Farmwife at Midlife -

What's not to love about Downton Abbey?

2012-02-13T03:06:00.000-05:00

There is much to love about Downton Abbey. Airing here on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Classics" and now ending its second season, the series is filmed in an historic English estate, there are marvelous clothes and real settings, and the characters are feisty and largely likeable, with fast-paced plots just sudsy enough to keep our interest. It is written by Julian Fellowes, who also wrote the equally frothy motion picture Gosford Park (and whom you may remember as the rascal Killwillie in the Scottish-based Monarch of the Glen, a more modern take on the aristocratic and sporting life that remains in Great Britain). The series is a glimpse into the large scale country house era that once existed on both sides of the Atlantic and, seemingly, something of which we can not get enough. Of course, there are pantries and larders and silver vaults, too.

Carson, the loyal butler of Downton Abbey, awaits his supper below stairs.

As in Gosford Park, Fellowes has created a world where the servant and sire know their position and everything runs within well-oiled systems, precise order, and an awareness of one's place. World War I was a game-changer for all of that, even for our American "aristocracy." What I like about Fellowes' approach is that he pays equal attention to the domestic staff, which outnumbered the family members several times over, as he does the lives of those who are on the receiving end of such loyal service. In the past several decades, the museum world in Britain and the United States has begun to take notice of this importance. No house museum tour is worth its admission without seeing a glimpse into the "below stairs" life. Kitchens, sculleries, pantries, cellars, laundries, and servant bedrooms are now regular parts of most house museum experiences with the names, faces and histories of the domestic staff of a household often researched in detail. [Of course, a love of these spaces fueled my interest in writing, The Pantry-Its History and Modern Uses.]

Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio is an architectural nod to English manors and an
example of the country house expression in the United States in the early 20th century.

I have always been an Anglophile. This is motivated by architectural and historical interest as much as great literature, a rainy and lush climate (but notice how it never seems to rain at Downton Abbey?), stodgy nursery food and a good cup of tea (OK, and for a brief few pubescent years I read a lot of Regency romances). My great-grandparents, of German and English heritage, were über Anglophiles. In 1912 they set out with their architect and decorator on buying trips to Great Britain to find suitable furnishings–even buying old bits of manors and castles that were for sale–for the Tudor Revival estate they were creating back in Akron, Ohio. Enamored as they were with their British travels (Compton Wynyates and Haddon Hall were especially inspiring), they decided to stay a few extra weeks and went ahead and cancelled their homeward trip on the Titanic in April 1912. Stan Hywet Hall likely owes it ultimate completion to that fateful decision. That it even exists today is because it was signed over in 1957 by the six Seiberling children to a non-profit museum foundation and left as originally furnished and decorated–complete with paintings, china, silver, full cupboards, closets and drawers.

Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, c. 1925.

The house, which was completed in 1915, had all of the grandiose trappings of its era and yet always maintained a cozier sense of home and family. There were balls and galas, events in the Music Room, garden parties and large family dinners (F.A. Seiberling, my great-grandfather, was one of nine children who lived in the Akron area and he liked to gather the clan together often). Christmas was a beloved time and my father's childhood Christmases at the manor were a source of many happy memories. On certain occasions, the manor and its grounds were also opened to the public or to employees of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. The English would have scoffed, I'm sure, but the attention to detail in the house is transporting and the intended effect has succeeded in the appearance of an estate that has evolved over centuries. Charles Schneider, a Cleveland architect, won the commission because his design was warm and appealing, not at all like the marbled halls of many of the Gilded Age homes in Newport and New York that the Seiberling family found wanting.

Lord and Lady Grantham–

to the manor born in Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey incorporates aspects of the American Gilded Age in the newer wealth of Cora, Lady Grantham's heritage paired with the aristocratic, but slowly impoverished, Edwardian English estate of her husband Lord Grantham. Despite his wife's money, and their three daughters, the estate and its contents must pass by law to the next male heir, ideally with sufficient funds for its maintenance to keep it within direct lineage–an example of the male heir primogeniture holdover of feudal law. Marriages of this kind were not uncommon during this time when wealthy women from American industrial families were paired with English noblemen to infuse dwindling estates with cash and uphold their preservation. Thus, a tentative "marriage of convenience" was forged between pockets of the American nouveau riche and a few bastions of fading English aristocracy.

The F.A. Seiberling family around 1915, after Stan Hywet was completed. My grandfather, James Penfield, is at the upper left, alongside his sister-in-law Henrietta Buckler Seiberling (who would later be instrumental in the creation of Alcoholic's Anonymous), brothers Fred and Willard, and in front (from left), sister Virginia Seiberling Handy, parents F.A. Seiberling and Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, flanking youngest sibling, Franklin, Jr., and sister Irene Seiberling Harrison.

One of the many reasons I continue to enjoy Stan Hywet today is because it is the only repository of family memory that I have left in Akron: we long ago left the small house across town where I grew up and my grandparents' home, just up the road from Stan Hywet, was sold in 1983. Where there were once several dozen staff, by the end of World War II there were only a few servants (and the once well-manicured grounds more or less went wild). Meanwhile, my father's household in a comfortable 1923 Spanish Mission style house nearby had two live-in staff and several hired as needed. He and my mother spent their married years in a much smaller suburban Colonial, across town, with no maids. By the 1960s, the world that my family had known no longer existed and paralleled the demise of the midwestern Rust Belt's industrial heyday. While I can't deny that I am grateful for a glimpse into this other world––or that I take pride in my heritage on both sides of my family––at the same time I am blessed to have had a grounded upbringing from each of my parents that focused on values, kindness and the merits of a good education: part middle class suburban offerings and part New Hampshire farm.

F.A. Seiberling in front of Stan Hywet in 1942.

It's fun to speculate "what if?" What if the family had returned on the Titanic? Would Stan Hywet still have been built? What if there hadn't been a hostile takeover of Goodyear Tire & Rubber in 1921? What if the family had still been involved with Goodyear and never founded Seiberling Tire & Rubber (when F.A. lost Goodyear he turned around after a few months and started another tire company, which stayed in the family until a corporate raid in 1960)? What if the family still owned Stan Hywet? Would there have been a pattern of primogeniture as there was in Great Britain or would my grandfather, the second of two sons, who ran Seiberling Tire after his father passed the baton, been the heir apparent to the home? The speculation is fun but the reality is that, in deeding the entire estate and its contents in 1957, the six siblings guaranteed that the property and grounds would never be divided, sold or destroyed. Today it continues to live up to its noblesse oblige Latin motto carved over the door: "Non Nobis Solum" (Not for us alone) with a well-preserved house, collections and accurately restored landscapes and gardens. [Meanwhile, Highclere Castle, the very English and historic setting of Downton Abbey, remains privately owned through direct lineage of the Carnarvon family since 1679, and is also open to the public.]

So as my husband and I watch Downton Abbey from our humble doublewide on our Kentucky farm, it seems a rather strange way of glimpsing a reassuring sense of order and family life in a changing world. While the fictional characters in the household of Downton Abbey mourn the way it was before World War I, nearly one hundred years later we look back at a past we did, or did not, know with the same, odd kind of longing. No matter what era we're in, it's usually about one's sense of place in the world, family hierarchy and relations, a well-appointed house (or hopes and plans of one), great dinner parties, and the intricacies of romance and relationships. Strong and imperious no-nonsense matriarchs with great one-liners go a long way, too, even if snark was probably not very fashionable in those days. I want to be like the Dowager Countess when I grow up! And, while we're being silly (sort of): a devoted butler would be fabulous.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

"The plums that were in the icebox..."

2012-02-10T13:08:00.000-05:00

Stanley plums hang from a tree in Casey County in August.

This is why I preserve the fruits of summer: so I can enjoy them on a dreary day in February, when the only berries or fruits at the grocery store are Chilean, or bananas or citrus fruit that got boring back in December.

Canning and freezing is a way of continuing to eat local produce year round. There is nothing better than opening a jar of peaches, plums or pears from your pantry after they've sat a bit in the refrigerator (or, as my husband and I grew up with,"icebox"–a term leftover from our parents and grandparents).

They are luscious, sweet, summery and worth every sweaty hour I took in the summer to put them up.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were so delicious
so sweet
and so cold

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Doldrums

2012-02-01T20:14:00.001-05:00

Watching Walton Goggins helps my doldrums! As the complex white supremacist felon-turned-
preacher-turned-backwoods-Robin Hood-Harlin County-pot lord, "Boyd Crowder," Coggins has shaped
as fascinating a character as they come, in FX's Emmy-winning Justified (now in its third season).

The other day I was helping one of our sons in his homework review, as I often do as the "designated homework go-to person" (which now, despite eighteen years of formal education–not including two years of preschool–I find is quite limiting in certain subjects, especially math, science and parts of world geography).

The word "doldrums" came up, not as a vocabulary word but as a geographical term. It is defined as follows: "an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds." [Mmm, sounds more like perimenopause to me!]

I have only known it in terms of emotional weather: the blahs, blues, feeling down or mildly depressed. The Oxford American Dictionary is more specific: depression, melancholy, gloom, gloominess, downheartedness, dejection, despondency, low spirits, despair; inertia, apathy, listlessness, blahs, blue funk, blues. It further describes the origin of the word as a "dull, sluggish person" (late 18th cent.): "perhaps from dull, on the pattern of tantrums."

A dull, sluggish person having a dull tantrum: YES!

A Minton tile by William Wise from his lovely "Country Pursuits" series.
I've been collecting these for about ten years but don't have this one yet.

It's not all bad, really, but the weather has been something else this "winter." Everyone I know who lives on farmland here in Kentucky (or further yonder on farms and other places in Facebook land) would very much like a real winter. Because this has been a perpetual fall: a long, rainy mud season, often dreary (and always muddy). That means access to feed cattle or check on newborn calves in pastures can be troublesome at worst and messy at best. The one nice thing is that my Speckled Sussex chicks that I got in October are doing well and their water never freezes–and we've been able to use our outdoor water, too. My nine, almost three-year old, hens even started laying again on the Winter Solstice and have been providing us with about three eggs each day.

If I felt like it, I could probably start getting our garden beds ready. But I don't feel like it! I want WINTER, dash it, and a nice excuse to be inside doing indoor things and some writing projects without guilt. We had a three-day cold stretch a few weeks ago, when the temperature stayed well below 30 degrees for three days and nights. It was the best I've felt (no cough!) since late November, when it was also warm and wet. I'm blaming mold: everything here has been moldering for months. The leaves in the forest, the grass in the fields, the creek beds. I think even our house is starting to grow stuff on it.

Spring in Kentucky is lovely, long and prolonged, and perhaps my favorite season here. But if the daffodils are already blooming in some people's yards (and they are!), to what do we have to look forward in a few more months? What will this mean for berries and fruit trees or the entire spring flora? Will we have redbud blooming in another few weeks? Strawberries in mid-April? I realize that our growing season is influenced as much by the pull of the sun, as it climbs higher in the sky, as we are (my moods, certainly). So who knows what we can expect in the next few months?

Yes, I could be outside walking, on the roads, at least, as long as our fields are so muddy. I could be doing fall-cleanup. But so many of our days have been rainy and drizzly or just not consistently warm enough to be outside without lots of layers. It's teasing and fickle, hard to plan around. If there's one thing I've learned is that I just want to enjoy the season in its season and that I welcome each of them for what they are. And I like winter for nestling in and working on things that often compete with summer months when we are outside much more (or need to be).

Back in New England they are having a warm winter, too, and it's bad for the ski industry and the snow plowers who rely upon the white stuff to generate the green stuff. But what else can you expect when you have two feet of snow on Halloween?

Call it Global Warming or what you will: I'm just calling it annoying. "Call me Ishmael," as I know that I have "November in my soul." I just don't want a winter, or spring, of Novembers.

Shall we just call this little weather gaffe "Sprinter" or "Wing"? The birds are even coming back early, too, and some, perhaps, have never left.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

My Farmer, Outstanding in His Field (and out sitting, too)

2012-01-23T13:59:00.003-05:00

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

PS And I hope some of the readers who have returned here after reading my "Paula Deen" post (which got about 500 hits in five days) have come back for more. Usually it's more about farm life and frolic and recipes around here than it is about essays on celebrity. So, welcome!

Paula Deen is not the problem !

2012-01-17T15:06:00.000-05:00

Paula represents all that is homey, buttery and sweet
in Southern cuisine. She is a true confection and even
preaches moderation. My one criticism is that she is often
too reliant upon cake mixes and canned soup in her recipes.

Food snobbery and elitism are alive and well in America. So Paula Deen has Type-2 diabetes. That's unfortunate, and curable, and she'll likely be making some lifestyle changes to try to reverse this: something from which everyone in her situation might also learn. Did she handle it well by announcing it with a commercial endorsement for a diabetes medication rather than coming out a few years ago when she was first diagnosed? Probably not and as a person in the food world that would have only helped her situation. (However no one is bashing Sally Field for needing and endorsing Boniva®) But to use this as fodder for more Paula bashing? Or the inevitable "See, we told you so-s!" or that Southern food is fat-laden, disease-creating poor man's slop? None of it is either accurate or fair.

This is like killing the messenger. Food has become a spectator sport in the United States and Food Network (and everything Martha Stewart) has helped fuel why we all love to watch food shows or read about food or photograph and blog about food. No wonder we are a nation of extremes in eating and food obsessives: denial, binge-eating, obesity and anorexia (or fitness anorexics) abound, there is gluten and lactose intolerance and diabetes is rampant. It's not because of the food but because of what's in the food (or that has been taken from the food). Since the middle of the last century, we've stripped our food down and filled or modified it with preservatives and chemicals and now we're reaping the consequences. Choice is also involved, too, but at the basis of this issue is our gradual departure from, and slow return to, whole and real food in the American diet. As a culture we also love to hate fat people: we applaud when someone loses the weight and then, just as easily, we turn on them for embracing their new bodies and being "all that." Or, just forever fat.

I come from a hale and hearty clan of German and Victorian era English-Americans from industrial Ohio on one side and mainline WASPs, via Boston and New York, on the other. Genetically, and in other ways, I am very much my father's daughter: clinically obese, stubby little elfin hands and feet, rather short and short-waisted. Could I be healthier? Yes. I'm sure I could fight my genetics kicking and screaming for hours each day by running or lifting weights. But in my life so far I've mostly chosen not to (and it's no surprise that I was never more fit before I owned a car and lived in Boston in fifth-floor walkups and still ate whatever I wanted, in moderation). I've never been athletic and I've always found comfort in food and in cooking or preparing it for my family and yes, even eating it. Unapologetically. I'm working on the "move more" part but I also realize, especially when looking at family photos, that I yam what I yam.

My father died in his mid-60s of complications that were surely triggered from decades of untreated sleep apnea. Most of my other relatives on his side lived into their 80s, 90s and beyond. Some died of cancer, from smoking, or from other reasons, but none related to their heftier genetic predispositions. Their hearts were strong! My father never had diabetes, despite his size, or high cholesterol or blood sugar or major heart trouble. In fact, I never heard of diabetes in my family. I am exactly the same as I approach fifty.

Meanwhile, my mother's side of the family is small and wiry. My maternal grandfather died at 63: he and my grandmother moved from suburban New York in post-war 1946 to live on a New England farm, raise their children and their own vegetables and farm-raised food. He was lean and fit, as were his six offspring. But he had a lifelong heart and cholesterol problem (I used to enable him when I learned to make chocolate chip cookies: he'd drive me uptown for the supplies on the down low!). My mother has inherited this, too, and had a massive heart attack in her late-50s. Now through exercise, diet and medication she is monitoring this disease. And yet in my family I've always been pointed towards as what you don't want to be: the poster child of the fat girl. Even as a teenager I was told, "Cathy, if you only lost 15-20 pounds..." Then what? If only I only had fifteen pounds to lose now!

Here in Kentucky we've befriended many in our local Old Order Mennonite community who still render their own lard, drink whole milk and make butter regularly from their own farms, make their own baked goods, and eat more than we do most of the time (large breakfasts and even larger noon dinners). They bake a lot of "treats" and don't eat fast food (perhaps an occasional special treat while shopping). They also grow most of their own produce and meat. So it is no surprise to me that they don't have a lot of obesity, or cancer or diabetes in their community. American farm families have traditionally been healthier when they eat their own food and often work it off, too, during the course of a day. Our big problem today in terms of health is inactivity and poor food choices. Not fat. It's just important to remember that not everyone gets fat, or diabetes, because they sit around all day, feasting on junk food, Coke and greasy main dishes (I am testament to that: we eat real food in our house and raise our own meat, eggs and some produce–or buy it locally). And we all know people who are thin and eat nothing but awful food.

