AUGUST BOUNTY

Phlox bloom in my garden in the hot, humid days of August, when the nights begin to cool and the gentlest touch of autumn is in the air. In this part of the world, the harvest is at its ripest now. Roadside farmers secret extra ears of corn into each bag, green beans spill out of marketplace baskets and cartons, and luscious, ripe tomatoes, once treasures, weigh the basket as commonplace loads.

Saturated with bounty, August yet calls forth a note of sadness in the evening cicada’s song, its single-note melody somehow lonesome, its empty carapace a morningtime souvenir of another lifetime. As children, we prodded the insect’s shell and sipped the tender sap of phlox’s flower. Still these tokens take me there, to that youthful place of song and fruit and endless, wondrous mystery.

GRILLED PIZZA

Oblivious to the ozone warning on a recent hot, steamy day in our nation’s capital, my father and I headed out for sightseeing. We took the Metro and then the city bus to Mount Vernon, the property just outside of Washington, D.C., that George and Martha Washington called home. The house itself is surprisingly modest, yet it is in an incomparable setting. Perched on a bluff overlooking the Potomac, the site commands a wide, impressive view of the river and surrounding lands. We took full advantage of the Washingtons’ verandah and the cooling breezes that wafted up to us there from the river below. Sitting on simple wooden chairs, we wondered if Martha served George iced tea or mint juleps on hot summer days more than two hundred years ago.

Today, back at home, it’s similarly hot and muggy. Air temperatures are in the high nineties and the dew point is somewhere close to seventy. We have more pedestrian concerns before us than to wonder what George and Martha sipped on their back porch. We have dinner to make, and in oppressive heat. The solution? Pizza on the grill outside. It’s amazingly quick and easy!

Pizza Dough
To make things simple, buy prepackaged pizza dough. Otherwise, you can make your own dough as follows:

1 package quick-rising yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup hot water (between 105-115 degrees)
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, choppped

1. Sprinkle the yeast and sugar into a cup of hot water. Let sit for about 10 minutes, until the yeast bubbles nicely.
2. Meanwhile, mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. When the yeast is ready, pour into the flour and stir. Add the olive oil and rosemary. Stir until well blended and slightly tacky to the touch.
3. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes.
4. Place the dough in a large bowl lightly oiled with olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place for about an hour. The dough will easily double in size.
5. When the dough has risen, punch it down gently and divide into four pieces.
6. Shape each piece into an 8-inch round (or as close thereto as you can). You can either do this with your fingers and hands or with a rolling pin.
7. Place each piece of dough onto an individual, oiled pizza pan, cutting board, or large plate. Cover with towels or plastic wrap and allow to rise another 30-60 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare your toppings.

Toppings
You can use your favorite prepackaged pizza toppings: grated cheese, sliced meats, olives, sliced vegetables (which you’ll then want to roast or sauté ahead of time), and whatever else appeals to you. I roasted my own garlic (one big bulb in the oven early in the morning), roasted my own vegetables (two eggplants and two red peppers; see the previous “Rear Window” blog entry for how-to information), bought two small containers of local goat cheese, and grated about 3 cups of domestic mozzarella.

To prepare the pizzas:

1. Preheat the grill.
2. When the grill is ready, turn to medium heat. Brush a little olive oil on one side of each pizza round. Place the pizza rounds directly onto the grill, oiled side down. My grill fits two rounds at a time, but if you have a larger grill, you can do all four at once. I found it easiest to pick up the rounds with my hands and place each one gently onto the grill.
3. Grill each piece quickly for about 1 or 2 minutes, with the lid down, just until the dough has set. It may begin to turn brown and take on lovely grill streaks.
4. Remove each pizza round from the grill, using tongs. Take them back into the kitchen and lightly brush the ungrilled side of the dough with a little more olive oil. Then arrange the toppings of your choice onto the grilled side of each round. I started with the roasted garlic, then a little grated mozzarella, then the roasted veggies, then the goat cheese and a bit more mozzarella. Drizzle each pizza with a little olive oil or vinaigrette (homemade or bottled both work).
5. Return the pizza rounds to the grill, topping side up and ungrilled side down. Close the lid of the grill and allow the cheese to melt. This takes about 5 minutes.
6. Remove the individual pizzas from grill using tongs. Serve the pizzas with a simple green salad. Enjoy!

*Makes four individual 8-inch pizzas, enough to feed 4-6 people.

REAR WINDOW

An alley. Three adult men and a young boy pass by, their laughter and voices floating up to where we sit on a back porch three flights up. Loud music blasts out of an apartment across the way. A light comes on in a nearby window. A man comes into view, wearing only his underpants. He walks over to the computer in his study. The window at his desk is shaded and the man disappears into shadow profile. The music stops. An alley inhabitant, drinking his evening beer at the dumpster below, applauds. Summer in Chicago.

We’ve come to visit friends in the city for my birthday weekend. The alley scene is our own private rear window, like the memorable Hitchcock film starring James Stewart as the voyeur and Grace Kelly as his intrepid love interest. As in that movie (set in New York), here in Chicago we have a view into the lives of strangers whose stories we can only guess at. Poverty and affluence, loneliness and camaraderie, tragedy and comedy all in this one spot, in this one evening.

As the man at the dumpster opens another beer, our hosts bring out the cold tapas for our evening meal: garbanzos with mustard greens; potato salad with chopped boiled eggs and a touch of horseradish; a salad of green and black olives and crunchy pearl onions; and roasted eggplant and red peppers in a garlicky marinade. An egg-based tortilla topped with fresh asparagus precedes the main course—seafood paella.

It’s hot and muggy, and when we drive home the next day, the weather hasn’t changed at all. We decide to make the eggplant tapas for our evening meal. It’s quick and easy, and by grilling outside, we can keep heat out of the house. As we eat our meal on the back deck, we’re serenaded by cardinals at the birdfeeder and by our neighbor’s electric saw. Our cats stretch out along the screen door where the breeze is best. We humans provide the rear window action in their feline world.

You can make the roasted eggplant tapas on your own grill. In the heat of the summer, it’s a perfect meal.

Roasted Eggplant in Marinade
2 eggplants, sliced thickly
2 large red peppers, whole
2 lemons, seeded and juiced
¼ cup – 1/3 cup olive oil
4-6 cloves fresh garlic, pressed
Salt, to taste

1. Preheat the grill.
2. Cut the ends off the eggplants. Then cut each eggplant into slices about an inch thick each. Brush a little olive oil onto each side of the slices.
3. Place the eggplant slices and the whole peppers on the heated grill. Turn frequently, keeping the heat somewhere between 350 and 400 degrees.
4. Roast until the skin of the peppers is black and the eggplant slices are nicely blackened and soft—about 20 minutes or so. The peppers and the eggplant will be done at about the same time.
5. Take the vegetables off the grill and allow them to cool before handling. Cut the eggplant slices into bite-sized chunks. Then remove the blackened skin from the peppers along with the stem, seeds, and any remaining pith. Slice peppers into strips and combine with the eggplant in a large serving bowl.
6. To make the marinade, combine the juice of 2 lemons with the olive oil. Stir in the pressed garlic and salt. Drizzle over the eggplant and peppers. Serve at room temperature or cold, whichever you prefer, with slices of crusty baguette or wedges of pita bread.

*Serves 6

YOGA DIARY

Part of teacher training at the Iyengar yoga studio where I attend class is to keep a daily practice log. I'm not in the teacher training program, but I do sometimes keep notes on my practice just to see what it amounts to on paper and to master the Sanskrit names of the asanas (poses). Today's practice looked something like this:

INVOCATION to Patanjali, the codifier of yoga. As I begin chanting, the dog and the cats come racing to see what's up. Buddy (the dog) licks my face energetically.

