Remembering Madeleine

As I bake cookies for Christmas, I am remembering a wonderful woman named Madeleine Bonhomme. Our family became acquainted with this fine French woman when we took up folk dancing as an interest in my home town of Toledo, Ohio. She was well into her early seventies and still dancing with our international folk dance group. She wasn’t much over 5 foot, arthritic and a bit round, but she continued to shuffle through dances in her traditional French costume delighting many audiences we performed for.

We were lucky to know this rather temperamental woman who didn’t suffer fools gladly. We often got to be the recipients of her wonderful cooking and she came to our home to pass on her skills to my mother. I, of course, was hanging about, learning too. One time she came over and shared with us her secrets for making that famous French dish, Boeuf Bourguignon. It would seem, according to Madeleine, that in order to properly prepare such a dish, consumption of the beautiful ruby red wine was necessary. That turned into quite a cooking party as I recall.

Puff pastry is another all day kind of cooking feat which really deserves company, and Madeleine was a perfect teacher and conversationalist. First you make dough which then gets rolled into a large square, spread with butter, and folded into thirds and then thirds again. The brick gets wrapped in wax paper and then put into the refrigerator to harden. After an appropriate cooling period, the process is repeated until about a pound of butter is worked into the dough. Because of the folding process, the dough bakes into flaky buttery layers which can be formed into crescents, pastry cookies or used to enfold a meat roast or brie cheese. It is very time intensive, but oh so worth the effort and wonderful to share with a family or a good friend.

But the thing Madeleine was most famous for was “d’ cookie”. By this she meant the shell shaped buttery cake cookies with which she shared her name. She often brought a large tin of these rich little mouth-fulls to folk-dancing rehearsals or as a gift at holidays. The molded pans hold only 12 cookies and they are frightfully fussy to make. I think this is why she was cranky about how quickly they disappeared after being presented. They are usually flavored with vanilla and sprinkled with powdered sugar, but they can have lemon, orange or almond flavorings.

Some years ago, Madeleine must have sensed her approaching death and gave the three Madeleine pans to my mother. She could no long bake “d’ cookie” and she hoped my mother would take on the tradition. A few years later, my mother gifted me with the pans because of my fond memories of the woman who introduced us to the beautiful little cakes. I feel it is such an honor to receive something as intimate as cooking equipment so lovingly used over the years. I love to make these sweets at holiday time and remember our dear friend and hope we meet again some day to talk over dance, food, and “d’ cookie”.

Icing flowers and Embroidery Wool

I recently heard that one of my specialty stores, Sweet Celebrations recently went out of business. I nearly cried. In a previous incarnation and based in Minneapolis area, it was called Maid of Scandinavia. They sold supplies for making candy, cakes and desserts and rose water for flavoring lemonade. Now where will I get the red waxed paper squares for my Christmas caramels? It was a double hit because a wonderful embroidery store closed here in Boise where I could find silk and wool threads and linen fabrics. It feels like loss of culture.

I came to love handmade things as a young girl. My grandmother knitted, embroidered and smocked for me and my cousins.  My mother and father are both very artful and our home was filled with the evidence of their handmade adventures.  We lived the Arts and Crafts movement or rather the 60’s and 70’s revival of it. 

The cradle of my artistic sense as I remember it was when we moved back to Ann Arbor, Michigan while my father resumed his Doctoral studies in romance linguistics,  I was about 7 years old and this time period was filled with some of the most happy recollections of my life.  My mother was always taking my brother and I on adventures. Window shopping in downtown Ann Arbor, trips to the U of M Natural History Museum, farmer’s market trips where we bought produce and armfuls of flowers wrapped in newspaper. I can only begin to name the lovely little specialty stores we haunted.

One of my favorite places was a paper goods store that sold Hallmark items located in an old home.  What a fun place.  You may remember when they made coordinated party goods in all sorts of lovely patterns.  The table centerpieces were often contrived of accordion paper ornaments which opened out from a flattened shape in a packet and clipped together to stay open.  I always dreamed of which one I might get to have for my next birthday.

I also remember a lovely little yarn shop in an old arcade in the middle of town square. My mother bought one of my first wool embroidery projects which had a scene of kittens playing with yarn. It was the start of a life long love of crewel embroidery. It seems now to be out of favor as a pass-time, but I still love separating hanks of yarn by color and perusing the various stitches I’ll be using.

Another favorite store was a party store which sold everything from wines and gourmet delights to table wares and party goods.  I think this is where I was introduced to candied violets. They are magical. Real violets are dipped in fine, shimmering, purple sugar.  Very expensive due to time-intensiveness, they are used to top special desserts. Even the most mundane custard can be elevated to royal status with a few violets perched upon it.

