Field and Fen

Yesterday, power of concentration and focus not working well, anxiety about various household things, I made apricot sauce for the Christmas ham.

Simple recipe, sugar and water, dried apricots simmered till tender, blended smooth, dash of vanilla, done. 

And really good, not very sweet, nice to oppose the saltiness of ham. Also the lovely golden color contrasts with the color of ham. In the freezer now. 

It's the first day of Hanukah, enjoy if you observe it. Long ago my son came home from nursery school singing the dreidel song, and with a little dreidel. I wasn't sure if it was a religious item not for casual handling, so I took it from him until I could ask a friend. 

She said what sort of mom are you? It's a TOY, give it back to him right now!  So my education was improved and he went on to adapt the dreidel song to all kinds of contexts. One time he was making worms from clay, singing oh flatworm, flatworm, flatworm, I made it out of clay..

So that's us today. Happy Sunday, beginning of Advent, too, if you celebrate it.

 The last day has double doors, very dramatic

And it opens to the best tree ever, for the Snowshoe Hare and Santa Tomte to admire

Thank you all for following this, it's been fun opening a door each day.  And thank you Heather C., for giving me one of the best ways I've ever had of navigating the season which is a difficult one for me, with something to look forward to each day. You're a star, dear HGD.

And here's the stage set for the apple crumble Christmas dessert, along with the almond crescents. This is the setup for the apples, crumble topping yet to come.

Tomorrow, if I remember, I'll post a picture of the result before we dive into it.

Meanwhile merry Christmas if you celebrate it, TGIF if you celebrate other days. 

And, a la Tiny Tim, the Dickens one, not the pop one with Miss Vicky, God bless us every one! Trala. 

 Santa, or Tomte, is still hanging in there, bringing his sled of gifts.  I always want to know what's in the parcels, when you see boxed gifts in the movies.

And meanwhile, chez Boud, yesterday I got back into tortilla making.  Using the masa harina, the official flour of Mexican corn tortillas, courtesy of Chris, thank you, and her handwritten recipe, I got under way

I was planning on tortillas stuffed with chicken salad, with lettuce and cilantro

So I set to work, making the dough, and rolling it out.  I had forgotten the resting period needed, so by the time I got to the rolling, I was starving.

And I instantly underwent a rapid education in the difference between rolling out a dough with gluten rich flour, and one with gluten free masa harina.

Big difference in how it handles and responds.  I had to add a few drops of water to get the dough working better.  And I had a bit of trouble getting it off the plastic wrap, even though I'd oiled it, and went over to parchment paper, which worked a whole lot better.

I tried slapping it back and forth in my hands, with some success, but I still needed more rolling work to make it thin and big enough to actually work.  And here you see my lunch.  Next time I have to use little to no oil on the pan.  I forgot this, and out of force of habit, spritzed the pan with olive oil.  They were still nice and flexible, though, and rolled very obligingly for me.  

They definitely taste different from the flour tortillas I made recently, a nice change, in fact.

 So here's another few, now in the freezer, waiting till I need another tortilla.  Thanks, Chris, that was a nice experience.  And with a dry pan, they'll work even better.

I really like a lunch I can just pick up and eat.  Better than sandwiches. Also making the tortillas postponed my having to bake bread, always a good thing.  It's so easy, I have no idea why I put it off.

Meanwhile, soup is happening.  Sweet potato, pumpkin, red lentil, with bits of stuff added in from previous cooking, including the liquid from the canned chicken, which has a good flavor, and the potato starch from making the vichyssoise, I think, anyway, various little flavor-loaded containers got into the soup.

 Here's  Tomte Santa, with the snow hare and a furry friend looking out on the shortest day.

 Today's Advent Calendar window is a puzzle: what's the robin sitting on, in his earnest conversation with Santa? And is he giving his wishlist or hoping for a sleigh ride?

 If anyone can identify this flying figure, please do. It might be a European robin, can't say I've ever seen one in flight. I'm learning that I don't have to know everything, so I'm not researching this one.  If I find out, good, but not by dint of searching.

I was reading an essay today about Christmas and being free not to do things the way we always have.  Partly it's about the pandemic, partly about the idea that it's okay to do things the way that suits us, rather than the socially demanded way.  All year round, that is.

One of the immediate subjects is, for people who celebrate Christmas, that if you simply decide to be simple, it gives other people permission to do likewise.  Which had not occurred to me, even though when I see other people being casual and comfortable and not stressing out about their hair and eyebrows and Christmas cards and so on, it gives me permission to do likewise.  Not that my hair and eyebrows are ever a concern, to be honest, but for some people that kind of grooming issue has been a big deal during lockdown.