Virginia Willis, an Atlanta-based chef and food writer, said it so beautifully in today's article on the subject in The New York Times:

"No one vilifies Michelin chefs for putting sticks of butter in their food," Ms. Willis said. "But when a Southern woman does it, that's tacky." (however) "Paula's food often reflects modern cooking and convenience foods more than Southern tradition...she feels like she cooks for 'real people' and for better or worse, that is how many people in this country chose to eat."

So the point of all of this is that we should not be quick to judge people based on their size or their diets or where they hail from in food world. There are plenty of healthy looking people out there who probably have all sorts of diseases based on their genetics and lifestyle choices (or addictions from alcoholism or smoking). I doubt Paula Deen eats fried chicken and three-layer frosted cakes 24/7 and lately, it would seem, that Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman blogger who now has her own Food Network show, is putting Paula to shame with all of her fatty, over-buttered recipes. (Do you think she really cooks for all of those ranch hands every day without additional staff?) Where is the outcry there? And no one is saying that Ina Garten should cut back on the rich foods in her kitchen or that Giada should maybe eat more. (And neither should they: Ina is a Food Goddess in my estimation and, like Paula, another self-made cook who started in the trenches of restaurants and catering.)

Food Network has become a circus and has only fed our food snobbery and elitist mindsets about the food foibles of American cuisine. If you want to read about the lusciousness of real food, without the guilt, anything by M.F.K Fisher, Julia Child, or Laurie Colwin, Alice Waters or Elizabeth David will fit the bill. They embraced, or still embrace, real food. Whole food. Good food–and usually without benefit of a sexy photo. [Further back there are the delightful Mrs. Appleyard books, the Blueberry Hill cookbooks by Elsie Masterston, and, of course, my particular favorites: those few books by Mary Mason Campbell, whom I hail in my book, The Pantry. And then there is the incomparable Della Lutes who wrote the best-selling classics The Country Kitchen, Home Grown and other books and domestic-related articles during, and before, the Great Depression.]

There's room for everyone in food world and I hope that this isn't just another excuse to beat on Southern cuisine from both coasts. Paula Deen has worked hard for her fame and fortune, starting from her own kitchen as an agoraphobic single mother peddling sandwiches. Let's cut her some slack and support her quest for better health as we all try to make our own lifestyle tweaks (or not). And if she has some fried chicken on occasion, so be it. Butter and lard and sugar are not the problem with the American diet: chemicals and preservatives and high fructose corn syrup have created the food crisis we are having now. And fast food super-sizing, no doubt. It's always about moderation in all things.

But well-intentioned home cooks who might happen to become food celebrities, who are just keeping it real in their kitchens and sharing the love, even if it involves a bit of fat and sugar on occasion? They will never be the problem with the American diet.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Housekeeping

2012-01-15T16:19:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year! 2012 is upon us and I'm doing some major housekeeping: of our home spaces, my office, and my blog and web presence. I have a new personal author site that I will now be able to keep routinely updated at CatherinePond.com. In the next few months I will also be uploading and linking direct PDF links to published magazine articles and online articles. You can now browse pantry-related things on a new tabs feature on my In the Pantry blog.

In honor of this organizational frenzy (which includes my actual pantries) and a new self-imposed frugality (I haven't spent a penny on anything since before New Year's, including groceries), I am happy to announce that copies of my book, The Pantry, are now available for only $10, plus shipping! This is not a book you'd want on an e-reader and, at this price, it's worth having it on your coffee table. They make a great gift or inspiration for your own home.

Why am I doing this, you ask? Several years ago my publisher was going to remainder the books, originally sold at $16.95 (and a bargain at that price). I knew there was still a market for The Pantry, based on people who follow my blog and who often ask me pantry-related questions. And, it remains the only book exclusively on pantries and their history and design in the American home. So I bought all copies back from the publisher that hadn't sold, save for a few they held back for Amazon (about 100 and I believe they are all gone now), and have been selling them ever since.

It's hard to write and market your own work but there it is. I just want to share something with you of which I am proud and that I also believe in: a pantry, of some kind, in every home. And to thank you for your loyal readership over the years: at my blogs and elsewhere.

Now available for only $10.00 (plus $4.95 shipping and handling)

exclusively from the author (sent media mail with delivery confirmation).

Click "Order THE PANTRY" for more information, or order directly below.

Cute Animal Files: Edgar Time!

2012-01-14T14:38:00.000-05:00

We know that Edgar is a cow and that our purpose here is to raise grass-fed calves and beef cattle. As Edgar was abandoned by his mother, we are left to raise him. Right now he resides in a straw-strewn makeshift manger in our cattle-sorting building. He is fed twice a day and often has the doors open for sunlight, or to roam around outside (he just follows whomever he is with) in a larger paddock. When he is a bit older he will be let in with the other calves. Yet he will always be more comfortable with humans.

As he will remain a bull, we will never be able to trust him entirely when he is fully grown. We will keep him here on the farm but we can't do this with every orphan. It's a reality I'm learning to accept. We raise meat, not pets. I only name the ones who stay with us.

But Edgar is now clearly a pet. And cute. And somebody's baby. That's the humanized element to raising animals that we don't eat. The reverse is that we eat some mammals and others we domesticate. It seems odd when you really think about it. For many years buying meat in the grocery store, which we still do on occasion, just made it a more abstract reality. When meat is portioned and pieced and slick-wrapped you don't necessarily think about where it comes from.

This is changing in our food world. People are thinking. They are asking important questions, wanting to know how an animal or vegetable was raised or where and with what means? If they choose not to eat animal products, that's fine, too. But for those who do there are solutions to factory farming. There are sustainable ways to raise or grow our food.

There are studies out now that show how beneficial grass-fed beef is compared to those raised on grain on a factory-farm. It doesn't necessarily have to be organic, either (very few farms are able to be 100% organic but many are close without being official: we are trying to get years of chemicals out of our pastures). Grass-fed beef has lower cholesterol, lower fat, better vitamins and minerals. And the cows were likely happier–although we're not exactly in a position to ask them or even determine this human emotion as applied to bovines.

That is perhaps the main reason we are now living on a farm: we want this sustainability in our own lives and for our children and to live from the land without depleting it.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Hearty Seafood Chowder

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

Being from New England, I have learned the fine, but easy art, of making chowder. Recently I wrote a guest blog for a fellow Kentucky Food Blogger, Mindy Wilson, while she is tripping around Europe, tasting Viennese pastries and all manner of wonderful foods, with her professor husband on a college class excursion. I had suggested corn chowder, knowing that January can often be perfect for such meals (well, at around 55 degrees until the past few days, it's actually been quite balmy). Click here for that recipe and blog post at The World in My Kitchen. [And yes, I really did spill chowder on the Mayor of Lincoln, England in my first, and last, catering attempt!]

It is versatile and the basic chowder can translate into corn, seafood, fish or clam. What was fun was writing down the recipe, at last, for Mindy's blog, and then realizing I could, with a few minor tweaks, make it into other chowders. While I made the corn chowder for The World in My Kitchen before Christmas, the other day I finally made our Christmas Eve Seafood Chowder (for New Year's instead). And, I was pleasantly surprised that about $15 worth of frozen seafood (cod, shrimp and scallops) at Walmart was practically indiscernible from using fresh (which would have been far more expensive here in Kentucky: although Lexington Seafood is the place to go for a fresh splurge, which we do about once a year).

This is a hearty milk-based soup with New England origins–perfect on a cold winter's day with a loaf of crusty bread (or better yet, oyster crackers). You can also use this recipe, with minor changes, to make any number of *chowders [see below]. In about an hour, from start until serving, you will have a big vat of chowder to feed many appetites––and, if you are lucky, you'll even have leftovers for the next day. Chowder is even better once the flavors have had a chance to meld.

The roux, as it is thickening, before transferring to a larger kettle.

Hearty Seafood Chowder

12 oz. (3/4 pound) diced bacon (we prefer using smoked bacon and usually our own)
1 heaping Tbsp. minced garlic
1 large sweet onion, chopped (you can add a bit of red onion, if desired)
1 cup celery, chopped (include some leaves)
1 cup diced red bell pepper (OPTIONAL: I did not add this because my husband does not care for red peppers)
1/3 cup chopped parsley
4 large baking-sized potatoes, peeled and diced
1 quart fish or lobster stock (if not, chicken stock will do)
1 Tbsp. Kosher salt
lots of fresh ground pepper
liberal dashes of sweet Hungarian paprika
3/4 cup flour, or more, depending on how thick you'd like it
6-8 cups whole milk (you could use other kinds of milk but whole works best)
2-3 pounds assorted fresh (or uncooked and previously frozen) seafood in any combination: scallops, shrimp, tilapia, cod, clams, lobster, etc.
1 cup heavy cream (or half-and-half, if you must)

On medium high heat in a Dutch oven, large skillet or heavy-duty stock pot, cook bacon, with garlic, until almost done and starting to crisp up a bit. Stir frequently and do not drain!
Add onions, celery, parsley (and red bell pepper, if desired) and cook until translucent.
Add salt and pepper. Stir.
Add diced potatoes. Stir for several minutes.
Add the flour (3/4 cup if you want a slightly thicker chowder) and stir well.
Add 1 quart chicken stock and stir until thickened and bubbly.
Add paprika (about one large teaspoon).
Set to low, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are done, but not too soft (about 15 minutes).
Transfer your chowder "roux" to a large 2-gallon kettle.
Heat on low, with 6-8 cups whole milk until just before boiling (do not boil!). Stir well as mixture will start to thicken somewhat from the roux.
Add the seafood, chopped into bite-sized morsels (frozen is fine and you don't have to thaw it unless shelling the shrimp: the cod or tilapia will likely flake on their own).
Cook on low, stirring frequently, until nicely heated.
Shortly before serving, add heavy cream and stir in.
Serve with homemade croutons, a good crusty bread or old-fashioned oyster crackers.

I like to turn off the kettle when the chowder is done, cover it, and take it off the burner. This will keep it warm until supper but will assure that the soup doesn't boil. You can also freeze this. It makes almost two gallons, too, so perfect for a crowd or for a stretch of easy meals.

And remember, you can take the girl out of New England, but you can't take New England out of the girl!

NOTES:

*The wonderful beauty of this chowder is, with a few minor changes, you can readily make it into a Corn Chowder, New England Clam Chowder, or Fish Chowder (or any number of things: mushroom, hearty vegetable, etc.) Here's how:

For CORN, use 1 quart chicken stock and eight cups canned, frozen or fresh corn (or a combination) in place of seafood;
For CLAM, use 1 quart clam broth and 1-2 quarts fresh shucked clams (or canned);
For FISH, use 1 quart fish stock and 2 pounds chopped up fresh (or frozen) fish (Cod works best as it holds up well in the soup).
For OYSTER, use 1 quart fish stock (which can include the oyster "liquor") and 1 quart of fresh, frozen or canned oysters. Oyster Stew uses whole oysters without the potatoes and bacon etc. and Oyster Bisque is when the oysters have been cooked in their own broth, and milk, with a bit of seasoning, and then put through a blender: we always had this for the soup course at Christmas Eve at my grandparents' in Akron. Wonderful food memories there!

[You can also use chicken stock instead of fish stock, which can be harder to find and more expensive.]

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Connected

2012-01-11T14:35:00.000-05:00

Image of a woman writing at her desk from www.louisamayalcott.org

I have been going through some cathartic times in the past few months. Call them midlife gurglings, spoutings, truths or triumphs. Call them growing pains or upheavals. Call them the grumblings of a cranky, perimenopausal middle aged woman who, like Howard Beale in the movie Network, is "mad as hell and isn't going to take it any more!" A few weeks ago this was originally going to be a blog about giving up blogging (or at least shelving it for a while). Lately I've been questioning why I blog. You see, my first blog, In the Pantry, was started after I got my first book deal–a bit backwards, yes? And I haven't really written much, aside from many blog posts or the occasional paid article, since the publication of The Pantry in 2007. Throw in a major move and other stuff, and, well, here I am: on a ridge in Kentucky. Writing, farming, adjusting.

My early writing mentor and friend, children's author

Elizabeth Yates McGreal at her home in New Hampshire.

The book, and the blogs, have brought me many new friends and acquaintances (and all but one have been wonderful and true). I have always been real with my readers but I'm tiring of the false pretense put forward by so many bloggers: I'll call it PWS (Pioneer Woman Syndrome). Real bloggers don't do it all, and can't possibly. We blogging women––farm bloggers, Mommy bloggers, Christian bloggers, homeschool bloggers, style bloggers, book bloggers, writing bloggers, food bloggers, craft bloggers––are putting our wares on the table and hoping you'll notice. I believe that true authenticity shines through the best blogs and sometimes it is hidden by glimmers that one wants us to see. But I was getting weary of the show circuit and just wanted to go back to my desk and my chickens (and my family, of course, when they are home), without its more immediate connections to the world. To write and communicate the old-fashioned way.

A Lady Writing a Letter, Jan Vermeer Van Delft, 1665-66,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

I've learned that true friendships must be cultivated in real time–not on the Internet or on Facebook, but with letters, cards, phone calls and actual visits. Social media is just a support system to real friendship while, in the worst of times, it can encourage snarky, mean, and childish behaviors (yes, I've been there). Perhaps the greatest irony of our times is that the more we connect "on line," the less connected we are to each other in real time, or the less inclination we might have to doing so. I'm more isolated here in Kentucky, by geography and circumstance (farmwife on the farm on our own lane with neighbors close enough but not within eye or ear shot…and we like it this way!), but I can't let that be an excuse for my reliance upon internet behaviors and connections: for good and for bad. I used to be a regular and passionate letter writer–it's time to return to that, at least with little notes and nibbles. After all, the U.S. Postal Service needs us! What a retro, patriotic act: to just write a letter or send a card to an old friend or someone whom has meant so much to you!

Jane Austen at her desk, early 1800s.

Blogging has been wonderfully fun. On my two personal blogs it has been like a virtual scrapbook of my life for the past (almost) seven years–or at least, aspects of it: the things that I wanted to show or to share, usually the icing. While glimpses, they have been real: my stuff, my food, my homes, my family, my world. Real 100% Catherine Grade A Authenticity. No bullshit. No pretense.

At the same time, there is just too much noise from the Internet. It's a magnet for me. I don't need to run to it when I want to "Google" more useless information to further clutter my mind. I don't need to post something fun, snarky, and sometimes negative, on someone's Facebook wall (even if they upset me) or on my own. I don't even need to be blogging! [And Lord knows I don't need more recipes...or to be spending any money right now, "free shipping" or not!]

Print by Charles Dana Gibson, early 20th Century

I'm not surprised that the Internet now has its own addiction discussion in the psychological field or that Facebook is having its own kind of quiet backlash. I grapple with this daily, or should I say have. Is there a 12-Step Program yet for recovering social media addicts? This about says it all: "The Photographs of Your Junk (will be publicized!)". We all want validation but do we need it from the entire world? All of the blogs, tweets and Facebook posts out there are really about wanting to be heard. "I'm here!" It's kind of like that Dr. Seuss story, Horton Hears a Who! ["even though you can't see or hear them at all, a person's a person, no matter how small."] Meanwhile, I blog: therefore I am should really be I live and sometimes I blog about it.

Writer Susan Sontag by Annie Leibovitz

The world that you see on my blogs, and arguably most other lifestyle blogs, is neat and tidy: it is my own free-content lifestyle magazine, so naturally I usually put my best face forward. What I photograph is real, but like any magazine shoot of someone's home it is styled and you don't necessarily see what's hidden in the dusty corners of the room. [I've been on many shoots as a writer and sometimes as a stylist: they can take a day or days to make something camera ready--just remember that! It's not worth comparing yourself, or your home, to what you see in a magazine because it is not the day-to-day reality.] And let's be brutally honest: everyone who blogs regularly knows how time consuming it is. There are the photos and the formatting, the writing, the information gathering, the fact-checking, the good design (which, to me, is just as important in blog land as what is said). Even though I just usually write off the cuff, as it is, it still takes time and then time again to format the blog and tweak it (I am, as ever, a perfectionist when I want to do something right). And this is time away from doing all of the great stuff that we tell you about! Time away from our houses, our families, our gardens, our quiet time, our reading time, our hobbies. And I don't even Tweet! Or have a cell phone! (I hardly even use the phone, however, except when necessary. Perhaps this, too, will change.)

Painting by Frans Van Mieris, the Elder, 1680
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

So because I seem to have my priorities mixed up, I'm going back to basics. My farmer husband recently attempted, and gave up, on learning about computers at our local library (and note, I have not volunteered to teach him, either: that would be like teaching your own child to drive a car). He is as aware, as I am, that the Internet has been on for most of our nearly sixteen year marriage. It is the other "man" in my life. I told him that his timing was perfect, that he doesn't need to give up his card-carrying Luddite status just yet. Meanwhile, our 14 year old son will still not be getting a Facebook account, despite his pleadings–and his mother will try to set the example by being on it less–probably until he is 18. Yet we will continue to have computers as word processors and archival repositories (a major photo project, any one?) in our home.