There was a bakery up the road from my grade school in Toledo, Ohio which sold pre-made hand painted icing flowers. Though they aren’t very tasty, they are a beautiful thing to behold. Yellow and purple pansies were my favorite of course, but all of the flowers were enchanting. When this store went out of business in the early 70’s in my economically depressed hometown, I felt so sad.

The loss of my favorite stores because of internet marketing or economic pressures is so devastating. I feel frustrated trying to find what I want in dumb-downed big box stores because the service is poor or non-existent. The only advantage to buying on the internet is that you can do it in your PJs and bunny slippers. It is too hard trying to discern color, hand (the feel of it), taste, and texture via a modem.

So my soap-stand for today is support your local merchants. They might be a bit more expensive, but its way worth the quality products, chit-chat, and knowing you are helping them make a living by selling concrete rabbits, buttons, zebra wood planks or whatever. And while you are at it, put away you poison pen and give a compliment in person or note. They will be happy to accommodate your needs if it helps them stay in business.

Fruits of Our Harvest

It’s the middle of October and canning season has finally wound down to a simmer. What started in the middle of the summer has produced for me a cupboard full of jewel-toned jars of peaches, pears, tomatoes, grape juice, apple juice to name a few.

I especially start to get rather squirrel-ish by about mid August. I start calculating how much fruit I will need to buy to put up for the winter. “Put up” is a Utah/Idaho colloquialism for preserving food, thus “putting it up” on a shelf. At first I begin to think one bushel of peaches should be enough since I only have one child at home.  But then, I get worried, because one year, there was a late freeze which made peaches rare and pricey.  I had better get two bushels then…I can always give away some, and the kids at college will want to take some for their meager menu.

My favorite variety of peaches, “Ida Lady” (“Summer Lady” as it is known elsewhere) is sure to come in for harvest around Labor Day weekend. You can almost bet that my friend Ellen and I will be hunkered in at my house for the holiday weekend peeling, slicing, bottling, and processing quart jars of peaches. For a while we made our children help us so they could learn not only the process of canning, but also for the work value.  But now, we recognize we are much more efficient by ourselves. There is a sort of rhythm that exists in my kitchen which has bonded us over the years. 

Here is the secret to our success of putting up 4 bushels of peaches in a day:

1. Most important. Get a canning buddy.  It could be a like-minded girlfriend, spouse or grown up child. Just make sure it is someone you like spending time and a kitchen with.
2. Get a camp stove.  I mean the kind of stove that has two large burners on four tall skinny legs attached to propane. It is perfect for running two boiling water baths out on the back porch so the kitchen doesn’t get all hot. Sort of harkening back to those summer kitchens so often part of farm houses years ago.
3. Forget the sticky syrup production unless you want to be hosing down your kitchen, dogs, children or anything else that might come in contact with you. Opt instead for putting 1/3 cup sugar in each jar for light syrup and dissolving with an inch of boiling water. Less than this amount we’ve found leads to water-logged peaches because all the sugar goes into the water (remember the principles of osmosis and diffusion?) and the texture really deteriorates over the months in your cupboard. We assembly line about 3 dozen jars at a time on a covered protected card table. Before putting the sugar in, put in about 1/8 of a teaspoon of ascorbic acid in each jar. It is available in bulk at our local health food store co-op. 
4. Fill the jars with sliced peaches. We find that quarters seem to work the best.  If you want to make them all pretty in halves for state fair quality, just make enough to put on the front row of shelves to show off.  Trust me, you won’t get more in the jar and you aren’t going to get the eight boxes of fruit staring you in the face done today if you obsess about looks.
5. Top off the jar to ½ inch from the top with more boiling water (we keep two tea kettles going). Wipe the rims and put your clean lids on. That’s right; you don’t need to put them boiling water first.  When you process them in the boiling water bath it will take care of unwanted bacterial contaminants; more than that is just over-kill.
6. Process your bottles according to size and altitude. Check this website for further information: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/pnw0199/pnw0199.pdf

And so the peaches go, followed quickly by pears, applesauce, tomatoes and anything else I can get my hands on for a reasonable price. By the time October is here, I am pretty much getting tired of it all and the squirrel in me has overstayed its welcome.