So I hereby put my money where my mouth is, and say: I will greet people with texts and emails as I get to it, and definitely in response to their greeting me. No flock of cards is going out. The little decorations I have out at home will not be added to.  

Christmas dinner is being brought by Handsome Son, heat and eat style,just as we did at Thanksgiving.  I'll get out the red cloth and the white embroidered cloth and glasses, and lay the table.  I'll make an apple crumble for dessert.  Nothing fancier.  And I'll enjoy the day. We may even be celebrating on the 25th this year. Everyone I know has too much stuff, so it's not really a favor to give presents, unless they can be consumed right away.  So aside from getting out The Pearls, that's it for our huge festivities.  And it will be enough.

I don't believe in making Christmas the centerpiece of the year, certainly don't start planning it in January, as some folks I know do, and good luck to them, if they like it, go for it.  Me, not being swept up in that energy.

I really think learning to live in the present is a bigger deal now than ever, since we realize better than ever that we don't know how much present we're going to get. It's like the difference between 9/10 and 9/11.  We were in deadly danger on 9/10, but we didn't know it then. After 9/11 we certainly knew it, and continue to.

It's a continuing work in progress for me, learning not to make anxiety the default of the day.  But I'm working on it. So many things don't matter as much as they seem to in the middle of the night.

So that's where I am, and I do offer these thoughts to you in the hope that they might be helpful, or at least interesting, and if not, you can always scroll on quietly.

Off to make blueberry muffins now, for Handsome Son tomorrow.

 Interesting that we tend to celebrate Christmas as a time of snow and frost, when the original events took place in a very different climate, where it would have been amazing to have snow everywhere. And the cozy notion of cottages far away on a hillside, too, very geography specific.  Just a thought.

Today is icy after the snow cleanup.  A layer of it lurking under the snow.  So I'm not venturing out today.  No expedition while the cleaning family are here, just staying home, out of their way, wearing a mask.  They are masked and gloved, very considerate.

Soon it will be the solstice, and soon after that we'll see the days lengthen tiny bit by tiny bit.  February in this region always seems weird to me, still very cold but with a lot more daylight to enjoy being frozen..

 This morning's Advent Calendar door.

And the scene outside after the storm.  We are in that region that is always on the cusp between two systems, one side rain, one side snow.  We seem to have got the snow side this time, several inches of wet stuff, but it could have been worse, as it is north of here.

Here's the sidewalk snowblower, huffing and sticking, trying to throw heavy wet snow. The cloudy bit at the left is the snow it's managed to fire out.  They have to get this done in order for the shovelers to do the individual paths.  After the plows came last night during the night.  Which was after the sanders came last afternoon. It's an unfolding drama.

People who are mainly working from home, are not rushing out to clear their cars yet, either.  I'll wait till there's activity before I do anything. I think I can clear my car, but as for digging around it, I may need help with that.  It's not a matter of going anywhere, but of moving cars so that the plows can clear everything before it all freezes again tonight. Usually one of the neighbors takes my keys and does that for me.  No idea where my car goes, just an act of faith that it will be brought back!

My plan is to stay indoors and have soup.  And maybe make some chocolate bark before I sample all the chocolate chips and there are none left for bark.  My bite is faster than my bark.

 But first, the Christmas tree showed up on the Advent Calendar, lit and ready to go.

And here are the cranberries, from Misfits, and Canadian, which seems strange to a person living in the cranberry state, but the NJ cranberries all seem to be contracted to big companies to make drinks and other cranberry adjacent products.  Anyway, these are very good.

And pancakes, which the cookbook calls crepes, which they are not, crepes being so thin as to be transparent,and these are thin, but definitely pancakes the way I like them.  I'm not a fan of the ones that look like athletic shoe soles.

And for once I did let the batter rest for an hour, and found that is a very good idea.

First layer of cranberry sauce

 Then a couple more, and a drawing of molasses on top.  Very good afternoon tea yesterday, with a pot of tea.  Celebratory.

The European robin, to be exact.  Which is a totally different sort of bird from the American robin.  Europeans, on being told that pigeon-like thing with the pink chest is a robin, say, never!  that's a pigeon with a pink chest.  Real robins are tiny, very bold and friendly, sit on your spade while you're gardening, or maybe on your hat.  They are winter birds, and feature on many a British Christmas card, sitting on a snowy log.

