Birthday Boy

Happy birthday, Stephen! It's cold and rainy out, a good day for celebrating indoors. This is the kind of weather I was born into about a quarter of a century ago, or so my mother tells me: a foggy and damp December morning, the kind of weather I still love. It does chill you to the bone, though. Brrr. I'm glad we've got bellies full of birthday cookies and birthday risotto to keep us warm.

We went out for brunch to celebrate (nothing says birthday like a stack of pancakes!), then saw the Drawn to Detail exhibit at DeCordova. The museum has a huge staircase flooded with natural light, and it was cozy to watch the sleet and rain run down the windows while we looked at the delicate works on paper. There were some prints, an animation project, and many intricate drawings, some so large and detailed that they made our heads spin.

I've made substantial progress in my November book, but I won't finish it tonight. I've got too much work to do before tomorrow. I'm procrastinating, as usual, but for an unusual reason: one of my assignments is to write a self-reflection essay based on a presentation I gave, which means that I need to watch and re-watch a video of myself and scrutinize my performance. You know how hearing your own voice on the answering machine can make you cringe and ask, "Do I really sound like that?" This is like that, but longer and in greater detail, and I'm being graded on my critique.

So let's talk about something else for a minute, until I absolutely have to go finish my work. How about Thanksgiving travel? I've spent a lot of time in the car over the past week (7 hours round-trip to my parents' house + 6 hours to visit my grandparents) and here are the lessons I learned:

1. Driving on the Tuesday before and the Saturday after Thanksgiving is much easier than on the Wednesday before and the Sunday after, but the Mass Pike is always crazy east of I-84.
2. The content on NPR is better on weekdays than weekends, unless you're really into opera.
3. E-Z Pass is worth its weight in gold, even if it has a silly name (actually, I think mine's a Fast Lane, since I bought it in Massachusetts).
4. If you want to travel by train between Boston and Albany on a holiday weekend, reserve early.

I wanted to take the train to New York state, but it sold out really early. I may try again at Christmas. I love the idea of traveling across the state in a comfy train car, reading and not worried about traffic or road conditions. My mom suggested the bus as an alternative, but it doesn't hold the same appeal for me. My vision of the bus = crowded, sitting in traffic, watching a movie picked out by the bus company, whereas train travel = smooth, sitting by the window, plenty of leg room, quiet, snacks. Maybe I'll take a train ride next weekend, just for the fun of it. Go to the end of the commuter line and look around, see what we find; public transportation as the doorway to adventure.

Something from the Oven

These weeks of the semester are particularly heavy with deadlines, so aside from going to work, class, and the gym, I rarely venture outside anymore. Instead, in between papers and PowerPoints, I've been baking.

This weekend, I made marshmallows. I've wanted to try this ever since I saw a recipe in a Christmas book of my mom's when I was in high school, but the ingredients freaked me out. (Corn syrup? Can you even buy corn syrup?) Now that we've made caramels a few times, the ingredients and the candy thermometer and the weird terminology (soft ball stage, etc.) are familiar and comfortable. Well, as comfortable as things can be when boiling-hot sugar lava is involved.

But I can't say that I was prepared for how messy this stuff would be. It's all stick and no structure: too thick to flow into the pan on its own, but not substantial enough to coax along with a spatula. If you were having a bad day already, trying to wrestle the molten fluff-stuff into a neat rectangle would probably make you cry.

Luckily, I was having a good day, so it was mostly just funny. As we pried the last bits of marshmallow goo from the sugar-encrusted utensils, I told Stephen about an episode of the Muppet Show (not Muppet Babies, which I've actually never seen, but the live show with celebrity guests) where Dr. Bunsen Honeydew develops a Super Adhesive that sticks to everything in the studio. That's kind of what our kitchen looked like on Sunday afternoon. (Update: I found it on YouTube! Wow, that's a blast from my past. Gilda Radner is the guest, if you can believe it.)

Other things I've been cooking up:

Carrot almond muffins, with the last of our CSA carrots. I made these when we were going over to my boss's house for dinner one night. I really like this recipe, which can be modified to fit any combination of nuts and fruit/vegetable. (As always, I got it from here.) There's a variation in the book for pumpkin bread with hazelnuts, which sounds magnificent. We've still got some uncarved pumpkins on the windowsill--I wonder if they would be good for muffins? Or do you have to use sugar pumpkins when baking?

The recipe made a lot of batter, so I made some mini muffins, too. These were perfectly bite sized, and I got in the habit of stuffing three or four in my mouth on the walk home from the gym. I'd tell myself that they're full of beta carotene.

