Planting Cabbages

i still put the bowl of milk down for our shadow

~ our black lab. she’s at the vet this morning being x-rayed, getting a head start on soothing her inflamed ears and itchy eyes. seems she has allergies, and i pray that’s all she has.

 

and as a mother, and no i am not the mother of shadow (her mother’s name was chaos) but in caring for her, the cycle of nurturing is fed.

 

men can be mother’s too, i don’t intend to not include them in these conjectures. that i live with a nurturing (and at times ridiculously outrageous and hilarious) man was verified these last few weeks. this was not always so. he is older now. when our sons were young - he was much more of a father than a mother.

 

will this arouse any controversy? i wonder how you feel about mothers, fathers, AND THE TRANSITIONING OF LIFE.

 

women can, need to be at times, and are fathers.

 

my mother, aileen, was definitely more like what i thought of as a father. she was exacting, never emotionally close, stern, UTTERLY demanding.

 

of course there are many ways to think about mothers and fathers.

 

i explore these themes in city of ladies. how life changes, the people you meet along the way often fill in the gaps for what you were missing, or if you have been scarred – the same chaos follows you, shadows you, if you will. and you follow that path religiously because it is so familiar, even if it is unhealthy.

 

recently i've watched and read both these excellent revealing sides of mother’s.

 

sunshine cleaning - sisters dealing with the loss of their estranged mother and her memories

 

 

stone angels  - which is a book of note from canadian author margaret laurence

 

over a long conversation with a dear childhood friend, brenda, we shared how deeply devoted we were to our children (all sons) and how even now, as they are grown – and mostly grown – brenda’s youngest son is 15, would that we could, we would rescue them from any type of pain. we just would.

 

having losses of my own, i know there is no one and no way we could.  despite our devotion, we can’t save them from tragic losses or the possibility of happiness - life. we can prepare them to weather these days. to be strong in themselves, and even to begin to know that even on the most troublesome days come along they can handle it. 

 

but there is the table. around it sharing the experiences of daily satisfaction and deep flavors of sustenance.

 

but also being intensely devoted to the history of cooking and cuisine - i have pondered how these concepts of nurturing and non, can be consumed in a meal or a dish. 

 

and you are too, or you wouldn't be here ~ right?

 

 

i believe we encounter them every day at the table.

 

at the bread counter the other day i had an exchange with a young mother of several daughters.

 

she was distraught over feeding her children. she did not like to cook. but she did because, well, i am not sure why. i think she felt she had too. it is expected. she is a full-time mom (aren't all mothers?) at home, with perhaps another part time job ~ but clearly she enjoys being a mom - except this one straw.   

 

what she cooked, they didn't like.

 

she felt dissapointed. and she let them know.

 

battles ensued at the table.

 

she felt dissapointed again. they preferred store bought yogurt and bagels to her grilled vegetables or to her lovingly braised stews and soups.  she thought perhaps she would hold dessert back as a prize.

 

if you eat this, then this.

 

i offered the what if she arranged little bites of all of it on their plates.

even dessert.

 

little little bites. to entice their hunger.

 

what do you think?

 

i didn't get to tell her, but i also think if they can cook together, this might help take the pressure off of mom.

 

here is a smattering of mothers, both contemporary and ancient.

 

cafe mama

 

recent story - boston

 

another recent story - celtic

 

delia, the baby horse’s story - ancient heartache, maybe you've heard?

 

and shadow, you’ll be coming home today.

 

but drats! in the last sip of my morning’s coffee, was wax. any idea why?

 

the reason is in our recipe for this morning. ingredients from my favorite landscapes in la belle france.

 

i hope it nurtures you.

 

in this season.

 

today.

 

salt and honey walnuts with floc’d figs 

serve as an appetizer for a special dinner.

 

the esplette pepper or piment d'esplette comes from the basque region of france and has been used there since around 1523. adjust to suit your taste, then uummm!

