Dianthus and His Backpack

Dianthus started preschool last week. Here he is on the first day of school; backpack, classroom-identifying armband, new school shoes and all.  I want to comment about how much he likes it and how it has ruined our evenings (afternoon pre-K is smack dab in the middle of what was much-needed nap time) but I'm sitting here crying a little about our son growing up, so I'd better leave it at that and return to my lesson plans.

Good Omens for Lucky STIR

Intrigued by a meta analysis of best books (13 top 100 list condensed into one), Janet and I chose Good Omens (#316) by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman to read for August STIR.  That it has a lucky title is just bonus.
I laughed in bed at the list of characters.  Join us if you will.
If you'd like my thoughts on other recent reads: Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (#118), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (#40), the first three Louise Penny Novels*, or The Language of Flowers, let me know.
It also looks like I will never get around to reviewing One Fifth Avenue (Candace Bushnell), The Hobbit, the other Jennifer Crusie books I've read, Marcus Samuelson's Yes, Chef, the newest Robin McKinley (Peagasus, which is in dire need of the second half of the story, to be released 2014), the Nora Ephron books, Betty Friedan's memoirs or much of anything else I've read in the last year.  I'd be happy to discuss if you ask questions.

*Abbreviated thought: you should read them.

Kimchi Reveals the Inherited Traits

The day we took off on a recent trip road trip to Kansas and Colorado, the Mister and I were running behind.  (Shocking, that, I know!)

Besides packing ourselves and the kids (for lounging, for hiking, for swimming, for hosting a croquet tournament, for going out of a special dinner, for attending a conference, for riding around at the ranch, and for presenting ethnobotanical improv at a semi-formal garden party*) and trying to clean the house, we spread mulch, because, unlike my parents, we don't have a sprinkle system to repair, and we made sauerkraut, kimchee and salsa. 

We had extra vegetables in the fridge. The In-Laws had given us some of them, so we couldn't just take them back, and, besides, I had been wanting to ferment foods for over a year.  Kimchee would be obvious answer, no?

I followed the recipe from Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation.  Unlike Katz's more comprehensive The Art of Fermentation, Wild Fermentation includes step-by-step recipes.  Except for the temperature of fermentation (I was leaving town so I stuck the whole think in the fridge), I followed the Baechu Kimchi (page 47) exactly, having a cabbage, chiles, ginger, daikon and carrots all waiting in the fridge.  The Mister thinks that it is overly salty and it does make one's mouth burn, but I am really happy with the results.  The sauerkraut is okay.

What do you do the day you leave on vacation?

*Ethnobotanical Improv Storytelling, for real.  I panicked, so I rehearsed the part I already know I am good at (the botany) tried to forget about the part which is difficult (improvisational storytelling).  I was initially relieved when I didn't have a crowd for real storytelling, then suddenly found my groove, started telling great plant-use stories, and was dismayed when I had to quit.  Contact me if you know of an audience for such an obscure entertainment.

The pines of the Mister

On our recent (read "over a month ago") trip West, Le Cirque de Sierra, I kept crossing paths with myself.

Utah Prairie Dog

Second-grader me was very excited we made the tunnel into Zion without stopping.  I was embarrassed when I saw high school me "showering" at the base of Bridal Veil Falls with the rest of her church youth group, and no reminders about how dirty we were (many days without showers packed double into un-air-conditioned vans after one caught fire in Nevada) could ease my regret that I had ever been that tacky and thoughtless as to ruin the falls experience for all the other visitors.  College me liked SE Utah much better on that sunny Spring Break than in a gale force dust storm making it hard to stay on the road.  Modern me couldn't help bragging about camping in the snow in Yosemite and on the Mojave in February with my Scottish Ranger* boyfriend of 17 years ago.  Even grad school me made an appearance contrasting the desert right after the cold rain in 2003 with baked Death Valley in June.

Our (Black-Tailed) Prairie Dog

I travel.  I remember places.  It's not a bad thing, overall.

But it can be a bit disconcerting when every exit off of I-70 reminds me of another trip with another person.

At Bryce Canyon.  Not Jeffrey's.