STANDING POSES
--Urdhvahastasana
--Uttanasana (2 minutes, with head supported on block and blanket)
--Adho Mukha Svanasana. I alternate legs in the one-legged variation we learned this week to get the heel on the floor closer to the ground.
--Trikonasana. As I extend to the right side, I catch the slatted blinds reflected in the framed photograph of the House on the Hill, my mother's great uncle Virgil Hines's home in southern Missouri. I've just been to that part of the world to scatter my mother's ashes. I like seeing my life (the blinds) overlaid onto hers (the House on the Hill).
--Utthita Parsvakonasana
INVERSIONS
--Adho Mukha Vrksasana (full arm balance). We're learning to do this pose free standing. Going up into the pose farther away from the wall is the first step. I start nine inches from the wall, and as I kick up, my foot scrapes hard against the marble top of my great grandmother Covert's parlor table. China goes crashing, and the animals come racing to see what's up.
--Sirsasana (6 minutes, without wall support). I took a year off my yoga practice recently because of hamstring problems. I returned about four months ago, a little creaky but still strong. Before my leave, I'd been able to routinely go up into and come down out of headstand in the center of the room. I've been frightened to do so, until today. I am able to stay up for six minutes and come down, for the first time in a long time, without crashing to the floor. Legs poker stiff and core muscles firm.
FORWARD BENDS AND SEATED POSES
--Janu Sirsasana. This forward bend incorporates a difficult hip/groin rotation and demands an intense stretch of the extended hamstring. It has never come easily, and I resist the pose's difficulties. So I keep at it.
--Padmasana. Another difficult pose requiring openness in the hips and knees. I'm getting to the point where I can fold both legs into the body for the full lotus pose instead of only one leg at a time. I close my eyes and fold my hands in front of my chest in namaskar. The animals sense a change of energy and come racing to see what's up.
SUPINE POSES
--Supta Virasana (4.5 minutes)
--Supta Baddha Konasana (5 minutes)
INVERSION
--Sarvangasana (5 minutes). We learned a variation of shoulder stand this week whereby the practitioner somersaults up onto a bolster or pile of blankets to get into the pose. The bolster helps lift the body and prevent the settling into the hips and stomach area that often comes as the practitioner remains in the pose for some time. Sarvangasana is meant to soothe the nerves, which in the early years of practice seemed laughable. I am better able today to relax the neck and throat and to unclench the teeth. My shirt slips down a bit in front, exposing my stomach muscles, which I admire. I pull my mind away from this momentary distraction.
FORWARD BEND
--Paschimottanasana (3 minutes). Another difficult pose for me these days, so I keep at it. We are taught to exhale tension in the stomach and groin to better surrender into the pose. Just as I feel a bit of surrender, the timer goes off (2 minutes). Our teacher says a true yoga pose begins only after the practitioner stops fighting against the asana, so I set the timer for another minute.
END OF PRACTICE
--Savasana (22 minutes). This pose always concludes a yoga practice. We've been doing increasingly longer savasana in class. This is the first time I've done such an extended savasana at home. I work on letting go of words and on allowing the energy to release into the back of the body, like blood settles in a corpse (savasana means "corpse pose" and is practiced to tame the breath and the mind). The oldest cat, the one who is most keenly attuned to shifts in energy, settles into the narrow space between my ankles. I feel contentment.

SOUTHERN STYLE

"Grease and gravy," commented the desk clerk. "That's what we're all about down here!"

I chuckled in response to her comment, a coda to the discussion about Southern cooking we'd had with the hotel desk staff since arriving the night before. Just off the interchange of Interstate 70 and state highway 63 in Columbia, Missouri, the hotel was our stop for the night en route to the Missouri Ozarks to scatter my mother's ashes in the landscape of her family roots. The city is also the place where my sister and I were both born.

For dinner that night in Columbia, we indulged in chicken-fried everything, green beans with ham, mashed potatoes, white gravy and biscuits, and coconut cream pie. When we got back to the hotel, the young woman at the desk showed off her own meal--brought to her by her roommates--of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and greens. "We mix greens with cabbage down here and add hot spices," she clarified.

The next morning, news of our meal had spread, and the morning staff asked for a full report of our choices. They listened intently and with genuine interest, smiling with a kind of pride as we talked about the central ingredients of Southern cuisine.

The fried chicken recipe we make at home, in the faraway North, was given to SJG long ago by a coworker from the Deep South. It's spicier than the fried chicken my mother used to make (she seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper only). It is delicious, easy to make, and tastes even better the next day.

Southern-Style Fried Chicken
6 skin-on chicken thighs or drumsticks
1 or 2 cups white flour for dredging
1/2 cup canola oil
4-6 bulbs fresh garlic, squeezed through a garlic press
salt, pepper, paprika, dried dill, and cayenne--all to taste

1) Rinse chicken in cool water.
2) Put the flour in a plastic bag; dredge the chicken in the flour.
3) Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan (we use a cast iron pan) until nice and hot.
4) Put the chicken in the hot oil, skin side up.
5) Squeeze the fresh garlic into the sizzling oil (rather than directly onto the chicken pieces).
6) Season the chicken with salt, pepper, paprika, dried dill, and cayenne.
7) Brown the chicken on both sides.
8) Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Place the chicken on the foil, skin side down. Re-season with the spices (except the garlic).
9) Bake in a 350-degree preheated oven for 30 minutes.
10) After 30 minutes, flip the chicken so that the skin side is up. Bake another 30 minutes more.

Serve with mashed potatoes, white gravy, biscuits, and greens or green beans. Enjoy!

Crossing the Piney

I crossed the River Styx today,

Its current hard and swift.

In swallows' dip and swoop,

In vultures' circle dance,

I let her go at last.

Sparkle sun and light-blast lustre

below the limestone bluff;

All green and smooth

the water there,

While down below

In rippling current's flow

The petals loosed, the ashes too,

I gave her back at last.

On memory's tide

In fading golden hues

I crossed the River back again.

The water cold

Its promise sure

To take her home at last.

--for my mother (above)

1934-2002

IN SUCH A LANDSCAPE

Thwappp! A flying object smacked into my thigh. Ketchup oozed down my leg and bits of pickle shattered across my hand. A hamburger hit. Tossed out of a speeding car, already long gone, right under a perfectly cloudless desert sky. Who could imagine, in such a landscape?

I suppose I was the perfect target. A lone pedestrian along a busy speedway strip. Head down in meditative reflection, walking back to a neighborhood spa to meet up with SJG, who had been convinced, rather reluctantly, to do a mud wrap on our first day in Tucson. As I wound through the quiet streets off the speedway, admiring the orange trees and the small adobe homes with their cactus gardens and brightly colored doorways, a young woman and her two friendly dogs came out of an alley ahead of me. The dogs made a beeline for my sticky legs and eagerly licked up the ketchup as I fell into conversation with their owner. She reassured me that Tucson is an otherwise friendly town, and I felt better for the encounter.

I later learned that burgers-as-food-missile is a growing trend on the West Coast. There, in LA in particular, the trick is to toss fast food into the car next to you just as you’re taking off from a green light. While it is unnerving to be struck by flying food, there’s an element of absurdist humor to the whole thing. After all, we’ve been tossing tomatoes and eggs and pies at one another for a long time, and various comedic entertainers have played on this expression of hostility to great effect. We laugh at the Three Stooges, at Johnny Carson, at Debbie Reynolds and Martin Short, at their glee at tossing a pie or at their feigned shock as victim. Go to http://www.piesintheface.com for an entire catalog of such humor. And sure enough, SJG doubled over with laughter as I recounted the adventure, as did the other guests at our bed and breakfast later that day.

So, in a spirit of good humor, and for another truly memorable burger, try this recipe, which we make at our house on the grill in summer or under the broiler during the winter.

TURKEY BURGERS
1 pound ground turkey
1 egg
½ cup oatmeal (finely cut flakes)
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 small chopped onion
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1-2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper, to taste
a couple shakes of Tabasco sauce (optional)

While the grill is preheating, mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Shape into patties. Place a sheet of tin foil on the heated grill. Place the turkey patties on the tin foil and grill on both sides until done.

BLOOMING CYMBIDIUM

Orchids produce flowers on their own schedule. A catleya I bought long ago after a trip to Key West bloomed well initially, then sat dormant for several years before coming alive last winter after I put it in the warmth and humidity of the upstairs bathroom. Five Decembers ago, when my mother died, my sister chose the cymbidium plant pictured above for its profuse flowering. We cut the stems, wrapped them in satin ribbon, and placed them atop our mother's casket to be cremated with her. I haven't had the heart to toss the plant, even though it too has remained dormant all these years. True to the mysteries of the species, six buds appeared suddenly last week, opening slowly to reveal a delicate beauty well worth the long wait.

A BEAUTIFUL BOULE

My father and my sister are the breadmakers in the family. Their loaves always turn out like pieces of art--crisp golden crusts, airy light interiors--with no special effort on their part and with very little attention to the recipe itself. I, on the other hand, slavishly follow every step with scientific precision and end up with dense, disappointing loaves.

While in town for his seventy-sixth birthday earlier this month, my father made a loaf of no-knead bread. It requires very little yeast and relies instead on time (about 20 hours) to raise the dough. He's sloppy and impatient as a baker, rushing through every step to get the thing done with. When he was finished, the kitchen was covered in flour, as was he, but the result was stunning--a gorgeous golden boule, split open at the top, flowerlike, and dusted in a sprinkling of flour.

I tried to recreate the boule this weekend, and though mine is lovely enough (see photo above), it's not truly splendid. But, I'm determined to keep trying, using the very easy recipe (below) that my father saw in the New York Times last year.

NO-KNEAD BREAD
(from the New York Times as adapted from the city's Sullivan Street Bakery)

3 cups flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1-1/4 tsp salt
1-5/8 cups water (warmed in a pan, just to take off the chill, and to no more than about 120 degrees F)
flour, cornmeal, or oat bran, as needed

1. Combine flour, yeast, and salt. Add the warm water and stir until blended. The dough will be sticky and shaggy. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let is rest for 18 hours in a warm room. (I set the bowl on top of a towel or two and put the whole thing on top of a warm radiator.)

