one this year). Since presumably Charlie Brown wouldn't approve, I went with the Ramsey Lewis soundtrack instead.

The video turned out much better than I expected. The muted original sound and the light sort of makes it feel like an old-fashioned 8mm family film. There's one clip where I forgot to mute the sound, and you can hear the football game in the background.

Enjoy the video, and Merry Christmas!

Ice

We've got our first long blast of cold weather. It's been discouraging to see open water still on the small lakes around here. When it's cold, I want ice! Time to skate!

On Friday night, we went to some friends' house for a festive dinner party. When we were leaving, our headlights shone on what looked like a major construction site in the backyard next door. "Wonder what's going on there," I said. Steve responded, "They're making an ice rink!"

This is a great Minnesota tradition, though I hadn't seen it up close before. Steve has made them before; all it takes is plastic sheeting, 2x8s and some concrete blocks to hold the plastic in place. Then you flood the ice with a hose.

There are, of course, some very nice amateur videos on YouTube that show you how to make yoru own rink in your backyard. Some are quite elaborate. Most are made by teenage hockey players, and as such, the music over the videos is very loud and there's much profanity used in describing the ice rink construction and final product. I did find this lovely family rink video.



There's also an excellent documentary about amateur ice rinks in Minnesota, Canada and other cold places, called Pond Hockey: http://pondhockeymovie.com/. There are advantages to frozen ground!

I grew up ice skating three blocks from our house on Farragut Street in Park Forest, Illinois. The grade school (Illinois School, on Illinois Street, not to be confused with Indiana School on Indiana Street about 12 blocks away) had an outdoor rink every winter. You never knew when it would be flooded (it seemed done by elves, but I do believe some firemen came out and opened a fire hydrant onto it once the weather was going to stay below freezing). The rink was actually carved into the ground, with sloped sides and a mound down the middle that separated the figure skating side from the hockey side. This was, in my day and my neighborhood, a gender line: boys on the hockey side and girls on the figure skating side.

I also took figure skating lessons at a large indoor rink in Park Forest South. I took a bus to get there, and I always was a little nervous when I came out into the dark (it was probably 4:30 or 5 p.m.) and had to find my bus. I had no idea where I was but it felt like a long way from home. I truly valued this kind of independent experience even then. I became a good skater: figure eights and backward and some spins, but nothing elaborate. As good a skater as I was, I was always impressed by boys and how they could skate. Hockey demanded a kind of athleticism I would never have, a confidence and ease on skates. It was like they were on solid ground and I was doing the same thing on a balance beam, precarious.

The last time I was at that grade school rink, the older brother of one of my childhood friends was there with his toddler daughter. He was clearly a hockey player. She was on little double-bladed skates and completely enveloped in a snowsuit. This man, who was in his 20s, skated around and around the rink, holding onto her all the way. She must have felt like she was flying. All you could hear was her laughter, pealing out of that snowsuit. When they came my way, I could see her face-- one gigantic smile. It was one of the purest portraits of joy I've ever seen.

So every day I watch our pond, waiting for the day it will ice over, then freeze completely. It's nice if it happens before there is snow, but if there is snow, Tim will get out there and blow it clear. In the old days, Paul used to string up lights around the pond, but now we skate in dark or moonlight.

It's one reason we live in Minnesota.

To the Chicken Soup Factory

Chickens from the same flock who didn't even make it to the laying stage at the scene of an earlier slaughter...

Tim and Annie's seven chickens, who have entertained us for several seasons and lived peaceably and productively on the farm, are nearing their end. There's been a sudden decline in egg production, from six eggs a day to three, and so they've been deemed unworthy of winter care.

We're chicken-sitting this weekend while Tim and Annie are out East for the holiday, and today Steve brought in the three eggs. One is puny, another is thin-shelled, and the third is quite large. It's too bad you can't tell which one is still laying the large eggs! Their fates are inextricably joined, in the same way they move together in a small flock throughout the day.



It's actually pretty good timing on their part. It saves Tim a winter of feeding them and keeping their water from freezing, and they don't have to be cooped up all winter in the barn. Not that the barn is a bad place-- they'll miss the full renovation to a furniture-making shop. And Tim did build them a glassed-in porch for sunny winter days.

Of course, since they've been freely ranging for three years now, they are no longer worth eating. Once killed, all they will be good for is chicken broth or soup. I was offered the chickens for this purpose, but I'm not really willing to prepare them. Too many feathers!

I'm glad at times like these for civilization: cartons of organic chicken broth and the Kuebelbecks' eggs at the local co-op market. Next spring, along with all the other new stuff, we'll have another batch of chicks on the farm, and with them, an abundance of fresh eggs again.

