 "Almost everything I know in the world, I learned from novels and memoirs and stories. I could practically draw you a city map of Milan, Rome, or Venice, even though I've never been to any of them. I've read about how to make the perfect Old Fashioned, how to tend a rose garden, how to butterfly a pork loin.
But then you find yourself standing at a bar or kneeling in the dirt or holding a very sharp chef's knife and you realize all at once that it doesn't matter what you've read or seen or think you know. You learn it, really learn it, with your hands. With your fingers and your knife, your nose and your ears, your tongue and our muscle memory, learning as you go." Shuana Niequist
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Upgraded Corn Fritters
1/4 c. flour 1 c. quick oats 1 T. sugar 1/2 t. baking powder 1/2 t. baking soda 1/4 t. cinnamon 1/8 t. salt 1 c. buttermilk 1 egg 2 T. melted butter 1 cob of corn cooked and cut off the cob 3 T. diced, jarred smoked red peppers 1/3 c. feta cheese. crumbled Mix dry and wet ingredients after combining separately. Cook on a hot griddle till dry around the edges. Flip and continue cooking until golden. Especially good with grilled and sliced London Broil and Rote Koln (red cabbage) or German sausages with homemade applesauce.  Jamie Oliver's Summer Pudding Summer Pudding (in Britain a pudding is any dessert, as in "the pudding course") Something to wait for all year, I promise. This is a perfect Summer Solstice tradition. My friend Ruth introduced me to this very simple, but very grand occasion for bone china, strong black tea and a long leisurely afternoon in the company of berries. (and friends!) Most recipes are very similar, though each cook will have her own ideal ratio/combination of berries - "ours" is always heavy on the raspberries. 2 lbs. mixed summer berries (raspberries, red-currants, strawberries, black-currants, blueberries, blackberries,) scant 1/2 cup of sugar (to taste) Juice of ½ orange or one lemon 8-10 slices soft white bread, crusts removed whipped or clotted cream to serve fresh mint leaves, whole berries for garnish Choose a round bowl with smooth sides for your mould, (this is similar to an upside down cake) grease lightly with butter or oil. Combine the berries (quarter the strawberries) with the sugar and lemon juice and simmer until soft. (5-10 minutes). Meanwhile, cut the crusts from the bread and press the slices into the bowl as a lining. (reserving some for the "bottom" of the pudding.) Scoop berries with juice into the bread mould and make a "lid" with the remaining slices. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and weight it with something heavy. Chill a long while (overnight is great.) To serve, invert pudding quickly on a large plate. Let it rest a moment or two before removing the mould. Garnish with cream, mint sprig and whole berries.  Our Empty Nest NY GreensCooked lettuce? Yep, it's a thing, especially in New York State where this wonderful dish is known as "Utica Greens" after the city where people of Italian decent enjoy Greens cook-offs and a friendly rivalry for the title of Best Utica Greens. I'm renaming them, "Empty Nest NY Greens" for a couple of reasons, a) children may not appreciate the idea of cooked lettuce or the snappy bite of this dish, b) we always called delicacies like this "adult food" at our house which enlarged foodie curiosity in the children and reserved the lion's share for us, c) because now that the children are grown, my Inamorato and I can sometimes afford to eat at the wonderful Delmonico's where this dish is an outstanding treat, d) because we have discovered them as a twosome (again) these greens have become a sign and symbol to us that there are always new things to discover with fledglings or back to being lovebirds, and e) we have gathered food memories wherever we have lived and it is time to write the NY cache. I wasn't bold enough to ask the chef for his recipe but I tried my hand with this newspaper clipping (with a couple of adjustments) and they were pretty darn close!  Ingredients:
2 heads escarole 4 thin slices of prosciutto sliced (or 1/2 cup ham, bacon or pancetta) 2-6 cloves chopped garlic (to taste) 1 cup chopped onion Olive Oil 2 -3 Hot Italian peppers seeded and Julienned (Cherry Peppers in a jar are ok) 1/2 c. Italian seasoned bread crumbs 1/4 c. Pecorino Romano grated (I used 1/2c. Asiago) 1 c. chicken broth Salt and Pepper Method: 1. pour yourself a glass of red to drink whilst cooking. 2. wash greens really well and slice in 1 inch strips 3. blanch greens in boiling salted water for two minutes and cool quickly in ice water. Drain well 4. saute the onion till translucent, add garlic and peppers but don't blacken, add the broth for a minute to flavor. 5. add the reserved escarole for one minute just to combine remove from heat. 6. combine salt and pepper, bread crumbs and cheese as a topping for greens in an oven-proof casserole or pan. 7. bake till cheese melts in a hot oven. We had these as an appetizer with good bread at D's but they are fantastic as a side dish and I know some (large-ish) children who would not object to a hearty breakfast of such.  "Sun setting over Lake," Turner 1840 "Traditional societies personally transmit and personally use knowledge. It doesn't exist in books that can be shelved; songs are not recorded on CDs that can be played at will. Knowledge exists only because one person gave it to another, and it is kept alive only by repeated use and personal transmission. How one learns something and uses that knowledge is important in traditional societies, more than in ours. We seem to feel that whatever is to be learned exists independently from the way it is transmitted. If, for example, one person learns one thing from a parent, another from a teacher, a third from a computer, we like to assume that they all know the same thing. You simply know as a fact that the earth revolves around the sun, whether you absorbed that fact in early childhood, learned it in adulthood, figured it out on your own, had to reject religious belief to get there or learned it in English or in some other language. No matter how you learned it, it's a fact, and in our culture facts are seen as solid little building blocks, unchanged by how they are acquired or used." -Malcolm Margolan
 "Our" Plum Tart*
