Whoops, I know it's December, but here's our November recipe

Actually, I have two: this apple galette recipe was the best one I’ve ever had, so I’ll share it. And also a baked spinach a la Julia Child. I’m sorry I didn’t get these up sooner, November (and honestly, the last two months) just got away from me. And here it is December already and I’m so not ready for it. We’ve been dying for rain - and now we’ve finally got it and I find myself scrambling to get systems in place to deal with it, rather than been on top of my game. I’ve felt slightly behind all semester. I’m looking forward to getting my finals over with and then having a month to put everything to rights before the whole cycle begins again. You would not believe the state of my garden - such a mess - so much to do out there. I did manage to get our new mulberry tree planted, to replace our very sad peach tree.

“Country Apple Galette, adapted slightly from Jacques Pepin in Food + Wine

Pastry:
1-1/2 C all-purpose flour
1-1/2 t sugar
1/4 t salt
1 stick plus 2 T cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup ice water

Filling:

4 large apples (I used six small Granny Smith from my friend Lawrence’s tree)
2 T sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
1 T honey
1 T unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

In a food processor, combine the flour with the sugar, salt and butter and process for about five seconds. Sprinkle the ice water over the flour and process until the pasty just begins to come together, about 10 seconds. Transfer the pastry to a work surface, gather it together and pat into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper and refrigerate until ready to make galette (or just go ahead and use it right away).

Peel, halve, and core the apples. Chop half of the apples into small pieces. The other half, make nice slices. In a small bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon.

Preheat oven to 400. Roll out the pastry to a 12”x14” rectangle and transfer to a cookie sheet lined with parchment. Spread the chopped apples over the pastry to within one inch of the edge. Drizzle honey over the chopped apple. Arrange the apple slices on top in a pretty way. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the apples and dot with pieces of butter. Fold the pastry edge up and over the apples.

Bake for about an hour, until the pastry is nicely browned and crisp and all of the apples are tender. Transfer the pan to a rack and let cool. Serve warm or at room temp.”

“Baked Spinach a la Julia Child by way of Smitten Kitchen

3 pounds fresh spinach
3-1/2 to 4-1/2 T unsalted butter
salt and pepper
1-1/2 T flour
I C stock
3/4 C grated Gruyere (or swiss)
2 T fine breadcrumbs

Stem and wash your spinach but no need to dry. Put spinach in large pot over high heat. Cook, covered until wilted. Drain. Fill pot with cold water, plunge spinach into it, then drain again. Squeeze spinach to extract as much water as possible. You should have three cups (approx) of cooked spinach. Chop coarsely.

Melt 2 T butter over moderately high heat and stir in spinach. Cook for a couple of minutes until all of the water has steamed off. Lower heat and sprinkle in flour. Stir and cook for 2 minutes. Add stock very slowly and stir as added. You might or might not need all of the stock. Stir in another T of butter if you like. Season with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly butter a shallow 1-quart baking dish. Stir 1/2 C cheese into the spinach and then pour into baking dish. Mix remaining cheese with breadcrumbs and sprinkle over spinach. Melt 1-1/2 T butter and pour it over the top. Bake about 30 minutes, until heated through and brown on top.”

Hope you all had a lovely thanksgiving. We were able to travel to Tomales Bay for fresh oysters. It was fun to have them there for lunch, and fun to bring some home and shuck them for dinner too. It reminds us of our Maryland days!

New Chickens!

Please meet (from left): Amber, Gertrude, Joan, Dorothy, Lois, and Florence. They are too shy to show you their faces just yet.

Amber is our very first Buff Orpington. Joan and Gertrude are Rhode Island Reds. Dorothy and Lois are Easter Eggers. And Florence is a Plymouth Barred Rock. Florence has been the early leader, adventuring to the water first, onto the roost first, into the food first. Which is why we named her after Tom’s adventuring Aunt Florence who loved to visit new places. All these chickens are named after women in our family that we admire.