But really, after almost seven years, I was tired of feeling I have to be "on" or "on-line"––what, really, is the urgency? A few months ago I was close to sending in the paperwork to be a part of the "BlogHer" network, which would have involved allowing advertising (and possible revenues, and certainly more blog hits), but in December, when I decided to take the month off from blogging, more or less, I changed my mind. Why do I care if more, or less, people even read my blog? As wonderful as these friendships are, and having readers like you who come here, I shouldn't feel I have to be here. This isn't a job: it's a hobby. If people make revenue from their blogging, I applaud them, but it doesn't necessarily make them a writer, it makes them a paid blogger or provides reward for providing an excellent delivery system of interactive content.

It is time for a reread of one of my favorite books on
writing, and being: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.

I will be 50 in October 2012 and there is still much that I want to do in my life. If you don't know about so much of what goes on in it, that's alright, too. I have children and a husband who share me with the World Wide Web and want me back. Since moving to Kentucky my virtual world has been, at times, more captivating to me than the real world around me: it's been my friend, my place to go for succor and validation, or to vent. It has been the water cooler that I don't have in my daily life. That's not really a good place to be in: a virtual water cooler? Especially one where you are not paid for your working moments? So how about a real one, instead: where I connect with the real world more often. "Only connect," wrote E.M. Forster in Howard's End. If only he could know how those words would resonate within me these past ten years where real connection has been largely lacking, where family connections have fallen away, and where virtual ones have filled their spaces.

Ultimately, and this is the plan, if I focus hard and eliminate other things I can write again for the printed page: the occasional published magazine article, and hopefully more books. I have to harness that energy into a workable body of my writing without benefit of the world watching. I have much to share and publication involves a high degree of discipline, marketing, and a willingness to tolerate rejection (or editors--even the ones you know--not always responding). The freelance life is not a friend to non-routine and laziness, or even complacency. So it's time for a drop-kick boot camp in that realm in my life. Last month, during the holidays, I gave myself permission not to blog. It felt wonderful. I felt liberated! I did post two more small posts, after saying I wouldn't, but that was because I wanted to and didn't feel obligated.

My favorite American novelist, Willa Cather, who
had no benefit of Internet, blogs, Facebook or Twitter.

A friend of mine recently conducted a Facebook study by friending several famous authors and following them over the course of a year (living writers, of course!). She concluded that, try as they might, their (extremely active) Facebook and Twitter presence did not seem to be affecting sales of their new books. Many established and newer writers are being lured in by the false promise of social media. And where is it getting them, if not away from their real writing or craft? Probably to a pleasantly diverting virtual water cooler.

And yet...I was fully prepared to give up our Internet via expensive satellite at the end of 2011. We could use our fine county library or a cozy café with WiFi, I told myself. But the reality is much different. I have realized that I still want this kind connection with the world, right from my own cozy home. The trick is to manage it better. So now, when I don't want to be on the computer or need to be doing other things, I just turn it off.

The other day all of my thoughts about to give up the Internet, or not, were answered. Our local phone company, Windstream, contacted us about wanting two easements on our farm for DSL terminals (as I've always suspected, our farm is about half-way down our 8-mile ridge). Many of our neighbors have wanted DSL and have been asking for it, repeatedly, before we even moved here. I had it back in New Hampshire in our village home: it was fast, immediate, I could download things and upload photos without any problem. And, best of all, it was affordable (about one quarter the price for maximum bandwidth satellite internet). We are now negotiating with them to get this party started. It was almost like a strange kind of answer to something with which I'd been struggling: and isn't life often that way?

If you have gotten this far in this most unbloggy musing, I applaud you! But most of all, I thank you for your readership over these past seven years. It is so wonderful to connect here and wherever else the fates may allow. And if I don't blog for a stretch, you'll know I've just turned it off and am connecting in the real world.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Using What We Have

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Cairns, overlooking Loch Loyne, in Scotland (by Tim Wood, Flickriver).

New Year's resolutions are always well-intended. As this is my 50th year I decided to make some changes and implement goals, in both my personal and family life, that will hopefully extend well beyond 2012. As I am not the major breadwinner of the family, and we're in the farm together in terms of investment and outcome, what I can do is be more of a conscientious penny-pincher on the home front.

Here are my "lifestyle tweaks," in no particular order:

I am no longer buying food (even if it's a "good deal") or what we do not need. As for necessities, I am just buying milk and dairy products, when needed; gas for the cars (which I don't drive as much); and, in season, fresh local and affordable produce (that which we don't grow ourselves). Our pantries and freezers are full from lots of hard work and raising our own meat (and we have eggs a'plenty). We have other necessaries on hand, too. There will be few reasons to visit the grocery store (or any "box store" in 2012: sorry Target and Sam's Club!).
I will be making our own bread most of the time from a stocked baking pantry (and we're eating less of it any way).
As my husband and I have plenty of clothing in a variety of sizes and styles (we're not trendy so stuff lasts), we will only buy clothes for our boys when they need them. (As Henry has grown four inches in a few months, this is unavoidable!)
We have many (many) books and DVDs. If we don't have a book that I want to read, I will get it at the library or use inter-library loan for those harder to find items. If I really want a book to own, I will put it on my birthday/Christmas list for later this year. Amazon will no longer get my business (too easy, too cheap, too tempting with free shipping and door-to-door), even though we are 90 minutes from the nearest independent bookseller.
MAGAZINES! Because I write for several of them, and also enjoy them, I tend to oversubscribe or overbuy. Rather than throw out a lot of older magazines that I've found here and there (unread, I might add), I've sorted them by season and will spend 2012 reading magazines from the past few years––then donating them as I toss them. I will also be tossing old clippings and putting my own published articles into a portfolio and PDFs rather than stockpiling them! And who needs thousands of clipped recipes, house and garden ideas when there is the Internet and now this online bulletin board called Pinterest where you can organize your bookmarks and other clippings? Which I don't dare get on...yet. [Ok, I did. You can follow me here. What fun and what a help for organizing on line clips, images and links! (And thanks for the turn on, Teresa!)]
I want to connect more in real time (letters, phone calls, visits) so I am already on Facebook much less. So far, I have prewritten many blog posts in 2012 and posted in advance (a lovely feature of Blogger). I still don't need a cell phone and will use one of our shared family track phones if traveling solo (and travel will be minimal this year, too).

Gifting–let's just say that Christmas 2012 is almost a done deal already:

I want to knit again and will be tackling some unfinished projects (and wrap up those finished projects that I found from before our move in 2008). There is nothing like the gift of a handmade, and practical, knitted item.
I have many surplus pantry goodies that I make throughout the year (and percolating vanilla, as we speak): homemade and home baked gifts, at any time, are a gift of yourself.
I have started a pile of practically-new books of all kinds that I will pass along. What isn't a treasure to keep (I will always have a house full of books!) will be donated–and at some point I might open an eBay or Etsy store for old, vintage cookbooks. (Stay tuned!)
I have found a box of squirreled-away gift items from prior bouts of elfing (and sales) with various people's names on them.
I resisted all enticing post-Christmas sales and have been using up our wrapping paper stash (and many, many greeting cards I've picked up here and there) for several years. But I'm a sucker for tags, so...
I'm making my own gift tags out of Christmas cards that we have received from the past, ahem, four years. I want to send out Christmas cards again in 2012, after a several year hiatus, so maybe I should get started...

With all of this in mind, it will be easier to:

plan meals ahead, based on the ingredients and pantry/freezer items that we have on hand;
dissolve and "bust" the clutter;
donate what we don't need or can no longer use;
cull out closets, cupboards and tackle unpacked "mystery" boxes from our New Hampshire move. There wasn't the time to go through everything as I would have liked in 2008 and, because we moved ourselves–and the contents of one packed home and our garage-barn–in two box trailers, it was just too easy to say, "Throw it on the truck!" Now I am a borderline hoarder but still a clutterer-piler, much to the chagrin of my patient husband. They say you should just chuck it if it hasn't been opened in six months or a year but that doesn't work when you moved without much organization in the first place;
make more time to exercise;
take long farm walks with the family and dogs;
be more mindful in the task or preparation (including meals and "mindful eating");
make the time to write more regularly again (and for income!).

If there ever is a catastrophe, we'll have plenty to help feed our neighbors, too. And did you know that "stockpiling" food for more than seven days can get you branded as a terrorist? Don't get me started. These policy makers clearly didn't grow up on a farm.

What are your goals for 2012 or beyond?

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Old-Fashioned Macaroni and Cheese ~ Creamy, Rich, Easy !

2012-01-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

The reason this mac and cheese appealed so much, apart from the obvious creamy cheesy factor, is that it reminded me of the baked macaroni dishes that were brought to church suppers in Akron (and that my grandparents' cook used to make, too).

A dear friend and I are always seeking the "perfect" recipe of something. This same friend and I used to spend hours on the beach reading cookbooks together, comparing recipes, while her grandsons and my boys played happily near the water. [LINDA! I miss you!]

Friends, I have found, after many years of looking, the perfect mac and cheese recipe. Yes, on the back of a box of Mueller's® (that I got for 35 cents a box at a local discount food place––I love discount food places). Naturally, I stocked up on pasta boxes. I like Mueller's® and remember it, along with Creamette®, from childhood. I suppose they are good American pasta mainstays (although in recent years I've preferred several Italian brands). My next task will be to try this with different kinds of gluten-free pastas (as wheat is not something I'm supposed to have very often).

I photographed the recipe as it appeared on the box because it is as I made it, except:

I doubled it (and used 16 oz of small elbows);
I used real butter in the roux;
I used a heaping teaspoon of dried mustard (this gives it a nice snap);
I mixed up my cheese into a blend of sharp cheddar and milder Colby-American type mix;
I used buttered bread crumbs for the topping.

My youngest son, who is always shoving boxes of Annie's® at me (especially on the occasional fish or seafood night), even approves. I also judged this recipe based on its reheat value: it is just as creamy as the first time, especially when you infuse it with a bit of milk or cream and a few little pats of butter.

The ultimate comfort food! Diets be dashed!

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Epiphany: What We Need

2012-01-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Haying time in June on our knob mowing.

There has been much hype about the world ending this year on December 21st. What we do know is that the Mayan calendar ends on that date. Some reports say there will be an unusual planetary alignment which will place Earth right into the center of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time in some 20,000 years (at 11:11am, to be precise: 11:11 is a whole other thing with me as I've been seeing it regularly since 2000). We are––contrary to what my grade school science teacher told me and despite my third grade protestations––already a part of the Milky Way galaxy. It is so vast that it encompasses our entire Solar System but we are not in or near its center (it is thought to be a spiral galaxy and is 100,000 light years across). Therefore it is impossible to even photograph it as a complete galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to us, but still over 2 million light years away.
When I am overwhelmed and need perspective, I just look to the heavens and realize we are but a speck.

I was raised by an amateur astronomer and geographer, professional banker and numbers man, and a brilliant organist all rolled into one. My father had an inner compass and always knew where we were in the world just as much as he loved to watch the weather and the heavens–or a good old-fashioned disaster movie: double feature matinee of The Day The Earth Stood Still or The Amazing Colossal Man, anyone? There are also other mathematical theories and ideas about why 2012 is "it." My father and I would have discussed them all, with just a dash of sarcasm and levity in case "they" all happen to be right. Either way, for a bit of reason, here is NASA's take on the whole 2012 thing.

This was widely circulated on the Internet this winter.

Prophecies of the End Times have been around for centuries. I don't need to list them here or the historical precedents of burning one's farm to await the Rapture, which, according to the Bible, no one is supposed to know when it hits, "not even the angels in heaven." I'd like to think that 2012 will be the beginning of better things for the world: of how we relate with each other as citizens, neighbors and individuals. More tolerant, perhaps. More sharing of what we have or what we know or have learned. Less prone to fits of anger if we don't get our way. Less envy. Less aggression and more compassion. More connection in real time and less via texting on Facebook or Twitter. Instead of blocking or unfriending someone on Facebook or in Facetime (unless they are truly toxic beings), perhaps opening our hearts to the possibility of the knowledge and love of each other. Or just listening to different opinions and ideas. One can hope. We all struggle with these things in our modern world. I do know that connection, tolerance and being neighborly begins at home. Or through good karma [these Twenty Ways to Get Good Karma by the Dalai Lama are applicable to any person or religion]. Or on a blog! [Believe me, I've been grappling lately with why I blog and if I should even continue and I've decided, for now, to do so. Someday I might share more about why, or why I considered giving all of this up.]

This winter I have realized, quite plainly and perhaps for the first time, that the only things that I can really control in my life are what goes into my body and what comes out of my mouth (or my pen). I can also control my environment to some extent (and sometimes not at all: but that is a choice, even though I live with two boys and a husband who, for the most part, are neater than I am). I can also control how much time I spend connected with the world via the Internet (gladly, I do not have a cell phone). I can control when I move or when I am still. I can take joy in the quiet, or, as one of my great-grandmothers wrote to each of her nine children: "Remember, loved ones, the ruthlessness to rest." She didn't just mean for the body, but for the soul.

I occasionally dream of the house that we used to live in and the houses of my past: fine and glittering places. "Palaces" of family or of the stuff of generations but all places of memory and homeplaces because of the people in them. Christmas especially conjures these places and the sorrow that they are no longer in our lives. But they are places, not people, and even the loved ones with whom we shared those homes are no longer in our lives. So what would those places even be without them? "You can't go home again," echos Thomas Wolfe in my head, always, like a sonorous, yet clanging, temple gong.

Now we are here on a ridge in Kentucky, on a farm that we've made in four years and that continues to grow in terms of what we are trying to do. So here I can create a loving home. I can shape a fine home, cottage or even a doublewide with what we have. I can focus on my writing and time with my children and my husband. Real time where I am present and not distracted. I can provide nourishing and delicious food for my family from our ample pantries and freezers. I can spend less, especially now that we've stockpiled much. I can read more and start with the books in my own home library (even though much is still in boxes)–or go to the library more instead of bringing in more books. I can be a better friend and neighbor. I can sing and dance more, just because (and OK, Santa brought Momma an iPod Shuffle this Christmas...). I can pick up my knitting needles again and have-at that yarn box!

I half-joked with my husband and some friends that this year, apart from monthly bills, I would only be spending money on gas, seeds, local produce and the occasional bottle of milk. We have so much on hand that really, apart from occasional clothes for the boys (my husband and I have clothes in several sizes and in classic styles and aren't fashion victims so we'll be fine), we don't lack for much.

In fact, we don't lack for anything.

I have this Wendell Berry quote under my header photo but it bears repeating again:

"It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey...And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here."

Yes, what we need is here. Now. Perhaps one day in Heaven, too. But for now, today, this is all I know. And this is all I need.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Abandoned

2012-01-03T11:33:00.000-05:00

Most mothers in the animal kingdom are excellent mothers.

Not all mothers are good mothers, some are even horrible mothers. We know this exists among humans but it happens in nature, too. Sometimes a mother cow will abandon her calf, despite its bleating. Other times a mother cow will die in childbirth or soon after, despite the best interventions, thus orphaning her young. It is sad but you can't linger in the sorrow of it or it might consume you. I have developed a thicker skin since living on our own farm, especially after the loss of three dogs (to our own naiveté about the predators on the farm, including other neighbor dogs), many chickens, and several cows (and deer, raised from birth, who have returned to their natural nearby habitat, as it should be). Rule number 1 is for a reason: don't name your farm animals.

Inevitable loss is a part of farm life that isn't often shared. While we raise beef cattle that are well-cared for here at Valley View Farm, they will eventually end up on someone's dinner plate. This is the reality. What we can do is provide them a good life while they're here. I concur with Wendell Berry: "I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade." Hypocritical? Perhaps. I do not claim to be a vegetarian but there are times since living on our own farm when I have questioned my predilection for meat.

Wilbur is often by himself in the calf pasture.

Last winter we had several calves born during a cold bout of snow and miserable conditions that persisted into January. Most of those calves were abandoned by their mothers from death or circumstance. Each was bottle fed and only one has lived this long. But he exhibits many characteristics of "failure to thrive": he is smaller than his peers, he is a bit slower, and he doesn't look so well. We were going to ship him but I asked that he remain here on the farm for the rest of his days. He may not make it or he may. I didn't even have to pull my best Fern Arable. My husband agreed. Of course, we'd named him Wilbur and his small black Angus companion, Charlotte. This summer we found Charlotte on her side, dead in the creek. She had been separated from Wilbur and I think that she was lost without him, even though she had been surrounded by other cattle. The two were often spotted off by themselves. Since that time, Wilbur has been with his own peer group but is often alone, seeming to prefer his separation from the herd.