The naming confusion is all the fault of the Pilgrims, who were as good at birds and botany as they were at getting along with and appreciating native Americans.  I'm guessing they were mainly townsfolk, though I haven't researched this.  They certainly named things at random.  A bird with a pink chest might as well be called a robin.

And there's the goldfinch, the American version of which, brilliant yellow and black spring plumage, I know very well because it's the state bird of NJ.  But the goldfinch of Donna Tartt's brilliant novel of the same name, looks nothing like it.

You need to read it in print, not audio, though, because there are passages you whip through, so exciting, to find out what's next, and passages you linger over because they're so packed with meaning you need to address them that way.  Audiobooks have one failing, that they are read totally at the same speed throughout, destroying the dramatic impact of good writing as often as not.  But better than no access, I guess.

 Likewise the settlers',  we're back to the settlers, plant naming, it's good thing we have the Latin true names, because they really fell down on that one.

I was pretty good at botany as a kid in the UK.  It's more or less a requirement.  On Girl Guide hikes, our leader would say, name me the first ten plants we see out here on this moor.  And everyone could.  There was no what's this little green thing? or well, it's a little white flower, no, we knew our plants.  So I had to relearn a whole lot when I moved to the US.  My time in France wasn't much of a botanical education, the French people I knew having zero knowledge of, or interest in, botany.  Not much call for it in the high rent district of Paris.

But, aside from having different vegetation here, other than the plants John Tradescant stole and brought back to England for his boss, Lord Cecil, Elizabeth First's right hand man on state affairs and the treasury, which from then on we counted as English plants, such a nerve, there was a lot to learn.

The preceding paragraph, which is one sentence, is witness to a heavy Latin education, the periodic style, with subordinate clauses sticking out all over, but it makes sense if you stay with it.

One of the great blessings of not growing up with poison ivy, (now we're back to plants, I feel as if there should be a helpful voiceover in this blogpost), for instance, it being rare to nonexistent where I lived, is that you don't develop sensitivity to it until you've been exposed a few times.

So I was able to uproot and toss it at will, to the horror of my neighbors, who expected me to collapse quite soon.  And one of them refused to come into my living room until I removed a lovely vase of wild flowers and weeds, including a bunch of poison ivy, which I had thought pretty enough to pick.  She said if she even brushed against it, she'd be one big rash.

Wonderful discoveries about plants and trees, like the sassafras tree with the three kinds of leaves, very exciting stuff for me.  

My mid morning fruit break.  Looks seasonal, somehow.  The star motif gets in everywhere.

Current reading, highly recommended, is Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. 

I heard of her yesterday for the first time, and already I'm deep into this novel. It's a quest novel, on very humble lines, with a kind of accidental pilgrim, Harold of the title, in search of connection, and learning a lot on the way.  It's very much Canterbury Pilgrims in its way of introducing interesting characters, vignette style, and their stories, except that Harold's is a lone pilgrimage.

In some ways, it's a much abbreviated take on the sort of quest in the Goldfinch, except it's a quest for human connection rather than a masterpiece of painting and its symbolism.  

Anyway, back to the Great Me, I've been getting a lovely lot of greetings, emails, ecards, texts and general good wishes today.  Lovely day.  Sunny, nothing on the calendar other than lazing about. 

I'll take it!

 The snowshoe hare got the elf's attention and showed him where the Star is approaching.

And since she was writing in the Golden Age, where marketing was king, the Christie machine got ahead of her, and now she's scarcely heard of.  But this is a rattlin' good story, all the same.  About as serious as a Christie, and pretty puzzling, too.  I had several ideas about whodunit, but was wrong in the end. So I recommend this.  My library only has this one, but I managed to get some low cost other ones for my Kindle. Winter afternoon reading.

And I've been thinking about cabbage and leeks, yes, my life is riveting, partly because I had supplies of them in the freezer waiting for me to do something about them.  I love this vegetarian book of Ottolenghi's and even if you never cook from it, it's beautiful to handle and just see the photography.  I remembered having made an elaborate vegetable pie thing out of here ages ago, so I took a look.

And quickly found that since I have neither puff pastry, nor Gorgonzola, nor broccoli, I was a bit stymied with this recipe.  But I recommend it if you have the ingredients.

 I remembered some cabbage pie ideas from YouTube, still held back by a lack of cheese, it's on the grocery list for this week, decided to go to war with the food I had.

Namely, leek whites, red cabbage, cooked pumpkin, white onions, nice addition of capers. 