So why do I bother with all this? Is it worth the time and money?  Good questions.  First of all, let me say that if you haven’t had good home canned peaches or other fruits and vegetables, you won’t ever be able to answer these questions. When fruit is canned commercially, it tends to be either under-ripe or of a variety which is easier to process in mass but lacks flavor and sweetness. So by preserving just ripe fruit of the many flavorful varieties available, you won’t be looking back to insult your palate with the tinned variety; good in a pinch, but not much else.

As to the economy of it all, not including time, it comes out about the same price if not a bit less. The difference it’s made for our family is that they actually eat their fruit and veggies, because they taste good. I also don’t need to run to the store as frequently, thus reducing impulse spending.  Did I mention that the peaches make excellent pies in a jiffy?

I get a lot of personal satisfaction knowing that I have food put away for emergencies, like job loss, natural disasters, illness, or other unforeseen emergencies.  Because it’s there, when someone I know is sick or in distress, I can readily provide some yummy food or treats. I also like the idea that I am helping sustain our local economy.  I really am trying to go with the idea of eating within a hundred square miles of my home.

So, yes, it’s a lot of work, but it is a kind of security I am not willing to live without. As my friend Ellen says: “I don’t see anyone complaining about eating them”.

Family Pride?

Every Tuesday morning I head to the local Family History Center to volunteer helping other people to discover their “roots”. This week, in particular, I was doing a bit of detective work to find my second cousin’s Barnes family.  Along the way, I found a Barnes family history book which is available digitally on the web.

I should point out here that all families tend to promote the positive qualities of their family members. It’s only natural to want to preserve for posterity the most endearing stories and traits.  For reality sake however, every family has their share of unsavory folk such as murderers and thieves, among other skeletons in the closet. Most would like to keep them in the closet if possible.

The Barnes Family Year Book, published in 1907, has an incredibly complimentary forward.  It is the most collectively aggrandizing and adulatory type of writing I have rarely seen. Wait- was that redundant? Read on:

“It is likely that the name, (Barnes) as transmitted to America, came by representatives of lines extending back many generations in England to a common ancestor.  Here they have borne their share of the adventure and hardships experienced in clearing, and building up a great country, in conquering a savage hoard, and exterminating wild beasts.  Coming early to our eastern shore, they have swept back with each succeeding wave of civilization, foremost in every hazardous expedition requiring nerve and sinew for success.  Foremost in cultivating and making productive the soil, foremost in preparing and protecting homes for the benefit and comfort of their posterity, they have permeated the whole land, have entered into all trades, and have been honored in all professions.  As a family they have been strictly industrious.  They have shunned speculative schemes as detrimental to the well-being of their fellowmen, and have chosen to render honest labor for their livelihood, rather than wring it from the neighbors in mercenary trade.  They have ever been loyal to the spirit of freedom, borne to our New England shores by the Pilgrim ancestors.  Obedient and stubborn soldiers, they have stood upon the field of battle in every hour of peril and sailed on privateers to meet invading foes.  The only places we fail to find the name is on the rolls of the prison and the almshouse.”

Holy Toledo- that is some family!  Single-handedly, it would seem, they colonized a country, and brought it into the 20^th century to be the power we know today. This is little hard to chew for the rest of us who come from pre-revolutionary stock and those of us who don’t.

As I’ve been painting my seemingly never ending 60 feet of shelving (plenty of time to ponder), I’ve come to think about this differently. Genealogists, one of whom wrote this extensive family history, tend to dwell not only in the past, but also into the future.  What if this was not only a statement of fact about the past, but also a wish for future generations?

I teach my children and hold self-expectation about many of these qualities of working hard, making a comfortable place to live and making the world better by treating my fellowman fairly and honestly. Loyalty and patriotism never go out of style. While exterminating wild beasts is strictly politically incorrect, conquering the hoards of individuals in the world who are savage to innocent bystanders is laudable. I’ll bet you know a few at work!  Finally, the goal of family members avoiding imprisonment for illegal activities and being fiscally responsible in this age of overspending and unrivaled debt is definitely something I would want my progeny to strive towards.

While the rest of us non-Barnes’ can’t expect to have such a whistle clean past, we can work towards helping families to have exceptional futures. As I have often counseled my family: “Every generation, a little better” Now that is what I call a great family!  

360 Degree Horizon

I am sorry to report to my Eastern family and friends. I’ve become a Westerner. It’s been slowly coming over me and I had one of those epiphanies as I was driving home from a lovely weekend with my two oldest children in Logan, Utah yesterday.

I first came to the west by transferring to Brigham Young University. Some of the obvious downers to Easterners of living in Utah/Idaho and most of the arid west are: paucity of trees, dry, dry air that leaves your lips and hands husk like, and sage everywhere and don’t forget: trying to keep a lawn green is a total joke.