Big Projects

Last year, it was the kitchen rehab. But this year, Steve could barely contain himself in finishing the last of the landscape projects before he got to his Big Project-- renovating one of the hog barns into a furniture-making shop. The day after his last job (Saturday) he began by putting a big hole in the roof. Sunday he rented a masonry saw and took out a large chunk of the wall. All this was in preparation for today, when his "consultant," Dwayne, who built our house, and his brother Tim joined him in raising the roof enough to make room for the glass garage door that will go in the opening.

He's been thinking and talking about that glass garage door for about a year. I remember when we saw one at the restaurant Joe's Garage in Minneapolis. It will be a lovely thing, sort of like a greenhouse wall, and will bring good light into the working space. Good light is the opposite of what this place currently has.

The custom wood stove is ordered, as is the garage door. The insulation guy has been out to look at the place and is working up some bids. What started out as buying a few tools on Craig's List has become a truly awesome endeavor.

I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't rather use the money for a trip to Italy or Paris... but it is inspiring to see someone dig into something so ambitious. A place to spend the Minnesota winters making mid-century modern style furniture. The plywood will be bent. The metal will be soldered. Other local furniture makers and woodworkers will be consulted. A sectional couch the likes of which have not been seen before will be installed in our living room.

And me? I'm working on small pieces, daily, writing out bits of what I know, imagining myself into worlds I want to explore, in the hopes of making a whole book out of it, at least a draft, over the winter.

Garden to Bed



4 new beds make a total of 12, and the dock for my pump out of the water




The newly landscaped garden includes a long
plowed bed  for potatoes, beans and onions.

 

I am officially a garden addict, something I never thought would happen to me. On Saturday afternoon while Steve bought some useful stuff at Menards for building his furniture shop, I found myself wandering the aisles of the empty garden center and bought three bags of cedar mulch. I ran into a friend who was buying Christmas lights, which in that moment seemed more rational (though much too early!). In my defense, I was going to put the mulch over the newly transplanted perennials, but when I gave it further consideration, it does seem obvious that leaf mulch is about as heavy as I should apply this late in the fall. All those wood chips will only make it more difficult to plant things in spring if I spread it now.



Just like this time last year, I'm really ready to begin again, to the point where I'm thinking-- If only I lived in a warmer climate, like Southern California. Yeah, if only I had a few acres in Southern California, I could just plant more seeds now! Then I realize that I have what I have because it is where it is, and that I'm glad about that.

garlic bed covered in grass

I spent my "extra hour" from falling back to daylight savings time on Sunday out in the garden, turning over the last of the weeds, cutting back the asparagus and trying to get the weeds out from around their stalks, and heaping on the last of the cut grass over them. I also heaped more grass onto the garlic beds, where the late freeze has meant the bulbs are sending up shoots through the 4-5 inches I already put down. "Go to bed!" I feel like yelling at them. "You aren't supposed to come up until April!" It's good for them to get going a little bit, so they can develop a root system under the snow during the winter. Or so I understand from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is still my favorite bedtime reading.



I can't wait to receive my first "yearbook" as a member of Seed Savers. This is the master book for ordering from individual farmers who save heirloom seeds. I am very happy with the Seed Savers stock I bought, as well as the seeds I bought locally at Woods Farm and Nursery, but I can't help but want to buy a few seeds from the big book o' seeds! Mostly, I just need more reading material.



All this reminds me of the movie Into the Great Silence about a Cistercian community in France. One ancient monk walks around in the middle of winter looking at his raised beds covered with snow, then stands in a shed looking through seed packets. He seems quite out of his mind. The poignancy, of course, is wondering if he will live to see another planting season, and the nonverbal way he demonstrates he is thinking about spring, new life, there in the winter. But for me, that's where I turned off the movie. I was starting to doze already, but the crazy old seed monk just seemed like kind of an indictment of a life of total silence, although that's not what was meant at all. I found myself wondering, "Is anyone watching out for this old guy?"

So I will have to find other things to occupy my mind. The forecast is for snow tonight in some areas of the state, although not here until maybe the 18th. But once we hit Thanksgiving, there's no turning back. And certainly the beds are done until after the snows. Then again, maybe tomorrow I'll drive out for a few more bags of mushroom compost and dig them into the beds...



Tamarack

tamarack and pine trees I pass on my way to work

Throughout my adult life, there have been times I have been criticized for not being more engaged with nature. The harshest came from Denise Levertov, who thought it was the ultimate reason that I should not be a poet. I remember a conference with her when she said, "Susan, your interest is in human relationships. Poets care about nature. Why don't you write fiction?" I said to her, almost plaintively, "I'm going on a backpacking trip for four days starting tomorrow." She came very close to patting my knee, as if to say, "That's nice, dear, but it's not going to make you a poet."