 

1 cups walnuts

 

1 cup sliced dried figs

 

1 cup floc de gascogne

 

2 teaspoons olive oil

 

1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt

 

2 tablespoons sugar

 

1/4 teaspoon piment d'esplette, or more to taste

 

2 tablespoons honey

 

mix together the salt, sugar, and pepper.

 

set aside in a small bowl.

 

soak the figs in floc for a couple of hours.

 

when ready to cook, drain the floc (should any remain, its yours, drink up)

 

heat a wok or heavy skillet over medium heat till hot. 

 

add the oil, give it a swirl, then add the nuts. 

 

stir well, but gently till the nuts are warmed, but not burned.

 

add in the figs.

 

sprinkle on the salt, stir, then shake over the sugar a little bit at a time.

 

add the honey and continue stirring till it’s melted and glazes the nuts.

 

remove to a buttered baking sheet and allow to cool and harden.

 

for an aperitif serve with vin de noix, a sweet wine made from green

 

walnuts picked and crushed on st. jeans’ day, june 24, in gascony.

 

 

make no bones about it

excuse my absence here. but i’m back with my adventure.

the last two weeks have passed, though i can’t exactly say they have been, ahem, painless.

 

shoulder surgery is part of it. accomplished. mobility mounting.

make no mistake the results will be magical. they say. no. quite possibly even splendid. but i must be patient.

 

the story behind the story turned out quite different than what i had expected. isn't that usually so?

 

months ago, they hushed and gave me my mri results.

 

they patted my arm and shook their heads about my rotator cuff, well, i scuffed my feet out of the examining room.

 

now what?

surgery.

that's what.

 

perhaps i didn’t make it clear enough to the docs.

 

this is my right arm, if you please.

 

my well-honed julienne, batonnet, brunois, oblique, and paysanne chip-chopper. 

 

alright. i gazed at the traffic from my stance in the middle of the road. 

 

then, i smiled and traced my by then “multi-terrifying tear” in my rotato cuff, from a bike ride 15 years ago.

 

in secret i tell you, i wanted my injured cuff to stem from this.

 

not only to have that story to tell. but to be true.

i live in a family of guys. and i am not one.

 

when my son, erick or jaryd, or my husband, rich, hands me a badmitten racket, they fight over who will get me.

 

not because of my powerful serve, but because the birdie will never meet the racket. 

 

maybe you have this problem? my racket is the racket plagued with giant and invisible holes. i swear.

 

but now at last i had a hero story to tell (and tell again, as is the tradtion at our table) and followed by surgery, well, my place amongst my fellow and familial wounded and famously so was secured. at last.

come along as i tell you what happened 15 years ago.

 

i was on a bike. 20 miles out. deep into alamance county along the old greensboro highway. a beautiful clear day. the kind of day where the horizon goes on forever. a day so clear...ok you get the idea. the sun was high in the sky.

 

it was likely this same time of year. late september. we had stopped for a picnic lunch. which if you knew my husband you know this means we had a power bar and a gatorade. yum.

 

to back up a little bit too, this was during the period of my career when i trekked out to now famous celebrity dairy in silk hope to learn how to make goat cheese from the mother expert, fleming pfann (today, what i did would be named far more romantically. my career would be heralded as an apprentice of fromage and i would have written a year in the curd, which became an overnight sensation that propelled me to the world cheese festival and circumference, be a best seller and i would have been on oprah)

 

but back to the bike. the sweat and the fears.

 

i was too far out and too far into the ride to turn around. i had another ten miles to go. when to what did my wondering eyes appear than a feast of flying beasties. they swooped over the hill from lindley’s mill, turned south towards savannah and then suprised themselves and moi by smacking into my face at a zillion miles per hour. 

 

my arms whirled. my legs flailed.

 

and left their stations on the pedals. but all i churned up in the ditch was dirt. my palms swiped bug exoskeletons from my lips and nose and rubbed legs out continuing to gauge my eyes.