They're also full of molasses, which I substituted for half of the sugar. I love the smell of molasses. I first tried it when I was anemic a couple of years ago and a friend told me to try putting blackstrap molasses into oatmeal, applesauce, and anything else I cooked. I didn't like it in most of those things, but I do love it in gingerbread. Smells like Christmas to me.

I've also been making good use of these implements, which we got on our trip to the Cape last month. The honey is from Plimoth Plantation, the donut mix from a gourmet food store, and the mixing bowl and corn pan are from a fancy kitchen shop. Food and kitchen shopping is pretty much the only kind of shopping that I like to do on vacation, and luckily Stephen feels similarly. He's been making donuts (excuse me, doughnuts) from that mix, and, like most fried things, they are heavenly.

I'm kind of a sucker for most shaped pans. I don't like Bundt pans for some reason--I guess I like cakes in traditional shapes, and the ones that look like castles or flowers just seem silly to me. But I do like shaped pans for other things, like madeleine pans for cookies and corn-shaped pans for cornbread.

Our first attempt to bake cornbread in this didn't work out very well--it was tasty, but it didn't pick up any of the decorative detail from the pan. Maybe we'll have to try another recipe. Or maybe I should try baking non-corn bread in here? A sort of culinary faux bois? Tricky.

Change

Here I am on my way to vote on Tuesday afternoon. I was expecting a long line because it was around the block and down the street in the morning, but there were only a handful of people when I got there at 4:30. I was glad I had gotten up early that day so I had time to figure out a red, white and blue outfit. I felt restless and excited all day, like it was Christmas Eve--a nervous and hopeful Christmas Eve. Everyone at work was talking about the ballot questions in Massachusetts: Would people really vote to abolish the state income tax? (Luckily, they did not.) Stephen and I stayed up late that night to see the results come in and watch the concession and victory speeches. When they called the election for Obama, of course I felt elated. But I also felt--and I wasn't expecting this--relieved. I felt like I could stop worrying about things. Not that there isn't still plenty to worry about, but I now feel that our national problems are in the hands of people smarter than me, and I don't dread the decisions they're going to make. It's a nice change.

Harvest

We got our last CSA box of the season yesterday. There were lots of roots in it, some huge kohlrabi and a couple of butternut squash. We've still got a dozen carrots in the fridge; I'm adding grated carrot to everything I make these days. We got some popcorn-on-the-cob this week, too. The kernels are a beautiful deep red color, drying on the windowsill. The farmer, Karen, says it should be ready to eat by Thanksgiving.

Here's what we got in a particularly colorful box a few weeks ago. The viney things with pods are edamame:

The farm share isn't cheap, but I think we'll get one again next year. I love having fresh things in the fridge. The cashiers at the grocery store must think I'm very anti-veggie, because all I buy at the store these days is pasta, rice, milk and cheese. Everything else comes out of the box.

We managed to get a winter share, so that will extend the season a bit: it consists of two big pick-ups, one before Thanksgiving and another in mid-December. We'll have to try to find a cool and dark place for a makeshift root cellar. Then it's all foreign veggies for six months or so.

One thing I really liked about the share was learning what grows well in Massachusetts, and when. We got some surprising things, like fall raspberries and a bajillion hot peppers in September. I also got to try a lot of things that I would never have bought myself. I found out that I like spinach, cabbage, and bok choy, and that I don't like radishes, turnips, or rutabagas. Kohlrabi is best when grated, salted, and fried. Winter squash is more fun than summer squash. There is such a thing as too much lettuce. Dill in large quantities is trouble. The smell of basil makes everyone smile. And small garlic cloves are almost more work than they're worth. Almost.

Plimoth

On our way back from the Cape, we spent Columbus Day at Plimoth Plantation. If not for the lack of plumbing and electricity, I think I could happily live in this town. I love the little houses. Stephen and I walked through every single one, comparing favorites like prospective buyers. Some of the houses were divided into two rooms, but most had only one, with an attic overhead for storage. Each had a bed, a table with chairs, and a big hearth. The windows had greased paper screens to keep the wind out. They must have been freezing in the winter.

If we lived here, we'd have a few goats in the yard, and maybe a sheep. We would grow potatoes and chard, but no fennel. (I don't like the licorice taste.) We'd make pumpkin bread and walk along the Eel River on warm afternoons.


I visited Plimoth Plantation with my school in seventh grade, when we took a three-day trip to Boston. I feel kind of bad for the people who were there that day; I'm sure it wasn't fun to share the experience with 200 thirteen-year-olds. I don't remember much about that visit except the view from the top of the hill as we entered the town. I was surprised to find it so unchanged on this trip.