Such a pronouncement is silly, of course, but Denise Levertov loomed very large and we students gave her a lot of power. In fact, she did have the power to make or break us, recommending her favorite students' manuscripts to publishers. When my poetry manuscript was a finalist for the National Poetry Series a couple of years later, she was one of the judges.

I grew up in Park Forest, a suburb of Chicago, a place defined, if by anything, but culture, by sociology, by human relationships. It is the subject of the book The Organizational Man. There was a forest preserve, and we walked in it, but in its deep recesses there was danger-- smoking and drinking and sex and violence. We stayed on the path and didn't go there at night. On a camping trip with the Campfire Girls we got deluged and ended up twelve whimpering, sodden girls in the back of station wagons driving home in the middle of the night.

I knew the names of a few trees: locust, maple, oak. Firs and pines were all "evergreens." The truth is, I didn't know anyone who knew the names of any plants beyond the most common. I loved summer storms and October weather, especially the early darkness and wind in the piles of leaves. I loved lilacs in June. I loved snow on the giant pine outside our kitchen window, framed by the carport.

During my two stints in California and my year in Reno, I worked very hard to absorb the natural world. Backpacking was just the start. The fact is, it was foreign terrain. In Reno, attached to the Literature and Environment program at the University, there was so much talk about the various ecosystems. Basin and range. Watersheds. Elevation and its effects. Lake Tahoe and its clarity and fragility. Walking in the public lands, which seemed barren to me, I have to admit I loved the rusted out shells of old cars people had pushed over ridges and the sound of people shooting tin cans. But I worked hard to pay attention to the plants as well.

Which brings me to the tamarack tree. This fall it has made an impression on me. Two weekends ago we were out at the Kluesner log cabin, which was built on our property and moved to a lake near Wadena, Minnesota. It was a gorgeous, unseasonably warm October weekend, so we went kayaking both days on the lake. On one shore was a large tamarack grove, right along the swampy edge of the lake, backed by black-green pines.

Tamarack is a pine tree whose foliage turns yellow in the fall before it loses its needles. They're feathery and I'm sure I thought they were just drought-stricken, sickly trees in the past (not noticing they grow in or near water). But this year I saw them along that lakeshore in all their glory, and now I see them on my way to work, small stands sometimes glowing in the morning sun or stark against green pines. They only grow in northern climes, mostly in Alaska and Canada, also in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut and Maine, dipping down as far south as the "extreme northern end of Illinois." 

I remember standing with my sister on a corner in Atlanta when she helped me move there after college. She wanted to know what kind of tree we were looking at, a large tree with smooth bark, gnarly branches and large, waxy green leaves. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder. It turned out to be a magnolia, and then I started seeing them everywhere. I wish she could have been there to see them in bloom. Later I learned about dogwoods, from a poster for the annual dogwood festival, and started looking for them. I learned what azaleas were.

I read about jacaranda trees in a poem, and then looking for them in Southern California after living there two years. They bloom in April, and if you look for them they are everywhere. But you have to look-- amid the shopping centers and concrete. You have to go into the neighborhoods and slow down. In fact, you can see them best from an airplane at that time, making a light-purple canopy over the area. They are native to South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. They are exotic, like the bamboo, birds of paradise and lemon trees in my Long Beach neighborhood.

Nature is a tricky business, and mostly, it is local. In Park Forest, I loved the rattling seed pods of the locust trees, the helicopter seeds of the maple. More than anything I loved the weeping willows that grew along a creek behind the public library. I loved Queen Anne's lace with its black dot at the center. When I was very young and living by that forest preserve,  I thought the black dot was a baby ant, the queen. I loved black-eyed Susans, with whom I shared a name. To share a name with a flower seemed quite magical.

Now I live with and love the purple aster, droopy cone flowers and bergamot. I look for the sumac and, now, the tamarack groves.   

Migration

We're in the midst of some amazing migratory activity here. Yesterday, I swear, a giant flock of seagulls was circling over the prairie for hours, completely silent, swooping up insects but never landing.

Saturday I was reading on the porch to an utter cacophany of chatter from a large flock of starlings that had taken up temporary residence in our cottonwood trees. I think they first staked out the fir trees at the edge of the property, where they sounded like some giant, creaking machinery. Then they moved in closer, filling the cottonwoods and really making a racket.