Meet Edgar Meeker Pond! (Yes, I'm nuts.)

Just after Christmas we had our first truly abandoned calf. A newborn Hereford calf was found bleating in the pasture behind the house. For days my husband, boys, and some men hired to help move the cattle, went looking for the mother. No luck as no one was coming forward. It normally would have been easy to spot her: she would have seemed frantic, bellowing and carrying on, especially if she had heard the cries of her own calf. So they brought the calf over near the sorting shed and we've been bottle-feeding him ever since. I've named him Edgar (an old untapped surname on my mother's side). And yes, he's staying. He and Wilbur will have their own "pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture" for the rest of their days.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Eggs Benedict Pond

2012-01-03T00:05:00.001-05:00

I have no idea where the name Eggs Benedict hails from (Benedict Arnold?). I'm sure I could Google it and provide you the answer but I'm too lazy tonight.

We enjoyed this favorite brunch meal at 2:30pm on New Year's Day after our farm chores were complete. Our menu consisted of Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce (which is rather like a savory zabayon, so the drippings on the plate near the strawberries were not a problem)–complete with our own eggs (my hens have been laying since the Solstice on December 21, probably lured more by the warmer days than the day itself)–and our own pork bacon on the side. I also served a combination of strawberries–fresh and locally-grown frozen ones–and we had a pitcher of Bellinis (made with chilled apricot nectar, instead of peach, and champagne: next time I will use our own canned peaches, as peach is traditional in this Venetian cocktail).

It was by far the most delicious batch of Benedict we've ever had–even better than breakfast at the (former) Ritz Carlton in Boston (often a special treat on day trips to the city). Perhaps it was that we were all very hungry by mid-afternoon or that using our own eggs (and bacon) really raised the bar a bit more. Either way, it was a most delicious way to ring in the New Year after a late night. I even had three (halves). As my husband often says, "Hunger makes a kingly sauce." As it turns out, so does Hollandaise. I used Julia Child's reliable recipe for Hollandaise sauce, which you can also use on fresh steamed vegetables like broccoli or asparagus. She is the queen of sauces and her two-volume The Art of French Cooking is a must for any cook.

To prepare the Eggs Benedict you'll need a good egg poacher (my husband is expert at making poached eggs so I leave this to him), some lightly toasted–and buttered–Thomas' English muffins, some good sliced ham–gently warmed–and a small pot of simmering sauce on hand for the last touch. You can also garnish with cayenne pepper and a smattering of chopped herbs. And don't forget the fresh ground pepper: grind liberally over the eggs just before serving. As for the cholesterol, well, our counts are low in that realm of numbers and I suppose I don't worry about it so much given that I know what my hens eat. Besides, it is Sunday and we never worry about what we eat on Sunday.

Julia Child's Hollandaise Sauce

3 egg yolks
1 Tbsp. water
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, or more
6-8 ounces very soft unsalted butter
1 dash cayenne
salt, to taste
fresh ground white pepper, to taste

Whisk the yolks, water and juice in saucepan until thick and pale.
Set the pan over medium low heat and whisk at a brisk speed, making sure to get bottom and insides of pan.
Keep heat moderated by taking pan off and on burner. You don't want the eggs to cook too fast (I used a thick Le Creuset sauce pan which avoided this problem, but you do have to keep whisking and watching).
You can tell when the sauce is near done when it thickens and feels more like a custard.
Then, add the butter in chunks, whisking after each addition. When it is the consistency that you want, stop adding butter.
Season lightly with salt, pepper and a dash of cayenne, whisking well. Add more lemon juice if desired.
Serve warm.

Happy 2012!

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

I love the New Year! The holidays have come and gone (and a season of birthdays in our family). I start to eye new projects around the house. I welcome a cozier January and February to be indoors and getting things done (without "garden guilt," as I like to call it). And yet seed catalogues are arriving by the day and **plant-dreaming-deep sets in while doing other things. After a long few months of rain and mud–and balmier temperatures–I'm actually hoping we have a bit of winter this winter.

My resolutions this year are to be more in the moment in all ways and to check off some long term goals that I've had in the realms of health, well being, sorting the past (vast photo and archive project), and getting my house in order. I don't mean manic bouts of cleaning–although I have been looking forward to some good organizational frenzy in several areas. I mean the house of my body and my soul. I want to connect more with myself as well as the world in real and authentic ways: this means less Internet and Facebook and more Face Time (or good old-fashioned letters and notes via the U.S. Postal Service).

It's still technically Christmas in our house
until the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th.
Plus, it's too hard to take down the decor before
then, especially when I got it up so late last year!

Our farm has been growing and my husband is doing a great job managing it, my boys are busy at school and on the farm, our daughter is happy and well in her life back in New England. We are reasonably settled here now and I have no more excuses not to write more for publication (and to dust off some old fits and starts and try new ideas).

2012 should be interesting in all ways. I'll try to pop in here with more "bloggish" (rather than essay-ish) postings when I can, even if it's just a photo or two, a recipe or something I want to share.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine
**to borrow from the poet May Sarton

In the Bleak Midwinter

2011-12-21T22:44:00.000-05:00

The three deer that we raised from near infancy, before Christmas outside of our home in 2010
(with chicken house behind). Sadly, the deer with the injured leg died on Christmas Day.
The other two are at our neighbor's farm, free to come and go, where the cattle aren't around to scare them.
They have been glimpsed frequently all year and the doe was even seen with twin fauns.

It is warm and balmy here in Kentucky, more mud season, really, and even my original nine chickens, almost three years old, have started to lay eggs again after their long autumnal molt. It hardly feels bleak or even like midwinter! And yet this lovely English carol, by Gustav Holst composed to a poem by Christina Rossetti (1872), is so beautiful that I wanted to share it with you on the Winter Solstice. I have sung it many times in various choirs and it is one of my favorite Christmas carols, its message both simple and profound.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

A happy Christmas and blessed New Year to you all as this will be my last post of 2011 ~ I think.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

I Wonder As I Wander

2011-12-17T10:59:00.001-05:00

An old barn on our Kentucky farm, now fallen in completely, that is like an Appalachian manger.
I'm sorry that we were unable to restore it or even keep it standing as I mourn these old structures.

I know I said I would not post again this month but I have a few free moments and wanted to share the story of my favorite American Christmas carol with you––and this one is truly American in every sense.

When I was a child I was fortunate to be privy to, and ultimately share, my father's musical interests. A Music major at the College of Wooster in Ohio, my father was an interim and occasional organist for many churches in the Akron area for over thirty years until the late 1990s. Music was his true and abiding passion. [His vocation was as a bank branch manager for several decades.]

So picture a suburban living room in the 1960s, a bit drab and beige with some gold tones for good measure, with a stereo hi-fi at one end of it. My father would come home from work, put on an LP record (that's "Long Playing" 33rpm record for you youngsters), still in his white shirt and tie, and often conduct along with the music. Sometimes we'd just listen and he'd interject and share with me what he knew about a particular piece of music. Under his tutelage I was exposed to Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Vierne and the more modern strains of Aaron Copland. From an early age, I learned the individual sounds of the instruments and the complexities of the fugue state. I learned about dissonance and harmony and the joys of a simple melody. [Later on the 1970s there would be the pop tunes from Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass.] I spent my childhood watching him, absorbing the music, begging for favorites to be replayed, and even, when no one was looking, inventing choreography and singing along to popular musicals and the more obscure (Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song, anyone?). I may well have missed my true calling!

For about a month at Christmas the house was filled with the dulcet crooning of Andy Williams, the sonorous bass of Ed Ames and the more raucous singing of Mitch Miller––even the folksy warmth of The Kingston Trio, whose "Last Month of the Year" Christmas album is probably my all-time favorite. [In the 1970s this would be rivaled by the quiet and soulful "Rocky Mountain Christmas" by John Denver.] Even when my father was at work, my mother would play Christmas music to fill our days. The music from their collection of Christmas albums is emblazoned on my soul in that sentimental way that music can muster. It formed the essential soundtrack of our holidays. Sometimes, for reasons both bitter and sweet, it can be painful to hear these albums again (and yes, I have several on CD now).

A scene from Eli's award-winning heirloom manger–built of local cedar and manger people made out of clothespins.

One of the most haunting songs for me was Ed Ames' recording of the Appalachian carol, "I Wonder As I Wander." The lyrics read:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

I always knew of its "Appalachian" origins from the liner notes, but only recently learned that it was composed from a Kentucky folk balladeer by the name of John Jacob Niles (1892-1980) from Louisville. [And how would I know while spending childhood Christmases in northeastern Ohio that I would one day be living in Kentucky?]

Niles had heard a woman singing the song in Murphy, North Carolina and set about to record it. Here is more about the history of the song. And here is another choral rendition that isn't bad at all [I believe this arrangement may be from Englishman, John Rutter].

It is such a simple and beautiful carol and I love to hear it as much as my favorite Appalachian hymn, "What Wondrous Love Is This?" (which we sung, as a congregation, at our wedding). Both are written in a minor key so there is a natural sense of haunting melancholy and pondering to heighten the wonderment that is felt in the lyrics to these songs. There is likely even an African American Spiritual origin to the melodies.

Merry Christmas to you all and always remember to enjoy the music ~

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

PS. In case you are wondering where the many albums are now, they were donated to the Music Department at the College of Wooster in 2008 in loving memory of my father, James Henry Seiberling. He never discussed with me where he would like them to go but after spending seven years in storage at our house in New Hampshire, and prompted by our move South, I decided that he might have liked that his extensive and eclectic collection remain intact and shared with others. The most obvious choice seemed to be the present and future music students at his alma mater where he gave so generously over the years (and where they would have the state-of-the-art equipment, in a CD world, to play them). I hope that Wooster's music students are enjoying them in musical theory and appreciation courses as much as I did all those years ago in our Ohio living room.

At the Holidays, Less Is Always More

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

In recent years, since our move from New Hampshire, I've kept decoration to a minimum.
This is because so much is still in boxes and because we no longer have nine fireplace mantels!

Over the past few years, the holidays have become all about adjusting my formerly high expectations. Things happen: sickness, busy schedules, invariable moves or life changes. The important thing is to remember, first and foremost, what the holidays are all about: reaffirming our spiritual selves and/or being with family or friends in a relaxed, festive setting and celebrating those relationships. Of course, both aspects are easier said than done. What I've been dealing with, however, these past few years is a good old case of the holiday blahs and the overwhelming bittersweetness of Christmas Past (family departed or no longer near, places gone, a new 'familiar'). So it's been time to revise, rethink and reconsider what the holidays mean to us and how much is realistic these days.

This year I have been planning to sing with the Pleasant Hill Shaker Singers on Saturday, a musical group that I've joined in the past year. Unfortunately, I've had a lingering and rather bad case of a bronchial deal which set in hard after Thanksgiving. So I likely will not be able to sing or even attend, even though I've been looking forward to this for months.

Cookie bakes, like getting together with
friends or family to make and give cookies,
are also a lot of fun. I did this in 2008
with some of my Mennonite friends
[for some recipes that I used: click here].

About six months ago I started planning a Cookie Swap for some friends, from near and far, on our farm here in Kentucky. I invited friends on Facebook, I started making lists, I was even getting ready to send out the real invitations, too. Well, since that time we've realized there will be a big basketball tournament for our oldest son on the same weekend. As we've committed to that sports life for the next several months, and not knowing exactly when his games will be that day (and not wanting to miss them), I can't really plan a big event at the farm that weekend. When I suggested the "snow date" of the following weekend, it was understandably not an option for most everyone as they all have prior commitments: some family from Tennessee couldn't even come up the first weekend, after planning on it for months. Things happen.

In the meantime, the day after Thanksgiving––and planned just as the turkey was roasting––we drove six hours to see an old friend in Akron, Ohio. As Robin pointed out, we have known each other almost 45 years! That's since kindergarten in 1967 at Old Trail School, my friends. We've seen each other, and our families, a handful of times since our high school years but each time it is as if we just pick right up where we left off. There is such a comfort and longevity to our friendship and it truly warmed my heart to see her–and the city where I grew up (and one of the most special places there). It was crazy to do as I was starting to feel the effects of the cough, but had just considered it fall allergy-generated at the time.

Santa Claus and my festive husband at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, just last week.

Stan Hywet was built by my great-grandparents
and will celebrate its centennial in 2015.

The other thing we did in Akron on our 36-hour whirlwind was to tour Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens for their annual "Deck the Hall" Holiday extravaganza. If you are near the Akron, Ohio region this holiday, I highly recommend this for a shot of seasonal joy. We've been to this finely preserved museum home many times over the years, but never at the holidays, and we all dressed up and had a blast. The morning before our trip, while getting the Thanksgiving dinner prepared, I figured we'd be spending a "quiet" weekend at home. But were able to do this because of Hilton Honors points that allowed us a free night's stay, the fact that we had to run up north of Columbus at some point before winter weather for a pick-up of some equipment any way, and because we knew this kind of opportunity is slim-to-none. Also, there was a clear and balmy weather window and we could cover our animals for 48 hours through means of feed delivery and shelter.

So the point of all of this is that I've learned––a lot––as a woman of a certain age, of any age: when you make plans, God laughs. But, most of all, I'm learning to embrace the spontaneous, especially at the holidays. It is often doable and very affordable at the same time.

Here are other sure fire and affordable ways to preserving your sanity and making the holidays special for you and your family:

Henry learns how easy it is to make homemade cocoa.

Is it snowing out? Stop what you're doing right now, go outside and run around in it, and then make some hot chocolate (it doesn't even have to be homemade, but that's an easy proposition) and pop in a favorite Christmas movie or classic old television program to watch as a family.
Record, or watch as a family, the television premiere of the documentary Becoming Santa on December 7 at 9pm on the OWN Network! My old friend Jack Sanderson, who stars in it and wrote it, promises that you might just believe again or at least find some holiday magic. If concerned about younger children viewing the film he says: "We say that the film is not really for anyone who is expected a visit from Santa. That said, when children that believe in Santa have watched, we have explained that Santa has many regional representatives." We can't wait to watch as a family and I've also ordered a few as gifts on Amazon.com ~
A pre-Christmas vacation "snow day" from school (and, ideally, your job) is like a gift in itself: take the time to just enjoy your children and don't worry about gift-wrapping or baking or anything else, unless it is something you can, and want to do, all together: make a gingerbread house, make cookies, or just watch movies in your pajamas!
Is Handel's Messiah playing in your area? (Most small towns even have a Messiah-sing these days.) Take your family to hear it and you will be filled with the most beautiful holiday music ever written. Better yet, sing along with it, as many allow. It's usually free.
Do you want to make cookies but don't want the fuss? Buy some premade cookie dough or a mix, whip up some cookies, and decorate with sprinkles and canned frosting. (Did I just say this? Really!? Mrs. I-Won't-Use-a-Cake-Mix-Catherine? But seriously, it's not about what kind of cookie, it's about the memories made while making it.)
Find a group of friends and go caroling at a local nursing home: it will warm their hearts and also warm yours, free of charge.
Gather up a box of groceries and take them to your local food pantry. They are especially in need this year. Or drop an anonymous basket of goodies on the door step of a neighbor and mark it "LOVE, SANTA."

Watching movies and being cozy by the fire on a New England winter's day.

It's very hard to commit to not giving gifts at the holidays and I know our holidays will never be like that. However, you can modify your expectations whether for economy or sanity. Here are some ideas for easy, affordable gift-giving:

Give fewer gifts and limit your list: do you have to give each child in a family a gift? How about a special book or edible gift for the entire family to enjoy?
Buy on sale throughout the year or when you see something affordable and "just perfect" for someone. Make a running list, so you don't forget, and hide items in a secret cupboard, or box, in your house (just remember where you put them!). Throughout the year, I also like to pick up quality, fun items for friends when I see them at yard sales or craft fairs or my very favorite haunt: used bookstores.
Make creative coupons for special favors or gifts-in-kind, and either print them off your computer or make simple cards (this is especially good for children to do when they have a gift budget).
Mail order can be your friend: look for special bargains around the holidays and the latest enticement, free shipping! You're also saving on gas and the hassle of malls.
Do you have a special magazine that you enjoy? Support print media and, when renewing your subscription, give one to a friend. Most magazines that we subscribe to are offering 2-for-1 renewal offers now.
Make and give something homemade: baked, sewn, knitted, crocheted, crafted or even preserved in your kitchen earlier that summer. [I am planning on raiding my preserve pantry big time––and my homemade vanilla stores! Here's the blog post on how I made it.]
If you don't craft yourself, support those who do! You can often find some great holiday decor, floral arrangements and homemade items at local craft fairs and holiday bazaars. You are also supporting local artisans when you do so.
This is a postcript: don't forget that my book, The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses is still available from my website at the affordable price of $16.90, including shipping! I am happy to sign and inscribe (and ship directly) to anyone on your list! It makes a great and affordable gift for the foodie, food historian, or kitchen-lover in your life!