2. Eighteen hours later, check the dough. It is risen sufficiently when the surface is covered with small bubbles.

3. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and sprinkle a little more flour over the dough itself. Fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with more plastic wrap, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

4. Then gently shape the dough into a ball. Coat a cotton kitchen towel with flour, cornmeal, or oat bran. Put the bread, seam side down, on the towel and dust with a little more flour, cornmeal, or bran. Cover with another towel and let the dough rise for 2 more hours.

5. Half an hour before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a heavy covered pot (I use a cast-iron Dutch oven) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, remove the pot from the oven. Turn the dough into the pot, seam side up. Shake the pot a time or two to more evenly distribute the dough. Cover with the lid and bake 30 minutes. Then carefully remove the lid (watch out for escaping steam!) and bake for another 10-15 minutes to brown the crust.

Cool on a rack. Makes excellent toast!

WINTER SOLSTICE 2006

After a long, dry autumn and early winter, it is finally snowing. Looking out my window, I see tire tracks through the snow in the alley across from my office, and coworkers are popping in to express their excitement about the weather. We live in the Upper Midwest, where we expect to have snow on the ground, and lots of it, by Winter Solstice.

This is the time of year that marks the fourth anniversary of my mother’s suicide, and I’ve been thinking about the people who have helped me during the years after her death, often in unanticipated and surprising ways. I’m a list maker, and today I’ve made a list of those people and the various things for which I'm grateful to them.

SJG, for loving me, for doing all the housework in the months immediately afterward, and for giving me space to mourn in my own way

My sister, for listening without judgment

My father, who found just the right poems

MFO, for her letters and knowing heart

ML, who pointed me to the right stories

Ann G, who trusts in my mother’s choice

Kay, Marion, and JZ, who understand what it’s like

Jon, who gave me his copy of Kaddish

Luci, who came into this world on the heels of my mother’s departure

And Finna, for her joy.

UNCLE LARRY’S SUGU

A young colleague, who, like me, has Italian roots, was quizzing me the other day about family recipes. She wanted to know if I had any favorite Italian recipes, and I immediately thought of my Uncle Larry stirring a giant kettle of sugu (spaghetti sauce) in his summer shorts and black knee highs. Uncle Larry is married to my father’s sister Mary, and the two of them often hosted the yearly August birthday party for my Italian grandmother, the family matriarch, now long dead. The gathering was always huge (ten adult children and their families), and Uncle Larry and Auntie Mary’s suburban home and yard accommodated everyone. It was in the basement kitchen that Uncle Larry made his famous sugu and served all the other fixings of an Italian lunch—spicey olive salad, spaghetti, warm loaves of sesame-seed encrusted Italian bread, and every kind of Italian cookie you could think of.

Lunch was buffet style, with Uncle Larry smiling his giant toothy smile as he ladled the thick sugu over each guest’s plate of spaghetti. Only recently did I receive a copy of his recipe, which serves 30 people, so do your math if you want to make less!

UNCLE LARRY’S SUGU*

2 lbs ground chuck
2 lbs mild Italian sausage
½ cup olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
Several cloves garlic, chopped
3 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
1 quart tomato sauce
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 TB sugar
2 TB dried basil
1-1/4 cups white vermouth
1-1/2 cups chopped parsley
½ pound mushrooms, chopped

1. Saute the meat in an 8-quart kettle until cooked through.
2. Drain grease and set meat aside.
3. In the same pan, sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent.
4. Stir in the crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste.
5. Bring to a boil, then add the spices, vermouth, parsley, mushrooms, and meat.
6. Simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Serve over the pasta of your choice.

Makes 7 quarts
Serves 30

*For a spicier sauce, use hot Italian sausage and more garlic, pepper, and basil, to your liking

LUSTING IN TENNESSEE

Earlier this month, right after the hard drive on my home computer crashed, I went to Nashville, Tennessee, for a conference. Afterwards, my father joined me for a weekend to visit some of the area’s Civil War battlefields. That Saturday night, we headed into downtown Nashville for the early show of the Grand Ol’ Opry, where it crossed my mind that Garrison Keillor must have had this in mind when he created his long-enduring “Prairie Home Companion” radio show. (And indeed he had, as confirmed in an interview I happened across shortly after returning home.)

One of the battlefields we visited—Chickamauga—is in northern Georgia, just across the Tennessee border. Driving from Nashville through the colors of the forested borderland mountains took me back to southeastern Missouri, where we picked persimmons with my mother's parents in a similar vista one long ago Thanksgiving. The Civil War battlefields breathe history too, though I found myself seduced instead by the omnipresent Baptist billboards announcing all manner of saving grace and redemption. One church offered a Seven Deadly Sins weekly series from its pulpit. The sin of this, Week Three: “Avoid the Lure of Lust!”

Regional linguistic flair is enchanting, and this euphonic admonishment stayed with me all day and through dinner, where our waitress insisted we sample the restaurant’s famous bread pudding slathered with Jack Daniels whiskey sauce. Not normally enamored of bread pudding, I chose a different dessert, but the sighs of pleasure from my father were too much to ignore. One bite convinced me. Impossible to avoid the lure of this lusty bread pudding!

Below are approximate recipes for the pudding and a sauce, adapted from the waitress’s orally rendered version, from Betty Crocker, and from a must-have regional desserts cookbook by Richard Sax called Classic Home Desserts (Chapters Publishing, 1994). Unlike many recipes for bread pudding, the pudding that lured us in Nashville relies on day-old sweet rolls instead of bread as the base. You can easily double the pudding and sauce recipes if you want a larger amount.

BREAD PUDDING

4 cups cubed day-old sweet rolls, sugar doughnuts, croissants, and/or raisin bread
1-1/2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 eggs
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt

1) Put the cubed sweet rolls in an 8 x 8 pan and set aside. Heat the milk and cream in a large saucepan until hot.
2) In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugars, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt. Slowly whisk in the hot milk.
3) Pour the hot egg-milk mixture over the sweet rolls and let stand for 15-20 minutes to allow the rolls to absorb the liquid.
4) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the pudding until the custard is set but not too dry (about 40 minutes). Make the whiskey sauce while the pudding is cooling outside the oven.

Serves about 6 people.


WHISKEY SAUCE*

½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
¼ cup whiskey (Jack Daniels is the whiskey of choice in Nashville, where this whiskey is made; you can use any whiskey or bourbon to your liking)

1) Whisk the sugar and egg together in a double boiler until warm and a little fluffy.
2) Whisk in the melted butter and add the whiskey. Pour the warm sauce over servings of warm bread pudding.

*If this recipe doesn’t appeal, you can also make a classic hard sauce and add whiskey or bourbon to that recipe. Or, you can make crème anglaise and flavor it with bourbon or whiskey. Any such butter-based sauce will be excellent over the pudding.

MORNING'S MINION

Earlier this month, SJG and I watched migrating hawks in Duluth. With the lake in the distance and yellow gold trees in fall vestment below, we admired the birds floating past the overlook on columns of air known as thermals. Volunteers at the site let me hold, barefisted, a female sharp-shinned hawk. I stroked the back of her neck, leaning close to smell her. As the winds picked up, she squirmed in my hand, eager to be released to her journey south toward warmer climes. I opened my fist and, barely breathing, watched her dip toward the ground, spread her wings in wide embrace, and move skyward into the sun on large wingstrokes.

I told my sister about this hawk, and she pointed toward the first stanza of "The Windhover," a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom
of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn
Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air,
and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:
the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery
of the thing!

PEACH JAM

Every summer when we're doing just about nothing in the North Woods, SJG comes up with exactly one culinary challenge for our doing just about everything life. This year, she said, "Let's make peach jam." We've canned pickles, stewed tomatoes, harvest mix (stewed tomatoes, peppers, and garlic), and cranberry chutney, but never jam. So last weekend, we went to our favorite cooperative grocery to buy peaches and pectin to do just that. The next afternoon, a cool drizzly Sunday, we put up four pints of peach jam (above), as lovely in its amber glow as it is sweet and delicate on the tongue. Below is a recipe cobbled together from a variety of sources. Follow instructions carefully and make only one small batch at a time. (Note that peach season is pretty much over, though the jam will be very tasty with less than perfect fruit.)

Peach Jam

3 pounds fresh peaches, peeled and pitted

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 packet pectin

5 cups white sugar

canning equipment (pint jars and screwtop lids and rings; kettles for cooking the peaches and sterilizing the jars; a metal canning ring for processing the jars after they've been filled; a plastic funnel; a ladle; tongs; a cooking fork; a rubber spatula)

1. Sterilize four or five pint jars in the dishwasher and leave them there until ready to use.

2. At the same time, set a large canning kettle full of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Bring a smaller kettle (8 quarts) of water to boil at the same time.

3. When the smaller kettle of water comes to a boil, set it in the sink and add the peaches. Let them sit in the water for a minute or two, then remove them, and while still warm, pull of the skins. It should slide right off.

4. Take out the pit of each peach and any brown or otherwise blemished sections. Remove the tough red fibers around the pits. Slice the peaches into chunks and place them in a large saucepan or 8-quart kettle. Mash the peaches with a potato masher, leaving some small chunks for texture. Add the lemon juice to the peaches and stir briefly.