I finally roused myself and went to take a look. It was camera-worthy, so I went for the flip. I have a feeling starlings are what caused all the trouble for Alfred Hitchcock, as they really do travel in enormous groups. There are reports of them blackening the sky as they lift from a field. My starlings were not that numerous, but the sound and their black bodies filling the trees was ominous.

I took this video, which almost captures the sound. Turn your speakers all the way up and watch/listen for the spot, about 30 seconds in, when they fall into a sudden hush and swoop from a cottonwood at back to the ones along the driveway. The sudden silence and rush of wings took my breath away.

Prairie Bouquet

Here's a photo of today's prairie bouquet. It's very tempting to cut flowers from the prairie, but each year I realize how fragile they are when you pick them. They can sway out there in the pairie pummelled by wind for weeks, but once you put them in a vase, they seem to immediately start diministhing. I check the water temperature, but that's not it. They just want to be in the soil, in the wind, part of the whole.

And since this is the same season my orchid very happily blooms inside, I probably will just enjoy the flowers from the window or visiting them for the rest of the summer.

Locavore

It's easy to be a locavore come July in Minnesota. Between the garden, the St. Joseph Farmer's Market and our new Minnesota Street Market Co-op that carries Forest mushrooms grown right up the road and local, organic milk, I'm even making local pizzas! Friday night's was made with homemade mozzarella that was so buttery yellow and had such a real mozzarella texture, it was a revelation. It was topped with Forest criminis sauteed with garden spinach and farmer's market onions. The dough was made with the whey from the cheese and local flour from Freeport, Minnesota. I did use garlic that was no doubt imported from China, but hey, it's small! (wait until next year...) And, since I'm confessing, Trader Joe's pizza sauce.

I also made a batch of what's called in Ricki "the Cheese Queen" Carroll's Home Cheese Making book, lactic cheese. It's a pretty bad name for a really excellent soft cheese that you can make in 24 hours if you have rennet, thermophilic starter and salt. I've been making it all year, and nothing is better on a Triscuit than this cheese with some herbs de Provence mixed in. Except, perhaps, the "rosey dill radish dip" I made this weekend.

The last of the garden radishes and first of the garden dill were amazing in this dip, which calls for cream cheese, but I would imagine that cream cheese is too sweet and thus not as good as with lactic cheese. Again, it uses an exotic garlic clove and lemon, but there's no need to go crazy with this locavore stuff. After all, we Minnesotans are a practical people. And the food system has not yet collapsed.

Here's the recipe, which comes from the Common Ground Garden CSA web site.

Rosey-dilled Radish Dip



8 oz. lactic or cream cheese, at room temperature (so you can mix it)
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs fresh chopped dill 
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup finely chopped radishes


Combine all the ingredients well. Refrigerate at least 1 hour to incorporate the flavors before serving. Serve with crackers, chips or vegetable strips.

4th of July Prairie

bergemot

Last year, with an early spring and lots of warm weather, for some reason the prairie flowers were pretty unimpressive. This year, however, everything seems anxious to make up for the long, cold winter and spring, or maybe all the rain has helped.

In June the whole story was yarrow. It came up in big patches throughout the prairie. I think of the prairie as having waves of color-- first white, then yellow, and finally purple.

On July 1, thre were already clear signs that yellow was coming in, with bright spots of coreopsis and, here and there, some early black-eyed-Susans.

But here it is just July 4, and already there are three beautiful purple coneflowers, those ladies with their droopy skirts. Walking out there, I found bergemot coming in, among all the dried stalks of last year's grey coneflowers. And bright purple thistle.



purple coneflowers

The prairie is mostly green grasses still, but the promise is there of great glory, a profusion of flowers in the weeks to come.

For more photos from July 4 on our prairie, click here.



Flowers

As my vegetable gardening ramps up, I'm less and less interested in flower gardening. We have terraced beds along the side of the house and the first year I stuck in a bunch of oriental lily bulbs which have been dramatic every year. I fill in other spaces with annuals, the customary border of alyssum, and have gradually been adding other perennials like lilies. In the really shady space, since I don't like hostas, I put in some columbine this year, which will probably take over...

I did transplant some of my favorite flowers from my garden in Cold Spring when I moved, including my absolute favorites, the siberian irises. I am not in general an iris fan, since they seem more leaves than anything, and I find their "beards" somewhat lewd. But the elegance and vibrance of the siberian iris, even before it blooms, and its thin, spiky leaves, always make me happy.