 

is this perhaps a little melodramatic, too embellished?

nah. what a story, don’t you agree?

 

but after surgery my report offered a grand bouffe of four items wrong with my shoulder.

 

1. a little cartilage worn and torn

 

2. a 1 cm tear in my cuff

 

3. shredding of my biceps tendon/ligament

 

this shredded ligament had to be, and was, reattached and this takes time to heal. and so it moves onto the platter as a piece de resistance in the buffet. garnished with a little fennel pollen and toasted coriander and cumin seeds. and the reason it will be take another two months till i am back to slicing and dicing to precision with my right arm.

 

and ….one more thing, which was. ta da da..

 

4. a bone spur

 

eeeeoooowww

 

isn't that something old people have?

 

the bone spur, as it turns out (or up to be more accurate) was the root of all these problems so to speak as each time i would lift my arm, well, you get the picture. sorry. 

 

so all along on this magical mystery tour of pre-surgery, post and now pt (physical therapy) the medical personnel have rubbed their chins or touched me on the arm, the left one – as they liken my situation to what they deem an appropriate culinary analogy.

 

so i could understand.

 

the doc imbued his med-speak with culinary affection’s such as the ever famous ”when you’re butchering a cow, it’s like all that white tissue you trim off from a filet mignon.”

 

or this one. “your tendon is like you know the pieces that hold the chicken legs together but that you don’t eat?” yummy, thanks doc.

but my favorite must be “you can’t rush the healing. its exactly like having a student who continuously asks about the cake in the oven, or the beef bourguignon, is it done? i can tell you’d hate that, wouldn’t you?”

 

they have a point. some things you cannot rush.

 

and so it is with much cause celebre that i tell you i have achieved the result of my goal that i had posted last time which was to finish the manuscript.

 

hallelujah. city of ladies is a fait accompli.

 

the manuscript is completely roasted, stewed, deglazed. and garnished.

 

revised, edited, and in the hands of writers/readers:

 

teresa, cathy, chris, bruno, barry, and kitty!

 

so there is an odd kismet/karma chameleon that the recipe today is for

marrow fritters.

 

these are part of the wedding feast on toussaint in the the village of ceres in my novel, city of ladies.

 

i must mention that when looking for more informationon marrow recipes it is important to realize that other cultures can and do refer to squash as marrow.

 

for what I referr to here is bone marrow as from veal and beef bones. 

 

if you love osso bucco, the real thing and various and assundry offal – you have already picked up your fork.

 

an expert is fergus henderson, the british chef, who is well-know for his “offal” work and delicious results.

 

the bone marrow fritter recipe here is from the book medieval kitchen: recipes from france and italy.

 

and for a look at exactly why bone marrow is so good for you. 

 

from the the weston a. price foundation www.westonaprice.org

 

but this blog is in no way ending, in fact there is so much more to say.

 

i hope you'll stay tuned.

 

in closing today, i'd like to share a bit of really nice and sumptuous news.

 

three of my mother sauce recipes; basil béchamel, shrimp and scallop veloute, and an orange ginger hollandaise sauce are featured in the chef's chefs section of a newly released book by ann prospero:

 

triangle chefs: their lives, recipes, and restaurants.

 

it takes a fabulous look inside the who’s, what’s, where’s and why’s of a chef’s life. ann is a wonderful writer.

 

and since you mention it, soon, more about mother’s.

 

and food.

 

and bread.

 

fabulous, nurturing, crusty, hole ridden, sink into my bones, bread.

deadline september 7. tying up loose ends before shoulder surgery on september 8.

 

resolving the thread of the map and the skull.

 

but tell me how do you manage your space and time?

i suspect you’ve had your struggles too.