So I took some time to consciously note what was different about this trip from all of the trips of my past.  There were new destinations, of course; I hadn't previously been to Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley (torture on my ears), Mono Lake or Devil's Postpile.  There were new animals: Utah Prairie Dogs in Bryce and Beldings Ground Squirrels swarming the park in June Lake, where we stayed.  There was the Mister, Dianthus, Aster and the Parents-in-Law.  And there were the pines.  Conifers of the Sierra make me smile in connection to a whole lot of bad puns and experiences of my past.  When Dianthus and Aster started collecting large cones, I first thought they were just adding to my collection of Ponderosa recollections.  A few days later, I did some investigation: "It turns out the cones are Jeffrey's**," I announced.
My Mother-in-Law looked at me quizzically, as if to ask, "The cones belong to my son?"
In my mind they do now.

At Bryce Canyon, Jeffery.

Yosemite Squirrel with gray shoulder

He has Mammoth Lakes all to himself in my memory, for now.

*He's not actually Scottish, but since I met him in Scotland and he loves Scotland, I usually think of him that way.
**Jeffrey (or Jeffrey's) Pines, Pinus jeffreyi.  They are confined mostly to lower montane elevations of the east side of the Southern Sierra Nevada.  The Mister does not spell his name that way.

Come by and we'll pretend it's your birthday

As noted elsewhere*, I am big into birthdays (and traditions and romantic gestures and lots and lots of other things) and love baking birthday cakes.  I mentioned on facebook yesterday that I was baking a cake for my sons' birthdays, the aroma of warm chocolate was wafting through the house, and more friends should visit for their birthdays so that I could bake them a cake.  Twenty people "liked" that status within a few hours.

It would have looked better had my cake pans been the same size and
there not been a worldwide shortage of sour cherries.
Maybe

Well, friends, what are you waiting for?
I'd love the chance to combine four things that I love-- drinking sparkling wine in celebration of something, baking a decadent, multi-layer cake, arranging some flowers and talking to friends.  Come by for your birthday!
The secret is that it doesn't even need to be your actual birthday.  Even Dianthus has the hang of it, "I'll be four on Tuesday, but we celebrated my birthday with Grandma and Grandpa last night."***
Tuesday to Saturday is admittedly, pretty close, but it need not be.  A dear friend of mine (from high school) also has a May birthday.  Throughout college and occasionally afterward, we would celebrate with a nicer meal than we could generally afford, sometime in May.  Once we both started graduate school, several years lapsed before we were able to go out to dinner together.  It happened to be in January.  At his urging, we had a bottle of sparkling wine, toasted with "happy birthday" and I didn't turn down the free dessert once offered**.  I owe much to that meal.  It was the start of the sparkling wine resolution ("If sparkling wine is your favorite drink, why don't you have it more than two or three times a year?" ) which was the start of my annual resolution/themes which then led to this blog and the official start of celebrating birthdays whenever I see friends.

Leo Birthday Boys. With an average of over 23 years experience.

So stop by (okay, give me notice so I can bake you a proper cake, move the junk from the guest bedroom into another space, and find a bottle of bubbly [in Oklahoma we can't buy chilled champagne or any alcohol on Sunday]) and let's celebrate.

*** We also had a cake for Aster on Wednesday (even though his birthday was last Tuesday).  Both cakes baked were from Tish Boyles' The Cake Book, a less comprehensive tome than The Cake Bible, but still pretty authoritative.  I altered the Peach Buttermilk Coffee Cake recipe too much to know if the cake, as written, is good, not great, or if the substitutions (oil for some butter, walnuts for almonds, half whole wheat flour, half fresh and half frozen peaches, unneeded cream cheese frosting made overly sticky with juice and powdered sugar at the behest of Dianthus) diminished something that could have been great.  Dianthus has been hankering for a cherry cake and a chocolate cake.  I baked him a Black Forest cake and it was great.  It's better today after the cherry juice, cream, jam and alcohol have had more time to permeate, but looks even more askew (who knew that my two nine inch pans were so different in size?  Or that I wouldn't notice until after I had cut the layer and was alternating them?).

2 year-old Aster does not seem to mind lack of "birthday" candles

*See, for instance, picture of a Lady Baltimore Cake here or first key lime pie discussion here.

**I have plans to write an article about rules for enjoying food like a passionate amateur. One such rule would be to never turn down genuinely offered bonus items and to express delight in them when they are great and unexpected, as the chocolate cake in this case was.  I'm afraid, however, that the list of rules would end up like my suggestions for having a fun wedding ("marry someone as great as the Mister who has a fun family and have fun friends and family yourself"), i.e. "enjoy eating and eat with someone you love who enjoys eating".