This year, I also had these three giant dianthus plants come back. I still can't quite believe it, but there they are. Everything I've read says they're an annual, but as soon as the ground thawed, their green leaves were visible. They made it through a Minnesota winter! So I don't have to wait until August for them to be big and full of blooms. Next year I won't pull out any of my dianthus at the end of the season-- we'll see if they make another encore.

Mnding the Chickens

This Memorial Day weekend, everyone has been off at various cabins except me and Steve, so we had the WHOLE 80 acre farm to ourselves. We gardened, ate well, had coffee on the porch and even took a dip in the pond. This is exactly what we would have done if people had been here, but it still felt different somehow.

Of course, church was half-empty, lots of people leave town, so the whole town felt quiet.

My job was to take care of the chickens, and can I just say, I LOVE chickens! Each morning when I made my way out there (this morning in pajamas), the ladies were standing in their sun room clucking and squawking low, waiting for me to open the door. All seven of them file out together and get quiet. They make their way in a group down onto the commons and begin looking for grubs and stuff.

It was much harder to remember to go out at night and shut the door to the coop. It doesn't get dark until 9 p.m., and by then I was just not thinking about chickens. Last night we got home from a party around 9:30, and a little after 10 I turned on PBS, which was showing some kind of "best of" Laugh-In. They made the rounds of one-liners with various characters, and then Goldie Hawn came on and started by saying, "Who is taking care of the chickens? I mean, who watches out for the chickens? People are always telling jokes about them. Why did the chicken cross the road?..." then Colonel Sanders appeared and said something about how much he loves chickens, then someone else, then back to Goldie-- you get the idea.

Of course, by then I had my shoes and sweater on and was heading out the door. Who was taking care of the chickens indeed!! I'd completely forgotten!

It was a beautiful, dark night. It had been cold and windy during the day, but now it was already warming up (today it was 85). It smelled rich and green and the air was a little heavy. The grass is saturated, so I took the long way around the driveway and out to the chicken barn. As it is every night, all was quiet. I trusted they were inside, because they always are, and closed and latched the door.

The chickens come home to roost. Every evening, they go and take their places, lay an egg, and quietly sit on it. I suppose they sleep, too.

The contrast between the morning and the evening is quite beautiful. The ease of care and the reliability of chicken behavior is comforting. Latching the chicken coop, you really can feel like all is right with the world.

Three days and 18 eggs later, my duties are up. I do think I understand why so many people in this area are so well-tempered and steady. It's easy to see how they could have grown to love hard work and living simply. They grew up minding chickens.

First Harvest

The rhubarb has been, like everything, slow in coming in, but I did manage to get four cups of rhubarb picked on Friday for the first dish from the garden. With some remaining frozen strawberries and help from epicurious.com, I made strawberry-rhubarb compote with shortcakes. I didn't really like the orange rind in the biscuits, but I subsituted orange marmalade for some of the jam in the compote recipe and that was delicious.

Last night, which was the first night of eating dinner on the screen porch, I "harvested" the baby arugula from a window box I started back in March when I was planting seedlings, and it was enough for two small bowls of salad-- a squeeze of lemon, champagne vinegar and olive oil and they were good to go. I took photos to mark the occasion, but the CF card wasn't in the camera!

Last night's dinner was a great homemade chicken korma and I did have a few sprigs of cilantro I grew from seed to garnish that as well. It's the time of year I look with interest at the dandelion greens, but I haven't gone there yet. It seems like it would be too close to eating grass! And mostly, I think indoor planting doesn't result in much in the way of food. I have some lovely looking, but quite sparse, kale plants. I put a few seedlings out and instead of "taking off," they got windblown and shriveled. The basil and some other herbs I planted indoors also look weak and I'd diagnose them with "failure to thrive."

Starting peppers and tomatoes makes sense, but I don't see getting a good planter of lettuce going with my current set-up. Some things just need to start in the ground and tough it out.

And so those two meager bowls kind of depleted my indoor veggies. Other than rhubarb, I now will have nothing to eat (a sprig of cilantro and basil here and there) from the garden for probably three weeks. But there is promise out there, including little fields of lettuce and spinach dotting the landscape. There are tiny beet seedlings and snow peas almost ready to reach the first rung of the fence. Most exciting of all, most of the asparagus plants have little stems poking up through the bottom layer of dirt. I can't eat from those plants for three years, but they are alive!