3/4c. plus 1-2 T. sugar 8 T. unsalted butter 1 c. unbleached, sifted flour 1 t. baking powder 2 eggs pinch salt 24 halves of blue plums pitted 1 t. cinnamon 1. arrange rack in lower third of oven. Preheat to 350 degrees F. 2. blend sugar and butter in electric mixer. Add eggs, flour, b. powder and salt. Place in un-greased springform pan and press plums skin side down into the dough. sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. 3. Bake 40-50 minutes till tests done. Serve warm or room temp. preferably with vanilla ice cream. * I look forward to making this every fall. I don't know where I got the recipe originally. If it is yours, Thank you! Write me and I will adjust my title. THE WORLD OF WORK AS A POET WOULD LIKE IT TO BE
There is no point in work unless it absorbs you like an absorbing game. If it doesn’t absorb you if it’s never any fun, don’t do it. When a man goes out to work he is alive like a tree in spring, he is living, not merely working. When the hindus weave thin wool into long, long lengths of stuff with their thin dark hands and their wide dark eyes and their still souls absorbed they are like slender trees putting forth leaves, a long white web of living leaf, the tissue they weave, and they clothe themselves in white as a tree clothes itself in its own foliage, As with cloth, so with houses, ships, shoes, wagons or cups or loaves. Men might put them forth as a snail its shell, as a bird that leans its breast against its nest, to make it round, As the turnip models its round root, as the bush makes its own flowers and gooseberries, putting them forth, not manufacturing them, And cities might be as once they were, bowers grown out from the busy bodies of people’ And so it will be again, men will smash the machines. At last, for the sake of clothing himself in his own leaf-like cloth tissued from his life, and dwelling in his own bowery house, like a beaver’s nibbled mansion And drinking from cups that came off his fingers like flowers off their five-fold stem, he will cancel the machines we have got. D H Lawrence 1885-1930 Blueberry-Lemon Tart
Ingredients Pastry: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons sugar Pinch kosher salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, in chunks 1 large egg, separated 2 tablespoons ice water, plus 1 teaspoon Filling: 4 large eggs 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 cup fresh lemon juice (about 5 lemons) 1/4 cup heavy cream 1 lemon, zested Pinch kosher salt 1 pint blueberries Directions To make the pastry, pulse the flour, sugar, and salt together in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the dough resembles cornmeal. Add the egg yolk and 2 tablespoons ice water and pulse again until the dough pulls together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle. Roll the dough up onto the pin and lay it inside a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough into the edges of the pan and fold the excess dough inside to reinforce the rim. Cover the tart pan with plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator for another 30 minutes to rest. To bake the shell, heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and prick the bottom of the dough with a fork. Cover the shell with a piece of parchment paper and fill it with pie weights or dry beans. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the parchment and weights. Lightly beat the egg white with 1 teaspoon water and brush it onto the bottom and sides of the tart shell; set aside to cool. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon juice, cream, zest, and salt. Add the blueberries to the cooled tart shell and pour the filling over the blueberries. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. The curd should jiggle slightly when done. Cool to room temperature, remove from the tart ring, and serve. Thank you chef Tyler Florence. This was a highlight of our weekend.  (thanks to Mother Earth News). Chickens are great at eating pests. If I ever start anew with a garden, this is some clever negotiating I'd like to try.
I have been enjoying E.B. White's meditation on chickens this week. "The Hen: An Appreciation," in The Second Tree from the Corner "Chickens do not always enjoy an honorable position among city-bred people, although the egg, I notice, goes on and on. Right now the hen is in favor. The war has deified her (could we say the Recession?-ed.) and she is the darling of the home front, feted at conference tables, praised in every smoking car, her girlish ways and curious habits the topic of many an excited husbandman to whom yesterday she was stranger without honor or allure. My own attachment to the hen dates from 1907, and I have been faithful to her in good times and bad. Ours has not always been an easy relationship to maintain. At first, as a boy in a carefully zoned suburb, I had neighbors and police to reckon with; my chickens had to be as closely guarded as an underground newspaper. Later, as a man in the country, I had my old friends in town to reckon with, most of whom regarded the hen as a comic prop straight out of vaudeville....Their scorn only increased my devotion to the hen. I remained loyal, as a man would to a bride whom his family received with open ridicule. Now it is my turn to wear the smile, as I listen to the enthusiastic cackling of urbanites, who have suddenly taken up the hen socially and who fill the air with their newfound ecstasy and knowledge and the relative charms of the New Hampshire Red and the Laced Wyandotte. You would think, from their nervous cries of wonder and praise that the hen was hatched yesterday in the suburbs of New York, instead of in the remote past in the jungles of India. To a man who keeps hens, all poultry lore is exciting and endlessly fascinating. Every spring I settle down with my farm journal and read, with the same glazed expression on my face, the age-old story of how to prepare a brooder house...."  Sorrel is the first thing up in the garden.
Sorrel Soup French Style from Honest Food.net You will need a fair bit of sorrel to make this recipe, as it cooks down into a puree alarmingly fast. You can buy sorrel at some fancy supermarkets, a lot of farmer’s markets in the spring — or you can garden your own or forage for it. (If you want to plant it in your garden, you can buy sorrel seed online.) If you can’t find it, substitute watercress and use sour cream instead of regular cream. Serve this with bread and a nice white wine, or a floral beer like a Belgian. Serves 4-6. Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 25 minutes
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"Ideas
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"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
--Charlotte Mason
Virtual Life?
A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
In Appreciation
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
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