We were down to four chickens, two of whom aren’t laying at all anymore (from our very first batch of chickens all those years ago). I’m tired of not having fresh eggs, so I’ve been waiting for the right moment to add some new hens. The other day I saw a post in CropMobster - a farmer in Petaluma had pullets for sale. So today I drove up north and picked these six up. Let me know if you want some too and I’ll get you the farmer’s email and phone #. He has a lot more to sell. They are really a bit younger than pullets - coop-ready chicks, I’d call them. I had to run out and buy crumble because the pelleted food was too big for them.

I have the six little hens in a large dog crate in the main coop. They have food and water and a branch for roosting. At night I’ll cover the cage with a blanket to keep the wind and chill off of them. In a few days, I’ll put them in with our big hens, and they can fight it out, but meanwhile they are protected while they all get to know each other.

Our four big hens are completely nonplussed - very unsure of this new situation. So maybe they will all be on equal footing when I finally let everyone mingle. I can only hope.

Changing the Narrative

This morning in my Chemistry class, I was talking with a fellow student about her plans, and what she wanted to do after her time at Merritt. She is a super smart student, and gets really great grades, even in Chemistry (!), and I admire her very much because she is working full time as well as going to school full time. I was advising her to join the honor society at Merritt because you can get great scholarships and I know she gets good grades, so they would welcome her joining. I could see her take that in, and struggle with something internally, and then she shared with me how she is the first in her family to go to college, and how her brother is “into drugs,” and so there is a lot of pressure on her to do well and make something of herself. I was even more impressed with her, and told her so. Then I said, “you’re doing a huge thing - you’re changing the narrative.”

Which stopped me in my tracks, because why had I said that? It’s not something that would normally be in my head. I realized that I had said that because Tom said it to me this morning, and it was fresh on my mind and heart.

You see, earlier today I got an email from one of the universities I have applied to, for transfer as a Junior in Environmental Studies, for the Fall of 2020. It’s the first response I have gotten, and I was accepted. I smiled and filed it away, glad but not overwhelmed - after all, I’ve been working hard, doing what I was told to do to transfer, and getting excellent grades - I expected to be accepted. But when I offhandedly mentioned it to Tom, he made me slow down and take it in, really digest it. He was beaming with pride as he said to me, “This is so great! I’m so proud of you! Look what you’ve done - you’ve changed your narrative!” and once he said that, of course I dissolved in tears, realizing that’s just what I’ve done, at the ripe age of almost-52.

I’ve carried a lot of shame and regret with me all these years since I failed at my first attempt at college. It’s funny how that stuff affects a person, and creates these stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, which may not really be true. My story went something like this: “I’m a rotten student, I really suck at math, I’ve never gotten it, I fail even in classes I like and enjoy because I just suck.” It isn’t much of a stretch to assume that maybe that story carried over into every aspect of my life - relationships, parenting, career. Maybe it shaped my need to overachieve. Maybe it shaped my need to be seen as a busy, productive person. Maybe it shaped my need to be desired and loved. But it was never really truth - it was just a story I told myself about myself.

Last year, I told a friend that this second attempt at college was a sort of redemption for me. But what I didn’t realize until now was that if I succeeded this time, all the stories I told myself about myself might be shattered, and I’d have to create new ones. Like this one: I can do equations, and I can wrestle with a problem until I figure it out, and I’m actually not intrinsically bad at math. Here’s another one: I can see something through to the end, I’m not the quitter I thought I was, and I can actually do something I think is very hard and succeed at it. Here’s another one: I’ve been so busy trying to prove myself to the world, all these years, because I never could accept that I was enough without some kind of accomplishment backing it up, but I’ve just learned that the accomplishment doesn’t come at the end of something, it comes in the process of something.

What pleases me very much is that I have discovered this exactly when my children will be going out into the world with the stories they are telling themselves about themselves, and I hope I can convey this to them properly somehow:

They can change the story any time they want to. I know, because I’ve just done it.