Strawberry Rhubarb Shortcakes

4 cups 3/4-inch-thick slices fresh rhubarb
3/4 cup sugar
2 T water
2 T strawberry preserves
1 tsp minced orange peel (note: I used 1T raspberry preserves and 1 T orange marmalade, which complemented the allspice and gave it a more sharp flavor)

1/4  tsp ground allspice
1 quart strawberries, hulled and thickly sliced

Biscuits
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
6 T sugar
4.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 T minced orange peel (I would skip this in the future, and maybe use another T sugar)
1/4 tsp salt
9 T chilled butter, cut into pieces
3/4 c plus 3 T whipping cream (or half and half)

whipped cream or ice cream

For compote:
Combine first 5 ingredients in heavy large saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until rhubarb is tender but some pieces remain intact, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and add allspice. Cool completely. Stir in strawberries. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled (3 hrs or overnight). This last seems optional to me!

For biscuits:
Set oven to 400 degrees. Combine first 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Add ubber and cut in using pastry blender or rub with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. (In the future I will use my food processor for this step. It's the only way I know to quickly make good "coarse meal" of dough.) Add 3 T cream and stir until dough comes together. (Again, the food processor is good for this, since you can add a little more at a time to make it come together.)

Turn out dough onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, about 6 turns. Flatten dough to 3/4 inch thick round. Cut out biscuits using a cookie cutter. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet about 20-23 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool slightly. If making ahead, can reward them in 350 degree oven for five minutes before serving.

Cut biscuits in half, load on the compote and top with ice cream. (Garnish with mint, optional.)

The Future of Television

As an early adapter, I'm not very impressive. I'm guided more by my desire to live simply than to try something new. Although I've had a Honda Hybrid since 2002, I've actually all but given up my cell phone, which is now prepaid and has no message system attached to it. No iphone for me, though I do love my ipod touch, especially for the epicurious app that lets me get recipes right in my kitchen.

I am a fan of television, and though I think it would be virtuous of me to just disconnect the dish and not get any programming, I have been unable to pull the plug. We were among the first to get a Roku box from Netflix to stream videos on our television, and I could almost get by with that. It was a first step toward computer-driven television. So I haven't gotten a DVR, because I don't really want to pay to save more television shows. I want to watch less! And I definitely want to pay less than $600-$800/year for television.

Yesterday, I took the first real step and bought a cable to connect my rather outdated laptop to our pretty new television set. It's just a VGA cable, basically turning the television into a computer monitor. It also just connects video, so I brought down some speakers to run with the computer for sound.

As an experiment, it was successful. I was able to watch the episode of Upstairs, Downstairs that I missed, and the sound was only slightly out of sync and the images only slightly choppy. Later that night we had less success downloading a PBS Frontline episode, and settled for an episode of 30 Rock that was pretty badly synced. It was still funny!

I'm thinking what's in order is a dedicated computer (preferably a netbook) and an HDMI cable. And with those one-time investments, I could possibly return the dish! It's odd to think of the future resembling the past, but it means we would get down to radio as our primary news source (which it is already) and a limited television schedule. If we had to think of what we want to watch, instead of flipping channels to find something, I'm thinking at least the time I spend watching infomercials for extreme exercise programs will diminish.

And this morning, reading the campus electronic bulletin board, I ended up at a Web site that has a "live loon cam" focused on a loon nesting in Central Minnesota. I really like the idea of having something like that up on the television. Kind of like the yule log.

So here's to the future! And I'd welcome any advice on computer set-ups, etc.

Why Seasons Are Important

Lately, the world has been bumming me out. The earthquake and tsunami, followed by the radiation leak that has now been upgraded from Level 5 to Level 7 toxic event, the same category as Chernobyl (skipping Level 6 while people continued to live near the nuclear power plant), has been such a bad disaster that Americans have stopped complaining about rising gasoline prices. The situation in Libya is fraught with evil upon evil, and is sure to be followed by story after story of atrocities.

The ramped up media panic about the possibility of a government shutdown, now morphing into the next big rhetorical impending disaster of not raising the debt ceiling, would be something I would ignore except that I believe from following the discourse that the Republicans are so far gone they might just go through with it. The financial crisis and the banks and companies that caused it have brought on an ever-deepening cynicism about the seats of power in my country. There are reports about ozone depletion and shocking impending natural disasters. "What will happen to the Wisconsin maple syrup season as temperatures warm?" read one headline in my inbox this week.

Given our awareness of the rapid change to the world around us, and the possibilty of loss on a major scale-- of reasonably-priced food, for example, or nutritious food (Dear Lord, watching poor Jamie Oliver in Los Angeles last night even for 10 minutes almost put me over the edge).

But then, even after a winter as long and cold as the one we just had, today there are turtles back on the log. There is a pair of geese, and nesting ducks. They have all come back. Even the ones that were in the gulf during the horrible BP oil spill.