One thing I like about Plimoth is how everything is so carefully made, so necessary but beautiful in its simplicity, from the wool blankets to the handmade pottery. It reminds me of the Shaker aesthetic, which I also love. I saw an article about the Plantation in the November issue of Living a few weeks ago, which is what prompted me to plan this visit in the first place. It was a great time of year to be there. Everything looked like New England, like autumn, like Thanksgiving. I'm a little sad about the weather turning cold, but this made me excited to go home and bake carrot bread. And grateful for modern conveniences like radiators and indoor plumbing.

Yurt

We went yurt camping last weekend!

The first time I stayed in a yurt, or even saw a yurt or heard the word, was almost seven years ago, in my first year of college. I was in the Outdoor Association--I think that's what it was called at the time; it had several names over the years--and we went winter camping in a yurt in the Adirondacks. Our leader explained that it wasn't really winter camping, because we had a permanent shelter and a woodstove and got to lock our stuff up in the yurt during the day. I did "real" winter camping later and found out that he was right.

There weren't any bunks in the yurt on that trip, so we all slept on the floor--eight or nine of us. It got bitterly cold at night, and we took turns waking up to stoke the fire. I woke everyone up at 2am with my loud newspaper rustling as I tried to bring the embers back to life one night. Even with the fire, my face would get cold as I slept, so I would curl into a ball at the foot of my mummy bag, trying to seal up the head hole. You're not supposed to breathe into your sleeping bag, but I can't abide a cold nose.

The yurt we stayed in last weekend is in Shawme-Cromwell State Forest on Cape Cod, and you can rent it for just $40 a night. It seemed a little silly because there were 6 bunks in there, and just two of us, but I really liked it. No bugs and lots of fresh air. They even had track lighting and a little space heater inside! The things we packed were a weird mix of road trip and camping paraphernalia and housewares: a map, pillows, toothbrushes, headlamps, Smartwool socks, a table lamp, some French bread and a block of dill havarti.

The Cape was pretty quiet compared to the summer months; this was the last vacation weekend for the season. We got ice cream from The Smuggler on the day before it closed for the winter. We had dinner in Chatham one night, and in Sandwich another. There were crowds here and there, but what struck me was that almost everyone we saw was over 65. Everywhere we went, there were gangs and gangs of seniors. I don't know if that's what the Cape looks like when the tourists leave, or if they were tourists, but there were a lot of them.

We spent most of the time at the beach. It was far too cold to swim, but we sat near the water and read and talked. The beach in Dennis was incredibly shallow, and the strip of exposed sand widened spectacularly over the course of an hour as the tide went out. The sky was cloudless, and the sun was so bright that it was almost oppressive. There were other people on the beach, but as they followed the tide out, they became mere specks on the horizon. It felt quiet and bright and still, like a surrealist painting.

We visited a beach in Sandwich on Saturday night just as the sun was setting. This one was full of people starting bonfires and listening to music. The waves were quiet, and the moon was brilliant, almost as bright as the setting sun. We could see bats flying around, eating up the last of the mosquitoes, I guess. We went back to the yurt and roasted marshmallows over a campfire. It was chilly out, and I put on thick warm socks to keep warm.

Fall was in the air.

The Chemex in Action

I'm sick, so we called off our planned camping trip this weekend and Stephen made breakfast: Rice Krispies with milk, and coffee in the new Chemex. This is our first coffeemaker, so I'm dreaming up all the things we can make now: coffee ice cream, coffee popsicles, cafe au lait...

Of course, it's too cold for popsicle-making these days. I cooked up some applesauce this afternoon. The Jonamacs we had were pretty tart, so I added maple syrup along with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Mark Bittman recommended adding salt, too, so I did that and it enhanced the flavors nicely. My mom used to make applesauce in the fall when the house was chilly, so it (like so many things) makes me thing of her.

I finished my September book last night, just three days late. I ended up sticking with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and it was different than I expected. I really didn't know what to expect; I'd never heard of it before I found it on a bookshelf at my parents' house, an ancient hardcover without a dust jacket. The spine crumbled every time I opened it. Most of the books I read these days are contemporary non-fiction, so this was a nice change. I came to really like Francie and spent a while thinking about what her life would be like after the book ended. I always find it so jarring to finish a book, and since the establishment of the Book Club of One, they seem as short-lived as mayflies*. I used to read just a few each year.

* "The lifespan of an adult mayfly can vary from just 30 minutes to one day depending on the species." - The Bastion of All Credible Knowledge (c) Adam M.