Above all, less is more. Here's an easy step to preserving your time and your mind this December: make a list, or several lists, on a quiet day in November, perhaps even in the afterglow of Thanksgiving, and check them twice. I'm also here to say, from experience, that most of the time as a mother or woman, you just need to give yourself the break that you need at the holidays and unplan. Go ahead. Do it! Take, along the way as my great-grandmother used to say to her children, "the ruthlessness to rest." If you can, take a nap! Above all, get more sleep than you might otherwise take for yourself: whether working or at home with the family. So, above all, don't overschedule. To give yourself chunks of time, first overplan: dream big, then take away. You'll feel liberated when you do.

New Year's Resolution Tea with friends!

Here's how! First, put on the list/calendar those absolutes: meetings, get-togethers, school or church events, and work-related expectations and then add in everything else. Allow yourself the fun of going big–but only at first and only on paper.

Then ask yourself and consult with your family, especially if there are events that might include them, the following question around each event or activity:

Does this event or project enhance the holiday season or add stress to it?
Is it all family-inclusive and not more individually-based?
Does it celebrate my family or friends?
Does it involve a lot of extra planning?
Is it fun or meaningful, or both?
Is it something that might wait until January (eg. think New Year's cards/letters or something as simple as an email or Facebook card on-line; even gift-giving and lunch with friends: one of my favorite things to do was a New Year's Resolution Tea with two friends back in New Hampshire–we'd write out our goals, have some goodies, and share gifts)?
Is it something school or work-related that you really have to be doing? [And believe me, from prior experience, some schools can really pile on the holiday stress with so many extras.]
Above all, if you are completely overwhelmed or have a tight budget (and who doesn't these days?), plan no more than one involved task or event that involves the entire family.

After going big for a bit––as I'm want to do with any list of goals––cross off those things that don't matter or that perhaps you can do at a later time (or "next year"). Forget about them! Remember this holiday mantra: when in doubt, go small and stay home! Less is always more at the holidays!

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos of all time: my friend Linda
and her grandson on the Santa Train in Putney, Vermont (and Henry by the window).
This was our annual family holiday event and in 2007 we brought our friends along.

A magical Christmas Eve! (2010)

No one is saying that you have to use all of your holiday decorations, or light up your house like a birthday cake, or get your tree up the day after Thanksgiving after chopping it down at the nearest tree farm, or shop until you drop throughout Black Friday or Cyber Monday or even Shop Local Saturday. You don't even have to make a single Christmas cookie! Your children will find their greatest happiness not by the sweet froth and manic frenzy that we might whip up for them, but by the time we spend with them and by the traditions you make together.

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are a Christmas day dinner no matter where we are.

In recent years we'd visit Bamma after Christmas.

Something else to keep in mind: in the old English tradition, Christmas has twelve traditional days of feasting and celebration until Epiphany on January 6th. Meanwhile, Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, has eight. That's a lot of extra time to stretch things out, so use it! In our house we often do things "on the list" after Christmas: maybe that's when we have friends over for an impromptu dinner, or the boys have a few friends in for a slumber party, or when I sit down to write cards while the boys are happily playing with their new Lego sets (well, "happily" doesn't always last as long as I might like). It is sometimes when we plan a dinner at a restaurant and take in a special blockbuster movie. I might try some new recipes or plan special foods for an at-home New Year's Eve family night. It's also a great time to gather extended family together from further away: perhaps everyone wants to have their own Christmas at home with their immediate family. There is nothing wrong with saying, "let's gather this year between Christmas and New Year's" or, "how about Easter instead?"

This will be our first Christmas without Aunt Cynthia and we'll miss her.

I heard something quite profound on a documentary the other day about hyper-parenting. After mentioning the all-true reality of children only being "with us for so long, and then they're gone, like that," this father said "the more time we spend with our children when they are young, the more time they'll want to spend with us as adults." That was like a slap across the face. Yes, it's not about the perfect holiday: it's about the imperfect life, all bound together with the ones we love, and enhanced by the foods, rituals and traditions we love––for one, hopefully relaxed, month at the end of each year. Above all, do what you love to do and be with the people you love.

And on that note I'm going to keep things simple and make December a blog-free month this year. Yes, that's right. There are many old Christmas and holiday chestnuts over at In the Pantry where you can search the archives at your leisure.

Just keep smiling and remember the wonder of Christmas in a child's face!

In the meantime, happy holidays, a very Merry Christmas, and you come back when you're ready! We'll see you in 2012 ~
Catherine

NOTE: Readers of this blog may remember this list–of my pre-holiday 'to do' list, written way back in January? Well, I haven't looked at it all year until tonight and surprisingly I've accomplished much of it (except for the big February clean-out and inventory of the boxes and boxes of Christmas decor!) And, because of that task, we have yet to start decorating the house...hopefully this weekend. If not, next. I love to make lists and to plan, but it's all in the execution. Sometimes I just absorb what I write: "so it was written, so it shall be done."

Another tidbit? I have not sent Christmas cards in three years. However, I still have the letters and the photos that I printed out for some of them. Best laid plans... So this year, friends and family will receive at least the cards and photos! I'm using things up and why not well-intentioned Christmas cards that never got written or sent when intended? [Yes, I even have the postage...]

Our Kentucky farm Christmases have been quiet, simple and lovely.
Someday I have plans for a major matriarchy with lots of family gatherings
in 'Catherine's Farmhouse of Dreams.' Build it and they will come!

Here is a link to a blog posting
about our first Kentucky Christmas.
May your days be merry and bright:
And may all your Christmases be white!

I have lived in many special places over the years, or have been a part of them,

but our house in Hancock will always be 'Catherine's Christmas House of Dreams.'

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T22:53:00.001-05:00

I am so very thankful for farm-raised food from our fields and pastures–and grown in the fields of other farmers that we know.

I am grateful for a husband who knows how to fill the barns with "the harvest cheer" and likes to fetch the odd thing at the grocery store, too. [Ok, so he likes to shop and fill the pantries and freezers as much as I do: enabler !]

I am blessed to have three wonderful children, each unique and special, and who love me no matter what I do or say or how un-motherly I can be at times. And who love my cooking so much that they refuse to go anywhere else for Thanksgiving dinner because they don't want to miss a single homemade morsel from their "Mama Goo." [Or who even visit from afar in October just to be here for my birthday and an "early" Thanksgiving celebration! We miss you Addie!]

And I am grateful for my friends and faraway family who, here or there or through the internet, visit when they can in heart and mind or by meeting me to share a laugh or a cup of tea.

Have a blessed, warm, safe and bountiful Thanksgiving ~

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Farmhouse Thanksgiving Stuffing

2011-11-16T11:16:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite Thanksgiving decorations, from our son Henry, made many years ago.

Our first Thanksgiving in our Kentucky doublewide in 2008!

I've had a few requests this year for my stuffing and thought I'd blog about it as I do believe in sharing, even the most sacred of family recipes! When home from college one Thanksgiving break, way back in the early 80s [and no, I was not a Madonna fan: definitely a Cure, Morrissey, Kate Bush, U2, English Beat, and general British New Wave kind of gal], I came up with this recipe. It has been minimally tweaked over the years. I first assembled it with various ingredients we had on hand and additions I wanted to try. Whenever I make it, the stuffing reminds me of long-ago Thanksgivings altogether on our New Hampshire farm, many years ago, and how my visiting father especially loved it on the few times he joined us from Ohio.

Thanksgiving for 13: the table set at our old house in Hancock in 2007 (our last in New Hampshire).

Temple and our friend, Peter Sawyer,
at our second Thanksgiving in 2007.

This will easily stuff an 18-25# bird quite nicely, with plenty of leftovers. I usually make this much because then I freeze a bunch for roast chicken throughout the winter and my kids always beg for this stuffing throughout the year. [I've taken out the water chestnuts since I've been married, even though Temple didn't really know what they were until I mentioned them! But they give it a nice crunch. I've tried other nuts, including chestnuts, but the water chestnuts hold up the best.]

The added fruity sweetness pairs well with the savory additions and the crunch of the water chestnuts. And don't forget the gravy!

Catherine's Farmhouse Thanksgiving Stuffing (c. 1985)

2 bags of favorite stuffing mix (I like to include one that is corn meal-based)
1-2 loaves shredded up stale bread (or you can do this a few days before and leave it in a bowl on top of the fridge to dry)
2 sticks of butter
1 very large sweet onion (or 2 large), chopped
2 Tbsps minced garlic (fresh or jarred)
5 scallions, chopped fine
1 large bunch of celery, chopped (inc. leafy bits)
1-1.5 pounds of sweet Italian sausage (links or ground)
1-1.5 pounds of hot Italian sausage (" ")
2 cans of sliced water chestnuts (packed in water)
4 Granny Smith apples (or other crisp/tart apples that won't mush upon cooking, like Winesaps)
1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 can of whole cranberry sauce
1 large bunch parsley, chopped fine
1 small bunch fresh sage, chopped fine
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
2 quarts liquid (I combine chicken stock with apple cider, sometimes a bit of wine)

You will need one very large bowl to make this and a big skillet.

Two days before: cube up fresh or stale bread or shred and place in large bowl, uncovered.

Evening before you roast the bird (or very early in morning) esp. if you have a very cold place where you can keep stuffing mix covered up:

1. Add two bags of stuffing mix to prepared bread in bowl.

2. In large skillet, in the two sticks of melted butter, sauté the onion, garlic, scallions and celery together until translucent and nicely brown (but not overly so). Set aside.

3. Chop water chestnuts and Granny Smith apples (those should be small but not diced). Add to large skillet with vegetable mixture and lightly sauté. Add bag of cranberries and cook, on low, until they pop.

4. In another skillet, crumble and brown both kinds of Italian sausage. Drain and set aside.

5. Chop parsley and sage until fine. Add part to each of the above skillet mixtures and toss. Sprinkle, also, with kosher salt and ground black pepper to taste.

6. To large bread bowl, add all of the above skillets full. Toss with hands or large spoons.

7. To the tossed and combined mixture, add 1 can of cranberry sauce (this can be homemade but make sure you use whole berry sauce) and gradually add the 2 quarts liquid, combining as you go. You may not need all two quarts (reserve any unused for your gravy).

8. Make sure you taste and adjust liquids or seasonings! (You will have everyone trying to eat this before you get it in the bird.)

9. Stuff your bird right before roasting and set aside a dish to bake for the table and/or put right into freezer containers! There will be plenty of extra.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!

2011-11-14T11:59:00.001-05:00

We have much to be thankful for in our home and on our farm and in our family. I've realized, for many reasons, that I need to take a bit of a blog break so I can better focus on my family, and home, and the coming holidays––and not the Internet.

I've written about the holidays quite a bit on my other blog, In the Pantry. If you go to that blog and enter "Thanksgiving" in the Search box, you will find many posts from the past six years relating to this favorite holiday. As you will also discover, Thanksgiving has always been a special time in our home. Here in Kentucky it is different: quieter, less over-the-top, back to basics. Lovely, simple, just us. As it should be but I do miss larger family gatherings and the friends that we'd have each year in different combinations. Our "farmhouse of dreams" will probably return us to those glory meals and gatherings but for now we relish these more intimate feasts.

I'm catching up with book orders, too, and this is just a reminder that The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses [Gibbs Smith: 2007] makes a great gift for the foodie, domestic or kitchen lover in your life. Go to www.CatherinePond.com for ordering information or email me at info@CatherinePond.com for a special offer ($10 a copy + shipping! Hardbound and photographed!) and mention you saw it on Farmwife at Midlife. I am happy to sign and/or inscribe your books, also.

It is certainly pantry season around here as we have finished filling the cupboards and freezers full of good food and the bounty with which we have been blessed. Which reminds me, also, to donate to our local food pantries: money or food. They are especially low and hard hit in this economy. Every little bit helps.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

And, you come back when you're ready––

Catherine

11:11 on 11-11-11

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Veterans' Day is, of course, weighted with its own importance and meaning but 11:11 is a time, and number, of great numeric and spiritual significance for me.

Since early in 2001 I started seeing 11:11 almost daily as I was doing things about our former home. Sometimes I would see it in the car. I'm one of these people who often knows what time it is, give or take a few minutes, just by my internal clock. And, I also don't really look at clocks much unless they happen to catch my eye. And, I suppose the digital clock on the stove or in the car can catch the eye in more of a way than a clockface.

So the persistence of seeing 11:11 started to intrigue me. What did it mean? Why 11:11 and not a daily dose of 2:23 or any other number pattern? This number kept haunting me for the next eighteen months or so.

On the night of October 27, 2002, just a few days short of my fortieth birthday, I realized its significance. My father, who had been in failing health, was pronounced dead (such a cold term) at 2am on Sunday morning, October 27, exactly when the hospital clocks automatically turned back for Daylight Savings. This was its own time irony, as this was a time of year that he loved as it helped justify his inner cave bear. [He also liked Halloween and the excitement of the October playoffs and World Series. He loved astronomy and mathematics, but he especially loved playing the organ, and his devotion to his family. He was also a merry prankster and liked a good practical joke.]

As his three children we had the difficult and weighted prospect of having to let our father go. He knew what was happening and what the alternatives were as his system slowly started to shut down in his last week of earthly life. Late in the night of October 26 we gathered around him one last time and said our goodbyes. He nodded and squeezed our hands. He had accepted what was and although he could not speak he could nod vigorously and even try to write. This is so intensely personal and there is more to say, but not now.

When they took him off of what had been his life support for his last few days, I noticed the time. It was 11:11pm. I didn't really appreciate the significance of that until I returned home a week later, to New Hampshire. The old Art Deco electric clock that he had given me, which had sat on his bedside table as a child, had been playing peculiar games that week. My husband, who was in New Hampshire with our daughter and young boys, had awoken on the morning of October 27, around 2am, and saw that the red, glowing night light portion of the clock was illuminated. The well-worn nightlight feature, with its original small bulb, hadn't worked for many months. He thought it strange and didn't tell me about it. A week later we compared notes and realized what had happened.

This clock was something my father was going "to pitch," as he'd say. And he was good at throwing things out! Not one for sentiment, except in memory or in special objects–or musical works–he kept very little. I was always attached to that clock. I liked its Deco look, its pewter finish, and the red glowing warmth from its clock face. I had spent the night in his old room in the house where he grew up, many times as a child, and for an entire summer before I went to college. My father's bedroom was right next to my grandparents' room, with a shared door. The reassurance of their presence through the wall and the door next to me, and the glowing clock face, were reminders that I was not alone in their big old post-Victorian house that smelled of rosewood and cool plaster.

My father had given me this clock while I was visiting him in his Akron apartment when my daughter was much younger. "You want that old thing? It's wiring is probably shot but, OK, if you want it, take it home with you." He didn't really see the sense in it. The clock was older than he was and probably from the 1920s or early 1930s, still with its original cord.

I couldn't resist this once in a lifetime opportunity. Before it was 11:12am,
I called my traveling husband to say "Happy 11:11, 11-11-11!"

There is more to this story but this is a blog, after all. I couldn't let this day pass by without commenting on 11:11. I've since discovered that this is not a singular phenomenon. There are entire websites about 11:11. Maybe it means something else greater than my own story.

But every time any of my immediate family sees 11:11 we call out from wherever we are and to whomever is listening, "Hi, Grandpa!"

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Postscript. I forgot to mention that approximately six months after my father died, in April 2003, the glowing red light bulb from the clock's night light extinguished again. This happened on the night we set our clocks forward an hour. My father was always the merry prankster. I haven't used the clock since it was packed in a box for our Kentucky move in August 2008. But it's in a box and when I find it, I will plug it in again.

A Quilting: Friendship, Harmony, Unity

2011-11-05T11:40:00.000-04:00

Two years ago my daughter and I were part of a unique experience. A group of women from the local Old Order Mennonite community in Casey County, Kentucky, led by several of my good friends in this faith, wanted to make a 'Friendship' quilt for my husband's December birthday. That summer I had selected the fabrics, and decided upon the pattern, with my friend Anna. She then pieced the blocks together and took each of thirty-six blocks to different families and individuals that we knew in the community. In late October we gathered at her father's house, a central location, to quilt the sewn back and front together and to bind it off.