It makes me think-- what if one were to just pay attention to what is here, what goes and returns, this plot of land? What if I were to make space for only those in my immediate neighborhood or the town around me? Would I be able to live not as a global person but as a local person? Would that offer more hope and promise than the highly-charged technological world I live in now, even out in a small town in Central Minnesota?

The seasons are important, because they remind us that change is a natural part of life, and that in all the change, there are patterns, comforting ones. The sun does come up and stay up longer, and it warms the earth. The birds and animals come back because they believe in this. It is a fact they count on. As should we.

Planting

cherry tomato seedlings and one surprising batch of cilantro

Today I did my first outdoor seed planting. I may have gotten carried away, but I didn't put in anything that can't be replanted if it ends up getting very cold again. I'm hopeful that it won't come to that!

The soil was able to be worked, and it was the perfect day to be in the garden: in the low 60s and overcast with no wind. If only the wind would hold off for one month, the garden would be beautiful, but I know that is not what's going to happen. I didn't bother putting my little plastic row cover over anything-- these are cool-weather plants and will want rain as well. When Steve came out to see it, he had advice for reinforcing the tall pea fence, which will definitely topple when it has plants on it and the winds come.

I planted 10 asparagus crowns down the side of two beds. They can't be harvested for two years. But when they are ready, they will come up with the rhubarb, nice and early, and be finished by the time the tomato plants I'll put in beside them are starting to take off. I'm thankful to YouTube for the great videos on how to plant anything, and this particularly good video on how to plant asparagus crowns. I've also been watching lots of YouTube videos on how to plant seed potatoes. None are as definitive as this one for asparagus.

I planted a bed of onions and beets, and a bed with spinach and then my tall pea fence with snow peas and green arrow shelling peas. I'm really excited about the beets and the shelling peas, which are new for me. I disliked peas as a kid, but I think the best food I've ever eaten is a salad of garden greens with sweet peas from the Farmer's Market and vinegar and oil. I also have a great recipe for pea shoots with salmon and Asian sweet pepper sauce. There's still room for a row of something else in that bed, but I'll wait and put in something that can get going once the peas are waning, like peppers.

The most fun bed was the mixed bed. It has a row of onions and a row of lettuce, a patch of carrots (I did not buy enough carrot seeds!) radishes and the big experiment, potatoes. Potatoes take up so much room (as do onions) that I'm thinking I might still in the end want a permanent garden plot (not raised) for them. Something I can hoe and weed and treat heartily for potato beetles. As it is just an experiment, I put in four russet seed potatoes (a shame, really, when I bought a small bag) with enough space that I can hopefully get some good-sized potatoes. Next week a bag of fingerling potatoes will arrive, and I'll have to find space for them, too!

I'm not one for physical labor, so I was shocked at how fast time went. Turning over the soil, going to the barn for hose, digging trenches and holes for the asparagus-- it was great. The only thing I wanted was more room!

It's very hard for me to know how much space to leave for plants. I don't want to crowd the beds, but I do want to maximize them. I see great drawings of slanted trellises with cucumbers growing on them and under the trellis are cabbages. Carrots Love Tomatoes, about companion planting, seems to suggest you can tuck in plants everywhere if you have raised beds-- some radishes here, some carrots there, herbs all over the place. Still, when I put that little seed in the ground, I want it to have enough space to thrive, and to give me all it's capable of producing.

The good news is that the summer is long-- at least from where I am standing today. Things can be added and "tucked" in here and there. A few squash plants put on one side of a bed can snake over and go where they want out into the field! And next year, I can expand the whole operation again!

Soil That Can Be Worked

The key gardening phrase on some seed packets is "as soon as the soil can be worked." That is when you can plant your first lettuce, peas, carrots, spinach and radishes. I have a large stack of seeds I can plant then. And so I've been going out to check the beds, turning over the soil a few inches at a time as it thaws. Until I can dig my shovel down to the bottom, I won't plant. I also need to be able to turn under and then leave for a week the chicken manure I've incorporated into the top layer. It was already fairly broken down, so shouldn't scorch the plants, but I want to make sure.

The thaw has come very quickly. The snow melted faster than I thought possible, and today was the first day to break 60 degrees. Still, it feels very late. Easter is as late as it seems it possibly can be, not until April 23. I'll put in the onions and potatoes on their liturgical schedule, Good Friday.The college has plans to return the koi to their summer fountain home on April 14, which was unthinkable even on April 1. But it seems the good thing about a late spring may be less of a chance of relapse.

Mating season is in full force, and one good thing about the late spring is the ability to see all the creatures. The male sand hill crane had a little competition, but he seems to have chased him off. Each evening, six to eight deer have been coming out and grazing on the edge of the prairie. One evening a lone turkey came stumbling out of the woods to join all of them-- seven deer, the three cranes, and one turkey. The muskrat is back on the pond, and the ducks are going at it loudly as well.