Three eggs, flour, nutmeg, a spoonful of plain yogurt, Dijon mustard, beaten up as a sauce.

Then all baked at 400 for about 40 minutes, resulting in this interesting stuff

The roast potatoes were just fine, the cabbage mixture lacked a little oomph, so after I sampled it I decided it might work better as a soup.  Sooooooo, a quart of chicken broth and a dash of lemon juice later, simmering and  blender at work, here it comes, with a sprig of lemon balm to decorate it

It's really odd to have a tangy soup, which  tastes pretty good, and looks like dessert.  But if you can get past expecting it to be some fruit deal because of  the color, it's fine.

Today's advent calendar day opens to what might be an ammo dump of snowballs ready to pelt the other elves and gnomes.  Or maybe a lighted Christmas tree. Either way, the white rabbit, probably really a  snowshoe hare, for the season, keeps her back firmly turned

Since school is virtual, as is her husband's job, they can move like this without major interruption, except for the little matter of getting halfway round the planet,  On a plane, a place I wouldn't care to be for many hours right now.  I'll miss them, the kids especially.

And I got this weekend's royal viewing, it's not a weekend without royal scandal, including the hats, which are often the greatest scandal of all.

Here's what we always suspected, and now it does seem to be true. Not surprising since they were a security risk, what with his having access to all the secret papers as King, leaving them lying around unlocked, with dodgy people galore in the house, well, mansion, really, and being great pals with Hitler and other chums.

So this will be good. 

Meanwhile back at the fence: after all the alerts, warnings, threats about trees and that, they now tell us that, after all, they still don't know when they can start.  I guess the supply chain for fences has been yanked around by covid-19. Unless the fencing people have retooled to make vaccine, who knows. No, that was definitely a joke, in case anyone wonders.

What I wonder is if people who can't take the flu shot will be able to safely take the covid vaccine. Or if once again we'll be begging everyone around us who can take it, to do so for all our sakes. It's a while before I need to know that, since I doubt if the general population is going to see supplies before next summer earliest.

So this morning, walk done, more of a chore than a pleasure at the moment, what with the low winter energy, library done, therapy lamp session done, check, check, check, blogpost about to go out, that part is fun, I'm about to have a bowl of vichyssoise for lunch.

Then bake cornbread muffins this afternoon in anticipation of a visit from Handsome Son.

Today's Advent Calendar window. 

I must get Handsome Son next time he's over, to bring down the Christmas decorations, such as they are, from the high shelf in the art closet.

I'll probably heap them around, interspersed with small dolls and animals. No tree. I'm not a fan of fake ones, and I'm deadly allergic to real cut ones in the house.

But it will be festive enough to suit them as will see it. I don't get much enthusiasm going till later in the month, in case you wondered at this downbeat plan!

This year I plan not to cut out stars. Nor weave them in paper. At least that's this morning's thinking. We'll see.

 Do you know that old carol?  We learned it at school.  It's about bringing lighted torches, to see the stable and visit with the baby in the manger.  Here's an elf all ready to make his way there.

She's in Gibraltar at the time of the Spanish Civil war, intrigue, murder, spying, her own grief to deal with, a very exciting and moving read.  Guernica features.  In fact I had to stop there this morning, overcome by that.  The huge Picasso masterwork based on that atrocity was almost too much to deal with. I saw it in Washington, I believe. I think it's now housed in the UN building.

And here's the second part of the Shanghai Girls novel, thank you Ellen, for mentioning it, or I might not have realized there was another part.  This is gripping enough that when I started reading yesterday morning, I put my breakfast toast into the toaster oven, and completely forgot it, so there was a nice piece of buttered charcoal for breakfast.

Veggie lasagna, from a good local caterer, enough for two meals for the likes of me,   As you see, tomorrow's lunch on the left, today's on the right.

And a chocolate chip cookie!  My tax dollars well spent today, anyway. Very happy senior here.

 Santa is getting serious here, mounted on his straw steed ready for his rounds

And on YouTube a favorite, showing up again.  It's a high school mime troupe which did this hilariously funny Hallelujah Chorus on flash cards.  Here holding cards high to hit the high notes

The smallest one, second from right, has to jump to get the cards up to the level of the others, and their neighbor to the left gets to hold up syllables like ER and other such intelligible word scraps.  Do go and look. I think you'll like it.  They're miming to a very professional choir.

The comments are inadvertently funny, too, with people who evidently didn't read the expo, saying well they must all be men, women can't be monks, and so on, hot debate, when we're talking about a bunch of high school mimes dressed as monks, as anyone can!