Saffron Crocus

I decided to try my hand at growing saffron crocus this year, and so far it has been a very interesting project. Saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, is a Mediterranean bulb (technically corm), and likes extremely well-draining soil, with somewhat dry conditions. They bloom in fall, rather than spring, after a dry summer, in full sun. I live in a Mediterranean climate, and thought it would be easy to grow these here, and it has been, so far. I decided to plant them in a very large container, to which I added a 75/25 mix of compost-amended potting soil and grit (I used chicken grit rather than horticultural grit, which is what I had on hand and is a bit larger in size), mixed thoroughly. I have watered sparingly. These flowers have just begun to open, and they are lovely. They apparently handle frost with no problem (Mediterranean plants usually do fine with cold, they just don’t like to be in soggy soil) and will bloom for about a month. In very cold climates, they need to be dug up and stored for the winter; here, they will be just fine.

As you can see from the photo, there are three orange stamens (the male parts) and three red stigmas (the part of the pistil ((female parts)) that receives the pollen). [*Botany tangent: This means there are three chambers in the ovary. There are also three petals and three sepals. They are in the Iris family and this is a hallmark of that family.] The red stigmas are the saffron ‘threads’ that are so treasured for cooking, and cost so much in the store. You can see why. It would take a very great many flowers to make any amount of saffron. For home use, you need the amount that about 10-12 bulbs provide, for most recipes. That means I’ll have enough each year for 1-2 recipes. However, the bulbs, like all bulbs, increase each year, and I’ll be able to divide them and plant them throughout the garden. They are a welcome addition to the fall garden, which can look faded. It is best to pick the stigmas in the morning and then dry them during the day, storing them in a jar when fully dried. Much like asparagus, however, you are not supposed to pick them the first year. In the second and third years there is apparently a very abundant harvest, and then likely they’ll need to be dug up and separated and the whole process starts again.

I bought mine from Renee’s Garden for about $30 for 25 bulbs. They will be available for sale again in spring.

The Wind is Increasing

When I was a child, I loved the wind. Growing up in Maryland, if we had a big wind, it was something to enjoy. My mom would bundle me up and I’d go outside and across the street the woods. The trees were up on a slight rise and there was a sort of bowl-shaped lawn down below between two lines of townhouses. I’d stand in that spot with the neighborhood kids, letting the wind buffet me, and move my body back and forth. If it was fall, the trees in the wood (probably maples?) would begin to shed leaves. All the kids would race to catch them as they fell. It’s a happy memory, and so clear in my mind.

It’s nearly 2 am here, and the promised wind has started picking up. I was woken by the sound of acorns being flung from the oaks and hitting the cars and the house. It sounds like 3 inch hail, or like someone throwing a rock at the house. I’ve come to dread the wind in October, as I imagine all Californians do. This is a fairly new feeling. I mean, we had two huge events here years ago, both in October - the Loma Prieta earthquake happened 30 years ago on October 17, 1989, and the Oakland Hills fire was 28 years ago, October 10-21, 1991. So we’ve had a common feeling of portent since those events happened. But in the last three years, the wind events have increased, and as we’ve discussed before, they always happen this time of year. Always when our vegetation is at its driest.

Our house is lucky tonight - we have power. Most of Northern CA is in blackout. This is the second major loss of power in the last couple of weeks. Many areas have lost power more than twice. Sonoma county was in the middle of a blackout when the fire started in Geyserville last Wednesday. In many ways, having the power out makes things worse for everyone. Certainly it increases the dread.

We’ve never had a fire come within five miles of Poppy Corners - I mean the big wildfire kinds of fires. And yet I hear the wind and I am on high alert. Partially this is because I am thinking of what this wind is doing to the fire up north - now I see that there is a new evacuation warning for the entire town of Santa Rosa - and partly this is because of this sort of PTSD thing that I really believe all Californians have regarding this time of year. If I’m feeling it this much and I’ve never had any fire-related trauma, can you imagine what the folks in Santa Rosa feel like tonight, who haven’t yet recovered from the 2017 fire?

I also can’t stop thinking about the firefighters, how difficult their job is, how many of them are at the scene right now, how many haven’t slept in days. How there are people organizing this tremendous effort, what they must feel like, how they will dream of smoke and fire for years. How it will affect the children of these places. What it must do to a person to hear a bang on the door in the middle of the night and have two minutes to grab things and leave a home you may never come back to.

Maybe it’s because it’s the middle of the night, or maybe it’s because of this latent anxiety, or maybe it’s just fanciful, but I can’t help but think: This is only the beginning.