All day the women worked at the quilt frame in the late October sunlight that filtered through the southern side of the home. At noon we took a break with a meal my daughter and I had provided–of meatloaf and many sides, if I recall–and then we enjoyed a potluck dessert with a grand (surprise) birthday cake for my 47th birthday. All of that time I'd been trying to keep the quilting a surprise from my husband, which, believe me, was very hard to pull off, and here my friends were also wanting to surprise me. It worked! Anna's daughter Norma made the beautiful birthday cake.

I picked many vintage fabrics and patterns that were semi-neutral
and not overly feminine (well, a little bit), because it was Temple's gift, after all!

I didn't write about it at the time on my older blog, In the Pantry–except for the initial fabric purchasing–because I had felt like it might be violating a very special, and almost sacred, occurrence in my life. Of course, I took many photographs, being careful not to include faces if I could help it. I wanted to document the occasion, as it's not everyday that one is given a handmade friendship quilt or gets to see part of its creation, and most in attendance understood this. [One of the more conservative church women spoke out about this, however, and got me in a bit of trouble, something which soured me a bit for a time. But, as I explained, while quilting is the women's way of self-expression, photography and writing are mine.]

Our daughter was visiting between resort job seasons and tried her hand at stitching, also.

Friendship quilts are often made before a woman's wedding or as a send off,
or welcome, to someone in the community from the other women (or families).

A beautiful birthday cake from Norma.

I put in a few stitches for luck–
mainly because my cooking
exceeds my sewing ability!

Team work! Two Mennonite girls transport a rolled-up quilt
after the quilting. There were several quilts done at the same time.

Many of these women are the most industrious women I know: they easily run domestic circles around me and, sometimes, I wish I could just turn the ideas and thoughts that clatter around my brain off (A.D.D. much?) and try and work more as they do in and around the house. [To stay on task, and so well, is an enviable attribute.] A quilting provides a necessary pause away from all of that domestic routine and solitude, and a time for more intimate discussions, a chance to share news, some polite well-meaning "gossip" or to share recipes. These women run their houses like well-run machines and I swear they could run the world if we let them! Being a part of that day showed me what women can do when they put their minds to it, in whatever capacity: how, when working together, they can make great things. It was a truly humbling for me. [After four years at a women's college in the early 1980s, and in the workforce, of course I understand that women can work together–I just had never seen this kind of collaborative effort before with such a great number of people. Or, to be honest, I'd not been privy to women working together so well, in any setting. The men in their communities work together the same way on building projects.]

A quilting–like a church-cleaning, auctions and other occasions–is a chance for the women
of the Old Order Mennonite (or Amish) faith to join together, only in a more intimate way.
This is also what most farm women did in rural communities, and as far back as early American times.

What I realized today as I was changing our bed, and still thinking so much on this recent church split, is that the quilt we use and see every day represents these friendships and acquaintances that we hold dear. There is such harmony in its pattern and yet great diversity, too. And there, stitched on each block, are the names and individual embellishments from so many families in the community–from both churches. I can run my fingers over the stitching and think of each one, each gift they that have given us with their participation and handiwork–and many with their friendship.

On Christmas Day in 2009 we assembled at the home of Anna and Melvin Hurst to sing hymns together in the afternoon. The day was dreary and dark but the songs of the many gathered there lifted us up to the place you should be on Christmas. I felt a stark kind of spiritual experience and to be a part of their fellowship made me feel all the more welcome here on a holiday that can be hard so far away from one's familiar.

After the singing, Anna and I and some other women walked out with the quilt. My husband was very surprised, moved, and, for once in his life, speechless.

Today I look at that quilt and am reminded of how well this community of Old Order Mennonites can and does work together. They are the first to show up for local blood drives and in times of disaster, working for weeks after the Liberty flood of 2010, among other things, including rallying around their own people in need or crisis. They are always the first to help each other, despite their church differences.

A quilt of many colors: here Anna and her daughter Grace hold up the top,
minus the final row at the bottom, a few weeks before the quilting.

The quilt represents beauty, order, benevolence, and individuality amongst unity. We were blessed to receive it and my daughter and I were blessed to be a part of its coming together (even though we only added a few stitches for the sake of doing so–seamstresses we are not!).

And it will be a constant reminder to me that among discord there can always be a quiet, but resonant, harmony, a purposeful mission, a joining together in force despite differences of opinion or ways of worship. A reminder that, as with most things, it is the final outcome or greater glory that is important and not necessarily the details. If only I could take it to each family and remind them of this, too, despite our many differences in lifestyle and worship, and what it means to me: especially now in the clamor of their community's internal upheavals.

The quilt is like an intricate rosary of fabric and stitches and handmade, heartfelt care. It has warmed our bed and our hearts for the past two years. When I look upon it, at times, I will say prayers of benediction for every one of those who have given it to us and for the healing of the community that has been such a part of our lives here in Kentucky.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Schisms

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

A tranquil ravine behind the Laura Ingalls Wilder farm in Mansfield, Missouri.

We all have experienced schisms in our lives: with friends, family members, ideologies, in companies, nonprofit organizations and even churches. Some rifts quickly fuse back together, some are narrow enough to hop over and others are so wide that they are impassable. Lately I've been troubled by the widening gap created in our local Old Order Mennonite community. It is sad and disheartening, so unnecessary to those of us who are on the outside looking in or who know many of them as friends or neighbors. While I can't go into great detail here or all of the history–much of which I don't know or understand–the usual cast of characters is involved: Ego, Pride, Righteousness (and I will add, Male, as their religion is set up as a complete patriarchy). As a friend of mine back in New Hampshire has observed, in any church split or religious issue the women are usually the ones who suffer the most. She couldn't be more right about that in this case.

Young Buddhist monks (photograph from the website ReligionFacts.com)

"How do you want to create peace

if there is no peace inside yourselves?"

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I have friends on both sides of the divide and they, too, are also friends with each other. A couple, quite close to us, is even experiencing the divide within their own home. As individuals in the local community they are all friends or at least friendly and charitable with each other and community-natured. But when it comes to church rules and personal conduct, they are divided. So much so that the splinter group that decided to leave the original church several years ago (which is part of the larger Groffdale Old Order Mennonite Conference that settled here initially) have now been told to leave the area by a group of bishops in the established conference. It has reached a point where there is no resolution and the group that has left the original church–that has sought even stricter rules of conduct from how they all were raised in the church (or "man's law" vs. "God's law")–has been given a finite period of time to sell their farms and businesses and move away from those from whom they wish to worship separately. They certainly understand that they are free to worship as they please–which is why the Mennonites and Amish came here from Germany and Switzerland in the first place–but because their religion and lifestyle is so intricately meshed, church splits in their communities effect all areas of their lives. Thus, major whole-herd moves as the result of dissension are not uncommon. [As for the financial ramifications in this economy, I can't even begin to ponder it.]

Hay on the knob and the Morgan Cemetery, Hickory Nut Ridge, Summer 2009.

"I'm a Protestant atheist. [Philip Larkin's poem, Church Going, captures his attitude] to religion, tradition, faith,

architecture, Englishness, Larkin's admirable stoicism.

Larkin very much wanted to be a believer, and couldn't do it.

And he was petrified of death."

~ Christopher Hitchens

[as quoted in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald]

I asked the other day, in the car, with several Mennonite friends that I took on errands, "Where is God in all of this?" Does God care where we worship or how, or even with whom? Even though we would like to find a church that works for us, I have believed for a very long time that we can avoid the middle man–the Church–and go right to the source: God. My favorite cathedral these days is among the open fields of our farm or in the quiet Kentucky woods. In nature do we see God's greatest glories and sometimes the very harsh realities and tempests.

Gertie and John, Valley View Farm, December 2010.

"Trouble no one about their religion, respect all in their views,

and demand that they respect yours."

~ Chief Tecumseh

Church does serve a great purpose: it binds people in community and fellowship and it provides a place and time each week for pause, prayer and reflection. There are rituals and rites and there can be great beauty and comfort in them. Church, as a structure, can even provide the setting for magnificent music and great art and architecture. But it can also split and fracture and wound. The blood-letting can be gradual or immediate but there is pain either way. That pain doesn't come from a holy place but from the man-made and the mundane.

Exit gate at the Cathedral of the Pines,
Rindge, New Hampshire, June 2009.

"We must learn to live

together as brothers,

or we are going to perish

together as fools."

~ Martin Luther King

The Bible provides a code of conduct for pre-Christians (especially in the The Old Testament) and later Christians with the word of Christ, but so much is no longer applicable, particularly in the Old Testament, to our lives today. There are too many examples to name here but we also know that the Bible does not explicity say that we are supposed to live separately but equally, while celibate (eg. the United Society of Believers, aka Shakers, who actually believed in a dual deity of Mother and Father); or to have many wives (Old Order Mormons); or live without electricity, modern conveniences, automobiles or tractors (eg. the Amish and some Old Order Mennonites); or to even have a Pope. Those differences are all from human intervention and decision-making. As long as no one is hurting anyone else, why not? I respect people's individual journeys, even if I don't always understand them.

Lupines by a Vermont brook, June 2009.

"Our view is that there is truth and holiness in other religious faiths. Our view is that there are many paths to God."

~ Rabbi Eric Yoffee

The Bible is a template for living for those who wish to follow it, just as there are comparative texts in other religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, to name a few. Some even share the same texts, such as parts of the Old Testament in the Bible, Torah and Koran. But I believe there is one creator and that he/she/it very likely came to different people throughout the world and in different times as the same entity or embodiment, only with different personas. In other words, religious pluralism.

My favorite mountain in the whole world, the Grand Monadnock,
taken from Sawyer Farm, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, June 2009.

"There are many paths up the Mountain,

but the view of the moon from the top is the same."

~ Ancient Japanese saying

It would seem that there are so many schisms now in our society. Our political world has never been so divisive (and, ironically, because religion is often thrown out there into the mix). We are disconnected in so many ways from each other and with ourselves. The rise in drug use and substance abuse has never been greater. Our economy, and the world's, is a house of cards and collapsing everywhere. If ever there was a time to come together it is now.

Mount Monadnock from the outdoor altar at the Cathedral of the Pines,
Rindge, New Hampshire, June 2009.

"Why is it that when we talk to God, it's called prayer,

but when God talks to us, it's called schizophrenia?"

~ Lily Tomlin

So why, in God's name, do we fight about what God says or represents or how we are to worship? Why can't we tolerate religious differences as long as there is a peaceful methodology and good intentions behind them? As long as we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, with all people and in all things and in all places and at all times, we are on the right track. The trick is in staying on that track and that is where we, as humans, fail miserably and fall hard. As long as we get back on it, and keep walking, we'll be doing the best that we can do.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

The former Baldock Chapel interior.
Casey County, Kentucky, 2008.

...Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

The Baldock Chapel, pre-demolition.
Casey County, Kentucky, 2008.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

~ from the poem "Church Going," by Philip Larkin

To DO List for My 50th Year

2011-11-01T16:49:00.000-04:00

On the sweatshirt of a birthday gift from a very funny friend.

I am so blessed to have made some amazing friendships in my life. While I have cherished a few golden oldies from my childhood and college years––even though we don't see each other enough (thank you Facebook!)––most of the dearest friends that I have made have been in the latter half of the past decade while still living in New Hampshire and here in Kentucky. Several make me laugh, a lot, and I was quite spoiled by some on my recent birthday: with good wishes, thoughts, prayers, laughter and some lovely gifts.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”

People who know me know that I am the real deal, bumps and all: I may speak my mind at times, I may defend others who are not so fortunate, and I never suffer fools gladly. Like meets like and stays with like and if you encounter a false friend in your life you will soon know it. The best indicator of a sour relationship is that it just isn't working: something's "off," you might find yourself apologizing too often and for things you're not aware that you've done, or it just feels forced. Perhaps there is a certain envy in the relationship on one side, or both, that causes friction. Either way, these friendships are toxic and you are best to run, fast, in the other direction.

Sometimes we just encounter narcissists––whether friends, family members or coworkers––in our lives who are simply incapable of any kind of authentic self or true relationship or the ability to accept responsibility for their part in something. They can be classic victims and often shed their identities, and personas, and start again. You may be left in their wake. Consider yourself fortunate and, if still standing there trying to figure them out, just run, RUN! Or, sit back and enjoy the behaviors from a distance. Better yet, no, just run and don't look back. Maybe say a few "Hail Marys" or prayers while you're at it. Forgiveness fills the heart but it never forgets. [It is also good to remember that narcissists, like sociopaths, can not change who they are: there are thousands of websites on this very subject, and even many books. They are more insidious then you might think and not always whom you might expect, at first.]

It goes without saying that my family comes first–our children on Addie's
visit last month–but sometimes we have to make time for ourselves, too.

We had such a wonderful time out West in October–a trip is a great way to reconnect.

Above all we need to be surrounded by people who love us and have our backs, just as we need to be that friend, family member or colleague. One thing I'm realizing as I age and stare at 50 next year is that I have a reduced capacity for bullshit of any kind or people who lack a sense of humor or who are inauthentic. So boundaries are in order. So is cleaning out my closet: in all realms. This year will be a combination of many things as I prepare, hopefully, for the next fifty years of my life.

“You are never too old to set another goal

or to dream a new dream.”

I need to also count and remember my blessings each and every day. And, as C.S. Lewis wrote (he is also responsible for all of the quotes in this blog today):

“You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

I would like to try and do things that nourish the body, feed the soul and surround the heart in warmth and good feeling. Several years ago, two friends and I started writing out our goals for the next year, around the holidays, always with shared presents, good food and a cup of tea. This continues that tradition.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough

or a book long enough to suit me.”

To Do List for My 50th Year (written just after my 49th birthday):

Put health, exercise and good eating habits FIRST and ALWAYS (the rest will come): SCHEDULE IT IN!
Make weekly menu plans for best use of pantries and freezers.
Go through all "stuff" in rooms, closets and cupboards in two houses, bite by bite, room by room: keep, pitch, donate, regift, sell. Only keep what is useful or truly beautiful (this includes special sentiments). Prioritize projects for 2012-13 execution (esp. archival and WRITING).
Go through shop, box by box, and either rebox or SELL!!!
Go through archives in shop and either pitch (eg. BURN) or regroup for later proper storage and sharing.
Spend as little money as absolutely possible.
Get office spaces better ready for good work flow (see 3. and 4.).
Spend much less time with media and read much more.
Write more notes and letters to friends and family: "Only connect." (see 8.)
Establish clear boundaries in all realms to open doors and windows in others: Let the LIGHT in and darkness AWAY!
Cultivate authentic relationships.
Keep laughing and occasionally swearing. It helps.
Drink more tea, and often drink it with friends.
"Remember," as my great-grandmother advised, "the ruthlessness to rest."

An old cross in the adobe home of our cousins in Colorado.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

You come back when you're ready!
Catherine

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T23:52:00.002-04:00

I feel a day late and a dollar short as it is now Halloween night. Despite its joys and excitement, I am glad to see the month end. October is one of the busiest times of the year for my family, in a good way, and I'm ready to hunker in and focus on all things domestic: my house (and Chickabiddy Cottage), my writing, and preparations for the (simple, joyful) holidays.

This is also the beginning of my 50th year. I can't quite believe it. 49 feels good but it also is providing the impetus for change in many ways: better health habits, setting good boundaries, and asking myself, what is it that I want to do with the next 50 years, God willing? Those are just personal goals–there are many that I have for my family, too, but those are shared. We've settled into our Kentucky lives fairly well and now it's time to micromanage the details and the dreams. The realization is also here that no longer can I idle away any goals by saying, "some day" because, let's face it, I was saying some of those same things twenty-five years ago, half my lifetime to this point.

Yesterday I read the eulogy that novelist Mona Simpson wrote about her brother Steve Jobs that appeared in the October 30th edition of The New York Times. Perhaps you have read it, too. If not, do yourself a favor and stop reading this post now and read it. I wept throughout because her words were lovely but also because of what she was sharing. Here is a man, not much older than myself, who has changed the way we communicate with the world. His life was a series of extraordinary accomplishments and a few setbacks. While he was known for his perfectionism, his sister portrayed him as a romantic who also knew all of the names of the English roses. What especially got me were his last words, as he looked beyond his wife and children on his death bed in that most intimate and sorrowful of moments that some of us are privy to share with someone we love.

His sister writes:

"But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve's capacity for wonderment, the artist's belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve's final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW."

I want to continue to live, and eventually die, with that feeling of "OH WOW."

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Big Sky Country–Day 4

2011-10-25T21:45:00.001-04:00

Around noon, after the festivities ended at Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer, South Dakota, we headed down from the Black Hills into eastern Wyoming and had to give up our detour northwards to Devils Tower, also in the Black Hills. There just wasn't enough time this trip–I suggested that we might fold that into a trip to Yellowstone National Park some day.