5. Meanwhile, bring a small saucepan of water to a simmer and place the screwtop lids and rings in the water to allow them to sterilize while you're making the jam. The water in the large canning kettle should be boiling by now; place the pint jars in the boiling water and keep them there until ready to fill.

6. Add the pectin powder to the peaches and stir until dissolved over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and add the sugar, stirring constantly.

7. Continuing to stir, bring the mixture to a full boil and allow to boil at a rolling boil for one minute.

8. Remove from the heat and skim off any foam with a slotted spoon.

9. Use a ladle to spoon the hot peach jam through a canning funnel into the sterilized pint jars, one at a time, leaving about 1/4- to 1/2-inch space between the top of the jam and the top of the rim of each jar. Use a rubber spatula to press out any air bubbles. Place a sterilized lid on top of the jar after you've filled it and carefully screw the accompanying ring onto the jar until finger tight.

10. When the jars are filled and capped, place them in the large canning kettle of boiling water, cover it, and boil for 10 minutes exactly. This helps prevent spoilage.

11. When the 10 minutes are up, turn off the heat and remove the cover of the canning kettle. When the water is no longer boiling and bubbles are no longer rising to the top (about three minutes), processing is complete.

12. Remove the jars with a pair of canning tongs and set them upright to cool and set undisturbed for 24 hours.

13. The next day, place the jars somewhere cool and dark for storage. Best eaten within the first six or eight months, after which time the jam will begin to darken and get runny.

* for extremely helpful tips, photos, recipes, and other useful information about canning, go to www.pickyourown.org

EIGHTY-ONE...AND DRUMMING

On behalf of my sister, I brought a length of braided sweetgrass to my Aunt V. in Milwaukee this past holiday weekend. For now, she's enlaced it with a heart of grapevine stems and berries (above) on her living room wall, but once it dries, V. will use the sweetgrass for smudging at drumming circles, which she hosts in her backyard. She and the women with whom she drums tie red prayer cloths around the slim trunk of the crabapple tree V. planted in memory of her older sister (my aunt) C., who died three years ago. The drummers invoke their higher spirits and say a prayer of honor and thanks before smudging the tree and the sacred circle around it in which they will drum. They learn rhythms together and then turn to silent meditation to the beat of their drums.

I came to know my Aunt V., who last month celebrated her eighty-first birthday, when I was about fourteen years old and she was the age I am now. My parents dropped off the three of us--my sister, my brother, and me--to spend a week with her (she is one of my father's older sisters) and our Uncle G. in the small house they shared with G's two older brothers and a large dalmatian. My parents were headed to an august medical facility many hours away where my mother underwent a battery of tests, which eventually ruled out cancer and determined her to be in robust physical health.

In those years, my aunt and uncle led a very private life, and in retrospect, I see that, in welcoming three children whom they barely knew--two teens and a three year old--my relatives had said yes to an intrusion into their privacy, and to a lot of work. As mistress of the house, V. kept us occupied all day and every day with activities we thought she undertook on a lark but that must have required much forethought, planning, and organization.

That summer, we learned to sew with Vogue patterns and to make pasta by hand, stringing lengths of hand-cut fettucine to dry on hangers before cooking. At some level, we recognized our aunt's efforts, for on her birthday, which arrived during our visit, we proclaimed her Queen for the Day. To start the morning, we served apricot sugar toast and coffee to her in bed and executed an ambitious dinner that evening, an undertaking that proved the wisdom of avoiding the temptation to prepare a new recipe as the centerpiece of a special meal. In tackling salmon croquettes, I discovered, too late, the difficulty of replicating neatly shaped and perfectly browned patties as displayed in lustrous glory in the pages of V's Bon Appetit magazine. No matter the meal's imperfections, the memory is one we still recall fondly, and the visit cemented a relationship that has endured for more than thirty years.

In remembering that week with her, and in learning more about her drumming this last visit, I admire more than ever V's willingness--and ability--to choose yes as a response to life, even when many and sometimes most of the variables are unknown. It's impossible for me to avoid contrasting her, now long widowed, with my mother who, though fearless in her imaginative life, was, unlike V., largely overwhelmed by the physical, tangible realities that come with being human. I hope I'm not deluded in imagining my own life as some mix of the best of the two approaches, and I like to envision that when I'm eighty-one, I'll still be saying yes to life and finding sacred possibilities in my own backyard.

SUMMER BERRIES

For the last couple years, we’ve been stopping in Duluth for lunch on our way to the North Woods. This harbor city, which we used to whiz past, is becoming known for independent-minded restauranteurs with a desire to serve simple yet delicious food from seasonal, locally produced ingredients. We ate lunch this year at the Nokomis Restaurant & Bar (www.nokomisonthelake.com) on the scenic stretch of old highway 61 just outside of town. The restaurant occupies what was once a lakeside supper club, and with its large plate-glass windows offers a spectacular view of Lake Superior just across the road.

We started our lunch with a salad of field greens encircled with a long strip of thinly sliced cucumber and topped with roasted tomatoes, thin slices of radishes, white enoki mushrooms, roasted pumpkin seeds, and Maytag blue cheese dressing. For the entrée, SJG chose a hamburger of grass-fed beef and shredded short ribs on toasted focaccia. I opted for vegetarian fare: slices of toasted ciabatta spread with black olive tapenade and layered with fresh basil, slices of red and yellow tomatoes, and quenelles of ricotta. SJG raved about the molten chocolate cake she chose for dessert, while my warm blackberry-raspberry cobbler brought back memories of my Missouri grandmother’s recipe for a blackberry dessert that was part-cobbler, part-crisp, part-buckle—a recipe I’ve never seen replicated in any cookbook. Below is an approximation of that summer berry recipe.

Missouri Ozarks Blackberry Cobbler

Berries:
1-1/2 pints blackberries
1/3 cup sugar
3 TB cold water

Topping:
6 TB unsalted butter (room temperature)
½ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
½ cup flour
½ cup old-fashioned pearl tapioca
Ground cinnamon (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the berries in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Sprinkle with the sugar and pour in the water, combing gently with your fingers.
2) Cream the butter, sugar, and salt. Stir in the flour, tapioca, and cinnamon (if using).
3) Sprinkle the topping over the berries. (If you like a lot of topping, as I do, feel free to make more of it. This is up to the individual palate, though it may prolong baking a little.)
4) Bake until done (roughly 20 minutes; check frequently just to be sure).
5) Cool briefly, and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

THE NORTH WOODS

Set on the edge of a lake in the northern wilderness, a much-loved cabin is the place we go every summer to recuperate from the year’s frenzy. We bring pillows, our favorite pajamas and fleece socks, piles of books and periodicals, and, above all else, the determination to avoid the urge to do.

This year is no exception. On the long drive north, we discuss whether or not we’ll take naps like we did the year the temperature soared into the nineties every day. At a minimum, we agree, we’ll be certain to put in twelve-hour nights, heading to bed as soon as the sun slips behind the ridge of pines to the west, leaving a rosy glow behind the canopy.

We arrive late, unpack and settle in quickly, and take a brief walk with the resident dog. Then we head to bed, adding a feather quilt to the pile of blankets and opening the windows to let in the pine-scented air. It’s very dark here, with no glow of city lights or flickering of the neighbors’ motion-detector floodlamps, and as we settle under the covers, darkness calls forth the silence of the place. It’s a still night, with no breeze to filter through the leaves, and we lie still, breathing as quietly as possible, listening for any noise that might break the spell.

The silence is stubborn, and though we anticipate a bird’s call or the crunch of a neighbor’s footstep on the gravel pathway, we hear nothing. Tired from the long day’s drive, and eager to stay true to our pledge, we drift to sleep as the three-quarter moon rises high in the black sky above.

SUMMER ICE CREAM
Every summer for the last several years, my father and I have made ice cream using the electric ice-cream machine he and my mother bought years ago. One summer they made ice cream every week from whatever fruit was in season at the moment. Their peach ice cream stands out, smooth and delicately flavored, tasting almost exactly like the scent of the fruit itself. This year, my father and I made vanilla lavender ice cream with goats' milk as the dairy base. It brought back memories of the long-ago peach ice cream with its special satisfaction of merging senses.

Vanilla Lavender Ice Cream

Lavender Milk:

1 cup goats' milk
6-8 sprigs fresh lavender

Put the milk and the lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Just before it starts boiling, remove from heat, cover, and allow to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the milk into a small bowl, discard the lavender, and let milk cool for another 10 minutes.