Slowly, slowly, I’ve come to love these open places. People are open too in this land, and I’ve let go of most of my eastern paranoia. Each time I drive to Utah from my home in Boise, I forget how huge the mountains are. The Wasatch front is right in your face. Granite mountains with sheer cliffs decorated with a smattering of sage and scrub oak. The mountains are less conspicuous in Boise because the foothills hide they’re grandiosity. As well, this city of trees, can play make believe as if it were not in the middle of a high mountain desert.

Traveling to Utah in the most efficient way from Boise requires driving a 94 mile segment of freeway between Burley, Idaho and Tremonton, Utah. This lonely portion of the trip winds through high mountains and open range land. It often feels as though I am sailing on an ocean of dried grasses. Because of its terrain, this area is continually bombarded with severe weather. Often there are mountain passes which are laden with thick ice and snow and can be quite treacherous. It has been rare that I’ve driven this section of road without experiencing some form of precipitation and the wind continually howls. After the farmers have plowed their dry farms, dust-devils reach to the sky and swirl through fields threatening to topple some unaware driver. This area is known for zero-visibility dust and snow storms. I have dreaded driving this road occupied only with long-haul truck drivers and other motorists trying to cut time off their trips like me. Usually, I obsess about getting across it during daylight.

Over the years a new feeling has come over me as I drive this trip. This fall as I was driving home from dropping my son off in Logan, I chanced to be in the area where I-84 bifurcates to send travelers east to Pocatello as I continue west to my destination just after the sun set. Heading west, the sky was gloriously tinted with all the colors of sunset, but as I turned my head, it blended into green and blue and purples. Clouds looked like islands in a sea of fire. It was glorious; this natural performance lasted for sometime as I chased the sun westward. I was astounded at the view in this area which is uninterrupted by trees or buildings; just a clean line of terrain and sky all around. This type of vista can be seen in the West where open sky is a 360 degree vault of blue. Suddenly, my otherwise irksome trip was turned into magic.

Yesterday as we drove home again from Logan, I hoped I could again see this magnificent performance. We were about a half hour later however. This time the performance showed something altogether different but just as entrancing. As dusk became night, the clear skies became an art student’s exercise of mixing graded shades of hues. Adding successive portions of black, the sky became inkier and more intriguing. Blue and purple above and gold and orange of fields turning into deep but almost glowing greens, I stretched and strained my vision to be able to see until it was completely enfolded into night. I knew then, this is my favorite part of the trip. Sometimes completely devoid of trees, awesome and powerful, I live happily in this western landscape.

The Power of Pondering

What is pondering? I say it is the adult version of day-dreaming. Once the province of great scientific and philosophic minds, pondering should be a daily part of all our lives.

What got me thinking about this principle (pondering) yesterday while I was babysitting, was a two year old lying on his tummy on the trampoline with his head sitting on his elbow raised hands. He was peacefully observing his environment dappled with fall sunlight. I kept thinking about how he must believe the world in his Grammy’s back yard was the best ever! So safe and secure…

I remember sitting like that, all dreamy eyed, thinking of present happy delights, past experiences, and hoped for futures. It was easy to do; I lived within walking distance of two metropolitan parks in Toledo, Ohio. I’ve never minded being solitary and I was only interrupted in my reveries by hunger or impending darkness. There is just something lovely about observing the sky through the lacework of leaves in a wooded canopy. It felt like everything was going to be OK. It is why I crave time in my garden- if no one else will listen to you, the plants will.

So what happened to those days, when you could work out your daily angst by quietly abiding in nature, a cozy bedroom or by a fireplace blaze? Grow up people! You don’t have time for this. You have obligations… responsibilities…people depend on you… there are people to be dominated, wars to be won, not to mention sales to shop before the deals are gone. Somewhere, lost in the land of maturity, is a part of humanity that needs to think before they act, and gain some perspective.

What are the benefits of pondering if we actually take time to do it? Perhaps it is better thought out plans, less impulsive purchases, kinder interactions with those around us, and more openness to inspiration. The world could use a whole lot more of those things! But then, what happens after we’ve pondered and come to a conclusion? It seems there is an inherent call to action. After all, sitting about staring into the sky and never following through probably is day dreaming.

I plan to take a bit more time to ponder what I will do each day and how it will affect not only me, but my family, my community and my world. Call it scheduled, goal oriented, productive, and caring day-dreaming. I’ll call you tomorrow, after I “sleep on it”.