 

 

 

when my youngest son, jaryd, returned from school in savannah this past may i felt a wonderful and proud kinship with him. not only of course as my son but also as another artist in our house who has projects (he is an animator) for which he must set goals to complete. his work is guided by deadlines. for the career he desires it is realistic for him to think this way. he was recently injured and though it could have been much worse, he reminds me not to focus on how bad or what could have been, he has recovered and i thank god, and embrace working side by side (his room is next to my writing room, but more on that below) as he focuses on his 11 second project with renewed energy as well.

 

 

one of the hardest things for me is transitioning and squirreling away from everyday life in my house.

 

since i last wrote, on august 20 we had our “vacation” at home.

 

over the years, and because our business, the c’est si bon! cooking school, is our home - the house wears a thousand faces.

 

at times a sanctuary, in winter a quiet place of rectitude.

 

but for the last twelve years our summers are bee hives of classes and youthful exuberance. opposite to many whose summers move towards relaxation and vacation, we look to september to relax as others are returning and vamping up their return to work/school mode.

 

those mornings, i devote one hour, thirty or even fifteen minutes before cooking classes to write.

 

 

 

 

way back in 1995 before c’est si bon! began i ate whole winters away. pondering, paragraphing and dreaming. i adored feeling newborn and hungrily chomped at the crown of bread.

 

for many years i wrote wherever i was. there was no one set place.

 

but there were various rooms.

 

in spring i chose our cherry kitchen table in the house kitchen where i could see the birds at the feeder. or the teak table in the dining room if we had had a recent spate of long dinners and people. (ha, this was all part of the same room, the great room, only a few feet separate the cherry table from the teak table.) in winter, i sometimes sank into the cushions of our green sofa also in the great room, especially if a fire was going.

 

sometimes, with the windows opened to the deck, i typed on the main computer in my office. if i was writing about the oven, i took the laptop to the table by the wood oven. or to the cooking school if it was silent of small voices and empty of high heels. upstairs in the loft. or i perched at the pastry table to look out the window over the front brick walk to watch the hens scurry away from the rooster. or i sat at the wood baking table next to the sink and the window that looks out over the garden.

 

and there were numerous settings. my lap top went wherever i went. france, italy, north carolina, virginia, new york, and colorado.

 

as the business grew, i knew something had to change. i want both my writing and teaching cooking to thrive.

 

 

 

this past spring i ask our oldest son, erick, first and then took over his room, for writing. i have my books. spiral notebooks with the most recent copy of the ms. photos. file boxes. my maps on the wall. my lamp with the st jacques shell.

 

erick moved out the fall after he graduated from high school, now five years ago. first to an apartment in durham and then to colorado where he is now a sushi sous chef in edwards.  he was recently home for a wonderful visit with his girlfriend. but even when he can come home for a bit he no longer stays in his room, but rather in the loft above the cooking school. this gives him some privacy and he rather likes (i like to think!) because of his career and our shared interests, staying in the cooking school.

 

my husband, god bless him, is not at all inclined to savor projects of the internal kind. he is a doer. a gardener. a builder. an engineer. he renews and requires being in the fray of people. he is the extrovert. his spirit explores the physical landscape. the rooster personality.

 

i could just say i’ll finish up after my surgery. but for many reasons I am ready to move on. i thoroughly love this story. but am ready to see it released, to begin its second journey. whatever that may be. i am satisfied with the tale. thankful to have been given the time, the support from family and friends, and the patience to explore, revise, and share.

 

enjoy wherever you are and i'll visit as city of ladies squeezes through one last passage.

 

and now back to work.

 

acciughe, roman sauce of anchovies, parsley, garlic, and capers

 

this combination is so luxurious and perfect to serve over:

 

roasted eggplants or zucchini

cooked orecchiette pasta

grilled chicken, beef or shrimp

2 tins of anchovies

 

6 cloves of garlic, chopped

 2 cups olive oil

1 1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley

 

2 tsp capers, chopped

 

place the anchovies, garlic, parsley and capers in a medium pot. add the olive oil.  warm over low heat until anchovies melt.  serve at room temperature.