Ice Cream:
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
3 cups goats' milk (or, half goats' milk/half cows' milk)
lavender milk (see above)
1 cup whipping cream
1 vanilla bean (or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)

1) Put the egg yolks and sugar in a big saucepan. Beat with a whisk until pale yellow.
2) Put 3 cups goats' milk and lavendar milk in another saucepan. Cut the vanilla bean in half and gently split each half open and add to the milk. Slowly bring just to the boil.
3) Add about 1/2 cup of the warm milk to the egg yolk and sugar mixture, beating constantly. Stir in the remaining milk. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the custard. Stirring the whole time, slowly bring the mixture again just to the boil, at which point it will be smooth and custardlike. (Just under the boil is 180 degrees F, which assures the safety of eating the eggs.)
4) Pour the custard into a chilled bowl and allow to come to room temperature. If a vanilla bean was not used, stir in the vanilla extract. Then place the custard in the freezer for about 30 minutes to make for faster churning.
5) When ready to churn the custard mixture, whip the whipping cream until just under stiff-peak stage and fold into chilled mixture. (This makes for more volume.) Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer's directions. Chill in freezer for several hours before serving. Makes about 1 quart of ice cream.

MATERNAL BODIES

Our neighbors, Peter and Gaye, have two little girls aged nine and three. The other day, Gaye and the girls were in their backyard, and as the four of us talked, the girls climbed and slid across their mother's body as she lounged on the grass. Into my mind sprang the memory of this feline mother and her offspring, who, like Gaye, lay patiently in grasses on another continent while her cubs claimed the maternal body as their own.

AMERICAN FORMATIVE VALUES: WEAVING THE AMERICAN FABRIC

My sister went to the new downtown public library recently to hear historian Neil Baldwin talk about his book The American Revelation: Ten Ideals that Shaped Our Country from Puritans to the Cold War, which was released this summer in paperback. Not particularly inspired by Baldwin himself, she was, however, deeply intrigued by the idea of pinpointing characteristic American values that shape our common personality, so when my father came to town for a visit last weekend, we agreed on that Friday to craft our own lists and to come together on Sunday afternoon to share our thoughts about the American personality. The four of us (my father, my sister, SJG, and I) sat on the back porch all Sunday afternoon, quizzing each other in detail about our lists, amplifying ideas, making connections to other related theories—all at top volume and with much manic waving of napkins and leaping about to make an emphatic point.

After hours of conversation, we had shaped a seven-page list, out of which we pulled the following top-five values, which we agreed, as a group, to be characteristic of the iconic American personality. Caveat: these are idealistic values, which, though brilliant in their allure, sometimes manifest darkly and are not experienced by all of the people all of the time. However, they are values to which this particular group feels we aspire as a nation and which we feel do distinguish us as a people from other nations and cultures in other parts of the world.

1) Individualism—the notion, inscribed in our Declaration of Independence, that each individual has certain “unalienable rights,” and that each person has the right to live up to one’s abilities and interests, as defined by self. As Americans, the tension between acting for the greater common good and “doing your own thing” generally plays out in favor of individual choice.

2) Pragmatism—the tendency to figure out a problem based on what works at any given moment rather than relying on pre-established, accepted truth; a sort of “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” approach to life; pragmatism as a school of philosophical thought was pioneered in the nineteenth century by American philosophers John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, and William James (brother of Henry James). Generally speaking, they held that experimentation, inquiry, and observation are the tools for determining “truth,” with complete freedom to re-determine and re-name any of the objects under investigation at any time.

3) Mobility—the general openness of American economic, political, and social systems, whereby individuals have ease of movement among and between groups or places. To be born in one class, in one place, among one set of people does not mean one spends an entire lifetime in that same class, place, or set of people. This plays out in a general flexibility of thought and practice—the ability of the average American to go beyond prescribed limits to see if something is doable or enjoyable. Want to paint your house purple? Go for it! Want to have salmon with chocolate (a definite no-no in French cuisine)? Why not!

4) Fusion—the ability and desire to incorporate cultural expressions of all stripes into the mainstream or to simply accommodate them alongside other options, whether it be music (blues influence in jazz, country influence in rock and roll), food (Cuban Chinese restaurants), vocabulary (street language or foreign terms that become part of everyday mainstream vernacular), or ethnic family groupings (Chinese Jewish families as one example). Our socio-cultural fabric is like a sponge--very absorptive.

5) Optimism—a “things are looking up” approach to life, whereby events are perceived to flow inevitably toward the good, the better, the best. We came up with a list of classic popular songs, such as “High Hopes” and “Accentuate the Positive,” that speak to this American tendency to avoid bad news and to express a distinct preference for "the sunny side of the street."

Try making your own list—see what you come up with!

BOTSWANA MASALA

Southern Africa is home to an intriguing mix of peoples. That part of the world often telescopes into a black-and-white paradigm, but the blend is much richer, with populations of black, white, yellow, brown and everything in between. As a result, the cuisine is varied. On safari in Botswana last month, I mentioned my interest in local foods to the camp manager's wife, a lovely young woman with family roots in subcontinental India. So one evening, she arranged for us to be served a traditional meal of eland stew--cooked slowly on top of the camp stove all day to release the meat's juices and marrow--with mounds of steaming-hot, white polenta as the accompanying dish.

People in Botswana generally eat fruit for dessert, if they have dessert at all. But since the safari camps cater to American tastes, we savored a rich, dense gingerbread cake for dessert that evening. Alongside our plates, the servers placed small white pitchers of warm "pudding," or creme anglaise, to pour over the cake. Ginger is a common spice in Botswana, used both in African dishes as well as in those brought to the continent by its Indian population. In memory of that meal is this easy-to-make version of gingerbread cake.

Gingerbread Cake

3/4 cup dark honey
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup unsulphured blackstrap molasses
3 eggs
3 cups sifted flour (half white, half whole wheat)
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons powdered cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups buttermilk

Mix honey, oil, molasses, and eggs in a large bowl. Sift together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the flour mixture to the honey mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Pour the batter into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Serve slightly warm with whipped cream, flavored to taste with sugar and vanilla.

BELOW THE SURFACE

Polite smiles, yeses and nos, perhaps a few words in answer to the usual questions. Is it hot here in summer? How many cubs does a lioness birth? Where does your family live? I want more. Do you have siblings? How many? What does your name mean? Not your English name, the one for white foreigners. Your real name, the one that links you to this place. It means “not the same way.” He, our guide, is the youngest child. Seven of the eleven adult siblings are dead. They were sick, he says, when I ask how. In naming him, his mother wards off the sickness. This child will not be taken from her like the others.

We stop talking, still in our tracks, like the impala we pass each day. Alert to danger, to realities that keep us apart. Read about in books, perhaps, or gleaned from other inquisitive questionings.

The silence lingers, overtakes us. The relationship—between guide and tourist, man and woman, black and white—has no words to touch his sorrow. Yet in parting, the young guide steps toward me, leans forward with open arms. I move into his embrace, unanticipated, generous, as innocent, I think, as my questions had been. Between us, a vast landscape of human experience remains untouched. Where words can’t go, a gesture of affection has taken us below the surface, to the region where understanding lies and where hope burns. I climb into the tiny aircraft that will take me to the next camp, wiggle my fingers in farewell through the crack of the open window, and train my eyes on the waving arms below until all human form blends into the dun colors and broad sweep of the bush.

INTIMATIONS OF MORNING

Coming to wakefulness from sleep, I open my eyes. The blackness is complete, oddly rich, not unlike the smooth sheen of melted chocolate. I wonder for a moment if blindness has this same sensual depth. I lie quietly, anticipating the shapes of things to announce themselves, even if only in shadowy outline. But nothing emerges at all, only the sounds of the bush outside.

Baboons have begun to bark, the leaves of the trees rustling as the animals make their way through the branches above our tent. A lion roars, rumbling and low, in the not-too-far-away distance. The delicate chiming of bell frogs slowly diminishes, overtaken by hornbills sounding in raucous staccato. Slats of soft light reveal the framed outline of the tent windows, netted and thickly curtained to hold back the chill of night. I can pick out familiar shapes now, folds of mosquito netting around the bed, a chair in the far corner, the woven screen that encloses shower, sink, and bath. Fruit bats, calling forth evening darkness in clinking gate-latch chorus, end their song as the light shifts, rose-pink embers’ glow.

I slip out of bed, slide open the doors of the tent, and step out onto the verandah. The veld spreads before me, vast, quiet, secret. Palm trees stand tall along the distant horizon, delineating land from endless sky, and in between their dark trunks, a small orb rises, silently, swiftly, to paint the sky blood orange red.

CADILLAC MAN

Many years ago, my mother, who was Caucasian, had an ongoing flirtation with an older African American man who worked at the same nursing home she did. She was a nursing assistant there at the time, and he was….I don’t quite remember. What I do remember is that he came from Mississippi and his name was Johnny V----. He drove a big, white Cadillac, and boy was he a smooth operator. Oh, and he was married too. That didn’t really matter, though nothing ever came of their flirtation. They simply admired each other openly and entertained their fantasies without ever acting on them.

Recently, I had one of those sudden sinking feelings that hit you in the pit of your stomach. I realized that, on my birthday next week, I’ll turn 47—almost 50. I began to wonder where all the time has gone and, in answer to my puzzlings, made a mental list of what has happened to me in the course of almost five decades of living. It was a long, meaty list, of the sort the average woman of my age, race, and class might have. Still, in my mind, 50 is a big number and doesn’t quite fit my image of myself.