From east-central Wyoming we headed south with the Denver area our ultimate goal to visit with relatives for a few days. The drive was glorious: when the weather is right, "big sky" country is spectacular to drive through and we were treated to mountains, mesas, buttes, cattle and various wildlife along the way.

In northern Colorado we even saw snow. According to the Weather Channel they are about to get a huge blizzard there in the next forty-eight hours: up to two feet in some parts and about a foot in suburban Denver where we were visiting. I now believe that we picked the perfect late autumn window for our western excursion!

We enjoyed the spare openness of the Wyoming range but I have to say I would miss the hills of Kentucky (or New England) after a while. There is something so liberating about driving in open country like this–you sense the breadth and scope of this country and how, despite how populated it is, there are still miles of open, uninhabited land in the big square states of the great American West.

I'll let the photographs speak for themselves. They are more or less in chronological order and most were taken from our car window–don't worry: my husband was driving and I was shooting–at a "reasonable and proper" rate of speed.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Native Americans' Day–Day 4

2011-10-25T18:45:00.000-04:00

The Black Hills of South Dakota live up to their name and we saw their full beauty on the fourth day which dawned clear, cold and sunny after the previous day of rain. On our way to the Crazy Horse Memorial, after a hearty breakfast, I suggested we go back to Mount Rushmore (a slight detour) and see it in the morning light. We weren't disappointed.

Between the gloom and the beginning affects of my feeling the altitude, our initial visit to Mount Rushmore was, well, not the bright spot I had expected. For you 1950s architecture and **North by Northwest movie buffs , there is a new visitor's center (although the original may have been copied in studio for the movie shoots). It works, it is beautifully executed but it was different. But what was jarring was that I missed my father in an unexpected way and got a bit, well, verklempt. We were retracing parts of his month-long trip with me in 1984. He always said that "Everyone should see Mount Rushmore before they die." [And along with that you could insert the Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, etc.––I had been with him to some of those sites on our 1984 trip but not all.] So I got overwhelmed by a feeling of nostalgic longing for my father all over again: it has been almost nine years to the day that has passed [October 27, 2002]. It was also one of those moments in the years since his passing that I have felt him here with me. [Fortunately, I have a very loving and understanding husband and children!]

A movie still from North By Northwest.

So on the fourth day, thanks to a slight departure in the itinerary (always important to remain flexible!), we were able to see Mount Rushmore in the cool, bright early morning light. There is a particular view, that we discovered as we approached from the south side, where Washington's profile appears through a gap in the trees and rocks. At another spot, below the visitor's center on the road, we pulled over and a very kind couple from Ohio took our group photo. Of course we all had to be photographed in various ways in front of the backdrop: it's just what you do on vacation!

We arrived at the Crazy Horse Memorial by 10am in time for their special Native Americans' Day ceremony. South Dakota is the only state to officially recognize the second Monday in October––aka Columbus Day––as Native Americans' Day and we were lucky to have timed our trip to coincide with this celebration. They also said that there would be a blast on the sculpture following the ceremony, weather depending. [I took some photos of it, but it is so large a sculpture that the blast is hardly detectable at the base of it.]

Now for the purposes of scale, let me note that the small opening you see in the above photo–under Crazy Horse's outstretched arm–is ten stories tall, the size of a modest city building. The four presidents on Mount Rushmore would not only fit on the sculpture but be dwarfed. The Korczak Ziolkowski family has been working on this monument for the past fifty years and will be working on it at least fifty more. We told our boys that they will be able to bring their grandchildren here one day to see it finished. It was somewhat humbling to look at such a thing, like a great Egyptian sphinx magnified many times, and realize that we will not live to see its completion (well, unless we both make 99 and 106!).

The monument faces to the east and Crazy Horse said that "my lands are where my dead are buried," in 1877. To him, the Black Hills were his spiritual and physical home. Today there are many tribes in the region, including the Sioux. Several of the Lakota Sioux nation were represented at the ceremonies doing various dances and/or speaking. It was a moving experience as well as one that we don't have every day in our part of the world.

Eli insisted that we stop at this tourist spot so he could take a photo, or two.
I am so happy that our children share our warped senses of humor
and see the beauty in the little things, even if this woman reminded him of his mama!

This isn't logging: the Black Hills are victim to a specific kind of pine borer that is destroying its forests.
The Native Americans see this as a severe environmental, even spiritual, warning to all of us
as the Black Hills are sacred, holy lands to their culture and the birthplace of the Lakota Sioux nation.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

**NOTE: Hooked on Houses is one of my favorite web sites of all time. Of course the author included a blog post on North by Northwest!

Les Mauvaises Terres–Day 3

2011-10-23T21:27:00.001-04:00

The Prairie Homestead, just outside of the Badlands National Park off I-90, is a rare and preserved
sod home. The sod portion, built in 1909, is on the left and the other addition was added later.

Although cozy and play-house like, it would have been bleak–and dusty–much of the year.

That's the root cellar in a dugout to the right. Imagine the winters? And the wind?

A fine, interpretive display!
I like a museum with a sense of humor.

Some canned goods in the root cellar.

The sod chicken house.

The Badlands or Les Mauvaises Terres: bleak, expansive, not arable.
They are more photogenic when the sun is out but this was our poorest weather day of the trip.

In the 1930s, when auto travel had begun to be more popular in the West,
Wall Drug Store lured people off the highway with the promise of free ice water.
You start to see signs for Wall Drug many miles east of it. [I even saw one in Amsterdam]

There are even more signs after you exit the Badlands–yup, right into the town of Wall, SD.

While it is the ultimate tourist trap, you have to see it once in your life (well, this is twice for me).
And it seems to be the only show in town unless you want to keep driving further along to Rapid City.

There is still free ice water.

Coffee was great (or was it the price? Still 5 cents) but the food was lousy.

Get out of the way! Our boys do have a crazy sense of humor, too.
All things considered, Wall Drug is a great place to get out and stretch for a bit.

Magnificent Mount Rushmore, even though it was dreary out.

Mountain goats just sort of ambling along near a campsite.

Prairie dogs are everywhere and are a real menace to ranchers' livestock safety.

This bison was wandering around right outside of our car.

"Home, home on the range! Where the deer and the antelope play..."

Just missed this!

Our budding geologists.

Our cabin for the night at Rustic Ridge.
Cozy, clean and rustic.

Dinner at the end of a long day
at the Chute Rooster in Hill City, SD.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

October Morning

2011-10-21T11:41:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite views on our farm–which is why we named it "Valley View."

We've had two days of needed rain: cold and damp and drizzly. Perfect hunkering-in fall weather–some of my favorite time of the year if not too prolonged. Almost everyone I know has been making chili or soup these past two days. We picked our daughter up, right on time with no delays despite the weather in the northeast, also, in Nashville on Tuesday (thank you Southwest for her safe delivery!).

I woke up Addie early this morning
to the sound of peeping chicks.

Now, on the back side of the weather system, is the lovely cool and crisp air of autumn. We had tinges of frost last night but nothing major yet (one of the advantages to ridge living). I drove off early to the post office to collect our Speckled Sussex chicks who also arrived safe and sound, with one extra (thank you Welp Hatchery!).

The chicks are all situated under a cozy heat lamp in the chicken house and will begin to lay eggs by early spring. The mixed batch of 26 will hopefully be at least half hen (the roosters will be fattened for the freezer). Meanwhile, my ten remaining hens, now 2.5 years old, are molting and taking a bit of a rest from egg-laying. We'll see how they do with egg-laying in the spring, otherwise I might have to be making some decisions as to their life expectancy. I am getting tougher.

A deer on the ridge turned when I said, "Hi Gertie!" but it wasn't and he ran off again.

Tomorrow we will be having Aunt Cynthia's burial at a small and lovely Catholic cemetery in western Casey County. She passed in June and I will write more about her soon. She would have loved this weather, too.

I am so content with my children altogether again, a puffed-up broody hen if I do say so, even if for a short time. With their span of ages–23, 13 and 11–they are at two different ends of the spectrum. In the past few years I have learned to appreciate those different stages and go with it, while enjoying all of the various colors and nuances, and moments, along the way.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Corn & Steak–with Tea–Day 2 continued

2011-10-20T09:54:00.001-04:00

Tea for 2? There were no tea rooms in Tea, SD.

Further up the highway was the delightful discovery of the town of Tea, South Dakota (where they crown Mr. and Mrs. Teapot each year)–the women at the antique shop by the exit were not sure of the origins of the town's name. We ended our long day from Kansas City with a requisite visit to the Mitchell, South Dakota Corn Palace and dinner at Chef Louie's for a fabulous steak with a nice glass of wine. We could have gone to Colorado across Missouri and into Kansas–the fastest route. As we rarely like to return on the same road we head out on, I suggested South Dakota.

I had been through South Dakota almost thirty years ago when my father treated me to a month-long post-college Western trip. After a summer internship at a funky historic house museum in Brunswick, Maine, and as maid of honor in an old friend's September wedding in Ohio, we set out for the great American West. We had a great month seeing many sites and new country together–all sites in places Dad had not taken us altogether as children but where he had been on trips before as a child and college student. It was invigorating after so many years in academia and before deciding what to do next with my life. As my father had done, I wanted to make sure the boys and T. saw the Corn Palace––and Mount Rushmore, of course, and other sites in the western end of the state. One must always balance corny with the magnificent.

Much of the South Dakota soil was rich and chocolaty, something we don't see in our part of Kentucky.

Individual ears of corn are glued to the outside of the Corn Palace each year,
and on murals inside, by volunteers. The theme changes yearly.

Original Corn Palaces were quite exotic and Byzantine.

We we are partial to large bovines on the side of the road.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Harvest Home

2011-10-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

"She recalled the free, pleasant life of her home,

where she was allowed to do everything,

and where nothing ever happened to her."

~ E.M. Forster, A Room With a View

I have been on an E.M. Forster kick lately, with a reread of A Room With A View––and next up will be Howard's End, a favorite novel I have not read since my friend Edie gave me a copy when we first became friends. [Oh how I value dear friends and treasured books!] While reading on our trip, I wrote down the above quote from a description of Lucy Honeychurch who, on holiday in Florence, has received a packet of letters from her family at their country home in England. Naturally, she is reflective as she pauses to read the news.

I enjoy travelling without a Baedecker or guide and prefer to roam around with little or no information except the destination. But most of the time I prefer to be at home and sometimes it is hard to get me out of it. There is that acute feeling of home that arises when we travel or get away from it––and that pulls us back, too. Such a powerful, primal feeling that there really is no other like it. And yet we also have the capacity for want of flight.

Temple feeding our calves yesterday–we were all outside on a glorious Sunday.

The last three days have been about reconnecting again at our farm after our needed travel whirlwind of 8-days away. It has been good to have a bit of a pause before school resumes tomorrow, to do some fall cleanup, and to get ready for our daughter's visit in a few days!

The view from my east porch––and pantry window.

I've also been puttering: my favorite pastime. It's not always immediately productive but eventually a "little here and a little there" does make a big difference. Put it this way, I'm a nest featherer and only a janitor under great duress or deadline. But I can rearrange shelves or decor endlessly––and pantries, of course (more about those soon).

At Bear Wallow, where we literally were in and out of the gift shop in ten minutes,
I was delighted to run into my friend Teresa whom I hadn't seen in a while.

On the way to Bear Wallow Farm to get a few more pumpkins––
they're just over on the next ridge.

Our resident mockingbird in the rhododendron.

I will also say, in an odd juxtaposition to the spring when our daughter last visited, that one of our crabapples is blooming again and our mockingbird, who made himself quite at home in April and May (singing all night at the cottage for our daughter!), has also returned. I've often compared the "loss" of my daughter to that of Persephone [and another blog reference to autumn and fall cleaning/puttering here]. As always, I find symbolism and meaning in most everything.

The boys helped me move pumpkins and stuff to decorate.

Henry bushhogged the knob pasture while Eli and I did some outdoor decorating.

Some recent antique linen finds from our trip: line-drying in the autumn sun.

And speaking of feathering, I almost forgot that my twenty-five Speckled Sussex chicks are due to arrive early this morning. [My remaining mixed bunch of 11 hens is molting again and now 2 and a half.] Shelley will be calling, bright and early, from the Nancy post office. Time to get out the heat lamp for them, too, as autumn weather is most certainly here and frost is not far behind. And we'll have lots of eggs in the spring.

Just imagine: crabapple blossoms in October! Does this mean I'll get crabapples in February?

The last of the coleus, cut before inevitable frost.
I also potted up various summer plants for indoors,
such as a giant bush basil. We'll see how they fare.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Along the Way: Day 2

2011-10-17T11:59:00.001-04:00

"America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for.

It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large."

~ E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

I have learned that on trips, as in life, there is the inevitable detour. You can roll with it or you can get upset about it but I've found these moments to be embraced rather than feared. I've never minded a side road or a byway over a highway. We deliberately made certain we would have some lower-mileage days to anticipate "off-roading" away from the interstate when we could. We all like bushwhacking in the countryside looking for old barns and buildings or unusual discoveries not found in the average guide book.

In the northwestern corner of Missouri, tucked on the right of Nebraska on the east side of the Missouri River––and just under Iowa––we had such an opportunity. We would learn that the Missouri River had been deliberately flooded this year to relieve flooding concerns in more populated areas. Those who suffered from this mandate were, of course, numerous farms and businesses along the flood plain. Interstate 29 was closed for several exits because of weakened road beds from earlier flooding. So, we ambled along the route that they told us to take, figuring we'd get back on the interstate further up within a bit of time.

Instead we enjoyed a several hour rural odyssey because we were soon to make a wrong turn from the detour route. Later on neither of us could determine why we'd turned at the old schoolhouse and continued on, because we had clearly gotten off the road we were told to stay on. But something led us down a country road and we were all gladdened for it.

The High Creek Church (in Watson, Missouri) was an unexpected discovery [their blog has information about its history and preservation]. If a location scout for a movie was looking for the perfect country church, this would be it. And they wouldn't have to change or add a thing. It had a welcoming feeling and it's the kind of place I could tuck into once a week, no matter the denomination. It has presence, peace, solitude. Now, in editing these photos, I realize the irony of the name given the flooding and the detour because of it. We left a donation in an envelope and I expect it is safe, just as everything seems to have been left just as it is. Trust. It's a rare thing these days.

This Gothic Revival country church was a delightful find: open, welcoming,
preserved by a dedicated group of local people, and on a quiet country road.
We could have spent all day inside and out of it.

We loved this old tree and the burial ground behind it.

My favorite hymn of all time.

If we could build a church on our farm it would be this one.
As a singer I was delighted to test out the fabulous acoustics, too.
I know it is selfish, but imagine a private place to reflect, pray, sing in!?

You have no idea how grateful I was to find this outhouse in the church yard!

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

PS I wasn't going to "out" the High Creek Church or its location until I realized that they have a blog and actively seek donations for its continued preservation.

Farmwife on the Prairie: Day 1

2011-10-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

Part of the the journey is getting ready for the journey. Two weeks ago I came up with a long list of reasons not to go–that I will not bore you with here–but in the end, three people whom I love prevailed upon me to come along, too. I'm glad that I did. And when you drive and do not have plane reservations, there is a great deal more flexibility in departure and itinerary. Either way, there is the inevitable "to do" list before leaving. Much was done, some was tabled for our return, bags were packed, and life continued. The road awaited us: America!

   Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
   All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
   Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
   Perennial with the Earth,
   with Freedom, Law and Love,
   A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
   Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

~ "America" by Walt Whitman

We began our 8.5 day, 3,700 mile journey on Friday, October 7 in a blurry-eyed pre-dawn haze, arriving midday at the St. Louis Gateway Arch (now also named The Jefferson Expansion Memorial by the National Park Service). It is most certainly Finnish architect Eero Saarinen's masterpiece and was constructed between 1963-1965 after the architect had won an architectural competition in 1947. We had all driven past it before on separate trips in the past few years but hadn't stopped. I had studied it somewhat in Thomas McCormick's "Modern Architecture" seminar in college almost thirty years ago and vaguely remembered my parents talking about its construction completion back in the mid-60s.

Is it architecture? Sculpture? Or both? We were able to go up into it, too, which presented its own set of fears: height (me) and small spaces (Eli). But the beautiful day and architectural interest prevailed!

As it is a National Monument, we had airport-like security on our way into the subterranean visitor's center. Our boys got to keep their pocket knives as I suppose they were really just looking for explosives. That made me a bit uneasy, as did the idea of St. Louis being just north of the New Madrid fault line. So I just sucked it up and acted like the brave and fierce mother that I can be at times. And what is 630 feet, really, between family?