The Clafouti Trilogy, Part III: I love the concept of Julia Child

I opened up The Mister's paperback copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (volume 1) and was interested to learn that clafouti, translated as "Cherry Flan" is usually also spelled clafoutis in French in both singular and plural, that the desert is from Limousin, and that the preparation, pancake batter poured over fruit, is about as simple "as you can imagine" (pg. 699).  I glanced at the master recipe (cherry) and the six variations (with liqueur, with almonds, plum, blackberry, apple, and pear) and then I closed the book and followed the instructions in the Gourmet Cookbook*.

Like my mother, I love Julia Child.  She was tall, fun, appeared fearless, a good writer, a good cook, and passionate about food.  Yet I never met her, I have never watched her show, never bought one of her books, missed the Meryl Streep portrayal of her and rarely even open the one book that's been sitting on our shelf for nine years.  So, I guess I love the concept of Julia Child.

Do you have any cookbooks you love but don't use?
Do you have any people who adore the idea of, but have no real basis for your admiration?**

*Halving the recipe, leaving out the kirsch, and replacing cherries with apricots, peaches and blackberries.  Changing quantities, flavoring and main ingredients is pretty close to following a recipe for me.  This morning I made another clafouti for breakfast.  With all peaches, whole wheat flour and brown sugar, I'm not totally sure it was the same dessert, but I'm not sure what else to call it.

**Others for me include Alfred Russel Wallace, Barbara McClintock, Alice Waters and the Bronte Sisters.

The Clafouti Trilogy: Part II That's MY Plate

Sitting down to a nice home-cooked dinner, we were directed to look at our plates.  I was impressed with the beautiful Portmerion Botanical Garden collection and was about to say something when he looked over at mine, "Bellis perennis.  The English Daisy.  That's MY plate."
I smiled back at him and nodded weakly, "Is that an anemone on yours?"
He then reached across the table, grabbed the plate in front of me, and repeated, "Bellis perennis is my plate," as he handed me the anemone.
Had he been four, I would have only been stunned that he knew the Latin names.  As he was past sixty, and I was his son's girlfriend eating in his house for the first time, I was stunned on all kinds of counts.
This happened in 1997 (meaning we are not talking about the Mister's Father).  Ever since that time, I can't eat off of flowery dishes without first checking to see if is is an English Daisy that I am not allowed to have.  Fortunately, my lasagna pan has clematis on it and my clafouti dish has gazania* so I am good to use them.  And yes, despite my avowal that I don't like limited purpose stuff that just clutters up the house and my avowal that I don't like floral stuff, I own a flowery clafouti dish, and I love it.
I was running around the kitchen assembling the ingredients for the clafouti, when I asked the Mister to look at the recipe and tell me what size of dish I needed (two quart, according to the Gourmet Cookbook).  He and I tried to figure out which of our pans fit that description (we're better with linear measurements than volumes) when I dashed to the display shelving, "Oh never mind, I just remembered we have a clafouti pan. I'll use it."
It was just this morning as I was looking for Knock-Off Portmerion Clafouti Pan Websites to which to link that I realized that my fabulous garage sale purchase could not be a clafouti pan because they don't exist. Flan: possibly.  Quiche: sure. Floral Clafouti pan: doesn't exist.  Except you have photographic evidence of the clafouti in mine. 
Tomorrow in the exciting conclusion: what is a clafouti and why my clafouti may not have been one.


*My dish gives the common name of Gazania as Treasure Flower, a name that I have never heard anyone in horticulture use.  All of the gardeners I know call them "gazania" but apparently that term is not widespread:
Middle-aged English Garden Visitor at garden in SW Scotland: what are those pretty flowers?
Me (inappropriately young, blonde and female): Gazania.
Him: Daisies?
Me: Gazania.
Him [loudly]: What is that name of those daisies?
Me: They are called gazania.
Him [loudly and slowly]: Where . . are . . you . . from?
Me: Colorado, in the States.
Him: Really? I thought is was someplace farther, like Denmark.
Me (baffled by distance part of remark): I'm from the U.S.  I have been working here for almost a year.
Him: How do you like England?
Me: Well, I've only been to England once, but I very much like it here in Scotland.
Him (not recognizing that Scotland is not part of England): Very good, then.

Him [flagging down an appropriately male and middle-aged gardener]: Excuse me, can you tell me the name of these flowers.
Scottish Gardener: Those would be gazania.
Him: Thank you.