I must not be the only one for whom the number doesn’t fit the image. Walking along a busy downtown street the other day, on my way to buy a quick to-go lunch, I noticed an older black man pulling out of an off-street parking lot just ahead of me. He was driving a shiny, new silver Cadillac and we caught each other's glance for a flash of an instant.

I could feel it coming. He pulled slowly out of the lot, leaned casually out of the window, looked me up and down in my tight-fitting jeans and sleeveless tee, and crooned, “How ya doin’, Little Miss Blue Jeans?”

I kept on walking and said nothing in response. Instead, I fumed inwardly. It’s been a while since a stranger has hit on me in public, and I wasn’t really prepared. “I’m 50, for God’s sake,” I thought to myself. “I’m heading into menopause! Shouldn’t a woman be free from all this attention after a certain point???” But then I thought about my mother and her flirtation with Johnny V----. It's not always the case, but sometimes strangers and casual acquaintances are simply showing us their admiration, and it doesn’t hurt to nod in recognition of that fact. The fellow drove on, and I eventually cooled off. In fact, I feel a little better about turning 50. But I wish I’d smiled back at my Cadillac Man.

GUERRILLA DANCING

My friend M. has studied flamenco dance for years. She performs locally--solo and with others--and has recently joined a new group that commits hit-and-run flamenco dance. They show up at local events, more or less unannounced, put down their flamenco dancing boards, hit the “on” bottom on their boom box, and start dancing. In explaining the concept, she says, “You know, hit-and-run flamenco is kinda like hit-and-run guerrilla warfare.”

In reflecting on her words afterwards, I thought about how the radicals in our lives aren’t “out there.” They aren’t “them” or “others.” They’re our friends and neighbors and family. They’re the ones who see and practice guerrilla warfare as joyful dance, as art, as beauty. In a time when many of us feel discouraged or fearful about the state of the world, I take hope and inspiration from people like M. She’ll be dancing when the lights go out, and I hope I will be too.

AN EARLY HARVEST

June is asparagus season where I live, and every Thursday morning, I stop at the downtown farmers market on my way to work to buy a carton of fresh asparagus. I buy from the same vendor every week--a tall, lean fellow with blue eyes and a green felt hat. He's soft spoken and unassuming, yet everyone knows he has the best asparagus spears in town. If you don't get to him before noon, you won't go home with his asparagus.

I love asparagus three ways: steamed and served with a little butter and lemon juice; steamed and served over pasta with a sprinkling of fresh parmiggiano reggiano; or steamed and stirred into a favorite Asian salad called kung pao tofu. Admittedly, the first two options are simple and quick, while the tofu is detail work and takes a little time. But, the complex, full flavors of the salad are worth the trouble for this slim green vegetable, which is at its peak for just a few weeks in early summer.

KUNG PAO TOFU

Marinade:
3 tbsp tamari
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp unsulphured blackstrap molasses
1 tsp fresh, minced ginger
1 package extra firm tofu, drained, and chopped into large bite-sized pieces

1) Combine the marinade ingredients (except the tofu) in a medium-sized glass bowl. Stir to blend.
2) Add the bite-sized tofu and let it marinate for 20 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the chunks of tofu on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes to an hour until dark brown and slightly crunchy. Remove from oven and cool while you make the dressing.

Dressing:
1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
2 tsp tamari
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp minced garlic
1-1/2 tsp minced ginger
1-1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp cornstarch

1) Bring all the ingredients (except the cornstarch) to a boil in a small saucepan.
2) Whisk in the cornstarch and continue stirring until the dressing thickens (just a minute or two). Set aside while you cut up the vegetables for the salad.

Vegetables:
1 bunch asparagus, chopped and steamed til tender-crunchy (about 6-7 minutes)
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 green or yellow bell pepper, julienned
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 bunch green onions, chopped
3 tbsp (or more, to taste) toasted cashews
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

In a large bowl, combine the chopped vegetables, the baked tofu, and the warm dressing. Serve over rice of your choice (white or brown basmati rice is tasty). Enjoy!

GOOGLING MY WAY INTO THE PAST

I've been thinking about people I was close to years ago, and with the aid of modern technology have googled a few of them, just to see what pops up. As a test, I started with my family. All of us bookworms, we each come up with our publishing credentials. Even a short editorial comment my father submitted to the New York Times years ago comes up with a link to the text itself. The colorful covers of the books my sister and I have written come up on amazon.com, along with the gratifying "More books by...." link. Turns out my brother, who is on the periphery of family life these days, isn't editing the law journal he helped found a number of years ago. And my mother, unforgettable in her private life, yet pathologically fearful of the public spotlight, shows up not at all. Not even her obituary.

By contrast, a once dear friend from my teen years pops up all over the Internet. Not in the field she originally aspired to, but in another, where her extreme extroversion flourishes. The love of my life, the one who broke my heart, shows up on the roster of the ski team that shaped her early adult life. Alas, no photo to highlight her dark good looks. Police detectives I once knew through social connections are quoted in local newspapers and court documents; former professors show up on university faculty rosters or on the covers of articles and books they've written; one fellow, who had the starring role in all the high school theater productions, is splashed all over the electronic entertainment world, having risen to stardom on a highly successful television drama.

And then there are those, who, like my mother, don't show up at all or who, more humorously, share the name of prominent contributors in various fields of endeavor. A social worker shows up as a diversity organizer, a retired cop pops up as a prominent breast surgeon, another friend with athletic skills shows up as a Swiss filmmaker.

I've heard tales of people reconnecting to long lost friends through google searches. It's tempting, but I prefer to leave the past in cyberspace, where I can touch it from a safe distance if I choose and rely on memory for the rest.

LIVING IN A COCOON
(for JF, who put it all in perspective)

"Well, you could stay home and watch TV instead," reflected a colleague as I fretted about my next travel adventure. My father and I are going on safari in June. We're heading to the Okavango Delta in the northwestern corner of Botswana in southern Africa. The game viewing there is superb, and all the charts promise lions, elephants, cheetahs, colorful birds, and everything in between. The fancy coffee table book our safari agency sent us is filled with glossy panoramic photographs of the African bush, and I easily imagined myself in the landscape, free from all worry and bother, waiting only for the next friendly predator to stroll languidly past my tent.

But that was before a friend--a travel nurse--sent me the Botswana package from Travax.com. Travax produces country reports focused on health and safety issues synthesized from data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the World Health Organization. After reading the 42-page document, I wondered why I'd paid for my safari package in full. I also wondered why the photos from the safari agency showed tourists in shorts and sleeveless shirts--didn't they know about malaria? ticks? UV exposure? What about the food and waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid, and cholera? Airborne contagious diseases such as polio, influenza, and tuberculosis? Measles, sleeping sickness, and parasites in abundance? And let's not even get started on HIV/AIDS. Turns out Botswana has the second-highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world, with an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults of 37% and 33,000 AIDS deaths each year (out of a total population of 1.6 million). For perspective, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults in the United States is less than 1% (0.6% to be precise), and AIDS deaths reach about 14,000 people each year out of a total population of almost 299 million people. I checked the CIA World Fact Book to make sure Travax wasn't making this stuff up. Don't breathe, don't eat, and definitely don't have sex in Botswana.

Believe you me, I ran to my doctor for a first round of innoculations (DPT and hepatitis A for starters) and for a slough of prescriptions. Because the risk of TD (traveler's diarrhea) is so high--there's bacterial diarrhea and protozoal diarrhea, so if you don't get one, you'll get the other--I came away with three prescriptions just for diarrhea: one for bad diarrhea, a second for really bad diarrhea, and a third for really, really bad diarrhea. Next week, I go to the travel clinic for the second and final round of innoculations (typhoid and polio) and to discuss which of the many malaria profylaxes has a chance in hell to work in Botswana. Turns out African mosquitoes are mutating like crazy and many are resistant to anti-malarial drugs. Great. Does that mean the tubes of 35% DEET cream I bought to slather all over my body and the giant bottle of super-toxic Permethrin I'm supposed to spray on every article of outer clothing before I leave are just an exercise in wishful thinking?

As I was ranting about all this to my sister one evening, she looked at me askance. "How did you miss this stuff?" she asked me. She writes geography books for a living and is just coming off a period of writing specifically about Africa. She loves to relay to me all the statistical data she's gathered on the countries she's writing about, so Mali's human misery index, Uganda's information campaign against AIDS, and guinea worm eradication in Senegal are daily conversational fare between the two of us. I guess I'd missed this stuff because, like most Americans, I live in a cocoon of public health splendor. An Iranian taxi cab driver once told me that the U.S. miracle is its vast and highly effective system of agricultural distribution. Now that I'm going to Botswana, I think it's our ability to manage and protect public health on a grand scale...and still have money left over to go to the movies.