We've also spotted a coyote, which we hear but never see, twice on the property. One evening he skirted just before dusk along the edge of the large pond before turning and bounding into the woods. The other time he was along the stubble cornfield our neighbor maintains east of our property.

I have a few pans of small sprouts, that I hope will become real plants in the six weeks between now and when I can transplant at the end of May. By then I'll be ready for the next group of seeds, those with packets that read: "when the danger of frost is past."

Tracks

It is difficult to get up during a blizzard at the end of March and go to work. This is true. My workplace, where most of the people (nuns) live right where they work, does not have snow days. So on Wednesday morning, Steve drove me the mile to work in the 4WD Subaru, and it was fine.

We all feel quite put upon, and the people in Chicago and Pennsylvania who woke up to an inch of slushy snow have nothing on us. We got about seven inches, and with the temperatures staying below freezing (well below at night, in the single digits), it's not going to suddenly disappear. The broadcasters, who were in full "flood watch" mode, are still putting out reports, but the crests are delayed now, and in a way, this might slow down the flooding or make it less severe--or more, depending on who you listen to.

One thing I like about a late snow like this is that the birds have returned. I feel for them, but figure they must have enough resources to get through a slight setback like this. I mean, spring IS coming. It's a geological certainty. 

In the meantime, we get to listen to the birds in this still-white, silent world. We can see the sand hill cranes, which returned last week, in stark contrast to the frozen wetlands. And in the morning when I look out the window, I see all the tracks of little creatures making their way down our prairie paths.

There will be no more cross-country skiing for us, so the birds and small animals and deer get the landscape, and they seem to follow the trails we made. It gets the imagination working.

Here is a poem I wrote about 5 years ago, when my apartment looked out on a small lake. It is about cross-country skiing, and it's true that when I'm skiing I still am always looking for signs of animals or hidden animals.  It was written earlier in winter, but the tracks made me think of it today.

Why I Cross-Country Ski

I am out here for the two deer

who hide behind the smallest scrap of yellow:

the mother stands and watches me,

from this distance so like a dog
until she prances, and even then--
until her child bounds toward her,
hooves to haunches with his quick heart.

Last week on an inch of powder
I saw their sweet tracks circling
objects poking through the lake,
their tiny regular footfalls meandering.

I know somewhere they lie down

and the snow hollows a bed beneath them.

I think they are not bothered by cold.

It may be they like this season best of all.

Seed Planting

Today is the day to start my seeds. It is 10 degrees and the wind is howling, but spring is predicted to begin with temps in the 50s by mid-week. I imagine in the time before climatologists, people just had to go by the Almanac or habit, ignoring the weather outside and believing spring would come soon.

I've never had much luck starting tomatoes inside, but this year my friend Connie is starting my tomatoes and I'm starting her peppers. I've been reading my seed packets carefully to see what can be planted "as soon as the soil can be worked." I did buy some plastic tarp tunnels to use for early warming of seedlings when I put them outdoors, mostly hoping to protect some from the winds we get out here.

Yesterday, Steve and I took his daughter to the airport for her spring break and then we went to IKEA for a light fixture for the kitchen (which is almost, nearly, not-quite completed) and dinner at the French Meadow Bakery and Cafe. I had black barley risotto with roasted winter vegetables that was wonderful-- exactly the kind of food I want to make from my harvest. We drove back first through rain, then driving snow. We both agreed it was the absolute ugliest time of year-- what snow remained was black with soot and mud, and all that was exposed was dead, dirt patches. You don't notice the fields and woods and prairie and lake; you just feel "highway." Going at 50 miles per hour, you realize how far from even the outer edge of the Twin Cities we are.

It's been a long time since my last entry, and I'm conscious of that. Everything this time of year feels worn and old and we're all just waiting for spring. We're still watching movies at night, but it feels like that's all we do, and so not worth commentary. We don't have much to say to each other, and it feels like the world is just cold and waiting for something.

Ash Wednesday, very late this year, on March 9, was one sign of promise. We now enter The Church's springtime. And as we enter, it's a season of hard boiled eggs and tuna melts, of austerity and focus on God. Next weekend I'm taking an introductory workshop in Centering Prayer, something that has long interested me. I've always enjoyed contemplative prayer, and would like to develop this practice, possibly attending weekend retreats in the future.

Entering spring, at least this far north, is a matter of small acts: putting seeds in little plastic cups with some water and peat, and looking forward.