What impressed me about the monument is that beyond its architectural design and iconic presence, there is the feat of engineering. Its stainless steel-clad frame rises from sixty-foot foundations in the ground and houses two series of elevator cars that ferry visitors to and from the top within minutes. It is built to withstand almost any disaster, including 150 mph winds. It remains a symbol of the embodiment of the great American spirit of expansiveness and opportunity that fueled the settlers in the 1800s. As a "Gateway to the Midwest," it connects the Mississippi River with the land beyond where settlers awaited endless explorations and discoveries of the Great Frontier.

So it seemed a fitting and symbolic place to begin our own 9-day excursion, by Honda Pilot, into the great American West. There is no better way to see this magnificent country of ours than by driving around and across it. By nightfall we were east of Kansas City, Missouri munching contentedly on hamburgers at Winstead's (they weren't as good as Swenson's from Akron but, as my husband always says, "Hunger makes a kingly sauce."), a few antique malls behind us, and ready for a good night's sleep.

"Earthlings, please prepare to board for your final destination."

The elevator access ports had a very futuristic Logan's Run feel to them–
as Temple and I are both well past thirty, this wasn't exactly a comfort!

Eli was a bit anxious about the pod things.

The cozy pods seated five: no windows.

I made myself look through the small portal and take this photo. And then I almost threw up.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Big Farmwife on the Prairie

2011-10-14T23:12:00.001-04:00

Pa would not have wanted to ravish Ma at the end of a long 15-mile day on the prairie, believe me.

I hate this show now more than ever (OK, "intensely dislike"). I've been in a car with two active boys and my husband for eight days straight, sharing the same square footage, more or less, that you would share in a covered wagon--and yes, probably with as much stuff! But Pa and Ma were way too chipper, and clean (and Pa's hair!) for any prairie meanderings. The only real element on that entire show was Nellie Oleson and her mother. I don't mean to bash the books--they are in their own league and worth reading at least once (I'm already planning a tour of all of the "Little House" sites with my first granddaughter--if and when, of course).

We have arrived tonight at our final destination, just inside Kentucky, after a whirlwind tour of the Great Plains, the Midwest and the eastern Rockies. The weather cooperated, the journey was grand in many respects (not the altitude adjustment, however). But, try as I might, at the end of the day there is dust in my knickers as we arrive, a bit bedraggled, to our next destination.

Once we return and I hug my dogs (who have been at the kennel for the past week), feed my chickens, go to a local auction and buy some pumpkins (I have been promising my boys), I will start blogging (with pics) of our last week's adventures.

You have to leave the farm once in a while!

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Homemade Vanilla Extract

2011-09-27T12:29:00.001-04:00

Talk about putting things off! I've had two of the most gorgeous, squishy 1/4# bags of vanilla beans in my pantry since late May when I picked them up at nearby Wilson's Cedar Point Farm (near the Casey County line in western Pulaski County) during strawberry season. The man working there that day happened to be selling both Tahitian and Madagascar varieties from the inventory of a spice wholesaler friend (a good friend to have!) and I was delighted to scarf them up. My good fortune was not lost on me: it was one of those days of alarming kismet, when you feel great to be living in a place where the strawberry man happened to read your mind about the vanilla you've been planning to make. There, at a small roadside stand in rural Kentucky, I traded cash for beans. A delightful encounter, but rather than seize the beans at the time, they've been in my pantry ever since.

Tahitian beans, left and Madagascar, right.

As I am not likely to find a roadside vanilla bean man every day, you can also purchase vanilla beans in bulk on line through any number of affordable spice emporiums, your local bulk foods shop (we like Sunny Valley Country Store in nearby Casey County), or even on eBay! If you are making large quantities of extract you will want to go the wholesale route, if possible, as the smaller Tahitian beans can be several dollars each or more. If you can, find some Madagascar: it will make a richer vanilla and the beans are light years away from the Tahitian. The former variety is plump, almost raisiny, in texture and cuts easily, revealing their fleshy and seedy interior. However, because you are making an infusion, either bean will work.

We also have a full, I mean FULL, liquor (and wine) closet. Much of this came down with us from New Hampshire. We don't drink much but when we do, or when we want some on hand for cooking, we like to have it at the ready. We are also in a dry county: as in we have to drive almost as far as Lexington (90 miles and 90 minutes, as I say) to purchase more liquor. This was a new, somewhat quirky concept to me when we moved to Kentucky. So, yes, earlier this summer I bought vodka, rum, and even some local bourbon varieties, to try my hand at vanilla-making.

I wanted to try several varieties, not that it likely makes a difference, so I used
vodka, clear rum and dark rum and the last bit of Woodford Reserve on hand.
[I didn't even think of opening the Maker's Mark for vanilla – sacrilege! Besides, I prefer Woodford.]

As with most things, this process is deceptively easy. The trick is just DOING IT (says the woman who was armed and ready in May to do so)! Also, you do not need six months to age it as I'd thought: two-three months is just as sufficient, or even less according to some recipes. Now I will have plenty of extract for 2012 as well as some holiday gift-giving in less than three months.

Here's the basic vanilla recipe, followed by my larger quantity recipe:

Slice 3-4 beans vertically (but don't detach) and place in 1 pint of bourbon, rum, brandy or vodka

Now, I don't know if the type of alcohol, other than listed above, or the brand, really matters. That is why I am using several different liquor bases to make mine. Also, with the exception of one pint using Tahitian beans (I want to compare bean flavors), I used all Madagascar beans. Because they are larger, I used 3 to 3.5 beans a quart. [You would want to double that amount if using Tahitian beans: some use even more than that.]

Massive Quantity of Vanilla Extract

I have not yet done a cost analysis but I expect it is much cheaper than store-bought:

1.75 ltr bottle vodka
1.75 ltr bottle clear rum
1.75 ltr bottle dark rum
1 cup Woodford's Reserve bourbon (leftover from julep season)
c. 24 vanilla beans (mostly Madagascar), or 1/4 pound beans

[Or, three 1.75 litres of the same alcohol variety]

1. Take a small and very sharp paring knife and along a wooden cutting board (so knife doesn't slip), open up the vanilla beans vertically. Places in different sized glass jars or one or two large ones (especially if using one or two alcohol varieties): here would be a great time to use some of those large 1/2 gallon Ball jars! Next time...).

2. Pour in liquor, using ratio found in basic vanilla recipe, above.

3. Cap jars tightly (I use the plastic Ball storage lids and they are perfect here).

4. Label jars and date them: this is especially important if you are experimenting with different kinds of liquor. [I found wonderful vintage red labels from Gartner at Target last year––they remind me of the vintage ones that you could always find from old label companies.]

5. Place jars in cool dark closet for anywhere between several days to several months (although 4-6 weeks seems the average suggestion). In mid-late November I'll start bottling it up. [NOTE: I love old Classico® bottles which is one reason I buy their sauce! You can actually reuse them for canning because the openings are the same size as small-mouthed canning jars.]

Many recommend, after the extract is ready, to just keep topping off with more alcohol, keeping the beans in the extract as is. Or, you can strain your extract and decant into smaller bottles for gift-giving. [More on this in a few months.] Oh, and I almost forgot: the above recipe yielded me 176 oz of percolating extract: or 5 quarts and 1 pint, or 1 gallon and 1 quart and 1 pint! That's a lot of vanilla.

For the past month I've also been using the smaller Tahitian beans in some of my preserving and canning infusions. So when one of those beans is "spent" I recyled it into vanilla sugar. Just take a pint jar and place used bean (or two) into it, put on tight lid, and let rest on your pantry shelf. Use sugar for dusting baked goods, in tea, etc.

Next on Lifetime®: What Mommy Really Does in the Pantry–The Catherine Pond Story
My husband will be horrified to see this sink, until he finds out it was only a vanilla bender!

Once you make and use your own homemade vanilla extract, you won't want to buy store-bought again. It is more affordable, more luscious, more infused. And, you can keep adding to it if you like. It's the extract that never ends.

So here's to holiday baking, gifting to my fabulous baker and foodie friends, and many winter custards ahead ~

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

Easy Fall Supper

2011-09-27T00:29:00.001-04:00

With all of the canning in these past few weeks and after-school basketball practice and general mayhem around here, I'm starting to wean us back into decent weeknight suppers that are ready by 7pm when everyone walks in the door, or 6pm if an earlier practice. Perhaps the operative phrase would be "weaning myself" into preparing them!

In Lexington last week we got some ground lamb at Critchfield Meats (I now go to Lexington with a large list of supplies, as if we are on a rare wagon train outing to buy and barter in town, which we kind of are: those items we can't find locally––and I do look). I was up there primarily to find some interesting Japanese ingredients for our youngest son's International Food Fest (thank you Hibari Japanese Grocery) and, of course, that invariably led me to Good Foods Market & Café (where we actually got an impromptu sushi lesson!), a requisite stop at Target and the Clinique counter at Dillard's (don't ask: OK, it has to do with a very large age spot on my face––plus it is "free gift" season so you get more bang for the buck), all followed by a marvelous late lunch at Masala out at Beaumont Centre (their lamb rogan josh is divine and, fortunately, my husband agreed: I believe I've now successfully converted my Pond men to the joys of Indian cuisine––baby steps).

There is a fair bit of waste, as with cabbage, but my chickens will be happy!

We could have lamb at least once a week in our family, not including leftovers, but it is still a "treat meat" for us (until we one day, perhaps, raise our own). I usually do a roast and then a curry with the leftovers. This week I decided to make a traditional Shepherd's Pie using ground lamb instead of ground beef. Our oldest son Henry loves Brussels sprouts, as do I. It is also an easy vegetable to prepare. We had some apples around and we're trying to avoid bread, so here's what I did. Dinner was ready and on the table within an hour plus.

Prep Work

The often ill-prepared, and misunderstood,
Brussels sprout is one of my favorite fall vegetables.

Le petit choux est parfait!

Peel and start your potatoes to the boil (my youngest, bless him, peeled about 10 medium potatoes for me). I always throw in a hearty dash of sea salt.
Rinse, peel off the outer layers, and chop off a bit at the stem end of the Brussels sprouts (I only buy fresh). Cut them in half.
Place on a buttered cookie or baking sheet and lightly drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt and a bit of cinnamon (this will enhance their flavor after they caramelize in the oven).
Set oven for 400 degrees: you can either roast the Brussels sprouts for 15 minutes first, and keep warm, or cook along with the casserole at 375 degrees. Just watch them as they will roast and caramelize quickly.

My favorite kitchen item is my husband's old farmer friend Norris Patch's "spider" (aka skillet).
He purchased it at a New Hampshire estate sale after Norris passed away many years ago.
It's nicely seasoned and everything is delicious when prepared in it: it's a hefty size, too.

Valley View Farm Shepherd's Pie

~ Serves 5-6 hungry people (or 8 daintier eaters)

10 medium potatoes (or 5 large)
2 medium onions (or 1 large), chopped fine
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
2 pounds ground lamb (or ground beef, or even ground turkey)
3 Tablespoons flour
Beef broth (1/2-1 cup)
salt and pepper
dash of Worcestershire sauce
1 quart +/- corn kernels (canned, frozen or fresh)
1 stick butter
1/2 cup cream
paprika

While potatoes are cooking, sauté onion and minced garlic in large skillet with olive oil or bit of butter. Cook for a few minutes until translucent.
Add ground lamb and chop together until well browned, about 5-10 minutes.
Drain fat as much as you can (not necessary but a good idea).
Add flour and stir to make a roux-like mixture, followed by a 1/2-1 cup water with a beef stock cube (or 1/2-1 cup of beef broth).
Season with salt and fresh ground pepper.
Spoon mixture into greased 2 quart casserole or baking dish.
In same skillet, quickly sauté corn in a 1/2 stick of butter until cooked. Add 1/4 cup cream. Spoon mixture on top of the meat mixture in the dish.
Drain potatoes, if you haven't already, and mash (I use an old-fashioned potato masher) with 1/2 stick of butter and 1/4 cup cream. You can add milk, or half-and-half, but make sure it is whole milk! You can also adjust the quantity of butter and cream/milk to your desired consistency but make sure the potatoes will hold their peak.
Ladle hearty dollops of mashed potatoes on top of the corn layer. Spread a bit, as if frosting a cake, and sprinkle potato topping with paprika.
Bake in 375 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes [you might want to put a cookie sheet under the dish on the next rack to catch any drips that might "spill over" while cooking.]

While Baking

We're trying to avoid dessert and baked goods (note: trying) so imagine my husband's surprise when he suggested I bake some apples and I said, sure! I've never done this before. I've put them into pie, crisp, cobbler, cookies, cakes and bread. I've made them into applesauce and apple butter. But I've never taken a lovely apple, cored it, set it in a buttered dish, spooned brown sugar into it, added a bit of butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon. And that, my friends, is easier than pie!

You can throw the apple dish (an old Le Creuset gratin dish or pottery casserole baker works great) in with the main dishes to bake alongside. Just take them out when mushy or bubbly. Serve with vanilla ice cream, of course! [I had mine with a small, quite decadent, container of Liberté, a favorite plum-fig yogurt that I picked up in Lexington. Thankfully, it is not sold locally because it is rich in both taste, calories and price. A true treat.]

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

'Obsessive Canning Disorder' Much?

2011-09-25T12:45:00.000-04:00

Today my daughter asked me on the phone, concerned, "Mom, why are you canning so much?" I had to laugh (not the "heh heh, heh heh" nutty kind of laugh but a real scoffing kind of laugh) because I was reminded of this image, right (internet source unknown), and that my youngest son had asked the same question last week.

You've heard it here, first: Obsessive Canning Disorder. I believe I have discovered another shade of the OCD spectrum, folks, like "Obsessive Cleaning Disorder" which likely afflicts a wider domestic population. Zombies or not, we will have one full larder this winter!

Part of the vast cellar storehouse belonging to some Old Order Mennonites:
as this particular family doesn't have a freezer, they really do can everything.

Here's the main reason why I can stuff, why I like to have food on hand, why I can justify a sense of food hoarding for my family (not to mention that these are difficult financial times and we are trying to rely less upon the grocery store, as well as to buy and consume locally grown food for a number of reasons):

“Of course…when I was girl…noself-respecting house was built without a basement and a fruit and vegetablecellar. From the time the first strawberries ripened, usually in late May,until the first snow fell, my mother’s chief household concern was her fruitcellar. By Halloween the cellar was filled. Sealed with paraffin in neatlylabeled containers were shelves of rich strawberry preserves, raspberry jam,orange marmalade and blueberries; jars of chili sauce, purple beets and yellowcorn; quarts of whole green tomato pickles, cucumber pickles; and crocks ofapple butter. On the bottom shelf, lying side by side, were a few bottles ofdandelion wine. Buried deep in rich brown dirt, against two of the walls, was awinter’s supply of potatoes, carrots and onions. Two stone crocks, holdingdozens of eggs 'put down' in liquid glass, stood against the third wall. To theleft of the door stood a bushel basket or two of red apples, filling the small,windowless room with their spicy odor. To the right of the door, on a shelfhand high, was a candle in a holder and a box of matches. Beneath the candleshelf on the floor was a mouse trap decorated with a tempting bit of cheese...Mother was justly proud of hercellar. She spent weeks standing over steaming preserve kettles, often on hotdays.”

And then there's Annie Curd, whom I quoted in my book, The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses, who wrote over a century ago:

"Our list of fall fruits is completed; the hard, back-breaking work is at an end, and we feel as if––well, we never wanted to see or taste jelly again. But there are few of us who do not in time regain an appetite for these dainty relishes, and who do not, after a rest, enjoy viewing the array upon our pantry shelves."

from "Fruit Jellies," The Home-Maker, August 1890

It's part of the seasonal rhythm here: buy local produce or grow it, put it in jars or freezer bags, eat some and store some. I will be grateful this winter when I open up the canning cupboard (we do not have a cellar, alas) and see all of those jars lined up ready to be opened and savored.

And the canning continues: we are in the midst of grape juice, grape jam [here's my recipe from an old blog post at In the Pantry–yikes, almost FIVE years ago!] and maybe spiced grapes over at the cottage and I must return to it. I may even can the contents of my 'what not' drawer (seriously). I promise more blog entries soon with recipes and photos in this realm.

You come back when you're ready!

Catherine

NOTE: The first quote, above, was one of many unused, and wonderful, quotes that I found while researching for my book, The Pantry–Its History and Modern Uses. I was limited to 100 pages, including photographs, so I found many more delicious quotes than I was able to use. This is from an article that appeared in American Cookery by Jane Hutchin. [“No More Cellars,” by JaneHutchin, American Cookery, April1941, Vol. XLV, No. 9, pp. 545-547]