NEVER NEVER LAND

I didn't really want to come to Disneyland for the annual science teachers national convention, but now that I'm here, I'm not sure I really want to leave. Everything is perfect. The weather is glorious, pleasantly cool in the early morning and comfortably warm by afternoon. The flora is in full bloom--yellow day lilies, shrub-sized clivia, paperlike California poppies, bougainvillea, azaleas, lantana, hip-tall birds of paradise, camellias and clematis as big as plates, and everywhere everywhere the gentle susserating of palms. Birds chirp high in the trees, a sociable sparrow shares my breakfast scone, and from morning til night, children squeal with a mix of delight and terror as the Disney machines, on their slightly rusted rails, hurl their occupants through space for an all-you-can-ride thrill.

There's not a speck of trash anywhere, no signs of poverty or distress, and at every turn, there's Mickey Mouse to greet you with his goofy grin. He's carved into the soap in the hotel rooms, carefully clipped into the hedges, and perched--ears only--atop the heads of most children under ten, who seem to sprout a Mickey cap within minutes of their arrival.

On the walk back to the hotel from an afternoon of convention sessions, I happened onto a Cinderella theme wedding, complete with golden carriage, white horses, coachmen, giggling bridesmaids all in pink, and a fairy princess bride, perfect in her whiter than white wedding gown and sparkling tiara. I felt an instant pang of envy; that feeling of recognizing before one's eyes a childhood fantasy made real in someone else's life. A beefy bodyguard approached me, asking in an apologetic tone if I would mind bypassing the bridal party, as the entourage was about to make its way to a garlanded canopy tent a few hundred yards away where the bride was to be married in outdoor splendor. The guard and I fell into whispered conversation, and I asked him if Cinderella weddings were common at Disneyland. He confessed that, as an employee of the bride's family, he wasn't sure of the statistics but that theme weddings were not unheard of.

"It's a whole other world out here, " I remarked in awe.

"It's lovely lovely," he grinned in response, raising his eyebrows and cocking his head in a sort of self-mocking acknowledgment of his role in this dreamland production.

Since my arrival at Disneyland, I've been wondering how to explain the appeal of the place. I think of myself as immune to canned reality, far too sophisticated to be seduced this easily. My colleagues must view me in this same light. They've been chuckling at me and my Disneyfied glee.

The monumental effort behind such a carefully manicured vision is a given, yet you don't ever see anyone laboring at it. It all takes place after hours or very discreetly in remote corners. I think it's because the vision is so smooth and tightly controlled that we fall for the fantasy. And, after a weekend of listening to science teachers at wit's end over plummeting student achievement in STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), over the lack of meaningful support from the highest levels of government to reverse the trend, and over distorted national priorities, the Disneyland cocoon provides respite. Tinkerbell is there to wave her magic wand to wish it all away, and for a day or two, I believe.

PARIS IN THE SPRING

Spring is the traditional season for demonstrations in France (May 1 is workers' day), and indeed students, labor unions, and citizen sympathizers have been demonstrating for a couple of weeks in Paris and in other major French cities. My father is in Paris this week, and he's been sending regular email updates. He reports that much of the action in Paris has been near iconic sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Bastille, and the Place de la Republique, which is close to where he is staying. Air, rail, and metro traffic has been impacted, and many schools and businesses have closed on strike days.

Unlike the rioting last autumn, which was focused in poor immigrant ghettos, the upheaval this time is in the urban core. It is largely a white, middle-class protest of a new labor law that extends the period of employment probation for workers under the age of twenty-six to two years (currently the probationary period is only a matter of a couple of months). During the probationary period, employers have the right to dismiss young workers for just about any reason. The new law was meant to open up job opportunities for youth (a major issue in last fall's rioting), but instead, most young people in France resist the idea of American-style at will employment. They want the new law abolished. President Chirac has stepped in, changing the language of the law a little so as to ensure that, at a minimum, employers give reasons for dismissing youth employees.

La Chef writes to me about the demonstrations in highly reflective terms. As a grandmother, she sees her grandchildren inheriting a very different world from the one in which she grew up and lived out most of her career. She sees the forces of economic globalization at work in France and says that many of the changes to French labor law, against which so many citizens are protesting, are a foregone conclusion. We agree that the socio-economic contract that has provided job security in France for more than half a century is falling apart, and that historic change such as this is painful.

In broad terms, I wonder how changes to employment patterns impact culinary traditions. In the United States, with low unemployment and a high percentage of working families, quick meals in front of the television are increasingly the norm. Eating at restaurants during the work week has become de rigueur. The number of families heading for restaurants to celebrate holiday meals is skyrocketing, and the industry is quickly adjusting. The same trends are appearing in France, where the hours-long family meal is becoming a relic of the past. French grocery stores carry more prepared and pre-packaged foods, and even Valrhona, the preeminent French chocolatier, has begun to produce and sell chocolate chips as well as standard bar chocolate for cooking. Chips are easier for the home cook, who can save time and avoid the mess that comes with chopping up the large and heavy blocks of Valrhona chocolate into manageable pieces.

I discovered a 3-kilo bag of Valrhona chips in La Chef's cupboard last fall. Although she laments the passing of "slow food" and makes her career out of preserving slow food values (local and organic production of food, seasonal eating, home cooking using only the freshest of ingredients), she loves the chips. "Easier for melting," she says. On this trip to Paris, I've sent my father to Georges Detou in the Les Halles neighborhood for a 3-kilo bag of Valrhona chips for me. I've already gone through almost an entire bag from his most recent trip to Paris in early March. The chips are perfect for an Americanized version of the French "reine de saba," a sort of molten brownie traditionally made with pulverized almonds. Below is the easy American version.

Americanized Reine de Saba

12 ounces Valrhona chocolate chips (American semisweet chocolate chips will work too)
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1) Melt 6 ounces (about one cup) of the chips and the butter in a small pan over low heat. (You can melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave or over a doubleboiler as well.) Pour the melted chocolate and butter into a medium-sized bowl.

2) Beat the sugar into the melted chocolate. Then mix in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla.

3) Sift together the dry ingredients and stir into the chocolate mixture, blending well. Add the remaining 6 ounces of chips (not melted) to the batter.

4) Pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch pie dish or cake pan and bake for about 23 minutes* in a 350-degree oven (for glass pans; 375-degree oven for non-glass). Serve warm with ice cream.

*Note that chocolate brownies, cakes, and cookies are best if pulled from the oven a little underdone. If overcooked, chocolate desserts become too dry. Twenty-three minutes is just about right for this recipe.

FEELING NOSTALGIC
(Piney River picnic, left, 1963)

My sister is in London until Friday. She left her computer at home and took paper and pen instead, saying she wanted to be in London the way it once would have been, free of instant messaging and satellite phone connection. I'm not supposed to call or email. I've resisted the phone call, but, of course, I've already sent her three emails, which she doesn't seem to have read, so I guess she's staying true to her vow.

With the edicts in place, it's awfully quiet around here. When my sister is at home, we talk all the time, either by phone, email, or in person. When I run out of things to say, she keeps right on going, and I say, "Uh, huh or "uh, uh" in reply, just like when we were young. I got to feeling nostalgic this morning and dug around in a closet for the white photo album where the old family photos are. I was looking for a particular image of my sister and me sitting in a pile of leaves on the curb in front of one of the Columbia, Missouri, homes. Instead, I found this picture from a 1963 picnic on the Piney River with my mother's mother (seated, background), my sister (foreground), me (in the middle), our shepherd Leki, my parents (off frame), and my mother's Aunt Maud and Uncle Willis (also off frame). It brought back fond memories of that river, where we searched for crawfish, skipped rocks, and collected buckeyes.

One summer, years after the 1963 picnic, my grandmother took my brother and me for a picnic on the Piney. She sat on the rocky riverbank to lay out our lunch while my brother and I, teenagers both, stripped off our clothes and lept off a boulder into the deep and dark waters below. My grandmother, a very proper grande dame indeed, looked up and smiled. "My little frogs," she said.

THE FAINTING

In searching for a gardening essay I'd written a couple years ago, I ran across a piece about family communications that I'd written a long time ago. It was funny then, and it's still funny now.

Donna said she'd heard about The Fainting from her sister, Rose, who'd heard about from their brother, Dan, who'd heard about it from their father, Dominic. News gets around like that in that family. The source of family information is always several people back. No one ever seems to remember exactly who the original source is, and I doubt anyone really cares. The most important thing just seems to be the news.

There was the time their mother, Virginia, moved back into the house on Peters Square with Dominic. I think that news came from Rose, who'd heard it from Virginia, who'd actually been invited by Dominic. Donna was surprised by that one. After all, only twelve years had passed since Virginia and Dominic's divorce--and Dominic holds a grudge. His most recent outburst had been the threat of police action if Virginia ever stepped foot on his property. But, maybe twelve years is, after all, long enough to erase--or at least to dull--the sharpness of bitter memory. Donna said maybe it was loneliness. Or old age. But most probably, it had something to do with eating habits.

Virginia liked to test already-proven formulas, and the Greenway housing coop experience was no exception. She left Omaha in a hurry, speeding back to Minneapolis, her mother's old black Buick crammed full of belongings, the typing table and captain's chair firmly strapped to the top. Rose went with her for the ride. Donna says it was for the money--Virginia paid Rose to miss work at the library.

Rose didn't stay in Minneapolis for long, but Virginia did. She moved into the Greenway coop, into the room where Fran had lived when Rose was there. Actually, Rose moved in after Fran did. Fran had greeted Rose at the front door in her dirty long johns and ill-fitting robe. Fran's mother had given the robe to her at Christmas. Fran wore it out of guilt, or perhaps in the false belief that love had guided her mother's choice.

Shortly after the move, Donna went to visit Virginia in her new room at the Greenway. All the treasures that had been stuffed and wedged into the old black Buick were there, neatly arranged around the room. A few new postcards were tacked up onto the freshly painted walls, and handstitched quilts had been rolled onto wooden dowels to serve as curtains. Donna said Virginia could turn a storm sewer into a home.

Donna and Virginia ate breakfast out near the high school that morning. Virginia picked at an omelette--she always had a nervous stomach--and Donna slammed her thumb in the doorjam of the stall in the women's bathroom. She lost part of her nail, but Virginia still made her pay for the meal.

Donna says that Virginia's parting gesture after breakfast was a finger up the nose. Typical, and mostly in fun, but partly serious. Donna and Dan and Dominic had plans for dinner together that evening, and Virginia--as always--felt left out. Dan said she'd been talking a lot about marriage recently, mostly because she wanted a color television. And a good meal or two, which is how it all started, really.

A few months later, Donna called Dominic, who told her that Dan had told him that Virginia had reported that she'd fainted at work. The doctor attributed the fainting to poor eating habits. Dominic and Dan swore it was the strictly enforced vegetarian menu at the Greenway coop. Donna said it was more like a lifetime of cigarettes, coffee, Coca-Cola, and a five-pound bag of sugar every week. No one could agree on the cause exactly, but four weeks after The Fainting, Virginia showed up at Dominic's door, was invited in, fell asleep on the couch, and hasn't left yet. At least that's what Donna says she heard from Rose, who heard it from Dan, who heard it from Dominic. And he should know.

WINTER BLOOMS

(flowering cattleya, left)

My cattleya is in bloom. It hasn't produced flowers since I bought it several years ago, inspired by a visit SJG and I took to an orchid garden on a wintertime trip to Key West. When I bought the cattleya, the plant was in full bloom. But after the flowers faded and dropped off about a month later, it didn't produce a single bud or bloom again. I followed all the greenhouse directions--occasional on-schedule feedings, regular waterings and spraying with distilled water, perfect placement in an east-facing window with sheer curtains to filter the morning light during winter, and an under-the-trees outdoor life during the summer when natural rains could feed it. With no results.

I seriously thought about throwing it out. My mother, who had a magical green thumb, grew orchids with my father when I was young. They built a basement greenhouse, where they kept many different orchid varieties, bringing them into the dining room as they came into bloom at different times. When a plant gave up its annual blooming life after several years, they threw it out and replaced it with another orchid. But I couldn't bring myself to throw out my cattleya. Even though it wasn't producing flowers, it was still alive, and I couldn't bear the vision of trash can suffocation. Instead I moved it all over the house, including into the basement for a couple of winters, where even there it refused to give up.

Earlier this month, my sister casually mentioned a Swedish friend's wife, who grows orchids--in Sweden of all places. It's cold and dark there, yet this woman's orchids are blooming profusely now under what is described to me as neglectful care. I decided to try a version of managed neglect. I brought my cattleya from the basement and into the bathroom, where I placed it on the floor near the radiator and away from the windows. I figured the room's humidity and indirect light would bring miracles. If my approach didn't work, I promised myself, I would finally throw out the orchid.

But it did work, and the cattleya has been in bloom for about a week, with another four or five weeks to go. I think I'll bring the cymbidium into the bathroom tomorrow.

SWIMMING TO SERENITY

(Photo at left of the Roman pool at the Parc Monceau in Paris, courtesy of my father)

In the winter months, after it's become too cold and icy to ride my bicycle to work every day, I change my routine of exercise to include weekly swimming sessions at the downtown pool. I usually go in the midafternoon, when the pool is quiet, and there's only me and the Eastern European ladies in their swim caps and giant floral-patterned swimsuits. One time, in the steam bath after my swim, I ran into one of the ladies drinking a clear liquid from her flask. "That's a great idea, to drink water in here," I said to her. "I'm drinking vodka," she replied, and we both chuckled.

Although swimming is an exercise for the body, I find that, for me, it's primarily an excercise in meditation. Energy slows with each exhalation into the water, moving inward with each stroke. The exterior world begins to fall away, and I listen to my breathing as the water streams past my body and flows out through my nose and mouth with each forced out-breath. I imagine it must have been like this in utero.

I've never been a fast, powerful body in the water. In fact, years ago when in graduate school, I took a thrice-weekly swimming class at the university's Olympic-sized pool. One of the surprise! goals of the class was to increase speed and power, so at the beginning of the first week of class, we buddied up and counted the number of laps we each could swim in a five-minute period. I swam 18 laps. At the end of the semester, we again buddied up and counted laps for the same amount of time. Every one else in class had increased their capabilities by a lap or two. I again swam 18 laps.

I think this means that my potential as a swimmer is what it is, and that there's something in me that doesn't want to swim fast and hard. What I do want is to hit my stride, whatever that may be on any particular day, and to view life from a water creature's perspective--with that funny feeling of solitude and extreme insularity, even with other bodies in the water. One afternoon at the university all those years ago, swimming laps in the slow lane, I rotated onto my side for an inhalation and made contact with a woman swimming over and on top of me. As I held my breath to wait for her to clear my body, I wondered why she hadn't chosen one of the fast lanes. Swimming, of course, does have a competitive side, but drowning your fellow swimmers in the slow lane seems to go beyond the pale. Feeling the power swimmer had violated some common code of water life--whereby all swimmers respect solitude and insularity--I felt frightened that day, unable to regain my meditative rhythm, and got out of the pool at the far end of my lane. I like to tell this story to the lifeguards at the downtown pool. That way, I figure they'll remember me and look out for me in case anyone else tries to overpower me in the slow lane. But no one ever has and my pool-life serenity has only that one blemish.

SHAPING EACH OTHER'S LIVES

Humans, as social creatures living in community, shape the lives of those around them. I know that in principle I've influenced the lives of people around me, loved ones and strangers alike. But it's hard to see that influence, and it's a rare event when any one of these people has actually confirmed or described to me the impressions I've made on them. If they've done so, it's usually been under unusual circumstances or in a moment of emotional fervor. I view these confirmations of human impact on other lives as a sort of footprint, proving that we have passed this way and have left certain recognizable signs in our wake.

Just this weekend, my young neighbor friend Gracie, who's almost nine, unwittingly showed me one of my footprints. SJG and I had invited Gracie, her mother and father, Gay and Peter, and her little sister, Bronte, to our house for a rib feast to celebrate Gay's birthday. We prepared the ribs the two-day way, marinating them overnight in spices, grilling them briefly the next afternoon, and finishing them in a two-hour steam bath in the oven. To please Gracie and Bronte's palate, we also made our favorite macaroni and cheese recipe; cole slaw rounded out the meal. We left the choice of dessert to Gay, and she opted for chocolate mousse. I made the mousse well in advance, to give it time to chill and set in individual glasses, with plans to serve each glass with a dollop of whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

After we'd finished the main meal, I called Gracie into the kitchen. "I need your help with the whipped cream for the mousse," I told her conspiratorially. She raced into the kitchen after me, and I handed her an old-fashioned set of beaters, the kind that you turn by hand. They fit neatly into a cylindrical ceramic container and work perfectly to beat small amounts of whipping cream and egg whites.

Gracie looked puzzled. "What are we going to do with these?" she asked.

"We'll beat the whipping cream with them and put a little spoonful on top of each person's mousse," I explained as I pointed to the small glasses of mousse in the refrigerator.

"Oh," Gracie replied. "I thought we were going to squirt the cream out of a can!"

"Nope," I replied. "We're doing the real thing." I poured the whipping cream into the ceramic container, placed the beaters on top, and told Gracie to start turning. "You can switch hands if you get tired," I explained.

Gracie dutifully began to crank the beaters, and within seconds wondered if her work was done. I showed her how to lift the beaters to check the consistency of the cream, and she went back to her work, checking frequently and switching hands as her eight-year-old arms tired. In due time, she exclaimed, "I think it must be done. It's getting really hard to turn this thing."

And indeed the cream was ready to spoon onto the mousse, after which Gracie sprinkled each one with chocolate shavings. She carefully placed the glasses of mousse onto a serving tray, carried it with great delicacy into the dining room, and placed it before her mother. "Mom, I beat the cream!" she cried with girlish pride. In a flash, I saw my footprint, saw through Gracie's excitement and pride that I had offered her a way to use her human powers to transform something ordinary into loveliness.